nobody denies, the greater part of the knowledge transmitted by the senses is liable to error, what sort of a moral being must that be, who does not act until aroused by outward objects, and by objects even whose appearances are often deceitful ?

A French philosopher, making use of the most revolting expression, has said, "that thought is nothing but the material product of the brain." This deplorable definition is the most. natural result of those metaphysics which attribute to our sensations the origin of all our ideas. We are in the right, if it be so, to laugh at all that is intellectual, and to make what is impalpable synonymous with what is incomprehensible. If the human mind is but subtle matter, put in motion by other elements, more or less gross, in comparison with which even it has the disadvantage of being passive; if our impressions and our recollections are nothing but the prolonged vibrations of an instrument, which chance has played upon; then there are only fibres in the brain, only physical forces in the world, and every thing can be explained according to the laws by which these forces are governed. Still there remain some little difficulties concerning the origin of things, and the end of our existence; but the question has been much simplified, and reason counsels us to suppress within our souls all the desires and all the hopes that genius, love, and religion call to life; for, according to this system, man would only be another machine in the great mechanism of the universe; his faculties would be all wheel-work, his morality a matter of calculation, and his worship success.

Locke, believing from the bottom of his soul in the existence of God, established his conviction, without perceiving it, upon reasonings which are all taken out of the sphere of ex perience; he asserts the existence of an eternal principle, the orimary cause of all other causes; thus he enters into the region of infinity, and that region lies beyond all experience: sut Locke, at the same time, was so apprehensive lest the idea of God should pass for an innate idea in man, it appeared to bim so absurd that the Creator should have deigned to in

scribe his name, like that of a great painter, upon the tablet of the soul, that he set himself to discover, out of all the narratives of travellers, some nations who were destitute of any religious belief. We may, I think, boldly affirm, that such na tions do not exist. The impulse that exalts us towards the Supreme Intelligence discovers itself in the genius of Newton, as it does in the soul of the poor savage, who worships the stone upon which he finds rest. No man clings exclusively to the externa. world, such as it is; and all have felt in their hearts, at some period of their lives, an undefinable inclination towards the supernatural; but how can it happen, that a being, so religious as Locke, should try to change the primitive characters of belief into an accidental knowledge, which chance may confer or take away? I repeat it, the tendency of any doctrine ought always to be deemed of great account in the judgment which we form upon the truth of that doctrine; for, in theory, the good and the true are inseparable.

All that is invisible talks to man of a beginning and an end, of decline and destruction. A divine spark is the only indication in us of immortality. From what sensation does this arise? All our sensations fight against it, and yet it triumphs over them all. What! it will be said, do not final causes, do not the wonders of the universe, the splendor of the heavens. that strikes our eyes, declare the magnificence and the goodness of our Creator? The book of nature is contradictory; we see there the emblems of good and evil almost in equal proportion; and things are thus constituted, in order that man be able to exercise his liberty between opposite probabilities, between fears and hopes of almost equal power. The starry Leaven appears to us like the threshold of the Divinity; out all the evils and all the vices of human nature obscure these celestial fires. A solitary voice, without speech, but not without harmony, without force, but irresistible, proclaims a God at the bottom of the human heart: all that is truly beautiful in man springs from what he experiences within himself, and spontaneously every heroic action is inspired by moral liberty; the act of devoting ourselves to the divine will, that

act which every sensation opposes, and which enthusiasm alone inspires, is so noble and so pure, that the angels themselves, virtuous as they are by nature, and without impediment, might envy it to man.

The metaphysical doctrine that displaces the centre of life, by supposing its impulse to come from without, despoils man of his liberty, and destroys itself; for a spiritual nature no longer exists, when we unite it in such a manner to a physical nature, that it is only by human respect that we distinguish them: such a system shrinks from its own consequences, excepting when it derives from them, as it has done in France, materialism built upon sensation, and ethics founded upon interest. The abstract theory of this system was born in England; but none of its consequences have been admitted there. In France. they have not had the honor of the discovery, but in a great degree that of the application. In Germany, since Leibnitz, they have opposed the system and its consequences; and, assuredly, it is worthy of enlightened and religious men of all countries, to inquire whether those principles, whose results are so fatal, ought to be considered as incontestable truths.

Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Smith, Reid, Dugald Stewart, etc., have studied the operations of the human mind with a rare sagacity; the works of Dugald Stewart, in particular, contain so perfect a theory of the intellectual faculties, that we may consider them, so to speak, as the natural history of the moral being. Every individual must recognize in them some part. of himself. Whatever opinion we may have adopted as to the origin of ideas, we must acknowledge the utility of a labor which has for its object the examination of their progress and direction; but it is not enough to observe the development of our faculties, we must ascend to their source, in order to give an account of the nature, and of the independence, of the will of man.

We cannot consider that question as an idle one, which endeavors to learn whether the soul has an independent faculty of feeling and thinking. It is the question of Hamlet, "To be or not to be?"

CHAPTER III.

OF FRENCH PHILOSOPHY.

DESCARTES, for a long period, was the chief of French philosophy; and if his physics had not been confessedly er roneous, perhaps his metaphysics would have preserved a more lasting ascendency. Bossuet, Fénelon, Pascal, all the great men of the age of Louis XIV, had adopted the Idealism of Descartes; and this system agreed much better with the Catholic religion than that philosophy which is purely experimental; for it appeared singularly difficult to combine a faith in the most mysterious doctrines with the sovereign empire of sensation over the soul.

Among the French metaphysicians who have professed the doctrine of Locke, we must reckon, in the first class, Condillac, whose priestly office obliged him to use some caution in regard to religion, and Bonnet, who, being naturally religious, lived at Geneva, in a country where learning and piety are inseparable. These two philosophers, Bonnet especially, have established exceptions in favor of revelation; but it appears to me, that one of the causes of the diminution of respect for Religion, is this custom of setting her apart from all the sciences; as if philosophy, reasoning, every thing, in short, which is esteemed in earthly affairs, could not be applied to Religion an ironical veneration removes her to a distance from all the interests of life; it is, if we may so express ourselves, to bow her out of the circle of the human mind. In every country, where a religious belief is predominant, it is the centre of ideas; and philosophy consists in the rational interpretation of divine truths.

When Descartes wrote, Bacon's philosophy had not yet penetrated into France; and that country was then in the

same state of ignorance and scholastic superstition as at the epoch when the great English thinker published his works. There are two methods of correcting the prejudices of men: the recourse to experience, and the appeal to reflection. Bacon adopted the first means; Descartes the second. The one has rendered immense service to the sciences; the other to thought, which is the source of all the sciences.

Bacon was a man of much greater genius, and of still am pler learning, than Descartes. He has known how to establish his philosophy in the material world; that of Descartes was brought into discredit by the learned, who attacked with success his opinions upon the system of the world:1 he could reason justly in the examination of the soul, and deceived himself in relation to the physical laws of the universe; but the judgments of men resting almost entirely upon a blind and precipitate confidence in analogy, they believed that he who had observed so ill what passed without him, was no better instructed as to the world within. In his manner of writing, Descartes shows a simplicity and overflowing goodness of nature, which inspires his readers with confidence; and the energy of his genius will not be contested. Nevertheless, when we compare him, either to the German philosophers or to Plato, we can neither find in his works the theory of Idealism in all its abstraction, nor the poetical imagination, which constitutes its beauty. Yet a ray of light had passed over the mind of Descartes, and his is the glory of having directed the philosophy of his day towards the interior development of the soul. He produced a great effect by referring all received truths to the test of reflection; these axioms were admired:

1 ""Descartes,' says Voltaire, was the greatest mathematician of his age; but mathematics leave the intellect as they find it. That of Descartes was too prone to invention. He preferred the divination to the study of nature. The first of mathematicians produced nothing almost but romances of philosophy.' A more felicitous expression had been preoccupied by Father Daniel: 'The philosophy of Descartes is the romance of nature.' But in fact, Descartes himself was author of the mot:-'My heory of vortices is a philosophical romance.'"-(Sir Wm. Hamilton, Dis"ussions on Philosophy, etc., p. 296.)-Ed.