diff options
| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:53:37 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:53:37 -0700 |
| commit | 47483ece1e2863d616d569cf8c5d1e31706bc737 (patch) | |
| tree | 9219b82c77692f3045eeee8bbdc54784875b1ae7 | |
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 18569-8.txt | 10513 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 18569-8.zip | bin | 0 -> 200954 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 18569-h.zip | bin | 0 -> 214210 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 18569-h/18569-h.htm | 10751 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 18569.txt | 10513 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 18569.zip | bin | 0 -> 200787 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 |
9 files changed, 31793 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/18569-8.txt b/18569-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9d865cc --- /dev/null +++ b/18569-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10513 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, by Voltaire + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary + +Author: Voltaire + +Release Date: June 12, 2006 [EBook #18569] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VOLTAIRE'S PHILOSOPHICAL *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Lisa Reigel and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +[TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Greek words in this text have been transliterated +and placed between +marks+.] + + + + +Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary + + +New York + +CARLTON HOUSE + +MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + + + +_PREFACE_ + + +This book does not demand continuous reading; but at whatever place one +opens it, one will find matter for reflection. The most useful books are +those of which readers themselves compose half; they extend the thoughts +of which the germ is presented to them; they correct what seems +defective to them, and they fortify by their reflections what seems to +them weak. + +It is only really by enlightened people that this book can be read; the +ordinary man is not made for such knowledge; philosophy will never be +his lot. Those who say that there are truths which must be hidden from +the people, need not be alarmed; the people do not read; they work six +days of the week, and on the seventh go to the inn. In a word, +philosophical works are made only for philosophers, and every honest man +must try to be a philosopher, without pluming himself on being one. + +This alphabet is extracted from the most estimable works which are not +commonly within the reach of the many; and if the author does not always +mention the sources of his information, as being well enough known to +the learned, he must not be suspected of wishing to take the credit for +other people's work, because he himself preserves anonymity, according +to this word of the Gospel: "Let not thy left hand know what thy right +hand doeth." + + + + +_CONTENTS_ + + + PAGE +PREFACE BY VOLTAIRE 5 + +ADULTERY 11 +ADVOCATE 16 +ANCIENTS AND MODERNS 17 +ANIMALS 21 +ANTIQUITY 24 +ARTS 27 +ASTROLOGY 29 +ATHEISM 32 +AUTHORITY 46 +AUTHORS 48 + +BANISHMENT 50 +BANKRUPTCY 51 +BEAUTY 53 +BISHOP 55 +BOOKS 57 +BOULEVERD 60 +BOURGES 61 +BRAHMINS 62 + +CHARACTER 65 +CHARLATAN 68 +CIVIL LAWS 73 +CLIMATE 74 +COMMON SENSE 78 +CONCATENATION OF EVENTS 80 +CONTRADICTIONS 83 +CORN 85 +CROMWELL 88 +CUSTOMS 94 + +DEMOCRACY 96 +DESTINY 98 +DEVOUT 102 + +ECCLESIASTICAL MINISTRY 103 +EMBLEM 106 +ENGLISH THEATRE, ON THE 110 +ENVY 112 +EQUALITY 114 +EXPIATION 118 +EXTREME 122 +EZOURVEIDAM 125 + +FAITH 126 +FALSE MINDS 128 +FATHERLAND 131 +FINAL CAUSES 133 +FRAUD 136 +FREE-WILL 142 +FRENCH 146 +FRIENDSHIP 150 + +GOD 151 + +HELVETIA 156 +HISTORY 157 + +IGNORANCE 163 +IMPIOUS 166 + +JOAN OF ARC 168 + +KISSING 173 + +LANGUAGES 178 +LAWS 184 +LIBERTY 187 +LIBRARY 191 +LIMITS OF THE HUMAN MIND 194 +LOCAL CRIMES 195 +LOVE 197 +LUXURY 200 + +MAN 203 +MAN IN THE IRON MASK 204 +MARRIAGE 210 +MASTER 211 +MEN OF LETTERS 214 +METAMORPHOSIS 216 +MILTON, ON THE REPROACH OF PLAGIARISM AGAINST 217 +MOHAMMEDANS 220 +MOUNTAIN 221 + +NAKEDNESS 222 +NATURAL LAW 224 +NATURE 227 +NECESSARY 231 +NEW NOVELTIES 236 + +PHILOSOPHER 237 +POWER, OMNIPOTENCE 240 +PRAYERS 245 +PRÉCIS OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY 247 +PREJUDICES 251 + +RARE 255 +REASON 257 +RELIGION 259 + +SECT 267 +SELF-ESTEEM 271 +SOUL 273 +STATES, GOVERNMENTS 294 +SUPERSTITION 297 + +TEARS 299 +THEIST 301 +TOLERANCE 302 +TRUTH 305 +TYRANNY 308 + +VIRTUE 309 + +WHY? 313 + +DECLARATION OF ADMIRERS, QUESTIONERS AND DOUBTERS 315 + + + + +_ADULTERY_ + + +NOTE ON A MAGISTRATE WRITTEN ABOUT 1764 + +A senior magistrate of a French town had the misfortune to have a wife +who was debauched by a priest before her marriage, and who since covered +herself with disgrace by public scandals: he was so moderate as to leave +her without noise. This man, about forty years old, vigorous and of +agreeable appearance, needs a woman; he is too scrupulous to seek to +seduce another man's wife, he fears intercourse with a public woman or +with a widow who would serve him as concubine. In this disquieting and +sad state, he addresses to his Church a plea of which the following is a +précis: + +My wife is criminal, and it is I who am punished. Another woman is +necessary as a comfort to my life, to my virtue even; and the sect of +which I am a member refuses her to me; it forbids me to marry an honest +girl. The civil laws of to-day, unfortunately founded on canon law, +deprive me of the rights of humanity. The Church reduces me to seeking +either the pleasures it reproves, or the shameful compensations it +condemns; it tries to force me to be criminal. + +I cast my eyes over all the peoples of the earth; there is not a single +one except the Roman Catholic people among whom divorce and a new +marriage are not natural rights. + +What upheaval of the rule has therefore made among the Catholics a +virtue of undergoing adultery, and a duty of lacking a wife when one has +been infamously outraged by one's own? + +Why is a bond that has rotted indissoluble in spite of the great law +adopted by the code, _quidquid ligatur dissolubile est_? I am allowed a +separation _a mensa et thoro_, and I am not allowed divorce. The law +can deprive me of my wife, and it leaves me a name called "sacrament"! +What a contradiction! what slavery! and under what laws did we receive +birth! + +What is still more strange is that this law of my Church is directly +contrary to the words which this Church itself believes to have been +uttered by Jesus Christ: "Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it +be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery" (Matt. +xix. 9). + +I do not examine whether the pontiffs of Rome are in the right to +violate at their pleasure the law of him they regard as their master; +whether when a state has need of an heir, it is permissible to repudiate +her who can give it one. I do not inquire if a turbulent woman, +demented, homicidal, a poisoner, should not be repudiated equally with +an adulteress: I limit myself to the sad state which concerns me: God +permits me to remarry, and the Bishop of Rome does not permit me. + +Divorce was a practice among Catholics under all the emperors; it was +also in all the dismembered states of the Roman Empire. The kings of +France, those called "of the first line," almost all repudiated their +wives in order to take new ones. At last came Gregory IX., enemy of the +emperors and kings, who by a decree made marriage an unshakeable yoke; +his decretal became the law of Europe. When the kings wanted to +repudiate a wife who was an adulteress according to Jesus Christ's law, +they could not succeed; it was necessary to find ridiculous pretexts. +Louis the younger was obliged, to accomplish his unfortunate divorce +from Eleanor of Guienne, to allege a relationship which did not exist. +Henry IV., to repudiate Marguerite de Valois, pretexted a still more +false cause, a refusal of consent. One had to lie to obtain a divorce +legitimately. + +What! a king can abdicate his crown, and without the Pope's permission +he cannot abdicate his wife! Is it possible that otherwise enlightened +men have wallowed so long in this absurd servitude! + +That our priests, that our monks renounce wives, to that I consent; it +is an outrage against population, it is a misfortune for them, but they +merit this misfortune which they have made for themselves. They have +been the victims of the popes who wanted to have in them slaves, +soldiers without families and without fatherland, living solely for the +Church: but I, magistrate, who serve the state all day, I need a wife in +the evening; and the Church has not the right to deprive me of a benefit +which God accords me. The apostles were married, Joseph was married, and +I want to be. If I, Alsacian, am dependent on a priest who dwells at +Rome, if this priest has the barbarous power to rob me of a wife, let +him make a eunuch of me for the singing of _Misereres_ in his chapel. + + +NOTE FOR WOMEN + +Equity demands that, having recorded this note in favour of husbands, we +should also put before the public the case in favour of wives, presented +to the junta of Portugal by a Countess of Arcira. This is the substance +of it: + +The Gospel has forbidden adultery for my husband just as for me; he will +be damned as I shall, nothing is better established. When he committed +twenty infidelities, when he gave my necklace to one of my rivals, and +my ear-rings to another, I did not ask the judges to have him shaved, to +shut him up among monks and to give me his property. And I, for having +imitated him once, for having done with the most handsome young man in +Lisbon what he did every day with impunity with the most idiotic +strumpets of the court and the town, have to answer at the bar before +licentiates each of whom would be at my feet if we were alone together +in my closet; have to endure at the court the usher cutting off my hair +which is the most beautiful in the world; and being shut up among nuns +who have no common sense, deprived of my dowry and my marriage +covenants, with all my property given to my coxcomb of a husband to help +him seduce other women and to commit fresh adulteries. + +I ask if it is just, and if it is not evident that the laws were made by +cuckolds? + +In answer to my plea I am told that I should be happy not to be stoned +at the city gate by the canons, the priests of the parish and the whole +populace. This was the practice among the first nation of the earth, the +chosen nation, the cherished nation, the only one which was right when +all the others were wrong. + +To these barbarities I reply that when the poor adulteress was presented +by her accusers to the Master of the old and new law, He did not have +her stoned; that on the contrary He reproached them with their +injustice, that he laughed at them by writing on the ground with his +finger, that he quoted the old Hebraic proverb--"He that is without sin +among you, let him first cast a stone at her"; that then they all +retired, the oldest fleeing first, because the older they were the more +adulteries had they committed. + +The doctors of canon law answer me that this history of the adulteress +is related only in the Gospel of St. John, that it was not inserted +there until later. Leontius, Maldonat, affirm that it is not to be found +in a single ancient Greek copy; that none of the twenty-three early +commentators mentions it. Origen, St. Jerome, St. John Chrysostom, +Theophilact, Nonnus, do not recognize it at all. It is not to be found +in the Syriac Bible, it is not in Ulphilas' version. + +That is what my husband's advocates say, they who would have me not only +shaved, but also stoned. + +But the advocates who pleaded for me say that Ammonius, author of the +third century, recognized this story as true, and that if St. Jerome +rejects it in some places, he adopts it in others; that, in a word, it +is authentic to-day. I leave there, and I say to my husband: "If you are +without sin, shave me, imprison me, take my property; but if you have +committed more sins than I have, it is for me to shave you, to have you +imprisoned, and to seize your fortune. In justice these things should be +equal." + +My husband answers that he is my superior and my chief, that he is more +than an inch taller, that he is shaggy as a bear; that consequently I +owe him everything, and that he owes me nothing. + +But I ask if Queen Anne of England is not her husband's chief? if her +husband the Prince of Denmark, who is her High Admiral, does not owe her +entire obedience? and if she would not have him condemned by the court +of peers if the little man's infidelity were in question? It is +therefore clear that if the women do not have the men punished, it is +when they are not the stronger. + + + + +_ADVOCATE_ + + +An advocate is a man who, not having a sufficient fortune to buy one of +those resplendent offices on which the universe has its eyes, studies +the laws of Theodosius and Justinian for three years, so that he may +learn the usages of Paris, and who finally, being registered, has the +right to plead causes for money, if he have a strong voice. + + + + +_ANCIENTS AND MODERNS_ + + +The great dispute between the ancients and the moderns is not yet +settled; it has been on the table since the silver age succeeded the +golden age. Mankind has always maintained that the good old times were +much better than the present day. Nestor, in the "Iliad," wishing to +insinuate himself as a wise conciliator into the minds of Achilles and +Agamemnon, starts by saying to them--"I lived formerly with better men +than you; no, I have never seen and I shall never see such great +personages as Dryas, Cenæus, Exadius, Polyphemus equal to the gods, +etc." + +Posterity has well avenged Achilles for Nestor's poor compliment. Nobody +knows Dryas any longer; one has hardly heard speak of Exadius, or of +Cenæus; and as for Polyphemus equal to the gods, he has not too good a +reputation, unless the possession of a big eye in one's forehead, and +the eating of men raw, are to have something of the divine. + +Lucretius does not hesitate to say that nature has degenerated (lib. II. +v. 1159). Antiquity is full of eulogies of another more remote +antiquity. Horace combats this prejudice with as much finesse as force +in his beautiful Epistle to Augustus (Epist. I. liv. ii.). "Must our +poems, then," he says, "be like our wines, of which the oldest are +always preferred?" + +The learned and ingenious Fontenelle expresses himself on this subject +as follows: + +"The whole question of the pre-eminence between the ancients and the +moderns, once it is well understood, is reduced to knowing whether the +trees which formerly were in our countryside were bigger than those of +to-day. In the event that they were, Homer, Plato, Demosthenes cannot +be equalled in these latter centuries. + +"Let us throw light on this paradox. If the ancients had more intellect +than us, it is that the brains of those times were better ordered, +formed of firmer or more delicate fibres, filled with more animal +spirits; but in virtue of what were the brains of those times better +ordered? The trees also would have been bigger and more beautiful; for +if nature was then younger and more vigorous, the trees, as well as +men's brains, would have been conscious of this vigour and this youth." +("Digression on the Ancients and the Moderns," vol. 4, 1742 edition.) + +With the illustrious academician's permission, that is not at all the +state of the question. It is not a matter of knowing whether nature has +been able to produce in our day as great geniuses and as good works as +those of Greek and Latin antiquity; but to know whether we have them in +fact. Without a doubt it is not impossible for there to be as big oaks +in the forest of Chantilli as in the forest of Dodona; but supposing +that the oaks of Dodona had spoken, it would be quite clear that they +had a great advantage over ours, which in all probability will never +speak. + +Nature is not bizarre; but it is possible that she gave the Athenians a +country and a sky more suitable than Westphalia and the Limousin for +forming certain geniuses. Further, it is possible that the government of +Athens, by seconding the climate, put into Demosthenes' head something +that the air of Climart and La Grenouillère and the government of +Cardinal de Richelieu did not put into the heads of Omer Talon and +Jérome Bignon. + +This dispute is therefore a question of fact. Was antiquity more fecund +in great monuments of all kinds, up to the time of Plutarch, than modern +centuries have been from the century of the Medicis up to Louis XIV. +inclusive? + +The Chinese, more than two hundred years before our era, constructed +that great wall which was not able to save them from the invasion of the +Tartars. The Egyptians, three thousand years before, had overloaded the +earth with their astonishing pyramids, which had a base of about ninety +thousand square feet. Nobody doubts that, if one wished to undertake +to-day these useless works, one could easily succeed by a lavish +expenditure of money. The great wall of China is a monument to fear; the +pyramids are monuments to vanity and superstition. Both bear witness to +a great patience in the peoples, but to no superior genius. Neither the +Chinese nor the Egyptians would have been able to make even a statue +such as those which our sculptors form to-day. + +The chevalier Temple, who has made it his business to disparage all the +moderns, claims that in architecture they have nothing comparable to the +temples of Greece and Rome: but, for all that he is English, he must +agree that the Church of St. Peter is incomparably more beautiful than +the Capitol was. + +It is curious with what assurance he maintains that there is nothing new +in our astronomy, nothing in the knowledge of the human body, unless +perhaps, he says, the circulation of the blood. Love of his own opinion, +founded on his vast self-esteem, makes him forget the discovery of the +satellites of Jupiter, of the five moons and the ring of Saturn, of the +rotation of the sun on its axis, of the calculated position of three +thousand stars, of the laws given by Kepler and Newton for the heavenly +orbs, of the causes of the precession of the equinoxes, and of a hundred +other pieces of knowledge of which the ancients did not suspect even the +possibility. + +The discoveries in anatomy are as great in number. A new universe in +little, discovered by the microscope, was counted for nothing by the +chevalier Temple; he closed his eyes to the marvels of his +contemporaries, and opened them only to admire ancient ignorance. + +He goes so far as to pity us for having nothing left of the magic of the +Indians, the Chaldeans, the Egyptians; and by this magic he understands +a profound knowledge of nature, whereby they produced miracles: but he +does not cite one miracle, because in fact there never were any. "What +has become," he asks, "of the charms of that music which so often +enchanted man and beast, the fishes, the birds, the snakes, and changed +their nature?" + +This enemy of his century really believes the fable of Orpheus, and has +not apparently heard either the beautiful music of Italy, or even that +of France, which in truth does not charm snakes, but does charm the ears +of connoisseurs. + +What is still more strange is that, having all his life cultivated +belles-lettres, he does not reason better about our good authors than +about our philosophers. He looks on Rabelais as a great man. He cites +the "Amours des Gaules" as one of our best works. He was, however, a +scholar, a courtier, a man of much wit, an ambassador, a man who had +reflected profoundly on all he had seen. He possessed great knowledge: a +prejudice sufficed to spoil all this merit. + +There are beauties in Euripides, and in Sophocles still more; but they +have many more defects. One dares say that the beautiful scenes of +Corneille and the touching tragedies of Racine surpass the tragedies of +Sophocles and Euripides as much as these two Greeks surpass Thespis. +Racine was quite conscious of his great superiority over Euripides; but +he praised the Greek poet in order to humiliate Perrault. + +Molière, in his good pieces, is as superior to the pure but cold +Terence, and to the droll Aristophanes, as to Dancourt the buffoon. + +There are therefore spheres in which the moderns are far superior to the +ancients, and others, very few in number, in which we are their +inferiors. It is to this that the whole dispute is reduced. + + + + +_ANIMALS_ + + +What a pitiful, what a sorry thing to have said that animals are +machines bereft of understanding and feeling, which perform their +operations always in the same way, which learn nothing, perfect nothing, +etc.! + +What! that bird which makes its nest in a semi-circle when it is +attaching it to a wall, which builds it in a quarter circle when it is +in an angle, and in a circle upon a tree; that bird acts always in the +same way? That hunting-dog which you have disciplined for three months, +does it not know more at the end of this time than it knew before your +lessons? Does the canary to which you teach a tune repeat it at once? do +you not spend a considerable time in teaching it? have you not seen that +it has made a mistake and that it corrects itself? + +Is it because I speak to you, that you judge that I have feeling, +memory, ideas? Well, I do not speak to you; you see me going home +looking disconsolate, seeking a paper anxiously, opening the desk where +I remember having shut it, finding it, reading it joyfully. You judge +that I have experienced the feeling of distress and that of pleasure, +that I have memory and understanding. + +Bring the same judgment to bear on this dog which has lost its master, +which has sought him on every road with sorrowful cries, which enters +the house agitated, uneasy, which goes down the stairs, up the stairs, +from room to room, which at last finds in his study the master it loves, +and which shows him its joy by its cries of delight, by its leaps, by +its caresses. + +Barbarians seize this dog, which in friendship surpasses man so +prodigiously; they nail it on a table, and they dissect it alive in +order to show the mesenteric veins. You discover in it all the same +organs of feeling that are in yourself. Answer me, machinist, has nature +arranged all the means of feeling in this animal, so that it may not +feel? has it nerves in order to be impassible? Do not suppose this +impertinent contradiction in nature. + +But the schoolmasters ask what the soul of animals is? I do not +understand this question. A tree has the faculty of receiving in its +fibres its sap which circulates, of unfolding the buds of its leaves and +its fruit; will you ask what the soul of this tree is? it has received +these gifts; the animal has received those of feeling, of memory, of a +certain number of ideas. Who has bestowed these gifts? who has given +these faculties? He who has made the grass of the fields to grow, and +who makes the earth gravitate toward the sun. + +"Animals' souls are substantial forms," said Aristotle, and after +Aristotle, the Arab school, and after the Arab school, the angelical +school, and after the angelical school, the Sorbonne, and after the +Sorbonne, nobody at all. + +"Animals' souls are material," cry other philosophers. These have not +been in any better fortune than the others. In vain have they been asked +what a material soul is; they have to admit that it is matter which has +sensation: but what has given it this sensation? It is a material soul, +that is to say that it is matter which gives sensation to matter; they +cannot issue from this circle. + +Listen to other brutes reasoning about the brutes; their soul is a +spiritual soul which dies with the body; but what proof have you of it? +what idea have you of this spiritual soul, which, in truth, has feeling, +memory, and its measure of ideas and ingenuity; but which will never be +able to know what a child of six knows? On what ground do you imagine +that this being, which is not body, dies with the body? The greatest +fools are those who have advanced that this soul is neither body nor +spirit. There is a fine system. By spirit we can understand only some +unknown thing which is not body. Thus these gentlemen's system comes +back to this, that the animals' soul is a substance which is neither +body nor something which is not body. + +Whence can come so many contradictory errors? From the habit men have +always had of examining what a thing is, before knowing if it exists. +The clapper, the valve of a bellows, is called in French the "soul" of a +bellows. What is this soul? It is a name that I have given to this valve +which falls, lets air enter, rises again, and thrusts it through a pipe, +when I make the bellows move. + +There is not there a distinct soul in the machine: but what makes +animals' bellows move? I have already told you, what makes the stars +move. The philosopher who said, "_Deus est anima brutorum_," was right; +but he should go further. + + + + +_ANTIQUITY_ + + +Have you sometimes seen in a village Pierre Aoudri and his wife +Peronelle wishing to go before their neighbours in the procession? "Our +grandfathers," they say, "were tolling the bells before those who jostle +us to-day owned even a pig-sty." + +The vanity of Pierre Aoudri, his wife and his neighbours, knows nothing +more about it. Their minds kindle. The quarrel is important; honour is +in question. Proofs are necessary. A scholar who sings in the choir, +discovers an old rusty iron pot, marked with an "A," first letter of the +name of the potter who made the pot. Pierre Aoudri persuades himself +that it was his ancestors' helmet. In this way was Cæsar descended from +a hero and from the goddess Venus. Such is the history of nations; such +is, within very small margins, the knowledge of early antiquity. + +The scholars of Armenia _demonstrate_ that the terrestrial paradise was +in their land. Some profound Swedes _demonstrate_ that it was near Lake +Vener which is visibly a remnant of it. Some Spaniards _demonstrate_ +also that it was in Castille; while the Japanese, the Chinese, the +Indians, the Africans, the Americans are not sufficiently unfortunate to +know even that there was formerly a terrestrial paradise at the source +of the Phison, the Gehon, the Tigris and the Euphrates, or, if you +prefer it, at the source of the Guadalquivir, the Guadiana, the Douro +and the Ebro; for from Phison one easily makes Phaetis; and from Phaetis +one makes the Baetis which is the Guadalquivir. The Gehon is obviously +the Guadiana, which begins with a "G." The Ebro, which is in Catalonia, +is incontestably the Euphrates, of which the initial letter is "E." + +But a Scotsman appears who _demonstrates_ in his turn that the garden of +Eden was at Edinburgh, which has retained its name; and it is to be +believed that in a few centuries this opinion will make its fortune. + +The whole globe was burned once upon a time, says a man versed in +ancient and modern history; for I read in a newspaper that some +absolutely black charcoal has been found in Germany at a depth of a +hundred feet, between mountains covered with wood. And it is suspected +even that there were charcoal burners in this place. + +Phaeton's adventure makes it clear that everything has boiled right to +the bottom of the sea. The sulphur of Mount Vesuvius proves invincibly +that the banks of the Rhine, Danube, Ganges, Nile and the great Yellow +River are merely sulphur, nitre and Guiac oil, which only await the +moment of the explosion to reduce the earth to ashes, as it has already +been. The sand on which we walk is evident proof that the earth has been +vitrified, and that our globe is really only a glass ball, just as are +our ideas. + +But if fire has changed our globe, water has produced still finer +revolutions. For you see clearly that the sea, the tides of which mount +as high as eight feet in our climate, has produced mountains of a height +of sixteen to seventeen thousand feet. This is so true that some learned +men who have never been in Switzerland have found a big ship with all +its rigging petrified on Mount St. Gothard, or at the bottom of a +precipice, one knows not where; but it is quite certain that it was +there. Therefore men were originally fish, _quod erat demonstrandum_. + +To descend to a less antique antiquity, let us speak of the times when +the greater part of the barbarous nations left their countries, to go to +seek others which were hardly any better. It is true, if there be +anything true in ancient history, that there were some Gaulish brigands +who went to pillage Rome in the time of Camillus. Other Gaulish brigands +had passed, it is said, through Illyria on the way to hire their +services as murderers to other murderers, in the direction of Thrace; +they exchanged their blood for bread, and later established themselves +in Galatia. But who were these Gauls? were they Berichons and Angevins? +They were without a doubt Gauls whom the Romans called Cisalpines, and +whom we call Transalpines, famished mountain-dwellers, neighbours of the +Alps and the Apennines. The Gauls of the Seine and the Marne did not +know at that time that Rome existed, and could not take it into their +heads to pass Mount Cenis, as Hannibal did later, to go to steal the +wardrobes of Roman senators who at that time for all furniture had a +robe of poor grey stuff, ornamented with a band the colour of ox blood; +two little pummels of ivory, or rather dog's bone, on the arms of a +wooden chair; and in their kitchens a piece of rancid bacon. + +The Gauls, who were dying of hunger, not finding anything to eat in +Rome, went off therefore to seek their fortune farther away, as was the +practice of the Romans later, when they ravaged so many countries one +after the other; as did the peoples of the North when they destroyed the +Roman Empire. + +And, further, what is it which instructs very feebly about these +emigrations? It is a few lines that the Romans wrote at hazard; because +for the Celts, the Velches or the Gauls, these men who it is desired to +make pass for eloquent, at that time did not know, they and their bards, +how either to read or write. + +But to infer from that that the Gauls or Celts, conquered after by a few +of Cæsar's legions, and by a horde of Bourguignons, and lastly by a +horde of Sicamores, under one Clodovic, had previously subjugated the +whole world, and given their names and laws to Asia, seems to me to be +very strange: the thing is not mathematically impossible, and if it be +_demonstrated_, I give way; it would be very uncivil to refuse to the +Velches what one accords to the Tartars. + + + + +_ARTS_ + +THAT THE NEWNESS OF THE ARTS IN NO WISE PROVES THE NEWNESS OF THE GLOBE + + +All the philosophers thought matter eternal but the arts appear new. +There is not one, even to the art of making bread, which is not recent. +The first Romans ate pap; and these conquerors of so many nations never +thought of either windmills or watermills. This truth seems at first to +contradict the antiquity of the globe such as it is, or supposes +terrible revolutions in this globe. The inundations of barbarians can +hardly annihilate arts which have become necessary. I suppose that an +army of negroes come among us like locusts, from the mountains of +Cobonas, through the Monomotapa, the Monoemugi, the Nosseguais, the +Maracates; that they have traversed Abyssinia, Nubia, Egypt, Syria, Asia +Minor, the whole of our Europe; that they have overthrown everything, +ransacked everything; there will still remain a few bakers, a few +cobblers, a few tailors, a few carpenters: the necessary arts will +survive; only luxury will be annihilated. It is what was seen at the +fall of the Roman Empire; the art of writing even became very rare; +almost all those which contributed to the comfort of life were reborn +only long after. We invent new ones every day. + +From all this one can at bottom conclude nothing against the antiquity +of the globe. For, supposing even that an influx of barbarians had made +us lose entirely all the arts even to the arts of writing and making +bread; supposing, further, that for ten years past we had no bread, +pens, ink and paper; the land which has been able to subsist for ten +years without eating bread and without writing its thoughts, would be +able to pass a century, and a hundred thousand centuries without these +aids. + +It is quite clear that man and the other animals can exist very well +without bakers, without novelists, and without theologians, witness the +whole of America, witness three quarters of our continent. + +The newness of the arts among us does not therefore prove the newness of +the globe, as was claimed by Epicurus, one of our predecessors in +reverie, who supposed that by chance the eternal atoms in declining, had +one day formed our earth. Pomponace said: "_Se il mondo non è eterno, +per tutti santi è molto vecchio._" + + + + +_ASTROLOGY_ + + +Astrology may rest on better foundations than Magic. For if no one has +seen either Goblins, or Lemures, or Dives, or Peris, or Demons, or +Cacodemons, the predictions of astrologers have often been seen to +succeed. If of two astrologers consulted on the life of a child and on +the weather, one says that the child will live to manhood, the other +not; if one announces rain, and the other fine weather, it is clear that +one of them will be a prophet. + +The great misfortune of the astrologers is that the sky has changed +since the rules of the art were established. The sun, which at the +equinox was in Aries in the time of the Argonauts, is to-day in Taurus; +and the astrologers, to the great ill-fortune of their art, to-day +attribute to one house of the sun what belongs visibly to another. +However, that is not a demonstrative reason against astrology. The +masters of the art deceive themselves; but it is not demonstrated that +the art cannot exist. + +There is no absurdity in saying: Such and such a child is born in the +waxing of the moon, during stormy weather, at the rising of such and +such star; his constitution has been feeble, and his life unhappy and +short; which is the ordinary lot of poor constitutions: this child, on +the contrary, was born when the moon was full, the sun strong, the +weather calm, at the rising of such and such star; his constitution has +been good, his life long and happy. If these observations had been +repeated, if they had been found accurate, experience would have been +able after some thousands of years to form an art which it would have +been difficult to doubt: one would have thought, with some likelihood, +that men are like trees and vegetables which must be planted and sown +only in certain seasons. It would have been of no avail against the +astrologers to say: My son was born at a fortunate time, and +nevertheless died in his cradle; the astrologer would have answered: It +often happens that trees planted in the proper season perish; I answered +to you for the stars, but I did not answer for the flaw of conformation +you communicated to your child. Astrology operates only when no cause +opposes itself to the good the stars can do. + +One would not have succeeded better in discrediting the astrologer by +saying: Of two children who were born in the same minute, one has been +king, the other has been only churchwarden of his parish; for the +astrologer could very well have defended himself by pointing out that +the peasant made his fortune when he became churchwarden, as the prince +when he became king. + +And if one alleged that a bandit whom Sixtus V. had hanged was born at +the same time as Sixtus V., who from a pig-herd became Pope, the +astrologers would say one had made a mistake of a few seconds, and that +it is impossible, according to the rules, for the same star to give the +triple crown and the gibbet. It is then only because a host of +experiences belied the predictions, that men perceived at last that the +art was illusory; but before being undeceived, they were long credulous. + +One of the most famous mathematicians in Europe, named Stoffler, who +flourished in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and who long worked +at the reform of the calendar, proposed at the Council of Constance, +foretold a universal flood for the year 1524. This flood was to arrive +in the month of February, and nothing is more plausible; for Saturn, +Jupiter and Mars were then in conjunction in the sign of Pisces. All the +peoples of Europe, Asia and Africa, who heard speak of the prediction, +were dismayed. Everyone expected the flood, despite the rainbow. Several +contemporary authors record that the inhabitants of the maritime +provinces of Germany hastened to sell their lands dirt cheap to those +who had most money, and who were not so credulous as they. Everyone +armed himself with a boat as with an ark. A Toulouse doctor, named +Auriol, had a great ark made for himself, his family and his friends; +the same precautions were taken over a large part of Italy. At last the +month of February arrived, and not a drop of water fell: never was month +more dry, and never were the astrologers more embarrassed. Nevertheless +they were not discouraged, nor neglected among us; almost all princes +continued to consult them. + +I have not the honour of being a prince; but the celebrated Count of +Boulainvilliers and an Italian, named Colonne, who had much prestige in +Paris, both foretold that I should die infallibly at the age of +thirty-two. I have been so malicious as to deceive them already by +nearly thirty years, wherefore I humbly beg their pardon. + + + + +_ATHEISM_ + + +SECTION I + +OF THE COMPARISON SO OFTEN MADE BETWEEN ATHEISM AND IDOLATRY + +It seems to me that in the "Encyclopedic Dictionary" the opinion of the +Jesuit Richeome, on atheists and idolaters, has not been refuted as +strongly as it might have been; opinion held formerly by St. Thomas, St. +Gregory of Nazianze, St. Cyprian and Tertullian, opinion that Arnobius +set forth with much force when he said to the pagans: "Do you not blush +to reproach us with despising your gods, and is it not much more proper +to believe in no God at all, than to impute to them infamous +actions?"[1] opinion established long before by Plutarch, who says "that +he much prefers people to say there is no Plutarch, than to say--'There +is an inconstant, choleric, vindictive Plutarch'";[2] opinion +strengthened finally by all the effort of Bayle's dialectic. + +Here is the ground of dispute, brought to fairly dazzling light by the +Jesuit Richeome, and rendered still more plausible by the way Bayle has +turned it to account.[3] + +"There are two porters at the door of a house; they are asked: 'Can one +speak to your master?' 'He is not there,' answers one. 'He is there,' +answers the other, 'but he is busy making counterfeit money, forged +contracts, daggers and poisons, to undo those who have but accomplished +his purposes.' The atheist resembles the first of these porters, the +pagan the other. It is clear, therefore, that the pagan offends the +Deity more gravely than does the atheist." + +With Father Richeome's and even Bayle's permission, that is not at all +the position of the matter. For the first porter to resemble the +atheists, he must not say--"My master is not here": he should say--"I +have no master; him whom you claim to be my master does not exist; my +comrade is a fool to tell you that he is busy compounding poisons and +sharpening daggers to assassinate those who have executed his caprices. +No such being exists in the world." + +Richeome has reasoned, therefore, very badly. And Bayle, in his somewhat +diffuse discourses, has forgotten himself so far as to do Richeome the +honour of annotating him very malapropos. + +Plutarch seems to express himself much better in preferring people who +affirm there is no Plutarch, to those who claim Plutarch to be an +unsociable man. In truth, what does it matter to him that people say he +is not in the world? But it matters much to him that his reputation be +not tarnished. It is not thus with the Supreme Being. + +Plutarch even does not broach the real object under discussion. It is +not a question of knowing who offends more the Supreme Being, whether it +be he who denies Him, or he who distorts Him. It is impossible to know +otherwise than by revelation, if God is offended by the empty things men +say of Him. + +Without a thought, philosophers fall almost always into the ideas of the +common herd, in supposing God to be jealous of His glory, to be +choleric, to love vengeance, and in taking rhetorical figures for real +ideas. The interesting subject for the whole universe, is to know if it +be not better, for the good of all mankind, to admit a rewarding and +revengeful God, who recompenses good actions hidden, and who punishes +secret crimes, than to admit none at all. + +Bayle exhausts himself in recounting all the infamies imputed by fable +to the gods of antiquity. His adversaries answer him with commonplaces +that signify nothing. The partisans of Bayle and his enemies have +almost always fought without making contact. They all agree that Jupiter +was an adulterer, Venus a wanton, Mercury a rogue. But, as I see it, +that is not what needs consideration. One must distinguish between +Ovid's Metamorphoses and the religion of the ancient Romans. It is quite +certain that never among the Romans or even among the Greeks, was there +a temple dedicated to Mercury the rogue, Venus the wanton, Jupiter the +adulterer. + +The god whom the Romans called _Deus optimus_, very good, very great, +was not reputed to encourage Clodius to sleep with Cæsar's wife, or +Cæsar to be King Nicomedes' Sodomite. + +Cicero does not say that Mercury incited Verres to steal Sicily, +although Mercury, in the fable, had stolen Apollo's cows. The real +religion of the ancients was that Jupiter, _very good and very just_, +and the secondary gods, punished the perjurer in the infernal regions. +Likewise the Romans were long the most religious observers of oaths. +Religion was very useful, therefore, to the Romans. There was no command +to believe in Leda's two eggs, in the changing of Inachus' daughter into +a cow, in the love of Apollo for Hyacinthus. + +One must not say therefore that the religion of Numa dishonoured the +Deity. For a long time, therefore, people have been disputing over a +chimera; which happens only too often. + +The question is then asked whether a nation of atheists can exist; it +seems to me that one must distinguish between the nation properly so +called, and a society of philosophers above the nation. It is very true +that in every country the populace has need of the greatest curb, and +that if Bayle had had only five or six hundred peasants to govern, he +would not have failed to announce to them the existence of a God, +rewarder and revenger. But Bayle would not have spoken of Him to the +Epicureans who were rich people, fond of rest, cultivating all the +social virtues, and above all friendship, fleeing the embarrassment and +danger of public affairs, in fine, leading a comfortable and innocent +life. It seems to me that in this way the dispute is finished as regards +society and politics. + +For entirely savage races, it has been said already that one cannot +count them among either the atheists or the theists. Asking them their +belief would be like asking them if they are for Aristotle or +Democritus: they know nothing; they are not atheists any more than they +are Peripatetics. + +In this case, I shall answer that the wolves live like this, and that an +assembly of cannibal barbarians such as you suppose them is not a +society; and I shall always ask you if, when you have lent your money to +someone in your society, you want neither your debtor, nor your +attorney, nor your judge, to believe in God. + + +OF MODERN ATHEISTS. REASONS OF THE WORSHIPPERS OF GOD + +We are intelligent beings: intelligent beings cannot have been formed by +a crude, blind, insensible being: there is certainly some difference +between the ideas of Newton and the dung of a mule. Newton's +intelligence, therefore, came from another intelligence. + +When we see a beautiful machine, we say that there is a good engineer, +and that this engineer has excellent judgment. The world is assuredly an +admirable machine; therefore there is in the world an admirable +intelligence, wherever it may be. This argument is old, and none the +worse for that. + +All living bodies are composed of levers, of pulleys, which function +according to the laws of mechanics; of liquids which the laws of +hydrostatics cause to circulate perpetually; and when one thinks that +all these beings have a perception quite unrelated to their +organization, one is overwhelmed with surprise. + +The movement of the heavenly bodies, that of our little earth round the +sun, all operate by virtue of the most profound mathematical law. How +Plato who was not aware of one of these laws, eloquent but visionary +Plato, who said that the earth was erected on an equilateral triangle, +and the water on a right-angled triangle; strange Plato, who says there +can be only five worlds, because there are only five regular bodies: +how, I say, did Plato, who did not know even spherical trigonometry, +have nevertheless a genius sufficiently fine, an instinct sufficiently +happy, to call God the "Eternal Geometer," to feel the existence of a +creative intelligence? Spinoza himself admits it. It is impossible to +strive against this truth which surrounds us and which presses on us +from all sides. + + +REASONS OF THE ATHEISTS + +Notwithstanding, I have known refractory persons who say that there is +no creative intelligence at all, and that movement alone has by itself +formed all that we see and all that we are. They tell you brazenly: + +"The combination of this universe was possible, seeing that the +combination exists: therefore it was possible that movement alone +arranged it. Take four of the heavenly bodies only, Mars, Venus, Mercury +and the Earth: let us think first only of the place where they are, +setting aside all the rest, and let us see how many probabilities we +have that movement alone put them in their respective places. We have +only twenty-four chances in this combination, that is, there are only +twenty-four chances against one to bet that these bodies will not be +where they are with reference to each other. Let us add to these four +globes that of Jupiter; there will be only a hundred and twenty against +one to bet that Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury and our globe, will not be +placed where we see them. + +"Add finally Saturn: there will be only seven hundred and twenty chances +against one, for putting these six big planets in the arrangement they +preserve among themselves, according to their given distances. It is +therefore demonstrated that in seven hundred and twenty throws, +movement alone has been able to put these six principal planets in their +order. + +"Take then all the secondary bodies, all their combinations, all their +movements, all the beings that vegetate, that live, that feel, that +think, that function in all the globes, you will have but to increase +the number of chances; multiply this number in all eternity, up to the +number which our feebleness calls 'infinity,' there will always be a +unity in favour of the formation of the world, such as it is, by +movement alone: therefore it is possible that in all eternity the +movement of matter alone has produced the entire universe such as it +exists. It is even inevitable that in eternity this combination should +occur. Thus," they say, "not only is it possible for the world to be +what it is by movement alone, but it was impossible for it not to be +likewise after an infinity of combinations." + +ANSWER + +All this supposition seems to me prodigiously fantastic, for two +reasons; first, that in this universe there are intelligent beings, and +that you would not know how to prove it possible for movement alone to +produce understanding; second, that, from your own avowal, there is +infinity against one to bet, that an intelligent creative cause animates +the universe. When one is alone face to face with the infinite, one +feels very small. + +Again, Spinoza himself admits this intelligence; it is the basis of his +system. You have not read it, and it must be read. Why do you want to go +further than him, and in foolish arrogance plunge your feeble reason in +an abyss into which Spinoza dared not descend? Do you realize thoroughly +the extreme folly of saying that it is a blind cause that arranges that +the square of a planet's revolution is always to the square of the +revolutions of other planets, as the cube of its distance is to the cube +of the distances of the others to the common centre? Either the +heavenly bodies are great geometers, or the Eternal Geometer has +arranged the heavenly bodies. + +But where is the Eternal Geometer? is He in one place or in all places, +without occupying space? I have no idea. Is it of His own substance that +He has arranged all things? I have no idea. Is He immense without +quantity and without quality? I have no idea. All that I know is that +one must worship Him and be just. + + +NEW OBJECTION OF A MODERN ATHEIST[4] + +Can one say that the parts of animals conform to their needs: what are +these needs? preservation and propagation. Is it astonishing then that, +of the infinite combinations which chance has produced, there has been +able to subsist only those that have organs adapted to the nourishment +and continuation of their species? have not all the others perished of +necessity? + +ANSWER + +This objection, oft-repeated since Lucretius, is sufficiently refuted by +the gift of sensation in animals, and by the gift of intelligence in +man. How should combinations "which chance has produced," produce this +sensation and this intelligence (as has just been said in the preceding +paragraph)? Without any doubt the limbs of animals are made for their +needs with incomprehensible art, and you are not so bold as to deny it. +You say no more about it. You feel that you have nothing to answer to +this great argument which nature brings against you. The disposition of +a fly's wing, a snail's organs suffices to bring you to the ground. + + +MAUPERTUIS' OBJECTION + +Modern natural philosophers have but expanded these so-called arguments, +often they have pushed them to trifling and indecency. They have found +God in the folds of the skin of the rhinoceros: one could, with equal +reason, deny His existence because of the tortoise's shell. + +ANSWER + +What reasoning! The tortoise and the rhinoceros, and all the different +species, are proof equally in their infinite variety of the same cause, +the same design, the same aim, which are preservation, generation and +death. + +There is unity in this infinite variety; the shell and the skin bear +witness equally. What! deny God because shell does not resemble leather! +And journalists have been prodigal of eulogies about these ineptitudes, +eulogies they have not given to Newton and Locke, both worshippers of +the Deity who spoke with full knowledge. + + +MAUPERTUIS' OBJECTION + +Of what use are beauty and proportion in the construction of the snake? +They may have uses, some say, of which we are ignorant. At least let us +be silent then; let us not admire an animal which we know only by the +harm it does. + +ANSWER + +And be you silent too, seeing that you cannot conceive its utility any +more than I can; or avow that in reptiles everything is admirably +proportioned. + +Some are venomous, you have been so yourself. Here there is question +only of the prodigious art which has formed snakes, quadrupeds, birds, +fish and bipeds. This art is sufficiently evident. You ask why the snake +does harm? And you, why have you done harm so many times? Why have you +been a persecutor? which is the greatest of all crimes for a +philosopher. That is another question, a question of moral and physical +ill. For long has one asked why there are so many snakes and so many +wicked men worse than snakes. If flies could reason, they would complain +to God of the existence of spiders; but they would admit what Minerva +admitted about Arachne, in the fable, that she arranges her web +marvellously. + +One is bound therefore to recognize an ineffable intelligence which even +Spinoza admitted. One must agree that this intelligence shines in the +vilest insect as in the stars. And as regards moral and physical ill, +what can one say, what do? console oneself by enjoying physical and +moral good, in worshipping the Eternal Being who has made one and +permitted the other. + +One more word on this subject. Atheism is the vice of a few intelligent +persons, and superstition is the vice of fools. But rogues! what are +they? rogues. + + +SECTION II + +Let us say a word on the moral question set in action by Bayle, to know +"if a society of atheists could exist?" Let us mark first of all in this +matter what is the enormous contradiction of men in this dispute; those +who have risen against Bayle's opinion with the greatest ardour; those +who have denied with the greatest insults the possibility of a society +of atheists, have since maintained with the same intrepidity that +atheism is the religion of the government of China. + +Assuredly they are quite mistaken about the Chinese government; they had +but to read the edicts of the emperors of this vast country to have +seen that these edicts are sermons, and that everywhere there is mention +of the Supreme Being, ruler, revenger, rewarder. + +But at the same time they are not less mistaken on the impossibility of +a society of atheists; and I do not know how Mr. Bayle can have +forgotten one striking example which was capable of making his cause +victorious. + +In what does a society of atheists appear impossible? It is that one +judges that men who had no check could never live together; that laws +can do nothing against secret crimes; that a revengeful God who punishes +in this world or the other the wicked who have escaped human justice is +necessary. + +The laws of Moses, it is true, did not teach a life to come, did not +threaten punishments after death, did not teach the first Jews the +immortality of the soul; but the Jews, far from being atheists, far from +believing in avoiding divine vengeance, were the most religious of all +men. Not only did they believe in the existence of an eternal God, but +they believed Him always present among them; they trembled lest they be +punished in themselves, in their wives, in their children, in their +posterity, even unto the fourth generation; this curb was very potent. + +But, among the Gentiles, many sects had no curb; the sceptics doubted +everything: the academicians suspended judgment on everything; the +Epicureans were persuaded that the Deity could not mix Himself in the +affairs of men; and at bottom, they admitted no Deity. They were +convinced that the soul is not a substance, but a faculty which is born +and which perishes with the body; consequently they had no yoke other +than morality and honour. The Roman senators and knights were veritable +atheists, for the gods did not exist for men who neither feared nor +hoped anything from them. The Roman senate in the time of Cæsar and +Cicero, was therefore really an assembly of atheists. + +That great orator, in his harangue for Cluentius, says to the whole +senate in assembly: "What ill does death do him? we reject all the inept +fables of the nether regions: of what then has death deprived him? of +nothing but the consciousness of suffering." + +Does not Cæsar, the friend of Cataline, wishing to save his friend's +life against this same Cicero, object to him that to make a criminal die +is not to punish him at all, that death _is nothing_, that it is merely +the end of our ills, that it is a moment more happy than calamitous? And +do not Cicero and the whole senate surrender to these reasons? The +conquerors and the legislators of the known universe formed visibly +therefore a society of men who feared nothing from the gods, who were +real atheists. + +Further on Bayle examines whether idolatry is more dangerous than +atheism, if it is a greater crime not to believe in the Deity than to +have unworthy opinions thereof: in that he is of Plutarch's opinion; he +believes it is better to have no opinion than to have a bad opinion; but +with all deference to Plutarch, it was clearly infinitely better for the +Greeks to fear Ceres, Neptune and Jupiter, than to fear nothing at all. +The sanctity of oaths is clearly necessary, and one should have more +confidence in those who believe that a false oath will be punished, than +in those who think they can make a false oath with impunity. It is +indubitable that in a civilized town, it is infinitely more useful to +have a religion, even a bad one, than to have none at all. + +It looks, therefore, that Bayle should have examined rather which is the +more dangerous, fanaticism or atheism. Fanaticism is certainly a +thousand times more deadly; for atheism inspires no bloody passion, +whereas fanaticism does: atheism is not opposed to crime, but fanaticism +causes crimes to be committed. Fanatics committed the massacres of St. +Bartholomew. Hobbes passed for an atheist; he led a tranquil and +innocent life. The fanatics of his time deluged England, Scotland and +Ireland with blood. Spinoza was not only atheist, but he taught atheism; +it was not he assuredly who took part in the judicial assassination of +Barneveldt; it was not he who tore the brothers De Witt in pieces, and +who ate them grilled. + +The atheists are for the most part impudent and misguided scholars who +reason badly, and who not being able to understand the creation, the +origin of evil, and other difficulties, have recourse to the hypothesis +of the eternity of things and of inevitability. + +The ambitious, the sensual, have hardly time for reasoning, and for +embracing a bad system; they have other things to do than comparing +Lucretius with Socrates. That is how things go among us. + +That was not how things went with the Roman senate which was almost +entirely composed of atheists in theory and in practice, that is to say, +who believed in neither a Providence nor a future life; this senate was +an assembly of philosophers, of sensualists and ambitious men, all very +dangerous, who ruined the republic. Epicureanism existed under the +emperors: the atheists of the senate had been rebels in the time of +Sylla and Cæsar: under Augustus and Tiberius they were atheist slaves. + +I would not wish to have to deal with an atheist prince, who would find +it to his interest to have me ground to powder in a mortar: I should be +quite sure of being ground to powder. If I were a sovereign, I would not +wish to have to deal with atheist courtiers, whose interest it would be +to poison me: I should have to be taking antidotes every day. It is +therefore absolutely necessary for princes and for peoples, that the +idea of a Supreme Being, creator, ruler, rewarder, revenger, shall be +deeply engraved in people's minds. + +Bayle says, in his "Thoughts on the Comets," that there are atheist +peoples. The Caffres, the Hottentots, the Topinambous, and many other +small nations, have no God: they neither deny nor affirm; they have +never heard speak of Him; tell them that there is a God: they will +believe it easily; tell them that everything happens through the nature +of things; they will believe you equally. To claim that they are +atheists is to make the same imputation as if one said they are +anti-Cartesian; they are neither for nor against Descartes. They are +real children; a child is neither atheist nor deist, he is nothing. + +What conclusion shall we draw from all this? That atheism is a very +pernicious monster in those who govern; that it is also pernicious in +the persons around statesmen, although their lives may be innocent, +because from their cabinets it may pierce right to the statesmen +themselves; that if it is not so deadly as fanaticism, it is nearly +always fatal to virtue. Let us add especially that there are less +atheists to-day than ever, since philosophers have recognized that there +is no being vegetating without germ, no germ without a plan, etc., and +that wheat comes in no wise from putrefaction. + +Some geometers who are not philosophers have rejected final causes, but +real philosophers admit them; a catechist proclaims God to the children, +and Newton demonstrates Him to the learned. + +If there are atheists, whom must one blame, if not the mercenary tyrants +of souls, who, making us revolt against their knaveries, force a few +weak minds to deny the God whom these monsters dishonour. How many times +have the people's leeches brought oppressed citizens to the point of +revolting against their king! + +Men fattened on our substance cry to us: "Be persuaded that a she-ass +has spoken; believe that a fish has swallowed a man and has given him up +at the end of three days safe and sound on the shore; have no doubt that +the God of the universe ordered one Jewish prophet to eat excrement +(Ezekiel), and another prophet to buy two whores and to make with them +sons of whoredom (Hosea). These are the very words that the God of truth +and purity has been made to utter; believe a hundred things either +visibly abominable or mathematically impossible; unless you do, the God +of pity will burn you, not only during millions of thousands of millions +of centuries in the fire of hell, but through all eternity, whether you +have a body, whether you have not." + +These inconceivable absurdities revolt weak and rash minds, as well as +wise and resolute minds. They say: "Our masters paint God to us as the +most insensate and the most barbarous of all beings; therefore there is +no God;" but they should say: therefore our masters attribute to God +their absurdities and their furies, therefore God is the contrary of +what they proclaim, therefore God is as wise and as good as they make +him out mad and wicked. It is thus that wise men account for things. But +if a bigot hears them, he denounces them to a magistrate who is a +watchdog of the priests; and this watchdog has them burned over a slow +fire, in the belief that he is avenging and imitating the divine majesty +he outrages. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] Arnobius, _Adversus Gentes._, lib. v. + +[2] _Of Superstition_, by Plutarch. + +[3] See Bayle, _Continuation of Divers Thoughts_, par. 77, art. XIII. + +[4] See, for this objection, Maupertuis' Essay on Cosmology, first part. + + + + +_AUTHORITY_ + + +Wretched human beings, whether you wear green robes, turbans, black +robes or surplices, cloaks and neckbands, never seek to use authority +where there is question only of reason, or consent to be scoffed at +throughout the centuries as the most impertinent of all men, and to +suffer public hatred as the most unjust. + +A hundred times has one spoken to you of the insolent absurdity with +which you condemned Galileo, and I speak to you for the hundred and +first, and I hope you will keep the anniversary of it for ever; I desire +that there be graved on the door of your Holy Office: + +"Here seven cardinals, assisted by minor brethren, had the master of +thought in Italy thrown into prison at the age of seventy; made him fast +on bread and water because he instructed the human race, and because +they were ignorant." + +There was pronounced a sentence in favour of Aristotle's categories, and +there was decreed learnedly and equitably the penalty of the galleys for +whoever should be sufficiently daring as to have an opinion different +from that of the Stagyrite, whose books were formerly burned by two +councils. + +Further on a faculty, which had not great faculties, issued a decree +against innate ideas, and later a decree for innate ideas, without the +said faculty being informed by its beadles what an idea is. + +In the neighbouring schools judicial proceedings were instituted against +the circulation of the blood. + +An action was started against inoculation, and parties have been +subpoenaed. + +At the Customs of thought twenty-one folio volumes were seized, in which +it was stated treacherously and wickedly that triangles always have +three angles; that a father is older than his son; that Rhea Silvia lost +her virginity before giving birth to her child, and that flour is not an +oak leaf. + +In another year was judged the action: _Utrum chimera bombinans in vacuo +possit comedere secundas intentiones_, and was decided in the +affirmative. + +In consequence, everyone thought themselves far superior to Archimedes, +Euclid, Cicero, Pliny, and strutted proudly about the University +quarter. + + + + +_AUTHORS_ + + +Author is a generic name which can, like the name of all other +professions, signify good or bad, worthy of respect or ridicule, useful +and agreeable, or trash for the wastepaper-basket. + + * * * * * + +We think that the author of a good work should refrain from three +things--from putting his name, save very modestly, from the epistle +dedicatory, and from the preface. Others should refrain from a +fourth--that is, from writing. + + * * * * * + +Prefaces are another stumbling-block. "The 'I,'" said Pascal, "is +hateful." Speak as little of yourself as possible; for you must know +that the reader's self-esteem is as great as yours. He will never +forgive you for wanting to condemn him to have a good opinion of you. It +is for your book to speak for you, if it comes to be read by the crowd. + + * * * * * + +If you want to be an author, if you want to write a book; reflect that +it must be useful and new, or at least infinitely agreeable. + + * * * * * + +If an ignoramus, a pamphleteer, presumes to criticize without +discrimination, you can confound him; but make rare mention of him, for +fear of sullying your writings. + + * * * * * + +If you are attacked as regards your style, never reply; it is for your +work alone to make answer. + + * * * * * + +Someone says you are ill, be content that you are well, without wanting +to prove to the public that you are in perfect health. And above all +remember that the public cares precious little whether you are well or +ill. + + * * * * * + +A hundred authors make compilations in order to have bread, and twenty +pamphleteers make excerpts from these compilations, or apology for them, +or criticism and satire of them, also with the idea of having bread, +because they have no other trade. All these persons go on Friday to the +police lieutenant of Paris to ask permission to sell their rubbish. They +have audience immediately after the strumpets who do not look at them +because they know that these are underhand dealings.[5] + + * * * * * + +Real authors are those who have succeeded in one of the real arts, in +epic poetry, in tragedy or comedy, in history or philosophy, who have +taught men or charmed them. The others of whom we have spoken are, among +men of letters, what wasps are among birds. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[5] When Voltaire was writing, it was the police lieutenant of Paris who +had, under the chancellor, the inspection of books: since then, a part +of his department has been taken from him. He has kept only the +inspection of theatrical plays and works below those on printed sheets. +The detail of this part is immense. In Paris one is not permitted to +print that one has lost one's dog, unless the police are assured that in +the poor beast's description there is no proposition contrary to +morality and religion (1819). + + + + +_BANISHMENT_ + + +Banishment for a period or for life, punishment to which one condemns +delinquents, or those one wishes to appear as such. + +Not long ago one banished outside the sphere of jurisdiction a petty +thief, a petty forger, a man guilty of an act of violence. The result +was that he became a big robber, a forger on a big scale, and murderer +within the sphere of another jurisdiction. It is as if we threw into our +neighbours' fields the stones which incommode us in our own. + +Those who have written on the rights of men, have been much tormented to +know for certain if a man who has been banished from his fatherland +still belongs to his fatherland. It is nearly the same thing as asking +if a gambler who has been driven away from the gaming-table is still one +of the gamblers. + +If to every man it is permitted by natural right to choose his +fatherland, he who has lost the right of citizen can, with all the more +reason, choose for himself a new fatherland; but can he bear arms +against his former fellow-citizens? There are a thousand examples of it. +How many French protestants naturalized in Holland, England and Germany +have served against France, and against armies containing their own +kindred and their own brothers! The Greeks who were in the King of +Persia's armies made war on the Greeks, their former compatriots. One +has seen the Swiss in the Dutch service fire on the Swiss in the French +service. It is still worse than to fight against those who have banished +you; for, after all, it seems less dishonest to draw the sword for +vengeance than to draw it for money. + + + + +_BANKRUPTCY_ + + +Few bankruptcies were known in France before the sixteenth century. The +great reason is that there were no bankers. Lombards, Jews lent on +security at ten per cent: trade was conducted in cash. Exchange, +remittances to foreign countries were a secret unknown to all judges. + +It is not that many people were not ruined; but that was not called +_bankruptcy_; one said _discomfiture_; this word is sweeter to the ear. +One used the word _rupture_ as did the Boulonnais; but rupture does not +sound so well. + +The bankruptcies came to us from Italy, _bancorotto, bancarotta, +gambarotta e la giustizia non impicar_. Every merchant had his bench +(_banco_) in the place of exchange; and when he had conducted his +business badly, declared himself _fallito_, and abandoned his property +to his creditors with the proviso that he retain a good part of it for +himself, be free and reputed a very upright man. There was nothing to be +said to him, his bench was broken, _banco rotto, banca rotta_; he could +even, in certain towns, keep all his property and baulk his creditors, +provided he seated himself bare-bottomed on a stone in the presence of +all the merchants. This was a mild derivation of the old Roman +proverb--_solvere aut in aere aut in cute_, to pay either with one's +money or one's skin. But this custom no longer exists; creditors have +preferred their money to a bankrupt's hinder parts. + +In England and in some other countries, one declares oneself bankrupt in +the gazettes. The partners and creditors gather together by virtue of +this announcement which is read in the coffee-houses, and they come to +an arrangement as best they can. + +As among the bankruptcies there are frequently fraudulent cases, it has +been necessary to punish them. If they are taken to court they are +everywhere regarded as theft, and the guilty are condemned to +ignominious penalties. + +It is not true that in France the death penalty was decreed against +bankrupts without distinction. Simple failures involved no penalty; +fraudulent bankrupts suffered the penalty of death in the states of +Orleans, under Charles IX., and in the states of Blois in 1576, but +these edicts, renewed by Henry IV., were merely comminatory. + +It is too difficult to prove that a man has dishonoured himself on +purpose, and has voluntarily ceded all his goods to his creditors in +order to cheat them. When there has been a doubt, one has been content +with putting the unfortunate man in the pillory, or with sending him to +the galleys, although ordinarily a banker makes a poor convict. + +Bankrupts were very favourably treated in the last year of Louis XIV.'s +reign, and during the Regency. The sad state to which the interior of +the kingdom was reduced, the multitude of merchants who could not or +would not pay, the quantity of unsold or unsellable effects, the fear of +interrupting all commerce, obliged the government in 1715, 1716, 1718, +1721, 1722, and 1726 to suspend all proceedings against all those who +were in a state of insolvency. The discussions of these actions were +referred to the judge-consuls; this is a jurisdiction of merchants very +expert in these cases, and better constituted for going into these +commercial details than the parliaments which have always been more +occupied with the laws of the kingdom than with finance. As the state +was at that time going bankrupt, it would have been too hard to punish +the poor middle-class bankrupts. + +Since then we have had eminent men, fraudulent bankrupts, but they have +not been punished. + + + + +_BEAUTY_ + + +Ask a toad what beauty is, the _to kalon_? He will answer you that it is +his toad wife with two great round eyes issuing from her little head, a +wide, flat mouth, a yellow belly, a brown back. Interrogate a Guinea +negro, for him beauty is a black oily skin, deep-set eyes, a flat nose. +Interrogate the devil; he will tell you that beauty is a pair of horns, +four claws and a tail. Consult, lastly, the philosophers, they will +answer you with gibberish: they have to have something conforming to the +arch-type of beauty in essence, to the _to kalon_. + +One day I was at a tragedy near by a philosopher. "How beautiful that +is!" he said. + +"What do you find beautiful there?" I asked. + +"It is beautiful," he answered, "because the author has reached his +goal." + +The following day he took some medicine which did him good. "The +medicine has reached its goal," I said to him. "What a beautiful +medicine!" He grasped that one cannot say a medicine is beautiful, and +that to give the name of "beauty" to something, the thing must cause you +to admire it and give you pleasure. He agreed that the tragedy had +inspired these sentiments in him, and that there was the _to kalon_, +beauty. + +We journeyed to England: the same piece, perfectly translated, was +played there; it made everybody in the audience yawn. "Ho, ho!" he said, +"the _to kalon_ is not the same for the English and the French." After +much reflection he came to the conclusion that beauty is often very +relative, just as what is decent in Japan is indecent in Rome, and what +is fashionable in Paris, is not fashionable in Pekin; and he saved +himself the trouble of composing a long treatise on beauty. + +There are actions which the whole world finds beautiful. Two of Cæsar's +officers, mortal enemies, send each other a challenge, not as to who +shall shed the other's blood with tierce and quarte behind a thicket as +with us, but as to who shall best defend the Roman camp, which the +Barbarians are about to attack. One of them, having repulsed the enemy, +is near succumbing; the other rushes to his aid, saves his life, and +completes the victory. + +A friend sacrifices his life for his friend; a son for his father.... +The Algonquin, the Frenchman, the Chinaman, will all say that that is +very _beautiful_, that these actions give them pleasure, that they +admire them. + +They will say as much of the great moral maxims, of Zarathustra's--"In +doubt if an action be just, abstain..."; of Confucius'--"Forget +injuries, never forget kindnesses." + +The negro with the round eyes and flat nose, who will not give the name +of "beauties" to the ladies of our courts, will without hesitation give +it to these actions and these maxims. The wicked man even will recognize +the beauty of these virtues which he dare not imitate. The beauty which +strikes the senses merely, the imagination, and that which is called +"intelligence," is often uncertain therefore. The beauty which speaks to +the heart is not that. You will find a host of people who will tell you +that they have found nothing beautiful in three-quarters of the Iliad; +but nobody will deny that Codrus' devotion to his people was very +beautiful, supposing it to be true. + +There are many other reasons which determine me not to write a treatise +on beauty. + + + + +_BISHOP_ + + +Samuel Ornik, native of Basle, was, as you know, a very amiable young +man who, besides, knew his New Testament by heart in Greek and German. +When he was twenty his parents sent him on a journey. He was charged to +carry some books to the coadjutor of Paris, at the time of the Fronde. +He arrived at the door of the archbishop's residence; the Swiss told him +that Monseigneur saw nobody. "Comrade," said Ornik to him, "you are very +rude to your compatriots. The apostles let everyone approach, and Jesus +Christ desired that people should suffer all the little children to come +to him. I have nothing to ask of your master; on the contrary, I have +brought him something." + +"Come inside, then," said the Swiss. + +He waits an hour in a first antechamber. As he was very naïve, he began +a conversation with a servant, who was very fond of telling all he knew +of his master. "He must be mightily rich," said Ornik, "to have this +crowd of pages and flunkeys whom I see running about the house." + +"I don't know what his income is," answered the other, "but I heard it +said to Joly and the Abbé Charier that he already had two millions of +debts." + +"But who is that lady coming out of the room?" + +"That is Madame de Pomereu, one of his mistresses." + +"She is really very pretty; but I have not read that the apostles had +such company in their bedrooms in the mornings. Ah! I think the +archbishop is going to give audience." + +"Say--'His Highness, Monseigneur.'" + +"Willingly." Ornik salutes His Highness, presents his books, and is +received with a very gracious smile. The archbishop says four words to +him, then climbs into his coach, escorted by fifty horsemen. In +climbing, Monseigneur lets a sheath fall. Ornik is quite astonished that +Monseigneur carries so large an ink-horn in his pocket. "Don't you see +that's his dagger?" says the chatterbox. "Everyone carries a dagger when +he goes to parliament." + +"That's a pleasant way of officiating," says Ornik; and he goes away +very astonished. + +He traverses France, and enlightens himself from town to town; thence he +passes into Italy. When he is in the Pope's territory, he meets one of +those bishops with a thousand crowns income, walking on foot. Ornik was +very polite; he offers him a place in his cambiature. "You are doubtless +on your way to comfort some sick man, Monseigneur?" + +"Sir, I am on my way to my master's." + +"Your master? that is Jesus Christ, doubtless?" + +"Sir, it is Cardinal Azolin; I am his almoner. He pays me very poorly; +but he has promised to place me in the service of Donna Olimpia, the +favourite sister-in-law _di nostro signore_." + +"What! you are in the pay of a cardinal? But do you not know that there +were no cardinals in the time of Jesus Christ and St. John?" + +"Is it possible?" cried the Italian prelate. + +"Nothing is more true; you have read it in the Gospel." + +"I have never read it," answered the bishop; "all I know is Our Lady's +office." + +"I tell you there were neither cardinals nor bishops, and when there +were bishops, the priests were their equals almost, according to +Jerome's assertions in several places." + +"Holy Virgin," said the Italian. "I knew nothing about it: and the +popes?" + +"There were not any popes any more than cardinals." + +The good bishop crossed himself; he thought he was with an evil spirit, +and jumped out of the cambiature. + + + + +_BOOKS_ + + +You despise them, books, you whose whole life is plunged in the vanities +of ambition and in the search for pleasure or in idleness; but think +that the whole of the known universe, with the exception of the savage +races is governed by books alone. The whole of Africa right to Ethiopia +and Nigritia obeys the book of the Alcoran, after having staggered under +the book of the Gospel. China is ruled by the moral book of Confucius; a +greater part of India by the book of the Veidam. Persia was governed for +centuries by the books of one of the Zarathustras. + +If you have a law-suit, your goods, your honour, your life even depends +on the interpretation of a book which you never read. + +_Robert the Devil_, the _Four Sons of Aymon_, the _Imaginings of Mr. +Oufle_, are books also; but it is with books as with men; the very small +number play a great part, the rest are mingled in the crowd. + +Who leads the human race in civilized countries? those who know how to +read and write. You do not know either Hippocrates, Boerhaave or +Sydenham; but you put your body in the hands of those who have read +them. You abandon your soul to those who are paid to read the Bible, +although there are not fifty among them who have read it in its entirety +with care. + +To such an extent do books govern the world, that those who command +to-day in the city of the Scipios and the Catos have desired that the +books of their law should be only for them; it is their sceptre; they +have made it a crime of _lèse-majesté_ for their subjects to look there +without express permission. In other countries it has been forbidden to +think in writing without letters patent. + +There are nations among whom thought is regarded purely as an object of +commerce. The operations of the human mind are valued there only at two +sous the sheet. + +In another country, the liberty of explaining oneself by books is one of +the most inviolable prerogatives. Print all that you like under pain of +boring or of being punished if you abuse too considerably your natural +right. + +Before the admirable invention of printing, books were rarer and more +expensive than precious stones. Almost no books among the barbarian +nations until Charlemagne, and from him to the French king Charles V., +surnamed "the wise"; and from this Charles right to François Ier, there +is an extreme dearth. + +The Arabs alone had books from the eighth century of our era to the +thirteenth. + +China was filled with them when we did not know how to read or write. + +Copyists were much employed in the Roman Empire from the time of the +Scipios up to the inundation of the barbarians. + +The Greeks occupied themselves much in transcribing towards the time of +Amyntas, Philip and Alexander; they continued this craft especially in +Alexandria. + +This craft is somewhat ungrateful. The merchants always paid the authors +and the copyists very badly. It took two years of assiduous labour for a +copyist to transcribe the Bible well on vellum. What time and what +trouble for copying correctly in Greek and Latin the works of Origen, of +Clement of Alexandria, and of all those other authors called "fathers." + +The poems of Homer were long so little known that Pisistratus was the +first who put them in order, and who had them transcribed in Athens, +about five hundred years before the era of which we are making use. + +To-day there are not perhaps a dozen copies of the Veidam and the +Zend-Avesta in the whole of the East. + +You would not have found a single book in the whole of Russia in 1700, +with the exception of Missals and a few Bibles in the homes of aged men +drunk on brandy. + +To-day people complain of a surfeit: but it is not for readers to +complain; the remedy is easy; nothing forces them to read. It is not any +the more for authors to complain. Those who make the crowd must not cry +that they are being crushed. Despite the enormous quantity of books, how +few people read! and if one read profitably, one would see the +deplorable follies to which the common people offer themselves as prey +every day. + +What multiplies books, despite the law of not multiplying beings +unnecessarily, is that with books one makes others; it is with several +volumes already printed that a new history of France or Spain is +fabricated, without adding anything new. All dictionaries are made with +dictionaries; almost all new geography books are repetitions of +geography books. The Summation of St. Thomas has produced two thousand +fat volumes of theology; and the same family of little worms that have +gnawed the mother, gnaw likewise the children. + + + + +_BOULEVERD OR BOULEVART_ + + +Boulevart, fortification, rampart. Belgrade is the boulevart of the +Ottoman Empire on the Hungarian side. Who would believe that this word +originally signified only a game of bowls? The people of Paris played +bowls on the grass of the rampart; this grass was called the _verd_, +like the grass market. _On boulait sur le verd._ From there it comes +that the English, whose language is a copy of ours in almost all the +words which are not Saxon, have called the game of bowls +"bowling-green," the _verd_ (green) of the game of bowls. We have taken +back from them what we had lent them. Following their example, we gave +the name of _boulingrins_, without knowing the strength of the word, to +the grass-plots we introduced into our gardens. + +I once heard two good dames who were going for a walk on the +_Bouleverd_, and not on the _Boulevart_. People laughed at them, and +wrongly. But in all matters custom carries the day; and everyone who is +right against custom is hissed or condemned. + + + + +_BOURGES_ + + +Our questions barely turn on geography; but let us be permitted to mark +in two words our astonishment about the town of Bourges. The +"Dictionnaire de Trévoux" claims that "it is one of the most ancient +towns of Europe, that it was the seat of the empire of the Gauls, and +gave kings to the Celts." + +I do not wish to combat the ancientness of any town or any family. But +was there ever an empire of the Gauls? Did the Celts have kings? This +mania for antiquity is a malady from which one will not be healed so +soon. The Gauls, Germany, Scandinavia have nothing that is antique save +the land, the trees and the animals. If you want antiquities, go toward +Asia, and even then it is very small beer. Man is ancient and monuments +new, that is what we have in view in more than one article. + +If it were a real benefit to be born in a stone or wooden enclosure more +ancient than another, it would be very reasonable to make the foundation +of one's town date back to the time of the war of the giants; but since +there is not the least advantage in this vanity, one must break away +from it. That is all I had to say about Bourges. + + + + +_BRAHMINS_ + + +Is it not probable that the Brahmins were the first legislators of the +earth, the first philosophers, the first theologians? + +Do not the few monuments of ancient history which remain to us form a +great presumption in their favour, since the first Greek philosophers +went to them to learn mathematics, and since the most ancient +curiosities collected by the emperors of China are all Indian? + +We will speak elsewhere of the "Shasta"; it is the first book of +theology of the Brahmins, written about fifteen hundred years before +their "Veidam," and anterior to all the other books. + +Their annals make no mention of any war undertaken by them at any time. +The words for _arms_, to _kill_, to _maim_, are not to be found either +in the fragments of the "Shasta" which we have, or in the "Ezourveidam," +or in the "Cormoveidam." I can at least give the assurance that I did +not see them in these last two collections: and what is still more +singular is that the "Shasta" which speaks of a conspiracy in heaven, +makes no mention of any war in the great peninsula enclosed between the +Indus and the Ganges. + +The Hebrews, who were known so late, never name the Brahmins; they had +no knowledge of India until after the conquests of Alexander, and their +settling in Egypt, of which they had said so much evil. The name of +India is to be found only in the Book of Esther, and in that of Job +which was not Hebrew. One remarks a singular contrast between the sacred +books of the Hebrews, and those of the Indians. The Indian books +announce only peace and gentleness; they forbid the killing of animals: +the Hebrew books speak only of killing, of the massacre of men and +beasts; everything is slaughtered in the name of the Lord; it is quite +another order of things. + +It is incontestably from the Brahmins that we hold the idea of the fall +of the celestial beings in revolt against the Sovereign of nature; and +it is from there probably that the Greeks drew the fable of the Titans. +It is there also that the Jews at last took the idea of the revolt of +Lucifer, in the first century of our era. + +How could these Indians suppose a revolt in heaven without having seen +one on earth? Such a jump from human nature to divine nature is barely +conceivable. Usually one goes from known to unknown. + +One does not imagine a war of giants until one has seen some men more +robust than the others tyrannize over their fellows. The first Brahmins +must either have experienced violent discords, or at least have seen +them in heaven. + +It is a very astonishing phenomenon for a society of men who have never +made war to have invented a species of war made in the imaginary spaces, +or in a globe distant from ours, or in what is called the "firmament," +the "empyrean." But it must be carefully observed that in this revolt of +celestial beings against their Sovereign no blows were struck, no +celestial blood flowed, no mountains hurled at the head, no angels cut +in two, as in Milton's sublime and grotesque poem. + +According to the "Shasta," it is only a formal disobedience to the +orders of the Most High, a cabal which God punishes by relegating the +rebellious angels to a vast place of shadows called "Ondera" during the +period of an entire mononthour. A mononthour is four hundred and +twenty-six millions of our years. But God deigned to pardon the guilty +after five thousand years, and their ondera was only a purgatory. + +He made "Mhurd" of them, men, and placed them in our globe on condition +that they should not eat animals, and that they should not copulate with +the males of their new species, under pain of returning to ondera. + +Those are the principal articles of the Brahmins' faith, which have +lasted without interruption from immemorial times right to our day: it +seems strange to us that among them it should be as grave a sin to eat a +chicken as to commit sodomy. + +This is only a small part of the ancient cosmogony of the Brahmins. +Their rites, their pagodas, prove that among them everything was +allegorical; they still represent virtue beneath the emblem of a woman +who has ten arms, and who combats ten mortal sins represented by +monsters. Our missionaries have not failed to take this image of virtue +for that of the devil, and to assure us that the devil is worshipped in +India. We have never been among these people but to enrich ourselves and +to calumniate them. + +Really we have forgotten a very essential thing in this little article +on the Brahmins; it is that their sacred books are filled with +contradictions. But the people do not know of them, and the doctors have +solutions ready, figurative meanings, allegories, symbols, express +declarations of Birma, Brahma and Vitsnou, which should close the mouths +of all who reason. + + + + +_CHARACTER_ + + +From the Greek word _impression_, _engraving_. + +It is what nature has graved in us. + +Can one change one's character? Yes, if one changes one's body. It is +possible for a man born blunderer, unbending and violent, being stricken +with apoplexy in his old age, to become a foolish, tearful child, timid +and peaceable. His body is no longer the same. But as long as his +nerves, his blood and his marrow are in the same state, his nature will +not change any more than a wolf's and a marten's instinct. + +The character is composed of our ideas and our feelings: well, it is +substantiated that we give ourselves neither feelings nor ideas; +therefore our character does not depend on us. + +If it depended on us, there is nobody who would not be perfect. + +We cannot give ourselves tastes, talents; why should we give ourselves +qualities? + +If one does not reflect, one thinks oneself master of everything; when +one reflects thereon, one sees that one is master of nothing. + +Should you wish to change a man's character completely, purge him with +diluents every day until you have killed him. Charles XII., in his +suppurative fever on the road to Bender, was no longer the same man. One +prevailed upon him as upon a child. + +If I have a crooked nose and two cat's eyes, I can hide them with a +mask. Can I do more with the character which nature has given me? + +A man born violent, hasty, presented himself before François I., King of +France, to complain of an injustice; the prince's countenance, the +respectful bearing of the courtiers, the very place where he is, make a +powerful impression on this man; mechanically he lowers his eyes, his +rough voice softens, he presents his petition humbly, one would believe +him born as gentle as are (at that moment at least) the courtiers, +amongst whom he is even disconcerted; but François I. understands +physiognomy, he easily discovers in the lowered eyes, burning +nevertheless with sombre fire, in the strained facial muscles, in the +compressed lips, that this man is not so gentle as he is forced to +appear. This man follows him to Pavia, is taken with him, led to the +same prison in Madrid: François I.'s majesty no longer makes the same +impression on him; he grows familiar with the object of his respect. One +day when pulling off the king's boots, and pulling them off badly, the +king, embittered by his misfortune, gets angry; my man sends the king +about his business, and throws his boots out of the window. + +Sixtus V. was born petulant, stubborn, haughty, impetuous, vindictive, +arrogant; this character seemed softened during the trials of his +novitiate. He begins to enjoy a certain credit in his order; he flies +into a passion with a guard, and batters him with his fist: he is +inquisitor at Venice; he performs his duties with insolence: behold him +cardinal, he is possessed _dalla rabbia papale_: this fury triumphs over +his nature; he buries his person and his character in obscurity; he apes +the humble and the dying man; he is elected Pope; this moment gives back +to the spring, which politics have bent, all its long curbed elasticity; +he is the haughtiest and most despotic of sovereigns. + + _Naturam expella furca, tamen usque recurret._ + + (Hor. L. I., ep. x). + + Drive away nature, it returns at the gallop. + + (DESTOUCHES, _Glorieux_, Act 3, Sc. 5.) + +Religion, morality put a brake on a nature's strength; they cannot +destroy it. The drunkard in a cloister, reduced to a half-sétier of +cider at each meal, will no longer get drunk, but he will always like +wine. + +Age enfeebles character; it is a tree that produces only degenerate +fruit, but the fruit is always of the same nature; it is knotted and +covered with moss, it becomes worm-eaten, but it is always oak or pear +tree. If one could change one's character, one would give oneself one, +one would be master of nature. Can one give oneself anything? do we not +receive everything? Try to animate an indolent man with a continued +activity; to freeze with apathy the boiling soul of an impetuous fellow, +to inspire someone who has neither ear nor taste with a taste for music +and poetry, you will no more succeed than if you undertook to give sight +to a man born blind. We perfect, we soften, we conceal what nature has +put in us, but we do not put in ourselves anything at all. + +One says to a farmer: "You have too many fish in this pond, they will +not prosper; there are too many cattle in your meadows, grass lacks, +they will grow thin." It happens after this exhortation that the pikes +eat half my man's carp, and the wolves the half of his sheep; the rest +grow fat. Will he congratulate himself on his economy? This countryman, +it is you; one of your passions has devoured the others, and you think +you have triumphed over yourself. Do not nearly all of us resemble that +old general of ninety who, having met some young officers who were +debauching themselves with some girls, says to them angrily: "Gentlemen, +is that the example I give you?" + + + + +_CHARLATAN_ + + +The article entitled "Charlatan" in the "Encyclopedic Dictionary" is +filled with useful truths agreeably presented. The Chevalier de Jaucourt +has there presented the charlatanry of medicine. + +We will take the liberty of adding here a few reflections. The abode of +the doctors is in the large towns; there are barely any doctors in the +country. It is in the great towns that the rich invalids are; +debauchery, the excesses of the table, the passions, are the cause of +their maladies. Dumoulin, not the lawyer, the doctor, who was as good a +practician as the other, said as he was dying, that he left two great +doctors behind him, diet and river water. + +In 1728, in the time of Law, the most famous charlatan of the first +species, another, Villars by name, confided to some friends that his +uncle who had lived nearly a hundred years, and who died only by +accident, had left him the secret of a water which could easily prolong +life to a hundred and fifty years, provided a man was temperate. When he +saw a funeral pass, he shrugged his shoulders in pity; if the defunct, +he observed, had drunk my water, he would not be where he is. His +friends to whom he gave generously of the water, and who observed the +prescribed regime in some degree, thrived on it and praised it. He then +sold the bottle for six francs; the sale was prodigious. It was water +from the Seine with a little nitre. Those who took it and who subjected +themselves to a certain amount of regime, above all those who were born +with a good constitution, recovered perfect health in a few days. He +said to the others: "It is your fault if you are not entirely cured: +correct these two vices and you will live at least a hundred and fifty +years." Some of them reformed; this good charlatan's fortune increased +like his reputation. The Abbé de Pons, the enthusiast, put him far above +the Maréchal de Villars: "The Maréchal kills men," he said to him, "but +you make them live." + +People learned at last that Villars Water was only river water; they +would have no more of it; and went to other charlatans. + +It is certain that he had done good, and that the only reproach one +could make against him was that he had sold Seine water a little too +dear. He led men to temperance by which fact he was superior to the +apothecary Arnoult, who stuffed Europe with his sachets against +apoplexy, without recommending any virtue. + +I knew in London a doctor named Brown, who practised in Barbados. He had +a sugar refinery and negroes; he was robbed of a considerable sum; he +assembled his negroes: "My lads," he said to them, "the great serpent +appeared to me during the night, he told me that the thief would at this +moment have a parrot's feather on the end of his nose." The guilty man +promptly put his hand to his nose. "It is you who robbed me," said the +master; "the great serpent has just told me so." And he regained his +money. One can hardly condemn such a charlatanry; but one must be +dealing with negroes. + +Scipio Africanus, this great Scipio very different otherwise from Dr. +Brown, willingly made his soldiers believe that he was inspired by the +gods. This great charlatanry was long the custom. Can one blame Scipio +to have availed himself of it? he was the man who perhaps did most +honour to the Roman Republic; but why did the gods inspire him not to +render his accounts? + +Numa did better; it was necessary to police some brigands and a senate +which was the most difficult section of these brigands to govern. If he +had proposed his laws to the assembled tribes, the assassins of his +predecessor would have made a thousand difficulties. He addressed +himself to the goddess Egeria, who gave him some pandects from Jupiter; +he was obeyed without contradiction, and he reigned happily. His +instructions were good, his charlatanry did good; but if some secret +enemy had discovered the imposture, if he had said: "Exterminate an +impostor who prostitutes the name of the gods in order to deceive men," +Numa ran the risk of being sent to heaven with Romulus. + +It is probable that Numa took his measures very carefully, and that he +deceived the Romans for their benefit, with a dexterity suitable to the +time, the place, the intelligence of the early Romans. + +Mahomet was twenty times on the point of failing, but he succeeded at +last with the Arabs of Medina; and people believed that he was the +intimate friend of the Archangel Gabriel. If to-day someone came to +Constantinople to announce that he was the favourite of the Archangel +Raphael, far superior to Gabriel in dignity, and that it was in him +alone people should believe, he would be impaled in the public place. It +is for charlatans to choose their time well. + +Was there not a little charlatanry in Socrates with his familiar demon, +and Apollo's precise declaration which proclaimed him the wisest of all +men? How can Rollin, in his history, reason from this oracle? How is it +that he does not let the young idea know that it was pure charlatanry? +Socrates chose his time badly. A hundred years earlier, maybe, he would +have governed Athens. + +All leaders of sects in philosophy have been somewhat charlatans: but +the greatest of all have been those who have aspired to domination. +Cromwell was the most terrible of all our charlatans. He appeared at +precisely the only time he could succeed: under Elizabeth he would have +been hanged; under Charles II. he would have been merely ridiculous. He +came happily at a time when people were disgusted with kings; and his +son, at a time when people were weary of a protector. + + +OF CHARLATANRY IN SCIENCE AND LITERATURE + +The sciences can barely be without charlatanry. People wish to have +their opinions accepted; the quibbling doctor wishes to eclipse the +angelic doctor; the recondite doctor wishes to reign alone. Each builds +his system of physics, metaphysics, scholastic theology; it is a +competition in turning one's merchandise to account. You have agents who +extol it, fools who believe you, protectors who support you. + +Is there a greater charlatanry than that of substituting words for +things, and of wanting others to believe what you do not believe +yourself? + +One establishes whirlwinds of subtle matter, ramous, globulous, +striated, channelled; the other elements of matter which are not matter +at all, and a pre-established harmony which makes the clock of the body +sound the hour, when the clock of the soul shows it with its hand. These +chimeras find partisans for a few years. When this rubbish has passed +out of fashion, new fanatics appear on the itinerant theatre; they +banish germs from the world, they say that the sea produced the +mountains, and that men were once fish. + +How much charlatanry has been put into history, either by astonishing +the reader with prodigies, by titillating human malignity with satire, +or by flattering the families of tyrants with infamous eulogy? + +The wretched species that writes for a living is charlatan in another +way. A poor man who has no trade, who has had the misfortune to go to +college, and who thinks he knows how to write, goes to pay his court to +a bookseller, and asks him for work. The bookseller knows that the +majority of most people who live in houses want to have little +libraries, that they need abridgments and new titles; he orders from the +writer an abridgment of the "History by Rapin-Thoyras," an abridgment of +the "History of the Church," a "Collection of Witty Sayings" drawn from +the "Menagiana," a "Dictionary of Great Men," where an unknown pedant +is placed beside Cicero, and a _sonettiero_ of Italy near Virgil. + +Another bookseller orders novels, or translations of novels. "If you +have no imagination," he says to the workman, "you will take a few of +the adventures in 'Cyrus,' in 'Gusman d'Alfarache,' in the 'Secret +Memoirs of a Gentleman of Quality,' or 'Of a Lady of Quality'; and from +the total you will prepare a volume of four hundred pages at twenty sous +the sheet." + +Another bookseller gives the gazettes and almanacs for ten years past to +a man of genius. "You will make me an extract of all that, and you will +bring it me back in three months under the name of 'Faithful History of +the Times,' by the Chevalier de Trois Etoiles, Lieutenant of the Navy, +employed in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs." + +Of this kind of book there are about fifty thousand in Europe; and it +all passes just like the secret of whitening the skin, of darkening the +hair, and the universal panacea. + + + + +_CIVIL LAWS_ + + +EXTRACT FROM SOME NOTES FOUND AMONG A LAWYER'S PAPERS, WHICH MAYBE MERIT +EXAMINATION. + +Let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for +nothing, and a man condemned to public works still serves the country, +and is a living lesson. + + * * * * * + +Let all laws be clear, uniform and precise: to interpret laws is almost +always to corrupt them. + + * * * * * + +Let nothing be infamous save vice. + + * * * * * + +Let taxes be always proportional. + + * * * * * + +Let the law never be contradictory to custom: for if the custom be good, +the law is worthless. + + + + +_CLIMATE_ + + +Climate influences religion as regards customs and ceremonies. A +legislator will not have had difficulty in making the Indians bathe in +the Ganges at certain seasons of the moon; it is a great pleasure for +them. He would have been stoned if he had proposed the same bath to the +peoples who dwell on the banks of the Dwina near Archangel. Forbid pig +to an Arab who would have leprosy if he ate of this flesh which is very +bad and disgusting in his country, he will obey you joyfully. Issue the +same veto to a Westphalian and he will be tempted to fight you. + +Abstinence from wine is a good religious precept in Arabia where orange +water, lemon water, lime water are necessary to health. Mohammed would +not have forbidden wine in Switzerland perhaps, especially before going +to battle. + +There are customs of pure fantasy. Why did the priests of Egypt imagine +circumcision? it is not for health. Cambyses who treated them as they +deserved, they and their bull Apis, Cambyses' courtiers, Cambyses' +soldiers, had not had their prepuces lopped, and were very well. Climate +does nothing to a priest's genitals. One offered one's prepuce to Isis, +probably as one presented everywhere the first fruits of the earth. It +was offering the first fruits of life. + +Religions have always rolled on two pivots; observance and creed: +observance depends largely on climate; creed not at all. One could as +easily make a dogma accepted on the equator as the polar circle. It +would later be rejected equally at Batavia and in the Orkneys, while it +would be maintained _unguibus et rostro_ at Salamanca. That depends in +no way on the soil and the atmosphere, but solely on opinion, that +fickle queen of the world. + +Certain libations of wine will be precept in a vine-growing country, and +it will not occur to a legislator's mind to institute in Norway sacred +mysteries which cannot be performed without wine. + +It will be expressly ordered to burn incense in the parvis of a temple +where beasts are slaughtered in the Deity's honour, and for the priests' +supper. This butcher's shop called "temple" would be a place of +abominable infection if it were not continually purified: and without +the assistance of aromatics, the religion of the ancients would have +caused the plague. Even the interior of the temple was decked with +festoons of flowers in order to make the air sweeter. + +No cow will be sacrificed in the burning land of the Indian peninsula; +because this animal which furnishes necessary milk is very rare in an +arid country, its flesh is dry, tough, contains very little nourishment, +and the Brahmins would live very badly. On the contrary, the cow will +become sacred, in view of its rarity and utility. + +One will only enter barefoot the temple of Jupiter Ammon where the heat +is excessive: one must be well shod to perform one's devotions in +Copenhagen. + +It is not so with dogma. People have believed in polytheism in all +climates; and it is as easy for a Crimean Tartar as for an inhabitant of +Mecca to recognize a single God, incommunicable, non-begetting, +non-begotten. It is through its dogma still more than through its rites +that a religion is spread from one climate to another. The dogma of the +unity of God soon passed from Medina to the Caucasus; then the climate +cedes to opinion. + +The Arabs said to the Turks: "We had ourselves circumcised in Arabia +without really knowing why; it was an old fashion of the priests of +Egypt to offer to Oshireth or Osiris a little part of what they held +most precious. We had adopted this custom three thousand years before we +became Mohammedans. You will be circumcised like us; like us you will be +obliged to sleep with one of your wives every Friday, and to give each +year two and a half per cent of your income to the poor. We drink only +water and sherbet; all intoxicating liquor is forbidden us; in Arabia it +is pernicious. You will embrace this regime although you love wine +passionately, and although it may even be often necessary for you to go +on the banks of the Phasis and Araxes. Lastly, if you want to go to +Heaven, and be well placed there, you will take the road to Mecca." + +The inhabitants of the north of the Caucasus submit to these laws, and +embrace throughout the country a religion which was not made for them. + +In Egypt the symbolic worship of animals succeeded the dogmas of Thaut. +The gods of the Romans later shared Egypt with the dogs, the cats and +the crocodiles. To the Roman religion succeeded Christianity; it was +entirely driven out by Mohammedanism, which perhaps will cede its place +to a new religion. + +In all these vicissitudes climate has counted for nothing: government +has done everything. We are considering here second causes only, without +raising profane eyes to the Providence which directs them. The Christian +religion, born in Syria, having received its principal development in +Alexandria, inhabits to-day the lands where Teutate, Irminsul, Frida, +Odin were worshipped. + +There are peoples whose religion has been made by neither climate nor +government. What cause detached the north of Germany, Denmark, +three-quarters of Switzerland, Holland, England, Scotland, Ireland, from +the Roman communion? Poverty. Indulgences and deliverance from purgatory +were sold too dear to souls whose bodies had at that time very little +money. The prelates, the monks devoured a province's whole revenue. +People took a cheaper religion. At last, after twenty civil wars, +people believed that the Pope's religion was very good for great lords, +and the reformed religion for citizens. Time will show whether the Greek +religion or the Turkish religion will prevail by the Ægean Sea and the +Pont-Euxine. + + + + +_COMMON SENSE_ + + +There are sometimes in common expressions an image of what passes in the +depths of all men's hearts. Among the Romans _sensus communis_ signified +not only common sense, but humanity, sensibility. As we are not as good +as the Romans, this word signifies among us only half of what it +signified among them. It means only good sense, plain reason, reason set +in operation, a first notion of ordinary things, a state midway between +stupidity and intelligence. "This man has no common sense" is a great +insult. "A common-sense man" is an insult likewise; it means that he is +not entirely stupid, and that he lacks what is called wit and +understanding. But whence comes this expression _common sense_, unless +it be from the senses? Men, when they invented this word, avowed that +nothing entered the soul save through the senses; otherwise, would they +have used the word _sense_ to signify common reasoning? + +People say sometimes--"Common sense is very rare." What does this phrase +signify? that in many men reason set in operation is stopped in its +progress by prejudices, that such and such man who judges very sanely in +one matter, will always be vastly deceived in another. This Arab, who +will be a good calculator, a learned chemist, an exact astronomer, will +believe nevertheless that Mohammed put half the moon in his sleeve. + +Why will he go beyond common sense in the three sciences of which I +speak, and why will he be beneath common sense when there is question of +this half moon? Because in the first cases he has seen with his eyes, +he has perfected his intelligence; and in the second, he has seen with +other people's eyes, he has closed his own, he has perverted the common +sense which is in him. + +How has this strange mental alienation been able to operate? How can the +ideas which move with so regular and so firm a step in the brain on a +great number of subjects limp so wretchedly on another a thousand times +more palpable and easy to comprehend? This man always has inside him the +same principles of intelligence; he must have some organ vitiated then, +just as it happens sometimes that the finest _gourmet_ may have a +depraved taste as regards a particular kind of food. + +How is the organ of this Arab, who sees half the moon in Mohammed's +sleeve, vitiated? It is through fear. He has been told that if he did +not believe in this sleeve, his soul, immediately after his death, when +passing over the pointed bridge, would fall for ever into the abyss. He +has been told even worse things: If ever you have doubts about this +sleeve, one dervish will treat you as impious; another will prove to you +that you are an insensate fool who, having all possible motives for +believing, have not wished to subordinate your superb reason to the +evidence; a third will report you to the little divan of a little +province, and you will be legally impaled. + +All this terrifies the good Arab, his wife, his sister, all his little +family into a state of panic. They have good sense about everything +else, but on this article their imagination is wounded, as was the +imagination of Pascal, who continually saw a precipice beside his +armchair. But does our Arab believe in fact in Mohammed's sleeve? No. He +makes efforts to believe; he says it is impossible, but that it is true; +he believes what he does not believe. On the subject of this sleeve he +forms in his head a chaos of ideas which he is afraid to disentangle; +and this veritably is not to have common sense. + + + + +_CONCATENATION OF EVENTS_ + + +The present is delivered, it is said, of the future. Events are linked +to each other by an invincible fatality: it is Destiny which, in Homer, +is above even Jupiter. This master of gods and men declares roundly that +he cannot stop his son Sarpedon dying in his appointed time. Sarpedon +was born at the moment when he had to be born, and could not be born at +another moment; he could not die otherwise than before Troy; he could +not be buried elsewhere than in Lycia; had at the appointed time to +produce vegetables which had to be changed into the substance of a few +Lycians; his heirs had to establish a new order in his states; this new +order had to exert an influence over the neighbouring kingdoms; from it +resulted a new arrangement of war and peace with the neighbours of the +neighbours of Lycia: thus, step by step, the destiny of the whole world +has been dependent on Sarpedon's death, which depended on Helen being +carried off; and this carrying off was necessarily linked to Hecuba's +marriage, which by tracing back to other events was linked to the origin +of things. + +If only one of these facts had been arranged differently, another +universe would have resulted: but it was not possible for the present +universe not to exist; therefore it was not possible for Jupiter to save +his son's life, for all that he was Jupiter. + +This system of necessity and fatality has been invented in our time by +Leibnitz, according to what people say, under the name of +_self-sufficient reason_; it is, however, very ancient: that there is no +effect without a cause and that often the smallest cause produces the +greatest effects, does not date from to-day. + +Lord Bolingbroke avows that the little quarrels of Madame Marlborough +and Madame Masham gave birth to his chance of making Queen Anne's +private treaty with Louis XIV.; this treaty led to the Peace of Utrecht; +this Peace of Utrecht established Philip V. on the throne of Spain. +Philip V. took Naples and Sicily from the house of Austria; the Spanish +prince who is to-day King of Naples clearly owes his kingdom to my lady +Masham: and he would not have had it, he would not perhaps even have +been born, if the Duchess of Marlborough had been more complaisant +towards the Queen of England. His existence at Naples depended on one +foolishness more or less at the court of London. + +Examine the position of all the peoples of the universe; they are +established like this on a sequence of facts which appear to be +connected with nothing and which are connected with everything. +Everything is cog, pulley, cord, spring, in this vast machine. + +It is likewise in the physical sphere. A wind which blows from the +depths of Africa and the austral seas, brings a portion of the African +atmosphere, which falls in rain in the valleys of the Alps; these rains +fertilize our lands; our north wind in its turn sends our vapours among +the negroes; we do good to Guinea, and Guinea does good to us. The chain +stretches from one end of the universe to the other. + +But it seems to me that a strange abuse is made of the truth of this +principle. From it some people conclude that there is not a sole minute +atom whose movement has not exerted its influence in the present +arrangement of the world; that there is not a single minute accident, +among either men or animals, which is not an essential link in the great +chain of fate. + +Let us understand each other: every effect clearly has its cause, going +back from cause to cause in the abyss of eternity; but every cause has +not its effect going forward to the end of the centuries. All events are +produced by each other, I admit; if the past is delivered of the +present, the present is delivered of the future; everything has father, +but everything has not always children. Here it is precisely as with a +genealogical tree; each house goes back, as we say, to Adam; but in the +family there are many persons who have died without leaving issue. + +There is a genealogical tree of the events of this world. It is +incontestable that the inhabitants of Gaul and Spain are descended from +Gomer, and the Russians from Magog, his younger brother: one finds this +genealogy in so many fat books! On this basis one cannot deny that the +Great Turk, who is also descended from Magog, was not bound to be well +beaten in 1769 by Catherine II., Empress of Russia. This adventure is +clearly connected with other great adventures. But that Magog spat to +right or left, near Mount Caucasus, and that he made two circles in a +well or three, that he slept on the left side or on the right; I do not +see that that has had much influence on present affairs. + +One must think that everything is not complete in nature, as Newton has +demonstrated, and that every movement is not communicated step by step +until it makes a circuit of the world, as he has demonstrated still +further. Throw into water a body of like density, you calculate easily +that after a short time the movement of this body, and the movement it +has communicated to the water, are destroyed; the movement disappears +and is effaced; therefore the movement that Magog might produce by +spitting in a well cannot influence what is passing to-day in Moldavia +and Wallachia; therefore present events are not the children of all past +events: they have their direct lines; but a thousand little collateral +lines do not serve them at all. Once more, every being has a father, but +every being has not children. + + + + +_CONTRADICTIONS_ + + +If some literary society wishes to undertake the dictionary of +contradictions, I subscribe for twenty folio volumes. + +The world can exist only by contradictions: what is needed to abolish +them? to assemble the states of the human race. But from the manner in +which men are made, it would be a fresh contradiction if they were to +agree. Assemble all the rabbits of the universe, there will not be two +different opinions among them. + +I know only two kinds of immutable beings on the earth, mathematicians +and animals; they are led by two invariable rules, demonstration and +instinct: and even the mathematicians have had some disputes, but the +animals have never varied. + +The contrasts, the light and shade in which public men are represented +in history, are not contradictions, they are faithful portraits of human +nature. + +Every day people condemn and admire Alexander the murderer of Clitus, +but the avenger of Greece, the conqueror of the Persians, and the +founder of Alexandria; + +Cæsar the debauchee, who robs the public treasury of Rome to reduce his +country to dependence; but whose clemency equals his valour, and whose +intelligence equals his courage; + +Mohammed, impostor, brigand; but the sole religious legislator who had +courage, and who founded a great empire; + +Cromwell the enthusiast, a rogue in his fanaticism even, judicial +assassin of his king, but as profound politician as brave warrior. + +A thousand contrasts frequently crowd together, and these contrasts are +in nature; they are no more astonishing than a fine day followed by +storm. + +Men are equally mad everywhere; they have made the laws little by +little, as gaps are repaired in a wall. Here eldest sons have taken all +they could from younger sons, there younger sons share equally. +Sometimes the Church has commanded the duel, sometimes she has +anathematized it. The partisans and the enemies of Aristotle have each +been excommunicated in their turn, as have those who wore long hair and +those who wore short. In this world we have perfect law only to rule a +species of madness called gaming. The rules of gaming are the only ones +which admit neither exception, relaxation, variety nor tyranny. A man +who has been a lackey, if he play at lansquenet with kings, is paid +without difficulty if he win; everywhere else the law is a sword with +which the stronger cut the weaker in pieces. + +Nevertheless, this world exists as if everything were well ordered; the +irregularity is of our nature; our political world is like our globe, a +misshapen thing which always preserves itself. It would be mad to wish +that the mountains, the seas, the rivers, were traced in beautiful +regular forms; it would be still more mad to ask perfect wisdom of men; +it would be wishing to give wings to dogs or horns to eagles. + + + + +_CORN_ + + +The Gauls had corn in Cæsar's time: one is curious to know where they +and the Teutons found it to sow. People answer you that the Tyrians had +brought it into Spain, the Spaniards into Gaul, the Gauls into Germany. +And where did the Tyrians get this corn? Among the Greeks probably, from +whom they received it in exchange for their alphabet. + +Who had made this present to the Greeks? It was formerly Ceres without a +doubt; and when one has gone back to Ceres one can hardly go farther. +Ceres must have come down on purpose from the sky to give us wheat, rye, +barley, etc. + +But as the credit of Ceres who gave the corn to the Greeks, and that of +Isheth or Isis who bestowed it on the Egyptians, is very much fallen in +these days, we remain in uncertainty as to the origin of corn. + +Sanchoniathon affirms that Dagon or Dagan, one of the grandsons of +Thaut, had the control of corn in Phoenicia. Well, his Thaut is of +about the same time as our Jared. From this it results that corn is very +old, and that it is of the same antiquity as grass. Perhaps this Dagon +was the first man to make bread, but that is not demonstrated. + +Strange thing! we know positively that it is to Noah that we are under +an obligation for wine, and we do not know to whom we owe bread. And, +still more strange thing, we are so ungrateful to Noah, that we have +more than two thousand songs in honour of Bacchus, and we chant barely +one in honour of Noah our benefactor. + +A Jew has assured me that corn came by itself in Mesopotamia, like the +apples, wild pears, chestnuts, medlars in the West. I want to believe +it until I am sure of the contrary; for corn must certainly grow +somewhere. It has become the ordinary and indispensable food in the good +climates, and throughout the North. + +Some great philosophers whose talents we esteem and whose systems we do +not follow (Buffon) have claimed on page 195 of the "Natural History of +the Dog," that mankind has made corn; that our fathers by virtue of +sowing lolium and gramina changed them into wheat. As these philosophers +are not of our opinion about shells, they will permit us not to be of +theirs about corn. We do not believe that one has ever made tulips grow +from jasmin. We find that the germ of corn is quite different from that +of lolium, and we do not believe in any transmutation. When somebody +shows it to us we will retract. + +Corn assuredly is not the food of the greater part of the world. Maize, +tapioca, feed the whole of America. We have entire provinces where the +peasants eat nothing but chestnut bread, more nourishing and of better +flavour than that of rye and barley which so many people eat, and which +is much better than the ration bread which is given to the soldier. The +whole of southern Africa does not know of bread. The immense archipelago +of the Indies, Siam, Laos, Pegu, Cochin China, Tonkin, a part of China, +Japan, the coast of Malabar and Coromandel, the banks of the Ganges +furnish a rice, the cultivation of which is much easier than that of +wheat, and which causes it to be neglected. Corn is absolutely unknown +for the space of fifteen hundred leagues on the coasts of the Glacial +Sea. This food, to which we are accustomed, is among us so precious that +the fear of seeing a dearth of it alone causes riots among the most +subjugated peoples. The corn trade is everywhere one of the great +objects of government; it is a part of our being, and yet this essential +commodity is sometimes squandered ridiculously. The powder merchants use +the best flour for covering the heads of our young men and women. But +over three-quarters of the earth bread is not eaten at all. People +maintain that the Ethiopians mocked at the Egyptians who lived on +bread. But since it is our chief food, corn has become one of the great +objects of trade and politics. So much has been written on this subject, +that if a husbandman sowed as much corn as the weight of the volumes we +have about this commodity, he might hope for the amplest harvest, and +become richer than those who in their gilded and lacquered drawing-rooms +ignore his exceeding labour and wretchedness. + + + + +_CROMWELL_ + + +SECTION I + +Cromwell is painted as a man who was an impostor all his life. I have +difficulty in believing it. I think that first of all he was an +enthusiast, and that later he made even his fanaticism serve his +greatness. A novice who is fervent at the age of twenty often becomes a +skilful rogue at forty. In the great game of human life one begins by +being a dupe, and one finishes by being a rogue. A statesman takes as +almoner a monk steeped in the pettinesses of his monastery, devout, +credulous, clumsy, quite new to the world: the monk learns, forms +himself, intrigues, and supplants his master. + +Cromwell did not know at first whether he would be an ecclesiastic or a +soldier. He was both. In 1622 he served a campaign in the army of +Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, a great man, brother of two great +men; and when he returned to England, he went into the service of Bishop +Williams, and was his grace's theologian, while his grace passed as his +wife's lover. His principles were those of the Puritans; thus he had to +hate a bishop with all his heart, and not have a liking for kings. He +was driven from Bishop Williams' house because he was a Puritan; and +there is the origin of his fortune. The English Parliament declared +itself against the throne and against the episcopacy; some of his +friends in this parliament procured the nomination of a village for him. +Only at this time did he begin to exist, and he was more than forty +before he had ever made himself talked of. In vain was he conversant +with Holy Writ, in vain did he argue about the rights of priests and +deacons, and preach a few poor sermons and libels, he was ignored. I +have seen one of his sermons which is very insipid, and which bears +sufficient resemblance to the predications of the quakers; assuredly +there is to be found there no trace of that persuasive eloquence with +which later he carried the parliaments away. The reason is that in fact +he was much more suited to public affairs than to the Church. It was +above all in his tone and in his air that his eloquence consisted; a +gesture of that hand that had won so many battles and killed so many +royalists, was more persuasive than the periods of Cicero. It must be +avowed that it was his incomparable bravery which made him known, and +which led him by degrees to the pinnacle of greatness. + +He began by launching out as a volunteer who wished to make his fortune, +in the town of Hull, besieged by the king. There he did many fine and +happy actions, for which he received a gratification of about six +thousand francs from the parliament. This present made by the parliament +to an adventurer made it clear that the rebel party must prevail. The +king was not in a position to give to his general officers what the +parliament gave to volunteers. With money and fanaticism one is bound in +the long run to be master of everything. Cromwell was made colonel. Then +his great talents for war developed to the point that when the +parliament created the Count of Manchester general of its armies, it +made Cromwell lieutenant-general, without his having passed through the +other ranks. Never did man appear more worthy of commanding; never were +more activity and prudence, more boldness and more resource seen than in +Cromwell. He is wounded at the battle of York; and while the first +dressing is being put on his wound, he learns that his general, +Manchester, is retiring, and that the battle is lost. He hastens to +Manchester's side; he finds him fleeing with some officers; he takes him +by the arm, and says to him with an air of confidence and grandeur: "You +are mistaken, my lord; it is not on this side that the enemy is." He +leads him back near the battlefield, rallies during the night more than +twelve thousand men, speaks to them in the name of God, quotes Moses, +Gideon and Joshua, at daybreak recommences the battle against the +victorious royal army, and defeats it completely. Such a man had to +perish or be master. Nearly all the officers of his army were +enthusiasts who carried the New Testament at their saddle-bow: in the +army as in the parliament men spoke only of making Babylon fall, of +establishing the religion in Jerusalem, of shattering the colossus. +Among so many madmen Cromwell ceased to be mad, and thought that it was +better to govern them than to be governed by them. The habit of +preaching as though he were inspired remained to him. Picture a fakir +who has put an iron belt round his waist as a penitence, and who then +takes off his belt to beat the other fakirs' ears: there you have +Cromwell. He becomes as intriguing as he was intrepid; he associates +himself with all the colonels of the army, and thus forms among the +troops a republic which forces the commander-in-chief to resign. Another +commander-in-chief is nominated, he disgusts him. He governs the army, +and by it he governs the parliament; he puts this parliament in the +necessity of making him commander-in-chief at last. All this was a great +deal; but what is essential is that he wins all the battles he engages +in in England, Scotland and Ireland; and he wins them, not in watching +the fighting and in taking care of himself, but always by charging the +enemy, rallying his troops, rushing everywhere, often wounded, killing +many royalist officers with his own hand, like a desperate and +infuriated grenadier. + +Amid this frightful war Cromwell made love; he went, his Bible under his +arm, to sleep with the wife of his major-general, Lambert. She loved the +Count of Holland, who was serving in the king's army. Cromwell took him +prisoner in a battle, and enjoyed the pleasure of having his rival's +head cut off. His maxim was to shed the blood of every important enemy, +either on the field of battle, or by the executioner's hand. He always +increased his power, by always daring to abuse it; the profundity of his +plans took away nothing from his ferocious impetuosity. He goes into the +House of Parliament and, taking his watch, which he threw on the ground +and which he shattered to atoms: "I will break you," he said, "like this +watch." He returns there some time after, drives all the members out one +after the other, making them defile before him. Each is obliged, as he +passes, to make him a deep bow: one of them passes with his hat on his +head; Cromwell takes his hat from him and throws it on the ground: +"Learn to respect me," he says. + +When he had outraged all kings by having his own legitimate king's head +cut off, and when he started to reign himself, he sent his portrait to a +crowned head; it was to Christine, Queen of Sweden. Marvell, a famous +English poet, who wrote very good Latin verse, accompanied this portrait +with six verses where he made Cromwell himself speak. Cromwell corrected +the last two as follows: + + _At tibi submittit frontem reverentior umbra, + Non sunt hi vultus regibus usque truces._ + +This queen was the first to recognize him as soon as he was protector of +the three kingdoms. Almost all the sovereigns of Europe sent their +ambassadors _to their brother_ Cromwell, to this bishop's servant, who +had just caused a sovereign, their own kin, to perish at the hand of the +executioner. They vied with each in soliciting his alliance. Cardinal +Mazarin, to please him, drove out of France the two sons of Charles I., +the two grandsons of Henry IV., the two first cousins of Louis XIV. +France conquered Dunkirk for him, and sent him the keys. After his +death, Louis XIV. and all his court wore mourning, excepting +Mademoiselle, who had the courage to come to the company in a coloured +habit, and alone maintained the honour of her race. + +Never was a king more absolute than he was. He said that he had +preferred governing under the name of _protector_ rather than under that +of _king_, because the English knew the point to which a King of +England's prerogative extended, and did not know to what point a +protector's might go. That was to understand men, who are governed by +opinion, and whose opinion depends on a name. He had conceived a +profound scorn for the religion which had served to his fortune. There +is a certain anecdote preserved in the house of St. John, which proves +sufficiently the little account which Cromwell made of the instrument +which had produced such great effects in his hands. He was drinking one +day with Ireton, Fleetwood and St. John, great-grandfather of the +celebrated Lord Bolingbroke; they wished to uncork a bottle, and the +corkscrew fell under the table; they all looked for it and did not find +it. Meanwhile a deputation from the Presbyterian churches was waiting in +the antechamber, and an usher came to announce them. "Tell them," said +Cromwell, "that I have retired, _and that I am seeking the Lord_." It +was the expression which the fanatics used when they were saying their +prayers. When he had thus dismissed the band of ministers, he said these +very words to his confidants: "Those puppies think that we are seeking +the Lord, and we are only seeking the corkscrew." + +There is barely an example in Europe of any man who, come from so low, +raised himself so high. But what was absolutely essential to him with +all his talents? Fortune. He had this fortune; but was he happy? He +lived poorly and anxiously until he was forty-three; from that time he +bathed himself in blood, passed his life in turmoil, and died before his +time at the age of fifty-seven. Let us compare this life with that of +Newton, who lived eighty-four years, always tranquil, always honoured, +always the light of all thinking beings, seeing increase each day his +renown, his reputation, his fortune, without ever having either care or +remorse; and let us judge which of the two had the better part. + + +SECTION II + +Oliver Cromwell was regarded with admiration by the Puritans and +independents of England; he is still their hero; but Richard Cromwell, +his son, is my man. + +The first is a fanatic who would be hissed to-day in the House of +Commons, if he uttered there one single one of the unintelligible +absurdities which he gave out with so much confidence before other +fanatics who listened to him open-mouthed and wide-eyed, in the name of +the Lord. If he said that one must seek the Lord, and fight the Lord's +battles; if he introduced the Jewish jargon into the parliament of +England, to the eternal shame of the human intelligence, he would be +nearer to being led to Bedlam than to being chosen to command armies. + +He was brave without a doubt; so are wolves; there are even monkeys as +fierce as tigers. From being a fanatic he became an adroit politician, +that is to say that from a wolf he became fox, climbed by imposture from +the first steps where the infuriated enthusiasm of the times had placed +him, right to the pinnacle of greatness; and the impostor walked on the +heads of the prostrated fanatics. He reigned, but he lived in the +horrors of anxiety. He knew neither serene days nor tranquil nights. The +consolations of friendship and society never approached him; he died +before his time, more worthy, without a doubt, of execution than the +king whom he had conducted from a window of his own palace to the +scaffold. + +Richard Cromwell, on the contrary, born with a gentle, wise spirit, +refused to keep his father's crown at the price of the blood of two or +three rebels whom he could sacrifice to his ambition. He preferred to be +reduced to private life rather than be an omnipotent assassin. He left +the protectorate without regret to live as a citizen. Free and tranquil +in the country, he enjoyed health there, and there did he possess his +soul in peace for eighty-six years, loved by his neighbours, to whom he +was arbiter and father. + +Readers, give your verdict. If you had to choose between the destiny of +the father and that of the son, which would you take? + + + + +_CUSTOMS_ + +CONTEMPTIBLE CUSTOMS DO NOT ALWAYS SUPPOSE A CONTEMPTIBLE NATION + + +There are cases where one must not judge a nation by its customs and +popular superstitions. I suppose that Cæsar, having conquered Egypt, +wanting to make trade flourish in the Roman Empire, has sent an embassy +to China, by the port of Arsinoë, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean. The +Emperor Yventi, first of his name, was then reigning; the annals of +China represent him as a very wise and learned prince. After receiving +Cæsar's ambassadors with all the Chinese politeness, he informs himself +secretly through his interpreters of the customs, science and religion +of this Roman people, as celebrated in the West as the Chinese people is +in the East. He learns first of all that this people's pontiffs have +arranged their year in so absurd a fashion that the sun has already the +heavenly signs of spring when the Romans are celebrating the first +festivals of winter. + +He learns that this nation supports at great cost a college of priests +who know exactly the time when one should set sail and when one should +give battle, by inspecting an ox's liver, or by the way in which the +chickens eat barley. This sacred science was brought formerly to the +Romans by a little god named Tages, who emerged from the earth in +Tuscany. These peoples worship one supreme God whom they always call the +very great and very good God. Nevertheless, they have built a temple to +a courtesan named Flora; and almost all the good women of Rome have in +their homes little household gods four or five inches high. One of +these little divinities is the goddess of the breasts; the other the +goddess of the buttocks. There is a household god who is called the god +Pet. The emperor Yventi starts laughing: the tribunals of Nankin think +first of all with him that the Roman ambassadors are madmen or impostors +who have taken the title of envoys of the Roman Republic; but as the +emperor is as just as he is polite, he has private talks with the +ambassadors. He learns that the Roman pontiffs have been very ignorant, +but that Cæsar is now reforming the calendar; they admit to him that the +college of augurs was established in early barbarous times; that this +ridiculous institution, become dear to a people long uncivilized, has +been allowed to subsist; that all honest people laugh at the augurs; +that Cæsar has never consulted them; that according to a very great man +named Cato, never has an augur been able to speak to his comrade without +laughter; and that finally Cicero, the greatest orator and the best +philosopher in Rome, has just written against the augurs a little work +entitled "Of Divination," in which he commits to eternal ridicule all +the soothsayers, all the predictions, and all the sorcery of which the +world is infatuated. The emperor of China is curious to read Cicero's +book, the interpreters translate it; he admires the book and the Roman +Republic. + + + + +_DEMOCRACY_ + + +Ordinarily there is no comparison between the crimes of the great who +are always ambitious, and the crimes of the people who always want, and +can want only liberty and equality. These two sentiments, Liberty and +Equality, do not lead direct to calumny, rapine, assassination, +poisoning, the devastation of one's neighbours' lands, etc.; but +ambitious might and the mania for power plunge into all these crimes +whatever be the time, whatever be the place. + +Popular government is in itself, therefore, less iniquitous, less +abominable than despotic power. + +The great vice of democracy is certainly not tyranny and cruelty: there +have been mountain-dwelling republicans, savage, ferocious; but it is +not the republican spirit that made them so, it is nature. + +The real vice of a civilized republic is in the Turkish fable of the +dragon with many heads and the dragon with many tails. The many heads +hurt each other, and the many tails obey a single head which wants to +devour everything. + +Democracy seems suitable only to a very little country, and further it +must be happily situated. Small though it be, it will make many +mistakes, because it will be composed of men. Discord will reign there +as in a monastery; but there will be no St. Bartholomew, no Irish +massacres, no Sicilian vespers, no inquisition, no condemnation to the +galleys for having taken some water from the sea without paying for it, +unless one supposes this republic composed of devils in a corner of +hell. + +One questions every day whether a republican government is preferable to +a king's government? The dispute ends always by agreeing that to govern +men is very difficult. The Jews had God Himself for master; see what has +happened to them on that account: nearly always have they been beaten +and slaves, and to-day do you not find that they cut a pretty figure? + + + + +_DESTINY_ + + +Of all the books of the Occident which have come down to us, the most +ancient is Homer; it is there that one finds the customs of profane +antiquity, of the gross heroes, of the gross gods, made in the image of +men; but it is there that among the reveries and inconsequences, one +finds too the seeds of philosophy, and above all the idea of the destiny +which is master of the gods, as the gods are masters of the world. + +When the magnanimous Hector wishes absolutely to fight the magnanimous +Achilles, and with this object starts fleeing with all his might, and +three times makes the circuit of the city before fighting, in order to +have more vigour; when Homer compares fleet-of-foot Achilles, who +pursues him, to a man who sleeps; when Madame Dacier goes into ecstasies +of admiration over the art and mighty sense of this passage, then +Jupiter wants to save great Hector who has made so many sacrifices to +him, and he consults the fates; he weighs the destinies of Hector and +Achilles in the balance (Iliad, liv. xxii.): he finds that the Trojan +must absolutely be killed by the Greek; he cannot oppose it; and from +this moment, Apollo, Hector's guardian genius, is forced to abandon him. +It is not that Homer is not often prodigal, and particularly in this +place, of quite contrary ideas, following the privilege of antiquity; +but he is the first in whom one finds the notion of destiny. This +notion, therefore, was very much in vogue in his time. + +The Pharisees, among the little Jewish people, did not adopt destiny +until several centuries later; for these Pharisees themselves, who were +the first literates among the Jews, were very new fangled. In +Alexandria they mixed a part of the dogmas of the Stoics with the old +Jewish ideas. St. Jerome claims even that their sect is not much +anterior to the Christian era. + +The philosophers never had need either of Homer or the Pharisees to +persuade themselves that everything happens through immutable laws, that +everything is arranged, that everything is a necessary effect. This is +how they argued. + +Either the world exists by its own nature, by its physical laws, or a +supreme being has formed it according to his supreme laws: in both +cases, these laws are immutable; in both cases everything is necessary; +heavy bodies tend towards the centre of the earth, without being able to +tend to pause in the air. Pear-trees can never bear pineapples. A +spaniel's instinct cannot be an ostrich's instinct; everything is +arranged, in gear, limited. + +Man can have only a certain number of teeth, hair and ideas; there comes +a time when he necessarily loses his teeth, hair and ideas. + +It would be a contradiction that what was yesterday was not, that what +is to-day is not; it is also a contradiction that what must be cannot +be. + +If you could disturb the destiny of a fly, there would be no reason that +could stop your making the destiny of all the other flies, of all the +other animals, of all men, of all nature; you would find yourself in the +end more powerful than God. + +Imbeciles say: "My doctor has extricated my aunt from a mortal malady; +he has made my aunt live ten years longer than she ought to have lived." +Others who affect knowledge, say: "The prudent man makes his own +destiny." + +But often the prudent, far from making their destinies, succumb to them; +it is destiny which makes them prudent. + +Profound students of politics affirm that, if Cromwell, Ludlow, Ireton +and a dozen other parliamentarians had been assassinated a week before +Charles I.'s head was cut off, this king might have lived longer and +died in his bed; they are right; they can add further that if the whole +of England had been swallowed up in the sea, this monarch would not +have perished on a scaffold near Whitehall; but things were arranged so +that Charles had to have his neck severed. + +Cardinal d'Ossat was doubtless more prudent than a madman in Bedlam; but +is it not clear that the organs of d'Ossat the sage were made otherwise +than those of the scatter-brain? just as a fox's organs are different +from a stork's and a lark's. + +Your doctor saved your aunt; but assuredly he did not in that contradict +nature's order; he followed it. It is clear that your aunt could not +stop herself being born in such and such town, that she could not stop +herself having a certain malady at a particular time, that the doctor +could not be elsewhere than in the town where he was, that your aunt had +to call him, that he had to prescribe for her the drugs which cured her, +or which one thinks cured her, when nature was the only doctor. + +A peasant thinks that it has hailed on his field by chance; but the +philosopher knows that there is no chance, and that it was impossible, +in the constitution of this world, for it not to hail on that day in +that place. + +There are persons who, frightened by this truth, admit half of it as +debtors who offer half to their creditors, and ask respite for the rest. +"There are," they say, "some events which are necessary, and others +which are not." It would be very comic that one part of the world was +arranged, and that the other were not; that a part of what happens had +to happen, and that another part of what happens did not have to happen. +If one looks closely at it, one sees that the doctrine contrary to that +of destiny is absurd; but there are many people destined to reason +badly, others not to reason at all, others to persecute those who +reason. + +Some say to you: "Do not believe in fatalism; for then everything +appearing inevitable, you will work at nothing, you will wallow in +indifference, you will love neither riches, nor honours, nor glory; you +will not want to acquire anything, you will believe yourself without +merit as without power; no talent will be cultivated, everything will +perish through apathy." + +Be not afraid, gentlemen, we shall ever have passions and prejudices, +since it is our destiny to be subjected to prejudices and passions: we +shall know that it no more depends on us to have much merit and great +talent, than to have a good head of hair and beautiful hands: we shall +be convinced that we must not be vain about anything, and yet we shall +always have vanity. + +I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the +passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the +toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and +to make it public in spite of you. + +The owl, which feeds on mice in its ruins, said to the nightingale: +"Finish singing under your beautiful shady trees, come into my hole, +that I may eat you"; and the nightingale answered: "I was born to sing +here, and to laugh at you." + +You ask me what will become of liberty? I do not understand you. I do +not know what this liberty is of which you speak; so long have you been +disputing about its nature, that assuredly you are not acquainted with +it. If you wish, or rather, if you are able to examine peaceably with me +what it is, pass to the letter L. + + + + +_DEVOUT_ + + +The word "devout" signifies "devoted"; and in the strict sense of the +term this qualification should belong only to monks and nuns who make +vows. But as in the Gospel there is no more mention of vows than of +devout persons, this title does not in fact belong to anyone. Everyone +should be equally righteous. A man who styles himself devout resembles a +commoner who styles himself a marquis; he arrogates to himself a quality +he does not possess. He thinks himself more worthy than his neighbour. +One can forgive such foolishness in women; their frailty and their +frivolity render them excusable; the poor creatures pass from a lover to +a director in good faith: but one cannot pardon the rogues who direct +them, who abuse their ignorance, who establish the throne of their pride +on the credulity of the sex. They resolve themselves into a little +mystic seraglio composed of seven or eight aged beauties, subdued by the +weight of their lack of occupation, and almost always do these persons +pay tribute to their new masters. No young woman without a lover, no +aged devout woman without a director. Oh! the Orientals are wiser than +we are! Never does a pasha say: "We supped yesterday with the Aga of the +Janissaries who is my sister's lover, and the vicar of the mosque who is +my wife's director." + + + + +_THE ECCLESIASTICAL MINISTRY_ + + +The institution of religion exists only to keep mankind in order, and to +make men merit the goodness of God by their virtue. Everything in a +religion which does not tend towards this goal must be considered +foreign or dangerous. + +Instruction, exhortation, menaces of pains to come, promises of immortal +beatitude, prayers, counsels, spiritual help are the only means +ecclesiastics may use to try to make men virtuous here below, and happy +for eternity. + +All other means are repugnant to the liberty of the reason, to the +nature of the soul, to the inalterable rights of the conscience, to the +essence of religion and of the ecclesiastical ministry, to all the +rights of the sovereign. + +Virtue supposes liberty, as the carrying of a burden supposes active +force. Under coercion no virtue, and without virtue no religion. Make a +slave of me, I shall be no better for it. + +The sovereign even has no right to use coercion to lead men to religion, +which supposes essentially choice and liberty. My thought is subordinate +to authority no more than is sickness or health. + +In order to disentangle all the contradictions with which books on canon +law have been filled, and to fix our ideas on the ecclesiastical +ministry, let us investigate amid a thousand equivocations what the +Church is. + +The Church is the assembly of all the faithful summoned on certain days +to pray in common, and at all times to do good actions. + +The priests are persons established under the authority of the sovereign +to direct these prayers and all religious worship. + +A numerous Church could not exist without ecclesiastics; but these +ecclesiastics are not the Church. + +It is no less evident that if the ecclesiastics, who are part of civil +society, had acquired rights which might trouble or destroy society, +these rights ought to be suppressed. + +It is still more evident that, if God has attached to the Church +prerogatives or rights, neither these rights nor these prerogatives +should belong exclusively either to the chief of the Church or to the +ecclesiastics, because they are not the Church, just as the magistrates +are not the sovereign in either a democratic state or in a monarchy. + +Finally, it is quite evident that it is our souls which are under the +clergy's care, solely for spiritual things. + +Our soul acts internally; internal acts are thought, volition, +inclinations, acquiescence in certain truths. All these acts are above +all coercion, and are within the ecclesiastical minister's sphere only +in so far as he must instruct and never command. + +This soul acts also externally. External actions are under the civil +law. Here coercion may have a place; temporal or corporal pains maintain +the law by punishing those who infringe it. + +Obedience to ecclesiastical order must consequently always be free and +voluntary: no other should be possible. Submission, on the other hand, +to civil order may be coerced and compulsory. + +For the same reason, ecclesiastical punishments, always spiritual, do +not reach here below any but those who are convinced inwardly of their +fault. Civil pains, on the contrary, accompanied by a physical ill, have +their physical effects, whether or no the guilty recognize their +justice. + +From this it results obviously that the authority of the clergy is and +can be spiritual only; that it should not have any temporal power; that +no coercive force is proper to its ministry, which would be destroyed by +it. + +It follows from this further that the sovereign, careful not to suffer +any partition of his authority, must permit no enterprise which puts +the members of society in external and civil dependence on an +ecclesiastical body. + +Such are the incontestable principles of real canon law, of which the +rules and decisions should be judged at all times by the eternal and +immutable truths which are founded on natural law and the necessary +order of society. + + + + +_EMBLEM_ + + +In antiquity everything is symbol or emblem. In Chaldea it starts by +putting a ram, two kids, a bull in the sky, to mark the productions of +the earth in the spring. Fire is the symbol of the Deity in Persia; the +celestial dog warns the Egyptians of the Nile floods; the serpent which +hides its tail in its head, becomes the image of eternity. The whole of +nature is represented and disguised. + +In India again you find many of those old statues, uncouth and +frightful, of which we have already spoken, representing virtue provided +with ten great arms with which to combat vice, and which our poor +missionaries have taken for the picture of the devil. + +Put all these symbols of antiquity before the eyes of a man of the +soundest sense, who has never heard speak of them, he will not +understand anything: it is a language to be learned. + +The old theological poets were in the necessity of giving God eyes, +hands, feet; of announcing Him in the form of a man. St. Clement of +Alexandria records some verses of Xenophanes the Colophonian (Stromates +liv. v.), from which one sees that it is not merely from to-day that men +have made God in their own image. Orpheus of Thrace, the first +theologian of the Greeks, long before Homer, expresses himself +similarly, according to the same Clement of Alexandria. + +Everything being symbol and emblem, the philosophers, and especially +those who had travelled in India, employed this method; their precepts +were emblems and enigmas. + +_Do not stir the fire with a sword_, that is, do not irritate angry +men. + +_Do not hide the light under the bushel._--Do not hide the truth from +men. + +_Abstain from beans._--Flee frequently public assemblies in which one +gave one's suffrage with black or white beans. + +_Do not have swallows in your house._--That it may not be filled with +chatterers. + +_In the tempest worship the echo._--In times of public trouble retire to +the country. + +_Do not write on the snow._--Do not teach feeble and sluggish minds. + +_Do not eat either your heart or your brain._--Do not give yourself up +to either grief or to too difficult enterprises, etc. + +Such are the maxims of Pythagoras, the sense of which is not hard to +understand. + +The most beautiful of all the emblems is that of God, whom Timæus of +Locres represents by this idea: _A circle the centre of which is +everywhere and the circumference nowhere._ Plato adopted this emblem; +Pascal had inserted it among the material which he intended using, and +which has been called his "Thoughts." + +In metaphysics, in moral philosophy, the ancients have said everything. +We coincide with them, or we repeat them. All modern books of this kind +are only repetitions. + +It is above all among the Indians, the Egyptians, the Syrians, that +these emblems, which to us appear most strange, were consecrated. It is +there that the two organs of generation, the two symbols of life, were +carried in procession with the greatest respect. We laugh at it, we dare +treat these peoples as barbarous idiots, because they innocently thanked +God for having given them existence. What would they have said if they +had seen us enter our temples with the instrument of destruction at our +side? + +At Thebes the sins of the people were represented by a goat. On the +coast of Phoenicia a naked woman, with a fish's tail, was the emblem +of nature. + +One must not be astonished, therefore, if this use of symbols reached +the Hebrews when they had formed a body of people near the Syrian +desert. + +One of the most beautiful emblems of the Judaic books is this passage of +Ecclesiastes: "... when the grinders cease because they are few, and +those that look out of the windows be darkened, when the almond-tree +shall flourish and the grasshopper shall be a burden: or ever the silver +cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken +at the fountain...." + +That signifies that the old men lose their teeth, that their sight is +dim, that their hair whitens like the flower of the almond-tree, that +their feet swell like the grasshopper, that they are no more fit for +engendering children, and that then they must prepare for the great +journey. + +The "Song of Songs" is (as one knows) a continual emblem of the marriage +of Jesus Christ with the Church. It is an emblem from beginning to end. +Especially does the ingenious Dom Calmet demonstrate that the palm-tree +to which the well-beloved goes is the cross to which our Lord Jesus +Christ was condemned. But it must be avowed that a pure and healthy +moral philosophy is still preferable to these allegories. + +One sees in this people's books a crowd of typical emblems which revolt +us to-day and which exercise our incredulity and our mockery, but which +appeared ordinary and simple to the Asiatic peoples. + +In Ezekiel are images which appear to us as licentious and revolting: in +those times they were merely natural. There are thirty examples in the +"Song of Songs," model of the most chaste union. Remark carefully that +these expressions, these images are always quite serious, and that in no +book of this distant antiquity will you find the least mockery on the +great subject of generation. When lust is condemned it is in definite +terms; but never to excite to passion, nor to make the smallest +pleasantry. This far-distant antiquity did not have its Martial, its +Catullus, or its Petronius. + +It results from all the Jewish prophets and from all the Jewish books, +as from all the books which instruct us in the usages of the Chaldeans, +the Persians, the Phoenicians, the Syrians, the Indians, the +Egyptians; it results, I say, that their customs were not ours, that +this ancient world in no way resembled our world. Go from Gibraltar to +Mequinez merely, the manners are no longer the same; no longer does one +find the same ideas; two leagues of sea have changed everything. + + + + +_ON THE ENGLISH THEATRE_ + + +I have cast my eyes on an edition of Shakespeare issued by Master Samuel +Johnson. I saw there that foreigners who are astonished that in the +plays of the great Shakespeare a Roman senator plays the buffoon, and +that a king appears on the stage drunk, are treated as little-minded. I +do not desire to suspect Master Johnson of being a sorry jester, and of +being too fond of wine; but I find it somewhat extraordinary that he +counts buffoonery and drunkenness among the beauties of the tragic +stage: and no less singular is the reason he gives, that the poet +disdains accidental distinctions of circumstance and country, like a +painter who, content with having painted the figure, neglects the +drapery. The comparison would be more just if he were speaking of a +painter who in a noble subject should introduce ridiculous grotesques, +should paint Alexander the Great mounted on an ass in the battle of +Arbela, and Darius' wife drinking at an inn with rapscallions. + +But there is one thing more extraordinary than all, that is that +Shakespeare is a genius. The Italians, the French, the men of letters of +all other countries, who have not spent some time in England, take him +only for a clown, for a joker far inferior to Harlequin, for the most +contemptible buffoon who has ever amused the populace. Nevertheless, it +is in this same man that one finds pieces which exalt the imagination +and which stir the heart to its depths. It is Truth, it is Nature +herself who speaks her own language with no admixture of artifice. It is +of the sublime, and the author has in no wise sought it. + +What can one conclude from this contrast of grandeur and sordidness, of +sublime reason and uncouth folly, in short from all the contrasts that +we see in Shakespeare? That he would have been a perfect poet had he +lived in the time of Addison. + +The famous Addison, who flourished under Queen Anne, is perhaps of all +English writers the one who best knew how to guide genius with taste. He +had a correct style, an imagination discreet in expression, elegance, +strength and simplicity in his verse and in his prose. A friend of +propriety and orderliness, he wanted tragedy to be written with dignity, +and it is thus that his "Cato" is composed. + +From the very first act the verses are worthy of Virgil, and the +sentiments worthy of Cato. There is no theatre in Europe where the scene +of Juba and Syphax was not applauded as a masterpiece of skill, of +well-developed characters, of fine contrasts, and of pure and noble +diction. Literary Europe, which knows the translations of this piece, +applauded even to the philosophic traits with which the rôle of Cato is +filled. + +The piece had the great success which its beauty of detail merited, and +which was assured to it by the troubles in England to which this tragedy +was in more than one place a striking allusion. But the appositeness of +these allusions having passed, the verse being only beautiful, the +maxims being only noble and just, and the piece being cold, people no +longer felt anything more than the coldness. Nothing is more beautiful +than Virgil's second canto; recite it on the stage, it will bore: on the +stage one must have passion, live dialogue, action. People soon returned +to Shakespeare's uncouth but captivating aberrations. + + + + +_ENVY_ + + +One knows well enough what antiquity has said of this shameful passion, +and what the moderns have repeated. Hesiod is the first classic author +who speaks of it. + +"The potter is envious of the potter, the artisan of the artisan, the +poor man even of the poor man, the musician of the musician (or if one +would give another sense to the word _Aoidos_) the poet of the poet." + +Long before Hesiod, Job had said: "Envy slayeth the silly one" (Job. +chap. v. verse 2). + +I think that Mandeville, author of the "Fable of the Bees," was the +first to try to prove that envy is a very good thing, a very useful +passion. His first reason is that envy is as natural to man as hunger +and thirst; that it can be found in children, as well as in horses and +dogs. Do you want your children to hate each other, kiss one more than +the other; the secret is infallible. + +He maintains that the first thing that two young women meeting each +other do is to cast about for what is ridiculous in each other, and the +second to flatter each other. + +He believes that without envy the arts would be indifferently +cultivated, and that Raphael would not have been a great painter if he +had not been jealous of Michael Angelo. + +Mandeville has taken emulation for envy, maybe; maybe, also, emulation +is only envy kept within the bounds of decency. + +Michael Angelo might say to Raphael: "Your envy has only led you to work +still better than me; you have not decried me, you have not intrigued +against me with the Pope, you have not tried to have me excommunicated +for having put cripples and one-eyed men in paradise, and succulent +cardinals with beautiful women naked as your hand in hell, in my picture +of the last judgment. Your envy is very praiseworthy; you are a fine +envious fellow; let us be good friends." + +But if the envious man is a wretch without talent, jealous of merit as +beggars are of the rich; if, pressed by the indigence as by the +turpitude of his character he writes you some "News from Parnassus," +some "Letters of Madame la Comtesse," some "Années Littéraires," this +animal displays an envy that is good for nothing, and for which +Mandeville could never make an apology. + +One asks why the ancients thought that the eye of the envious man +bewitched those who looked at it. It is the envious, rather, who are +bewitched. + +Descartes says: "That envy impels the yellow bile which comes from the +lower part of the liver, and the black bile which comes from the spleen, +which is diffused from the heart through the arteries, etc." But as no +kind of bile is formed in the spleen, Descartes, by speaking thus, does +not seem to merit too much that his natural philosophy should be envied. + +A certain Voët or Voëtius, a theological scamp, who accused Descartes of +atheism, was very ill with the black bile; but he knew still less than +Descartes how his detestable bile was diffused in his blood. + +Madame Pernelle is right: "The envious will die, but envy never." +(Tartufe, Act v, Scene iii.) + +But it is good proverb which says that "it is better to be envious than +to have pity." Let us be envious, therefore, as hard as we can. + + + + +_EQUALITY_ + + +SECTION I + +It is clear that men, enjoying the faculties connected with their +nature, are equal; they are equal when they perform animal functions, +and when they exercise their understanding. The King of China, the Great +Mogul, the Padisha of Turkey, cannot say to the least of men: "I forbid +you to digest, to go to the privy and to think." All the animals of each +species are equal among themselves. Animals by nature have over us the +advantage of independence. If a bull which is wooing a heifer is driven +away with the blows of the horns by a stronger bull, it goes in search +of another mistress in another field, and lives free. A cock, beaten by +a cock, consoles itself in another poultry-house. It is not so with us. +A little vizier exiles a bostangi to Lemnos: the vizier Azem exiles the +little vizier to Tenedos: the padisha exiles the little vizier Azem to +Rhodes: the Janissaries put the padisha in prison, and elect another who +will exile good Mussulmans as he chooses; people will still be very +obliged to him if he limits his sacred authority to this little +exercise. + +If this world were what it seems it should be, if man could find +everywhere in it an easy subsistence, and a climate suitable to his +nature, it is clear that it would be impossible for one man to enslave +another. If this globe were covered with wholesome fruits; if the air, +which should contribute to our life, gave us no diseases and a premature +death; if man had no need of lodging and bed other than those of the +buck and the deer; then the Gengis-kans and the Tamerlans would have no +servants other than their children, who would be folk honourable enough +to help them in their old age. + +In the natural state enjoyed by all untamed quadrupeds, birds and +reptiles, man would be as happy as they; domination would then be a +chimera, an absurdity of which no one would think; for why seek servants +when you have no need of their service? + +If it came into the head of some individual of tyrannous mind and brawny +arm to enslave a neighbour less strong than he, the thing would be +impossible; the oppressed would be on the Danube before the oppressor +had taken his measures on the Volga. + +All men would then be necessarily equal, if they were without needs; the +poverty connected with our species subordinates one man to another; it +is not the inequality which is the real misfortune, it is the +dependence. It matters very little that So-and-so calls himself "His +Highness," and So-and-so "His Holiness"; but to serve the one or the +other is hard. + +A big family has cultivated fruitful soil; two little families near by +have thankless and rebellious fields; the two poor families have to +serve the opulent family, or slaughter it: there is no difficulty in +that. One of the two indigent families offers its arms to the rich +family in order to have bread; the other goes to attack it and is +beaten. The serving family is the origin of the servants and the +workmen; the beaten family is the origin of the slaves. + +In our unhappy world it is impossible for men living in society not to +be divided into two classes, the one the rich that commands, the other +the poor that serves; and these two are subdivided into a thousand, and +these thousand still have different gradations. + +When the prizes are drawn you come to us: "I am a man like you," you +say. "I have two hands and two feet, as much pride as you, nay more, a +mind as disordered, at least, as inconsequent, as contradictory as +yours. I am a citizen of San Marino, or of Ragusa, or Vaugirard: give +me my share of the land. In our known hemisphere there are about fifty +thousand million arpents to cultivate, some passable, some sterile. We +are only about a thousand million featherless bipeds in this continent; +that makes fifty arpents apiece: be just; give me my fifty arpents." + +"Go and take them in the land of the Cafres," we answer, "or the +Hottentots, or the Samoyedes; come to an amicable arrangement with them; +here all the shares are taken. If among us you want to eat, be clothed, +lodged, warmed, work for us as your father did; serve us or amuse us, +and you will be paid; otherwise you will be obliged to ask charity, +which would be too degrading to your sublime nature, and would stop your +being really the equal of kings, and even of country parsons, according +to the pretensions of your noble pride." + + +SECTION II + +All the poor are not unhappy. The majority were born in that state, and +continual work stops their feeling their position too keenly; but when +they feel it, then one sees wars, like that of the popular party against +the senate party in Rome, like those of the peasants in Germany, England +and France. All these wars finish sooner or later with the subjection of +the people, because the powerful have money, and money is master of +everything in a state: I say in a state; for it is not the same between +nations. The nation which makes the best use of the sword will always +subjugate the nation which has more gold and less courage. + +All men are born with a sufficiently violent liking for domination, +wealth and pleasure, and with much taste for idleness; consequently, all +men want their money and the wives or daughters of others, to be their +master, to subject them to all their caprices, and to do nothing, or at +least to do only very agreeable things. You see clearly that with these +fine inclinations it is as impossible for men to be equal as it is +impossible for two predicants or two professors of theology not to be +jealous of each other. + +The human race, such as it is, cannot subsist unless there is an +infinity of useful men who possess nothing at all; for it is certain +that a man who is well off will not leave his own land to come to till +yours; and if you have need of a pair of shoes, it is not the Secretary +to the Privy Council who will make them for you. Equality, therefore, is +at once the most natural thing and the most fantastic. + +As men go to excess in everything when they can, this inequality has +been exaggerated. It has been maintained in many countries that it was +not permissible for a citizen to leave the country where chance has +caused him to be born; the sense of this law is visibly: "This land is +so bad and so badly governed, that we forbid any individual to leave it, +for fear that everyone will leave it." Do better: make all your subjects +want to live in your country, and foreigners to come to it. + +All men have the right in the bottom of their hearts to think themselves +entirely equal to other men: it does not follow from that that the +cardinal's cook should order his master to prepare him his dinner; but +the cook can say: "I am a man like my master; like him I was born +crying; like me he will die with the same pangs and the same ceremonies. +Both of us perform the same animal functions. If the Turks take +possession of Rome, and if then I am cardinal and my master cook, I +shall take him into my service." This discourse is reasonable and just; +but while waiting for the Great Turk to take possession of Rome, the +cook must do his duty, or else all human society is perverted. + +As regards a man who is neither a cardinal's cook, nor endowed with any +other employment in the state; as regards a private person who is +connected with nothing, but who is vexed at being received everywhere +with an air of being patronized or scorned, who sees quite clearly that +many _monsignors_ have no more knowledge, wit or virtue than he, and who +at times is bored at waiting in their antechambers, what should he +decide to do? Why, to take himself off. + + + + +_EXPIATION_ + + +Maybe the most beautiful institution of antiquity is that solemn +ceremony which repressed crimes by warning that they must be punished, +and which calmed the despair of the guilty by making them atone for +their transgressions by penitences. Remorse must necessarily have +preceded the expiations; for the maladies are older than the medicine, +and all needs have existed before relief. + +It was, therefore, before all the creeds, a natural religion, which +troubled man's heart when in his ignorance or in his hastiness he had +committed an inhuman action. A friend killed his friend in a quarrel, a +brother killed his brother, a jealous and frantic lover even killed her +without whom he could not live. The head of a nation condemned a +virtuous man, a useful citizen. These are men in despair, if they have +sensibility. Their conscience harries them; nothing is more true; and it +is the height of unhappiness. Only two choices remain, either +reparation, or a settling in crime. All sensitive souls choose the +first, monsters choose the second. + +As soon as religions were established, there were expiations; the +ceremonies accompanying them were ridiculous: for what connection +between the water of the Ganges and a murder? how could a man repair a +homicide by bathing himself? We have already remarked this excess of +aberration and absurdity, of imagining that he who washes his body +washes his soul, and wipes away the stains of bad actions. + +The water of the Nile had later the same virtue as the water of the +Ganges: to these purifications other ceremonies were added: I avow that +they were still more impertinent. The Egyptians took two goats, and drew +lots for which of the two should be thrown below, charged with the sins +of the guilty. The name of "Hazazel," the expiator, was given to this +goat. What connection, I ask you, between a goat and a man's crime? + +It is true that since, God permitted this ceremony to be sanctified +among the Jews our fathers, who took so many Egyptian rites; but +doubtless it was the repentance, and not the goat, which purified the +Jewish souls. + +Jason, having killed Absyrthe his step-brother, comes, it is said, with +Medea, more guilty than he, to have himself absolved by Circe, queen and +priestess of Aea, who ever after passed for a great magician. Circe +absolves them with a sucking-pig and salt cakes. That may make a fairly +good dish, but can barely either pay for Absyrthe's blood or render +Jason and Medea more honourable people, unless they avow a sincere +repentance while eating their sucking-pig. + +Orestes' expiation (he had avenged his father by murdering his mother) +was to go to steal a statue from the Tartars of Crimea. The statue must +have been very badly made, and there was nothing to gain on such an +effect. Since then we have done better, we have invented the mysteries; +the guilty might there receive their absolution by undergoing painful +ordeals, and by swearing that they would lead a new life. It is from +this oath that the new members were called among all nations by a name +which corresponds to initiates, _qui ineunt vitam novam_, who began a +new career, who entered into the path of virtue. + +The Christian catechumens were called _initiates_ only when they were +baptised. + +It is undoubted that in these mysteries one was washed of one's faults +only by the oath to be virtuous; that is so true that the hierophant in +all the Greek mysteries, in sending away the assembly, pronounced these +two Egyptian words--"_Koth_, _ompheth_, watch, be pure"; which is a +proof at once that the mysteries came originally from Egypt, and that +they were invented only to make men better. + +The sages in all times did what they could, therefore, to inspire +virtue, and not to reduce human frailty to despair; but also there are +crimes so horrible that no mystery accorded expiation for them. Nero, +for all that he was emperor, could not get himself initiated into the +mysteries of Ceres. Constantine, on the Report of Zosimus, could not +obtain pardon for his crimes: he was stained with the blood of his wife, +his son and all his kindred. It was in the interest of the human race +that such great transgressions should remain without expiation, in order +that absolution should not invite their committal, and that universal +horror might sometimes stop the villains. + +The Roman Catholics have expiations which are called "penitences." + +By the laws of the barbarians who destroyed the Roman Empire, crimes +were expiated with money. That was called _compounding_, _componat cum +decem, viginti, triginta solidis_. It cost two hundred sous of that time +to kill a priest, and four hundred for killing a bishop; so that a +bishop was worth precisely two priests. + +Having thus compounded with men, one compounded with God, when +confession was generally established. Finally, Pope John XXII., who made +money out of everything, prepared a tariff of sins. + +The absolution of an incest, four turonenses for a layman; _ab incestu +pro laico in foro conscientiæ turonenses quatuor_. For the man and the +woman who have committed incest, eighteen turonenses four ducats and +nine carlins. That is not just; if one person pays only four turonenses, +the two owed only eight turonenses. + +Sodomy and bestiality are put at the same rate, with the inhibitory +clause to title XLIII: that amounts to ninety turonenses twelve ducats +and six carlins: _cum inhibitione turonenses 90, ducatos 12, carlinos +6_, _etc._ + +It is very difficult to believe that Leo X. was so imprudent as to have +this impost printed in 1514, as is asserted; but it must be considered +that no spark appeared at that time of the conflagration which reformers +kindled later, that the court of Rome slumbered on the people's +credulity, and neglected to cover its exactions with the lightest veil. +The public sale of indulgences, which followed soon after, makes it +clear that this court took no precaution to hide the turpitudes to which +so many nations were accustomed. As soon as complaints against the +Church's abuses burst forth, the court did what it could to suppress the +book; but it could not succeed. + +If I dare give my opinion of this impost, I think that the various +editions are not reliable; the prices are not at all proportionate: +these prices do not agree with those which are alleged by d'Aubigné, +grandfather of Madame de Maintenon, in the "Confession de Sanci"; he +rates virginity at six _gros_, and incest with his mother and sister at +five _gros_; this account is ridiculous. I think that there was in fact +a tariff established in the datary's office, for those who came to Rome +to be absolved, or to bargain for dispensations; but that the enemies of +Rome added much to it in order to render it more odious. + +What is quite certain is that these imposts were never authorized by any +council; that it was an enormous abuse invented by avarice, and +respected by those whose interest it was not to abolish it. The buyers +and the sellers were equally satisfied: thus, barely anybody protested, +until the troubles of the reformation. It must be admitted that an exact +note of all these imposts would be of great service to the history of +the human mind. + + + + +_EXTREME_ + + +We shall try to extract from this word _extreme_ a notion which may be +useful. + +One disputes every day if, in war, luck or leadership produces +successes. + +If, in disease, nature acts more than medicine for curing or killing. + +If, in jurisprudence, it is not very advantageous to come to terms when +one is in the right, and to plead when one is in the wrong. + +If literature contributes to the glory of a nation or to its decadence. + +If one should or should not make the people superstitious. + +If there is anything true in metaphysics, history and moral philosophy. + +If taste is arbitrary, and if there is in fact good taste and bad taste, +etc., etc. + +To decide all these questions right away, take an example of what is the +most extreme in each; compare the two opposed extremes, and you will at +once discover which is true. + +You wish to know if leadership can infallibly determine the success of +the war; look at the most extreme case, the most opposed situations, in +which leadership alone will infallibly triumph. The enemy's army is +forced to pass through a deep mountain gorge; your general knows it: he +makes a forced march, he takes possession of the heights, he holds the +enemy shut in a pass; they must either die or surrender. In this extreme +case, luck cannot have any part in the victory. It is therefore +demonstrated that skill can determine the success of a campaign; from +that alone is it proved that war is an art. + +Now imagine an advantageous but less decisive position; success is not +so certain, but it is always very probable. You arrive thus, step by +step, to a perfect equality between the two armies. What will decide +then? luck, that is to say an unforeseen event, a general officer killed +when he is on his way to execute an important order, a corps which is +shaken by a false rumour, a panic and a thousand other cases which +cannot be remedied by prudence; but it still remains certain that there +is an art, a generalship. + +As much must be said of medicine, of this art of operating on the head +and the hand, to restore life to a man who is about to lose it. + +The first man who at the right moment bled and purged a sufferer from an +apoplectic fit; the first man who thought of plunging a knife into the +bladder in order to extract a stone, and of closing the wound again; the +first man who knew how to stop gangrene in a part of the body, were +without a doubt almost divine persons, and did not resemble Molière's +doctors. + +Descend from this obvious example to experiments that are less striking +and more equivocal; you see fevers, ills of all kinds which are cured, +without it being well proved if it be nature or the doctor who has cured +them; you see diseases of which the result cannot be guessed; twenty +doctors are deceived; the one that has the most intelligence, the surest +eye, guesses the character of the malady. There is therefore an art; and +the superior man knows the finenesses of it. Thus did La Peyronie guess +that a man of the court had swallowed a pointed bone which had caused an +ulcer, and put him in danger of death; thus did Boerhaave guess the +cause of the malady as unknown as cruel of a count of Vassenaar. There +is therefore really an art of medicine; but in all arts there are men +like Virgil and Mævius. + +In jurisprudence, take a clear case, in which the law speaks clearly; a +bill of exchange properly prepared and accepted; the acceptor must be +condemned to pay it in every country. There is therefore a useful +jurisprudence, although in a thousand cases judgments are arbitrary, to +the misfortune of the human race, because the laws are badly made. + +Do you desire to know if literature does good to a nation; compare the +two extremes, Cicero and an uncouth ignoramus. See if it is Pliny or +Attila who caused the fall of Rome. + +One asks if one should encourage superstition in the people; see above +all what is most extreme in this disastrous matter, St. Bartholomew, the +massacres in Ireland, the crusades; the question is soon answered. + +Is there any truth in metaphysics? Seize first of all the points that +are most astonishing and the most true; something exists for all +eternity. An eternal Being exists by Himself; this Being cannot be +either wicked or inconsequent. One must surrender to these truths; +almost all the rest is given over to dispute, and the justest mind +unravels the truth while the others are seeking in the shadows. + +It is with all things as with colours; the weakest eyes distinguish +black from white; the better, more practised eyes, discern shades that +resemble each other. + + + + +_EZOURVEIDAM_ + + +What is this "Ezourveidam" which is in the King of France's library? It +is an ancient commentary which an ancient Brahmin composed once upon a +time, before the epoch of Alexander, on the ancient "Veidam," which was +itself much less ancient than the book of the "Shasta." + +Let us respect, I tell you, all these ancient Indians. They invented the +game of chess, and the Greeks went among them to learn geometry. + +This "Ezourveidam" was lastly translated by a Brahmin, correspondent of +the unfortunate French India Company. It was brought to me on Mount +Krapack, where I have long been observing the snows; and I sent it to +the great Library of Paris, where it is better placed than in my home. + +Those who wish to consult it will see that after many revolutions +produced by the Eternal, it pleased the Eternal to form a man who was +called _Adimo_, and a woman whose name corresponds to that of life. + +Is this Indian anecdote taken from the Jewish books? have the Jews +copied it from the Indians? or can one say that both wrote it +originally, and that fine minds meet? + +The Jews were not permitted to think that their writers had drawn +anything from the Brahmins, for they had never heard tell of them. We +are not permitted to think about Adam otherwise than the Jews. +Consequently I hold my tongue, and I do not think at all. + + + + +_FAITH_ + + +_We have long pondered whether or no we should print this article, which +we found in an old book. Our respect for St. Peter's see restrained us. +But some pious men having convinced us that Pope Alexander VI. had +nothing in common with St. Peter, we at last decided to bring this +little piece into the light, without scruple._ + +One day Prince Pico della Mirandola met Pope Alexander VI. at the house +of the courtesan Emilia, while Lucretia, the holy father's daughter, was +in child-bed, and one did not know in Rome if the child was the Pope's, +or his son's the Duke of Valentinois, or Lucretia's husband's, Alphonse +of Aragon, who passed for impotent. The conversation was at first very +sprightly. Cardinal Bembo records a part of it. + +"Little Pic," said the Pope, "who do you think is my grandson's father?" + +"Your son-in-law, I think," answered Pic. + +"Eh! how can you believe such folly?" + +"I believe it through faith." + +"But do you not know quite well that a man who is impotent does not make +children?" + +"Faith consists," returned Pic, "in believing things because they are +impossible; and, further, the honour of your house demands that +Lucretia's son shall not pass as the fruit of an incest. You make me +believe more incomprehensible mysteries. Have I not to be convinced that +a serpent spoke, that since then all men have been damned, that Balaam's +she-ass also spoke very eloquently, and that the walls of Jericho fell +at the sound of trumpets?" Pic forthwith ran through a litany of all +the admirable things he believed. + +Alexander fell on his sofa by dint of laughing. + +"I believe all that like you," he said, "for I know well that only by +faith can I be saved, and that I shall not be saved by my works." + +"Ah! Holy Father," said Pic, "you have need of neither works nor faith; +that is good for poor profane people like us; but you who are vice-god +can believe and do all you want to. You have the keys of heaven; and +without a doubt St. Peter will not close the door in your face. But for +myself, I avow I should need potent protection if, being only a poor +prince, I had slept with my daughter, and if I had used the stiletto and +the cantarella as often as your Holiness." + +Alexander could take a jest. "Let us talk seriously," he said to Prince +della Mirandola. "Tell me what merit one can have in telling God that +one is persuaded of things of which in fact one cannot be persuaded? +What pleasure can that give God? Between ourselves, saying that one +believes what is impossible to believe is lying." + +Pico della Mirandola made a great sign of the cross. "Eh! paternal God," +he cried, "may your Holiness pardon me, you are not a Christian." + +"No, by my faith," said the Pope. + +"I thought as much," said Pico della Mirandola. + + + + +_FALSE MINDS_ + + +We have blind men, one-eyed men, squint-eyed men, men with long sight, +short sight, clear sight, dim sight, weak sight. All that is a faithful +enough image of our understanding; but we are barely acquainted with +false sight. There are hardly men who always take a cock for a horse, or +a chamber-pot for a house. Why do we often come across minds otherwise +just enough, which are absolutely false on important things? Why does +this same Siamese who will never let himself be cheated when there is +question of counting him three rupees, firmly believe in the +metamorphoses of Sammonocodom? By what strange singularity do sensible +men resemble Don Quixote who thought he saw giants where other men saw +only windmills? Still, Don Quixote was more excusable than the Siamese +who believes that Sammonocodom came several times on earth, and than the +Turk who is persuaded that Mahomet put half the moon in his sleeve; for +Don Quixote, struck with the idea that he must fight giants, can figure +to himself that a giant must have a body as big as a mill; but from what +supposition can a sensible man set off to persuade himself that the half +of the moon has gone into a sleeve, and that a Sammonocodom has come +down from heaven to play at shuttlecock, cut down a forest, and perform +feats of legerdemain? + +The greatest geniuses can have false judgment about a principle they +have accepted without examination. Newton had very false judgment when +he commentated the Apocalypse. + +All that certain tyrants of the souls desire is that the men they teach +shall have false judgment. A fakir rears a child who gives much promise; +he spends five or six years in driving into his head that the god Fo +appeared to men as a white elephant, and he persuades the child that he +will be whipped after his death for five hundred thousand years if he +does not believe these metamorphoses. He adds that at the end of the +world the enemy of the god Fo will come to fight against this divinity. + +The child studies and becomes a prodigy; he argues on his master's +lessons; he finds that Fo has only been able to change himself into a +white elephant, because that is the most beautiful of animals. "The +kings of Siam and Pegu," he says, "have made war for a white elephant; +certainly if Fo had not been hidden in that elephant, these kings would +not have been so senseless as to fight simply for the possession of an +animal. + +"The enemy of Fo will come to defy him at the end of the world; +certainly this enemy will be a rhinoceros, for the rhinoceros fights the +elephant." It is thus that in mature age the fakir's learned pupil +reasons, and he becomes one of the lights of India; the more subtle his +mind, the more false is it, and he forms later minds as false as his. + +One shows all these fanatics a little geometry, and they learn it easily +enough; but strange to relate, their minds are not straightened for +that; they perceive the truths of geometry; but they do not learn to +weigh probabilities; they have got into a habit; they will reason +crookedly all their lives, and I am sorry for them. + +There are unfortunately many ways of having a false mind: + +1. By not examining if the principle is true, even when one deduces +accurate consequences therefrom; and this way is common. + +2. By drawing false consequences from a principle recognized as true. +For example, a servant is asked if his master is in his room, by persons +he suspects of wanting his life: if he were foolish enough to tell them +the truth on the pretext that one must not lie, it is clear he would be +drawing an absurd consequence from a very true principle. + +A judge who would condemn a man who has killed his assassin, because +homicide is forbidden, would be as iniquitous as he was poor reasoner. + +Similar cases are subdivided in a thousand different gradations. The +good mind, the just mind, is that which distinguishes them; whence comes +that one has seen so many iniquitous judgments, not because the judges' +hearts were bad, but because they were not sufficiently enlightened. + + + + +_FATHERLAND_ + + +A young journeyman pastrycook who had been to college, and who still +knew a few of Cicero's phrases, boasted one day of loving his +fatherland. "What do you mean by your fatherland?" a neighbour asked +him. "Is it your oven? is it the village where you were born and which +you have never seen since? is it the street where dwelled your father +and mother who have been ruined and have reduced you to baking little +pies for a living? is it the town-hall where you will never be police +superintendent's clerk? is it the church of Our Lady where you have not +been able to become a choir-boy, while an absurd man is archbishop and +duke with an income of twenty thousand golden louis?" + +The journeyman pastrycook did not know what to answer. A thinker who was +listening to this conversation, concluded that in a fatherland of some +extent there were often many thousand men who had no fatherland. + +You, pleasure loving Parisian, who have never made any great journey +save that to Dieppe to eat fresh fish; who know nothing but your +varnished town house, your pretty country house, and your box at that +Opera where the rest of Europe persists in feeling bored; who speak your +own language agreeably enough because you know no other, you love all +that, and you love further the girls you keep, the champagne which comes +to you from Rheims, the dividends which the Hôtel-de-Ville pays you +every six months, and you say you love your fatherland! + +In all conscience, does a financier cordially love his fatherland? + +The officer and the soldier who will pillage their winter quarters, if +one lets them, have they a very warm love for the peasants they ruin? + +Where was the fatherland of the scarred Duc de Guise, was it in Nancy, +Paris, Madrid, Rome? + +What fatherland have you, Cardinals de La Balue, Duprat, Lorraine, +Mazarin? + +Where was the fatherland of Attila and of a hundred heroes of this type? + +I would like someone to tell me which was Abraham's fatherland. + +The first man to write that the fatherland is wherever one feels +comfortable was, I believe, Euripides in his "Phaeton." But the first +man who left his birthplace to seek his comfort elsewhere had said it +before him. + +Where then is the fatherland? Is it not a good field, whose owner, +lodged in a well-kept house, can say: "This field that I till, this +house that I have built, are mine; I live there protected by laws which +no tyrant can infringe. When those who, like me, possess fields and +houses, meet in their common interest, I have my voice in the assembly; +I am a part of everything, a part of the community, a part of the +dominion; there is my fatherland."