Voltaire, The Works of Voltaire, Vol. V (Philosophical Dictionary Part 3) [1764]

Edition used:

The Works of Voltaire. A Contemporary Version. A Critique and Biography by John Morley, notes by Tobias Smollett, trans. William F. Fleming (New York: E.R. DuMont, 1901). In 21 vols. Vol. V.

Author: Voltaire

Notes: Tobias Smollett

Translator: William F. Fleming

About this title:

Volume 3 of the Philosophical Dictionary with entries from “Fanaticism” to the “Job.” The Philosophical Dictionary first appeared in 1764 in a “pocket edition” designed to be carried about one’s person. It consists of a series of short essays on a variety of topics all of which are tied together as examples of Voltaire’s withering criticism of “the infamous thing” - examples of tyranny and persecution by a privileged orthodoxy in Church and State of those individuals who disagree.

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The WORKS of VOLTAIRE

“Between two servants of Humanity, who appeared eighteen hundred years apart, there is a mysterious relation. * * * * Let us say it with a sentiment of profound respect: JESUS WEPT: VOLTAIRE SMILED. Of that divine tear and of that human smile is composed the sweetness of the present civilization.”

VICTOR HUGO.

Sans Souci

VOLTAIRE

A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY Vol. V — Part I

A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY.

FANATICISM.

SECTION I.

Fanaticism is the effect of a false conscience, which makes religion subservient to the caprices of the imagination, and the excesses of the passions.

It arises, in general, from legislators entertaining too narrow views, or from their extending their regulations beyond the limits within which alone they were intended to operate. Their laws are made merely for a select society. When extended by zeal to a whole people, and transferred by ambition from one climate to another, some changes of institution should take place, some accommodation to persons, places, and circumstances. But what, in fact, has been the case? Certain minds, constituted in a great degree like those of the small original flock, have received a system with equal ardor, and become its apostles, and even its martyrs, rather than abate a single iota of its demands. Others, on the contrary, less ardent, or more attached to their prejudices of education, have struggled with energy against the new yoke, and consented to receive it only after considerable softenings and mitigations; hence the schism between rigorists and moderates, by which all are urged on to vehemence and madness—the one party for servitude and the other for freedom.

Let us imagine an immense rotunda, a pantheon, with innumerable altars placed under its dome. Let us figure to ourselves a devotee of every sect, whether at present existing or extinct, at the feet of that divinity which he worships in his own peculiar way, under all the extravagant forms which human imagination has been able to invent. On the right we perceive one stretched on his back upon a mat, absorbed in contemplation, and awaiting the moment when the divine light shall come forth to inform his soul. On the left is a prostrate energumen striking his forehead against the ground, with a view to obtain from it an abundant produce. Here we see a man with the air and manner of a mountebank, dancing over the grave of him whom he invokes. There we observe a penitent, motionless and mute as the statue before which he has bent himself in humiliation. One, on the principle that God will not blush at his own resemblance, displays openly what modesty universally conceals; another, as if the artist would shudder at the sight of his own work, covers with an impenetrable veil his whole person and countenance; another turns his back upon the south, because from that quarter blows the devil’s tempest. Another stretches out his arms towards the east, because there God first shows His radiant face. Young women, suffused with tears, bruise and gash their lovely persons under the idea of assuaging the demon of desire, although by means tending in fact rather to strengthen his influence; others again, in opposite attitudes, solicit the approaches of the Divinity. One young man, in order to mortify the most urgent of his feelings, attaches to particular parts of his frame large iron rings, as heavy as he can bear; another checks still more effectually the tempter’s violence by inhuman amputation, and suspends the bleeding sacrifice upon the altar.

Let us observe them quite the temple, and, full of the inspiration of their respective deities, spread the terror and delusion over the face of the earth. They divide the world between them; and the four extremities of it are almost instantly in flames: nations obey them, and kings tremble before them. That almost despotic power which the enthusiasm of a single person exercises over a multitude who see or hear him; the ardor communicated to each other by assembled minds; numberless strong and agitating influences acting in such circumstances, augmented by each individual’s personal anxiety and distress, require but a short time to operate, in order to produce universal delirium. Only let a single people be thus fascinated and agitated under the guidance of a few impostors, the seduction will spread with the speed of wild-fire, prodigies will be multiplied beyond calculation, and whole communities be led astray forever. When the human mind has once quitted the luminous track pointed out by nature, it returns to it no more; it wanders round the truth, but never obtains of it more than a few faint glimmerings, which, mingling with the false lights of surrounding superstition, leave it, in fact, in complete and palpable obscurity.

It is dreadful to observe how the opinion that the wrath of heaven might be appeased by human massacre spread, after being once started, through almost every religion; and what various reasons have been given for the sacrifice, as though, in order to preclude, if possible, the escape of any one from extirpation. Sometimes they are enemies who must be immolated to Mars the exterminator. The Scythians slay upon the altars of this deity a hundredth part of their prisoners of war; and from this usage attending victory, we may form some judgment of the justice of war: accordingly, among other nations it was engaged in solely to supply these human sacrifices, so that, having first been instituted, as it would seem, to expiate the horrors of war, they at length came to serve as a justification of them.

Sometimes a barbarous deity requires victims from among the just and good. The Getæ eagerly dispute the honor of personally conveying to Zamolxis the vows and devotions of their country. He whose good fortune has destined him to be the sacrifice is thrown with the greatest violence upon a range of spears, fixed for the purpose. If on falling he receives a mortal wound, it augurs well as to the success of the negotiation and the merit of the envoy; but if he survives the wound, he is a wretch with whom the god would not condescend to hold any communication.

Sometimes children are demanded, and the respective divinities recall the life they had but just imparted: “Justice,” says Montaigne, “thirsting for the blood of innocence!” Sometimes the call is for the dearest and nearest blood: the Carthaginians sacrificed their own sons to Saturn, as if Time did not devour them with sufficient speed. Sometimes the demand was for the blood of the most beautiful. That Amestris, who had buried twelve men alive in order to obtain from Pluto, in return for so revolting an offering, a somewhat longer life—that same Amestris further sacrifices to that insatiable divinity twelve daughters of the highest personages in Persia; as the sacrificing priests have always taught men that they ought to offer on the altar the most valuable of their possessions. It is upon this principle that among some nations the first-born were immolated, and that among others they were redeemed by offerings more valuable to the ministers of sacrifice. This it is, unquestionably, which introduced into Europe the practice prevalent for centuries of devoting children to celibacy at the early age of five years, and shutting up in a cloister the brothers of an hereditary prince, just as in Asia the practice is to murder them.

Sometimes it is the purest blood that is demanded. We read of certain Indians, if I recollect rightly, who hospitably entertain all who visit them and make a merit of killing every sensible and virtuous stranger who enters their country, that his talents and virtues may remain with them. Sometimes the blood required is that which is most sacred. With the majority of idolaters, priests perform the office of executioner at the altar; and among the Siberians, it is the practice to kill the priests in order to despatch them to pray in the other world for the fulfilment of the wishes of the people.

But let us turn our attention to other frenzies and other spectacles. All Europe passes into Asia by a road inundated with the blood of Jews, who commit suicide to avoid falling into the hands of their enemies. This epidemic depopulates one-half of the inhabited world: kings, pontiffs, women, the young and the aged, all yield to the influence of the holy madness which, for a series of two hundred years, instigated the slaughter of innumerable nations at the tomb of a god of peace. Then were to be seen lying oracles, and military hermits, monarchs in pulpits, and prelates in camps. All the different states constitute one delirious populace; barriers of mountains and seas are surmounted; legitimate possessions are abandoned to enable their owners to fly to conquests which were no longer, in point of fertility, the land of promise; manners become corrupted under foreign skies; princes, after having exhausted their respective kingdoms to redeem a country which had never been theirs, complete the ruin of them for their personal ransom; thousands of soldiers, wandering under the banners of many chieftains, acknowledge the authority of none and hasten their defeat by their desertion; and the disease terminates only to be succeeded by a contagion still more horrible and desolating.

The same spirit of fanaticism cherished the rage for distant conquests: scarcely had Europe repaired its losses when the discovery of a new world hastened the ruin of our own. At that terrible injunction, “Go and conquer,” America was desolated and its inhabitants exterminated; Africa and Europe were exhausted in vain to repeople it; the poison of money and of pleasure having enervated the species, the world became nearly a desert and appeared likely every day to advance nearer to desolation by the continual wars which were kindled on our continent, from the ambition of extending its power to foreign lands.

Let us now compute the immense number of slaves which fanaticism has made, whether in Asia, where uncircumcision was a mark of infamy, or in Africa, where the Christian name was a crime, or in America, where the pretext of baptism absolutely extinguished the feelings of humanity. Let us compute the thousands who have been seen to perish either on scaffolds in the ages of persecution, or in civil wars by the hands of their fellow citizens, or by their own hands through excessive austerities, and maceration. Let us survey the surface of the earth, and glance at the various standards unfurled and blazing in the name of religion; in Spain against the Moors, in France against the Turks, in Hungary against the Tartars; at the numerous military orders, founded for converting infidels by the point of the sword, and slaughtering one another at the foot of the altar they had come to defend. Let us then look down from the appalling tribunal thus raised on the bodies of the innocent and miserable, in order to judge the living, as God, with a balance widely different, will judge the dead.

In a word, let us contemplate the horrors of fifteen centuries, all frequently renewed in the course of a single one; unarmed men slain at the feet of altars; kings destroyed by the dagger or by poison; a large state reduced to half its extent by the fury of its own citizens; the nation at once the most warlike and the most pacific on the face of the globe, divided in fierce hostility against itself; the sword unsheathed between the sons and the father; usurpers, tyrants, executioners, sacrilegious robbers, and bloodstained parricides violating, under the impulse of religion, every convention divine or human—such is the deadly picture of fanaticism.

SECTION II.

If this term has at present any connection with its original meaning it is exceedingly slight.

“Fanaticus” was an honorable designation. It signified the minister or benefactor of a temple. According to the dictionary of Trévoux some antiquaries have discovered inscriptions in which Roman citizens of considerable consequence assumed the title of “fanaticus.”

In Cicero’s oration “pro domo sua,” a passage occurs in which the word “fanaticus” appears to me of difficult explanation. The seditious and libertine Clodius, who had brought about the banishment of Cicero for having saved the republic, had not only plundered and demolished the houses of that great man, but in order that Cicero might never be able to return to his city residence he procured the consecration of the land on which it stood; and the priests had erected there a temple to liberty, or rather to slavery, in which Cæsar, Pompey, Crassus, and Clodius then held the republic. Thus in all ages has religion been employed as an instrument in the persecution of great men. When at length, in a happier period, Cicero was recalled, he pleaded before the people in order to obtain the restoration of the ground on which his house had stood, and the rebuilding of the house at the expense of the Roman people. He thus expresses himself in the speech against Clodius (Oratio pro Domo sua, chap. xl): “Adspicite, adspicite, pontifices, hominem religiosum . . . . monete eum, modum quemdam esse religionis; nimium esse superstitiosum non oportere. Quid tibi necesse fuit anili superstitione, homo fanatice, sacrificium, quod aliænæ domi fieret invisere?”

Does the word “fanaticus,” as used above, mean senseless, pitiless, abominable fanatic, according to the present acceptation, or does it rather imply the pious, religious man, the frequenter and consecrator of temples? Is it used here in the meaning of decided censure or ironical praise? I do not feel myself competent to determine, but will give a translation of the passage:

“Behold, reverend pontiffs, behold the pious man . . . . suggest to him that even religion itself has its limits, that a man ought not to be so over-scrupulous. What occasion was there for a sacred person, a fanatic like yourself, to have recourse to the superstition of an old woman, in order to assist at a sacrifice performed in another person’s house?”

Cicero alludes here to the mysteries of the Bona Dea, which had been profaned by Clodius, who, in the disguise of a female, and accompanied by an old woman, had obtained an introduction to them, with a view to an assignation with Cæsar’s wife. The passage is, in consequence, evidently ironical.

Cicero calls Clodius a religious man, and the irony requires to be kept up through the whole passage. He employs terms of honorable meaning, more clearly to exhibit Clodius’s infamy. It appears to me, therefore, that he uses the word in question, “fanaticus,” in its respectable sense, as a word conveying the idea of a sacrificer, a pious man, a zealous minister of temple.

The term might be afterwards applied to those who believed themselves inspired by the gods, who bestowed a somewhat curious gift on the interpreters of their will, by ordaining that, in order to be a prophet, the loss of reason is indispensable.

Les Dieux à leur interprète

Ont fait un étrange don;

Ne peut on être prophète

Sans qu’on perde la raison?

The same dictionary of Trévoux informs us that the old chronicles of France call Clovis fanatic and pagan. The reader would have been pleased to have had the particular chronicles specified. I have not found this epithet applied to Clovis in any of the few books I possess at my house near Mount Krapak, where I now write.

We understand by fanaticism at present a religious madness, gloomy and cruel. It is a malady of the mind, which is taken in the same way as smallpox. Books communicate it much less than meetings and discourses. We seldom get heated while reading in solitude, for our minds are then tranquil and sedate. But when an ardent man of strong imagination addresses himself to weak imaginations, his eyes dart fire, and that fire rapidly spreads; his tones, his gestures, absolutely convulse the nerves of his auditors. He exclaims, “The eye of God is at this moment upon you; sacrifice every mere human possession and feeling; fight the battles of the Lord”—and they rush to the fight.

Fanaticism is, in reference to superstition, what delirium is to fever, or rage to anger. He who is involved in ecstasies and visions, who takes dreams for realities, and his own imaginations for prophecies, is a fanatical novice of great hope and promise, and will probably soon advance to the highest form, and kill man for the love of God.

Bartholomew Diaz was a fanatical monk. He had a brother at Nuremberg called John Diaz, who was an enthusiastic adherent to the doctrines of Luther, and completely convinced that the pope was Antichrist, and had the sign of the beast. Bartholomew, still more ardently convinced that the pope was god upon earth, quits Rome, determined either to convert or murder his brother; he accordingly murdered him! Here is a perfect case of fanaticism. We have noticed and done justice to this Diaz elsewhere.

Polyeuctes, who went to the temple on a day of solemn festival, to throw down and destroy the statues and ornaments, was a fanatic less horrible than Diaz, but not less foolish. The assassins of Francis, duke of Guise, of William, prince of Orange, of King Henry III., of King Henry IV., and various others, were equally possessed, equally laboring under morbid fury, with Diaz.

The most striking example of fanaticism is that exhibited on the night of St. Bartholomew, when the people of Paris rushed from house to house to stab, slaughter, throw out of the window, and tear in pieces their fellow citizens not attending mass. Guyon, Patouillet, Chaudon, Nonnotte, and the ex-Jesuit Paulian, are merely fanatics in a corner—contemptible beings whom we do not think of guarding against. They would, however, on a day of St. Bartholomew, perform wonders.

There are some cold-blooded fanatics; such as those judges who sentence men to death for no other crime than that of thinking differently from themselves, and these are so much the more guilty and deserving of the execration of mankind, as, not laboring under madness like the Clements, Châtels, Ravaillacs, and Damiens, they might be deemed capable of listening to reason.

There is no other remedy for this epidemical malady than that spirit of philosophy, which, extending itself from one to another, at length civilizes and softens the manners of men and prevents the access of the disease. For when the disorder has made any progress, we should, without loss of time, fly from the seat of it, and wait till the air has become purified from contagion. Law and religion are not completely efficient against the spiritual pestilence. Religion, indeed, so far from affording proper nutriment to the minds of patients laboring under this infectious and infernal distemper, is converted, by the diseased process of their minds, into poison. These malignant devotees have incessantly before their eyes the example of Ehud, who assassinated the king of Eglon; of Judith, who cut off the head of Holofernes while in bed with him; of Samuel, hewing in pieces King Agag; of Jehoiada the priest, who murdered his queen at the horse-gate. They do not perceive that these instances, which are respectable in antiquity, are in the present day abominable. They derive their fury from religion, decidedly as religion condemns it.

Laws are yet more powerless against these paroxysms of rage. To oppose laws to cases of such a description would be like reading a decree of council to a man in a frenzy. The persons in question are fully convinced that the Holy Spirit which animates and fills them is above all laws; that their own enthusiasm is, in fact, the only law which they are bound to obey.

What can be said in answer to a man who says he will rather obey God than men, and who consequently feels certain of meriting heaven by cutting your throat?

When once fanaticism has gangrened the brain of any man the disease may be regarded as nearly incurable. I have seen Convulsionaries who, while speaking of the miracles of St. Paris, gradually worked themselves up to higher and more vehement degrees of agitation till their eyes became inflamed, their whole frames shook, their countenances became distorted by rage, and had any man contradicted them he would inevitably have been murdered.

Yes, I have seen these wretched Convulsionaries writhing their limbs and foaming at their mouths. They were exclaiming, “We must have blood.” They effected the assassination of their king by a lackey, and ended with exclaiming against philosophers.

Fanatics are nearly always under the direction of knaves, who place the dagger in their hands. These knaves resemble Montaigne’s “Old Man of the Mountain,” who, it is said, made weak persons imagine, under his treatment of them, that they really had experienced the joys of paradise, and promised them a whole eternity of such delights if they would go and assassinate such as he should point out to them. There has been only one religion in the world which has not been polluted by fanaticism and that is the religion of the learned in China. The different sects of ancient philosophers were not merely exempt from this pest of human society, but they were antidotes to it: for the effect of philosophy is to render the soul tranquil, and fanaticism and tranquillity are totally incompatible. That our own holy religion has been so frequently polluted by this infernal fury must be imputed to the folly and madness of mankind. Thus Icarus abused the wings which he received for his benefit. They were given him for his salvation and they insured his destruction:

Ainsi du plumage qu’il eut

Icare pervertit l’usage;

Il le reçut pour son salut,

Il s’en servit pour son dommage.

—Bertaut, bishop of Séez.

SECTION III.

Fanatics do not always fight the battles of the Lord. They do not always assassinate kings and princes. There are tigers among them, but there are more foxes.

What a tissue of frauds, calumnies, and robberies has been woven by fanatics of the court of Rome against fanatics of the court of Calvin, by Jesuits against Jansenists, and vice versa! And if you go farther back you will find ecclesiastical history, which is the school of virtues, to be that of atrocities and abominations, which have been employed by every sect against the others. They all have the same bandage over their eyes whether marching out to burn down the cities and towns of their adversaries, to slaughter the inhabitants, or condemn them to judicial execution; or when merely engaged in the comparatively calm occupation of deceiving and defrauding, of acquiring wealth and exercising domination. The same fanaticism blinds them; they think that they are doing good. Every fanatic is a conscientious knave, but a sincere and honest murderer for the good cause.

Read, if you are able, the five or six thousand volumes in which, for a hundred years together, the Jansenists and Molinists have dealt out against each other their reproaches and revilings, their mutual exposures of fraud and knavery, and then judge whether Scapin or Trevelin can be compared with them.

One of the most curious theological knaveries ever practised is, in my opinion, that of a small bishop—the narrative asserts that he was a Biscayan bishop; however, we shall certainly, at some future period find out both his name and his bishopric—whose diocese was partly in Biscay and partly in France.

In the French division of his diocese there was a parish which had formerly been inhabited by some Moors. The lord of the parish or manor was no Mahometan; he was perfectly catholic, as the whole universe should be, for the meaning of catholic is universal. My lord the bishop had some suspicions concerning this unfortunate seigneur, whose whole occupation consisted in doing good, and conceived that in his heart he entertained bad thoughts and sentiments savoring not a little of heresy. He even accused him of having said, in the way of pleasantry, that there were good people in Morocco as well as in Biscay, and that an honest inhabitant of Morocco might absolutely not be a mortal enemy of the Supreme Being, who is the father of all mankind.

The fanatic, upon this, wrote a long letter to the king of France, the paramount sovereign of our little manorial lord. In this letter he entreated his majesty to transfer the manor of this stray and unbelieving sheep either to Lower Brittany or Lower Normandy, according to his good pleasure, that he might be no longer able to diffuse the contagion of heresy among his Biscayan neighbors, by his abominable jests. The king of France and his council smiled, as may naturally be supposed, at the extravagance and folly of the demand.

Our Biscayan pastor learning, some time afterwards, that his French sheep was sick, ordered public notices to be fixed up at the church gates of the canton, prohibiting any one from administering the communion to him, unless he should previously give in a bill of confession, from which it might appear that he was not circumcised; that he condemned with his whole heart the heresy of Mahomet, and every other heresy of the like kind—as, for example, Calvinism and Jansenism; and that in every point he thought like him, the said Biscayan bishop.

Bills of confession were at that time much in fashion. The sick man sent for his parish priest, who was a simple and sottish man, and threatened to have him hanged by the parliament of Bordeaux if he did not instantly administer the viaticum to him. The priest was alarmed, and accordingly celebrated the sacred ordinance, as desired by the patient; who, after the ceremony, declared aloud, before witnesses, that the Biscayan pastor had falsely accused him before the king of being tained with the Mussulman religion; that he was a sincere Christian, and that the Biscayan was a calumniator. He signed this, after it had been written down, in presence of a notary, and every form required by law was complied with. He soon after became better, and rest and a good conscience speedily completed his recovery.

The Biscayan, quite exasperated that the old patient should have thus exposed and disappointed him, resolved to have his revenge, and thus he set about it.

He procured, fifteen days after the event just mentioned, the fabrication, in his own language or patois, of a profession of faith which the priest pretended to have heard and received. It was signed by the priest and three or four peasants, who had not been present at the ceremony; and the forged instrument was then passed through the necessary and solemn form of verification and registry, as if this form could give it authenticity.

An instrument not signed by the party alone interested, signed by persons unknown, fifteen days after the event, an instrument disavowed by the real and credible witnesses of that event, involved evidently the crime of forgery; and, as the subject of the forgery was a matter of faith, the crime clearly rendered both the priest and the witnesses liable to the galleys in this world, and to hell in the other.

Our lord of the manor, however, who loved a joke, but had no gall or malice in his heart, took compassion both upon the bodies and souls of these conspirators. He declined delivering them over to human justice, and contented himself with giving them up to ridicule. But he declared that after the death of the Biscayan he would, if he survived, have the pleasure of printing an account of all his proceedings and manœuvres on this business, together with the documents and evidences, just to amuse the small number of readers who might like anecdotes of that description; and not, as is often pompously announced, with a view to the instruction of the universe. There are so many authors who address themselves to the universe, who really imagine they attract, and perhaps absorb, the attention of the universe, that he conceived he might not have a dozen readers out of the whole who would attend for a moment to himself. But let us return to fanaticism.

It is this rage for making proselytes, this intensely mad desire which men feel to bring others over to partake of their own peculiar cup or communion, that induced the Jesuit Châtel and the Jesuit Routh to rush with eagerness to the deathbed of the celebrated Montesquieu. These two devoted zealots desired nothing better than to be able to boast that they had persuaded him of the merits of contrition and of sufficing grace. We wrought his conversion, they said. He was, in the main, a worthy soul: he was much attached to the society of Jesus. We had some little difficulty in inducing him to admit certain fundamental truths; but as in these circumstances, in the crisis of life and death, the mind is always most clear and acute, we soon convinced him.

This fanatical eagerness for converting men is so ardent, that the most debauched monk in his convent would even quit his mistress, and walk to the very extremity of the city, for the sake of making a single convert.

We have all seen Father Poisson, a Cordelier of Paris, who impoverished his convent to pay his mistresses, and who was imprisoned in consequence of the depravity of his manners. He was one of the most popular preachers at Paris, and one of the most determined and zealous of converters.

Such also was the celebrated preacher Fantin, at Versailles. The list might be easily enlarged; but it is unnecessary, if not also dangerous, to expose the freaks and freedoms of constituted authorities. You know what happened to Ham for having revealed his father’s shame. He became as black as a coal.

Let us merely pray to God, whether rising or lying down, that he would deliver us from fanatics, as the pilgrims of Mecca pray that they may meet with no sour faces on the road.

SECTION IV.

Ludlow, who was rather an enthusiast for liberty than a fanatic in religion—that brave man, who hated Cromwell more than he did Charles I., relates that the parliamentary forces were always defeated by the royal army in the beginning of the civil war; just as the regiment of porters (portes-cochères) were unable to stand the shock of conflict, in the time of the Fronde against the great Condé. Cromwell said to General Fairfax: “How can you possibly expect a rabble of London porters and apprentices to resist a nobility urged on by the principle, or rather the phantom, of honor? Let us actuate them by a more powerful phantom—fanaticism! Our enemies are fighting only for their king; let us persuade our troops they are fighting for their God.

“Give me a commission, and I will raise a regiment of brother murderers, whom I will pledge myself soon to make invincible fanatics!”

He was as good as his word; he composed his regiment of red-coated brothers, of gloomy religionists, whom he made obedient tigers. Mahomet himself was never better served by soldiers.

But in order to inspire this fanaticism, you must be seconded and supported by the spirit of the times. A French parliament at the present day would attempt in vain to raise a regiment of such porters as we have mentioned; it could, with all its efforts, merely rouse into frenzy a few women of the fishmarket.

Only the ablest men have the power to make and to guide fanatics. It is not, however, sufficient to possess the profoundest dissimulation and the most determined intrepidity; everything depends, after these previous requisites are secured, on coming into the world at a proper time.

SECTION V.

Geometry then, it seems, is not always connected with clearness and correctness of understanding. Over what precipices do not men fall, notwithstanding their boasted leading-strings of reason! A celebrated Protestant, who was esteemed one of the first mathematicians of the age, and who followed in the train of the Newtons, the Leibnitzes, and Bernouillis, at the beginning of the present century, struck out some very singular corollaries. It is said that with a grain of faith a man may remove mountains; and this man of science, following up the method of pure geometrical analysis, reasoned thus with himself: I have many grains of faith, and can, therefore, remove many mountains. This was the man who made his appearance at London in 1707; and, associating himself with certain men of learning and science, some of whom, moreover, were not deficient in sagacity, they publicly announced that they would raise to life a dead person in any cemetery that might be fixed upon. Their reasoning was uniformly synthetical. They said, genuine disciples must have the power of performing miracles; we are genuine disciples, we therefore shall be able to perform as many as we please. The mere unscientific saints of the Romish church have resuscitated many worthy persons; therefore, a fortiori, we, the reformers of the reformed themselves, shall resuscitate as many as we may desire.

These arguments are irrefragable, being constructed according to the most correct form possible. Here we have at a glance the explanation why all antiquity was inundated with prodigies; why the temples of Æsculapius at Epidaurus, and in other cities, were completely filled with ex-votos; the roofs adorned with thighs straightened, arms restored, and silver infants: all was miracle.

In short, the famous Protestant geometrician whom I speak of appeared so perfectly sincere; he asserted so confidently that he would raise the dead, and his proposition was put forward with so much plausibility and strenuousness, that the people entertained a very strong impression on the subject, and Queen Anne was advised to appoint a day, an hour, and a cemetery, such as he should himself select, in which he might have the opportunity of performing his miracle legally, and under the inspection of justice. The holy geometrician chose St. Paul’s cathedral for the scene of his exertion: the people ranged themselves in two rows; soldiers were stationed to preserve order both among the living and the dead; the magistrates took their seats; the register procured his record; it was impossible that the new miracles could be verified too completely. A dead body was disinterred agreeably to the holy man’s choice and direction; he then prayed, he fell upon his knees, and made the most pious and devout contortions possible; his companions imitated him; the dead body exhibited no sign of animation; it was again deposited in its grave, and the professed resuscitator and his adherents were slightly punished. I afterwards saw one of these misled creatures; he declared to me that one of the party was at the time under the stain of a venial sin, for which the dead person suffered, and but for which the resurrection would have been infallible.

Were it allowable for us to reveal the disgrace of those to whom we owe the sincerest respect, I should observe here, that Newton, the great Newton himself, discovered in the “Apocalypse” that the pope was Antichrist, and made many other similar discoveries. I should also observe that he was a decided Arian. I am aware that this deviation of Newton, compared to that of the other geometrician, is as unity to infinity. But if the exalted Newton imagined that he found the modern history of Europe in the “Apocalypse,” we may say: Alas, poor human beings!

It seems as if superstition were an epidemic disease, from which the strongest minds are not always exempt. There are in Turkey persons of great and strong sense, who would undergo empalement for the sake of certain opinions of Abubeker. These principles being once admitted, they reason with great consistency; and the Navaricians, the Radarists, and the Jabarites mutually consign each other to damnation in conformity to very shrewd and subtle argument. They all draw plausible consequences, but they never dare to examine principles.

A report is publicly spread abroad by some person, that there exists a giant seventy feet high; the learned soon after begin to discuss and dispute about the color of his hair, the thickness of his thumb, the measurement of his nails; they exclaim, cabal, and even fight upon the subject. Those who maintain that the little finger of the giant is only fifteen lines in diameter burn those who assert that it is a foot thick. “But, gentlemen,” modestly observes a stranger passing by, “does the giant you are disputing about really exist?” “What a horrible doubt!” all the disputants cry out together. “What blasphemy! What absurdity!” A short truce is then brought about to give time for stoning the poor stranger; and, after having duly performed that murderous ceremony, they resume fighting upon the everlasting subject of the nails and little finger.

FANCY.

Fancy formerly signified imagination, and the term was used simply to express that faculty of the soul which receives sensible objects.

Descartes and Gassendi, and all the philosophers of their day, say that “the form or images of things are painted in the fancy.” But the greater part of abstract terms are, in the course of time, received in a sense different from their original one, like tools which industry applies to new purposes.

Fancy, at present, means “a particular desire, a transient taste”; he has a fancy for going to China; his fancy for gaming and dancing has passed away. An artist paints a fancy portrait, a portrait not taken from any model. To have fancies is to have extraordinary tastes, but of brief duration. Fancy, in this sense, falls a little short of oddity (bizarrerie) and caprice.

Caprice may express “a sudden and unreasonable disgust.” He had a fancy for music, and capriciously became disgusted with it. Whimsicality gives an idea of inconsistency and bad taste, which fancy does not; he had a fancy for building, but he constructed his house in a whimsical taste.

There are shades of distinction between having fancies and being fantastic; the fantastic is much nearer to the capricious and the whimsical. The word “fantastic” expresses a character unequal and abrupt. The idea of charming or pleasant is excluded from it; whereas there are agreeable fancies.

We sometimes hear used in conversation “odd fancies” (des fantasies musquées); but the expression was never understood to mean what the “Dictionary of Trévoux” supposes—“The whims of men of superior rank which one must not venture to condemn;” on the contrary, that expression is used for the very object and purpose of condemning them; and musquée, in this connection, is an expletive adding force to the term “fancies,” as we say, Sottise pommée, folie fieffée, to express nonsense and folly.

FASTI.

Of the Different Significations of this Word.

The Latin word “fasti” signifies festivals, and it is in this sense that Ovid treats of it in his poem entitled “The Fasti.”

Godeau has composed the Fasti of the church on this model, but with less success. The religion of the Roman Pagans was more calculated for poetry than that of the Christians; to which it may be added, that Ovid was a better poet than Godeau.

The consular fasti were only the list of consuls.

The fasti of the magistrates were the days in which they were permitted to plead; and those on which they did not plead were called nefasti, because then they could not plead for justice.

The word “nefastus” in this sense does not signify unfortunate; on the contrary, nefastus and nefandus were the attributes of unfortunate days in another sense, signifying days in which people must not plead; days worthy only to be forgotten; “ille nefasto te posuit die.”

Besides other fasti, the Romans had their fasti urbis, fasti rustici, which were calendars of the particular usages, and ceremonies of the city and the country.

On these days of solemnity, every one sought to astonish by the grandeur of his dress, his equipage, or his banquet. This pomp, invisible on other days, was called fastus. It expresses magnificence in those who by their station can afford it, but vanity in others.

Though the word “fastus” may not be always injurious, the word “pompous” is invariably so. A devotee who makes a parade of his virtue renders humility itself pompous.

FATHERS—MOTHERS—CHILDREN.

Their Duties.

The “Encyclopædia” has been much exclaimed against in France; because it was produced in France, and has done France honor. In other countries, people have not cried out; on the contrary, they have eagerly set about pirating or spoiling it, because money was to be gained thereby.

But we, who do not, like the encyclopædists of Paris, labor for glory; we, who are not, like them, exposed to envy; we, whose little society lies unnoticed in Hesse, in Würtemberg, in Switzerland, among the Grisons, or at Mount Krapak; and have, therefore, no apprehension of having to dispute with the doctor of the Comédie Italienne, or with a doctor of the Sorbonne; we, who sell not our sheets to a bookseller, but are free beings, and lay not black on white until we have examined, to the utmost of our ability, whether the said black may be of service to mankind; we, in short, who love virtue, shall boldly declare what we think.

“Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long—” I would venture to say, “Honor thy father and thy mother, though this day shall be thy last.”

Tenderly love and joyfully serve the mother who bore you in her womb, fed you at her breast, and patiently endured all that was disgusting in your infancy. Discharge the same duties to your father, who brought you up.

What will future ages say of a Frank, named Louis the Thirteenth, who, at the age of sixteen, began the exercise of his authority with having the door of his mother’s apartment walled up, and sending her into exile, without giving the smallest reason for so doing, and solely because it was his favorite’s wish?

“But, sir, I must tell you in confidence that my father is a drunkard, who begot me one day by chance, not caring a jot about me; and gave me no education but that of beating me every day when he came home intoxicated. My mother was a coquette, whose only occupation was love-making. But for my nurse, who had taken a liking to me, and who, after the death of her son, received me into her house for charity, I should have died of want.”

“Well, then, honor your nurse; and bow to your father and mother when you meet them. It is said in the Vulgate, ‘Honora patrem tuum et matrem tuam’—not dilige.”

“Very well, sir, I shall love my father and my mother if they do me good; I shall honor them if they do me ill. I have thought so ever since I began to think, and you confirm me in my maxims.”

“Fare you well, my child, I see you will prosper, for you have a grain of philosophy in your composition.”

“One word more, sir. If my father were to call himself Abraham, and me Isaac, and were to say to me, ‘My son, you are tall and strong; carry these fagots to the top of that hill, to burn you with after I have cut off your head; for God ordered me to do so when He came to see me this morning,’—what would you advise me to do in such critical circumstances?”

“Critical, indeed! But what would you do of yourself? for you seem to be no blockhead.”

“I own, sir, that I should ask him to produce a written order, and that from regard for himself, I should say to him—‘Father, you are among strangers, who do not allow a man to assassinate his son without an express condition from God, duly signed, sealed and delivered. See what happened to poor Calas, in the half French, half Spanish town of Toulouse. He was broken on the wheel; and the procureur-général Riquet decided on having Madame Calas, the mother, burned—all on the bare and very ill-conceived suspicion, that they had hung up their son, Mark Antony Calas, for the love of God. I should fear that his conclusions would be equally prejudicial to the well-being of yourself and your sister or niece, Madame Sarah, my mother. Once more I say, show me a lettre de cachet for cutting my throat, signed by God’s own hand, and countersigned by Raphael, Michael, or Beelzebub. If not, father—your most obedient: I will go to Pharaoh of Egypt, or to the king of the desert of Gerar, who both have been in love with my mother, and will certainly be kind to me. Cut my brother Ishmael’s throat, if you like; but rely upon it, you shall not cut mine.’ ”

“Good; this is arguing like a true sage. The ‘Encyclopædia’ itself could not have reasoned better. I tell you, you will do great things. I admire you for not having said an ill word to your father Abraham—for not having been tempted to beat him. And tell me: had you been that Cram, whom his father, the Frankish King Clothaire, had burned in a barn; a Don Carlos, son of that fox, Philip the Second; a poor Alexis, son of that Czar Peter, half hero, half tiger—”

“Ah, sir, say no more of those horrors; you will make me detest human nature.”

FAVOR.

Of What is Understood by the Word.

Favor, from the Latin word “favor,” rather signifies a benefit than a recompense.

We earnestly beg a favor; we merit and loudly demand a recompense. The god Favor, according to the Roman mythologists, was the son of Beauty and Fortune. All favor conveys the idea of something gratuitous; he has done me the favor of introducing me, of presenting me, of recommending my friend, of correcting my work. The favor of princes is the effect of their fancy, and of assiduous complaisance. The favor of the people sometimes implies merit, but is more often attributable to lucky accident.

Favor differs much from kindness. That man is in favor with the king, but he has not yet received any kindnesses from him. We say that he has been received into the good graces of a person, not he has been received into favor; though we say to be in favor, because favor is supposed to be an habitual taste; while to receive into grace is to pardon, or, at least, is less than to bestow a favor.

To obtain grace is the effect of a moment; to obtain favor is a work of time. Nevertheless, we say indifferently, do me the kindness and do me the favor, to recommend my friend.

Letters of recommendation were formerly called letters of favor. Severus says, in the tragedy of Polyeuctes:

Je mourrais mille fois plutôt que d’abuser

Des lettres de faveur que j’ai pour l’épouser.

“Letters of favor,” though I have to wed her,

I’d rather die a thousand times than use them.

We have the favor and good-will, not the kindness of the prince and the public. We may obtain the favor of our audience by modesty, but it will not be gracious if we are tedious.

This expression “favor,” signifies a gratuitous good-will, which we seek to obtain from the prince or the public. Gallantry has extended it to the complaisance of the ladies; and though we do not say that we have the favors of the king, we say that we have the favors of a lady.

The equivalent to this expression is unknown in Asia, where the women possess less influence. Formerly, ribbons, gloves, buckles, and sword-knots given by a lady, were called favors. The earl of Essex wore a glove of Queen Elizabeth’s in his hat, which he called the queen’s favor.

FAVORITE.

This word has sometimes a bounded and sometimes an extended sense. “Favorite” sometimes conveys the idea of power; and sometimes it only signifies a man who pleases his master.

Henry III. had favorites who were only playthings, and he had those who governed the state, as the dukes of Joyeuse and Épernon. A favorite may be compared to a piece of gold, which is valued at whatever the prince pleases.

An ancient writer has asked, “Who ought to be the king’s favorite?—the people!” Good poets are called the favorites of the muses, as prosperous men are called the favorites of fortune, because both are supposed to receive these gifts without laboring for them. It is thus, that a fertile and well-situated land is called the favorite of nature.

The woman who pleases the sultan most is called the favorite sultana. Somebody has written the history of favorites; that is to say, the mistresses of the greatest princes.

Several princes in Germany have country houses which they call favorites.

A lady’s favorite is now only to be found in romances and stories of the last century.

FEASTS.

SECTION I.

A poor gentleman of the province of Hagenau, cultivated his small estate, and St. Ragonda, or Radegonda, was the patron of his parish.

Now it happened, on the feast of St. Ragonda, that it was necessary to do something to this poor gentleman’s field, without which great loss would be incurred. The master, with all his family, after having devoutly assisted at mass, went to cultivate his land, on which depended the subsistence of his family, while the rector and the other parishioners went to tipple as usual.

The rector, while enjoying his glass, was informed of the enormous offence committed in his parish by this profane laborer, and went, burning with wine and anger, to seek the cultivator. “Sir, you are very insolent and very impious to dare to cultivate your field, instead of going to the tavern like other people.” “I agree, sir,” replied the gentleman, “that it is necessary to drink to the honor of the saint; but it is also necessary to eat, and my family would die of hunger if I did not labor.” “Drink and die, then,” said the vicar. “In what law, in what book is it so written?” said the laborer. “In Ovid,” replied the vicar. “I think you are mistaken,” said the gentleman; “in what part of Ovid have you read that I should go to the tavern rather than cultivate my field on St. Ragonda’s day?”

It should be remarked that both the gentleman and the pastor were well educated men. “Read the metamorphoses of the daughters of Minyas,” said the vicar. “I have read it,” replied the other, “and I maintain that they have no relation to my plough.” “How, impious man! do you not remember that the daughters of Minyas were changed into bats for having spun on a feast day?” “The case is very different,” replied the gentleman, “these ladies had not rendered any homage to Bacchus. I have been at the mass of St. Ragonda, you can have nothing to say to me; you cannot change me into a bat.” “I will do worse,” said the priest, “I will fine you.” He did so. The poor gentleman was ruined: he quitted the country with his family—went into a strange one—became a Lutheran—and his ground remained uncultivated for several years.

This affair was related to a magistrate of good sense and much piety. These are the reflections which he made upon it:

“They were no doubt innkeepers,” said he, “that invented this prodigious number of feasts; the religion of peasants and artisans consists in getting tipsy on the day of a saint, whom they only know by this kind of worship. It is on these days of idleness and debauchery that all crimes are committed; it is these feasts which fill the prisons, and which support the police officers, registers, lieutenants of police, and hangmen; the only excuse for feast-days among us. From this cause Catholic countries are scarcely cultivated at all; whilst heretics, by daily cultivating their lands, produce abundant crops.”

It is all very well that the shoemakers should go in the morning to mass on St. Crispin’s day, because crepido signifies the upper leather of a shoe; that the brush-makers should honor St. Barbara their patron; that those who have weak eyes should hear the mass of St. Clara: that St. — should be celebrated in many provinces; but after having paid their devoirs to the saints they should become serviceable to men, they should go from the altar to the plough; it is the excess of barbarity, and insupportable slavery, to consecrate our days to idleness and vice. Priests, command, if it be necessary that the saints Roche, Eustace, and Fiacre, be prayed to in the morning; but, magistrates, order your fields to be cultivated as usual. It is labor that is necessary; the greater the industry the more the day is sanctified.

SECTION II.

Letter from a Weaver of Lyons to the Gentlemen of the Commission established at Paris, for the Reformation of Religious Orders, printed in the public papers in 1768.

Gentlemen:

“I am a silk-weaver, and have worked at Lyons for nineteen years. My wages have increased insensibly; at present I get thirty-five sous per day. My wife, who makes lace, would get fifteen more, if it were possible for her to devote her time to it; but as the cares of the house, illness, or other things, continually hinder her, I reduce her profit to ten sous, which makes forty-five sous daily. If from the year we deduct eighty-two Sundays, or holidays, we shall have two hundred and eighty-four profitable days, which at forty-five sous make six hundred and thirty-nine livres. That is my revenue; the following are my expenses:

“I have eight living children, and my wife is on the point of being confined with the eleventh; for I have lost two. I have been married fifteen years: so that I annually reckon twenty-four livres for the expenses of her confinements and baptisms, one hundred and eight livres for two nurses, having generally two children out at nurse, and sometimes even three. I pay fifty-seven livres rent and fourteen taxes.

“My income is then reduced to four hundred and thirty-six livres, or twenty-five sous three deniers a day, with which I have to clothe and furnish my family, buy wood and candles, and support my wife and six children.

“I look forward to holidays with dismay. I confess that I often almost curse their institution. They could only have been instituted by usurers and innkeepers.

“My father made me study hard in my youth, and wished me to become a monk, showing me in that state a sure asylum against want; but I always thought that every man owes his tribute to society, and that monks are useless drones who live upon the labor of the bees. Notwithstanding, I acknowledge that when I see John C—, with whom I studied, and who was the most idle boy in the college, possessing the first place among the prémontrés, I cannot help regretting that I did not listen to my father’s advice.

“This is the third holiday in Christmas, I have pawned the little furniture I had, I am in a week’s debt with my tradesman, and I want bread—how are we to get over the fourth? This is not all; I have the prospect of four more next week. Great God! Eight holidays in ten days; you cannot have commanded it!

“One year I hoped that rents would diminish by the suppression of one of the monasteries of the Capuchins and Cordeliers. What useless houses in the centre of Lyons are those of the Jacobins, nuns of St. Peter, etc. Why not establish them in the suburbs if they are thought necessary? How many more useful inhabitants would supply their places!

“All these reflections, gentlemen, have induced me to address myself to you who have been chosen by the king for the task of rectifying abuses. I am not the only one who thinks thus. How many laborers in Lyons and other places, how many laborers in the kingdom are reduced to the same extremities as myself? It is evident that every holiday costs the state several millions (livres). These considerations will lead you to take more to heart the interests of the people, which are rather too little attended to.

“I have the honor to be, etc.,

“Bocen.”

This request, which was really presented, will not be misplaced in a work like the present.

SECTION III.

The feast given to the Roman people by Julius Cæsar and the emperors who succeeded him are well known. The feast of twenty-two thousand tables served by twenty-two thousand purveyors; the naval fights on artificial lakes, etc., have not, however, been imitated by the Herulian, Lombard, and Frankish chieftains, who would have their festivity equally celebrated.

FERRARA.

What we have to say of Ferrara has no relation to literature, but it has a very great one to justice, which is much more necessary than the belles-lettres, and much less cultivated, at least in Italy.

Ferrara was constantly a fief of the empire, like Parma and Placentia. Pope Clement VIII. robbed Cæsar d’Este of it by force of arms, in 1597. The pretext for this tyranny was a very singular one for a man who called himself the humble vicar of Jesus Christ.

Alphonso d’Este, the first of the name, sovereign of Ferrara, Modena, Este, Carpio, and Rovigno, espoused a simple gentlewoman of Ferrara, named Laura Eustochia, by whom he had three children before marriage. These children he solemnly acknowledged in the face of the Church. None of the formalities prescribed by the laws were wanting at this recognition. His successor, Alphonso d’Este, was acknowledged duke of Ferrara; he espoused Julia d’Urbino, the daughter of Francis, duke d’Urbino, by whom he had the unfortunate Cæsar d’Este, the incontestable heir of all the property of all the family, and declared so by the last duke, who died October 27, 1597. Pope Clement VIII., surnamed Aldobrandino, and originally of the family of a merchant of Florence, dared to pretend that the grandmother of Cæsar d’Este was not sufficiently noble, and that the children that she had brought into the world ought to be considered bastards. The first reason is ridiculous and scandalous in a bishop, the second is unwarrantable in every tribunal in Europe. If the duke was not legitimate, he ought to have lost Modena and his other states also; and if there was no flaw in his title, he ought to have kept Ferrara as well as Modena.

The acquisition of Ferrara was too fine a thing for the pope not to procure all the decretals and decisions of those brave theologians, who declare that the pope can render just that which is unjust. Consequently he first excommunicated Cæsar d’Este, and as excommunication necessarily deprives a man of all his property, the common father of the faithful raised his troops against the excommunicated, to rob him of his inheritance in the name of the Church. These troops were defeated, but the duke of Modena soon saw his finances exhausted, and his friends become cool.

To make his case still more deplorable, the king of France, Henry IV., believed himself obliged to take the side of the pope, in order to balance the credit of Philip II. at the court of Rome; in the same manner that good King Louis XII. less excusably dishonored himself by uniting with that monster Alexander VI., and his execrable bastard, the duke of Borgia. The duke was obliged to return, and the pope caused Ferrara to be invaded by Cardinal Aldobrandino, who entered this flourishing city at the head of a thousand horse and five thousand foot soldiers.

It is a great pity that such a man as Henry IV. descended to this unworthiness which is called politic. The Catos, Metelluses, Scipios, and Fabriciuses would not thus have betrayed justice to please a priest—and such a priest!

From this time Ferrara became a desert; its uncultivated soil was covered with standing marshes. This province, under the house of Este, had been one of the finest in Italy; the people always regretted their ancient masters. It is true that the duke was indemnified; he was nominated to a bishopric and a benefice; he was even furnished with some measures of salt from the mines of Servia. But it is no less true that the house of Modena has incontestable and imprescriptable rights to the duchy of Ferrara, of which it was thus shamefully despoiled.

Now, my dear reader, let us suppose that this scene took place at the time in which Jesus Christ appeared to his apostles after his resurrection, and that Simon Barjonas, surnamed Peter, wished to possess himself of the states of this poor duke of Ferrara. Imagine the duke coming to Bethany to demand justice of the Lord Jesus. Our Lord sends immediately for Peter and says to him, “Simon, son of Jonas, I have given thee the keys of heaven, but I have not given thee those of the earth. Because thou hast been told that the heavens surround the globe, and that the contained is in the containing, dost thou imagine that kingdoms here below belong to thee, and that thou hast only to possess thyself of whatever thou likest? I have already forbidden thee to draw the sword. Thou appearest to me a very strange compound; at one time cutting off the ear of Malchus, and at another even denying me. Be more lenient and decorous, and take neither the property nor the ears of any one for fear of thine own.”

FEVER.

It is not as a physician, but as a patient, that I wish to say a word or two on fever. We cannot help now and then speaking of our enemies; and this one has been attacking me for more than twenty years; not Fréron himself has been more implacable.

I ask pardon of Sydenham, who defined fever to be “an effort of nature, laboring with all its power to expel the peccant matter.” We might thus define smallpox, measles, diarrhœa, vomitings, cutaneous eruptions, and twenty other diseases. But, if this physician defined ill, he practised well. He cured, because he had experience, and he knew how to wait.

Boerhaave says, in his “Aphorisms”: “A more frequent opposition, and an increased resistance about the capillary vessels, give an absolute idea of an acute fever. These are the words of a great master; but he sets out with acknowledging that the nature of fever is profoundly hidden.

He does not tell us what that secret principle is which develops itself at regular periods in intermittent fever—what that internal poison is, which, after the lapse of a day, is renewed—where that flame is, which dies and revives at stated moments.

We know fairly well that we are liable to fever after excess, or in unseasonable weather. We know that quinine, judiciously administered, will cure it. This is quite enough; the how we do not know.

Every animal that does not perish suddenly dies by fever. The fever seems to be the inevitable effect of the fluids that compose the blood, or that which is in the place of blood. The structure of every animal proves to natural philosophers that it must, at all times, have enjoyed a very short life.

Theologians have held, as have promulgated other opinions. It is not for us to examine this question. The philosophers and physicians have been right in sensu humano, and the theologians, in sensu divino. It is said in Deuteronomy, xxviii, 22, that if the Jews do not serve the law they shall be smitten “with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning.” It is only in Deuteronomy, and in Molière’s “Physician in Spite of Himself,” that people have been threatened with fever.

It seems impossible that fever should not be an accident natural to an animate body, in which so many fluids circulate; just as it is impossible for an animate body not to be crushed by the falling of a rock.

Blood makes life; it furnishes the viscera, the limbs, the skin, the very extremities of the hairs and nails with the fluids, the humors proper for them.

This blood, by which the animal has life, is formed by the chyle. During pregnancy this chyle is transmitted from the uterus to the child, and, after the child is born, the milk of the nurse produces this same chyle. The greater diversity of aliments it afterwards receives, the more the chyle is liable to be soured. This alone forming the blood, and this blood, composed of so many different humors so subject to corruption, circulating through the whole human body more than five hundred and fifty times in twenty-four hours, with the rapidity of a torrent, it is not only astonishing that fever is not more frequent, it is astonishing that man lives. In every articulation, in every gland, in every passage, there is danger of death; but there are also as many succors as there are dangers. Almost every membrane extends or contracts as occasion requires. All the veins have sluices which open and shut, giving passage to the blood and preventing a return, by which the machine would be destroyed. The blood, rushing through all these canals, purifies itself. It is a river that carries with it a thousand impurities; it discharges itself by perspiration, by transpiration, by all the secretions. Fever is itself a succor; it is a rectification when it does not kill.

Man, by his reason, accelerates the cure by administering bitters, and, above all, by regimen. This reason is an oar with which he may row for some time on the sea of the world when disease does not swallow him up.

It is asked: How is it that nature has abandoned the animals, her work, to so many horrible diseases, almost always accompanied by fever? How and why is it that so many disorders exist with so much order, formation, and destruction everywhere, side by side? This is a difficulty that often gives me a fever, but I beg you will read the letters of Memmius. Then, perhaps, you will be inclined to suspect that the incomprehensible artificer of vegetables, animals, and worlds, having made all for the best, could not have made anything better.

FICTION.

Is not a fiction, which teaches new and interesting truths, a fine thing? Do you not admire the Arabian story of the sultan who would not believe that a little time could appear long, and who disputed with his dervish on the nature of duration? The latter to convince him of it, begged him only to plunge his head for a moment into the basin in which he was washing. Immediately the sultan finds himself transported into a frightful desert; he is obliged to labor to get a livelihood; he marries, and has children who grow up and ill treat him; finally he returns to his country and his palace and he there finds the dervish who has caused him to suffer so many evils for five and twenty years. He is about to kill him, and is only appeased when he is assured that all passed in the moment in which, with his eyes shut, he put his head into the water.

You still more admire the fiction of the loves of Dido and Æneas, which caused the mortal hatred between Carthage and Rome, as also that which exhibits in Elysium the destinies of the great men of the Roman Empire.

You also like that of Alcina, in Ariosto, who possesses the dignity of Minerva with the beauty of Venus, who is so charming to the eyes of her lovers, who intoxicates them with voluptuous delights, and unites all the loves and graces, but who, when she is at last reduced to her true self and the enchantment has passed away, is nothing more than a little shrivelled, disgusting, old woman.

As to fictions which represent nothing, teach nothing, and from which nothing results, are they anything more than falsities? And if they are incoherent and heaped together without choice, are they anything better than dreams?

You will possibly tell me that there are ancient fictions which are very incoherent, without ingenuity, and even absurd, which are still admired; but is it not rather owing to the fine images which are scattered over these fictions than to the inventions which introduce them? I will not dispute the point, but if you would be hissed at by all Europe, and afterwards forgotten forever, write fictions similar to those which you admire.

FIERTÉ.

Fierté is one of those expressions, which, having been originally employed in an offensive sense, are afterwards used in a favorable one. It is censure when this word signifies high-flown, proud, haughty, and disdainful. It is almost praise when it means the loftiness of a noble mind.

It is a just eulogium on a general who marches towards the enemy with fierté. Writers have praised the fierté of the gait of Louis XIV.; they should have contented themselves with remarking its nobleness.

Fierté, without dignity, is a merit incompatible with modesty. It is only fierté in air and manners which offends; it then displeases, even in kings.

Fierté of manner in society is the expression of pride; fierté of soul is greatness. The distinctions are so nice that a proud spirit is deemed blamable, while a proud soul is a theme of praise. By the former is understood one who thinks advantageously of himself while the latter denotes one who entertains elevated sentiments.

Fierté, announced by the exterior, is so great a fault that the weak, who abjectly praise it in the great are obliged to soften it, or rather to extol it, by speaking of “this noble fierté.” It is not simply vanity, which consists in setting a value upon little things; it is not presumption, which believes itself capable of great ones; it is not disdain, which adds contempt of others to a great opinion of self; but it is intimately allied to all these faults.

This word is used in romances, poetry, and above all, in operas, to express the severity of female modesty. We meet with vain fierté, vigorous fierté, etc. Poets are, perhaps, more in the right than they imagine. The fierté of a woman is not only rigid modesty and love of duty, but the high value which she sets upon her beauty. The fierté of the pencil is sometimes spoken of to signify free and fearless touches.

FIGURE.

Every one desirous of instruction should read with attention all the articles in the “Dictionnaire Encyclopédique,” under the head “Figure,” viz.:

“Figure of the Earth,” by M. d’Alembert—a work both clear and profound, in which we find all that can be known on the subject.

“Figure of Rhetoric,” by César Dumarsais—a piece of instruction which teaches at once to think and to write; and, like many other articles, make us regret that young people in general have not a convenient opportunity of reading things so useful.

“Human Figure,” as relating to painting and sculpture—an excellent lesson given to every artist, by M. Watelet.

“Figure,” in physiology—a very ingenious article, by M. de Caberoles.

“Figure,” in arithmetic and in algebra—by M. Mallet.

“Figure,” in logic, in metaphysics, and in polite literature, by M. le Chevalier de Jaucourt—a man superior to the philosophers of antiquity, inasmuch as he has preferred retirement, real philosophy, and indefatigable labor, to all the advantages that his birth might have procured him, in a country where birth is set above all beside, excepting money.

Figure or Form of the Earth.

Plato, Aristotle, Eratosthenes, Posidonius, and all the geometricians of Asia, of Egypt, and of Greece, having acknowledged the sphericity of our globe, how did it happen that we, for so long a time, imagined that the earth was a third longer than it was broad, and thence derived the terms “longitude” and “latitude,” which continually bear testimony to our ancient ignorance?

The reverence due to the “Bible,” which teaches us so many truths more necessary and more sublime, was the cause of this, our almost universal error. It had been found, in Pslam ciii, that God had stretched the heavens over the earth like a skin; and as a skin is commonly longer than it is wide, the same was concluded of the earth.

St. Athanasius expresses himself as warmly against good astronomers as against the partisans of Arius and Eusebius. “Let us,” says he, “stop the mouths of those barbarians, who, speaking without proof, dare to assert that the heavens also extend under the earth.” The fathers considered the earth as a great ship, surrounded by water, with the prow to the east, and the stern to the west. We still find, in “Cosmos,” a work of the fourth century, a sort of geographical chart, in which the earth has this figure.

Tortato, bishop of Avila, near the close of the fifteenth century, declares in his commentary on Genesis, that the Christian faith is shaken, if the earth is believed to be round. Columbus, Vespucius, and Magellan, not having the fear of excommunication by this learned bishop before their eyes, the earth resumed its rotundity in spite of him.

Then man went from one extreme to the other, and the earth was regarded as a perfect sphere. But the error of the perfect sphere was the mistake of philosophers, while that of a long, flat earth was the blunder of idiots.

When once it began to be clearly known that our globe revolves on its own axis every twenty-four hours, it might have been inferred from that alone that its form could not be absolutely round. Not only does the centrifugal zone considerably raise the waters in the region of the equator, by the motion of the diurnal rotation, but they are moreover elevated about twenty-five feet, twice a day, by the tides; the lands about the equator must then be perfectly inundated. But they are not so; therefore the region of the equator is much more elevated, in proportion, than the rest of the earth: then the earth is a spheroid elevated at the equator, and cannot be a perfect sphere. This proof, simple as it is, had escaped the greatest geniuses: because a universal prejudice rarely permits investigation.

We know that, in 1762, in a voyage to Cayenne, near the line, undertaken by order of Louis XIV., under the auspices of Colbert, the patron of all the arts, Richer, among many other observations, found that the oscillations or vibrations of his timepiece did not continue so frequent as in the latitude of Paris, and that it was absolutely necessary to shorten the pendulum one line and something more than a quarter. Physics and geometry were at that time not nearly so much cultivated as they now are; what man would have believed that an observation so trivial in appearance, a line more or less, could lead to the knowledge of the greatest physical truths? It was first of all discovered that the weight must necessarily be less on the equator than in our latitudes, since weight alone causes the oscillation of a pendulum. Consequently, the weight of bodies being the less the farther they are from the centre of the earth, it was inferred that the region of the equator must be much more elevated than our own—much more remote from the centre; so the earth could not be an exact sphere.

Many philosophers acted, on the occasion of these discoveries, as all men act when an opinion is to be changed—they disputed on Richer’s experiment; they pretended that our pendulums made their vibrations more slowly about the equator only because the metal was lengthened by the heat; but it was seen that the heat of the most burning summer lengthens it but one line in thirty feet; and here was an elongation of a line and a quarter, a line and a half, or even two lines, in an iron rod, only three feet and eight lines long.

Some years after MM. Varin, Deshayes, Feuillée, and Couplet, repeated the same experiment on the pendulum, near the equator; and it was always found necessary to shorten it, although the heat was very often less on the line than fifteen or twenty degrees from it. This experiment was again confirmed by the academicians whom Louis XV. sent to Peru; and who were obliged, on the mountains about Quito, where it froze, to shorten the second pendulum about two lines.

About the same time, the academicians who went to measure an arc of the meridian in the north, found that at Pello, within the Polar circle, it was necessary to lengthen the pendulum, in order to have the same oscillations as at Paris: consequently weight is greater at the polar circle than in the latitude of France, as it is greater in our latitude than at the equator. Weight being greater in the north, the north was therefore nearer the centre of the earth than the equator; therefore the earth was flattened at the poles.

Never did reasoning and experiment so fully concur to establish a truth. The celebrated Huygens, by calculating centrifugal forces, had proved that the consequent diminution of weight on the surface of a sphere was not great enough to explain the phenomena, and that therefore the earth must be a spheroid flattened at the poles. Newton, by the principles of attraction, had found nearly the same relations: only it must be observed, that Huygens believed this force inherent in bodies determining them towards the centre of the globe, to be everywhere the same. He had not yet seen the discoveries of Newton; so that he considered the diminution of weight by the theory of centrifugal forces only. The effect of centrifugal forces diminishes the primitive gravity on the equator. The smaller the circles in which this centrifugal force is exercised become, the more it yields to the force of gravity; thus, at the pole itself the centrifugal force being null, must leave the primitive gravity in full action. But this principle of a gravity always equal, falls to nothing before the discovery made by Newton, that a body transported, for instance, to the distance of ten diameters from the centre of the earth, would weigh one hundred times less than at the distance of one diameter.

It is then by the laws of gravitation, combined with those of the centrifugal force, that the real form of the earth must be shown. Newton and Gregory had such confidence in this theory that they did not hesitate to advance that experiments on weight were a surer means of knowing the form of the earth than any geographical measurement.

Louis XIV. had signalized his reign by that meridian which was drawn through France: the illustrious Dominico Cassini had begun it with his son; and had, in 1701, drawn from the feet of the Pyrenees to the observatory a line as straight as it could be drawn, considering the almost insurmountable obstacles which the height of mountains, the changes of refraction in the air, and the altering of instruments were constantly opposing to the execution of so vast and delicate an undertaking; he had, in 1701, measured six degrees eighteen minutes of that meridian. But, from whatever cause the error might proceed, he had found the degrees towards Paris, that is towards the north, shorter than those towards the Pyrenees and the south. This measurement gave the lie both to the theory of Norwood and to the new theory of the earth flattened at the poles. Yet this new theory was beginning to be so generally received that the academy’s secretary did not hesitate, in his history of 1701, to say that the new measurements made in France proved the earth to be a spheroid flattened at the poles. The truth was, that Dominico Cassini’s measurement led to a conclusion directly opposite; but, as the figure of the earth had not yet become a question in France, no one at that time was at the trouble of combating this false conclusion. The degrees of the meridian from Collioure to Paris were believed to be exactly measured; and the pole, which from that measurement must necessarily be elongated, was believed to be flattened.

An engineer, named M. de Roubais, astonished at this conclusion, demonstrated that, by the measurements taken in France, the earth must be an oblate spheroid, of which the meridian passing through the poles must be longer than the equator, the poles being elongated. But of all the natural philosophers to whom he addressed his dissertation, not one would have it printed; because it seemed that the academy had pronounced it as too bold in an individual to raise his voice. Some time after the error of 1701 was acknowledged, that which had been said was unsaid; and the earth was lengthened by a just conclusion drawn from a false principle. The meridian was continued in the same principle from Paris to Dunkirk; and the degrees were still found to grow shorter as they approached the north. People were still mistaken respecting the figure of the earth, as they had been concerning the nature of light. About the same time, some mathematicians who were performing the same operations in China were astonished to find a difference among their degrees, which they had expected to find alike; and to discover, after many verifications, that they were shorter towards the north than towards the south. This accordance of the mathematicians of France with those of China was another powerful reason for believing in the oblate spheroid. In France they did still more; they measured parallels to the equator. It is easily understood that on an oblate spheroid our degrees of longitude must be shorter than on a sphere. M. de Cassini found the parallel which passes through St. Malo to be shorter by one thousand and thirty-seven toises than it would have been on a spherical earth.

All these measurements proved that the degrees had been found as it was wished to find them. They overturned, for a time, in France, the demonstrations of Newton and Huygens; and it was no longer doubted that the poles were of a form precisely contrary to that which had at first been attributed to them. In short, nothing at all was known about the matter.

At length, other academicians, who had visited the polar circle in 1736, having found, by new measurements, that the degree was longer there than in France, people doubted between them and the Cassinis. But these doubts were soon after removed: for these same astronomers, returning from the pole, examined afresh the degree to the north of Paris, measured by Picard, in 1677, and found it to be a hundred and twenty-three toises longer than it was according to Picard’s measurement. If, then, Picard, with all his precautions, had made his degree one hundred and twenty-three toises too short, it was not at all unlikely that the degrees towards the south had in like manner been found too long. Thus the first error of Picard, having furnished the foundations for the measurements of the meridian, also furnished an excuse for the almost inevitable errors which very good astronomers might have committed in the course of these operations.

Unfortunately, other men of science found that, at the Cape of Good Hope, the degrees of the meridian did not agree with ours. Other measurements, taken in Italy, likewise contradicted those of France, and all were falsified by those of China. People again began to doubt, and to suspect, in my opinion quite reasonably, that the earth had protuberances. As for the English, though they are fond of travelling, they spared themselves the fatigue, and held fast their theory.

The difference between one diameter and the other is not more than five or six of our leagues—a difference immense in the eyes of a disputant, but almost imperceptible to those who consider the measurement of the globe only in reference to the purposes of utility which it may serve. A geographer could scarcely make this difference perceptible on a map; nor would a pilot be able to discover whether he was steering on a spheroid or on a sphere. Yet there have been men bold enough to assert that the lives of navigators depended on this question. Oh quackery! will you spare no degrees—not even those of the meridian?

FIGURED—FIGURATIVE.

We say, a truth “figured” by a fable, by a parable; the church “figured” by the young spouse in Solomon’s Song; ancient Rome “figured” by Babylon. A figurative style is constituted by metaphorical expressions, figuring the things spoken of—and disfiguring them when the metaphors are not correct.

Ardent imagination, passion, desire—frequently deceived—produce the figurative style. We do not admit it into history, for too many metaphors are hurtful, not only to perspicuity, but also to truth, by saying more or less than the thing itself.

In didactic works, this style should be rejected. It is much more out of place in a sermon than in a funeral oration, because the sermon is a piece of instruction in which the truth is to be announced; while the funeral oration is a declaration in which it is to be exaggerated.

The poetry of enthusiasm, as the epopee and the ode, is that to which this style is best adapted. It is less admissible in tragedy, where the dialogue should be natural as well as elevated; and still less in comedy, where the style must be more simple.

The limits to be set to the figurative style, in each kind, are determined by taste. Baltasar Gracian says, that “our thoughts depart from the vast shores of memory, embark on the sea of imagination, arrive in the harbor of intelligence, and are entered at the custom house of the understanding.”

This is precisely the style of Harlequin. He says to his master, “The ball of your commands has rebounded from the racquet of my obedience.” Must it not be owned that such is frequently that oriental style which people try to admire? Another fault of the figurative style is the accumulating of incoherent figures. A poet, speaking of some philosophers, has called them:

D’ambitieux pygmées

Qui sur leurs pieds vainement redressés

Et sur des monts d’argumens entassés

De jour en jour superbes Encelades,

Vont redoublant leurs folles escalades.

When philosophers are to be written against, it should be done better. How do ambitious pygmies, reared on their hind legs on mountains of arguments, continue escalades? What a false and ridiculous image! What elaborate dulness!

In an allegory by the same author, entitled the “Liturgy of Cytherea,” we find these lines:

De toutes parts, autour de l’inconnue,

Ils vont tomber comme grêle menue,

Moissons des cœurs sur la terre jonchés,

Et des Dieux même à son char attachés,

De par Venus nous venons cette affaire

Si s’en retourne aux cieux dans son sérail,

En ruminant comment il pourra faire

Pour ramener la brebis au bercail.

Here we have harvests of hearts thrown on the ground like small hail; and among these hearts palpitating on the ground, are gods bound to the car of the unknown; while love, sent by Venus, ruminates in his seraglio in heaven, what he shall do to bring back to the fold this lost mutton surrounded by scattered hearts. All this forms a figure at once so false, so puerile, and so incoherent—so disgusting, so extravagant, so stupidly expressed, that we are astonished that a man, who made good verses of another kind, and was not devoid of taste, could write anything so miserably bad.

Figures, metaphors, are not necessary in an allegory; what has been invented with imagination may be told with simplicity. Plato has more allegories than figures; he often expresses them elegantly and without ostentation.

Nearly all the maxims of the ancient orientals and of the Greeks were in the figurative style. All those sentences are metaphors, or short allegories; and in them the figurative style has great effect in rousing the imagination and impressing the memory.

We know that Pythagoras said, “In the tempest adore the echo,” that is, during civil broils retire to the country; and “Stir not the fire with the sword,” meaning, do not irritate minds already inflamed. In every language, there are many common proverbs which are in the figurative style.

FIGURE IN THEOLOGY.

It is quite certain, and is agreed by the most pious men, that figures and allegories have been carried too far. Some of the fathers of the church regard the piece of red cloth, placed by the courtesan Rahab at her window, for a signal to Joshua’s spies, as a figure of the blood of Jesus Christ. This is an error of an order of mind which would find mystery in everything.

Nor can it be denied that St. Ambrose made very bad use of his taste for allegory, when he says, in his book of “Noah and the Ark,” that the back door of the ark was a figure of our hinder parts.

All men of sense have asked how it can be proved that these Hebrew words, “maher, salas-has-bas,” (take quick the spoils) are a figure of Jesus Christ? How is Judah, tying his ass to a vine, and washing his cloak in the wine, also a figure of Him. How can Ruth, slipping into bed to Boaz, figure the church, how are Sarah and Rachel the church, and Hagar and Leah the synagogue? How do the kisses of the Shunamite typify the marriage of the church? A volume might be made of these enigmas, which, to the best theologians of later times, have appeared to be rather far-fetched than edifying.

The danger of this abuse is fully admitted by Abbé Fleury, the author of the “Ecclesiastical History.” It is a vestige of rabbinism; a fault into which the learned St. Jerome never fell. It is like oneiromancy, or the explanation of dreams. If a girl sees muddy water, when dreaming, she will be ill-married; if she sees clear water, she will have a good husband; a spider denotes money, etc. In short, will enlightened posterity believe it? The understanding of dreams has, for more than four thousand years, been made a serious study.

Symbolical Figures.

All nations have made use of them, as we have said in the article “emblem.” But who began? Was it the Egyptians? It is not likely. We think we have already more than once proved that Egypt is a country quite new, and that many ages were requisite to save the country from inundations, and render it habitable. It is impossible that the Egyptians should have invented the signs of the zodiac, since the figures denoting our seed-time and harvest cannot coincide with theirs. When we cut our corn, their land is covered with water; and when we sow, their reaping time is approaching. Thus the bull of our zodiac and the girl bearing ears of corn cannot have come from Egypt.

Here is also an evident proof of the falsity of the new paradox, that the Chinese are an Egyptian colony. The characters are not the same. The Chinese mark the course of the sun by twenty-eight constellations; and the Egyptians, after the Chaldæans, reckoned only twelve, like ourselves.

The figures that denote the planets are in China and in India all different from those of Egypt and of Europe; so are the signs of the metals; so is the method of guiding the hand in writing. Nothing could have been more chimerical than to send the Egyptians to people China.

All these fabulous foundations, laid in fabulous times, have caused an irreparable loss of time to a prodigious multitude of the learned, who have all been bewildered in their laborious researches, which might have been serviceable to mankind if directed to arts of real utility.

Pluche, in his History, or rather his fable, of the Heavens, assures us that Ham, son of Noah, went and reigned in Egypt, where there was nobody to reign over; that his son Menes was the greatest of legislators, and that Thoth was his prime minister.

According to him and his authorities, this Thoth, or somebody else, instituted feasts in honor of the deluge; and the joyful cry of “Io Bacche,” so famous among the Greeks, was, among the Egyptians, a lamentation. “Bacche” came from the Hebrew “beke,” signifying sobs, and that at a time when the Hebrew people did not exist. According to this explanation, “joy” means “sorrow,” and “to sing” signifies “to weep.”

The Iroquois have more sense. They do not take the trouble to inquire what passed on the shores of Lake Ontario some thousand years ago: instead of making systems, they go hunting.

The same authors affirm that the sphinxes, with which Egypt was adorned, signified superabundance, because some interpreters have asserted that the Hebrew word “spang” meant an “excess”; as if the Egyptians had taken lessons from the Hebrew tongue, which is, in great part, derived from the Phœnician: besides, what relation has a sphinx to an abundance of water? Future schoolmen will maintain, with greater appearance of reason, that the masks which decorate the keystones of our windows are emblems of our masquerades; and that these fantastic ornaments announced that balls were given in every house to which they were affixed.

Figure, Figurative, Allegorical, Mystical, Tropological, Typical, etc.

This is often the art of finding in books everything but what they really contain. For instance, Romulus killing his brother Remus shall signify the death of the duke of Berry, brother of Louis XI.; Regulus, imprisoned at Carthage, shall typify St. Louis captive at Mansurah.

It is very justly remarked in the “Encyclopædia,” that many fathers of the church have, perhaps, carried this taste for allegorical figures a little too far; but they are to be reverenced, even in their wanderings. If the holy fathers used and then abused this method, their little excesses of imagination may be pardoned, in consideration of their holy zeal.

The antiquity of the usage may also be pleaded in justification, since it was practised by the earliest philosophers. But it is true that the symbolical figures employed by the fathers are in a different taste.

For example: When St. Augustine wishes to make it appear that the forty-two generations of the genealogy of Jesus are announced by St. Matthew, who gives only forty-one, he says that Jechonias must be counted twice, because Jechonias is a corner-stone belonging to two walls; that these two walls figure the old and the new law; and that Jechonias, being thus the corner-stone, figures Jesus Christ, who is the real corner-stone.

The same saint, in the same sermon, says that the number forty must prevail; and at once abandons Jechonias and his corner-stone, counted as two. The number forty, he says, signifies life; ten, which is perfect beatitude, being multiplied by four, which, being the number of the seasons, figures time.

Again, in the same sermon, he explains why St. Luke gives Jesus Christ seventy-seven ancestors: fifty-six up to the patriarch Abraham, and twenty-one from Abraham up to God himself. It is true that, according to the Hebrew text, there would be but seventy-six; for the Hebrew does not reckon a Cainan, who is interpolated in the Greek translation called “The Septuagint.”

Thus said Augustine: “The number seventy-seven figures the abolition of all sins by baptism . . . . the number ten signifies justice and beatitude, resulting from the creature, which makes seven with the Trinity, which is three: therefore it is that God’s commandments are ten in number. The number eleven denotes sin, because it transgresses ten. . . . This number seventy-seven is the product of eleven, figuring sin, multiplied by seven, and not by ten, for seven is the symbol of the creature. Three represents the soul, which is in some sort an image of the Divinity; and four represents the body, on account of its four qualities.” In these explanations, we find some trace of the cabalistic mysteries and the quaternary of Pythagoras. This taste was very long in vogue.

St. Augustine goes much further, concerning the dimensions of matter. Breadth is the dilatation of the heart, which performs good works; length is perseverance; depth is the hope of reward. He carries the allegory very far, applying it to the cross, and drawing great consequences therefrom. The use of these figures had passed from the Jews to the Christians long before St. Augustine’s time. It is not for us to know within what bounds it was right to stop.

The examples of this fault are innumerable. No one who has studied to advantage will hazard the introduction of such figures, either in the pulpit or in the school. We find no such instances among the Romans or the Greeks, not even in their poets.

In Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” themselves, we find only ingenious deductions drawn from fables which are given as fables. Deucalion and Pyrrha threw stones behind them between their legs, and men were produced therefrom. Ovid says:

Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum,

Et documenta damus qua simus origine nati.

Thence we are a hardened and laborious race,

Proving full well our stony origin.

Apollo loves Daphne, but Daphne does not love Apollo. This is because love has two kinds of arrows; the one golden and piercing, the other leaden and blunt. Apollo has received in his heart a golden arrow, Daphne a leaden one.

Ecce sagittifera prompsit duo tela pharetra

Diversorum operum; fugat hoc, facit illud amorem

Quod facit auratum est, et cuspide fulget acuta;

Quod fugat obtusum est, et habet sub arundine plumbum . . . .

Two different shafts he from his quiver draws;

One to repel desire, and one to cause.

One shaft is pointed with refulgent gold,

To bribe the love, and make the lover bold;

One blunt and tipped with lead, whose base allay

Provokes disdain, and drives desire away.

—Dryden.

These figures are all ingenious, and deceive no one.

That Venus, the goddess of beauty, should not go unattended by the Graces, is a charming truth. These fables, which were in the mouths of all—these allegories, so natural and attractive—had so much sway over the minds of men, that perhaps the first Christians imitated while they opposed them.

They took up the weapons of mythology to destroy it, but they could not wield them with the same address. They did not reflect that the sacred austerity of our holy religion placed these resources out of their power, and that a Christian hand would have dealt but awkwardly with the lyre of Apollo.

However, the taste for these typical and prophetic figures was so firmly rooted that every prince, every statesman, every pope, every founder of an order, had allegories or allusions taken from the Holy Scriptures applied to him. Satire and flattery rivalled each other in drawing from this source.

When Pope Innocent III. made a bloody crusade against the court of Toulouse, he was told, “Innocens eris a maledictione.” When the order of the Minimes was established, it appeared that their founder had been foretold in Genesis: “Minimus cum patre nostro.”

The preacher who preached before John of Austria after the celebrated battle of Lepanto, took for his text, “Fuit homo missus a Deo, cui nomen erat Johannes;” A man sent from God, whose name was John; and this allusion was very fine, if all the rest were ridiculous. It is said to have been repeated for John Sobieski, after the deliverance of Vienna; but this latter preacher was nothing more than a plagiarist.

In short, so constant has been this custom that no preacher of the present day has ever failed to take an allegory for his text. One of the most happy instances is the text of the funeral oration over the duke of Candale, delivered before his sister, who was considered a pattern of virtue: “Dic, quia soror mea es, ut mihi bene eveniat propter te.”—“Say, I pray thee, that thou art my sister, that it may be well with me for thy sake.”’

It is not to be wondered at that the Cordeliers carried these figures rather too far in favor of St. Francis of Assisi, in the famous but little-known book, entitled, “Conformities of St. Francis of Assisi with Jesus Christ.” We find in it sixty-four predictions of the coming of St. Francis, some in the Old Testament, others in the New; and each prediction contains three figures, which signify the founding of the Cordeliers. So that these fathers find themselves foretold in the Bible a hundred and ninety-two times.

From Adam down to St. Paul, everything prefigured the blessed Francis of Assisi. The Scriptures were given to announce to the universe the sermons of Francis to the quadrupeds, the fishes, and the birds, the sport he had with a woman of snow, his frolics with the devil, his adventures with brother Elias and brother Pacificus.

These pious reveries, which amounted even to blasphemy, have been condemned. But the Order of St. Francis has not suffered by them, having renounced these extravagancies so common to the barbarous ages.

FINAL CAUSES.

SECTION I.

Virgil says (“Æneid,” book vi. 727):

Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet.

This active mind infused, through all the space

Unites and mingles with the mighty mass.

—Dryden.

Virgil said well: and Benedict Spinoza, who has not the brilliancy of Virgil, nor his merit, is compelled to acknowledge an intelligence presiding over all. Had he denied this, I should have said to him: Benedict, you are a fool; you possess intelligence, and you deny it, and to whom do you deny it?

In the year 1770, there appeared a man, in some respects far superior to Spinoza, as eloquent as the Jewish Hollander is dry, less methodical, but infinitely more perspicuous; perhaps equal to him in mathematical science; but without the ridiculous affectation of applying mathematical reasonings to metaphysical and moral subjects. The man I mean is the author of the “System of Nature.” He assumed the name of Mirabaud, the secretary of the French Academy. Alas! the worthy secretary was incapable of writing a single page of the book of our formidable opponent. I would recommend all you who are disposed to avail yourselves of your reason and acquire instruction, to read the following eloquent though dangerous passage from the “System of Nature.” (Part II. v. 153.)

It is contended that animals furnish us with a convincing evidence that there is some powerful cause of their existence; the admirable adaptation of their different parts, mutually receiving and conferring aid towards accomplishing their functions, and maintaining in health and vigor the entire being, announce to us an artificer uniting power to wisdom. Of the power of nature, it is impossible for us to doubt; she produces all the animals that we see by the help of combinations of that matter, which is in incessant action; the adaptation of the parts of these animals is the result of the necessary laws of their nature, and of their combination. When the adaptation ceases, the animal is necessarily destroyed. What then becomes of the wisdom, the intelligence, or the goodness of that alleged cause, to which was ascribed all the honor of this boasted adaptation? Those animals of so wonderful a structure as to be pronounced the works of an immutable God, do not they undergo incessant changes; and do not they end in decay and destruction? Where is the wisdom, the goodness, the foresight, the immutability of an artificer, whose sole object appears to be to derange and destroy the springs of those machines which are proclaimed to be masterpieces of his power and skill? If this God cannot act otherwise than thus, he is neither free nor omnipotent. If his will changes, he is not immutable. If he permits machines, which he has endowed with sensibility, to experience pain, he is deficient in goodness. If he has been unable to render his productions solid and durable, he is deficient in skill. Perceiving as we do the decay and ruin not only of all animals, but of all the other works of deity, we cannot but inevitably conclude, either that everything performed in the course of nature is absolutely necessary—the unavoidable result of its imperative and insuperable laws, or that the artificer who impels her various operations is destitute of plan, of power, of constancy, of skill, and of goodness.

“Man, who considers himself the master-work of the Divinity, supplies us more readily and completely than any other production, with evidence of the incapacity or malignity of his pretended author. In this being, possessed of feeling, intuition, and reason, which considers itself as the perpetual object of divine partiality, and forms its God on the model of itself, we see a machine more changeable, more frail, more liable to derangement from its extraordinary complication, than that of the coarsest and grossest beings. Beasts, which are destitute of our mental powers and acquirements; plants, which merely vegetate; stones, which are unendowed with sensation, are, in many respects, beings far more favored than man. They are, at least, exempt from distress of mind, from the tortures of thought, and corrosions of care, to which the latter is a victim. Who would not prefer being a mere unintelligent animal, or a senseless stone, when his thoughts revert to the irreparable loss of an object dearly beloved? Would it not be infinitely more desirable to be an inanimate mass, than the gloomy votary and victim of superstition, trembling under the present yoke of his diabolical deity, and anticipating infinite torments in a future existence? Beings destitute of sensation, life, memory, and thought experience no affliction from the idea of what is past, present, or to come; they do not believe there is any danger of incurring eternal torture for inaccurate reasoning; which is believed, however, by many of those favored beings who maintain that the great architect of the world has created the universe for themselves.

“Let us not be told that we have no idea of a work without having that of the artificer distinguished from the work. Nature is not a work. She has always existed of herself. Every process takes place in her bosom. She is an immense manufactory, provided with materials, and she forms the instruments by which she acts; all her works are effects of her own energy, and of agents or causes which she frames, contains, and impels. Eternal, uncreated elements—elements indestructible, ever in motion, and combining in exquisite and endless diversity, originate all the beings and all the phenomena that we behold; all the effects, good or evil, that we feel; the order or disorder which we distinguish, merely by different modes in which they affect ourselves; and, in a word, all those wonders which excite our meditation and confound our reasoning. These elements, in order to effect objects thus comprehensive and important, require nothing beyond their own properties, individual or combined, and the motion essential to their very existence; and thus preclude the necessity of recurring to an unknown artificer, in order to arrange, mould, combine, preserve, and dissolve them.

“But, even admitting for a moment, that it is impossible to conceive of the universe without an artificer who formed it, and who preserves and watches over his work, where shall we place that artificer? Shall he be within or without the universe? Is he matter or motion? Or is he mere space, nothingness, vacuity? In each of these cases, he will either be nothing, or he will be comprehended in nature, and subjected to her laws. If he is in nature, I think I see in her only matter in motion, and cannot but thence conclude that the agent impelling her is corporeal and material, and that he is consequently liable to dissolution. If this agent is out of nature, then I have no idea of what place he can occupy, nor of an immaterial being, nor of the manner in which a spirit, without extension, can operate upon the matter from which it is separated. Those unknown tracts of space which imagination has placed beyond the visible world may be considered as having no existence for a being who can scarcely see to the distance of his own feet; the ideal power which inhabits them can never be represented to my mind, unless when my imagination combines at random the fantastic colors which it is always forced to employ in the world on which I am. In this case, I shall merely reproduce in idea what my senses have previously actually perceived; and that God, which I, as it were, compel myself to distinguish from nature, and to place beyond her circuit, will ever, in opposition to all my efforts, necessarily withdraw within it.

“It will be observed and insisted upon by some that if a statue or a watch were shown to a savage who had never seen them, he would inevitably acknowledge that they were the productions of some intelligent agent, more powerful and ingenious than himself; and hence it will be inferred that we are equally bound to acknowledge that the machine of the universe, that man, that the phenomena of nature, are the productions of an agent, whose intelligence and power are far superior to our own.

“I answer, in the first place, that we cannot possibly doubt either the great power or the great skill of nature; we admire her skill as often as we are surprised by the extended, varied and complicated effects which we find in those of her works that we take the pains to investigate; she is not, however, either more or less skilful in any one of her works than in the rest. We no more comprehend how she could produce a stone or a piece of metal than how she could produce a head organized like that of Newton. We call that man skilful who can perform things which we are unable to perform ourselves. Nature can perform everything; and when anything exists, it is a proof that she was able to make it. Thus, it is only in relation to ourselves that we ever judge nature to be skilful; we compare it in those cases with ourselves; and, as we possess a quality which we call intelligence, by the aid of which we produce works, in which we display our skill, we thence conclude that the works of nature, which must excite our astonishment and admiration, are not in fact hers, but the productions of an artificer, intelligent like ourselves, and whose intelligence we proportion, in our minds, to the degree of astonishment excited in us by his works; that is, in fact, to our own weakness and ignorance.”

See the reply to these arguments under the articles on “Atheism” and “God,” and in the following section, written long before the “System of Nature.”

SECTION II.

If a clock is not made in order to tell the time of the day, I will then admit that final causes are nothing but chimeras, and be content to go by the name of a final-cause-finder—in plain language, fool—to the end of my life.

All the parts, however, of that great machine, the world, seem made for one another. Some philosophers affect to deride final causes, which were rejected, they tell us, by Epicurus and Lucretius. But it seems to me that Epicurus and Lucretius rather merit the derision. They tell you that the eye is not made to see; but that, since it was found out that eyes were capable of being used for that purpose, to that purpose they have been applied. According to them, the mouth is not formed to speak and eat, nor the stomach to digest, nor the heart to receive the blood from the veins and impel it through the arteries, nor the feet to walk, nor the ears to hear. Yet, at the same time, these very shrewd and consistent persons admitted that tailors made garments to clothe them, and masons built houses to lodge them; and thus ventured to deny nature—the great existence, the universal intelligence—what they conceded to the most insignificant artificers employed by themselves.

The doctrine of final causes ought certainly to be preserved from being abused. We have already remarked that M. le Prieur, in the “Spectator of Nature,” contends in vain that the tides were attached to the ocean to enable ships to enter more easily into their ports, and to preserve the water from corruption; he might just as probably and successfully have urged that legs were made to wear boots, and noses to bear spectacles.

In order to satisfy ourselves of the truth of a final cause, in any particular instance, it is necessary that the effect produced should be uniform and invariably in time and place. Ships have not existed in all times and upon all seas; accordingly, it cannot be said that the ocean was made for ships. It is impossible not to perceive how ridiculous it would be to maintain that nature had toiled on from the very beginning of time to adjust herself to the inventions of our fortuitous and arbitrary arts, all of which are of so late a date in their discovery; but it is perfectly clear that if noses were not made for spectacles, they were made for smelling, and there have been noses ever since there were men. In the same manner, hands, instead of being bestowed for the sake of gloves, are visibly destined for all those uses to which the metacarpus, the phalanges of the fingers, and the movements of the circular muscle of the wrist, render them applicable by us. Cicero, who doubted everything else, had no doubt about final causes.

