ed perception of its harmlessness, will subside into simple
astonishment. Then let any genius, sufficiently powerful to impress on
his mind all the terms of the communication, impart to him, that after
a long process of ages, when his race shall have attained what some
people think proper to denominate a very advanced stage of
perfectibility, the most favoured and distinguished of the community
shall meet by hundreds, to grin, and labour, and gesticulate, like the
phantasma before him, from sunset to sunrise, while all nature is at
rest, and that they shall consider this a happy and pleasurable mode
of existence, and furnishing the most delightful of all possible
contrasts to what they will call his vegetative state: would he not
groan from his inmost soul for the lamentable condition of his
posterity?

_Mr Jenkison._
I know not what your wild and original man might think of the matter
in the abstract; but comparatively, I conceive, he would be better
pleased with the vision of such a scene as this, than with that of a
party of Indians (who would have all the advantage of being nearly as
wild as himself), dancing their infernal war-dance round a midnight
fire in a North American forest.

_Mr Escot._
Not if you should impart to him the true nature of both, by laying
open to his view the springs of action in both parties.

_Mr Jenkison._
To do this with effect, you must make him a profound metaphysician,
and thus transfer him at once from his wild and original state to a
very advanced stage of intellectual progression; whether that
progression be towards good or evil, I leave you and our friend Foster
to settle between you.

_Mr Escot._
I wish to make no change in his habits and feelings, but to give him,
hypothetically, so much mental illumination, as will enable him to
take a clear view of two distinct stages of the deterioration of his
posterity, that he may be enabled to compare them with each other, and
with his own more happy condition. The Indian, dancing round the
midnight fire, is very far deteriorated; but the magnificent beau,
dancing to the light of chandeliers, is infinitely more so. The Indian
is a hunter: he makes great use of fire, and subsists almost entirely
on animal food. The malevolent passions that spring from these
pernicious habits involve him in perpetual war. He is, therefore,
necessitated, for his own preservation, to keep all the energies of
his nature in constant activi