nevertheless admitted a God; but this is only because men scarcely ever reason or act upon their principles. Had men reasoned consequently, Epicurus and his apostle Lucretius must have been the most religious assertors of the Providence which they combated; for when they admitted the void and the termination of matter, a truth of which they had only an imperfect glimpse, it necessarily followed that matter was the being of necessity, existing by itself, since it was not indefinite: they had, therefore, in their own philosophy, and in their own despite, a demonstration that there is a Supreme Being, necessary, infinite, the fabricator of the universe. Newton's philosophy, which admits and proves the void and finite matter, also demonstratively proves the existence of a God. daism, is to be found amidst all religions; but it is singular that the latter, which is the extreme of superstition, abhorred by the people, and contemned by the wise, is everywhere tolerated for money; while the former, which is the opposite of superstition, unknown to the people, and embraced by philosophers alone, is publicly exercised nowhere but in China. There is no country in Europe where there are more theists than in England. Some persons ask whether they have a religion or not. There are two sorts of theists. The one sort think that God made the world without giving man rules for good and evil. It is clear that these should have no other name than that of philosophers. The others believe that God gave to man a natural law: these, it is certain, have a religion, though they have no external worship. They are, with reference to the Christian religion, peaceful enemies, which she carries in her bosom; they renounce without any design of de Thus I regard true philosophers as the apostles of the Divinity. Each class of men requires its particular ones: a parish catechist tells children that there is a God, but Newton proves it to the wise.stroying her. All other sects desire to In London, under Charles II. after predominate, like political bodies, which Cromwell's wars, as at Paris under Henry seek to feed on the substance of others, IV. after the war of the Guises, people and rise upon their ruin; theism has altook great pride in being atheists: hav-ways lain quiet. Theists have never been ing passed from the excess of cruelty to found caballing in any state. that of pleasure, and corrupted their There was in London a society of theminds successively by war and by volup-ists, who for some time continued to meet tuousness, they reasoned very indiffer- together. They had a small book of their ently since then, the more nature has laws, in which religion, on which so been studied the better its author has many ponderous volumes have been been known. written, occupied only two pages. Their principal axiom was this" Morality is the same among all men, therefore it comes from God; worship is various, therefore it is the work of man." One thing I will venture to believe, which is, that of all religions, theism is the most widely spread in the world: it is the prevailing religion of China; it is that of the wise among the Mahometans; The second axiom was, "That men and, among Christian philosophers, eight being all brethren, and acknowledging out of ten are of the same opinion. It the same God, it is execrable that brethhas penetrated even into the schools of ren should persecute brethren, because theology, into the cloisters, into the con- they testify their love for the common clave; it is a sort of sect without asso-father in a different manner. Indeed," ciation, without worship, without cere- said they, "what upright man would monies, without disputes, and without { kill his elder or his younger brother, bezeal, spread through the world without cause one of them had saluted their fahaving been preached. Theism, like Ju-ther after the Chinese, and the other after the Dutch fashion, especially while it was undecided in what way the father wished their reverence to be made to him! Surely, he who should act thus, would be a bad brother rather than a good son." Locke was a declared theist. I was astonished to find in that great philosopher's chapter on innate ideas, that men { have all different ideas of justice. Were such the case, morality would no longer be the same; the voice of God would not be heard by man; natural religion would be at an end. I am willing to believe with him, that there are nations in which men eat their fathers, and where to lie with a neighbour's wife is to do I am well aware that these maxims lead directly to "the abominable and execrable dogma of toleration;" but I do no more than simply relate the fact. I am very careful not to become a controversialist. It must, however, be allowed,{him a friendly office: but if this be true, that if the different sects into which Christians have been divided had possessed this moderation, Christianity would have been disturbed by fewer disorders, shaken by fewer revolutions, and stained with less blood. it does not prove that the law, "Do not Let us pity the theists for combating our holy revelation. But whence comes it that so many Calvinists, Lutherans, Anabaptists, Nestorians, Arians, parti- { sans of Rome, and enemies of Rome, have been so sanguinary, so barbarous, and so miserable, now persecuting, now If a service be rendered to a neighpersecuted? It is because they have bour by lying with his wife, it is when he been the multitude. Whence is it that cannot himself have a child, and is detheists, though in error, have never done sirous of having one: otherwise he would harm to mankind? Because they have be very angry. In both these cases, and been philosophers. The Christian reli- in all others, the natural law," Do not gion has cost the human species seven- to another that which you would not have teen millions of men, reckoning only one another do to you," remains unbroken. million per century, who have perished, All the other rules, so different and so either by the hands of the ordinary