the foul perishes with the body, the value of virtue can only be appreciated by the fruits it produces in this present scene of existence, and these fruits vary according to our different conftitutions, taftes, tempers, and fituations in human life and if the foul has even a perpetual duration, but in fucceffive scenes of being, that are totally unconnected, the appreciation of virtue must fill be formed upon its influence in the present state alone. And thus (concludes our Author) ceteris paribus, it was infinitely more the intereft of Plato to be virtuous, than it was of Epicurus, confidering their respective psychological fyftems. Because to the one virtue could promife no more than the happiness of a few days, while it held out, in prospect, to the other a fcene of felicity without end. The value, therefore, and the excellence of virtue, in these oppofite fyftems, are as one age to an infinity of ages; i. e. as unity to infinite.But this is not all: for the moral notions really change in confequence of the different fyftems of Plato and Epicurus, and it is not strictly true, that virtue is always fuppofed to produce, more or lefs, happiness in both. The difciple of Epicurus, who happens to be of a voluptuous turn, and expects nothing beyond a prefent life, will be difpofed, by his fyftem, to look upon virtue and morality as vifionary, and to place his fovereign good, and confequently his rule of obligation, in the longest and fulleft enjoyment poffible of fenfual pleasures; while the Platonist regarding fenfual pleasure as a low and tranfitory thing, and virtue as fublime and immortal, will form to himself a very different notion of things, and a quite different rule of moral conduct. The Author purfues this comparison of the Platonic and Epicurean fyftems in their effects on moral conduct, or in the effects they ought naturally to produce on the conduct of men in all the ftations, relations, circumftances, and events, of human life, if men acted confiftently with their opinions, and this detail is interefting in the highest degree. He afterwards examines, in the fame manner, the influence of the Neceffitarian and Sceptical fyftems on moral notions and conduct, and difcovers the fame masterly hand in treating moral fubjects, which has procured him fuch eminent reputation in other branches of science.

MEMOIR. III. Concerning the Problem of Molyneux, by M. Merian. The Fourth Memoir.

on this intricate fub

In M. Merian's preceding Memoir ject, we faw a trial made of Berkeley's principles in the folution of this famous problem, and he continues this trial in the paper now before us. He begins here by the judgment, which the blind man, fuddenly endowed with the fenfe of feeing,

See the Appendix to Rev. vol, liii. 1776.

muft

muft pronounce concerning the terms extenfion and figure applied to visible objects, and affirms that he would not confound them with that extenfion and figure which he had already perceived by his touch; as vifible extenfion and figure and tangible extenfion and figure are neither the fame thing, nor even homogeneous, and thofe only, who have always enjoyed the fenfe of feeing, can confound, in confequence of early prejudice and illufion, things which really have nothing in common. Το illuftrate this, our Author fhews, firft, how we have acquired the habit of confounding the objects of fight and touch, and then how this confufion has paffed into our ordinary language, fo that the terms extenfion and figure exprefs equally ideas received by fight and touch. The detail into which he here enters is truly philofophical and ingenious. He not only points out the origin of this confufion in the first dawn of infancy, but alfo fhews its final causes, and its effects in the magic of painting and perspective. He then proceeds to fhew, how we perceive objects without us, which only exift in our perceptions, points out the fymbolic union between fight and touch according to the theory of Bishop Berkeley, confiders the analogy that exifts between natural and artificial language, and difcufies feveral other points, which relate to the folution of the problem under confideration. The fummary and refult of all these difquifitions is as follows:

Objects, and confequently extenfion and figure, confidered as vifible and tangible, are heterogeneous things, which have nothing fimilar, nothing in common. They are only related to each other by affociation; the union that connects them is merely fymbolic, in confequence of which they become the figns of each other, and recal each other reciprocally to the mind, as articulate founds denote and recal certain thoughts, and as written words denote and recal articulate founds.