? + +Well now, is it better for your fatherland to be a monarchy or a +republic? For four thousand years has this question been debated. Ask +the rich for an answer, they all prefer aristocracy; question the +people, they want democracy: only kings prefer royalty. How then is it +that nearly the whole world is governed by monarchs? Ask the rats who +proposed to hang a bell round the cat's neck. But in truth, the real +reason is, as has been said, that men are very rarely worthy of +governing themselves. + +It is sad that often in order to be a good patriot one is the enemy of +the rest of mankind. To be a good patriot is to wish that one's city may +be enriched by trade, and be powerful by arms. It is clear that one +country cannot gain without another loses, and that it cannot conquer +without making misery. Such then is the human state that to wish for +one's country's greatness is to wish harm to one's neighbours. He who +should wish that his fatherland might never be greater, smaller, richer, +poorer, would be the citizen of the world. + + + + +_FINAL CAUSES_ + + +If a clock is not made to tell the hour, I will then admit that final +causes are chimeras; and I shall consider it quite right for people to +call me "_cause-finalier_," that is--an imbecile. + +All the pieces of the machine of this world seem, however, made for each +other. A few philosophers affect to mock at the final causes rejected by +Epicurus and Lucretius. It is, it seems to me, at Epicurus and Lucretius +rather that they should mock. They tell you that the eye is not made for +seeing, but that man has availed himself of it for this purpose when he +perceived that eyes could be so used. According to them, the mouth is +not made for speaking, for eating, the stomach for digesting, the heart +for receiving the blood from the veins and for dispatching it through +the arteries, the feet for walking, the ears for hearing. These persons +avow nevertheless that tailors make them coats to clothe them, and +masons houses to lodge them, and they dare deny to nature, to the great +Being, to the universal Intelligence, what they accord to the least of +their workmen. + +Of course one must not make an abuse of final causes; we have remarked +that in vain Mr. Prieur, in "The Spectacle of Nature," maintains that +the tides are given to the ocean so that vessels may enter port more +easily, and to stop the water of the sea from putrefying. In vain would +he say that legs are made to be booted, and the nose to wear spectacles. + +In order that one may be certain of the true end for which a cause +functions, it is essential that that effect shall exist at all times +and in all places. There were not ships at all times and on all the +seas; hence one cannot say that the ocean was made for the ships. One +feels how ridiculous it would be to maintain that nature had worked from +all time in order to adjust herself to the inventions of our arbitrary +arts, which appeared so late; but it is quite evident that if noses were +not made for spectacles, they were for smelling, and that there have +been noses ever since there have been men. Similarly, hands not having +been given on behalf of glove-makers, they are visibly destined for all +the purposes which the metacarpal bones and the phalanges and the +circular muscle of the wrist may procure for us. + +Cicero, who doubted everything, did not, however, doubt final causes. + +It seems especially difficult for the organs of generation not to be +destined to perpetuate the species. This mechanism is very admirable, +but the sensation which nature has joined to this mechanism is still +more admirable. Epicurus had to avow that pleasure is divine; and that +this pleasure is a final cause, by which are ceaselessly produced +sentient beings who have not been able to give themselves sensation. + +This Epicurus was a great man for his time; he saw what Descartes +denied, what Gassendi affirmed, what Newton demonstrated, that there is +no movement without space. He conceived the necessity of atoms to serve +as constituent parts of invariable species. Those are exceedingly +philosophical ideas. Nothing was especially more worthy of respect than +the moral system of the true Epicureans; it consisted in the removal to +a distance of public matters incompatible with wisdom, and in +friendship, without which life is a burden. But as regards the rest of +Epicurus' physics, they do not appear any more admissible than +Descartes' channelled matter. It is, it seems to me, to stop one's eyes +and understanding to maintain that there is no design in nature; and if +there is design, there is an intelligent cause, there exists a God. + +People present to us as objections the irregularities of the globe, the +volcanoes, the plains of shifting sands, a few small mountains destroyed +and others formed by earthquakes, etc. But from the fact that the naves +of the wheels of your coach have caught fire, does it ensue that your +coach was not made expressly to carry you from one place to another? + +The chains of mountains which crown the two hemispheres, and more than +six hundred rivers which flow right to the sea from the feet of these +rocks; all the streams which come down from these same reservoirs, and +which swell the rivers, after fertilizing the country; the thousands of +fountains which start from the same source, and which water animal and +vegetable kind; all these things seem no more the effect of a fortuitous +cause and of a declension of atoms, than the retina which receives the +rays of light, the crystalline lens which refracts them, the incus, the +malleus, the stapes, the tympanic membrane of the ear, which receives +the sounds, the paths of the blood in our veins, the systole and +diastole of the heart, this pendulum of the machine which makes life. + + + + +_FRAUD_ + + +Bambabef the fakir one day met one of the disciples of Confutzee, whom +we call "Confucius," and this disciple was named "Ouang," and Bambabef +maintained that the people had need of being deceived, and Ouang claimed +that one should never deceive anybody; and here is the summary 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 in a diameter of two or three feet, +although this star is a million times bigger than the earth; he makes us +see the moon and the stars set on the same blue background, whereas they +are at different depths. He requires that a square tower shall appear +round to us from a distance; he requires that fire shall seem hot to us, +although it is neither hot nor cold; in fine, he surrounds us with +errors suited to our nature. + +OUANG: + +What you name error is not one at all. The sun, placed as it is at +millions of millions of lis[6] beyond our globe, is not the sun we see. +We perceive in reality, and we can perceive, only the sun which is +depicted in our retina at a determined angle. Our eyes have not been +given us for appreciating sizes and distances, we need other aids and +other operations to appreciate them. + + * * * * * + +Bambabef seemed very astonished at this proposition. Ouang, who was very +patient, explained to him the theory of optics; and Bambabef, who had a +quick understanding, surrendered to the demonstrations of Confutzee's +disciple, then he resumed the argument. + + +BAMBABEF: + +If God does not deceive us through the medium of our senses, as I +believed, avow at least that doctors always deceive children for their +good; they tell them that they are giving them sugar, and in fact they +are giving them rhubarb. I, a fakir, may then deceive the people who are +as ignorant as the children. + +OUANG: + +I have two sons; I have never deceived them; when they have been ill I +have told them that there was a very bitter medicine, and that they must +have the courage to take it; "it would harm you if it were sweet." I +have never allowed their masters and teachers to make them afraid of +spirits, ghosts, goblins, sorcerers; by this means I have made brave, +wise young citizens of them. + +BAMBABEF: + +The people are not born so happily as your family. + +OUANG: + +All men are alike, or nearly so; they are born with the same +dispositions. One must not corrupt men's natures. + +BAMBABEF: + +We teach them errors, I admit, but it is for their good. We make them +believe that if they do not buy the nails we have blessed, if they do +not expiate their sins by giving us money, they will become, in another +life, post-horses, dogs or lizards. That intimidates them, and they +become honest people. + +OUANG: + +Do you not see that you are perverting these poor people? There are +among them many more than you think who reason, who laugh at your +miracles, at your superstitions, who see quite well that they will not +be changed into either lizards or post-horses. What is the consequence? +They have enough sense to see that you are telling them impertinences, +and they have not enough to raise themselves toward a religion that is +pure and free from superstition, such as ours. Their passions make them +believe that there is no religion at all, because the only one that is +taught them is ridiculous; you become guilty of all the vices in which +they are plunged. + +BAMBABEF: + +Not at all, for we do not teach them anything but good morality. + +OUANG: + +You would have yourselves stoned by the people if you taught them impure +morality. Men are so made that they want to do evil, but that they do +not want it preached to them. All that is necessary is that you should +not mix a wise moral system with absurd fables, because you weaken +through your impostures, which you can do without, the morality that you +are forced to teach. + +BAMBABEF: + +What! you believe that one can teach the people truth without +strengthening it with fables? + +OUANG: + +I firmly believe it. Our literati are of the same stuff as our tailors, +our weavers and our husbandmen. They worship a God creator, rewarder, +avenger. They do not sully their worship, either by absurd systems, or +by extravagant ceremonies; and there are far less crimes among the +literati than among the people. Why not deign to instruct our workmen as +we instruct our literati? + +BAMBABEF: + +You would be very foolish; it is as if you wanted them to have the same +courtesy, to be lawyers; that is neither possible nor proper. There must +be white bread for the masters, and brown bread for the servants. + +OUANG: + +I admit that all men should not have the same learning; but there are +some things necessary to all. It is necessary that all men should be +just; and the surest way of inspiring all men with justice is to inspire +in them religion without superstition. + +BAMBABEF: + +It is a fine project, but it is impracticable. Do you think that men +will be satisfied to believe in a God who punishes and rewards? You have +told me that it often happens that the most shrewd among the people +revolt against my fables; they will revolt in the same way against +truth. They will say: "Who will assure me that God punishes and +rewards? where is the proof of it? what is your mission? what miracle +have you performed that I may believe you?" They will laugh at you much +more than at me. + +OUANG: + +That is where you are mistaken. You imagine that people will shake off +the yoke of an honest, probable idea that is useful to everyone, of an +idea in accordance with human reason, because people reject things that +are dishonest, absurd, useless, dangerous, that make good sense shudder. + +The people are very disposed to believe their magistrates: when their +magistrates propose to them only a reasonable belief, they embrace it +willingly. There is no need of prodigies for believing in a just God, +who reads in man's heart; this idea is too natural, too necessary, to be +combated. It is not necessary to say precisely how God will punish and +reward; it suffices that people believe in His justice. I assure you I +have seen entire towns which have had barely any other dogma, and that +it is in those towns that I have seen most virtue. + +BAMBABEF: + +Take care; in those towns you will find philosophers who will deny you +both your pains and your recompenses. + +OUANG: + +You will admit to me that these philosophers will deny your inventions +still more strongly; so you gain nothing from that. Though there are +philosophers who do not agree with my principles, there are honest +people none the less; none the less do they cultivate the virtue of +them, which must be embraced by love, and not by fear. But, further, I +maintain that no philosopher would ever be assured that Providence did +not reserve pains for the wicked and rewards for the good. For if they +ask me who told me that God punishes? I shall ask them who has told them +that God does not punish. In fine, I maintain that these philosophers, +far from contradicting me, will help me. Would you like to be a +philosopher? + +BAMBABEF: + +Willingly; but do not tell the fakirs. + +OUANG: + +Let us think above all that, if a philosopher wishes to be useful to +human society, he must announce a God. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[6] A li is 124 paces. + + + + +_FREE-WILL_ + + +Ever since men have reasoned, the philosophers have obscured this +matter: but the theologians have rendered it unintelligible by absurd +subtleties about grace. Locke is perhaps the first man to find a thread +in this labyrinth; for he is the first who, without having the arrogance +of trusting in setting out from a general principle, examined human +nature by analysis. For three thousand years people have disputed +whether or no the will is free. In the "Essay on the Human +Understanding," chapter on "Power," Locke shows first of all that the +question is absurd, and that liberty can no more belong to the will than +can colour and movement. + +What is the meaning of this phrase "to be free"? it means "to be able," +or assuredly it has no sense. For the will "to be able" is as ridiculous +at bottom as to say that the will is yellow or blue, round or square. To +will is to wish, and to be free is to be able. Let us note step by step +the chain of what passes in us, without obfuscating our minds by any +terms of the schools or any antecedent principle. + +It is proposed to you that you mount a horse, you must absolutely make a +choice, for it is quite clear that you either will go or that you will +not go. There is no middle way. It is therefore of absolute necessity +that you wish yes or no. Up to there it is demonstrated that the will is +not free. You wish to mount the horse; why? The reason, an ignoramus +will say, is because I wish it. This answer is idiotic, nothing happens +or can happen without a reason, a cause; there is one therefore for your +wish. What is it? the agreeable idea of going on horseback which +presents itself in your brain, the dominant idea, the determinant idea. +But, you will say, can I not resist an idea which dominates me? No, for +what would be the cause of your resistance? None. By your will you can +obey only an idea which will dominate you more. + +Now you receive all your ideas; therefore you receive your wish, you +wish therefore necessarily. The word "liberty" does not therefore belong +in any way to your will. + +You ask me how thought and wish are formed in us. I answer you that I +have not the remotest idea. I do not know how ideas are made any more +than how the world was made. All that is given to us is to grope for +what passes in our incomprehensible machine. + +The will, therefore, is not a faculty that one can call free. A free +will is an expression absolutely void of sense, and what the scholastics +have called will of indifference, that is to say willing without cause, +is a chimera unworthy of being combated. + +Where will be liberty then? in the power to do what one wills. I wish to +leave my study, the door is open, I am free to leave it. + +But, say you, if the door is closed, and I wish to stay at home, I stay +there freely. Let us be explicit. You exercise then the power that you +have of staying; you have this power, but you have not that of going +out. + +The liberty about which so many volumes have been written is, therefore, +reduced to its accurate terms, only the power of acting. + +In what sense then must one utter the phrase--"Man is free"? in the same +sense that one utters the words, health, strength, happiness. Man is not +always strong, always healthy, always happy. + +A great passion, a great obstacle, deprive him of his liberty, his power +of action. + +The word "liberty," "free-will," is therefore an abstract word, a +general word, like beauty, goodness, justice. These terms do not state +that all men are always beautiful, good and just; similarly, they are +not always free. + +Let us go further: this liberty being only the power of acting, what is +this power? It is the effect of the constitution and present state of +our organs. Leibnitz wishes to resolve a geometrical problem, he has an +apoplectic fit, he certainly has not liberty to resolve his problem. Is +a vigorous young man, madly in love, who holds his willing mistress in +his arms, free to tame his passion? undoubtedly not. He has the power of +enjoying, and has not the power of refraining. Locke was therefore very +right to call liberty "power." When is it that this young man can +refrain despite the violence of his passion? when a stronger idea +determines in a contrary sense the activity of his body and his soul. + +But what! the other animals will have the same liberty, then, the same +power? Why not? They have senses, memory, feeling, perceptions, as we +have. They act with spontaneity as we act. They must have also, as we +have, the power of acting by virtue of their perceptions, by virtue of +the play of their organs. + +Someone cries: "If it be so, everything is only machine, everything in +the universe is subjected to eternal laws." Well! would you have +everything at the pleasure of a million blind caprices? Either +everything is the sequence of the necessity of the nature of things, or +everything is the effect of the eternal order of an absolute master; in +both cases we are only wheels in the machine of the world. + +It is a vain witticism, a commonplace to say that without the pretended +liberty of the will, all pains and rewards are useless. Reason, and you +will come to a quite contrary conclusion. + +If a brigand is executed, his accomplice who sees him expire has the +liberty of not being frightened at the punishment; if his will is +determined by itself, he will go from the foot of the scaffold to +assassinate on the broad highway; if his organs, stricken with horror, +make him experience an unconquerable terror, he will stop robbing. His +companion's punishment becomes useful to him and an insurance for +society only so long as his will is not free. + +Liberty then is only and can be only the power to do what one will. That +is what philosophy teaches us. But if one considers liberty in the +theological sense, it is a matter so sublime that profane eyes dare not +raise themselves to it.[7] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[7] See "Liberty." + + + + +_FRENCH_ + + +The French language did not begin to have any form until towards the +tenth century; it was born from the ruins of Latin and Celtic, mixed +with a few Germanic words. This language was first of all the _romanum +rusticum_, rustic Roman, and the Germanic language was the court +language up to the time of Charles the Bald; Germanic remained the sole +language of Germany after the great epoch of the partition of 843. +Rustic Roman, the Romance language, prevailed in Western France; the +people of the country of Vaud, of the Valais, of the Engadine valley, +and of a few other cantons, still retain to-day manifest vestiges of +this idiom. + +At the end of the tenth century French was formed; people wrote in +French at the beginning of the eleventh; but this French still retained +more of Rustic Roman than the French of to-day. The romance of +Philomena, written in the tenth century in rustic Roman, is not in a +tongue very different from that of the Norman laws. One still remarks +Celtic, Latin and German derivations. The words signifying the parts of +the human body, or things of daily use, and which have nothing in common +with Latin or German, are in old Gaulish or Celtic, such as _tête_, +_jambe_, _sabre_, _pointe_, _aller_, _parler_, _écouter_, _regarder_, +_aboyer_, _crier_, _coutume_, _ensemble_, and many others of this kind. +Most of the terms of war were Frank or German: _Marche_, _halte_, +_maréchal_, _bivouac_, _reitre_, _lansquenet_. All the rest is Latin; +and all the Latin words were abridged, according to the custom and +genius of the nations of the north; thus from _palatium_, palais; from +_lupus_, loup; from _Auguste_, août; from _Junius_, juin; from _unctus_, +oint; from _purpura_, pourpre; from _pretium_, prix, etc. Hardly were +there left any vestiges of the Greek tongue, which had been so long +spoken at Marseilles. + +In the twelfth century there began to be introduced into the language +some of the terms of Aristotle's philosophy; and towards the sixteenth +century one expressed by Greek terms all the parts of the human body, +their diseases, their remedies; whence the words _cardiaque_, +_céphalique_, _podagre_, _apoplectique_, _asthmatique_, _iliaque_, +_empyème_, and so many others. Although the language then enriched +itself from the Greek, and although since Charles VIII. it had drawn +much aid from Italian already perfected, the French language had not yet +taken regular consistence. François Ier abolished the ancient custom of +pleading, judging, contracting in Latin; custom which bore witness to +the barbarism of a language which one did not dare use in public +documents, a pernicious custom for citizens whose lot was regulated in a +language they did not understand. One was obliged then to cultivate +French; but the language was neither noble nor regular. The syntax was +left to caprice. The genius for conversation being turned to +pleasantries, the language became very fertile in burlesque and naïve +expressions, and very sterile in noble and harmonious terms: from this +it comes that in rhyming dictionaries one finds twenty terms suitable +for comic poetry, for one for more exalted use; and it is, further, a +reason why Marot never succeeded in a serious style, and why Amyot could +render Plutarch's elegance only with naïveté. + +French acquired vigour beneath the pen of Montaigne; but it still had +neither nobility nor harmony. Ronsard spoiled the language by bringing +into French poetry the Greek compounds which the doctors and +philosophers used. Malherbe repaired Ronsard's mischief somewhat. The +language became more noble and more harmonious with the establishment of +the Académie Française, and acquired finally, in the reign of Louis +XIV., the perfection whereby it might be carried into all forms of +composition. + +The genius of this language is order and clarity; for each language has +its genius, and this genius consists in the facility which the language +gives for expressing oneself more or less happily, for using or +rejecting the familiar twists of other languages. French having no +declensions, and being always subject to the article, cannot adopt Greek +and Latin inversions; it obliges words to arrange themselves in the +natural order of ideas. Only in one way can one say "_Plancus a pris +soin des affaires de César._" That is the only arrangement one can give +to these words. Express this phrase in Latin--_Res Cæsaris Plancus +diligenter curavit_: one can arrange these words in a hundred and twenty +ways, without injuring the sense and without troubling the language. The +auxiliary verbs which eke out and enervate the phrases in modern +languages, still render the French tongue little suited to the concise +lapidary style. The auxiliary verbs, its pronouns, its articles, its +lack of declinable participles, and finally its uniform gait, are +injurious to the great enthusiasm of poetry, in which it has less +resources than Italian and English; but this constraint and this bondage +render it more suitable for tragedy and comedy than any language in +Europe. The natural order in which one is obliged to express one's +thoughts and construct one's phrases, diffuses in this language a +sweetness and easiness that is pleasing to all peoples; and the genius +of the nation mingling with the genius of the language has produced more +agreeably written books than can be seen among any other people. + +The pleasure and liberty of society having been long known only in +France, the language has received therefrom a delicacy of expression and +a finesse full of simplicity barely to be found elsewhere. This finesse +has sometimes been exaggerated, but people of taste have always known +how to reduce it within just limits. + +Many persons have thought that the French language has become +impoverished since the time of Amyot and Montaigne: one does indeed +find in many authors expressions which are no longer admissible; but +they are for the most part familiar expressions for which equivalents +have been substituted. The language has been enriched with a quantity of +noble and energetic expressions; and without speaking here of the +eloquence of things, it has acquired the eloquence of words. It is in +the reign of Louis XIV., as has been said, that this eloquence had its +greatest splendour, and that the language was fixed. Whatever changes +time and caprice prepare for it, the good authors of the seventeenth and +eighteenth centuries will always serve as models. + + + + +_FRIENDSHIP_ + + +Friendship is the marriage of the soul; and this marriage is subject to +divorce. It is a tacit contract between two sensitive and virtuous +persons. I say "sensitive," because a monk, a recluse can be not wicked +and live without knowing what friendship is. I say "virtuous," because +the wicked have only accomplices; voluptuaries have companions in +debauch, self-seekers have partners, politicians get partisans; the +generality of idle men have attachments; princes have courtiers; +virtuous men alone have friends. Cethegus was the accomplice of +Catilina, and Maecenas the courtier of Octavius; but Cicero was the +friend of Atticus. + + + + +_GOD_ + + +During the reign of Arcadius, Logomacos, lecturer in theology of +Constantinople, went to Scythia and halted at the foot of the Caucasus, +in the fertile plains of Zephirim, on the frontier of Colchis. That good +old man Dondindac was in his great lower hall, between his sheepfold and +his vast barn; he was kneeling with his wife, his five sons and five +daughters, his kindred and his servants, and after a light meal they +were all singing God's praises. "What do you there, idolator?" said +Logomacos to him. + +"I am not an idolator," answered Dondindac. + +"You must be an idolator," said Logomacos, "seeing that you are not +Greek. Tell me, what was that you were singing in your barbarous +Scythian jargon?" + +"All tongues are equal in the ears of God," answered the Scythian. "We +were singing His praises." + +"That's very extraordinary," returned the theologian. "A Scythian family +who pray God without having been taught by us!" He soon engaged +Dondindac the Scythian in conversation, for he knew a little Scythian, +and the other a little Greek. The following conversation was found in a +manuscript preserved in the library of Constantinople. + + +LOGOMACOS: + +Let us see if you know your catechism. Why do you pray God? + +DONDINDAC: + +Because it is right to worship the Supreme Being from whom we hold +everything. + +LOGOMACOS: + +Not bad for a barbarian! And what do you ask of Him? + +DONDINDAC: + +I thank Him for the benefits I enjoy, and even for the ills with which +He tries me; but I take good care not to ask Him for anything; He knows +better than us what we need, and besides, I am afraid to ask Him for +good weather when my neighbour is asking for rain. + +LOGOMACOS: + +Ah! I thought he was going to say something silly. Let us start again +farther back. Barbarian, who has told you there is a God? + +DONDINDAC: + +The whole of nature. + +LOGOMACOS: + +That does not suffice. What idea have you of God? + +DONDINDAC: + +The idea of my creator, of my master, who will reward me if I do good, +and who will punish me if I do ill. + +LOGOMACOS: + +Trash, nonsense all that! Let us come to essentials. Is God infinite +_secundum quid_, or in essence? + +DONDINDAC: + +I don't understand you. + +LOGOMACOS: + +Brutish fool! Is God in one place, beyond all places, or in all places? + +DONDINDAC: + +I have no idea ... just as you please. + +LOGOMACOS: + +Dolt! Is it possible for what has been not to have been, and can a stick +not have two ends? Does He see the future as future or as present? how +does He draw the being out of non-existence, and how annihilate the +being? + +DONDINDAC: + +I have never examined these things. + +LOGOMACOS: + +What a blockhead! Come, one must humble oneself, see things in +proportion. Tell me, my friend, do you think that matter can be eternal? + +DONDINDAC: + +What does it matter to me whether it exists from all eternity or not? I +do not exist from all eternity. God is always my master; He has given me +the notion of justice, I must follow it; I do not want to be a +philosopher, I want to be a man. + +LOGOMACOS: + +These blockheads are troublesome. Let us go step by step. What is God? + +DONDINDAC: + +My sovereign, my judge, my father. + +LOGOMACOS: + +That's not what I'm asking you. What is His nature? + +DONDINDAC: + +To be potent and good. + +LOGOMACOS: + +But, is He corporeal or spiritual? + +DONDINDAC: + +How should I know? + +LOGOMACOS: + +What! you don't know what a spirit is? + +DONDINDAC: + +Not in the least: of what use would it be to me? should I be more just? +should I be a better husband, a better father, a better master, a better +citizen? + +LOGOMACOS: + +It is absolutely essential you should learn what a spirit is. It is, it +is, it is ... I will tell you another time. + +DONDINDAC: + +I'm very much afraid that you may tell me less what it is than what it +is not. Allow me to put a question to you in my turn. I once saw one of +your temples; why do you depict God with a long beard? + +LOGOMACOS: + +That's a very difficult question which needs preliminary instruction. + +DONDINDAC: + +Before receiving your instruction, I must tell you what happened to me +one day. I had just built a closet at the end of my garden; I heard a +mole arguing with a cockchafer. "That's a very fine building," said the +mole. "It must have been a very powerful mole who did that piece of +work." + +"You're joking," said the cockchafer. "It was a cockchafer bubbling over +with genius who is the architect of this building." From that time I +resolved never to argue. + + + + +_HELVETIA_ + + +Happy Helvetia! to what charter do you owe your liberty? to your +courage, to your resolution, to your mountains. + +"But I am your emperor." + +"But I do not want you any longer." + +"But your fathers were my father's slaves." + +"It is for that very reason that their children do not wish to serve +you." + +"But I had the right belonging to my rank." + +"And we have the right of nature." + +Why is liberty so rare? + +Because it is the chiefest good. + + + + +_HISTORY_ + + +DEFINITION + +History is the recital of facts given as true, in contradistinction to +the fable, which is the recital of facts given as false. + +There is the history of opinions which is hardly anything but a +collection of human errors. + +The history of the arts can be the most useful of all when it joins to +the knowledge of the invention and the progress of the arts the +description of their mechanism. + +Natural history, improperly called _history_, is an essential part of +natural philosophy. The history of events has been divided into sacred +history and profane history; sacred history is a series of divine and +miraculous operations whereby it pleased God once on a time to lead the +Jewish nation, and to-day to exercise our faith. + + +FIRST FOUNDATIONS OF HISTORY + +The first foundations of all history are the recitals of the fathers to +the children, transmitted afterward from one generation to another; at +their origin they are at the very most probable, when they do not shock +common sense, and they lose one degree of probability in each +generation. With time the fable grows and the truth grows less; from +this it comes that all the origins of peoples are absurd. Thus the +Egyptians had been governed by the gods for many centuries; then they +had been governed by demi-gods; finally they had had kings for eleven +thousand three hundred and forty years; and in that space of time the +sun had changed four times from east to west. + +The Phoenicians of Alexander's time claimed to have been established +in their country for thirty thousand years; and these thirty thousand +years were filled with as many prodigies as the Egyptian chronology. I +avow that physically it is very possible that Phoenicia has existed +not merely thirty thousand years, but thirty thousand milliards of +centuries, and that it experienced like the rest of the world thirty +million revolutions. But we have no knowledge of it. + +One knows what a ridiculously marvellous state of affairs ruled in the +ancient history of the Greeks. + +The Romans, for all that they were serious, did not any the less envelop +the history of their early centuries in fables. This nation, so recent +compared with the Asiatic peoples, was five hundred years without +historians. It is not surprising, therefore, that Romulus was the son of +Mars, that a she-wolf was his foster mother, that he marched with a +thousand men of his village of Rome against twenty-five thousand +combatants of the village of the Sabines: that later he became a god; +that Tarquin, the ancient, cut a stone with a razor, and that a vestal +drew a ship to land with her girdle, etc. + +The early annals of all our modern nations are no less fabulous; the +prodigious and improbable things must sometimes be reported, but as +proofs of human credulity: they enter the history of opinions and +foolishnesses; but the field is too vast. + + +OF RECORDS + +In order to know with a little certainty something of ancient history, +there is only one means, it is to see if any incontestable records +remain. We have only three in writing: the first is the collection of +astronomical observations made for nineteen hundred consecutive years at +Babylon, sent by Alexander to Greece. This series of observations, which +goes back to two thousand two hundred and thirty-four years before our +era, proves invincibly that the Babylonians existed as a body of people +several centuries before; for the arts are only the work of time, and +men's natural laziness leaves them for some thousands of years without +other knowledge and without other talents than those of feeding +themselves, of defending themselves against the injuries of the air, and +of slaughtering each other. Let us judge by the Germans and by the +English in Cæsar's time, by the Tartars to-day, by the two-thirds of +Africa, and by all the peoples we have found in America, excepting in +some respects the kingdoms of Peru and of Mexico, and the republic of +Tlascala. Let us remember that in the whole of this new world nobody +knew how to read or write. + +The second record is the central eclipse of the sun, calculated in China +two thousand one hundred and fifty-five years before our era, and +recognized true by our astronomers. Of the Chinese the same thing must +be said as of the peoples of Babylon; they already comprised a vast +civilized empire without a doubt. But what puts the Chinese above all +the peoples of the earth is that neither their laws, nor their customs, +nor the language spoken among them by their lettered mandarins has +changed for about four thousand years. Nevertheless, this nation and the +nation of India, the most ancient of all those that exist to-day, which +possess the vastest and the most beautiful country, which invented +almost all the arts before we had learned any of them, have always been +omitted right to our days in all so-called universal histories. And when +a Spaniard and a Frenchman took a census of the nations, neither one nor +the other failed to call his country the first monarchy in the world, +and his king the greatest king in the world, flattering himself that his +king would give him a pension as soon as he had read his book. + +The third record, very inferior to the two others, exists in the Arundel +marbles: the chronicle of Athens is graved there two hundred and +sixty-three years before our era; but it goes back only to Cecrops, +thirteen hundred and nineteen years beyond the time when it was +engraved. In the history of antiquity those are the sole incontestable +epochs that we have. + +Let us give serious attention to these marbles brought back from Greece +by Lord Arundel. Their chronicle begins fifteen hundred and eighty-two +years before our era. That is to-day (1771) an antiquity of 3,353 years, +and you do not see there a single fact touching on the miraculous, on +the prodigious. It is the same with the Olympiads; it is not there that +one should say _Græcia mendax_, lying Greece. The Greeks knew very well +how to distinguish between history and fable, between real facts and the +tales of Herodotus: just as in their serious affairs their orators +borrowed nothing from the speeches of the sophists or from the images of +the poets. + +The date of the taking of Troy is specified in these marbles; but no +mention is made of Apollo's arrows, or of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, or +of the ridiculous combats of the gods. The date of the inventions of +Triptolemy and Ceres is found there; but Ceres is not called _goddess_. +Mention is made of a poem on the abduction of Prosperine; it is not said +that she is the daughter of Jupiter and a goddess, and that she is wife +of the god of the infernal regions. + +Hercules is initiated into the mysteries of Eleusis; but not a word on +his twelve labours, nor on his passage into Africa in his cup, nor on +his divinity, nor on the big fish by which he was swallowed, and which +kept him in its belly three days and three nights, according to +Lycophron. + +Among us, on the contrary, a standard is brought from heaven by an angel +to the monks of Saint-Denis; a pigeon brings a bottle of oil to a church +in Rheims; two armies of snakes give themselves over to a pitched battle +in Germany; an archbishop of Mayence is besieged and eaten by rats; and, +to crown everything, great care has been taken to mark the year of these +adventures. + +All history is recent. It is not astonishing that we have no ancient +profane history beyond about four thousand years. The revolutions of +this globe, the long and universal ignorance of that art which transmits +facts by writing are the cause of it. This art was common only among a +very small number of civilized nations; and was in very few hands even. +Nothing rarer among the French and the Germans than to know how to +write; up to the fourteenth century of our era nearly all deeds were +only attested by witnesses. It was, in France, only under Charles VII., +in 1454, that one started to draft in writing some of the customs of +France. The art of writing was still rarer among the Spanish, and from +that it results that their history is so dry and so uncertain, up to the +time of Ferdinand and Isabella. One sees by that to what extent the very +small number of men who knew how to write could deceive, and how easy it +was to make us believe the most enormous absurdities. + +There are nations which have subjugated a part of the world without +having the usage of characters. We know that Gengis-khan conquered a +part of Asia at the beginning of the thirteenth century, but it is not +through either him or the Tartars that we know it. Their history, +written by the Chinese and translated by Father Gaubil, states that +these Tartars had not at that time the art of writing. + +This art cannot have been less unknown to the Scythian Oguskan, named +Madies by the Persians and the Greeks, who conquered a part of Europe +and Asia so long before the reign of Cyrus. It is almost certain that at +that time of a hundred nations there were hardly two or three who used +characters. It is possible that in an ancient world destroyed, men knew +writing and the other arts; but in ours they are all very recent. + +There remain records of another kind, which serve to establish merely +the remote antiquity of certain peoples, and which precede all the known +epochs, and all the books; these are the prodigies of architecture, like +the pyramids and the palaces of Egypt, which have resisted time. +Herodotus, who lived two thousand two hundred years ago, and who had +seen them, was not able to learn from the Egyptian priests at what time +they had been erected. + +It is difficult to give to the most ancient of the pyramids less than +four thousand years of antiquity; but one must consider that these +efforts of the ostentation of the kings could only have been commenced +long after the establishment of the towns. But to build towns in a land +inundated every year, let us always remark that it was first necessary +to raise the land of the towns on piles in this land of mud, and to +render them inaccessible to the flood; it was essential, before taking +this necessary course, and before being in a state to attempt these +great works, for the people to have practised retreating during the +rising of the Nile, amid the rocks which form two chains right and left +of this river. It was necessary for these mustered peoples to have the +instruments for tilling, those of architecture, a knowledge of +surveying, with laws and a police. All this necessarily requires a +prodigious space of time. We see by the long details which face every +day the most necessary and the smallest of our undertakings, how +difficult it is to do great things, and it needs not only indefatigable +stubbornness, but several generations animated with this stubbornness. + +However, whether it be Menes, Thaut or Cheops, or Rameses who erected +one or two of these prodigious masses, we shall not be the more +instructed of the history of ancient Egypt: the language of this people +is lost. We therefore know nothing but that before the most ancient +historians there was matter for making an ancient history. + + + + +_IGNORANCE_ + + +I am ignorant of how I was formed, and of how I was born. For a quarter +of my life I was absolutely ignorant of the reasons for all that I saw, +heard and felt, and I was nothing but a parrot at whom other parrots +chattered. + +When I looked round me and within me, I conceived that something exists +for all eternity; since there are beings who exist to-day, I concluded +that there is a being who is necessary and necessarily eternal. Thus, +the first step I took to emerge from my ignorance crossed the boundaries +of all the centuries. + +But when I tried to walk in this infinite quarry open before me, I could +neither find a single path, nor discern plainly a single object; and +from the leap I made to contemplate eternity, I fell back again into the +abyss of my ignorance. + +I saw what was called "matter," from the star Sirius and the stars of +the Milky Way, as distant from Sirius as Sirius is from us, right to the +last atom that can be perceived with the microscope, and I am ignorant +as to what matter is. + +The light which let me see all these beings is unknown to me; I can, +with the help of a prism, dissect this light, and divide it into seven +pencils of rays; but I cannot divide these pencils; I am ignorant of +what they are composed. Light is of the nature of matter, since it has +movement and makes an impression on objects; but it does not tend toward +a centre like all bodies: on the contrary, it escapes invincibly from +the centre, whereas all matter bears towards its centre. Light seems +penetrable, and matter is impenetrable. Is this light matter? is it not +matter? with what innumerable properties can it be endowed? I am +ignorant thereof. + +Is this substance which is so brilliant, so swift and so unknown, are +these other substances which roll in the immensity of space, eternal as +they seem infinite? I have no idea. Has a necessary being, of sovereign +intelligence, created them out of nothing, or has he arranged them? did +he produce this order in Time or before Time? What even is this Time of +which I speak? I cannot define it. O God! Teach me, for I am enlightened +neither by other men's darkness nor by my own. + +What is sensation? How have I received it? what connection is there +between the air which strikes my ear and the sensation of sound? between +this body and the sensation of colour? I am profoundly ignorant thereof, +and I shall always be ignorant thereof. + +What is thought? where does it dwell? how is it formed? who gives me +thought during my sleep? is it by virtue of my will that I think? But +always during my sleep, and often while I am awake, I have ideas in +spite of myself. These ideas, long forgotten, long relegated to the back +shop of my brain, issue from it without my interfering, and present +themselves to my memory, which makes vain efforts to recall them. + +External objects have not the power to form ideas in me, for one does +not give oneself what one has not; I am too sensible that it is not I +who give them to me, for they are born without my orders. Who produces +them in me? whence do they come? whither do they go? Fugitive phantoms, +what invisible hand produces you and causes you to disappear? + +Why, alone of all animals, has man the mania for dominating his +fellow-men? + +Why and how has it been possible that of a hundred thousand million men +more than ninety-nine have been immolated to this mania? + +How is reason so precious a gift that we would not lose it for anything +in the world? and how has this reason served only to make us the most +unhappy of all beings? + +Whence comes it that loving truth passionately, we are always betrayed +to the most gross impostures? + +Why is life still loved by this crowd of Indians deceived and enslaved +by the bonzes, crushed by a Tartar's descendants, overburdened with +work, groaning in want, assailed by disease, exposed to every scourge? + +Whence comes evil, and why does evil exist? + +O atoms of a day! O my companions in infinite littleness, born like me +to suffer everything and to be ignorant of everything, are there enough +madmen among you to believe that they know all these things? No, there +are not; no, at the bottom of your hearts you feel your nonentity as I +render justice to mine. But you are arrogant enough to want people to +embrace your vain systems; unable to be tyrants over our bodies, you +claim to be tyrants over our souls. + + + + +_THE IMPIOUS_ + + +Who are the impious? those who give a white beard, feet and hands to the +Being of beings, to the great Demiourgos, to the eternal intelligence by +which nature is governed. But they are only excusably impious, poor +impious people against whom one must not grow wroth. + +If even they paint the great incomprehensible Being born on a cloud +which can bear nothing; if they are foolish enough to put God in a mist, +in the rain, or on a mountain, and to surround him with little chubby, +flushed faces accompanied by two wings; I laugh and I pardon them with +all my heart. + +The impious persons who attribute to the Being of beings preposterous +predictions and injustices would anger me if this great Being had not +given me a reason which quells my wrath. The silly fanatic repeats to +me, after others, that it is not for us to judge what is reasonable and +just in the great Being, that His reason is not like our reason, that +His justice is not like our justice. Eh! how, you mad demoniac, do you +want me to judge justice and reason otherwise than by the notions I have +of them? do you want me to walk otherwise than with my feet, and to +speak otherwise than with my mouth? + +The impious man who supposes the great Being jealous, arrogant, +malignant, vindictive, is more dangerous. I would not want to sleep +under the same roof as this man. + +But how would you treat the impious man who says to you: "See only +through my eyes, do not think; I announce to you a tyrannical God who +has made me to be your tyrant; I am his well-beloved: during all +eternity he will torture millions of his creatures whom he detests in +order to gladden me; I shall be your master in this world, and I shall +laugh at your torments in the other." + +Do you not feel an itching to thrash this cruel, impious fellow? If you +are born gentle, will you not run with all your might to the west when +this barbarian utters his atrocious reveries in the east? + + + + +_JOAN OF ARC_ + + +It is meet that the reader should be acquainted with the true history of +Joan of Arc surnamed "the Maid." The details of her adventure are very +little known and may give readers pleasure; here they are. + +Paul Jove says that the courage of the French was stimulated by this +girl, and takes good care not to believe her inspired. Neither Robert, +Gaguin, Paul Emile, Polydore Vergile, Genebrard, Philip of Bergamo, +Papyre Masson, nor even Mariana, say that she was sent by God; and even +though Mariana the Jesuit had said it, that would not deceive me. + +Mézerai relates "that the prince of the celestial militia appeared to +her." I am sorry for Mézerai, and I ask pardon of the prince of the +celestial militia. + +Most of our historians, who copy each other, suppose that the Maid +uttered prophecies, and that her prophecies were accomplished. She is +made to say that "she will drive the English out of the kingdom," and +they were still there five years after her death. She is said to have +written a long letter to the King of England, and assuredly she could +neither read nor write; such an education was not given to an inn +servant in the Barois; and the information laid against her states that +she could not sign her name. + +But, it is said, she found a rusted sword, the blade of which was +engraved with five golden _fleurs-de-lis_; and this sword was hidden in +the church of Sainte Catherine de Fierbois at Tours. There, certainly is +a great miracle! + +Poor Joan of Arc having been captured by the English, despite her +prophecies and her miracles, maintained first of all in her +cross-examination that St. Catherine and St. Marguerite had honoured her +with many revelations. I am astonished that she never said anything of +her talks with the prince of the celestial militia. These two saints +apparently liked talking better than St. Michael. Her judges thought her +a sorceress, she thought herself inspired. + +One great proof that Charles VII.'s captains made use of the marvellous +in order to encourage the soldiers, in the deplorable state to which +France was reduced, is that Saintrailles had his shepherd, as the Comte +de Dunois had his shepherdess. The shepherd made prophecies on one side, +while the shepherdess made them on the other. + +But unfortunately the Comte de Dunois' prophetess was captured at the +siege of Compiègne by a bastard of Vendôme, and Saintrailles' prophet +was captured by Talbot. The gallant Talbot was far from having the +shepherd burned. This Talbot was one of those true Englishmen who scorn +superstition, and who have not the fanaticism for punishing fanatics. + +This, it seems to me, is what the historians should have observed, and +what they have neglected. + +The Maid was taken to Jean de Luxembourg, Comte de Ligny. She was shut +up in the fortress of Beaulieu, then in that of Beaurevoir, and from +there in that of Crotoy in Picardy. + +First of all Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, who was of the King of +England's party against his own legitimate king, claims the Maid as a +sorceress arrested on the limits of his diocese. He wishes to judge her +as a sorceress. He supported the right he claimed by a downright lie. +Joan had been captured on the territory of the bishopric of Noyon: and +neither the Bishop of Beauvais, nor the Bishop of Noyon assuredly had +the right of condemning anybody, and still less of committing to death a +subject of the Duke of Lorraine, and a warrior in the pay of the King of +France. + +There was at that time (who would believe it?) a vicar-general of the +Inquisition in France, by name Brother Martin.[8] It was one of the most +horrible effects of the total subversion of that unfortunate country. +Brother Martin claimed the prisoner as smelling of heresy (_odorantem +hæresim_). He called upon the Duke of Burgundy and the Comte de Ligny, +"by the right of his office, and of the authority given to him by the +Holy See, to deliver Joan to the Holy Inquisition." + +The Sorbonne hastened to support Brother Martin, and wrote to the Duke +of Burgundy and to Jean de Luxembourg--"You have used your noble power +to apprehend this woman who calls herself the Maid, by means of whom the +honour of God has been immeasurably offended, the faith exceedingly +hurt, and the Church too greatly dishonoured; for by reason of her, +idolatry, errors, bad doctrine, and other inestimable evils have ensued +in this kingdom ... but what this woman has done would be of small +account, if did not ensue what is meet for satisfying the offence +perpetrated by her against our gentle Creator and His faith, and the +Holy Church with her other innumerable misdeeds ... and it would be +intolerable offence against the divine majesty if it happened that this +woman were freed."[9] + +Finally, the Maid was awarded to Jean Cauchon whom people called the +unworthy bishop, the unworthy Frenchman, and the unworthy man. Jean de +Luxembourg sold the Maid to Cauchon and the English for ten thousand +livres, and the Duke of Bedford paid them. The Sorbonne, the bishop and +Brother Martin, then presented a new petition to this Duke of Bedford, +regent of France, "in honour of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, for +that the said Joan may be briefly put into the hands of the Church." +Joan was led to Rouen. The archbishopric was vacant at that time, and +the chapter permitted the Bishop of Beauvais to _work_ in the town. +(_Besogner_ is the term which was used.) He chose as assessors nine +doctors of the Sorbonne with thirty-five other assistants, abbots or +monks. The vicar of the Inquisition, Martin, presided with Cauchon; and +as he was only a vicar, he had but second place. + +Joan underwent fourteen examinations; they are singular. She said that +she saw St. Catherine and St. Marguerite at Poitiers. Doctor Beaupère +asks her how she recognized the saints. She answers that it was by their +way of bowing. Beaupère asks her if they are great chatterboxes. "Go +look on the register," she says. Beaupère asks her if, when she saw St. +Michael, he was naked. She answers: "Do you think our Lord had nothing +to clothe him with?" + +The curious will carefully observe here that Joan had long been directed +with other religious women of the populace by a rogue named Richard,[10] +who performed miracles, and who taught these girls to perform them. One +day he gave communion three times in succession to Joan, in honour of +the Trinity. It was then the custom in matters of importance and in +times of great peril. The knights had three masses said, and +communicated three times when they went to seek fortune or to fight in a +duel. It is what has been observed on the part of the Chevalier Bayard. + +The workers of miracles, Joan's companions, who were submissive to +Richard, were named Pierrone and Catherine. Pierrone affirmed that she +had seen that God appeared to her in human form as a friend to a friend. +God was "clad in a long white robe, etc." + +Up to the present the ridiculous; here now is the horrible. + +One of Joan's judges, doctor of theology and priest, by name Nicholas +_the Bird-Catcher_, comes to confess her in prison. He abuses the +sacrament to the point of hiding behind a piece of serge two priests who +transcribed Joan of Arc's confession. Thus did the judges use sacrilege +in order to be murderers. And an unfortunate idiot, who had had enough +courage to render very great services to the king and the country, was +condemned to be burned by forty-four French priests who immolated her +for the English faction. + +It is sufficiently well-known how someone had the cunning and meanness +to put a man's suit beside her to tempt her to wear this suit again, and +with what absurd barbarism this transgression was claimed as a pretext +for condemning her to the flames, as if in a warrior girl it was a crime +worthy of the fire, to put on breeches instead of a skirt. All this +wrings the heart, and makes common sense shudder. One cannot conceive +how we dare, after the countless horrors of which we have been guilty, +call any nation by the name of barbarian. + +Most of our historians, lovers of the so-called embellishments of +history rather than of truth, say that Joan went fearlessly to the +torture; but as the chronicles of the times bear witness, and as the +historian Villaret admits, she received her sentence with cries and +tears; a weakness pardonable in her sex, and perhaps in ours, and very +compatible with the courage which this girl had displayed amid the +dangers of war; for one can be fearless in battle, and sensitive on the +scaffold. + +I must add that many persons have believed without any examination that +the Maid of Orleans was not burned at Rouen at all, although we have the +official report of her execution. They have been deceived by the account +we still have of an adventuress who took the name of the "Maid," +deceived Joan of Arc's brothers, and under cover of this imposture, +married in Lorraine a nobleman of the house of Armoise. There were two +other rogues who also passed themselves off as the "Maid of Orleans." +All three claimed that Joan was not burned at all, and that another +woman had been substituted for her. Such stories can be admitted only by +those who want to be deceived. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[8] Beuchot says: There was at that time in France an +Inquisitor-General, named Brother Jean or Jacques le Graverend. His +vice-inquisitor or vicar, who took part in Joan's trial, was not called +Brother Martin, but Brother Jean Magistri or the Master. + +[9] This is a translation of the Latin of the Sorbonne, made long after. + +[10] Beuchot says that Berriat Saint-Prix, in his "Jeanne d'Arc," +proves, page 341 _et seq._, that the imputations against Brother Richard +are groundless, and that he could exercise no influence at the trial. + + + + +_KISSING_ + + +I ask pardon of the boys and the girls; but maybe they will not find +here what they will seek. This article is only for scholars and serious +persons for whom it is barely suitable. + +There is but too much question of kissing in the comedies of Molière's +time. Champagne, in the comedy of "La Mère Coquette" by Quinault, asks +kisses of Laurette; she says to him--"You are not content, then; really +it is shameful; I have kissed you twice." Champagne answers her--"What! +you keep account of your kisses?" (Act I. Sc. 1.). + +The valets always used to ask kisses of the soubrettes; people kissed +each other on the stage. Usually it was very dull and very intolerable, +particularly in the case of ugly actors, who were nauseating. + +If the reader wants kisses, let him look for them in the "Pastor Fido"; +there is one entire chorus where nothing but kisses is mentioned; and +the piece is founded solely on a kiss that Mirtillo gave one day to +Amarilli, in a game of blind man's buff, _un bacio molto saporito_. + +Everyone knows the chapter on kisses, in which Jean de la Casa, +Archbishop of Benevento, says that people can kiss each other from head +to foot. He pities the people with big noses who can only approach each +other with difficulty; and he counsels ladies with long noses to have +flat-nosed lovers. + +The kiss was a very ordinary form of salutation throughout ancient +times. Plutarch recalls that the conspirators, before killing Cæsar, +kissed his face, hand and breast. Tacitus says that when Agricola, his +father-in-law, returned from Rome, Domitian received him with a cold +kiss, said nothing to him, and left him confounded in the crowd. The +inferior who could not succeed in greeting his superior by kissing him, +put his mouth to his own hand, and sent him a kiss that the other +returned in the same way if he so wished. + +This sign was used even for worshipping the gods. Job, in his parable +(Chap. xxxi.), which is perhaps the oldest of known books, says that he +has not worshipped the sun and the moon like the other Arabs, that he +has not carried his hand to his mouth as he looked at the stars. + +In our Occident nothing remains of this ancient custom but the puerile +and genteel civility that is still taught to children in some small +towns, of kissing their right hands when someone has given them some +sweets. + +It was a horrible thing to betray with a kiss; it was that that made +Cæsar's assassination still more hateful. We know all about Judas' +kisses; they have become proverbial. + +Joab, one of David's captains, being very jealous of Amasa, another +captain, says to him (2 Sam. xx. 9): "Art thou in health, my brother? +And he took Amasa by the beard with the right hand to kiss him," and +with his other hand drew his sword and "smote him therewith in the fifth +rib, and shed out his bowels on the ground." + +No other kiss is to be found in the other fairly frequent assassinations +which were committed among the Jews, unless it be perhaps the kisses +which Judith gave to the captain Holophernes, before cutting off his +head while he was in bed asleep; but no mention is made of them, and the +thing is merely probable. + +In one of Shakespeare's tragedies called "Othello," this Othello, who is +a black, gives two kisses to his wife before strangling her. That seems +abominable to honourable people; but Shakespeare's partisans say it is +beautifully natural, particularly in a black. + +When Giovanni Galeas Sforza was assassinated in Milan Cathedral, on St. +Stephen's day, the two Medici in the Reparata church; Admiral Coligny, +the Prince of Orange, the Maréchal d'Ancre, the brothers Witt, and so +many others; at least they were not kissed. + +There was among the ancients I know not what of symbolic and sacred +attached to the kiss, since one kissed the statues of the gods and their +beards, when the sculptors had shown them with a beard. Initiates kissed +each other at the mysteries of Ceres, as a sign of concord. + +The early Christians, men and women, kissed each other on the mouth at +their _agapæ_. This word signified "love-feast." They gave each other +the holy kiss, the kiss of peace, the kiss of brother and sister, +agion +philêma+. This custom lasted for more than four centuries, and was +abolished at last on account of its consequences. It was these kisses of +peace, these agapæ of love, these names of "brother" and "sister," that +long drew to the little-known Christians, those imputations of +debauchery with which the priests of Jupiter and the priestesses of +Vesta charged them. You see in Petronius, and in other profane authors, +that the libertines called themselves "brother" and "sister." It was +thought that among the Christians the same names signified the same +infamies. They were innocent accomplices in spreading these accusations +over the Roman empire. + +There were in the beginning seventeen different Christian societies, +just as there were nine among the Jews, including the two kinds of +Samaritans. The societies which flattered themselves at being the most +orthodox accused the others of the most inconceivable obscenities. The +term of "gnostic," which was at first so honourable, signifying +"learned," "enlightened," "pure," became a term of horror and scorn, a +reproach of heresy. Saint Epiphanius, in the third century, claimed that +they used first to tickle each other, the men and the women; that then +they gave each other very immodest kisses, and that they judged the +degree of their faith by the voluptuousness of these kisses; that the +husband said to his wife, in presenting a young initiate to her: "Have +an agape with my brother," and that they had an agape. + +We do not dare repeat here, in the chaste French tongue,[11] what Saint +Epiphanius adds in Greek (Epiphanius, _contra hæres_, lib. I., vol. ii). +We will say merely that perhaps this saint was somewhat imposed upon; +that he allowed himself to be too carried away by zeal, and that all +heretics are not hideous debauchees. + +The sect of Pietists, wishing to imitate the early Christians, to-day +give each other kisses of peace on leaving the assembly, calling each +other "my brother, my sister"; it is what, twenty years ago, a very +pretty and very human Pietist lady avowed to me. The ancient custom was +to kiss on the mouth; the Pietists have carefully preserved it. + +There was no other manner of greeting dames in France, Germany, Italy, +England; it was the right of cardinals to kiss queens on the mouth, and +in Spain even. What is singular is that they had not the same +prerogative in France, where ladies always had more liberty than +anywhere else, but "every country has its ceremonies," and there is no +usage so general that chance and custom have not provided exceptions. It +would have been an incivility, an affront, for an honourable woman, when +she received a lord's first visit, not to have kissed him, despite his +moustaches. "It is a displeasing custom," says Montaigne (Book III., +chap. v.), "and offensive to ladies, to have to lend their lips to +whoever has three serving-men in his suite, disagreeable though he be." +This custom was, nevertheless, the oldest in the world. + +If it is disagreeable for a young and pretty mouth to stick itself out +of courtesy to an old and ugly mouth, there was a great danger between +fresh, red mouths of twenty to twenty-five years old; and that is what +finally brought about the abolition of the ceremony of kissing in the +mysteries and the agapæ. It is what caused women to be confined among +the Orientals, so that they might kiss only their fathers and their +brothers; custom long since introduced into Spain by the Arabs. + +Behold the danger: there is one nerve of the fifth pair which goes from +the mouth to the heart, and thence lower down, with such delicate +industry has nature prepared everything! The little glands of the lips, +their spongy tissue, their velvety paps, the fine skin, ticklish, gives +them an exquisite and voluptuous sensation, which is not without analogy +with a still more hidden and still more sensitive part. Modesty may +suffer from a lengthily savoured kiss between two Pietists of eighteen. + +It is to be remarked that the human species, the turtledoves and the +pigeons alone are acquainted with kisses; thence came among the Latins +the word _columbatìm_, which our language has not been able to render. +There is nothing of which abuse has not been made. The kiss, designed by +nature for the mouth, has often been prostituted to membranes which do +not seem made for this usage. One knows of what the templars were +accused. + +We cannot honestly treat this interesting subject at greater length, +although Montaigne says: "One should speak thereof shamelessly: brazenly +do we utter 'killing,' 'wounding,' 'betraying,' but of that we dare not +speak but with bated breath." + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[11] Or the English--_Translator._ + + + + +_LANGUAGES_ + + +There is no complete language, no language which can express all our +ideas and all our sensations; their shades are too numerous, too +imperceptible. Nobody can make known the precise degree of sensation he +experiences. One is obliged, for example, to designate by the general +names of "love" and "hate" a thousand loves and a thousand hates all +different from each other; it is the same with our pleasures and our +pains. Thus all languages are, like us, imperfect. + +They have all been made successively and by degrees according to our +needs. It is the instinct common to all men which made the first +grammars without perceiving it. The Lapps, the Negroes, as well as the +Greeks, needed to express the past, the present and the future; and they +did it: but as there has never been an assembly of logicians who formed +a language, no language has been able to attain a perfectly regular +plan. + +All words, in all possible languages, are necessarily the images of +sensations. Men have never been able to express anything but what they +felt. Thus everything has become metaphor; everywhere the soul is +enlightened, the heart burns, the mind wanders. Among all peoples the +infinite has been the negation of the finite; immensity the negation of +measure. It is evident that our five senses have produced all languages, +as well as all our ideas. The least imperfect are like the laws: those +in which there is the least that is arbitrary are the best. The most +complete are necessarily those of the peoples who have cultivated the +arts and society. Thus the Hebraic language should be one of the +poorest languages, like the people who used to speak it. How should the +Hebrews have had maritime terms, they who before Solomon had not a boat? +how the terms of philosophy, they who were plunged in such profound +ignorance up to the time when they started to learn something in their +migration to Babylon? The language of the Phoenicians, from which the +Hebrews drew their jargon, should be very superior, because it was the +idiom of an industrious, commercial, rich people, distributed all over +the earth. + +The most ancient known language should be that of the nation most +anciently gathered together as a body of people. It should be, further, +that of the people which has been least subjugated, or which, having +been subjugated, has civilized its conquerors. And in this respect, it +is constant that Chinese and Arabic are the most ancient of all those +that are spoken to-day. + +There is no mother-tongue. All neighbouring nations have borrowed from +each other: but one has given the name of "mother-tongue" to those from +which some known idioms are derived. For example, Latin is the +mother-tongue in respect of Italian, Spanish and French: but it was +itself derived from Tuscan; and Tuscan was derived from Celtic and +Greek. + +The most beautiful of all languages must be that which is at once, the +most complete, the most sonorous, the most varied in its twists and the +most regular in its progress, that which has most compound words, that +which by its prosody best expresses the soul's slow or impetuous +movements, that which most resembles music. + +Greek has all these advantages: it has not the roughness of Latin, in +which so many words end in _um_, _ur_, _us_. It has all the pomp of +Spanish, and all the sweetness of Italian. It has above all the living +languages of the world the expression of music, by long and short +syllables, and by the number and variety of its accents. Thus all +disfigured as it is to-day in Greece, it can still be regarded as the +most beautiful language in the universe. + +The most beautiful language cannot be the most widely distributed, when +the people which speaks it is oppressed, not numerous, without commerce +with other nations, and when these other nations have cultivated their +own languages. Thus Greek should be less diffused than Arabic, and even +Turkish. + +Of all European languages French should be the most general, because it +is the most suited to conversation: it has taken its character from that +of the people which speaks it. + +The French have been, for nearly a hundred and fifty years, the people +which has best known society, which the first discarded all +embarrassment, and the first among whom women were free and even +sovereign, when elsewhere they were only slaves. The always uniform +syntax of this language, which admits no inversions, is a further +facility barely possessed by other tongues; it is more current coin than +others, even though it lacks weight. The prodigious quantity of +agreeably frivolous books which this nation has produced is a further +reason for the favour which its language has obtained among all nations. + +Profound books will not give vogue to a language: they will be +translated; people will learn Newton's philosophy; but they will not +learn English in order to understand it. + +What makes French still more common is the perfection to which the drama +has been carried in this tongue. It is to "Cinna," "Phèdre," the +"Misanthrope" that it owes its vogue, and not to the conquests of Louis +XIV. + +It is not so copious and so flexible as Italian, or so majestic as +Spanish, or so energetic as English; and yet it has had more success +than these three languages from the sole fact that it is more suited to +intercourse, and that there are more agreeable books in it than +elsewhere. It has succeeded like the cooks of France, because it has +more flattered general taste. + +The same spirit which has led the nations to imitate the French in their +furniture, in the arrangement of rooms, in gardens, in dancing, in all +that gives charm, has led them also to speak their language. The great +art of good French writers is precisely that of the women of this +nation, who dress better than the other women of Europe, and who, +without being more beautiful, appear to be so by the art with which they +adorn themselves, by the noble and simple charm they give themselves so +naturally. + +It is by dint of good breeding that this language has managed to make +the traces of its former barbarism disappear. Everything would bear +witness to this barbarism to whosoever should look closely. One would +see that the number _vingt_ comes from _viginti_, and that formerly this +_g_ and this _t_ were pronounced with a roughness characteristic of all +the northern nations; of the month of _Augustus_ has been made the month +of _août_. Not so long ago a German prince thinking that in France one +never pronounced the term _Auguste_ otherwise, called King Auguste of +Poland King Août. All the letters which have been suppressed in +pronunciation, but retained in writing, are our former barbarous +clothes. + +It was when manners were softened that the language also was softened: +before François Ier summoned women to his court, it was as clownish as +we were. It would have been as good to speak old Celtic as the French of +the time of Charles VIII. and Louis XII.: German was not more harsh. + +It has taken centuries to remove this rust. The imperfections which +remain would still be intolerable, were it not for the continual care +one takes to avoid them, as a skilful horseman avoids stones in the +road. Good writers are careful to combat the faulty expressions which +popular ignorance first brings into vogue, and which, adopted by bad +authors, then pass into the gazettes and the pamphlets. _Roastbeef_ +signifies in English _roasted ox_, and our waiters talk to us nowadays +of a "roastbeef of mutton." _Riding-coat_ means _a coat for going on +horseback_; of it people have made _redingote_, and the populace thinks +it an ancient word of the language. It has been necessary to adopt this +expression with the people because it signifies an article of common +use. + +In matters of arts and crafts and necessary things, the common people +subjugated the court, if one dare say so; just as in matters of religion +those who most despise the common run of people are obliged to speak and +to appear to think like them. + +To call things by the names which the common people has imposed on them +is not to speak badly; but one recognizes a people naturally more +ingenious than another by the proper names which it gives to each thing. + +It is only through lack of imagination that a people adapts the same +expression to a hundred different ideas. It is a ridiculous sterility +not to have known how to express otherwise _an arm of the sea_, _a scale +arm_, _an arm of a chair_; there is poverty of thought in saying equally +the _head of a nail_, the _head of an army_. + +Ignorance has introduced another custom into all modern languages. A +thousand terms no longer signify what they should signify. _Idiot_ meant +_solitary_, to-day it means _foolish_; _epiphany_ signified +_appearance_, to-day it is the festival of three kings; _baptize_ is to +dip in water, we say _baptize with the name_ of John or James. + +To these defects in almost all languages are added barbarous +irregularities. Venus is a charming name, _venereal_ is abominable. +Another result of the irregularity of these languages composed at hazard +in uncouth times is the quantity of compound words of which the simple +form does not exist any more. They are children who have lost their +father. We have _architects_ and no _tects_; there are things which are +_ineffable_ and none which are _effable_. One is _intrepid_, one is not +_trepid_. There are _impudent_ fellows, _insolent_ fellows, but neither +_pudent_ fellows nor _solent_ fellows. All languages more or less retain +some of these defects; they are all irregular lands from which the hand +of the adroit artist knows how to derive advantage. + +Other defects which make a nation's character evident always slip into +languages. In France there are fashions in expressions as in ways of +doing the hair. A fashionable invalid or doctor will take it into his +head to say that he has had a _soupçon_ of fever to signify that he has +had a slight attack; soon the whole nation has _soupçons_ of colics, +_soupçons_ of hatred, love, ridicule. Preachers in the pulpit tell you +that you must have at least a _soupçon_ of God's love. After a few +months this fashion gives place to another. + +What does most harm to the nobility of the language is not this passing +fashion with which people are soon disgusted, not the solecisms of +fashionable people into which good authors do not fall, but the +affectation of mediocre authors in speaking of serious things in a +conversational style. Everything conspires to corrupt a language that is +rather widely diffused; authors who spoil the style by affectation; +those who write to foreign countries, and who almost always mingle +foreign expressions with their natural tongue; merchants who introduce +into conversation their business terms. + +All languages being imperfect, it does not follow that one should change +them. One must adhere absolutely to the manner in which the good authors +have spoken them; and when one has a sufficient number of approved +authors, a language is fixed. Thus one can no longer change anything in +Italian, Spanish, English, French, without corrupting them; the reason +is clear: it is that one would soon render unintelligible the books +which provide the instruction and the pleasure of the nations. + + + + +_LAWS_ + + +Sheep live very placidly in community, they are considered very +easy-going, because we do not see the prodigious quantity of animals +they devour. It is even to be believed that they eat them innocently and +without knowing it, like us when we eat a Sassenage cheese. The republic +of the sheep is a faithful representation of the golden age. + +A chicken-run is visibly the most perfect monarchic state. There is no +king comparable to a cock. If he marches proudly in the midst of his +people, it is not out of vanity. If the enemy approaches, he does not +give orders to his subjects to go to kill themselves for him by virtue +of his certain knowledge and plenary power; he goes to battle himself, +ranges his chickens behind him and fights to the death. If he is the +victor, he himself sings the _Te Deum_. In civil life there is no one so +gallant, so honest, so disinterested. He has all the virtues. Has he in +his royal beak a grain of corn, a grub, he gives it to the first lady +among his subjects who presents herself. Solomon in his harem did not +come near a poultry-yard cock. + +If it be true that the bees are governed by a queen to whom all her +subjects make love, that is a still more perfect government. + +The ants are considered to be an excellent democracy. Democracy is above +all the other States, because there everyone is equal, and each +individual works for the good of all. + +The republic of the beavers is still superior to that of the ants, at +least if we judge by their masonry work. + +The monkeys resemble strolling players rather than a civilized people; +and they do not appear to be gathered together under fixed, fundamental +laws, like the preceding species. + +We resemble the monkeys more than any other animal by the gift of +imitation, the frivolity of our ideas, and by our inconstancy which has +never allowed us to have uniform and durable laws. + +When nature formed our species and gave us instincts, self-esteem for +our preservation, benevolence for the preservation of others, love which +is common to all the species, and the inexplicable gift of combining +more ideas than all the animals together; when she had thus given us our +portion, she said to us: "Do as you can." + +There is no good code in any country. The reason for this is evident; +the laws have been made according to the times, the place and the need, +etc. + +When the needs have changed, the laws which have remained, have become +ridiculous. Thus the law which forbade the eating of pig and the +drinking of wine was very reasonable in Arabia, where pig and wine are +injurious; it is absurd at Constantinople. + +The law which gives the whole fee to the eldest son is very good in +times of anarchy and pillage. Then the eldest son is the captain of the +castle which the brigands will attack sooner or later; the younger sons +will be his chief officers, the husbandmen his soldiers. All that is to +be feared is that the younger son may assassinate or poison the Salian +lord his elder brother, in order to become in his turn the master of the +hovel; but these cases are rare, because nature has so combined our +instincts and our passions that we have more horror of assassinating our +elder brother than we have of being envious of his position. But this +law, suitable for the owners of dungeons in Chilperic's time is +detestable when there is question of sharing stocks in a city. + +To the shame of mankind, one knows that the laws of games are the only +ones which everywhere are just, clear, inviolable and executed. Why is +the Indian who gave us the rules of the game of chess willingly obeyed +all over the world, and why are the popes' decretals, for example, +to-day an object of horror and scorn? the reason is that the inventor of +chess combined everything with precision for the satisfaction of the +players, and that the popes, in their decretals, had nothing in view but +their own interest. The Indian wished to exercise men's minds equally, +and give them pleasure; the popes wished to besot men's minds. Also, the +essence of the game of chess has remained the same for five thousand +years, it is common to all the inhabitants of the earth; and the +decretals are known only at Spoletto, Orvieto, Loretto, where the +shallowest lawyer secretly hates and despises them. + +But I delight in thinking that there is a natural law independent of all +human conventions: the fruit of my work must belong to me; I must honour +my father and my mother; I have no right over my fellow's life, and my +fellow has none over mine, etc. But when I think that from Chedorlaomer +to Mentzel,[12] colonel of hussars, everyone loyally kills and pillages +his fellow with a licence in his pocket, I am very afflicted. + +I am told that there are laws among thieves, and also laws of war. I ask +what are these laws of war. I learn that they mean hanging a brave +officer who has held fast in a bad post without cannon against a royal +army; that they mean having a prisoner hanged, if the enemy has hanged +one of yours; that they mean putting to the fire and the sword villages +which have not brought their sustenance on the appointed day, according +to the orders of the gracious sovereign of the district. "Good," say I, +"that is the 'Spirit of the Laws.'" + +It seems to me that most men have received from nature enough common +sense to make laws, but that everyone is not just enough to make good +laws. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[12] Chedorlaomer was king of the Elamites, and contemporary with +Abraham. See Genesis ch. xiv. + +Mentzel was a famous chief of Austrian partisans in the war of 1741. At +the head of five thousand men, he made Munich capitulate on February +13th, 1742. + + + + +_LIBERTY_ + + +Either I am very much mistaken, or Locke the definer has very well +defined liberty as "power." I am mistaken again, or Collins, celebrated +London magistrate, is the only philosopher who has really sifted this +idea, and Clark's answer to him was merely that of a theologian. But of +all that has been written in France on liberty, the following little +dialogue seems to me the most clear. + +A: There is a battery of guns firing in your ears, have you the liberty +to hear them or not to hear them? + +B: Without doubt, I cannot stop myself hearing them. + +A: Do you want this gun to carry off your head and the heads of your +wife and daughter, who are walking with you? + +B: What are you talking about? as long as I am of sound mind, I cannot +want such a thing; it is impossible. + +A: Good; you hear this gun necessarily, and you wish necessarily that +neither you nor your family shall die from a cannon shot while you are +out for a walk; you have not the power either of not hearing or of +wishing to remain here? + +B: Clearly. + +A: You have consequently taken some thirty steps in order to be +sheltered from the gun, you have had the power to walk these few steps +with me? + +B: Again very clearly. + +A: And if you had been a paralytic, you could not have avoided being +exposed to this battery, you would necessarily have heard and received a +gun shot; and you would be dead necessarily? + +B: Nothing is more true. + +A: In what then does your liberty consist, unless it be in the power +that your self has exercised in performing what your will required of +absolute necessity? + +B: You embarrass me; liberty then is nothing but the power of doing what +I want to do? + +A: Think about it, and see if liberty can be understood otherwise. + +B: In that case my hunting dog is as free as I am; he has necessarily +the will to run when he sees a hare, and the power of running if he has +not a pain in his legs. I have then nothing above my dog; you reduce me +to the state of the beasts. + +A: What poor sophistry from the poor sophists who have taught you. +Indeed you are in a bad way to be free like your dog! Do you not eat, +sleep, propagate like him, even almost to the attitude? Do you want the +sense of smell other than through your nose? Why do you want to have +liberty otherwise than your dog has? + +B: But I have a soul which reasons much, and my dog reasons hardly at +all. He has almost only simple ideas, and I have a thousand metaphysical +ideas. + +A: Well, you are a thousand times freer than he is; that is, you have a +thousand times more power of thinking than he has; but you do not think +otherwise than he does. + +B: What! I am not free to wish what I wish? + +A: What do you mean by that? + +B: I mean what everyone means. Doesn't one say every day, wishes are +free? + +A: A proverb is not a reason; explain yourself more clearly. + +B: I mean that I am free to wish as I please. + +A: With your permission, that has no sense; do you not see that it is +ridiculous to say, I wish to wish? You wish necessarily, as a result of +the ideas that have offered themselves to you. Do you wish to be +married; yes or no? + +B: But if I tell you that I want neither the one nor the other? + +A: You will be answering like someone who says: "Some believe Cardinal +Mazarin to be dead, others believe him to be alive, and as for me I +believe neither the one nor the other." + +B: Well, I want to be married. + +A: Ah! that is an answer. Why do you want to be married? + +B: Because I am in love with a beautiful, sweet, well-bred young girl, +who is fairly rich and sings very well, whose parents are very honest +people, and because I flatter myself I am loved by her, and very welcome +to her family. + +A: That is a reason. You see that you cannot wish without reason. I +declare to you that you are free to marry; that is, that you have the +power to sign the contract, have your nuptials, and sleep with your +wife. + +B: How now! I cannot wish without reason? And what will become of that +other proverb: _Sit pro ratione voluntas_; my will is my reason, I wish +because I wish? + +A: That is absurd, my dear fellow; there would be in you an effect +without a cause. + +B: What! When I play at odds and evens, I have a reason for choosing +evens rather than odds? + +A: Yes, undoubtedly. + +B: And what is that reason, if you please? + +A: The reason is that the idea of even rather than the opposite idea +presents itself to your mind. It would be comic that there were cases +where you wished because there was a cause of wishing, and that there +were cases where you wished without any cause. When you wish to be +married, you evidently feel the dominating reason; you do not feel it +when you are playing at odds and evens; and yet there certainly must be +one. + +B: But, I repeat, I am not free then? + +A: Your will is not free, but your actions are. You are free to act, +when you have the power to act. + +B: But all the books I have read on the liberty of indifference.... + +A: What do you mean by the liberty of indifference? + +B: I mean the liberty of spitting on the right or on the left, of +sleeping on my right side or on my left, of taking a walk of four turns +or five. + +A: Really the liberty you would have there would be a comic liberty! God +would have given you a fine gift! It would really be something to boast +of! Of what use to you would be a power which was exercised only on such +futile occasions? But the fact is that it is ridiculous to suppose the +will to wish to spit on the right. Not only is this will to wish absurd, +but it is certain that several trifling circumstances determine you in +these acts that you call indifferent. You are no more free in these acts +than in the others. But, I repeat, you are free at all times, in all +places, as soon as you do what you wish to do. + +B: I suspect you are right. I will think about it.[13] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[13] See "Free-Will." + + + + +_LIBRARY_ + + +A big library has this in it of good, that it dismays those who look at +it. Two hundred thousand volumes discourage a man tempted to print; but +unfortunately he at once says to himself: "People do not read all those +books, and they may read mine." He compares himself to a drop of water +who complains of being lost in the ocean and ignored: a genius had pity +on it; he caused it to be swallowed by an oyster; it became the most +beautiful pearl in the Orient, and was the chief ornament in the throne +of the Great Mogul. Those who are only compilers, imitators, +commentators, splitters of phrases, usurious critics, in short, those on +whom a genius has no pity, will always remain drops of water. + +Our man works in his garret, therefore, in the hope of becoming a pearl. + +It is true that in this immense collection of books there are about a +hundred and ninety-nine thousand which will never be read, from cover to +cover at least; but one may need to consult some of them once in a +lifetime. It is a great advantage for whoever wishes to learn to find at +his hand in the king's palace the volume and page he seeks, without +being kept waiting a moment. It is one of the most noble institutions. +No expense is more magnificent and more useful. + +The public library of the King of France is the finest in the whole +world, less on account of the number and rarity of the volumes than of +the ease and courtesy with which the librarians lend them to all +scholars. This library is incontestably the most precious monument there +is in France. + +This astounding multitude of books should not scare. We have already +remarked that Paris contains about seven hundred thousand men, that one +cannot live with them all, and that one chooses three or four friends. +Thus must one no more complain of the multitude of books than of the +multitude of citizens. + +A man who wishes to learn a little about his existence, and who has no +time to waste, is quite embarrassed. He wishes to read simultaneously +Hobbes, Spinoza, Bayle who wrote against them, Leibnitz who disputed +with Bayle, Clarke who disputed with Leibnitz, Malebranche who differed +from them all, Locke who passed as having confounded Malebranche, +Stillingfleet who thought he had vanquished Locke, Cudworth who thinks +himself above them because he is understood by no one. One would die of +old age before having thumbed the hundredth part of the metaphysical +romances. + +One is very content to have the most ancient books, as one inquires into +the most ancient medals. It is that which makes the honour of a library. +The oldest books in the world are the "Kings" of the Chinese, the +"Shastabad" of the Brahmins, of which Mr. Holwell has brought to our +knowledge admirable passages, what remains of the ancient Zarathustra, +the fragments of Sanchoniathon which Eusebius has preserved for us and +which bears the characteristics of the most remote antiquity. I do not +speak of the "Pentateuch" which is above all one could say of it. + +We still have the prayer of the real Orpheus, which the hierophant +recited in the old Greek mysteries. "Walk in the path of justice, +worship the sole master of the universe. He is one; He is sole by +Himself. All beings owe Him their existence; He acts in them and by +them. He sees everything, and never has been seen by mortal eyes." + +St. Clement of Alexandria, the most learned of the fathers of the +Church, or rather the only scholar in profane antiquity, gives him +almost always the name of Orpheus of Thrace, of Orpheus the Theologian, +to distinguish him from those who wrote later under his name. + +We have no longer anything either of Museus or of Linus. A few passages +from these predecessors of Homer would well be an adornment to a +library. + +Augustus had formed the library called the Palatine. The statue of +Apollo presided over it. The emperor embellished it with busts of the +best authors. One saw in Rome twenty-nine great public libraries. There +are now more than four thousand important libraries in Europe. Choose +which suits you, and try not to be bored. + + + + +_LIMITS OF THE HUMAN MIND_ + + +Someone asked Newton one day why he walked when he wanted to, and how +his arm and his hand moved at his will. He answered manfully that he had +no idea. "But at least," his interlocutor said to him, "you who +understand so well the gravitation of the planets will tell me why they +turn in one direction rather than in another!" And he again confessed +that he had no idea. + +Those who taught that the ocean was salt for fear that it might become +putrid, and that the tides were made to bring our ships into port (The +Abbé Pluche in "The Spectacle of Nature"), were somewhat ashamed when +the reply was made to them that the Mediterranean has ports and no ebb. +Musschenbroeck himself fell into this inadvertence. + +Has anyone ever been able to say precisely how a log is changed on the +hearth into burning carbon, and by what mechanism lime is kindled by +fresh water? + +Is the first principle of the movement of the heart in animals properly +understood? does one know clearly how generation is accomplished? has +one guessed what gives us sensations, ideas, memory? We do not +understand the essence of matter any more than the children who touch +its surface. + +Who will teach us by what mechanism this grain of wheat that we throw +into the ground rises again to produce a pipe laden with an ear of corn, +and how the same soil produces an apple at the top of this tree, and a +chestnut on its neighbour? Many teachers have said--"What do I not +know?" Montaigne used to say--"What do I know?" + +Ruthlessly trenchant fellow, wordy pedagogue, meddlesome theorist, you +seek the limits of your mind. They are at the end of your nose. + + + + +_LOCAL CRIMES_ + + +Traverse the whole earth, you will find that theft, murder, adultery, +calumny are regarded as crimes which society condemns and curbs; but +should what is approved in England, and condemned in Italy, be punished +in Italy as an outrage against the whole of humanity? That is what I +call a local crime. Does not that which is criminal only in the +enclosure of some mountains, or between two rivers, demand of judges +more indulgence than those outrages which are held in horror in all +countries? Should not the judge say to himself: "I should not dare +punish at Ragusa what I punish at Loretto"? Should not this reflection +soften in his heart the hardness that it is only too easy to contract +during the long exercise of his office? + +You know the _kermesses_ in Flanders; in the last century they were +carried to a point of indecency which might revolt eyes unaccustomed to +these spectacles. This is how Christmas was celebrated in some towns. +First there appeared a young man half naked, with wings on his back; he +recited the _Ave Maria_ to a young girl who answered him _fiat_, and the +angel kissed her on the mouth: then a child enclosed in a great +cardboard cock cried, imitating the cock's cry: _Puer natus est nobis._ +A big ox bellowed _ubi_, which it pronounced _oubi_; a sheep bleated +_Bethlehem_. An ass cried _hihanus_, to signify _eamus_; a long +procession, preceded by four fools with baubles and rattles, closed the +performance. There remain to-day traces of these popular devotions, +which among more educated peoples would be taken for profanations. A +bad-tempered Swiss, more drunk maybe than those who played the rôles of +ox and ass, came to words with them in Louvain; blows were given; the +people wanted to hang the Swiss, who escaped with difficulty. + +The same man had a violent quarrel at the Hague in Holland for having +stoutly taken Barneveldt's part against an extravagant Gomarist. He was +put into prison in Amsterdam for having said that priests are the +scourge of humanity and the source of all our misfortunes. "What!" he +said. "If one believes that good works make for salvation, one finds +oneself in a dungeon; if one laughs at a cock and an ass, one risks +being hanged." This adventure, burlesque though it is, makes it quite +clear that one can be reprehensible on one or two points in our +hemisphere, and be absolutely innocent in the rest of the world. + + + + +_LOVE_ + + +There are so many sorts of love that one does not know to whom to +address oneself for a definition of it. The name of "love" is given +boldly to a caprice lasting a few days, a sentiment without esteem, +gallants' affectations, a frigid habit, a romantic fantasy, relish +followed by prompt disrelish: people give this name to a thousand +chimeras. + +If philosophers want to probe to the bottom this barely philosophical +matter, let them meditate on the banquet of Plato, in which Socrates, +honourable lover of Alcibiades and Agathon, converses with them on the +metaphysics of love. + +Lucretius speaks of it more as a natural philosopher: Virgil follows in +the steps of Lucretius; _amor omnibus idem_. + +It is the stuff of nature broidered by nature. Do you want an idea of +love? look at the sparrows in your garden; look at your pigeons; look at +the bull which is brought to the heifer; look at this proud horse which +two of your grooms lead to the quiet mare awaiting him; she draws aside +her tail to welcome him; see how her eyes sparkle; hark to the neighing; +watch the prancing, the curvetting, the ears pricked, the mouth opening +with little convulsions, the swelling nostrils, the flaring breath, the +manes rising and floating, the impetuous movement with which he hurls +himself on the object which nature has destined for him; but be not +jealous of him, and think of the advantages of the human species; in +love they compensate for all those that nature has given to the +animals--strength, beauty, nimbleness, speed. + +There are animals, even, who have no enjoyment in possession. Scale +fish are deprived of this delight: the female throws millions of eggs on +the mud; the male coming across them passes over them, and fertilizes +them with his seed, without troubling about the female to whom they +belong. + +Most animals that pair, taste pleasure only by a single sense, and as +soon as the appetite is satisfied, everything is extinguished. No +animal, apart from you, knows what kissing is; the whole of your body is +sensitive; your lips especially enjoy a voluptuousness that nothing can +tire; and this pleasure belongs to no species but yours: you can give +yourself up to love at any time, and the animals have but a fixed time. +If you reflect on these superiorities, you will say with the Count of +Rochester--"In a country of atheists love would cause the Deity to be +worshipped." + +As men have received the gift of perfecting all that nature accords +them, they have perfected love. Cleanliness, the care of oneself, by +rendering the skin more delicate, increase the pleasure of contact; and +attention to one's health renders the organs of voluptuousness more +sensitive. All the other sentiments that enter into that of love, just +like metals which amalgamate with gold: friendship, regard, come to +help; the faculties of mind and body are still further chains. + +Self-love above all tightens all these bonds. One applauds oneself for +one's choice, and a crowd of illusions form the decoration of the +building of which nature has laid the foundations. + +That is what you have above the animals. But if you taste so many +pleasures unknown to them, how many sorrows too of which the beasts have +no idea! What is frightful for you is that over three-fourths of the +earth nature has poisoned the pleasures of love and the sources of life +with an appalling disease to which man alone is subject, and which +infects in him the organs of generation alone. + +It is in no wise with this plague as with so many other maladies that +are the result of our excesses. It was not debauch that introduced it +into the world. Phryne, Lais, Flora, Messalina and those like them, +were not attacked by it; it was born in some islands where men lived in +innocence, and thence spread itself over the ancient world. + +If ever one could accuse nature of despising her work, of contradicting +her plans, of acting against her designs, it is in this detestable +scourge which has soiled the earth with horror and filth. Is that the +best of all possible worlds? What! if Cæsar, Antony, Octavius never had +this disease, was it not possible for it not to cause the death of +François I.? "No," people say, "things were ordered thus for the best." +I want to believe it; but it is sad for those to whom Rabelais dedicated +his book. + +Erotic philosophers have often debated the question of whether Heloïse +could still really love Abelard when he was a monk and emasculate? One +of these qualities did very great harm to the other. + +But console yourself, Abelard, you were loved; the root of the hewn tree +still retains a remnant of sap; the imagination aids the heart. One can +still be happy at table even though one eats no longer. Is it love? is +it simply a memory? is it friendship? All that is composed of something +indescribable. It is an obscure feeling resembling the fantastic +passions retained by the dead in the Elysian fields. The heroes who, +during their lifetime, shone in the chariot races, drove imaginary +chariots when they were dead. Heloïse lived with you on illusions and +supplements. She kissed you sometimes, and with all the more pleasure +that having taken a vow at the Paraclet monastery to love you no longer, +her kisses thereby became more precious as more guilty. A woman can +barely be seized with a passion for a eunuch: but she can keep her +passion for her lover become eunuch, provided that he remains lovable. + +It is not the same, ladies, for a lover who has grown old in service; +the externals subsist no longer; the wrinkles horrify; the white +eyebrows shock; the lost teeth disgust; the infirmities estrange: all +that one can do is to have the virtue of being nurse, and of tolerating +what one has loved. It is burying a dead man. + + + + +_LUXURY_ + + +People have declaimed against luxury for two thousand years, in verse +and in prose, and people have always delighted in it. + +What has not been said of the early Romans when these brigands ravaged +and pillaged the harvests; when, to enlarge their poor village, they +destroyed the poor villages of the Volscians and the Samnites? They were +disinterested, virtuous men; they had not yet been able to steal either +gold, silver, or precious stones, because there were not any in the +little towns they plundered. Their woods and their marshes produced +neither pheasants nor partridges, and people praise their temperance. + +When gradually they had pillaged everything, stolen everything from the +far end of the Adriatic Gulf to the Euphrates, and when they had enough +intelligence to enjoy the fruit of their plundering; when they +cultivated the arts, when they tasted of all pleasures, and when they +even made the vanquished taste of them, they ceased then, people say, to +be wise and honest men. + +All these declamations reduce themselves to proving that a robber must +never either eat the dinner he has taken, or wear the coat he has +pilfered, or adorn himself with the ring he has filched. He should throw +all that, people say, in the river, so as to live like an honest man. +Say rather that he should not have stolen. Condemn brigands when they +pillage; but do not treat them as senseless when they enjoy. Honestly, +when a large number of English sailors enriched themselves at the taking +of Pondicherry and Havana, were they wrong to enjoy themselves later in +London, as the price of the trouble they had had in the depths of Asia +and America? + +The declaimers want one to bury in the ground the wealth one has amassed +by the fortune of arms, by agriculture, by commerce and by industry. +They cite Lacedæmon; why do they not cite also the republic of San +Marino? What good did Sparto to Greece? Did she ever have Demosthenes, +Sophocles, Apelles, Phidias? The luxury of Athens produced great men in +every sphere; Sparta had a few captains, and in less number even than +other towns. But how fine it is that as small a republic as Lacedæmon +retains its poverty.[14] + +One arrives at death as well by lacking everything as by enjoying what +can make life pleasant. The Canadian savage subsists, and comes to old +age like the English citizen who has an income of fifty thousand +guineas. But who will ever compare the land of the Iroquois to England? + +Let the republic of Ragusa and the canton of Zug make sumptuary laws, +they are right, the poor man must not spend beyond his powers; but I +have read somewhere: + +"Learn that luxury enriches a great state, even if it ruins a +small."[15] + +If by luxury you understand excess, everyone knows that excess in any +form is pernicious, in abstinence as in gluttony, in economy as in +generosity. I do not know how it has happened that in my village where +the land is ungrateful, the taxes heavy, the prohibition against +exporting the corn one has sown intolerable, there is nevertheless +barely a cultivator who has not a good cloth coat, and who is not well +shod and well fed. If this cultivator toiled in his fields in his fine +coat, with white linen, his hair curled and powdered, there, certainly, +would be the greatest luxury, and the most impertinent; but that a +bourgeois of Paris or London should appear at the theatre clad like a +peasant, there would be the most vulgar and ridiculous niggardliness. + +When scissors, which are certainly not of the remotest antiquity, were +invented, what did people not say against the first men who pared their +nails, and who cut part of the hair which fell on their noses? They were +treated, without a doubt, as fops and prodigals, who bought an +instrument of vanity at a high price, in order to spoil the Creator's +handiwork. What an enormous sin to cut short the horn which God made to +grow at the end of our fingers! It was an outrage against the Deity! It +was much worse when shirts and socks were invented. One knows with what +fury the aged counsellors who had never worn them cried out against the +young magistrates who were addicted to this disastrous luxury.[16] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[14] Lacedæmon avoided luxury only by preserving the community or +equality of property; but she did not preserve either the one or the +other save by having the land cultivated by an enslaved people. The +existence of the equality or community of property supposes the +existence of an enslaved people. The Spartans had virtue, just like +highwaymen, inquisitors and all classes of men whom habit has +familiarized with a species of crime, to the point of committing them +without remorse. + +[15] The sumptuary laws are by their nature a violation of the right of +property. If in a little state there is not a great inequality of +fortune, there will be no luxury; if this inequality exists, luxury is +the remedy for it. It is her sumptuary laws that have lost Geneva her +liberty. + +[16] If by luxury one understands everything that is beyond the +necessary, luxury is a natural consequence of the progress of the human +species; and to reason consequently every enemy of luxury should believe +with Rousseau that the state of happiness and virtue for man is that, +not of the savage, but of the orang-outang. One feels that it would be +absurd to regard as an evil the comforts which all men would enjoy: +also, does one not generally give the name of luxury to the +superfluities which only a small number of individuals can enjoy. In +this sense, luxury is a necessary consequence of property, without which +no society can subsist, and of a great inequality between fortunes which +is the consequence, not of the right of property, but of bad laws. +Moralists should address their sermons to the legislators, and not to +individuals, because it is in the order of possible things that a +virtuous and enlightened man may have the power to make reasonable laws, +and it is not in human nature for all the rich men of a country to +renounce through virtue procuring for themselves for money the +enjoyments of pleasure or vanity. + + + + +_GENERAL REFLECTION ON MAN_ + + +It needs twenty years to lead man from the plant state in which he is +within his mother's womb, and the pure animal state which is the lot of +his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of the reason begins +to appear. It has needed thirty centuries to learn a little about his +structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It +takes an instant to kill him. + + + + +_MAN IN THE IRON MASK_ + + +The author of the "Siècle de Louis XIV."[17] is the first to speak of +the man in the iron mask in an authenticated history. The reason is that +he was very well informed about the anecdote which astonishes the +present century, which will astonish posterity, and which is only too +true. He was deceived about the date of the death of this singularly +unfortunate unknown. The date of his burial at St. Paul was March 3rd, +1703, and not 1704. (Note.--According to a certificate reported by +Saint-Foix, the date was November 20th, 1703.) + +He was imprisoned first of all at Pignerol before being so on St. +Margaret's Islands, and later in the Bastille; always under the same +man's guard, Saint-Mars, who saw him die. Father Griffet, Jesuit, has +communicated to the public the diary of the Bastille, which testifies to +the dates. He had this diary without difficulty, for he held the +delicate position of confessor of prisoners imprisoned in the Bastille. + +The man in the iron mask is a riddle to which everyone wishes to guess +the answer. Some say that he was the Duc de Beaufort: but the Duc de +Beaufort was killed by the Turks at the defence of Candia, in 1669; and +the man in the iron mask was at Pignerol, in 1662. Besides, how would +one have arrested the Duc de Beaufort surrounded by his army? how would +one have transferred him to France without anybody knowing anything +about it? and why should he have been put in prison, and why this mask? + +Others have considered the Comte de Vermandois, natural son of Louis +XIV., who died publicly of the small-pox in 1683, with the army, and was +buried in the town of Arras. + +Later it was thought that the Duke of Monmouth, whose head King James +II. had cut off publicly in London in 1685, was the man in the iron +mask. It would have been necessary for him to be resuscitated, and then +for him to change the order of the times, for him to put the year 1662 +in place of 1685; for King James who never pardoned anyone, and who on +that account deserved all his misfortunes, to have pardoned the Duke of +Monmouth, and to have caused the death, in his place, of a man exactly +like him. It would have been necessary to find this double who would +have been so kind as to have his neck cut off in public in order to save +the Duke of Monmouth. It would have been necessary for the whole of +England to have been under a misapprehension; for James then to have +sent his earnest entreaties to Louis XIV. to be so good as to serve as +his constable and gaoler. Then Louis XIV. having done King James this +little favour, would not have failed to have the same consideration for +King William and for Queen Anne, with whom he was at war; and he would +carefully have preserved in these two monarchs' consideration his +dignity of gaoler, with which King James had honoured him. + +All these illusions being dissipated, it remains to be learned who was +this prisoner who was always masked, the age at which he died, and under +what name he was buried. It is clear that if he was not allowed to pass +into the courtyard of the Bastille, if he was not allowed to speak to +his doctor, unless covered by a mask, it was for fear that in his +features might be recognized some too striking resemblance. He might +show his tongue, and never his face. As regards his age, he himself said +to the Bastille apothecary, a few days before his death, that he thought +he was about sixty; and Master Marsolan, surgeon to the Maréchal de +Richelieu, and later to the Duc d'Orléans, regent, son-in-law of this +apothecary, has repeated it to me more than once. + +Finally, why give him an Italian name? he was always called Marchiali! +He who writes this article knows more about it, maybe, than Father +Griffet, and will not say more. + + +PUBLISHERS NOTE[18] + +It is surprising to see so many scholars and so many intelligent and +sagacious writers torment themselves with guessing who can have been +the famous man in the iron mask, without the simplest, most natural, +most probable idea ever presenting itself to them. Once the fact as M. +de Voltaire reports it is admitted, with its circumstances; the +existence of a prisoner of so singular a species, put in the rank of the +best authenticated historical truths; it seems that not only is nothing +easier than to imagine who this prisoner was, but that it is even +difficult for there to be two opinions on the subject. The author of +this article would have communicated his opinion earlier, if he had not +believed that this idea must already have come to many others, and if he +were not persuaded that it was not worth while giving as a discovery +what, according to him, jumps to the eyes of all who read this anecdote. + +However, as for some time past this event has divided men's minds, and +as quite recently the public has again been given a letter in which it +is claimed as proved that this celebrated prisoner was a secretary of +the Duke of Mantua (which cannot be reconciled with the great marks of +respect shown by M. de Saint-Mars to his prisoner), the author has +thought it his duty to tell at last what has been his opinion for many +years. Maybe this conjecture will put an end to all other researches, +unless the secret be revealed by those who can be its guardians, in such +a way as to remove all doubts. + +He will not amuse himself with refuting those who have imagined that +this prisoner could be the Comte de Vermandois, the Duc de Beaufort, or +the Duke of Monmouth. The scholarly and very wise author of this last +opinion has well refuted the others; but he had based his own opinion +essentially merely on the impossibility of finding in Europe some other +prince whose detention it would have been of the very highest importance +should not be known. M. de Saint-Foix is right, if he means to speak +only of princes whose existence was known; but why has nobody yet +thought of supposing that the iron mask might have been an unknown +prince, brought up in secret, and whose existence it was important +should remain unknown? + +The Duke of Monmouth was not for France a prince of such great +importance; and one does not see even what could have engaged this +power, at least after the death of this duke and of James II., to make +so great a secret of his detention, if indeed he was the iron mask. It +is hardly probable either that M. de Louvois and M. de Saint-Mars would +have shown the Duke of Monmouth the profound respect which M. de +Voltaire assures they showed the iron mask. + +The author conjectures, from the way that M. de Voltaire has told the +facts, that this celebrated historian is as persuaded as he is of the +suspicion which he is going, he says, to bring to light; but that M. de +Voltaire, as a Frenchman, did not wish, he adds, to publish point-blank, +particularly as he had said enough for the answer to the riddle not to +be difficult to guess. Here it is, he continues, as I see it. + +"The iron mask was undoubtedly a brother and an elder brother of Louis +XIV., whose mother had that taste for fine linen on which M. de Voltaire +lays stress. It was in reading the Memoirs of that time, which report +this anecdote about the queen, that, recalling this same taste in the +iron mask, I doubted no longer that he was her son: a fact of which all +the other circumstances had persuaded me already. + +"It is known that Louis XIII. had not lived with the queen for a long +time; that the birth of Louis XIV. was due only to a happy chance +skilfully induced; a chance which absolutely obliged the king to sleep +in the same bed with the queen. This is how I think the thing came to +pass. + +"The queen may have thought that it was her fault that no heir was born +to Louis XIII. The birth of the iron mask will have undeceived her. The +cardinal to whom she will have confided the fact will have known, for +more than one reason, how to turn the secret to account; he will have +thought of making use of this event for his own benefit and for the +benefit of the state. Persuaded by this example that the queen could +give the king children, the plan which produced the chance of one bed +for the king and the queen was arranged in consequence. But the queen +and the cardinal, equally impressed with the necessity of hiding from +Louis XIII. the iron mask's existence, will have had him brought up in +secret. This secret will have been a secret for Louis XIV. until +Cardinal Mazarin's death. + +"But this monarch learning then that he had a brother, and an elder +brother whom his mother could not disacknowledge, who further bore maybe +the marked features which betrayed his origin, reflecting that this +child born during marriage could not, without great inconvenience and a +horrible scandal, be declared illegitimate after Louis XIII.'s death, +Louis XIV. will have judged that he could not use a wiser or juster +means than the one he employed in order to assure his own tranquillity +and the peace of the state; means which relieved him of committing a +cruelty which policy would have represented as necessary to a monarch +less conscientious and less magnanimous than Louis XIV. + +"It seems to me, our author continues, that the more one knows of the +history of those times, the more one must be struck by these assembled +circumstances which are in favour of such a supposition." + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[17] Voltaire. + +[18] This note, given as a publisher's note in the 1771 edition, passes +among many men of letters as being by Voltaire himself. He knew of this +edition, and he never contradicted the opinion there advanced on the +subject of the man in the iron mask. + +He was the first to speak of this man. He always combated all the +conjectures made about the mask: he always spoke as though better +informed than others on the subject, and as though unwilling to tell all +he knew. + +There is a letter in circulation from Mlle. de Valois, written to the +Duke, afterward Maréchal de Richelieu, where she boasts of having +learned from the Duc d'Orléans, her father, under strange conditions, +who the man in the iron mask was; this man, she says, was a twin brother +of Louis XIV., born a few hours after him. + +Either this letter, which it was so useless, so indecent, so dangerous +to read, is a supposititious letter, or the regent, in giving his +daughter the reward she had so nobly acquired, thought to weaken the +danger there was in revealing a state secret, by altering the facts, so +as to make of this prince a younger son without right to the throne, +instead of the heir-apparent to the crown. + +But Louis XIV., who had a brother; Louis XIV., whose soul was +magnanimous; Louis XIV., who prided himself even on a scrupulous +probity, whom history has reproached with no crime, who indeed committed +no crime apart from letting himself be too swayed by the counsels of +Louvois and the Jesuits; Louis XIV. would never have detained one of his +brothers in perpetual prison, in order to forestall the evils announced +by an astrologer, in whom he did not believe. He needed more important +motives. Eldest son of Louis XIII., acknowledged by this prince, the +throne belonged to him; but a son born of Anne of Austria, unknown to +her husband, had no rights, and could, nevertheless, try to make himself +acknowledged, rend France with a long civil war, win maybe over Louis +XIII.'s son, by alleging the right of primogeniture, and substitute a +new race for the old race of the Bourbons. These motives, if they did +not entirely justify Louis XIV.'s rigour, serve at least to excuse him; +and the prisoner, too well-informed of his fate, could be grateful to +him for not having listened to more rigorous counsels, counsels which +politics have often employed against those who had pretensions to +thrones occupied by their competitors. + +From his youth Voltaire was connected with the Duc de Richelieu, who was +not discreet: if Mlle. de Valois' letter is authentic, he knew of it; +but, possessed of a just mind, he felt the error, and sought other +information. He was in a position to obtain it; he rectified the truth +altered in the letter, as he rectified so many other errors. + + + + +_MARRIAGE_ + + +I came across a reasoner who said: "Engage your subjects to marry as +soon as possible; let them be exempt from taxes the first year, and let +their tax be distributed over those who at the same age are celibate. + +"The more married men you have, the less crime there will be. Look at +the frightful records of your registers of crime; you will find there a +hundred bachelors hanged or wheeled for one father of a family. + +"Marriage makes man wiser and more virtuous. The father of a family, +near to committing a crime, is often stopped by his wife whose blood, +less feverish than his, makes her gentler, more compassionate, more +fearful of theft and murder, more timorous, more religious. + +"The father of a family does not want to blush before his children. He +fears to leave them a heritage of shame. + +"Marry your soldiers, they will not desert any more. Bound to their +families, they will be bound also to their fatherland. A bachelor +soldier often is nothing but a vagabond, to whom it is indifferent +whether he serves the king of Naples or the king of Morocco." + +The Roman warriors were married; they fought for their wives and +children; and they enslaved the wives and children of other nations. + +A great Italian politician, who further was very learned in oriental +languages, a very rare thing among our politicians, said to me in my +youth: "_Caro figlio_, remember that the Jews have never had but one +good institution, that of having a horror of virginity." If this little +race of superstitious intermediaries had not considered marriage as the +first law of man, if there had been among them convents of nuns, they +were irreparably lost. + + + + +_MASTER_ + + +SECTION I + +"Unfortunate that I am to have been born!" said Ardassan Ougli, young +page of the great Sultan of the Turks. "If it were only the great Sultan +on whom I am dependent; but I am subject to the chief of my oda, to the +capigi pasha; and when I receive my pay, I have to bow down to one of +the tefterdar's clerks who deducts half of it. Before I was seven years +old I had cut off, in spite of myself, in ceremony, the end of my +prepuce, and it made me ill for a fortnight. The dervish who prays for +us is my master; an iman is still more my master; the mollah is still +more my master than the iman. The cadi is another master; the +cadi-leskier is master still more; the mufti is much more master than +all these together. The grand vizier's kaia can with a word have me +thrown into the canal; and the grand vizier, finally, can have my neck +wrung at his pleasure, and stuff the skin of my head, without anybody +even taking notice. + +"How many masters, great God! even if I had as many bodies and as many +souls as I have duties to accomplish, I could not attend to everything. +Oh, Allah! if only you had made me a screech-owl! I should live free in +my hole, and I should eat mice at my ease without masters or servants. +That assuredly is man's real destiny; only since he was perverted has he +masters. No man was made to serve another man continuously. Each would +have charitably aided his fellow, if things were as they should be. The +man with eyes would have led the blind man, the active man would have +acted as crutch to the cripple. This world would have been the paradise +of Mohammed; and it is the hell which is exactly under the pointed +bridge." + +Thus did Ardassan Ougli speak, after receiving the stirrup-leather from +one of his masters. + +After a few years Ardassan Ougli became pasha with three tails. He made +a prodigious fortune, and he firmly believed that all men, excepting the +Great Turk and the Grand Vizier, were born to serve him, and all women +to give him pleasure in accordance with his caprice. + + +SECTION II + +How has it been possible for one man to become another man's master, and +by what species of incomprehensible magic has he been able to become the +master of many other men? On this phenomenon a great number of good +volumes have been written; but I give the preference to an Indian fable, +because it is short, and because the fables have said everything. + +Adimo, the father of all the Indians, had two sons and two daughters by +his wife Procriti. The elder son was a giant, the younger was a little +hunchback, the two daughters were pretty. As soon as the giant was +conscious of his strength, he lay with his two sisters, and made the +little hunchback serve him. Of his two sisters, one was his cook, the +other his gardener. When the giant wanted to sleep, he started by +chaining his little hunchback brother to a tree; and when the brother +escaped, he caught him in four strides, and gave him twenty strokes with +a length of ox sinew. + +The hunchback became submissive and the best subject in the world. The +giant, satisfied to see him fulfilling his duties as subject, permitted +him to lie with one of his sisters for whom he himself had taken a +distaste. The children who came of this marriage were not entirely +hunchbacked; but they had sufficiently misshapen forms. They were +reared in fear of God and the giant. They received an excellent +education; they were taught that their great uncle was giant by divine +right, that he could do with his family as pleased him; that if he had a +pretty niece or great-niece, she was for him alone without a doubt, and +that no one could lie with her until he wanted her no longer. + +The giant having died, his son, who was not by a long way as strong and +as big as he, thought nevertheless that he, like his father, was giant +by divine right. He claimed to make all the men work for him, and to lie +with all the women. The family leagued itself against him, he was beaten +to death, and the others turned themselves into a republic. + +The Siamese, on the contrary, maintain that the family had started by +being republican, and that the giant did not come until after a great +number of years and dissensions; but all the authors of Benares and Siam +agree that mankind lived an infinity of centuries before having the +intelligence to make laws; and they prove it by an unanswerable reason, +which is that even to-day when everyone plumes himself on his +intelligence, no way has been found of making a score of passably good +laws. + +It is indeed still an insoluble question in India whether republics were +established before or after monarchies, whether confusion appeared more +horrible to mankind than despotism. I do not know what happened in order +of time; but in that of nature it must be agreed that all men being born +equal, violence and adroitness made the first masters, the laws made the +last. + + + + +_MEN OF LETTERS_ + + +In our barbarous times, when the Franks, the Germans, the Bretons, the +Lombards, the Spanish Muzarabs, knew not how either to read or write, +there were instituted schools, universities, composed almost entirely of +ecclesiastics who, knowing nothing but their own jargon, taught this +jargon to those who wished to learn it; the academies came only a long +time afterwards; they despised the foolishness of the schools, but did +not always dare to rise against them, because there are foolishnesses +that are respected provided that they concern respectable things. + +The men of letters who have rendered the greatest services to the small +number of thinking beings spread over the world, are the isolated +writers, the true scholars shut in their studies, who have neither +argued on the benches of the universities, nor told half-truths in the +academies; and almost all of them have been persecuted. Our wretched +species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always +throw stones at those who are showing a new road. + +Montesquieu says that the Scythians rent their slaves' eyes, so that +they might be less distracted while they were churning their butter; +that is just how the inquisition functions, and in the land where this +monster reigns almost everybody is blind. In England people have had two +eyes for more than two hundred years; the French are starting to open +one eye; but sometimes there are men in power who do not want the people +to have even this one eye open. + +These poor persons in power are like Doctor Balouard of the Italian +Comedy, who does not want to be served by anyone but the dolt +Harlequin, and who is afraid of having too shrewd a valet. + +Compose some odes in praise of My Lord Superbus Fadus, some madrigals +for his mistress; dedicate a book on geography to his door-keeper, you +will be well-received; enlighten mankind, you will be exterminated. + +Descartes was forced to leave his country, Gassendi was calumniated, +Arnauld dragged out his days in exile; every philosopher is treated as +the prophets were among the Jews. + +Who would believe that in the eighteenth century a philosopher was +dragged before the secular tribunals, and treated as impious by the +tribunals of arguments, for having said that men could not practise the +arts if they had no hands? I do not despair that soon the first person +who is so insolent as to say that men could not think if they had no +heads will be immediately condemned to the galleys; "for," some young +graduate will say to him, "the soul is a pure spirit, the head is only +matter; God can put the soul in the heel, as well as in the brain; +therefore I denounce you as impious." + +The greatest misfortune of a man of letters is not perhaps being the +object of his confrères' jealousy, the victim of the cabal, the despised +of the men of power; but of being judged by fools. Fools go far +sometimes, particularly when bigotry is added to ineptitude, and to +ineptitude the spirit of vengeance. The further great misfortune of a +man of letters is that ordinarily he is unattached. A bourgeois buys +himself a small position, and there he is backed by his colleagues. If +he suffers an injustice, he finds defenders at once. The man of letters +is unsuccoured; he resembles a flying-fish; if he rises a little, the +birds devour him; if he dives, the fish eat him. + +Every public man pays tribute to malignity, but he is paid in honours +and gold. + + + + +_METAMORPHOSIS_, _METEMPSYCHOSIS_ + + +Is it not very natural that all the metamorphoses with which the world +is covered should have made people imagine in the Orient, where +everything has been imagined, that our souls passed from one body to +another? An almost imperceptible speck becomes a worm, this worm becomes +a butterfly; an acorn transforms itself into an oak; an egg into a bird; +water becomes cloud and thunder; wood is changed into fire and ash; +everything in nature appears, in fine, metamorphosed. Soon people +attributed to souls, which were regarded as light figures, what they saw +in more gross bodies. The idea of metempsychosis is perhaps the most +ancient dogma of the known universe, and it still reigns in a large part +of India and China. + + + + +_MILTON, ON THE REPROACH OF PLAGIARISM AGAINST_ + + +Some people have accused Milton of having taken his poem from the +tragedy of "The Banishment of Adam" by Grotius, and from the "Sarcotis" +of the Jesuit Masenius, printed at Cologne in 1654 and in 1661, long +before Milton gave his "Paradise Lost." + +As regards Grotius, it was well enough known in England that Milton had +carried into his epic English poem a few Latin verses from the tragedy +of "Adam." It is in no wise to be a plagiarist to enrich one's language +with the beauties of a foreign language. No one accused Euripides of +plagiarism for having imitated in one of the choruses of "Iphigenia" the +second book of the Iliad; on the contrary, people were very grateful to +him for this imitation, which they regarded as a homage rendered to +Homer on the Athenian stage. + +Virgil never suffered a reproach for having happily imitated, in the +Æneid, a hundred verses by the first of Greek poets. + +Against Milton the accusation was pushed a little further. A Scot, Will +Lauder by name, very attached to the memory of Charles I., whom Milton +had insulted with the most uncouth animosity, thought himself entitled +to dishonour the memory of this monarch's accuser. It was claimed that +Milton was guilty of an infamous imposture in robbing Charles I. of the +sad glory of being the author of the "Eikon Basilika," a book long dear +to the royalists, and which Charles I., it was said, had composed in his +prison to serve as consolation for his deplorable adversity. + +Lauder, therefore, about the year of 1752, wanted to begin by proving +that Milton was only a plagiarist, before proving that he had acted as a +forger against the memory of the most unfortunate of kings; he procured +some editions of the poem of the "Sarcotis." It seemed evident that +Milton had imitated some passages of it, as he had imitated Grotius and +Tasso. + +But Lauder did not rest content there; he unearthed a bad translation in +Latin verse of the "Paradise Lost" of the English poet; and joining +several verses of this translation to those by Masenius, he thought +thereby to render the accusation more grave, and Milton's shame more +complete. It was in that, that he was badly deceived; his fraud was +discovered. He wanted to make Milton pass for a forger, and he was +himself convicted of forging. No one examined Masenius' poem of which at +that time there were only a few copies in Europe. All England, convinced +of the Scot's poor trick, asked no more about it. The accuser, +confounded, was obliged to disavow his manoeuvre, and ask pardon for +it. + +Since then a new edition of Masenius was printed in 1757. The literary +public was surprised at the large number of very beautiful verses with +which the Sarcotis was sprinkled. It is in truth nothing but a long +declamation of the schools on the fall of man: but the exordium, the +invocation, the description of the garden of Eden, the portrait of Eve, +that of the devil, are precisely the same as in Milton. Further, it is +the same subject, the same plot, the same catastrophe. If the devil +wishes, in Milton, to be revenged on man for the harm which God has done +him, he has precisely the same plan in the work of the Jesuit Masenius; +and he manifests it in verses worthy maybe of the century of Augustus. +("Sarcotis," I., 271 _et seq._) + +One finds in both Masenius and Milton little episodes, trifling +digressions which are absolutely alike; both speak of Xerxes who covered +the sea with his ships. Both speak in the same tone of the Tower of +Babel; both give the same description of luxury, of pride, of avarice, +of gluttony. + +What most persuaded the generality of readers of Milton's plagiarism was +the perfect resemblance of the beginning of the two poems. Many +foreigners, after reading the exordium, had no doubt but that the rest +of Milton's poem was taken from Masenius. It is a very great error and +easy to recognize. + +I do not think that the English poet imitated in all more than two +hundred of the Jesuit of Cologne's verses; and I dare say that he +imitated only what was worthy of being imitated. These two hundred +verses are very beautiful; so are Milton's; and the total of Masenius' +poem, despite these two hundred beautiful verses, is not worth anything +at all. + +Molière took two whole scenes from the ridiculous comedy of the "Pédant +Joué" by Cyrano de Bergerac. "These two scenes are good," he said as he +was jesting with his friends. "They belong to me by right: I recover my +property." After that anyone who treated the author of "Tartufe" and "Le +Misanthrope" as a plagiarist would have been very badly received. + +It is certain that generally Milton, in his "Paradise", has in imitating +flown on his own wings; and it must be agreed that if he borrowed so +many traits from Grotius and from the Jesuit of Cologne, they are +blended in the crowd of original things which are his; in England he is +always regarded as a very great poet. + +It is true that he should have avowed having translated two hundred of a +Jesuit's verses; but in his time, at the court of Charles II., people +did not worry themselves with either the Jesuits, or Milton, or +"Paradise Lost", or "Paradise Regained". All those things were either +scoffed at, or unknown. + + + + +_MOHAMMEDANS_ + + +I tell you again, ignorant imbeciles, whom other ignoramuses have made +believe that the Mohammedan religion is voluptuous and sensual, there is +not a word of truth in it; you have been deceived on this point as on so +many others. + +Canons, monks, vicars even, if a law were imposed on you not to eat or +drink from four in the morning till ten at night, during the month of +July, when Lent came at this period; if you were forbidden to play at +any game of chance under pain of damnation; if wine were forbidden you +under the same pain; if you had to make a pilgrimage into the burning +desert; if it were enjoined on you to give at least two and a half per +cent. of your income to the poor; if, accustomed to enjoy possession of +eighteen women, the number were cut down suddenly by fourteen; honestly, +would you dare call that religion sensual? + +The Latin Christians have so many advantages over the Mussulmans, I do +not say in the matter of war, but in the matter of doctrines; the Greek +Christians have so beaten them latterly from 1769 to 1773, that it is +not worth the trouble to indulge in unjust reproaches against Islam. + +Try to retake from the Mohammedans all that they usurped; but it is +easier to calumniate them. + +I hate calumny so much that I do not want even to impute foolishness to +the Turks, although I detest them as tyrants over women and enemies of +the arts. + +I do not know why the historian of the Lower Empire maintains that +Mohammed speaks in his Koran of his journey into the sky: Mohammed does +not say a word about it; we have proved it. + +One must combat ceaselessly. When one has destroyed an error, there is +always someone who resuscitates it. + + + + +_MOUNTAIN_ + + +It is a very old, very universal fable that tells of the mountain which, +having frightened all the countryside by its outcry that it was in +labour, was hissed by all present when it brought into the world a mere +mouse. The people in the pit were not philosophers. Those who hissed +should have admired. It was as fine for the mountain to give birth to a +mouse, as for the mouse to give birth to a mountain. A rock which +produces a rat is a very prodigious thing; and never has the world seen +anything approaching this miracle. All the globes of the universe could +not call a fly into existence. Where the vulgar laugh, the philosopher +admires; and he laughs where the vulgar open their big, stupid eyes in +astonishment. + + + + +_NAKEDNESS_ + + +Why should one lock up a man or a woman who walked stark naked in the +street? and why is no one shocked by absolutely nude statues, by +pictures of the Madonna and of Jesus that may be seen in some churches? + +It is probably that the human species lived long without being clothed. + +People unacquainted with clothing have been found in more than one +island and in the American continent. + +The most civilized hide the organs of generation with leaves, woven +rushes, feathers. + +Whence comes this form of modesty? is it the instinct for lighting +desires by hiding what it gives pleasure to discover? + +Is it really true that among slightly more civilized nations, such as +the Jews and half-Jews, there have been entire sects who would not +worship God save by stripping themselves of all their clothes? such +were, it is said, the Adamites and the Abelians. They gathered quite +naked to sing the praises of God: St. Epiphanius and St. Augustine say +so. It is true that they were not contemporary, and that they were very +far from these people's country. But at all events this madness is +possible: it is not even more extraordinary, more mad than a hundred +other madnesses which have been round the world one after the other. + +We have said elsewhere that to-day even the Mohammedans still have +saints who are madmen, and who go naked like monkeys. It is very +possible that some fanatics thought it was better to present themselves +to the Deity in the state in which He formed them, than in the disguise +invented by man. It is possible that they showed everything out of +piety. There are so few well-made persons of both sexes, that nakedness +might have inspired chastity, or rather disgust, instead of increasing +desire. + +It is said particularly that the Abelians renounced marriage. If there +were any fine lads and pretty lasses among them, they were at least +comparable to St. Adhelme and to blessed Robert d'Arbrisselle, who slept +with the prettiest persons, that their continence might triumph all the +more. + +But I avow that it would have been very comic to see a hundred Helens +and Parises singing anthems, giving each other the kiss of peace, and +making agapæ. + +All of which shows that there is no singularity, no extravagance, no +superstition which has not passed through the heads of mankind. Happy +the day when these superstitions do not trouble society and make of it a +scene of disorder, hatred and fury! It is better without doubt to pray +God stark naked, than to stain His altars and the public places with +human blood. + + + + +_NATURAL LAW_ + + +B: What is natural law? + +A: The instinct which makes us feel justice. + +B: What do you call just and unjust? + +A: What appears such to the entire universe. + +B: The universe is composed of many heads. It is said that in Lacedæmon +were applauded thefts for which people in Athens were condemned to the +mines. + +A: Abuse of words, logomachy, equivocation; theft could not be committed +at Sparta, when everything was common property. What you call "theft" +was the punishment for avarice. + +B: It was forbidden to marry one's sister in Rome. It was allowed among +the Egyptians, the Athenians and even among the Jews, to marry one's +sister on the father's side. It is but with regret that I cite that +wretched little Jewish people, who should assuredly not serve as a rule +for anyone, and who (putting religion aside) was never anything but a +race of ignorant and fanatic brigands. But still, according to their +books, the young Thamar, before being ravished by her brother Amnon, +says to him:--"Nay, my brother, do not thou this folly, but speak unto +the king; for he will not withhold me from thee." (2 Samuel xiii. 12, +13.) + +A: Conventional law all that, arbitrary customs, fashions that pass: the +essential remains always. Show me a country where it was honourable to +rob me of the fruit of my toil, to break one's promise, to lie in order +to hurt, to calumniate, to assassinate, to poison, to be ungrateful +towards a benefactor, to beat one's father and one's mother when they +offer you food. + +B: Have you forgotten that Jean-Jacques, one of the fathers of the +modern Church, has said that "the first man who dared enclose and +cultivate a piece of land" was the enemy "of the human race," that he +should have been exterminated, and that "the fruits of the earth are for +all, and that the land belongs to none"? Have we not already examined +together this lovely proposition which is so useful to society +(Discourse on Inequality, second part)? + +A: Who is this Jean-Jacques? he is certainly not either John the +Baptist, nor John the Evangelist, nor James the Greater, nor James the +Less[19]; it must be some Hunnish wit who wrote that abominable +impertinence or some poor joker _bufo magro_ who wanted to laugh at what +the entire world regards as most serious. For instead of going to spoil +the land of a wise and industrious neighbour, he had only to imitate +him; and every father of a family having followed this example, behold +soon a very pretty village formed. The author of this passage seems to +me a very unsociable animal. + +B: You think then that by outraging and robbing the good man who has +surrounded his garden and chicken-run with a live hedge, he has been +wanting in respect towards the duties of natural law? + +A: Yes, yes, once again, there is a natural law, and it does not consist +either in doing harm to others, or in rejoicing thereat. + +B: I imagine that man likes and does harm only for his own advantage. +But so many people are led to look for their own interest in the +misfortune of others, vengeance is so violent a passion, there are such +disastrous examples of it; ambition, still more fatal, has inundated the +world with so much blood, that when I retrace for myself the horrible +picture, I am tempted to avow that man is a very devil. In vain have I +in my heart the notion of justice and injustice; an Attila courted by +St. Leo, a Phocas flattered by St. Gregory with the most cowardly +baseness, an Alexander VI. sullied with so many incests, so many +murders, so many poisonings, with whom the weak Louis XII., who is +called "the good," makes the most infamous and intimate alliance; a +Cromwell whose protection Cardinal Mazarin seeks, and for whom he drives +out of France the heirs of Charles I., Louis XIV.'s first cousins, etc., +etc.; a hundred like examples set my ideas in disorder, and I know no +longer where I am. + +A: Well, do storms stop our enjoyment of to-day's beautiful sun? Did the +earthquake which destroyed half the city of Lisbon stop your making the +voyage to Madrid very comfortably? If Attila was a brigand and Cardinal +Mazarin a rogue, are there not princes and ministers who are honest +people? Has it not been remarked that in the war of 1701, Louis XIV.'s +council was composed of the most virtuous men? The Duc de Beauvilliers, +the Marquis de Torci, the Maréchal de Villars, Chamillart lastly who +passed for being incapable, but never for dishonest. Does not the idea +of justice subsist always? It is upon that idea that all laws are +founded. The Greeks called them "daughters of heaven," which only means +daughters of nature. Have you no laws in your country? + +B: Yes, some good, some bad. + +A: Where, if it was not in the notions of natural law, did you get the +idea that every man has within himself when his mind is properly made? +You must have obtained it there, or nowhere. + +B: You are right, there is a natural law; but it is still more natural +to many people to forget it. + +A: It is natural also to be one-eyed, hump-backed, lame, deformed, +unhealthy; but one prefers people who are well made and healthy. + +B: Why are there so many one-eyed and deformed minds? + +A: Peace! But go to the article on "Power." + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[19] Jean=John: Jacques=James. + + + + +_NATURE_ + + +DIALOGUE BETWEEN THE PHILOSOPHER AND NATURE + +THE PHILOSOPHER: + +Who are you, Nature? I live in you; for fifty years have I been seeking +you, and I have not found you yet. + +NATURE: + +The ancient Egyptians, who lived, it is said, some twelve hundred years, +made me the same reproach. They called me Isis; they put a great veil on +my head, and they said that nobody could lift it. + +THE PHILOSOPHER: + +That is what makes me address myself to you. I have been able to measure +some of your globes, know their paths, assign the laws of motion; but I +have not been able to learn who you are. + +Are you always active? are you always passive? did your elements arrange +themselves, as water deposits itself on sand, oil on water, air on oil? +have you a mind which directs all your operations, as councils are +inspired as soon as they are assembled, although their members are +sometimes ignoramuses? I pray you tell me the answer to your riddle. + +NATURE: + +I am the great everything. I know no more about it. I am not a +mathematician; and everything is arranged in my world according to +mathematical laws. Guess if you can how it is all done. + +THE PHILOSOPHER: + +Certainly, since your great everything does not know mathematics, and +since all your laws are most profoundly geometrical, there must be an +eternal geometer who directs you, a supreme intelligence who presides +over your operations. + +NATURE: + +You are right; I am water, earth, fire, atmosphere, metal, mineral, +stone, vegetable, animal. I feel indeed that there is in me an +intelligence; you have an intelligence, you do not see it. I do not see +mine either; I feel this invisible power; I cannot know it: why should +you, who are but a small part of me, want to know what I do not know? + +THE PHILOSOPHER: + +We are curious. I want to know how being so crude in your mountains, in +your deserts, in your seas, you appear nevertheless so industrious in +your animals, in your vegetables? + +NATURE: + +My poor child do you want me to tell you the truth? It is that I have +been given a name which does not suit me; my name is "Nature", and I am +all art. + +THE PHILOSOPHER: + +That word upsets all my ideas. What! nature is only art? + +NATURE: + +Yes, without any doubt. Do you not know that there is an infinite art in +those seas and those mountains that you find so crude? do you not know +that all those waters gravitate towards the centre of the earth, and +mount only by immutable laws; that those mountains which crown the +earth are the immense reservoirs of the eternal snows which produce +unceasingly those fountains, lakes and rivers without which my animal +species and my vegetable species would perish? And as for what are +called my animal kingdom, my vegetable kingdom and my mineral kingdom, +you see here only three; learn that I have millions of kingdoms. But if +you consider only the formation of an insect, of an ear of corn, of +gold, of copper, everything will appear as marvels of art. + +THE PHILOSOPHER: + +It is true. The more I think about it, the more I see that you are only +the art of I know not what most potent and industrious great being, who +hides himself and who makes you appear. All reasoners since Thales, and +probably long before him, have played at blind man's buff with you; they +have said: "I have you!" and they had nothing. We all resemble Ixion; he +thought he was kissing Juno, and all that he possessed was a cloud. + +NATURE: + +Since I am all that is, how can a being such as you, so small a part of +myself, seize me? Be content, atoms my children, with seeing a few atoms +that surround you, with drinking a few drops of my milk, with vegetating +for a few moments on my breast, and with dying without having known your +mother and your nurse. + +THE PHILOSOPHER: + +My dear mother, tell me something of why you exist, of why there is +anything. + +NATURE: + +I will answer you as I have answered for so many centuries all those who +have interrogated me about first principles: I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THEM. + +THE PHILOSOPHER: + +Would not non-existence be better than this multitude of existences made +in order to be continually dissolved, this crowd of animals born and +reproduced in order to devour others and to be devoured, this crowd of +sentient beings formed for so many painful sensations, that other crowd +of intelligences which so rarely hear reason. What is the good of all +that, Nature? + +NATURE: + +Oh! go and ask Him who made me. + + + + +_NECESSARY_ + + +OSMIN: + +Do you not say that everything is necessary? + +SELIM: + +If everything were not necessary, it would follow that God had made +useless things. + +OSMIN: + +That is to say that it was necessary to the divine nature to make all +that it has made? + +SELIM: + +I think so, or at least I suspect it; there are people who think +otherwise; I do not understand them; maybe they are right. I am afraid +of disputes on this subject. + +OSMIN: + +It is also of another necessary that I want to talk to you. + +SELIM: + +What! of what is necessary to an honest man that he may live? of the +misfortune to which one is reduced when one lacks the necessary? + +OSMIN: + +No; for what is necessary to one is not always necessary to the other: +it is necessary for an Indian to have rice, for an Englishman to have +meat; a fur is necessary to a Russian, and a gauzy stuff to an African; +this man thinks that twelve coach-horses are necessary to him, that man +limits himself to a pair of shoes, a third walks gaily barefoot: I want +to talk to you of what is necessary to all men. + +SELIM: + +It seems to me that God has given all that is necessary to this species: +eyes to see with, feet for walking, a mouth for eating, an oesophagus +for swallowing, a stomach for digesting, a brain for reasoning, organs +for producing one's fellow creature. + +OSMIN: + +How does it happen then that men are born lacking a part of these +necessary things? + +SELIM: + +It is because the general laws of nature have brought about some +accidents which have made monsters to be born; but generally man is +provided with everything that is necessary to him in order to live in +society. + +OSMIN: + +Are there notions common to all men which serve to make them live in +society? + +SELIM: + +Yes. I have travelled with Paul Lucas, and wherever I went, I saw that +people respected their father and their mother, that people believed +themselves to be obliged to keep their promises, that people pitied +oppressed innocents, that they hated persecution, that they regarded +liberty of thought as a rule of nature, and the enemies of this liberty +as enemies of the human race; those who think differently seemed to me +badly organized creatures, monsters like those who are born without eyes +and hands. + +OSMIN: + +Are these necessary things in all time and in all places? + +SELIM: + +Yes, if they were not they would not be necessary to the human species. + +OSMIN: + +So a belief which is new is not necessary to this species. Men could +very well live in society and accomplish their duty to God, before +believing that Mahomet had frequent interviews with the angel Gabriel. + +SELIM: + +Nothing is clearer; it would be ridiculous to think that man could not +accomplish his duty to God before Mahomet came into the world; it was +not at all necessary for the human species to believe in the Alcoran: +the world went along before Mahomet just as it goes along to-day. If +Mahometanism had been necessary to the world, it would have existed in +all places; God who has given us all two eyes to see the sun, would have +given us all an intelligence to see the truth of the Mussulman religion. +This sect is therefore only like the positive laws that change according +to time and place, like the fashions, like the opinions of the natural +philosophers which follow one after the other. + +The Mussulman sect could not be essentially necessary to mankind. + +OSMIN: + +But since it exists, God has permitted it? + +SELIM: + +Yes, as he permits the world to be filled with foolishness, error and +calamity; that is not to say that men are all essentially made to be +fools and miscreants. He permits that some men be eaten by snakes; but +one cannot say--"God made man to be eaten by snakes." + +OSMIN: + +What do you mean when you say "God permits"? can nothing happen without +His order? permit, will and do, are they not the same thing for Him? + +SELIM: + +He permits crime, but He does not commit it. + +OSMIN: + +Committing a crime is acting against divine justice, it is disobeying +God. Well, God cannot disobey Himself, He cannot commit crime; but He +has made man in such a way that man may commit many crimes: where does +that come from? + +SELIM: + +There are people who know, but I do not; all that I know is that the +Alcoran is ridiculous, although from time to time it has some tolerably +good things; certainly the Alcoran was not at all necessary to man; I +stick by that: I see clearly what is false, and I know very little that +is true. + +OSMIN: + +I thought you would instruct me, and you teach me nothing. + +SELIM: + +Is it not a great deal to recognize people who deceive you, and the +gross and dangerous errors which they retail to you? + +OSMIN: + +I should have ground for complaint against a doctor who showed me all +the harmful plants, and who did not show me one salutary plant. + +SELIM: + +I am not a doctor, and you are not ill; but it seems to me I should be +giving you a very good prescription if I said to you: "Put not your +trust in all the inventions of charlatans, worship God, be an honest +man, and believe that two and two make four." + + + + +_NEW NOVELTIES_ + + +It seems that the first words of Ovid's "Metamorphoses," _In nova fert +animus_, are the motto of the human race. Nobody is touched by the +admirable spectacle of the sun which rises, or rather seems to rise, +every day; everybody runs to see the smallest little meteor which +appears for an instant in that accumulation of vapours, called the sky, +that surround the earth. + +An itinerant bookseller does not burden himself with a Virgil, with a +Horace, but with a new book, even though it be detestable. He draws you +aside and says to you: "Sir, do you want some books from Holland?" + +From the beginning of the world women have complained of the fickleness +that is imputed to them in favour of the first new object which presents +itself, and whose novelty is often its only merit. Many ladies (it must +be confessed, despite the infinite respect we have for them) have +treated men as they complain they have themselves been treated; and the +story of Gioconda is much older than Ariosto. + +Perhaps this universal taste for novelty is one of nature's favours. +People cry to us: "Be content with what you have, desire nothing that is +beyond your estate, restrain your curiosity, tame your intellectual +disquiet." These are very good maxims; but if we had always followed +them, we should still be eating acorns, we should be sleeping in the +open air, and we should not have had Corneille, Racine, Molière, +Poussin, Lebrun, Lemoine or Pigalle. + + + + +_PHILOSOPHER_ + + +Philosopher, _lover of wisdom_, that is to say, _of truth_. All +philosophers have had this dual character; there is not one in antiquity +who has not given mankind examples of virtue and lessons in moral +truths. They have all contrived to be deceived about natural philosophy; +but natural philosophy is so little necessary for the conduct of life, +that the philosophers had no need of it. It has taken centuries to learn +a part of nature's laws. One day was sufficient for a wise man to learn +the duties of man. + +The philosopher is not enthusiastic; he does not set himself up as a +prophet; he does not say that he is inspired by the gods. Thus I shall +not put in the rank of philosophers either the ancient Zarathustra, or +Hermes, or the ancient Orpheus, or any of those legislators of whom the +nations of Chaldea, Persia, Syria, Egypt and Greece boasted. Those who +styled themselves children of the gods were the fathers of imposture; +and if they used lies for the teaching of truths, they were unworthy of +teaching them; they were not philosophers; they were at best very +prudent liars. + +By what fatality, shameful maybe for the Western peoples, is it +necessary to go to the far Orient to find a wise man who is simple, +unostentatious, free from imposture, who taught men to live happily six +hundred years before our vulgar era, at a time when the whole of the +North was ignorant of the usage of letters, and when the Greeks were +barely beginning to distinguish themselves by their wisdom? + +This wise man is Confucius, who being legislator never wanted to +deceive men. What more beautiful rule of conduct has ever been given +since him in the whole world? + +"Rule a state as you rule a family; one can only govern one's family +well by setting the example. + +"Virtue should be common to both husbandman and monarch. + +"Apply thyself to the trouble of preventing crimes in order to lessen +the trouble of punishing them. + +"Under the good kings Yao and Xu the Chinese were good; under the bad +kings Kie and Chu they were wicked. + +"Do to others as to thyself. + +"Love all men; but cherish honest people. Forget injuries, and never +kindnesses. + +"I have seen men incapable of study; I have never seen them incapable of +virtue." + +Let us admit that there is no legislator who has proclaimed truths more +useful to the human race. + +A host of Greek philosophers have since taught an equally pure moral +philosophy. If they had limited themselves to their empty systems of +natural philosophy, their names would be pronounced to-day in mockery +only. If they are still respected, it is because they were just and that +they taught men to be so. + +One cannot read certain passages of Plato, and notably the admirable +exordium of the laws of Zaleucus, without feeling in one's heart the +love of honourable and generous actions. The Romans have their Cicero, +who alone is worth perhaps all the philosophers of Greece. After him +come men still more worthy of respect, but whom one almost despairs of +imitating; Epictetus in bondage, the Antonines and the Julians on the +throne. + +Which is the citizen among us who would deprive himself, like Julian, +Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius, of all the delicacies of our flabby and +effeminate lives? who would sleep as they did on the ground? who would +impose on himself their frugality? who, as they did, would march +barefoot and bareheaded at the head of the armies, exposed now to the +heat of the sun, now to the hoar-frost? who would command all their +passions as they did? There are pious men among us; but where are the +wise men? where are the resolute, just and tolerant souls? + +There have been philosophers of the study in France; and all, except +Montaigne, have been persecuted. It is, I think, the last degree of the +malignity of our nature, to wish to oppress these very philosophers who +would correct it. + +I quite understand that the fanatics of one sect slaughter the +enthusiasts of another sect, that the Franciscans hate the Dominicans, +and that a bad artist intrigues to ruin one who surpasses him; but that +the wise Charron should have been threatened with the loss of his life, +that the learned and generous Ramus should have been assassinated, that +Descartes should have been forced to flee to Holland to escape the fury +of the ignorant, that Gassendi should have been obliged to withdraw +several times to Digne, far from the calumnies of Paris; these things +are a nation's eternal shame. + + + + +_POWER_, _OMNIPOTENCE_ + + +I suppose that the man who reads this article is convinced that this +world is formed with intelligence, and that a little astronomy and +anatomy suffices to make this universal and supreme intelligence +admired. + +Can he know by himself if this intelligence is omnipotent, that is to +say, infinitely powerful? Has he the least notion of the infinite, to +understand what is an infinite power? + +The celebrated historian philosopher, David Hume, says in "Particular +Providence": "A weight of ten ounces is lifted in a balance by another +weight; therefore this other weight is of more than ten ounces; but one +can adduce no reason why it should weigh a hundred ounces." + +One can say likewise: You recognize a supreme intelligence strong enough +to form you, to preserve you for a limited time, to reward you, to +punish you. Do you know enough of this power to demonstrate that it can +do still more? + +How can you prove by your reason that this being can do more than he has +done? + +The life of all animals is short. Could he make it longer? + +All animals are the prey of each other: everything is born to be +devoured. Could he form without destroying? + +You do not know what nature is. You cannot therefore know if nature has +not forced him to do only the things he has done. + +This globe is only a vast field of destruction and carnage. Either the +great Being has been able to make of it an eternal abode of delight for +all sentient beings, or He has not been able. If He has been able and if +He has not done so, fear to regard him as malevolent; but if He has not +been able, fear not to look on Him as a very great power, circumscribed +by nature in His limits. + +Whether or no His power is infinite does not regard you. It is a matter +of indifference to a subject whether his master possesses five hundred +leagues of land or five thousand; he is subject neither more nor less. + +Which would be the greater insult to this ineffable Being, to say: "He +has made miserable men without being able to dispense with them, or He +has made them for His pleasure?" + +Many sects represent Him as cruel; others, for fear of admitting a +wicked God, have the audacity to deny His existence. Is it not better to +say that probably the necessity of His nature and the necessity of +things have determined everything? + +The world is the theatre of moral ill and physical ill; one is only too +aware of it: and the "All is good" of Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke and Pope, +is only a witty paradox, a poor joke. + +The two principles of Zarathustra and Manes, so carefully scrutinized by +Bayle, are a still poorer joke. They are, as has been observed already, +Molière's two doctors, one of whom says to the other: "Grant me the +emetic, and I will grant you the bleeding." Manichæism is absurd; and +that is why it has had so many supporters. + +I admit that I have not been enlightened by all that Bayle says about +the Manichæans and the Paulicians. That is controversy; I would have +preferred pure philosophy. Why discuss our mysteries beside +Zarathustra's? As soon as you dare to treat of our mysteries, which need +only faith and no reasoning, you open precipices for yourself. + +The trash in our scholastic theology has nothing to do with the trash in +Zarathustra's reveries. + +Why debate original sin with Zarathustra? There was never any question +of it save in St. Augustine's time. Neither Zarathustra nor any +legislator of antiquity had ever heard speak of it. + +If you dispute with Zarathustra, put under lock and key the old and the +new Testaments which he did not know, and which one must revere without +desiring to explain them. + +What then should I have said to Zarathustra? My reason cannot admit two +gods who fight, that is good only in a poem where Minerva quarrels with +Mars. My feeble reason is much more content with a single great Being, +whose essence was to make, and who has made all that nature has +permitted Him, than it is satisfied with two great Beings, one of whom +spoils the works of the other. Your bad principle Ahriman, has not been +able to upset a single one of the astronomical and physical laws of the +good principle Ormuzd; everything progresses in the heavens with the +greatest regularity. Why should the wicked Ahriman have had power over +this little globe of the world? + +If I had been Ahriman, I should have attacked Ormuzd in his fine grand +provinces of so many suns and stars. I should not have limited myself to +making war on him in a little village. + +There is much evil in this village: but whence have you the knowledge +that this evil is not inevitable? + +You are forced to admit an intelligence diffused over the universe; but +(1) do you know, for instance, if this power reaches right to foreseeing +the future? You have asserted it a thousand times; but you have never +been able either to prove it, or to understand it. You cannot know how +any being whatever sees what is not. Well, the future is not; therefore +no being can see it. You are reduced to saying that He foresees it; but +foreseeing is conjecturing. This is the opinion of the Socinians. + +Well, a God who, according to you, conjectures, can be mistaken. In your +system He is really mistaken; for if He had foreseen that His enemy +would poison all His works here below, He would not have produced them; +He would not have prepared for Himself the shame of being continually +vanquished. + +(2) Do I not do Him much more honour by saying that He has made +everything by the necessity of His nature, than you do Him by raising an +enemy who disfigures, who soils, who destroys all His works here below? + +(3) It is not to have an unworthy idea of God to say that, having formed +thousands of millions of worlds where death and evil do not dwell, it +was necessary that evil and death should dwell in this world. + +(4) It is not to disparage God to say that He could not form man without +giving him self-esteem; that this self-esteem could not lead him without +misguiding him almost always; that his passions are necessary, but that +they are disastrous; that propagation cannot be executed without desire; +that desire cannot animate man without quarrels; that these quarrels +necessarily bring wars in their train, etc. + +(5) When he sees part of the combinations of the animal, vegetable and +mineral kingdoms, and this globe pierced everywhere like a sieve, from +which escape in crowds so many exhalations, what philosopher will be +bold enough, what scholastic foolish enough to see clearly that nature +could stop the effects of volcanoes, the inclemencies of the atmosphere, +the violence of the winds, the plagues, and all the destructive +scourges? + +(6) One must be very powerful, very strong, very industrious, to have +formed lions which devour bulls, and to have produced men who invent +arms to kill at one blow, not only bulls and lions, but even each other. +One must be very powerful to have caused to be born spiders which spin +webs to catch flies; but that is not to be omnipotent, infinitely +powerful. + +(7) If the great Being had been infinitely powerful, there is no reason +why He should not have made sentient animals infinitely happy; He has +not done so, therefore He was not able. + +(8) All the sects of the philosophers have stranded on the reef of moral +and physical ill. It only remains to avow that God having acted for the +best has not been able to act better. + +(9) This necessity settles all the difficulties and finishes all the +disputes. We have not the impudence to say--"All is good." We say--"All +is the least bad that is possible." + +(10) Why does a child often die in its mother's womb? Why is another who +has had the misfortune to be born, reserved for torments as long as his +life, terminated by a frightful death? + +Why has the source of life been poisoned all over the world since the +discovery of America? why since the seventh century of our era does +smallpox carry off the eighth part of the human race? why since all time +have bladders been subject to being stone quarries? why the plague, war, +famine, the inquisition? Turn in every direction, you will find no other +solution than that everything has been necessary. + +I speak here to philosophers only and not to theologians. We know well +that faith is the thread in the labyrinth. We know that the fall of Adam +and Eve, original sin, the immense power given to the devil, the +predilection accorded by the great Being to the Jewish people, and the +baptism substituted for the amputation of the prepuce, are the answers +which explain everything. We have argued only against Zarathustra and +not against the university of Conimbre or Coïmbre, to which we submit in +our articles. + + + + +_PRAYERS_ + + +We do not know any religion without prayers, even the Jews had some, +although there was not among them any public form, until the time when +they sang canticles in their synagogues, which happened very late. + +All men, in their desires and their fears, invoked the aid of a deity. +Some philosophers, more respectful to the Supreme Being, and less +condescending to human frailty, for all prayer desired only resignation. +It is indeed what seems proper as between creature and creator. But +philosophy is not made to govern the world; she rises above the common +herd; she speaks a language that the crowd cannot understand. It would +be suggesting to fishwives that they should study conic sections. + +Even among the philosophers, I do not believe that anyone apart from +Maximus of Tyre has treated of this matter; this is the substance of +Maximus' ideas. + +The Eternal has His intentions from all eternity. If prayer accords with +His immutable wishes, it is quite useless to ask of Him what He has +resolved to do. If one prays Him to do the contrary of what He has +resolved, it is praying Him to be weak, frivolous, inconstant; it is +believing that He is thus, it is to mock Him. Either you ask Him a just +thing; in this case He must do it, and the thing will be done without +your praying Him for it; entreating Him is even to distrust Him: or the +thing is unjust, and then you outrage Him. You are worthy or unworthy of +the grace you implore: if worthy, He knows it better than you; if +unworthy, you commit a crime the more in asking for what you do not +deserve. + +In a word, we pray to God only because we have made Him in our own +image. We treat Him like a pasha, like a sultan whom one may provoke and +appease. + +In short, all nations pray to God: wise men resign themselves and obey +Him. + +Let us pray with the people, and resign ourselves with the wise men. + + + + +_PRÉCIS OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY_ + + +I have spent nearly forty years of my pilgrimage in two or three corners +of this world seeking the philosopher's stone that is called Truth. I +have consulted all the adepts of antiquity, Epicurus and Augustine, +Plato and Malebranche, and I have remained in my poverty. Maybe in all +these philosophers' crucibles there are one or two ounces of gold; but +all the rest is residue, dull mud, from which nothing can be born. + +It seems to me that the Greeks our masters wrote much more to show their +intelligence than that they used their intelligence in order to learn. I +do not see a single author of antiquity who had a coherent system, a +clear, methodical system progressing from consequence to consequence. + +When I wanted to compare and combine the systems of Plato, of the +preceptor of Alexander, of Pythagoras and of the Orientals, here, more +or less, is what I was able to gather: + +Chance is a word empty of sense; nothing can exist without a cause. The +world is arranged according to mathematical laws; it is therefore +arranged by an intelligence. + +It is not an intelligent being such as I am, who directed the formation +of this world, for I cannot form a mite; therefore this world is the +work of a prodigiously superior intelligence. + +Does this being, who possesses intelligence and power in so high a +degree, exist necessarily? It must be so, for either the being received +existence from another, or from its own nature. If the being received +existence from another, which is very difficult to imagine, I must have +recourse to this other, and this other will be the prime author. To +whichever side I turn I have to admit a prime author, potent and +intelligent, who is such necessarily by his own nature. + +Did this prime author produce things out of nothing? that is not +imaginable; to create out of nothing is to change nothing into +something. I must not admit such a production unless I find invincible +reasons which force me to admit what my intelligence can never +comprehend. + +All that exists appears to exist necessarily, since it exists. For if +to-day there is a reason for the existence of things, there was one +yesterday, there was one in all time; and this cause must always have +had its effect, without which it would have been during eternity a +useless cause. + +But how shall things have always existed, being visibly under the hand +of the prime author? This power therefore must always have acted; in the +same way, nearly, that there is no sun without light, so there is no +movement without a being that passes from one point of space to another +point. + +There is therefore a potent and intelligent being who has always acted; +and if this being had never acted, of what use would his existence have +been to him? + +All things are therefore eternal emanations of this prime author. + +But how imagine that stone and mud are emanations of the eternal Being, +potent and intelligent? + +Of two things one, either the matter of this stone and this mud exist +necessarily by themselves, or they exist necessarily through this prime +author; there is no middle course. + +Thus, therefore, there are only two choices to make, admit either matter +eternal by itself, or matter issuing eternally from the potent, +intelligent eternal Being. + +But, either subsisting by its own nature, or emanated from the producing +Being, it exists from all eternity, because it exists, and there is no +reason why it should not have existed before. + +If matter is eternally necessary, it is therefore impossible, it is +therefore contradictory that it does not exist; but what man can affirm +that it is impossible, that it is contradictory that this pebble and +this fly have not existence? One is, nevertheless, forced to suppress +this difficulty which astonishes the imagination more than it +contradicts the principles of reasoning. + +In fact, as soon as you have imagined that everything has emanated from +the supreme and intelligent Being, that nothing has emanated from the +Being without reason, that this Being existing always, must always have +acted, that consequently all things must have eternally issued from the +womb of His existence, you should no more refuse to believe in the +matter of which this pebble and this fly, an eternal production, are +formed, than you refuse to imagine light as an eternal emanation from +the omnipotent Being. + +Since I am a being with extension and thought, my extension and my +thought are therefore necessary productions of this Being. It is evident +to me that I cannot give myself either extension or thought. I have +therefore received both from this necessary Being. + +Can He give me what He has not? I have intelligence and I am in space; +therefore He is intelligent, and He is in space. + +To say that this eternal Being, this omnipotent God, has from all time +necessarily filled the universe with His productions, is not to deprive +Him of His liberty; on the contrary, for liberty is only the power of +acting. God has always acted to the full; therefore God has always made +use of the fullness of His liberty. + +The liberty that is called _liberty of indifference_ is a phrase without +idea, an absurdity; for it would be determination without reason; it +would be an effect without a cause. Therefore, God cannot have this +so-called liberty which is a contradiction in terms. He has therefore +always acted through this same necessity which makes His existence. + +It is therefore impossible for the world to be without God, it is +impossible for God to be without the world. + +This world is filled with beings who succeed each other, therefore God +has always produced beings who succeed each other. + +These preliminary assertions are the basis of the ancient Oriental +philosophy and of that of the Greeks. One must except Democritus and +Epicurus, whose corpuscular philosophy combated these dogmas. But let us +remark that the Epicureans relied on an entirely erroneous natural +philosophy, and that the metaphysical system of all the other +philosophers holds good with all the systems of natural philosophy. The +whole of nature, excepting the vacuum, contradicts Epicurus; and no +phenomenon contradicts the philosophy which I have just explained. Well, +is not a philosophy which is in accord with all that passes in nature, +and which contents the most careful minds, superior to all other +non-revealed systems? + +After the assertions of the ancient philosophers, which I have +reconciled as far as has been possible for me, what is left to us? a +chaos of doubts and chimeras. I do not think that there has ever been a +philosopher with a system who did not at the end of his life avow that +he had wasted his time. It must be admitted that the inventors of the +mechanical arts have been much more useful to mankind than the inventors +of syllogisms: the man who invented the shuttle surpasses with a +vengeance the man who imagined innate ideas. + + + + +_PREJUDICES_ + + +Prejudice is an opinion without judgment. Thus all over the world do +people inspire children with all the opinions they desire, before the +children can judge. + +There are some universal, necessary prejudices, which even make virtue. +In all countries children are taught to recognize a rewarding and +revenging God; to respect and love their father and their mother; to +look on theft as a crime, selfish lying as a vice before they can guess +what is a vice and what a virtue. + +There are then some very good prejudices; they are those which are +ratified by judgment when one reasons. + +Sentiment is not a simple prejudice; it is something much stronger. A +mother does not love her son because she has been told she must love +him; she cherishes him happily in spite of herself. It is not through +prejudice that you run to the help of an unknown child about to fall +into a precipice, or be eaten by a beast. + +But it is through prejudice that you will respect a man clad in certain +clothes, walking gravely, speaking likewise. Your parents have told you +that you should bow before this man; you respect him before knowing +whether he merits your respect; you grow in years and in knowledge; you +perceive that this man is a charlatan steeped in arrogance, +self-interest and artifice; you despise what you revered, and the +prejudice cedes to judgment. Through prejudice you have believed the +fables with which your childhood was cradled; you have been told that +the Titans made war on the gods, and Venus was amorous of Adonis; when +you are twelve you accept these fables as truths; when you are twenty +you look on them as ingenious allegories. + +Let us examine briefly the different sorts of prejudices, so as to set +our affairs in order. We shall be perhaps like those who, at the time of +Law's system, perceived that they had calculated imaginary riches. + + +PREJUDICES OF THE SENSES + +Is it not strange that our eyes always deceive us, even when we have +very good sight, and that on the contrary our ears do not deceive us? +Let your well-informed ear hear "You are beautiful, I love you"; it is +quite certain that someone has not said "I hate you, you are ugly": but +you see a smooth mirror; it is demonstrated that you are mistaken, it +has a very uneven surface. You see the sun as about two feet in +diameter; it is demonstrated that it is a million times bigger than the +earth. + +It seems that God has put truth in your ears, and error in your eyes; +but study optics, and you will see that God has not deceived you, and +that it is impossible for objects to appear to you otherwise than you +see them in the present state of things. + + +PHYSICAL PREJUDICES + +The sun rises, the moon also, the earth is motionless: these are natural +physical prejudices. But that lobsters are good for the blood, because +when cooked they are red; that eels cure paralysis because they wriggle; +that the moon affects our maladies because one day someone observed that +a sick man had an increase of fever during the waning of the moon; these +ideas and a thousand others are the errors of ancient charlatans who +judged without reasoning, and who, being deceived, deceived others. + + +HISTORICAL PREJUDICES + +Most historical stories have been believed without examination, and this +belief is a prejudice. Fabius Pictor relates that many centuries before +him, a vestal of the town of Alba, going to draw water in her pitcher, +was ravished, that she gave birth to Romulus and Remus, that they were +fed by a she-wolf, etc. The Roman people believed this fable; they did +not examine whether at that time there were vestals in Latium, whether +it were probable that a king's daughter would leave her convent with her +pitcher, whether it were likely that a she-wolf would suckle two +children instead of eating them; the prejudice established itself. + +A monk writes that Clovis, being in great danger at the battle of +Tolbiac, made a vow to turn Christian if he escaped; but is it natural +to address oneself to a foreign god on such an occasion? is it not then +that the religion in which one was born acts most potently? Which is the +Christian who, in a battle against the Turks, will not address himself +to the Holy Virgin rather than to Mohammed? It is added that a pigeon +brought the holy phial in its beak to anoint Clovis, and that an angel +brought the oriflamme to lead him; prejudice believed all the little +stories of this kind. Those who understand human nature know well that +Clovis the usurper and Rolon (or Rol) the usurper turned Christian in +order to govern the Christians more surely, just as the Turkish usurpers +turned Mussulman in order to govern the Mussulmans more surely. + + +RELIGIOUS PREJUDICES + +If your nurse has told you that Ceres rules over the crops, or that +Vistnou and Xaca made themselves men several times, or that Sammonocodom +came to cut down a forest, or that Odin awaits you in his hall near +Jutland, or that Mohammed or somebody else made a journey into the sky; +if lastly your tutor comes to drive into your brain what your nurse has +imprinted on it you keep it for life. If your judgment wishes to rise +against these prejudices, your neighbours and, above all, your +neighbours' wives cry out "Impious reprobate," and dismay you; your +dervish, fearing to see his income diminish, accuses you to the cadi, +and this cadi has you impaled if he can, because he likes ruling over +fools, and thinks that fools obey better than others: and that will last +until your neighbours and the dervish and the cadi begin to understand +that foolishness is good for nothing, and that persecution is +abominable. + + + + +_RARE_ + + +Rare in natural philosophy is the opposite of dense. In moral +philosophy, it is the opposite of common. + +This last variety of rare is what excites admiration. One never admires +what is common, one enjoys it. + +An eccentric thinks himself above the rest of wretched mortals when he +has in his study a rare medal that is good for nothing, a rare book that +nobody has the courage to read, an old engraving by Albrecht Durer, +badly designed and badly printed: he triumphs if he has in his garden a +stunted tree from America. This eccentric has no taste; he has only +vanity. He has heard say that the beautiful is rare; but he should know +that all that is rare is not beautiful. + +Beauty is rare in all nature's works, and in all works of art. + +Whatever ill things have been said of women, I maintain that it is rarer +to find women perfectly beautiful than passibly good. + +You will meet in the country ten thousand women attached to their homes, +laborious, sober, feeding, rearing, teaching their children; and you +will find barely one whom you could show at the theatres of Paris, +London, Naples, or in the public gardens, and who would be looked on as +a beauty. + +Likewise, in works of art, you have ten thousand daubs and scrawls to +one masterpiece. + +If everything were beautiful and good, it is clear that one would no +longer admire anything; one would enjoy. But would one have pleasure in +enjoying? that is a big question. + +Why have the beautiful passages in "The Cid," "The Horaces," "Cinna," +had such a prodigious success? Because in the profound night in which +people were plunged, they suddenly saw shine a new light that they did +not expect. It was because this beauty was the rarest thing in the +world. + +The groves of Versailles were a beauty unique in the world, as were then +certain passages of Corneille. St. Peter's, Rome, is unique. + +But let us suppose that all the churches of Europe were equal to St. +Peter's, Rome, that all statues were Venus dei Medici, that all +tragedies were as beautiful as Racine's "Iphigénie", all works of poetry +as well written as Boileau's "Art Poétique", all comedies as good as +"Tartufe", and thus in every sphere; would you then have as much +pleasure in enjoying masterpieces become common as they made you taste +when they were rare? I say boldly "No!"; and I believe that the ancient +school, which so rarely was right, was right when it said: _Ab assuetis +non fit passio_, habit does not make passion. + +But, my dear reader, will it be the same with the works of nature? Will +you be disgusted if all the maids are so beautiful as Helen; and you, +ladies, if all the lads are like Paris? Let us suppose that all wines +are excellent, will you have less desire to drink? if the partridges, +pheasants, pullets are common at all times, will you have less appetite? +I say boldly again "No!", despite the axiom of the schools, "Habit does +not make passion": and the reason, you know it, is that all the +pleasures which nature gives us are always recurring needs, necessary +enjoyments, and that the pleasures of the arts are not necessary. It is +not necessary for a man to have groves where water gushes to a height of +a hundred feet from the mouth of a marble face, and on leaving these +groves to go to see a fine tragedy. But the two sexes are always +necessary to each other. The table and the bed are necessities. The +habit of being alternately on these two thrones will never disgust you. + +In Paris a few years ago people admired a rhinoceros. If there were in +one province ten thousand rhinoceroses, men would run after them only to +kill them. But let there be a hundred thousand beautiful women men will +always run after them to ... honour them. + + + + +_REASON_ + + +At the time when all France was mad about Law's system, and Law was +controller-general, there came to him in the presence of a great +assembly a man who was always right, who always had reason on his side. +Said he to Law: + +"Sir, you are the biggest madman, the biggest fool, or the biggest rogue +who has yet appeared among us; and that is saying a great deal: this is +how I prove it. You have imagined that a state's wealth can be increased +tenfold with paper; but as this paper can represent only the money that +is representative of true wealth, the products of the land and industry, +you should have begun by giving us ten times more corn, wine, cloth, +canvas, etc. That is not enough, you must be sure of your market. But +you make ten times as many notes as we have of silver and commodities, +therefore you are ten times more extravagant, or more inept, or more of +a rogue than all the comptrollers who have preceded you. This is how I +prove my major." + +Hardly had he started his major than he was conducted to Saint-Lazare. + +When he came out of Saint-Lazare, where he studied much and strengthened +his reason, he went to Rome; he asked for a public audience of the Pope, +on condition that he was not interrupted in his harangue; and he spoke +to the Pope in these terms: + +"Holy Father, you are an antichrist and this is how I prove it to Your +Holiness. I call antichrist the man who does the contrary to what Christ +did and commanded. Now Christ was poor, and you are very rich; he paid +tribute, and you exact tribute; he submitted to the powers that were, +and you have become a power; he walked on foot, and you go to +Castel-Gandolfo in a sumptuous equipage; he ate all that one was so good +as to give him, and you want us to eat fish on Friday and Saturday, when +we live far from sea and river; he forbade Simon Barjona to use a sword, +and you have swords in your service, etc., etc., etc. Therefore in this +sense Your Holiness is antichrist. In every other sense I hold you in +great veneration, and I ask you for an indulgence _in articulo mortis_." + +My man was put in the Castello St. Angelo. + +When he came out of the Castello St. Angelo, he rushed to Venice, and +asked to speak to the doge. + +"Your Serenity," he said, "must be a scatter-brain to marry the sea +every year: for firstly, one only marries the same person once; +secondly, your marriage resembles Harlequin's which was half made, +seeing that it lacked but the consent of the bride; thirdly, who has +told you that one day other maritime powers will not declare you +incapable of consummating the marriage?" + +He spoke, and was shut up in the Tower of St. Mark's. + +When he came out of the Tower of St. Mark's, he went to Constantinople; +he had audience of the mufti; and spoke to him in these terms: + +"Your religion, although it has some good points, such as worship of the +great Being, and the necessity of being just and charitable, is +otherwise nothing but a rehash of Judaism and a tedious collection of +fairy tales. If the archangel Gabriel had brought the leaves of the +Koran to Mahomet from some planet, all Arabia would have seen Gabriel +come down: nobody saw him; therefore Mahomet was a brazen impostor who +deceived imbeciles." + +Hardly had he pronounced these words than he was impaled. Nevertheless +he had always been right, and had always had reason on his side. + + + + +_RELIGION_ + + +I meditated last night; I was absorbed in the contemplation of nature; I +admired the immensity, the course, the harmony of these infinite globes +which the vulgar do not know how to admire. + +I admired still more the intelligence which directs these vast forces. I +said to myself: "One must be blind not to be dazzled by this spectacle; +one must be stupid not to recognize the author of it; one must be mad +not to worship Him. What tribute of worship should I render Him? Should +not this tribute be the same in the whole of space, since it is the same +supreme power which reigns equally in all space? Should not a thinking +being who dwells in a star in the Milky Way offer Him the same homage as +the thinking being on this little globe where we are? Light is uniform +for the star Sirius and for us; moral philosophy must be uniform. If a +sentient, thinking animal in Sirius is born of a tender father and +mother who have been occupied with his happiness, he owes them as much +love and care as we owe to our parents. If someone in the Milky Way sees +a needy cripple, if he can relieve him and if he does not do it, he is +guilty toward all globes. Everywhere the heart has the same duties: on +the steps of the throne of God, if He has a throne; and in the depth of +the abyss, if He is an abyss." + +I was plunged in these ideas when one of those genii who fill the +intermundane spaces came down to me. I recognized this same aerial +creature who had appeared to me on another occasion to teach me how +different God's judgments were from our own, and how a good action is +preferable to a controversy. + +He transported me into a desert all covered with piled up bones; and +between these heaps of dead men there were walks of ever-green trees, +and at the end of each walk a tall man of august mien, who regarded +these sad remains with pity. + +"Alas! my archangel," said I, "where have you brought me?" + +"To desolation," he answered. + +"And who are these fine patriarchs whom I see sad and motionless at the +end of these green walks? they seem to be weeping over this countless +crowd of dead." + +"You shall know, poor human creature," answered the genius from the +intermundane spaces; "but first of all you must weep." + +He began with the first pile. "These," he said, "are the twenty-three +thousand Jews who danced before a calf, with the twenty-four thousand +who were killed while lying with Midianitish women. The number of those +massacred for such errors and offences amounts to nearly three hundred +thousand. + +"In the other walks are the bones of the Christians slaughtered by each +other for metaphysical disputes. They are divided into several heaps of +four centuries each. One heap would have mounted right to the sky; they +had to be divided." + +"What!" I cried, "brothers have treated their brothers like this, and I +have the misfortune to be of this brotherhood!" + +"Here," said the spirit, "are the twelve million Americans killed in +their fatherland because they had not been baptized." + +"My God! why did you not leave these frightful bones to dry in the +hemisphere where their bodies were born, and where they were consigned +to so many different deaths? Why assemble here all these abominable +monuments to barbarism and fanaticism?" + +"To instruct you." + +"Since you wish to instruct me," I said to the genius, "tell me if there +have been peoples other than the Christians and the Jews in whom zeal +and religion wretchedly transformed into fanaticism, have inspired so +many horrible cruelties." + +"Yes," he said. "The Mohammedans were sullied with the same +inhumanities, but rarely; and when one asked _amman_, pity, of them and +offered them tribute, they pardoned. As for the other nations there has +not been one right from the existence of the world which has ever made a +purely religious war. Follow me now." I followed him. + +A little beyond these piles of dead men we found other piles; they were +composed of sacks of gold and silver, and each had its label: _Substance +of the heretics massacred in the eighteenth century, the seventeenth and +the sixteenth._ And so on in going back: _Gold and silver of Americans +slaughtered_, etc., etc. And all these piles were surmounted with +crosses, mitres, croziers, triple crowns studded with precious stones. + +"What, my genius! it was then to have these riches that these dead were +piled up?" + +"Yes, my son." + +I wept; and when by my grief I had merited to be led to the end of the +green walks, he led me there. + +"Contemplate," he said, "the heroes of humanity who were the world's +benefactors, and who were all united in banishing from the world, as far +as they were able, violence and rapine. Question them." + +I ran to the first of the band; he had a crown on his head, and a little +censer in his hand; I humbly asked him his name. "I am Numa Pompilius," +he said to me. "I succeeded a brigand, and I had brigands to govern: I +taught them virtue and the worship of God; after me they forgot both +more than once; I forbade that in the temples there should be any image, +because the Deity which animates nature cannot be represented. During my +reign the Romans had neither wars nor seditions, and my religion did +nothing but good. All the neighbouring peoples came to honour me at my +funeral: that happened to no one but me." + +I kissed his hand, and I went to the second. He was a fine old man about +a hundred years old, clad in a white robe. He put his middle-finger on +his mouth, and with the other hand he cast some beans behind him. I +recognized Pythagoras. He assured me he had never had a golden thigh, +and that he had never been a cock; but that he had governed the +Crotoniates with as much justice as Numa governed the Romans, almost at +the same time; and that this justice was the rarest and most necessary +thing in the world. I learned that the Pythagoreans examined their +consciences twice a day. The honest people! how far we are from them! +But we who have been nothing but assassins for thirteen hundred years, +we say that these wise men were arrogant. + +In order to please Pythagoras, I did not say a word to him and I passed +to Zarathustra, who was occupied in concentrating the celestial fire in +the focus of a concave mirror, in the middle of a hall with a hundred +doors which all led to wisdom. (Zarathustra's precepts are called +_doors_, and are a hundred in number.) Over the principal door I read +these words which are the précis of all moral philosophy, and which cut +short all the disputes of the casuists: "When in doubt if an action is +good or bad, refrain." + +"Certainly," I said to my genius, "the barbarians who immolated all +these victims had never read these beautiful words." + +We then saw the Zaleucus, the Thales, the Aniximanders, and all the +sages who had sought truth and practised virtue. + +When we came to Socrates, I recognized him very quickly by his flat +nose. "Well," I said to him, "here you are then among the number of the +Almighty's confidants! All the inhabitants of Europe, except the Turks +and the Tartars of the Crimea, who know nothing, pronounce your name +with respect. It is revered, loved, this great name, to the point that +people have wanted to know those of your persecutors. Melitus and +Anitus are known because of you, just as Ravaillac is known because of +Henry IV.; but I know only this name of Anitus. I do not know precisely +who was the scoundrel who calumniated you, and who succeeded in having +you condemned to take hemlock." + +"Since my adventure," replied Socrates, "I have never thought about that +man; but seeing that you make me remember it, I have much pity for him. +He was a wicked priest who secretly conducted a business in hides, a +trade reputed shameful among us. He sent his two children to my school. +The other disciples taunted them with having a father who was a currier; +they were obliged to leave. The irritated father had no rest until he +had stirred up all the priests and all the sophists against me. They +persuaded the counsel of the five hundred that I was an impious fellow +who did not believe that the Moon, Mercury and Mars were gods. Indeed, I +used to think, as I think now, that there is only one God, master of all +nature. The judges handed me over to the poisoner of the republic; he +cut short my life by a few days: I died peacefully at the age of +seventy; and since that time I pass a happy life with all these great +men whom you see, and of whom I am the least." + +After enjoying some time in conversation with Socrates, I went forward +with my guide into a grove situated above the thickets where all the +sages of antiquity seemed to be tasting sweet repose. + +I saw a man of gentle, simple countenance, who seemed to me to be about +thirty-five years old. From afar he cast compassionate glances on these +piles of whitened bones, across which I had had to pass to reach the +sages' abode. I was astonished to find his feet swollen and bleeding, +his hands likewise, his side pierced, and his ribs flayed with whip +cuts. "Good Heavens!" I said to him, "is it possible for a just man, a +sage, to be in this state? I have just seen one who was treated in a +very hateful way, but there is no comparison between his torture and +yours. Wicked priests and wicked judges poisoned him; is it by priests +and judges that you have been so cruelly assassinated?" + +He answered with much courtesy--"_Yes._" + +"And who were these monsters?" + +"_They were hypocrites._" + +"Ah! that says everything; I understand by this single word that they +must have condemned you to death. Had you then proved to them, as +Socrates did, that the Moon was not a goddess, and that Mercury was not +a god?" + +"_No, these planets were not in question. My compatriots did not know at +all what a planet is; they were all arrant ignoramuses. Their +superstitions were quite different from those of the Greeks._" + +"You wanted to teach them a new religion, then?" + +"_Not at all; I said to them simply--'Love God with all your heart and +your fellow-creature as yourself, for that is man's whole duty.' Judge +if this precept is not as old as the universe; judge if I brought them a +new religion. I did not stop telling them that I had come not to destroy +the law but to fulfil it; I had observed all their rites; circumcised as +they all were, baptized as were the most zealous among them, like them I +paid the Corban; I observed the Passover as they did, eating standing up +a lamb cooked with lettuces. I and my friends went to pray in the +temple; my friends even frequented this temple after my death; in a +word, I fulfilled all their laws without a single exception._" + +"What! these wretches could not even reproach you with swerving from +their laws?" + +"_No, without a doubt._" + +"Why then did they put you in the condition in which I now see you?" + +"_What do you expect me to say! they were very arrogant and selfish. +They saw that I knew them; they knew that I was making the citizens +acquainted with them; they were the stronger; they took away my life: +and people like them will always do as much, if they can, to whoever +does them too much justice._" + +"But did you say nothing, do nothing that could serve them as a +pretext?" + +"_To the wicked everything serves as pretext._" + +"Did you not say once that you were come not to send peace, but a +sword?" + +"_It is a copyist's error; I told them that I sent peace and not a +sword. I have never written anything; what I said can have been changed +without evil intention._" + +"You therefore contributed in no way by your speeches, badly reported, +badly interpreted, to these frightful piles of bones which I saw on my +road in coming to consult you?" + +"_It is with horror only that I have seen those who have made themselves +guilty of these murders._" + +"And these monuments of power and wealth, of pride and avarice, these +treasures, these ornaments, these signs of grandeur, which I have seen +piled up on the road while I was seeking wisdom, do they come from you?" + +"_That is impossible; I and my people lived in poverty and meanness: my +grandeur was in virtue only._" + +I was about to beg him to be so good as to tell me just who he was. My +guide warned me to do nothing of the sort. He told me that I was not +made to understand these sublime mysteries. Only did I conjure him to +tell me in what true religion consisted. + +"_Have I not already told you? Love God and your fellow-creature as +yourself._" + +"What! if one loves God, one can eat meat on Friday?" + +"_I always ate what was given me; for I was too poor to give anyone +food._" + +"In loving God, in being just, should one not be rather cautious not to +confide all the adventures of one's life to an unknown man?" + +"_That was always my practice._" + +"Can I not, by doing good, dispense with making a pilgrimage to St. +James of Compostella?" + +"_I have never been in that country._" + +"Is it necessary for me to imprison myself in a retreat with fools?" + +"_As for me, I always made little journeys from town to town._" + +"Is it necessary for me to take sides either for the Greek Church or the +Latin?" + +"_When I was in the world I never made any difference between the Jew +and the Samaritan._" + +"Well, if that is so, I take you for my only master." Then he made me a +sign with his head which filled me with consolation. The vision +disappeared, and a clear conscience stayed with me. + + + + +_SECT_ + + +SECTION I + +Every sect, in whatever sphere, is the rallying-point of doubt and +error. Scotist, Thomist, Realist, Nominalist, Papist, Calvinist, +Molinist, Jansenist, are only pseudonyms. + +There are no sects in geometry; one does not speak of a Euclidian, an +Archimedean. + +When the truth is evident, it is impossible for parties and factions to +arise. Never has there been a dispute as to whether there is daylight at +noon. + +The branch of astronomy which determines the course of the stars and the +return of eclipses being once known, there is no more dispute among +astronomers. + +In England one does not say--"I am a Newtonian, a Lockian, a Halleyan." +Why? Those who have read cannot refuse their assent to the truths taught +by these three great men. The more Newton is revered, the less do people +style themselves Newtonians; this word supposes that there are +anti-Newtonians in England. Maybe we still have a few Cartesians in +France; that is solely because Descartes' system is a tissue of +erroneous and ridiculous imaginings. + +It is likewise with the small number of truths of fact which are well +established. The records of the Tower of London having been +authentically gathered by Rymer, there are no Rymerians, because it +occurs to no one to combat this collection. In it one finds neither +contradictions, absurdities nor prodigies; nothing which revolts the +reason, nothing, consequently, which sectarians strive to maintain or +upset by absurd arguments. Everyone agrees, therefore, that Rymer's +records are worthy of belief. + +You are Mohammedan, therefore there are people who are not, therefore +you might well be wrong. + +What would be the true religion if Christianity did not exist? the +religion in which there were no sects; the religion in which all minds +were necessarily in agreement. + +Well, to what dogma do all minds agree? to the worship of a God and to +integrity. All the philosophers of the world who have had a religion +have said in all time--"There is a God, and one must be just." There, +then, is the universal religion established in all time and throughout +mankind. + +The point in which they all agree is therefore true, and the systems +through which they differ are therefore false. + +"My sect is the best," says a Brahmin to me. But, my friend, if your +sect is good, it is necessary; for if it were not absolutely necessary +you would admit to me that it was useless: if it is absolutely +necessary, it is for all men; how then can it be that all men have not +what is absolutely necessary to them? How is it possible for the rest of +the world to laugh at you and your Brahma? + +When Zarathustra, Hermes, Orpheus, Minos and all the great men say--"Let +us worship God, and let us be just," nobody laughs; but everyone hisses +the man who claims that one cannot please God unless when one dies one +is holding a cow's tail, and the man who wants one to have the end of +one's prepuce cut off, and the man who consecrates crocodiles and +onions, and the man who attaches eternal salvation to the dead men's +bones one carries under one's shirt, or to a plenary indulgence which +one buys at Rome for two and a half sous. + +Whence comes this universal competition in hisses and derision from one +end of the world to the other? It is clear that the things at which +everyone sneers are not of a very evident truth. What shall we say of +one of Sejan's secretaries who dedicated to Petronius a bombastic book +entitled--"The Truths of the Sibylline Oracles, Proved by the Facts"? + +This secretary proves to you first that it was necessary for God to send +on earth several sibyls one after the other; for He had no other means +of teaching mankind. It is demonstrated that God spoke to these sibyls, +for the word _sibyl_ signifies _God's counsel_. They had to live a long +time, for it is the very least that persons to whom God speaks should +have this privilege. They were twelve in number, for this number is +sacred. They had certainly predicted all the events in the world, for +Tarquinius Superbus bought three of their Books from an old woman for a +hundred crowns. "What incredulous fellow," adds the secretary, "will +dare deny all these evident facts which happened in a corner before the +whole world? Who can deny the fulfilment of their prophecies? Has not +Virgil himself quoted the predictions of the sibyls? If we have not the +first examples of the Sibylline Books, written at a time when people did +not know how to read or write, have we not authentic copies? Impiety +must be silent before such proofs." Thus did Houttevillus speak to +Sejan. He hoped to have a position as augur which would be worth an +income of fifty thousand francs, and he had nothing.