But if the cunning and ingenuity consequent upon man's extra allowance of brain has enabled him, by dint of combination in society, to subdue many animals for his use, has he by this means, and what he calls civilisation, really and truly improved his condition for the brief term of life which nature has allotted him? Are not the evils generated by education, in which hypocrisy and fraud are the chief ingredients--the vices--the crimes--the immoral and distracting systems of religion, which induce a general depravity of character, and the unnatural and iniquitous laws emanating from such a corrupt state of society, infinitely greater than the alleged advantages arising from this boasted civilisation? If we take the aggregate of morality in man, as he is at present produced and educated in the great manufactory of society, in which Christian theology with its concomitant evils, are the principal apparatus, we shall have difficulty in finding on the face of the earth, a more vicious, treacherous, and cruel animal. This is always denied in theory; but the conduct of every man recognises its woeful truth practically. Let the man of observation and true candor of mind lay his hand upon his heart, and honestly declare whether his fellow men, and in instances, even those he calls his friends, are not the sole source of all his inquietudes and miseries--whether this demi-god is not the animal that he is obliged to be more incessantly on his guard against than any other! This universal prevalence of vice and moral depravity is primarily accounted for by the priest and superstitionist, by the equally flagitious and absurd dogma about what they call original sin; but the true cause is very far from lurking in anything innately vicious in human nature, but on the contrary, is wholly engendered by their own unearthly delusions--the contagion of supernaturalism, and its distracting train of theological inventions. These are the fatal lures which have estranged and drawn man to apostatise from the wholesome principles of his nature--surrounded him with artificial circumstances wholly adverse to these principles, and as degrading to his position as an intelligent being, as they are inimical to his peace and happiness. Whilst the elements of society shall continue to be thus contaminated, life will be a gift scarce worth receiving and though the ingenuous truth-loving mind may, on the approach of dissolution, feel dismayed at the idea of ceasing to contemplate the beautiful of nature--the sun, the green fields, the woods, the streams, and the mountains, in which alone it finds prayers and sermons; yet no reluctance can be experienced in quitting intercourse with fellow men, whose religion imposes the necessity of shunning truth in almost anything, affords an example of habitual deception,* and by placing the _unnatural_, in the chair of the _natural_, turns man into a pitiful caricature of what he ought to be, in the nobler destinies of humanity.