This is a certainty very different from the others; they were only probabilities, and these probabilities when examined have turned out errors; but mathematical certainty is immutable and eternal.

I exist, I think, I feel grief—is all that as certain as a geometrical truth? Yes, sceptical as I am, I avow it. Why? It is that these truths are proved by the same principle that it is impossible for a thing to exist and not exist at the same time. I cannot at the same time feel and not feel. A triangle cannot at the same time contain a hundred and eighty degrees, which are the sum of two right angles, and not contain them.

The physical certainty of my existence, of my identity, is of the same value as mathematical certainty, although it is of a different kind.

It is not the same with the certainty founded on appearances, or on the unanimous testimony of mankind.

But how, you will say to me-are you not certain that Pekin exists? Have you not merchandise from Pekin? People of different countries and different opinions have vehemently written against one another, while preaching the truth at Pekin; then are you not assured of the existence of this town? I answer, that it is extremely probable that there may be a city of Pekin, but I would not wager my life that such a town exists; and I would at any time wager my life, that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles.

In the Dictionnaire Encyclopédique a very pleasant thing appears. It is there maintained, that a man ought to be as certain that marshal Saxe rose from the dead, if all Paris tells him so, as he is sure that marshal Saxe gained the battle of Fontenoy, upon the same testimony.

Pray observe the beauty of this reasoning: as I believe all Paris when it tells me a thing morally possible, I ought to believe all Paris when it tells me a thing morally and physically impossible.

Apparently, the author of this article has a disposition to be risible; as to ourselves, who have only undertaken this little dictionary to ask a few questions,

VOL. II.

M

we are very far from possessing this very extensive certainty.

CHAIN OF CREATED BEINGS.

THE gradation of beings, rising from the lowest to the Great Supreme-the scale of infinity—is an idea that fills us with admiration; but when steadily regarded, this phantom disappears, as apparitions were wont to vanish in the morning at the crowing of the cock.

The imagination is pleased with the imperceptible transition from brute matter to organized matter-from plants to zoophytes-from zoophytes to animals-from animals to men-from men to genii-from these genii clad in a light aërial body, to immaterial substances of a thousand different orders, rising from beauty to perfection, up to God himself. This hierarchy is very pleasing to young men, who look upon it as upon the pope and cardinals, followed by the archbishops and bishops, after whom are the vicars, curates, and priests, the deacons and sub-deacons, then come the monks, and the capuchins bring up the rear.

But there is, perhaps, a somewhat greater distance between God and his most perfect creatures, than between the Holy Father and the dean of the sacred college. The dean may become pope; but can the most perfect of the genii created by the Supreme Being become God? Is there not infinity between them?

Nor does this chain, this pretended gradation, any more exist in vegetables and animals; the proof is, that some species of plants and animals have been entirely destroyed-We have no murex* The Jews were forbidden to eat griffin and ixion: these two species, whatever Bochart may say, have probably disappeared from the earth. Where, then, is the chain?

Supposing that we had not lost some species, it is evident that they may be destroyed. Lions and rhinoceroses are becoming very scarce; and if the rest of

*The shell fish, from which the ancients derived their celebrated purple dye.

the nations had imitated the English, there would not now have been a wolf left.

It is probable that there have been races of men who are no longer to be found. Why should they not have existed, as well as the whites, the blacks, the Caffres to whom nature has given an apron of their own skin, hanging from the belly to the middle of the thigh; the Samoyeds, whose women have nipples of a beautiful jet, &c.

Is there not a manifest void between the ape and man? Is it not easy to imagine a two-legged animal without feathers, having intelligence, without our shape or the use of speech-one which we could tame, which would answer our signs, and serve us? And again, between this species and man, cannot we imagine

others?

Beyond man, divine Plato, you place in heaven a string of celestial substances, in some of which we believe, because the faith so teaches us. But what reason had you to believe in them? It does not appear that you had spoken with the genius of Socrates; and though Heres, good man, rose again on purpose to tell you the secrets of the other world, he told you nothing of these substances.

