Nor is the next attempt which he makes at imparting knowledge much better, if any, than the first. It is that man, who did not make himself, but was made by a power unknown to himself, is the creature of circumstances, over which he has no control, and in fact, is nothing but what he is made: or in other words, that he is a mere machine. Some, perhaps, may be a little startled at the deduction which I profess to draw from Mr. Owen’s principles, and think that he is not quite so bad as that: but I can tell them it is not a deduction of mine; it is one of the fundamental principles, nay, the corner-stone of Mr. Owen’s system, the admission and belief of which is essential to his success. Nay, in one of his works, “Essays on the formation of the human character,” he expressly says that men are “living machines,” p. 28. Whether even the followers of Mr. Owen may be flattered at being accounted only machines, and may be willing that he should mould and use them as he pleases, in working out his results, I know not: but I do think that men in general will not thank him for the compliment, nor be inclined to become his tools. It is too great a fall from the dignity of high, intelligent, rational, and accountable beings, to be treated as “living machines;” especially when every man, whatever may be his circumstances, has only need to appeal to his own consciousness for the evidences of the fact, that he is not a machine. But Mr. Owen tells us, “Men are nothing but what they are made, and they are made to be what they are by their organization, and the external circumstances which act upon and influence it,” namely, that organization. “None are, or can be bad by nature; their education,” which makes them bad, “is always the business or work of society, and not of the individual. The individual is thus, evidently, a material of nature, finished and fashioned by the society in which it lives, according to the ignorance, or the intelligence, or the knowledge of human nature, which that society has been made to possess, and by the influence of other external circumstances, with which the individual may be surrounded.” (Book of the New Moral World, p. 54.) But, if this statement be true, that the nature of man is good, and he would never be bad if he were not taught to be so, we now shall want all Mr. Owen’s wisdom to explain to us how, upon his system, evil and sin first came into the world. That they are in the world, he cannot but admit; indeed, he tells us that it is the object of his system to drive them out of it. Well, then, will he have the goodness to tell us how, upon his system, they first came into the world? Man could not do wrong without his being taught to do wrong? then who first taught him? And whence did he receive it? According to Mr. Owen’s theory, man could not receive it from himself; whence, then, did he get it? It must have been from some sinful being who was in the world before sin itself, which is a palpable