Such an improved state of mind, in thought and action, makes the author of the OPUS MAXIMUM, or, Scripture of Reason, the first man that ever lived, in the true category of manhood; and worthy the patronage of the first of potentates, and first of the conquerors.

The Opus Maximum, or, Conquest of the Moral World, the characteristic penetration of your Majesty will discover to be the only true Scripture. of Reason; [which means a just transcript of the laws of nature, as exhibited in the intelligible phænomena of the universe] that has ever appeared to determine the true principles and distinct practical means of the moral and physical sciences, as related to human existence.

The pretended Scripture or Revelations, of the Chinese, the Peruvians, the Tartars, the Persians, the Indians, the Egyptians, and the Europeans, are nothing but an incongruous mass of mysteries and fables, which transcribe nothing from the volume of things and relations, in the phonomena of the visible universe. They exhibit no moral principles, but only practical rules and means of changeable customs, as justice, property, faith and power, which the improveable progress of society may abrogate, in theory and practice, as in the republic of Plato, and the improveable state of many existing fraternities, sects and communities.

The Opus Maximum, the Scripture of Reason, and Conquest of the Moral World, reveals or transcribes from the constitution of nature, immutable principles of moral and physical truths, [not means and rules, discoverable only by experience] viz. That all being is united in time and futurity, in one common interest, demonstrated through the perpetual circulation of matter, from mode to mode, both in life and death, passing from a point of agency, in the personal identity, to a vast circle of patiency in the material identity. That the primary element, or principle of all human society, is to co-operate with united energy, or universal organism of the whole species, to secure individual liberty, by placing it under the protection of the public will, or majority of a community, in small societies, and not to leave the individual subjugated and tormented by the capricious relations of custom or instinct, as, in the present imperfect state of society, began, formed and completed, without any alteration by Scythian barbarism.

The means and rules to execute the unalterable principles of theory, and accommodate them to practical perfectability,

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are wholly empyric, and cannot be revealed by any dicta tes of codes or theories, but must be accommodated by civil power, to the improving state of intellect, and expanding sy mpathy of the subjected population, advanced, through a proper system of education and instruction, as developed in the Opus Maximum, under the lucid figure of the spiral diagram, whose double centre of base and vertex, forms, the true and double criterion of moral truth: viz. perfectability -led on by the clue of experience.

The great object and sole purpose of this philosophic address, is to impress with awe, upon your Majesty's mind, in a few succinct observations and explanations, the most momentous revelation contained in the Opus Maximum, and which alone constitutes the Conquest of the Moral World, viz. That the indestructible atoms of matter are incessantly circulating from body to body, throughout all modes of sensitive life, and in the transition they pass from a single point, or centre of agency, in the personal identity, into a vast circle of multiplied patiency, the material identity; which causes the retribution of the agency of good or evil to be increased in an incalculable ratio, to all atoms of matter that exist or circulate in the patiency or sphere of sensitive life.

I will demonstrate, with complete evidence, the truth of this most important revelation, in the conduct of your Majesty's own personal agency, under the double identity of person and matter.

When, Sire, you form a decree, issue an order, or perform an action, to execute some particular desire, or gratify some urgent inclination, you enjoy the pleasure of that action in your single and personal identity of Emperor; but this decree, order or action, may diffuse pain or pleasure to millions of millions of subjects, allies and surrounding nations; and as your personal atoms are every moment leaving your body, and dispersing themselves far beyond the extent of your own empire, they must in their vast sphere of circulation, successively become constituent parts of millions of millions of sensitive beings, affected in their actual condition of enjoyment or sufferance, by their own. previous agency in their collective or personal identity in. the body of Emperor, and, consequently, must multiply their interest of pain and pleasure, in an incalculable ratio, in the vast circle of patiency, in their new material identities, which cannot be affected by the loss of memory,

in the change of consciousness, by the transmutation of their substance, from mode to mode.

It has been objected to this clear and demonstrable. chemical process of nature in its laws of circulation of matter, throughout all bodies within the vast sphere of in-, fluence or affinity, that as the personal identity must lose all remembrance of its connection with the material identity, that is, that the atoms of the prince, when separated, and circulating into the bodies of subjects, that they lose all proper interest, in the loss of memory, or change of con

sciousness.

This objection is extremely futile and irreflective, as the following arguments will shew. If the atoms of the prince, in their previous agency, or collective consciousness of a personal identity, have communicated, or been the cause of good or evil to their successive material patiency, in new consciousness of new identities, though these atoms must lose all memory of their previous associations in past identity, and assume or change it into the consciousness of a new identity, such oblivion or change of personal identity, cannot alter or affect the nature of the really existent sensations, suffered or enjoyed by the same identical atoms.

