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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 35625 ***
+
+A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY
+
+VOLUME V
+
+By
+
+VOLTAIRE
+
+
+
+
+EDITION DE LA PACIFICATION
+
+THE WORKS OF VOLTAIRE
+
+A CONTEMPORARY VERSION
+
+
+  With Notes by Tobias Smollett, Revised and Modernized
+     New Translations by William F. Fleming, and an
+           Introduction by Oliver H.G. Leigh
+
+A CRITIQUE AND BIOGRAPHY
+
+BY
+
+THE RT. HON. JOHN MORLEY
+
+FORTY-THREE VOLUMES
+
+
+  One hundred and sixty-eight designs, comprising reproductions
+      of rare old engravings, steel plates, photogravures,
+                    and curious fac-similes
+
+VOLUME IX
+
+E.R. DuMONT
+
+PARIS--LONDON--NEW YORK--CHICAGO
+
+1901
+
+
+
+
+_The WORKS of VOLTAIRE_
+
+     _"Between two servants of Humanity, who appeared eighteen hundred
+     years apart, there is a mysterious relation. * * * * Let us say it
+     with a sentiment of profound respect: JESUS WEPT: VOLTAIRE SMILED.
+     Of that divine tear and of that human smile is composed the
+     sweetness of the present civilization."_
+
+                                                    _VICTOR HUGO._
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF PLATES--VOL. V
+
+  SANS SOUCI _Frontispiece_
+  A LAND STORM
+  THE TEMPTATION OF ADAM
+  DESCARTES
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: SANS SOUCI]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY.
+
+IN TEN VOLUMES
+
+Vol. V
+
+FANATICISM--GREGORY VII
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+FANATICISM.
+
+SECTION I.
+
+
+Fanaticism is the effect of a false conscience, which makes religion
+subservient to the caprices of the imagination, and the excesses of the
+passions.
+
+It arises, in general, from legislators entertaining too narrow views,
+or from their extending their regulations beyond the limits within which
+alone they were intended to operate. Their laws are made merely for a
+select society. When extended by zeal to a whole people, and transferred
+by ambition from one climate to another, some changes of institution
+should take place, some accommodation to persons, places, and
+circumstances. But what, in fact, has been the case? Certain minds,
+constituted in a great degree like those of the small original flock,
+have received a system with equal ardor, and become its apostles, and
+even its martyrs, rather than abate a single iota of its demands.
+Others, on the contrary, less ardent, or more attached to their
+prejudices of education, have struggled with energy against the new
+yoke, and consented to receive it only after considerable softenings and
+mitigations: hence the schism between rigorists and moderates, by which
+all are urged on to vehemence and madness--the one party for servitude
+and the other for freedom.
+
+Let us imagine an immense rotunda, a pantheon, with innumerable altars
+placed under its dome. Let us figure to ourselves a devotee of every
+sect, whether at present existing or extinct, at the feet of that
+divinity which he worships in his own peculiar way, under all the
+extravagant forms which human imagination has been able to invent. On
+the right we perceive one stretched on his back upon a mat, absorbed in
+contemplation, and awaiting the moment when the divine light shall come
+forth to inform his soul. On the left is a prostrate energumen striking
+his forehead against the ground, with a view to obtain from it an
+abundant produce. Here we see a man with the air and manner of a
+mountebank, dancing over the grave of him whom he invokes. There we
+observe a penitent, motionless and mute as the statue before which he
+has bent himself in humiliation. One, on the principle that God will not
+blush at his own resemblance, displays openly what modesty universally
+conceals; another, as if the artist would shudder at the sight of his
+own work, covers with an impenetrable veil his whole person and
+countenance; another turns his back upon the south, because from that
+quarter blows the devil's tempest. Another stretches out his arms
+towards the east, because there God first shows His radiant face. Young
+women, suffused with tears, bruise and gash their lovely persons under
+the idea of assuaging the demon of desire, although by means tending in
+fact rather to strengthen his influence; others again, in opposite
+attitudes, solicit the approaches of the Divinity. One young man, in
+order to mortify the most urgent of his feelings, attaches to particular
+parts of his frame large iron rings, as heavy as he can bear; another
+checks still more effectually the tempter's violence by inhuman
+amputation, and suspends the bleeding sacrifice upon the altar.
+
+Let us observe them quit the temple, and, full of the inspiration of
+their respective deities, spread the terror and delusion over the face
+of the earth. They divide the world between them; and the four
+extremities of it are almost instantly in flames: nations obey them, and
+kings tremble before them. That almost despotic power which the
+enthusiasm of a single person exercises over a multitude who see or hear
+him; the ardor communicated to each other by assembled minds; numberless
+strong and agitating influences acting in such circumstances, augmented
+by each individual's personal anxiety and distress, require but a short
+time to operate, in order to produce universal delirium. Only let a
+single people be thus fascinated and agitated under the guidance of a
+few impostors, the seduction will spread with the speed of wild-fire,
+prodigies will be multiplied beyond calculation, and whole communities
+be led astray forever. When the human mind has once quitted the luminous
+track pointed out by nature, it returns to it no more; it wanders round
+the truth, but never obtains of it more than a few faint glimmerings,
+which, mingling with the false lights of surrounding superstition, leave
+it, in fact, in complete and palpable obscurity.
+
+It is dreadful to observe how the opinion that the wrath of heaven might
+be appeased by human massacre spread, after being once started, through
+almost every religion; and what various reasons have been given for the
+sacrifice, as though, in order to preclude, if possible, the escape of
+any one from extirpation. Sometimes they are enemies who must be
+immolated to Mars the exterminator. The Scythians slay upon the altars
+of this deity a hundredth part of their prisoners of war; and from this
+usage attending victory, we may form some judgment of the justice of
+war: accordingly, among other nations it was engaged in solely to supply
+these human sacrifices, so that, having first been instituted, as it
+would seem, to expiate the horrors of war, they at length came to serve
+as a justification of them.
+
+Sometimes a barbarous deity requires victims from among the just and
+good. The Getæ eagerly dispute the honor of personally conveying to
+Zamolxis the vows and devotions of their country. He whose good fortune
+has destined him to be the sacrifice is thrown with the greatest
+violence upon a range of spears, fixed for the purpose. If on falling
+he receives a mortal wound, it augurs well as to the success of the
+negotiation and the merit of the envoy; but if he survives the wound, he
+is a wretch with whom the god would not condescend to hold any
+communication.
+
+Sometimes children are demanded, and the respective divinities recall
+the life they had but just imparted: "Justice," says Montaigne,
+"thirsting for the blood of innocence!" Sometimes the call is for the
+dearest and nearest blood: the Carthaginians sacrificed their own sons
+to Saturn, as if Time did not devour them with sufficient speed.
+Sometimes the demand was for the blood of the most beautiful. That
+Amestris, who had buried twelve men alive in order to obtain from Pluto,
+in return for so revolting an offering, a somewhat longer life--that
+same Amestris further sacrifices to that insatiable divinity twelve
+daughters of the highest personages in Persia; as the sacrificing
+priests have always taught men that they ought to offer on the altar the
+most valuable of their possessions. It is upon this principle that among
+some nations the first-born were immolated, and that among others they
+were redeemed by offerings more valuable to the ministers of sacrifice.
+This it is, unquestionably, which introduced into Europe the practice
+prevalent for centuries of devoting children to celibacy at the early
+age of five years, and shutting up in a cloister the brothers of an
+hereditary prince, just as in Asia the practice is to murder them.
+
+Sometimes it is the purest blood that is demanded. We read of certain
+Indians, if I recollect rightly, who hospitably entertain all who visit
+them and make a merit of killing every sensible and virtuous stranger
+who enters their country, that his talents and virtues may remain with
+them. Sometimes the blood required is that which is most sacred. With
+the majority of idolaters, priests perform the office of executioner at
+the altar; and among the Siberians, it is the practice to kill the
+priests in order to despatch them to pray in the other world for the
+fulfilment of the wishes of the people.
+
+But let us turn our attention to other frenzies and other spectacles.
+All Europe passes into Asia by a road inundated with the blood of Jews,
+who commit suicide to avoid falling into the hands of their enemies.
+This epidemic depopulates one-half of the inhabited world: kings,
+pontiffs, women, the young and the aged, all yield to the influence of
+the holy madness which, for a series of two hundred years, instigated
+the slaughter of innumerable nations at the tomb of a god of peace. Then
+were to be seen lying oracles, and military hermits, monarchs in
+pulpits, and prelates in camps. All the different states constitute one
+delirious populace; barriers of mountains and seas are surmounted;
+legitimate possessions are abandoned to enable their owners to fly to
+conquests which were no longer, in point of fertility, the land of
+promise; manners become corrupted under foreign skies; princes, after
+having exhausted their respective kingdoms to redeem a country which
+had never been theirs, complete the ruin of them for their personal
+ransom; thousands of soldiers, wandering under the banners of many
+chieftains, acknowledge the authority of none and hasten their defeat by
+their desertion; and the disease terminates only to be succeeded by a
+contagion still more horrible and desolating.
+
+The same spirit of fanaticism cherished the rage for distant conquests:
+scarcely had Europe repaired its losses when the discovery of a new
+world hastened the ruin of our own. At that terrible injunction, "Go and
+conquer," America was desolated and its inhabitants exterminated; Africa
+and Europe were exhausted in vain to repeople it; the poison of money
+and of pleasure having enervated the species, the world became nearly a
+desert and appeared likely every day to advance nearer to desolation by
+the continual wars which were kindled on our continent, from the
+ambition of extending its power to foreign lands.
+
+Let us now compute the immense number of slaves which fanaticism has
+made, whether in Asia, where uncircumcision was a mark of infamy, or in
+Africa, where the Christian name was a crime, or in America, where the
+pretext of baptism absolutely extinguished the feelings of humanity. Let
+us compute the thousands who have been seen to perish either on
+scaffolds in the ages of persecution, or in civil wars by the hands of
+their fellow citizens, or by their own hands through excessive
+austerities, and maceration. Let us survey the surface of the earth, and
+glance at the various standards unfurled and blazing in the name of
+religion; in Spain against the Moors, in France against the Turks, in
+Hungary against the Tartars; at the numerous military orders, founded
+for converting infidels by the point of the sword, and slaughtering one
+another at the foot of the altar they had come to defend. Let us then
+look down from the appalling tribunal thus raised on the bodies of the
+innocent and miserable, in order to judge the living, as God, with a
+balance widely different, will judge the dead.
+
+In a word, let us contemplate the horrors of fifteen centuries, all
+frequently renewed in the course of a single one; unarmed men slain at
+the feet of altars; kings destroyed by the dagger or by poison; a large
+state reduced to half its extent by the fury of its own citizens; the
+nation at once the most warlike and the most pacific on the face of the
+globe, divided in fierce hostility against itself; the sword unsheathed
+between the sons and the father; usurpers, tyrants, executioners,
+sacrilegious robbers, and bloodstained parricides violating, under the
+impulse of religion, every convention divine or human--such is the
+deadly picture of fanaticism.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+If this term has at present any connection with its original meaning it
+is exceedingly slight.
+
+"_Fanaticus_" was an honorable designation. It signified the minister or
+benefactor of a temple. According to the dictionary of Trévoux some
+antiquaries have discovered inscriptions in which Roman citizens of
+considerable consequence assumed the title of "_fanaticus_."
+
+In Cicero's oration "_pro domo sua_," a passage occurs in which the word
+"_fanaticus_" appears to me of difficult explanation. The seditious and
+libertine Clodius, who had brought about the banishment of Cicero for
+having saved the republic, had not only plundered and demolished the
+houses of that great man, but in order that Cicero might never be able
+to return to his city residence he procured the consecration of the land
+on which it stood; and the priests had erected there a temple to
+liberty, or rather to slavery, in which Cæsar, Pompey, Crassus, and
+Clodius then held the republic. Thus in all ages has religion been
+employed as an instrument in the persecution of great men. When at
+length, in a happier period, Cicero was recalled, he pleaded before the
+people in order to obtain the restoration of the ground on which his
+house had stood, and the rebuilding of the house at the expense of the
+Roman people. He thus expresses himself in the speech against Clodius
+(_Oratio pro Domo sua_, chap. xl): "_Adspicite, adspicite, pontifices,
+hominem religiosum.... monete eum, modum quemdam esse religionis; nimium
+esse superstitiosum non oportere. Quid tibi necesse fuit anili
+superstitione, homo fanatice, sacrificium, quod aliænæ domi fieret
+invisere?_"
+
+Does the word "_fanaticus_," as used above, mean senseless, pitiless,
+abominable fanatic, according to the present acceptation, or does it
+rather imply the pious, religious man, the frequenter and consecrator of
+temples? Is it used here in the meaning of decided censure or ironical
+praise? I do not feel myself competent to determine, but will give a
+translation of the passage:
+
+"Behold, reverend pontiffs, behold the pious man.... suggest to him that
+even religion itself has its limits, that a man ought not to be so
+over-scrupulous. What occasion was there for a sacred person, a fanatic
+like yourself, to have recourse to the superstition of an old woman, in
+order to assist at a sacrifice performed in another person's house?"
+
+Cicero alludes here to the mysteries of the _Bona Dea_, which had been
+profaned by Clodius, who, in the disguise of a female, and accompanied
+by an old woman, had obtained an introduction to them, with a view to an
+assignation with Cæsar's wife. The passage is, in consequence, evidently
+ironical.
+
+Cicero calls Clodius a religious man, and the irony requires to be kept
+up through the whole passage. He employs terms of honorable meaning,
+more clearly to exhibit Clodius's infamy. It appears to me, therefore,
+that he uses the word in question, "_fanaticus_" in its respectable
+sense, as a word conveying the idea of a sacrificer, a pious man, a
+zealous minister of a temple.
+
+The term might be afterwards applied to those who believed themselves
+inspired by the gods, who bestowed a somewhat curious gift on the
+interpreters of their will, by ordaining that, in order to be a prophet,
+the loss of reason is indispensable.
+
+     _Les Dieux à leur interprète_
+       _Ont fait un étrange don;_
+     _Ne peut on être prophète_
+      _Sans qu'on perde la raison?_
+
+The same dictionary of Trévoux informs us that the old chronicles of
+France call Clovis fanatic and pagan. The reader would have been pleased
+to have had the particular chronicles specified. I have not found this
+epithet applied to Clovis in any of the few books I possess at my house
+near Mount Krapak, where I now write.
+
+We understand by fanaticism at present a religious madness, gloomy and
+cruel. It is a malady of the mind, which is taken in the same way as
+smallpox. Books communicate it much less than meetings and discourses.
+We seldom get heated while reading in solitude, for our minds are then
+tranquil and sedate. But when an ardent man of strong imagination
+addresses himself to weak imaginations, his eyes dart fire, and that
+fire rapidly spreads; his tones, his gestures, absolutely convulse the
+nerves of his auditors. He exclaims, "The eye of God is at this moment
+upon you; sacrifice every mere human possession and feeling; fight the
+battles of the Lord"--and and they rush to the fight.
+
+Fanaticism is, in reference to superstition, what delirium is to fever,
+or rage to anger. He who is involved in ecstasies and visions, who takes
+dreams for realities, and his own imaginations for prophecies, is a
+fanatical novice of great hope and promise, and will probably soon
+advance to the highest form, and kill man for the love of God.
+
+Bartholomew Diaz was a fanatical monk. He had a brother at Nuremberg
+called John Diaz, who was an enthusiastic adherent to the doctrines of
+Luther, and completely convinced that the pope was Antichrist, and had
+the sign of the beast. Bartholomew, still more ardently convinced that
+the pope was god upon earth, quits Rome, determined either to convert or
+murder his brother; he accordingly murdered him! Here is a perfect case
+of fanaticism. We have noticed and done justice to this Diaz elsewhere.
+
+Polyeuctes, who went to the temple on a day of solemn festival, to throw
+down and destroy the statues and ornaments, was a fanatic less horrible
+than Diaz, but not less foolish. The assassins of Francis, duke of
+Guise, of William, prince of Orange, of King Henry III., of King Henry
+IV., and various others, were equally possessed, equally laboring under
+morbid fury, with Diaz.
+
+The most striking example of fanaticism is that exhibited on the night
+of St. Bartholomew, when the people of Paris rushed from house to house
+to stab, slaughter, throw out of the window, and tear in pieces their
+fellow citizens not attending mass. Guyon, Patouillet, Chaudon,
+Nonnotte, and the ex-Jesuit Paulian, are merely fanatics in a
+corner--contemptible beings whom we do not think of guarding against.
+They would, however, on a day of St. Bartholomew, perform wonders.
+
+There are some cold-blooded fanatics; such as those judges who sentence
+men to death for no other crime than that of thinking differently from
+themselves, and these are so much the more guilty and deserving of the
+execration of mankind, as, not laboring under madness like the Clements,
+Châtels, Ravaillacs, and Damiens, they might be deemed capable of
+listening to reason.
+
+There is no other remedy for this epidemical malady than that spirit of
+philosophy, which, extending itself from one to another, at length
+civilizes and softens the manners of men and prevents the access of the
+disease. For when the disorder has made any progress, we should, without
+loss of time, fly from the seat of it, and wait till the air has become
+purified from contagion. Law and religion are not completely efficient
+against the spiritual pestilence. Religion, indeed, so far from
+affording proper nutriment to the minds of patients laboring under this
+infectious and infernal distemper, is converted, by the diseased process
+of their minds, into poison. These malignant devotees have incessantly
+before their eyes the example of Ehud, who assassinated the king of
+Eglon; of Judith, who cut off the head of Holofernes while in bed with
+him; of Samuel, hewing in pieces King Agag; of Jehoiada the priest, who
+murdered his queen at the horse-gate. They do not perceive that these
+instances, which are respectable in antiquity, are in the present day
+abominable. They derive their fury from religion, decidedly as religion
+condemns it.
+
+Laws are yet more powerless against these paroxysms of rage. To oppose
+laws to cases of such a description would be like reading a decree of
+council to a man in a frenzy. The persons in question are fully
+convinced that the Holy Spirit which animates and fills them is above
+all laws; that their own enthusiasm is, in fact, the only law which they
+are bound to obey.
+
+What can be said in answer to a man who says he will rather obey God
+than men, and who consequently feels certain of meriting heaven by
+cutting your throat?
+
+When once fanaticism has gangrened the brain of any man the disease may
+be regarded as nearly incurable. I have seen Convulsionaries who, while
+speaking of the miracles of St. Paris, gradually worked themselves up to
+higher and more vehement degrees of agitation till their eyes became
+inflamed, their whole frames shook, their countenances became distorted
+by rage, and had any man contradicted them he would inevitably have been
+murdered.
+
+Yes, I have seen these wretched Convulsionaries writhing their limbs and
+foaming at their mouths. They were exclaiming, "We must have blood."
+They effected the assassination of their king by a lackey, and ended
+with exclaiming against philosophers.
+
+Fanatics are nearly always under the direction of knaves, who place the
+dagger in their hands. These knaves resemble Montaigne's "Old Man of the
+Mountain," who, it is said, made weak persons imagine, under his
+treatment of them, that they really had experienced the joys of
+paradise, and promised them a whole eternity of such delights if they
+would go and assassinate such as he should point out to them. There has
+been only one religion in the world which has not been polluted by
+fanaticism and that is the religion of the learned in China. The
+different sects of ancient philosophers were not merely exempt from this
+pest of human society, but they were antidotes to it: for the effect of
+philosophy is to render the soul tranquil, and fanaticism and
+tranquillity are totally incompatible. That our own holy religion has
+been so frequently polluted by this infernal fury must be imputed to the
+foil and madness of mankind. Thus Icarus abused the wings which he
+received for his benefit. They were given him for his salvation and they
+insured his destruction:
+
+     _Ainsi du plumage qu'il eut_
+       _Icare pervertit l'usage;_
+     _Il le reçut pour son salut,_
+       _Il s'en servit pour son dommage._
+                     --BERTAUT, bishop of Séez.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+Fanatics do not always fight the battles of the Lord. They do not always
+assassinate kings and princes. There are tigers among them, but there
+are more foxes.
+
+What a tissue of frauds, calumnies, and robberies has been woven by
+fanatics of the court of Rome against fanatics of the court of Calvin,
+by Jesuits against Jansenists, and _vice versa_! And if you go farther
+back you will find ecclesiastical history, which is the school of
+virtues, to be that of atrocities and abominations, which have been
+employed by every sect against the others. They all have the same
+bandage over their eyes whether marching out to burn down the cities and
+towns of their adversaries, to slaughter the inhabitants, or condemn
+them to judicial execution; or when merely engaged in the comparatively
+calm occupation of deceiving and defrauding, of acquiring wealth and
+exercising domination. The same fanaticism blinds them; they think that
+they are doing good. Every fanatic is a conscientious knave, but a
+sincere and honest murderer for the good cause.
+
+Read, if you are able, the five or six thousand volumes in which, for a
+hundred years together, the Jansenists and Molinists have dealt out
+against each other their reproaches and revilings, their mutual
+exposures of fraud and knavery, and then judge whether Scapin or
+Trevelin can be compared with them.
+
+One of the most curious theological knaveries ever practised is, in my
+opinion, that of a small bishop--the narrative asserts that he was a
+Biscayan bishop; however, we shall certainly, at some future period find
+out both his name and his bishopric--whose diocese was partly in Biscay
+and partly in France.
+
+In the French division of his diocese there was a parish which had
+formerly been inhabited by some Moors. The lord of the parish or manor
+was no Mahometan; he was perfectly catholic, as the whole universe
+should be, for the meaning of catholic is universal. My lord the bishop
+had some suspicions concerning this unfortunate seigneur, whose whole
+occupation consisted in doing good, and conceived that in his heart he
+entertained bad thoughts and sentiments savoring not a little of heresy.
+He even accused him of having said, in the way of pleasantry, that there
+were good people in Morocco as well as in Biscay, and that an honest
+inhabitant of Morocco might absolutely not be a mortal enemy of the
+Supreme Being, who is the father of all mankind.