[20] + +"What my sect teaches is obscure, I admit it," says a fanatic; "and it +is because of this obscurity that it must be believed; for the sect +itself says it is full of obscurities. My sect is extravagant, therefore +it is divine; for how should what appears so mad have been embraced by +so many peoples, if it were not divine?" It is precisely like the +Alcoran which the Sonnites say has an angel's face and an animal's +snout; be not scandalized by the animal's snout, and worship the angel's +face. Thus speaks this insensate fellow. But a fanatic of another sect +answers--"It is you who are the animal, and I who am the angel." + +Well, who shall judge the suit? who shall decide between these two +fanatics? The reasonable, impartial man learned in a knowledge that is +not that of words; the man free from prejudice and lover of truth and +justice; in short, the man who is not the foolish animal, and who does +not think he is the angel. + + +SECTION II + +_Sect_ and _error_ are synonymous. You are Peripatetic and I +Platonician; we are therefore both wrong; for you combat Plato only +because his fantasies have revolted you, and I am alienated from +Aristotle only because it seems to me that he does not know what he is +talking about. If one or the other had demonstrated the truth, there +would be a sect no longer. To declare oneself for the opinion of the one +or the other is to take sides in a civil war. There are no sects in +mathematics, in experimental physics. A man who examines the relations +between a cone and a sphere is not of the sect of Archimedes: he who +sees that the square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is +equal to the square of the two other sides is not of the sect of +Pythagoras. + +When you say that the blood circulates, that the air is heavy, that the +sun's rays are pencils of seven refrangible rays, you are not either of +the sect of Harvey, or the sect of Torricelli, or the sect of Newton; +you agree merely with the truth demonstrated by them, and the entire +universe will ever be of your opinion. + +This is the character of truth; it is of all time; it is for all men; it +has only to show itself to be recognized; one cannot argue against it. A +long dispute signifies--"Both parties are wrong." + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[20] Reference to the Abbé Houtteville, author of a book entitled--"The +Truth of the Christian Religion, Proved by the Facts." + + + + +_SELF-ESTEEM_ + + +Nicole in his "Essais de Morale," written after two or three thousand +volumes of ethics ("Treatise on Charity," Chap. II), says that "by means +of the wheels and gibbets which people establish in common are repressed +the tyrannous thoughts and designs of each individual's self-esteem." + +I shall not examine whether people have gibbets in common, as they have +meadows and woods in common, and a common purse, and if one represses +ideas with wheels; but it seems very strange to me that Nicole should +take highway robbery and assassination for self-esteem. One should +distinguish shades of difference a little better. The man who said that +Nero had his mother assassinated through self-esteem, that Cartouche had +much self-esteem, would not be expressing himself very correctly. +Self-esteem is not wickedness, it is a sentiment that is natural to all +men; it is much nearer vanity than crime. + +A beggar in the suburbs of Madrid nobly begged charity; a passer-by says +to him: "Are you not ashamed to practise this infamous calling when you +are able to work?" + +"Sir," answered the beggar, "I ask for money, not advice." And he turned +on his heel with full Castillian dignity. + +This gentleman was a proud beggar, his vanity was wounded by a trifle. +He asked charity out of love for himself, and could not tolerate the +reprimand out of further love for himself. + +A missionary travelling in India met a fakir laden with chains, naked as +a monkey, lying on his stomach, and having himself whipped for the sins +of his compatriots, the Indians, who gave him a few farthings. + +"What self-denial!" said one of the lookers-on. + +"Self-denial!" answered the fakir. "Learn that I have myself flogged in +this world in order to return it in another, when you will be horses and +I horseman." + +Those who have said that love of ourselves is the basis of all our +opinions and all our actions, have therefore been quite right in India, +Spain, and all the habitable world: and as one does not write to prove +to men that they have faces, it is not necessary to prove to them that +they have self-esteem. Self-esteem is the instrument of our +conservation; it resembles the instrument of the perpetuity of the +species: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and it +has to be hidden. + + + + +_SOUL_ + + +SECTION I + +This is a vague, indeterminate term, which expresses an unknown +principle of known effects that we feel in us. The word _soul_ +corresponds to the Latin _anima_, to the Greek +pneuma+, to the term of +which all nations have made use to express what they did not understand +any better than we do. + +In the proper and literal sense of the Latin and the languages derived +from Latin, it signifies _that which animates_. Thus people have spoken +of the soul of men, of animals, sometimes of plants, to signify their +principal of vegetation and life. In pronouncing this word, people have +never had other than a confused idea, as when it is said in +Genesis--"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and +breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living +soul; and the soul of animals is in the blood; and kill not my soul, +etc." + +Thus the soul was generally taken for the origin and the cause of life, +for life itself. That is why all known nations long imagined that +everything died with the body. If one can disentangle anything in the +chaos of ancient histories, it seems that the Egyptians at least were +the first to distinguish between the intelligence and the soul: and the +Greeks learned from them to distinguish their +nous+, their +pneuma+, +their +skia+. The Latins, following their example, distinguish _animus_ +and _anima_; and we, finally, have also had our _soul_ and our +_understanding_. But is that which is the principle of our life +different from that which is the principle of our thoughts? is it the +same being? Does that which directs us and gives us sensation and +memory resemble that which is in animals the cause of digestion and the +cause of their sensations and of their memory? + +There is the eternal object of the disputes of mankind; I say eternal +object; for not having any first notion from which we can descend in +this examination, we can only rest for ever in a labyrinth of doubt and +feeble conjecture. + +We have not the smallest step where we may place a foot in order to +reach the most superficial knowledge of what makes us live and of what +makes us think. How should we have? we should have had to see life and +thought enter a body. Does a father know how he has produced his son? +does a mother how she conceived him? Has anyone ever been able to divine +how he acts, how he wakes, how he sleeps? Does anyone know how his limbs +obey his will? has anyone discovered by what art ideas are marked out in +his brain and issue from it at his command? Frail automatons moved by +the invisible hand which directs us on this stage of the world, which of +us has been able to detect the wire which guides us? + +We dare question whether the soul is "spirit" or "matter"; if it is +created before us, if it issues from non-existence at our birth, if +after animating us for one day on earth, it lives after us into +eternity. These questions appear sublime; what are they? questions of +blind men saying to other blind men--"What is light?" + +When we want to learn something roughly about a piece of metal, we put +it in a crucible in the fire. But have we a crucible in which to put the +soul? "The soul is _spirit_," says one. But what is spirit? Assuredly no +one has any idea; it is a word that is so void of sense that one is +obliged to say what spirit is not, not being able to say what it is. +"The soul is matter," says another. But what is matter? We know merely +some of its appearances and some of its properties; and not one of these +properties, not one of these appearances, seems to have the slightest +connection with thought. + +"Thought is something distinct from matter," say you. But what proof of +it have you? Is it because matter is divisible and figurable, and +thought is not? But who has told you that the first principles of matter +are divisible and figurable? It is very probable that they are not; +entire sects of philosophers maintain that the elements of matter have +neither form nor extension. With a triumphant air you cry--"Thought is +neither wood, nor stone, nor sand, nor metal, therefore thought does not +belong to matter." Weak, reckless reasoners! gravitation is neither +wood, nor sand, nor metal, nor stone; movement, vegetation, life are not +these things either, and yet life, vegetation, movement, gravitation, +are given to matter. To say that God cannot make matter think is to say +the most insolently absurd thing that anyone has ever dared utter in the +privileged schools of lunacy. We are not certain that God has treated +matter like this; we are only certain that He can. But what matters all +that has been said and all that will be said about the soul? what does +it matter that it has been called entelechy, quintessence, flame, ether? +that it has been thought universal, uncreated, transmigrant, etc.? + +In these matters that are inaccessible to the reason, what do these +romances of our uncertain imaginations matter? What does it matter that +the Fathers of the first four centuries thought the soul corporeal? What +does it matter that Tertullian, by a contradiction frequent in him, has +decided that it is simultaneously corporeal, formed and simple? We have +a thousand witnesses to ignorance, and not one that gives a glimmer of +probability. + +How then are we so bold as to assert what the soul is? We know certainly +that we exist, that we feel, that we think. Do we want to take a step +beyond? we fall into a shadowy abyss; and in this abyss we are still so +madly reckless as to dispute whether this soul, of which we have not the +least idea, was made before us or with us, and whether it perishes or is +immortal. + +The article SOUL, and all the articles of the nature of metaphysics, +must start by a sincere submission to the incontrovertible dogmas of +the Church. Revelation is worth more, without doubt, than the whole of +philosophy. Systems exercise the mind, but faith illumines and guides +it. + +Do we not often pronounce words of which we have only a very confused +idea, or even of which we have none at all? Is not the word _soul_ an +instance? When the clapper or valve of a bellows is out of order, and +when air which is in the bellows leaves it by some unexpected opening in +this valve, so that it is no longer compressed against the two blades, +and is not thrust violently towards the hearth which it has to light, +French servants say--"The soul of the bellows has burst." They know no +more about it than that; and this question in no wise disturbs their +peace of mind. + +The gardener utters the phrase "the soul of the plants," and cultivates +them very well without knowing what he means by this term. + +The violin-maker poses, draws forward or back the "soul of a violin" +beneath the bridge in the belly of the instrument; a puny piece of wood +more or less gives the violin or takes away from it a harmonious soul. + +We have many industries in which the workmen give the qualification of +"soul" to their machines. Never does one hear them dispute about this +word. Such is not the case with philosophers. + +For us the word "soul" signifies generally that which animates. Our +ancestors the Celts gave to their soul the name of _seel_, from which +the English _soul_, and the German _seel_; and probably the ancient +Teutons and the ancient Britons had no quarrels in their universities +over this expression. + +The Greeks distinguished three sorts of souls--+psychê+, which signified +the sensitive soul, the soul of the senses; and that is why Love, child +of Aphrodite, had so much passion for Psyche, and why Psyche loved him +so tenderly: +pneuma+, the breath which gives life and movement to the +whole machine, and which we have translated by _spiritus_, spirit; +vague word to which have been given a thousand different meanings: and +finally +nous+, the intelligence. + +We possessed therefore three souls, without having the least notion of +any of them. St. Thomas Aquinas (Summation of St. Thomas. Lyons edition, +1738) admits these three souls as a peripatetic, and distinguishes each +of these three souls in three parts. +psychê+ was in the breast, ++pneuma+ was distributed throughout the body, and +nous+ was in the +head. There has been no other philosophy in our schools up to our day, +and woe betide any man who took one of these souls for the other. + +In this chaos of ideas there was, nevertheless, a foundation. Men had +noticed that in their passions of love, hate, anger, fear, their +internal organs were stimulated to movement. The liver and the heart +were the seat of the passions. If one thought deeply, one felt a strife +in the organs of the head; therefore the intellectual soul was in the +head. Without respiration no vegetation, no life; therefore the +vegetative soul was in the breast which receives the breath of air. + +When men saw in dreams their dead relatives or friends, they had to seek +what had appeared to them. It was not the body which had been consumed +on a funeral pyre, or swallowed up in the sea and eaten by the fishes. +It was, however, something, so they maintained; for they had seen it; +the dead man had spoken; the dreamer had questioned him. Was it ++psychê+, was it +pneuma+, was it +nous+, with whom one had conversed in +the dream? One imagined a phantom, an airy figure: it was +skia+, it was ++daimôn+, a ghost from the shades, a little soul of air and fire, very +unrestricted, which wandered I know not where. + +Eventually, when one wanted to sift the matter, it became a constant +that this soul was corporeal; and the whole of antiquity never had any +other idea. At last came Plato who so subtilized this soul that it was +doubtful if he did not separate it entirely from matter; but that was a +problem that was never solved until faith came to enlighten us. + +In vain do the materialists quote some of the fathers of the Church who +did not express themselves with precision. St. Irenæus says (liv. v. +chaps. vi and vii) that the soul is only the breath of life, that it is +incorporeal only by comparison with the mortal body, and that it +preserves the form of man so that it may be recognized. + +In vain does Tertullian express himself like this--"The corporeality of +the soul shines bright in the Gospel." (_Corporalitas animæ in ipso +Evangelio relucescit_, DE ANIMA, cap. vii.) For if the soul did +not have a body, the image of the soul would not have the image of the +body. + +In vain does he record the vision of a holy woman who had seen a very +shining soul, of the colour of air. + +In vain does Tatien say expressly (_Oratio ad Græcos_, c. xxiii.)--"The +soul of man is composed of many parts." + +In vain is St. Hilarius quoted as saying in later times (St. Hilarius on +St. Matthew)--"There is nothing created which is not corporeal, either +in heaven, or on earth, or among the visible, or among the invisible: +everything is formed of elements; and souls, whether they inhabit a +body, or issue from it, have always a corporeal substance." + +In vain does St. Ambrose, in the sixth century, say (On Abraham, liv. +ii., ch. viii.)--"We recognize nothing but the material, except the +venerable Trinity alone." + +The body of the entire Church has decided that the soul is immaterial. +These saints fell into an error at that time universal; they were men; +but they were not mistaken over immortality, because that is clearly +announced in the Gospels. + +We have so evident a need of the decision of the infallible Church on +these points of philosophy, that we have not indeed by ourselves any +sufficient notion of what is called "pure spirit," and of what is named +"matter." Pure spirit is an expression which gives us no idea; and we +know matter only by a few phenomena. We know it so little that we call +it "substance"; well, the word substance means "that which is under"; +but what is under will be eternally hidden from us. What is _under_ is +the Creator's secret; and this secret of the Creator is everywhere. We +do not know either how we receive life, or how we give it, or how we +grow, or how we digest, or how we sleep, or how we think, or how we +feel. + +The great difficulty is to understand how a being, whoever he be, has +thoughts. + + +SECTION II + +The author of the article SOUL in the "Encyclopedia" (the Abbé Yvon) +followed Jaquelot scrupulously; but Jaquelot teaches us nothing. He sets +himself also against Locke, because the modest Locke said (liv. iv, ch. +iii, para. vi.)--"We possibly shall never be able to know whether any +mere material being thinks or no; it being impossible for us, by the +contemplation of our own ideas without revelation, to discover whether +Omnipotency has not given to some systems of matter, fitly disposed, a +power to perceive and think, or else joined and fixed to matter, so +disposed, a thinking immaterial substance: it being, in respect of our +notions, not much more remote from our comprehension to conceive that +God can, if he pleases, superadd to matter a faculty of thinking, than +that he should superadd to it another substance with a faculty of +thinking; since we know not wherein thinking consists, nor to what sort +of substances the Almighty has been pleased to give that power which +cannot be in any created being but merely by the good pleasure and +bounty of the Creator, for I see no contradiction in it, that the first +eternal thinking Being should, if he pleased, give to certain systems of +created senseless matter, put together as he thinks fit, some degrees of +sense, perception and thought." + +Those are the words of a profound, religious and modest man. + +We know what quarrels he had to undergo on account of this opinion which +appeared bold, but which was in fact in him only a consequence of his +conviction of the omnipotence of God and the weakness of man. He did not +say that matter thought; but he said that we have not enough knowledge +to demonstrate that it is impossible for God to add the gift of thought +to the unknown being called "matter", after according it the gift of +gravitation and the gift of movement, both of which are equally +incomprehensible. + +Locke was not assuredly the only one who had advanced this opinion; it +was the opinion of all antiquity, who, regarding the soul as very +unrestricted matter, affirmed consequently that matter could feel and +think. + +It was Gassendi's opinion, as may be seen in his objections to +Descartes. "It is true," says Gassendi, "that you know what you think; +but you are ignorant of what species of substance you are, you who +think. Thus although the operation of thought is known to you, the +principle of your essence is hidden from you; and you do not know what +is the nature of this substance, one of the operations of which is to +think. You are like a blind man who, feeling the heat of the sun and +being informed that it is caused by the heat of the sun, thinks he has a +clear and distinct idea of this luminary; because if he were asked what +the sun was, he could reply that it is a thing which heats, etc." + +The same Gassendi, in his "Epicurean Philosophy," repeats several times +that there is no mathematical evidence of the pure spirituality of the +soul. + +Descartes, in one of his letters to the Palatine Princess Elisabeth, +says to her--"I confess that by the natural reason alone we can make +many conjectures on the soul, and have gratifying hopes, but no +certainty." And in that sentence Descartes combats in his letters what +he puts forward in his works; a too ordinary contradiction. + +In fine we have seen that all the Fathers of the first centuries of the +Church, while believing the soul immortal, believed it at the same time +material; they thought that it is as easy for God to conserve as to +create. They said--"God made the soul thinking, He will preserve it +thinking." + +Malebranche has proved very well that we have no idea by ourselves, and +that objects are incapable of giving us ideas: from that he concludes +that we see everything in God. That is at the bottom the same thing as +making God the author of all our ideas; for with what should we see in +Him, if we had not instruments for seeing? and these instruments, it is +He alone who holds them and guides them. This system is a labyrinth, one +lane of which would lead you to Spinozism, another to Stoicism, another +to chaos. + +When one has had a good argument about spirit and matter, one always +finishes by not understanding each other. No philosopher has been able +with his own strength to lift this veil stretched by nature over all the +first principles of things. Men argue, nature acts. + + +SECTION III + +OF THE SOUL OF ANIMALS, AND OF SOME EMPTY IDEAS + +Before the strange system which supposes animals to be pure machines +without any sensation, men had never thought that the beasts possessed +an immaterial soul; and nobody had pushed recklessness to the point of +saying that an oyster has a spiritual soul. Everyone concurred peaceably +in agreeing that the beasts had received from God feeling, memory, +ideas, and no pure spirit. Nobody had abused the gift of reason to the +point of saying that nature had given the beasts all the organs of +feeling so that they might not feel anything. Nobody had said that they +cry when they are wounded, and that they fly when pursued, without +experiencing pain or fear. + +At that time people did not deny the omnipotence of God; He had been +able to communicate to the organized matter of animals pleasure, pain, +remembrance, the combination of a few ideas; He had been able to give to +several of them, such as the monkey, the elephant, the hunting-dog, the +talent of perfecting themselves in the arts which were taught to them; +not only had He been able to endow nearly all carnivorous animals with +the talent of warring better in their experienced old age than in their +too trustful youth; not only, I say, had He been able to do these +things, but He had done them: the universe bore witness thereto. + +Pereira and Descartes maintained that the universe was mistaken, that +God was a juggler, that He had given animals all the instruments of life +and sensation, so that they might have neither life nor sensation, +properly speaking. But I do not know what so-called philosophers, in +order to answer Descartes' chimera, leaped into the opposite chimera; +they gave liberally of pure spirit to the toads and the insects. + +Between these two madnesses, the one refusing feeling to the organs of +feeling, the other lodging a pure spirit in a bug, somebody thought of a +middle path. It was instinct. And what is instinct? Oh, oh, it is a +substantial form; it is a plastic form; it is I do not know what! it is +instinct. I shall be of your opinion so long as you will call the +majority of things, "I do not know what"; so long as your philosophy +begins and ends with "I do not know what", I shall quote Prior to you in +his poem on the vanity of the world. + +The author of the article SOUL in the "Encyclopedia" explains +himself like this:--"I picture the animals' soul as an immaterial and +intelligent substance, but of what species? It must, it seems to me, be +an active principle which has sensations, and which has only that.... If +we reflect on the nature of the soul of animals, it supplies us with +groundwork which might lead us to think that its spirituality will save +it from annihilation." + +I do not know how one pictures an immaterial substance. To picture +something is to make an image of it; and up till now nobody has been +able to paint the spirit. For the word "picture", I want the author to +understand "I conceive"; speaking for myself, I confess I do not +conceive it. I confess still less that a spiritual soul may be +annihilated, because I do not conceive either creation or non-existence; +because I have never been present at God's council; because I know +nothing at all about the principle of things. + +If I wish to prove that the soul is a real being, someone stops me by +telling me that it is a faculty. If I assert that it is a faculty, and +that I have the faculty of thinking, I am told that I am mistaken; that +God, the eternal master of all nature, does everything in me, and +directs all my actions and all my thoughts; that if I produced my +thoughts, I should know the thought I will have in a minute; that I +never know it; that I am only an automaton with sensations and ideas, +necessarily dependent, and in the hands of the Supreme Being, infinitely +more compliant to Him than clay is to the potter. + +I confess my ignorance, therefore; I avow that four thousand tomes of +metaphysics will not teach us what our soul is. + +An orthodox philosopher said to a heterodox philosopher--"How have you +been able to come to the point of imagining that the soul is mortal by +nature, and eternal only by the pure wish of God?" + +"By my own experience," said the other. + +"How! are you dead?" + +"Yes, very often. I suffered from epilepsy in my youth, and I assure you +that I was completely dead for several hours. No sensation, no +remembrance even of the moment that I fell ill. The same thing happens +to me now nearly every night. I never feel the precise moment that I go +to sleep; my sleep is absolutely dreamless. I cannot imagine by +conjecture how long I have slept. I am dead regularly six hours out of +the twenty-four. That is a quarter of my life." + +The orthodox then asserted that he always thought during his sleep +without knowing anything about it. The heterodox answered him--"I +believe through revelation that I shall always think in the other life; +but I assure you I think rarely in this one." + +The orthodox was not mistaken in asserting the immortality of the soul, +for faith and reason demonstrate this truth; but he might be mistaken in +asserting that a sleeping man always thinks. + +Locke admitted frankly that he did not always think while he was asleep: +another philosopher has said--"Thought is characteristic of man; but it +is not his essence." + +Let us leave to each man the liberty and consolation of seeking himself, +and of losing himself in his ideas. + +It is good, however, to know, that in 1730 a philosopher[21] suffered a +severe enough persecution for having confessed, with Locke, that his +understanding was not exercised at every moment of the day and night, +just as he did not use his arms and his legs at all moments. Not only +did court ignorance persecute him, but the malignant influence of a few +so-called men of letters was let loose against him. What in England had +produced merely a few philosophical disputes, produced in France the +most cowardly atrocities; a Frenchman suffered by Locke. + +There have always been in the mud of our literature more than one of +these miscreants who have sold their pens, and intrigued against their +benefactors even. This remark is rather foreign to the article +SOUL; but should one miss an opportunity of dismaying those who +make themselves unworthy of the name of men of letters, who prostitute +the little mind and conscience they have to a vile self-interest, to a +fantastic policy, who betray their friends to flatter fools, who in +secret powder the hemlock which the powerful and malicious ignoramus +wants to make useful citizens drink? + +In short, while we worship God with all our soul, let us confess always +our profound ignorance of this soul, of this faculty of feeling and +thinking which we possess from His infinite goodness. Let us avow that +our feeble reasonings can take nothing away from, or add anything to +revelation and faith. Let us conclude in fine that we should use this +intelligence, the nature of which is unknown, for perfecting the +sciences which are the object of the "Encyclopedia"; just as watchmakers +use springs in their watches, without knowing what a spring is. + + +SECTION IV + +ABOUT THE SOUL, AND ABOUT OUR LITTLE KNOWLEDGE + +On the testimony of our acquired knowledge, we have dared question +whether the soul is created before us, whether it comes from +non-existence into our body? at what age it came to settle between a +bladder and the intestines _cæcum_ and _rectum_? if it brought ideas +with it or received them there, and what are these ideas? if after +animating us for a few moments, its essence is to live after us into +eternity without the intervention of God Himself? if being spirit, and +God being spirit, they are both of like nature? These questions seem +sublime; what are they? questions about light by men born blind. + +What have all the philosophers, ancient and modern, taught us? a child +is wiser than they are; he does not think about things of which he can +form no conception. + +You will say that it is sad for our insatiable curiosity, for our +inexhaustible thirst for happiness, to be thus ignorant of ourselves! I +agree, and there are still sadder things; but I shall answer you: + + _Sors tua mortalis, non est mortale quod optas._ + + --Ovid, Met. II. 56 + + "You have a man's fate, and a god's desires." + +Once again, it seems that the nature of every principle of things is the +Creator's secret. How does the air carry sound? how are animals formed? +how do some of our limbs constantly obey our wills? what hand puts ideas +in our memory, keeps them there as in a register, and pulls them out +sometimes when we want them and sometimes in spite of ourselves? Our +nature, the nature of the universe, the nature of the least plant, +everything for us is sunk in a shadowy pit. + +Man is an acting, feeling, thinking being: that is all we know of him: +it is not given to us to know what makes us feel and think, or what +makes us act, or what makes us exist. The acting faculty is as +incomprehensible for us as the thinking faculty. The difficulty is less +to conceive how a body of mud has feelings and ideas, than to conceive +how a being, whatever it be, has ideas and feelings. + +Here on one side the soul of Archimedes, on the other the soul of an +idiot; are they of the same nature? If their essence is to think, they +think always, and independently of the body which cannot act without +them. If they think by their own nature, can the species of a soul which +cannot do a sum in arithmetic be the same as that which measured the +heavens? If it is the organs of the body which made Archimedes think, +why is it that my idiot, who has a stronger constitution than +Archimedes, who is more vigorous, digests better and performs all his +functions better, does not think at all? It is, you say, because his +brain is not so good. But you are making a supposition; you do not know +at all. No difference has ever been found between healthy brains that +have been dissected. It is even very probable that a fool's cerebellum +will be in better condition than Archimedes', which has worked +prodigiously, and which might be worn out and shrivelled. + +Let us conclude therefore what we have already concluded, that we are +ignoramuses about all first principles. As regards ignoramuses who pride +themselves on their knowledge, they are far inferior to monkeys. + +Now dispute, choleric arguers: present your petitions against each +other; proffer your insults, pronounce your sentences, you who do not +know one word about the matter. + + +SECTION V + +OF WARBURTON'S PARADOX ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL + +Warburton, editor and commentator of Shakespeare and Bishop of +Gloucester, making use of English freedom, and abuse of the custom of +hurling insults at one's adversaries, has composed four volumes to prove +that the immortality of the soul was never announced in the Pentateuch, +and to conclude from this same proof that Moses' mission is divine. Here +is the précis of his book, which he himself gives, pages 7 and 8 of the +first volume. + +"1. The doctrine of a life to come, of rewards and punishments after +death, is necessary to all civil society. + +"2. The whole human race (_and this is where he is mistaken_), and +especially the wisest and most learned nations of antiquity, concurred +in believing and teaching this doctrine. + +"3. It cannot be found in any passage of the law of Moses; therefore the +law of Moses is of divine origin. Which I am going to prove by the two +following syllogisms: + + +_First Syllogism_ + +"Every religion, every society that has not the immortality of the soul +for its basis, can be maintained only by an extraordinary providence; +the Jewish religion had not the immortality of the soul for basis; +therefore the Jewish religion was maintained by an extraordinary +providence. + + +_Second Syllogism_ + +"All the ancient legislators have said that a religion which did not +teach the immortality of the soul could not be maintained but by an +extraordinary providence; Moses founded a religion which is not founded +on the immortality of the soul; therefore Moses believed his religion +maintained by an extraordinary providence." + +What is much more extraordinary is this assertion of Warburton's, which +he has put in big letters at the beginning of his book. He has often +been reproached with the extreme rashness and bad faith with which he +dares to say that all the ancient legislators believed that a religion +which is not founded on pains and recompenses after death, can be +maintained only by an extraordinary providence; not one of them ever +said it. He does not undertake even to give any example in his huge book +stuffed with a vast number of quotations, all of which are foreign to +his subject. He has buried himself beneath a pile of Greek and Latin +authors, ancient and modern, for fear one might see through him on the +other side of a horrible multitude of envelopes. When criticism finally +probed to the bottom, he was resurrected from among all these dead men +in order to load all his adversaries with insults. + +It is true that towards the end of his fourth volume, after having +walked through a hundred labyrinths, and having fought with everybody he +met on the road, he comes at last to his great question which he had +left there. He lays all the blame on the Book of Job which passes among +scholars for an Arab work, and he tries to prove that Job did not +believe in the immortality of the soul. Later he explains in his own way +all the texts of Holy Writ by which people have tried to combat this +opinion. + +All one can say about it is that, if he was right, it was not for a +bishop to be right in such a way. He should have felt that one might +draw dangerous inferences; but everything in this world is a mass of +contradiction. This man, who became accuser and persecutor, was not made +bishop by a minister of state's patronage until immediately after he had +written his book. + +At Salamanca, Coimbre or Rome, he would have been obliged to recant and +to ask pardon. In England he became a peer of the realm with an income +of a hundred thousand _livres_; it was enough to modify his methods. + + +SECTION VI + +OF THE NEED OF REVELATION + +The greatest benefit we owe to the New Testament is that it has revealed +to us the immortality of the soul. It is in vain, therefore, that this +fellow Warburton tried to cloud over this important truth, by +continually representing in his legation of Moses that "the ancient Jews +knew nothing of this necessary dogma, and that the Sadducees did not +admit it in the time of our Lord Jesus." + +He interprets in his own way the very words that have been put into +Jesus Christ's mouth: "... have ye not read that which was spoken unto +you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and +the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living" +(St. Matt. xxii. 31, 32). He gives to the parable of the wicked rich man +a sense contrary to that of all the Churches. Sherlock, Bishop of +London, and twenty other scholars refuted him. English philosophers even +reproached him with the scandal of an Anglican bishop manifesting an +opinion so contrary to the Anglican Church; and after that, this man +takes it into his head to treat these persons as impious: like the +character of _Arlequin_ in the comedy of the _Dévaliseur de maisons_, +who, after throwing the furniture out of the window, sees a man carrying +some of it off, and cries with all his might "Stop thief!" + +One should bless the revelation of the immortality of the soul, and of +rewards and punishments after death, all the more that mankind's vain +philosophy has always been sceptical of it. The great Cæsar did not +believe in it at all, he made himself quite clear in full senate when, +in order to stop Catalina being put to death, he represented that death +left man without sensation, that everything died with him; and nobody +refuted this view. + +The Roman Empire was divided between two principal sects: that of +Epicurus which asserted that deity was useless to the world, and that +the soul perished with the body: and that of the Stoics who regarded the +soul as part of the Deity, which after death was joined again to its +origin, to the great everything from which it emanated. Thus, whether +one believed the soul mortal, or whether one believed it immortal, all +the sects were agreed in laughing at pains and punishments after death. + +We still have a hundred monuments of this belief of the Romans. It is by +virtue of this opinion graved profoundly in their hearts, that so many +simple Roman citizens killed themselves without the least scruple; they +did not wait for a tyrant to hand them over to the executioners. + +The most virtuous men even, and those most persuaded of the existence of +a God, hoped for no reward, and feared no punishment. Clement, who later +was Pope and saint, began by himself doubting what the early Christians +said of another life, and consulted St. Peter at Cæsarea. We are far +from believing that St. Clement wrote the history that is attributed to +him; but this history makes evident the need the human race had of a +precise revelation. All that can surprise us is that so repressive and +salutary a doctrine has left a prey to so many horrible crimes men who +have so little time to live, and who see themselves squeezed between two +eternities. + + +SECTION VII + +SOULS OF FOOLS AND MONSTERS + +A deformed child is born absolutely imbecile, it has no ideas and lives +without ideas; we have seen examples of this. How shall this animal be +defined? doctors have said that it is something between man and beast; +others have said that it had a sensitive soul, but not an intellectual +soul. It eats, drinks, sleeps, wakes, has sensations; but it does not +think. + +Is there another life for this creature, or is there none? The question +has been posed, and has not yet been completely answered. + +Some say that this creature must have a soul, because its father and +mother had one. But by this reasoning one would prove that if it came +into the world without a nose it would be deemed to have one, because +its father and its mother had noses. + +A woman gives birth to child with no chin, its forehead is receding and +rather black, its nose is slim and pointed, its eyes are round, it bears +not a bad resemblance to a swallow; the rest of its body, nevertheless, +is made like ours. The parents have it baptised; by a plurality of votes +it is considered a man and possessor of an immortal soul. But if this +ridiculous little figure has pointed nails and beak-like mouth, it is +declared a monster, it has no soul, and is not baptised. + +It is well known that in London in 1726 there was a woman who gave birth +every week to a rabbit. No difficulty was made about refusing baptism to +this child, despite the epidemic mania there was for three weeks in +London for believing that this poor rogue was making wild rabbits. The +surgeon who attended her, St. André by name, swore that nothing was +more true, and people believed him. But what reason did the credulous +have for refusing a soul to this woman's children? she had a soul, her +children should be provided with souls also; whether they had hands, +whether they had paws, whether they were born with a little snout or +with a face; cannot the Supreme Being bestow the gift of thought and +sensation on a little I know not what, born of a woman, shaped like a +rabbit, as well as to a little I know not what, shaped like a man? Shall +the soul that was ready to lodge in this woman's foetus go back again +into space? + +Locke makes the sound observation, about monsters, that one must not +attribute immortality to the exterior of a body; that the form has +nothing to do with it. This immortality, he says, is no more attached to +the form of his face or his chest, than to the way his beard is dressed +or his coat cut. + +He asks what is the exact measure of deformity by which you can +recognize whether or no a child has a soul? What is the precise degree +at which it must be declared a monster and deprived of a soul? + +One asks still further what would be a soul which never has any but +fantastic ideas? there are some which never escape from them. Are they +worthy or unworthy? what is to be done with their pure spirit? + +What is one to think of a child with two heads? without deformity apart +from this? Some say that it has two souls because it is provided with +two pineal glands, with two _corpus callosum_, with two _sensorium +commune_. Others reply that one cannot have two souls when one has only +one chest and one navel.[22] + +In fine, so many questions have been asked about this poor human soul, +that if it were necessary to answer them all, this examination of its +own person would cause it the most intolerable boredom. There would +happen to it what happened to Cardinal de Polignac at a conclave. His +steward, tired of never being able to make him settle his accounts, made +the journey from Rome, and came to the little window of his cell +burdened with an immense bundle of papers. He read for nearly two hours. +At last, seeing that no reply was forthcoming, he put his head forward. +The cardinal had departed nearly two hours before. Our souls will depart +before their stewards have acquainted them with the facts: but let us be +exact before God, whatever sort of ignoramuses we are, we and our +stewards. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[21] Voltaire himself. + +[22] The Chevalier d'Angos, learned astronomer, has carefully observed a +two-headed lizard for several days; and he has assured himself that the +lizard had two independent wills, each of which had an almost equal +power over the body. When the lizard was given a piece of bread, in such +a way that it could see it with only one head, this head wanted to go +after the bread, and the other wanted the body to remain at rest. + + + + +_STATES_, _GOVERNMENTS_ + + +The ins and outs of all governments have been closely examined recently. +Tell me then, you who have travelled, in what state, under what sort of +government you would choose to be born. I imagine that a great +land-owning lord in France would not be vexed to be born in Germany; he +would be sovereign instead of subject. A peer of France would be very +glad to have the privileges of the English peerage; he would be +legislator. The lawyer and the financier would be better off in France +than elsewhere. + +But what country would a wise, free man, a man with a moderate fortune, +and without prejudices, choose? + +A member of the government of Pondicherry, a learned man enough, +returned to Europe by land with a Brahmin better educated than the +ordinary Brahmin. "What do you think of the government of the Great +Mogul?" asked the councillor. + +"I think it abominable," answered the Brahmin. "How can you expect a +state to be happily governed by the Tartars? Our rajahs, our omrahs, our +nabobs, are very content, but the citizens are hardly so; and millions +of citizens are something." + +Reasoning, the councillor and the Brahmin traversed the whole of Upper +Asia. "I make the observation," said the Brahmin, "that there is not one +republic in all this vast part of the world." + +"Formerly there was the republic of Tyre," said the councillor, "but it +did not last long; there was still another one in the direction of +Arabia Petrea, in a little corner called Palestine, if one can honour +with the name of republic a horde of thieves and usurers sometimes +governed by judges, sometimes by a species of kings, sometimes by +grand-pontiffs, become slave seven or eight times, and finally driven +out of the country which it had usurped." + +"I imagine," said the Brahmin, "that one ought to find very few +republics on the earth. Men are rarely worthy of governing themselves. +This happiness should belong only to little peoples who hide themselves +in islands, or among the mountains, like rabbits who shun carnivorous +beasts; but in the long run they are discovered and devoured." + +When the two travellers reached Asia Minor, the councillor said to the +Brahmin: "Would you believe that a republic was formed in a corner of +Italy, which lasted more than five hundred years, and which owned Asia +Minor, Asia, Africa, Greece, Gaul, Spain and the whole of Italy?" + +"She soon became a monarchy, then," said the Brahmin. + +"You have guessed right," said the other. "But this monarchy fell, and +every day we compose beautiful dissertations in order to find the cause +of its decadence and downfall." + +"You take a deal of trouble," said the Indian. "This empire fell because +it existed. Everything has to fall. I hope as much will happen to the +Grand Mogul's empire." + +"By the way," said the European, "do you consider that there should be +more honour in a despotic state, and more virtue in a republic?" + +The Indian, having had explained to him what we mean by honour, answered +that honour was more necessary in a republic, and that one had more need +of virtue in a monarchical state. "For," said he, "a man who claims to +be elected by the people, will not be if he is dishonoured; whereas at +the court he could easily obtain a place, in accordance with a great +prince's maxim, that in order to succeed a courtier should have neither +honour nor character. As regards virtue, one must be prodigiously +virtuous to dare to say the truth. The virtuous man is much more at his +ease in a republic; he has no one to flatter." + +"Do you think," said the man from Europe, "that laws and religions are +made for climates, just as one has to have furs in Moscow, and gauzy +stuffs in Delhi?" + +"Without a doubt," answered the Brahmin. "All the laws which concern +material things are calculated for the meridian one lives in. A German +needs only one wife, and a Persian three or four. + +"The rites of religion are of the same nature. How, if I were Christian, +should I say mass in my province where there is neither bread nor wine? +As regards dogmas, that is another matter; the climate has nothing to do +with them. Did not your religion begin in Asia, whence it was driven +out? does it not exist near the Baltic Sea, where it was unknown?" + +"In what state, under what domination, would you like best to live?" +asked the councillor. + +"Anywhere but where I do live," answered his companion. "And I have met +many Siamese, Tonkinese, Persians and Turks who said as much." + +"But, once again," persisted the European, "what state would you +choose?" + +The Brahmin answered: "The state where only the laws are obeyed." + +"That is an old answer," said the councillor. + +"It is none the worse for that," said the Brahmin. + +"Where is that country?" asked the councillor. + +"We must look for it," answered the Brahmin. + + + + +_SUPERSTITION_ + + +The superstitious man is to the rogue what the slave is to the tyrant. +Further, the superstitious man is governed by the fanatic and becomes +fanatic. Superstition born in Paganism, adopted by Judaism, infested the +Christian Church from the earliest times. All the fathers of the Church, +without exception, believed in the power of magic. The Church always +condemned magic, but she always believed in it: she did not +excommunicate sorcerers as madmen who were mistaken, but as men who were +really in communication with the devil. + +To-day one half of Europe thinks that the other half has long been and +still is superstitious. The Protestants regard the relics, the +indulgences, the mortifications, the prayers for the dead, the holy +water, and almost all the rites of the Roman Church, as a superstitious +dementia. Superstition, according to them, consists in taking useless +practices for necessary practices. Among the Roman Catholics there are +some more enlightened than their ancestors, who have renounced many of +these usages formerly considered sacred; and they defend themselves +against the others who have retained them, by saying: "They are +indifferent, and what is merely indifferent cannot be an evil." + +It is difficult to mark the limits of superstition. A Frenchman +travelling in Italy finds almost everything superstitious, and is hardly +mistaken. The Archbishop of Canterbury maintains that the Archbishop of +Paris is superstitious; the Presbyterians make the same reproach against +His Grace of Canterbury, and are in their turn treated as superstitious +by the Quakers, who are the most superstitious of all in the eyes of +other Christians. + +In Christian societies, therefore, no one agrees as to what superstition +is. The sect which seems to be the least attacked by this malady of the +intelligence is that which has the fewest rites. But if with few +ceremonies it is still strongly attached to an absurd belief, this +absurd belief is equivalent alone to all the superstitious practices +observed from the time of Simon the magician to that of Father +Gauffridi. + +It is therefore clear that it is the fundamentals of the religion of one +sect which is considered as superstition by another sect. + +The Moslems accuse all Christian societies of it, and are themselves +accused. Who will judge this great matter? Will it be reason? But each +sect claims to have reason on its side. It will therefore be force which +will judge, while awaiting the time when reason will penetrate a +sufficient number of heads to disarm force. + +Up to what point does statecraft permit superstition to be destroyed? +This is a very thorny question; it is like asking up to what point one +should make an incision in a dropsical person, who may die under the +operation. It is a matter for the doctor's discretion. + +Can there exist a people free from all superstitious prejudices? That is +to ask--Can there exist a nation of philosophers? It is said that there +is no superstition in the magistrature of China. It is probable that +none will remain in the magistrature of a few towns of Europe. + +Then the magistrates will stop the superstition of the people from being +dangerous. These magistrates' example will not enlighten the mob, but +the principal persons of the middle-classes will hold the mob in check. +There is not perhaps a single riot, a single religious outrage in which +the middle-classes were not formerly imbrued, because these middle +classes were then the mob; but reason and time will have changed them. +Their softened manners will soften those of the lowest and most savage +populace; it is a thing of which we have striking examples in more than +one country. In a word, less superstition, less fanaticism; and less +fanaticism, less misery. + + + + +_TEARS_ + + +Tears are the mute language of sorrow. But why? What connection is there +between a sad idea and this limpid, salt liquid, filtered through a +little gland at the external corner of the eye, which moistens the +conjunctiva and the small lachrymal points, whence it descends into the +nose and mouth through the reservoir called the lachrymal sack and its +ducts? + +Why in women and children, whose organs are part of a frail and delicate +network, are tears more easily excited by sorrow than in grown men, +whose tissue is firmer? + +Did nature wish compassion to be born in us at sight of these tears +which soften us, and lead us to help those who shed them? The woman of a +savage race is as firmly determined to help the child that cries as +would be a woman of the court, and maybe more, because she has fewer +distractions and passions. + +In the animal body everything has an object without a doubt. The eyes +especially bear such evident, such proven, such admirable relation to +the rays of light; this mechanism is so divine, that I should be tempted +to take for a delirium of burning fever the audacity which denies the +final causes of the structure of our eyes. + +The use of tears does not seem to have so well determined and striking +an object; but it would be beautiful that nature made them flow in order +to stir us to pity. + +There are women who are accused of weeping when they wish. I am not at +all surprised at their talent. A live, sensitive, tender imagination can +fix itself on some object, on some sorrowful memory, and picture it in +such dominating colours that they wring tears from it. It is what +happens to many actors, and principally to actresses, on the stage. + +The women who imitate them in their own homes add to this talent the +petty fraud of appearing to weep for their husbands, whereas in fact +they are weeping for their lovers. Their tears are true, but the object +of them is false. + +One asks why the same man who has watched the most atrocious events +dry-eyed, who even has committed cold-blooded crimes, will weep at the +theatre at the representation of these events and crimes? It is that he +does not see them with the same eyes, he sees them with the eyes of the +author and the actor. He is no longer the same man; he was a barbarian, +he was agitated by furious passions when he saw an innocent woman +killed, when he stained himself with his friend's blood. His soul was +filled with stormy tumult; it is tranquil, it is empty; nature returns +to it; he sheds virtuous tears. That is the true merit, the great good +of the theatres; there is achieved what can never be achieved by the +frigid declamations of an orator paid to bore the whole of an audience +for an hour. + +David the capitoul, who, without emotion, caused and saw the death of +innocent Calas on the wheel, would have shed tears at the sight of his +own crime in a well-written and well-spoken tragedy. + +It is thus that Pope has said in the prologue to Addison's Cato:-- + + "Tyrants no more their savage nature kept; + And foes to virtue wondered how they wept." + + + + +_THEIST_ + + +The theist is a man firmly persuaded of the existence of a Supreme Being +as good as He is powerful, who has formed all beings with extension, +vegetating, sentient and reflecting; who perpetuates their species, who +punishes crimes without cruelty, and rewards virtuous actions with +kindness. + +The theist does not know how God punishes, how he protects, how he +pardons, for he is not reckless enough to flatter himself that he knows +how God acts, but he knows that God acts and that He is just. +Difficulties against Providence do not shake him in his faith, because +they are merely great difficulties, and not proofs. He submits to this +Providence, although he perceives but a few effects and a few signs of +this Providence: and, judging of the things he does not see by the +things he sees, he considers that this Providence reaches all places and +all centuries. + +Reconciled in this principle with the rest of the universe, he does not +embrace any of the sects, all of which contradict each other; his +religion is the most ancient and the most widespread; for the simple +worship of a God has preceded all the systems of the world. He speaks a +language that all peoples understand, while they do not understand one +another. He has brothers from Pekin to Cayenne, and he counts all wise +men as his brethren. He believes that religion does not consist either +in the opinions of an unintelligible metaphysic, or in vain display, but +in worship and justice. The doing of good, there is his service; being +submissive to God, there is his doctrine. The Mahometan cries to +him--"Have a care if you do not make the pilgrimage to Mecca!" "Woe unto +you," says a Recollet, "if you do not make a journey to Notre-Dame de +Lorette!" He laughs at Lorette and at Mecca; but he succours the needy +and defends the oppressed. + + + + +_TOLERANCE_ + + +What is tolerance? it is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed +of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's +folly--that is the first law of nature. + +It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, +because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster. That admits of no +difficulty. But the government! but the magistrates! but the princes! +how do they treat those who have another worship than theirs? If they +are powerful strangers, it is certain that a prince will make an +alliance with them. François I., very Christian, will unite with +Mussulmans against Charles V., very Catholic. François I. will give +money to the Lutherans of Germany to support them in their revolt +against the emperor; but, in accordance with custom, he will start by +having Lutherans burned at home. For political reasons he pays them in +Saxony; for political reasons he burns them in Paris. But what will +happen? Persecutions make proselytes? Soon France will be full of new +Protestants. At first they will let themselves be hanged, later they in +their turn will hang. There will be civil wars, then will come the St. +Bartholomew; and this corner of the world will be worse than all that +the ancients and moderns have ever told of hell. + +Madmen, who have never been able to give worship to the God who made +you! Miscreants, whom the example of the Noachides, the learned Chinese, +the Parsees and all the sages, has never been able to lead! Monsters, +who need superstitions as crows' gizzards need carrion! you have been +told it already, and there is nothing else to tell you--if you have two +religions in your countries, they will cut each other's throat; if you +have thirty religions, they will dwell in peace. Look at the great Turk, +he governs Guebres, Banians, Greek Christians, Nestorians, Romans. The +first who tried to stir up tumult would be impaled; and everyone is +tranquil. + +Of all religions, the Christian is without doubt the one which should +inspire tolerance most, although up to now the Christians have been the +most intolerant of all men. The Christian Church was divided in its +cradle, and was divided even in the persecutions which under the first +emperors it sometimes endured. Often the martyr was regarded as an +apostate by his brethren, and the Carpocratian Christian expired beneath +the sword of the Roman executioners, excommunicated by the Ebionite +Christian, the which Ebionite was anathema to the Sabellian. + +This horrible discord, which has lasted for so many centuries, is a very +striking lesson that we should pardon each other's errors; discord is +the great ill of mankind; and tolerance is the only remedy for it. + +There is nobody who is not in agreement with this truth, whether he +meditates soberly in his study, or peaceably examines the truth with his +friends. Why then do the same men who admit in private indulgence, +kindness, justice, rise in public with so much fury against these +virtues? Why? it is that their own interest is their god, and that they +sacrifice everything to this monster that they worship. + +I possess a dignity and a power founded on ignorance and credulity; I +walk on the heads of the men who lie prostrate at my feet; if they +should rise and look me in the face, I am lost; I must bind them to the +ground, therefore, with iron chains. + +Thus have reasoned the men whom centuries of bigotry have made powerful. +They have other powerful men beneath them, and these have still others, +who all enrich themselves with the spoils of the poor, grow fat on their +blood, and laugh at their stupidity. They all detest tolerance, as +partisans grown rich at the public expense fear to render their +accounts, and as tyrants dread the word liberty. And then, to crown +everything, they hire fanatics to cry at the top of their voices: +"Respect my master's absurdities, tremble, pay, and keep your mouths +shut." + +It is thus that a great part of the world long was treated; but to-day +when so many sects make a balance of power, what course to take with +them? Every sect, as one knows, is a ground of error; there are no sects +of geometers, algebraists, arithmeticians, because all the propositions +of geometry, algebra and arithmetic are true. In every other science one +may be deceived. What Thomist or Scotist theologian would dare say +seriously that he is sure of his case? + +If it were permitted to reason consistently in religious matters, it is +clear that we all ought to become Jews, because Jesus Christ our Saviour +was born a Jew, lived a Jew, died a Jew, and that he said expressly that +he was accomplishing, that he was fulfilling the Jewish religion. But it +is clearer still that we ought to be tolerant of one another, because we +are all weak, inconsistent, liable to fickleness and error. Shall a reed +laid low in the mud by the wind say to a fellow reed fallen in the +opposite direction: "Crawl as I crawl, wretch, or I shall petition that +you be torn up by the roots and burned?" + + + + +_TRUTH_ + + +"Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, +Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause +came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. +Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice. + +"Pilate saith unto Him, What is truth? And when he had said this he went +out, etc." (St. John xviii. 37.) + +It is a sad thing for the human race that Pilate went out without +waiting for the answer; we should know what truth is. Pilate had very +little curiosity. The accused led before him, says he is king, that he +was to be king; and Pilate does not inquire how that can be. He is +supreme judge in Cæsar's name, he has power of life and death; his duty +was to probe the sense of these words. He ought to say--"Tell me what +you understand by being king. How were you born to be king and to bear +witness to the truth? It is maintained that truth reaches but with +difficulty to the ear of kings. I am judge, I have always had great +trouble in finding it. While your enemies are howling against you +without, give me some information on the point; you will be doing me the +greatest service that has ever been done a judge; and I much prefer to +learn to recognize truth, than to accede to the Jews' clamorous demand +to have you hanged." + +We shall not dare, to be sure, seek what the author of all truth would +have been able to reply to Pilate. + +Would he have said: "Truth is an abstract word which most men use +indifferently in their books and judgments, for error and falsehood?" +This definition would have been marvellously appropriate to all makers +of systems. Similarly is the word "wisdom" taken often for folly, and +"wit" for nonsense. + +Humanly speaking, let us define truth, while waiting for a better +definition, as--"a statement of the facts as they are." + +I suppose that if one had given only six months to teaching Pilate the +truths of logic, he would assuredly have made this conclusive syllogism. +One must not take away the life of a man who has only preached good +morality: well, the man who has been impeached has, on the showing of +his enemies even, often preached excellent morality; therefore he should +not be punished with death. + +He might have drawn this further argument. + +My duty is to disperse the riotous assemblage of a seditious people who +demand a man's death, unreasonably and without legal form; well, that is +the position of the Jews in this instance; therefore I must drive them +away and break up their meeting. + +We suppose that Pilate knew arithmetic; hence we will not speak of those +forms of truth. + +As regards mathematical truths, I think it would have taken at least +three years before he could have learned higher geometry. The truths of +physics combined with those of geometry would have demanded more than +four years. We spend six, ordinarily, in studying theology; I ask twelve +for Pilate, seeing that he was pagan, and that six years would not have +been too much for eradicating all his old errors, and six years more for +making him fit to receive a doctor's hood. + +If Pilate had had a well-balanced mind, I should have asked only two +years to teach him metaphysical truth; and as metaphysical truth is +necessarily allied to moral truth, I flatter myself that in less than +nine years he would have become a real scholar and a perfectly honest +man. + +I should then have said to Pilate:--Historical truths are merely +probabilities. If you had fought at the battle of Philippi, that is for +you a truth which you know by intuition, by perception. But for us who +dwell near the Syrian desert, it is merely a very probable thing, which +we know by hearsay. How much hearsay is necessary to form a conviction +equal to that of a man who, having seen the thing, can flatter himself +that he has a sort of certainty? + +He who has heard the thing told by twelve thousand eyewitnesses, has +only twelve thousand probabilities, equal to one strong probability, +which is not equal to certainty. + +If you have the thing from only one of these witnesses, you know +nothing; you should be sceptical. If the witness is dead, you should be +still more sceptical, for you cannot enlighten yourself. If from several +witnesses who are dead, you are in the same plight. If from those to +whom the witnesses have spoken, your scepticism should increase still +more. + +From generation to generation scepticism increases, and probability +diminishes; and soon probability is reduced to zero. + + + + +_TYRANNY_ + + +One gives the name of tyrant to the sovereign who knows no laws but +those of his caprice, who takes his subjects' property, and who +afterwards enrols them to go to take the property of his neighbours. +There are none of these tyrants in Europe. + +One distinguishes between the tyranny of one man and that of many. The +tyranny of many would be that of a body which invaded the rights of +other bodies, and which exercised despotism in favour of the laws +corrupted by it. Nor are there any tyrants of this sort in Europe. + +Under which tyranny would you like to live? Under neither; but if I had +to choose, I should detest the tyranny of one man less than that of +many. A despot always has his good moments; an assembly of despots +never. If a tyrant does me an injustice, I can disarm him through his +mistress, his confessor or his page; but a company of grave tyrants is +inaccessible to all seductions. When it is not unjust, it is at the +least hard, and never does it bestow favours. + +If I have only one despot, I am quit of him by drawing myself up against +a wall when I see him pass, or by bowing low, or by striking the ground +with my forehead, according to the custom of the country; but if there +is a company of a hundred despots, I am exposed to repeating this +ceremony a hundred times a day, which in the long run is very annoying +if one's hocks are not supple. If I have a farm in the neighbourhood of +one of our lords, I am crushed; if I plead against a relation of the +relations of one of our lords, I am ruined. What is to be done? I fear +that in this world one is reduced to being either hammer or anvil; lucky +the man who escapes these alternatives! + + + + +_VIRTUE_ + + +SECTION I + +It is said of Marcus Brutus that, before killing himself, he uttered +these words: "O virtue! I thought you were something; but you are only +an empty phantom!" + +You were right, Brutus, if you considered virtue as being head of a +faction, and assassin of your benefactor; but if you had considered +virtue as consisting only of doing good to those dependent on you, you +would not have called it a phantom, and you would not have killed +yourself in despair. + +I am very virtuous says this excrement of theology, for I have the four +cardinal virtues, and the three divine. An honest man asks him--"What is +the cardinal virtue?" The other answers--"Strength, prudence, temperance +and justice." + + +THE HONEST MAN: + +If you are just, you have said everything; your strength, your prudence, +your temperance, are useful qualities. If you have them, so much the +better for you; but if you are just, so much the better for the others. +But it is not enough to be just, you must do good; that is what is +really cardinal. And your divine virtues, which are they? + +THE EXCREMENT: + +Faith, hope, charity. + +THE HONEST MAN: + +Is it a virtue to believe? either what you believe seems true to you, +and in this case there is no merit in believing; or it seems false to +you, and then it is impossible for you to believe. + +Hope cannot be a virtue any more than fear; one fears and one hopes, +according as one receives a promise or a threat. As for charity, is it +not what the Greeks and the Romans understood by humanity, love of one's +neighbour? this love is nothing if it be not active; doing good, +therefore, is the sole true virtue. + +THE EXCREMENT: + +One would be a fool! Really, I am to give myself a deal of torment in +order to serve mankind, and I shall get no return! all work deserves +payment. I do not mean to do the least honest action, unless I am +certain of paradise. + +THE HONEST MAN: + +Ah, master! that is to say that, if you did not hope for paradise, and +if you did not fear hell, you would never do any good action. Believe +me, master, there are two things worthy of being loved for themselves, +God and virtue. + +THE EXCREMENT: + +I see, sir, you are a disciple of Fénélon. + +THE HONEST MAN: + +Yes, master. + +THE EXCREMENT: + +I shall denounce you to the judge of the ecclesiastical court at Meaux. + +THE HONEST MAN: + +Go along, denounce! + + +SECTION II + +What is virtue? Beneficence towards the fellow-creature. Can I call +virtue things other than those which do me good? I am needy, you are +generous. I am in danger, you help me. I am deceived, you tell me the +truth. I am neglected, you console me. I am ignorant, you teach me. +Without difficulty I shall call you virtuous. But what will become of +the cardinal and divine virtues? Some of them will remain in the +schools. + +What does it matter to me that you are temperate? you observe a precept +of health; you will have better health, and I am happy to hear it. You +have faith and hope, and I am happy still; they will procure you eternal +life. Your divine virtues are celestial gifts; your cardinal virtues are +excellent qualities which serve to guide you: but they are not virtues +as regards your fellow-creature. The prudent man does good to himself, +the virtuous man does good to mankind. St. Paul was right to tell you +that charity prevails over faith and hope. + +But shall only those that are useful to one's fellow-creature be +admitted as virtues? How can I admit any others? We live in society; +really, therefore, the only things that are good for us are those that +are good for society. A recluse will be sober, pious; he will be clad in +hair-cloth; he will be a saint: but I shall not call him virtuous until +he has done some act of virtue by which other men have profited. So long +as he is alone, he is doing neither good nor evil; for us he is nothing. +If St. Bruno brought peace to families, if he succoured want, he was +virtuous; if he fasted, prayed in solitude, he was a saint. Virtue among +men is an interchange of kindness; he who has no part in this +interchange should not be counted. If this saint were in the world, he +would doubtless do good; but so long as he is not in the world, the +world will be right in refusing him the title of virtuous; he will be +good for himself and not for us. + +But, you say to me, if a recluse is a glutton, a drunkard, given to +secret debauches with himself, he is vicious; he is virtuous, therefore, +if he has the opposite qualities. That is what I cannot agree: he is a +very disagreeable fellow if he has the faults you mention; but he is not +vicious, wicked, punishable as regards society to whom these infamies do +no harm. It is to be presumed that were he to return to society he would +do harm there, that he would be very vicious; and it is even more +probable that he would be a wicked man, than it is sure that the other +temperate and chaste recluse would be a virtuous man, for in society +faults increase, and good qualities diminish. + +A much stronger objection is made; Nero, Pope Alexander VI., and other +monsters of this species, have bestowed kindnesses; I answer hardily +that on that day they were virtuous. + +A few theologians say that the divine emperor Antonine was not virtuous; +that he was a stubborn Stoic who, not content with commanding men, +wished further to be esteemed by them; that he attributed to himself the +good he did to the human race; that all his life he was just, laborious, +beneficent through vanity, and that he only deceived men through his +virtues. "My God!" I exclaim. "Give us often rogues like him!" + + + + +_WHY?_ + + +Why does one hardly ever do the tenth part of the good one might do? + +Why in half Europe do girls pray to God in Latin, which they do not +understand? + +Why in antiquity was there never a theological quarrel, and why were no +people ever distinguished by the name of a sect? The Egyptians were not +called Isiacs or Osiriacs; the peoples of Syria did not have the name of +Cybelians. The Cretans had a particular devotion to Jupiter, and were +never entitled Jupiterians. The ancient Latins were very attached to +Saturn; there was not a village in Latium called Saturnian: on the +contrary, the disciples of the God of truth taking their master's title, +and calling themselves "anointed" like Him, declared, as soon as they +could, an eternal war on all the peoples who were not anointed, and made +war among themselves for fourteen hundred years, taking the names of +Arians, Manicheans, Donatists, Hussites, Papists, Lutherans, Calvinists. +And lastly, the Jansenists and the Molinists have had no more poignant +mortification than that of not having been able to slaughter each other +in pitched battle. Whence does this come? + +Why is the great number of hard-working, innocent men who till the land +every day of the year that you may eat all its fruits, scorned, +vilified, oppressed, robbed; and why is it that the useless and often +very wicked man who lives only by their work, and who is rich only +through their poverty, is on the contrary respected, courted, +considered? + +Why is it that, the fruits of the earth being so necessary for the +conservation of men and animals, one yet sees so many years and so many +countries where there is entire lack of these fruits? + +Why is the half of Africa and America covered with poisons? + +Why is there no land where insects are not far in excess of men? + +Why does a little whitish, evil-smelling secretion form a being which +has hard bones, desires and thoughts? and why do these beings always +persecute each other? + +Why does so much evil exist, seeing that everything is formed by a God +whom all theists are agreed in naming "good?" + +Why, since we complain ceaselessly of our ills, do we spend all our time +in increasing them? + +Why, as we are so miserable, have we imagined that not to be is a great +ill, when it is clear that it was not an ill not to be before we were +born? + +Why and how does one have dreams during sleep, if one has no soul; and +how is it that these dreams are always so incoherent, so extravagant, if +one has a soul? + +Why do the stars move from west to east rather than from east to west? + +Why do we exist? why is there anything? + + + + +_DECLARATION OF THE ADMIRERS, QUESTIONERS AND DOUBTERS WHO HAVE AMUSED +THEMSELVES BY PROPOUNDING TO THE SCHOLARS THE ABOVE QUESTIONS IN NINE +VOLUMES._[23] + + +We declare to the scholars that, being like them prodigiously ignorant +about the first principles of all things, and about the natural, +typical, mystic, allegorical sense of many things, we refer these things +to the infallible judgment of the Holy Inquisition of Rome, Florence, +Madrid, Lisbon, and to the decrees of the Sorbonne of Paris, perpetual +council of the Gauls. + +Our errors springing in no wise from malice, but being the natural +consequence of human frailty, we hope that they will be pardoned to us +in this world and the other. + +We beseech the small number of heavenly spirits who are still shut up in +France in mortal bodies, and who, from there, enlighten the universe at +_thirty sous_ the sheet, to communicate their luminousness to us for the +tenth volume which we reckon on publishing at the end of Lent 1772, or +in Advent 1773; and for their luminousness we will pay _forty sous_. + +This tenth volume will contain some very curious articles, which, if God +favours us, will give new point to the salt which we shall endeavour to +bestow in the thanks we shall give to these gentlemen. + +Executed on Mount Krapack, the thirtieth day of the month of Janus, the +year of the world + +according to Scaliger 5722 +according to Riccioli 5956 +according to Eusebius 6972 +according to the Alphonsine Tables 8707 +according to the Egyptians 370000 +according to the Chaldeans 465102 +according to the Brahmins 780000 +according to the philosophers infinity + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[23] The Philosophical Dictionary was first published as "Questions on +the Encyclopedia," then reprinted as "Reason by Alphabet," and then +finally, with many additions, became the "Philosophical Dictionary." + + + + +TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES: + +This text had three occurrences of "François I" followed by a +superscripted "er". These have be rendered as François Ier in this text. + +The following words used an "oe" ligature in the original: + + foetus + manoeuvre + oesophagus + Phoenicia + Phoenicians + subpoenaed + +Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been left as in the original. + +There is one occurrence of "Vistnou" and one of "Vitsnou". One of these +is clearly an error, but each has been left as in the original. + +The symbol representing infinity has been replaced with the word +"infinity" on page 316, the last line of the text. + +The following corrections have been made to the original text: + + page 17: Nestor, in the "Iliad," wishing to insinuate himself + as a wise conciliator into the minds of Achilles and + Agamemnon{original had "Agamamemnon"}, + + page 40: Atheism is the vice of a few intelligent persons, and + superstition{original had "superstitution"} is the vice of + fools. + + page 42: if it is a greater crime not to believe in the + Deity{original had "Diety"} than to have unworthy opinions + thereof: + + page 54: They will say as much of the great moral maxims, of + Zarathustra's--"In doubt if an{original had "in"} action be + just, abstain..."; + + page 58: What time and what trouble for copying correctly in + Greek and Latin the works of Origen{original had "Origin"}, of + Clement of Alexandria, and of all those other authors called + "fathers." + + page 101: we shall be convinced that we must not be vain about + anything, and yet we shall always{original had "aways"} have + vanity. + + page 128: All that certain tyrants{original had "tryants"} of + the souls desire is that the men they teach shall have false + judgment. + + page 166: and to surround him with little chubby, flushed faces + accompanied{original had "accompained"} by two wings; I laugh + and I pardon them with all my heart. + + page 171: And an unfortunate{original had "unforunate"} idiot, + who had had enough courage to render very great services to the + king + + page 220: Try to retake from the Mohammedans all that they + usurped; but it is easier to calumniate{original had + "calcumniate"} them. + + pafe 224: It was allowed among the Egyptians{original had + "Egyptains"}, the Athenians and even among the Jews, to marry + one's sister on the father's side. + + page 251: Your parents have told you that you should bow before + this man; you respect him before knowing whether he merits your + respect;{original had colon} you grow in years and in + knowledge; + + page 280: (Corporalitas animæ in ipso Evangelio relucescit, De + Anima,{original had period} cap. vii.) + + page 295: "She soon became a monarchy, then,{original had + period}" said the Brahmin. + + page 315: we refer these things to the infallible{original had + "infallable"} judgment of the Holy Inquisition of Rome, + Florence, Madrid, Lisbon, + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, by Voltaire + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VOLTAIRE'S PHILOSOPHICAL *** + +***** This file should be named 18569-8.txt or 18569-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/5/6/18569/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Lisa Reigel and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +*** END: FULL LICENSE *** + diff --git a/18569-8.zip b/18569-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..326dd38 --- /dev/null +++ b/18569-8.zip diff --git a/18569-h.zip b/18569-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..ba68c1f --- /dev/null +++ b/18569-h.zip diff --git a/18569-h/18569-h.htm b/18569-h/18569-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2d832eb --- /dev/null +++ b/18569-h/18569-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,10751 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + + + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + + .paddedp1 { text-align: center; /* adds extra padding on title page + margin-top: 1.5em; and for section headers */ + margin-bottom: 1.5em; + font-weight: bold; + } + .paddedp2 { text-align: center; /* adds extra padding on title page + margin-top: 2em; and for section headers */ + } + + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + table {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: auto;} + td.r {text-align: right; } /* aligning cell content to the right */ + td.l {text-align: left; } /* aligning cell content to the left */ + td.c {text-align: center; } /* aligning cell content in center */ + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + ul.TOC { /* TOC as a whole, or any sub-list of sub-topics in it */ + list-style-type: none; /*list with no symbol */ + position: relative; /*makes a "container" for span.tocright */ + width: 85%; /*page-number margin pulls in */ + } + + span.tocright { /* use absolute positioning to move page# right */ + position: absolute; right: 5%; + } + + .pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + } /* page numbers */ + + ins.correction {text-decoration: none; border-bottom: thin dotted red;} + ins.greekcorr {text-decoration: none; border-bottom: thin dotted #333;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .lowercase {text-transform:lowercase;} + + .footnotehead {margin-left: 5%} + .footnotes {margin-top: 1.5em; border: dashed 1px;} + .footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + .footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + .fnanchor {vertical-align: super; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + + .author {margin-left: 20em;} + + a:link {text-decoration: none;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +Project Gutenberg's Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, by Voltaire + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary + +Author: Voltaire + +Release Date: June 12, 2006 [EBook #18569] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VOLTAIRE'S PHILOSOPHICAL *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Lisa Reigel and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<p>TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: A few typographical errors have been corrected. +They have been marked in the text with <ins class="correction" title="like this">popups</ins>. +A complete list of corrections follows the text. Greek words that may +not display correctly in all browsers are similarly transliterated: +<ins class = "greekcorr" title = "biblos">βιβλος</ins>.</p> + +<h1 style="margin-top: 3em">Voltaire's</h1> +<h1>Philosophical</h1> +<h1>Dictionary</h1> + + +<h4 style="margin-top: 4em">New York</h4> + +<h3 style="margin-top: 3em">CARLTON HOUSE</h3> + +<h4 style="margin-top: 3em">MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</h4> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Preface" id="Preface"></a><i>PREFACE</i></h2> + + +<p>This book does not demand continuous reading; but at whatever place one +opens it, one will find matter for reflection. The most useful books are +those of which readers themselves compose half; they extend the thoughts +of which the germ is presented to them; they correct what seems +defective to them, and they fortify by their reflections what seems to +them weak.</p> + +<p>It is only really by enlightened people that this book can be read; the +ordinary man is not made for such knowledge; philosophy will never be +his lot. Those who say that there are truths which must be hidden from +the people, need not be alarmed; the people do not read; they work six +days of the week, and on the seventh go to the inn. In a word, +philosophical works are made only for philosophers, and every honest man +must try to be a philosopher, without pluming himself on being one.</p> + +<p>This alphabet is extracted from the most estimable works which are not +commonly within the reach of the many; and if the author does not always +mention the sources of his information, as being well enough known to +the learned, he must not be suspected of wishing to take the credit for +other people's work, because he himself preserves anonymity, according +to this word of the Gospel: "Let not thy left hand know what thy right +hand doeth."</p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p> +<h2><i>CONTENTS</i></h2> +<ul class="TOC"> +<li> <span class="tocright">PAGE</span></li> +<li><a href="#Preface"><span class="smcap">Preface by Voltaire</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_5">5</a></span></li> +<li> </li> +<li><a href="#Adultery"><span class="smcap">Adultery</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Advocate"><span class="smcap">Advocate</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_16">16</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Ancients"><span class="smcap">Ancients and Moderns</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_17">17</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Animals"><span class="smcap">Animals</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_21">21</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Antiquity"><span class="smcap">Antiquity</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_24">24</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Arts"><span class="smcap">Arts</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_27">27</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Astrology"><span class="smcap">Astrology</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_29">29</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Atheism"><span class="smcap">Atheism</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_32">32</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Authority"><span class="smcap">Authority</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_46">46</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Authors"><span class="smcap">Authors</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_48">48</a></span></li> +<li> </li> +<li><a href="#Banishment"><span class="smcap">Banishment</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_50">50</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Bankruptcy"><span class="smcap">Bankruptcy</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_51">51</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Beauty"><span class="smcap">Beauty</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_53">53</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Bishop"><span class="smcap">Bishop</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_55">55</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Books"><span class="smcap">Books</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_57">57</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Bouleverd"><span class="smcap">Bouleverd</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_60">60</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Bourges"><span class="smcap">Bourges</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_61">61</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Brahmins"><span class="smcap">Brahmins</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_62">62</a></span></li> +<li> </li> +<li><a href="#Character"><span class="smcap">Character</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Charlatan"><span class="smcap">Charlatan</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_68">68</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Civil_Laws"><span class="smcap">Civil Laws</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_73">73</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Climate"><span class="smcap">Climate</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_74">74</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Common_Sense"><span class="smcap">Common Sense</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_78">78</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Concatenation"><span class="smcap">Concatenation of Events</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_80">80</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Contradictions"><span class="smcap">Contradictions</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_83">83</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Corn"><span class="smcap">Corn</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_85">85</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Cromwell"><span class="smcap">Cromwell</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_88">88</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Customs"><span class="smcap">Customs</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_94">94</a></span></li> +<li> <a name="Page_8" id="Page_8"></a></li> +<li><a href="#Democracy"><span class="smcap">Democracy</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_96">96</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Destiny"><span class="smcap">Destiny</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_98">98</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Devout"><span class="smcap">Devout</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_102">102</a></span></li> +<li> </li> +<li><a href="#Ecclesiastical"><span class="smcap">Ecclesiastical Ministry</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_103">103</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Emblem"><span class="smcap">Emblem</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_106">106</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Theatre"><span class="smcap">English Theatre, on the</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_110">110</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Envy"><span class="smcap">Envy</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_112">112</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Equality"><span class="smcap">Equality</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_114">114</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Expiation"><span class="smcap">Expiation</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_118">118</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Extreme"><span class="smcap">Extreme</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_122">122</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Ezourveidam"><span class="smcap">Ezourveidam</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_125">125</a></span></li> +<li> </li> +<li><a href="#Faith"><span class="smcap">Faith</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_126">126</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#False_Minds"><span class="smcap">False Minds</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_128">128</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Fatherland"><span class="smcap">Fatherland</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_131">131</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Final_Causes"><span class="smcap">Final Causes</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_133">133</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Fraud"><span class="smcap">Fraud</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_136">136</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Free-will"><span class="smcap">Free-will</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_142">142</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#French"><span class="smcap">French</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_146">146</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Friendship"><span class="smcap">Friendship</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_150">150</a></span></li> +<li> </li> +<li><a href="#God"><span class="smcap">God</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_151">151</a></span></li> +<li> </li> +<li><a href="#Helvetia"><span class="smcap">Helvetia</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_156">156</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#History"><span class="smcap">History</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_157">157</a></span></li> +<li> </li> +<li><a href="#Ignorance"><span class="smcap">Ignorance</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_163">163</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Impious"><span class="smcap">Impious</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_166">166</a></span></li> +<li> </li> +<li><a href="#Joan"><span class="smcap">Joan of Arc</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_168">168</a></span></li> +<li> </li> +<li><a href="#Kissing"><span class="smcap">Kissing</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_173">173</a></span></li> +<li> </li> +<li><a href="#Languages"><span class="smcap">Languages</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_178">178</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Laws"><span class="smcap">Laws</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_184">184</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Liberty"><span class="smcap">Liberty</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_187">187</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Library"><span class="smcap">Library</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_191">191</a></span></li> +<li><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9"></a><a href="#Limits"><span class="smcap">Limits of the Human Mind</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_194">194</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Crimes"><span class="smcap">Local Crimes</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_195">195</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Love"><span class="smcap">Love</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_197">197</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Luxury"><span class="smcap">Luxury</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_200">200</a></span></li> +<li> </li> +<li><a href="#Man"><span class="smcap">Man</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_203">203</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Iron_Mask"><span class="smcap">Man in the Iron Mask</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_204">204</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Marriage"><span class="smcap">Marriage</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_210">210</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Master"><span class="smcap">Master</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_211">211</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Men_of_Letters"><span class="smcap">Men of Letters</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_214">214</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Metamorphosis"><span class="smcap">Metamorphosis</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_216">216</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Milton"><span class="smcap">Milton, on the Reproach of Plagiarism Against</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_217">217</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Mohammedans"><span class="smcap">Mohammedans</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_220">220</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Mountain"><span class="smcap">Mountain</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_221">221</a></span></li> +<li> </li> +<li><a href="#Nakedness"><span class="smcap">Nakedness</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_222">222</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Natural_Law"><span class="smcap">Natural Law</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_224">224</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Nature"><span class="smcap">Nature</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_227">227</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Necessary"><span class="smcap">Necessary</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_231">231</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Novelties"><span class="smcap">New Novelties</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_236">236</a></span></li> +<li> </li> +<li><a href="#Philosopher"><span class="smcap">Philosopher</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_237">237</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Power"><span class="smcap">Power, Omnipotence</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_240">240</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Prayers"><span class="smcap">Prayers</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_245">245</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Ancient_Philosophy"><span class="smcap">Précis of Ancient Philosophy</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_247">247</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Prejudices"><span class="smcap">Prejudices</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_251">251</a></span></li> +<li> </li> +<li><a href="#Rare"><span class="smcap">Rare</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_255">255</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Reason"><span class="smcap">Reason</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_257">257</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Religion"><span class="smcap">Religion</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_259">259</a></span></li> +<li> </li> +<li><a href="#Sect"><span class="smcap">Sect</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_267">267</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Self-esteem"><span class="smcap">Self-esteem</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_271">271</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Soul"><span class="smcap">Soul</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_273">273</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#States"><span class="smcap">States, Governments</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_294">294</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Superstition"><span class="smcap">Superstition</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_297">297</a></span></li> +<li> <a name="Page_10" id="Page_10"></a></li> +<li><a href="#Tears"><span class="smcap">Tears</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_299">299</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Theist"><span class="smcap">Theist</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_301">301</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Tolerance"><span class="smcap">Tolerance</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_302">302</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Truth"><span class="smcap">Truth</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_305">305</a></span></li> +<li><a href="#Tyranny"><span class="smcap">Tyranny</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_308">308</a></span></li> +<li> </li> +<li><a href="#Virtue"><span class="smcap">Virtue</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_309">309</a></span></li> +<li> </li> +<li><a href="#Why"><span class="smcap">Why?</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_313">313</a></span></li> +<li> </li> +<li><a href="#Declaration"><span class="smcap">Declaration of Admirers, Questioners and Doubters</span></a> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_315">315</a></span></li> +</ul> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Adultery" id="Adultery"></a><i>ADULTERY</i></h2> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">Note on a Magistrate Written about 1764</span></h3> + +<p>A senior magistrate of a French town had the misfortune to have a wife +who was debauched by a priest before her marriage, and who since covered +herself with disgrace by public scandals: he was so moderate as to leave +her without noise. This man, about forty years old, vigorous and of +agreeable appearance, needs a woman; he is too scrupulous to seek to +seduce another man's wife, he fears intercourse with a public woman or +with a widow who would serve him as concubine. In this disquieting and +sad state, he addresses to his Church a plea of which the following is a +précis:</p> + +<p>My wife is criminal, and it is I who am punished. Another woman is +necessary as a comfort to my life, to my virtue even; and the sect of +which I am a member refuses her to me; it forbids me to marry an honest +girl. The civil laws of to-day, unfortunately founded on canon law, +deprive me of the rights of humanity. The Church reduces me to seeking +either the pleasures it reproves, or the shameful compensations it +condemns; it tries to force me to be criminal.</p> + +<p>I cast my eyes over all the peoples of the earth; there is not a single +one except the Roman Catholic people among whom divorce and a new +marriage are not natural rights.</p> + +<p>What upheaval of the rule has therefore made among the Catholics a +virtue of undergoing adultery, and a duty of lacking a wife when one has +been infamously outraged by one's own?</p> + +<p>Why is a bond that has rotted indissoluble in spite of the great law +adopted by the code, <i>quidquid ligatur dissolubile est</i>? I am allowed a +separation <i>a mensa et thoro</i>,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> and I am not allowed divorce. The law +can deprive me of my wife, and it leaves me a name called "sacrament"! +What a contradiction! what slavery! and under what laws did we receive +birth!</p> + +<p>What is still more strange is that this law of my Church is directly +contrary to the words which this Church itself believes to have been +uttered by Jesus Christ: "Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it +be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery" (Matt. +xix. 9).</p> + +<p>I do not examine whether the pontiffs of Rome are in the right to +violate at their pleasure the law of him they regard as their master; +whether when a state has need of an heir, it is permissible to repudiate +her who can give it one. I do not inquire if a turbulent woman, +demented, homicidal, a poisoner, should not be repudiated equally with +an adulteress: I limit myself to the sad state which concerns me: God +permits me to remarry, and the Bishop of Rome does not permit me.</p> + +<p>Divorce was a practice among Catholics under all the emperors; it was +also in all the dismembered states of the Roman Empire. The kings of +France, those called "of the first line," almost all repudiated their +wives in order to take new ones. At last came Gregory IX., enemy of the +emperors and kings, who by a decree made marriage an unshakeable yoke; +his decretal became the law of Europe. When the kings wanted to +repudiate a wife who was an adulteress according to Jesus Christ's law, +they could not succeed; it was necessary to find ridiculous pretexts. +Louis the younger was obliged, to accomplish his unfortunate divorce +from Eleanor of Guienne, to allege a relationship which did not exist. +Henry IV., to repudiate Marguerite de Valois, pretexted a still more +false cause, a refusal of consent. One had to lie to obtain a divorce +legitimately.</p> + +<p>What! a king can abdicate his crown, and without the Pope's permission +he cannot abdicate his wife! Is it possible that otherwise enlightened +men have wallowed so long in this absurd servitude!</p> + +<p>That our priests, that our monks renounce wives, to that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> I consent; it +is an outrage against population, it is a misfortune for them, but they +merit this misfortune which they have made for themselves. They have +been the victims of the popes who wanted to have in them slaves, +soldiers without families and without fatherland, living solely for the +Church: but I, magistrate, who serve the state all day, I need a wife in +the evening; and the Church has not the right to deprive me of a benefit +which God accords me. The apostles were married, Joseph was married, and +I want to be. If I, Alsacian, am dependent on a priest who dwells at +Rome, if this priest has the barbarous power to rob me of a wife, let +him make a eunuch of me for the singing of <i>Misereres</i> in his chapel.</p> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">Note for Women</span></h3> + +<p>Equity demands that, having recorded this note in favour of husbands, we +should also put before the public the case in favour of wives, presented +to the junta of Portugal by a Countess of Arcira. This is the substance +of it:</p> + +<p>The Gospel has forbidden adultery for my husband just as for me; he will +be damned as I shall, nothing is better established. When he committed +twenty infidelities, when he gave my necklace to one of my rivals, and +my ear-rings to another, I did not ask the judges to have him shaved, to +shut him up among monks and to give me his property. And I, for having +imitated him once, for having done with the most handsome young man in +Lisbon what he did every day with impunity with the most idiotic +strumpets of the court and the town, have to answer at the bar before +licentiates each of whom would be at my feet if we were alone together +in my closet; have to endure at the court the usher cutting off my hair +which is the most beautiful in the world; and being shut up among nuns +who have no common sense, deprived of my dowry and my marriage +covenants, with all my property given to my coxcomb of a husband to help +him seduce other women and to commit fresh adulteries.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> +I ask if it is just, and if it is not evident that the laws were made by +cuckolds?</p> + +<p>In answer to my plea I am told that I should be happy not to be stoned +at the city gate by the canons, the priests of the parish and the whole +populace. This was the practice among the first nation of the earth, the +chosen nation, the cherished nation, the only one which was right when +all the others were wrong.</p> + +<p>To these barbarities I reply that when the poor adulteress was presented +by her accusers to the Master of the old and new law, He did not have +her stoned; that on the contrary He reproached them with their +injustice, that he laughed at them by writing on the ground with his +finger, that he quoted the old Hebraic proverb—"He that is without sin +among you, let him first cast a stone at her"; that then they all +retired, the oldest fleeing first, because the older they were the more +adulteries had they committed.</p> + +<p>The doctors of canon law answer me that this history of the adulteress +is related only in the Gospel of St. John, that it was not inserted +there until later. Leontius, Maldonat, affirm that it is not to be found +in a single ancient Greek copy; that none of the twenty-three early +commentators mentions it. Origen, St. Jerome, St. John Chrysostom, +Theophilact, Nonnus, do not recognize it at all. It is not to be found +in the Syriac Bible, it is not in Ulphilas' version.</p> + +<p>That is what my husband's advocates say, they who would have me not only +shaved, but also stoned.</p> + +<p>But the advocates who pleaded for me say that Ammonius, author of the +third century, recognized this story as true, and that if St. Jerome +rejects it in some places, he adopts it in others; that, in a word, it +is authentic to-day. I leave there, and I say to my husband: "If you are +without sin, shave me, imprison me, take my property; but if you have +committed more sins than I have, it is for me to shave you, to have you +imprisoned, and to seize your fortune. In justice these things should be +equal."</p> + +<p>My husband answers that he is my superior and my chief, that he is more +than an inch taller, that he is shaggy as a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> bear; that consequently I +owe him everything, and that he owes me nothing.</p> + +<p>But I ask if Queen Anne of England is not her husband's chief? if her +husband the Prince of Denmark, who is her High Admiral, does not owe her +entire obedience? and if she would not have him condemned by the court +of peers if the little man's infidelity were in question? It is +therefore clear that if the women do not have the men punished, it is +when they are not the stronger.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Advocate" id="Advocate"></a><i>ADVOCATE</i></h2> + + +<p>An advocate is a man who, not having a sufficient fortune to buy one of +those resplendent offices on which the universe has its eyes, studies +the laws of Theodosius and Justinian for three years, so that he may +learn the usages of Paris, and who finally, being registered, has the +right to plead causes for money, if he have a strong voice.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Ancients" id="Ancients"></a><i>ANCIENTS AND MODERNS</i></h2> + + +<p>The great dispute between the ancients and the moderns is not yet +settled; it has been on the table since the silver age succeeded the +golden age. Mankind has always maintained that the good old times were +much better than the present day. Nestor, in the "Iliad," wishing to +insinuate himself as a wise conciliator into the minds of Achilles and +<ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Original has Agamamemnon.">Agamemnon</ins>, starts by saying to them—"I lived formerly with better men +than you; no, I have never seen and I shall never see such great +personages as Dryas, Cenæus, Exadius, Polyphemus equal to the gods, +etc."</p> + +<p>Posterity has well avenged Achilles for Nestor's poor compliment. Nobody +knows Dryas any longer; one has hardly heard speak of Exadius, or of +Cenæus; and as for Polyphemus equal to the gods, he has not too good a +reputation, unless the possession of a big eye in one's forehead, and +the eating of men raw, are to have something of the divine.</p> + +<p>Lucretius does not hesitate to say that nature has degenerated (lib. II. +v. 1159). Antiquity is full of eulogies of another more remote +antiquity. Horace combats this prejudice with as much finesse as force +in his beautiful Epistle to Augustus (Epist. I. liv. ii.). "Must our +poems, then," he says, "be like our wines, of which the oldest are +always preferred?"</p> + +<p>The learned and ingenious Fontenelle expresses himself on this subject +as follows:</p> + +<p>"The whole question of the pre-eminence between the ancients and the +moderns, once it is well understood, is reduced to knowing whether the +trees which formerly were in our countryside were bigger than those of +to-day. In the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> event that they were, Homer, Plato, Demosthenes cannot +be equalled in these latter centuries.</p> + +<p>"Let us throw light on this paradox. If the ancients had more intellect +than us, it is that the brains of those times were better ordered, +formed of firmer or more delicate fibres, filled with more animal +spirits; but in virtue of what were the brains of those times better +ordered? The trees also would have been bigger and more beautiful; for +if nature was then younger and more vigorous, the trees, as well as +men's brains, would have been conscious of this vigour and this youth." +("Digression on the Ancients and the Moderns," vol. 4, 1742 edition.)</p> + +<p>With the illustrious academician's permission, that is not at all the +state of the question. It is not a matter of knowing whether nature has +been able to produce in our day as great geniuses and as good works as +those of Greek and Latin antiquity; but to know whether we have them in +fact. Without a doubt it is not impossible for there to be as big oaks +in the forest of Chantilli as in the forest of Dodona; but supposing +that the oaks of Dodona had spoken, it would be quite clear that they +had a great advantage over ours, which in all probability will never +speak.</p> + +<p>Nature is not bizarre; but it is possible that she gave the Athenians a +country and a sky more suitable than Westphalia and the Limousin for +forming certain geniuses. Further, it is possible that the government of +Athens, by seconding the climate, put into Demosthenes' head something +that the air of Climart and La Grenouillère and the government of +Cardinal de Richelieu did not put into the heads of Omer Talon and +Jérome Bignon.</p> + +<p>This dispute is therefore a question of fact. Was antiquity more fecund +in great monuments of all kinds, up to the time of Plutarch, than modern +centuries have been from the century of the Medicis up to Louis XIV. +inclusive?</p> + +<p>The Chinese, more than two hundred years before our era, constructed +that great wall which was not able to save them from the invasion of the +Tartars. The Egyptians, three thousand years before, had overloaded the +earth with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> their astonishing pyramids, which had a base of about ninety +thousand square feet. Nobody doubts that, if one wished to undertake +to-day these useless works, one could easily succeed by a lavish +expenditure of money. The great wall of China is a monument to fear; the +pyramids are monuments to vanity and superstition. Both bear witness to +a great patience in the peoples, but to no superior genius. Neither the +Chinese nor the Egyptians would have been able to make even a statue +such as those which our sculptors form to-day.</p> + +<p>The chevalier Temple, who has made it his business to disparage all the +moderns, claims that in architecture they have nothing comparable to the +temples of Greece and Rome: but, for all that he is English, he must +agree that the Church of St. Peter is incomparably more beautiful than +the Capitol was.</p> + +<p>It is curious with what assurance he maintains that there is nothing new +in our astronomy, nothing in the knowledge of the human body, unless +perhaps, he says, the circulation of the blood. Love of his own opinion, +founded on his vast self-esteem, makes him forget the discovery of the +satellites of Jupiter, of the five moons and the ring of Saturn, of the +rotation of the sun on its axis, of the calculated position of three +thousand stars, of the laws given by Kepler and Newton for the heavenly +orbs, of the causes of the precession of the equinoxes, and of a hundred +other pieces of knowledge of which the ancients did not suspect even the +possibility.</p> + +<p>The discoveries in anatomy are as great in number. A new universe in +little, discovered by the microscope, was counted for nothing by the +chevalier Temple; he closed his eyes to the marvels of his +contemporaries, and opened them only to admire ancient ignorance.</p> + +<p>He goes so far as to pity us for having nothing left of the magic of the +Indians, the Chaldeans, the Egyptians; and by this magic he understands +a profound knowledge of nature, whereby they produced miracles: but he +does not cite one miracle, because in fact there never were any.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> "What +has become," he asks, "of the charms of that music which so often +enchanted man and beast, the fishes, the birds, the snakes, and changed +their nature?"</p> + +<p>This enemy of his century really believes the fable of Orpheus, and has +not apparently heard either the beautiful music of Italy, or even that +of France, which in truth does not charm snakes, but does charm the ears +of connoisseurs.</p> + +<p>What is still more strange is that, having all his life cultivated +belles-lettres, he does not reason better about our good authors than +about our philosophers. He looks on Rabelais as a great man. He cites +the "Amours des Gaules" as one of our best works. He was, however, a +scholar, a courtier, a man of much wit, an ambassador, a man who had +reflected profoundly on all he had seen. He possessed great knowledge: a +prejudice sufficed to spoil all this merit.</p> + +<p>There are beauties in Euripides, and in Sophocles still more; but they +have many more defects. One dares say that the beautiful scenes of +Corneille and the touching tragedies of Racine surpass the tragedies of +Sophocles and Euripides as much as these two Greeks surpass Thespis. +Racine was quite conscious of his great superiority over Euripides; but +he praised the Greek poet in order to humiliate Perrault.</p> + +<p>Molière, in his good pieces, is as superior to the pure but cold +Terence, and to the droll Aristophanes, as to Dancourt the buffoon.</p> + +<p>There are therefore spheres in which the moderns are far superior to the +ancients, and others, very few in number, in which we are their +inferiors. It is to this that the whole dispute is reduced.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Animals" id="Animals"></a><i>ANIMALS</i></h2> + + +<p>What a pitiful, what a sorry thing to have said that animals are +machines bereft of understanding and feeling, which perform their +operations always in the same way, which learn nothing, perfect nothing, +etc.!</p> + +<p>What! that bird which makes its nest in a semi-circle when it is +attaching it to a wall, which builds it in a quarter circle when it is +in an angle, and in a circle upon a tree; that bird acts always in the +same way? That hunting-dog which you have disciplined for three months, +does it not know more at the end of this time than it knew before your +lessons? Does the canary to which you teach a tune repeat it at once? do +you not spend a considerable time in teaching it? have you not seen that +it has made a mistake and that it corrects itself?</p> + +<p>Is it because I speak to you, that you judge that I have feeling, +memory, ideas? Well, I do not speak to you; you see me going home +looking disconsolate, seeking a paper anxiously, opening the desk where +I remember having shut it, finding it, reading it joyfully. You judge +that I have experienced the feeling of distress and that of pleasure, +that I have memory and understanding.</p> + +<p>Bring the same judgment to bear on this dog which has lost its master, +which has sought him on every road with sorrowful cries, which enters +the house agitated, uneasy, which goes down the stairs, up the stairs, +from room to room, which at last finds in his study the master it loves, +and which shows him its joy by its cries of delight, by its leaps, by +its caresses.</p> + +<p>Barbarians seize this dog, which in friendship surpasses<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> man so +prodigiously; they nail it on a table, and they dissect it alive in +order to show the mesenteric veins. You discover in it all the same +organs of feeling that are in yourself. Answer me, machinist, has nature +arranged all the means of feeling in this animal, so that it may not +feel? has it nerves in order to be impassible? Do not suppose this +impertinent contradiction in nature.</p> + +<p>But the schoolmasters ask what the soul of animals is? I do not +understand this question. A tree has the faculty of receiving in its +fibres its sap which circulates, of unfolding the buds of its leaves and +its fruit; will you ask what the soul of this tree is? it has received +these gifts; the animal has received those of feeling, of memory, of a +certain number of ideas. Who has bestowed these gifts? who has given +these faculties? He who has made the grass of the fields to grow, and +who makes the earth gravitate toward the sun.</p> + +<p>"Animals' souls are substantial forms," said Aristotle, and after +Aristotle, the Arab school, and after the Arab school, the angelical +school, and after the angelical school, the Sorbonne, and after the +Sorbonne, nobody at all.</p> + +<p>"Animals' souls are material," cry other philosophers. These have not +been in any better fortune than the others. In vain have they been asked +what a material soul is; they have to admit that it is matter which has +sensation: but what has given it this sensation? It is a material soul, +that is to say that it is matter which gives sensation to matter; they +cannot issue from this circle.</p> + +<p>Listen to other brutes reasoning about the brutes; their soul is a +spiritual soul which dies with the body; but what proof have you of it? +what idea have you of this spiritual soul, which, in truth, has feeling, +memory, and its measure of ideas and ingenuity; but which will never be +able to know what a child of six knows? On what ground do you imagine +that this being, which is not body, dies with the body? The greatest +fools are those who have advanced that this soul is neither body nor +spirit. There is a fine system. By spirit we can understand only some +unknown thing which is not body. Thus these gentlemen's system<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> comes +back to this, that the animals' soul is a substance which is neither +body nor something which is not body.</p> + +<p>Whence can come so many contradictory errors? From the habit men have +always had of examining what a thing is, before knowing if it exists. +The clapper, the valve of a bellows, is called in French the "soul" of a +bellows. What is this soul? It is a name that I have given to this valve +which falls, lets air enter, rises again, and thrusts it through a pipe, +when I make the bellows move.</p> + +<p>There is not there a distinct soul in the machine: but what makes +animals' bellows move? I have already told you, what makes the stars +move. The philosopher who said, "<i>Deus est anima brutorum</i>," was right; +but he should go further.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Antiquity" id="Antiquity"></a><i>ANTIQUITY</i></h2> + + +<p>Have you sometimes seen in a village Pierre Aoudri and his wife +Peronelle wishing to go before their neighbours in the procession? "Our +grandfathers," they say, "were tolling the bells before those who jostle +us to-day owned even a pig-sty."</p> + +<p>The vanity of Pierre Aoudri, his wife and his neighbours, knows nothing +more about it. Their minds kindle. The quarrel is important; honour is +in question. Proofs are necessary. A scholar who sings in the choir, +discovers an old rusty iron pot, marked with an "A," first letter of the +name of the potter who made the pot. Pierre Aoudri persuades himself +that it was his ancestors' helmet. In this way was Cæsar descended from +a hero and from the goddess Venus. Such is the history of nations; such +is, within very small margins, the knowledge of early antiquity.</p> + +<p>The scholars of Armenia <i>demonstrate</i> that the terrestrial paradise was +in their land. Some profound Swedes <i>demonstrate</i> that it was near Lake +Vener which is visibly a remnant of it. Some Spaniards <i>demonstrate</i> +also that it was in Castille; while the Japanese, the Chinese, the +Indians, the Africans, the Americans are not sufficiently unfortunate to +know even that there was formerly a terrestrial paradise at the source +of the Phison, the Gehon, the Tigris and the Euphrates, or, if you +prefer it, at the source of the Guadalquivir, the Guadiana, the Douro +and the Ebro; for from Phison one easily makes Phaetis; and from Phaetis +one makes the Baetis which is the Guadalquivir. The Gehon is obviously +the Guadiana, which begins with a "G." The Ebro, which is in Catalonia, +is incontestably the Euphrates, of which the initial letter is "E."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> +But a Scotsman appears who <i>demonstrates</i> in his turn that the garden of +Eden was at Edinburgh, which has retained its name; and it is to be +believed that in a few centuries this opinion will make its fortune.</p> + +<p>The whole globe was burned once upon a time, says a man versed in +ancient and modern history; for I read in a newspaper that some +absolutely black charcoal has been found in Germany at a depth of a +hundred feet, between mountains covered with wood. And it is suspected +even that there were charcoal burners in this place.</p> + +<p>Phaeton's adventure makes it clear that everything has boiled right to +the bottom of the sea. The sulphur of Mount Vesuvius proves invincibly +that the banks of the Rhine, Danube, Ganges, Nile and the great Yellow +River are merely sulphur, nitre and Guiac oil, which only await the +moment of the explosion to reduce the earth to ashes, as it has already +been. The sand on which we walk is evident proof that the earth has been +vitrified, and that our globe is really only a glass ball, just as are +our ideas.</p> + +<p>But if fire has changed our globe, water has produced still finer +revolutions. For you see clearly that the sea, the tides of which mount +as high as eight feet in our climate, has produced mountains of a height +of sixteen to seventeen thousand feet. This is so true that some learned +men who have never been in Switzerland have found a big ship with all +its rigging petrified on Mount St. Gothard, or at the bottom of a +precipice, one knows not where; but it is quite certain that it was +there. Therefore men were originally fish, <i>quod erat demonstrandum</i>.</p> + +<p>To descend to a less antique antiquity, let us speak of the times when +the greater part of the barbarous nations left their countries, to go to +seek others which were hardly any better. It is true, if there be +anything true in ancient history, that there were some Gaulish brigands +who went to pillage Rome in the time of Camillus. Other Gaulish brigands +had passed, it is said, through Illyria on the way to hire their +services as murderers to other murderers, in the direction of Thrace; +they exchanged their blood for bread,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> and later established themselves +in Galatia. But who were these Gauls? were they Berichons and Angevins? +They were without a doubt Gauls whom the Romans called Cisalpines, and +whom we call Transalpines, famished mountain-dwellers, neighbours of the +Alps and the Apennines. The Gauls of the Seine and the Marne did not +know at that time that Rome existed, and could not take it into their +heads to pass Mount Cenis, as Hannibal did later, to go to steal the +wardrobes of Roman senators who at that time for all furniture had a +robe of poor grey stuff, ornamented with a band the colour of ox blood; +two little pummels of ivory, or rather dog's bone, on the arms of a +wooden chair; and in their kitchens a piece of rancid bacon.</p> + +<p>The Gauls, who were dying of hunger, not finding anything to eat in +Rome, went off therefore to seek their fortune farther away, as was the +practice of the Romans later, when they ravaged so many countries one +after the other; as did the peoples of the North when they destroyed the +Roman Empire.</p> + +<p>And, further, what is it which instructs very feebly about these +emigrations? It is a few lines that the Romans wrote at hazard; because +for the Celts, the Velches or the Gauls, these men who it is desired to +make pass for eloquent, at that time did not know, they and their bards, +how either to read or write.</p> + +<p>But to infer from that that the Gauls or Celts, conquered after by a few +of Cæsar's legions, and by a horde of Bourguignons, and lastly by a +horde of Sicamores, under one Clodovic, had previously subjugated the +whole world, and given their names and laws to Asia, seems to me to be +very strange: the thing is not mathematically impossible, and if it be +<i>demonstrated</i>, I give way; it would be very uncivil to refuse to the +Velches what one accords to the Tartars.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Arts" id="Arts"></a><i>ARTS</i></h2> + +<h3><span class="smcap">That the Newness of the Arts in no wise proves the Newness of the +Globe</span></h3> + + +<p>All the philosophers thought matter eternal but the arts appear new. +There is not one, even to the art of making bread, which is not recent. +The first Romans ate pap; and these conquerors of so many nations never +thought of either windmills or watermills. This truth seems at first to +contradict the antiquity of the globe such as it is, or supposes +terrible revolutions in this globe. The inundations of barbarians can +hardly annihilate arts which have become necessary. I suppose that an +army of negroes come among us like locusts, from the mountains of +Cobonas, through the Monomotapa, the Monoemugi, the Nosseguais, the +Maracates; that they have traversed Abyssinia, Nubia, Egypt, Syria, Asia +Minor, the whole of our Europe; that they have overthrown everything, +ransacked everything; there will still remain a few bakers, a few +cobblers, a few tailors, a few carpenters: the necessary arts will +survive; only luxury will be annihilated. It is what was seen at the +fall of the Roman Empire; the art of writing even became very rare; +almost all those which contributed to the comfort of life were reborn +only long after. We invent new ones every day.</p> + +<p>From all this one can at bottom conclude nothing against the antiquity +of the globe. For, supposing even that an influx of barbarians had made +us lose entirely all the arts even to the arts of writing and making +bread; supposing, further, that for ten years past we had no bread, +pens, ink and paper; the land which has been able to subsist for ten +years without eating bread and without writing its thoughts, would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> be +able to pass a century, and a hundred thousand centuries without these +aids.</p> + +<p>It is quite clear that man and the other animals can exist very well +without bakers, without novelists, and without theologians, witness the +whole of America, witness three quarters of our continent.</p> + +<p>The newness of the arts among us does not therefore prove the newness of +the globe, as was claimed by Epicurus, one of our predecessors in +reverie, who supposed that by chance the eternal atoms in declining, had +one day formed our earth. Pomponace said: "<i>Se il mondo non è eterno, +per tutti santi è molto vecchio.</i>"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Astrology" id="Astrology"></a><i>ASTROLOGY</i></h2> + + +<p>Astrology may rest on better foundations than Magic. For if no one has +seen either Goblins, or Lemures, or Dives, or Peris, or Demons, or +Cacodemons, the predictions of astrologers have often been seen to +succeed. If of two astrologers consulted on the life of a child and on +the weather, one says that the child will live to manhood, the other +not; if one announces rain, and the other fine weather, it is clear that +one of them will be a prophet.</p> + +<p>The great misfortune of the astrologers is that the sky has changed +since the rules of the art were established. The sun, which at the +equinox was in Aries in the time of the Argonauts, is to-day in Taurus; +and the astrologers, to the great ill-fortune of their art, to-day +attribute to one house of the sun what belongs visibly to another. +However, that is not a demonstrative reason against astrology. The +masters of the art deceive themselves; but it is not demonstrated that +the art cannot exist.</p> + +<p>There is no absurdity in saying: Such and such a child is born in the +waxing of the moon, during stormy weather, at the rising of such and +such star; his constitution has been feeble, and his life unhappy and +short; which is the ordinary lot of poor constitutions: this child, on +the contrary, was born when the moon was full, the sun strong, the +weather calm, at the rising of such and such star; his constitution has +been good, his life long and happy. If these observations had been +repeated, if they had been found accurate, experience would have been +able after some thousands of years to form an art which it would have +been difficult to doubt: one would have thought, with some likelihood, +that men are like trees and vegetables which must be planted and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> sown +only in certain seasons. It would have been of no avail against the +astrologers to say: My son was born at a fortunate time, and +nevertheless died in his cradle; the astrologer would have answered: It +often happens that trees planted in the proper season perish; I answered +to you for the stars, but I did not answer for the flaw of conformation +you communicated to your child. Astrology operates only when no cause +opposes itself to the good the stars can do.</p> + +<p>One would not have succeeded better in discrediting the astrologer by +saying: Of two children who were born in the same minute, one has been +king, the other has been only churchwarden of his parish; for the +astrologer could very well have defended himself by pointing out that +the peasant made his fortune when he became churchwarden, as the prince +when he became king.</p> + +<p>And if one alleged that a bandit whom Sixtus V. had hanged was born at +the same time as Sixtus V., who from a pig-herd became Pope, the +astrologers would say one had made a mistake of a few seconds, and that +it is impossible, according to the rules, for the same star to give the +triple crown and the gibbet. It is then only because a host of +experiences belied the predictions, that men perceived at last that the +art was illusory; but before being undeceived, they were long credulous.</p> + +<p>One of the most famous mathematicians in Europe, named Stoffler, who +flourished in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and who long worked +at the reform of the calendar, proposed at the Council of Constance, +foretold a universal flood for the year 1524. This flood was to arrive +in the month of February, and nothing is more plausible; for Saturn, +Jupiter and Mars were then in conjunction in the sign of Pisces. All the +peoples of Europe, Asia and Africa, who heard speak of the prediction, +were dismayed. Everyone expected the flood, despite the rainbow. Several +contemporary authors record that the inhabitants of the maritime +provinces of Germany hastened to sell their lands dirt cheap to those +who had most money, and who were not so credulous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> as they. Everyone +armed himself with a boat as with an ark. A Toulouse doctor, named +Auriol, had a great ark made for himself, his family and his friends; +the same precautions were taken over a large part of Italy. At last the +month of February arrived, and not a drop of water fell: never was month +more dry, and never were the astrologers more embarrassed. Nevertheless +they were not discouraged, nor neglected among us; almost all princes +continued to consult them.</p> + +<p>I have not the honour of being a prince; but the celebrated Count of +Boulainvilliers and an Italian, named Colonne, who had much prestige in +Paris, both foretold that I should die infallibly at the age of +thirty-two. I have been so malicious as to deceive them already by +nearly thirty years, wherefore I humbly beg their pardon.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Atheism" id="Atheism"></a><i>ATHEISM</i></h2> + + +<h3>SECTION I</h3> + +<p class="paddedp2"><span class="smcap">Of the Comparison so often made between Atheism and Idolatry</span></p> + +<p>It seems to me that in the "Encyclopedic Dictionary" the opinion of the +Jesuit Richeome, on atheists and idolaters, has not been refuted as +strongly as it might have been; opinion held formerly by St. Thomas, St. +Gregory of Nazianze, St. Cyprian and Tertullian, opinion that Arnobius +set forth with much force when he said to the pagans: "Do you not blush +to reproach us with despising your gods, and is it not much more proper +to believe in no God at all, than to impute to them infamous +actions?"<a name="FNanchor_1" id="FNanchor_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> opinion established long before by Plutarch, who says "that +he much prefers people to say there is no Plutarch, than to say—'There +is an inconstant, choleric, vindictive Plutarch'";<a name="FNanchor_2" id="FNanchor_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> opinion +strengthened finally by all the effort of Bayle's dialectic.</p> + +<p>Here is the ground of dispute, brought to fairly dazzling light by the +Jesuit Richeome, and rendered still more plausible by the way Bayle has +turned it to account.<a name="FNanchor_3" id="FNanchor_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p> + +<p>"There are two porters at the door of a house; they are asked: 'Can one +speak to your master?' 'He is not there,' answers one. 'He is there,' +answers the other, 'but he is busy making counterfeit money, forged +contracts, daggers and poisons, to undo those who have but accomplished +his purposes.' The atheist resembles the first of these porters, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>the +pagan the other. It is clear, therefore, that the pagan offends the +Deity more gravely than does the atheist."</p> + +<p>With Father Richeome's and even Bayle's permission, that is not at all +the position of the matter. For the first porter to resemble the +atheists, he must not say—"My master is not here": he should say—"I +have no master; him whom you claim to be my master does not exist; my +comrade is a fool to tell you that he is busy compounding poisons and +sharpening daggers to assassinate those who have executed his caprices. +No such being exists in the world."</p> + +<p>Richeome has reasoned, therefore, very badly. And Bayle, in his somewhat +diffuse discourses, has forgotten himself so far as to do Richeome the +honour of annotating him very malapropos.</p> + +<p>Plutarch seems to express himself much better in preferring people who +affirm there is no Plutarch, to those who claim Plutarch to be an +unsociable man. In truth, what does it matter to him that people say he +is not in the world? But it matters much to him that his reputation be +not tarnished. It is not thus with the Supreme Being.</p> + +<p>Plutarch even does not broach the real object under discussion. It is +not a question of knowing who offends more the Supreme Being, whether it +be he who denies Him, or he who distorts Him. It is impossible to know +otherwise than by revelation, if God is offended by the empty things men +say of Him.</p> + +<p>Without a thought, philosophers fall almost always into the ideas of the +common herd, in supposing God to be jealous of His glory, to be +choleric, to love vengeance, and in taking rhetorical figures for real +ideas. The interesting subject for the whole universe, is to know if it +be not better, for the good of all mankind, to admit a rewarding and +revengeful God, who recompenses good actions hidden, and who punishes +secret crimes, than to admit none at all.</p> + +<p>Bayle exhausts himself in recounting all the infamies imputed by fable +to the gods of antiquity. His adversaries answer him with commonplaces +that signify nothing. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> partisans of Bayle and his enemies have +almost always fought without making contact. They all agree that Jupiter +was an adulterer, Venus a wanton, Mercury a rogue. But, as I see it, +that is not what needs consideration. One must distinguish between +Ovid's Metamorphoses and the religion of the ancient Romans. It is quite +certain that never among the Romans or even among the Greeks, was there +a temple dedicated to Mercury the rogue, Venus the wanton, Jupiter the +adulterer.</p> + +<p>The god whom the Romans called <i>Deus optimus</i>, very good, very great, +was not reputed to encourage Clodius to sleep with Cæsar's wife, or +Cæsar to be King Nicomedes' Sodomite.</p> + +<p>Cicero does not say that Mercury incited Verres to steal Sicily, +although Mercury, in the fable, had stolen Apollo's cows. The real +religion of the ancients was that Jupiter, <i>very good and very just</i>, +and the secondary gods, punished the perjurer in the infernal regions. +Likewise the Romans were long the most religious observers of oaths. +Religion was very useful, therefore, to the Romans. There was no command +to believe in Leda's two eggs, in the changing of Inachus' daughter into +a cow, in the love of Apollo for Hyacinthus.</p> + +<p>One must not say therefore that the religion of Numa dishonoured the +Deity. For a long time, therefore, people have been disputing over a +chimera; which happens only too often.</p> + +<p>The question is then asked whether a nation of atheists can exist; it +seems to me that one must distinguish between the nation properly so +called, and a society of philosophers above the nation. It is very true +that in every country the populace has need of the greatest curb, and +that if Bayle had had only five or six hundred peasants to govern, he +would not have failed to announce to them the existence of a God, +rewarder and revenger. But Bayle would not have spoken of Him to the +Epicureans who were rich people, fond of rest, cultivating all the +social virtues, and above all friendship, fleeing the embarrassment and +danger of public<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> affairs, in fine, leading a comfortable and innocent +life. It seems to me that in this way the dispute is finished as regards +society and politics.</p> + +<p>For entirely savage races, it has been said already that one cannot +count them among either the atheists or the theists. Asking them their +belief would be like asking them if they are for Aristotle or +Democritus: they know nothing; they are not atheists any more than they +are Peripatetics.</p> + +<p>In this case, I shall answer that the wolves live like this, and that an +assembly of cannibal barbarians such as you suppose them is not a +society; and I shall always ask you if, when you have lent your money to +someone in your society, you want neither your debtor, nor your +attorney, nor your judge, to believe in God.</p> + +<p class="paddedp2"> </p> +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Of Modern Atheists. Reasons of the Worshippers of God</span></p> + +<p>We are intelligent beings: intelligent beings cannot have been formed by +a crude, blind, insensible being: there is certainly some difference +between the ideas of Newton and the dung of a mule. Newton's +intelligence, therefore, came from another intelligence.</p> + +<p>When we see a beautiful machine, we say that there is a good engineer, +and that this engineer has excellent judgment. The world is assuredly an +admirable machine; therefore there is in the world an admirable +intelligence, wherever it may be. This argument is old, and none the +worse for that.</p> + +<p>All living bodies are composed of levers, of pulleys, which function +according to the laws of mechanics; of liquids which the laws of +hydrostatics cause to circulate perpetually; and when one thinks that +all these beings have a perception quite unrelated to their +organization, one is overwhelmed with surprise.</p> + +<p>The movement of the heavenly bodies, that of our little earth round the +sun, all operate by virtue of the most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> profound mathematical law. How +Plato who was not aware of one of these laws, eloquent but visionary +Plato, who said that the earth was erected on an equilateral triangle, +and the water on a right-angled triangle; strange Plato, who says there +can be only five worlds, because there are only five regular bodies: +how, I say, did Plato, who did not know even spherical trigonometry, +have nevertheless a genius sufficiently fine, an instinct sufficiently +happy, to call God the "Eternal Geometer," to feel the existence of a +creative intelligence? Spinoza himself admits it. It is impossible to +strive against this truth which surrounds us and which presses on us +from all sides.</p> + +<p class="paddedp2"> </p> +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Reasons of the Atheists</span></p> + +<p>Notwithstanding, I have known refractory persons who say that there is +no creative intelligence at all, and that movement alone has by itself +formed all that we see and all that we are. They tell you brazenly:</p> + +<p>"The combination of this universe was possible, seeing that the +combination exists: therefore it was possible that movement alone +arranged it. Take four of the heavenly bodies only, Mars, Venus, Mercury +and the Earth: let us think first only of the place where they are, +setting aside all the rest, and let us see how many probabilities we +have that movement alone put them in their respective places. We have +only twenty-four chances in this combination, that is, there are only +twenty-four chances against one to bet that these bodies will not be +where they are with reference to each other. Let us add to these four +globes that of Jupiter; there will be only a hundred and twenty against +one to bet that Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury and our globe, will not be +placed where we see them.</p> + +<p>"Add finally Saturn: there will be only seven hundred and twenty chances +against one, for putting these six big planets in the arrangement they +preserve among themselves, according to their given distances. It is +therefore<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> demonstrated that in seven hundred and twenty throws, +movement alone has been able to put these six principal planets in their +order.</p> + +<p>"Take then all the secondary bodies, all their combinations, all their +movements, all the beings that vegetate, that live, that feel, that +think, that function in all the globes, you will have but to increase +the number of chances; multiply this number in all eternity, up to the +number which our feebleness calls 'infinity,' there will always be a +unity in favour of the formation of the world, such as it is, by +movement alone: therefore it is possible that in all eternity the +movement of matter alone has produced the entire universe such as it +exists. It is even inevitable that in eternity this combination should +occur. Thus," they say, "not only is it possible for the world to be +what it is by movement alone, but it was impossible for it not to be +likewise after an infinity of combinations."</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Answer</span></p> + +<p>All this supposition seems to me prodigiously fantastic, for two +reasons; first, that in this universe there are intelligent beings, and +that you would not know how to prove it possible for movement alone to +produce understanding; second, that, from your own avowal, there is +infinity against one to bet, that an intelligent creative cause animates +the universe. When one is alone face to face with the infinite, one +feels very small.</p> + +<p>Again, Spinoza himself admits this intelligence; it is the basis of his +system. You have not read it, and it must be read. Why do you want to go +further than him, and in foolish arrogance plunge your feeble reason in +an abyss into which Spinoza dared not descend? Do you realize thoroughly +the extreme folly of saying that it is a blind cause that arranges that +the square of a planet's revolution is always to the square of the +revolutions of other planets, as the cube of its distance is to the cube +of the distances of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> the others to the common centre? Either the +heavenly bodies are great geometers, or the Eternal Geometer has +arranged the heavenly bodies.</p> + +<p>But where is the Eternal Geometer? is He in one place or in all places, +without occupying space? I have no idea. Is it of His own substance that +He has arranged all things? I have no idea. Is He immense without +quantity and without quality? I have no idea. All that I know is that +one must worship Him and be just.</p> + +<p class="paddedp2"> </p> +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">New Objection of a Modern Atheist</span><a name="FNanchor_4" id="FNanchor_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p> + +<p>Can one say that the parts of animals conform to their needs: what are +these needs? preservation and propagation. Is it astonishing then that, +of the infinite combinations which chance has produced, there has been +able to subsist only those that have organs adapted to the nourishment +and continuation of their species? have not all the others perished of +necessity?</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Answer</span></p> + +<p>This objection, oft-repeated since Lucretius, is sufficiently refuted by +the gift of sensation in animals, and by the gift of intelligence in +man. How should combinations "which chance has produced," produce this +sensation and this intelligence (as has just been said in the preceding +paragraph)? Without any doubt the limbs of animals are made for their +needs with incomprehensible art, and you are not so bold as to deny it. +You say no more about it. You feel that you have nothing to answer to +this great argument which nature brings against you. The disposition of +a fly's wing, a snail's organs suffices to bring you to the ground.</p> + +<p class="paddedp2"> </p> +<p class="center"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span><span class="smcap">Maupertuis' Objection</span></p> + +<p>Modern natural philosophers have but expanded these so-called arguments, +often they have pushed them to trifling and indecency. They have found +God in the folds of the skin of the rhinoceros: one could, with equal +reason, deny His existence because of the tortoise's shell.</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Answer</span></p> + +<p>What reasoning! The tortoise and the rhinoceros, and all the different +species, are proof equally in their infinite variety of the same cause, +the same design, the same aim, which are preservation, generation and +death.</p> + +<p>There is unity in this infinite variety; the shell and the skin bear +witness equally. What! deny God because shell does not resemble leather! +And journalists have been prodigal of eulogies about these ineptitudes, +eulogies they have not given to Newton and Locke, both worshippers of +the Deity who spoke with full knowledge.</p> + +<p class="paddedp2"> </p> +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Maupertuis' Objection</span></p> + +<p>Of what use are beauty and proportion in the construction of the snake? +They may have uses, some say, of which we are ignorant. At least let us +be silent then; let us not admire an animal which we know only by the +harm it does.</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Answer</span></p> + +<p>And be you silent too, seeing that you cannot conceive its utility any +more than I can; or avow that in reptiles everything is admirably +proportioned.</p> + +<p>Some are venomous, you have been so yourself. Here<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> there is question +only of the prodigious art which has formed snakes, quadrupeds, birds, +fish and bipeds. This art is sufficiently evident. You ask why the snake +does harm? And you, why have you done harm so many times? Why have you +been a persecutor? which is the greatest of all crimes for a +philosopher. That is another question, a question of moral and physical +ill. For long has one asked why there are so many snakes and so many +wicked men worse than snakes. If flies could reason, they would complain +to God of the existence of spiders; but they would admit what Minerva +admitted about Arachne, in the fable, that she arranges her web +marvellously.</p> + +<p>One is bound therefore to recognize an ineffable intelligence which even +Spinoza admitted. One must agree that this intelligence shines in the +vilest insect as in the stars. And as regards moral and physical ill, +what can one say, what do? console oneself by enjoying physical and +moral good, in worshipping the Eternal Being who has made one and +permitted the other.</p> + +<p>One more word on this subject. Atheism is the vice of a few intelligent +persons, and <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original had superstitution.">superstition</ins> is the vice of fools. But rogues! what are +they? rogues.</p> + + +<h3>SECTION II</h3> + +<p>Let us say a word on the moral question set in action by Bayle, to know +"if a society of atheists could exist?" Let us mark first of all in this +matter what is the enormous contradiction of men in this dispute; those +who have risen against Bayle's opinion with the greatest ardour; those +who have denied with the greatest insults the possibility of a society +of atheists, have since maintained with the same intrepidity that +atheism is the religion of the government of China.</p> + +<p>Assuredly they are quite mistaken about the Chinese government; they had +but to read the edicts of the emperors<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> of this vast country to have +seen that these edicts are sermons, and that everywhere there is mention +of the Supreme Being, ruler, revenger, rewarder.</p> + +<p>But at the same time they are not less mistaken on the impossibility of +a society of atheists; and I do not know how Mr. Bayle can have +forgotten one striking example which was capable of making his cause +victorious.</p> + +<p>In what does a society of atheists appear impossible? It is that one +judges that men who had no check could never live together; that laws +can do nothing against secret crimes; that a revengeful God who punishes +in this world or the other the wicked who have escaped human justice is +necessary.</p> + +<p>The laws of Moses, it is true, did not teach a life to come, did not +threaten punishments after death, did not teach the first Jews the +immortality of the soul; but the Jews, far from being atheists, far from +believing in avoiding divine vengeance, were the most religious of all +men. Not only did they believe in the existence of an eternal God, but +they believed Him always present among them; they trembled lest they be +punished in themselves, in their wives, in their children, in their +posterity, even unto the fourth generation; this curb was very potent.</p> + +<p>But, among the Gentiles, many sects had no curb; the sceptics doubted +everything: the academicians suspended judgment on everything; the +Epicureans were persuaded that the Deity could not mix Himself in the +affairs of men; and at bottom, they admitted no Deity. They were +convinced that the soul is not a substance, but a faculty which is born +and which perishes with the body; consequently they had no yoke other +than morality and honour. The Roman senators and knights were veritable +atheists, for the gods did not exist for men who neither feared nor +hoped anything from them. The Roman senate in the time of Cæsar and +Cicero, was therefore really an assembly of atheists.</p> + +<p>That great orator, in his harangue for Cluentius, says to the whole +senate in assembly: "What ill does death do him? we reject all the inept +fables of the nether regions:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> of what then has death deprived him? of +nothing but the consciousness of suffering."</p> + +<p>Does not Cæsar, the friend of Cataline, wishing to save his friend's +life against this same Cicero, object to him that to make a criminal die +is not to punish him at all, that death <i>is nothing</i>, that it is merely +the end of our ills, that it is a moment more happy than calamitous? And +do not Cicero and the whole senate surrender to these reasons? The +conquerors and the legislators of the known universe formed visibly +therefore a society of men who feared nothing from the gods, who were +real atheists.</p> + +<p>Further on Bayle examines whether idolatry is more dangerous than +atheism, if it is a greater crime not to believe in the <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original has Diety.">Deity</ins> than to +have unworthy opinions thereof: in that he is of Plutarch's opinion; he +believes it is better to have no opinion than to have a bad opinion; but +with all deference to Plutarch, it was clearly infinitely better for the +Greeks to fear Ceres, Neptune and Jupiter, than to fear nothing at all. +The sanctity of oaths is clearly necessary, and one should have more +confidence in those who believe that a false oath will be punished, than +in those who think they can make a false oath with impunity. It is +indubitable that in a civilized town, it is infinitely more useful to +have a religion, even a bad one, than to have none at all.</p> + +<p>It looks, therefore, that Bayle should have examined rather which is the +more dangerous, fanaticism or atheism. Fanaticism is certainly a +thousand times more deadly; for atheism inspires no bloody passion, +whereas fanaticism does: atheism is not opposed to crime, but fanaticism +causes crimes to be committed. Fanatics committed the massacres of St. +Bartholomew. Hobbes passed for an atheist; he led a tranquil and +innocent life. The fanatics of his time deluged England, Scotland and +Ireland with blood. Spinoza was not only atheist, but he taught atheism; +it was not he assuredly who took part in the judicial assassination of +Barneveldt; it was not he who tore the brothers De Witt in pieces, and +who ate them grilled.</p> + +<p>The atheists are for the most part impudent and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> misguided scholars who +reason badly, and who not being able to understand the creation, the +origin of evil, and other difficulties, have recourse to the hypothesis +of the eternity of things and of inevitability.</p> + +<p>The ambitious, the sensual, have hardly time for reasoning, and for +embracing a bad system; they have other things to do than comparing +Lucretius with Socrates. That is how things go among us.</p> + +<p>That was not how things went with the Roman senate which was almost +entirely composed of atheists in theory and in practice, that is to say, +who believed in neither a Providence nor a future life; this senate was +an assembly of philosophers, of sensualists and ambitious men, all very +dangerous, who ruined the republic. Epicureanism existed under the +emperors: the atheists of the senate had been rebels in the time of +Sylla and Cæsar: under Augustus and Tiberius they were atheist slaves.</p> + +<p>I would not wish to have to deal with an atheist prince, who would find +it to his interest to have me ground to powder in a mortar: I should be +quite sure of being ground to powder. If I were a sovereign, I would not +wish to have to deal with atheist courtiers, whose interest it would be +to poison me: I should have to be taking antidotes every day. It is +therefore absolutely necessary for princes and for peoples, that the +idea of a Supreme Being, creator, ruler, rewarder, revenger, shall be +deeply engraved in people's minds.</p> + +<p>Bayle says, in his "Thoughts on the Comets," that there are atheist +peoples. The Caffres, the Hottentots, the Topinambous, and many other +small nations, have no God: they neither deny nor affirm; they have +never heard speak of Him; tell them that there is a God: they will +believe it easily; tell them that everything happens through the nature +of things; they will believe you equally. To claim that they are +atheists is to make the same imputation as if one said they are +anti-Cartesian; they are neither for nor against Descartes. They are +real children; a child is neither atheist nor deist, he is nothing.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>What conclusion shall we draw from all this? That atheism is a very +pernicious monster in those who govern; that it is also pernicious in +the persons around statesmen, although their lives may be innocent, +because from their cabinets it may pierce right to the statesmen +themselves; that if it is not so deadly as fanaticism, it is nearly +always fatal to virtue. Let us add especially that there are less +atheists to-day than ever, since philosophers have recognized that there +is no being vegetating without germ, no germ without a plan, etc., and +that wheat comes in no wise from putrefaction.</p> + +<p>Some geometers who are not philosophers have rejected final causes, but +real philosophers admit them; a catechist proclaims God to the children, +and Newton demonstrates Him to the learned.</p> + +<p>If there are atheists, whom must one blame, if not the mercenary tyrants +of souls, who, making us revolt against their knaveries, force a few +weak minds to deny the God whom these monsters dishonour. How many times +have the people's leeches brought oppressed citizens to the point of +revolting against their king!</p> + +<p>Men fattened on our substance cry to us: "Be persuaded that a she-ass +has spoken; believe that a fish has swallowed a man and has given him up +at the end of three days safe and sound on the shore; have no doubt that +the God of the universe ordered one Jewish prophet to eat excrement +(Ezekiel), and another prophet to buy two whores and to make with them +sons of whoredom (Hosea). These are the very words that the God of truth +and purity has been made to utter; believe a hundred things either +visibly abominable or mathematically impossible; unless you do, the God +of pity will burn you, not only during millions of thousands of millions +of centuries in the fire of hell, but through all eternity, whether you +have a body, whether you have not."</p> + +<p>These inconceivable absurdities revolt weak and rash minds, as well as +wise and resolute minds. They say: "Our masters paint God to us as the +most insensate and the most barbarous of all beings; therefore there is +no God;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> but they should say: therefore our masters attribute to God +their absurdities and their furies, therefore God is the contrary of +what they proclaim, therefore God is as wise and as good as they make +him out mad and wicked. It is thus that wise men account for things. But +if a bigot hears them, he denounces them to a magistrate who is a +watchdog of the priests; and this watchdog has them burned over a slow +fire, in the belief that he is avenging and imitating the divine majesty +he outrages.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1" id="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Arnobius, <i>Adversus Gentes.</i>, lib. v.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2" id="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <i>Of Superstition</i>, by Plutarch.