Then only will you feel the justness of that verse of Boileau, an eternal epigraph of all that is good and great in the arts and in literature

"C'est avoir profité que de savoir s'y plaire."

To take pleasure in the perusal of good models, to persevere in their study, is to give to oneself that which all the treasures of the world cannot give us-delicacy of taste, peace of mind, contentment, and the joys of a pure conscience; for the knowledge of the beautiful always leads us to the enjoyment of virtue. Let us, then, conclude this chapter as we commenced it, by saying that knowledge and eloquence are a divine harmony, and that all that is most elevated in our souls unceasingly responds to all that is most elevated in nature.

CHAPTER XXV.

OF THE HARMONY BETWEEN THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL FACULTIES.

"Ainsi sont exclus de la nouvelle science les stoiciens qui veulent la mort des sens, et les epicuriens qui font des sens la règle de l'homme." VICO. Science Nouvelle.

"L'homme n'est ni ange ni bête; et le malheur est, que qui veut faire l'ange, fait la bête."

PASCAL.

Ar the first glance there is something alarming in the part which nature accords to matter. Foresight, intelligence, animal volition, all the instincts, all the passions,

appertain to it. Animals think, remember, will, love, hate; but these faculties have no other aim than the conservation of the species. Matter, being satiated, sleeps or rests; man still desires, always desires; his passions are without repose; after the satisfactions derived from earth, they dream of satisfactions from heaven. There is, then, in man something else than matter, an infinity which aspires to eternity.

The principles being thus defined, the alarm ceases, for the noblest part belongs to the soul. The soul is the delight in good, it is the virtuous, the immortal being. What animal passion, what earthly pleasure can we regret in the contemplations of the beau ideal, and of the infinite? And yet we must be careful not to disunite on earth these two halves of our being. Death alone has this right: it kills the animal in order to set the god free; but man cannot destroy the one nor the other without disturbing the wellbeing of the world. If he attempt to make himself an angel, his animal passions draw him forcibly back earthwards; if he attempt to become an animal, his celestial passions torment him with remorse. He is not free to alter his nature, but only to regulate it. Whenever he abandons the rule, he mistakes his position: he is no longer anything, for he cannot attain, in the two extremes, either to the perfection of a god, nor to the usefulness of a beast, and he will have ceased to be a man.

Education ought to apply itself to develope simultaneously these two halves of our being; it is applied, on the contrary, to separate them. This is the cause of all the evils which afflict humanity. world? intellects which strive to will have gold in order to have pleasures; this is all that is desired; they are taught only for this object; it is the avowed aim of our studies and of our labours; all comes

What do we see in the acquire fortune. People

to this point; even the transcendental speculations of science, and the science which does not tend to attain it is despised. On seeing the use which we make of thought, would it not seem to be bestowed upon us merely to gratify in a splendid manner the animal appetites?

Man then forgets even his God; for the animal passions, when they are dominant, stifle the thought of God; and, as we have already said, they render us incapable of comprehending truth and virtue. But amidst this crowd of men, powerful by their intellect, there exist some individuals, whose sole thought is to free themselves from their senses; they would live only the life of the soul. These men are likewise in a false position; for they live upon the earth. Observe how they make imbecility and suffering a religious precept, attacking the body by fastings and mortifications, attacking the mind by insensate beliefs, forcing it to believe that which is absurd, and demolishing the temple in which God himself has willed that he should be adored.

Thus, some condemn themselves to live as if they had no soul; others, as if they had no body. Useless efforts! it results from them, that in the former a great development of the intellect takes place without principles, and in the latter, a great development, not of the faculties of the soul, (for they reject reason,) but of the sense of infinity, without intellect. Everywhere man is the victim of an error which arises from pride; everywhere man is found to be incomplete.

The perfect and complete man is he who maintains the harmony between the two principles of his being, who accepts his position upon the earth on the conditions which God imposes upon us, leaving the plant free, and far from killing the animal passions, regulates and deifies them by the sense of the beautiful, by reason and conscience.

H

He feels that he loses the most sublime part of himself if he attach himself only to the things of earth. He feels, also, that in a world altogether material, the despising of matter could not be a perfection. We are condemned to live with a body, because all is substance around us. If man attenuate himself by discipline and fasting, still a skeleton of him must remain; and in this labour against a part of himself, it is not an angel which he developes, it is the harmony of a world which he falsifies or destroys.

And again, if the one or the other of these theories procured the happiness which they appear to promise; but they produce nothing but degradation and death; and this truth, already sufficiently striking in the annals of convents, becomes a luminous truth in the annals of nations,-man can only be enslaved by being made incomplete. The most opposite despotisms, the religious and the philosophical despotism, have no other origin than this—they divide the work of God in order to debase it, and they debase it in order to rule over it. Observe what takes place in India and in China, the ancient cradles of these two kinds of despotism. In India the brahmins devote to contempt the material man, his intelligence, his science, and even his reason; stifling the lights which would guide him, exalting the superstitions which degrade him, leaving only allpowerful in the soul the sentiment of infinity, and by the light of this devouring flame precipitating an entire people of martyrs into the sacred waters of the Ganges, or beneath the bloody wheels of the car of Jaggernaut.

In China, on the other hand, it is the faculties of the soul which they extinguish, and those of the animal which are favoured. There, no sentiment of infinity exists; the soul is walled in like the nation. All the sciences are without progress, all the arts without movement, all the operations of the mind without ideality. Three thousand years ago,

the thoughts of the Chinese came to a stop, and an immense people became as if automatized beneath the influence of its terrestrial doctrines.

Given up to pleasure, they remain beneath the yoke of their tyrants, who surround them with keepers, enclose them within walls, watch over their safety, provide for their wants, and without caring for their souls, encourage even the depravation of their manners.

Nothing is more admirable than the regulations of the Chinese police, when the object is the cleanliness of the towns, the perfection of agriculture, the abundance of the markets, or the development of industry. Thus the mechanical part of the sciences and the arts is carried even to a prodigy of perfection. But by the side of this material order, the most hideous vices are publicly practised. There, slavery is in honour; women are a merchandize; fathers sell their children, and infanticide, consecrated by custom, is abominably protected by the magistrates.

In order to render this nation moral, to tear it from its depravations, what is required? To awaken its soul, which has slumbered for thirty centuries. Give to China the sentiment of infinity which consumes the Indian; to the Indian, the industrious intelligence which materialises the Chinese; you will render man more complete. You will resuscitate these nations to reason and truth; you will restore them to the human race.