There is no intermedial

But from

Such a creature does not exist. between the brute and man, unless it be man himself, for man sometimes sinks to the level of the brute. this abjection to which he is cast, he may be redeemed, whilst nothing can raise the brute from its brutalization; the most perfect animal remains faithful to its instincts. Educate a dog; the most brilliant success will only produce a dog; that is to say, that his intelligence, so wonderful, will only develope itself within the acknowledged qualities of his species. Thus, he may chase, watch the flock, love and defend his master, but you will never teach him to live in a community like the bee, or to build a house like the beaver.

And even the qualities which are proper to him are extremely limited. All is restricted to intelligence, and to affections without choice and without enlightenment; the dog attaches himself to the master which chance gives him. He does not love men; he gives himself to a man, and he looks for his protection; it is the instinct of the ivy, and not the election of love; it is a law imposed, not a free sentiment; that which you admire in him you will find in a hundred thousand others, and all the prodigies of the individual are only the character of the species. An admirable animal, doubtless, but evidently created for man, since from this attachment which is so strong, and from this wonderful intelligence, no ray of light radiates towards God.

Choose the most

It is not the same thing with man. abject being in the lowest grade of intelligence, place this man in circumstances favourable to the development of the beautiful and the infinite; on a sudden, this being, void of intelligence, will raise himself up to the thought of God; and from out of the heart of the brutal and vicious man, you will see spring up the noble sentiments of pity and of love.

G

There are in us some lights which our idleness leaves in the shade; others which education leaves in forgetfulness; a moral idea only is required to render the former visible, as a blow only is required to cause the spark to emanate from the flint which conceals it.

The celebrated methodist Whitfield was preaching in the streets of Philadelphia. The prodigious influence of this sectary, and the power of his eloquence over the multitude, are well known. He required money for an act of charity, and he addressed himself to the most brutalized population on the earth. All at once he was interrupted by sobbings; a man emerged from the crowd, and throwing down before him a dozen stones, and some pieces of money, said in his energetic language, "Here, take my alms; I came to break thy head, and it is thou who hast broken my heart."

The two wills of the man are here developed in all their energy. The orator awakens the will of the moral being; he goes to seek it amidst the most hostile passions, and opposes it to the will of these passions. He effects suddenly, that which education ought to have effected by degrees, and with greater advantage to the individual. He separates the man from the wild beast; he calls him forth, and forces him to signalize his presence by a manly action.

There exist, then, two wills in man: there is only one will in animals. Man therefore is alone free upon the earth. He alone can struggle with and conquer himself. He alone escapes from the fatalities of organisation.

The virtuous man is he in whom the will of the spiritual being is stronger than the will of the material being.

When these two wills are opposed, there is a contest, and then, according as the one or the other predominates, you will see produced, an Epaminondas or a Cæsar, a Socrates or a Sylla, a Washington or a Bonaparte-wisdom or ambition, with all their consequences.

When the will of the soul is the strongest, it makes the faculties of the intelligence subservient to its triumph; and when, on the contrary, the animal will is uppermost, all the faculties of the soul are either obliterated or obey it. In this latter instance, the soul imparts to the terrestrial passions a something of its power and of its greatness. Infinity applied to human ambition produces heroes and conquerors. All the glories which have not for their object the welfare of humanity, originate from this source.

We have seen that man, reduced to his bodily organisation, and to his intelligence, is a perfect animal, living and thinking; but the purely intellectual being which we have separated from him, is neither less perfect, less living, nor less thinking though his thoughts are of another order: they constitute the moral being, as the thoughts of the intelligence constitute the physical being. Intelligence is constituted in order to feel and to know; the soul in order

to reveal and to love. Thus, besides the memory of earthly things, there exists the memory of celestial things; at first obscure and confined like the visions of a dream; then bright and luminous as the first rays of the morning. To this memory the senses contribute nothing; being independent of time and matter, all its recollections are of eternity; it speaks to us of God, always of God, and we believe in him without seeing him, without touching or hearing him; and we believe in him intellectually, contrary to our material interests, notwithstanding our terrors, notwithstanding our weakness and our crimes. Such are the reminiscences of the soul. Leibnitz termed them obscure thoughts; Descartes innate thoughts; Bacon the divine sense. Happy memory, which remembers God, and brings him here below, in order to adore him! For, from this faculty proceeds the celestial passion which is termed love, and which belongs only to man upon the earth.

It

constitutes our greatest power, and perhaps, likewise, our brightest light; the want of a something perfect to love being as a revelation of our destiny. And in fact, would our soul be capable of knowing eternal perfections, if it did not touch by some points at eternity?

The soul possesses, then, a superior memory, which comes to us already impressed with the wonders of a world which we do not see, and with the thought of a God who is unknown to us; and we foreknow this God as the earth foreknows the rising of the sun when the first glimmerings of day gild the mountain tops; then the zephyr blows, the bird sings, and the human soul expands amidst these joyful presentiments of nature.

CHAPTER XIX.

UNION OF THE FACULTIES OF THE SOUL AND OF THE INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES.

"Nous sommes trop élevés à l'égard de nous mêmes pour nous comprendre."

SAINT AUGUSTIN.

"God is a spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."

ST. JOHN.

WE are asked how the soul is combined with thought, we ourselves ask how thought is combined with matter, and both questions must alike remain without an answer. All that we know without comprehending and without

wishing to explain it, is, that thought is the organ of the soul, as the senses are the organs of thought. At the summit of the intelligent faculties the soul appears.

In this temporary amalgamation of two natures, the intelligent being makes itself known only by its relations with terrestrial things, and the spiritual being by its impressions of divine things. Nothing is more decided than the attributes of these two beings, the union of which constitutes man.

Intelligence knows that there are a world, animals, plants, stars, the sun, &c.

The soul knows that it is immortal, and that God exists.

Thus the soul teaches us that which without its assistance the loftiest intellects would never know; the infinite, the beautiful, the moral, the true, is a closed world to them. The soul, on the contrary, enlarges the being which it possesses; it dematerialises him; all which it adds to thought is incomprehensible to thought; out of time it makes eternity; out of space, immensity; out of death, immortality; it attaches itself only to the invisible, and reposes only in infinity.

What a distance is there between these conceptions and thought!

To think is to judge. But animals think, though their thoughts stop where the beautiful, the infinite begin. But there is no beautiful, no infinite for the material being. The beautiful exists only for the sublime essence which seeks it; the infinite exists only for the soul which desires it. If y you could endow the smallest insect with the sense of the beautiful and the infinite, this imperceptible atom would comprehend eternity, and would see God, and this vision would render it immortal.