+
+The fanatic, upon this, wrote a long letter to the king of France, the
+paramount sovereign of our little manorial lord. In this letter he
+entreated his majesty to transfer the manor of this stray and
+unbelieving sheep either to Lower Brittany or Lower Normandy, according
+to his good pleasure, that he might be no longer able to diffuse the
+contagion of heresy among his Biscayan neighbors, by his abominable
+jests. The king of France and his council smiled, as may naturally be
+supposed, at the extravagance and folly of the demand.
+
+Our Biscayan pastor learning, some time afterwards, that his French
+sheep was sick, ordered public notices to be fixed up at the church
+gates of the canton, prohibiting any one from administering the
+communion to him, unless he should previously give in a bill of
+confession, from which it might appear that he was not circumcised; that
+he condemned with his whole heart the heresy of Mahomet, and every other
+heresy of the like kind--as, for example, Calvinism and Jansenism; and
+that in every point he thought like him, the said Biscayan bishop.
+
+Bills of confession were at that time much in fashion. The sick man sent
+for his parish priest, who was a simple and sottish man, and threatened
+to have him hanged by the parliament of Bordeaux if he did not instantly
+administer the viaticum to him. The priest was alarmed, and accordingly
+celebrated the sacred ordinance, as desired by the patient; who, after
+the ceremony, declared aloud, before witnesses, that the Biscayan pastor
+had falsely accused him before the king of being tainted with the
+Mussulman religion; that he was a sincere Christian, and that the
+Biscayan was a calumniator. He signed this, after it had been written
+down, in presence of a notary, and every form required by law was
+complied with. He soon after became better, and rest and a good
+conscience speedily completed his recovery.
+
+The Biscayan, quite exasperated that the old patient should have thus
+exposed and disappointed him, resolved to have his revenge, and thus he
+set about it.
+
+He procured, fifteen days after the event just mentioned, the
+fabrication, in his own language or patois, of a profession of faith
+which the priest pretended to have heard and received. It was signed by
+the priest and three or four peasants, who had not been present at the
+ceremony; and the forged instrument was then passed through the
+necessary and solemn form of verification and registry, as if this form
+could give it authenticity.
+
+An instrument not signed by the party alone interested, signed by
+persons unknown, fifteen days after the event, an instrument disavowed
+by the real and credible witnesses of that event, involved evidently the
+crime of forgery; and, as the subject of the forgery was a matter of
+faith, the crime clearly rendered both the priest and the witnesses
+liable to the galleys in this world, and to hell in the other.
+
+Our lord of the manor, however, who loved a joke, but had no gall or
+malice in his heart, took compassion both upon the bodies and souls of
+these conspirators. He declined delivering them over to human justice,
+and contented himself with giving them up to ridicule. But he declared
+that after the death of the Biscayan he would, if he survived, have the
+pleasure of printing an account of all his proceedings and manœuvres
+on this business, together with the documents and evidences, just to
+amuse the small number of readers who might like anecdotes of that
+description; and not, as is often pompously announced, with a view to
+the instruction of the universe. There are so many authors who address
+themselves to the universe, who really imagine they attract, and perhaps
+absorb, the attention of the universe, that he conceived he might not
+have a dozen readers out of the whole who would attend for a moment to
+himself. But let us return to fanaticism.
+
+It is this rage for making proselytes, this intensely mad desire which
+men feel to bring others over to partake of their own peculiar cup or
+communion, that induced the Jesuit Châtel and the Jesuit Routh to rush
+with eagerness to the deathbed of the celebrated Montesquieu. These two
+devoted zealots desired nothing better than to be able to boast that
+they had persuaded him of the merits of contrition and of sufficing
+grace. We wrought his conversion, they said. He was, in the main, a
+worthy soul: he was much attached to the society of Jesus. We had some
+little difficulty in inducing him to admit certain fundamental truths;
+but as in these circumstances, in the crisis of life and death, the
+mind is always most clear and acute, we soon convinced him.
+
+This fanatical eagerness for converting men is so ardent, that the most
+debauched monk in his convent would even quit his mistress, and walk to
+the very extremity of the city, for the sake of making a single convert.
+
+We have all seen Father Poisson, a Cordelier of Paris, who impoverished
+his convent to pay his mistresses, and who was imprisoned in consequence
+of the depravity of his manners. He was one of the most popular
+preachers at Paris, and one of the most determined and zealous of
+converters.
+
+Such also was the celebrated preacher Fantin, at Versailles. The list
+might be easily enlarged; but it is unnecessary, if not also dangerous,
+to expose the freaks and freedoms of constituted authorities. You know
+what happened to Ham for having revealed his father's shame. He became
+as black as a coal.
+
+Let us merely pray to God, whether rising or lying down, that he would
+deliver us from fanatics, as the pilgrims of Mecca pray that they may
+meet with no sour faces on the road.
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+Ludlow, who was rather an enthusiast for liberty than a fanatic in
+religion--that brave man, who hated Cromwell more than he did Charles
+I., relates that the parliamentary forces were always defeated by the
+royal army in the beginning of the civil war; just as the regiment of
+porters (_portes-cochères_) were unable to stand the shock of conflict,
+in the time of the Fronde against the great Condé. Cromwell said to
+General Fairfax: "How can you possibly expect a rabble of London porters
+and apprentices to resist a nobility urged on by the principle, or
+rather the phantom, of honor? Let us actuate them by a more powerful
+phantom--fanaticism! Our enemies are fighting only for their king; let
+us persuade our troops they are fighting for their God.
+
+"Give me a commission, and I will raise a regiment of brother murderers,
+whom I will pledge myself soon to make invincible fanatics!"
+
+He was as good as his word; he composed his regiment of red-coated
+brothers, of gloomy religionists, whom he made obedient tigers. Mahomet
+himself was never better served by soldiers.
+
+But in order to inspire this fanaticism, you must be seconded and
+supported by the spirit of the times. A French parliament at the present
+day would attempt in vain to raise a regiment of such porters as we have
+mentioned; it could, with all its efforts, merely rouse into frenzy a
+few women of the fish-market.
+
+Only the ablest men have the power to make and to guide fanatics. It is
+not, however, sufficient to possess the profoundest dissimulation and
+the most determined intrepidity; everything depends, after these
+previous requisites are secured, on coming into the world at a proper
+time.
+
+
+SECTION V.
+
+Geometry then, it seems, is not always connected with clearness and
+correctness of understanding. Over what precipices do not men fall,
+notwithstanding their boasted leading-strings of reason! A celebrated
+Protestant, who was esteemed one of the first mathematicians of the age,
+and who followed in the train of the Newtons, the Leibnitzes, and
+Bernouillis, at the beginning of the present century, struck out some
+very singular corollaries. It is said that with a grain of faith a man
+may remove mountains; and this man of science, following up the method
+of pure geometrical analysis, reasoned thus with himself: I have many
+grains of faith, and can, therefore, remove many mountains. This was the
+man who made his appearance at London in 1707; and, associating himself
+with certain men of learning and science, some of whom, moreover, were
+not deficient in sagacity, they publicly announced that they would raise
+to life a dead person in any cemetery that might be fixed upon. Their
+reasoning was uniformly synthetical. They said, genuine disciples must
+have the power of performing miracles; we are genuine disciples, we
+therefore shall be able to perform as many as we please. The mere
+unscientific saints of the Romish church have resuscitated many worthy
+persons; therefore, _a fortiori_, we, the reformers of the reformed
+themselves, shall resuscitate as many as we may desire.
+
+These arguments are irrefragable, being constructed according to the
+most correct form possible. Here we have at a glance the explanation why
+all antiquity was inundated with prodigies; why the temples of
+Æsculapius at Epidaurus, and in other cities, were completely filled
+with _ex-votos_; the roofs adorned with thighs straightened, arms
+restored, and silver infants: all was miracle.
+
+In short, the famous Protestant geometrician whom I speak of appeared so
+perfectly sincere; he asserted so confidently that he would raise the
+dead, and his proposition was put forward with so much plausibility and
+strenuousness, that the people entertained a very strong impression on
+the subject, and Queen Anne was advised to appoint a day, an hour, and a
+cemetery, such as he should himself select, in which he might have the
+opportunity of performing his miracle legally, and under the inspection
+of justice. The holy geometrician chose St. Paul's cathedral for the
+scene of his exertion: the people ranged themselves in two rows;
+soldiers were stationed to preserve order both among the living and the
+dead; the magistrates took their seats; the register procured his
+record; it was impossible that the new miracles could be verified too
+completely. A dead body was disinterred agreeably to the holy man's
+choice and direction; he then prayed, he fell upon his knees, and made
+the most pious and devout contortions possible; his companions imitated
+him; the dead body exhibited no sign of animation; it was again
+deposited in its grave, and the professed resuscitator and his adherents
+were slightly punished. I afterwards saw one of these misled creatures;
+he declared to me that one of the party was at the time under the stain
+of a venial sin, for which the dead person suffered, and but for which
+the resurrection would have been infallible.
+
+Were it allowable for us to reveal the disgrace of those to whom we owe
+the sincerest respect, I should observe here, that Newton, the great
+Newton himself, discovered in the "Apocalypse" that the pope was
+Antichrist, and made many other similar discoveries. I should also
+observe that he was a decided Arian. I am aware that this deviation of
+Newton, compared to that of the other geometrician, is as unity to
+infinity. But if the exalted Newton imagined that he found the modern
+history of Europe in the "Apocalypse," we may say: Alas, poor human
+beings!
+
+It seems as if superstition were an epidemic disease, from which the
+strongest minds are not always exempt. There are in Turkey persons of
+great and strong sense, who would undergo empalement for the sake of
+certain opinions of Abubeker. These principles being once admitted, they
+reason with great consistency; and the Navaricians, the Radarists, and
+the Jabarites mutually consign each other to damnation in conformity to
+very shrewd and subtle argument. They all draw plausible consequences,
+but they never dare to examine principles.
+
+A report is publicly spread abroad by some person, that there exists a
+giant seventy feet high; the learned soon after begin to discuss and
+dispute about the color of his hair, the thickness of his thumb, the
+measurement of his nails; they exclaim, cabal, and even fight upon the
+subject. Those who maintain that the little finger of the giant is only
+fifteen lines in diameter burn those who assert that it is a foot thick.
+"But, gentlemen," modestly observes a stranger passing by, "does the
+giant you are disputing about really exist?" "What a horrible doubt!"
+all the disputants cry out together. "What blasphemy! What absurdity!" A
+short truce is then brought about to give time for stoning the poor
+stranger; and, after having duly performed that murderous ceremony, they
+resume fighting upon the everlasting subject of the nails and little
+finger.
+
+
+
+
+FANCY.
+
+
+Fancy formerly signified imagination, and the term was used simply to
+express that faculty of the soul which receives sensible objects.
+
+Descartes and Gassendi, and all the philosophers of their day, say that
+"the form or images of things are painted in the fancy." But the greater
+part of abstract terms are, in the course of time, received in a sense
+different from their original one, like tools which industry applies to
+new purposes.
+
+Fancy, at present, means "a particular desire, a transient taste"; he
+has a fancy for going to China; his fancy for gaming and dancing has
+passed away. An artist paints a fancy portrait, a portrait not taken
+from any model. To have fancies is to have extraordinary tastes, but of
+brief duration. Fancy, in this sense, falls a little short of oddity
+(_bizarrerie_) and caprice.
+
+Caprice may express "a sudden and unreasonable disgust." He had a fancy
+for music, and capriciously became disgusted with it. Whimsicality gives
+an idea of inconsistency and bad taste, which fancy does not; he had a
+fancy for building, but he constructed his house in a whimsical taste.
+
+There are shades of distinction between having fancies and being
+fantastic; the fantastic is much nearer to the capricious and the
+whimsical. The word "fantastic" expresses a character unequal and
+abrupt. The idea of charming or pleasant is excluded from it; whereas
+there are agreeable fancies.
+
+We sometimes hear used in conversation "odd fancies" (_des fantasies
+musquées_); but the expression was never understood to mean what the
+"Dictionary of Trévoux" supposes--"The whims of men of superior rank
+which one must not venture to condemn;" on the contrary, that expression
+is used for the very object and purpose of condemning them; and
+_musquée_, in this connection, is an expletive adding force to the term
+"fancies," as we say, _Sottise pommée_, _folie fieffée_, to express
+nonsense and folly.
+
+
+
+
+FASTI.
+
+_Of the Different Significations of this Word._
+
+
+The Latin word "_fasti_" signifies festivals, and it is in this sense
+that Ovid treats of it in his poem entitled "The Fasti."
+
+Godeau has composed the Fasti of the church on this model, but with less
+success. The religion of the Roman Pagans was more calculated for poetry
+than that of the Christians; to which it may be added, that Ovid was a
+better poet than Godeau.
+
+The consular fasti were only the list of consuls.
+
+The fasti of the magistrates were the days in which they were permitted
+to plead; and those on which they did not plead were called _nefasti_,
+because then they could not plead for justice.
+
+The word "_nefastus_" in this sense does not signify unfortunate; on the
+contrary, _nefastus_ and _nefandus_ were the attributes of unfortunate
+days in another sense, signifying days in which people must not plead;
+days worthy only to be forgotten; _"ille nefasto te posuit die."_
+
+Besides other fasti, the Romans had their _fasti urbis_, _fasti
+rustici_, which were calendars of the particular usages, and ceremonies
+of the city and the country.
+
+On these days of solemnity, every one sought to astonish by the grandeur
+of his dress, his equipage, or his banquet. This pomp, invisible on
+other days, was called _fastus_. It expresses magnificence in those who
+by their station can afford it, but vanity in others.
+
+Though the word "_fastus_" may not be always injurious, the word
+"pompous" is invariably so. A devotee who makes a parade of his virtue
+renders humility itself pompous.
+
+
+
+
+FATHERS--MOTHERS--CHILDREN.
+
+_Their Duties._
+
+
+The "Encyclopædia" has been much exclaimed against in France; because it
+was produced in France, and has done France honor. In other countries,
+people have not cried out; on the contrary, they have eagerly set about
+pirating or spoiling it, because money was to be gained thereby.
+
+But we, who do not, like the encyclopædists of Paris, labor for glory;
+we, who are not, like them, exposed to envy; we, whose little society
+lies unnoticed in Hesse, in Würtemberg, in Switzerland, among the
+Grisons, or at Mount Krapak; and have, therefore, no apprehension of
+having to dispute with the doctor of the _Comédie Italienne_, or with a
+doctor of the Sorbonne; we, who sell not our sheets to a bookseller, but
+are free beings, and lay not black on white until we have examined, to
+the utmost of our ability, whether the said black may be of service to
+mankind; we, in short, who love virtue, shall boldly declare what we
+think.
+
+"Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long--" I would
+venture to say, "Honor thy father and thy mother, _though this day shall
+be thy last_."
+
+Tenderly love and joyfully serve the mother who bore you in her womb,
+fed you at her breast, and patiently endured all that was disgusting in
+your infancy. Discharge the same duties to your father, who brought you
+up.
+
+What will future ages say of a Frank, named Louis the Thirteenth, who,
+at the age of sixteen, began the exercise of his authority with having
+the door of his mother's apartment walled up, and sending her into
+exile, without giving the smallest reason for so doing, and solely
+because it was his favorite's wish?
+
+"But, sir, I must tell you in confidence that my father is a drunkard,
+who begot me one day by chance, not caring a jot about me; and gave me
+no education but that of beating me every day when he came home
+intoxicated. My mother was a coquette, whose only occupation was
+love-making. But for my nurse, who had taken a liking to me, and who,
+after the death of her son, received me into her house for charity, I
+should have died of want."
+
+"Well, then, honor your nurse; and bow to your father and mother when
+you meet them. It is said in the Vulgate, '_Honora patrem tuum et
+matrem tuam_'--not _dilige_."
+
+"Very well, sir, I shall love my father and my mother if they do me
+good; I shall honor them if they do me ill. I have thought so ever since
+I began to think, and you confirm me in my maxims."
+
+"Fare you well, my child, I see you will prosper, for you have a grain
+of philosophy in your composition."
+
+"One word more, sir. If my father were to call himself Abraham, and me
+Isaac, and were to say to me, 'My son, you are tall and strong; carry
+these fagots to the top of that hill, to burn you with after I have cut
+off your head; for God ordered me to do so when He came to see me this
+morning,'--what would you advise me to do in such critical
+circumstances?"
+
+"Critical, indeed! But what would you do of yourself? for you seem to be
+no blockhead."
+
+"I own, sir, that I should ask him to produce a written order, and that
+from regard for himself, I should say to him--'Father, you are among
+strangers, who do not allow a man to assassinate his son without an
+express condition from God, duly signed, sealed and delivered. See what
+happened to poor Calas, in the half French, half Spanish town of
+Toulouse. He was broken on the wheel; and the _procureur-général_ Riquet
+decided on having Madame Calas, the mother, burned--all on the bare and
+very ill-conceived suspicion, that they had hung up their son, Mark
+Antony Calas, for the love of God. I should fear that his conclusions
+would be equally prejudicial to the well-being of yourself and your
+sister or niece, Madame Sarah, my mother. Once more I say, show me a
+_lettre de cachet_ for cutting my throat, signed by God's own hand, and
+countersigned by Raphael, Michael, or Beelzebub. If not, father--your
+most obedient: I will go to Pharaoh of Egypt, or to the king of the
+desert of Gerar, who both have been in love with my mother, and will
+certainly be kind to me. Cut my brother Ishmael's throat, if you like;
+but rely upon it, you shall not cut mine.'"
+
+"Good; this is arguing like a true sage. The 'Encyclopædia' itself could
+not have reasoned better. I tell you, you will do great things. I admire
+you for not having said an ill word to your father Abraham--for not
+having been tempted to beat him. And tell me: had you been that Cram,
+whom his father, the Frankish King Clothaire, had burned in a barn; a
+Don Carlos, son of that fox, Philip the Second; a poor Alexis, son of
+that Czar Peter, half hero, half tiger--"
+
+"Ah, sir, say no more of those horrors; you will make me detest human
+nature."
+
+
+
+
+FAVOR.
+
+_Of What is Understood by the Word._
+
+
+Favor, from the Latin word "_favor_," rather signifies a benefit than a
+recompense.
+
+We earnestly beg a favor; we merit and loudly demand a recompense. The
+god Favor, according to the Roman mythologists, was the son of Beauty
+and Fortune. All favor conveys the idea of something gratuitous; he has
+done me the favor of introducing me, of presenting me, of recommending
+my friend, of correcting my work. The favor of princes is the effect of
+their fancy, and of assiduous complaisance. The favor of the people
+sometimes implies merit, but is more often attributable to lucky
+accident.
+
+Favor differs much from kindness. That man is in favor with the king,
+but he has not yet received any kindnesses from him. We say that he has
+been received into the good graces of a person, not he has been received
+into favor; though we say to be in favor, because favor is supposed to
+be an habitual taste; while to receive into grace is to pardon, or, at
+least, is less than to bestow a favor.
+
+To obtain grace is the effect of a moment; to obtain favor is a work of
+time. Nevertheless, we say indifferently, do me the kindness and do me
+the favor, to recommend my friend.
+
+Letters of recommendation were formerly called letters of favor. Severus
+says, in the tragedy of Polyeuctes:
+
+     _Je mourrais mille fois plutôt que d'abuser_
+     _Des lettres de faveur que j'ai pour l'épouser._
+
+     "Letters of favor," though I have to wed her,
+     I'd rather die a thousand times than use them.
+
+We have the favor and good-will, not the kindness of the prince and the
+public. We may obtain the favor of our audience by modesty, but it will
+not be gracious if we are tedious.
+
+This expression "favor," signifies a gratuitous good-will, which we seek
+to obtain from the prince or the public. Gallantry has extended it to
+the complaisance of the ladies; and though we do not say that we have
+the favors of the king, we say that we have the favors of a lady.
+
+The equivalent to this expression is unknown in Asia, where the women
+possess less influence. Formerly, ribbons, gloves, buckles, and
+sword-knots given by a lady, were called favors. The earl of Essex wore
+a glove of Queen Elizabeth's in his hat, which he called the queen's
+favor.
+
+
+
+
+FAVORITE.
+
+
+This word has sometimes a bounded and sometimes an extended sense.
+"Favorite" sometimes conveys the idea of power; and sometimes it only
+signifies a man who pleases his master.
+
+Henry III. had favorites who were only play-things, and he had those who
+governed the state, as the dukes of Joyeuse and Épernon. A favorite may
+be compared to a piece of gold, which is valued at whatever the prince
+pleases.
+
+An ancient writer has asked, "Who ought to be the king's favorite?--the
+people!" Good poets are called the favorites of the muses, as prosperous
+men are called the favorites of fortune, because both are supposed to
+receive these gifts without laboring for them. It is thus, that a
+fertile and well-situated land is called the favorite of nature.
+
+The woman who pleases the sultan most is called the favorite sultana.
+Somebody has written the history of favorites; that is to say, the
+mistresses of the greatest princes.
+
+Several princes in Germany have country houses which they call
+favorites.
+
+A lady's favorite is now only to be found in romances and stories of the
+last century.
+
+
+
+
+FEASTS.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+A poor gentleman of the province of Hagenau, cultivated his small
+estate, and St. Ragonda, or Radegonda, was the patron of his parish.
+
+Now it happened, on the feast of St. Ragonda, that it was necessary to
+do something to this poor gentleman's field, without which great loss
+would be incurred. The master, with all his family, after having
+devoutly assisted at mass, went to cultivate his land, on which depended
+the subsistence of his family, while the rector and the other
+parishioners went to tipple as usual.
+
+The rector, while enjoying his glass, was informed of the enormous
+offence committed in his parish by this profane laborer, and went,
+burning with wine and anger, to seek the cultivator. "Sir, you are very
+insolent and very impious to dare to cultivate your field, instead of
+going to the tavern like other people." "I agree, sir," replied the
+gentleman, "that it is necessary to drink to the honor of the saint; but
+it is also necessary to eat, and my family would die of hunger if I did
+not labor." "Drink and die, then," said the vicar. "In what law, in what
+book is it so written?" said the laborer. "In Ovid," replied the vicar.
+"I think you are mistaken," said the gentleman; "in what part of Ovid
+have you read that I should go to the tavern rather than cultivate my
+field on St. Ragonda's day?"
