"Beneath all this a dangerous poison l'es:
"So---every man is neither right nor wrong,
"And, since we never can be truly wise,

"By instinct only should be driven along." Sir, I've not said a word to that effect.

It's true, you've artfully diguised your meaning: "But, Sir, my judgment ever is correct."

Sir, in this case, 'tis rather overweening. Let truth be sought, but let all passion yield;

Discussion's night, and disputation's wrong: This have I said and that at court, in field,

Or town, one often should restrain one's tongue.
"But, my dear Sir, you've still a double sense;
"I can distinguish." Sir, with a my heart;
I've told my thoughts with all due deference,

And crave the like indulgence on your part.
"My son, all thinking' is a grievous crime;
"So, I'll denounce you without loss of time."
Blest would be they who, from fanatic power,
From carping censors, envious crities, free,
Oer Helicon might roam in liberty,
And unmolested pluck each fragrant flower!
So does the farmer, in his healthy fields,

Far from the ills in swarming towns that spring,
Taste the pure joys that our existence yields,
Extract the honey and escape the sting.

DISTANCE.

of distance, I must find it out by means of an intermediate idea; but it is necessary that this intermediate idea be clearly understood, for it is only by the medium of things known that we can acquire a notion of things unknown.

I am told that such a house is distant a mile from such a river: but if I do not know where this river is, I certainly do not know where the house is situate. A body yields easily to the impression of my hand: I conclude immediately that it is soft. Another resists; I feel at once its hardness. I ought therefore to feel the angles formed in my eye, in order to determine the distance of objects. But most men do not even know that these angles exist; it is evident, therefore, that they cannot be the immediate cause of our ascertaining distances.

A MAN who knows how to reckon the paces from one end of his house to the He who, for the first time in his life, other, might imagine that nature had all hears the noise of a cannon or the sound at once taught him this distance, and that of a concert, cannot judge whether the he has only need of a coup d'œil, as in cannon be fired or the concert be perthe case of colours. He is deceived; the formed, at the distance of a league or of different distances of objects can only be twenty paces. He has only the experiknown by experience, comparison, and ence which accustoms him to judge of the habit. It is that which makes a sailor, distance between himself and the place on seeing a vessel afar off, able to say whence the noise proceeds. The vibrawithout hesitation what distance his own tions, the undulations of the air, carry a vessel is from it, of which distance a pas-sound to his ears, or rather to his sensosenger would only form a very confusedrium; but this noise no more carries to idea. his sensorium the place whence it proceeds, than it teaches him the form of the cannon or of the musical instruments. It is the same thing precisely with regard to the rays of light which proceed from an object, but which do not at all inform us of its situation.

Distance is only the line from a given object to ourselves. This line terminates at a point; and whether the object be a thousand leagues from us or only a foot, this point is always the same to our eyes. We have then no means of directly perceiving distances, as we have of ascertaining by the touch whether a body is hard or soft; by the taste, if it is bitter or sweet; or by the ear, whether of two sounds the one is grave and the other lively. For if I duly notice, the parts of a body which give way to my fingers are the immediate cause of my sensation of softness; and the vibrations of the air, excited by the sonorous body, are the immediate cause of my sensation of sound. But as I cannot have an immediate idea

Neither do they inform us more immediately of magnitude or form. I see from afar a little round tower; I approach, perceive, and touch a great quadrangular building. Certainly, this which I now see and touch cannot be that which I saw before. The little round tower which was before my eyes, cannot be this large square building. One thing in relation to us, is the measurable and tangible ob}ject; another, the visible object. I hear, from my chamber, the noise of a carriage;

I open my window and see it; I descend and enter it. Yet this carriage that I have heard, this carriage that I have seen, and this carriage which I have touched, are three objects absolutely distinct to three of my senses, which have no immediate relation to one another.

by a blind man thus suddenly gifted with sight.

