as much as I believe it of the Athenians, the Egyptians, and even of the Jews. From the above it might be concluded, that it was common for children to marry with their fathers or mothers; whereas even the marriage of cousins is forbidden among the Guebres at this day, who are held to maintain the doctrines of their forefathers as scrupulously as the Jews.

INCUBUS.

HAVE there ever been incubi and succubi? Our learned jurisconsults and demonologists admit both the one and the other.

It is pretended that Satan, always on the alert, inspires young ladies and gentlemen with heated dreams, and by a sort of double process produces extraordinary consequences, which in point of fact led to the birth of so many heroes and demigods in ancient times.

You will tell me, that everything is contradictory in this world; that it was forbidden by the Jewish law to marry two sisters, which was deemed a very indecent act, and yet Jacob married Ra- The devil took a great deal of superchel during the life of her elder sister fluous trouble: he had only to leave the Leah; and that this Rachel is evidently young people alone, and the world will a type of the Roman Catholic and apos-be sufficiently supplied with heroes withtolic church. You are doubtless right, out any assistance from him. but that prevents not an individual who An idea may be formed of incubi by sleeps with two sisters in Europe from the explanation of the great Delrio, of being grievously censured. As to power-Boguets, and other writers learned in ful and dignified princes, they may take the sisters of their wives for the good of their states, and even their own sisters by the same father and mother, if they think proper.

It is a far worse affair to have a commerce with a gossip or godmother, which was deemed an unpardonable offence by the capitularies of Charlemagne, being called a spiritual incest.

sorcery; but they fail in their account of succubi. A female might pretend to believe that she had communicated with and was pregnant by a god, the explication of Delrio being very favourable to the assumption. The devil in this case acts the part of an incubus, but his performances as a succubus are more inconceivable. The gods and goddesses of antiquity acted much more nobly and decorously: Jupiter in person, was the incubus of Alcmena and Semele; Thetis

One Andovere, who is called Queen of France, because she was the wife of a certain Chilperic, who reigned over Sois-in person, the succubus of Peleus, and sons, was stigmatised by ecclesiastical Venus of Anchises, without having rejustice, censured, degraded, and divorced, course to the various contrivances of our for having borne her own child to the bap-extraordinary demonism. tismal font. It was a mortal sin, a sacrilege, a spiritual incest; and she thereby forfeited her marriage-bed and crown. This apparently contradicts what I have just observed, that everything in the way of love is permitted to the great, but then I spoke of present times, and not those of Andovere.

As to carnal incest, read the advocate Voglan, who would absolutely have any two cousins burned who fall into a weakness of this kind. The advocate Voglan is rigorous-the unmerciful Celt.

Let us simply observe, that the gods frequently disguised themselves, in their pursuit of our girls, sometimes as an eagle, sometimes as a pigeon, a swan, a horse, a shower of gold; but the goddesses assumed no disguise: they had only to show themselves, to please. It must however be presumed, that whatever shapes the gods assumed to steal a march, they consummated their loves in the form of men.

As to the new manner of rendering girls pregnant by the ministry of the devil, it is not to be doubted, for the Sorbonne decided the point in the year 1318.

"Per tales artes et ritus impios et invocationes et demonum, nullus unquam sequatur effectus ministerio demonum, error."

"It is an error to believe, that these magic arts and invocations of the devils are without effect."

This decision has never been revoked. Thus we are bound to believe in succubi and incubi, because our teachers have always believed in them.

INFINITY.

WHO will give me a clear idea of infinity? I have never had an idea of it which was not excessively confusedpossibly because I am a finite being.

What is that which is eternally going on without advancing-always reckoning without a sum total-dividing eternally without arriving at an indivisible particle?

There have been many other sages in It might seem as if the notion of infithis science, as well as the Sorbonne.nity formed the bottom of the bucket of Bodin, in his book concerning sorcerers, the Danaïdes.

dedicated to Christopher de Thou, first Nevertheless, it is impossible that infipresident of the parliament of Paris, re-nity should not exist. An infinite duralates that John Hervilier, a native of tion is demonstrable.

