constantly been tearing the bosom of its mother; they who combat it are benefactors to mankind: it is a serpent enclosing religion in its folds, its head must be bruised, without wounding the parent whom it infects and devours.

provided that this priest is not a Le Tellier, putting the whole kingdom in combustion by rogueries worthy of the pillory, nor a Warburton, violating the laws of society, making public the private papers of a member of parliament in You fear, "that, by adoring God, order to ruin him, and calumniating men would soon again become supersti- whosoever is not of his opinion. The tious and fanatical." But is it not to be latter cases are rare. The sacerdotal feared that, in denying him, they would { state is a curb which forces to good beabandon themselves to the most atrocious} haviour. passions, and the most frightful crimes? Between these two extremes is there not a very rational mean? Where is the safe track between these two rocks? It is God, and wise laws.

You affirm, that it is but one step from adoration to superstition: but there is an infinity to well-constituted minds, and these are now very numerous: they are at the head of nations; they influence public manners, and, year by year, the fanaticism that overspread the earth is receding in its detestable usurpations.

A stupid priest excites contempt; a bad priest inspires horror; a good priest, mild, pious, without superstitition, charitable, tolerant, is one who ought to be cherished and revered. You dread abuses -so do I. Let us unite to prevent them; but let us not condemn the usage when it is useful to society, when it is not perverted by fanaticism, or by fraudulent wickedness.

I have one very important thing to tell you. I am persuaded that you are in a great error, but I am equally conI shall say a few words more in an- vinced that you are honest in your selfswer to what you say in page 223. "If delusion. You would have men virtuous it be presumed that there are relations even without a God, although you have between man and this incredible being, unfortunately said that "so soon as vice then altars must be raised and presents renders man happy, he must love vice" must be made to him, &c.; if no con- -a frightful proposition, which your ception be formed of this being, then the friends should have prevailed on you to matter must be referred to priests, who erase. Everywhere else you inspire &c. &c. &c. A great evil to be probity. This philosophical dispute will sure, to assemble in the harvest season, only be between you and a few philosoand thank God for the bread that he has phers scattered over Europe; the rest of given us! Who says you should make the earth will not even hear of it. The presents to God? The idea is ridiculous! people do not read us. If some theoloBut where is the harm of employing agian were to seek to persecute us, he citizen, called an elder' or 'priest,' to render thanks to the divinity in the name of the other citizens?-provided the priest is not a Gregory VII. trampling? on the heads of kings, nor an Alexander VI. polluting by incest his daughter, the offspring of a rape, and, by the aid of his bastard son, poisoning and assassinating almost all the neighbouring princes: provided that, in a parish, this priest is not a knave, picking the pockets of the penitents he confesses, and using the money to seduce the girls he catechises;

would be impudent as well as wicked; he would but serve to confirm you, and to make new atheists.

You are wrong: but the Greeks did not persecute Epicurus; the Romans did not persecute Lucretius. You are wrong: but your genius and your virtue must be respected, while you are refuted with all possible strength.

In my opinion, the finest homage that can be rendered to God is, to stand forward in his defence without anger; as the most unworthy portrait that can be

diawn of him is, to paint him vindictive, most ancient and most extensive empires and furious. He is truth itself; and in the world, these examples are suffitruth is without passion. To be a dis- cient for my cause-and my cause is that ciple of God is, to announce him as of a of all mankind. mild heart and of an unalterable mind.

I do not believe that there is in all I think, with you, that fanaticism is a Europe one statesman, one man at all monster a thousand times more danger-versed in the affairs of the world, who

ous than philosophical atheism. Spinosa did not commit a single bad action. Châtel and Ravaillac, both devotees, assassinated Henry IV.

has not the most profound contempt for the legends with which we have been inundated, even more than we now are with pamphlets. If religion no longer gives birth to civil wars, it is to philosophy alone that we are indebted, theological disputes beginning to be regarded in much the same manner as the quarrels of Punch and Joan at the fair. An usurpation, alike odious and ridiculous,

The atheist of the closet is almost always a quiet philosopher; while the fanatic is always turbulent: but the court atheist, the atheistical prince, might be the scourge of mankind. Borgia and his like have done almost as much harm as the fanatics of Munster and of the Ce-founded upon fraud on one side, and vennes. I say the fanatics on both sides. The misfortune is, that atheists of the closet make atheists of the court. It was Chiron who brought up Achilles: he fed him with lion's marrow. Achilles will one day drag Hector's body round the walls of Troy, and immolate twelve captives to his vengeance.