In fact, a man, born blind, was found in 1729, by whom this question was indubitably decided. The famous Cheselden, one of those celebrated surgeons who join manual skill to the most enlightened Further; it is demonstrated that there minds, imagined that he could give sight is formed in my eye an angle a degree to this blind man by couching, and prolarger when a thing is near, when I see posed the operation. The patient was a man four feet from me, as when I see with great difficulty brought to consent to the same man at a distance of eight feet. {it. He did not conceive that the sense However, I always see this man of the of sight could much augment his pleasame size. How does my mind thus sures. Except that he desired to be able contradict the mechanism of my organs? to read and to write, he cared indeed The object is really a degree smaller to little about seeing. He proved by this my eyes, and yet I see it the same. It indifference, that it is impossible to be is in vain that we attempt to explain this rendered unhappy by the privation of mystery, by the route which the rays fol- pleasures of which we have never formed low, or by the form taken by the crysta- an idea-a very important truth. Howline humour of the eye. Whatever may ever this may be, the operation was perbe supposed to the contrary, the angle formed, and succeeded. This young man at which I see a man at four feet from me at fourteen years of age saw the light for is always nearly double the angle at which the first time, and his experience conI see him at eight feet. Neither geo-firmed all that Locke and Berkeley had metry nor physics will explain this difficulty.

so ably foreseen. For a long time he distinguished neither dimension, distance, These geometrical lines and angles are nor form. An object about the size of not really more the cause of our seeing an inch, which was placed before his objects in their proper places, than that eyes, and which concealed a house from we see them of a certain size and at a cer- him, appeared as large as the house itself. tain distance. The mind does not con- All that he saw seemed to touch his eyes, sider, that if this part were to be painted and to touch them as objects of feeling at the bottom of the eye, it could collect { touch the skin. He could not at first nothing from lines that it saw not. The distinguish that which, by the aid of his eye looks down only to see that which is hands, he had thought round, from that near the ground, and is uplifted to see which he had supposed square; nor that which is above the earth. All this could he discern, with his eyes, if that might be explained and placed beyond which his hands had felt to be tall and dispute, by any person born blind, to short, were so in reality. He was so far whom the sense of sight was afterwards { from knowing anything about magnitude, attained. For if this blind man, the mo- that after having at last conceived by his ment that he opens his eyes, can correctly sight that his house was larger than his judge of distances, dimensions, and situ- chamber, he could not conceive how sight ations, it would be true that the optical could give him this idea. It was not angles suddenly formed in his retina were until after two months' experience, he the immediate cause of his decisions. could discover that pictures represented Doctor Berkeley asserts, after Locke (go-existing bodies; and when, after this ing even further than Locke), that neither situation, magnitude, distance, nor figure, would be any of them discerned

long development of his new sense in him, he perceived that bodies, and not surfaces only, were painted in the pic

tures, he took them in his hands, and was astonished at not finding those solid bodies of which he had began to perceive the representation, and demanded which was the deceiver, the sense of feeling or that of sight.

Thus was it irrevocably decided, that the manner in which we see things follows not immediately from the angles formed in the eye. These mathematical angles were in the eyes of this man the same as in our own, and were of no use to him, without the help of experience and of his other senses.

The adventure of the man born blind was known in France towards the year 1735. The author of the Elements of Newton, who had seen a great deal of Cheselden, made mention of this important discovery, but did not take much notice of it. And even when the same operation of the cataract was performed at Paris on a young man who was said to have been deprived of sight from his cradle, the operators neglected to attend to the daily development of the sense of sight in him, and to the progress of nature. The fruit of this operation was, therefore, lost to philosophy.

horse of the size of a sheep, a much smaller picture is formed in my eye-a more acute angle; but it is a fact which accompanies, not causes my opinion. In like manner, it makes a different impression on my brain, when I see a man blush from shame and from anger; but these different impressions would tell me nothing of what was passing in this man's { mind, without experience, whose voice alone is attended to.

So far from the angle being the immediate cause of my thinking that a horse is far off when I see it very small, it happens that I see my horse equally large at ten, twenty, thirty, or forty paces, though the angle at ten paces may be double, treble, or quadruple. I see at a distance, through a small hole, a man posted on the top of a house; the remoteness and fewness of the rays at first prevent me from distinguishing that it is a man ; the object appears to me very small. Í think I see a statue two feet high at most; the object moves; I then judge that it is a man; and from that instant the man appears to me of his ordinary size. Whence come these two judgments so different? When I believed that I saw a statue, I imagined it to be two feet high, because I saw it at such an angle; experience had not led my mind to falsify the traits imprinted on my retina; but as soon as I judged that it was a man, the association established in my mind by experience between a man and his known height of five or six feet, involuntarily. obliged me to imagine that I saw one of a certain height; or, in fact, that I saw the height itself.

