.

It is not our purpose here to summarize Mr. Gibson's admirable work, or
to give even an outline of so well-known a history; but rather to
attempt some brief criticism of the man himself, and incidentally of his
views.

Temperament and early education are among the principal determinants of
character; and certainly when we contrast Feli with his brother Jean,
who presumably received the same home-training, we see how largely he
was the creature of temperament. Jean was by nature the "good boy,"
tractable and docile; Feli, the unmanageable, the lawless, the violent.
While Jean was dutifully learning his lessons to order, Feli, the
obstreperous, imprisoned in the library, was feeding his tender mind
with Diderot, Montaigne, Pascal, Voltaire, Rousseau, and similar diet,
and at twelve exhibited such infidel tendencies as made it prudent to
defer his first Communion for some ten years.

From first to last, whether we consider his childish waywardness and
outbreaks of violent passion, which persevered in a less childish form
through manhood; or the fits of intense depression and melancholy,
alternating with spells of high nerve-tension and feverish excitement;
or the restlessness and impatient energy which showed themselves always
and everywhere, and at times drove him like a wild man into the woods,
"seeking rest and finding none;" or the prophetic, not to say, the
fanatical strain which breaks out in so much of his writing, especially
in the _Paroles d'un Croyant_,--in all alike there is evident that
predominance of the imaginative and emotional elements which, combined
with intellectual gifts, constitute genius as commonly understood. For
such a character the training which would suffice for half a dozen good
little Jeans would be wholly inadequate. So much fire and feeling ill
submits to the yoke of self-restraint in matters moral or intellectual.
The mind is apt to be fascinated by the brilliant pictures of the
imagination and to become a slave to the tyranny of a fixed idea; while
the strength of passionate desire paralyzes the power of free
deliberation. It is precisely this self-restraint, the fruit of a
careful education given and responded to, that we miss in De Lammenais
both in his moral character and in his mind. Peace and tranquillity of
soul are essential to successful thinking, more especially in
philosophy; and in proportion as a brilliant imagination is a help, it
is also a danger if let run riot. At ti