God keep us from an abominable priest who should hew a king in pieces with his sacrificing knife; as also from him who, with a helmet on his head and a cuirass on his back, at the age of seventy, should dare to sign with his three bloody fingers the ridiculous excommunication of a king of France! and from.... and from....

But also, may God preserve us from a choleric and barbarous despot, who, not believing in a God, should be his own God, who should render himself unworthy of his sacred trust by trampling on the duties which that trust imposes, who should remorselessly sacrifice to his passions, his friends, his relatives, his servants, and his people. These two tigers, the one shorn, the other crowned, are equally to be feared. By what means shall we muzzle them?

If the idea of a God has made a Titus or a Trajan, an Antonine or an Aurelius, and those great Chinese emperors, whose memory is so dear to the second of the

stupidity on the other, is every instant undermined by reason, which is esta{blishing its reign. The bull "In cœnâ Domini"-that masterpiece of insolence and folly, no longer dares appear, even in Rome. If a regiment of monks makes the least evolution against the laws of the state, it is immediately broken. But, because the Jesuits have been expelled, must we also expel God? On the contrary, we must love him the more.

SECTION VI.

In the reign of Arcadius, Logomachos, a theologue of Constantinople, went into Scythia and stopped at the foot of Mount Caucasus in the fruitful plains of Zephirim, on the borders of Colchis. The good old man Dondindac was in his great hall between his large sheepfold and his extensive barn; he was on his knees with his wife, his five sons and five daughters, his kinsmen and servants; and all were singing the praises of God, after a light repast.-"What art thou doing, idolater?" said Logomachos to him. "I am not an idolater," said Dondindac. "Thou must be an idolater," said Logomachos, "for thou art not a Greek. Come, tell me what thou wast singing in thy barbarous Scythian jargon ?"-"All tongues are alike to the ears of God," answered the Scythian;

a spirit is. It is... it is... it is... I manner of reasoning was, for a long will say what another time. time the bane of philosophy.

DONDINDAC.

I much fear that you will tell me rather what it is not than what it is. Permit me, in turn, to ask you one question. Some time ago, I saw one of your temples: why do you paint God with a long beard?

LOGOMACHOS.

Animals feel pleasure in performing all the functions for which they are destined. The happiness which poetical fancy has imagined would be an uninterrupted series of pleasures, but such a series would be incompatible with our organs and our destination. There is great pleasure in eating, drinking, and

That is a very difficult question, and connubial endearments; but it is clear requires preliminary instruction.

DONDINDAC.

Before I receive your instruction, I must relate to you a thing which one day happened to me. I had just built a closet at the end of my garden, when I heard a mole arguing thus with an ant :"Here is a fine fabric," said the mole; "it must have been a very powerful mole that performed this work."-" You jest," returned the ant; "the architect of this edifice is an ant of mighty genius." From that time I resolved never to dispute.

HAPPINESS is an abstract idea composed of certain pleasurable sensations. Plato, who wrote better than he reasoned, conceived the notion of his world in archetype; that is, his original world,—of his general ideas of the beautiful, the good, the orderly, and the just, as if there had existed eternal beings, called order, good, beauty, and justice; whence might be derived the feeble copies exhibited here below of the just, the beautiful, and the good.

that if a man were always eating, or always in the full extacy of enjoyment, his organs would be incapable of sustaining it it is farther evident that he would be unable to fulfil the destinies he was born to, and that, in the case supposed, the human race would absolutely perish through pleasure.

To pass constantly and without interruption from one pleasure to another, is also a chimera. The woman who has conceived must go through childbirth, which is a pain; the man is obliged to cleave wood and hew stone, which is not a pleasure.