It appears particularly difficult to suppose that those parts of the human frame by which the perpetuation of the species is conducted should not, in fact, have been intended and destined for that purpose, from their mechanism so truly admirable, and the sensation which nature has connected with it more admirable still. Epicurus would be at least obliged to admit that pleasure is divine, and that that pleasure is a final cause, in consequence of which beings, endowed with sensibility, but who could never have communicated it to themselves, have been incessantly introduced into the world as others have passed away from it.

This philosopher, Epicurus, was a great man for the age in which he lived. He saw that Descartes denied what Gassendi affirmed and what Newton demonstrated—that motion cannot exist without a vacuum. He conceived the necessity of atoms to serve as constituent parts of invariable species. These are philosophical ideas. Nothing, however, was more respectable than the morality of genuine Epicureans; it consisted in sequestration from public affairs, which are incompatible with wisdom, and in friendship, without which life is but a burden. But as to the rest of the philosophy of Epicurus, it appears not to be more admissible than the grooved or tubular matter of Descartes. It is, as it appears to me, wilfully to shut the eyes and the understanding, and to maintain that there is no design in nature; and if there is design, there is an intelligent cause—there exists a God.

Some point us to the irregularities of our globe, the volcanoes, the plains of moving sand, some small mountains swallowed up in the ocean, others raised by earthquakes, etc. But does it follow from the naves of your chariot wheel taking fire, that your chariot was not made expressly for the purpose of conveying you from one place to another?

The chains of mountains which crown both hemispheres, and more than six hundred rivers which flow from the foot of these rocks towards the sea; the various streams that swell these rivers in their courses, after fertilizing the fields through which they pass; the innumerable fountains which spring from the same source, which supply necessary refreshment, and growth, and beauty to animal and vegetable life; all this appears no more to result from a fortuitous concourse and an obliquity of atoms, than the retina which receives the rays of light, or the crystalline humor which refracts it, or the drum of the ear which admits sound, or the circulation of the blood in our veins, the systole and diastole of the heart, the regulating principle of the machine of life.

SECTION III.

It would appear that a man must be supposed to have lost his senses before he can deny that stomachs are made for digestion, eyes to see, and ears to hear.

On the other hand, a man must have a singular partiality for final causes, to assert that stone was made for building houses, and that silkworms are produced in China that we may wear satins in Europe.

But, it is urged, if God has evidently done one thing by design, he has then done all things by design. It is ridiculous to admit Providence in the one case and to deny it in the others. Everything that is done was foreseen, was arranged. There is no arrangement without an object, no effect without a cause; all, therefore, is equally the result, the product of the final cause; it is, therefore, as correct to say that noses were made to bear spectacles, and fingers to be adorned with rings, as to say that the ears were formed to hear sounds, the eyes to receive light.

All that this objection amounts to, in my opinion, is that everything is the result, nearer or more remote, of a general final cause; that everything is the consequence of eternal laws. When the effects are invariably the same in all times and places, and when these uniform effects are independent of the beings to which they attach, then there is visibly a final cause.

All animals have eyes and see; all have ears and hear; all have mouths with which they eat; stomachs, or something similar, by which they digest their food; all have suitable means for expelling the fæces; all have the organs requisite for the continuation of their species; and these natural gifts perform their regular course and process without any application or intermixture of art. Here are final causes clearly established; and to deny a truth so universal would be a perversion of the faculty of reason.

But stones, in all times and places, do not constitute the materials of buildings. All noses do not bear spectacles; all fingers do not carry a ring; all legs are not covered with silk stockings. A silkworm, therefore, is not made to cover my legs, exactly as your mouth is made for eating, and another part of your person for the “garderobe.” There are, therefore, we see, immediate effects produced from final causes, and effects of a very numerous description, which are remote productions from those causes.

Everything belonging to nature is uniform, immutable, and the immediate work of its author. It is he who has established the laws by which the moon contributes three-fourths to the cause of the flux and reflux of the ocean, and the sun the remaining fourth. It is he who has given a rotatory motion to the sun, in consequence of which that orb communicates its rays of light in the short space of seven minutes and a half to the eyes of men, crocodiles, and cats.

But if, after a course of ages, we started the inventions of shears and spits, to clip the wool of sheep with the one, and with the other to roast in order to eat them, what else can be inferred from such circumstances, but that God formed us in such a manner that, at some time or other, we could not avoid becoming ingenious and carnivorous?

Sheep, undoubtedly, were not made expressly to be roasted and eaten, since many nations abstain from such food with horror. Mankind are not created essentially to massacre one another, since the Brahmins, and the respectable primitives called Quakers, kill no one. But the clay out of which we are kneaded frequently produces massacres, as it produces calumnies, vanities, persecutions, and impertinences. It is not precisely that the formation of man is the final cause of our madnesses and follies, for a final cause is universal, and invariable in every age and place; but the horrors and absurdities of the human race are not at all the less included in the eternal order of things. When we thresh our corn, the flail is the final cause of the separation of the grain. But if that flail, while threshing my grain, crushes to death a thousand insects, that occurs not by an express and determinate act of my will, nor, on the other hand, is it by mere chance; the insects were, on this occasion, actually under my flail, and could not but be there.

It is a consequence of the nature of things that a man should be ambitious; that he should enroll and discipline a number of other men; that he should be a conqueror, or that he should be defeated; but it can never be said that the man was created by God to be killed in war.

The organs with which nature has supplied us cannot always be final causes in action. The eyes which are bestowed for seeing are not constantly open. Every sense has its season for repose. There are some senses that are even made no use of. An imbecile and wretched female, for example, shut up in a cloister at the age of fourteen years, mars one of the final causes of her existence; but the cause, nevertheless, equally exists, and whenever it is free it will operate.

FINESSE, FINENESS, ETC.

Of the Different Significations of the Word.

Fineness either in its proper or its figurative sense does not signify either light, slender, fine, or of a rare thin texture; this word expresses something delicate and finished. Light cloth, soft linen, thin lace, or slender galloon, are not always fine.

This word has a relation to the verb “to finish,” whence come the finishings of art; thus, we say, the finishings of Vanderwerff’s pencil or of Mieris; we say, a fine horse, fine gold, a fine diamond. A fine horse is opposed to a clumsy one; the fine diamond to a false one; fine or refined gold to gold mixed with alloy.

Fineness is generally applied to delicate things and lightness of manufacture. Although we say a fine horse, we seldom say, “the fineness of a horse.” We speak of the fineness of hair, lace, or stuff. When by this word we should express the fault or wrong use of anything, we add the adverb “too”; as—This thread is broken, it was too fine; this stuff is too fine for the season.

Fineness or finesse, in a figurative sense, applies to conduct, speech, and works of mind. In conduct, finesse always expresses, as in the arts, something delicate or subtile; it may sometimes exist without ability, but it is very rarely unaccompanied by a little deception; politics admit it, and society reproves it.

Finesse is not exactly subtlety; we draw a person into a snare with finesse; we escape from it with subtlety. We act with finesse, and we play a subtle trick. Distrust is inspired by an unsparing use of finesse; yet we almost always deceive ourselves if we too generally suspect it.

Finesse, in works of wit, as in conversation, consists in the art of not expressing a thought clearly, but leaving it so as to be easily perceived. It is an enigma to which people of sense readily find the solution.

A chancellor one day offering his protection to parliament, the first president turning towards the assembly, said: “Gentlemen, thank the chancellor; he has given us more than we demanded of him”—a very witty reproof.

Finesse, in conversation and writing, differs from delicacy; the first applies equally to piquant and agreeable things, even to blame and praise; and still more to indecencies, over which a veil is drawn, through which we cannot penetrate without a blush. Bold things may be said with finesse.

Delicacy expresses soft and agreeable sentiments and ingenious praise; thus finesse belongs more to epigram, and delicacy to madrigal. It is delicacy which enters into a lover’s jealousies, and not finesse.

The praises given to Louis XIV. by Despréaux are not always equally delicate; satires are not always sufficiently ingenious in the way of finesse. When Iphigenia, in Racine, has received from her father the order never to see Achilles more, she cries: “Dieux plus doux, vous n’aviez demandé que ma vie!”—“More gentle gods, you only ask my life!” The true character of this partakes rather of delicacy than of finesse.

FIRE.

SECTION I.

Is fire anything more than an element which lights, warms, and burns us? Is not light always fire, though fire is not always light? And is not Boerhaave in the right?

Is not the purest fire extracted from our combustibles, always gross, and partaking of the bodies consumed, and very different from elementary fire? How is fire distributed throughout nature, of which it is the soul?

Ignis ubique latet, naturam amplectitur omnem,

Cuncta parit, renovat, dividit, unit, alit.

Why did Newton, in speaking of rays of light, always say, “De natura radiorum lucis, utrum corpora sint necne non disputamus”; without examining whether they were bodies or not?

Did he only speak geometrically? In that case, this doubt was useless. It is evident that he doubted of the nature of elementary fire, and doubted with reason.

Is elementary fire a body like others, as earth and water? If it was a body of this kind, would it not gravitate like all other matter? Would it escape from the luminous body in the right line? Would it have a uniform progression? And why does light never move out of a right line when it is unimpeded in its rapid course?

May not elementary fire have properties of matter little known to us, and properties of substance entirely so? May it not be a medium between matter and substances of another kind? And who can say that there are not a million of these substances? I do not say that there are, but I say it is not proved that there may not be.

It was very difficult to believe about a hundred years ago that bodies acted upon one another, not only without touching, and without emission, but at great distances; it is, however, found to be true, and is no longer doubted. At present, it is difficult to believe that the rays of the sun are penetrable by each other, but who knows what may happen to prove it?

However that may be, I wish, for the novelty of the thing, that this incomprehensible penetrability could be admitted. Light has something so divine that we should endeavor to make it a step to the discovery of substances still more pure.

Come to my aid, Empedocles and Democritus; come and admire the wonders of electricity; see if the sparks which traverse a thousand bodies in the twinkling of an eye are of ordinary matter; judge if elementary fire does not contract the heart, and communicate that warmth which gives life! Judge if this element is not the source of all sensation, and if sensation is not the origin of thought; though ignorant and insolent pedants have condemned the proposition, as one which should be persecuted.

Tell me, if the Supreme Being, who presides over all nature, cannot forever preserve these elementary atoms which he has so rarely endowed? “Igneus est ollis vigor et cœlestis origo.”

The celebrated Le Cat calls this vivifying fluid “an amphibious being, endowed by its author with a superior refinement which links it to immaterial beings, and thereby ennobles and elevates it into that medium nature which we recognize, and which is the source of all its properties.”

You are of the opinion of Le Cat? I would be so too if I could; but there are so many fools and villains that I dare not. I can only think quietly in my own way at Mount Krapak. Let others think as well as they are allowed to think, whether at Salamanca or Bergamo.

SECTION II.

What is Understood by Fire Used Figuratively.

Fire, particularly in poetry, often signifies love, and is employed more elegantly in the plural than in the singular. Corneille often says “un beau feu” for a virtuous and noble love. A man has fire in his conversation; that does not mean that he has brilliant and enlightened ideas, but lively expressions animated by action.

Fire in writing does not necessarily imply lightness and beauty, but vivacity, multiplied figures, and spontaneous ideas. Fire is a merit in speech and writing only when it is well managed. It is said that poets are animated with a divine fire when they are sublime; genius cannot exist without fire, but fire may be possessed without genius.

FIRMNESS.

Firmness comes from firm, and has a different signification from solidity and hardness; a squeezed cloth, a beaten negro, have firmness without being hard or solid.

It must always be remembered that modifications of the soul can only be expressed by physical images; we say firmness of soul, and of mind, which does not signify that they are harder or more solid than usual.

Firmness is the exercise of mental courage; it means a decided resolution; while obstinacy, on the contrary, signifies blindness. Those who praise the firmness of Tacitus are not so much in the wrong as P. Bouhours pretends; it is an accidental ill-chosen term, which expresses energy and strength of thought and of style. It may be said that La Bruyère has a firm style, and that many other writers have only a hard one.

FLATTERY.

I find not one monument of flattery in remote antiquity; there is no flattery in Hesiod—none in Homer. Their stories are not addressed to a Greek, elevated to some dignity, nor to his lady; as each canto of Thomson’s “Seasons” is dedicated to some person of rank, or as so many forgotten epistles in verse have been dedicated, in England, to gentlemen or ladies of quality, with a brief eulogy, and the arms of the patron or patroness placed at the head of the work.

Nor is there any flattery in Demosthenes. This way of asking alms harmoniously began, if I mistake not, with Pindar. No hand can be stretched out more emphatically.

It appears to me that among the Romans great flattery is to be dated from the time of Augustus. Julius Cæsar had scarcely time to be flattered. There is not, extant, any dedicatory epistle to Sulla, Marius, or Carbo, nor to their wives, or their mistresses. I can well believe that very bad verses were presented to Lucullus and Pompey; but, thank God, we do not have them.

It is a great spectacle to behold Cicero equal in dignity to Cæsar, speaking before him as advocate for a king of Bithynia and Lesser Armenia, named Deiotarus, accused of laying ambuscades for him, and even designing to assassinate him. Cicero begins with acknowledging that he is disconcerted in his presence. He calls him the vanquisher of the world—“victorem orbis terrarum.” He flatters him; but this adulation does not yet amount to baseness; some sense of shame still remains.

But with Augustus there are no longer any bounds; the senate decrees his apotheosis during his lifetime. Under the succeeding emperors this flattery becomes the ordinary tribute, and is no longer anything more than a style. It is impossible to flatter any one, when the most extravagant adulation has become the ordinary currency.

In Europe, we have had no great monuments of flattery before Louis XIV. His father, Louis XIII., had very little incense offered him. We find no mention of him, except in one or two of Malherbe’s odes. There, indeed, according to custom, he is called “thou greatest of kings”—as the Spanish poets say to the king of Spain, and the English poets (laureate) to the king of England; but the better part of the poet’s praises is bestowed on Cardinal Richelieu, whose soul is great and fearless; who practises so well the healing art of government, and who knows how to cure all our evils:

Dont l’âme toute grande est une âme hardîe,

Qui pratique si bien l’art de nous secourir,

Que, pourvu qu’il soit cru, nous n’avons maladie,

Qu’il ne sache guérir.

Upon Louis XIV. flattery came in a deluge. But he was not like the man said to have been smothered by the rose leaves heaped upon him; on the contrary, he thrived the more.

Flattery, when it has some plausible pretext, may not be so pernicious as it has been thought; it sometimes encourages to great acts; but its excess is vicious, like the excess of satire. La Fontaine says, and pretends to say it after Æsop:

On ne peut trop louer trois sortes de personnes;

Les dieux, sa maitresse, et son roi.

Ésope le disait; j’y souscris quant à moi;

Ces sont maximes toujours bonnes.

Your flattery to three sorts of folks apply:—

You cannot say too civil things

To gods, to mistresses, and kings;

So honest Æsop said—and so say I.

Honest Æsop said no such thing; nor do we find that he flattered any king, or any concubine. It must not be thought that kings are in reality flattered by all the flatteries that are heaped upon them; for the greater number never reach them.

One common folly of orators is that of exhausting themselves in praising some prince who will never hear of their praises. But what is most lamentable of all is that Ovid should have praised Augustus even while he was dating “de Ponto.”

The perfection of the ridiculous might be found in the compliments which preachers address to kings, when they have the happiness of exhibiting before their majesties. “To the reverend Father Gaillard, preacher to the king.” Ah! most reverend father, do you preach only for the king? Are you like the monkey at the fair, which leaps “only for the king?”

FORCE (PHYSICAL).

What is “force?” Where does it reside? Whence does it come? Does it perish? Or is it ever the same?

It has pleased us to denominate “force” that weight which one body exercises upon another. Here is a ball of two hundred pounds’ weight on this floor; it presses the floor, you say, with a force of two hundred pounds, And this you call a “dead force.” But are not these words “dead” and “force” a little contradictory? Might we not as well say “dead alive”—yes and no at once?

This ball “weighs.” Whence comes this “weight?” and is this weight a “force?” If the ball were not impeded, would it go directly to the centre of the earth? Whence has it this incomprehensible property?

It is supported by my floor; and you freely give to my floor the “vis inertiæ”—“inertiæ” signifying “inactivity,” “impotence.” Now is it not singular that “impotence” should be denominated “force?”

What is the living force which acts in your arm and your leg? What is the source of it? How can it be supposed that this force exists when you are dead? Does it go and take up its abode elsewhere, as a man goes to another house when his own is in ruins?

How can it have been said that there is always the same force in nature? There must, then, have been always the same number of men, or of active beings equivalent to men. Why does a body in motion communicate its force to another body with which it comes in contact?

These are questions which neither geometry, nor mechanics, nor metaphysics can answer. Would you arrive at the first principle of the force of bodies, and of motion, you must ascend to a still superior principle. Why is there “anything?”

FORCE—STRENGTH.

These words have been transplanted from simple to figurative speech. They are applied to all the parts of the body that are in motion, in action—the force of the heart, which some have made four hundred pounds, and some three ounces; the force of the viscera, the lungs, the voice; the force of the arm.

The metaphor which has transported these words into morals has made them express a cardinal virtue. Strength, in this sense, is the courage to support adversity, and to undertake virtuous and difficult actions; it is the “animi fortitudo.”

The strength of the mind is penetration and depth—“ingenii vis.” Nature gives it as she gives that of the body; moderate labor increases and excessive labor diminishes it.

The force of an argument consists in a clear exposition of clearly-exhibited proofs, and a just conclusion: with mathematical theorems it has nothing to do; because the evidence of a demonstration can be made neither more nor less; only it may be arrived at by a longer or a shorter path—a simpler or more complicated method. It is in doubtful questions that the force of reasoning is truly applicable.

The force of eloquence is not merely a train of just and vigorous reasoning, which is not incompatible with dryness; this force requires floridity, striking images, and energetic expressions. Thus it has been said, that the sermons of Bourdaloue have force, those of Massillon more elegance. Verses may have strength, and want every other beauty. The strength of a line in our language consists principally in saying something in each hemistich.

Strength in painting is the expression of the muscles, which, by feeling touches, are made to appear under the flesh that covers them. There is too much strength when the muscles are too strongly articulated. The attitudes of the combatants have great strength in the battles of Constantine, drawn by Raphael and Julio Romano; and in those of Cæsar, painted by Lebrun. Inordinate strength is harsh in painting and bombastic in poetry.

Some philosophers have asserted that force is a property inherent in matter; that each invisible particle, or rather monad, is endowed with an active force; but it would be as difficult to demonstrate this assertion as it would be to prove that whiteness is a quality inherent in matter, as the Trevoux dictionary says in the article “Inherent.”

The strength of every animal has arrived at the highest when the animal has attained its full growth. It decreases when the muscles no longer receive the same quantity of nourishment: and this quantity ceases to be the same when the animal spirits no longer communicate to the muscles their accustomed motion. It is probable that the animal spirits are of fire, inasmuch as old men want motion and strength in proportion as they want warmth.

FRANCHISE.

A word which always gives an idea of liberty in whatever sense it is taken; a word derived from the Franks, who were always free. It is so ancient, that when the Cid besieged and took Toledo, in the eleventh century, franchies or franchises were given to all the French who went on this expedition, and who established themselves at Toledo. All walled cities had franchises, liberties, and privileges, even in the greatest anarchy of feudal power. In all countries possessing assemblies or states, the sovereign swore, on his accession, to guard their liberties.

This name, which has been given generally to the rights of the people, to immunities, and to sanctuaries or asylums, has been more particularly applied to the quarters of the ambassadors of the court of Rome. It was a plot of ground around their palaces, which was larger or smaller according to the will of the ambassador. The ground was an asylum for criminals, who could not be there pursued. This franchise was restricted, under Innocent XI. to the inside of their palaces. Churches and convents had the same privileges in Italy, but not in other states. There are in Paris several places of sanctuary, in which debtors cannot be seized for their debts by common justice, and where mechanics can pursue their trades without being freemen. Mechanics have this privilege in the Faubourg St. Antoine, but it is not an asylum like the Temple.

The word “franchise,” which usually expresses the liberties of a nation, city, or person, is sometimes used to signify liberty of speech, of counsel, or of a law proceeding; but there is a great difference between speaking with frankness and speaking with liberty. In a speech to a superior, liberty is a studied or excessive boldness—frankness outstepping its just bounds. To speak with liberty is to speak without fear; to speak with frankness is to conduct yourself openly and nobly. To speak with too much liberty is to become audacious; to speak with too much frankness is to be too open-hearted.

FRANCIS XAVIER.

It would not be amiss to know something true concerning the celebrated Francis Xavero, whom we call Xavier, surnamed the Apostle of the Indies. Many people still imagine that he established Christianty along the whole southern coast of India, in a score of islands, and above all in Japan. But thirty years ago, even a doubt on the subject was hardly to be tolerated in Europe. The Jesuits have not hesitated to compare him to St. Paul. His travels and miracles had been written in part by Tursellinus and Orlandini, by Levena, and by Partoli, all Jesuits, but very little known in France; and the less people were acquainted with the details the greater was his reputation.

When the Jesuit Bouhours composed his history, he (Bouhours) was considered as a man of very englightened mind, and was living in the best company in Paris; I do not mean the company of Jesus, but that of men of the world the most distinguished for intellect and knowledge. No one wrote in a purer or more unaffected style; it was even proposed in the French Academy that it should trespass against the rules of its institution, by receiving Father Bouhours into its body. He had another great advantage in the influence of his order, which then, by an almost inconceivable illusion, governed all Catholic princes.

Sound criticism was, it is true, beginning to rear its head; but its progress was slow: men were, in general, more anxious to write ably than to write what was true.

Bouhours wrote the lives of St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier almost without encountering a single objection. Even his comparison of St. Ignatius to Cæsar, and Xavier to Alexander, passed without animadversion; it was tolerated as a flower of rhetoric.

I have seen in the Jesuit’s college, Rue St. Jacques, a picture twelve feet long and twelve high, representing Ignatius and Xavier ascending to heaven, each in a magnificent chariot drawn by four milkwhite horses; and above, the Eternal Father, adorned with a fine white beard descending to His waist, with Jesus and the Virgin beside him; the Holy Ghost beneath them, in the form of a dove; and angels joining their hands, and bending down to receive Father Ignatius and Father Xavier.

Had anyone publicly made a jest of this picture, the reverend Father La Chaise, confessor to the king, would infallibly have had the sacrilegious scoffer honored with a lettre de cachet.

It cannot be denied that Francis Xavier is comparable to Alexander, inasmuch as they both went to India—so is Ignatius to Cæsar, both having been in Gaul. But Xavier, the vanquisher of the devil, went far beyond Alexander, the conqueror of Darius. How gratifying it is to see him going, in the capacity of a volunteer converter, from Spain into France, from France to Rome, from Rome to Lisbon, and from Lisbon to Mozambique, after making the tour of Africa. He stays a long time at Mozambique, where he receives from God the gift of prophecy: he then proceeds to Melinda, where he disputes on the Koran with the Mahometans, who doubtless understand his religion as well as he understands theirs, and where he even finds caciques, although they are to be found nowhere but in America. The Portuguese vessel arrives at the island of Zocotora, which is unquestionably that of the Amazons: there he converts all the islanders, and builds a church. Thence he reaches Goa, where he finds a pillar on which St. Thomas had engraved, that one day St. Xavier should come and re-establish the Christian religion, which had flourished of old in India. Xavier has no difficulty whatever in perusing the ancient characters, whether Indian or Hebrew, in which this prophecy is expressed. He forthwith takes up a hand-bell, assembles all the little boys around him, explains to them the creed, and baptizes them—but his great delight was to marry the Indians to their mistresses.

From Goa he speeds to Cape Comorin, to the fishing coast, to the kingdom of Travancore. His greatest anxiety, on arriving in any country, is to quit it. He embarks in the first Portuguese ship he finds, whithersoever it is bound, it matters not to Xavier; provided only that he is travelling somewhere, he is content. He is received through charity, and returns two or three times to Goa, to Cochin, to Cori, to Negapatam, to Meliapour. A vessel is departing for Malacca, and Xavier accordingly takes his passage for Malacca, in great despair that he has not yet had an opportunity of seeing Siam, Pegu, and Tonquin. We find him in the island of Sumatra, at Borneo, at Macassar, in the Moluccas, and especially at Ternate and Amboyna. The king of Ternate had, in his immense seraglio, a hundred women in the capacity of wives, and seven or eight hundred in that of concubines. The first thing Xavier does is to turn them all out. Please to observe that the island of Ternate is two leagues across.

Thence finding another Portugese vessel bound for Ceylon, he returns to Ceylon, where he makes various excursions to Goa and to Cochin. The Portuguese were already trading to Japan. A ship sails for that country: Xavier takes care to embark in it, and visits all the Japan islands. In short (says the Jesuit Bouhours), the whole length of Xavier’s routes, joined together, would reach several times around the globe.

Be it observed, that he set out on his travels in 1542, and died in 1552. If he had time to learn the languages of all the nations he visited, it was no trifling miracle: if he had the gift of tongues, it was a greater miracle still. But unfortunately, in several of his letters, he says that he is obliged to employ an interpreter; and in others he acknowledges that he finds extreme difficulty in learning the Japanese language, which he cannot pronounce.

The Jesuit Bouhours, in giving some of his letters, has no doubt that “St. Francis Xavier had the gift of tongues”; but he acknowledges that “he had it not always.” “He had it,” says he, “on several occasions; for, without having learned the Chinese tongue, he preached to the Chinese every morning at Amanguchi, which is the capital of a province in Japan.”

He must have been perfectly acquainted with all the languages of the East; for he made songs in them of the Paternoster, Ave-Maria, and Credo, for the instruction of the little boys and girls.

But the best of all is, that this man, who had occasion for a dragoman, spoke every tongue at once, like the apostles; and when he spoke Portuguese, in which language Bouhours acknowledges that the saint explained himself very ill, the Indians, the Chinese, the Japanese, the inhabitants of Ceylon and of Sumatra, all understood him perfectly.

One day in particular, when he was preaching on the immateriality of the soul, the motion of the planets, the eclipses of the sun and moon, the rainbow, sin and grace, paradise and purgatory, he made himself understood to twenty persons of different nations.

Is it asked how such a man could make so many converts in Japan? The simple answer is that he did not make any; but other Jesuits, who staid a long time in the country, by favor of the treaties between the kings of Portugal and the emperors of Japan, converted so many people, that a civil war ensued, which is said to have cost the lives of nearly four hundred thousand men. This is the most noted prodigy that the missionaries have worked in Japan.

But those of Francis Xavier are not without their merit. Among his host of miracles, we find no fewer than eight children raised from the dead. “Xavier’s greatest miracle,” says the Jesuit Bouhours, “was not his raising so many of the dead to life, but his not himself dying of fatigue.”

But the pleasantest of his miracles is, that having dropped his crucifix into the sea, near the island of Baranura, which I am inclined to think was the island of Barataria, a crab came, four-and-twenty hours after, bringing the cane between its claws.

The most brilliant of all, and after which no other deserves to be related, is that in a storm which lasted three days, he was constantly in two ships, a hundred and fifty leagues apart, and served one of them as a pilot. The truth of this miracle was attested by all the passengers, who could neither deceive nor be deceived.

Yet all this was written seriously and with success in the age of Louis XIV., in the age of the “Provincial Letters,” of Racine’s tragedies, of “Bayle’s Dictionary,” and of so many other learned works.

It would appear to be a sort of miracle that a man of sense, like Bouhours, should have committed such a mass of extravagance to the press, if we did not know to what excesses men can be carried by the corporate spirit in general, and the monachal spirit in particular. We have more than two hundred volumes entirely in this taste, compiled by monks; but what is most to be lamented is, that the enemies of the monks also compile. They compile more agreeably, and are read. It is most deplorable that, in nineteen-twentieths of Europe, there is no longer that profound respect and just veneration for the monks which is still felt for them in some of the villages of Aragon and Calabria.

The miracles of St. Francis Xavier, the achievements of Don Quixote, the Comic Romance, and the convulsionaries of St. Medard, have an equal claim on our admiration and reverence.

After speaking of Francis Xavier it would be useless to discuss the history of the other Francises. If you would be instructed thoroughly, consult the conformities of St. Francis of Assisi.

Since the fine history of St. Francis Xavier by the Jesuit Bouhours, we have had the history of St. Francis Régis by the Jesuit Daubenton, confessor to Philip V. of Spain: but this is small-beer after brandy. In the history of the blessed Régis, there is not even a single resuscitation.

FRANKS—FRANCE—FRENCH

Italy has always preserved its name, notwithstanding the pretended establishment of Æneas, which should have left some traces of the language, characters, and manners of Phrygia, if he ever came with Achates and so many others, into the province of Rome, then almost a desert. The Goths, Lombards, Franks, Allemani or Germans, who have by turns invaded Italy, have at least left it its name.

The Tyrians, Africans, Romans, Vandals, Visigoths, and Saracens, have, one after the other, been masters of Spain, yet the name of Spain exists. Germany has also always preserved its own name; it has merely joined that of Allemagne to it, which appellation it did not receive from any conqueror.

The Gauls are almost the only people in the west who have lost their name. This name was originally Walch or Welsh; the Romans always substituted a G for the W, which is barbarous: of “Welsh” they made Galli, Gallia. They distinguished the Celtic, the Belgic, and the Aquitanic Gaul, each of which spoke a different jargon.

Who were, and whence came these Franks, who in such small numbers and little time possessed themselves of all the Gauls, which in ten years Cæsar could not entirely reduce? I am reading an author who commences by these words: “The Franks from whom we descend.” . . . . Ha! my friend, who has told you that you descend in a right line from a Frank? Clovodic, whom we call Clovis, probably had not more than twenty thousand men, badly clothed and armed, when he subjugated about eight or ten millions of Welsh or Gauls, held in servitude by three or four Roman legions. We have not a single family in France which can furnish, I do not say the least proof, but the least probability, that it had its origin from a Frank.

When the pirates of the Baltic Sea came, to the number of seven or eight thousand, to give Normandy in fief, and Brittany in arrière fief, did they leave any archives by which it may be seen whether they were the fathers of all the Normans of the present day?

It has been a long time believed that the Franks came from the Trojans. Ammianus Marcellinus, who lived in the fourth century, says: “According to several ancient writers, troops of fugitive Trojans established themselves on the borders of the Rhine, then a desert.” As to Æneas, he might easily have sought an asylum at the extremity of the Mediterranean, but Francus, the son of Hector, had too far to travel to go towards Düsseldorf, Worms, Solm, Ehrenbreitstein.

Fredegarius doubts not that the Franks at first retired into Macedonia, and carried arms under Alexander, after having fought under Priam; on which alleged facts the monk Otfried compliments the emperor, Louis the German.

The geographer of Ravenna, less fabulous, assigns the first habitation of the horde of Franks among the Cimbrians, beyond the Elbe, towards the Baltic Sea. These Franks might well be some remains of these barbarian Cimbri defeated by Marius; and the learned Leibnitz is of this opinion.

It is very certain that, in the time of Constantine, beyond the Rhine, there were hordes of Franks or Sicambri, who lived by pillage. They assembled under bandit captains, chiefs whom historians have had the folly to call kings. Constantine himself pursued them to their haunts, caused several to be hanged, and others to be delivered to wild beasts, in the amphitheatre of Trier, for his amusement. Two of their pretended kings perished in this manner, at which the panegyrists of Constantine are in ecstasies.

The Salic law, written, it is said, by these barbarians, is one of the absurd chimeras with which we have always been pestered. It would be very strange if the Franks had written such a considerable code in their marshes, and the French had not any written usages until the close of the reign of Charles VII. It might as well be said that the Algonquins and Chicachas had written laws. Men are never governed by authentic laws, consigned to public records, until they have been assembled into cities, and have a regular police, archives, and all that characterizes a civilized nation. When you find a code in a nation which was barbarous at the time it was written, who lived upon rapine and pillage, and which had not a walled town, you may be sure that this code is a pretended one, which has been made in much later times. Fallacies and suppositions never obliterate this truth from the minds of the wise.

What is more ridiculous still, this Salic law has been given to us in Latin; as if savages, wandering beyond the Rhine, had learnt the Latin language. It is supposed to have been first digested by Clovis, and it ran thus: “While the illustrious nation of the Franks was still considered barbarous, the heads of this nation dictated the Salic law. They chose among themselves four chiefs, Visogast, Bodogast, Sologast, Vindogast”—taking, according to La Fontaine’s fable, the names of places for those of men:

Notre magot prit pour ce coup

Le nom d’un port pour un nom d’homme.

These names are those of some Frank cantons in the province of Worms. Whatever may be the epoch in which the customs denominated the Salic law were constructed on an ancient tradition, it is very clear that the Franks were not great legislators.

What is the original meaning of the word “Frank?” That is a question of which we know nothing, and which above a hundred authors have endeavored to find out. What is the meaning of Hun, Alan, Goth, Welsh, Picard? And what do these words signify?

Were the armies of Clovis all composed of Franks? It does not appear so. Childeric the Frank had made inroads as far as Tournay. It is said that Clovis was the son of Childeric, and Queen Bazine, the wife of King Bazin. Now Bazin and Bazine are assuredly not German names, and we have never seen the least proof that Clovis was their son. All the German cantons elected their chiefs, and the province of Franks had no doubt elected Clovis as they had done his father. He made his expedition against the Gauls, as all the other barbarians had undertaken theirs against the Roman Empire.

Do you really and truly believe that the Herulian Odo, surnamed Acer by the Romans, and known to us by the name of Odoacer, had only Herulians in his train, and that Genseric conducted Vandals alone into Africa? All the wretches without talent or profession, who have nothing to lose, do they not always join the first captain of robbers who raises the standard of destruction?

As soon as Clovis had the least success, his troops were no doubt joined by all the Belgians who panted for booty; and this army is nevertheless called the army of Franks. The expedition is very easy. The Visigoths had already invaded one-third of Gaul, and the Burgundians another. The rest submitted to Clovis. The Franks divided the land of the vanquished, and the Welsh cultivated it.

The word “Frank” originally signified a free possessor, while the others were slaves. Hence come the words “franchise,” and “to enfranchise”—“I make you a Frank,” “I render you a free man.” Hence, francalenus, holding freely; frank aleu, frank dad, frank chamen, and so many other terms half Latin and half barbarian, which have so long composed the miserable patois spoken in France.

Hence, also, a franc in gold or silver to express the money of the king of the Franks, which did not appear until a long time after, but which reminds us of the origin of the monarchy. We still say twenty francs, twenty livres, which signifies nothing in itself; it gives no idea of the weight or value of the money, being only a vague expression, by which ignorant people have been continually deceived, not knowing really how much they receive or how much they pay.

Charlemagne did not consider himself as a Frank; he was born in Austrasia, and spoke the German language. He was of the family of Arnold, bishop of Metz, preceptor to Dagobert. Now it is not probable that a man chosen for a preceptor was a Frank. He made the greatest glory of the most profound ignorance, and was acquainted only with the profession of arms. But what gives most weight to the opinion that Charlemagne regarded the Franks as strangers to him is the fourth article of one of his capitularies on his farms. “If the Franks,” said he, “commit any ravages on our possessions, let them be judged according to their laws.”

The Carlovingian race always passed for German: Pope Adrian IV., in his letter to the archbishops of Mentz, Cologne, and Trier, expresses himself in these remarkable terms: “The emperor was transferred from the Greeks to the Germans. Their king was not emperor until after he had been crowned by the pope . . . . all that the emperor possessed he held from us. And as Zacharius gave the Greek Empire to the Germans, we can give that of the Germans to the Greeks.”

However, France having been divided into eastern and western, and the eastern being Austrasia, this name of France prevailed so far, that even in the time of the Saxon emperors, the court of Constantinople always called them pretended Frank emperors, as may be seen in the letters of Bishop Luitprand, sent from Rome to Constantinople.

Of the French Nation.

When the Franks established themselves in the country of the first Welsh, which the Romans called Gallia, the nation was composed of ancient Celts or Gauls, subjugated by Cæsar, Roman families who were established there, Germans who had already emigrated there, and finally of the Franks, who had rendered themselves masters of the country under their chief Clovis. While the monarchy existed, which united Gaul and Germany, all the people, from the source of the Weser to the seas of Gaul, bore the name of Franks. But when at the congress of Verdun, in 843, under Charles the Bald, Germany and Gaul were separated, the name of Franks remained to the people of western France, which alone retained the name of France.

The name of French was scarcely known until towards the tenth century. The foundation of the nation is of Gallic families, and traces of the character of the ancient Gauls have always existed.

Indeed, every people has its character, as well as every man; and this character is generally formed of all the resemblances caused by nature and custom among the inhabitants of the varieties which distinguish them. Thus French character, genius, and wit, result from that which has been common to the different provinces in the kingdom. The people of Guienne and those of Normandy differ much; there is, however, found in them the French genius, which forms a nation of these different provinces, and distinguishes them from the Indians and Germans. Climate and soil evidently imprint unchangeable marks on men, as well as on animals and plants. Those which depend on government, religion, and education are different. That is the knot which explains how people have lost one part of their ancient character and preserved the other. A people who formerly conquered half the world are no longer recognized under sacerdotal government, but the seeds of their ancient greatness of soul still exist, though hidden beneath weakness.

In the same manner the barbarous government of the Turks has enervated the Egyptians and the Greeks, without having been able to destroy the original character or temper of their minds.

The present character of the French is the same as Cæsar ascribed to the Gauls—prompt to resolve, ardent to combat, impetuous in attack, and easily discouraged. Cæsar, Agatius, and others say, that of all the barbarians the Gauls were the most polished. They are still in the most civilized times the model of politeness to all their neighbors, though they occasionally discover the remains of their levity, petulance, and barbarity.

The inhabitants of the coasts of France were always good seamen; the people of Guienne always compose the best infantry; “those who inhabit the provinces of Blois and Tours are not,” says Tasso, “robust and indefatigable, but bland and gentle, like the land which they inhabit.”

. . . . Gente robusta, e faticosa,

La terra molle, e lieta, e dilettosa

Simili a se gli abitator, produce.

But how can we reconcile the character of the Parisians of our day with that which the Emperor Julian, the first of princes and men after Marcus Aurelius, gave to the Parisians of his time?—“I love this people,” says he in his “Misopogon,” “because they are serious and severe like myself.” This seriousness, which seems at present banished from an immense city become the centre of pleasure, then reigned in a little town destitute of amusements: in this respect the spirit of the Parisians has changed notwithstanding the climate.

The affluence, opulence, and idleness of the people who may occupy themselves with pleasures and the arts, and not with the government, have given a new turn of mind to a whole nation.

Further, how is it to be explained by what degrees this people have passed from the fierceness which characterized them in the time of King John, Charles VI., Charles IX., Henry III., and Henry IV., to the soft facility of manners for which they are now the admiration of Europe? It is that the storms of government and religion forced constitutional vivacity into paroxysms of faction and fanaticism; and that this same vivacity, which always will exist, has at present no object but the pleasures of society. The Parisian is impetuous in his pleasures as he formerly was in his fierceness. The original character which is caused by the climate is always the same. If at present he cultivates the arts, of which he was so long deprived, it is not that he has another mind, since he has not other organs; but it is that he has more relief, and this relief has not been created by himself, as by the Greeks and Florentines, among whom the arts flourished like the natural fruits of their soil. The Frenchman has only received them, but having happily cultivated and adopted these exotics, he has almost perfected them.

The French government was originally that of all the northern nations—of all those whose policy was regulated in general assemblies of the nation. Kings were the chief of these assemblies; and this was almost the only administration of the French in the first two generations, before Charles the Simple.

When the monarchy was dismembered, in the decline of the Carlovingian race, when the kingdom of Arles arose, and the provinces were occupied by vassals little dependent on the crown, the name of French was more restricted. Under Hugh Capet, Henry, and Philip, the people on this side the Loire only, were called French. There was then seen a great diversity of manners and of laws in the provinces held from the crown of France. The particular lords who became the masters of these provinces introduced new customs into their new states. A Breton and a Fleming have at present some conformity, notwithstanding the difference of their character, which they hold from the sun and the climate, but originally there was not the least similitude between them.

It is only since the time of Francis I. that there has been any uniformity in manners and customs. The court, at this time, first began to serve for a model to the United Provinces; but in general, impetuosity in war, and a lax discipline, always formed the predominant character of the nation.

Gallantry and politeness began to distinguish the French under Francis I. Manners became odious after the death of Francis II. However, in the midst of their horrors, there was always a politeness at court which the Germans and English endeavored to imitate. The rest of Europe, in aiming to resemble the French, were already jealous of them. A character in one of Shakespeare’s comedies says that it is difficult to be polite without having been at the court of France.

Though the nation has been taxed with frivolity by Cæsar, and by all neighboring nations, yet this kingdom, so long dismembered, and so often ready to sink, is united and sustained principally by the wisdom of its negotiations, address, and patience; but above all, by the divisions of Germany and England. Brittany alone has been united to the kingdom by a marriage; Burgundy by right of fee, and by the ability of Louis XI.; Dauphiny by a donation, which was the fruit of policy; the county of Toulouse by a grant, maintained by an army; Provence by money. One treaty of peace has given Alsace, another Lorraine. The English have been driven from France, notwithstanding the most signal victories, because the kings of France have known how to temporize, and profit on all favorable occasions;—all which proves, that if the French youth are frivolous, the men of riper age, who govern it, have always been wise. Even at present the magistracy are severe in manners, as in the time of the Emperor Julian. If the first successes in Italy, in the time of Charles VIII., were owing to the warlike impetuosity of the nation, the disgraces which followed them were caused by the blindness of a court which was composed of young men alone. Francis I. was only unfortunate in his youth, when all was governed by favorites of his own age, and he rendered his kingdom more flourishing at a more advanced age.

The French have always used the same arms as their neighbors, and have nearly the same discipline in war, but were the first who discarded the lance and pike. The battle of Ivry discouraged the use of lances, which were soon abolished, and under Louis XIV. pikes were also discontinued. They wore tunics and robes until the sixteenth century. Under Louis the Young they left off the custom of letting the beards grow, and retook to it under Francis I. Only under Louis XIV. did they begin to shave the entire face. Their dress is continually changing, and at the end of each century the French might take the portraits of their grandfathers for those of foreigners.

FRAUD.

Whether pious Frauds should be practised upon the People.

Once upon a time the fakir Bambabef met one of the disciples of Confutzee (whom we call Confucius), and this disciple was named Whang. Bambabef maintained that the people require to be deceived, and Whang asserted that we should never deceive any one. Here is a sketch of their dispute:

Bambabef.

—We must imitate the Supreme Being, who does not show us things as they are. He makes us see the sun with a diameter of two or three feet, although it is a million of times larger than the earth. He makes us see the moon and the stars affixed to one and the same blue surface, while they are at different elevations; he chooses that a square tower should appear round to us at a distance; he chooses that fire should appear to us to be hot, although it is neither hot nor cold; in short, he surrounds us with errors, suitable to our nature.

Whang.

—What you call error is not so. The sun, such as it is, placed at millions of millions of lis from our globe, is not that which we see, that which we really perceive: we perceive only the sun which is painted on our retina, at a determinate angle. Our eyes were not given us to know sizes and distances: to know these, other aids and other operations are necessary.

Bambabef seemed much astonished at this position. Whang, being very patient, explained to him the theory of optics; and Bambabef, having some conception, was convinced by the demonstrations of the disciple of Confucius. He then resumed in these terms:

Bambabef.

—If God does not, as I thought, deceive us by the ministry of our senses, you will at least acknowledge that our physicians are constantly deceiving children for their good. They tell them that they are giving them sugar, when in reality they are giving them rhubarb. I, a fakir, may then deceive the people, who are as ignorant as children.

Whang.

—I have two sons; I have never deceived them. When they have been sick, I have said to them: “Here is a nauseous medicine; you must have the courage to take it; if it were pleasant, it would injure you.” I have never suffered their nurses and tutors to make them afraid of ghosts, goblins, and witches. I have thereby made them wise and courageous citizens.

Bambabef.

—The people are not born so happily as your family.

Whang.

—Men all nearly resemble one another; they are born with the same dispositions. Their nature ought not to be corrupted.

Bambabef.

—We teach them errors, I own; but it is for their good. We make them believe that if they do not buy our blessed nails, if they do not expiate their sins by giving us money, they will, in another life, become post-horses, dogs, or lizards. This intimidates them, and they become good people.

Whang.

—Do you not see that you are perverting these poor folks? There are among them many more than you think there are who reason, who make a jest of your miracles and your superstitions; who see very clearly that they will not be turned into lizards, nor into post-horses. What is the consequence? They have good sense enough to perceive that you talk to them very impertinently; but they have not enough to elevate themselves to a religion pure and untrammelled by superstition like ours. Their passions make them think there is no religion, because the only one that is taught them is ridiculous: thus you become guilty of all the vices into which they plunge.

Bambabef.

—Not at all, for we teach them none but good morals.

Whang.

—The people would stone you if you taught impure morals. Men are so constituted that they like very well to do evil, but they will not have it preached to them. But a wise morality should not be mixed up with absurd fables: for by these impostures, which you might do without, you weaken that morality which you are forced to teach.

Bambabef.

—What! do you think that truth can be taught to the people without the aid of fables?

Whang.

—I firmly believe it. Our literati are made of the same stuff as our tailors, our weavers, and our laborers. They worship a creating, rewarding, and avenging God. They do not sully their worship by absurd systems, nor by extravagant ceremonies. There are much fewer crimes among the lettered than among the people; why should we not condescend to instruct our working classes as we do our literati?

Bambabef.

—That would be great folly; as well might you wish them to have the same politeness, or to be all jurisconsults. It is neither possible nor desirable. There must be white bread for the master, and brown for the servant.

Whang.

—I own that men should not all have the same science; but there are things necessary to all. It is necessary that each one should be just; and the surest way of inspiring all men with justice is to inspire them with religion without superstition.

Bambabef.

—That is a fine project, but it is impracticable. Do you think it is sufficient for men to believe in a being that rewards and punishes? You have told me that the more acute among the people often revolt against fables. They will, in like manner, revolt against truth. They will say: Who shall assure me that God rewards and punishes? Where is the proof? What mission have you? What miracle have you worked that I should believe in you? They will laugh at you much more than at me.

Whang.

—Your error is this: You imagine that men will spurn an idea that is honest, likely, and useful to every one; an idea which accords with human reason, because they reject things which are dishonest, absurd, useless, dangerous, and shocking to good sense.

The people are much disposed to believe their magistrates; and when their magistrates propose to them only a rational belief, they embrace it willingly. There is no need of prodigies to believe in a just God, who reads the heart of man: this is an idea too natural, too necessary, to be combated. It is not necessary to know precisely how God rewards and punishes: to believe in His justice is enough. I assure you that I have seen whole towns with scarcely any other tenet; and that in them I have seen the most virtue.

Bambabef.

—Take heed what you say. You will find philosophers in these times, who will deny both pains and rewards.

Whang.

—But you will acknowledge that these philosophers will much more strongly deny your inventions; so you will gain nothing by that. Supposing that there are philosophers who do not agree with my principles, they are not the less honest men; they do not the less cultivate virtue, which should be embraced through love, and not through fear. Moreover, I maintain that no philosopher can ever be assured that Providence does not reserve pains for the wicked, and rewards for the good. For, if they ask me who has told me that God punishes, I shall ask them who has told them that God does not punish. In short, I maintain that the philosophers, far from contradicting, will aid me. Will you be a philosopher?

Bambabef.

—With all my heart. But do not tell the fakirs. And let us, above all, remember that if a philosopher would be of service to human society, he must announce a God.

FREE-WILL.

From the commencement of the time in which men began to reason, philosophers have agitated this question, which theologians have rendered unintelligible by their absurd subtleties upon grace. Locke is perhaps the first who, without having the arrogance of announcing a general principle, has examined human nature by analysis. It has been disputed for three thousand years, whether the will is free or not; Locke shows that the question is absurd, and that liberty cannot belong to the will any more than color and motion.

What is meant by the expression to be free? It signifies power, or rather it has no sense at all. To say that the will can, is in itself as ridiculous as if we said that it is yellow, or blue, round, or square.

Will is will, and liberty is power. Let us gradually examine the chain of what passes within us, without confusing our minds with any scholastic terms, or antecedent principle.

It is proposed to you to ride on horseback; it is absolutely necessary for you to make a choice, for it is very clear that you must either go or not; there is no medium, you must absolutely do the one or the other. So far it is demonstrated that the will is not free. You will get on horseback; why? Because I will to do so, an ignoramus will say. This reply is an absurdity; nothing can be done without reason or cause. Your will then is caused by what? The agreeable idea which is presented to your brain; the predominant, or determined idea; but, you will say, cannot I resist an idea which predominates over me? No, for what would be the cause of your resistance? An idea by which your will is swayed still more despotically.

You receive your ideas, and, therefore, receive your will. You will then necessarily; consequently, the word “liberty” belongs not to will in any sense.

You ask me how thought and will are formed within you? I answer that I know nothing about it. I no more know how ideas are created than I know how the world was formed. We are only allowed to grope in the dark in reference to all that inspires our incomprehensible machine.

Will, then, is not a faculty which can be called free. “Free-will” is a word absolutely devoid of sense, and that which scholars have called “indifference,” that is to say, will without cause, is a chimera unworthy to be combated.

In what then consists liberty? In the power of doing what we will? I would go into my cabinet; the door is open, I am free to enter. But, say you, if the door is shut and I remain where I am, I remain freely. Let us explain ourselves—you then exercise the power that you possess of remaining; you possess this power, but not the power of going out.

Liberty, then, on which so many volumes have been written, reduced to its proper sense, is only the power of acting.

In what sense must the expression “this man is free” be spoken? In the same sense in which we use the words “health,” “strength,” and “happiness.” Man is not always strong, healthy, or happy. A great passion, a great obstacle, may deprive him of his liberty, or power of action.

The words “liberty” and “free-will” are, then, abstractions, general terms, like beauty, goodness, justice. These terms do not signify that all men are always handsome, good, and just, neither are they always free.

Further, liberty being only the power of acting, what is this power? It is the effect of the constitution, and the actual state of our organs. Leibnitz would solve a problem of geometry, but falls into an apoplexy; he certainly has not the liberty to solve his problem. A vigorous young man, passionately in love, who holds his willing mistress in his arms, is he free to subdue his passion? Doubtless not. He has the power of enjoying, and has not the power to abstain. Locke then is very right in calling liberty, power. When can this young man abstain, notwithstanding the violence of his passion? When a stronger idea shall determine the springs of his soul and body to the contrary.

But how? Have other animals the same liberty, the same power? Why not? They have sense, memory, sentiment, and perceptions like ourselves; they act spontaneously as we do. They must, also, like us, have the power of acting by virtue of their perception, and of the play of their organs.

We exclaim: If it be thus, all things are machines merely; everything in the universe is subjected to the eternal laws. Well, would you have everything rendered subject to a million of blind caprices? Either all is the consequence of the nature of things, or all is the effect of the eternal order of an absolute master; in both cases, we are only wheels to the machine of the world.

It is a foolish, common-place expression that without this pretended freedom of will, rewards and punishments are useless. Reason, and you will conclude quite the contrary.

If, when a robber is executed, his accomplice, who sees him suffer, has the liberty of not being frightened at the punishment; if his will determines of itself, he will go from the foot of the scaffold to assassinate on the high road; if struck with horror, he experiences an insurmountable terror, he will no longer thieve. The punishment of his companion will become useful to him, and moreover prove to society that his will is not free.

Liberty, then, is not and cannot be anything but the power of doing what we will. That is what philosophy teaches us. But, if we consider liberty in the theological sense, it is so sublime a matter that profane eyes may not be raised so high.

FRENCH LANGUAGE.

The French language did not begin to assume a regular form until the tenth century; it sprang from the remains of the Latin and the Celtic, mixed with a few Teutonic words. This language was, in the first instance, the provincial Roman, and the Teutonic was the language of the courts, until the time of Charles the Bald. The Teutonic remained the only language in Germany, after the grand epoch of the division in 433. The rustic Roman prevailed in Western France; the inhabitants of the Pays de Vaud, of the Valois, of the valley of Engadine, and some other cantons, still preserve some manifest vestiges of this idiom.

At the commencement of the eleventh century, French began to be written; but this French retained more of Romance or rustic Roman than of the language of the present day. The romance of Philomena, written in the tenth century, is not very different in language from that of the laws of the Normans. We cannot yet trace the original Celtic, Latin, and German. The words which signify the members of the human body, or things in daily use, which have no relation to the Latin or German, are of ancient Gallic or Celtic, as tête, jambe, sabre, point, aller, parler, écouter, regarder, crier, cotume, ensemble, and many more of the same kind. The greater number of the warlike phrases were French or German, as marche, halte, maréchal, bivouac, lansquenet. Almost all the rest are Latin, and the Latin words have been all abridged, according to the usage and genius of the nations of the north.

In the twelfth century, some terms were borrowed from the philosophy of Aristotle; and toward the sixteenth century, Greek names were found for the parts of the human body, and for its maladies and their remedies. Although the language was then enriched with Greek, and aided from the time of Charles VIII. with considerable accessions from the Italian, already arrived at perfection, it did not acquire a regular form. Francis I. abolished the custom of pleading and of judging in Latin, which proved the barbarism of a language which could not be used in public proceedings—a pernicious custom to the natives, whose fortunes were regulated in a language which they could not understand. It then became necessary to cultivate the French, but the language was neither noble nor regular, and its syntax was altogether capricious. The genius of its conversation being turned towards pleasantry, the language became fertile in smart and lively expressions, but exceedingly barren in dignified and harmonious phrases; whence it arises that in the dictionaries of rhymes, twenty suitable words are found for comic poetry for one of poetry of a more elevated nature. This was the cause that Marot never succeeded in the serious style, and that Amyot was unable to give a version of the elegant simplicity of Plutarch.

The French tongue acquired strength from the pen of Montaigne, but still wanted elevation and harmony. Ronsard injured the language by introducing into French poetry the Greek compounds, derivable from the physicians. Malherbe partly repaired the fault of Ronsard. It became more lofty and harmonious by the establishment of the French Academy, and finally in the age of Louis XIV. acquired the perfection by which it is now distinguished.

The genius of the French language—for every language has its genius—is clearness and order. This genius consists in the facility which a language possesses of expressing itself more or less happily, and of employing or rejecting the familiar terms of other languages. The French tongue having no declensions, and being aided by articles, cannot adopt the inversions of the Greek and the Latin; the words are necessarily arranged agreeably to the course of the ideas. We can only say in one way, “Plancus a pris soin des affaires de Cæsar”; but this phrase in Latin, “Res Cæsaris, Plancus diligenter curavit,” may be arranged in a hundred and twenty different forms without injuring the sense or rules of the language. The auxiliary verbs, which lengthen and weaken phrases in the modern tongues, render that of France still less adapted to the lapidary style. Its auxiliary verbs, its pronouns, its articles, its deficiency of declinable participles, and, lastly, its uniformity of position, preclude the exhibition of much enthusiasm in poetry; it possesses fewer capabilities of this nature than the Italian and the English; but this constraint and slavery render it more proper for tragedy and comedy than any language in Europe. The natural order in which the French people are obliged to express their thoughts and construct their phrases, infuses into their speech a facility and amenity which please everybody; and the genius of the nation suiting with the genius of the language, has produced a greater number of books agreeably written than are to be found among any other people.

Social freedom and politeness having been for a long time established in France, the language has acquired a delicacy of expression, and a natural refinement which are seldom to be found out of it. This refinement has occasionally been carried too far; but men of taste have always known how to reduce it within due bounds.

Many persons have maintained that the French language has been impoverished since the days of Montaigne and Amyot, because expressions abound in these authors which are no longer employed; but these are for the most part terms for which equivalents have been found. It has been enriched with a number of noble and energetic expressions, and, without adverting to the eloquence of matter, has certainly that of speech. It was during the reign of Louis XIV., as already observed, that the language was fixed. Whatever changes time and caprice may have in store, the good authors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries will always serve for models.

Circumstances created no right to expect that France would be distinguished in philosophy. A Gothic government extinguished all kind of illumination during more than twelve centuries; and professors of error, paid for brutalizing human nature, more increased the darkness. Nevertheless, there is more philosophy in Paris than in any town on earth, and possibly than in all the towns put together, excepting London. The spirit of reason has even penetrated into the provinces. In a word, the French genius is probably at present equal to that of England in philosophy; while for the last four-score years France has been superior to all other nations in literature; and has undeniably taken the lead in the courtesies of society, and in that easy and natural politeness, which is improperly termed urbanity.

FRIENDSHIP.

The temple of friendship has long been known by name, but it is well known that it has been very little frequented; as the following verses pleasantly observe, Orestes, Pylades, Pirithous, Achates, and the tender Nisus, were all genuine friends and great heroes; but, alas, existent only in fable:

En vieux langage on voit sur la façade,

Les noms sacrés d’Oreste et de Pylade;

Le médaillon du bon Pirithous,

Du sage Achate et du tendre Nisus;

Tous grands héros, tous amis véritables;

Ces noms sont beaux; mais ils sont dans les fables.

Friendship commands more than love and esteem. Love your neighbor signifies assist your neighbor, but not—enjoy his conversation with pleasure, if he be tiresome; confide to him your secrets, if he be a tattler; or lend him your money, if he be a spendthrift.

Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce. It is a tacit contract between two sensible and virtuous persons. I say sensible, for a monk or a hermit cannot be so, who lives without knowing friendship. I say virtuous, for the wicked only have accomplices—the voluptuous, companions—the interested, associates; politicians assemble factions—the generality of idle men have connections—princes, courtiers. Virtuous men alone possess friends.

Cethegus was the accomplice of Catiline, and Mæcenas the courtier of Octavius; but Cicero was the friend of Atticus.

What is caused by this contract between two tender, honest minds? Its obligations are stronger or weaker according to the degrees of sensibility, and the number of services rendered.

The enthusiasm of friendship has been stronger among the Greeks and Arabs than among us. The tales that these people have imagined on the subject of friendship are admirable; we have none to compare to them. We are rather dry and reserved in everything. I see no great trait of friendship in our histories, romances, or theatre.

The only friendship spoken of among the Jews, was that which existed between Jonathan and David. It is said that David loved him with a love stronger than that of women; but it is also said that David, after the death of his friend, dispossessed Mephibosheth, his son, and caused him to be put to death.

Friendship was a point of religion and legislation among the Greeks. The Thebans had a regiment of lovers—a fine regiment; some have taken it for a regiment of nonconformists. They are deceived; it is taking a shameful accident for a noble principle. Friendship, among the Greeks, was prescribed by the laws and religion. Manners countenanced abuses, but the laws did not.

FRIVOLITY.

What persuades me still more of the existence of Providence, said the profound author of “Bacha Billeboquet,” is that to console us for our innumerable miseries, nature has made us frivolous. We are sometimes ruminating oxen, overcome by the weight of our yoke; sometimes dispersed doves, tremblingly endeavoring to avoid the claws of the vulture, stained with the blood of our companions; foxes, pursued by dogs; and tigers, who devour one another. Then we suddenly become butterflies; and forget, in our volatile winnowings, all the horrors that we have experienced.

If we were not frivolous, what man without shuddering, could live in a town in which the wife of a marshal of France, a lady of honor to the queen, was burned, under the pretext that she had killed a white cock by moonlight; or in the same town in which Marshal Marillac was assassinated according to form, pursuant to a sentence passed by judicial murderers appointed by a priest in his own country house, in which he embraced Marion de Lorme while these robed wretches executed his sanguinary wishes?

Could a man say to himself, without trembling in every nerve, and having his heart frozen with horror: “Here I am, in the very place which, it is said, was strewed with the dead and dying bodies of two thousand young gentlemen, murdered near the Faubourg St. Antoine, because one man in a red cassock displeased some others in black ones!”

Who could pass the Rue de la Féronerie without shedding tears and falling into paroxysms of rage against the holy and abominable principles which plunged the sword into the heart of the best of men, and of the greatest of kings?

We could not walk a step in the streets of Paris on St. Bartholomew’s day, without saying: “It was here that one of my ancestors was murdered for the love of God; it was here that one of my mother’s family was dragged bleeding and mangled; it was here that one-half of my countrymen murdered the other.”

Happily, men are so light, so frivolous, so struck with the present and so insensible to the past, that in ten thousand there are not above two or three who make these reflections.

How many boon companions have I seen, who, after the loss of children, wives, mistresses, fortune, and even health itself, have eagerly resorted to a party to retail a piece of scandal, or to a supper to tell humorous stories. Solidity consists chiefly in a uniformity of ideas. It has been said that a man of sense should invariably think in the same way; reduced to such an alternative, it would be better not to have been born. The ancients never invented a finer fable than that which bestowed a cup of the water of Lethe on all who entered the Elysian fields.

If you would tolerate life, mortals, forget yourselves, and enjoy it.

GALLANT.

This word is derived from “gal,” the original signification of which was gayety and rejoicing, as may be seen in Alain Chartier, and in Froissart. Even in the “Romance of the Rose” we meet with the word “galandé” in the sense of ornamented, adorned.

La belle fut bien attornée

Et d’un filet d’or galandée.

It is probable that the gala of the Italians, and the galan of the Spaniards, are derived from the word “gal,” which seems to be originally Celtic; hence, was insensibly formed gallant, which signifies a man forward, or eager to please. The term received an improved and more noble signification in the times of chivalry, when the desire to please manifested itself in feats of arms, and personal conflict. To conduct himself gallantly, to extricate himself from an affair gallantly, implies, even at present, a man’s conducting himself conformably to principle and honor. A gallant man among the English, signifies a man of courage; in France it means more—a man of noble general demeanor. A gallant (un homme galant) is totally different from a gallant man (un galant homme); the latter means a man of respectable and honorable feeling—the former, something nearer the character of a petit maître, a man successfully addicted to intrigue. Being gallant (être galant) in general implies an assiduity to please by studious attentions, and flattering deference. “He was exceedingly gallant to those ladies,” means merely, he behaved more than politely to them; but being the gallant of a lady is an expression of stronger meaning; it signifies being her lover; the word is scarcely any longer in use in this sense, except in low or familiar poetry. A gallant is not merely a man devoted to and successful in intrigue, but the term implies, moreover, somewhat of impudence and effrontery, in which sense Fontaine uses it in the following: “Mais un ‘galant,’ chercheur des pucelages.”

Thus are various meanings attached to the same word. The case is similar with the term “gallantry,” which sometimes signifies a disposition to coquetry, and a habit of flattery; sometimes a present of some elegant toy, or piece of jewelry; sometimes intrigue, with one woman or with many; and, latterly, it has even been applied to signify ironically the favors of Venus; thus, to talk gallantries, to give gallantries, to have gallantries, to contract a gallantry, express very different meanings. Nearly all the terms which occur frequently in conversation acquire, in the same manner, various shades of meaning, which it is difficult to discriminate; the meaning of terms of art is more precise and less arbitrary.

GARGANTUA.

If ever a reputation was fixed on a solid basis, it is that of Gargantua. Yet in the present age of philosophy and criticism, some rash and daring minds have started forward, who have ventured to deny the prodigies believed respecting this extraordinary man—persons who have carried their skepticism so far as even to doubt his very existence.

How is it possible, they ask, that there should have existed in the sixteenth century a distinguished hero, never mentioned by a single contemporary, by St. Ignatius, Cardinal Capitan, Galileo, or Guicciardini, and respecting whom the registers of the Sorbonne do not contain the slightest notice?

Investigate the histories of France, of Germany, of England, Spain, and other countries, and you find not a single word about Gargantua. His whole life, from his birth to his death, is a tissue of inconceivable prodigies.

His mother, Gargamelle, was delivered of him from the left ear. Almost at the instant of his birth he called out for a drink, with a voice that was heard even in the districts of Beauce and Vivarais. Sixteen ells of cloth were required to make him breeches, and a hundred hides of brown cows were used in his shoes. He had not attained the age of twelve years before he gained a great battle, and founded the abbey of Thélême. Madame Badebec was given to him in marriage, and Badebec is proved to be a Syrian name.

He is represented to have devoured six pilgrims in a mere salad, and the river Seine is stated to have flowed entirely from his person, so that the Parisians are indebted for their beautiful river to him alone.

All this is considered contrary to nature by our carping philosophers, who scruple to admit even what is probable, unless it is well supported by evidence.

They observe, that if the Parisians have always believed in Gargantua, that is no reason why other nations should believe in him; that if Gargantua had really performed one single prodigy out of the many attributed to him, the whole world would have resounded with it, all records would have noticed it, and a hundred monuments would have attested it. In short, they very unceremoniously treat the Parisians who believe in Gargantua as ignorant simpletons and superstitious idiots, with whom are intermixed a few hypocrites, who pretend to believe in Gargantua, in order to obtain some convenient priorship in the abbey of Thélême.

The reverend Father Viret, a Cordelier of fullsleeved dignity, a confessor of ladies, and a preacher to the king, has replied to our Pyrrhonean philosophers in a manner decisive and invincible. He very learnedly proves that if no writer, with the exception of Rabelais, has mentioned the prodigies of Gargantua, at least, no historian has contradicted them; that the sage de Thou, who was a believer in witchcraft, divination, and astrology, never denied the miracles of Gargantua. They were not even called in question by La Mothe le Vayer. Mézeray treated them with such respect as not to say a word against them, or indeed about them. These prodigies were performed before the eyes of all the world. Rabelais was a witness of them. It was impossible that he could be deceived, or that he would deceive. Had he deviated even in the smallest degree from the truth, all the nations of Europe would have been roused against him in indignation; all the gazetteers and journalists of the day would have exclaimed with one voice against the fraud and imposture.

In vain do the philosophers reply—for they reply to everything—that, at the period in question, gazettes and journals were not in existence. It is said in return that there existed what was equivalent to them, and that is sufficient. Everything is impossible in the history of Gargantua, and from this circumstance itself may be inferred its incontestable truth. For if it were not true, no person could possibly have ventured to imagine it, and its incredibility constitutes the great proof that it ought to be believed.

Open all the “Mercuries,” all the “Journals de Trevoux”; those immortal works which teem with instruction to the race of man, and you will not find a single line which throws a doubt on the history of Gargantua. It was reserved for our own unfortunate age to produce monsters, who would establish a frightful Pyrrhonism, under the pretence of requiring evidence as nearly approaching to mathematical as the case will admit, and of a devotion to reason, truth, and justice. What a pity! Oh, for a single argument to confound them!

Gargantua founded the abbey of Thélême. The title deeds, it is true, were never found; it never had any; but it exists, and produces an income of ten thousand pieces of gold a year. The river Seine exists, and is an eternal monument of the prodigious fountain from which Gargantua supplied so noble a stream. Moreover, what will it cost you to believe in him? Should you not take the safest side? Gargantua can procure for you wealth, honors, and influence. Philosophy can only bestow on you internal tranquillity and satisfaction, which you will of course estimate as a trifle. Believe, then, I again repeat, in Gargantua; if you possess the slightest portion of avarice, ambition, or knavery, it is the wisest part you can adopt.

GAZETTE.

A narrative of public affairs. It was at the beginning of the seventeenth century that this useful practice was suggested and established at Venice, at the time when Italy still continued the centre of European negotiations, and Venice was the unfailing asylum of liberty. The leaves or sheets containing this narrative, which were published once a week, were called “Gazettes,” from the word “gazetta,” the name of a small coin, amounting nearly to one of our demi-sous, then current at Venice. The example was afterwards followed in all the great cities of Europe.

Journals of this description have been established in China from time immemorial. The “Imperial Gazette” is published there every day by order of the court. Admitting this gazette to be true, we may easily believe it does not contain all that is true; neither in fact should it do so.

Théophraste Renaudot, a physician, published the first gazettes in France in 1601, and he had an exclusive privilege for the publication, which continued for a long time a patrimony to his family. The like privilege became an object of importance at Amsterdam, and the greater part of the gazettes of the United Provinces are still a source of revenue to many of the families of magistrates, who pay writers for furnishing materials for them. The city of London alone publishes more than twelve gazettes in the course of a week. They can be printed only upon stamped paper, and produce no inconsiderable income to the State.

The gazettes of China relate solely to that empire; those of the different states of Europe embrace the affairs of all countries. Although they frequently abound in false intelligence, they may nevertheless be considered as supplying good material for history; because, in general, the errors of each particular gazette are corrected by subsequent ones, and because they contain authentic copies of almost all state papers, which indeed are published in them by order of the sovereigns or governments themselves. The French gazettes have always been revised by the ministry. It is on this account that the writers of them have always adhered to certain forms and designations, with a strictness apparently somewhat inconsistent with the courtesies of polished society, bestowing the title of monsieur only on some particular descriptions of persons, and that of sieur upon others; the authors having forgotten that they were not speaking in the name of their king. These public journals, it must be added, to their praise, have never been debased by calumny, and have always been written with considerable correctness.

The case is very different with respect to foreign gazettes; those of London, with the exception of the court gazette, abound frequently in that coarseness and licentiousness of observation which the national liberty allows. The French gazettes established in that country have been seldom written with purity, and have sometimes been not a little instrumental in corrupting the language. One of the greatest faults which has found a way into them arises from the authors having concluded that the ancient forms of expression used in public proclamations and in judicial and political proceedings and documents in France, and with which they were particularly conversant, were analogous to the regular syntax of our language, and from their having accordingly imitated that style in their narrative. This is like a Roman historian’s using the style of the law of the twelve tables.

In imitation of the political gazettes, literary ones began to be published in France in 1665; for the first journals were, in fact, simply advertisements of the works recently printed in Europe; to this mere announcement of publication was soon added a critical examination or review. Many authors were offended at it, notwithstanding its great moderation.

We shall here speak only of those literary gazettes with which the public, who were previously in possession of various journals from every country in Europe in which the sciences were cultivated, were completely overwhelmed. These gazettes appeared at Paris about the year 1723, under many different names, as “The Parnassian Intelligencer,” “Observations on New Books,” etc. The greater number of them were written for the single purpose of making money; and as money is not to be made by praising authors, these productions consisted generally of satire and abuse. They often contained the most odious personalities, and for a time sold in proportion to the virulence of their malignity; but reason and good taste, which are always sure to prevail at last, consigned them eventually to contempt and oblivion.

GENEALOGY.

SECTION I.

Many volumes have been written by learned divines in order to reconcile St. Matthew with St. Luke on the subject of the genealogy of Jesus Christ. The former enumerates only twenty-seven generations from David through Solomon, while Luke gives forty-two, and traces the descent through Nathan. The following is the method in which the learned Calmet solves a difficulty relating to Melchizedek: The Orientals and the Greeks, ever abounding in fable and invention, fabricated a genealogy for him, in which they give us the names of his ancestors. But, adds this judicious Benedictine, as falsehood always betrays itself, some state his genealogy according to one series, and others according to another. There are some who maintain that he descended from a race obscure and degraded, and there are some who are disposed to represent him as illegitimate.

This passage naturally applies to Jesus, of whom, according to the apostle, Melchizedek was the type or figure. In fact, the gospel of Nicomedes expressly states that the Jews, in the presence of Pilate, reproached Jesus with being born of fornication; upon which the learned Fabricius remarks, that it does not appear from any clear and credible testimony that the Jews directed to Jesus Christ during His life, or even to His apostles, that calumny respecting His birth which they so assiduously and virulently circulated afterwards. The Acts of the Apostles, however, inform us that the Jews of Antioch opposed themselves, blaspheming against what Paul spoke to them concerning Jesus; and Origen maintains that the passage in St. John’s gospel “We are not born of fornication, we have never been in subjection unto any man” was an indirect reproach thrown out by the Jews against Jesus on the subject of His birth. For, as this father informs us, they pretended that Jesus was originally from a small hamlet of Judæa, and His mother nothing more than a poor villager subsisting by her labor, who, having been found guilty of adultery with a soldier of the name of Panther, was turned away by her husband, whose occupation was that of a carpenter; that, after this disgraceful expulsion, she wandered about miserably from one place to another, and was privately delivered of Jesus, who, pressed by the necessity of His circumstances, was compelled to go and hire Himself as a servant in Egypt, where He acquired some of those secrets which the Egyptians turn to so good an account, and then returned to His own country, in which, full of the miracles He was enabled to perform, He proclaimed Himself to be God.

According to a very old tradition, the name of Panther, which gave occasion to the mistake of the Jews, was, as we are informed by St. Epiphanius, the surname of Joseph’s father, or rather, as is asserted by St. John Damascene, the proper name of Mary’s grandfather.

As to the situation of servant, with which Jesus was reproached, He declares Himself that He came not to be served, but to serve. Zoroaster, according to the Arabians, had in like manner been the servant of Esdras. Epictetus was even born in servitude. Accordingly, St. Cyril of Jerusalem justly observed that it is no disgrace to any man.

On the subject of the miracles, we learn indeed from Pliny that the Egyptians had the secret of dyeing with different colors, stuffs which were dipped in the very same furnace, and this is one of the miracles which the gospel of the Infancy attributes to Jesus. But, according to St. Chrysostom, Jesus performed no miracle before His baptism, and those stated to have been wrought by Him before are absolute fabrications. The reason assigned by this father for such an arrangement is, that the wisdom of God determined against Christ’s performing any miracles in His childhood, lest they should have been regarded as impostures.

Epiphanius in vain alleges that to deny the miracles ascribed by some to Jesus during His infancy, would furnish heretics with a specious pretext for saying that He became Son of God only in consequence of the effusion of the Holy Spirit, which descended upon Him at His baptism; we are contending here, not against heretics, but against Jews.

Mr. Wagenseil has presented us with a Latin translation of a Jewish work entitled “Toldos Jeschu,” in which it is related that Jeschu, being at Bethlehem in Judah, the place of his birth, cried out aloud, “Who are the wicked men that pretend I am a bastard, and spring from an impure origin? They are themselves bastards, themselves exceedingly impure! Was I not born of a virgin mother? And I entered through the crown of her head!”

This testimony appeared of such importance to M. Bergier, that that learned divine felt no scruple about employing it without quoting his authority. The following are his words, in the twenty-third page of the “Certainty of the Proofs of Christianity”: “Jesus was born of a virgin by the operation of the Holy Spirit. Jesus Himself frequently assured us of this with His own mouth; and to the same purpose is the recital of the apostles.” It is certain that these words are only to be found in the “Toldos Jeschu”; and the certainty of that proof, among those adduced by M. Bergier, subsists, although St. Matthew applies to Jesus the passage of “Isaiah”: “He shall not dispute, he shall not cry aloud, and no one shall hear his voice in the streets.”

According to St. Jerome, there was in like manner an ancient tradition among the Gymnosophists of India, that Buddha, the author of their creed, was born of a virgin, who was delivered of him from her side. In the same manner was born Julius Cæsar, Scipio Africanus, Manlius, Edward VI. of England, and others, by means of an operation called by surgeons the Cæsarian operation, because it consists in abstracting the child from the womb by an incision in the abdomen of the mother. Simon, surnamed the Magician, and Manès both pretended to have been born of virgins. This might, however, merely mean, that their mothers were virgins at the time of conceiving them. But in order to be convinced of the uncertainty attending the marks and evidences of virginity, it will be perfectly sufficient to read the commentary of M. de Pompignan, the celebrated bishop of Puy en Velai, on the following passage in the Book of Proverbs: “There are three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not. The way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the way of a man in his youth.” In order to give a literal translation of the passage, according to this prelate (in the third chapter of the second part of his work entitled “Infidelity Convinced by the Prophecies”), it would have been necessary to say, Viam viri in virgine adolescentula”—The way of a man with a maid. The translation of our Vulgate, says he, substitutes another meaning, exact indeed and true, but less conformable to the original text. In short, he corroborates his curious interpretation by the analogy between this verse and the following one: “Such is the life of the adulterous woman, who, after having eaten, wipeth her mouth and saith, I have done no wickedness.”

However this may be, the virginity of Mary was not generally admitted, even at the beginning of the third century. “Many have entertained the opinion and do still,” said St. Clement of Alexandria, “that Mary was delivered of a son without that delivery producing any change in her person; for some say that a midwife who visited her after the birth found her to retain all the marks of virginity.” It is clear that St. Clement refers here to the gospel of the conception of Mary, in which the angel Gabriel says to her, “Without intercourse with man, thou, a virgin, shalt conceive, thou, a virgin, shalt be delivered of a child, thou, a virgin, shalt give suck”; and also to the first gospel of James, in which the midwife exclaims, “What an unheard-of wonder! Mary has just brought a son into the world, and yet retains all the evidences of virginity.” These two gospels were, nevertheless, subsequently rejected as apocryphal, although on this point they were conformable to the opinion adopted by the church; the scaffolding was removed after the building was completed.

What is added by Jeschu—“I entered by the crown of the head”—was likewise the opinion held by the church. The Breviary of the Maronites represents the word of the Father as having entered by the ear of the blessed woman. St. Augustine and Pope Felix say expressly that the virgin became pregnant through the ear. St. Ephrem says the same in a hymn, and Voisin, his translator, observes that the idea came originally from Gregory of Neocæsarea, surnamed Thaumaturgos. Agobar relates that in his time the church sang in the time of public service: “The Word entered through the ear of the virgin, and came out at the golden gate.” Eutychius speaks also of Elian, who attended at the Council of Nice, and who said that the Word entered by the ear of the virgin, and came out in the way of childbirth. This Elian was a rural bishop, whose name occurs in Selden’s published Arabic List of Fathers who attended the Council of Nice.

It is well known that the Jesuit Sanchez gravely discussed the question whether the Virgin Mary contributed seminally in the incarnation of Christ, and that, like other divines before him, he concluded in the affirmative. But these extravagances of a prurient and depraved imagination should be classed with the opinion of Aretin, who introduces the Holy Spirit on this occasion effecting his purpose under the figure of a dove; as mythology describes Jupiter to have succeeded with Leda in the form of a swan, or as the most eminent authors of the church—St. Austin, Athenagoras, Tertullian, St. Clement of Alexandria, St. Cyprian, Lactantius, St. Ambrose—and others believed, after Philo and Josephus, the historian, who were Jews, that angels had associated with the daughters of men, and engaged in sexual connection with them. St. Augustine goes so far as to charge the Manichæans with teaching, as a part of their religious persuasion, that beautiful young persons appeared in a state of nature before the princes of darkness, or evil angels, and deprived them of the vital substance which that father calls the nature of God. Herodius is still more explicit, and says that the divine majesty escaped through the productive organs of demons.

It is true that all these fathers believed angels to be corporeal. But, after the works of Plato had established the idea of their spirituality, the ancient opinion of a corporeal union between angels and women was explained by the supposition that the same angel who, in a woman’s form, had received the embraces of a man, in turn held communication with a woman, in the character of a man. Divines, by the terms “incubus” and “succubus,” designate the different parts thus performed by angels. Those who are curious on the subject of these offensive and revolting reveries may see further details in “Various Readings of the Book of Genesis,” by Otho Gualter; “Magical Disquisitions,” by Delvis, and the “Discourses on Witchcraft,” by Henry Boguet.

SECTION II.

No genealogy, even although reprinted in Moréri, approaches that of Mahomet or Mahommed, the son of Abdallah, the son of Abd’all Montaleb, the son of Ashem; which Mahomet was, in his younger days, groom of the widow Khadijah, then her factor, then her husband, then a prophet of God, then condemned to be hanged, then conqueror and king of Arabia; and who finally died an enviable death, satiated with glory and with love.

The German barons do not trace back their origin beyond Witikind; and our modern French marquises can scarcely any of them show deeds and patents of an earlier date than Charlemagne. But the race of Mahomet, or Mohammed, which still exists, has always exhibited a genealogical tree, of which the trunk is Adam, and of which the branches reach from Ishmael down to the nobility and gentry who at the present day bear the high title of cousins of Mahomet.

There is no difficulty about this genealogy, no dispute among the learned, no false calculations to be rectified, no contradictions to palliate, no impossibilities to be made possible.

Your pride cavils against the authenticity of these titles. You tell me that you are descended from Adam as well as the greatest prophet, if Adam was the common father of our race; but that this same Adam was never known by any person, not even by the ancient Arabs themselves; that the name has never been cited except in the books of the Jews; and that, consequently, you take the liberty of writing down false against the high and noble claims of Mahomet, or Mohammed.

You add that, in any case, if there has been a first man, whatever his name might be, you are a descendant from him as decidedly as Khadijah’s illustrious groom; and that, if there has been no first man, if the human race always existed, as so many of the learned pretend, then you are clearly a gentleman from all eternity.

In answer to this you are told that you are a plebeian (roturier)from all eternity, unless you can produce a regular and complete set of parchments.

You reply that men are equal; that one race cannot be more ancient than another; that parchments, with bits of wax dangling to them, are a recent invention; that there is no reason that compels you to yield to the family of Mahomet, or to that of Confucius; or to that of the emperors of Japan; or to the royal secretaries of the grand college. Nor can I oppose your opinion by arguments, physical, metaphysical, or moral. You think yourself equal to the dairo of Japan, and I entirely agree with you. All that I would advise you is, that if ever you meet with him, you take good care to be the stronger.

GENESIS.

The sacred writer having conformed himself to the ideas generally received, and being indeed obliged not to deviate from them, as without such condescension to the weakness and ignorance of those whom he addressed, he would not have been understood, it only remains for us to make some observations on the natural philosophy prevailing in those early periods; for, with respect to theology, we reverence it, we believe in it, and never either dispute or discuss it.

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Thus has the original passage been translated, but the translation is not correct. There is no one, however slightly informed upon the subject, who is not aware that the real meaning of the word is, “In the beginning the gods made (firent or fit) the heaven and the earth.” This reading, moreover, perfectly corresponds with the ancient idea of the Phœnicians, who imagined that, in reducing the chaos (chautereb) into order, God employed the agency of inferior deities.

The Phœnicians had been long a powerful people, having a theogony of their own, before the Hebrews became possessed of a few cantons of land near their territory. It is extremely natural to suppose that when the Hebrews had at length formed a small establishment near Phœnicia, they began to acquire its language. At that time their writers might, and probably did, borrow the ancient philosophy of their masters. Such is the regular march of the human mind.

At the time in which Moses is supposed to have lived, were the Phœnician philosophers sufficiently enlightened to regard the earth as a mere point in the compass with the infinite orbs placed by God in the immensity of space, commonly called heaven? The idea so very ancient, and at the same time so utterly false, that heaven was made for earth, almost always prevailed in the minds of the great mass of the people. It would certainly be just as correct and judicious for any person to suppose, if told that God created all the mountains and a single grain of sand, that the mountains were created for that grain of sand. It is scarcely possible that the Phœnicians, who were such excellent navigators, should not have had some good astronomers; but the old prejudices generally prevailed, and those old prejudices were very properly spared and indulged by the author of the Book of Genesis, who wrote to instruct men in the ways of God, and not in natural philosophy.

“The earth was without form (tohu bohu) and void; darkness rested upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved upon the surface of the waters.”

Tohu bohu means precisely chaos, disorder. It is one of those imitative words which are to be found in all languages; as, for example, in the French we have sens dessus dessous, tintamarre, trictrac, tonnerre, bombe. The earth was not as yet formed in its present state; the matter existed, but the divine power had not yet arranged it. The spirit of God means literally the breath, the wind, which agitated the waters. The same idea occurs in the “Fragments” of the Phœnician author Sanchoniathon. The Phœnicians, like every other people, believed matter to be eternal. There is not a single author of antiquity who ever represented something to have been produced from nothing. Even throughout the whole Bible, no passage is to be found in which matter is said to have been created out of nothing. Not, however, that we mean to controvert the truth of such creation. It was, nevertheless, a truth not known by the carnal Jews.

On the question of the eternity of the world, mankind has always been divided, but never on that of the eternity of matter. From nothing, nothing can proceed, nor into nothing can aught existent return. “De nihilo nihilum, et in nihilum nil posse gigni reverti.” (Persius, Sat. iii.) Such was the opinion of all antiquity.

“God said let there be light, and there was light; and he saw that the light was good, and he divided the light from the darkness; and he called the light day, and the darkness night; and the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said also, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And God called the firmament heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. . . . . And he saw that it was good.”

We begin with examining whether Huet, bishop of Avranches, Leclerc, and some other commentators, are not in the right in opposing the idea of those who consider this passage as exhibiting the most sublime eloquence.

Eloquence is not aimed at in any history written by the Jews. The style of the passage in question, like that of all the rest of the work, possesses the most perfect simplicity. If an orator, intending to give some idea of the power of God, employed for that purpose the short and simple expression we are considering, “He said, let there be light, and there was light,” it would then be sublime. Exactly similar is the passage in one of the Psalms, “Dixit, et facta sunt”—“He spake, and they were made.” It is a trait which, being unique in this place, and introduced purposely in order to create a majestic image, elevates and transports the mind. But, in the instance under examination, the narrative is of the most simple character. The Jewish writer is speaking of light just in the same unambitious manner as of other objects of creation; he expresses himself equally and regularly after every article, “and God saw that it was good.” Everything is sublime in the course or act of creation, unquestionably, but the creation of light is no more so than that of the herbs of the field; the sublime is something which soars far from the rest, whereas all is equal throughout the chapter.

But further, it was another very ancient opinion that light did not proceed from the sun. It was seen diffused throughout the atmosphere, before the rising and after the setting of that star; the sun was supposed merely to give it greater strength and clearness; accordingly the author of Genesis accommodates himself to this popular error, and even states the creation of the sun and moon not to have taken place until four days after the existence of light. It was impossible that there could be a morning and evening before the existence of a sun. The inspired writer deigned, in this instance, to condescend to the gross and wild ideas of the nation. The object of God was not to teach the Jews philosophy. He might have raised their minds to the truth, but he preferred descending to their error. This solution can never be too frequently repeated.

The separation of the light from the darkness is a part of the same system of philosophy. It would seem that night and day were mixed up together, as grains of different species which are easily separable from each other. It is sufficiently known that darkness is nothing but the absence of light, and that there is in fact no light when our eyes receive no sensation of it; but at that period these truths were far from being known.

The idea of a firmament, again, is of the very highest antiquity. The heavens are imagined to be a solid mass, because they always exhibited the same phenomena. They rolled over our heads, they were therefore constituted of the most solid materials. Who could suppose that the exhalations from the land and sea supplied the water descending from the clouds, or compute their corresponding quantities? No Halley then lived to make so curious a calculation. The heavens therefore were conceived to contain reservoirs. These reservoirs could be supported only on a strong arch, and as this arch of heaven was actually transparent, it must necessarily have been made of crystal. In order that the waters above might descend from it upon the earth, sluices, cataracts, and floodgates were necessary, which might be opened and shut as circumstances required. Such was the astronomy of the day; and, as the author wrote for Jews, it was incumbent upon him to adopt their gross ideas, borrowed from other people somewhat less gross than themselves.

“God also made two great lights, one to rule the day, the other the night; He also made the stars.”

It must be admitted that we perceive throughout the same ignorance of nature. The Jews did not know that the moon shone only with a reflected light. The author here speaks of stars as of mere luminous points, such as they appear, although they are in fact so many suns, having each of them worlds revolving round it. The Holy Spirit, then, accommodated Himself to the spirit of the times. If He had said that the sun was a million times larger than the earth, and the moon fifty times smaller, no one would have comprehended Him. They appear to us two stars of nearly equal size.

“God said, also, let us make man in our own image, and let him have dominion over the fishes.”

What meaning did the Jews attach to the expression, “let us make man in our own image?” The same as all antiquity attached to it: “Finxit in effigiem moderantum cuncta deorum.” (Ovid, Metam. i. 82.)

