ternal nature could not have supplied, for there is nothing there answering to it. I have not arrived at it by a mere negation of finite qualities, because there is more reality and positiveness to me in this infinity than in the finite existences by which I am surrounded. Nor can it be a delusion of my fancy, for it is the most real of all my thoughts. It is not a combination of my imagination, for it is the most simple of all my conceptions: it is as true to me as the consciousness of my own existence. Therefore, God exists: the idea answers to a reality; and that reality is GOD.

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Hobbes, Gassendi, and all the rest of Descartes's opponents, contest the wording and form of this immortal argument; and, perhaps, if we analyze it into a syllogism, it will fall to pieces. We are disposed to say, however, that 'cogito ergo sum,' and 'cogito ergo Deus,' are great intuitions rather than demonstrations: that they express deep ineradicable convictions of the reason, from which we cannot escape; and that the great failure of Descartes was, that he did not also propound a cogito ergo natura,' and, upon these three cognitions, build the whole structure of his ontology. When either of these three statements becomes subordinate to the other two-when the validity of one of them is made to rest on the insecure treatment of logical forms, a door is opened either to absolute idealism or to gross materialism. This door was opened by Descartes; through it Spinoza and all his modern followers have passed.

The second demonstration occurs in the 'Discourse on Method,' in the third Meditation,' and in the Principia.'

It is the à posteriori argument, in a metaphysical form. I am; and I have the idea of God; I cannot, then, be the author of myself, or I should have endowed myself with the. perfections of which I have the idea. If it be supposed that I have always been what I am now, that will not dispense with my having had a cause, for the mere duration of substance is only the repetition of the act by which it was first produced. To recur to my parents, or to any combination of causes save the all-perfect and infinite, will not solve the conditions of the problem. Here, therefore, my own existence and my idea of God is the demonstration of God's existence; and, Descartes concludes

• When I reflect upon myself, I know not only that I am an imperfect thing, incomplete, and dependent on another-one which tends and aspires ceaselessly to something better and greater than itself, but I know also that He on whom I depend possesses in himself all those great qualities to which I aspire."-Third Meditation.

In this argument we notice the first appearance of the great fallacy which has run through the whole of Cartesianism-viz.,

the identification of creation and conservation—the supposition that every moment is an act of repeated creation; that there is no force in substance, no activity in man. Here peeps out that perfect passivity, both of matter and mind, which became so fearful a tool in the hands of Spinoza, and has been the fruitful source of the errors which, by denying the personality of man, have obliterated from the universe a personal God.

There has been great difference of opinion about the third argument; we will quote from the Principia' and the 'Discours de la Méthode ?’–

'Cum autem mens quæ se ipsam novit. . . primo quidem invenit apud se multarum rerum ideas. . . . Considerans deinde inter diversas ideas, quas apud se habet, unam esse entis summe intelligentis summe potentis et summe perfecti quæ omnium longe præcipua est, agnoscit in ipsa existentiam, non possibilem et contingentem tantum quemadmodum in ideis aliarum omnium rerum, quas distincte percipit sed omnino necessariam et æternam. Atque ut ex eo quod exempli causa, percipiat in idea trianguli necessario contineri, tres ejus angulos æquales esse duobus rectis, plane sibi persuadet triangulum tres angulos habere æquales duobis rectis-ita ex eo solo, quod percipiat, existentiam necessariam et æternam in entis summe perfecti idea contineri plane concludere debet ens summe perfectum existere.'-Principia I. §§ 13, 14. 'The existence of the Perfect Being is comprised in the idea of Him in the same way that the equality of its three angles to a right angle is comprised in the idea of a triangle.'-Trans. Discourse on Method, p. 79.

Now Jules Simon has well put it :

The idea of the essence of God implies the existence of God; there is, then, an identity between conceiving the idea of God, and conceiving clearly that God is.'

Mr. Lewes tells us that this last is the most perfect demonstration of the three, and he puts it into the form of a syllogism, with the criterion for the major premiss. Mr. Hallam seems, with all his clearness, to be quite mystified about it, and unable to comprehend its meaning; and M. Bouillier pronounces it utterly worthless. We are glad that such a momentous truth does not rest on such an insecure demonstration, even in the theories of Descartes.

If now, having established, as he thought, the Being of a God of infinite wisdom, power, and goodness, he had proceeded with his criterion to reason out the truthfulness of our sense perceptions, and if he had recognised the validity of our indestructible common sense, when we transform our impressions into perceptions, and are convinced of the existence of an external world, he would have laid the foundation for a true science, as well as uttered the birth-cry of modern philosophy.

But he rendered this great persuasion of the human reason insecure by the position which he gave it in the temple of truth.

Having established two great fundamental propositions, he advances to the proof of an external world. The very circumstance that he thought it worth his while to prove this great reality betrays the insecurity of his principles.