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3" id="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> See Bayle, <i>Continuation of Divers Thoughts</i>, par. 77, art. +XIII.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4" id="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> See, for this objection, Maupertuis' Essay on Cosmology, +first part.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Authority" id="Authority"></a><i>AUTHORITY</i></h2> + + +<p>Wretched human beings, whether you wear green robes, turbans, black +robes or surplices, cloaks and neckbands, never seek to use authority +where there is question only of reason, or consent to be scoffed at +throughout the centuries as the most impertinent of all men, and to +suffer public hatred as the most unjust.</p> + +<p>A hundred times has one spoken to you of the insolent absurdity with +which you condemned Galileo, and I speak to you for the hundred and +first, and I hope you will keep the anniversary of it for ever; I desire +that there be graved on the door of your Holy Office:</p> + +<p>"Here seven cardinals, assisted by minor brethren, had the master of +thought in Italy thrown into prison at the age of seventy; made him fast +on bread and water because he instructed the human race, and because +they were ignorant."</p> + +<p>There was pronounced a sentence in favour of Aristotle's categories, and +there was decreed learnedly and equitably the penalty of the galleys for +whoever should be sufficiently daring as to have an opinion different +from that of the Stagyrite, whose books were formerly burned by two +councils.</p> + +<p>Further on a faculty, which had not great faculties, issued a decree +against innate ideas, and later a decree for innate ideas, without the +said faculty being informed by its beadles what an idea is.</p> + +<p>In the neighbouring schools judicial proceedings were instituted against +the circulation of the blood.</p> + +<p>An action was started against inoculation, and parties have been +subpœnaed.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>At the Customs of thought twenty-one folio volumes were seized, in which +it was stated treacherously and wickedly that triangles always have +three angles; that a father is older than his son; that Rhea Silvia lost +her virginity before giving birth to her child, and that flour is not an +oak leaf.</p> + +<p>In another year was judged the action: <i>Utrum chimera bombinans in vacuo +possit comedere secundas intentiones</i>, and was decided in the +affirmative.</p> + +<p>In consequence, everyone thought themselves far superior to Archimedes, +Euclid, Cicero, Pliny, and strutted proudly about the University +quarter.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Authors" id="Authors"></a><i>AUTHORS</i></h2> + + +<p>Author is a generic name which can, like the name of all other +professions, signify good or bad, worthy of respect or ridicule, useful +and agreeable, or trash for the wastepaper-basket.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>We think that the author of a good work should refrain from three +things—from putting his name, save very modestly, from the epistle +dedicatory, and from the preface. Others should refrain from a +fourth—that is, from writing.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Prefaces are another stumbling-block. "The 'I,'" said Pascal, "is +hateful." Speak as little of yourself as possible; for you must know +that the reader's self-esteem is as great as yours. He will never +forgive you for wanting to condemn him to have a good opinion of you. It +is for your book to speak for you, if it comes to be read by the crowd.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>If you want to be an author, if you want to write a book; reflect that +it must be useful and new, or at least infinitely agreeable.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>If an ignoramus, a pamphleteer, presumes to criticize without +discrimination, you can confound him; but make rare mention of him, for +fear of sullying your writings.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>If you are attacked as regards your style, never reply; it is for your +work alone to make answer.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Someone says you are ill, be content that you are well,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> without wanting +to prove to the public that you are in perfect health. And above all +remember that the public cares precious little whether you are well or +ill.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>A hundred authors make compilations in order to have bread, and twenty +pamphleteers make excerpts from these compilations, or apology for them, +or criticism and satire of them, also with the idea of having bread, +because they have no other trade. All these persons go on Friday to the +police lieutenant of Paris to ask permission to sell their rubbish. They +have audience immediately after the strumpets who do not look at them +because they know that these are underhand dealings.<a name="FNanchor_5" id="FNanchor_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Real authors are those who have succeeded in one of the real arts, in +epic poetry, in tragedy or comedy, in history or philosophy, who have +taught men or charmed them. The others of whom we have spoken are, among +men of letters, what wasps are among birds.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5" id="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> When Voltaire was writing, it was the police lieutenant of +Paris who had, under the chancellor, the inspection of books: since +then, a part of his department has been taken from him. He has kept only +the inspection of theatrical plays and works below those on printed +sheets. The detail of this part is immense. In Paris one is not +permitted to print that one has lost one's dog, unless the police are +assured that in the poor beast's description there is no proposition +contrary to morality and religion (1819).</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Banishment" id="Banishment"></a><i>BANISHMENT</i></h2> + + +<p>Banishment for a period or for life, punishment to which one condemns +delinquents, or those one wishes to appear as such.</p> + +<p>Not long ago one banished outside the sphere of jurisdiction a petty +thief, a petty forger, a man guilty of an act of violence. The result +was that he became a big robber, a forger on a big scale, and murderer +within the sphere of another jurisdiction. It is as if we threw into our +neighbours' fields the stones which incommode us in our own.</p> + +<p>Those who have written on the rights of men, have been much tormented to +know for certain if a man who has been banished from his fatherland +still belongs to his fatherland. It is nearly the same thing as asking +if a gambler who has been driven away from the gaming-table is still one +of the gamblers.</p> + +<p>If to every man it is permitted by natural right to choose his +fatherland, he who has lost the right of citizen can, with all the more +reason, choose for himself a new fatherland; but can he bear arms +against his former fellow-citizens? There are a thousand examples of it. +How many French protestants naturalized in Holland, England and Germany +have served against France, and against armies containing their own +kindred and their own brothers! The Greeks who were in the King of +Persia's armies made war on the Greeks, their former compatriots. One +has seen the Swiss in the Dutch service fire on the Swiss in the French +service. It is still worse than to fight against those who have banished +you; for, after all, it seems less dishonest to draw the sword for +vengeance than to draw it for money.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Bankruptcy" id="Bankruptcy"></a><i>BANKRUPTCY</i></h2> + + +<p>Few bankruptcies were known in France before the sixteenth century. The +great reason is that there were no bankers. Lombards, Jews lent on +security at ten per cent: trade was conducted in cash. Exchange, +remittances to foreign countries were a secret unknown to all judges.</p> + +<p>It is not that many people were not ruined; but that was not called +<i>bankruptcy</i>; one said <i>discomfiture</i>; this word is sweeter to the ear. +One used the word <i>rupture</i> as did the Boulonnais; but rupture does not +sound so well.</p> + +<p>The bankruptcies came to us from Italy, <i>bancorotto, bancarotta, +gambarotta e la giustizia non impicar</i>. Every merchant had his bench +(<i>banco</i>) in the place of exchange; and when he had conducted his +business badly, declared himself <i>fallito</i>, and abandoned his property +to his creditors with the proviso that he retain a good part of it for +himself, be free and reputed a very upright man. There was nothing to be +said to him, his bench was broken, <i>banco rotto, banca rotta</i>; he could +even, in certain towns, keep all his property and baulk his creditors, +provided he seated himself bare-bottomed on a stone in the presence of +all the merchants. This was a mild derivation of the old Roman +proverb—<i>solvere aut in aere aut in cute</i>, to pay either with one's +money or one's skin. But this custom no longer exists; creditors have +preferred their money to a bankrupt's hinder parts.</p> + +<p>In England and in some other countries, one declares oneself bankrupt in +the gazettes. The partners and creditors gather together by virtue of +this announcement which is read in the coffee-houses, and they come to +an arrangement as best they can.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>As among the bankruptcies there are frequently fraudulent cases, it has +been necessary to punish them. If they are taken to court they are +everywhere regarded as theft, and the guilty are condemned to +ignominious penalties.</p> + +<p>It is not true that in France the death penalty was decreed against +bankrupts without distinction. Simple failures involved no penalty; +fraudulent bankrupts suffered the penalty of death in the states of +Orleans, under Charles IX., and in the states of Blois in 1576, but +these edicts, renewed by Henry IV., were merely comminatory.</p> + +<p>It is too difficult to prove that a man has dishonoured himself on +purpose, and has voluntarily ceded all his goods to his creditors in +order to cheat them. When there has been a doubt, one has been content +with putting the unfortunate man in the pillory, or with sending him to +the galleys, although ordinarily a banker makes a poor convict.</p> + +<p>Bankrupts were very favourably treated in the last year of Louis XIV.'s +reign, and during the Regency. The sad state to which the interior of +the kingdom was reduced, the multitude of merchants who could not or +would not pay, the quantity of unsold or unsellable effects, the fear of +interrupting all commerce, obliged the government in 1715, 1716, 1718, +1721, 1722, and 1726 to suspend all proceedings against all those who +were in a state of insolvency. The discussions of these actions were +referred to the judge-consuls; this is a jurisdiction of merchants very +expert in these cases, and better constituted for going into these +commercial details than the parliaments which have always been more +occupied with the laws of the kingdom than with finance. As the state +was at that time going bankrupt, it would have been too hard to punish +the poor middle-class bankrupts.</p> + +<p>Since then we have had eminent men, fraudulent bankrupts, but they have +not been punished.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Beauty" id="Beauty"></a><i>BEAUTY</i></h2> + + +<p>Ask a toad what beauty is, the <i>to kalon</i>? He will answer you that it is +his toad wife with two great round eyes issuing from her little head, a +wide, flat mouth, a yellow belly, a brown back. Interrogate a Guinea +negro, for him beauty is a black oily skin, deep-set eyes, a flat nose. +Interrogate the devil; he will tell you that beauty is a pair of horns, +four claws and a tail. Consult, lastly, the philosophers, they will +answer you with gibberish: they have to have something conforming to the +arch-type of beauty in essence, to the <i>to kalon</i>.</p> + +<p>One day I was at a tragedy near by a philosopher. "How beautiful that +is!" he said.</p> + +<p>"What do you find beautiful there?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"It is beautiful," he answered, "because the author has reached his +goal."</p> + +<p>The following day he took some medicine which did him good. "The +medicine has reached its goal," I said to him. "What a beautiful +medicine!" He grasped that one cannot say a medicine is beautiful, and +that to give the name of "beauty" to something, the thing must cause you +to admire it and give you pleasure. He agreed that the tragedy had +inspired these sentiments in him, and that there was the <i>to kalon</i>, +beauty.</p> + +<p>We journeyed to England: the same piece, perfectly translated, was +played there; it made everybody in the audience yawn. "Ho, ho!" he said, +"the <i>to kalon</i> is not the same for the English and the French." After +much reflection he came to the conclusion that beauty is often very +relative, just as what is decent in Japan is indecent in Rome,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> and what +is fashionable in Paris, is not fashionable in Pekin; and he saved +himself the trouble of composing a long treatise on beauty.</p> + +<p>There are actions which the whole world finds beautiful. Two of Cæsar's +officers, mortal enemies, send each other a challenge, not as to who +shall shed the other's blood with tierce and quarte behind a thicket as +with us, but as to who shall best defend the Roman camp, which the +Barbarians are about to attack. One of them, having repulsed the enemy, +is near succumbing; the other rushes to his aid, saves his life, and +completes the victory.</p> + +<p>A friend sacrifices his life for his friend; a son for his father.... +The Algonquin, the Frenchman, the Chinaman, will all say that that is +very <i>beautiful</i>, that these actions give them pleasure, that they +admire them.</p> + +<p>They will say as much of the great moral maxims, of Zarathustra's—"In +doubt if <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original has in.">an</ins> action be just, abstain..."; of Confucius'—"Forget +injuries, never forget kindnesses."</p> + +<p>The negro with the round eyes and flat nose, who will not give the name +of "beauties" to the ladies of our courts, will without hesitation give +it to these actions and these maxims. The wicked man even will recognize +the beauty of these virtues which he dare not imitate. The beauty which +strikes the senses merely, the imagination, and that which is called +"intelligence," is often uncertain therefore. The beauty which speaks to +the heart is not that. You will find a host of people who will tell you +that they have found nothing beautiful in three-quarters of the Iliad; +but nobody will deny that Codrus' devotion to his people was very +beautiful, supposing it to be true.</p> + +<p>There are many other reasons which determine me not to write a treatise +on beauty.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Bishop" id="Bishop"></a><i>BISHOP</i></h2> + + +<p>Samuel Ornik, native of Basle, was, as you know, a very amiable young +man who, besides, knew his New Testament by heart in Greek and German. +When he was twenty his parents sent him on a journey. He was charged to +carry some books to the coadjutor of Paris, at the time of the Fronde. +He arrived at the door of the archbishop's residence; the Swiss told him +that Monseigneur saw nobody. "Comrade," said Ornik to him, "you are very +rude to your compatriots. The apostles let everyone approach, and Jesus +Christ desired that people should suffer all the little children to come +to him. I have nothing to ask of your master; on the contrary, I have +brought him something."</p> + +<p>"Come inside, then," said the Swiss.</p> + +<p>He waits an hour in a first antechamber. As he was very naïve, he began +a conversation with a servant, who was very fond of telling all he knew +of his master. "He must be mightily rich," said Ornik, "to have this +crowd of pages and flunkeys whom I see running about the house."</p> + +<p>"I don't know what his income is," answered the other, "but I heard it +said to Joly and the Abbé Charier that he already had two millions of +debts."</p> + +<p>"But who is that lady coming out of the room?"</p> + +<p>"That is Madame de Pomereu, one of his mistresses."</p> + +<p>"She is really very pretty; but I have not read that the apostles had +such company in their bedrooms in the mornings. Ah! I think the +archbishop is going to give audience."</p> + +<p>"Say—'His Highness, Monseigneur.'"</p> + +<p>"Willingly." Ornik salutes His Highness, presents his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> books, and is +received with a very gracious smile. The archbishop says four words to +him, then climbs into his coach, escorted by fifty horsemen. In +climbing, Monseigneur lets a sheath fall. Ornik is quite astonished that +Monseigneur carries so large an ink-horn in his pocket. "Don't you see +that's his dagger?" says the chatterbox. "Everyone carries a dagger when +he goes to parliament."</p> + +<p>"That's a pleasant way of officiating," says Ornik; and he goes away +very astonished.</p> + +<p>He traverses France, and enlightens himself from town to town; thence he +passes into Italy. When he is in the Pope's territory, he meets one of +those bishops with a thousand crowns income, walking on foot. Ornik was +very polite; he offers him a place in his cambiature. "You are doubtless +on your way to comfort some sick man, Monseigneur?"</p> + +<p>"Sir, I am on my way to my master's."</p> + +<p>"Your master? that is Jesus Christ, doubtless?"</p> + +<p>"Sir, it is Cardinal Azolin; I am his almoner. He pays me very poorly; +but he has promised to place me in the service of Donna Olimpia, the +favourite sister-in-law <i>di nostro signore</i>."</p> + +<p>"What! you are in the pay of a cardinal? But do you not know that there +were no cardinals in the time of Jesus Christ and St. John?"</p> + +<p>"Is it possible?" cried the Italian prelate.</p> + +<p>"Nothing is more true; you have read it in the Gospel."</p> + +<p>"I have never read it," answered the bishop; "all I know is Our Lady's +office."</p> + +<p>"I tell you there were neither cardinals nor bishops, and when there +were bishops, the priests were their equals almost, according to +Jerome's assertions in several places."</p> + +<p>"Holy Virgin," said the Italian. "I knew nothing about it: and the +popes?"</p> + +<p>"There were not any popes any more than cardinals."</p> + +<p>The good bishop crossed himself; he thought he was with an evil spirit, +and jumped out of the cambiature.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Books" id="Books"></a><i>BOOKS</i></h2> + + +<p>You despise them, books, you whose whole life is plunged in the vanities +of ambition and in the search for pleasure or in idleness; but think +that the whole of the known universe, with the exception of the savage +races is governed by books alone. The whole of Africa right to Ethiopia +and Nigritia obeys the book of the Alcoran, after having staggered under +the book of the Gospel. China is ruled by the moral book of Confucius; a +greater part of India by the book of the Veidam. Persia was governed for +centuries by the books of one of the Zarathustras.</p> + +<p>If you have a law-suit, your goods, your honour, your life even depends +on the interpretation of a book which you never read.</p> + +<p><i>Robert the Devil</i>, the <i>Four Sons of Aymon</i>, the <i>Imaginings of Mr. +Oufle</i>, are books also; but it is with books as with men; the very small +number play a great part, the rest are mingled in the crowd.</p> + +<p>Who leads the human race in civilized countries? those who know how to +read and write. You do not know either Hippocrates, Boerhaave or +Sydenham; but you put your body in the hands of those who have read +them. You abandon your soul to those who are paid to read the Bible, +although there are not fifty among them who have read it in its entirety +with care.</p> + +<p>To such an extent do books govern the world, that those who command +to-day in the city of the Scipios and the Catos have desired that the +books of their law should be only for them; it is their sceptre; they +have made it a crime<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> of <i>lèse-majesté</i> for their subjects to look there +without express permission. In other countries it has been forbidden to +think in writing without letters patent.</p> + +<p>There are nations among whom thought is regarded purely as an object of +commerce. The operations of the human mind are valued there only at two +sous the sheet.</p> + +<p>In another country, the liberty of explaining oneself by books is one of +the most inviolable prerogatives. Print all that you like under pain of +boring or of being punished if you abuse too considerably your natural +right.</p> + +<p>Before the admirable invention of printing, books were rarer and more +expensive than precious stones. Almost no books among the barbarian +nations until Charlemagne, and from him to the French king Charles V., +surnamed "the wise"; and from this Charles right to François I<sup>er</sup>, there +is an extreme dearth.</p> + +<p>The Arabs alone had books from the eighth century of our era to the +thirteenth.</p> + +<p>China was filled with them when we did not know how to read or write.</p> + +<p>Copyists were much employed in the Roman Empire from the time of the +Scipios up to the inundation of the barbarians.</p> + +<p>The Greeks occupied themselves much in transcribing towards the time of +Amyntas, Philip and Alexander; they continued this craft especially in +Alexandria.</p> + +<p>This craft is somewhat ungrateful. The merchants always paid the authors +and the copyists very badly. It took two years of assiduous labour for a +copyist to transcribe the Bible well on vellum. What time and what +trouble for copying correctly in Greek and Latin the works of <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original has Origin.">Origen</ins>, of +Clement of Alexandria, and of all those other authors called "fathers."</p> + +<p>The poems of Homer were long so little known that Pisistratus was the +first who put them in order, and who had them transcribed in Athens, +about five hundred years before the era of which we are making use.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>To-day there are not perhaps a dozen copies of the Veidam and the +Zend-Avesta in the whole of the East.</p> + +<p>You would not have found a single book in the whole of Russia in 1700, +with the exception of Missals and a few Bibles in the homes of aged men +drunk on brandy.</p> + +<p>To-day people complain of a surfeit: but it is not for readers to +complain; the remedy is easy; nothing forces them to read. It is not any +the more for authors to complain. Those who make the crowd must not cry +that they are being crushed. Despite the enormous quantity of books, how +few people read! and if one read profitably, one would see the +deplorable follies to which the common people offer themselves as prey +every day.</p> + +<p>What multiplies books, despite the law of not multiplying beings +unnecessarily, is that with books one makes others; it is with several +volumes already printed that a new history of France or Spain is +fabricated, without adding anything new. All dictionaries are made with +dictionaries; almost all new geography books are repetitions of +geography books. The Summation of St. Thomas has produced two thousand +fat volumes of theology; and the same family of little worms that have +gnawed the mother, gnaw likewise the children.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Bouleverd" id="Bouleverd"></a><i>BOULEVERD OR BOULEVART</i></h2> + + +<p>Boulevart, fortification, rampart. Belgrade is the boulevart of the +Ottoman Empire on the Hungarian side. Who would believe that this word +originally signified only a game of bowls? The people of Paris played +bowls on the grass of the rampart; this grass was called the <i>verd</i>, +like the grass market. <i>On boulait sur le verd.</i> From there it comes +that the English, whose language is a copy of ours in almost all the +words which are not Saxon, have called the game of bowls +"bowling-green," the <i>verd</i> (green) of the game of bowls. We have taken +back from them what we had lent them. Following their example, we gave +the name of <i>boulingrins</i>, without knowing the strength of the word, to +the grass-plots we introduced into our gardens.</p> + +<p>I once heard two good dames who were going for a walk on the +<i>Bouleverd</i>, and not on the <i>Boulevart</i>. People laughed at them, and +wrongly. But in all matters custom carries the day; and everyone who is +right against custom is hissed or condemned.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Bourges" id="Bourges"></a><i>BOURGES</i></h2> + + +<p>Our questions barely turn on geography; but let us be permitted to mark +in two words our astonishment about the town of Bourges. The +"Dictionnaire de Trévoux" claims that "it is one of the most ancient +towns of Europe, that it was the seat of the empire of the Gauls, and +gave kings to the Celts."</p> + +<p>I do not wish to combat the ancientness of any town or any family. But +was there ever an empire of the Gauls? Did the Celts have kings? This +mania for antiquity is a malady from which one will not be healed so +soon. The Gauls, Germany, Scandinavia have nothing that is antique save +the land, the trees and the animals. If you want antiquities, go toward +Asia, and even then it is very small beer. Man is ancient and monuments +new, that is what we have in view in more than one article.</p> + +<p>If it were a real benefit to be born in a stone or wooden enclosure more +ancient than another, it would be very reasonable to make the foundation +of one's town date back to the time of the war of the giants; but since +there is not the least advantage in this vanity, one must break away +from it. That is all I had to say about Bourges.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Brahmins" id="Brahmins"></a><i>BRAHMINS</i></h2> + + +<p>Is it not probable that the Brahmins were the first legislators of the +earth, the first philosophers, the first theologians?</p> + +<p>Do not the few monuments of ancient history which remain to us form a +great presumption in their favour, since the first Greek philosophers +went to them to learn mathematics, and since the most ancient +curiosities collected by the emperors of China are all Indian?</p> + +<p>We will speak elsewhere of the "Shasta"; it is the first book of +theology of the Brahmins, written about fifteen hundred years before +their "Veidam," and anterior to all the other books.</p> + +<p>Their annals make no mention of any war undertaken by them at any time. +The words for <i>arms</i>, to <i>kill</i>, to <i>maim</i>, are not to be found either +in the fragments of the "Shasta" which we have, or in the "Ezourveidam," +or in the "Cormoveidam." I can at least give the assurance that I did +not see them in these last two collections: and what is still more +singular is that the "Shasta" which speaks of a conspiracy in heaven, +makes no mention of any war in the great peninsula enclosed between the +Indus and the Ganges.</p> + +<p>The Hebrews, who were known so late, never name the Brahmins; they had +no knowledge of India until after the conquests of Alexander, and their +settling in Egypt, of which they had said so much evil. The name of +India is to be found only in the Book of Esther, and in that of Job +which was not Hebrew. One remarks a singular contrast between the sacred +books of the Hebrews, and those of the Indians. The Indian books +announce only peace and gentleness; they forbid the killing of animals: +the Hebrew books speak only of killing, of the massacre of men and +beasts;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> everything is slaughtered in the name of the Lord; it is quite +another order of things.</p> + +<p>It is incontestably from the Brahmins that we hold the idea of the fall +of the celestial beings in revolt against the Sovereign of nature; and +it is from there probably that the Greeks drew the fable of the Titans. +It is there also that the Jews at last took the idea of the revolt of +Lucifer, in the first century of our era.</p> + +<p>How could these Indians suppose a revolt in heaven without having seen +one on earth? Such a jump from human nature to divine nature is barely +conceivable. Usually one goes from known to unknown.</p> + +<p>One does not imagine a war of giants until one has seen some men more +robust than the others tyrannize over their fellows. The first Brahmins +must either have experienced violent discords, or at least have seen +them in heaven.</p> + +<p>It is a very astonishing phenomenon for a society of men who have never +made war to have invented a species of war made in the imaginary spaces, +or in a globe distant from ours, or in what is called the "firmament," +the "empyrean." But it must be carefully observed that in this revolt of +celestial beings against their Sovereign no blows were struck, no +celestial blood flowed, no mountains hurled at the head, no angels cut +in two, as in Milton's sublime and grotesque poem.</p> + +<p>According to the "Shasta," it is only a formal disobedience to the +orders of the Most High, a cabal which God punishes by relegating the +rebellious angels to a vast place of shadows called "Ondera" during the +period of an entire mononthour. A mononthour is four hundred and +twenty-six millions of our years. But God deigned to pardon the guilty +after five thousand years, and their ondera was only a purgatory.</p> + +<p>He made "Mhurd" of them, men, and placed them in our globe on condition +that they should not eat animals, and that they should not copulate with +the males of their new species, under pain of returning to ondera.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>Those are the principal articles of the Brahmins' faith, which have +lasted without interruption from immemorial times right to our day: it +seems strange to us that among them it should be as grave a sin to eat a +chicken as to commit sodomy.</p> + +<p>This is only a small part of the ancient cosmogony of the Brahmins. +Their rites, their pagodas, prove that among them everything was +allegorical; they still represent virtue beneath the emblem of a woman +who has ten arms, and who combats ten mortal sins represented by +monsters. Our missionaries have not failed to take this image of virtue +for that of the devil, and to assure us that the devil is worshipped in +India. We have never been among these people but to enrich ourselves and +to calumniate them.</p> + +<p>Really we have forgotten a very essential thing in this little article +on the Brahmins; it is that their sacred books are filled with +contradictions. But the people do not know of them, and the doctors have +solutions ready, figurative meanings, allegories, symbols, express +declarations of Birma, Brahma and <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Also spelled Vistnou in original.">Vitsnou</ins>, which should close the mouths +of all who reason.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Character" id="Character"></a><i>CHARACTER</i></h2> + + +<p>From the Greek word <i>impression</i>, <i>engraving</i>.</p> + +<p>It is what nature has graved in us.</p> + +<p>Can one change one's character? Yes, if one changes one's body. It is +possible for a man born blunderer, unbending and violent, being stricken +with apoplexy in his old age, to become a foolish, tearful child, timid +and peaceable. His body is no longer the same. But as long as his +nerves, his blood and his marrow are in the same state, his nature will +not change any more than a wolf's and a marten's instinct.</p> + +<p>The character is composed of our ideas and our feelings: well, it is +substantiated that we give ourselves neither feelings nor ideas; +therefore our character does not depend on us.</p> + +<p>If it depended on us, there is nobody who would not be perfect.</p> + +<p>We cannot give ourselves tastes, talents; why should we give ourselves +qualities?</p> + +<p>If one does not reflect, one thinks oneself master of everything; when +one reflects thereon, one sees that one is master of nothing.</p> + +<p>Should you wish to change a man's character completely, purge him with +diluents every day until you have killed him. Charles XII., in his +suppurative fever on the road to Bender, was no longer the same man. One +prevailed upon him as upon a child.</p> + +<p>If I have a crooked nose and two cat's eyes, I can hide them with a +mask. Can I do more with the character which nature has given me?</p> + +<p>A man born violent, hasty, presented himself before François I., King of +France, to complain of an injustice; the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> prince's countenance, the +respectful bearing of the courtiers, the very place where he is, make a +powerful impression on this man; mechanically he lowers his eyes, his +rough voice softens, he presents his petition humbly, one would believe +him born as gentle as are (at that moment at least) the courtiers, +amongst whom he is even disconcerted; but François I. understands +physiognomy, he easily discovers in the lowered eyes, burning +nevertheless with sombre fire, in the strained facial muscles, in the +compressed lips, that this man is not so gentle as he is forced to +appear. This man follows him to Pavia, is taken with him, led to the +same prison in Madrid: François I.'s majesty no longer makes the same +impression on him; he grows familiar with the object of his respect. One +day when pulling off the king's boots, and pulling them off badly, the +king, embittered by his misfortune, gets angry; my man sends the king +about his business, and throws his boots out of the window.</p> + +<p>Sixtus V. was born petulant, stubborn, haughty, impetuous, vindictive, +arrogant; this character seemed softened during the trials of his +novitiate. He begins to enjoy a certain credit in his order; he flies +into a passion with a guard, and batters him with his fist: he is +inquisitor at Venice; he performs his duties with insolence: behold him +cardinal, he is possessed <i>dalla rabbia papale</i>: this fury triumphs over +his nature; he buries his person and his character in obscurity; he apes +the humble and the dying man; he is elected Pope; this moment gives back +to the spring, which politics have bent, all its long curbed elasticity; +he is the haughtiest and most despotic of sovereigns.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Naturam expella furca, tamen usque recurret.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="author">(Hor. L. I., ep. x).</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Drive away nature, it returns at the gallop.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="author">(<span class="smcap">Destouches</span>, <i>Glorieux</i>, Act 3, Sc. 5.)</p> + +<p>Religion, morality put a brake on a nature's strength; they cannot +destroy it. The drunkard in a cloister, reduced to a half-sétier of +cider at each meal, will no longer get drunk, but he will always like +wine.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>Age enfeebles character; it is a tree that produces only degenerate +fruit, but the fruit is always of the same nature; it is knotted and +covered with moss, it becomes worm-eaten, but it is always oak or pear +tree. If one could change one's character, one would give oneself one, +one would be master of nature. Can one give oneself anything? do we not +receive everything? Try to animate an indolent man with a continued +activity; to freeze with apathy the boiling soul of an impetuous fellow, +to inspire someone who has neither ear nor taste with a taste for music +and poetry, you will no more succeed than if you undertook to give sight +to a man born blind. We perfect, we soften, we conceal what nature has +put in us, but we do not put in ourselves anything at all.</p> + +<p>One says to a farmer: "You have too many fish in this pond, they will +not prosper; there are too many cattle in your meadows, grass lacks, +they will grow thin." It happens after this exhortation that the pikes +eat half my man's carp, and the wolves the half of his sheep; the rest +grow fat. Will he congratulate himself on his economy? This countryman, +it is you; one of your passions has devoured the others, and you think +you have triumphed over yourself. Do not nearly all of us resemble that +old general of ninety who, having met some young officers who were +debauching themselves with some girls, says to them angrily: "Gentlemen, +is that the example I give you?"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Charlatan" id="Charlatan"></a><i>CHARLATAN</i></h2> + + +<p>The article entitled "Charlatan" in the "Encyclopedic Dictionary" is +filled with useful truths agreeably presented. The Chevalier de Jaucourt +has there presented the charlatanry of medicine.</p> + +<p>We will take the liberty of adding here a few reflections. The abode of +the doctors is in the large towns; there are barely any doctors in the +country. It is in the great towns that the rich invalids are; +debauchery, the excesses of the table, the passions, are the cause of +their maladies. Dumoulin, not the lawyer, the doctor, who was as good a +practician as the other, said as he was dying, that he left two great +doctors behind him, diet and river water.</p> + +<p>In 1728, in the time of Law, the most famous charlatan of the first +species, another, Villars by name, confided to some friends that his +uncle who had lived nearly a hundred years, and who died only by +accident, had left him the secret of a water which could easily prolong +life to a hundred and fifty years, provided a man was temperate. When he +saw a funeral pass, he shrugged his shoulders in pity; if the defunct, +he observed, had drunk my water, he would not be where he is. His +friends to whom he gave generously of the water, and who observed the +prescribed regime in some degree, thrived on it and praised it. He then +sold the bottle for six francs; the sale was prodigious. It was water +from the Seine with a little nitre. Those who took it and who subjected +themselves to a certain amount of regime, above all those who were born +with a good constitution, recovered perfect health in a few days. He +said to the others: "It is your fault if you are not entirely cured: +correct these two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> vices and you will live at least a hundred and fifty +years." Some of them reformed; this good charlatan's fortune increased +like his reputation. The Abbé de Pons, the enthusiast, put him far above +the Maréchal de Villars: "The Maréchal kills men," he said to him, "but +you make them live."</p> + +<p>People learned at last that Villars Water was only river water; they +would have no more of it; and went to other charlatans.</p> + +<p>It is certain that he had done good, and that the only reproach one +could make against him was that he had sold Seine water a little too +dear. He led men to temperance by which fact he was superior to the +apothecary Arnoult, who stuffed Europe with his sachets against +apoplexy, without recommending any virtue.</p> + +<p>I knew in London a doctor named Brown, who practised in Barbados. He had +a sugar refinery and negroes; he was robbed of a considerable sum; he +assembled his negroes: "My lads," he said to them, "the great serpent +appeared to me during the night, he told me that the thief would at this +moment have a parrot's feather on the end of his nose." The guilty man +promptly put his hand to his nose. "It is you who robbed me," said the +master; "the great serpent has just told me so." And he regained his +money. One can hardly condemn such a charlatanry; but one must be +dealing with negroes.</p> + +<p>Scipio Africanus, this great Scipio very different otherwise from Dr. +Brown, willingly made his soldiers believe that he was inspired by the +gods. This great charlatanry was long the custom. Can one blame Scipio +to have availed himself of it? he was the man who perhaps did most +honour to the Roman Republic; but why did the gods inspire him not to +render his accounts?</p> + +<p>Numa did better; it was necessary to police some brigands and a senate +which was the most difficult section of these brigands to govern. If he +had proposed his laws to the assembled tribes, the assassins of his +predecessor would have made a thousand difficulties. He addressed +himself to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> goddess Egeria, who gave him some pandects from Jupiter; +he was obeyed without contradiction, and he reigned happily. His +instructions were good, his charlatanry did good; but if some secret +enemy had discovered the imposture, if he had said: "Exterminate an +impostor who prostitutes the name of the gods in order to deceive men," +Numa ran the risk of being sent to heaven with Romulus.</p> + +<p>It is probable that Numa took his measures very carefully, and that he +deceived the Romans for their benefit, with a dexterity suitable to the +time, the place, the intelligence of the early Romans.</p> + +<p>Mahomet was twenty times on the point of failing, but he succeeded at +last with the Arabs of Medina; and people believed that he was the +intimate friend of the Archangel Gabriel. If to-day someone came to +Constantinople to announce that he was the favourite of the Archangel +Raphael, far superior to Gabriel in dignity, and that it was in him +alone people should believe, he would be impaled in the public place. It +is for charlatans to choose their time well.</p> + +<p>Was there not a little charlatanry in Socrates with his familiar demon, +and Apollo's precise declaration which proclaimed him the wisest of all +men? How can Rollin, in his history, reason from this oracle? How is it +that he does not let the young idea know that it was pure charlatanry? +Socrates chose his time badly. A hundred years earlier, maybe, he would +have governed Athens.</p> + +<p>All leaders of sects in philosophy have been somewhat charlatans: but +the greatest of all have been those who have aspired to domination. +Cromwell was the most terrible of all our charlatans. He appeared at +precisely the only time he could succeed: under Elizabeth he would have +been hanged; under Charles II. he would have been merely ridiculous. He +came happily at a time when people were disgusted with kings; and his +son, at a time when people were weary of a protector.</p> + + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span></p> +<h4><span class="smcap">Of Charlatanry in Science and Literature</span></h4> + +<p>The sciences can barely be without charlatanry. People wish to have +their opinions accepted; the quibbling doctor wishes to eclipse the +angelic doctor; the recondite doctor wishes to reign alone. Each builds +his system of physics, metaphysics, scholastic theology; it is a +competition in turning one's merchandise to account. You have agents who +extol it, fools who believe you, protectors who support you.</p> + +<p>Is there a greater charlatanry than that of substituting words for +things, and of wanting others to believe what you do not believe +yourself?</p> + +<p>One establishes whirlwinds of subtle matter, ramous, globulous, +striated, channelled; the other elements of matter which are not matter +at all, and a pre-established harmony which makes the clock of the body +sound the hour, when the clock of the soul shows it with its hand. These +chimeras find partisans for a few years. When this rubbish has passed +out of fashion, new fanatics appear on the itinerant theatre; they +banish germs from the world, they say that the sea produced the +mountains, and that men were once fish.</p> + +<p>How much charlatanry has been put into history, either by astonishing +the reader with prodigies, by titillating human malignity with satire, +or by flattering the families of tyrants with infamous eulogy?</p> + +<p>The wretched species that writes for a living is charlatan in another +way. A poor man who has no trade, who has had the misfortune to go to +college, and who thinks he knows how to write, goes to pay his court to +a bookseller, and asks him for work. The bookseller knows that the +majority of most people who live in houses want to have little +libraries, that they need abridgments and new titles; he orders from the +writer an abridgment of the "History by Rapin-Thoyras," an abridgment of +the "History of the Church," a "Collection of Witty Sayings" drawn from +the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> "Menagiana," a "Dictionary of Great Men," where an unknown pedant +is placed beside Cicero, and a <i>sonettiero</i> of Italy near Virgil.</p> + +<p>Another bookseller orders novels, or translations of novels. "If you +have no imagination," he says to the workman, "you will take a few of +the adventures in 'Cyrus,' in 'Gusman d'Alfarache,' in the 'Secret +Memoirs of a Gentleman of Quality,' or 'Of a Lady of Quality'; and from +the total you will prepare a volume of four hundred pages at twenty sous +the sheet."</p> + +<p>Another bookseller gives the gazettes and almanacs for ten years past to +a man of genius. "You will make me an extract of all that, and you will +bring it me back in three months under the name of 'Faithful History of +the Times,' by the Chevalier de Trois Etoiles, Lieutenant of the Navy, +employed in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs."</p> + +<p>Of this kind of book there are about fifty thousand in Europe; and it +all passes just like the secret of whitening the skin, of darkening the +hair, and the universal panacea.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Civil_Laws" id="Civil_Laws"></a><i>CIVIL LAWS</i></h2> + + +<h4><span class="smcap">Extract from Some Notes found among a Lawyer's Papers, which maybe +merit Examination.</span></h4> + + +<p>Let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for +nothing, and a man condemned to public works still serves the country, +and is a living lesson.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Let all laws be clear, uniform and precise: to interpret laws is almost +always to corrupt them.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Let nothing be infamous save vice.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Let taxes be always proportional.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Let the law never be contradictory to custom: for if the custom be good, +the law is worthless.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Climate" id="Climate"></a><i>CLIMATE</i></h2> + + +<p>Climate influences religion as regards customs and ceremonies. A +legislator will not have had difficulty in making the Indians bathe in +the Ganges at certain seasons of the moon; it is a great pleasure for +them. He would have been stoned if he had proposed the same bath to the +peoples who dwell on the banks of the Dwina near Archangel. Forbid pig +to an Arab who would have leprosy if he ate of this flesh which is very +bad and disgusting in his country, he will obey you joyfully. Issue the +same veto to a Westphalian and he will be tempted to fight you.</p> + +<p>Abstinence from wine is a good religious precept in Arabia where orange +water, lemon water, lime water are necessary to health. Mohammed would +not have forbidden wine in Switzerland perhaps, especially before going +to battle.</p> + +<p>There are customs of pure fantasy. Why did the priests of Egypt imagine +circumcision? it is not for health. Cambyses who treated them as they +deserved, they and their bull Apis, Cambyses' courtiers, Cambyses' +soldiers, had not had their prepuces lopped, and were very well. Climate +does nothing to a priest's genitals. One offered one's prepuce to Isis, +probably as one presented everywhere the first fruits of the earth. It +was offering the first fruits of life.</p> + +<p>Religions have always rolled on two pivots; observance and creed: +observance depends largely on climate; creed not at all. One could as +easily make a dogma accepted on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> the equator as the polar circle. It +would later be rejected equally at Batavia and in the Orkneys, while it +would be maintained <i>unguibus et rostro</i> at Salamanca. That depends in +no way on the soil and the atmosphere, but solely on opinion, that +fickle queen of the world.</p> + +<p>Certain libations of wine will be precept in a vine-growing country, and +it will not occur to a legislator's mind to institute in Norway sacred +mysteries which cannot be performed without wine.</p> + +<p>It will be expressly ordered to burn incense in the parvis of a temple +where beasts are slaughtered in the Deity's honour, and for the priests' +supper. This butcher's shop called "temple" would be a place of +abominable infection if it were not continually purified: and without +the assistance of aromatics, the religion of the ancients would have +caused the plague. Even the interior of the temple was decked with +festoons of flowers in order to make the air sweeter.</p> + +<p>No cow will be sacrificed in the burning land of the Indian peninsula; +because this animal which furnishes necessary milk is very rare in an +arid country, its flesh is dry, tough, contains very little nourishment, +and the Brahmins would live very badly. On the contrary, the cow will +become sacred, in view of its rarity and utility.</p> + +<p>One will only enter barefoot the temple of Jupiter Ammon where the heat +is excessive: one must be well shod to perform one's devotions in +Copenhagen.</p> + +<p>It is not so with dogma. People have believed in polytheism in all +climates; and it is as easy for a Crimean Tartar as for an inhabitant of +Mecca to recognize a single God, incommunicable, non-begetting, +non-begotten. It is through its dogma still more than through its rites +that a religion is spread from one climate to another. The dogma of the +unity of God soon passed from Medina to the Caucasus; then the climate +cedes to opinion.</p> + +<p>The Arabs said to the Turks: "We had ourselves circumcised in Arabia +without really knowing why; it was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> an old fashion of the priests of +Egypt to offer to Oshireth or Osiris a little part of what they held +most precious. We had adopted this custom three thousand years before we +became Mohammedans. You will be circumcised like us; like us you will be +obliged to sleep with one of your wives every Friday, and to give each +year two and a half per cent of your income to the poor. We drink only +water and sherbet; all intoxicating liquor is forbidden us; in Arabia it +is pernicious. You will embrace this regime although you love wine +passionately, and although it may even be often necessary for you to go +on the banks of the Phasis and Araxes. Lastly, if you want to go to +Heaven, and be well placed there, you will take the road to Mecca."</p> + +<p>The inhabitants of the north of the Caucasus submit to these laws, and +embrace throughout the country a religion which was not made for them.</p> + +<p>In Egypt the symbolic worship of animals succeeded the dogmas of Thaut. +The gods of the Romans later shared Egypt with the dogs, the cats and +the crocodiles. To the Roman religion succeeded Christianity; it was +entirely driven out by Mohammedanism, which perhaps will cede its place +to a new religion.</p> + +<p>In all these vicissitudes climate has counted for nothing: government +has done everything. We are considering here second causes only, without +raising profane eyes to the Providence which directs them. The Christian +religion, born in Syria, having received its principal development in +Alexandria, inhabits to-day the lands where Teutate, Irminsul, Frida, +Odin were worshipped.</p> + +<p>There are peoples whose religion has been made by neither climate nor +government. What cause detached the north of Germany, Denmark, +three-quarters of Switzerland, Holland, England, Scotland, Ireland, from +the Roman communion? Poverty. Indulgences and deliverance from purgatory +were sold too dear to souls whose bodies had at that time very little +money. The prelates, the monks devoured a province's whole revenue. +People took a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> cheaper religion. At last, after twenty civil wars, +people believed that the Pope's religion was very good for great lords, +and the reformed religion for citizens. Time will show whether the Greek +religion or the Turkish religion will prevail by the Ægean Sea and the +Pont-Euxine.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Common_Sense" id="Common_Sense"></a><i>COMMON SENSE</i></h2> + + +<p>There are sometimes in common expressions an image of what passes in the +depths of all men's hearts. Among the Romans <i>sensus communis</i> signified +not only common sense, but humanity, sensibility. As we are not as good +as the Romans, this word signifies among us only half of what it +signified among them. It means only good sense, plain reason, reason set +in operation, a first notion of ordinary things, a state midway between +stupidity and intelligence. "This man has no common sense" is a great +insult. "A common-sense man" is an insult likewise; it means that he is +not entirely stupid, and that he lacks what is called wit and +understanding. But whence comes this expression <i>common sense</i>, unless +it be from the senses? Men, when they invented this word, avowed that +nothing entered the soul save through the senses; otherwise, would they +have used the word <i>sense</i> to signify common reasoning?</p> + +<p>People say sometimes—"Common sense is very rare." What does this phrase +signify? that in many men reason set in operation is stopped in its +progress by prejudices, that such and such man who judges very sanely in +one matter, will always be vastly deceived in another. This Arab, who +will be a good calculator, a learned chemist, an exact astronomer, will +believe nevertheless that Mohammed put half the moon in his sleeve.</p> + +<p>Why will he go beyond common sense in the three sciences of which I +speak, and why will he be beneath common sense when there is question of +this half moon? Because in the first cases he has seen with his eyes, +he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> has perfected his intelligence; and in the second, he has seen with +other people's eyes, he has closed his own, he has perverted the common +sense which is in him.</p> + +<p>How has this strange mental alienation been able to operate? How can the +ideas which move with so regular and so firm a step in the brain on a +great number of subjects limp so wretchedly on another a thousand times +more palpable and easy to comprehend? This man always has inside him the +same principles of intelligence; he must have some organ vitiated then, +just as it happens sometimes that the finest <i>gourmet</i> may have a +depraved taste as regards a particular kind of food.</p> + +<p>How is the organ of this Arab, who sees half the moon in Mohammed's +sleeve, vitiated? It is through fear. He has been told that if he did +not believe in this sleeve, his soul, immediately after his death, when +passing over the pointed bridge, would fall for ever into the abyss. He +has been told even worse things: If ever you have doubts about this +sleeve, one dervish will treat you as impious; another will prove to you +that you are an insensate fool who, having all possible motives for +believing, have not wished to subordinate your superb reason to the +evidence; a third will report you to the little divan of a little +province, and you will be legally impaled.</p> + +<p>All this terrifies the good Arab, his wife, his sister, all his little +family into a state of panic. They have good sense about everything +else, but on this article their imagination is wounded, as was the +imagination of Pascal, who continually saw a precipice beside his +armchair. But does our Arab believe in fact in Mohammed's sleeve? No. He +makes efforts to believe; he says it is impossible, but that it is true; +he believes what he does not believe. On the subject of this sleeve he +forms in his head a chaos of ideas which he is afraid to disentangle; +and this veritably is not to have common sense.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Concatenation" id="Concatenation"></a><i>CONCATENATION OF EVENTS</i></h2> + + +<p>The present is delivered, it is said, of the future. Events are linked +to each other by an invincible fatality: it is Destiny which, in Homer, +is above even Jupiter. This master of gods and men declares roundly that +he cannot stop his son Sarpedon dying in his appointed time. Sarpedon +was born at the moment when he had to be born, and could not be born at +another moment; he could not die otherwise than before Troy; he could +not be buried elsewhere than in Lycia; had at the appointed time to +produce vegetables which had to be changed into the substance of a few +Lycians; his heirs had to establish a new order in his states; this new +order had to exert an influence over the neighbouring kingdoms; from it +resulted a new arrangement of war and peace with the neighbours of the +neighbours of Lycia: thus, step by step, the destiny of the whole world +has been dependent on Sarpedon's death, which depended on Helen being +carried off; and this carrying off was necessarily linked to Hecuba's +marriage, which by tracing back to other events was linked to the origin +of things.</p> + +<p>If only one of these facts had been arranged differently, another +universe would have resulted: but it was not possible for the present +universe not to exist; therefore it was not possible for Jupiter to save +his son's life, for all that he was Jupiter.</p> + +<p>This system of necessity and fatality has been invented in our time by +Leibnitz, according to what people say, under the name of +<i>self-sufficient reason</i>; it is, however, very ancient: that there is no +effect without a cause and that often the smallest cause produces the +greatest effects, does not date from to-day.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>Lord Bolingbroke avows that the little quarrels of Madame Marlborough +and Madame Masham gave birth to his chance of making Queen Anne's +private treaty with Louis XIV.; this treaty led to the Peace of Utrecht; +this Peace of Utrecht established Philip V. on the throne of Spain. +Philip V. took Naples and Sicily from the house of Austria; the Spanish +prince who is to-day King of Naples clearly owes his kingdom to my lady +Masham: and he would not have had it, he would not perhaps even have +been born, if the Duchess of Marlborough had been more complaisant +towards the Queen of England. His existence at Naples depended on one +foolishness more or less at the court of London.</p> + +<p>Examine the position of all the peoples of the universe; they are +established like this on a sequence of facts which appear to be +connected with nothing and which are connected with everything. +Everything is cog, pulley, cord, spring, in this vast machine.</p> + +<p>It is likewise in the physical sphere. A wind which blows from the +depths of Africa and the austral seas, brings a portion of the African +atmosphere, which falls in rain in the valleys of the Alps; these rains +fertilize our lands; our north wind in its turn sends our vapours among +the negroes; we do good to Guinea, and Guinea does good to us. The chain +stretches from one end of the universe to the other.</p> + +<p>But it seems to me that a strange abuse is made of the truth of this +principle. From it some people conclude that there is not a sole minute +atom whose movement has not exerted its influence in the present +arrangement of the world; that there is not a single minute accident, +among either men or animals, which is not an essential link in the great +chain of fate.</p> + +<p>Let us understand each other: every effect clearly has its cause, going +back from cause to cause in the abyss of eternity; but every cause has +not its effect going forward to the end of the centuries. All events are +produced by each other, I admit; if the past is delivered of the +present, the present is delivered of the future; everything has father, +but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> everything has not always children. Here it is precisely as with a +genealogical tree; each house goes back, as we say, to Adam; but in the +family there are many persons who have died without leaving issue.</p> + +<p>There is a genealogical tree of the events of this world. It is +incontestable that the inhabitants of Gaul and Spain are descended from +Gomer, and the Russians from Magog, his younger brother: one finds this +genealogy in so many fat books! On this basis one cannot deny that the +Great Turk, who is also descended from Magog, was not bound to be well +beaten in 1769 by Catherine II., Empress of Russia. This adventure is +clearly connected with other great adventures. But that Magog spat to +right or left, near Mount Caucasus, and that he made two circles in a +well or three, that he slept on the left side or on the right; I do not +see that that has had much influence on present affairs.</p> + +<p>One must think that everything is not complete in nature, as Newton has +demonstrated, and that every movement is not communicated step by step +until it makes a circuit of the world, as he has demonstrated still +further. Throw into water a body of like density, you calculate easily +that after a short time the movement of this body, and the movement it +has communicated to the water, are destroyed; the movement disappears +and is effaced; therefore the movement that Magog might produce by +spitting in a well cannot influence what is passing to-day in Moldavia +and Wallachia; therefore present events are not the children of all past +events: they have their direct lines; but a thousand little collateral +lines do not serve them at all. Once more, every being has a father, but +every being has not children.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Contradictions" id="Contradictions"></a><i>CONTRADICTIONS</i></h2> + + +<p>If some literary society wishes to undertake the dictionary of +contradictions, I subscribe for twenty folio volumes.</p> + +<p>The world can exist only by contradictions: what is needed to abolish +them? to assemble the states of the human race. But from the manner in +which men are made, it would be a fresh contradiction if they were to +agree. Assemble all the rabbits of the universe, there will not be two +different opinions among them.</p> + +<p>I know only two kinds of immutable beings on the earth, mathematicians +and animals; they are led by two invariable rules, demonstration and +instinct: and even the mathematicians have had some disputes, but the +animals have never varied.</p> + +<p>The contrasts, the light and shade in which public men are represented +in history, are not contradictions, they are faithful portraits of human +nature.</p> + +<p>Every day people condemn and admire Alexander the murderer of Clitus, +but the avenger of Greece, the conqueror of the Persians, and the +founder of Alexandria;</p> + +<p>Cæsar the debauchee, who robs the public treasury of Rome to reduce his +country to dependence; but whose clemency equals his valour, and whose +intelligence equals his courage;</p> + +<p>Mohammed, impostor, brigand; but the sole religious legislator who had +courage, and who founded a great empire;</p> + +<p>Cromwell the enthusiast, a rogue in his fanaticism even, judicial +assassin of his king, but as profound politician as brave warrior.</p> + +<p>A thousand contrasts frequently crowd together, and these contrasts are +in nature; they are no more astonishing than a fine day followed by +storm.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>Men are equally mad everywhere; they have made the laws little by +little, as gaps are repaired in a wall. Here eldest sons have taken all +they could from younger sons, there younger sons share equally. +Sometimes the Church has commanded the duel, sometimes she has +anathematized it. The partisans and the enemies of Aristotle have each +been excommunicated in their turn, as have those who wore long hair and +those who wore short. In this world we have perfect law only to rule a +species of madness called gaming. The rules of gaming are the only ones +which admit neither exception, relaxation, variety nor tyranny. A man +who has been a lackey, if he play at lansquenet with kings, is paid +without difficulty if he win; everywhere else the law is a sword with +which the stronger cut the weaker in pieces.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, this world exists as if everything were well ordered; the +irregularity is of our nature; our political world is like our globe, a +misshapen thing which always preserves itself. It would be mad to wish +that the mountains, the seas, the rivers, were traced in beautiful +regular forms; it would be still more mad to ask perfect wisdom of men; +it would be wishing to give wings to dogs or horns to eagles.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Corn" id="Corn"></a><i>CORN</i></h2> + + +<p>The Gauls had corn in Cæsar's time: one is curious to know where they +and the Teutons found it to sow. People answer you that the Tyrians had +brought it into Spain, the Spaniards into Gaul, the Gauls into Germany. +And where did the Tyrians get this corn? Among the Greeks probably, from +whom they received it in exchange for their alphabet.</p> + +<p>Who had made this present to the Greeks? It was formerly Ceres without a +doubt; and when one has gone back to Ceres one can hardly go farther. +Ceres must have come down on purpose from the sky to give us wheat, rye, +barley, etc.</p> + +<p>But as the credit of Ceres who gave the corn to the Greeks, and that of +Isheth or Isis who bestowed it on the Egyptians, is very much fallen in +these days, we remain in uncertainty as to the origin of corn.</p> + +<p>Sanchoniathon affirms that Dagon or Dagan, one of the grandsons of +Thaut, had the control of corn in Phœnicia. Well, his Thaut is of +about the same time as our Jared. From this it results that corn is very +old, and that it is of the same antiquity as grass. Perhaps this Dagon +was the first man to make bread, but that is not demonstrated.</p> + +<p>Strange thing! we know positively that it is to Noah that we are under +an obligation for wine, and we do not know to whom we owe bread. And, +still more strange thing, we are so ungrateful to Noah, that we have +more than two thousand songs in honour of Bacchus, and we chant barely +one in honour of Noah our benefactor.</p> + +<p>A Jew has assured me that corn came by itself in Mesopotamia, like the +apples, wild pears, chestnuts, medlars<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> in the West. I want to believe +it until I am sure of the contrary; for corn must certainly grow +somewhere. It has become the ordinary and indispensable food in the good +climates, and throughout the North.</p> + +<p>Some great philosophers whose talents we esteem and whose systems we do +not follow (Buffon) have claimed on page 195 of the "Natural History of +the Dog," that mankind has made corn; that our fathers by virtue of +sowing lolium and gramina changed them into wheat. As these philosophers +are not of our opinion about shells, they will permit us not to be of +theirs about corn. We do not believe that one has ever made tulips grow +from jasmin. We find that the germ of corn is quite different from that +of lolium, and we do not believe in any transmutation. When somebody +shows it to us we will retract.</p> + +<p>Corn assuredly is not the food of the greater part of the world. Maize, +tapioca, feed the whole of America. We have entire provinces where the +peasants eat nothing but chestnut bread, more nourishing and of better +flavour than that of rye and barley which so many people eat, and which +is much better than the ration bread which is given to the soldier. The +whole of southern Africa does not know of bread. The immense archipelago +of the Indies, Siam, Laos, Pegu, Cochin China, Tonkin, a part of China, +Japan, the coast of Malabar and Coromandel, the banks of the Ganges +furnish a rice, the cultivation of which is much easier than that of +wheat, and which causes it to be neglected. Corn is absolutely unknown +for the space of fifteen hundred leagues on the coasts of the Glacial +Sea. This food, to which we are accustomed, is among us so precious that +the fear of seeing a dearth of it alone causes riots among the most +subjugated peoples. The corn trade is everywhere one of the great +objects of government; it is a part of our being, and yet this essential +commodity is sometimes squandered ridiculously. The powder merchants use +the best flour for covering the heads of our young men and women. But +over three-quarters of the earth bread is not eaten at all. People +maintain that the Ethiopians mocked at the Egyptians<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> who lived on +bread. But since it is our chief food, corn has become one of the great +objects of trade and politics. So much has been written on this subject, +that if a husbandman sowed as much corn as the weight of the volumes we +have about this commodity, he might hope for the amplest harvest, and +become richer than those who in their gilded and lacquered drawing-rooms +ignore his exceeding labour and wretchedness.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Cromwell" id="Cromwell"></a><i>CROMWELL</i></h2> + + +<h3>SECTION I</h3> + +<p>Cromwell is painted as a man who was an impostor all his life. I have +difficulty in believing it. I think that first of all he was an +enthusiast, and that later he made even his fanaticism serve his +greatness. A novice who is fervent at the age of twenty often becomes a +skilful rogue at forty. In the great game of human life one begins by +being a dupe, and one finishes by being a rogue. A statesman takes as +almoner a monk steeped in the pettinesses of his monastery, devout, +credulous, clumsy, quite new to the world: the monk learns, forms +himself, intrigues, and supplants his master.</p> + +<p>Cromwell did not know at first whether he would be an ecclesiastic or a +soldier. He was both. In 1622 he served a campaign in the army of +Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, a great man, brother of two great +men; and when he returned to England, he went into the service of Bishop +Williams, and was his grace's theologian, while his grace passed as his +wife's lover. His principles were those of the Puritans; thus he had to +hate a bishop with all his heart, and not have a liking for kings. He +was driven from Bishop Williams' house because he was a Puritan; and +there is the origin of his fortune. The English Parliament declared +itself against the throne and against the episcopacy; some of his +friends in this parliament procured the nomination of a village for him. +Only at this time did he begin to exist, and he was more than forty +before he had ever made himself talked of. In vain was he conversant +with Holy Writ, in vain did he argue about the rights of priests and +deacons, and preach a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> few poor sermons and libels, he was ignored. I +have seen one of his sermons which is very insipid, and which bears +sufficient resemblance to the predications of the quakers; assuredly +there is to be found there no trace of that persuasive eloquence with +which later he carried the parliaments away. The reason is that in fact +he was much more suited to public affairs than to the Church. It was +above all in his tone and in his air that his eloquence consisted; a +gesture of that hand that had won so many battles and killed so many +royalists, was more persuasive than the periods of Cicero. It must be +avowed that it was his incomparable bravery which made him known, and +which led him by degrees to the pinnacle of greatness.</p> + +<p>He began by launching out as a volunteer who wished to make his fortune, +in the town of Hull, besieged by the king. There he did many fine and +happy actions, for which he received a gratification of about six +thousand francs from the parliament. This present made by the parliament +to an adventurer made it clear that the rebel party must prevail. The +king was not in a position to give to his general officers what the +parliament gave to volunteers. With money and fanaticism one is bound in +the long run to be master of everything. Cromwell was made colonel. Then +his great talents for war developed to the point that when the +parliament created the Count of Manchester general of its armies, it +made Cromwell lieutenant-general, without his having passed through the +other ranks. Never did man appear more worthy of commanding; never were +more activity and prudence, more boldness and more resource seen than in +Cromwell. He is wounded at the battle of York; and while the first +dressing is being put on his wound, he learns that his general, +Manchester, is retiring, and that the battle is lost. He hastens to +Manchester's side; he finds him fleeing with some officers; he takes him +by the arm, and says to him with an air of confidence and grandeur: "You +are mistaken, my lord; it is not on this side that the enemy is." He +leads him back near the battlefield, rallies during the night more than +twelve thousand men, speaks to them in the name of God, quotes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> Moses, +Gideon and Joshua, at daybreak recommences the battle against the +victorious royal army, and defeats it completely. Such a man had to +perish or be master. Nearly all the officers of his army were +enthusiasts who carried the New Testament at their saddle-bow: in the +army as in the parliament men spoke only of making Babylon fall, of +establishing the religion in Jerusalem, of shattering the colossus. +Among so many madmen Cromwell ceased to be mad, and thought that it was +better to govern them than to be governed by them. The habit of +preaching as though he were inspired remained to him. Picture a fakir +who has put an iron belt round his waist as a penitence, and who then +takes off his belt to beat the other fakirs' ears: there you have +Cromwell. He becomes as intriguing as he was intrepid; he associates +himself with all the colonels of the army, and thus forms among the +troops a republic which forces the commander-in-chief to resign. Another +commander-in-chief is nominated, he disgusts him. He governs the army, +and by it he governs the parliament; he puts this parliament in the +necessity of making him commander-in-chief at last. All this was a great +deal; but what is essential is that he wins all the battles he engages +in in England, Scotland and Ireland; and he wins them, not in watching +the fighting and in taking care of himself, but always by charging the +enemy, rallying his troops, rushing everywhere, often wounded, killing +many royalist officers with his own hand, like a desperate and +infuriated grenadier.</p> + +<p>Amid this frightful war Cromwell made love; he went, his Bible under his +arm, to sleep with the wife of his major-general, Lambert. She loved the +Count of Holland, who was serving in the king's army. Cromwell took him +prisoner in a battle, and enjoyed the pleasure of having his rival's +head cut off. His maxim was to shed the blood of every important enemy, +either on the field of battle, or by the executioner's hand. He always +increased his power, by always daring to abuse it; the profundity of his +plans took away nothing from his ferocious impetuosity. He goes into the +House of Parliament and, taking his watch, which he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> threw on the ground +and which he shattered to atoms: "I will break you," he said, "like this +watch." He returns there some time after, drives all the members out one +after the other, making them defile before him. Each is obliged, as he +passes, to make him a deep bow: one of them passes with his hat on his +head; Cromwell takes his hat from him and throws it on the ground: +"Learn to respect me," he says.</p> + +<p>When he had outraged all kings by having his own legitimate king's head +cut off, and when he started to reign himself, he sent his portrait to a +crowned head; it was to Christine, Queen of Sweden. Marvell, a famous +English poet, who wrote very good Latin verse, accompanied this portrait +with six verses where he made Cromwell himself speak. Cromwell corrected +the last two as follows:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>At tibi submittit frontem reverentior umbra,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Non sunt hi vultus regibus usque truces.</i></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This queen was the first to recognize him as soon as he was protector of +the three kingdoms. Almost all the sovereigns of Europe sent their +ambassadors <i>to their brother</i> Cromwell, to this bishop's servant, who +had just caused a sovereign, their own kin, to perish at the hand of the +executioner. They vied with each in soliciting his alliance. Cardinal +Mazarin, to please him, drove out of France the two sons of Charles I., +the two grandsons of Henry IV., the two first cousins of Louis XIV. +France conquered Dunkirk for him, and sent him the keys. After his +death, Louis XIV. and all his court wore mourning, excepting +Mademoiselle, who had the courage to come to the company in a coloured +habit, and alone maintained the honour of her race.</p> + +<p>Never was a king more absolute than he was. He said that he had +preferred governing under the name of <i>protector</i> rather than under that +of <i>king</i>, because the English knew the point to which a King of +England's prerogative extended, and did not know to what point a +protector's might go. That was to understand men, who are governed by +opinion, and whose opinion depends on a name. He had conceived a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> +profound scorn for the religion which had served to his fortune. There +is a certain anecdote preserved in the house of St. John, which proves +sufficiently the little account which Cromwell made of the instrument +which had produced such great effects in his hands. He was drinking one +day with Ireton, Fleetwood and St. John, great-grandfather of the +celebrated Lord Bolingbroke; they wished to uncork a bottle, and the +corkscrew fell under the table; they all looked for it and did not find +it. Meanwhile a deputation from the Presbyterian churches was waiting in +the antechamber, and an usher came to announce them. "Tell them," said +Cromwell, "that I have retired, <i>and that I am seeking the Lord</i>." It +was the expression which the fanatics used when they were saying their +prayers. When he had thus dismissed the band of ministers, he said these +very words to his confidants: "Those puppies think that we are seeking +the Lord, and we are only seeking the corkscrew."</p> + +<p>There is barely an example in Europe of any man who, come from so low, +raised himself so high. But what was absolutely essential to him with +all his talents? Fortune. He had this fortune; but was he happy? He +lived poorly and anxiously until he was forty-three; from that time he +bathed himself in blood, passed his life in turmoil, and died before his +time at the age of fifty-seven. Let us compare this life with that of +Newton, who lived eighty-four years, always tranquil, always honoured, +always the light of all thinking beings, seeing increase each day his +renown, his reputation, his fortune, without ever having either care or +remorse; and let us judge which of the two had the better part.</p> + + +<h3>SECTION II</h3> + +<p>Oliver Cromwell was regarded with admiration by the Puritans and +independents of England; he is still their hero; but Richard Cromwell, +his son, is my man.</p> + +<p>The first is a fanatic who would be hissed to-day in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> House of +Commons, if he uttered there one single one of the unintelligible +absurdities which he gave out with so much confidence before other +fanatics who listened to him open-mouthed and wide-eyed, in the name of +the Lord. If he said that one must seek the Lord, and fight the Lord's +battles; if he introduced the Jewish jargon into the parliament of +England, to the eternal shame of the human intelligence, he would be +nearer to being led to Bedlam than to being chosen to command armies.</p> + +<p>He was brave without a doubt; so are wolves; there are even monkeys as +fierce as tigers. From being a fanatic he became an adroit politician, +that is to say that from a wolf he became fox, climbed by imposture from +the first steps where the infuriated enthusiasm of the times had placed +him, right to the pinnacle of greatness; and the impostor walked on the +heads of the prostrated fanatics. He reigned, but he lived in the +horrors of anxiety. He knew neither serene days nor tranquil nights. The +consolations of friendship and society never approached him; he died +before his time, more worthy, without a doubt, of execution than the +king whom he had conducted from a window of his own palace to the +scaffold.</p> + +<p>Richard Cromwell, on the contrary, born with a gentle, wise spirit, +refused to keep his father's crown at the price of the blood of two or +three rebels whom he could sacrifice to his ambition. He preferred to be +reduced to private life rather than be an omnipotent assassin. He left +the protectorate without regret to live as a citizen. Free and tranquil +in the country, he enjoyed health there, and there did he possess his +soul in peace for eighty-six years, loved by his neighbours, to whom he +was arbiter and father.</p> + +<p>Readers, give your verdict. If you had to choose between the destiny of +the father and that of the son, which would you take?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Customs" id="Customs"></a><i>CUSTOMS</i></h2> + +<h4><span class="smcap">Contemptible Customs do not always Suppose a Contemptible +Nation</span></h4> + + +<p>There are cases where one must not judge a nation by its customs and +popular superstitions. I suppose that Cæsar, having conquered Egypt, +wanting to make trade flourish in the Roman Empire, has sent an embassy +to China, by the port of Arsinoë, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean. The +Emperor Yventi, first of his name, was then reigning; the annals of +China represent him as a very wise and learned prince. After receiving +Cæsar's ambassadors with all the Chinese politeness, he informs himself +secretly through his interpreters of the customs, science and religion +of this Roman people, as celebrated in the West as the Chinese people is +in the East. He learns first of all that this people's pontiffs have +arranged their year in so absurd a fashion that the sun has already the +heavenly signs of spring when the Romans are celebrating the first +festivals of winter.</p> + +<p>He learns that this nation supports at great cost a college of priests +who know exactly the time when one should set sail and when one should +give battle, by inspecting an ox's liver, or by the way in which the +chickens eat barley. This sacred science was brought formerly to the +Romans by a little god named Tages, who emerged from the earth in +Tuscany. These peoples worship one supreme God whom they always call the +very great and very good God. Nevertheless, they have built a temple to +a courtesan named Flora; and almost all the good women of Rome have in +their homes little household gods four or five inches high. One of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> +these little divinities is the goddess of the breasts; the other the +goddess of the buttocks. There is a household god who is called the god +Pet. The emperor Yventi starts laughing: the tribunals of Nankin think +first of all with him that the Roman ambassadors are madmen or impostors +who have taken the title of envoys of the Roman Republic; but as the +emperor is as just as he is polite, he has private talks with the +ambassadors. He learns that the Roman pontiffs have been very ignorant, +but that Cæsar is now reforming the calendar; they admit to him that the +college of augurs was established in early barbarous times; that this +ridiculous institution, become dear to a people long uncivilized, has +been allowed to subsist; that all honest people laugh at the augurs; +that Cæsar has never consulted them; that according to a very great man +named Cato, never has an augur been able to speak to his comrade without +laughter; and that finally Cicero, the greatest orator and the best +philosopher in Rome, has just written against the augurs a little work +entitled "Of Divination," in which he commits to eternal ridicule all +the soothsayers, all the predictions, and all the sorcery of which the +world is infatuated. The emperor of China is curious to read Cicero's +book, the interpreters translate it; he admires the book and the Roman +Republic.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Democracy" id="Democracy"></a><i>DEMOCRACY</i></h2> + + +<p>Ordinarily there is no comparison between the crimes of the great who +are always ambitious, and the crimes of the people who always want, and +can want only liberty and equality. These two sentiments, Liberty and +Equality, do not lead direct to calumny, rapine, assassination, +poisoning, the devastation of one's neighbours' lands, etc.; but +ambitious might and the mania for power plunge into all these crimes +whatever be the time, whatever be the place.</p> + +<p>Popular government is in itself, therefore, less iniquitous, less +abominable than despotic power.</p> + +<p>The great vice of democracy is certainly not tyranny and cruelty: there +have been mountain-dwelling republicans, savage, ferocious; but it is +not the republican spirit that made them so, it is nature.</p> + +<p>The real vice of a civilized republic is in the Turkish fable of the +dragon with many heads and the dragon with many tails. The many heads +hurt each other, and the many tails obey a single head which wants to +devour everything.</p> + +<p>Democracy seems suitable only to a very little country, and further it +must be happily situated. Small though it be, it will make many +mistakes, because it will be composed of men. Discord will reign there +as in a monastery; but there will be no St. Bartholomew, no Irish +massacres, no Sicilian vespers, no inquisition, no condemnation to the +galleys for having taken some water from the sea without paying for it, +unless one supposes this republic composed of devils in a corner of +hell.</p> + +<p>One questions every day whether a republican government is preferable to +a king's government? The dispute<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> ends always by agreeing that to govern +men is very difficult. The Jews had God Himself for master; see what has +happened to them on that account: nearly always have they been beaten +and slaves, and to-day do you not find that they cut a pretty figure?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Destiny" id="Destiny"></a><i>DESTINY</i></h2> + + +<p>Of all the books of the Occident which have come down to us, the most +ancient is Homer; it is there that one finds the customs of profane +antiquity, of the gross heroes, of the gross gods, made in the image of +men; but it is there that among the reveries and inconsequences, one +finds too the seeds of philosophy, and above all the idea of the destiny +which is master of the gods, as the gods are masters of the world.</p> + +<p>When the magnanimous Hector wishes absolutely to fight the magnanimous +Achilles, and with this object starts fleeing with all his might, and +three times makes the circuit of the city before fighting, in order to +have more vigour; when Homer compares fleet-of-foot Achilles, who +pursues him, to a man who sleeps; when Madame Dacier goes into ecstasies +of admiration over the art and mighty sense of this passage, then +Jupiter wants to save great Hector who has made so many sacrifices to +him, and he consults the fates; he weighs the destinies of Hector and +Achilles in the balance (Iliad, liv. xxii.): he finds that the Trojan +must absolutely be killed by the Greek; he cannot oppose it; and from +this moment, Apollo, Hector's guardian genius, is forced to abandon him. +It is not that Homer is not often prodigal, and particularly in this +place, of quite contrary ideas, following the privilege of antiquity; +but he is the first in whom one finds the notion of destiny. This +notion, therefore, was very much in vogue in his time.</p> + +<p>The Pharisees, among the little Jewish people, did not adopt destiny +until several centuries later; for these Pharisees themselves, who were +the first literates among the Jews, were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> very new fangled. In +Alexandria they mixed a part of the dogmas of the Stoics with the old +Jewish ideas. St. Jerome claims even that their sect is not much +anterior to the Christian era.</p> + +<p>The philosophers never had need either of Homer or the Pharisees to +persuade themselves that everything happens through immutable laws, that +everything is arranged, that everything is a necessary effect. This is +how they argued.</p> + +<p>Either the world exists by its own nature, by its physical laws, or a +supreme being has formed it according to his supreme laws: in both +cases, these laws are immutable; in both cases everything is necessary; +heavy bodies tend towards the centre of the earth, without being able to +tend to pause in the air. Pear-trees can never bear pineapples. A +spaniel's instinct cannot be an ostrich's instinct; everything is +arranged, in gear, limited.</p> + +<p>Man can have only a certain number of teeth, hair and ideas; there comes +a time when he necessarily loses his teeth, hair and ideas.</p> + +<p>It would be a contradiction that what was yesterday was not, that what +is to-day is not; it is also a contradiction that what must be cannot +be.</p> + +<p>If you could disturb the destiny of a fly, there would be no reason that +could stop your making the destiny of all the other flies, of all the +other animals, of all men, of all nature; you would find yourself in the +end more powerful than God.</p> + +<p>Imbeciles say: "My doctor has extricated my aunt from a mortal malady; +he has made my aunt live ten years longer than she ought to have lived." +Others who affect knowledge, say: "The prudent man makes his own +destiny."</p> + +<p>But often the prudent, far from making their destinies, succumb to them; +it is destiny which makes them prudent.</p> + +<p>Profound students of politics affirm that, if Cromwell, Ludlow, Ireton +and a dozen other parliamentarians had been assassinated a week before +Charles I.'s head was cut off, this king might have lived longer and +died in his bed; they are right; they can add further that if the whole +of England<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> had been swallowed up in the sea, this monarch would not +have perished on a scaffold near Whitehall; but things were arranged so +that Charles had to have his neck severed.</p> + +<p>Cardinal d'Ossat was doubtless more prudent than a madman in Bedlam; but +is it not clear that the organs of d'Ossat the sage were made otherwise +than those of the scatter-brain? just as a fox's organs are different +from a stork's and a lark's.</p> + +<p>Your doctor saved your aunt; but assuredly he did not in that contradict +nature's order; he followed it. It is clear that your aunt could not +stop herself being born in such and such town, that she could not stop +herself having a certain malady at a particular time, that the doctor +could not be elsewhere than in the town where he was, that your aunt had +to call him, that he had to prescribe for her the drugs which cured her, +or which one thinks cured her, when nature was the only doctor.</p> + +<p>A peasant thinks that it has hailed on his field by chance; but the +philosopher knows that there is no chance, and that it was impossible, +in the constitution of this world, for it not to hail on that day in +that place.</p> + +<p>There are persons who, frightened by this truth, admit half of it as +debtors who offer half to their creditors, and ask respite for the rest. +"There are," they say, "some events which are necessary, and others +which are not." It would be very comic that one part of the world was +arranged, and that the other were not; that a part of what happens had +to happen, and that another part of what happens did not have to happen. +If one looks closely at it, one sees that the doctrine contrary to that +of destiny is absurd; but there are many people destined to reason +badly, others not to reason at all, others to persecute those who +reason.</p> + +<p>Some say to you: "Do not believe in fatalism; for then everything +appearing inevitable, you will work at nothing, you will wallow in +indifference, you will love neither riches, nor honours, nor glory; you +will not want to acquire anything, you will believe yourself without +merit as without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> power; no talent will be cultivated, everything will +perish through apathy."</p> + +<p>Be not afraid, gentlemen, we shall ever have passions and prejudices, +since it is our destiny to be subjected to prejudices and passions: we +shall know that it no more depends on us to have much merit and great +talent, than to have a good head of hair and beautiful hands: we shall +be convinced that we must not be vain about anything, and yet we shall +<ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original has aways.">always</ins> have vanity.</p> + +<p>I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the +passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the +toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and +to make it public in spite of you.</p> + +<p>The owl, which feeds on mice in its ruins, said to the nightingale: +"Finish singing under your beautiful shady trees, come into my hole, +that I may eat you"; and the nightingale answered: "I was born to sing +here, and to laugh at you."</p> + +<p>You ask me what will become of liberty? I do not understand you. I do +not know what this liberty is of which you speak; so long have you been +disputing about its nature, that assuredly you are not acquainted with +it. If you wish, or rather, if you are able to examine peaceably with me +what it is, pass to the letter L.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Devout" id="Devout"></a><i>DEVOUT</i></h2> + + +<p>The word "devout" signifies "devoted"; and in the strict sense of the +term this qualification should belong only to monks and nuns who make +vows. But as in the Gospel there is no more mention of vows than of +devout persons, this title does not in fact belong to anyone. Everyone +should be equally righteous. A man who styles himself devout resembles a +commoner who styles himself a marquis; he arrogates to himself a quality +he does not possess. He thinks himself more worthy than his neighbour. +One can forgive such foolishness in women; their frailty and their +frivolity render them excusable; the poor creatures pass from a lover to +a director in good faith: but one cannot pardon the rogues who direct +them, who abuse their ignorance, who establish the throne of their pride +on the credulity of the sex. They resolve themselves into a little +mystic seraglio composed of seven or eight aged beauties, subdued by the +weight of their lack of occupation, and almost always do these persons +pay tribute to their new masters. No young woman without a lover, no +aged devout woman without a director. Oh! the Orientals are wiser than +we are! Never does a pasha say: "We supped yesterday with the Aga of the +Janissaries who is my sister's lover, and the vicar of the mosque who is +my wife's director."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Ecclesiastical" id="Ecclesiastical"></a><i>THE ECCLESIASTICAL MINISTRY</i></h2> + + +<p>The institution of religion exists only to keep mankind in order, and to +make men merit the goodness of God by their virtue. Everything in a +religion which does not tend towards this goal must be considered +foreign or dangerous.</p> + +<p>Instruction, exhortation, menaces of pains to come, promises of immortal +beatitude, prayers, counsels, spiritual help are the only means +ecclesiastics may use to try to make men virtuous here below, and happy +for eternity.</p> + +<p>All other means are repugnant to the liberty of the reason, to the +nature of the soul, to the inalterable rights of the conscience, to the +essence of religion and of the ecclesiastical ministry, to all the +rights of the sovereign.</p> + +<p>Virtue supposes liberty, as the carrying of a burden supposes active +force. Under coercion no virtue, and without virtue no religion. Make a +slave of me, I shall be no better for it.</p> + +<p>The sovereign even has no right to use coercion to lead men to religion, +which supposes essentially choice and liberty. My thought is subordinate +to authority no more than is sickness or health.</p> + +<p>In order to disentangle all the contradictions with which books on canon +law have been filled, and to fix our ideas on the ecclesiastical +ministry, let us investigate amid a thousand equivocations what the +Church is.</p> + +<p>The Church is the assembly of all the faithful summoned on certain days +to pray in common, and at all times to do good actions.</p> + +<p>The priests are persons established under the authority of the sovereign +to direct these prayers and all religious worship.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>A numerous Church could not exist without ecclesiastics; but these +ecclesiastics are not the Church.</p> + +<p>It is no less evident that if the ecclesiastics, who are part of civil +society, had acquired rights which might trouble or destroy society, +these rights ought to be suppressed.</p> + +<p>It is still more evident that, if God has attached to the Church +prerogatives or rights, neither these rights nor these prerogatives +should belong exclusively either to the chief of the Church or to the +ecclesiastics, because they are not the Church, just as the magistrates +are not the sovereign in either a democratic state or in a monarchy.</p> + +<p>Finally, it is quite evident that it is our souls which are under the +clergy's care, solely for spiritual things.</p> + +<p>Our soul acts internally; internal acts are thought, volition, +inclinations, acquiescence in certain truths. All these acts are above +all coercion, and are within the ecclesiastical minister's sphere only +in so far as he must instruct and never command.</p> + +<p>This soul acts also externally. External actions are under the civil +law. Here coercion may have a place; temporal or corporal pains maintain +the law by punishing those who infringe it.</p> + +<p>Obedience to ecclesiastical order must consequently always be free and +voluntary: no other should be possible. Submission, on the other hand, +to civil order may be coerced and compulsory.</p> + +<p>For the same reason, ecclesiastical punishments, always spiritual, do +not reach here below any but those who are convinced inwardly of their +fault. Civil pains, on the contrary, accompanied by a physical ill, have +their physical effects, whether or no the guilty recognize their +justice.</p> + +<p>From this it results obviously that the authority of the clergy is and +can be spiritual only; that it should not have any temporal power; that +no coercive force is proper to its ministry, which would be destroyed by +it.</p> + +<p>It follows from this further that the sovereign, careful not to suffer +any partition of his authority, must permit no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> enterprise which puts +the members of society in external and civil dependence on an +ecclesiastical body.</p> + +<p>Such are the incontestable principles of real canon law, of which the +rules and decisions should be judged at all times by the eternal and +immutable truths which are founded on natural law and the necessary +order of society.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Emblem" id="Emblem"></a><i>EMBLEM</i></h2> + + +<p>In antiquity everything is symbol or emblem. In Chaldea it starts by +putting a ram, two kids, a bull in the sky, to mark the productions of +the earth in the spring. Fire is the symbol of the Deity in Persia; the +celestial dog warns the Egyptians of the Nile floods; the serpent which +hides its tail in its head, becomes the image of eternity. The whole of +nature is represented and disguised.</p> + +<p>In India again you find many of those old statues, uncouth and +frightful, of which we have already spoken, representing virtue provided +with ten great arms with which to combat vice, and which our poor +missionaries have taken for the picture of the devil.</p> + +<p>Put all these symbols of antiquity before the eyes of a man of the +soundest sense, who has never heard speak of them, he will not +understand anything: it is a language to be learned.</p> + +<p>The old theological poets were in the necessity of giving God eyes, +hands, feet; of announcing Him in the form of a man. St. Clement of +Alexandria records some verses of Xenophanes the Colophonian (Stromates +liv. v.), from which one sees that it is not merely from to-day that men +have made God in their own image. Orpheus of Thrace, the first +theologian of the Greeks, long before Homer, expresses himself +similarly, according to the same Clement of Alexandria.</p> + +<p>Everything being symbol and emblem, the philosophers, and especially +those who had travelled in India, employed this method; their precepts +were emblems and enigmas.</p> + +<p><i>Do not stir the fire with a sword</i>, that is, do not irritate angry +men.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span><i>Do not hide the light under the bushel.</i>—Do not hide the truth from +men.</p> + +<p><i>Abstain from beans.</i>—Flee frequently public assemblies in which one +gave one's suffrage with black or white beans.</p> + +<p><i>Do not have swallows in your house.</i>—That it may not be filled with +chatterers.</p> + +<p><i>In the tempest worship the echo.</i>—In times of public trouble retire to +the country.</p> + +<p><i>Do not write on the snow.</i>—Do not teach feeble and sluggish minds.</p> + +<p><i>Do not eat either your heart or your brain.</i>—Do not give yourself up +to either grief or to too difficult enterprises, etc.</p> + +<p>Such are the maxims of Pythagoras, the sense of which is not hard to +understand.</p> + +<p>The most beautiful of all the emblems is that of God, whom Timæus of +Locres represents by this idea: <i>A circle the centre of which is +everywhere and the circumference nowhere.</i> Plato adopted this emblem; +Pascal had inserted it among the material which he intended using, and +which has been called his "Thoughts."</p> + +<p>In metaphysics, in moral philosophy, the ancients have said everything. +We coincide with them, or we repeat them. All modern books of this kind +are only repetitions.</p> + +<p>It is above all among the Indians, the Egyptians, the Syrians, that +these emblems, which to us appear most strange, were consecrated. It is +there that the two organs of generation, the two symbols of life, were +carried in procession with the greatest respect. We laugh at it, we dare +treat these peoples as barbarous idiots, because they innocently thanked +God for having given them existence. What would they have said if they +had seen us enter our temples with the instrument of destruction at our +side?</p> + +<p>At Thebes the sins of the people were represented by a goat. On the +coast of Phœnicia a naked woman, with a fish's tail, was the emblem +of nature.</p> + +<p>One must not be astonished, therefore, if this use of symbols reached +the Hebrews when they had formed a body of people near the Syrian +desert.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>One of the most beautiful emblems of the Judaic books is this passage of +Ecclesiastes: "... when the grinders cease because they are few, and +those that look out of the windows be darkened, when the almond-tree +shall flourish and the grasshopper shall be a burden: or ever the silver +cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken +at the fountain...."</p> + +<p>That signifies that the old men lose their teeth, that their sight is +dim, that their hair whitens like the flower of the almond-tree, that +their feet swell like the grasshopper, that they are no more fit for +engendering children, and that then they must prepare for the great +journey.</p> + +<p>The "Song of Songs" is (as one knows) a continual emblem of the marriage +of Jesus Christ with the Church. It is an emblem from beginning to end. +Especially does the ingenious Dom Calmet demonstrate that the palm-tree +to which the well-beloved goes is the cross to which our Lord Jesus +Christ was condemned. But it must be avowed that a pure and healthy +moral philosophy is still preferable to these allegories.</p> + +<p>One sees in this people's books a crowd of typical emblems which revolt +us to-day and which exercise our incredulity and our mockery, but which +appeared ordinary and simple to the Asiatic peoples.</p> + +<p>In Ezekiel are images which appear to us as licentious and revolting: in +those times they were merely natural. There are thirty examples in the +"Song of Songs," model of the most chaste union. Remark carefully that +these expressions, these images are always quite serious, and that in no +book of this distant antiquity will you find the least mockery on the +great subject of generation. When lust is condemned it is in definite +terms; but never to excite to passion, nor to make the smallest +pleasantry. This far-distant antiquity did not have its Martial, its +Catullus, or its Petronius.</p> + +<p>It results from all the Jewish prophets and from all the Jewish books, +as from all the books which instruct us in the usages of the Chaldeans, +the Persians, the Phœnicians,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> the Syrians, the Indians, the +Egyptians; it results, I say, that their customs were not ours, that +this ancient world in no way resembled our world. Go from Gibraltar to +Mequinez merely, the manners are no longer the same; no longer does one +find the same ideas; two leagues of sea have changed everything.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Theatre" id="Theatre"></a><i>ON THE ENGLISH THEATRE</i></h2> + + +<p>I have cast my eyes on an edition of Shakespeare issued by Master Samuel +Johnson. I saw there that foreigners who are astonished that in the +plays of the great Shakespeare a Roman senator plays the buffoon, and +that a king appears on the stage drunk, are treated as little-minded. I +do not desire to suspect Master Johnson of being a sorry jester, and of +being too fond of wine; but I find it somewhat extraordinary that he +counts buffoonery and drunkenness among the beauties of the tragic +stage: and no less singular is the reason he gives, that the poet +disdains accidental distinctions of circumstance and country, like a +painter who, content with having painted the figure, neglects the +drapery. The comparison would be more just if he were speaking of a +painter who in a noble subject should introduce ridiculous grotesques, +should paint Alexander the Great mounted on an ass in the battle of +Arbela, and Darius' wife drinking at an inn with rapscallions.</p> + +<p>But there is one thing more extraordinary than all, that is that +Shakespeare is a genius. The Italians, the French, the men of letters of +all other countries, who have not spent some time in England, take him +only for a clown, for a joker far inferior to Harlequin, for the most +contemptible buffoon who has ever amused the populace. Nevertheless, it +is in this same man that one finds pieces which exalt the imagination +and which stir the heart to its depths. It is Truth, it is Nature +herself who speaks her own language with no admixture of artifice. It is +of the sublime, and the author has in no wise sought it.</p> + +<p>What can one conclude from this contrast of grandeur<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> and sordidness, of +sublime reason and uncouth folly, in short from all the contrasts that +we see in Shakespeare? That he would have been a perfect poet had he +lived in the time of Addison.</p> + +<p>The famous Addison, who flourished under Queen Anne, is perhaps of all +English writers the one who best knew how to guide genius with taste. He +had a correct style, an imagination discreet in expression, elegance, +strength and simplicity in his verse and in his prose. A friend of +propriety and orderliness, he wanted tragedy to be written with dignity, +and it is thus that his "Cato" is composed.</p> + +<p>From the very first act the verses are worthy of Virgil, and the +sentiments worthy of Cato. There is no theatre in Europe where the scene +of Juba and Syphax was not applauded as a masterpiece of skill, of +well-developed characters, of fine contrasts, and of pure and noble +diction. Literary Europe, which knows the translations of this piece, +applauded even to the philosophic traits with which the rôle of Cato is +filled.</p> + +<p>The piece had the great success which its beauty of detail merited, and +which was assured to it by the troubles in England to which this tragedy +was in more than one place a striking allusion. But the appositeness of +these allusions having passed, the verse being only beautiful, the +maxims being only noble and just, and the piece being cold, people no +longer felt anything more than the coldness. Nothing is more beautiful +than Virgil's second canto; recite it on the stage, it will bore: on the +stage one must have passion, live dialogue, action. People soon returned +to Shakespeare's uncouth but captivating aberrations.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Envy" id="Envy"></a><i>ENVY</i></h2> + + +<p>One knows well enough what antiquity has said of this shameful passion, +and what the moderns have repeated. Hesiod is the first classic author +who speaks of it.</p> + +<p>"The potter is envious of the potter, the artisan of the artisan, the +poor man even of the poor man, the musician of the musician (or if one +would give another sense to the word <i>Aoidos</i>) the poet of the poet."</p> + +<p>Long before Hesiod, Job had said: "Envy slayeth the silly one" (Job. +chap. v. verse 2).</p> + +<p>I think that Mandeville, author of the "Fable of the Bees," was the +first to try to prove that envy is a very good thing, a very useful +passion. His first reason is that envy is as natural to man as hunger +and thirst; that it can be found in children, as well as in horses and +dogs. Do you want your children to hate each other, kiss one more than +the other; the secret is infallible.</p> + +<p>He maintains that the first thing that two young women meeting each +other do is to cast about for what is ridiculous in each other, and the +second to flatter each other.</p> + +<p>He believes that without envy the arts would be indifferently +cultivated, and that Raphael would not have been a great painter if he +had not been jealous of Michael Angelo.</p> + +<p>Mandeville has taken emulation for envy, maybe; maybe, also, emulation +is only envy kept within the bounds of decency.</p> + +<p>Michael Angelo might say to Raphael: "Your envy has only led you to work +still better than me; you have not decried me, you have not intrigued +against me with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> Pope, you have not tried to have me excommunicated +for having put cripples and one-eyed men in paradise, and succulent +cardinals with beautiful women naked as your hand in hell, in my picture +of the last judgment. Your envy is very praiseworthy; you are a fine +envious fellow; let us be good friends."</p> + +<p>But if the envious man is a wretch without talent, jealous of merit as +beggars are of the rich; if, pressed by the indigence as by the +turpitude of his character he writes you some "News from Parnassus," +some "Letters of Madame la Comtesse," some "Années Littéraires," this +animal displays an envy that is good for nothing, and for which +Mandeville could never make an apology.</p> + +<p>One asks why the ancients thought that the eye of the envious man +bewitched those who looked at it. It is the envious, rather, who are +bewitched.</p> + +<p>Descartes says: "That envy impels the yellow bile which comes from the +lower part of the liver, and the black bile which comes from the spleen, +which is diffused from the heart through the arteries, etc." But as no +kind of bile is formed in the spleen, Descartes, by speaking thus, does +not seem to merit too much that his natural philosophy should be envied.</p> + +<p>A certain Voët or Voëtius, a theological scamp, who accused Descartes of +atheism, was very ill with the black bile; but he knew still less than +Descartes how his detestable bile was diffused in his blood.</p> + +<p>Madame Pernelle is right: "The envious will die, but envy never." +(Tartufe, Act v, Scene iii.)</p> + +<p>But it is good proverb which says that "it is better to be envious than +to have pity." Let us be envious, therefore, as hard as we can.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Equality" id="Equality"></a><i>EQUALITY</i></h2> + + +<h3>SECTION I</h3> + +<p>It is clear that men, enjoying the faculties connected with their +nature, are equal; they are equal when they perform animal functions, +and when they exercise their understanding. The King of China, the Great +Mogul, the Padisha of Turkey, cannot say to the least of men: "I forbid +you to digest, to go to the privy and to think." All the animals of each +species are equal among themselves. Animals by nature have over us the +advantage of independence. If a bull which is wooing a heifer is driven +away with the blows of the horns by a stronger bull, it goes in search +of another mistress in another field, and lives free. A cock, beaten by +a cock, consoles itself in another poultry-house. It is not so with us. +A little vizier exiles a bostangi to Lemnos: the vizier Azem exiles the +little vizier to Tenedos: the padisha exiles the little vizier Azem to +Rhodes: the Janissaries put the padisha in prison, and elect another who +will exile good Mussulmans as he chooses; people will still be very +obliged to him if he limits his sacred authority to this little +exercise.</p> + +<p>If this world were what it seems it should be, if man could find +everywhere in it an easy subsistence, and a climate suitable to his +nature, it is clear that it would be impossible for one man to enslave +another. If this globe were covered with wholesome fruits; if the air, +which should contribute to our life, gave us no diseases and a premature +death; if man had no need of lodging and bed other than those of the +buck and the deer; then the Gengis-kans<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> and the Tamerlans would have no +servants other than their children, who would be folk honourable enough +to help them in their old age.</p> + +<p>In the natural state enjoyed by all untamed quadrupeds, birds and +reptiles, man would be as happy as they; domination would then be a +chimera, an absurdity of which no one would think; for why seek servants +when you have no need of their service?</p> + +<p>If it came into the head of some individual of tyrannous mind and brawny +arm to enslave a neighbour less strong than he, the thing would be +impossible; the oppressed would be on the Danube before the oppressor +had taken his measures on the Volga.</p> + +<p>All men would then be necessarily equal, if they were without needs; the +poverty connected with our species subordinates one man to another; it +is not the inequality which is the real misfortune, it is the +dependence. It matters very little that So-and-so calls himself "His +Highness," and So-and-so "His Holiness"; but to serve the one or the +other is hard.</p> + +<p>A big family has cultivated fruitful soil; two little families near by +have thankless and rebellious fields; the two poor families have to +serve the opulent family, or slaughter it: there is no difficulty in +that. One of the two indigent families offers its arms to the rich +family in order to have bread; the other goes to attack it and is +beaten. The serving family is the origin of the servants and the +workmen; the beaten family is the origin of the slaves.</p> + +<p>In our unhappy world it is impossible for men living in society not to +be divided into two classes, the one the rich that commands, the other +the poor that serves; and these two are subdivided into a thousand, and +these thousand still have different gradations.</p> + +<p>When the prizes are drawn you come to us: "I am a man like you," you +say. "I have two hands and two feet, as much pride as you, nay more, a +mind as disordered, at least, as inconsequent, as contradictory as +yours. I am a citizen of San Marino, or of Ragusa, or Vaugirard: give<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> +me my share of the land. In our known hemisphere there are about fifty +thousand million arpents to cultivate, some passable, some sterile. We +are only about a thousand million featherless bipeds in this continent; +that makes fifty arpents apiece: be just; give me my fifty arpents."</p> + +<p>"Go and take them in the land of the Cafres," we answer, "or the +Hottentots, or the Samoyedes; come to an amicable arrangement with them; +here all the shares are taken. If among us you want to eat, be clothed, +lodged, warmed, work for us as your father did; serve us or amuse us, +and you will be paid; otherwise you will be obliged to ask charity, +which would be too degrading to your sublime nature, and would stop your +being really the equal of kings, and even of country parsons, according +to the pretensions of your noble pride."</p> + + +<h3>SECTION II</h3> + +<p>All the poor are not unhappy. The majority were born in that state, and +continual work stops their feeling their position too keenly; but when +they feel it, then one sees wars, like that of the popular party against +the senate party in Rome, like those of the peasants in Germany, England +and France. All these wars finish sooner or later with the subjection of +the people, because the powerful have money, and money is master of +everything in a state: I say in a state; for it is not the same between +nations. The nation which makes the best use of the sword will always +subjugate the nation which has more gold and less courage.</p> + +<p>All men are born with a sufficiently violent liking for domination, +wealth and pleasure, and with much taste for idleness; consequently, all +men want their money and the wives or daughters of others, to be their +master, to subject them to all their caprices, and to do nothing, or at +least to do only very agreeable things. You see clearly that with these +fine inclinations it is as impossible for men to be equal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> as it is +impossible for two predicants or two professors of theology not to be +jealous of each other.</p> + +<p>The human race, such as it is, cannot subsist unless there is an +infinity of useful men who possess nothing at all; for it is certain +that a man who is well off will not leave his own land to come to till +yours; and if you have need of a pair of shoes, it is not the Secretary +to the Privy Council who will make them for you. Equality, therefore, is +at once the most natural thing and the most fantastic.</p> + +<p>As men go to excess in everything when they can, this inequality has +been exaggerated. It has been maintained in many countries that it was +not permissible for a citizen to leave the country where chance has +caused him to be born; the sense of this law is visibly: "This land is +so bad and so badly governed, that we forbid any individual to leave it, +for fear that everyone will leave it." Do better: make all your subjects +want to live in your country, and foreigners to come to it.</p> + +<p>All men have the right in the bottom of their hearts to think themselves +entirely equal to other men: it does not follow from that that the +cardinal's cook should order his master to prepare him his dinner; but +the cook can say: "I am a man like my master; like him I was born +crying; like me he will die with the same pangs and the same ceremonies. +Both of us perform the same animal functions. If the Turks take +possession of Rome, and if then I am cardinal and my master cook, I +shall take him into my service." This discourse is reasonable and just; +but while waiting for the Great Turk to take possession of Rome, the +cook must do his duty, or else all human society is perverted.</p> + +<p>As regards a man who is neither a cardinal's cook, nor endowed with any +other employment in the state; as regards a private person who is +connected with nothing, but who is vexed at being received everywhere +with an air of being patronized or scorned, who sees quite clearly that +many <i>monsignors</i> have no more knowledge, wit or virtue than he, and who +at times is bored at waiting in their antechambers, what should he +decide to do? Why, to take himself off.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Expiation" id="Expiation"></a><i>EXPIATION</i></h2> + + +<p>Maybe the most beautiful institution of antiquity is that solemn +ceremony which repressed crimes by warning that they must be punished, +and which calmed the despair of the guilty by making them atone for +their transgressions by penitences. Remorse must necessarily have +preceded the expiations; for the maladies are older than the medicine, +and all needs have existed before relief.</p> + +<p>It was, therefore, before all the creeds, a natural religion, which +troubled man's heart when in his ignorance or in his hastiness he had +committed an inhuman action. A friend killed his friend in a quarrel, a +brother killed his brother, a jealous and frantic lover even killed her +without whom he could not live. The head of a nation condemned a +virtuous man, a useful citizen. These are men in despair, if they have +sensibility. Their conscience harries them; nothing is more true; and it +is the height of unhappiness. Only two choices remain, either +reparation, or a settling in crime. All sensitive souls choose the +first, monsters choose the second.</p> + +<p>As soon as religions were established, there were expiations; the +ceremonies accompanying them were ridiculous: for what connection +between the water of the Ganges and a murder? how could a man repair a +homicide by bathing himself? We have already remarked this excess of +aberration and absurdity, of imagining that he who washes his body +washes his soul, and wipes away the stains of bad actions.</p> + +<p>The water of the Nile had later the same virtue as the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> water of the +Ganges: to these purifications other ceremonies were added: I avow that +they were still more impertinent. The Egyptians took two goats, and drew +lots for which of the two should be thrown below, charged with the sins +of the guilty. The name of "Hazazel," the expiator, was given to this +goat. What connection, I ask you, between a goat and a man's crime?</p> + +<p>It is true that since, God permitted this ceremony to be sanctified +among the Jews our fathers, who took so many Egyptian rites; but +doubtless it was the repentance, and not the goat, which purified the +Jewish souls.</p> + +<p>Jason, having killed Absyrthe his step-brother, comes, it is said, with +Medea, more guilty than he, to have himself absolved by Circe, queen and +priestess of Aea, who ever after passed for a great magician. Circe +absolves them with a sucking-pig and salt cakes. That may make a fairly +good dish, but can barely either pay for Absyrthe's blood or render +Jason and Medea more honourable people, unless they avow a sincere +repentance while eating their sucking-pig.</p> + +<p>Orestes' expiation (he had avenged his father by murdering his mother) +was to go to steal a statue from the Tartars of Crimea. The statue must +have been very badly made, and there was nothing to gain on such an +effect. Since then we have done better, we have invented the mysteries; +the guilty might there receive their absolution by undergoing painful +ordeals, and by swearing that they would lead a new life. It is from +this oath that the new members were called among all nations by a name +which corresponds to initiates, <i>qui ineunt vitam novam</i>, who began a +new career, who entered into the path of virtue.</p> + +<p>The Christian catechumens were called <i>initiates</i> only when they were +baptised.</p> + +<p>It is undoubted that in these mysteries one was washed of one's faults +only by the oath to be virtuous; that is so true that the hierophant in +all the Greek mysteries, in sending away the assembly, pronounced these +two Egyptian words—"<i>Koth</i>, <i>ompheth</i>, watch, be pure"; which is a +proof<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> at once that the mysteries came originally from Egypt, and that +they were invented only to make men better.</p> + +<p>The sages in all times did what they could, therefore, to inspire +virtue, and not to reduce human frailty to despair; but also there are +crimes so horrible that no mystery accorded expiation for them. Nero, +for all that he was emperor, could not get himself initiated into the +mysteries of Ceres. Constantine, on the Report of Zosimus, could not +obtain pardon for his crimes: he was stained with the blood of his wife, +his son and all his kindred. It was in the interest of the human race +that such great transgressions should remain without expiation, in order +that absolution should not invite their committal, and that universal +horror might sometimes stop the villains.</p> + +<p>The Roman Catholics have expiations which are called "penitences."</p> + +<p>By the laws of the barbarians who destroyed the Roman Empire, crimes +were expiated with money. That was called <i>compounding</i>, <i>componat cum +decem, viginti, triginta solidis</i>. It cost two hundred sous of that time +to kill a priest, and four hundred for killing a bishop; so that a +bishop was worth precisely two priests.</p> + +<p>Having thus compounded with men, one compounded with God, when +confession was generally established. Finally, Pope John XXII., who made +money out of everything, prepared a tariff of sins.</p> + +<p>The absolution of an incest, four turonenses for a layman; <i>ab incestu +pro laico in foro conscientiæ turonenses quatuor</i>. For the man and the +woman who have committed incest, eighteen turonenses four ducats and +nine carlins. That is not just; if one person pays only four turonenses, +the two owed only eight turonenses.</p> + +<p>Sodomy and bestiality are put at the same rate, with the inhibitory +clause to title XLIII: that amounts to ninety turonenses twelve ducats +and six carlins: <i>cum inhibitione turonenses 90, ducatos 12, carlinos +6</i>, <i>etc.</i></p> + +<p>It is very difficult to believe that Leo X. was so imprudent as to have +this impost printed in 1514, as is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> asserted; but it must be considered +that no spark appeared at that time of the conflagration which reformers +kindled later, that the court of Rome slumbered on the people's +credulity, and neglected to cover its exactions with the lightest veil. +The public sale of indulgences, which followed soon after, makes it +clear that this court took no precaution to hide the turpitudes to which +so many nations were accustomed. As soon as complaints against the +Church's abuses burst forth, the court did what it could to suppress the +book; but it could not succeed.</p> + +<p>If I dare give my opinion of this impost, I think that the various +editions are not reliable; the prices are not at all proportionate: +these prices do not agree with those which are alleged by d'Aubigné, +grandfather of Madame de Maintenon, in the "Confession de Sanci"; he +rates virginity at six <i>gros</i>, and incest with his mother and sister at +five <i>gros</i>; this account is ridiculous. I think that there was in fact +a tariff established in the datary's office, for those who came to Rome +to be absolved, or to bargain for dispensations; but that the enemies of +Rome added much to it in order to render it more odious.</p> + +<p>What is quite certain is that these imposts were never authorized by any +council; that it was an enormous abuse invented by avarice, and +respected by those whose interest it was not to abolish it. The buyers +and the sellers were equally satisfied: thus, barely anybody protested, +until the troubles of the reformation. It must be admitted that an exact +note of all these imposts would be of great service to the history of +the human mind.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Extreme" id="Extreme"></a><i>EXTREME</i></h2> + + +<p>We shall try to extract from this word <i>extreme</i> a notion which may be +useful.</p> + +<p>One disputes every day if, in war, luck or leadership produces +successes.</p> + +<p>If, in disease, nature acts more than medicine for curing or killing.</p> + +<p>If, in jurisprudence, it is not very advantageous to come to terms when +one is in the right, and to plead when one is in the wrong.</p> + +<p>If literature contributes to the glory of a nation or to its decadence.</p> + +<p>If one should or should not make the people superstitious.</p> + +<p>If there is anything true in metaphysics, history and moral philosophy.</p> + +<p>If taste is arbitrary, and if there is in fact good taste and bad taste, +etc., etc.</p> + +<p>To decide all these questions right away, take an example of what is the +most extreme in each; compare the two opposed extremes, and you will at +once discover which is true.</p> + +<p>You wish to know if leadership can infallibly determine the success of +the war; look at the most extreme case, the most opposed situations, in +which leadership alone will infallibly triumph. The enemy's army is +forced to pass through a deep mountain gorge; your general knows it: he +makes a forced march, he takes possession of the heights, he holds the +enemy shut in a pass; they must either die or surrender. In this extreme +case, luck cannot have any part in the victory. It is therefore +demonstrated that skill can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> determine the success of a campaign; from +that alone is it proved that war is an art.</p> + +<p>Now imagine an advantageous but less decisive position; success is not +so certain, but it is always very probable. You arrive thus, step by +step, to a perfect equality between the two armies. What will decide +then? luck, that is to say an unforeseen event, a general officer killed +when he is on his way to execute an important order, a corps which is +shaken by a false rumour, a panic and a thousand other cases which +cannot be remedied by prudence; but it still remains certain that there +is an art, a generalship.</p> + +<p>As much must be said of medicine, of this art of operating on the head +and the hand, to restore life to a man who is about to lose it.</p> + +<p>The first man who at the right moment bled and purged a sufferer from an +apoplectic fit; the first man who thought of plunging a knife into the +bladder in order to extract a stone, and of closing the wound again; the +first man who knew how to stop gangrene in a part of the body, were +without a doubt almost divine persons, and did not resemble Molière's +doctors.</p> + +<p>Descend from this obvious example to experiments that are less striking +and more equivocal; you see fevers, ills of all kinds which are cured, +without it being well proved if it be nature or the doctor who has cured +them; you see diseases of which the result cannot be guessed; twenty +doctors are deceived; the one that has the most intelligence, the surest +eye, guesses the character of the malady. There is therefore an art; and +the superior man knows the finenesses of it. Thus did La Peyronie guess +that a man of the court had swallowed a pointed bone which had caused an +ulcer, and put him in danger of death; thus did Boerhaave guess the +cause of the malady as unknown as cruel of a count of Vassenaar. There +is therefore really an art of medicine; but in all arts there are men +like Virgil and Mævius.</p> + +<p>In jurisprudence, take a clear case, in which the law speaks clearly; a +bill of exchange properly prepared and accepted; the acceptor must be +condemned to pay it in every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> country. There is therefore a useful +jurisprudence, although in a thousand cases judgments are arbitrary, to +the misfortune of the human race, because the laws are badly made.</p> + +<p>Do you desire to know if literature does good to a nation; compare the +two extremes, Cicero and an uncouth ignoramus. See if it is Pliny or +Attila who caused the fall of Rome.</p> + +<p>One asks if one should encourage superstition in the people; see above +all what is most extreme in this disastrous matter, St. Bartholomew, the +massacres in Ireland, the crusades; the question is soon answered.</p> + +<p>Is there any truth in metaphysics? Seize first of all the points that +are most astonishing and the most true; something exists for all +eternity. An eternal Being exists by Himself; this Being cannot be +either wicked or inconsequent. One must surrender to these truths; +almost all the rest is given over to dispute, and the justest mind +unravels the truth while the others are seeking in the shadows.</p> + +<p>It is with all things as with colours; the weakest eyes distinguish +black from white; the better, more practised eyes, discern shades that +resemble each other.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Ezourveidam" id="Ezourveidam"></a><i>EZOURVEIDAM</i></h2> + + +<p>What is this "Ezourveidam" which is in the King of France's library? It +is an ancient commentary which an ancient Brahmin composed once upon a +time, before the epoch of Alexander, on the ancient "Veidam," which was +itself much less ancient than the book of the "Shasta."</p> + +<p>Let us respect, I tell you, all these ancient Indians. They invented the +game of chess, and the Greeks went among them to learn geometry.</p> + +<p>This "Ezourveidam" was lastly translated by a Brahmin, correspondent of +the unfortunate French India Company. It was brought to me on Mount +Krapack, where I have long been observing the snows; and I sent it to +the great Library of Paris, where it is better placed than in my home.</p> + +<p>Those who wish to consult it will see that after many revolutions +produced by the Eternal, it pleased the Eternal to form a man who was +called <i>Adimo</i>, and a woman whose name corresponds to that of life.</p> + +<p>Is this Indian anecdote taken from the Jewish books? have the Jews +copied it from the Indians? or can one say that both wrote it +originally, and that fine minds meet?</p> + +<p>The Jews were not permitted to think that their writers had drawn +anything from the Brahmins, for they had never heard tell of them. We +are not permitted to think about Adam otherwise than the Jews. +Consequently I hold my tongue, and I do not think at all.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Faith" id="Faith"></a><i>FAITH</i></h2> + + +<p><i>We have long pondered whether or no we should print this article, which +we found in an old book. Our respect for St. Peter's see restrained us. +But some pious men having convinced us that Pope Alexander VI. had +nothing in common with St. Peter, we at last decided to bring this +little piece into the light, without scruple.</i></p> + +<p>One day Prince Pico della Mirandola met Pope Alexander VI. at the house +of the courtesan Emilia, while Lucretia, the holy father's daughter, was +in child-bed, and one did not know in Rome if the child was the Pope's, +or his son's the Duke of Valentinois, or Lucretia's husband's, Alphonse +of Aragon, who passed for impotent. The conversation was at first very +sprightly. Cardinal Bembo records a part of it.</p> + +<p>"Little Pic," said the Pope, "who do you think is my grandson's father?"</p> + +<p>"Your son-in-law, I think," answered Pic.</p> + +<p>"Eh! how can you believe such folly?"</p> + +<p>"I believe it through faith."</p> + +<p>"But do you not know quite well that a man who is impotent does not make +children?"</p> + +<p>"Faith consists," returned Pic, "in believing things because they are +impossible; and, further, the honour of your house demands that +Lucretia's son shall not pass as the fruit of an incest. You make me +believe more incomprehensible mysteries. Have I not to be convinced that +a serpent spoke, that since then all men have been damned, that Balaam's +she-ass also spoke very eloquently, and that the walls of Jericho fell +at the sound of trumpets?" Pic forthwith<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> ran through a litany of all +the admirable things he believed.</p> + +<p>Alexander fell on his sofa by dint of laughing.</p> + +<p>"I believe all that like you," he said, "for I know well that only by +faith can I be saved, and that I shall not be saved by my works."</p> + +<p>"Ah! Holy Father," said Pic, "you have need of neither works nor faith; +that is good for poor profane people like us; but you who are vice-god +can believe and do all you want to. You have the keys of heaven; and +without a doubt St. Peter will not close the door in your face. But for +myself, I avow I should need potent protection if, being only a poor +prince, I had slept with my daughter, and if I had used the stiletto and +the cantarella as often as your Holiness."</p> + +<p>Alexander could take a jest. "Let us talk seriously," he said to Prince +della Mirandola. "Tell me what merit one can have in telling God that +one is persuaded of things of which in fact one cannot be persuaded? +What pleasure can that give God? Between ourselves, saying that one +believes what is impossible to believe is lying."</p> + +<p>Pico della Mirandola made a great sign of the cross. "Eh! paternal God," +he cried, "may your Holiness pardon me, you are not a Christian."</p> + +<p>"No, by my faith," said the Pope.</p> + +<p>"I thought as much," said Pico della Mirandola.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="False_Minds" id="False_Minds"></a><i>FALSE MINDS</i></h2> + + +<p>We have blind men, one-eyed men, squint-eyed men, men with long sight, +short sight, clear sight, dim sight, weak sight. All that is a faithful +enough image of our understanding; but we are barely acquainted with +false sight. There are hardly men who always take a cock for a horse, or +a chamber-pot for a house. Why do we often come across minds otherwise +just enough, which are absolutely false on important things? Why does +this same Siamese who will never let himself be cheated when there is +question of counting him three rupees, firmly believe in the +metamorphoses of Sammonocodom? By what strange singularity do sensible +men resemble Don Quixote who thought he saw giants where other men saw +only windmills? Still, Don Quixote was more excusable than the Siamese +who believes that Sammonocodom came several times on earth, and than the +Turk who is persuaded that Mahomet put half the moon in his sleeve; for +Don Quixote, struck with the idea that he must fight giants, can figure +to himself that a giant must have a body as big as a mill; but from what +supposition can a sensible man set off to persuade himself that the half +of the moon has gone into a sleeve, and that a Sammonocodom has come +down from heaven to play at shuttlecock, cut down a forest, and perform +feats of legerdemain?</p> + +<p>The greatest geniuses can have false judgment about a principle they +have accepted without examination. Newton had very false judgment when +he commentated the Apocalypse.</p> + +<p>All that certain <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original has tryants.">tyrants</ins> of the souls desire is that the men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> they teach +shall have false judgment. A fakir rears a child who gives much promise; +he spends five or six years in driving into his head that the god Fo +appeared to men as a white elephant, and he persuades the child that he +will be whipped after his death for five hundred thousand years if he +does not believe these metamorphoses. He adds that at the end of the +world the enemy of the god Fo will come to fight against this divinity.</p> + +<p>The child studies and becomes a prodigy; he argues on his master's +lessons; he finds that Fo has only been able to change himself into a +white elephant, because that is the most beautiful of animals. "The +kings of Siam and Pegu," he says, "have made war for a white elephant; +certainly if Fo had not been hidden in that elephant, these kings would +not have been so senseless as to fight simply for the possession of an +animal.</p> + +<p>"The enemy of Fo will come to defy him at the end of the world; +certainly this enemy will be a rhinoceros, for the rhinoceros fights the +elephant." It is thus that in mature age the fakir's learned pupil +reasons, and he becomes one of the lights of India; the more subtle his +mind, the more false is it, and he forms later minds as false as his.</p> + +<p>One shows all these fanatics a little geometry, and they learn it easily +enough; but strange to relate, their minds are not straightened for +that; they perceive the truths of geometry; but they do not learn to +weigh probabilities; they have got into a habit; they will reason +crookedly all their lives, and I am sorry for them.</p> + +<p>There are unfortunately many ways of having a false mind:</p> + +<p>1. By not examining if the principle is true, even when one deduces +accurate consequences therefrom; and this way is common.</p> + +<p>2. By drawing false consequences from a principle recognized as true. +For example, a servant is asked if his master is in his room, by persons +he suspects of wanting his life: if he were foolish enough to tell them +the truth on the pretext<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> that one must not lie, it is clear he would be +drawing an absurd consequence from a very true principle.</p> + +<p>A judge who would condemn a man who has killed his assassin, because +homicide is forbidden, would be as iniquitous as he was poor reasoner.</p> + +<p>Similar cases are subdivided in a thousand different gradations. The +good mind, the just mind, is that which distinguishes them; whence comes +that one has seen so many iniquitous judgments, not because the judges' +hearts were bad, but because they were not sufficiently enlightened.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Fatherland" id="Fatherland"></a><i>FATHERLAND</i></h2> + + +<p>A young journeyman pastrycook who had been to college, and who still +knew a few of Cicero's phrases, boasted one day of loving his +fatherland. "What do you mean by your fatherland?" a neighbour asked +him. "Is it your oven? is it the village where you were born and which +you have never seen since? is it the street where dwelled your father +and mother who have been ruined and have reduced you to baking little +pies for a living? is it the town-hall where you will never be police +superintendent's clerk? is it the church of Our Lady where you have not +been able to become a choir-boy, while an absurd man is archbishop and +duke with an income of twenty thousand golden louis?"</p> + +<p>The journeyman pastrycook did not know what to answer. A thinker who was +listening to this conversation, concluded that in a fatherland of some +extent there were often many thousand men who had no fatherland.</p> + +<p>You, pleasure loving Parisian, who have never made any great journey +save that to Dieppe to eat fresh fish; who know nothing but your +varnished town house, your pretty country house, and your box at that +Opera where the rest of Europe persists in feeling bored; who speak your +own language agreeably enough because you know no other, you love all +that, and you love further the girls you keep, the champagne which comes +to you from Rheims, the dividends which the Hôtel-de-Ville pays you +every six months, and you say you love your fatherland!</p> + +<p>In all conscience, does a financier cordially love his fatherland?</p> + +<p>The officer and the soldier who will pillage their winter quarters, if +one lets them, have they a very warm love for the peasants they ruin?</p> + +<p>Where was the fatherland of the scarred Duc de Guise, was it in Nancy, +Paris, Madrid, Rome?</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>What fatherland have you, Cardinals de La Balue, Duprat, Lorraine, +Mazarin?</p> + +<p>Where was the fatherland of Attila and of a hundred heroes of this type?</p> + +<p>I would like someone to tell me which was Abraham's fatherland.</p> + +<p>The first man to write that the fatherland is wherever one feels +comfortable was, I believe, Euripides in his "Phaeton." But the first +man who left his birthplace to seek his comfort elsewhere had said it +before him.</p> + +<p>Where then is the fatherland? Is it not a good field, whose owner, +lodged in a well-kept house, can say: "This field that I till, this +house that I have built, are mine; I live there protected by laws which +no tyrant can infringe. When those who, like me, possess fields and +houses, meet in their common interest, I have my voice in the assembly; +I am a part of everything, a part of the community, a part of the +dominion; there is my fatherland."?</p> + +<p>Well now, is it better for your fatherland to be a monarchy or a +republic? For four thousand years has this question been debated. Ask +the rich for an answer, they all prefer aristocracy; question the +people, they want democracy: only kings prefer royalty. How then is it +that nearly the whole world is governed by monarchs? Ask the rats who +proposed to hang a bell round the cat's neck. But in truth, the real +reason is, as has been said, that men are very rarely worthy of +governing themselves.</p> + +<p>It is sad that often in order to be a good patriot one is the enemy of +the rest of mankind. To be a good patriot is to wish that one's city may +be enriched by trade, and be powerful by arms. It is clear that one +country cannot gain without another loses, and that it cannot conquer +without making misery. Such then is the human state that to wish for +one's country's greatness is to wish harm to one's neighbours. He who +should wish that his fatherland might never be greater, smaller, richer, +poorer, would be the citizen of the world.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Final_Causes" id="Final_Causes"></a><i>FINAL CAUSES</i></h2> + + +<p>If a clock is not made to tell the hour, I will then admit that final +causes are chimeras; and I shall consider it quite right for people to +call me "<i>cause-finalier</i>," that is—an imbecile.</p> + +<p>All the pieces of the machine of this world seem, however, made for each +other. A few philosophers affect to mock at the final causes rejected by +Epicurus and Lucretius. It is, it seems to me, at Epicurus and Lucretius +rather that they should mock. They tell you that the eye is not made for +seeing, but that man has availed himself of it for this purpose when he +perceived that eyes could be so used. According to them, the mouth is +not made for speaking, for eating, the stomach for digesting, the heart +for receiving the blood from the veins and for dispatching it through +the arteries, the feet for walking, the ears for hearing. These persons +avow nevertheless that tailors make them coats to clothe them, and +masons houses to lodge them, and they dare deny to nature, to the great +Being, to the universal Intelligence, what they accord to the least of +their workmen.</p> + +<p>Of course one must not make an abuse of final causes; we have remarked +that in vain Mr. Prieur, in "The Spectacle of Nature," maintains that +the tides are given to the ocean so that vessels may enter port more +easily, and to stop the water of the sea from putrefying. In vain would +he say that legs are made to be booted, and the nose to wear spectacles.</p> + +<p>In order that one may be certain of the true end for which a cause +functions, it is essential that that effect shall exist at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> all times +and in all places. There were not ships at all times and on all the +seas; hence one cannot say that the ocean was made for the ships. One +feels how ridiculous it would be to maintain that nature had worked from +all time in order to adjust herself to the inventions of our arbitrary +arts, which appeared so late; but it is quite evident that if noses were +not made for spectacles, they were for smelling, and that there have +been noses ever since there have been men. Similarly, hands not having +been given on behalf of glove-makers, they are visibly destined for all +the purposes which the metacarpal bones and the phalanges and the +circular muscle of the wrist may procure for us.</p> + +<p>Cicero, who doubted everything, did not, however, doubt final causes.</p> + +<p>It seems especially difficult for the organs of generation not to be +destined to perpetuate the species. This mechanism is very admirable, +but the sensation which nature has joined to this mechanism is still +more admirable. Epicurus had to avow that pleasure is divine; and that +this pleasure is a final cause, by which are ceaselessly produced +sentient beings who have not been able to give themselves sensation.</p> + +<p>This Epicurus was a great man for his time; he saw what Descartes +denied, what Gassendi affirmed, what Newton demonstrated, that there is +no movement without space. He conceived the necessity of atoms to serve +as constituent parts of invariable species. Those are exceedingly +philosophical ideas. Nothing was especially more worthy of respect than +the moral system of the true Epicureans; it consisted in the removal to +a distance of public matters incompatible with wisdom, and in +friendship, without which life is a burden. But as regards the rest of +Epicurus' physics, they do not appear any more admissible than +Descartes' channelled matter. It is, it seems to me, to stop one's eyes +and understanding to maintain that there is no design in nature; and if +there is design, there is an intelligent cause, there exists a God.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>People present to us as objections the irregularities of the globe, the +volcanoes, the plains of shifting sands, a few small mountains destroyed +and others formed by earthquakes, etc. But from the fact that the naves +of the wheels of your coach have caught fire, does it ensue that your +coach was not made expressly to carry you from one place to another?</p> + +<p>The chains of mountains which crown the two hemispheres, and more than +six hundred rivers which flow right to the sea from the feet of these +rocks; all the streams which come down from these same reservoirs, and +which swell the rivers, after fertilizing the country; the thousands of +fountains which start from the same source, and which water animal and +vegetable kind; all these things seem no more the effect of a fortuitous +cause and of a declension of atoms, than the retina which receives the +rays of light, the crystalline lens which refracts them, the incus, the +malleus, the stapes, the tympanic membrane of the ear, which receives +the sounds, the paths of the blood in our veins, the systole and +diastole of the heart, this pendulum of the machine which makes life.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Fraud" id="Fraud"></a><i>FRAUD</i></h2> + + +<p>Bambabef the fakir one day met one of the disciples of Confutzee, whom +we call "Confucius," and this disciple was named "Ouang," and Bambabef +maintained that the people had need of being deceived, and Ouang claimed +that one should never deceive anybody; and here is the summary of their +dispute:</p> + + +<p class="center">BAMBABEF:</p> + +<p>We must imitate the Supreme Being who does not show us things as they +are; he makes us see the sun in a diameter of two or three feet, +although this star is a million times bigger than the earth; he makes us +see the moon and the stars set on the same blue background, whereas they +are at different depths. He requires that a square tower shall appear +round to us from a distance; he requires that fire shall seem hot to us, +although it is neither hot nor cold; in fine, he surrounds us with +errors suited to our nature.</p> + +<p class="center">OUANG:</p> + +<p>What you name error is not one at all. The sun, placed as it is at +millions of millions of lis<a name="FNanchor_6" id="FNanchor_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> beyond our globe, is not the sun we see. +We perceive in reality, and we can perceive, only the sun which is +depicted in our retina at a determined angle. Our eyes have not been +given us for appreciating sizes and distances, we need other aids and +other operations to appreciate them.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>Bambabef seemed very astonished at this proposition. Ouang, who was very +patient, explained to him the theory of optics; and Bambabef, who had a +quick understanding, surrendered to the demonstrations of Confutzee's +disciple, then he resumed the argument.</p> + + +<p class="center">BAMBABEF:</p> + +<p>If God does not deceive us through the medium of our senses, as I +believed, avow at least that doctors always deceive children for their +good; they tell them that they are giving them sugar, and in fact they +are giving them rhubarb. I, a fakir, may then deceive the people who are +as ignorant as the children.</p> + +<p class="center">OUANG:</p> + +<p>I have two sons; I have never deceived them; when they have been ill I +have told them that there was a very bitter medicine, and that they must +have the courage to take it; "it would harm you if it were sweet." I +have never allowed their masters and teachers to make them afraid of +spirits, ghosts, goblins, sorcerers; by this means I have made brave, +wise young citizens of them.</p> + +<p class="center">BAMBABEF:</p> + +<p>The people are not born so happily as your family.</p> + +<p class="center">OUANG:</p> + +<p>All men are alike, or nearly so; they are born with the same +dispositions. One must not corrupt men's natures.</p> + +<p class="center"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>BAMBABEF:</p> + +<p>We teach them errors, I admit, but it is for their good. We make them +believe that if they do not buy the nails we have blessed, if they do +not expiate their sins by giving us money, they will become, in another +life, post-horses, dogs or lizards. That intimidates them, and they +become honest people.</p> + +<p class="center">OUANG:</p> + +<p>Do you not see that you are perverting these poor people? There are +among them many more than you think who reason, who laugh at your +miracles, at your superstitions, who see quite well that they will not +be changed into either lizards or post-horses. What is the consequence? +They have enough sense to see that you are telling them impertinences, +and they have not enough to raise themselves toward a religion that is +pure and free from superstition, such as ours. Their passions make them +believe that there is no religion at all, because the only one that is +taught them is ridiculous; you become guilty of all the vices in which +they are plunged.</p> + +<p class="center">BAMBABEF:</p> + +<p>Not at all, for we do not teach them anything but good morality.</p> + +<p class="center">OUANG:</p> + +<p>You would have yourselves stoned by the people if you taught them impure +morality. Men are so made that they want to do evil, but that they do +not want it preached to them. All that is necessary is that you should +not mix a wise moral system with absurd fables, because you weaken +through your impostures, which you can do without, the morality that you +are forced to teach.</p> + +<p class="center"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>BAMBABEF:</p> + +<p>What! you believe that one can teach the people truth without +strengthening it with fables?</p> + +<p class="center">OUANG:</p> + +<p>I firmly believe it. Our literati are of the same stuff as our tailors, +our weavers and our husbandmen. They worship a God creator, rewarder, +avenger. They do not sully their worship, either by absurd systems, or +by extravagant ceremonies; and there are far less crimes among the +literati than among the people. Why not deign to instruct our workmen as +we instruct our literati?</p> + +<p class="center">BAMBABEF:</p> + +<p>You would be very foolish; it is as if you wanted them to have the same +courtesy, to be lawyers; that is neither possible nor proper. There must +be white bread for the masters, and brown bread for the servants.</p> + +<p class="center">OUANG:</p> + +<p>I admit that all men should not have the same learning; but there are +some things necessary to all. It is necessary that all men should be +just; and the surest way of inspiring all men with justice is to inspire +in them religion without superstition.</p> + +<p class="center">BAMBABEF:</p> + +<p>It is a fine project, but it is impracticable. Do you think that men +will be satisfied to believe in a God who punishes and rewards? You have +told me that it often happens that the most shrewd among the people +revolt against my fables; they will revolt in the same way against +truth. They will say:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> "Who will assure me that God punishes and +rewards? where is the proof of it? what is your mission? what miracle +have you performed that I may believe you?" They will laugh at you much +more than at me.</p> + +<p class="center">OUANG:</p> + +<p>That is where you are mistaken. You imagine that people will shake off +the yoke of an honest, probable idea that is useful to everyone, of an +idea in accordance with human reason, because people reject things that +are dishonest, absurd, useless, dangerous, that make good sense shudder.</p> + +<p>The people are very disposed to believe their magistrates: when their +magistrates propose to them only a reasonable belief, they embrace it +willingly. There is no need of prodigies for believing in a just God, +who reads in man's heart; this idea is too natural, too necessary, to be +combated. It is not necessary to say precisely how God will punish and +reward; it suffices that people believe in His justice. I assure you I +have seen entire towns which have had barely any other dogma, and that +it is in those towns that I have seen most virtue.</p> + +<p class="center">BAMBABEF:</p> + +<p>Take care; in those towns you will find philosophers who will deny you +both your pains and your recompenses.</p> + +<p class="center">OUANG:</p> + +<p>You will admit to me that these philosophers will deny your inventions +still more strongly; so you gain nothing from that. Though there are +philosophers who do not agree with my principles, there are honest +people none the less; none the less do they cultivate the virtue of +them, which must be embraced by love, and not by fear. But, further, I +maintain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> that no philosopher would ever be assured that Providence did +not reserve pains for the wicked and rewards for the good. For if they +ask me who told me that God punishes? I shall ask them who has told them +that God does not punish. In fine, I maintain that these philosophers, +far from contradicting me, will help me. Would you like to be a +philosopher?</p> + +<p class="center">BAMBABEF:</p> + +<p>Willingly; but do not tell the fakirs.</p> + +<p class="center">OUANG:</p> + +<p>Let us think above all that, if a philosopher wishes to be useful to +human society, he must announce a God.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6" id="Footnote_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> A li is 124 paces.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Free-will" id="Free-will"></a><i>FREE-WILL</i></h2> + + +<p>Ever since men have reasoned, the philosophers have obscured this +matter: but the theologians have rendered it unintelligible by absurd +subtleties about grace. Locke is perhaps the first man to find a thread +in this labyrinth; for he is the first who, without having the arrogance +of trusting in setting out from a general principle, examined human +nature by analysis. For three thousand years people have disputed +whether or no the will is free. In the "Essay on the Human +Understanding," chapter on "Power," Locke shows first of all that the +question is absurd, and that liberty can no more belong to the will than +can colour and movement.</p> + +<p>What is the meaning of this phrase "to be free"? it means "to be able," +or assuredly it has no sense. For the will "to be able" is as ridiculous +at bottom as to say that the will is yellow or blue, round or square. To +will is to wish, and to be free is to be able. Let us note step by step +the chain of what passes in us, without obfuscating our minds by any +terms of the schools or any antecedent principle.</p> + +<p>It is proposed to you that you mount a horse, you must absolutely make a +choice, for it is quite clear that you either will go or that you will +not go. There is no middle way. It is therefore of absolute necessity +that you wish yes or no. Up to there it is demonstrated that the will is +not free. You wish to mount the horse; why? The reason, an ignoramus +will say, is because I wish it. This answer is idiotic, nothing happens +or can happen without a reason, a cause; there is one therefore for your +wish. What is it? the agreeable idea of going on horseback which +presents itself in your brain, the dominant idea, the determinant idea. +But, you will say,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> can I not resist an idea which dominates me? No, for +what would be the cause of your resistance? None. By your will you can +obey only an idea which will dominate you more.</p> + +<p>Now you receive all your ideas; therefore you receive your wish, you +wish therefore necessarily. The word "liberty" does not therefore belong +in any way to your will.</p> + +<p>You ask me how thought and wish are formed in us. I answer you that I +have not the remotest idea. I do not know how ideas are made any more +than how the world was made. All that is given to us is to grope for +what passes in our incomprehensible machine.</p> + +<p>The will, therefore, is not a faculty that one can call free. A free +will is an expression absolutely void of sense, and what the scholastics +have called will of indifference, that is to say willing without cause, +is a chimera unworthy of being combated.</p> + +<p>Where will be liberty then? in the power to do what one wills. I wish to +leave my study, the door is open, I am free to leave it.</p> + +<p>But, say you, if the door is closed, and I wish to stay at home, I stay +there freely. Let us be explicit. You exercise then the power that you +have of staying; you have this power, but you have not that of going +out.</p> + +<p>The liberty about which so many volumes have been written is, therefore, +reduced to its accurate terms, only the power of acting.</p> + +<p>In what sense then must one utter the phrase—"Man is free"? in the same +sense that one utters the words, health, strength, happiness. Man is not +always strong, always healthy, always happy.</p> + +<p>A great passion, a great obstacle, deprive him of his liberty, his power +of action.</p> + +<p>The word "liberty," "free-will," is therefore an abstract word, a +general word, like beauty, goodness, justice. These terms do not state +that all men are always beautiful, good and just; similarly, they are +not always free.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>Let us go further: this liberty being only the power of acting, what is +this power? It is the effect of the constitution and present state of +our organs. Leibnitz wishes to resolve a geometrical problem, he has an +apoplectic fit, he certainly has not liberty to resolve his problem. Is +a vigorous young man, madly in love, who holds his willing mistress in +his arms, free to tame his passion? undoubtedly not. He has the power of +enjoying, and has not the power of refraining. Locke was therefore very +right to call liberty "power." When is it that this young man can +refrain despite the violence of his passion? when a stronger idea +determines in a contrary sense the activity of his body and his soul.</p> + +<p>But what! the other animals will have the same liberty, then, the same +power? Why not? They have senses, memory, feeling, perceptions, as we +have. They act with spontaneity as we act. They must have also, as we +have, the power of acting by virtue of their perceptions, by virtue of +the play of their organs.</p> + +<p>Someone cries: "If it be so, everything is only machine, everything in +the universe is subjected to eternal laws." Well! would you have +everything at the pleasure of a million blind caprices? Either +everything is the sequence of the necessity of the nature of things, or +everything is the effect of the eternal order of an absolute master; in +both cases we are only wheels in the machine of the world.</p> + +<p>It is a vain witticism, a commonplace to say that without the pretended +liberty of the will, all pains and rewards are useless. Reason, and you +will come to a quite contrary conclusion.</p> + +<p>If a brigand is executed, his accomplice who sees him expire has the +liberty of not being frightened at the punishment; if his will is +determined by itself, he will go from the foot of the scaffold to +assassinate on the broad highway; if his organs, stricken with horror, +make him experience an unconquerable terror, he will stop robbing. His +companion's punishment becomes useful to him and an insurance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> for +society only so long as his will is not free.</p> + +<p>Liberty then is only and can be only the power to do what one will. That +is what philosophy teaches us. But if one considers liberty in the +theological sense, it is a matter so sublime that profane eyes dare not +raise themselves to it.<a name="FNanchor_7" id="FNanchor_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p> + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7" id="Footnote_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> See "<a href="#Liberty">Liberty</a>."</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="French" id="French"></a><i>FRENCH</i></h2> + + +<p>The French language did not begin to have any form until towards the +tenth century; it was born from the ruins of Latin and Celtic, mixed +with a few Germanic words. This language was first of all the <i>romanum +rusticum</i>, rustic Roman, and the Germanic language was the court +language up to the time of Charles the Bald; Germanic remained the sole +language of Germany after the great epoch of the partition of 843. +Rustic Roman, the Romance language, prevailed in Western France; the +people of the country of Vaud, of the Valais, of the Engadine valley, +and of a few other cantons, still retain to-day manifest vestiges of +this idiom.</p> + +<p>At the end of the tenth century French was formed; people wrote in +French at the beginning of the eleventh; but this French still retained +more of Rustic Roman than the French of to-day. The romance of +Philomena, written in the tenth century in rustic Roman, is not in a +tongue very different from that of the Norman laws. One still remarks +Celtic, Latin and German derivations. The words signifying the parts of +the human body, or things of daily use, and which have nothing in common +with Latin or German, are in old Gaulish or Celtic, such as <i>tête</i>, +<i>jambe</i>, <i>sabre</i>, <i>pointe</i>, <i>aller</i>, <i>parler</i>, <i>écouter</i>, <i>regarder</i>, +<i>aboyer</i>, <i>crier</i>, <i>coutume</i>, <i>ensemble</i>, and many others of this kind. +Most of the terms of war were Frank or German: <i>Marche</i>, <i>halte</i>, +<i>maréchal</i>, <i>bivouac</i>, <i>reitre</i>, <i>lansquenet</i>. All the rest is Latin; +and all the Latin words were abridged, according to the custom and +genius of the nations of the north; thus from <i>palatium</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>, palais; from +<i>lupus</i>, loup; from <i>Auguste</i>, août; from <i>Junius</i>, juin; from <i>unctus</i>, +oint; from <i>purpura</i>, pourpre; from <i>pretium</i>, prix, etc. Hardly were +there left any vestiges of the Greek tongue, which had been so long +spoken at Marseilles.</p> + +<p>In the twelfth century there began to be introduced into the language +some of the terms of Aristotle's philosophy; and towards the sixteenth +century one expressed by Greek terms all the parts of the human body, +their diseases, their remedies; whence the words <i>cardiaque</i>, +<i>céphalique</i>, <i>podagre</i>, <i>apoplectique</i>, <i>asthmatique</i>, <i>iliaque</i>, +<i>empyème</i>, and so many others. Although the language then enriched +itself from the Greek, and although since Charles VIII. it had drawn +much aid from Italian already perfected, the French language had not yet +taken regular consistence. François I<sup>er</sup> abolished the ancient custom of +pleading, judging, contracting in Latin; custom which bore witness to +the barbarism of a language which one did not dare use in public +documents, a pernicious custom for citizens whose lot was regulated in a +language they did not understand. One was obliged then to cultivate +French; but the language was neither noble nor regular. The syntax was +left to caprice. The genius for conversation being turned to +pleasantries, the language became very fertile in burlesque and naïve +expressions, and very sterile in noble and harmonious terms: from this +it comes that in rhyming dictionaries one finds twenty terms suitable +for comic poetry, for one for more exalted use; and it is, further, a +reason why Marot never succeeded in a serious style, and why Amyot could +render Plutarch's elegance only with naïveté.</p> + +<p>French acquired vigour beneath the pen of Montaigne; but it still had +neither nobility nor harmony. Ronsard spoiled the language by bringing +into French poetry the Greek compounds which the doctors and +philosophers used. Malherbe repaired Ronsard's mischief somewhat. The +language became more noble and more harmonious with the establishment of +the Académie Française, and acquired finally, in the reign<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> of Louis +XIV., the perfection whereby it might be carried into all forms of +composition.</p> + +<p>The genius of this language is order and clarity; for each language has +its genius, and this genius consists in the facility which the language +gives for expressing oneself more or less happily, for using or +rejecting the familiar twists of other languages. French having no +declensions, and being always subject to the article, cannot adopt Greek +and Latin inversions; it obliges words to arrange themselves in the +natural order of ideas. Only in one way can one say "<i>Plancus a pris +soin des affaires de César.</i>" That is the only arrangement one can give +to these words. Express this phrase in Latin—<i>Res Cæsaris Plancus +diligenter curavit</i>: one can arrange these words in a hundred and twenty +ways, without injuring the sense and without troubling the language. The +auxiliary verbs which eke out and enervate the phrases in modern +languages, still render the French tongue little suited to the concise +lapidary style. The auxiliary verbs, its pronouns, its articles, its +lack of declinable participles, and finally its uniform gait, are +injurious to the great enthusiasm of poetry, in which it has less +resources than Italian and English; but this constraint and this bondage +render it more suitable for tragedy and comedy than any language in +Europe. The natural order in which one is obliged to express one's +thoughts and construct one's phrases, diffuses in this language a +sweetness and easiness that is pleasing to all peoples; and the genius +of the nation mingling with the genius of the language has produced more +agreeably written books than can be seen among any other people.</p> + +<p>The pleasure and liberty of society having been long known only in +France, the language has received therefrom a delicacy of expression and +a finesse full of simplicity barely to be found elsewhere. This finesse +has sometimes been exaggerated, but people of taste have always known +how to reduce it within just limits.</p> + +<p>Many persons have thought that the French language has become +impoverished since the time of Amyot and Montaigne:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> one does indeed +find in many authors expressions which are no longer admissible; but +they are for the most part familiar expressions for which equivalents +have been substituted. The language has been enriched with a quantity of +noble and energetic expressions; and without speaking here of the +eloquence of things, it has acquired the eloquence of words. It is in +the reign of Louis XIV., as has been said, that this eloquence had its +greatest splendour, and that the language was fixed. Whatever changes +time and caprice prepare for it, the good authors of the seventeenth and +eighteenth centuries will always serve as models.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Friendship" id="Friendship"></a><i>FRIENDSHIP</i></h2> + + +<p>Friendship is the marriage of the soul; and this marriage is subject to +divorce. It is a tacit contract between two sensitive and virtuous +persons. I say "sensitive," because a monk, a recluse can be not wicked +and live without knowing what friendship is. I say "virtuous," because +the wicked have only accomplices; voluptuaries have companions in +debauch, self-seekers have partners, politicians get partisans; the +generality of idle men have attachments; princes have courtiers; +virtuous men alone have friends. Cethegus was the accomplice of +Catilina, and Maecenas the courtier of Octavius; but Cicero was the +friend of Atticus.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="God" id="God"></a><i>GOD</i></h2> + + +<p>During the reign of Arcadius, Logomacos, lecturer in theology of +Constantinople, went to Scythia and halted at the foot of the Caucasus, +in the fertile plains of Zephirim, on the frontier of Colchis. That good +old man Dondindac was in his great lower hall, between his sheepfold and +his vast barn; he was kneeling with his wife, his five sons and five +daughters, his kindred and his servants, and after a light meal they +were all singing God's praises. "What do you there, idolator?" said +Logomacos to him.</p> + +<p>"I am not an idolator," answered Dondindac.</p> + +<p>"You must be an idolator," said Logomacos, "seeing that you are not +Greek. Tell me, what was that you were singing in your barbarous +Scythian jargon?"</p> + +<p>"All tongues are equal in the ears of God," answered the Scythian. "We +were singing His praises."</p> + +<p>"That's very extraordinary," returned the theologian. "A Scythian family +who pray God without having been taught by us!" He soon engaged +Dondindac the Scythian in conversation, for he knew a little Scythian, +and the other a little Greek. The following conversation was found in a +manuscript preserved in the library of Constantinople.</p> + +<p class="paddedp2"> </p> +<p class="center">LOGOMACOS:</p> + +<p>Let us see if you know your catechism. Why do you pray God?</p> + +<p class="center"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>DONDINDAC:</p> + +<p>Because it is right to worship the Supreme Being from whom we hold +everything.</p> + +<p class="center">LOGOMACOS:</p> + +<p>Not bad for a barbarian! And what do you ask of Him?</p> + +<p class="center">DONDINDAC:</p> + +<p>I thank Him for the benefits I enjoy, and even for the ills with which +He tries me; but I take good care not to ask Him for anything; He knows +better than us what we need, and besides, I am afraid to ask Him for +good weather when my neighbour is asking for rain.</p> + +<p class="center">LOGOMACOS:</p> + +<p>Ah! I thought he was going to say something silly. Let us start again +farther back. Barbarian, who has told you there is a God?</p> + +<p class="center">DONDINDAC:</p> + +<p>The whole of nature.</p> + +<p class="center">LOGOMACOS:</p> + +<p>That does not suffice. What idea have you of God?</p> + +<p class="center">DONDINDAC:</p> + +<p>The idea of my creator, of my master, who will reward me if I do good, +and who will punish me if I do ill.</p> + +<p class="center">LOGOMACOS:</p> + +<p>Trash, nonsense all that! Let us come to essentials. Is God infinite +<i>secundum quid</i>, or in essence?</p> + +<p class="center"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>DONDINDAC:</p> + +<p>I don't understand you.</p> + +<p class="center">LOGOMACOS:</p> + +<p>Brutish fool! Is God in one place, beyond all places, or in all places?</p> + +<p class="center">DONDINDAC:</p> + +<p>I have no idea ... just as you please.</p> + +<p class="center">LOGOMACOS:</p> + +<p>Dolt! Is it possible for what has been not to have been, and can a stick +not have two ends? Does He see the future as future or as present? how +does He draw the being out of non-existence, and how annihilate the +being?</p> + +<p class="center">DONDINDAC:</p> + +<p>I have never examined these things.</p> + +<p class="center">LOGOMACOS:</p> + +<p>What a blockhead! Come, one must humble oneself, see things in +proportion. Tell me, my friend, do you think that matter can be eternal?</p> + +<p class="center">DONDINDAC:</p> + +<p>What does it matter to me whether it exists from all eternity or not? I +do not exist from all eternity. God is always my master; He has given me +the notion of justice, I must follow it; I do not want to be a +philosopher, I want to be a man.</p> + +<p class="center">LOGOMACOS:</p> + +<p>These blockheads are troublesome. Let us go step by step. What is God?</p> + +<p class="center"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>DONDINDAC:</p> + +<p>My sovereign, my judge, my father.</p> + +<p class="center">LOGOMACOS:</p> + +<p>That's not what I'm asking you. What is His nature?</p> + +<p class="center">DONDINDAC:</p> + +<p>To be potent and good.</p> + +<p class="center">LOGOMACOS:</p> + +<p>But, is He corporeal or spiritual?</p> + +<p class="center">DONDINDAC:</p> + +<p>How should I know?</p> + +<p class="center">LOGOMACOS:</p> + +<p>What! you don't know what a spirit is?</p> + +<p class="center">DONDINDAC:</p> + +<p>Not in the least: of what use would it be to me? should I be more just? +should I be a better husband, a better father, a better master, a better +citizen?</p> + +<p class="center">LOGOMACOS:</p> + +<p>It is absolutely essential you should learn what a spirit is. It is, it +is, it is ... I will tell you another time.</p> + +<p class="center">DONDINDAC:</p> + +<p>I'm very much afraid that you may tell me less what it is than what it +is not. Allow me to put a question to you in my turn. I once saw one of +your temples; why do you depict God with a long beard?</p> + +<p class="center"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>LOGOMACOS:</p> + +<p>That's a very difficult question which needs preliminary instruction.</p> + +<p class="center">DONDINDAC:</p> + +<p>Before receiving your instruction, I must tell you what happened to me +one day. I had just built a closet at the end of my garden; I heard a +mole arguing with a cockchafer. "That's a very fine building," said the +mole. "It must have been a very powerful mole who did that piece of +work."</p> + +<p>"You're joking," said the cockchafer. "It was a cockchafer bubbling over +with genius who is the architect of this building." From that time I +resolved never to argue.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Helvetia" id="Helvetia"></a><i>HELVETIA</i></h2> + + +<p>Happy Helvetia! to what charter do you owe your liberty? to your +courage, to your resolution, to your mountains.</p> + +<p>"But I am your emperor."</p> + +<p>"But I do not want you any longer."</p> + +<p>"But your fathers were my father's slaves."</p> + +<p>"It is for that very reason that their children do not wish to serve +you."</p> + +<p>"But I had the right belonging to my rank."</p> + +<p>"And we have the right of nature."</p> + +<p>Why is liberty so rare?</p> + +<p>Because it is the chiefest good.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="History" id="History"></a><i>HISTORY</i></h2> + + +<h4><span class="smcap">Definition</span></h4> + +<p>History is the recital of facts given as true, in contradistinction to +the fable, which is the recital of facts given as false.</p> + +<p>There is the history of opinions which is hardly anything but a +collection of human errors.</p> + +<p>The history of the arts can be the most useful of all when it joins to +the knowledge of the invention and the progress of the arts the +description of their mechanism.</p> + +<p>Natural history, improperly called <i>history</i>, is an essential part of +natural philosophy. The history of events has been divided into sacred +history and profane history; sacred history is a series of divine and +miraculous operations whereby it pleased God once on a time to lead the +Jewish nation, and to-day to exercise our faith.</p> + + +<h4><span class="smcap">First Foundations of History</span></h4> + +<p>The first foundations of all history are the recitals of the fathers to +the children, transmitted afterward from one generation to another; at +their origin they are at the very most probable, when they do not shock +common sense, and they lose one degree of probability in each +generation. With time the fable grows and the truth grows less; from +this it comes that all the origins of peoples are absurd. Thus the +Egyptians had been governed by the gods for many centuries; then they +had been governed by demi-gods; finally they had had kings for eleven +thousand three hundred and forty years; and in that space of time the +sun had changed four times from east to west.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>The Phœnicians of Alexander's time claimed to have been established +in their country for thirty thousand years; and these thirty thousand +years were filled with as many prodigies as the Egyptian chronology. I +avow that physically it is very possible that Phœnicia has existed +not merely thirty thousand years, but thirty thousand milliards of +centuries, and that it experienced like the rest of the world thirty +million revolutions. But we have no knowledge of it.</p> + +<p>One knows what a ridiculously marvellous state of affairs ruled in the +ancient history of the Greeks.</p> + +<p>The Romans, for all that they were serious, did not any the less envelop +the history of their early centuries in fables. This nation, so recent +compared with the Asiatic peoples, was five hundred years without +historians. It is not surprising, therefore, that Romulus was the son of +Mars, that a she-wolf was his foster mother, that he marched with a +thousand men of his village of Rome against twenty-five thousand +combatants of the village of the Sabines: that later he became a god; +that Tarquin, the ancient, cut a stone with a razor, and that a vestal +drew a ship to land with her girdle, etc.</p> + +<p>The early annals of all our modern nations are no less fabulous; the +prodigious and improbable things must sometimes be reported, but as +proofs of human credulity: they enter the history of opinions and +foolishnesses; but the field is too vast.</p> + + +<h4><span class="smcap">Of Records</span></h4> + +<p>In order to know with a little certainty something of ancient history, +there is only one means, it is to see if any incontestable records +remain. We have only three in writing: the first is the collection of +astronomical observations made for nineteen hundred consecutive years at +Babylon, sent by Alexander to Greece. This series of observations, which +goes back to two thousand two hundred and thirty-four years before our +era, proves invincibly that the Babylonians existed as a body of people +several centuries before; for the arts are only the work of time, and +men's natural laziness leaves them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> for some thousands of years without +other knowledge and without other talents than those of feeding +themselves, of defending themselves against the injuries of the air, and +of slaughtering each other. Let us judge by the Germans and by the +English in Cæsar's time, by the Tartars to-day, by the two-thirds of +Africa, and by all the peoples we have found in America, excepting in +some respects the kingdoms of Peru and of Mexico, and the republic of +Tlascala. Let us remember that in the whole of this new world nobody +knew how to read or write.</p> + +<p>The second record is the central eclipse of the sun, calculated in China +two thousand one hundred and fifty-five years before our era, and +recognized true by our astronomers. Of the Chinese the same thing must +be said as of the peoples of Babylon; they already comprised a vast +civilized empire without a doubt. But what puts the Chinese above all +the peoples of the earth is that neither their laws, nor their customs, +nor the language spoken among them by their lettered mandarins has +changed for about four thousand years. Nevertheless, this nation and the +nation of India, the most ancient of all those that exist to-day, which +possess the vastest and the most beautiful country, which invented +almost all the arts before we had learned any of them, have always been +omitted right to our days in all so-called universal histories. And when +a Spaniard and a Frenchman took a census of the nations, neither one nor +the other failed to call his country the first monarchy in the world, +and his king the greatest king in the world, flattering himself that his +king would give him a pension as soon as he had read his book.</p> + +<p>The third record, very inferior to the two others, exists in the Arundel +marbles: the chronicle of Athens is graved there two hundred and +sixty-three years before our era; but it goes back only to Cecrops, +thirteen hundred and nineteen years beyond the time when it was +engraved. In the history of antiquity those are the sole incontestable +epochs that we have.</p> + +<p>Let us give serious attention to these marbles brought back from Greece +by Lord Arundel. Their chronicle begins<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> fifteen hundred and eighty-two +years before our era. That is to-day (1771) an antiquity of 3,353 years, +and you do not see there a single fact touching on the miraculous, on +the prodigious. It is the same with the Olympiads; it is not there that +one should say <i>Græcia mendax</i>, lying Greece. The Greeks knew very well +how to distinguish between history and fable, between real facts and the +tales of Herodotus: just as in their serious affairs their orators +borrowed nothing from the speeches of the sophists or from the images of +the poets.</p> + +<p>The date of the taking of Troy is specified in these marbles; but no +mention is made of Apollo's arrows, or of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, or +of the ridiculous combats of the gods. The date of the inventions of +Triptolemy and Ceres is found there; but Ceres is not called <i>goddess</i>. +Mention is made of a poem on the abduction of Prosperine; it is not said +that she is the daughter of Jupiter and a goddess, and that she is wife +of the god of the infernal regions.</p> + +<p>Hercules is initiated into the mysteries of Eleusis; but not a word on +his twelve labours, nor on his passage into Africa in his cup, nor on +his divinity, nor on the big fish by which he was swallowed, and which +kept him in its belly three days and three nights, according to +Lycophron.</p> + +<p>Among us, on the contrary, a standard is brought from heaven by an angel +to the monks of Saint-Denis; a pigeon brings a bottle of oil to a church +in Rheims; two armies of snakes give themselves over to a pitched battle +in Germany; an archbishop of Mayence is besieged and eaten by rats; and, +to crown everything, great care has been taken to mark the year of these +adventures.</p> + +<p>All history is recent. It is not astonishing that we have no ancient +profane history beyond about four thousand years. The revolutions of +this globe, the long and universal ignorance of that art which transmits +facts by writing are the cause of it. This art was common only among a +very small number of civilized nations; and was in very few hands even. +Nothing rarer among the French and the Germans than to know how to +write; up to the fourteenth century of our era<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> nearly all deeds were +only attested by witnesses. It was, in France, only under Charles VII., +in 1454, that one started to draft in writing some of the customs of +France. The art of writing was still rarer among the Spanish, and from +that it results that their history is so dry and so uncertain, up to the +time of Ferdinand and Isabella. One sees by that to what extent the very +small number of men who knew how to write could deceive, and how easy it +was to make us believe the most enormous absurdities.</p> + +<p>There are nations which have subjugated a part of the world without +having the usage of characters. We know that Gengis-khan conquered a +part of Asia at the beginning of the thirteenth century, but it is not +through either him or the Tartars that we know it. Their history, +written by the Chinese and translated by Father Gaubil, states that +these Tartars had not at that time the art of writing.</p> + +<p>This art cannot have been less unknown to the Scythian Oguskan, named +Madies by the Persians and the Greeks, who conquered a part of Europe +and Asia so long before the reign of Cyrus. It is almost certain that at +that time of a hundred nations there were hardly two or three who used +characters. It is possible that in an ancient world destroyed, men knew +writing and the other arts; but in ours they are all very recent.</p> + +<p>There remain records of another kind, which serve to establish merely +the remote antiquity of certain peoples, and which precede all the known +epochs, and all the books; these are the prodigies of architecture, like +the pyramids and the palaces of Egypt, which have resisted time. +Herodotus, who lived two thousand two hundred years ago, and who had +seen them, was not able to learn from the Egyptian priests at what time +they had been erected.</p> + +<p>It is difficult to give to the most ancient of the pyramids less than +four thousand years of antiquity; but one must consider that these +efforts of the ostentation of the kings could only have been commenced +long after the establishment of the towns. But to build towns in a land +inundated every year, let us always remark that it was first necessary +to raise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> the land of the towns on piles in this land of mud, and to +render them inaccessible to the flood; it was essential, before taking +this necessary course, and before being in a state to attempt these +great works, for the people to have practised retreating during the +rising of the Nile, amid the rocks which form two chains right and left +of this river. It was necessary for these mustered peoples to have the +instruments for tilling, those of architecture, a knowledge of +surveying, with laws and a police. All this necessarily requires a +prodigious space of time. We see by the long details which face every +day the most necessary and the smallest of our undertakings, how +difficult it is to do great things, and it needs not only indefatigable +stubbornness, but several generations animated with this stubbornness.