Come to my aid, Empedocles and Democritus; come and admire the wonders of electricity; see if the sparks which traverse a thousand bodies in the twinkling of an eye are of ordinary matter; judge if elementary fire does not contract the heart, and communicate that warmth which gives life! Judge if this element is not the source of all sensation, and if sensation is not the origin of thought; though ignorant and insolent pedants have condemned the proposition, as one which should be persecuted. Tell me, if the Supreme Being, who presides over all nature, cannot forever preserve these elementary atoms which he has so rarely endowed? _"Igneus est ollis vigor et cœlestis origo._" The celebrated Le Cat calls this vivifying fluid "an amphibious being, endowed by its author with a superior refinement which links it to immaterial beings, and thereby ennobles and elevates it into that medium nature which we recognize, and which is the source of all its properties." You are of the opinion of Le Cat? I would be so too if I could; but there are so many fools and villains that I dare not. I can only think quietly in my own way at Mount Krapak. Let others think as well as they are allowed to think, whether at Salamanca or Bergamo. SECTION II. _What is Understood by Fire Used Figuratively._ Fire, particularly in poetry, often signifies love, and is employed more elegantly in the plural than in the singular. Corneille often says "_un beau feu_" for a virtuous and noble love. A man has fire in his conversation; that does not mean that he has brilliant and enlightened ideas, but lively expressions animated by action. Fire in writing does not necessarily imply lightness and beauty, but vivacity, multiplied figures, and spontaneous ideas. Fire is a merit in speech and writing only when it is well managed. It is said that poets are animated with a divine fire when they are sublime; genius cannot exist without fire, but fire may be possessed without genius. FIRMNESS. Firmness comes from firm, and has a different signification from solidity and hardness; a squeezed cloth, a beaten negro, have firmness without being hard or solid. It must always be remembered that modifications of the soul can only be expressed by physical images; we say firmness of soul, and of mind, which does not signify that they are harder or more solid than usual. Firmness is the exercise of mental courage; it means a decided resolution; while obstinacy, on the contrary, signifies blindness. Those who praise the firmness of Tacitus are not so much in the wrong as P. Bouhours pretends; it is an accidental ill-chosen term, which expresses energy and strength of thought and of style. It may be said that La Bruyère has a firm style, and that many other writers have only a hard one. FLATTERY.