+
+It should be remarked that both the gentleman and the pastor were well
+educated men. "Read the metamorphoses of the daughters of Minyas," said
+the vicar. "I have read it," replied the other, "and I maintain that
+they have no relation to my plough." "How, impious man! do you not
+remember that the daughters of Minyas were changed into bats for having
+spun on a feast day?" "The case is very different," replied the
+gentleman, "these ladies had not rendered any homage to Bacchus. I have
+been at the mass of St. Ragonda, you can have nothing to say to me; you
+cannot change me into a bat." "I will do worse," said the priest, "I
+will fine you." He did so. The poor gentleman was ruined: he quitted the
+country with his family--went into a strange one--became a Lutheran--and
+his ground remained uncultivated for several years.
+
+This affair was related to a magistrate of good sense and much piety.
+These are the reflections which he made upon it:
+
+"They were no doubt innkeepers," said he, "that invented this prodigious
+number of feasts; the religion of peasants and artisans consists in
+getting tipsy on the day of a saint, whom they only know by this kind of
+worship. It is on these days of idleness and debauchery that all crimes
+are committed; it is these feasts which fill the prisons, and which
+support the police officers, registers, lieutenants of police, and
+hangmen; the only excuse for feast-days among us. From this cause
+Catholic countries are scarcely-cultivated at all; whilst heretics, by
+daily cultivating their lands, produce abundant crops."
+
+It is all very well that the shoemakers should go in the morning to mass
+on St. Crispin's day, because _crepido_ signifies the upper leather of a
+shoe; that the brush-makers should honor St. Barbara their patron; that
+those who have weak eyes should hear the mass of St. Clara: that St.----
+should be celebrated in many provinces; but after having paid their
+devoirs to the saints they should become serviceable to men, they should
+go from the altar to the plough; it is the excess of barbarity, and
+insupportable slavery, to consecrate our days to idleness and vice.
+Priests, command, if it be necessary that the saints Roche, Eustace, and
+Fiacre, be prayed to in the morning; but, magistrates, order your fields
+to be cultivated as usual. It is labor that is necessary; the greater
+the industry the more the day is sanctified.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+Letter from a Weaver of Lyons to the Gentlemen of the Commission
+established at Paris, for the Reformation of Religious Orders, printed
+in the public papers in 1768.
+
+     "Gentlemen: I am a silk-weaver, and have worked at Lyons for
+     nineteen years. My wages have increased insensibly; at present I
+     get thirty-five sous per day. My wife, who makes lace, would get
+     fifteen more, if it were possible for her to devote her time to it;
+     but as the cares of the house, illness, or other things,
+     continually hinder her, I reduce her profit to ten sous, which
+     makes forty-five sous daily. If from the year we deduct eighty-two
+     Sundays, or holidays, we shall have two hundred and eighty-four
+     profitable days, which at forty-five sous make six hundred and
+     thirty-nine livres. That is my revenue; the following are my
+     expenses:
+
+     "I have eight living children, and my wife is on the point of being
+     confined with the eleventh; for I have lost two. I have been
+     married fifteen years: so that I annually reckon twenty-four livres
+     for the expenses of her confinements and baptisms, one hundred and
+     eight livres for two nurses, having generally two children out at
+     nurse, and sometimes even three. I pay fifty-seven livres rent and
+     fourteen taxes.
+
+     "My income is then reduced to four hundred and thirty-six livres,
+     or twenty-five sous three deniers a day, with which I have to
+     clothe and furnish my family, buy wood and candles, and support my
+     wife and six children.
+
+     "I look forward to holidays with dismay. I confess that I often
+     almost curse their institution. They could only have been
+     instituted by usurers and innkeepers.
+
+     "My father made me study hard in my youth, and wished me to become
+     a monk, showing me in that state a sure asylum against want; but I
+     always thought that every man owes his tribute to society, and that
+     monks are useless drones who live upon the labor of the bees.
+     Notwithstanding, I acknowledge that when I see John C----, with
+     whom I studied, and who was the most idle boy in the college,
+     possessing the first place among the _prémontrés_, I cannot help
+     regretting that I did not listen to my father's advice.
+
+     "This is the third holiday in Christmas, I have pawned the little
+     furniture I had, I am in a week's debt with my tradesman, and I
+     want bread--how are we to get over the fourth? This is not all; I
+     have the prospect of four more next week. Great God! Eight holidays
+     in ten days; you cannot have commanded it!
+
+     "One year I hoped that rents would diminish by the suppression of
+     one of the monasteries of the Capuchins and Cordeliers. What
+     useless houses in the centre of Lyons are those of the Jacobins,
+     nuns of St. Peter, etc. Why not establish them in the suburbs if
+     they are thought necessary? How many more useful inhabitants would
+     supply their places!
+
+     "All these reflections, gentlemen, have induced me to address
+     myself to you who have been chosen by the king for the task of
+     rectifying abuses. I am not the only one who thinks thus. How many
+     laborers in Lyons and other places, how many laborers in the
+     kingdom are reduced to the same extremities as myself? It is
+     evident that every holiday costs the state several millions
+     (livres). These considerations will lead you to take more to heart
+     the interests of the people, which are rather too little attended
+     to.
+
+     "I have the honor to be, etc.,
+
+     "BOCEN."
+
+This request, which was really presented, will not be misplaced in a
+work like the present.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+The feast given to the Roman people by Julius Cæsar and the emperors who
+succeeded him are well known. The feast of twenty-two thousand tables
+served by twenty-two thousand purveyors; the naval fights on artificial
+lakes, etc., have not, however, been imitated by the Herulian, Lombard,
+and Frankish chieftains, who would have their festivity equally
+celebrated.
+
+
+
+
+FERRARA.
+
+
+What we have to say of Ferrara has no relation to literature, but it has
+a very great one to justice, which is much more necessary than the
+belles-lettres, and much less cultivated, at least in Italy.
+
+Ferrara was constantly a fief of the empire, like Parma and Placentia.
+Pope Clement VIII. robbed Cæsar d'Este of it by force of arms, in 1597.
+The pretext for this tyranny was a very singular one for a man who
+called himself the humble vicar of Jesus Christ.
+
+Alphonso d'Este, the first of the name, sovereign of Ferrara, Modena,
+Este, Carpio, and Rovigno, espoused a simple gentlewoman of Ferrara,
+named Laura Eustochia, by whom he had three children before marriage.
+These children he solemnly acknowledged in the face of the Church. None
+of the formalities prescribed by the laws were wanting at this
+recognition. His successor, Alphonso d'Este, was acknowledged duke of
+Ferrara; he espoused Julia d'Urbino, the daughter of Francis, duke
+d'Urbino, by whom he had the unfortunate Cæsar d'Este, the incontestable
+heir of all the property of all the family, and declared so by the last
+duke, who died October 27, 1597. Pope Clement VIII., surnamed
+Aldobrandino, and originally of the family of a merchant of Florence,
+dared to pretend that the grandmother of Cæsar d'Este was not
+sufficiently noble, and that the children that she had brought into the
+world ought to be considered bastards. The first reason is ridiculous
+and scandalous in a bishop, the second is unwarrantable in every
+tribunal in Europe. If the duke was not legitimate, he ought to have
+lost Modena and his other states also; and if there was no flaw in his
+title, he ought to have kept Ferrara as well as Modena.
+
+The acquisition of Ferrara was too fine a thing for the pope not to
+procure all the decretals and decisions of those brave theologians, who
+declare that the pope can render just that which is unjust. Consequently
+he first excommunicated Cæsar d'Este, and as excommunication necessarily
+deprives a man of all his property, the common father of the faithful
+raised his troops against the excommunicated, to rob him of his
+inheritance in the name of the Church. These troops were defeated, but
+the duke of Modena soon saw his finances exhausted, and his friends
+become cool.
+
+To make his case still more deplorable, the king of France, Henry IV.,
+believed himself obliged to take the side of the pope, in order to
+balance the credit of Philip II. at the court of Rome; in the same
+manner that good King Louis XII. less excusably dishonored himself by
+uniting with that monster Alexander VI., and his execrable bastard, the
+duke of Borgia. The duke was obliged to return, and the pope caused
+Ferrara to be invaded by Cardinal Aldobrandino, who entered this
+flourishing city at the head of a thousand horse and five thousand foot
+soldiers.
+
+It is a great pity that such a man as Henry IV. descended to this
+unworthiness which is called politic. The Catos, Metelluses, Scipios,
+and Fabriciuses would not thus have betrayed justice to please a
+priest--and such a priest!
+
+From this time Ferrara became a desert; its uncultivated soil was
+covered with standing marshes. This province, under the house of Este,
+had been one of the finest in Italy; the people always regretted their
+ancient masters. It is true that the duke was indemnified; he was
+nominated to a bishopric and a benefice; he was even furnished with some
+measures of salt from the mines of Servia. But it is no less true that
+the house of Modena has incontestable and imprescriptable rights to the
+duchy of Ferrara, of which it was thus shamefully despoiled.
+
+Now, my dear reader, let us suppose that this scene took place at the
+time in which Jesus Christ appeared to his apostles after his
+resurrection, and that Simon Barjonas, surnamed Peter, wished to possess
+himself of the states of this poor duke of Ferrara. Imagine the duke
+coming to Bethany to demand justice of the Lord Jesus. Our Lord sends
+immediately for Peter and says to him, "Simon, son of Jonas, I have
+given thee the keys of heaven, but I have not given thee those of the
+earth. Because thou hast been told that the heavens surround the globe,
+and that the contained is in the containing, dost thou imagine that
+kingdoms here below belong to thee, and that thou hast only to possess
+thyself of whatever thou likest? I have already forbidden thee to draw
+the sword. Thou appearest to me a very strange compound; at one time
+cutting off the ear of Malchus, and at another even denying me. Be more
+lenient and decorous, and take neither the property nor the ears of any
+one for fear of thine own."
+
+
+
+
+FEVER.
+
+
+It is not as a physician, but as a patient, that I wish to say a word or
+two on fever. We cannot help now and then speaking of our enemies; and
+this one has been attacking me for more than twenty years; not Fréron
+himself has been more implacable.
+
+I ask pardon of Sydenham, who defined fever to be "an effort of nature,
+laboring with all its power to expel the peccant matter." We might thus
+define smallpox, measles, diarrhœa, vomitings, cutaneous eruptions,
+and twenty other diseases. But, if this physician defined ill, he
+practised well. He cured, because he had experience, and he knew how to
+wait.
+
+Boerhaave says, in his "Aphorisms": "A more frequent opposition, and an
+increased resistance about the capillary vessels, give an absolute idea
+of an acute fever." These are the words of a great master; but he sets
+out with acknowledging that the nature of fever is profoundly hidden.
+
+He does not tell us what that secret principle is which develops itself
+at regular periods in intermittent fever--what that internal poison is,
+which, after the lapse of a day, is renewed--where that flame is, which
+dies and revives at stated moments.
+
+We know fairly well that we are liable to fever after excess, or in
+unseasonable weather. We know that quinine, judiciously administered,
+will cure it. This is quite enough; the _how_ we do not know.
+
+Every animal that does not perish suddenly dies by fever. The fever
+seems to be the inevitable effect of the fluids that compose the blood,
+or that which is in the place of blood. The structure of every animal
+proves to natural philosophers that it must, at all times, have enjoyed
+a very short life.
+
+Theologians have held, as have promulgated other opinions. It is not for
+us to examine this question. The philosophers and physicians have been
+right _in sensu humano_, and the theologians, _in sensu divino_. It is
+said in Deuteronomy, xxviii, 22, that if the Jews do not serve the law
+they shall be smitten "with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an
+inflammation, and with an extreme burning." It is only in Deuteronomy,
+and in Molière's "Physician in Spite of Himself," that people have been
+threatened with fever.
+
+It seems impossible that fever should not be an accident natural to an
+animate body, in which so many fluids circulate; just as it is
+impossible for an animate body not to be crushed by the falling of a
+rock.
+
+Blood makes life; it furnishes the viscera, the limbs, the skin, the
+very extremities of the hairs and nails with the fluids, the humors
+proper for them.
+
+This blood, by which the animal has life, is formed by the chyle. During
+pregnancy this chyle is transmitted from the uterus to the child, and,
+after the child is born, the milk of the nurse produces this same chyle.
+The greater diversity of aliments it afterwards receives, the more the
+chyle is liable to be soured. This alone forming the blood, and this
+blood, composed of so many different humors so subject to corruption,
+circulating through the whole human body more than five hundred and
+fifty times in twenty-four hours, with the rapidity of a torrent, it is
+not only astonishing that fever is not more frequent, it is astonishing
+that man lives. In every articulation, in every gland, in every passage,
+there is danger of death; but there are also as many succors as there
+are dangers. Almost every membrane extends or contracts as occasion
+requires. All the veins have sluices which open and shut, giving passage
+to the blood and preventing a return, by which the machine would be
+destroyed. The blood, rushing through all these canals, purifies itself.
+It is a river that carries with it a thousand impurities; it discharges
+itself by perspiration, by transpiration, by all the secretions. Fever
+is itself a succor; it is a rectification when it does not kill.
+
+Man, by his reason, accelerates the cure by administering bitters, and,
+above all, by regimen. This reason is an oar with which he may row for
+some time on the sea of the world when disease does not swallow him up.
+
+It is asked: How is it that nature has abandoned the animals, her work,
+to so many horrible diseases, almost always accompanied by fever? How
+and why is it that so many disorders exist with so much order,
+formation, and destruction everywhere, side by side? This is a
+difficulty that often gives me a fever, but I beg you will read the
+letters of Memmius. Then, perhaps, you will be inclined to suspect that
+the incomprehensible artificer of vegetables, animals, and worlds,
+having made all for the best, could not have made anything better.
+
+
+
+
+FICTION.
+
+
+Is not a fiction, which teaches new and interesting truths, a fine
+thing? Do you not admire the Arabian story of the sultan who would not
+believe that a little time could appear long, and who disputed with his
+dervish on the nature of duration? The latter to convince him of it,
+begged him only to plunge his head for a moment into the basin in which
+he was washing. Immediately the sultan finds himself transported into a
+frightful desert; he is obliged to labor to get a livelihood; he
+marries, and has children who grow up and ill treat him; finally he
+returns to his country and his palace and he there finds the dervish who
+has caused him to suffer so many evils for five and twenty years. He is
+about to kill him, and is only appeased when he is assured that all
+passed in the moment in which, with his eyes shut, he put his head into
+the water.
+
+You still more admire the fiction of the loves of Dido and Æneas, which
+caused the mortal hatred between Carthage and Rome, as also that which
+exhibits in Elysium the destinies of the great men of the Roman Empire.
+
+You also like that of Alcina, in Ariosto, who possesses the dignity of
+Minerva with the beauty of Venus, who is so charming to the eyes of her
+lovers, who intoxicates them with voluptuous delights, and unites all
+the loves and graces, but who, when she is at last reduced to her true
+self and the enchantment has passed away, is nothing more than a little
+shrivelled, disgusting, old woman.
+
+As to fictions which represent nothing, teach nothing, and from which
+nothing results, are they anything more than falsities? And if they are
+incoherent and heaped together without choice, are they anything better
+than dreams?
+
+You will possibly tell me that there are ancient fictions which are very
+incoherent, without ingenuity, and even absurd, which are still admired;
+but is it not rather owing to the fine images which are scattered over
+these fictions than to the inventions which introduce them? I will not
+dispute the point, but if you would be hissed at by all Europe, and
+afterwards forgotten forever, write fictions similar to those which you
+admire.
+
+
+
+
+FIERTÉ.
+
+
+Fierté is one of those expressions, which, having been originally
+employed in an offensive sense, are afterwards used in a favorable one.
+It is censure when this word signifies high-flown, proud, haughty, and
+disdainful. It is almost praise when it means the loftiness of a noble
+mind.
+
+It is a just eulogium on a general who marches towards the enemy with
+_fierté_. Writers have praised the _fierté_ of the gait of Louis XIV.;
+they should have contented themselves with remarking its nobleness.
+
+_Fierté_, without dignity, is a merit incompatible with modesty. It is
+only _fierté_ in air and manners which offends; it then displeases, even
+in kings.
+
+_Fierté_ of manner in society is the expression of pride; _fierté_ of
+soul is greatness. The distinctions are so nice that a proud spirit is
+deemed blamable, while a proud soul is a theme of praise. By the former
+is understood one who thinks advantageously of himself while the latter
+denotes one who entertains elevated sentiments.
+
+_Fierté_, announced by the exterior, is so great a fault that the weak,
+who abjectly praise it in the great are obliged to soften it, or rather
+to extol it, by speaking of "this noble _fierté_." It is not simply
+vanity, which consists in setting a value upon little things; it is not
+presumption, which believes itself capable of great ones; it is not
+disdain, which adds contempt of others to a great opinion of self; but
+it is intimately allied to all these faults.
+
+This word is used in romances, poetry, and above all, in operas, to
+express the severity of female modesty. We meet with vain _fierté_,
+vigorous _fierté_, etc. Poets are, perhaps, more in the right than they
+imagine. The _fierté_ of a woman is not only rigid modesty and love of
+duty, but the high value which she sets upon her beauty. The _fierté_ of
+the pencil is sometimes spoken of to signify free and fearless touches.
+
+
+
+
+FIGURE.
+
+
+Every one desirous of instruction should read with attention all the
+articles in the "_Dictionnaire Encyclopédique_," under the head
+"Figure," viz.:
+
+"Figure of the Earth," by M. d'Alembert--a work both clear and profound,
+in which we find all that can be known on the subject.
+
+"Figure of Rhetoric," by César Dumarsais--a piece of instruction which
+teaches at once to think and to write; and, like many other articles,
+make us regret that young people in general have not a convenient
+opportunity of reading things so useful.
+
+"Human Figure," as relating to painting and sculpture--an excellent
+lesson given to every artist, by M. Watelet.
+
+"Figure," in physiology--a very ingenious article, by M. de Caberoles.
+
+"Figure," in arithmetic and in algebra--by M. Mallet.
+
+"Figure," in logic, in metaphysics, and in polite literature, by M. le
+Chevalier de Jaucourt--a man superior to the philosophers of antiquity,
+inasmuch as he has preferred retirement, real philosophy, and
+indefatigable labor, to all the advantages that his birth might have
+procured him, in a country where birth is set above all beside,
+excepting money.
+
+_Figure or Form of the Earth._
+
+Plato, Aristotle, Eratosthenes, Posidonius, and all the geometricians of
+Asia, of Egypt, and of Greece, having acknowledged the sphericity of our
+globe, how did it happen that we, for so long a time, imagined that the
+earth was a third longer than it was broad, and thence derived the terms
+"_longitude_" and "_latitude_," which continually bear testimony to our
+ancient ignorance?
+
+The reverence due to the "Bible," which teaches us so many truths more
+necessary and more sublime, was the cause of this, our almost universal
+error. It had been found, in Psalm ciii, that God had stretched the
+heavens over the earth like a skin; and as a skin is commonly longer
+than it is wide, the same was concluded of the earth.
+
+St. Athanasius expresses himself as warmly against good astronomers as
+against the partisans of Arius and Eusebius. "Let us," says he, "stop
+the mouths of those barbarians, who, speaking without proof, dare to
+assert that the heavens also extend under the earth." The fathers
+considered the earth as a great ship, surrounded by water, with the prow
+to the east, and the stern to the west. We still find, in "Cosmos," a
+work of the fourth century, a sort of geographical chart, in which the
+earth has this figure.
+
+Tortato, bishop of Avila, near the close of the fifteenth century,
+declares in his commentary on Genesis, that the Christian faith is
+shaken, if the earth is believed to be round. Columbus, Vespucius, and
+Magellan, not having the fear of excommunication by this learned bishop
+before their eyes, the earth resumed its rotundity in spite of him.
+
+Then man went from one extreme to the other, and the earth was regarded
+as a perfect sphere. But the error of the perfect sphere was the mistake
+of philosophers, while that of a long, flat earth was the blunder of
+idiots.
+
+When once it began to be clearly known that our globe revolves on its
+own axis every twenty-four hours, it might have been inferred from that
+alone that its form could not be absolutely round. Not only does the
+centrifugal zone considerably raise the waters in the region of the
+equator, by the motion of the diurnal rotation, but they are moreover
+elevated about twenty-five feet, twice a day, by the tides; the lands
+about the equator must then be perfectly inundated. But they are not so;
+therefore the region of the equator is much more elevated, in
+proportion, than the rest of the earth: then the earth is a spheroid
+elevated at the equator, and cannot be a perfect sphere. This proof,
+simple as it is, had escaped the greatest geniuses: because a universal
+prejudice rarely permits investigation.
+
+We know that, in 1762, in a voyage to Cayenne, near the line, undertaken
+by order of Louis XIV., under the auspices of Colbert, the patron of all
+the arts, Richer, among many other observations, found that the
+oscillations or vibrations of his timepiece did not continue so frequent
+as in the latitude of Paris, and that it was absolutely necessary to
+shorten the pendulum one line and something more than a quarter. Physics
+and geometry were at that time not nearly so much cultivated as they now
+are; what man would have believed that an observation so trivial in
+appearance, a line more or less, could lead to the knowledge of the
+greatest physical truths? It was first of all discovered that the weight
+must necessarily be less on the equator than in our latitudes, since
+weight alone causes the oscillation of a pendulum. Consequently, the
+weight of bodies being the less the farther they are from the centre of
+the earth, it was inferred that the region of the equator must be much
+more elevated than our own--much more remote from the centre; so the
+earth could not be an exact sphere.
+
+Many philosophers acted, on the occasion of these discoveries, as all
+men act when an opinion is to be changed--they disputed on Richer's
+experiment; they pretended that our pendulums made their vibrations more
+slowly about the equator only because the metal was lengthened by the
+heat; but it was seen that the heat of the most burning summer lengthens
+it but one line in thirty feet; and here was an elongation of a line and
+a quarter, a line and a half, or even two lines, in an iron rod, only
+three feet and eight lines long.
