advantages it procures us, we are not good but politic; it is the highest injustice to love justice only for the sake of reward; to aspire to the table of the Gods merely to please and delight ourselves, is not to love the sovereign good, it is to degrade it and make it subservient to our interest. It was thus that souls fell from the sublime place in heaven, they loved nectar and ambrosia more than truth, and separated the love of pleasure from the love of order. To love the sovereign Beauty only as beneficent, is to love him for the finite participation of his gifts, it is to love him for what he does in us, and not for what he is in himself; it is to separate the sovereign goodness from the supreme justice; to love the immutable Beauty for his perfection, is to love him for his immense totality; it is to love him for what we know of him, and not for what we feel of him; it is to love without measure the Being wilhout limits, and it is this love which dilates, elevates, deifies, and gives a kind of immensity to the soul. I maintain therefore with all the ancients that we are not to desire admittance to the table of the Gods, but as a state in which we are united to the sovereign Beauty, transformed into his image and perfected in his love. Is Olympus less the object of our desire, because we desire it from a motive worthy of the Gods? Do we love the Gods the less, because we prefer their friendship to the nectar that is drunk at their table?

O Samiens! Anaximandre cherche nonseulement à obscurcir votre esprit, mais encore à corrompre vos mœurs; il vous trompe en s'attachant au sens littéral de votre mythologie. Les Dieux, exempts de nos faiblesses, ne descendent sur la terre pour y satifaire aucune passion. Tout ce que la sage antiquité nous raconte des amours de Jupiter et des autres Divinités, n'est qu'une allégorie ingénieuse, pour représenter les simples relations des Dieux avec les mortels depuis l'âge de fer. Vos philosophes nous représentent toujours la vertu comme une force divine descendue du ciel; ils parlent sans cesse de Divinités tutélaires qui nous inspirent, nous éclairent et nous fortifient, et cela pour prouver que les vertus héroïques ne peuvent provenir que des Dieux seuls. Mais ces poëtes qui ne cherchent qu'à plaire et à frapper l'imagination en entassant merveilles sur merveilles, ont défiguré votre mythologie par leurs fictions.

En cet endroit Anaximandre s'écria encore avec un air de zèle et d'enthousiasme : Souffrirez-vous, ô Samiens! qu'on anéantisse ainsi votre religion, en tournant ses mystères en allégories, en blasphémant contre les livres sacrés de vos poëtes, et en niant les faits les plus constans de la tradition? Pythagore renverse vos autels, vos temples et votre sacerdoce, dans le dessein de vous conduire, à l'impiété, sous prétexte de détruire la superstition. Un murmure confus s'élève aussitôt dans l'assemblée; les sentimens se partagent; la plupart des prêtres me traitent d'impie et d'ennemis de la religion. Voyant alors la dissimulation profonde d'Anaximandre, et le zèle aveugle du peuple séduit par des sophismes, il me fut im

O Samians! Anaximander endeavors not only to cloud your minds, but to corrupt your manners; he deceives you by sticking to the literal sense of your mythology. The Gods who are exempt from human frailties do not descend to satisfy any passions; all that wise antiquity tells us of the amours of Jupiter and the other Divinities, are but an ingenious allegory to represent the pure communications of the Gods with mortals since the iron age. Your philosophers always describe virtue to us as divine energy descending from heaven, they continually speak of guardian Deities, who inspire, enlighten and strengthen us, to shew that heroic virtues can proceed from the Gods alone; but those poets who seek only to please and to strike the imagination by heaping wonders upon wonders, have disfigured your mythology by their fictions.

Here Anaximander cried out again with an air of zeal and enthusiasm: Will you suffer o Samians, your religion to be thus destroyed by turning its mysteries into allegories, blas-" pheming against the sacred books of your poets," and denying the most undoubted facts of tradition? Pythagoras overthrows your altars, your temples and your priesthood, that he may lead you to impiety, under pretence of destroying superstition. A confused murmur immediately arose in the assembly; they were divided in their sentiments: the greatest part of the priests called me impious, and an enemy of religion. Perceiving then the deep dissimulation of Anaximander, and the blind zeal of the people who were deluded by

possible de me contenir, et je dis en élevant la voix :

O Roi! Pontifes et Samiens! écoutez-moi pour la dernière fois. Je n'ai pas voulu dévoiler d'abord les mystères du système monstrueux d'Anaximandre, ni chercher, dans une assemblée publique, à rendre sa personne odieuse comme il s'est appliqué à rendre la inienne j'ai respecté jusqu'ici ses cheveux blancs: mais à présent que je vois l'abîme de destruction où il cherche à vous précipiter, je ne saurais me taire plus long-tems sans trahir les Dieux et ma patrie. Anaximandre vous paraît zélé pour la religion, mais, dans le fond, il cherche à la détruire. Voici ses principes, ceux qu'il enseigne en secret à ceux qui veulent l'écouter. Tout n'est que matière et mouvement dans l'univers: dans le sein fécond d'une matière infinie tout se produit par une révolution éternelle de formes; la destruction des unes donne naissance aux autres ; le différent arrangement des atomes fait seul les différentes sortes des esprits mais tout se dissipe et se replonge dans le même abîme après la mort. Selon Anaximandre, ce qui est actuellement pierre, bois, métal, peut se dissoudre et se transformer, non-seulement en eau, en air et en pure flamme, mais même en esprit raisonnable. Selon lui, nos craintes frivoles ont creusé-les enfers, et notre imagination effrayée est la source de ces fleuves fameux qui coulent dans le sombre Tartare; notre superstition a peuplé les régions célestes de Dieux et de demi-Dieux, et c'est notre vanité qui nous fait nous imaginer que nous boirons un jour le nectar avec eux. Selon lui, la bonté et la méchanceté, la vertu et le vice, la justice et l'injustice, ne sont que les noms que

sophistry, it was impossible for me to contain myself, and rising my voice I said:

O king! Priests and Samians! hearken to me for the last time. I would not at first lay open the mysteries of Anaximander's monstrous system, nor endeavor in a public assembly to render his person odious as he has laboured to do mine: hitherto I have respected his grey hair, but now that I see the pit of destruction into which he seeks to hurry you, I can no longer be silent without being false to the Gods and to my country. Anaximander seems to you to be zealous for religion, but in reality he endeavours to destroy it. Hear what his principles are, which he teaches in secret to those who will listen to him. There is nothing in the universe but matter and motion; in the fruitful bosom of an infinite matter every thing is produced by an eternal-revolution of forms; the destruction of some is the birth of others; the different ranging of the atoms is what alone makes the different sorts of minds, but all is dissipated and plunged again into the same abyss after death. According to Anaximander, that which is now stone, wood, metal, may be dissolved and transformed not only into water, air and pure flame, but into rational spirit; according to him our own idle fears have dug the infernal pit, and our own scared imagination is the source of all those famous rivers which flow in gloomy Tartarus; our superstition has pled the celestial regions with Gods and demiGods, and it is our vanity which makes us imagine that we shall one day drink nectar with them; according to him goodness and malice, virtue and vice, justice and injustice, are hut

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