OF THE SOUL. 227 



this country the philosophy, and especially the psy- 

 chology, of the Scottish school met with due recog- 

 nition by the French philosophers of the time of the 

 Eestoration. 



As is well known, and has been mentioned in the 

 course of this History, the philosophy of Locke was 

 introduced into France mainly through the influence 

 of Voltaire, who made it, as well as the natural phil- 

 osophy of Newton, a prominent subject in his ' Lettres 

 sur les Anglais/ published in 1731. 



The new ideas which were contained in this philosophy 25. 



. British ideas 



fell upon a more genial soil in France, where everything carried over 

 was prepared to receive the seed of the mental revolution 

 which they contained. M. Taine has eloquently set 

 forth the reasons why the philosophy of the eighteenth 

 century, which was born in England, met with its full 

 development in France. " The new seed fell upon a 

 suitable soil in the country of the classical spirit. In 

 this country of logical reasoning it did not meet any 

 of those rivals which choked it on the other side of 

 the Channel, and it not only acquires immediately the 

 force of the rising sap, but also the organ of propagation 

 which was wanting. This organ is the art of language : 

 eloquence applied to the most serious subjects, the talent 

 of illuminating everything. The good writers of this 

 nation express things better than those of any other 

 nation. Their books teach little to genuine scholars, 

 but it is by the art of language that men are ruled, 

 and the mass of them, continually driven away from 

 the sanctuary of the sciences by the severe style and 

 the execrable taste of other learned works, cannot 