+
+Some years after MM. Varin, Deshayes, Feuillée, and Couplet, repeated
+the same experiment on the pendulum, near the equator; and it was always
+found necessary to shorten it, although the heat was very often less on
+the line than fifteen or twenty degrees from it. This experiment was
+again confirmed by the academicians whom Louis XV. sent to Peru; and who
+were obliged, on the mountains about Quito, where it froze, to shorten
+the second pendulum about two lines.
+
+About the same time, the academicians who went to measure an arc of the
+meridian in the north, found that at Pello, within the Polar circle, it
+was necessary to lengthen the pendulum, in order to have the same
+oscillations as at Paris: consequently weight is greater at the polar
+circle than in the latitude of France, as it is greater in our latitude
+than at the equator. Weight being greater in the north, the north was
+therefore nearer the centre of the earth than the equator; therefore the
+earth was flattened at the poles.
+
+Never did reasoning and experiment so fully concur to establish a truth.
+The celebrated Huygens, by calculating centrifugal forces, had proved
+that the consequent diminution of weight on the surface of a sphere was
+not great enough to explain the phenomena, and that therefore the earth
+must be a spheroid flattened at the poles. Newton, by the principles of
+attraction, had found nearly the same relations: only it must be
+observed, that Huygens believed this force inherent in bodies
+determining them towards the centre of the globe, to be everywhere the
+same. He had not yet seen the discoveries of Newton; so that he
+considered the diminution of weight by the theory of centrifugal forces
+only. The effect of centrifugal forces diminishes the primitive gravity
+on the equator. The smaller the circles in which this centrifugal force
+is exercised become, the more it yields to the force of gravity; thus,
+at the pole itself the centrifugal force being null, must leave the
+primitive gravity in full action. But this principle of a gravity always
+equal, falls to nothing before the discovery made by Newton, that a body
+transported, for instance, to the distance of ten diameters from the
+centre of the earth, would weigh one hundred times less than at the
+distance of one diameter.
+
+It is then by the laws of gravitation, combined with those of the
+centrifugal force, that the real form of the earth must be shown. Newton
+and Gregory had such confidence in this theory that they did not
+hesitate to advance that experiments on weight were a surer means of
+knowing the form of the earth than any geographical measurement.
+
+Louis XIV. had signalized his reign by that meridian which was drawn
+through France: the illustrious Dominico Cassini had begun it with his
+son; and had, in 1701, drawn from the feet of the Pyrenees to the
+observatory a line as straight as it could be drawn, considering the
+almost insurmountable obstacles which the height of mountains, the
+changes of refraction in the air, and the altering of instruments were
+constantly opposing to the execution of so vast and delicate an
+undertaking; he had, in 1701, measured six degrees eighteen minutes of
+that meridian. But, from whatever cause the error might proceed, he had
+found the degrees towards Paris, that is towards the north, shorter than
+those towards the Pyrenees and the south. This measurement gave the lie
+both to the theory of Norwood and to the new theory of the earth
+flattened at the poles. Yet this new theory was beginning to be so
+generally received that the academy's secretary did not hesitate, in his
+history of 1701, to say that the new measurements made in France proved
+the earth to be a spheroid flattened at the poles. The truth was, that
+Dominico Cassini's measurement led to a conclusion directly opposite;
+but, as the figure of the earth had not yet become a question in France,
+no one at that time was at the trouble of combating this false
+conclusion. The degrees of the meridian from Collioure to Paris were
+believed to be exactly measured; and the pole, which from that
+measurement must necessarily be elongated, was believed to be flattened.
+
+An engineer, named M. de Roubais, astonished at this conclusion,
+demonstrated that, by the measurements taken in France, the earth must
+be an oblate spheroid, of which the meridian passing through the poles
+must be longer than the equator, the poles being elongated. But of all
+the natural philosophers to whom he addressed his dissertation, not one
+would have it printed; because it seemed that the academy had pronounced
+it as too bold in an individual to raise his voice. Some time after the
+error of 1701 was acknowledged, that which had been said was unsaid; and
+the earth was lengthened by a just conclusion drawn from a false
+principle. The meridian was continued in the same principle from Paris
+to Dunkirk; and the degrees were still found to grow shorter as they
+approached the north. People were still mistaken respecting the figure
+of the earth, as they had been concerning the nature of light. About the
+same time, some mathematicians who were performing the same operations
+in China were astonished to find a difference among their degrees,
+which they had expected to find alike; and to discover, after many
+verifications, that they were shorter towards the north than towards the
+south. This accordance of the mathematicians of France with those of
+China was another powerful reason for believing in the oblate spheroid.
+In France they did still more; they measured parallels to the equator.
+It is easily understood that on an oblate spheroid our degrees of
+longitude must be shorter than on a sphere. M. de Cassini found the
+parallel which passes through St. Malo to be shorter by one thousand and
+thirty-seven toises than it would have been on a spherical earth.
+
+All these measurements proved that the degrees had been found as it was
+wished to find them. They overturned, for a time, in France, the
+demonstrations of Newton and Huygens; and it was no longer doubted that
+the poles were of a form precisely contrary to that which had at first
+been attributed to them. In short, nothing at all was known about the
+matter.
+
+At length, other academicians, who had visited the polar circle in 1736,
+having found, by new measurements, that the degree was longer there than
+in France, people doubted between them and the Cassinis. But these
+doubts were soon after removed: for these same astronomers, returning
+from the pole, examined afresh the degree to the north of Paris,
+measured by Picard, in 1677, and found it to be a hundred and
+twenty-three toises longer than it was according to Picard's
+measurement. If, then, Picard, with all his precautions, had made his
+degree one hundred and twenty-three toises too short, it was not at all
+unlikely that the degrees towards the south had in like manner been
+found too long. Thus the first error of Picard, having furnished the
+foundations for the measurements of the meridian, also furnished an
+excuse for the almost inevitable errors which very good astronomers
+might have committed in the course of these operations.
+
+Unfortunately, other men of science found that, at the Cape of Good
+Hope, the degrees of the meridian did not agree with ours. Other
+measurements, taken in Italy, likewise contradicted those of France, and
+all were falsified by those of China. People again began to doubt, and
+to suspect, in my opinion quite reasonably, that the earth had
+protuberances. As for the English, though they are fond of travelling,
+they spared themselves the fatigue, and held fast their theory.
+
+The difference between one diameter and the other is not more than five
+or six of our leagues--a difference immense in the eyes of a disputant,
+but almost imperceptible to those who consider the measurement of the
+globe only in reference to the purposes of utility which it may serve. A
+geographer could scarcely make this difference perceptible on a map; nor
+would a pilot be able to discover whether he was steering on a spheroid
+or on a sphere. Yet there have been men bold enough to assert that the
+lives of navigators depended on this question. Oh quackery! will you
+spare no degrees--not even those of the meridian?
+
+
+
+
+FIGURED--FIGURATIVE.
+
+
+We say, a truth "figured" by a fable, by a parable; the church "figured"
+by the young spouse in Solomon's Song; ancient Rome "figured" by
+Babylon. A figurative style is constituted by metaphorical expressions,
+figuring the things spoken of--and disfiguring them when the metaphors
+are not correct.
+
+Ardent imagination, passion, desire--frequently deceived--produce the
+figurative style. We do not admit it into history, for too many
+metaphors are hurtful, not only to perspicuity, but also to truth, by
+saying more or less than the thing itself.
+
+In didactic works, this style should be rejected. It is much more out of
+place in a sermon than in a funeral oration, because the sermon is a
+piece of instruction in which the truth is to be announced; while the
+funeral oration is a declaration in which it is to be exaggerated.
+
+The poetry of enthusiasm, as the epopee and the ode, is that to which
+this style is best adapted. It is less admissible in tragedy, where the
+dialogue should be natural as well as elevated; and still less in
+comedy, where the style must be more simple.
+
+The limits to be set to the figurative style, in each kind, are
+determined by taste. Baltasar Gracian says, that "our thoughts depart
+from the vast shores of memory, embark on the sea of imagination, arrive
+in the harbor of intelligence, and are entered at the custom house of
+the understanding."
+
+This is precisely the style of Harlequin. He says to his master, "The
+ball of your commands has rebounded from the racquet of my obedience."
+Must it not be owned that such is frequently that oriental style which
+people try to admire? Another fault of the figurative style is the
+accumulating of incoherent figures. A poet, speaking of some
+philosophers, has called them:
+
+                   _D'ambitieux pygmées_
+     _Qui sur leurs pieds vainement redressés_
+     _Et sur des monts d'argumens entassés_
+     _De jour en jour superbes Encelades,_
+     _Vont redoublant leurs folles escalades._
+
+When philosophers are to be written against, it should be done better.
+How do ambitious pygmies, reared on their hind legs on mountains of
+arguments, continue escalades? What a false and ridiculous image! What
+elaborate dulness!
+
+In an allegory by the same author, entitled the "Liturgy of Cytherea,"
+we find these lines:
+
+     _De toutes parts, autour de l'inconnue,_
+     _Ils vont tomber comme grêle menue,_
+     _Moissons des cœurs sur la terre jonchés,_
+     _Et des Dieux même à son char attachés._
+     _De par Venus nous venons cette affaire_
+     _Si s'en retourne aux cieux dans son sérail,_
+     _En ruminant comment il pourra faire_
+     _Pour ramener la brebis au bercail._
+
+Here we have harvests of hearts thrown on the ground like small hail;
+and among these hearts palpitating on the ground, are gods bound to the
+car of the unknown; while love, sent by Venus, ruminates in his seraglio
+in heaven, what he shall do to bring back to the fold this lost mutton
+surrounded by scattered hearts. All this forms a figure at once so
+false, so puerile, and so incoherent--so disgusting, so extravagant, so
+stupidly expressed, that we are astonished that a man, who made good
+verses of another kind, and was not devoid of taste, could write
+anything so miserably bad.
+
+Figures, metaphors, are not necessary in an allegory; what has been
+invented with imagination may be told with simplicity. Plato has more
+allegories than figures; he often expresses them elegantly and without
+ostentation.
+
+Nearly all the maxims of the ancient orientals and of the Greeks were in
+the figurative style. All those sentences are metaphors, or short
+allegories; and in them the figurative style has great effect in rousing
+the imagination and impressing the memory.
+
+We know that Pythagoras said, "In the tempest adore the echo," that is,
+during civil broils retire to the country; and "Stir not the fire with
+the sword," meaning, do not irritate minds already inflamed. In every
+language, there are many common proverbs which are in the figurative
+style.
+
+
+
+
+FIGURE IN THEOLOGY.
+
+
+It is quite certain, and is agreed by the most pious men, that figures
+and allegories have been carried too far. Some of the fathers of the
+church regard the piece of red cloth, placed by the courtesan Rahab at
+her window, for a signal to Joshua's spies, as a figure of the blood of
+Jesus Christ. This is an error of an order of mind which would find
+mystery in everything.
+
+Nor can it be denied that St. Ambrose made very bad use of his taste for
+allegory, when he says, in his book of "Noah and the Ark," that the back
+door of the ark was a figure of our hinder parts.
+
+All men of sense have asked how it can be proved that these Hebrew
+words, "_maher, salas-has-has_," (take quick the spoils) are a figure of
+Jesus Christ? How is Judah, tying his ass to a vine, and washing his
+cloak in the wine, also a figure of Him. How can Ruth, slipping into bed
+to Boaz, figure the church, how are Sarah and Rachel the church, and
+Hagar and Leah the synagogue? How, do the kisses of the Shunamite typify
+the marriage of the church? A volume might be made of these enigmas,
+which, to the best theologians of later times, have appeared to be
+rather far-fetched than edifying.
+
+The danger of this abuse is fully admitted by Abbé Fleury, the author of
+the "Ecclesiastical History." It is a vestige of rabbinism; a fault
+into which the learned St. Jerome never fell. It is like oneiromancy,
+or the explanation of dreams. If a girl sees muddy water, when dreaming,
+she will be ill-married; if she sees clear water, she will have a good
+husband; a spider denotes money, etc. In short, will enlightened
+posterity believe it? The understanding of dreams has, for more than
+four thousand years, been made a serious study.
+
+_Symbolical Figures._
+
+All nations have made use of them, as we have said in the article
+"emblem." But who began? Was it the Egyptians? It is not likely. We
+think we have already more than once proved that Egypt is a country
+quite new, and that many ages were requisite to save the country from
+inundations, and render it habitable. It is impossible that the
+Egyptians should have invented the signs of the zodiac, since the
+figures denoting our seed-time and harvest cannot coincide with theirs.
+When we cut our corn, their land is covered with water; and when we sow,
+their reaping time is approaching. Thus the bull of our zodiac and the
+girl bearing ears of corn cannot have come from Egypt.
+
+Here is also an evident proof of the falsity of the new paradox, that
+the Chinese are an Egyptian colony. The characters are not the same. The
+Chinese mark the course of the sun by twenty-eight constellations and
+the Egyptians, after the Chaldæans, reckoned only twelve, like
+ourselves.
+
+The figures that denote the planets are in China and in India all
+different from those of Egypt and of Europe; so are the signs of the
+metals; so is the method of guiding the hand in writing. Nothing could
+have been more chimerical than to send the Egyptians to people China.
+
+All these fabulous foundations, laid in fabulous times, have caused an
+irreparable loss of time to a prodigious multitude of the learned, who
+have all been bewildered in their laborious researches, which might have
+been serviceable to mankind if directed to arts of real utility.
+
+Pluche, in his History, or rather his fable, of the Heavens, assures us
+that Ham, son of Noah, went and reigned in Egypt, where there was nobody
+to reign over; that his son Menes was the greatest of legislators, and
+that Thoth was his prime minister.
+
+According to him and his authorities, this Thoth, or somebody else,
+instituted feasts in honor of the deluge; and the joyful cry of "_Io
+Bacche_," so famous among the Greeks, was, among the Egyptians, a
+lamentation. "_Bacche_" came from the Hebrew "_beke_" signifying _sobs_,
+and that at a time when the Hebrew people did not exist. According to
+this explanation, "_joy_" means "_sorrow_," and "_to sing_" signifies
+"_to weep_."
+
+The Iroquois have more sense. They do not take the trouble to inquire
+what passed on the shores of Lake Ontario some thousand years ago:
+instead of making systems, they go hunting.
+
+The same authors affirm that the sphinxes, with which Egypt was adorned,
+signified superabundance, because some interpreters have asserted that
+the Hebrew word "_spang_" meant an "excess"; as if the Egyptians had
+taken lessons from the Hebrew tongue, which is, in great part, derived
+from the Phœnician: besides, what relation has a sphinx to an
+abundance of water? Future schoolmen will maintain, with greater
+appearance of reason, that the masks which decorate the keystones of our
+windows are emblems of our masquerades; and that these fantastic
+ornaments announced that balls were given in every house to which they
+were affixed.
+
+_Figure, Figurative, Allegorical, Mystical, Topological, Typical, etc._
+
+This is often the art of finding in books everything but what they
+really contain. For instance, Romulus killing his brother Remus shall
+signify the death of the duke of Berry, brother of Louis XI.; Regulus,
+imprisoned at Carthage, shall typify St. Louis captive at Mansurah.
+
+It is very justly remarked in the "Encyclopædia," that many fathers of
+the church have, perhaps, carried this taste for allegorical figures a
+little too far; but they are to be reverenced, even in their wanderings.
+If the holy fathers used and then abused this method, their little
+excesses of imagination may be pardoned, in consideration of their holy
+zeal.
+
+The antiquity of the usage may also be pleaded in justification, since
+it was practised by the earliest philosophers. But it is true that the
+symbolical figures employed by the fathers are in a different taste.
+
+For example: When St. Augustine wishes to make it appear that the
+forty-two generations of the genealogy of Jesus are announced by St.
+Matthew, who gives only forty-one, he says that Jechonias must be
+counted twice, because Jechonias is a corner-stone belonging to two
+walls; that these two walls figure the old and the new law; and that
+Jechonias, being thus the corner-stone, figures Jesus Christ, who is the
+real corner-stone.
+
+The same saint, in the same sermon, says that the number forty must
+prevail; and at once abandons Jechonias and his corner-stone, counted as
+two. The number forty, he says, signifies life; ten, which is perfect
+beatitude, being multiplied by four, which, being the number of the
+seasons, figures time.
+
+Again, in the same sermon, he explains why St. Luke gives Jesus Christ
+seventy-seven ancestors: fifty-six up to the patriarch Abraham, and
+twenty-one from Abraham up to God himself. It is true that, according to
+the Hebrew text, there would be but seventy-six; for the Hebrew does not
+reckon a Cainan, who is interpolated in the Greek translation called
+"The Septuagint."
+
+Thus said Augustine: "The number seventy-seven figures the abolition of
+all sins by baptism.... the number ten signifies justice and beatitude,
+resulting from, the creature, which makes seven with the Trinity, which
+is three: therefore it is that God's commandments are ten in number. The
+number eleven denotes sin, because it transgresses ten.... This number
+seventy-seven is the product of eleven, figuring sin, multiplied by
+seven, and not by ten, for seven is the symbol of the creature. Three
+represents the soul, which is in some sort an image of the Divinity; and
+four represents the body, on account of its four qualities." In these
+explanations, we find some trace of the cabalistic mysteries and the
+quaternary of Pythagoras. This taste was very long in vogue.
+
+St. Augustine goes much further, concerning the dimensions of matter.
+Breadth is the dilatation of the heart, which performs good works;
+length is perseverance; depth is the hope of reward. He carries the
+allegory very far, applying it to the cross, and drawing great
+consequences therefrom. The use of these figures had passed from the
+Jews to the Christians long before St. Augustine's time. It is not for
+us to know within what bounds it was right to stop.
+
+The examples of this fault are innumerable. No one who has studied to
+advantage will hazard the introduction of such figures, either in the
+pulpit or in the school. We find no such instances among the Romans or
+the Greeks, not even in their poets.
+
+In Ovid's "Metamorphoses" themselves, we find only ingenious deductions
+drawn from fables which are given as fables. Deucalion and Pyrrha threw
+stones behind them between their legs, and men were produced therefrom.
+Ovid says:
+
+     _Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum,_
+     _Et documenta damus qua simus origine nati._
+
+     Thence we are a hardened and laborious race,
+     Proving full well our stony origin.
+
+Apollo loves Daphne, but Daphne does not love Apollo. This is because
+love has two kinds of arrows; the one golden and piercing, the other
+leaden and blunt. Apollo has received in his heart a golden arrow,
+Daphne a leaden one.
+
+     _Ecce sagittifera prompsit duo tela pharetra_
+     _Diversorum operum; fugat hoc, facit illud amorem_
+     _Quod facit auratum est, et cuspide fulget acuta;_
+     _Quod fugat obtusum est, et habet sub arundine plumbum...._
+
+     Two different shafts he from his quiver draws;
+     One to repel desire, and one to cause.
+     One shaft is pointed with refulgent gold,
+     To bribe the love, and make the lover bold;
+     One blunt and tipped with lead, whose base allay
+     Provokes disdain, and drives desire away.--DRYDEN.
+
+These figures are all ingenious, and deceive no one.
+
+That Venus, the goddess of beauty, should not go unattended by the
+Graces, is a charming truth. These fables, which were in the mouths of
+all--these allegories, so natural and attractive--had so much sway over
+the minds of men, that perhaps the first Christians imitated while they
+opposed them.
+
+They took up the weapons of mythology to destroy it, but they could not
+wield them with the same address. They did not reflect that the sacred
+austerity of our holy religion placed these resources out of their
+power, and that a Christian hand would have dealt but awkwardly with the
+lyre of Apollo.
+
+However, the taste for these typical and prophetic figures was so firmly
+rooted that every prince, every statesman, every pope, every founder of
+an order, had allegories or allusions taken from the Holy Scriptures
+applied to him. Satire and flattery rivalled each other in drawing from
+this source.
+
+When Pope Innocent III. made a bloody crusade against the court of
+Toulouse, he was told, "_Innocens eris a maledictione_." When the order
+of the Minimes was established, it appeared that their founder had been
+foretold in Genesis: "_Minimus cum patre nostro_."
+
+The preacher who preached before John of Austria after the celebrated
+battle of Lepanto, took for his text, "_Fuit homo missus a Deo, cui
+nomen erat Johannes_;" A man sent from God, whose name was John; and
+this allusion was very fine, if all the rest were ridiculous. It is said
+to have been repeated for John Sobieski, after the deliverance of
+Vienna; but this latter preacher was nothing more than a plagiarist.
+
+In short, so constant has been this custom that no preacher of the
+present day has ever failed to take an allegory for his text. One of the
+most happy instances is the text of the funeral oration over the duke of
+Candale, delivered before his sister, who was considered a pattern of
+virtue: "_Die, quia soror, mea es, ut mihi bene eveniat propter,
+te_."--"Say, I pray thee, that thou art my sister, that it may be well
+with me for thy sake."
+
+It is not to be wondered at that the Cordeliers carried these figures
+rather too far in favor of St. Francis of Assisi, in the famous but
+little-known book, entitled, "Conformities of St. Francis of Assisi with
+Jesus Christ." We find in it sixty-four predictions of the coming of St.
+Francis, some in the Old Testament, others in the New; and each
+prediction contains three figures, which signify the founding of the
+Cordeliers. So that these fathers find themselves foretold in the Bible
+a hundred and ninety-two times.
+
+From Adam down to St. Paul, everything prefigured the blessed Francis of
+Assisi. The Scriptures were given to announce to the universe the
+sermons of Francis to the quadrupeds, the fishes, and the birds, the
+sport he had with a woman of snow, his frolics with the devil, his
+adventures with brother Elias and brother Pacificus.
+
+These pious reveries, which amounted even to blasphemy, have been
+condemned. But the Order of St. Francis has not suffered by them, having
+renounced these extravagancies so common to the barbarous ages.
+
+
+
+
+FINAL CAUSES.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+Virgil says ("Æneid," book vi. 727):
+
+     _Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet._
+
+     This active mind infused, through all the space
+     Unites and mingles with the mighty mass.--DRYDEN.
+
+Virgil said well: and Benedict Spinoza, who has not the brilliancy of
+Virgil, nor his merit, is compelled to acknowledge an intelligence
+presiding over all. Had he denied this, I should have said to him:
+Benedict, you are a fool; you possess intelligence, and you deny it, and
+to whom do you deny it?