Verberie, was condemned by that parlia- The commencement of existence is ment to be burned alive for having pro-absurd; for nothing cannot originate stituted his daughter to the devil, a great something. When an atom exist, we black man, whose caresses were attended must necessarily conclude that it has exwith a sensation of cold which appears toisted from all eternity; and hence an inbe very uncongenial to his nature; but our jurisprudence has always admitted the fact, and the prodigious number of sorcerers which it has burnt in consequence will always remain a proof of its accuracy.

The celebrated Picus of Mirandola (a prince never lies) says, he knew an old man of the age of eighty years who had slept half his life with a female devil, and another of seventy who enjoyed a similar felicity. Both were buried at Rome, but nothing is said of the fate of their children.

Thus is the existence of incubi and succubi demonstrated.

finite duration rigorously demonstrated. But what is an infinite past?—an infini{tude which I arrest in imagination whenever I please. Behold! I exclaim, an infinity passed away; let us proceed to another. I distinguish between two eternities, the one before, the other behind

me.

I

When however I reflect upon my words, perceive that I have absurdly pronounced the words "one eternity has passed away, and I am entering into another."

For at the moment that I thus talk, eternity endures, and the tide of time flows. Duration is not separable; and as something has ever been, something must ever be.

The infinite in duration, then, is linked to an uninterrupted chain. This infinite perpetuates itself, even at the instant that say it is passed. Time begins and ends with me, but duration is infinite.

It is impossible, at least, to prove to the contrary; for if we are called on to believe that devils can enter our bodies, who can prevent them from taking kindred liberties with our wives and our daughters? And if there be demons, there are pro-I bably demonesses; for to be consistent, if the demons beget children on our females, it must follow that we effect the same thing on the demonesses.

Never has there been a more universal empire than that of the devil. What has dethroned him?-Reason.

The infinite is here quickly formed without, however, our possession of the ability to form a clear notion of it.

We are told of infinite space-what is space? Is it a being, or nothing at all? If it is a being, what is its nature?

You cannot tell me. If it is nothing, no-practically divisible, and if the last atom thing can have no quality; yet you tell me that it is penetrable and immense. I am so embarrassed, I cannot correctly call it either something or nothing.

We have adroitly defined the infinite in arithmetic by a love-knot, in this manner Co; but we possess not therefore a clearer notion of it. This infinity is not like the others, a powerlessness of reach-means, however, nothing more than that ing a termination. We call the infinite in quantity any number soever, which surpasses the utmost number we are able to imagine.

the want of power on the part of these beings to form themselves. We are also forced to allow, that the Great Being exists eternally by his own power, since he cannot have sprung from nothing; but we discover not so easily his infinity in magnitude, power, and moral attributes. How are we to conceive infinite extent in a being called simple? and if he be uncompounded, what notions can we form of a simple being? We know God by his works, but we cannot understand him by his nature.

not for him and his family to expire of famine for the sake of an old woman.

At all events, the infinite justice we attribute to God can but little resemble the contradictory notions of justice of this woman and this savage; and yet, when we say that God is just, we only pronounce these words agreeably to our own ideas of justice.

We know of nothing belonging to virtue more agreeable than frankness and cordiality, but to attribute infinite frankness and cordiality to God would amount to an absurdity.

We have such confused notions of the

If it is evident that we cannot understand his nature, is it not equally so, that we must remain ignorant of his attri-attributes of the Supreme Being, that butes ? some schools endow him with prescience, an infinite foresight which excludes all contingent event, while other schools contend for prescience without contingency. Lastly, since the Sorbonne has de

When we say that his power is infinite, do we mean anything more than that it is very great? Aware of the existence of pyramids of the height of 600 feet, we can conceive them of the altitude ofclared that God can make a stick divested 600,000 feet. of two ends, and that the same thing can at once be and not be, we know not what to say, being in eternal fear of ad

Nothing can limit the power of the Eternal Being existing necessarily of himself. Agreed: no antagonists cir-vancing a heresy. cumscribe him; but how convince me that he is not circumscribed by his own nature?

Has all that has been said on this great subject been demonstrated?

