In spite of all the colleges in the world, philosophers will still see, that our first knowledge we receive from our sensations; and that our memory is no more than a continued sensation: a man, born without any of his five senses, would, could he live, be totally void of any ideas. It is owing to the senses that we even have our metaphysical notions; for how should a circle or a triangle be measured, without having seen or felt one? How can we form an idea, imperfect as it is, of infinitude, but by enlarging boundaries? and how can we throw down boundaries without having seen or felt them? An eminent philosopher says, that sensation includes all our faculties. Traite des Sensations.

What must be inferred from all this? That I leave to reflective readers.

SOLOMON.'

SURELY Solomon could not be so rich as he is said to be? The book of Chronicles tells us that melk David, his father, left him one hundred thousand talents of gold, and one thousand talents of silver. so enormous a sum, that it is quite incredible. There is not so much cash in all the nations of the whole world; and it is not easy to conceive that David amassed such treasures in so small a country as Palestine.

Solomon, according to the first book of Chronicles, had forty thousand stables for his chariot-horses. Each stable containing ten horses, makes four hundred thousand, which, with his twelve thousand saddle horses, amount to four hundred and twelve thousand good war horses; a great many for a Jewish melk, who never was engaged in a war. Never was the like magnificence seen in a country breeding only asses, and, at present, without any other beast for the saddle. But probably times are altered; indeed so wise a prince, having a thousand concubines, might very well have four hundred and twelve thousand horses, were it only to give his seraglio an airing along Genesareth lake, or that of Sodom, or toward Cedron brook, one of the most delicious spots on earth, except that this brook is dry nine months of the year, and the ground a little stoney.

But is this same wise Solomon really author of the works fathered on him? Is it likely, for instance, that the Jewish eclogue, called the Song of Songs, is of his writing?

A monarch, who had a thousand mistresses, may have said

to one of these charmers, Kiss me with the kisses of thy mouth, for thy breasts are better than wine. A king and a shepherd, amidst such armorous endearments, may very naturally talk alike: but it is somewhat odd, that it is the girl who is made to talk thus wantonly about kisses and her sweetheart's breasts.

I likewise will not deny but a courtly prince may make his mistress say, My husband is like a cluster of myrrh; he shall lie all night between my breasts. A cluster of myrrh is to me somewhat obscure; but I very well understand the charmer's meaning, when she bids her beloved lay his left hand over her neck, and embrace her with his right.

There are some expressions in which the author's elucidation is wanted; as when he says, "Your navel is like a goblet, in which there is always something to drink; your belly is like a bushel of wheat; your breasts are like two young roses; your nose is as the tower of Lebanon."

This, I own, is not the style of Virgil's Eclogues; but all have not a like style, and a Jew is not obliged to write like Virgil.

I suppose it may be another beautiful strain of eastern eloquence to say, "Our sister is yet little; she has no breasts; what shall we do for our sister? If she be a wall, let us build on her; if a door, let us shut her."

We will allow that such words might have escaped Solomon, (though the wisest of men,) in a merry mood. This composition is said to be an epithalamium, on his marriage with Pharaoh's daughter: but is it natural that Pharaoh's son-in-law should leave his beloved in the night, to go and saunter in his walnut-yard; and that the queen should run after him barefooted? that the city watch should beat her and take her gown from her?

Could a king's daughter have said, I am brown, yet am I beautiful as Solomon's furs. Such expressions might be overlooked in a home-spun swain; though, after all, there can be little affinity between furs and a girl's beauty. Well, but Solomon's furs might be exceedingly admired in their time; and for a low-lived Jew, in a lay to his sweetheart, to tell her, in his Jewish gibberish, that never any Jewish king had such fine furred gowns as her dear self, was not at all out of character; but Solomon must have been strangely infatuated with his furs, to compare them to his mistress. Were a king, in our times, to write such an epithalamium, on his marriage with a neighbouring monarch's daughter, he would forfeit all title to the laurel.

Several rabbis have advanced, that this luscious eclogue not only is not Solomon's, but is not so much as authentic. Theodore de Mopsueste was of the same opinion; and the celebrated Grotius calls the Song of Songs a libidinous work, flagitiosus; yet it is received as canonical, and reputed to be throughout an allegory of Christ and his church's espousals. The allegory must be owned to be a little forced; and what the church could mean, by its little sister having no breasts, and that, if a wall, she must be built upon, is impenetrably

obscure.

Ecclesiastes is of a more serious turn, but no more Solomon's, than the Song of Songs. The author is commonly thought to be Jesus, the son of Sirach, whilst others attribute it to Philo of Biblos; but whoever he was, the Pentateuch seems not to have been known in his time, else he would not have said, that, at the time of the deluge, Abraham was going to sacrifice Isaac, or have spoken of Joseph, the patriarch, as a king of Egypt.

