finally prevail.
When many individuals of a society attain that self-forgetfulness which
is promoted by a high and free religious sentiment, but which is
incompatible with either licentious or ascetic tendencies, the tone of
manners in that society will be much raised. When, free from the
grossness of self-indulgence, and from the constraint of self-denial,
every one spontaneously thinks more of his neighbour than of himself,
the world will witness, at last, the perfection of manners. It is clear
that the high morals of which such refined manners will be the
expression, must greatly depend on the exaltation of the religious
sentiment from which they emanate.

The traveller may possibly object the difficulty of classing societies
by their religious tendencies, and ask whether minds of every sort are
not to be found in all numerous assemblages of persons. This is true:
but yet there is a prevailing religious sentiment in all communities.
Religious, like other sentiment, is modified by the strong general
influences under which each society lives; and in it, as in other kinds,
there will be general resemblance, with particular differences under it.
It is well known that even sects, exclusive in their opinions and
straitened by forms, differ in different countries almost as much as if
there were no common bond. Not only is episcopacy not the same religion
among born East Indians as in England, but the Quakers of the United
States, though like the English in doctrine and in manners, are easily
distinguishable from them in religious sentiment: and even the Jews,
who might be expected to be the same all over the world, differ in
Russia, Persia, and Great Britain as much as if a spirit of division had
been sent among them. They not only appear here in furs, there in cotton
or silk, and elsewhere in broadcloth; but the hearts they bear beneath
the garments, the thoughts that stir under the cap, the turban, and the
hat, are modified in their action as the skies under which they move are
in aspect. They are strongly tinctured with the national sentiment of
Russia, Persia, and England; and if the fond dream of some of them (in
which, by the way, large numbers of their body have ceased to
sympathize,) could come true, and they should ever be brought together
within their ancient borders, they would find that their religion, so
unique in its fixedness, though one in word, is many in spirit.--Much
more easy is the assimilation between