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ite authors the following just and pathetic reflection : "Le spectacle de la nature, si vivant, si animé pour ceux qui reconnoissent un Dieu, est mort aux yeux de l'athée, et dans cette grande harmonie des êtres où tout parle de Dieu d'une voix si douce, il n'apperçoit qu'un silence éternel." *

I have already mentioned the strong bias towards materialism, which the authors of the Encyclopédie derived from Condillac's comments upon Locke. These comments they seem to have received entirely upon credit, without ever being at pains to compare them with the original. Had D'Alembert exercised freely his own judgment, no person was more likely to have perceived their complete futility; and, in fact, he has thrown out various observations which strike at their very root. Notwithstanding, however, these occasional glimpses of light, he invariably reverts to the same error, and has once and again repeated it in terms as strong as Condillac or Gassendi.

The author who pushed this account of the origin of our knowledge to the most extraordinary and offensive consequences, was Helvetius. His book, De l'Esprit, is said to have been composed of materials collected from the conversations of the society in which he habitually lived; and it has accordingly been quoted as an authentic record of the ideas then in fashion among the wits of Paris. The unconnected and desultory composition of the work certainly furnishes some intrinsic evidence of the truth of this anecdote.

According to Helvetius, as all our ideas are derived from the external senses,† the causes of the inferiority of the

* Rousseau. In a work by Hérault de Sechelles (entitled Voyage à Montbar, contenant des détails très intéressans sur le caractère, la personne, et les écrits de Buffon, Paris, 1801), a very different idea of his religious creed is given from that which I have ascribed to him; but, in direct opposition to this statement, we have a letter, dictated by Buffon, on his death-bed, to Madame Necker, in return for a present of her husband's book, On the Importance of Religious Opinions. The letter (we are told) is in the hand-writing of Buffon's son, who describes his father as then too weak to hold the pen. (Mélanges extraits des Manuscrits de Madame Necker. 3 Vols. Paris, 1788.)

The sublime address to the Supreme Being, with which Buffon closes his reflections on the calamities of war, seems to breathe the very soul of Fenelon. "Grand Dieu! dont la seule présence soutient la nature et maintient l'harmonie des loix de l'univers," &c.

† In combating the philosophy of Helvetius, La Harpe (whose philosophical opin

souls of brutés to those of men, are to be sought for in the difference between them with respect to bodily organization. In illustration of this remark he reasons as follows:

"1. The feet of all quadrupeds terminate either in horn, as those of the ox and the deer; or in nails, as those of the dog and the wolf; or in claws, as those of the lion and the cat. This peculiar organization of the feet of these animals deprives them not only of the sense of touch, considered as a channel of information with respect to external objects, but also of the dexterity requisite for the practice of the mechanical arts.

"2. The life of animals, in general, being of a shorter duration than that of man, does not permit them to make so many observations, or to acquire so many ideas.

"3. Animals being better armed and better clothed by nature than the human species, have fewer wants, and consequently fewer motives to stimulate or to exercise their invention. If the voracious animals are more cunning than others, it is because hunger, ever inventive, inspires them with the art of stratagems to surprise their

prey.

ions seem, on many occasions, to have been not a little influenced by his private partialities and dislikes) exclaims loudly against the same principles to which he had tacitly given his unqualified approbation in speaking of Condillac. On this occasion he is at pains to distinguish between the doctrines of the two writers; asserting that Condillac considered our senses as only the occasional causes of our ideas, while Helvetius represented the former as the productive causes of the latter. (Cours de Littérat. Tome XV. pp. 348, 349.) But that this is by no means reconcilable with the general spirit of Condillac's works (although perhaps some detached ex- · pressions may be selected from them admitting of such an interpretation,) appears sufficiently from the passages formerly quoted. In addition to these, I beg leave to transcribe the following:. "Dans le système que toutes nos connoissances viennent des sens, rien n'est plus aisé que de se faire une notion exacte des idées. Car elles ne sont que des sensations ou des portions extraites de quelque sensation pour être considérés à part; ce qui produit deux sortes d'idées, les sensibles et les abstraites." (Traité des Systèmes, Chap. vi.) “Puisque nous avons vu que le souvenir n'est qu'une manière de sentir, c'est une consequence, que les idées intellectuelles ne diffèrent pas essentiellement des sensations mêmes." (Traité des Sensations, Chap. viii. § 33.) Is not this precisely the doctrine and even the language of Helvetius?

In the same passage of the Lycée, from which the above quotation is taken from La Harpe, there is a sweeping judgment pronounced on the merits of Locke, which may se ve as a specimen of the author's competency to decide on metaphysical questions: "Locke a prouvé autant qu'il est possible à l'homme, que l'âme est une substance simple et indivisible, et par conséquent immatérielle. Cependant, il ajoute, qu'il n'oseroit affirmer que Dieu ne puisse douer la matière de pensée. Condillac est de son avis sur le premier article, et le combat sur le second. Je suis entièrement de l'avis de Condillac, et tous les bons métaphysiciens conviennent que c'est la seule inexactitude qu'on puisse relever dans l'ouvrage de Locke." (Cours de Littérat. Tom. XV. p. 149.)

"4. The lower animals compose a society that flies from man, who, by the assistance of weapons made by himself, is become formidable to the strongest amongst them.

