And are these sublime pressentiments only dreams after all?  Dreams!  Know you not that our dreams create nothing, and that they are never anything else than confused reminiscences and fantastic combinations of the realities of our waking consciousness?  What then is that mysterious waking during which we have seen the eternal, the infinite, the perfection of goodness, the fulness of joy, all those sublime images which come to haunt our spirit during the dream of life?  Recollections of our origin! foreshadowings of our destinies!  While then all below is transitory, and is escaping from us in a ceaseless flight, let us abandon ourselves without fear to these instincts of the soul—­

As a bird, if it light on a sprig too slight
The feathery freight to bear,
Yet, conscious of wings, tosses fearless, and sings,
Then drops—­on the buoyant air.[159]

FOOTNOTES: 

[131] Systeme de la Nature, published under the pseudonyme of Mirabaud.

[132] Systeme de la Nature, Part I. chap. 1.

[133] Ibid. Part II. chap. 14.

[134] Vie de Jesus. Dedication.

[135] Revue des Deux Mondes of 15 January, 1860.

[136] Plebeii philosophi qui a Platone et Socrate et ab ea familia dissident.

[137] Les philosophes francais du XIXe siecle, chap.  XIV.

[138] Hegel et l’Hegelianisme par M. Ed. Scherer.

[139] Page 854.

[140] Page 852.

[141] Page 856.

[142] Isa. xx. 20.

[143] Essais de critique et d’histoire, pp. 8 and 9.

[144] Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 Feb. 1861, page 855.

[145] Page 853.

[146] Page 854.

[147] Revue des Deux Mondes of the 15th Feb. 1861, page 854.

[148] Introduction a l’histoire de la philosophie.  Neuvieme lecon.

[149]

     Il repondit, baissant un oeil humide: 
     Jamais ce nom n’attristera mes vers.

[150] Introduction a l’histoire de la philosophie. Treizieme lecon.

[151]

Je prends tout doucement les hommes comme ils sont,
J’accoutume mon ame a souffrir ce qu’ils font.

[152] Nihil nefas ducere, hanc summam inter eos religionem esse. (Tit.  Liv. lib. xxxix. c. 13.)

[153]

. . . . . .  Ces haines vigoureuses
Que doit donner le vice aux ames vertueuses.

[154] Melanges de Toepffer. De la mauvaise presse consideree comme excellente.

[155] Revue des Deux Mondes of 15 Feb. 1861, page 854.—­Etudes critiques sur la litterature contemporaine, par Edmond Scherer, page x. et xi.

[156] Sa’nkya—­ka’rika’, 61 and 64.  The text 61 in which occur the words “Nothing exists” is hard to understand, but there appears to be no doubt of the meaning of No. 64. Non sum, non est meum, nec sum ego.