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1840.] In the next Lecture M. Jouffroy speaks of the Skepticism of the Present Age. This is a most admirable Lecture. We will not attempt to give an outline of it, for every word of it is too precious to be omitted, and we hope that all who read our article will read this one Lecture, if they cannot be induced or cannot find time to read the whole of the two volumes. The reader will bear in mind that the author was a Frenchman, and is speaking more particularly of France, but the most of what he says is as applicable to other nations as to his own.

We have departed somewhat from the author's method of taking up his subjects. Before reviewing these four systems of Philosophy, which make a system of ethics impossible, he has two Lectures upon the facts of Man's Moral Nature. These are two excellent chapters, and contain the basis of Jouffroy's system. Their contents cannot be too deeply impressed upon the memory.

There are three successive developments in the soul, each bringing new psychological facts, new motives, and a new law of action. The first is impulse—then the intellect—and after that the spiritual faculties.

The first development is that of impulse. Thus hunger and impulses of the like kind which arise from the very constitution of our natures, are of this class. They compel us to action. These motives do not always have self, but often the good of another person for their object. Thus the mother's care of her child is of this kind. Undoubtedly it makes her happy to take care of her child. It is no less clear, that it is, in the highest sense of the word, right and duty that she should; but we suspect she does it not so much because of the happiness it will afford her, or because she thinks it is right and a duty to do it, as because she loves the child. Here then is the first class of facts in a man's moral mature. We call them impulses because they impel—because they arise in the soul, sometimes uncalled by any outward object whatever, and sometimes excited by some outward object, and impel a man from within to action.

But when the intellect comes into activity, we recollect that the gratification of our appetites gave us pleasure. Hence a desire to reproduce this pleasure or gratification becomes a motive to action. This is self love. We seek