No images are made but of bodies. No nation ever imagined a God without body, and it is impossible to represent Him otherwise. We may indeed say that God is nothing that we are acquainted with, but we can have no idea of what He is. The Jews invariably conceived God to be corporeal, as well as every other people. All the first fathers of the Church, also, entertained the same belief till they had embraced the ideas of Plato, or rather until the light of Christianity became more pure.

“He created them male and female.” If God, or the secondary or inferior gods, created mankind, male and female, after their own likeness, it would seem in that case, as if the Jews believed that God and the gods who so formed them were male and female. It has been a subject of discussion, whether the author means to say that man had originally two sexes, or merely that God made Adam and Eve on the same day. The most natural meaning is that God formed Adam and Eve at the same time; but this interpretation involves an absolute contradiction to the statement of the woman’s being made out of the rib of man after the seven days were concluded.

“And he rested on the seventh day.” The Phœnicians, Chaldæans, and Indians, represented God as having made the world in six periods, which the ancient Zoroaster calls the six “Gahanbars,” so celebrated among the Persians.

It is beyond all question that these nations possessed a theology before the Jews inhabited the deserts of Horeb and Sinai, and before they could possibly have had any writers. Many writers have considered it probable that the allegory of six days was imitated from that of the six periods. God may have permitted the idea to have prevailed in large and populous empires before he inspired the Jewish people with it. He had undoubtedly permitted other people to invent the arts before the Jews were in possession of any one of them.

“From this pleasant place a river went out which watered the garden, and thence it was divided into four rivers. One was called Pison, which compassed the whole land of Havilah, whence cometh gold . . . . the second was called Gihon and surrounds Ethiopia . . . . the third is the Tigris, and the fourth the Euphrates.”

According to this version, the earthly paradise would have contained nearly a third part of Asia and of Africa. The sources of the Euphrates and the Tigris are sixty leagues distant from each other, in frightful mountains, bearing no possible resemblance to a garden. The river which borders Ethiopia, and which can be no other than the Nile, commences its course at the distance of more than a thousand leagues from the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates; and, if the Pison means the Phasis, it is not a little surprising that the source of a Scythian river and that of an African one should be situated on the same spot. We must therefore look for some other explanation, and for other rivers. Every commentator has got up a paradise of his own.

It has been said that the Garden of Eden resembles the gardens of Eden at Saana in Arabia Felix, celebrated throughout all antiquity; that the Hebrews, a very recent people, might be an Arabian horde, and assume to themselves the honor of the most beautiful spot in the finest district of Arabia; and that they have always converted to their own purposes the ancient traditions of the vast and powerful nations in the midst of whom they were in bondage. They were not, however, on this account, the less under the divine protection and guidance.

“The Lord then took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden that he might cultivate it.” It is very respectable and pleasant for a man to “cultivate his garden,” but it must have been somewhat difficult for Adam to have dressed and kept in order a garden of a thousand leagues in length, even although he had been supplied with some assistants. Commentators on this subject, therefore, we again observe, are completely at a loss, and must be content to exercise their ingenuity in conjecture. Accordingly, these four rivers have been described as flowing through numberless different territories.

“Eat not of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” It is not easy to conceive that there ever existed a tree which could teach good and evil, as there are trees that bear pears and apricots. And besides the question is asked, why is God unwilling that man should know good and evil? Would not his free access to this knowledge, on the contrary, appear—if we may venture to use such language—more worthy of God, and far more necessary to man? To our weak reason it would seem more natural and proper for God to command him to eat largely of such fruit; but we must bring our reason under subjection, and acquiesce with humility and simplicity in the conclusion that God is to be obeyed.

The temptation of Adam.

“If thou shalt eat thereof, thou shalt die.” Nevertheless, Adam ate of it and did not die; on the contrary, he is stated to have lived on for nine hundred and thirty years. Many of the fathers considered the whole matter as an allegory. In fact, it might be said that all other animals have no knowledge that they shall die, but that man, by means of his reason, has such knowledge. This reason is the tree of knowledge which enables him to foresee his end. This, perhaps, is the most rational interpretation that can be given. We venture not to decide positively.

“The Lord said, also, it is not good for man to be alone; let us make him a helpmeet for him.” We naturally expect that the Lord is about to bestow on him a wife; but first he conducts before him all the various tribes of animals. Perhaps the copyist may have committed here an error of transposition.

“And the name which Adam gave to every animal is its true name.” What we should naturally understand by the true name of an animal, would be a name describing all, or at least, the principal properties of its species. But this is not the case in any language. In each there are some imitative words, as “coq” and “cocu” in the Celtic, which bear some slight similarity to the notes of the cock and the cuckoo; tintamarre, trictrac, in French; alali, in Greek; lupus, in Latin, etc. But these imitative words are exceedingly few. Moreover, if Adam had thus thoroughly known the properties of various animals, he must either have previously eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, or it would apparently have answered no end for God to have interdicted him from it. He must have already known more than the Royal Society of London, and the Academy of the Sciences.

It may be remarked that this is the first time the name of Adam occurs in the Book of Genesis. The first man, according to the ancient Brahmins, who were prodigiously anterior to the Jews, was called Adimo, a son of the earth, and his wife, Procris, life. This is recorded in the Vedas, in the history of the second formation of the world. Adam and Eve expressed perfectly the same meanings in the Phœnician language—a new evidence of the Holy Spirit’s conforming Himself to commonly received ideas.

“When Adam was asleep God took one of his ribs and put flesh instead thereof; and of the rib which he had taken from Adam he formed a woman, and he brought the woman to Adam.”

In the previous chapter the Lord had already created the male and the female; why, therefore, remove a rib from the man to form out of it a woman who was already in being? It is answered that the author barely announces in the one case what he explains in another. It is answered further that this allegory places the wife in subjection to her husband, and expresses their intimate union. Many persons have been led to imagine from this verse that men have one rib less than women; but this is a heresy, and anatomy informs us that a wife has no more ribs than her husband.

“But the serpent was more subtle than all animals on the earth; he said to the woman,” etc. Throughout the whole of this article there is no mention made of the devil. Everything in it relates to the usual course of nature. The serpent was considered by all oriental nations, not only as the most cunning of all animals, but likewise as immortal. The Chaldæans had a fable concerning a quarrel between God and the serpent, and this fable had been preserved by Pherecydes. Origen cites it in his sixth book against Celsus. A serpent was borne in procession at the feasts of Bacchus. The Egyptians, according to the statement of Eusebius in the first book of the tenth chapter of his “Evangelical Preparation,” attached a sort of divinity to the serpent. In Arabia, India, and even China, the serpent was regarded as a symbol of life; and hence it was that the emperors of China, long before the time of Moses, always bore upon their breast the image of a serpent.

Eve expresses no astonishment at the serpent’s speaking to her. In all ancient histories, animals have spoken; hence Pilpay and Lokman excited no surprise by their introduction of animals conversing and disputing.

The whole of this affair appears so clearly to have been supposed in the natural course of events, and so unconnected with anything allegorical, that the narrative assigns a reason why the serpent, from that time, has moved creeping on its belly, why we always are eager to crush it under our feet, and why it always attempts—at least according to the popular belief—to bite and wound us. Precisely as, with respect to presumed changes affecting certain animals recorded in ancient fable, reasons were stated why the crow which originally had been white is at the present day black; why the owl quits his gloomy retreat only by night; why the wolf is devoted to carnage. The fathers, however, believed the affair to be an allegory at once clear and venerable. The safest way is to believe like them.

“I will multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children. Thou shalt be under the power of the man, and he shall rule over thee.” Why, it is asked, should the multiplication of conception be a punishment? It was, on the contrary, says the objector, esteemed a superior blessing, particularly among the Jews. The pains of childbirth are inconsiderable, in all except very weak or delicate women. Those accustomed to labor are delivered, particularly in warm climates, with great ease. Brutes frequently experience greater suffering from this process of nature: some even die under it. And with respect to the superiority or dominion of the man over the woman, it is merely in the natural course of events; it is the effect of strength of body, and even of strength of mind. Men, generally speaking, possess organs more capable of continued attention than women, and are better fitted by nature for labors both of the head and arm. But when a woman possesses both a hand and a mind more powerful than her husband’s, she everywhere possesses the dominion over him; it is then the husband that is under subjection to the wife. There is certainly truth in these remarks; but it might, nevertheless, very easily be the fact that, before the commission of the original sin, neither subjection nor sorrow existed.

“The Lord made for them coats of skins.” This passage decidedly proves that the Jews believed God to be corporeal. A rabbi, of the name of Eliezer, stated in his works that God clothed Adam and Eve with the skin of the very serpent who had tempted them; and Origen maintains that this coat of skins was a new flesh, a new body, which God conferred on man. It is far better to adhere respectfully to the literal texts.

“And the Lord said; Lo! Adam is become like one of us.” It seems as if the Jews admitted, originally, many gods. It is somewhat more difficult to determine what they meant by the word “God,” Elohïm. Some commentators have contended that the expression “one of us” signifies the Trinity. But certainly there is nothing relating to the Trinity throughout the Bible. The Trinity is not a compound of many or several Gods: it is one and the same god threefold; and the Jews never heard the slightest mention of one god in three persons. By the words “like us,” or “as one of us,” it is probable that the Jews understood the angels, Elohïm. It is this passage which has induced many learned men very rashly to conclude that this book was not written until that people had adopted the belief of those inferior gods. But this opinion has been condemned.

“The Lord sent him forth from the garden of Eden to cultivate the ground.” But,” it is remarked by some, “the Lord had placed him in the garden of Eden to cultivate that garden.” If Adam, instead of being a gardener, merely becomes a laborer, his situation, they observe, is not made very much worse by the change. A good laborer is well worth a good gardener. These remarks must be regarded as too light and frivolous. It appears more judicious to say that God punished disobedience by banishing the offender from the place of his nativity.

The whole of this history, generally speaking—according to the opinion of liberal, not to say licentious, commentators—proceeds upon the idea which has prevailed in every past age, and still exists, that the first times were better and happier than those which followed. Men have always complained of the present and extolled the past. Pressed down by the labors of life, they have imagined happiness to consist in inactivity, not considering that the most unhappy of all states is that of a man who has nothing to do. They felt themselves frequently miserable, and framed in their imaginations an ideal period in which all the world had been happy; although it might be just as naturally and truly supposed that there had existed times in which no tree decayed and perished, in which no beast was weak, diseased, or devoured by another, and in which spiders did not prey upon flies. Hence the idea of the golden age; of the egg pierced by Arimanes; of the serpent who stole from the ass the recipe for obtaining a happy and immortal life, which the man had placed upon his pack-saddle; of the conflict between Typhon and Osiris, and between Opheneus and the gods; of the famous box of Pandora; and of all those ancient tales, of which some are ingenious, but none instructive. But we are bound to believe that the fables of other nations are imitations of the Hebrew history, since we possess the ancient history of the Hebrews, and the early books of other nations are nearly all destroyed. Besides the testimonies in favor of the Book of Genesis are irrefragable.

“And He placed before the garden of Eden a cherub with a flaming sword, which turned all round to guard the way to the tree of life.” The word “kerub” signifies ox. An ox armed with a flaming sword is rather a singular exhibition, it is said, before a portal. But the Jews afterwards represented angels under the form of oxen and hawks although they were forbidden to make any images. They evidently derived these emblems of oxen and hawks from the Egyptians, whom they imitated in so many other things. The Egyptians first venerated the ox as the emblem of agriculture, and the hawk as that of the winds; but they never converted the ox into a sentinel. It is probably an allegory; and the Jews by “kerub” understood nature. It was a symbol formed of the head of an ox, the head and body of a man, and the wings of a hawk.

“And the Lord set a mark upon Cain.” What Lord? says the infidel. He accepts the offering of Abel, and rejects that of his elder brother, without the least reason being assigned for the distinction. By this proceeding the Lord was the cause of animosity between the two brothers. We are presented in this piece of history, it is true, with a moral, however humiliating, lesson; a lesson to be derived from all the fables of antiquity, that scarcely had the race of man commenced the career of existence, before one brother assassinates another. But what the sages of this world consider contrary to everything moral, to everything just, to all the principles of common sense, is that God, who inflicted eternal damnation on the race of man, and useless crucifixion on His own son, on account merely of the eating of an apple, should absolutely pardon a fratricide! nay, that He should more than pardon, that He should take the offender under His peculiar protection! He declares that whoever shall avenge the murder of Abel shall experience sevenfold the punishment that Cain might have suffered. He puts a mark upon him as a safeguard. Here, continue these vile blasphemers, here is a fable as execrable as it is absurd. It is the raving of some wretched Jew, who wrote those infamous and revolting fooleries, in imitation of the tales so greedily swallowed by the neighboring population in Syria. This senseless Jew attributes these atrocious reveries to Moses, at a time when nothing was so rare as books. That fatality, which affects and disposes of everything, has handed down this contemptible production to our own times. Knaves have extolled it, and fools have believed it. Such is the language of a tribe of theists, who, while they adore a God, dare to condemn the God of Israel; and who judge of the conduct of the eternal Deity by the rules of our own imperfect morality, and erroneous justice. They admit a God, to subject Him to our laws. Let us guard against such rashness; and, once again it must be repeated, let us revere what we cannot comprehend. Let us cry out, O Altitudo! O the height and depth! with all our strength.

“The gods Elohïm, seeing the daughters of men that they were fair, took for wives those whom they chose.” This imagination, again, may be traced in the history of every people. No nation has ever existed, unless perhaps we may except China, in which some god is not described as having had offspring from women. These corporeal gods frequently descended to visit their dominions upon earth; they saw the daughters of our race, and attached themselves to those who were most interesting and beautiful: the issue of this connection between gods and mortals must of course have been superior to other men; accordingly, Genesis informs us that from the association it mentions, of the gods with women, sprang a race of giants.

“I will bring a deluge of waters upon the earth.” I will merely observe here that St. Augustine, in his “City of God,” No. 8, says, “Maximum illud diluvium Græca nec Latina novit historia”—neither Greek nor Latin history knows anything about the great deluge. In fact, none had ever been known in Greece but those of Deucalion and Ogyges. They are regarded as universal in the fables collected by Ovid, but are wholly unknown in eastern Asia. St. Augustine, therefore, is not mistaken, in saying that history makes no mention of this event.

“God said to Noah, I will make a covenant with you, and with your seed after you, and with all living creatures.” God make a covenant with beasts! What sort of a covenant? Such is the outcry of infidels. But if He makes a covenant with man, why not with the beast? It has feeling, and there is something as divine in feeling as in the most metaphysical meditation. Besides, beasts feel more correctly than the greater part of men think. It is clearly in virtue of this treaty that Francis d’Assisi, the founder of the Seraphic order, said to the grasshoppers and the hares, “Pray sing, my dear sister grasshopper; pray browse, my dear brother hare.” But what were the conditions of the treaty? That all animals should devour one another; that they should feed upon our flesh, and we upon theirs; that, after having eaten them, we should proceed with wrath and fury to the extermination of our own race—nothing being then wanting to crown the horrid series of butchery and cruelty, but devouring our fellow-men, after having thus remorselessly destroyed them. Had there been actually such a treaty as this it could have been entered into only with the devil.

Probably the meaning of the whole passage is neither more nor less than that God is equally the absolute master of everything that breathes. This pact can be nothing more than an order, and the word “covenant” is used merely as more emphatic and impressive; we should not therefore be startled and offended at the words, but adore the spirit, and direct our minds back to the period in which this book was written—a book of scandal to the weak, but of edification to the strong.

“And I will put my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of my covenant.” Observe that the author does not say, I have put my bow in the clouds; he says, I will put: this clearly implies it to have been the prevailing opinion that there had not always been a rainbow. This phenomenon is necessarily produced by rain; yet in this place it is represented as something supernatural, exhibited in order to announce and prove that the earth should no more be inundated. It is singular to choose the certain sign of rain, in order to assure men against their being drowned. But it may also be replied that in any danger of inundation, we have the cheering security of the rainbow.

“But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of Adam had built, and he said, ‘Behold a people which have but one language. They have begun to do this, and they will not desist until they have completed it. Come, then, let us go and confound their language, that no one may understand his neighbor.’ ” Observe here, that the sacred writer always continues to conform to the popular opinions. He always speaks of God as of a man who endeavors to inform himself of what is passing, who is desirous of seeing with his own eyes what is going on in his dominions, who calls together his council in order to deliberate with them.

“And Abraham having divided his men—who were three hundred and eighteen in number—fell upon the five kings, and pursued them unto Hoba, on the left hand of Damascus.” From the south bank of the lake of Sodom to Damascus was a distance of eighty leagues, not to mention crossing the mountains Libanus and Anti-Libanus. Infidels smile and triumph at such exaggeration. But as the Lord favored Abraham, nothing was in fact exaggerated.

“And two angels arrived at Sodom at even.” The whole history of these two angels, whom the inhabitants of Sodom wished to violate, is perhaps the most extraordinary in the records of all antiquity. But it must be considered that almost all Asia believed in the existence of the demoniacal incubus and succubus; and moreover, that these two angels were creatures more perfect than mankind, and must have possessed more beauty to stimulate their execrable tendencies. It is possible that the passage may be only meant as a rhetorical figure to express the atrocious depravity of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is not without the greatest diffidence that we suggest to the learned this solution.

As to Lot, who proposes to the people of Sodom the substitution of his two daughters in the room of the angels; and his wife, who was changed into a statue of salt, and all the rest of that history, what shall we venture to say? The old Arabian tale of Kinyras and Myrrha has some resemblance to the incest of Lot with his daughters; and the adventure of Philemon and Baucis is somewhat similar to the case of the two angels who appeared to Lot and his wife. With respect to the statue of salt, we know not where to find any resemblance; perhaps in the history of Orpheus and Eurydice.

Many ingenious men are of opinion, with the great Newton and the learned Leclerc that the Pentateuch was written by Samuel when the Jews had a little knowledge of reading and writing, and that all these histories are imitations of Syrian fables.

But it is enough that all this is in the Holy Scripture to induce us to reverence it, without attempting to find out in this book anything besides what is written by the Holy Spirit. Let us always recollect that those times were not like our times; and let us not fail to repeat, after so many great men, that the Old Testament is a true history; and that all that has been written differing from it by the rest of the world is fabulous.

Some critics have contended that all the incredible passages in the canonical books, which scandalize weak minds, ought to be suppressed; but it has been observed in answer that those critics had bad hearts, and ought to be burned at the stake; and that it is impossible to be a good man without believing that the people of Sodom wanted to violate two angels. Such is the reasoning of a species of monsters who wish to lord it over the understandings of mankind.

It is true that many eminent fathers of the Church have had the prudence to turn all these histories into allegories, after the example of the Jews, and particularly of Philo. The popes, more discreet, have endeavored to prevent the translation of these books into the vulgar tongue, lest some men should in consequence be led to think and judge, about what was proposed to them only to adore.

We are certainly justified in concluding hence, that those who thoroughly understand this book should tolerate those who do not understand it at all; for if the latter understand nothing of it, it is not their own fault: on the other hand, those who comprehend nothing that it contains should tolerate those who comprehend everything in it.

Learned and ingenious men, full of their own talents and acquirements, have maintained that it is impossible that Moses could have written the Book of Genesis. One of their principal reasons is that in the history of Abraham that patriarch is stated to have paid for a cave which he purchased for the interment of his wife, in silver coin, and the king of Gerar is said to have given Sarah a thousand pieces of silver when he restored her, after having carried her off for her beauty at the age of seventy-five. They inform us that they have consulted all the ancient authors, and that it appears very certain that at the period mentioned silver money was not in existence. But these are evidently mere cavils, as the Church has always firmly believed Moses to have been the author of the Pentateuch. They strengthen all the doubts suggested by Aben-Ezra, and Baruch Spinoza. The physician Astruc, father-in-law of the comptroller-general Silhouette, in his book—now become very scarce—called “Conjectures on the Book of Genesis,” adds some objections, inexplicable undoubtedly to human learning, but not so to a humble and submissive piety. The learned, many of them, contradict every line, but the devout consider every line sacred. Let us dread falling into the misfortune of believing and trusting to our reason; but let us bring ourselves into subjection in understanding as well as in heart.

“And Abraham said that Sarah was his sister, and the king of Gerar took her for himself.” We admit, as we have said under the article on “Abraham,” that Sarah was at this time ninety years of age, that she had been already carried away by a king of Egypt, and that a king of this same horrid wilderness of Gerar, likewise, many years afterwards, carried away the wife of Isaac, Abraham’s son. We have also spoken of his servant, Hagar, who bore him a son, and of the manner in which the patriarch sent her and her son away. It is well known how infidels triumph on the subject of all these histories, with what a disdainful smile they speak of them, and that they place the story of one Abimelech falling in love with Sarah whom Abraham had passed off as his sister, and of another Abimelech falling in love with Rebecca, whom Isaac also passes as his sister, even beneath the thousand and one nights of the Arabian fables. We cannot too often remark that the great error of all these learned critics is their wishing to try everything by the test of our feeble reason, and to judge of the ancient Arabs as they judge of the courts of France or of England.

“And the soul of Shechem, King Hamor’s son, was bound up with the soul of Dinah, and he soothed her grief by his tender caresses, and he went to Hamor his father, and said to him, give me that woman to be my wife.”

Here our critics exclaim in terms of stronger disgust than ever. “What!” say they; “the son of a king is desirous to marry a vagabond girl;” the marriage is celebrated; Jacob the father, and Dinah the daughter, are loaded with presents; the king of Shechem deigns to receive those wandering robbers called patriarchs within his city; he has the incredible politeness or kindness to undergo, with his son, his court, and his people, the rite of circumcision, thus condescending to the superstition of a petty horde that could not call half a league of territory their own! And in return for this astonishing hospitality and goodness, how do our holy patriarchs act? They wait for the day when the process of circumcision generally induces fever, when Simeon and Levi run through the whole city with poniards in their hands and massacre the king, the prince his son, and all the inhabitants. We are precluded from the horror appropriate to this infernal counterpart of the tragedy of St. Bartholomew, only by a sense of its absolute impossibility. It is an abominable romance; but it is evidently a ridiculous romance. It is impossible that two men could have slaughtered in quiet the whole population of a city. The people might suffer in a slight degree from the operation which had preceded, but notwithstanding this, they would have risen in self-defence against two diabolical miscreants; they would have instantly assembled, would have surrounded them, and destroyed them with the summary and complete vengeance merited by their atrocity.

But there is a still more palpable impossibility. It is, that according to the accurate computation of time, Dinah, this daughter of Jacob, could be only three years old; and that, even by forcing up chronology as far as possible in favor of the narrative, she could at the very most be only five. It is here, then, that we are assailed with bursts of indignant exclamation! “What!” it is said, “what! is it this book, the book of a rejected and reprobate people; a book so long unknown to all the world; a book in which sound reason and decent manners are outraged in every page, that is held up to us as irrefragable, holy, and dictated by God Himself? Is it not even impious to believe it? or could anything less than the fury of cannibals urge to the persecution of sensible and modest men for not believing it?”

To this we reply: “The Church declares its belief in it. The copyists may have mixed up some revolting absurdities with respectable and genuine histories. It belongs to the holy church only to decide. The profane ought to be guided by her. Those absurdities, those alleged horrors do not affect the substance of our faith. How lamentable would be the fate of mankind, if religion and virtue depended upon what formerly happened to Shechem and to little Dinah!”

“These are the kings who reigned in the land of Edom before the children of Israel had a king.” This is the celebrated passage which has proved one of the great stumbling stones. This it was which decided the great Newton, the pious and acute Samuel Clarke, the profound and philosophic Bolingbroke, the learned Leclerc, the ingenious Fréret, and a host of other enlightened men, to maintain that it was impossible Moses could have been the author of Genesis.

We admit that in fact these words could not have been written until after the time that the Jews had kings.

It is principally this verse that determined Astruc to give up the inspired authority of the whole Book of Genesis, and suppose the author had derived his materials from existing memoirs and records. His work is ingenious and accurate, but it is rash, not to say audacious. Even a council would scarcely have ventured on such an enterprise. And to what purpose has it served Astruc’s thankless and dangerous labor—to double the darkness he wished to enlighten? Here is the fruit of the tree of knowledge, of which we are all so desirous of eating. Why must it be, that the fruit of the tree of ignorance should be more nourishing and more digestible?

But of what consequence can it be to us, after all, whether any particular verse or chapter was written by Moses, or Samuel, or the priest (sacrificateur) who came to Samaria, or Esdras, or any other person? In what respect can our government, our laws, our fortunes, our morals, our well-being, be bound up with the unknown chiefs of a wretched and barbarous country called Edom or Idumæa, always inhabited by robbers? Alas! those poor Arabs, who have not shirts to their backs, neither know nor care whether or not we are in existence! They go on steadily plundering caravans, and eating barley bread, while we are perplexing and tormenting ourselves to know whether any petty kings flourished in a particular canton of Arabia Petræa, before they existed in a particular canton adjoining the west of the lake of Sodom!

O miseras hominum curas! O pectora cœca!

—Lucretius, ii. 14.

Blind, wretched man! in what dark paths of strife

Thou walkest the little journey of thy life!

—Creech.

GENII.

The doctrines of judicial astrology and magic have spread all over the world. Look back to the ancient Zoroaster, and you will find that of the genii long established. All antiquity abounds in astrologers and magicians; such ideas were therefore very natural. At present, we smile at the number who entertained them; if we were in their situation, if like them we were only beginning to cultivate the sciences, we should perhaps believe just the same. Let us suppose ourselves intelligent people, beginning to reason on our own existence, and to observe the stars. The earth, we might say, is no doubt immovable in the midst of the world; the sun and planets only revolve in her service, and the stars are only made for us; man, therefore, is the great object of all nature. What is the intention of all these globes, and of the immensity of heaven thus destined for our use? It is very likely that all space and these globes are peopled with substances, and since we are the favorites of nature, placed in the centre of the universe, and all is made for man, these substances are evidently destined to watch over man.

The first man who believed the thing at all possible would soon find disciples persuaded that it existed. We might then commence by saying, genii perhaps exist, and nobody could affirm the contrary; for where is the impossibility of the air and planets being peopled? We might afterwards say there are genii, and certainly no one could prove that there are not. Soon after, some sages might see these genii, and we should have no right to say to them: “You have not seen them”; as these persons might be honorable, and altogether worthy of credit. One might see the genius of the empire or of his own city; another that of Mars or Saturn; the genii of the four elements might be manifested to several philosophers; more than one sage might see his own genius; all at first might be little more than dreaming, but dreams are the symbols of truth.

It was soon known exactly how these genii were formed. To visit our globe, they must necessarily have wings; they therefore had wings. We know only of bodies; they therefore had bodies, but bodies much finer than ours, since they were genii, and much lighter, because they came from so great a distance. The sages who had the privilege of conversing with the genii inspired others with the hope of enjoying the same happiness. A skeptic would have been ill received, if he had said to them: “I have seen no genius, therefore there are none.” They would have replied: “You reason ill; it does not follow that a thing exists not, which is unknown to you. There is no contradiction in the doctrine which inculcates these ethereal powers; no impossibility that they may visit us; they show themselves to our sages, they manifest themselves to us; you are not worthy of seeing genii.”

Everything on earth is composed of good and evil; there are therefore incontestably good and bad genii. The Persians had their peris and dives; the Greeks, their demons and cacodæmons; the Latins, bonos et malos genios. The good genii are white, and the bad black, except among the negroes, where it is necessarily the reverse. Plato without difficulty admits of a good and evil genius for every individual. The evil genius of Brutus appeared to him, and announced to him his death before the battle of Philippi. Have not grave historians said so? And would not Plutarch have been very injudicious to have assured us of this fact, if it were not true?

Further, consider what a source of feasts, amusements, good tales, and bon mots, originated in the belief of genii!

There were male and female genii. The genii of the ladies were called by the Romans little Junos. They also had the pleasure of seeing their genii grow up. In infancy, they were a kind of Cupid with wings, and when they protected old age, they wore long beards, and even sometimes the forms of serpents. At Rome, there is preserved a marble, on which is represented a serpent under a palm tree, to which are attached two crowns with this inscription: “To the genius of the Augusti”; it was the emblem of immortality.

What demonstrative proof have we at present, that the genii, so universally admitted by so many enlightened nations, are only phantoms of the imagination? All that can be said is reduced to this: “I have never seen a genius, and no one of my acquaintance has ever seen one; Brutus has not written that his genius appeared to him before the battle of Philippi; neither Newton, Locke, nor even Descartes, who gave the reins to his imagination; neither kings nor ministers of state have ever been suspected of communing with their genii; therefore I do not believe a thing of which there is not the least truth. I confess their existence is not impossible; but the possibility is not a proof of the reality. It is possible that there may be satyrs, with little turned-up tails and goats’ feet; but I must see several to believe in them; for if I saw but one, I should still doubt their existence.”

GENIUS.

Of genius or demon, we have already spoken in the article on “angel.” It is not easy to know precisely whether the peris of the Persians were invented before the demons of the Greeks, but it is very probable that they were. It may be, that the souls of the dead, called shades, manes, etc., passed for demons. Hesiod makes Hercules say that a demon dictated his labors.

The demon of Socrates had so great a reputation, that Apuleius, the author of the “Golden Ass,” who was himself a magician of good repute, says in his “Treatise on the Genius of Socrates,” that a man must be without religion who denies it. You see that Apuleius reasons precisely like brothers Garasse and Bertier: “You do not believe that which I believe; you are therefore without religion.” And the Jansenists have said as much of brother Bertier, as well as of all the world except themselves. “These demons,” says the very religious and filthy Apuleius, “are intermediate powers between ether and our lower region. They live in our atmosphere, and bear our prayers and merits to the gods. They treat of succors and benefits, as interpreters and ambassadors. Plato says, that it is by their ministry that revelations, presages, and the miracles of magicians, are effected.”—Cæterum sunt quædam divinæ mediæ potestates, inter summum æthera, et infimas terras, in isto intersitæ æris spatio, per quas et desideria nostra et merita ad deos commeant. Hos Græco nomine demonias nuncupant. Inter terricolas cœli colasque victores, hinc pecum, inde donorum: qui ultro citroque portant, hinc petitiones, inde suppetias: ceu quidam utriusque interpretes, et salutigeri. Per hos eosdem, ut Plato in symposio autumat, cuncta denuntiata; et majorum varia miracula, omnesque præsagium species reguntur.”

St. Augustine has condescended to refute Apuleius in these words:

“It is impossible for us to say that demons are neither mortal nor eternal, for all that has life, either lives eternally, or loses the breath of life by death; and Apuleius has said, that as to time, the demons are eternal. What then remains, but that demons hold a medium situation, and have one quality higher and another lower than mankind; and as, of these two things, eternity is the only higher thing which they exclusively possess, to complete the allotted medium, what must be the lower, if not misery?” This is powerful reasoning!

As I have never seen any genii, demons, peris, or hobgoblins, whether beneficent or mischievous, I cannot speak of them from knowledge. I only relate what has been said by people who have seen them.

Among the Romans, the word “genius” was not used to express a rare talent, as with us: the term for that quality was ingenium. We use the word “genius” indifferently in speaking of the tutelar demon of a town of antiquity, or an artist, or a musician. The term “genius” seems to have been intended to designate not great talents generally, but those into which invention enters. Invention, above everything, appeared a gift from the gods—this ingenium, quasi ingenitum, a kind of divine inspiration. Now an artist, however perfect he may be in his profession, if he have no invention, if he be not original, is not considered a genius. He is only inspired by the artists his predecessors, even when he surpasses them.

It is very probable that many people now play at chess better than the inventor of the game, and that they might gain the prize of corn promised him by the Indian king. But this inventor was a genius, and those who might now gain the prize would be no such thing. Poussin, who was a great painter before he had seen any good pictures, had a genius for painting. Lulli, who never heard any good musician in France, had a genius for music.

Which is the more desirable to possess, a genius without a master, or the attainment of perfection by imitating and surpassing the masters which precede us?

If you put this question to artists, they will perhaps be divided; if you put it to the public, it will not hesitate. Do you like a beautiful Gobelin tapestry better than one made in Flanders at the commencement of the arts? Do you prefer modern masterpieces of engraving to the first wood-cuts? the music of the present day to the first airs, which resembled the Gregorian chant? the makers of the artillery of our time to the genius which invented the first cannon? everybody will answer, “yes.” All purchasers will say: “I own that the inventor of the shuttle had more genius than the manufacturer who made my cloth, but my cloth is worth more than that of the inventor.

In short, every one in conscience will confess, that we respect the geniuses who invented the arts, but that the minds which perfect them are of more present benefit.

SECTION II.

The article on “Genius” has been treated in the “Encyclopædia” by men who possess it. We shall hazard very little after them.

Every town, every man possessed a genius. It was imagined that those who performed extraordinary things were inspired by their genius. The nine muses were nine genii, whom it was necessary to invoke; therefore Ovid says: “Et Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo”—“The God within us, He the mind inspires.

But, properly speaking, is genius anything but capability? What is capability but a disposition to succeed in an art? Why do we say the genius of a language? It is, that every language, by its terminations, articles, participles, and shorter or longer words, will necessarily have exclusive properties of its own.

By the genius of a nation is meant the character, manners, talents, and even vices, which distinguish one people from another. It is sufficient to see the French, English, and Spanish people, to feel this difference.

We have said that the particular genius of a man for an art is a different thing from his general talent; but this name is given only to a very superior ability. How many people have talent for poetry, music, and painting; yet it would be ridiculous to call them geniuses.

Genius, conducted by taste, will never commit a gross fault. Racine, since his “Andromache,” “Le Poussin,” and “Rameau,” has never committed one. Genius, without taste, will often commit enormous errors; and, what is worse, it will not be sensible of them.

GEOGRAPHY.

Geography is one of those sciences which will always require to be perfected. Notwithstanding the pains that have been taken, it has hitherto been impossible to have an exact description of the earth. For this great work, it would be necessary that all sovereigns should come to an understanding, and lend mutual assistance. But they have ever taken more pains to ravage the world than they have to measure it.

No one has yet been able to make an exact map of upper Egypt, nor of the regions bordering on the Red Sea, nor of the vast country of Arabia. Of Africa we know only the coasts; all the interior is no more known than it was in the times of Atlas and Hercules. There is not a single well-detailed map of all the Grand Turk’s possessions in Asia; all is placed at random, excepting some few large towns, the crumbling remains of which are still existing. In the states of the Great Mogul something is known of the relative positions of Agra and Delhi; but thence to the kingdom of Golconda everything is laid down at a venture.

It is known that Japan extends from about the thirtieth to the fortieth degree of north latitude; there cannot be an error of more than two degrees, which is about fifty leagues; so that, relying on one of our best maps, a pilot would be in danger of losing his track or his life.

As for the longitude, the first maps of the Jesuits determined it between the one hundred and fifty-seventh and the one hundred and seventy-fifth degree; whereas, it is now determined between the one hundred and forty-sixth and the one hundred and sixtieth.

China is the only Asiatic country of which we have an exact measurement; because the emperor Kam-hi employed some Jesuit astronomers to draw exact maps, which is the best thing the Jesuits have done. Had they been content with measuring the earth, they would never have been proscribed.

In our western world, Italy, France, Russia, England, and the principal towns of the other states, have been measured by the same method as was employed in China; but it was not until a very few years ago, that in France it was undertaken to form an entire topography. A company taken from the Academy of Sciences despatched engineers or surveyors into every corner of the kingdom, to lay down even the meanest hamlet, the smallest rivulet, the hills, the woods, in their true places. Before that time, so confused was the topography, that on the eve of the battle of Fontenoy, the maps of the country being all examined, every one of them was found entirely defective.

If a positive order had been sent from Versailles to an inexperienced general to give battle, and post himself as appeared most advisable from the maps, as sometimes happened in the time of the minister Chamillar, the battle would infallibly have been lost.

A general who should carry on a war in the country of the Morlachians, or the Montenegrins, with no knowledge of places but from the maps, would be at as great a loss as if he were in the heart of Africa.

Happily, that which has often been traced by geographers, according to their own fancy, in their closets, is rectified on the spot. In geography, as in morals, it is very difficult to know the world without going from home.

It is not with this department of knowledge, as with the arts of poetry, music, and painting. The last works of these kinds are often the worst. But in the sciences, which require exactness rather than genius, the last are always the best, provided they are done with some degree of care.

One of the greatest advantages of geography, in my opinion, is this: your fool of a neighbor, and his wife almost as stupid, are incessantly reproaching you with not thinking as they think in Rue St. Jacques. “See,” say they, “what a multitude of great men have been of our opinion, from Peter the Lombard down to the Abbé Petit-pied. The whole universe has received our truths; they reign in the Faubourg St. Honoré, at Chaillot and at Étampes, at Rome and among the Uscoques.” Take a map of the world; show them all Africa, the empires of Japan, China, India, Turkey, Persia, and that of Russia, more extensive than was the Roman Empire; make them pass their finger over all Scandinavia, all the north of Germany, the three kingdoms of Great Britain, the greater part of the Low Countries, and of Helvetia; in short make them observe, in the four great divisions of the earth, and in the fifth, which is as little known as it is great in extent, the prodigious number of races, who either never heard of those opinions, or have combated them, or have held them in abhorrence, and you will thus oppose the whole universe to Rue St. Jacques.

You will tell them that Julius Cæsar, who extended his power much farther than that street, did not know a word of all which they think so universal; and that our ancestors, on whom Julius Cæsar bestowed the lash, knew no more of them than he did.

They will then, perhaps, feel somewhat ashamed at having believed that the organ of St. Severin’s church gave the tone to the rest of the world.

GLORY—GLORIOUS.

SECTION I.

Glory is reputation joined with esteem, and is complete when admiration is superadded. It always supposes that which is brilliant in action, in virtue, or in talent, and the surmounting of great difficulties. Cæsar and Alexander had glory. The same can hardly be said of Socrates. He claims esteem, reverence, pity, indignation against his enemies; but the term “glory” applied to him would be improper; his memory is venerable rather than glorious. Attila had much brilliancy, but he has no glory; for history, which may be mistaken, attributes to him no virtues: Charles XII. still has glory; for his valor, his disinterestedness, his liberality, were extreme. Success is sufficient for reputation, but not for glory. The glory of Henry IV. is every day increasing; for time has brought to light all his virtues, which were incomparably greater than his defects.

Glory is also the portion of inventors in the fine arts; imitators have only applause. It is granted, too, to great talents, but in sublime arts only. We may well say, the glory of Virgil, or Cicero, but not of Martial, nor of Aulus Gellius.

Men have dared to say, the glory of God: God created this world for His glory; not that the Supreme Being can have glory; but that men, having no expressions suitable to Him, use for Him those by which they are themselves most flattered.

Vainglory is that petty ambition which is contented with appearances, which is exhibited in pompous display, and never elevates itself to greater things. Sovereigns, having real glory, have been known to be nevertheless fond of vainglory—seeking too eagerly after praise, and being too much attached to the trappings of ostentation.

False glory often verges towards vanity; but it often leads to excesses, while vainglory is more confined to splendid littlenesses. A prince who should look for honor in revenge, would seek a false glory rather than a vain one.

To give glory signifies to acknowledge, to bear witness. Give glory to truth, means acknowledging truth—Give glory to the God whom you serve—Bear witness to the God whom you serve.

Glory is taken for heaven—He dwells in glory; but this is the case in no religion but ours. It is not allowable to say that Bacchus or Hercules was received into glory, when speaking of their apotheosis. The saints and angels have sometimes been called the glorious, as dwelling in the abode of glory.

Gloriously is always taken in the good sense; he reigned gloriously; he extricated himself gloriously from great danger or embarrassment.

To glory in, is sometimes taken in the good, sometimes in the bad, sense, according to the nature of the object in question. He glories in a disgrace which is the fruit of his talents and the effect of envy. We say of the martyrs, that they glorified God—that is, that their constancy made the God whom they attested revered by men.

SECTION II.

That Cicero should love glory, after having stifled Catiline’s conspiracy, may be pardoned him. That the king of Prussia, Frederick the Great, should have the same feelings after Rosbach and Lissa, and after being the legislator, the historian, the poet, and the philosopher of his country—that he should be passionately fond of glory, and at the same time, have self-command enough to be modestly so—he will, on that account, be the more glorified.

That the empress Catherine II. should have been forced by the brutish insolence of a Turkish sultan to display all her genius; that from the far north she should have sent four squadrons which spread terror in the Dardanelles and in Asia Minor; and that, in 1770, she took four provinces from those Turks who made Europe tremble—with this sort of glory she will not be reproached, but will be admired for speaking of her successes with that air of indifference and superiority which shows that they were merited.

In short, glory befits geniuses of this sort, though belonging to the very mean race of mortals.

But if, at the extremity of the west, a townsman of a place called Paris thinks he has glory in being harangued by a teacher of the university, who says to him: “Monseigneur, the glory you have acquired in the exercise of your office, your illustrious labors with which the universe resounds,” etc., then I ask if there are mouths enough in that universe to celebrate, with their hisses, the glory of our citizen, and the eloquence of the pedant who attends to bray out this harangue at monseigneur’s hotel? We are such fools that we have made God glorious like ourselves.

That worthy chief of the dervishes, Ben-al-betif, said to his brethren one day: “My brethren, it is good that you should frequently use that sacred formula of our Koran, ‘In the name of the most merciful God’; because God uses mercy, and you learn to do so too, by oft repeating the words that recommend virtue, without which there would be few men left upon the earth. But, my brethren, beware of imitating those rash ones who boast, on every occasion, of laboring for the glory of God.

“If a young simpleton maintains a thesis on the categories, an ignoramus in furs presiding, he is sure to write in large characters, at the head of his thesis, ‘Ek alha abron doxa.’—‘Ad majorem Dei gloriam.’—To the greater glory of God. If a good Mussulman has had his house whitewashed, he cuts this foolish inscription in the door. A saka carries water for the greater glory of God. It is an impious usage, piously used. What would you say of a little chiaoux, who, while emptying our sultan’s close-stool, should exclaim: “To the greater glory of our invincible monarch?” There is certainly a greater distance between God and the sultan than between the sultan and the little chiaoux.

“Ye miserable earth-worms, called men, what have you resembling the glory of the Supreme Being? Can He love glory? Can He receive it from you? Can He enjoy it? How long, ye two-legged animals without feathers, will you make God after your own image? What! because you are vain, because you love glory, you would have God love it also? If there were several Gods, perhaps each one would seek to gain the good opinion of his fellows. That might be glory to God. Such a God, if infinite greatness may be compared with extreme lowliness, would be like King Alexander or Iscander, who would enter the lists with none but kings. But you, poor creatures! what glory can you give to God? Cease to profane the sacred name. An emperor, named Octavius Augustus, forbade his being praised in the schools of Rome, lest his name should be brought into contempt. You can bring the name of the Supreme Being neither into contempt, nor into honor. Humble yourselves in the dust; adore, and be silent.”

Thus spake Ben-al-betif; and the dervishes cried out: “Glory to God! Ben-al-betif has said well.”

SECTION III.

Conversation with a Chinese.

In 1723, there was in Holland a Chinese: this Chinese was a man of letters and a merchant; which two professions ought not to be incompatible, but which have become so amongst us, thanks to the extreme regard which is paid to money, and the little consideration which mankind have ever shown, and will ever show, for merit.

This Chinese, who spoke a little Dutch, was once in a bookseller’s shop with some men of learning. He asked for a book, and “Bossuet’s Universal History,” badly translated, was proposed to him. “Ah!” said he, “how fortunate! I shall now see what is said of our great empire—of our nation, which has existed as a national body for more than fifty thousand years—of that succession of emperors who have governed us for so many ages. I shall now see what is thought of the religion of the men of letters—of that simple worship which we render to the Supreme Being. How pleasing to see what is said in Europe of our arts, many of which are more ancient amongst us than any European kingdom. I guess the author will have made many mistakes in the history of the war which we had twenty-two thousand five hundred and fifty-two years ago, with the warlike nations of Tonquin and Japan, and of that solemn embassy which the mighty emperor of the Moguls sent to ask laws from us, in the year of the world 500,000,000,000,079,123,450,000.” “Alas!” said one of the learned men to him, “you are not even mentioned in that book; you are too inconsiderable; it is almost all about the first nation in the world—the only nation, the great Jewish people!”

“The Jewish people!” exclaimed the Chinese. “Are they, then, masters of at least three-quarters of the earth?” “They flatter themselves that they shall one day be so,” was the answer; “until which time they have the honor of being our old-clothesmen, and, now and then, clippers of our coin.”—“You jest,” said the Chinese; “had these people ever a vast empire?” “They had as their own for some years,” said I, “a small country; but it is not by the extent of their states that a people are to be judged; as it is not by his riches that we are to estimate a man.”

“But is no other people spoken of in this book?” asked the man of letters. “Undoubtedly,” returned a learned man who stood next me, and who instantly replied, “there is a deal said in it of a small country sixty leagues broad, called Egypt, where it is asserted that there was a lake a hundred and fifty leagues round, cut by the hands of men.”—“Zounds!” said the Chinese; “a lake a hundred and fifty leagues round in a country only sixty broad! That is fine, indeed!”—“Everybody was wise in that country,” added the doctor. “Oh! what fine times they must have been,” said the Chinese. “But is that all?”—“No,” replied the European; “he also treats of that celebrated people, the Greeks.” “Who are these Greeks?” asked the man of letters. “Ah!” continued the other, “they inhabited a province about a two-hundredth part as large as China, but which has been famous throughout the world.” “I have never heard speak of these people, neither in Mogul nor in Japan, nor in Great Tartary,” said the Chinese, with an ingenuous look.

“Oh, ignorant, barbarous man!” politely exclaimed our scholar. “Know you not, then, the Theban Epaminondas; nor the harbor of Piræus; nor the name of the two horses of Achilles; nor that of Silenus’s ass? Have you not heard of Jupiter, nor of Diogenes, nor of Lais, nor of Cybele, nor—”

“I am much arraid,” replied the man of letters, “that you know nothing at all of the ever memorable adventure of the celebrated Xixofou Concochigramki, nor of the mysteries of the great Fi Psi Hi Hi. But pray, what are the other unknown things of which this universal history treats?” The scholar then spoke for a quarter of an hour on the Roman commonwealth: but when he came to Julius Cæsar, the Chinese interrupted him, saying, “As for him, I think I know him: was he not a Turk?”

“What!” said the scholar, somewhat warm, “do you not at least know the difference between Pagans, Christians, and Mussulmans? Do you not know Constantine, and the history of the popes?” “We have indistinctly heard,” answered the Asiatic, “of one Mahomet.”

“It is impossible,” returned the other, “that you should not, at least, be acquainted with Luther, Zuinglius, Bellarmin, Œcolampadius.” “I shall never remember those names,” said the Chinese. He then went away to sell a considerable parcel of tea and fine grogram, with which he bought two fine girls and a ship-boy, whom he took back to his own country, adoring Tien, and commending himself to Confucius.

For myself, who was present at this conversation, I clearly saw what glory is; and I said: Since Cæsar and Jupiter are unknown in the finest, the most ancient, the most extensive, the most populous and well-regulated kingdom upon earth; it beseems you, ye governors of some little country, ye preachers in some little parish, or some little town—ye doctors of Salamanca and of Bourges, ye flimsy authors, and ye ponderous commentators—it beseems you to make pretensions to renown!

GOAT—SORCERY.

The honors of every kind which antiquity paid to goats would be very astonishing, if anything could astonish those who have grown a little familiar with the world, ancient and modern. The Egyptians and the Jews often designated the kings and the chiefs of the people by the word “goat.” We find in Zachariah:

“Mine anger was kindled against the shepherds, and I punished the goats; for the Lord of Hosts hath visited his flock, the house of Judah, and hath made them as his goodly horse in the battle.”

“Remove out of the midst of Babylon,” says Jeremiah to the chiefs of the people; “go forth out of the land of the Chaldæans, and be as the he-goats before the flocks.”

Isaiah, in chapters x. and xiv., uses the term “goat,” which has been translated “prince.” The Egyptians went much farther than calling their kings goats; they consecrated a goat in Mendes, and it is even said that they adored him. The truth very likely was, that the people took an emblem for a divinity, as is but too often the case.

It is not likely that the Egyptian shoën or shotim, i. e., priests, immolated goats and worshipped them at the same time. We know that they had their goat Hazazel, which they adorned and crowned with flowers, and threw down headlong, as an expiation for the people; and that the Jews took from them, not only this ceremony, but even the very name of Hazazel, as they adopted many other rites from Egypt.

But goats received another, and yet more singular honor. It is beyond a doubt that in Egypt many women set the same example with goats, as Pasiphae did with her bull.

The Jews but too faithfully imitated these abominations. Jeroboam instituted priests for the service of his calves and his goats.

The worship of the goat was established in Egypt, and in the lands of a part of Palestine. Enchantments were believed to be operated by means of goats, and other monsters, which were always represented with a goat’s head.

Magic, sorcery, soon passed from the East into the West, and extended itself throughout the earth. The sort of sorcery that came from the Jews was called Sabbatum by the Romans, who thus confounded their sacred day with their secret abominations. Thence it was, that in the neighboring nations, to be a sorcerer and to go to the sabbath, meant the same thing.

Wretched village women, deceived by knaves, and still more by the weakness of their own imaginations, believed that after pronouncing the word “abraxa,” and rubbing themselves with an ointment mixed with cow-dung and goat’s hair, they went to the sabbath on a broom-stick in their sleep, that there they adored a goat, and that he enjoyed them.

This opinion was universal. All the doctors asserted that it was the devil, who metamorphosed himself into a goat. This may be seen in Del Rio’s “Disquisitions,” and in a hundred other authors. The theologian Grillandus, a great promoter of the Inquisition, quoted by Del Rio, says that sorcerers call the goat Martinet. He assures us that a woman who was attached to Martinet, mounted on his back, and was carried in an instant through the air to a place called the Nut of Benevento.

There were books in which the mysteries of the sorcerers were written. I have seen one of them, at the head of which was a figure of a goat very badly drawn, with a woman on her knees behind him. In France, these books were called “grimoires”; and in other countries “the devil’s alphabet.” That which I saw contained only four leaves, in almost illegible characters, much like those of the “Shepherd’s Almanac.”

Reasoning and better education would have sufficed in Europe for the extirpation of such an extravagance; but executions were employed instead of reasoning. The pretended sorcerers had their “grimoire,” and the judges had their sorcerer’s code. In 1599, the Jesuit Del Rio, a doctor of Louvain, published his “Magical Disquisitions.” He affirms that all heretics are magicians, and frequently recommends that they be put to the torture. He has no doubt that the devil transforms himself into a goat, and grants his favors to all women presented to him. He quotes various jurisconsults, called demonographers, who assert that Luther was the son of a woman and a goat. He assures us that at Brussels, in 1595, a woman was brought to bed of a child, of which the devil, disguised as a goat, was father, and that she was punished, but he does not inform us in what manner.

But the jurisprudence of witchcraft has been the most profoundly treated by one Boguet, “grand juge en dernier ressort” of an abbey of St. Claude in Franche-Comté. He gives an account of all the executions to which he condemned wizards and witches, and the number is very considerable. Nearly all the witches are supposed to have had commerce with the goat.

It has already been said that more than a hundred thousand sorcerers have been executed in Europe. Philosophy alone has at length cured men of this abominable delusion, and has taught judges that they should not burn the insane.

GOD—GODS.

SECTION I.

The reader cannot too carefully bear in mind that this dictionary has not been written for the purpose of repeating what so many others have said.

The knowledge of a God is not impressed upon us by the hands of nature, for then men would all have the same idea; and no idea is born with us. It does not come to us like the perception of light, of the ground, etc., which we receive as soon as our eyes and our understandings are opened. Is it a philosophical idea? No; men admitted the existence of gods before they were philosophers.

Whence, then, is this idea derived? From feeling, and from that natural logic which unfolds itself with age, even in the rudest of mankind. Astonishing effects of nature were beheld—harvests and barrenness, fair weather and storms, benefits and scourges; and the hand of a master was felt. Chiefs were necessary to govern societies; and it was needful to admit sovereigns of these new sovereigns whom human weakness had given itself—beings before whose power these men who could bear down their fellow-men might tremble. The first sovereigns in their time employed these notions to cement their power. Such were the first steps; thus every little society had its god. These notions were rude because everything was rude. It is very natural to reason by analogy. One society under a chief did not deny that the neighboring tribe should likewise have its judge, or its captain; consequently it could not deny that the other should also have its god. But as it was to the interest of each tribe that its captain should be the best, it was also interested in believing, and consequently it did believe, that its god was the mightiest. Hence those ancient fables which have so long been generally diffused, that the gods of one nation fought against the gods of another. Hence the numerous passages in the Hebrew books, which we find constantly disclosing the opinion entertained by the Jews, that the gods of their enemies existed, but that they were inferior to the God of the Jews.

Meanwhile, in the great states where the progress of society allowed to individuals the enjoyment of speculative leisure, there were priests, Magi, and philosophers.

Some of these perfected their reason so far as to acknowledge in secret one only and universal god. So, although the ancient Egyptians adored Osiri, Osiris, or rather Osireth (which signifies this land is mine); though they also adored other superior beings, yet they admitted one supreme, one only principal god, whom they called “Knef,” whose symbol was a sphere placed on the frontispiece of the temple.

After this model, the Greeks had their Zeus, their Jupiter, the master of the other gods, who were but what the angels are with the Babylonians and the Hebrews, and the saints with the Christians of the Roman communion.

It is a more thorny question than it has been considered, and one by no means profoundly examined, whether several gods, equal in power, can exist at the same time?

We have no adequate idea of the Divinity; we creep on from conjecture to conjecture, from likelihood to probability. We have very few certainties. There is something; therefore there is something eternal; for nothing is produced from nothing. Here is a certain truth on which the mind reposes. Every work which shows us means and an end, announces a workman; then this universe, composed of springs, of means, each of which has its end, discovers a most mighty, a most intelligent workman. Here is a probability approaching the greatest certainty. But is this supreme artificer infinite? Is he everywhere? Is he in one place? How are we, with our feeble intelligence and limited knowledge, to answer these questions?

My reason alone proves to me a being who has arranged the matter of this world; but my reason is unable to prove to me that he made this matter—that he brought it out of nothing. All the sages of antiquity, without exception, believed matter to be eternal, and existing by itself. All then that I can do, without the aid of superior light, is to believe that the God of this world is also eternal, and existing by Himself. God and matter exist by the nature of things. May not other gods exist, as well as other worlds? Whole nations, and very enlightened schools, have clearly admitted two gods in this world—one the source of good, the other the source of evil. They admitted an eternal war between two equal powers. Assuredly, nature can more easily suffer the existence of several independent beings in the immensity of space, than that of limited and powerless gods in this world, of whom one can do no good, and the other no harm.

If God and matter exist from all eternity, as antiquity believed, here then are two necessary beings; now, if there be two necessary beings, there may be thirty. These doubts alone, which are the germ of an infinity of reflections, serve at least to convince us of the feebleness of our understanding. We must, with Cicero, confess our ignorance of the nature of the Divinity; we shall never know any more of it than he did.

In vain do the schools tell us that God is infinite negatively and not privatively—“formaliter et non materialiter,” that He is the first act, the middle, and the last—that He is everywhere without being in any place; a hundred pages of commentaries on definitions like these cannot give us the smallest light. We have no steps whereby to arrive at such knowledge.

We feel that we are under the hand of an invisible being; this is all; we cannot advance one step farther. It is mad temerity to seek to divine what this being is—whether he is extended or not, whether he is in one place or not, how he exists, or how he operates.

SECTION II.

I am ever apprehensive of being mistaken; but all monuments give me sufficient evidence that the polished nations of antiquity acknowledged a supreme god. There is not a book, not a medal, not a bas-relief, not an inscription, in which Juno, Minerva, Neptune, Mars, or any of the other deities, is spoken of as a forming being, the sovereign of all nature. On the contrary, the most ancient profane books that we have—those of Hesiod and Homer—represent their Zeus as the only thunderer, the only master of gods and men; he even punishes the other gods; he ties Juno with a chain, and drives Apollo out of heaven.

The ancient religion of the Brahmins—the first that admitted celestial creatures—the first which spoke of their rebellion—explains itself in sublime manner concerning the unity and power of God; as we have seen in the article on “Angel.”

The Chinese, ancient as they are, come after the Indians. They have acknowledged one only god from time immemorial; they have no subordinate gods, no mediating demons or genii between God and man; no oracles, no abstract dogmas, no theological disputes among the lettered; their emperor was always the first pontiff; their religion was always august and simple; thus it is that this vast empire, though twice subjugated, has constantly preserved its integrity, has made its conquerors receive its laws, and notwithstanding the crimes and miseries inseparable from the human race, is still the most flourishing state upon earth.

The Magi of Chaldæa, the Sabeans, acknowledged but one supreme god, whom they adored in the stars, which are his work. The Persians adored him in the sun. The sphere placed on the frontispiece of the temple of Memphis was the emblem of one only and perfect god, called “Knef” by the Egyptians.

The title of “Deus Optimus Maximus” was never given by the Romans to any but “Jupiter, hominum sator atque deorum.” This great truth, which we have elsewhere pointed out, cannot be too often repeated.

This adoration of a Supreme God, from Romulus down to the total destruction of the empire and of its religion, is confirmed. In spite of all the follies of the people, who venerated secondary and ridiculous gods, and in spite of the Epicureans, who in reality acknowledged none, it is verified that, in all times, the magistrates and the wise adored one sovereign God.

From the great number of testimonies left us to this truth, I will select first that of Maximus of Tyre, who flourished under the Antonines—those models of true piety, since they were models of humanity. These are his words, in his discourse entitled “Of God,” according to Plato. The reader who would instruct himself is requested to weigh them well:

“Men have been so weak as to give to God a human figure, because they had seen nothing superior to man; but it is ridiculous to imagine, with Homer, that Jupiter or the Supreme Divinity has black eyebrows and golden hair, which he cannot shake without making the heavens tremble.

“When men are questioned concerning the nature of the Divinity, their answers are all different. Yet, notwithstanding this prodigious variety of opinions, you will find one and the same feeling throughout the earth—viz., that there is but one God, who is the father of all. . . . . ”

After this formal avowal, after the immortal discourses of Cicero, of Antonine, of Epictetus, what becomes of the declamations which so many ignorant pedants are still repeating? What avail those eternal reproachings of base polytheism and puerile idolatry, but to convince us that the reproachers have not the slightest acquaintance with sterling antiquity? They have taken the reveries of Homer for the doctrines of the wise.

Is it necessary to have stronger or more expressive testimony? You will find it in the letter from Maximus of Madaura to St. Augustine; both were philosophers and orators; at least, they prided themselves on being so; they wrote to each other freely; they were even friends as much as a man of the old religion and one of the new could be friends. Read Maximus of Madaura’s letter, and the bishop of Hippo’s answer:

Letter from Maximus of Madaura.

“Now, that there is a sovereign God, who is without beginning, and, who, without having begotten anything like unto himself, is nevertheless the father and the former of all things, what man can be gross and stupid enough to doubt? He it is of whom, under different names, we adore the eternal power extending through every part of the world—thus honoring separately, by different sorts of worship, what may be called his several members, we adore him entirely. . . . . May those subordinate gods preserve you, under whose names, and by whom all we mortals upon earth adore the common father of gods and men, by different sorts of worship, it is true, but all according in their variety, and all tending to the same end.”

By whom was this letter written? By a Numidian—one of the country of the Algerines!

Augustine’s Answer.

“In your public square there are two statues of Mars, the one naked, the other armed; and close by, the figure of a man who, with three fingers advanced towards Mars, holds in check that divinity, so dangerous to the whole town. With regard to what you say of such gods, being portions of the only true God, I take the liberty you give me, to warn you not to fall into such a sacrilege; for that only God, of whom you speak, is doubtless He who is acknowledged by the whole world, and concerning whom, as some of the ancients have said, the ignorant agree with the learned. Now, will you say that he whose strength, if not his cruelty, is represented by an inanimate man, is a portion of that God? I could easily push you hard on this subject; for you will clearly see how much might be said upon it; but I refrain, lest you should say that I employ against you the weapons of rhetoric rather than those of virtue.”

We know not what was signified by these two statues, of which no vestige is left us; but not all the statues with which Rome was filled—not the Pantheon and all the temples consecrated to the inferior gods, nor even those of the twelve greater gods prevented “Deus Optimus Maximus”—“God, most good, most great”—from being acknowledged throughout the empire.

The misfortune of the Romans, then, was their ignorance of the Mosaic law, and afterwards, of the law of the disciples of our Saviour Jesus Christ—their want of the faith—their mixing with the worship of a supreme God the worship of Mars, of Venus, of Minerva, of Apollo, who did not exist, and their preserving that religion until the time of the Theodosii. Happily, the Goths, the Huns, the Vandals, the Heruli, the Lombards, the Franks, who destroyed that empire, submitted to the truth, and enjoyed a blessing denied to Scipio, to Cato, to Metellus, to Emilius, to Cicero, to Varro, to Virgil, and to Horace.

None of these great men knew Jesus Christ, whom they could not know; yet they did not worship the devil, as so many pedants are every day repeating. How should they worship the devil, of whom they had never heard?

A Calumny on Cicero by Warburton, on the Subject of a Supreme God.

Warburton, like his contemporaries, has calumniated Cicero and ancient Rome. He boldly supposes that Cicero pronounced these words, in his “Oration for Flaccus”:

“It is unworthy of the majesty of the empire to adore only one God”—“Majestatem imperii non decuit ut unus tantum Deus colatur.”

It will, perhaps, hardly be believed that there is not a word of this in the “Oration for Flaccus,” nor in any of Cicero’s works. Flaccus, who had exercised the prætorship in Asia Minor, is charged with exercising some vexations. He was secretly persecuted by the Jews, who then inundated Rome; for, by their money, they had obtained privileges in Rome at the very time when Pompey, after Crassus, had taken Jerusalem, and hanged their petty king, Alexander, son of Aristobolus. Flaccus had forbidden the conveying of gold and silver specie to Jerusalem, because the money came back altered, and commerce was thereby injured; and he had seized the gold which was clandestinely carried. This gold, said Cicero, is still in the treasury. Flaccus has acted as disinterestedly as Pompey.

Cicero, then, with his wonted irony, pronounces these words: “Each country has its religion; we have ours. While Jerusalem was yet free, while the Jews were yet at peace, even then they held in abhorrence the splendor of this empire, the dignity of the Roman name, the institutions of our ancestors. Now that nation has shown more than ever, by the strength of its arms, what it should think of the Roman Empire. It has shown us, by its valor, how dear it is to the immortal gods; it has proved it to us, by its being vanquished, expatriated, and tributary.”—“Stantibus Hierosolymis, pacatisque Judais, tamen istorum religio sacrorum, a splendore hujus imperii, gravitate nominis nostri, majorum institutis, abhorrebat; nunc vero hoc magis quid illa gens, quid de imperio nostro sentiret, ostendit armis; quam cara diis immortalibus esset, docuit, quod est victa, quod elocata, quod servata.”

It is then quite false that Cicero, or any other Roman, ever said that it did not become the majesty of the empire to acknowledge a supreme God. Their Jupiter, the Zeus of the Greeks, the Jehovah of the Phœnicians, was always considered as the master of the secondary gods. This great truth cannot be too forcibly inculcated.

Did the Romans Take Their Gods from the Greeks?

Had not the Romans served gods for whom they were not indebted to the Greeks? For instance, they could not be guilty of plagiarism in adoring Cœlum, while the Greeks adored Ouranon; or in addressing themselves to Saturnus and Tellus, while the Greeks addressed themselves to Ge and Chronos. They called Ceres, her whom the Greeks named Deo and Demiter.

Their Neptune was Poseidon, their Venus was Aphrodite; their Juno was called, in Greek, Era; their Proserpine, Core; and their favorites, Mars and Bellona, were Ares and Enio. In none of these instances do the names resemble.

Did the inventive spirits of Rome and of Greece assemble? or did the one take from the other the thing, while they disguised the name? It is very natural that the Romans, without consulting the Greeks, should make to themselves gods of the heavens, of time; beings presiding over war, over generation, over harvests, without going to Greece to ask for gods, as they afterwards went there to ask for laws. When you find a name that resembles nothing else, it is but fair to believe it a native of that particular country.

But is not Jupiter, the master of all the gods, a word belonging to every nation, from the Euphrates to the Tiber? Among the first Romans, it was Jov, Jovis; among the Greeks, Zeus; among the Phœnicians, the Syrians, and the Egyptians, Jehovah.

Does not this resemblance serve to confirm the supposition that every people had the knowledge of the Supreme Being?—a knowledge confused, it is true; but what man can have it distinct?

SECTION III.

Examination of Spinoza.

Spinoza cannot help admitting an intelligence acting in matter, and forming a whole with it.

“I must conclude,” he says, “that the absolute being is neither thought nor extent, exclusively of each other; but that extent and thought are necessary attributes of the absolute being.”

Herein he appears to differ from all the atheists of antiquity; from Ocellus, Lucanus, Heraclitus, Democritus, Leucippus, Strato, Epicurus, Pythagoras, Diagoras, Zeno of Elis, Anaximander, and so many others. He differs from them, above all, in his method, which he took entirely from the reading of Descartes, whose very style he has imitated.

The multitude of those who cry out against Spinoza, without ever having read him, will especially be astonished by his following declaration. He does not make it to dazzle mankind, nor to appease theologians, nor to obtain protectors, nor to disarm a party; he speaks as a philosopher, without naming himself, without advertising himself; and expresses himself in Latin, so as to be understood by a very small number. Here is his profession of faith.

Spinoza’s Profession of Faith.

“If I also concluded that the idea of God, comprised in that of the infinity of the universe, excused me from obedience, love, and worship, I should make a still more pernicious use of my reason; for it is evident to me that the laws which I have received, not by the relation or intervention of other men, but immediately from Him, are those which the light of nature points out to me as the true guides of rational conduct. If I failed of obedience, in this particular, I should sin, not only against the principle of my being and the society of my kind, but also against myself, in depriving myself of the most solid advantage of my existence. This obedience does, it is true, bind me only to the duties of my state, and makes me look on all besides as frivolous practices, invented in superstition to serve the purposes of their inventors.

“With regard to the love of God, so far, I conceive, is this idea from tending to weaken it, that no other is more calculated to increase it; since, through it, I know that God is intimate with my being; that He gives me existence and my every property; but He gives me them liberally, without reproach, without interest, without subjecting me to anything but my own nature. It banishes fear, uneasiness, distrust, and all the effects of a vulgar or interested love. It informs me that this is a good which I cannot lose, and which I possess the more fully, as I know and love it.”

Are these the words of the virtuous and tender Fénelon, or those of Spinoza? How is it that two men so opposed to each other, have, with such different notions of God, concurred in the idea of loving God for Himself?

It must be acknowledged that they went both to the same end—the one as a Christian, the other as a man who had the misfortune not to be so; the holy archbishop, as philosopher, convinced that God is distinct from nature; the other as a widely-erring disciple of Descartes, who imagined that God is all nature.

The former was orthodox, the latter was mistaken, I must assent; but both were honest, both estimable in their sincerity, as in their mild and simple manners; though there is no other point of resemblance between the imitator of the “Odyssey,” and a dry Cartesian fenced round with arguments; between one of the most accomplished men of the court of Louis XIV., invested with what is called a high divinity, and a poor unjudaïzed Jew, living with an income of three hundred florins, in the most profound obscurity.

If there be any similitude between them, it is that Fénelon was accused before the Sanhedrim of the new law, and the other before a synagogue without power or without reason; but the one submitted, the other rebelled.

Foundation of Spinoza’s Philosophy.

The great dialectician Bayle has refuted Spinoza. His system, therefore, is not demonstrated, like one of Euclid’s propositions; for, if it were so, it could not be combated. It is, therefore, at least obscure.

I have always had some suspicion that Spinoza, with his universal substance, his modes and accidents, had some other meaning than that in which he is understood by Bayle; and consequently, that Bayle may be right, without having confounded Spinoza. And, in particular, I have always thought that often Spinoza did not understand himself, and that this is the principal reason why he has not been understood.

It seems to me that the ramparts of Spinozism might be beaten down on a side which Bayle has neglected. Spinoza thinks that there can exist but one substance; and it appears throughout his book that he builds his theory on the mistake of Descartes, that “nature is a plenum.”

The theory of a plenum is as false as that of a void. It is now demonstrated that motion is as impossible in absolute fulness, as it is impossible that, in an equal balance, a weight of two pounds in one scale should sink a weight of two in the other.

Now, if every motion absolutely requires empty space, what becomes of Spinoza’s one and only substance? How can the substance of a star, between which and us there is a void so immense, be precisely the substance of this earth, or the substance of myself, or the substance of a fly eaten by a spider?

Perhaps I mistake, but I never have been able to conceive how Spinoza, admitting an infinite substance of which thought and matter are the two modalities—admitting the substance which he calls God, and of which all that we see is mode or accident—could nevertheless reject final causes. If this infinite, universal being thinks, must he not have design? If he has design, must he not have a will? Spinoza says, we are modes of that absolute, necessary, infinite being. I say to Spinoza, we will, and have design, we who are but modes; therefore, this infinite, necessary, absolute being cannot be deprived of them; therefore, he has will, design, power.

I am aware that various philosophers, and especially Lucretius, have denied final causes; I am also aware that Lucretius, though not very chaste, is a very great poet in his descriptions and in his morals; but in philosophy I own he appears to me to be very far behind a college porter or a parish beadle. To affirm that the eye is not made to see, nor the ear to hear, nor the stomach to digest—is not this the most enormous absurdity, the most revolting folly, that ever entered the human mind? Doubter as I am, this insanity seems to me evident, and I say so.

For my part, I see in nature, as in the arts, only final causes, and I believe that an apple tree is made to bear apples, as I believe that a watch is made to tell the hour.

I must here acquaint the readers that if Spinoza, in several passages of his works, makes a jest of final causes, he most expressly acknowledges them in the first part of his “Being, in General and in Particular.”

Here he says, “Permit me for a few moments to dwell with admiration on the wonderful dispensation of nature, which, having enriched the constitution of man with all the resources necessary to prolong to a certain term the duration of his frail existence, and to animate his knowledge of himself by that of an infinity of distant objects, seems purposely to have neglected to give him the means of well knowing what he is obliged to make a more ordinary use of—the individuals of his own species. Yet, when duly considered, this appears less the effect of a refusal than of an extreme liberality; for, if there were any intelligent being that could penetrate another against his will, he would enjoy such an advantage as would of itself exclude him from society; whereas, in the present state of things, each individual enjoying himself in full independence communicates himself so much only as he finds convenient.”

What shall I conclude from this? That Spinoza frequently contradicted himself; that he had not always clear ideas; that in the great wreck of systems, he clung sometimes to one plank, sometimes to another; that in this weakness he was like Malebranche, Arnauld, Bossuet, and Claude, who now and then contradicted themselves in their disputes; that he was like numberless metaphysicians and theologians? I shall conclude that I have additional reason for distrusting all my metaphysical notions; that I am a very feeble animal, treading on quicksands, which are continually giving way beneath me; and that there is perhaps nothing so foolish as to believe ourselves always in the right.

Baruch Spinoza, you are very confused; but are you as dangerous as you are said to be? I maintain that you are not; and my reason is, that you are confused, that you have written in bad Latin, and that there are not ten persons in Europe who read you from beginning to end, although you have been translated into French. Who is the dangerous author? He who is read by the idle at court and by the ladies.

SECTION IV.

The “System of Nature.”

The author of the “System of Nature” has had the advantage of being read by both learned and ignorant, and by women. His style, then, has merits which that of Spinoza wanted. He is often luminous, sometimes eloquent; although he may be charged, like all the rest, with repetition, declamation, and self-contradiction. But for profundity, he is very often to be distrusted both in physics and in morals. The interest of mankind is here in question; we will, therefore, examine whether his doctrine is true and useful; and will, if we can, be brief.

“Order and disorder do not exist.” What! in physics, is not a child born blind, without legs, or a monster, contrary to the nature of the species? Is it not the ordinary regularity of nature that makes order, and irregularity that constitues disorder? Is it not a great derangement, a dreadful disorder, when nature gives a child hunger and closes the œsophagus? The evacuations of every kind are necessary; yet the channels are frequently without orifices, which it is necessary to remedy. Doubtless this disorder has its cause; for there is no effect without a cause; but it is a very disordered effect.

Is not the assassination of our friend, or of our brother, a horrible disorder in morals? Are not the calumnies of a Garasse, of a Letellier, of a Doucin, against Jansenists, and those of Jansenists against Jesuits, petty disorders? Were not the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the Irish massacre, etc., execrable disorders? This crime has its cause in passion, but the effect is execrable; the cause is fatal; this disorder makes us shudder. The origin of the disorder remains to be discovered, but the disorder exists.

“Experience proves to us that the matter which we regard as inert and dead assumes action, intelligence, and life, when it is combined in a certain way.”

This is precisely the difficulty. How does a germ come to life? Of this the author and the reader are alike ignorant. Hence, are not the “System of Nature,” and all the systems in the world, so many dreams?

“It would be necessary to define the vital principle, which I deem impossible.” Is not this definition very easy, very common? Is not life organization with feeling? But that you have these two properties from the motion of matter alone, it is impossible to give any proof; and if it cannot be proved, why affirm it? Why say aloud, “I know,” while you say to yourself, “I know not”?

“It will be asked, what is man?” etc. Assuredly, this article is no clearer than the most obscure of Spinoza’s; and many readers will feel indignant at the decisive tone which is assumed without anything being explained.

“Matter is eternal and necessary; but its forms and its combinations are transitory and contingent,” etc. It is hard to comprehend, matter being, according to our author, necessary, and without freedom, how there can be anything contingent. By contingency, we understand that which may be, or may not be; but since all must be, of absolute necessity, every manner of being, which he here very erroneously calls contingent, is as absolutely of necessity as the being itself. Here again we are in a labyrinth.

When you venture to affirm that there is no God, that matter acts of itself by an eternal necessity, it must be demonstrated like a proposition in Euclid, otherwise you rest your system only on a perhaps. What a foundation for that which is most interesting to the human race!

“If man is by his nature forced to love his well-being, he is forced to love the means of that well-being. It were useless, and perhaps unjust, to ask a man to be virtuous, if he cannot be so without making himself unhappy. So soon as vice makes him happy, he must love vice.”

This maxim is yet more execrable in morals than the others are in physics. Were it true that a man could not be virtuous without suffering, he must be encouraged to suffer. Our author’s proposition would evidently be the ruin of society. Besides, how does he know that we cannot be happy without having vices? On the contrary, is it not proved by experience that the satisfaction of having subdued them is a thousand times greater than the pleasure of yielding to them?—a pleasure always empoisoned, a pleasure leading to woe. By subduing our vices, we acquire tranquillity, the consoling testimony of our conscience; by giving ourselves up to them, we lose our health, our quiet—we risk everything. Thus our author himself, in twenty passages, wishes all to be sacrificed to virtue; and he advances this proposition only to give in his system a fresh proof of the necessity of being virtuous.

“They who, with so many arguments, reject innate ideas should have perceived that this ineffable intelligence by which the world is said to be guided, and of which our senses can determine neither the existence nor the qualities, is a being of reason.”

But, truly, how does it follow from our having no innate ideas, that there is no God? Is not this consequence absurd? Is there any contradiction in saying that God gives us ideas through our senses? Is it not, on the contrary, most clearly evident, that if there is an Almighty Being from whom we have life, we owe to him our ideas and our senses as well as everything else? It should first have been proved that God does not exist, which our author has not done, which he has not even attempted to do before this page of his tenth chapter.

Fearful of wearying the reader by an examination of all these detached passages, I will come at once to the foundation of the book, and the astonishing error upon which the author has built his system.

Story of the Eels on Which the System is Founded.

About the year 1750 there was, in France, an English Jesuit called Needham, disguised as a secular, who was then serving as tutor to the nephew of M. Dillon, archbishop of Toulouse. This man made experiments in natural philosophy, and especially in chemistry.

Having put some rye meal into well-corked bottles, and some boiled mutton gravy into other bottles, he thought that his mutton gravy and his meal had given birth to eels, which again produced others; and that thus a race of eels was formed indifferently from the juice of meat, or from a grain of rye.

A natural philosopher, of some reputation, had no doubt that this Needham was a profound atheist. He concluded that, since eels could be made of rye meal, men might be made of wheat flour; that nature and chemistry produce all; and that it was demonstrated that we may very well dispense with an all-forming God.

This property of meal very easily deceived one who, unfortunately, was already wandering amidst ideas that should make us tremble for the weakness of the human mind. He wanted to dig a hole in the centre of the earth, to see the central fire; to dissect Patagonians, that he might know the nature of the soul; to cover the sick with pitch, to prevent them from perspiring; to exalt his soul, that he might foretell the future. If to these things it were added, that he had the still greater unhappiness of seeking to oppress two of his brethren, it would do no honor to atheism; it would only serve to make us look into ourselves with confusion.

It is really strange that men, while denying a creator, should have attributed to themselves the power of creating eels.

But it is yet more deplorable that natural philosophers, of better information, adopted the Jesuit Needham’s ridiculous system, and joined it to that of Maillet, who asserted that the ocean had formed the Alps and Pyrenees, and that men were originally porpoises, whose forked tails changed in the course of time into thighs and legs. Such fancies are worthy to be placed with the eels formed by meal. We were assured, not long ago, that at Brussels a hen had brought forth half a dozen young rabbits.

This transmutation of meal and gravy into eels was demonstrated to be as false and ridiculous as it really is, by M. Spallanzani, a rather better observer than Needham. But the extravagance of so palpable an illusion was evident without his observations. Needham’s eels soon followed the Brussels’ hen.

Nevertheless, in 1768, the correct, elegant, and judicious translator of Lucretius was so far led away, that he not only, in his notes to book viii. p. 361, repeats Needham’s pretended experiments, but he also does all he can to establish their validity. Here, then, we have the new foundation of the “System of Nature.”

The author, in the second chapter, thus expresses himself: “After moistening meal with water, and shutting up the mixture, it is found after a little time, with the aid of the microscope, that it has produced organized beings, of whose production the water and meal were believed to be incapable. Thus inanimate nature can pass into life, which is itself but an assemblage of motions.”

Were this unparalleled blunder true, yet, in rigorous reasoning, I do not see how it would prove there is no God; I do not see why a supreme, intelligent, and mighty being, having formed the sun and the stars, might not also deign to form animalculæ without a germ. Here is no contradiction in terms. A demonstrative proof that God has no existence must be sought elsewhere; and most assuredly no person has ever found, or will ever find, one.

Our author treats final causes with contempt, because the argument is hackneyed; but this much-contemned argument is that of Cicero and of Newton. This alone might somewhat lessen the confidence of atheists in themselves. The number is not small of the sages who, observing the course of the stars, and the prodigious art that pervades the structure of animals and vegetables, have acknowledged a powerful hand working these continual wonders.

The author asserts that matter, blind and without choice, produces intelligent animals. Produce, without intelligence, beings with intelligence! Is this conceivable? Is this system founded on the smallest verisimilitude? An opinion so contradictory requires proofs no less astonishing than itself. The author gives us none; he never proves anything; but he affirms all that he advances. What chaos! what confusion! and what temerity!

Spinoza at least acknowledged an intelligence acting in this great whole, which constituted nature: in this there was philosophy. But in the new system, I am under the necessity of saying that there is none.

Matter has extent, solidity, gravity, divisibility. I have all these as well as this stone: but was a stone ever known to feel and think? If I am extended, solid, divisible, I owe it to matter. But I have sensations and thoughts—to what do I owe them? Not to water, not to mire—most likely to something more powerful than myself. Solely to the combination of the elements, you will say. Then prove it to me. Show me plainly that my intelligence cannot have been given to me by an intelligent cause. To this are you reduced.

Our author successively combats the God of the schoolmen—a God composed of discordant qualities; a God to whom, as to those of Homer, is attributed the passions of men; a God capricious, fickle, unreasonable, absurd—but he cannot combat the God of the wise. The wise, contemplating nature, admit an intelligent and supreme power. It is perhaps impossible for human reason, destitute of divine assistance, to go a step further.

Our author asks where this being resides; and, from the impossibility that anyone, without being infinite, should tell where He resides, he concludes that He does not exist. This is not philosophical; for we are not, because we cannot tell where the cause of an effect is, to conclude that there is no cause. If you had never seen a gunner, and you saw the effects of a battery of cannon, you would not say it acts entirely by itself. Shall it, then, only be necessary for you to say there is no God, in order to be believed on your words?

Finally, his great objection is, the woes and crimes of mankind—an objection alike ancient and philosophical; an objection common, but fatal and terrible, and to which we find no answer but in the hope of a better life. Yet what is this hope? We can have no certainty in it but from reason. But I will venture to say, that when it is proved to us that a vast edifice, constructed with the greatest art, is built by an architect, whoever he may be, we ought to believe in that architect, even though the edifice should be stained with our blood, polluted by our crimes, and should crush us in its fall. I inquire not whether the architect is a good one, whether I should be satisfied with his building, whether I should quit it rather than stay in it, nor whether those who are lodged in it for a few days, like myself, are content: I only inquire if it be true that there is an architect, or if this house, containing so many fine apartments and so many wretched garrets, built itself.

SECTION V.

The Necessity of Believing in a Supreme Being.

The great, the interesting object, as it appears to me, is, not to argue metaphysically, but to consider whether, for the common good of us miserable and thinking animals, we should admit a rewarding and avenging God, at once our restraint and consolation, or should reject this idea, and so abandon ourselves to calamity without hope, and crime without remorse.

Hobbes says that if, in a commonwealth, in which no God should be acknowledged, any citizen were to propose one, he would have him hanged.

Apparently, he meant by this strange exaggeration, a citizen who should seek to rule in the name of a god, a charlatan who would make himself a tyrant. We understand citizens, who, feeling the weakness of human nature, its perverseness, and its misery, seek some prop to support it through the languors and horrors of this life.

From Job down to us, a great many men have cursed their existence; we have, therefore, perpetual need of consolation and hope. Of these your philosophy deprives us. The fable of Pandora was better; it left us hope—which you snatch from us! Philosophy, you say, furnishes no proof of happiness to come. No—but you have no demonstration of the contrary. There may be in us an indestructible monad which feels and thinks, without our knowing anything at all of how that monad is made. Reason is not absolutely opposed to this idea, though reason alone does not prove it. Has not this opinion a prodigious advantage over yours? Mine is useful to mankind, yours is baneful; say of it what you will, it may encourage a Nero, an Alexander VI., or a Cartouche. Mine may restrain them.

Marcus Antoninus and Epictetus believed that their monad, of whatever kind it was, would be united to the monad of the Great Being; and they were the most virtuous of men.

In the state of doubt in which we both are, I do not say to you with Pascal, “choose the safest.” There is no safety in uncertainty. We are here not to talk, but to examine; we must judge, and our judgment is not determined by our will. I do not propose to you to believe extravagant things, in order to escape embarrassment. I do not say to you, “Go to Mecca, and instruct yourself by kissing the black stone, take hold of a cow’s tail, muffle yourself in a scapulary, or be imbecile and fanatical to acquire the favor of the Being of beings.” I say to you: “Continue to cultivate virtue, to be beneficent, to regard all superstition with horror, or with pity; but adore, with me, the design which is manifested in all nature, and consequently the Author of that design—the primordial and final cause of all; hope with me that our monad, which reasons on the great eternal being, may be happy through that same great Being.” There is no contradiction in this. You can no more demonstrate its impossibility than I can demonstrate mathematically that it is so. In metaphysics we scarcely reason on anything but probabilities. We are all swimming in a sea of which we have never seen the shore. Woe be to those who fight while they swim! Land who can: but he that cries out to me, “You swim in vain, there is no land,” disheartens me, and deprives me of all my strength.

What is the object of our dispute? To console our unhappy existence. Who consoles it—you or I?

You yourself own, in some passages of your work, that the belief in a God has withheld some men on the brink of crime; for me, this acknowledgment is enough. If this opinion had prevented but ten assassinations, but ten calumnies, but ten iniquitous judgments on the earth, I hold that the whole earth ought to embrace it.

Religion, you say, has produced thousands of crimes—say, rather, superstition, which unhappily reigns over this globe; it is the most cruel enemy of the pure adoration due to the Supreme Being.

Let us detest this monster which has constantly been tearing the bosom of its mother; they who combat it are benefactors to mankind: it is a serpent enclosing religion in its folds, its head must be bruised, without wounding the parent whom it infects and devours.

You fear, “that, by adoring God, men would soon again become superstitious and fanatical.” But is it not to be feared that in denying Him, they would abandon themselves to the most atrocious passions, and the most frightful crimes? Between these two extremes is there not a very rational mean? Where is the safe track between these two rocks? It is God, and wise laws.

You affirm that it is but one step from adoration to superstition: but there is an infinity to well-constituted minds, and these are now very numerous; they are at the head of nations; they influence public manners, and, year by year, the fanaticism that overspread the earth is receding in its detestable usurpations.

I shall say a few words more in answer to what you say in page 223. “If it be presumed that there are relations between man and this incredible being, then altars must be raised and presents must be made to him, etc.; if no conception be formed of this being, then the matter must be referred to priests, who . . .” A great evil to be sure, to assemble in the harvest season, and thank God for the bread that He has given us! Who says you should make presents to God? The idea is ridiculous! But where is the harm of employing a citizen, called an “elder” or “priest,” to render thanks to the Divinity in the name of the other citizens?—provided the priest is not a Gregory VII. trampling on the heads of kings, nor an Alexander VI. polluting by incest his daughter, the offspring of a rape, and, by the aid of his bastard son, poisoning and assassinating almost all the neighboring princes: provided that, in a parish, this priest is not a knave, picking the pockets of the penitents he confesses, and using the money to seduce the girls he catechises; provided that this priest is not a Letellier, putting the whole kingdom in combustion by rogueries worthy of the pillory, nor a Warburton, violating the laws of society, making public the private papers of a member of parliament in order to ruin him, and calumniating whosoever is not of his opinion. The latter cases are rare. The sacerdotal state is a curb which forces to good behavior.

A stupid priest excites contempt; a bad priest inspires horror; a good priest, mild, pious, without superstition, charitable, tolerant, is one who ought to be cherished and revered. You dread abuses—so do I. Let us unite to prevent them; but let us not condemn the usage when it is useful to society, when it is not perverted by fanaticism, or by fraudulent wickedness.

I have one very important thing to tell you. I am persuaded that you are in a great error, but I am equally convinced that you are honest in your self-delusion. You would have men virtuous even without a God, although you have unfortunately said that “so soon as vice renders man happy, he must love vice”—a frightful proposition, which your friends should have prevailed on you to erase. Everywhere else you inspire probity. This philosophical dispute will be only between you and a few philosophers scattered over Europe; the rest of the earth will not even hear of it. The people do not read us. If some theologian were to seek to persecute us, he would be impudent as well as wicked; he would but serve to confirm you, and to make new atheists.

You are wrong: but the Greeks did not persecute Epicurus; the Romans did not persecute Lucretius. You are wrong: but your genius and your virtue must be respected, while you are refuted with all possible strength.

In my opinion, the finest homage that can be rendered to God is to stand forward in His defence without anger; as the most unworthy portrait that can be drawn of Him is to paint Him vindictive and furious. He is truth itself; and truth is without passion. To be a disciple of God is to announce Him as of a mild heart and of an unalterable mind.

I think, with you, that fanaticism is a monster a thousand times more dangerous than philosophical atheism. Spinoza did not commit a single bad action. Châtel and Ravaillac, both devotees, assassinated Henry IV.