+
+In the year 1770, there appeared a man, in some respects far superior to
+Spinoza, as eloquent as the Jewish Hollander is dry, less methodical,
+but infinitely more perspicuous; perhaps equal to him in mathematical
+science; but without the ridiculous affectation of applying mathematical
+reasonings to metaphysical and moral subjects. The man I mean is the
+author of the "System of Nature." He assumed the name of Mirabaud, the
+secretary of the French Academy. Alas! the worthy secretary was
+incapable of writing a single page of the book of our formidable
+opponent. I would recommend all you who are disposed to avail yourselves
+of your reason and acquire instruction, to read the following eloquent
+though dangerous passage from the "System of Nature." (Part II. v. 153.)
+
+It is contended that animals furnish us with a convincing evidence that
+there is some powerful cause of their existence; the admirable
+adaptation of their different parts, mutually receiving and conferring
+aid towards accomplishing their functions, and maintaining in health and
+vigor the entire being, announce to us an artificer uniting power to
+wisdom. Of the power of nature, it is impossible for us to doubt; she
+produces all the animals that we see by the help of combinations of that
+matter, which is in incessant action; the adaptation of the parts of
+these animals is the result of the necessary laws of their nature, and
+of their combination. When the adaptation ceases, the animal is
+necessarily destroyed. What then becomes of the wisdom, the
+intelligence, or the goodness of that alleged cause, to which was
+ascribed all the honor of this boasted adaptation? Those animals of so
+wonderful a structure as to be pronounced the works of an immutable God,
+do not they undergo incessant changes; and do not they end in decay and
+destruction? Where is the wisdom, the goodness, the fore-sight, the
+immutability of an artificer, whose sole object appears to be to derange
+and destroy the springs of those machines which are proclaimed to be
+masterpieces of his power and skill? If this God cannot act otherwise
+than thus, he is neither free nor omnipotent. If his will changes, he is
+not immutable. If he permits machines, which he has endowed with
+sensibility, to experience pain, he is deficient in goodness. If he has
+been unable to render his productions solid and durable, he is deficient
+in skill. Perceiving as we do the decay and ruin not only of all
+animals, but of all the other works of deity, we cannot but inevitably
+conclude, either that everything performed in the course of nature is
+absolutely necessary--the unavoidable result of its imperative and
+insuperable laws, or that the artificer who impels her various
+operations is destitute of plan, of power, of constancy, of skill, and
+of goodness.
+
+"Man, who considers himself the master-work of the Divinity, supplies us
+more readily and completely than any other production, with evidence of
+the incapacity or malignity of his pretended author. In this being,
+possessed of feeling, intuition, and reason, which considers itself as
+the perpetual object of divine partiality, and forms its God on the
+model of itself, we see a machine more changeable, more frail, more
+liable to derangement from its extraordinary complication, than that of
+the coarsest and grossest beings. Beasts, which are destitute of our
+mental powers and acquirements; plants, which merely vegetate; stones,
+which are unendowed with sensation, are, in many respects, beings far
+more favored than man. They are, at least, exempt from distress of mind,
+from the tortures of thought, and corrosions of care, to which the
+latter is a victim. Who would not prefer being a mere unintelligent
+animal, or a senseless stone, when his thoughts revert to the
+irreparable loss of an object dearly beloved? Would it not be infinitely
+more desirable to be an inanimate mass, than the gloomy votary and
+victim of superstition, trembling under the present yoke of his
+diabolical deity, and anticipating infinite torments in a future
+existence? Beings destitute of sensation, life, memory, and thought
+experience no affliction from the idea of what is past, present, or to
+come; they do not believe there is any danger of incurring eternal
+torture for inaccurate reasoning; which is believed, however, by many of
+those favored beings who maintain that the great architect of the world
+has created the universe for themselves.
+
+[Illustration: NATURE IS NOT A WORK]
+
+"Let us not be told that we have no idea of a work without having that
+of the artificer distinguished from the work. _Nature is not a work._
+She has always existed of herself. Every process takes place in her
+bosom. She is an immense manufactory, provided with materials, and she
+forms the instruments by which she acts; all her works are effects of
+her own energy, and of agents or causes which she frames, contains, and
+impels. Eternal, uncreated elements--elements indestructible, ever in
+motion, and combining in exquisite and endless diversity, originate all
+the beings and all the phenomena that we behold; all the effects, good
+or evil, that we feel; the order or disorder which we distinguish,
+merely by different modes in which they affect ourselves; and, in a
+word, all those wonders which excite our meditation and confound our
+reasoning. These elements, in order to effect objects thus comprehensive
+and important, require nothing beyond their own properties, individual
+or combined, and the motion essential to their very existence; and thus
+preclude the necessity of recurring to an unknown artificer, in order to
+arrange, mould, combine, preserve, and dissolve them.
+
+"But, even admitting for a moment, that it is impossible to conceive of
+the universe without an artificer who formed it, and who preserves and
+watches over his work, where shall we place that artificer? Shall he be
+within or without the universe? Is he matter or motion? Or is he mere
+space, nothingness, vacuity? In each of these cases, he will either be
+nothing, or he will be comprehended in nature, and subjected to her
+laws. If he is in nature, I think I see in her only matter in motion,
+and cannot but thence conclude that the agent impelling her is corporeal
+and material, and that he is consequently liable to dissolution. If this
+agent is out of nature, then I have no idea of what place he can occupy,
+nor of an immaterial being, nor of the manner in which a spirit, without
+extension, can operate upon the matter from which it is separated. Those
+unknown tracts of space which imagination has placed beyond the visible
+world may be considered as having no existence for a being who can
+scarcely see to the distance of his own feet; the ideal power which
+inhabits them can never be represented to my mind, unless when my
+imagination combines at random the fantastic colors which it is always
+forced to employ in the world on which I am. In this case, I shall
+merely reproduce in idea what my senses have previously actually
+perceived; and that God, which I, as it were, compel myself to
+distinguish from nature, and to place beyond her circuit, will ever, in
+opposition to all my efforts, necessarily withdraw within it.
+
+"It will be observed and insisted upon by some that if a statue or a
+watch were shown to a savage who had never seen them, he would
+inevitably acknowledge that they were the productions of some
+intelligent agent, more powerful and ingenious than himself; and hence
+it will be inferred that we are equally bound to acknowledge that the
+machine of the universe, that man, that the phenomena of nature, are the
+productions of an agent, whose intelligence and power are far superior
+to our own.
+
+"I answer, in the first place, that we cannot possibly doubt either the
+great power or the great skill of nature; we admire her skill as often
+as we are surprised by the extended, varied and complicated effects
+which we find in those of her works that we take the pains to
+investigate; she is not, however, either more or less skilful in any one
+of her works than in the rest. We no more comprehend how she could
+produce a stone or a piece of metal than how she could produce a head
+organized like that of Newton. We call that man skilful who can perform
+things which we are unable to perform ourselves. Nature can perform
+everything; and when anything exists, it is a proof that she was able to
+make it. Thus, it is only in relation to ourselves that we ever judge
+nature to be skilful; we compare it in those cases with ourselves; and,
+as we possess a quality which we call intelligence, by the aid of which
+we produce works, in which we display our skill, we thence conclude that
+the works of nature, which must excite our astonishment and admiration,
+are not in fact hers, but the productions of an artificer, intelligent
+like ourselves, and whose intelligence we proportion, in our minds, to
+the degree of astonishment excited in us by his works; that is, in fact,
+to our own weakness and ignorance."
+
+See the reply to these arguments under the articles on "Atheism" and
+"God," and in the following section, written long before the "System of
+Nature."
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+If a clock is not made in order to tell the time of the day, I will then
+admit that final causes are nothing but chimeras, and be content to go
+by the name of a final-cause-finder--in plain language, fool--to the end
+of my life.
+
+All the parts, however, of that great machine, the world, seem made for
+one another. Some philosophers affect to deride final causes, which were
+rejected, they tell us, by Epicurus and Lucretius. But it seems to me
+that Epicurus and Lucretius rather merit the derision. They tell you
+that the eye is not made to see; but that, since it was found out that
+eyes were capable of being used for that purpose, to that purpose they
+have been applied. According to them, the mouth is not formed to speak
+and eat, nor the stomach to digest, nor the heart to receive the blood
+from the veins and impel it through the arteries, nor the feet to walk,
+nor the ears to hear. Yet, at the same time, these very shrewd and
+consistent persons admitted that tailors made garments to clothe them,
+and masons built houses to lodge them; and thus ventured to deny
+nature--the great existence, the universal intelligence--what they
+conceded to the most insignificant artificers employed by themselves.
+
+The doctrine of final causes ought certainly to be preserved from being
+abused. We have already remarked that M. le Prieur, in the "Spectator of
+Nature," contends in vain that the tides were attached to the ocean to
+enable ships to enter more easily into their ports, and to preserve the
+water from corruption; he might just as probably and successfully have
+urged that legs were made to wear boots, and noses to bear spectacles.
+
+In order to satisfy ourselves of the truth of a final cause, in any
+particular instance, it is necessary that the effect produced should be
+uniform and invariably in time and place. Ships have not existed in all
+times and upon all seas; accordingly, it cannot be said that the ocean
+was made for ships. It is impossible not to perceive how ridiculous it
+would be to maintain that nature had toiled on from the very beginning
+of time to adjust herself to the inventions of our fortuitous and
+arbitrary arts, all of which are of so late a date in their discovery;
+but it is perfectly clear that if noses were not made for spectacles,
+they were made for smelling, and there have been noses ever since there
+were men. In the same manner, hands, instead of being bestowed for the
+sake of gloves, are visibly destined for all those uses to which the
+metacarpus, the phalanges of the fingers, and the movements of the
+circular muscle of the wrist, render them applicable by us. Cicero, who
+doubted everything else, had no doubt about final causes.
+
+It appears particularly difficult to suppose that those parts of the
+human frame by which the perpetuation of the species is conducted should
+not, in fact, have been intended and destined for that purpose, from
+their mechanism so truly admirable, and the sensation which nature has
+connected with it more admirable still. Epicurus would be at least
+obliged to admit that pleasure is divine, and that that pleasure is a
+final cause, in consequence of which beings, endowed with sensibility,
+but who could never have communicated it to themselves, have been
+incessantly introduced into the world as others have passed away from
+it.
+
+This philosopher, Epicurus, was a great man for the age in which he
+lived. He saw that Descartes denied what Gassendi affirmed and what
+Newton demonstrated--that motion cannot exist without a vacuum. He
+conceived the necessity of atoms to serve as constituent parts of
+invariable species. These are philosophical ideas. Nothing, however,
+was more respectable than the morality of genuine Epicureans; it
+consisted in sequestration from public affairs, which are incompatible
+with wisdom, and in friendship, without which life is but a burden. But
+as to the rest of the philosophy of Epicurus, it appears not to be more
+admissible than the grooved or tubular matter of Descartes. It is, as it
+appears to me, wilfully to shut the eyes and the understanding, and to
+maintain that there is no design in nature; and if there is design,
+there is an intelligent cause--there exists a God.
+
+Some point us to the irregularities of our globe, the volcanoes, the
+plains of moving sand, some small mountains swallowed up in the ocean,
+others raised by earthquakes, etc. But does it follow from the naves of
+your chariot wheel taking fire, that your chariot was not made expressly
+for the purpose of conveying you from one place to another?
+
+The chains of mountains which crown both hemispheres, and more than six
+hundred rivers which flow from the foot of these rocks towards the sea;
+the various streams that swell these rivers in their courses, after
+fertilizing the fields through which they pass; the innumerable
+fountains which spring from the same source, which supply necessary
+refreshment, and growth, and beauty to animal and vegetable life; all
+this appears no more to result from a fortuitous concourse and an
+obliquity of atoms, than the retina which receives the rays of light, or
+the crystalline humor which refracts it, or the drum of the ear which
+admits sound, or the circulation of the blood in our veins, the systole
+and diastole of the heart, the regulating principle of the machine of
+life.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+It would appear that a man must be supposed to have lost his senses
+before he can deny that stomachs are made for digestion, eyes to see,
+and ears to hear.
+
+On the other hand, a man must have a singular partiality for final
+causes, to assert that stone was made for building houses, and that
+silkworms are produced in China that we may wear satins in Europe.
+
+But, it is urged, if God has evidently done one thing by design, he has
+then done all things by design. It is ridiculous to admit Providence in
+the one case and to deny it in the others. Everything that is done was
+foreseen, was arranged. There is no arrangement without an object, no
+effect without a cause; all, therefore, is equally the result, the
+product of the final cause; it is, therefore, as correct to say that
+noses were made to bear spectacles, and fingers to be adorned with
+rings, as to say that the ears were formed to hear sounds, the eyes to
+receive light.
+
+All that this objection amounts to, in my opinion, is that everything is
+the result, nearer or more remote, of a general final cause; that
+everything is the consequence of eternal laws. When the effects are
+invariably the same in all times and places, and when these uniform
+effects are independent of the beings to which they attach, then there
+is visibly a final cause.
+
+All animals have eyes and see; all have ears and hear; all have mouths
+with which they eat; stomachs, or something similar, by which they
+digest their food; all have suitable means for expelling the fæces; all
+have the organs requisite for the continuation of their species; and
+these natural gifts perform their regular course and process without any
+application or intermixture of art. Here are final causes clearly
+established; and to deny a truth so universal would be a perversion of
+the faculty of reason.
+
+But stones, in all times and places, do not constitute the materials of
+buildings. All noses do not bear spectacles; all fingers do not carry a
+ring; all legs are not covered with silk stockings. A silkworm,
+therefore, is not made to cover my legs, exactly as your mouth is made
+for eating, and another part of your person for the "garderobe." There
+are, therefore, we see, immediate effects produced from final causes,
+and effects of a very numerous description, which are remote productions
+from those causes.
+
+Everything belonging to nature is uniform, immutable, and the immediate
+work of its author. It is he who has established the laws by which the
+moon contributes three-fourths to the cause of the flux and reflux of
+the ocean, and the sun the remaining fourth. It is he who has given a
+rotatory motion to the sun, in consequence of which that orb
+communicates its rays of light in the short space of seven minutes and a
+half to the eyes of men, crocodiles, and cats.
+
+But if, after a course of ages, we started the inventions of shears and
+spits, to clip the wool of sheep with the one, and with the other to
+roast in order to eat them, what else can be inferred from such
+circumstances, but that God formed us in such a manner that, at some
+time or other, we could not avoid becoming ingenious and carnivorous?
+
+Sheep, undoubtedly, were not made expressly to be roasted and eaten,
+since many nations abstain from such food with horror. Mankind are not
+created essentially to massacre one another, since the Brahmins, and the
+respectable primitives called Quakers, kill no one. But the clay out of
+which we are kneaded frequently produces massacres, as it produces
+calumnies, vanities, persecutions, and impertinences. It is not
+precisely that the formation of man is the final cause of our madnesses
+and follies, for a final cause is universal, and invariable in every age
+and place; but the horrors and absurdities of the human race are not at
+all the less included in the eternal order of things. When we thresh our
+corn, the flail is the final cause of the separation of the grain. But
+if that flail, while threshing my grain, crushes to death a thousand
+insects, that occurs not by an express and determinate act of my will,
+nor, on the other hand, is it by mere chance; the insects were, on this
+occasion, actually under my flail, and could not but be there.
+
+It is a consequence of the nature of things that a man should be
+ambitious; that he should enroll and discipline a number of other men;
+that he should be a conqueror, or that he should be defeated; but it can
+never be said that the man was created by God to be killed in war.
+
+The organs with which nature has supplied us cannot always be final
+causes in action. The eyes which are bestowed for seeing are not
+constantly open. Every sense has its season for repose. There are some
+senses that are even made no use of. An imbecile and wretched female,
+for example, shut up in a cloister at the age of fourteen years, mars
+one of the final causes of her existence; but the cause, nevertheless,
+equally exists, and whenever it is free it will operate.
+
+
+
+
+FINESSE, FINENESS, ETC.
+
+_Of the Different Significations of the Word._
+
+
+Fineness either in its proper or its figurative sense does not signify
+either light, slender, fine, or of a rare thin texture; this word
+expresses something delicate and finished. Light cloth, soft linen, thin
+lace, or slender galloon, are not always fine.
+
+This word has a relation to the verb "to finish," whence come the
+finishings of art; thus, we say, the finishings of Vanderwerff's pencil
+or of Mieris; we say, a fine horse, fine gold, a fine diamond. A fine
+horse is opposed to a clumsy one; the fine diamond to a false one; fine
+or refined gold to gold mixed with alloy.
+
+Fineness is generally applied to delicate things and lightness of
+manufacture. Although we say a fine horse, we seldom say, "the fineness
+of a horse." We speak of the fineness of hair, lace, or stuff. When by
+this word we should express the fault or wrong use of anything, we add
+the adverb "too"; as--This thread is broken, it was too fine; this stuff
+is too fine for the season.
+
+Fineness or finesse, in a figurative sense, applies to conduct, speech,
+and works of mind. In conduct, finesse always expresses, as in the arts,
+something delicate or subtile; it may sometimes exist without ability,
+but it is very rarely unaccompanied by a little deception; politics
+admit it, and society reproves it.
+
+Finesse is not exactly subtlety; we draw a person into a snare with
+finesse; we escape from it with subtlety. We act with finesse, and we
+play a subtle trick. Distrust is inspired by an unsparing use of
+finesse; yet we almost always deceive ourselves if we too generally
+suspect it.
+
+Finesse, in works of wit, as in conversation, consists in the art of not
+expressing a thought clearly, but leaving it so as to be easily
+perceived. It is an enigma to which people of sense readily find the
+solution.
+
+A chancellor one day offering his protection to parliament, the first
+president turning towards the assembly, said: "Gentlemen, thank the
+chancellor; he has given us more than we demanded of him"--a very witty
+reproof.
+
+Finesse, in conversation and writing, differs from delicacy; the first
+applies equally to piquant and agreeable things, even to blame and
+praise; and still more to indecencies, over which a veil is drawn,
+through which we cannot penetrate without a blush. Bold things may be
+said with finesse.
+
+Delicacy expresses soft and agreeable sentiments and ingenious praise;
+thus finesse belongs more to epigram, and delicacy to madrigal. It is
+delicacy which enters into a lover's jealousies, and not finesse.
+
+The praises given to Louis XIV. by Despréaux are not always equally
+delicate; satires are not always sufficiently ingenious in the way of
+finesse. When Iphigenia, in Racine, has received from her father the
+order never to see Achilles more, she cries: "_Dieux plus doux, vous
+n'aviez demandé que ma vie!_"--"More gentle gods, you only ask my life!"
+The true character of this partakes rather of delicacy than of finesse.
+
+
+
+
+FIRE.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+Is fire anything more than an element which lights, warms, and burns us?
+Is not light always fire, though fire is not always light? And is not
+Boerhaave in the right?
+
+Is not the purest fire extracted from our combustibles, always gross,
+and partaking of the bodies consumed, and very different from elementary
+fire? How is fire distributed throughout nature, of which it is the
+soul?
+
+     _Ignis ubique latet, naturam amplectitur omnem,_
+     _Cuncta parit, renovat, dividit, unit, alit._
+
+Why did Newton, in speaking of rays of light, always say, "_De natura
+radiorum lucis, utrum corpora sint necne non disputamus_"; without
+examining whether they were bodies or not?
+
+Did he only speak geometrically? In that case, this doubt was useless.
+It is evident that he doubted of the nature of elementary fire, and
+doubted with reason.
+
+Is elementary fire a body like others, as earth and water? If it was a
+body of this kind, would it not gravitate like all other matter? Would
+it escape from the luminous body in the right line? Would it have a
+uniform progression? And why does light never move out of a right line
+when it is unimpeded in its rapid course?
+
+May not elementary fire have properties of matter little known to us,
+and properties of substance entirely so? May it not be a medium between
+matter and substances of another kind? And who can say that there are
+not a million of these substances? I do not say that there are, but I
+say it is not proved that there may not be.
+
+It was very difficult to believe about a hundred years ago that bodies
+acted upon one another, not only without touching, and without emission,
+but at great distances; it is, however, found to be true, and is no
+longer doubted. At present, it is difficult to believe that the rays of
+the sun are penetrable by each other, but who knows what may happen to
+prove it?
+
+However that may be, I wish, for the novelty of the thing, that this
+incomprehensible penetrability could be admitted. Light has something so
+divine that we should endeavor to make it a step to the discovery of
+substances still more pure.
+
+Come to my aid, Empedocles and Democritus; come and admire the wonders
+of electricity; see if the sparks which traverse a thousand bodies in
+the twinkling of an eye are of ordinary matter; judge if elementary fire
+does not contract the heart, and communicate that warmth which gives
+life! Judge if this element is not the source of all sensation, and if
+sensation is not the origin of thought; though ignorant and insolent
+pedants have condemned the proposition, as one which should be
+persecuted.
+
+Tell me, if the Supreme Being, who presides over all nature, cannot
+forever preserve these elementary atoms which he has so rarely endowed?
+_"Igneus est ollis vigor et cœlestis origo._"
+
+The celebrated Le Cat calls this vivifying fluid "an amphibious being,
+endowed by its author with a superior refinement which links it to
+immaterial beings, and thereby ennobles and elevates it into that medium
+nature which we recognize, and which is the source of all its
+properties."
+
+You are of the opinion of Le Cat? I would be so too if I could; but
+there are so many fools and villains that I dare not. I can only think
+quietly in my own way at Mount Krapak. Let others think as well as they
+are allowed to think, whether at Salamanca or Bergamo.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+_What is Understood by Fire Used Figuratively._
+
+Fire, particularly in poetry, often signifies love, and is employed more
+elegantly in the plural than in the singular. Corneille often says "_un
+beau feu_" for a virtuous and noble love. A man has fire in his
+conversation; that does not mean that he has brilliant and enlightened
+ideas, but lively expressions animated by action.
+
+Fire in writing does not necessarily imply lightness and beauty, but
+vivacity, multiplied figures, and spontaneous ideas. Fire is a merit in
+speech and writing only when it is well managed. It is said that poets
+are animated with a divine fire when they are sublime; genius cannot
+exist without fire, but fire may be possessed without genius.