We speak of his moral attributes, but we only judge of them by our own; and it is impossible to do otherwise. We attribute to him justice, goodness, &c. only from the ideas we collect from the small degree of justice and goodness existing among ourselves.

But, in fact, what connection is there between our qualities so uncertain and variable, and those of the Supreme Being?

One thing may however be asserted without danger,-that God is infinite, and man exceedingly bounded.

The mind of man is so extremely narrow, that Pascal has said: "Do you believe it impossible for God to be infinite and without parts? I wish to convince you of an existence infinite and indivisible,—it is a mathematical pointmoving everywhere with infinite swiftness, for it is in all places, and entire in every place."

Nothing more absurd was ever asserted, and yet it has been said by the author of the Provincial Letters. It is sufficient to give men of sense the ague.

INFLUENCE.

Our idea of justice is only that of not allowing our own interest to usurp over the interest of another. The bread which a wife has kneaded out of the flour pro- EVERY thing around exercises some duced from the wheat which her hus-influence upon us, either physically or band has sown, belongs to her. A hungry morally. With this truth we are well savage snatches away her bread, and the acquainted. woman exclaims against such enormous injustice. The savage quietly answers, that nothing is more just, and that it was

Înfluence may be exerted upon a being without touching, without moving that being.

In short, matter has been demonstrated ? diligence had some peculiar and marvelto possess the astonishing power of gra-lous influence on the lady's constitution. vitating without contact, of acting at immense distances.

One idea influences another; a fact not less incomprehensible.

I have not with me at Mount Krapac the book intitled "On the Influence of the Sun and Moon," composed by the celebrated physician Mead; but I well know, that those two bodies are the cause of the tides; and it is not in consequence of touching the waters of the ocean that they produce that flux and reflux it is demonstrated that they produce them by the laws of gravitation.

There was a time when the inhabitants of every sea-port were persuaded, that no one would die while the tide was rising, and that death always waited for its ebb.

Many physicians possessed a store of strong reasons to explain this constant phenomenon. The sea when rising communicates to human bodies the force or strength by which itself is raised. It brings with it vivifying particles which reanimate all patients. It is salt, and salt preserves from the putrefaction attendant on death. But when the sea sinks and retires, everything sinks or retires with it; nature languishes; the patient is no longer vivified; he departs with the tide. The whole, it must be

but the presumed fact, unfortunately, is after all untrue.

But when we are in a fever, have the sun and moon any influence upon the accesses of it, in its days of crisis? Is your wife constitutionally disordered only during the first quarter of the moon?admitted, is most beautifully explained, Will the trees, cut at the time of full moon, rot sooner than if cut down in its wane? Not that I know. But timber cut down while the sap is circulating in it, undergoes putrefaction sooner than other timber; and if by chance it is cut down at the full moon, men will certainly say it was the full moon that caused all { the evil.

The various elements, food, watching, sleep, and the passions, are constantly exerting on our frame their respective influences. While these influences are thus severally operating upon us, the planets traverse their appropriate orbits, and the stars shine with their usual brilliancy. But shall we really be so weak as to say that the progress and light of those heavenly bodies are the cause of The fitful periods of the fever which our rheums and indigestion, and sleepyou brought upon yourself by indulging{lessness; of the ridiculous wrath we are too much in the pleasures of the table, in with some silly reasoner; or of the occur about the first quarter of the moon; passion with which we are enamoured of your neighbour experiences his in its de- some interesting woman? cline.

Your wife may have been disordered during the moon's growing; but your neighbour's was so in its decline.

But the gravitation of the sun and moon has made the earth in some degree flat at the pole, and raises the sea twice between the tropics in four-and-twenty hours. It may, therefore, regulate our fits of fever, and govern our whole maBefore however we assert this to be the case, we should wait until we can prove it.

Were a woman of Lyons to remark that the periodical affections of her con-chine. stitution had occurred in three or four successive instances on the day of the arrival of the diligence from Paris, would her medical attendant, however devoted he might be to system, think himself authorised in concluding that the Paris

The sun acts strongly upon us by its rays, which touch us, and enter through our pores. Here is unquestionably a very decided and a very benignant in