</p> + +<p>However, whether it be Menes, Thaut or Cheops, or Rameses who erected +one or two of these prodigious masses, we shall not be the more +instructed of the history of ancient Egypt: the language of this people +is lost. We therefore know nothing but that before the most ancient +historians there was matter for making an ancient history.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Ignorance" id="Ignorance"></a><i>IGNORANCE</i></h2> + + +<p>I am ignorant of how I was formed, and of how I was born. For a quarter +of my life I was absolutely ignorant of the reasons for all that I saw, +heard and felt, and I was nothing but a parrot at whom other parrots +chattered.</p> + +<p>When I looked round me and within me, I conceived that something exists +for all eternity; since there are beings who exist to-day, I concluded +that there is a being who is necessary and necessarily eternal. Thus, +the first step I took to emerge from my ignorance crossed the boundaries +of all the centuries.</p> + +<p>But when I tried to walk in this infinite quarry open before me, I could +neither find a single path, nor discern plainly a single object; and +from the leap I made to contemplate eternity, I fell back again into the +abyss of my ignorance.</p> + +<p>I saw what was called "matter," from the star Sirius and the stars of +the Milky Way, as distant from Sirius as Sirius is from us, right to the +last atom that can be perceived with the microscope, and I am ignorant +as to what matter is.</p> + +<p>The light which let me see all these beings is unknown to me; I can, +with the help of a prism, dissect this light, and divide it into seven +pencils of rays; but I cannot divide these pencils; I am ignorant of +what they are composed. Light is of the nature of matter, since it has +movement and makes an impression on objects; but it does not tend toward +a centre like all bodies: on the contrary, it escapes invincibly from +the centre, whereas all matter bears towards its centre. Light seems +penetrable, and matter is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> impenetrable. Is this light matter? is it not +matter? with what innumerable properties can it be endowed? I am +ignorant thereof.</p> + +<p>Is this substance which is so brilliant, so swift and so unknown, are +these other substances which roll in the immensity of space, eternal as +they seem infinite? I have no idea. Has a necessary being, of sovereign +intelligence, created them out of nothing, or has he arranged them? did +he produce this order in Time or before Time? What even is this Time of +which I speak? I cannot define it. O God! Teach me, for I am enlightened +neither by other men's darkness nor by my own.</p> + +<p>What is sensation? How have I received it? what connection is there +between the air which strikes my ear and the sensation of sound? between +this body and the sensation of colour? I am profoundly ignorant thereof, +and I shall always be ignorant thereof.</p> + +<p>What is thought? where does it dwell? how is it formed? who gives me +thought during my sleep? is it by virtue of my will that I think? But +always during my sleep, and often while I am awake, I have ideas in +spite of myself. These ideas, long forgotten, long relegated to the back +shop of my brain, issue from it without my interfering, and present +themselves to my memory, which makes vain efforts to recall them.</p> + +<p>External objects have not the power to form ideas in me, for one does +not give oneself what one has not; I am too sensible that it is not I +who give them to me, for they are born without my orders. Who produces +them in me? whence do they come? whither do they go? Fugitive phantoms, +what invisible hand produces you and causes you to disappear?</p> + +<p>Why, alone of all animals, has man the mania for dominating his +fellow-men?</p> + +<p>Why and how has it been possible that of a hundred thousand million men +more than ninety-nine have been immolated to this mania?</p> + +<p>How is reason so precious a gift that we would not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> lose it for anything +in the world? and how has this reason served only to make us the most +unhappy of all beings?</p> + +<p>Whence comes it that loving truth passionately, we are always betrayed +to the most gross impostures?</p> + +<p>Why is life still loved by this crowd of Indians deceived and enslaved +by the bonzes, crushed by a Tartar's descendants, overburdened with +work, groaning in want, assailed by disease, exposed to every scourge?</p> + +<p>Whence comes evil, and why does evil exist?</p> + +<p>O atoms of a day! O my companions in infinite littleness, born like me +to suffer everything and to be ignorant of everything, are there enough +madmen among you to believe that they know all these things? No, there +are not; no, at the bottom of your hearts you feel your nonentity as I +render justice to mine. But you are arrogant enough to want people to +embrace your vain systems; unable to be tyrants over our bodies, you +claim to be tyrants over our souls.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Impious" id="Impious"></a><i>THE IMPIOUS</i></h2> + + +<p>Who are the impious? those who give a white beard, feet and hands to the +Being of beings, to the great Demiourgos, to the eternal intelligence by +which nature is governed. But they are only excusably impious, poor +impious people against whom one must not grow wroth.</p> + +<p>If even they paint the great incomprehensible Being born on a cloud +which can bear nothing; if they are foolish enough to put God in a mist, +in the rain, or on a mountain, and to surround him with little chubby, +flushed faces <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original has accompained.">accompanied</ins> by two wings; I laugh and I pardon them with +all my heart.</p> + +<p>The impious persons who attribute to the Being of beings preposterous +predictions and injustices would anger me if this great Being had not +given me a reason which quells my wrath. The silly fanatic repeats to +me, after others, that it is not for us to judge what is reasonable and +just in the great Being, that His reason is not like our reason, that +His justice is not like our justice. Eh! how, you mad demoniac, do you +want me to judge justice and reason otherwise than by the notions I have +of them? do you want me to walk otherwise than with my feet, and to +speak otherwise than with my mouth?</p> + +<p>The impious man who supposes the great Being jealous, arrogant, +malignant, vindictive, is more dangerous. I would not want to sleep +under the same roof as this man.</p> + +<p>But how would you treat the impious man who says to you: "See only +through my eyes, do not think; I announce to you a tyrannical God who +has made me to be your tyrant; I am his well-beloved: during all +eternity he will torture<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> millions of his creatures whom he detests in +order to gladden me; I shall be your master in this world, and I shall +laugh at your torments in the other."</p> + +<p>Do you not feel an itching to thrash this cruel, impious fellow? If you +are born gentle, will you not run with all your might to the west when +this barbarian utters his atrocious reveries in the east?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Joan" id="Joan"></a><i>JOAN OF ARC</i></h2> + + +<p>It is meet that the reader should be acquainted with the true history of +Joan of Arc surnamed "the Maid." The details of her adventure are very +little known and may give readers pleasure; here they are.</p> + +<p>Paul Jove says that the courage of the French was stimulated by this +girl, and takes good care not to believe her inspired. Neither Robert, +Gaguin, Paul Emile, Polydore Vergile, Genebrard, Philip of Bergamo, +Papyre Masson, nor even Mariana, say that she was sent by God; and even +though Mariana the Jesuit had said it, that would not deceive me.</p> + +<p>Mézerai relates "that the prince of the celestial militia appeared to +her." I am sorry for Mézerai, and I ask pardon of the prince of the +celestial militia.</p> + +<p>Most of our historians, who copy each other, suppose that the Maid +uttered prophecies, and that her prophecies were accomplished. She is +made to say that "she will drive the English out of the kingdom," and +they were still there five years after her death. She is said to have +written a long letter to the King of England, and assuredly she could +neither read nor write; such an education was not given to an inn +servant in the Barois; and the information laid against her states that +she could not sign her name.</p> + +<p>But, it is said, she found a rusted sword, the blade of which was +engraved with five golden <i>fleurs-de-lis</i>; and this sword was hidden in +the church of Sainte Catherine de Fierbois at Tours. There, certainly is +a great miracle!</p> + +<p>Poor Joan of Arc having been captured by the English, despite her +prophecies and her miracles, maintained first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> of all in her +cross-examination that St. Catherine and St. Marguerite had honoured her +with many revelations. I am astonished that she never said anything of +her talks with the prince of the celestial militia. These two saints +apparently liked talking better than St. Michael. Her judges thought her +a sorceress, she thought herself inspired.</p> + +<p>One great proof that Charles VII.'s captains made use of the marvellous +in order to encourage the soldiers, in the deplorable state to which +France was reduced, is that Saintrailles had his shepherd, as the Comte +de Dunois had his shepherdess. The shepherd made prophecies on one side, +while the shepherdess made them on the other.</p> + +<p>But unfortunately the Comte de Dunois' prophetess was captured at the +siege of Compiègne by a bastard of Vendôme, and Saintrailles' prophet +was captured by Talbot. The gallant Talbot was far from having the +shepherd burned. This Talbot was one of those true Englishmen who scorn +superstition, and who have not the fanaticism for punishing fanatics.</p> + +<p>This, it seems to me, is what the historians should have observed, and +what they have neglected.</p> + +<p>The Maid was taken to Jean de Luxembourg, Comte de Ligny. She was shut +up in the fortress of Beaulieu, then in that of Beaurevoir, and from +there in that of Crotoy in Picardy.</p> + +<p>First of all Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, who was of the King of +England's party against his own legitimate king, claims the Maid as a +sorceress arrested on the limits of his diocese. He wishes to judge her +as a sorceress. He supported the right he claimed by a downright lie. +Joan had been captured on the territory of the bishopric of Noyon: and +neither the Bishop of Beauvais, nor the Bishop of Noyon assuredly had +the right of condemning anybody, and still less of committing to death a +subject of the Duke of Lorraine, and a warrior in the pay of the King of +France.</p> + +<p>There was at that time (who would believe it?) a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> vicar-general of the +Inquisition in France, by name Brother Martin.<a name="FNanchor_8" id="FNanchor_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> It was one of the most +horrible effects of the total subversion of that unfortunate country. +Brother Martin claimed the prisoner as smelling of heresy (<i>odorantem +hæresim</i>). He called upon the Duke of Burgundy and the Comte de Ligny, +"by the right of his office, and of the authority given to him by the +Holy See, to deliver Joan to the Holy Inquisition."</p> + +<p>The Sorbonne hastened to support Brother Martin, and wrote to the Duke +of Burgundy and to Jean de Luxembourg—"You have used your noble power +to apprehend this woman who calls herself the Maid, by means of whom the +honour of God has been immeasurably offended, the faith exceedingly +hurt, and the Church too greatly dishonoured; for by reason of her, +idolatry, errors, bad doctrine, and other inestimable evils have ensued +in this kingdom ... but what this woman has done would be of small +account, if did not ensue what is meet for satisfying the offence +perpetrated by her against our gentle Creator and His faith, and the +Holy Church with her other innumerable misdeeds ... and it would be +intolerable offence against the divine majesty if it happened that this +woman were freed."<a name="FNanchor_9" id="FNanchor_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p> + +<p>Finally, the Maid was awarded to Jean Cauchon whom people called the +unworthy bishop, the unworthy Frenchman, and the unworthy man. Jean de +Luxembourg sold the Maid to Cauchon and the English for ten thousand +livres, and the Duke of Bedford paid them. The Sorbonne, the bishop and +Brother Martin, then presented a new petition to this Duke of Bedford, +regent of France, "in honour of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, for +that the said Joan may be briefly put into the hands of the Church." +Joan was led to Rouen. The archbishopric was vacant at that time, and +the chapter permitted the Bishop of Beauvais <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>to <i>work</i> in the town. +(<i>Besogner</i> is the term which was used.) He chose as assessors nine +doctors of the Sorbonne with thirty-five other assistants, abbots or +monks. The vicar of the Inquisition, Martin, presided with Cauchon; and +as he was only a vicar, he had but second place.</p> + +<p>Joan underwent fourteen examinations; they are singular. She said that +she saw St. Catherine and St. Marguerite at Poitiers. Doctor Beaupère +asks her how she recognized the saints. She answers that it was by their +way of bowing. Beaupère asks her if they are great chatterboxes. "Go +look on the register," she says. Beaupère asks her if, when she saw St. +Michael, he was naked. She answers: "Do you think our Lord had nothing +to clothe him with?"</p> + +<p>The curious will carefully observe here that Joan had long been directed +with other religious women of the populace by a rogue named Richard,<a name="FNanchor_10" id="FNanchor_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> +who performed miracles, and who taught these girls to perform them. One +day he gave communion three times in succession to Joan, in honour of +the Trinity. It was then the custom in matters of importance and in +times of great peril. The knights had three masses said, and +communicated three times when they went to seek fortune or to fight in a +duel. It is what has been observed on the part of the Chevalier Bayard.</p> + +<p>The workers of miracles, Joan's companions, who were submissive to +Richard, were named Pierrone and Catherine. Pierrone affirmed that she +had seen that God appeared to her in human form as a friend to a friend. +God was "clad in a long white robe, etc."</p> + +<p>Up to the present the ridiculous; here now is the horrible.</p> + +<p>One of Joan's judges, doctor of theology and priest, by name Nicholas +<i>the Bird-Catcher</i>, comes to confess her in prison. He abuses the +sacrament to the point of hiding behind a piece of serge two priests who +transcribed Joan of Arc's confession. Thus did the judges use sacrilege +in order to be murderers. And an <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original has unforunate.">unfortunate</ins> idiot, who had had <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>enough +courage to render very great services to the king and the country, was +condemned to be burned by forty-four French priests who immolated her +for the English faction.</p> + +<p>It is sufficiently well-known how someone had the cunning and meanness +to put a man's suit beside her to tempt her to wear this suit again, and +with what absurd barbarism this transgression was claimed as a pretext +for condemning her to the flames, as if in a warrior girl it was a crime +worthy of the fire, to put on breeches instead of a skirt. All this +wrings the heart, and makes common sense shudder. One cannot conceive +how we dare, after the countless horrors of which we have been guilty, +call any nation by the name of barbarian.</p> + +<p>Most of our historians, lovers of the so-called embellishments of +history rather than of truth, say that Joan went fearlessly to the +torture; but as the chronicles of the times bear witness, and as the +historian Villaret admits, she received her sentence with cries and +tears; a weakness pardonable in her sex, and perhaps in ours, and very +compatible with the courage which this girl had displayed amid the +dangers of war; for one can be fearless in battle, and sensitive on the +scaffold.</p> + +<p>I must add that many persons have believed without any examination that +the Maid of Orleans was not burned at Rouen at all, although we have the +official report of her execution. They have been deceived by the account +we still have of an adventuress who took the name of the "Maid," +deceived Joan of Arc's brothers, and under cover of this imposture, +married in Lorraine a nobleman of the house of Armoise. There were two +other rogues who also passed themselves off as the "Maid of Orleans." +All three claimed that Joan was not burned at all, and that another +woman had been substituted for her. Such stories can be admitted only by +those who want to be deceived.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8" id="Footnote_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Beuchot says: There was at that time in France an +Inquisitor-General, named Brother Jean or Jacques le Graverend. His +vice-inquisitor or vicar, who took part in Joan's trial, was not called +Brother Martin, but Brother Jean Magistri or the Master.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9" id="Footnote_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> This is a translation of the Latin of the Sorbonne, made +long after.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10" id="Footnote_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Beuchot says that Berriat Saint-Prix, in his "Jeanne +d'Arc," proves, page 341 <i>et seq.</i>, that the imputations against Brother +Richard are groundless, and that he could exercise no influence at the +trial.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Kissing" id="Kissing"></a><i>KISSING</i></h2> + + +<p>I ask pardon of the boys and the girls; but maybe they will not find +here what they will seek. This article is only for scholars and serious +persons for whom it is barely suitable.</p> + +<p>There is but too much question of kissing in the comedies of Molière's +time. Champagne, in the comedy of "La Mère Coquette" by Quinault, asks +kisses of Laurette; she says to him—"You are not content, then; really +it is shameful; I have kissed you twice." Champagne answers her—"What! +you keep account of your kisses?" (Act I. Sc. 1.).</p> + +<p>The valets always used to ask kisses of the soubrettes; people kissed +each other on the stage. Usually it was very dull and very intolerable, +particularly in the case of ugly actors, who were nauseating.</p> + +<p>If the reader wants kisses, let him look for them in the "Pastor Fido"; +there is one entire chorus where nothing but kisses is mentioned; and +the piece is founded solely on a kiss that Mirtillo gave one day to +Amarilli, in a game of blind man's buff, <i>un bacio molto saporito</i>.</p> + +<p>Everyone knows the chapter on kisses, in which Jean de la Casa, +Archbishop of Benevento, says that people can kiss each other from head +to foot. He pities the people with big noses who can only approach each +other with difficulty; and he counsels ladies with long noses to have +flat-nosed lovers.</p> + +<p>The kiss was a very ordinary form of salutation throughout ancient +times. Plutarch recalls that the conspirators, before killing Cæsar, +kissed his face, hand and breast. Tacitus says that when Agricola, his +father-in-law, returned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> from Rome, Domitian received him with a cold +kiss, said nothing to him, and left him confounded in the crowd. The +inferior who could not succeed in greeting his superior by kissing him, +put his mouth to his own hand, and sent him a kiss that the other +returned in the same way if he so wished.</p> + +<p>This sign was used even for worshipping the gods. Job, in his parable +(Chap. xxxi.), which is perhaps the oldest of known books, says that he +has not worshipped the sun and the moon like the other Arabs, that he +has not carried his hand to his mouth as he looked at the stars.</p> + +<p>In our Occident nothing remains of this ancient custom but the puerile +and genteel civility that is still taught to children in some small +towns, of kissing their right hands when someone has given them some +sweets.</p> + +<p>It was a horrible thing to betray with a kiss; it was that that made +Cæsar's assassination still more hateful. We know all about Judas' +kisses; they have become proverbial.</p> + +<p>Joab, one of David's captains, being very jealous of Amasa, another +captain, says to him (2 Sam. xx. 9): "Art thou in health, my brother? +And he took Amasa by the beard with the right hand to kiss him," and +with his other hand drew his sword and "smote him therewith in the fifth +rib, and shed out his bowels on the ground."</p> + +<p>No other kiss is to be found in the other fairly frequent assassinations +which were committed among the Jews, unless it be perhaps the kisses +which Judith gave to the captain Holophernes, before cutting off his +head while he was in bed asleep; but no mention is made of them, and the +thing is merely probable.</p> + +<p>In one of Shakespeare's tragedies called "Othello," this Othello, who is +a black, gives two kisses to his wife before strangling her. That seems +abominable to honourable people; but Shakespeare's partisans say it is +beautifully natural, particularly in a black.</p> + +<p>When Giovanni Galeas Sforza was assassinated in Milan Cathedral, on St. +Stephen's day, the two Medici in the Reparata church; Admiral Coligny, +the Prince of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> Orange, the Maréchal d'Ancre, the brothers Witt, and so +many others; at least they were not kissed.</p> + +<p>There was among the ancients I know not what of symbolic and sacred +attached to the kiss, since one kissed the statues of the gods and their +beards, when the sculptors had shown them with a beard. Initiates kissed +each other at the mysteries of Ceres, as a sign of concord.</p> + +<p>The early Christians, men and women, kissed each other on the mouth at +their <i>agapæ</i>. This word signified "love-feast." They gave each other +the holy kiss, the kiss of peace, the kiss of brother and sister, +<ins class="greekcorr" title="agion philêma">ἄγιον φίλημα</ins>. This custom lasted for more than four centuries, +and was abolished at last on account of its consequences. It was these +kisses of peace, these agapæ of love, these names of "brother" and +"sister," that long drew to the little-known Christians, those +imputations of debauchery with which the priests of Jupiter and the +priestesses of Vesta charged them. You see in Petronius, and in other +profane authors, that the libertines called themselves "brother" and +"sister." It was thought that among the Christians the same names +signified the same infamies. They were innocent accomplices in spreading +these accusations over the Roman empire.</p> + +<p>There were in the beginning seventeen different Christian societies, +just as there were nine among the Jews, including the two kinds of +Samaritans. The societies which flattered themselves at being the most +orthodox accused the others of the most inconceivable obscenities. The +term of "gnostic," which was at first so honourable, signifying +"learned," "enlightened," "pure," became a term of horror and scorn, a +reproach of heresy. Saint Epiphanius, in the third century, claimed that +they used first to tickle each other, the men and the women; that then +they gave each other very immodest kisses, and that they judged the +degree of their faith by the voluptuousness of these kisses; that the +husband said to his wife, in presenting a young initiate to her: "Have +an agape with my brother," and that they had an agape.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>We do not dare repeat here, in the chaste French tongue,<a name="FNanchor_11" id="FNanchor_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> what Saint +Epiphanius adds in Greek (Epiphanius, <i>contra hæres</i>, lib. I., vol. ii). +We will say merely that perhaps this saint was somewhat imposed upon; +that he allowed himself to be too carried away by zeal, and that all +heretics are not hideous debauchees.</p> + +<p>The sect of Pietists, wishing to imitate the early Christians, to-day +give each other kisses of peace on leaving the assembly, calling each +other "my brother, my sister"; it is what, twenty years ago, a very +pretty and very human Pietist lady avowed to me. The ancient custom was +to kiss on the mouth; the Pietists have carefully preserved it.</p> + +<p>There was no other manner of greeting dames in France, Germany, Italy, +England; it was the right of cardinals to kiss queens on the mouth, and +in Spain even. What is singular is that they had not the same +prerogative in France, where ladies always had more liberty than +anywhere else, but "every country has its ceremonies," and there is no +usage so general that chance and custom have not provided exceptions. It +would have been an incivility, an affront, for an honourable woman, when +she received a lord's first visit, not to have kissed him, despite his +moustaches. "It is a displeasing custom," says Montaigne (Book III., +chap. v.), "and offensive to ladies, to have to lend their lips to +whoever has three serving-men in his suite, disagreeable though he be." +This custom was, nevertheless, the oldest in the world.</p> + +<p>If it is disagreeable for a young and pretty mouth to stick itself out +of courtesy to an old and ugly mouth, there was a great danger between +fresh, red mouths of twenty to twenty-five years old; and that is what +finally brought about the abolition of the ceremony of kissing in the +mysteries and the agapæ. It is what caused women to be confined among +the Orientals, so that they might kiss only their fathers and their +brothers; custom long since introduced into Spain by the Arabs.</p> + +<p>Behold the danger: there is one nerve of the fifth pair <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>which goes from +the mouth to the heart, and thence lower down, with such delicate +industry has nature prepared everything! The little glands of the lips, +their spongy tissue, their velvety paps, the fine skin, ticklish, gives +them an exquisite and voluptuous sensation, which is not without analogy +with a still more hidden and still more sensitive part. Modesty may +suffer from a lengthily savoured kiss between two Pietists of eighteen.</p> + +<p>It is to be remarked that the human species, the turtledoves and the +pigeons alone are acquainted with kisses; thence came among the Latins +the word <i>columbatìm</i>, which our language has not been able to render. +There is nothing of which abuse has not been made. The kiss, designed by +nature for the mouth, has often been prostituted to membranes which do +not seem made for this usage. One knows of what the templars were +accused.</p> + +<p>We cannot honestly treat this interesting subject at greater length, +although Montaigne says: "One should speak thereof shamelessly: brazenly +do we utter 'killing,' 'wounding,' 'betraying,' but of that we dare not +speak but with bated breath."</p> + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11" id="Footnote_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Or the English—<i>Translator.</i></p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Languages" id="Languages"></a><i>LANGUAGES</i></h2> + + +<p>There is no complete language, no language which can express all our +ideas and all our sensations; their shades are too numerous, too +imperceptible. Nobody can make known the precise degree of sensation he +experiences. One is obliged, for example, to designate by the general +names of "love" and "hate" a thousand loves and a thousand hates all +different from each other; it is the same with our pleasures and our +pains. Thus all languages are, like us, imperfect.</p> + +<p>They have all been made successively and by degrees according to our +needs. It is the instinct common to all men which made the first +grammars without perceiving it. The Lapps, the Negroes, as well as the +Greeks, needed to express the past, the present and the future; and they +did it: but as there has never been an assembly of logicians who formed +a language, no language has been able to attain a perfectly regular +plan.</p> + +<p>All words, in all possible languages, are necessarily the images of +sensations. Men have never been able to express anything but what they +felt. Thus everything has become metaphor; everywhere the soul is +enlightened, the heart burns, the mind wanders. Among all peoples the +infinite has been the negation of the finite; immensity the negation of +measure. It is evident that our five senses have produced all languages, +as well as all our ideas. The least imperfect are like the laws: those +in which there is the least that is arbitrary are the best. The most +complete are necessarily those of the peoples who have cultivated the +arts and society. Thus the Hebraic language should be one of the +poorest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> languages, like the people who used to speak it. How should the +Hebrews have had maritime terms, they who before Solomon had not a boat? +how the terms of philosophy, they who were plunged in such profound +ignorance up to the time when they started to learn something in their +migration to Babylon? The language of the Phœnicians, from which the +Hebrews drew their jargon, should be very superior, because it was the +idiom of an industrious, commercial, rich people, distributed all over +the earth.</p> + +<p>The most ancient known language should be that of the nation most +anciently gathered together as a body of people. It should be, further, +that of the people which has been least subjugated, or which, having +been subjugated, has civilized its conquerors. And in this respect, it +is constant that Chinese and Arabic are the most ancient of all those +that are spoken to-day.</p> + +<p>There is no mother-tongue. All neighbouring nations have borrowed from +each other: but one has given the name of "mother-tongue" to those from +which some known idioms are derived. For example, Latin is the +mother-tongue in respect of Italian, Spanish and French: but it was +itself derived from Tuscan; and Tuscan was derived from Celtic and +Greek.</p> + +<p>The most beautiful of all languages must be that which is at once, the +most complete, the most sonorous, the most varied in its twists and the +most regular in its progress, that which has most compound words, that +which by its prosody best expresses the soul's slow or impetuous +movements, that which most resembles music.</p> + +<p>Greek has all these advantages: it has not the roughness of Latin, in +which so many words end in <i>um</i>, <i>ur</i>, <i>us</i>. It has all the pomp of +Spanish, and all the sweetness of Italian. It has above all the living +languages of the world the expression of music, by long and short +syllables, and by the number and variety of its accents. Thus all +disfigured as it is to-day in Greece, it can still be regarded as the +most beautiful language in the universe.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>The most beautiful language cannot be the most widely distributed, when +the people which speaks it is oppressed, not numerous, without commerce +with other nations, and when these other nations have cultivated their +own languages. Thus Greek should be less diffused than Arabic, and even +Turkish.</p> + +<p>Of all European languages French should be the most general, because it +is the most suited to conversation: it has taken its character from that +of the people which speaks it.</p> + +<p>The French have been, for nearly a hundred and fifty years, the people +which has best known society, which the first discarded all +embarrassment, and the first among whom women were free and even +sovereign, when elsewhere they were only slaves. The always uniform +syntax of this language, which admits no inversions, is a further +facility barely possessed by other tongues; it is more current coin than +others, even though it lacks weight. The prodigious quantity of +agreeably frivolous books which this nation has produced is a further +reason for the favour which its language has obtained among all nations.</p> + +<p>Profound books will not give vogue to a language: they will be +translated; people will learn Newton's philosophy; but they will not +learn English in order to understand it.</p> + +<p>What makes French still more common is the perfection to which the drama +has been carried in this tongue. It is to "Cinna," "Phèdre," the +"Misanthrope" that it owes its vogue, and not to the conquests of Louis +XIV.</p> + +<p>It is not so copious and so flexible as Italian, or so majestic as +Spanish, or so energetic as English; and yet it has had more success +than these three languages from the sole fact that it is more suited to +intercourse, and that there are more agreeable books in it than +elsewhere. It has succeeded like the cooks of France, because it has +more flattered general taste.</p> + +<p>The same spirit which has led the nations to imitate the French in their +furniture, in the arrangement of rooms, in gardens, in dancing, in all +that gives charm, has led them also to speak their language. The great +art of good French<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> writers is precisely that of the women of this +nation, who dress better than the other women of Europe, and who, +without being more beautiful, appear to be so by the art with which they +adorn themselves, by the noble and simple charm they give themselves so +naturally.</p> + +<p>It is by dint of good breeding that this language has managed to make +the traces of its former barbarism disappear. Everything would bear +witness to this barbarism to whosoever should look closely. One would +see that the number <i>vingt</i> comes from <i>viginti</i>, and that formerly this +<i>g</i> and this <i>t</i> were pronounced with a roughness characteristic of all +the northern nations; of the month of <i>Augustus</i> has been made the month +of <i>août</i>. Not so long ago a German prince thinking that in France one +never pronounced the term <i>Auguste</i> otherwise, called King Auguste of +Poland King Août. All the letters which have been suppressed in +pronunciation, but retained in writing, are our former barbarous +clothes.</p> + +<p>It was when manners were softened that the language also was softened: +before François I<sup>er</sup> summoned women to his court, it was as clownish as +we were. It would have been as good to speak old Celtic as the French of +the time of Charles VIII. and Louis XII.: German was not more harsh.</p> + +<p>It has taken centuries to remove this rust. The imperfections which +remain would still be intolerable, were it not for the continual care +one takes to avoid them, as a skilful horseman avoids stones in the +road. Good writers are careful to combat the faulty expressions which +popular ignorance first brings into vogue, and which, adopted by bad +authors, then pass into the gazettes and the pamphlets. <i>Roastbeef</i> +signifies in English <i>roasted ox</i>, and our waiters talk to us nowadays +of a "roastbeef of mutton." <i>Riding-coat</i> means <i>a coat for going on +horseback</i>; of it people have made <i>redingote</i>, and the populace thinks +it an ancient word of the language. It has been necessary to adopt this +expression with the people because it signifies an article of common +use.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>In matters of arts and crafts and necessary things, the common people +subjugated the court, if one dare say so; just as in matters of religion +those who most despise the common run of people are obliged to speak and +to appear to think like them.</p> + +<p>To call things by the names which the common people has imposed on them +is not to speak badly; but one recognizes a people naturally more +ingenious than another by the proper names which it gives to each thing.</p> + +<p>It is only through lack of imagination that a people adapts the same +expression to a hundred different ideas. It is a ridiculous sterility +not to have known how to express otherwise <i>an arm of the sea</i>, <i>a scale +arm</i>, <i>an arm of a chair</i>; there is poverty of thought in saying equally +the <i>head of a nail</i>, the <i>head of an army</i>.</p> + +<p>Ignorance has introduced another custom into all modern languages. A +thousand terms no longer signify what they should signify. <i>Idiot</i> meant +<i>solitary</i>, to-day it means <i>foolish</i>; <i>epiphany</i> signified +<i>appearance</i>, to-day it is the festival of three kings; <i>baptize</i> is to +dip in water, we say <i>baptize with the name</i> of John or James.</p> + +<p>To these defects in almost all languages are added barbarous +irregularities. Venus is a charming name, <i>venereal</i> is abominable. +Another result of the irregularity of these languages composed at hazard +in uncouth times is the quantity of compound words of which the simple +form does not exist any more. They are children who have lost their +father. We have <i>architects</i> and no <i>tects</i>; there are things which are +<i>ineffable</i> and none which are <i>effable</i>. One is <i>intrepid</i>, one is not +<i>trepid</i>. There are <i>impudent</i> fellows, <i>insolent</i> fellows, but neither +<i>pudent</i> fellows nor <i>solent</i> fellows. All languages more or less retain +some of these defects; they are all irregular lands from which the hand +of the adroit artist knows how to derive advantage.</p> + +<p>Other defects which make a nation's character evident always slip into +languages. In France there are fashions in expressions as in ways of +doing the hair. A fashionable invalid or doctor will take it into his +head to say that he has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> had a <i>soupçon</i> of fever to signify that he has +had a slight attack; soon the whole nation has <i>soupçons</i> of colics, +<i>soupçons</i> of hatred, love, ridicule. Preachers in the pulpit tell you +that you must have at least a <i>soupçon</i> of God's love. After a few +months this fashion gives place to another.</p> + +<p>What does most harm to the nobility of the language is not this passing +fashion with which people are soon disgusted, not the solecisms of +fashionable people into which good authors do not fall, but the +affectation of mediocre authors in speaking of serious things in a +conversational style. Everything conspires to corrupt a language that is +rather widely diffused; authors who spoil the style by affectation; +those who write to foreign countries, and who almost always mingle +foreign expressions with their natural tongue; merchants who introduce +into conversation their business terms.</p> + +<p>All languages being imperfect, it does not follow that one should change +them. One must adhere absolutely to the manner in which the good authors +have spoken them; and when one has a sufficient number of approved +authors, a language is fixed. Thus one can no longer change anything in +Italian, Spanish, English, French, without corrupting them; the reason +is clear: it is that one would soon render unintelligible the books +which provide the instruction and the pleasure of the nations.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Laws" id="Laws"></a><i>LAWS</i></h2> + + +<p>Sheep live very placidly in community, they are considered very +easy-going, because we do not see the prodigious quantity of animals +they devour. It is even to be believed that they eat them innocently and +without knowing it, like us when we eat a Sassenage cheese. The republic +of the sheep is a faithful representation of the golden age.</p> + +<p>A chicken-run is visibly the most perfect monarchic state. There is no +king comparable to a cock. If he marches proudly in the midst of his +people, it is not out of vanity. If the enemy approaches, he does not +give orders to his subjects to go to kill themselves for him by virtue +of his certain knowledge and plenary power; he goes to battle himself, +ranges his chickens behind him and fights to the death. If he is the +victor, he himself sings the <i>Te Deum</i>. In civil life there is no one so +gallant, so honest, so disinterested. He has all the virtues. Has he in +his royal beak a grain of corn, a grub, he gives it to the first lady +among his subjects who presents herself. Solomon in his harem did not +come near a poultry-yard cock.</p> + +<p>If it be true that the bees are governed by a queen to whom all her +subjects make love, that is a still more perfect government.</p> + +<p>The ants are considered to be an excellent democracy. Democracy is above +all the other States, because there everyone is equal, and each +individual works for the good of all.</p> + +<p>The republic of the beavers is still superior to that of the ants, at +least if we judge by their masonry work.</p> + +<p>The monkeys resemble strolling players rather than a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> civilized people; +and they do not appear to be gathered together under fixed, fundamental +laws, like the preceding species.</p> + +<p>We resemble the monkeys more than any other animal by the gift of +imitation, the frivolity of our ideas, and by our inconstancy which has +never allowed us to have uniform and durable laws.</p> + +<p>When nature formed our species and gave us instincts, self-esteem for +our preservation, benevolence for the preservation of others, love which +is common to all the species, and the inexplicable gift of combining +more ideas than all the animals together; when she had thus given us our +portion, she said to us: "Do as you can."</p> + +<p>There is no good code in any country. The reason for this is evident; +the laws have been made according to the times, the place and the need, +etc.</p> + +<p>When the needs have changed, the laws which have remained, have become +ridiculous. Thus the law which forbade the eating of pig and the +drinking of wine was very reasonable in Arabia, where pig and wine are +injurious; it is absurd at Constantinople.</p> + +<p>The law which gives the whole fee to the eldest son is very good in +times of anarchy and pillage. Then the eldest son is the captain of the +castle which the brigands will attack sooner or later; the younger sons +will be his chief officers, the husbandmen his soldiers. All that is to +be feared is that the younger son may assassinate or poison the Salian +lord his elder brother, in order to become in his turn the master of the +hovel; but these cases are rare, because nature has so combined our +instincts and our passions that we have more horror of assassinating our +elder brother than we have of being envious of his position. But this +law, suitable for the owners of dungeons in Chilperic's time is +detestable when there is question of sharing stocks in a city.</p> + +<p>To the shame of mankind, one knows that the laws of games are the only +ones which everywhere are just, clear, inviolable and executed. Why is +the Indian who gave us the rules of the game of chess willingly obeyed +all over the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> world, and why are the popes' decretals, for example, +to-day an object of horror and scorn? the reason is that the inventor of +chess combined everything with precision for the satisfaction of the +players, and that the popes, in their decretals, had nothing in view but +their own interest. The Indian wished to exercise men's minds equally, +and give them pleasure; the popes wished to besot men's minds. Also, the +essence of the game of chess has remained the same for five thousand +years, it is common to all the inhabitants of the earth; and the +decretals are known only at Spoletto, Orvieto, Loretto, where the +shallowest lawyer secretly hates and despises them.</p> + +<p>But I delight in thinking that there is a natural law independent of all +human conventions: the fruit of my work must belong to me; I must honour +my father and my mother; I have no right over my fellow's life, and my +fellow has none over mine, etc. But when I think that from Chedorlaomer +to Mentzel,<a name="FNanchor_12" id="FNanchor_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> colonel of hussars, everyone loyally kills and pillages +his fellow with a licence in his pocket, I am very afflicted.</p> + +<p>I am told that there are laws among thieves, and also laws of war. I ask +what are these laws of war. I learn that they mean hanging a brave +officer who has held fast in a bad post without cannon against a royal +army; that they mean having a prisoner hanged, if the enemy has hanged +one of yours; that they mean putting to the fire and the sword villages +which have not brought their sustenance on the appointed day, according +to the orders of the gracious sovereign of the district. "Good," say I, +"that is the 'Spirit of the Laws.'"</p> + +<p>It seems to me that most men have received from nature enough common +sense to make laws, but that everyone is not just enough to make good +laws.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12" id="Footnote_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Chedorlaomer was king of the Elamites, and contemporary +with Abraham. See Genesis ch. xiv. +</p><p> +Mentzel was a famous chief of Austrian partisans in the war of 1741. At +the head of five thousand men, he made Munich capitulate on February +13th, 1742.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Liberty" id="Liberty"></a><i>LIBERTY</i></h2> + + +<p>Either I am very much mistaken, or Locke the definer has very well +defined liberty as "power." I am mistaken again, or Collins, celebrated +London magistrate, is the only philosopher who has really sifted this +idea, and Clark's answer to him was merely that of a theologian. But of +all that has been written in France on liberty, the following little +dialogue seems to me the most clear.</p> + +<p class="paddedp2"> </p> +<p>A: There is a battery of guns firing in your ears, have you the liberty +to hear them or not to hear them?</p> + +<p>B: Without doubt, I cannot stop myself hearing them.</p> + +<p>A: Do you want this gun to carry off your head and the heads of your +wife and daughter, who are walking with you?</p> + +<p>B: What are you talking about? as long as I am of sound mind, I cannot +want such a thing; it is impossible.</p> + +<p>A: Good; you hear this gun necessarily, and you wish necessarily that +neither you nor your family shall die from a cannon shot while you are +out for a walk; you have not the power either of not hearing or of +wishing to remain here?</p> + +<p>B: Clearly.</p> + +<p>A: You have consequently taken some thirty steps in order to be +sheltered from the gun, you have had the power to walk these few steps +with me?</p> + +<p>B: Again very clearly.</p> + +<p>A: And if you had been a paralytic, you could not have avoided being +exposed to this battery, you would necessarily have heard and received a +gun shot; and you would be dead necessarily?</p> + +<p>B: Nothing is more true.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>A: In what then does your liberty consist, unless it be in the power +that your self has exercised in performing what your will required of +absolute necessity?</p> + +<p>B: You embarrass me; liberty then is nothing but the power of doing what +I want to do?</p> + +<p>A: Think about it, and see if liberty can be understood otherwise.</p> + +<p>B: In that case my hunting dog is as free as I am; he has necessarily +the will to run when he sees a hare, and the power of running if he has +not a pain in his legs. I have then nothing above my dog; you reduce me +to the state of the beasts.</p> + +<p>A: What poor sophistry from the poor sophists who have taught you. +Indeed you are in a bad way to be free like your dog! Do you not eat, +sleep, propagate like him, even almost to the attitude? Do you want the +sense of smell other than through your nose? Why do you want to have +liberty otherwise than your dog has?</p> + +<p>B: But I have a soul which reasons much, and my dog reasons hardly at +all. He has almost only simple ideas, and I have a thousand metaphysical +ideas.</p> + +<p>A: Well, you are a thousand times freer than he is; that is, you have a +thousand times more power of thinking than he has; but you do not think +otherwise than he does.</p> + +<p>B: What! I am not free to wish what I wish?</p> + +<p>A: What do you mean by that?</p> + +<p>B: I mean what everyone means. Doesn't one say every day, wishes are +free?</p> + +<p>A: A proverb is not a reason; explain yourself more clearly.</p> + +<p>B: I mean that I am free to wish as I please.</p> + +<p>A: With your permission, that has no sense; do you not see that it is +ridiculous to say, I wish to wish? You wish necessarily, as a result of +the ideas that have offered themselves to you. Do you wish to be +married; yes or no?</p> + +<p>B: But if I tell you that I want neither the one nor the other?</p> + +<p>A: You will be answering like someone who says: "Some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> believe Cardinal +Mazarin to be dead, others believe him to be alive, and as for me I +believe neither the one nor the other."</p> + +<p>B: Well, I want to be married.</p> + +<p>A: Ah! that is an answer. Why do you want to be married?</p> + +<p>B: Because I am in love with a beautiful, sweet, well-bred young girl, +who is fairly rich and sings very well, whose parents are very honest +people, and because I flatter myself I am loved by her, and very welcome +to her family.</p> + +<p>A: That is a reason. You see that you cannot wish without reason. I +declare to you that you are free to marry; that is, that you have the +power to sign the contract, have your nuptials, and sleep with your +wife.</p> + +<p>B: How now! I cannot wish without reason? And what will become of that +other proverb: <i>Sit pro ratione voluntas</i>; my will is my reason, I wish +because I wish?</p> + +<p>A: That is absurd, my dear fellow; there would be in you an effect +without a cause.</p> + +<p>B: What! When I play at odds and evens, I have a reason for choosing +evens rather than odds?</p> + +<p>A: Yes, undoubtedly.</p> + +<p>B: And what is that reason, if you please?</p> + +<p>A: The reason is that the idea of even rather than the opposite idea +presents itself to your mind. It would be comic that there were cases +where you wished because there was a cause of wishing, and that there +were cases where you wished without any cause. When you wish to be +married, you evidently feel the dominating reason; you do not feel it +when you are playing at odds and evens; and yet there certainly must be +one.</p> + +<p>B: But, I repeat, I am not free then?</p> + +<p>A: Your will is not free, but your actions are. You are free to act, +when you have the power to act.</p> + +<p>B: But all the books I have read on the liberty of indifference....</p> + +<p>A: What do you mean by the liberty of indifference?</p> + +<p>B: I mean the liberty of spitting on the right or on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> left, of +sleeping on my right side or on my left, of taking a walk of four turns +or five.</p> + +<p>A: Really the liberty you would have there would be a comic liberty! God +would have given you a fine gift! It would really be something to boast +of! Of what use to you would be a power which was exercised only on such +futile occasions? But the fact is that it is ridiculous to suppose the +will to wish to spit on the right. Not only is this will to wish absurd, +but it is certain that several trifling circumstances determine you in +these acts that you call indifferent. You are no more free in these acts +than in the others. But, I repeat, you are free at all times, in all +places, as soon as you do what you wish to do.</p> + +<p>B: I suspect you are right. I will think about it.<a name="FNanchor_13" id="FNanchor_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p> + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13" id="Footnote_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> See "<a href="#Free-will">Free-Will</a>."</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Library" id="Library"></a><i>LIBRARY</i></h2> + + +<p>A big library has this in it of good, that it dismays those who look at +it. Two hundred thousand volumes discourage a man tempted to print; but +unfortunately he at once says to himself: "People do not read all those +books, and they may read mine." He compares himself to a drop of water +who complains of being lost in the ocean and ignored: a genius had pity +on it; he caused it to be swallowed by an oyster; it became the most +beautiful pearl in the Orient, and was the chief ornament in the throne +of the Great Mogul. Those who are only compilers, imitators, +commentators, splitters of phrases, usurious critics, in short, those on +whom a genius has no pity, will always remain drops of water.</p> + +<p>Our man works in his garret, therefore, in the hope of becoming a pearl.</p> + +<p>It is true that in this immense collection of books there are about a +hundred and ninety-nine thousand which will never be read, from cover to +cover at least; but one may need to consult some of them once in a +lifetime. It is a great advantage for whoever wishes to learn to find at +his hand in the king's palace the volume and page he seeks, without +being kept waiting a moment. It is one of the most noble institutions. +No expense is more magnificent and more useful.</p> + +<p>The public library of the King of France is the finest in the whole +world, less on account of the number and rarity of the volumes than of +the ease and courtesy with which the librarians lend them to all +scholars. This library is incontestably the most precious monument there +is in France.</p> + +<p>This astounding multitude of books should not scare. We<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> have already +remarked that Paris contains about seven hundred thousand men, that one +cannot live with them all, and that one chooses three or four friends. +Thus must one no more complain of the multitude of books than of the +multitude of citizens.</p> + +<p>A man who wishes to learn a little about his existence, and who has no +time to waste, is quite embarrassed. He wishes to read simultaneously +Hobbes, Spinoza, Bayle who wrote against them, Leibnitz who disputed +with Bayle, Clarke who disputed with Leibnitz, Malebranche who differed +from them all, Locke who passed as having confounded Malebranche, +Stillingfleet who thought he had vanquished Locke, Cudworth who thinks +himself above them because he is understood by no one. One would die of +old age before having thumbed the hundredth part of the metaphysical +romances.</p> + +<p>One is very content to have the most ancient books, as one inquires into +the most ancient medals. It is that which makes the honour of a library. +The oldest books in the world are the "Kings" of the Chinese, the +"Shastabad" of the Brahmins, of which Mr. Holwell has brought to our +knowledge admirable passages, what remains of the ancient Zarathustra, +the fragments of Sanchoniathon which Eusebius has preserved for us and +which bears the characteristics of the most remote antiquity. I do not +speak of the "Pentateuch" which is above all one could say of it.</p> + +<p>We still have the prayer of the real Orpheus, which the hierophant +recited in the old Greek mysteries. "Walk in the path of justice, +worship the sole master of the universe. He is one; He is sole by +Himself. All beings owe Him their existence; He acts in them and by +them. He sees everything, and never has been seen by mortal eyes."</p> + +<p>St. Clement of Alexandria, the most learned of the fathers of the +Church, or rather the only scholar in profane antiquity, gives him +almost always the name of Orpheus of Thrace, of Orpheus the Theologian, +to distinguish him from those who wrote later under his name.</p> + +<p>We have no longer anything either of Museus or of Linus.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> A few passages +from these predecessors of Homer would well be an adornment to a +library.</p> + +<p>Augustus had formed the library called the Palatine. The statue of +Apollo presided over it. The emperor embellished it with busts of the +best authors. One saw in Rome twenty-nine great public libraries. There +are now more than four thousand important libraries in Europe. Choose +which suits you, and try not to be bored.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Limits" id="Limits"></a><i>LIMITS OF THE HUMAN MIND</i></h2> + + +<p>Someone asked Newton one day why he walked when he wanted to, and how +his arm and his hand moved at his will. He answered manfully that he had +no idea. "But at least," his interlocutor said to him, "you who +understand so well the gravitation of the planets will tell me why they +turn in one direction rather than in another!" And he again confessed +that he had no idea.</p> + +<p>Those who taught that the ocean was salt for fear that it might become +putrid, and that the tides were made to bring our ships into port (The +Abbé Pluche in "The Spectacle of Nature"), were somewhat ashamed when +the reply was made to them that the Mediterranean has ports and no ebb. +Musschenbroeck himself fell into this inadvertence.</p> + +<p>Has anyone ever been able to say precisely how a log is changed on the +hearth into burning carbon, and by what mechanism lime is kindled by +fresh water?</p> + +<p>Is the first principle of the movement of the heart in animals properly +understood? does one know clearly how generation is accomplished? has +one guessed what gives us sensations, ideas, memory? We do not +understand the essence of matter any more than the children who touch +its surface.</p> + +<p>Who will teach us by what mechanism this grain of wheat that we throw +into the ground rises again to produce a pipe laden with an ear of corn, +and how the same soil produces an apple at the top of this tree, and a +chestnut on its neighbour? Many teachers have said—"What do I not +know?" Montaigne used to say—"What do I know?"</p> + +<p>Ruthlessly trenchant fellow, wordy pedagogue, meddlesome theorist, you +seek the limits of your mind. They are at the end of your nose.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Crimes" id="Crimes"></a><i>LOCAL CRIMES</i></h2> + + +<p>Traverse the whole earth, you will find that theft, murder, adultery, +calumny are regarded as crimes which society condemns and curbs; but +should what is approved in England, and condemned in Italy, be punished +in Italy as an outrage against the whole of humanity? That is what I +call a local crime. Does not that which is criminal only in the +enclosure of some mountains, or between two rivers, demand of judges +more indulgence than those outrages which are held in horror in all +countries? Should not the judge say to himself: "I should not dare +punish at Ragusa what I punish at Loretto"? Should not this reflection +soften in his heart the hardness that it is only too easy to contract +during the long exercise of his office?</p> + +<p>You know the <i>kermesses</i> in Flanders; in the last century they were +carried to a point of indecency which might revolt eyes unaccustomed to +these spectacles. This is how Christmas was celebrated in some towns. +First there appeared a young man half naked, with wings on his back; he +recited the <i>Ave Maria</i> to a young girl who answered him <i>fiat</i>, and the +angel kissed her on the mouth: then a child enclosed in a great +cardboard cock cried, imitating the cock's cry: <i>Puer natus est nobis.</i> +A big ox bellowed <i>ubi</i>, which it pronounced <i>oubi</i>; a sheep bleated +<i>Bethlehem</i>. An ass cried <i>hihanus</i>, to signify <i>eamus</i>; a long +procession, preceded by four fools with baubles and rattles, closed the +performance. There remain to-day traces of these popular devotions, +which among more educated peoples would be taken for profanations. A +bad-tempered Swiss, more drunk maybe than those who played the rôles of +ox and ass, came<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> to words with them in Louvain; blows were given; the +people wanted to hang the Swiss, who escaped with difficulty.</p> + +<p>The same man had a violent quarrel at the Hague in Holland for having +stoutly taken Barneveldt's part against an extravagant Gomarist. He was +put into prison in Amsterdam for having said that priests are the +scourge of humanity and the source of all our misfortunes. "What!" he +said. "If one believes that good works make for salvation, one finds +oneself in a dungeon; if one laughs at a cock and an ass, one risks +being hanged." This adventure, burlesque though it is, makes it quite +clear that one can be reprehensible on one or two points in our +hemisphere, and be absolutely innocent in the rest of the world.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Love" id="Love"></a><i>LOVE</i></h2> + + +<p>There are so many sorts of love that one does not know to whom to +address oneself for a definition of it. The name of "love" is given +boldly to a caprice lasting a few days, a sentiment without esteem, +gallants' affectations, a frigid habit, a romantic fantasy, relish +followed by prompt disrelish: people give this name to a thousand +chimeras.</p> + +<p>If philosophers want to probe to the bottom this barely philosophical +matter, let them meditate on the banquet of Plato, in which Socrates, +honourable lover of Alcibiades and Agathon, converses with them on the +metaphysics of love.</p> + +<p>Lucretius speaks of it more as a natural philosopher: Virgil follows in +the steps of Lucretius; <i>amor omnibus idem</i>.</p> + +<p>It is the stuff of nature broidered by nature. Do you want an idea of +love? look at the sparrows in your garden; look at your pigeons; look at +the bull which is brought to the heifer; look at this proud horse which +two of your grooms lead to the quiet mare awaiting him; she draws aside +her tail to welcome him; see how her eyes sparkle; hark to the neighing; +watch the prancing, the curvetting, the ears pricked, the mouth opening +with little convulsions, the swelling nostrils, the flaring breath, the +manes rising and floating, the impetuous movement with which he hurls +himself on the object which nature has destined for him; but be not +jealous of him, and think of the advantages of the human species; in +love they compensate for all those that nature has given to the +animals—strength, beauty, nimbleness, speed.</p> + +<p>There are animals, even, who have no enjoyment in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> possession. Scale +fish are deprived of this delight: the female throws millions of eggs on +the mud; the male coming across them passes over them, and fertilizes +them with his seed, without troubling about the female to whom they +belong.</p> + +<p>Most animals that pair, taste pleasure only by a single sense, and as +soon as the appetite is satisfied, everything is extinguished. No +animal, apart from you, knows what kissing is; the whole of your body is +sensitive; your lips especially enjoy a voluptuousness that nothing can +tire; and this pleasure belongs to no species but yours: you can give +yourself up to love at any time, and the animals have but a fixed time. +If you reflect on these superiorities, you will say with the Count of +Rochester—"In a country of atheists love would cause the Deity to be +worshipped."</p> + +<p>As men have received the gift of perfecting all that nature accords +them, they have perfected love. Cleanliness, the care of oneself, by +rendering the skin more delicate, increase the pleasure of contact; and +attention to one's health renders the organs of voluptuousness more +sensitive. All the other sentiments that enter into that of love, just +like metals which amalgamate with gold: friendship, regard, come to +help; the faculties of mind and body are still further chains.</p> + +<p>Self-love above all tightens all these bonds. One applauds oneself for +one's choice, and a crowd of illusions form the decoration of the +building of which nature has laid the foundations.</p> + +<p>That is what you have above the animals. But if you taste so many +pleasures unknown to them, how many sorrows too of which the beasts have +no idea! What is frightful for you is that over three-fourths of the +earth nature has poisoned the pleasures of love and the sources of life +with an appalling disease to which man alone is subject, and which +infects in him the organs of generation alone.</p> + +<p>It is in no wise with this plague as with so many other maladies that +are the result of our excesses. It was not debauch that introduced it +into the world. Phryne, Lais,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> Flora, Messalina and those like them, +were not attacked by it; it was born in some islands where men lived in +innocence, and thence spread itself over the ancient world.</p> + +<p>If ever one could accuse nature of despising her work, of contradicting +her plans, of acting against her designs, it is in this detestable +scourge which has soiled the earth with horror and filth. Is that the +best of all possible worlds? What! if Cæsar, Antony, Octavius never had +this disease, was it not possible for it not to cause the death of +François I.? "No," people say, "things were ordered thus for the best." +I want to believe it; but it is sad for those to whom Rabelais dedicated +his book.</p> + +<p>Erotic philosophers have often debated the question of whether Heloïse +could still really love Abelard when he was a monk and emasculate? One +of these qualities did very great harm to the other.</p> + +<p>But console yourself, Abelard, you were loved; the root of the hewn tree +still retains a remnant of sap; the imagination aids the heart. One can +still be happy at table even though one eats no longer. Is it love? is +it simply a memory? is it friendship? All that is composed of something +indescribable. It is an obscure feeling resembling the fantastic +passions retained by the dead in the Elysian fields. The heroes who, +during their lifetime, shone in the chariot races, drove imaginary +chariots when they were dead. Heloïse lived with you on illusions and +supplements. She kissed you sometimes, and with all the more pleasure +that having taken a vow at the Paraclet monastery to love you no longer, +her kisses thereby became more precious as more guilty. A woman can +barely be seized with a passion for a eunuch: but she can keep her +passion for her lover become eunuch, provided that he remains lovable.</p> + +<p>It is not the same, ladies, for a lover who has grown old in service; +the externals subsist no longer; the wrinkles horrify; the white +eyebrows shock; the lost teeth disgust; the infirmities estrange: all +that one can do is to have the virtue of being nurse, and of tolerating +what one has loved. It is burying a dead man.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Luxury" id="Luxury"></a><i>LUXURY</i></h2> + + +<p>People have declaimed against luxury for two thousand years, in verse +and in prose, and people have always delighted in it.</p> + +<p>What has not been said of the early Romans when these brigands ravaged +and pillaged the harvests; when, to enlarge their poor village, they +destroyed the poor villages of the Volscians and the Samnites? They were +disinterested, virtuous men; they had not yet been able to steal either +gold, silver, or precious stones, because there were not any in the +little towns they plundered. Their woods and their marshes produced +neither pheasants nor partridges, and people praise their temperance.</p> + +<p>When gradually they had pillaged everything, stolen everything from the +far end of the Adriatic Gulf to the Euphrates, and when they had enough +intelligence to enjoy the fruit of their plundering; when they +cultivated the arts, when they tasted of all pleasures, and when they +even made the vanquished taste of them, they ceased then, people say, to +be wise and honest men.</p> + +<p>All these declamations reduce themselves to proving that a robber must +never either eat the dinner he has taken, or wear the coat he has +pilfered, or adorn himself with the ring he has filched. He should throw +all that, people say, in the river, so as to live like an honest man. +Say rather that he should not have stolen. Condemn brigands when they +pillage; but do not treat them as senseless when they enjoy. Honestly, +when a large number of English sailors enriched themselves at the taking +of Pondicherry and Havana, were they wrong to enjoy themselves later in +London, as the price of the trouble they had had in the depths of Asia +and America?</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>The declaimers want one to bury in the ground the wealth one has amassed +by the fortune of arms, by agriculture, by commerce and by industry. +They cite Lacedæmon; why do they not cite also the republic of San +Marino? What good did Sparto to Greece? Did she ever have Demosthenes, +Sophocles, Apelles, Phidias? The luxury of Athens produced great men in +every sphere; Sparta had a few captains, and in less number even than +other towns. But how fine it is that as small a republic as Lacedæmon +retains its poverty.<a name="FNanchor_14" id="FNanchor_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p> + +<p>One arrives at death as well by lacking everything as by enjoying what +can make life pleasant. The Canadian savage subsists, and comes to old +age like the English citizen who has an income of fifty thousand +guineas. But who will ever compare the land of the Iroquois to England?</p> + +<p>Let the republic of Ragusa and the canton of Zug make sumptuary laws, +they are right, the poor man must not spend beyond his powers; but I +have read somewhere:</p> + +<p>"Learn that luxury enriches a great state, even if it ruins a +small."<a name="FNanchor_15" id="FNanchor_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p> + +<p>If by luxury you understand excess, everyone knows that excess in any +form is pernicious, in abstinence as in gluttony, in economy as in +generosity. I do not know how it has happened that in my village where +the land is ungrateful, the taxes heavy, the prohibition against +exporting the corn one has sown intolerable, there is nevertheless +barely a cultivator who has not a good cloth coat, and who is not well +shod and well fed. If this cultivator toiled in his fields in his fine +coat, with white linen, his hair curled and powdered, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>there, certainly, +would be the greatest luxury, and the most impertinent; but that a +bourgeois of Paris or London should appear at the theatre clad like a +peasant, there would be the most vulgar and ridiculous niggardliness.</p> + +<p>When scissors, which are certainly not of the remotest antiquity, were +invented, what did people not say against the first men who pared their +nails, and who cut part of the hair which fell on their noses? They were +treated, without a doubt, as fops and prodigals, who bought an +instrument of vanity at a high price, in order to spoil the Creator's +handiwork. What an enormous sin to cut short the horn which God made to +grow at the end of our fingers! It was an outrage against the Deity! It +was much worse when shirts and socks were invented. One knows with what +fury the aged counsellors who had never worn them cried out against the +young magistrates who were addicted to this disastrous luxury.<a name="FNanchor_16" id="FNanchor_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p> + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14" id="Footnote_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Lacedæmon avoided luxury only by preserving the community +or equality of property; but she did not preserve either the one or the +other save by having the land cultivated by an enslaved people. The +existence of the equality or community of property supposes the +existence of an enslaved people. The Spartans had virtue, just like +highwaymen, inquisitors and all classes of men whom habit has +familiarized with a species of crime, to the point of committing them +without remorse.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15" id="Footnote_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> The sumptuary laws are by their nature a violation of the +right of property. If in a little state there is not a great inequality +of fortune, there will be no luxury; if this inequality exists, luxury +is the remedy for it. It is her sumptuary laws that have lost Geneva her +liberty.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16" id="Footnote_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> If by luxury one understands everything that is beyond the +necessary, luxury is a natural consequence of the progress of the human +species; and to reason consequently every enemy of luxury should believe +with Rousseau that the state of happiness and virtue for man is that, +not of the savage, but of the orang-outang. One feels that it would be +absurd to regard as an evil the comforts which all men would enjoy: +also, does one not generally give the name of luxury to the +superfluities which only a small number of individuals can enjoy. In +this sense, luxury is a necessary consequence of property, without which +no society can subsist, and of a great inequality between fortunes which +is the consequence, not of the right of property, but of bad laws. +Moralists should address their sermons to the legislators, and not to +individuals, because it is in the order of possible things that a +virtuous and enlightened man may have the power to make reasonable laws, +and it is not in human nature for all the rich men of a country to +renounce through virtue procuring for themselves for money the +enjoyments of pleasure or vanity.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Man" id="Man"></a><i>GENERAL REFLECTION ON MAN</i></h2> + + +<p>It needs twenty years to lead man from the plant state in which he is +within his mother's womb, and the pure animal state which is the lot of +his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of the reason begins +to appear. It has needed thirty centuries to learn a little about his +structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It +takes an instant to kill him.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Iron_Mask" id="Iron_Mask"></a><i>MAN IN THE IRON MASK</i></h2> + + +<p>The author of the "Siècle de Louis XIV."<a name="FNanchor_17" id="FNanchor_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> is the first to speak of +the man in the iron mask in an authenticated history. The reason is that +he was very well informed about the anecdote which astonishes the +present century, which will astonish posterity, and which is only too +true. He was deceived about the date of the death of this singularly +unfortunate unknown. The date of his burial at St. Paul was March 3rd, +1703, and not 1704. (Note.—According to a certificate reported by +Saint-Foix, the date was November 20th, 1703.)</p> + +<p>He was imprisoned first of all at Pignerol before being so on St. +Margaret's Islands, and later in the Bastille; always under the same +man's guard, Saint-Mars, who saw him die. Father Griffet, Jesuit, has +communicated to the public the diary of the Bastille, which testifies to +the dates. He had this diary without difficulty, for he held the +delicate position of confessor of prisoners imprisoned in the Bastille.</p> + +<p>The man in the iron mask is a riddle to which everyone wishes to guess +the answer. Some say that he was the Duc de Beaufort: but the Duc de +Beaufort was killed by the Turks at the defence of Candia, in 1669; and +the man in the iron mask was at Pignerol, in 1662. Besides, how would +one have arrested the Duc de Beaufort surrounded by his army? how would +one have transferred him to France without anybody knowing anything +about it? and why should he have been put in prison, and why this mask?</p> + +<p>Others have considered the Comte de Vermandois, natural son of Louis +XIV., who died publicly of the small-pox in 1683, with the army, and was +buried in the town of Arras.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>Later it was thought that the Duke of Monmouth, whose head King James +II. had cut off publicly in London in 1685, was the man in the iron +mask. It would have been necessary for him to be resuscitated, and then +for him to change the order of the times, for him to put the year 1662 +in place of 1685; for King James who never pardoned anyone, and who on +that account deserved all his misfortunes, to have pardoned the Duke of +Monmouth, and to have caused the death, in his place, of a man exactly +like him. It would have been necessary to find this double who would +have been so kind as to have his neck cut off in public in order to save +the Duke of Monmouth. It would have been necessary for the whole of +England to have been under a misapprehension; for James then to have +sent his earnest entreaties to Louis XIV. to be so good as to serve as +his constable and gaoler. Then Louis XIV. having done King James this +little favour, would not have failed to have the same consideration for +King William and for Queen Anne, with whom he was at war; and he would +carefully have preserved in these two monarchs' consideration his +dignity of gaoler, with which King James had honoured him.</p> + +<p>All these illusions being dissipated, it remains to be learned who was +this prisoner who was always masked, the age at which he died, and under +what name he was buried. It is clear that if he was not allowed to pass +into the courtyard of the Bastille, if he was not allowed to speak to +his doctor, unless covered by a mask, it was for fear that in his +features might be recognized some too striking resemblance. He might +show his tongue, and never his face. As regards his age, he himself said +to the Bastille apothecary, a few days before his death, that he thought +he was about sixty; and Master Marsolan, surgeon to the Maréchal de +Richelieu, and later to the Duc d'Orléans, regent, son-in-law of this +apothecary, has repeated it to me more than once.</p> + +<p>Finally, why give him an Italian name? he was always called Marchiali! +He who writes this article knows more about it, maybe, than Father +Griffet, and will not say more.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span></p> +<h4><span class="smcap">Publishers Note</span><a name="FNanchor_18" id="FNanchor_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></h4> + + +<p>It is surprising to see so many scholars and so many intelligent and +sagacious writers torment themselves with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>guessing who can have been +the famous man in the iron mask, without the simplest, most natural, +most probable idea ever presenting itself to them. Once the fact as M. +de Voltaire reports it is admitted, with its circumstances; the +existence of a prisoner of so singular a species, put in the rank of the +best authenticated historical truths; it seems that not only is nothing +easier than to imagine who this prisoner was, but that it is even +difficult for there to be two opinions on the subject. The author of +this article would have communicated his opinion earlier, if he had not +believed that this idea must already have come to many others, and if he +were not persuaded that it was not worth while giving as a discovery +what, according to him, jumps to the eyes of all who read this anecdote.</p> + +<p>However, as for some time past this event has divided men's minds, and +as quite recently the public has again been given a letter in which it +is claimed as proved that this celebrated prisoner was a secretary of +the Duke of Mantua (which cannot be reconciled with the great marks of +respect shown by M. de Saint-Mars to his prisoner), the author has +thought it his duty to tell at last what has been his opinion for many +years. Maybe this conjecture will put an end to all other researches, +unless the secret be revealed by those who can be its guardians, in such +a way as to remove all doubts.</p> + +<p>He will not amuse himself with refuting those who have imagined that +this prisoner could be the Comte de Vermandois, the Duc de Beaufort, or +the Duke of Monmouth. The scholarly and very wise author of this last +opinion has well refuted the others; but he had based his own opinion +essentially merely on the impossibility of finding in Europe some other +prince whose detention it would have been of the very highest importance +should not be known. M. de Saint-Foix is right, if he means to speak +only of princes whose existence was known; but why has nobody yet +thought of supposing that the iron mask might have been an unknown +prince, brought up in secret, and whose existence it was important +should remain unknown?</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>The Duke of Monmouth was not for France a prince of such great +importance; and one does not see even what could have engaged this +power, at least after the death of this duke and of James II., to make +so great a secret of his detention, if indeed he was the iron mask. It +is hardly probable either that M. de Louvois and M. de Saint-Mars would +have shown the Duke of Monmouth the profound respect which M. de +Voltaire assures they showed the iron mask.</p> + +<p>The author conjectures, from the way that M. de Voltaire has told the +facts, that this celebrated historian is as persuaded as he is of the +suspicion which he is going, he says, to bring to light; but that M. de +Voltaire, as a Frenchman, did not wish, he adds, to publish point-blank, +particularly as he had said enough for the answer to the riddle not to +be difficult to guess. Here it is, he continues, as I see it.</p> + +<p>"The iron mask was undoubtedly a brother and an elder brother of Louis +XIV., whose mother had that taste for fine linen on which M. de Voltaire +lays stress. It was in reading the Memoirs of that time, which report +this anecdote about the queen, that, recalling this same taste in the +iron mask, I doubted no longer that he was her son: a fact of which all +the other circumstances had persuaded me already.</p> + +<p>"It is known that Louis XIII. had not lived with the queen for a long +time; that the birth of Louis XIV. was due only to a happy chance +skilfully induced; a chance which absolutely obliged the king to sleep +in the same bed with the queen. This is how I think the thing came to +pass.</p> + +<p>"The queen may have thought that it was her fault that no heir was born +to Louis XIII. The birth of the iron mask will have undeceived her. The +cardinal to whom she will have confided the fact will have known, for +more than one reason, how to turn the secret to account; he will have +thought of making use of this event for his own benefit and for the +benefit of the state. Persuaded by this example that the queen could +give the king children, the plan which produced the chance of one bed +for the king and the queen was arranged in consequence. But the queen +and the cardinal, equally impressed with the necessity of hiding from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> +Louis XIII. the iron mask's existence, will have had him brought up in +secret. This secret will have been a secret for Louis XIV. until +Cardinal Mazarin's death.</p> + +<p>"But this monarch learning then that he had a brother, and an elder +brother whom his mother could not disacknowledge, who further bore maybe +the marked features which betrayed his origin, reflecting that this +child born during marriage could not, without great inconvenience and a +horrible scandal, be declared illegitimate after Louis XIII.'s death, +Louis XIV. will have judged that he could not use a wiser or juster +means than the one he employed in order to assure his own tranquillity +and the peace of the state; means which relieved him of committing a +cruelty which policy would have represented as necessary to a monarch +less conscientious and less magnanimous than Louis XIV.</p> + +<p>"It seems to me, our author continues, that the more one knows of the +history of those times, the more one must be struck by these assembled +circumstances which are in favour of such a supposition."</p> + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17" id="Footnote_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> Voltaire.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18" id="Footnote_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> This note, given as a publisher's note in the 1771 +edition, passes among many men of letters as being by Voltaire himself. +He knew of this edition, and he never contradicted the opinion there +advanced on the subject of the man in the iron mask. +</p><p> +He was the first to speak of this man. He always combated all the +conjectures made about the mask: he always spoke as though better +informed than others on the subject, and as though unwilling to tell all +he knew. +</p><p> +There is a letter in circulation from Mlle. de Valois, written to the +Duke, afterward Maréchal de Richelieu, where she boasts of having +learned from the Duc d'Orléans, her father, under strange conditions, +who the man in the iron mask was; this man, she says, was a twin brother +of Louis XIV., born a few hours after him. +</p><p> +Either this letter, which it was so useless, so indecent, so dangerous +to read, is a supposititious letter, or the regent, in giving his +daughter the reward she had so nobly acquired, thought to weaken the +danger there was in revealing a state secret, by altering the facts, so +as to make of this prince a younger son without right to the throne, +instead of the heir-apparent to the crown. +</p><p> +But Louis XIV., who had a brother; Louis XIV., whose soul was +magnanimous; Louis XIV., who prided himself even on a scrupulous +probity, whom history has reproached with no crime, who indeed committed +no crime apart from letting himself be too swayed by the counsels of +Louvois and the Jesuits; Louis XIV. would never have detained one of his +brothers in perpetual prison, in order to forestall the evils announced +by an astrologer, in whom he did not believe. He needed more important +motives. Eldest son of Louis XIII., acknowledged by this prince, the +throne belonged to him; but a son born of Anne of Austria, unknown to +her husband, had no rights, and could, nevertheless, try to make himself +acknowledged, rend France with a long civil war, win maybe over Louis +XIII.'s son, by alleging the right of primogeniture, and substitute a +new race for the old race of the Bourbons. These motives, if they did +not entirely justify Louis XIV.'s rigour, serve at least to excuse him; +and the prisoner, too well-informed of his fate, could be grateful to +him for not having listened to more rigorous counsels, counsels which +politics have often employed against those who had pretensions to +thrones occupied by their competitors. +</p><p> +From his youth Voltaire was connected with the Duc de Richelieu, who was +not discreet: if Mlle. de Valois' letter is authentic, he knew of it; +but, possessed of a just mind, he felt the error, and sought other +information. He was in a position to obtain it; he rectified the truth +altered in the letter, as he rectified so many other errors.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Marriage" id="Marriage"></a><i>MARRIAGE</i></h2> + + +<p>I came across a reasoner who said: "Engage your subjects to marry as +soon as possible; let them be exempt from taxes the first year, and let +their tax be distributed over those who at the same age are celibate.</p> + +<p>"The more married men you have, the less crime there will be. Look at +the frightful records of your registers of crime; you will find there a +hundred bachelors hanged or wheeled for one father of a family.</p> + +<p>"Marriage makes man wiser and more virtuous. The father of a family, +near to committing a crime, is often stopped by his wife whose blood, +less feverish than his, makes her gentler, more compassionate, more +fearful of theft and murder, more timorous, more religious.</p> + +<p>"The father of a family does not want to blush before his children. He +fears to leave them a heritage of shame.</p> + +<p>"Marry your soldiers, they will not desert any more. Bound to their +families, they will be bound also to their fatherland. A bachelor +soldier often is nothing but a vagabond, to whom it is indifferent +whether he serves the king of Naples or the king of Morocco."</p> + +<p>The Roman warriors were married; they fought for their wives and +children; and they enslaved the wives and children of other nations.</p> + +<p>A great Italian politician, who further was very learned in oriental +languages, a very rare thing among our politicians, said to me in my +youth: "<i>Caro figlio</i>, remember that the Jews have never had but one +good institution, that of having a horror of virginity." If this little +race of superstitious intermediaries had not considered marriage as the +first law of man, if there had been among them convents of nuns, they +were irreparably lost.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Master" id="Master"></a><i>MASTER</i></h2> + + +<h3>SECTION I</h3> + +<p>"Unfortunate that I am to have been born!" said Ardassan Ougli, young +page of the great Sultan of the Turks. "If it were only the great Sultan +on whom I am dependent; but I am subject to the chief of my oda, to the +capigi pasha; and when I receive my pay, I have to bow down to one of +the tefterdar's clerks who deducts half of it. Before I was seven years +old I had cut off, in spite of myself, in ceremony, the end of my +prepuce, and it made me ill for a fortnight. The dervish who prays for +us is my master; an iman is still more my master; the mollah is still +more my master than the iman. The cadi is another master; the +cadi-leskier is master still more; the mufti is much more master than +all these together. The grand vizier's kaia can with a word have me +thrown into the canal; and the grand vizier, finally, can have my neck +wrung at his pleasure, and stuff the skin of my head, without anybody +even taking notice.</p> + +<p>"How many masters, great God! even if I had as many bodies and as many +souls as I have duties to accomplish, I could not attend to everything. +Oh, Allah! if only you had made me a screech-owl! I should live free in +my hole, and I should eat mice at my ease without masters or servants. +That assuredly is man's real destiny; only since he was perverted has he +masters. No man was made to serve another man continuously. Each would +have charitably aided his fellow, if things were as they should be. The +man with eyes would have led the blind man, the active man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> would have +acted as crutch to the cripple. This world would have been the paradise +of Mohammed; and it is the hell which is exactly under the pointed +bridge."</p> + +<p>Thus did Ardassan Ougli speak, after receiving the stirrup-leather from +one of his masters.</p> + +<p>After a few years Ardassan Ougli became pasha with three tails. He made +a prodigious fortune, and he firmly believed that all men, excepting the +Great Turk and the Grand Vizier, were born to serve him, and all women +to give him pleasure in accordance with his caprice.</p> + + +<h3>SECTION II</h3> + +<p>How has it been possible for one man to become another man's master, and +by what species of incomprehensible magic has he been able to become the +master of many other men? On this phenomenon a great number of good +volumes have been written; but I give the preference to an Indian fable, +because it is short, and because the fables have said everything.</p> + +<p>Adimo, the father of all the Indians, had two sons and two daughters by +his wife Procriti. The elder son was a giant, the younger was a little +hunchback, the two daughters were pretty. As soon as the giant was +conscious of his strength, he lay with his two sisters, and made the +little hunchback serve him. Of his two sisters, one was his cook, the +other his gardener. When the giant wanted to sleep, he started by +chaining his little hunchback brother to a tree; and when the brother +escaped, he caught him in four strides, and gave him twenty strokes with +a length of ox sinew.</p> + +<p>The hunchback became submissive and the best subject in the world. The +giant, satisfied to see him fulfilling his duties as subject, permitted +him to lie with one of his sisters for whom he himself had taken a +distaste. The children who came of this marriage were not entirely +hunchbacked;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> but they had sufficiently misshapen forms. They were +reared in fear of God and the giant. They received an excellent +education; they were taught that their great uncle was giant by divine +right, that he could do with his family as pleased him; that if he had a +pretty niece or great-niece, she was for him alone without a doubt, and +that no one could lie with her until he wanted her no longer.</p> + +<p>The giant having died, his son, who was not by a long way as strong and +as big as he, thought nevertheless that he, like his father, was giant +by divine right. He claimed to make all the men work for him, and to lie +with all the women. The family leagued itself against him, he was beaten +to death, and the others turned themselves into a republic.</p> + +<p>The Siamese, on the contrary, maintain that the family had started by +being republican, and that the giant did not come until after a great +number of years and dissensions; but all the authors of Benares and Siam +agree that mankind lived an infinity of centuries before having the +intelligence to make laws; and they prove it by an unanswerable reason, +which is that even to-day when everyone plumes himself on his +intelligence, no way has been found of making a score of passably good +laws.</p> + +<p>It is indeed still an insoluble question in India whether republics were +established before or after monarchies, whether confusion appeared more +horrible to mankind than despotism. I do not know what happened in order +of time; but in that of nature it must be agreed that all men being born +equal, violence and adroitness made the first masters, the laws made the +last.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Men_of_Letters" id="Men_of_Letters"></a><i>MEN OF LETTERS</i></h2> + + +<p>In our barbarous times, when the Franks, the Germans, the Bretons, the +Lombards, the Spanish Muzarabs, knew not how either to read or write, +there were instituted schools, universities, composed almost entirely of +ecclesiastics who, knowing nothing but their own jargon, taught this +jargon to those who wished to learn it; the academies came only a long +time afterwards; they despised the foolishness of the schools, but did +not always dare to rise against them, because there are foolishnesses +that are respected provided that they concern respectable things.</p> + +<p>The men of letters who have rendered the greatest services to the small +number of thinking beings spread over the world, are the isolated +writers, the true scholars shut in their studies, who have neither +argued on the benches of the universities, nor told half-truths in the +academies; and almost all of them have been persecuted. Our wretched +species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always +throw stones at those who are showing a new road.</p> + +<p>Montesquieu says that the Scythians rent their slaves' eyes, so that +they might be less distracted while they were churning their butter; +that is just how the inquisition functions, and in the land where this +monster reigns almost everybody is blind. In England people have had two +eyes for more than two hundred years; the French are starting to open +one eye; but sometimes there are men in power who do not want the people +to have even this one eye open.</p> + +<p>These poor persons in power are like Doctor Balouard of the Italian +Comedy, who does not want to be served by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> anyone but the dolt +Harlequin, and who is afraid of having too shrewd a valet.</p> + +<p>Compose some odes in praise of My Lord Superbus Fadus, some madrigals +for his mistress; dedicate a book on geography to his door-keeper, you +will be well-received; enlighten mankind, you will be exterminated.</p> + +<p>Descartes was forced to leave his country, Gassendi was calumniated, +Arnauld dragged out his days in exile; every philosopher is treated as +the prophets were among the Jews.</p> + +<p>Who would believe that in the eighteenth century a philosopher was +dragged before the secular tribunals, and treated as impious by the +tribunals of arguments, for having said that men could not practise the +arts if they had no hands? I do not despair that soon the first person +who is so insolent as to say that men could not think if they had no +heads will be immediately condemned to the galleys; "for," some young +graduate will say to him, "the soul is a pure spirit, the head is only +matter; God can put the soul in the heel, as well as in the brain; +therefore I denounce you as impious."</p> + +<p>The greatest misfortune of a man of letters is not perhaps being the +object of his confrères' jealousy, the victim of the cabal, the despised +of the men of power; but of being judged by fools. Fools go far +sometimes, particularly when bigotry is added to ineptitude, and to +ineptitude the spirit of vengeance. The further great misfortune of a +man of letters is that ordinarily he is unattached. A bourgeois buys +himself a small position, and there he is backed by his colleagues. If +he suffers an injustice, he finds defenders at once. The man of letters +is unsuccoured; he resembles a flying-fish; if he rises a little, the +birds devour him; if he dives, the fish eat him.</p> + +<p>Every public man pays tribute to malignity, but he is paid in honours +and gold.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Metamorphosis" id="Metamorphosis"></a><i>METAMORPHOSIS</i>, <i>METEMPSYCHOSIS</i></h2> + + +<p>Is it not very natural that all the metamorphoses with which the world +is covered should have made people imagine in the Orient, where +everything has been imagined, that our souls passed from one body to +another? An almost imperceptible speck becomes a worm, this worm becomes +a butterfly; an acorn transforms itself into an oak; an egg into a bird; +water becomes cloud and thunder; wood is changed into fire and ash; +everything in nature appears, in fine, metamorphosed. Soon people +attributed to souls, which were regarded as light figures, what they saw +in more gross bodies. The idea of metempsychosis is perhaps the most +ancient dogma of the known universe, and it still reigns in a large part +of India and China.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Milton" id="Milton"></a><i>MILTON, ON THE REPROACH OF PLAGIARISM AGAINST</i></h2> + + +<p>Some people have accused Milton of having taken his poem from the +tragedy of "The Banishment of Adam" by Grotius, and from the "Sarcotis" +of the Jesuit Masenius, printed at Cologne in 1654 and in 1661, long +before Milton gave his "Paradise Lost."</p> + +<p>As regards Grotius, it was well enough known in England that Milton had +carried into his epic English poem a few Latin verses from the tragedy +of "Adam." It is in no wise to be a plagiarist to enrich one's language +with the beauties of a foreign language. No one accused Euripides of +plagiarism for having imitated in one of the choruses of "Iphigenia" the +second book of the Iliad; on the contrary, people were very grateful to +him for this imitation, which they regarded as a homage rendered to +Homer on the Athenian stage.</p> + +<p>Virgil never suffered a reproach for having happily imitated, in the +Æneid, a hundred verses by the first of Greek poets.</p> + +<p>Against Milton the accusation was pushed a little further. A Scot, Will +Lauder by name, very attached to the memory of Charles I., whom Milton +had insulted with the most uncouth animosity, thought himself entitled +to dishonour the memory of this monarch's accuser. It was claimed that +Milton was guilty of an infamous imposture in robbing Charles I. of the +sad glory of being the author of the "Eikon Basilika," a book long dear +to the royalists, and which Charles I., it was said, had composed in his +prison to serve as consolation for his deplorable adversity.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>Lauder, therefore, about the year of 1752, wanted to begin by proving +that Milton was only a plagiarist, before proving that he had acted as a +forger against the memory of the most unfortunate of kings; he procured +some editions of the poem of the "Sarcotis." It seemed evident that +Milton had imitated some passages of it, as he had imitated Grotius and +Tasso.</p> + +<p>But Lauder did not rest content there; he unearthed a bad translation in +Latin verse of the "Paradise Lost" of the English poet; and joining +several verses of this translation to those by Masenius, he thought +thereby to render the accusation more grave, and Milton's shame more +complete. It was in that, that he was badly deceived; his fraud was +discovered. He wanted to make Milton pass for a forger, and he was +himself convicted of forging. No one examined Masenius' poem of which at +that time there were only a few copies in Europe. All England, convinced +of the Scot's poor trick, asked no more about it. The accuser, +confounded, was obliged to disavow his manœuvre, and ask pardon for +it.</p> + +<p>Since then a new edition of Masenius was printed in 1757. The literary +public was surprised at the large number of very beautiful verses with +which the Sarcotis was sprinkled. It is in truth nothing but a long +declamation of the schools on the fall of man: but the exordium, the +invocation, the description of the garden of Eden, the portrait of Eve, +that of the devil, are precisely the same as in Milton. Further, it is +the same subject, the same plot, the same catastrophe. If the devil +wishes, in Milton, to be revenged on man for the harm which God has done +him, he has precisely the same plan in the work of the Jesuit Masenius; +and he manifests it in verses worthy maybe of the century of Augustus. +("Sarcotis," I., 271 <i>et seq.</i>)</p> + +<p>One finds in both Masenius and Milton little episodes, trifling +digressions which are absolutely alike; both speak of Xerxes who covered +the sea with his ships. Both speak in the same tone of the Tower of +Babel; both give the same description of luxury, of pride, of avarice, +of gluttony.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>What most persuaded the generality of readers of Milton's plagiarism was +the perfect resemblance of the beginning of the two poems. Many +foreigners, after reading the exordium, had no doubt but that the rest +of Milton's poem was taken from Masenius. It is a very great error and +easy to recognize.</p> + +<p>I do not think that the English poet imitated in all more than two +hundred of the Jesuit of Cologne's verses; and I dare say that he +imitated only what was worthy of being imitated. These two hundred +verses are very beautiful; so are Milton's; and the total of Masenius' +poem, despite these two hundred beautiful verses, is not worth anything +at all.</p> + +<p>Molière took two whole scenes from the ridiculous comedy of the "Pédant +Joué" by Cyrano de Bergerac. "These two scenes are good," he said as he +was jesting with his friends. "They belong to me by right: I recover my +property." After that anyone who treated the author of "Tartufe" and "Le +Misanthrope" as a plagiarist would have been very badly received.</p> + +<p>It is certain that generally Milton, in his "Paradise", has in imitating +flown on his own wings; and it must be agreed that if he borrowed so +many traits from Grotius and from the Jesuit of Cologne, they are +blended in the crowd of original things which are his; in England he is +always regarded as a very great poet.</p> + +<p>It is true that he should have avowed having translated two hundred of a +Jesuit's verses; but in his time, at the court of Charles II., people +did not worry themselves with either the Jesuits, or Milton, or +"Paradise Lost", or "Paradise Regained". All those things were either +scoffed at, or unknown.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Mohammedans" id="Mohammedans"></a><i>MOHAMMEDANS</i></h2> + + +<p>I tell you again, ignorant imbeciles, whom other ignoramuses have made +believe that the Mohammedan religion is voluptuous and sensual, there is +not a word of truth in it; you have been deceived on this point as on so +many others.</p> + +<p>Canons, monks, vicars even, if a law were imposed on you not to eat or +drink from four in the morning till ten at night, during the month of +July, when Lent came at this period; if you were forbidden to play at +any game of chance under pain of damnation; if wine were forbidden you +under the same pain; if you had to make a pilgrimage into the burning +desert; if it were enjoined on you to give at least two and a half per +cent. of your income to the poor; if, accustomed to enjoy possession of +eighteen women, the number were cut down suddenly by fourteen; honestly, +would you dare call that religion sensual?</p> + +<p>The Latin Christians have so many advantages over the Mussulmans, I do +not say in the matter of war, but in the matter of doctrines; the Greek +Christians have so beaten them latterly from 1769 to 1773, that it is +not worth the trouble to indulge in unjust reproaches against Islam.</p> + +<p>Try to retake from the Mohammedans all that they usurped; but it is +easier to <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: Original has calcumniate.">calumniate</ins> them.</p> + +<p>I hate calumny so much that I do not want even to impute foolishness to +the Turks, although I detest them as tyrants over women and enemies of +the arts.</p> + +<p>I do not know why the historian of the Lower Empire maintains that +Mohammed speaks in his Koran of his journey into the sky: Mohammed does +not say a word about it; we have proved it.</p> + +<p>One must combat ceaselessly. When one has destroyed an error, there is +always someone who resuscitates it.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Mountain" id="Mountain"></a><i>MOUNTAIN</i></h2> + + +<p>It is a very old, very universal fable that tells of the mountain which, +having frightened all the countryside by its outcry that it was in +labour, was hissed by all present when it brought into the world a mere +mouse. The people in the pit were not philosophers. Those who hissed +should have admired. It was as fine for the mountain to give birth to a +mouse, as for the mouse to give birth to a mountain. A rock which +produces a rat is a very prodigious thing; and never has the world seen +anything approaching this miracle. All the globes of the universe could +not call a fly into existence. Where the vulgar laugh, the philosopher +admires; and he laughs where the vulgar open their big, stupid eyes in +astonishment.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Nakedness" id="Nakedness"></a><i>NAKEDNESS</i></h2> + + +<p>Why should one lock up a man or a woman who walked stark naked in the +street? and why is no one shocked by absolutely nude statues, by +pictures of the Madonna and of Jesus that may be seen in some churches?</p> + +<p>It is probably that the human species lived long without being clothed.</p> + +<p>People unacquainted with clothing have been found in more than one +island and in the American continent.</p> + +<p>The most civilized hide the organs of generation with leaves, woven +rushes, feathers.</p> + +<p>Whence comes this form of modesty? is it the instinct for lighting +desires by hiding what it gives pleasure to discover?</p> + +<p>Is it really true that among slightly more civilized nations, such as +the Jews and half-Jews, there have been entire sects who would not +worship God save by stripping themselves of all their clothes? such +were, it is said, the Adamites and the Abelians. They gathered quite +naked to sing the praises of God: St. Epiphanius and St. Augustine say +so. It is true that they were not contemporary, and that they were very +far from these people's country. But at all events this madness is +possible: it is not even more extraordinary, more mad than a hundred +other madnesses which have been round the world one after the other.</p> + +<p>We have said elsewhere that to-day even the Mohammedans still have +saints who are madmen, and who go naked like monkeys. It is very +possible that some fanatics thought it was better to present themselves +to the Deity in the state in which He formed them, than in the disguise +invented by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> man. It is possible that they showed everything out of +piety. There are so few well-made persons of both sexes, that nakedness +might have inspired chastity, or rather disgust, instead of increasing +desire.</p> + +<p>It is said particularly that the Abelians renounced marriage. If there +were any fine lads and pretty lasses among them, they were at least +comparable to St. Adhelme and to blessed Robert d'Arbrisselle, who slept +with the prettiest persons, that their continence might triumph all the +more.</p> + +<p>But I avow that it would have been very comic to see a hundred Helens +and Parises singing anthems, giving each other the kiss of peace, and +making agapæ.</p> + +<p>All of which shows that there is no singularity, no extravagance, no +superstition which has not passed through the heads of mankind. Happy +the day when these superstitions do not trouble society and make of it a +scene of disorder, hatred and fury! It is better without doubt to pray +God stark naked, than to stain His altars and the public places with +human blood.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Natural_Law" id="Natural_Law"></a><i>NATURAL LAW</i></h2> + + +<p>B: What is natural law?</p> + +<p>A: The instinct which makes us feel justice.</p> + +<p>B: What do you call just and unjust?</p> + +<p>A: What appears such to the entire universe.</p> + +<p>B: The universe is composed of many heads. It is said that in Lacedæmon +were applauded thefts for which people in Athens were condemned to the +mines.</p> + +<p>A: Abuse of words, logomachy, equivocation; theft could not be committed +at Sparta, when everything was common property. What you call "theft" +was the punishment for avarice.</p> + +<p>B: It was forbidden to marry one's sister in Rome. It was allowed among +the <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Original has Egyptains.">Egyptians</ins>, the Athenians and even among the Jews, to marry one's +sister on the father's side. It is but with regret that I cite that +wretched little Jewish people, who should assuredly not serve as a rule +for anyone, and who (putting religion aside) was never anything but a +race of ignorant and fanatic brigands. But still, according to their +books, the young Thamar, before being ravished by her brother Amnon, +says to him:—"Nay, my brother, do not thou this folly, but speak unto +the king; for he will not withhold me from thee." (2 Samuel xiii. 12, +13.)</p> + +<p>A: Conventional law all that, arbitrary customs, fashions that pass: the +essential remains always. Show me a country where it was honourable to +rob me of the fruit of my toil, to break one's promise, to lie in order +to hurt, to calumniate, to assassinate, to poison, to be ungrateful +towards a benefactor, to beat one's father and one's mother when they +offer you food.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>B: Have you forgotten that Jean-Jacques, one of the fathers of the +modern Church, has said that "the first man who dared enclose and +cultivate a piece of land" was the enemy "of the human race," that he +should have been exterminated, and that "the fruits of the earth are for +all, and that the land belongs to none"? Have we not already examined +together this lovely proposition which is so useful to society +(Discourse on Inequality, second part)?</p> + +<p>A: Who is this Jean-Jacques? he is certainly not either John the +Baptist, nor John the Evangelist, nor James the Greater, nor James the +Less<a name="FNanchor_19" id="FNanchor_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a>; it must be some Hunnish wit who wrote that abominable +impertinence or some poor joker <i>bufo magro</i> who wanted to laugh at what +the entire world regards as most serious. For instead of going to spoil +the land of a wise and industrious neighbour, he had only to imitate +him; and every father of a family having followed this example, behold +soon a very pretty village formed. The author of this passage seems to +me a very unsociable animal.</p> + +<p>B: You think then that by outraging and robbing the good man who has +surrounded his garden and chicken-run with a live hedge, he has been +wanting in respect towards the duties of natural law?</p> + +<p>A: Yes, yes, once again, there is a natural law, and it does not consist +either in doing harm to others, or in rejoicing thereat.</p> + +<p>B: I imagine that man likes and does harm only for his own advantage. +But so many people are led to look for their own interest in the +misfortune of others, vengeance is so violent a passion, there are such +disastrous examples of it; ambition, still more fatal, has inundated the +world with so much blood, that when I retrace for myself the horrible +picture, I am tempted to avow that man is a very devil. In vain have I +in my heart the notion of justice and injustice; an Attila courted by +St. Leo, a Phocas flattered by St. Gregory with the most cowardly +baseness, an Alexander VI. sullied with so many incests, so many +murders, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>so many poisonings, with whom the weak Louis XII., who is +called "the good," makes the most infamous and intimate alliance; a +Cromwell whose protection Cardinal Mazarin seeks, and for whom he drives +out of France the heirs of Charles I., Louis XIV.'s first cousins, etc., +etc.; a hundred like examples set my ideas in disorder, and I know no +longer where I am.</p> + +<p>A: Well, do storms stop our enjoyment of to-day's beautiful sun? Did the +earthquake which destroyed half the city of Lisbon stop your making the +voyage to Madrid very comfortably? If Attila was a brigand and Cardinal +Mazarin a rogue, are there not princes and ministers who are honest +people? Has it not been remarked that in the war of 1701, Louis XIV.'s +council was composed of the most virtuous men? The Duc de Beauvilliers, +the Marquis de Torci, the Maréchal de Villars, Chamillart lastly who +passed for being incapable, but never for dishonest. Does not the idea +of justice subsist always? It is upon that idea that all laws are +founded. The Greeks called them "daughters of heaven," which only means +daughters of nature. Have you no laws in your country?</p> + +<p>B: Yes, some good, some bad.</p> + +<p>A: Where, if it was not in the notions of natural law, did you get the +idea that every man has within himself when his mind is properly made? +You must have obtained it there, or nowhere.</p> + +<p>B: You are right, there is a natural law; but it is still more natural +to many people to forget it.</p> + +<p>A: It is natural also to be one-eyed, hump-backed, lame, deformed, +unhealthy; but one prefers people who are well made and healthy.</p> + +<p>B: Why are there so many one-eyed and deformed minds?</p> + +<p>A: Peace! But go to the article on "<a href="#Power">Power</a>."</p> + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19" id="Footnote_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> Jean=John: Jacques=James.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Nature" id="Nature"></a><i>NATURE</i></h2> + +<p class="paddedp1"><span class="smcap">Dialogue between the Philosopher and Nature</span></p> + +<p class="center">THE PHILOSOPHER:</p> + +<p>Who are you, Nature? I live in you; for fifty years have I been seeking +you, and I have not found you yet.</p> + +<p class="center">NATURE:</p> + +<p>The ancient Egyptians, who lived, it is said, some twelve hundred years, +made me the same reproach. They called me Isis; they put a great veil on +my head, and they said that nobody could lift it.</p> + +<p class="center">THE PHILOSOPHER:</p> + +<p>That is what makes me address myself to you. I have been able to measure +some of your globes, know their paths, assign the laws of motion; but I +have not been able to learn who you are.</p> + +<p>Are you always active? are you always passive? did your elements arrange +themselves, as water deposits itself on sand, oil on water, air on oil? +have you a mind which directs all your operations, as councils are +inspired as soon as they are assembled, although their members are +sometimes ignoramuses? I pray you tell me the answer to your riddle.</p> + +<p class="center">NATURE:</p> + +<p>I am the great everything. I know no more about it. I am not a +mathematician; and everything is arranged in my world according to +mathematical laws. Guess if you can how it is all done.</p> + +<p class="center"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>THE PHILOSOPHER:</p> + +<p>Certainly, since your great everything does not know mathematics, and +since all your laws are most profoundly geometrical, there must be an +eternal geometer who directs you, a supreme intelligence who presides +over your operations.</p> + +<p class="center">NATURE:</p> + +<p>You are right; I am water, earth, fire, atmosphere, metal, mineral, +stone, vegetable, animal. I feel indeed that there is in me an +intelligence; you have an intelligence, you do not see it. I do not see +mine either; I feel this invisible power; I cannot know it: why should +you, who are but a small part of me, want to know what I do not know?</p> + +<p class="center">THE PHILOSOPHER:</p> + +<p>We are curious. I want to know how being so crude in your mountains, in +your deserts, in your seas, you appear nevertheless so industrious in +your animals, in your vegetables?</p> + +<p class="center">NATURE:</p> + +<p>My poor child do you want me to tell you the truth? It is that I have +been given a name which does not suit me; my name is "Nature", and I am +all art.</p> + +<p class="center">THE PHILOSOPHER:</p> + +<p>That word upsets all my ideas. What! nature is only art?</p> + +<p class="center">NATURE:</p> + +<p>Yes, without any doubt. Do you not know that there is an infinite art in +those seas and those mountains that you find so crude? do you not know +that all those waters gravitate towards the centre of the earth, and +mount only by immutable laws; that those mountains which crown the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> +earth are the immense reservoirs of the eternal snows which produce +unceasingly those fountains, lakes and rivers without which my animal +species and my vegetable species would perish? And as for what are +called my animal kingdom, my vegetable kingdom and my mineral kingdom, +you see here only three; learn that I have millions of kingdoms. But if +you consider only the formation of an insect, of an ear of corn, of +gold, of copper, everything will appear as marvels of art.</p> + +<p class="center">THE PHILOSOPHER:</p> + +<p>It is true. The more I think about it, the more I see that you are only +the art of I know not what most potent and industrious great being, who +hides himself and who makes you appear. All reasoners since Thales, and +probably long before him, have played at blind man's buff with you; they +have said: "I have you!" and they had nothing. We all resemble Ixion; he +thought he was kissing Juno, and all that he possessed was a cloud.</p> + +<p class="center">NATURE:</p> + +<p>Since I am all that is, how can a being such as you, so small a part of +myself, seize me? Be content, atoms my children, with seeing a few atoms +that surround you, with drinking a few drops of my milk, with vegetating +for a few moments on my breast, and with dying without having known your +mother and your nurse.</p> + +<p class="center">THE PHILOSOPHER:</p> + +<p>My dear mother, tell me something of why you exist, of why there is +anything.</p> + +<p class="center">NATURE:</p> + +<p>I will answer you as I have answered for so many centuries all those who +have interrogated me about first principles: I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THEM.</p> + +<p class="center"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>THE PHILOSOPHER:</p> + +<p>Would not non-existence be better than this multitude of existences made +in order to be continually dissolved, this crowd of animals born and +reproduced in order to devour others and to be devoured, this crowd of +sentient beings formed for so many painful sensations, that other crowd +of intelligences which so rarely hear reason. What is the good of all +that, Nature?</p> + +<p class="center">NATURE:</p> + +<p>Oh! go and ask Him who made me.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Necessary" id="Necessary"></a><i>NECESSARY</i></h2> + + +<p class="center">OSMIN:</p> + +<p>Do you not say that everything is necessary?</p> + +<p class="center">SELIM:</p> + +<p>If everything were not necessary, it would follow that God had made +useless things.</p> + +<p class="center">OSMIN:</p> + +<p>That is to say that it was necessary to the divine nature to make all +that it has made?</p> + +<p class="center">SELIM:</p> + +<p>I think so, or at least I suspect it; there are people who think +otherwise; I do not understand them; maybe they are right. I am afraid +of disputes on this subject.</p> + +<p class="center">OSMIN:</p> + +<p>It is also of another necessary that I want to talk to you.</p> + +<p class="center">SELIM:</p> + +<p>What! of what is necessary to an honest man that he may live? of the +misfortune to which one is reduced when one lacks the necessary?</p> + +<p class="center">OSMIN:</p> + +<p>No; for what is necessary to one is not always necessary to the other: +it is necessary for an Indian to have rice, for an Englishman to have +meat; a fur is necessary to a Russian,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> and a gauzy stuff to an African; +this man thinks that twelve coach-horses are necessary to him, that man +limits himself to a pair of shoes, a third walks gaily barefoot: I want +to talk to you of what is necessary to all men.</p> + +<p class="center">SELIM:</p> + +<p>It seems to me that God has given all that is necessary to this species: +eyes to see with, feet for walking, a mouth for eating, an œsophagus +for swallowing, a stomach for digesting, a brain for reasoning, organs +for producing one's fellow creature.</p> + +<p class="center">OSMIN:</p> + +<p>How does it happen then that men are born lacking a part of these +necessary things?</p> + +<p class="center">SELIM:</p> + +<p>It is because the general laws of nature have brought about some +accidents which have made monsters to be born; but generally man is +provided with everything that is necessary to him in order to live in +society.</p> + +<p class="center">OSMIN:</p> + +<p>Are there notions common to all men which serve to make them live in +society?</p> + +<p class="center">SELIM:</p> + +<p>Yes. I have travelled with Paul Lucas, and wherever I went, I saw that +people respected their father and their mother, that people believed +themselves to be obliged to keep their promises, that people pitied +oppressed innocents, that they hated persecution, that they regarded +liberty of thought as a rule of nature, and the enemies of this liberty +as enemies of the human race; those who think differently seemed to me +badly organized creatures, monsters like those who are born without eyes +and hands.</p> + +<p class="center"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>OSMIN:</p> + +<p>Are these necessary things in all time and in all places?</p> + +<p class="center">SELIM:</p> + +<p>Yes, if they were not they would not be necessary to the human species.</p> + +<p class="center">OSMIN:</p> + +<p>So a belief which is new is not necessary to this species. Men could +very well live in society and accomplish their duty to God, before +believing that Mahomet had frequent interviews with the angel Gabriel.</p> + +<p class="center">SELIM:</p> + +<p>Nothing is clearer; it would be ridiculous to think that man could not +accomplish his duty to God before Mahomet came into the world; it was +not at all necessary for the human species to believe in the Alcoran: +the world went along before Mahomet just as it goes along to-day. If +Mahometanism had been necessary to the world, it would have existed in +all places; God who has given us all two eyes to see the sun, would have +given us all an intelligence to see the truth of the Mussulman religion. +This sect is therefore only like the positive laws that change according +to time and place, like the fashions, like the opinions of the natural +philosophers which follow one after the other.</p> + +<p>The Mussulman sect could not be essentially necessary to mankind.</p> + +<p class="center">OSMIN:</p> + +<p>But since it exists, God has permitted it?</p> + +<p class="center">SELIM:</p> + +<p>Yes, as he permits the world to be filled with foolishness, error and +calamity; that is not to say that men are all essentially made to be +fools and miscreants. He permits<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> that some men be eaten by snakes; but +one cannot say—"God made man to be eaten by snakes."</p> + +<p class="center">OSMIN:</p> + +<p>What do you mean when you say "God permits"? can nothing happen without +His order? permit, will and do, are they not the same thing for Him?</p> + +<p class="center">SELIM:</p> + +<p>He permits crime, but He does not commit it.</p> + +<p class="center">OSMIN:</p> + +<p>Committing a crime is acting against divine justice, it is disobeying +God. Well, God cannot disobey Himself, He cannot commit crime; but He +has made man in such a way that man may commit many crimes: where does +that come from?</p> + +<p class="center">SELIM:</p> + +<p>There are people who know, but I do not; all that I know is that the +Alcoran is ridiculous, although from time to time it has some tolerably +good things; certainly the Alcoran was not at all necessary to man; I +stick by that: I see clearly what is false, and I know very little that +is true.</p> + +<p class="center">OSMIN:</p> + +<p>I thought you would instruct me, and you teach me nothing.</p> + +<p class="center">SELIM:</p> + +<p>Is it not a great deal to recognize people who deceive you, and the +gross and dangerous errors which they retail to you?</p> + +<p class="center">OSMIN:</p> + +<p>I should have ground for complaint against a doctor who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> showed me all +the harmful plants, and who did not show me one salutary plant.</p> + +<p class="center">SELIM:</p> + +<p>I am not a doctor, and you are not ill; but it seems to me I should be +giving you a very good prescription if I said to you: "Put not your +trust in all the inventions of charlatans, worship God, be an honest +man, and believe that two and two make four."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Novelties" id="Novelties"></a><i>NEW NOVELTIES</i></h2> + + +<p>It seems that the first words of Ovid's "Metamorphoses," <i>In nova fert +animus</i>, are the motto of the human race. Nobody is touched by the +admirable spectacle of the sun which rises, or rather seems to rise, +every day; everybody runs to see the smallest little meteor which +appears for an instant in that accumulation of vapours, called the sky, +that surround the earth.</p> + +<p>An itinerant bookseller does not burden himself with a Virgil, with a +Horace, but with a new book, even though it be detestable. He draws you +aside and says to you: "Sir, do you want some books from Holland?"</p> + +<p>From the beginning of the world women have complained of the fickleness +that is imputed to them in favour of the first new object which presents +itself, and whose novelty is often its only merit. Many ladies (it must +be confessed, despite the infinite respect we have for them) have +treated men as they complain they have themselves been treated; and the +story of Gioconda is much older than Ariosto.</p> + +<p>Perhaps this universal taste for novelty is one of nature's favours. +People cry to us: "Be content with what you have, desire nothing that is +beyond your estate, restrain your curiosity, tame your intellectual +disquiet." These are very good maxims; but if we had always followed +them, we should still be eating acorns, we should be sleeping in the +open air, and we should not have had Corneille, Racine, Molière, +Poussin, Lebrun, Lemoine or Pigalle.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Philosopher" id="Philosopher"></a><i>PHILOSOPHER</i></h2> + + +<p>Philosopher, <i>lover of wisdom</i>, that is to say, <i>of truth</i>. All +philosophers have had this dual character; there is not one in antiquity +who has not given mankind examples of virtue and lessons in moral +truths. They have all contrived to be deceived about natural philosophy; +but natural philosophy is so little necessary for the conduct of life, +that the philosophers had no need of it. It has taken centuries to learn +a part of nature's laws. One day was sufficient for a wise man to learn +the duties of man.</p> + +<p>The philosopher is not enthusiastic; he does not set himself up as a +prophet; he does not say that he is inspired by the gods. Thus I shall +not put in the rank of philosophers either the ancient Zarathustra, or +Hermes, or the ancient Orpheus, or any of those legislators of whom the +nations of Chaldea, Persia, Syria, Egypt and Greece boasted. Those who +styled themselves children of the gods were the fathers of imposture; +and if they used lies for the teaching of truths, they were unworthy of +teaching them; they were not philosophers; they were at best very +prudent liars.</p> + +<p>By what fatality, shameful maybe for the Western peoples, is it +necessary to go to the far Orient to find a wise man who is simple, +unostentatious, free from imposture, who taught men to live happily six +hundred years before our vulgar era, at a time when the whole of the +North was ignorant of the usage of letters, and when the Greeks were +barely beginning to distinguish themselves by their wisdom?</p> + +<p>This wise man is Confucius, who being legislator never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> wanted to +deceive men. What more beautiful rule of conduct has ever been given +since him in the whole world?</p> + +<p>"Rule a state as you rule a family; one can only govern one's family +well by setting the example.</p> + +<p>"Virtue should be common to both husbandman and monarch.</p> + +<p>"Apply thyself to the trouble of preventing crimes in order to lessen +the trouble of punishing them.</p> + +<p>"Under the good kings Yao and Xu the Chinese were good; under the bad +kings Kie and Chu they were wicked.</p> + +<p>"Do to others as to thyself.</p> + +<p>"Love all men; but cherish honest people. Forget injuries, and never +kindnesses.</p> + +<p>"I have seen men incapable of study; I have never seen them incapable of +virtue."</p> + +<p>Let us admit that there is no legislator who has proclaimed truths more +useful to the human race.</p> + +<p>A host of Greek philosophers have since taught an equally pure moral +philosophy. If they had limited themselves to their empty systems of +natural philosophy, their names would be pronounced to-day in mockery +only. If they are still respected, it is because they were just and that +they taught men to be so.</p> + +<p>One cannot read certain passages of Plato, and notably the admirable +exordium of the laws of Zaleucus, without feeling in one's heart the +love of honourable and generous actions. The Romans have their Cicero, +who alone is worth perhaps all the philosophers of Greece. After him +come men still more worthy of respect, but whom one almost despairs of +imitating; Epictetus in bondage, the Antonines and the Julians on the +throne.</p> + +<p>Which is the citizen among us who would deprive himself, like Julian, +Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius, of all the delicacies of our flabby and +effeminate lives? who would sleep as they did on the ground? who would +impose on himself their frugality? who, as they did, would march +barefoot and bareheaded at the head of the armies, exposed now to the +heat of the sun, now to the hoar-frost? who would command<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> all their +passions as they did? There are pious men among us; but where are the +wise men? where are the resolute, just and tolerant souls?</p> + +<p>There have been philosophers of the study in France; and all, except +Montaigne, have been persecuted. It is, I think, the last degree of the +malignity of our nature, to wish to oppress these very philosophers who +would correct it.</p> + +<p>I quite understand that the fanatics of one sect slaughter the +enthusiasts of another sect, that the Franciscans hate the Dominicans, +and that a bad artist intrigues to ruin one who surpasses him; but that +the wise Charron should have been threatened with the loss of his life, +that the learned and generous Ramus should have been assassinated, that +Descartes should have been forced to flee to Holland to escape the fury +of the ignorant, that Gassendi should have been obliged to withdraw +several times to Digne, far from the calumnies of Paris; these things +are a nation's eternal shame.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Power" id="Power"></a><i>POWER</i>, <i>OMNIPOTENCE</i></h2> + + +<p>I suppose that the man who reads this article is convinced that this +world is formed with intelligence, and that a little astronomy and +anatomy suffices to make this universal and supreme intelligence +admired.</p> + +<p>Can he know by himself if this intelligence is omnipotent, that is to +say, infinitely powerful? Has he the least notion of the infinite, to +understand what is an infinite power?</p> + +<p>The celebrated historian philosopher, David Hume, says in "Particular +Providence": "A weight of ten ounces is lifted in a balance by another +weight; therefore this other weight is of more than ten ounces; but one +can adduce no reason why it should weigh a hundred ounces."</p> + +<p>One can say likewise: You recognize a supreme intelligence strong enough +to form you, to preserve you for a limited time, to reward you, to +punish you. Do you know enough of this power to demonstrate that it can +do still more?</p> + +<p>How can you prove by your reason that this being can do more than he has +done?</p> + +<p>The life of all animals is short. Could he make it longer?</p> + +<p>All animals are the prey of each other: everything is born to be +devoured. Could he form without destroying?</p> + +<p>You do not know what nature is. You cannot therefore know if nature has +not forced him to do only the things he has done.</p> + +<p>This globe is only a vast field of destruction and carnage. Either the +great Being has been able to make of it an eternal abode of delight for +all sentient beings, or He has not been able. If He has been able and if +He has not done so, fear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> to regard him as malevolent; but if He has not +been able, fear not to look on Him as a very great power, circumscribed +by nature in His limits.</p> + +<p>Whether or no His power is infinite does not regard you. It is a matter +of indifference to a subject whether his master possesses five hundred +leagues of land or five thousand; he is subject neither more nor less.</p> + +<p>Which would be the greater insult to this ineffable Being, to say: "He +has made miserable men without being able to dispense with them, or He +has made them for His pleasure?"</p> + +<p>Many sects represent Him as cruel; others, for fear of admitting a +wicked God, have the audacity to deny His existence. Is it not better to +say that probably the necessity of His nature and the necessity of +things have determined everything?</p> + +<p>The world is the theatre of moral ill and physical ill; one is only too +aware of it: and the "All is good" of Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke and Pope, +is only a witty paradox, a poor joke.</p> + +<p>The two principles of Zarathustra and Manes, so carefully scrutinized by +Bayle, are a still poorer joke. They are, as has been observed already, +Molière's two doctors, one of whom says to the other: "Grant me the +emetic, and I will grant you the bleeding." Manichæism is absurd; and +that is why it has had so many supporters.</p> + +<p>I admit that I have not been enlightened by all that Bayle says about +the Manichæans and the Paulicians. That is controversy; I would have +preferred pure philosophy. Why discuss our mysteries beside +Zarathustra's? As soon as you dare to treat of our mysteries, which need +only faith and no reasoning, you open precipices for yourself.</p> + +<p>The trash in our scholastic theology has nothing to do with the trash in +Zarathustra's reveries.</p> + +<p>Why debate original sin with Zarathustra? There was never any question +of it save in St. Augustine's time. Neither Zarathustra nor any +legislator of antiquity had ever heard speak of it.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>If you dispute with Zarathustra, put under lock and key the old and the +new Testaments which he did not know, and which one must revere without +desiring to explain them.</p> + +<p>What then should I have said to Zarathustra? My reason cannot admit two +gods who fight, that is good only in a poem where Minerva quarrels with +Mars. My feeble reason is much more content with a single great Being, +whose essence was to make, and who has made all that nature has +permitted Him, than it is satisfied with two great Beings, one of whom +spoils the works of the other. Your bad principle Ahriman, has not been +able to upset a single one of the astronomical and physical laws of the +good principle Ormuzd; everything progresses in the heavens with the +greatest regularity. Why should the wicked Ahriman have had power over +this little globe of the world?</p> + +<p>If I had been Ahriman, I should have attacked Ormuzd in his fine grand +provinces of so many suns and stars. I should not have limited myself to +making war on him in a little village.</p> + +<p>There is much evil in this village: but whence have you the knowledge +that this evil is not inevitable?</p> + +<p>You are forced to admit an intelligence diffused over the universe; but +(1) do you know, for instance, if this power reaches right to foreseeing +the future? You have asserted it a thousand times; but you have never +been able either to prove it, or to understand it. You cannot know how +any being whatever sees what is not. Well, the future is not; therefore +no being can see it. You are reduced to saying that He foresees it; but +foreseeing is conjecturing. This is the opinion of the Socinians.</p> + +<p>Well, a God who, according to you, conjectures, can be mistaken. In your +system He is really mistaken; for if He had foreseen that His enemy +would poison all His works here below, He would not have produced them; +He would not have prepared for Himself the shame of being continually +vanquished.</p> + +<p>(2) Do I not do Him much more honour by saying that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> He has made +everything by the necessity of His nature, than you do Him by raising an +enemy who disfigures, who soils, who destroys all His works here below?</p> + +<p>(3) It is not to have an unworthy idea of God to say that, having formed +thousands of millions of worlds where death and evil do not dwell, it +was necessary that evil and death should dwell in this world.</p> + +<p>(4) It is not to disparage God to say that He could not form man without +giving him self-esteem; that this self-esteem could not lead him without +misguiding him almost always; that his passions are necessary, but that +they are disastrous; that propagation cannot be executed without desire; +that desire cannot animate man without quarrels; that these quarrels +necessarily bring wars in their train, etc.</p> + +<p>(5) When he sees part of the combinations of the animal, vegetable and +mineral kingdoms, and this globe pierced everywhere like a sieve, from +which escape in crowds so many exhalations, what philosopher will be +bold enough, what scholastic foolish enough to see clearly that nature +could stop the effects of volcanoes, the inclemencies of the atmosphere, +the violence of the winds, the plagues, and all the destructive +scourges?</p> + +<p>(6) One must be very powerful, very strong, very industrious, to have +formed lions which devour bulls, and to have produced men who invent +arms to kill at one blow, not only bulls and lions, but even each other. +One must be very powerful to have caused to be born spiders which spin +webs to catch flies; but that is not to be omnipotent, infinitely +powerful.</p> + +<p>(7) If the great Being had been infinitely powerful, there is no reason +why He should not have made sentient animals infinitely happy; He has +not done so, therefore He was not able.</p> + +<p>(8) All the sects of the philosophers have stranded on the reef of moral +and physical ill. It only remains to avow that God having acted for the +best has not been able to act better.</p> + +<p>(9) This necessity settles all the difficulties and finishes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> all the +disputes. We have not the impudence to say—"All is good." We say—"All +is the least bad that is possible."</p> + +<p>(10) Why does a child often die in its mother's womb? Why is another who +has had the misfortune to be born, reserved for torments as long as his +life, terminated by a frightful death?</p> + +<p>Why has the source of life been poisoned all over the world since the +discovery of America? why since the seventh century of our era does +smallpox carry off the eighth part of the human race? why since all time +have bladders been subject to being stone quarries? why the plague, war, +famine, the inquisition? Turn in every direction, you will find no other +solution than that everything has been necessary.</p> + +<p>I speak here to philosophers only and not to theologians. We know well +that faith is the thread in the labyrinth. We know that the fall of Adam +and Eve, original sin, the immense power given to the devil, the +predilection accorded by the great Being to the Jewish people, and the +baptism substituted for the amputation of the prepuce, are the answers +which explain everything. We have argued only against Zarathustra and +not against the university of Conimbre or Coïmbre, to which we submit in +our articles.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Prayers" id="Prayers"></a><i>PRAYERS</i></h2> + + +<p>We do not know any religion without prayers, even the Jews had some, +although there was not among them any public form, until the time when +they sang canticles in their synagogues, which happened very late.</p> + +<p>All men, in their desires and their fears, invoked the aid of a deity. +Some philosophers, more respectful to the Supreme Being, and less +condescending to human frailty, for all prayer desired only resignation. +It is indeed what seems proper as between creature and creator. But +philosophy is not made to govern the world; she rises above the common +herd; she speaks a language that the crowd cannot understand. It would +be suggesting to fishwives that they should study conic sections.</p> + +<p>Even among the philosophers, I do not believe that anyone apart from +Maximus of Tyre has treated of this matter; this is the substance of +Maximus' ideas.</p> + +<p>The Eternal has His intentions from all eternity. If prayer accords with +His immutable wishes, it is quite useless to ask of Him what He has +resolved to do. If one prays Him to do the contrary of what He has +resolved, it is praying Him to be weak, frivolous, inconstant; it is +believing that He is thus, it is to mock Him. Either you ask Him a just +thing; in this case He must do it, and the thing will be done without +your praying Him for it; entreating Him is even to distrust Him: or the +thing is unjust, and then you outrage Him. You are worthy or unworthy of +the grace you implore: if worthy, He knows it better than you; if +unworthy, you commit a crime the more in asking for what you do not +deserve.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>In a word, we pray to God only because we have made Him in our own +image. We treat Him like a pasha, like a sultan whom one may provoke and +appease.</p> + +<p>In short, all nations pray to God: wise men resign themselves and obey +Him.</p> + +<p>Let us pray with the people, and resign ourselves with the wise men.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Ancient_Philosophy" id="Ancient_Philosophy"></a><i>PRÉCIS OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY</i></h2> + + +<p>I have spent nearly forty years of my pilgrimage in two or three corners +of this world seeking the philosopher's stone that is called Truth. I +have consulted all the adepts of antiquity, Epicurus and Augustine, +Plato and Malebranche, and I have remained in my poverty. Maybe in all +these philosophers' crucibles there are one or two ounces of gold; but +all the rest is residue, dull mud, from which nothing can be born.</p> + +<p>It seems to me that the Greeks our masters wrote much more to show their +intelligence than that they used their intelligence in order to learn. I +do not see a single author of antiquity who had a coherent system, a +clear, methodical system progressing from consequence to consequence.</p> + +<p>When I wanted to compare and combine the systems of Plato, of the +preceptor of Alexander, of Pythagoras and of the Orientals, here, more +or less, is what I was able to gather:</p> + +<p>Chance is a word empty of sense; nothing can exist without a cause. The +world is arranged according to mathematical laws; it is therefore +arranged by an intelligence.</p> + +<p>It is not an intelligent being such as I am, who directed the formation +of this world, for I cannot form a mite; therefore this world is the +work of a prodigiously superior intelligence.</p> + +<p>Does this being, who possesses intelligence and power in so high a +degree, exist necessarily? It must be so, for either the being received +existence from another, or from its own nature. If the being received +existence from another, which is very difficult to imagine, I must have +recourse to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> this other, and this other will be the prime author. To +whichever side I turn I have to admit a prime author, potent and +intelligent, who is such necessarily by his own nature.</p> + +<p>Did this prime author produce things out of nothing? that is not +imaginable; to create out of nothing is to change nothing into +something. I must not admit such a production unless I find invincible +reasons which force me to admit what my intelligence can never +comprehend.</p> + +<p>All that exists appears to exist necessarily, since it exists. For if +to-day there is a reason for the existence of things, there was one +yesterday, there was one in all time; and this cause must always have +had its effect, without which it would have been during eternity a +useless cause.</p> + +<p>But how shall things have always existed, being visibly under the hand +of the prime author? This power therefore must always have acted; in the +same way, nearly, that there is no sun without light, so there is no +movement without a being that passes from one point of space to another +point.</p> + +<p>There is therefore a potent and intelligent being who has always acted; +and if this being had never acted, of what use would his existence have +been to him?</p> + +<p>All things are therefore eternal emanations of this prime author.</p> + +<p>But how imagine that stone and mud are emanations of the eternal Being, +potent and intelligent?</p> + +<p>Of two things one, either the matter of this stone and this mud exist +necessarily by themselves, or they exist necessarily through this prime +author; there is no middle course.</p> + +<p>Thus, therefore, there are only two choices to make, admit either matter +eternal by itself, or matter issuing eternally from the potent, +intelligent eternal Being.</p> + +<p>But, either subsisting by its own nature, or emanated from the producing +Being, it exists from all eternity, because it exists, and there is no +reason why it should not have existed before.</p> + +<p>If matter is eternally necessary, it is therefore impossible, it is +therefore contradictory that it does not exist; but what man can affirm +that it is impossible, that it is contradictory<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> that this pebble and +this fly have not existence? One is, nevertheless, forced to suppress +this difficulty which astonishes the imagination more than it +contradicts the principles of reasoning.</p> + +<p>In fact, as soon as you have imagined that everything has emanated from +the supreme and intelligent Being, that nothing has emanated from the +Being without reason, that this Being existing always, must always have +acted, that consequently all things must have eternally issued from the +womb of His existence, you should no more refuse to believe in the +matter of which this pebble and this fly, an eternal production, are +formed, than you refuse to imagine light as an eternal emanation from +the omnipotent Being.</p> + +<p>Since I am a being with extension and thought, my extension and my +thought are therefore necessary productions of this Being. It is evident +to me that I cannot give myself either extension or thought. I have +therefore received both from this necessary Being.</p> + +<p>Can He give me what He has not? I have intelligence and I am in space; +therefore He is intelligent, and He is in space.</p> + +<p>To say that this eternal Being, this omnipotent God, has from all time +necessarily filled the universe with His productions, is not to deprive +Him of His liberty; on the contrary, for liberty is only the power of +acting. God has always acted to the full; therefore God has always made +use of the fullness of His liberty.</p> + +<p>The liberty that is called <i>liberty of indifference</i> is a phrase without +idea, an absurdity; for it would be determination without reason; it +would be an effect without a cause. Therefore, God cannot have this +so-called liberty which is a contradiction in terms. He has therefore +always acted through this same necessity which makes His existence.</p> + +<p>It is therefore impossible for the world to be without God, it is +impossible for God to be without the world.</p> + +<p>This world is filled with beings who succeed each other, therefore God +has always produced beings who succeed each other.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>These preliminary assertions are the basis of the ancient Oriental +philosophy and of that of the Greeks. One must except Democritus and +Epicurus, whose corpuscular philosophy combated these dogmas. But let us +remark that the Epicureans relied on an entirely erroneous natural +philosophy, and that the metaphysical system of all the other +philosophers holds good with all the systems of natural philosophy. The +whole of nature, excepting the vacuum, contradicts Epicurus; and no +phenomenon contradicts the philosophy which I have just explained. Well, +is not a philosophy which is in accord with all that passes in nature, +and which contents the most careful minds, superior to all other +non-revealed systems?</p> + +<p>After the assertions of the ancient philosophers, which I have +reconciled as far as has been possible for me, what is left to us? a +chaos of doubts and chimeras. I do not think that there has ever been a +philosopher with a system who did not at the end of his life avow that +he had wasted his time. It must be admitted that the inventors of the +mechanical arts have been much more useful to mankind than the inventors +of syllogisms: the man who invented the shuttle surpasses with a +vengeance the man who imagined innate ideas.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Prejudices" id="Prejudices"></a><i>PREJUDICES</i></h2> + + +<p>Prejudice is an opinion without judgment. Thus all over the world do +people inspire children with all the opinions they desire, before the +children can judge.</p> + +<p>There are some universal, necessary prejudices, which even make virtue. +In all countries children are taught to recognize a rewarding and +revenging God; to respect and love their father and their mother; to +look on theft as a crime, selfish lying as a vice before they can guess +what is a vice and what a virtue.</p> + +<p>There are then some very good prejudices; they are those which are +ratified by judgment when one reasons.</p> + +<p>Sentiment is not a simple prejudice; it is something much stronger. A +mother does not love her son because she has been told she must love +him; she cherishes him happily in spite of herself. It is not through +prejudice that you run to the help of an unknown child about to fall +into a precipice, or be eaten by a beast.</p> + +<p>But it is through prejudice that you will respect a man clad in certain +clothes, walking gravely, speaking likewise. Your parents have told you +that you should bow before this man; you respect him before knowing +whether he merits your respect<ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Original has colon.">;</ins> you grow in years and in knowledge; you +perceive that this man is a charlatan steeped in arrogance, +self-interest and artifice; you despise what you revered, and the +prejudice cedes to judgment. Through prejudice you have believed the +fables with which your childhood was cradled; you have been told that +the Titans made war on the gods, and Venus was amorous of Adonis; when +you are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> twelve you accept these fables as truths; when you are twenty +you look on them as ingenious allegories.</p> + +<p>Let us examine briefly the different sorts of prejudices, so as to set +our affairs in order. We shall be perhaps like those who, at the time of +Law's system, perceived that they had calculated imaginary riches.</p> + + +<h4><span class="smcap">Prejudices of the Senses</span></h4> + +<p>Is it not strange that our eyes always deceive us, even when we have +very good sight, and that on the contrary our ears do not deceive us? +Let your well-informed ear hear "You are beautiful, I love you"; it is +quite certain that someone has not said "I hate you, you are ugly": but +you see a smooth mirror; it is demonstrated that you are mistaken, it +has a very uneven surface. You see the sun as about two feet in +diameter; it is demonstrated that it is a million times bigger than the +earth.</p> + +<p>It seems that God has put truth in your ears, and error in your eyes; +but study optics, and you will see that God has not deceived you, and +that it is impossible for objects to appear to you otherwise than you +see them in the present state of things.</p> + + +<h4><span class="smcap">Physical Prejudices</span></h4> + +<p>The sun rises, the moon also, the earth is motionless: these are natural +physical prejudices. But that lobsters are good for the blood, because +when cooked they are red; that eels cure paralysis because they wriggle; +that the moon affects our maladies because one day someone observed that +a sick man had an increase of fever during the waning of the moon; these +ideas and a thousand others are the errors of ancient charlatans who +judged without reasoning, and who, being deceived, deceived others.</p> + + +<h4><span class="smcap">Historical Prejudices</span></h4> + +<p>Most historical stories have been believed without examination, and this +belief is a prejudice. Fabius Pictor relates<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> that many centuries before +him, a vestal of the town of Alba, going to draw water in her pitcher, +was ravished, that she gave birth to Romulus and Remus, that they were +fed by a she-wolf, etc. The Roman people believed this fable; they did +not examine whether at that time there were vestals in Latium, whether +it were probable that a king's daughter would leave her convent with her +pitcher, whether it were likely that a she-wolf would suckle two +children instead of eating them; the prejudice established itself.</p> + +<p>A monk writes that Clovis, being in great danger at the battle of +Tolbiac, made a vow to turn Christian if he escaped; but is it natural +to address oneself to a foreign god on such an occasion? is it not then +that the religion in which one was born acts most potently? Which is the +Christian who, in a battle against the Turks, will not address himself +to the Holy Virgin rather than to Mohammed? It is added that a pigeon +brought the holy phial in its beak to anoint Clovis, and that an angel +brought the oriflamme to lead him; prejudice believed all the little +stories of this kind. Those who understand human nature know well that +Clovis the usurper and Rolon (or Rol) the usurper turned Christian in +order to govern the Christians more surely, just as the Turkish usurpers +turned Mussulman in order to govern the Mussulmans more surely.</p> + + +<h4><span class="smcap">Religious Prejudices</span></h4> + +<p>If your nurse has told you that Ceres rules over the crops, or that +<ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Also spelled Vitsnou in original.">Vistnou</ins> and Xaca made themselves men several times, or that Sammonocodom +came to cut down a forest, or that Odin awaits you in his hall near +Jutland, or that Mohammed or somebody else made a journey into the sky; +if lastly your tutor comes to drive into your brain what your nurse has +imprinted on it you keep it for life. If your judgment wishes to rise +against these prejudices, your neighbours and, above all, your +neighbours' wives cry out "Impious reprobate," and dismay you; your +dervish, fearing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> to see his income diminish, accuses you to the cadi, +and this cadi has you impaled if he can, because he likes ruling over +fools, and thinks that fools obey better than others: and that will last +until your neighbours and the dervish and the cadi begin to understand +that foolishness is good for nothing, and that persecution is +abominable.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Rare" id="Rare"></a><i>RARE</i></h2> + + +<p>Rare in natural philosophy is the opposite of dense. In moral +philosophy, it is the opposite of common.</p> + +<p>This last variety of rare is what excites admiration. One never admires +what is common, one enjoys it.</p> + +<p>An eccentric thinks himself above the rest of wretched mortals when he +has in his study a rare medal that is good for nothing, a rare book that +nobody has the courage to read, an old engraving by Albrecht Durer, +badly designed and badly printed: he triumphs if he has in his garden a +stunted tree from America. This eccentric has no taste; he has only +vanity. He has heard say that the beautiful is rare; but he should know +that all that is rare is not beautiful.</p> + +<p>Beauty is rare in all nature's works, and in all works of art.</p> + +<p>Whatever ill things have been said of women, I maintain that it is rarer +to find women perfectly beautiful than <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Possibly a typographical error for passably.">passibly</ins> good.</p> + +<p>You will meet in the country ten thousand women attached to their homes, +laborious, sober, feeding, rearing, teaching their children; and you +will find barely one whom you could show at the theatres of Paris, +London, Naples, or in the public gardens, and who would be looked on as +a beauty.</p> + +<p>Likewise, in works of art, you have ten thousand daubs and scrawls to +one masterpiece.</p> + +<p>If everything were beautiful and good, it is clear that one would no +longer admire anything; one would enjoy. But would one have pleasure in +enjoying? that is a big question.</p> + +<p>Why have the beautiful passages in "The Cid," "The Horaces," "Cinna," +had such a prodigious success? Because in the profound night in which +people were plunged,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> they suddenly saw shine a new light that they did +not expect. It was because this beauty was the rarest thing in the +world.</p> + +<p>The groves of Versailles were a beauty unique in the world, as were then +certain passages of Corneille. St. Peter's, Rome, is unique.</p> + +<p>But let us suppose that all the churches of Europe were equal to St. +Peter's, Rome, that all statues were Venus dei Medici, that all +tragedies were as beautiful as Racine's "Iphigénie", all works of poetry +as well written as Boileau's "Art Poétique", all comedies as good as +"Tartufe", and thus in every sphere; would you then have as much +pleasure in enjoying masterpieces become common as they made you taste +when they were rare? I say boldly "No!"; and I believe that the ancient +school, which so rarely was right, was right when it said: <i>Ab assuetis +non fit passio</i>, habit does not make passion.</p> + +<p>But, my dear reader, will it be the same with the works of nature? Will +you be disgusted if all the maids are so beautiful as Helen; and you, +ladies, if all the lads are like Paris? Let us suppose that all wines +are excellent, will you have less desire to drink? if the partridges, +pheasants, pullets are common at all times, will you have less appetite? +I say boldly again "No!", despite the axiom of the schools, "Habit does +not make passion": and the reason, you know it, is that all the +pleasures which nature gives us are always recurring needs, necessary +enjoyments, and that the pleasures of the arts are not necessary. It is +not necessary for a man to have groves where water gushes to a height of +a hundred feet from the mouth of a marble face, and on leaving these +groves to go to see a fine tragedy. But the two sexes are always +necessary to each other. The table and the bed are necessities. The +habit of being alternately on these two thrones will never disgust you.</p> + +<p>In Paris a few years ago people admired a rhinoceros. If there were in +one province ten thousand rhinoceroses, men would run after them only to +kill them. But let there be a hundred thousand beautiful women men will +always run after them to ... honour them.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Reason" id="Reason"></a><i>REASON</i></h2> + + +<p>At the time when all France was mad about Law's system, and Law was +controller-general, there came to him in the presence of a great +assembly a man who was always right, who always had reason on his side. +Said he to Law:</p> + +<p>"Sir, you are the biggest madman, the biggest fool, or the biggest rogue +who has yet appeared among us; and that is saying a great deal: this is +how I prove it. You have imagined that a state's wealth can be increased +tenfold with paper; but as this paper can represent only the money that +is representative of true wealth, the products of the land and industry, +you should have begun by giving us ten times more corn, wine, cloth, +canvas, etc. That is not enough, you must be sure of your market. But +you make ten times as many notes as we have of silver and commodities, +therefore you are ten times more extravagant, or more inept, or more of +a rogue than all the comptrollers who have preceded you. This is how I +prove my major."</p> + +<p>Hardly had he started his major than he was conducted to Saint-Lazare.</p> + +<p>When he came out of Saint-Lazare, where he studied much and strengthened +his reason, he went to Rome; he asked for a public audience of the Pope, +on condition that he was not interrupted in his harangue; and he spoke +to the Pope in these terms:</p> + +<p>"Holy Father, you are an antichrist and this is how I prove it to Your +Holiness. I call antichrist the man who does the contrary to what Christ +did and commanded. Now Christ was poor, and you are very rich; he paid +tribute, and you exact tribute; he submitted to the powers that were, +and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> you have become a power; he walked on foot, and you go to +Castel-Gandolfo in a sumptuous equipage; he ate all that one was so good +as to give him, and you want us to eat fish on Friday and Saturday, when +we live far from sea and river; he forbade Simon Barjona to use a sword, +and you have swords in your service, etc., etc., etc. Therefore in this +sense Your Holiness is antichrist. In every other sense I hold you in +great veneration, and I ask you for an indulgence <i>in articulo mortis</i>."</p> + +<p>My man was put in the Castello St. Angelo.</p> + +<p>When he came out of the Castello St. Angelo, he rushed to Venice, and +asked to speak to the doge.</p> + +<p>"Your Serenity," he said, "must be a scatter-brain to marry the sea +every year: for firstly, one only marries the same person once; +secondly, your marriage resembles Harlequin's which was half made, +seeing that it lacked but the consent of the bride; thirdly, who has +told you that one day other maritime powers will not declare you +incapable of consummating the marriage?"</p> + +<p>He spoke, and was shut up in the Tower of St. Mark's.</p> + +<p>When he came out of the Tower of St. Mark's, he went to Constantinople; +he had audience of the mufti; and spoke to him in these terms:</p> + +<p>"Your religion, although it has some good points, such as worship of the +great Being, and the necessity of being just and charitable, is +otherwise nothing but a rehash of Judaism and a tedious collection of +fairy tales. If the archangel Gabriel had brought the leaves of the +Koran to Mahomet from some planet, all Arabia would have seen Gabriel +come down: nobody saw him; therefore Mahomet was a brazen impostor who +deceived imbeciles."</p> + +<p>Hardly had he pronounced these words than he was impaled. Nevertheless +he had always been right, and had always had reason on his side.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Religion" id="Religion"></a><i>RELIGION</i></h2> + + +<p>I meditated last night; I was absorbed in the contemplation of nature; I +admired the immensity, the course, the harmony of these infinite globes +which the vulgar do not know how to admire.</p> + +<p>I admired still more the intelligence which directs these vast forces. I +said to myself: "One must be blind not to be dazzled by this spectacle; +one must be stupid not to recognize the author of it; one must be mad +not to worship Him. What tribute of worship should I render Him? Should +not this tribute be the same in the whole of space, since it is the same +supreme power which reigns equally in all space? Should not a thinking +being who dwells in a star in the Milky Way offer Him the same homage as +the thinking being on this little globe where we are? Light is uniform +for the star Sirius and for us; moral philosophy must be uniform. If a +sentient, thinking animal in Sirius is born of a tender father and +mother who have been occupied with his happiness, he owes them as much +love and care as we owe to our parents. If someone in the Milky Way sees +a needy cripple, if he can relieve him and if he does not do it, he is +guilty toward all globes. Everywhere the heart has the same duties: on +the steps of the throne of God, if He has a throne; and in the depth of +the abyss, if He is an abyss."</p> + +<p>I was plunged in these ideas when one of those genii who fill the +intermundane spaces came down to me. I recognized this same aerial +creature who had appeared to me on another occasion to teach me how +different God's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> judgments were from our own, and how a good action is +preferable to a controversy.</p> + +<p>He transported me into a desert all covered with piled up bones; and +between these heaps of dead men there were walks of ever-green trees, +and at the end of each walk a tall man of august mien, who regarded +these sad remains with pity.</p> + +<p>"Alas! my archangel," said I, "where have you brought me?"</p> + +<p>"To desolation," he answered.</p> + +<p>"And who are these fine patriarchs whom I see sad and motionless at the +end of these green walks? they seem to be weeping over this countless +crowd of dead."</p> + +<p>"You shall know, poor human creature," answered the genius from the +intermundane spaces; "but first of all you must weep."</p> + +<p>He began with the first pile. "These," he said, "are the twenty-three +thousand Jews who danced before a calf, with the twenty-four thousand +who were killed while lying with Midianitish women. The number of those +massacred for such errors and offences amounts to nearly three hundred +thousand.</p> + +<p>"In the other walks are the bones of the Christians slaughtered by each +other for metaphysical disputes. They are divided into several heaps of +four centuries each. One heap would have mounted right to the sky; they +had to be divided."</p> + +<p>"What!" I cried, "brothers have treated their brothers like this, and I +have the misfortune to be of this brotherhood!"</p> + +<p>"Here," said the spirit, "are the twelve million Americans killed in +their fatherland because they had not been baptized."</p> + +<p>"My God! why did you not leave these frightful bones to dry in the +hemisphere where their bodies were born, and where they were consigned +to so many different deaths? Why assemble here all these abominable +monuments to barbarism and fanaticism?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>"To instruct you."</p> + +<p>"Since you wish to instruct me," I said to the genius, "tell me if there +have been peoples other than the Christians and the Jews in whom zeal +and religion wretchedly transformed into fanaticism, have inspired so +many horrible cruelties."</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said. "The Mohammedans were sullied with the same +inhumanities, but rarely; and when one asked <i>amman</i>, pity, of them and +offered them tribute, they pardoned. As for the other nations there has +not been one right from the existence of the world which has ever made a +purely religious war. Follow me now." I followed him.</p> + +<p>A little beyond these piles of dead men we found other piles; they were +composed of sacks of gold and silver, and each had its label: <i>Substance +of the heretics massacred in the eighteenth century, the seventeenth and +the sixteenth.</i> And so on in going back: <i>Gold and silver of Americans +slaughtered</i>, etc., etc. And all these piles were surmounted with +crosses, mitres, croziers, triple crowns studded with precious stones.</p> + +<p>"What, my genius! it was then to have these riches that these dead were +piled up?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, my son."</p> + +<p>I wept; and when by my grief I had merited to be led to the end of the +green walks, he led me there.</p> + +<p>"Contemplate," he said, "the heroes of humanity who were the world's +benefactors, and who were all united in banishing from the world, as far +as they were able, violence and rapine. Question them."</p> + +<p>I ran to the first of the band; he had a crown on his head, and a little +censer in his hand; I humbly asked him his name. "I am Numa Pompilius," +he said to me. "I succeeded a brigand, and I had brigands to govern: I +taught them virtue and the worship of God; after me they forgot both +more than once; I forbade that in the temples there should be any image, +because the Deity which animates nature cannot be represented. During my +reign the Romans had neither wars nor seditions, and my religion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> did +nothing but good. All the neighbouring peoples came to honour me at my +funeral: that happened to no one but me."</p> + +<p>I kissed his hand, and I went to the second. He was a fine old man about +a hundred years old, clad in a white robe. He put his middle-finger on +his mouth, and with the other hand he cast some beans behind him. I +recognized Pythagoras. He assured me he had never had a golden thigh, +and that he had never been a cock; but that he had governed the +Crotoniates with as much justice as Numa governed the Romans, almost at +the same time; and that this justice was the rarest and most necessary +thing in the world. I learned that the Pythagoreans examined their +consciences twice a day. The honest people! how far we are from them! +But we who have been nothing but assassins for thirteen hundred years, +we say that these wise men were arrogant.</p> + +<p>In order to please Pythagoras, I did not say a word to him and I passed +to Zarathustra, who was occupied in concentrating the celestial fire in +the focus of a concave mirror, in the middle of a hall with a hundred +doors which all led to wisdom. (Zarathustra's precepts are called +<i>doors</i>, and are a hundred in number.) Over the principal door I read +these words which are the précis of all moral philosophy, and which cut +short all the disputes of the casuists: "When in doubt if an action is +good or bad, refrain."</p> + +<p>"Certainly," I said to my genius, "the barbarians who immolated all +these victims had never read these beautiful words."</p> + +<p>We then saw the Zaleucus, the Thales, the Aniximanders, and all the +sages who had sought truth and practised virtue.</p> + +<p>When we came to Socrates, I recognized him very quickly by his flat +nose. "Well," I said to him, "here you are then among the number of the +Almighty's confidants! All the inhabitants of Europe, except the Turks +and the Tartars of the Crimea, who know nothing, pronounce your name +with respect. It is revered, loved, this great name, to the point that +people have wanted to know those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> of your persecutors. Melitus and +Anitus are known because of you, just as Ravaillac is known because of +Henry IV.; but I know only this name of Anitus. I do not know precisely +who was the scoundrel who calumniated you, and who succeeded in having +you condemned to take hemlock."</p> + +<p>"Since my adventure," replied Socrates, "I have never thought about that +man; but seeing that you make me remember it, I have much pity for him. +He was a wicked priest who secretly conducted a business in hides, a +trade reputed shameful among us. He sent his two children to my school. +The other disciples taunted them with having a father who was a currier; +they were obliged to leave. The irritated father had no rest until he +had stirred up all the priests and all the sophists against me. They +persuaded the counsel of the five hundred that I was an impious fellow +who did not believe that the Moon, Mercury and Mars were gods. Indeed, I +used to think, as I think now, that there is only one God, master of all +nature. The judges handed me over to the poisoner of the republic; he +cut short my life by a few days: I died peacefully at the age of +seventy; and since that time I pass a happy life with all these great +men whom you see, and of whom I am the least."</p> + +<p>After enjoying some time in conversation with Socrates, I went forward +with my guide into a grove situated above the thickets where all the +sages of antiquity seemed to be tasting sweet repose.</p> + +<p>I saw a man of gentle, simple countenance, who seemed to me to be about +thirty-five years old. From afar he cast compassionate glances on these +piles of whitened bones, across which I had had to pass to reach the +sages' abode. I was astonished to find his feet swollen and bleeding, +his hands likewise, his side pierced, and his ribs flayed with whip +cuts. "Good Heavens!" I said to him, "is it possible for a just man, a +sage, to be in this state? I have just seen one who was treated in a +very hateful way, but there is no comparison between his torture and +yours. Wicked priests and wicked judges poisoned him; is it by priests +and judges that you have been so cruelly assassinated?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>He answered with much courtesy—"<i>Yes.</i>"</p> + +<p>"And who were these monsters?"</p> + +<p>"<i>They were hypocrites.</i>"</p> + +<p>"Ah! that says everything; I understand by this single word that they +must have condemned you to death. Had you then proved to them, as +Socrates did, that the Moon was not a goddess, and that Mercury was not +a god?"</p> + +<p>"<i>No, these planets were not in question. My compatriots did not know at +all what a planet is; they were all arrant ignoramuses. Their +superstitions were quite different from those of the Greeks.</i>"</p> + +<p>"You wanted to teach them a new religion, then?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Not at all; I said to them simply—'Love God with all your heart and +your fellow-creature as yourself, for that is man's whole duty.' Judge +if this precept is not as old as the universe; judge if I brought them a +new religion. I did not stop telling them that I had come not to destroy +the law but to fulfil it; I had observed all their rites; circumcised as +they all were, baptized as were the most zealous among them, like them I +paid the Corban; I observed the Passover as they did, eating standing up +a lamb cooked with lettuces. I and my friends went to pray in the +temple; my friends even frequented this temple after my death; in a +word, I fulfilled all their laws without a single exception.</i>"</p> + +<p>"What! these wretches could not even reproach you with swerving from +their laws?"</p> + +<p>"<i>No, without a doubt.</i>"</p> + +<p>"Why then did they put you in the condition in which I now see you?"</p> + +<p>"<i>What do you expect me to say! they were very arrogant and selfish. +They saw that I knew them; they knew that I was making the citizens +acquainted with them; they were the stronger; they took away my life: +and people like them will always do as much, if they can, to whoever +does them too much justice.</i>"</p> + +<p>"But did you say nothing, do nothing that could serve them as a +pretext?"</p> + +<p>"<i>To the wicked everything serves as pretext.</i></p> + +<p>"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>"Did you not say once that you were come not to send peace, but a +sword?"</p> + +<p>"<i>It is a copyist's error; I told them that I sent peace and not a +sword. I have never written anything; what I said can have been changed +without evil intention.</i>"</p> + +<p>"You therefore contributed in no way by your speeches, badly reported, +badly interpreted, to these frightful piles of bones which I saw on my +road in coming to consult you?"</p> + +<p>"<i>It is with horror only that I have seen those who have made themselves +guilty of these murders.</i>"</p> + +<p>"And these monuments of power and wealth, of pride and avarice, these +treasures, these ornaments, these signs of grandeur, which I have seen +piled up on the road while I was seeking wisdom, do they come from you?"</p> + +<p>"<i>That is impossible; I and my people lived in poverty and meanness: my +grandeur was in virtue only.</i>"</p> + +<p>I was about to beg him to be so good as to tell me just who he was. My +guide warned me to do nothing of the sort. He told me that I was not +made to understand these sublime mysteries. Only did I conjure him to +tell me in what true religion consisted.</p> + +<p>"<i>Have I not already told you? Love God and your fellow-creature as +yourself.</i>"</p> + +<p>"What! if one loves God, one can eat meat on Friday?"</p> + +<p>"<i>I always ate what was given me; for I was too poor to give anyone +food.</i>"</p> + +<p>"In loving God, in being just, should one not be rather cautious not to +confide all the adventures of one's life to an unknown man?"</p> + +<p>"<i>That was always my practice.</i>"</p> + +<p>"Can I not, by doing good, dispense with making a pilgrimage to St. +James of Compostella?"</p> + +<p>"<i>I have never been in that country.</i>"</p> + +<p>"Is it necessary for me to imprison myself in a retreat with fools?"</p> + +<p>"<i>As for me, I always made little journeys from town to town.</i>"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>"Is it necessary for me to take sides either for the Greek Church or the +Latin?"</p> + +<p>"<i>When I was in the world I never made any difference between the Jew +and the Samaritan.</i>"</p> + +<p>"Well, if that is so, I take you for my only master." Then he made me a +sign with his head which filled me with consolation. The vision +disappeared, and a clear conscience stayed with me.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Sect" id="Sect"></a><i>SECT</i></h2> + + +<h3>SECTION I</h3> + +<p>Every sect, in whatever sphere, is the rallying-point of doubt and +error. Scotist, Thomist, Realist, Nominalist, Papist, Calvinist, +Molinist, Jansenist, are only pseudonyms.</p> + +<p>There are no sects in geometry; one does not speak of a Euclidian, an +Archimedean.</p> + +<p>When the truth is evident, it is impossible for parties and factions to +arise. Never has there been a dispute as to whether there is daylight at +noon.</p> + +<p>The branch of astronomy which determines the course of the stars and the +return of eclipses being once known, there is no more dispute among +astronomers.</p> + +<p>In England one does not say—"I am a Newtonian, a Lockian, a Halleyan." +Why? Those who have read cannot refuse their assent to the truths taught +by these three great men. The more Newton is revered, the less do people +style themselves Newtonians; this word supposes that there are +anti-Newtonians in England. Maybe we still have a few Cartesians in +France; that is solely because Descartes' system is a tissue of +erroneous and ridiculous imaginings.</p> + +<p>It is likewise with the small number of truths of fact which are well +established. The records of the Tower of London having been +authentically gathered by Rymer, there are no Rymerians, because it +occurs to no one to combat this collection. In it one finds neither +contradictions, absurdities nor prodigies; nothing which revolts the +reason, nothing, consequently, which sectarians strive to maintain or +upset by absurd arguments. Everyone agrees, therefore, that Rymer's +records are worthy of belief.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>You are Mohammedan, therefore there are people who are not, therefore +you might well be wrong.</p> + +<p>What would be the true religion if Christianity did not exist? the +religion in which there were no sects; the religion in which all minds +were necessarily in agreement.</p> + +<p>Well, to what dogma do all minds agree? to the worship of a God and to +integrity. All the philosophers of the world who have had a religion +have said in all time—"There is a God, and one must be just." There, +then, is the universal religion established in all time and throughout +mankind.</p> + +<p>The point in which they all agree is therefore true, and the systems +through which they differ are therefore false.</p> + +<p>"My sect is the best," says a Brahmin to me. But, my friend, if your +sect is good, it is necessary; for if it were not absolutely necessary +you would admit to me that it was useless: if it is absolutely +necessary, it is for all men; how then can it be that all men have not +what is absolutely necessary to them? How is it possible for the rest of +the world to laugh at you and your Brahma?</p> + +<p>When Zarathustra, Hermes, Orpheus, Minos and all the great men say—"Let +us worship God, and let us be just," nobody laughs; but everyone hisses +the man who claims that one cannot please God unless when one dies one +is holding a cow's tail, and the man who wants one to have the end of +one's prepuce cut off, and the man who consecrates crocodiles and +onions, and the man who attaches eternal salvation to the dead men's +bones one carries under one's shirt, or to a plenary indulgence which +one buys at Rome for two and a half sous.</p> + +<p>Whence comes this universal competition in hisses and derision from one +end of the world to the other? It is clear that the things at which +everyone sneers are not of a very evident truth. What shall we say of +one of Sejan's secretaries who dedicated to Petronius a bombastic book +entitled—"The Truths of the Sibylline Oracles, Proved by the Facts"?</p> + +<p>This secretary proves to you first that it was necessary for God to send +on earth several sibyls one after the other;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> for He had no other means +of teaching mankind. It is demonstrated that God spoke to these sibyls, +for the word <i>sibyl</i> signifies <i>God's counsel</i>. They had to live a long +time, for it is the very least that persons to whom God speaks should +have this privilege. They were twelve in number, for this number is +sacred. They had certainly predicted all the events in the world, for +Tarquinius Superbus bought three of their Books from an old woman for a +hundred crowns. "What incredulous fellow," adds the secretary, "will +dare deny all these evident facts which happened in a corner before the +whole world? Who can deny the fulfilment of their prophecies? Has not +Virgil himself quoted the predictions of the sibyls? If we have not the +first examples of the Sibylline Books, written at a time when people did +not know how to read or write, have we not authentic copies? Impiety +must be silent before such proofs." Thus did Houttevillus speak to +Sejan. He hoped to have a position as augur which would be worth an +income of fifty thousand francs, and he had nothing.<a name="FNanchor_20" id="FNanchor_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p> + +<p>"What my sect teaches is obscure, I admit it," says a fanatic; "and it +is because of this obscurity that it must be believed; for the sect +itself says it is full of obscurities. My sect is extravagant, therefore +it is divine; for how should what appears so mad have been embraced by +so many peoples, if it were not divine?" It is precisely like the +Alcoran which the Sonnites say has an angel's face and an animal's +snout; be not scandalized by the animal's snout, and worship the angel's +face. Thus speaks this insensate fellow. But a fanatic of another sect +answers—"It is you who are the animal, and I who am the angel."</p> + +<p>Well, who shall judge the suit? who shall decide between these two +fanatics? The reasonable, impartial man learned in a knowledge that is +not that of words; the man free from prejudice and lover of truth and +justice; in short, the man who is not the foolish animal, and who does +not think he is the angel.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span></p> +<h3>SECTION II</h3> + +<p><i>Sect</i> and <i>error</i> are synonymous. You are Peripatetic and I +Platonician; we are therefore both wrong; for you combat Plato only +because his fantasies have revolted you, and I am alienated from +Aristotle only because it seems to me that he does not know what he is +talking about. If one or the other had demonstrated the truth, there +would be a sect no longer. To declare oneself for the opinion of the one +or the other is to take sides in a civil war. There are no sects in +mathematics, in experimental physics. A man who examines the relations +between a cone and a sphere is not of the sect of Archimedes: he who +sees that the square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is +equal to the square of the two other sides is not of the sect of +Pythagoras.</p> + +<p>When you say that the blood circulates, that the air is heavy, that the +sun's rays are pencils of seven refrangible rays, you are not either of +the sect of Harvey, or the sect of Torricelli, or the sect of Newton; +you agree merely with the truth demonstrated by them, and the entire +universe will ever be of your opinion.</p> + +<p>This is the character of truth; it is of all time; it is for all men; it +has only to show itself to be recognized; one cannot argue against it. A +long dispute signifies—"Both parties are wrong."</p> + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20" id="Footnote_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> Reference to the Abbé Houtteville, author of a book +entitled—"The Truth of the Christian Religion, Proved by the Facts."</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Self-esteem" id="Self-esteem"></a><i>SELF-ESTEEM</i></h2> + + +<p>Nicole in his "Essais de Morale," written after two or three thousand +volumes of ethics ("Treatise on Charity," Chap. II), says that "by means +of the wheels and gibbets which people establish in common are repressed +the tyrannous thoughts and designs of each individual's self-esteem."</p> + +<p>I shall not examine whether people have gibbets in common, as they have +meadows and woods in common, and a common purse, and if one represses +ideas with wheels; but it seems very strange to me that Nicole should +take highway robbery and assassination for self-esteem. One should +distinguish shades of difference a little better. The man who said that +Nero had his mother assassinated through self-esteem, that Cartouche had +much self-esteem, would not be expressing himself very correctly. +Self-esteem is not wickedness, it is a sentiment that is natural to all +men; it is much nearer vanity than crime.</p> + +<p>A beggar in the suburbs of Madrid nobly begged charity; a passer-by says +to him: "Are you not ashamed to practise this infamous calling when you +are able to work?"</p> + +<p>"Sir," answered the beggar, "I ask for money, not advice." And he turned +on his heel with full Castillian dignity.</p> + +<p>This gentleman was a proud beggar, his vanity was wounded by a trifle. +He asked charity out of love for himself, and could not tolerate the +reprimand out of further love for himself.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>A missionary travelling in India met a fakir laden with chains, naked as +a monkey, lying on his stomach, and having himself whipped for the sins +of his compatriots, the Indians, who gave him a few farthings.</p> + +<p>"What self-denial!" said one of the lookers-on.</p> + +<p>"Self-denial!" answered the fakir. "Learn that I have myself flogged in +this world in order to return it in another, when you will be horses and +I horseman."</p> + +<p>Those who have said that love of ourselves is the basis of all our +opinions and all our actions, have therefore been quite right in India, +Spain, and all the habitable world: and as one does not write to prove +to men that they have faces, it is not necessary to prove to them that +they have self-esteem. Self-esteem is the instrument of our +conservation; it resembles the instrument of the perpetuity of the +species: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and it +has to be hidden.</p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Soul" id="Soul"></a><i>SOUL</i></h2> + + +<h3>SECTION I</h3> + +<p>This is a vague, indeterminate term, which expresses an unknown +principle of known effects that we feel in us. The word <i>soul</i> +corresponds to the Latin <i>anima</i>, to the Greek <ins class="greekcorr" title="pneuma">πνεῦμα</ins>, to the +term of which all nations have made use to express what they did not +understand any better than we do.