Phil. Yes, to be sure.

Friend. Pray let me hear that reason.

Phil. Because the idea of odd presented itself to your mind before the contrary notion. It would be strange, indeed, that in some cases you will because there is a cause of volition; and that in other cases you will without any cause. In your willing to be married, you evidently perceive the determining reason; and in playing at even and odd, you do not perceive it; and yet one there must be.

Friend. But again, am I not then free?

Phil. Your will is not free, but your actions are: you are free to act, when you have the power of acting.

Friend. But all the books I have read on the liberty of indifference

Phil. Are nonsense. There is no such thing as liberty of indifference: it is a word void of sense, and coined by those who were not overloaded with it.

LIMITS OF THE HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.

Poor doctor! these limits are every where. Art thou for knowing how it came to pass, that thy arm and thy leg obey thy will, and thy liver does not? Wouldst thou investigate how thought is formed in thy minute understanding, and the child in that woman's womb? I give thee what time thou wilt. Tell me also, what is matter? Thy equals have written ten thousand volumes on this article: some qualities of this substance they have found, and children know them as well as thyself; but what is that substance essentially? and what is that to which thou hast given the appellation of spirit, from a Latin word signifying breath, in the room of a better, because thou hast no idea of it?

See this grain of corn, which I throw into the ground, and tell me how it rises again to shoot forth a stem with an ear? Inform me how the same ground produces an apple on this tree, and a chesnut on that? I could fill a folio with such questions, to which thy answer ought to be, I know not. And yet thou hast taken thy degrees, and wearest a furred gown and cap, and art called master: and there is another fool, who, priding himself upon a petty employment in some paltry town, conceits that he has likewise purchased the privilege of judging and condemning what he does not understand.

Montaigne's motto was, "What do I know?"Que sai-je? and thine is, "What do I not know?"—Que ne sai-je pas?

LOVE.

"Love the same in all."

HERE we must call in the constitution: the ground is natural, and embroidered by imagination. Shall I give you an idea of love? view the sparrows in thy garden; view thy pigeons ; behold the bull led to thy heifer; look on that spirited horse, which two of thy servants are bringing to thy mare, who quietly, though anxiously, awaits his coming: how his eyes glare, how he neighs: observe how he prances; his erect ears, his convulsed mouth, his snorting, his turgid nostrils, his fiery breath issuing from them; the flutterings of his mane; the impetuosity with which he rushes on the object that nature has appointed for him but forbear all discontent, and consider the advantages of the human species. In matters of love, they make up for those which nature has given to beasts,-strength, beauty, activity, and velocity.

There are even creatures strangers to fruition. It is a delight of which shell-fish are deprived; the female ejects millions of eggs on the slime and mud; the male, in passing by, fecundates them by his sperm, without troubling himself what female they belong to.

Most creatures, in copulation, receive pleasure only from one sense, and, that appetite satisfied, sink into insensibility. Thou alone, of all animals, art acquainted with the warm endearments of embraces; thy whole body glows with ecstatic sensations; thy lips, especially enjoy a most sweet delight, without satiety or weariness, and this delight is peculiar to thy species lastly, thou canst, at all times, give thyself to love; whereas other creatures have only a stated season. Reflect on these pre-eminences, and thou wilt say with the earl of Rochester, "Love would cause the deity to be worshipped, in a land of atheists."

As it has been imparted to mankind, to improve the several gifts of nature, they have made improvements in love. Cleanliness, or the care of one's person, rendering the skin softer, increases the pleasure of touch; and, attention to health, adds a more exquisite sensibility to the organs of voluptuousness.

All other sentiments combine with that of love, as metals amalgamate with gold: friendship and esteem join to support it; and the talents, both of the body and the mind, are additional ties.

Self-love, especially, adds force to the several ties. We

are enraptured with our choice, and a crowd of illusions decorate that work, of which the foundation is laid in nature.

Such is thy pre-eminence above other animals; but, if thou enjoyest so many pleasures, withheld from them, how many vexations are thy portion, of which beasts have no idea! One dreadful circumstance to thee is, that in three-fourths of the earth, nature has infected the delights of love, and the source of life, with a horrible distemper, to which man alone is subject, and, in him, affecting only the organs of generation.

This contagion is not, like many other distempers, the consequence of excesses; neither was it debauchery which produced it. Phryne, Lais, Flora, and Messalina, knew nothing of it. It received its birth in islands, where mankind lived in innocence; and from thence it has spread into the whole world.

If ever nature could be arraigned of neglecting its work, of thwarting its own plan, and counteracting its own views, it is here. Is this the best of the possible worlds? What! has Cæsar, Antony, or Octavius, never had this distemper? and was it not possible that it should have proved the death of Francis I.? No, it is said, things were so ordered for the best: I will believe so, but that is very melancholy for those to whom Rabelais dedicated his book.