+
+
+
+
+FIRMNESS.
+
+
+Firmness comes from firm, and has a different signification from
+solidity and hardness; a squeezed cloth, a beaten negro, have firmness
+without being hard or solid.
+
+It must always be remembered that modifications of the soul can only be
+expressed by physical images; we say firmness of soul, and of mind,
+which does not signify that they are harder or more solid than usual.
+
+Firmness is the exercise of mental courage; it means a decided
+resolution; while obstinacy, on the contrary, signifies blindness. Those
+who praise the firmness of Tacitus are not so much in the wrong as P.
+Bouhours pretends; it is an accidental ill-chosen term, which expresses
+energy and strength of thought and of style. It may be said that La
+Bruyère has a firm style, and that many other writers have only a hard
+one.
+
+
+
+
+FLATTERY.
+
+
+I find not one monument of flattery in remote antiquity; there is no
+flattery in Hesiod--none in Homer. Their stories are not addressed to a
+Greek, elevated to some dignity, nor to his lady; as each canto of
+Thomson's "Seasons" is dedicated to some person of rank, or as so many
+forgotten epistles in verse have been dedicated, in England, to
+gentlemen or ladies of quality, with a brief eulogy, and the arms of
+the patron or patroness placed at the head of the work.
+
+Nor is there any flattery in Demosthenes. This way of asking alms
+harmoniously began, if I mistake not, with Pindar. No hand can be
+stretched out more emphatically.
+
+It appears to me that among the Romans great flattery is to be dated
+from the time of Augustus. Julius Cæsar had scarcely time to be
+flattered. There is not, extant, any dedicatory epistle to Sulla,
+Marius, or Carbo, nor to their wives, or their mistresses. I can well
+believe that very bad verses were presented to Lucullus and Pompey; but,
+thank God, we do not have them.
+
+It is a great spectacle to behold Cicero equal in dignity to Cæsar,
+speaking before him as advocate for a king of Bithynia and Lesser
+Armenia, named Deiotarus, accused of laying ambuscades for him, and even
+designing to assassinate him. Cicero begins with acknowledging that he
+is disconcerted in his presence. He calls him the vanquisher of the
+world--"_victorem orbis terrarum_." He flatters him; but this adulation
+does not yet amount to baseness; some sense of shame still remains.
+
+But with Augustus there are no longer any bounds; the senate decrees his
+apotheosis during his lifetime. Under the succeeding emperors this
+flattery becomes the ordinary tribute, and is no longer anything more
+than a style. It is impossible to flatter any one, when the most
+extravagant adulation has become the ordinary currency.
+
+In Europe, we have had no great monuments of flattery before Louis XIV.
+His father, Louis XIII., had very little incense offered him. We find no
+mention of him, except in one or two of Malherbe's odes. There, indeed,
+according to custom, he is called "thou greatest of kings"--as the
+Spanish poets say to the king of Spain, and the English poets (laureate)
+to the king of England; but the better part of the poet's praises is
+bestowed on Cardinal Richelieu, whose soul is great and fearless; who
+practises so well the healing art of government, and who knows how to
+cure all our evils:
+
+     _Dont l'âme toute grande est une âme hardîe,_
+     _Qui pratique si bien l'art de nous secourir,_
+     _Que, pourvu qu'il soit cru, nous n'avons maladie,_
+     _Qu'il ne sache guérir._
+
+Upon Louis XIV. flattery came in a deluge. But he was not like the man
+said to have been smothered by the rose leaves heaped upon him; on the
+contrary, he thrived the more.
+
+Flattery, when it has some plausible pretext, may not be so pernicious
+as it has been thought; it sometimes encourages to great acts; but its
+excess is vicious, like the excess of satire. La Fontaine says, and
+pretends to say it after Æsop:
+
+     _On ne peut trop louer trois sortes de personnes;_
+     _Les dieux, sa maitresse, et son roi._
+     _Æsope le disait; j'y souscris quant à moi;_
+     _Ces sont maximes toujours bonnes._
+
+     Your flattery to three sorts of folks apply:--
+     You cannot say too civil things
+     To gods, to mistresses, and kings;
+     So honest Æsop said--and so say I.
+
+Honest Æsop said no such thing; nor do we find that he flattered any
+king, or any concubine. It must not be thought that kings are in reality
+flattered by all the flatteries that are heaped upon them; for the
+greater number never reach them.
+
+One common folly of orators is that of exhausting themselves in praising
+some prince who will never hear of their praises. But what is most
+lamentable of all is that Ovid should have praised Augustus even while
+he was dating "_de Ponto_."
+
+The perfection of the ridiculous might be found in the compliments which
+preachers address to kings, when they have the happiness of exhibiting
+before their majesties.--"To the reverend Father Gaillard, preacher to
+the king." Ah! most reverend father, do you preach only for the king?
+Are you like the monkey at the fair, which leaps "only for the king?"
+
+
+
+
+FORCE (PHYSICAL).
+
+
+What is "force?" Where does it reside? Whence does it come? Does it
+perish? Or is it ever the same?
+
+It has pleased us to denominate "force" that weight which one body
+exercises upon another. Here is a ball of two hundred pounds' weight on
+this floor; it presses the floor, you say, with a force of two hundred
+pounds. And this you call a "dead force." But are not these words
+"dead" and "force" a little contradictory? Might we not as well say
+"dead alive"--yes and no at once?
+
+This ball "weighs." Whence comes this "weight?" and is this weight a
+"force?" If the ball were not impeded, would it go directly to the
+centre of the earth? Whence has it this incomprehensible property?
+
+It is supported by my floor; and you freely give to my floor the "_vis
+inertiæ_"--"inertiæ" signifying "inactivity," "impotence." Now is it not
+singular that "impotence" should be denominated "force?"
+
+What is the living force which acts in your arm and your leg? What is
+the source of it? How can it be supposed that this force exists when you
+are dead? Does it go and take up its abode elsewhere, as a man goes to
+another house when his own is in ruins?
+
+How can it have been said that there is always the same force in nature?
+There must, then, have been always the same number of men, or of active
+beings equivalent to men. Why does a body in motion communicate its
+force to another body with which it comes in contact?
+
+These are questions which neither geometry, nor mechanics, nor
+metaphysics can answer. Would you arrive at the first principle of the
+force of bodies, and of motion, you must ascend to a still superior
+principle. Why is there "anything?"
+
+
+
+
+FORCE--STRENGTH.
+
+
+These words have been transplanted from simple to figurative speech.
+They are applied to all the parts of the body that are in motion, in
+action--the force of the heart, which some have made four hundred
+pounds, and some three ounces; the force of the viscera, the lungs, the
+voice; the force of the arm.
+
+The metaphor which has transported these words into morals has made them
+express a cardinal virtue. Strength, in this sense, is the courage to
+support adversity, and to undertake virtuous and difficult actions; it
+is the "_animi fortitudo_."
+
+The strength of the mind is penetration and depth--"_ingenii vis_."
+Nature gives it as she gives that of the body; moderate labor increases
+and excessive labor diminishes it.
+
+The force of an argument consists in a clear exposition of
+clearly-exhibited proofs, and a just conclusion; with mathematical
+theorems it has nothing to do; because the evidence of a demonstration
+can be made neither more nor less; only it may be arrived at by a longer
+or a shorter path--a simpler or more complicated method. It is in
+doubtful questions that the force of reasoning is truly applicable.
+
+The force of eloquence is not merely a train of just and vigorous
+reasoning, which is not incompatible with dryness; this force, requires
+floridity, striking images, and energetic expressions. Thus it has been
+said, that the sermons of Bourdaloue have force, those of Massillon
+more elegance. Verses may have strength, and want every other beauty.
+The strength of a line in our language consists principally in saying
+something in each hemistich.
+
+Strength in painting is the expression of the muscles, which, by feeling
+touches, are made to appear under the flesh that covers them. There is
+too much strength when the muscles are too strongly articulated. The
+attitudes of the combatants have great strength in the battles of
+Constantine, drawn by Raphael and Julio Romano; and in those of Cæsar,
+painted by Lebrun. Inordinate strength is harsh in painting and
+bombastic in poetry.
+
+Some philosophers have asserted that force is a property inherent in
+matter; that each invisible particle, or rather _monad_, is endowed with
+an active force; but it would be as difficult to demonstrate this
+assertion as it would be to prove that whiteness is a quality inherent
+in matter, as the Trévoux dictionary says in the article "Inherent."
+
+The strength of every animal has arrived at the highest when the animal
+has attained its full growth. It decreases when the muscles no longer
+receive the same quantity of nourishment: and this quantity ceases to be
+the same when the animal spirits no longer communicate to the muscles
+their accustomed motion. It is probable that the animal spirits are of
+fire, inasmuch as old men want motion and strength in proportion as they
+want warmth.
+
+
+
+
+FRANCHISE.
+
+
+A word which always gives an idea of liberty in whatever sense it is
+taken; a word derived from the Franks, who were always free. It is so
+ancient, that when the Cid besieged and took Toledo, in the eleventh
+century, franchies or franchises were given to all the French who went
+on this expedition, and who established themselves at Toledo. All walled
+cities had franchises, liberties, and privileges, even in the greatest
+anarchy of feudal power. In all countries possessing assemblies or
+states, the sovereign swore, on his accession, to guard their liberties.
+
+This name, which has been given generally to the rights of the people,
+to immunities, and to sanctuaries or asylums, has been more particularly
+applied to the quarters of the ambassadors of the court of Rome. It was
+a plot of ground around their palaces, which was larger or smaller
+according to the will of the ambassador. The ground was an asylum for
+criminals, who could not be there pursued. This franchise was
+restricted, under Innocent XI. to the inside of their palaces. Churches
+and convents had the same privileges in Italy, but not in other states.
+There are in Paris several places of sanctuary, in which debtors cannot
+be seized for their debts by common justice, and where mechanics can
+pursue their trades without being freemen. Mechanics have this privilege
+in the Faubourg St. Antoine, but it is not an asylum like the Temple.
+
+The word "franchise," which usually expresses the liberties of a nation,
+city, or person, is sometimes used to signify liberty of speech, of
+counsel, or of a law proceeding; but there is a great difference between
+speaking with frankness and speaking with liberty. In a speech to a
+superior, liberty is a studied or excessive boldness--frankness
+outstepping its just bounds. To speak with liberty is to speak without
+fear; to speak with frankness is to conduct yourself openly and nobly.
+To speak with too much liberty is to become audacious; to speak with too
+much frankness is to be too open-hearted.
+
+
+
+
+FRANCIS XAVIER.
+
+
+It would not be amiss to know something true concerning the celebrated
+Francis Xavero, whom we call Xavier, surnamed the Apostle of the Indies.
+Many people still imagine that he established Christianty along the
+whole southern coast of India, in a score of islands, and above all in
+Japan. But thirty years ago, even a doubt on the subject was hardly to
+be tolerated in Europe. The Jesuits have not hesitated to compare him to
+St. Paul. His travels and miracles had been written in part by
+Tursellinus and Orlandini, by Levena, and by Partoli, all Jesuits, but
+very little known in France; and the less people were acquainted with
+the details the greater was his reputation.
+
+When the Jesuit Bouhours composed his history, he (Bouhours) was
+considered as a man of very enlightened mind, and was living in the best
+company in Paris; I do not mean the company of Jesus, but that of men of
+the world the most distinguished for intellect and knowledge. No one
+wrote in a purer or more unaffected style; it was even proposed in the
+French Academy that it should trespass against the rules of its
+institution, by receiving Father Bouhours into its body. He had another
+great advantage in the influence of his order, which then, by an almost
+inconceivable illusion, governed all Catholic princes.
+
+Sound criticism was, it is true, beginning to rear its head; but its
+progress was slow: men were, in general, more anxious to write ably than
+to write what was true.
+
+Bouhours wrote the lives of St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier almost
+without encountering a single objection. Even his comparison of St.
+Ignatius to Cæsar, and Xavier to Alexander, passed without
+animadversion; it was tolerated as a flower of rhetoric.
+
+I have seen in the Jesuit's college, Rue St. Jacques, a picture twelve
+feet long and twelve high, representing Ignatius and Xavier ascending to
+heaven, each in a magnificent chariot drawn by four milk-white horses;
+and above, the Eternal Father, adorned with a fine white beard
+descending to His waist, with Jesus and the Virgin beside him; the Holy
+Ghost beneath them, in the form of a dove; and angels joining their
+hands, and bending down to receive Father Ignatius and Father Xavier.
+
+Had anyone publicly made a jest of this picture, the reverend Father La
+Chaise, confessor to the king, would infallibly have had the
+sacrilegious scoffer honored with a _lettre de cachet_.
+
+It cannot be denied that Francis Xavier is comparable to Alexander,
+inasmuch as they both went to India--so is Ignatius to Cæsar, both
+having been in Gaul. But Xavier, the vanquisher of the devil, went far
+beyond Alexander, the conqueror of Darius. How gratifying it is to see
+him going, in the capacity of a volunteer converter, from Spain into
+France, from France to Rome, from Rome to Lisbon, and from Lisbon to
+Mozambique, after making the tour of Africa. He stays a long time at
+Mozambique, where he receives from God the gift of prophecy: he then
+proceeds to Melinda, where he disputes on the Koran with the Mahometans,
+who doubtless understand his religion as well as he understands theirs,
+and where he even finds caciques, although they are to be found nowhere
+but in America. The Portuguese vessel arrives at the island of Zocotora,
+which is unquestionably that of the Amazons: there he converts all the
+islanders, and builds a church. Thence he reaches Goa, where he finds a
+pillar on which St. Thomas had engraved, that one day St. Xavier should
+come and re-establish the Christian religion, which had flourished of
+old in India. Xavier has no difficulty whatever in perusing the ancient
+characters, whether Indian or Hebrew, in which this prophecy is
+expressed. He forthwith takes up a hand-bell, assembles all the little
+boys around him, explains to them the creed, and baptizes them--but his
+great delight was to marry the Indians to their mistresses.
+
+From Goa he speeds to Cape Comorin, to the fishing coast, to the kingdom
+of Travancore. His greatest anxiety, on arriving in any country, is to
+quit it. He embarks in the first Portuguese ship he finds, whithersoever
+it is bound, it matters not to Xavier; provided only that he is
+travelling somewhere, he is content. He is received through charity, and
+returns two or three times to Goa, to Cochin, to Cori, to Negapatam, to
+Meliapour. A vessel is departing for Malacca, and Xavier accordingly
+takes his passage for Malacca, in great despair that he has not yet had
+an opportunity of seeing Siam, Pegu, and Tonquin. We find him in the
+island of Sumatra, at Borneo, at Macassar, in the Moluccas, and
+especially at Ternate and Amboyna. The king of Ternate had, in his
+immense seraglio, a hundred women in the capacity of wives, and seven or
+eight hundred in that of concubines. The first thing Xavier does is to
+turn them all out. Please to observe that the island of Ternate is two
+leagues across.
+
+Thence finding another Portugese vessel bound for Ceylon, he returns to
+Ceylon, where he makes various excursions to Goa and to Cochin. The
+Portuguese were already trading to Japan. A ship sails for that country:
+Xavier takes care to embark in it, and visits all the Japan islands. In
+short (says the Jesuit Bouhours), the whole length of Xavier's routes,
+joined together, would reach several times around the globe.
+
+Be it observed, that he set out on his travels in 1542, and died in
+1552. If he had time to learn the languages of all the nations he
+visited, it was no trifling miracle: if he had the gift of tongues, it
+was a greater miracle still. But unfortunately, in several of his
+letters, he says that he is obliged to employ an interpreter; and in
+others he acknowledges that he finds extreme difficulty in learning the
+Japanese language, which he cannot pronounce.
+
+The Jesuit Bouhours, in giving some of his letters, has no doubt that
+"St. Francis Xavier had the gift of tongues"; but he acknowledges that
+"he had it not always." "He had it," says he, "on several occasions;
+for, without having learned the Chinese tongue, he preached to the
+Chinese every morning at Amanguchi, which is the capital of a province
+in Japan."
+
+He must have been perfectly acquainted with all the languages of the
+East; for he made songs in them of the Paternoster, Ave-Maria, and
+Credo, for the instruction of the little boys and girls.
+
+But the best of all is, that this man, who had occasion for a dragoman,
+spoke every tongue at once, like the apostles; and when he spoke
+Portuguese, in which language Bouhours acknowledges that the saint
+explained himself very ill, the Indians, the Chinese, the Japanese, the
+inhabitants of Ceylon and of Sumatra, all understood him perfectly.
+
+One day in particular, when he was preaching on the immateriality of the
+soul, the motion of the planets, the eclipses of the sun and moon, the
+rainbow, sin and grace, paradise and purgatory, he made himself
+understood to twenty persons of different nations.
+
+Is it asked how such a man could make so many converts in Japan? The
+simple answer is that he did not make any; but other Jesuits, who staid
+a long time in the country, by favor of the treaties between the kings
+of Portugal and the emperors of Japan, converted so many people, that a
+civil war ensued, which is said to have cost the lives of nearly four
+hundred thousand men. This is the most noted prodigy that the
+missionaries have worked in Japan.
+
+But those of Francis Xavier are not without their merit. Among his host
+of miracles, we find no fewer than eight children raised from the dead.
+"Xavier's greatest miracle," says the Jesuit Bouhours, "was not his
+raising so many of the dead to life, but his not himself dying of
+fatigue."
+
+But the pleasantest of his miracles is, that having dropped his crucifix
+into the sea, near the island of Baranura, which I am inclined to think
+was the island of Barataria, a crab came, four-and-twenty hours after,
+bringing the cane between its claws.
+
+The most brilliant of all, and after which no other deserves to be
+related, is that in a storm which lasted three days, he was constantly
+in two ships, a hundred and fifty leagues apart, and served one of them
+as a pilot. The truth of this miracle was attested by all the
+passengers, who could neither deceive nor be deceived.
+
+Yet all this was written seriously and with success in the age of Louis
+XIV., in the age of the "Provincial Letters," of Racine's tragedies, of
+"Bayle's Dictionary," and of so many other learned works.
+
+It would appear to be a sort of miracle that a man of sense, like
+Bouhours, should have committed such a mass of extravagance to the
+press, if we did not know to what excesses men can be carried by the
+corporate spirit in general, and the monachal spirit in particular. We
+have more than two hundred volumes entirely in this taste, compiled by
+monks; but what is most to be lamented is, that the enemies of the monks
+also compile. They compile more agreeably, and are read. It is most
+deplorable that, in nineteen-twentieths of Europe, there is no longer
+that profound respect and just veneration for the monks which is still
+felt for them in some of the villages of Aragon and Calabria.
+
+The miracles of St. Francis Xavier, the achievements of Don Quixote,
+the Comic Romance, and the convulsionaries of St. Medard, have an equal
+claim on our admiration and reverence.
+
+After speaking of Francis Xavier it would be useless to discuss the
+history of the other Francises. If you would be instructed thoroughly,
+consult the conformities of St. Francis of Assisi.
+
+Since the fine history of St. Francis Xavier by the Jesuit Bouhours, we
+have had the history of St. Francis Régis by the Jesuit Daubenton,
+confessor to Philip V. of Spain: but this is small-beer after brandy. In
+the history of the blessed Régis, there is not even a single
+resuscitation.
+
+
+
+
+FRANKS--FRANCE--FRENCH
+
+
+Italy has always preserved its name, notwithstanding the pretended
+establishment of Æneas, which should have left some traces of the
+language, characters, and manners of Phrygia, if he ever came with
+Achates and so many others, into the province of Rome, then almost a
+desert. The Goths, Lombards, Franks, Allemani or Germans, who have by
+turns invaded Italy, have at least left it its name.
+
+The Tyrians, Africans, Romans, Vandals, Visigoths, and Saracens, have,
+one after the other, been masters of Spain, yet the name of Spain
+exists. Germany has also always preserved its own name; it has merely
+joined that of Allemagne to it, which appellation it did not receive
+from any conqueror.
+
+The Gauls are almost the only people in the west who have lost their
+name. This name was originally Walch or Welsh; the Romans always
+substituted a G for the W, which is barbarous: of "Welsh" they made
+Galli, Gallia. They distinguished the Celtic, the Belgic, and the
+Aquitanic Gaul, each of which spoke a different jargon.
+
+Who were, and whence came these Franks, who in such small numbers and
+little time possessed themselves of all the Gauls, which in ten years
+Cæsar could not entirely reduce? I am reading an author who commences by
+these words: "The Franks from whom we descend." ... Ha! my friend, who
+has told you that you descend in a right line from a Frank? Clovodic,
+whom we call Clovis, probably had not more than twenty thousand men,
+badly clothed and armed, when he subjugated about eight or ten millions
+of Welsh or Gauls, held in servitude by three or four Roman legions. We
+have not a single family in France which can furnish, I do not say the
+least proof, but the least probability, that it had its origin from a
+Frank.
+
+When the pirates of the Baltic Sea came, to the number of seven or eight
+thousand, to give Normandy in fief, and Brittany in _arrière fief_, did
+they, leave any archives by which it may be seen whether they were the
+fathers of all the Normans of the present day?
+
+It has been a long time believed that the Franks came from the Trojans.
+Ammianus Marcellinus, who lived in the fourth century, says: "According
+to several ancient writers, troops of fugitive Trojans established
+themselves on the borders of the Rhine, then a desert." As to Æneas, he
+might easily have sought an asylum at the extremity of the
+Mediterranean, but Francus, the son of Hector, had too far to travel to
+go towards Düsseldorf, Worms, Solm, Ehrenbreitstein.
+
+Fredegarius doubts not that the Franks at first retired into Macedonia,
+and carried arms under Alexander, after having fought under Priam; on
+which alleged facts the monk Otfried compliments the emperor, Louis the
+German.
+
+The geographer of Ravenna, less fabulous, assigns the first habitation
+of the horde of Franks among the Cimbrians, beyond the Elbe, towards the
+Baltic Sea. These Franks might well be some remains of these barbarian
+Cimbri defeated by Marius; and the learned Leibnitz is of this opinion.
