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 Catechisme 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.

The modern philosophical works, especially those of MM.  Cousin and Jouffroy, were rarely seen in the seminary, though they were the constant subject of conversation on account of the discussion which they had excited among the clergy.  This was the year of M. Jouffroy’s death, and the pathetic despairing pages of his philosophy captivated us.  I myself knew them by heart.  We followed with deep interest the discussion raised by the publication of his posthumous works.  In reality, we only knew Cousin, Jouffroy, and Pierre Leroux by those who had opposed them.  The old-fashioned divinity of the schools is so upright that no demonstration of a proposition is complete unless followed by the formula, Solvuntur objecta.  Herein are ingenuously set forth the objections against the proposition which it is sought to establish; and these objections are then solved, often in a way which does not in the least diminish the force of the heterodox ideas which are supposed to have been controverted.  In this way the whole body of modern ideas reached us beneath the cover of feeble refutations.  We gained, moreover, a great deal of information from each other.  One of our number, who had studied philosophy in the university, would recite passages from M. Cousin to us; a second, who had studied history, would familiarise us with Augustin Thierry; while a third came to us from the school of Montalembert and Lacordaire.  His lively imagination made him a great favourite with us, but the Philosophie de Lyon was more than he could endure, and he left us.