exe-varied, may be referred to this. When, cutioner, or by those of executioners paid and led to battle,-all for the salvation of souls and the greater glory of God. I have heard men express astonishment, that a religion so moderate, and so apparently comformable to reason, as theism, has not been spread among the people. therefore, the wise metaphysician Locke, Among the great and little vulgar may be found pious herb-women, Molinist EPICURUS, equally great as a genius, duchesses, scrupulous sempstresses who and respectable in his morals; and after would go to the stake for anabaptism,-him Lucretius, who forced the Latin devout hackney-coachmen, most deter-language to express philosophical ideas, mined in the cause of Luther or of Arius, and, to the great admiration of Rome, but no theists: for theism cannot so to express them in verse;- Epicurus and mach be called a religion as a system of Lucretius, I say, admitted atoms and ilosophy; and the vulgar, whether the void: Gassendi supported this docgreat or little, are not philosophers. trine, and Newton demonstrated it. In vain did a remnant of Cartesianism still combat for the plenum; in vain did Leibnitz, who had at first adopted the rational system of Epicurus, Lucretius, Gassendi, and Newton, change his opinion respecting the void, after he had embroiled himself with his master Newton: the plenum is now regarded as a chimera. Neither Spinoza an effect of chance? Yet the son of the great Racine says, in his poem on Religion, O toi! qui follement fais ton Dieu du hasard, In this, Epicurus and Lucretius appear to have been true philosophers, and their intermedials, which have been so much ridiculed, were no other than the unresisting space in which Newton has demonstrated that the planets move round their orbits in times proportioned to their areas. Thus it was not Epicurus's intermedials, but his opponents, that were ridiculous. But when Epicurus afterwards tells us that his atoms declined in the void by chance; that this declination formed men and animals by chance; that the eyes were placed in the uppersity," which is the opposite of chance. part of the head, and the feet at the end of the legs by chance; that ears were not given to hear, but that the declination of atoms having fortuitously composed ears, men fortuitously made use of them to earing into other elements. The first system with, this madness, called physics, has been very justly turned into ridicule. The only question now agitated is, whether the author of nature has formed primordial parts unsusceptible of division, or if all is continually dividing and chang seems to account for everything, and the second, hitherto at least, for nothing. If the first elements of things were not indestructible, one element might at last swallow up all the rest, and change them into its own substance. Hence perhaps it was, that Empedocles imagined that everything came from fire, and would be destroyed by fire. Sound philosophy, then, has long distinguished what is good in Epicurus and Lucretius, from their chimeras, founded on imagination and ignorance. The most submissive minds have adopted the doctrine of creation in time, and the most daring have admitted that of creation before all time. Some have received with This question of atoms involves another; faith a universe produced from nothing; that of the divisibility of matter ad infiniothers, unable to comprehend this doc- tum. The word atom signifies without trine in physics, have believed that all parts-not to be divided. You divide it beings were emanations from the Great-in thought; for, if you were to divide it the Supreme and Universal Being: but in reality, it would no longer be an atom. all have rejected the fortuitous concur- You may divide a grain of gold into rence of atoms; all have acknowledged eighteen millions of visible parts; a grain that chance is a word without meaning. of copper, dissolved in spirit of sal amWhat we call chance, can be no other moniac, has exhibited upwards of twentythan the unknown cause of a known ef- two thousand parts: but when you bave fect. Whence comes it then, that philo-arrived at the last element, the atom essophers are still accused of thinking that capes the microscope, and you can divide the stupendous and indescribable ar- no further except in imagination. rangement of the universe is a production The infinite divisibility of atoms is like of the fortuitous concurrence of atoms-some propositions in geometry. You may pass an infinity of curves between a circle and its tangent, supposing the circle and the tangent to be lines without breadth; but there are no such lines in nature. ing him; he continued to accumulate to the last day of his life. This passion, which was constantly gratified, has never been called avarice. He did not expend a tenth part of his income; yet he had the reputation of a generous man, too fond of splendour. A father of a family who, with an in You likewise establish that asymptotes will approach one another without ever meeting; but it is under the supposition that they are lines having length without breadth-things which have only a specu-come of twenty thousand livres, expends only five or six, and accumulates his savings to portion his children, has the repu lative existence. So, also, we represent unity by a line, and divide this line and this unity into astation among his neighbours of being avamany fractions as you please; but this ricious, mean, stingy, a niggard, a miser, infinity of fractions will never be any other a grip-farthing; and every abusive epithan our unity and our line. thet that can be thought of is bestowed upon him. It is not strictly demonstrated that atoms are indivisible; but it appears that they are not divided by the laws of nature. AVARICE. AVARITIES, amor habendi-desire of having, avidity, covetousness. Nevertheless, this good citizen is much more to be honoured than the Croesus I have just mentioned: he expends three times as much in proportion. But the cause of