ho have committed the same faults; and we insist that their
actions must be measured against their opportunities. But a similar
conviction assures us that there is somewhere a point of freedom. Where
that point is--where other influences terminate, and responsibility
begins--will always be of intricate and often impossible solution. But
if there be such a point at all, it is fatal to necessitarianism, and
man is what he has been hitherto supposed to be--an exception in the
order of nature, with a power not differing in degree but differing in
kind from those of other creatures. Moral life, like all life, is a
mystery; and as to anatomise the body will not reveal the secret of
animation, so with the actions of the moral man. The spiritual life,
which alone gives them meaning and being, glides away before the logical
dissecting knife, and leaves it but a corpse to work upon.

FOOTNOTES:

[N] _Westminster Review_, 1854.

[O] Since these words were written a book has appeared in Paris by an
able disciple of Leibnitz, which, although it does not lead us to modify
the opinion expressed in them, yet obliges us to give our reasons for
speaking as we do. M. de Careil[P] has discovered in the library at
Hanover, a MS. in the hand-writing of Leibnitz, containing a series of
remarks on the book of a certain John Wachter. It does not appear who
this John Wachter was, nor by what accident he came to have so
distinguished a critic. If we may judge by the extracts at present
before us, he seems to have been an absurd and extravagant person, who
had attempted to combine the theology of the Cabbala with the very
little which he was able to understand of the philosophy of Spinoza;
and, as far as he is concerned, neither his writings nor the reflections
upon them are of interest to any human being. The extravagance of
Spinoza's followers, however, furnished Leibnitz with an opportunity of
noticing the points on which he most disapproved of Spinoza himself; and
these few notices M. de Careil has now for the first time published as
_The Refutation of Spinoza_, by Leibnitz. They are exceedingly brief and
scanty; and the writer of them would assuredly have hesitated to
describe an imperfect criticism by so ambitious a title. The modern
editor, however, must be allowed the privilege of a worshipper, and we
will not quarrel with him for an exaggerated estimate of what his master
had accomplished. We are indebted to his enthusiasm for what is a