"From your own house of glass do not throw stones at those of your neighbours."

nearer the moon approaches its perigee, the higher the tide still rises. These experiences and various others, these invariable correspondences with the phases of the moon, were the foundation of the ancient and just opinion, that that body is a principal cause of the flux and reflux of the ocean.

They were the Jews who were at that very time, carried off in slavery to Babylon. It was the good Jeremiah himself who was accused of being bribed by the court of Babylon, and of having consequently prophesied in his favour. It After numerous centuries appeared the was he who was the object of public great Newton-Are you at all acquainted scorn and hatred, and who it is thought with Newton? Did you ever hear, that ended his career by being stoned to death after calculating the square of the proby the Jews themselves. This Jeremiah,gress of the moon in its orbit during the be assured from me, was never before understood to be a joker.

The God of the Jews, I again repeat, is the God of all nature. I expressly make this repetition that you may have no ground for pretending ignorance of it, and that you may not accuse me before the ecclesiastical court. I still, however, assert and maintain, that the stupid Jews frequently knew no other God than a local one.

"It is not natural to attribute the tides to the phases of the moon. They are not the high tides which occur at the full moon, that are ascribed to the phases of that planet."

Here we see ignorance of a different description.

It occasionally happens that persons of a certain description are so much ashamed of the part they play in the world, that they are desirous of disguising themselves sometimes as wits, and sometimes as philosophers.

In the first place, it is proper to inform M. l'abbé, that nothing is more natural than to attribute an effect to that which is always followed by this effect. If a particular wind is constantly followed by rain, it is natural to attribute the rain to the wind. Now, over all the shores of the ocean, the tides are always higher in the moon's 'syzygies,'—if you happen to know the meaning of the term, than at its quarterings. The moon rises every day later; the tide is also every day later. The nearer the moon approaches our zenith, the greater is the tide; the

space of a minute, and dividing that square by the diameter of that orbit, he found the quotient to be fifteen feet? that he thence demonstrated that the moon gravitates towards the earth three thousand six hundred times less than if she were near the earth? that he afterwards demonstrated that its attractive force is the cause of three-fourths of the elevation of the sea by the tide, and that the force of the sun is the cause of the remaining fourth? You appear perfectly astonished. You never read anything like this in the "Christian Pedagogue." Endeavour, henceforward, both you and the porters of your parish, never to speak about things of which you have not even the slightest idea.

You can form no conception of the injury you do to religion by your ignorance, and still more by your reasonings. In order to preserve in the world the little faith that remains in it, it would be the most judicious measure possible to restrain you, and such as you, from writing and publishing in behalf of it.

I should absolutely make your astonished eyes stare almost to starting, were I to inform you, that this same Newton was persuaded that Samuel is the author of the Pentateuch. I do not mean to say that he demonstrated it in the same way as he calculated and deduced the power of gravitation. Learn, then, to doubt and to be modest. I believe in the Pentateuch, remember; but I believe also, that you have printed and published the most enormous absurdities.

I could here transcribe a large volume while all matter gravitates towards a cenof instances of your own individual ig-tre. Light appears to be penetrable, and norance and imbecility, and many of matter is impenetrable. Is light matter, those of your brethren and colleagues. or is it not matter? What is it? With I shall not, however, take the trouble of what numberless properties can it be indoing it. Let us go on with our ques-vested? I am completely ignorant.

External objects have not the power of forming ideas in me, for nothing can communicate what it does not possess ; I am well assured that they are not given me by myself, for they are produced without my orders. Who then produces them in me? Whence do they come? Whither do they go? Fugitive phan-senting to himself sensible objects. This toms! What invisible hand produces faculty is dependent upon memory. We and disperses you? see men, animals, gardens, which perceptions are introduced by the senses; the memory retains them, and the imagination compounds them. On this account the ancient Greeks called the muses, "the daughters of memory."

perceived, by means of your senses, that some particular thing which you were told existed, did exist in fact; and that another of which you were told the same, did not exist? And, is it not from this experience, that you frame the general idea of truth and falsehood? And, when The celebrated Addison, in the eleven asked what you mean by these words, essays upon the imagination with which can you help figuring to yourself some he has enriched the volumes of the Specsensible image, occasioning you to recoltator, begins with observing, that “the lect, that you have sometimes been told, sense of sight is the only one which furas a fact, what really and truly happened,nishes the imagination with ideas." Yet and very often what was not so?

attention, and you will then clearly dis{ cern, that these images are the foundation of all the notions you possess. It may be worth the reader's while to dwell a little upon this idea, to extend it, and to rectify it.

certainly it must be allowed, that the Have you any other notion of just and other senses contribute some share. A unjust, than what is derived from parti- man born blind still hears, in his imagicular actions, which appeared to you nation, the harmony which no longer respectively of these descriptions? You vibrates upon his ear; he still continues began in your childhood by learning to listening as in a trance or dream; the read under some master: you endea-objects which have resisted or yielded to voured to spell well, but you really spelt his hands produce a similar effect in his ill your master chastised you: this ap-head or mind. It is true that the sense peared to you very unjust. You have observed a labourer refused his wages, and innumerable instances of the like nature. Is the abstract idea of just and unjust anything more than facts of this character confusedly mixed up in your imagination?

