need not wonder if he fails, in the solution of questions on which
philosophers have employed their abilities from the earliest times,

"And found no end, in wand'ring mazes lost."

He denies, that man was created _perfect_, because the system requires
subordination, and because the power of losing his perfection, of
"rendering himself wicked and miserable, is the highest imperfection
imaginable." Besides, the regular gradations of the scale of being
required, somewhere, "such a creature as man, with all his infirmities
about him; and the total removal of those would be altering his nature,
and, when he became perfect, he must cease to be man."

I have already spent some considerations on the _scale of being_, of
which, yet, I am obliged to renew the mention, whenever a new argument
is made to rest upon it; and I must, therefore, again remark, that
consequences cannot have greater certainty than the postulate from which
they are drawn, and that no system can be more hypothetical than this,
and, perhaps, no hypothesis more absurd.

He again deceives himself with respect to the perfection with which
_man_ is held to be originally vested. "That man came perfect, that is,
endued with all possible perfection, out of the hands of his creator, is
a false notion derived from the philosophers.--The universal system
required subordination, and, consequently, comparative imperfection."
That _man was ever endued with all possible perfection_, that is, with
all perfection, of which the idea is not contradictory, or destructive
of itself, is, undoubtedly, _false_. But it can hardly be called _a
false notion_, because no man ever thought it, nor can it be derived
from the _philosophers_; for, without pretending to guess what