full weight, your most certain knowledge; knowledge if not yet confirmed by your own experience, yet already taught in this Areopagus, and laid before you in this our philosophical system of morals, with all the certainty to your understanding of geometrical demonstration, that all the virtues which we have already inculcated, have been acquired, and are acquirable only by the mind in its best state of tension, elasticity, and vigour : from which state, there is certainly a very suspicious condition of collapse and relaxation, in all cases of inconstancy and fickleness.

And as all the virtues exist only in their exhibition, there being no justice, but when men are just, and no sincerity but when they are sincere: if, while all the reasons for our good purposes last, our good purposes last not,-then has our candle gone out before our work is done; and there is an indication of an incipient imbecility of mind, which a man hath as good reason to be frightened at, as at the first symptom of a palsied limb. It is of most ugly indication, and if remedy be not applied in time, the moral disorder may extend its ravages, till it gradually and imperceptibly destroys the faculty of perseverance in any thing and your good man sinks at last into the debile creature of the weather, and the atmosphere. He can only do good when you catch him at it; and persists in his good purposes no longer than the wind keeps in the quarter for them.

Surely then all the reasons that call for the cultivation of the moral virtues, call for their continued exhibition with steadiness, perseverance, and constancy. He who had motive enough to set out on a journey, should have motive enough to continue to the journey's end.

Consider then the sense of infirmity, the loss of all comfortable grounds of confidence in ourselves, and the ill grace which we must stand in with other men, whose good opinion, upon any reckoning, must be ofas much consequence to us, as ours to them, when we have been bravoes in beating up for the war, but cowards in the battle, have launched the gallant vessel on the deep, and then ta'en boat and come to land again.

Consider then, that whatever cause or purpose it be, that ought not to be steadily and perseveringly prosecuted, and kept up with the same spirit and energy with which it was begun, that cause or purpose is certainly one which should never have been begun at all. The error was in limine, in the first setting out; and the sooner it be corrected, the better; tho' the correction even in that case, cannot take place without the painful chastisement to the mind, of discovering its own versatility and impotence, and the consciousness of a lightly-come and lightly-go sort of a character-that sits so vastly like a fool's-cap on a man's forehead, that you might well! no more of it.

The first principle of the virtue of constancy, is, to get wit enough not to set out in any thing without sufficient reason for No 3.-Vol. 4.

G

being constant. And if such reason from the first was not want-` ing, it will remain to ensure a good man's perseverance on the same principles that ensure his justice, sincerity, and truth.

For these eternal and immutable principles of the everlasting law of righteousness, followed out into their determinations of the proprieties and fitnesses of sentiment and action, will be found to plant their cannon as directly against fickleness and unsteadiness -to any thing which is apprehended to be right, as against adherence and obstinacy to what is known to be wrong.

From this theorem of moral demonstration, it is an immediate corollary, that if it was (as in all cases which determine a wise and good man's conduct, it will be) great and sufficient merit is the object, which first engaged his affections: to conceive disgust afterwards, and withdraw those affections for small and trivial defects, is a breach upon justice, sincerity, and truth; and the inconstancy, which I have endeavoured to consider only as a weakness, becomes a crime. It isn't fair!—It isn't just !—It isn't' honest!

We admire the virtue of constancy, and admit at once that it gives an unspeakable nobility of character, even to the lover, whose first impressions certainly commence not in the very precisest and clearest dictates of his reason, nor are much kept up by any contributions of that deliberating and cool-hearted quality. And even woman's love, (as which, there is nothing in heaven or earth so lovely) though it kindles not its torch upon Minerva's altar-nor borrows brightness from Apollo's ray, yet is it in Nature's great design, no transient and fugitive flame; no light that shining once, "shall shine no more on life's dull stream;" but it is of essential character to last while life itself shall last. It is Nature's sweet balm of Gilead, her best provision for all human comfort—to soothe the brow of care-to heal the heart of affliction-to adorn the dullest and gloomiest scences of the great drama-and

"Like the taper's light,
Illume and cheer the way,

While still as darker grows the night,
It sheds its brighter ray."

Is not this something like demonstration that Nature gives her voice for constancy, that all good and liberal affections, should be permanent and lasting ones; and that something contrary to Nature, must have taken place, some weakness and imbecility from the ends of the perfection she aims at, some vice therefore, that may and must be eradicated by moral culture is in growth, and rank luxuriance in the mind, that is wanting of the great excellence of constancy, and steadiness, and wanting ofit, where there is least excuse and greatest shame in wanting it, even for the prosecution of great and laudable objects which the clearest perceptions of reason had approved, which conscience prompted, and which judgment sanctioned.

Consider then, how disgraceful it is, and how frightful a symptom of a physical defect or injury, which the mind must in some way have come by, when it gets so ill-balanced and off the pivot of its proper action, as not to respond to its own laws. When it falls into the moral paralysis of Seneca's Medea, who is pourtrayed as exclaiming under the painful consiousness of her half infirmity, and half guilt" Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor."-" 1 see and approve better things-I follow worse."-In other words, virtue shall have my voice, but vice, my heart.

"These are, who blind to thoughts fatiguing ray,
As fortune gives example, take their way:
Not Virtue's foes tho' they her path decline,

And not her friends, tho' with her friends they join."

SHENSTONE.

Such a state of mind, and it is in such a state of mind only, that inconstancy and fickleness originate, is not innocent, is not natural nor hath its full share of Nature's wholesome energies.

