ve fallen much below mediocrity.... Let a man, for instance,
like M. de Fontenelle, contemplate, without severity, the wickedness
of mankind; let him consider it, let him rise up against crimes without
hating the criminals, and people will applaud his moderation; and yet,
at the same instant, they will accuse him of being too lukewarm in
friendship. They do not perceive, that the same absence of the passions,
to which he owes the moderation they commend, must necessarily render
him less sensible of the charms of friendship."

The "abuse of words" by different schools of philosophers is thus ably
pointed out:--

"Descartes had before Locke observed that the Peripatetics, intrenching
themselves behind the obscurity of words, were not unlike a blind man,
who, in order to be a match for his clear-sighted antagonist, should
draw him into a dark cavern. 'Now,' added he, 'if this man can introduce
light into the cavern, and compel the Peripatetics to fix clear ideas
to their words, the victory is his own. In imitation of Descartes and
Locke, I shall show that, both in metaphysics and morality, the abuse of
words, and the ignorance of their true import, is a labyrinth in which
the greatest geniuses have lost themselves; and, in order to set this
particular in a clear light, instance, in some of those words which
have given rise to the longest and sharpest disputes among philosophers:
such, in metaphysics, are Matter, Space, and Infinite. It has at all
times been alternately asserted that Matter felt, or did not feel, and
given rise to disputes equally loud and vague. It was very late before
it came into the disputants! heads to ask one another, what they were
disputing about, and to annex a precise idea to the word Matter. Had
they at first fixed the meaning of it, they would have perceived, if
I may use the expression, that men were the creators of Matter; that
Matter was not a being; that in nature there were only individuals to
which the name of Body had been given; and that this word Matter could
import no more than the collection of properties common to all bodies.
The meaning of this word being determined, all that remained was to
know, whether extent, solidity, and impenetrability, were the only
properties common to all bodies; and whether the discovery of a power,
such for instance as attraction, might not give rise to a conjecture
that bodies had some properties hitherto unknown, such as that of
sensation, which, thou