hearts; happy in the downfall of others--themselves holding on with bent necks and cruel eyes to a wretch more a slave if possible than they to his miserable passions--And if I said these are the consequences of civilization & turned to the savage world I saw only ignorance unrepaid by any noble feeling--a mere animal, love of life joined to a low love of power & a fiendish love of destruction--I saw a creature drawn on by his senses & his selfish passions but untouched by aught noble or even Human-- And then when I sought for consolation in the various faculties man is possessed of & which I felt burning within me--I found that spirit of union with love & beauty which formed my happiness & pride degraded into superstition & turned from its natural growth which could bring forth only good fruit:--cruelty--& intolerance & hard tyranny was grafted on its trunk & from it sprung fruit suitable to such grafts--If I mingled with my fellow creatures was the voice I heard that of love & virtue or that of selfishness & vice, still misery was ever joined to it & the tears of mankind formed a vast sea ever blown on by its sighs & seldom illuminated by its smiles--Such taking only one side of the picture & shutting wisdom from the view is a just portraiture of the creation as seen on earth But when I compared the good & evil of the world & wished to divide them into two seperate principles I found them inextricably intwined together & I was again cast into perplexity & doubt--I might have considered the earth as an imperfect formation where having bad materials to work on the Creator could only palliate the evil effects of his combinations but I saw a wanton malignity in many parts & particularly in the mind of man that baffled me a delight in mischief a love of evil for evils sake--a siding of the multitude--a dastardly applause which in their hearts the crowd gave to triumphant wick[ed]ness over lowly virtue that filled me with painful sensations. Meditation, painful & continual thought only encreased my doubts--I dared not commit the blasphemy of ascribing the slightest evil to a beneficent God--To whom then should I ascribe the creation? To two principles? Which was the upermost? They were certainly independant for neither could the good spirit allow the existence of evil or the evil one the existence of good--Tired of these doubts to which I could form no probable solution--Sick of forming theories which I destroyed as quickly as I built them I was one evening on the top of Hymettus beholding the lovely prospect as the sun set in the glowing sea--I looked towards Athens & in my heart I exclaimed--oh busy hive of men! What heroism & what meaness exists within thy walls! And alas! both to the good & to the wicked what incalculable misery--Freemen ye call yourselves yet every free man has ten slaves to build up his freedom--and these slaves are men as they are yet d[e]graded by their station to all that is mean & loathsome--Yet in how many hearts now