The atheist of the closet is almost always a quiet philosopher, while the fanatic is always turbulent: but the court atheist, the atheistical prince, might be the scourge of mankind. Borgia and his like have done almost as much harm as the fanatics of Münster and of the Cévennes. I say the fanatics on both sides. The misfortune is, that atheists of the closet make atheists of the court. It was Chiron who brought up Achilles; he fed him with lion’s marrow. Achilles will one day drag Hector’s body round the walls of Troy, and immolate twelve captives to his vengeance.

God keep us from an abominable priest who should hew a king in pieces with his sacrificing knife, as also from him who, with a helmet on his head and a cuirass on his back, at the age of seventy, should dare to sign with his three bloody fingers the ridiculous excommunication of a king of France! and from . . . . and from . . . .

But also, may God preserve us from a choleric and barbarous despot, who, not believing in a God, should be his own God, who should render himself unworthy of his sacred trust by trampling on the duties which that trust imposes, who should remorselessly sacrifice to his passions, his friends, his relatives, his servants, and his people. These two tigers, the one shorn, the other crowned are equally to be feared. By what means shall we muzzle them? . . . .

If the idea of a God has made a Titus or a Trajan, an Antonine or an Aurelius, and those great Chinese emperors, whose memory is so dear to the second of the most ancient and most extensive empires in the world, these examples are sufficient for my cause—and my cause is that of all mankind.

I do not believe that there is in all Europe one statesman, one man at all versed in the affairs of the world, who has not the most profound contempt for the legends with which we have been inundated, even more than we now are with pamphlets. If religion no longer gives birth to civil wars, it is to philosophy alone that we are indebted, theological disputes beginning to be regarded in much the same manner as the quarrels of Punch and Judy at the fair. A usurpation, alike odious and ridiculous, founded upon fraud on one side and stupidity on the other, is every instant undermined by reason, which is establishing its reign. The bull “In cæna Domini”—that masterpiece of insolence and folly, no longer dares appear, even in Rome. If a regiment of monks makes the least evolution against the laws of the state, it is immediately broken. But, because the Jesuits have been expelled, must we also expel God? On the contrary, we must love Him the more.

SECTION VI.

In the reign of Arcadius, Logomachos, a theologue of Constantinople, went into Scythia and stopped at the foot of Mount Caucasus in the fruitful plains of Zephirim, on the borders of Colchis. The good old man Dondindac was in his great hall between his large sheepfold and his extensive barn; he was on his knees with his wife, his five sons and five daughters, his kinsmen and servants; and all were singing the praises of God, after a light repast. “What are you doing, idolater?” said Logomachos to him. “I am not an idolater,” said Dondindac. “You must be an idolater,” said Logomachos, “for you are not a Greek. Come, tell me what you were singing in your barbarous Scythian jargon?” “All tongues are alike to the ears of God,” answered the Scythian; “we were singing His praises.” “Very extraordinary!” returned the theologue; “a Scythian family praying to God without having been instructed by us!” He soon entered into conversation with the Scythian Dondindac; for the theologue knew a little Scythian, and the other a little Greek. This conversation has been found in a manuscript preserved in the library of Constantinople.

logomachos.

Let us see if you know your catechism. Why do you pray to God?

dondindac.

Because it is just to adore the Supreme Being, from whom we have everything.

logomachos.

Very fair for a barbarian. And what do you ask of him?

dondindac.

I thank Him for the blessings I enjoy, and even for the trials which He sends me; but I am careful to ask nothing of Him; for He knows our wants better than we do; besides, I should be afraid of asking for fair weather while my neighbor was asking for rain.

logomachos.

Ah! I thought he would say some nonsense or other. Let us begin farther back. Barbarian, who told you that there is a God?

dondindac.

All nature tells me.

logomachos.

That is not enough. What idea have you of God?

dondindac.

The idea of my Creator; my master, who will reward me if I do good, and punish me if I do evil.

logomachos.

Trifles! trash! Let us come to some essentials. Is God infinite secundum quid, or according to essence?

dondindac.

I don’t understand you.

logomachos.

Brute beast! Is God in one place, or in every place?

dondindac.

I know not . . . . just as you please.

logomachos.

Ignoramus! . . . . Can He cause that which has not been to have been, or that a stick shall not have two ends? Does He see the future as future, or as present? How does He draw being from nothing, and how reduce being to nothing?

dondindac.

I have never examined these things.

logomachos.

What a stupid fellow! Well, I must come nearer to your level. . . . . Tell me, friend, do you think that matter can be eternal?

dondindac.

What matters it to me whether it exists from all eternity or not? I do not exist from all eternity. God must still be my Master. He has given me the nature of justice; it is my duty to follow it: I seek not to be a philosopher; I wish to be a man.

logomachos.

One has a great deal of trouble with these blockheads. Let us proceed step by step. What is God?

dondindac.

My sovereign, my judge, my father.

logomachos.

That is not what I ask. What is His nature?

dondindac.

To be mighty and good.

logomachos.

But is He corporeal or spiritual?

dondindac.

How should I know that?

logomachos.

What; do you not know what a spirit is?

dondindac.

Not in the least. Of what service would that knowledge be to me? Should I be more just? Should I be a better husband, a better father, a better master, or a better citizen?

logomachos.

You must absolutely be taught what a spirit is. It is— it is— it is— I will say what another time.

dondindac.

I much fear that you will tell me rather what it is not than what it is. Permit me, in turn, to ask you one question. Some time ago, I saw one of your temples: why do you paint God with a long beard?

logomachos.

That is a very difficult question, and requires preliminary instruction.

dondindac.

Before I receive your instruction, I must relate to you a thing which one day happened to me. I had just built a closet at the end of my garden, when I heard a mole arguing thus with an ant: “Here is a fine fabric,” said the mole; “it must have been a very powerful mole that performed this work.” “You jest,” returned the ant; “the architect of this edifice is an ant of mighty genius.” From that time I resolved never to dispute.

GOOD—THE SOVEREIGN GOOD, A CHIMERA.

SECTION I.

Happiness is an abstract idea composed of certain pleasurable sensations. Plato, who wrote better than he reasoned, conceived the notion of his world in archetype; that is, his original world—of his general ideas of the beautiful, the good, the orderly, and the just, as if there had existed eternal beings, called order, good, beauty, and justice; whence might be derived the feeble copies exhibited here below of the just, the beautiful, and the good.

It is, then, in consequence of his suggestions that philosophers have occupied themselves in seeking for the sovereign good, as chemists seek for the philosopher’s stone; but the sovereign good has no more existence than the sovereign square, or the sovereign crimson: there is the crimson color, and there are squares; but there is no general existence so denominated. This chimerical manner of reasoning was for a long time the bane of philosophy.

Animals feel pleasure in performing all the functions for which they are destined. The happiness which poetical fancy has imagined would be an uninterrupted series of pleasures; but such a series would be incompatible with our organs and our destination. There is great pleasure in eating, drinking, and connubial endearments; but it is clear that if a man were always eating, or always in the full ecstasy of enjoyment, his organs would be incapable of sustaining it: it is further evident that he would be unable to fulfil the destinies he was born to, and that, in the case supposed, the human race would absolutely perish through pleasure.

To pass constantly and without interruption from one pleasure to another is also a chimera. The woman who has conceived must go through childbirth, which is a pain; the man is obliged to cleave wood and hew stone, which is not a pleasure.

If the name of happiness is meant to be applied to some pleasures which are diffused over human life, there is in fact, we must admit, happiness. If the name attaches only to one pleasure always permanent, or a continued although varied range of delicious enjoyment, then happiness belongs not to this terraqueous globe. Go and seek for it elsewhere.

If we make happiness consist in any particular situation that a man may be in, as for instance, a situation of wealth, power, or fame, we are no less mistaken. There are some scavengers who are happier than some sovereigns. Ask Cromwell whether he was more happy when he was lord protector of England, than when, in his youthful days, he enjoyed himself at a tavern; he will probably tell you in answer, that the period of his usurpation was not the period most productive of pleasures. How many plain or even ugly country women are more happy than were Helen and Cleopatra.

We must here however make one short remark; that when we say such a particular man is probably happier than some other; that a young muleteer has advantages very superior to those of Charles V.; that a dressmaker has more enjoyment than a princess, we should adhere to the probability of the case. There is certainly every appearance that a muleteer, in full health, must have more pleasure than Charles the Fifth, laid up with the gout; but nevertheless it may also be, that Charles, on his crutches, revolves in his mind with such ecstasy the facts of his holding a king of France and a pope prisoners, that his lot is absolutely preferable to that of the young and vigorous muleteer.

It certainly belongs to God alone, to a being capable of seeing through all hearts, to decide which is the happiest man. There is only one case in which a person can affirm that his actual state is worse or better than that of his neighbor; this case is that of existing rivalship, and the moment that of victory.

I will suppose that Archimedes has an assignation at night with his mistress. Nomentanus has the same assignation at the same hour. Archimedes presents himself at the door, and it is shut in his face; but it is opened to his rival, who enjoys an excellent supper, which he enlivens by his repeated sallies of wit upon Archimedes, and after the conclusion of which he withdraws to still higher enjoyments, while the other remains exposed in the street to all the pelting of a pitiless storm. There can be no doubt that Nomentanus has a right to say: “I am more happy to-night than Archimedes: I have more pleasure than he”; but it is necessary, in order to admit the truth and justness of the inference of the successful competitors in his own favor, to suppose that Archimedes is thinking only about the loss of his good supper, about being despised and deceived by a beautiful woman, about being supplanted by his rival, and annoyed by the tempest; for, if the philosopher in the street should be calmly reflecting that his soul ought to be above being discomposed by a strumpet or a storm, if he should be absorbed in a profound and interesting problem, and if he should discover the proportions between the cylinder and the sphere, he may experience a pleasure a hundred times superior to that of Nomentanus.

It is only therefore in the single case of actual pleasure and actual pain, and without a reference to anything else whatever, that a comparison between any two individuals can be properly made. It is unquestionable that he who enjoys the society of his mistress is happier at the moment than his scorned rival deploring over his misfortune. A man in health, supping on a fat partridge, is undoubtedly happier at the time than another under the torment of the colic; but we cannot safely carry our inferences farther; we cannot estimate the existence of one man against that of another; we possess no accurate balance for weighing desires and sensations.

We began this article with Plato and his sovereign good; we will conclude it with Solon and the saying of his which has been so highly celebrated, that “we ought to pronounce no man happy before his death.” This maxim, when examined into, will be found nothing more than a puerile remark, just like many other apothegms consecrated by their antiquity. The moment of death has nothing in common with the lot experienced by any man in life; a man may perish by a violent and ignominious death, and yet, up to that moment, may have enjoyed all the pleasures of which human nature is susceptible. It is very possible and very common for a happy man to cease to be so; no one can doubt it; but he has not the less had his happy moments.

What, then, can Solon’s expression strictly and fairly mean? that a man happy to-day is not certain of being so to-morrow! In this case it is a truth so incontestable and trivial that, not merely is it not worthy of being elevated into a maxim, but it is not worthy delivering at all.

SECTION II.

Well-being is a rare possession. May not the sovereign good in this world be considered as a sovereign chimera? The Greek philosophers discussed at great length, according to their usual practice, this celebrated question. The reader will, probably, compare them to just so many mendicants reasoning about the philosopher’s stone.

The sovereign good! What an expression! It might as well have been asked: What is the sovereign blue, or the sovereign ragout, or the sovereign walk, or the sovereign reading?

Every one places his good where he can, and has as much of it as he can, in his own way, and in very scanty measure. Castor loved horses; his twin brother, to try a fall—

Quid dem? quid non dem? renuis tu quod jubet alter . . . .

Castor gaudet equis, ovo prognatus eodem

Pugnis, etc.

The greatest good is that which delights us so powerfully as to render us incapable of feeling anything else; as the greatest evil is that which goes so far as to deprive us of all feeling. These are the two extremes of human nature, and these moments are short. Neither extreme delight nor extreme torture can last a whole life. The sovereign good and the sovereign evil are nothing more than chimeras.

We all know the beautiful fable of Crantor. He introduces upon the stage at the Olympic games, Wealth, Pleasure, Health, and Virtue. Each claims the apple. Wealth says, I am the sovereign good, for with me all goods are purchased. Pleasure says, the apple belongs to me, for it is only on my account that wealth is desired. Health asserts, that without her there can be no pleasure, and wealth is useless. Finally, Virtue states that she is superior to the other three, because, although possessed of gold, pleasures, and health, a man may make himself very contemptible by misconduct. The apple was conferred on Virtue.

The fable is very ingenious; it would be still more so if Crantor had said that the sovereign good consists in the combination of the four rivals, Virtue, Health, Wealth, and Pleasure; but this fable neither does, nor can, resolve the absurd question about the sovereign good. Virtue is not a good; it is a duty. It is of a different nature; of a superior order. It has nothing to do with painful or with agreeable sensations. A virtuous man, laboring under stone and gout, without aid, without friends, destitute of necessaries, persecuted, and chained down to the floor by a voluptuous tyrant who enjoys good health, is very wretched; and his insolent persecutor, caressing a new mistress on his bed of purple, is very happy. Say, if you please, that the persecuted sage is preferable to the persecuting profligate; say that you admire the one and detest the other; but confess that the sage in chains is scarcely less than mad with rage and pain; if he does not himself admit that he is so, he completely deceives you; he is a charlatan.

GOOD..

Of Good and Evil, Physical and Moral.

We here treat of a question of the greatest difficulty and importance. It relates to the whole of human life. It would be of much greater consequence to find a remedy for our evils; but no remedy is to be discovered, and we are reduced to the sad necessity of tracing out their origin. With respect to this origin, men have disputed ever since the days of Zoroaster, and in all probability they disputed on the same subject long before him. It was to explain the mixture of good and evil that they conceived the idea of two principles—Oromazes, the author of light, and Arimanes, the author of darkness; the box of Pandora; the two vessels of Jupiter; the apple eaten by Eve; and a variety of other systems. The first of dialecticians, although not the first of philosophers, the illustrious Bayle, has clearly shown how difficult it is for Christians who admit one only God, perfectly good and just, to reply to the objections of the Manichæans who acknowledge two Gods—one good, and the other evil.

The foundation of the system of the Manichæans, with all its antiquity, was not on that account more reasonable. Lemmas, susceptible of the most clear and rigid geometrical demonstrations, should alone have induced any men to the adoption of such a theorem as the following: “There are two necessary beings, both supreme, both infinite, both equally powerful, both in conflict with each other, yet, finally, agreeing to pour out upon this little planet—one, all the treasures of his beneficence, and the other all the stores of his malice.” It is in vain that the advocates of this hypothesis attempt to explain by it the cause of good and evil: even the fable of Prometheus explains it better. Every hypothesis which only serves to assign a reason for certain things, without being, in addition to that recommendation, established upon indisputable principles, ought invariably to be rejected.

The Christian doctors—independently of revelation, which makes everything credible—explain the origin of good and evil no better than the partnergods of Zoroaster.

When they say God is a tender father, God is a just king; when they add the idea of infinity to that of love, that kindness, that justice which they observe in the best of their own species, they soon fall into the most palpable and dreadful contradictions. How could this sovereign, who possessed in infinite fulness the principle or quality of human justice, how could this father, entertaining an infinite affection for his children; how could this being, infinitely powerful, have formed creatures in His own likeness, to have them immediately afterwards tempted by a malignant demon, to make them yield to that temptation to inflict death on those whom He had created immortal, and to overwhelm their posterity with calamities and crimes! We do not here speak of a contradiction still more revolting to our feeble reason. How could God, who ransomed the human race by the death of His only Son; or rather, how could God, who took upon Himself the nature of man, and died on the cross to save men from perdition, consign over to eternal tortures nearly the whole of that human race for whom He died? Certainly, when we consider this system merely as philosophers—without the aid of faith—we must consider it as absolutely monstrous and abominable. It makes of God either pure and unmixed malice, and that malice infinite, which created thinking beings, on purpose to devote them to eternal misery, or absolute impotence and imbecility, in not being able to foresee or to prevent the torments of his offspring.

But the eternity of misery is not the subject of this article, which relates properly only to the good and evil of the present life. None of the doctors of the numerous churches of Christianity, all of which advocate the doctrine we are here contesting, have been able to convince a single sage.

We cannot conceive how Bayle, who managed the weapons of dialectics with such admirable strength and dexterity, could content himself with introducing in a dispute a Manichæan, a Calvinist, a Molinist, and a Socinian. Why did he not introduce, as speaking, a reasonable and sensible man? Why did not Bayle speak in his own person? He would have said far better what we shall now venture to say ourselves.

A father who kills his children is a monster; a king who conducts his subjects into a snare, in order to obtain a pretext for delivering them up to punishment and torture, is an execrable tyrant. If you conceive God to possess the same kindness which you require in a father, the same justice that you require in a king, no possible resource exists by which, if we may use the expression, God can be exculpated; and by allowing Him to possess infinite wisdom and infinite goodness you, in fact, render Him infinitely odious; you excite a wish that He had no existence; you furnish arms to the atheist, who will ever be justified in triumphantly remarking to you: Better by far is it to deny a God altogether, than impute to Him such conduct as you would punish, to the extremity of the law, in men.

We begin then with observing, that it is unbecoming in us to ascribe to God human attributes. It is not for us to make God after our own likeness. Human justice, human kindness, and human wisdom can never be applied or made suitable to Him. We may extend these attributes in our imagination as far as we are able, to infinity; they will never be other than human qualities with boundaries perpetually or indefinitely removed; it would be equally rational to attribute to Him infinite solidity, infinite motion, infinite roundness, or infinite divisibility. These attributes can never be His.

Philosophy informs us that this universe must have been arranged by a Being incomprehensible, eternal, and existing by His own nature; but, once again, we must observe that philosophy gives us no information on the subject of the attributes of that nature. We know what He is not, and not what He is.

With respect to God, there is neither good nor evil, physically or morally. What is physical or natural evil? Of all evils, the greatest, undoubtedly, is death. Let us for a moment consider whether man could have been immortal.

In order that a body like ours should have been indissoluble, imperishable, it would have been necessary that it should not be composed of parts; that it should not be born; that it should have neither nourishment nor growth; that it should experience no change. Let any one examine each of these points; and let every reader extend their number according to his own suggestions, and it will be seen that the proposition of an immortal man is a contradiction.

If our organized body were immortal, that of mere animals would be so likewise; but it is evident that, in the course of a very short time, the whole globe would, in this case, be incompetent to supply nourishment to those animals; those immortal beings which exist only in consequence of renovation by food, would then perish for want of the means of such renovation. All this involves contradiction. We might make various other observations on the subject, but every reader who deserves the name of a philosopher will perceive that death was necessary to everything that is born; that death can neither be an error on the part of God, nor an evil, an injustice, nor a chastisement to man.

Man, born to die, can no more be exempt from pain than from death. To prevent an organized substance endowed with feeling from ever experiencing pain, it would be necessary that all the laws of nature should be changed; that matter should no longer be divisible; that it should neither have weight, action, nor force; that a rock might fall on an animal without crushing it; and that water should have no power to suffocate, or fire to burn it. Man, impassive, then, is as much a contradiction as man immortal.

This feeling of pain was indispensable to stimulate us to self-preservation, and to impart to us such pleasures as are consistent with those general laws by which the whole system of nature is bound and regulated.

If we never experienced pain, we should be every moment injuring ourselves without perceiving it. Without the excitement of uneasiness, without some sensation of pain, we should perform no function of life; should never communicate it, and should be destitute of all the pleasures of it. Hunger is the commencement of pain which compels us to take our required nourishment. Ennui is a pain which stimulates to exercise and occupation. Love itself is a necessity which becomes painful until it is met with corresponding attachment. In a word, every desire is a want, a necessity, a beginning of pain. Pain, therefore, is the mainspring of all the actions of animated beings. Every animal possessed of feeling must be liable to pain, if matter is divisible; and pain was as necessary as death. It is not, therefore, an error of Providence, nor a result of malignity, nor a creature of imagination. Had we seen only brutes suffer, we should, for that, never have accused nature of harshness or cruelty; had we, while ourselves were impassive, witnessed the lingering and torturing death of a dove, when a kite seized upon it with his murderous talons, and leisurely devouring its bleeding limbs, doing in that no more than we do ourselves, we should not express the slightest murmur of dissatisfaction. But what claim have we for an exemption of our own bodies from such dismemberment and torture beyond what might be urged in behalf of brutes? Is it that we possess an intellect superior to theirs? But what has intellect to do with the divisibility of matter? Can a few ideas more or less in a brain prevent fire from burning, or a rock from crushing us?

Moral evil, upon which so many volumes have been written is, in fact, nothing but natural evil. This moral evil is a sensation of pain occasioned by one organized being to another. Rapine, outrage, etc., are evil only because they produce evil. But as we certainly are unable to do any evil, or occasion any pain to God, it is evident by the light of reason—for faith is altogether a different principle—that in relation to the Supreme Being and as affecting Him, moral evil can have no existence.

As the greatest of natural evils is death, the greatest of moral evils is, unquestionably, war. All crimes follow in its train; false and calumnious declarations, perfidious violation of the treaties, pillage, devastation, pain, and death under every hideous and appalling form.

All this is physical evil in relation to man, but can no more be considered moral evil in relation to God than the rage of dogs worrying and destroying one another. It is a mere commonplace idea, and as false as it is feeble, that men are the only species that slaughter and destroy one another. Wolves, dogs, cats, cocks, quails, all war with their respective species: house spiders devour one another; the male universally fights for the female. This warfare is the result of the laws of nature, of principles in their very blood and essence; all is connected; all is necessary.

Nature has granted man about two and twenty years of life, one with another; that is, of a thousand children born in the same month, some of whom have died in their infancy, and the rest lived respectively to the age of thirty, forty, fifty, and even eighty years, or perhaps beyond, the average calculation will allow to each the above-mentioned number of twenty-two years.

How can it affect the Deity, whether a man die in battle or of a fever? War destroys fewer human beings than smallpox. The scourge of war is transient, that of smallpox reigns with paramount and permanent fatality throughout the earth, followed by a numerous train of others; and taking into consideration the combined, and nearly regular operation of the various causes which sweep mankind from the stage of life, the allowance of two and twenty years for every individual will be found in general to be tolerably correct.

Man, you say, offends God by killing his neighbor; if this be the case, the directors of nations must indeed be tremendous criminals; for, while even invoking God to their assistance, they urge on to slaughter immense multitudes of their fellow-beings, for contemptible interests which it would show infinitely more policy, as well as humanity, to abandon. But how—to reason merely as philosophers—how do they offend God? Just as much as tigers and crocodiles offend him. It is, surely, not God whom they harass and torment, but their neighbor. It is only against man that man can be guilty. A highway robber can commit no robbery on God. What can it signify to the eternal Deity, whether a few pieces of yellow metal are in the hands of Jerome, or of Bonaventure? We have necessary desires, necessary passions, and necessary laws for the restraint of both; and while on this our ant-hill, during the little day of our existence, we are engaged in eager and destructive contest about a straw, the universe moves on in its majestic course, directed by eternal and unalterable laws, which comprehend in their operation the atom that we call the earth.

GOSPEL.

It is a matter of high importance to ascertain which are the first gospels. It is a decided truth, whatever Abbadie may assert to the contrary, that none of the first fathers of the Church, down to Irenæus inclusively, have quoted any passage from the four gospels with which we are acquainted. And to this it may be added, that the Alogi, the Theodosians, constantly rejected the gospel of St. John, and always spoke of it with contempt; as we are informed by St. Epiphanius in his thirty-fourth homily. Our enemies further observe that the most ancient fathers do not merely forbear to quote anything from our gospels, but relate many passages or events which are to be found only in the apocryphal gospels rejected by the canon.

St. Clement, for example, relates that our Lord, having been questioned concerning the time when His kingdom would come, answered, “That will be when what is without shall resemble that within, and when there shall be neither male nor female.” But we must admit that this passage does not occur in either of our gospels. There are innumerable other instances to prove this truth; which may be seen in the “Critical Examination” of M. Fréret, perpetual secretary of the Academy of Belles Lettres at Paris.

The learned Fabricius took the pains to collect the ancient gospels which time has spared; that of James appears to be the first; and it is certain that it still possesses considerable authority with some of the Oriental churches. It is called “the first gospel.” There remain the passion and the resurrection, pretended to have been written by Nicodemus. This gospel of Nicodemus is quoted by St. Justin and Tertullian. It is there we find the names of our Lord’s accusers—Annas, Caiaphas, Soumas, Dathan, Gamaliel, Judas, Levi, and Napthali; the attention and particularity with which these names are given confer upon the work an appearance of truth and sincerity. Our adversaries have inferred that as so many false gospels were forged, which at first were recognized as true, those which constitute at the present day the foundation of our own faith may have been forged also. They dwell much on the circumstance of the first heretics suffering even death itself in defence of these apocryphal gospels. There have evidently been, they say, forgers, seducers, and men who have been seduced by them into error, and died in defence of that error; it is, at least, therefore, no proof of the truth of Christianity that it has had its martyrs who have died for it.

They add further, that the martyrs were never asked the question, whether they believed the gospel of John or the gospel of James. The Pagans could not put a series of interrogatories about books with which they were not at all acquainted; the magistrates punished some Christians very unjustly, as disturbers of the public peace, but they never put particular questions to them in relation to our four gospels. These books were not known to the Romans before the time of Diocletian, and even towards the close of Diocletian’s reign, they had scarcely obtained any publicity. It was deemed in a Christian a crime both abominable and unpardonable to show a gospel to any Gentile. This is so true, that you cannot find the word “gospel” in any profane author whatever.

The rigid Socinians, influenced by the above-mentioned or other difficulties, do not consider our four divine gospels in any other light than as works of clandestine introduction, fabricated about a century after the time of Jesus Christ, and carefully concealed from the Gentiles for another century beyond that; works, as they express it, of a coarse and vulgar character, written by coarse and vulgar men, who, for a long time confined their discourses and appeals to the mere populace of their party. We will not here repeat the blasphemies uttered by them. This sect, although considerably diffused and numerous, is at present as much concealed as were the first gospels. The difficulty of converting them is so much the greater, in consequence of their obstinately refusing to listen to anything but mere reason. The other Christians contend against them only with the weapons of the Holy Scripture: it is consequently impossible that, being thus always in hostility with respect to principles, they should ever unite in their conclusions.

With respect to ourselves, let us ever remain inviolably attached to our four gospels, in union with the infallible church. Let us reject the five gospels which it has rejected; let us not inquire why our Lord Jesus Christ permitted five false gospels, five false histories of his life to be written; and let us submit to our spiritual pastors and directors, who alone on earth are enlightened by the Holy Spirit.

Into what a gross error did Abbadie fall when he considered as authentic the letters so ridiculously forged, from Pilate to Tiberius, and the pretended proposal of Tiberius to place Jesus Christ in the number of the gods. If Abbadie is a bad critic and a contemptible reasoner, is the Church on that account less enlightened? are we the less bound to believe it? Shall we at all the less submit to it?

GOVERNMENT.

SECTION I.

The pleasure of governing must certainly be exquisite, if we may judge from the vast numbers who are eager to be concerned in it. We have many more books on government than there are monarchs in the world. Heaven preserve me from making any attempt here to give instruction to kings and their noble ministers—their valets, confessors, or financiers. I understand nothing about the matter; I have the profoundest respect and reverence for them all. It belongs only to Mr. Wilkes, with his English balance, to weigh the merits of those who are at the head of the human race. It would, besides, be exceedingly strange if, with three or four thousand volumes on the subject of government, with Machiavelli, and Bossuet’s “Policy of the Holy Scripture,” with the “General Financier,” the “Guide to Finances,” the “Means of Enriching a State,” etc., there could possibly be a single person living who was not perfectly acquainted with the duties of kings and the science of government.

Professor Puffendorf, or, as perhaps we should rather say, Baron Puffendorf, says that King David, having sworn never to attempt the life of Shimei, his privy counsellor, did not violate his oath when, according to the Jewish history, he instructed his son Solomon to get him assassinated, “because David had only engaged that he himself would not kill Shimei.” The baron, who rebukes so sharply the mental reservations of the Jesuits, allows David, in the present instance, to entertain one which would not be particularly palatable to privy counsellors.

Let us consider the words of Bossuet in his “Policy of the Holy Scripture,” addressed to Monseigneur the Dauphin. “Thus we see royalty established according to the order of succession in the house of David and Solomon, and the throne of David is secured forever—although, by the way, that same little joint-stool called a ‘throne,’ instead of being secured forever, lasted, in fact, only a very short time.” By virtue of this law, the eldest son was to succeed, to the exclusion of his brothers, and on this account Adonijah, who was the eldest, said to Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon, “Thou knowest that the kingdom was mine, and all Israel had recognized my right; but the Lord hath transferred the kingdom to my brother Solomon.” The right of Adonijah was incontestable. Bossuet expressly admits this at the close of this article. “The Lord has transferred” is only a usual phrase, which means, I have lost my property or right, I have been deprived of my right. Adonijah was the issue of a lawful wife; the birth of his younger brother was the fruit of a double crime.

“Unless, then,” says Bossuet, “something extraordinary occurred, the eldest was to succeed.” But the something extraordinary, in the present instance, which prevented it was, that Solomon, the issue of a marriage arising out of a double adultery and a murder, procured the assassination, at the foot of the altar, of his elder brother and his lawful king, whose rights were supported by the high priest Abiathar and the chief commander Joab. After this we must acknowledge that it is more difficult than some seem to imagine to take lessons on the rights of persons, and on the true system of government from the Holy Scriptures, which were first given to the Jews, and afterwards to ourselves, for purposes of a far higher nature.

“The preservation of the people is the supreme law.” Such is the fundamental maxim of nations; but in all civil wars the safety of the people is made to consist in slaughtering a number of the citizens. In all foreign wars, the safety of a people consists in killing their neighbors, and taking possession of their property! It is difficult to perceive in this a particularly salutary “right of nations,” and a government eminently favorable to liberty of thought and social happiness.

There are geometrical figures exceedingly regular and complete in their kind; arithmetic is perfect; many trades or manufactures are carried on in a manner constantly uniform and excellent; but with respect to the government of men, is it possible for any one to be good, when all are founded on passions in conflict with each other?

No convent of monks ever existed without discord; it is impossible, therefore, to exclude it from kingdoms. Every government resembles not merely a monastic institution, but a private household. There are none existing without quarrels; and quarrels between one people and another, between one prince and another, have ever been sanguinary; those between subjects and their sovereigns have been sometimes no less destructive. How is an individual to act? Must he risk joining in the conflict, or withdraw from the scene of action?

SECTION II.

More than one people are desirous of new constitutions. The English would have no objection to a change of ministers once in every eight hours, but they have no wish to change the form of their government.

The modern Romans are proud of their church of St. Peter and their ancient Greek statues; but the people would be glad to be better fed, although they were not quite so rich in benedictions; the fathers of families would be content that the Church should have less gold, if the granaries had more corn; they regret the time when the apostles journeyed on foot, and when the citizens of Rome travelled from one palace to another in litters.

We are incessantly reminded of the admirable republics of Greece. There is no question that the Greeks would prefer the government of a Pericles and a Demosthenes to that of a pasha; but in their most prosperous and palmy times they were always complaining; discord and hatred prevailed between all the cities without, and in every separate city within. They gave laws to the old Romans, who before that time had none; but their own were so bad for themselves that they were continually changing them.

What could be said in favor of a government under which the just Aristides was banished, Phocion put to death, Socrates condemned to drink hemlock after having been exposed to banter and derision on the stage by Aristophanes; and under which the Amphyctions, with contemptible imbecility, actually delivered up Greece into the power of Philip, because the Phocians had ploughed up a field which was part of the territory of Apollo? But the government of the neighboring monarchies was worse.

Puffendorf promises us a discussion on the best form of government. He tells us, “that many pronounce in favor of monarchy, and others, on the contrary, inveigh furiously against kings; and that it does not fall within the limits of his subject to examine in detail the reasons of the latter.” If any mischievous and malicious reader expects to be told here more than he is told by Puffendorf, he will be much deceived.

A Swiss, a Hollander, a Venetian nobleman, an English peer, a cardinal, and a count of the empire, were once disputing, on a journey, about the nature of their respective governments, and which of them deserved the preference: no one knew much about the matter; each remained in his own opinion without having any very distinct idea what that opinion was; and they returned without having come to any general conclusion; every one praising his own country from vanity, and complaining of it from feeling.

What, then, is the destiny of mankind? Scarcely any great nation is governed by itself. Begin from the east, and take the circuit of the world. Japan closed its ports against foreigners from the well-founded apprehension of a dreadful revolution.

China actually experienced such a revolution; she obeys Tartars of a mixed race, half Mantchou and half Hun. India obeys Mogul Tartars. The Nile, the Orontes, Greece, and Epirus are still under the yoke of the Turks. It is not an English race that reigns in England; it is a German family which succeeded to a Dutch prince, as the latter succeeded a Scotch family which had succeeded an Angevin family, that had replaced a Norman family, which had expelled a family of usurping Saxons. Spain obeys a French family; which succeeded to an Austrasian race, that Austrasian race had succeeded families that boasted of Visigoth extraction; these Visigoths had been long driven out by the Arabs, after having succeeded to the Romans, who had expelled the Carthaginians. Gaul obeys Franks, after having obeyed Roman prefects.

The same banks of the Danube have belonged to Germans, Romans, Arabs, Slavonians, Bulgarians, and Huns, to twenty different families, and almost all foreigners.

And what greater wonder has Rome had to exhibit than so many emperors who were born in the barbarous provinces, and so many popes born in provinces no less barbarous? Let him govern who can. And when any one has succeeded in his attempts to become master, he governs as he can.

SECTION III.

In 1769, a traveller delivered the following narrative: “I saw, in the course of my journey, a large and populous country, in which all offices and places were purchasable; I do not mean clandestinely, and in evasion of the law, but publicly, and in conformity to it. The right to judge, in the last resort, of the honor, property, and life of the citizen, was put to auction in the same manner as the right and property in a few acres of land. Some very high commissions in the army are conferred only on the highest bidder. The principal mystery of their religion is celebrated for the petty sum of three sesterces, and if the celebrator does not obtain this fee he remains idle like a porter without employment.

“Fortunes in this country are not made by agriculture, but are derived from a certain game of chance, in great practice there, in which the parties sign their names, and transfer them from hand to hand. If they lose, they withdraw into the mud and mire of their original extraction; if they win, they share in the administration of public affairs; they marry their daughters to mandarins, and their sons become a species of mandarins also.

“A considerable number of the citizens have their whole means of subsistence assigned upon a house, which possesses in fact nothing, and a hundred persons have bought for a hundred thousand crowns each the right of receiving and paying the money due to these citizens upon their assignments on this imaginary hotel; rights which they never exercise, as they in reality know nothing at all of what is thus supposed to pass through their hands.

“Sometimes a proposal is made and cried about the streets, that all who have a little money in their chest should exchange it for a slip of exquisitely manufactured paper, which will free you from all pecuniary care, and enable you to pass through life with ease and comfort. On the morrow an order is published, compelling you to change this paper for another, much better. On the following day you are deafened with the cry of a new paper, cancelling the two former ones. You are ruined! But long heads console you with the assurance, that within a fortnight the newsmen will cry up some proposal more engaging.

“You travel into one province of this empire, and purchase articles of food, drink, clothing, and lodging. If you go into another province, you are obliged to pay duties upon all those commodities, as if you had just arrived from Africa. You inquire the reason of this, but obtain no answer; or if, from extraordinary politeness, any one condescends to notice your questions, he replies that you come from a province reputed foreign, and that, consequently, you are obliged to pay for the convenience of commerce. In vain you puzzle yourself to comprehend how the province of a kingdom can be deemed foreign to that kingdom.

“On one particular occasion, while changing horses, finding myself somewhat fatigued, I requested the postmaster to favor me with a glass of wine. ‘I cannot let you have it,’ says he; ‘the superintendents of thirst, who are very considerable in number, and all of them remarkably sober, would accuse me of drinking to excess, which would absolutely be my ruin.’ ‘But drinking a single glass of wine,’ I replied, ‘to repair a man’s strength, is not drinking to excess; and what difference can it make whether that single glass of wine is taken by you or me?’

“ ‘Sir,’ replied the man, ‘our laws relating to thirst are much more excellent than you appear to think them. After our vintage is finished, physicians are appointed by the regular authorities to visit our cellars. They set aside a certain quantity of wine, such as they judge we may drink consistently with health. At the end of the year they return; and if they conceive that we have exceeded their restriction by a single bottle, they punish us with very severe fines; and if we make the slightest resistance, we are sent to Toulon to drink salt-water. Were I to give you the wine you ask, I should most certainly be charged with excessive drinking. You must see to what danger I should be exposed from the supervisors of our health.’

“I could not refrain from astonishment at the existence of such a system; but my astonishment was no less on meeting with a disconsolate and mortified pleader, who informed me that he had just then lost, a little beyond the nearest rivulet, a cause precisely similar to one he had gained on this side of it. I understood from him that, in his country, there are as many different codes of laws as there are cities. His conversation raised my curiosity. ‘Our nation,’ said he, ‘is so completely wise and enlightened, that nothing is regulated in it. Laws, customs, the rights of corporate bodies, rank, precedence, everything is arbitrary; all is left to the prudence of the nation.’

“I happened to be still in this same country when it became involved in a war with some of its neighbors. This war was nicknamed ‘The Ridicule,’ because there was much to be lost and nothing to be gained by it. I went upon my travels elsewhere, and did not return till the conclusion of peace, when the nation seemed to be in the most dreadful state of misery; it had lost its money, its soldiers, its fleets, and its commerce. I said to myself, its last hour is come; everything, alas! must pass away. Here is a nation absolutely annihilated. What a dreadful pity! for a great part of the people were amiable, industrious, and gay, after having been formerly coarse, superstitious, and barbarous.

“I was perfectly astonished, at the end of only two years, to find its capital and principal cities more opulent than ever. Luxury had increased, and an air of enjoyment prevailed everywhere. I could not comprehend this prodigy; and it was only after I had examined into the government of the neighboring nations that I could discover the cause of what appeared so unaccountable. I found that the government of all the rest was just as bad as that of this nation, and that this nation was superior to all the rest in industry.

“A provincial of the country I am speaking of was once bitterly complaining to me of all the grievances under which he labored. He was well acquainted with history. I asked him if he thought he should have been happier had he lived a hundred years before, when his country was in a comparative state of barbarism, and a citizen was liable to be hanged for having eaten flesh in Lent? He shook his head in the negative. Would you prefer the times of the civil wars, which began at the death of Francis II.; or the times of the defeats of St. Quentin and Pavia; or the long disorders attending the wars against the English; or the feudal anarchy; or the horrors of the second race of kings, or the barbarity of the first? At every successive question, he appeared to shudder more violently. The government of the Romans seemed to him the most intolerable of all. ‘Nothing can be worse,’ he said, ‘than to be under foreign masters.’ At last we came to the Druids. ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed, ‘I was quite mistaken: it is still worse to be governed by sanguinary priests.’ He admitted, at last, although with sore reluctance, that the time he lived in was, all things considered, the least intolerable and hateful.”

SECTION IV.

An eagle governed the birds of the whole country of Ornithia. He had no other right, it must be allowed, than what he derived from his beak and claws; however, after providing liberally for his own repasts and pleasures, he governed as well as any other bird of prey.

In his old age he was invaded by a flock of hungry vultures, who rushed from the depths of the North to scatter fear and desolation through his provinces. There appeared, just about this time, a certain owl, who was born in one of the most scrubby thickets of the empire, and who had long been known under the name of “luci-fugax,” or light-hater. He possessed much cunning, and associated only with bats; and, while the vultures were engaged in conflict with the eagle, our politic owl and his party entered with great adroitness, in the character of pacificators, on that department of the air which was disputed by the combatants.

The eagle and vultures, after a war of long duration, at last actually referred the cause of contention to the owl, who, with his solemn and imposing physiognomy, was well formed to deceive them both.

He persuaded the eagles and vultures to suffer their claws to be a little pared, and just the points of their beaks to be cut off, in order to bring about perfect peace and reconciliation. Before this time, the owl had always said to the birds, “Obey the eagle”; afterwards, in consequence of the invasion, he had said to them, “Obey the vultures.” He now, however, soon called out to them, “Obey me only.” The poor birds did not know to whom to listen: they were plucked by the eagle, the vultures, and the owl and bats. “Qui habet aures, audiat.”—“He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”

SECTION V.

“I have in my possession a great number of catapultæ and balistæ of the ancient Romans, which are certainly rather worm-eaten, but would still do very well as specimens. I have many water-clocks, but half of them probably out of repair and broken, some sepulchral lamps, and an old copper model of a quinquereme. I have also togas, pretextas, and laticlaves in lead; and my predecessors established a society of tailors; who, after inspecting ancient monuments, can make up robes pretty awkwardly. For these reasons thereunto moving us, after hearing the report of our chief antiquary, we do hereby appoint and ordain, that all the said venerable usages should be observed and kept up forever; and every person, through the whole extent of our dominions, shall dress and think precisely as men dressed and thought in the time of Cnidus Rufillus, proprietor of the province devolved to us by right,” etc.

It is represented to an officer belonging to the department whence this edict issued, that all the engines enumerated in it are become useless; that the understandings and the inventions of mankind are every day making new advances towards perfection; and that it would be more judicious to guide and govern men by the reins in present use, than by those by which they were formerly subjected; that no person could be found to go on board the quinquereme of his most serene highness; that his tailors might make as many laticlaves as they pleased, and that not a soul would purchase one of them; and that it would be worthy of his wisdom to condescend, in some small measure, to the manner of thinking that now prevailed among the better sort of people in his own dominions.

The officer above mentioned promised to communicate this representation to a clerk, who promised to speak about it to the referendary, who promised to mention it to his most serene highness whenever an opportunity should offer.

SECTION VI.

Picture of the English Government.

The establishment of a government is a matter of curious and interesting investigation. I shall not speak, in this place, of the great Tamerlane, or Timerling, because I am not precisely acquainted with the mystery of the Great Mogul’s government. But we can see our way somewhat more clearly into the administration of affairs in England; and I had rather examine that than the administration of India; as England, we are informed, is inhabited by free men and not by slaves; and in India, according to the accounts we have of it, there are many slaves and but few free men.

Let us, in the first place, view a Norman bastard seating himself upon the throne of England. He had about as much right to it as St. Louis had, at a later period, to Grand Cairo. But St. Louis had the misfortune not to begin with obtaining a judicial decision in favor of his right to Egypt from the court of Rome; and William the Bastard failed not to render his cause legitimate and sacred, by obtaining in confirmation of the rightfulness of his claim, a decree of Pope Alexander II. issued without the opposite party having obtained a hearing, and simply in virtue of the words, “Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven.” His competitor, Harold, a perfectly legitimate monarch, being thus bound by a decree of heaven, William united to this virtue of the holy see another of far more powerful efficacy still, which was the victory of Hastings. He reigned, therefore, by the right of the strongest, just as Pepin and Clovis had reigned in France; the Goths and Lombards in Italy; the Visigoths, and afterwards the Arabs in Spain; the Vandals in Africa, and all the kings of the world in succession.

It must be nevertheless admitted, that our Bastard possessed as just a title as the Saxons and the Danes, whose title, again, was quite as good as that of the Romans. And the title of all these heroes in succession was precisely that of “robbers on the highway,” or, if you like it better, that of foxes and pole-cats when they commit their depredations on the farm-yard.

All these great men were so completely highway robbers, that from the time of Romulus down to the buccaneers, the only question and concern were about the “spolia opima,” the pillage and plunder, the cows and oxen carried off by the hand of violence. Mercury, in the fable, steals the cows of Apollo; and in the Old Testament, Isaiah assigns the name of robber to the son whom his wife was to bring into the world, and who was to be an important and sacred type. That name was Mahershalalhashbaz, “divide speedily the soil.” We have already observed, that the names of soldier and robber were often synonymous.

Thus then did William soon become king by divine right. William Rufus, who usurped the crown over his elder brother, was also king by divine right, without any difficulty; and the same right attached after him to Henry, the third usurper.

The Norman barons who had joined at their own expense in the invasion of England, were desirous of compensation. It was necessary to grant it, and for this purpose to make them great vassals, and great officers of the crown. They became possessed of the finest estates. It is evident that William would rather, had he dared, have kept all to himself, and made all these lords his guards and lackeys. But this would have been too dangerous an attempt. He was obliged, therefore, to divide and distribute.

With respect to the Anglo-Saxon lords, there was no very easy way of killing, or even making slaves of the whole of them. They were permitted in their own districts, to enjoy the rank and denomination of lords of the manor—seignieurs châtelans. They held of the great Norman vassals, who held of William.

By this system everything was kept in equilibrium until the breaking out of the first quarrel. And what became of the rest of the nation? The same that had become of nearly all the population of Europe. They became serfs or villeins.

At length, after the frenzy of the Crusades, the ruined princes sell liberty to the serfs of the glebe, who had obtained money by labor and commerce. Cities are made free, the commons are granted certain privileges; and the rights of men revive even out of anarchy itself.

The barons were everywhere in contention with their king, and with one another. The contention became everywhere a petty intestine war, made up out of numberless civil wars. From this abominable and gloomy chaos appeared a feeble gleam, which enlightened the commons, and considerably improved their situation.

The kings of England, being themselves great vassals of France for Normandy, and afterwards for Guienne and other provinces, easily adopted the usages of the kings from whom they held. The states of the realm were long made up, as in France, of barons and bishops.

The English court of chancery was an imitation of the council of state, of which the chancellor of France was president. The court of king’s bench was formed on the model of the parliament instituted by Philip le Bel. The common pleas were like the jurisdiction of the châtelat. The court of exchequer resembled that of the superintendents of the finances—généraux des finances—which became, in France, the court of aids.

The maxim that the king’s domain is inalienable is evidently taken from the system of French government.

The right of the king of England to call on his subjects to pay his ransom, should he become a prisoner of war; that of requiring a subsidy when he married his eldest daughter, and when he conferred the honor of knighthood on his son; all these circumstances call to recollection the ancient usages of a kingdom of which William was the chief vassal.

Scarcely had Philip le Bel summoned the commons to the states-general, before Edward, king of England, adopted the like measure, in order to balance the great power of the barons. For it was under this monarch’s reign that the commons were first clearly and distinctly summoned to parliament.

We perceive, then, that up to this epoch in the fourteenth century, the English government followed regularly in the steps of France. The two churches are entirely alike; the same subjection to the court of Rome; the same exactions which are always complained of, but, in the end, always paid to that rapacious court; the same dissensions, somewhat more or less violent; the same excommunications; the same donations to monks; the same chaos; the same mixture of holy rapine, superstition, and barbarism.

As France and England, then, were for so long a period governed by the same principles, or rather without any principle at all, and merely by usages of a perfectly similar character, how is it that, at length, the two governments have become as different as those of Morocco and Venice?

It is, perhaps, in the first place to be ascribed to the circumstance of England, or rather Great Britain, being an island, in consequence of which the king has been under no necessity of constantly keeping up a considerable standing army which might more frequently be employed against the nation itself than against foreigners.

It may be further observed, that the English appear to have in the structure of their minds something more firm, more reflective, more persevering, and, perhaps, more obstinate, than some other nations.

To this latter circumstance it may be probably attributed, that, after incessantly complaining of the court of Rome, they at length completely shook off its disgraceful yoke; while a people of more light and volatile character has continued to wear it, affecting at the same time to laugh and dance in its chains.

The insular situation of the English, by inducing the necessity of urging to the particular pursuit and practice of navigation, has probably contributed to the result we are here considering, by giving to the natives a certain sternness and ruggedness of manners.

These stern and rugged manners, which have made their island the theatre of many a bloody tragedy, have also contributed, in all probability, to inspire a generous frankness.

It is in consequence of this combination of opposite qualities that so much royal blood has been shed in the field, and on the scaffold, and yet poison, in all their long and violent domestic contentions, has never been resorted to; whereas, in other countries, under priestly domination poison has been the prevailing weapon of destruction.

The love of liberty appears to have advanced, and to have characterized the English, in proportion as they have advanced in knowledge and in wealth. All the citizens of a state cannot be equally powerful, but they may be equally free. And this high point of distinction and enjoyment the English, by their firmness and intrepidity, have at length attained.

To be free is to be dependent only on the laws. The English, therefore, have ever loved the laws, as fathers love their children, because they are, or at least think themselves, the framers of them.

A government like this could be established only at a late period; because it was necessary long to struggle with powers which commanded respect, or at least, impressed awe—the power of the pope, the most terrible of all, as it was built on prejudice and ignorance; the royal power ever tending to burst its proper boundary, and which it was requisite, however difficult, to restrain within it; the power of the barons, which was, in fact, an anarchy; the power of the bishops, who, always mixing the sacred with the profane, left no means unattempted to prevail over both barons and kings.

The house of commons gradually became the impregnable mole, which successfully repelled those serious and formidable torrents.

The house of commons is, in reality, the nation; for the king, who is the head, acts only for himself, and what is called his prerogative. The peers are a parliament only for themselves; and the bishops only for themselves, in the same manner.

But the house of commons is for the people, as every member of it is deputed by the people. The people are to the king in the proportion of about eight millions to unity. To the peers and bishops they are as eight millions to, at most, two hundred. And these eight million free citizens are represented by the lower house.

With respect to this establishment or constitution—in comparison with which the republic of Plato is merely a ridiculous reverie, and which might be thought to have been invented by Locke, or Newton, or Halley, or Archimedes—it sprang, in fact, out of abuses, of a most dreadful description, and such as are calculated to make human nature shudder. The inevitable friction of this vast machine nearly proved its destruction in the days of Fairfax and Cromwell. Senseless fanaticism broke into this noble edifice, like a devouring fire that consumes a beautiful building formed only of wood.

In the time of William the Third it was rebuilt of stone. Philosophy destroyed fanaticism, which convulses to their centres states even the most firm and powerful. We cannot easily help believing that a constitution which has regulated the rights of king, lords, and people, and in which every individual finds security, will endure as long as human institutions and concerns shall have a being.

We cannot but believe, also, that all states not established upon similar principles, will experience revolutions.

The English constitution has, in fact, arrived at that point of excellence, in consequence of which all men are restored to those natural rights, which, in nearly all monarchies, they are deprived of. These rights are, entire liberty of person and property; freedom of the press; the right of being tried in all criminal cases by a jury of independent men—the right of being tried only according to the strict letter of the law; and the right of every man to profess, unmolested, what religion he chooses, while he renounces offices, which the members of the Anglican or established church alone can hold. These are denominated privileges. And, in truth, invaluable privileges they are in comparison with the usages of most other nations of the world! To be secure on lying down that you shall rise in possession of the same property with which you retired to rest; that you shall not be torn from the arms of your wife, and from your children, in the dead of might, to be thrown into a dungeon, or buried in exile in a desert; that, when rising from the bed of sleep, you will have the power of publishing all your thoughts; and that, if you are accused of having either acted, spoken, or written wrongly, you can be tried only according to law. These privileges attach to every one who sets his foot on English ground. A foreigner enjoys perfect liberty to dispose of his property and person; and, if accused of any offence, he can demand that half the jury shall be composed of foreigners.

I will venture to assert, that, were the human race solemnly assembled for the purpose of making laws, such are the laws they would make for their security. Why then are they not adopted in other countries? But would it not be equally judicious to ask, why cocoanuts, which are brought to maturity in India, do not ripen at Rome? You answer, these cocoanuts did not always, or for some time, come to maturity in England; that the trees have not been long cultivated; that Sweden, following her example, planted and nursed some of them for several years, but that they did not thrive; and that it is possible to produce such fruit in other provinces, even in Bosnia and Servia. Try and plant the tree then.

And you who bear authority over these benighted people, whether under the name of pasha, effendi, or mollah, let me advise you, although an unpromising subject for advice, not to act the stupid as well as barbarous part of riveting your nations in chains. Reflect, that the heavier you make the people’s yoke, the more completely your own children, who cannot all of them be pashas, will be slaves. Surely you would not be so contemptible a wretch as to expose your whole posterity to groan in chains, for the sake of enjoying a subaltern tyranny for a few days! Oh, how great at present is the distance between an Englishman and a Bosnian!

SECTION VII.

The mixture now existing in the government of England—this concert between the commons, the lords, and the king—did not exist always. England was long a slave. She was so to the Romans, the Saxons, Danes, and French. William the Conqueror, in particular, ruled her with a sceptre of iron. He disposed of the properties and lives of his new subjects like an Oriental despot; he prohibited them from having either fire or candle in their houses after eight o’clock at night, under pain of death: his object being either to prevent nocturnal assemblies among them, or merely, by so capricious and extravagant a prohibition, to show how far the power of some men can extend over others. It is true, that both before as well as after William the Conqueror, the English had parliaments; they made a boast of them; as if the assemblies then called parliaments, made up of tyrannical churchmen and baronial robbers, had been the guardians of public freedom and happiness.

The barbarians, who, from the shores of the Baltic poured over the rest of Europe, brought with them the usage of states or parliaments, about which a vast deal is said and very little known. The kings were not despotic, it is true; and it was precisely on this account that the people groaned in miserable slavery. The chiefs of these savages, who had ravaged France, Italy, Spain, and England, made themselves monarchs. Their captains divided among themselves the estates of the vanquished; hence, the margraves, lairds, barons, and the whole series of the subaltern tyrants, who often contested the spoils of the people with the monarchs, recently advanced to the throne and not firmly fixed on it. These were all birds of prey, battling with the eagle, in order to suck the blood of the doves. Every nation, instead of one good master, had a hundred tyrants. The priests soon took part in the contest. From time immemorial it had been the fate of the Gauls, the Germans, and the islanders of England, to be governed by their druids and the chiefs of their villages, an ancient species of barons, but less tyrannical than their successors. These druids called themselves mediators between God and men; they legislated, they excommunicated, they had the power of life and death. The bishops gradually succeeded to the authority of the druids, under the Goth and Vandal government. The popes put themselves at their head; and, with briefs, bulls, and monks, struck terror into the hearts of kings, whom they sometimes dethroned and occasionally caused to be assassinated, and drew to themselves, as nearly as they were able, all the money of Europe. The imbecile Ina, one of the tyrants of the English heptarchy, was the first who, on a pilgrimage to Rome, submitted to pay St. Peter’s penny—which was about a crown of our money—for every house within his territory. The whole island soon followed this example; England gradually became a province of the pope; and the holy father sent over his legates, from time to time, to levy upon it his exorbitant imposts. John, called Lackland, at length made a full and formal cession of his kingdom to his holiness, by whom he had been excommunicated; the barons, who did not at all find their account in this proceeding, expelled that contemptible king, and substituted in his room Louis VIII., father of St. Louis, king of France. But they soon became disgusted with the new-comer, and obliged him to recross the sea.

While the barons, bishops, and popes were thus harassing and tearing asunder England, where each of the parties strove eagerly to be the dominant one, the people, who form the most numerous, useful, and virtuous portion of a community, consisting of those who study the laws and sciences, merchants, artisans, and even peasants, who exercise at once the most important and the most despised of occupations; the people, I say, were looked down upon equally by all these combatants, as a species of beings inferior to mankind. Far, indeed, at that time, were the commons from having the slightest participation in the government: they were villeins, or serfs of the soil; both their labor and their blood belonged to their masters, who were called “nobles.” The greater number of men in Europe were what they still continue to be in many parts of the world—the serfs of a lord, a species of cattle bought and sold together with the land. It required centuries to get justice done to humanity; to produce an adequate impression of the odious and execrable nature of the system, according to which the many sow, and only the few reap; and surely it may even be considered fortunate for France that the powers of these petty robbers were extinguished there by the legitimate authority of kings, as it was in England by that of the king and nation united.

Happily, in consequence of the convulsions of empires by the contests between sovereigns and nobles, the chains of nations are more or less relaxed. The barons compelled John (Lackland) and Henry III to grant the famous charter, the great object of which, in reality, was to place the king in dependence on the lords, but in which the rest of the nation was a little favored, to induce it, when occasion might require, to range itself in the ranks of its pretended protectors. This great charter, which is regarded as the sacred origin of English liberties, itself clearly shows how very little liberty was understood. The very title proves that the king considered himself absolute by right, and that the barons and clergy compelled him to abate his claim to this absolute power only by the application of superior force. These are the words with which Magna Charta begins: “We grant, of our free will, the following privileges to the archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, and barons, of our kingdom,” etc. Throughout the articles of it, not a word is said of the house of commons; a proof that it did not then exist, or that it existed without power. The freemen of England are specified in it, a melancholy demonstration that there were men who were not free. We perceive, from the thirty-seventh article, that the pretended freemen owed service to their lord. Liberty of such a description had but too strong a similarity to bondage. By the twenty-first article, the king ordains that henceforward his officers shall not take away the horses and ploughs of freemen, without paying for them. This regulation was considered by the people as true liberty, because it freed them from a greater tyranny. Henry VII., a successful warrior and politician, who pretended great attachment to the barons, but who cordially hated and feared them, granted them permission to alienate their lands. In consequence of this, the villeins, who by their industry and skill accumulated property, in the course of time became purchasers of the castles of the illustrious nobles who had ruined themselves by their extravagance, and, gradually, nearly all the landed property of the kingdom changed masters.

The house of commons now advanced in power every day. The families of the old nobility became extinct in the progress of time; and, as in England, correctly speaking, peers only are nobles, there would scarcely have been any nobles in the country, if the kings had not, from time to time, created new barons, and kept up the body of peers, whom they had formerly so much dreaded, to counteract that of the commons, now become too formidable. All the new peers, who compose the upper house, receive from the king their title and nothing more, since none of them have the property of the lands of which they bear the names. One is duke of Dorset, without possessing a single foot of land in Dorsetshire; another is an earl under the name of a certain village, yet scarcely knowing where that village is situated. They have power in the parliament, and nowhere else.

You hear no mention, in this country, of the high, middle, and low courts of justice, nor of the right of chase over the lands of private citizens, who have no right to fire a gun on their own estates.

A man is not exempted from paying particular taxes because he is a noble or a clergyman. All imposts are regulated by the house of commons, which, although subordinate in rank, is superior in credit to that of the lords. The peers and bishops may reject a bill sent up to them by the commons, when the object is to raise money, but they can make no alteration in it: they must admit it or reject it, without restriction. When the bill is confirmed by the lords, and assented to by the king, then all the classes of the nation contribute. Every man pays, not according to his rank—which would be absurd—but according to his revenue. There is no arbitrary taille or capitation, but a real tax on lands. These were all valued in the reign of the celebrated King William. The tax exists still unaltered, although the rents of lands have considerably increased; thus no one is oppressed, and no one complains. The feet of the cultivator are not bruised and mutilated by wooden shoes; he eats white bread; he is well clothed. He is not afraid to increase his farming-stock, nor to roof his cottage with tiles, lest the following year should, in consequence, bring with it an increase of taxation. There are numerous farmers who have an income of about five or six hundred pounds sterling, and still disdain not to cultivate the land which has enriched them, and on which they enjoy the blessing of freedom.

SECTION VIII.

The reader well knows that in Spain, near the coast of Malaga, there was discovered, in the reign of Philip II., a small community, until then unknown, concealed in the recesses of the Alpuxarras mountains. This chain of inaccessible rocks is intersected by luxuriant valleys, and these valleys are still cultivated by the descendants of the Moors, who were forced, for their own happiness, to become Christians, or at least to appear such.

Among these Moors, as I was stating, there was, in the time of Philip, a small society, inhabiting a valley to which there existed no access but through caverns. This valley is situated between Pitos and Portugos. The inhabitants of this secluded abode were almost unknown to the Moors themselves. They spoke a language that was neither Spanish nor Arabic, and which was thought to be derived from that of the ancient Carthaginians.

This society had but little increased in numbers: the reason alleged for which was that the Arabs, their neighbors, and before their time the Africans, were in the practice of coming and taking from them the young women.

These poor and humble, but nevertheless happy, people, had never heard any mention of the Christian or Jewish religions; and knew very little about that of Mahomet, not holding it in any estimation. They offered up, from time immemorial, milk and fruits to a statue of Hercules. This was the amount of their religion. As to other matters, they spent their days in indolence and innocence. They were at length discovered by a familiar of the Inquisition. The grand inquisitor had the whole of them burned. This is the sole event of their history.

The hallowed motives of their condemnation were, that they had never paid taxes, although, in fact, none had ever been demanded of them, and they were totally unacquainted with money; that they were not possessed of any Bible, although they did not understand Latin; and that no person had been at the pains of baptizing them. They were all invested with the san benito, and broiled to death with becoming ceremony.

It is evident that this is a specimen of the true system of government; nothing can so completely contribute to the content, harmony, and happiness of society.

GOURD OR CALABASH.

This fruit grows in America on the branches of a tree as high as the tallest oaks.

Thus, Matthew Garo, who is thought so wrong in Europe for finding fault with gourds creeping on the ground, would have been right in Mexico. He would have been still more in the right in India, where cocoas are very elevated. This proves that we should never hasten to conclusions. What God has made, He has made well, no doubt; and has placed his gourds on the ground in our climates, lest, in falling from on high, they should break Matthew Garo’s nose.

The calabash will only be introduced here to show that we should mistrust the idea that all was made for man. There are people who pretend that the turf is only green to refresh the sight. It would appear, however, that it is rather made for the animals who nibble it than for man, to whom dog-grass and trefoil are useless. If nature has produced the trees in favor of some species, it is difficult to say to which she has given the preference. Leaves, and even bark, nourish a prodigious multitude of insects: birds eat their fruits, and inhabit their branches, in which they build their industriously formed nests, while the flocks repose under their shades.

The author of the “Spectacle de la Nature” pretends that the sea has a flux and reflux, only to facilitate the going out and coming in of our vessels. It appears that even Matthew Garo reasoned better; the Mediterranean, on which so many vessels sail, and which only has a tide in three or four places, destroys the opinion of this philosopher.

Let us enjoy what we have, without believing ourselves the centre and object of all things.

GRACE.

In persons and works, grace signifies, not only that which is pleasing, but that which is attractive; so that the ancients imagined that the goddess of beauty ought never to appear without the graces. Beauty never displeases, but it may be deprived of this secret charm, which invites us to regard it, and sentimentally attracts and fills the soul. Grace in figure, carriage, action, discourse, depends on its attractive merit. A beautiful woman will have no grace, if her mouth be shut without a smile, and if her eyes display no sweetness. The serious is not always graceful, because unattractive, and approaching too near to the severe, which repels.

A well-made man whose carriage is timid or constrained, gait precipitate or heavy, and gestures awkward, has no gracefulness, because he has nothing gentle or attractive in his exterior. The voice of an orator which wants flexibility or softness is without grace.

It is the same in all the arts. Proportion and beauty may not be graceful. It cannot be said that the pyramids of Egypt are graceful; it cannot be said that the Colossus of Rhodes is as much so as the Venus of Cnidus. All that is merely strong and vigorous exhibits not the charm of grace.

It would show but small acquaintance with Michelangelo and Caravaggio to attribute to them the grace of Albano. The sixth book of the “Æneid” is sublime; the fourth has more grace. Some of the gallant odes of Horace breathe gracefulness, as some of his epistles cultivate reason.

It seems, in general, that the little and pretty of all kinds are more susceptible of grace than the large. A funeral oration, a tragedy, or a sermon, are badly praised, if they are only honored with the epithet of graceful.

It is not good for any kind of work to be opposed to grace, for its opposite is rudeness, barbarity, and dryness. The Hercules of Farnese should not have the gracefulness of the Apollo of Belvidere and of Antinous, but it is neither rude nor clumsy. The burning of Troy is not described by Virgil with the graces of an elegy of Tibullus: it pleases by stronger beauties. A work, then, may be deprived of grace, without being in the least disagreeable. The terrible, or horrible, in description, is not to be graceful, neither should it solely affect its opposite; for if an artist, whatever branch he may cultivate, expresses only frightful things, and softens them not by agreeable contrasts, he will repel.

Grace, in painting and sculpture, consists in softness of outline and harmonious expression; and painting, next to sculpture, has grace in the unison of parts, and of figures which animate one another, and which become agreeable by their attributes and their expression.

Graces of diction, whether in eloquence or poetry, depend on choice of words and harmony of phrases, and still more upon delicacy of ideas and smiling descriptions. The abuse of grace is affectation, as the abuse of the sublime is absurdity; all perfection is nearly a fault.

To have grace applies equally to persons and things. This dress, this work, or that woman, is graceful. What is called a good grace applies to manner alone. She presents herself with good grace. He has done that which was expected of him with a good grace. To possess the graces: This woman has grace in her carriage, in all that she says and does.

To obtain grace is, by a metaphor, to obtain pardon, as to grant grace is to grant pardon. We make grace of one thing by taking away all the rest. The commissioners took all his effects and made him a gift—a grace—of his money. To grant graces, to diffuse graces, is the finest privilege of the sovereignty; it is to do good by something more than justice. To have one’s good graces is usually said in relation to a superior: to have a lady’s good graces, is to be her favorite lover. To be in grace, is said of a courtier who has been in disgrace: we should not allow our happiness to depend on the one, nor our misery on the other. Graces, in Greek, are “charities”; a term which signifies amiable.

The graces, divinities of antiquity, are one of the most beautiful allegories of the Greek mythology. As this mythology always varied according either to the imagination of the poets, who were its theologians, or to the customs of the people, the number, names, and attributes of the graces often change; but it was at last agreed to fix them as three, Aglaia, Thalia, and Euphrosyne, that is to say, sparkling, blooming, mirthful. They were always near Venus. No veil should cover their charms. They preside over favors, concord, rejoicings, love, and even eloquence; they were the sensible emblem of all that can render life agreeable. They were painted dancing and holding hands; and every one who entered their temples was crowned with flowers. Those who have condemned the fabulous mythology should at least acknowledge the merit of these lively fictions, which announce truths intimately connected with the felicity of mankind.

GRACE (OF).

SECTION I.

This term, which signifies favor or privilege, is employed in this sense by theologians. They call grace a particular operation of God on mankind, intended to render them just and happy. Some have admitted universal grace, that which God gives to all men, though mankind, according to them, with the exception of a very small number, will be delivered to eternal flames: others admit grace towards Christians of their communion only; and lastly, others only for the elect of that communion.

It is evident that a general grace, which leaves the universe in vice, error, and eternal misery, is not a grace, a favor, or privilege, but a contradiction in terms.

Particular grace, according to theologians, is either in the first place “sufficing,” which if resisted, suffices not—resembling a pardon given by a king to a criminal, who is nevertheless delivered over to the punishment; or “efficacious” when it is not resisted, although it may be resisted; in this case, they just resemble famished guests to whom are presented delicious viands, of which they will surely eat, though, in general, they may be supposed at liberty not to eat; or “necessary,” that is, unavoidable, being nothing more than the chain of eternal decrees and events. We shall take care not to enter into the long and appalling details, subtleties, and sophisms, with which these questions are embarrassed. The object of this dictionary is not to be the vain echo of vain disputes.

St. Thomas calls grace a substantial form, and the Jesuit Bouhours names it a je ne sais quoi; this is perhaps the best definition which has ever been given of it.

If the theologians had wanted a subject on which to ridicule Providence, they need not have taken any other than that which they have chosen. On one side the Thomists assure us that man, in receiving efficacious grace, is not free in the compound sense, but that he is free in the divided sense; on the other, the Molinists invent the medium doctrine of God and congruity, and imagine exciting, preventing, concomitant, and co-operating grace.

Let us quit these bad but seriously constructed jokes of the theologians; let us leave their books, and each consult his common sense; when he will see that all these reasoners have sagaciously deceived themselves, because they have reasoned upon a principle evidently false. They have supposed that God acts upon particular views; now, an eternal God, without general, immutable, and eternal laws, is an imaginary being, a phantom, a god of fable.

Why, in all religions on which men pique themselves on reasoning, have theologians been forced to admit this grace which they do not comprehend? It is that they would have salvation confined to their own sect, and further, they would have this salvation divided among those who are the most submissive to themselves. These particular theologians, or chiefs of parties, divide among themselves. The Mussulman doctors entertain similar opinions and similar disputes, because they have the same interest to actuate them; but the universal theologian, that is to say, the true philosopher, sees that it is contradictory for nature to act on particular or single views; that it is ridiculous to imagine God occupying Himself in forcing one man in Europe to obey Him, while He leaves all the Asiatics intractable; to suppose Him wrestling with another man who sometimes submits, and sometimes disarms Him, and presenting to another a help, which is nevertheless useless. Such grace, considered in a true point of view, is an absurdity. The prodigious mass of books composed on this subject is often an exercise of intellect, but always the shame of reason.

SECTION II.

All nature, all that exists, is the grace of God; He bestows on all animals the grace of form and nourishment. The grace of growing seventy feet high is granted to the fir, and refused to the reed. He gives to man the grace of thinking, speaking, and knowing him; He grants me the grace of not understanding a word of all that Tournelli, Molina, and Soto, have written on the subject of grace.

The first who has spoken of efficacious and gratuitous grace is, without contradiction, Homer. This may be astonishing to a bachelor of theology, who knows no author but St. Augustine; but, if he read the third book of the “Iliad,” he will see that Paris says to his brother Hector: “If the gods have given you valor, and me beauty, do not reproach me with the presents of the beautiful Venus; no gift of the gods is despicable—it does not depend upon man to obtain them.”

Nothing is more positive than this passage. If we further remark that Jupiter, according to his pleasure, gave the victory sometimes to the Greeks, and at others to the Trojans, we shall see a new proof that all was done by grace from on high. Sarpedon, and afterwards Patroclus, are barbarians to whom by turns grace has been wanting.

There have been philosophers who were not of the opinion of Homer. They have pretended that general Providence does not immediately interfere with the affairs of particular individuals; that it governs all by universal laws; that Thersites and Achilles were equal before it, and that neither Chalcas nor Talthybius ever had versatile or congruous graces.

According to these philosophers, the dog-grass and the oak, the mite and the elephant, man, the elements and stars, obey invariable laws, which God, as immutable, has established from all eternity.

SECTION III.

If one were to come from the bottom of hell, to say to us on the part of the devil—Gentlemen, I must inform you that our sovereign lord has taken all mankind for his share, except a small number of people who live near the Vatican and its dependencies—we should all pray of this deputy to inscribe us on the list of the privileged; we should ask him what we must do to obtain this grace.

If he were to answer, You cannot merit it, my master has made the list from the beginning of time; he has only listened to his own pleasure, he is continually occupied in making an infinity of pots-de-chambre and some dozen gold vases; if you are pots-de-chambre so much the worse for you.

At these fine words we should use our pitchforks to send the ambassador back to his master. This is, however, what we have dared to impute to God—to the eternal and sovereignly good being!

Man has been always reproached with having made God in his own image, Homer has been condemned for having transported all the vices and follies of earth into heaven. Plato, who has thus justly reproached him, has not hesitated to call him a blasphemer; while we, a hundred times more thoughtless, hardy, and blaspheming than this Greek, who did not understand conventional language, devoutly accuse God of a thing of which we have never accused the worst of men.

It is said that the king of Morocco, Muley Ismael, had five hundred children. What would you say if a marabout of Mount Atlas related to you that the wise and good Muley Ismael, dining with his family, at the close of the repast, spoke thus:

“I am Muley Ismael, who has forgotten you for my glory, for I am very glorious. I love you very tenderly, I shelter you as a hen covers her chickens; I have decreed that one of my youngest children shall have the kingdom of Tafilet, and that another shall possess Morocco; and for my other dear children, to the number of four hundred and ninety-eight, I order that one-half shall be tortured, and the other half burned, for I am the Lord Muley Ismael.”

You would assuredly take the marabout for the greatest fool that Africa ever produced; but if three or four thousand marabouts, well entertained at your expense, were to repeat to you the same story, what would you do? Would you not be tempted to make them fast upon bread and water until they recovered their senses?

You will allege that my indignation is reasonable enough against the supralapsarians, who believe that the king of Morocco begot these five hundred children only for his glory; and that he had always the intention to torture and burn them, except two, who were destined to reign.

But I am wrong, you say, against the infralapsarians, who avow that it was not the first intention of Muley Ismael to cause his children to perish; but that, having foreseen that they would be of no use, he thought he should be acting as a good father in getting rid of them by torture and fire.

Ah, supralapsarians, infralapsarians, free-gracians, sufficers, efficacians, jansenists, and molinists—become men, and no longer trouble the earth with such absurd and abominable fooleries.

SECTION IV.

Holy advisers of modern Rome, illustrious and infallible theologians, no one has more respect for your divine decisions than I; but if Paulus Æmilius, Scipio, Cato, Cicero, Cæsar, Titus, Trajan, or Marcus Aurelius, revisited that Rome to which they formerly did such credit, you must confess that they would be a little astonished at your decisions on grace. What would they say if they heard you speak of healthful grace according to St. Thomas, and medicinal grace according to Cajetan; of exterior and interior grace, of free, sanctifying, co-operating, actual, habitual, and efficacious grace, which is sometimes inefficacious; of the sufficing which sometimes does not suffice, of the versatile and congruous—would they really comprehend it more than you and I?

What need would these poor people have of your instructions? I fancy I hear them say: “Reverend fathers, you are terrible genii; we foolishly thought that the Eternal Being never conducted Himself by particular laws like vile human beings, but by general laws, eternal like Himself. No one among us ever imagined that God was like a senseless master, who gives an estate to one slave and refuses food to another; who orders one with a broken arm to knead a loaf, and a cripple to be his courier.

All is grace on the part of God; He has given to the globe we inhabit the grace of form; to the trees the grace of making them grow; to animals that of feeding them; but will you say, because one wolf finds in his road a lamb for his supper, while another is dying with hunger, that God has given the first wolf a particular grace? Is it a preventive grace to cause one oak to grow in preference to another in which sap is wanting? If throughout nature all being is submitted to general laws, how can a single species of animals avoid conforming to them?

Why should the absolute master of all be more occupied in directing the interior of a single man than in conducting the remainder of entire nature? By what caprice would He change something in the heart of a Courlander or a Biscayan, while He changes nothing in the general laws which He has imposed upon all the stars.

What a pity to suppose that He is continually making, defacing, and renewing our sentiments! And what audacity in us to believe ourselves excepted from all beings! And further, is it not only for those who confess that these changes are imagined? A Savoyard, a Bergamask, on Monday, will have the grace to have a mass said for twelve sous; on Tuesday he will go to the tavern and have no grace; on Wednesday he will have a co-operating grace, which will conduct him to confession, but he will not have the efficacious grace of perfect contrition; on Thursday there will be a sufficing grace which will not suffice, as has been already said. God will labor in the head of this Bergamask—sometimes strongly, sometimes weakly, while the rest of the earth will no way concern Him! He will not deign to meddle with the interior of the Indians and Chinese! If you possess a grain of reason, reverend fathers, do you not find this system prodigiously ridiculous?

Poor, miserable man! behold this oak which rears its head to the clouds, and this reed which bends at its feet; you do not say that efficacious grace has been given to the oak and withheld from the reed. Raise your eyes to heaven; see the eternal Demiourgos creating millions of worlds, which gravitate towards one another by general and eternal laws. See the same light reflected from the sun to Saturn, and from Saturn to us; and in this grant of so many stars, urged onward in their rapid course; in this general obedience of all nature, dare to believe, if you can, that God is occupied in giving a versatile grace to Sister Theresa, or a concomitant one to Sister Agnes.

Atom—to which another foolish atom has said that the Eternal has particular laws for some atoms of thy neighborhood; that He gives His grace to that one and refuses it to this; that such as had not grace yesterday shall have it to-morrow—repeat not this folly. God has made the universe, and creates not new winds to remove a few straws in one corner of the universe. Theologians are like the combatants in Homer, who believed that the gods were sometimes armed for and sometimes against them. Had Homer not been considered a poet, he would be deemed a blasphemer.

It is Marcus Aurelius who speaks, and not I; for God, who inspires you, has given me grace to believe all that you say, all that you have said, and all that you will say.

GRAVE—GRAVITY.

Grave, in its moral meaning, always corresponds with its physical one; it expresses something of weight; thus, we say—a person, an author, or a maxim of weight, for a grave person, author, or maxim. The grave is to the serious what the lively is to the agreeable. It is one degree more of the same thing, and that degree a considerable one. A man may be serious by temperament, and even from want of ideas. He is grave, either from a sense of decorum, or from having ideas of depth and importance, which induce gravity. There is a difference between being grave and being a grave man. It is a fault to be unseasonably grave. He who is grave in society is seldom much sought for; but a grave man is one who acquires influence and authority more by his real wisdom than his external carriage.

Tum pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem

Conspexere, silent, adrectisque auribus adstant.

—Virgil’sÆneid, i. 151.

If then some grave and pious man appear,

They hush their noise, and lend a listening ear.

—Dryden.

A decorous air should be always preserved, but a grave air is becoming only in the function of some high and important office, as, for example, in council. When gravity consists, as is frequently the case, only in the exterior carriage, frivolous remarks are delivered with a pompous solemnity, exciting at once ridicule and aversion. We do not easily pardon those who wish to impose upon us by this air of consequence and self-sufficiency.

The duke de La Rochefoucauld said “Gravity is a mysteriousness of body assumed in order to conceal defects of mind.” Without investigating whether the phrase “mysteriousness of body” is natural and judicious, it is sufficient to observe that the remark is applicable to all who affect gravity, but not to those who merely exhibit a gravity suitable to the office they hold, the place where they are, or the business in which they are engaged.

A grave author is one whose opinions relate to matters obviously disputable. We never apply the term to one who has written on subjects which admit no doubt or controversy. It would be ridiculous to call Euclid and Archimedes grave authors.

Gravity is applicable to style. Livy and de Thou have written with gravity. The same observations cannot with propriety be applied to Tacitus, whose object was brevity, and who has displayed malignity; still less can it be applied to Cardinal de Retz, who sometimes infuses into his writings a misplaced gayety, and sometimes even forgets decency.

The grave style declines all sallies of wit or pleasantry; if it sometimes reaches the sublime, if on any particular occasion it is pathetic, it speedily returns to the didactic wisdom and noble simplicity which habitually characterizes it; it possesses strength without daring. Its greatest difficulty is to avoid monotony.

A grave affair (affaire), a grave case (cas), is used concerning a criminal rather than a civil process. A grave disease implies danger.

GREAT—GREATNESS.

Of the Meaning of These Words.

Great is one of those words which are most frequently used in a moral sense, and with the least consideration and judgment. Great man, great genius, great captain, great philosopher, great poet; we mean by this language “one who has far exceeded ordinary limits.” But, as it is difficult to define those limits, the epithet “great” is often applied to those who possess only mediocrity.

This term is less vague and doubtful when applied to material than to moral subjects. We know what is meant by a great storm, a great misfortune, a great disease, great property, great misery.

The term “large” (gros) is sometimes used with respect to subjects of the latter description, that is, material ones, as equivalent to great, but never with respect to moral subjects. We say large property for great wealth, but not a large captain for a great captain, or a large minister for a great minister. Great financier means a man eminently skilful in matters of national finance; but gros financier expresses merely a man who has become wealthy in the department of finance.

The great man is more difficult to be defined than the great artist. In an art or profession, the man who has far distanced his rivals, or who has the reputation of having done so, is called great in his art, and appears, therefore, to have required merit of only one description in order to obtain this eminence; but the great man must combine different species of merit. Gonsalvo, surnamed the Great Captain, who observed that “the web of honor was coarsely woven,” was never called a great man. It is more easy to name those to whom this high distinction should be refused than those to whom it should be granted. The denomination appears to imply some great virtues. All agree that Cromwell was the most intrepid general, the most profound statesman, the man best qualified to conduct a party, a parliament, or an army, of his day; yet no writer ever gives him the title of great man; because, although he possessed great qualities, he possessed not a single great virtue.

This title seems to fall to the lot only of the small number of men who have been distinguished at once by virtues, exertions, and success. Success is essential, because the man who is always unfortunate is supposed to be so by his own fault.

Great (grand), by itself, expresses some dignity. In Spain it is a high and most distinguishing appellative (grandee) conferred by the king on those whom he wishes to honor. The grandees are covered in the presence of the king, either before speaking to him or after having spoken to him, or while taking their seats with the rest.

Charles the Fifth conferred the privileges of grandeeship on sixteen principal noblemen. That emperor himself afterwards granted the same honors to many others. His successors, each in his turn, have added to the number. The Spanish grandees have long claimed to be considered of equal rank and dignity with the electors and the princes of Italy. At the court of France they have the same honors as peers.

The title of “great” has been always given, in France, to many of the chief officers of the crown—as great seneschal, great master, great chamberlain, great equerry, great pantler, great huntsman, great falconer. These titles were given them to distinguish their pre-eminence above the persons serving in the same departments under them. The distinction is not given to the constable, nor to the chancellor, nor to the marshals, although the constable is the chief of all the household officers, the chancellor the second person in the state, and the marshal the second officer in the army. The reason obviously is, that they had no deputies, no vice-constables, vice-marshals, vice-chancellors, but officers under another denomination who executed their orders, while the great steward, great chamberlain, and great equerry, etc., had stewards, chamberlains, and equerries under them.

Great (grand) in connection with seigneur, “great lord,” has a signification more extensive and uncertain. We give this title of “grand seigneur” (seignor) to the Turkish sultan, who assumes that of pasha, to which the expression grand seignor does not correspond. The expression “un grand,” a “great man,” is used in speaking of a man of distinguished birth, invested with dignities, but it is used only by the common people. A person of birth or consequence never applies the term to any one. As the words “great lord” (grand seigneur) are commonly applied to those who unite birth, dignity, and riches, poverty seems to deprive a man of the right to it, or at least to render it inappropriate or ridiculous. Accordingly, we say a poor gentleman, but not a poor grand seigneur.

Great (grand) is different from mighty (puissant). A man may at the same time be both one and the other, but puissant implies the possession of some office of power and consequence. “Grand” indicates more show and less reality; the “puissant” commands, the “grand” possesses honors.

There is greatness (grandeur) in mind, in sentiments, in manners, and in conduct. The expression is not used in speaking of persons in the middling classes of society, but only of those who, by their rank, are bound to show nobility and elevation. It is perfectly true that a man of the most obscure birth and connections may have more greatness of mind than a monarch. But it would be inconsistent with the usual phraseology to say, “that merchant or that farmer acted greatly” (avec grandeur); unless, indeed, in very particular circumstances, and placing certain characters in striking opposition, we should, for example, make such a remark as the following: “The celebrated merchant who entertained Charles the Fifth in his own house, and lighted a fire of cinnamon wood with that prince’s bond to him for fifty thousand ducats, displayed more greatness of soul than the emperor.”

The title of “greatness” (grandeur) was formerly given to various persons possessing stations of dignity. French clergymen, when writing to bishops, still call them “your greatness.” Those titles, which are lavished by sycophancy and caught at by vanity, are now little used.

Haughtiness is often mistaken for greatness (grandeur). He who is ostentatious of greatness displays vanity. But one becomes weary and exhausted with writing about greatness. According to the lively remark of Montaigne, “we cannot obtain it, let us therefore take our revenge by abusing it.”

GREEK.

Observations Upon the Extinction of the Greek Language at Marseilles.

It is exceedingly strange that, as Marseilles was founded by a Greek colony, scarcely any vestige of the Greek language is to be found in Provence Languedoc, or any district of France; for we cannot consider as Greek the terms which were taken, at a comparatively modern date, from the Latins, and which had been adopted by the Romans themselves from the Greeks so many centuries before. We received those only at second hand. We have no right to say that we abandoned the word Got for that of Theos, rather than that of Deus, from which, by a barbarous termination, we have made Dieu.

It is clear that the Gauls, having received the Latin language with the Roman laws, and having afterwards received from those same Romans the Christian religion, adopted from them all the terms which were connected with that religion. These same Gauls did not acquire, until a late period, the Greek terms which relate to medicine, anatomy, and surgery.

After deducting all the words originally Greek which we have derived through the Latin, and all the anatomical and medical terms which were, in comparison, so recently acquired, there is scarcely anything left; for surely, to derive “abréger” from “brakus,” rather than from “abreviare”; “acier” from “axi,” rather than from “acies”; “acre” from “agros,” rather than from “ager”; and “aile” from “ily,” rather than from “ala”—this, I say, would surely be perfectly ridiculous.

Some have even gone so far as to say that “omelette” comes from “omeilaton,” because “meli” in Greek signifies honey, and “oon” an egg. In the “Garden of Greek Roots” there is a more curious derivation still; it is pretended that “dîner” (dinner) comes from “deipnein,” which signifies supper.

As some may be desirous of possessing a list of the Greek words which the Marseilles colony may have introduced into the language of the Gauls, independently of those which came through the Romans, we present the following one:

Aboyer, perhaps from bauzein.

Affre, affreux, from afronos.

Agacer, perhaps from anaxein.

Alali, a Greek war-cry.

Babiller, perhaps from babazo.

Balle, from ballo.

Bas, from batys.

Blesser, from the aorist of blapto.

Bouteille, from bouttis.

Bride, from bryter.

Brique, from bryka.

Coin, from gonia.

Colère, from chole.

Colle, from colla.

Couper, from copto.

Cuisse, perhaps from ischis.

Entraille, from entera.

Ermite, from eremos.

Fier, from fiaros.

Gargarizer, from gargarizein.

Idiot, from idiotes.

Maraud, from miaros.

Moquer, from mokeuo.

Moustache, from mustax.

Orgueil, from orge.

Page, from pais.

Siffler, perhaps from siffloo.

Tuer, thuein.

I am astonished to find so few words remaining of a language spoken at Marseilles, in the time of Augustus, in all its purity; and I am particularly astonished to find the greater number of the Greek words preserved in Provence, signifying things of little or no utility, while those used to express things of the first necessity and importance are utterly lost. We have not a single one remaining that signifies land, sea, sky, the sun, the moon, rivers, or the principal parts of the human body; the words used for which might have been expected to be transmitted down from the beginning through every succeeding age. Perhaps we must attribute the cause of this to the Visigoths, the Burgundians, and the Franks; to the horrible barbarism of all those nations which laid waste the Roman Empire, a barbarism of which so many traces yet remain.

GUARANTEE.

A guarantee is a pledge by which a person renders himself responsible to another for something, and binds himself to secure him in the enjoyment of it. The word (garant) is derived from the Celtic and Teutonic “warrant.” In all the words which we have retained from those ancient languages we have changed the w into g. Among the greater number of the nations of the North “warrant” still signifies assurance, guaranty; and in this sense it means, in English, an order of the king, as signifying the pledge of the king. When in the middle ages kings concluded treaties, they were guaranteed on both sides by a considerable number of knights, who bound themselves by oath to see that the treaty was observed, and even, when a superior education qualified them to do so, which sometimes happened, signed their names to it. When the emperor Frederick Barbarossa ceded so many rights to Pope Alexander III. at the celebrated congress of Venice, in 1117, the emperor put his seal to the instrument which the pope and cardinals signed. Twelve princes of the empire guaranteed the treaty by an oath upon the gospel; but none of them signed it. It is not said that the doge of Venice guaranteed that peace which was concluded in his palace. When Philip Augustus made peace in 1200 with King John of England, the principal barons of France and Normandy swore to the due observance of it, as cautionary or guaranteeing parties. The French swore that they would take arms against their king if he violated his word, and the Normans, in like manner, to oppose their sovereign if he did not adhere to his. One of the constables of the Montmorency family, after a negotiation with one of the earls of March, in 1227, swore to the observance of the treaty upon the soul of the king.

