dicere, non omnes omnium rerum, sed deorum, et principia mentis esse in universis quibus divinitatem tribuit, et animantes imagines, quæ vel prodesse nobis soleant vel nocere. Epicurus vero neque aliquid in principiis rerum ponit præter atomos, id est, corpuscula quædam tam minuta, ut etiam dividi nequeant, neque sentiri, aut visu, aut tactu possint: quorum corpusculorum concursu fortuito, et mundos innumerabiles, et animantia, et ipsas animas fieri dicit, et deos quos humana forma non in aliquo mundo, sed extra mundos, atque inter mundos constituit: et non vult omnino aliquid præter corpora cogitare: quæ tamen ut cogitet, imagines dicit ab ipsis rebus, quas atomis formari putat defluere, atque in animum introire subtiliores quam sunt illæ imagines quæ ad oculos veniunt."

These are vain speculations; but scarcely more so than the distinction of the Peripatetics between matter and the material soul of brutes, the hypothesis of automata, or that of the soul of the world.

On the unavoidable tendency of the atomic philosophy to atheism, Seneca has a strong and pointed passage, accompanied with a candid exception against any inference disadvantageous to the personal piety of Epicurus, and a compliment to the disinterested and philosophical grounds of that piety. "Tu denique, Epicure, Deum inermem facis. Omnia illi tela, omnem detraxisti potentiam, et ne cuiquam metuendus esset, projecisti illum Hunc igitur inseptum ingenti quodam et inexplicabili muro, divisumque a contactu et a conspectu mortalium, non habes quare verearis; nulla illi nec tribuendi, nec nocendi

extra motum.

materia est. Atqui hunc vis videri colere, non aliter quam parentem: grato, ut opinor, animo: aut si non vis videri gratus, quia nullum habes illius beneficium, sed te atomi et istæ micæ tuæ forte ac temere conglobaverunt, cur colis? Propter majestatem, inquis, ejus eximiam, singularemque naturam. Ut concedam tibi: nempe hoc facis nulla spe, nullo pretio inductus. Est ergo aliquid per se expetendum, cujus te ipsa dignitas ducit: id est honestum."-De Beneficiis, lib. iv. cap. 19.

Thus much for the lofty, but cold and inefficient principle on which it was attempted to reconcile the eternal existence of matter with the philosophy of piety! But the duties of piety are appointed to be practised in the temples and in the streets, and not to be treated as subjects of curious speculation in the library, to feed the reveries of abstraction, or give play to the subtleties of argument. Religion, whether considered in the light of philosophy, or as involving the practical rule of life, is not to be treated as a question between the Deity and the student, but between the Deity and the people it is neither a code of honour for the gentleman, a string of propositions for the theorist, nor a body of laws for the politician or the legislator, to overawe the many-headed beast. It is a system of faith, a rule of practice, and a fund of consolation to all God's creatures; and the lowest are as capable as the highest, the most dull as capable as the most acute, the most shallow as capable as the most profound, of comprehending its plainness, and of appropriating its benefits both temporal and eternal.

The asinine position in which his atoms have placed Epicurus, between Fate and Liberty, is

perplexing to him, and ludicrous to the spectators. But we must not look at him too contemptuously on that account, when we consider the extreme difficulty which modern and Christian metaphysicians find, in settling the limits between free-will and necessity. The question is not, and probably never will be set at rest.. The insu perable difficulty seems to be this. If we go the whole length of the former, we seem to deny the prescience of God; for how could any being know, a year ago, or ten thousand years ago, how I shall act an hour hence, when I, a perfectly free agent, am not now determined how I shall act, and do not mean to make up my mind till the last moment? On the other hand, if, to avoid Scylla, we run upon the Charybdis of necessity, we incur the double danger, of setting ourselves free, as machines and not accountable agents, from all moral responsibility, and of making the Deity not only the cause, or to say the least of it, the unpreventing by-stander, but even almost, if not quite, the perpetrator of evil. No Christian philosopher will commit such suicide, as to leap into either of these gulfs: and therefore all endeavour, some more successfully than others, to steer a middle course between them: or, to change the metaphor, they endeavour, like skilful artists, to select such parts of each system as will work up best together, and dove-tail into a uniform and practical piece of machinery. I am not going to be so rash, as to enter far upon this subject; but I think we may feel our way to it, and make something like an approach, in the following manner. How would an ordinary, average man act in such or such circumstances? To this question a person

of sound sense, and much knowledge of the world, will know how to return a shrewd, and probable answer. In fact, the question is asked, and answered, and that not only speculatively and curiously, but the answer is acted upon, every day. Should the question be put respecting the friend of this sensible man, whose general character, private sentiments, peculiarities and oddities are known to him; his quantum of wisdom and good conduct in his grave capacity, as a member of parliament or a churchwarden, his nonsense and folly in the recesses of his family; the answer will be justified by the event in a large majority of cases. But as no man can fathom all the depths of his nearest friend's heart; or, if he could, his own reach of reason would not be far enough to comprehend and estimate unerringly all he might have found there; in a minority, bearing some assignable proportion to the majority of cases, the answer will fail in some points or altogether. Yet this attempt at prescience, whether successful or unsuccessful, has no interfering influence over the liberty and independence of the friend so speculated upon: for we assume the whole discussion to take place with strangers, without the knowledge of the party. Should this party, having acted wrong, be subsequently called to account, and having received a hint that his friend had been prophesying his delinquency, plead predestination as his apology, no jury, no commissioners of bankrupts would listen for a moment to such a plea: the court would so entirely doubt its sincerity, that they would scarcely quarter him on the Lunatic Asylum instead of committing him to gaol. The only difference between the prescience

of the wise man and that of the Deity, but that a most important one, is that the first is fallible, the last infallible. But that infallibility has no tendency whatever to exonerate the evil doer. It lays no more previous obligation to do evil, than would the fallible prognostication which happened to be true, but might have been false.

I do not know whether we may not be assisted in unravelling this tangled thread, by the very perplexities of Epicurus.

To secure his liberty, he thought it necessary to deny that every proposition is either true or false. He was afraid of the affirmative; Chrysippus could not support his fatality with the negative, and thought it inconsistent with common sense. Cicero gives the following account of the controversy. "Itaque contendit omnes nervos Chrysippus, ut persuadeat, omne άžíμ aut verum esse, aut falsum. Ut enim Epicurus veretur, ne, si hoc concesserit, concedendum sit, fato fieri, quæcumque fiant: (si enim alterutrum ex æternitate verum sit, esse id etiam certum: et, si certum, etiam necessarium: ita et necessitatem, et fatum confirmari putat) sic Chrysippus metuit, ne, si non obtinuerit, omne, quod enuntietur, aut verum esse, aut falsum, non teneat, omnia fato fieri, et ex causis æternis rerum futurarum. Sed Epicurus declinatione atomi vitari fati necessitatem putat. Itaque tertius quidam motus oritur extra pondus et plagam, (deviating from the perpendicular, which he holds to be the natural, and as it were instinctive tendency of the atom,) cum declinat atomus intervallo minimo. Id appellet ἐλάχιστον. Quam declinationem sine causa fieri si minus verbis, re cogitur confiteri.

.. Hanc rationem Epicurus