_The Unknown_.--I have no objection. Let there be a fair discussion; remember we fight only with foils, and the point of mine shall be covered with velvet. In your attack upon chemistry, Philalethes, you limited the use of it to the apothecary's shop and the kitchen. The first is an equivocal use; by introducing it into the kitchen you make it an art fundamental to all others. But if what you had stated had really meant to be serious, it would not have deserved a reply; as it is in mere playfulness, it shall not be thrown away. I want eloquence, however, to adorn my subject, yet it is sufficiently exciting even to awaken feeling. Persons in general look at the magnificent fabric of civilized society as the result of the accumulated labour, ingenuity, and enterprise of man through a long course of ages, without attempting to define what has been owing to the different branches of human industry and science; and usually attribute to politicians, statesmen, and warriors a much greater share than really belongs to them in the work: what they have done is in reality little. The beginning of civilization is the discovery of some useful arts by which men acquire property, comforts, or luxuries. The necessity or desire of preserving them leads to laws and social institutions. The discovery of peculiar arts gives superiority to particular nations; and the love of power induces them to employ this superiority to subjugate other nations, who learn their arts, and ultimately adopt their manners; so that in reality the origin, as well as the progress and improvement, of civil society is founded in mechanical and chemical inventions. No people have ever arrived at any degree of perfection in their institutions who have not possessed in a high degree the useful and refined arts. The comparison of savage and civilized man, in fact, demonstrates the triumph of chemical and mechanical philosophy as the causes not only of the physical, but ultimately even of moral improvement. Look at the condition of man in the lowest state in which we are acquainted with him. Take the native of New Holland, advanced only a few steps above the animal creation, and that principally by the use of fire; naked, defending himself against wild beasts or killing them for food only by weapons made of wood hardened in the fire, or pointed with stones or fish bones; living only in holes dug out of the earth, or in huts rudely constructed of a few branches of trees covered with grass; having no approach to the enjoyment of luxuries or even comforts; unable to provide for his most pressing wants; having a language scarcely articulate, relating only to the great objects of nature, or to his most pressing necessities or desires, and living solitary or in single families, unacquainted with religion, government, or laws, submitted to the mercy of nature or the elements. How different is man in his highest state of cultivation; every part of his body covered with the products of