"Neither Voltaire, the master, nor D'Alembert, the disciple,' says Priestley, would have been much displeased if some mischief had befallen their enemies, and it would have given them some pleasure to have promoted it.' He then gives an illustration or two of this remark. 'There is,' says Voltaire, 'a friar, who has a farm on my estate at Tournay. He comes hither sometimes. I promise myself the pleasure of putting him in the pillory as soon as I am well; a pleasantry which philosophers may take with such priests, without being persecutors, as they are.' D'Alembert manifests a not dissimilar disposition. Of a letter by Voltaire, he says, 'I shed tears over it; I read it again and again, and concluded with wishing to see all the fanatics in the fire into which they wished to throw other people.' And the infidel King of Prussia, Frederic, says, in a letter to Voltaire, 'I would make the tonsured executioners who persecute you, disappear from the face of the earth, if it was in my power to effect it.' This,' adds Priestley, was not the sentiment of Christ or the apostles. Jesus exhorted his disciples to bless them that curse you, and to pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you. And Paul advised his converts not to render evil for evil, but to overcome evil with good.'Priestley's Works, vol. xvii. pp. 64-5. Voltaire himself has expressly declared what would be the nature of the toleration which philosophers would allow were they in power; they will render the fanatics abominable, and the superstitious ridiculous.'-Quoted in Priestley, ut supra.

6

'At the very commencement of his (Tycho Brahe) "ourney, however, an event occurred in which the impetuosity of his temper had nearly cost him his life. At a wedding-feast in Rostock, a questionable point in geometry involved him in a dispute with a Danish nobleman of the same temperament with himself; and the two

mathematicians resolved to settle the difference by the sword. Tycho, however, seems to have been second in the conflict, for he lost the greater part of his nose, and was obliged to supply its place by a substitute of gold and silver, which a cement of glue attached to his face.'

Sir D. Brewster's Life of Sir Isaac Newton, chap. x.

NOTE 5. p. 96.

After this Discourse was written, my attention was more forcibly directed than it had been, to what is called The Religion of the New Moral World'; and I looked with considerable interest into it, as being a professed exhibition of the religion of Socialism; not without a hope that I might find, at least, an indirect recantation of some of Mr. Owen's grossest errors. There is, however, no brightening of the dark picture. The very title, RELIGION of the New Moral World,' is a misnomer. Religion is either the sentiment which binds the human heart to a Primary Creative Intelligence, or it is 'The Whole Duty of Man,' deduced from the relations which he sustains to that Intelligence. Of neither of these things is one word said in the piece. Its Religion' is nothing more than a transcript of Socialist morality—a transcript, designated by the name of religion, for reasons best understood by the party whence the confession of faith (!) proceeded.

From this publication I learn, that the existence even of an 'unknown cause' is nothing but a 'probable conjecture,' for I read in it- Human knowledge is not sufficiently advanced to enable the children of the New Moral World to express more than probable conjectures respecting the Supreme Power of the universe.' Among, however, the modest conjectures' of this exposition, one is, that the 'attributes' of the 'unknown cause' are probably those lan's of nature by which, at all times,

U

in all places, the operations of the universe are incessantly continued.' The knowledge which Socialism exhibits of the nature of evidence, and the grounds of our intellectual and moral knowledge, may also be gathered from the profound remark, that man knows the forms and qualities of those existences around him, only so far as his senses have been made to perceive them.' What form or what quality of the existences around him' did Mr. Owen ever learn from the exclusive operation of his senses? Such a writer requires to be put into the Horn Book of intellectual science. And yet this is the person, who is to overturn and re-construct society all over the world! Surely, however, the Socialist doubter departs from the modesty of probable conjecture,' and rivals the dogmatic assumption of the boldest à priori sophist of ancient and modern times, when he says-That if this Power had desired to make the nature of its existence known to man, it would have enabled him to comprehend it without mystery or doubt.' Yet Mr. Owen, in other publications, declares it to be an impossibility for the finite to comprehend the infinite. Now, however, not only is this impossibility denied by implication, but Mr. Owen, in some way, has got to know what the unknown Power-'it is of no importance whether men call it matter or spirit'-to know what this unknown matter or unknown spirit, 'would have' done, had it 'desired' a certain result,'tanquam modo ex deorum concilio, et ex Epicuri intermundiis descendisset,' as if, like Mahomet, he had just come down to earth from the council-chamber of his unknown power, whose attributes are the laws of nature!

But the writer is by no means sure- -it is unbecoming a Socialist philosopher to be sure of any thing, but of the omnipotence of circumstances, and that man is the chief of animals'-whether there be one or more

unknown causes, for I read, the creating power or powers (how many?) will be universally called God in the New Moral World.' This looks like an approach to the superstition,' of the old, irrational world,'but why will it or they be so designated? Has, then, Socialism 'found out' the Deity? By no means. The designation is a mere conventionalism; and surely such a resource is unworthy the dignity of a philosophy which is so strict in its modes of enquiry as to abjure every thing but what man's 'senses have been made to perceive.' As, however, 'names alter nothing'-so may the name God be used if convenient (for what? to allure the unwary?). These are the assigned reasons for adopting the name without the idea,- for the convenience of discourse'-(why discourse about the unknown?) and the term God is, perhaps, as unexceptionable for this purpose as any that can be employed, because it has the recommendation of general use in its favour.'

It has been asserted by Socialists that their system is independent of any particular opinions as to religion, and, consequently, that it should be considered apart from any reference whatever to the subject. Some of Mr. Owen's adherents may be of this way of thinking; others boldly proclaim themselves the unsparing foes of religion, especially of Christianity; but respecting Mr. Owen's own ideas in this matter there is no room for doubt. It would be easy to increase the evidence supplied in the Lectures themselves,-but the following will suffice:-In 1820, Mr. Owen gave a challenge' to the Clergy of New Orleans,' in which he says 'I have now finished a course of lectures in this city, the principles of which are in direct opposition to those which you have been taught it your duty to preach.' 'I propose to prove (in the discussion), as I have already attempted to do in my lectures, that all the religions of

the world have been founded on the ignorance of mankind; that they are directly opposed to the never-changing laws of our nature; that they have been, and are the real source of vice, disunion, and misery of every description; that they are now the only real bar to the formation of a society of virtue, of intelligence, of charity, in its most extended sense, and of sincerity and kindness among the whole human family; and that they can be no longer maintained except through the ignorance of the mass of the people, and the tyranny of the few over that mass.'

NOTE 6. p. 120.

The Five Fundamental Facts which constitute the Social philosophy of the formation of character, are as follows: extracted from The Social Bible, by Robert Owen.'

1st. That man is a compound being, whose character is formed of his constitution or organisation at birth, and of the effects of external circumstances upon it, from birth to death; such original organisation and external influences continually acting and re-acting each upon the other.

2nd. That man is compelled by his original constitution to receive his feelings and his convictions independent of his will.

3rd. That his feelings, or his convictions, or both of them united, create the motive to action called the will, which stimulates him to act, and decides his actions. 4th. That the organisation of no two human beings is ever precisely similar at birth, nor can art subsequently form any two individuals, from infancy to maturity, to be the same.

5th. That nevertheless the constitution of every infant, except in case of organic disease, is capable of being formed or matured either into a very inferior or a very