'I think, therefore I am,' is indisputable; and if Descartes had deduced hence the properties and not the essence of thought, we should have a different history of Cartesianism to relate. By making thought the essence of the substance-mind, as extension was the essence of the substance-matter, he gave to Malebranche and Spinoza, those principles on which we have already remarked. Vast, also, was the chasm thus opened between mind and matter, and profound the problem which was thus revived for subsequent metaphysicians to solve. All Cartesians saw the distinction between these substances-mind and matter; but they differed widely as to the mode of bringing out their harmony. Malebranche could have done very well without matter altogether; he believed in it, on the testimony of Scripture only; Spinoza said, extension and thought are not substances, but attributes of the infinite substance, and that their harmony springs from the oneness of their origin. Leibnitz saw a' pre-established harmony' between them; such as might be supposed to prevail between two mechanisms of some great contriver, which were founded on the same principle, and, without connexion, imitated one another's movements. And if we suppose the two mechanisms to be two pieces of clockwork, so constructed that when one is on the point of striking, the Deity interposes, and, by a direct act, causes the other to follow its example, we have the theory of occasional causes' suggested either by Regis, Clauberg, or Geulincx, and adopted by Malebranche. However fruitless, these discussions proved of immediate result, the psychological method of Descartes became that of Spinoza on the one hand, and even of Locke and Leibnitz on the other, so that all that has been developed in the more recent philosophies of France, Germany, or Scotland, owes its origin indirectly to the genius and daring of this one man.

Descartes, by dedicating his meditations to the doctors of the Sorbonne, and by requesting them to endorse his rebellion against their immemorial rights, struck a sly and fatal blow at their influence; while, by appealing to the people, he laid the foundations of another despotism scarcely less galling, though of a different class. There was the tyranny of a literary democracy, when the fate of poet and philosopher, essayist, dramatist, and divine, was settled by the satire of Boileau, and the wit of Voltaire. The people-or rather the mob of jour

nalists and journal readers shouted applause to the dicta of their favourite, and he became the fountain of authority and the arbiter of taste. Fashion now reigned instead of truth, and whereas once the knee was bent to learned doctors, these learned doctors now received the only diploma that could be worn from 'Les Bas Bleues.'

The history of superstition, of tyranny, and of literary despotism, falls into the same circle. The breaking of crosses, the fall of monarchies, the overthrow of Sorbonnes, require for their comprehension one embracing glance.

The effects of the eikonoclasm of a Gallican mob, and of the feverish excitement of the Age of Terror,' will never cease; and, in the same way, the vibrations of the battle-cries raised by the startling paradoxes and new spirit of Descartes, will never be spent.

To trace the history of Cartesianism is to ascend an ancient river whose banks are studded with hoary ruins. Occasional disturbance in the celestial origin of its waters creates a tidal swell through its whole extent. Fertility is educed from the slime that it deposits on the deserts by its side. Mystic temples, written over with cabalistic signs, loom ghostlike from amid its islands and behind its cataracts; nor are its waters unsaluted with a bard-like monument that gazes on the sunrising; the seeds that were buried a thousand years ago in tombs excavated in the rocks through which it found its way, still retain their vitality; and every museum of wonder throughout the world contains the mummied corpses of its defunct heroes, and fragments of the palaces in which they dwelt.

ART. II.-Tales and Traditions of Hungary. By Francis and Theresa Pulszky. In 3 vols. London: Colburn.

It is something remarkable to see two foreigners, husband and wife, writing, after a brief sojourn amongst us, in our own language with a freedom and correctness, nay more, with an unconstrained eloquence, which would do great honour to any native author. We are equally at a loss to distinguish the style of these accomplished Hungarians from that of English-born authors, and that of one from the other. Driven from Hungary by the unhappy turn of the revolution there, Mr. and Mrs. Pulszky, distinguished by their talents, as well as their pro

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perty and station in their fatherland, disdain to spend their days in aristocratic indolence, but occupy themselves in making us acquainted with the literature and social and political circumstances of their country, thereby, at the same time, enabling them the better to assist their fellow exiles who are less fortunately circumstanced. This is in itself truly meritorious, and the manner in which they acquit themselves in a strange tongue, entering boldly into competition with the splendid array of our native writers, is quite extraordinary.

The contents of these volumes consist of a number of short stories which occupy the first, and a romance by Mr. Pulszky, which runs through the remaining two. Of the shorter stories there are several, such as the Guardians,' 'the Loves of the Angels,'' the Maid and the Genii,' and 'Ashmodai, the Lame Demon,' which are derived from Jewish traditions, and are pretty well known to the English reader. The Maid and the Genii,' is the legend of Harut and Marut, who are said, by the Jews, in punishment of their abandoning fidelity to heaven for the love of an earthly damsel, to be confined in a deep cavern, or, as it is here given, in two wells, under Babylon, and to hang there in chains till the day of Judgment. Ashmodai is the well-known Diable Boiteux, or Devil on Two Sticks. The rest of the legends are more national and unknown to us, except the one called The Hair of the Orphan Girl,' which is the Hungarian version of that almost universally diffused legend of the Fairy Godmother-the Cinderella of England, the Aschenputtel of Germany, and the Kari Trästak of Norway. In this version of the story, the false Cinderella, the ugly daughter of the wicked stepmother, when attempting to impose on the prince, wears the splendid hair of the true Cinderella, which the base stepmother had shorn from the orphan girl for the purpose. It is rent away by a tempest on the wedding-day, and dispersed over all the land. When the bridal procession of the true Cinderella returned over the heath from the cathedral to the palace, all the hills around were adorned with golden bunches-the hair which the storm had rent from the false bride. It still adorns the heaths of Hungary, and its name, 'the hair of the orphan girl,' reminds the shepherd of the beautiful Ellen.

'At every election in Hungary,' says our authors, each of the parties chooses its standard and its party sign, which they wear in their hats: a rose, a green branch, a cock's, or an ostrich's feather. The prettiest of the signs is, no doubt, the feathergrass, bearing from afar the semblance of a bird of paradise. It is extremely sensitive; unfolding of itself when exposed to the sun's rays, while its delicate fibres shrink from rain.'

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