your liberty? Do not you become a slave? Do not you engage in excessive expences, to obtain a destructive pleasure? Do not you find yourself unable to do good, and constrained to follow those things which you would despise, if your reason were not corrupted?" "O God!" said Xenophon," this is to attribute a strange power to a kiss." "Are you astonished at it?" says Socrates. "Do not you see little spiders, whose bite is so venomous that it causes strange pains, and makes people lose their senses?" "I know it very well," said Xenophon; "but those creatures spit out their poison when they bite." "Do you think," added Socrates, "that love-kisses are not venomous, because you do not see the poison? Know that a fair woman is an animal more dangerous than scorpions, because they cannot hurt unless they touch us; but beauty wounds us without coming near us. What way soever we perceive it, it shoots out its venom, and perverts our understandings. Perhaps it is for this reason, that the Cupids are represented with bows and arrows, because a fair face wounds us from afar. I advise you then, Xenophon, when you see any beauty, to fly without looking behind you; and as for you, Critobulus, I think it would be proper for you to be absent a whole year: for that will be time little enough to heal your wound."

Can any morality be more worthy of a great philosopher than this? Our good Casuists would not judge it too severe, nor find any hyperbole in the comparisons of Socrates. The maxims of an ancient Roman had no less rigour. He had a freedman whom he loved very much, and a daughter who began to grow marriageable. He knew that this freed-man had kissed her, and punished him severely, though there was something which might be urged as an excuse in the circumstances of that fault; but he had no regard to that, nor to the friendship he had for the criminal, he considered only the consequences of

the punishment. Penelope would not have thought this morality too severe. We have spoken of a Florentine lady who managed herself after this rule, and of a law which was grounded on the same maxim. This law subsists no longer in France, but it is not abrogated at Naples. Half the donations of the man who is contracted, and dies before the consummation, belongs to the woman, if she gave him a kiss, but otherwise she has nothing. These are maxims unknown to a great many nations, that judge of things quite otherwise, and do not set them at so high a rate. We will quote the author of the Saint Evremoniana. "A kiss, which in Turkey, Italy, and Spain, is the beginning of adultery, at Paris is only a mere civility; and if that Persian, who made so many mysterious voyages to get three kisses of the fair Cyrus, had been in Paris, he would not have valued that pleasure so much as he did. There are no visits now in which there are not kisses, but they are like money, which we value just as we please; and as kisses are a merchandise which costs nothing, and does not wear out, and is always plentiful, nobody is sparing of them, and few are greedy of them." What I am going to quote out of Montaigne is not of the same sort, for that author considered only kisses of civility; but as what he says is an evidence of the custom of his time, I may join it to the words of Saint Evremoniana. The reader will distinguish where there is occasion. "Scarcity gives a relish to meat. Thus the manner of salutations, which is particular to our nation, takes off, by its frequency, the pleasure of kisses, which Socrates says, is so dangerous and powerful to steal our hearts. It is an unpleasant custom, and injurious to the ladies, to hold out their lips to every one who has three footmen in his retinue, how disagreeable soever he be.

Cujus livida naribus caninis
Dependet glacies rigetque barba:
Centum occurrere malo culilingis.

MART. Epigr. VII.

And we ourselves do not get much by it; for, as the world is at present, we must kiss fifty ugly ones for three that are handsome; and for a tender stomach, as such of my age have, one bad kiss is too much for a good one."

In respect to this custom in England, we have the following curious passage in one of the epistles of Erasmus. "If you did but sufficiently know, my Faustus, the pleasures of England, you would haste hither with wings at your feet, or if your gout would not permit you to do that, you would wish yourself a Dedalus. To mention only one pleasure out of multitudes: here are nymphs beautiful as angels, lovely and debonair; you would readily confess that your Muses are not to be compared to them. Besides, we have a custom which can never be sufficiently commended. Wherever you go, you shall be welcomed with kisses from them all; and when you depart, you shall be dismissed with as endearing a farewell: return, the same sweet welcome shall be repeated. Do they take their leave of you, kisses are exchanged at parting. Wherever you meet them, you feast on their rosy lips. In a word, all places you enter are full of kisses, which, my friend, had you once but tasted, how soft, how fragrant they are, you would not, I am positive, like Solon desire to live ten years, but till death, in England." You see that Erasmus did not like English women less than Englishmen.

To conclude, I must needs say that Puteanus was much in the right, not to breed an Italian girl as they did the Flemish ones. All must act in such an affair, according to the law of custom; neither the law of nations, nor the law of nature include this part of education: the diversity of climates and opinions is the best rule here.-Art. PUTEANUS.

LACTANTIUS.

(His Arguments against Philosophy.)

LACTANTIUS pretends to destroy all philosophy, by maintaining with Socrates, that we can know nothing, and, with Zeno, that nothing is to be believed, but what we know. "Si neque sciri," says he, "quicquam potest, ut Socrates docuit, nec opinari oportet, ut Zeno, tota philosophia sublata est." He confirms his pretence by the great number of sects into which philosophy was divided. Each engrossed truth and wisdom to itself, and made error and folly the portion of all the rest. So that whatever particular sect we would condemn, we have the suffrages of all the other philosophers, who are not of that sect. We are sure then of a majority in condemning them all; for each in particular approves our judgment as to all the rest; and has nothing to oppose, in bar against a general sentence, but the testimony it gives itself; in which case it is a judge in its own cause, and consequently unworthy of credit. They destroy each other," says he, "like Cadmus's brood, not one of them is left alive; and the reason is, because they have, indeed, each a sword, but no buckler: they have arms for an offensive, but not for a defensive war." Arcesilas observing this, took up arms against them all, and founded a new sect of philosophy, which consisted in not philosophising at all. He introduced a kind of wavering, uncertain philosophy; for in order to know, that nothing can be known, we must necessarily know something; for if you know nothing at all, this very knowledge, that nothing can be known, will be destroyed. He therefore who gives it as his opinion that nothing is known, professes to know something; something therefore may be known. Akin to this is that example of this kind of philosophy usually proposed in the schools; that

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a certain person dreamt that he ought not to believe in dreams. For if he did believe in them, it follows, that he ought not to believe in them; but if he did not believe in them, it follows, that he ought to believe in them. Thus, if nothing can be known, we must necessarily know this very hing, that nothing is known. But if it be known, that nothing can be known, it is false which is pretended that nothing can be known. Thus an opinion is advanced which is repugnant to, and destructive of itself." Lastly, Lactantius confesses, that with relation to physics, there is no such thing as science, and that it ought not to be so much as sought after. "How much more wisely and truly would Arcesilas have reasoned if he had said only, that the causes and reasons of heavenly or natural things, as being hid, could not be known; since there is no teacher to instruct us in them; and that we ought not to inquire after them, since no inquiry will discover them?"

Let us briefly observe on this dispute. The argument which Lactantius makes use of to overthrow all the sects of philosophy by each other, proves too much. An atheist, who should make use of it, at present, to overthrow the Christian religion, would reason ill; the Christian sects mutually condemn each other; I grant it; but if you should condemn any one of them in all its doctrinal points, you would not have the suffrages of all the rest. Lactantius contradicts himself wretchedly. He confesses, that if there be no science among men, Arcesilas gains the victory; and he pretends to have demonstrated, that we are too frail to attain to science. Why then does he presently add, that Arcesilas loses the victory, because there are actually several sciences among men? The examples he alleges are nothing to the purpose; for in the sense in which the word is taken in this dispute, it is not science to discern good from bad; nor has this kind of knowledge been called in question by the