the great difference between their reputations is this:— Men hate the individual whom they Properly speaking, avarice is the desire of accumulating, whether in grain, move-call avaricious, only because there is noables, money, or curiosities. There were avaricious men long before coin was invented. thing to be gained by him. The physician, the apothecary, the wine-merchant, the draper, the grocer, the saddler, and a few girls, gain a good deal by our Crœsus, who is truly avaricious. But with our close and economical citizen, there is no{ thing to be done; therefore he is loaded with maledictions. We do not call a man avaricious, who has four-and-twenty coach-horses, yet will not lend one to his friend; or who, having two thousand bottles of Burgundy in his cellar, will not send you half a dozen, when he knows you to be in want of them. If he show you a hundred thousand crowns' worth of diamonds, you do not think of asking him to present youliére. with one worth twenty livres; you conconsider him as a man of great magnificence, but not at all avaricious. As for those among the avaricious who deprive themselves of the necessaries of life, we leave them to Plautus and Mo AUGURY. MUST not a man be very thoroughly He who in finance, in army contracts, possessed by the demon of etymology to and great undertakings, gained two mil-say, with Pezron and others, that the Rohons each year, and who, when possessed of forty-three millions, besides his houses at Paris and his moveables, expended fifty thousand crowns per annum for his table, and sometimes lent money to noblemen at five per cent. interest, did not pass, in the minds of the people, for an avaricious man. He had, however, all his life burned with the thirst of gain; the demon of covetousness was perpetually torment man word augurium came from the Celtic words au and gur? According to the se learned men, au must, among the Basques and Bas- Bretons, have signified the liver; because usu, which (say they) signified left, doubtless stood for the liver, which is on the right side: and gur meant man, or yellow, or red, in that Celtic tongue which we have not one memorial. Truly, this is powerful reasoning. of Absurd curiosity (for we must call? Judah acknowledges, in the name of things by their right names) has been his brethren, that Joseph is a great dicarried so far as to seek Hebrew and viner, and that God has inspired him Chaldee derivations for certain Teutonic, "God hath found out the iniquity of thy and Celtic words. This, Bochart never servants." At that time they took Joseph fails to do. It is astonishing with what, for an Egyptian lord. It is evident from confidence these men of genius have proved the text, that they believe the God of the that expressions used on the banks of the Egyptians and of the Jews had discovered Tyber were borrowed from the patois of to this minister the theft of his cup. the savages of Biscay. Nay, they even assert that this patois was one of the first idioms of the primitive language-the parent of all other languages throughout the world. They have only to proceed, and say that all the various notes of birds come from the cry of the two first parrots, from which every other species of birds has been produced. The religious folly of auguries was originally founded on very sound and natural observations. The birds of passage have always marked the progress of the seasons; we see them come in flocks in the spring, and return in the autumn. The cuckoo is heard only in fine weather, which his note seems to invite. The swallows, skimming along the ground, announce rain. Each climate has its bird, which is in effect its augury. Here then we have auguries or divination clearly established in the book of Genesis; so clearly, that it is afterwards forbidden in Leviticus :--" Ye shall not eat anything with the blood: neither shall ye use enchantment nor observe times. Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard." As for the superstition of seeing the future in a cup, it still exists, and is called seeing in a glass. The individual must never have known pollution; he must turn towards the east, and pronounce the words, " Abraxa per dominum nostrum ;" after which he will see in a glass of water whatever he pleases. Children were usually chosen for this operation. They must retain their hair: a shaven head, or one wearing a wig, can see nothing in the glass. Among the observing part of mankind { This pastime was much in vogue in France there were, no doubt, knaves who per- during the regency of the Duke of Orsuaded fools that there was something di-leans, and still more so in the times previne in these animals, and that their flight ceding. presaged our destinies, which were written on the wings of a sparrow just as clearly as in the stars. The commentators on the allegorical and interesting story of Joseph sold by his brethren, and made Pharaoh's prime minister for having explained his dreams, infer that Joseph was skilled in the science of auguries, from the circumstance that Joseph's steward is commanded to say to his brethren, "Is not this it," (the silver cup,)" in which my lord drinketh? and whereby indeed he divineth?" Joseph, having caused his brethren to be brought back before him, says to them, "What deed is this that ye have done? Wot ye not that such a man as I can certainly divine ?" As for auguries, they perished with the Roman empire. Only the bishops have retained the augurial staff, called the crosier, which was the distinctive mark of the dignity of augur; so that the symbol of falsehood has become the symbol of truth. There were innumerable kinds of divinations, of which several have reached our latter ages. This curiosity to read the future, is a malady which only philosophy can cure; for the weak minds that still practise these pretended arts of divi} nation—even the fools who give themselves to the devil-all make religion subservient to these profanations, by which it is outraged. It is an observation worthy of the wise, |