In the sensible universe, the pretended chain is no less interrupted.

What gradation, I pray you, is there among the planets? The moon is forty times smaller than our globe. Travelling from the moon through space, you find Venus, about as large as the earth. From thence you go to Mercury, which revolves in an ellipsis very different from the circular orbit of Venus; it is twentyseven times smaller than the earth, the sun is a million of times larger, and Mars is five times smaller. latter goes his round in two years, his neighbour Jupi ter in twelve, and Saturn in thirty; yet Saturn, the most distant of all, is not so large as Jupiter. Where is the pretended gradation?

The

And then, how, in so many empty spaces, do you extend a chain connecting the whole? There can,

certainly, be no other than that which Newton discovered that which makes all the globes of the planetary world gravitate one towards another in the immense void.

Oh, much admired Plato! I fear that thou hast told us nothing but fables, that thou hast spoken to us only as a sophist! Oh, Plato! thou hast done more mischief than thou art aware of. How so? you will ask. I will not tell you.

CHAIN OR GENERATION OF EVENTS.

THE present, we say, is pregnant with the future; events are linked one with another by an invincible fatality. This is the Fate which, in Homer, is superior to Jupiter himself. The master of gods and men expressly declares, that he cannot prevent his son Sarpedon from dying at the time appointed. Sarpedon was born at the moment when it was necessary that he should be born, and could not be born at any other; he could not die elsewhere than before Troy; he could not be buried elsewhere than in Lycia; his body must, in the appointed time, produce vegetables, which must change into the substance of some of the Lycians; his heirs must establish a new order of things in his states; that new order must influence neighbouring kingdoms; thence must result a new arrangement in war and in peace with the neighbours of Lycia. So that, from link to link, the destiny of the whole earth depended on the death of Sarpedon, which depended on the elopement of Helen, which had a necessary connection with the marriage of Hecuba, which, ascending to higher events, was connected with the origin of things.

Had any one of these occurrences been ordered otherwise, the result would have been a different universe. Now, it was not possible for the actual universe not to exist; therefore it was not possible for Jupiter, Jove as he was, to save the life of his son.

We are told that this doctrine of necessity and fatality has been invented in our own times, by Leibnitz,

under the name of sufficing reason. It is, however, of great antiquity. It is no recent discovery, that there is no effect without a cause, and that often the smallest cause produces the greatest effects.

Lord Bolingbroke acknowledges that he was indebted to the petty quarrels between the duchess of Marlborough and Mrs. Masham, for an opportunity of concluding the private treaty between queen Anne and Louis XIV. This treaty led to the peace of Utrecht; the peace of Utrecht secured the throne of Spain to Philip V.; Philip took Naples and Sicily from the house of Austria. Thus the Spanish prince, who is now king of Naples, evidently owes his kingdom to Mrs. Masham : he would not have had it, nor even have been born, if the duchess of Marlborough had been more complaisant towards the queen of England: his existence at Naples depended on one folly more or less at the court of London.

Examine the situations of every people upon earth; they are in like manner founded on a train of occurrences seemingly without connection, but all connected. In this immense machine, all is wheel, pulley, cord, or spring.

It is the same in physical order. A wind blowing from the southern seas and the remotest parts of Africa, brings with it a portion of the African atmosphere, which, falling in showers in the vallies of the Alps, fertilises our lands; on the other hand, our north wind carries our vapours among the negroes; we do good to Guinea, and Guinea to us. The chain extends from one end of the universe to the other.

But the truth of this principle seems to me to be strangely abused; for it is thence concluded that there is no atom, however small, the movement of which has not influenced the actual arrangement of the whole world; that the most trivial accident, whether among men or animals, is an essential link in the great chain of destiny.

Let us understand one another. Every effect evidently has its cause, ascending from cause to cause,