ain arguments which satisfied Descartes, Newton, and
Leibnitz. It has seemed to me that his understanding, a little obscured
by passion, misconceives the true purport of the reasonings which it
rejects, and by thus impairing their force, assumes to itself the right
to despise them.

The religious negations of Ausonio Franchi do not stop at Christian
dogma. He denies all value to those higher aspirations of the human soul
which constitute _reason_, in the philosophical meaning of the term.
Now, this radical negation of the reason is what those Italians who do
not scruple to practise it denominate _Rationalism_. And this very
unwarrantable use of a word is in fact only a particular case of a
general phenomenon. To criticise, means to examine the thoughts which
present themselves to the mind in order to distinguish error from truth.
The Frenchmen, who call themselves the _critics_, are men who require
that the intellect shall make itself the impartial mirror of ideas, but
shall renounce the while all discrimination between truth and error. The
term scepticism, in its primary signification, contains the idea of
inquiring, of examining; and they give the name of _sceptics_ to the
philosophers who declare that there is nothing to discover, and
consequently nothing to examine, or to search for! One is a
_free-thinker_ only on the express condition of renouncing all such
free exercise of thought as might lead to the acceptance of beliefs
generally received. This is verily the carnival of language, and the
_bal masque_ of words. These corruptions of the meaning of terms are
highly instructive. Doctrines contrary to the laws of human nature bear
witness in this way to a secret shame in producing themselves under
their true colors. Just as hypocrisy is an homage which vice pays to
virtue, so these barbarisms are an homage which error pays to truth.

To return to Italy: that beautiful and noble country has not escaped the
revival of atheism. The intoxication of a new liberty, and the political
struggles in which the Papacy is at present engaged, will favor for a
time, it may be feared, the development of evil doctrines.[85] But the
lively genius of the Italians will not be long in attaching itself
again to the grand traditions of its past history; and the inhabitants
of the land, whose soil was trodden by Pythagoras and Saint Augustine,
will not link themselves with doctrines which always run those who hold
them aground sooner or