I do not mean to reproach this author for not knowing what is equally hidden from learning and from ignorance.  The shame is, to impose words, for ideas, upon ourselves or others.  To imagine, that we are going forward, when we are only turning round.  To think, that there is any difference between him that gives no reason, and him that gives a reason, which, by his own confession, cannot be conceived.

But, that he may not be thought to conceive nothing but things inconceivable, he has, at last, thought on a way, by which human sufferings may produce good effects.  He imagines, that as we have not only animals for food, but choose some for our diversion, the same privilege may be allowed to some beings above us, who may deceive, torment, or destroy us, for the ends, only, of their own pleasure or utility.  This he again finds impossible to be conceived, but that impossibility lessens not the probability of the conjecture, which, by analogy, is so strongly confirmed.  I cannot resist the temptation of contemplating this analogy, which, I think, he might have carried further, very much to the advantage of his argument.  He might have shown, that these “hunters, whose game is man,” have many sports analogous to our own.  As we drown whelps and kittens, they amuse themselves, now and then, with sinking a ship, and stand round the fields of Blenheim, or the walls of Prague, as we encircle a cockpit.  As we shoot a bird flying, they take a man in the midst of his business or pleasure, and knock him down with an apoplexy.  Some of them, perhaps, are virtuosi, and delight in the operations of an asthma, as a human philosopher in the effects of the air-pump.  To swell a man with a tympany is as good sport as to blow a frog.  Many a merry bout have these frolick beings at the vicissitudes of an ague, and good sport it is to see a man tumble with an epilepsy, and revive and tumble again, and all this he knows not why.  As they are wiser and more powerful than we, they have more exquisite diversions; for we have no way of procuring any sport so brisk and so lasting, as the paroxysms of the gout and stone, which, undoubtedly, must make high mirth, especially if the play be a little diversified with the blunders and puzzles of the blind and deaf.  We know not how far their sphere of observation may extend.  Perhaps, now and then, a merry being may place himself in such a situation, as to enjoy, at once, all the varieties of an epidemical disease, or amuse his leisure with the tossings and contortions of every possible pain, exhibited together.

One sport the merry malice of these beings has found means of enjoying, to which we have nothing equal or similar.  They now and then catch a mortal, proud of his parts, and flattered either by the submission of those who court his kindness, or the notice of those who suffer him to court theirs.  A head, thus prepared for the reception of false opinions, and the projection of vain designs, they easily fill