The Proverbs have been ascribed to Isaiah, Elziah, Sobna, Eliakim, Joake, and many others; but to whomsoever we owe this collection of eastern sentences, we may be sure it does not come from a royal hand. Would a king have said, the wrath of a king is as the roaring of a lion? This is the language of a subject, or slave, who trembles at a frown from his master. Would Solomon have harped so much on a libidinous woman? Would he have said, Look not on wine, when it appears bright in the glass, and its colour shines?

I very much question whether drinking-glasses were made in Solomon's time; the invention is but modern: the ancients drank out of wooden or metal cups; and this single passage betrays that book to be the work of some Alexandrine Jew, and written long since Alexander.

We now come to Ecclesiastes, which Grotius affirms to have been written in the time of Zorobabel. This author's freedom is known to every body; he says, "That men are in nothing better than beasts; that it is better never to have been born than to exist; that there is no other life; that the only good is to eat and drink, and be merry with the woman one loves.

Solomon, perhaps, might have talked in this manner to some of his women, and some construe these sayings as objections which he makes to himself; but besides the libertinism of which they strongly savour, they have nothing of the appearance of objections; and to make the author mean the contrary of what he says, is an insult on the world.

However, several of the fathers tell us, that Solomon repented, and imposed on himself a severe penance: now, this should silence all animadversions on his conduct.

But though these books were written by a Jew, what is that to us? The Christian religion is, indeed, founded on Judaism, but not on all the Jewish books. Why should the Song of Songs be held more sacred among us than the fables of the Talmud? The answer is, because we have included it in the Hebrew canon. And what is this same canon? It is a collection of authentic works. Well, and must a work of course be divine, by being authentic? For instance, a history of the kings of Judah and of Sichem, what is it but a history? A strange prepossession indeed! We despise and abhor the Jews; and yet we insist that all their writings, which we have collected, bear the sacred stamp of divinity. Never was such a contradiction heard of!

SOUL.

It would be a fine thing to see one's soul. Know thyself, is an excellent precept, which God alone can but himself can know his essence?

practise.

Who

We call that which animates, soul; and so contracted is the understanding, that we know little more of it. Three fourths of our species do not go that length, and concern themselves little about the thinking being; the other fourth is seeking, but has not found, nor ever will find, it.

Poor pedant! thou seest a vegetating plant, and thou sayest, Vegetation, or vegetative soul. Thou observest that bodies have and give motion, and this with thee is strength. Thy hound's aptness in learning to hunt under thy instruction, thou callest Instinct, or sensitive soul; and, as thou hast combined ideas, this thou termest, Spirit.

But, pray, what do you mean by, This flower vegetates? Is there a real being named Vegetation? One body impels another, but is there in it a distinct being, called Strength? This hound brings thee a partridge; but is there a being called Instinct? Wouldst thou not laugh at a philosopher, had he even been Alexander's preceptor, who should say, All animals live; therefore there is in them a being, a substantial form, which is life?

Could a tulip speak, and say to thee, We are evidently two beings united; wouldst thou not contemptuously turn thy back on the tulip?

Let us first examine what thou knowest, and of what thou art certain that thou walkest with thy feet; that thou digestest by thy stomach; that thou feelest all over thy body; and that thou thinkest by thy head. Let us see if thy reason alone could give thee so much insight as to conclude, without any supernatural help, that thou hast a soul.

The first philosophers, both Chaldeans and Egyptians, said, There must be something in us that produces our thoughts. This something must be very subtile: it is a breath; it is fire; it is ether; it is a quintessence; it is a light form; it is an entelechia; it is a number; it is a harmony. According to the divine Plato, it is a compound of the same and of the other; and Epicurus, from Democritus, has said that it is thinking atoms in us but, friend, how does an atom think? Own your ignorance here.

The opinion which, unquestionably, we should embrace is that the soul is an immaterial being; but as certainly you do not conceive what this immaterial being is. No, answer the learned; but we know that its nature is to think. And how came you to know this? We know it, because it does think. O doctors! O schoolmen! I am very much afraid that you are as ignorant as Epicurus. The nature of a stone is to fall, because it falls; but I ask you what makes it fall?

We know, continue they, that a stone has no soul. Granted, I believe it as well as you. We know that a negative and an affirmative are not divisible; are not parts of matter; I am of your opinion. But matter, otherwise unknown to us, has qualities that are not divisible, as gravitation towards a centre, given it by God. Now this gravitation has no parts, is not divisible. The motory force of bodies is not a being composed of parts; neither can it be said, that the vegetation of all organized bodies, their life, their instinct, are distinct or divisible beings. You can no more cut asunder the vegetation of a rose, the life of a horse, or the instinct of a dog, than you can sever a sensation, a negation, or an affirmation. Thus your fine argument, taken from the indivisibility of thought, proves nothing at all.

What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? All you can, of yourself, without a revelation, allow to be in yourself, is a power, unknown to you, of feeling and thinking.

Now, honestly tell me, is this power of feeling and thinking the same as that by which you digest and walk? You tell me it is not; for it would be in vain for your understanding to say