The practice of guaranteeing the states of a third party was of great antiquity, although under a different name. The Romans in this manner guaranteed the possessions of many of the princes of Asia and Africa, by taking them under their protection until they secured to themselves the possession of the territories thus protected. We must regard as a mutual guaranty the ancient alliance between France and Castile, of king to king, kingdom to kingdom, and man to man.

We do not find any treaty in which the guaranty of the states of a third party is expressly stipulated for before that which was concluded between Spain and the states-general in 1609, by the mediation of Henry IV. He procured from Philip III., king of Spain, the recognition of the United Provinces as free and sovereign states. He signed the guaranty of this sovereignty of the seven provinces, and obtained the signature of the same instrument from the king of Spain; and the republic acknowledged that it owed its freedom to the interference of the French monarch. It is principally within our own times that treaties of guaranty have become comparatively frequent. Unfortunately these engagements have occasionally produced ruptures and war; and it is clearly ascertained that the best of all possible guaranties is power.

GREGORY VII.

Bayle himself, while admitting that Gregory was the firebrand of Europe, concedes to him the denomination of a great man. “That old Rome,” says he, “which plumed itself upon conquests and military virtue, should have brought so many other nations under its dominion, redounds, according to the general maxims of mankind, to her credit and glory; but, upon the slightest reflection, can excite little surprise. On the other hand, it is a subject of great surprise to see new Rome, which pretended to value itself only on an apostolic ministry, possessed of an authority under which the greatest monarchs have been constrained to bend. Caron may observe, with truth, that there is scarcely a single emperor who has opposed the popes without feeling bitter cause to regret his resistance. Even at the present day the conflicts of powerful princes with the court of Rome almost always terminate in their confusion.”

I am of a totally different opinion from Bayle. There will probably be many of a different one from mine. I deliver it however with freedom, and let him who is willing and able refute it.

1. The differences of the princes of Orange and the seven provinces with Rome did not terminate in their confusion; and Bayle, who, while at Amsterdam, could set Rome at defiance, was a happy illustration of the contrary.

The triumphs of Queen Elizabeth, of Gustavus Vasa in Sweden, of the kings of Denmark, of all the princes of the north of Germany, of the finest part of Helvetia, of the single and small city of Geneva—the triumphs, I say, of all these over the policy of the Roman court are perfectly satisfactory testimonies that it may be easily and successfully resisted, both in affairs of religion and government.

2. The sacking of Rome by the troops of Charles the Fifth; the pope (Clement VII.) a prisoner in the castle of St. Angelo; Louis XIV. compelling Pope Alexander VII. to ask his pardon, and erecting even in Rome itself a monument of the pope’s submission; and, within our own times, the easy subversion of that steady, and apparently most formidable support of the papal power, the society of Jesuits in Spain, in France, in Naples, in Goa, and in Paraguay—all this furnishes decisive evidence, that, when potent princes are in hostility with Rome, the quarrel is not terminated in their confusion; they may occasionally bend before the storm, but they will not eventually be overthrown.

When the popes walked on the heads of kings, when they conferred crowns by a parchment bull, it appears to me, that at this extreme height of their power and grandeur they did no more than the caliphs, who were the successors of Mahomet, did in the very period of their decline. Both of them, in the character of priests, conferred the investiture of empires, in solemn ceremony, on the most powerful of contending parties.

3. Maimbourg says: “What no pope ever did before, Gregory VIII. did, depriving Henry IV. of his dignity of emperor, and of his kingdoms of Germany and Italy.”

Maimbourg is mistaken. Pope Zachary had, long before that, placed a crown on the head of the Austrasian Pepin, who usurped the kingdom of the Franks; and Pope Leo III. had declared the son of that Pepin emperor of the West, and thereby deprived the empress Irene of the whole of that empire; and from that time, it must be admitted, there has not been a single priest of the Romish church who has not imagined that his bishop enjoyed the disposal of all crowns.

This maxim was always turned to account when it was possible to be so. It was considered as a consecrated weapon, deposited in the sacristy of St. John of Lateran, which might be drawn forth in solemn and impressive ceremony on every occasion that required it. This prerogative is so commanding; it raises to such a height the dignity of an exorcist born at Velletri or Cività Vecchia, that if Luther, Œcolampadius, John Calvin, and all the prophets of the Cévennes, had been natives of any miserable village near Rome, and undergone the tonsure there, they would have supported that church with the same rage which they actually manifested for its destruction.

4. Everything, then, depends on the time and place of a man’s birth, and the circumstances by which he is surrounded. Gregory VII. was born in an age of barbarism, ignorance, and superstition; and he had to deal with a young, debauched, inexperienced emperor, deficient in money, and whose power was contested by all the powerful lords of Germany.

We cannot believe, that, from the time of the Austrasian Charlemagne, the Roman people ever paid very willing obedience to Franks or Teutonians: they hated them as much as the genuine old Romans would have hated the Cimbri, if the Cimbri had obtained dominion in Italy. The Othos had left behind them in Rome a memory that was execrated, because they had enjoyed great power there; and, after the time of the Othos, Europe it is well known became involved in frightful anarchy.

This anarchy was not more effectually restrained under the emperors of the house of Franconia. One-half of Germany was in insurrection against Henry IV. The countess Mathilda, grand duchess, his cousin-german, more powerful than himself in Italy, was his mortal enemy. She possessed, either as fiefs of the empire, or as allodial property, the whole duchy of Tuscany, the territory of Cremona, Ferrara, Mantua, and Parma; a part of the Marches of Ancona, Reggio, Modena, Spoleto, and Verona; and she had rights, that is to say pretensions, to the two Burgundies; for the imperial chancery claimed those territories, according to its regular practice of claiming everything.

We admit, that Gregory VII. would have been little less than an idiot had he not exerted his strongest efforts to secure a complete influence over this powerful princess; and to obtain, by her means, a point of support and protection against the Germans. He became her director, and, after being her director, her heir.

I shall not, in this place, examine whether he was really her lover, or whether he only pretended to be so; or whether his enemies merely pretended it; or whether, in his idle moments, the assuming and ardent little director did not occasionally abuse the influence he possessed with his penitent, and prevail over a feeble and capricious woman. In the course of human events nothing can be more natural or common; but as usually no registers are kept of such cases; as those interesting intimacies between the directors and directed do not take place before witnesses, and as Gregory has been reproached with this imputation only by his enemies, we ought not to confound accusation with proof. It is quite enough that Gregory claimed the whole of his penitent’s property.

5. The donation which he procured to be made to himself by the countess Mathilda, in the year 1077, is more than suspected. And one proof that it is not to be relied upon is that not merely was this deed never shown, but that, in a second deed, the first is stated to have been lost. It was pretended that the donation had been made in the fortress of Canossa, and in the second act it is said to have been made at Rome. These circumstances may be considered as confirming the opinion of some antiquaries, a little too scrupulous, who maintain that out of a thousand grants made in those times—and those times were of long duration—there are more than nine hundred evidently counterfeit.

There have been two sorts of usurpers in our quarter of the world, Europe—robbers and forgers.

6. Bayle, although allowing the title of Great to Gregory, acknowledges at the same time that this turbulent man disgraced his heroism by his prophecies. He had the audacity to create an emperor, and in that he did well, as the emperor Henry IV. had made a pope. Henry deposed him, and he deposed Henry. So far there is nothing to which to object—both sides are equal. But Gregory took it into his head to turn prophet; he predicted the death of Henry IV. for the year 1080; but Henry IV. conquered, and the pretended emperor Rudolph was defeated and slain in Thuringia by the famous Godfrey of Bouillon, a man more truly great than all the other three. This proves, in my opinion, that Gregory had more enthusiasm than talent.

I subscribe with all my heart to the remark of Bayle, that “when a man undertakes to predict the future, he is provided against everything by a face of brass, and an inexhaustible magazine of equivocations.” But your enemies deride your equivocations; they also have a face of brass like yourself; and they expose you as a knave, a braggart, and a fool.

7. Our great man ended his public career with witnessing the taking of Rome by assault, in the year 1083. He was besieged in the castle, since called St. Angelo, by the same emperor Henry IV., whom he had dared to dispossess, and died in misery and contempt at Salerno, under the protection of Robert Guiscard the Norman.

I ask pardon of modern Rome, but when I read the history of the Scipios, the Catos, the Pompeys, and the Cæsars, I find a difficulty in ranking with them a factious monk who was made a pope under the name of Gregory VII.

But our Gregory has obtained even a yet finer title; he has been made a saint, at least at Rome. It was the famous cardinal Coscia who effected this canonization under Pope Benedict XIII. Even an office or service of St. Gregory VII. was printed, in which it was said, that that saint “absolved the faithful from the allegiance which they had sworn to their emperor.”

Many parliaments of the kingdom were desirous of having this legend burned by the executioner: but Bentivoglio, the nuncio—who kept one of the actresses at the opera, of the name of Constitution, as his mistress, and had by her a daughter called la Légende; a man otherwise extremely amiable, and a most interesting companion—procured from the ministry a mitigation of the threatened storm; and, after passing sentence of condemnation on the legend of St. Gregory, the hostile party were contented to suppress it and to laugh at it.

Geneva, Voltaire’s home in the suburbs.

VOLTAIRE

A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY Vol. V—Part II

A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY.

HAPPY—HAPPILY.

What is called happiness is an abstract idea, composed of various ideas of pleasure; for he who has but a moment of pleasure is not a happy man, in like manner that a moment of grief constitutes not a miserable one. Pleasure is more transient than happiness, and happiness than felicity. When a person says—I am happy at this moment, he abuses the word, and only means I am pleased. When pleasure is continuous, he may then call himself happy. When this happiness lasts a little longer, it is a state of felicity. We are sometimes very far from being happy in prosperity, just as a surfeited invalid eats nothing of a great feast prepared for him.

The ancient adage, “No person should be called happy before his death,” seems to turn on very false principles, if we mean by this maxim that we should not give the name of happy to a man who had been so constantly from his birth to his last hour. This continuity of agreeable moments is rendered impossible by the constitution of our organs, by that of the elements on which we depend, and by that of mankind, on whom we depend still more. Constant happiness is the philosopher’s stone of the soul; it is a great deal for us not to be a long time unhappy. A person whom we might suppose to have always enjoyed a happy life, who perishes miserably, would certainly merit the appellation of happy until his death, and we might boldly pronounce that he had been the happiest of men. Socrates might have been the happiest of the Greeks, although superstitious, absurd, or iniquitous judges, or all together, juridically poisoned him at the age of seventy years, on the suspicion that he believed in only one God.

The philosophical maxim so much agitated, “Nemo ante obitum felix,” therefore, appears absolutely false in every sense; and if it signifies that a happy man may die an unhappy death, it signifies nothing of consequence.

The proverb of being “Happy as a king” is still more false. Everybody knows how the vulgar deceive themselves.

It is asked, if one condition is happier than another; if man in general is happier than woman. It would be necessary to have tried all conditions, to have been man and woman like Tiresias and Iphis, to decide this question; still more would it be necessary to have lived in all conditions, with a mind equally proper to each; and we must have passed through all the possible states of man and woman to judge of it.

It is further queried, if of two men one is happier than the other. It is very clear that he who has the gout and stone, who loses his fortune, his honor, his wife and children, and who is condemned to be hanged immediately after having been mangled, is less happy in this world in everything than a young, vigorous sultan, or La Fontaine’s cobbler.

But we wish to know which is the happier of two men equally healthy, equally rich, and of an equal condition. It is clear that it is their temper which decides it. The most moderate, the least anxious, and at the same time the most sensible, is the most happy; but unfortunately the most sensible is often the least moderate. It is not our condition, it is the temper of our souls which renders us happy. This disposition of our souls depends on our organs, and our organs have been arranged without our having the least part in the arrangement.

It belongs to the reader to make his reflections on the above. There are many articles on which he can say more than we ought to tell him. In matters of art, it is necessary to instruct him; in affairs of morals, he should be left to think for himself.

There are dogs whom we caress, comb, and feed with biscuits, and whom we give to pretty females: there are others which are covered with the mange, which die of hunger; others which we chase and beat, and which a young surgeon slowly dissects, after having driven four great nails into their paws. Has it depended upon these poor dogs to be happy or unhappy?

We say a happy thought, a happy feature, a happy repartee, a happy physiognomy, happy climate, etc. These thoughts, these happy traits, which strike like sudden inspirations, and which are called the happy sallies of a man of wit, strike like flashes of light across our eyes, without our seeking it. They are no more in our power than a happy physiognomy; that is to say, a sweet and noble aspect, so independent of us, and so often deceitful. The happy climate is that which nature favors: so are happy imaginations, so is happy genius, or great talent. And who can give himself genius? or who, when he has received some ray of this flame, can preserve it always brilliant?

When we speak of a happy rascal, by this word we only comprehend his success. “Felix Sulla”—the fortunate Sulla, and Alexander VI., a duke of Borgia, have happily pillaged, betrayed, poisoned, ravaged, and assassinated. But being villains, it is very likely that they were very unhappy, even when not in fear of persons resembling themselves.

It may happen to an ill-disposed person, badly educated—a Turk, for example, of whom it ought to be said, that he is permitted to doubt the Christian faith—to put a silken cord round the necks of his viziers, when they are rich; to strangle, massacre, or throw his brothers into the Black Sea, and to ravage a hundred leagues of country for his glory. It may happen, I say, that this man has no more remorse than his mufti, and is very happy—on all which the reader may duly ponder.

There were formerly happy planets, and others unhappy, or unfortunate; unhappily, they no longer exist. Some people would have deprived the public of this useful Dictionary—happily, they have not succeeded.

Ungenerous minds, and absurd fanatics, every day endeavor to prejudice the powerful and the ignorant against philosophers. If they were unhappily listened to, we should fall back into the barbarity from which philosophers alone have withdrawn us.

HEAVEN (CIEL MATÉRIEL).

The laws of optics, which are founded upon the nature of things, have ordained that, from this small globe of earth on which we live, we shall always see the material heaven as if we were the centre of it, although we are far from being that centre; that we shall always see it as a vaulted roof, hanging over a plane, although there is no other vaulted roof than that of our atmosphere, which has no such plane; that our sun and moon will always appear one-third larger at the horizon than at their zenith, although they are nearer the spectator at the zenith than at the horizon.

Such are the laws of optics, such is the structure of your eyes, that, in the first place, the material heaven, the clouds, the moon, the sun, which is at so vast a distance from you; the planets, which in their apogee are still at a greater distance from it; all the stars placed at distances yet vastly greater, comets and meteors, everything, must appear to us in that vaulted roof as consisting of our atmosphere.

The sun appears to us, when in its zenith, smaller than when at fifteen degrees below; at thirty degrees below the zenith it will appear still larger than at fifteen; and finally, at the horizon, its size will seem larger yet; so that its dimensions in the lower heaven decrease in consequence of its elevations, in the following proportions:

At the horizon | 100
At fifteen degrees above |   68
At thirty degrees |   50
At forty-five degrees |   40

Its apparent magnitudes in the vaulted roof are as its apparent elevations; and it is the same with the moon, and with a comet.

It is not habit, it is not the intervention of tracts of land, it is not the refraction of the atmosphere which produces this effect. Malebranche and Régis have disputed with each other on this subject; but Robert Smith has calculated.

Observe the two stars, which, being at a prodigious distance from each other, and at very different depths, in the immensity of space, are here considered as placed in the circle which the sun appears to traverse. You perceive them distant from each other in the great circle, but approximating to each other in every circle smaller, or within that described by the path of the sun.

It is in this manner that you see the material heaven. It is by these invariable laws of optics that you perceive the planets sometimes retrograde and sometimes stationary; there is in fact nothing of the kind. Were you stationed in the sun, we should perceive all the planets and comets moving regularly round it in those elliptical orbits which God assigns. But we are upon the planet of the earth, in a corner of the universe, where it is impossible for us to enjoy the sight of everything.

Let us not then blame the errors of our senses, like Malebranche; the steady laws of nature originating in the immutable will of the Almighty, and adapted to the structure of our organs, cannot be errors.

We can see only the appearances of things, and not things themselves. We are no more deceived when the sun, the work of the divinity—that star a million times larger than our earth—appears to us quite flat and two feet in width, than when, in a convex mirror, which is the work of our own hands, we see a man only a few inches high.

If the Chaldæan magi were the first who employed the understanding which God bestowed upon them, to measure and arrange in their respective stations the heavenly bodies, other nations more gross and unintelligent made no advance towards imitating them.

These childish and savage populations imagined the earth to be flat, supported, I know not how, by its own weight in the air; the sun, moon, and stars to move continually upon a solid vaulted roof called a firmament; and this roof to sustain waters, and have flood-gates at regular distances, through which these waters issued to moisten and fertilize the earth.

But how did the sun, the moon, and all the stars reappear after their setting? Of this they know nothing at all. The heaven touched the flat earth: and there were no means by which the sun, moon, and stars could turn under the earth, and go to rise in the east after having set in the west. It is true that these children of ignorance were right by chance in not entertaining the idea that the sun and fixed stars moved round the earth. But they were far from conceiving that the sun was immovable, and the earth with its satellite revolving round him in space together with the other planets. Their fables were more distant from the true system of the world than darkness from light.

They thought that the sun and stars returned by certain unknown roads after having refreshed themselves for their course at some spot, not precisely ascertained, in the Mediterranean Sea. This was the amount of astronomy, even in the time of Homer, who is comparatively recent; for the Chaldæans kept their science to themselves, in order to obtain thereby, greater respect from other nations. Homer says, more than once, that the sun plunges into the ocean—and this ocean, be it observed, is nothing but the Nile—here, by the freshness of the waters, he repairs during the night the fatigue and exhaustion of the day, after which, he goes to the place of his regular rising by ways unknown to mortals. This idea is very like that of Baron Fœneste, who says, that the cause of our not seeing the sun when he goes back, is that he goes back by night.

As, at that time, the nations of Syria and the Greeks were somewhat acquainted with Asia and a small part of Europe, and had no notion of the countries which lie to the north of the Euxine Sea and to the south of the Nile, they laid it down as a certainty that the earth was a full third longer than it was wide; consequently the heaven, which touched the earth and embraced it, was also longer than it was wide. Hence came down to us degrees of longitude and latitude, names which we have always retained, although with far more correct ideas than those which originally suggested them.

The Book of Job, composed by an ancient Arab who possessed some knowledge of astronomy, since he speaks of the constellations, contains nevertheless the following passage: “Where wert thou, when I laid the foundation of the earth? Who hath taken the dimensions thereof? On what are its foundations fixed? Who hath laid the cornerstone thereof?”

The least informed schoolboy, at the present day, would tell him, in answer: “The earth has neither cornerstone nor foundation; and, as to its dimensions, we know them perfectly well, as from Magellan to Bougainville, various navigators have sailed round it.”

The same schoolboy would put to silence the pompous declaimer Lactantius, and all those who before and since his time have decided that the earth was fixed upon the water, and that there can be no heaven under the earth; and that, consequently, it is both ridiculous and impious to suppose the existence of antipodes.

It is curious to observe with what disdain, with what contemptuous pity, Lactantius looks down upon all the philosophers, who, from about four hundred years before his time, had begun to be acquainted with the apparent revolutions of the sun and planets, with the roundness of the earth, and the liquid and yielding nature of the heaven through which the planets revolved in their orbits, etc. He inquires, “by what degrees philosophers attained such excess of folly as to conceive the earth to be a globe, and to surround that globe with heaven.” These reasonings are upon a par with those he has adduced on the subject of the sibyls.

Our young scholar would address some such language as this to all these consequential doctors: “You are to learn that there are no such things as solid heavens placed one over another, as you have been told; that there are no real circles in which the stars move on a pretended firmament; that the sun is the centre of our planetary world; and that the earth and the planets move round it in space, in orbits not circular but elliptical. You must learn that there is, in fact, neither above nor below, but that the planets and the comets tend all towards the sun, their common centre, and that the sun tends towards them, according to an eternal law of gravitation.”

Lactantius and his gabbling associates would be perfectly astonished, were the true system of the world thus unfolded to them.

HEAVEN OF THE ANCIENTS.

Were a silkworm to denominate the small quantity of downy substance surrounding its ball, heaven, it would reason just as correctly as all the ancients, when they applied that term to the atmosphere; which, as M. de Fontenelle has well observed in his “Plurality of Worlds,” is the down of our ball.

The vapors which rise from our seas and land, and which form the clouds, meteors, and thunder, were supposed, in the early ages of the world, to be the residence of gods. Homer always makes the gods descend in clouds of gold; and hence painters still represent them seated on a cloud. How can any one be seated on water? It was perfectly correct to place the master of the gods more at ease than the rest; he had an eagle to carry him, because the eagle soars higher than the other birds.

The ancient Greeks, observing that the lords of cities resided in citadels on the tops of mountains, supposed that the gods might also have their citadel, and placed it in Thessaly, on Mount Olympus, whose summit is sometimes hidden in clouds; so that their palace was on the same floor with their heaven.

Afterwards, the stars and planets, which appear fixed to the blue vault of our atmosphere, became the abodes of gods; seven of them had each a planet, and the rest found a lodging where they could. The general council of gods was held in a spacious hall which lay beyond the Milky Way; for it was but reasonable that the gods should have a hall in the air, as men had town-halls and courts of assembly upon earth.

When the Titans, a species of animal between gods and men, declared their just and necessary war against these same gods in order to recover a part of their patrimony, by the father’s side, as they were the sons of heaven and earth; they contented themselves with piling two or three mountains upon one another, thinking that would be quite enough to make them masters of heaven, and of the castle of Olympus.

Neve foret terris securior arduus æther,

Affectasse ferunt regnum celeste gigantes;

Altaque congestos struxisse ad sidera montes.

—Ovid’sMetamorph., i. 151-153.

Nor heaven itself was more secure than earth;

Against the gods the Titans levied wars,

And piled up mountains till they reached the stars.

It is, however, more than six hundred leagues from these stars to Mount Olympus, and from some stars infinitely farther.

Virgil (Eclogue v, 57) does not hesitate to say: “Sub pedibusque videt nubes et sidera Daphnis.”

Daphnis, the guest of heaven, with wondering eyes,

Views in the Milky Way, the Starry skies,

And far beneath him, from the shining sphere

Beholds the morning clouds, and rolling year.

—Dryden.

But where then could Daphnis possibly place himself?

At the opera, and in more serious productions, the gods are introduced descending in the midst of tempests, clouds, and thunder; that is, God is brought forward in the midst of the vapors of our petty globe. These notions are so suitable to our weak minds, that they appear to us grand and sublime.

This philosophy of children and old women was of prodigious antiquity; it is believed, however, that the Chaldæans entertained nearly as correct ideas as ourselves on the subject of what is called heaven. They placed the sun in the midst of our planetary system, nearly at the same distance from our globe as our calculation computes it; and they supposed the earth and some planets to revolve round that star; this we learn from Aristarchus of Samos. It is nearly the system of the world since established by Copernicus: but the philosophers kept the secret to themselves, in order to obtain greater respect both from kings and people, or rather perhaps, to avoid the danger of persecution.

The language of error is so familiar to mankind that we still apply the name of heaven to our vapors, and the space between the earth and moon. We use the expression of ascending to heaven, just as we say the sun turns round, although we well know that it does not. We are, probably, the heaven of the inhabitants of the moon; and every planet places its heaven in that planet nearest to itself.

Had Homer been asked, to what heaven the soul of Sarpedon had fled, or where that of Hercules resided, Homer would have been a good deal embarrassed, and would have answered by some harmonious verses.

What assurance could there be, that the ethereal soul of Hercules would be more at its ease in the planet Venus or in Saturn, than upon our own globe? Could its mansion be in the sun? In that flaming and consuming furnace, it would appear difficult for it to endure its station. In short, what was it that the ancients meant by heaven? They knew nothing about it; they were always exclaiming, “Heaven and earth,” thus placing completely different things in most absurd connection. It would be just as judicious to exclaim, and connect in the same manner, infinity and an atom. Properly speaking, there is no heaven. There are a prodigious number of globes revolving in the immensity of space, and our globe revolves like the rest.

The ancients thought that to go to heaven was to ascend; but there is no ascent from one globe to another. The heavenly bodies are sometimes above our horizon, and sometimes below it. Thus, let us suppose that Venus, after visiting Paphos, should return to her own planet, when that planet had set; the goddess would not in that case ascend, in reference to our horizon; she would descend, and the proper expression would be then, descended to heaven. But the ancients did not discriminate with such nicety; on every subject of natural philosophy, their notions were vague, uncertain and contradictory. Volumes have been composed in order to ascertain and point out what they thought upon many questions of this description. Six words would have been sufficient—“they did not think at all.” We must always except a small number of sages; but they appeared at too late a period, and but rarely disclosed their thoughts; and when they did so, the charlatans in power took care to send them to heaven by the shortest way.

A writer, if I am not mistaken, of the name of Pluche, has been recently exhibiting Moses as a great natural philosopher; another had previously harmonized Moses with Descartes, and published a book, which he called, “Cartesius Mosaisans”; according to him, Moses was the real inventor of “Vortices,” and the subtile matter; but we full well know, that when God made Moses a great legislator and prophet, it was no part of His scheme to make him also a professor of physics. Moses instructed the Jews in their duty, and did not teach them a single word of philosophy. Calmet, who compiled a great deal, but never reasoned at all, talks of the system of the Hebrews; but that stupid people never had any system. They had not even a school of geometry; the very name was utterly unknown to them. The whole of their science was comprised in money-changing and usury.

We find in their books ideas on the structure of heaven, confused, incoherent, and in every respect worthy of a people immersed in barbarism. Their first heaven was the air, the second the firmament in which the stars were fixed. This firmament was solid and made of glass, and supported the superior waters which issued from the vast reservoirs by flood-gates, sluices, and cataracts, at the time of the deluge.

Above the firmament or these superior waters was the third heaven, or the empyream, to which St. Paul was caught up. The firmament was a sort of demi-vault which came close down to the earth.

It is clear that, according to this opinion, there could be no antipodes. Accordingly, St. Augustine treats the idea of antipodes as an absurdity; and Lactantius, whom we have already quoted, expressly says “can there possibly be any persons so simple as to believe that there are men whose heads are lower than their feet?” etc.

St. Chrysostom exclaims, in his fourteenth homily, “Where are they who pretend that the heavens are movable, and that their form is circular?”

Lactantius, once more, says, in the third book of his “Institutions,” “I could prove to you by many arguments that it is impossible heaven should surround the earth.”

The author of the “Spectacle of Nature” may repeat to M. le Chevalier as often as he pleases, that Lactantius and St. Chrysostom are great philosophers. He will be told in reply that they were great saints; and that to be a great saint, it is not at all necessary to be a great astronomer. It will be believed that they are in heaven, although it will be admitted to be impossible to say precisely in what part of it.

HELL.

Infernum, subterranean; the regions below, or the infernal regions. Nations which buried the dead placed them in the inferior or infernal regions. Their soul, then, was with them in those regions. Such were the first physics and the first metaphysics of the Egyptians and Greeks.

The Indians, who were far more ancient, who had invented the ingenious doctrine of the metempsychosis, never believed that souls existed in the infernal regions.

The Japanese, Coreans, Chinese, and the inhabitants of the vast territory of eastern and western Tartary never knew a word of the philosophy of the infernal regions.

The Greeks, in the course of time, constituted an immense kingdom of these infernal regions, which they liberally conferred on Pluto and his wife Proserpine. They assigned them three privy counsellors, three housekeepers called Furies, and three Fates to spin, wind, and cut the thread of human life. And, as in ancient times, every hero had his dog to guard his gate, so was Pluto attended and guarded by an immense dog with three heads; for everything, it seems, was to be done by threes. Of the three privy counsellors, Minos, Æacus, and Rhadamanthus, one judged Greece, another Asia Minor—for the Greeks were then unacquainted with the Greater Asia—and the third was for Europe.

The poets, having invented these infernal regions, or hell, were the first to laugh at them. Sometimes Virgil mentions hell in the “Æneid” in a style of seriousness, because that style was then suitable to his subject. Sometimes he speaks of it with contempt in his “Georgics” (ii. 490, etc.).

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas

Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum

Subjecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari!

Happy the man whose vigorous soul can pierce

Through the formation of this universe,

Who nobly dares despise, with soul sedate,

The den of Acheron, and vulgar fears and fate.

—Wharton.

The following lines from the “Troad” (chorus of act ii.), in which Pluto, Cerberus, Phlegethon, Styx, etc., are treated like dreams and childish tales, were repeated in the theatre of Rome, and applauded by forty thousand hands:

. . . . Tænara et aspero

Regnum sub domino, limen et obsidens

Custos non facili Cerberus ostio

Rumores vacui, verbaque inania,

Et par solicito fabula somnio.

Lucretius and Horace express themselves equally strongly. Cicero and Seneca used similar language in innumerable parts of their writings. The great emperor Marcus Aurelius reasons still more philosophically than those I have mentioned. “He who fears death, fears either to be deprived of all senses, or to experience other sensations. But, if you no longer retain your own senses, you will be no longer subject to any pain or grief. If you have senses of a different nature, you will be a totally different being.”

To this reasoning, profane philosophy had nothing to reply. Yet, agreeably to that contradiction or perverseness which distinguishes the human species, and seems to constitute the very foundation of our nature, at the very time when Cicero publicly declared that “not even an old woman was to be found who believed in such absurdities,” Lucretius admitted that these ideas were powerfully impressive upon men’s minds; his object, he says, is to destroy them:

. . . . Si certum finem esse viderent

Ærumnarum homines, aliqua ratione valerent

Religionibus atque minis obsistere vatum.

Nunc ratio nulla est restandi, nulla facultas;

Æternas quoniam poenas in morte timendum.

—Lucretius, i. 108.

. . . . If it once appear

That after death there’s neither hope nor fear;

Then might men freely triumph, then disdain

The poet’s tales, and scorn their fancied pain;

But now we must submit, since pains we fear

Eternal after death, we know not where.

—Creech.

It was therefore true, that among the lowest classes of the people, some laughed at hell, and others trembled at it. Some regarded Cerberus, the Furies, and Pluto as ridiculous fables, others perpetually presented offerings to the infernal gods. It was with them just as it is now among ourselves:

Et quocumque tamen miseri venere, parentant,

Et nigros mactant pecudes, et Manibus divis

Inferias mittunt multoque in rebus acerbis

Acrius admittunt animos ad religionem.

—Lucretius, iii. 51.

Nay, more than that, where’er the wretches come

They sacrifice black sheep on every tomb,

To please the manes; and of all the rout,

When cares and dangers press, grow most devout.

—Creech.

Many philosophers who had no belief in the fables about hell, were yet desirous that the people should retain that belief. Such was Zimens of Locris. Such was the political historian Polybius. “Hell,” says he, “is useless to sages, but necessary to the blind and brutal populace.”

It is well known that the law of the Pentateuch never announces a hell. All mankind was involved in this chaos of contradiction and uncertainty, when Jesus Christ came into the world. He confirmed the ancient doctrine of hell, not the doctrine of the heathen poets, not that of the Egyptian priests, but that which Christianity adopted, and to which everything must yield. He announced a kingdom that was about to come, and a hell that should have no end.

He said, in express words, at Capernaum in Galilee, “Whosoever shall call his brother ‘Raca,’ shall be condemned by the sanhedrim; but whosoever shall call him ‘fool,’ shall be condemned to Gehenna Hinnom, Gehenna of fire.”

This proves two things, first, that Jesus Christ was adverse to abuse and reviling; for it belonged only to Him, as master, to call the Pharisees hypocrites, and a “generation of vipers.”

Secondly, that those who revile their neighbor deserve hell; for the Gehenna of fire was in the valley of Hinnom, where victims had formerly been burned in sacrifice to Moloch, and this Gehenna was typical of the fire of hell.

He says, in another place, “If any one shall offend one of the weak who believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the sea.

“And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than to go into the Gehenna of inextinguishable fire, where the worm dies not, and where the fire is not quenched.

“And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter lame into eternal life, than to be cast with two feet into the inextinguishable Gehenna, where the worm dies not, and where the fire is not quenched.

“And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out; it is better to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than to be cast with both eyes into the Gehenna of fire, where the worm dies not, and the fire is not quenched.

“For everyone shall be burned with fire, and every victim shall be salted with salt.

“Salt is good; but if the salt have lost its savor, with what will you salt?

“You have salt in yourselves, preserve peace one with another.”

He said on another occasion, on His journey to Jerusalem, “When the master of the house shall have entered and shut the door, you will remain without, and knock, saying, ‘Lord, open unto us;’ and he will answer and say unto you, ‘Nescio vos,’ I know you not; whence are you? And then ye shall begin to say, we have eaten and drunk with thee, and thou hast taught in our public places; and he will reply, ‘Nescio vos,’ whence are you, workers of iniquity? And there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see there Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the prophets, and yourselves cast out.”

Notwithstanding the other positive declarations made by the Saviour of mankind, which assert the eternal damnation of all who do not belong to our church, Origen and some others were not believers in the eternity of punishments.

The Socinians reject such punishments; but they are without the pale. The Lutherans and Calvinists, although they have strayed beyond the pale, yet admit the doctrine of a hell without end.

When men came to live in society, they must have perceived that a great number of criminals eluded the severity of the laws; the laws punished public crimes; it was necessary to establish a check upon secret crimes; this check was to be found only in religion. The Persians, Chaldæans, Egyptians, and Greeks, entertained the idea of punishments after the present life, and of all the nations of antiquity that we are acquainted with, the Jews, as we have already remarked, were the only one who admitted solely temporal punishments. It is ridiculous to believe, or pretend to believe, from some excessively obscure passages, that hell was recognized by the ancient laws of the Jews, by their Leviticus, or by their Decalogue, when the author of those laws says not a single word which can bear the slightest relation to the chastisements of a future life. We might have some right to address the compiler of the Pentateuch in such language as the following: “You are a man of no consistency, as destitute of probity as understanding, and totally unworthy of the name which you arrogate to yourself of legislator. What! you are perfectly acquainted, it seems, with that doctrine so eminently repressive of human vice, so necessary to the virtue and happiness of mankind—the doctrine of hell; and yet you do not explicitly announce it; and, while it is admitted by all the nations which surround you, you are content to leave it for some commentators, after four thousand years have passed away, to suspect that this doctrine might possibly have been entertained by you, and to twist and torture your expressions, in order to find that in them which you have never said. Either you are grossly ignorant not to know that this belief was universal in Egypt, Chaldæa, and Persia; or you have committed the most disgraceful error in judgment, in not having made it the foundation-stone of your religion.”

The authors of the Jewish laws could at most only answer: “We confess that we are excessively ignorant; that we did not learn the art of writing until a late period; that our people were a wild and barbarous horde, that wandered, as our own records admit, for nearly half a century in impracticable deserts, and at length obtained possession of a petty territory by the most odious rapine and detestable cruelty ever mentioned in the records of history. We had no commerce with civilized nations, and how could you suppose that, so grossly mean and grovelling as we are in all our ideas and usages, we should have invented a system so refined and spiritual as that in question?”

We employed the word which most nearly corresponds with soul, merely to signify life; we know our God and His ministers, His angels, only as corporeal beings; the distinction of soul and body, the idea of a life beyond death, can be the fruit only of long meditation and refined philosophy. Ask the Hottentots and negroes, who inhabit a country a hundred times larger than ours, whether they know anything of a life to come? We thought we had done enough in persuading the people under our influence that God punished offenders to the fourth generation, either by leprosy, by sudden death, or by the loss of the little property of which the criminal might be possessed.

To this apology it might be replied: “You have invented a system, the ridicule and absurdity of which are as clear as the sun at noon-day; for the offender who enjoyed good health, and whose family were in prosperous circumstances, must absolutely have laughed you to scorn.”

The apologist for the Jewish law would here rejoin: “You are much mistaken; since for one criminal who reasoned correctly, there were a hundred who never reasoned at all. The man who, after he had committed a crime, found no punishment of it attached to himself or his son, would yet tremble for his grandson. Besides, if after the time of committing his offence he was not speedily seized with some festering sore, such as our nation was extremely subject to, he would experience it in the course of years. Calamities are always occurring in a family, and we, without difficulty, instilled the belief that these calamities were inflicted by the hand of God taking vengeance for secret offences.”

It would be easy to reply to this answer by saying: “Your apology is worth nothing; for it happens every day that very worthy and excellent persons lose their health and their property; and, if there were no family that did not experience calamity, and that calamity at the same time was a chastisement from God, all the families of your community must have been made up of scoundrels.”

The Jewish priest might again answer and say that there are some calamities inseparable from human nature, and others expressly inflicted by the hand of God. But, in return, we should point out to such a reasoner the absurdity of considering fever and hail-stones in some cases as divine punishments; in others as mere natural effects.

In short, the Pharisees and the Essenians among the Jews did admit, according to certain notions of their own, the belief of a hell. This dogma had passed from the Greeks to the Romans, and was adopted by the Christians.

Many of the fathers of the church rejected the doctrine of eternal punishments. It appeared to them absurd to burn to all eternity an unfortunate man for stealing a goat. Virgil has finely said:

. . . . Sedit eternumque sedebit

Infelix Theseus.

Unhappy Theseus, doomed forever there,

Is fixed by fate on his eternal chair.

—Dryden.

But it is vain for him to maintain or imply that Theseus is forever fixed to his chair, and that this position constitutes his punishment. Others have imagined Theseus to be a hero who could never be seen on any seat in hell, and who was to be found in the Elysian Fields.

A Calvinistical divine, of the name of Petit Pierre, not long since preached and published the doctrine that the damned would at some future period be pardoned. The rest of the ministers of his association told him that they wished for no such thing. The dispute grew warm. It was said that the king, whose subjects they were, wrote to him, that since they were desirous of being damned without redemption, he could have no reasonable objection, and freely gave his consent. The damned majority of the church of Neufchâtel ejected poor Petit Pierre, who had thus converted hell into a mere purgatory. It is stated that one of them said to him: “My good friend, I no more believe in the eternity of hell than yourself; but recollect that it may be no bad thing, perhaps, for your servant, your tailor, and your lawyer to believe in it.”

I will add, as an illustration of this passage, a short address of exhortation to those philosophers who in their writings deny a hell; I will say to them: “Gentlemen, we do not pass our days with Cicero, Atticus, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, the Chancellor de l’Hôpital, La Mothe le Vayer, Desyveteaux, René Descartes, Newton, or Locke, nor with the respectable Bayle, who was so superior to the power and frown of fortune, nor with the too scrupulously virtuous infidel Spinoza, who, although laboring under poverty and destitution, gave back to the children of the grand pensionary De Witt an allowance of three hundred florins, which had been granted him by that great statesman, whose heart, it may be remembered, the Hollanders actually devoured, although there was nothing to be gained by it. Every man with whom we intermingle in life is not a des Barreaux, who paid the pleaders their fees for a cause which he had forgotten to bring into court. Every woman is not a Ninon de L’Enclos, who guarded deposits in trust with religious fidelity, while the gravest personages in the state were violating them. In a word, gentlemen, all the world are not philosophers.

“We are obliged to hold intercourse and transact business, and mix up in life with knaves possessing little or no reflection—with vast numbers of persons addicted to brutality, intoxication, and rapine. You may, if you please, preach to them that there is no hell, and that the soul of man is mortal. As for myself, I will be sure to thunder in their ears that if they rob me they will inevitably be damned. I will imitate the country clergyman, who, having had a great number of sheep stolen from him, at length said to his hearers, in the course of one of his sermons: ‘I cannot conceive what Jesus Christ was thinking about when he died for such a set of scoundrels as you are.’ ”

There is an excellent book for fools called “The Christian Pedagogue,” composed by the reverend father d’Outreman, of the Society of Jesus, and enlarged by Coulon, curé of Ville-Juif-les-Paris. This book has passed, thank God, through fifty-one editions, although not a single page in it exhibits a gleam of common sense.

Friar Outreman asserts—in the hundred and fifty-seventh page of the second edition in quarto—that one of Queen Elizabeth’s ministers, Baron Hunsdon, predicted to Cecil, secretary of state, and to six other members of the cabinet council, that they as well as he would be damned; which, he says, was actually the case, and is the case with all heretics. It is most likely that Cecil and the other members of the council gave no credit to the said Baron Hunsdon; but if the fictitious baron had said the same to six common citizens, they would probably have believed him.

Were the time ever to arrive in which no citizen of London believed in a hell, what course of conduct would be adopted? What restraint upon wickedness would exist? There would exist the feeling of honor, the restraint of the laws, that of the Deity Himself, whose will it is that mankind shall be just, whether there be a hell or not.

HELL (DESCENT INTO).

Our colleague who wrote the article on “Hell” has made no mention of the descent of Jesus Christ into hell. This is an article of faith of high importance; it is expressly particularized in the creed of which we have already spoken. It is asked whence this article of faith is derived; for it is not to be found in either of our four gospels, and the creed called the Apostles’ Creed is not older than the age of those learned priests, Jerome, Augustine, and Rufinus.

It is thought that this descent of our Lord into hell is taken originally from the gospel of Nicodemus, one of the oldest.

In that gospel the prince of Tartarus and Satan, after a long conversation with Adam, Enoch, Elias the Tishbite, and David, hears a voice like the thunder, and a voice like a tempest. David says to the prince of Tartarus, “Now, thou foul and miscreant prince of hell, open thy gates and let the King of Glory enter,” etc. While he was thus addressing the prince, the Lord of Majesty appeared suddenly in the form of man, and He lighted up the eternal darkness, and broke asunder the indissoluble bars, and by an invincible virtue He visited those who lay in the depth of the darkness of guilt, in the shadow of the depth of sin.

Jesus Christ appeared with St. Michael; He overcame death; He took Adam by the hand; and the good thief followed Him, bearing the cross. All this took place in hell, in the presence of Carinus and Lenthius, who were resuscitated for the express purpose of giving evidence of the fact to the priests Ananias and Caiaphas, and to Doctor Gamaliel, at that time St. Paul’s master.

This gospel of Nicodemus has long been considered as of no authority. But a confirmation of this descent into hell is found in the First Epistle of St. Peter, at the close of the third chapter: “Because Christ died once for our sins, the just for the unjust, that He might offer us to God; dead indeed in the flesh, but resuscitated in spirit, by which He went to preach to the spirits that were in prison.”

Many of the fathers interpreted this passage very differently, but all were agreed as to the fact of the descent of Jesus into hell after His death. A frivolous difficulty was started upon the subject. He had, while upon the cross, said to the good thief: “This day shalt thou be with Me in paradise.” By going to hell, therefore, He failed to perform His promise. This objection is easily answered by saying that He took him first to hell and afterwards to paradise; but, then, what becomes of the stay of three days?

Eusebius of Cæsarea says that Jesus left His body, without waiting for Death to come and seize it; and that, on the contrary, He seized Death, who, in terror and agony, embraced His feet, and afterwards attempted to escape by flight, but was prevented by Jesus, who broke down the gates of the dungeons which enclosed the souls of the saints, drew them forth from their confinement, resuscitated them, then resuscitated Himself, and conducted them in triumph to that heavenly Jerusalem which descended from heaven every night, and was actually seen by the astonished eyes of St. Justin.

It was a question much disputed whether all those who were resuscitated died again before they ascended into heaven. St. Thomas, in his “Summary,” asserts that they died again. This also is the opinion of the discriminating and judicious Calmet. “We maintain,” says he, in his dissertation on this great question, “that the saints who were resuscitated, after the death of the Saviour died again, in order to revive hereafter.”

God had permitted, ages before, that the profane Gentiles should imitate in anticipation these sacred truths. The ancients imagined that the gods resuscitated Pelops; that Orpheus extricated Eurydice from hell, at least for a moment; that Hercules delivered Alcestis from it; that Æsculapius resuscitated Hippolytus, etc. Let us ever discriminate between fable and truth, and keep our minds in the same subjection with respect to whatever surprises and astonishes us, as with respect to whatever appears perfectly conformable to their circumscribed and narrow views.

HERESY.

SECTION I.

A Greek word, signifying “belief, or elected opinion.” It is not greatly to the honor of human reason that men should be hated, persecuted, massacred, or burned at the stake, on account of their chosen opinions; but what is exceedingly little to our honor is that this mischievous and destructive madness has been as peculiar to us as leprosy was to the Hebrews, or lues formerly to the Caribs.

We well know, theologically speaking, that heresy having become a crime, as even the word itself is a reproach; we well know, I say, that the Latin church, which alone can possess reason, has also possessed the right of reproving all who were of a different opinion from her own.

On the other side, the Greek church had the same right; accordingly, it reproved the Romans when they chose a different opinion from the Greeks on the procession of the Holy Spirit, the viands which might be taken in Lent, the authority of the pope, etc.

But upon what ground did any arrive finally at the conclusion that, when they were the strongest, they might burn those who entertained chosen opinions of their own? Those who had such opinions were undoubtedly criminal in the sight of God, since they were obstinate. They will, therefore, as no one can possibly doubt, be burned to all eternity in another world; but why burn them by a slow fire in this? The sufferers have represented that such conduct is a usurpation of the jurisdiction of God; that this punishment is very hard and severe, considered as an infliction by men; and that it is, moreover, of no utility, since one hour of suffering added to eternity is an absolute cipher.

The pious inflicters, however, replied to these reproaches that nothing was more just than to put upon burning coals whoever had a self-formed opinion; that to burn those whom God Himself would burn, was in fact a holy conformity to God; and finally, that since, by admission, the burning for an hour or two was a mere cipher in comparison with eternity, the burning of five or six provinces for chosen opinions—for heresies—was a matter in reality of very little consequence.

In the present day it is asked, “Among what cannibals have these questions been agitated, and their solutions proved by facts?” We must admit with sorrow and humiliation that it was asked even among ourselves, and in the very same cities where nothing is minded but operas, comedies, balls, fashions, and intrigue.

Unfortunately, it was a tyrant who introduced the practice of destroying heretics—not one of those equivocal tyrants who are regarded as saints by one party, and monsters by another, but one Maximus, competitor of Theodosius I., a decided tyrant, in the strictest meaning of the term, over the whole empire.

He destroyed at Trier, by the hands of the executioner, the Spaniard Priscillian and his adherents, whose opinions were pronounced erroneous by some bishops of Spain. These prelates solicited the capital punishment of the Priscillianists with a charity so ardent that Maximus could refuse them nothing. It was by no means owing to them that St. Martin was not beheaded as a heretic. He was fortunate enough to quit Trier and escape back to Tours.

A single example is sufficient to establish a usage. The first Scythian who scooped out the brains of his enemy and made a drinking-cup of his skull, was allowed all the rank and consequence in Scythia. Thus was consecrated the practice of employing the executioner to cut off “opinions.”

No such thing as heresy existed among the religions of antiquity, because they had reference only to moral conduct and public worship. When metaphysics became connected with Christianity, controversy prevailed; and from controversy arose different parties, as in the schools of philosophy. It was impossible that metaphysics should not mingle the uncertainties essential to their nature with the faith due to Jesus Christ. He had Himself written nothing; and His incarnation was a problem which the new Christians, whom He had not Himself inspired, solved in many different ways. “Each,” as St. Paul expressly observes, “had his peculiar party; some were for Apollos, others for Cephas.”

Christians in general, for a long time, assumed the name of Nazarenes, and even the Gentiles gave them no other appellations during the two first centuries. But there soon arose a particular school of Nazarenes, who believed a gospel different from the four canonical ones. It has even been pretended that this gospel differed only very slightly from that of St. Matthew, and was in fact anterior to it. St. Epiphanius and St. Jerome place the Nazarenes in the cradle of Christianity.

Those who considered themselves as knowing more than the rest, took the denomination of gnostics, “knowers”; and this denomination was for a long time so honorable that St. Clement of Alexandria, in his “Stromata,” always calls the good Christians true gnostics. “Happy are they who have entered into the gnostic holiness! He who deserves the name of gnostic resists seducers and gives to every one that asks.” The fifth and sixth books of the “Stromata” turn entirely upon the perfection of gnosticism.

The Ebionites existed incontestably in the time of the apostles. That name, which signifies “poor,” was intended to express how dear to them was the poverty in which Jesus was born.

Cerinthus was equally ancient. The “Apocalypse” of St. John was attributed to him. It is even thought that St. Paul and he had violent disputes with each other.

It seems to our weak understandings very natural to expect from the first disciples a solemn declaration, a complete and unalterable profession of faith, which might terminate all past, and preclude any future quarrels; but God permitted it not so to be. The creed called the “Apostles’ Creed,” which is short, and in which are not to be found the consubstantiality, the word trinity, or the seven sacraments, did not make its appearance before the time of St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and the celebrated priest Rufinus. It was by this priest, the enemy of St. Jerome, that we are told it was compiled. Heresies had had time to multiply, and more than fifty were enumerated as existing in the fifth century.

Without daring to scrutinize the ways of Providence, which are impenetrable by the human mind, and merely consulting, as far as we are permitted, our feeble reason, it would seem that of so many opinions on so many articles, there would always exist one which must prevail, which was the orthodox, “the right of teaching.” The other societies, besides the really orthodox, soon assumed that title also; but being the weaker parties, they had given to them the designation of “heretics.”

When, in the progress of time, the Christian church in the East, which was the mother of that in the West, had irreparably broken with her daughter, each remained sovereign in her distinct sphere, and each had her particular heresies, arising out of the dominant opinion.

The barbarians of the North, having but recently become Christians, could not entertain the same opinions as Southern countries, because they could not adopt the same usages. They could not, for example, for a long time adore images, as they had neither painters nor sculptors. It also was somewhat dangerous to baptize an infant in winter, in the Danube, the Weser, or the Elbe.

It was no easy matter for the inhabitants of the shores of the Baltic to know precisely the opinions held in the Milanese and the march of Ancona. The people of the South and of the North of Europe had therefore chosen opinions different from each other. This seems to me to be the reason why Claude, bishop of Turin, preserved in the ninth century all the usages and dogmas received in the seventh and eighth, from the country of the Allobroges, as far as the Elbe and the Danube.

These dogmas and usages became fixed and permanent among the inhabitants of valleys and mountainous recesses, and near the banks of the Rhone, among a sequestered and almost unknown people, whom the general desolation left untouched in their seclusion and poverty, until they at length became known, under the name of the Vaudois in the twelfth, and that of the Albigenses in the thirteenth century. It is known how their chosen opinions were treated; what crusades were preached against them; what carnage was made among them; and that, from that period to the present day, Europe has not enjoyed a single year of tranquillity and toleration.

It is a great evil to be a heretic; but is it a great good to maintain orthodoxy by soldiers and executioners? Would it not be better that every man should eat his bread in peace under the shade of his own fig-tree? I suggest so bold a proposition with fear and trembling.

SECTION II.

Of the Extirpation of Heresies.

It appears to me that, in relation to heresies, we ought to distinguish between opinion and faction. From the earliest times of Christianity opinions were divided, as we have already seen. The Christians of Alexandria did not think, on many points, like those of Antioch. The Achaians were opposed to the Asiatics. This difference has existed through all past periods of our religion, and probably will always continue. Jesus Christ, who might have united all believers in the same sentiment, has not, in fact, done so; we must, therefore, presume that He did not desire it, and that it was His design to exercise in all churches the spirit of indulgence and charity, by permitting the existence of different systems of faith, while all should be united in acknowledging Him for their chief and master. All the varying sects, a long while tolerated by the emperors, or concealed from their observation, had no power to persecute and proscribe one another, as they were all equally subject to the Roman magistrates. They possessed only the power of disputing with each other. When the magistrates prosecuted them, they all claimed the rights of nature. They said: “Permit us to worship God in peace; do not deprive us of the liberty you allow to the Jews.”

All the different sects existing at present may hold the same language to those who oppress them. They may say to the nations who have granted privileges to the Jews: Treat us as you treat these sons of Jacob; let us, like them, worship God according to the dictates of conscience. Our opinion is not more injurious to your state or realm than Judaism. You tolerate the enemies of Jesus Christ; tolerate us, therefore, who adore Jesus Christ, and differ from yourselves only upon subtle points of theology; do not deprive yourselves of the services of useful subjects. It is of consequence to you to obtain their labor and skill in your manufactures, your marine, and your agriculture, and it is of no consequence at all to you that they hold a few articles of faith different from your own. What you want is their work, and not their catechism.

Faction is a thing perfectly different. It always happens, as a matter of necessity, that a persecuted sect degenerates into a faction. The oppressed unite, and console and encourage one another. They have more industry to strengthen their party than the dominant sect has for their extermination. To crush them or be crushed by them is the inevitable alternative. Such was the case after the persecution raised in 303 by the Cæsar, Galerius, during the last two years of the reign of Diocletian. The Christians, after having been favored by Diocletian for the long period of eighteen years, had become too numerous and wealthy to be extirpated. They joined the party of Constantius Chlorus; they fought for Constantine his son; and a complete revolution took place in the empire.

We may compare small things to great, when both are under the direction of the same principle or spirit. A similar revolution happened in Holland, in Scotland, and in Switzerland. When Ferdinand and Isabella expelled from Spain the Jews,—who were settled there not merely before the reigning dynasty, but before the Moors and Goths, and even the Carthaginians—the Jews would have effected a revolution in that country if they had been as warlike as they were opulent, and if they could have come to an understanding with the Arabs.

In a word, no sect has ever changed the government of a country but when it was furnished with arms by despair. Mahomet himself would not have succeeded had he not been expelled from Mecca and a price set upon his head.

If you are desirous, therefore, to prevent the overflow of a state by any sect, show it toleration. Imitate the wise conduct exhibited at the present day by Germany, England, Holland, Denmark, and Russia. There is no other policy to be adopted with respect to a new sect than to destroy, without remorse, both leaders and followers, men, women, and children, without a single exception, or to tolerate them when they are numerous. The first method is that of a monster, the second that of a sage.

Bind to the state all the subjects of that state by their interest; let the Quaker and the Turk find their advantage in living under your laws. Religion is between God and man; civil law is between you and your people.

SECTION III.

It is impossible not to regret the loss of a “History of Heresies,” which Strategius wrote by order of Constantine. Ammianus Marcellinus informs us that the emperor, wishing to ascertain the opinions of the different sects, and not finding any other person who could give correct ideas on the subject, imposed the office of drawing up a report or narrative upon it on that officer, who acquitted himself so well, that Constantine was desirous of his being honored in consequence with the name of Musonianus. M. de Valois, in his notes upon Ammianus, observes that Strategius, who was appointed prefect of the East, possessed as much knowledge and eloquence, as moderation and mildness; such, at least, is the eulogium passed upon him by Libanius.

The choice of a layman by the emperor shows that an ecclesiastic at that time had not the qualities indispensable for a task so delicate. In fact, St. Augustine remarks that a bishop of Bresse, called Philastrius, whose work is to be found in the collection of the fathers, having collected all the heresies, even including those which existed among the Jews before the coming of Jesus Christ, reckons twenty-eight of the latter and one hundred and twenty-eight from the coming of Christ; while St. Epiphanius, comprising both together, makes the whole number but eighty. The reason assigned by St. Augustine for this difference is, that what appears heresy to the one, does not appear so to the other. Accordingly this father tells the Manichæans: “We take the greatest care not to treat you with rigor; such conduct we leave to those who know not what pains are necessary for the discovery of truth, and how difficult it is to avoid falling into errors; we leave it to those who know not with what sighs and groans even a very slight knowledge of the divine nature is alone to be acquired. For my own part, I consider it my duty to bear with you as I was borne with formerly myself, and to show you the same tolerance which I experienced when I was in error.”

If, however, any one considers the infamous imputations, which we have noticed under the article on “Genealogy,” and the abominations of which this professedly indulgent and candid father accused the Manichæans in the celebration of their mysteries—as we shall see under the article on “Zeal”—we shall be convinced that toleration was never the virtue of the clergy. We have already seen, under the article on “Council,” what seditions were excited by the ecclesiastics in relation to Arianism. Eusebius informs us that in some places the statues of Constantine were thrown down because he wished the Arians to be tolerated; and Sozomen says that on the death of Eusebius of Nicomedia, when Macedonius, an Arian, contested the see of Constantinople with Paul, a Catholic, the disturbance and confusion became so dreadful in the church, from which each endeavored to expel the other, that the soldiers, thinking the people in a state of insurrection, actually charged upon them; a fierce and sanguinary conflict ensued, and more than three thousand persons were slain or suffocated. Macedonius ascended the episcopal throne, took speedy possession of all the churches, and persecuted with great cruelty the Novatians and Catholics. It was in revenge against the latter of these that he denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit, just as he recognized the divinity of the Word, which was denied by the Arians out of mere defiance to their protector Constantius, who had deposed him.

The same historian adds that on the death of Athanasius, the Arians, supported by Valens, apprehended, bound in chains, and put to death those who remained attached to Peter, whom Athanasius had pointed out as his successor. Alexandria resembled a city taken by assault. The Arians soon possessed themselves of the churches, and the bishop, installed by them, obtained the power of banishing from Egypt all who remained attached to the Nicean creed.

We read in Socrates that, after the death of Sisinnius, the church of Constantinople became again divided on the choice of a successor, and Theodosius the Younger placed in the patriarchal see the violent and fiery Nestorius. In his first sermon he addresses the following language to the emperor: “Give me the land purged of heretics, and I will give you the kingdom of Heaven; second me in the extermination of heretics, and I engage to furnish you with effectual assistance against the Persians.” He afterwards expelled the Arians from the capital, armed the people against them, pulled down their churches, and obtained from the emperor rigorous and persecuting edicts to effect their extirpation. He employed his powerful influence subsequently in procuring the arrest, imprisonment, and even whipping of the principal persons among the people who had interrupted him in the middle of a discourse, in which he was delivering his distinguishing system of doctrine, which was soon condemned at the Council of Ephesus.

Photius relates that when the priest reached the altar, it was customary in the church of Constantinople for the people to chant: “Holy God, powerful God, immortal God”; and the name given to this part of the service was “the trisagion.” The priest, Peter had added: “Who hast been crucified for us, have mercy upon us.” The Catholics considered this addition as containing the error of the Eutychian Theopathists, who maintained that the divinity had suffered; they, however, chanted the trisagion with the addition, to avoid irritating the emperor Anastasius, who had just deposed another Macedonius, and placed in his stead Timotheus, by whose order this addition was ordered to be chanted. But on a particular day the monks entered the church, and, instead of the addition in question, chanted a verse from one of the Psalms: the people instantly exclaimed: “The orthodox have arrived very seasonably!” All the partisans of the Council of Chalcedon chanted, in union with the monks, the verse from the Psalm; the Eutychians were offended; the service was interrupted; a battle commenced in the church; the people rushed out, obtained arms as speedily as possible, spread carnage and conflagration through the city, and were pacified only by the destruction of ten thousand lives.

The imperial power at length established through all Egypt the authority of this Council of Chalcedon; but the massacre of more than a hundred thousand Egyptians, on different occasions, for having refused to acknowledge the council, had planted in the hearts of the whole population an implacable hatred against the emperors. A part of those who were hostile to the council withdrew to Upper Egypt, others quitted altogether the dominions of the empire and passed over to Africa and among the Arabs, where all religions were tolerated.

We have already observed that under the reign of the empress Irene the worship of images was reestablished and confirmed by the second Council of Nice. Leo the Armenian, Michael the Stammerer, and Theophilus, neglected nothing to effect its abolition; and this opposition caused further disturbance in the empire of Constantinople, till the reign of the empress Theodora, who gave the force of law to the second Council of Nice, extinguished the party of Iconoclasts, or image-breakers, and exerted the utmost extent of her authority against the Manichæans. She despatched orders throughout the empire to seek for them everywhere, and put all those to death who would not recant. More than a hundred thousand perished by different modes of execution. Four thousand, who escaped from this severe scrutiny and extensive punishment, took refuge among the Saracens, united their own strength with theirs, ravaged the territories of the empire, and erected fortresses in which the Manichæans, who had remained concealed through terror of capital punishment, found an asylum, and constituted a hostile force, formidable from their numbers, and from their burning hatred both of the emperors and Catholics. They frequently inflicted on the territories of the empire dread and devastation, and cut to pieces its disciplined armies.

We abridge the details of these dreadful massacres; those of Ireland, those of the valleys of Piedmont, those which we shall speak of in the article on “Inquisition,” and lastly, the massacre of St. Bartholomew, displayed in the West the same spirit of intolerance, against which nothing more pertinent and sensible has been written than what we find in the works of Salvian.

The following is the language employed respecting the followers of one of the principal heresies by this excellent priest of Marseilles, who was surnamed the master of bishops, who deplored with bitterness the violence and vices of his age, and who was called the Jeremiah of the fifth century. “The Arians,” says he, “are heretics; but they do not know it; they are heretics among us, but they are not so among themselves; for they consider themselves so perfectly and completely Catholic, that they treat us as heretics. We are convinced that they entertain an opinion injurious to the divine generation, inasmuch as they say that the Son is less than the Father. They, on the other hand, think that we hold an opinion injurious to the Father, because we regard the Father and the Son equal. The truth is with us, but they consider it as favoring them. We give to God the honor which is due to Him, but they, according to their peculiar way of thinking, maintain that they do the same. They do not acquit themselves of their duty; but in the very point where they fail in doing so, they make the greatest duty of religion consist. They are impious, but even in being so they consider themselves as following, and as practising, genuine piety. They are then mistaken, but from a principle of love to God; and, although they have not the true faith, they regard that which they have actually embraced as the perfect love of God.

“The sovereign judge of the universe alone knows how they will be punished for their errors in the day of judgment. In the meantime he patiently bears with them, because he sees that if they are in error, they err from pure motives of piety.”

HERMES.

Hermes, or Ermes, Mercury Trismegistus, or Thaut, or Taut, or Thot.

We neglect reading the ancient book of Mercury Trismegistus, and we are not wrong in so doing. To philosophers it has appeared a sublime piece of jargon, and it is perhaps for this reason that they believed it the work of a great Platonist.

Nevertheless, in this theological chaos, how many things there are to astonish and subdue the human mind! God, whose triple essence is wisdom, power and bounty; God, forming the world by His thought, His word; God creating subaltern gods; God commanding these gods to direct the celestial orbs, and to preside over the world; the sun; the Son of God; man His image in thought; light, His principal work a divine essence—all these grand and lively images dazzle a subdued imagination.

It remains to be known whether this work, as much celebrated as little read, was the work of a Greek or of an Egyptian. St. Augustine hesitates not in believing that it is the work of an Egyptian, who pretended to be descended from the ancient Mercury, from the ancient Thaut, the first legislator of Egypt. It is true that St. Augustine knew no more of the Egyptian than of the Greek; but in his time it was necessary that we should not doubt that Hermes, from whom we received theology, was an Egyptian sage, probably anterior to the time of Alexander, and one of the priests whom Plato consulted.

It has always appeared to me that the theology of Plato in nothing resembled that of other Greeks, with the exception of Timæus, who had travelled in Egypt, as well as Pythagoras.

The Hermes Trismegistus that we possess is written in barbarous Greek, and in a foreign idiom. This is a proof that it is a translation in which the words have been followed more than the sense.

Joseph Scaliger, who assisted the lord of Candale, bishop of Aire, to translate the Hermes, or Mercury Trismegistus, doubts not that the original was Egyptian. Add to these reasons that it is not very probable that a Greek would have addressed himself so often to Thaut. It is not natural for us to address ourselves to strangers with so much warm-heartedness; at least, we see no example of it in antiquity.

The Egyptian Æsculpaius, who is made to speak in this book, and who is perhaps the author of it, wrote to Ammon, king of Egypt: “Take great care how you suffer the Greeks to translate the books of our Mercury, our Thaut, because they would disfigure them.” Certainly a Greek would not have spoken thus; there is therefore every appearance of this book being Egyptian.

There is another reflection to be made, which is, that the systems of Hermes and Plato were equally formed to extend themselves through all the Jewish schools, from the time of the Ptolemies. This doctrine made great progress in them; you see it completely displayed by the Jew Philo, a learned man after the manner of those times.

He copies entire passages from Mercury Trismegistus in his chapter on the formation of the world. “Firstly,” says he, “God made the world intelligible, the Heavens incorporeal, and the earth invisible; he afterwards created the incorporeal essence of water and spirit; and finally the essence of incorporeal light, the origin of the sun and of the stars.”

Such is the pure doctrine of Hermes. He adds that the word, or invisible and intellectual thought, is the image of God. Here is the creation of the world by the word, by thought, by the logos, very strongly expressed.

Afterwards follows the doctrine of Numbers, which descended from the Egyptians to the Jews. He calls reason the relation of God. The number of seven is the accomplishment of all things, “which is the reason,” says he, “that the lyre has only seven strings.”

In a word Philo possessed all the philosophy of his time.

We are therefore deceived, when we believe that the Jews, under the reign of Herod, were plunged in the same state of ignorance in which they were previously immersed. It is evident that St. Paul was well informed. It is only necessary to read the first chapter of St. John, which is so different from those of the others, to perceive that the author wrote precisely like Hermes and Plato. “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of man.” It is thus that St. Paul says: “God made the worlds by His Son.”

In the time of the apostles were seen whole societies of Christians who were only too learned, and thence substituted a fantastic philosophy for simplicity of faith. The Simons, Menanders, and Cerinthuses, taught precisely the doctrines of Hermes. Their Æons were only the subaltern gods, created by the great Being. All the first Christians, therefore, were not ignorant men, as it always has been asserted; since there were several of them who abused their literature; even in the Acts the governor Festus says to St. Paul: “Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad.”

Cerinthus dogmatized in the time of St. John the Evangelist. His errors were of a profound, refined, and metaphysical cast. The faults which he remarked in the construction of the world made him think—at least so says Dr. Dupin—that it was not the sovereign God who created it, but a virtue inferior to this first principle, which had not the knowledge of the sovereign God. This was wishing to correct even the system of Plato, and deceiving himself, both as a Christian and a philosopher; but at the same time it displayed a refined and well-exercised mind.

It is the same with the primitives called Quakers, of whom we have so much spoken. They have been taken for men who cannot see beyond their noses, and who make no use of their reason. However, there have been among them several who employed all the subtleties of logic. Enthusiasm is not always the companion of total ignorance, it is often that of erroneous information.

HISTORIOGRAPHER.

This is a title very different from that of historian. In France we commonly see men of letters pensioned, and, as it was said formerly, appointed to write history. Alain Chartier was the historiographer of Charles VII.; he says that he interrogated the domestics of this prince, and put them on their oaths, according to the duty of his charge, to ascertain whether Charles really had Agnes Sorel for his mistress. He concludes that nothing improper ever passed between these lovers; and that all was reduced to a few honest caresses, to which these domestics had been the innocent witnesses. However, it is proved, not by historiographers, but by historians supported by family titles, that Charles VII. had three daughters by Agnes Sorel, the eldest of whom, married to one Breze, was stabbed by her husband. From this time there were often titled historiographers in France, and it was the custom to give them commissions of councillors of state, with the provisions of their charge. They were commensal officers of the king’s house. Matthieu had these privileges under Henry IV., but did not therefore write a better history.

At Venice it is always a noble of the senate who possesses this title and function, and the celebrated Nani has filled them with general approbation. It is very difficult for the historiographer of a prince not to be a liar; that of a republic flatters less; but he does not tell all the truth. In China historiographers are charged with collecting all the events and original titles under a dynasty. They throw the leaves numbered into a vast hall, through an orifice resembling the lion’s mouth at Venice, into which is cast all secret intelligence. When the dynasty is extinct the hall is opened and the materials digested, of which an authentic history is composed. The general journal of the empire also serves to form the body of history; this journal is superior to our newspapers, being made under the superintendence of the mandarins of each province, revised by a supreme tribunal, and every piece bearing an authenticity which is decisive in contentious matters.

Every sovereign chose his own historiographer. Vittorio Siri was one; Pelisson was first chosen by Louis XIV. to write the events of his reign, and acquitted himself of his task with eloquence in the history of Franche-Comté. Racine, the most elegant of poets, and Boileau, the most correct, were afterwards substituted for Pelisson. Some curious persons have collected “Memoirs of the Passage of the Rhine,” written by Racine. We cannot judge by these memoirs whether Louis XIV. passed the Rhine or not with his troops, who swam across the river. This example sufficiently demonstrates how rarely it happens that an historiographer dare tell the truth. Several also, who have possessed this title, have taken good care of writing history; they have followed the example of Amyot, who said that he was too much attached to his masters to write their lives. Father Daniel had the patent of historiographer, after having given his “History of France”; he had a pension of 600 livres, regarded merely as a suitable stipend for a monk.

It is very difficult to assign true bounds to the arts, sciences, and literary labor. Perhaps it is the proper duty of an historiographer to collect materials, and that of an historian to put them in order. The first can amass everything, the second arrange and select. The historiographer is more of the simple annalist, while the historian seems to have a more open field for reflection and eloquence.

We need scarcely say here that both should equally tell the truth, but we can examine this great law of Cicero: “Ne quid veri tacere non audeat.”—“That we ought not to dare to conceal any truth.” This rule is of the number of those that want illustration. Suppose a prince confides to his historiographer an important secret to which his honor is attached, or that the good of the state requires should not be revealed—should the historiographer or historian break his word with the prince, or betray his country to obey Cicero? The curiosity of the public seems to exact it; honor and duty forbid it. Perhaps in this case he should renounce writing history.

If a truth dishonors a family, ought the historiographer or historian to inform the public of it? No; doubtless he is not bound to reveal the shame of individuals; history is no satire.

But if this scandalous truth belongs to public events, if it enters into the interests of the state—if it has produced evils of which it imports to know the cause, it is then that the maxims of Cicero should be observed; for this law is like all others which must be executed, tempered, or neglected, according to circumstances.

Let us beware of this humane respect when treating of acknowledged public faults, prevarications, and injustices, into which the misfortunes of the times have betrayed respectable bodies. They cannot be too much exposed; they are beacons which warn these always-existing bodies against splitting again on similar rocks. If an English parliament has condemned a man of fortune to the torture—if an assembly of theologians had demanded the blood of an unfortunate who differed in opinion from themselves, it should be the duty of an historian to inspire all ages with horror for these juridical assassins. We should always make the Athenians blush for the death of Socrates.

Happily, even an entire people always find it good to have the crimes of their ancestors placed before them; they like to condemn them, and to believe themselves superior. The historiographer or historian encourages them in these sentiments, and, in retracing the wars of government and religion, prevents their repetition.

HISTORY.

SECTION I.

Definition of History.

History is the recital of facts represented as true. Fable, on the contrary, is the recital of facts represented as fiction. There is the history of human opinions, which is scarcely anything more than the history of human errors.

The history of the arts may be made the most useful of all, when to a knowledge of their invention and progress it adds a description of their mechanical means and processes.

Natural history, improperly designated “history,” is an essential part of natural philosophy. The history of events has been divided into sacred and profane. Sacred history is a series of divine and miraculous operations, by which it has pleased God formerly to direct and govern the Jewish nation, and, in the present day, to try our faith. “To learn Hebrew, the sciences, and history,” says La Fontaine, “is to drink up the sea.”

Si j’apprenois l’Hébreu, les sciences, l’histoire,

Tout cela, c’est la mer à boire.

—La Fontaine, book viii, fable 25.

The Foundations of History.

The foundations of all history are the recitals of events, made by fathers to their children, and afterwards transmitted from one generation to another. They are, at most, only probable in their origin when they do not shock common sense, and they lose a degree of probability at every successive transmission. With time the fabulous increases and the true disappears; hence it arises that the original traditions and records of all nations are absurd. Thus the Egyptians had been governed for many ages by the gods. They had next been under the government of demi-gods; and, finally, they had kings for eleven thousand three hundred and forty years, and during that period the sun had changed four times from east and west.

The Phœnicians, in the time of Alexander, pretended that they had been settled in their own country for thirty thousand years; and those thirty thousand years were as full of prodigies as the Egyptian chronology. I admit it to be perfectly consistent with physical possibility that Phœnicia may have existed, not merely for thirty thousand years, but thirty thousand millions of ages, and that it may have endured, as well as the other portions of the globe, thirty millions of revolutions. But of all this we possess no knowledge.

The ridiculous miracles which abound in the ancient history of Greece are universally known.

The Romans, although a serious and grave people, have, nevertheless, equally involved in fables the early periods of their history. That nation, so recent in comparison with those of Asia, was five hundred years without historians. It is impossible, therefore, to be surprised on finding that Romulus was the son of Mars; that a she-wolf was his nurse; that he marched with a thousand men from his own village, Rome, against twenty thousand warriors belonging to the city of the Sabines; that he afterwards became a god; that the elder Tarquin cut through a stone with a razor, and that a vestal drew a ship to land with her girdle, etc.

The first annals of modern nations are no less fabulous; things prodigious and improbable ought sometimes, undoubtedly, to be related, but only as proofs of human credulity. They constitute part of the history of human opinion and absurdities; but the field is too immense.

Of Monuments or Memorials.

The only proper method of endeavoring to acquire some knowledge of ancient history is to ascertain whether there remain any incontestable public monuments. We possess only three such, in the way of writing or inscription. The first is the collection of astronomical observations made during nineteen hundred successive years at Babylon, and transferred by Alexander to Greece. This series of observations, which goes back two thousand two hundred and thirty-four years beyond our vulgar era, decidedly proves that the Babylonians existed as an associated and incorporated people many ages before; for the arts are struck out and elaborated only in the slow course of time, and the indolence natural to mankind permits thousands of years to roll away without their acquiring any other knowledge or talents than what are required for food, clothing, shelter, and mutual destruction. Let the truth of these remarks be judged of from the state of the Germans and the English in the time of Cæsar, from that of the Tartars at the present day, from that of two-thirds of Africa, and from that of all the various nations found in the vast continent of America, excepting, in some respects, the kingdoms of Peru and Mexico, and the republic of Tlascala. Let it be recollected that in the whole of the new world not a single individual could write or read.

The second monument is the central eclipse of the sun, calculated in China two thousand one hundred and fifty-five years before our vulgar era, and admitted by all our astronomers to have actually occurred. We must apply the same remark to the Chinese as to the people of Babylon. They had undoubtedly, long before this period, constituted a vast empire and social polity. But what places the Chinese above all the other nations of the world is that neither their laws, nor manners, nor the language exclusively spoken by their men of learning, have experienced any change in the course of about four thousand years. Yet this nation and that of India, the most ancient of all that are now subsisting, those which possess the largest and most fertile tracts of territory, those which had invented nearly all the arts almost before we were in possession even of any of them, have been always omitted, down to our time, in our pretended universal histories. And whenever a Spaniard or a Frenchman enumerated the various nations of the globe, neither of them failed to represent his own country as the first monarchy on earth, and his king as the greatest sovereign, under the flattering hope, no doubt, that that greatest of sovereigns, after having read his book, would confer upon him a pension.

The third monument, but very inferior to the two others, is the Arundel Marbles. The chronicle of Athens was inscribed on these marbles two hundred and sixty-three years before our era, but it goes no further back than the time of Cecrops, thirteen hundred and nineteen years beyond the time of its inscription. In the history of all antiquity these are the only incontestable epochs that we possess.

Let us attend a little particularly to these marbles, which were brought from Greece by Lord Arundel. The chronicle contained in them commences fifteen hundred and seventy-seven years before our era. This, at the present time, makes an antiquity of 3,348 years, and in the course of that period you do not find a single miraculous or prodigious event on record. It is the same with the Olympiads. It must not be in reference to these that the expression can be applied of “Græcia mendax” (lying Greece). The Greeks well knew how to distinguish history from fable, and real facts from the tales of Herodotus; just as in relation to important public affairs, their orators borrowed nothing from the discourses of the sophists or the imagery of the poets.

The date of the taking of Troy is specified in these marbles, but there is no mention made of Apollo’s arrows, or the sacrifice of Iphigenia, or the ridiculous battles of the gods. The date of the inventions of Triptolemus and Ceres is given; but Ceres is not called goddess. Notice is taken of a poem upon the rape of Proserpine; but it is not said that she is the daughter of Jupiter and a goddess, and the wife of the god of hell.

Hercules is initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries, but not a single word is mentioned of the twelve labors, nor of his passage to Africa in his cup, nor of his divinity, nor of the great fish by which he was swallowed, and which, according to Lycophron, kept him in its belly three days and three nights.

Among us, on the contrary, a standard is brought by an angel from heaven to the monks of St. Denis; a pigeon brings a bottle of oil to the church of Rheims; two armies of serpents engage in pitched battle in Germany; an archbishop of Mentz is besieged and devoured by rats; and to complete and crown the whole, the year in which these adventures occurred, is given with the most particular precision. The abbé Langlet, also condescending to compile, compiles these contemptible fooleries, while the almanacs, for the hundredth time, repeat them. In this manner are our youth instructed and enlightened; and all these trumpery fables are put in requisition even for the education of princes!

All history is comparatively recent. It is by no means astonishing to find that we have, in fact, no profane history that goes back beyond about four thousand years. The cause of this is to be found in the revolutions of the globe, and the long and universal ignorance of the art which transmits events by writing. There are still many nations totally unacquainted with the practice of this art. It existed only in a small number of civilized states, and even in them was confined to comparatively few hands. Nothing was more rare among the French and Germans than knowing how to write; down to the fourteenth century of our era, scarcely any public acts were attested by witnesses. It was not till the reign of Charles VII. in France, in 1454, that an attempt was made to reduce to writing some of the customs of France. The art was still more uncommon among the Spaniards, and hence it arises that their history is so dry and doubtful till the time of Ferdinand and Isabella. We perceive, from what has been said, with what facility the very small number of persons who possessed the art of writing might impose by means of it, and how easy it has been to produce a belief in the most enormous absurdities.

There have been nations who have subjugated a considerable part of the world, and who yet have not been acquainted with the use of characters. We know that Genghis Khan conquered a part of Asia in the beginning of the thirteenth century; but it is not from him, nor from the Tartars, that we have derived that knowledge. Their history, written by the Chinese, and translated by Father Gaubil, states that these Tartars were at that time unacquainted with the art of writing.

This art was, unquestionably, not likely to be less unknown to the Scythian Ogus-kan, called by the Persians and Greeks Madies, who conquered a part of Europe and Asia long before the reign of Cyrus. It is almost a certainty that at that time, out of a hundred nations, there were only two or three that employed characters. It is undoubtedly possible, that in an ancient world destroyed, mankind were acquainted with the art of writing and the other arts, but in our world they are all of recent date.

There remain monuments of another kind, which serve to prove merely the remote antiquity of certain nations, an antiquity preceding all known epochs, and all books; these are the prodigies of architecture, such as the pyramids and palaces of Egypt, which have resisted and wearied the power of time. Herodotus, who lived two thousand two hundred years ago, and who had seen them, was unable to learn from the Egyptian priests at what periods these structures were raised.

It is difficult to ascribe to the oldest of the pyramids an antiquity of less than four thousand years, and, it is necessary to consider, that those ostentatious piles, erected by monarchs, could not have been commenced till long after the establishment of cities. But, in order to build cities in a country every year inundated, it must always be recollected that it would have been previously necessary in this land of slime and mud, to lay the foundation upon piles, that they might thus be inaccessible to the inundation; it would have been necessary, even before taking this indispensable measure of precaution, and before the inhabitants could be in a state to engage in such important and even dangerous labors, that the people should have contrived retreats, during the swelling of the Nile, between the two chains of rocks which exist on the right and left banks of the river. It would have been necessary that these collected multitudes should have instruments of tillage, and of architecture, a knowledge of architecture and surveying, regular laws, and an active police. All these things require a space of time absolutely prodigious. We see, every day, by the long details which relate even to those of our undertakings, which are most necessary and most diminutive, how difficult it is to execute works of magnitude, and that they not only require unwearied perseverance, but many generations animated by the same spirit.

However, whether we admit that one or two of those immense masses were erected by Menes, or Thaut, or Cheops, or Rameses, we shall not, in consequence, have the slightest further insight into the ancient history of Egypt. The language of that people is lost; and all we know in reference to the subject is that before the most ancient historians existed, there existed materials for writing ancient history.

SECTION II.

As we already possess, I had almost said, twenty thousand works, the greater number of them extending to many volumes, on the subject, exclusively, of the history of France; and as, even a studious man, were he to live a hundred years, would find it impossible to read them, I think it a good thing to know where to stop. We are obliged to connect with the knowledge of our own country the history of our neighbors. We are still less permitted to remain ignorant of the Greeks and Romans, and their laws which are become ours; but, if to this laborious study we should resolve to add that of more remote antiquity, we should resemble the man who deserted Tacitus and Livy to study seriously the “Thousand and One Nights.” All the origins of nations are evidently fables. The reason is that men must have lived long in society, and have learned to make bread and clothing (which would be matters of some difficulty) before they acquired the art of transmitting all their thoughts to posterity (a matter of greater difficulty still). The art of writing is certainly not more than six thousand years old, even among the Chinese; and, whatever may be the boast of the Chaldæans and Egyptians, it appears not at all likely that they were able to read and write earlier.

The history, therefore, of preceding periods, could be transmitted by memory alone; and we well know how the memory of past events changes from one generation to another. The first histories were written only from the imagination. Not only did every people invent its own origin, but it invented also the origin of the whole world.

If we may believe Sanchoniathon, the origin of things was a thick air, which was rarified by the wind; hence sprang desire and love, and from the union of desire and love were formed animals. The stars were later productions, and intended merely to adorn the heavens, and to rejoice the sight of the animals upon earth.

The Knef of the Egyptians, their Oshiret and Ishet, which we call Osiris and Isis, are neither less ingenious nor ridiculous. The Greeks embellished all these fictions. Ovid collected them and ornamented them with the charms of the most beautiful poetry. What he says of a god who develops or disembroils chaos, and of the formation of man, is sublime.

Sanctius his animal, mentisque capacius altæ

Deerat adhuc, et quod dominari in cætera posset.

Natus homo est . . . .

—Ovid,Metam., i, v. 76.

A creature of a more exalted kind

Was wanting yet, and then was man designed;

Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast,

For empire formed, and fit to rule the rest.

—Dryden.

Pronaque cum spectent animalia cætera terram;

Os homini sublime dedit cælumque tueri

Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus.

Metam., i, v. 84.

Thus, while the mute creation downward bend

Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend,

Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes

Beholds his own hereditary skies.

—Dryden.

Hesiod, and other writers who lived so long before, would have been very far from expressing themselves with this elegant sublimity. But, from the interesting moment of man’s formation down to the era of the Olympiads, everything is plunged in profound obscurity.

Herodotus is present at the Olympic games, and, like an old woman to children, recites his narratives, or rather tales, to the assembled Greeks. He begins by saying that the Phœnicians sailed from the Red Sea into the Mediterranean; which, if true, must necessarily imply that they had doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and made the circuit of Africa.

Then comes the rape of Io; then the fable of Gyges and Candaules; then the wondrous stories of banditti, and that of the daughter of Cheops, king of Egypt, having required a hewn stone from each of her many lovers, and obtained, in consequence, a number large enough to build one of the pyramids.

To this, add the oracles, prodigies, and frauds of priests, and you have the history of the human race.

The first periods of the Roman history appear to have been written by Herodotus; our conquerors and legislators knew no other way of counting their years as they passed away, than by driving nails into a wall by the hand of the sacred pontiff.

The great Romulus, the king of a village, is the son of the god Mars, and a recluse, who was proceeding to a well to draw water in a pitcher. He has a god for his father, a woman of loose manners for his mother, and a she-wolf for his nurse. A buckler falls from heaven expressly for Numa. The invaluable books of the Sibyls are found by accident. An augur, by divine permission, divides a large flintstone with a razor. A vestal, with her mere girdle, draws into the water a large vessel that has been stranded. Castor and Pollux come down to fight for the Romans, and the marks of their horses’ feet are imprinted on the stones. The transalpine Gauls advanced to pillage Rome; some relate that they were driven away by geese, others that they carried away with them much gold and silver; but it is probable that, at that time in Italy, geese were far more abundant than silver. We have imitated the first Roman historians, at least in their taste for fables. We have our oriflamme, our great standard, brought from heaven by an angel, and the holy phial by a pigeon; and, when to these we add the mantle of St. Martin, we feel not a little formidable.

What would constitute useful history? That which should teach us our duties and our rights, without appearing to teach them.

It is often asked whether the fable of the sacrifice of Iphigenia is taken from the history of Jephthah; whether the deluge of Deucalion is invented in imitation of that of Noah; whether the adventure of Philemon and Baucis is copied from that of Lot and his wife. The Jews admit that they had no communication with strangers, that their books were unknown to the Greeks till the translation made by the order of Ptolemy. The Jews were, long before that period, money-brokers and usurers among the Greeks at Alexandria; but the Greeks never went to sell old clothes at Jerusalem. It is evident that no people imitated the Jews, and also that the Jews imitated or adopted many things from the Babylonians, the Egyptians, and the Greeks.

All Jewish antiquities are sacred in our estimation, notwithstanding the hatred and contempt in which we hold that people. We cannot, indeed, believe them by reason, but we bring ourselves under subjection to the Jews by faith. There are about fourscore systems in existence on the subject of their chronology, and a far greater number of ways of explaining the events recorded in their histories; we know not which is the true one, but we reserve our faith for it in store against the time when that true one shall be discovered.

We have so many things to believe in this sensible and magnanimous people, that all our faith is exhausted by them, and we have none left for the prodigies with which the other nations abound. Rollin may go on repeating to us the oracles of Apollo, and the miraculous achievements of Semiramis; he may continue to transcribe all that has been narrated of the justice of those ancient Scythians who so frequently pillaged Africa, and occasionally ate men for their breakfast; yet sensible and well-educated people will still feel and express some degree of incredulity.

What I most admire in our modern compilers is the judgment and zeal with which they prove to us that whatever happened in former ages, in the most extensive and powerful empires of the world, took place solely for the instruction of the inhabitants of Palestine. If the kings of Babylon, in the course of their conquests, overrun the territories of the Hebrew people, it is only to correct that people for their sins. If the monarch, who has been commonly named Cyrus, becomes master of Babylon, it is that he may grant permission to some captive Jews to return home. If Alexander conquers Darius, it is for the settlement of some Jew old-clothesmen at Alexandria. When the Romans join Syria to their vast dominions, and round their empire with the little district of Judæa, this is still with a view to teach a moral lesson to the Jews. The Arabs and the Turks appear upon the stage of the world solely for the correction of this amiable people. We must acknowledge that they have had an excellent education; never had any pupil so many preceptors. Such is the utility of history.

But what is still more instructive is the exact justice which the clergy have dealt out to all those sovereigns with whom they were dissatisfied. Observe with what impartial candor St. Gregory of Nazianzen judges the emperor Julian, the philosopher. He declares that that prince, who did not believe in the existence of the devil, held secret communication with that personage, and that, on a particular occasion, when the demons appeared to him under the most hideous forms, and in the midst of the most raging flames, he drove them away by making inadvertently the sign of the cross.

He denominates him madman and wretch; he asserts that Julian immolated young men and women every night in caves. Such is the description he gives of the most candid and clement of men, and who never exercised the slightest revenge against this same Gregory, notwithstanding the abuse and invectives with which he pursued him throughout his reign.

To apologize for the guilty is a happy way of justifying calumny against the innocent. Compensation is thus effected; and such compensation was amply afforded by St. Gregory. The emperor Constantius, Julian’s uncle and predecessor, upon his accession to the throne, had massacred Julius, his mother’s brother, and his two sons, all three of whom had been declared august; this was a system which he had adopted from his father. He afterwards procured the assassination of Gallus, Julian’s brother. The cruelty which he thus displayed to his own family, he extended to the empire at large; but he was a man of prayer, and, even at the decisive battle with Maxentius, he was praying to God in a neighboring church during the whole time in which the armies were engaged. Such was the man who was eulogized by Gregory; and, if such is the way in which the saints make us acquainted with the truth, what may we not expect from the profane, particularly when they are ignorant, superstitious, and irritable?

