more to be hoped for in natural religion, as it is not content with
instructing us in the nature of superior powers, but carries its views
farther, to their disposition towards us, and our duties towards them;
and consequently we ourselves are not only the beings, that reason, but
also one of the objects, concerning which we reason.

If therefore the sciences of Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural
Religion, have such a dependence on the knowledge of man, what may be
expected in the other sciences, whose connexion with human nature is more
close and intimate? The sole end of logic is to explain the principles
and operations of our reasoning faculty, and the nature of our ideas:
morals and criticism regard our tastes and sentiments: and politics
consider men as united in society, and dependent on each other. In these
four sciences of Logic, Morals, Criticism, and Politics, is comprehended
almost everything, which it can any way import us to be acquainted with,
or which can tend either to the improvement or ornament of the human
mind.

Here then is the only expedient, from which we can hope for success in
our philosophical researches, to leave the tedious lingering method,
which we have hitherto followed, and instead of taking now and then a
castle or village on the frontier, to march up directly to the capital or
center of these sciences, to human nature itself; which being once
masters of, we may every where else hope for an easy victory. From this
station we may extend our conquests over all those sciences, which more
intimately concern human life, and may afterwards proceed at leisure to
discover more fully those, which are the objects of pore curiosity. There
is no question of importance, whose decision is not comprised in the
science of man; and there is none, which can be decided with any
certainty, before we become acquainted with that science. In pretending,