I will suppose a traveller on horseback, during the day to have interchanged many millions of atoms with the body of his horse-Now I demand, whether those human atoms that have transmuted into the new identity of horse, will feel、 less pain from the spur, the bit, the whip, the galling, the mutilating, jading and the hunger, inflicted by the agency of their previous identity, man, because they have lost all consciousness of their former association in such identity, and acquired the new one of horse?

This important revelation of human interest, in the transmutation of matter, I shall make another effort to demon strate, in answering a very general objection to its truth, which is, that when a limb or member is amputated from any part of the body, all personal interest in that detached member must cease.

We must take notice, that the human body forms two clear and discriminate identities, the one merely nominal, called personal identity, and the other real, called material identity; which have no proper, or common, but only an influential interest with each other, which may be explained in the following manner.

The nominal, or personal identity called self, is nothing but a succession of thoughts or sensations, bound together by

the tether of memory; and when this ends, the identity ceases. The agency of this persoua! identity tends only to procure a continuation of good, to what is called self, or person, and to perpetuate and expand that good, in the widest circle of the sensitive system; to anticipate the interests or procure the well-being of the real or material identity, in the transmutation and circulation of its indestructible atoms into that sphere in which all connection with the identity of self or person is totally lost.

The amputated limb has certainly no connection whatever with the proper interest of the nominal identity it left, but the matter thereof, diffusing itself into the general circulation of the whole sensitive system, will meet in an infinitely multiplied ratio, a proportion of good or evil that its previous agency, while a constituent part of the human body, might have augmented or diminished in its future state of patiency.

Hence we may observe, with the completest evidence, that though there exists no unity of interest between the two identities, personal and material, in-their separation, but only in influence, while combined, the personal identity possessing the whole agency is obliged, by the laws of sympathy in the moral world, to provide good for its own succession of thoughts or sensation, and to extend that good to the interests of the material identity, in the transmutation of its indestructible atoms, throughout the great circle of patiency, in the whole sensitive system.

I have clearly proved, in my exposition and discovery of the laws of intellectual power, that all human action must be guided and governed by the observation of facts, and the criterion of experience, to ascertain their relations in science or knowledge. Now, as the fact of the transmutation of matter from body to body, is ascertained by the sense of smelling, and the contagion of diseases. This fact, founded on experience, forms a positive law of sensation, or thought, which directs man to extend the sphere of his agency, from the interest of the personal, to that of the material identity, in the circulation or transmutation of its individual atoms, throughout the whole sensitive system; and whatever conjectures may be formed, on rational analogy, relative to the quantity or duration of such interest, as these can never be brought to the test of experience, they can have no influence on human action, or the moral conduct of mankind.

It has been objected, Sire, to this system of Materialism, that it is a gloomy doctrine: this sentiment is the effect of

bad mental habitudes, unacquainted with the moral and physical laws of the universe.

The man whose thoughts and sensations are disciplined in accord with the harmony of nature's laws, conducts the unbounded operations of the faculty of imagination, in the conjectures of rational analogy, in a close similitude of cause and effect, in the same genera of things, as thus:

He analogises the chemical affinity and transmutation of terrestrial bodies, with celestial bodies of planets, satellites, comets, suns, and stars, and as the former are in a constant state of intercirculation with each other, and of the same genera of matter and power, it is rational or disciplined analogy that enables the imagination to conclude, from similitude of cause and effect, that all the bodies of the celestial system have the same intercirculation of matter, from one to the other, and produces the following dignifying and consoling conjectures:

That the indestructible atoms of matter, which pass through the body of man, must circulate throughout all the genera and species of matter and power, which constitute the great body of the universe, and instead of being fixed, according to the mysteries of theology, to an eternal identity of person, [the greatest torture that could be inflicted on sensitive matter] every atom in nature must circulate like those of the human body, carrying the particles of the foot into the locality of the brain, and, vice versa, throughout the great body or mechanism of the universe, and become, at one time, the central, and at another time the circumferential member of nature; and such conjectures of rational analogy [that have nothing to do with the direction of human action, but only the consolation of thought] elevate degraded man to the highest dignity of his character, the highest felicity of thought and sensation, and the highest energy of his nature, in the true predicament of manhood, that is the conformity of the relations of thought and action, to the relation of things in the constitution of nature.

This demonstration of the unity of interest throughout the sphere of sensitive life reveals an important principle, which is, that the word worship, which in the present chaos of the moral world, means adulation, fear and prostration of one atom for another, in the true laws of the constitution of nature means only the co-operation of the various genera and species of indestructible atoms to augment the sum of good and diminish the sum of evil throughout the whole sensitive existence, in which the previous agency of matter identifies