s confined generalization of facts; a desire to do right, but
checked by accident and cunning--everywhere uneasy--always fatal. If
the Christians' fables were true, we might say that Adam and Eve were
originally in possession of Instinct and Reason, and fell by listening
to the promptings of volition, instead of the unswerving powers of the
brutes, and for a hereditary punishment was cursed with a superabundance
of reason. For with all our intellectual prerogatives, we have yet
failed to arrive at a definite course of action which should influence
our conduct. The Essay, speaking of Government by Christianity, says:--

"Force first made conquest, and that conquest law,
Till superstition taught the tyrant awe.

.....

She taught the weak to bend, the proud to pray,
To power unseen, and mightier far than they:
She, from the rending earth and bursting skies,
Saw Gods descend and fiends infernal rise.
Here _fixed_ the dreadful, there the blessed abodes,
Here _made her_ devils, and weak hope her Gods.
Gods partial, changeful, passionate, _unjust_,
Whose _attributes were rage, revenge, or lust_.
Such as the souls of cowards might conceive,
And formed like tyrants; tyrants would believe.
Zeal then, not charity, became the guide,
And Hell was _built in spite_, and Heaven in pride."

And again--

"For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight,
His can't be wrong whose life is in the right."

The Essay concludes with an invocation to Bolingbroke--whom Pope styles,
"my guide, philosopher, and friend." Such is the conclusion of the most
remarkable ethical poem in any language. It is the Iliad of English
Deism. Not a single allusion to Christ--a future state of existence
given only as a faint probability--the whole artificial state of society
satirized--prayer ridiculed, and government of every kind denounced
which does not bring happiness to the people. The first principle laid
down is the corner-stone of materialism--"What can we reason but
from what we know?"--which is stated, explained, and defended with an
axiomatic brevity rarely equalled, never surpassed--with a number
of illustrations comprising the _chef d'oeuvre_ of poetic grace, and
synthical melody combined with arguments as cogent as the examples are
perfect.

It stands alone in its impregnability--a pile of literary architecture
like the "Novum Organan" of Bacon, the "Principia