At the present day the study of history is occasionally applied to a purpose somewhat whimsical and absurd. Certain charters of the time of Dagobert are discovered and brought forward, the greater part of them of a somewhat suspicious character in point of genuineness, and ill-understood; and from these it is inferred, that customs, rights, and prerogatives, which subsisted then, should be revived now. I would recommend it to those who adopt this method of study and reasoning, to say to the ocean, “You formerly extended to Aigues-Mortes, Fréjus, Ravenna, and Ferrara. Return to them immediately.”

SECTION III.

Of the Certainty of History.

All certainty which does not consist in mathematical demonstration is nothing more than the highest probability; there is no other historical certainty.

When Marco Polo described the greatness and population of China, being the first, and for a time the only writer who had described them, he could not obtain credit. The Portuguese, who for ages afterwards had communication and commerce with that vast empire, began to render the description probable. It is now a matter of absolute certainty; of that certainty which arises from the unanimous deposition of a thousand witnesses or different nations, unopposed by the testimony of a single individual.

If merely two or three historians had described the adventure of King Charles XII. when he persisted in remaining in the territories of his benefactor, the sultan, in opposition to the orders of that monarch, and absolutely fought, with the few domestics that attended his person, against an army of janissaries and Tartars, I should have suspended my judgment about its truth; but, having spoken to many who actually witnessed the fact, and having never heard it called in question, I cannot possibly do otherwise than believe it; because, after all, although such conduct is neither wise nor common, there is nothing in it contradictory to the laws of nature, or the character of the hero.

That which is in opposition to the ordinary course of nature ought not to be believed, unless it is attested by persons evidently inspired by the divine mind, and whose inspiration, indeed, it is impossible to doubt. Hence we are justified in considering as a paradox the assertion made under the article on “Certainty,” in the great “Encyclopædia,” that we are as much bound to believe in the resuscitation of a dead man, if all Paris were to affirm it, as to believe all Paris when it states that we gained the battle of Fontenoy. It is clear that the evidence of all Paris to a thing improbable can never be equal to that evidence in favor of a probable one. These are the first principles of genuine logic. Such a dictionary as the one in question should be consecrated only to truth.

Uncertainty of History.

Periods of time are distinguished as fabulous and historical. But even in the historical times themselves it is necessary to distinguish truths from fables. I am not here speaking of fables, now universally admitted to be such. There is no question, for example, respecting the prodigies with which Livy has embellished, or rather defaced, his history. But with respect to events generally admitted, how many reasons exist for doubt!

Let it be recollected that the Roman republic was five hundred years without historians; that Livy himself deplores the loss of various public monuments or records, as almost all, he says, were destroyed in the burning of Rome: “Pleraque interiere.” Let it be considered that, in the first three hundred years, the art of writing was very uncommon: “Raræ per eadem tempora literæ.” Reason will be then seen for entertaining doubt on all those events which do not correspond with the usual order of human affairs.

Can it be considered very likely that Romulus, the grandson of the king of the Sabines, was compelled to carry off the Sabine women in order to obtain for his people wives? Is the history of Lucretia highly probable; can we easily believe, on the credit of Livy, that the king Porsenna betook himself to flight, full of admiration for the Romans, because a fanatic had pledged himself to assassinate him? Should we not rather be inclined to rely upon Polybius, who was two hundred years earlier than Livy? Polybius informs us that Porsenna subjugated the Romans. This is far more probable than the adventure of Scævola’s burning off his hand for failing in the attempt to assassinate him. I would have defied Poltrot to do as much.

Does the adventure of Regulus, inclosed within a hogshead or tub stuck round with iron spikes, deserve belief? Would not Polybius, a contemporary, have recorded it had it been true? He says not a single word upon the subject. Is not this a striking presumption that the story was trumped up long afterwards to gratify the popular hatred against the Carthaginians?

Open “Moréri’s Dictionary,” at the article on “Regulus.” He informs you that the torments inflicted on that Roman are recorded in Livy. The particular decade, however, in which Livy would have recorded it, if at all, is lost; and in lieu of it, we have only the supplement of Freinsheim; and thus it appears that Dictionary has merely cited a German writer of the seventeenth century, under the idea of citing a Roman of the Augustan age. Volumes might be composed out of all the celebrated events which have been generally admitted, but which may be more fairly doubted. But the limits allowed for this article will not permit us to enlarge.

Whether Temples, Festivals, Annual Ceremonies, and even Medals, are Historic Proofs.

We might be naturally led to imagine that a monument raised by any nation in celebration of a particular event, would attest the certainty of that event; if, however, these monuments were not erected by contemporaries, or if they celebrate events that carry with them but little probability, they may often be regarded as proving nothing more than a wish to consecrate a popular opinion.

The rostral column, erected in Rome by the contemporaries of Duilius, is undoubtedly a proof of the naval victory obtained by Duilius; but does the statue of the augur Nævius, who is said to have divided a large flint with a razor, prove that Nævius in reality performed that prodigy? Were the statues of Ceres and Triptolemus, at Athens, decisive evidences that Ceres came down from I know not what particular planet, to instruct the Athenians in agriculture? Or does the famous Laocoon, which exists perfect to the present day, furnish incontestable evidence of the truth of the story of the Trojan horse?

Ceremonies and annual festivals observed universally throughout any nation, are, in like manner, no better proofs of the reality of the events to which they are attributed. The festival of Orion, carried on the back of a dolphin, was celebrated among the Romans as well as the Greeks. That of Faunus was in celebration of his adventure with Hercules and Omphale, when that god, being enamored of Omphale, mistook the bed of Hercules for that of his mistress.

The famous feast of the Lupercals was instituted in honor of the she-wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus.

What was the origin of the feast of Orion, which was observed on the fifth of the ides of May? It was neither more nor less than the following adventure: Hyreus once entertained at his house the gods Jupiter, Neptune, and Mercury, and when his high and mighty guests were about to depart, the worthy host, who had no wife, and was very desirous of having a son, lamented his unfortunate fate, and expressed his anxious desire to the three divinities. We dare not exactly detail what they did to the hide of an ox which Hyreus had killed for their entertainment; however, they afterwards covered the well-soaked hide with a little earth; and thence, at the end of nine months, was born Orion.

Almost all the Roman, Syrian, Grecian, and Egyptian festivals, were founded on similar legends, as well as the temples and statues of ancient heroes. They were monuments consecrated by credulity to error.

One of our most ancient monuments is the statue of St. Denis carrying his head in his arms.

Even a medal, and a contemporary medal, is sometimes no proof. How many medals has flattery struck in celebration of battles very indecisive in themselves, but thus exalted into victories; and of enterprises, in fact, baffled and abortive, and completed only in the inscription on the medal? Finally, during the war in 1740, between the Spaniards and the English, was there not a medal struck, attesting the capture of Carthagena by Admiral Vernon, although that admiral was obliged to raise the siege?

Medals are then unexceptionable testimonies only when the event they celebrate is attested by contemporary authors; these evidences thus corroborating each other, verify the event described.

Should an Historian ascribe Fictitious Speeches to his Characters, and sketch Portraits of them?

If on any particular occasion the commander of an army, or a public minister, has spoken in a powerful and impressive manner, characteristic of his genius and his age, his discourse should unquestionably be given with the most literal exactness. Speeches of this description are perhaps the most valuable part of history. But for what purpose represent a man as saying what he never did say? It would be just as correct to attribute to him acts which he never performed. It is a fiction imitated from Homer; but that which is fiction in a poem, in strict language, is a lie in the historian. Many of the ancients adopted the method in question, which merely proves that many of the ancients were fond of parading their eloquence at the expense of truth.

Of Historical Portraiture.

Portraits, also, frequently manifest a stronger desire for display, than to communicate information. Contemporaries are justifiable in drawing the portraits of statesmen with whom they have negotiated, or of generals under whom they have fought. But how much is it to be apprehended that the pencil will in many cases be guided by the feelings? The portraits given by Lord Clarendon appear to be drawn with more impartiality, gravity, and judgment, than those which we peruse with so much delight in Cardinal de Retz.

But to attempt to paint the ancients; to elaborate in this way the development of their minds; to regard events as characters in which we may accurately read the most sacred feelings and intents of their hearts—this is an undertaking of no ordinary difficulty and discrimination, although as frequently conducted, both childish and trifling.

Of Cicero’s Maxim Concerning History, that an Historian should never dare to relate a Falsehood or to Conceal a Truth.

The first part of this precept is incontestable; we must stop for a moment to examine the other. If a particular truth may be of any service to the state, your silence is censurable. But I will suppose you to write the history of a prince who had reposed in you a secret—ought you to reveal that secret? Ought you to say to all posterity what you would be criminal in disclosing to a single individual? Should the duty of an historian prevail over the higher and more imperative duty of a man?

I will suppose again, that you have witnessed a failing or weakness which has not had the slightest influence on public affairs—ought you to publish such weakness? In such a case history becomes satire.

It must be allowed, indeed, that the greater part of anecdote writers are more indiscreet than they are useful. But what opinion must we entertain of those impudent compilers who appear to glory in scattering about them calumny and slander, and print and sell scandals as Voisin sold poisons?

Of Satirical History.

If Plutarch censured Herodotus for not having sufficiently extolled the fame of some of the Grecian cities, and for omitting many known facts worthy of being recorded, how much more censurable are certain of our modern writers, who, without any of the merits of Herodotus, impute both to princes and to nations acts of the most odious character, without the slightest proof or evidence? The history of the war in 1741 has been written in England; and it relates, “that at the battle of Fontenoy the French fired at the English balls and pieces of glass which had been prepared with poison; and that the duke of Cumberland sent to the king of France a box full of those alleged poisonous articles, which had been found in the bodies of the wounded English.” The same author adds, that the French having lost in that battle forty thousand men, the parliament issued an order to prevent people from talking on the subject, under pain of corporal punishment.

The fraudulent memoirs published not long since under the name of Madame de Maintenon, abound with similar absurdities. We are told in them, that at the siege of Lille the allies threw placards into the city, containing these words: “Frenchmen, be comforted—Maintenon shall never be your queen.”

Almost every page is polluted by false statements and abuse of the royal family and other leading families in the kingdom, without the author’s making out the smallest probability to give a color to his calumnies. This is not writing history; it is writing slanders which deserve the pillory.

A vast number of works have been printed in Holland, under the name of history, of which the style is as vulgar and coarse as the abuse, and the facts as false as they are ill-narrated. This, it has been observed, is a bad fruit of the noble tree of liberty. But if the contemptible authors of this trash have the liberty thus to deceive their readers, it becomes us here to take the liberty to undeceive them.

A thirst for despicable gain, and the insolence of vulgar and grovelling manners, were the only motives which led that Protestant refugee from Languedoc, of the name of Langlevieux, but commonly called La Beaumelle, to attempt the most infamous trick that ever disgraced literature. He sold to Eslinger, the bookseller of Frankfort, in 1751, for seventeen louis d’or, the “History of the Age of Louis XIV.,” which is not his; and, either to make it believed that he was the proprietor, or to earn his money, he loaded it with abusive and abominable notes against Louis XIV., his son, and his grandson, the duke of Burgundy, whom he abuses in the most unmeasured terms, and calls a traitor to his grandfather and his country. He pours upon the duke of Orleans, the regent, calumnies at once the most horrible and the most absurd; no person of consequence is spared, and yet no person of consequence did he ever know. He retails against the marshals Villars and Villeroi, against ministers, and even against ladies, all the petty, dirty, and scandalous tales that could be collected from the lowest taverns and wine-houses; and he speaks of the greatest princes as if they were amenable to himself, and under his own personal jurisdiction. He expresses himself, indeed, as if he were a formal and authorized judge of kings: “Give me,” says he, “a Stuart, and I will make him king of England.”

This most ridiculous and abominable conduct, proceeding from an author obscure and unknown, has incurred no prosecution; it would have been severely punished in a man whose words would have carried any weight. But we must here observe, that these works of darkness frequently circulate through all Europe; they are sold at the fairs of Frankfort and Leipsic, and the whole of the North is overrun with them. Foreigners, who are not well informed, derive from books of this description their knowledge of modern history. German authors are not always sufficiently on their guard against memoirs of this character, but employ them as materials; which has been the case with the memoirs of Pontis, Montbrun, Rochefort, and Pordac; with all the pretended political testaments of ministers of state, which have proceeded from the pen of forgery; with the “Royal Tenth” of Boisguillebert, impudently published under the name of Marshal Vauban; and with innumerable compilations of anas and anecdotes.

History is sometimes even still more shamefully abused in England. As there are always two parties in furious hostility against each other, until some common danger for a season unites them, the writers of one faction condemn everything that the others approve. The same individual is represented as a Cato and a Catiline. How is truth to be extricated from this adulation and satire? Perhaps there is only one rule to be depended upon, which is, to believe all the good which the historian of a party ventures to allow to the leaders of the opposite faction; and all the ills which he ventures to impute to the chiefs of his own—a rule, of which neither party can severely complain.

With regard to memoirs actually written by agents in the events recorded, as those of Clarendon, Ludlow, and Burnet, in England, and de la Rochefoucauld and de Retz in France, if they agree, they are true; if they contradict each other, doubt them.

With respect to anas and anecdotes, there may perhaps be one in a hundred of them that contain some shadow of truth.

SECTION IV.

Of the Method or Manner of Writing History, and of Style.

We have said so much upon this subject, that we must here say very little. It is sufficiently known and fully admitted, that the method and style of Livy—his gravity, and instructive eloquence, are suitable to the majesty of the Roman republic; that Tacitus is more calculated to portray tyrants, Polybius to give lessons on war, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus to investigate antiquities.

But, while he forms himself on the general model of these great masters, a weighty responsibility is attached to the modern historian from which they were exempt. He is required to give more minute details, facts more completely authenticated, correct dates, precise authorities, more attention to customs, laws, manners, commerce, finance, agriculture, and population. It is with history, as it is with mathematics and natural philosophy; the field of it is immensely enlarged. The more easy it is to compile newspapers, the more difficult it is at the present day to write history.

Daniel thought himself a historian, because he transcribed dates and narratives of battles, of which I can understand nothing. He should have informed me of the rights of the nation, the rights of the chief corporate establishments in it; its laws, usages, manners, with the alterations by which they have been affected in the progress of time. This nation might not improperly address him in some such language as the following:—I want from you my own history rather than that of Louis le Gros and Louis Hutin; you tell me, copying from some old, unauthenticated, and carelessly-written chronicle, that when Louis VIII. was attacked by a mortal disease, and lay languishing and powerless, the physicians ordered the more than half-dead monarch to take to his bed a blooming damsel, who might cherish the few sparks of remaining life; and that the pious king rejected the unholy advice with indignation. Alas! Daniel, you are unacquainted, it seems, with the Italian proverb—“Donna ignuda manda l’uomo sotto la terra.” You ought to possess a little stronger tincture of political and natural history.

The history of a foreign country should be formed on a different model to that of our own.

If we compose a history of France, we are under no necessity to describe the course of the Seine and the Loire; but if we publish a history of the conquests of the Portuguese in Asia, a topographical description of the recently explored country is required. It is desirable that we should, as it were, conduct the reader by the hand round Africa, and along the coasts of Persia and India; and it is expected that we should treat with information and judgment, of manners, laws, and customs so new to Europe.

We have a great variety of histories of the establishment of the Portuguese in India, written by our countrymen, but not one of them has made us acquainted with the different governments of that country, with its religious antiquities, Brahmins, disciples of St. John, Guebers, and Banians. Some letters of Xavier and his successors have, it is true, been preserved to us. We have had histories of the Indies composed at Paris, from the accounts of those missionaries who were unacquainted with the language of the Brahmins. We have it repeated, in a hundred works, that the Indians worship the devil. The chaplains of a company of merchants quit our country under these impressions, and, as soon as they perceive on the coast some symbolical figures, they fail not to write home that they are the portraits and likenesses of the devil, that they are in the devil’s empire, and that they are going to engage in battle with him. They do not reflect that we are the real worshippers of the devil Mammon, and that we travel six thousand leagues from our native land to offer our vows at his shrine, and to obtain the grant of some portion of his treasures.

As to those who hire themselves out at Paris to some bookseller in the Rue de St. Jacques, and at so much per job, and who are ordered to write a history of Japan, Canada, or the Canaries, as the case requires and opportunity suggests, from the memoirs of a few Capuchin friars—to such I have nothing to say.

It is sufficient, if it be clearly understood, that the method which would be proper in writing a history of our own country is not suitable in describing the discoveries of the new world; that we should not write on a small city as on a great empire; and that the private history of a prince should be composed in a very different manner from the history of France and England.

If you have nothing to tell us, but that on the banks of the Oxus and the Jaxartes, one barbarian has been succeeded by another barbarian, in what respect do you benefit the public?

These rules are well known; but the art of writing history well will always be very uncommon. It obviously requires a style grave, pure, varied, and smooth. But we may say with respect to rules for writing history, as in reference to those for all the intellectual arts—there are many precepts, but few masters.

SECTION V.

History of the Jewish Kings, and of the “Paralipomena.”

Every nation, as soon as it was able to write, has written its own history, and the Jews have accordingly written theirs. Before they had kings, they lived under a theocracy; it was their destiny to be governed by God himself.

When the Jews were desirous of having a king, like the adjoining nations, the prophet Samuel, who was exceedingly interested in preventing it, declared to them, on the part of God, that they were rejecting God himself. Thus the Jewish theocracy ceased when the monarchy commenced.

We may therefore remark, without the imputation of blasphemy, that the history of the Jewish kings was written like that of other nations, and that God did not take the pains Himself to dictate the history of a people whom He no longer governed.

We advance this opinion with the greatest diffidence. What may perhaps be considered as confirming it, is, that the “Paralipomena” very frequently contradict the Book of Kings, both with respect to chronology and facts, just as profane historians sometimes contradict one another. Moreover, if God always wrote the history of the Jews, it seems only consistent and natural to think that He writes it still; for the Jews are always His cherished people. They are on some future day to be converted, and it seems that whenever that event happens, they will have as complete a right to consider the history of their dispersion as sacred, as they have now to say, that God wrote the history of their kings.

We may be allowed here to make one reflection; which is, that as God was for a very long period their king, and afterwards became their historian, we are bound to entertain for all Jews the most profound respect. There is not a single Jew broker, or slop-man, who is not infinitely superior to Cæsar and Alexander. How can we avoid bending in prostration before an old-clothes man, who proves to us that his history has been written by God Himself, while the histories of Greece and Rome have been transmitted to us merely by the profane hand of man?

If the style of the history of the kings, and of the “Paralipomena,” is divine, it may nevertheless be true that the acts recorded in these histories are not divine. David murders Uriah; Ishbosheth and Mephibosheth are murdered; Absalom murders Ammon; Joab murders Absalom; Solomon murders his brother Adonijah; Baasha murders Nadab; Zimri murders Ela; Omri murders Zimri; Ahab murders Naboth; Jehu murders Ahab and Joram; the inhabitants of Jerusalem murder Amaziah, son of Joash; Shallum, son of Jabesh, murders Zachariah, son of Jeroboam; Menahhem murders Shallum, son of Jabesh; Pekah, son of Remaliah, murders Pekahiah, son of Manehem; and Hoshea, son of Elah, murders Pekah, son of Remaliah. We pass over, in silence, many other minor murders. It must be acknowledged, that, if the Holy Spirit did write this history, He did not choose a subject particularly edifying.

SECTION VI.

Of bad Actions which have been consecrated or excused in History.

It is but too common for historians to praise very depraved and abandoned characters, who have done service either to a dominant sect, or to their nation at large. The praises thus bestowed, come perhaps from a loyal and zealous citizen; but zeal of this description is injurious to the great society of mankind. Romulus murders his brother, and he is made a god. Constantine cuts the throat of his son, strangles his wife, and murders almost all his family: he has been eulogized in general councils, but history should ever hold up such barbarities to detestation. It is undoubtedly fortunate for us that Clovis was a Catholic. It is fortunate for the Anglican church that Henry VIII. abolished monks, but we must at the same time admit that Clovis and Henry VIII. were monsters of cruelty.

When first the Jesuit Berruyer, who although a Jesuit, was a fool, undertook to paraphrase the Old and New Testaments in the style of the lowest populace, with no other intention than that of having them read; he scattered some flowers of rhetoric over the two-edged knife which the Jew Ehud thrust up to the hilt in the stomach of the king Eglon; and over the sabre with which Judith cut off the head of Holofernes after having prostituted herself to his pleasures; and also over many other acts recorded, of a similar description. The parliament, respecting the Bible which narrates these histories, nevertheless condemned the Jesuit who extolled them, and ordered the Old and New Testaments to be burned:—I mean merely those of the Jesuit.

But as the judgments of mankind are ever different in similar cases, the same thing happened to Bayle in circumstances totally different. He was condemned for not praising all the actions of David, king of the province of Judæa. A man of the name of Jurieu, a refugee preacher in Holland, associated with some other refugee preachers, were desirous of obliging him to recant. But how could he recant with reference to facts delivered in the scripture? Had not Bayle some reason to conclude that all the facts recorded in the Jewish books are not the actions of saints; that David, like other men, had committed some criminal acts; and that if he is called a man after God’s own heart, he is called so in consequence of his penitence, and not of his crimes?

Let us disregard names and confine our consideration to things only. Let us suppose, that during the reign of Henry IV. a clergyman of the League party secretly poured out a phial of oil on the head of a shepherd of Brie; that the shepherd comes to court; that the clergyman presents him to Henry IV. as an excellent violin player who can completely drive away all care and melancholy; that the king makes him his equerry, and bestows on him one of his daughters in marriage; that afterwards, the king having quarrelled with the shepherd, the latter takes refuge with one of the princes of Germany, his father-in-law’s enemy; that he enlists and arms six hundred banditti overwhelmed by debt and debauchery; that with this regiment of brigands he rushes to the field, slays friends as well as enemies, exterminating all, even to women with children at the breast, in order to prevent a single individual’s remaining to give intelligence of the horrid butchery. I farther suppose this same shepherd of Brie to become king of France after the death of Henry IV.; that he procures the murder of that king’s grandson, after having invited him to sit at meat at his own table, and delivers over to death seven other younger children of his king and benefactor. Who is the man that will not conceive the shepherd of Brie to act rather harshly?

Commentators are agreed that the adultery of David, and his murder of Uriah, are faults which God pardoned. We may therefore conclude that the massacres above mentioned are faults which God also pardoned.

However, Bayle had no quarter given him; but at length some preachers at London having compared George II. to David, one of that monarch’s servants prints and publishes a small book, in which he censures the comparison. He examines the whole conduct of David; he goes infinitely farther than Bayle, and treats David with more severity than Tacitus applies to Domitian. This book did not raise in England the slightest murmur; every reader felt that bad actions are always bad; that God may pardon them when repentance is proportioned to guilt, but that certainly no man can ever approve of them.

There was more reason, therefore, prevailing in England than there was in Holland in the time of Bayle. We now perceive clearly and without difficulty, that we ought not to hold up as a model of sanctity what, in fact, deserves the severest punishment; and we see with equal clearness that, as we ought not to consecrate guilt, so we ought not to believe absurdity.

HONOR.

The author of the “Spirit of Laws” has founded his system on the idea that virtue is the principle of a republican government, and honor that of monarchism. Is there virtue then without honor, and how is a republic established in virtue?

Let us place before the reader’s eyes that which has been said in an able little book upon this subject. Pamphlets soon sink into oblivion. Truth ought not to be lost; it should be consigned to works possessing durability.

“Assuredly republics have never been formed on a theoretical principle of virtue. The public interest being opposed to the domination of an individual, the spirit of self-importance, and the ambition of every person, serve to curb ambition and the inclination to rapacity, wherever they may appear. The pride of each citizen watches over that of his neighbor, and no person would willingly be the slave of another’s caprice. Such are the feelings which establish republics, and which preserve them. It is ridiculous to imagine that there must be more virtue in a Grison than in a Spaniard.”

That honor can be the sole principle of monarchies is a no less chimerical idea, and the author shows it to be so himself, without being aware of it. “The nature of honor,” says he, in chapter vii. of book iii., “is to demand preferences and distinctions. It, therefore, naturally suits a monarchical government.”

Was it not on this same principle, that the Romans demanded the prætorship, consulship, ovation, and triumph in their republic? These were preferences and distinctions well worth the titles and preferences purchased in monarchies, and for which there is often a regular fixed price.

This remark proves, in our opinion, that the “Spirit of Laws,” although sparkling with wit, and commendable by its respect for the laws and hatred of superstition and rapine, is founded entirely upon false views.

Let us add, that it is precisely in courts that there is always least honor:

L’ingannare, il mentir, la frode, il furto,

E la rapina di pictà vestita,

Crescer coi damno e precipizio altrui,

E fare a se de l’altrui biasmo onore,

Son le virtù di quella gente infidà.

—Pastor Fido, atto v., scena i.

Ramper avec bassesse en affectant l’audace,

S’engraisser de rapine en attestant les lois,

Étouffer en secret son ami qu’on embrasse.

Voilà l’honneur qui règne à la suite des rois.

To basely crawl, yet wear a face of pride;

To rob the public, yet o’er law preside;

Salute a friend, yet sting in the embrace—

Such is the honor which in courts takes place.

Indeed, it is in courts, that men devoid of honor often attain to the highest dignities; and it is in republics that a known dishonorable citizen is seldom trusted by the people with public concerns.

The celebrated saying of the regent, duke of Orleans, is sufficient to destroy the foundation of the “Spirit of Laws”: “This is a perfect courtier—he has neither temper nor honor.”

HUMILITY.

Philosophers have inquired, whether humility is a virtue; but virtue or not, every one must agree that nothing is more rare. The Greeks called it “tapeinosis” or “tapeineia.” It is strongly recommended in the fourth book of the “Laws of Plato”: he rejects the proud and would multiply the humble.

Epictetus, in five places, preaches humility: “If thou passest for a person of consequence in the opinion of some people, distrust thyself. No lifting up of thy eye-brows. Be nothing in thine own eyes—if thou seekest to please, thou art lost. Give place to all men; prefer them to thyself; assist them all.” We see by these maxims that never Capuchin went so far as Epictetus.

Some theologians, who had the misfortune to be proud, have pretended that humility cost nothing to Epictetus, who was a slave; and that he was humble by station, as a doctor or a Jesuit may be proud by station.

But what will they say of Marcus Antoninus, who on the throne recommended humility? He places Alexander and his muleteer on the same line. He said that the vanity of pomp is only a bone thrown in the midst of dogs; that to do good, and to patiently hear himself calumniated, constitute the virtue of a king.

Thus the master of the known world recommended humility; but propose humility to a musician, and see how he will laugh at Marcus Aurelius.

Descartes, in his treatise on the “Passions of the Soul,” places humility among their number, who—if we may personify this quality—did not expect to be regarded as a passion. He also distinguishes between virtuous and vicious humility.

But we leave to philosophers more enlightened than ourselves the care of explaining this doctrine, and will confine ourselves to saying, that humility is “the modesty of the soul.”

It is the antidote to pride. Humility could not prevent Rousseau from believing that he knew more of music than those to whom he taught it; but it could induce him to believe that he was not superior to Lulli in recitative.

The reverend father Viret, cordelier, theologian, and preacher, all humble as he is, will always firmly believe that he knows more than those who learn to read and write; but his Christian humility, his modesty of soul, will oblige him to confess in the bottom of his heart that he has written nothing but nonsense. Oh, brothers Nonnotte, Guyon, Pantouillet, vulgar scribblers! be more humble, and always bear in recollection “the modesty of the soul.”

HYPATIA.

I will suppose that Madame Dacier had been the finest woman in Paris; and that in the quarrel on the comparative merits of the ancients and moderns, the Carmelites pretended that the poem of the Magdalen, written by a Carmelite, was infinitely superior to Homer, and that it was an atrocious impiety to prefer the “Iliad” to the verses of a monk. I will take the additional liberty of supposing that the archbishop of Paris took the part of the Carmelites against the governor of the city, a partisan of the beautiful Madame Dacier, and that he excited the Carmelites to massacre this fine woman in the church of Notre Dame, and to drag her, naked and bloody, to the Place Maubert—would not everybody say that the archbishop of Paris had done a very wicked action, for which he ought to do penance?

This is precisely the history of Hypatia. She taught Homer and Plato, in Alexandria, in the time of Theodosius II. St. Cyril incensed the Christian populace against her, as it is related by Damasius and Suidas, and clearly proved by the most learned men of the age, such as Bruker, La Croze, and Basnage, as is very judiciously exposed in the great “Dictionnaire Encyclopédique,” in the article on “Éclectisme.”

A man whose intentions are no doubt very good, has printed two volumes against this article of the “Encyclopædia.” Two volumes against two pages, my friends, are too much. I have told you a hundred times you multiply being without necessity. Two lines against two volumes would be quite sufficient; but write not even these two lines.

I am content with remarking, that St. Cyril was a man of parts; that he suffered his zeal to carry him too far; that when we strip beautiful women, it is not to massacre them; that St. Cyril, no doubt, asked pardon of God for this abominable action; and that I pray the father of mercies to have pity on his soul. He wrote the two volumes against “Éclectisme,” also inspires me with infinite commiseration.

IDEA.

SECTION I.

What is an idea?

It is an image painted upon my brain.

Are all your thoughts, then, images?

Certainly; for the most abstract thoughts are only the consequences of all the objects that I have perceived. I utter the word “being” in general, only because I have known particular beings; I utter the word “infinity,” only because I have seen certain limits, and because I push back those limits in my mind to a greater and still greater distance, as far as I am able. I have ideas in my head only because I have images.

And who is the painter of this picture?

It is not myself; I cannot draw with sufficient skill; the being that made me, makes my ideas.

And how do you know that the ideas are not made by yourself?

Because they frequently come to me involuntarily when I am awake, and always without my consent when I dream.

You are persuaded, then, that your ideas belong to you only in the same manner as your hairs, which grow and become white, and fall off, without your having anything at all to do with the matter?

Nothing can possibly be clearer; all that I can do is to frizzle, cut, and powder them; but I have nothing to do with producing them.

You must, then, I imagine, be of Malebranche’s opinion, that we see all in God?

I am at least certain of this, that if we do not see things in the Great Being, we see them in consequence of His powerful and immediate action.

And what was the nature or process of this action?

I have already told you repeatedly, in the course of our conversation, that I do not know a single syllable about the subject, and that God has not communicated His secret to any one. I am completely ignorant of that which makes my heart beat, and my blood flow through my veins; I am ignorant of the principle of all my movements, and yet you seem to expect how I should explain how I feel and how I think. Such an expectation is unreasonable.

But you at least know whether your faculty of having ideas is joined to extension?

Not in the least. It is true that Tatian, in his discourse to the Greeks, says the soul is evidently composed of a body. Irenæus, in the twenty-sixth chapter of his second book, says, “The Lord has taught that our souls preserve the figure of our body in order to retain the memory of it.” Tertullian asserts, in his second book on the soul, that it is a body. Arnobius, Lactantius, Hilary, Gregory of Nyssa, and Ambrose, are precisely of the same opinion. It is pretended that other fathers of the Church assert that the soul is without extension, and that in this respect they adopt the opinion of Plato; this, however, may well be doubted. With respect to myself, I dare not venture to form an opinion; I see nothing but obscurity and incomprehensibility in either system; and, after a whole life’s meditation on the subject, I am not advanced a single step beyond where I was on the first day.

The subject, then, was not worth thinking about?

That is true; the man who enjoys knows more of it, or at least knows it better, than he who reflects; he is more happy. But what is it that you would have? It depended not, I repeat, upon myself whether I should admit or reject all those ideas which have crowded into my brain in conflict with each other, and actually converted my medullary magazine into their field of battle. After a hard-fought contest between them, I have obtained nothing but uncertainty from the spoils.

It is a melancholy thing to possess so many ideas, and yet to have no precise knowledge of the nature of ideas?

It is, I admit; but it is much more melancholy, and inexpressibly more foolish, for a man to believe he knows what in fact he does not.

But, if you do not positively know what an idea is, if you are ignorant whence ideas come, you at least know by what they come?

Yes; just in the same way as the ancient Egyptians, who, without knowing the source of the Nile, knew perfectly well that its waters reached them by its bed. We know perfectly that ideas come to us by the senses; but we never know whence they come. The source of this Nile will never be discovered.

If it is certain that all ideas are given by means of the senses, why does the Sorbonne, which has so long adopted this doctrine from Aristotle, condemn it with so much virulence in Helvetius?

Because the Sorbonne is composed of theologians.

SECTION II.

All in God.

In God we live and move and have our being.

St. Paul,

Aratus, who is thus quoted and approved by St. Paul, made this confession of faith, we perceive among the Greeks.

The virtuous Cato says the same thing: “Jupiter est quodcumque vides quocumque moveris.”—Lucan’s “Pharsalia,” ix, 580. “Whate’er we see, whate’er we feel, is Jove.”

Malebranche is the commentator on Aratus, St. Paul, and Cato. He succeeded, in the first instance, in showing the errors of the senses and imagination; but when he attempted to develop the grand system, that all is in God, all his readers declared the commentary to be more obscure than the text. In short, having plunged into this abyss, his head became bewildered; he held conversations with the Word; he was made acquainted with what the Word had done in other planets; he became, in truth, absolutely mad; a circumstance well calculated to excite apprehension in our own minds, apt as we some of us are to attempt soaring, upon our weak and puny opinions, very far beyond our reach.

In order to comprehend the notion of Malebranche, such as he held it while he retained his faculties, we must admit nothing that we do not clearly conceive, and reject what we do not understand. Attempting to explain an obscurity by obscurities, is to act like an idiot.

I feel decidedly that my first ideas and my sensations have come to me without any co-operation or volition on my part. I clearly see that I cannot give myself a single idea. I cannot give myself anything. I have received everything. The objects which surround me cannot, of themselves, give me either idea or sensation; for how is it possible for a little particle of matter to possess the faculty of producing a thought?

I am therefore irresistibly led to conclude that the Eternal Being, who bestows everything, gives me my ideas, in whatever manner this may be done. But what is an idea, what is a sensation, a volition, etc.? It is myself perceiving, myself feeling, myself willing.

We see, in short, that what is called an idea is no more a real being than there is a real being called motion, although there are bodies moved. In the same manner there is not any particular being called memory, imagination, judgment; but we ourselves remember, imagine, and judge.

The truth of all this, it must be allowed, is sufficiently plain and trite; but it is necessary to repeat and inculcate such truth, as the opposite errors are more trite still.

Laws of Nature.

How, let us now ask, would the Eternal Being, who formed all, produce all those various modes or qualities which we perceive in organized bodies?

Did He introduce two beings in a grain of wheat, one of which should produce germination in the other? Did He introduce two beings in the composition of a stag, one of which should produce swiftness in the other? Certainly not. All that we know on the subject is that the grain is endowed with the faculty of vegetating, and the stag with that of speed.

There is evidently a grand mathematical principle directing all nature, and affecting everything produced. The flying of birds, the swimming of fishes, the walking or running of quadrupeds, are visible effects of known laws of motion. “Mens agitat molem.” Can the sensations and ideas of those animals, then, be anything more than the admirable effects or mathematical laws more refined and less obvious?

Organization of the Senses and Ideas.

It is by these general and comprehensive laws that every animal is impelled to seek its appropriate food. We are naturally, therefore, led to conjecture that there is a law by which it has the idea of this food, and without which it would not go in search of it.

The eternal intelligence has made all the actions of an animal depend upon a certain principle; the eternal intelligence, therefore, has made the sensations which cause those actions depend on the same principle.

Would the author of nature have disposed and adjusted those admirable instruments, the senses, with so divine a skill; would he have exhibited such astonishing adaptation between the eyes and light; between the atmosphere and the ears, had it, after all, been necessary to call in the assistance of other agency to complete his work? Nature always acts by the shortest ways. Protracted processes indicate want of skill; multiplicity of springs, and complexity of co-operation are the result of weakness. We cannot but believe, therefore, that one main spring regulates the whole system.

The Great Being Does Everything.

Not merely are we unable to give ourselves sensations, we cannot even imagine any beyond those which we have actually experienced. Let all the academies of Europe propose a premium for him who shall imagine a new sense; no one will ever gain that premium. We can do nothing, then, of our mere selves, whether there be an invisible and intangible being enclosed in our brain or diffused throughout our body, or whether there be not; and it must be admitted, upon every system, that the author of nature has given us all that we possess—organs, sensations, and the ideas which proceed from them.

As we are thus secured under His forming hand, Malebranche, notwithstanding all his errors, had reason to say philosophically, that we are in God and that we see all in God; as St. Paul used the same language in a theological sense, and Aratus and Cato in a moral one.

What then are we to understand by the words seeing all in God? They are either words destitute of meaning, or they mean that God gives us all our ideas.

What is the meaning of receiving an idea? We do not create it when we receive it; it is not, therefore, so unphilosophical as has been thought, to say it is God who produces the ideas in my head, as it is He who produces motion in my whole body. Everything is an operation of God upon His creatures.

How is Everything an Action of God?

There is in nature only one universal, eternal, and active principle. There cannot be two such principles; for they would either be alike or different. If they are different, they destroy one another; if they are alike, it is the same as if they were only one. The unity of design, visible through the grand whole in all its infinite variety, announces one single principle, and that principle must act upon all being, or it ceases to be a universal opinion.

If it acts upon all being, it acts upon all the modes of all being. There is not, therefore, a single remnant, a single mode, a single idea, which is not the immediate effect of a universal cause perpetually present.

The matter of the universe, therefore, belongs to God, as much as the ideas and the ideas as much as the matter. To say that anything is out of Him would be saying that there is something out of the vast whole. God being the universal principle of all things, all, therefore, exists in Him, and by Him.

The system includes that of “physical premotion,” but in the same manner as an immense wheel includes a small one that endeavors to fly off from it. The principle which we have just been unfolding is too vast to admit of any particular and detailed view.

Physical premotion occupies the great supreme with all the changing vagaries which take place in the head of an individual Jansenist or Molinist; we, on the contrary, occupy the Being of Beings only with the grand and general laws of the universe. Physical premotion makes five propositions a matter of attention and occupation to God, which interest only some lay-sister, the sweeper of a convent; while we attribute to Him employment of the most simple and important description—the arrangement of the whole system of the universe.

Physical premotion is founded upon that subtle and truly Grecian principle, that if a thinking being can give himself an idea, he would augment his existence; but we do not, for our parts, know what is meant by augmenting our being. We comprehend nothing about the matter. We say that a thinking being might give himself new modes without adding to his existence; just in the same manner as when we dance, our sliding steps and crossings and attitudes give us no new existence; and to suppose they do so would appear completely absurd. We agree only so far in the system of physical premotion, that we are convinced we give ourselves nothing.

Both the system of premotion and our own are abused, as depriving men of their liberty. God forbid we should advocate such deprivation. To do away with this imputation, it is only necessary to understand the meaning of the word liberty. We shall speak of it in its proper place; and in the meantime the world will go on as it has gone on hitherto, without the Thomists or their opponents, or all the disputants in the world, having any power to change it. In the same manner we shall always have ideas, without precisely knowing what an idea is.

IDENTITY.

This scientific term signifies no more than “the same thing.” It might be correctly, translated by “sameness.” This subject is of considerably more interest than may be imagined. All agree that the guilty person only ought to be punished—the individual perpetrator, and no other. But a man fifty years of age is not in reality the same individual as the man of twenty; he retains no longer any of the parts which then formed his body; and if he has lost the memory of past events, it is certain that there is nothing left to unite his actual existence to an existence which to him is lost.

I am the same person only by the consciousness of what I have been combined with that of what I am; I have no consciousness of my past being but through memory; memory alone, therefore, establishes the identity, the sameness of my person.

We may, in truth, be naturally and aptly resembled to a river, all whose waters pass away in perpetual change and flow. It is the same river as to its bed, its banks, its source, its mouth, everything, in short, that is not itself; but changing every moment its waters, which constitute its very being, it has no identity; there is no sameness belonging to the river.

Were there another Xerxes like him who lashed the Hellespont for disobedience, and ordered for it a pair of handcuffs; and were the son of this Xerxes to be drowned in the Euphrates, and the father desirous of punishing that river for the death of his son, the Euphrates might very reasonably say in its vindication: “Blame the waves that were rolling on at the time your son was bathing; those waves belong not to me, and form no part of me; they have passed on to the Persian Gulf; a part is mixed with the salt water of that sea, and another part, exhaled in vapor, has been impelled by a south-east wind to Gaul, and been incorporated with endives and lettuces, which the Gauls have since used in their salads; seize the culprit where you can find him.”

It is the same with a tree, a branch of which broken by the wind might have fractured the skull of your great grandfather. It is no longer the same tree; all its parts have given way to others. The branch which killed your great grandfather is no part of this tree; it exists no longer.

It has been asked, then, how a man, who has totally lost his memory before his death, and whose members have been changed into other substances, can be punished for his faults or rewarded for his virtues when he is no longer himself? I have read in a well known book the following question and answer:

“Question. How can I be either rewarded or punished when I shall no longer exist; when there will be nothing remaining of that which constituted my person? It is only by means of memory that I am always myself; after my death, a miracle will be necessary to restore it to me—to enable me to re-enter upon my lost existence.

“Answer. That is just as much as to say that if a prince had put to death his whole family, in order to reign himself, and if he had tyrannized over his subjects with the most wanton cruelty, he would be exempted from punishment on pleading before God, ‘I am not the offender; I have lost my memory; you are under a mistake; I am no longer the same person.’ Do you think this sophism would pass with God?”

This answer is a highly commendable one; but it does not completely solve the difficulty.

It would be necessary for this purpose, in the first place, to know whether understanding and sensation are a faculty given by God to man, or a created substance; a question which philosophy is too weak and uncertain to decide.

It is necessary in the next place to know whether, if the soul be a substance and has lost all knowledge of the evil it has committed, and be, moreover, as perfect a stranger to what it has done with its own body, as to all the other bodies of our universe—whether, in these circumstances, it can or should, according to our manner of reasoning, answer in another universe for actions of which it has not the slightest knowledge; whether, in fact, a miracle would not be necessary to impart to this soul the recollection it no longer possesses, to render it consciously present to the crimes which have become obliterated and annihilated in its mind, and make it the same person that it was on earth; or whether God will judge it nearly in the same way in which the presidents of human tribunals proceed, condemning a criminal, although he may have completely forgotten the crimes he has actually committed. He remembers them no longer; but they are remembered for him; he is punished for the sake of the example. But God cannot punish a man after his death with a view to his being an example to the living. No living man knows whether the deceased is condemned or absolved. God, therefore, can punish him only because he cherished and accomplished evil desires; but if, when after death he presents himself before the tribunal of God, he no longer entertains any such desire; if for a period of twenty years he has totally forgotten that he did entertain such; if he is no longer in any respect the same person; what is it that God will punish in him?

These are questions which appear beyond the compass of the human understanding, and there seems to exist a necessity, in these intricacies and labyrinths, of recurring to faith alone, which is always our last asylum.

Lucretius had partly felt these difficulties, when in his third book (verses 890-91) he describes a man trembling at the idea of what will happen to him when he will no longer be the same man:

Nec radicitus e vita se tollit et evit;

Sed facit esse sui quiddam super inscius ipse.

But Lucretius is not the oracle to be addressed, in order to obtain any discoveries of the future.

The celebrated Toland, who wrote his own epitaph, concluded it with these words: “Idem futurus Tolandus nunquam”—“He will never again be the same Toland.”

However, it may be presumed that God would have well known how to find and restore him, had such been his good pleasure; and it is to be presumed, also, that the being who necessarily exists, is necessarily good.

IDOL—IDOLATER—IDOLATRY.

SECTION I.

Idol is derived from the Greek word “eidos,” figure; “eidolos,” the representation of a figure, and “latreuein,” to serve, revere, or adore.

It does not appear that there was ever any people on earth who took the name of idolaters. This word is an offence, an insulting term, like that of “gavache,” which the Spaniards formerly gave to the French; and that of “maranes,” which the French gave to the Spaniards in return. If we had demanded of the senate of the Areopagus of Athens, or at the court of the kings of Persia: “Are you idolaters?” they would scarcely have understood the question. None would have answered: “We adore images and idols.” This word, idolater, idolatry, is found neither in Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, nor any other author of the religion of the Gentiles. There was never any edict, any law, which commanded that idols should be adored; that they should be treated as gods and regarded as gods.

When the Roman and Carthaginian captains made a treaty, they called all their gods to witness. “It is in their presence,” said they, “that we swear peace.” Yet the statues of these gods, whose number was very great, were not in the tents of the generals. They regarded, or pretended to regard, the gods as present at the actions of men as witnesses and judges. And assuredly it was not the image which constituted the divinity.

In what view, therefore, did they see the statues of their false gods in the temples? With the same view, if we may so express ourselves, that the Catholics see the images, the object of their veneration. The error was not in adoring a piece of wood or marble, but in adoring a false divinity, represented by this wood and marble. The difference between them and the Catholics is, not that they had images, and the Catholics had none; the difference is, that their images represented the fantastic beings of a false religion, and that the Christian images represent real beings in a true religion. The Greeks had the statue of Hercules, and we have that of St. Christopher; they had Æsculpius and his goat, we have St. Roch and his dog; they had Mars and his lance, and we have St. Anthony of Padua and St. James of Compostella.

When the consul Pliny addresses prayers to the immortal gods in the exordium of the panegyric of Trajan, it is not to images that he addresses them. These images were not immortal.

Neither the latest nor the most remote times of paganism offer a single fact which can lead to the conclusion that they adored idols. Homer speaks only of the gods who inhabited the high Olympus. The palladium, although fallen from heaven, was only a sacred token of the protection of Pallas; it was herself that was venerated in the palladium. It was our ampoule, or holy oil.

But the Romans and Greeks knelt before their statues, gave them crowns, incense, and flowers, and carried them in triumph in the public places. The Catholics have sanctified these customs, and yet are not called idolaters.

The women in times of drouth carried the statues of the Gods after having fasted. They walked barefooted with dishevelled hair, and it quickly rained bucketfuls, says Pretonius: “Et statim urceatim pluebat.” Has not this custom been consecrated; illegitimate indeed among the Gentiles, but legitimate among the Catholics? In how many towns are not images carried to obtain the blessings of heaven through their intercession? If a Turk, or a learned Chinese, were a witness of these ceremonies, he would, through ignorance, accuse the Italians of putting their trust in the figures which they thus promenade in possession.

SECTION II.

Examination of the Ancient Idolatry.

From the time of Charles I., the Catholic religion was declared idolatrous in England. All the Presbyterians are persuaded that the Catholics adore bread, which they eat, and figures, which are the work of their sculptors and painters. With that which one part of Europe reproaches the Catholics, they themselves reproach the Gentiles.

We are surprised at the prodigious number of declamations uttered in all times against the idolatry of the Romans and Greeks; and we are afterwards still more surprised when we see that they were not idolaters.

They had some temples more privileged than others. The great Diana of Ephesus had more reputation than a village Diana. There were more miracles performed in the temple of Æsculapius at Epidaurus, than in any other of his temples. The statue of the Olympian Jupiter attracted more offerings than that of the Paphlagonian Jupiter. But to oppose the customs of a true religion to those of a false one, have we not for several ages had more devotion to certain altars than to others?

Has not Our Lady of Loretto been preferred to Our Lady of Neiges, to that of Ardens, of Hall, etc.? That is not saying there is more virtue in a statue at Loretto than in a statue of the village of Hall, but we have felt more devotion to the one than to the other; we have believed that she whom we invoked, at the feet of her statues, would condescend, from the height of heaven, to diffuse more favors and to work more miracles in Loretto than in Hall. This multiplicity of images of the same person also proves that it is the images that we revere, and that the worship relates to the person who is represented; for it is not possible that every image can be the same thing. There are a thousand images of St. Francis, which have no resemblance to him, and which do not resemble one another; and all indicate a single Saint Francis, invoked, on the day of his feast, by those who are devoted to this saint.

It was precisely the same with the pagans, who supposed the existence only of a single divinity, a single Apollo, and not as many Apollos and Dianas as they had temples and statues. It is therefore proved, as much as history can prove anything, that the ancients believed not the statue to be a divinity; that worship was not paid to this statue or image, and consequently that they were not idolaters. It is for us to ascertain how far the imputation has been a mere pretext to accuse them of idolatry.

A gross and superstitious populace who reason not, and who know neither how to doubt, deny, or believe; who visit the temples out of idleness, and because the lowly are there equal to the great; who make their contributions because it is the custom; who speak continually of miracles without examining any of them; and who are very little in point of intellect beyond the brutes whom they sacrifice—such a people, I repeat, in the sight of the great Diana, or of Jupiter the Thunderer, may well be seized with a religious horror, and adore, without consciousness, the statue itself. This is what happens now and then, in our own churches, to our ignorant peasantry, who, however, are informed that it is the blessed mortals received into heaven whose intercession they solicit, and not that of images of wood and stone.

The Greeks and Romans augment the number of their gods by their apotheoses. The Greeks deified conquerors like Bacchus, Hercules, and Perseus. Rome devoted altars to her emperors. Our apotheoses are of a different kind; we have infinitely more saints than they have secondary gods, but we pay respect neither to rank nor to conquest. We consecrate temples to the simply virtuous, who would have been unknown on earth if they had not been placed in heaven. The apotheoses of the ancients were the effect of flattery, ours are produced by a respect for virtue.

Cicero, in his philosophical works, only allows of a suspicion that the people may mistake the statues of the gods and confound them with the gods themselves. His interlocutors attack the established religion, but none of them think of accusing the Romans of taking marble and brass for divinities. Lucretius accuses no person of this stupidity, although he reproaches the superstitious of every class. This opinion, therefore, has never existed; there never have been idolaters.

Horace causes an image of Priapus to speak, and makes him say: “I was once the trunk of a fig tree, and a carpenter being doubtful whether he should make of me a god or a bench, at length determined to make me a divinity.” What are we to gather from this pleasantry? Priapus was one of the subaltern divinities, and a subject of raillery for the wits, and this pleasantry is a tolerable proof that a figure placed in the garden to frighten away the birds could not be very profoundly worshipped.

Dacier, giving way to the spirit of a commentator, observes that Baruch predicted this adventure. “They became what the workmen chose to make them:” but might not this be observed of all statues? Had Baruch a visionary anticipation of the “Satires of Horace”?

A block of marble may as well be hewn into a cistern, as into a figure of Alexander, Jupiter, or any being still more respectable. The matter which composed the cherubim of the Holy of Holies might have been equally appropriated to the vilest functions. Is a throne or altar the less revered because it might have been formed into a kitchen table?

Dacier, instead of concluding that the Romans adored the statue of Priapus, and that Baruch predicted it, should have perceived that the Romans laughed at it. Consult all the authors who speak of the statues of the gods, you will not find one of them allude to idolatry; their testimony amounts to the express contrary. “It is not the workman,” says Martial, “who makes the gods, but he who prays to them.”

Qui finxit sacros auro vel marmore vultus

Non facit ille deos, qui rogat ille facit.

“It is Jove whom we adore in the image of Jove,” writes Ovid: “Colitur pro Jove, forma Jovis.”

“The gods inhabit our minds and bosoms,” observes Statius, “and not images in the form of them:”

Nulla autem effigies, nulli commissa metallo.

Forma Dei, mentes habitare et pectora gaudet.

Lucan, too, calls the universe the abode and empire of God: “Estne Dei, sedes, nisi terra, et pontus, et aer?” A volume might be filled with passages asserting idols to be images alone.

There remains but the case in which statues became oracles; notions that might have led to an opinion that there was something divine about them. The predominant sentiment, however, was that the gods had chosen to visit certain altars and images, in order to give audience to mortals, and to reply to them. We read in Homer and in the chorus of the Greek tragedies, of prayers to Apollo, who delivered his responses on the mountains in such a temple, or such a town. There is not, in all antiquity, the least trace of a prayer addressed to a statue; and if it was believed that the divine spirit preferred certain temples and images, as he preferred certain men, it was simply an error in application. How many miraculous images have we? The ancients only boasted of possessing what we possess, and if we are not idolaters for using images, by what correct principle can we term them so?

Those who profess magic, and who either believe, or affect to believe it, a science, pretend to possess the secret of making the gods descend into their statues, not indeed, the superior gods, but the secondary gods or genii. This is what Hermes Trismegistus calls “making” gods—a doctrine which is controverted by St. Augustine in his “City of God.” But even this clearly shows that the images were not thought to possess anything divine, since it required a magician to animate them, and it happened very rarely that a magician was successful in these sublime endeavors.

In a word, the images of the gods were not gods. Jupiter, and not his statue, launched his thunderbolts; it was not the statue of Neptune which stirred up tempests, nor that of Apollo which bestowed light. The Greeks and the Romans were Gentiles and Polytheists, but not idolaters.

We lavished this reproach upon them when we had neither statues nor temples, and have continued the injustice even after having employed painting and sculpture to honor and represent our truths, precisely in the same manner in which those we reproach employed them to honor and personify their fiction.

SECTION III.

Whether the Persians, the Sabæans, the Egyptians, the Tartars, or the Turks, have been Idolaters, and the Extent of the Antiquity of the Images Called Idols—History of Their Worship.

It is a great error to denominate those idolaters who worship the sun and the stars. These nations for a long time had neither images nor temples. If they were wrong, it was in rendering to the stars that which belonged only to the creator of the stars. Moreover, the dogma of Zoroaster, or Zerdusht, teaches a Supreme Being, an avenger and rewarder, which opinion is very distant from idolatry. The government of China possesses no idol, but has always preserved the simple worship of the master of heaven, Kien-tien.

Genghis Khan, among the Tartars, was not an idolater, and used no images. The Mahometans, who inhabit Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Persia, India, and Africa, call the Christians idolaters and giaours, because they imagine that Christians worship images. They break the statues which they find in Sancta Sophia, the church of the Holy Apostles; and others they convert into mosques. Appearances have deceived them, as they are eternally deceiving man, and have led them to believe that churches dedicated to saints who were formerly men, images of saints worshipped kneeling, and miracles worked in these churches, are invincible proofs of absolute idolatry; although all amount to nothing. Christians, in fact, adore one God only, and even in the blessed, only revere the virtues of God manifested in them. The image-breakers (iconoclasts), and the Protestants, who reproach the Catholic Church with idolatry, claim the same answer.

As men rarely form precise ideas, and still less express them with precision, we call the Gentiles, and still more the Polytheists, idolaters. An immense number of volumes have been written in order to develop the various opinions upon the origin of the worship rendered to the deity. This multitude of books and opinions proves nothing, except ignorance.

It is not known who invented coats, shoes, and stockings, and yet we would know who invented idols. What signifies a passage of Sanchoniathon, who lived before the battle of Troy? What does he teach us when he says that Chaos—the spirit, that is to say, the breath—in love with his principles, draws the veil from it, which renders the air luminous; that the wind Colp, and his wife Bau, engendered Eon; that Eon engendered Genos, that Chronos, their descendant, had two eyes behind as well as before; that he became a god, and that he gave Egypt to his son Thaut? Such is one of the most respectable monuments of antiquity.

Orpheus will teach us no more in his “Theogony,” than Damasius has preserved to us. He represents the principles of the world under the figure of a dragon with two heads, the one of a bull, the other of a lion; a face in the middle, which he calls the face of God, and golden wings to his shoulders.

But, from these fantastic ideas may be drawn two great truths—the one that sensible images and hieroglyphics are of the remotest antiquity; the other that all the ancient philosophers have recognized a First Principle.

As to polytheism, good sense will tell you that as long as men have existed—that is to say, weak animals capable of reason and folly, subject to all accidents, sickness and death—these men have felt their weakness and dependence. Obliged to acknowledge that there is something more powerful than themselves; having discovered a principle in the earth which furnishes their aliment; one in the air which often destroys them; one in fire which consumes; and in water which drowns them—what is more natural than for ignorant men to imagine beings which preside over these elements? What is more natural than to revere the invisible power which makes the sun and stars shine to our eyes? and, since they would form an idea of powers superior to man, what more natural than to figure them in a sensible manner? Could they think otherwise? The Jewish religion, which preceded ours, and which was given by God himself, was filled with these images, under which God is represented. He deigns to speak the human language in a bush; He appeared once on a mountain; the celestial spirits which he sends all come with a human form: finally, the sanctuary is covered with cherubs, which are the bodies of men with the wings and heads of animals. It is this which has given rise to the error of Plutarch, Tacitus, Appian, and so many others, of reproaching the Jews with adoring an ass’s head. God, in spite of his prohibition to paint or form likenesses, has, therefore, deigned to adapt himself to human weakness, which required the senses to be addressed by sensible beings.

Isaiah, in chapter vi., sees the Lord seated on a throne, and His train filled the temple. The Lord extends His hand, and touches the mouth of Jeremiah, in chap. i. of that prophet. Ezekiel, in chap. i., sees a throne of sapphire, and God appeared to him like a man seated on this throne. These images alter not the purity of the Jewish religion, which never employed pictures, statues, or idols, to represent God to the eyes of the people.

The learned Chinese, the Parsees, and the ancient Egyptians, had no idols; but Isis and Osiris were soon represented. Bel, at Babylon, was a great colossus. Brahma was a fantastic monster in the peninsula of India. Above all, the Greeks multiplied the names of the gods, statues, and temples, but always attributed the supreme power to their Zeus, called Jupiter by the Latins, the sovereign of gods and men. The Romans imitated the Greeks. These people always placed all the gods in heaven, without knowing what they understood by heaven.

The Romans had their twelve great gods, six male and six female, whom they called “Dii majorum gentium”; Jupiter, Neptune, Apollo, Vulcar., Mars, Mercury, Juno, Vesta, Minerva, Ceres, Venus, and Diana; Pluto was therefore forgotten: Vesta took his place.

Afterwards, came the gods “minorum gentium,” the gods of mortal origin; the heroes, as Bacchus, Hercules, and Æsculapius: the infernal gods, Pluto and Proserpine: those of the sea, as Tethys, Amphitrite, the Nereids, and Glaucus. The Dryads, Naiads, gods of gardens; those of shepherds, etc. They had them, indeed, for every profession, for every action of life, for children, marriageable girls, married, and lying-in women: they had even the god Peditum; and finally, they idolized their emperors. Neither these emperors nor the god Peditum, the goddess Pertunda, nor Priapus, nor Rumilia, the goddess of nipples; nor Stercutius, the god of the privy, were, in truth, regarded as the masters of heaven and earth. The emperors had sometimes temples, the petty gods—the penates—had none; but all had their representations, their images.

There were little images with which they ornamented their closets, the amusements of old women and children, which were not authorized by any public worship. The superstition of every individual was left to act according to his own taste. These small idols are still found in the ruins of ancient towns.

If no person knows when men began to make these images, they must know that they are of the greatest antiquity. Terah, the father of Abraham, made them at Ur in Chaldæa. Rachel stole and carried off the images of Laban, her father. We cannot go back further.

But what precise notion had the ancient nations of all these representations? What virtue, what power, was attributed to them? Believed they that the gods descended from heaven to conceal themselves in these statues; or that they communicated to them a part of the divine spirit; or that they communicated to them nothing at all? There has been much very uselessly written on this subject; it is clear that every man judged of it according to the degree of his reason, credulity, or fanaticism. It is evident that the priests attached as much divinity to their statues as they possibly could, to attract more offerings. We know that the philosophers reproved these superstitions, that warriors laughed at them, that the magistrates tolerated them, and that the people, always absurd, knew not what they did. In a word, this is the history of all nations to which God has not made himself known.

The same idea may be formed of the worship which all Egypt rendered to the cow, and that several towns paid to a dog, an ape, a cat, and to onions. It appears that these were first emblems. Afterwards, a certain ox Apis, and a certain dog Anubis, were adored; they always ate beef and onions; but it is difficult to know what the old women of Egypt thought of the holy cows and onions.

Idols also often spoke. On the day of the feast of Cybele at Rome, those fine words were commemorated which the statue pronounced when it was translated from the palace of King Attilus: “I wish to depart; take me away quickly; Rome is worthy the residence of every god.”

Ipsa peti volui; ne sit mora, mitte volentum;

Dignus Roma locus quo Deus omnis eat.

—Ovid’sFasti, iv, 269-270.

The statue of Fortune spoke; the Scipios, the Ciceros, and the Cæsars, indeed, believed nothing of it; but the old woman, to whom Encolpus gave a crown to buy geese and gods, might credit it.

Idols also gave oracles, and priests hidden in the hollow of the statues spoke in the name of the divinity.

How happens it, in the midst of so many gods and different theogonies and particular worships, that there was never any religious war among the people called idolaters? This peace was a good produced from an evil, even from error; for each nation, acknowledging several inferior gods, found it good for his neighbors also to have theirs. If you except Cambyses, who is reproached with having killed the ox Apis, you will not see any conqueror in profane history who ill-treated the gods of a vanquished people. The heathens had no exclusive religion, and the priests thought only of multiplying the offerings and sacrifices.

The first offerings were fruits. Soon after, animals were required for the table of the priests; they killed them themselves, and became cruel butchers; finally, they introduced the horrible custom of sacrificing human victims, and above all, children and young girls. The Chinese, Parsees, and Indians, were never guilty of these abominations; but at Hieropolis, in Egypt, according to Porphyrius, they immolated men.

Strangers were sacrificed at Taurida: happily, the priests of Taurida had not much practice. The first Greeks, the Cypriots, Phœnicians, Tyrians, and Carthaginians, possessed this abominable superstition. The Romans themselves fell into this religious crime; and Plutarch relates, that they immolated two Greeks and two Gauls to expiate the gallantries of three vestals. Procopius, contemporary with the king of the Franks, Theodobert, says that the Franks sacrificed men when they entered Italy with that prince. The Gauls and Germans commonly made these frightful sacrifices. We can scarcely read history without conceiving horror at mankind.

It is true that among the Jews, Jeptha sacrificed his daughter, and Saul was ready to immolate his son; it is also true that those who were devoted to the Lord by anathema could not be redeemed, as other beasts were, but were doomed to perish.

We will now speak of the human victims sacrificed in all religions.

To console mankind for the horrible picture of these pious sacrifices, it is important to know, that amongst almost all nations called idolatrous, there have been holy theologies and popular error, secret worship and public ceremonies; the religion of sages, and that of the vulgar. To know that one God alone was taught to those initiated into the mysteries, it is only necessary to look at the hymn attributed to the ancient Orpheus, which was sung in the mysteries of the Eleusinian Ceres, so celebrated in Europe and Asia: “Contemplate divine nature; illuminate thy mind; govern thy heart; walk in the path of justice, that the God of heaven and earth may be always present to thy eyes: He only self-exists, all beings derive their existence from Him; He sustains them all; He has never been seen by mortals, and He sees all things.”

We may also read the passage of the philosopher Maximus, whom we have already quoted: “What man is so gross and stupid as to doubt that there is a supreme, eternal, and infinite God, who has engendered nothing like Himself, and who is the common father of all things?”

There are a thousand proofs that the ancient sages not only abhorred idolatry, but polytheism.

Epictetus, that model of resignation and patience, that man so great in a humble condition, never speaks of but one God. Read over these maxims: “God has created me; God is within me; I carry Him everywhere. Can I defile Him by obscene thoughts, unjust actions, or infamous desires? My duty is to thank God for all, to praise Him for all; and only to cease blessing Him in ceasing to live.” All the ideas of Epictetus turn on this principle. Is this an idolater?

Marcus Aurelius, perhaps as great on the throne of the Roman Empire as Epictetus was in slavery, often speaks, indeed, of the gods, either to conform himself to the received language, or to express intermediate beings between the Supreme Being and men; but in how many places does he show that he recognizes one eternal, infinite God alone? “Our soul,” says he, “is an emanation from the divinity. My children, my body, my mind, are derived from God.”

The Stoics and Platonics admitted a divine and universal nature; the Epicureans denied it. The pontiffs spoke only of a single God in their mysteries. Where then were the idolaters? All our declaimers exclaim against idolatry like little dogs, that yelp when they hear a great one bark.

As to the rest, it is one of the greatest errors of the “Dictionary” of Moreri to say, that in the time of Theodosius the younger, there remained no idolaters except in the retired countries of Asia and Africa. Even in the seventh century there were many people still heathen in Italy. The north of Germany, from the Weser, was not Christian in the time of Charlemagne. Poland and all the south remained a long time after him in what was called idolatry; the half of Africa, all the kingdoms beyond the Ganges, Japan, the populace of China, and a hundred hordes of Tartars, have preserved their ancient religion. In Europe there are only a few Laplanders, Samoyedes, and Tartars, who have persevered in the religion of their ancestors.

Let us conclude with remarking, that in the time which we call the middle ages, we dominated the country of the Mahometans pagan; we treated as idolaters and adorers of images, a people who hold all images in abhorrence. Let us once more avow, that the Turks are more excusable in believing us idolaters, when they see our altars loaded with images and statues.

A gentleman belonging to Prince Ragotski assured me upon his honor, that being in a coffee-house at Constantinople, the mistress ordered that he should not be served because he was an idolater. He was a Protestant, and swore to her that he adored neither host nor images. “Ah! if that is the case,” said the woman, “come to me every day, and you shall be served for nothing.”

IGNATIUS LOYOLA.

If you are desirous of obtaining a great name, of becoming the founder of a sect or establishment, be completely mad; but be sure that your madness corresponds with the turn and temper of your age. Have in your madness reason enough to guide your extravagances; and forget not to be excessively opinionated and obstinate. It is certainly possible that you may get hanged; but if you escape hanging, you will have altars erected to you.

In real truth, was there ever a fitter subject for the Petites-Maisons, or Bedlam, than Ignatius, or St. Inigo the Biscayan, for that was his true name? His head became deranged in consequence of his reading the “Golden Legend”; as Don Quixote’s was, afterwards, by reading the romances of chivalry. Our Biscayan hero, in the first place, dubs himself a knight of the Holy Virgin, and performs the Watch of Arms in honor of his lady. The virgin appears to him and accepts his services; she often repeats her visit, and introduces to him her son. The devil, who watches his opportunity, and clearly foresees the injury he must in the course of time suffer from the Jesuits, comes and makes a tremendous noise in the house, and breaks all the windows; the Biscayan drives him away with the sign of the cross; and the devil flies through the wall, leaving in it a large opening, which was shown to the curious fifty years after the happy event.

His family, seeing the very disordered state of his mind, is desirous of his being confined and put under a course of regimen and medicine. He extricates himself from his family as easily as he did from the devil, and escapes without knowing where to go. He meets with a Moor, and disputes with him about the immaculate conception. The Moor, who takes him exactly for what he is, quits him as speedily as possible. The Biscayan hesitates whether he shall kill the Moor or pray to God for his conversion; he leaves the decision to his horse, and the animal, rather wiser than its master, takes the road leading to the stable.

Our hero, after this adventure, undertakes a pilgrimage to Bethlehem, begging his bread on the way: his madness increases as he proceeds; the Dominicans take pity on him at Manrosa, and keep him in their establishment for some days, and then dismiss him uncured.

He embarks at Barcelona, and goes to Venice; he returns to Barcelona, still travelling as a mendicant, always experiencing trances and ecstacies, and frequently visited by the Holy Virgin and Jesus Christ.

At length, he was given to understand that, in order to go to the Holy Land with any fair view of converting the Turks, the Christians of the Greek church, the Armenians, and the Jews, it was necessary to begin with a little study of theology. Our hero desires nothing better; but, to become a theologian, it was requisite to know something of grammar and a little Latin; this gives him no embarrassment whatever: he goes to college at the age of thirty-three; he is there laughed at, and learns nothing.

He was almost broken-hearted at the idea of not being able to go and convert the infidels. The devil, for this once, took pity on him. He appeared to him, and swore to him, on the faith of a Christian, that, if he would deliver himself over to him, he would make him the most learned and able man in the church of God. Ignatius, however, was not to be cajoled to place himself under the discipline of such a master; he went back to his class; he occasionally experienced the rod, but his learning made no progress.

Expelled from the college of Barcelona, persecuted by the devil, who punished him for refusing to submit to his instructions, and abandoned by the Virgin Mary, who took no pains about assisting her devoted knight, he, nevertheless, does not give way to despair. He joins the pilgrims of St. James in their wanderings over the country. He preaches in the streets and public places, from city to city, and is shut up in the dungeons of the Inquisition. Delivered from the Inquisition, he is put in prison at Alcala. He escapes thence to Salamanca, and is there again imprisoned. At length, perceiving that he is no prophet in his own country, he forms a resolution to go to Paris. He travels thither on foot, driving before him an ass which carried his baggage, money, and manuscripts. Don Quixote had a horse and an esquire, but Ignatius was not provided with either.

He experiences at Paris the same insults and injuries as he had endured in Spain. He is absolutely flogged, in all the regular form and ceremony of scholastic discipline, at the college of St. Barbe. His vocation, at length, calls him to Rome.

How could it possibly come to pass, that a man of such extravagant character and manners, should at length obtain consideration at the court of Rome, gain over a number of disciples, and become the founder of a powerful order, among whom are to be found men of unquestionable worth and learning? The reason is, that he was opinionated, obstinate, and enthusiastic; and found enthusiasts like himself, with whom he associated. These, having rather a greater share of reason than himself, were instrumental in somewhat restoring and re-establishing his own; he became more prudent and regular towards the close of his life, and occasionally even displayed in his conduct proofs of ability.

Perhaps Mahomet, in his first conversations with the angel Gabriel, began his career with being as much deranged as Ignatius; and perhaps Ignatius, in Mahomet’s circumstances, would have performed as great achievements as the prophet; for he was equally ignorant, and quite as visionary and intrepid.

It is a common observation, that such cases occur only once: however, it is not long since an English rustic, more ignorant than the Spaniard Ignatius, formed the society of people called “Quakers”; a society far superior to that of Ignatius. Count Zinzendorf has, in our own time, formed the sect of Moravians; and the Convulsionaries of Paris were very nearly upon the point of effecting a revolution. They were quite mad enough, but they were not sufficiently persevering and obstinate.

IGNORANCE.

SECTION I.

There are many kinds of ignorance; but the worst of all is that of critics, who, it is well known, are doubly bound to possess information and judgment as persons who undertake to affirm and to censure. When they pronounce erroneously, therefore, they are doubly culpable.

A man, for example, composes two large volumes upon a few pages of a valuable book which he has not understood, and in the first place examines the following words:

“The sea has covered immense tracts. . . . . The deep beds of shells which are found in Touraine and elsewhere, could have been deposited there only by the sea.”

True, if those beds of shells exist in fact; but the critic ought to be aware that the author himself discovered, or thought he had discovered, that those regular beds of shells have no existence.

He ought to have said:

“The universal Deluge is related by Moses with the agreement of all nations.”

1. Because the Pentateuch was long unknown, not only to the other nations of the world, but to the Jews themselves.

2. Because only a single copy of the law was found at the bottom of an old chest in the time of King Josiah.

3. Because that book was lost during the captivity.

4. Because it was restored by Esdras.

5. Because it was always unknown to every other nation till the time of its being translated by the Seventy.

6. Because, even after the translation ascribed to the Seventy, we have not a single author among the Gentiles who quotes a single passage from this book, down to the time of Longinus, who lived under the Emperor Aurelian.

7. Because no other nation ever admitted a universal deluge before Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”; and even Ovid himself does not make his deluge extend beyond the Mediterranean.

8. Because St. Augustine expressly acknowledges that the universal deluge was unknown to all antiquity.

9. Because the first deluge of which any notice is taken by the Gentiles, is that mentioned by Berosus, and which he fixes at about four thousand four hundred years before our vulgar era; which deluge did not extend beyond the Euxine Sea.

10. Finally, because no monument of a universal deluge remains in any nation in the world.

In addition to all these reasons, it must be observed, that the critic did not even understand the simple state of the question. The only inquiry is, whether we have any natural proof that the sea has successively abandoned many tracts of territory? and upon this plain and mere matter-of-fact subject, M. Abbé François has taken occasion to abuse men whom he certainly neither knows nor understands. It is far better to be silent, than merely to increase the quantity of bad books.

The same critic, in order to prop up old ideas, now almost universally despised and derided, and which have not the slightest relation to Moses, thinks proper to say: “Berosus perfectly agrees with Moses in the number of generations before the Deluge.”

Be it known to you, my dear reader, that this same Berosus is the writer who informs us that the fish Oannes came out to the river Euphrates every day, to go and preach to the Chaldæans; and that the same fish wrote with one of its bones a capital book about the origin of things. Such is the writer whom the ingenious abbé brings forward as a voucher for Moses.

“Is it not evident,” he says, “that a great number of European families, transplanted to the coasts of Africa, have become, without any mixture of African blood, as black as any of the natives of the country?”

It is just the contrary of this, M. l’Abbé, that is evident. You are ignorant that the reticulum mucosum” of the negroes is black, although I have mentioned the fact times innumerable. Were you to have ever so large a number of children born to you in Guinea, of a European wife, they would not one of them have that black unctuous skin, those dark and thick lips, those round eyes, or that woolly hair, which form the specific differences of the negro race. In the same manner, were your family established in America, they would have beards, while a native American will have none. Now extricate yourself from the difficulty, with Adam and Eve only, if you can.

“Who was this ‘Melchom,’ you ask, who had taken possession of the country of God? A pleasant sort of god, certainly, whom the God of Jeremiah would carry off to be dragged into captivity.”

Ah, M. l’Abbé! you are quite smart and lively. You ask, who is this Melchom? I will immediately inform you. Melek or Melkom signified the Lord, as did Adoni or Adonai, Baal or Bel, Adad or Shadai, Eloi or Eloa. Almost all the nations of Syria gave such names to their gods; each had its lord, its protector, its god. Even the name of Jehovah was a Phœnician and proper name; this we learn from Sanchoniathon, who was certainly anterior to Moses; and also from Diodorus.

We well know that God is equally the God, the absolute master, of Egyptians and Jews, of all men and all worlds; but it is not in this light that he is represented when Moses appears before Pharaoh. He never speaks to that monarch but in the name of the God of the Hebrews, as an ambassador delivers the orders of the king his master. He speaks so little in the name of the Master of all Nature, that Pharaoh replies to him, “I do not know him.” Moses performs prodigies in the name of this God; but the magicians of Pharaoh perform precisely the same prodigies in the name of their own. Hitherto both sides are equal; the contest is, who shall be deemed most powerful, not who shall be deemed alone powerful. At length, the God of the Hebrews decidedly carries the day; he manifests a power by far the greater; but not the only power. Thus, speaking after the manner of men, Pharaoh’s incredulity is very excusable. It is the same incredulity as Montezuma exhibited before Cortes, and Atahualpa before the Pizarros.

When Joshua called together the Jews, he said to them: “Choose ye this day whom ye will serve, whether the gods which your father served, that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land ye dwell; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” The people, therefore, had already given themselves up to other gods, and might serve whom they pleased.

When the family of Micah, in Ephraim, hire a Levitical priest to conduct the service of a strange god, when the whole tribe of Dan serve the same god as the family of Micah; when a grandson of Moses himself becomes a hired priest of the same god—no one murmurs; every one has his own god, undisturbed; and the grandson of Moses becomes an idolater without any one’s reviling or accusing him. At that time, therefore, every one chose his own local god, his own protector.

The same Jews, after the death of Gideon, adore Baal-berith, which means precisely the same as Adonai—the lord, the protector; they change their protector.

Adonai, in the time of Joshua, becomes master of the mountains; but he is unable to overcome the inhabitants of the valleys, because they had chariots armed with scythes. Can anything more correctly represent the idea of a local deity, a god who is strong in one place, but not so in another?

Jephthah, the son of Gilead, and a concubine, says to the Moabites: “Wilt thou not possess what Chemosh, thy god, giveth thee to possess? So, whomsoever the Lord our God shall drive out from before us, them will we possess.”

It is then perfectly proved, that the undistinguishing Jews, although chosen by the God of the universe, regarded him notwithstanding as a mere local god, the god of a particular territory of people, like the god of the Amorites, or that of the Moabites, of the mountains or of the valleys.

It is unfortunately very evident that it was perfectly indifferent to the grandson of Moses whether he served Micah’s god or his grandfather’s. It is clear, and cannot but be admitted, that the Jewish religion was not formed, that it was not uniform, till the time of Esdras; and we must, even then, except the Samaritans.

You may now, probably, have some idea of the meaning of this lord or god Melchom. I am not in favor of his cause—the Lord deliver me from such folly!—but when you remark, “the god which Jeremiah threatened to carry into slavery must be a curious and pleasant sort of deity,” I will answer you, M. l’Abbé, with this short piece of advice:—“From your own house of glass do not throw stones at those of your neighbors.”

They were the Jews who were at that very time carried off in slavery to Babylon. It was the good Jeremiah himself who was accused of being bribed by the court of Babylon, and of having consequently prophesied in his favor. It was he who was the object of public scorn and hatred, and who it is thought ended his career by being stoned to death by the Jews themselves. This Jeremiah, be assured from me, was never before understood to be a joker.

The God of the Jews, I again repeat, is the God of all nature. I expressly make this repetition that you may have no ground for pretending ignorance of it, and that you may not accuse me before the ecclesiastical court. I still, however, assert and maintain, that the stupid Jews frequently knew no other God than a local one.

“It is not natural to attribute the tides to the phases of the moon. They are not the high tides which occur at the full moon, that are ascribed to the phases of that planet.” Here we see ignorance of a different description.

It occasionally happens that persons of a certain description are so much ashamed of the part they play in the world, that they are desirous of disguising themselves sometimes as wits, and sometimes as philosophers.

In the first place, it is proper to inform M. l’Abbé, that nothing is more natural than to attribute an effect to that which is always followed by this effect. If a particular wind is constantly followed by rain, it is natural to attribute the rain to the wind. Now, over all the shores of the ocean, the tides are always higher in the moon’s “syzygies”—if you happen to know the meaning of the term—than at its quarterings. The moon rises every day later; the tide is also every day later. The nearer the moon approaches our zenith, the greater is the tide; the nearer the moon approaches its perigee, the higher the tide still rises. These experiences and various others, these invariable correspondences with the phases of the moon, were the foundation of the ancient and just opinion, that that body is a principal cause of the flux and reflux of the ocean.

After numerous centuries appeared the great Newton—Are you at all acquainted with Newton? Did you ever hear, that after calculating the square of the progress of the moon in its orbit during the space of a minute, and dividing that square by the diameter of that orbit, he found the quotient to be fifteen feet? that he thence demonstrated that the moon gravitates towards the earth three thousand six hundred times less than if she were near the earth? that he afterwards demonstrated that its attractive force is the cause of three-fourths of the elevation of the sea by the tide, and that the force of the sun is the cause of the remaining fourth? You appear perfectly astonished. You never read anything like this in the “Christian Pedagogue.” Endeavor henceforward, both you and the porters of your parish, never to speak about things of which you have not even the slightest idea.

You can form no conception of the injury you do to religion by your ignorance, and still more by your reasonings. In order to preserve in the world the little faith that remains in it, it would be the most judicious measure possible to restrain you, and such as you, from writing and publishing in behalf of it.

I should absolutely make your astonished eyes stare almost to starting, were I to inform you, that this same Newton was persuaded that Samuel is the author of the Pentateuch. I do not mean to say that he demonstrated it in the same way as he calculated and deduced the power of gravitation. Learn, then, to doubt and to be modest. I believe in the Pentateuch, remember; but I believe, also, that you have printed and published the most enormous absurdities. I could here transcribe a large volume of instances of your own individual ignorance and imbecility, and many of those of your brethren and colleagues. I shall not, however, take the trouble of doing it. Let us go on with our questions.

SECTION II.

I am ignorant how I was formed, and how I was born. I was perfectly ignorant, for a quarter of my life, of the reasons of all that I saw, heard, and felt, and was a mere parrot, talking by rote in imitation of other parrots.

When I looked about me and within me, I conceived that something existed from all eternity. Since there are beings actually existing, I concluded that there is some being necessary and necessarily eternal. Thus the first step I took to extricate myself from my ignorance, overpassed the limits of all ages—the boundaries of time.

But when I was desirous of proceeding in this infinite career, I could neither perceive a single path, nor clearly distinguish a single object; and from the flight which I took to contemplate eternity, I have fallen back into the abyss of my original ignorance.

I have seen what is denominated “matter,” from the star Sirius, and the stars of the “milky way,” as distant from Sirius as that is from us, to the smallest atom that can be perceived by the microscope; and yet I know not what matter is.

Light, which has enabled me to see all these different and distant beings, is perfectly unknown to me; I am able by the help of a prism to anatomize this light, and divide it into seven pencillings of rays; but I cannot divide these pencillings themselves; I know not of what they are composed. Light resembles matter in having motion and impinging upon objects, but it does not tend towards a common centre like all other bodies; on the contrary it flies off by some invincible power from the centre, while all matter gravitates towards a centre. Light appears to be penetrable, and matter is impenetrable. Is light matter, or is it not matter? What is it? With what numberless properties can it be invested? I am completely ignorant.

This substance so brilliant, so rapid, and so unknown, and those other substances which float in the immensity of space—seeming to be infinite—are they eternal? I know nothing on the subject. Has a necessary being, sovereignly intelligent, created them from nothing, or has he only arranged them? Did he produce this order in time, or before time? Alas! what is this time, of which I am speaking? I am incapable of defining it. O God, it is Thou alone by whom I can be instructed, for I am neither enlightened by the darkness of other men nor by my own.

Mice and moles have their resemblances of structure, in certain respects, to the human frame. What difference can it make to the Supreme Being whether animals like ourselves, or such as mice, exist upon this globe revolving in space with innumerable globes around it?

Why have we being? Why are there any beings? What is sensation? How have I received it? What connection is there between the air which vibrates on my ear and the sensation of sound? between this body and the sensation of colors? I am perfectly ignorant, and shall ever remain ignorant.

What is thought? Where does it reside? How is it formed? Who gives me thoughts during my sleep? Is it in virtue of my will that I think? No, for always during sleep, and often when I am awake, I have ideas against, or at least without, my will. These ideas, long forgotten, long put away, and banished in the lumber room of my brain, issue from it without any effort or volition of mine, and suddenly present themselves to my memory, which had, perhaps, previously made various vain attempts to recall them.

External objects have not the power of forming ideas in me, for nothing can communicate what it does not possess; I am well assured that they are not given me by myself, for they are produced without my orders. Who then produces them in me? Whence do they come? Whither do they go? Fugitive phantoms! What invisible hand produces and disperses you?

Why, of all the various tribes of animals, has man alone the mad ambition of domineering over his fellow? Why and how could it happen, that out of a thousand millions of men, more than nine hundred and ninety-nine have been sacrificed to this mad ambition?

How is it that reason is a gift so precious that we would none of us lose it for all the pomp or wealth of the world, and yet at the same time that it has merely served to render us, in almost all cases, the most miserable of beings? Whence comes it, that with a passionate attachment to truth, we are always yielding to the most palpable impostures?

Why do the vast tribes of India, deceived and enslaved by the bonzes, trampled upon by the descendant of a Tartar, bowed down by labor, groaning in misery, assailed by diseases, and a mark for all the scourges and plagues of life, still fondly cling to that life? Whence comes evil, and why does it exist?

O atoms of a day! O companions in littleness, born like me to suffer everything, and be ignorant of everything!—are there in reality any among you so completely mad as to imagine you know all this, or that you can solve all these difficulties? Certainly there can be none. No; in the bottom of your heart you feel your own nothingness, as completely as I do justice to mine. But you are nevertheless arrogant and conceited enough to be eager for our embracing your vain systems; and not having the power to tyrannize over our bodies, you aim at becoming the tyrants of our souls.

IMAGINATION.

SECTION I.

Imagination is the power which every being, endowed with perception and reason, is conscious he possesses of representing to himself sensible objects. This faculty is dependent upon memory. We see men, animals, gardens, which perceptions are introduced by the senses; the memory retains them, and the imagination compounds them. On this account the ancient Greeks called the muses, “the daughters of memory.”

It is of great importance to observe, that these faculties of receiving ideas, retaining them, and compounding them, are among the many things of which we can give no explanation. These invisible springs of our being are of nature’s workmanship, and not of our own.

Perhaps this gift of God, imagination, is the sole instrument with which we compound ideas, even those which are abstract and metaphysical.

You pronounce the word “triangle;” but you merely utter a sound, if you do not represent to yourself the image of some particular triangle. You certainly have no idea of a triangle but in consequence of having seen triangles, if you have the gift of sight, or of having felt them, if you are blind. You cannot think of a triangle in general, unless your imagination figures to itself, at least in a confused way, some particular triangle. You calculate; but it is necessary that you should represent to yourself units added to each other, or your mind will be totally insensible to the operation of your hand.

You utter the abstract terms—greatness, truth, justice, finite, infinite; but is the term “greatness” thus uttered, anything more or less, than a mere sound, from the action of your tongue, producing vibrations in the air, unless you have the image of some greatness in your mind? What meaning is there in the words “truth” and “falsehood,” if you have not perceived, by means of your senses, that some particular thing which you were told existed, did exist in fact; and that another of which you were told the same, did not exist? And, is it not from this experience, that you frame the general idea of truth and falsehood? And, when asked what you mean by these words, can you help figuring to yourself some sensible image, occasioning you to recollect that you have sometimes been told, as a fact, what really and truly happened, and very often what was not so?

Have you any other notion of just and unjust, than what is derived from particular actions, which appeared to you respectively of these descriptions? You began in your childhood by learning to read under some master: you endeavored to spell well, but you really spelled ill: your master chastised you: this appeared to you very unjust. You have observed a laborer refused his wages, and innumerable instances of the like nature. Is the abstract idea of just and unjust anything more than facts of this character confusedly mixed up in your imagination?

Is “finite” anything else in your conception than the image of some limited quantity or extent? Is “infinite” anything but the image of the same extent or quantity enlarged indefinitely? Do not all these operations take place in your mind just in the same manner as you read a book? You read circumstances and events recorded in it, and never think at the time of the alphabetical characters, without which, however, you would have no notion of these events and circumstances. Attend to this point for a single moment, and then you will distinctly perceive the essential importance of those characters over which your eye previously glided without thinking of them. In the same manner all your reasonings, all your accumulations of knowledge are founded on images traced in your brain. You have, in general, no distinct perception or recollection of them; but give the case only a moment’s attention, and you will then clearly discern, that these images are the foundation of all the notions you possess. It may be worth the reader’s while to dwell a little upon this idea, to extend it, and to rectify it.

The celebrated Addison, in the eleven essays on the imagination with which he has enriched the volumes of the “Spectator,” begins with observing, that “the sense of sight is the only one which furnishes the imagination with ideas.” Yet certainly it must be allowed, that the other senses contribute some share. A man born blind still hears, in his imagination, the harmony which no longer vibrates upon his ear; he still continues listening as in a trance or dream; the objects which have resisted or yielded to his hands produce a similar effect in his head or mind. It is true that the sense of sight alone supplies images; and as it is a kind of touching or feeling which extends even to the distance of the stars, its immense diffusion enriches the imagination more than all the other senses put together.

