established and unchangeable; and our fortune inexhaustible: when the two latter of these illusions cease before the former, we are much to be pitied.

ON MORALITY.

MORALITY teaches us how we ought to live with men; what a number of discourses, sermons, and books there are, which instruct us in the first principles of it! But there are few which teach us how to live with ourselves, and for ourselves alone: it is because the master and the lessons are in our own hearts and depend upon our characters. There are people who have lived sixty years without ever having known themselves, because they have never been at the trouble of studying their characters; for the most trifling research is sufficient to give us that knowledge to perfection. Let it not be imagined that self-love hinders us from judging truly of our own character; on the contrary, it informs us of our defects, and engages us to correct them, because our happiness is interested therein: it only hinders us from confessing them before others. Let us be sincere, we may be deceived about our defects, but we cannot totally conceal them.

ON THE PRACTICE OF MORALITY.

THE Chinese are persuaded that there is but one science which merits to be profoundly studied, and that it is necessary to study it one's whole life; it is morality: from this results, say our relations of them, that all the Chinese are philosophers. I maintain that these relations are not authentic; it is neither true nor possible that they should be so; and I should greatly pity a people who passed their whole lives in the study of morality. The first year of their studies they would know everything necessary to be known; and when men obstinately pursue the study of a thing, which they possess in the most ample manner, they terminate in perplexity. What we ought to do during our lives, is not to study morality, but to practise it; it may be very well practised without being understood, when we suffer ourselves to be conducted by those who know what it is; and much more so, when we are penetrated by its principles, which are few in number, but universally acknowledged, for such a length of time past, to be good, that there is nothing more

solid. Afterwards, it is necessary to apply them on every occasion; and to oppose them to the fire of the passions, and to the trifling interests, which incline us to deviate from our duty. There are professions in routine of which it may be said, in parodying a verse of Boileau: The practice is easy, and the art is difficult. It is quite the contrary in morality; the knowledge of its principles is simple and easy; but the practice is a difficulty which we experience every day.

It is not the vivacity only of our passions, of our character, and our age, which causes obstacles to the practice of morality, but circumstances also, difficult to be foreseen. However, at all events the wise man is prepared. It is particularly necessary when we are young to reflect upon what we read and see; to put ourselves in the place of people whom we hear speak, or whom we know personally, and ask ourselves, what would we do were we in a like situation? This is what is called studying historical books and the great book of the world to advantage. I have for more than twenty years followed this method, and I am of opinion that I am the better for it. Without ambition, or any ardent desire of changing my present situation, I like, notwithstanding, to build castles in the air: they amuse me and give me no uneasiness; they are agreeable dreams which never make me start out of sleep, or give me the nightmare. My friend, the Abbé de Saint Pierre, dreams continually that he is reforming the state; I have a little more right than he has to form such dreams. He writes and publishes what he dreams of; I am tempted to do so likewise; but I answer for it, that my dreams shall not be brought to light during my existence: first, because I do not believe the world disposed to make use of that which I think is for its advantage; secondly, because the example of the Abbé de St. Pierre frightens me. With the best intentions, he has given much advice which would well deserve to be followed; but he has attacked in front generally received ideas; he has proposed impracticable means of arriving at happy ends, he has announced his ideas in an emphatical tone; and has believed that to be well expressed, they have need of new words and an extraordinary orthography; all this has thrown a ridicule upon his writings and person; and it was only by passing for a fool and a dotard that he avoided the hatred of those whose interest it was to maintain the abuses which he was willing to destroy. It cannot be denied that he merited, in several respects, re

proaches, and even derision; but assuredly it was possible to reap some advantage from his ideas upon several objects, and to turn to a good account his idle speculations. A fine example for those who would still wish to publish projects of reform: but ought this to frighten a good citizen? No! at least, it will not hinder me from thinking, and even writing, were it but for myself, that which shall appear to me best to be done.

ON THE NATURAL TURN FOR SCANDAL AND RAILLERY.

THE love of scandal is so founded upon the malignity natural to most men, and especially to women, that this vice will never be out of fashion; the levity of our nation makes scandal more common in France than anywhere else. But at least we abhor calumny; we look upon it as a vice, the principles of which are the most culpable, and its consequences may be the most pernicious. We are as fearful of becoming calumniators as murderers, and this with much reason. As for scandal, when it is well retailed, it is a means of pleasing in society, -it animates conversation, those present are amused by speaking ill of the absent: one company is made to laugh at the follies of another. But this sportiveness must be light, agreeable, and satirical: let us leave to old and peevish devotees the bad habit of malignantly slandering their neighbors, of reproaching young persons with defects, which they compensate by some good qualities, or with faults against which the aged cry so loudly, only because they can no longer commit them.

