Dr Robertson, that "servitude is a name too mild to describe their wretched state. A wife among most tribes is no better than a beast of burden, destined to every office of labour and fatigue. While the men loiter out the day in sloth, or spend it in amusement, the women are condemned to incessant toil. Tasks are imposed upon them without pity, and services are received without complacence or gratitude. Every circumstance reminds women of this mortifying inferiority. They must approach their lords with reverence, they must regard them as more exalted beings, and are not even permitted to eat in their presence.

As the operations of intellect come, in the progress of civilization, to be appreciated beyond the mere exertions of physical strength, it is according to the degree in which he enjoys the power of subjecting the minds and the wills of numbers, that the idea of self expands in the mind of man.

Women are then no longer subjected to the cruel hardships of incessant labour and fatigue; for it is not now by his exemption from labour, that man's superiority is to be asserted. It is on the exertions of intellect that he rests his claim: and thenceforth a complete dominion over the minds, a complete subjugation of the intellectual powers of the feebler sex, becomes essential to the gratification of the selfish principle in his heart. The desire of power here operates exactly as it operates in every other instance; and is gratified, in proportion as it can annihilate the individuality of the beings, who, viewed in connexion with the. idea of self, serve to augment that idea.

The consequences that flow from this destruction of mind, have been described in the sketch presented of arbitrary government; where it was attempted to prove, that despotism never fails to destroy those intellectual powers, of whose operations it assumes the controul, and prescribes the

limits. But, as no experience of the consequences can induce the despot to relinquish his pretensions, he continues strenuously to oppose every attempt at the exertion of intellect, which, by giving individuality to the character, would render it impossible for him to contemplate himself as the sole intelligence within the nation he governs.

Very similar to this, in every nation unenlightened by Christianity, has been the relative situation of the sexes. Impelled by the desire of magnifying the idea of self, man has ever been prone to view the sex inferior to his in physical strength, not as composed of individuals separately possessed of faculties and affections common to the species, but as a whole, and that whole subject to his controul. As society advances in knowledge and refinement, the limits he prescribes to the exercise of intellect in the sex is enlarged; but the free use of reason is a boon

seldom granted, or rather never granted without reluctance; except by very superiorly enlightened minds. To such minds, the general interests of society appear far more important than the gratification of the selfish principle in any of its modifications. Instead of seeking to enlarge the idea of self, by exercising dominion over the mental powers of any of their species, they endeavour to break the fetters of prejudice, to throw wide the gates of knowledge, and to encourage every human being to improve and exercise those talents, for the improvement and cultivation of which, every human being is, without exception, to be accountable to Him by whom they were bestowed.

CHAPTER VIII.

Origin of idolatry. Pagan superstition. Sects of philosophy. Doctrines taught in the heathen schools favourable to the indulgence of the selfish principle.

WHATEVER gratification the selfish principle may derive, from that incorporation of the powers, faculties, and qualities, of a number of individuals in one body, described by the term party, that gratification is still further enhanced, when, besides the powers and qualities of human beings, we can throw a portion of what is super-human into the general stock. We then identify ourselves, not only with all the glory resulting from the aggregate power, wealth, strength, talents, and influence, of those