Now, under this afpect, what becomes of the problem of Molyneux? To afk the blind man, when he has first opened his eyes to the light, which of the two visible objects is the globe and which is the cube, is it not to ask him how the tangible globe and cube are called in a language, which he does not understand? Let us fuppofe that he does not understand French; is it not as if he, continuing blind, was asked, which of the two bodies he had touched was that which the French called the globe and which that denominated the cube? Or as if, in opening his eyes, they fhewed him these words, written in French letters, which he neither could decypher nor underftand? Now the visible globe and cube are really no more than characters written or painted: they have no other relation to the tangible globe and cube than that which words bear to things; and, in order to understand them, it is neceffary to understand

understand the language: but the blind man is totally ignorant of this vifual language: its characters have no meaning to him, nor can they have any, until he has learned this language, by combining the objects of fight with thofe of touch. He there. fore ftands before his vifible globe and cube, juft as a child who does not know his letters ftands before a book.

Thus then the fundamental maxim of those who affirm that the blind man will difcern the globe from the cube, is entirely overturned by Berkeley's theory, and the reasonings they employ to maintain their folution, are involved in the fame ruin, as M. Merian propofes to fhew in another Memoir, by apply ing this theory to each of thefe reafonings fucceffively.

POLITE LITERATURE.

MEMOIR I. Concerning the Influence of the Sciences in Poetry, by M. Merian. First Memoir.

This is another problem, which may be refolved both by hiftory and philosophy, or in other words by facts, or by reafoning from the nature of things. M. Merian employs both thefe methods of folution, and the hiftorical part, which occupies him in this and in a fubfequent Memoir, is left unfinished, and is to be refumed in the following volume. The objects exhibited to us in the first of these Memoirs are, the Origin of Poetry, and an account, of the Hebrew, Celtic, and Grecian poetry. In tracing poetry to its origin, in the striking objects of nature, in the vivacity of imagination, in the want of a primitive language, and in the ardor of paffions, neither reftrained nor modified by art or experience, M. Merian difplays his ufual eloquence, and fays many good things that have been both fung and faid, times without number, before him. He turns however this origin to his purpofe, by fhewing that poetry bears no marks of its derivation from science, that it was not to any effort of intellectual faculties that we owe the first poetic numbers, and that poetry not only arofe in times of complete ignorance, but was rendered neceffary by this very ignorance to fupply the want of thofe arts that were afterwards formed by knowledge and experience, and particularly the art of writing. It is well known that the earliest legiflators and hiftorians compofed ballads, and alfo fung them.

The Author gives a most beautiful and elegant defcription of the poetry of the Hebrews, in the writings of Mofes, David, Solomon, and the prophets, on which he bestows the highest encomiums; and then proceeds to prove that poetry borrowed nothing from fcience. Here he gives a long and exaggerated defcription of the grofs ignorance of the Jewish nation." Be fore the captivity of Babylon (fays he) the Jews were not enHightened with a fingle ray of human fcience, and when, after that period, they began to ftudy philofophy, and to be divided

into different fects, the poetic fpirit had already difappeared with the prophetic. The other enlightened nations, the Greeks and Romans, looked upon the Jews as the most barbarous of barbarians; and if it must be acknowledged, that they entertained much nobler ideas of the Supreme Being, than the Gentile nations, who treated them with contempt, they obtained thefe ideas traditionally from their ancestors, who do not pretend to have formed them of themselves." M. Merian finds here the acknowledgment of a revelation favourable to his hypothefis: he leaves, at leaft, pretenfions to infpiration unmolefted, that his afperfions on the Jewish nation may not appear intuitively groundlefs. And, indeed, he is in a fort of dilemma; for if Mofes, David, Solomon, and the prophets were infpired, he must acknowledge a Divine Revelation, and if they were not infpired, his afperfions are the fruits either of grofs ignorance or of a perverfe partiality. But leaving inspiration and non-inspiration out of the queftion, it betrays either inconfideration or ignorance in our Academician to fay, that the people who had a Mofes for their founder, and a David and a Solomon for their kings, were ignorant even of the names of the fciences; that in the time of Mofes, the Egyptians were only children in intellectual improvement,-that Solomon's knowledge was confined to morals, religion, civil prudence, and the art of reigning (which by the by are no fuch small matters) and that his knowledge of plants and animals was afJuredly (are you fo fure of that, Sir?) neither botany nor anatomy. If M. Merian will be at the pains of reading, what the learned Bishop of Gloucester, in his Divine Legation of Mofes, and the Prefident Goguet in his Origin of Laws, Arts, and Sciences, have obferved with refpect to the ftate of learning and arts in Egypt, he will find his expreffions and affertions on this fubject worthy of correction.

