maintain that the philosophers, far from contradicting, will aid me. Will you be a philosopher?

BAMBABEF.

With all my heart. But do not tell the fakirs. And let us, above all, remember, that if a philosopher would be of service to human society, he must announce a God.

FREE-WILL.

FROM the commencement of the time in which men began to reason, philosophers have agitated this question, which theologians have rendered unintelligible by their absurd subtleties upon grace. Locke is perhaps the first, who, without having the arrogance of announcing a general principle, has examined human nature by analysis. It has been disputed for three thousand years, whether the will is free or not;* Locke shows, that the question is absurd, and that liberty cannot belong to the will any more than colour and motion.

What is meant by the expression to be free? It signifies power, or rather it has no sense at all. To say that the will can, is in itself as ridiculous as if we said that it is yellow, or blue, round, or square. Will is will, and liberty is power. Let us gradually examine the chain of what passes within us, without confusing our minds with any scholastic terms, or antecedent principle.

It is proposed to you to ride on horseback, it is absolutely necessary for you to make a choice, for it is very clear that you must either go or not; there is no medium, you must absolutely do the one or the other. So far it is demonstrated that the will is not free. You will get on horseback? why? Because I will to do so, an ignoramus will say. This reply is an absurdity, nothing can be done without reason or cause. Your will then is caused by what? the agreeable idea which is presented to your brain; the predominant, or

* See the Essay on the Human Understanding, chapter on Power.

determinate idea; but, you will say, cannot I resist an idea which predominates over me? No, for what would be the cause of your resistance? an idea by which your will is swayed still more despotically.

You receive your ideas, and, therefore, receive your will. You will then necessarily; consequently, the word liberty belongs not to will in any sense.

You ask me, how thought and will are formed within you? I answer, that I know nothing about it. I no more know how ideas are created, than I know how the world was formed. We are only allowed to grope in the dark in reference to all that inspires our incomprehensible machine.

Will, then, is not a faculty which can be called free. A free-will is a word absolutely void of sense; and that which scholars have called indifference, that is to say, will without cause, is a chimera, unworthy to be combatted.

In what then consists liberty? In the power of doing what we will? I would go into my cabinet, the door is open, I am free to enter. But say you, if the door is shut and I remain where I am, I remain freely? Let us explain ourselves;-—you then exercise the power that you possess of remaining, you possess this power, but not the power of going out.

Liberty, then, on which so many volumes have been written, reduced to its proper sense, is only the power of acting. "this man is

In what sense must the expression free" be spoken? In the same sense in which we use the words health, strength, and happiness. Man is not always strong, healthy, or happy. A great passion, a great obstacle, may deprive him of his liberty, or power of action.

The words liberty and free-will are, then, abstractions, general terms, like beauty, goodness, justice. These terms do not signify that all men are always handsome, good, and just, neither are they always

free.

Further, liberty being only the power of acting, -what is this power? It is the effect of the constitu

tion, and the actual state of our organs. Leibnitz would solve a problem of geometry, but falls into an apoplexy: he certainly has not the liberty to solve his problem. A vigorous young man, passionately in love, who holds his willing mistress in his arms, is he free to subdue his passion? doubtless not. He has the power of enjoying, and has not the power to abstain. Locke is then very right in calling liberty, power. When can this young man abstain, notwithstanding the violence of his passion? when a stronger idea shall determine the springs of his soul and body to the contrary.

But how? have other animals the same liberty, the same power? Why not? They have sense, memory, sentiment, and perceptions like ourselves; they act spontaneously as we do. They must also, like us, have the power of acting by virtue of their perception, and of the play of their organs.

We exclaim, If it be thus, all things are machines merely; everything in the universe is subjected to eternal laws. Well, would you have everything rendered subject to a million of blind caprices? Either all is the consequence of the nature of things, or, all is the effect of the eternal order of an absolute master; in both cases we are only wheels to the machine of the world.