</p> + +<p>In the proper and literal sense of the Latin and the languages derived +from Latin, it signifies <i>that which animates</i>. Thus people have spoken +of the soul of men, of animals, sometimes of plants, to signify their +principal of vegetation and life. In pronouncing this word, people have +never had other than a confused idea, as when it is said in +Genesis—"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and +breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living +soul; and the soul of animals is in the blood; and kill not my soul, +etc."</p> + +<p>Thus the soul was generally taken for the origin and the cause of life, +for life itself. That is why all known nations long imagined that +everything died with the body. If one can disentangle anything in the +chaos of ancient histories, it seems that the Egyptians at least were +the first to distinguish between the intelligence and the soul: and the +Greeks learned from them to distinguish their <ins class="greekcorr" title="nous">νοῦς</ins>, their +<ins class="greekcorr" title="pneuma">πνεῦμα</ins>, their <ins class="greekcorr" title="skia">σκιὰ</ins>. The Latins, following their +example, distinguish <i>animus</i> and <i>anima</i>; and we, finally, have also +had our <i>soul</i> and our <i>understanding</i>. But is that which is the +principle of our life different from that which is the principle of our +thoughts? is it the same being?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> Does that which directs us and gives us +sensation and memory resemble that which is in animals the cause of +digestion and the cause of their sensations and of their memory?</p> + +<p>There is the eternal object of the disputes of mankind; I say eternal +object; for not having any first notion from which we can descend in +this examination, we can only rest for ever in a labyrinth of doubt and +feeble conjecture.</p> + +<p>We have not the smallest step where we may place a foot in order to +reach the most superficial knowledge of what makes us live and of what +makes us think. How should we have? we should have had to see life and +thought enter a body. Does a father know how he has produced his son? +does a mother how she conceived him? Has anyone ever been able to divine +how he acts, how he wakes, how he sleeps? Does anyone know how his limbs +obey his will? has anyone discovered by what art ideas are marked out in +his brain and issue from it at his command? Frail automatons moved by +the invisible hand which directs us on this stage of the world, which of +us has been able to detect the wire which guides us?</p> + +<p>We dare question whether the soul is "spirit" or "matter"; if it is +created before us, if it issues from non-existence at our birth, if +after animating us for one day on earth, it lives after us into +eternity. These questions appear sublime; what are they? questions of +blind men saying to other blind men—"What is light?"</p> + +<p>When we want to learn something roughly about a piece of metal, we put +it in a crucible in the fire. But have we a crucible in which to put the +soul? "The soul is <i>spirit</i>," says one. But what is spirit? Assuredly no +one has any idea; it is a word that is so void of sense that one is +obliged to say what spirit is not, not being able to say what it is. +"The soul is matter," says another. But what is matter? We know merely +some of its appearances and some of its properties; and not one of these +properties, not one of these appearances, seems to have the slightest +connection with thought.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>"Thought is something distinct from matter," say you. But what proof of +it have you? Is it because matter is divisible and figurable, and +thought is not? But who has told you that the first principles of matter +are divisible and figurable? It is very probable that they are not; +entire sects of philosophers maintain that the elements of matter have +neither form nor extension. With a triumphant air you cry—"Thought is +neither wood, nor stone, nor sand, nor metal, therefore thought does not +belong to matter." Weak, reckless reasoners! gravitation is neither +wood, nor sand, nor metal, nor stone; movement, vegetation, life are not +these things either, and yet life, vegetation, movement, gravitation, +are given to matter. To say that God cannot make matter think is to say +the most insolently absurd thing that anyone has ever dared utter in the +privileged schools of lunacy. We are not certain that God has treated +matter like this; we are only certain that He can. But what matters all +that has been said and all that will be said about the soul? what does +it matter that it has been called entelechy, quintessence, flame, ether? +that it has been thought universal, uncreated, transmigrant, etc.?</p> + +<p>In these matters that are inaccessible to the reason, what do these +romances of our uncertain imaginations matter? What does it matter that +the Fathers of the first four centuries thought the soul corporeal? What +does it matter that Tertullian, by a contradiction frequent in him, has +decided that it is simultaneously corporeal, formed and simple? We have +a thousand witnesses to ignorance, and not one that gives a glimmer of +probability.</p> + +<p>How then are we so bold as to assert what the soul is? We know certainly +that we exist, that we feel, that we think. Do we want to take a step +beyond? we fall into a shadowy abyss; and in this abyss we are still so +madly reckless as to dispute whether this soul, of which we have not the +least idea, was made before us or with us, and whether it perishes or is +immortal.</p> + +<p>The article SOUL, and all the articles of the nature of metaphysics, +must start by a sincere submission to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> incontrovertible dogmas of +the Church. Revelation is worth more, without doubt, than the whole of +philosophy. Systems exercise the mind, but faith illumines and guides +it.</p> + +<p>Do we not often pronounce words of which we have only a very confused +idea, or even of which we have none at all? Is not the word <i>soul</i> an +instance? When the clapper or valve of a bellows is out of order, and +when air which is in the bellows leaves it by some unexpected opening in +this valve, so that it is no longer compressed against the two blades, +and is not thrust violently towards the hearth which it has to light, +French servants say—"The soul of the bellows has burst." They know no +more about it than that; and this question in no wise disturbs their +peace of mind.</p> + +<p>The gardener utters the phrase "the soul of the plants," and cultivates +them very well without knowing what he means by this term.</p> + +<p>The violin-maker poses, draws forward or back the "soul of a violin" +beneath the bridge in the belly of the instrument; a puny piece of wood +more or less gives the violin or takes away from it a harmonious soul.</p> + +<p>We have many industries in which the workmen give the qualification of +"soul" to their machines. Never does one hear them dispute about this +word. Such is not the case with philosophers.</p> + +<p>For us the word "soul" signifies generally that which animates. Our +ancestors the Celts gave to their soul the name of <i>seel</i>, from which +the English <i>soul</i>, and the German <i>seel</i>; and probably the ancient +Teutons and the ancient Britons had no quarrels in their universities +over this expression.</p> + +<p>The Greeks distinguished three sorts of souls—<ins class="greekcorr" title="psychê">ψυχὴ</ins>, which +signified the sensitive soul, the soul of the senses; and that is why +Love, child of Aphrodite, had so much passion for Psyche, and why Psyche +loved him so tenderly: <ins class="greekcorr" title="pneuma">πνεῦμα</ins>, the breath which gives life and +movement to the whole machine, and which we have translated by +<i>spiritus</i>,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> spirit; vague word to which have been given a thousand +different meanings: and finally <ins class="greekcorr" title="nous">νοῦς</ins>, the intelligence.</p> + +<p>We possessed therefore three souls, without having the least notion of +any of them. St. Thomas Aquinas (Summation of St. Thomas. Lyons edition, +1738) admits these three souls as a peripatetic, and distinguishes each +of these three souls in three parts. <ins class="greekcorr" title="psychê">ψυχὴ</ins> was in the breast, +<ins class="greekcorr" title="pneuma">πνεῦμα</ins> was distributed throughout the body, and <ins class="greekcorr" title="nous">νοῦς</ins> +was in the head. There has been no other philosophy in our schools up to +our day, and woe betide any man who took one of these souls for the +other.</p> + +<p>In this chaos of ideas there was, nevertheless, a foundation. Men had +noticed that in their passions of love, hate, anger, fear, their +internal organs were stimulated to movement. The liver and the heart +were the seat of the passions. If one thought deeply, one felt a strife +in the organs of the head; therefore the intellectual soul was in the +head. Without respiration no vegetation, no life; therefore the +vegetative soul was in the breast which receives the breath of air.</p> + +<p>When men saw in dreams their dead relatives or friends, they had to seek +what had appeared to them. It was not the body which had been consumed +on a funeral pyre, or swallowed up in the sea and eaten by the fishes. +It was, however, something, so they maintained; for they had seen it; +the dead man had spoken; the dreamer had questioned him. Was it <ins class="greekcorr" title="psychê">ψυχὴ</ins>, was it <ins class="greekcorr" title="pneuma">πνεῦμα</ins>, was it <ins class="greekcorr" title="nous">νοῦς</ins>, with whom one had +conversed in the dream? One imagined a phantom, an airy figure: it was +<ins class="greekcorr" title="skia">σκιὰ</ins>, it was <ins class="greekcorr" title="daimôn">δαίμων</ins>, a ghost from the shades, a little +soul of air and fire, very unrestricted, which wandered I know not +where.</p> + +<p>Eventually, when one wanted to sift the matter, it became a constant +that this soul was corporeal; and the whole of antiquity never had any +other idea. At last came Plato who so subtilized this soul that it was +doubtful if he did not separate it entirely from matter; but that was a +problem that was never solved until faith came to enlighten us.</p> + +<p>In vain do the materialists quote some of the fathers of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> the Church who +did not express themselves with precision. St. Irenæus says (liv. v. +chaps. vi and vii) that the soul is only the breath of life, that it is +incorporeal only by comparison with the mortal body, and that it +preserves the form of man so that it may be recognized.</p> + +<p>In vain does Tertullian express himself like this—"The corporeality of +the soul shines bright in the Gospel." (<i>Corporalitas animæ in ipso +Evangelio relucescit</i>, <span class="smcap">De Anima</span><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Original has period.">,</ins> cap. vii.) For if the soul did +not have a body, the image of the soul would not have the image of the +body.</p> + +<p>In vain does he record the vision of a holy woman who had seen a very +shining soul, of the colour of air.</p> + +<p>In vain does Tatien say expressly (<i>Oratio ad Græcos</i>, c. xxiii.)—"The +soul of man is composed of many parts."</p> + +<p>In vain is St. Hilarius quoted as saying in later times (St. Hilarius on +St. Matthew)—"There is nothing created which is not corporeal, either +in heaven, or on earth, or among the visible, or among the invisible: +everything is formed of elements; and souls, whether they inhabit a +body, or issue from it, have always a corporeal substance."</p> + +<p>In vain does St. Ambrose, in the sixth century, say (On Abraham, liv. +ii., ch. viii.)—"We recognize nothing but the material, except the +venerable Trinity alone."</p> + +<p>The body of the entire Church has decided that the soul is immaterial. +These saints fell into an error at that time universal; they were men; +but they were not mistaken over immortality, because that is clearly +announced in the Gospels.</p> + +<p>We have so evident a need of the decision of the infallible Church on +these points of philosophy, that we have not indeed by ourselves any +sufficient notion of what is called "pure spirit," and of what is named +"matter." Pure spirit is an expression which gives us no idea; and we +know matter only by a few phenomena. We know it so little that we call +it "substance"; well, the word substance means "that which is under"; +but what is under will be eternally hidden from us. What is <i>under</i> is +the Creator's secret; and this secret of the Creator is everywhere. We +do not know either how we receive life, or how we give it, or how we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> +grow, or how we digest, or how we sleep, or how we think, or how we +feel.</p> + +<p>The great difficulty is to understand how a being, whoever he be, has +thoughts.</p> + + +<h3>SECTION II</h3> + +<p>The author of the article SOUL in the "Encyclopedia" (the Abbé Yvon) +followed Jaquelot scrupulously; but Jaquelot teaches us nothing. He sets +himself also against Locke, because the modest Locke said (liv. iv, ch. +iii, para. vi.)—"We possibly shall never be able to know whether any +mere material being thinks or no; it being impossible for us, by the +contemplation of our own ideas without revelation, to discover whether +Omnipotency has not given to some systems of matter, fitly disposed, a +power to perceive and think, or else joined and fixed to matter, so +disposed, a thinking immaterial substance: it being, in respect of our +notions, not much more remote from our comprehension to conceive that +God can, if he pleases, superadd to matter a faculty of thinking, than +that he should superadd to it another substance with a faculty of +thinking; since we know not wherein thinking consists, nor to what sort +of substances the Almighty has been pleased to give that power which +cannot be in any created being but merely by the good pleasure and +bounty of the Creator, for I see no contradiction in it, that the first +eternal thinking Being should, if he pleased, give to certain systems of +created senseless matter, put together as he thinks fit, some degrees of +sense, perception and thought."</p> + +<p>Those are the words of a profound, religious and modest man.</p> + +<p>We know what quarrels he had to undergo on account of this opinion which +appeared bold, but which was in fact in him only a consequence of his +conviction of the omnipotence of God and the weakness of man. He did not +say that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> matter thought; but he said that we have not enough knowledge +to demonstrate that it is impossible for God to add the gift of thought +to the unknown being called "matter", after according it the gift of +gravitation and the gift of movement, both of which are equally +incomprehensible.</p> + +<p>Locke was not assuredly the only one who had advanced this opinion; it +was the opinion of all antiquity, who, regarding the soul as very +unrestricted matter, affirmed consequently that matter could feel and +think.</p> + +<p>It was Gassendi's opinion, as may be seen in his objections to +Descartes. "It is true," says Gassendi, "that you know what you think; +but you are ignorant of what species of substance you are, you who +think. Thus although the operation of thought is known to you, the +principle of your essence is hidden from you; and you do not know what +is the nature of this substance, one of the operations of which is to +think. You are like a blind man who, feeling the heat of the sun and +being informed that it is caused by the heat of the sun, thinks he has a +clear and distinct idea of this luminary; because if he were asked what +the sun was, he could reply that it is a thing which heats, etc."</p> + +<p>The same Gassendi, in his "Epicurean Philosophy," repeats several times +that there is no mathematical evidence of the pure spirituality of the +soul.</p> + +<p>Descartes, in one of his letters to the Palatine Princess Elisabeth, +says to her—"I confess that by the natural reason alone we can make +many conjectures on the soul, and have gratifying hopes, but no +certainty." And in that sentence Descartes combats in his letters what +he puts forward in his works; a too ordinary contradiction.</p> + +<p>In fine we have seen that all the Fathers of the first centuries of the +Church, while believing the soul immortal, believed it at the same time +material; they thought that it is as easy for God to conserve as to +create. They said—"God made the soul thinking, He will preserve it +thinking."</p> + +<p>Malebranche has proved very well that we have no idea by ourselves, and +that objects are incapable of giving us ideas: from that he concludes +that we see everything in God.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> That is at the bottom the same thing as +making God the author of all our ideas; for with what should we see in +Him, if we had not instruments for seeing? and these instruments, it is +He alone who holds them and guides them. This system is a labyrinth, one +lane of which would lead you to Spinozism, another to Stoicism, another +to chaos.</p> + +<p>When one has had a good argument about spirit and matter, one always +finishes by not understanding each other. No philosopher has been able +with his own strength to lift this veil stretched by nature over all the +first principles of things. Men argue, nature acts.</p> + + +<h3>SECTION III</h3> + +<h4><span class="smcap">Of the Soul of Animals, and of some Empty Ideas</span></h4> + +<p>Before the strange system which supposes animals to be pure machines +without any sensation, men had never thought that the beasts possessed +an immaterial soul; and nobody had pushed recklessness to the point of +saying that an oyster has a spiritual soul. Everyone concurred peaceably +in agreeing that the beasts had received from God feeling, memory, +ideas, and no pure spirit. Nobody had abused the gift of reason to the +point of saying that nature had given the beasts all the organs of +feeling so that they might not feel anything. Nobody had said that they +cry when they are wounded, and that they fly when pursued, without +experiencing pain or fear.</p> + +<p>At that time people did not deny the omnipotence of God; He had been +able to communicate to the organized matter of animals pleasure, pain, +remembrance, the combination of a few ideas; He had been able to give to +several of them, such as the monkey, the elephant, the hunting-dog, the +talent of perfecting themselves in the arts which were taught to them; +not only had He been able to endow nearly all carnivorous animals with +the talent of warring better in their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> experienced old age than in their +too trustful youth; not only, I say, had He been able to do these +things, but He had done them: the universe bore witness thereto.</p> + +<p>Pereira and Descartes maintained that the universe was mistaken, that +God was a juggler, that He had given animals all the instruments of life +and sensation, so that they might have neither life nor sensation, +properly speaking. But I do not know what so-called philosophers, in +order to answer Descartes' chimera, leaped into the opposite chimera; +they gave liberally of pure spirit to the toads and the insects.</p> + +<p>Between these two madnesses, the one refusing feeling to the organs of +feeling, the other lodging a pure spirit in a bug, somebody thought of a +middle path. It was instinct. And what is instinct? Oh, oh, it is a +substantial form; it is a plastic form; it is I do not know what! it is +instinct. I shall be of your opinion so long as you will call the +majority of things, "I do not know what"; so long as your philosophy +begins and ends with "I do not know what", I shall quote Prior to you in +his poem on the vanity of the world.</p> + +<p>The author of the article <span class="smcap lowercase">SOUL</span> in the "Encyclopedia" explains +himself like this:—"I picture the animals' soul as an immaterial and +intelligent substance, but of what species? It must, it seems to me, be +an active principle which has sensations, and which has only that.... If +we reflect on the nature of the soul of animals, it supplies us with +groundwork which might lead us to think that its spirituality will save +it from annihilation."</p> + +<p>I do not know how one pictures an immaterial substance. To picture +something is to make an image of it; and up till now nobody has been +able to paint the spirit. For the word "picture", I want the author to +understand "I conceive"; speaking for myself, I confess I do not +conceive it. I confess still less that a spiritual soul may be +annihilated, because I do not conceive either creation or non-existence; +because I have never been present at God's council; because I know +nothing at all about the principle of things.</p> + +<p>If I wish to prove that the soul is a real being, someone stops me by +telling me that it is a faculty. If I assert that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> it is a faculty, and +that I have the faculty of thinking, I am told that I am mistaken; that +God, the eternal master of all nature, does everything in me, and +directs all my actions and all my thoughts; that if I produced my +thoughts, I should know the thought I will have in a minute; that I +never know it; that I am only an automaton with sensations and ideas, +necessarily dependent, and in the hands of the Supreme Being, infinitely +more compliant to Him than clay is to the potter.</p> + +<p>I confess my ignorance, therefore; I avow that four thousand tomes of +metaphysics will not teach us what our soul is.</p> + +<p>An orthodox philosopher said to a heterodox philosopher—"How have you +been able to come to the point of imagining that the soul is mortal by +nature, and eternal only by the pure wish of God?"</p> + +<p>"By my own experience," said the other.</p> + +<p>"How! are you dead?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, very often. I suffered from epilepsy in my youth, and I assure you +that I was completely dead for several hours. No sensation, no +remembrance even of the moment that I fell ill. The same thing happens +to me now nearly every night. I never feel the precise moment that I go +to sleep; my sleep is absolutely dreamless. I cannot imagine by +conjecture how long I have slept. I am dead regularly six hours out of +the twenty-four. That is a quarter of my life."</p> + +<p>The orthodox then asserted that he always thought during his sleep +without knowing anything about it. The heterodox answered him—"I +believe through revelation that I shall always think in the other life; +but I assure you I think rarely in this one."</p> + +<p>The orthodox was not mistaken in asserting the immortality of the soul, +for faith and reason demonstrate this truth; but he might be mistaken in +asserting that a sleeping man always thinks.</p> + +<p>Locke admitted frankly that he did not always think while he was asleep: +another philosopher has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> said—"Thought is characteristic of man; but it +is not his essence."</p> + +<p>Let us leave to each man the liberty and consolation of seeking himself, +and of losing himself in his ideas.</p> + +<p>It is good, however, to know, that in 1730 a philosopher<a name="FNanchor_21" id="FNanchor_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> suffered a +severe enough persecution for having confessed, with Locke, that his +understanding was not exercised at every moment of the day and night, +just as he did not use his arms and his legs at all moments. Not only +did court ignorance persecute him, but the malignant influence of a few +so-called men of letters was let loose against him. What in England had +produced merely a few philosophical disputes, produced in France the +most cowardly atrocities; a Frenchman suffered by Locke.</p> + +<p>There have always been in the mud of our literature more than one of +these miscreants who have sold their pens, and intrigued against their +benefactors even. This remark is rather foreign to the article +<span class="smcap lowercase">SOUL</span>; but should one miss an opportunity of dismaying those who +make themselves unworthy of the name of men of letters, who prostitute +the little mind and conscience they have to a vile self-interest, to a +fantastic policy, who betray their friends to flatter fools, who in +secret powder the hemlock which the powerful and malicious ignoramus +wants to make useful citizens drink?</p> + +<p>In short, while we worship God with all our soul, let us confess always +our profound ignorance of this soul, of this faculty of feeling and +thinking which we possess from His infinite goodness. Let us avow that +our feeble reasonings can take nothing away from, or add anything to +revelation and faith. Let us conclude in fine that we should use this +intelligence, the nature of which is unknown, for perfecting the +sciences which are the object of the "Encyclopedia"; just as watchmakers +use springs in their watches, without knowing what a spring is.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p> +<h3>SECTION IV</h3> + +<h4><span class="smcap">About the Soul, and About our Little Knowledge</span></h4> + +<p>On the testimony of our acquired knowledge, we have dared question +whether the soul is created before us, whether it comes from +non-existence into our body? at what age it came to settle between a +bladder and the intestines <i>cæcum</i> and <i>rectum</i>? if it brought ideas +with it or received them there, and what are these ideas? if after +animating us for a few moments, its essence is to live after us into +eternity without the intervention of God Himself? if being spirit, and +God being spirit, they are both of like nature? These questions seem +sublime; what are they? questions about light by men born blind.</p> + +<p>What have all the philosophers, ancient and modern, taught us? a child +is wiser than they are; he does not think about things of which he can +form no conception.</p> + +<p>You will say that it is sad for our insatiable curiosity, for our +inexhaustible thirst for happiness, to be thus ignorant of ourselves! I +agree, and there are still sadder things; but I shall answer you:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Sors tua mortalis, non est mortale quod optas.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="author">—Ovid, Met. II. 56</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"You have a man's fate, and a god's desires."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Once again, it seems that the nature of every principle of things is the +Creator's secret. How does the air carry sound? how are animals formed? +how do some of our limbs constantly obey our wills? what hand puts ideas +in our memory, keeps them there as in a register, and pulls them out +sometimes when we want them and sometimes in spite of ourselves? Our +nature, the nature of the universe, the nature of the least plant, +everything for us is sunk in a shadowy pit.</p> + +<p>Man is an acting, feeling, thinking being: that is all we know of him: +it is not given to us to know what makes us feel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> and think, or what +makes us act, or what makes us exist. The acting faculty is as +incomprehensible for us as the thinking faculty. The difficulty is less +to conceive how a body of mud has feelings and ideas, than to conceive +how a being, whatever it be, has ideas and feelings.</p> + +<p>Here on one side the soul of Archimedes, on the other the soul of an +idiot; are they of the same nature? If their essence is to think, they +think always, and independently of the body which cannot act without +them. If they think by their own nature, can the species of a soul which +cannot do a sum in arithmetic be the same as that which measured the +heavens? If it is the organs of the body which made Archimedes think, +why is it that my idiot, who has a stronger constitution than +Archimedes, who is more vigorous, digests better and performs all his +functions better, does not think at all? It is, you say, because his +brain is not so good. But you are making a supposition; you do not know +at all. No difference has ever been found between healthy brains that +have been dissected. It is even very probable that a fool's cerebellum +will be in better condition than Archimedes', which has worked +prodigiously, and which might be worn out and shrivelled.</p> + +<p>Let us conclude therefore what we have already concluded, that we are +ignoramuses about all first principles. As regards ignoramuses who pride +themselves on their knowledge, they are far inferior to monkeys.</p> + +<p>Now dispute, choleric arguers: present your petitions against each +other; proffer your insults, pronounce your sentences, you who do not +know one word about the matter.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span></p> +<h3>SECTION V</h3> + +<h4><span class="smcap">Of Warburton's Paradox on the Immortality of the Soul</span></h4> + +<p>Warburton, editor and commentator of Shakespeare and Bishop of +Gloucester, making use of English freedom, and abuse of the custom of +hurling insults at one's adversaries, has composed four volumes to prove +that the immortality of the soul was never announced in the Pentateuch, +and to conclude from this same proof that Moses' mission is divine. Here +is the précis of his book, which he himself gives, pages 7 and 8 of the +first volume.</p> + +<p>"1. The doctrine of a life to come, of rewards and punishments after +death, is necessary to all civil society.</p> + +<p>"2. The whole human race (<i>and this is where he is mistaken</i>), and +especially the wisest and most learned nations of antiquity, concurred +in believing and teaching this doctrine.</p> + +<p>"3. It cannot be found in any passage of the law of Moses; therefore the +law of Moses is of divine origin. Which I am going to prove by the two +following syllogisms:</p> + + +<p class="center"><i>First Syllogism</i></p> + +<p>"Every religion, every society that has not the immortality of the soul +for its basis, can be maintained only by an extraordinary providence; +the Jewish religion had not the immortality of the soul for basis; +therefore the Jewish religion was maintained by an extraordinary +providence.</p> + + +<p class="center"><i>Second Syllogism</i></p> + +<p>"All the ancient legislators have said that a religion which did not +teach the immortality of the soul could not be maintained but by an +extraordinary providence; Moses founded a religion which is not founded +on the immortality of the soul;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> therefore Moses believed his religion +maintained by an extraordinary providence."</p> + +<p>What is much more extraordinary is this assertion of Warburton's, which +he has put in big letters at the beginning of his book. He has often +been reproached with the extreme rashness and bad faith with which he +dares to say that all the ancient legislators believed that a religion +which is not founded on pains and recompenses after death, can be +maintained only by an extraordinary providence; not one of them ever +said it. He does not undertake even to give any example in his huge book +stuffed with a vast number of quotations, all of which are foreign to +his subject. He has buried himself beneath a pile of Greek and Latin +authors, ancient and modern, for fear one might see through him on the +other side of a horrible multitude of envelopes. When criticism finally +probed to the bottom, he was resurrected from among all these dead men +in order to load all his adversaries with insults.</p> + +<p>It is true that towards the end of his fourth volume, after having +walked through a hundred labyrinths, and having fought with everybody he +met on the road, he comes at last to his great question which he had +left there. He lays all the blame on the Book of Job which passes among +scholars for an Arab work, and he tries to prove that Job did not +believe in the immortality of the soul. Later he explains in his own way +all the texts of Holy Writ by which people have tried to combat this +opinion.</p> + +<p>All one can say about it is that, if he was right, it was not for a +bishop to be right in such a way. He should have felt that one might +draw dangerous inferences; but everything in this world is a mass of +contradiction. This man, who became accuser and persecutor, was not made +bishop by a minister of state's patronage until immediately after he had +written his book.</p> + +<p>At Salamanca, Coimbre or Rome, he would have been obliged to recant and +to ask pardon. In England he became a peer of the realm with an income +of a hundred thousand <i>livres</i>; it was enough to modify his methods.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span></p> +<h3>SECTION VI</h3> + +<h4><span class="smcap">Of the Need of Revelation</span></h4> + +<p>The greatest benefit we owe to the New Testament is that it has revealed +to us the immortality of the soul. It is in vain, therefore, that this +fellow Warburton tried to cloud over this important truth, by +continually representing in his legation of Moses that "the ancient Jews +knew nothing of this necessary dogma, and that the Sadducees did not +admit it in the time of our Lord Jesus."</p> + +<p>He interprets in his own way the very words that have been put into +Jesus Christ's mouth: "... have ye not read that which was spoken unto +you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and +the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living" +(St. Matt. xxii. 31, 32). He gives to the parable of the wicked rich man +a sense contrary to that of all the Churches. Sherlock, Bishop of +London, and twenty other scholars refuted him. English philosophers even +reproached him with the scandal of an Anglican bishop manifesting an +opinion so contrary to the Anglican Church; and after that, this man +takes it into his head to treat these persons as impious: like the +character of <i>Arlequin</i> in the comedy of the <i>Dévaliseur de maisons</i>, +who, after throwing the furniture out of the window, sees a man carrying +some of it off, and cries with all his might "Stop thief!"</p> + +<p>One should bless the revelation of the immortality of the soul, and of +rewards and punishments after death, all the more that mankind's vain +philosophy has always been sceptical of it. The great Cæsar did not +believe in it at all, he made himself quite clear in full senate when, +in order to stop Catalina being put to death, he represented that death +left man without sensation, that everything died with him; and nobody +refuted this view.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>The Roman Empire was divided between two principal sects: that of +Epicurus which asserted that deity was useless to the world, and that +the soul perished with the body: and that of the Stoics who regarded the +soul as part of the Deity, which after death was joined again to its +origin, to the great everything from which it emanated. Thus, whether +one believed the soul mortal, or whether one believed it immortal, all +the sects were agreed in laughing at pains and punishments after death.</p> + +<p>We still have a hundred monuments of this belief of the Romans. It is by +virtue of this opinion graved profoundly in their hearts, that so many +simple Roman citizens killed themselves without the least scruple; they +did not wait for a tyrant to hand them over to the executioners.</p> + +<p>The most virtuous men even, and those most persuaded of the existence of +a God, hoped for no reward, and feared no punishment. Clement, who later +was Pope and saint, began by himself doubting what the early Christians +said of another life, and consulted St. Peter at Cæsarea. We are far +from believing that St. Clement wrote the history that is attributed to +him; but this history makes evident the need the human race had of a +precise revelation. All that can surprise us is that so repressive and +salutary a doctrine has left a prey to so many horrible crimes men who +have so little time to live, and who see themselves squeezed between two +eternities.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span></p> +<h3>SECTION VII</h3> + +<h4><span class="smcap">Souls of Fools and Monsters</span></h4> + +<p>A deformed child is born absolutely imbecile, it has no ideas and lives +without ideas; we have seen examples of this. How shall this animal be +defined? doctors have said that it is something between man and beast; +others have said that it had a sensitive soul, but not an intellectual +soul. It eats, drinks, sleeps, wakes, has sensations; but it does not +think.</p> + +<p>Is there another life for this creature, or is there none? The question +has been posed, and has not yet been completely answered.</p> + +<p>Some say that this creature must have a soul, because its father and +mother had one. But by this reasoning one would prove that if it came +into the world without a nose it would be deemed to have one, because +its father and its mother had noses.</p> + +<p>A woman gives birth to child with no chin, its forehead is receding and +rather black, its nose is slim and pointed, its eyes are round, it bears +not a bad resemblance to a swallow; the rest of its body, nevertheless, +is made like ours. The parents have it baptised; by a plurality of votes +it is considered a man and possessor of an immortal soul. But if this +ridiculous little figure has pointed nails and beak-like mouth, it is +declared a monster, it has no soul, and is not baptised.</p> + +<p>It is well known that in London in 1726 there was a woman who gave birth +every week to a rabbit. No difficulty was made about refusing baptism to +this child, despite the epidemic mania there was for three weeks in +London for believing that this poor rogue was making wild rabbits. The +surgeon who attended her, St. André by name, swore<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> that nothing was +more true, and people believed him. But what reason did the credulous +have for refusing a soul to this woman's children? she had a soul, her +children should be provided with souls also; whether they had hands, +whether they had paws, whether they were born with a little snout or +with a face; cannot the Supreme Being bestow the gift of thought and +sensation on a little I know not what, born of a woman, shaped like a +rabbit, as well as to a little I know not what, shaped like a man? Shall +the soul that was ready to lodge in this woman's fœtus go back again +into space?</p> + +<p>Locke makes the sound observation, about monsters, that one must not +attribute immortality to the exterior of a body; that the form has +nothing to do with it. This immortality, he says, is no more attached to +the form of his face or his chest, than to the way his beard is dressed +or his coat cut.</p> + +<p>He asks what is the exact measure of deformity by which you can +recognize whether or no a child has a soul? What is the precise degree +at which it must be declared a monster and deprived of a soul?</p> + +<p>One asks still further what would be a soul which never has any but +fantastic ideas? there are some which never escape from them. Are they +worthy or unworthy? what is to be done with their pure spirit?</p> + +<p>What is one to think of a child with two heads? without deformity apart +from this? Some say that it has two souls because it is provided with +two pineal glands, with two <i>corpus callosum</i>, with two <i>sensorium +commune</i>. Others reply that one cannot have two souls when one has only +one chest and one navel.<a name="FNanchor_22" id="FNanchor_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></p> + +<p>In fine, so many questions have been asked about this poor human soul, +that if it were necessary to answer them all, this <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>examination of its +own person would cause it the most intolerable boredom. There would +happen to it what happened to Cardinal de Polignac at a conclave. His +steward, tired of never being able to make him settle his accounts, made +the journey from Rome, and came to the little window of his cell +burdened with an immense bundle of papers. He read for nearly two hours. +At last, seeing that no reply was forthcoming, he put his head forward. +The cardinal had departed nearly two hours before. Our souls will depart +before their stewards have acquainted them with the facts: but let us be +exact before God, whatever sort of ignoramuses we are, we and our +stewards.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21" id="Footnote_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> Voltaire himself.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22" id="Footnote_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> The Chevalier d'Angos, learned astronomer, has carefully +observed a two-headed lizard for several days; and he has assured +himself that the lizard had two independent wills, each of which had an +almost equal power over the body. When the lizard was given a piece of +bread, in such a way that it could see it with only one head, this head +wanted to go after the bread, and the other wanted the body to remain at +rest.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="States" id="States"></a><i>STATES</i>, <i>GOVERNMENTS</i></h2> + + +<p>The ins and outs of all governments have been closely examined recently. +Tell me then, you who have travelled, in what state, under what sort of +government you would choose to be born. I imagine that a great +land-owning lord in France would not be vexed to be born in Germany; he +would be sovereign instead of subject. A peer of France would be very +glad to have the privileges of the English peerage; he would be +legislator. The lawyer and the financier would be better off in France +than elsewhere.</p> + +<p>But what country would a wise, free man, a man with a moderate fortune, +and without prejudices, choose?</p> + +<p>A member of the government of Pondicherry, a learned man enough, +returned to Europe by land with a Brahmin better educated than the +ordinary Brahmin. "What do you think of the government of the Great +Mogul?" asked the councillor.</p> + +<p>"I think it abominable," answered the Brahmin. "How can you expect a +state to be happily governed by the Tartars? Our rajahs, our omrahs, our +nabobs, are very content, but the citizens are hardly so; and millions +of citizens are something."</p> + +<p>Reasoning, the councillor and the Brahmin traversed the whole of Upper +Asia. "I make the observation," said the Brahmin, "that there is not one +republic in all this vast part of the world."</p> + +<p>"Formerly there was the republic of Tyre," said the councillor, "but it +did not last long; there was still another one in the direction of +Arabia Petrea, in a little corner called Palestine, if one can honour +with the name of republic a horde<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> of thieves and usurers sometimes +governed by judges, sometimes by a species of kings, sometimes by +grand-pontiffs, become slave seven or eight times, and finally driven +out of the country which it had usurped."</p> + +<p>"I imagine," said the Brahmin, "that one ought to find very few +republics on the earth. Men are rarely worthy of governing themselves. +This happiness should belong only to little peoples who hide themselves +in islands, or among the mountains, like rabbits who shun carnivorous +beasts; but in the long run they are discovered and devoured."</p> + +<p>When the two travellers reached Asia Minor, the councillor said to the +Brahmin: "Would you believe that a republic was formed in a corner of +Italy, which lasted more than five hundred years, and which owned Asia +Minor, Asia, Africa, Greece, Gaul, Spain and the whole of Italy?"</p> + +<p>"She soon became a monarchy, then<ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Original has period.">,</ins>" said the Brahmin.</p> + +<p>"You have guessed right," said the other. "But this monarchy fell, and +every day we compose beautiful dissertations in order to find the cause +of its decadence and downfall."</p> + +<p>"You take a deal of trouble," said the Indian. "This empire fell because +it existed. Everything has to fall. I hope as much will happen to the +Grand Mogul's empire."</p> + +<p>"By the way," said the European, "do you consider that there should be +more honour in a despotic state, and more virtue in a republic?"</p> + +<p>The Indian, having had explained to him what we mean by honour, answered +that honour was more necessary in a republic, and that one had more need +of virtue in a monarchical state. "For," said he, "a man who claims to +be elected by the people, will not be if he is dishonoured; whereas at +the court he could easily obtain a place, in accordance with a great +prince's maxim, that in order to succeed a courtier should have neither +honour nor character. As regards virtue, one must be prodigiously +virtuous to dare to say the truth. The virtuous man is much more at his +ease in a republic; he has no one to flatter."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>"Do you think," said the man from Europe, "that laws and religions are +made for climates, just as one has to have furs in Moscow, and gauzy +stuffs in Delhi?"</p> + +<p>"Without a doubt," answered the Brahmin. "All the laws which concern +material things are calculated for the meridian one lives in. A German +needs only one wife, and a Persian three or four.</p> + +<p>"The rites of religion are of the same nature. How, if I were Christian, +should I say mass in my province where there is neither bread nor wine? +As regards dogmas, that is another matter; the climate has nothing to do +with them. Did not your religion begin in Asia, whence it was driven +out? does it not exist near the Baltic Sea, where it was unknown?"</p> + +<p>"In what state, under what domination, would you like best to live?" +asked the councillor.</p> + +<p>"Anywhere but where I do live," answered his companion. "And I have met +many Siamese, Tonkinese, Persians and Turks who said as much."</p> + +<p>"But, once again," persisted the European, "what state would you +choose?"</p> + +<p>The Brahmin answered: "The state where only the laws are obeyed."</p> + +<p>"That is an old answer," said the councillor.</p> + +<p>"It is none the worse for that," said the Brahmin.</p> + +<p>"Where is that country?" asked the councillor.</p> + +<p>"We must look for it," answered the Brahmin.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Superstition" id="Superstition"></a><i>SUPERSTITION</i></h2> + + +<p>The superstitious man is to the rogue what the slave is to the tyrant. +Further, the superstitious man is governed by the fanatic and becomes +fanatic. Superstition born in Paganism, adopted by Judaism, infested the +Christian Church from the earliest times. All the fathers of the Church, +without exception, believed in the power of magic. The Church always +condemned magic, but she always believed in it: she did not +excommunicate sorcerers as madmen who were mistaken, but as men who were +really in communication with the devil.</p> + +<p>To-day one half of Europe thinks that the other half has long been and +still is superstitious. The Protestants regard the relics, the +indulgences, the mortifications, the prayers for the dead, the holy +water, and almost all the rites of the Roman Church, as a superstitious +dementia. Superstition, according to them, consists in taking useless +practices for necessary practices. Among the Roman Catholics there are +some more enlightened than their ancestors, who have renounced many of +these usages formerly considered sacred; and they defend themselves +against the others who have retained them, by saying: "They are +indifferent, and what is merely indifferent cannot be an evil."</p> + +<p>It is difficult to mark the limits of superstition. A Frenchman +travelling in Italy finds almost everything superstitious, and is hardly +mistaken. The Archbishop of Canterbury maintains that the Archbishop of +Paris is superstitious; the Presbyterians make the same reproach against +His Grace of Canterbury, and are in their turn treated as superstitious +by the Quakers, who are the most superstitious of all in the eyes of +other Christians.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>In Christian societies, therefore, no one agrees as to what superstition +is. The sect which seems to be the least attacked by this malady of the +intelligence is that which has the fewest rites. But if with few +ceremonies it is still strongly attached to an absurd belief, this +absurd belief is equivalent alone to all the superstitious practices +observed from the time of Simon the magician to that of Father +Gauffridi.</p> + +<p>It is therefore clear that it is the fundamentals of the religion of one +sect which is considered as superstition by another sect.</p> + +<p>The Moslems accuse all Christian societies of it, and are themselves +accused. Who will judge this great matter? Will it be reason? But each +sect claims to have reason on its side. It will therefore be force which +will judge, while awaiting the time when reason will penetrate a +sufficient number of heads to disarm force.</p> + +<p>Up to what point does statecraft permit superstition to be destroyed? +This is a very thorny question; it is like asking up to what point one +should make an incision in a dropsical person, who may die under the +operation. It is a matter for the doctor's discretion.</p> + +<p>Can there exist a people free from all superstitious prejudices? That is +to ask—Can there exist a nation of philosophers? It is said that there +is no superstition in the magistrature of China. It is probable that +none will remain in the magistrature of a few towns of Europe.</p> + +<p>Then the magistrates will stop the superstition of the people from being +dangerous. These magistrates' example will not enlighten the mob, but +the principal persons of the middle-classes will hold the mob in check. +There is not perhaps a single riot, a single religious outrage in which +the middle-classes were not formerly imbrued, because these middle +classes were then the mob; but reason and time will have changed them. +Their softened manners will soften those of the lowest and most savage +populace; it is a thing of which we have striking examples in more than +one country. In a word, less superstition, less fanaticism; and less +fanaticism, less misery.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Tears" id="Tears"></a><i>TEARS</i></h2> + + +<p>Tears are the mute language of sorrow. But why? What connection is there +between a sad idea and this limpid, salt liquid, filtered through a +little gland at the external corner of the eye, which moistens the +conjunctiva and the small lachrymal points, whence it descends into the +nose and mouth through the reservoir called the lachrymal sack and its +ducts?</p> + +<p>Why in women and children, whose organs are part of a frail and delicate +network, are tears more easily excited by sorrow than in grown men, +whose tissue is firmer?</p> + +<p>Did nature wish compassion to be born in us at sight of these tears +which soften us, and lead us to help those who shed them? The woman of a +savage race is as firmly determined to help the child that cries as +would be a woman of the court, and maybe more, because she has fewer +distractions and passions.</p> + +<p>In the animal body everything has an object without a doubt. The eyes +especially bear such evident, such proven, such admirable relation to +the rays of light; this mechanism is so divine, that I should be tempted +to take for a delirium of burning fever the audacity which denies the +final causes of the structure of our eyes.</p> + +<p>The use of tears does not seem to have so well determined and striking +an object; but it would be beautiful that nature made them flow in order +to stir us to pity.</p> + +<p>There are women who are accused of weeping when they wish. I am not at +all surprised at their talent. A live, sensitive, tender imagination can +fix itself on some object, on some sorrowful memory, and picture it in +such dominating colours<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> that they wring tears from it. It is what +happens to many actors, and principally to actresses, on the stage.</p> + +<p>The women who imitate them in their own homes add to this talent the +petty fraud of appearing to weep for their husbands, whereas in fact +they are weeping for their lovers. Their tears are true, but the object +of them is false.</p> + +<p>One asks why the same man who has watched the most atrocious events +dry-eyed, who even has committed cold-blooded crimes, will weep at the +theatre at the representation of these events and crimes? It is that he +does not see them with the same eyes, he sees them with the eyes of the +author and the actor. He is no longer the same man; he was a barbarian, +he was agitated by furious passions when he saw an innocent woman +killed, when he stained himself with his friend's blood. His soul was +filled with stormy tumult; it is tranquil, it is empty; nature returns +to it; he sheds virtuous tears. That is the true merit, the great good +of the theatres; there is achieved what can never be achieved by the +frigid declamations of an orator paid to bore the whole of an audience +for an hour.</p> + +<p>David the capitoul, who, without emotion, caused and saw the death of +innocent Calas on the wheel, would have shed tears at the sight of his +own crime in a well-written and well-spoken tragedy.</p> + +<p>It is thus that Pope has said in the prologue to Addison's Cato:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Tyrants no more their savage nature kept;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And foes to virtue wondered how they wept."<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Theist" id="Theist"></a><i>THEIST</i></h2> + + +<p>The theist is a man firmly persuaded of the existence of a Supreme Being +as good as He is powerful, who has formed all beings with extension, +vegetating, sentient and reflecting; who perpetuates their species, who +punishes crimes without cruelty, and rewards virtuous actions with +kindness.</p> + +<p>The theist does not know how God punishes, how he protects, how he +pardons, for he is not reckless enough to flatter himself that he knows +how God acts, but he knows that God acts and that He is just. +Difficulties against Providence do not shake him in his faith, because +they are merely great difficulties, and not proofs. He submits to this +Providence, although he perceives but a few effects and a few signs of +this Providence: and, judging of the things he does not see by the +things he sees, he considers that this Providence reaches all places and +all centuries.</p> + +<p>Reconciled in this principle with the rest of the universe, he does not +embrace any of the sects, all of which contradict each other; his +religion is the most ancient and the most widespread; for the simple +worship of a God has preceded all the systems of the world. He speaks a +language that all peoples understand, while they do not understand one +another. He has brothers from Pekin to Cayenne, and he counts all wise +men as his brethren. He believes that religion does not consist either +in the opinions of an unintelligible metaphysic, or in vain display, but +in worship and justice. The doing of good, there is his service; being +submissive to God, there is his doctrine. The Mahometan cries to +him—"Have a care if you do not make the pilgrimage to Mecca!" "Woe unto +you," says a Recollet, "if you do not make a journey to Notre-Dame de +Lorette!" He laughs at Lorette and at Mecca; but he succours the needy +and defends the oppressed.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Tolerance" id="Tolerance"></a><i>TOLERANCE</i></h2> + + +<p>What is tolerance? it is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed +of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's +folly—that is the first law of nature.</p> + +<p>It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, +because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster. That admits of no +difficulty. But the government! but the magistrates! but the princes! +how do they treat those who have another worship than theirs? If they +are powerful strangers, it is certain that a prince will make an +alliance with them. François I., very Christian, will unite with +Mussulmans against Charles V., very Catholic. François I. will give +money to the Lutherans of Germany to support them in their revolt +against the emperor; but, in accordance with custom, he will start by +having Lutherans burned at home. For political reasons he pays them in +Saxony; for political reasons he burns them in Paris. But what will +happen? Persecutions make proselytes? Soon France will be full of new +Protestants. At first they will let themselves be hanged, later they in +their turn will hang. There will be civil wars, then will come the St. +Bartholomew; and this corner of the world will be worse than all that +the ancients and moderns have ever told of hell.</p> + +<p>Madmen, who have never been able to give worship to the God who made +you! Miscreants, whom the example of the Noachides, the learned Chinese, +the Parsees and all the sages, has never been able to lead! Monsters, +who need superstitions as crows' gizzards need carrion! you have been +told it already, and there is nothing else to tell you—if you have two +religions in your countries, they will cut each<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> other's throat; if you +have thirty religions, they will dwell in peace. Look at the great Turk, +he governs Guebres, Banians, Greek Christians, Nestorians, Romans. The +first who tried to stir up tumult would be impaled; and everyone is +tranquil.</p> + +<p>Of all religions, the Christian is without doubt the one which should +inspire tolerance most, although up to now the Christians have been the +most intolerant of all men. The Christian Church was divided in its +cradle, and was divided even in the persecutions which under the first +emperors it sometimes endured. Often the martyr was regarded as an +apostate by his brethren, and the Carpocratian Christian expired beneath +the sword of the Roman executioners, excommunicated by the Ebionite +Christian, the which Ebionite was anathema to the Sabellian.</p> + +<p>This horrible discord, which has lasted for so many centuries, is a very +striking lesson that we should pardon each other's errors; discord is +the great ill of mankind; and tolerance is the only remedy for it.</p> + +<p>There is nobody who is not in agreement with this truth, whether he +meditates soberly in his study, or peaceably examines the truth with his +friends. Why then do the same men who admit in private indulgence, +kindness, justice, rise in public with so much fury against these +virtues? Why? it is that their own interest is their god, and that they +sacrifice everything to this monster that they worship.</p> + +<p>I possess a dignity and a power founded on ignorance and credulity; I +walk on the heads of the men who lie prostrate at my feet; if they +should rise and look me in the face, I am lost; I must bind them to the +ground, therefore, with iron chains.</p> + +<p>Thus have reasoned the men whom centuries of bigotry have made powerful. +They have other powerful men beneath them, and these have still others, +who all enrich themselves with the spoils of the poor, grow fat on their +blood, and laugh at their stupidity. They all detest tolerance, as +partisans grown rich at the public expense fear to render their +accounts, and as tyrants dread the word liberty. And then, to crown<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> +everything, they hire fanatics to cry at the top of their voices: +"Respect my master's absurdities, tremble, pay, and keep your mouths +shut."</p> + +<p>It is thus that a great part of the world long was treated; but to-day +when so many sects make a balance of power, what course to take with +them? Every sect, as one knows, is a ground of error; there are no sects +of geometers, algebraists, arithmeticians, because all the propositions +of geometry, algebra and arithmetic are true. In every other science one +may be deceived. What Thomist or Scotist theologian would dare say +seriously that he is sure of his case?</p> + +<p>If it were permitted to reason consistently in religious matters, it is +clear that we all ought to become Jews, because Jesus Christ our Saviour +was born a Jew, lived a Jew, died a Jew, and that he said expressly that +he was accomplishing, that he was fulfilling the Jewish religion. But it +is clearer still that we ought to be tolerant of one another, because we +are all weak, inconsistent, liable to fickleness and error. Shall a reed +laid low in the mud by the wind say to a fellow reed fallen in the +opposite direction: "Crawl as I crawl, wretch, or I shall petition that +you be torn up by the roots and burned?"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Truth" id="Truth"></a><i>TRUTH</i></h2> + + +<p>"Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, +Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause +came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. +Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice.</p> + +<p>"Pilate saith unto Him, What is truth? And when he had said this he went +out, etc." (St. John xviii. 37.)</p> + +<p>It is a sad thing for the human race that Pilate went out without +waiting for the answer; we should know what truth is. Pilate had very +little curiosity. The accused led before him, says he is king, that he +was to be king; and Pilate does not inquire how that can be. He is +supreme judge in Cæsar's name, he has power of life and death; his duty +was to probe the sense of these words. He ought to say—"Tell me what +you understand by being king. How were you born to be king and to bear +witness to the truth? It is maintained that truth reaches but with +difficulty to the ear of kings. I am judge, I have always had great +trouble in finding it. While your enemies are howling against you +without, give me some information on the point; you will be doing me the +greatest service that has ever been done a judge; and I much prefer to +learn to recognize truth, than to accede to the Jews' clamorous demand +to have you hanged."</p> + +<p>We shall not dare, to be sure, seek what the author of all truth would +have been able to reply to Pilate.</p> + +<p>Would he have said: "Truth is an abstract word which most men use +indifferently in their books and judgments, for error and falsehood?" +This definition would have been marvellously appropriate to all makers +of systems. Similarly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> is the word "wisdom" taken often for folly, and +"wit" for nonsense.</p> + +<p>Humanly speaking, let us define truth, while waiting for a better +definition, as—"a statement of the facts as they are."</p> + +<p>I suppose that if one had given only six months to teaching Pilate the +truths of logic, he would assuredly have made this conclusive syllogism. +One must not take away the life of a man who has only preached good +morality: well, the man who has been impeached has, on the showing of +his enemies even, often preached excellent morality; therefore he should +not be punished with death.</p> + +<p>He might have drawn this further argument.</p> + +<p>My duty is to disperse the riotous assemblage of a seditious people who +demand a man's death, unreasonably and without legal form; well, that is +the position of the Jews in this instance; therefore I must drive them +away and break up their meeting.</p> + +<p>We suppose that Pilate knew arithmetic; hence we will not speak of those +forms of truth.</p> + +<p>As regards mathematical truths, I think it would have taken at least +three years before he could have learned higher geometry. The truths of +physics combined with those of geometry would have demanded more than +four years. We spend six, ordinarily, in studying theology; I ask twelve +for Pilate, seeing that he was pagan, and that six years would not have +been too much for eradicating all his old errors, and six years more for +making him fit to receive a doctor's hood.</p> + +<p>If Pilate had had a well-balanced mind, I should have asked only two +years to teach him metaphysical truth; and as metaphysical truth is +necessarily allied to moral truth, I flatter myself that in less than +nine years he would have become a real scholar and a perfectly honest +man.</p> + +<p>I should then have said to Pilate:—Historical truths are merely +probabilities. If you had fought at the battle of Philippi, that is for +you a truth which you know by intuition, by perception. But for us who +dwell near the Syrian desert, it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> is merely a very probable thing, which +we know by hearsay. How much hearsay is necessary to form a conviction +equal to that of a man who, having seen the thing, can flatter himself +that he has a sort of certainty?</p> + +<p>He who has heard the thing told by twelve thousand eyewitnesses, has +only twelve thousand probabilities, equal to one strong probability, +which is not equal to certainty.</p> + +<p>If you have the thing from only one of these witnesses, you know +nothing; you should be sceptical. If the witness is dead, you should be +still more sceptical, for you cannot enlighten yourself. If from several +witnesses who are dead, you are in the same plight. If from those to +whom the witnesses have spoken, your scepticism should increase still +more.</p> + +<p>From generation to generation scepticism increases, and probability +diminishes; and soon probability is reduced to zero.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Tyranny" id="Tyranny"></a><i>TYRANNY</i></h2> + + +<p>One gives the name of tyrant to the sovereign who knows no laws but +those of his caprice, who takes his subjects' property, and who +afterwards enrols them to go to take the property of his neighbours. +There are none of these tyrants in Europe.</p> + +<p>One distinguishes between the tyranny of one man and that of many. The +tyranny of many would be that of a body which invaded the rights of +other bodies, and which exercised despotism in favour of the laws +corrupted by it. Nor are there any tyrants of this sort in Europe.</p> + +<p>Under which tyranny would you like to live? Under neither; but if I had +to choose, I should detest the tyranny of one man less than that of +many. A despot always has his good moments; an assembly of despots +never. If a tyrant does me an injustice, I can disarm him through his +mistress, his confessor or his page; but a company of grave tyrants is +inaccessible to all seductions. When it is not unjust, it is at the +least hard, and never does it bestow favours.</p> + +<p>If I have only one despot, I am quit of him by drawing myself up against +a wall when I see him pass, or by bowing low, or by striking the ground +with my forehead, according to the custom of the country; but if there +is a company of a hundred despots, I am exposed to repeating this +ceremony a hundred times a day, which in the long run is very annoying +if one's hocks are not supple. If I have a farm in the neighbourhood of +one of our lords, I am crushed; if I plead against a relation of the +relations of one of our lords, I am ruined. What is to be done? I fear +that in this world one is reduced to being either hammer or anvil; lucky +the man who escapes these alternatives!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Virtue" id="Virtue"></a><i>VIRTUE</i></h2> + + +<h3>SECTION I</h3> + +<p>It is said of Marcus Brutus that, before killing himself, he uttered +these words: "O virtue! I thought you were something; but you are only +an empty phantom!"</p> + +<p>You were right, Brutus, if you considered virtue as being head of a +faction, and assassin of your benefactor; but if you had considered +virtue as consisting only of doing good to those dependent on you, you +would not have called it a phantom, and you would not have killed +yourself in despair.</p> + +<p>I am very virtuous says this excrement of theology, for I have the four +cardinal virtues, and the three divine. An honest man asks him—"What is +the cardinal virtue?" The other answers—"Strength, prudence, temperance +and justice."</p> + +<p class="padded2p"> </p> +<p class="center">THE HONEST MAN:</p> + +<p>If you are just, you have said everything; your strength, your prudence, +your temperance, are useful qualities. If you have them, so much the +better for you; but if you are just, so much the better for the others. +But it is not enough to be just, you must do good; that is what is +really cardinal. And your divine virtues, which are they?</p> + +<p class="center">THE EXCREMENT:</p> + +<p>Faith, hope, charity.</p> + +<p class="center">THE HONEST MAN:</p> + +<p>Is it a virtue to believe? either what you believe seems true to you, +and in this case there is no merit in believing;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> or it seems false to +you, and then it is impossible for you to believe.</p> + +<p>Hope cannot be a virtue any more than fear; one fears and one hopes, +according as one receives a promise or a threat. As for charity, is it +not what the Greeks and the Romans understood by humanity, love of one's +neighbour? this love is nothing if it be not active; doing good, +therefore, is the sole true virtue.</p> + +<p class="center">THE EXCREMENT:</p> + +<p>One would be a fool! Really, I am to give myself a deal of torment in +order to serve mankind, and I shall get no return! all work deserves +payment. I do not mean to do the least honest action, unless I am +certain of paradise.</p> + +<p class="center">THE HONEST MAN:</p> + +<p>Ah, master! that is to say that, if you did not hope for paradise, and +if you did not fear hell, you would never do any good action. Believe +me, master, there are two things worthy of being loved for themselves, +God and virtue.</p> + +<p class="center">THE EXCREMENT:</p> + +<p>I see, sir, you are a disciple of Fénélon.</p> + +<p class="center">THE HONEST MAN:</p> + +<p>Yes, master.</p> + +<p class="center">THE EXCREMENT:</p> + +<p>I shall denounce you to the judge of the ecclesiastical court at Meaux.</p> + +<p class="center">THE HONEST MAN:</p> + +<p>Go along, denounce!</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span></p> +<h3>SECTION II</h3> + +<p>What is virtue? Beneficence towards the fellow-creature. Can I call +virtue things other than those which do me good? I am needy, you are +generous. I am in danger, you help me. I am deceived, you tell me the +truth. I am neglected, you console me. I am ignorant, you teach me. +Without difficulty I shall call you virtuous. But what will become of +the cardinal and divine virtues? Some of them will remain in the +schools.</p> + +<p>What does it matter to me that you are temperate? you observe a precept +of health; you will have better health, and I am happy to hear it. You +have faith and hope, and I am happy still; they will procure you eternal +life. Your divine virtues are celestial gifts; your cardinal virtues are +excellent qualities which serve to guide you: but they are not virtues +as regards your fellow-creature. The prudent man does good to himself, +the virtuous man does good to mankind. St. Paul was right to tell you +that charity prevails over faith and hope.</p> + +<p>But shall only those that are useful to one's fellow-creature be +admitted as virtues? How can I admit any others? We live in society; +really, therefore, the only things that are good for us are those that +are good for society. A recluse will be sober, pious; he will be clad in +hair-cloth; he will be a saint: but I shall not call him virtuous until +he has done some act of virtue by which other men have profited. So long +as he is alone, he is doing neither good nor evil; for us he is nothing. +If St. Bruno brought peace to families, if he succoured want, he was +virtuous; if he fasted, prayed in solitude, he was a saint. Virtue among +men is an interchange of kindness; he who has no part in this +interchange should not be counted. If this saint were in the world, he +would doubtless do good; but so long as he is not in the world, the +world will be right in refusing him the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> title of virtuous; he will be +good for himself and not for us.</p> + +<p>But, you say to me, if a recluse is a glutton, a drunkard, given to +secret debauches with himself, he is vicious; he is virtuous, therefore, +if he has the opposite qualities. That is what I cannot agree: he is a +very disagreeable fellow if he has the faults you mention; but he is not +vicious, wicked, punishable as regards society to whom these infamies do +no harm. It is to be presumed that were he to return to society he would +do harm there, that he would be very vicious; and it is even more +probable that he would be a wicked man, than it is sure that the other +temperate and chaste recluse would be a virtuous man, for in society +faults increase, and good qualities diminish.</p> + +<p>A much stronger objection is made; Nero, Pope Alexander VI., and other +monsters of this species, have bestowed kindnesses; I answer hardily +that on that day they were virtuous.</p> + +<p>A few theologians say that the divine emperor Antonine was not virtuous; +that he was a stubborn Stoic who, not content with commanding men, +wished further to be esteemed by them; that he attributed to himself the +good he did to the human race; that all his life he was just, laborious, +beneficent through vanity, and that he only deceived men through his +virtues. "My God!" I exclaim. "Give us often rogues like him!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Why" id="Why"></a><i>WHY?</i></h2> + + +<p>Why does one hardly ever do the tenth part of the good one might do?</p> + +<p>Why in half Europe do girls pray to God in Latin, which they do not +understand?</p> + +<p>Why in antiquity was there never a theological quarrel, and why were no +people ever distinguished by the name of a sect? The Egyptians were not +called Isiacs or Osiriacs; the peoples of Syria did not have the name of +Cybelians. The Cretans had a particular devotion to Jupiter, and were +never entitled Jupiterians. The ancient Latins were very attached to +Saturn; there was not a village in Latium called Saturnian: on the +contrary, the disciples of the God of truth taking their master's title, +and calling themselves "anointed" like Him, declared, as soon as they +could, an eternal war on all the peoples who were not anointed, and made +war among themselves for fourteen hundred years, taking the names of +Arians, Manicheans, Donatists, Hussites, Papists, Lutherans, Calvinists. +And lastly, the Jansenists and the Molinists have had no more poignant +mortification than that of not having been able to slaughter each other +in pitched battle. Whence does this come?</p> + +<p>Why is the great number of hard-working, innocent men who till the land +every day of the year that you may eat all its fruits, scorned, +vilified, oppressed, robbed; and why is it that the useless and often +very wicked man who lives only by their work, and who is rich only +through their poverty, is on the contrary respected, courted, +considered?</p> + +<p>Why is it that, the fruits of the earth being so necessary for the +conservation of men and animals, one yet sees so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> many years and so many +countries where there is entire lack of these fruits?</p> + +<p>Why is the half of Africa and America covered with poisons?</p> + +<p>Why is there no land where insects are not far in excess of men?</p> + +<p>Why does a little whitish, evil-smelling secretion form a being which +has hard bones, desires and thoughts? and why do these beings always +persecute each other?</p> + +<p>Why does so much evil exist, seeing that everything is formed by a God +whom all theists are agreed in naming "good?"</p> + +<p>Why, since we complain ceaselessly of our ills, do we spend all our time +in increasing them?</p> + +<p>Why, as we are so miserable, have we imagined that not to be is a great +ill, when it is clear that it was not an ill not to be before we were +born?</p> + +<p>Why and how does one have dreams during sleep, if one has no soul; and +how is it that these dreams are always so incoherent, so extravagant, if +one has a soul?</p> + +<p>Why do the stars move from west to east rather than from east to west?</p> + +<p>Why do we exist? why is there anything?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="Declaration" id="Declaration"></a><i>DECLARATION OF THE ADMIRERS, QUESTIONERS AND DOUBTERS WHO HAVE AMUSED +THEMSELVES BY PROPOUNDING TO THE SCHOLARS THE ABOVE QUESTIONS IN NINE +VOLUMES.</i><a name="FNanchor_23" id="FNanchor_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></h2> + + +<p>We declare to the scholars that, being like them prodigiously ignorant +about the first principles of all things, and about the natural, +typical, mystic, allegorical sense of many things, we refer these things +to the <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: Original has infallable.">infallible</ins> judgment of the Holy Inquisition of Rome, Florence, +Madrid, Lisbon, and to the decrees of the Sorbonne of Paris, perpetual +council of the Gauls.</p> + +<p>Our errors springing in no wise from malice, but being the natural +consequence of human frailty, we hope that they will be pardoned to us +in this world and the other.</p> + +<p>We beseech the small number of heavenly spirits who are still shut up in +France in mortal bodies, and who, from there, enlighten the universe at +<i>thirty sous</i> the sheet, to communicate their luminousness to us for the +tenth volume which we reckon on publishing at the end of Lent 1772, or +in Advent 1773; and for their luminousness we will pay <i>forty sous</i>.</p> + +<p>This tenth volume will contain some very curious articles, which, if God +favours us, will give new point to the salt which we shall endeavour to +bestow in the thanks we shall give to these gentlemen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span></p> + +<p>Executed on Mount Krapack, the thirtieth day of the month of Janus, the +year of the world</p> + + +<table cellpadding="2" summary="Year of the World"> +<tr> + <td class="l">according to Scaliger</td> + <td class="r">5722</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="l">according to Riccioli</td> + <td class="r">5956</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="l">according to Eusebius</td> + <td class="r">6972</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="l">according to the Alphonsine Tables</td> + <td class="r">8707</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="l">according to the Egyptians</td> + <td class="r">370000</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="l">according to the Chaldeans</td> + <td class="r">465102</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="l">according to the Brahmins</td> + <td class="r">780000</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="l">according to the philosophers</td> + <td class="c">∞</td> +</tr> +</table> + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnotehead">FOOTNOTES:</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23" id="Footnote_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> The Philosophical Dictionary was first published as +"Questions on the Encyclopedia," then reprinted as "Reason by Alphabet," +and then finally, with many additions, became the "Philosophical +Dictionary."</p></div></div> + + +<p style="margin-top: 2em">TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:</p> + +<p>The following corrections have been made to the original text:</p> + +<p>page 17: Nestor, in the "Iliad," wishing to insinuate himself as a wise +conciliator into the minds of Achilles and Agamemnon{original had +"Agamamemnon"},</p> + +<p>page 40: Atheism is the vice of a few intelligent persons, and +superstition{original had "superstitution"} is the vice of fools.</p> + +<p>page 42: if it is a greater crime not to believe in the Deity{original +had "Diety"} than to have unworthy opinions thereof:</p> + +<p>page 54: They will say as much of the great moral maxims, of +Zarathustra's—"In doubt if an{original had "in"} action be just, +abstain...";</p> + +<p>page 58: What time and what trouble for copying correctly in Greek and +Latin the works of Origen{original had "Origin"}, of Clement of +Alexandria, and of all those other authors called "fathers."</p> + +<p>page 101: we shall be convinced that we must not be vain about anything, +and yet we shall always{original had "aways"} have vanity.</p> + +<p>page 128: All that certain tyrants{original had "tryants"} of the souls +desire is that the men they teach shall have false judgment.</p> + +<p>page 166: and to surround him with little chubby, flushed faces +accompanied{original had "accompained"} by two wings; I laugh and I +pardon them with all my heart.</p> + +<p>page 171: And an unfortunate{original had "unforunate"} idiot, who had +had enough courage to render very great services to the king</p> + +<p>page 220: Try to retake from the Mohammedans all that they usurped; but +it is easier to calumniate{original had "calcumniate"} them.</p> + +<p>pafe 224: It was allowed among the Egyptians{original had "Egyptains"}, +the Athenians and even among the Jews, to marry one's sister on the +father's side.</p> + +<p>page 251: Your parents have told you that you should bow before this +man; you respect him before knowing whether he merits your +respect;{original had colon} you grow in years and in knowledge;</p> + +<p>page 280: (Corporalitas animæ in ipso Evangelio relucescit, De +Anima,{original had period} cap. vii.)</p> + +<p>page 295: "She soon became a monarchy, then,{original had period}" said +the Brahmin.</p> + +<p>page 315: we refer these things to the infallible{original had +"infallable"} judgment of the Holy Inquisition of Rome, Florence, +Madrid, Lisbon,</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, by Voltaire + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VOLTAIRE'S PHILOSOPHICAL *** + +***** This file should be named 18569-h.htm or 18569-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/5/6/18569/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Lisa Reigel and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +*** END: FULL LICENSE *** + + + +</pre> + +</body> +</html> + diff --git a/18569.txt b/18569.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f1a873e --- /dev/null +++ b/18569.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10513 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, by Voltaire + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary + +Author: Voltaire + +Release Date: June 12, 2006 [EBook #18569] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VOLTAIRE'S PHILOSOPHICAL *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Lisa Reigel and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +[TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Greek words in this text have been transliterated +and placed between +marks+.] + + + + +Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary + + +New York + +CARLTON HOUSE + +MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + + + +_PREFACE_ + + +This book does not demand continuous reading; but at whatever place one +opens it, one will find matter for reflection. The most useful books are +those of which readers themselves compose half; they extend the thoughts +of which the germ is presented to them; they correct what seems +defective to them, and they fortify by their reflections what seems to +them weak. + +It is only really by enlightened people that this book can be read; the +ordinary man is not made for such knowledge; philosophy will never be +his lot. Those who say that there are truths which must be hidden from +the people, need not be alarmed; the people do not read; they work six +days of the week, and on the seventh go to the inn. In a word, +philosophical works are made only for philosophers, and every honest man +must try to be a philosopher, without pluming himself on being one. + +This alphabet is extracted from the most estimable works which are not +commonly within the reach of the many; and if the author does not always +mention the sources of his information, as being well enough known to +the learned, he must not be suspected of wishing to take the credit for +other people's work, because he himself preserves anonymity, according +to this word of the Gospel: "Let not thy left hand know what thy right +hand doeth." + + + + +_CONTENTS_ + + + PAGE +PREFACE BY VOLTAIRE 5 + +ADULTERY 11 +ADVOCATE 16 +ANCIENTS AND MODERNS 17 +ANIMALS 21 +ANTIQUITY 24 +ARTS 27 +ASTROLOGY 29 +ATHEISM 32 +AUTHORITY 46 +AUTHORS 48 + +BANISHMENT 50 +BANKRUPTCY 51 +BEAUTY 53 +BISHOP 55 +BOOKS 57 +BOULEVERD 60 +BOURGES 61 +BRAHMINS 62 + +CHARACTER 65 +CHARLATAN 68 +CIVIL LAWS 73 +CLIMATE 74 +COMMON SENSE 78 +CONCATENATION OF EVENTS 80 +CONTRADICTIONS 83 +CORN 85 +CROMWELL 88 +CUSTOMS 94 + +DEMOCRACY 96 +DESTINY 98 +DEVOUT 102 + +ECCLESIASTICAL MINISTRY 103 +EMBLEM 106 +ENGLISH THEATRE, ON THE 110 +ENVY 112 +EQUALITY 114 +EXPIATION 118 +EXTREME 122 +EZOURVEIDAM 125 + +FAITH 126 +FALSE MINDS 128 +FATHERLAND 131 +FINAL CAUSES 133 +FRAUD 136 +FREE-WILL 142 +FRENCH 146 +FRIENDSHIP 150 + +GOD 151 + +HELVETIA 156 +HISTORY 157 + +IGNORANCE 163 +IMPIOUS 166 + +JOAN OF ARC 168 + +KISSING 173 + +LANGUAGES 178 +LAWS 184 +LIBERTY 187 +LIBRARY 191 +LIMITS OF THE HUMAN MIND 194 +LOCAL CRIMES 195 +LOVE 197 +LUXURY 200 + +MAN 203 +MAN IN THE IRON MASK 204 +MARRIAGE 210 +MASTER 211 +MEN OF LETTERS 214 +METAMORPHOSIS 216 +MILTON, ON THE REPROACH OF PLAGIARISM AGAINST 217 +MOHAMMEDANS 220 +MOUNTAIN 221 + +NAKEDNESS 222 +NATURAL LAW 224 +NATURE 227 +NECESSARY 231 +NEW NOVELTIES 236 + +PHILOSOPHER 237 +POWER, OMNIPOTENCE 240 +PRAYERS 245 +PRECIS OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY 247 +PREJUDICES 251 + +RARE 255 +REASON 257 +RELIGION 259 + +SECT 267 +SELF-ESTEEM 271 +SOUL 273 +STATES, GOVERNMENTS 294 +SUPERSTITION 297 + +TEARS 299 +THEIST 301 +TOLERANCE 302 +TRUTH 305 +TYRANNY 308 + +VIRTUE 309 + +WHY? 313 + +DECLARATION OF ADMIRERS, QUESTIONERS AND DOUBTERS 315 + + + + +_ADULTERY_ + + +NOTE ON A MAGISTRATE WRITTEN ABOUT 1764 + +A senior magistrate of a French town had the misfortune to have a wife +who was debauched by a priest before her marriage, and who since covered +herself with disgrace by public scandals: he was so moderate as to leave +her without noise. This man, about forty years old, vigorous and of +agreeable appearance, needs a woman; he is too scrupulous to seek to +seduce another man's wife, he fears intercourse with a public woman or +with a widow who would serve him as concubine. In this disquieting and +sad state, he addresses to his Church a plea of which the following is a +precis: + +My wife is criminal, and it is I who am punished. Another woman is +necessary as a comfort to my life, to my virtue even; and the sect of +which I am a member refuses her to me; it forbids me to marry an honest +girl. The civil laws of to-day, unfortunately founded on canon law, +deprive me of the rights of humanity. The Church reduces me to seeking +either the pleasures it reproves, or the shameful compensations it +condemns; it tries to force me to be criminal. + +I cast my eyes over all the peoples of the earth; there is not a single +one except the Roman Catholic people among whom divorce and a new +marriage are not natural rights. + +What upheaval of the rule has therefore made among the Catholics a +virtue of undergoing adultery, and a duty of lacking a wife when one has +been infamously outraged by one's own? + +Why is a bond that has rotted indissoluble in spite of the great law +adopted by the code, _quidquid ligatur dissolubile est_? I am allowed a +separation _a mensa et thoro_, and I am not allowed divorce. The law +can deprive me of my wife, and it leaves me a name called "sacrament"! +What a contradiction! what slavery! and under what laws did we receive +birth! + +What is still more strange is that this law of my Church is directly +contrary to the words which this Church itself believes to have been +uttered by Jesus Christ: "Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it +be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery" (Matt. +xix. 9). + +I do not examine whether the pontiffs of Rome are in the right to +violate at their pleasure the law of him they regard as their master; +whether when a state has need of an heir, it is permissible to repudiate +her who can give it one. I do not inquire if a turbulent woman, +demented, homicidal, a poisoner, should not be repudiated equally with +an adulteress: I limit myself to the sad state which concerns me: God +permits me to remarry, and the Bishop of Rome does not permit me. + +Divorce was a practice among Catholics under all the emperors; it was +also in all the dismembered states of the Roman Empire. The kings of +France, those called "of the first line," almost all repudiated their +wives in order to take new ones. At last came Gregory IX., enemy of the +emperors and kings, who by a decree made marriage an unshakeable yoke; +his decretal became the law of Europe. When the kings wanted to +repudiate a wife who was an adulteress according to Jesus Christ's law, +they could not succeed; it was necessary to find ridiculous pretexts. +Louis the younger was obliged, to accomplish his unfortunate divorce +from Eleanor of Guienne, to allege a relationship which did not exist. +Henry IV., to repudiate Marguerite de Valois, pretexted a still more +false cause, a refusal of consent. One had to lie to obtain a divorce +legitimately. + +What! a king can abdicate his crown, and without the Pope's permission +he cannot abdicate his wife! Is it possible that otherwise enlightened +men have wallowed so long in this absurd servitude! + +That our priests, that our monks renounce wives, to that I consent; it +is an outrage against population, it is a misfortune for them, but they +merit this misfortune which they have made for themselves. They have +been the victims of the popes who wanted to have in them slaves, +soldiers without families and without fatherland, living solely for the +Church: but I, magistrate, who serve the state all day, I need a wife in +the evening; and the Church has not the right to deprive me of a benefit +which God accords me. The apostles were married, Joseph was married, and +I want to be. If I, Alsacian, am dependent on a priest who dwells at +Rome, if this priest has the barbarous power to rob me of a wife, let +him make a eunuch of me for the singing of _Misereres_ in his chapel. + + +NOTE FOR WOMEN + +Equity demands that, having recorded this note in favour of husbands, we +should also put before the public the case in favour of wives, presented +to the junta of Portugal by a Countess of Arcira. This is the substance +of it: + +The Gospel has forbidden adultery for my husband just as for me; he will +be damned as I shall, nothing is better established. When he committed +twenty infidelities, when he gave my necklace to one of my rivals, and +my ear-rings to another, I did not ask the judges to have him shaved, to +shut him up among monks and to give me his property. And I, for having +imitated him once, for having done with the most handsome young man in +Lisbon what he did every day with impunity with the most idiotic +strumpets of the court and the town, have to answer at the bar before +licentiates each of whom would be at my feet if we were alone together +in my closet; have to endure at the court the usher cutting off my hair +which is the most beautiful in the world; and being shut up among nuns +who have no common sense, deprived of my dowry and my marriage +covenants, with all my property given to my coxcomb of a husband to help +him seduce other women and to commit fresh adulteries. + +I ask if it is just, and if it is not evident that the laws were made by +cuckolds? + +In answer to my plea I am told that I should be happy not to be stoned +at the city gate by the canons, the priests of the parish and the whole +populace. This was the practice among the first nation of the earth, the +chosen nation, the cherished nation, the only one which was right when +all the others were wrong. + +To these barbarities I reply that when the poor adulteress was presented +by her accusers to the Master of the old and new law, He did not have +her stoned; that on the contrary He reproached them with their +injustice, that he laughed at them by writing on the ground with his +finger, that he quoted the old Hebraic proverb--"He that is without sin +among you, let him first cast a stone at her"; that then they all +retired, the oldest fleeing first, because the older they were the more +adulteries had they committed. + +The doctors of canon law answer me that this history of the adulteress +is related only in the Gospel of St. John, that it was not inserted +there until later. Leontius, Maldonat, affirm that it is not to be found +in a single ancient Greek copy; that none of the twenty-three early +commentators mentions it. Origen, St. Jerome, St. John Chrysostom, +Theophilact, Nonnus, do not recognize it at all. It is not to be found +in the Syriac Bible, it is not in Ulphilas' version. + +That is what my husband's advocates say, they who would have me not only +shaved, but also stoned. + +But the advocates who pleaded for me say that Ammonius, author of the +third century, recognized this story as true, and that if St. Jerome +rejects it in some places, he adopts it in others; that, in a word, it +is authentic to-day. I leave there, and I say to my husband: "If you are +without sin, shave me, imprison me, take my property; but if you have +committed more sins than I have, it is for me to shave you, to have you +imprisoned, and to seize your fortune. In justice these things should be +equal." + +My husband answers that he is my superior and my chief, that he is more +than an inch taller, that he is shaggy as a bear; that consequently I +owe him everything, and that he owes me nothing. + +But I ask if Queen Anne of England is not her husband's chief? if her +husband the Prince of Denmark, who is her High Admiral, does not owe her +entire obedience? and if she would not have him condemned by the court +of peers if the little man's infidelity were in question? It is +therefore clear that if the women do not have the men punished, it is +when they are not the stronger. + + + + +_ADVOCATE_ + + +An advocate is a man who, not having a sufficient fortune to buy one of +those resplendent offices on which the universe has its eyes, studies +the laws of Theodosius and Justinian for three years, so that he may +learn the usages of Paris, and who finally, being registered, has the +right to plead causes for money, if he have a strong voice. + + + + +_ANCIENTS AND MODERNS_ + + +The great dispute between the ancients and the moderns is not yet +settled; it has been on the table since the silver age succeeded the +golden age. Mankind has always maintained that the good old times were +much better than the present day. Nestor, in the "Iliad," wishing to +insinuate himself as a wise conciliator into the minds of Achilles and +Agamemnon, starts by saying to them--"I lived formerly with better men +than you; no, I have never seen and I shall never see such great +personages as Dryas, Cenaeus, Exadius, Polyphemus equal to the gods, +etc." + +Posterity has well avenged Achilles for Nestor's poor compliment. Nobody +knows Dryas any longer; one has hardly heard speak of Exadius, or of +Cenaeus; and as for Polyphemus equal to the gods, he has not too good a +reputation, unless the possession of a big eye in one's forehead, and +the eating of men raw, are to have something of the divine. + +Lucretius does not hesitate to say that nature has degenerated (lib. II. +v. 1159). Antiquity is full of eulogies of another more remote +antiquity. Horace combats this prejudice with as much finesse as force +in his beautiful Epistle to Augustus (Epist. I. liv. ii.). "Must our +poems, then," he says, "be like our wines, of which the oldest are +always preferred?" + +The learned and ingenious Fontenelle expresses himself on this subject +as follows: + +"The whole question of the pre-eminence between the ancients and the +moderns, once it is well understood, is reduced to knowing whether the +trees which formerly were in our countryside were bigger than those of +to-day. In the event that they were, Homer, Plato, Demosthenes cannot +be equalled in these latter centuries. + +"Let us throw light on this paradox. If the ancients had more intellect +than us, it is that the brains of those times were better ordered, +formed of firmer or more delicate fibres, filled with more animal +spirits; but in virtue of what were the brains of those times better +ordered? The trees also would have been bigger and more beautiful; for +if nature was then younger and more vigorous, the trees, as well as +men's brains, would have been conscious of this vigour and this youth." +("Digression on the Ancients and the Moderns," vol. 4, 1742 edition.) + +With the illustrious academician's permission, that is not at all the +state of the question. It is not a matter of knowing whether nature has +been able to produce in our day as great geniuses and as good works as +those of Greek and Latin antiquity; but to know whether we have them in +fact. Without a doubt it is not impossible for there to be as big oaks +in the forest of Chantilli as in the forest of Dodona; but supposing +that the oaks of Dodona had spoken, it would be quite clear that they +had a great advantage over ours, which in all probability will never +speak. + +Nature is not bizarre; but it is possible that she gave the Athenians a +country and a sky more suitable than Westphalia and the Limousin for +forming certain geniuses. Further, it is possible that the government of +Athens, by seconding the climate, put into Demosthenes' head something +that the air of Climart and La Grenouillere and the government of +Cardinal de Richelieu did not put into the heads of Omer Talon and +Jerome Bignon. + +This dispute is therefore a question of fact. Was antiquity more fecund +in great monuments of all kinds, up to the time of Plutarch, than modern +centuries have been from the century of the Medicis up to Louis XIV. +inclusive? + +The Chinese, more than two hundred years before our era, constructed +that great wall which was not able to save them from the invasion of the +Tartars. The Egyptians, three thousand years before, had overloaded the +earth with their astonishing pyramids, which had a base of about ninety +thousand square feet. Nobody doubts that, if one wished to undertake +to-day these useless works, one could easily succeed by a lavish +expenditure of money. The great wall of China is a monument to fear; the +pyramids are monuments to vanity and superstition. Both bear witness to +a great patience in the peoples, but to no superior genius. Neither the +Chinese nor the Egyptians would have been able to make even a statue +such as those which our sculptors form to-day. + +The chevalier Temple, who has made it his business to disparage all the +moderns, claims that in architecture they have nothing comparable to the +temples of Greece and Rome: but, for all that he is English, he must +agree that the Church of St. Peter is incomparably more beautiful than +the Capitol was. + +It is curious with what assurance he maintains that there is nothing new +in our astronomy, nothing in the knowledge of the human body, unless +perhaps, he says, the circulation of the blood. Love of his own opinion, +founded on his vast self-esteem, makes him forget the discovery of the +satellites of Jupiter, of the five moons and the ring of Saturn, of the +rotation of the sun on its axis, of the calculated position of three +thousand stars, of the laws given by Kepler and Newton for the heavenly +orbs, of the causes of the precession of the equinoxes, and of a hundred +other pieces of knowledge of which the ancients did not suspect even the +possibility. + +The discoveries in anatomy are as great in number. A new universe in +little, discovered by the microscope, was counted for nothing by the +chevalier Temple; he closed his eyes to the marvels of his +contemporaries, and opened them only to admire ancient ignorance. + +He goes so far as to pity us for having nothing left of the magic of the +Indians, the Chaldeans, the Egyptians; and by this magic he understands +a profound knowledge of nature, whereby they produced miracles: but he +does not cite one miracle, because in fact there never were any. "What +has become," he asks, "of the charms of that music which so often +enchanted man and beast, the fishes, the birds, the snakes, and changed +their nature?" + +This enemy of his century really believes the fable of Orpheus, and has +not apparently heard either the beautiful music of Italy, or even that +of France, which in truth does not charm snakes, but does charm the ears +of connoisseurs. + +What is still more strange is that, having all his life cultivated +belles-lettres, he does not reason better about our good authors than +about our philosophers. He looks on Rabelais as a great man. He cites +the "Amours des Gaules" as one of our best works. He was, however, a +scholar, a courtier, a man of much wit, an ambassador, a man who had +reflected profoundly on all he had seen. He possessed great knowledge: a +prejudice sufficed to spoil all this merit. + +There are beauties in Euripides, and in Sophocles still more; but they +have many more defects. One dares say that the beautiful scenes of +Corneille and the touching tragedies of Racine surpass the tragedies of +Sophocles and Euripides as much as these two Greeks surpass Thespis. +Racine was quite conscious of his great superiority over Euripides; but +he praised the Greek poet in order to humiliate Perrault. + +Moliere, in his good pieces, is as superior to the pure but cold +Terence, and to the droll Aristophanes, as to Dancourt the buffoon. + +There are therefore spheres in which the moderns are far superior to the +ancients, and others, very few in number, in which we are their +inferiors. It is to this that the whole dispute is reduced. + + + + +_ANIMALS_ + + +What a pitiful, what a sorry thing to have said that animals are +machines bereft of understanding and feeling, which perform their +operations always in the same way, which learn nothing, perfect nothing, +etc.! + +What! that bird which makes its nest in a semi-circle when it is +attaching it to a wall, which builds it in a quarter circle when it is +in an angle, and in a circle upon a tree; that bird acts always in the +same way? That hunting-dog which you have disciplined for three months, +does it not know more at the end of this time than it knew before your +lessons? Does the canary to which you teach a tune repeat it at once? do +you not spend a considerable time in teaching it? have you not seen that +it has made a mistake and that it corrects itself? + +Is it because I speak to you, that you judge that I have feeling, +memory, ideas? Well, I do not speak to you; you see me going home +looking disconsolate, seeking a paper anxiously, opening the desk where +I remember having shut it, finding it, reading it joyfully. You judge +that I have experienced the feeling of distress and that of pleasure, +that I have memory and understanding. + +Bring the same judgment to bear on this dog which has lost its master, +which has sought him on every road with sorrowful cries, which enters +the house agitated, uneasy, which goes down the stairs, up the stairs, +from room to room, which at last finds in his study the master it loves, +and which shows him its joy by its cries of delight, by its leaps, by +its caresses. + +Barbarians seize this dog, which in friendship surpasses man so +prodigiously; they nail it on a table, and they dissect it alive in +order to show the mesenteric veins. You discover in it all the same +organs of feeling that are in yourself. Answer me, machinist, has nature +arranged all the means of feeling in this animal, so that it may not +feel? has it nerves in order to be impassible? Do not suppose this +impertinent contradiction in nature. + +But the schoolmasters ask what the soul of animals is? I do not +understand this question. A tree has the faculty of receiving in its +fibres its sap which circulates, of unfolding the buds of its leaves and +its fruit; will you ask what the soul of this tree is? it has received +these gifts; the animal has received those of feeling, of memory, of a +certain number of ideas. Who has bestowed these gifts? who has given +these faculties? He who has made the grass of the fields to grow, and +who makes the earth gravitate toward the sun. + +"Animals' souls are substantial forms," said Aristotle, and after +Aristotle, the Arab school, and after the Arab school, the angelical +school, and after the angelical school, the Sorbonne, and after the +Sorbonne, nobody at all. + +"Animals' souls are material," cry other philosophers. These have not +been in any better fortune than the others. In vain have they been asked +what a material soul is; they have to admit that it is matter which has +sensation: but what has given it this sensation? It is a material soul, +that is to say that it is matter which gives sensation to matter; they +cannot issue from this circle. + +Listen to other brutes reasoning about the brutes; their soul is a +spiritual soul which dies with the body; but what proof have you of it? +what idea have you of this spiritual soul, which, in truth, has feeling, +memory, and its measure of ideas and ingenuity; but which will never be +able to know what a child of six knows? On what ground do you imagine +that this being, which is not body, dies with the body? The greatest +fools are those who have advanced that this soul is neither body nor +spirit. There is a fine system. By spirit we can understand only some +unknown thing which is not body. Thus these gentlemen's system comes +back to this, that the animals' soul is a substance which is neither +body nor something which is not body. + +Whence can come so many contradictory errors? From the habit men have +always had of examining what a thing is, before knowing if it exists. +The clapper, the valve of a bellows, is called in French the "soul" of a +bellows. What is this soul? It is a name that I have given to this valve +which falls, lets air enter, rises again, and thrusts it through a pipe, +when I make the bellows move. + +There is not there a distinct soul in the machine: but what makes +animals' bellows move? I have already told you, what makes the stars +move. The philosopher who said, "_Deus est anima brutorum_," was right; +but he should go further. + + + + +_ANTIQUITY_ + + +Have you sometimes seen in a village Pierre Aoudri and his wife +Peronelle wishing to go before their neighbours in the procession? "Our +grandfathers," they say, "were tolling the bells before those who jostle +us to-day owned even a pig-sty." + +The vanity of Pierre Aoudri, his wife and his neighbours, knows nothing +more about it. Their minds kindle. The quarrel is important; honour is +in question. Proofs are necessary. A scholar who sings in the choir, +discovers an old rusty iron pot, marked with an "A," first letter of the +name of the potter who made the pot. Pierre Aoudri persuades himself +that it was his ancestors' helmet. In this way was Caesar descended from +a hero and from the goddess Venus. Such is the history of nations; such +is, within very small margins, the knowledge of early antiquity. + +The scholars of Armenia _demonstrate_ that the terrestrial paradise was +in their land. Some profound Swedes _demonstrate_ that it was near Lake +Vener which is visibly a remnant of it. Some Spaniards _demonstrate_ +also that it was in Castille; while the Japanese, the Chinese, the +Indians, the Africans, the Americans are not sufficiently unfortunate to +know even that there was formerly a terrestrial paradise at the source +of the Phison, the Gehon, the Tigris and the Euphrates, or, if you +prefer it, at the source of the Guadalquivir, the Guadiana, the Douro +and the Ebro; for from Phison one easily makes Phaetis; and from Phaetis +one makes the Baetis which is the Guadalquivir. The Gehon is obviously +the Guadiana, which begins with a "G." The Ebro, which is in Catalonia, +is incontestably the Euphrates, of which the initial letter is "E." + +But a Scotsman appears who _demonstrates_ in his turn that the garden of +Eden was at Edinburgh, which has retained its name; and it is to be +believed that in a few centuries this opinion will make its fortune. + +The whole globe was burned once upon a time, says a man versed in +ancient and modern history; for I read in a newspaper that some +absolutely black charcoal has been found in Germany at a depth of a +hundred feet, between mountains covered with wood. And it is suspected +even that there were charcoal burners in this place. + +Phaeton's adventure makes it clear that everything has boiled right to +the bottom of the sea. The sulphur of Mount Vesuvius proves invincibly +that the banks of the Rhine, Danube, Ganges, Nile and the great Yellow +River are merely sulphur, nitre and Guiac oil, which only await the +moment of the explosion to reduce the earth to ashes, as it has already +been. The sand on which we walk is evident proof that the earth has been +vitrified, and that our globe is really only a glass ball, just as are +our ideas. + +But if fire has changed our globe, water has produced still finer +revolutions. For you see clearly that the sea, the tides of which mount +as high as eight feet in our climate, has produced mountains of a height +of sixteen to seventeen thousand feet. This is so true that some learned +men who have never been in Switzerland have found a big ship with all +its rigging petrified on Mount St. Gothard, or at the bottom of a +precipice, one knows not where; but it is quite certain that it was +there. Therefore men were originally fish, _quod erat demonstrandum_. + +To descend to a less antique antiquity, let us speak of the times when +the greater part of the barbarous nations left their countries, to go to +seek others which were hardly any better. It is true, if there be +anything true in ancient history, that there were some Gaulish brigands +who went to pillage Rome in the time of Camillus. Other Gaulish brigands +had passed, it is said, through Illyria on the way to hire their +services as murderers to other murderers, in the direction of Thrace; +they exchanged their blood for bread, and later established themselves +in Galatia. But who were these Gauls? were they Berichons and Angevins? +They were without a doubt Gauls whom the Romans called Cisalpines, and +whom we call Transalpines, famished mountain-dwellers, neighbours of the +Alps and the Apennines. The Gauls of the Seine and the Marne did not +know at that time that Rome existed, and could not take it into their +heads to pass Mount Cenis, as Hannibal did later, to go to steal the +wardrobes of Roman senators who at that time for all furniture had a +robe of poor grey stuff, ornamented with a band the colour of ox blood; +two little pummels of ivory, or rather dog's bone, on the arms of a +wooden chair; and in their kitchens a piece of rancid bacon. + +The Gauls, who were dying of hunger, not finding anything to eat in +Rome, went off therefore to seek their fortune farther away, as was the +practice of the Romans later, when they ravaged so many countries one +after the other; as did the peoples of the North when they destroyed the +Roman Empire. + +And, further, what is it which instructs very feebly about these +emigrations? It is a few lines that the Romans wrote at hazard; because +for the Celts, the Velches or the Gauls, these men who it is desired to +make pass for eloquent, at that time did not know, they and their bards, +how either to read or write. + +But to infer from that that the Gauls or Celts, conquered after by a few +of Caesar's legions, and by a horde of Bourguignons, and lastly by a +horde of Sicamores, under one Clodovic, had previously subjugated the +whole world, and given their names and laws to Asia, seems to me to be +very strange: the thing is not mathematically impossible, and if it be +_demonstrated_, I give way; it would be very uncivil to refuse to the +Velches what one accords to the Tartars. + + + + +_ARTS_ + +THAT THE NEWNESS OF THE ARTS IN NO WISE PROVES THE NEWNESS OF THE GLOBE + + +All the philosophers thought matter eternal but the arts appear new. +There is not one, even to the art of making bread, which is not recent. +The first Romans ate pap; and these conquerors of so many nations never +thought of either windmills or watermills. This truth seems at first to +contradict the antiquity of the globe such as it is, or supposes +terrible revolutions in this globe. The inundations of barbarians can +hardly annihilate arts which have become necessary. I suppose that an +army of negroes come among us like locusts, from the mountains of +Cobonas, through the Monomotapa, the Monoemugi, the Nosseguais, the +Maracates; that they have traversed Abyssinia, Nubia, Egypt, Syria, Asia +Minor, the whole of our Europe; that they have overthrown everything, +ransacked everything; there will still remain a few bakers, a few +cobblers, a few tailors, a few carpenters: the necessary arts will +survive; only luxury will be annihilated. It is what was seen at the +fall of the Roman Empire; the art of writing even became very rare; +almost all those which contributed to the comfort of life were reborn +only long after. We invent new ones every day. + +From all this one can at bottom conclude nothing against the antiquity +of the globe. For, supposing even that an influx of barbarians had made +us lose entirely all the arts even to the arts of writing and making +bread; supposing, further, that for ten years past we had no bread, +pens, ink and paper; the land which has been able to subsist for ten +years without eating bread and without writing its thoughts, would be +able to pass a century, and a hundred thousand centuries without these +aids. + +It is quite clear that man and the other animals can exist very well +without bakers, without novelists, and without theologians, witness the +whole of America, witness three quarters of our continent. + +The newness of the arts among us does not therefore prove the newness of +the globe, as was claimed by Epicurus, one of our predecessors in +reverie, who supposed that by chance the eternal atoms in declining, had +one day formed our earth. Pomponace said: "_Se il mondo non e eterno, +per tutti santi e molto vecchio._" + + + + +_ASTROLOGY_ + + +Astrology may rest on better foundations than Magic. For if no one has +seen either Goblins, or Lemures, or Dives, or Peris, or Demons, or +Cacodemons, the predictions of astrologers have often been seen to +succeed. If of two astrologers consulted on the life of a child and on +the weather, one says that the child will live to manhood, the other +not; if one announces rain, and the other fine weather, it is clear that +one of them will be a prophet. + +The great misfortune of the astrologers is that the sky has changed +since the rules of the art were established. The sun, which at the +equinox was in Aries in the time of the Argonauts, is to-day in Taurus; +and the astrologers, to the great ill-fortune of their art, to-day +attribute to one house of the sun what belongs visibly to another. +However, that is not a demonstrative reason against astrology. The +masters of the art deceive themselves; but it is not demonstrated that +the art cannot exist. + +There is no absurdity in saying: Such and such a child is born in the +waxing of the moon, during stormy weather, at the rising of such and +such star; his constitution has been feeble, and his life unhappy and +short; which is the ordinary lot of poor constitutions: this child, on +the contrary, was born when the moon was full, the sun strong, the +weather calm, at the rising of such and such star; his constitution has +been good, his life long and happy. If these observations had been +repeated, if they had been found accurate, experience would have been +able after some thousands of years to form an art which it would have +been difficult to doubt: one would have thought, with some likelihood, +that men are like trees and vegetables which must be planted and sown +only in certain seasons. It would have been of no avail against the +astrologers to say: My son was born at a fortunate time, and +nevertheless died in his cradle; the astrologer would have answered: It +often happens that trees planted in the proper season perish; I answered +to you for the stars, but I did not answer for the flaw of conformation +you communicated to your child. Astrology operates only when no cause +opposes itself to the good the stars can do. + +One would not have succeeded better in discrediting the astrologer by +saying: Of two children who were born in the same minute, one has been +king, the other has been only churchwarden of his parish; for the +astrologer could very well have defended himself by pointing out that +the peasant made his fortune when he became churchwarden, as the prince +when he became king. + +And if one alleged that a bandit whom Sixtus V. had hanged was born at +the same time as Sixtus V., who from a pig-herd became Pope, the +astrologers would say one had made a mistake of a few seconds, and that +it is impossible, according to the rules, for the same star to give the +triple crown and the gibbet. It is then only because a host of +experiences belied the predictions, that men perceived at last that the +art was illusory; but before being undeceived, they were long credulous. + +One of the most famous mathematicians in Europe, named Stoffler, who +flourished in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and who long worked +at the reform of the calendar, proposed at the Council of Constance, +foretold a universal flood for the year 1524. This flood was to arrive +in the month of February, and nothing is more plausible; for Saturn, +Jupiter and Mars were then in conjunction in the sign of Pisces. All the +peoples of Europe, Asia and Africa, who heard speak of the prediction, +were dismayed. Everyone expected the flood, despite the rainbow. Several +contemporary authors record that the inhabitants of the maritime +provinces of Germany hastened to sell their lands dirt cheap to those +who had most money, and who were not so credulous as they. Everyone +armed himself with a boat as with an ark. A Toulouse doctor, named +Auriol, had a great ark made for himself, his family and his friends; +the same precautions were taken over a large part of Italy. At last the +month of February arrived, and not a drop of water fell: never was month +more dry, and never were the astrologers more embarrassed. Nevertheless +they were not discouraged, nor neglected among us; almost all princes +continued to consult them. + +I have not the honour of being a prince; but the celebrated Count of +Boulainvilliers and an Italian, named Colonne, who had much prestige in +Paris, both foretold that I should die infallibly at the age of +thirty-two. I have been so malicious as to deceive them already by +nearly thirty years, wherefore I humbly beg their pardon. + + + + +_ATHEISM_ + + +SECTION I + +OF THE COMPARISON SO OFTEN MADE BETWEEN ATHEISM AND IDOLATRY + +It seems to me that in the "Encyclopedic Dictionary" the opinion of the +Jesuit Richeome, on atheists and idolaters, has not been refuted as +strongly as it might have been; opinion held formerly by St. Thomas, St. +Gregory of Nazianze, St. Cyprian and Tertullian, opinion that Arnobius +set forth with much force when he said to the pagans: "Do you not blush +to reproach us with despising your gods, and is it not much more proper +to believe in no God at all, than to impute to them infamous +actions?"[1] opinion established long before by Plutarch, who says "that +he much prefers people to say there is no Plutarch, than to say--'There +is an inconstant, choleric, vindictive Plutarch'";[2] opinion +strengthened finally by all the effort of Bayle's dialectic. + +Here is the ground of dispute, brought to fairly dazzling light by the +Jesuit Richeome, and rendered still more plausible by the way Bayle has +turned it to account.[3] + +"There are two porters at the door of a house; they are asked: 'Can one +speak to your master?' 'He is not there,' answers one. 'He is there,' +answers the other, 'but he is busy making counterfeit money, forged +contracts, daggers and poisons, to undo those who have but accomplished +his purposes.' The atheist resembles the first of these porters, the +pagan the other. It is clear, therefore, that the pagan offends the +Deity more gravely than does the atheist." + +With Father Richeome's and even Bayle's permission, that is not at all +the position of the matter. For the first porter to resemble the +atheists, he must not say--"My master is not here": he should say--"I +have no master; him whom you claim to be my master does not exist; my +comrade is a fool to tell you that he is busy compounding poisons and +sharpening daggers to assassinate those who have executed his caprices. +No such being exists in the world." + +Richeome has reasoned, therefore, very badly. And Bayle, in his somewhat +diffuse discourses, has forgotten himself so far as to do Richeome the +honour of annotating him very malapropos. + +Plutarch seems to express himself much better in preferring people who +affirm there is no Plutarch, to those who claim Plutarch to be an +unsociable man. In truth, what does it matter to him that people say he +is not in the world? But it matters much to him that his reputation be +not tarnished. It is not thus with the Supreme Being. + +Plutarch even does not broach the real object under discussion. It is +not a question of knowing who offends more the Supreme Being, whether it +be he who denies Him, or he who distorts Him. It is impossible to know +otherwise than by revelation, if God is offended by the empty things men +say of Him. + +Without a thought, philosophers fall almost always into the ideas of the +common herd, in supposing God to be jealous of His glory, to be +choleric, to love vengeance, and in taking rhetorical figures for real +ideas. The interesting subject for the whole universe, is to know if it +be not better, for the good of all mankind, to admit a rewarding and +revengeful God, who recompenses good actions hidden, and who punishes +secret crimes, than to admit none at all. + +Bayle exhausts himself in recounting all the infamies imputed by fable +to the gods of antiquity. His adversaries answer him with commonplaces +that signify nothing. The partisans of Bayle and his enemies have +almost always fought without making contact. They all agree that Jupiter +was an adulterer, Venus a wanton, Mercury a rogue. But, as I see it, +that is not what needs consideration. One must distinguish between +Ovid's Metamorphoses and the religion of the ancient Romans. It is quite +certain that never among the Romans or even among the Greeks, was there +a temple dedicated to Mercury the rogue, Venus the wanton, Jupiter the +adulterer. + +The god whom the Romans called _Deus optimus_, very good, very great, +was not reputed to encourage Clodius to sleep with Caesar's wife, or +Caesar to be King Nicomedes' Sodomite. + +Cicero does not say that Mercury incited Verres to steal Sicily, +although Mercury, in the fable, had stolen Apollo's cows. The real +religion of the ancients was that Jupiter, _very good and very just_, +and the secondary gods, punished the perjurer in the infernal regions. +Likewise the Romans were long the most religious observers of oaths. +Religion was very useful, therefore, to the Romans. There was no command +to believe in Leda's two eggs, in the changing of Inachus' daughter into +a cow, in the love of Apollo for Hyacinthus. + +One must not say therefore that the religion of Numa dishonoured the +Deity. For a long time, therefore, people have been disputing over a +chimera; which happens only too often. + +The question is then asked whether a nation of atheists can exist; it +seems to me that one must distinguish between the nation properly so +called, and a society of philosophers above the nation. It is very true +that in every country the populace has need of the greatest curb, and +that if Bayle had had only five or six hundred peasants to govern, he +would not have failed to announce to them the existence of a God, +rewarder and revenger. But Bayle would not have spoken of Him to the +Epicureans who were rich people, fond of rest, cultivating all the +social virtues, and above all friendship, fleeing the embarrassment and +danger of public affairs, in fine, leading a comfortable and innocent +life. It seems to me that in this way the dispute is finished as regards +society and politics. + +For entirely savage races, it has been said already that one cannot +count them among either the atheists or the theists. Asking them their +belief would be like asking them if they are for Aristotle or +Democritus: they know nothing; they are not atheists any more than they +are Peripatetics. + +In this case, I shall answer that the wolves live like this, and that an +assembly of cannibal barbarians such as you suppose them is not a +society; and I shall always ask you if, when you have lent your money to +someone in your society, you want neither your debtor, nor your +attorney, nor your judge, to believe in God. + + +OF MODERN ATHEISTS. REASONS OF THE WORSHIPPERS OF GOD + +We are intelligent beings: intelligent beings cannot have been formed by +a crude, blind, insensible being: there is certainly some difference +between the ideas of Newton and the dung of a mule. Newton's +intelligence, therefore, came from another intelligence. + +When we see a beautiful machine, we say that there is a good engineer, +and that this engineer has excellent judgment. The world is assuredly an +admirable machine; therefore there is in the world an admirable +intelligence, wherever it may be. This argument is old, and none the +worse for that. + +All living bodies are composed of levers, of pulleys, which function +according to the laws of mechanics; of liquids which the laws of +hydrostatics cause to circulate perpetually; and when one thinks that +all these beings have a perception quite unrelated to their +organization, one is overwhelmed with surprise. + +The movement of the heavenly bodies, that of our little earth round the +sun, all operate by virtue of the most profound mathematical law. How +Plato who was not aware of one of these laws, eloquent but visionary +Plato, who said that the earth was erected on an equilateral triangle, +and the water on a right-angled triangle; strange Plato, who says there +can be only five worlds, because there are only five regular bodies: +how, I say, did Plato, who did not know even spherical trigonometry, +have nevertheless a genius sufficiently fine, an instinct sufficiently +happy, to call God the "Eternal Geometer," to feel the existence of a +creative intelligence? Spinoza himself admits it. It is impossible to +strive against this truth which surrounds us and which presses on us +from all sides. + + +REASONS OF THE ATHEISTS + +Notwithstanding, I have known refractory persons who say that there is +no creative intelligence at all, and that movement alone has by itself +formed all that we see and all that we are. They tell you brazenly: + +"The combination of this universe was possible, seeing that the +combination exists: therefore it was possible that movement alone +arranged it. Take four of the heavenly bodies only, Mars, Venus, Mercury +and the Earth: let us think first only of the place where they are, +setting aside all the rest, and let us see how many probabilities we +have that movement alone put them in their respective places. We have +only twenty-four chances in this combination, that is, there are only +twenty-four chances against one to bet that these bodies will not be +where they are with reference to each other. Let us add to these four +globes that of Jupiter; there will be only a hundred and twenty against +one to bet that Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury and our globe, will not be +placed where we see them. + +"Add finally Saturn: there will be only seven hundred and twenty chances +against one, for putting these six big planets in the arrangement they +preserve among themselves, according to their given distances. It is +therefore demonstrated that in seven hundred and twenty throws, +movement alone has been able to put these six principal planets in their +order. + +"Take then all the secondary bodies, all their combinations, all their +movements, all the beings that vegetate, that live, that feel, that +think, that function in all the globes, you will have but to increase +the number of chances; multiply this number in all eternity, up to the +number which our feebleness calls 'infinity,' there will always be a +unity in favour of the formation of the world, such as it is, by +movement alone: therefore it is possible that in all eternity the +movement of matter alone has produced the entire universe such as it +exists. It is even inevitable that in eternity this combination should +occur. Thus," they say, "not only is it possible for the world to be +what it is by movement alone, but it was impossible for it not to be +likewise after an infinity of combinations." + +ANSWER + +All this supposition seems to me prodigiously fantastic, for two +reasons; first, that in this universe there are intelligent beings, and +that you would not know how to prove it possible for movement alone to +produce understanding; second, that, from your own avowal, there is +infinity against one to bet, that an intelligent creative cause animates +the universe. When one is alone face to face with the infinite, one +feels very small. + +Again, Spinoza himself admits this intelligence; it is the basis of his +system. You have not read it, and it must be read. Why do you want to go +further than him, and in foolish arrogance plunge your feeble reason in +an abyss into which Spinoza dared not descend? Do you realize thoroughly +the extreme folly of saying that it is a blind cause that arranges that +the square of a planet's revolution is always to the square of the +revolutions of other planets, as the cube of its distance is to the cube +of the distances of the others to the common centre? Either the +heavenly bodies are great geometers, or the Eternal Geometer has +arranged the heavenly bodies. + +But where is the Eternal Geometer? is He in one place or in all places, +without occupying space? I have no idea. Is it of His own substance that +He has arranged all things? I have no idea. Is He immense without +quantity and without quality? I have no idea. All that I know is that +one must worship Him and be just. + + +NEW OBJECTION OF A MODERN ATHEIST[4] + +Can one say that the parts of animals conform to their needs: what are +these needs? preservation and propagation. Is it astonishing then that, +of the infinite combinations which chance has produced, there has been +able to subsist only those that have organs adapted to the nourishment +and continuation of their species? have not all the others perished of +necessity? + +ANSWER + +This objection, oft-repeated since Lucretius, is sufficiently refuted by +the gift of sensation in animals, and by the gift of intelligence in +man. How should combinations "which chance has produced," produce this +sensation and this intelligence (as has just been said in the preceding +paragraph)? Without any doubt the limbs of animals are made for their +needs with incomprehensible art, and you are not so bold as to deny it. +You say no more about it. You feel that you have nothing to answer to +this great argument which nature brings against you. The disposition of +a fly's wing, a snail's organs suffices to bring you to the ground. + + +MAUPERTUIS' OBJECTION + +Modern natural philosophers have but expanded these so-called arguments, +often they have pushed them to trifling and indecency. They have found +God in the folds of the skin of the rhinoceros: one could, with equal +reason, deny His existence because of the tortoise's shell. + +ANSWER + +What reasoning! The tortoise and the rhinoceros, and all the different +species, are proof equally in their infinite variety of the same cause, +the same design, the same aim, which are preservation, generation and +death. + +There is unity in this infinite variety; the shell and the skin bear +witness equally. What! deny God because shell does not resemble leather! +And journalists have been prodigal of eulogies about these ineptitudes, +eulogies they have not given to Newton and Locke, both worshippers of +the Deity who spoke with full knowledge. + + +MAUPERTUIS' OBJECTION + +Of what use are beauty and proportion in the construction of the snake? +They may have uses, some say, of which we are ignorant. At least let us +be silent then; let us not admire an animal which we know only by the +harm it does. + +ANSWER + +And be you silent too, seeing that you cannot conceive its utility any +more than I can; or avow that in reptiles everything is admirably +proportioned. + +Some are venomous, you have been so yourself. Here there is question +only of the prodigious art which has formed snakes, quadrupeds, birds, +fish and bipeds. This art is sufficiently evident. You ask why the snake +does harm? And you, why have you done harm so many times? Why have you +been a persecutor? which is the greatest of all crimes for a +philosopher. That is another question, a question of moral and physical +ill. For long has one asked why there are so many snakes and so many +wicked men worse than snakes. If flies could reason, they would complain +to God of the existence of spiders; but they would admit what Minerva +admitted about Arachne, in the fable, that she arranges her web +marvellously. + +One is bound therefore to recognize an ineffable intelligence which even +Spinoza admitted. One must agree that this intelligence shines in the +vilest insect as in the stars. And as regards moral and physical ill, +what can one say, what do? console oneself by enjoying physical and +moral good, in worshipping the Eternal Being who has made one and +permitted the other. + +One more word on this subject. Atheism is the vice of a few intelligent +persons, and superstition is the vice of fools. But rogues! what are +they? rogues. + + +SECTION II + +Let us say a word on the moral question set in action by Bayle, to know +"if a society of atheists could exist?" Let us mark first of all in this +matter what is the enormous contradiction of men in this dispute; those +who have risen against Bayle's opinion with the greatest ardour; those +who have denied with the greatest insults the possibility of a society +of atheists, have since maintained with the same intrepidity that +atheism is the religion of the government of China. + +Assuredly they are quite mistaken about the Chinese government; they had +but to read the edicts of the emperors of this vast country to have +seen that these edicts are sermons, and that everywhere there is mention +of the Supreme Being, ruler, revenger, rewarder. + +But at the same time they are not less mistaken on the impossibility of +a society of atheists; and I do not know how Mr. Bayle can have +forgotten one striking example which was capable of making his cause +victorious. + +In what does a society of atheists appear impossible? It is that one +judges that men who had no check could never live together; that laws +can do nothing against secret crimes; that a revengeful God who punishes +in this world or the other the wicked who have escaped human justice is +necessary. + +The laws of Moses, it is true, did not teach a life to come, did not +threaten punishments after death, did not teach the first Jews the +immortality of the soul; but the Jews, far from being atheists, far from +believing in avoiding divine vengeance, were the most religious of all +men. Not only did they believe in the existence of an eternal God, but +they believed Him always present among them; they trembled lest they be +punished in themselves, in their wives, in their children, in their +posterity, even unto the fourth generation; this curb was very potent. + +But, among the Gentiles, many sects had no curb; the sceptics doubted +everything: the academicians suspended judgment on everything; the +Epicureans were persuaded that the Deity could not mix Himself in the +affairs of men; and at bottom, they admitted no Deity. They were +convinced that the soul is not a substance, but a faculty which is born +and which perishes with the body; consequently they had no yoke other +than morality and honour. The Roman senators and knights were veritable +atheists, for the gods did not exist for men who neither feared nor +hoped anything from them. The Roman senate in the time of Caesar and +Cicero, was therefore really an assembly of atheists. + +That great orator, in his harangue for Cluentius, says to the whole +senate in assembly: "What ill does death do him? we reject all the inept +fables of the nether regions: of what then has death deprived him? of +nothing but the consciousness of suffering." + +Does not Caesar, the friend of Cataline, wishing to save his friend's +life against this same Cicero, object to him that to make a criminal die +is not to punish him at all, that death _is nothing_, that it is merely +the end of our ills, that it is a moment more happy than calamitous? And +do not Cicero and the whole senate surrender to these reasons? The +conquerors and the legislators of the known universe formed visibly +therefore a society of men who feared nothing from the gods, who were +real atheists. + +Further on Bayle examines whether idolatry is more dangerous than +atheism, if it is a greater crime not to believe in the Deity than to +have unworthy opinions thereof: in that he is of Plutarch's opinion; he +believes it is better to have no opinion than to have a bad opinion; but +with all deference to Plutarch, it was clearly infinitely better for the +Greeks to fear Ceres, Neptune and Jupiter, than to fear nothing at all. +The sanctity of oaths is clearly necessary, and one should have more +confidence in those who believe that a false oath will be punished, than +in those who think they can make a false oath with impunity. It is +indubitable that in a civilized town, it is infinitely more useful to +have a religion, even a bad one, than to have none at all. + +It looks, therefore, that Bayle should have examined rather which is the +more dangerous, fanaticism or atheism. Fanaticism is certainly a +thousand times more deadly; for atheism inspires no bloody passion, +whereas fanaticism does: atheism is not opposed to crime, but fanaticism +causes crimes to be committed. Fanatics committed the massacres of St. +Bartholomew. Hobbes passed for an atheist; he led a tranquil and +innocent life. The fanatics of his time deluged England, Scotland and +Ireland with blood. Spinoza was not only atheist, but he taught atheism; +it was not he assuredly who took part in the judicial assassination of +Barneveldt; it was not he who tore the brothers De Witt in pieces, and +who ate them grilled. + +The atheists are for the most part impudent and misguided scholars who +reason badly, and who not being able to understand the creation, the +origin of evil, and other difficulties, have recourse to the hypothesis +of the eternity of things and of inevitability. + +The ambitious, the sensual, have hardly time for reasoning, and for +embracing a bad system; they have other things to do than comparing +Lucretius with Socrates. That is how things go among us. + +That was not how things went with the Roman senate which was almost +entirely composed of atheists in theory and in practice, that is to say, +who believed in neither a Providence nor a future life; this senate was +an assembly of philosophers, of sensualists and ambitious men, all very +dangerous, who ruined the republic. Epicureanism existed under the +emperors: the atheists of the senate had been rebels in the time of +Sylla and Caesar: under Augustus and Tiberius they were atheist slaves. + +I would not wish to have to deal with an atheist prince, who would find +it to his interest to have me ground to powder in a mortar: I should be +quite sure of being ground to powder. If I were a sovereign, I would not +wish to have to deal with atheist courtiers, whose interest it would be +to poison me: I should have to be taking antidotes every day. It is +therefore absolutely necessary for princes and for peoples, that the +idea of a Supreme Being, creator, ruler, rewarder, revenger, shall be +deeply engraved in people's minds. + +Bayle says, in his "Thoughts on the Comets," that there are atheist +peoples. The Caffres, the Hottentots, the Topinambous, and many other +small nations, have no God: they neither deny nor affirm; they have +never heard speak of Him; tell them that there is a God: they will +believe it easily; tell them that everything happens through the nature +of things; they will believe you equally. To claim that they are +atheists is to make the same imputation as if one said they are +anti-Cartesian; they are neither for nor against Descartes. They are +real children; a child is neither atheist nor deist, he is nothing. + +What conclusion shall we draw from all this? That atheism is a very +pernicious monster in those who govern; that it is also pernicious in +the persons around statesmen, although their lives may be innocent, +because from their cabinets it may pierce right to the statesmen +themselves; that if it is not so deadly as fanaticism, it is nearly +always fatal to virtue. Let us add especially that there are less +atheists to-day than ever, since philosophers have recognized that there +is no being vegetating without germ, no germ without a plan, etc., and +that wheat comes in no wise from putrefaction. + +Some geometers who are not philosophers have rejected final causes, but +real philosophers admit them; a catechist proclaims God to the children, +and Newton demonstrates Him to the learned. + +If there are atheists, whom must one blame, if not the mercenary tyrants +of souls, who, making us revolt against their knaveries, force a few +weak minds to deny the God whom these monsters dishonour. How many times +have the people's leeches brought oppressed citizens to the point of +revolting against their king! + +Men fattened on our substance cry to us: "Be persuaded that a she-ass +has spoken; believe that a fish has swallowed a man and has given him up +at the end of three days safe and sound on the shore; have no doubt that +the God of the universe ordered one Jewish prophet to eat excrement +(Ezekiel), and another prophet to buy two whores and to make with them +sons of whoredom (Hosea). These are the very words that the God of truth +and purity has been made to utter; believe a hundred things either +visibly abominable or mathematically impossible; unless you do, the God +of pity will burn you, not only during millions of thousands of millions +of centuries in the fire of hell, but through all eternity, whether you +have a body, whether you have not." + +These inconceivable absurdities revolt weak and rash minds, as well as +wise and resolute minds. They say: "Our masters paint God to us as the +most insensate and the most barbarous of all beings; therefore there is +no God;" but they should say: therefore our masters attribute to God +their absurdities and their furies, therefore God is the contrary of +what they proclaim, therefore God is as wise and as good as they make +him out mad and wicked. It is thus that wise men account for things. But +if a bigot hears them, he denounces them to a magistrate who is a +watchdog of the priests; and this watchdog has them burned over a slow +fire, in the belief that he is avenging and imitating the divine majesty +he outrages. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] Arnobius, _Adversus Gentes._, lib. v. + +[2] _Of Superstition_, by Plutarch. + +[3] See Bayle, _Continuation of Divers Thoughts_, par. 77, art. XIII. + +[4] See, for this objection, Maupertuis' Essay on Cosmology, first part. + + + + +_AUTHORITY_ + + +Wretched human beings, whether you wear green robes, turbans, black +robes or surplices, cloaks and neckbands, never seek to use authority +where there is question only of reason, or consent to be scoffed at +throughout the centuries as the most impertinent of all men, and to +suffer public hatred as the most unjust. + +A hundred times has one spoken to you of the insolent absurdity with +which you condemned Galileo, and I speak to you for the hundred and +first, and I hope you will keep the anniversary of it for ever; I desire +that there be graved on the door of your Holy Office: + +"Here seven cardinals, assisted by minor brethren, had the master of +thought in Italy thrown into prison at the age of seventy; made him fast +on bread and water because he instructed the human race, and because +they were ignorant." + +There was pronounced a sentence in favour of Aristotle's categories, and +there was decreed learnedly and equitably the penalty of the galleys for +whoever should be sufficiently daring as to have an opinion different +from that of the Stagyrite, whose books were formerly burned by two +councils. + +Further on a faculty, which had not great faculties, issued a decree +against innate ideas, and later a decree for innate ideas, without the +said faculty being informed by its beadles what an idea is. + +In the neighbouring schools judicial proceedings were instituted against +the circulation of the blood. + +An action was started against inoculation, and parties have been +subpoenaed. + +At the Customs of thought twenty-one folio volumes were seized, in which +it was stated treacherously and wickedly that triangles always have +three angles; that a father is older than his son; that Rhea Silvia lost +her virginity before giving birth to her child, and that flour is not an +oak leaf. + +In another year was judged the action: _Utrum chimera bombinans in vacuo +possit comedere secundas intentiones_, and was decided in the +affirmative. + +In consequence, everyone thought themselves far superior to Archimedes, +Euclid, Cicero, Pliny, and strutted proudly about the University +quarter. + + + + +_AUTHORS_ + + +Author is a generic name which can, like the name of all other +professions, signify good or bad, worthy of respect or ridicule, useful +and agreeable, or trash for the wastepaper-basket. + + * * * * * + +We think that the author of a good work should refrain from three +things--from putting his name, save very modestly, from the epistle +dedicatory, and from the preface. Others should refrain from a +fourth--that is, from writing. + + * * * * * + +Prefaces are another stumbling-block. "The 'I,'" said Pascal, "is +hateful." Speak as little of yourself as possible; for you must know +that the reader's self-esteem is as great as yours. He will never +forgive you for wanting to condemn him to have a good opinion of you. It +is for your book to speak for you, if it comes to be read by the crowd. + + * * * * * + +If you want to be an author, if you want to write a book; reflect that +it must be useful and new, or at least infinitely agreeable. + + * * * * * + +If an ignoramus, a pamphleteer, presumes to criticize without +discrimination, you can confound him; but make rare mention of him, for +fear of sullying your writings. + + * * * * * + +If you are attacked as regards your style, never reply; it is for your +work alone to make answer. + + * * * * * + +Someone says you are ill, be content that you are well, without wanting +to prove to the public that you are in perfect health. And above all +remember that the public cares precious little whether you are well or +ill. + + * * * * * + +A hundred authors make compilations in order to have bread, and twenty +pamphleteers make excerpts from these compilations, or apology for them, +or criticism and satire of them, also with the idea of having bread, +because they have no other trade. All these persons go on Friday to the +police lieutenant of Paris to ask permission to sell their rubbish. They +have audience immediately after the strumpets who do not look at them +because they know that these are underhand dealings.[5] + + * * * * * + +Real authors are those who have succeeded in one of the real arts, in +epic poetry, in tragedy or comedy, in history or philosophy, who have +taught men or charmed them. The others of whom we have spoken are, among +men of letters, what wasps are among birds. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[5] When Voltaire was writing, it was the police lieutenant of Paris who +had, under the chancellor, the inspection of books: since then, a part +of his department has been taken from him. He has kept only the +inspection of theatrical plays and works below those on printed sheets. +The detail of this part is immense. In Paris one is not permitted to +print that one has lost one's dog, unless the police are assured that in +the poor beast's description there is no proposition contrary to +morality and religion (1819). + + + + +_BANISHMENT_ + + +Banishment for a period or for life, punishment to which one condemns +delinquents, or those one wishes to appear as such. + +Not long ago one banished outside the sphere of jurisdiction a petty +thief, a petty forger, a man guilty of an act of violence. The result +was that he became a big robber, a forger on a big scale, and murderer +within the sphere of another jurisdiction. It is as if we threw into our +neighbours' fields the stones which incommode us in our own. + +Those who have written on the rights of men, have been much tormented to +know for certain if a man who has been banished from his fatherland +still belongs to his fatherland. It is nearly the same thing as asking +if a gambler who has been driven away from the gaming-table is still one +of the gamblers. + +If to every man it is permitted by natural right to choose his +fatherland, he who has lost the right of citizen can, with all the more +reason, choose for himself a new fatherland; but can he bear arms +against his former fellow-citizens? There are a thousand examples of it. +How many French protestants naturalized in Holland, England and Germany +have served against France, and against armies containing their own +kindred and their own brothers! The Greeks who were in the King of +Persia's armies made war on the Greeks, their former compatriots. One +has seen the Swiss in the Dutch service fire on the Swiss in the French +service. It is still worse than to fight against those who have banished +you; for, after all, it seems less dishonest to draw the sword for +vengeance than to draw it for money. + + + + +_BANKRUPTCY_ + + +Few bankruptcies were known in France before the sixteenth century. The +great reason is that there were no bankers. Lombards, Jews lent on +security at ten per cent: trade was conducted in cash. Exchange, +remittances to foreign countries were a secret unknown to all judges. + +It is not that many people were not ruined; but that was not called +_bankruptcy_; one said _discomfiture_; this word is sweeter to the ear. +One used the word _rupture_ as did the Boulonnais; but rupture does not +sound so well. + +The bankruptcies came to us from Italy, _bancorotto, bancarotta, +gambarotta e la giustizia non impicar_. Every merchant had his bench +(_banco_) in the place of exchange; and when he had conducted his +business badly, declared himself _fallito_, and abandoned his property +to his creditors with the proviso that he retain a good part of it for +himself, be free and reputed a very upright man. There was nothing to be +said to him, his bench was broken, _banco rotto, banca rotta_; he could +even, in certain towns, keep all his property and baulk his creditors, +provided he seated himself bare-bottomed on a stone in the presence of +all the merchants. This was a mild derivation of the old Roman +proverb--_solvere aut in aere aut in cute_, to pay either with one's +money or one's skin. But this custom no longer exists; creditors have +preferred their money to a bankrupt's hinder parts. + +In England and in some other countries, one declares oneself bankrupt in +the gazettes. The partners and creditors gather together by virtue of +this announcement which is read in the coffee-houses, and they come to +an arrangement as best they can. + +As among the bankruptcies there are frequently fraudulent cases, it has +been necessary to punish them. If they are taken to court they are +everywhere regarded as theft, and the guilty are condemned to +ignominious penalties. + +It is not true that in France the death penalty was decreed against +bankrupts without distinction. Simple failures involved no penalty; +fraudulent bankrupts suffered the penalty of death in the states of +Orleans, under Charles IX., and in the states of Blois in 1576, but +these edicts, renewed by Henry IV., were merely comminatory. + +It is too difficult to prove that a man has dishonoured himself on +purpose, and has voluntarily ceded all his goods to his creditors in +order to cheat them. When there has been a doubt, one has been content +with putting the unfortunate man in the pillory, or with sending him to +the galleys, although ordinarily a banker makes a poor convict. + +Bankrupts were very favourably treated in the last year of Louis XIV.'s +reign, and during the Regency. The sad state to which the interior of +the kingdom was reduced, the multitude of merchants who could not or +would not pay, the quantity of unsold or unsellable effects, the fear of +interrupting all commerce, obliged the government in 1715, 1716, 1718, +1721, 1722, and 1726 to suspend all proceedings against all those who +were in a state of insolvency. The discussions of these actions were +referred to the judge-consuls; this is a jurisdiction of merchants very +expert in these cases, and better constituted for going into these +commercial details than the parliaments which have always been more +occupied with the laws of the kingdom than with finance. As the state +was at that time going bankrupt, it would have been too hard to punish +the poor middle-class bankrupts. + +Since then we have had eminent men, fraudulent bankrupts, but they have +not been punished. + + + + +_BEAUTY_ + + +Ask a toad what beauty is, the _to kalon_? He will answer you that it is +his toad wife with two great round eyes issuing from her little head, a +wide, flat mouth, a yellow belly, a brown back. Interrogate a Guinea +negro, for him beauty is a black oily skin, deep-set eyes, a flat nose. +Interrogate the devil; he will tell you that beauty is a pair of horns, +four claws and a tail. Consult, lastly, the philosophers, they will +answer you with gibberish: they have to have something conforming to the +arch-type of beauty in essence, to the _to kalon_. + +One day I was at a tragedy near by a philosopher. "How beautiful that +is!" he said. + +"What do you find beautiful there?" I asked. + +"It is beautiful," he answered, "because the author has reached his +goal." + +The following day he took some medicine which did him good. "The +medicine has reached its goal," I said to him. "What a beautiful +medicine!" He grasped that one cannot say a medicine is beautiful, and +that to give the name of "beauty" to something, the thing must cause you +to admire it and give you pleasure. He agreed that the tragedy had +inspired these sentiments in him, and that there was the _to kalon_, +beauty. + +We journeyed to England: the same piece, perfectly translated, was +played there; it made everybody in the audience yawn. "Ho, ho!" he said, +"the _to kalon_ is not the same for the English and the French." After +much reflection he came to the conclusion that beauty is often very +relative, just as what is decent in Japan is indecent in Rome, and what +is fashionable in Paris, is not fashionable in Pekin; and he saved +himself the trouble of composing a long treatise on beauty. + +There are actions which the whole world finds beautiful. Two of Caesar's +officers, mortal enemies, send each other a challenge, not as to who +shall shed the other's blood with tierce and quarte behind a thicket as +with us, but as to who shall best defend the Roman camp, which the +Barbarians are about to attack. One of them, having repulsed the enemy, +is near succumbing; the other rushes to his aid, saves his life, and +completes the victory. + +A friend sacrifices his life for his friend; a son for his father.... +The Algonquin, the Frenchman, the Chinaman, will all say that that is +very _beautiful_, that these actions give them pleasure, that they +admire them. + +They will say as much of the great moral maxims, of Zarathustra's--"In +doubt if an action be just, abstain..."; of Confucius'--"Forget +injuries, never forget kindnesses." + +The negro with the round eyes and flat nose, who will not give the name +of "beauties" to the ladies of our courts, will without hesitation give +it to these actions and these maxims. The wicked man even will recognize +the beauty of these virtues which he dare not imitate. The beauty which +strikes the senses merely, the imagination, and that which is called +"intelligence," is often uncertain therefore. The beauty which speaks to +the heart is not that. You will find a host of people who will tell you +that they have found nothing beautiful in three-quarters of the Iliad; +but nobody will deny that Codrus' devotion to his people was very +beautiful, supposing it to be true. + +There are many other reasons which determine me not to write a treatise +on beauty. + + + + +_BISHOP_ + + +Samuel Ornik, native of Basle, was, as you know, a very amiable young +man who, besides, knew his New Testament by heart in Greek and German. +When he was twenty his parents sent him on a journey. He was charged to +carry some books to the coadjutor of Paris, at the time of the Fronde. +He arrived at the door of the archbishop's residence; the Swiss told him +that Monseigneur saw nobody. "Comrade," said Ornik to him, "you are very +rude to your compatriots. The apostles let everyone approach, and Jesus +Christ desired that people should suffer all the little children to come +to him. I have nothing to ask of your master; on the contrary, I have +brought him something." + +"Come inside, then," said the Swiss. + +He waits an hour in a first antechamber. As he was very naive, he began +a conversation with a servant, who was very fond of telling all he knew +of his master. "He must be mightily rich," said Ornik, "to have this +crowd of pages and flunkeys whom I see running about the house." + +"I don't know what his income is," answered the other, "but I heard it +said to Joly and the Abbe Charier that he already had two millions of +debts." + +"But who is that lady coming out of the room?" + +"That is Madame de Pomereu, one of his mistresses." + +"She is really very pretty; but I have not read that the apostles had +such company in their bedrooms in the mornings. Ah! I think the +archbishop is going to give audience." + +"Say--'His Highness, Monseigneur.'" + +"Willingly." Ornik salutes His Highness, presents his books, and is +received with a very gracious smile. The archbishop says four words to +him, then climbs into his coach, escorted by fifty horsemen. In +climbing, Monseigneur lets a sheath fall. Ornik is quite astonished that +Monseigneur carries so large an ink-horn in his pocket. "Don't you see +that's his dagger?" says the chatterbox. "Everyone carries a dagger when +he goes to parliament." + +"That's a pleasant way of officiating," says Ornik; and he goes away +very astonished. + +He traverses France, and enlightens himself from town to town; thence he +passes into Italy. When he is in the Pope's territory, he meets one of +those bishops with a thousand crowns income, walking on foot. Ornik was +very polite; he offers him a place in his cambiature. "You are doubtless +on your way to comfort some sick man, Monseigneur?" + +"Sir, I am on my way to my master's." + +"Your master? that is Jesus Christ, doubtless?" + +"Sir, it is Cardinal Azolin; I am his almoner. He pays me very poorly; +but he has promised to place me in the service of Donna Olimpia, the +favourite sister-in-law _di nostro signore_." + +"What! you are in the pay of a cardinal? But do you not know that there +were no cardinals in the time of Jesus Christ and St. John?" + +"Is it possible?" cried the Italian prelate. + +"Nothing is more true; you have read it in the Gospel." + +"I have never read it," answered the bishop; "all I know is Our Lady's +office." + +"I tell you there were neither cardinals nor bishops, and when there +were bishops, the priests were their equals almost, according to +Jerome's assertions in several places." + +"Holy Virgin," said the Italian. "I knew nothing about it: and the +popes?" + +"There were not any popes any more than cardinals." + +The good bishop crossed himself; he thought he was with an evil spirit, +and jumped out of the cambiature. + + + + +_BOOKS_ + + +You despise them, books, you whose whole life is plunged in the vanities +of ambition and in the search for pleasure or in idleness; but think +that the whole of the known universe, with the exception of the savage +races is governed by books alone. The whole of Africa right to Ethiopia +and Nigritia obeys the book of the Alcoran, after having staggered under +the book of the Gospel. China is ruled by the moral book of Confucius; a +greater part of India by the book of the Veidam. Persia was governed for +centuries by the books of one of the Zarathustras. + +If you have a law-suit, your goods, your honour, your life even depends +on the interpretation of a book which you never read. + +_Robert the Devil_, the _Four Sons of Aymon_, the _Imaginings of Mr. +Oufle_, are books also; but it is with books as with men; the very small +number play a great part, the rest are mingled in the crowd. + +Who leads the human race in civilized countries? those who know how to +read and write. You do not know either Hippocrates, Boerhaave or +Sydenham; but you put your body in the hands of those who have read +them. You abandon your soul to those who are paid to read the Bible, +although there are not fifty among them who have read it in its entirety +with care. + +To such an extent do books govern the world, that those who command +to-day in the city of the Scipios and the Catos have desired that the +books of their law should be only for them; it is their sceptre; they +have made it a crime of _lese-majeste_ for their subjects to look there +without express permission. In other countries it has been forbidden to +think in writing without letters patent. + +There are nations among whom thought is regarded purely as an object of +commerce. The operations of the human mind are valued there only at two +sous the sheet. + +In another country, the liberty of explaining oneself by books is one of +the most inviolable prerogatives. Print all that you like under pain of +boring or of being punished if you abuse too considerably your natural +right. + +Before the admirable invention of printing, books were rarer and more +expensive than precious stones. Almost no books among the barbarian +nations until Charlemagne, and from him to the French king Charles V., +surnamed "the wise"; and from this Charles right to Francois Ier, there +is an extreme dearth. + +The Arabs alone had books from the eighth century of our era to the +thirteenth. + +China was filled with them when we did not know how to read or write. + +Copyists were much employed in the Roman Empire from the time of the +Scipios up to the inundation of the barbarians. + +The Greeks occupied themselves much in transcribing towards the time of +Amyntas, Philip and Alexander; they continued this craft especially in +Alexandria. + +This craft is somewhat ungrateful. The merchants always paid the authors +and the copyists very badly. It took two years of assiduous labour for a +copyist to transcribe the Bible well on vellum. What time and what +trouble for copying correctly in Greek and Latin the works of Origen, of +Clement of Alexandria, and of all those other authors called "fathers." + +The poems of Homer were long so little known that Pisistratus was the +first who put them in order, and who had them transcribed in Athens, +about five hundred years before the era of which we are making use. + +To-day there are not perhaps a dozen copies of the Veidam and the +Zend-Avesta in the whole of the East. + +You would not have found a single book in the whole of Russia in 1700, +with the exception of Missals and a few Bibles in the homes of aged men +drunk on brandy. + +To-day people complain of a surfeit: but it is not for readers to +complain; the remedy is easy; nothing forces them to read. It is not any +the more for authors to complain. Those who make the crowd must not cry +that they are being crushed. Despite the enormous quantity of books, how +few people read! and if one read profitably, one would see the +deplorable follies to which the common people offer themselves as prey +every day. + +What multiplies books, despite the law of not multiplying beings +unnecessarily, is that with books one makes others; it is with several +volumes already printed that a new history of France or Spain is +fabricated, without adding anything new. All dictionaries are made with +dictionaries; almost all new geography books are repetitions of +geography books. The Summation of St. Thomas has produced two thousand +fat volumes of theology; and the same family of little worms that have +gnawed the mother, gnaw likewise the children. + + + + +_BOULEVERD OR BOULEVART_ + + +Boulevart, fortification, rampart. Belgrade is the boulevart of the +Ottoman Empire on the Hungarian side. Who would believe that this word +originally signified only a game of bowls? The people of Paris played +bowls on the grass of the rampart; this grass was called the _verd_, +like the grass market. _On boulait sur le verd._ From there it comes +that the English, whose language is a copy of ours in almost all the +words which are not Saxon, have called the game of bowls +"bowling-green," the _verd_ (green) of the game of bowls. We have taken +back from them what we had lent them. Following their example, we gave +the name of _boulingrins_, without knowing the strength of the word, to +the grass-plots we introduced into our gardens. + +I once heard two good dames who were going for a walk on the +_Bouleverd_, and not on the _Boulevart_. People laughed at them, and +wrongly. But in all matters custom carries the day; and everyone who is +right against custom is hissed or condemned. + + + + +_BOURGES_ + + +Our questions barely turn on geography; but let us be permitted to mark +in two words our astonishment about the town of Bourges. The +"Dictionnaire de Trevoux" claims that "it is one of the most ancient +towns of Europe, that it was the seat of the empire of the Gauls, and +gave kings to the Celts." + +I do not wish to combat the ancientness of any town or any family. But +was there ever an empire of the Gauls? Did the Celts have kings? This +mania for antiquity is a malady from which one will not be healed so +soon. The Gauls, Germany, Scandinavia have nothing that is antique save +the land, the trees and the animals. If you want antiquities, go toward +Asia, and even then it is very small beer. Man is ancient and monuments +new, that is what we have in view in more than one article. + +If it were a real benefit to be born in a stone or wooden enclosure more +ancient than another, it would be very reasonable to make the foundation +of one's town date back to the time of the war of the giants; but since +there is not the least advantage in this vanity, one must break away +from it. That is all I had to say about Bourges. + + + + +_BRAHMINS_ + + +Is it not probable that the Brahmins were the first legislators of the +earth, the first philosophers, the first theologians? + +Do not the few monuments of ancient history which remain to us form a +great presumption in their favour, since the first Greek philosophers +went to them to learn mathematics, and since the most ancient +curiosities collected by the emperors of China are all Indian? + +We will speak elsewhere of the "Shasta"; it is the first book of +theology of the Brahmins, written about fifteen hundred years before +their "Veidam," and anterior to all the other books. + +Their annals make no mention of any war undertaken by them at any time. +The words for _arms_, to _kill_, to _maim_, are not to be found either +in the fragments of the "Shasta" which we have, or in the "Ezourveidam," +or in the "Cormoveidam." I can at least give the assurance that I did +not see them in these last two collections: and what is still more +singular is that the "Shasta" which speaks of a conspiracy in heaven, +makes no mention of any war in the great peninsula enclosed between the +Indus and the Ganges. + +The Hebrews, who were known so late, never name the Brahmins; they had +no knowledge of India until after the conquests of Alexander, and their +settling in Egypt, of which they had said so much evil. The name of +India is to be found only in the Book of Esther, and in that of Job +which was not Hebrew. One remarks a singular contrast between the sacred +books of the Hebrews, and those of the Indians. The Indian books +announce only peace and gentleness; they forbid the killing of animals: +the Hebrew books speak only of killing, of the massacre of men and +beasts; everything is slaughtered in the name of the Lord; it is quite +another order of things. + +It is incontestably from the Brahmins that we hold the idea of the fall +of the celestial beings in revolt against the Sovereign of nature; and +it is from there probably that the Greeks drew the fable of the Titans. +It is there also that the Jews at last took the idea of the revolt of +Lucifer, in the first century of our era. + +How could these Indians suppose a revolt in heaven without having seen +one on earth? Such a jump from human nature to divine nature is barely +conceivable. Usually one goes from known to unknown. + +One does not imagine a war of giants until one has seen some men more +robust than the others tyrannize over their fellows. The first Brahmins +must either have experienced violent discords, or at least have seen +them in heaven. + +It is a very astonishing phenomenon for a society of men who have never +made war to have invented a species of war made in the imaginary spaces, +or in a globe distant from ours, or in what is called the "firmament," +the "empyrean." But it must be carefully observed that in this revolt of +celestial beings against their Sovereign no blows were struck, no +celestial blood flowed, no mountains hurled at the head, no angels cut +in two, as in Milton's sublime and grotesque poem. + +According to the "Shasta," it is only a formal disobedience to the +orders of the Most High, a cabal which God punishes by relegating the +rebellious angels to a vast place of shadows called "Ondera" during the +period of an entire mononthour. A mononthour is four hundred and +twenty-six millions of our years. But God deigned to pardon the guilty +after five thousand years, and their ondera was only a purgatory. + +He made "Mhurd" of them, men, and placed them in our globe on condition +that they should not eat animals, and that they should not copulate with +the males of their new species, under pain of returning to ondera. + +Those are the principal articles of the Brahmins' faith, which have +lasted without interruption from immemorial times right to our day: it +seems strange to us that among them it should be as grave a sin to eat a +chicken as to commit sodomy. + +This is only a small part of the ancient cosmogony of the Brahmins. +Their rites, their pagodas, prove that among them everything was +allegorical; they still represent virtue beneath the emblem of a woman +who has ten arms, and who combats ten mortal sins represented by +monsters. Our missionaries have not failed to take this image of virtue +for that of the devil, and to assure us that the devil is worshipped in +India. We have never been among these people but to enrich ourselves and +to calumniate them. + +Really we have forgotten a very essential thing in this little article +on the Brahmins; it is that their sacred books are filled with +contradictions. But the people do not know of them, and the doctors have +solutions ready, figurative meanings, allegories, symbols, express +declarations of Birma, Brahma and Vitsnou, which should close the mouths +of all who reason. + + + + +_CHARACTER_ + + +From the Greek word _impression_, _engraving_. + +It is what nature has graved in us. + +Can one change one's character? Yes, if one changes one's body. It is +possible for a man born blunderer, unbending and violent, being stricken +with apoplexy in his old age, to become a foolish, tearful child, timid +and peaceable. His body is no longer the same. But as long as his +nerves, his blood and his marrow are in the same state, his nature will +not change any more than a wolf's and a marten's instinct. + +The character is composed of our ideas and our feelings: well, it is +substantiated that we give ourselves neither feelings nor ideas; +therefore our character does not depend on us. + +If it depended on us, there is nobody who would not be perfect. + +We cannot give ourselves tastes, talents; why should we give ourselves +qualities? + +If one does not reflect, one thinks oneself master of everything; when +one reflects thereon, one sees that one is master of nothing. + +Should you wish to change a man's character completely, purge him with +diluents every day until you have killed him. Charles XII., in his +suppurative fever on the road to Bender, was no longer the same man. One +prevailed upon him as upon a child. + +If I have a crooked nose and two cat's eyes, I can hide them with a +mask. Can I do more with the character which nature has given me? + +A man born violent, hasty, presented himself before Francois I., King of +France, to complain of an injustice; the prince's countenance, the +respectful bearing of the courtiers, the very place where he is, make a +powerful impression on this man; mechanically he lowers his eyes, his +rough voice softens, he presents his petition humbly, one would believe +him born as gentle as are (at that moment at least) the courtiers, +amongst whom he is even disconcerted; but Francois I. understands +physiognomy, he easily discovers in the lowered eyes, burning +nevertheless with sombre fire, in the strained facial muscles, in the +compressed lips, that this man is not so gentle as he is forced to +appear. This man follows him to Pavia, is taken with him, led to the +same prison in Madrid: Francois I.'s majesty no longer makes the same +impression on him; he grows familiar with the object of his respect. One +day when pulling off the king's boots, and pulling them off badly, the +king, embittered by his misfortune, gets angry; my man sends the king +about his business, and throws his boots out of the window. + +Sixtus V. was born petulant, stubborn, haughty, impetuous, vindictive, +arrogant; this character seemed softened during the trials of his +novitiate. He begins to enjoy a certain credit in his order; he flies +into a passion with a guard, and batters him with his fist: he is +inquisitor at Venice; he performs his duties with insolence: behold him +cardinal, he is possessed _dalla rabbia papale_: this fury triumphs over +his nature; he buries his person and his character in obscurity; he apes +the humble and the dying man; he is elected Pope; this moment gives back +to the spring, which politics have bent, all its long curbed elasticity; +he is the haughtiest and most despotic of sovereigns. + + _Naturam expella furca, tamen usque recurret._ + + (Hor. L. I., ep. x). + + Drive away nature, it returns at the gallop. + + (DESTOUCHES, _Glorieux_, Act 3, Sc. 5.) + +Religion, morality put a brake on a nature's strength; they cannot +destroy it. The drunkard in a cloister, reduced to a half-setier of +cider at each meal, will no longer get drunk, but he will always like +wine. + +Age enfeebles character; it is a tree that produces only degenerate +fruit, but the fruit is always of the same nature; it is knotted and +covered with moss, it becomes worm-eaten, but it is always oak or pear +tree. If one could change one's character, one would give oneself one, +one would be master of nature. Can one give oneself anything? do we not +receive everything? Try to animate an indolent man with a continued +activity; to freeze with apathy the boiling soul of an impetuous fellow, +to inspire someone who has neither ear nor taste with a taste for music +and poetry, you will no more succeed than if you undertook to give sight +to a man born blind. We perfect, we soften, we conceal what nature has +put in us, but we do not put in ourselves anything at all. + +One says to a farmer: "You have too many fish in this pond, they will +not prosper; there are too many cattle in your meadows, grass lacks, +they will grow thin." It happens after this exhortation that the pikes +eat half my man's carp, and the wolves the half of his sheep; the rest +grow fat. Will he congratulate himself on his economy? This countryman, +it is you; one of your passions has devoured the others, and you think +you have triumphed over yourself. Do not nearly all of us resemble that +old general of ninety who, having met some young officers who were +debauching themselves with some girls, says to them angrily: "Gentlemen, +is that the example I give you?" + + + + +_CHARLATAN_ + + +The article entitled "Charlatan" in the "Encyclopedic Dictionary" is +filled with useful truths agreeably presented. The Chevalier de Jaucourt +has there presented the charlatanry of medicine. + +We will take the liberty of adding here a few reflections. The abode of +the doctors is in the large towns; there are barely any doctors in the +country. It is in the great towns that the rich invalids are; +debauchery, the excesses of the table, the passions, are the cause of +their maladies. Dumoulin, not the lawyer, the doctor, who was as good a +practician as the other, said as he was dying, that he left two great +doctors behind him, diet and river water. + +In 1728, in the time of Law, the most famous charlatan of the first +species, another, Villars by name, confided to some friends that his +uncle who had lived nearly a hundred years, and who died only by +accident, had left him the secret of a water which could easily prolong +life to a hundred and fifty years, provided a man was temperate. When he +saw a funeral pass, he shrugged his shoulders in pity; if the defunct, +he observed, had drunk my water, he would not be where he is. His +friends to whom he gave generously of the water, and who observed the +prescribed regime in some degree, thrived on it and praised it. He then +sold the bottle for six francs; the sale was prodigious. It was water +from the Seine with a little nitre. Those who took it and who subjected +themselves to a certain amount of regime, above all those who were born +with a good constitution, recovered perfect health in a few days. He +said to the others: "It is your fault if you are not entirely cured: +correct these two vices and you will live at least a hundred and fifty +years." Some of them reformed; this good charlatan's fortune increased +like his reputation. The Abbe de Pons, the enthusiast, put him far above +the Marechal de Villars: "The Marechal kills men," he said to him, "but +you make them live." + +People learned at last that Villars Water was only river water; they +would have no more of it; and went to other charlatans. + +It is certain that he had done good, and that the only reproach one +could make against him was that he had sold Seine water a little too +dear. He led men to temperance by which fact he was superior to the +apothecary Arnoult, who stuffed Europe with his sachets against +apoplexy, without recommending any virtue. + +I knew in London a doctor named Brown, who practised in Barbados. He had +a sugar refinery and negroes; he was robbed of a considerable sum; he +assembled his negroes: "My lads," he said to them, "the great serpent +appeared to me during the night, he told me that the thief would at this +moment have a parrot's feather on the end of his nose." The guilty man +promptly put his hand to his nose. "It is you who robbed me," said the +master; "the great serpent has just told me so." And he regained his +money. One can hardly condemn such a charlatanry; but one must be +dealing with negroes. + +Scipio Africanus, this great Scipio very different otherwise from Dr. +Brown, willingly made his soldiers believe that he was inspired by the +gods. This great charlatanry was long the custom. Can one blame Scipio +to have availed himself of it? he was the man who perhaps did most +honour to the Roman Republic; but why did the gods inspire him not to +render his accounts? + +Numa did better; it was necessary to police some brigands and a senate +which was the most difficult section of these brigands to govern. If he +had proposed his laws to the assembled tribes, the assassins of his +predecessor would have made a thousand difficulties. He addressed +himself to the goddess Egeria, who gave him some pandects from Jupiter; +he was obeyed without contradiction, and he reigned happily. His +instructions were good, his charlatanry did good; but if some secret +enemy had discovered the imposture, if he had said: "Exterminate an +impostor who prostitutes the name of the gods in order to deceive men," +Numa ran the risk of being sent to heaven with Romulus. + +It is probable that Numa took his measures very carefully, and that he +deceived the Romans for their benefit, with a dexterity suitable to the +time, the place, the intelligence of the early Romans. + +Mahomet was twenty times on the point of failing, but he succeeded at +last with the Arabs of Medina; and people believed that he was the +intimate friend of the Archangel Gabriel. If to-day someone came to +Constantinople to announce that he was the favourite of the Archangel +Raphael, far superior to Gabriel in dignity, and that it was in him +alone people should believe, he would be impaled in the public place. It +is for charlatans to choose their time well. + +Was there not a little charlatanry in Socrates with his familiar demon, +and Apollo's precise declaration which proclaimed him the wisest of all +men? How can Rollin, in his history, reason from this oracle? How is it +that he does not let the young idea know that it was pure charlatanry? +Socrates chose his time badly. A hundred years earlier, maybe, he would +have governed Athens. + +All leaders of sects in philosophy have been somewhat charlatans: but +the greatest of all have been those who have aspired to domination. +Cromwell was the most terrible of all our charlatans. He appeared at +precisely the only time he could succeed: under Elizabeth he would have +been hanged; under Charles II. he would have been merely ridiculous. He +came happily at a time when people were disgusted with kings; and his +son, at a time when people were weary of a protector. + + +OF CHARLATANRY IN SCIENCE AND LITERATURE + +The sciences can barely be without charlatanry. People wish to have +their opinions accepted; the quibbling doctor wishes to eclipse the +angelic doctor; the recondite doctor wishes to reign alone. Each builds +his system of physics, metaphysics, scholastic theology; it is a +competition in turning one's merchandise to account. You have agents who +extol it, fools who believe you, protectors who support you. + +Is there a greater charlatanry than that of substituting words for +things, and of wanting others to believe what you do not believe +yourself? + +One establishes whirlwinds of subtle matter, ramous, globulous, +striated, channelled; the other elements of matter which are not matter +at all, and a pre-established harmony which makes the clock of the body +sound the hour, when the clock of the soul shows it with its hand. These +chimeras find partisans for a few years. When this rubbish has passed +out of fashion, new fanatics appear on the itinerant theatre; they +banish germs from the world, they say that the sea produced the +mountains, and that men were once fish. + +How much charlatanry has been put into history, either by astonishing +the reader with prodigies, by titillating human malignity with satire, +or by flattering the families of tyrants with infamous eulogy? + +The wretched species that writes for a living is charlatan in another +way. A poor man who has no trade, who has had the misfortune to go to +college, and who thinks he knows how to write, goes to pay his court to +a bookseller, and asks him for work. The bookseller knows that the +majority of most people who live in houses want to have little +libraries, that they need abridgments and new titles; he orders from the +writer an abridgment of the "History by Rapin-Thoyras," an abridgment of +the "History of the Church," a "Collection of Witty Sayings" drawn from +the "Menagiana," a "Dictionary of Great Men," where an unknown pedant +is placed beside Cicero, and a _sonettiero_ of Italy near Virgil. + +Another bookseller orders novels, or translations of novels. "If you +have no imagination," he says to the workman, "you will take a few of +the adventures in 'Cyrus,' in 'Gusman d'Alfarache,' in the 'Secret +Memoirs of a Gentleman of Quality,' or 'Of a Lady of Quality'; and from +the total you will prepare a volume of four hundred pages at twenty sous +the sheet." + +Another bookseller gives the gazettes and almanacs for ten years past to +a man of genius. "You will make me an extract of all that, and you will +bring it me back in three months under the name of 'Faithful History of +the Times,' by the Chevalier de Trois Etoiles, Lieutenant of the Navy, +employed in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs." + +Of this kind of book there are about fifty thousand in Europe; and it +all passes just like the secret of whitening the skin, of darkening the +hair, and the universal panacea. + + + + +_CIVIL LAWS_ + + +EXTRACT FROM SOME NOTES FOUND AMONG A LAWYER'S PAPERS, WHICH MAYBE MERIT +EXAMINATION. + +Let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for +nothing, and a man condemned to public works still serves the country, +and is a living lesson. + + * * * * * + +Let all laws be clear, uniform and precise: to interpret laws is almost +always to corrupt them. + + * * * * * + +Let nothing be infamous save vice. + + * * * * * + +Let taxes be always proportional. + + * * * * * + +Let the law never be contradictory to custom: for if the custom be good, +the law is worthless. + + + + +_CLIMATE_ + + +Climate influences religion as regards customs and ceremonies. A +legislator will not have had difficulty in making the Indians bathe in +the Ganges at certain seasons of the moon; it is a great pleasure for +them. He would have been stoned if he had proposed the same bath to the +peoples who dwell on the banks of the Dwina near Archangel. Forbid pig +to an Arab who would have leprosy if he ate of this flesh which is very +bad and disgusting in his country, he will obey you joyfully. Issue the +same veto to a Westphalian and he will be tempted to fight you. + +Abstinence from wine is a good religious precept in Arabia where orange +water, lemon water, lime water are necessary to health. Mohammed would +not have forbidden wine in Switzerland perhaps, especially before going +to battle. + +There are customs of pure fantasy. Why did the priests of Egypt imagine +circumcision? it is not for health. Cambyses who treated them as they +deserved, they and their bull Apis, Cambyses' courtiers, Cambyses' +soldiers, had not had their prepuces lopped, and were very well. Climate +does nothing to a priest's genitals. One offered one's prepuce to Isis, +probably as one presented everywhere the first fruits of the earth. It +was offering the first fruits of life. + +Religions have always rolled on two pivots; observance and creed: +observance depends largely on climate; creed not at all. One could as +easily make a dogma accepted on the equator as the polar circle. It +would later be rejected equally at Batavia and in the Orkneys, while it +would be maintained _unguibus et rostro_ at Salamanca. That depends in +no way on the soil and the atmosphere, but solely on opinion, that +fickle queen of the world. + +Certain libations of wine will be precept in a vine-growing country, and +it will not occur to a legislator's mind to institute in Norway sacred +mysteries which cannot be performed without wine. + +It will be expressly ordered to burn incense in the parvis of a temple +where beasts are slaughtered in the Deity's honour, and for the priests' +supper. This butcher's shop called "temple" would be a place of +abominable infection if it were not continually purified: and without +the assistance of aromatics, the religion of the ancients would have +caused the plague. Even the interior of the temple was decked with +festoons of flowers in order to make the air sweeter. + +No cow will be sacrificed in the burning land of the Indian peninsula; +because this animal which furnishes necessary milk is very rare in an +arid country, its flesh is dry, tough, contains very little nourishment, +and the Brahmins would live very badly. On the contrary, the cow will +become sacred, in view of its rarity and utility. + +One will only enter barefoot the temple of Jupiter Ammon where the heat +is excessive: one must be well shod to perform one's devotions in +Copenhagen. + +It is not so with dogma. People have believed in polytheism in all +climates; and it is as easy for a Crimean Tartar as for an inhabitant of +Mecca to recognize a single God, incommunicable, non-begetting, +non-begotten. It is through its dogma still more than through its rites +that a religion is spread from one climate to another. The dogma of the +unity of God soon passed from Medina to the Caucasus; then the climate +cedes to opinion. + +The Arabs said to the Turks: "We had ourselves circumcised in Arabia +without really knowing why; it was an old fashion of the priests of +Egypt to offer to Oshireth or Osiris a little part of what they held +most precious. We had adopted this custom three thousand years before we +became Mohammedans. You will be circumcised like us; like us you will be +obliged to sleep with one of your wives every Friday, and to give each +year two and a half per cent of your income to the poor. We drink only +water and sherbet; all intoxicating liquor is forbidden us; in Arabia it +is pernicious. You will embrace this regime although you love wine +passionately, and although it may even be often necessary for you to go +on the banks of the Phasis and Araxes. Lastly, if you want to go to +Heaven, and be well placed there, you will take the road to Mecca." + +The inhabitants of the north of the Caucasus submit to these laws, and +embrace throughout the country a religion which was not made for them. + +In Egypt the symbolic worship of animals succeeded the dogmas of Thaut. +The gods of the Romans later shared Egypt with the dogs, the cats and +the crocodiles. To the Roman religion succeeded Christianity; it was +entirely driven out by Mohammedanism, which perhaps will cede its place +to a new religion. + +In all these vicissitudes climate has