To rally agreeably, it is necessary to have a graceful delivery; and this is no common talent. Light circumstances are sometimes added to the story, to render it more poignant; but it must not be lengthened by them, nor the narration retarded. Mix your recitals with but few observations, draw no conclusions from them, but leave your auditors to make such malignant reflections as you will easily suggest to them; these will be so much the more approved of, as they will believe them to come from themselves. I knew in my younger days some excellent story-tellers; they seem to be more rare at present; I think so perhaps, by anticipation, from the mania common to old people, of believing that everything degenerates; but, however this may be, I mean to form some day a list of the good story-tellers of my time, and to characterize each of them by some one of their best stories, which I shall easily

recollect. Madame Cornuel compared stories to those matelotes (rich ragouts, like turtle), of which it is said, the "fish is eaten for the sake of the sauce;" in like manner, said she, the best stories are best related. We have a proof of this in the famous tales of the Abbé de Boifrebert, at which the great Cardinal Richelieu laughed so much. Douville, brother to the Abbé, has had them printed, and nothing is more insipid on being read; but this is because we have no longer the storyteller to make us relish them, yet it was not he who wrote them.

The man whom in all France I have heard tell the best story is the Duke of Maine, legitimated son of the late King; he was otherwise a weak prince, and had but middling talents; his wife, who prides herself upon being superior to him in point of understanding, does not tell a story so well as he does; and their two sons, the Prince of Dombes and the Comte d'Eu, who in other respects do not pass for men of genius, possess their father's talent to a great degree.

The age is certainly become more moderate in many respects; slander is not spread with malignity and ill humor; its consequences are more feared; men are become circumspect, lest simple disputes should become serious affairs, which they wish to avoid. Perhaps (let us secretly acknowledge it) we are become a little cowardly; but when we are unfortunate enough to be so, the true means of concealing it is to avoid disputes, and to this end it is necessary to take timely precautions. After all, I like the present age better than I should have done the preceding one; men were certainly brave and daring; but even the most prudent people were not in safety, because they were beset with those who were quarrelsome. Society is at present more safe; we have scarcely anything to fear but trifling disputes or pleasantries easy to be borne with when we know how to reply to them. Formerly men devoured each other like lions and tigers; at present, we play with each other like little dogs, which gnaw, or young kittens, the strokes of whose claws are not mortal.

I like the raillery of men of wit, even though I should be the subject of it, better than the circumspection of fools: nothing can be more dull or ridiculous than some of my acquaintance of this description; their insipidity makes one almost sick; from insipidity comes ennui; and ennui is the pest of society.

ARGYLE.

ARGYLE OR ARGYLL, GEORGE DOUGLAS CAMPBELL, eighth Duke of Argyll, an English philosophical, scientific, and political writer, and statesman; born in Ardencaple Castle, Dumbartonshire, April 30, 1823. He was Lord Privy Seal (1860) and Postmaster General (1855), being reappointed to both offices in 1860, to the former again in 1880; was Secretary for India (1868-74). He wrote: "The Reign of Law" (1866), a striking work upholding theism; "Primeval Man" (1869); "Iona" (1870); "The Eastern Question" (2 vols., 1879); "The Unity of Nature" (1883); "Scotland as It Was, and as It Is" (1887); and "The Unseen Foundations of Society" (1892).

ANALOGY BETWEEN MAN'S WORKS AND THOSE OF THE

CREATOR.

(From "The Reign of Law," Chap. II.)

WHATEVER difficulty there may be in conceiving of a Will not exercised by a visible Person, it is a difficulty which cannot be evaded by arresting our conceptions at the point at which they have arrived in forming the idea of the Laws or Forces. That idea is itself made up out of elements derived from our own consciousness of Personality. It is perfectly true that the Mind does recognize in Nature a reflection of itself. But if this be a deception, it is a deception which is not avoided by transferring the idea of Personality to the abstract idea of Force, or by investing combinations of Force with the attributes of Mind.

We need not be jealous then, when new domains are claimed. as under the Reign of Law-an agency through which we see working everywhere some Purpose of the Everlasting Will. The mechanisms devised by Man are in this respect only an image of the more perfect mechanism of Nature, in which the same principle of Adjustment is always the highest result which Science can ascertain or recognize. There is this difference, indeed that in regard to our works our knowledge of Natural Laws is very imperfect, and our control over them is very feeble; whereas, in the machinery of Nature there is evidence of com