In the composition of human beings, we distinguish the body, the intellects, and the heart. The cultivation of these, demands our attention in proportion to their respective importance. Of bodily powers, agility and physical strength are the principal, if not the only constituents. By the intellects we perceive, compare, abstract, and form conclusions. Their province extends to moral, not less than to other relations. Moral ideas, together with their relations, are as truly objects of intellect, as are ideas of number or quantity. Perceiving these relations, we discern the reality of duty and the fitness of actions. But though the obligations of virtue

are discerned by the understanding, the understand ing is not the seat of moral virtue. There is no conceivable state of the intellects, of which we can predicate either virtue or vice. Moral dispositions or affections are distinct from the understanding; and, in these consist whatever, in accountable beings, is worthy of praise or blame.

On this distinction are grounded those few remarks, which the present interesting occasion gives me an opportunity of addressing to you, relative to that union, which ought ever to be maintained between piety and good morals on the one hand, and literature and science on the other. Mind, however capacious, if perverted, does not raise its possessor, so much above brute animals, as it leaves him inferior to the man of moral goodness.

So long as the moral character is debased, I know not whether it is desirable, that the intellects should be improved. Knowledge gives power, which is injurious or beneficent, according to the manner, in which it is used. Physical strength will be dangerous, if guided by brute impulse; but infinitely more so, if under the direction of intellects perverted. Give to the tiger human sagacity, and, after having desolated the forest, he will invade the habitations of men, and form a wilderness for himself in the midst of rich plantations or populous

cities. Give to Leviathan intellects, proportionate to his bodily powers, and navies will no longer dare to traverse the ocean.

But you may ask, whether, reason does not ap plaud virtue; and whether the latter will not be cherished, in proportion as the former is improved? I answer, that reason does unquestionably applaud virtue; and, the more the science of ethics is studied, and the relations of man examined, the more clearly will appear the reality and strength of those obligations, which bind man to the Author of his being. But, particular subjects may be neglected, while the intellectual powers in general are highly cultivated. The use, made of the intellects, will depend on the moral character. If that be corrupt, there will probably be a disinclination to those subjects, which lead to conclusions, unfolding either the turpitude or the consequences of vice. In the character of a man of study, it is no more implied, that he is versed in the theory of morals, than that he is an adept in botany, mathematics, or political economy. Gross ignorance of moral truths is sometimes betrayed by those, who, in many of the walks of science, have left ordinary men far behind; and the obligations and duties of life are not only better discharged, but as well understood by the unlettered cottager, as by some, whose time has been assidu

ously devoted to study. With the former, morality may have been the only subject of investigation. With the other, it may be among the few, which have been overlooked,

But, with whatever attention or success the science of virtue may have been explored, the reality is a distinct object; and between the two there is no necessary or invariable connexion. Most evidently, therefore, you are not to take it for granted, that the heart is meliorating, because the memory may be strengthened, the powers of discernment rendered more acute, and the imagination enlivened. The Greeks and Romans gave to the human intellect, perhaps, as high a polish, as it is capable of receiving. But, if we inquire for a pure morality, we are referred to the Scythians, or back to the time, when Saturn himself had not assumed the visage of manhood. Those very periods, in which literary taste was refined even to fastidiousness, . were distinguished by moral insensibility, and by multiplied acts of atrocious cruelty, not less than by licentiousness, the most unlimited and the most disgusting. Many among the celebrated relicks of antiquity, it is well known, are monuments at once of the cultivated talents, and moral degradation of their authors and their age. Even philosophical studies, which, more than all others, might be ex

pected to subdue the passions and reclaim the irreg ularities of the heart, have been found inadequate to the object. You will not learn temperance of Arcesilaus or Lacidas, nor the contempt of pleasure from Aristippus.

It being certain, that the cultivation of the intel lectual powers does not necessarily imply virtue, either in principle or practice, I request you to look attentively at the different effects on civil society, produced by literature and science, as they are combined or not with sentiments of religion. To whom is the cause of social order and human happiness most indebted,→to such philosophers as Boulanger, Cordorcet, and Dupuis, or to Locke, Newton, and Sir William Jones? None of these distinguished characters lived without effect. The influence of their example and writings has been discovered in families-it has been felt in deliberate assemblies, by nations, and by the whole civilized world. In regard to the latter, their wonderful powers were employed either directly or indirectly to establish those great principles, which lie at the foundation of religion, both natural and revealed. Whether they investigated the laws of mind or of matter, they considered them, as originating with an intelligent Lawgiver, of whose existence and agency they discovered new evidence, in proportion, as they passed