SOCRATIC LOVE, AS IT IS CALLED.

How could it be, that a vice, which, if general, would extinguish the human species; an infamous crime against nature, should become so natural? It appears to be the last degree of reflective corruption; and yet it is usually found in those who have not had time to be corrupted. It makes its way into novice hearts, who are strangers to ambition, fraud, and a thirst after wealth; it is blind youth, which, at the end of childhood, by an unaccountable instinct, plunges itself into this enormity.

The inclination of the two sexes for each other, declares itself very early; but, after all that has been said of the African women, and those of the southern parts of Asia, this propensity is much stronger in man than in woman. Agreeably to the universal law of nature, in all creatures, it is ever the male who makes the first advances. The young males of our species, brought up together, coming to feel that play which nature begins to unfold to them, in the want of the natural ob

ject of their instinct, betake themselves to a resemblance of such objects.

It is nothing uncommon for a boy, by the beauty of his complexion, and the mild sparkle of his eyes, for two or three years, to have the look of a pretty girl. Now, the love of such a boy, arises from a mistake in nature: the female sex is honoured in our fondness for what partakes of her beauties, and when such resemblance is withered by age, the mistake is at an end.

This mistake in nature is known to be much more common in mild climates, than amidst the northern frosts, the blood being there more fervid, and the occasion more frequent: accordingly, what seems only weakness in young Alcibiades, is, in a Dutch sailor, or a Russian sutler, a most loathsome abomination.

I cannot bear, that the Greeks should be charged with having authorised this licentiousness. The legislator, Solon, is brought in because he has said,

"A beauteous boy thou mayst embrace,
While no rough beard deforms his face."

But who will say that Solon was a legislator at the time of his making these two ridiculous lines? He was then young, and, when the rake was grown virtuous, it cannot be thought that he inserted such an infamy among the laws of his republic: it is like accusing Theodore de Beza, of having preached up pederasty in his church, because in his youth, he had made verses on young Candidus, and says,

66 Amplector hunc et illam."

Plutarch likewise, is misunderstood; who, among his rants in the dialogue on love, makes one of the speakers say, that women are not worthy of a genuine love; but another speaker keenly takes the women's part.

It is as certain, as the knowledge of antiquity can be, that Socratic love was not an infamous passion. It is the word love has occasioned the mistake. The lovers of a youth were exactly what, among us, are the minions of our princes, or formerly pages of honour; young gentlemen, who had partaken of the education of children of rank, and who accompanied their patrons in their studies, or in the field. This was a martial and holy institution, but it was soon abused, as were the nocturnal feasts and orgies.

The troop of lovers, instituted by Laius, was an invincible corps of young warriors, engaged by oath, mutually to lay down their lives for one another; and, perhaps, never had ancient discipline any thing more grand or useful.

Sextus Empiricus, and others, may talk as long as they please of pederasty being recommended by the laws of Persia. Let them quote the text of the law, and even show the Persian code, yet will I not believe it. I will say, it is not true, by reason of its being impossible. I do aver, that it is not in human nature to make a law contradictory and injurious to nature: a law, which, literally adhered to, would put an end to the human species. The thing is, scandalous customs, being connived at, are often mistaken for the laws of a country. Sextus Empiricus, doubting of every thing, might as well doubt of this jurisprudence. If, living in our days, he had seen two or three young Jesuits fondling some scholars, could he, from thence say, that this sport was permitted them by the constitutions of Ignatius Loyola?

The love of boys was so common at Rome, that no punishment was thought of for a crime into which every body ran headlong. Octavius Augustus, that sensualist, that cowardly murderer, dared to banish Ovid, at the same time that he was very well pleased with Virgil's singing the beauty and flights of Alexis, and Horace's making little odes for Ligurinus. Still the old Scantinian law, against pederasty, was in force: the emperor Philip revived it, and caused the boys, who followed that trade, to be driven out of Rome. In a word, I cannot think that ever there was a polished nation, where the laws were contrary to morality.

SELF-LOVE.

A BEGGAR, about the skirts of Madrid, used to ask alms with great dignity: a person passing by said to him, "Are you not ashamed to follow this scandalous trade, you who are able to work?"—" Sir," answered the beggar, “I ask you for money, and not for advice;" then turned his back upon him with all the stateliness of a Castilian. Don was a lofty beggar indeed; his vanity soon took pet. He could ask alms out of self-love; and, from another kind of self-love, would not bear reproof.

A missionary, in India, met a facquier loaded with chains, as bare as an ape, lying on his belly, while his countrymen, at his request, were whipping him for his sins, and, at the same