+
+It is very certain that, in the time of Constantine, beyond the Rhine,
+there were hordes of Franks or Sicambri, who lived by pillage. They
+assembled under bandit captains, chiefs whom historians have had the
+folly to call kings. Constantine himself pursued them to their haunts,
+caused several to be hanged, and others to be delivered to wild beasts,
+in the amphitheatre of Trier, for his amusement. Two of their pretended
+kings perished in this manner, at which the panegyrists of Constantine
+are in ecstasies.
+
+The Salic law, written, it is said, by these barbarians, is one of the
+absurd chimeras with which we have always been pestered. It would be
+very strange if the Franks had written such a considerable code in their
+marshes, and the French had not any written usages until the close of
+the reign of Charles VII. It might as well be said that the Algonquins
+and Chicachas had written laws. Men are never governed by authentic
+laws, consigned to public records, until they have been assembled into
+cities, and have a regular police, archives, and all that characterizes
+a civilized nation. When you find a code in a nation which was barbarous
+at the time it was written, who lived upon rapine and pillage, and which
+had not a walled town, you may be sure that this code is a pretended
+one, which has been made in much later times. Fallacies and suppositions
+never obliterate this truth from the minds of the wise.
+
+What is more ridiculous still, this Salic law has been given to us in
+Latin; as if savages, wandering beyond the Rhine, had learnt the Latin
+language. It is supposed to have been first digested by Clovis, and it
+ran thus: "While the illustrious nation of the Franks was still
+considered barbarous, the heads of this nation dictated the Salic law.
+They chose among themselves four chiefs, Visogast, Bodogast, Sologast,
+Vindogast"--taking, according to La Fontaine's fable, the names of
+places for those of men:
+
+     _Notre magot prit pour ce coup_
+     _Le nom d'un port pour un nom d'homme._
+
+These names are those of some Frank cantons in the province of Worms.
+Whatever may be the epoch in which the customs denominated the Salic law
+were constructed on an ancient tradition, it is very clear that the
+Franks were not great legislators.
+
+What is the original meaning of the word "Frank?" That is a question of
+which we know nothing, and which above a hundred authors have endeavored
+to find out. What is the meaning of Hun, Alan, Goth, Welsh, Picard? And
+what do these words signify?
+
+Were the armies of Clovis all composed of Franks? It does not appear so.
+Childeric the Frank had made inroads as far as Tournay. It is said that
+Clovis was the son of Childeric, and Queen Bazine, the wife of King
+Bazin. Now Bazin and Bazine are assuredly not German names, and we have
+never seen the least proof that Clovis was their son. All the German
+cantons elected their chiefs, and the province of Franks had no doubt
+elected Clovis as they had done his father. He made his expedition
+against the Gauls, as all the other barbarians had undertaken theirs
+against the Roman Empire.
+
+Do you really and truly believe that the Herulian Odo, surnamed Acer by
+the Romans, and known to us by the name of Odoacer, had only Herulians
+in his train, and that Genseric conducted Vandals alone into Africa? All
+the wretches without talent or profession, who have nothing to lose, do
+they not always join the first captain of robbers who raises the
+standard of destruction?
+
+As soon as Clovis had the least success, his troops were no doubt joined
+by all the Belgians who panted for booty; and this army is nevertheless
+called the army of Franks. The expedition is very easy. The Visigoths
+had already invaded one-third of Gaul, and the Burgundians another. The
+rest submitted to Clovis. The Franks divided the land of the vanquished,
+and the Welsh cultivated it.
+
+The word "Frank" originally signified a free possessor, while the others
+were slaves. Hence come the words "franchise," and "to enfranchise"--"I
+make you a Frank," "I render you a free man." Hence, _francalenus_,
+holding freely; _frank aleu_, _frank dad_, _frank chamen_, and so many
+other terms half Latin and half barbarian, which have so long composed
+the miserable patois spoken in France.
+
+Hence, also, a franc in gold or silver to express the money of the king
+of the Franks, which did not appear until a long time after, but which
+reminds us of the origin of the monarchy. We still say twenty francs,
+twenty livres, which signifies nothing in itself; it gives no idea of
+the weight or value of the money, being only a vague expression, by
+which ignorant people have been continually deceived, not knowing really
+how much they receive or how much they pay.
+
+Charlemagne did not consider himself as a Frank; he was born in
+Austrasia, and spoke the German language. He was of the family of
+Arnold, bishop of Metz, preceptor to Dagobert. Now it is not probable
+that a man chosen for a preceptor was a Frank. He made the greatest
+glory of the most profound ignorance, and was acquainted only with the
+profession of arms. But what gives most weight to the opinion that
+Charlemagne regarded the Franks as strangers to him is the fourth
+article of one of his capitularies on his farms. "If the Franks," said
+he, "commit any ravages on our possessions, let them be judged according
+to their laws."
+
+The Carlovingian race always passed for German: Pope Adrian IV., in his
+letter to the archbishops of Mentz, Cologne, and Trier, expresses
+himself in these remarkable terms: "The emperor was transferred from the
+Greeks to the Germans. Their king was not emperor until after he had
+been crowned by the pope.... all that the emperor possessed he held from
+us. And as Zacharius gave the Greek Empire to the Germans, we can give
+that of the Germans to the Greeks."
+
+However, France having been divided into eastern and western, and the
+eastern being Austrasia, this name of France prevailed so far, that even
+in the time of the Saxon emperors, the court of Constantinople always
+called them pretended Frank emperors, as may be seen in the letters of
+Bishop Luitgrand, sent from Rome to Constantinople.
+
+_Of the French Nation._
+
+When the Franks established themselves in the country of the first
+Welsh, which the Romans called Gallia, the nation was composed of
+ancient Celts or Gauls, subjugated by Cæsar, Roman families who were
+established there, Germans who had already emigrated there, and finally
+of the Franks, who had rendered themselves masters of the country under
+their chief Clovis. While the monarchy existed, which united Gaul and
+Germany, all the people, from the source of the Weser to the seas of
+Gaul, bore the name of Franks. But when at the congress of Verdun, in
+843, under Charles the Bald, Germany and Gaul were separated, the name
+of Franks remained to the people of western France, which alone retained
+the name of France.
+
+The name of French was scarcely known until towards the tenth century.
+The foundation of the nation is of Gallic families, and traces of the
+character of the ancient Gauls have always existed.
+
+Indeed, every people has its character, as well as every man; and this
+character is generally formed of all the resemblances caused by nature
+and custom among the inhabitants of the varieties which distinguish
+them. Thus French character, genius, and wit, result from that which has
+been common to the different provinces in the kingdom. The people of
+Guienne and those of Normandy differ much; there is, however, found in
+them the French genius, which forms a nation of these different
+provinces, and distinguishes them from the Indians and Germans. Climate
+and soil evidently imprint unchangeable marks on men, as well as on
+animals and plants. Those which depend on government, religion, and
+education are different. That is the knot which explains how people have
+lost one part of their ancient character and preserved the other. A
+people who formerly conquered half the world are no longer recognized
+under sacerdotal government, but the seeds of their ancient greatness of
+soul still exist, though hidden beneath weakness.
+
+In the same manner the barbarous government of the Turks has enervated
+the Egyptians and the Greeks, without having been able to destroy the
+original character or temper of their minds.
+
+The present character of the French is the same as Cæsar ascribed to the
+Gauls--prompt to resolve, ardent to combat, impetuous in attack, and
+easily discouraged. Cæsar, Agatius, and others say, that of all the
+barbarians the Gauls were the most polished. They are still in the most
+civilized times the model of politeness to all their neighbors, though
+they occasionally discover the remains of their levity, petulance, and
+barbarity.
+
+The inhabitants of the coasts of France were always good seamen; the
+people of Guienne always compose the best infantry; "those who inhabit
+the provinces of Blois and Tours are not," says Tasso, "robust and
+indefatigable, but bland and gentle, like the land which they inhabit."
+
+     _.... Gente robusta, e faticosa,_
+     _La terra molle, e lieta, e dilettosa_
+     _Simili a se gli abitator, produce._
+
+But how can we reconcile the character of the Parisians of our day with
+that which the Emperor Julian, the first of princes and men after Marcus
+Aurelius, gave to the Parisians of his time?--"I love this people," says
+he in his "_Misopogon_," "because they are serious and severe like
+myself." This seriousness, which seems at present banished from an
+immense city become the centre of pleasure, then reigned in a little
+town destitute of amusements: in this respect the spirit of the
+Parisians has changed notwithstanding the climate.
+
+The affluence, opulence, and idleness of the people who may occupy
+themselves with pleasures and the arts, and not with the government,
+have given a new turn of mind to a whole nation.
+
+Further, how is it to be explained by what degrees this people have
+passed from the fierceness which characterized them in the time of King
+John, Charles VI., Charles IX., Henry III., and Henry IV., to the soft
+facility of manners for which they are now the admiration of Europe? It
+is that the storms of government and religion forced constitutional
+vivacity into paroxysms of faction and fanaticism; and that this same
+vivacity, which always will exist, has at present no object but the
+pleasures of society. The Parisian is impetuous in his pleasures as he
+formerly was in his fierceness. The original character which is caused
+by the climate is always the same. If at present he cultivates the
+arts, of which he was so long deprived, it is not that he has another
+mind, since he has not other organs; but it is that he has more relief,
+and this relief has not been created by himself, as by the Greeks and
+Florentines, among whom the arts flourished like the natural fruits of
+their soil. The Frenchman has only received them, but having happily
+cultivated and adopted these exotics, he has almost perfected them.
+
+The French government was originally that of all the northern
+nations--of all those whose policy was regulated in general assemblies
+of the nation. Kings were the chief of these assemblies; and this was
+almost the only administration of the French in the first two
+generations, before Charles the Simple.
+
+When the monarchy was dismembered, in the decline of the Carlovingian
+race, when the kingdom of Aries arose, and the provinces were occupied
+by vassals little dependent on the crown, the name of French was more
+restricted. Under Hugh Capet, Henry, and Philip, the people on this side
+the Loire only, were called French. There was then seen a great
+diversity of manners and of laws in the provinces held from the crown of
+France. The particular lords who became the masters of these provinces
+introduced new customs into their new states. A Breton and a Fleming
+have at present some conformity, notwithstanding the difference of
+their character, which they hold from the sun and the climate, but
+originally there was not the least similitude between them.
+
+It is only since the time of Francis I. that there has been any
+uniformity in manners and customs. The court, at this time, first began
+to serve for a model to the United Provinces; but in general,
+impetuosity in war, and a lax discipline, always formed the predominant
+character of the nation.
+
+Gallantry and politeness began to distinguish the French under Francis
+I. Manners became odious after the death of Francis II. However, in the
+midst of their horrors, there was always a politeness at court which the
+Germans and English endeavored to imitate. The rest of Europe, in aiming
+to resemble the French, were already jealous of them. A character in one
+of Shakespeare's comedies says that it is difficult to be polite without
+having been at the court of France.
+
+Though the nation has been taxed with frivolity by Cæsar, and by all
+neighboring nations, yet this kingdom, so long dismembered, and so often
+ready to sink, is united and sustained principally by the wisdom of its
+negotiations, address, and patience; but above all, by the divisions of
+Germany and England. Brittany alone has been united to the kingdom by a
+marriage; Burgundy by right of fee, and by the ability of Louis XI.;
+Dauphiny by a donation, which was the fruit of policy; the county of
+Toulouse by a grant, maintained by an army; Provence by money. One
+treaty of peace has given Alsace, another Lorraine. The English have
+been driven from France, notwithstanding the most signal victories,
+because the kings of France have known how to temporize, and profit on
+all favorable occasions;--all which proves, that if the French youth are
+frivolous, the men of riper age, who govern it, have always been wise.
+Even at present the magistracy are severe in manners, as in the time of
+the Emperor Julian. If the first successes in Italy, in the time of
+Charles VIII., were owing to the warlike impetuosity of the nation, the
+disgraces which followed them were caused by the blindness of a court
+which was composed of young men alone. Francis I. was only unfortunate
+in his youth, when all was governed by favorites of his own age, and he
+rendered his kingdom more flourishing at a more advanced age.
+
+The French have always used the same arms as their neighbors, and have
+nearly the same discipline in war, but were the first who discarded the
+lance and pike. The battle of Ivry discouraged the use of lances, which
+were soon abolished, and under Louis XIV. pikes were also discontinued.
+They wore tunics and robes until the sixteenth century. Under Louis the
+Young they left off the custom of letting the beards grow, and retook to
+it under Francis I. Only under Louis XIV. did they begin to shave the
+entire face. Their dress is continually changing, and at the end of each
+century the French might take the portraits of their grandfathers for
+those of foreigners.
+
+
+
+
+FRAUD.
+
+_Whether pious Frauds should be practised upon the People._
+
+Once upon a time the fakir Bambabef met one of the disciples of
+Confutzee (whom we call Confucius), and this disciple was named Whang.
+Bambabef maintained that the people require to be deceived, and Whang
+asserted that we should never deceive any one. Here is a sketch of their
+dispute:
+
+BAMBABEF.--We must imitate the Supreme Being, who does not show us
+things as they are. He makes us see the sun with a diameter of two or
+three feet, although it is a million of times larger than the earth. He
+makes us see the moon and the stars affixed to one and the same blue
+surface, while they are at different elevations; he chooses that a
+square tower should appear round to us at a distance; he chooses that
+fire should appear to us to be hot, although it is neither hot nor cold;
+in short, he surrounds us with errors, suitable to our nature.
+
+WHANG.--What you call error is not so. The sun, such as it is, placed at
+millions of millions of lis from our globe, is not that which we see,
+that which we really perceive: we perceive only the sun which is painted
+on our retina, at a determinate angle. Our eyes were not given us to
+know sizes and distances: to know these, other aids and other
+operations are necessary.
+
+Bambabef seemed much astonished at this position. Whang, being very
+patient, explained to him the theory of optics; and Bambabef, having
+some conception, was convinced by the demonstrations of the disciple of
+Confucius. He then resumed in these terms:
+
+BAMBABEF.--If God does not, as I thought, deceive us by the ministry of
+our senses, you will at least acknowledge that our physicians are
+constantly deceiving children for their good. They tell them that they
+are giving them sugar, when in reality they are giving them rhubarb. I,
+a fakir, may then deceive the people, who are as ignorant as children.
+
+WHANG.--I have two sons; I have never deceived them. When they have been
+sick, I have said to them: "Here is a nauseous medicine; you must have
+the courage to take it; if it were pleasant, it would injure you." I
+have never suffered their nurses and tutors to make them afraid of
+ghosts, goblins, and witches. I have thereby made them wise and
+courageous citizens.
+
+BAMBABEF.--The people are not born so happily as your family.
+
+WHANG.--Men all nearly resemble one another; they are born with the same
+dispositions. Their nature ought not to be corrupted.
+
+BAMBABEF.--We teach them errors, I own; but it is for their good. We
+make them believe that if they do not buy our blessed nails, if they do
+not expiate their sins by giving us money, they will, in another life,
+become post-horses, dogs, or lizards. This intimidates them, and they
+become good people.
+
+WHANG.--Do you not see that you are perverting these poor folks? There
+are among them many more than you think there are who reason, who make a
+jest of your miracles and your superstitions; who see very clearly that
+they will not be turned into lizards, nor into post-horses. What is the
+consequence? They have good sense enough to perceive that you talk to
+them very impertinently; but they have not enough to elevate themselves
+to a religion pure and untrammelled by superstition like ours. Their
+passions make them think there is no religion, because the only one that
+is taught them is ridiculous: thus you become guilty of all the vices
+into which they plunge.
+
+BAMBABEF.--Not at all, for we teach them none but good morals.
+
+WHANG.--The people would stone you if you taught impure morals. Men are
+so constituted that they like very well to do evil, but they will not
+have it preached to them. But a wise morality should not be mixed up
+with absurd fables: for by these impostures, which you might do without,
+you weaken that morality which you are forced to teach.
+
+BAMBABEF.--What! do you think that truth can be taught to the people
+without the aid of fables?
+
+WHANG.--I firmly believe it. Our literati are made of the same stuff as
+our tailors, our weavers, and our laborers. They worship a creating,
+rewarding, and avenging God. They do not sully their worship by absurd
+systems, nor by extravagant ceremonies. There are much fewer crimes
+among the lettered than among the people; why should we not condescend
+to instruct our working classes as we do our literati?
+
+BAMBABEF.--That would be great folly; as well might you wish them to
+have the same politeness, or to be all jurisconsults. It is neither
+possible nor desirable. There must be white bread for the master, and
+brown for the servant.
+
+WHANG.--I own that men should not all have the same science; but there
+are things necessary to all. It is necessary that each one should be
+just; and the surest way of inspiring all men with justice is to inspire
+them with religion without superstition.
+
+BAMBABEF.--That is a fine project, but it is impracticable. Do you think
+it is sufficient for men to believe in a being that rewards and
+punishes? You have told me that the more acute among the people often
+revolt against fables. They will, in like manner, revolt against truth.
+They will say: Who shall assure me that God rewards and punishes? Where
+is the proof? What mission have you? What miracle have you worked that I
+should believe in you? They will laugh at you much more than at me.
+
+WHANG.--Your error is this: You imagine that men will spurn an idea that
+is honest, likely, and useful to every one; an idea which accords with
+human reason, because they reject things which are dishonest, absurd,
+useless, dangerous, and shocking to good sense.
+
+The people are much disposed to believe their magistrates; and when
+their magistrates propose to them only a rational belief, they embrace
+it willingly. There is no need of prodigies to believe in a just God,
+who reads the heart of man: this is an idea too natural, too necessary,
+to be combated. It is not necessary to know precisely how God rewards
+and punishes: to believe in His justice is enough. I assure you that I
+have seen whole towns with scarcely any other tenet; and that in them I
+have seen the most virtue.
+
+BAMBABEF.--Take heed what you say. You will find philosophers in these
+times, who will deny both pains and rewards.
+
+WHANG.--But you will acknowledge that these philosophers will much more
+strongly deny your inventions; so you will gain nothing by that.
+Supposing that there are philosophers who do not agree with my
+principles, they are not the less honest men; they do not the less
+cultivate virtue, which should be embraced through love, and not through
+fear. Moreover, I maintain that no philosopher can ever be assured that
+Providence does not reserve pains for the wicked, and rewards for the
+good. For, if they ask me who has told me that God punishes, I shall ask
+them who has told them that God does not punish. In short, I maintain
+that the philosophers, far from contradicting, will aid me. Will you be
+a philosopher?
+
+BAMBABEF.--With all my heart. But do not tell the fakirs. And let us,
+above all, remember that if a philosopher would be of service to human
+society, he must announce a God.
+
+
+
+
+FREE-WILL.
+
+
+From the commencement of the time in which men began to reason,
+philosophers have agitated this question, which theologians have
+rendered unintelligible by their absurd subtleties upon grace. Locke is
+perhaps the first who, without having the arrogance of announcing a
+general principle, has examined human nature by analysis. It has been
+disputed for three thousand years, whether the will is free or not;
+Locke shows that the question is absurd, and that liberty cannot belong
+to the will any more than color and motion.
+
+What is meant by the expression to be free? It signifies power, or
+rather it has no sense at all. To say that the will _can_, is in itself
+as ridiculous as if we said that it is yellow, or blue, round, or
+square.
+
+Will is will, and liberty is power. Let us gradually examine the chain
+of what passes within us, without confusing our minds with any
+scholastic terms, or antecedent principle.
+
+It is proposed to you to ride on horseback; it is absolutely necessary
+for you to make a choice, for it is very clear that you must either go
+or not; there is no medium, you must absolutely do the one or the other.
+So far it is demonstrated that the will is not free. You will get on
+horseback; why? Because I will to do so, an ignoramus will say. This
+reply is an absurdity; nothing can be done without reason or cause. Your
+will then is caused by what? The agreeable idea which is presented to
+your brain; the predominant, or determined idea; but, you will say,
+cannot I resist an idea which predominates over me? No, for what would
+be the cause of your resistance? An idea by which your will is swayed
+still more despotically.
+
+You receive your ideas, and, therefore, receive your will. You will then
+necessarily; consequently, the word "liberty" belongs not to will in any
+sense.
+
+You ask me how thought and will are formed within you? I answer that I
+know nothing about it. I no more know how ideas are created than I know
+how the world was formed. We are only allowed to grope in the dark in
+reference to all that inspires our incomprehensible machine.
+
+Will, then, is not a faculty which can be called free. "Free-will" is a
+word absolutely devoid of sense, and that which scholars have called
+"indifference," that is to say, will without cause, is a chimera
+unworthy to be combated.
+
+In what then consists liberty? In the power of doing what we will? I
+would go into my cabinet; the door is open, I am free to enter. But, say
+you, if the door is shut and I remain where I am, I remain freely. Let
+us explain ourselves--you then exercise the power that you possess of
+remaining; you possess this power, but not the power of going out.
+
+Liberty, then, on which so many volumes have been written, reduced to
+its proper sense, is only the power of acting.
+
+In what sense must the expression "this man is free" be spoken? In the
+same sense in which we use the words "health," "strength," and
+"happiness." Man is not always strong, healthy, or happy. A great
+passion, a great obstacle, may deprive him of his liberty, or power of
+action.
+
+The words "liberty" and "free-will" are, then, abstractions, general
+terms, like beauty, goodness, justice. These terms do not signify that
+all men are always handsome, good, and just, neither are they always
+free.
+
+Further, liberty being only the power of acting, what is this power? It
+is the effect of the constitution, and the actual state of our organs.
+Leibnitz would solve a problem of geometry, but falls into an apoplexy;
+he certainly has not the liberty to solve his problem. A vigorous young
+man, passionately in love, who holds his willing mistress in his arms,
+is he free to subdue his passion? Doubtless not. He has the power of
+enjoying, and has not the power to abstain. Locke then is very right in
+calling liberty, power. When can this young man abstain, notwithstanding
+the violence of his passion? When a stronger idea shall determine the
+springs of his soul and body to the contrary.
+
+But how? Have other animals the same liberty, the same power? Why not?
+They have sense, memory, sentiment, and perceptions like ourselves; they
+act spontaneously as we do. They must, also, like us, have the power of
+acting by virtue of their perception, and of the play of their organs.
