Page:A discourse upon the origin and foundation of the inequality among mankind (IA discourseuponori00rous).pdf/243

which my Imagination has not ſuggeſted, every attentive Reader muſt unavoidably be ſtruck at the immenſe Space which ſeparates theſe two States. 'Tis in this ſlow Succeſſion of things he may meet with the Solution of an infinite Number of Problems in Morality and Politics, which Philoſophers are puzzled to ſolve. He will perceive that, the Mankind of one Age not being the Mankind of another, the Reaſon why Diogenes could not find a Man was, that he ſought among his Cotemporaries the Man of an earlier Period: Cato, he will then ſee, fell with Rome and with Liberty, becauſe he did not ſuit the Age in which he lived; and the greateſt of Men ſerved only to aſtoniſh that World, which would have chearfully obeyed him, had he come into it five hundred Years earlier. In a word, he will find himſelf in a Condition to underſtand how the Soul and the Paſſions of Men by inſenſible Alterations change as it were