The philosophical aim and ambition of the author at once appear in the inquiry which he institutes for the three several animating _principles_ of the several forms of government respectively distinguished by him; namely, democracy (or republicanism), monarchy, and despotism. What these three principles are will be seen from the following statement: "As _virtue_ is necessary in a republic, and in a monarchy _honor_, so _fear_ is necessary in a despotic government." The meaning is that in republics virtue possessed by the citizens is the spring of national prosperity; that under a monarchy the desire of preferment at the hands of the sovereign is what quickens men to perform services to the State; that despotism thrives by fear inspired in the breasts of those subject to its sway. To illustrate the freely discursive character of the work, we give the whole of chapter sixteen--there are chapters still shorter--in Book VII.: AN EXCELLENT CUSTOM OF THE SAMNITES. The Samnites had a custom which in so small a republic, and especially in their situation, must have been productive of admirable effects. The young people were all convened in one place and their conduct was examined. He that was declared the best of the whole assembly had leave given him to take which girl he pleased for his wife; the second best chose after him, and so on. Admirable institution! The only recommendation that young men could have on this occasion was their virtue and the service done their country. He who had the greatest share of these endowments chose which girl he liked out of the whole nation. Love, beauty, chastity, virtue, birth, and even wealth itself, were all, in some measure, the dowry of virtue. A nobler and grander recompense, less chargeable to a petty state and more capable of influencing both sexes, could scarce be imagined. The Samnites were descended from the Lacedemonians; and Plato, whose institutes are only an improvement of those of Lycurgus, enacted nearly the same law. The relation of the foregoing chapter to the subject indicated in the title of the book is sufficiently obscure and remote for a work like this, purporting to be philosophical. What relation exists seems to be found in the fact that the custom described tends to produce that popular virtue by which republics flourish. But the information, at all events, is curious and interesting. The following paragraphs, taken from the second chapter of Book XIV., contain in germ a large part of the philosophy underlying M. Taine's essays on the history of literature: OF THE DIFFERENCE OF MEN IN DIFFERENT CLIMATES.