Essays.

He refers to the following passage in the Gospel of St. John, xviii. 38: “Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all.”

He probably refers to the “New Academy,” a sect of Greek philosophers, one of whose moot questions was, “What is truth?” Upon which they came to the unsatisfactory conclusion, that mankind has no criterion by which to form a judgment.

Perhaps he was thinking of St. Augustine.—See Aug. Confess. i. 25, 26.

“The wine of evil spirits.”

Genesis i. 3: “And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.”

At the moment when “The Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”—Genesis ii. 7.

Lucretius, the Roman poet and Epicurean philosopher, is alluded to.—Lucret. ii. init. Comp. Adv. of Learning, i. 8, 5.