verse. The moral agency of man, the immortality of the soul, and a future state of reward and punishment, were also inculcated by this enlightened philosopher. He exploded the polytheistic superstitions of his country, and thence became the victim of an accusation of impiety.

The morality of Socrates, though successfully cultivated by some, was pushed to extravagance by the Cynics. Virtue, in their opinion, consisted in renouncing all the conveniencies of life. They clothed themselves in rags, slept and ate in the deserts, or wandered about the country with no other equipment than a stick and a wallet. They condemned all knowledge as useless. They associated impudence with ignorance, and indulged in scurrility and invective without restraint.

15. The Academic and Peripatetic sects.

THE founder of the academic sect was Plato. The doctrines of this philosopher have had a most extensive empire over the minds of men. This circumstance is, in part, owing to their intrinsic merit, and, in part, to the eloquence with which they have been propounded. Plato had the most sublime ideas of the Divinity and his attributes. He taught that the human soul was a portion of the Divinity; and that this alliance with the eternal mind, might be improved in · to actual intercourse with the Supreme Being, by abstracting the soul from all the corruptions which it derives from the body: a doctrine highly flattering to

the pride of man, and generating that mystical enthusiasm which has a most powerful empire over a warm imagination.

The founder of the Peripatetic sect was Aristotle, the tutor of Alexander the great. He established his school in the Lyceum at Athens, and there inculcated those doctrines, which have found so many zealous partisans, and so many rancorous opponents. His metaphysics, from the sententious brevity of his expression, are extremely obscure, and they have given rise to numberless commentaries. His physical works are the result of extensive observation, and of deep acquaintance with nature; and his critical writings, as his Poetics and his Art of Rhetoric, display both taste and judgement. The peculiar passion of Aristotle was that of classifying, arranging, and combining the objects of his knowledge; so as to reduce all to a few principles: a propensity very dangerous in philosophy, and repressive to improvement in science.

16. The Stoics and the Epicureans.

THE stoics believed that man's chief happiness consisted in tranquillity of mind. They endeavored, therefore, to raise themselves above all the passions and feelings of humanity. They believed all nature, and God himself, the soul of the universe, to be regulated by fixed and immutable laws. The human soul being a portion of the Divinity, man cannot complain of being actuated by that necessity which actuates God himself. His pains and pleasures are determin

ed by the laws which determine his existence. Virtue consists in accommodating the mind to the immutable laws of nature: vice, in opposing these laws. Vice, therefore, is folly; and virtue, the only true wisdom.

Epicurus taught that man's supreme happiness consists in pleasure. He limited the term, so as to make it mean only the practice of virtue. But, if pleasure is allowed to be the means of happiness, every man will draw it from those sources which he finds can best supply it. It might have been the pleasure of Epicurus to be chaste and temperate. We are told that it was so. But others find their pleasure in intemperance and luxury; and such was the taste of his principal followers. Epicurus held that the Deity was indifferent to all the actions of men. His followers, therefore, had no other counseler than their own conscience, and no other guide than the instinctive desire of their own happiness.

II. CLAS6.DESCRIPTIVE PIECES.

1. The form of the Mole adapted to its mode of life.

THE mutual relation of parts, arising from a subserviency to a common purpose, is very observable in the mole. The strong, short legs of this animal, the palmated feet, armed with sharp nails, the pig-like nose, the teeth, the velvet coat, the small external ear, the sagacious smell, the sunk, protected eye,—all conduce to the utilities or to the safety of its under-ground

life. The form of its feet fixes the character of the animal. Its feet are so many shovels: they determine its action to that of rooting in the ground; and every thing in its body agrees with this destination. The cylindrical figure of the mole, as well as the compactness of its form, arising from the terseness of its limbs, proportionally lessens its labor; because, in proportion to its bulk, it requires but a small quantity of earth to be removed for its progress. It has nearly the same structure of the face and jaws, and the same offices for them, as the hog. The nose is sharp, slender, tendinous, strong; with a pair of nerves going down to the end of it. The plush covering, which, by the smoothness, closeness, and polish of the short piles that compose it, rejects the adhesion of almost every species of earth, defends the animal from cold and wet, and from the impediment which it would experience by the mould sticking to its body. From soils of all kinds, the little pioneer comes forth bright and clean. Inhabiting dirt, it is of all animals the

neatest.

But what is most to be admired in the mole, is its eyes. This animal occasionally visiting the surface, and wanting, for its safety and direction to be informed when it does so, or when it approaches the surface, a perception of light was necessary. I do not know that the clearness of sight depends at all upon the size of the organ. What is gained by the largeness or prominence of the globe of the eye, is width in the field of vision. Such a capacity would be of no

use to an animal which was to seek its food in the dark. The mole did not want to look about it; nor would a large, advanced eye have been easily defended from the annoyance to which the life of the animal must constantly expose it. How, indeed, was the mole, working its way under ground, to guard its eyes at all? To meet this difficulty, the eyes are made scarcely larger than the head of a corking pin ; and these minute globules are sunk so deeply in the skull, and lye so sheltered in the velvet of its covering, as that any contraction of what may be called the eye brows, not only closes up the apertures which lead to the eyes, but presents, as it were, a cushion to any sharp or protruding substance which might push against them. This aperture, even in its ordinary state, is, like a pin-hole in a piece of velvet, scarcely pervious to loose particles of earth.

2. The form of insects adapted to their mode of life.

In insects, more than in any other animals, especially when we take in the multitude of species, which the microscope discovers, we are struck with the variety of nature. There are said to be six thousand species of flies; and seven hundred and sixty of butterflies; each different from all the rest. St. Pierre tells us from his own observation, that in the course of three weeks, thirty-seven species of winged insects, with distinctions well expressed, visited a single strawberry-plant. Ray observed, within the compass of a mile or two from his own house, two hundred