counted for nothing: government +has done everything. We are considering here second causes only, without +raising profane eyes to the Providence which directs them. The Christian +religion, born in Syria, having received its principal development in +Alexandria, inhabits to-day the lands where Teutate, Irminsul, Frida, +Odin were worshipped. + +There are peoples whose religion has been made by neither climate nor +government. What cause detached the north of Germany, Denmark, +three-quarters of Switzerland, Holland, England, Scotland, Ireland, from +the Roman communion? Poverty. Indulgences and deliverance from purgatory +were sold too dear to souls whose bodies had at that time very little +money. The prelates, the monks devoured a province's whole revenue. +People took a cheaper religion. At last, after twenty civil wars, +people believed that the Pope's religion was very good for great lords, +and the reformed religion for citizens. Time will show whether the Greek +religion or the Turkish religion will prevail by the AEgean Sea and the +Pont-Euxine. + + + + +_COMMON SENSE_ + + +There are sometimes in common expressions an image of what passes in the +depths of all men's hearts. Among the Romans _sensus communis_ signified +not only common sense, but humanity, sensibility. As we are not as good +as the Romans, this word signifies among us only half of what it +signified among them. It means only good sense, plain reason, reason set +in operation, a first notion of ordinary things, a state midway between +stupidity and intelligence. "This man has no common sense" is a great +insult. "A common-sense man" is an insult likewise; it means that he is +not entirely stupid, and that he lacks what is called wit and +understanding. But whence comes this expression _common sense_, unless +it be from the senses? Men, when they invented this word, avowed that +nothing entered the soul save through the senses; otherwise, would they +have used the word _sense_ to signify common reasoning? + +People say sometimes--"Common sense is very rare." What does this phrase +signify? that in many men reason set in operation is stopped in its +progress by prejudices, that such and such man who judges very sanely in +one matter, will always be vastly deceived in another. This Arab, who +will be a good calculator, a learned chemist, an exact astronomer, will +believe nevertheless that Mohammed put half the moon in his sleeve. + +Why will he go beyond common sense in the three sciences of which I +speak, and why will he be beneath common sense when there is question of +this half moon? Because in the first cases he has seen with his eyes, +he has perfected his intelligence; and in the second, he has seen with +other people's eyes, he has closed his own, he has perverted the common +sense which is in him. + +How has this strange mental alienation been able to operate? How can the +ideas which move with so regular and so firm a step in the brain on a +great number of subjects limp so wretchedly on another a thousand times +more palpable and easy to comprehend? This man always has inside him the +same principles of intelligence; he must have some organ vitiated then, +just as it happens sometimes that the finest _gourmet_ may have a +depraved taste as regards a particular kind of food. + +How is the organ of this Arab, who sees half the moon in Mohammed's +sleeve, vitiated? It is through fear. He has been told that if he did +not believe in this sleeve, his soul, immediately after his death, when +passing over the pointed bridge, would fall for ever into the abyss. He +has been told even worse things: If ever you have doubts about this +sleeve, one dervish will treat you as impious; another will prove to you +that you are an insensate fool who, having all possible motives for +believing, have not wished to subordinate your superb reason to the +evidence; a third will report you to the little divan of a little +province, and you will be legally impaled. + +All this terrifies the good Arab, his wife, his sister, all his little +family into a state of panic. They have good sense about everything +else, but on this article their imagination is wounded, as was the +imagination of Pascal, who continually saw a precipice beside his +armchair. But does our Arab believe in fact in Mohammed's sleeve? No. He +makes efforts to believe; he says it is impossible, but that it is true; +he believes what he does not believe. On the subject of this sleeve he +forms in his head a chaos of ideas which he is afraid to disentangle; +and this veritably is not to have common sense. + + + + +_CONCATENATION OF EVENTS_ + + +The present is delivered, it is said, of the future. Events are linked +to each other by an invincible fatality: it is Destiny which, in Homer, +is above even Jupiter. This master of gods and men declares roundly that +he cannot stop his son Sarpedon dying in his appointed time. Sarpedon +was born at the moment when he had to be born, and could not be born at +another moment; he could not die otherwise than before Troy; he could +not be buried elsewhere than in Lycia; had at the appointed time to +produce vegetables which had to be changed into the substance of a few +Lycians; his heirs had to establish a new order in his states; this new +order had to exert an influence over the neighbouring kingdoms; from it +resulted a new arrangement of war and peace with the neighbours of the +neighbours of Lycia: thus, step by step, the destiny of the whole world +has been dependent on Sarpedon's death, which depended on Helen being +carried off; and this carrying off was necessarily linked to Hecuba's +marriage, which by tracing back to other events was linked to the origin +of things. + +If only one of these facts had been arranged differently, another +universe would have resulted: but it was not possible for the present +universe not to exist; therefore it was not possible for Jupiter to save +his son's life, for all that he was Jupiter. + +This system of necessity and fatality has been invented in our time by +Leibnitz, according to what people say, under the name of +_self-sufficient reason_; it is, however, very ancient: that there is no +effect without a cause and that often the smallest cause produces the +greatest effects, does not date from to-day. + +Lord Bolingbroke avows that the little quarrels of Madame Marlborough +and Madame Masham gave birth to his chance of making Queen Anne's +private treaty with Louis XIV.; this treaty led to the Peace of Utrecht; +this Peace of Utrecht established Philip V. on the throne of Spain. +Philip V. took Naples and Sicily from the house of Austria; the Spanish +prince who is to-day King of Naples clearly owes his kingdom to my lady +Masham: and he would not have had it, he would not perhaps even have +been born, if the Duchess of Marlborough had been more complaisant +towards the Queen of England. His existence at Naples depended on one +foolishness more or less at the court of London. + +Examine the position of all the peoples of the universe; they are +established like this on a sequence of facts which appear to be +connected with nothing and which are connected with everything. +Everything is cog, pulley, cord, spring, in this vast machine. + +It is likewise in the physical sphere. A wind which blows from the +depths of Africa and the austral seas, brings a portion of the African +atmosphere, which falls in rain in the valleys of the Alps; these rains +fertilize our lands; our north wind in its turn sends our vapours among +the negroes; we do good to Guinea, and Guinea does good to us. The chain +stretches from one end of the universe to the other. + +But it seems to me that a strange abuse is made of the truth of this +principle. From it some people conclude that there is not a sole minute +atom whose movement has not exerted its influence in the present +arrangement of the world; that there is not a single minute accident, +among either men or animals, which is not an essential link in the great +chain of fate. + +Let us understand each other: every effect clearly has its cause, going +back from cause to cause in the abyss of eternity; but every cause has +not its effect going forward to the end of the centuries. All events are +produced by each other, I admit; if the past is delivered of the +present, the present is delivered of the future; everything has father, +but everything has not always children. Here it is precisely as with a +genealogical tree; each house goes back, as we say, to Adam; but in the +family there are many persons who have died without leaving issue. + +There is a genealogical tree of the events of this world. It is +incontestable that the inhabitants of Gaul and Spain are descended from +Gomer, and the Russians from Magog, his younger brother: one finds this +genealogy in so many fat books! On this basis one cannot deny that the +Great Turk, who is also descended from Magog, was not bound to be well +beaten in 1769 by Catherine II., Empress of Russia. This adventure is +clearly connected with other great adventures. But that Magog spat to +right or left, near Mount Caucasus, and that he made two circles in a +well or three, that he slept on the left side or on the right; I do not +see that that has had much influence on present affairs. + +One must think that everything is not complete in nature, as Newton has +demonstrated, and that every movement is not communicated step by step +until it makes a circuit of the world, as he has demonstrated still +further. Throw into water a body of like density, you calculate easily +that after a short time the movement of this body, and the movement it +has communicated to the water, are destroyed; the movement disappears +and is effaced; therefore the movement that Magog might produce by +spitting in a well cannot influence what is passing to-day in Moldavia +and Wallachia; therefore present events are not the children of all past +events: they have their direct lines; but a thousand little collateral +lines do not serve them at all. Once more, every being has a father, but +every being has not children. + + + + +_CONTRADICTIONS_ + + +If some literary society wishes to undertake the dictionary of +contradictions, I subscribe for twenty folio volumes. + +The world can exist only by contradictions: what is needed to abolish +them? to assemble the states of the human race. But from the manner in +which men are made, it would be a fresh contradiction if they were to +agree. Assemble all the rabbits of the universe, there will not be two +different opinions among them. + +I know only two kinds of immutable beings on the earth, mathematicians +and animals; they are led by two invariable rules, demonstration and +instinct: and even the mathematicians have had some disputes, but the +animals have never varied. + +The contrasts, the light and shade in which public men are represented +in history, are not contradictions, they are faithful portraits of human +nature. + +Every day people condemn and admire Alexander the murderer of Clitus, +but the avenger of Greece, the conqueror of the Persians, and the +founder of Alexandria; + +Caesar the debauchee, who robs the public treasury of Rome to reduce his +country to dependence; but whose clemency equals his valour, and whose +intelligence equals his courage; + +Mohammed, impostor, brigand; but the sole religious legislator who had +courage, and who founded a great empire; + +Cromwell the enthusiast, a rogue in his fanaticism even, judicial +assassin of his king, but as profound politician as brave warrior. + +A thousand contrasts frequently crowd together, and these contrasts are +in nature; they are no more astonishing than a fine day followed by +storm. + +Men are equally mad everywhere; they have made the laws little by +little, as gaps are repaired in a wall. Here eldest sons have taken all +they could from younger sons, there younger sons share equally. +Sometimes the Church has commanded the duel, sometimes she has +anathematized it. The partisans and the enemies of Aristotle have each +been excommunicated in their turn, as have those who wore long hair and +those who wore short. In this world we have perfect law only to rule a +species of madness called gaming. The rules of gaming are the only ones +which admit neither exception, relaxation, variety nor tyranny. A man +who has been a lackey, if he play at lansquenet with kings, is paid +without difficulty if he win; everywhere else the law is a sword with +which the stronger cut the weaker in pieces. + +Nevertheless, this world exists as if everything were well ordered; the +irregularity is of our nature; our political world is like our globe, a +misshapen thing which always preserves itself. It would be mad to wish +that the mountains, the seas, the rivers, were traced in beautiful +regular forms; it would be still more mad to ask perfect wisdom of men; +it would be wishing to give wings to dogs or horns to eagles. + + + + +_CORN_ + + +The Gauls had corn in Caesar's time: one is curious to know where they +and the Teutons found it to sow. People answer you that the Tyrians had +brought it into Spain, the Spaniards into Gaul, the Gauls into Germany. +And where did the Tyrians get this corn? Among the Greeks probably, from +whom they received it in exchange for their alphabet. + +Who had made this present to the Greeks? It was formerly Ceres without a +doubt; and when one has gone back to Ceres one can hardly go farther. +Ceres must have come down on purpose from the sky to give us wheat, rye, +barley, etc. + +But as the credit of Ceres who gave the corn to the Greeks, and that of +Isheth or Isis who bestowed it on the Egyptians, is very much fallen in +these days, we remain in uncertainty as to the origin of corn. + +Sanchoniathon affirms that Dagon or Dagan, one of the grandsons of +Thaut, had the control of corn in Phoenicia. Well, his Thaut is of +about the same time as our Jared. From this it results that corn is very +old, and that it is of the same antiquity as grass. Perhaps this Dagon +was the first man to make bread, but that is not demonstrated. + +Strange thing! we know positively that it is to Noah that we are under +an obligation for wine, and we do not know to whom we owe bread. And, +still more strange thing, we are so ungrateful to Noah, that we have +more than two thousand songs in honour of Bacchus, and we chant barely +one in honour of Noah our benefactor. + +A Jew has assured me that corn came by itself in Mesopotamia, like the +apples, wild pears, chestnuts, medlars in the West. I want to believe +it until I am sure of the contrary; for corn must certainly grow +somewhere. It has become the ordinary and indispensable food in the good +climates, and throughout the North. + +Some great philosophers whose talents we esteem and whose systems we do +not follow (Buffon) have claimed on page 195 of the "Natural History of +the Dog," that mankind has made corn; that our fathers by virtue of +sowing lolium and gramina changed them into wheat. As these philosophers +are not of our opinion about shells, they will permit us not to be of +theirs about corn. We do not believe that one has ever made tulips grow +from jasmin. We find that the germ of corn is quite different from that +of lolium, and we do not believe in any transmutation. When somebody +shows it to us we will retract. + +Corn assuredly is not the food of the greater part of the world. Maize, +tapioca, feed the whole of America. We have entire provinces where the +peasants eat nothing but chestnut bread, more nourishing and of better +flavour than that of rye and barley which so many people eat, and which +is much better than the ration bread which is given to the soldier. The +whole of southern Africa does not know of bread. The immense archipelago +of the Indies, Siam, Laos, Pegu, Cochin China, Tonkin, a part of China, +Japan, the coast of Malabar and Coromandel, the banks of the Ganges +furnish a rice, the cultivation of which is much easier than that of +wheat, and which causes it to be neglected. Corn is absolutely unknown +for the space of fifteen hundred leagues on the coasts of the Glacial +Sea. This food, to which we are accustomed, is among us so precious that +the fear of seeing a dearth of it alone causes riots among the most +subjugated peoples. The corn trade is everywhere one of the great +objects of government; it is a part of our being, and yet this essential +commodity is sometimes squandered ridiculously. The powder merchants use +the best flour for covering the heads of our young men and women. But +over three-quarters of the earth bread is not eaten at all. People +maintain that the Ethiopians mocked at the Egyptians who lived on +bread. But since it is our chief food, corn has become one of the great +objects of trade and politics. So much has been written on this subject, +that if a husbandman sowed as much corn as the weight of the volumes we +have about this commodity, he might hope for the amplest harvest, and +become richer than those who in their gilded and lacquered drawing-rooms +ignore his exceeding labour and wretchedness. + + + + +_CROMWELL_ + + +SECTION I + +Cromwell is painted as a man who was an impostor all his life. I have +difficulty in believing it. I think that first of all he was an +enthusiast, and that later he made even his fanaticism serve his +greatness. A novice who is fervent at the age of twenty often becomes a +skilful rogue at forty. In the great game of human life one begins by +being a dupe, and one finishes by being a rogue. A statesman takes as +almoner a monk steeped in the pettinesses of his monastery, devout, +credulous, clumsy, quite new to the world: the monk learns, forms +himself, intrigues, and supplants his master. + +Cromwell did not know at first whether he would be an ecclesiastic or a +soldier. He was both. In 1622 he served a campaign in the army of +Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, a great man, brother of two great +men; and when he returned to England, he went into the service of Bishop +Williams, and was his grace's theologian, while his grace passed as his +wife's lover. His principles were those of the Puritans; thus he had to +hate a bishop with all his heart, and not have a liking for kings. He +was driven from Bishop Williams' house because he was a Puritan; and +there is the origin of his fortune. The English Parliament declared +itself against the throne and against the episcopacy; some of his +friends in this parliament procured the nomination of a village for him. +Only at this time did he begin to exist, and he was more than forty +before he had ever made himself talked of. In vain was he conversant +with Holy Writ, in vain did he argue about the rights of priests and +deacons, and preach a few poor sermons and libels, he was ignored. I +have seen one of his sermons which is very insipid, and which bears +sufficient resemblance to the predications of the quakers; assuredly +there is to be found there no trace of that persuasive eloquence with +which later he carried the parliaments away. The reason is that in fact +he was much more suited to public affairs than to the Church. It was +above all in his tone and in his air that his eloquence consisted; a +gesture of that hand that had won so many battles and killed so many +royalists, was more persuasive than the periods of Cicero. It must be +avowed that it was his incomparable bravery which made him known, and +which led him by degrees to the pinnacle of greatness. + +He began by launching out as a volunteer who wished to make his fortune, +in the town of Hull, besieged by the king. There he did many fine and +happy actions, for which he received a gratification of about six +thousand francs from the parliament. This present made by the parliament +to an adventurer made it clear that the rebel party must prevail. The +king was not in a position to give to his general officers what the +parliament gave to volunteers. With money and fanaticism one is bound in +the long run to be master of everything. Cromwell was made colonel. Then +his great talents for war developed to the point that when the +parliament created the Count of Manchester general of its armies, it +made Cromwell lieutenant-general, without his having passed through the +other ranks. Never did man appear more worthy of commanding; never were +more activity and prudence, more boldness and more resource seen than in +Cromwell. He is wounded at the battle of York; and while the first +dressing is being put on his wound, he learns that his general, +Manchester, is retiring, and that the battle is lost. He hastens to +Manchester's side; he finds him fleeing with some officers; he takes him +by the arm, and says to him with an air of confidence and grandeur: "You +are mistaken, my lord; it is not on this side that the enemy is." He +leads him back near the battlefield, rallies during the night more than +twelve thousand men, speaks to them in the name of God, quotes Moses, +Gideon and Joshua, at daybreak recommences the battle against the +victorious royal army, and defeats it completely. Such a man had to +perish or be master. Nearly all the officers of his army were +enthusiasts who carried the New Testament at their saddle-bow: in the +army as in the parliament men spoke only of making Babylon fall, of +establishing the religion in Jerusalem, of shattering the colossus. +Among so many madmen Cromwell ceased to be mad, and thought that it was +better to govern them than to be governed by them. The habit of +preaching as though he were inspired remained to him. Picture a fakir +who has put an iron belt round his waist as a penitence, and who then +takes off his belt to beat the other fakirs' ears: there you have +Cromwell. He becomes as intriguing as he was intrepid; he associates +himself with all the colonels of the army, and thus forms among the +troops a republic which forces the commander-in-chief to resign. Another +commander-in-chief is nominated, he disgusts him. He governs the army, +and by it he governs the parliament; he puts this parliament in the +necessity of making him commander-in-chief at last. All this was a great +deal; but what is essential is that he wins all the battles he engages +in in England, Scotland and Ireland; and he wins them, not in watching +the fighting and in taking care of himself, but always by charging the +enemy, rallying his troops, rushing everywhere, often wounded, killing +many royalist officers with his own hand, like a desperate and +infuriated grenadier. + +Amid this frightful war Cromwell made love; he went, his Bible under his +arm, to sleep with the wife of his major-general, Lambert. She loved the +Count of Holland, who was serving in the king's army. Cromwell took him +prisoner in a battle, and enjoyed the pleasure of having his rival's +head cut off. His maxim was to shed the blood of every important enemy, +either on the field of battle, or by the executioner's hand. He always +increased his power, by always daring to abuse it; the profundity of his +plans took away nothing from his ferocious impetuosity. He goes into the +House of Parliament and, taking his watch, which he threw on the ground +and which he shattered to atoms: "I will break you," he said, "like this +watch." He returns there some time after, drives all the members out one +after the other, making them defile before him. Each is obliged, as he +passes, to make him a deep bow: one of them passes with his hat on his +head; Cromwell takes his hat from him and throws it on the ground: +"Learn to respect me," he says. + +When he had outraged all kings by having his own legitimate king's head +cut off, and when he started to reign himself, he sent his portrait to a +crowned head; it was to Christine, Queen of Sweden. Marvell, a famous +English poet, who wrote very good Latin verse, accompanied this portrait +with six verses where he made Cromwell himself speak. Cromwell corrected +the last two as follows: + + _At tibi submittit frontem reverentior umbra, + Non sunt hi vultus regibus usque truces._ + +This queen was the first to recognize him as soon as he was protector of +the three kingdoms. Almost all the sovereigns of Europe sent their +ambassadors _to their brother_ Cromwell, to this bishop's servant, who +had just caused a sovereign, their own kin, to perish at the hand of the +executioner. They vied with each in soliciting his alliance. Cardinal +Mazarin, to please him, drove out of France the two sons of Charles I., +the two grandsons of Henry IV., the two first cousins of Louis XIV. +France conquered Dunkirk for him, and sent him the keys. After his +death, Louis XIV. and all his court wore mourning, excepting +Mademoiselle, who had the courage to come to the company in a coloured +habit, and alone maintained the honour of her race. + +Never was a king more absolute than he was. He said that he had +preferred governing under the name of _protector_ rather than under that +of _king_, because the English knew the point to which a King of +England's prerogative extended, and did not know to what point a +protector's might go. That was to understand men, who are governed by +opinion, and whose opinion depends on a name. He had conceived a +profound scorn for the religion which had served to his fortune. There +is a certain anecdote preserved in the house of St. John, which proves +sufficiently the little account which Cromwell made of the instrument +which had produced such great effects in his hands. He was drinking one +day with Ireton, Fleetwood and St. John, great-grandfather of the +celebrated Lord Bolingbroke; they wished to uncork a bottle, and the +corkscrew fell under the table; they all looked for it and did not find +it. Meanwhile a deputation from the Presbyterian churches was waiting in +the antechamber, and an usher came to announce them. "Tell them," said +Cromwell, "that I have retired, _and that I am seeking the Lord_." It +was the expression which the fanatics used when they were saying their +prayers. When he had thus dismissed the band of ministers, he said these +very words to his confidants: "Those puppies think that we are seeking +the Lord, and we are only seeking the corkscrew." + +There is barely an example in Europe of any man who, come from so low, +raised himself so high. But what was absolutely essential to him with +all his talents? Fortune. He had this fortune; but was he happy? He +lived poorly and anxiously until he was forty-three; from that time he +bathed himself in blood, passed his life in turmoil, and died before his +time at the age of fifty-seven. Let us compare this life with that of +Newton, who lived eighty-four years, always tranquil, always honoured, +always the light of all thinking beings, seeing increase each day his +renown, his reputation, his fortune, without ever having either care or +remorse; and let us judge which of the two had the better part. + + +SECTION II + +Oliver Cromwell was regarded with admiration by the Puritans and +independents of England; he is still their hero; but Richard Cromwell, +his son, is my man. + +The first is a fanatic who would be hissed to-day in the House of +Commons, if he uttered there one single one of the unintelligible +absurdities which he gave out with so much confidence before other +fanatics who listened to him open-mouthed and wide-eyed, in the name of +the Lord. If he said that one must seek the Lord, and fight the Lord's +battles; if he introduced the Jewish jargon into the parliament of +England, to the eternal shame of the human intelligence, he would be +nearer to being led to Bedlam than to being chosen to command armies. + +He was brave without a doubt; so are wolves; there are even monkeys as +fierce as tigers. From being a fanatic he became an adroit politician, +that is to say that from a wolf he became fox, climbed by imposture from +the first steps where the infuriated enthusiasm of the times had placed +him, right to the pinnacle of greatness; and the impostor walked on the +heads of the prostrated fanatics. He reigned, but he lived in the +horrors of anxiety. He knew neither serene days nor tranquil nights. The +consolations of friendship and society never approached him; he died +before his time, more worthy, without a doubt, of execution than the +king whom he had conducted from a window of his own palace to the +scaffold. + +Richard Cromwell, on the contrary, born with a gentle, wise spirit, +refused to keep his father's crown at the price of the blood of two or +three rebels whom he could sacrifice to his ambition. He preferred to be +reduced to private life rather than be an omnipotent assassin. He left +the protectorate without regret to live as a citizen. Free and tranquil +in the country, he enjoyed health there, and there did he possess his +soul in peace for eighty-six years, loved by his neighbours, to whom he +was arbiter and father. + +Readers, give your verdict. If you had to choose between the destiny of +the father and that of the son, which would you take? + + + + +_CUSTOMS_ + +CONTEMPTIBLE CUSTOMS DO NOT ALWAYS SUPPOSE A CONTEMPTIBLE NATION + + +There are cases where one must not judge a nation by its customs and +popular superstitions. I suppose that Caesar, having conquered Egypt, +wanting to make trade flourish in the Roman Empire, has sent an embassy +to China, by the port of Arsinoe, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean. The +Emperor Yventi, first of his name, was then reigning; the annals of +China represent him as a very wise and learned prince. After receiving +Caesar's ambassadors with all the Chinese politeness, he informs himself +secretly through his interpreters of the customs, science and religion +of this Roman people, as celebrated in the West as the Chinese people is +in the East. He learns first of all that this people's pontiffs have +arranged their year in so absurd a fashion that the sun has already the +heavenly signs of spring when the Romans are celebrating the first +festivals of winter. + +He learns that this nation supports at great cost a college of priests +who know exactly the time when one should set sail and when one should +give battle, by inspecting an ox's liver, or by the way in which the +chickens eat barley. This sacred science was brought formerly to the +Romans by a little god named Tages, who emerged from the earth in +Tuscany. These peoples worship one supreme God whom they always call the +very great and very good God. Nevertheless, they have built a temple to +a courtesan named Flora; and almost all the good women of Rome have in +their homes little household gods four or five inches high. One of +these little divinities is the goddess of the breasts; the other the +goddess of the buttocks. There is a household god who is called the god +Pet. The emperor Yventi starts laughing: the tribunals of Nankin think +first of all with him that the Roman ambassadors are madmen or impostors +who have taken the title of envoys of the Roman Republic; but as the +emperor is as just as he is polite, he has private talks with the +ambassadors. He learns that the Roman pontiffs have been very ignorant, +but that Caesar is now reforming the calendar; they admit to him that the +college of augurs was established in early barbarous times; that this +ridiculous institution, become dear to a people long uncivilized, has +been allowed to subsist; that all honest people laugh at the augurs; +that Caesar has never consulted them; that according to a very great man +named Cato, never has an augur been able to speak to his comrade without +laughter; and that finally Cicero, the greatest orator and the best +philosopher in Rome, has just written against the augurs a little work +entitled "Of Divination," in which he commits to eternal ridicule all +the soothsayers, all the predictions, and all the sorcery of which the +world is infatuated. The emperor of China is curious to read Cicero's +book, the interpreters translate it; he admires the book and the Roman +Republic. + + + + +_DEMOCRACY_ + + +Ordinarily there is no comparison between the crimes of the great who +are always ambitious, and the crimes of the people who always want, and +can want only liberty and equality. These two sentiments, Liberty and +Equality, do not lead direct to calumny, rapine, assassination, +poisoning, the devastation of one's neighbours' lands, etc.; but +ambitious might and the mania for power plunge into all these crimes +whatever be the time, whatever be the place. + +Popular government is in itself, therefore, less iniquitous, less +abominable than despotic power. + +The great vice of democracy is certainly not tyranny and cruelty: there +have been mountain-dwelling republicans, savage, ferocious; but it is +not the republican spirit that made them so, it is nature. + +The real vice of a civilized republic is in the Turkish fable of the +dragon with many heads and the dragon with many tails. The many heads +hurt each other, and the many tails obey a single head which wants to +devour everything. + +Democracy seems suitable only to a very little country, and further it +must be happily situated. Small though it be, it will make many +mistakes, because it will be composed of men. Discord will reign there +as in a monastery; but there will be no St. Bartholomew, no Irish +massacres, no Sicilian vespers, no inquisition, no condemnation to the +galleys for having taken some water from the sea without paying for it, +unless one supposes this republic composed of devils in a corner of +hell. + +One questions every day whether a republican government is preferable to +a king's government? The dispute ends always by agreeing that to govern +men is very difficult. The Jews had God Himself for master; see what has +happened to them on that account: nearly always have they been beaten +and slaves, and to-day do you not find that they cut a pretty figure? + + + + +_DESTINY_ + + +Of all the books of the Occident which have come down to us, the most +ancient is Homer; it is there that one finds the customs of profane +antiquity, of the gross heroes, of the gross gods, made in the image of +men; but it is there that among the reveries and inconsequences, one +finds too the seeds of philosophy, and above all the idea of the destiny +which is master of the gods, as the gods are masters of the world. + +When the magnanimous Hector wishes absolutely to fight the magnanimous +Achilles, and with this object starts fleeing with all his might, and +three times makes the circuit of the city before fighting, in order to +have more vigour; when Homer compares fleet-of-foot Achilles, who +pursues him, to a man who sleeps; when Madame Dacier goes into ecstasies +of admiration over the art and mighty sense of this passage, then +Jupiter wants to save great Hector who has made so many sacrifices to +him, and he consults the fates; he weighs the destinies of Hector and +Achilles in the balance (Iliad, liv. xxii.): he finds that the Trojan +must absolutely be killed by the Greek; he cannot oppose it; and from +this moment, Apollo, Hector's guardian genius, is forced to abandon him. +It is not that Homer is not often prodigal, and particularly in this +place, of quite contrary ideas, following the privilege of antiquity; +but he is the first in whom one finds the notion of destiny. This +notion, therefore, was very much in vogue in his time. + +The Pharisees, among the little Jewish people, did not adopt destiny +until several centuries later; for these Pharisees themselves, who were +the first literates among the Jews, were very new fangled. In +Alexandria they mixed a part of the dogmas of the Stoics with the old +Jewish ideas. St. Jerome claims even that their sect is not much +anterior to the Christian era. + +The philosophers never had need either of Homer or the Pharisees to +persuade themselves that everything happens through immutable laws, that +everything is arranged, that everything is a necessary effect. This is +how they argued. + +Either the world exists by its own nature, by its physical laws, or a +supreme being has formed it according to his supreme laws: in both +cases, these laws are immutable; in both cases everything is necessary; +heavy bodies tend towards the centre of the earth, without being able to +tend to pause in the air. Pear-trees can never bear pineapples. A +spaniel's instinct cannot be an ostrich's instinct; everything is +arranged, in gear, limited. + +Man can have only a certain number of teeth, hair and ideas; there comes +a time when he necessarily loses his teeth, hair and ideas. + +It would be a contradiction that what was yesterday was not, that what +is to-day is not; it is also a contradiction that what must be cannot +be. + +If you could disturb the destiny of a fly, there would be no reason that +could stop your making the destiny of all the other flies, of all the +other animals, of all men, of all nature; you would find yourself in the +end more powerful than God. + +Imbeciles say: "My doctor has extricated my aunt from a mortal malady; +he has made my aunt live ten years longer than she ought to have lived." +Others who affect knowledge, say: "The prudent man makes his own +destiny." + +But often the prudent, far from making their destinies, succumb to them; +it is destiny which makes them prudent. + +Profound students of politics affirm that, if Cromwell, Ludlow, Ireton +and a dozen other parliamentarians had been assassinated a week before +Charles I.'s head was cut off, this king might have lived longer and +died in his bed; they are right; they can add further that if the whole +of England had been swallowed up in the sea, this monarch would not +have perished on a scaffold near Whitehall; but things were arranged so +that Charles had to have his neck severed. + +Cardinal d'Ossat was doubtless more prudent than a madman in Bedlam; but +is it not clear that the organs of d'Ossat the sage were made otherwise +than those of the scatter-brain? just as a fox's organs are different +from a stork's and a lark's. + +Your doctor saved your aunt; but assuredly he did not in that contradict +nature's order; he followed it. It is clear that your aunt could not +stop herself being born in such and such town, that she could not stop +herself having a certain malady at a particular time, that the doctor +could not be elsewhere than in the town where he was, that your aunt had +to call him, that he had to prescribe for her the drugs which cured her, +or which one thinks cured her, when nature was the only doctor. + +A peasant thinks that it has hailed on his field by chance; but the +philosopher knows that there is no chance, and that it was impossible, +in the constitution of this world, for it not to hail on that day in +that place. + +There are persons who, frightened by this truth, admit half of it as +debtors who offer half to their creditors, and ask respite for the rest. +"There are," they say, "some events which are necessary, and others +which are not." It would be very comic that one part of the world was +arranged, and that the other were not; that a part of what happens had +to happen, and that another part of what happens did not have to happen. +If one looks closely at it, one sees that the doctrine contrary to that +of destiny is absurd; but there are many people destined to reason +badly, others not to reason at all, others to persecute those who +reason. + +Some say to you: "Do not believe in fatalism; for then everything +appearing inevitable, you will work at nothing, you will wallow in +indifference, you will love neither riches, nor honours, nor glory; you +will not want to acquire anything, you will believe yourself without +merit as without power; no talent will be cultivated, everything will +perish through apathy." + +Be not afraid, gentlemen, we shall ever have passions and prejudices, +since it is our destiny to be subjected to prejudices and passions: we +shall know that it no more depends on us to have much merit and great +talent, than to have a good head of hair and beautiful hands: we shall +be convinced that we must not be vain about anything, and yet we shall +always have vanity. + +I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the +passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the +toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and +to make it public in spite of you. + +The owl, which feeds on mice in its ruins, said to the nightingale: +"Finish singing under your beautiful shady trees, come into my hole, +that I may eat you"; and the nightingale answered: "I was born to sing +here, and to laugh at you." + +You ask me what will become of liberty? I do not understand you. I do +not know what this liberty is of which you speak; so long have you been +disputing about its nature, that assuredly you are not acquainted with +it. If you wish, or rather, if you are able to examine peaceably with me +what it is, pass to the letter L. + + + + +_DEVOUT_ + + +The word "devout" signifies "devoted"; and in the strict sense of the +term this qualification should belong only to monks and nuns who make +vows. But as in the Gospel there is no more mention of vows than of +devout persons, this title does not in fact belong to anyone. Everyone +should be equally righteous. A man who styles himself devout resembles a +commoner who styles himself a marquis; he arrogates to himself a quality +he does not possess. He thinks himself more worthy than his neighbour. +One can forgive such foolishness in women; their frailty and their +frivolity render them excusable; the poor creatures pass from a lover to +a director in good faith: but one cannot pardon the rogues who direct +them, who abuse their ignorance, who establish the throne of their pride +on the credulity of the sex. They resolve themselves into a little +mystic seraglio composed of seven or eight aged beauties, subdued by the +weight of their lack of occupation, and almost always do these persons +pay tribute to their new masters. No young woman without a lover, no +aged devout woman without a director. Oh! the Orientals are wiser than +we are! Never does a pasha say: "We supped yesterday with the Aga of the +Janissaries who is my sister's lover, and the vicar of the mosque who is +my wife's director." + + + + +_THE ECCLESIASTICAL MINISTRY_ + + +The institution of religion exists only to keep mankind in order, and to +make men merit the goodness of God by their virtue. Everything in a +religion which does not tend towards this goal must be considered +foreign or dangerous. + +Instruction, exhortation, menaces of pains to come, promises of immortal +beatitude, prayers, counsels, spiritual help are the only means +ecclesiastics may use to try to make men virtuous here below, and happy +for eternity. + +All other means are repugnant to the liberty of the reason, to the +nature of the soul, to the inalterable rights of the conscience, to the +essence of religion and of the ecclesiastical ministry, to all the +rights of the sovereign. + +Virtue supposes liberty, as the carrying of a burden supposes active +force. Under coercion no virtue, and without virtue no religion. Make a +slave of me, I shall be no better for it. + +The sovereign even has no right to use coercion to lead men to religion, +which supposes essentially choice and liberty. My thought is subordinate +to authority no more than is sickness or health. + +In order to disentangle all the contradictions with which books on canon +law have been filled, and to fix our ideas on the ecclesiastical +ministry, let us investigate amid a thousand equivocations what the +Church is. + +The Church is the assembly of all the faithful summoned on certain days +to pray in common, and at all times to do good actions. + +The priests are persons established under the authority of the sovereign +to direct these prayers and all religious worship. + +A numerous Church could not exist without ecclesiastics; but these +ecclesiastics are not the Church. + +It is no less evident that if the ecclesiastics, who are part of civil +society, had acquired rights which might trouble or destroy society, +these rights ought to be suppressed. + +It is still more evident that, if God has attached to the Church +prerogatives or rights, neither these rights nor these prerogatives +should belong exclusively either to the chief of the Church or to the +ecclesiastics, because they are not the Church, just as the magistrates +are not the sovereign in either a democratic state or in a monarchy. + +Finally, it is quite evident that it is our souls which are under the +clergy's care, solely for spiritual things. + +Our soul acts internally; internal acts are thought, volition, +inclinations, acquiescence in certain truths. All these acts are above +all coercion, and are within the ecclesiastical minister's sphere only +in so far as he must instruct and never command. + +This soul acts also externally. External actions are under the civil +law. Here coercion may have a place; temporal or corporal pains maintain +the law by punishing those who infringe it. + +Obedience to ecclesiastical order must consequently always be free and +voluntary: no other should be possible. Submission, on the other hand, +to civil order may be coerced and compulsory. + +For the same reason, ecclesiastical punishments, always spiritual, do +not reach here below any but those who are convinced inwardly of their +fault. Civil pains, on the contrary, accompanied by a physical ill, have +their physical effects, whether or no the guilty recognize their +justice. + +From this it results obviously that the authority of the clergy is and +can be spiritual only; that it should not have any temporal power; that +no coercive force is proper to its ministry, which would be destroyed by +it. + +It follows from this further that the sovereign, careful not to suffer +any partition of his authority, must permit no enterprise which puts +the members of society in external and civil dependence on an +ecclesiastical body. + +Such are the incontestable principles of real canon law, of which the +rules and decisions should be judged at all times by the eternal and +immutable truths which are founded on natural law and the necessary +order of society. + + + + +_EMBLEM_ + + +In antiquity everything is symbol or emblem. In Chaldea it starts by +putting a ram, two kids, a bull in the sky, to mark the productions of +the earth in the spring. Fire is the symbol of the Deity in Persia; the +celestial dog warns the Egyptians of the Nile floods; the serpent which +hides its tail in its head, becomes the image of eternity. The whole of +nature is represented and disguised. + +In India again you find many of those old statues, uncouth and +frightful, of which we have already spoken, representing virtue provided +with ten great arms with which to combat vice, and which our poor +missionaries have taken for the picture of the devil. + +Put all these symbols of antiquity before the eyes of a man of the +soundest sense, who has never heard speak of them, he will not +understand anything: it is a language to be learned. + +The old theological poets were in the necessity of giving God eyes, +hands, feet; of announcing Him in the form of a man. St. Clement of +Alexandria records some verses of Xenophanes the Colophonian (Stromates +liv. v.), from which one sees that it is not merely from to-day that men +have made God in their own image. Orpheus of Thrace, the first +theologian of the Greeks, long before Homer, expresses himself +similarly, according to the same Clement of Alexandria. + +Everything being symbol and emblem, the philosophers, and especially +those who had travelled in India, employed this method; their precepts +were emblems and enigmas. + +_Do not stir the fire with a sword_, that is, do not irritate angry +men. + +_Do not hide the light under the bushel._--Do not hide the truth from +men. + +_Abstain from beans._--Flee frequently public assemblies in which one +gave one's suffrage with black or white beans. + +_Do not have swallows in your house._--That it may not be filled with +chatterers. + +_In the tempest worship the echo._--In times of public trouble retire to +the country. + +_Do not write on the snow._--Do not teach feeble and sluggish minds. + +_Do not eat either your heart or your brain._--Do not give yourself up +to either grief or to too difficult enterprises, etc. + +Such are the maxims of Pythagoras, the sense of which is not hard to +understand. + +The most beautiful of all the emblems is that of God, whom Timaeus of +Locres represents by this idea: _A circle the centre of which is +everywhere and the circumference nowhere._ Plato adopted this emblem; +Pascal had inserted it among the material which he intended using, and +which has been called his "Thoughts." + +In metaphysics, in moral philosophy, the ancients have said everything. +We coincide with them, or we repeat them. All modern books of this kind +are only repetitions. + +It is above all among the Indians, the Egyptians, the Syrians, that +these emblems, which to us appear most strange, were consecrated. It is +there that the two organs of generation, the two symbols of life, were +carried in procession with the greatest respect. We laugh at it, we dare +treat these peoples as barbarous idiots, because they innocently thanked +God for having given them existence. What would they have said if they +had seen us enter our temples with the instrument of destruction at our +side? + +At Thebes the sins of the people were represented by a goat. On the +coast of Phoenicia a naked woman, with a fish's tail, was the emblem +of nature. + +One must not be astonished, therefore, if this use of symbols reached +the Hebrews when they had formed a body of people near the Syrian +desert. + +One of the most beautiful emblems of the Judaic books is this passage of +Ecclesiastes: "... when the grinders cease because they are few, and +those that look out of the windows be darkened, when the almond-tree +shall flourish and the grasshopper shall be a burden: or ever the silver +cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken +at the fountain...." + +That signifies that the old men lose their teeth, that their sight is +dim, that their hair whitens like the flower of the almond-tree, that +their feet swell like the grasshopper, that they are no more fit for +engendering children, and that then they must prepare for the great +journey. + +The "Song of Songs" is (as one knows) a continual emblem of the marriage +of Jesus Christ with the Church. It is an emblem from beginning to end. +Especially does the ingenious Dom Calmet demonstrate that the palm-tree +to which the well-beloved goes is the cross to which our Lord Jesus +Christ was condemned. But it must be avowed that a pure and healthy +moral philosophy is still preferable to these allegories. + +One sees in this people's books a crowd of typical emblems which revolt +us to-day and which exercise our incredulity and our mockery, but which +appeared ordinary and simple to the Asiatic peoples. + +In Ezekiel are images which appear to us as licentious and revolting: in +those times they were merely natural. There are thirty examples in the +"Song of Songs," model of the most chaste union. Remark carefully that +these expressions, these images are always quite serious, and that in no +book of this distant antiquity will you find the least mockery on the +great subject of generation. When lust is condemned it is in definite +terms; but never to excite to passion, nor to make the smallest +pleasantry. This far-distant antiquity did not have its Martial, its +Catullus, or its Petronius. + +It results from all the Jewish prophets and from all the Jewish books, +as from all the books which instruct us in the usages of the Chaldeans, +the Persians, the Phoenicians, the Syrians, the Indians, the +Egyptians; it results, I say, that their customs were not ours, that +this ancient world in no way resembled our world. Go from Gibraltar to +Mequinez merely, the manners are no longer the same; no longer does one +find the same ideas; two leagues of sea have changed everything. + + + + +_ON THE ENGLISH THEATRE_ + + +I have cast my eyes on an edition of Shakespeare issued by Master Samuel +Johnson. I saw there that foreigners who are astonished that in the +plays of the great Shakespeare a Roman senator plays the buffoon, and +that a king appears on the stage drunk, are treated as little-minded. I +do not desire to suspect Master Johnson of being a sorry jester, and of +being too fond of wine; but I find it somewhat extraordinary that he +counts buffoonery and drunkenness among the beauties of the tragic +stage: and no less singular is the reason he gives, that the poet +disdains accidental distinctions of circumstance and country, like a +painter who, content with having painted the figure, neglects the +drapery. The comparison would be more just if he were speaking of a +painter who in a noble subject should introduce ridiculous grotesques, +should paint Alexander the Great mounted on an ass in the battle of +Arbela, and Darius' wife drinking at an inn with rapscallions. + +But there is one thing more extraordinary than all, that is that +Shakespeare is a genius. The Italians, the French, the men of letters of +all other countries, who have not spent some time in England, take him +only for a clown, for a joker far inferior to Harlequin, for the most +contemptible buffoon who has ever amused the populace. Nevertheless, it +is in this same man that one finds pieces which exalt the imagination +and which stir the heart to its depths. It is Truth, it is Nature +herself who speaks her own language with no admixture of artifice. It is +of the sublime, and the author has in no wise sought it. + +What can one conclude from this contrast of grandeur and sordidness, of +sublime reason and uncouth folly, in short from all the contrasts that +we see in Shakespeare? That he would have been a perfect poet had he +lived in the time of Addison. + +The famous Addison, who flourished under Queen Anne, is perhaps of all +English writers the one who best knew how to guide genius with taste. He +had a correct style, an imagination discreet in expression, elegance, +strength and simplicity in his verse and in his prose. A friend of +propriety and orderliness, he wanted tragedy to be written with dignity, +and it is thus that his "Cato" is composed. + +From the very first act the verses are worthy of Virgil, and the +sentiments worthy of Cato. There is no theatre in Europe where the scene +of Juba and Syphax was not applauded as a masterpiece of skill, of +well-developed characters, of fine contrasts, and of pure and noble +diction. Literary Europe, which knows the translations of this piece, +applauded even to the philosophic traits with which the role of Cato is +filled. + +The piece had the great success which its beauty of detail merited, and +which was assured to it by the troubles in England to which this tragedy +was in more than one place a striking allusion. But the appositeness of +these allusions having passed, the verse being only beautiful, the +maxims being only noble and just, and the piece being cold, people no +longer felt anything more than the coldness. Nothing is more beautiful +than Virgil's second canto; recite it on the stage, it will bore: on the +stage one must have passion, live dialogue, action. People soon returned +to Shakespeare's uncouth but captivating aberrations. + + + + +_ENVY_ + + +One knows well enough what antiquity has said of this shameful passion, +and what the moderns have repeated. Hesiod is the first classic author +who speaks of it. + +"The potter is envious of the potter, the artisan of the artisan, the +poor man even of the poor man, the musician of the musician (or if one +would give another sense to the word _Aoidos_) the poet of the poet." + +Long before Hesiod, Job had said: "Envy slayeth the silly one" (Job. +chap. v. verse 2). + +I think that Mandeville, author of the "Fable of the Bees," was the +first to try to prove that envy is a very good thing, a very useful +passion. His first reason is that envy is as natural to man as hunger +and thirst; that it can be found in children, as well as in horses and +dogs. Do you want your children to hate each other, kiss one more than +the other; the secret is infallible. + +He maintains that the first thing that two young women meeting each +other do is to cast about for what is ridiculous in each other, and the +second to flatter each other. + +He believes that without envy the arts would be indifferently +cultivated, and that Raphael would not have been a great painter if he +had not been jealous of Michael Angelo. + +Mandeville has taken emulation for envy, maybe; maybe, also, emulation +is only envy kept within the bounds of decency. + +Michael Angelo might say to Raphael: "Your envy has only led you to work +still better than me; you have not decried me, you have not intrigued +against me with the Pope, you have not tried to have me excommunicated +for having put cripples and one-eyed men in paradise, and succulent +cardinals with beautiful women naked as your hand in hell, in my picture +of the last judgment. Your envy is very praiseworthy; you are a fine +envious fellow; let us be good friends." + +But if the envious man is a wretch without talent, jealous of merit as +beggars are of the rich; if, pressed by the indigence as by the +turpitude of his character he writes you some "News from Parnassus," +some "Letters of Madame la Comtesse," some "Annees Litteraires," this +animal displays an envy that is good for nothing, and for which +Mandeville could never make an apology. + +One asks why the ancients thought that the eye of the envious man +bewitched those who looked at it. It is the envious, rather, who are +bewitched. + +Descartes says: "That envy impels the yellow bile which comes from the +lower part of the liver, and the black bile which comes from the spleen, +which is diffused from the heart through the arteries, etc." But as no +kind of bile is formed in the spleen, Descartes, by speaking thus, does +not seem to merit too much that his natural philosophy should be envied. + +A certain Voet or Voetius, a theological scamp, who accused Descartes of +atheism, was very ill with the black bile; but he knew still less than +Descartes how his detestable bile was diffused in his blood. + +Madame Pernelle is right: "The envious will die, but envy never." +(Tartufe, Act v, Scene iii.) + +But it is good proverb which says that "it is better to be envious than +to have pity." Let us be envious, therefore, as hard as we can. + + + + +_EQUALITY_ + + +SECTION I + +It is clear that men, enjoying the faculties connected with their +nature, are equal; they are equal when they perform animal functions, +and when they exercise their understanding. The King of China, the Great +Mogul, the Padisha of Turkey, cannot say to the least of men: "I forbid +you to digest, to go to the privy and to think." All the animals of each +species are equal among themselves. Animals by nature have over us the +advantage of independence. If a bull which is wooing a heifer is driven +away with the blows of the horns by a stronger bull, it goes in search +of another mistress in another field, and lives free. A cock, beaten by +a cock, consoles itself in another poultry-house. It is not so with us. +A little vizier exiles a bostangi to Lemnos: the vizier Azem exiles the +little vizier to Tenedos: the padisha exiles the little vizier Azem to +Rhodes: the Janissaries put the padisha in prison, and elect another who +will exile good Mussulmans as he chooses; people will still be very +obliged to him if he limits his sacred authority to this little +exercise. + +If this world were what it seems it should be, if man could find +everywhere in it an easy subsistence, and a climate suitable to his +nature, it is clear that it would be impossible for one man to enslave +another. If this globe were covered with wholesome fruits; if the air, +which should contribute to our life, gave us no diseases and a premature +death; if man had no need of lodging and bed other than those of the +buck and the deer; then the Gengis-kans and the Tamerlans would have no +servants other than their children, who would be folk honourable enough +to help them in their old age. + +In the natural state enjoyed by all untamed quadrupeds, birds and +reptiles, man would be as happy as they; domination would then be a +chimera, an absurdity of which no one would think; for why seek servants +when you have no need of their service? + +If it came into the head of some individual of tyrannous mind and brawny +arm to enslave a neighbour less strong than he, the thing would be +impossible; the oppressed would be on the Danube before the oppressor +had taken his measures on the Volga. + +All men would then be necessarily equal, if they were without needs; the +poverty connected with our species subordinates one man to another; it +is not the inequality which is the real misfortune, it is the +dependence. It matters very little that So-and-so calls himself "His +Highness," and So-and-so "His Holiness"; but to serve the one or the +other is hard. + +A big family has cultivated fruitful soil; two little families near by +have thankless and rebellious fields; the two poor families have to +serve the opulent family, or slaughter it: there is no difficulty in +that. One of the two indigent families offers its arms to the rich +family in order to have bread; the other goes to attack it and is +beaten. The serving family is the origin of the servants and the +workmen; the beaten family is the origin of the slaves. + +In our unhappy world it is impossible for men living in society not to +be divided into two classes, the one the rich that commands, the other +the poor that serves; and these two are subdivided into a thousand, and +these thousand still have different gradations. + +When the prizes are drawn you come to us: "I am a man like you," you +say. "I have two hands and two feet, as much pride as you, nay more, a +mind as disordered, at least, as inconsequent, as contradictory as +yours. I am a citizen of San Marino, or of Ragusa, or Vaugirard: give +me my share of the land. In our known hemisphere there are about fifty +thousand million arpents to cultivate, some passable, some sterile. We +are only about a thousand million featherless bipeds in this continent; +that makes fifty arpents apiece: be just; give me my fifty arpents." + +"Go and take them in the land of the Cafres," we answer, "or the +Hottentots, or the Samoyedes; come to an amicable arrangement with them; +here all the shares are taken. If among us you want to eat, be clothed, +lodged, warmed, work for us as your father did; serve us or amuse us, +and you will be paid; otherwise you will be obliged to ask charity, +which would be too degrading to your sublime nature, and would stop your +being really the equal of kings, and even of country parsons, according +to the pretensions of your noble pride." + + +SECTION II + +All the poor are not unhappy. The majority were born in that state, and +continual work stops their feeling their position too keenly; but when +they feel it, then one sees wars, like that of the popular party against +the senate party in Rome, like those of the peasants in Germany, England +and France. All these wars finish sooner or later with the subjection of +the people, because the powerful have money, and money is master of +everything in a state: I say in a state; for it is not the same between +nations. The nation which makes the best use of the sword will always +subjugate the nation which has more gold and less courage. + +All men are born with a sufficiently violent liking for domination, +wealth and pleasure, and with much taste for idleness; consequently, all +men want their money and the wives or daughters of others, to be their +master, to subject them to all their caprices, and to do nothing, or at +least to do only very agreeable things. You see clearly that with these +fine inclinations it is as impossible for men to be equal as it is +impossible for two predicants or two professors of theology not to be +jealous of each other. + +The human race, such as it is, cannot subsist unless there is an +infinity of useful men who possess nothing at all; for it is certain +that a man who is well off will not leave his own land to come to till +yours; and if you have need of a pair of shoes, it is not the Secretary +to the Privy Council who will make them for you. Equality, therefore, is +at once the most natural thing and the most fantastic. + +As men go to excess in everything when they can, this inequality has +been exaggerated. It has been maintained in many countries that it was +not permissible for a citizen to leave the country where chance has +caused him to be born; the sense of this law is visibly: "This land is +so bad and so badly governed, that we forbid any individual to leave it, +for fear that everyone will leave it." Do better: make all your subjects +want to live in your country, and foreigners to come to it. + +All men have the right in the bottom of their hearts to think themselves +entirely equal to other men: it does not follow from that that the +cardinal's cook should order his master to prepare him his dinner; but +the cook can say: "I am a man like my master; like him I was born +crying; like me he will die with the same pangs and the same ceremonies. +Both of us perform the same animal functions. If the Turks take +possession of Rome, and if then I am cardinal and my master cook, I +shall take him into my service." This discourse is reasonable and just; +but while waiting for the Great Turk to take possession of Rome, the +cook must do his duty, or else all human society is perverted. + +As regards a man who is neither a cardinal's cook, nor endowed with any +other employment in the state; as regards a private person who is +connected with nothing, but who is vexed at being received everywhere +with an air of being patronized or scorned, who sees quite clearly that +many _monsignors_ have no more knowledge, wit or virtue than he, and who +at times is bored at waiting in their antechambers, what should he +decide to do? Why, to take himself off. + + + + +_EXPIATION_ + + +Maybe the most beautiful institution of antiquity is that solemn +ceremony which repressed crimes by warning that they must be punished, +and which calmed the despair of the guilty by making them atone for +their transgressions by penitences. Remorse must necessarily have +preceded the expiations; for the maladies are older than the medicine, +and all needs have existed before relief. + +It was, therefore, before all the creeds, a natural religion, which +troubled man's heart when in his ignorance or in his hastiness he had +committed an inhuman action. A friend killed his friend in a quarrel, a +brother killed his brother, a jealous and frantic lover even killed her +without whom he could not live. The head of a nation condemned a +virtuous man, a useful citizen. These are men in despair, if they have +sensibility. Their conscience harries them; nothing is more true; and it +is the height of unhappiness. Only two choices remain, either +reparation, or a settling in crime. All sensitive souls choose the +first, monsters choose the second. + +As soon as religions were established, there were expiations; the +ceremonies accompanying them were ridiculous: for what connection +between the water of the Ganges and a murder? how could a man repair a +homicide by bathing himself? We have already remarked this excess of +aberration and absurdity, of imagining that he who washes his body +washes his soul, and wipes away the stains of bad actions. + +The water of the Nile had later the same virtue as the water of the +Ganges: to these purifications other ceremonies were added: I avow that +they were still more impertinent. The Egyptians took two goats, and drew +lots for which of the two should be thrown below, charged with the sins +of the guilty. The name of "Hazazel," the expiator, was given to this +goat. What connection, I ask you, between a goat and a man's crime? + +It is true that since, God permitted this ceremony to be sanctified +among the Jews our fathers, who took so many Egyptian rites; but +doubtless it was the repentance, and not the goat, which purified the +Jewish souls. + +Jason, having killed Absyrthe his step-brother, comes, it is said, with +Medea, more guilty than he, to have himself absolved by Circe, queen and +priestess of Aea, who ever after passed for a great magician. Circe +absolves them with a sucking-pig and salt cakes. That may make a fairly +good dish, but can barely either pay for Absyrthe's blood or render +Jason and Medea more honourable people, unless they avow a sincere +repentance while eating their sucking-pig. + +Orestes' expiation (he had avenged his father by murdering his mother) +was to go to steal a statue from the Tartars of Crimea. The statue must +have been very badly made, and there was nothing to gain on such an +effect. Since then we have done better, we have invented the mysteries; +the guilty might there receive their absolution by undergoing painful +ordeals, and by swearing that they would lead a new life. It is from +this oath that the new members were called among all nations by a name +which corresponds to initiates, _qui ineunt vitam novam_, who began a +new career, who entered into the path of virtue. + +The Christian catechumens were called _initiates_ only when they were +baptised. + +It is undoubted that in these mysteries one was washed of one's faults +only by the oath to be virtuous; that is so true that the hierophant in +all the Greek mysteries, in sending away the assembly, pronounced these +two Egyptian words--"_Koth_, _ompheth_, watch, be pure"; which is a +proof at once that the mysteries came originally from Egypt, and that +they were invented only to make men better. + +The sages in all times did what they could, therefore, to inspire +virtue, and not to reduce human frailty to despair; but also there are +crimes so horrible that no mystery accorded expiation for them. Nero, +for all that he was emperor, could not get himself initiated into the +mysteries of Ceres. Constantine, on the Report of Zosimus, could not +obtain pardon for his crimes: he was stained with the blood of his wife, +his son and all his kindred. It was in the interest of the human race +that such great transgressions should remain without expiation, in order +that absolution should not invite their committal, and that universal +horror might sometimes stop the villains. + +The Roman Catholics have expiations which are called "penitences." + +By the laws of the barbarians who destroyed the Roman Empire, crimes +were expiated with money. That was called _compounding_, _componat cum +decem, viginti, triginta solidis_. It cost two hundred sous of that time +to kill a priest, and four hundred for killing a bishop; so that a +bishop was worth precisely two priests. + +Having thus compounded with men, one compounded with God, when +confession was generally established. Finally, Pope John XXII., who made +money out of everything, prepared a tariff of sins. + +The absolution of an incest, four turonenses for a layman; _ab incestu +pro laico in foro conscientiae turonenses quatuor_. For the man and the +woman who have committed incest, eighteen turonenses four ducats and +nine carlins. That is not just; if one person pays only four turonenses, +the two owed only eight turonenses. + +Sodomy and bestiality are put at the same rate, with the inhibitory +clause to title XLIII: that amounts to ninety turonenses twelve ducats +and six carlins: _cum inhibitione turonenses 90, ducatos 12, carlinos +6_, _etc._ + +It is very difficult to believe that Leo X. was so imprudent as to have +this impost printed in 1514, as is asserted; but it must be considered +that no spark appeared at that time of the conflagration which reformers +kindled later, that the court of Rome slumbered on the people's +credulity, and neglected to cover its exactions with the lightest veil. +The public sale of indulgences, which followed soon after, makes it +clear that this court took no precaution to hide the turpitudes to which +so many nations were accustomed. As soon as complaints against the +Church's abuses burst forth, the court did what it could to suppress the +book; but it could not succeed. + +If I dare give my opinion of this impost, I think that the various +editions are not reliable; the prices are not at all proportionate: +these prices do not agree with those which are alleged by d'Aubigne, +grandfather of Madame de Maintenon, in the "Confession de Sanci"; he +rates virginity at six _gros_, and incest with his mother and sister at +five _gros_; this account is ridiculous. I think that there was in fact +a tariff established in the datary's office, for those who came to Rome +to be absolved, or to bargain for dispensations; but that the enemies of +Rome added much to it in order to render it more odious. + +What is quite certain is that these imposts were never authorized by any +council; that it was an enormous abuse invented by avarice, and +respected by those whose interest it was not to abolish it. The buyers +and the sellers were equally satisfied: thus, barely anybody protested, +until the troubles of the reformation. It must be admitted that an exact +note of all these imposts would be of great service to the history of +the human mind. + + + + +_EXTREME_ + + +We shall try to extract from this word _extreme_ a notion which may be +useful. + +One disputes every day if, in war, luck or leadership produces +successes. + +If, in disease, nature acts more than medicine for curing or killing. + +If, in jurisprudence, it is not very advantageous to come to terms when +one is in the right, and to plead when one is in the wrong. + +If literature contributes to the glory of a nation or to its decadence. + +If one should or should not make the people superstitious. + +If there is anything true in metaphysics, history and moral philosophy. + +If taste is arbitrary, and if there is in fact good taste and bad taste, +etc., etc. + +To decide all these questions right away, take an example of what is the +most extreme in each; compare the two opposed extremes, and you will at +once discover which is true. + +You wish to know if leadership can infallibly determine the success of +the war; look at the most extreme case, the most opposed situations, in +which leadership alone will infallibly triumph. The enemy's army is +forced to pass through a deep mountain gorge; your general knows it: he +makes a forced march, he takes possession of the heights, he holds the +enemy shut in a pass; they must either die or surrender. In this extreme +case, luck cannot have any part in the victory. It is therefore +demonstrated that skill can determine the success of a campaign; from +that alone is it proved that war is an art. + +Now imagine an advantageous but less decisive position; success is not +so certain, but it is always very probable. You arrive thus, step by +step, to a perfect equality between the two armies. What will decide +then? luck, that is to say an unforeseen event, a general officer killed +when he is on his way to execute an important order, a corps which is +shaken by a false rumour, a panic and a thousand other cases which +cannot be remedied by prudence; but it still remains certain that there +is an art, a generalship. + +As much must be said of medicine, of this art of operating on the head +and the hand, to restore life to a man who is about to lose it. + +The first man who at the right moment bled and purged a sufferer from an +apoplectic fit; the first man who thought of plunging a knife into the +bladder in order to extract a stone, and of closing the wound again; the +first man who knew how to stop gangrene in a part of the body, were +without a doubt almost divine persons, and did not resemble Moliere's +doctors. + +Descend from this obvious example to experiments that are less striking +and more equivocal; you see fevers, ills of all kinds which are cured, +without it being well proved if it be nature or the doctor who has cured +them; you see diseases of which the result cannot be guessed; twenty +doctors are deceived; the one that has the most intelligence, the surest +eye, guesses the character of the malady. There is therefore an art; and +the superior man knows the finenesses of it. Thus did La Peyronie guess +that a man of the court had swallowed a pointed bone which had caused an +ulcer, and put him in danger of death; thus did Boerhaave guess the +cause of the malady as unknown as cruel of a count of Vassenaar. There +is therefore really an art of medicine; but in all arts there are men +like Virgil and Maevius. + +In jurisprudence, take a clear case, in which the law speaks clearly; a +bill of exchange properly prepared and accepted; the acceptor must be +condemned to pay it in every country. There is therefore a useful +jurisprudence, although in a thousand cases judgments are arbitrary, to +the misfortune of the human race, because the laws are badly made. + +Do you desire to know if literature does good to a nation; compare the +two extremes, Cicero and an uncouth ignoramus. See if it is Pliny or +Attila who caused the fall of Rome. + +One asks if one should encourage superstition in the people; see above +all what is most extreme in this disastrous matter, St. Bartholomew, the +massacres in Ireland, the crusades; the question is soon answered. + +Is there any truth in metaphysics? Seize first of all the points that +are most astonishing and the most true; something exists for all +eternity. An eternal Being exists by Himself; this Being cannot be +either wicked or inconsequent. One must surrender to these truths; +almost all the rest is given over to dispute, and the justest mind +unravels the truth while the others are seeking in the shadows. + +It is with all things as with colours; the weakest eyes distinguish +black from white; the better, more practised eyes, discern shades that +resemble each other. + + + + +_EZOURVEIDAM_ + + +What is this "Ezourveidam" which is in the King of France's library? It +is an ancient commentary which an ancient Brahmin composed once upon a +time, before the epoch of Alexander, on the ancient "Veidam," which was +itself much less ancient than the book of the "Shasta." + +Let us respect, I tell you, all these ancient Indians. They invented the +game of chess, and the Greeks went among them to learn geometry. + +This "Ezourveidam" was lastly translated by a Brahmin, correspondent of +the unfortunate French India Company. It was brought to me on Mount +Krapack, where I have long been observing the snows; and I sent it to +the great Library of Paris, where it is better placed than in my home. + +Those who wish to consult it will see that after many revolutions +produced by the Eternal, it pleased the Eternal to form a man who was +called _Adimo_, and a woman whose name corresponds to that of life. + +Is this Indian anecdote taken from the Jewish books? have the Jews +copied it from the Indians? or can one say that both wrote it +originally, and that fine minds meet? + +The Jews were not permitted to think that their writers had drawn +anything from the Brahmins, for they had never heard tell of them. We +are not permitted to think about Adam otherwise than the Jews. +Consequently I hold my tongue, and I do not think at all. + + + + +_FAITH_ + + +_We have long pondered whether or no we should print this article, which +we found in an old book. Our respect for St. Peter's see restrained us. +But some pious men having convinced us that Pope Alexander VI. had +nothing in common with St. Peter, we at last decided to bring this +little piece into the light, without scruple._ + +One day Prince Pico della Mirandola met Pope Alexander VI. at the house +of the courtesan Emilia, while Lucretia, the holy father's daughter, was +in child-bed, and one did not know in Rome if the child was the Pope's, +or his son's the Duke of Valentinois, or Lucretia's husband's, Alphonse +of Aragon, who passed for impotent. The conversation was at first very +sprightly. Cardinal Bembo records a part of it. + +"Little Pic," said the Pope, "who do you think is my grandson's father?" + +"Your son-in-law, I think," answered Pic. + +"Eh! how can you believe such folly?" + +"I believe it through faith." + +"But do you not know quite well that a man who is impotent does not make +children?" + +"Faith consists," returned Pic, "in believing things because they are +impossible; and, further, the honour of your house demands that +Lucretia's son shall not pass as the fruit of an incest. You make me +believe more incomprehensible mysteries. Have I not to be convinced that +a serpent spoke, that since then all men have been damned, that Balaam's +she-ass also spoke very eloquently, and that the walls of Jericho fell +at the sound of trumpets?" Pic forthwith ran through a litany of all +the admirable things he believed. + +Alexander fell on his sofa by dint of laughing. + +"I believe all that like you," he said, "for I know well that only by +faith can I be saved, and that I shall not be saved by my works." + +"Ah! Holy Father," said Pic, "you have need of neither works nor faith; +that is good for poor profane people like us; but you who are vice-god +can believe and do all you want to. You have the keys of heaven; and +without a doubt St. Peter will not close the door in your face. But for +myself, I avow I should need potent protection if, being only a poor +prince, I had slept with my daughter, and if I had used the stiletto and +the cantarella as often as your Holiness." + +Alexander could take a jest. "Let us talk seriously," he said to Prince +della Mirandola. "Tell me what merit one can have in telling God that +one is persuaded of things of which in fact one cannot be persuaded? +What pleasure can that give God? Between ourselves, saying that one +believes what is impossible to believe is lying." + +Pico della Mirandola made a great sign of the cross. "Eh! paternal God," +he cried, "may your Holiness pardon me, you are not a Christian." + +"No, by my faith," said the Pope. + +"I thought as much," said Pico della Mirandola. + + + + +_FALSE MINDS_ + + +We have blind men, one-eyed men, squint-eyed men, men with long sight, +short sight, clear sight, dim sight, weak sight. All that is a faithful +enough image of our understanding; but we are barely acquainted with +false sight. There are hardly men who always take a cock for a horse, or +a chamber-pot for a house. Why do we often come across minds otherwise +just enough, which are absolutely false on important things? Why does +this same Siamese who will never let himself be cheated when there is +question of counting him three rupees, firmly believe in the +metamorphoses of Sammonocodom? By what strange singularity do sensible +men resemble Don Quixote who thought he saw giants where other men saw +only windmills? Still, Don Quixote was more excusable than the Siamese +who believes that Sammonocodom came several times on earth, and than the +Turk who is persuaded that Mahomet put half the moon in his sleeve; for +Don Quixote, struck with the idea that he must fight giants, can figure +to himself that a giant must have a body as big as a mill; but from what +supposition can a sensible man set off to persuade himself that the half +of the moon has gone into a sleeve, and that a Sammonocodom has come +down from heaven to play at shuttlecock, cut down a forest, and perform +feats of legerdemain? + +The greatest geniuses can have false judgment about a principle they +have accepted without examination. Newton had very false judgment when +he commentated the Apocalypse. + +All that certain tyrants of the souls desire is that the men they teach +shall have false judgment. A fakir rears a child who gives much promise; +he spends five or six years in driving into his head that the god Fo +appeared to men as a white elephant, and he persuades the child that he +will be whipped after his death for five hundred thousand years if he +does not believe these metamorphoses. He adds that at the end of the +world the enemy of the god Fo will come to fight against this divinity. + +The child studies and becomes a prodigy; he argues on his master's +lessons; he finds that Fo has only been able to change himself into a +white elephant, because that is the most beautiful of animals. "The +kings of Siam and Pegu," he says, "have made war for a white elephant; +certainly if Fo had not been hidden in that elephant, these kings would +not have been so senseless as to fight simply for the possession of an +animal. + +"The enemy of Fo will come to defy him at the end of the world; +certainly this enemy will be a rhinoceros, for the rhinoceros fights the +elephant." It is thus that in mature age the fakir's learned pupil +reasons, and he becomes one of the lights of India; the more subtle his +mind, the more false is it, and he forms later minds as false as his. + +One shows all these fanatics a little geometry, and they learn it easily +enough; but strange to relate, their minds are not straightened for +that; they perceive the truths of geometry; but they do not learn to +weigh probabilities; they have got into a habit; they will reason +crookedly all their lives, and I am sorry for them. + +There are unfortunately many ways of having a false mind: + +1. By not examining if the principle is true, even when one deduces +accurate consequences therefrom; and this way is common. + +2. By drawing false consequences from a principle recognized as true. +For example, a servant is asked if his master is in his room, by persons +he suspects of wanting his life: if he were foolish enough to tell them +the truth on the pretext that one must not lie, it is clear he would be +drawing an absurd consequence from a very true principle. + +A judge who would condemn a man who has killed his assassin, because +homicide is forbidden, would be as iniquitous as he was poor reasoner. + +Similar cases are subdivided in a thousand different gradations. The +good mind, the just mind, is that which distinguishes them; whence comes +that one has seen so many iniquitous judgments, not because the judges' +hearts were bad, but because they were not sufficiently enlightened. + + + + +_FATHERLAND_ + + +A young journeyman pastrycook who had been to college, and who still +knew a few of Cicero's phrases, boasted one day of loving his +fatherland. "What do you mean by your fatherland?" a neighbour asked +him. "Is it your oven? is it the village where you were born and which +you have never seen since? is it the street where dwelled your father +and mother who have been ruined and have reduced you to baking little +pies for a living? is it the town-hall where you will never be police +superintendent's clerk? is it the church of Our Lady where you have not +been able to become a choir-boy, while an absurd man is archbishop and +duke with an income of twenty thousand golden louis?" + +The journeyman pastrycook did not know what to answer. A thinker who was +listening to this conversation, concluded that in a fatherland of some +extent there were often many thousand men who had no fatherland. + +You, pleasure loving Parisian, who have never made any great journey +save that to Dieppe to eat fresh fish; who know nothing but your +varnished town house, your pretty country house, and your box at that +Opera where the rest of Europe persists in feeling bored; who speak your +own language agreeably enough because you know no other, you love all +that, and you love further the girls you keep, the champagne which comes +to you from Rheims, the dividends which the Hotel-de-Ville pays you +every six months, and you say you love your fatherland! + +In all conscience, does a financier cordially love his fatherland? + +The officer and the soldier who will pillage their winter quarters, if +one lets them, have they a very warm love for the peasants they ruin? + +Where was the fatherland of the scarred Duc de Guise, was it in Nancy, +Paris, Madrid, Rome? + +What fatherland have you, Cardinals de La Balue, Duprat, Lorraine, +Mazarin? + +Where was the fatherland of Attila and of a hundred heroes of this type? + +I would like someone to tell me which was Abraham's fatherland. + +The first man to write that the fatherland is wherever one feels +comfortable was, I believe, Euripides in his "Phaeton." But the first +man who left his birthplace to seek his comfort elsewhere had said it +before him. + +Where then is the fatherland? Is it not a good field, whose owner, +lodged in a well-kept house, can say: "This field that I till, this +house that I have built, are mine; I live there protected by laws which +no tyrant can infringe. When those who, like me, possess fields and +houses, meet in their common interest, I have my voice in the assembly; +I am a part of everything, a part of the community, a part of the +dominion; there is my fatherland."? + +Well now, is it better for your fatherland to be a monarchy or a +republic? For four thousand years has this question been debated. Ask +the rich for an answer, they all prefer aristocracy; question the +people, they want democracy: only kings prefer royalty. How then is it +that nearly the whole world is governed by monarchs? Ask the rats who +proposed to hang a bell round the cat's neck. But in truth, the real +reason is, as has been said, that men are very rarely worthy of +governing themselves. + +It is sad that often in order to be a good patriot one is the enemy of +the rest of mankind. To be a good patriot is to wish that one's city may +be enriched by trade, and be powerful by arms. It is clear that one +country cannot gain without another loses, and that it cannot conquer +without making misery. Such then is the human state that to wish for +one's country's greatness is to wish harm to one's neighbours. He who +should wish that his fatherland might never be greater, smaller, richer, +poorer, would be the citizen of the world. + + + + +_FINAL CAUSES_ + + +If a clock is not made to tell the hour, I will then admit that final +causes are chimeras; and I shall consider it quite right for people to +call me "_cause-finalier_," that is--an imbecile. + +All the pieces of the machine of this world seem, however, made for each +other. A few philosophers affect to mock at the final causes rejected by +Epicurus and Lucretius. It is, it seems to me, at Epicurus and Lucretius +rather that they should mock. They tell you that the eye is not made for +seeing, but that man has availed himself of it for this purpose when he +perceived that eyes could be so used. According to them, the mouth is +not made for speaking, for eating, the stomach for digesting, the heart +for receiving the blood from the veins and for dispatching it through +the arteries, the feet for walking, the ears for hearing. These persons +avow nevertheless that tailors make them coats to clothe them, and +masons houses to lodge them, and they dare deny to nature, to the great +Being, to the universal Intelligence, what they accord to the least of +their workmen. + +Of course one must not make an abuse of final causes; we have remarked +that in vain Mr. Prieur, in "The Spectacle of Nature," maintains that +the tides are given to the ocean so that vessels may enter port more +easily, and to stop the water of the sea from putrefying. In vain would +he say that legs are made to be booted, and the nose to wear spectacles. + +In order that one may be certain of the true end for which a cause +functions, it is essential that that effect shall exist at all times +and in all places. There were not ships at all times and on all the +seas; hence one cannot say that the ocean was made for the ships. One +feels how ridiculous it would be to maintain that nature had worked from +all time in order to adjust herself to the inventions of our arbitrary +arts, which appeared so late; but it is quite evident that if noses were +not made for spectacles, they were for smelling, and that there have +been noses ever since there have been men. Similarly, hands not having +been given on behalf of glove-makers, they are visibly destined for all +the purposes which the metacarpal bones and the phalanges and the +circular muscle of the wrist may procure for us. + +Cicero, who doubted everything, did not, however, doubt final causes. + +It seems especially difficult for the organs of generation not to be +destined to perpetuate the species. This mechanism is very admirable, +but the sensation which nature has joined to this mechanism is still +more admirable. Epicurus had to avow that pleasure is divine; and that +this pleasure is a final cause, by which are ceaselessly produced +sentient beings who have not been able to give themselves sensation. + +This Epicurus was a great man for his time; he saw what Descartes +denied, what Gassendi affirmed, what Newton demonstrated, that there is +no movement without space. He conceived the necessity of atoms to serve +as constituent parts of invariable species. Those are exceedingly +philosophical ideas. Nothing was especially more worthy of respect than +the moral system of the true Epicureans; it consisted in the removal to +a distance of public matters incompatible with wisdom, and in +friendship, without which life is a burden. But as regards the rest of +Epicurus' physics, they do not appear any more admissible than +Descartes' channelled matter. It is, it seems to me, to stop one's eyes +and understanding to maintain that there is no design in nature; and if +there is design, there is an intelligent cause, there exists a God. + +People present to us as objections the irregularities of the globe, the +volcanoes, the plains of shifting sands, a few small mountains destroyed +and others formed by earthquakes, etc. But from the fact that the naves +of the wheels of your coach have caught fire, does it ensue that your +coach was not made expressly to carry you from one place to another? + +The chains of mountains which crown the two hemispheres, and more than +six hundred rivers which flow right to the sea from the feet of these +rocks; all the streams which come down from these same reservoirs, and +which swell the rivers, after fertilizing the country; the thousands of +fountains which start from the same source, and which water animal and +vegetable kind; all these things seem no more the effect of a fortuitous +cause and of a declension of atoms, than the retina which receives the +rays of light, the crystalline lens which refracts them, the incus, the +malleus, the stapes, the tympanic membrane of the ear, which receives +the sounds, the paths of the blood in our veins, the systole and +diastole of the heart, this pendulum of the machine which makes life. + + + + +_FRAUD_ + + +Bambabef the fakir one day met one of the disciples of Confutzee, whom +we call "Confucius," and this disciple was named "Ouang," and Bambabef +maintained that the people had need of being deceived, and Ouang claimed +that one should never deceive anybody; and here is the summary 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 in a diameter of two or three feet, +although this star is a million times bigger than the earth; he makes us +see the moon and the stars set on the same blue background, whereas they +are at different depths. He requires that a square tower shall appear +round to us from a distance; he requires that fire shall seem hot to us, +although it is neither hot nor cold; in fine, he surrounds us with +errors suited to our nature. + +OUANG: + +What you name error is not one at all. The sun, placed as it is at +millions of millions of lis[6] beyond our globe, is not the sun we see. +We perceive in reality, and we can perceive, only the sun which is +depicted in our retina at a determined angle. Our eyes have not been +given us for appreciating sizes and distances, we need other aids and +other operations to appreciate them. + + * * * * * + +Bambabef seemed very astonished at this proposition. Ouang, who was very +patient, explained to him the theory of optics; and Bambabef, who had a +quick understanding, surrendered to the demonstrations of Confutzee's +disciple, then he resumed the argument. + + +BAMBABEF: + +If God does not deceive us through the medium of our senses, as I +believed, avow at least that doctors always deceive children for their +good; they tell them that they are giving them sugar, and in fact they +are giving them rhubarb. I, a fakir, may then deceive the people who are +as ignorant as the children. + +OUANG: + +I have two sons; I have never deceived them; when they have been ill I +have told them that there was a very bitter medicine, and that they must +have the courage to take it; "it would harm you if it were sweet." I +have never allowed their masters and teachers to make them afraid of +spirits, ghosts, goblins, sorcerers; by this means I have made brave, +wise young citizens of them. + +BAMBABEF: + +The people are not born so happily as your family. + +OUANG: + +All men are alike, or nearly so; they are born with the same +dispositions. One must not corrupt men's natures. + +BAMBABEF: + +We teach them errors, I admit, but it is for their good. We make them +believe that if they do not buy the nails we have blessed, if they do +not expiate their sins by giving us money, they will become, in another +life, post-horses, dogs or lizards. That intimidates them, and they +become honest people. + +OUANG: + +Do you not see that you are perverting these poor people? There are +among them many more than you think who reason, who laugh at your +miracles, at your superstitions, who see quite well that they will not +be changed into either lizards or post-horses. What is the consequence? +They have enough sense to see that you are telling them impertinences, +and they have not enough to raise themselves toward a religion that is +pure and free from superstition, such as ours. Their passions make them +believe that there is no religion at all, because the only one that is +taught them is ridiculous; you become guilty of all the vices in which +they are plunged. + +BAMBABEF: + +Not at all, for we do not teach them anything but good morality. + +OUANG: + +You would have yourselves stoned by the people if you taught them impure +morality. Men are so made that they want to do evil, but that they do +not want it preached to them. All that is necessary is that you should +not mix a wise moral system with absurd fables, because you weaken +through your impostures, which you can do without, the morality that you +are forced to teach. + +BAMBABEF: + +What! you believe that one can teach the people truth without +strengthening it with fables? + +OUANG: + +I firmly believe it. Our literati are of the same stuff as our tailors, +our weavers and our husbandmen. They worship a God creator, rewarder, +avenger. They do not sully their worship, either by absurd systems, or +by extravagant ceremonies; and there are far less crimes among the +literati than among the people. Why not deign to instruct our workmen as +we instruct our literati? + +BAMBABEF: + +You would be very foolish; it is as if you wanted them to have the same +courtesy, to be lawyers; that is neither possible nor proper. There must +be white bread for the masters, and brown bread for the servants. + +OUANG: + +I admit that all men should not have the same learning; but there are +some things necessary to all. It is necessary that all men should be +just; and the surest way of inspiring all men with justice is to inspire +in them religion without superstition. + +BAMBABEF: + +It is a fine project, but it is impracticable. Do you think that men +will be satisfied to believe in a God who punishes and rewards? You have +told me that it often happens that the most shrewd among the people +revolt against my fables; they will revolt in the same way against +truth. They will say: "Who will assure me that God punishes and +rewards? where is the proof of it? what is your mission? what miracle +have you performed that I may believe you?" They will laugh at you much +more than at me. + +OUANG: + +That is where you are mistaken. You imagine that people will shake off +the yoke of an honest, probable idea that is useful to everyone, of an +idea in accordance with human reason, because people reject things that +are dishonest, absurd, useless, dangerous, that make good sense shudder. + +The people are very disposed to believe their magistrates: when their +magistrates propose to them only a reasonable belief, they embrace it +willingly. There is no need of prodigies for believing in a just God, +who reads in man's heart; this idea is too natural, too necessary, to be +combated. It is not necessary to say precisely how God will punish and +reward; it suffices that people believe in His justice. I assure you I +have seen entire towns which have had barely any other dogma, and that +it is in those towns that I have seen most virtue. + +BAMBABEF: + +Take care; in those towns you will find philosophers who will deny you +both your pains and your recompenses. + +OUANG: + +You will admit to me that these philosophers will deny your inventions +still more strongly; so you gain nothing from that. Though there are +philosophers who do not agree with my principles, there are honest +people none the less; none the less do they cultivate the virtue of +them, which must be embraced by love, and not by fear. But, further, I +maintain that no philosopher would ever be assured that Providence did +not reserve pains for the wicked and rewards for the good. For if they +ask me who told me that God punishes? I shall ask them who has told them +that God does not punish. In fine, I maintain that these philosophers, +far from contradicting me, will help me. Would you like to be a +philosopher? + +BAMBABEF: + +Willingly; but do not tell the fakirs. + +OUANG: + +Let us think above all that, if a philosopher wishes to be useful to +human society, he must announce a God. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[6] A li is 124 paces. + + + + +_FREE-WILL_ + + +Ever since men have reasoned, the philosophers have obscured this +matter: but the theologians have rendered it unintelligible by absurd +subtleties about grace. Locke is perhaps the first man to find a thread +in this labyrinth; for he is the first who, without having the arrogance +of trusting in setting out from a general principle, examined human +nature by analysis. For three thousand years people have disputed +whether or no the will is free. In the "Essay on the Human +Understanding," chapter on "Power," Locke shows first of all that the +question is absurd, and that liberty can no more belong to the will than +can colour and movement. + +What is the meaning of this phrase "to be free"? it means "to be able," +or assuredly it has no sense. For the will "to be able" is as ridiculous +at bottom as to say that the will is yellow or blue, round or square. To +will is to wish, and to be free is to be able. Let us note step by step +the chain of what passes in us, without obfuscating our minds by any +terms of the schools or any antecedent principle. + +It is proposed to you that you mount a horse, you must absolutely make a +choice, for it is quite clear that you either will go or that you will +not go. There is no middle way. It is therefore of absolute necessity +that you wish yes or no. Up to there it is demonstrated that the will is +not free. You wish to mount the horse; why? The reason, an ignoramus +will say, is because I wish it. This answer is idiotic, nothing happens +or can happen without a reason, a cause; there is one therefore for your +wish. What is it? the agreeable idea of going on horseback which +presents itself in your brain, the dominant idea, the determinant idea. +But, you will say, can I not resist an idea which dominates me? No, for +what would be the cause of your resistance? None. By your will you can +obey only an idea which will dominate you more. + +Now you receive all your ideas; therefore you receive your wish, you +wish therefore necessarily. The word "liberty" does not therefore belong +in any way to your will. + +You ask me how thought and wish are formed in us. I answer you that I +have not the remotest idea. I do not know how ideas are made any more +than how the world was made. All that is given to us is to grope for +what passes in our incomprehensible machine. + +The will, therefore, is not a faculty that one can call free. A free +will is an expression absolutely void of sense, and what the scholastics +have called will of indifference, that is to say willing without cause, +is a chimera unworthy of being combated. + +Where will be liberty then? in the power to do what one wills. I wish to +leave my study, the door is open, I am free to leave it. + +But, say you, if the door is closed, and I wish to stay at home, I stay +there freely. Let us be explicit. You exercise then the power that you +have of staying; you have this power, but you have not that of going +out. + +The liberty about which so many volumes have been written is, therefore, +reduced to its accurate terms, only the power of acting. + +In what sense then must one utter the phrase--"Man is free"? in the same +sense that one utters the words, health, strength, happiness. Man is not +always strong, always healthy, always happy. + +A great passion, a great obstacle, deprive him of his liberty, his power +of action. + +The word "liberty," "free-will," is therefore an abstract word, a +general word, like beauty, goodness, justice. These terms do not state +that all men are always beautiful, good and just; similarly, they are +not always free. + +Let us go further: this liberty being only the power of acting, what is +this power? It is the effect of the constitution and present state of +our organs. Leibnitz wishes to resolve a geometrical problem, he has an +apoplectic fit, he certainly has not liberty to resolve his problem. Is +a vigorous young man, madly in love, who holds his willing mistress in +his arms, free to tame his passion? undoubtedly not. He has the power of +enjoying, and has not the power of refraining. Locke was therefore very +right to call liberty "power." When is it that this young man can +refrain despite the violence of his passion? when a stronger idea +determines in a contrary sense the activity of his body and his soul. + +But what! the other animals will have the same liberty, then, the same +power? Why not? They have senses, memory, feeling, perceptions, as we +have. They act with spontaneity as we act. They must have also, as we +have, the power of acting by virtue of their perceptions, by virtue of +the play of their organs. + +Someone cries: "If it be so, everything is only machine, everything in +the universe is subjected to eternal laws." Well! would you have +everything at the pleasure of a million blind caprices? Either +everything is the sequence of the necessity of the nature of things, or +everything is the effect of the eternal order of an absolute master; in +both cases we are only wheels in the machine of the world. + +It is a vain witticism, a commonplace to say that without the pretended +liberty of the will, all pains and rewards are useless. Reason, and you +will come to a quite contrary conclusion. + +If a brigand is executed, his accomplice who sees him expire has the +liberty of not being frightened at the punishment; if his will is +determined by itself, he will go from the foot of the scaffold to +assassinate on the broad highway; if his organs, stricken with horror, +make him experience an unconquerable terror, he will stop robbing. His +companion's punishment becomes useful to him and an insurance for +society only so long as his will is not free. + +Liberty then is only and can be only the power to do what one will. That +is what philosophy teaches us. But if one considers liberty in the +theological sense, it is a matter so sublime that profane eyes dare not +raise themselves to it.[7] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[7] See "Liberty." + + + + +_FRENCH_ + + +The French language did not begin to have any form until towards the +tenth century; it was born from the ruins of Latin and Celtic, mixed +with a few Germanic words. This language was first of all the _romanum +rusticum_, rustic Roman, and the Germanic language was the court +language up to the time of Charles the Bald; Germanic remained the sole +language of Germany after the great epoch of the partition of 843. +Rustic Roman, the Romance language, prevailed in Western France; the +people of the country of Vaud, of the Valais, of the Engadine valley, +and of a few other cantons, still retain to-day manifest vestiges of +this idiom. + +At the end of the tenth century French was formed; people wrote in +French at the beginning of the eleventh; but this French still retained +more of Rustic Roman than the French of to-day. The romance of +Philomena, written in the tenth century in rustic Roman, is not in a +tongue very different from that of the Norman laws. One still remarks +Celtic, Latin and German derivations. The words signifying the parts of +the human body, or things of daily use, and which have nothing in common +with Latin or German, are in old Gaulish or Celtic, such as _tete_, +_jambe_, _sabre_, _pointe_, _aller_, _parler_, _ecouter_, _regarder_, +_aboyer_, _crier_, _coutume_, _ensemble_, and many others of this kind. +Most of the terms of war were Frank or German: _Marche_, _halte_, +_marechal_, _bivouac_, _reitre_, _lansquenet_. All the rest is Latin; +and all the Latin words were abridged, according to the custom and +genius of the nations of the north; thus from _palatium_, palais; from +_lupus_, loup; from _Auguste_, aout; from _Junius_, juin; from _unctus_, +oint; from _purpura_, pourpre; from _pretium_, prix, etc. Hardly were +there left any vestiges of the Greek tongue, which had been so long +spoken at Marseilles. + +In the twelfth century there began to be introduced into the language +some of the terms of Aristotle's philosophy; and towards the sixteenth +century one expressed by Greek terms all the parts of the human body, +their diseases, their remedies; whence the words _cardiaque_, +_cephalique_, _podagre_, _apoplectique_, _asthmatique_, _iliaque_, +_empyeme_, and so many others. Although the language then enriched +itself from the Greek, and although since Charles VIII. it had drawn +much aid from Italian already perfected, the French language had not yet +taken regular consistence. Francois Ier abolished the ancient custom of +pleading, judging, contracting in Latin; custom which bore witness to +the barbarism of a language which one did not dare use in public +documents, a pernicious custom for citizens whose lot was regulated in a +language they did not understand. One was obliged then to cultivate +French; but the language was neither noble nor regular. The syntax was +left to caprice. The genius for conversation being turned to +pleasantries, the language became very fertile in burlesque and naive +expressions, and very sterile in noble and harmonious terms: from this +it comes that in rhyming dictionaries one finds twenty terms suitable +for comic poetry, for one for more exalted use; and it is, further, a +reason why Marot never succeeded in a serious style, and why Amyot could +render Plutarch's elegance only with naivete. + +French acquired vigour beneath the pen of Montaigne; but it still had +neither nobility nor harmony. Ronsard spoiled the language by bringing +into French poetry the Greek compounds which the doctors and +philosophers used. Malherbe repaired Ronsard's mischief somewhat. The +language became more noble and more harmonious with the establishment of +the Academie Francaise, and acquired finally, in the reign of Louis +XIV., the perfection whereby it might be carried into all forms of +composition. + +The genius of this language is order and clarity; for each language has +its genius, and this genius consists in the facility which the language +gives for expressing oneself more or less happily, for using or +rejecting the familiar twists of other languages. French having no +declensions, and being always subject to the article, cannot adopt Greek +and Latin inversions; it obliges words to arrange themselves in the +natural order of ideas. Only in one way can one say "_Plancus a pris +soin des affaires de Cesar._" That is the only arrangement one can give +to these words. Express this phrase in Latin--_Res Caesaris Plancus +diligenter curavit_: one can arrange these words in a hundred and twenty +ways, without injuring the sense and without troubling the language. The +auxiliary verbs which eke out and enervate the phrases in modern +languages, still render the French tongue little suited to the concise +lapidary style. The auxiliary verbs, its pronouns, its articles, its +lack of declinable participles, and finally its uniform gait, are +injurious to the great enthusiasm of poetry, in which it has less +resources than Italian and English; but this constraint and this bondage +render it more suitable for tragedy and comedy than any language in +Europe. The natural order in which one is obliged to express one's +thoughts and construct one's phrases, diffuses in this language a +sweetness and easiness that is pleasing to all peoples; and the genius +of the nation mingling with the genius of the language has produced more +agreeably written books than can be seen among any other people. + +The pleasure and liberty of society having been long known only in +France, the language has received therefrom a delicacy of expression and +a finesse full of simplicity barely to be found elsewhere. This finesse +has sometimes been exaggerated, but people of taste have always known +how to reduce it within just limits. + +Many persons have thought that the French language has become +impoverished since the time of Amyot and Montaigne: one does indeed +find in many authors expressions which are no longer admissible; but +they are for the most part familiar expressions for which equivalents +have been substituted. The language has been enriched with a quantity of +noble and energetic expressions; and without speaking here of the +eloquence of things, it has acquired the eloquence of words. It is in +the reign of Louis XIV., as has been said, that this eloquence had its +greatest splendour, and that the language was fixed. Whatever changes +time and caprice prepare for it, the good authors of the seventeenth and +eighteenth centuries will always serve as models. + + + + +_FRIENDSHIP_ + + +Friendship is the marriage of the soul; and this marriage is subject to +divorce. It is a tacit contract between two sensitive and virtuous +persons. I say "sensitive," because a monk, a recluse can be not wicked +and live without knowing what friendship is. I say "virtuous," because +the wicked have only accomplices; voluptuaries have companions in +debauch, self-seekers have partners, politicians get partisans; the +generality of idle men have attachments; princes have courtiers; +virtuous men alone have friends. Cethegus was the accomplice of +Catilina, and Maecenas the courtier of Octavius; but Cicero was the +friend of Atticus. + + + + +_GOD_ + + +During the reign of Arcadius, Logomacos, lecturer in theology of +Constantinople, went to Scythia and halted at the foot of the Caucasus, +in the fertile plains of Zephirim, on the frontier of Colchis. That good +old man Dondindac was in his great lower hall, between his sheepfold and +his vast barn; he was kneeling with his wife, his five sons and five +daughters, his kindred and his servants, and after a light meal they +were all singing God's praises. "What do you there, idolator?" said +Logomacos to him. + +"I am not an idolator," answered Dondindac. + +"You must be an idolator," said Logomacos, "seeing that you are not +Greek. Tell me, what was that you were singing in your barbarous +Scythian jargon?" + +"All tongues are equal in the ears of God," answered the Scythian. "We +were singing His praises." + +"That's very extraordinary," returned the theologian. "A Scythian family +who pray God without having been taught by us!" He soon engaged +Dondindac the Scythian in conversation, for he knew a little Scythian, +and the other a little Greek. The following conversation was found in a +manuscript preserved in the library of Constantinople. + + +LOGOMACOS: + +Let us see if you know your catechism. Why do you pray God? + +DONDINDAC: + +Because it is right to worship the Supreme Being from whom we hold +everything. + +LOGOMACOS: + +Not bad for a barbarian! And what do you ask of Him? + +DONDINDAC: + +I thank Him for the benefits I enjoy, and even for the ills with which +He tries me; but I take good care not to ask Him for anything; He knows +better than us what we need, and besides, I am afraid to ask Him for +good weather when my neighbour is asking for rain. + +LOGOMACOS: + +Ah! I thought he was going to say something silly. Let us start again +farther back. Barbarian, who has told you there is a God? + +DONDINDAC: + +The whole of nature. + +LOGOMACOS: + +That does not suffice. What idea have you of God? + +DONDINDAC: + +The idea of my creator, of my master, who will reward me if I do good, +and who will punish me if I do ill. + +LOGOMACOS: + +Trash, nonsense all that! Let us come to essentials. Is God infinite +_secundum quid_, or in essence? + +DONDINDAC: + +I don't understand you. + +LOGOMACOS: + +Brutish fool! Is God in one place, beyond all places, or in all places? + +DONDINDAC: + +I have no idea ... just as you please. + +LOGOMACOS: + +Dolt! Is it possible for what has been not to have been, and can a stick +not have two ends? Does He see the future as future or as present? how +does He draw the being out of non-existence, and how annihilate the +being? + +DONDINDAC: + +I have never examined these things. + +LOGOMACOS: + +What a blockhead! Come, one must humble oneself, see things in +proportion. Tell me, my friend, do you think that matter can be eternal? + +DONDINDAC: + +What does it matter to me whether it exists from all eternity or not? I +do not exist from all eternity. God is always my master; He has given me +the notion of justice, I must follow it; I do not want to be a +philosopher, I want to be a man. + +LOGOMACOS: + +These blockheads are troublesome. Let us go step by step. What is God? + +DONDINDAC: + +My sovereign, my judge, my father. + +LOGOMACOS: + +That's not what I'm asking you. What is His nature? + +DONDINDAC: + +To be potent and good. + +LOGOMACOS: + +But, is He corporeal or spiritual? + +DONDINDAC: + +How should I know? + +LOGOMACOS: + +What! you don't know what a spirit is? + +DONDINDAC: + +Not in the least: of what use would it be to me? should I be more just? +should I be a better husband, a better father, a better master, a better +citizen? + +LOGOMACOS: + +It is absolutely essential you should learn what a spirit is. It is, it +is, it is ... I will tell you another time. + +DONDINDAC: + +I'm very much afraid that you may tell me less what it is than what it +is not. Allow me to put a question to you in my turn. I once saw one of +your temples; why do you depict God with a long beard? + +LOGOMACOS: + +That's a very difficult question which needs preliminary instruction. + +DONDINDAC: + +Before receiving your instruction, I must tell you what happened to me +one day. I had just built a closet at the end of my garden; I heard a +mole arguing with a cockchafer. "That's a very fine building," said the +mole. "It must have been a very powerful mole who did that piece of +work." + +"You're joking," said the cockchafer. "It was a cockchafer bubbling over +with genius who is the architect of this building." From that time I +resolved never to argue. + + + + +_HELVETIA_ + + +Happy Helvetia! to what charter do you owe your liberty? to your +courage, to your resolution, to your mountains. + +"But I am your emperor." + +"But I do not want you any longer." + +"But your fathers were my father's slaves." + +"It is for that very reason that their children do not wish to serve +you." + +"But I had the right belonging to my rank." + +"And we have the right of nature." + +Why is liberty so rare? + +Because it is the chiefest good. + + + + +_HISTORY_ + + +DEFINITION + +History is the recital of facts given as true, in contradistinction to +the fable, which is the recital of facts given as false. + +There is the history of opinions which is hardly anything but a +collection of human errors. + +The history of the arts can be the most useful of all when it joins to +the knowledge of the invention and the progress of the arts the +description of their mechanism. + +Natural history, improperly called _history_, is an essential part of +natural philosophy. The history of events has been divided into sacred +history and profane history; sacred history is a series of divine and +miraculous operations whereby it pleased God once on a time to lead the +Jewish nation, and to-day to exercise our faith. + + +FIRST FOUNDATIONS OF HISTORY + +The first foundations of all history are the recitals of the fathers to +the children, transmitted afterward from one generation to another; at +their origin they are at the very most probable, when they do not shock +common sense, and they lose one degree of probability in each +generation. With time the fable grows and the truth grows less; from +this it comes that all the origins of peoples are absurd. Thus the +Egyptians had been governed by the gods for many centuries; then they +had been governed by demi-gods; finally they had had kings for eleven +thousand three hundred and forty years; and in that space of time the +sun had changed four times from east to west. + +The Phoenicians of Alexander's time claimed to have been established +in their country for thirty thousand years; and these thirty thousand +years were filled with as many prodigies as the Egyptian chronology. I +avow that physically it is very possible that Phoenicia has existed +not merely thirty thousand years, but thirty thousand milliards of +centuries, and that it experienced like the rest of the world thirty +million revolutions. But we have no knowledge of it. + +One knows what a ridiculously marvellous state of affairs ruled in the +ancient history of the Greeks. + +The Romans, for all that they were serious, did not any the less envelop +the history of their early centuries in fables. This nation, so recent +compared with the Asiatic peoples, was five hundred years without +historians. It is not surprising, therefore, that Romulus was the son of +Mars, that a she-wolf was his foster mother, that he marched with a +thousand men of his village of Rome against twenty-five thousand +combatants of the village of the Sabines: that later he became a god; +that Tarquin, the ancient, cut a stone with a razor, and that a vestal +drew a ship to land with her girdle, etc. + +The early annals of all our modern nations are no less fabulous; the +prodigious and improbable things must sometimes be reported, but as +proofs of human credulity: they enter the history of opinions and +foolishnesses; but the field is too vast. + + +OF RECORDS + +In order to know with a little certainty something of ancient history, +there is only one means, it is to see if any incontestable records +remain. We have only three in writing: the first is the collection of +astronomical observations made for nineteen hundred consecutive years at +Babylon, sent by Alexander to Greece. This series of observations, which +goes back to two thousand two hundred and thirty-four years before our +era, proves invincibly that the Babylonians existed as a body of people +several centuries before; for the arts are only the work of time, and +men's natural laziness leaves them for some thousands of years without +other knowledge and without other talents than those of feeding +themselves, of defending themselves against the injuries of the air, and +of slaughtering each other. Let us judge by the Germans and by the +English in Caesar's time, by the Tartars to-day, by the two-thirds of +Africa, and by all the peoples we have found in America, excepting in +some respects the kingdoms of Peru and of Mexico, and the republic of +Tlascala. Let us remember that in the whole of this new world nobody +knew how to read or write. + +The second record is the central eclipse of the sun, calculated in China +two thousand one hundred and fifty-five years before our era, and +recognized true by our astronomers. Of the Chinese the same thing must +be said as of the peoples of Babylon; they already comprised a vast +civilized empire without a doubt. But what puts the Chinese above all +the peoples of the earth is that neither their laws, nor their customs, +nor the language spoken among them by their lettered mandarins has +changed for about four thousand years. Nevertheless, this nation and the +nation of India, the most ancient of all those that exist to-day, which +possess the vastest and the most beautiful country, which invented +almost all the arts before we had learned any of them, have always been +omitted right to our days in all so-called universal histories. And when +a Spaniard and a Frenchman took a census of the nations, neither one nor +the other failed to call his country the first monarchy in the world, +and his king the greatest king in the world, flattering himself that his +king would give him a pension as soon as he had read his book. + +The third record, very inferior to the two others, exists in the Arundel +marbles: the chronicle of Athens is graved there two hundred and +sixty-three years before our era; but it goes back only to Cecrops, +thirteen hundred and nineteen years beyond the time when it was +engraved. In the history of antiquity those are the sole incontestable +epochs that we have. + +Let us give serious attention to these marbles brought back from Greece +by Lord Arundel. Their chronicle begins fifteen hundred and eighty-two +years before our era. That is to-day (1771) an antiquity of 3,353 years, +and you do not see there a single fact touching on the miraculous, on +the prodigious. It is the same with the Olympiads; it is not there that +one should say _Graecia mendax_, lying Greece. The Greeks knew very well +how to distinguish between history and fable, between real facts and the +tales of Herodotus: just as in their serious affairs their orators +borrowed nothing from the speeches of the sophists or from the images of +the poets. + +The date of the taking of Troy is specified in these marbles; but no +mention is made of Apollo's arrows, or of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, or +of the ridiculous combats of the gods. The date of the inventions of +Triptolemy and Ceres is found there; but Ceres is not called _goddess_. +Mention is made of a poem on the abduction of Prosperine; it is not said +that she is the daughter of Jupiter and a goddess, and that she is wife +of the god of the infernal regions. + +Hercules is initiated into the mysteries of Eleusis; but not a word on +his twelve labours, nor on his passage into Africa in his cup, nor on +his divinity, nor on the big fish by which he was swallowed, and which +kept him in its belly three days and three nights, according to +Lycophron. + +Among us, on the contrary, a standard is brought from heaven by an angel +to the monks of Saint-Denis; a pigeon brings a bottle of oil to a church +in Rheims; two armies of snakes give themselves over to a pitched battle +in Germany; an archbishop of Mayence is besieged and eaten by rats; and, +to crown everything, great care has been taken to mark the year of these +adventures. + +All history is recent. It is not astonishing that we have no ancient +profane history beyond about four thousand years. The revolutions of +this globe, the long and universal ignorance of that art which transmits +facts by writing are the cause of it. This art was common only among a +very small number of civilized nations; and was in very few hands even. +Nothing rarer among the French and the Germans than to know how to +write; up to the fourteenth century of our era nearly all deeds were +only attested by witnesses. It was, in France, only under Charles VII., +in 1454, that one started to draft in writing some of the customs of +France. The art of writing was still rarer among the Spanish, and from +that it results that their history is so dry and so uncertain, up to the +time of Ferdinand and Isabella. One sees by that to what extent the very +small number of men who knew how to write could deceive, and how easy it +was to make us believe the most enormous absurdities. + +There are nations which have subjugated a part of the world without +having the usage of characters. We know that Gengis-khan conquered a +part of Asia at the beginning of the thirteenth century, but it is not +through either him or the Tartars that we know it. Their history, +written by the Chinese and translated by Father Gaubil, states that +these Tartars had not at that time the art of writing. + +This art cannot have been less unknown to the Scythian Oguskan, named +Madies by the Persians and the Greeks, who conquered a part of Europe +and Asia so long before the reign of Cyrus. It is almost certain that at +that time of a hundred nations there were hardly two or three who used +characters. It is possible that in an ancient world destroyed, men knew +writing and the other arts; but in ours they are all very recent. + +There remain records of another kind, which serve to establish merely +the remote antiquity of certain peoples, and which precede all the known +epochs, and all the books; these are the prodigies of architecture, like +the pyramids and the palaces of Egypt, which have resisted time. +Herodotus, who lived two thousand two hundred years ago, and who had +seen them, was not able to learn from the Egyptian priests at what time +they had been erected. + +It is difficult to give to the most ancient of the pyramids less than +four thousand years of antiquity; but one must consider that these +efforts of the ostentation of the kings could only have been commenced +long after the establishment of the towns. But to build towns in a land +inundated every year, let us always remark that it was first necessary +to raise the land of the towns on piles in this land of mud, and to +render them inaccessible to the flood; it was essential, before taking +this necessary course, and before being in a state to attempt these +great works, for the people to have practised retreating during the +rising of the Nile, amid the rocks which form two chains right and left +of this river. It was necessary for these mustered peoples to have the +instruments for tilling, those of architecture, a knowledge of +surveying, with laws and a police. All this necessarily requires a +prodigious space of time. We see by the long details which face every +day the most necessary and the smallest of our undertakings, how +difficult it is to do great things, and it needs not only indefatigable +stubbornness, but several generations animated with this stubbornness. + +However, whether it be Menes, Thaut or Cheops, or Rameses who erected +one or two of these prodigious masses, we shall not be the more +instructed of the history of ancient Egypt: the language of this people +is lost. We therefore know nothing but that before the most ancient +historians there was matter for making an ancient history. + + + + +_IGNORANCE_ + + +I am ignorant of how I was formed, and of how I was born. For a quarter +of my life I was absolutely ignorant of the reasons for all that I saw, +heard and felt, and I was nothing but a parrot at whom other parrots +chattered. + +When I looked round me and within me, I conceived that something exists +for all eternity; since there are beings who exist to-day, I concluded +that there is a being who is necessary and necessarily eternal. Thus, +the first step I took to emerge from my ignorance crossed the boundaries +of all the centuries. + +But when I tried to walk in this infinite quarry open before me, I could +neither find a single path, nor discern plainly a single object; and +from the leap I made to contemplate eternity, I fell back again into the +abyss of my ignorance. + +I saw what was called "matter," from the star Sirius and the stars of +the Milky Way, as distant from Sirius as Sirius is from us, right to the +last atom that can be perceived with the microscope, and I am ignorant +as to what matter is. + +The light which let me see all these beings is unknown to me; I can, +with the help of a prism, dissect this light, and divide it into seven +pencils of rays; but I cannot divide these pencils; I am ignorant of +what they are composed. Light is of the nature of matter, since it has +movement and makes an impression on objects; but it does not tend toward +a centre like all bodies: on the contrary, it escapes invincibly from +the centre, whereas all matter bears towards its centre. Light seems +penetrable, and matter is impenetrable. Is this light matter? is it not +matter? with what innumerable properties can it be endowed? I am +ignorant thereof. + +Is this substance which is so brilliant, so swift and so unknown, are +these other substances which roll in the immensity of space, eternal as +they seem infinite? I have no idea. Has a necessary being, of sovereign +intelligence, created them out of nothing, or has he arranged them? did +he produce this order in Time or before Time? What even is this Time of +which I speak? I cannot define it. O God! Teach me, for I am enlightened +neither by other men's darkness nor by my own. + +What is sensation? How have I received it? what connection is there +between the air which strikes my ear and the sensation of sound? between +this body and the sensation of colour? I am profoundly ignorant thereof, +and I shall always be ignorant thereof. + +What is thought? where does it dwell? how is it formed? who gives me +thought during my sleep? is it by virtue of my will that I think? But +always during my sleep, and often while I am awake, I have ideas in +spite of myself. These ideas, long forgotten, long relegated to the back +shop of my brain, issue from it without my interfering, and present +themselves to my memory, which makes vain efforts to recall them. + +External objects have not the power to form ideas in me, for one does +not give oneself what one has not; I am too sensible that it is not I +who give them to me, for they are born without my orders. Who produces +them in me? whence do they come? whither do they go? Fugitive phantoms, +what invisible hand produces you and causes you to disappear? + +Why, alone of all animals, has man the mania for dominating his +fellow-men? + +Why and how has it been possible that of a hundred thousand million men +more than ninety-nine have been immolated to this mania? + +How is reason so precious a gift that we would not lose it for anything +in the world? and how has this reason served only to make us the most +unhappy of all beings? + +Whence comes it that loving truth passionately, we are always betrayed +to the most gross impostures? + +Why is life still loved by this crowd of Indians deceived and enslaved +by the bonzes, crushed by a Tartar's descendants, overburdened with +work, groaning in want, assailed by disease, exposed to every scourge? + +Whence comes evil, and why does evil exist? + +O atoms of a day! O my companions in infinite littleness, born like me +to suffer everything and to be ignorant of everything, are there enough +madmen among you to believe that they know all these things? No, there +are not; no, at the bottom of your hearts you feel your nonentity as I +render justice to mine. But you are arrogant enough to want people to +embrace your vain systems; unable to be tyrants over our bodies, you +claim to be tyrants over our souls. + + + + +_THE IMPIOUS_ + + +Who are the impious? those who give a white beard, feet and hands to the +Being of beings, to the great Demiourgos, to the eternal intelligence by +which nature is governed. But they are only excusably impious, poor +impious people against whom one must not grow wroth. + +If even they paint the great incomprehensible Being born on a cloud +which can bear nothing; if they are foolish enough to put God in a mist, +in the rain, or on a mountain, and to surround him with little chubby, +flushed faces accompanied by two wings; I laugh and I pardon them with +all my heart. + +The impious persons who attribute to the Being of beings preposterous +predictions and injustices would anger me if this great Being had not +given me a reason which quells my wrath. The silly fanatic repeats to +me, after others, that it is not for us to judge what is reasonable and +just in the great Being, that His reason is not like our reason, that +His justice is not like our justice. Eh! how, you mad demoniac, do you +want me to judge justice and reason otherwise than by the notions I have +of them? do you want me to walk otherwise than with my feet, and to +speak otherwise than with my mouth? + +The impious man who supposes the great Being jealous, arrogant, +malignant, vindictive, is more dangerous. I would not want to sleep +under the same roof as this man. + +But how would you treat the impious man who says to you: "See only +through my eyes, do not think; I announce to you a tyrannical God who +has made me to be your tyrant; I am his well-beloved: during all +eternity he will torture millions of his creatures whom he detests in +order to gladden me; I shall be your master in this world, and I shall +laugh at your torments in the other." + +Do you not feel an itching to thrash this cruel, impious fellow? If you +are born gentle, will you not run with all your might to the west when +this barbarian utters his atrocious reveries in the east? + + + + +_JOAN OF ARC_ + + +It is meet that the reader should be acquainted with the true history of +Joan of Arc surnamed "the Maid." The details of her adventure are very +little known and may give readers pleasure; here they are. + +Paul Jove says that the courage of the French was stimulated by this +girl, and takes good care not to believe her inspired. Neither Robert, +Gaguin, Paul Emile, Polydore Vergile, Genebrard, Philip of Bergamo, +Papyre Masson, nor even Mariana, say that she was sent by God; and even +though Mariana the Jesuit had said it, that would not deceive me. + +Mezerai relates "that the prince of the celestial militia appeared to +her." I am sorry for Mezerai, and I ask pardon of the prince of the +celestial militia. + +Most of our historians, who copy each other, suppose that the Maid +uttered prophecies, and that her prophecies were accomplished. She is +made to say that "she will drive the English out of the kingdom," and +they were still there five years after her death. She is said to have +written a long letter to the King of England, and assuredly she could +neither read nor write; such an education was not given to an inn +servant in the Barois; and the information laid against her states that +she could not sign her name. + +But, it is said, she found a rusted sword, the blade of which was +engraved with five golden _fleurs-de-lis_; and this sword was hidden in +the church of Sainte Catherine de Fierbois at Tours. There, certainly is +a great miracle! + +Poor Joan of Arc having been captured by the English, despite her +prophecies and her miracles, maintained first of all in her +cross-examination that St. Catherine and St. Marguerite had honoured her +with many revelations. I am astonished that she never said anything of +her talks with the prince of the celestial militia. These two saints +apparently liked talking better than St. Michael. Her judges thought her +a sorceress, she thought herself inspired. + +One great proof that Charles VII.'s captains made use of the marvellous +in order to encourage the soldiers, in the deplorable state to which +France was reduced, is that Saintrailles had his shepherd, as the Comte +de Dunois had his shepherdess. The shepherd made prophecies on one side, +while the shepherdess made them on the other. + +But unfortunately the Comte de Dunois' prophetess was captured at the +siege of Compiegne by a bastard of Vendome, and Saintrailles' prophet +was captured by Talbot. The gallant Talbot was far from having the +shepherd burned. This Talbot was one of those true Englishmen who scorn +superstition, and who have not the fanaticism for punishing fanatics. + +This, it seems to me, is what the historians should have observed, and +what they have neglected. + +The Maid was taken to Jean de Luxembourg, Comte de Ligny. She was shut +up in the fortress of Beaulieu, then in that of Beaurevoir, and from +there in that of Crotoy in Picardy. + +First of all Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, who was of the King of +England's party against his own legitimate king, claims the Maid as a +sorceress arrested on the limits of his diocese. He wishes to judge her +as a sorceress. He supported the right he claimed by a downright lie. +Joan had been captured on the territory of the bishopric of Noyon: and +neither the Bishop of Beauvais, nor the Bishop of Noyon assuredly had +the right of condemning anybody, and still less of committing to death a +subject of the Duke of Lorraine, and a warrior in the pay of the King of +France. + +There was at that time (who would believe it?) a vicar-general of the +Inquisition in France, by name Brother Martin.[8] It was one of the most +horrible effects of the total subversion of that unfortunate country. +Brother Martin claimed the prisoner as smelling of heresy (_odorantem +haeresim_). He called upon the Duke of Burgundy and the Comte de Ligny, +"by the right of his office, and of the authority given to him by the +Holy See, to deliver Joan to the Holy Inquisition." + +The Sorbonne hastened to support Brother Martin, and wrote to the Duke +of Burgundy and to Jean de Luxembourg--"You have used your noble power +to apprehend this woman who calls herself the Maid, by means of whom the +honour of God has been immeasurably offended, the faith exceedingly +hurt, and the Church too greatly dishonoured; for by reason of her, +idolatry, errors, bad doctrine, and other inestimable evils have ensued +in this kingdom ... but what this woman has done would be of small +account, if did not ensue what is meet for satisfying the offence +perpetrated by her against our gentle Creator and His faith, and the +Holy Church with her other innumerable misdeeds ... and it would be +intolerable offence against the divine majesty if it happened that this +woman were freed."[9] + +Finally, the Maid was awarded to Jean Cauchon whom people called the +unworthy bishop, the unworthy Frenchman, and the unworthy man. Jean de +Luxembourg sold the Maid to Cauchon and the English for ten thousand +livres, and the Duke of Bedford paid them. The Sorbonne, the bishop and +Brother Martin, then presented a new petition to this Duke of Bedford, +regent of France, "in honour of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, for +that the said Joan may be briefly put into the hands of the Church." +Joan was led to Rouen. The archbishopric was vacant at that time, and +the chapter permitted the Bishop of Beauvais to _work_ in the town. +(_Besogner_ is the term which was used.) He chose as assessors nine +doctors of the Sorbonne with thirty-five other assistants, abbots or +monks. The vicar of the Inquisition, Martin, presided with Cauchon; and +as he was only a vicar, he had but second place. + +Joan underwent fourteen examinations; they are singular. She said that +she saw St. Catherine and St. Marguerite at Poitiers. Doctor Beaupere +asks her how she recognized the saints. She answers that it was by their +way of bowing. Beaupere asks her if they are great chatterboxes. "Go +look on the register," she says. Beaupere asks her if, when she saw St. +Michael, he was naked. She answers: "Do you think our Lord had nothing +to clothe him with?" + +The curious will carefully observe here that Joan had long been directed +with other religious women of the populace by a rogue named Richard,[10] +who performed miracles, and who taught these girls to perform them. One +day he gave communion three times in succession to Joan, in honour of +the Trinity. It was then the custom in matters of importance and in +times of great peril. The knights had three masses said, and +communicated three times when they went to seek fortune or to fight in a +duel. It is what has been observed on the part of the Chevalier Bayard. + +The workers of miracles, Joan's companions, who were submissive to +Richard, were named Pierrone and Catherine. Pierrone affirmed that she +had seen that God appeared to her in human form as a friend to a friend. +God was "clad in a long white robe, etc." + +Up to the present the ridiculous; here now is the horrible. + +One of Joan's judges, doctor of theology and priest, by name Nicholas +_the Bird-Catcher_, comes to confess her in prison. He abuses the +sacrament to the point of hiding behind a piece of serge two priests who +transcribed Joan of Arc's confession. Thus did the judges use sacrilege +in order to be murderers. And an unfortunate idiot, who had had enough +courage to render very great services to the king and the country, was +condemned to be burned by forty-four French priests who immolated her +for the English faction. + +It is sufficiently well-known how someone had the cunning and meanness +to put a man's suit beside her to tempt her to wear this suit again, and +with what absurd barbarism this transgression was claimed as a pretext +for condemning her to the flames, as if in a warrior girl it was a crime +worthy of the fire, to put on breeches instead of a skirt. All this +wrings the heart, and makes common sense shudder. One cannot conceive +how we dare, after the countless horrors of which we have been guilty, +call any nation by the name of barbarian. + +Most of our historians, lovers of the so-called embellishments of +history rather than of truth, say that Joan went fearlessly to the +torture; but as the chronicles of the times bear witness, and as the +historian Villaret admits, she received her sentence with cries and +tears; a weakness pardonable in her sex, and perhaps in ours, and very +compatible with the courage which this girl had displayed amid the +dangers of war; for one can be fearless in battle, and sensitive on the +scaffold. + +I must add that many persons have believed without any examination that +the Maid of Orleans was not burned at Rouen at all, although we have the +official report of her execution. They have been deceived by the account +we still have of an adventuress who took the name of the "Maid," +deceived Joan of Arc's brothers, and under cover of this imposture, +married in Lorraine a nobleman of the house of Armoise. There were two +other rogues who also passed themselves off as the "Maid of Orleans." +All three claimed that Joan was not burned at all, and that another +woman had been substituted for her. Such stories can be admitted only by +those who want to be deceived. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[8] Beuchot says: There was at that time in France an +Inquisitor-General, named Brother Jean or Jacques le Graverend. His +vice-inquisitor or vicar, who took part in Joan's trial, was not called +Brother Martin, but Brother Jean Magistri or the Master. + +[9] This is a translation of the Latin of the Sorbonne, made long after. + +[10] Beuchot says that Berriat Saint-Prix, in his "Jeanne d'Arc," +proves, page 341 _et seq._, that the imputations against Brother Richard +are groundless, and that he could exercise no influence at the trial. + + + + +_KISSING_ + + +I ask pardon of the boys and the girls; but maybe they will not find +here what they will seek. This article is only for scholars and serious +persons for whom it is barely suitable. + +There is but too much question of kissing in the comedies of Moliere's +time. Champagne, in the comedy of "La Mere Coquette" by Quinault, asks +kisses of Laurette; she says to him--"You are not content, then; really +it is shameful; I have kissed you twice." Champagne answers her--"What! +you keep account of your kisses?" (Act I. Sc. 1.). + +The valets always used to ask kisses of the soubrettes; people kissed +each other on the stage. Usually it was very dull and very intolerable, +particularly in the case of ugly actors, who were nauseating. + +If the reader wants kisses, let him look for them in the "Pastor Fido"; +there is one entire chorus where nothing but kisses is mentioned; and +the piece is founded solely on a kiss that Mirtillo gave one day to +Amarilli, in a game of blind man's buff, _un bacio molto saporito_. + +Everyone knows the chapter on kisses, in which Jean de la Casa, +Archbishop of Benevento, says that people can kiss each other from head +to foot. He pities the people with big noses who can only approach each +other with difficulty; and he counsels ladies with long noses to have +flat-nosed lovers. + +The kiss was a very ordinary form of salutation throughout ancient +times. Plutarch recalls that the conspirators, before killing Caesar, +kissed his face, hand and breast. Tacitus says that when Agricola, his +father-in-law, returned from Rome, Domitian received him with a cold +kiss, said nothing to him, and left him confounded in the crowd. The +inferior who could not succeed in greeting his superior by kissing him, +put his mouth to his own hand, and sent him a kiss that the other +returned in the same way if he so wished. + +This sign was used even for worshipping the gods. Job, in his parable +(Chap. xxxi.), which is perhaps the oldest of known books, says that he +has not worshipped the sun and the moon like the other Arabs, that he +has not carried his hand to his mouth as he looked at the stars. + +In our Occident nothing remains of this ancient custom but the puerile +and genteel civility that is still taught to children in some small +towns, of kissing their right hands when someone has given them some +sweets. + +It was a horrible thing to betray with a kiss; it was that that made +Caesar's assassination still more hateful. We know all about Judas' +kisses; they have become proverbial. + +Joab, one of David's captains, being very jealous of Amasa, another +captain, says to him (2 Sam. xx. 9): "Art thou in health, my brother? +And he took Amasa by the beard with the right hand to kiss him," and +with his other hand drew his sword and "smote him therewith in the fifth +rib, and shed out his bowels on the ground." + +No other kiss is to be found in the other fairly frequent assassinations +which were committed among the Jews, unless it be perhaps the kisses +which Judith gave to the captain Holophernes, before cutting off his +head while he was in bed asleep; but no mention is made of them, and the +thing is merely probable. + +In one of Shakespeare's tragedies called "Othello," this Othello, who is +a black, gives two kisses to his wife before strangling her. That seems +abominable to honourable people; but Shakespeare's partisans say it is +beautifully natural, particularly in a black. + +When Giovanni Galeas Sforza was assassinated in Milan Cathedral, on St. +Stephen's day, the two Medici in the Reparata church; Admiral Coligny, +the Prince of Orange, the Marechal d'Ancre, the brothers Witt, and so +many others; at least they were not kissed. + +There was among the ancients I know not what of symbolic and sacred +attached to the kiss, since one kissed the statues of the gods and their +beards, when the sculptors had shown them with a beard. Initiates kissed +each other at the mysteries of Ceres, as a sign of concord. + +The early Christians, men and women, kissed each other on the mouth at +their _agapae_. This word signified "love-feast." They gave each other +the holy kiss, the kiss of peace, the kiss of brother and sister, +agion +philema+. This custom lasted for more than four centuries, and was +abolished at last on account of its consequences. It was these kisses of +peace, these agapae of love, these names of "brother" and "sister," that +long drew to the little-known Christians, those imputations of +debauchery with which the priests of Jupiter and the priestesses of +Vesta charged them. You see in Petronius, and in other profane authors, +that the libertines called themselves "brother" and "sister." It was +thought that among the Christians the same names signified the same +infamies. They were innocent accomplices in spreading these accusations +over the Roman empire. + +There were in the beginning seventeen different Christian societies, +just as there were nine among the Jews, including the two kinds of +Samaritans. The societies which flattered themselves at being the most +orthodox accused the others of the most inconceivable obscenities. The +term of "gnostic," which was at first so honourable, signifying +"learned," "enlightened," "pure," became a term of horror and scorn, a +reproach of heresy. Saint Epiphanius, in the third century, claimed that +they used first to tickle each other, the men and the women; that then +they gave each other very immodest kisses, and that they judged the +degree of their faith by the voluptuousness of these kisses; that the +husband said to his wife, in presenting a young initiate to her: "Have +an agape with my brother," and that they had an agape. + +We do not dare repeat here, in the chaste French tongue,[11] what Saint +Epiphanius adds in Greek (Epiphanius, _contra haeres_, lib. I., vol. ii). +We will say merely that perhaps this saint was somewhat imposed upon; +that he allowed himself to be too carried away by zeal, and that all +heretics are not hideous debauchees. + +The sect of Pietists, wishing to imitate the early Christians, to-day +give each other kisses of peace on leaving the assembly, calling each +other "my brother, my sister"; it is what, twenty years ago, a very +pretty and very human Pietist lady avowed to me. The ancient custom was +to kiss on the mouth; the Pietists have carefully preserved it. + +There was no other manner of greeting dames in France, Germany, Italy, +England; it was the right of cardinals to kiss queens on the mouth, and +in Spain even. What is singular is that they had not the same +prerogative in France, where ladies always had more liberty than +anywhere else, but "every country has its ceremonies," and there is no +usage so general that chance and custom have not provided exceptions. It +would have been an incivility, an affront, for an honourable woman, when +she received a lord's first visit, not to have kissed him, despite his +moustaches. "It is a displeasing custom," says Montaigne (Book III., +chap. v.), "and offensive to ladies, to have to lend their lips to +whoever has three serving-men in his suite, disagreeable though he be." +This custom was, nevertheless, the oldest in the world. + +If it is disagreeable for a young and pretty mouth to stick itself out +of courtesy to an old and ugly mouth, there was a great danger between +fresh, red mouths of twenty to twenty-five years old; and that is what +finally brought about the abolition of the ceremony of kissing in the +mysteries and the agapae. It is what caused women to be confined among +the Orientals, so that they might kiss only their fathers and their +brothers; custom long since introduced into Spain by the Arabs. + +Behold the danger: there is one nerve of the fifth pair which goes from +the mouth to the heart, and thence lower down, with such delicate +industry has nature prepared everything! The little glands of the lips, +their spongy tissue, their velvety paps, the fine skin, ticklish, gives +them an exquisite and voluptuous sensation, which is not without analogy +with a still more hidden and still more sensitive part. Modesty may +suffer from a lengthily savoured kiss between two Pietists of eighteen. + +It is to be remarked that the human species, the turtledoves and the +pigeons alone are acquainted with kisses; thence came among the Latins +the word _columbatim_, which our language has not been able to render. +There is nothing of which abuse has not been made. The kiss, designed by +nature for the mouth, has often been prostituted to membranes which do +not seem made for this usage. One knows of what the templars were +accused. + +We cannot honestly treat this interesting subject at greater length, +although Montaigne says: "One should speak thereof shamelessly: brazenly +do we utter 'killing,' 'wounding,' 'betraying,' but of that we dare not +speak but with bated breath." + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[11] Or the English--_Translator._ + + + + +_LANGUAGES_ + + +There is no complete language, no language which can express all our +ideas and all our sensations; their shades are too numerous, too +imperceptible. Nobody can make known the precise degree of sensation he +experiences. One is obliged, for example, to designate by the general +names of "love" and "hate" a thousand loves and a thousand hates all +different from each other; it is the same with our pleasures and our +pains. Thus all languages are, like us, imperfect. + +They have all been made successively and by degrees according to our +needs. It is the instinct common to all men which made the first +grammars without perceiving it. The Lapps, the Negroes, as well as the +Greeks, needed to express the past, the present and the future; and they +did it: but as there has never been an assembly of logicians who formed +a language, no language has been able to attain a perfectly regular +plan. + +All words, in all possible languages, are necessarily the images of +sensations. Men have never been able to express anything but what they +felt. Thus everything has become metaphor; everywhere the soul is +enlightened, the heart burns, the mind wanders. Among all peoples the +infinite has been the negation of the finite; immensity the negation of +measure. It is evident that our five senses have produced all languages, +as well as all our ideas. The least imperfect are like the laws: those +in which there is the least that is arbitrary are the best. The most +complete are necessarily those of the peoples who have cultivated the +arts and society. Thus the Hebraic language should be one of the +poorest languages, like the people who used to speak it. How should the +Hebrews have had maritime terms, they who before Solomon had not a boat? +how the terms of philosophy, they who were plunged in such profound +ignorance up to the time when they started to learn something in their +migration to Babylon? The language of the Phoenicians, from which the +Hebrews drew their jargon, should be very superior, because it was the +idiom of an industrious, commercial, rich people, distributed all over +the earth. + +The most ancient known language should be that of the nation most +anciently gathered together as a body of people. It should be, further, +that of the people which has been least subjugated, or which, having +been subjugated, has civilized its conquerors. And in this respect, it +is constant that Chinese and Arabic are the most ancient of all those +that are spoken to-day. + +There is no mother-tongue. All neighbouring nations have borrowed from +each other: but one has given the name of "mother-tongue" to those from +which some known idioms are derived. For example, Latin is the +mother-tongue in respect of Italian, Spanish and French: but it was +itself derived from Tuscan; and Tuscan was derived from Celtic and +Greek. + +The most beautiful of all languages must be that which is at once, the +most complete, the most sonorous, the most varied in its twists and the +most regular in its progress, that which has most compound words, that +which by its prosody best expresses the soul's slow or impetuous +movements, that which most resembles music. + +Greek has all these advantages: it has not the roughness of Latin, in +which so many words end in _um_, _ur_, _us_. It has all the pomp of +Spanish, and all the sweetness of Italian. It has above all the living +languages of the world the expression of music, by long and short +syllables, and by the number and variety of its accents. Thus all +disfigured as it is to-day in Greece, it can still be regarded as the +most beautiful language in the universe. + +The most beautiful language cannot be the most widely distributed, when +the people which speaks it is oppressed, not numerous, without commerce +with other nations, and when these other nations have cultivated their +own languages. Thus Greek should be less diffused than Arabic, and even +Turkish. + +Of all European languages French should be the most general, because it +is the most suited to conversation: it has taken its character from that +of the people which speaks it. + +The French have been, for nearly a hundred and fifty years, the people +which has best known society, which the first discarded all +embarrassment, and the first among whom women were free and even +sovereign, when elsewhere they were only slaves. The always uniform +syntax of this language, which admits no inversions, is a further +facility barely possessed by other tongues; it is more current coin than +others, even though it lacks weight. The prodigious quantity of +agreeably frivolous books which this nation has produced is a further +reason for the favour which its language has obtained among all nations. + +Profound books will not give vogue to a language: they will be +translated; people will learn Newton's philosophy; but they will not +learn English in order to understand it. + +What makes French still more common is the perfection to which the drama +has been carried in this tongue. It is to "Cinna," "Phedre," the +"Misanthrope" that it owes its vogue, and not to the conquests of Louis +XIV. + +It is not so copious and so flexible as Italian, or so majestic as +Spanish, or so energetic as English; and yet it has had more success +than these three languages from the sole fact that it is more suited to +intercourse, and that there are more agreeable books in it than +elsewhere. It has succeeded like the cooks of France, because it has +more flattered general taste. + +The same spirit which has led the nations to imitate the French in their +furniture, in the arrangement of rooms, in gardens, in dancing, in all +that gives charm, has led them also to speak their language. The great +art of good French writers is precisely that of the women of this +nation, who dress better than the other women of Europe, and who, +without being more beautiful, appear to be so by the art with which they +adorn themselves, by the noble and simple charm they give themselves so +naturally. + +It is by dint of good breeding that this language has managed to make +the traces of its former barbarism disappear. Everything would bear +witness to this barbarism to whosoever should look closely. One would +see that the number _vingt_ comes from _viginti_, and that formerly this +_g_ and this _t_ were pronounced with a roughness characteristic of all +the northern nations; of the month of _Augustus_ has been made the month +of _aout_. Not so long ago a German prince thinking that in France one +never pronounced the term _Auguste_ otherwise, called King Auguste of +Poland King Aout. All the letters which have been suppressed in +pronunciation, but retained in writing, are our former barbarous +clothes. + +It was when manners were softened that the language also was softened: +before Francois Ier summoned women to his court, it was as clownish as +we were. It would have been as good to speak old Celtic as the French of +the time of Charles VIII. and Louis XII.: German was not more harsh. + +It has taken centuries to remove this rust. The imperfections which +remain would still be intolerable, were it not for the continual care +one takes to avoid them, as a skilful horseman avoids stones in the +road. Good writers are careful to combat the faulty expressions which +popular ignorance first brings into vogue, and which, adopted by bad +authors, then pass into the gazettes and the pamphlets. _Roastbeef_ +signifies in English _roasted ox_, and our waiters talk to us nowadays +of a "roastbeef of mutton." _Riding-coat_ means _a coat for going on +horseback_; of it people have made _redingote_, and the populace thinks +it an ancient word of the language. It has been necessary to adopt this +expression with the people because it signifies an article of common +use. + +In matters of arts and crafts and necessary things, the common people +subjugated the court, if one dare say so; just as in matters of religion +those who most despise the common run of people are obliged to speak and +to appear to think like them. + +To call things by the names which the common people has imposed on them +is not to speak badly; but one recognizes a people naturally more +ingenious than another by the proper names which it gives to each thing. + +It is only through lack of imagination that a people adapts the same +expression to a hundred different ideas. It is a ridiculous sterility +not to have known how to express otherwise _an arm of the sea_, _a scale +arm_, _an arm of a chair_; there is poverty of thought in saying equally +the _head of a nail_, the _head of an army_. + +Ignorance has introduced another custom into all modern languages. A +thousand terms no longer signify what they should signify. _Idiot_ meant +_solitary_, to-day it means _foolish_; _epiphany_ signified +_appearance_, to-day it is the festival of three kings; _baptize_ is to +dip in water, we say _baptize with the name_ of John or James. + +To these defects in almost all languages are added barbarous +irregularities. Venus is a charming name, _venereal_ is abominable. +Another result of the irregularity of these languages composed at hazard +in uncouth times is the quantity of compound words of which the simple +form does not exist any more. They are children who have lost their +father. We have _architects_ and no _tects_; there are things which are +_ineffable_ and none which are _effable_. One is _intrepid_, one is not +_trepid_. There are _impudent_ fellows, _insolent_ fellows, but neither +_pudent_ fellows nor _solent_ fellows. All languages more or less retain +some of these defects; they are all irregular lands from which the hand +of the adroit artist knows how to derive advantage. + +Other defects which make a nation's character evident always slip into +languages. In France there are fashions in expressions as in ways of +doing the hair. A fashionable invalid or doctor will take it into his +head to say that he has had a _soupcon_ of fever to signify that he has +had a slight attack; soon the whole nation has _soupcons_ of colics, +_soupcons_ of hatred, love, ridicule. Preachers in the pulpit tell you +that you must have at least a _soupcon_ of God's love. After a few +months this fashion gives place to another. + +What does most harm to the nobility of the language is not this passing +fashion with which people are soon disgusted, not the solecisms of +fashionable people into which good authors do not fall, but the +affectation of mediocre authors in speaking of serious things in a +conversational style. Everything conspires to corrupt a language that is +rather widely diffused; authors who spoil the style by affectation; +those who write to foreign countries, and who almost always mingle +foreign expressions with their natural tongue; merchants who introduce +into conversation their business terms. + +All languages being imperfect, it does not follow that one should change +them. One must adhere absolutely to the manner in which the good authors +have spoken them; and when one has a sufficient number of approved +authors, a language is fixed. Thus one can no longer change anything in +Italian, Spanish, English, French, without corrupting them; the reason +is clear: it is that one would soon render unintelligible the books +which provide the instruction and the pleasure of the nations. + + + + +_LAWS_ + + +Sheep live very placidly in community, they are considered very +easy-going, because we do not see the prodigious quantity of animals +they devour. It is even to be believed that they eat them innocently and +without knowing it, like us when we eat a Sassenage cheese. The republic +of the sheep is a faithful representation of the golden age. + +A chicken-run is visibly the most perfect monarchic state. There is no +king comparable to a cock. If he marches proudly in the midst of his +people, it is not out of vanity. If the enemy approaches, he does not +give orders to his subjects to go to kill themselves for him by virtue +of his certain knowledge and plenary power; he goes to battle himself, +ranges his chickens behind him and fights to the death. If he is the +victor, he himself sings the _Te Deum_. In civil life there is no one so +gallant, so honest, so disinterested. He has all the virtues. Has he in +his royal beak a grain of corn, a grub, he gives it to the first lady +among his subjects who presents herself. Solomon in his harem did not +come near a poultry-yard cock. + +If it be true that the bees are governed by a queen to whom all her +subjects make love, that is a still more perfect government. + +The ants are considered to be an excellent democracy. Democracy is above +all the other States, because there everyone is equal, and each +individual works for the good of all. + +The republic of the beavers is still superior to that of the ants, at +least if we judge by their masonry work. + +The monkeys resemble strolling players rather than a civilized people; +and they do not appear to be gathered together under fixed, fundamental +laws, like the preceding species. + +We resemble the monkeys more than any other animal by the gift of +imitation, the frivolity of our ideas, and by our inconstancy which has +never allowed us to have uniform and durable laws. + +When nature formed our species and gave us instincts, self-esteem for +our preservation, benevolence for the preservation of others, love which +is common to all the species, and the inexplicable gift of combining +more ideas than all the animals together; when she had thus given us our +portion, she said to us: "Do as you can." + +There is no good code in any country. The reason for this is evident; +the laws have been made according to the times, the place and the need, +etc. + +When the needs have changed, the laws which have remained, have become +ridiculous. Thus the law which forbade the eating of pig and the +drinking of wine was very reasonable in Arabia, where pig and wine are +injurious; it is absurd at Constantinople. + +The law which gives the whole fee to the eldest son is very good in +times of anarchy and pillage. Then the eldest son is the captain of the +castle which the brigands will attack sooner or later; the younger sons +will be his chief officers, the husbandmen his soldiers. All that is to +be feared is that the younger son may assassinate or poison the Salian +lord his elder brother, in order to become in his turn the master of the +hovel; but these cases are rare, because nature has so combined our +instincts and our passions that we have more horror of assassinating our +elder brother than we have of being envious of his position. But this +law, suitable for the owners of dungeons in Chilperic's time is +detestable when there is question of sharing stocks in a city. + +To the shame of mankind, one knows that the laws of games are the only +ones which everywhere are just, clear, inviolable and executed. Why is +the Indian who gave us the rules of the game of chess willingly obeyed +all over the world, and why are the popes' decretals, for example, +to-day an object of horror and scorn? the reason is that the inventor of +chess combined everything with precision for the satisfaction of the +players, and that the popes, in their decretals, had nothing in view but +their own interest. The Indian wished to exercise men's minds equally, +and give them pleasure; the popes wished to besot men's minds. Also, the +essence of the game of chess has remained the same for five thousand +years, it is common to all the inhabitants of the earth; and the +decretals are known only at Spoletto, Orvieto, Loretto, where the +shallowest lawyer secretly hates and despises them. + +But I delight in thinking that there is a natural law independent of all +human conventions: the fruit of my work must belong to me; I must honour +my father and my mother; I have no right over my fellow's life, and my +fellow has none over mine, etc. But when I think that from Chedorlaomer +to Mentzel,[12] colonel of hussars, everyone loyally kills and pillages +his fellow with a licence in his pocket, I am very afflicted. + +I am told that there are laws among thieves, and also laws of war. I ask +what are these laws of war. I learn that they mean hanging a brave +officer who has held fast in a bad post without cannon against a royal +army; that they mean having a prisoner hanged, if the enemy has hanged +one of yours; that they mean putting to the fire and the sword villages +which have not brought their sustenance on the appointed day, according +to the orders of the gracious sovereign of the district. "Good," say I, +"that is the 'Spirit of the Laws.'" + +It seems to me that most men have received from nature enough common +sense to make laws, but that everyone is not just enough to make good +laws. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[12] Chedorlaomer was king of the Elamites, and contemporary with +Abraham. See Genesis ch. xiv. + +Mentzel was a famous chief of Austrian partisans in the war of 1741. At +the head of five thousand men, he made Munich capitulate on February +13th, 1742. + + + + +_LIBERTY_ + + +Either I am very much mistaken, or Locke the definer has very well +defined liberty as "power." I am mistaken again, or Collins, celebrated +London magistrate, is the only philosopher who has really sifted this +idea, and Clark's answer to him was merely that of a theologian. But of +all that has been written in France on liberty, the following little +dialogue seems to me the most clear. + +A: There is a battery of guns firing in your ears, have you the liberty +to hear them or not to hear them? + +B: Without doubt, I cannot stop myself hearing them. + +A: Do you want this gun to carry off your head and the heads of your +wife and daughter, who are walking with you? + +B: What are you talking about? as long as I am of sound mind, I cannot +want such a thing; it is impossible. + +A: Good; you hear this gun necessarily, and you wish necessarily that +neither you nor your family shall die from a cannon shot while you are +out for a walk; you have not the power either of not hearing or of +wishing to remain here? + +B: Clearly. + +A: You have consequently taken some thirty steps in order to be +sheltered from the gun, you have had the power to walk these few steps +with me? + +B: Again very clearly. + +A: And if you had been a paralytic, you could not have avoided being +exposed to this battery, you would necessarily have heard and received a +gun shot; and you would be dead necessarily? + +B: Nothing is more true. + +A: In what then does your liberty consist, unless it be in the power +that your self has exercised in performing what your will required of +absolute necessity? + +B: You embarrass me; liberty then is nothing but the power of doing what +I want to do? + +A: Think about it, and see if liberty can be understood otherwise. + +B: In that case my hunting dog is as free as I am; he has necessarily +the will to run when he sees a hare, and the power of running if he has +not a pain in his legs. I have then nothing above my dog; you reduce me +to the state of the beasts. + +A: What poor sophistry from the poor sophists who have taught you. +Indeed you are in a bad way to be free like your dog! Do you not eat, +sleep, propagate like him, even almost to the attitude? Do you want the +sense of smell other than through your nose? Why do you want to have +liberty otherwise than your dog has? + +B: But I have a soul which reasons much, and my dog reasons hardly at +all. He has almost only simple ideas, and I have a thousand metaphysical +ideas. + +A: Well, you are a thousand times freer than he is; that is, you have a +thousand times more power of thinking than he has; but you do not think +otherwise than he does. + +B: What! I am not free to wish what I wish? + +A: What do you mean by that? + +B: I mean what everyone means. Doesn't one say every day, wishes are +free? + +A: A proverb is not a reason; explain yourself more clearly. + +B: I mean that I am free to wish as I please. + +A: With your permission, that has no sense; do you not see that it is +ridiculous to say, I wish to wish? You wish necessarily, as a result of +the ideas that have offered themselves to you. Do you wish to be +married; yes or no? + +B: But if I tell you that I want neither the one nor the other? + +A: You will be answering like someone who says: "Some believe Cardinal +Mazarin to be dead, others believe him to be alive, and as for me I +believe neither the one nor the other." + +B: Well, I want to be married. + +A: Ah! that is an answer. Why do you want to be married? + +B: Because I am in love with a beautiful, sweet, well-bred young girl, +who is fairly rich and sings very well, whose parents are very honest +people, and because I flatter myself I am loved by her, and very welcome +to her family. + +A: That is a reason. You see that you cannot wish without reason. I +declare to you that you are free to marry; that is, that you have the +power to sign the contract, have your nuptials, and sleep with your +wife. + +B: How now! I cannot wish without reason? And what will become of that +other proverb: _Sit pro ratione voluntas_; my will is my reason, I wish +because I wish? + +A: That is absurd, my dear fellow; there would be in you an effect +without a cause. + +B: What! When I play at odds and evens, I have a reason for choosing +evens rather than odds? + +A: Yes, undoubtedly. + +B: And what is that reason, if you please? + +A: The reason is that the idea of even rather than the opposite idea +presents itself to your mind. It would be comic that there were cases +where you wished because there was a cause of wishing, and that there +were cases where you wished without any cause. When you wish to be +married, you evidently feel the dominating reason; you do not feel it +when you are playing at odds and evens; and yet there certainly must be +one. + +B: But, I repeat, I am not free then? + +A: Your will is not free, but your actions are. You are free to act, +when you have the power to act. + +B: But all the books I have read on the liberty of indifference.... + +A: What do you mean by the liberty of indifference? + +B: I mean the liberty of spitting on the right or on the left, of +sleeping on my right side or on my left, of taking a walk of four turns +or five. + +A: Really the liberty you would have there would be a comic liberty! God +would have given you a fine gift! It would really be something to boast +of! Of what use to you would be a power which was exercised only on such +futile occasions? But the fact is that it is ridiculous to suppose the +will to wish to spit on the right. Not only is this will to wish absurd, +but it is certain that several trifling circumstances determine you in +these acts that you call indifferent. You are no more free in these acts +than in the others. But, I repeat, you are free at all times, in all +places, as soon as you do what you wish to do. + +B: I suspect you are right. I will think about it.[13] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[13] See "Free-Will." + + + + +_LIBRARY_ + + +A big library has this in it of good, that it dismays those who look at +it. Two hundred thousand volumes discourage a man tempted to print; but +unfortunately he at once says to himself: "People do not read all those +books, and they may read mine." He compares himself to a drop of water +who complains of being lost in the ocean and ignored: a genius had pity +on it; he caused it to be swallowed by an oyster; it became the most +beautiful pearl in the Orient, and was the chief ornament in the throne +of the Great Mogul. Those who are only compilers, imitators, +commentators, splitters of phrases, usurious critics, in short, those on +whom a genius has no pity, will always remain drops of water. + +Our man works in his garret, therefore, in the hope of becoming a pearl. + +It is true that in this immense collection of books there are about a +hundred and ninety-nine thousand which will never be read, from cover to +cover at least; but one may need to consult some of them once in a +lifetime. It is a great advantage for whoever wishes to learn to find at +his hand in the king's palace the volume and page he seeks, without +being kept waiting a moment. It is one of the most noble institutions. +No expense is more magnificent and more useful. + +The public library of the King of France is the finest in the whole +world, less on account of the number and rarity of the volumes than of +the ease and courtesy with which the librarians lend them to all +scholars. This library is incontestably the most precious monument there +is in France. + +This astounding multitude of books should not scare. We have already +remarked that Paris contains about seven hundred thousand men, that one +cannot live with them all, and that one chooses three or four friends. +Thus must one no more complain of the multitude of books than of the +multitude of citizens. + +A man who wishes to learn a little about his existence, and who has no +time to waste, is quite embarrassed. He wishes to read simultaneously +Hobbes, Spinoza, Bayle who wrote against them, Leibnitz who disputed +with Bayle, Clarke who disputed with Leibnitz, Malebranche who differed +from them all, Locke who passed as having confounded Malebranche, +Stillingfleet who thought he had vanquished Locke, Cudworth who thinks +himself above them because he is understood by no one. One would die of +old age before having thumbed the hundredth part of the metaphysical +romances. + +One is very content to have the most ancient books, as one inquires into +the most ancient medals. It is that which makes the honour of a library. +The oldest books in the world are the "Kings" of the Chinese, the +"Shastabad" of the Brahmins, of which Mr. Holwell has brought to our +knowledge admirable passages, what remains of the ancient Zarathustra, +the fragments of Sanchoniathon which Eusebius has preserved for us and +which bears the characteristics of the most remote antiquity. I do not +speak of the "Pentateuch" which is above all one could say of it. + +We still have the prayer of the real Orpheus, which the hierophant +recited in the old Greek mysteries. "Walk in the path of justice, +worship the sole master of the universe. He is one; He is sole by +Himself. All beings owe Him their existence; He acts in them and by +them. He sees everything, and never has been seen by mortal eyes." + +St. Clement of Alexandria, the most learned of the fathers of the +Church, or rather the only scholar in profane antiquity, gives him +almost always the name of Orpheus of Thrace, of Orpheus the Theologian, +to distinguish him from those who wrote later under his name. + +We have no longer anything either of Museus or of Linus. A few passages +from these predecessors of Homer would well be an adornment to a +library. + +Augustus had formed the library called the Palatine. The statue of +Apollo presided over it. The emperor embellished it with busts of the +best authors. One saw in Rome twenty-nine great public libraries. There +are now more than four thousand important libraries in Europe. Choose +which suits you, and try not to be bored. + + + + +_LIMITS OF THE HUMAN MIND_ + + +Someone asked Newton one day why he walked when he wanted to, and how +his arm and his hand moved at his will. He answered manfully that he had +no idea. "But at least," his interlocutor said to him, "you who +understand so well the gravitation of the planets will tell me why they +turn in one direction rather than in another!" And he again confessed +that he had no idea. + +Those who taught that the ocean was salt for fear that it might become +putrid, and that the tides were made to bring our ships into port (The +Abbe Pluche in "The Spectacle of Nature"), were somewhat ashamed when +the reply was made to them that the Mediterranean has ports and no ebb. +Musschenbroeck himself fell into this inadvertence. + +Has anyone ever been able to say precisely how a log is changed on the +hearth into burning carbon, and by what mechanism lime is kindled by +fresh water? + +Is the first principle of the movement of the heart in animals properly +understood? does one know clearly how generation is accomplished? has +one guessed what gives us sensations, ideas, memory? We do not +understand the essence of matter any more than the children who touch +its surface. + +Who will teach us by what mechanism this grain of wheat that we throw +into the ground rises again to produce a pipe laden with an ear of corn, +and how the same soil produces an apple at the top of this tree, and a +chestnut on its neighbour? Many teachers have said--"What do I not +know?" Montaigne used to say--"What do I know?" + +Ruthlessly trenchant fellow, wordy pedagogue, meddlesome theorist, you +seek the limits of your mind. They are at the end of your nose. + + + + +_LOCAL CRIMES_ + + +Traverse the whole earth, you will find that theft, murder, adultery, +calumny are regarded as crimes which society condemns and curbs; but +should what is approved in England, and condemned in Italy, be punished +in Italy as an outrage against the whole of humanity? That is what I +call a local crime. Does not that which is criminal only in the +enclosure of some mountains, or between two rivers, demand of judges +more indulgence than those outrages which are held in horror in all +countries? Should not the judge say to himself: "I should not dare +punish at Ragusa what I punish at Loretto"? Should not this reflection +soften in his heart the hardness that it is only too easy to contract +during the long exercise of his office? + +You know the _kermesses_ in Flanders; in the last century they were +carried to a point of indecency which might revolt eyes unaccustomed to +these spectacles. This is how Christmas was celebrated in some towns. +First there appeared a young man half naked, with wings on his back; he +recited the _Ave Maria_ to a young girl who answered him _fiat_, and the +angel kissed her on the mouth: then a child enclosed in a great +cardboard cock cried, imitating the cock's cry: _Puer natus est nobis._ +A big ox bellowed _ubi_, which it pronounced _oubi_; a sheep bleated +_Bethlehem_. An ass cried _hihanus_, to signify _eamus_; a long +procession, preceded by four fools with baubles and rattles, closed the +performance. There remain to-day traces of these popular devotions, +which among more educated peoples would be taken for profanations. A +bad-tempered Swiss, more drunk maybe than those who played the roles of +ox and ass, came to words with them in Louvain; blows were given; the +people wanted to hang the Swiss, who escaped with difficulty. + +The same man had a violent quarrel at the Hague in Holland for having +stoutly taken Barneveldt's part against an extravagant Gomarist. He was +put into prison in Amsterdam for having said that priests are the +scourge of humanity and the source of all our misfortunes. "What!" he +said. "If one believes that good works make for salvation, one finds +oneself in a dungeon; if one laughs at a cock and an ass, one risks +being hanged." This adventure, burlesque though it is, makes it quite +clear that one can be reprehensible on one or two points in our +hemisphere, and be absolutely innocent in the rest of the world. + + + + +_LOVE_ + + +There are so many sorts of love that one does not know to whom to +address oneself for a definition of it. The name of "love" is given +boldly to a caprice lasting a few days, a sentiment without esteem, +gallants' affectations, a frigid habit, a romantic fantasy, relish +followed by prompt disrelish: people give this name to a thousand +chimeras. + +If philosophers want to probe to the bottom this barely philosophical +matter, let them meditate on the banquet of Plato, in which Socrates, +honourable lover of Alcibiades and Agathon, converses with them on the +metaphysics of love. + +Lucretius speaks of it more as a natural philosopher: Virgil follows in +the steps of Lucretius; _amor omnibus idem_. + +It is the stuff of nature broidered by nature. Do you want an idea of +love? look at the sparrows in your garden; look at your pigeons; look at +the bull which is brought to the heifer; look at this proud horse which +two of your grooms lead to the quiet mare awaiting him; she draws aside +her tail to welcome him; see how her eyes sparkle; hark to the neighing; +watch the prancing, the curvetting, the ears pricked, the mouth opening +with little convulsions, the swelling nostrils, the flaring breath, the +manes rising and floating, the impetuous movement with which he hurls +himself on the object which nature has destined for him; but be not +jealous of him, and think of the advantages of the human species; in +love they compensate for all those that nature has given to the +animals--strength, beauty, nimbleness, speed. + +There are animals, even, who have no enjoyment in possession. Scale +fish are deprived of this delight: the female throws millions of eggs on +the mud; the male coming across them passes over them, and fertilizes +them with his seed, without troubling about the female to whom they +belong. + +Most animals that pair, taste pleasure only by a single sense, and as +soon as the appetite is satisfied, everything is extinguished. No +animal, apart from you, knows what kissing is; the whole of your body is +sensitive; your lips especially enjoy a voluptuousness that nothing can +tire; and this pleasure belongs to no species but yours: you can give +yourself up to love at any time, and the animals have but a fixed time. +If you reflect on these superiorities, you will say with the Count of +Rochester--"In a country of atheists love would cause the Deity to be +worshipped." + +As men have received the gift of perfecting all that nature accords +them, they have perfected love. Cleanliness, the care of oneself, by +rendering the skin more delicate, increase the pleasure of contact; and +attention to one's health renders the organs of voluptuousness more +sensitive. All the other sentiments that enter into that of love, just +like metals which amalgamate with gold: friendship, regard, come to +help; the faculties of mind and body are still further chains. + +Self-love above all tightens all these bonds. One applauds oneself for +one's choice, and a crowd of illusions form the decoration of the +building of which nature has laid the foundations. + +That is what you have above the animals. But if you taste so many +pleasures unknown to them, how many sorrows too of which the beasts have +no idea! What is frightful for you is that over three-fourths of the +earth nature has poisoned the pleasures of love and the sources of life +with an appalling disease to which man alone is subject, and which +infects in him the organs of generation alone. + +It is in no wise with this plague as with so many other maladies that +are the result of our excesses. It was not debauch that introduced it +into the world. Phryne, Lais, Flora, Messalina and those like them, +were not attacked by it; it was born in some islands where men lived in +innocence, and thence spread itself over the ancient world. + +If ever one could accuse nature of despising her work, of contradicting +her plans, of acting against her designs, it is in this detestable +scourge which has soiled the earth with horror and filth. Is that the +best of all possible worlds? What! if Caesar, Antony, Octavius never had +this disease, was it not possible for it not to cause the death of +Francois I.? "No," people say, "things were ordered thus for the best." +I want to believe it; but it is sad for those to whom Rabelais dedicated +his book. + +Erotic philosophers have often debated the question of whether Heloise +could still really love Abelard when he was a monk and emasculate? One +of these qualities did very great harm to the other. + +But console yourself, Abelard, you were loved; the root of the hewn tree +still retains a remnant of sap; the imagination aids the heart. One can +still be happy at table even though one eats no longer. Is it love? is +it simply a memory? is it friendship? All that is composed of something +indescribable. It is an obscure feeling resembling the fantastic +passions retained by the dead in the Elysian fields. The heroes who, +during their lifetime, shone in the chariot races, drove imaginary +chariots when they were dead. Heloise lived with you on illusions and +supplements. She kissed you sometimes, and with all the more pleasure +that having taken a vow at the Paraclet monastery to love you no longer, +her kisses thereby became more precious as more guilty. A woman can +barely be seized with a passion for a eunuch: but she can keep her +passion for her lover become eunuch, provided that he remains lovable. + +It is not the same, ladies, for a lover who has grown old in service; +the externals subsist no longer; the wrinkles horrify; the white +eyebrows shock; the lost teeth disgust; the infirmities estrange: all +that one can do is to have the virtue of being nurse, and of tolerating +what one has loved. It is burying a dead man. + + + + +_LUXURY_ + + +People have declaimed against luxury for two thousand years, in verse +and in prose, and people have always delighted in it. + +What has not been said of the early Romans when these brigands ravaged +and pillaged the harvests; when, to enlarge their poor village, they +destroyed the poor villages of the Volscians and the Samnites? They were +disinterested, virtuous men; they had not yet been able to steal either +gold, silver, or precious stones, because there were not any in the +little towns they plundered. Their woods and their marshes produced +neither pheasants nor partridges, and people praise their temperance. + +When gradually they had pillaged everything, stolen everything from the +far end of the Adriatic Gulf to the Euphrates, and when they had enough +intelligence to enjoy the fruit of their plundering; when they +cultivated the arts, when they tasted of all pleasures, and when they +even made the vanquished taste of them, they ceased then, people say, to +be wise and honest men. + +All these declamations reduce themselves to proving that a robber must +never either eat the dinner he has taken, or wear the coat he has +pilfered, or adorn himself with the ring he has filched. He should throw +all that, people say, in the river, so as to live like an honest man. +Say rather that he should not have stolen. Condemn brigands when they +pillage; but do not treat them as senseless when they enjoy. Honestly, +when a large number of English sailors enriched themselves at the taking +of Pondicherry and Havana, were they wrong to enjoy themselves later in +London, as the price of the trouble they had had in the depths of Asia +and America? + +The declaimers want one to bury in the ground the wealth one has amassed +by the fortune of arms, by agriculture, by commerce and by industry. +They cite Lacedaemon; why do they not cite also the republic of San +Marino? What good did Sparto to Greece? Did she ever have Demosthenes, +Sophocles, Apelles, Phidias? The luxury of Athens produced great men in +every sphere; Sparta had a few captains, and in less number even than +other towns. But how fine it is that as small a republic as Lacedaemon +retains its poverty.