There are two descriptions of imagination; one consists in retaining a simple impression of objects; the other arranges the images received, and combines them in endless diversity. The first has been called passive imagination, and the second active. The passive scarcely advances beyond memory, and is common to man and to animals. From this power or faculty it arises, that the sportsman and his dog both follow the hunted game in their dreams, that they both hear the sound of the horn, and the one shouts and the other barks in their sleep. Both men and brutes do something more than recollect on these occasions, for dreams are never faithful and accurate images. This species of imagination compounds objects, but it is not the understanding which acts in it; it is the memory laboring under error.

This passive imagination certainly requires no assistance from volition, whether we are asleep or awake; it paints, independently of ourselves, what our eyes have seen; it hears what our ears have heard, and touches what we have touched; it adds to it or takes from it. It is an internal sense, acting necessarily, and accordingly there is nothing more common, in speaking of any particular individual, than to say, “he has no command over his imagination.”

In this respect we cannot but see, and be astonished at the slight share of power we really possess. Whence comes it, that occasionally in dreams we compose most coherent and eloquent discourses, and verses far superior to what we should write on the same subject if perfectly awake?—that we even solve complicated problems in mathematics? Here certainly there are very combined and complex ideas in no degree dependent on ourselves. But if it is incontestable that coherent ideas are formed within us independently of our will in sleep, who can safely assert that they are not produced in the same manner when we are awake? Is there a man living who foresees the idea which he will form in his mind the ensuing minute? Does it not seem as if ideas were given to us as much as the motions of our fibres; and had Father Malebranche merely maintained the principle that all ideas are given by God, could any one have successfully opposed him?

This passive faculty, independent of reflection, is the source of our passions and our errors; far from being dependent on the will, the will is determined by it. It urges us towards the objects which it paints before us, or diverts us from them, just according to the nature of the exhibition thus made of them by it. The image of a danger inspires fear; that of a benefit excites desire. It is this faculty alone which produces the enthusiasm of glory, of party, of fanaticism; it is this which produces so many mental alienations and disorders, making weak brains, when powerfully impressed, conceive that their bodies are metamorphosed into various animals, that they are possessed by demons, that they are under the infernal dominion of witchcraft, and that they are in reality going to unite with sorcerers in the worship of the devil, because they have been told that they were going to do so. This species of slavish imagination, which generally is the lot of ignorant people, has been the instrument which the imagination of some men has employed to acquire and retain power. It is, moreover, this passive imagination of brains easily excited and agitated, which sometimes produces on the bodies of children evident marks of the impression received by the mother; examples of this kind are indeed innumerable, and the writer of this article has seen some so striking that, were he to deny them, he must contradict his own ocular demonstration. This effect of imagination is incapable of being explained; but every other operation of nature is equally so; we have no clearer idea how we have perceptions, how we retain them, or how we combine them. There is an infinity between us and the springs or first principles of our nature.

Active imagination is that which joins combination and reflection to memory. It brings near to us many objects at a distance; it separates those mixed together, compounds them, and changes them; it seems to create, while in fact it merely arranges; for it has not been given to man to make ideas—he is only able to modify them.

This active imagination then is in reality a faculty as independent of ourselves as passive imagination; and one proof of its not depending upon ourselves is that, if we propose to a hundred persons, equally ignorant, to imagine a certain new machine, ninety-nine of them will form no imagination at all about it, notwithstanding all their endeavors. If the hundredth imagines something, is it not clear that it is a particular gift or talent which he has received? It is this gift which is called “genius”; it is in this that we recognize something inspired and divine.

This gift of nature is an imagination inventive in the arts—in the disposition of a picture, in the structure of a poem. It cannot exist without memory, but it uses memory as an instrument with which it produces all its performances.

In consequence of having seen that a large stone which the hand of man could not move, might be moved by means of a staff, active imagination invented levers, and afterwards compound moving forces, which are no other than disguised levers. It is necessary to figure in the mind the machines with their various effects and processes, in order to the actual production of them.

It is not this description of imagination that is called by the vulgar the enemy of judgment. On the contrary, it can only act in union with profound judgment; it incessantly combines its pictures, corrects its errors, and raises all its edifices according to calculation and upon a plan. There is an astonishing imagination in practical mathematics; and Archimedes had at least as much imagination as Homer. It is by this power that a poet creates his personages, appropriates to them characters and manners, invents his fable, presents the exposition of it, constructs its complexity, and prepares its development; a labor, all this, requiring judgment the most profound and the most delicately discriminative.

A very high degree of art is necessary in all these imaginative inventions, and even in romances. Those which are deficient in this quality are neglected and despised by all minds of natural good taste. An invariably sound judgment pervades all the fables of Æsop. They will never cease to be the delight of mankind. There is more imagination in the “Fairy Tales”; but these fantastic imaginations, destitute of order and good sense, can never be in high esteem; they are read childishly, and must be condemned by reason.

The second part of active imagination is that of detail, and it is this to which the world distinguishingly applies the term. It is this which constitutes the charm of conversation, for it is constantly presenting to the mind what mankind are most fond of—new objects. It paints in vivid colors what men of cold and reserved temperament hardly sketch; it employs the most striking circumstances; it cites the most appropriate examples; and when this talent displays itself in union with the modesty and simplicity which become and adorn all talents, it conciliates to itself an empire over society. Man is so completely a machine that wine sometimes produces this imagination, as intoxication destroys it. This is a topic to excite at once humiliation and wonder. How can it happen that a small quantity of a certain liquor, which would prevent a man from effecting an important calculation, shall at the same time bestow on him the most brilliant ideas?

It is in poetry particularly that this imagination of detail and expression ought to prevail. It is always agreeable, but there it is necessary. In Homer, Virgil, and Horace, almost all is imagery, without even the reader’s perceiving it. Tragedy requires fewer images, fewer picturesque expressions and sublime metaphors and allegories than the epic poem and the ode; but the greater part of these beauties, under discreet and able management, produce an admirable effect in tragedy; they should never, however, be forced, stilted, or gigantic.

Active imagination, which constitutes men poets, confers on them enthusiasm, according to the true meaning of the Greek word, that internal emotion which in reality agitates the mind and transforms the author into the personage whom he introduces as the speaker; for such is the true enthusiasm, which consists in emotion and imagery. An author under this influence says precisely what would be said by the character he is exhibiting.

Less imagination is admissible in eloquence than in poetry. The reason is obvious—ordinary discourse should be less remote from common ideas. The orator speaks the language of all; the foundation of the poet’s performance is fiction. Accordingly, imagination is the essence of his art; to the orator it is only an accessory.

Particular traits or touches of imagination have, it is observed, added great beauties to painting. That artifice especially is often cited, by which the artist covers with a veil the head of Agamemnon at the sacrifice of Iphigenia; an expedient, nevertheless, far less beautiful than if the painter had possessed the secret of exhibiting in the countenance of Agamemnon the conflict between the grief of a father, the majesty of a monarch, and the resignation of a good man to the will of heaven; as Rubens had the skill to paint in the looks and attitude of Mary de Medici the pain of childbirth, the joy of being delivered of a son, and the maternal affection with which she looks upon her child.

In general, the imaginations of painters when they are merely ingenious, contribute more to exhibit the learning in the artist than to increase the beauty of the art. All the allegorical compositions in the world are not worth the masterly execution and fine finish which constitute the true value of paintings.

In all the arts, the most beautiful imagination is always the most natural. The false is that which brings together objects incompatible; the extravagant paints objects which have no analogy, allegory, or resemblance. A strong imagination explores everything to the bottom; a weak one skims over the surface; the placid one reposes in agreeable pictures; the ardent one piles images upon images. The judicious or sage imagination is that which employs with discrimination all these different characters, but which rarely admits the extravagant and always rejects the false.

If memory nourished and exercised be the source of all imagination, that same faculty of memory, when overcharged, becomes the extinction of it. Accordingly, the man whose head is full of names and dates does not possess that storehouse of materials from which he can derive compound images. Men occupied in calculation, or with intricate matters of business, have generally a very barren imagination.

When imagination is remarkably stirring and ardent, it may easily degenerate into madness; but it has been observed that this morbid affection of the organs of the brain more frequently attaches to those passive imaginations which are limited to receiving strong impressions of objects than to those fervid and active ones which collect and combine ideas; for this active imagination always requires the association of judgment, the other is independent of it.

It is not perhaps useless to add to this essay, that by the words perception, memory, imagination, and judgment, we do not mean distinct and separate organs, one of which has the gift of perceiving, another of recollecting, the third of imagining, and the last of judging. Men are more inclined, than some are aware, to consider these as completely distinct and separate faculties. It is, however, one and the same being that performs all these operations, which we know only by their effects, without being able to know anything of that being itself.

SECTION II.

Brutes possess imagination as well as ourselves; your dog, for example, hunts in his dreams. “Objects are painted in the fancy,” says Descartes, as others have also said. Certainly they are; but what is the fancy, and how are objects painted in it? Is it with “the subtle matter”? “How can I tell” is the appropriate answer to all questions thus affecting the first principles of human organization.

Nothing enters the understanding without an image. It was necessary, in order to our obtaining the confused idea we possess of infinite space, that we should have an idea of a space of a few feet. It is necessary, in order to our having the idea of God, that the image of something more powerful than ourselves should have long dwelt upon our minds.

We do not create a single idea or image. I defy you to create one. Ariosto did not make Astolpho travel to the moon till long after he had heard of the moon, of St. John, and of the Paladins.

We make no images; we only collect and combine them. The extravagances of the “Thousand and One Nights” and the “Fairy Tales” are merely combinations. He who comprises most images in the storehouse of his memory is the person who possesses most imagination.

The difficulty is in not bringing together these images in profusion, without any selection. You might employ a whole day in representing, without any toilsome effort, and almost without any attention, a fine old man with a long beard, clothed in ample drapery, and borne in the midst of a cloud resting on chubby children with beautiful wings attached to their shoulders, or upon an eagle of immense size and grandeur; all the gods and animals surrounding him; golden tripods running to arrive at his council; wheels revolving by their own self-motion, advancing as they revolve; having four faces covered with eyes, ears, tongues, and noses; and between these tripods and wheels an immense multitude of dead resuscitated by the crash of thunder; the celestial spheres dancing and joining in harmonious concert, etc. The lunatic asylum abounds in such imaginations.

We may, in dealing with the subject of imagination distinguish:

1. The imagination which disposes of the events of a poem, romance, tragedy, or comedy, and which attaches the characters and passions to the different personages. This requires the profoundest judgment and the most exquisite knowledge of the human heart; talents absolutely indispensable; but with which, however, nothing has yet been done but merely laying the foundation of the edifice.

2. The imagination which gives to all these personages the eloquence or diction appropriate to their rank, suitable to their station. Here is the great art and difficulty; but even after doing this they have not done enough.

3. The imagination in the expression, by which every word paints an image in the mind without astonishing or overwhelming it; as in Virgil:

. . . . Remigium alarum.

—Æneid, vi, 19.

Mœrentem abjungens fraterna morte juvencum.

—Georgics, iii, 517.

. . . . Velorum pandimus alas.

—Æneid, iii, 520.

Pendent circum oscula nati.

—Georgics, ii, 523.

Immortale jecur tundens fecundaque pœnis

Viscera.

—Æneid, vi, 598-599.

Et caligantem nigra formidine lucum.

—Georgics, iv, 468.

Fata vocant, conditque natantia lumina somnus.

—Georgics, iv, 496.

Virgil is full of these picturesque expressions, with which he enriches the Latin language, and which are so difficult to be translated into our European jargons—the crooked and lame offspring of a well-formed and majestic sire, but which, however, have some merit of their own, and have done some tolerably good things in their way.

There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics. An inventor must begin with painting correctly in his mind the figure, the machine invented by him, and its properties or effects. We repeat there was far more imagination in the head of Archimedes than in that of Homer.

As the imagination of a great mathematician must possess extreme precision, so must that of a great poet be exceedingly correct and chaste. He must never present images that are incompatible with each other, incoherent, highly exaggerated, or unsuitable to the nature of the subject.

The great fault of some writers who have appeared since the age of Louis XIV. is attempting a constant display of imagination, and fatiguing the reader by the profuse abundance of far-fetched images and double rhymes, one-half of which may be pronounced absolutely useless. It is this which at length brought into neglect and obscurity a number of small poems, such as “Ver Vert,” “The Chartreuse,” and “The Shades,” which at one period possessed considerable celebrity. Mere sounding superfluity soon finds oblivion.

Omne supervacuum pleno de pectore manat.

—Horace,Art of Poetry, 837.

The active and the passive imagination have been distinguished in the “Encyclopædia.” The active is that of which we have treated. It is the talent of forming new pictures out of all those contained in our memory.

The passive is scarcely anything beyond memory itself, even in a brain under strong emotion. A man of an active and fervid imagination, a preacher of the League in France, or a Puritan in England, harangues the populace with a voice of thunder, with an eye of fire, and the gesture of a demoniac, and represents Jesus Christ as demanding justice of the Eternal Father for the new wounds he has received from the royalists, for the nails which have been driven for the second time through his feet and hands by these impious miscreants. Avenge, O God the Father, avenge the blood of God the Son; march under the banner of the Holy Spirit; it was formerly a dove, but is now an eagle bearing thunder! The passive imaginations, roused and stimulated by these images, by the voice, by the action of those sanguinary empirics, urge the maddened hearers to rush with fury from the chapel or meeting house, to kill their opponents and get themselves hanged.

Persons of passive imaginations, for the sake of high and violent excitement, go sometimes to the sermon and sometimes to the play; sometimes to the place of execution; and sometimes even to what they suppose to be the midnight and appalling meetings of presumed sorcerers.

IMPIOUS.

Who is the impious man? It is he who exhibits the Being of Beings, the great former of the world, the eternal intelligence by whom all nature is governed, with a long white beard, and having hands and feet. However, he is pardonable for his impiety—a weak and ignorant creature, the sight or conduct of whom we ought not to allow to provoke or to vex us.

If he should even paint that great and incomprehensible Being as carried on a cloud, which can carry nothing; if he is so stupid as to place God in a mist, in rain, or on a mountain, and to surround him with little round, chubby, painted faces, accompanied by two wings, I can smile and pardon him with all my heart.

The impious man, who ascribes to the Being of Beings absurd predictions and absolute iniquities, would certainly provoke me, if that Great Being had not bestowed upon me the gift of reason to control my anger. This senseless fanatic repeats to me once more what thousands of others have said before him, that it is not our province to decide what is reasonable and just in the Great Being; that His reason is not like our reason, nor His justice like our justice. What then, my rather too absurd and zealous friend, would you really wish me to judge of justice and reason by any other notions than I have of them myself? Would you have me walk otherwise than with my feet, or speak otherwise than with my mouth?

The impious man, who supposes the Great Being to be jealous, proud, malignant, and vindictive, is more dangerous. I would not sleep under the same roof with such a man.

But how will you treat the impious man, the daring blasphemer, who says to you: “See only with my eyes; do not think for yourself; I proclaim to you a tyrant God, who ordained me to be your tyrant; I am His well-beloved; He will torment to all eternity millions of His creatures, whom He detests, for the sake of gratifying me; I will be your master in this world and will laugh at your torments in the next!”

Do you not feel a very strong inclination to beat this cruel blasphemer? And, even if you happen to be born with a meek and forgiving spirit, would you not fly with the utmost speed to the West, when this barbarian utters his atrocious reveries in the East?

With respect to another and very different class of the impious—those who, while washing their elbows, neglect to turn their faces towards Aleppo and Erivan, or who do not kneel down in the dirt on seeing a procession of capuchin friars at Perpignan, they are certainly culpable; but I hardly think they ought to be impaled.

IMPOST.

SECTION I.

So many philosophical works have been written on the nature of impost, that we need say very little about it here. It is true that nothing is less philosophical than this subject; but it may enter into moral philosophy by representing to a superintendent of finances or to a Turkish teftardar that it accords not with universal morals to take his neighbor’s money; and that all receivers and custom-house officers and collectors of taxes are cursed in the gospel.

Cursed as they are, it must, however, be agreed that it is impossible for society to subsist unless each member pays something towards the expenses of it; and as, since every one ought to pay, it is necessary to have a receiver, we do not see why this receiver is to be cursed and regarded as an idolater. There is certainly no idolatry in receiving money of guests to-day for their supper.

In republics, and states which with the name of kingdoms are really republics, every individual is taxed according to his means and to the wants of society.

In despotic kingdoms—or to speak more politely—in monarchical states, it is not quite the same—the nation is taxed without consulting it. An agriculturist who has twelve hundred livres of revenue is quite astonished when four hundred are demanded of him. There are several who are even obliged to pay more than half of what they receive.

The cultivator demands why the half of his fortune is taken from him to pay soldiers, when the hundredth part would suffice. He is answered that, besides the soldiers, he must pay for luxury and the arts; that nothing is lost; and that in Persia towns and villages are assigned to the queen to pay for her girdles, slippers, and pins.

He replies that he knows nothing of the history of Persia, and that he should be very indignant if half his fortune were taken for girdles, pins, and shoes; that he would furnish them from a better market, and that he endures a grievous imposition.

He is made to hear reason by being put into a dungeon, and having his goods put up to sale. If he resists the tax-collectors whom the New Testament has damned, he is hanged, which renders all his neighbors infinitely accommodating.

Were this money employed by the sovereign in importing spices from India, coffee from Mocha, English and Arabian horses, silks from the Levant, and gew-gaws from China, it is clear that in a few years there would not remain a single sous in the kingdom. The taxes, therefore, serve to maintain the manufacturers; and so far what is poured into the coffers of the prince returns to the cultivators. They suffer, they complain, and other parts of the state suffer and complain also; but at the end of the year they find that every one has labored and lived some way or other.

If by chance a clown goes to the capital, he sees with astonishment a fine lady dressed in a gown of silk embroidered with gold, drawn in a magnificent carriage by two valuable horses, and followed by four lackeys dressed in a cloth of twenty francs an ell. He addresses himself to one of these lackeys, and says to him: “Sir, where does this lady get money to make such an expensive appearance?” “My friend,” says the lackey, “the king allows her a pension of forty thousand livres.” “Alas,” says the rustic, “it is my village which pays this pension.” “Yes,” answers the servant; “but the silk that you have gathered and sold has made the stuff in which she is dressed; my cloth is a part of thy sheep’s wool; my baker has made my bread of thy corn; thou hast sold at market the very fowls that we eat; thus thou seest that the pension of madame returns to thee and thy comrades.”

The peasant does not absolutely agree with the axioms of this philosophical lackey; but one proof that there is something true in his answer is that the village exists, and produces children who also complain, and who bring forth children again to complain.

SECTION II.

If we were obliged to read all the edicts of taxation, and all the books written against them, that would be the greatest tax of all.

We well know that taxes are necessary, and that the malediction pronounced in the gospel only regards those who abuse their employment to harass the people. Perhaps the copyist forgot a word, as for instance the epithet pravus. It might have meant pravus publicanus; this word was much more necessary, as the general malediction is a formal contradiction to the words put into the mouth of Jesus Christ: “Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s.” Certainly those who collected the dues of Cæsar ought not to have been held in horror. It would have been, at once, insulting the order of Roman Knights and the emperor himself; nothing could have been more ill-advised.

In all civilized countries the imposts are great, because the charges of the state are heavy. In Spain the articles of commerce sent to Cadiz, and thence to America, pay more than thirty per cent. before their transit is accomplished.

In England all duty upon importation is very considerable; however, it is paid without murmuring; there is even a pride in paying it. A merchant boasts of putting four or five thousand guineas a year into the public treasury. The richer a country is, the heavier are the taxes. Speculators would have taxes fall on landed productions only. What! having sown a field of flax, which will bring me two hundred crowns, by which flax a great manufacturer will gain two hundred thousand crowns by converting it into lace—must this manufacturer pay nothing, and shall I pay all, because it is produced by my land? The wife of this manufacturer will furnish the queen and princesses with fine point of Alençon, she will be patronized; her son will become intendant of justice, police, and finance, and will augment my taxes in my miserable old age. Ah! gentlemen speculators, you calculate badly; you are unjust.

The great point is that an entire people be not despoiled by an army of alguazils, in order that a score of town or court leeches may feast upon its blood.

The Duke de Sully relates, in his “Political Economy,” that in 1585 there were just twenty lords interested in the leases of farms, to whom the highest bidders gave three million two hundred and forty-eight thousand crowns.

It was still worse under Charles IX., and Francis I., and Louis XIII. There was not less depredation in the minority of Louis XIV. France, notwithstanding so many wounds, is still in being. Yes; but if it had not received them it would have been in better health. It was thus with several other states.

SECTION III.

It is just that those who enjoy the advantages of a government should support the charges. The ecclesiastics and monks, who possess great property, for this reason should contribute to the taxes in all countries, like other citizens. In the times which we call barbarous, great benefices and abbeys were taxed in France to the third of their revenue.

The Duke of Sully.

By a statute of the year 1188, Philip Augustus imposed a tenth of the revenues of all benefices. Philip le Bel caused the fifth, afterwards the fifteenth, and finally the twentieth part, to be paid, of all the possessions of the clergy.

King John, by a statute of March 12, 1355, taxed bishops, abbots, chapters, and all ecclesiastics generally, to the tenth of the revenue of their benefices and patrimonies. The same prince confirmed this tax by two other statutes, one of March 3, the other of Dec. 28, 1358.

In the letters-patent of Charles V., of June 22, 1372, it is decreed, that the churchmen shall pay taxes and other real and personal imposts. These letters-patent were renewed by Charles VI. in the year 1390.

How is it that these laws have been abolished, while so many monstrous customs and sanguinary decrees have been preserved? The clergy, indeed, pay a tax under the name of a free gift, and, as it is known, it is principally the poorest and most useful part of the church—the curates (rectors)—who pay this tax. But, why this difference and inequality of contributions between the citizens of the same state? Why do those who enjoy the greatest prerogatives, and who are sometimes useless to the public, pay less than the laborer, who is so necessary? The Republic of Venice supplies rules on this subject, which should serve as examples to all Europe.

SECTION IV.

Churchmen have not only pretended to be exempt from taxes, they have found the means in several provinces to tax the people, and make them pay as a legitimate right.

In several countries, monks having seized the tithes to the prejudice of the rectors, the peasants are obliged to tax themselves, to furnish their pastors with subsistence; and thus in several villages, and above all, in Franche-Comté, besides the tithes which the parishioners pay to the monks or to chapters, they further pay three or four measures of corn to their curates or rectors. This tax was called the right of harvest in some provinces, and boisselage in others.

It is no doubt right that curates should be well paid, but it would be much better to give them a part of the tithes which the monks have taken from them, than to overcharge the poor cultivator.

Since the king of France fixed the competent allowances for the curates, by his edict of the month of May, 1768, and charged the tithe-collectors with paying them, the peasants should no longer be held to pay a second tithe, a tax to which they only voluntarily submitted at a time when the influence and violence of the monks had taken from their pastors all means of subsistence.

The king has abolished this second tithe in Poitou, by letters-patent, registered by the Parliament of Paris July 11, 1769. It would be well worthy of the justice and beneficence of his majesty to make a similar law for other provinces, which are in the same situation as those of Poitou, Franche-Comté, etc.

By M. Chr., Advocate of Besançon.

IMPOTENCE.

I commence by this question, in favor of the impotent—“frigidi et maleficiati,” as they are denominated in the decretals: Is there a physician, or experienced person of any description, who can be certain that a well-formed young man, who has had no children by his wife, may not have them some day or other? Nature may know, but men can tell nothing about it. Since, then, it is impossible to decide that the marriage may not be consummated some time or other, why dissolve it?

Among the Romans, on the suspicion of impotence, a delay of two years was allowed, and in the Novels of Justinian three are required; but if in three years nature may bestow capability, she may equally do so in seven, ten, or twenty.

Those called “maleficiati” by the ancients were often considered bewitched. These charms were very ancient, and as there were some to take away virility, so there were others to restore it; both of which are alluded to in Petronius.

This illusion lasted a long time among us, who exorcised instead of disenchanting; and when exorcism succeeded not, the marriage was dissolved.

The canon law made a great question of impotence. Might a man who was prevented by sorcery from consummating his marriage, after being divorced and having children by a second wife—might such man, on the death of the latter wife, reject the first, should she lay claim to him? All the great canonists decided in the negative—Alexander de Nevo, Andrew Alberic, Turrecremata, Soto, and fifty more.

It is impossible to help admiring the sagacity displayed by the canonists, and above all by the religious of irreproachable manners in their development of the mysteries of sexual intercourse. There is no singularity, however strange, on which they have not treated. They have discussed at length all the cases in which capability may exist at one time or situation, and impotence in another. They have inquired into all the imaginary inventions to assist nature; and with the avowed object of distinguishing that which is allowable from that which is not, have exposed all which ought to remain veiled. It might be said of them: “Nox nocti indicat scientiam.”

Above all, Sanchez has distinguished himself in collecting cases of conscience which the boldest wife would hesitate to submit to the most prudent of matrons. One query leads to another in almost endless succession, until at length a question of the most direct and extraordinary nature is put, as to the manner of the communication of the Holy Ghost with the Virgin Mary.

These extraordinary researches were never made by anybody in the world except theologians; and suits in relation to impotency were unknown until the days of Theodosius.

In the Gospel, divorce is spoken of as allowable for adultery alone. The Jewish law permitted a husband to repudiate a wife who displeased him, without specifying the cause. “If she found no favor in his eyes, that was sufficient.” It is the law of the strongest, and exhibits human nature in its most barbarous garb. The Jewish laws treat not of impotence; it would appear, says a casuist, that God would not permit impotency to exist among a people who were to multiply like the sands on the seashore, and to whom he had sworn to bestow the immense country which lies between the Nile and Euphrates, and, by his prophets, to make lords of the whole earth. To fulfil these divine promises, it was necessary that every honest Jew should be occupied without ceasing in the great work of propagation. There was certainly a curse upon impotency; the time not having then arrived for the devout to make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven.

Marriage in the course of time having arrived at the dignity of a sacrament and a mystery, the ecclesiastics insensibly became judges of all which took place between husband and wife, and not only so, but of all which did not take place.

Wives possessed the liberty of presenting a request to be embesognées—such being our Gallic term, although the causes were carried on in Latin. Clerks pleaded and priests pronounced judgment, and the process was uniformly to decide two points—whether the man was bewitched, or the woman wanted another husband.

What appears most extraordinary is that all the canonists agree that a husband whom a spell or charm has rendered impotent, cannot in conscience apply to other charms or magicians to destroy it. This resembles the reasoning of the regularly admitted surgeons, who having the exclusive privilege of spreading a plaster, assure us that we shall certainly die if we allow ourselves to be cured by the hand which has hurt us. It might have been as well in the first place to inquire whether a sorcerer can really operate upon the virility of another man. It may be added that many weak-minded persons feared the sorcerer more than they confided in the exorcist. The sorcerer having deranged nature, holy water alone would not restore it.

In the cases of impotency in which the devil took no part, the presiding ecclesiastics were not less embarrassed. We have, in the Decretals, the famous head “De frigidis et maleficiatis,” which is very curious, but altogether uninforming. The political use made of it is exemplified in the case of Henry IV. of Castile, who was declared impotent, while surrounded by mistresses, and possessed of a wife by whom he had an heiress to the throne; but it was an archbishop of Toledo who pronounced this sentence, not the pope.

Alfonso, king of Portugal, was treated in the same manner, in the middle of the seventeenth century. This prince was known chiefly by his ferocity, debauchery, and prodigious strength of body. His brutal excesses disgusted the nation; and the queen, his wife, a princess of Nemours, being desirous of dethroning him, and marrying the infant Don Pedro his brother, was aware of the difficulty of wedding two brothers in succession, after the known circumstance of consummation with the elder. The example of Henry VIII. of England intimidated her, and she embraced the resolution of causing her husband to be declared impotent by the chapter of the cathedral of Lisbon; after which she hastened to marry his brother, without even waiting for the dispensation of the pope.

The most important proof of capability required from persons accused of impotency, is that called “the congress.” The President Bouhier says, that this combat in an enclosed field was adopted in France in the fourteenth century. And he asserts that it is known in France only.

This proof, about which so much noise has been made, was not conducted precisely as people have imagined. It has been supposed that a conjugal consummation took place under the inspection of physicians, surgeons, and midwives, but such was not the fact. The parties went to bed in the usual manner, and at a proper time the inspectors, who were assembled in the next room, were called on to pronounce upon the case.

In the famous process of the Marquis de Langeais, decided in 1659, he demanded “the congress”; and owing to the management of his lady (Marie de St. Simon) did not succeed. He demanded a second trial, but the judges, fatigued with the clamors of the superstitious, the plaints of the prudes, and the raillery of the wits, refused it. They declared the marquis impotent, his marriage void, forbade him to marry again, and allowed his wife to take another husband. The marquis, however, disregarded this sentence, and married Diana de Navailles, by whom he had seven children!

His first wife being dead, the marquis appealed to the grand chamberlain against the sentence which had declared him impotent, and charged him with the costs. The grand chamberlain, sensible of the ridicule applicable to the whole affair, confirmed his marriage with Diana de Navailles, declared him most potent, refused him the costs, but abolished the ceremony of the congress altogether.

The President Bouhier published a defence of the proof by congress, when it was no longer in use. He maintained, that the judges would not have committed the error of abolishing it, had they not been guilty of the previous error of refusing the marquis a second trial.

But if the congress may prove indecisive, how much more uncertain are the various other examinations had recourse to in cases of alleged impotency? Ought not the whole of them to be adjourned, as in Athens, for a hundred years? These causes are shameful to wives, ridiculous for husbands, and unworthy of the tribunals, and it would be better not to allow them at all. Yes, it may be said, but, in that case, marriage would not insure issue. A great misfortune, truly, while Europe contains three hundred thousand monks and eighty thousand nuns, who voluntarily abstain from propagating their kind.

INALIENATION—INALIENABLE.

The domains of the Roman emperors were anciently inalienable—it was the sacred domain. The barbarians came and rendered it altogether inalienable. The same thing happened to the imperial Greek domain.

After the re-establishment of the Roman Empire in Germany, the sacred domain was declared inalienable by the priests, although there remains not at present a crown’s worth of territory to alienate.

All the kings of Europe, who affect to imitate the emperors, have had their inalienable domain. Francis I., having effected his liberty by the cession of Burgundy, could find no other expedient to preserve it, than a state declaration, that Burgundy was inalienable; and was so fortunate as to violate both his honor and the treaty with impunity. According to this jurisprudence, every king may acquire the dominions of another, while incapable of losing any of his own. So that, in the end, each would be possessed of the property of somebody else. The kings of France and England possess very little special domain: their genuine and more effective domain is the purses of their subjects.

INCEST.

“The Tartars,” says the “Spirit of Laws,” “who may legally wed their daughters, never espouse their mothers.”

It is not known of what Tartars our author speaks, who cites too much at random: we know not at present of any people, from the Crimea to the frontiers of China, who are in the habit of espousing their daughters. Moreover, if it be allowed for the father to marry his daughter, why may not a son wed his mother?

Montesquieu cites an author named Priscus Panetes, a sophist who lived in the time of Attila. This author says that Attila married with his daughter Esca, according to the manner of the Scythians. This Priscus has never been printed, but remains in manuscript in the library of the Vatican; and Jornandes alone makes mention of it. It is not allowable to quote the legislation of a people on such authority. No one knows this Esca, or ever heard of her marriage with her father Attila.

I confess I have never believed that the Persians espoused their daughters, although in the time of the Cæsars the Romans accused them of it, to render them odious. It might be that some Persian prince committed incest, and the turpitude of an individual was imputed to the whole nation.

Quidquid delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi.

—Horace, i, epistle ii, 14.

. . . . When doting monarchs urge

Unsound resolves, their subjects feel the scourge.

—Francis.

I believe that the ancient Persians were permitted to marry with their sisters, just as much as I believe it of the Athenians, the Egyptians, and even of the Jews. From the above it might be concluded, that it was common for children to marry with their fathers or mothers; whereas even the marriage of cousins is forbidden among the Guebers at this day, who are held to maintain the doctrines of their forefathers as scrupulously as the Jews.

You will tell me that everything is contradictory in this world; that it was forbidden by the Jewish law to marry two sisters, which was deemed a very indecent act, and yet Jacob married Rachel during the life of her elder sister Leah; and that this Rachel is evidently a type of the Roman Catholic and apostolic church. You are doubtless right, but that prevents not an individual who sleeps with two sisters in Europe from being grievously censured. As to powerful and dignified princes, they may take the sisters of their wives for the good of their states, and even their own sisters by the same father and mother, if they think proper.

It is a far worse affair to have a commerce with a gossip or godmother, which was deemed an unpardonable offence by the capitularies of Charlemagne, being called a spiritual incest.

One Andovere, who is called queen of France, because she was the wife of a certain Chilperic, who reigned over Soissons, was stigmatized by ecclesiastical justice, censured, degraded, and divorced, for having borne her own child to the baptismal font. It was a mortal sin, a sacrilege, a spiritual incest; and she thereby forfeited her marriage-bed and crown. This apparently contradicts what I have just observed, that everything in the way of love is permitted to the great, but then I spoke of present times, and not of those of Andovere.

As to carnal incest, read the advocate Voglan, who would absolutely have any two cousins burned who fall into a weakness of this kind. The advocate Voglan is rigorous—the unmerciful Celt.

INCUBUS.

Have there ever been incubi and succubi? Our learned juriconsults and demonologists admit both the one and the other.

It is pretended that Satan, always on the alert, inspires young ladies and gentlemen with heated dreams, and by a sort of double process produces extraordinary consequences, which in point of fact led to the birth of so many heroes and demigods in ancient times.

The devil took a great deal of superfluous trouble: he had only to leave the young people alone, and the world will be sufficiently supplied with heroes without any assistance from him.

An idea may be formed of incubi by the explanation of the great Delrio, of Boguets, and other writers learned in sorcery; but they fail in their account of succubi. A female might pretend to believe that she had communicated with and was pregnant by a god, the explication of Delrio being very favorable to the assumption. The devil in this case acts the part of an incubus, but his performances as a succubus are more inconceivable. The gods and goddesses of antiquity acted much more nobly and decorously; Jupiter in person, was the incubus of Alcmena and Semele; Thetis in person, the succubus of Peleus, and Venus of Anchises, without having recourse to the various contrivances of our extraordinary demonism.

Let us simply observe, that the gods frequently disguised themselves, in their pursuit of our girls, sometimes as an eagle, sometimes as a pigeon, a swan, a horse, a shower of gold; but the goddesses assumed no disguise: they had only to show themselves, to please. It must however be presumed, that whatever shapes the gods assumed to steal a march, they consummated their loves in the form of men.

As to the new manner of rendering girls pregnant by the ministry of the devil, it is not to be doubted, for the Sorbonne decided the point in the year 1318.

“Per tales artes et ritus impios et invocationes et demonum, nullus unquam sequatur effectus ministerio demonum, error.”—“It is an error to believe, that these magic arts and invocations of the devils are without effect.”

This decision has never been revoked. Thus we are bound to believe in succubi and incubi, because our teachers have always believed in them.

There have been many other sages in this science, as well as the Sorbonne. Bodin, in his book concerning sorcerers, dedicated to Christopher de Thou, first president of the Parliament of Paris, relates that John Hervilier, a native of Verberie, was condemned by that parliament to be burned alive for having prostituted his daughter to the devil, a great black man, whose caresses were attended with a sensation of cold which appears to be very uncongenial to his nature; but our jurisprudence has always admitted the fact, and the prodigious number of sorcerers which it has burned in consequence will always remain a proof of its accuracy.

The celebrated Picus of Mirandola—a prince never lies—says he knew an old man of the age of eighty years who had slept half his life with a female devil, and another of seventy who enjoyed a similar felicity. Both were buried at Rome, but nothing is said of the fate of their children. Thus is the existence of incubi and succubi demonstrated.

It is impossible, at least, to prove to the contrary; for if we are called on to believe that devils can enter our bodies, who can prevent them from taking kindred liberties with our wives and our daughters? And if there be demons, there are probably demonesses; for to be consistent, if the demons beget children on our females, it must follow that we effect the same thing on the demonesses. Never has there been a more universal empire than that of the devil. What has dethroned him? Reason.

INFINITY.

Who will give me a clear idea of infinity? I have never had an idea of it which was not excessively confused—possibly because I am a finite being.

What is that which is eternally going on without advancing—always reckoning without a sum total—dividing eternally without arriving at an indivisible particle?

It might seem as if the notion of infinity formed the bottom of the bucket of the Danaïdes. Nevertheless, it is impossible that infinity should not exist. An infinite duration is demonstrable.

The commencement of existence is absurd; for nothing cannot originate something. When an atom exists we must necessarily conclude that it has existed from all eternity; and hence an infinite duration rigorously demonstrated. But what is an infinite past?—an infinitude which I arrest in imagination whenever I please. Behold! I exclaim, an infinity passed away; let us proceed to another. I distinguish between two eternities, the one before, the other behind me.

When, however, I reflect upon my words, I perceive that I have absurdly pronounced the words: “one eternity has passed away, and I am entering into another.” For at the moment that I thus talk, eternity endures, and the tide of time flows. Duration is not separable; and as something has ever been, something must ever be.

The infinite in duration, then, is linked to an uninterrupted chain. This infinite perpetuates itself, even at the instant that I say it has passed. Time begins and ends with me, but duration is infinite. The infinite is here quickly formed without, however, our possession of the ability to form a clear notion of it.

We are told of infinite space—what is space? Is it a being, or nothing at all? If it is a being, what is its nature? You cannot tell me. If it is nothing, nothing can have no quality; yet you tell me that it is penetrable and immense. I am so embarrassed, I cannot correctly call it either something or nothing.

In the meantime, I know not of anything which possesses more properties than a void. For if passing the confines of this globe, we are able to walk amidst this void, and thatch and build there when we possess materials for the purpose, this void or nothing is not opposed to whatever we might choose to do; for having no property it cannot hinder any; moreover, since it cannot hinder, neither can it serve us.

It is pretended that God created the world amidst nothing, and from nothing. That is abstruse; it is preferable to think that there is an infinite space; but we are curious—and if there be infinite space, our faculties cannot fathom the nature of it. We call it immense, because we cannot measure it; but what then? We have only pronounced words.

Of the Infinite in Number.

We have adroitly defined the infinite in arithmetic by a love-knot, in this manner ∞; but we possess not therefore a clearer notion of it. This infinity is not like the others, a powerlessness of reaching a termination. We call the infinite in quantity any number soever, which surpasses the utmost number we are able to imagine.

When we seek the infinitely small, we divide, and call that infinitely small which is less than the least assignable quantity. It is only another name for incapacity.

Is Matter Infinitely Divisible?

This question brings us back again precisely to our inability of finding the remotest number. In thought we are able to divide a grain of sand, but in imagination only; and the incapacity of eternally dividing this grain is called infinity.

It is true, that matter is not always practically divisible, and if the last atom could be divided into two, it would no longer be the least; or if the least, it would not be divisible; or if divisible, what is the germ or origin of things? These are all abstruse queries.

Of the Universe.

Is the universe bounded—is its extent immense—are the suns and planets without number? What advantage has the space which contains suns and planets, over the space which is void of them? Whether space be an existence or not, what is the space which we occupy, preferable to other space?

If our material heaven be not infinite, it is but a point in general extent. If it is infinite, it is an infinity to which something can always be added by the imagination.

Of the Infinite in Geometry.

We admit, in geometry, not only infinite magnitudes, that is to say, magnitudes greater than any assignable magnitude, but infinite magnitudes infinitely greater, the one than the other. This astonishes our dimension of brains, which is only about six inches long, five broad, and six in depth, in the largest heads. It means, however, nothing more than that a square larger than any assignable square, surpasses a line larger than any assignable line, and bears no proportion to it.

It is a mode of operating, a mode of working geometrically, and the word infinite is a mere symbol.

Of Infinite Power, Wisdom, Goodness.

In the same manner, as we cannot form any positive idea of the infinite in duration, number, and extension, are we unable to form one in respect to physical and moral power.

We can easily conceive, that a powerful being has modified matter, caused worlds to circulate in space, and formed animals, vegetables, and metals. We are led to this idea by the perception of the want of power on the part of these beings to form themselves. We are also forced to allow, that the Great Being exists eternally by His own power, since He cannot have sprung from nothing; but we discover not so easily His infinity in magnitude, power, and moral attributes.

How are we to conceive infinite extent in a being called simple? and if he be uncompounded, what notions can we form of a simple being? We know God by His works, but we cannot understand Him by His Nature. If it is evident that we cannot understand His nature, is it not equally so, that we must remain ignorant of His attributes?

When we say that His power is infinite, do we mean anything more than that it is very great? Aware of the existence of pyramids of the height of six hundred feet, we can conceive them of the altitude of 600,000 feet.

Nothing can limit the power of the Eternal Being existing necessarily of Himself. Agreed: no antagonists circumscribe Him; but how convince me that He is not circumscribed by His own nature? Has all that has been said on this great subject been demonstrated?

We speak of His moral attributes, but we only judge of them by our own; and it is impossible to do otherwise. We attribute to Him justice, goodness, etc., only from the ideas we collect from the small degree of justice and goodness existing among ourselves. But, in fact, what connection is there between our qualities so uncertain and variable, and those of the Supreme Being?

Our idea of justice is only that of not allowing our own interest to usurp over the interest of another. The bread which a wife has kneaded out of the flour produced from the wheat which her husband has sown, belongs to her. A hungry savage snatches away her bread, and the woman exclaims against such enormous injustice. The savage quietly answers that nothing is more just, and that it was not for him and his family to expire of famine for the sake of an old woman.

At all events, the infinite justice we attribute to God can but little resemble the contradictory notions of justice of this woman and this savage; and yet, when we say that God is just, we only pronounce these words agreeably to our own ideas of justice.

We know of nothing belonging to virtue more agreeable than frankness and cordiality, but to attribute infinite frankness and cordiality to God would amount to an absurdity.

We have such confused notions of the attributes of the Supreme Being, that some schools endow Him with prescience, an infinite foresight which excludes all contingent event, while other schools contend for prescience without contingency.

Lastly, since the Sorbonne has declared that God can make a stick divested of two ends, and that the same thing can at once be and not be, we know not what to say, being in eternal fear of advancing a heresy. One thing may, however, be asserted without danger—that God is infinite, and man exceedingly bounded.

The mind of man is so extremely narrow, that Pascal has said: “Do you believe it impossible for God to be infinite and without parts? I wish to convince you of an existence infinite and indivisible—it is a mathematical point—moving everywhere with infinite swiftness, for it is in all places, and entire in every place.”

Nothing more absurd was ever asserted, and yet it has been said by the author of the “Provincial Letters.” It is sufficient to give men of sense the ague.

INFLUENCE.

Everything around exercises some influence upon us, either physically or morally. With this truth we are well acquainted. Influence may be exerted upon a being without touching, without moving that being.

In short, matter has been demonstrated to possess the astonishing power of gravitating without contact, of acting at immense distances. One idea influences another; a fact not less incomprehensible.

I have not with me at Mount Krapak the book entitled, “On the Influence of the Sun and Moon,” composed by the celebrated physician Mead; but I well know that those two bodies are the cause of the tides; and it is not in consequence of touching the waters of the ocean that they produce that flux and reflux: it is demonstrated that they produce them by the laws of gravitation.

But when we are in a fever, have the sun and moon any influence upon the accesses of it, in its days of crisis? Is your wife constitutionally disordered only during the first quarter of the moon? Will the trees, cut at the time of full moon, rot sooner than if cut down in its wane? Not that I know. But timber cut down while the sap is circulating in it, undergoes putrefaction sooner than other timber; and if by chance it is cut down at the full moon, men will certainly say it was the full moon that caused all the evil. Your wife may have been disordered during the moon’s growing; but your neighbor’s was so in its decline.

The fitful periods of the fever which you brought upon yourself by indulging too much in the pleasures of the table occur about the first quarter of the moon; your neighbor experiences his in its decline. Everything that can possibly influence animals and vegetables must of course necessarily exercise that influence while the moon is making her circuit.

Were a woman of Lyons to remark that the periodical affections of her constitution had occurred in three or four successive instances on the day of the arrival of the diligence from Paris, would her medical attendant, however devoted he might be to system, think himself authorized in concluding that the Paris diligence had some peculiar and marvellous influence on the lady’s constitution?

There was a time when the inhabitants of every seaport were persuaded, that no one would die while the tide was rising, and that death always waited for its ebb.

Many physicians possessed a store of strong reasons to explain this constant phenomenon. The sea when rising communicates to human bodies the force or strength by which itself is raised. It brings with it vivifying particles which reanimate all patients. It is salt, and salt preserves from the putrefaction attendant on death. But when the sea sinks and retires, everything sinks or retires with it; nature languishes; the patient is no longer vivified; he departs with the tide. The whole, it must be admitted, is most beautifully explained, but the presumed fact, unfortunately, is after all untrue.

The various elements, food, watching, sleep, and the passions, are constantly exerting on our frame their respective influences. While these influences are thus severally operating on us, the planets traverse their appropriate orbits, and the stars shine with their usual brillancy. But shall we really be so weak as to say that the progress and light of those heavenly bodies are the cause of our rheums and indigestion, and sleeplessness; of the ridiculous wrath we are in with some silly reasoner; or of the passion with which we are enamored of some interesting woman?

But the gravitation of the sun and moon has made the earth in some degree flat at the pole, and raises the sea twice between the tropics in four-and-twenty hours. It may, therefore, regulate our fits of fever, and govern our whole machine. Before, however, we assert this to be the case, we should wait until we can prove it.

The sun acts strongly upon us by its rays, which touch us, and enter through our pores. Here is unquestionably a very decided and a very benignant influence. We ought not, I conceive, in physics, to admit of any action taking place without contact, until we have discovered some well-recognized and ascertained power which acts at a distance, like that of gravitation, for example, or like that of your thoughts over mine, when you furnish me with ideas. Beyond these cases, I at present perceive no influences but from matter in contact with matter.

The fish of my pond and myself exist each of us in our natural element. The water which touches them from head to tail is continually acting upon them. The atmosphere which surrounds and closes upon me acts upon me. I ought not to attribute to the moon, which is ninety thousand miles distant, what I might naturally ascribe to something incessantly in contact with my skin. This would be more unphilosophical than my considering the court of China responsible for a lawsuit that I was carrying on in France. We should never seek at a distance for what is absolutely within our immediate reach.

I perceive that the learned and ingenious M. Menuret is of a different opinion in the “Encyclopædia” under the article on “Influence.” This certainly excites in my mind considerable diffidence with respect to what I have just advanced. The Abbé de St. Pierre used to say, we should never maintain that we are absolutely in the right, but should rather say, “such is my opinion for the present.”

Influence of the Passions of Mothers upon their Fœtus.

I think, for the present, that violent affections of pregnant women produce often a prodigious effect upon the embryo within them; and I think that I shall always think so: my reason is that I have actually seen this effect. If I had no voucher of my opinion but the testimony of historians who relate the instance of Mary Stuart and her son James I., I should suspend my judgment; because between that event and myself, a series of two hundred years has intervened, a circumstance naturally tending to weaken belief; and because I can ascribe the impression made upon the brain of James to other causes than the imagination of Mary. The royal assassins, headed by her husband, rush with drawn swords into the cabinet where she is supping in company with her favorite, and kill him before her eyes; the sudden convulsion experienced by her in the interior of her frame extends to her offspring; and James I., although not deficient in courage, felt during his whole life an involuntary shuddering at the sight of a sword drawn from a scabbard. It is, however, possible that this striking and peculiar agitation might be owing to a different cause.

There was once introduced, in my presence, into the court of a woman with child, a showman who exhibited a little dancing dog with a kind of red bonnet on its head: the woman called out to have the figure removed; she declared that her child would be marked like it; she wept; and nothing could restore her confidence and peace. “This is the second time,” she said, “that such a misfortune has befallen me. My first child bears the impression of a similar terror that I was exposed to; I feel extremely weak. I know that some misfortune will reach me.” She was but too correct in her prediction. She was delivered of a child similar to the figure which had so terrified her. The bonnet was particularly distinguishable. The little creature lived two days.

In the time of Malebranche no one entertained the slightest doubt of the adventure which he relates, of the woman who, after seeing a criminal racked, was delivered of a son, all whose limbs were broken in the same places in which the malefactor had received the blows of the executioner. All the physicians at the time were agreed, that the imagination had produced this fatal effect upon her offspring.

Since that period, mankind is believed to have refined and improved; and the influence under consideration has been denied. It has been asked, in what way do you suppose that the affections of a mother should operate to derange the members of the fœtus? Of that I know nothing; but I have witnessed the fact. You new-fangled philosophers inquire and study in vain how an infant is formed, and yet require me to know how it becomes deformed.

INITIATION.

Ancient Mysteries.

The origin of the ancient mysteries may, with the greatest probability, be ascribed to the same weakness which forms associations of brotherhood among ourselves, and which established congregations under the direction of the Jesuits. It was probably this want of society which raised so many secret assemblies of artisans, of which scarcely any now remain besides that of the Freemasons. Even down to the very beggars themselves, all had their societies, their confraternities, their mysteries, and their particular jargon, of which I have met with a small dictionary, printed in the sixteenth century.

This natural inclination in men to associate, to secure themselves, to become distinguished above others, and to acquire confidence in themselves, may be considered as the generating cause of all those particular bonds or unions, of all those mysterious initiations which afterwards excited so much attention and produced such striking effects, and which at length sank into that oblivion in which everything is involved by time.

Begging pardon, while I say it, of the gods Cabri, of the hierophants of Samothrace, of Isis, Orpheus, and the Eleusinian Ceres, I must nevertheless acknowledge my suspicions that their sacred secrets were not in reality more deserving of curiosity than the interior of the convents of Carmelites or Capuchins.

These mysteries being sacred, the participators in them soon became so. And while the number of these was small, the mystery was respected; but at length, having grown too numerous, they retained no more consequence and consideration than we perceive to attach to German barons, since the world became full of barons.

Initiation was paid for, as every candidate pays his admission fees or welcome, but no member was allowed to talk for his money. In all ages it was considered a great crime to reveal the secrets of these religious farces. This secret was undoubtedly not worth knowing, as the assembly was not a society of philosophers, but of ignorant persons, directed by a hierophant. An oath of secrecy was administered, and an oath was always regarded as a sacred bond. Even at the present day, our comparatively pitiful society of Freemasons swear never to speak of their mysteries. These mysteries are stale and flat enough; but men scarcely ever perjure themselves.

Diagoras was proscribed by the Athenians for having made the secret hymn of Orpheus a subject for conversation. Aristotle informs us, that Æschylus was in danger of being torn to pieces by the people, or at least of being severely beaten by them, for having, in one of his dramas, given some idea of those Orphean mysteries in which nearly everybody was then initiated.

It appears that Alexander did not pay the highest respect possible to these reverend fooleries; they are indeed very apt to be despised by heroes. He revealed the secret to his mother Olympias, but he advised her to say nothing about it—so much are even heroes themselves bound in the chains of superstition.

“It is customary,” says Herodotus, “in the city of Rusiris, to strike both men and women after the sacrifice, but I am not permitted to say where they are struck.” He leaves it, however, to be very easily inferred.

I think I see a description of the mysteries of the Eleusinian Ceres, in Claudian’s poem on the “Rape of Proserpine,” much clearer than I can see any in the sixth book of the “Æneid.” Virgil lived under a prince who joined to all his other bad qualities that of wishing to pass for a religious character; who was probably initiated in these mysteries himself, the better to impose thereby upon the people; and who would not have tolerated such a profanation. You see his favorite Horace regards such a revelation as sacrilege:—

. . . . Vetabo qui Cereris sacrum

Fulgarit arcanæ sub iisdem

Sit trabibus, vel fragilem que mecum

Solvat phaselum.

—Horace, book iii, ode 2.

To silence due rewards we give;

And they who mysteries reveal

Beneath my roof shall never live,

Shall never hoist with me the doubtful sail.

—Francis.

Besides, the Cumæan sibyl and the descent into hell, imitated from Homer much less than it is embellished by Virgil, with the beautiful prediction of the destinies of the Cæsars and the Roman Empire, have no relation to the fables of Ceres, Proserpine, and Triptolemus. Accordingly, it is highly probable that the sixth book of the “Æneid” is not a description of those mysteries. If I ever said the contrary, I here unsay it; but I conceive that Claudian revealed them fully. He flourished at a time when it was permitted to divulge the mysteries of Eleusis, and indeed all the mysteries of the world. He lived under Honorius, in the total decline of the ancient Greek and Roman religion, to which Theodosius I. had already given the mortal blow.

Horace, at that period, would not have been at all afraid of living under the same roof with a revealer of mysteries. Claudian, as a poet, was of the ancient religion, which was more adapted to poetry than the new. He describes the droll absurdities of the mysteries of Ceres, as they were still performed with all becoming reverence in Greece, down to the time of Theodosius II. They formed a species of operatic pantomime, of the same description as we have seen many very amusing ones, in which were represented all the devilish tricks and conjurations of Doctor Faustus, the birth of the world and of Harlequin who both came from a large egg by the heat of the sun’s rays. Just in the same manner, the whole history of Ceres and Proserpine was represented by the mystagogues. The spectacle was fine; the cost must have been great; and it is no matter of astonishment that the initiated should pay the performers. All live by their respective occupations.

Every mystery had its peculiar ceremonies; but all admitted of wakes or vigils of which the youthful votaries fully availed themselves; but it was this abuse in part which finally brought discredit upon those nocturnal ceremonies instituted for sanctification. The ceremonies thus perverted to assignation and licentiousness were abolished in Greece in the time of the Peloponnesian war; they were abolished at Rome in the time of Cicero’s youth, eighteen years before his consulship. From the “Aulularia” of Plautus, we are led to consider them as exhibiting scenes of gross debauchery, and as highly injurious to public morals.

Our religion, which, while it adopted, greatly purified various pagan institutions, sanctified the name of the initiated, nocturnal feasts, and vigils, which were a long time in use, but which at length it became necessary to prohibit when an administration of police was introduced into the government of the Church, so long entrusted to the piety and zeal that precluded the necessity of police.

The principal formula of all the mysteries, in every place of their celebration, was, “Come out, ye who are profane;” that is, uninitiated. Accordingly, in the first centuries, the Christians adopted a similar formula. The deacon said, “Come out, all ye catechumens, all ye who are possessed, and who are uninitiated.”

It is in speaking of the baptism of the dead that St. Chrysostom says, “I should be glad to explain myself clearly, but I can do so only to the initiated. We are in great embarrassment. We must either speak unintelligibly, or disclose secrets which we are bound to conceal.”

It is impossible to describe more clearly the obligation of secrecy and the privilege of initiation. All is now so completely changed, that were you at present to talk about initiation to the greater part of your priests and parish officers, there would not be one of them that would understand you, unless by great chance he had read the chapter of Chrysostom above noticed.

You will see in Minutius Felix the abominable imputations with which the pagans attacked the Christian mysteries. The initiated were reproached with treating each other as brethren and sisters, solely with a view to profane that sacred name. They kissed, it was said, particular parts of the persons of the priests, as is still practised in respect to the santons of Africa; they stained themselves with all those pollutions which have since disgraced and stigmatized the templars. Both were accused of worshipping a kind of ass’s head.

We have seen that the early Christian societies ascribed to each other, reciprocally, the most inconceivable infamies. The pretext for these calumnies was the inviolable secret which every society made of its mysteries. It is upon this ground that in Minutius Felix, Cecilius, the accuser of the Christians, exclaims:

“Why do they so carefully endeavor to conceal what they worship, since what is decent and honorable always courts the light, and crimes alone seek secrecy?”

“Cur occultare et abscondere quidquid colunt magnopere nituntur? Quum honesta semper publico gaudeant, scelera secreta sint.”

It cannot be doubted that these accusations, universally spread, drew upon the Christians more than one persecution. Whenever a society of men, whatever they may be, are accused by the public voice, the falsehood of the charge is urged in vain, and it is deemed meritorious to persecute them.

How could it easily be otherwise than that the first Christians should be even held in horror, when St. Epiphanius himself urges against them the most execrable imputations? He asserts that the Christian Phibionites committed indecencies, which he specifies, of the grossest character; and, after passing through various scenes of pollution, exclaimed each of them: “I am the Christ.”

According to the same writer, the Gnostics and the Stratiotics equalled the Phibionites in exhibitions of licentiousness, and all three sects mingled horrid pollutions with their mysteries, men and women displaying equal dissoluteness.

The Carpocratians, according to the same father of the Church, even exceeded the horrors and abominations of the three sects just mentioned.

The Cerinthians did not abandon themselves to abominations such as these; but they were persuaded that Jesus Christ was the son of Joseph.

The Ebionites, in their gospel, maintain that St. Paul, being desirous of marrying the daughter of Gamaliel, and not able to obtain her, became a Christian, and established Christianity out of revenge.

All these accusations did not for some time reach the ear of the government. The Romans paid but little attention to the quarrels and mutual reproaches which occurred between these little societies of Jews, Greeks, and Egyptians, who were, as it were, hidden in the vast and general population; just as in London, in the present day, the parliament does not embarrass or concern itself with the peculiar forms or transactions of Mennonites, Pietists, Anabaptists, Millennarians, Moravians, or Methodists. It is occupied with matters of urgency and importance, and pays no attention to their mutual charges and recriminations till they become of importance from their publicity.

The charges above mentioned, at length, however, came to the ears of the senate; either from the Jews, who were implacable enemies of the Christians, or from Christians themselves; and hence it resulted that the crimes charged against some Christian societies were imputed to all; hence it resulted that their initiations were so long calumniated; hence resulted the persecutions which they endured. These persecutions, however, obliged them to greater circumspection; they strengthened themselves, they combined, they disclosed their books only to the initiated. No Roman magistrate, no emperor, ever had the slightest knowledge of them, as we have already shown. Providence increased, during the course of three centuries, both their number and their riches, until at length, Constantius Chlorus openly protected them, and Constantine, his son, embraced their religion.

In the meantime the names of initiated and mysteries still subsisted, and they were concealed from the Gentiles as much as was possible. As to the mysteries of the Gentiles, they continued down to the time of Theodosius.

INNOCENTS.

Of the Massacre of the Innocents.

When people speak of the massacre of the innocents, they do not refer to the Sicilian Vespers, nor to the matins of Paris, known under the name of St. Bartholomew; nor to the inhabitants of the new world, who were murdered because they were not Christians, nor to the auto-da-fés of Spain and Portugal, etc. They usually refer to the young children who were killed within the precincts of Bethlehem, by order of Herod the Great, and who were afterwards carried to Cologne, where they are still to be found.

Their number was maintained by the whole Greek Church to be fourteen thousand.

The difficulties raised by critics upon this point of history have been all solved by shrewd and learned commentators.

Objections have been started in relation to the star which conducted the Magi from the recesses of the East to Jerusalem. It has been said that the journey, being a long one, the star must have appeared for a long time above the horizon; and yet that no historian besides St. Matthew ever took notice of this extraordinary star; that if it had shone so long in the heavens, Herod and his whole court, and all Jerusalem, must have seen it as well as these three Magi, or kings; that Herod consequently could not, without absurdity, have inquired diligently, as Matthew expresses it, of these kings, at what time they had seen the star; that, if these three kings had made presents of gold and myrrh and incense to the new-born infant, his parents must have been very rich; that Herod could certainly never believe that this infant, born in a stable at Bethlehem, would be king of the Jews, as the kingdom of Judæa belonged to the Romans, and was a gift from Cæsar; that if three kings of the Indies were, at the present day, to come to France under the guidance of a star, and stop at the house of a woman of Vaugirard, no one could ever make the reigning monarch believe that the child of that poor woman would become king of France.

A satisfactory answer has been given to these difficulties, which may be considered preliminary ones, attending the subject of the massacre of the innocents; and it has been shown that what is impossible with man is not impossible with God.

With respect to the slaughter of the little children, whether the number was fourteen thousand, or greater, or less, it has been shown that this horrible and unprecedented cruelty was not absolutely incompatible with the character of Herod; that, after being established as king of Judæa by Augustus, he could not indeed fear anything from the child of obscure and poor parents, residing in a petty village; but that laboring at that time under the disorder of which he at length died, his blood might have become so corrupt that he might in consequence have lost both reason and humanity; that, in short, all these incomprehensible events, which prepared the way for mysteries still more incomprehensible, were directed by an inscrutable Providence.

It is objected that the historian Josephus, who was nearly contemporary, and who has related all the cruelties of Herod, has made no more mention of the massacre of the young children than of the star of the three kings; that neither the Jew Philo, nor any other Jew, nor any Roman takes any notice of it; and even that three of the evangelists have observed a profound silence upon these important subjects. It is replied that they are nevertheless announced by St. Matthew, and that the testimony of one inspired man is of more weight than the silence of all the world.

The critics, however, have not surrendered; they have dared to censure St. Matthew himself for saying that these children were massacred, “that the words of Jeremiah might be fulfilled. A voice is heard in Ramah, a voice of groaning and lamentation. Rachel weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”

These historical words, they observe, were literally fulfilled in the tribe of Benjamin, which descended from Rachel, when Nabuzaradan destroyed a part of that tribe near the city of Ramah. It was no longer a prediction, they say, any more than were the words “He shall be called a Nazarene. And He came to dwell in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets. He shall be called a Nazarene.” They triumph in the circumstance that these words are not to be found in any one of the prophets; just as they do in the idea that Rachel weeping for the Benjamites at Ramah has no reference whatever to the massacre of the innocents by Herod.

They dare even to urge that these two allusions, being clearly false, are a manifest proof of the falsehood of this narrative; and conclude that the massacre of the children, and the new star, and the journey of the three kings, never had the slightest foundation in fact.

They even go much further yet; they think they find as palpable a contradiction between the narrative of St. Matthew and that of St. Luke, as between the two genealogies adduced by them. St. Matthew says that Joseph and Mary carried Jesus into Egypt, fearing that he would be involved in the massacre. St. Luke, on the contrary, says, “After having fulfilled all the ceremonies of the law, Joseph and Mary returned to Nazareth, their city, and went every year to Jerusalem, to keep the Passover.”

But thirty days must have expired before a woman could have completed her purification from childbirth and fulfilled all the ceremonies of the law. During these thirty days, therefore, the child must have been exposed to destruction by the general proscription. And if his parents went to Jerusalem to accomplish the ordinance of the law, they certainly did not go to Egypt.

These are the principal objections of unbelievers. They are effectually refuted by the faith both of the Greek and Latin churches. If it were necessary always to be clearing up the doubts of persons who read the Scriptures, we must inevitably pass our whole lives in disputing about all the articles contained in them. Let us rather refer ourselves to our worthy superiors and masters; to the university of Salamanca when in Spain, to the Sorbonne in France, and to the holy congregation at Rome. Let us submit both in heart and in understanding to that which is required of us for our good.

INQUISITION.

SECTION I.

The Inquisition is an ecclesiastical jurisdiction, established by the see of Rome in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and even in the Indies, for the purpose of searching out and extirpating infidels, Jews, and heretics.

That we may not be suspected of resorting to falsehood in order to render this tribunal odious, we shall in this present article give the abstract of a Latin work on the “Origin and Progress of the Office of the Holy Inquisition,” printed by the royal press at Madrid in 1589, by order of Louis de Paramo, inquisitor in the kingdom of Sicily.

Without going back to the origin of the Inquisition, which Paramo thinks he discovers in the manner in which God is related to have proceeded against Adam and Eve, let us abide by the new law of which Jesus Christ, according to him, was the chief inquisitor. He exercised the functions of that office on the thirteenth day after his birth, by announcing to the city of Jerusalem, through the three kings or Magi, his appearance in the world, and afterwards by causing Herod to be devoured alive by worms; by driving the buyers and sellers out of the temple; and finally, by delivering Judæa into the hands of tyrants, who pillaged it in punishment of its unbelief.

After Jesus Christ, St. Peter, St. Paul, and the rest of the apostles exercised the office of inquisitor, which they transmitted to the popes and bishops, and their successors. St. Dominic having arrived in France with the bishop of Osma, of which he was archdeacon, became animated with zeal against the Albigenses, and obtained the regard and favor of Simon, Count de Montfort. Having been appointed by the pope inquisitor in Languedoc, he there founded his order, which was approved of and ratified, in 1216, by Honorius III. Under the auspices of St. Madelaine, Count Montfort took the city of Gezer by assault, and put all the inhabitants to the sword; and at Laval, four hundred Albigenses were burned at once. “In all the histories of the Inquisition that I ever read,” says Paramo, “I never met with an act of faith so eminent, or a spectacle so solemn. At the village of Cazera, sixty were burned; and in another place a hundred and eighty.”

The Inquisition was adopted by the count of Toulouse in 1229, and confided to the Dominicans by Pope Gregory IX. in 1233; Innocent IV. in 1251 established it in the whole of Italy, with the exception of Naples. At the commencement, indeed, heretics were not subjected in the Milanese to the punishment of death, which they nevertheless so richly deserved, because the popes were not sufficiently respected by the emperor Frederick, to whom that state belonged; but a short time afterwards heretics were burned at Milan, as well as in the other parts of Italy; and our author remarks, that in 1315 some thousands of heretics having spread themselves through Cremasco, a small territory included in the jurisdiction of the Milanese, the Dominican brothers burned the greater part of them; and thus checked the ravages of the theological pestilence by the flames.

As the first canon of the Council of Toulouse enjoined the bishops to appoint in every parish a priest and two or three laymen of reputation, who should be bound by oath to search carefully and frequently for heretics, in houses, caves, and all places wherever they might be able to hide themselves, and to give the speediest information to the bishop, the seigneur of the place, or his bailiff, after having taken all necessary precautions against the escape of any heretics discovered, the inquisitors must have acted at this time in concert with the bishops. The prisons of the bishop and of the Inquisition were frequently the same; and, although in the course of the procedure the inquisitor might act in his own name, he could not, without the intervention of the bishop, apply the torture, pronounce any definitive sentence, or condemn to perpetual imprisonment, etc. The frequent disputes that occurred between the bishops and the inquisitors, on the limits of their authority, on the spoils of the condemned, etc., compelled Pope Sixtus IV., in 1473, to make the Inquisitions independent and separate from the tribunals of the bishops. He created for Spain an Inquisitor-general, with full powers to nominate particular inquisitors; and Ferdinand V., in 1478, founded and endowed the Inquisition.

At the solicitation of Turrecremata (or Torquemada), a brother of the Dominican order, and grand inquisitor of Spain, the same Ferdinand, surnamed the Catholic, banished from his kingdom all the Jews, allowing them three months from the publication of his edict, after the expiration of which period they were not to be found in any of the Spanish dominions under pain of death. They were permitted, on quitting the kingdom, to take with them the goods and merchandise which they had purchased, but forbidden to take out of it any description of gold or silver.

The brother Turrecremata followed up and strengthened this edict, in the diocese of Toledo, by prohibiting all Christians, under pain of excommunication, from giving anything whatever to the Jews, even that which might be necessary to preserve life itself.

In consequence of these decrees about a million Jews departed from Catalonia, the kingdom of Aragon, that of Valencia, and other countries subject to the dominion of Ferdinand; the greater part of whom perished miserably; so that they compare the calamities that they suffered during this period to those they experienced under Titus and Vespasian. This expulsion of the Jews gave incredible joy to all Catholic sovereigns.

Some divines blamed these edicts of the king of Spain; their principal reasons are that unbelievers ought not to be constrained to embrace the faith of Jesus Christ, and that these violences are a disgrace to our religion.

But these arguments are very weak, and I contend, says Paramo, that the edict is pious, just, and praiseworthy, as the violence with which the Jews are required to be converted is not an absolute but a conditional violence, since they might avoid it by quitting their country. Besides, they might corrupt those of the Jews who were newly converted, and even Christians themselves; but, as St. Paul says, what communion is there between justice and iniquity, light and darkness, Jesus Christ and Belial?

With respect to the confiscation of their goods, nothing could be more equitable, as they had acquired them only by usury towards Christians, who only received back, therefore, what was in fact their own.

In short, by the death of our Lord, the Jews became slaves, and everything that a slave possesses belongs to his master. We could not but suspend our narrative for a moment to make these remarks, in opposition to persons who have thus calumniated the piety, the spotless justice, and the sanctity of the Catholic king.

At Seville, where an example of severity to the Jews was ardently desired, it was the holy will of God, who knows how to draw good out of evil, that a young man who was in waiting in consequence of an assignation, should see through the chinks of a partition an assembly of Jews, and in consequence inform against them. A great number of the unhappy wretches were apprehended, and punished as they deserved. By virtue of different edicts of the kings of Spain, and of the inquisitors, general and particular, established in that kingdom, there were, in a very short time, about two thousand heretics burned at Seville, and more than four thousand from 1482 to 1520. A vast number of others were condemned to perpetual imprisonment, or exposed to inflictions of different descriptions. The emigration from it was so great that five hundred houses were supposed to be left in consequence quite empty, and in the whole diocese, three thousand; and altogether more than a hundred thousand heretics were put to death, or punished in some other manner, or went into banishment to avoid severer suffering. Such was the destruction of heretics accomplished by these pious brethren.

The establishment of the Inquisition at Toledo was a fruitful source of revenue to the Catholic Church. In the short space of two years it actually burned at the stake fifty-two obstinate heretics, and two hundred and twenty more were outlawed; whence we may easily conjecture of what utility the Inquisition has been from its original establishment, since in so short a period it performed such wonders.

From the beginning of the fifteenth century, Pope Boniface IX. attempted in vain to establish the Inquisition in Portugal, where he created the provincial of the Dominicans, Vincent de Lisbon, inquisitor-general. Innocent VII., some years after, having named as inquisitor the Minim Didacus de Sylva, King John I. wrote to that pope that the establishment of the Inquisition in his kingdom was contrary to the good of his subjects, to his own interests, and perhaps also to the interests of religion.

The pope, affected by the representations of a too mild and easy monarch, revoked all the powers granted to the inquisitors newly established, and authorized Mark, bishop of Senigaglia, to absolve the persons accused; which he accordingly did. Those who had been deprived of their dignities and offices were re-established in them, and many were delivered from the fear of the confiscation of their property.

But how admirable, continues Paramo, is the Lord in all his ways! That which the sovereign pontiffs had been unable effectually to obtain with all their urgency, King John granted spontaneously to a dexterous impostor, whom God made use of as an instrument for accomplishing the good work. In fact, the wicked are frequently useful instruments in God’s hands, and he does not reject the good they bring about. Thus, when John remarks to our Lord Jesus Christ, “Lord, we saw one who was not Thy disciple casting out demons in Thy name, and we prevented him from doing so,” Jesus answered him, “Prevent him not; for he who works miracles in My name will not speak ill of Me; and he who is not against Me is for Me.”

Paramo relates afterwards that he saw in the library of St. Laurence, at the Escorial, a manuscript in the handwriting of Saavedra, in which that knave details his fabrication of a false bull, and obtaining thereby his entrée into Seville as legate, with a train of a hundred and twenty domestics; his defrauding of thirteen thousand ducats the heirs of a rich nobleman in that neighborhood, during his twenty days’ residence in the palace of the archbishop, by producing a counterfeit bond for the same sum, which the nobleman acknowledged, in that instrument, to have borrowed of the legate when he visited Rome; and finally, after his arrival at Badajoz, the permission granted him by King John III., to whom he was presented by means of forged letters of the pope, to establish tribunals of the Inquisition in the principal cities of the kingdom.

These tribunals began immediately to exercise their jurisdiction; and a vast number of condemnations and executions of relapsed heretics took place, as also of absolutions of recanting and penitent heretics. Six months had passed in this manner, when the truth was made apparent of that expression in the Gospel, “There is nothing hid which shall not be made known.” The Marquis de Villeneuve de Barcarotta, a Spanish nobleman, assisted by the governor of Mora, had the impostor apprehended and conducted to Madrid. He was there carried before John de Tavera, archbishop of Toledo. That prelate, perfectly astonished at all that now transpired of the knavery and address of the false legate, despatched all the depositions and documents relative to the case to Pope Paul III.; as he did also the acts of the inquisitions which Saavedra had established, and by which it appeared that a great number of heretics had already been judged and condemned, and that the impostor had extorted from his victims more than three hundred thousand ducats.

The pope could not help acknowledging in this the finger of God and a miracle of His providence; he accordingly formed the congregation of the tribunal of the Inquisition, under the denomination of “The Holy Office,” in 1545, and Sixtus V. confirmed it in 1588.

All writers but one agree with Paramo on the subject of the establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal. Antoine de Sousa alone, in his “Aphorisms of Inquisitors,” calls the history of Saavedra in question, under the pretence that he may very easily be conceived to have accused himself without being in fact guilty, in consideration of the glory which would redound to him from the event, and in the hope of living in the memory of mankind. But Sousa, in the very narrative which he substitutes for that of Paramo, exposes himself to the suspicion of bad faith, in citing two bulls of Paul III., and two others from the same pope to Cardinal Henry, the king’s brother; bulls which Sousa has not introduced into his printed work, and which are not to be found in any collection of apostolical bulls extant; two decisive reasons for rejecting his opinion, and adhering to that of Paramo, Hiescas, Salasar, Mendoça, Fernandez, and Placentinus.

When the Spaniards passed over to America they carried the Inquisition with them; the Portuguese introduced it in the Indies, immediately upon its being established at Lisbon, which led to the observation which Louis de Paramo makes in his preface, that this flourishing and verdant tree had extended its branches and its roots throughout the world, and produced the most pleasant fruits.

In order to form some correct idea of the jurisprudence of the Inquisition, and the forms of its proceedings, unknown to civil tribunals, let us take a cursory view of the “Directory of Inquisitors,” which Nicolas Eymeric, grand inquisitor of the kingdom of Aragon about the middle of the fourteenth century, composed in Latin, and addressed to his brother inquisitors, in virtue of the authority of his office.

A short time after the invention of printing, an edition of this work was printed at Barcelona, and soon conveyed to all the inquisitions in the Christian world. A second edition appeared at Rome in 1578, in folio, with scholia and commentaries by Francois Pegna, doctor in theology and canonist.

The following eulogium on the work is given by the editor in an epistle dedicatory to Gregory XIII.: “While Christian princes are everywhere engaged in combating with arms the enemies of the Catholic religion, and pouring out the blood of their soldiers to support the unity of the Church and the authority of the apostolic see, there are also zealous and devoted writers, who toil in obscurity, either to refute the opinions of innovators or to arm and direct the power of the laws against their persons, in order that the severity of punishments, and the solemnity and torture attending executions, keeping them within the bounds of duty, may produce that effect upon them which cannot be produced in them by the love of virtue.

“Although I fill only the lowest place among these defenders of religion, I am nevertheless animated with the same zeal for repressing the impious audacity and horrible depravity of the broachers of innovation. The labor which I here present to you on the ‘Directory of Inquisitions,’ will be a proof of my assertion. This work of Nicolas Eymeric, respectable for its antiquity, contains a summary of the principal articles of faith, and an elaborate and methodical code of instruction for the tribunals of the Holy Inquisition, on the means which they ought to employ for the repression and extirpation of heretics; on which account I felt it my duty to offer it in homage to your holiness, as the chief of the Christian republic.”

He declares, elsewhere, that he had it reprinted for the instruction of inquisitors; that the work is as much to be admired as respected, and teaches with equal piety and learning the proper means of repressing and exterminating heretics. He acknowledges, however, that he is in possession of other useful and judicious methods, for which he refers to practice, which will instruct much more effectually than any lessons, and that he more readily thus silently refers to practice, as there are certain matters relating to the subject which it is of importance not to divulge, and which, at the same time, are generally well known to inquisitors. He cites a vast number of writers, all of whom have followed the doctrines of the “Directory”; and he even complains that many have availed themselves of it without ascribing any honor to Eymeric for the good things they have in fact stolen from him.

We will secure ourselves from any reproach of this description, by pointing out exactly what we mean to borrow both from the author and the editor. Eymeric says, in the fifty-eighth page, “Commiseration for the children of the criminal, who by the severity used towards him are reduced to beggary, should never be permitted to mitigate that severity, since both by divine and human laws children are punished for the faults of their fathers.”

Page 123. “If a charge entered for prosecution were destitute of every appearance of truth, the inquisitor should not on that account expunge it from his register, because what at one period has not been discovered, may be so at another.”

Page 291. “It is necessary for the inquisitor to oppose cunning and stratagem to those employed by heretics, that he may thus pay the offenders in their own coin, and be enabled to adopt the language of the apostle, ‘Being crafty, I caught you with guile.’ ”

Page 296. “The information and depositions (procés-verbal) may be read over to the accused, completely suppressing the names of the accusers; and then it is for him to conjecture who the persons are that have brought against him any particular charges, to challenge them as incompetent witnesses, or to weaken their testimony by contrary evidence. This is the method generally used. The accused must not be permitted to imagine that challenges of witnesses will be easily allowed in cases of heresy, for it is of no consequence whether witnesses are respectable or infamous, accomplices in the prisoner’s offence, excommunicated, heretical, or in any manner whatever guilty, or perjured, etc. This has been so ruled in favor of the faith.”

Page 202. “The appeal which a prisoner makes from the Inquisition does not preclude that tribunal from trial and sentence of him upon other heads of accusation.”

Page 313. “Although the form of the order for applying the torture may suppose variation in the answers of the accused, and also in addition sufficient presumptive evidence against him for putting him to the question; both these circumstances are not necessary, and either will be sufficient for the purpose without the other.”

Pegna informs us, in the hundred and eighteenth scholium on the third book, that inquisitors generally employ only five kinds of torture when putting to the question, although Marsilius mentions fifteen kinds, and adds, that he has imagined others still—such, for example, as precluding the possibility of sleep, in which he is approved by Grillandus and Locatus.

Eymeric continues, page 319: “Care should be taken never to state in the form of absolution, that the prisoner is innocent, but merely that there was not sufficient evidence against him; a precaution necessary to prevent the prisoner, absolved in one case, from pleading that absolution in defence against any future charge that may be brought against him.”

Page 324. “Sometimes abjuration and canonical purgation are prescribed together. This is done, when, to a bad reputation of an individual in point of doctrine are joined inconsiderable presumptions, which, were they a little stronger, would tend to convict him of having really said or done something injurious to the faith. The prisoner who stands in these circumstances is compelled to abjure all heresy in general; and after that, if he falls into any heresy of any description whatever, however different from those which may have constituted the matter of the present charge or suspicion against him, he is punished as a relapsed person, and delivered over to the secular arm.”

Page 331. “Relapsed persons, when the relapse is clearly proved, must be delivered up to secular justice, whatever protestation they may make as to their future conduct, and whatever contrition they may express. The inquisitor will, in such circumstances, inform the secular authorities, that on such a particular day and hour, and in such a particular place, a heretic will be delivered up to them and should provide that notice be given to the public that they will be expected to be present at the ceremony, as the inquisitor will deliver a sermon on the occasion in defence of the true faith, and those who attend will obtain the usual indulgences.”

These indulgences are accordingly detailed: after the form of sentence given against the penitent heretic, the inquisitor will grant forty days’ indulgence to all persons present; three years to those who contributed to the apprehension, abjuration, condemnation, etc., of the said heretic; and finally, three years also will be granted by our holy father, the pope, to all who will denounce any other heretic.

Page 332. “When the culprit has been delivered over to the secular authority, it shall pronounce its sentence, and the criminal shall be conveyed to the place of punishment; some pious persons shall accompany him, and associate him in their prayers, and even pray with him; and not leave him till he has rendered up his soul to his Creator. But it is their duty to take particular care neither to say or to do anything which may hasten the moment of his death, for fear of falling into some irregularity. Accordingly, they should not exhort the criminal to mount the scaffold, or present himself to the executioner, or advise the executioner to get ready and arrange his instruments of punishment, so that the death may take place more quickly, and the prisoner be prevented from lingering; all for the sake of avoiding irregularity.”

Page 335. “Should it happen that the heretic, when just about to be fixed to the stake to be burned, were to give signs of conversion, he might, perhaps, out of singular lenity and favor, be allowed to be received and shut up, like penitent heretics, within four walls, although it would be weak to place much reliance on a confession of this nature, and the indulgence is not authorized by any express law; such lenity, however, is very dangerous. I was witness of an example in point at Barcelona: A priest who was condemned, with two other impenitent heretics, to be burned, and who was actually in the midst of the flames, called on the bystanders to pull him out instantly, for he was willing to be converted; he was accordingly extricated, dreadfully scorched on one side. I do not mean to decide whether this was well or ill done; but I know that, fourteen years afterwards, he was still dogmatizing, and had corrupted a considerable number of persons; he was therefore once more given up to justice, and was burned to death.”

“No person doubts,” says Pegna, scholium 47, “that heretics ought to be put to death; but the particular method of execution may well be a topic of discussion.” Alphonso de Castro, in the second book of his work, “On the Just Punishment of Heretics,” considers it a matter of great indifference whether they are destroyed by the sword, by fire, or any other method; but Hostiensis Godofredus, Covarruvias, Simancas, Roxas, etc., maintain that they ought decidedly to be burned. In fact, as Hostiensis very well expressed it, execution by fire is the punishment appropriate to heresy. We read in St. John, “If any one remain not in me, he shall be cast forth, as a branch, and wither, and men shall gather it and cast it into the fire and burn it.” “It may be added, continued Pegna, “that the universal custom of the Christian republic is in support of this opinion. Simancas and Roxas decide that heretics ought to be burned alive; but one precaution should always be taken in burning them, which is tearing out the tongue and keeping the mouth perfectly closed, in order to prevent their scandalizing the spectators by their impieties.”

Finally, page 369, Eymeric enjoins those whom he addresses to proceed in matters of heresy straight forward, without any wranglings of advocates, and without so many forms and solemnities as are generally employed in criminal cases; that is, to make the process as short as possible, by cutting off useless delays, by going on with the hearing and trial of such causes, even on days when the labors of the other judges are suspended; by disallowing every appeal which has for its apparent object merely a postponement of final judgment; and by not admitting an unnecessary multitude of witnesses, etc.

This revolting system of jurisprudence has simply been put under some restriction in Spain and Portugal; while at Milan the Inquisition itself has at length been entirely suppressed.

SECTION II.

The Inquisition is well known to be an admirable and truly Christian invention for increasing the power of the pope and monks, and rendering the population of a whole kingdom hypocrites.

St. Dominic is usually considered as the person to whom the world is principally indebted for this institution. In fact, we have still extant a patent granted by that great saint, expressed precisely in the following words: “I, brother Dominic, reconcile to the Church Roger, the bearer of these presents, on condition of his being scourged by a priest on three successive Sundays from the entrance of the city to the church doors; of his abstaining from meat all his life; of his fasting for the space of three Lents in a year; of his never drinking wine; of his carrying about him the ‘san benito’ with crosses; of his reciting the breviary every day, and ten paternosters in the course of the day, and twenty at midnight; of his preserving perfect chastity, and of his presenting himself every month before the parish priest, etc.; the whole under pain of being treated as heretical, perjured, and impenitent.”

Although Dominic was the real founder of the Inquisition, yet Louis de Paramo, one of the most respectable writers and most brilliant luminaries of the Holy Office, relates, in the second chapter of his second book, that God was the first institutor of the Holy Office, and that he exercised the power of the preaching brethren, that is of the Dominican Order, against Adam. In the first place Adam is cited before the tribunal: “Adam ubi es?”—Adam, where art thou? “And in fact,” adds Paramo, “the want of this citation would have rendered the whole procedure of God null.”

The dresses formed of skins, which God made for Adam and Eve, were the model of the “san benito,” which the Holy Office requires to be worn by heretics. It is true that, according to this argument, God was the first tailor; it is not, however, the less evident, on account of that ludicrous and profane inference, that he was the first inquisitor.

Adam was deprived of the immovable property he possessed in the terrestrial paradise, and hence the Holy Office confiscates the property of all whom it condemns.

Louis de Paramo remarks, that the inhabitants of Sodom were burned as heretics because their crime is a formal heresy. He thence passes to the history of the Jews: and in every part of it discovers the Holy Office.

Jesus Christ is the first inquisitor of the new law; the popes were inquisitors by divine right; and they afterwards communicated their power to St. Dominic.

He afterwards estimates the number of all those whom the Inquisition has put to death; he states it to be considerably above a hundred thousand.

His book was printed in 1589, at Madrid, with the approbation of doctors, the eulogiums of bishops, and the privilege of the king. We can, at the present day, scarcely form any idea of horrors at once so extravagant and abominable; but at that period nothing appeared more natural and edifying. All men resemble Louis de Paramo when they are fanatics.

Paramo was a plain, direct man, very exact in dates, omitting no interesting fact, and calculating with precision the number of human victims immolated by the Holy Office throughout the world.

He relates, with great naïveté, the establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal, and coincides perfectly with four other historians who have treated of that subject. The following account they unanimously agree in:

Singular Establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal.

Pope Boniface had long before, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, delegated some Dominican friars to go to Portugal, from one city to another, to burn heretics, Mussulmans, and Jews; but these were itinerant and not stationary; and even the kings sometimes complained of the vexations caused by them. Pope Clement VII. was desirous of giving them a fixed residence in Portugal, as they had in Aragon and Castile. Difficulties, however, arose between the court of Rome and that of Lisbon; tempers became irritated, the Inquisition suffered by it, and was far from being perfectly established.

In 1539, there appeared at Lisbon a legate of the pope, who came, he said, to establish the holy Inquisition on immovable foundations. He delivered his letters to King John III. from Pope Paul III. He had other letters from Rome for the chief officers of the court; his patents as legate were duly sealed and signed; and he exhibited the most ample powers for creating a grand inquisitor and all the judges of the Holy Office. He was, however, in fact an impostor of the name of Saavedra, who had the talent of counterfeiting hand-writings, seals, and coats-of-arms. He had acquired the art at Rome, and was perfected in it at Seville, at which place he arrived in company with two other sharpers. His train was magnificent, consisting of more than a hundred and twenty domestics. To defray, at least in part, the enormous expense with which all this splendor was attended, he and his associates borrowed at Seville large sums in the name of the apostolic chamber of Rome; everything was concerted with the most consummate art.

The king of Portugal was at first perfectly astonished at the pope’s despatching a legate to him without any previous announcement to him of his intention. The legate hastily observed that in a concern so urgent as that of establishing the Inquisition on a firm foundation, his holiness could admit of no delays, and that the king might consider himself honored by the holy father’s having appointed a legate to be the first person to announce his intention. The king did not venture to reply. The legate on the same day constituted a grand inquisitor, and sent about collectors to receive the tenths; and before the court could obtain answers from Rome to its representations on the subject, the legate had brought two hundred victims to the stake, and collected more than two hundred thousand crowns.

However, the marquis of Villanova, a Spanish nobleman, of whom the legate had borrowed at Seville a very considerable sum upon forged bills, determined, if possible, to repay himself the money with his own hands, instead of going to Lisbon and exposing himself to the intrigues and influence of the swindler there. The legate was at this time making his circuit through the country, and happened very conveniently to be on the borders of Spain. The marquis unexpectedly advanced upon him with fifty men well armed, carried him off prisoner, and conducted him to Madrid.

The whole imposture was speedily discovered at Lisbon; the Council of Madrid condemned the legate Saavedra to be flogged and sent to the galleys for ten years; but the most admirable circumstance was, that Pope Paul IV. confirmed subsequently all that the impostor had established; out of the plenitude of his divine power he rectified all the little irregularities of the various procedures, and rendered sacred what before was merely human. Of what importance the arm which God employs in His sacred service?—“Qu’ importe de quel bras Dieu daigne se servir?”

Such was the manner in which the Inquisition became established at Lisbon; and the whole kingdom extolled the wisdom and providence of God on the occasion.

