‘The orator will present three several pictures to the imagination of his supposed hearer: in the first he will represent a just king, who condemns and gives orders for the execution of a criminal; in the second, will be seen the good king, who opens the doors of his dungeon, and strikes off the chains of the same criminal; in the third picture, the criminal himself will be the principal figure, who, armed with a poniard, on his escape from his cell hastens to assassinate fifty of his fellow-citizens. But who is there that at the sight of these three pictures will not instantly perceive that justice which, by the death of a single individual, saves the lives of fifty persons, is preferable to mercy? Nevertheless, this judgment is really nothing but a sensation. In fact, if from the habit of connecting certain ideas with certain words, the sound of these words may, as experience demonstrates, excite in us almost the same sensations which we should feel from the actual presence of the objects, it is evident that from the contemplation of these three pictures, to judge that in a king justice is preferable to mercy, is to feel and see that in the first picture a single citizen is sacrificed, while in the third fifty are massacred; whence I conclude that every act of the judgment is only a sensation.’—_Helvetius on the Mind_, p. 12. On this statement I may be permitted to remark that as the author affirms that sensation is the same thing as judgment, so he seems to conceive that the assertion of any proposition is the same thing as the proof of it. He supposes three several pictures to be presented to a man of understanding, and that from an attentive contemplation and comparison of the different objects and events contained in them, he comes to a judgment or conclusion, _viz._ _That justice is preferable to mercy_. ‘Nevertheless,’ he says, ‘this judgment is really nothing but a sensation.’ This is all the proof he brings; and perhaps, considering the language and country in which this celebrated author wrote, it is reasoning good enough. Do I say this with any view to throw contempt on that lively, ingenious, gay, social, and polished people? No; but philosophy is not their _forte_: they are not in earnest in these remote speculations. In order duly to appreciate their writings, we must consider them not as the dictates of the understanding, but as the effects of constitution. Otherwise we shall do them great injustice. They pursue truth, like all other things, as far as it is agreeable; they reason for their amusement; they engage in abstruse questions to vary the topics of conversation. Whatever does not answer this purpose is banished out of books and society as a morose and cynical philosophy. To obtrude the dark and difficult parts of a question, or to enter into an elaborate investigation of them, is considered as a piece of ill-manners. Those writers, therefore, have been the most popular among