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Human life is not yet so well known, as that we can have it. And take the case of a man who is ill. I call two physicians: they differ in opinion. I am not to lie down, and die between them: I must do something. The conversation then turned on Atheism; on that horrible book, Système de la Nature ; and on the supposition of an eternal necessity, without design, without a governing mind.
Review of the Later Work. Identification of Fishes by the Skull. Renewed Correspondence with Prince Canino about Journey to the United States. Change of Plan owing to the Interest of the King of Prussia in the Expedition. Correspondence between Professor Sedgwick and Agassiz on Development Theory. Final Scientific Work in Neuchatel and Paris. Publication of "Systeme Glaciaire."
The journey was, of course, a difficult one at such a season, but the weather was beautiful, and they accomplished it in safety, though not without much suffering. They found no water except the pure and limpid water from springs that never freeze. The glacier lay dead in the grasp of winter. The results of this journey, tables of temperature, etc., are recorded in the "Systeme Glaciaire."
Holbach's Système de la Nature ou des Lois du Monde Physique et du Monde Moral. Voltaire's Dieu et les Hommes; oeuvre théologique, mais raisonnable . No one writer, indeed, of the eighteenth century contributed so many books to the flames as Voltaire.
PROF. SAISSET, Introduction, p. M. L'ABBÉ DE CONDILLAC, "Traité des Sensations," 2 vols. The HON. ROBERT BOYLE, "Theological Works," II. 79. "A Free Inquiry into the Received Notion of Nature." "Systême de la Nature," II. 75, 110, 115.
In the mechanical philosophy which presented itself in the Système de la Nature as a positive substitute for his lost faith, he found only that which filled his poet's soul with horror. 'It appeared to us, he says, 'so grey, so cimmerian and so dead that we shuddered at it as at a ghost. We thought it the very quintessence of old age. All was said to be necessary, and therefore there was no God.
Now, it would appear that Immanuel Kant was the man of destiny for the work of the reorganisation of ethical and religious life. I look upon him as the morning star of the New Reformation. He witnessed in his own day the very low-water mark of scepticism, reaching even to the gross atheism of Holbach in the Système de la Nature.
We might say with Scarron: "Et je vis l'ombre d'un esprit Qui tracait l'ombre d'um systeme Avec l'ombre de l'ombre meme." This abolition of nature by natural science is logical, and it was, in fact, Schelling's starting-point. From the standpoint of physiology, nature is but a necessary illusion, a constitutional hallucination.
The same theory, in substance, had been broached in the "Systême de la Nature," and there it was applied in support of the atheistic conclusions of that remarkable treatise. But it may be said to have been methodized by Volney; and in his treatise it is exhibited in a form adapted to popular instruction. There is a striking resemblance between his speculations and those of Mr. Combe.
The Exposition du Système du Monde is the Mécanique Céleste divested of the great apparatus of analytical formulæ which ought to be attentively perused by every astronomer who, to use an expression of Plato, is desirous of knowing the numbers which govern the physical universe.
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