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.

Animals feel pleasure in performing all the functions for which they are destined. The happiness which poetical Permit me, in turn, to ask you one ques-terrupted series of pleasures, but such a fancy has imagined would be an unintion. Same time ago, I saw one of your series would be incompatible with our temples: why do you paint God with a long beard? organs and our destination. There is great pleasure in eating, drinking, and connubial endearments; but it is clear

LOGOMACHOS.

That is a very difficult question, and that if a man were always eating, or alrequires preliminary instruction.

DONDIN DAC.

ways 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.

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; To pass constantly and without inter"it must have been a very powerful mole ruption from one pleasure to another, is that performed this work."" You jest," { also a chimera. The woman who has returned the ant; "the architect of this conceived must go through childbirth, edifice is an ant of mighty genius." From which is a pain; the man is obliged to that time I resolved never to dispute. cleave wood and hew stone, which is not a pleasure. GOOD THE SOVEREIGN GOOD-A CHIMERA.

SECTION I.

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, ora continued although varied range of delicious enjoyment, then happiness belongs not to this terraqueous globe. Go and seek for it elsewhere.

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 If we make happiness consist in any there had existed eternal beings, called particular situation that a man may be in, order, good, beauty, and justice; whence as for instance, a situation of wealth, might be derived the feeble copies exhi-power, or fame, &c., we are no less misbited here below of the just, the beautiful, and the good.

taken. There are some scavengers who are happier than some sovereigns. Ask It is, then, in consequence of his sug- Cromwell whether he was more happy gestions, that philosophers have occupied when he was lord protector of England, themselves in seeking for the sovereign than when, in his youthful days, he engood, 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 dressmaker 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.

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 It certainly belongs to God alone, to a supping on a fat partridge, is undoubtedly being capable of seeing through all happier at the time than another under hearts, to decide which is the happiest the torment of the colic; but we cannot man. There is only one case in which a safely carry our inferences farther; we person can affirm that his actual state is cannot estimate the existence of one man worse or better than that of his neigh-against that of another; we possess no bour; this case is that of existing rival-accurate balance for weighing desires ship, and the moment that of victory.

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 count 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 enjoyment, 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 competitor 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 is it not worthy of being elevated into a

maxim, but it is not worthy delivering very contemptible by misconduct. The

at all.

SECTION JI.

Well-being is a rare possession. May not the sovereign good in this world be considered as a sovereign chimera? The Greek philosophers discussed at great length, according to their usual practice, this celebrated question. The reader will, probably, compare them to just so many mendicants reasoning about the philosopher's stone.

apple was conferred on Virtue.

The fable is very ingenious; it would be still more so if Crantor had said, that the sovereign good consists in the combination of the four rivals, Virtue, Health, Wealth, and Pleasure; but this fable neither does, nor can, resolve the absurd question about the sovereign good. Virtue is not a good. It is a duty. It is of a different nature; of a superior order. It has nothing to do with painful or with agreeable sensations. A virtuous man,

The sovereign good! What an ex-labouring under stone and gout, without pression! It might as well have been aid, without friends, destitute of neces asked, What is the sovereign blue, or thesaries, persecuted, and chained down to sovereign ragout, or the sovereign walk, or the sovereign reading, &c.

Every one places his good where he can, and has as much of it as he can, in his own way, and in very scanty meaCastor loved horses: his twin

sure.

brother, to try a fall

Quid dem! quid non dem! renuis tu quod jubet

alter

Castor gaudet equis, ovo prognatus eodem
Pugnis, &c.

the floor by a voluptuous tyrant who enjoys good health, is very wretched ; and his insolent persecutor, caressing a new mistress on his bed of purple, is very happy. Say, if you please, that the persecuted sage is preferable to the persecuting profligate; say that you admire the one and detest the other; but confess that the sage in chains is scarcely less than mad with rage and pain: if he do not himself admit that he is so, he completely deceives you; he is a char

The greatest good is that which delights us so powerfully, as to render us incapable of feeling anything else; as the great-latan. est evil is that which goes so far as to deprive us of all feeling. These are the two extremes of human nature, and these moments are short.

GOOD.

It

Of good and evil, Physical and Moral. WE here treat of a question of the Neither extreme delight nor extreme greatest difficulty and importance. torture can last a whole life. The sove-relates to the whole of human life. It reign good and the sovereign evil are nothing more than chimeras.

would be of much greater consequence to find a remedy for our evils; but no remedy is to be discovered, and we are reduced to the sad necessity of tracing out their origin. With respect to this origin, men have disputed ever since the days of Zoroaster, and in all probability they disputed on the same subject long before him. It was to explain the mix

We all know the beautiful fable of Crantor. He introduces upon the stage at the Olympic games, Wealth, Pleasure, Health, and Virtue. Each claims the apple. Wealth says, I am the sovereign good, for with me all goods are purchased: Pleasure says, the apple belongs to me, for it is only on my account that wealthture of good and evil that they conceived is desired: Health asserts, that without her there can be no pleasure, and wealth is useless: finally, Virtue states, that she is superior to the other three, because, although possessed of gold, pleasures, and health, a man may make himself

the idea of two principles-Oromazes, the author of light, and Arimanes, the author of darkness; the box of Pandora; the two vessels of Jupiter; the apple eaten by Eve; and a variety of other systems. The first of dialecticians, al

though not the first of philosophers, the { whom he had created immortal, and to

illustrious Bayle, has clearly shown how difficult it is for Christians who admit one only God, perfectly good and just, to reply to the objections of the Manicheans who acknowledge two Gods-one good and the other evil.

overwhelm their posterity with calamities and crimes! We do not here speak of a contradiction still more revolting to our feeble reason. How could God, who ransomed the human race by the death of his only son; or rather, how could God, who took upon himself the nature of man, and died on the cross to save men from perdition, consign over to eternal tortures nearly the whole of that human race for whom he died?.. Cer

It

merely as philosophers (without the aid of faith) we must consider it as absolutely monstrous and abominable. makes of God either pure and unmixed malice, and that malice infinite, which created thinking beings, on purpose to devote them to eternal misery, or absolute impotence and imbecility, in not being able to foresee or to prevent the torments of his offspring.

