Manchurian Books

Of other nations, unknown to me, I do not speak."
Man may mistake the objects of his pursuit; he may misapply his industry,
and misplace his improvements: If, under a sense of such possible errors,
he would find a standard by which to judge of his own proceedings, and
arrive at the best state of his nature, he cannot find it perhaps in the
practice of any individual; or of any nation whatever; not even in the
sense of the majority, or the prevailing opinion of his kind. He must look
for it in the best conceptions of his understanding, in the best movements
of his heart; he must thence discover what is the perfection and the
happiness of which he is capable. He will find, on the scrutiny, that the
proper state of his nature, taken in this sense, is not a condition from
which mankind are for ever removed, but one to which they may now attain;
not prior to the exercise of their faculties, but procured by their just
application.
Of all the terms that we employ in treating of human affairs, those of
_natural_ and _unnatural_ are the least determinate in their
meaning.


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