and
the law. M. Villemain, the Minister of Public Instruction, being
consulted as to this particular case, finds that the painter is right;
only the property in the design should have been specially reserved in
the contract: so that, in reality, M. Villemain recognizes in the artist
a power to surrender his work and prevent its communication; thus
contradicting the legal axiom, One CANNOT GIVE AND KEEP AT THE SAME
TIME. A strange reasoner is M. Villemain! An ambiguous principle leads
to a false conclusion. Instead of rejecting the principle, M. Villemain
hastens to admit the conclusion. With him the _reductio ad absurdum_ is
a convincing argument. Thus he is made official defender of literary
property, sure of being understood and sustained by a set of loafers,
the disgrace of literature and the plague of public morals. Why, then,
does M. Villemain feel so strong an interest in setting himself up as
the chief of the literary classes, in playing for their benefit the role
of Trissotin in the councils of the State, and in becoming the
accomplice and associate of a band of profligates,--_soi-disant_ men of
letters,--who for more than ten years have labored with such deplorable
success to ruin public spirit, and corrupt the heart by warping the
mind?]

[Footnote 70: M. Leroux has been highly praised in a review for having
defended property. I do not know whether the industrious encyclopedist
is pleased with the praise, but I know very well that in his place I
should mourn for reason and for truth.]

[Footnote 71: "Impartial," of Besancon.]

[Footnote 72: The Arians deny the divinity of Christ. The Semi-Arians
differ from the Arians only by a few subtle distinctions. M. Pierre
Leroux, who regards Jesus as a man, but claims that the Spirit of God
was infused into him, is a true Semi-Arian.

The Manicheans admit two co-existent and eternal principles,--God and
matter, spirit and flesh, light and darkness, good and evil; but, unlike
the Phalansterians, who pretend to reconcile the two, the Manicheans
make war upon matter, and labor with all their might for the destruction
of the flesh, by condemning marriage and forbidding reproduction,--which
does not prevent them, however, from indulging in all the carnal
pleasures which the intensest lust can conceive of. In this last
particular, the tendency of the Fourieristic morality is quite
Manichean.

The Gnostics do not differ from the early Christians. As their name
indicate