by the objects that surround us. As soon as we acquire, if I may so speak, a consciousness of our sensations, we are disposed either to pursue or to flee from the objects that produce them; at first, as they are agreeable or displeasing to us; in the next place, in proportion to the agreement or disagreement we find between ourselves and the objects; and lastly, pursuant to the judgment we form of them, from the idea of happiness or perfection acquired by reason. These dispositions are enlarged and strengthened, in proportion as we become more sensible and intelligent; but restrained by habit, they are altered more or less. by opinion. Before this alteration, they are what I distinguish in man by the name of nature.

To these primitive dispositions every thing must, therefore, be referred; and this might easily be done, were the three sorts of education no more than different; but what are we to do, when they happen to be opposite? When, instead of educating a man for himself, you want to educate him for others, the harmony or agreement is then impossible. Being obliged either to combat nature or social institutions, you must make your option, whether you are to form the man or the citizen; for you cannot do both. Every partial society, when it is close and compact, deviates greatly from the general link; great lovers of their country are rude and uncivil to strangers; they look upon them only in the common light as men, and as unworthy of their regard. This inconveniency is inevitable, but of no great consequence. The point is, to behave kindly towards our fellow-subjects. Abroad, the Spartans were ambitious, avaricious, and unjust; while disinterestedness, equity, and concord reigned within their walls. Beware of those cosmopolites who pore over old books in search of duties, which they neglect to fulfill within their own communities. Thus you will see a philosopher admiring the Tartars, in order to be excused from loving his neighbors.

Man in his natural state is all for himself; he is the numerical unit or the absolute integer, that refers only to himself, or to his likeness. Man in the civil state is a fractionary unit, who depends on the denominator, and whose value consists in his relation to the integer, namely, the body politic. Among social institutions, those are the best, which are best adapted for divesting man of his natural state; for depriving him of his absolute, to give him a relative, existence; in short, for transferring self to a common unit; to the end, that each individual may no

longer consider himself as one, but as part of a unit, and have no sense or feeling but in conjunction with the whole. A Roman citizen was neither Caius nor Lucius,- he was a Roman; but he loved his country exclusive of himself. Regulus pretended to be a Carthaginian, as he was become the property of his masters. In the quality of a stranger, he refused to take his seat in the Roman senate; and before he would comply, he insisted upon receiving orders from a Carthaginian. With indignation he beheld the endeavors used to save his life. He carried his point, and returned triumphant to Carthage, to resign his last breath amidst the most exquisite tortures. Here we behold a man of quite a different stamp from those of the present age.

From "Émile.» Translated by N. Nugent.

I

CHRIST AND SOCRATES

WILL confess that the majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the Gospel hath its influence on my heart. Peruse the works of our philosophers with all their pomp of diction: how mean, how contemptible are they compared with the Scriptures! Is it possible that a book, at once so simple and sublime, should be merely the work of man? Is it possible that the sacred personage, whose history it contains, should be himself a mere man? Do we find that he assumed the tone of an enthusiast or ambitious sectary? What sweetness, what purity in his manner! What an affecting gracefulness in his delivery What sublimity in his maxims! what profound wisdom in his discourses! What presence of mind, what subtlety, what truth in his replies! How great the command over his passions! Where is the man, where the philosopher, who could so live, and so die, without weakness, and without ostentation? When Plato described his imaginary good man loaded with all the shame of guilt, yet meriting the highest rewards of virtue, he describes exactly the character of Jesus Christ: the resemblance was so striking, that all the Fathers perceived it.

What prepossession, what blindness must it be to compare the son of Sophronicus to the son of Mary! What an infinite disproportion there is between them! Socrates dying without pain or ignominy, easily supported his character to the last; and if his death, however easy, had not crowned his life, it might have

been doubted whether Socrates, with all his wisdom, was anything more than a vain sophist. He invented, it is said, the theory of morals. Others, however, had before put them in practice; he had only to say, therefore, what they had done, and to reduce their examples to precepts. Aristides had been just before Socrates. defined justice; Leonidas had given up his life for his country before Socrates declared patriotism to be a duty; the Spartans were a sober people before Socrates recommended sobriety; before he had even defined virtue, Greece abounded in virtuous men. But where could Jesus learn, among his competitors, that pure and sublime morality, of which he only hath given us both precept and example? The greatest wisdom was made known amongst the most bigoted fanaticism, and the simplicity of the most heroic virtues did honor to the vilest people on earth. The death of Socrates, peaceably philosophizing with his friends, appears the most agreeable that could be wished for; that of Jesus, expiring in the midst of agonizing pains, abused, insulted, and accused by a whole nation, is the most horrible that could be feared. Socrates, in receiving the cup of poison, blessed, indeed, the weeping executioner who administered it; but Jesus, in the midst of excruciating torments, prayed for his merciless tormentors. Yes, if the life and death of Socrates were those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a God. Shall we suppose the evangelic history a mere fiction? Indeed, my friend, it bears not the marks of fiction; on the contrary, the history of Socrates, which nobody presumes to doubt, is not so well attested as that of Jesus Christ. Such a supposition, in fact, only shifts the difficulty without obviating it: it is more inconceivable that a number of persons should agree to write such a history, than that one only should furnish the subject of it. The Jewish authors were incapable of the diction, and strangers to the morality, contained in the Gospel, the marks of whose truth are so striking and inimitable, that the inventor would be a more astonishing character than the hero.