The next clafs of Poets, that come under confideration, are thofe of the Celts, properly fo called, to whom our Author joins the German and, in general, the northern bards; and here he has no great difficulty in fhewing, that poetry arofe with mul tiplied marks of (indeed cloudy) grandeur and fublimity, even from the very bofom of ignorance and barbarifm. He here paffes in review the two Eddas, which contain the religious doctrine and mythology of Odin, and the works of Offian; and fhews, particularly in the compofitions of the latter, how force of genius, and fenfibility of heart, can bring forth the most fublime, affecting, and aftonifhing numbers, in a sphere of ideas, both narrow and barren. For there are no rays of science in the poems of Offian: and Nature, Society and Religion, which in aftertimes became fuch abundant fources of ideas and images, presented to him but a few dreary and uniform scenes. The

first (Nature) exhibited vast heaths, cloud-capped mountains, arid rocks involved in mifts, folitary vales refounding with the noife of torrents or the cries of dismal birds, pines, aged oaks, the graves of warriors covered with mofs, tempefts, whirlwinds, the ftormy and troubled fea of the Orkneys, and the north-wind whistling thro' the Caledonian forefts. The fecond (Society) in its rude state furnished him with no ideas, but what were offered by a people of hunters and navigators, without cities, laws, arts, agriculture, and even pafturage in fome fenfe: as to the third (Religion) it has no existence in the poems of Offian, and the only objects that engender here the marvellous, are ghofts and phantoms, the manes of ancient heroes fometimes riding on the waves and raifing tempefts, sometimes mounted upon clouds, and thus contemplating in folemn filence, the exploits of their defcendants.

As to the mythology of the Eddas, we have here a note, which deferves to be mentioned, as it shews that we must not give unbounded credit to these poems, nor to the conclufions that have been drawn from them, relative to the ancient poetical literature of the north. They are both confidered as, at least, liable to fufpicion, if not entirely falfe and fpurious, by fome eminent writers. The reafons for this fufpicion are as follows: The greatest part of the poetical tales and fongs of the northern bards, nay, the Edda itself came to us from Iceland during the last century. It is well known that Iceland was peopled by Norwegian fugitives, in the year 874; that it affumed the form of a republic in 928, and that its inhabitants were converted to christianity in the year 1000. About the middle of the eleventh century the Icelanders began to travel: their clergy studied in the German univerfities, and even vifited France and Italy. Hence their literature was not only infected by monaftic erudition, but also with that of the Troubadours which belongs to the fame period; and on their return to their cold country, they, in their turn, infected with this monkish erudition, the poems and traditions of the north, which were depofited among them. We must therefore (continues our Academician) diftinguish three claffes of northern geniuses: First, the Scandinavian Scaldes or Normans, ftill more ancient than the people of Iceland, and whose poems breathe yet a beautiful fimplicity, tho' perhaps adulterated in fome measure: of this number are Ragnar, Lodbrog and Thiodolf; Secondly, the Scaldes of Iceland before the chriftian æra, the difciples and fucceffors of the former: Thirdly, the Iceland poets, pofterior to the introduction of chriftianity, whose works exhibit an uncouth mixture of fcaldifm, Troubadourism, tales of knight errantry, fairy tales, and monaftic pedantry. In this third clafs, the learned men of whom we fpeak, place the Edda and confider it as a fyftem formed out of all these

rude