they fight each
other: their disobedience of the laws is an effect of their free-will;
they are punishable." "What a king can do in such a case," he adds, "God
who has an infinite power and prescience, infallibly does in relation to
all the actions of men." But the king, in the supposed case, does not act
on the minds of the duellists; their disposition to disobey the laws does
not proceed from him; whereas, according to the theory of Descartes,
nothing enters into the mind of man which does not spring entirely from
God. If we suppose a king, who has direct access to the mind of his
subject, like God, and who employs his power to excite therein a murderous
intent or any other particular disposition to disobey the law, we shall
have a more apposite representation of the divine agency according to the
theory of Descartes. Has anything ever been ascribed to the agency of
Satan himself which could more clearly render him an accomplice in the
sins of men?

From the bosom of Cartesianism two systems arose, one in principle, but
widely different in their developments and ultimate results. We allude to
the celebrated schemes of Spinoza and Malebranche. Both set out with the
same exaggerated view of the sublime truth that God is all in all; and
each gave a diverse development to this fundamental position, to this
central idea, according as the logical faculty predominated over the
moral, or the moral faculty over the logical. Father Malebranche, by a
happy inconsistency, preserved the great moral interests of the world
against the invasion of a remorseless logic. Spinoza, on the contrary,
could follow out his first principle almost to its last consequence, even
to the entire extinction of the moral light of the universe, and the
enthronement of blind power, with as little concern, with as profound
composure, as if he were merely discussing a theorem in the mathematics.

"All things," says he, "determined to such and such actions, are
determined by God; and, if God determines not a thing to act, it cannot
determine itself."(12) From this proposition he drew the inference, that
things which are produced by God, could not have existed in any other
manner, nor in any other order.(13) Thus, by the divine power, all things
in heaven and earth are bound together in the iron circle of necessity. It
required no great logical foresight to perceive that this doctrine shut
all real liberty out of the created universe; but it did require no