and indeed he triumphs in that part of his book, where he asks Hilas what this same subject, this SUBSTRATUM, this substance, is? It is, answers Hilas, the body extended; then the bishop, under the name of Philonoüs, laughs at him; and poor Hilas, perceiving that he had said extension was the subject of extension, and thus had talked sillily, is quite abashed, and owns that it is utterly inconceivable to him; that there is no such thing as body; that the world, instead of being material, as commonly thought, is intellectual.

It would have become Philonoüs only to have said to Hilas, we know nothing concerning the constitution of this subject, of this extended, solid, divisible, moveable, figured, substance, &c. We know no more of it than of the thinking, feeling, and willing subject; still this subject certainly exists, since it has essential properties from which it cannot be separated.

We are all, like the Paris ladies; they live high without knowing the ingredients in ragouts; so we make use of bodies without knowing the composition of them. What is body made of? of parts, and these parts are reducible to other parts. What are those last parts? still bodies; so you go on dividing, and are never nearer the mark.

At length, a subtile philosopher, observing that a picture is made of ingredients, none of which is a picture, and a house of materials of which none is a house, fancied bodies to be constructed of innumerable little beings, which are not bodies, and these are the MONADES SO much talked of. This system, however, has its fair side, and, had it been confirmed by Revelation, I should think it very possible. All D 3 these

these minute beings would be mathematical points, species of souls waiting only for a tegument to put themselves into it; this would make a continual metempsychosis, a monade entering sometimes into a whale, sometimes into a tree, and sometimes into a juggler. This system is full as good as another; I can relish it full as well as the declension of atoms, the substantial forms, versatile grace, and Don Calmet's vampires.

THE CHINESE CATECHISM;

OR

DIALOGUES between Cu-su, a disciple of CoNFUCIUS, and Prince Kou, son to the King of Lou, tributary to the CHINESE emperor GNENVAN, four hundred and seventeen years before

our common æra.

Translated into LATIN by Father FOUQUET, formerly a Jesuit. The manuscript is in the VATI CAN library, Number 42759.

Κου.

WHAT is meant by my duty to worship hea

ven (Chang-ti)?

Cu-su. Not the material heaven, which we see with our eyes; for this heaven is nothing but the air, and the air is composed of every kind of earthly exhalations. Now what a folly would it be to worship vapours?

Kou. It is, however, what I should not much wonder at; men, in my opinion, have given into greater follies.

CU-SU.

Cu-su. Very true; but you being born to rule over others, it becomes you to be wise. Kou. There are whole nations who worship heaven and the planets.

Cu-su. The planets are only so many earths like ours; the moon, for instance, might as well worship our sand and dirt, as we prostrate ourselves before the moon's sand and dirt.

Kou. What is the meaning of what we so often hear; heaven and earth, to go up to heaven, to be deserving of heaven?

CU-SU. It is talking very sillily; there is no such thing as heaven ('); every planet is environed with its atmosphere as with a shell, and rolls in the space round its sun; every sun is the center of several planets, which are continually going their rounds; there is neither high nor low, up nor down. Should the inhabitants of the moon talk of going up to the earth, of making one's self deserving of the earth, it would be talking madly; and we are little wiser in talking of deserving heaven. We might as well say a man must make himself deserving of the air, deserving of the constellation of the dragon, deserving of space.

Kou. I believe I understand you; we are only to worship God who made heaven and earth.

CU-SU. To be sure, we are to worship God alone. But in saying that he made heaven and earth, however devout our meaning may be, it

is

(1) This is only disputing about words; a place of future rewards, which the Chinese philosopher seems to allow, is Heaven, wherever it be.

is talking very sillily. For if by heaven we mean the prodigious space in which God kindled so many suns, and set so many worlds in motion, it is much more ridiculous to say, Heaven and "earth," than to say, "the mountains and a grain "of sand." Our globe is infinitely less than a grain of sand, in comparison of those millions of ten thousands of millions of worlds, among the infinitude of. which we are lost. All that we can do, is to join our feeble voice to that of the innumerable beings, which, throughout the abyss of expansion, ascribe homage and glory to their adorable Creator.

Kou. It was, then, a great imposition to tell us, that Fo came down among us from the fourth heaven, assuming the form of a white elephant.

Cu-su. These are tales which the bonzes tell to old women and children. The eternal Author of all beings is alone to be worshipped.

Kou. But how can one being make the other beings?

Cu-su. You see yonder star: it is fifteen hundred thousand millions of Lis from our globe, and emits rays which on your eyes form two angles equal at the top; and the like angles they form on the eyes of all animals; is not this manifest design? Is not this an admirable law? and is it not the workman who makes a work? and who frames laws but a legislator? Therefore there is an eternal Artist, an eternal Legislator.

Kou. But who made this Artist, and what is he like?

Cu-su. My dear prince, as I was yesterday walking near the vast Palace, lately built by the

king your father, I over-heard two crickets; one said to the other, What a stupendous fabric is here! Yes, said the other; and though I am not a little proud of my species, he who has made this prodigy, must be something above a cricket; but I have no idea of that being; such a one I see there must be, but what he is I know

not.

Kou. You are a cricket of infinitely more knowledge than I; and what I particularly like in you, is your not pretending to know what you really do not know.

SECOND DIALOGUE.

CU-SU. You allow, then, that there is an Almighty Being, self-existent, supreme Creator, and Maker of all nature.

Kou. Yes; but if he be self-existent he is unlimited, consequently he is every-where, he exists throughout all matter, and in every part of myself.

Cu-su. Why not?

Kou. I should then be a part of the Deity. CU-SU. Perhaps that may not be the consequence; behold this piece of glass, you see the light penetrates it every where, yet will you say it is light? It is mere sand, and nothing more: unquestionably every thing is in God; that by which every thing is animated must be every where. God is not like the Emperor of China, who dwells in his palace, and sends his orders by kolaos. As existing he must necessarily fill the whole of space, and all his works; and since he is in you, this is a continual document never to do any thing to raise shame or remorse.

Κου.