transitions, but its development is not so often portrayed. Men seem to
have been satisfied with unfolding the passions in their extremes, their
aberration, and their results, without considering how closely they are
bound up with the intellectual constitution of the individual.
Degeneracy in morals roots in a one-sided and wavering philosophy, doubly
dangerous, because it blinds the beclouded intellect with an appearance
of correctness, truth, and conviction, which places it less under the
restraining influence of man's instinctive moral sense. On the other
hand, an enlightened understanding ennobles the feelings,--the heart must
be formed by the head. The present age has witnessed an extraordinary increase of a thinking
public, by the facilities afforded to the diffusion of reading; the
former happy resignation to ignorance begins to make way for a state of
half-enlightenment, and few persons are willing to remain in the
condition in which their birth has placed then. Under these
circumstances it may not be unprofitable to call attention to certain
periods of the awakening and progress of the reason, to place in their
proper light certain truths and errors, closely connected with morals,
and calculated to be a source of happiness or misery, and, at all events,
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