I have read, and read over again, with scrupulous attention, the two principal philosophical treatises of M. Vacherot, _La Métaphysique et la Science ou Principes de Philosophie Positive,_ [Footnote 79] and the _Essais de Philosophie Critique_. [Footnote 80] [Footnote 79: Second edition, three vols. 12mo., 1863.] [Footnote 80: One vol. 8vo., 1864.] M. Vacherot does not desire to be, nor is he really, in his conscience and in his own eyes, an advocate either of Materialism, or Positivism, or Pantheism, or Atheism, or Skepticism. {381} He analyzes and he refutes successively these different systems, as conceived and expounded by their most distinguished representatives; he defends himself, and with warmth, from the charge of adhering to them: "a man," he says, "is not an Atheist, a Materialist, a Pantheist, an Idealist, because he does not believe in God, soul, mind, matter, world--in all these metaphysical words taken in a given acceptation. The true _Atheist_, if such a one exists, is he whose mind is grossly empirical, and wanting in the sense of what is intelligible, ideal, and divine. The true _Pantheist_ is he who identifies truth and reality, God and the world, whether, like Spinoza and Goethe, he deifies the world, or like the Stoics, he materializes God. The true _Materialist_ is he who degrades man to the beast, either by denying him his superior and really human faculties, or by deriving these from animal faculties. The true _Idealist_, like Berkeley, is he who rejects all external reality as an illusion, whatever the conception of that reality; whether it be as a thing made up of forces and of laws, or as consisting of extended matter. ... All these words require to be defined and explained, or they necessarily occasion mysteries, contradictions, and absurdities. In their vague complexities they do not express ideas of sufficient simplicity, nor do they answer to ideas sufficiently precise for science to adopt them unreservedly and without distinction. ... {382} A chosen few exist whose sympathy is dear to me; I remain profoundly attached to all the truths which they, with reason, regard as constituting the strength, life, and honor of philosophy. I remain, like them, a Spiritualist, an Idealist, a Theist, although with other methods, another language, and also, beyond a doubt, with notable reservations." [Footnote 81] [Footnote 81: La Métaphysique et la science; in the Introduction and the Preface, vol. i., pp. xvi, xxxiv.]