It is then quite false that Cicero, or any other Roman, ever said that it did not become the majesty of the empire to acknowledge a supreme God. Their Jupiter, the Zeus of the Greeks, the Jehovah of the Phenicians, was always considered as the master of the secondary gods. This great truth cannot be too forcibly inculcated.

Did the Romans take their Gods from the Greeks? Had not the Romans several gods for whom they were not indebted to the Greeks?.

For instance, they could not be guilty of plagiarism in adoring Cœlum, while the Greeks adored Ouranon; or in addressing themselves to Saturnus and Tellus, while the Greeks addressed themselves to Ge and Chronos.

They called Ceres, her whom the Greeks named Deo and Demiter.

Their Neptune was Poseidon, their Venus was Aphrodite; their Juno was called, in Greek, Era; their Proserpine, Core; and their favourites, Mars and Bellona, were Ares and Enio. In none of these instances do the names resemble.

Did the inventive spirits of Rome and of Greece assemble? or did the one take from the other the thing, while they disguised the name?

It is very natural that the Romans, without consulting the Greeks, should make to themselves gods of the heavens, of time; beings presiding over war, over generation, over harvests, without going to Greece to ask for gods, as they afterwards went there to ask for laws. When you find a name that resembles nothing else, it is but fair to believe it a native of that particular country.

But is not Jupiter, the master of all the gods, a word belonging to every nation, from the Euphrates to the Tiber. Among the first Romans, it was Jov, Jovis; among the Greeks, Zeus; among the Phenicians, the Syrians, and the Egyptians, Jehovah.

Does not this resemblance serve to confirm the supposition, that every people had the knowledge of the

Supreme Being?--a knowledge confused, it is true; but what man can have it distinct ?

SECTION III.

Examination of Spinosa.

Spinosa cannot help admitting an intelligence acting in matter, and forming a whole with it.

"I must conclude," he says, "that the absolute Being is neither thought nor extent, exclusively of each other; but that extent and thought are necessary attri→ butes of the absolute Being.'

Herein he appears to differ from all the atheists of antiquity; from Ocellus, Lucanus, Heraclitus, Democritus, Leucippus, Strato, Epicurus, Pythagoras, Diagoras, Zeno of Elis, Anaximander, and so many others. He differs from them, above all, in his method, which he took entirely from the reading of Descartes, whose very style he has imitated.

The multitude of those who cry out against Spinosa, without ever having read him, will especially be astonished by his following declaration. He does not make it to dazzle mankind, nor to appease theologians, nor to obtain protectors, nor to disarm a party: he speaks as a philosopher, without naming himself, without advertising himself; and expresses himself in Latin, so as to be understood by a very small number. Here is his profession of faith.

Spinosa's Profession of Faith.†

"If I also concluded that the idea of God, comprised in that of the infinity of the universe, excused me from obedience, love, and worship, I should make a still more pernicious use of my reason: for it is evident to me that the laws which I have received, not by the relation or intervention of other men, but immediately from him, are those which the light of nature points out to me as the true guides of

rational conduct. If I failed of obedience in this particular, I should sin, not only against the principle of my being and the society of my kind, but also against myself, in depriving myself of the most solid advantage of my existence. This obedience does, it is true, bind me only to the duties of my state, and makes me look on all beside as frivolous practices, invented in superstition to serve the purposes of their inventors.

"With regard to the love of God, so far, I conceive, is this idea from tending to weaken it, that no other is more calculated to increase it; since, through it, I know that God is intimate with my being; that he gives me existence, and my every property; but he gives me them liberally, without reproach, without interest, without subjecting me to anything but my own nature. It banishes fear, uneasiness, distrust, and all the effects of a vulgar or interested love. It informs me, that this is a good which I cannot lose, and which I possess the more fully, as I know and love it." Are these the words of the virtuous and tender Fénélon, or those of Spinosa? How is it that two men so opposed to each other, have, with such different notions of God, concurred in the idea of loving God for himself?*

It must be acknowledged, that they went both to the same end, the one as a christian, the other as a man who had the misfortune not to be so; the holy archbishop as a philosopher, convinced that God is distinct from nature; the other as a widely-erring disciple of Descartes, who imagined that God is all nature.

