tive position of man in the universe, are rather exercises for ingenuity than problems for solution. Endeavours to answer them are too much (to borrow the words of an old writer) like the attempt "to draw the likeness of Proteus, or to define the figure of the fleeting air." Never has the wit of man devised a faith which is consistent with the facts of life, or which renders them clear to the hapless being who stumbles darkling among them. Nor can it be said that Voltaire has been more successful than others in this adventure, the special object of which in his case is to explain how the bestowal of happiness on man, seemingly so fortuitous, is yet consistent with divine justice. His First Discourse endeavours to establish that the measure of good and evil is equally dealt out to men in all conditions of life—a doctrine which, after all indispensable limitations, must remain of very doubtful authority. The next affirms the doctrine of free-will, and the deduction that, as man is free, his happiness rests with himself. The Third asserts that the chief obstacle to happiness is envy; the Fourth, that moderation is an essential element of happiness; the Fifth affirms, in opposition to the ascetics of the time, that pleasure is a gift of heaven, and its pursuit, within just limits, praiseworthy; the Sixth, that perfect happiness cannot be the lot of man in this world, and that the inevitable fact forms no just ground for complaint; and the Seventh, that virtue consists in promoting the happiness of our fellows, and not in vain practices of mortification. Some of these themes require no proof, some admit of none; and the reader may be apt to think that so original a mind might be better employed than in in-