How do we represent to ourselves dimensions and distances?-In the same manner that we imagine the passions of men, by the colours with which they vary their countenances, and by the alteration which they make in their features. There is no person who cannot read joy or grief on the countenance of another. It is the language that nature addresses to all eyes; but experience only teaches this language. Experience alone teaches us, that when an object is too far, we see it confusedly It must therefore be absolutely conand weakly; and from thence we form cluded, that distance, dimension, and ideas, which always afterwards accom- situation are not, properly speaking, visipany the sensation of sight. Thus every ble things; that is to say, the proper and man who at ten paces distance sees his immediate objects of sight. The proper horse five feet high, if, some minutes and immediate object of sight is nothing after, he sees this horse of the size of a but coloured light; all the rest we only sheep, his mind, by an involuntary judg-discover by long acquaintance and expenent, immediately concludes that the horse is much further from him.

It is very true, that when I see my

rience. We learn to see precisely as we learn to speak and to read. The differ ence is, that the art of seeing is more

of all.

easy, and that nature is equally mistress } function to which it was destined by nature. They mutually aid one another to convey to our minds, through the medium of experience, the measure of knowledge that our being allows. We ask from our senses what they are not made to give us. We would have our eyes acquaint us with solidity, dimension, distance, &c.; but it is necessary for the touch to agree for that purpose with the sight, and that experience should second both. If Father Mallebranche had looked at this side of nature, he would perhaps have attributed fewer errors to our senses, which are the only sources of all our

The sudden and almost uniform judgments which, at a certain age, our minds form of distance, dimension, and situation, make us think that we have only to open our eyes to see in the manner in which we do see. We are deceived; it requires the help of the other senses. If men had only the sense of sight, they would have no means of knowing extent in length, breadth, and depth, and a pure spirit perhaps would not know it, unless God revealed it to him. It is very difficult, in our understanding, to separate the extent of an object from its colour.ideas. We never see anything but what is extended, and from that we are led to believe that we really see the extent. We can scarcely distinguish in our minds the yellow that we see in a louis d'or from the louis d'or in which we see the yellow. In the same manner, as when we hear the word louis d'or pronounced, we cannot help attaching the idea of the money to the word which we hear spoken.

We should not, however, extend this species of metaphysics to every case before us. We should only call it to our } aid when the mathematics are insufficient.

DIVINITY OF JESUS.

THE Socinians, who are regarded as blasphemers, do not recognise the divinity of Jesus Christ. They dare to pretend, with the philosophers of antiquity, with the Jews, the Mahometans, and most other nations, that the idea of a god-man is monstrous; that the distance from God to man is infinite; and that it is impos{sible for a perishable body to be infinite, immense, or eternal.

If all men spake the same language, we should be always ready to believe in a necessary connection between words and ideas. But all men in fact do possess the same language of imagination. Nature says to them all, When you have seen colours for a certain time, imagination will represent the bodies to which these colours appear attached to all alike. { This prompt and summary judgment once attained, will be of use to you during your life; for if to estimate the distances, magnitudes, and situations of all that surrounds you, it were necessary to examine the visual angles and rays, you would be dead before you had ascertained whether the things of which you have need were ten paces from you or a hun-lian, in his Discourse against Praxeas. dred thousand leagues, and whether they were of the size of a worm or of a mountain. It would be better to be born blind.

We are then, perhaps, very wrong, when we say that our senses deceive us. Every one of our senses performs the

They have the confidence to quote Eusebius, Bishop of Cæsarea, in their favour, who, in his Ecclesiastical History, book i., chap. 9, declares that it is absurd to imagine the uncreated and unchangeable nature of Almighty God taking the form of a man. They cite the fathers of the church, Justin and Tertullian, who have said the same thing: Justin, in his Diologue with Triphonius; and Tertul

They quote St. Paul, who never calls Jesus Christ God, and who calls him man very often. They carry their audacity so far as to affirm, that the Christians passed three entire ages in forming by degrees the apotheosis of Jesus; and that they only raised this astonishing edifice