as a motive for their attainment, because they are incomprehensible until they are experienced.

Among the German philosophers, some men of virtue, not inferior to Kant, and who approach nearer to religion in their inclinations, have attributed the origin of the moral law to religious sentiment. This sentiment cannot be of the nature of those which may grow into passions. Seneca has depicted its calmness and profundity by saying, "In the bosom of the virtuous man I know not what God, but a God has habitation."

Kant pretended, that it was to impair the disinterested purity of morals, to present the perspective of a future life, as the end of our actions; many German writers have completely refuted him on this point. In effect, the immortality of heaven has no relation to the rewards and punishments, of which we form an idea on this earth. The sentiment which makes us aspire to immortality is as disinterested as that which makes us find our happiness in devoting ourselves to the happiness of others; for the first offering of religious felicity is the sacrifice of self; and it is thus necessarily removed from every species of selfish

ness.

Whatever we may attempt, we must return to the acknowledgment, that religion is the true foundation of morality; it is that sensible and real object within us, which can alone divert our attention from external objects. If piety did not excite sublime emotions, who would sacrifice even sensual pleasures, however vulgar they might be, to the cold dignity of reason? We must begin the internal history of man with religion, or with sensation; for there is nothing animated besides. The moral system, founded upon personal interest, would be as evident as a mathematical truth, were it not for its exercising more control over the passions which overturn all calculations; nothing but a sentiment can triumph over a sentiment; the violence of nature can only be conquered by its exaltation. Reasoning, in such a case, is like the schoolmaster in la Fontaine; nobody listens to him, and all the world is crying out for help.

Jacobi, as I shall show in the analysis of his works, has

opposed the arguments which Kant uses, in order to avoid the admission of religious sentiment as the basis of morality. He believes, on the contrary, that the Divinity reveals himself to every man in particular, as he revealed himself to the human race, when prayers and works had prepared the heart to comprehend him. Another philosopher asserts, that immortality already commences upon this earth, for him who desires and feels in himself the taste for eternal things: another affirms, that nature forces man to understand the will of God; and that there is in the universe a groaning and imprisoned voice, which invites us to deliver the world and ourselves, by combating the principle of evil, under all its fatal appearances. These different systems are influenced by the imagination of each writer, and are adopted by those who sympathize with him; but the general direction of these opinions is ever the same: to free the soul from the influence of external objects; to place the empire of ourselves within us; and to make duty the law of this empire, and its hope another life.

Without doubt, the true Christians have taught the same doctrine at all periods; but what distinguishes the new German school, is their uniting to all these sentiments, which they suppose to be equally inherited by the simple and ignorant, the highest philosophy and the most precise species of knowledge. The era of pride had arrived, in which we were told that reason and the sciences destroyed all the prospects of imagination, all the terrors of conscience, every belief of the heart; and we blushed for the half of our nature which was declared weak and almost foolish. But men have made their appearance, who, by dint of thinking, have found out the theory of all natural impressions; and, far from wishing to stifle them, they have discovered to us the noble source from which they spring. The German moralists have raised up sentiment. and enthusiasm from the contempt of a tyrannical reason, which counted as gain only what is destroyed, and placed man and nature on the bed of Procrustes, that every part of them might be cut off, which the philosophy of materialism could not understand.

CHAPTER XV.

OF SCIENTIFIC ETHICS.

SINCE the taste for the exact sciences has taken hold of men's minds, they have wished to prove every thing by dem onstration; and the calculation of probabilities allowing them to reduce even what is uncertain to rules, they have flattered themselves that they could resolve mathematically all the difficulties offered by the nicest questions, and extend the dominion of Algebra over the universe. Some philosophers in Germany have also pretended to give to ethics the advantages of a science rigorously proved in its principles as well as in its consequences, and not admitting either of objection or exception, if the first basis of it be adopted. Kant and Fichte have attempted this metaphysical labor, and Schleiermacher, the translator of Plato, and the author of several religious treatises, of which we shall speak in the next section, has published a very deep book, on the examination of different systems of ethics considered as a science. He wished to find out one, all the reasoning of which should be perfectly linked together, in which the principle should involve all the consequences, and every consequence reproduce the principle; but, at present, it does not appear that this object is attainable.

The ancients also were desirous of making a science of ethics, but they included in this science laws and government; in fact, it is impossible to determine beforehand all the duties of life, when we do not know what may be required by the laws and manners of the country in which we are placed; it is in this point of view that Plato has imagined his Republic. Man entire is, in that work, considered in relation to religion, to politics, and to morals; but, as that republic could not exist, one cannot conceive how, in the midst of the abuses of humar

:

society, a code of morals, such as that would be, could supply the habitual interpretation of conscience. Philosophers aim at the scientific form in all things; one would say, they flatter themselves that they shall thus chain down the future, and withdraw themselves entirely from the yoke of circumstances ; but what frees us from them is the soul, the sincerity of our inward love of virtue. The science of morals can no more teach us to be honest men, in all the magnificence of that expression, than geometry to draw, or literary rules to invent.

Kant, who had admitted the necessity of sentiment in metaphysical truths, was willing to dispense with it in morals, and he was never able to establish incontestably more than this one great fact of the human heart, that ethics have duty, and not interest, for their basis; but to understand duty, conscience. and religion must be our teachers. Kant, in separating religion from the motives of ethics, could only see in conscience a judge, and not a divine voice, and therefore he has been incessantly presenting to that judge points of difficulty; the solutions of them which he has given, and which he thought evident, have been attacked in a thousand ways; for it is by sentiment alone that we ever arrive at unanimity of opinion among men.

Some German philosophers, perceiving the impossibility of reducing into law all the affections of which our nature is composed, and of making a science, as it were, of all the emotions of the heart, have contented themselves with affirming that ethics consist in a feeling of harmony within ourselves. Undoubtedly, when we feel no remorse, it is probable we are not criminal; and even when we may have committed what are faults according to the opinions of others, if we have done. our duty according to our own opinion, we are not guilty; but we must nevertheless be cautious in relying on this self-satis faction, which ought, it should seem, to be the best proof of virtue. There are men who have brought themselves to take their own pride for conscience; fanaticism, in others, is a disinterested medium, which justifies every thing in their eyes; and in some characters, the habit of committing crimes gives

a kind of strength which frees them from repentance, at least as long as they are untouched by misfortune.

It does not follow from this impossibility of discovering a science in ethics, or any universal signs, by which to know whether its precepts are observed, that there are not some positive duties which may serve as our guides; but as there are in the destiny of man both necessity and liberty, so, in his conduct, there ought to be inspiration and method. Nothing that belongs to virtue can be either altogether arbitrary or altogether fixed: thus, it is one of the miracles of religion, that it unites, in the same degree, the exultation of love and submission to the law; thus the heart of man is at once satisfied and directed.

I shall not here give an account of all the systems of scientific ethics which have been published in Germany; there are some of them so refined, that, although treating of our own nature, one does not know on what to rest for the conception of them. The French philosophers have rendered ethics singularly dry, by referring every thing to self-interest. Some German metaphysicians have arrived at the same result, by nevertheless building all their doctrines on sacrifices. Neither systems of materialism, nor those of abstraction, can give a complete idea of virtue.

CHAPTER XVI.

JACOBI.

Ir would be difficult in any country, to meet with a man of letters of a more distinguished nature than Jacobi; with every advantage of person and fortune, he devoted himself, from his youth, during forty years, to meditation. Philosophy is ordinarily a consolation or an asylum; but he who makes choice of it when circumstances concur to promise him great success