The foundation of the system of the Manicheans, with all its antiquity, was not on that account more reasonable. Lemmas, susceptible of the most clear and rigid geometrical demonstrations, should alone have induced any men totainly, when we consider this system the adoption of such a theorem as the following:-"There are two necessary beings, both supreme, both infinite, both equally powerful, both in conflict with } each other, yet, finally agreeing to pour out upon this little planet-one, all the treasures of his beneficence, and the other all the stores of his malice." It is in vain that the advocates of this hypothesis attempt to explain by it the cause of good and evil even the fable of Prometheus explains it better. Every hypothesis, which only serves to assign a reason for certain things, without being, in addition to that recommendation, established upon { indisputable principles, ought invariably to be rejected.

The Christian doctors (independently of the revelation, which makes everything credible), explain the origin of good and evil no better than the partner-gods of Zoroaster.

But the eternity of misery is not the subject of this article, which relates properly only to the good and evil of the present life. None of the doctors of the numerous churches of Christianity, all of which advocate the doctrine we are here contesting, have been able to convince a single sage.

We cannot conceive how Bayle, who managed the weapons of dialectics with such admirable strength and dexterity, could content himself with introducing in a dispute a Manichean, a Calvinist, a Molinist, and a Socinian. Why did he not introduce, as speaking, a reasonable { and sensible man? Why did not Bayle speak in his own person? He would have said far better what we shall now venture to say ourselves.

When they say God is a tender father, God is a just king; when they add the idea of infinity to that of love, that kindness, that justice which they observe in the best of their own species, they soon fall into the most palpable and dreadful contradictions. How could this sovereign, who possessed in infinite fulness the prin- A father, who kills his children, is a ciple or quality of human justice; how monster; a king who conducts his subcould this father, entertaining an infinitejects into a snare, in order to obtain a affection for his children; how could this pretext for delivering them up to punishbeing infinitely powerful, have formedment and torture, is an execrable tyrant. creatures in his own likeness, to have If you conceive God to possess the same them immediately afterwards tempted by kindness which you require in a father, a malignant demon, to make them yield the same justice that you require in a to the temptation, to inflict death on those king, no possible resource exists by which,

if we may use the expression, God can, be exculpated; and by allowing him to possess infinite wisdom and infinite goodness you, in fact, render him infinitely odious; you excite a wish that he had no existence; you furnish arms to the atheist, who will ever be justified in triumphantly remarking to you, Better by far is it to deny a God altogether, than impute to him such conduct as you would punish, to the extremity of the law, in men.

that the proposition of an immortal man is a contradiction.

If our organized body were immortal, that of mere animals would be so likewise; but it is evident that, in the course of a very short time, the whole globe would, in this case, be incompetent to supply nourishment to those animals; those immortal beings which subsist only in consequence of renovation by food, would then perish for want of the means of such renovation. All this involves We begin then with observing, that it contradiction. We might make various is unbecoming in us to ascribe to God other observations on the subject, but human attributes. It is not for us to every reader who deserves the name of a make God after our own likeness. Human philosopher will perceive, that death was justice, human kindness, and human wis-necessary to everything that is born; that dom can never be applied or made suitable to him. We may extend these attributes in our imagination as far as we are able to infinity; they will never be other than human qualities with boundaries perpetually or indefinitely removed; it would be equally rational to attribute to him infinite solidity, infinite motion, infinite roundness, or infinite divisibility. These attributes can never be his.

Philosophy informs us that this universe must have been arranged by a being incomprehensible, eternal, and existing by his own nature; but, once again, we must observe, that philosophy gives us no information on the subject of the attributes of that nature, We know what he is not, and not what he is.

With respect to God, there is neither good nor evil, physically or morally.

Of

What is physical or natural evil? all evils, the greatest, undoubtedly, is death. Let us for a moment consider whether man could have been immortal.

In order that a body like ours should have been indissoluble, imperishable, it would have been necessary that it should not be composed of parts; that it should not be born; that it should have neither nourishment nor growth; that it should experience no change. Let any one examine each of these points; and let every reader extend their number according to his own suggestions, and it will be seen

death can neither be an error on the part of God, nor an evil, an injustice, nor a chastisement to man.

Man, born to die, can no more be exempt from pain than from death. To prevent an organized substance endowed with feeling from ever experiencing pain, it would be necessary that all the laws of nature should be changed; that matter should no longer be divisible; that it should neither have weight, action, nor force; that a rock might fall on an animal without crushing it; and that water should have no power to suffocate, or fire to burn it. Man impassive, then, is as much a contradiction as man immortal.

This feeling of pain was indispensable to stimulate us to self-preservation, and to impart to us such pleasures as are consistent with those general laws by which the whole system of nature is bound and regulated.

If we never experienced pain, we should be every moment injuring ourselves without perceiving it. Without the excitement of uneasiness, without some sensation of pain, we should perform no function of life; should never communicate it, and should be destitute of all the pleasures of it. Hunger is the commencement of pain, which compels us to take our required nourishment. Ennui is a pain which stimulates to exercise and occupation. Love itself is a