By giving way to gusts of humour, and following the impression of a puerile liking, and disliking, to the dereliction of great and important objects, we not only put a most pitiful affront on our own understandings, and write ourselves down in the very lowest grade of the scale of rational beings, but we show no more sense of justice, than the John-a-dreams at the top of it, of whom they who pretend to know him, and I dare say, like him better than I do, tell us that "he visits the sins of the fathers upon the children" gets out of humour with his playthings, and then like a naughty boy, knocks the world to pieces for it.

Manhood cries" Shame on it!" and Philosophy remonstrates, "Shall the blind bigot and bewildered fanatic, your things of smoke and holy water, whose November understandings never admitted more than the foggy light of one idea, and that, such as of which three quarters was a mistake, pursue their object under all the indistinctness of discernment and infinite uncertainty of apprehension, with which their objects (an' make the best of them,) must necessarily be attended. And shall the philosopher relax and veer from the course of rectitude which his clearest knowledge had marked out, and his most perfect convictions approved?"

The cause of this is, that the moral debility and disorder induced by the early-engrafted vice of superstition, than which there is no vice of more deadly venom, is apt to remain when the kernel and core of the mischief seems to have been eradicated: and 'tis long ere the reasoning faculty, after having conquered its freedom from the usurpation of imposture, can seat itself so surely in its native throne, as to establish its perfect dominion, and to make the perception of a duty what Reason meant it should be- her imperial summons to the doing it.

This should be, and this would be the effect of the perfectly

established reign of reason in the mind. To be inconstant and fickle, and yet to be reasonable, is no less than a contradiction in terms: but that the habit of believing foolish and wicked stories in one-half of society, (and I should only like to know what would be too foolish and too wicked for them to believe,) and the still more monstrous and disgraceful habit of conniving at them, and eking them on, in the other who see through the cheat all the while; benumbs and deadens the moral sensibilities, and throws over the noble creature, who should have been the lord of his own will, and have obeyed the dictates of his reason only, to sink into the pitiful poor God help him, lady's apron-string of his tempers, and his humours, and his fits.

Men and Brethren!-Of all this mischief, and of all other mischiefs, as physiologists would say, the indication of cure is, to apply tonics to the mind, and so far as the mind retains its latent and unconquered energies capable of being screwed up, and set to the tune of rational harmony, the means will answer the end.

The same capacity which I trust has led your convictions along with mine, to quite enough distaste and disgust for fickleness and inconsistency of character, and for all your running too fast and then catching cold qualities, will ensure your mind's correction in itself of every predisposition or tendency to that Tom Fool's innocence, that would be wicked, were it old enough.

And your part of this most wholesome exercise of mental revision, will include your acquittal of one who never professes to have less need of it than any of you, from any implications of particular censure on others.

In completing, as we now have done, the round of all the moral virtues, it was logically isoteric to our system, to include the virtue of constancy, whose commendation necessarily involves the due apprehension of the deformity and unworthiness of the contrary qualities, and our conviction of our deficiency even of justice, fortitude, truth, and sincerity, if we suppose constancy to be wanting.

But wanting indeed it never has been, nor can be feared to be in any of the true members of this, our Society of Universal Benevolence, founded, as our Society is, on the firm basis of science and of truth-disdaining all pretences to improve the morals of mankind by any other means than improving their understandings and presenting no attitude of hostility to its assailants but the calm defence of a good temper, of which we regret that they have not the like, and of a respect for truth, which would settle the grievance for ever, if they had,

"As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,

Swells from the vale, and midway meets the storm.
Tho' round its sides the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head."

DELENDA EST CARTHAGO.

GOLDSMITH.

THEOLOGICAL DISCUSSION.

(From the New York Correspondent.)

We learn by accounts from Cincinnati, that the theological discussion between Mr. Owen and Mr. Campbell, had terminated after nine days' debate, before an audience of from 1200 to 1500 persons, many of whom were strangers, attracted to the spot by the novelty and importance of the subject. No report of the proceedings appears in the Cincinnati papers; but it is stated that the whole had been taken down in short-hand, and would be published as early as possible. Meanwhile, we subjoin the following "Twelve Fundamental Laws of Human Nature," drawn up by Mr. Owen, and which formed the ground-work of the discussion :

1. That man at his birth is ignorant of every thing relative to his own organization, and that he has not been permitted to create the slightest part of any of his natural propensities, faculties, or qualities, physical or mental.

2. That no two infants at birth have yet been know to possess precisely the same organization; while the physical, mental, and moral differences between all infants, are formed without their knowledge or will.

3. That each individual is placed, at birth, without his knowledge or consent within circumstances, which acting upon its peculiar organization, impress the general character of those circumstances upon the infant, child, and man. Yet that the influence of those circumstances, is to a certain degree modified by the peculiar natural organization of each individual.

4. That no infant has the power of deciding at what period of time, or in what part of the world, he shall come into existence; of whom he shall be born, in what particular religion he shall be trained to believe, or by what other circumstances he shall be surrounded from birth to death.

5. That each individual is so created, that when young, he may be made to receive impressions, to produce either true ideas, or false notions, and beneficial or injurious habits, and to retain them with great tenacity.

6. That each individual is so created, that he must believe according to the strongest impressions that can be made on his feelings, and other faculties, while his belief in no case depends upon his will.

7. That each individual is so created, that he must like that which is pleasing to him, or that which produces agreeable sensations on his individual organization, and he must dislike that which creates in him unpleasant or disagreeable sensations; while