Is 'finite' anything else in your conception than the image of some limited quantity or extent? Is infinite' anything but the image of the same extent or quantity enlarged indefinitely? Do not all these operations take place in your mind just in the same manner as you read a book? You read circumstances and events recorded in it, and never think at the time of the alphabetical characters, without which however you would have no notion of these events and circumstances. Attend to this point for a single moment, and then you will distinctly perceive the essential importance of those characters over which your eye previously glided without thinking of them. In the same manner all your reasonings, all your accumulations of knowledge are founded on images traced in your brain. You have, in general, no distinct perception or recollection of them; but give the case only a moment's

of sight alone supplies images; and as it is a kind of touching or feeling which extends even to the distance of the stars, its immense diffusion enriches the imagination more than all the other senses put together.

There are two descriptions of imagination; one consists in retaining a simple impression of objects; the other arranges the images received, and combines them in endless diversity. The first has been called passive imagination, and the second active. The passive scarcely advances beyond memory and is common to man and to animals. From this power or faculty it arises, that the sportsman and his dog both follow the hunted game in their dreams, that they both hear the sound of the horn, and the one shouts and the other barks in their sleep. Both men and brutes do something more than recollect on these occasions, for dreams are never faithful and accurate images. This species of imagination compounds objects, but it is not the understanding which acts in it; it is the memory la-. bouring under error.

This passive imagination certainly requires no assistance from volition, whether we are asleep or awake; it paints,

independently of ourselves, what our eyes have seen, it hears what our ears have heard, and touches what we have touched; it adds to it or takes from it. It is an internal sense, acting necessarily, and accordingly there is nothing more common, in speaking of any particular individual, than to say, "he has no command over his imagination."

In this respect we cannot but see, and be astonished at, the slight share of power we really possess. Whence comes it, that occasionally in dreams we compose the most coherent and eloquent discourses, and verses far superior to what we should write on the same subject if perfectly awake?—that we even solve complicated problems in mathematics? Here certainly there are very combined and complex ideas in no degree dependent on ourselves. But if it is incontestible that coherent ideas are formed within us independently of our will in sleep, who can safely assert that they are not produced in the same manner when we are awake? is there a man living who foresees the idea which he will form in his mind the ensuing minute? Does it not seem as if{ ideas were given to us as much as the motions of our fibres; and had father Malebranche merely maintained the prin- } ciple, that all ideas are given by God, could any one have successfully opposed him?

by demons, that they are under the infernal dominion of witchcraft, and that they are in reality going to unite with sorcerers in the worship of the devil, because they have been told that they were going to do so. This species of slavish imagination, which generally is the lot of ignorant people, has been the instrument which the imagination of some men has employed to acquire and retain power. It is, moreover, this passive imagination of brains easily excited and agitated, which sometimes produces on the bodies of children evident marks of the impression received by the mother; examples of this kind are indeed innumerable, and the writer of this article has seen some so striking, that, were he to deny them, he must contradict his own ocular demonstration. This effect of imagination is incapable of being explained; but every other operation of nature is equally so; we have no clearer idea how we have perceptions, how we retain them, or how we combine them. There is an infinity between us and the springs or first principles of our nature.

Active imagination is that which joins combination and reflection to memory. It brings near to us many objects at a distance; it separates those mixed to{gether, compounds them, and changes them; it seems to create, while in fact it merely arranges: for it has not been given to man to make ideas--he is only able to modify them.

This active imagination then is in reality a faculty as independent of ourselves as passive imagination; and one proof of its not depending upon ourselves is, that if we propose to a hundred persons, equally ignorant, to imagine a certain new machine, ninety-nine of them will form no imagination at all about it, notwithstanding all their endeavours. If the hundredth imagines something, is it not

This passive faculty, independent of reflection, is the source of our passions and our errors; far from being dependent on the will, the will is determined by it. It urges us towards the objects which it paints before us, or diverts us from them, just according to the nature of the exhibition thus made of them by it. The image of a danger inspires fear; that of a benefit excites desire. It is this faculty alone which produces the enthusiasm of glory, of party, of fanaticism; it is this which produces so many mental aliena-clear that it is a particular gift or talent tions and disorders, making weak brains, when powerfully impressed, conceive that their bodies are metamorphosed into various animals, that they are possessed

which he has received? It is this gift which is called 'genius;' it is in this that we recognise something inspired and divine.