It is a foolish common-place expression, that without this pretended freedom of will, rewards and punishments are useless. Reason, and you will conclude quite the contrary.

If, when a robber is executed, his accomplice who sees him suffer, has the liberty of not being frightened at the punishment; if his will determines of itself, he will go from the foot of the scaffold to assassinate on the high road; if struck with horror, he experiences an insurmountable terror, he will no longer thieve. The punishment of his companion will become useful to him, and moreover prove to society that his will is not free.

Liberty, then, is not and cannot be anything but the power of doing what we will. That is what phi

losophy teaches us. But, if we consider liberty in the theological sense, it is so sublime a matter that profane eyes may not be raised so high.*

FRENCH LANGUAGE.

THE French language did not begin to assume a regular form until towards the tenth century; it sprang from the remains of the Latin and the Celtic, mixed with a few Teutonic words. This language was, in the first instance, the provincial Roman, and the Teutonic was the language of the courts, until the time of Charles the Bald. The Teutonic remained the only language in Germany, after the grand epoch of the division in 433. The rustic Roman prevailed in western France: the inhabitants of the Pays de Vaud, of the Valais, of the valley of Engadieu, and some other cantons, still preserve some manifest vestiges of this idiom.

At the commencement of the eleventh century, French began to be written; but this French retained more of the romance or rustic Roman than of the language of the present day. The romance of Philomena, written in the tenth century, is not very different in language, from that of the laws of the Normans. We can yet trace the original Celtic, Latin, and GerThe words which signify the members of the

man.

*Voltaire has treated this once abstruse subject in his usual lucid and off-hand manner, and at this time it is scarcely necessary to add, that the doctrine of necessary volition, so far from injuring the well-being of society, when properly understood, is the foundation of all correct legislative and judicial improvement, as combining and adjusting the whole vast and complicated doctrine of motive. It is almost ludicrous to hear the bigoted and worthy personages who controvert it, act involuntarily on the very principles which they oppose while expatiating with lofty earnestness upon a sublime species of freedom, that, like a ci-devant monarch of France, with his roi le veut, consults its sublime pleasure alone. Allow these gentry to be right, and every man would be as completely cut off from his fellows as Robinson Crusoe, besides, why should they claim a faculty the non-possession of which, forms the great excuse of all they say, and of much of what they do?—T.

human body, or things in daily use, which have no relation to the Latin or German, are of ancient Gallic or Celtic, as tête, jambe, sabre, point, aller, parler, ècouter, regarder, crier, cotume, ensemble, and many more of the same kind. The greater part of the warlike phrases were French or German, as marche, halte, maréchal, bivouac, lansquenet. Almost all

the rest are Latin, and the Latin words have been all abridged, according to the usage and genius of the nations of the north.

In the twelfth century, some terms were borrowed from the philosophy of Aristotle; and, towards the sixteenth century, Greek names were found for the parts of the human body, and for its maladies and their remedies. Although the language was then enriched with Greek, and aided from the time of Charles VIII. with considerable accessions from the Italian, already arrived at perfection, it did not acquire a regular form. Francis I. abolished the custom of pleading and of judging in Latin, which proved the barbarism of a language which could not be used in public proceedinga pernicious custom to the natives, whose fortunes were regulated in a language which they could not understand. It then became necessary to cultivate the French, but the language was neither noble nor regular, and its syntax was altogether capricious. The genius of its conversation being turned towards pleasantry, the language became fertile in smart and lively expressions, but exceedingly barren in dignified and harmonious phrases; whence it arises that in the dictionaries of rhymes, twenty suitable words are found for comic poetry for one of poetry of a more elevated nature. This was the cause that Marot never succeeded in the serious style, and that Amyot was unable to give a version of the elegant simplicity of Plutarch.

The French tongue acquired strength from the pen of Montaigne, but still wanted elevation and harmony. Ronsard injured the language, by introducing into French poetry the Greek compounds, derivable from the physicians. Malherbe partly repaired the fault of