The character of the philosophy taught in the seminary was the Latin divinity of the schools--not in the outlandish and childish form which it assumed in the thirteenth century, but in the mitigated Cartesian form which was generally adopted for ecclesiastical education in the eighteenth century, and set out in the three volumes known by the name of _Philosophic de Lyon_. This name was given to it because the book formed part of a complete course of ecclesiastical study, drawn up a hundred years ago by order of M. de Montazet, the Jansenist Archbishop of Lyons. The theological part of the work, tainted with heresy, is now forgotten; but the philosophical part, imbued with a very commendable spirit of rationalism, remained, as recently as 1840, the basis of philosophical teaching in the seminaries, much to the disgust of the neo-Catholic school, which regarded the book as dangerous and absurd. It cannot be denied, however, that the problems were cleverly put, and the whole of these syllogistical dialectics formed an excellent course of training. I owe my lucidity of mind, more especially what skill I possess in dividing my subject (which is an art of capital importance, one of the conditions of the art of writing), to my divinity training, and in particular to geometry, which is the truest application of the syllogistical method. M. Manier mixed up with these ancient propositions the psychological analysis of the Scotch school. He had imbibed through his intimacy with Thomas Reid a great aversion to metaphysics, and an unlimited faith in common sense. _Posuit in visceribus hominis sapientiam_ was his favourite motto, and it did not occur to him that if man, in his quest after the true and the good, has only to explore the recesses of his own heart, the _Catéchisme_ of M. Olier was a building without a foundation. German philosophy was just beginning to be known, and what little I had been able to pick up had a strangely fascinating effect upon me. M. Manier impressed upon me that this philosophy shifted its ground too much, and that it was necessary to wait until it had completed its development before passing judgment upon it. "Scottish philosophy," he said, "has a reassuring influence and makes for Christianity;" and he depicted to me the worthy Thomas Reid in his double character of philosopher and minister of the Gospel. Thus Reid was for some time my ideal, and my aspiration was to lead the peaceful life of a laborious priest, attached to his sacred office and dispensed from the ordinary duties of his calling in order to follow out his studies. The antagonism between philosophical pursuits of this kind and the Christian faith had not as yet come in upon me with the irresistible force and clearness which was soon to leave me no alternative between the renunciation of Christianity and inconsistency of the most unwarrantable kind.