Now it is otherwise.  A change in the mode of life has made it necessary to be busy; and man finds a thousand things to do now which before he did not.  Instead of placing his ideas of greatness in the rude achievements of the savage, he studies arts, science, agriculture, and commerce, the refinements of the gentleman, the principles of society, and the knowledge of the philosopher.

There are many things which in themselves are morally neither good nor bad, but they are productive of consequences, which are strongly marked with one or other of these characters.  Thus commerce, though in itself a moral nullity, has had a considerable influence in tempering the human mind.  It was the want of objects in the ancient world, which occasioned in them such a rude and perpetual turn for war.  Their time hung upon their hands without the means of employment.  The indolence they lived in afforded leisure for mischief, and being all idle at once, and equal in their circumstances, they were easily provoked or induced to action.

But the introduction of commerce furnished the world with objects, which in their extent, reach every man, and give him something to think about and something to do; by these his attention his [sic] mechanically drawn from the pursuits which a state of indolence and an unemployed mind occasioned, and he trades with the same countries, which former ages, tempted by their productions, and too indolent to purchase them, would have gone to war with.

Thus, as I have already observed, the condition of the world being materially changed by the influence of science and commerce, it is put into a fitness not only to admit of, but to desire an extension of civilization.  The principal and almost only remaining enemy it now has to encounter, is prejudice; for it is evidently the interest of mankind to agree and make the best of life.  The world has undergone its divisions of empire, the several boundaries of which are known and settled.  The idea of conquering countries, like the Greeks and Romans, does not now exist; and experience has exploded the notion of going to war for the sake of profit.  In short, the objects for war are exceedingly diminished, and there is now left scarcely any thing to quarrel about, but what arises from that demon of society, prejudice, and the consequent sullenness and untractableness of the temper.

There is something exceedingly curious in the constitution and operation of prejudice.  It has the singular ability of accommodating itself to all the possible varieties of the human mind.  Some passions and vices are but thinly scattered among mankind, and find only here and there a fitness of reception.  But prejudice, like the spider, makes every where its home.  It has neither taste nor choice of place, and all that it requires is room.  There is scarcely a situation, except fire or water, in which a spider will not live.  So, let the mind be as naked as