which controversialists and apologists usually discuss it. Far from regretting the advantages which I thus deprive myself of, I would be well pleased thereat, if I could thus convince theologians that my writings are of a different order to theirs, that they are only intended as scholarly researches, open to attack as such, when they sometimes attempt to apply to the Christian and Jewish religions the same principles of criticism which are adopted towards other branches of history and philology. Questions of a purely theological nature I am no more called upon to discuss, than are Burnouf, Creuzer, Guizniaut, and other critical historians of ancient religions, to defend the creeds which they have made their study. The history of humanity seems to me to be a vast grouping where everything, though unequal and diverse, is of the same general order, arises from the same causes, and is subject to the same laws. These laws I seek without any other intention than to understand them exactly as they are. Nothing will ever induce me to leave a sphere, humble it may be, but valuable to science, for the paths of the controversialist, who is always certain of the countenance of those interested in opposing war to war." For the polemic system, the necessity of which I do not deny, though it is neither adapted to my tastes nor to my capabilities, Voltaire was enough. One cannot be, at the same time, a good controversialist and a good historian. Voltaire, so weak in mere erudition; Voltaire who, to us initiated into a better method, seems so poorly to comprehend the spirit of antiquity, is twenty times victorious over adversaries yet more destitute of true criticism than himself. A new edition of the works of this great man would furnish a reply that is now much needed to the usurpations of theology--a reply poor in itself, but well suited to that which it would combat; a weak, old-fashioned reply to a weak, old-fashioned science. Let us, who possess a love of the true and an inquiring spirit, do better. Let us leave these discussions to those who care for them; let us work for the limited class who follow the true path of the human mind. Popularity, I know, is more easily gained by those writers who, instead of pursuing the most elevated form of truth, devote their energies to combating the opinions of their age; yet by a just compensation, they are of no value after the theories they combat are abandoned. Those who, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, refuted magic and astrology, rendered an immense service to right and truth; and yet their writings are to-day unknown, and their very victory has consigned them to oblivion.