in the perceptions of his senses, all the will of his passions in the fury of his jealousy? Certainly, if man be only composed of those faculties which brutes share with him, there is an end of his futurity. How can we immaterialise them in the one, and not in the other? how give these to eternity, those to annihilation? shall we lower ourselves to the level of the brute, or shall we raise the brute up to our own?

Nothing of the kind: we shall emerge from this slough, by reverting to ourselves; the internal operations of conscience will reveal to us that hidden being which lives in us, which constitutes ourselves, and which manifests itself by virtue.

The soul will warn us of its power by a will opposed to our animal passions; of its morality, by the sense of justice and injustice; of its greatness, by the spontaneous actions of a reason which aspires after eternal truths; of its celestial origin, by the sublime notions of the beau ideal ; of its immortality, by the sense of infinity which expands until lost in the presence of a God.

Philosophers, who seek, as Montaigne says, whether man be anything else than an ox, now is the time to exercise your science; take this body, place it on your dissecting table-search in its heart, in its blood, its fibres, its entrails; display the innumerable folds of its brain, examining the matter, in every sense; handling it, dissecting it with the knife, studying it with the magnifying glass; recognize at a glance, memory, will, stratagem, avarice, the spirit of calculation; all the human arts, all the animal passions; measure the intelligence by the developement of the organs; suppress at pleasure, such or such function, by cutting such or such nerve; and when, after having become masters of your subject, you have well seized the relation of the fibres to sensation, of sensations to thoughts,—on the re

mains of this palpitating flesh; then tell me what is that powerful conscience, that severe master which commands the animal passions, which cuts short their pleasures, and which rejoices to see them overcome; tell me what sense could have given the idea of infinity to a creature so finite ; and whence does he experience the sentiment of the beau ideal, the model of which is not to be found on earth? Lastly, I would ask you, what is it to act, think, suffer, and die, for the cause of truth? and to employ another expression of Montaigne, "What sort of beasts are virtue and justice ?"

Morality, reason, beau ideal, conscience: such is man distinct from time and matter; these are the faculties which he alone possesses on the earth. I have found his soul, and in his soul the moral source of the human being, —that is to say, the necessity of another life.

From these divine modifications, I see virtue emanate, which is the triumph of the soul over matter; the true love which dreams of eternity; the idea of order, which arises from conscience, and from reason-the relations of effects to causes in infinity; in short, a God.

And these faculties which are in me, independently of my senses, exist in all men. I find traces of them, more or less marked in each individual, in each nation: they unite, they constitute the human race.

For, it is not the intellect which produces civilisation.

Men and nations tend to separate themselves by their manners, habits, opinions, and animal passions. They unite only at one point-the moral sense, the sense of the beautiful; and this invisible link suffices to combine the great human family upon the earth.

In animals, on the other hand, the individual is always detached from the species. Its instinct isolates it, even when it becomes the instinct of a society. No instinct

unites the bee of Chamouny to the bee of Mount Hymettus. For the bee there is no race of bees, as there is for man a human race: there is only a hive.

Thus, intelligence, memory, will, all the affections and passions which are in the life of animals, may die in man : but man will not therefore die—his immortality is more than a fact; it is a right, were he only separated from the brute by the sense of the Divinity.

During three thousand years, philosophers have not ceased to submit the great questions of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul to the examination of the intellect, and have all been surprised that they could only arrive at doubt. For my part, I am surprised at their surprise. Let them recommence a hundred times the same work, and they will obtain a hundred times the same result. How can faculties which belong to time and matter suffice for the discovery of the infinite? Is there not a somewhat of folly in attempting to contemplate the wonders of another world, with a torch destined only to light us in this?

Let us not deceive ourselves: it is for the soul to speak to us of the soul: and now that we know its true faculties, we have neither doubt nor error to apprehend, for they touch on all sides at the truth, which is God.

CHAPTER VIII.

FIRST LINE OF DEMARCATION.

"Dieu l'inépuisable mot, vient au bout de toutes les études de l'homme."-ST. MARC GIRARDIN.

THE animal which has senses, and which perceives ideas like man, receives these perceptions and these ideas without analysing them, and without seeking for their principle. It does not experience that sublime curiosity which incessantly recals us to the first cause, that is to say, to a cause which we can neither touch, see, nor feel, but of of which the power of imagining and comprehending is bestowed upon us. The intelligence of the animal restricts it perpetually to the earth; but as regards ourselves, we pass from a visible to an invisible world: this is a privilege of our nature. We desire to know what we are, and for what purpose we exist; we ask ourselves these questions, which exceed our intellectual powers. We always go beyond time and space, thus illustrating that there is in us a sentiment of infinity and of eternity.

CHAPTER IX.

OF THE INSTINCT OF MAN, AND OF THE IMPOSSIBILITY

OF DEFINING THE FACULTIES OF THE SOUL.

LET us then come to the following conclusion, viz. That which animals know, and what they have not learnt,

is a law of harmony purely terrestrial. Their instinct is restricted to the earth.

That which man knows, and which he has not learnt, is a celestial faculty, which displays to him the invisible, and carries him into eternity. Our instinct is the revelation of

a God, and the consciousness of our immortality.

Let us study in detail the different modifications, or rather the different faculties of the soul, and we shall find that their sole object is to place man in the presence of Him who is. We bear within ourselves the undeniable proof of the existence of God.

Before beginning this study, I ought to give some explanation respecting the language which I have adopted. Leaving aside all learned technicalities, I have endeavoured to employ only words which are perfectly intelligible. I know not whether I am mistaken, but it appears to me that the barbarous phrases invented by the schools are absolutely useless for the purposes of reason and thought; the object of philosophers ought to be, not to obscure philosophy, but to render it familiar to us. Yet we must not expect to find here a precise definition of what I call the faculties of the soul. Some philosophers have attempted it, but always in vain. How can we define that which

from its nature eludes all definition?

To define a thing, is to separate it from the infinite: it is to cause it to re-enter the circle of finite things by describing the parts which compose it, and by displaying it to the eyes.

Any definition of the faculties which belong to infinity is then impossible. Neither sentiment nor reason, nor the beautiful, nor God, nor any of the faculties of the soul, have ever been defined, precisely because their essence is infinite. And yet, that which we are unable to define, we feel it, we think of it, we believe in it, we have the consciousness