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gion of Lapland. If the common language of men had not been confounded upon their attempting the tower of Babel, I affirm that there never could have been but one language. Antiquaries constantly suppose a migrating spirit in the original inhabitants of the earth, not only without evidence, but contrary to all probability. Men never desert their connexions, nor their country without necessity. Fear of enemies, and of wild beasts, as well as the attractions of society, are more than sufficient to restrain them from wandering; not to mention that savages are peculiarly fond of their natal soil."
When ignorance, or profligacy pretends to sneer at revelation and at opinions held sacred by mankind, it is too humble to provoke resentment. But when a philosopher affects the dishonest task, he renders himself equally the object of indignation and contempt. Error and absurdity are at no time so despicable as when in a ridiculous confidence of shrewdness, or affectation of wit, they assume airs of superior sagacity, and contemptuous leer. To point out all the instances of weakness and mistake in this paragraph would exceed the bounds which I have prescribed to myself in these strictures, One important and obvious error I shall take notice of,

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and then shew that the whole foundation of this reasoning is false, and indicates even extreme ignorance of human nature, as it exists in that state of society of which he speaks.
"Without an immediate change of bodily constitution, says he, the builders of Babel could not possibly have subsisted, in the burning region of Guinea, or the frozen region of Lapland."- How, then, do Europeans, at this day, subsist both in Guinea and Lapland, without undergoing this previous and miraculous change of constitution? Have not the nations of Europe armies, or colonies, or travellers in every region on the globe? But if his lordship believed that the intensity of a frozen, or a torrid climate was sufficient to have destroyed the builders of Babel, he should have no objection, surely after such a declaration, to admit that men, from these causes, may suffer great changes in their complexion, and figure. Yet, his whole object is to combat this principle. He allows the greater, he denies the smaller effect. But errors or contradictions of this kind, we often have occasion to see, that philosophers, in their zeal against an obnoxious doctrine, easily overlook.

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