Pierre Sylvain, a Cartesian philosopher, was born in Agenois in the year 1632. He studied languages and philosophy under the Jesuits at Cahors, and subsequently theology at the Sorbonne at Paris. He heard Robaut's lectures on the Cartesian philosophy, which soon determined him to give up theology. In 1665 he was appointed to the philosophical chair at Toulouse, where his eloquence attracted great masses of the people. The magistrates, the learned, the ecclesiastics, and the very women, all affected to abjure the ancient philosophy. In 1680 he returned to Paris, where the concourse which followed him was such that the Peripatetics got alarmed. They applied to the Archbishop of Paris, who thought it expedient, in the name of the king, to put a stop to the lectures, which accordingly were discontinued for several months. The whole life of Regis was spent in propagating the new philosophy. In 1690 he published his Cours entier de philosophie, ou Système général selon les principes de Descartes, 4 vols., 4to, in which he embraced logic, metaphysics, physics, and morals. In the two following years he was occupied with the publication of his refutations of Huet, Duhamel, and Spinoza. In 1691 there appeared at Paris his Réponse au livre qui a pour titre Censure philosophique Cartésienne; in 1692 his Réponse aux Réflexions critiques de M. Duhamel sur le système Cartésien de la philosophie de M. Regis; and in 1704 his last work, L'Usage de la Raison et de la Foi, ou l'Accord de la Raison et de la Foi, followed by an attack on Spinoza. Regis was made a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1699, and he died in 1707. The reader may consult the Eloge de Regis by Fontenelle, the Histoire de la Philosophie du 17e siècle, by Damiron, vol. ii., p. 61, &c., and Boullier's notice of him in the Dictionnaire des Sciences Philosophiques.

REGISTRATION.