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of knowledge, without divesting ourselves of the mind itself. The man, who purposing to travel in Egypt, should take a lad with him to hold the pyramids while he inspected them, would probably come back, with more crude views of those stupendous objects than he set out with. The man who proposes to make a statement of self-evident truths, certainly, must have such crude notions of what is self-evident, that his statement would not be good for anything: and if I am not mistaken, that point will be made to appear, before we have done with this matter.
Is not the fact, that the author (of this part of the Declaration) goes on to state, what be had averred to he "self-evident," satisfactory testimony of one or the other of two contingencies, namely, that he either did not know what he was talking about, or, he must have supposed that those whom he addressed did not know? I admit that it is not absolutely conclusive, because there is one other contingency, to wit, that the whole was a mere joke. I think, however, the solemnity of the occasion, as well as the imperturbable gravity of the author, precludes us from the latter supposition. To be sure, in matters of jollity, the absurdity of a statement is what makes the fun of it. The greater the former, the more irresistible the latter. But the author of a witty absurdity, must show his tact by a nice choice of the occasion when it is to be uttered, or he himself becomes the subject and not the author of the mirth that is made. I cannot therefore indulge the belief, that the author of the Declaration was jesting with a nation in so trying an emergency, as that which clothed our country in sorrow and sack-cloth, on the fourth of July, 1776. Hence we must fall back on one or the other of the contingencies, stated at the beginning of this paragraph.
But what is it, of which self-evidence is affirmed? Why, "that all men are created equal." Did the author of this assertion believe it true? I think there is more evidence, to show that he disbelieved his own assertion, than there is to show that the assertion is capable of a demonstration. How can we have any belief, upon a subject upon which we can have no knowledge? We may entertain conjectures, upon subjects where our knowledge is very limited; as for instance, we may conjecture that the planet Jupiter is inhabited with beings like ourselves: but our present knowl-
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