If the name of happiness is meant to be applied to some pleasures which are diffused over human life, there is in fact, we must admit, happiness. If the name attaches only to one pleasure always permanent, or a continued although varied range

of delicious enjoyment, then happiness belongs not to this terraqueous globe. Go and seek for it elsewhere.

If we make happiness consist in any particular situation that a man may be in, as for instance, a situation of wealth, power, or fame, &c. we are no less mistaken. There are some scavengers who are happier than some sovereigns. Ask Cromwell whether he was more happy when he was lord protector of England, than when, in his youthful days, he en

It is, then, in consequence of his suggestions, that philosophers have occupied themselves in seeking for the sovereign good, as chemists seek for the philoso-joyed himself at a tavern; he will propher's stone; but the sovereign good has no more existence than the sovereign square, or the sovereign crimson: there is the crimson colour, and there are squares; but there is no general existence so denominated. This chimerical

bably tell you in answer, that the period of his usurpation was not the period most productive of pleasures. How many plain or even ugly country women are more happy than were Helen and Cleopatra.

We must here however make one short remark; that when we say such a particular man is probably happier than some other, that a young muleteer has very superior advantages over Charles the fifth, that a dress-maker has more enjoyment than a princess, we should adhere to the probability of the case. There is certainly every appearance that a muleteer, in full health, must have more pleasure than Charles the fifth, laid up with the gout; but nevertheless it may also be, that Charles, on his crutches, revolves in his mind with such extacy the facts of his holding a king of France and a pope prisoners, that his lot is absolutely preferable to that of the young and vigorous muleteer.

It certainly belongs to God alone, to a being capable of seeing through all hearts, to decide which is the happiest man. There is only one case in which a person can affirm that his actual state is worse or better than that of his neighbour; this case is that of existing rivalship, and the moment that of victory.

be calmly reflecting that his soul ought to be above being discomposed by a strumpet or a storm, if he should be absorbed in a profound and interesting problem, and if he should discover the proportions between the cylinder and the sphere, he may experience a pleasure a hundred times superior to that of Nomentanus.

It is only therefore in the single case of actual pleasure and actual pain, and without a reference to anything else whatever, that a comparison between any two individuals can be properly made. It is unquestionable that he who enjoys the society of his mistress is happier at the moment than his scorned rival deploring

over his misfortune. A man in health supping on a fat partridge, is undoubtedly happier at the time than another under the torment of the colic; but we cannot safely carry our inferences farther; we cannot estimate the existence of one man against that of another; we possess no accurate balance for weighing desires and

sensations.

We began this article with Plato and his sovereign good; we will conclude it with Solon and the saying of his which has been so highly celebrated, that “we ought to pronounce no man happy before his death." This maxim, when examined into, will be found nothing more than a puerile remark, just like many other apothegms consecrated by their antiquity. The moment of death has nothing in common with the lot experienced by any man in life; a man may perish by a violent and ignominious death, and yet, up to that moment, may have enjoyed all the pleasures of which human nature is susceptible. It is very possible and very common for a happy man to cease to be so; no one can doubt it; but he has not the less had his happy moments.

I will suppose that Archimedes has an assignation at night with his mistress. Nomentanus has the same assignation at the same hour. Archimedes presents himself at the door, and it is shut in his face; but it is opened to his rival, who makes an excellent supper, which he enlivens by his repeated sallies of wit upon Archimedes, and after the conclusion of which he withdraws to still higher enjoyments, while the other remains exposed in the street to all the pelting of a pitiless storm. There can be no doubt that Nomentanus has a right to say, I am more happy to-night than Archimedes: I have more pleasure than he; but it is necessary, in order to admit the truth and justness of the inference of the successful competitors in his own favour, to suppose that Archimedes is thinking only What, then, can Solon's expression about the loss of his good supper, about strictly and fairly mean? that a man being despised and deceived by a beau-happy to-day is not certain of being so tiful woman, about being supplanted by to-morrow! In this case it is a truth so his rival, and annoyed by the tempest; incontestible and trivial, that, not merely for, if the philosopher in the street should it is not worthy of being elevated into a