2. The passions are given to man on purpose to aid the slow and uncertain operations of reason. But is their action always proportioned to the causes which excite them? An acute pneumony, brought on by the trifling injury done to the system by the fatigue and heat of an evening spent in a dancing assembly, is but a faint representation of the immense disproportion between a trifling affront, and that excess of passion which seeks for gratification in poison, assassination, or a duel. The same disproportion appears between cause and effect in public bodies. A hasty word, of no mischievous influence, has often produced convulsions, and even revolutions, in states and empires. If we return to the human body we shall find in it many other instances of the disproportion between stimulus and action, besides that which takes place in the excitement of fever. 3. A single castor oil nut, although rejected by the stomach upon its first effort in vomiting, has, in one instance that came within my knowledge, produced a vomiting that continued nearly four and twenty hours. Here the duration of action was far beyond all kind of proportion to the cause which excited it. 4. A grain of sand, after being washed from the eye, is often followed by such an inflammation or excess in the action of the vessels of the eye, as to require bleeding, purging, and blistering to remove it. Could we comprehend every part of the sublime and ineffable system of the divine government, I am sure we should discover nothing in it but what tended ultimately to order. But the natural, moral, and political world exhibit every where marks of disorder, and the instruments of this disorder, are the operations of nature. Her influence is most obvious in the production of diseases, and in her hurtful or ineffectual efforts to remove them[4]. In again glancing at this subject I wish it to be remembered that those operations were not originally the means of injuring or seducing man, and that I believe a time will come when the exact relation, between cause and effect, or, in other words, the dominion of order shall be restored over every action of his body and mind, and health and happiness again be the result of every movement of nature. [4] See the Comparative View of the Diseases of the Indians and of Civilized Nations. Vol. I.