[14] + +One arrives at death as well by lacking everything as by enjoying what +can make life pleasant. The Canadian savage subsists, and comes to old +age like the English citizen who has an income of fifty thousand +guineas. But who will ever compare the land of the Iroquois to England? + +Let the republic of Ragusa and the canton of Zug make sumptuary laws, +they are right, the poor man must not spend beyond his powers; but I +have read somewhere: + +"Learn that luxury enriches a great state, even if it ruins a +small."[15] + +If by luxury you understand excess, everyone knows that excess in any +form is pernicious, in abstinence as in gluttony, in economy as in +generosity. I do not know how it has happened that in my village where +the land is ungrateful, the taxes heavy, the prohibition against +exporting the corn one has sown intolerable, there is nevertheless +barely a cultivator who has not a good cloth coat, and who is not well +shod and well fed. If this cultivator toiled in his fields in his fine +coat, with white linen, his hair curled and powdered, there, certainly, +would be the greatest luxury, and the most impertinent; but that a +bourgeois of Paris or London should appear at the theatre clad like a +peasant, there would be the most vulgar and ridiculous niggardliness. + +When scissors, which are certainly not of the remotest antiquity, were +invented, what did people not say against the first men who pared their +nails, and who cut part of the hair which fell on their noses? They were +treated, without a doubt, as fops and prodigals, who bought an +instrument of vanity at a high price, in order to spoil the Creator's +handiwork. What an enormous sin to cut short the horn which God made to +grow at the end of our fingers! It was an outrage against the Deity! It +was much worse when shirts and socks were invented. One knows with what +fury the aged counsellors who had never worn them cried out against the +young magistrates who were addicted to this disastrous luxury.[16] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[14] Lacedaemon avoided luxury only by preserving the community or +equality of property; but she did not preserve either the one or the +other save by having the land cultivated by an enslaved people. The +existence of the equality or community of property supposes the +existence of an enslaved people. The Spartans had virtue, just like +highwaymen, inquisitors and all classes of men whom habit has +familiarized with a species of crime, to the point of committing them +without remorse. + +[15] The sumptuary laws are by their nature a violation of the right of +property. If in a little state there is not a great inequality of +fortune, there will be no luxury; if this inequality exists, luxury is +the remedy for it. It is her sumptuary laws that have lost Geneva her +liberty. + +[16] If by luxury one understands everything that is beyond the +necessary, luxury is a natural consequence of the progress of the human +species; and to reason consequently every enemy of luxury should believe +with Rousseau that the state of happiness and virtue for man is that, +not of the savage, but of the orang-outang. One feels that it would be +absurd to regard as an evil the comforts which all men would enjoy: +also, does one not generally give the name of luxury to the +superfluities which only a small number of individuals can enjoy. In +this sense, luxury is a necessary consequence of property, without which +no society can subsist, and of a great inequality between fortunes which +is the consequence, not of the right of property, but of bad laws. +Moralists should address their sermons to the legislators, and not to +individuals, because it is in the order of possible things that a +virtuous and enlightened man may have the power to make reasonable laws, +and it is not in human nature for all the rich men of a country to +renounce through virtue procuring for themselves for money the +enjoyments of pleasure or vanity. + + + + +_GENERAL REFLECTION ON MAN_ + + +It needs twenty years to lead man from the plant state in which he is +within his mother's womb, and the pure animal state which is the lot of +his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of the reason begins +to appear. It has needed thirty centuries to learn a little about his +structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It +takes an instant to kill him. + + + + +_MAN IN THE IRON MASK_ + + +The author of the "Siecle de Louis XIV."[17] is the first to speak of +the man in the iron mask in an authenticated history. The reason is that +he was very well informed about the anecdote which astonishes the +present century, which will astonish posterity, and which is only too +true. He was deceived about the date of the death of this singularly +unfortunate unknown. The date of his burial at St. Paul was March 3rd, +1703, and not 1704. (Note.--According to a certificate reported by +Saint-Foix, the date was November 20th, 1703.) + +He was imprisoned first of all at Pignerol before being so on St. +Margaret's Islands, and later in the Bastille; always under the same +man's guard, Saint-Mars, who saw him die. Father Griffet, Jesuit, has +communicated to the public the diary of the Bastille, which testifies to +the dates. He had this diary without difficulty, for he held the +delicate position of confessor of prisoners imprisoned in the Bastille. + +The man in the iron mask is a riddle to which everyone wishes to guess +the answer. Some say that he was the Duc de Beaufort: but the Duc de +Beaufort was killed by the Turks at the defence of Candia, in 1669; and +the man in the iron mask was at Pignerol, in 1662. Besides, how would +one have arrested the Duc de Beaufort surrounded by his army? how would +one have transferred him to France without anybody knowing anything +about it? and why should he have been put in prison, and why this mask? + +Others have considered the Comte de Vermandois, natural son of Louis +XIV., who died publicly of the small-pox in 1683, with the army, and was +buried in the town of Arras. + +Later it was thought that the Duke of Monmouth, whose head King James +II. had cut off publicly in London in 1685, was the man in the iron +mask. It would have been necessary for him to be resuscitated, and then +for him to change the order of the times, for him to put the year 1662 +in place of 1685; for King James who never pardoned anyone, and who on +that account deserved all his misfortunes, to have pardoned the Duke of +Monmouth, and to have caused the death, in his place, of a man exactly +like him. It would have been necessary to find this double who would +have been so kind as to have his neck cut off in public in order to save +the Duke of Monmouth. It would have been necessary for the whole of +England to have been under a misapprehension; for James then to have +sent his earnest entreaties to Louis XIV. to be so good as to serve as +his constable and gaoler. Then Louis XIV. having done King James this +little favour, would not have failed to have the same consideration for +King William and for Queen Anne, with whom he was at war; and he would +carefully have preserved in these two monarchs' consideration his +dignity of gaoler, with which King James had honoured him. + +All these illusions being dissipated, it remains to be learned who was +this prisoner who was always masked, the age at which he died, and under +what name he was buried. It is clear that if he was not allowed to pass +into the courtyard of the Bastille, if he was not allowed to speak to +his doctor, unless covered by a mask, it was for fear that in his +features might be recognized some too striking resemblance. He might +show his tongue, and never his face. As regards his age, he himself said +to the Bastille apothecary, a few days before his death, that he thought +he was about sixty; and Master Marsolan, surgeon to the Marechal de +Richelieu, and later to the Duc d'Orleans, regent, son-in-law of this +apothecary, has repeated it to me more than once. + +Finally, why give him an Italian name? he was always called Marchiali! +He who writes this article knows more about it, maybe, than Father +Griffet, and will not say more. + + +PUBLISHERS NOTE[18] + +It is surprising to see so many scholars and so many intelligent and +sagacious writers torment themselves with guessing who can have been +the famous man in the iron mask, without the simplest, most natural, +most probable idea ever presenting itself to them. Once the fact as M. +de Voltaire reports it is admitted, with its circumstances; the +existence of a prisoner of so singular a species, put in the rank of the +best authenticated historical truths; it seems that not only is nothing +easier than to imagine who this prisoner was, but that it is even +difficult for there to be two opinions on the subject. The author of +this article would have communicated his opinion earlier, if he had not +believed that this idea must already have come to many others, and if he +were not persuaded that it was not worth while giving as a discovery +what, according to him, jumps to the eyes of all who read this anecdote. + +However, as for some time past this event has divided men's minds, and +as quite recently the public has again been given a letter in which it +is claimed as proved that this celebrated prisoner was a secretary of +the Duke of Mantua (which cannot be reconciled with the great marks of +respect shown by M. de Saint-Mars to his prisoner), the author has +thought it his duty to tell at last what has been his opinion for many +years. Maybe this conjecture will put an end to all other researches, +unless the secret be revealed by those who can be its guardians, in such +a way as to remove all doubts. + +He will not amuse himself with refuting those who have imagined that +this prisoner could be the Comte de Vermandois, the Duc de Beaufort, or +the Duke of Monmouth. The scholarly and very wise author of this last +opinion has well refuted the others; but he had based his own opinion +essentially merely on the impossibility of finding in Europe some other +prince whose detention it would have been of the very highest importance +should not be known. M. de Saint-Foix is right, if he means to speak +only of princes whose existence was known; but why has nobody yet +thought of supposing that the iron mask might have been an unknown +prince, brought up in secret, and whose existence it was important +should remain unknown? + +The Duke of Monmouth was not for France a prince of such great +importance; and one does not see even what could have engaged this +power, at least after the death of this duke and of James II., to make +so great a secret of his detention, if indeed he was the iron mask. It +is hardly probable either that M. de Louvois and M. de Saint-Mars would +have shown the Duke of Monmouth the profound respect which M. de +Voltaire assures they showed the iron mask. + +The author conjectures, from the way that M. de Voltaire has told the +facts, that this celebrated historian is as persuaded as he is of the +suspicion which he is going, he says, to bring to light; but that M. de +Voltaire, as a Frenchman, did not wish, he adds, to publish point-blank, +particularly as he had said enough for the answer to the riddle not to +be difficult to guess. Here it is, he continues, as I see it. + +"The iron mask was undoubtedly a brother and an elder brother of Louis +XIV., whose mother had that taste for fine linen on which M. de Voltaire +lays stress. It was in reading the Memoirs of that time, which report +this anecdote about the queen, that, recalling this same taste in the +iron mask, I doubted no longer that he was her son: a fact of which all +the other circumstances had persuaded me already. + +"It is known that Louis XIII. had not lived with the queen for a long +time; that the birth of Louis XIV. was due only to a happy chance +skilfully induced; a chance which absolutely obliged the king to sleep +in the same bed with the queen. This is how I think the thing came to +pass. + +"The queen may have thought that it was her fault that no heir was born +to Louis XIII. The birth of the iron mask will have undeceived her. The +cardinal to whom she will have confided the fact will have known, for +more than one reason, how to turn the secret to account; he will have +thought of making use of this event for his own benefit and for the +benefit of the state. Persuaded by this example that the queen could +give the king children, the plan which produced the chance of one bed +for the king and the queen was arranged in consequence. But the queen +and the cardinal, equally impressed with the necessity of hiding from +Louis XIII. the iron mask's existence, will have had him brought up in +secret. This secret will have been a secret for Louis XIV. until +Cardinal Mazarin's death. + +"But this monarch learning then that he had a brother, and an elder +brother whom his mother could not disacknowledge, who further bore maybe +the marked features which betrayed his origin, reflecting that this +child born during marriage could not, without great inconvenience and a +horrible scandal, be declared illegitimate after Louis XIII.'s death, +Louis XIV. will have judged that he could not use a wiser or juster +means than the one he employed in order to assure his own tranquillity +and the peace of the state; means which relieved him of committing a +cruelty which policy would have represented as necessary to a monarch +less conscientious and less magnanimous than Louis XIV. + +"It seems to me, our author continues, that the more one knows of the +history of those times, the more one must be struck by these assembled +circumstances which are in favour of such a supposition." + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[17] Voltaire. + +[18] This note, given as a publisher's note in the 1771 edition, passes +among many men of letters as being by Voltaire himself. He knew of this +edition, and he never contradicted the opinion there advanced on the +subject of the man in the iron mask. + +He was the first to speak of this man. He always combated all the +conjectures made about the mask: he always spoke as though better +informed than others on the subject, and as though unwilling to tell all +he knew. + +There is a letter in circulation from Mlle. de Valois, written to the +Duke, afterward Marechal de Richelieu, where she boasts of having +learned from the Duc d'Orleans, her father, under strange conditions, +who the man in the iron mask was; this man, she says, was a twin brother +of Louis XIV., born a few hours after him. + +Either this letter, which it was so useless, so indecent, so dangerous +to read, is a supposititious letter, or the regent, in giving his +daughter the reward she had so nobly acquired, thought to weaken the +danger there was in revealing a state secret, by altering the facts, so +as to make of this prince a younger son without right to the throne, +instead of the heir-apparent to the crown. + +But Louis XIV., who had a brother; Louis XIV., whose soul was +magnanimous; Louis XIV., who prided himself even on a scrupulous +probity, whom history has reproached with no crime, who indeed committed +no crime apart from letting himself be too swayed by the counsels of +Louvois and the Jesuits; Louis XIV. would never have detained one of his +brothers in perpetual prison, in order to forestall the evils announced +by an astrologer, in whom he did not believe. He needed more important +motives. Eldest son of Louis XIII., acknowledged by this prince, the +throne belonged to him; but a son born of Anne of Austria, unknown to +her husband, had no rights, and could, nevertheless, try to make himself +acknowledged, rend France with a long civil war, win maybe over Louis +XIII.'s son, by alleging the right of primogeniture, and substitute a +new race for the old race of the Bourbons. These motives, if they did +not entirely justify Louis XIV.'s rigour, serve at least to excuse him; +and the prisoner, too well-informed of his fate, could be grateful to +him for not having listened to more rigorous counsels, counsels which +politics have often employed against those who had pretensions to +thrones occupied by their competitors. + +From his youth Voltaire was connected with the Duc de Richelieu, who was +not discreet: if Mlle. de Valois' letter is authentic, he knew of it; +but, possessed of a just mind, he felt the error, and sought other +information. He was in a position to obtain it; he rectified the truth +altered in the letter, as he rectified so many other errors. + + + + +_MARRIAGE_ + + +I came across a reasoner who said: "Engage your subjects to marry as +soon as possible; let them be exempt from taxes the first year, and let +their tax be distributed over those who at the same age are celibate. + +"The more married men you have, the less crime there will be. Look at +the frightful records of your registers of crime; you will find there a +hundred bachelors hanged or wheeled for one father of a family. + +"Marriage makes man wiser and more virtuous. The father of a family, +near to committing a crime, is often stopped by his wife whose blood, +less feverish than his, makes her gentler, more compassionate, more +fearful of theft and murder, more timorous, more religious. + +"The father of a family does not want to blush before his children. He +fears to leave them a heritage of shame. + +"Marry your soldiers, they will not desert any more. Bound to their +families, they will be bound also to their fatherland. A bachelor +soldier often is nothing but a vagabond, to whom it is indifferent +whether he serves the king of Naples or the king of Morocco." + +The Roman warriors were married; they fought for their wives and +children; and they enslaved the wives and children of other nations. + +A great Italian politician, who further was very learned in oriental +languages, a very rare thing among our politicians, said to me in my +youth: "_Caro figlio_, remember that the Jews have never had but one +good institution, that of having a horror of virginity." If this little +race of superstitious intermediaries had not considered marriage as the +first law of man, if there had been among them convents of nuns, they +were irreparably lost. + + + + +_MASTER_ + + +SECTION I + +"Unfortunate that I am to have been born!" said Ardassan Ougli, young +page of the great Sultan of the Turks. "If it were only the great Sultan +on whom I am dependent; but I am subject to the chief of my oda, to the +capigi pasha; and when I receive my pay, I have to bow down to one of +the tefterdar's clerks who deducts half of it. Before I was seven years +old I had cut off, in spite of myself, in ceremony, the end of my +prepuce, and it made me ill for a fortnight. The dervish who prays for +us is my master; an iman is still more my master; the mollah is still +more my master than the iman. The cadi is another master; the +cadi-leskier is master still more; the mufti is much more master than +all these together. The grand vizier's kaia can with a word have me +thrown into the canal; and the grand vizier, finally, can have my neck +wrung at his pleasure, and stuff the skin of my head, without anybody +even taking notice. + +"How many masters, great God! even if I had as many bodies and as many +souls as I have duties to accomplish, I could not attend to everything. +Oh, Allah! if only you had made me a screech-owl! I should live free in +my hole, and I should eat mice at my ease without masters or servants. +That assuredly is man's real destiny; only since he was perverted has he +masters. No man was made to serve another man continuously. Each would +have charitably aided his fellow, if things were as they should be. The +man with eyes would have led the blind man, the active man would have +acted as crutch to the cripple. This world would have been the paradise +of Mohammed; and it is the hell which is exactly under the pointed +bridge." + +Thus did Ardassan Ougli speak, after receiving the stirrup-leather from +one of his masters. + +After a few years Ardassan Ougli became pasha with three tails. He made +a prodigious fortune, and he firmly believed that all men, excepting the +Great Turk and the Grand Vizier, were born to serve him, and all women +to give him pleasure in accordance with his caprice. + + +SECTION II + +How has it been possible for one man to become another man's master, and +by what species of incomprehensible magic has he been able to become the +master of many other men? On this phenomenon a great number of good +volumes have been written; but I give the preference to an Indian fable, +because it is short, and because the fables have said everything. + +Adimo, the father of all the Indians, had two sons and two daughters by +his wife Procriti. The elder son was a giant, the younger was a little +hunchback, the two daughters were pretty. As soon as the giant was +conscious of his strength, he lay with his two sisters, and made the +little hunchback serve him. Of his two sisters, one was his cook, the +other his gardener. When the giant wanted to sleep, he started by +chaining his little hunchback brother to a tree; and when the brother +escaped, he caught him in four strides, and gave him twenty strokes with +a length of ox sinew. + +The hunchback became submissive and the best subject in the world. The +giant, satisfied to see him fulfilling his duties as subject, permitted +him to lie with one of his sisters for whom he himself had taken a +distaste. The children who came of this marriage were not entirely +hunchbacked; but they had sufficiently misshapen forms. They were +reared in fear of God and the giant. They received an excellent +education; they were taught that their great uncle was giant by divine +right, that he could do with his family as pleased him; that if he had a +pretty niece or great-niece, she was for him alone without a doubt, and +that no one could lie with her until he wanted her no longer. + +The giant having died, his son, who was not by a long way as strong and +as big as he, thought nevertheless that he, like his father, was giant +by divine right. He claimed to make all the men work for him, and to lie +with all the women. The family leagued itself against him, he was beaten +to death, and the others turned themselves into a republic. + +The Siamese, on the contrary, maintain that the family had started by +being republican, and that the giant did not come until after a great +number of years and dissensions; but all the authors of Benares and Siam +agree that mankind lived an infinity of centuries before having the +intelligence to make laws; and they prove it by an unanswerable reason, +which is that even to-day when everyone plumes himself on his +intelligence, no way has been found of making a score of passably good +laws. + +It is indeed still an insoluble question in India whether republics were +established before or after monarchies, whether confusion appeared more +horrible to mankind than despotism. I do not know what happened in order +of time; but in that of nature it must be agreed that all men being born +equal, violence and adroitness made the first masters, the laws made the +last. + + + + +_MEN OF LETTERS_ + + +In our barbarous times, when the Franks, the Germans, the Bretons, the +Lombards, the Spanish Muzarabs, knew not how either to read or write, +there were instituted schools, universities, composed almost entirely of +ecclesiastics who, knowing nothing but their own jargon, taught this +jargon to those who wished to learn it; the academies came only a long +time afterwards; they despised the foolishness of the schools, but did +not always dare to rise against them, because there are foolishnesses +that are respected provided that they concern respectable things. + +The men of letters who have rendered the greatest services to the small +number of thinking beings spread over the world, are the isolated +writers, the true scholars shut in their studies, who have neither +argued on the benches of the universities, nor told half-truths in the +academies; and almost all of them have been persecuted. Our wretched +species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always +throw stones at those who are showing a new road. + +Montesquieu says that the Scythians rent their slaves' eyes, so that +they might be less distracted while they were churning their butter; +that is just how the inquisition functions, and in the land where this +monster reigns almost everybody is blind. In England people have had two +eyes for more than two hundred years; the French are starting to open +one eye; but sometimes there are men in power who do not want the people +to have even this one eye open. + +These poor persons in power are like Doctor Balouard of the Italian +Comedy, who does not want to be served by anyone but the dolt +Harlequin, and who is afraid of having too shrewd a valet. + +Compose some odes in praise of My Lord Superbus Fadus, some madrigals +for his mistress; dedicate a book on geography to his door-keeper, you +will be well-received; enlighten mankind, you will be exterminated. + +Descartes was forced to leave his country, Gassendi was calumniated, +Arnauld dragged out his days in exile; every philosopher is treated as +the prophets were among the Jews. + +Who would believe that in the eighteenth century a philosopher was +dragged before the secular tribunals, and treated as impious by the +tribunals of arguments, for having said that men could not practise the +arts if they had no hands? I do not despair that soon the first person +who is so insolent as to say that men could not think if they had no +heads will be immediately condemned to the galleys; "for," some young +graduate will say to him, "the soul is a pure spirit, the head is only +matter; God can put the soul in the heel, as well as in the brain; +therefore I denounce you as impious." + +The greatest misfortune of a man of letters is not perhaps being the +object of his confreres' jealousy, the victim of the cabal, the despised +of the men of power; but of being judged by fools. Fools go far +sometimes, particularly when bigotry is added to ineptitude, and to +ineptitude the spirit of vengeance. The further great misfortune of a +man of letters is that ordinarily he is unattached. A bourgeois buys +himself a small position, and there he is backed by his colleagues. If +he suffers an injustice, he finds defenders at once. The man of letters +is unsuccoured; he resembles a flying-fish; if he rises a little, the +birds devour him; if he dives, the fish eat him. + +Every public man pays tribute to malignity, but he is paid in honours +and gold. + + + + +_METAMORPHOSIS_, _METEMPSYCHOSIS_ + + +Is it not very natural that all the metamorphoses with which the world +is covered should have made people imagine in the Orient, where +everything has been imagined, that our souls passed from one body to +another? An almost imperceptible speck becomes a worm, this worm becomes +a butterfly; an acorn transforms itself into an oak; an egg into a bird; +water becomes cloud and thunder; wood is changed into fire and ash; +everything in nature appears, in fine, metamorphosed. Soon people +attributed to souls, which were regarded as light figures, what they saw +in more gross bodies. The idea of metempsychosis is perhaps the most +ancient dogma of the known universe, and it still reigns in a large part +of India and China. + + + + +_MILTON, ON THE REPROACH OF PLAGIARISM AGAINST_ + + +Some people have accused Milton of having taken his poem from the +tragedy of "The Banishment of Adam" by Grotius, and from the "Sarcotis" +of the Jesuit Masenius, printed at Cologne in 1654 and in 1661, long +before Milton gave his "Paradise Lost." + +As regards Grotius, it was well enough known in England that Milton had +carried into his epic English poem a few Latin verses from the tragedy +of "Adam." It is in no wise to be a plagiarist to enrich one's language +with the beauties of a foreign language. No one accused Euripides of +plagiarism for having imitated in one of the choruses of "Iphigenia" the +second book of the Iliad; on the contrary, people were very grateful to +him for this imitation, which they regarded as a homage rendered to +Homer on the Athenian stage. + +Virgil never suffered a reproach for having happily imitated, in the +AEneid, a hundred verses by the first of Greek poets. + +Against Milton the accusation was pushed a little further. A Scot, Will +Lauder by name, very attached to the memory of Charles I., whom Milton +had insulted with the most uncouth animosity, thought himself entitled +to dishonour the memory of this monarch's accuser. It was claimed that +Milton was guilty of an infamous imposture in robbing Charles I. of the +sad glory of being the author of the "Eikon Basilika," a book long dear +to the royalists, and which Charles I., it was said, had composed in his +prison to serve as consolation for his deplorable adversity. + +Lauder, therefore, about the year of 1752, wanted to begin by proving +that Milton was only a plagiarist, before proving that he had acted as a +forger against the memory of the most unfortunate of kings; he procured +some editions of the poem of the "Sarcotis." It seemed evident that +Milton had imitated some passages of it, as he had imitated Grotius and +Tasso. + +But Lauder did not rest content there; he unearthed a bad translation in +Latin verse of the "Paradise Lost" of the English poet; and joining +several verses of this translation to those by Masenius, he thought +thereby to render the accusation more grave, and Milton's shame more +complete. It was in that, that he was badly deceived; his fraud was +discovered. He wanted to make Milton pass for a forger, and he was +himself convicted of forging. No one examined Masenius' poem of which at +that time there were only a few copies in Europe. All England, convinced +of the Scot's poor trick, asked no more about it. The accuser, +confounded, was obliged to disavow his manoeuvre, and ask pardon for +it. + +Since then a new edition of Masenius was printed in 1757. The literary +public was surprised at the large number of very beautiful verses with +which the Sarcotis was sprinkled. It is in truth nothing but a long +declamation of the schools on the fall of man: but the exordium, the +invocation, the description of the garden of Eden, the portrait of Eve, +that of the devil, are precisely the same as in Milton. Further, it is +the same subject, the same plot, the same catastrophe. If the devil +wishes, in Milton, to be revenged on man for the harm which God has done +him, he has precisely the same plan in the work of the Jesuit Masenius; +and he manifests it in verses worthy maybe of the century of Augustus. +("Sarcotis," I., 271 _et seq._) + +One finds in both Masenius and Milton little episodes, trifling +digressions which are absolutely alike; both speak of Xerxes who covered +the sea with his ships. Both speak in the same tone of the Tower of +Babel; both give the same description of luxury, of pride, of avarice, +of gluttony. + +What most persuaded the generality of readers of Milton's plagiarism was +the perfect resemblance of the beginning of the two poems. Many +foreigners, after reading the exordium, had no doubt but that the rest +of Milton's poem was taken from Masenius. It is a very great error and +easy to recognize. + +I do not think that the English poet imitated in all more than two +hundred of the Jesuit of Cologne's verses; and I dare say that he +imitated only what was worthy of being imitated. These two hundred +verses are very beautiful; so are Milton's; and the total of Masenius' +poem, despite these two hundred beautiful verses, is not worth anything +at all. + +Moliere took two whole scenes from the ridiculous comedy of the "Pedant +Joue" by Cyrano de Bergerac. "These two scenes are good," he said as he +was jesting with his friends. "They belong to me by right: I recover my +property." After that anyone who treated the author of "Tartufe" and "Le +Misanthrope" as a plagiarist would have been very badly received. + +It is certain that generally Milton, in his "Paradise", has in imitating +flown on his own wings; and it must be agreed that if he borrowed so +many traits from Grotius and from the Jesuit of Cologne, they are +blended in the crowd of original things which are his; in England he is +always regarded as a very great poet. + +It is true that he should have avowed having translated two hundred of a +Jesuit's verses; but in his time, at the court of Charles II., people +did not worry themselves with either the Jesuits, or Milton, or +"Paradise Lost", or "Paradise Regained". All those things were either +scoffed at, or unknown. + + + + +_MOHAMMEDANS_ + + +I tell you again, ignorant imbeciles, whom other ignoramuses have made +believe that the Mohammedan religion is voluptuous and sensual, there is +not a word of truth in it; you have been deceived on this point as on so +many others. + +Canons, monks, vicars even, if a law were imposed on you not to eat or +drink from four in the morning till ten at night, during the month of +July, when Lent came at this period; if you were forbidden to play at +any game of chance under pain of damnation; if wine were forbidden you +under the same pain; if you had to make a pilgrimage into the burning +desert; if it were enjoined on you to give at least two and a half per +cent. of your income to the poor; if, accustomed to enjoy possession of +eighteen women, the number were cut down suddenly by fourteen; honestly, +would you dare call that religion sensual? + +The Latin Christians have so many advantages over the Mussulmans, I do +not say in the matter of war, but in the matter of doctrines; the Greek +Christians have so beaten them latterly from 1769 to 1773, that it is +not worth the trouble to indulge in unjust reproaches against Islam. + +Try to retake from the Mohammedans all that they usurped; but it is +easier to calumniate them. + +I hate calumny so much that I do not want even to impute foolishness to +the Turks, although I detest them as tyrants over women and enemies of +the arts. + +I do not know why the historian of the Lower Empire maintains that +Mohammed speaks in his Koran of his journey into the sky: Mohammed does +not say a word about it; we have proved it. + +One must combat ceaselessly. When one has destroyed an error, there is +always someone who resuscitates it. + + + + +_MOUNTAIN_ + + +It is a very old, very universal fable that tells of the mountain which, +having frightened all the countryside by its outcry that it was in +labour, was hissed by all present when it brought into the world a mere +mouse. The people in the pit were not philosophers. Those who hissed +should have admired. It was as fine for the mountain to give birth to a +mouse, as for the mouse to give birth to a mountain. A rock which +produces a rat is a very prodigious thing; and never has the world seen +anything approaching this miracle. All the globes of the universe could +not call a fly into existence. Where the vulgar laugh, the philosopher +admires; and he laughs where the vulgar open their big, stupid eyes in +astonishment. + + + + +_NAKEDNESS_ + + +Why should one lock up a man or a woman who walked stark naked in the +street? and why is no one shocked by absolutely nude statues, by +pictures of the Madonna and of Jesus that may be seen in some churches? + +It is probably that the human species lived long without being clothed. + +People unacquainted with clothing have been found in more than one +island and in the American continent. + +The most civilized hide the organs of generation with leaves, woven +rushes, feathers. + +Whence comes this form of modesty? is it the instinct for lighting +desires by hiding what it gives pleasure to discover? + +Is it really true that among slightly more civilized nations, such as +the Jews and half-Jews, there have been entire sects who would not +worship God save by stripping themselves of all their clothes? such +were, it is said, the Adamites and the Abelians. They gathered quite +naked to sing the praises of God: St. Epiphanius and St. Augustine say +so. It is true that they were not contemporary, and that they were very +far from these people's country. But at all events this madness is +possible: it is not even more extraordinary, more mad than a hundred +other madnesses which have been round the world one after the other. + +We have said elsewhere that to-day even the Mohammedans still have +saints who are madmen, and who go naked like monkeys. It is very +possible that some fanatics thought it was better to present themselves +to the Deity in the state in which He formed them, than in the disguise +invented by man. It is possible that they showed everything out of +piety. There are so few well-made persons of both sexes, that nakedness +might have inspired chastity, or rather disgust, instead of increasing +desire. + +It is said particularly that the Abelians renounced marriage. If there +were any fine lads and pretty lasses among them, they were at least +comparable to St. Adhelme and to blessed Robert d'Arbrisselle, who slept +with the prettiest persons, that their continence might triumph all the +more. + +But I avow that it would have been very comic to see a hundred Helens +and Parises singing anthems, giving each other the kiss of peace, and +making agapae. + +All of which shows that there is no singularity, no extravagance, no +superstition which has not passed through the heads of mankind. Happy +the day when these superstitions do not trouble society and make of it a +scene of disorder, hatred and fury! It is better without doubt to pray +God stark naked, than to stain His altars and the public places with +human blood. + + + + +_NATURAL LAW_ + + +B: What is natural law? + +A: The instinct which makes us feel justice. + +B: What do you call just and unjust? + +A: What appears such to the entire universe. + +B: The universe is composed of many heads. It is said that in Lacedaemon +were applauded thefts for which people in Athens were condemned to the +mines. + +A: Abuse of words, logomachy, equivocation; theft could not be committed +at Sparta, when everything was common property. What you call "theft" +was the punishment for avarice. + +B: It was forbidden to marry one's sister in Rome. It was allowed among +the Egyptians, the Athenians and even among the Jews, to marry one's +sister on the father's side. It is but with regret that I cite that +wretched little Jewish people, who should assuredly not serve as a rule +for anyone, and who (putting religion aside) was never anything but a +race of ignorant and fanatic brigands. But still, according to their +books, the young Thamar, before being ravished by her brother Amnon, +says to him:--"Nay, my brother, do not thou this folly, but speak unto +the king; for he will not withhold me from thee." (2 Samuel xiii. 12, +13.) + +A: Conventional law all that, arbitrary customs, fashions that pass: the +essential remains always. Show me a country where it was honourable to +rob me of the fruit of my toil, to break one's promise, to lie in order +to hurt, to calumniate, to assassinate, to poison, to be ungrateful +towards a benefactor, to beat one's father and one's mother when they +offer you food. + +B: Have you forgotten that Jean-Jacques, one of the fathers of the +modern Church, has said that "the first man who dared enclose and +cultivate a piece of land" was the enemy "of the human race," that he +should have been exterminated, and that "the fruits of the earth are for +all, and that the land belongs to none"? Have we not already examined +together this lovely proposition which is so useful to society +(Discourse on Inequality, second part)? + +A: Who is this Jean-Jacques? he is certainly not either John the +Baptist, nor John the Evangelist, nor James the Greater, nor James the +Less[19]; it must be some Hunnish wit who wrote that abominable +impertinence or some poor joker _bufo magro_ who wanted to laugh at what +the entire world regards as most serious. For instead of going to spoil +the land of a wise and industrious neighbour, he had only to imitate +him; and every father of a family having followed this example, behold +soon a very pretty village formed. The author of this passage seems to +me a very unsociable animal. + +B: You think then that by outraging and robbing the good man who has +surrounded his garden and chicken-run with a live hedge, he has been +wanting in respect towards the duties of natural law? + +A: Yes, yes, once again, there is a natural law, and it does not consist +either in doing harm to others, or in rejoicing thereat. + +B: I imagine that man likes and does harm only for his own advantage. +But so many people are led to look for their own interest in the +misfortune of others, vengeance is so violent a passion, there are such +disastrous examples of it; ambition, still more fatal, has inundated the +world with so much blood, that when I retrace for myself the horrible +picture, I am tempted to avow that man is a very devil. In vain have I +in my heart the notion of justice and injustice; an Attila courted by +St. Leo, a Phocas flattered by St. Gregory with the most cowardly +baseness, an Alexander VI. sullied with so many incests, so many +murders, so many poisonings, with whom the weak Louis XII., who is +called "the good," makes the most infamous and intimate alliance; a +Cromwell whose protection Cardinal Mazarin seeks, and for whom he drives +out of France the heirs of Charles I., Louis XIV.'s first cousins, etc., +etc.; a hundred like examples set my ideas in disorder, and I know no +longer where I am. + +A: Well, do storms stop our enjoyment of to-day's beautiful sun? Did the +earthquake which destroyed half the city of Lisbon stop your making the +voyage to Madrid very comfortably? If Attila was a brigand and Cardinal +Mazarin a rogue, are there not princes and ministers who are honest +people? Has it not been remarked that in the war of 1701, Louis XIV.'s +council was composed of the most virtuous men? The Duc de Beauvilliers, +the Marquis de Torci, the Marechal de Villars, Chamillart lastly who +passed for being incapable, but never for dishonest. Does not the idea +of justice subsist always? It is upon that idea that all laws are +founded. The Greeks called them "daughters of heaven," which only means +daughters of nature. Have you no laws in your country? + +B: Yes, some good, some bad. + +A: Where, if it was not in the notions of natural law, did you get the +idea that every man has within himself when his mind is properly made? +You must have obtained it there, or nowhere. + +B: You are right, there is a natural law; but it is still more natural +to many people to forget it. + +A: It is natural also to be one-eyed, hump-backed, lame, deformed, +unhealthy; but one prefers people who are well made and healthy. + +B: Why are there so many one-eyed and deformed minds? + +A: Peace! But go to the article on "Power." + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[19] Jean=John: Jacques=James. + + + + +_NATURE_ + + +DIALOGUE BETWEEN THE PHILOSOPHER AND NATURE + +THE PHILOSOPHER: + +Who are you, Nature? I live in you; for fifty years have I been seeking +you, and I have not found you yet. + +NATURE: + +The ancient Egyptians, who lived, it is said, some twelve hundred years, +made me the same reproach. They called me Isis; they put a great veil on +my head, and they said that nobody could lift it. + +THE PHILOSOPHER: + +That is what makes me address myself to you. I have been able to measure +some of your globes, know their paths, assign the laws of motion; but I +have not been able to learn who you are. + +Are you always active? are you always passive? did your elements arrange +themselves, as water deposits itself on sand, oil on water, air on oil? +have you a mind which directs all your operations, as councils are +inspired as soon as they are assembled, although their members are +sometimes ignoramuses? I pray you tell me the answer to your riddle. + +NATURE: + +I am the great everything. I know no more about it. I am not a +mathematician; and everything is arranged in my world according to +mathematical laws. Guess if you can how it is all done. + +THE PHILOSOPHER: + +Certainly, since your great everything does not know mathematics, and +since all your laws are most profoundly geometrical, there must be an +eternal geometer who directs you, a supreme intelligence who presides +over your operations. + +NATURE: + +You are right; I am water, earth, fire, atmosphere, metal, mineral, +stone, vegetable, animal. I feel indeed that there is in me an +intelligence; you have an intelligence, you do not see it. I do not see +mine either; I feel this invisible power; I cannot know it: why should +you, who are but a small part of me, want to know what I do not know? + +THE PHILOSOPHER: + +We are curious. I want to know how being so crude in your mountains, in +your deserts, in your seas, you appear nevertheless so industrious in +your animals, in your vegetables? + +NATURE: + +My poor child do you want me to tell you the truth? It is that I have +been given a name which does not suit me; my name is "Nature", and I am +all art. + +THE PHILOSOPHER: + +That word upsets all my ideas. What! nature is only art? + +NATURE: + +Yes, without any doubt. Do you not know that there is an infinite art in +those seas and those mountains that you find so crude? do you not know +that all those waters gravitate towards the centre of the earth, and +mount only by immutable laws; that those mountains which crown the +earth are the immense reservoirs of the eternal snows which produce +unceasingly those fountains, lakes and rivers without which my animal +species and my vegetable species would perish? And as for what are +called my animal kingdom, my vegetable kingdom and my mineral kingdom, +you see here only three; learn that I have millions of kingdoms. But if +you consider only the formation of an insect, of an ear of corn, of +gold, of copper, everything will appear as marvels of art. + +THE PHILOSOPHER: + +It is true. The more I think about it, the more I see that you are only +the art of I know not what most potent and industrious great being, who +hides himself and who makes you appear. All reasoners since Thales, and +probably long before him, have played at blind man's buff with you; they +have said: "I have you!" and they had nothing. We all resemble Ixion; he +thought he was kissing Juno, and all that he possessed was a cloud. + +NATURE: + +Since I am all that is, how can a being such as you, so small a part of +myself, seize me? Be content, atoms my children, with seeing a few atoms +that surround you, with drinking a few drops of my milk, with vegetating +for a few moments on my breast, and with dying without having known your +mother and your nurse. + +THE PHILOSOPHER: + +My dear mother, tell me something of why you exist, of why there is +anything. + +NATURE: + +I will answer you as I have answered for so many centuries all those who +have interrogated me about first principles: I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THEM. + +THE PHILOSOPHER: + +Would not non-existence be better than this multitude of existences made +in order to be continually dissolved, this crowd of animals born and +reproduced in order to devour others and to be devoured, this crowd of +sentient beings formed for so many painful sensations, that other crowd +of intelligences which so rarely hear reason. What is the good of all +that, Nature? + +NATURE: + +Oh! go and ask Him who made me. + + + + +_NECESSARY_ + + +OSMIN: + +Do you not say that everything is necessary? + +SELIM: + +If everything were not necessary, it would follow that God had made +useless things. + +OSMIN: + +That is to say that it was necessary to the divine nature to make all +that it has made? + +SELIM: + +I think so, or at least I suspect it; there are people who think +otherwise; I do not understand them; maybe they are right. I am afraid +of disputes on this subject. + +OSMIN: + +It is also of another necessary that I want to talk to you. + +SELIM: + +What! of what is necessary to an honest man that he may live? of the +misfortune to which one is reduced when one lacks the necessary? + +OSMIN: + +No; for what is necessary to one is not always necessary to the other: +it is necessary for an Indian to have rice, for an Englishman to have +meat; a fur is necessary to a Russian, and a gauzy stuff to an African; +this man thinks that twelve coach-horses are necessary to him, that man +limits himself to a pair of shoes, a third walks gaily barefoot: I want +to talk to you of what is necessary to all men. + +SELIM: + +It seems to me that God has given all that is necessary to this species: +eyes to see with, feet for walking, a mouth for eating, an oesophagus +for swallowing, a stomach for digesting, a brain for reasoning, organs +for producing one's fellow creature. + +OSMIN: + +How does it happen then that men are born lacking a part of these +necessary things? + +SELIM: + +It is because the general laws of nature have brought about some +accidents which have made monsters to be born; but generally man is +provided with everything that is necessary to him in order to live in +society. + +OSMIN: + +Are there notions common to all men which serve to make them live in +society? + +SELIM: + +Yes. I have travelled with Paul Lucas, and wherever I went, I saw that +people respected their father and their mother, that people believed +themselves to be obliged to keep their promises, that people pitied +oppressed innocents, that they hated persecution, that they regarded +liberty of thought as a rule of nature, and the enemies of this liberty +as enemies of the human race; those who think differently seemed to me +badly organized creatures, monsters like those who are born without eyes +and hands. + +OSMIN: + +Are these necessary things in all time and in all places? + +SELIM: + +Yes, if they were not they would not be necessary to the human species. + +OSMIN: + +So a belief which is new is not necessary to this species. Men could +very well live in society and accomplish their duty to God, before +believing that Mahomet had frequent interviews with the angel Gabriel. + +SELIM: + +Nothing is clearer; it would be ridiculous to think that man could not +accomplish his duty to God before Mahomet came into the world; it was +not at all necessary for the human species to believe in the Alcoran: +the world went along before Mahomet just as it goes along to-day. If +Mahometanism had been necessary to the world, it would have existed in +all places; God who has given us all two eyes to see the sun, would have +given us all an intelligence to see the truth of the Mussulman religion. +This sect is therefore only like the positive laws that change according +to time and place, like the fashions, like the opinions of the natural +philosophers which follow one after the other. + +The Mussulman sect could not be essentially necessary to mankind. + +OSMIN: + +But since it exists, God has permitted it? + +SELIM: + +Yes, as he permits the world to be filled with foolishness, error and +calamity; that is not to say that men are all essentially made to be +fools and miscreants. He permits that some men be eaten by snakes; but +one cannot say--"God made man to be eaten by snakes." + +OSMIN: + +What do you mean when you say "God permits"? can nothing happen without +His order? permit, will and do, are they not the same thing for Him? + +SELIM: + +He permits crime, but He does not commit it. + +OSMIN: + +Committing a crime is acting against divine justice, it is disobeying +God. Well, God cannot disobey Himself, He cannot commit crime; but He +has made man in such a way that man may commit many crimes: where does +that come from? + +SELIM: + +There are people who know, but I do not; all that I know is that the +Alcoran is ridiculous, although from time to time it has some tolerably +good things; certainly the Alcoran was not at all necessary to man; I +stick by that: I see clearly what is false, and I know very little that +is true. + +OSMIN: + +I thought you would instruct me, and you teach me nothing. + +SELIM: + +Is it not a great deal to recognize people who deceive you, and the +gross and dangerous errors which they retail to you? + +OSMIN: + +I should have ground for complaint against a doctor who showed me all +the harmful plants, and who did not show me one salutary plant. + +SELIM: + +I am not a doctor, and you are not ill; but it seems to me I should be +giving you a very good prescription if I said to you: "Put not your +trust in all the inventions of charlatans, worship God, be an honest +man, and believe that two and two make four." + + + + +_NEW NOVELTIES_ + + +It seems that the first words of Ovid's "Metamorphoses," _In nova fert +animus_, are the motto of the human race. Nobody is touched by the +admirable spectacle of the sun which rises, or rather seems to rise, +every day; everybody runs to see the smallest little meteor which +appears for an instant in that accumulation of vapours, called the sky, +that surround the earth. + +An itinerant bookseller does not burden himself with a Virgil, with a +Horace, but with a new book, even though it be detestable. He draws you +aside and says to you: "Sir, do you want some books from Holland?" + +From the beginning of the world women have complained of the fickleness +that is imputed to them in favour of the first new object which presents +itself, and whose novelty is often its only merit. Many ladies (it must +be confessed, despite the infinite respect we have for them) have +treated men as they complain they have themselves been treated; and the +story of Gioconda is much older than Ariosto. + +Perhaps this universal taste for novelty is one of nature's favours. +People cry to us: "Be content with what you have, desire nothing that is +beyond your estate, restrain your curiosity, tame your intellectual +disquiet." These are very good maxims; but if we had always followed +them, we should still be eating acorns, we should be sleeping in the +open air, and we should not have had Corneille, Racine, Moliere, +Poussin, Lebrun, Lemoine or Pigalle. + + + + +_PHILOSOPHER_ + + +Philosopher, _lover of wisdom_, that is to say, _of truth_. All +philosophers have had this dual character; there is not one in antiquity +who has not given mankind examples of virtue and lessons in moral +truths. They have all contrived to be deceived about natural philosophy; +but natural philosophy is so little necessary for the conduct of life, +that the philosophers had no need of it. It has taken centuries to learn +a part of nature's laws. One day was sufficient for a wise man to learn +the duties of man. + +The philosopher is not enthusiastic; he does not set himself up as a +prophet; he does not say that he is inspired by the gods. Thus I shall +not put in the rank of philosophers either the ancient Zarathustra, or +Hermes, or the ancient Orpheus, or any of those legislators of whom the +nations of Chaldea, Persia, Syria, Egypt and Greece boasted. Those who +styled themselves children of the gods were the fathers of imposture; +and if they used lies for the teaching of truths, they were unworthy of +teaching them; they were not philosophers; they were at best very +prudent liars. + +By what fatality, shameful maybe for the Western peoples, is it +necessary to go to the far Orient to find a wise man who is simple, +unostentatious, free from imposture, who taught men to live happily six +hundred years before our vulgar era, at a time when the whole of the +North was ignorant of the usage of letters, and when the Greeks were +barely beginning to distinguish themselves by their wisdom? + +This wise man is Confucius, who being legislator never wanted to +deceive men. What more beautiful rule of conduct has ever been given +since him in the whole world? + +"Rule a state as you rule a family; one can only govern one's family +well by setting the example. + +"Virtue should be common to both husbandman and monarch. + +"Apply thyself to the trouble of preventing crimes in order to lessen +the trouble of punishing them. + +"Under the good kings Yao and Xu the Chinese were good; under the bad +kings Kie and Chu they were wicked. + +"Do to others as to thyself. + +"Love all men; but cherish honest people. Forget injuries, and never +kindnesses. + +"I have seen men incapable of study; I have never seen them incapable of +virtue." + +Let us admit that there is no legislator who has proclaimed truths more +useful to the human race. + +A host of Greek philosophers have since taught an equally pure moral +philosophy. If they had limited themselves to their empty systems of +natural philosophy, their names would be pronounced to-day in mockery +only. If they are still respected, it is because they were just and that +they taught men to be so. + +One cannot read certain passages of Plato, and notably the admirable +exordium of the laws of Zaleucus, without feeling in one's heart the +love of honourable and generous actions. The Romans have their Cicero, +who alone is worth perhaps all the philosophers of Greece. After him +come men still more worthy of respect, but whom one almost despairs of +imitating; Epictetus in bondage, the Antonines and the Julians on the +throne. + +Which is the citizen among us who would deprive himself, like Julian, +Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius, of all the delicacies of our flabby and +effeminate lives? who would sleep as they did on the ground? who would +impose on himself their frugality? who, as they did, would march +barefoot and bareheaded at the head of the armies, exposed now to the +heat of the sun, now to the hoar-frost? who would command all their +passions as they did? There are pious men among us; but where are the +wise men? where are the resolute, just and tolerant souls? + +There have been philosophers of the study in France; and all, except +Montaigne, have been persecuted. It is, I think, the last degree of the +malignity of our nature, to wish to oppress these very philosophers who +would correct it. + +I quite understand that the fanatics of one sect slaughter the +enthusiasts of another sect, that the Franciscans hate the Dominicans, +and that a bad artist intrigues to ruin one who surpasses him; but that +the wise Charron should have been threatened with the loss of his life, +that the learned and generous Ramus should have been assassinated, that +Descartes should have been forced to flee to Holland to escape the fury +of the ignorant, that Gassendi should have been obliged to withdraw +several times to Digne, far from the calumnies of Paris; these things +are a nation's eternal shame. + + + + +_POWER_, _OMNIPOTENCE_ + + +I suppose that the man who reads this article is convinced that this +world is formed with intelligence, and that a little astronomy and +anatomy suffices to make this universal and supreme intelligence +admired. + +Can he know by himself if this intelligence is omnipotent, that is to +say, infinitely powerful? Has he the least notion of the infinite, to +understand what is an infinite power? + +The celebrated historian philosopher, David Hume, says in "Particular +Providence": "A weight of ten ounces is lifted in a balance by another +weight; therefore this other weight is of more than ten ounces; but one +can adduce no reason why it should weigh a hundred ounces." + +One can say likewise: You recognize a supreme intelligence strong enough +to form you, to preserve you for a limited time, to reward you, to +punish you. Do you know enough of this power to demonstrate that it can +do still more? + +How can you prove by your reason that this being can do more than he has +done? + +The life of all animals is short. Could he make it longer? + +All animals are the prey of each other: everything is born to be +devoured. Could he form without destroying? + +You do not know what nature is. You cannot therefore know if nature has +not forced him to do only the things he has done. + +This globe is only a vast field of destruction and carnage. Either the +great Being has been able to make of it an eternal abode of delight for +all sentient beings, or He has not been able. If He has been able and if +He has not done so, fear to regard him as malevolent; but if He has not +been able, fear not to look on Him as a very great power, circumscribed +by nature in His limits. + +Whether or no His power is infinite does not regard you. It is a matter +of indifference to a subject whether his master possesses five hundred +leagues of land or five thousand; he is subject neither more nor less. + +Which would be the greater insult to this ineffable Being, to say: "He +has made miserable men without being able to dispense with them, or He +has made them for His pleasure?" + +Many sects represent Him as cruel; others, for fear of admitting a +wicked God, have the audacity to deny His existence. Is it not better to +say that probably the necessity of His nature and the necessity of +things have determined everything? + +The world is the theatre of moral ill and physical ill; one is only too +aware of it: and the "All is good" of Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke and Pope, +is only a witty paradox, a poor joke. + +The two principles of Zarathustra and Manes, so carefully scrutinized by +Bayle, are a still poorer joke. They are, as has been observed already, +Moliere's two doctors, one of whom says to the other: "Grant me the +emetic, and I will grant you the bleeding." Manichaeism is absurd; and +that is why it has had so many supporters. + +I admit that I have not been enlightened by all that Bayle says about +the Manichaeans and the Paulicians. That is controversy; I would have +preferred pure philosophy. Why discuss our mysteries beside +Zarathustra's? As soon as you dare to treat of our mysteries, which need +only faith and no reasoning, you open precipices for yourself. + +The trash in our scholastic theology has nothing to do with the trash in +Zarathustra's reveries. + +Why debate original sin with Zarathustra? There was never any question +of it save in St. Augustine's time. Neither Zarathustra nor any +legislator of antiquity had ever heard speak of it. + +If you dispute with Zarathustra, put under lock and key the old and the +new Testaments which he did not know, and which one must revere without +desiring to explain them. + +What then should I have said to Zarathustra? My reason cannot admit two +gods who fight, that is good only in a poem where Minerva quarrels with +Mars. My feeble reason is much more content with a single great Being, +whose essence was to make, and who has made all that nature has +permitted Him, than it is satisfied with two great Beings, one of whom +spoils the works of the other. Your bad principle Ahriman, has not been +able to upset a single one of the astronomical and physical laws of the +good principle Ormuzd; everything progresses in the heavens with the +greatest regularity. Why should the wicked Ahriman have had power over +this little globe of the world? + +If I had been Ahriman, I should have attacked Ormuzd in his fine grand +provinces of so many suns and stars. I should not have limited myself to +making war on him in a little village. + +There is much evil in this village: but whence have you the knowledge +that this evil is not inevitable? + +You are forced to admit an intelligence diffused over the universe; but +(1) do you know, for instance, if this power reaches right to foreseeing +the future? You have asserted it a thousand times; but you have never +been able either to prove it, or to understand it. You cannot know how +any being whatever sees what is not. Well, the future is not; therefore +no being can see it. You are reduced to saying that He foresees it; but +foreseeing is conjecturing. This is the opinion of the Socinians. + +Well, a God who, according to you, conjectures, can be mistaken. In your +system He is really mistaken; for if He had foreseen that His enemy +would poison all His works here below, He would not have produced them; +He would not have prepared for Himself the shame of being continually +vanquished. + +(2) Do I not do Him much more honour by saying that He has made +everything by the necessity of His nature, than you do Him by raising an +enemy who disfigures, who soils, who destroys all His works here below? + +(3) It is not to have an unworthy idea of God to say that, having formed +thousands of millions of worlds where death and evil do not dwell, it +was necessary that evil and death should dwell in this world. + +(4) It is not to disparage God to say that He could not form man without +giving him self-esteem; that this self-esteem could not lead him without +misguiding him almost always; that his passions are necessary, but that +they are disastrous; that propagation cannot be executed without desire; +that desire cannot animate man without quarrels; that these quarrels +necessarily bring wars in their train, etc. + +(5) When he sees part of the combinations of the animal, vegetable and +mineral kingdoms, and this globe pierced everywhere like a sieve, from +which escape in crowds so many exhalations, what philosopher will be +bold enough, what scholastic foolish enough to see clearly that nature +could stop the effects of volcanoes, the inclemencies of the atmosphere, +the violence of the winds, the plagues, and all the destructive +scourges? + +(6) One must be very powerful, very strong, very industrious, to have +formed lions which devour bulls, and to have produced men who invent +arms to kill at one blow, not only bulls and lions, but even each other. +One must be very powerful to have caused to be born spiders which spin +webs to catch flies; but that is not to be omnipotent, infinitely +powerful. + +(7) If the great Being had been infinitely powerful, there is no reason +why He should not have made sentient animals infinitely happy; He has +not done so, therefore He was not able. + +(8) All the sects of the philosophers have stranded on the reef of moral +and physical ill. It only remains to avow that God having acted for the +best has not been able to act better. + +(9) This necessity settles all the difficulties and finishes all the +disputes. We have not the impudence to say--"All is good." We say--"All +is the least bad that is possible." + +(10) Why does a child often die in its mother's womb? Why is another who +has had the misfortune to be born, reserved for torments as long as his +life, terminated by a frightful death? + +Why has the source of life been poisoned all over the world since the +discovery of America? why since the seventh century of our era does +smallpox carry off the eighth part of the human race? why since all time +have bladders been subject to being stone quarries? why the plague, war, +famine, the inquisition? Turn in every direction, you will find no other +solution than that everything has been necessary. + +I speak here to philosophers only and not to theologians. We know well +that faith is the thread in the labyrinth. We know that the fall of Adam +and Eve, original sin, the immense power given to the devil, the +predilection accorded by the great Being to the Jewish people, and the +baptism substituted for the amputation of the prepuce, are the answers +which explain everything. We have argued only against Zarathustra and +not against the university of Conimbre or Coimbre, to which we submit in +our articles. + + + + +_PRAYERS_ + + +We do not know any religion without prayers, even the Jews had some, +although there was not among them any public form, until the time when +they sang canticles in their synagogues, which happened very late. + +All men, in their desires and their fears, invoked the aid of a deity. +Some philosophers, more respectful to the Supreme Being, and less +condescending to human frailty, for all prayer desired only resignation. +It is indeed what seems proper as between creature and creator. But +philosophy is not made to govern the world; she rises above the common +herd; she speaks a language that the crowd cannot understand. It would +be suggesting to fishwives that they should study conic sections. + +Even among the philosophers, I do not believe that anyone apart from +Maximus of Tyre has treated of this matter; this is the substance of +Maximus' ideas. + +The Eternal has His intentions from all eternity. If prayer accords with +His immutable wishes, it is quite useless to ask of Him what He has +resolved to do. If one prays Him to do the contrary of what He has +resolved, it is praying Him to be weak, frivolous, inconstant; it is +believing that He is thus, it is to mock Him. Either you ask Him a just +thing; in this case He must do it, and the thing will be done without +your praying Him for it; entreating Him is even to distrust Him: or the +thing is unjust, and then you outrage Him. You are worthy or unworthy of +the grace you implore: if worthy, He knows it better than you; if +unworthy, you commit a crime the more in asking for what you do not +deserve. + +In a word, we pray to God only because we have made Him in our own +image. We treat Him like a pasha, like a sultan whom one may provoke and +appease. + +In short, all nations pray to God: wise men resign themselves and obey +Him. + +Let us pray with the people, and resign ourselves with the wise men. + + + + +_PRECIS OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY_ + + +I have spent nearly forty years of my pilgrimage in two or three corners +of this world seeking the philosopher's stone that is called Truth. I +have consulted all the adepts of antiquity, Epicurus and Augustine, +Plato and Malebranche, and I have remained in my poverty. Maybe in all +these philosophers' crucibles there are one or two ounces of gold; but +all the rest is residue, dull mud, from which nothing can be born. + +It seems to me that the Greeks our masters wrote much more to show their +intelligence than that they used their intelligence in order to learn. I +do not see a single author of antiquity who had a coherent system, a +clear, methodical system progressing from consequence to consequence. + +When I wanted to compare and combine the systems of Plato, of the +preceptor of Alexander, of Pythagoras and of the Orientals, here, more +or less, is what I was able to gather: + +Chance is a word empty of sense; nothing can exist without a cause. The +world is arranged according to mathematical laws; it is therefore +arranged by an intelligence. + +It is not an intelligent being such as I am, who directed the formation +of this world, for I cannot form a mite; therefore this world is the +work of a prodigiously superior intelligence. + +Does this being, who possesses intelligence and power in so high a +degree, exist necessarily? It must be so, for either the being received +existence from another, or from its own nature. If the being received +existence from another, which is very difficult to imagine, I must have +recourse to this other, and this other will be the prime author. To +whichever side I turn I have to admit a prime author, potent and +intelligent, who is such necessarily by his own nature. + +Did this prime author produce things out of nothing? that is not +imaginable; to create out of nothing is to change nothing into +something. I must not admit such a production unless I find invincible +reasons which force me to admit what my intelligence can never +comprehend. + +All that exists appears to exist necessarily, since it exists. For if +to-day there is a reason for the existence of things, there was one +yesterday, there was one in all time; and this cause must always have +had its effect, without which it would have been during eternity a +useless cause. + +But how shall things have always existed, being visibly under the hand +of the prime author? This power therefore must always have acted; in the +same way, nearly, that there is no sun without light, so there is no +movement without a being that passes from one point of space to another +point. + +There is therefore a potent and intelligent being who has always acted; +and if this being had never acted, of what use would his existence have +been to him? + +All things are therefore eternal emanations of this prime author. + +But how imagine that stone and mud are emanations of the eternal Being, +potent and intelligent? + +Of two things one, either the matter of this stone and this mud exist +necessarily by themselves, or they exist necessarily through this prime +author; there is no middle course. + +Thus, therefore, there are only two choices to make, admit either matter +eternal by itself, or matter issuing eternally from the potent, +intelligent eternal Being. + +But, either subsisting by its own nature, or emanated from the producing +Being, it exists from all eternity, because it exists, and there is no +reason why it should not have existed before. + +If matter is eternally necessary, it is therefore impossible, it is +therefore contradictory that it does not exist; but what man can affirm +that it is impossible, that it is contradictory that this pebble and +this fly have not existence? One is, nevertheless, forced to suppress +this difficulty which astonishes the imagination more than it +contradicts the principles of reasoning. + +In fact, as soon as you have imagined that everything has emanated from +the supreme and intelligent Being, that nothing has emanated from the +Being without reason, that this Being existing always, must always have +acted, that consequently all things must have eternally issued from the +womb of His existence, you should no more refuse to believe in the +matter of which this pebble and this fly, an eternal production, are +formed, than you refuse to imagine light as an eternal emanation from +the omnipotent Being. + +Since I am a being with extension and thought, my extension and my +thought are therefore necessary productions of this Being. It is evident +to me that I cannot give myself either extension or thought. I have +therefore received both from this necessary Being. + +Can He give me what He has not? I have intelligence and I am in space; +therefore He is intelligent, and He is in space. + +To say that this eternal Being, this omnipotent God, has from all time +necessarily filled the universe with His productions, is not to deprive +Him of His liberty; on the contrary, for liberty is only the power of +acting. God has always acted to the full; therefore God has always made +use of the fullness of His liberty. + +The liberty that is called _liberty of indifference_ is a phrase without +idea, an absurdity; for it would be determination without reason; it +would be an effect without a cause. Therefore, God cannot have this +so-called liberty which is a contradiction in terms. He has therefore +always acted through this same necessity which makes His existence. + +It is therefore impossible for the world to be without God, it is +impossible for God to be without the world. + +This world is filled with beings who succeed each other, therefore God +has always produced beings who succeed each other. + +These preliminary assertions are the basis of the ancient Oriental +philosophy and of that of the Greeks. One must except Democritus and +Epicurus, whose corpuscular philosophy combated these dogmas. But let us +remark that the Epicureans relied on an entirely erroneous natural +philosophy, and that the metaphysical system of all the other +philosophers holds good with all the systems of natural philosophy. The +whole of nature, excepting the vacuum, contradicts Epicurus; and no +phenomenon contradicts the philosophy which I have just explained. Well, +is not a philosophy which is in accord with all that passes in nature, +and which contents the most careful minds, superior to all other +non-revealed systems? + +After the assertions of the ancient philosophers, which I have +reconciled as far as has been possible for me, what is left to us? a +chaos of doubts and chimeras. I do not think that there has ever been a +philosopher with a system who did not at the end of his life avow that +he had wasted his time. It must be admitted that the inventors of the +mechanical arts have been much more useful to mankind than the inventors +of syllogisms: the man who invented the shuttle surpasses with a +vengeance the man who imagined innate ideas. + + + + +_PREJUDICES_ + + +Prejudice is an opinion without judgment. Thus all over the world do +people inspire children with all the opinions they desire, before the +children can judge. + +There are some universal, necessary prejudices, which even make virtue. +In all countries children are taught to recognize a rewarding and +revenging God; to respect and love their father and their mother; to +look on theft as a crime, selfish lying as a vice before they can guess +what is a vice and what a virtue. + +There are then some very good prejudices; they are those which are +ratified by judgment when one reasons. + +Sentiment is not a simple prejudice; it is something much stronger. A +mother does not love her son because she has been told she must love +him; she cherishes him happily in spite of herself. It is not through +prejudice that you run to the help of an unknown child about to fall +into a precipice, or be eaten by a beast. + +But it is through prejudice that you will respect a man clad in certain +clothes, walking gravely, speaking likewise. Your parents have told you +that you should bow before this man; you respect him before knowing +whether he merits your respect; you grow in years and in knowledge; you +perceive that this man is a charlatan steeped in arrogance, +self-interest and artifice; you despise what you revered, and the +prejudice cedes to judgment. Through prejudice you have believed the +fables with which your childhood was cradled; you have been told that +the Titans made war on the gods, and Venus was amorous of Adonis; when +you are twelve you accept these fables as truths; when you are twenty +you look on them as ingenious allegories. + +Let us examine briefly the different sorts of prejudices, so as to set +our affairs in order. We shall be perhaps like those who, at the time of +Law's system, perceived that they had calculated imaginary riches. + + +PREJUDICES OF THE SENSES + +Is it not strange that our eyes always deceive us, even when we have +very good sight, and that on the contrary our ears do not deceive us? +Let your well-informed ear hear "You are beautiful, I love you"; it is +quite certain that someone has not said "I hate you, you are ugly": but +you see a smooth mirror; it is demonstrated that you are mistaken, it +has a very uneven surface. You see the sun as about two feet in +diameter; it is demonstrated that it is a million times bigger than the +earth. + +It seems that God has put truth in your ears, and error in your eyes; +but study optics, and you will see that God has not deceived you, and +that it is impossible for objects to appear to you otherwise than you +see them in the present state of things. + + +PHYSICAL PREJUDICES + +The sun rises, the moon also, the earth is motionless: these are natural +physical prejudices. But that lobsters are good for the blood, because +when cooked they are red; that eels cure paralysis because they wriggle; +that the moon affects our maladies because one day someone observed that +a sick man had an increase of fever during the waning of the moon; these +ideas and a thousand others are the errors of ancient charlatans who +judged without reasoning, and who, being deceived, deceived others. + + +HISTORICAL PREJUDICES + +Most historical stories have been believed without examination, and this +belief is a prejudice. Fabius Pictor relates that many centuries before +him, a vestal of the town of Alba, going to draw water in her pitcher, +was ravished, that she gave birth to Romulus and Remus, that they were +fed by a she-wolf, etc. The Roman people believed this fable; they did +not examine whether at that time there were vestals in Latium, whether +it were probable that a king's daughter would leave her convent with her +pitcher, whether it were likely that a she-wolf would suckle two +children instead of eating them; the prejudice established itself. + +A monk writes that Clovis, being in great danger at the battle of +Tolbiac, made a vow to turn Christian if he escaped; but is it natural +to address oneself to a foreign god on such an occasion? is it not then +that the religion in which one was born acts most potently? Which is the +Christian who, in a battle against the Turks, will not address himself +to the Holy Virgin rather than to Mohammed? It is added that a pigeon +brought the holy phial in its beak to anoint Clovis, and that an angel +brought the oriflamme to lead him; prejudice believed all the little +stories of this kind. Those who understand human nature know well that +Clovis the usurper and Rolon (or Rol) the usurper turned Christian in +order to govern the Christians more surely, just as the Turkish usurpers +turned Mussulman in order to govern the Mussulmans more surely. + + +RELIGIOUS PREJUDICES + +If your nurse has told you that Ceres rules over the crops, or that +Vistnou and Xaca made themselves men several times, or that Sammonocodom +came to cut down a forest, or that Odin awaits you in his hall near +Jutland, or that Mohammed or somebody else made a journey into the sky; +if lastly your tutor comes to drive into your brain what your nurse has +imprinted on it you keep it for life. If your judgment wishes to rise +against these prejudices, your neighbours and, above all, your +neighbours' wives cry out "Impious reprobate," and dismay you; your +dervish, fearing to see his income diminish, accuses you to the cadi, +and this cadi has you impaled if he can, because he likes ruling over +fools, and thinks that fools obey better than others: and that will last +until your neighbours and the dervish and the cadi begin to understand +that foolishness is good for nothing, and that persecution is +abominable. + + + + +_RARE_ + + +Rare in natural philosophy is the opposite of dense. In moral +philosophy, it is the opposite of common. + +This last variety of rare is what excites admiration. One never admires +what is common, one enjoys it. + +An eccentric thinks himself above the rest of wretched mortals when he +has in his study a rare medal that is good for nothing, a rare book that +nobody has the courage to read, an old engraving by Albrecht Durer, +badly designed and badly printed: he triumphs if he has in his garden a +stunted tree from America. This eccentric has no taste; he has only +vanity. He has heard say that the beautiful is rare; but he should know +that all that is rare is not beautiful. + +Beauty is rare in all nature's works, and in all works of art. + +Whatever ill things have been said of women, I maintain that it is rarer +to find women perfectly beautiful than passibly good. + +You will meet in the country ten thousand women attached to their homes, +laborious, sober, feeding, rearing, teaching their children; and you +will find barely one whom you could show at the theatres of Paris, +London, Naples, or in the public gardens, and who would be looked on as +a beauty. + +Likewise, in works of art, you have ten thousand daubs and scrawls to +one masterpiece. + +If everything were beautiful and good, it is clear that one would no +longer admire anything; one would enjoy. But would one have pleasure in +enjoying? that is a big question. + +Why have the beautiful passages in "The Cid," "The Horaces," "Cinna," +had such a prodigious success? Because in the profound night in which +people were plunged, they suddenly saw shine a new light that they did +not expect. It was because this beauty was the rarest thing in the +world. + +The groves of Versailles were a beauty unique in the world, as were then +certain passages of Corneille. St. Peter's, Rome, is unique. + +But let us suppose that all the churches of Europe were equal to St. +Peter's, Rome, that all statues were Venus dei Medici, that all +tragedies were as beautiful as Racine's "Iphigenie", all works of poetry +as well written as Boileau's "Art Poetique", all comedies as good as +"Tartufe", and thus in every sphere; would you then have as much +pleasure in enjoying masterpieces become common as they made you taste +when they were rare? I say boldly "No!"; and I believe that the ancient +school, which so rarely was right, was right when it said: _Ab assuetis +non fit passio_, habit does not make passion. + +But, my dear reader, will it be the same with the works of nature? Will +you be disgusted if all the maids are so beautiful as Helen; and you, +ladies, if all the lads are like Paris? Let us suppose that all wines +are excellent, will you have less desire to drink? if the partridges, +pheasants, pullets are common at all times, will you have less appetite? +I say boldly again "No!", despite the axiom of the schools, "Habit does +not make passion": and the reason, you know it, is that all the +pleasures which nature gives us are always recurring needs, necessary +enjoyments, and that the pleasures of the arts are not necessary. It is +not necessary for a man to have groves where water gushes to a height of +a hundred feet from the mouth of a marble face, and on leaving these +groves to go to see a fine tragedy. But the two sexes are always +necessary to each other. The table and the bed are necessities. The +habit of being alternately on these two thrones will never disgust you. + +In Paris a few years ago people admired a rhinoceros. If there were in +one province ten thousand rhinoceroses, men would run after them only to +kill them. But let there be a hundred thousand beautiful women men will +always run after them to ... honour them. + + + + +_REASON_ + + +At the time when all France was mad about Law's system, and Law was +controller-general, there came to him in the presence of a great +assembly a man who was always right, who always had reason on his side. +Said he to Law: + +"Sir, you are the biggest madman, the biggest fool, or the biggest rogue +who has yet appeared among us; and that is saying a great deal: this is +how I prove it. You have imagined that a state's wealth can be increased +tenfold with paper; but as this paper can represent only the money that +is representative of true wealth, the products of the land and industry, +you should have begun by giving us ten times more corn, wine, cloth, +canvas, etc. That is not enough, you must be sure of your market. But +you make ten times as many notes as we have of silver and commodities, +therefore you are ten times more extravagant, or more inept, or more of +a rogue than all the comptrollers who have preceded you. This is how I +prove my major." + +Hardly had he started his major than he was conducted to Saint-Lazare. + +When he came out of Saint-Lazare, where he studied much and strengthened +his reason, he went to Rome; he asked for a public audience of the Pope, +on condition that he was not interrupted in his harangue; and he spoke +to the Pope in these terms: + +"Holy Father, you are an antichrist and this is how I prove it to Your +Holiness. I call antichrist the man who does the contrary to what Christ +did and commanded. Now Christ was poor, and you are very rich; he paid +tribute, and you exact tribute; he submitted to the powers that were, +and you have become a power; he walked on foot, and you go to +Castel-Gandolfo in a sumptuous equipage; he ate all that one was so good +as to give him, and you want us to eat fish on Friday and Saturday, when +we live far from sea and river; he forbade Simon Barjona to use a sword, +and you have swords in your service, etc., etc., etc. Therefore in this +sense Your Holiness is antichrist. In every other sense I hold you in +great veneration, and I ask you for an indulgence _in articulo mortis_." + +My man was put in the Castello St. Angelo. + +When he came out of the Castello St. Angelo, he rushed to Venice, and +asked to speak to the doge. + +"Your Serenity," he said, "must be a scatter-brain to marry the sea +every year: for firstly, one only marries the same person once; +secondly, your marriage resembles Harlequin's which was half made, +seeing that it lacked but the consent of the bride; thirdly, who has +told you that one day other maritime powers will not declare you +incapable of consummating the marriage?" + +He spoke, and was shut up in the Tower of St. Mark's. + +When he came out of the Tower of St. Mark's, he went to Constantinople; +he had audience of the mufti; and spoke to him in these terms: + +"Your religion, although it has some good points, such as worship of the +great Being, and the necessity of being just and charitable, is +otherwise nothing but a rehash of Judaism and a tedious collection of +fairy tales. If the archangel Gabriel had brought the leaves of the +Koran to Mahomet from some planet, all Arabia would have seen Gabriel +come down: nobody saw him; therefore Mahomet was a brazen impostor who +deceived imbeciles." + +Hardly had he pronounced these words than he was impaled. Nevertheless +he had always been right, and had always had reason on his side. + + + + +_RELIGION_ + + +I meditated last night; I was absorbed in the contemplation of nature; I +admired the immensity, the course, the harmony of these infinite globes +which the vulgar do not know how to admire. + +I admired still more the intelligence which directs these vast forces. I +said to myself: "One must be blind not to be dazzled by this spectacle; +one must be stupid not to recognize the author of it; one must be mad +not to worship Him. What tribute of worship should I render Him? Should +not this tribute be the same in the whole of space, since it is the same +supreme power which reigns equally in all space? Should not a thinking +being who dwells in a star in the Milky Way offer Him the same homage as +the thinking being on this little globe where we are? Light is uniform +for the star Sirius and for us; moral philosophy must be uniform. If a +sentient, thinking animal in Sirius is born of a tender father and +mother who have been occupied with his happiness, he owes them as much +love and care as we owe to our parents. If someone in the Milky Way sees +a needy cripple, if he can relieve him and if he does not do it, he is +guilty toward all globes. Everywhere the heart has the same duties: on +the steps of the throne of God, if He has a throne; and in the depth of +the abyss, if He is an abyss." + +I was plunged in these ideas when one of those genii who fill the +intermundane spaces came down to me. I recognized this same aerial +creature who had appeared to me on another occasion to teach me how +different God's judgments were from our own, and how a good action is +preferable to a controversy. + +He transported me into a desert all covered with piled up bones; and +between these heaps of dead men there were walks of ever-green trees, +and at the end of each walk a tall man of august mien, who regarded +these sad remains with pity. + +"Alas! my archangel," said I, "where have you brought me?" + +"To desolation," he answered. + +"And who are these fine patriarchs whom I see sad and motionless at the +end of these green walks? they seem to be weeping over this countless +crowd of dead." + +"You shall know, poor human creature," answered the genius from the +intermundane spaces; "but first of all you must weep." + +He began with the first pile. "These," he said, "are the twenty-three +thousand Jews who danced before a calf, with the twenty-four thousand +who were killed while lying with Midianitish women. The number of those +massacred for such errors and offences amounts to nearly three hundred +thousand. + +"In the other walks are the bones of the Christians slaughtered by each +other for metaphysical disputes. They are divided into several heaps of +four centuries each. One heap would have mounted right to the sky; they +had to be divided." + +"What!" I cried, "brothers have treated their brothers like this, and I +have the misfortune to be of this brotherhood!" + +"Here," said the spirit, "are the twelve million Americans killed in +their fatherland because they had not been baptized." + +"My God! why did you not leave these frightful bones to dry in the +hemisphere where their bodies were born, and where they were consigned +to so many different deaths? Why assemble here all these abominable +monuments to barbarism and fanaticism?" + +"To instruct you." + +"Since you wish to instruct me," I said to the genius, "tell me if there +have been peoples other than the Christians and the Jews in whom zeal +and religion wretchedly transformed into fanaticism, have inspired so +many horrible cruelties." + +"Yes," he said. "The Mohammedans were sullied with the same +inhumanities, but rarely; and when one asked _amman_, pity, of them and +offered them tribute, they pardoned. As for the other nations there has +not been one right from the existence of the world which has ever made a +purely religious war. Follow me now." I followed him. + +A little beyond these piles of dead men we found other piles; they were +composed of sacks of gold and silver, and each had its label: _Substance +of the heretics massacred in the eighteenth century, the seventeenth and +the sixteenth._ And so on in going back: _Gold and silver of Americans +slaughtered_, etc., etc. And all these piles were surmounted with +crosses, mitres, croziers, triple crowns studded with precious stones. + +"What, my genius! it was then to have these riches that these dead were +piled up?" + +"Yes, my son." + +I wept; and when by my grief I had merited to be led to the end of the +green walks, he led me there. + +"Contemplate," he said, "the heroes of humanity who were the world's +benefactors, and who were all united in banishing from the world, as far +as they were able, violence and rapine. Question them." + +I ran to the first of the band; he had a crown on his head, and a little +censer in his hand; I humbly asked him his name. "I am Numa Pompilius," +he said to me. "I succeeded a brigand, and I had brigands to govern: I +taught them virtue and the worship of God; after me they forgot both +more than once; I forbade that in the temples there should be any image, +because the Deity which animates nature cannot be represented. During my +reign the Romans had neither wars nor seditions, and my religion did +nothing but good. All the neighbouring peoples came to honour me at my +funeral: that happened to no one but me." + +I kissed his hand, and I went to the second. He was a fine old man about +a hundred years old, clad in a white robe. He put his middle-finger on +his mouth, and with the other hand he cast some beans behind him. I +recognized Pythagoras. He assured me he had never had a golden thigh, +and that he had never been a cock; but that he had governed the +Crotoniates with as much justice as Numa governed the Romans, almost at +the same time; and that this justice was the rarest and most necessary +thing in the world. I learned that the Pythagoreans examined their +consciences twice a day. The honest people! how far we are from them! +But we who have been nothing but assassins for thirteen hundred years, +we say that these wise men were arrogant. + +In order to please Pythagoras, I did not say a word to him and I passed +to Zarathustra, who was occupied in concentrating the celestial fire in +the focus of a concave mirror, in the middle of a hall with a hundred +doors which all led to wisdom. (Zarathustra's precepts are called +_doors_, and are a hundred in number.) Over the principal door I read +these words which are the precis of all moral philosophy, and which cut +short all the disputes of the casuists: "When in doubt if an action is +good or bad, refrain." + +"Certainly," I said to my genius, "the barbarians who immolated all +these victims had never read these beautiful words." + +We then saw the Zaleucus, the Thales, the Aniximanders, and all the +sages who had sought truth and practised virtue. + +When we came to Socrates, I recognized him very quickly by his flat +nose. "Well," I said to him, "here you are then among the number of the +Almighty's confidants! All the inhabitants of Europe, except the Turks +and the Tartars of the Crimea, who know nothing, pronounce your name +with respect. It is revered, loved, this great name, to the point that +people have wanted to know those of your persecutors. Melitus and +Anitus are known because of you, just as Ravaillac is known because of +Henry IV.; but I know only this name of Anitus. I do not know precisely +who was the scoundrel who calumniated you, and who succeeded in having +you condemned to take hemlock." + +"Since my adventure," replied Socrates, "I have never thought about that +man; but seeing that you make me remember it, I have much pity for him. +He was a wicked priest who secretly conducted a business in hides, a +trade reputed shameful among us. He sent his two children to my school. +The other disciples taunted them with having a father who was a currier; +they were obliged to leave. The irritated father had no rest until he +had stirred up all the priests and all the sophists against me. They +persuaded the counsel of the five hundred that I was an impious fellow +who did not believe that the Moon, Mercury and Mars were gods. Indeed, I +used to think, as I think now, that there is only one God, master of all +nature. The judges handed me over to the poisoner of the republic; he +cut short my life by a few days: I died peacefully at the age of +seventy; and since that time I pass a happy life with all these great +men whom you see, and of whom I am the least." + +After enjoying some time in conversation with Socrates, I went forward +with my guide into a grove situated above the thickets where all the +sages of antiquity seemed to be tasting sweet repose. + +I saw a man of gentle, simple countenance, who seemed to me to be about +thirty-five years old. From afar he cast compassionate glances on these +piles of whitened bones, across which I had had to pass to reach the +sages' abode. I was astonished to find his feet swollen and bleeding, +his hands likewise, his side pierced, and his ribs flayed with whip +cuts. "Good Heavens!" I said to him, "is it possible for a just man, a +sage, to be in this state? I have just seen one who was treated in a +very hateful way, but there is no comparison between his torture and +yours. Wicked priests and wicked judges poisoned him; is it by priests +and judges that you have been so cruelly assassinated?" + +He answered with much courtesy--"_Yes._" + +"And who were these monsters?" + +"_They were hypocrites._" + +"Ah! that says everything; I understand by this single word that they +must have condemned you to death. Had you then proved to them, as +Socrates did, that the Moon was not a goddess, and that Mercury was not +a god?" + +"_No, these planets were not in question. My compatriots did not know at +all what a planet is; they were all arrant ignoramuses. Their +superstitions were quite different from those of the Greeks._" + +"You wanted to teach them a new religion, then?" + +"_Not at all; I said to them simply--'Love God with all your heart and +your fellow-creature as yourself, for that is man's whole duty.' Judge +if this precept is not as old as the universe; judge if I brought them a +new religion. I did not stop telling them that I had come not to destroy +the law but to fulfil it; I had observed all their rites; circumcised as +they all were, baptized as were the most zealous among them, like them I +paid the Corban; I observed the Passover as they did, eating standing up +a lamb cooked with lettuces. I and my friends went to pray in the +temple; my friends even frequented this temple after my death; in a +word, I fulfilled all their laws without a single exception._" + +"What! these wretches could not even reproach you with swerving from +their laws?" + +"_No, without a doubt._" + +"Why then did they put you in the condition in which I now see you?" + +"_What do you expect me to say! they were very arrogant and selfish. +They saw that I knew them; they knew that I was making the citizens +acquainted with them; they were the stronger; they took away my life: +and people like them will always do as much, if they can, to whoever +does them too much justice._" + +"But did you say nothing, do nothing that could serve them as a +pretext?" + +"_To the wicked everything serves as pretext._" + +"Did you not say once that you were come not to send peace, but a +sword?" + +"_It is a copyist's error; I told them that I sent peace and not a +sword. I have never written anything; what I said can have been changed +without evil intention._" + +"You therefore contributed in no way by your speeches, badly reported, +badly interpreted, to these frightful piles of bones which I saw on my +road in coming to consult you?" + +"_It is with horror only that I have seen those who have made themselves +guilty of these murders._" + +"And these monuments of power and wealth, of pride and avarice, these +treasures, these ornaments, these signs of grandeur, which I have seen +piled up on the road while I was seeking wisdom, do they come from you?" + +"_That is impossible; I and my people lived in poverty and meanness: my +grandeur was in virtue only._" + +I was about to beg him to be so good as to tell me just who he was. My +guide warned me to do nothing of the sort. He told me that I was not +made to understand these sublime mysteries. Only did I conjure him to +tell me in what true religion consisted. + +"_Have I not already told you? Love God and your fellow-creature as +yourself._" + +"What! if one loves God, one can eat meat on Friday?" + +"_I always ate what was given me; for I was too poor to give anyone +food._" + +"In loving God, in being just, should one not be rather cautious not to +confide all the adventures of one's life to an unknown man?" + +"_That was always my practice._" + +"Can I not, by doing good, dispense with making a pilgrimage to St. +James of Compostella?" + +"_I have never been in that country._" + +"Is it necessary for me to imprison myself in a retreat with fools?" + +"_As for me, I always made little journeys from town to town._" + +"Is it necessary for me to take sides either for the Greek Church or the +Latin?" + +"_When I was in the world I never made any difference between the Jew +and the Samaritan._" + +"Well, if that is so, I take you for my only master." Then he made me a +sign with his head which filled me with consolation. The vision +disappeared, and a clear conscience stayed with me. + + + + +_SECT_ + + +SECTION I + +Every sect, in whatever sphere, is the rallying-point of doubt and +error. Scotist, Thomist, Realist, Nominalist, Papist, Calvinist, +Molinist, Jansenist, are only pseudonyms. + +There are no sects in geometry; one does not speak of a Euclidian, an +Archimedean. + +When the truth is evident, it is impossible for parties and factions to +arise. Never has there been a dispute as to whether there is daylight at +noon. + +The branch of astronomy which determines the course of the stars and the +return of eclipses being once known, there is no more dispute among +astronomers. + +In England one does not say--"I am a Newtonian, a Lockian, a Halleyan." +Why? Those who have read cannot refuse their assent to the truths taught +by these three great men. The more Newton is revered, the less do people +style themselves Newtonians; this word supposes that there are +anti-Newtonians in England. Maybe we still have a few Cartesians in +France; that is solely because Descartes' system is a tissue of +erroneous and ridiculous imaginings. + +It is likewise with the small number of truths of fact which are well +established. The records of the Tower of London having been +authentically gathered by Rymer, there are no Rymerians, because it +occurs to no one to combat this collection. In it one finds neither +contradictions, absurdities nor prodigies; nothing which revolts the +reason, nothing, consequently, which sectarians strive to maintain or +upset by absurd arguments. Everyone agrees, therefore, that Rymer's +records are worthy of belief. + +You are Mohammedan, therefore there are people who are not, therefore +you might well be wrong. + +What would be the true religion if Christianity did not exist? the +religion in which there were no sects; the religion in which all minds +were necessarily in agreement. + +Well, to what dogma do all minds agree? to the worship of a God and to +integrity. All the philosophers of the world who have had a religion +have said in all time--"There is a God, and one must be just." There, +then, is the universal religion established in all time and throughout +mankind. + +The point in which they all agree is therefore true, and the systems +through which they differ are therefore false. + +"My sect is the best," says a Brahmin to me. But, my friend, if your +sect is good, it is necessary; for if it were not absolutely necessary +you would admit to me that it was useless: if it is absolutely +necessary, it is for all men; how then can it be that all men have not +what is absolutely necessary to them? How is it possible for the rest of +the world to laugh at you and your Brahma? + +When Zarathustra, Hermes, Orpheus, Minos and all the great men say--"Let +us worship God, and let us be just," nobody laughs; but everyone hisses +the man who claims that one cannot please God unless when one dies one +is holding a cow's tail, and the man who wants one to have the end of +one's prepuce cut off, and the man who consecrates crocodiles and +onions, and the man who attaches eternal salvation to the dead men's +bones one carries under one's shirt, or to a plenary indulgence which +one buys at Rome for two and a half sous. + +Whence comes this universal competition in hisses and derision from one +end of the world to the other? It is clear that the things at which +everyone sneers are not of a very evident truth. What shall we say of +one of Sejan's secretaries who dedicated to Petronius a bombastic book +entitled--"The Truths of the Sibylline Oracles, Proved by the Facts"? + +This secretary proves to you first that it was necessary for God to send +on earth several sibyls one after the other; for He had no other means +of teaching mankind. It is demonstrated that God spoke to these sibyls, +for the word _sibyl_ signifies _God's counsel_. They had to live a long +time, for it is the very least that persons to whom God speaks should +have this privilege. They were twelve in number, for this number is +sacred. They had certainly predicted all the events in the world, for +Tarquinius Superbus bought three of their Books from an old woman for a +hundred crowns. "What incredulous fellow," adds the secretary, "will +dare deny all these evident facts which happened in a corner before the +whole world? Who can deny the fulfilment of their prophecies? Has not +Virgil himself quoted the predictions of the sibyls? If we have not the +first examples of the Sibylline Books, written at a time when people did +not know how to read or write, have we not authentic copies? Impiety +must be silent before such proofs." Thus did Houttevillus speak to +Sejan. He hoped to have a position as augur which would be worth an +income of fifty thousand francs, and he had nothing.[20] + +"What my sect teaches is obscure, I admit it," says a fanatic; "and it +is because of this obscurity that it must be believed; for the sect +itself says it is full of obscurities. My sect is extravagant, therefore +it is divine; for how should what appears so mad have been embraced by +so many peoples, if it were not divine?" It is precisely like the +Alcoran which the Sonnites say has an angel's face and an animal's +snout; be not scandalized by the animal's snout, and worship the angel's +face. Thus speaks this insensate fellow. But a fanatic of another sect +answers--"It is you who are the animal, and I who am the angel." + +Well, who shall judge the suit? who shall decide between these two +fanatics? The reasonable, impartial man learned in a knowledge that is +not that of words; the man free from prejudice and lover of truth and +justice; in short, the man who is not the foolish animal, and who does +not think he is the angel. + + +SECTION II + +_Sect_ and _error_ are synonymous. You are Peripatetic and I +Platonician; we are therefore both wrong; for you combat Plato only +because his fantasies have revolted you, and I am alienated from +Aristotle only because it seems to me that he does not know what he is +talking about. If one or the other had demonstrated the truth, there +would be a sect no longer. To declare oneself for the opinion of the one +or the other is to take sides in a civil war. There are no sects in +mathematics, in experimental physics. A man who examines the relations +between a cone and a sphere is not of the sect of Archimedes: he who +sees that the square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is +equal to the square of the two other sides is not of the sect of +Pythagoras. + +When you say that the blood circulates, that the air is heavy, that the +sun's rays are pencils of seven refrangible rays, you are not either of +the sect of Harvey, or the sect of Torricelli, or the sect of Newton; +you agree merely with the truth demonstrated by them, and the entire +universe will ever be of your opinion. + +This is the character of truth; it is of all time; it is for all men; it +has only to show itself to be recognized; one cannot argue against it. A +long dispute signifies--"Both parties are wrong." + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[20] Reference to the Abbe Houtteville, author of a book entitled--"The +Truth of the Christian Religion, Proved by the Facts." + + + + +_SELF-ESTEEM_ + + +Nicole in his "Essais de Morale," written after two or three thousand +volumes of ethics ("Treatise on Charity," Chap. II), says that "by means +of the wheels and gibbets which people establish in common are repressed +the tyrannous thoughts and designs of each individual's self-esteem." + +I shall not examine whether people have gibbets in common, as they have +meadows and woods in common, and a common purse, and if one represses +ideas with wheels; but it seems very strange to me that Nicole should +take highway robbery and assassination for self-esteem. One should +distinguish shades of difference a little better. The man who said that +Nero had his mother assassinated through self-esteem, that Cartouche had +much self-esteem, would not be expressing himself very correctly. +Self-esteem is not wickedness, it is a sentiment that is natural to all +men; it is much nearer vanity than crime. + +A beggar in the suburbs of Madrid nobly begged charity; a passer-by says +to him: "Are you not ashamed to practise this infamous calling when you +are able to work?" + +"Sir," answered the beggar, "I ask for money, not advice." And he turned +on his heel with full Castillian dignity. + +This gentleman was a proud beggar, his vanity was wounded by a trifle. +He asked charity out of love for himself, and could not tolerate the +reprimand out of further love for himself. + +A missionary travelling in India met a fakir laden with chains, naked as +a monkey, lying on his stomach, and having himself whipped for the sins +of his compatriots, the Indians, who gave him a few farthings. + +"What self-denial!" said one of the lookers-on. + +"Self-denial!" answered the fakir. "Learn that I have myself flogged in +this world in order to return it in another, when you will be horses and +I horseman." + +Those who have said that love of ourselves is the basis of all our +opinions and all our actions, have therefore been quite right in India, +Spain, and all the habitable world: and as one does not write to prove +to men that they have faces, it is not necessary to prove to them that +they have self-esteem. Self-esteem is the instrument of our +conservation; it resembles the instrument of the perpetuity of the +species: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and it +has to be hidden. + + + + +_SOUL_ + + +SECTION I + +This is a vague, indeterminate term, which expresses an unknown +principle of known effects that we feel in us. The word _soul_ +corresponds to the Latin _anima_, to the Greek +pneuma+, to the term of +which all nations have made use to express what they did not understand +any better than we do. + +In the proper and literal sense of the Latin and the languages derived +from Latin, it signifies _that which animates_. Thus people have spoken +of the soul of men, of animals, sometimes of plants, to signify their +principal of vegetation and life. In pronouncing this word, people have +never had other than a confused idea, as when it is said in +Genesis--"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and +breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living +soul; and the soul of animals is in the blood; and kill not my soul, +etc." + +Thus the soul was generally taken for the origin and the cause of life, +for life itself. That is why all known nations long imagined that +everything died with the body. If one can disentangle anything in the +chaos of ancient histories, it seems that the Egyptians at least were +the first to distinguish between the intelligence and the soul: and the +Greeks learned from them to distinguish their +nous+, their +pneuma+, +their +skia+. The Latins, following their example, distinguish _animus_ +and _anima_; and we, finally, have also had our _soul_ and our +_understanding_. But is that which is the principle of our life +different from that which is the principle of our thoughts? is it the +same being? Does that which directs us and gives us sensation and +memory resemble that which is in animals the cause of digestion and the +cause of their sensations and of their memory? + +There is the eternal object of the disputes of mankind; I say eternal +object; for not having any first notion from which we can descend in +this examination, we can only rest for ever in a labyrinth of doubt and +feeble conjecture. + +We have not the smallest step where we may place a foot in order to +reach the most superficial knowledge of what makes us live and of what +makes us think. How should we have? we should have had to see life and +thought enter a body. Does a father know how he has produced his son? +does a mother how she conceived him? Has anyone ever been able to divine +how he acts, how he wakes, how he sleeps? Does anyone know how his limbs +obey his will? has anyone discovered by what art ideas are marked out in +his brain and issue from it at his command? Frail automatons moved by +the invisible hand which directs us on this stage of the world, which of +us has been able to detect the wire which guides us? + +We dare question whether the soul is "spirit" or "matter"; if it is +created before us, if it issues from non-existence at our birth, if +after animating us for one day on earth, it lives after us into +eternity. These questions appear sublime; what are they? questions of +blind men saying to other blind men--"What is light?" + +When we want to learn something roughly about a piece of metal, we put +it in a crucible in the fire. But have we a crucible in which to put the +soul? "The soul is _spirit_," says one. But what is spirit? Assuredly no +one has any idea; it is a word that is so void of sense that one is +obliged to say what spirit is not, not being able to say what it is. +"The soul is matter," says another. But what is matter? We know merely +some of its appearances and some of its properties; and not one of these +properties, not one of these appearances, seems to have the slightest +connection with thought. + +"Thought is something distinct from matter," say you. But what proof of +it have you? Is it because matter is divisible and figurable, and +thought is not? But who has told you that the first principles of matter +are divisible and figurable? It is very probable that they are not; +entire sects of philosophers maintain that the elements of matter have +neither form nor extension. With a triumphant air you cry--"Thought is +neither wood, nor stone, nor sand, nor metal, therefore thought does not +belong to matter." Weak, reckless reasoners! gravitation is neither +wood, nor sand, nor metal, nor stone; movement, vegetation, life are not +these things either, and yet life, vegetation, movement, gravitation, +are given to matter. To say that God cannot make matter think is to say +the most insolently absurd thing that anyone has ever dared utter in the +privileged schools of lunacy. We are not certain that God has treated +matter like this; we are only certain that He can. But what matters all +that has been said and all that will be said about the soul? what does +it matter that it has been called entelechy, quintessence, flame, ether? +that it has been thought universal, uncreated, transmigrant, etc.? + +In these matters that are inaccessible to the reason, what do these +romances of our uncertain imaginations matter? What does it matter that +the Fathers of the first four centuries thought the soul corporeal? What +does it matter that Tertullian, by a contradiction frequent in him, has +decided that it is simultaneously corporeal, formed and simple? We have +a thousand witnesses to ignorance, and not one that gives a glimmer of +probability. + +How then are we so bold as to assert what the soul is? We know certainly +that we exist, that we feel, that we think. Do we want to take a step +beyond? we fall into a shadowy abyss; and in this abyss we are still so +madly reckless as to dispute whether this soul, of which we have not the +least idea, was made before us or with us, and whether it perishes or is +immortal. + +The article SOUL, and all the articles of the nature of metaphysics, +must start by a sincere submission to the incontrovertible dogmas of +the Church. Revelation is worth more, without doubt, than the whole of +philosophy. Systems exercise the mind, but faith illumines and guides +it. + +Do we not often pronounce words of which we have only a very confused +idea, or even of which we have none at all? Is not the word _soul_ an +instance? When the clapper or valve of a bellows is out of order, and +when air which is in the bellows leaves it by some unexpected opening in +this valve, so that it is no longer compressed against the two blades, +and is not thrust violently towards the hearth which it has to light, +French servants say--"The soul of the bellows has burst." They know no +more about it than that; and this question in no wise disturbs their +peace of mind. + +The gardener utters the phrase "the soul of the plants," and cultivates +them very well without knowing what he means by this term. + +The violin-maker poses, draws forward or back the "soul of a violin" +beneath the bridge in the belly of the instrument; a puny piece of wood +more or less gives the violin or takes away from it a harmonious soul. + +We have many industries in which the workmen give the qualification of +"soul" to their machines. Never does one hear them dispute about this +word. Such is not the case with philosophers. + +For us the word "soul" signifies generally that which animates. Our +ancestors the Celts gave to their soul the name of _seel_, from which +the English _soul_, and the German _seel_; and probably the ancient +Teutons and the ancient Britons had no quarrels in their universities +over this expression. + +The Greeks distinguished three sorts of souls--+psyche+, which signified +the sensitive soul, the soul of the senses; and that is why Love, child +of Aphrodite, had so much passion for Psyche, and why Psyche loved him +so tenderly: +pneuma+, the breath which gives life and movement to the +whole machine, and which we have translated by _spiritus_, spirit; +vague word to which have been given a thousand different meanings: and +finally +nous+, the intelligence. + +We possessed therefore three souls, without having the least notion of +any of them. St. Thomas Aquinas (Summation of St. Thomas. Lyons edition, +1738) admits these three souls as a peripatetic, and distinguishes each +of these three souls in three parts. +psyche+ was in the breast, ++pneuma+ was distributed throughout the body, and +nous+ was in the +head. There has been no other philosophy in our schools up to our day, +and woe betide any man who took one of these souls for the other. + +In this chaos of ideas there was, nevertheless, a foundation. Men had +noticed that in their passions of love, hate, anger, fear, their +internal organs were stimulated to movement. The liver and the heart +were the seat of the passions. If one thought deeply, one felt a strife +in the organs of the head; therefore the intellectual soul was in the +head. Without respiration no vegetation, no life; therefore the +vegetative soul was in the breast which receives the breath of air. + +When men saw in dreams their dead relatives or friends, they had to seek +what had appeared to them. It was not the body which had been consumed +on a funeral pyre, or swallowed up in the sea and eaten by the fishes. +It was, however, something, so they maintained; for they had seen it; +the dead man had spoken; the dreamer had questioned him. Was it ++psyche+, was it +pneuma+, was it +nous+, with whom one had conversed in +the dream? One imagined a phantom, an airy figure: it was +skia+, it was ++daimon+, a ghost from the shades, a little soul of air and fire, very +unrestricted, which wandered I know not where. + +Eventually, when one wanted to sift the matter, it became a constant +that this soul was corporeal; and the whole of antiquity never had any +other idea. At last came Plato who so subtilized this soul that it was +doubtful if he did not separate it entirely from matter; but that was a +problem that was never solved until faith came to enlighten us. + +In vain do the materialists quote some of the fathers of the Church who +did not express themselves with precision. St. Irenaeus says (liv. v. +chaps. vi and vii) that the soul is only the breath of life, that it is +incorporeal only by comparison with the mortal body, and that it +preserves the form of man so that it may be recognized. + +In vain does Tertullian express himself like this--"The corporeality of +the soul shines bright in the Gospel." (_Corporalitas animae in ipso +Evangelio relucescit_, DE ANIMA, cap. vii.) For if the soul did +not have a body, the image of the soul would not have the image of the +body. + +In vain does he record the vision of a holy woman who had seen a very +shining soul, of the colour of air. + +In vain does Tatien say expressly (_Oratio ad Graecos_, c. xxiii.)--"The +soul of man is composed of many parts." + +In vain is St. Hilarius quoted as saying in later times (St. Hilarius on +St. Matthew)--"There is nothing created which is not corporeal, either +in heaven, or on earth, or among the visible, or among the invisible: +everything is formed of elements; and souls, whether they inhabit a +body, or issue from it, have always a corporeal substance." + +In vain does St. Ambrose, in the sixth century, say (On Abraham, liv. +ii., ch. viii.)--"We recognize nothing but the material, except the +venerable Trinity alone." + +The body of the entire Church has decided that the soul is immaterial. +These saints fell into an error at that time universal; they were men; +but they were not mistaken over immortality, because that is clearly +announced in the Gospels. + +We have so evident a need of the decision of the infallible Church on +these points of philosophy, that we have not indeed by ourselves any +sufficient notion of what is called "pure spirit," and of what is named +"matter." Pure spirit is an expression which gives us no idea; and we +know matter only by a few phenomena. We know it so little that we call +it "substance"; well, the word substance means "that which is under"; +but what is under will be eternally hidden from us. What is _under_ is +the Creator's secret; and this secret of the Creator is everywhere. We +do not know either how we receive life, or how we give it, or how we +grow, or how we digest, or how we sleep, or how we think, or how we +feel. + +The great difficulty is to understand how a being, whoever he be, has +thoughts. + + +SECTION II + +The author of the article SOUL in the "Encyclopedia" (the Abbe Yvon) +followed Jaquelot scrupulously; but Jaquelot teaches us nothing. He sets +himself also against Locke, because the modest Locke said (liv. iv, ch. +iii, para. vi.)--"We possibly shall never be able to know whether any +mere material being thinks or no; it being impossible for us, by the +contemplation of our own ideas without revelation, to discover whether +Omnipotency has not given to some systems of matter, fitly disposed, a +power to perceive and think, or else joined and fixed to matter, so +disposed, a thinking immaterial substance: it being, in respect of our +notions, not much more remote from our comprehension to conceive that +God can, if he pleases, superadd to matter a faculty of thinking, than +that he should superadd to it another substance with a faculty of +thinking; since we know not wherein thinking consists, nor to what sort +of substances the Almighty has been pleased to give that power which +cannot be in any created being but merely by the good pleasure and +bounty of the Creator, for I see no contradiction in it, that the first +eternal thinking Being should, if he pleased, give to certain systems of +created senseless matter, put together as he thinks fit, some degrees of +sense, perception and thought." + +Those are the words of a profound, religious and modest man. + +We know what quarrels he had to undergo on account of this opinion which +appeared bold, but which was in fact in him only a consequence of his +conviction of the omnipotence of God and the weakness of man. He did not +say that matter thought; but he said that we have not enough knowledge +to demonstrate that it is impossible for God to add the gift of thought +to the unknown being called "matter", after according it the gift of +gravitation and the gift of movement, both of which are equally +incomprehensible. + +Locke was not assuredly the only one who had advanced this opinion; it +was the opinion of all antiquity, who, regarding the soul as very +unrestricted matter, affirmed consequently that matter could feel and +think. + +It was Gassendi's opinion, as may be seen in his objections to +Descartes. "It is true," says Gassendi, "that you know what you think; +but you are ignorant of what species of substance you are, you who +think. Thus although the operation of thought is known to you, the +principle of your essence is hidden from you; and you do not know what +is the nature of this substance, one of the operations of which is to +think. You are like a blind man who, feeling the heat of the sun and +being informed that it is caused by the heat of the sun, thinks he has a +clear and distinct idea of this luminary; because if he were asked what +the sun was, he could reply that it is a thing which heats, etc." + +The same Gassendi, in his "Epicurean Philosophy," repeats several times +that there is no mathematical evidence of the pure spirituality of the +soul. + +Descartes, in one of his letters to the Palatine Princess Elisabeth, +says to her--"I confess that by the natural reason alone we can make +many conjectures on the soul, and have gratifying hopes, but no +certainty." And in that sentence Descartes combats in his letters what +he puts forward in his works; a too ordinary contradiction. + +In fine we have seen that all the Fathers of the first centuries of the +Church, while believing the soul immortal, believed it at the same time +material; they thought that it is as easy for God to conserve as to +create. They said--"God made the soul thinking, He will preserve it +thinking." + +Malebranche has proved very well that we have no idea by ourselves, and +that objects are incapable of giving us ideas: from that he concludes +that we see everything in God. That is at the bottom the same thing as +making God the author of all our ideas; for with what should we see in +Him, if we had not instruments for seeing? and these instruments, it is +He alone who holds them and guides them. This system is a labyrinth, one +lane of which would lead you to Spinozism, another to Stoicism, another +to chaos. + +When one has had a good argument about spirit and matter, one always +finishes by not understanding each other. No philosopher has been able +with his own strength to lift this veil stretched by nature over all the +first principles of things. Men argue, nature acts. + + +SECTION III + +OF THE SOUL OF ANIMALS, AND OF SOME EMPTY IDEAS + +Before the strange system which supposes animals to be pure machines +without any sensation, men had never thought that the beasts possessed +an immaterial soul; and nobody had pushed recklessness to the point of +saying that an oyster has a spiritual soul. Everyone concurred peaceably +in agreeing that the beasts had received from God feeling, memory, +ideas, and no pure spirit. Nobody had abused the gift of reason to the +point of saying that nature had given the beasts all the organs of +feeling so that they might not feel anything. Nobody had said that they +cry when they are wounded, and that they fly when pursued, without +experiencing pain or fear. + +At that time people did not deny the omnipotence of God; He had been +able to communicate to the organized matter of animals pleasure, pain, +remembrance, the combination of a few ideas; He had been able to give to +several of them, such as the monkey, the elephant, the hunting-dog, the +talent of perfecting themselves in the arts which were taught to them; +not only had He been able to endow nearly all carnivorous animals with +the talent of warring better in their experienced old age than in their +too trustful youth; not only, I say, had He been able to do these +things, but He had done them: the universe bore witness thereto. + +Pereira and Descartes maintained that the universe was mistaken, that +God was a juggler, that He had given animals all the instruments of life +and sensation, so that they might have neither life nor sensation, +properly speaking. But I do not know what so-called philosophers, in +order to answer Descartes' chimera, leaped into the opposite chimera; +they gave liberally of pure spirit to the toads and the insects. + +Between these two madnesses, the one refusing feeling to the organs of +feeling, the other lodging a pure spirit in a bug, somebody thought of a +middle path. It was instinct. And what is instinct? Oh, oh, it is a +substantial form; it is a plastic form; it is I do not know what! it is +instinct. I shall be of your opinion so long as you will call the +majority of things, "I do not know what"; so long as your philosophy +begins and ends with "I do not know what", I shall quote Prior to you in +his poem on the vanity of the world. + +The author of the article SOUL in the "Encyclopedia" explains +himself like this:--"I picture the animals' soul as an immaterial and +intelligent substance, but of what species? It must, it seems to me, be +an active principle which has sensations, and which has only that.... If +we reflect on the nature of the soul of animals, it supplies us with +groundwork which might lead us to think that its spirituality will save +it from annihilation." + +I do not know how one pictures an immaterial substance. To picture +something is to make an image of it; and up till now nobody has been +able to paint the spirit. For the word "picture", I want the author to +understand "I conceive"; speaking for myself, I confess I do not +conceive it. I confess still less that a spiritual soul may be +annihilated, because I do not conceive either creation or non-existence; +because I have never been present at God's council; because I know +nothing at all about the principle of things. + +If I wish to prove that the soul is a real being, someone stops me by +telling me that it is a faculty. If I assert that it is a faculty, and +that I have the faculty of thinking, I am told that I am mistaken; that +God, the eternal master of all nature, does everything in me, and +directs all my actions and all my thoughts; that if I produced my +thoughts, I should know the thought I will have in a minute; that I +never know it; that I am only an automaton with sensations and ideas, +necessarily dependent, and in the hands of the Supreme Being, infinitely +more compliant to Him than clay is to the potter. + +I confess my ignorance, therefore; I avow that four thousand tomes of +metaphysics will not teach us what our soul is. + +An orthodox philosopher said to a heterodox philosopher--"How have you +been able to come to the point of imagining that the soul is mortal by +nature, and eternal only by the pure wish of God?" + +"By my own experience," said the other. + +"How! are you dead?" + +"Yes, very often. I suffered from epilepsy in my youth, and I assure you +that I was completely dead for several hours. No sensation, no +remembrance even of the moment that I fell ill. The same thing happens +to me now nearly every night. I never feel the precise moment that I go +to sleep; my sleep is absolutely dreamless. I cannot imagine by +conjecture how long I have slept. I am dead regularly six hours out of +the twenty-four. That is a quarter of my life." + +The orthodox then asserted that he always thought during his sleep +without knowing anything about it. The heterodox answered him--"I +believe through revelation that I shall always think in the other life; +but I assure you I think rarely in this one." + +The orthodox was not mistaken in asserting the immortality of the soul, +for faith and reason demonstrate this truth; but he might be mistaken in +asserting that a sleeping man always thinks. + +Locke admitted frankly that he did not always think while he was asleep: +another philosopher has said--"Thought is characteristic of man; but it +is not his essence." + +Let us leave to each man the liberty and consolation of seeking himself, +and of losing himself in his ideas. + +It is good, however, to know, that in 1730 a philosopher[21] suffered a +severe enough persecution for having confessed, with Locke, that his +understanding was not exercised at every moment of the day and night, +just as he did not use his arms and his legs at all moments. Not only +did court ignorance persecute him, but the malignant influence of a few +so-called men of letters was let loose against him. What in England had +produced merely a few philosophical disputes, produced in France the +most cowardly atrocities; a Frenchman suffered by Locke. + +There have always been in the mud of our literature more than one of +these miscreants who have sold their pens, and intrigued against their +benefactors even. This remark is rather foreign to the article +SOUL; but should one miss an opportunity of dismaying those who +make themselves unworthy of the name of men of letters, who prostitute +the little mind and conscience they have to a vile self-interest, to a +fantastic policy, who betray their friends to flatter fools, who in +secret powder the hemlock which the powerful and malicious ignoramus +wants to make useful citizens drink? + +In short, while we worship God with all our soul, let us confess always +our profound ignorance of this soul, of this faculty of feeling and +thinking which we possess from His infinite goodness. Let us avow that +our feeble reasonings can take nothing away from, or add anything to +revelation and faith. Let us conclude in fine that we should use this +intelligence, the nature of which is unknown, for perfecting the +sciences which are the object of the "Encyclopedia"; just as watchmakers +use springs in their watches, without knowing what a spring is. + + +SECTION IV + +ABOUT THE SOUL, AND ABOUT OUR LITTLE KNOWLEDGE + +On the testimony of our acquired knowledge, we have dared question +whether the soul is created before us, whether it comes from +non-existence into our body? at what age it came to settle between a +bladder and the intestines _caecum_ and _rectum_? if it brought ideas +with it or received them there, and what are these ideas? if after +animating us for a few moments, its essence is to live after us into +eternity without the intervention of God Himself? if being spirit, and +God being spirit, they are both of like nature? These questions seem +sublime; what are they? questions about light by men born blind. + +What have all the philosophers, ancient and modern, taught us? a child +is wiser than they are; he does not think about things of which he can +form no conception. + +You will say that it is sad for our insatiable curiosity, for our +inexhaustible thirst for happiness, to be thus ignorant of ourselves! I +agree, and there are still sadder things; but I shall answer you: + + _Sors tua mortalis, non est mortale quod optas._ + + --Ovid, Met. II. 56 + + "You have a man's fate, and a god's desires." + +Once again, it seems that the nature of every principle of things is the +Creator's secret. How does the air carry sound? how are animals formed? +how do some of our limbs constantly obey our wills? what hand puts ideas +in our memory, keeps them there as in a register, and pulls them out +sometimes when we want them and sometimes in spite of ourselves? Our +nature, the nature of the universe, the nature of the least plant, +everything for us is sunk in a shadowy pit. + +Man is an acting, feeling, thinking being: that is all we know of him: +it is not given to us to know what makes us feel and think, or what +makes us act, or what makes us exist. The acting faculty is as +incomprehensible for us as the thinking faculty. The difficulty is less +to conceive how a body of mud has feelings and ideas, than to conceive +how a being, whatever it be, has ideas and feelings. + +Here on one side the soul of Archimedes, on the other the soul of an +idiot; are they of the same nature? If their essence is to think, they +think always, and independently of the body which cannot act without +them. If they think by their own nature, can the species of a soul which +cannot do a sum in arithmetic be the same as that which measured the +heavens? If it is the organs of the body which made Archimedes think, +why is it that my idiot, who has a stronger constitution than +Archimedes, who is more vigorous, digests better and performs all his +functions better, does not think at all? It is, you say, because his +brain is not so good. But you are making a supposition; you do not know +at all. No difference has ever been found between healthy brains that +have been dissected. It is even very probable that a fool's cerebellum +will be in better condition than Archimedes', which has worked +prodigiously, and which might be worn out and shrivelled. + +Let us conclude therefore what we have already concluded, that we are +ignoramuses about all first principles. As regards ignoramuses who pride +themselves on their knowledge, they are far inferior to monkeys. + +Now dispute, choleric arguers: present your petitions against each +other; proffer your insults, pronounce your sentences, you who do not +know one word about the matter. + + +SECTION V + +OF WARBURTON'S PARADOX ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL + +Warburton, editor and commentator of Shakespeare and Bishop of +Gloucester, making use of English freedom, and abuse of the custom of +hurling insults at one's adversaries, has composed four volumes to prove +that the immortality of the soul was never announced in the Pentateuch, +and to conclude from this same proof that Moses' mission is divine. Here +is the precis of his book, which he himself gives, pages 7 and 8 of the +first volume. + +"1. The doctrine of a life to come, of rewards and punishments after +death, is necessary to all civil society. + +"2. The whole human race (_and this is where he is mistaken_), and +especially the wisest and most learned nations of antiquity, concurred +in believing and teaching this doctrine. + +"3. It cannot be found in any passage of the law of Moses; therefore the +law of Moses is of divine origin. Which I am going to prove by the two +following syllogisms: + + +_First Syllogism_ + +"Every religion, every society that has not the immortality of the soul +for its basis, can be maintained only by an extraordinary providence; +the Jewish religion had not the immortality of the soul for basis; +therefore the Jewish religion was maintained by an extraordinary +providence. + + +_Second Syllogism_ + +"All the ancient legislators have said that a religion which did not +teach the immortality of the soul could not be maintained but by an +extraordinary providence; Moses founded a religion which is not founded +on the immortality of the soul; therefore Moses believed his religion +maintained by an extraordinary providence." + +What is much more extraordinary is this assertion of Warburton's, which +he has put in big letters at the beginning of his book. He has often +been reproached with the extreme rashness and bad faith with which he +dares to say that all the ancient legislators believed that a religion +which is not founded on pains and recompenses after death, can be +maintained only by an extraordinary providence; not one of them ever +said it. He does not undertake even to give any example in his huge book +stuffed with a vast number of quotations, all of which are foreign to +his subject. He has buried himself beneath a pile of Greek and Latin +authors, ancient and modern, for fear one might see through him on the +other side of a horrible multitude of envelopes. When criticism finally +probed to the bottom, he was resurrected from among all these dead men +in order to load all his adversaries with insults. + +It is true that towards the end of his fourth volume, after having +walked through a hundred labyrinths, and having fought with everybody he +met on the road, he comes at last to his great question which he had +left there. He lays all the blame on the Book of Job which passes among +scholars for an Arab work, and he tries to prove that Job did not +believe in the immortality of the soul. Later he explains in his own way +all the texts of Holy Writ by which people have tried to combat this +opinion. + +All one can say about it is that, if he was right, it was not for a +bishop to be right in such a way. He should have felt that one might +draw dangerous inferences; but everything in this world is a mass of +contradiction. This man, who became accuser and persecutor, was not made +bishop by a minister of state's patronage until immediately after he had +written his book. + +At Salamanca, Coimbre or Rome, he would have been obliged to recant and +to ask pardon. In England he became a peer of the realm with an income +of a hundred thousand _livres_; it was enough to modify his methods. + + +SECTION VI + +OF THE NEED OF REVELATION + +The greatest benefit we owe to the New Testament is that it has revealed +to us the immortality of the soul. It is in vain, therefore, that this +fellow Warburton tried to cloud over this important truth, by +continually representing in his legation of Moses that "the ancient Jews +knew nothing of this necessary dogma, and that the Sadducees did not +admit it in the time of our Lord Jesus." + +He interprets in his own way the very words that have been put into +Jesus Christ's mouth: "... have ye not read that which was spoken unto +you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and +the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living" +(St. Matt. xxii. 31, 32). He gives to the parable of the wicked rich man +a sense contrary to that of all the Churches. Sherlock, Bishop of +London, and twenty other scholars refuted him. English philosophers even +reproached him with the scandal of an Anglican bishop manifesting an +opinion so contrary to the Anglican Church; and after that, this man +takes it into his head to treat these persons as impious: like the +character of _Arlequin_ in the comedy of the _Devaliseur de maisons_, +who, after throwing the furniture out of the window, sees a man carrying +some of it off, and cries with all his might "Stop thief!" + +One should bless the revelation of the immortality of the soul, and of +rewards and punishments after death, all the more that mankind's vain +philosophy has always been sceptical of it. The great Caesar did not +believe in it at all, he made himself quite clear in full senate when, +in order to stop Catalina being put to death, he represented that death +left man without sensation, that everything died with him; and nobody +refuted this view. + +The Roman Empire was divided between two principal sects: that of +Epicurus which asserted that deity was useless to the world, and that +the soul perished with the body: and that of the Stoics who regarded the +soul as part of the Deity, which after death was joined again to its +origin, to the great everything from which it emanated. Thus, whether +one believed the soul mortal, or whether one believed it immortal, all +the sects were agreed in laughing at pains and punishments after death. + +We still have a hundred monuments of this belief of the Romans. It is by +virtue of this opinion graved profoundly in their hearts, that so many +simple Roman citizens killed themselves without the least scruple; they +did not wait for a tyrant to hand them over to the executioners. + +The most virtuous men even, and those most persuaded of the existence of +a God, hoped for no reward, and feared no punishment. Clement, who later +was Pope and saint, began by himself doubting what the early Christians +said of another life, and consulted St. Peter at Caesarea. We are far +from believing that St. Clement wrote the history that is attributed to +him; but this history makes evident the need the human race had of a +precise revelation. All that can surprise us is that so repressive and +salutary a doctrine has left a prey to so many horrible crimes men who +have so little time to live, and who see themselves squeezed between two +eternities. + + +SECTION VII + +SOULS OF FOOLS AND MONSTERS + +A deformed child is born absolutely imbecile, it has no ideas and lives +without ideas; we have seen examples of this. How shall this animal be +defined? doctors have said that it is something between man and beast; +others have said that it had a sensitive soul, but not an intellectual +soul. It eats, drinks, sleeps, wakes, has sensations; but it does not +think. + +Is there another life for this creature, or is there none? The question +has been posed, and has not yet been completely answered. + +Some say that this creature must have a soul, because its father and +mother had one. But by this reasoning one would prove that if it came +into the world without a nose it would be deemed to have one, because +its father and its mother had noses. + +A woman gives birth to child with no chin, its forehead is receding and +rather black, its nose is slim and pointed, its eyes are round, it bears +not a bad resemblance to a swallow; the rest of its body, nevertheless, +is made like ours. The parents have it baptised; by a plurality of votes +it is considered a man and possessor of an immortal soul. But if this +ridiculous little figure has pointed nails and beak-like mouth, it is +declared a monster, it has no soul, and is not baptised. + +It is well known that in London in 1726 there was a woman who gave birth +every week to a rabbit. No difficulty was made about refusing baptism to +this child, despite the epidemic mania there was for three weeks in +London for believing that this poor rogue was making wild rabbits. The +surgeon who attended her, St. Andre by name, swore that nothing was +more true, and people believed him. But what reason did the credulous +have for refusing a soul to this woman's children? she had a soul, her +children should be provided with souls also; whether they had hands, +whether they had paws, whether they were born with a little snout or +with a face; cannot the Supreme Being bestow the gift of thought and +sensation on a little I know not what, born of a woman, shaped like a +rabbit, as well as to a little I know not what, shaped like a man? Shall +the soul that was ready to lodge in this woman's foetus go back again +into space? + +Locke makes the sound observation, about monsters, that one must not +attribute immortality to the exterior of a body; that the form has +nothing to do with it. This immortality, he says, is no more attached to +the form of his face or his chest, than to the way his beard is dressed +or his coat cut. + +He asks what is the exact measure of deformity by which you can +recognize whether or no a child has a soul? What is the precise degree +at which it must be declared a monster and deprived of a soul? + +One asks still further what would be a soul which never has any but +fantastic ideas? there are some which never escape from them. Are they +worthy or unworthy? what is to be done with their pure spirit? + +What is one to think of a child with two heads? without deformity apart +from this? Some say that it has two souls because it is provided with +two pineal glands, with two _corpus callosum_, with two _sensorium +commune_. Others reply that one cannot have two souls when one has only +one chest and one navel.[22] + +In fine, so many questions have been asked about this poor human soul, +that if it were necessary to answer them all, this examination of its +own person would cause it the most intolerable boredom. There would +happen to it what happened to Cardinal de Polignac at a conclave. His +steward, tired of never being able to make him settle his accounts, made +the journey from Rome, and came to the little window of his cell +burdened with an immense bundle of papers. He read for nearly two hours. +At last, seeing that no reply was forthcoming, he put his head forward. +The cardinal had departed nearly two hours before. Our souls will depart +before their stewards have acquainted them with the facts: but let us be +exact before God, whatever sort of ignoramuses we are, we and our +stewards. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[21] Voltaire himself. + +[22] The Chevalier d'Angos, learned astronomer, has carefully observed a +two-headed lizard for several days; and he has assured himself that the +lizard had two independent wills, each of which had an almost equal +power over the body. When the lizard was given a piece of bread, in such +a way that it could see it with only one head, this head wanted to go +after the bread, and the other wanted the body to remain at rest. + + + + +_STATES_, _GOVERNMENTS_ + + +The ins and outs of all governments have been closely examined recently. +Tell me then, you who have travelled, in what state, under what sort of +government you would choose to be born. I imagine that a great +land-owning lord in France would not be vexed to be born in Germany; he +would be sovereign instead of subject. A peer of France would be very +glad to have the privileges of the English peerage; he would be +legislator. The lawyer and the financier would be better off in France +than elsewhere. + +But what country would a wise, free man, a man with a moderate fortune, +and without prejudices, choose? + +A member of the government of Pondicherry, a learned man enough, +returned to Europe by land with a Brahmin better educated than the +ordinary Brahmin. "What do you think of the government of the Great +Mogul?" asked the councillor. + +"I think it abominable," answered the Brahmin. "How can you expect a +state to be happily governed by the Tartars? Our rajahs, our omrahs, our +nabobs, are very content, but the citizens are hardly so; and millions +of citizens are something." + +Reasoning, the councillor and the Brahmin traversed the whole of Upper +Asia. "I make the observation," said the Brahmin, "that there is not one +republic in all this vast part of the world." + +"Formerly there was the republic of Tyre," said the councillor, "but it +did not last long; there was still another one in the direction of +Arabia Petrea, in a little corner called Palestine, if one can honour +with the name of republic a horde of thieves and usurers sometimes +governed by judges, sometimes by a species of kings, sometimes by +grand-pontiffs, become slave seven or eight times, and finally driven +out of the country which it had usurped." + +"I imagine," said the Brahmin, "that one ought to find very few +republics on the earth. Men are rarely worthy of governing themselves. +This happiness should belong only to little peoples who hide themselves +in islands, or among the mountains, like rabbits who shun carnivorous +beasts; but in the long run they are discovered and devoured." + +When the two travellers reached Asia Minor, the councillor said to the +Brahmin: "Would you believe that a republic was formed in a corner of +Italy, which lasted more than five hundred years, and which owned Asia +Minor, Asia, Africa, Greece, Gaul, Spain and the whole of Italy?" + +"She soon became a monarchy, then," said the Brahmin. + +"You have guessed right," said the other. "But this monarchy fell, and +every day we compose beautiful dissertations in order to find the cause +of its decadence and downfall." + +"You take a deal of trouble," said the Indian. "This empire fell because +it existed. Everything has to fall. I hope as much will happen to the +Grand Mogul's empire." + +"By the way," said the European, "do you consider that there should be +more honour in a despotic state, and more virtue in a republic?" + +The Indian, having had explained to him what we mean by honour, answered +that honour was more necessary in a republic, and that one had more need +of virtue in a monarchical state. "For," said he, "a man who claims to +be elected by the people, will not be if he is dishonoured; whereas at +the court he could easily obtain a place, in accordance with a great +prince's maxim, that in order to succeed a courtier should have neither +honour nor character. As regards virtue, one must be prodigiously +virtuous to dare to say the truth. The virtuous man is much more at his +ease in a republic; he has no one to flatter." + +"Do you think," said the man from Europe, "that laws and religions are +made for climates, just as one has to have furs in Moscow, and gauzy +stuffs in Delhi?" + +"Without a doubt," answered the Brahmin. "All the laws which concern +material things are calculated for the meridian one lives in. A German +needs only one wife, and a Persian three or four. + +"The rites of religion are of the same nature. How, if I were Christian, +should I say mass in my province where there is neither bread nor wine? +As regards dogmas, that is another matter; the climate has nothing to do +with them. Did not your religion begin in Asia, whence it was driven +out? does it not exist near the Baltic Sea, where it was unknown?" + +"In what state, under what domination, would you like best to live?" +asked the councillor. + +"Anywhere but where I do live," answered his companion. "And I have met +many Siamese, Tonkinese, Persians and Turks who said as much." + +"But, once again," persisted the European, "what state would you +choose?" + +The Brahmin answered: "The state where only the laws are obeyed." + +"That is an old answer," said the councillor. + +"It is none the worse for that," said the Brahmin. + +"Where is that country?" asked the councillor. + +"We must look for it," answered the Brahmin. + + + + +_SUPERSTITION_ + + +The superstitious man is to the rogue what the slave is to the tyrant. +Further, the superstitious man is governed by the fanatic and becomes +fanatic. Superstition born in Paganism, adopted by Judaism, infested the +Christian Church from the earliest times. All the fathers of the Church, +without exception, believed in the power of magic. The Church always +condemned magic, but she always believed in it: she did not +excommunicate sorcerers as madmen who were mistaken, but as men who were +really in communication with the devil. + +To-day one half of Europe thinks that the other half has long been and +still is superstitious. The Protestants regard the relics, the +indulgences, the mortifications, the prayers for the dead, the holy +water, and almost all the rites of the Roman Church, as a superstitious +dementia. Superstition, according to them, consists in taking useless +practices for necessary practices. Among the Roman Catholics there are +some more enlightened than their ancestors, who have renounced many of +these usages formerly considered sacred; and they defend themselves +against the others who have retained them, by saying: "They are +indifferent, and what is merely indifferent cannot be an evil." + +It is difficult to mark the limits of superstition. A Frenchman +travelling in Italy finds almost everything superstitious, and is hardly +mistaken. The Archbishop of Canterbury maintains that the Archbishop of +Paris is superstitious; the Presbyterians make the same reproach against +His Grace of Canterbury, and are in their turn treated as superstitious +by the Quakers, who are the most superstitious of all in the eyes of +other Christians. + +In Christian societies, therefore, no one agrees as to what superstition +is. The sect which seems to be the least attacked by this malady of the +intelligence is that which has the fewest rites. But if with few +ceremonies it is still strongly attached to an absurd belief, this +absurd belief is equivalent alone to all the superstitious practices +observed from the time of Simon the magician to that of Father +Gauffridi. + +It is therefore clear that it is the fundamentals of the religion of one +sect which is considered as superstition by another sect. + +The Moslems accuse all Christian societies of it, and are themselves +accused. Who will judge this great matter? Will it be reason? But each +sect claims to have reason on its side. It will therefore be force which +will judge, while awaiting the time when reason will penetrate a +sufficient number of heads to disarm force. + +Up to what point does statecraft permit superstition to be destroyed? +This is a very thorny question; it is like asking up to what point one +should make an incision in a dropsical person, who may die under the +operation. It is a matter for the doctor's discretion. + +Can there exist a people free from all superstitious prejudices? That is +to ask--Can there exist a nation of philosophers? It is said that there +is no superstition in the magistrature of China. It is probable that +none will remain in the magistrature of a few towns of Europe. + +Then the magistrates will stop the superstition of the people from being +dangerous. These magistrates' example will not enlighten the mob, but +the principal persons of the middle-classes will hold the mob in check. +There is not perhaps a single riot, a single religious outrage in which +the middle-classes were not formerly imbrued, because these middle +classes were then the mob; but reason and time will have changed them. +Their softened manners will soften those of the lowest and most savage +populace; it is a thing of which we have striking examples in more than +one country. In a word, less superstition, less fanaticism; and less +fanaticism, less misery. + + + + +_TEARS_ + + +Tears are the mute language of sorrow. But why? What connection is there +between a sad idea and this limpid, salt liquid, filtered through a +little gland at the external corner of the eye, which moistens the +conjunctiva and the small lachrymal points, whence it descends into the +nose and mouth through the reservoir called the lachrymal sack and its +ducts? + +Why in women and children, whose organs are part of a frail and delicate +network, are tears more easily excited by sorrow than in grown men, +whose tissue is firmer? + +Did nature wish compassion to be born in us at sight of these tears +which soften us, and lead us to help those who shed them? The woman of a +savage race is as firmly determined to help the child that cries as +would be a woman of the court, and maybe more, because she has fewer +distractions and passions. + +In the animal body everything has an object without a doubt. The eyes +especially bear such evident, such proven, such admirable relation to +the rays of light; this mechanism is so divine, that I should be tempted +to take for a delirium of burning fever the audacity which denies the +final causes of the structure of our eyes. + +The use of tears does not seem to have so well determined and striking +an object; but it would be beautiful that nature made them flow in order +to stir us to pity. + +There are women who are accused of weeping when they wish. I am not at +all surprised at their talent. A live, sensitive, tender imagination can +fix itself on some object, on some sorrowful memory, and picture it in +such dominating colours that they wring tears from it. It is what +happens to many actors, and principally to actresses, on the stage. + +The women who imitate them in their own homes add to this talent the +petty fraud of appearing to weep for their husbands, whereas in fact +they are weeping for their lovers. Their tears are true, but the object +of them is false. + +One asks why the same man who has watched the most atrocious events +dry-eyed, who even has committed cold-blooded crimes, will weep at the +theatre at the representation of these events and crimes? It is that he +does not see them with the same eyes, he sees them with the eyes of the +author and the actor. He is no longer the same man; he was a barbarian, +he was agitated by furious passions when he saw an innocent woman +killed, when he stained himself with his friend's blood. His soul was +filled with stormy tumult; it is tranquil, it is empty; nature returns +to it; he sheds virtuous tears. That is the true merit, the great good +of the theatres; there is achieved what can never be achieved by the +frigid declamations of an orator paid to bore the whole of an audience +for an hour. + +David the capitoul, who, without emotion, caused and saw the death of +innocent Calas on the wheel, would have shed tears at the sight of his +own crime in a well-written and well-spoken tragedy. + +It is thus that Pope has said in the prologue to Addison's Cato:-- + + "Tyrants no more their savage nature kept; + And foes to virtue wondered how they wept." + + + + +_THEIST_ + + +The theist is a man firmly persuaded of the existence of a Supreme Being +as good as He is powerful, who has formed all beings with extension, +vegetating, sentient and reflecting; who perpetuates their species, who +punishes crimes without cruelty, and rewards virtuous actions with +kindness. + +The theist does not know how God punishes, how he protects, how he +pardons, for he is not reckless enough to flatter himself that he knows +how God acts, but he knows that God acts and that He is just. +Difficulties against Providence do not shake him in his faith, because +they are merely great difficulties, and not proofs. He submits to this +Providence, although he perceives but a few effects and a few signs of +this Providence: and, judging of the things he does not see by the +things he sees, he considers that this Providence reaches all places and +all centuries. + +Reconciled in this principle with the rest of the universe, he does not +embrace any of the sects, all of which contradict each other; his +religion is the most ancient and the most widespread; for the simple +worship of a God has preceded all the systems of the world. He speaks a +language that all peoples understand, while they do not understand one +another. He has brothers from Pekin to Cayenne, and he counts all wise +men as his brethren. He believes that religion does not consist either +in the opinions of an unintelligible metaphysic, or in vain display, but +in worship and justice. The doing of good, there is his service; being +submissive to God, there is his doctrine. The Mahometan cries to +him--"Have a care if you do not make the pilgrimage to Mecca!" "Woe unto +you," says a Recollet, "if you do not make a journey to Notre-Dame de +Lorette!" He laughs at Lorette and at Mecca; but he succours the needy +and defends the oppressed. + + + + +_TOLERANCE_ + + +What is tolerance? it is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed +of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's +folly--that is the first law of nature. + +It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, +because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster. That admits of no +difficulty. But the government! but the magistrates! but the princes! +how do they treat those who have another worship than theirs? If they +are powerful strangers, it is certain that a prince will make an +alliance with them. Francois I., very Christian, will unite with +Mussulmans against Charles V., very Catholic. Francois I. will give +money to the Lutherans of Germany to support them in their revolt +against the emperor; but, in accordance with custom, he will start by +having Lutherans burned at home. For political reasons he pays them in +Saxony; for political reasons he burns them in Paris. But what will +happen? Persecutions make proselytes? Soon France will be full of new +Protestants. At first they will let themselves be hanged, later they in +their turn will hang. There will be civil wars, then will come the St. +Bartholomew; and this corner of the world will be worse than all that +the ancients and moderns have ever told of hell. + +Madmen, who have never been able to give worship to the God who made +you! Miscreants, whom the example of the Noachides, the learned Chinese, +the Parsees and all the sages, has never been able to lead! Monsters, +who need superstitions as crows' gizzards need carrion! you have been +told it already, and there is nothing else to tell you--if you have two +religions in your countries, they will cut each other's throat; if you +have thirty religions, they will dwell in peace. Look at the great Turk, +he governs Guebres, Banians, Greek Christians, Nestorians, Romans. The +first who tried to stir up tumult would be impaled; and everyone is +tranquil. + +Of all religions, the Christian is without doubt the one which should +inspire tolerance most, although up to now the Christians have been the +most intolerant of all men. The Christian Church was divided in its +cradle, and was divided even in the persecutions which under the first +emperors it sometimes endured. Often the martyr was regarded as an +apostate by his brethren, and the Carpocratian Christian expired beneath +the sword of the Roman executioners, excommunicated by the Ebionite +Christian, the which Ebionite was anathema to the Sabellian. + +This horrible discord, which has lasted for so many centuries, is a very +striking lesson that we should pardon each other's errors; discord is +the great ill of mankind; and tolerance is the only remedy for it. + +There is nobody who is not in agreement with this truth, whether he +meditates soberly in his study, or peaceably examines the truth with his +friends. Why then do the same men who admit in private indulgence, +kindness, justice, rise in public with so much fury against these +virtues? Why? it is that their own interest is their god, and that they +sacrifice everything to this monster that they worship. + +I possess a dignity and a power founded on ignorance and credulity; I +walk on the heads of the men who lie prostrate at my feet; if they +should rise and look me in the face, I am lost; I must bind them to the +ground, therefore, with iron chains. + +Thus have reasoned the men whom centuries of bigotry have made powerful. +They have other powerful men beneath them, and these have still others, +who all enrich themselves with the spoils of the poor, grow fat on their +blood, and laugh at their stupidity. They all detest tolerance, as +partisans grown rich at the public expense fear to render their +accounts, and as tyrants dread the word liberty. And then, to crown +everything, they hire fanatics to cry at the top of their voices: +"Respect my master's absurdities, tremble, pay, and keep your mouths +shut." + +It is thus that a great part of the world long was treated; but to-day +when so many sects make a balance of power, what course to take with +them? Every sect, as one knows, is a ground of error; there are no sects +of geometers, algebraists, arithmeticians, because all the propositions +of geometry, algebra and arithmetic are true. In every other science one +may be deceived. What Thomist or Scotist theologian would dare say +seriously that he is sure of his case? + +If it were permitted to reason consistently in religious matters, it is +clear that we all ought to become Jews, because Jesus Christ our Saviour +was born a Jew, lived a Jew, died a Jew, and that he said expressly that +he was accomplishing, that he was fulfilling the Jewish religion. But it +is clearer still that we ought to be tolerant of one another, because we +are all weak, inconsistent, liable to fickleness and error. Shall a reed +laid low in the mud by the wind say to a fellow reed fallen in the +opposite direction: "Crawl as I crawl, wretch, or I shall petition that +you be torn up by the roots and burned?" + + + + +_TRUTH_ + + +"Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, +Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause +came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. +Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice. + +"Pilate saith unto Him, What is truth? And when he had said this he went +out, etc." (St. John xviii. 37.) + +It is a sad thing for the human race that Pilate went out without +waiting for the answer; we should know what truth is. Pilate had very +little curiosity. The accused led before him, says he is king, that he +was to be king; and Pilate does not inquire how that can be. He is +supreme judge in Caesar's name, he has power of life and death; his duty +was to probe the sense of these words. He ought to say--"Tell me what +you understand by being king. How were you born to be king and to bear +witness to the truth? It is maintained that truth reaches but with +difficulty to the ear of kings. I am judge, I have always had great +trouble in finding it. While your enemies are howling against you +without, give me some information on the point; you will be doing me the +greatest service that has ever been done a judge; and I much prefer to +learn to recognize truth, than to accede to the Jews' clamorous demand +to have you hanged." + +We shall not dare, to be sure, seek what the author of all truth would +have been able to reply to Pilate. + +Would he have said: "Truth is an abstract word which most men use +indifferently in their books and judgments, for error and falsehood?" +This definition would have been marvellously appropriate to all makers +of systems. Similarly is the word "wisdom" taken often for folly, and +"wit" for nonsense. + +Humanly speaking, let us define truth, while waiting for a better +definition, as--"a statement of the facts as they are." + +I suppose that if one had given only six months to teaching Pilate the +truths of logic, he would assuredly have made this conclusive syllogism. +One must not take away the life of a man who has only preached good +morality: well, the man who has been impeached has, on the showing of +his enemies even, often preached excellent morality; therefore he should +not be punished with death. + +He might have drawn this further argument. + +My duty is to disperse the riotous assemblage of a seditious people who +demand a man's death, unreasonably and without legal form; well, that is +the position of the Jews in this instance; therefore I must drive them +away and break up their meeting. + +We suppose that Pilate knew arithmetic; hence we will not speak of those +forms of truth. + +As regards mathematical truths, I think it would have taken at least +three years before he could have learned higher geometry. The truths of +physics combined with those of geometry would have demanded more than +four years. We spend six, ordinarily, in studying theology; I ask twelve +for Pilate, seeing that he was pagan, and that six years would not have +been too much for eradicating all his old errors, and six years more for +making him fit to receive a doctor's hood. + +If Pilate had had a well-balanced mind, I should have asked only two +years to teach him metaphysical truth; and as metaphysical truth is +necessarily allied to moral truth, I flatter myself that in less than +nine years he would have become a real scholar and a perfectly honest +man. + +I should then have said to Pilate:--Historical truths are merely +probabilities. If you had fought at the battle of Philippi, that is for +you a truth which you know by intuition, by perception. But for us who +dwell near the Syrian desert, it is merely a very probable thing, which +we know by hearsay. How much hearsay is necessary to form a conviction +equal to that of a man who, having seen the thing, can flatter himself +that he has a sort of certainty? + +He who has heard the thing told by twelve thousand eyewitnesses, has +only twelve thousand probabilities, equal to one strong probability, +which is not equal to certainty. + +If you have the thing from only one of these witnesses, you know +nothing; you should be sceptical. If the witness is dead, you should be +still more sceptical, for you cannot enlighten yourself. If from several +witnesses who are dead, you are in the same plight. If from those to +whom the witnesses have spoken, your scepticism should increase still +more. + +From generation to generation scepticism increases, and probability +diminishes; and soon probability is reduced to zero. + + + + +_TYRANNY_ + + +One gives the name of tyrant to the sovereign who knows no laws but +those of his caprice, who takes his subjects' property, and who +afterwards enrols them to go to take the property of his neighbours. +There are none of these tyrants in Europe. + +One distinguishes between the tyranny of one man and that of many. The +tyranny of many would be that of a body which invaded the rights of +other bodies, and which exercised despotism in favour of the laws +corrupted by it. Nor are there any tyrants of this sort in Europe. + +Under which tyranny would you like to live? Under neither; but if I had +to choose, I should detest the tyranny of one man less than that of +many. A despot always has his good moments; an assembly of despots +never. If a tyrant does me an injustice, I can disarm him through his +mistress, his confessor or his page; but a company of grave tyrants is +inaccessible to all seductions. When it is not unjust, it is at the +least hard, and never does it bestow favours. + +If I have only one despot, I am quit of him by drawing myself up against +a wall when I see him pass, or by bowing low, or by striking the ground +with my forehead, according to the custom of the country; but if there +is a company of a hundred despots, I am exposed to repeating this +ceremony a hundred times a day, which in the long run is very annoying +if one's hocks are not supple. If I have a farm in the neighbourhood of +one of our lords, I am crushed; if I plead against a relation of the +relations of one of our lords, I am ruined. What is to be done? I fear +that in this world one is reduced to being either hammer or anvil; lucky +the man who escapes these alternatives! + + + + +_VIRTUE_ + + +SECTION I + +It is said of Marcus Brutus that, before killing himself, he uttered +these words: "O virtue! I thought you were something; but you are only +an empty phantom!" + +You were right, Brutus, if you considered virtue as being head of a +faction, and assassin of your benefactor; but if you had considered +virtue as consisting only of doing good to those dependent on you, you +would not have called it a phantom, and you would not have killed +yourself in despair. + +I am very virtuous says this excrement of theology, for I have the four +cardinal virtues, and the three divine. An honest man asks him--"What is +the cardinal virtue?" The other answers--"Strength, prudence, temperance +and justice." + + +THE HONEST MAN: + +If you are just, you have said everything; your strength, your prudence, +your temperance, are useful qualities. If you have them, so much the +better for you; but if you are just, so much the better for the others. +But it is not enough to be just, you must do good; that is what is +really cardinal. And your divine virtues, which are they? + +THE EXCREMENT: + +Faith, hope, charity. + +THE HONEST MAN: + +Is it a virtue to believe? either what you believe seems true to you, +and in this case there is no merit in believing; or it seems false to +you, and then it is impossible for you to believe. + +Hope cannot be a virtue any more than fear; one fears and one hopes, +according as one receives a promise or a threat. As for charity, is it +not what the Greeks and the Romans understood by humanity, love of one's +neighbour? this love is nothing if it be not active; doing good, +therefore, is the sole true virtue. + +THE EXCREMENT: + +One would be a fool! Really, I am to give myself a deal of torment in +order to serve mankind, and I shall get no return! all work deserves +payment. I do not mean to do the least honest action, unless I am +certain of paradise. + +THE HONEST MAN: + +Ah, master! that is to say that, if you did not hope for paradise, and +if you did not fear hell, you would never do any good action. Believe +me, master, there are two things worthy of being loved for themselves, +God and virtue. + +THE EXCREMENT: + +I see, sir, you are a disciple of Fenelon. + +THE HONEST MAN: + +Yes, master. + +THE EXCREMENT: + +I shall denounce you to the judge of the ecclesiastical court at Meaux. + +THE HONEST MAN: + +Go along, denounce! + + +SECTION II + +What is virtue? Beneficence towards the fellow-creature. Can I call +virtue things other than those which do me good? I am needy, you are +generous. I am in danger, you help me. I am deceived, you tell me the +truth. I am neglected, you console me. I am ignorant, you teach me. +Without difficulty I shall call you virtuous. But what will become of +the cardinal and divine virtues? Some of them will remain in the +schools. + +What does it matter to me that you are temperate? you observe a precept +of health; you will have better health, and I am happy to hear it. You +have faith and hope, and I am happy still; they will procure you eternal +life. Your divine virtues are celestial gifts; your cardinal virtues are +excellent qualities which serve to guide you: but they are not virtues +as regards your fellow-creature. The prudent man does good to himself, +the virtuous man does good to mankind. St. Paul was right to tell you +that charity prevails over faith and hope. + +But shall only those that are useful to one's fellow-creature be +admitted as virtues? How can I admit any others? We live in society; +really, therefore, the only things that are good for us are those that +are good for society. A recluse will be sober, pious; he will be clad in +hair-cloth; he will be a saint: but I shall not call him virtuous until +he has done some act of virtue by which other men have profited. So long +as he is alone, he is doing neither good nor evil; for us he is nothing. +If St. Bruno brought peace to families, if he succoured want, he was +virtuous; if he fasted, prayed in solitude, he was a saint. Virtue among +men is an interchange of kindness; he who has no part in this +interchange should not be counted. If this saint were in the world, he +would doubtless do good; but so long as he is not in the world, the +world will be right in refusing him the title of virtuous; he will be +good for himself and not for us. + +But, you say to me, if a recluse is a glutton, a drunkard, given to +secret debauches with himself, he is vicious; he is virtuous, therefore, +if he has the opposite qualities. That is what I cannot agree: he is a +very disagreeable fellow if he has the faults you mention; but he is not +vicious, wicked, punishable as regards society to whom these infamies do +no harm. It is to be presumed that were he to return to society he would +do harm there, that he would be very vicious; and it is even more +probable that he would be a wicked man, than it is sure that the other +temperate and chaste recluse would be a virtuous man, for in society +faults increase, and good qualities diminish. + +A much stronger objection is made; Nero, Pope Alexander VI., and other +monsters of this species, have bestowed kindnesses; I answer hardily +that on that day they were virtuous. + +A few theologians say that the divine emperor Antonine was not virtuous; +that he was a stubborn Stoic who, not content with commanding men, +wished further to be esteemed by them; that he attributed to himself the +good he did to the human race; that all his life he was just, laborious, +beneficent through vanity, and that he only deceived men through his +virtues. "My God!" I exclaim. "Give us often rogues like him!" + + + + +_WHY?_ + + +Why does one hardly ever do the tenth part of the good one might do? + +Why in half Europe do girls pray to God in Latin, which they do not +understand? + +Why in antiquity was there never a theological quarrel, and why were no +people ever distinguished by the name of a sect? The Egyptians were not +called Isiacs or Osiriacs; the peoples of Syria did not have the name of +Cybelians. The Cretans had a particular devotion to Jupiter, and were +never entitled Jupiterians. The ancient Latins were very attached to +Saturn; there was not a village in Latium called Saturnian: on the +contrary, the disciples of the God of truth taking their master's title, +and calling themselves "anointed" like Him, declared, as soon as they +could, an eternal war on all the peoples who were not anointed, and made +war among themselves for fourteen hundred years, taking the names of +Arians, Manicheans, Donatists, Hussites, Papists, Lutherans, Calvinists. +And lastly, the Jansenists and the Molinists have had no more poignant +mortification than that of not having been able to slaughter each other +in pitched battle. Whence does this come? + +Why is the great number of hard-working, innocent men who till the land +every day of the year that you may eat all its fruits, scorned, +vilified, oppressed, robbed; and why is it that the useless and often +very wicked man who lives only by their work, and who is rich only +through their poverty, is on the contrary respected, courted, +considered? + +Why is it that, the fruits of the earth being so necessary for the +conservation of men and animals, one yet sees so many years and so many +countries where there is entire lack of these fruits? + +Why is the half of Africa and America covered with poisons? + +Why is there no land where insects are not far in excess of men? + +Why does a little whitish, evil-smelling secretion form a being which +has hard bones, desires and thoughts? and why do these beings always +persecute each other? + +Why does so much evil exist, seeing that everything is formed by a God +whom all theists are agreed in naming "good?" + +Why, since we complain ceaselessly of our ills, do we spend all our time +in increasing them? + +Why, as we are so miserable, have we imagined that not to be is a great +ill, when it is clear that it was not an ill not to be before we were +born? + +Why and how does one have dreams during sleep, if one has no soul; and +how is it that these dreams are always so incoherent, so extravagant, if +one has a soul? + +Why do the stars move from west to east rather than from east to west? + +Why do we exist? why is there anything? + + + + +_DECLARATION OF THE ADMIRERS, QUESTIONERS AND DOUBTERS WHO HAVE AMUSED +THEMSELVES BY PROPOUNDING TO THE SCHOLARS THE ABOVE QUESTIONS IN NINE +VOLUMES._[23] + + +We declare to the scholars that, being like them prodigiously ignorant +about the first principles of all things, and about the natural, +typical, mystic, allegorical sense of many things, we refer these things +to the infallible judgment of the Holy Inquisition of Rome, Florence, +Madrid, Lisbon, and to the decrees of the Sorbonne of Paris, perpetual +council of the Gauls. + +Our errors springing in no wise from malice, but being the natural +consequence of human frailty, we hope that they will be pardoned to us +in this world and the other. + +We beseech the small number of heavenly spirits who are still shut up in +France in mortal bodies, and who, from there, enlighten the universe at +_thirty sous_ the sheet, to communicate their luminousness to us for the +tenth volume which we reckon on publishing at the end of Lent 1772, or +in Advent 1773; and for their luminousness we will pay _forty sous_. + +This tenth volume will contain some very curious articles, which, if God +favours us, will give new point to the salt which we shall endeavour to +bestow in the thanks we shall give to these gentlemen. + +Executed on Mount Krapack, the thirtieth day of the month of Janus, the +year of the world + +according to Scaliger 5722 +according to Riccioli 5956 +according to Eusebius 6972 +according to the Alphonsine Tables 8707 +according to the Egyptians 370000 +according to the Chaldeans 465102 +according to the Brahmins 780000 +according to the philosophers infinity + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[23] The Philosophical Dictionary was first published as "Questions on +the Encyclopedia," then reprinted as "Reason by Alphabet," and then +finally, with many additions, became the "Philosophical Dictionary." + + + + +TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES: + +This text had three occurrences of "Francois I" followed by a +superscripted "er". These have be rendered as Francois Ier in this text. + +The following words used an "oe" ligature in the original: + + foetus + manoeuvre + oesophagus + Phoenicia + Phoenicians + subpoenaed + +Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been left as in the original. + +There is one occurrence of "Vistnou" and one of "Vitsnou". One of these +is clearly an error, but each has been left as in the original. + +The symbol representing infinity has been replaced with the word +"infinity" on page 316, the last line of the text. + +The following corrections have been made to the original text: + + page 17: Nestor, in the "Iliad," wishing to insinuate himself + as a wise conciliator into the minds of Achilles and + Agamemnon{original had "Agamamemnon"}, + + page 40: Atheism is the vice of a few intelligent persons, and + superstition{original had "superstitution"} is the vice of + fools. + + page 42: if it is a greater crime not to believe in the + Deity{original had "Diety"} than to have unworthy opinions + thereof: + + page 54: They will say as much of the great moral maxims, of + Zarathustra's--"In doubt if an{original had "in"} action be + just, abstain..."; + + page 58: What time and what trouble for copying correctly in + Greek and Latin the works of Origen{original had "Origin"}, of + Clement of Alexandria, and of all those other authors called + "fathers." + + page 101: we shall be convinced that we must not be vain about + anything, and yet we shall always{original had "aways"} have + vanity. + + page 128: All that certain tyrants{original had "tryants"} of + the souls desire is that the men they teach shall have false + judgment. + + page 166: and to surround him with little chubby, flushed faces + accompanied{original had "accompained"} by two wings; I laugh + and I pardon them with all my heart. + + page 171: And an unfortunate{original had "unforunate"} idiot, + who had had enough courage to render very great services to the + king + + page 220: Try to retake from the Mohammedans all that they + usurped; but it is easier to calumniate{original had + "calcumniate"} them. + + pafe 224: It was allowed among the Egyptians{original had + "Egyptains"}, the Athenians and even among the Jews, to marry + one's sister on the father's side. + + page 251: Your parents have told you that you should bow before + this man; you respect him before knowing whether he merits your + respect;{original had colon} you grow in years and in + knowledge; + + page 280: (Corporalitas animae in ipso Evangelio relucescit, De + Anima,{original had period} cap. vii.) + + page 295: "She soon became a monarchy, then,{original had + period}" said the Brahmin. + + page 315: we refer these things to the infallible{original had + "infallable"} judgment of the Holy Inquisition of Rome, + Florence, Madrid, Lisbon, + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, by Voltaire + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VOLTAIRE'S PHILOSOPHICAL *** + +***** This file should be named 18569.txt or 18569.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/5/6/18569/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Lisa Reigel and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +*** END: FULL LICENSE *** + diff --git a/18569.zip b/18569.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..6044d02 --- /dev/null +++ b/18569.zip diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e9e35c2 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #18569 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18569) |