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    S10 hetiersfrom Germany.

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  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

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    Letters From Germ Aim Y.

    nature , refers them to that which is above nature , is reason . ' Many of your readers will not foe sorry to escape from this profound into open day , and it shines out brightly in the following anecdote of Rodsseau : On a mild autumnal morntog before sunrise a Madame d Epinal said to Rousseau , 66 I am sorry , ? my dear friend , but I cannot help it ; the reasoning of St . Lambert ( against the being of a God ) , which he brought forward the last

    evening 9 appears to me to be strong , and to prevail over the arguments on the opposite side * "" " Yes , ° answered the philosopher 6 i I must confess often , when I sit with my hands upon my eyes , or in the dark night , after having passed a tumultuous day , when sickness ot men have wounded me , such reasonings appear to roe also to give evidence against the being of a wise ruler of the world . But , lady 5 see there ; " ( and he pointed enthusiastically with his head and hands raised towards heaven ;) " Behold , the sun

    rises and scatters the cloud which covered the earth , and brings before me this wonderful and sublime scene of great mature . I require nothing more to expel every doubt from my heart . I have found again my trust , my God , my confidence in heaven . I wonder ; I prostrate myself before the Omnipresent ; I adore . " A parallel passage in a different manner occurs in the works of a distinguished philosopher of Germany , Mendelsohn 66 The Atheist asks , what God is ? Shew him what God has done : shew

    him the whole majesty of the creation , and all the beauty and perfection which it contains : tell him God has produced all 3 sustains all 3 after the laws of wisdom and goodness , of which we find the proof in every sun-mote , as well as in ourselveso Wot satisfied with itiis reply , he still asks . What is God himself ? When I tell you what any thing does or suffers , question me no farther what it is * The Materialist holds all simple , spiritual existences to be creations of the brain . He asks , What is your simple , spiritual

    existence , which must have neither magnitude , nor figure , nor colour , nor extension ? In vain you lead him into himself , and make him observe what passes within himself , when he thinks and feels , desires and refuses , acts and suffers . All this does not satisfy him and solve his question s What is the soul if it is not corporeal ? He reflects not that we know of body itself nothing more lhan what it does and what it suffers , and that beyond the action and -the suffering of any thing , nothing is ever in our

    thoughts / ' J am tempted to add a passage which is in some affinity with the preceding , by the pleasure it affords me at this great epoch in political history to add the homage of an obscure and unknown individual to the patriotic name of Benjamin Constant . In the celebrated preface to his translation of Schiller ' s Wallenstein , reprinted in his Melanges de Literature and de Politique , is an illustration of that kind of natural superstition and instinctive feeling of the supernatural ^ through which , he says , the loftiest

    and strongest minds seek to place themselves in connexion with universal nature , and inquire into their own destiny : 6 i I believe that no man who surveys an unbounded horizon , or walks on the shore of an agitated sea , or raises his eyes to the starry heavens , is a stranger on these occasions to a feeling which he cannot analyze or make plain to himself . It might be said , a voice descends from the lofty skies ; it rises from the summits of the

    rocks ; it is repeated in the rushing stream and sounding forest ; it comes forth from the depth of the abyss . Even in the laborious flight of the raven the scream of the birds of night , the distant roar of the wild beast , there seems to be a prophetic language ., Only those things which man has made for his use are silent , because they are without life ; and even these , when the time of ( their use is past ? regain a mysterious life . The breath of dc-

    S10 Hetiersfrom Germany.

    S 10 hetiersfrom Germany .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1830, page 810, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/mrp_02121830/page/10/