To conclude, the methods of procedure adopted by this tribunal are generally known; it is well known how strongly they are opposed to the false equity and blind reason of all other tribunals in the world. Men are imprisoned on the mere accusation of persons the most infamous; a son may denounce his father, and the wife her husband; the accused is never confronted with the accusers; and the property of the person convicted is confiscated for the benefit of the judges: such at least was the manner of its proceeding down to our own times. Surely in this we must perceive something decidedly divine; for it is absolutely incomprehensible that men should have patiently submitted to this yoke.

At length Count Aranda has obtained the blessings of all Europe by paring the nails and filing the teeth of the monster in Spain; it breathes, however, still.

INSTINCT.

“Instinctus,impulsus,” impulse; but what power impels us?

All feeling is instinct. A secret conformity of our organs to their respective objects forms our instinct. It is solely by instinct that we perform numberless involuntary movements, just as it is by instinct that we possess curiosity, that we run after novelty, that menaces terrify us, that contempt irritates us, that an air of submission appeases us, and that tears soften us.

We are governed by instinct, as well as cats and goats; this is one further circumstance in which we resemble the mere animal tribes—a resemblance as incontestable as that of our blood, our necessities, and the various functions of our bodies.

Our instinct is never so shrewd and skilful as theirs, and does not even approach it; a calf and a lamb, as soon as they are born, rush to the fountain of their mother’s milk; but unless the mother of the infant clasped it in her arms, and folded it to her bosom, it would inevitably perish.

No woman in a state of pregnancy was ever invincibly impelled to prepare for her infant a convenient wicker cradle, as the wren with its bill and claws prepares a nest for her offspring. But the power of reflection which we possess, in conjunction with two industrious hands presented to us by nature, raises us to an equality with the instinct of animals, and in the course of time places us infinitely above them, both in respect to good and evil—a proposition condemned by the members of the ancient parliament and by the Sorbonne, natural philosophers of distinguished eminence, and who, it is well known, have admirably promoted the perfection of the arts.

Our instinct, in the first place, impels us to beat our brother when he vexes us, if we are roused into a passion with him and feel that we are stronger than he is. Afterwards, our sublime reason leads us on to the invention of arrows, swords, pikes, and at length muskets, to kill our neighbors with.

Instinct alone urges us all to make love—“Amor omnibus idem;” but Virgil, Tibullus, and Ovid sing it. It is from instinct alone that a young artisan stands gazing with respect and admiration before the superfine gilt coach of a commissioner of taxes. Reason comes to the assistance of the young artisan; he is made a collector; he becomes polished; he embezzles; he rises to be a great man in his turn, and dazzles the eyes of his former comrades as he lolls at ease in his own carriage, more profusely gilded than that which originally excited his admiration and ambition.

What is this instinct which governs the whole animal kingdom, and which in us is strengthened by reason or repressed by habit? Is it “divinæ particula auræ?” Yes, undoubtedly it is something divine; for everything is so. Everything is the incomprehensible effect of an incomprehensible cause. Everything is swayed, is impelled by nature. We reason about everything, and originate nothing.

INTEREST.

We shall teach men nothing, when we tell them that everything we do is done from interest. What! it will be said, is it from motives of interest that the wretched fakir remains stark naked under the burning sun, loaded with chains, dying with hunger, half devoured by vermin, and devouring them in his turn? Yes, most undoubtedly it is; as we have stated elsewhere, he depends upon ascending to the eighteenth heaven, and looks with an eye of pity on the man who will be admitted only into the ninth.

The interest of the Malabar widow, who burns herself with the corpse of her husband, is to recover him in another world, and be there more happy even than the fakir. For, together with their metempsychosis, the Indians have another world; they resemble ourselves; their system admits of contradictions.

Were you ever acquainted with any king or republic that made either war or peace, that issued decrees, or entered into conventions, from any other motive than that of interest?

With respect to the interest of money, consult, in the great “Encyclopædia,” the article of M. d’Alembert, on “Calculation,” and that of M. Boucher d’Argis, on “Jurisprudence.” We will venture to add a few reflections.

1. Are gold and silver merchandise? Yes; the author of the “Spirit of Laws” does not think so when he says: “Money, which is the price of commodities, is hired and not bought.”

It is both lent and bought. I buy gold with silver, and silver with gold; and their price fluctuates in all commercial countries from day to day.

The law of Holland requires bills of exchange to be paid in the silver coin of the country, and not in gold, if the creditor demands it. Then I buy silver money, and I pay for it in gold, or in cloth, corn, or diamonds.

I am in want of money, corn, or diamonds, for the space of a year; the corn, money, or diamond merchant says—I could, for this year, sell my money, corn, or diamonds to advantage. Let us estimate at four, five, or six per cent., according to the usage of the country, what I should lose by letting you have it. You shall, for instance, return me at the end of the year, twenty-one carats of diamonds for the twenty which I now lend you; twenty-one sacks of corn for the twenty; twenty-one thousand crowns for twenty thousand crowns. Such is interest. It is established among all nations by the law of nature. The maximum or highest rate of interest depends, in every country, on its own particular law. In Rome money is lent on pledges at two and a half per cent., according to law, and the pledges are sold, if the money be not paid at the appointed time. I do not lend upon pledges, and I require only the interest customary in Holland. If I were in China, I should ask of you the customary interest at Macao and Canton.

2. While the parties were proceeding with this bargain at Amsterdam, it happened that there arrived from St. Magliore, a Jansenist (and the fact is perfectly true, he was called the Abbé des Issarts); this Jansenist says to the Dutch merchant, “Take care what you are about; you are absolutely incurring damnation; money must not produce money, ‘nummus nummum non parit.’ No one is allowed to receive interest for his money but when he is willing to sink the principal. The way to be saved is to make a contract with the gentleman; and for twenty thousand crowns which you are never to have returned to you, you and your heirs will receive a thousand crowns per annum to all eternity.”

“You jest,” replies the Dutchman; “you are in this very case proposing to me a usury that is absolutely of the nature of an infinite series. I should (that is, myself and heirs would) in that case receive back my capital at the end of twenty years, the double of it in forty, the four-fold of it in eighty; this you see would be just an infinite series. I cannot, besides, lend for more than twelve months, and I am contented with a thousand crowns as a remuneration.”

The Abbé des Issarts.

—I am grieved for your Dutch soul; God forbade the Jews to lend at interest, and you are well aware that a citizen of Amsterdam should punctually obey the laws of commerce given in a wilderness to runaway vagrants who had no commerce.

The Dutchman.

—That is clear; all the world ought to be Jews; but it seems to me, that the law permitted the Hebrew horde to gain as much by usury as they could from foreigners, and that, in consequence of this permission, they managed their affairs in the sequel remarkably well. Besides, the prohibition against one Jew’s taking interest from another must necessarily have become obsolete, since our Lord Jesus, when preaching at Jerusalem, expressly said that interest was in his time one hundred per cent.; for in the parable of the talents he says, that the servant who had received five talents gained five others in Jerusalem by them; that he who had two gained two by them; and that the third who had only one, and did not turn that to any account, was shut up in a dungeon by his master, for not laying it out with the money-changers. But these money-changers were Jews; it was therefore between Jews that usury was practised at Jerusalem; therefore this parable, drawn from the circumstances and manners of the times, decidedly indicates that usury or interest was at the rate of a hundred per cent. Read the twenty-fifth chapter of St. Matthew; he was conversant with the subject; he had been a commissioner of taxes in Galilee. Let me finish my argument with this gentleman; and do not make me lose both my money and my time.

The Abbé des Issarts.

—All that you say is very good and very fine; but the Sorbonne has decided that lending money on interest is a mortal sin.

The Dutchman.

—You must be laughing at me, my good friend, when you cite the Sorbonne as an authority to a merchant of Amsterdam. There is not a single individual among those wrangling railers themselves who does not obtain, whenever he can, five or six per cent. for his money by purchasing revenue bills, India bonds, assignments, and Canada bills. The clergy of France, as a corporate body, borrow at interest. In many of the provinces of France, it is the custom to stipulate for interest with the principal. Besides, the university of Oxford and that of Salamanca have decided against the Sorbonne. I acquired this information in the course of my travels; and thus we have authority against authority. Once more, I must beg you to interrupt me no longer.

The Abbé des Issarts.

—The wicked, sir, are never at a loss for reasons. You are, I repeat, absolutely destroying yourself, for the Abbé de St. Cyran, who has not performed any miracles, and the Abbé Paris, who performed some in St. Médard. . . . .

3. Before the abbé had finished his speech, the merchant drove him out of his counting-house; and after having legally lent his money, to the last penny, went to represent the conversation between himself and the abbé, to the magistrates, who forbade the Jansenists from propagating a doctrine so pernicious to commerce.

“Gentlemen,” said the chief bailiff, “give us of efficacious grace as much as you please, of predestination as much as you please, and of communion as little as you please; on these points you are masters; but take care not to meddle with the laws of commerce.”

INTOLERANCE.

Read the article on “Intolerance” in the great “Encyclopædia.” Read the treatise on “Toleration” composed on occasion of the dreadful assassination of John Calas, a citizen of Toulouse; and if, after that, you allow of persecution in matters of religion, compare yourself at once to Ravaillac. Ravaillac, you know, was highly intolerant. The following is the substance of all the discourses ever delivered by the intolerant:

You monster; you will be burned to all eternity in the other world, and whom I will myself burn as soon as ever I can in this, you really have the insolence to read de Thou and Bayle, who have been put into the index of prohibited authors at Rome! When I was preaching to you in the name of God, how Samson had killed a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass, your head, still harder than the arsenal from which Samson obtained his arms, showed me by a slight movement from left to right that you believed nothing of what I said. And when I stated that the devil Asmodeus, who out of jealousy twisted the necks of the seven husbands of Sarah among the Medes, was put in chains in upper Egypt, I saw a small contraction of your lips, in Latin called cachinnus (a grin) which plainly indicated to me that in the bottom of your soul you held the history of Asmodeus in derision.

And as for you, Isaac Newton; Frederick the Great, king of Prussia and elector of Brandenburg; John Locke; Catherine, empress of Russia, victorious over the Ottomans; John Milton; the beneficent sovereign of Denmark; Shakespeare; the wise king of Sweden; Leibnitz; the august house of Brunswick; Tillotson; the emperor of China; the Parliament of England; the Council of the great Mogul; in short, all you who do not believe one word which I have taught in my courses on divinity, I declare to you, that I regard you all as pagans and publicans, as, in order to engrave it on your unimpressible brains, I have often told you before. You are a set of callous miscreants; you will all go to gehenna, where the worm dies not and the fire is not quenched; for I am right, and you are all wrong; and I have grace, and you have none. I confess three devotees in my neighborhood, while you do not confess a single one; I have executed the mandates of bishops, which has never been the case with you; I have abused philosophers in the language of the fish-market, while you have protected, imitated, or equalled them; I have composed pious defamatory libels, stuffed with infamous calumnies, and you have never so much as read them. I say mass every day in Latin for fourteen sous, and you are never even so much as present at it, any more than Cicero, Cato, Pompey, Cæsar, Horace, or Virgil, were ever present at it—consequently you deserve each of you to have your right hand cut off, your tongue cut out, to be put to the torture, and at last burned at a slow fire; for God is merciful.

Such, without the slightest abatement, are the maxims of the intolerant, and the sum and substance of all their books. How delightful to live with such amiable people!

INUNDATION.

Was there ever a time when the globe was entirely inundated? It is physically impossible.

It is possible that the sea may successively have covered every land, one part after another; and even this can only have happened by very slow gradation, and in a prodigious number of centuries. In the course of five hundred years the sea has retired from Aigues-Mortes, Fréjus, and Ravenna, which were considerable ports, and left about two leagues of land dry. According to the ratio of such progression, it is clear that it would require two million and two hundred and fifty thousand years to produce the same effect through the whole circuit of the globe. It is a somewhat remarkable circumstance that this period of time nearly falls in with that which the axis of the earth would require to be raised, so as to coincide with the equator; a change extremely probable, which began to be considered so only about fifty years since, and which could not be completed in a shorter period of time than two million and three hundred thousand years.

The beds or strata of shells, which have been discovered at the distance of some leagues from the sea, are an incontestable evidence that it has gradually deposited these marine productions on tracts which were formerly shores of the ocean; but that the water should have ever covered the whole globe at once is an absurd chimera in physics, demonstrated to be impossible by the laws of gravitation, by the laws of fluids, and by the insufficient quantity of water for the purpose. We do not, however, by these observations, at all mean to impeach the truth of the universal deluge, related in the Pentateuch; on the contrary, that is a miracle which it is our duty to believe; it is a miracle, and therefore could not have been accomplished by the laws of nature.

All is miracle in the history of the deluge—a miracle, that forty days of rain should have inundated the four quarters of the world, and have raised the water to the height of fifteen cubits above the tops of the loftiest mountains; a miracle, that there should have been cataracts, floodgates, and openings in heaven; a miracle, that all sorts of animals should have been collected in the ark from all parts of the world; a miracle that Noah found the means of feeding them for a period of ten months; a miracle that all the animals with all their provisions could have been included and retained in the ark; a miracle, that the greater part of them did not die; a miracle, that after quitting the ark, they found food enough to maintain them; and a further miracle, but of a different kind, that a person, by the name of Lepelletier, thought himself capable of explaining how all the animals could be contained and fed in Noah’s ark naturally, that is, without a miracle.

But the history of the deluge being that of the most miraculous event of which the world ever heard, it must be the height of folly and madness to attempt an explanation of it: it is one of the mysteries which are believed by faith; and faith consists in believing that which reason does not believe—which is only another miracle.

The history of the universal deluge, therefore, is like that of the tower of Babel, of Balaam’s ass, of the falling of the walls of Jericho at the sound of trumpets, of waters turned into blood, of the passage of the Red Sea, and of the whole of the prodigies which God condescended to perform in favor of his chosen people—depths unfathomable to the human understanding.

JEHOVAH.

Jehovah, the ancient name of God. No people ever pronounced it “Geova,” as the French do; they pronounced it “Iëvo”; you find it so written in Sanchoniathon, cited by Eusebius, Prep., book x.; in Diodorus, book ii.; and in Macrobius, Sat., book i. All nations have pronounced it ie and not g. This sacred name was formed out of the vowels i, e, o, u, in the east. Some pronounced ïe, oh, with an aspirate, i, e, o, va. The word was always to be constituted of four letters, although we have here used five, for want of power to express these four characters.

We have already observed that, according to Clement of Alexandria, by seizing on the correct pronunciation of this name a person had it in his power to produce the death of any man. Clement gives an instance of it.

Long before the time of Moses, Seth had pronounced the name of “Jehovah,” as is related in the fourth chapter of Genesis; and, according to the Hebrew, Seth was even called “Jehovah.” Abraham swore to the king of Sodom by Jehovah, chap. xiv. 22.

From the word “Jehovah,” the Latins derived “Jove,” “Jovis,” “Jovispeter,” “Jupiter.” In the bush, the Almighty says to Moses, “My name is Jehovah.” In the orders which he gave Him for the court of Pharaoh, he says to him: “I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as the mighty God, only by my name, ‘Adonai,’ I was not known to them, and I made a covenant with them.”

The Jews did not for a long time pronounce this name. It was common to the Phœnicians and Egyptians. It signified, that which is; and hence, probably, is derived the inscription of Isis: “I am all that is.”

JEPHTHAH.

SECTION I.

It is evident from the text of the Book of Judges that Jephthah promised to sacrifice the first person that should come out of his house to congratulate him on his victory over the Ammonites. His only daughter presented herself before him for that purpose; he tore his garments and immolated her, after having promised her to go and deplore in the recesses of the mountains the calamity of her dying a virgin. The daughters of Israel long continued to celebrate this painful event, and devoted four days in the year to lamentation for the daughter of Jephthah.

In whatever period this history was written, whether it was imitated from the Greek history of Agamemnon and Idomeneus, or was the model from which that history was taken; whether it might be anterior or posterior to similar narratives in Assyrian history is not the point I am now examining. I keep strictly to the text. Jephthah vowed to make his daughter a burnt offering, and fulfilled his vow.

It was expressly commanded by the Jewish law to sacrifice men devoted to the Lord: “Every man that shall be devoted shall not be redeemed, but shall be put to death without remission.” The Vulgate translates it: “He shall not be redeemed, but shall die the death.”

It was in virtue of this law that Samuel hewed in pieces King Agag, whom, as we have already seen, Saul had pardoned. In fact, it was for sparing Agag that Saul was rebuked by the Lord, and lost his kingdom.

Thus, then, we perceive sacrifices of human blood clearly established; there is no point of history more incontestable: we can only judge of a nation by its own archives, and by what it relates concerning itself.

SECTION II.

There are, then, it seems, persons to be found who hesitate at nothing, who falsify a passage of Scripture as intrepidly as if they were quoting its very words, and who hope to deceive mankind by their falsehoods, knowing them perfectly to be such. If such daring impostors are to be found now, we cannot help supposing, that before the invention of printing, which affords such facility, and almost certainty of detection, there existed a hundred times as many.

One of the most impudent falsifiers who have lately appeared, is the author of an infamous libel entitled “The Anti-Philosophic Dictionary,” which truly deserves its title. But my readers will say, “Do not be so irritated; what is it to you that a contemptible book has been published?” Gentlemen, it is to the subject of Jephthah, to the subject of human victims, of the blood of men sacrificed to God, that I am now desirous of drawing your attention!

The author, whoever he may be, translates the thirty-ninth verse of the first chapter of the history of Jephthah as follows: “She returned to the house of her father, who fulfilled the consecration which he had promised by his vow, and his daughter remained in the state of virginity.”

Yes, falsifier of the Bible, I am irritated at it, I acknowledge; but you have lied to the holy spirit; which you ought to know is a sin which is never pardoned.

The passage in the Vulgate is as follows:

“Et reversa est ad patrem suum, et fecit ei sicut voverat quæ ignorabat virum. Exinde mos increbruit in Israel et consuetudo servata est, ut post anni circulum conveniant in unum filiæ Israel, et plangant filiam Jephte Galaaditæ, diebus quatuor.”

“And she returned to her father and he did to her as he had vowed, to her who had never known man; and hence came the usage, and the custom is still observed, that the daughters of Israel assemble every year to lament the daughter of Jephthah for four days.”

You will just have the goodness, Mr. Anti-philosopher, to tell us, whether four days of lamentation every year have been devoted to weeping the fate of a young woman because she was consecrated?

Whether any nuns (religieuses) were ever solemnly appointed among a people who considered virginity an opprobrium?

And also, what is the natural meaning of the phrase, he did to her as he had vowed—“Fecit ei sicut voverat?”

What had Jephthah vowed? What had he promised by an oath to perform? To kill his daughter; to offer her up as a burnt offering—and he did kill her.

Read Calmet’s dissertation on the rashness of Jephthah’s vow and its fulfilment; read the law which he cites, that terrible law of Leviticus, in the twenty-seventh chapter, which commands that all which shall be devoted to the Lord shall not be ransomed, but shall die the death: “Non redimetur, sed morte morletur.”

Observe the multitude of examples by which this most astonishing truth is attested. Look at the Amalekites and Canaanites; look at the king of Arvad and all his family subjected to the law of devotion; look at the priest Samuel slaying King Agag with his own hands, and cutting him into pieces as a butcher cuts up an ox in his slaughter-house. After considering all this, go and corrupt, falsify, or deny holy Scripture, in order to maintain your paradox; and insult those who revere the Scripture, however astonishing and confounding they may find it. Give the lie direct to the historian Josephus, who transcribes the narrative in question, and positively asserts that Jephthah immolated his daughter. Pile revilings upon falsehoods, and calumny upon ignorance; sages will smile at your impotence; and sages, thank God, are at present neither few nor weak. Oh, that you could but see the sovereign contempt with which they look down upon the Rouths, when they corrupt the holy Scripture, and when they boast of having disputed with the president Montesquieu in his last hour, and convinced him that he ought to think exactly like the Jesuits!

JESUITS; OR PRIDE.

The Jesuits have been so much a subject of discourse and discussion that, after having engaged the attention of Europe for a period of two hundred years, they at last begin to weary and disgust it, whether they write themselves, or whether any one else writes for or against that singular society; in which it must be confessed there have been found, and are to be found still, individuals of very extraordinary merit.

They have been reproached, in the six thousand volumes that have been written against them, with their lax morality, which has not, however, been more lax than that of the Capuchins; and with their doctrine relating to the safety of the person of kings; a doctrine which after all is not to be compared with the horn-handled knife of James Clement; nor with the prepared host, the sprinkled wafer, which so well answered the purpose of Ange de Montepulciano, another Jacobin, and which poisoned the emperor Henry VII.

It is not versatile grace which has been their ruin, nor the fraudulent bankruptcy of the reverend Father Lavalette, prefect of the apostolic missions. A whole order has not been expelled from France and Spain and the two Sicilies, because that order contained a single bankrupt. Nor was it affected by the odious deviations of the Jesuit Guyot-Desfontaines, or the Jesuit Fréron, or the reverend father Marsy, so injurious, in the latter instance, to the youthful and high-born victim. The public refused to attend these Greek and Latin imitations of Anacreon and Horace.

What is it then that was their ruin?—pride. What, it may be asked by some, were the Jesuits prouder than any other monks? Yes; and so much so that they procured a lettre de cachet against an ecclesiastic for calling them monks. One member of the society, called Croust, more brutal than the rest, a brother of the confessor of the second dauphiness, was absolutely, in my presence, going to beat the son of M. de Guyot, afterwards king’s advocate (prêteur-royal) at Strasburg, merely for saying he would go to see him in his convent.

It is perfectly incredible with what contempt they considered every university where they had not been educated, every book which they had not written, every ecclesiastic who was not “a man of quality.” Of this I have myself, times without number, been a witness. They express themselves in the following language, in their libel entitled “It is Time to Speak Out”: “Should we condescend even to speak to a magistrate who says the Jesuits are proud and ought to be humbled?” They were so proud that they would not suffer any one to blame their pride!

Whence did this hateful pride originate? From Father Guinard’s having been hanged? which is literally true.

It must be remarked that after the execution of that Jesuit under Henry IV., and after the banishment of the society from the kingdom, they were recalled only on the indispensable condition that one Jesuit should always reside at court, who should be responsible for all the rest. Coton was the person who thus became a hostage at the court of Henry IV.; and that excellent monarch, who was not without his little stratagems of policy, thought to conciliate the pope by making a hostage of his confessor.

From that moment every brother of the order seemed to feel as if he had been raised to be king’s confessor. This place of first spiritual physician became a department of the administration under Louis XIII., and more so still under Louis XIV. The brother Vadblé, valet de chambre of Father La Chaise, granted his protection to the bishops of France; and Father Letellier ruled with a sceptre of iron those who were very well disposed to be so ruled. It was impossible that the greater part of the Jesuits should not be puffed up by the consequence and power to which these two members of their society had been raised, and that they should not become as insolent as the lackeys of M. Louvois. There have been among them, certainly, men of knowledge, eloquence, and genius; these possessed some modesty, but those who had only mediocrity of talent or acquirement were tainted with that pride which generally attaches to mediocrity and to the pedantry of a college.

From the time of Father Garasse almost all their polemical works have been pervaded with an indecent and scornful arrogance which has roused the indignation of all Europe. This arrogance frequently sank into the most pitiful meanness; so that they discovered the extraordinary secret of being objects at once of envy and contempt. Observe, for example, how they expressed themselves of the celebrated Pasquier, advocate-general of the chamber of accounts:

“Pasquier is a mere porter, a Parisian varlet, a second-rate showman and jester, a journeyman retailer of ballads and old stories, a contemptible hireling, only fit to be a lackey’s valet, a scrub, a disgusting ragamuffin, strongly suspected of heresy, and either heretical or much worse, a libidinous and filthy satyr, a master-fool by nature, in sharp, in flat, and throughout the whole gamut, a three-shod fool, a fool double-dyed, a fool in grain, a fool in every sort of folly.”

They afterwards polished their style; but pride, by becoming less gross, only became the more revolting.

Everything is pardoned except pride; and this accounts for the fact that all the parliaments in the kingdom, the members of which had the greater part of them been disciples of the Jesuits, seized the first opportunity of effecting their annihilation; and the whole land rejoiced in their downfall.

So deeply was the spirit of pride rooted in them that it manifested itself with the most indecent rage, even while they were held down to the earth by the hand of justice, and their final sentence yet remained to be pronounced. We need only read the celebrated memorial already mentioned, entitled “It is Time to Speak Out,” printed at Avignon in 1763, under the assumed name of Anvers. It begins with an ironical petition to the persons holding the court of parliament. It addresses them with as much superiority and contempt as could be shown in reprimanding a proctor’s clerk. The illustrious M. de Montclar, procureur-général, the oracle of the Parliament of Provence, is continually treated as “M. Ripert,” and rebuked with as much consequence and authority as a mutinous and ignorant scholar by a professor in his chair. They pushed their audacity so far as to say that M. de Montclar “blasphemed” in giving an account of the institution of the Jesuits.

In their memorial, entitled “All Shall be Told,” they insult still more daringly the Parliament of Metz, and always in the style of arrogance and dictation derived from the schools.

They have retained this pride even in the very ashes to which France and Spain have now reduced them. From the bottom of those ashes the serpent, scotched as it has been, has again raised its hostile head. We have seen a contemptible creature, of the name of Nonnotte, set himself up for a critic on his masters; and, although possessing merely talent enough for preaching to a mob in the churchyard, discoursing with all the ease of impudence about things of which he has not the slightest notion. Another insolent member of the society, called Patouillet, dared, in the bishop’s mandates, to insult respectable citizens and officers of the king’s household, whose very lackeys would not have permitted him to speak to them.

One of the things on which they most prided themselves, was introducing themselves into the houses of the great in their last illness, as ambassadors of God, to open to them the gates of heaven, without their previously passing through purgatory. Under Louis XIV. it was considered as having a bad aspect, it was unfashionable and discreditable, to die without having passed through the hands of a Jesuit; and the wretch, immediately after the fatal scene had closed, would go and boast to his devotees that he had just been converting a duke and peer, who, without his protection, would have been inevitably damned.

The dying man might say: “By what right, you college excrement, do you intrude yourself on me in my dying moments? Was I ever seen to go to your cells when any of you had the fistula or gangrene, and were about to return your gross and unwieldy bodies to the earth? Has God granted your soul any rights over mine? Do I require a preceptor at the age of seventy? Do you carry the keys of Paradise at your girdle? You dare to call yourself an ambassador of God; show me your patent and if you have none, let me die in peace. No Benedictine, Chartreux, or Premonstrant, comes to disturb my dying moments; they have no wish to erect a trophy to their pride upon the bed of our last agony; they remain peacefully in their cells; do you rest quietly in yours; there can be nothing in common between you and me.”

A comic circumstance occurred on a truly mournful occasion, when an English Jesuit, of the name of Routh, eagerly strove to possess himself of the last hour of the great Montesquieu. “He came,” he said, “to bring back that virtuous soul to religion;” as if Montesquieu had not known what religion was better than a Routh; as if it had been the will of God that Montesquieu should think like a Routh! He was driven out of the chamber, and went all over Paris, exclaiming, “I have converted that celebrated man; I prevailed upon him to throw his ‘Persian Letters’ and his ‘Spirit of Laws’ into the fire.” Care was taken to print the narrative of the conversion of President Montesquieu by the reverend father Routh in the libel entitled “The Anti-Philosophic Dictionary.”

Another subject of pride and ambition with the Jesuits was making missions to various cities, just as if they had been among Indians or Japanese. They would oblige the whole magistracy to attend them in the streets; a cross was borne before them, planted in the principal public places; they dispossessed the resident clergy; they became complete masters of the city. A Jesuit of the name of Aubert performed one of these missions to Colmar, and compelled the advocate-general of the sovereign council to burn at his feet his copy of “Bayle,” which had cost him no less than fifty crowns. For my own part, I acknowledge that I would rather have burned brother Aubert himself. Judge how the pride of this Aubert must have swelled with this sacrifice as he boasted of it to his comrades at night, and as he exultingly wrote the account of it to his general.

O monks, monks! be modest, as I have already advised you; be moderate, if you wish to avoid the calamities impending over you.

JEWS.

SECTION I.

You order me to draw you a faithful picture of the spirit of the Jews, and of their history, and—without entering into the ineffable ways of Providence, which are not our ways—you seek in the manners of this people the source of the events which that Providence prepared.

It is certain that the Jewish nation is the most singular that the world has ever seen; and although, in a political view, the most contemptible of all, yet in the eyes of a philosopher, it is, on various accounts, worthy consideration.

The Guebers, the Banians, and the Jews, are the only nations which exist dispersed, having no alliance with any people, are perpetuated among foreign nations, and continue apart from the rest of the world.

The Guebers were once infinitely more considerable than the Jews, for they are castes of the Persians, who had the Jews under their dominion; but they are now scattered over but one part of the East.

The Banians, who are descended from the ancient people among whom Pythagoras acquired his philosophy, exist only in India and Persia; but the Jews are dispersed over the whole face of the earth, and if they were assembled, would compose a nation much more numerous than it ever was in the short time that they were masters of Palestine. Almost every people who have written the history of their origin, have chosen to set it off by prodigies; with them all has been miracle; their oracles have predicted nothing but conquest; and such of them as have really become conquerors have had no difficulty in believing these ancient oracles which were verified by the event. The Jews are distinguished among the nations by this—that their oracles are the only true ones, of which we are not permitted to doubt. These oracles, which they understand only in the literal sense, have a hundred times foretold to them that they should be masters of the world; yet they have never possessed anything more than a small corner of land, and that only for a small number of years, and they have not now so much as a village of their own. They must, then, believe, and they do believe, that their predictions will one day be fulfilled, and that they shall have the empire of the earth.

Among the Mussulmans and the Christians they are the lowest of all nations, but they think themselves the highest. This pride in their abasement is justified by an unanswerable reason—viz., that they are in reality the fathers of both Christians and Mussulmans. The Christian and the Mussulman religion acknowledge the Jewish as their parent; and, by a singular contradiction, they at once hold this parent in reverence and in abhorrence.

It were foreign to our present purpose to repeat that continued succession of prodigies which astonishes the imagination and exercises the faith. We have here to do only with events purely historical, wholly apart from the divine concurrence and the miracles which God, for so long a time, vouchsafed to work in this people’s favor.

First, we find in Egypt a family of seventy persons producing, at the end of two hundred and fifteen years, a nation counting six hundred thousand fighting men; which makes, with the women, the children and the old men, upward of two millions of souls. There is no example upon earth of so prodigious an increase of population; this people, having come out of Egypt, stayed forty years in the deserts of Stony Arabia, and in that frightful country the people much diminished.

What remained of this nation advanced a little northward in those deserts. It appears that they had the same principles which the tribes of Stony and Desert Arabia have since had, of butchering without mercy the inhabitants of little towns over whom they had the advantage, and reserving only the young women. The interests of population have ever been the principal object of both. We find that when the Arabs had conquered Spain, they imposed tributes of marriageable girls; and at this day the Arabs of the desert make no treaty without stipulating for some girls and a few presents.

The Jews arrived in a sandy, mountainous country, where there were a few towns, inhabited by a little people called the Midianites. In one Midianite camp, alone, they took six hundred and seventy-five thousand sheep, seventy-two thousand oxen, sixty-one thousand asses, and thirty-two thousand virgins. All the men, all the wives, and all the male children, were massacred; the girls and the booty were divided between the people and the sacrificers.

They then took, in the same country, the town of Jericho; but having devoted the inhabitants of that place to the anathema, they massacred them all, including the virgins, pardoning none but Rahab, a courtesan, who had aided them in surprising the town.

The learned have agitated the question whether the Jews, like so many other nations, really sacrificed men to the Divinity. This is a dispute on words; those whom the people consecrated to the anathema were not put to death on an altar, with religious rites; but they were not the less immolated, without its being permitted to pardon any one of them. Leviticus (xxvii., 29) expressly forbids the redeeming of those who shall have been devoted. Its words are, “They shall surely be put to death.” By virtue of this law it was that Jephthah devoted and killed his daughter, that Saul would have killed his son, and that the prophet Samuel cut in pieces King Agag, Saul’s prisoner. It is quite certain that God is the master of the lives of men, and that it is not for us to examine His laws. We ought to limit ourselves to believing these things, and reverencing in silence the designs of God, who permitted them.

It is also asked what right had strangers like the Jews to the land of Canaan? The answer is, that they had what God gave them.

No sooner had they taken Jericho and Lais than they had a civil war among themselves, in which the tribe of Benjamin was almost wholly exterminated—men, women, and children; leaving only six hundred males. The people, unwilling that one of the tribes should be annihilated, bethought themselves of sacking the whole city of the tribe of Manasseh, killing all the men, old and young, all the children, all the married women, all the widows, and taking six hundred virgins, whom they gave to the six hundred survivors of the tribe of Benjamin, to restore that tribe, in order that the number of their twelve tribes might still be complete.

Meanwhile, the Phœnicians, a powerful people settled in the coasts from time immemorial, being alarmed at the depredations and cruelties of these newcomers, frequently chastised them; the neighboring princes united against them; and they were seven times reduced to slavery, for more than two hundred years.

At last they made themselves a king, whom they elected by lot. This king could not be very mighty; for in the first battle which the Jews fought under him, against their masters, the Philistines, they had, in the whole army, but one sword and one lance, and not one weapon of steel. But David, their second king, made war with advantage. He took the city of Salem, afterwards so celebrated under the name of Jerusalem, and then the Jews began to make some figure on the borders of Syria. Their government and their religion took a more august form. Hitherto they had not the means of raising a temple, though every neighboring nation had one or more. Solomon built a superb one, and reigned over this people about forty years.

Not only were the days of Solomon the most flourishing days of the Jews, but all the kings upon earth could not exhibit a treasure approaching Solomon’s. His father, David, whose predecessor had not even iron, left to Solomon twenty-five thousand six hundred and forty-eight millions of French livres in ready money. His fleets, which went to Ophir, brought him sixty-eight millions per annum in pure gold, without reckoning the silver and jewels. He had forty thousand stables, and the same number of coach-houses, twelve thousand stables for his cavalry, seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines. Yet he had neither wood nor workmen for building his palace and the temple; he borrowed them of Hiram, king of Tyre, who also furnished gold; and Solomon gave Hiram twenty towns in payment. The commentators have acknowledged that these things need explanation, and have suspected some literal error in the copyist, who alone can have been mistaken.

On the death of Solomon, a division took place among the twelve tribes composing the nation. The kingdom was torn asunder, and separated into two small provinces, one of which was called Judah, the other Israel—nine tribes and a half composing the Israelitish province, and only two and a half that of Judah. Then there was between these two small peoples a hatred, the more implacable as they were kinsmen and neighbors, and as they had different religions; for at Sichem and at Samaria they worshipped “Baal”—giving to God a Sidonian name; while at Jerusalem they worshipped “Adonai.” At Sichem were consecrated two calves; at Jerusalem, two cherubim—which were two winged animals with double heads, placed in the sanctuary. So, each faction having its kings, its gods, its worship, and its prophets, they made a bloody war upon each other.

While this war was carried on, the kings of Assyria, who conquered the greater part of Asia, fell upon the Jews; as an eagle pounces upon two lizards while they are fighting. The nine and a half tribes of Samaria and Sichem were carried off and dispersed forever; nor has it been precisely known to what places they were led into slavery.

It is but twenty leagues from the town of Samaria to Jerusalem, and their territories joined each other; so that when one of these towns was enslaved by powerful conquerors, the other could not long hold out. Jerusalem was sacked several times; it was tributary to kings Hazael and Razin, enslaved under Tiglath-Pileser, three times taken by Nebuchodonosor, or Nebuchadnezzar, and at last destroyed. Zedekiah, who had been set up as king or governor by this conqueror, was led, with his whole people, into captivity in Babylonia; so that the only Jews left in Palestine were a few enslaved peasants, to sow the ground.

As for the little country of Samaria and Sichem, more fertile than that of Jerusalem, it was re-peopled by foreign colonies, sent there by Assyrian kings, who took the name of Samaritans.

The two and a half tribes that were slaves in Babylonia and the neighboring towns for seventy years, had time to adopt the usages of their masters, and enriched their own tongue by mixing with it the Chaldæan; this is incontestable. The historian Josephus tells us that he wrote first in Chaldæan, which is the language of his country. It appears that the Jews acquired but little of the science of the Magi; they turned brokers, money-changers, and old-clothes men; by which they made themselves necessary, as they still do, and grew rich.

Their gains enabled them to obtain, under Cyrus, the liberty of rebuilding Jerusalem; but when they were to return into their own country, those who had grown rich at Babylon, would not quit so fine a country for the mountains of Cœlesyria, nor the fruitful banks of the Euphrates and the Tigris, for the torrent of Kedron. Only the meanest part of the nation returned with Zorobabel. The Jews of Babylon contributed only their alms to the rebuilding of the city and the temple; nor was the collection a large one; for Esdras relates that no more than seventy thousand crowns could be raised for the erection of this temple, which was to be that of all the earth.

The Jews still remained subject to the Persians; they were likewise subject to Alexander; and when that great man, the most excusable of all conquerors, had, in the early years of his victorious career, begun to raise Alexandria, and make it the centre of the commerce of the world, the Jews flocked there to exercise their trade of brokers; and there it was that their rabbis at length learned something of the sciences of the Greeks. The Greek tongue became absolutely necessary to all trading Jews.

After Alexander’s death, this people continued subject in Jerusalem to the kings of Syria, and in Alexandria to the kings of Egypt; and when these kings were at war, this people always shared the fate of their subjects, and belonged to the conqueror.

From the time of their captivity at Babylon, the Jews never had particular governors taking the title of king. The pontiffs had the internal administration, and these pontiffs were appointed by their masters; they sometimes paid very high for this dignity, as the Greek patriarch at Constantinople pays for his at present.

Under Antiochus Epiphanes they revolted; the city was once more pillaged, and the walls demolished. After a succession of similar disasters, they at length obtained, for the first time, about a hundred and fifty years before the Christian era, permission to coin money, which permission was granted them by Antiochus Sidetes. They then had chiefs, who took the name of kings, and even wore a diadem. Antigonus was the first who was decorated with this ornament, which, without the power, confers but little honor.

At that time the Romans were beginning to become formidable to the kings of Syria, masters of the Jews; and the latter gained over the Roman senate by presents and acts of submission. It seemed that the wars in Asia Minor would, for a time at least, give some relief to this unfortunate people; but Jerusalem no sooner enjoyed some shadow of liberty than it was torn by civil wars, which rendered its condition under its phantoms of kings much more pitiable than it had ever been in so long and various a succession of bondages.

In their intestine troubles, they made the Romans their judges. Already most of the kingdoms of Asia Minor, Southern Africa, and three-fourths of Europe, acknowledged the Romans as their arbiters and masters.

Pompey came into Syria to judge the nation and to depose several petty tyrants. Being deceived by Aristobulus, who disputed the royalty of Jerusalem, he avenged himself upon him and his party. He took the city; had some of the seditious, either priests or Pharisees, crucified; and not long after, condemned Aristobulus, king of the Jews, to execution.

The Jews, ever unfortunate, ever enslaved, and ever revolting, again brought upon them the Roman arms. Crassus and Cassius punished them; and Metellus Scipio had a son of King Aristobulus, named Alexander, the author of all the troubles, crucified.

Under the great Cæsar, they were entirely subject and peaceable. Herod, famed among them and among us, for a long time was merely tetrarch, but obtained from Antony the crown of Judæa, for which he paid dearly; but Jerusalem would not recognize this new king, because he was descended from Esau, and not from Jacob, and was merely an Idumæan. The very circumstance of his being a foreigner caused him to be chosen by the Romans, the better to keep this people in check. The Romans protected the king of their nomination with an army; and Jerusalem was again taken by assault, sacked, and pillaged.

Herod, afterwards protected by Augustus, became one of the most powerful sovereigns among the petty kings of Arabia. He restored Jerusalem, repaired the fortifications that surrounded the temple, so dear to the Jews, and rebuilt the temple itself; but he could not finish it, for he wanted money and workmen. This proves that, after all, Herod was not rich; and the Jews, though fond of their temple, were still fonder of their money.

The name of king was nothing more than a favor granted by the Romans; it was not a title of succession. Soon after Herod’s death, Judæa was governed as a subordinate Roman province, by the proconsul of Syria, although from time to time the title of king was granted, sometimes to one Jew, sometimes to another, for a considerable sum of money, as under the emperor Claudius, when it was granted to the Jew Agrippa.

A daughter of Agrippa was that Berenice, celebrated for having been beloved by one of the best emperors Rome can boast. She it was who, by the injustice she experienced from her countrymen, drew down the vengeance of the Romans upon Jerusalem. She asked for justice, and the factions of the town refused it. The seditious spirit of the people impelled them to fresh excesses. Their character at all times was to be cruel; and their fate, to be punished.

This memorable siege, which ended in the destruction of the city, was carried on by Vespasian and Titus. The exaggerating Josephus pretends that in this short war more than a million of Jews were slaughtered. It is not to be wondered at that an author who puts fifteen thousand men in each village should slay a million. What remained were exposed in the public markets; and each Jew was sold at about the same price as the unclean animal of which they dare not eat.

In this last dispersion they again hoped for a deliverer; and under Adrian, whom they curse in their prayers, there arose one Barcochebas, who called himself a second Moses—a Shiloh—a Christ. Having assembled many of these wretched people under his banners, which they believed to be sacred, he perished with all his followers. It was the last struggle of this nation, which has never lifted its head again. Its constant opinion, that barrenness is a reproach, has preserved it; the Jews have ever considered as their two first duties, to get money and children.

From this short summary it results that the Hebrews have ever been vagrants, or robbers, or slaves, or seditious. They are still vagabonds upon the earth, and abhorred by men, yet affirming that heaven and earth and all mankind were created for them alone.

It is evident, from the situation of Judæa, and the genius of this people, that they could not but be continually subjugated. It was surrounded by powerful and warlike nations, for which it had an aversion; so that it could neither be in alliance with them, nor protected by them. It was impossible for it to maintain itself by its marine; for it soon lost the port which in Solomon’s time it had on the Red Sea; and Solomon himself always employed Tyrians to build and to steer his vessels, as well as to erect his palace and his temple. It is then manifest that the Hebrews had neither trade nor manufactures, and that they could not compose a flourishing people. They never had an army always ready for the field, like the Assyrians, the Medes, the Persians, the Syrians, and the Romans. The laborers and artisans took up arms only as occasion required, and consequently could not form well-disciplined troops. Their mountains, or rather their rocks, are neither high enough, nor sufficiently contiguous, to have afforded an effectual barrier against invasion. The most numerous part of the nation, transported to Babylon, Persia, and to India, or settled in Alexandria, were too much occupied with their traffic and their brokerage to think of war. Their civil government, sometimes republican, sometimes pontifical, sometimes monarchial, and very often reduced to anarchy, seems to have been no better than their military discipline.

You ask, what was the philosophy of the Hebrews? The answer will be a very short one—they had none. Their legislator himself does not anywhere speak expressly of the immortality of the soul, nor of the rewards of another life. Josephus and Philo believe the soul to be material; their doctors admitted corporeal angels; and when they sojourned at Babylon, they gave to these angels the names given them by the Chaldæans—Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel. The name of Satan is Babylonian, and is in somewise the Arimanes of Zoroaster. The name of Asmodeus also is Chaldæan; and Tobit, who lived in Nineveh, is the first who employed it. The dogma of the immortality of the soul was developed only in the course of ages, and among the Pharisees. The Sadducees always denied this spirituality, this immortality, and the existence of the angels. Nevertheless, the Sadducees communicated uninterruptedly with the Pharisees, and had even sovereign pontiffs of their own sect. The prodigious difference in opinion between these two great bodies did not cause any disturbance. The Jews, in the latter times of their sojourn at Jerusalem, were scrupulously attached to nothing but the ceremonials of their law. The man who had eaten pudding or rabbit would have been stoned; while he who denied the immortality of the soul might be high-priest.

It is commonly said that the abhorrence in which the Jews held other nations proceeded from their horror of idolatry; but it is much more likely that the manner in which they at the first exterminated some of the tribes of Canaan, and the hatred which the neighboring nations conceived for them, were the cause of this invincible aversion. As they knew no nations but their neighbors, they thought that in abhorring them they detested the whole earth, and thus accustomed themselves to be the enemies of all men.

One proof that this hatred was not caused by the idolatry of the nations is that we find in the history of the Jews that they were very often idolaters. Solomon himself sacrificed to strange gods. After him, we find scarcely any king in the little province of Judah that does not permit the worship of these gods and offer them incense. The province of Israel kept its two calves and its sacred groves, or adored other divinities.

This idolatry, with which so many nations are reproached, is a subject on which but little light has been thrown. Perhaps it would not be difficult to efface this stain upon the theology of the ancients. All polished nations had the knowledge of a supreme God, the master of the inferior gods and of men. The Egyptians themselves recognized a first principle, which they called Knef, and to which all beside was subordinate. The ancient Persians adored the good principle, named Orosmanes; and were very far from sacrificing to the bad principle, Arimanes, whom they regarded nearly as we regard the devil. Even to this day, the Guebers have retained the sacred dogma of the unity of God. The ancient Brahmins acknowledged one only Supreme Being; the Chinese associated no inferior being with the Divinity, nor had any idol until the times when the populace were led astray by the worship of Fo, and the superstitions of the bonzes. The Greeks and the Romans, notwithstanding the multitude of their gods, acknowledged in Jupiter the absolute sovereign of heaven and earth. Homer, himself in the most absurd poetical fictions, has never lost sight of this truth. He constantly represents Jupiter as the only Almighty, sending good and evil upon earth, and, with a motion of his brow, striking gods and men with awe. Altars were raised, and sacrifices offered to inferior gods, dependent on the one supreme. There is not a single monument of antiquity in which the title of sovereign of heaven is given to any secondary deity—to Mercury, to Apollo, to Mars. The thunderbolt was ever the attribute of the master of all, and of him only.

The idea of a sovereign being, of his providence, of his eternal decrees, is to be found among all philosophers and all poets. In short, it is perhaps as unjust to think that the ancients equalled the heroes, the genii, the inferior gods, to him whom they called “the father and master of the gods,” as it would be ridiculous to imagine that we associate with God the blessed and the angels.

You then ask whether the ancient philosophers and law-givers borrowed from the Jews, or the Jews from them? We must refer the question to Philo; he owns that before the translation of the Septuagint the books of his nation were unknown to strangers. A great people cannot have received their laws and their knowledge from a little people, obscure and enslaved. In the time of Osias, indeed, the Jews had no books; in his reign was accidentally found the only copy of the law then in existence. This people, after their captivity at Babylon, had no other alphabet than the Chaldæan; they were not famed for any art, any manufacture whatsoever; and even in the time of Solomon they were obliged to pay dear for foreign artisans. To say that the Egyptians, the Persians, the Greeks, were instructed by the Jews, were to say that the Romans learned the arts from the people of Brittany. The Jews never were natural philosophers, nor geometricians, nor astronomers. So far were they from having public schools for the instruction of youth, that they had not even a term in their language to express such an institution. The people of Peru and Mexico measured their year much better than the Jews. Their stay in Babylon and in Alexandria, during which individuals might instruct themselves, formed the people to no art save that of usury. They never knew how to stamp money; and when Antiochus Sidetes permitted them to have a coinage of their own, they were almost incapable of profiting by this permission for four or five years; indeed, this coin is said to have been struck at Samaria. Hence, it is, that Jewish medals are so rare, and nearly all false. In short, we find in them only an ignorant and barbarous people, who have long united the most sordid avarice with the most detestable superstition and the most invincible hatred for every people by whom they are tolerated and enriched. Still, we ought not to burn them.

SECTION II.

The Jewish Law.

Their law must appear, to every polished people, as singular as their conduct; if it were not divine, it would seem to be the law of savages beginning to assemble themselves into a nation; and being divine, one cannot understand how it is that it has not existed from all ages, for them, and for all men.

But it is more strange than all that the immortality of the soul is not even intimated in this law, entitled “Vaicrah and Addebarim,” Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

In this law it is forbidden to eat eels, because they have no scales; and hares, because they chew the cud, and have cloven feet. Apparently, the Jews had hares different from ours. The griffin is unclean, and four-footed birds are unclean, which animals are somewhat rare. Whoever touches a mouse, or a mole is unclean. The women are forbidden to lie with horses or asses. The Jewish women must have been subject to this sort of gallantry. The men are forbidden to offer up their seed to Moloch; and here the term seed is not metaphorical. It seems that it was customary, in the deserts of Arabia, to offer up this singular present to the gods; as it is said to be usual in Cochin and some other countries of India, for the girls to yield their virginity to an iron Priapus in a temple. These two ceremonies prove that mankind is capable of everything. The Kaffirs, who deprive themselves of one testicle, are a still more ridiculous example of the extravagance of superstition.

Another law of the Jews, equally strange, is their proof of adultery. A woman accused by her husband must be presented to the priests, and she is made to drink of the waters of jealousy, mixed with wormwood and dust. If she is innocent, the water makes her more beautiful; if she is guilty, her eyes start from her head, her belly swells, and she bursts before the Lord.

We shall not here enter into the details of all these sacrifices, which were nothing more than the operations of ceremonial butchers; but it of great importance to remark another kind of sacrifice too common in those barbarous times. It is expressly ordered, in the twenty-seventh chapter of Leviticus, that all men, vowed in anathema to the Lord, be immolated; they “shall surely be put to death”; such are the words of the text. Here is the origin of the story of Jephthah, whether his daughter was really immolated, or the story was copied from that of Iphigenia. Here, too, is the source of the vow made by Saul, who would have immolated his son, but that the army, less superstitious than himself, saved the innocent young man’s life.

It is then but too true that the Jews, according to their law, sacrificed human victims. This act of religion is in accordance with their manners; their own books represent them as slaughtering without mercy all that came in their way, reserving only the virgins for their use.

It would be very difficult—and should be very unimportant—to know at what time these laws were digested into the form in which we now have them. That they are of very high antiquity is enough to inform us how gross and ferocious the manners of that antiquity were.

SECTION III.

The Dispersion of the Jews.

It has been pretended that the dispersion of this people had been foretold, as a punishment for their refusing to acknowledge Jesus Christ as the Messiah; the asserters affecting to forget that they had been dispersed throughout the known world long before Jesus Christ. The books that are left us of this singular nation make no mention of a return of the twelve tribes transported beyond the Euphrates by Tiglath-Pileser and his successor Shalmaneser; and it was six hundred years after, that Cyrus sent back to Jerusalem the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, which Nebuchodonosor had brought away into the provinces of his empire. The Acts of the Apostles certify that fifty-three days after the death of Jesus Christ, there were Jews from every nation under heaven assembled for the feast of Pentecost. St. James writes to the twelve dispersed tribes; and Josephus and Philo speak of the Jews as very numerous throughout the East.

It is true that, considering the carnage that was made of them under some of the Roman emperors, and the slaughter of them so often repeated in every Christian state, one is astonished that this people not only still exists, but is at this day no less numerous than it was formerly. Their numbers must be attributed to their exemption from bearing arms, their ardor for marriage, their custom of contracting it in their families early, their law of divorce, their sober and regular way of life, their abstinence, their toil, and their exercise.

Their firm attachment to the Mosaic law is no less remarkable, especially when we consider their frequent apostasies when they lived under the government of their kings and their judges; and Judaism is now, of all the religions in the world, the one most rarely abjured—which is partly the fruit of the persecutions it has suffered. Its followers, perpetual martyrs to their creed, have regarded themselves with progressively increasing confidence, as the fountain of all sanctity; looking upon us as no other than rebellious Jews, who have abjured the law of God, and put to death or torture those who received it from His hand.

Indeed, if while Jerusalem and its temple existed, the Jews were sometimes driven from their country by the vicissitudes of empires, they have still more frequently been expelled through a blind zeal from every country in which they have dwelt since the progress of Christianity and Mahometanism. They themselves compare their religion to a mother, upon whom her two daughters, the Christian and the Mahometan, have inflicted a thousand wounds. But, how ill soever she has been treated by them, she still glories in having given them birth. She makes use of them both to embrace the whole world, while her own venerable age embraces all time.

It is singular that the Christians pretend to have accomplished the prophecies by tyrannizing over the Jews, by whom they were transmitted. We have already seen how the Inquisition banished the Jews from Spain. Obliged to wander from land to land, from sea to sea, to gain a livelihood; everywhere declared incapable of possessing any landed property, or holding any office, they have been obliged to disperse, and roam from place to place, unable to establish themselves permanently in any country, for want of support, of power to maintain their ground, and of knowledge in the art of war. Trade, a profession long despised by most of the nations of Europe, was, in those barbarous ages, their only resource; and as they necessarily grew rich by it, they were treated as infamous usurers. Kings who could not ransack the purses of their subjects, put the Jews, whom they regarded not as citizens, to torture.

What was done to them in England may give some idea of what they experienced in other countries. King John, being in want of money, had the rich Jews in his kingdom imprisoned. One of them, having had seven of his teeth drawn one after another, to obtain his property, gave, on losing the eighth, a thousand marks of silver. Henry III. extorted from Aaron, a Jew of York, fourteen thousand marks of silver, and ten thousand for his queen. He sold the rest of the Jews of his country to his brother Richard, for the term of one year, in order, says Matthew Paris, that this count might disembowel those whom his brother had flayed.

In France they were put in prison, plundered, sold, accused of magic, of sacrificing children, of poisoning the fountains. They were driven out of the kingdom; they were suffered to return for money; and even while they were tolerated, they were distinguished from the rest of the inhabitants by marks of infamy. And, by an inconceivable whimsicality, while in other countries the Jews were burned to make them embrace Christianity, in France the property of such as became Christians was confiscated. Charles IV., by an edict given at Basville, April 4, 1392, abrogated this tyrannical custom, which, according to the Benedictine Mabillon, had been introduced for two reasons:

First, to try the faith of these new converts, as it was but too common for those of this nation to feign submission to the gospel for some personal interest, without internally changing their belief.

Secondly, because as they had derived their wealth chiefly from usury, the purity of Christian morals appeared to require them to make a general restitution, which was effected by confiscation.

But the true reason of this custom, which the author of the “Spirit of Laws” has so well developed, was a sort of “droit d’amortissement”—a redemption for the sovereign, or the seigneurs, of the taxes which they levied on the Jews, as mortmainable serfs, whom they succeeded; for they were deprived of this benefit when the latter were converted to the Christian faith.

At length, being incessantly proscribed in every country, they ingeniously found the means of saving their fortunes and making their retreats forever secure. Being driven from France under Philip the Long, in 1318, they took refuge in Lombardy; there they gave to the merchants bills of exchange on those to whom they had entrusted their effects at their departure, and these were discharged.

The admirable invention of bills of exchange sprang from the extremity of despair; and then, and not until then, commerce was enabled to elude the efforts of violence, and to maintain itself throughout the world.

SECTION IV.

In Answer to Some Objections. Letters to Joseph, Ben, Jonathan, Aaron, Mathatai, and David Wincker.

FIRST LETTER.

Gentlemen:

When, forty-four years ago, your countryman Medina became a bankrupt in London, being twenty thousand francs in my debt, he told me that “it was not his fault; that he was unfortunate”; that “he had never been one of the children of Belial”; that “he had always endeavored to live as a son of God”—that is, as an honest man, a good Israelite. I was affected; I embraced him; we joined in the praise of God; and I lost eighty per cent.

You ought to know that I never hated your nation; I hate no one; not even Fréron.

Far from hating, I have always pitied you. If, like my protector, good Pope Lambertini, I have sometimes bantered a little, I am not therefore the less sensitive. I wept, at the age of sixteen, when I was told that a mother and her daughter had been burned at Lisbon for having eaten, standing, a little lamb, cooked with lettuce, on the fourteenth day of the red moon; and I can assure you that the extreme beauty that this girl was reported to have possessed, had no share in calling forth my tears, although it must have increased the spectators’ horror for the assassins, and their pity for the victim.

I know not how it entered my head to write an epic poem at the age of twenty. (Do you know what an epic poem is? For my part I knew nothing of the matter.) The legislator Montesquieu had not yet written his “Persian Letters,” which you reproach me with having commented on; but I had already of myself said, speaking of a monster well known to your ancestors, and which even now is not without devotees:

Il vient; le fanatisme est son horrible nom;

Enfant dénaturé de la religion;

Armé pour la défendre, il cherche à la détruire,

Et reçu dans son sein, l’embrasse et le déchire,

C’est lui qui dans Raba, sur les bords de l’Arnon

Guidait les descendans du malheureux Ammon,

Quand à Moloch leur dieu des mères gémissantes

Offraient de leurs enfans les entrailles fumantes.

Il dicta de Jephté le serment inhumain;

Dans le cœur de sa fille il conduisait sa main.

C’est lui qui, de Calchas ouvrant la bouche impie

Demanda par sa voix la mort d’Iphigénie.

France, dans tes forêts il habita long-temps,

À l’affreux Tentatès il offrit ton encens.

Tu n’a point oublié ces sacres homicides,

Qu’ à tes indignes dieux présentaient tes druides.

Du haut du capitole il criait aux Païens.

“Frappez, exterminez, déchirez les chrétiens.”

Mais lorsqu’au fils de Dieu Rome enfin fut soumise,

Du capitole en cendre il passa dans l’Église;

Et dans les cœurs chrétiens inspirant ses fureurs,

De martyrs qu’ils étaient les fit persécuteurs.

Dans Londres il a formé la secte turbulente

Qui sur un roi trop faible a mis sa main sanglante;

Dans Madrid, dans Lisbonne, il allume ces feux,

Ces buchers solennels où des Juifs malheureux

Sont tous les ans en pompe envoyés par des prêtres,

Pour n’avoir point quitté la foi de leurs ancêtres.

He comes; the fiend Fanaticism comes—

Religion’s horrid and unnatural child—

Armed to defend her, arming to destroy—

Tearing her bosom in his feigned embrace.

’Twas he who guided Ammon’s wretched race

On Arnon’s banks, where mothers offered up

Their children’s mangled limbs on Moloch’s altars.

’Twas he who prompted Jephthah’s barbarous oath,

And aimed the poniard at his daughter’s heart.

’Twas he who spoke, when Calchas’ impious tongue

Called for the blameless Iphigenia’s death.

France, he long revelled in thy forest shades,

Offering thy incense to the grim Tentates,

Whetting the savage Druid’s murderous knife

To sate his worthless gods with human gore.

He, from the Capitol, stirred Pagan hearts

To exterminate Christ’s followers; and he,

When Rome herself had bowed to Christian truth,

Quitted the Capitol to rule the church—

To reign supreme in every Christian soul,

And make the Pagans martyrs in their turn.

His were in England the fierce sect who laid

Their bloody hands on a too feeble king.

His are Madrid’s and Lisbon’s horrid fires,

The yearly portion of unhappy Jews,

By priestly judges doomed to temporal flames

For thinking their forefathers’ faith the best.

You clearly see, then, that even so long ago I was your servant, your friend, your brother; although my father and mother had preserved to me my foreskin.

I am aware that virility, whether circumcised or uncircumcised, has caused very fatal quarrels. I know what it cost Priam’s son Paris, and Agamemnon’s brother Menelaus. I have read enough of your books to know that Hamor’s son Sichem ravished Leah’s daughter Dinah, who at most was not more than five years old, but was very forward for her age. He wanted to make her his wife; and Jacob’s sons, brothers of the violated damsel, gave her to him in marriage on condition that he and all his people should be circumcised. When the operation was performed, and all the Sichemites, or Sechemites, were lying-in of the pains consequent thereupon, the holy patriarchs Simeon and Levi cut all their throats one after another. But, after all, I do not believe that uncircumcision ought now to produce such abominable horrors; and especially I do not think that men should hate, detest, anathematize, and damn one another every Saturday and Sunday, on account of a morsel more or less of flesh.

If I have said that some of the circumcised have clipped money at Metz, at Frankfort on the Oder, and at Warsaw (which I do not remember) I ask their pardon; for, being almost at the end of my pilgrimage, I have no wish to embroil myself with Israel.

I have the honor to be (as they say),

Yours, etc.

SECOND LETTER.

Antiquity of the Jews.

Gentlemen:

I have ever agreed, having read a few historical books for amusement, that you are a very ancient people, and your origin may be dated much farther back than that of the Teutones, the Celts, the Slavonians, the Angles, and Hurons. I see you assembling as a people in a capital called, sometimes Hershalaïm, sometimes Shaheb, on the hill Moriah, and on the hill Sion, near a desert, on a stony soil, by a small torrent which is dry six months of the year.

When you began to establish yourselves in your corner, I will not say of land, but of pebbles, Troy had been destroyed by the Greeks about two centuries.

Medon was archon of Athens. Echestratus was reigning in Lacedæmon. Latinus Sylvius was reigning in Latium; and Osochor in Egypt. The Indies had been flourishing for a long succession of ages.

This was the most illustrious period of Chinese history. The emperor Tchin-wang was reigning with glory over that vast empire; all the sciences were there cultivated; and the public annals inform us that the king of Cochin China, being come to pay his respects to this emperor, Tchin-wang, received from him a present of a mariner’s compass. This compass might have been of great service to your Solomon, for his fleets that went to the fine country of Ophir, which no one has ever known anything about.

Thus, after the Chaldæans, the Syrians, the Persians, the Phœnicians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Indians, the Chinese, the Latins, and the Etruscans, you are the first people upon earth who had any known form of government.

The Banians, the Guebers, and yourselves, are the only nations which, dispersed out of their own country, have preserved their ancient rites; if I make no account of the little Egyptian troops, called Zingari in Italy, Gypsies in England, and Bohemians in France, which had preserved the antique ceremonies of the worship of Isis, the sistrum, the cymbals, the dance of Isis, the prophesying, and the art of robbing hen-roosts.

These sacred troops are beginning to disappear from the face of the earth; while their pyramids still belong to the Turks, who perhaps will not always be masters of them—the figure of all things on this earth doth so pass away.

You say, that you have been settled in Spain ever since the days of Solomon: I believe it, and will even venture to think that the Phœnicians might have carried some Jews thither long before, when you were slaves in Phœnicia, after the horrid massacres which you say were committed by the robber Joshua, and by that other robber Caleb.

Your books indeed say, that you were reduced to slavery under Chushan-Rashataim, king of Mesopotamia, for eight years; under Eglon, king of Moab, for eighteen years; then under Jabin, king of Canaan, for twenty years; then in the little canton of Midian, from which you had issued, and where you dwelt in caverns, for seven years; then in Gilead, for eighteen years—notwithstanding that Jair, your prince, had thirty sons, each mounted on a fine ass—then under the Phœnicians (called by you Philistines), for forty years—until at last the Lord Adonai sent Samson, who tied three hundred foxes, one to another by the tails, and slew a thousand Philistines with the jaw-bone of an ass, from which issued a fountain of clear water; which has been very well represented at the Comédie Italienne.

Here are, by your own confession, ninety-six years of captivity in the land of promise. Now it is very probable that the Syrians, who were the factors for all nations, and navigated as far as the great ocean, bought some Jewish slaves, and took them to Cadiz, which they founded. You see that you are much more ancient than you think. It is indeed very likely that you inhabited Spain several centuries before the Romans, the Goths, the Vandals, and the Moors.

I am not only your friend, your brother, but moreover your genealogist. I beg, gentlemen, that you will have the goodness to believe, that I never have believed, I do not believe, and I never will believe, that you are descended from those highway robbers whose ears and noses were cut off by order of King Actisanes, and whom, according to Diodorus of Sicily, he sent into the desert between Lake Sirbo and Mount Sinai—a frightful desert where water and every other necessary of life are wanting. They made nets to catch quails, which fed them for a few weeks, during the passage of the birds.

Some of the learned have pretended that this origin perfectly agrees with your history. You yourselves say, that you inhabited this desert, that there you wanted water, and lived on quails, which in reality abound there. Your accounts appear in the main to confirm that of Diodorus; but I believe only the Pentateuch. The author does not say that you had your ears and noses cut off. As far as I remember, (for I have not Diodorus at hand), you lost only your noses. I do not now recollect where I read that your ears were of the party; it might be in some fragments of Manetho, cited by St. Ephraem.

In vain does the secretary, who has done me the honor of writing to me in your name, assure me that you stole to the amount of upwards of nine millions in gold, coined or carved, to go and set up your tabernacle in the desert. I maintain, that you carried off nothing but what lawfully belonged to you, reckoning interest at forty per cent., which was the lawful rate.

Be this as it may, I certify that you are of very good nobility, and that you were lords of Hershalaïm long before the houses of Suabia, Anhalt, Saxony, and Bavaria were heard of.

It may be that the negroes of Angola, and those of Guinea, are much more ancient than you, and that they adored a beautiful serpent before the Egyptians knew their Isis, and you dwelt near Lake Sirbo; but the negroes have not yet communicated their books to us.

THIRD LETTER.

On a few Crosses which befell God’s People.

Far from accusing you, gentlemen, I have always regarded you with compassion. Permit me here to remind you of what I have read in the preliminary discourse to the “Essay on the Spirit and Manners of Nations,” and on general history. Here we find, that two hundred and thirty-nine thousand and twenty Jews were slaughtered by one another, from the worshipping of the golden calf to the taking of the ark by the Philistines—which cost fifty thousand and seventy Jews their lives, for having dared to look upon the ark, while those who had so insolently taken it in war, were acquitted with only the piles, and a fine of five golden mice, and five golden anuses. You will not deny that the slaughter of two hundred and thirty-nine thousand and twenty men, by your fellow-countrymen, without reckoning those whom you lost in alternate war and slavery, must have been very detrimental to a rising colony.

How should I do otherwise than pity you? seeing that ten of your tribes were absolutely annihilated, or perhaps reduced to two hundred families, which, it is said, are to be found in China and Tartary. As for the two other tribes, I need not tell you what has happened to them. Suffer them my compassion, and do not impute to me ill-will.

FOURTH LETTER.

The Story of Micah.

Be not displeased at my asking from you some elucidation of a singular passage in your history, with which the ladies of Paris and people of fashion are but slightly acquainted.

Your Moses had not been dead quite thirty-eight years when the mother of Micah, of the tribe of Benjamin, lost eleven hundred shekels, which are said to be equivalent to about six hundred livres of our money. Her son returned them to her; the text does not inform us that he had not stolen them. The good Jewess immediately had them made into idols, and, according to custom, built them a little movable chapel. A Levite of Bethlehem offered himself to perform the service for ten francs per annum, two tunics, and his victuals.

A tribe (afterwards called the tribe of Dan) searching that neighborhood for something to plunder, passed near Micah’s house. The men of Dan, knowing that Micah’s mother had in her house a priest, a seer, a diviner, a rhoë, inquired of him if their excursion would be lucky—if they should find a good booty. The Levite promised them complete success. They began by robbing Micah’s chapel, and took from her even her Levite. In vain did Micah and his mother cry out: “You are carrying away my gods! You are stealing my priest!” The robbers silenced them, and went, through devotion, to put to fire and sword the little town of Dan, whose name this tribe adopted.

These freebooters were very grateful to Micah’s gods, which had done them such good service, and placed them in a new tabernacle. The crowd of devotees increasing, a new priest was wanted, and one presented himself. Those who are not conversant with your history will never divine who this chaplain was: but, gentlemen, you know that it was Moses’ own grandson, one Jonathan, son of Gershom, son of Moses and Jethro’s daughter.

You will agree with me, that the family of Moses was rather a singular one. His brother, at the age of one hundred, cast a golden calf and worshipped it; and his grandson turned chaplain to the idols for money. Does not this prove that your religion was not yet formed, and that you were a long time groping in the dark before you became perfect Israelites as you now are?

To my question you answer, that our Simon Peter Barjonas did as much; that he commenced his apostleship with denying his master. I have nothing to reply, except it be, that we must always distrust ourselves; and so great is my own self-distrust, that I conclude my letter with assuring you of my utmost indulgence, and requesting yours.

FIFTH LETTER.

Jewish Assassinations. Were the Jews Cannibals? Had their Mothers Commerce with Goats? Did their Fathers and Mothers Immolate their Children? With a few other fine Actions of God’s People.

Gentlemen,

—I have been somewhat uncourteous to your secretary. It is against the rules of politeness to scold a servant in the presence of his master; but self-important ignorance is revolting in a Christian who makes himself the servant of a Jew. I address myself directly to you, that I may have nothing more to do with your livery.

Jewish Calamities and Great Assassinations.

Permit me, in the first place, to lament over all your calamities; for, besides the two hundred and thirty-nine thousand and twenty Israelites killed by order of the Lord, I find that Jephthah’s daughter was immolated by her father. Turn which way you please—twixt the text as you will—dispute as you like against the fathers of the Church; still he did to her as he had vowed; and he had vowed to cut his daughter’s throat in thanksgiving to God. An excellent thanksgiving!

Yes, you have immolated human victims to the Lord; but be consoled; I have often told you that our Celts and all nations have done so formerly. What says M. de Bougainville, who has returned from the island of Otaheite—that island of Cytherea, whose inhabitants, peaceful, mild, humane, and hospitable, offer to the traveller all that they possess—the most delicious of fruits—the most beautiful and most obliging of women? He tells us that these people have their jugglers; and that these jugglers force them to sacrifice their children to apes, which they call their gods.

I find that seventy brothers of Abimelech were put to death on the same stone by this Abimelech, the son of Gideon and a prostitute. This son of Gideon was a bad kinsman, and this Gideon, the friend of God, was very debauched.

Your Levite going on his ass to Gibeah—the Gibeonites wanting to violate him—his poor wife violated in his stead, and dying in consequence—the civil war that ensued—all your tribe of Benjamin exterminated, saving only six hundred men—give me inexpressible pain.

You lost, all at once, five fine towns which the Lord destined for you, at the end of the lake of Sodom; and that for an inconceivable attempt upon the modesty of two angels. Really, this is much worse than what your mothers are accused of with the goats. How should I have other than the greatest pity for you, when I find murder and bestiality established against your ancestors, who are our first spiritual fathers, and our near kinsmen according to the flesh? For after all, if you are descended from Shem, we are descended from Japhet. We are therefore evidently cousins.

Melchim, or Petty Kings of the Jews.

Your Samuel had good reason for not wishing you to have kings; for nearly all your kings were assassins, beginning with David, who assassinated Mephibosheth, son of Jonathan, his tender friend, whom he “loved with a love greater than that of woman”; who assassinated Uriah, the husband of Bathsheba; who assassinated even the infants at the breast in the villages in alliance with his protector Achish; who on his death-bed commanded the assassination of his general Joab and his counsel Shimei—beginning, I say, with this David, and with Solomon, who assassinated his own brother Adonijah, clinging in vain to the altar, and ending with Herod “the Great,” who assassinated his brother-in-law, his wife, and all his kindred, including even his children.

I say nothing of the fourteen thousand little boys whom your petty king, this mighty Herod, had slaughtered in the village of Bethlehem. They are, as you know, buried at Cologne with our eleven thousand virgins; and one of these infants is still to be seen entire. You do not believe this authentic story, because it is not in your canon, and your Flavius Josephus makes no mention of it. I say nothing of the eleven hundred thousand men killed in the town of Jerusalem alone, during its siege by Titus. In good faith, the cherished nation is a very unlucky one.

Did the Jews Eat Human Flesh?

Among your calamities, which have so often made me shudder, I have always reckoned your misfortune in having eaten human flesh. You say that this happened only on great occasions; that it was not you whom the Lord invited to His table to eat the horse and the horseman, and that only the birds were the guests. I am willing to believe it.

Were the Jewish Ladies Intimate with Goats?

You assert that your mothers had no commerce with he-goats, nor your fathers with she-goats. But pray, gentlemen, why are you the only people upon earth whose laws have forbidden such commerce? Would any legislator ever have thought of promulgating this extraordinary law if the offence had not been common?

Did the Jews Immolate Human Victims?

You venture to affirm that you have never immolated human victims to the Lord. What, then, was the murder of Jephthah’s daughter, who was really immolated, as we have already shown from your own books?

How will you explain the anathema of the thirty-two virgins, that were the tribute of the Lord, when you took thirty-two thousand Midianitish virgins and sixty-one thousand asses? I will not here tell you, that according to this account there were not two asses for each virgin; but I will ask you, what was this tribute for the Lord? According to your Book of Numbers, there were sixteen thousand girls for your soldiers, sixteen thousand for your priests, and on the soldiers’ share there was levied a tribute of thirty-two virgins for the Lord. What became of them? You had no nuns. What was the Lord’s share in all your wars, if it was not blood? Did not the priest Samuel hack in pieces King Agag, whose life King Saul had saved? Did he not sacrifice him as the Lord’s share?

Either renounce your sacred books, in which, according to the decision of the church, I firmly believe, or acknowledge that your forefathers offered up to God rivers of human blood, unparalleled by any people on earth.

The Thirty-two Thousand Virgins, the Seventy-five Thousand Oxen, and the Fruitful Desert of Midian.

Let your secretary no longer evade—no longer equivocate, respecting the carnage of the Midianites and their villages. I feel great concern that your butcher-priest Eleazar, general of the Jewish armies, should have found in that little miserable and desert country, seventy-five thousand oxen, sixty-one thousand asses, and six hundred and seventy-five thousand sheep, without reckoning the rams and the lambs.

Now if you took thirty-two thousand infant girls, it is likely that there were as many infant boys, and as many fathers and mothers. These united amount to a hundred and twenty-eight thousand captives, in a desert where there is nothing to eat, nothing to drink but brackish water, and which is inhabited by some wandering Arabs, to the number of two or three thousand at most. You will besides observe, that, on all the maps, this frightful country is not more than eight leagues long, and as many broad.

But were it as large, as fertile, and as populous as Normandy or the Milanese, no matter. I hold to the text, which says, the Lord’s share was thirty-two maidens. Confound as you please Midian by the Red Sea with Midian by Sodom; I shall still demand an account of my thirty-two thousand virgins. Have you employed your secretary to calculate how many oxen and maidens the fine country of Midian is capable of feeding?

Gentlemen, I inhabit a canton which is not the Land of Promise; but we have a lake much finer than that of Sodom, and our soil is moderately productive. Your secretary tells me that an acre of Midian will feed three oxen: I assure you, gentlemen, that with us an acre will feed but one. If your secretary will triple the revenue of my lands, I will give him good wages, and will not pay him with drafts on the receivers-general. He will not find a better situation in all the country of Midian than with me; but unfortunately this man knows no more of oxen than he does of golden calves.

As for the thirty-two thousand maidenheads, I wish him joy of them. Our little country is as large as Midian. It contains about four thousand drunkards, a dozen attorneys, two men of sense, and four thousand persons of the fair sex, who are not uniformly pretty. These together make about eight thousand people, supposing that the registrar who gave me the account did not exaggerate by one-half, according to custom. Either your priests or ours would have had considerable difficulty in finding thirty-two thousand virgins for their use in our country. This makes me very doubtful concerning the numberings of the Roman people, at the time when their empire extended just four leagues from the Tarpeian rock, and they carried a handful of hay at the end of a pole for a standard. Perhaps you do not know that the Romans passed five hundred years in plundering their neighbors before they had any historian, and that their numberings, like their miracles, are very suspicious.

As for the sixty-one thousand asses, the fruits of your conquests in Midian—enough has been said of asses.

Jewish Children Immolated by their Mothers.

I tell you, that your fathers immolated their children; and I call your prophets to witness. Isaiah reproaches them with this cannibalish crime: “Slaying the children of the valleys under the clefts of the rocks.”

You will tell me, that it was not to the Lord Adonaï that the women sacrificed the fruit of their womb—that it was to some other god. But what matters it whether you called him to whom you offered up your children Melkom, or Sadaï, or Baal, or Adonai? That which it concerns us to know is, that you were parricides. It was to strange idols, you say, that your fathers made their offerings. Well,—I pity you still more for being descended from fathers at once both parricidal and idolatrous. I condole with you, that your fathers were idolaters for forty successive years in the desert of Sinai, as is expressly said by Jeremiah, Amos, and St. Stephen.

You were idolaters in the time of the Judges; and the grandson of Moses was priest of the tribe of Dan, who, as we have seen, were all idolaters; for it is necessary to repeat—to insist; otherwise everything is forgotten.

You were idolaters under your kings; you were not faithful to one God only, until after Esdras had restored your books. Then it was that your uninterruptedly true worship began; and by an incomprehensible providence of the Supreme Being, you have been the most unfortunate of all men ever since you became the most faithful—under the kings of Syria, under the kings of Egypt, under Herod the Idumæan, under the Romans, under the Persians, under the Arabs, under the Turks—until now, that you do me the honor of writing to me, and I have the honor of answering you.

SIXTH LETTER.

Beauty of the Land of Promise.

Do not reproach me with not loving you. I love you so much that I wish you were in Hershalaïm, instead of the Turks, who ravage your country; but who, nevertheless, have built a very fine mosque on the foundations of your temple, and on the platform constructed by your Herod.

You would cultivate that miserable desert, as you cultivated it formerly; you would carry earth to the bare tops of your arid mountains; you would not have much corn, but you would have very good vines, a few palms, olive trees, and pastures.

Though Palestine does not equal Provence, though Marseilles alone is superior to all Judæa, which had not one sea-port; though the town of Aix is incomparably better situated than Jerusalem, you might nevertheless make of your territory almost as much as the Provençals have made of theirs. You might execute, to your hearts’ content, your own detestable psalmody in your own detestable jargon.

It is true, that you would have no horses; for there are not, nor have there ever been, about Hershalaïm, any but asses. You would often be in want of wheat, but you would obtain it from Egypt or Syria.

You might convey merchandise to Damascus and to Saïd on your asses—or indeed on camels—which you never knew anything of in the time of your Melchim, and which would be a great assistance to you. In short, assiduous toil, to which man is born, would fertilize this land, which the lords of Constantinople and Asia Minor neglect.

This promised land of yours is very bad. Are you acquainted with St. Jerome? He was a Christian priest, one of those men whose books you do not read. However, he lived a long time in your country; he was a very learned person—not indeed slow to anger, for when contradicted he was prodigal of abuse—but knowing your language better than you do, for he was a good grammarian. Study was his ruling passion; anger was only second to it. He had turned priest, together with his friend Vincent, on condition that they should never say mass nor vespers, lest they should be too much interrupted in their studies; for being directors of women and girls, had they been moreover obliged to labor in the priestly office, they would not have had two hours in the day left for Greek, Chaldee, and the Jewish idiom. At last, in order to have more leisure, Jerome retired altogether, to live among the Jews at Bethlehem, as Huet, bishop of Avranches, retired to the Jesuits, at the house of the professed, Rue St. Antoine, at Paris.

Jerome did, it is true, embroil himself with the bishop of Jerusalem, named John, with the celebrated priest Rufinus, and with several of his friends; for, as I have already said, Jerome was full of choler and self-love, and St. Augustine charges him with levity and fickleness: but he was not the less holy, he was not the less learned, nor is his testimony the less to be received, concerning the nature of the wretched country in which his ardor for study and his melancholy confined him.

Be so obliging as to read his letter to Dardanus, written in the year 414 of our era, which, according to the Jewish reckoning, is the year of the world 4000, or 4001, or 4003, or 4004, as you please.

“I beg of those who assert that the Jewish people, after the coming out of Egypt, took possession of this country, which to us, by the passion and resurrection of our Saviour, has become truly a land of promise—I beg of them, I say, to show us what this people possessed. Their whole dominions extended only from Dan to Beersheba, about one hundred and sixty miles in length. The Holy Scriptures give no more to David and to Solomon . . . . I am ashamed to say what is the breadth of the land of promise, and I fear that the pagans will thence take occasion to blaspheme. It is but forty-six miles from Joppa to our little town of Bethlehem, beyond which all is a frightful desert.”

Read also the letter to one of his devotees, in which he says, that from Jerusalem to Bethlehem there is nothing but pebbles, and no water to drink; but that farther on, towards the Jordan, you find very good valleys in that country full of bare mountains. This really was a land of milk and honey, in comparison with the abominable desert of Horeb and Sinai, from which you originally came. The sorry province of Champagne is the land of promise, in relation to some parts of the Landes of Bordeaux—the banks of the Aar are the land of promise, when compared with the little Swiss cantons; all Palestine is very bad land, in comparison with Egypt, which you say you came out of as thieves; but it is a delightful country, if you compare it with the deserts of Jerusalem, Sodom, Horeb, Sinai, Kadesh, etc.

Go back to Judæa as soon as you can. I ask of you only two or three Hebrew families, in order to establish a little necessary trade at Mount Krapak, where I reside. For, if you are (like us) very ridiculous theologians, you are very intelligent buyers and sellers, which we are not.

SEVENTH LETTER.

Charity which God’s People and the Christians should entertain for each other.

My tenderness for you has only a few words more to say. We have been accustomed for ages to hang you up between two dogs; we have repeatedly driven you away through avarice; we have recalled you through avarice and stupidity; we still, in more towns than one, make you pay for liberty to breathe the air: we have, in more kingdoms than one, sacrificed you to God; we have burned you as holocausts—for I will not follow your example, and dissemble that we have offered up sacrifices of human blood; all the difference is, that our priests, content with applying your money to their own use, have had you burned by laymen; while your priests always immolated the human victims with their own sacred hands. You were monsters of cruelty and fanaticism in Palestine; we have been so in Europe: my friends, let all this be forgotten.

Would you live in peace? Imitate the Banians and the Guebers. They are much more ancient than you are; they are dispersed like you; they are, like you, without a country. The Guebers, in particular, who are the ancient Persians, are slaves like you, after being for a long while masters. They say not a word. Follow their example. You are calculating animals—try to be thinking ones.

JOB.

Good day, friend Job! thou art one of the most ancient originals of which books make mention; thou wast not a Jew; we know that the book which bears thy name is more ancient than the Pentateuch. If the Hebrews, who translated it from the Arabic, made use of the word “Jehovah” to signify God, they borrowed it from the Phœnicians and Egyptians, of which men of learning are assured. The word “Satan” was not Hebrew; it was Chaldæan, as is well known.

Thou dwelledst on the confines of Chaldæa. Commentators, worthy of their profession, pretend that thou didst believe in the resurrection, because, being prostrate on thy dunghill, thou hast said, in thy nineteenth chapter, that thou wouldst one day rise up from it. A patient who wishes his cure is not anxious for resurrection in lieu of it; but I would speak to thee of other things.

Confess that thou wast a great babbler; but thy friends were much greater. It is said that thou possessedst seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, one thousand cows, and five hundred sheasses. I will reckon up their value:

| livres.
Seven thousand sheep, at three livres ten sous apiece |   22,500
Three thousand camels at fifty crowns apiece | 450,000
A thousand cows, one with the other, cannot be valued at less than |   80,000
And five hundred she-asses, at twenty francs an ass |   10,000
The whole amounts to | 562,500

without reckoning thy furniture, rings and jewels.

I have been much richer than thou; and though I have lost a great part of my property and am ill, like thyself I have not murmured against God, as thy friends seem to reproach thee with sometimes doing.

I am not at all pleased with Satan, who, to induce thee to sin, and to make thee forget God, demanded permission to take away all thy property, and to give thee the itch. It is in this state that men always have recourse to divinity. They are prosperous people who forgot God. Satan knew not enough of the world at that time; he has improved himself since; and when he would be sure of any one, he makes him a farmer-general, or something better if possible, as our friend Pope has clearly shown in his history of the knight Sir Balaam.

Thy wife was an impertinent, but thy pretended friends Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuite, and Zophar, the Naamathite, were much more insupportable. They exhorted thee to patience in a manner that would have roused the mildest of men; they made thee long sermons more tiresome than those preached by the knave V—e at Amsterdam, and by so many other people.

It is true that thou didst not know what thou saidst, when exclaiming—“My God, am I a sea or a whale, to be shut up by Thee as in a prison?” But thy friends knew no more when they answered thee, “that the morn cannot become fresh without dew, and that the grass of the field cannot grow without water.” Nothing is less consolatory than this axiom.

Zophar of Naamath reproached thee with being a prater; but none of these good friends lent thee a crown. I would not have treated thee thus. Nothing is more common than people who advise; nothing more rare than those who assist. Friends are not worth much, from whom we cannot procure a drop of broth if we are in misery. I imagine that when God restored thy riches and health, these eloquent personages dared not present themselves before thee, hence the comforters of Job have become a proverb.

God was displeased with them, and told them sharply, in chap. xlii., that they were tiresome and imprudent, and he condemned them to a fine of seven bullocks and seven rams, for having talked nonsense. I would have condemned them for not having assisted their friend.

I pray thee, tell me if it is true, that thou livedst a hundred and forty years after this adventure. I like to learn that honest people live long; but men of the present day must be great rogues, since their lives are comparatively so short.

As to the rest, the book of Job is one of the most precious of antiquity. It is evident that this book is the work of an Arab who lived before the time in which we place Moses. It is said that Eliphaz, one of the interlocutors, is of Teman, which was an ancient city of Arabia. Bildad was of Shua, another town of Arabia. Zophar was of Naamath, a still more eastern country of Arabia.

But what is more remarkable, and which shows that this fable cannot be that of a Jew, is, that three constellations are spoken of, which we now call Arcturus, Orion, and the Pleiades. The Hebrews never had the least knowledge of astronomy; they had not even a word to express this science; all that regards the mental science was unknown to them, inclusive even of the term geometry.

The Arabs, on the contrary, living in tents, and being continually led to observe the stars, were perhaps the first who regulated their years by the inspection of the heavens.

The more important observation is, that one God alone is spoken of in this book. It is an absurd error to imagine that the Jews were the only people who recognized a sole God; it was the doctrine of almost all the East, and the Jews were only plagiarists in that as in everything else.

In chapter xxxviii. God Himself speaks to Job from the midst of a whirlwind, which has been since imitated in Genesis. We cannot too often repeat, that the Jewish books are very modern. Ignorance and fanaticism exclaim, that the Pentateuch is the most ancient book in the world. It is evident, that those of Sanchoniathon, and those of Thaut, eight hundred years anterior to those of Sanchoniathon; those of the first Zerdusht, the “Shasta,” the “Vedas” of the Indians, which we still possess; the “Five Kings of China”; and finally the Book of Job, are of a much remoter antiquity than any Jewish book. It is demonstrated that this little people could only have annals while they had a stable government; that they only had this government under their kings; that its jargon was only formed, in the course of time, of a mixture of Phœnician and Arabic. These are incontestable proofs that the Phœnicians cultivated letters a long time before them. Their profession was pillage and brokerage; they were writers only by chance. We have lost the books of the Egyptians and Phœnicians, the Chinese, Brahmins, and Guebers; the Jews have preserved theirs. All these monuments are curious, but they are monuments of human imagination alone, in which not a single truth, either physical or historical, is to be learned. There is not at present any little physical treatise that would not be more useful than all the books of antiquity.

The good Calmet, or Dom Calmet (for the Benedictines like us to give them their Dom), that simple compiler of so many reveries and imbecilities; that man whom simplicity has rendered so useful to whoever would laugh at antique nonsense, faithfully relates the opinion of those who would discover the malady with which Job was attacked, as if Job was a real personage. He does not hesitate in saying that Job had the smallpox, and heaps passage upon passage, as usual, to prove that which is not. He had not read the history of the smallpox by Astruc; for Astruc being neither a father of the Church nor a doctor of Salamanca, but a very learned physician, the good man Calmet knew not that he existed. Monkish compilers are poor creatures!

By an Invalid, At the Baths of Aix-la-Chapelle.