Cæsar's faction speedily became a dominant party, which swallowed up the republic. When the emperor Charles VI. disputed the throne of Spain with Philip V. he had a party in that kingdom, and at length he had no more than a faction in it. Yet we may always be allowed to talk of the "party" of Charles VI. It is different with respect to private persons. Descartes for a long time had a party in France; it would be incorrect to say he had a faction. Thus we perceive that words in many cases synonymous cease to be so in others. FACULTY. All the powers of matter and mind are faculties; and, what is still worse, faculties of which we know nothing, perfectly occult qualities; to begin with motion, of which no one has discovered the origin. When the president of the faculty of medicine in the "_Malade Imaginaire_," asks Thomas Diafoirus: "_Quare opium facit dormire_?"--Why does opium cause sleep? Thomas very pertinently replies, "_Quia est in eo virtus dormitiva quæ facit sopire."_--Because it possesses a dormitive power producing sleep. The greatest philosophers cannot speak more to the purpose. The honest chevalier de Jaucourt acknowledges, under the article on "Sleep," that it is impossible to go beyond conjecture with respect to the cause of it. Another Thomas, and in much higher reverence than his bachelor namesake in the comedy, has, in fact, made no other reply to all the questions which are started throughout his immense volumes. It is said, under the article on "Faculty," in the grand "Encyclopædia," "that the vital faculty once established in the intelligent principle by which we are animated, it may be easily conceived that the faculty, stimulated by the expressions which the vital _sensorium_ transmits to part of the common _sensorium,_ determines the alternate influx of the nervous fluid into the fibres which move the vital organs in order to produce the alternate contradiction of those organs." This amounts precisely to the answer of the young physician Thomas: "_Quia est in eo virtus alterniva quæ facit alternare_." And Thomas Diafoirus has at least the merit of being shortest. The faculty of moving the foot when we wish to do so, of recalling to mind past events, or of exercising our five senses; in short, any and all of our faculties will admit of no further or better explanation than that of Diafoirus. But consider thought! say those who understand the whole secret. Thought, which distinguishes man from all animals besides: "_Sanctius his animal, mentisque capacius altæ_." (Ovid's Metamorph. i. 76.)--More holy man, of more exalted mind! As holy as you like; it is on this subject, that of thought or mind, that Diafoirus is more triumphant than ever. All would reply in accordance with him: "_Quia est in eo virtus pensativa quæ facit pensare."_ No one will ever develop the mysterious process by which he thinks.