The former was orthodox, the latter was mistaken, -I must assent; but both were honest, both estimable in their sincerity, as in their mild and simple manners; though there is no other point of resemblance between the imitator of the Odyssey, and a dry Cartesian fenced round with arguments; between one of the most accomplished men of the court of Louis XIV. invested with what is called a high dignity, and a poor, unju

* See LOVE OF GOD.

daïzed Jew, living with an income of three hundred florins, in the most profound obscurity.*

If there be any similitude between them, it is that Fénélon was accused before the sanhedrim of the new law, and the other before a synagogue without power as without reason; but the one submitted, the other rebelled.

Foundation of Spinosa's Philosophy.

The great dialectician Bayle has refuted Spinosa. † His system, therefore, is not demonstrated, like one of Euclid's propositions; for if it were so, it could not be combated. It is, therefore, at least obscure.

I have always had some suspicion that Spinosa, with his universal substance, his modes and accidents, had some other meaning than that in which he is understood by Bayle; and consequently, that Bayle may be right, without having confounded Spinosa. And, in particular, I have always thought that often Spinosa did not understand himself, and that this is the principal reason why he has not been understood.

It seems to me, that the ramparts of Spinosism might be beaten down on a side which Bayle has neglected. Spinosa thinks that there can exist but one substance; and it appears throughout his book, that he builds his theory on the mistake of Descartes, that "Nature is a plenum."

The theory of a plenum is as false as that of a void. It is now demonstrated, that motion is as impossible in absolute fulness, as it is impossible that, in an equal balance, a weight of two pounds in one scale should sink a weight of two in the other..

Now, if every motion absolutely requires empty space, what becomes of Spinosa's one and only substance? How can the substance of a star, between which and us there is a void so immense, be precisely

After his death, it was seen, by his accounts, that he had sometimes spent no more than four sous and a half per day, for his food. This would not quite suffice for a dinner of monks assem bled in chapter.

+ See Bayle's Dictionary, article SPINOSA.

the substance of this earth, or the substance of myself? or the substance of a fly eaten by a spider? *

Perhaps I mistake, but I never have been able to conceive how Spinosa, admitting an infinite substance of which thought and matter are the two modalities— admitting the substance which he calls God, and of which all that we see is mode or accident-could nevertheless reject final causes. If this infinite, universal being thinks, must he not have design? If he has design, must he not have a will? Spinosa says, we are modes of that absolute, necessary, infinite being. I say to Spinosa, We will, and have design, we who are but modes; therefore this infinite, necessary, absolute being cannot be deprived of them; therefore he has will, design, power.

I am aware that various philosophers, and especially Lucretius, have denied final causes; I am also aware that Lucretius, though not very chaste, is a very great poet in his descriptions and in his morals; but in philosophy I own he appears to me to be very far behind a college porter or a parish beadle. To affirm that the eye is not made to see, nor the ear to hear, nor the stomach to digest,-is not this the most enormous absurdity, the most revolting folly, that ever entered the human mind? Doubter as I am, this insanity seems to me evident, and I say so.

For my part, I see in nature, as in the arts, only final causes; and I believe that an apple-tree is made to bear apples, as I believe that a watch is made to tell the hour.

I must here acquaint the reader, that if Spinosa, in several passages of his works, makes a jest of final causes, he most expressly acknowledges them in the first part of his Being in General and in Particular.+ Here he says, "Permit me for a few moments to dwell with admiration on the wonderful dispensation

The reason that Bayle did not press this argument is, that he was unacquainted with the demonstrations of Newton, Keill, Gregory, and Halley, that a void is necessary to motion.

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