"5. Man is the most prolific and versatile animal upon earth. He is born and lives in every climate; while many of the other animals, as the lion, the elephant, and the rhinoceros, are found only in a certain latitude. And the more any species of animals capable of making observations is multiplied, the more ideas and the greater ingenuity is it likely to possess.

1. Men

"But some may ask," continues Helvetius, "why monkeys, whose paws are nearly as dexterous as our hands, do not make a progress equal to that of man? A variety of causes," he observes, "conspire to fix them in that state of inferiority in which we find them: are more multiplied upon the earth. 2. Among the different species of monkeys, there are few whose strength can be compared with that of man; and accordingly, they form only a fugitive society before the human race. 3. Monkeys being frugivorous, have fewer wants, and, therefore, less invention than man. 4. Their life is shorter. And, finally, the organical structure of their bodies keeping them, like children, in perpetual motion, even after their desires are satisfied, they are not susceptible of lassitude (ennui), which ought to be considered (as I shall prove afterwards) as one of the principles to which the human mind owes its improvement.

"By combining," he adds, "all these differences between the nature of man and of beast, we may understand why sensibility and memory, though faculties common to man and to the lower animals, are in the latter only sterile qualities." *

The foregoing passage is translated literally from a note on one of the first paragraphs of the book De l'Es

It is not a little surprising that, in the above enumeration, Helvetius takes no notice of the want of language in the lower animals; a faculty without which, the multiplication of individuals could contribute nothing to the improvement of the species. Nor is this want of language in the brutes owing to any defect in the organs of speech; as sufficiently appears from those tribes which are possessed of the power of articulation in no inconsiderable a degree. It plainly indicates, therefore, some defect in those higher principles which are connected with the use of artificial signs.

prit; and in the sentence of the text to which the note refers, the author triumphantly asks, "Who can doubt, that if the wrist of a man had been terminated by the hoof of a horse, the species would still have been wandering in the forest?"

Without attempting any examination of this shallow and miserable theory, I shall content myself with observing, that it is not peculiar to the philosophers of modern France. From the Memorabilia of Xenophon it appears, that it was current among the sophists of Greece; and the answer given it by Socrates is as philosophical and satisfactory as any thing that could possibly be advanced in the present state of the sciences.

"And canst thou doubt, Aristodemus, if the gods take care of man? Hath not the privilege of an erect form been bestowed on him alone? Other animals they have provided with feet, by which they may be removed from one place to another; but to man they have also given the use of the hand. A tongue hath been bestowed on every other animal; but what animal, except man, hath the power of making his thoughts intelligible to others?

"Nor is it with respect to the body alone that the gods have shown themselves bountiful to man. Who seeth not, that he is as it were a god in the midst of this visible creation? So far doth he surpass all animals whatever in the endowments of his body and his mind. For if the body of the ox had been joined to the mind of man, the invention of the latter would have been of little avail, while unable to execute his purposes with facility. Nor would the human form have been of more use to the brute, so long as he remained destitute of understanding. But in thee, Aristodemus, hath been joined to a wonderful soul, a body no less wonderful; and sayest thou, after this, the gods take no care of me? What wouldst thou then more, to convince thee of their care? ” *

A very remarkable passage to the same purpose occurs in Galen's treatise, De Usu Partium. "But as of all animals man is the wisest, so hands are well fitted for the purposes of a wise animal. For it is not because he

⚫ Mrs. Sarah Fielding's translation.

had hands, that he is therefore wiser than the rest, as Anaxagoras alleged; but because he was wiser than the rest that he had therefore hands, as Aristotle has most wisely judged. Neither was it his hands but his reason which instructed man in the arts. The hands are only the organs by which the arts are practised."*

The contrast, in point of elevation, between the tone of French philosophy, and that of the best heathen moralists, was long ago remarked by Addison; and of this contrast, it would be difficult to find a better illustration than the passages which have just been quoted.

The disposition of ingenious men to pass suddenly from one extreme to another in matters of controversy, has, in no instance, been more strikingly exemplified than in the opposite theories concerning the nature of the brutes, which successively became fashionable in France during the last century. While the prevailing creed of French materialists leads to the rejection of every theory which professes to discriminate the rational mind from the animal principle of action, it is well known that, but a few years before, the disciples of Descartes allowed no one faculty to belong to man and brutes in common; and even went so far as to consider the latter in the light of mere machines. To this paradox the author was probably led, partly by his anxiety to elude the objection which the faculties of the lower animals have been supposed to present to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and partly by the difficulty of reconciling their sufferings with the Divine Goodness.

Absurd as this idea may now appear, none of the tenets of Descartes were once adopted with more implicit faith by some of the profoundest thinkers in Europe. The great Pascal admired it as the finest and most valuable article of the Cartesian system; and of the deep impression it made on the mind of Malebranche, a most decisive proof was exhibited by himself in the presence of Fontenelle. "M. de Fontenelle contoit," says one of his intimate friends, "qu'un jour étant allé voir Malebranche

* Galen. De Us. Part. 1. 1. c. 3.

†The Abbé Trublet, in the Mercure de Juillet, 1757. See Œuvres de Fontenelle, Tome II. p. 137. Amsterdam, 1764.

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