+
+We exclaim: If it be thus, all things are machines merely; everything in
+the universe is subjected to the eternal laws. Well, would you have
+everything rendered subject to a million of blind caprices? Either all
+is the consequence of the nature of things, or all is the effect of the
+eternal order of an absolute master; in both cases, we are only wheels
+to the machine of the world.
+
+It is a foolish, common-place expression that without this pretended
+freedom of will, rewards and punishments are useless. Reason, and you
+will conclude quite the contrary.
+
+If, when a robber is executed, his accomplice, who sees him suffer, has
+the liberty of not being frightened at the punishment; if his will
+determines of itself, he will go from the foot of the scaffold to
+assassinate on the high road; if struck with horror, he experiences an
+insurmountable terror, he will no longer thieve. The punishment of his
+companion will become useful to him, and moreover prove to society that
+his will is not free.
+
+Liberty, then, is not and cannot be anything but the power of doing what
+we will. That is what philosophy teaches us. But, if we consider liberty
+in the theological sense, it is so sublime a matter that profane eyes
+may not be raised so high.
+
+
+
+
+FRENCH LANGUAGE.
+
+
+The French language did not begin to assume a regular form until the
+tenth century; it sprang from the remains of the Latin and the Celtic,
+mixed with a few Teutonic words. This language was, in the first
+instance, the provincial Roman, and the Teutonic was the language of the
+courts, until the time of Charles the Bald. The Teutonic remained the
+only language in Germany, after the grand epoch of the division in 433.
+The rustic Roman prevailed in Western France; the inhabitants of the
+Pays de Vaud, of the Valois, of the valley of Engadine, and some other
+cantons, still preserve some manifest vestiges of this idiom.
+
+At the commencement of the eleventh century, French began to be written;
+but this French retained more of Romance or rustic Roman than of the
+language of the present day. The romance of Philomena, written in the
+tenth century, is not very different in language from that of the laws
+of the Normans. We cannot yet trace the original Celtic, Latin, and
+German. The words which signify the members of the human body, or
+things in daily use, which have no relation to the Latin or German, are
+of ancient Gallic or Celtic, as _tête_, _jambe_, _sabre_, _point_,
+_alter_, _parler_, _écouter_, _regarder_, _crier_, _cotume_, _ensemble_,
+and many more of the same kind. The greater number of the warlike
+phrases were French or German, as _marche, halte, maréchal, bivouac,
+lansquenet_. Almost, all the rest are Latin, and the Latin words have
+been all abridged, according to the usage and genius of the nations of
+the north.
+
+In the twelfth century, some terms were borrowed from the philosophy of
+Aristotle; and toward the sixteenth century, Greek names were found for
+the parts of the human body, and for its maladies and their remedies.
+Although the language was then enriched with Greek, and aided from the
+time of Charles VIII. with considerable accessions from the Italian,
+already arrived at perfection, it did not acquire a regular form.
+Francis I. abolished the custom of pleading and of judging in Latin,
+which proved the barbarism of a language which could not be used in
+public proceedings--a pernicious custom to the natives, whose fortunes
+were regulated in a language which they could not understand. It then
+became necessary to cultivate the French, but the language was neither
+noble nor regular, and its syntax was altogether capricious. The genius
+of its conversation being turned towards pleasantry, the language became
+fertile in smart and lively expressions, but exceedingly barren in
+dignified and harmonious phrases; whence it arises that in the
+dictionaries of rhymes, twenty suitable words are found for comic poetry
+for one of poetry of a more elevated nature. This was the cause that
+Marot never succeeded in the serious style, and that Amyot was unable to
+give a version of the elegant simplicity of Plutarch.
+
+The French tongue acquired strength from the pen of Montaigne, but still
+wanted elevation and harmony. Ronsard injured the language by
+introducing into French poetry the Greek compounds, derivable from the
+physicians. Malherbe partly repaired the fault of Ronsard. It became
+more lofty and harmonious by the establishment of the French Academy,
+and finally in the age of Louis XIV. acquired the perfection by which it
+is now distinguished.
+
+The genius of the French language--for every language has its genius--is
+clearness and order. This genius consists in the facility which a
+language possesses of expressing itself more or less happily, and of
+employing or rejecting the familiar terms of other languages. The French
+tongue having no declensions, and being aided by articles, cannot adopt
+the inversions of the Greek and the Latin; the words are necessarily
+arranged agreeably to the course of the ideas. We can only say in one
+way, "_Plancus a pris soin des affaires de Cæsar_"; but this phrase in
+Latin, "_Res Cæsaris, Plancus diligenter curavit_" may be arranged in a
+hundred and twenty different forms without injuring the sense or rules
+of the language. The auxiliary verbs, which lengthen and weaken phrases
+in the modern tongues, render that of France still less adapted to the
+lapidary style. Its auxiliary verbs, its pronouns, its articles, its
+deficiency of declinable participles, and, lastly, its uniformity of
+position, preclude the exhibition of much enthusiasm in poetry; it
+possesses fewer capabilities of this nature than the Italian and the
+English; but this constraint and slavery render it more proper for
+tragedy and comedy than any language in Europe. The natural order in
+which the French people are obliged to express their thoughts and
+construct their phrases, infuses into their speech a facility and
+amenity which please everybody; and the genius of the nation suiting
+with the genius of the language, has produced a greater number of books
+agreeably written than are to be found among any other people.
+
+Social freedom and politeness having been for a long time established in
+France, the language has acquired a delicacy of expression, and a
+natural refinement which are seldom to be found out of it. This
+refinement has occasionally been carried too far; but men of taste have
+always known how to reduce it within due bounds.
+
+Many persons have maintained that the French language has been
+impoverished since the days of Montaigne and Amyot, because expressions
+abound in these authors which are no longer employed; but these are for
+the most part terms for which equivalents have been found. It has been
+enriched with a number of noble and energetic expressions, and, without
+adverting to the eloquence of matter, has certainly that of speech. It
+was during the reign of Louis XIV., as already observed, that the
+language was fixed. Whatever changes time and caprice may have in store,
+the good authors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries will always
+serve for models.
+
+Circumstances created no right to expect that France would be
+distinguished in philosophy. A Gothic government extinguished all kind
+of illumination during more than twelve centuries; and professors of
+error, paid for brutalizing human nature, more increased the darkness.
+Nevertheless, there is more philosophy in Paris than in any town on
+earth, and possibly than in all the towns put together, excepting
+London. The spirit of reason has even penetrated into the provinces. In
+a word, the French genius is probably at present equal to that of
+England in philosophy; while for the last four-score years France has
+been superior to all other nations in literature; and has undeniably
+taken the lead in the courtesies of society, and in that easy and
+natural politeness, which is improperly termed urbanity.
+
+
+
+
+FRIENDSHIP.
+
+The temple of friendship has long been known by name, but it is well
+known that it has been very little frequented; as the following verses
+pleasantly observe, Orestes, Pylades, Pirithous, Achates, and the tender
+Nisus, were all genuine friends and great heroes; but, alas, existent
+only in fable:
+
+     _En vieux langage on voit sur la façade,_
+     _Les noms sacrés d'Oreste et de Pylade;_
+     _Le médaillon du bon Pirithous,_
+     _Du sage Achate et du tendre Nisus;_
+     _Tous grands héros, tous amis véritables;_
+     _Ces noms sont beaux; mais ils sont dans les fables._
+
+Friendship commands more than love and esteem. Love your neighbor
+signifies assist your neighbor, but not--enjoy his conversation with
+pleasure, if he be tiresome; confide to him your secrets, if he be a
+tattler; or lend him your money, if he be a spendthrift.
+
+Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to
+divorce. It is a tacit contract between two sensible and virtuous
+persons. I say sensible, for a monk or a hermit cannot be so, who lives
+without knowing friendship. I say virtuous, for the wicked only have
+accomplices--the voluptuous, companions--the interested, associates;
+politicians assemble factions--the generality of idle men have
+connections--princes, courtiers. Virtuous men alone possess friends.
+
+Cethegus was the accomplice of Catiline, and Mæcenas the courtier of
+Octavius; but Cicero was the friend of Atticus.
+
+What is caused by this contract between two tender, honest minds? Its
+obligations are stronger or weaker according to the degrees of
+sensibility, and the number of services rendered.
+
+The enthusiasm of friendship has been stronger among the Greeks and
+Arabs than among us. The tales that these people have imagined on the
+subject of friendship are admirable; we have none to compare to them. We
+are rather dry and reserved--in everything. I see no great trait of
+friendship in our histories, romances, or theatre.
+
+The only friendship spoken of among the Jews, was that which existed
+between Jonathan and David. It is said that David loved him with a love
+stronger than that of women; but it is also said that David, after the
+death of his friend, dispossessed Mephibosheth, his son, and caused him
+to be put to death.
+
+Friendship was a point of religion and legislation among the Greeks. The
+Thebans had a regiment of lovers--a fine regiment; some have taken it
+for a regiment of nonconformists. They are deceived; it is taking a
+shameful accident for a noble principle. Friendship, among the Greeks,
+was prescribed by the laws and religion. Manners countenanced abuses,
+but the laws did not.
+
+
+
+
+FRIVOLITY.
+
+
+What persuades me still more of the existence of Providence, said the
+profound author of "_Bacha Billeboquet_," is that to console us for our
+innumerable miseries, nature has made us frivolous. We are sometimes
+ruminating oxen, overcome by the weight of our yoke; sometimes
+dispersed doves, tremblingly endeavoring to avoid the claws of the
+vulture, stained with the blood of our companions; foxes, pursued by
+dogs; and tigers, who devour one another. Then we suddenly become
+butterflies; and forget, in our volatile winnowings, all the horrors
+that we have experienced.
+
+If we were not frivolous, what man without shuddering, could live in a
+town in which the wife of a marshal of France, a lady of honor to the
+queen, was burned, under the pretext that she had killed a white cock by
+moonlight; or in the same town in which Marshal Marillac was
+assassinated according to form, pursuant to a sentence passed by
+judicial murderers appointed by a priest in his own country house, in
+which he embraced Marion de Lorme while these robed wretches executed
+his sanguinary wishes?
+
+Could a man say to himself, without trembling in every nerve, and having
+his heart frozen with horror: "Here I am, in the very place which, it is
+said, was strewed with the dead and dying bodies of two thousand young
+gentlemen, murdered near the Faubourg St. Antoine, because one man in a
+red cassock displeased some others in black ones!"
+
+Who could pass the Rue de la Féronerie without shedding tears and
+falling into paroxysms of rage against the holy and abominable
+principles which plunged the sword into the heart of the best of men,
+and of the greatest of kings?
+
+We could not walk a step in the streets of Paris on St. Bartholomew's
+day, without saying: "It was here that one of my ancestors was murdered
+for the love of God; it was here that one of my mother's family was
+dragged bleeding and mangled; it was here that one-half of my countrymen
+murdered the other."
+
+Happily, men are so light, so frivolous, so struck with the present and
+so insensible to the past, that in ten thousand there are not above two
+or three who make these reflections.
+
+How many boon companions have I seen, who, after the loss of children,
+wives, mistresses, fortune, and even health itself, have eagerly
+resorted to a party to retail a piece of scandal, or to a supper to tell
+humorous stories. Solidity consists chiefly in a uniformity of ideas. It
+has been said that a man of sense should invariably think in the same
+way; reduced to such an alternative, it would be better not to have been
+born. The ancients never invented a finer fable than that which bestowed
+a cup of the water of Lethe on all who entered the Elysian fields.
+
+If you would tolerate life, mortals, forget yourselves, and enjoy it.
+
+
+
+
+GALLANT.
+
+
+This word is derived from "_gal_" the original signification of which
+was gayety and rejoicing, as may be seen in Alain Chartier, and in
+Froissart. Even in the "Romance of the Rose" we meet with the word
+"_galandé_" in the sense of ornamented, adorned.
+
+     _La belle fut bien attornie_
+     _Et d'un filet d'or galandée._
+
+It is probable that the _gala_ of the Italians, and the _galan_ of the
+Spaniards, are derived from the word "_gal_" which seems to be
+originally Celtic; hence, was insensibly formed _gallant_, which
+signifies a man forward, or eager to please. The term received an
+improved and more noble signification in the times of chivalry, when the
+desire to please manifested itself in feats of arms, and personal
+conflict. To conduct himself gallantly, to extricate himself from an
+affair gallantly, implies, even at present, a man's conducting himself
+conformably to principle and honor. A gallant man among the English,
+signifies a man of courage; in France it means more--a man of noble
+general demeanor. A gallant (_un homme galant_) is totally different
+from a gallant man (_un galant homme_); the latter means a man of
+respectable and honorable feeling--the former, something nearer the
+character of a _petit maître_ a man successfully addicted to intrigue.
+Being gallant (_être galant_) in general implies an assiduity to please
+by studious attentions, and flattering deference. "He was exceedingly
+gallant to those ladies," means merely, he behaved more than politely to
+them; but being the gallant of a lady is an expression of stronger
+meaning; it signifies being her lover; the word is scarcely any longer
+in use in this sense, except in low or familiar poetry. A gallant is not
+merely a man devoted to and successful in intrigue, but the term
+implies, moreover, somewhat of impudence and effrontery, in which sense
+Fontaine uses it in the following: "_Mais un 'galant,' chercheur des
+pucelages_."
+
+Thus are various meanings attached to the same word. The case is similar
+with the term "gallantry," which sometimes signifies a disposition to
+coquetry, and a habit of flattery; sometimes a present of some elegant
+toy, or piece of jewelry; sometimes intrigue, with one woman or with
+many; and, latterly, it has even been applied to signify ironically the
+favors of Venus; thus, to talk gallantries, to give gallantries, to have
+gallantries, to contract a gallantry, express very different meanings.
+Nearly all the terms which occur frequently in conversation acquire, in
+the same manner, various shades of meaning, which it is difficult to
+discriminate; the meaning of terms of art is more precise and less
+arbitrary.
+
+
+
+
+GARGANTUA.
+
+
+If ever a reputation was fixed on a solid basis, it is that of
+Gargantua. Yet in the present age of philosophy and criticism, some rash
+and daring minds have started forward, who have ventured to deny the
+prodigies believed respecting this extraordinary man--persons who have
+carried their skepticism so far as even to doubt his very existence.
+
+How is it possible, they ask, that there should have existed in the
+sixteenth century a distinguished hero, never mentioned by a single
+contemporary, by St. Ignatius, Cardinal Capitan, Galileo, or
+Guicciardini, and respecting whom the registers of the Sorbonne do not
+contain the slightest notice?
+
+Investigate the histories of France, of Germany, of England, Spain, and
+other countries, and you find not a single word about Gargantua. His
+whole life, from his birth to his death, is a tissue of inconceivable
+prodigies.
+
+His mother, Gargamelle, was delivered of him from the left ear. Almost
+at the instant of his birth he called out for a drink, with a voice that
+was heard even in the districts of Beauce and Vivarais. Sixteen ells of
+cloth were required to make him breeches, and a hundred hides of brown
+cows were used in his shoes. He had not attained the age of twelve years
+before he gained a great battle, and founded the abbey of Thélème.
+Madame Badebec was given to him in marriage, and Badebec is proved to be
+a Syrian name.
+
+He is represented to have devoured six pilgrims in a mere salad, and the
+river Seine is stated to have flowed entirely from his person, so that
+the Parisians are indebted for their beautiful river to him alone.
+
+All this is considered contrary to nature by our carping philosophers,
+who scruple to admit even what is probable, unless it is well supported
+by evidence.
+
+They observe, that if the Parisians have always believed in Gargantua,
+that is no reason why other nations should believe in him; that if
+Gargantua had really performed one single prodigy out of the many
+attributed to him, the whole world would have resounded with it, all
+records would have noticed it, and a hundred monuments would have
+attested it. In short, they very unceremoniously treat the Parisians who
+believe in Gargantua as ignorant simpletons and superstitious idiots,
+with whom are inter-mixed a few hypocrites, who pretend to believe in
+Gargantua, in order to obtain some convenient priorship in the abbey of
+Thélème.
+
+The reverend Father Viret, a Cordelier of full-sleeved dignity, a
+confessor of ladies, and a preacher to the king, has replied to our
+Pyrrhonean philosophers in a manner decisive and invincible. He very
+learnedly proves that if no writer, with the exception of Rabelais, has
+mentioned the prodigies of Gargantua, at least, no historian has
+contradicted them; that the sage de Thou, who was a believer in
+witchcraft, divination, and astrology, never denied the miracles of
+Gargantua. They were not even called in question by La Mothe le Vayer.
+Mézeray treated them with such respect as not to say a word against
+them, or indeed about them. These prodigies were performed before the
+eyes of all the world. Rabelais was a witness of them. It was impossible
+that he could be deceived, or that he would deceive. Had he deviated
+even in the smallest degree from the truth, all the nations of Europe
+would have been roused against him in indignation; all the gazetteers
+and journalists of the day would have exclaimed with one voice against
+the fraud and imposture.
+
+In vain do the philosophers reply--for they reply to everything--that,
+at the period in question, gazettes and journals were not in existence.
+It is said in return that there existed what was equivalent to them, and
+that is sufficient. Everything is impossible in the history of
+Gargantua, and from this circumstance itself may be inferred its
+incontestable truth. For if it were not true, no person could possibly
+have ventured to imagine it, and its incredibility constitutes the great
+proof that it ought to be believed.
+
+Open all the "Mercuries," all the "Journals de Trévoux"; those immortal
+works which teem with instruction to the race of man, and you will not
+find a single line which throws a doubt on the history of Gargantua. It
+was reserved for our own unfortunate age to produce monsters, who would
+establish a frightful Pyrrhonism, under the pretence of requiring
+evidence as nearly approaching to mathematical as the case will admit,
+and of a devotion to reason, truth, and justice. What a pity! Oh, for a
+single argument to confound them!
+
+Gargantua founded the abbey of Thélème. The title deeds, it is true,
+were never found; it never had any; but it exists, and produces an
+income of ten thousand pieces of gold a year. The river Seine exists,
+and is an eternal monument of the prodigious fountain from which
+Gargantua supplied so noble a stream. Moreover, what will it cost you to
+believe in him? Should you not take the safest side? Gargantua can
+procure for you wealth, honors, and influence. Philosophy can only
+bestow on you internal tranquillity and satisfaction, which you will of
+course estimate as a trifle. Believe, then, I again repeat, in
+Gargantua; if you possess the slightest portion of avarice, ambition, or
+knavery, it is the wisest part you can adopt.
+
+
+
+
+GAZETTE.
+
+
+A narrative of public affairs. It was at the beginning of the
+seventeenth century that this useful practice was suggested and
+established at Venice, at the time when Italy still continued the centre
+of European negotiations, and Venice was the unfailing asylum of
+liberty. The leaves or sheets containing this narrative, which were
+published once a week, were called "Gazettes," from the word "gazetta,"
+the name of a small coin, amounting nearly to one of our demi-sous, then
+current at Venice. The example was afterwards followed in all the great
+cities of Europe.
+
+Journals of this description have been established in China from time
+immemorial. The "_Imperial Gazette_" is published there every day by
+order of the court. Admitting this gazette to be true, we may easily
+believe it does not contain all that is true; neither in fact should it
+do so.
+
+Théophraste Renaudot, a physician, published the first gazettes in
+France in 1601, and he had an exclusive privilege for the publication,
+which continued for a long time a patrimony to his family. The like
+privilege became an object of importance at Amsterdam, and the greater
+part of the gazettes of the United Provinces are still a source of
+revenue to many of the families of magistrates, who pay writers for
+furnishing materials for them. The city of London alone publishes more
+than twelve gazettes in the course of a week. They can be printed only
+upon stamped paper, and produce no inconsiderable income to the State.
+
+The gazettes of China relate solely to that empire; those of the
+different states of Europe embrace the affairs of all countries.
+Although they frequently abound in false intelligence, they may
+nevertheless be considered as supplying good material for history;
+because, in general, the errors of each particular gazette are corrected
+by subsequent ones, and because they contain authentic copies of almost
+all state papers, which indeed are published in them by order of the
+sovereigns or governments themselves. The French gazettes have always
+been revised by the ministry. It is on this account that the writers of
+them have always adhered to certain forms and designations, with a
+strictness apparently somewhat inconsistent with the courtesies of
+polished society, bestowing the title of monsieur only on some
+particular descriptions of persons, and that of sieur upon others; the
+authors having forgotten that they were not speaking in the name of
+their king. These public journals, it must be added, to their praise,
+have never been debased by calumny, and have always been written with
+considerable correctness.
+
+The case is very different with respect to foreign gazettes; those of
+London, with the exception of the court gazette, abound frequently in
+that coarseness and licentiousness of observation which the national
+liberty allows. The French gazettes established in that country have
+been seldom written with purity, and have sometimes been not a little
+instrumental in corrupting the language. One of the greatest faults
+which has found a way into them arises from the authors having concluded
+that the ancient forms of expression used in public proclamations and in
+judicial and political proceedings and documents in France, and with
+which they were particularly conversant, were analogous to the regular
+syntax of our language, and from their having accordingly imitated that
+style in their narrative. This is like a Roman historian's using the
+style of the law of the twelve tables.
+
+In imitation of the political gazettes, literary ones began to be
+published in France in 1665; for the first journals were, in fact,
+simply advertisements of the works recently printed in Europe; to this
+mere announcement of publication was soon added a critical examination
+or review. Many authors were offended at it, notwithstanding its great
+moderation.
+
+We shall here speak only of those literary gazettes with which the
+public, who were previously in possession of various journals from every
+country in Europe in which the sciences were cultivated, were completely
+overwhelmed. These gazettes appeared at Paris about the year 1723, under
+many different names, as "The Parnassian Intelligencer," "Observations
+on New Books," etc. The greater number of them were written for the
+single purpose of making money; and as money is not to be made by
+praising authors, these productions consisted generally of satire and
+abuse. They often contained the most odious personalities, and for a
+time sold in proportion to the virulence of their malignity; but reason
+and good taste, which are always sure to prevail at last, consigned them
+eventually to contempt and oblivion.
+
+
+
+
+GENEALOGY.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+Many volumes have been written by learned divines in order to reconcile
+St. Matthew with St. Luke on the subject of the genealogy of Jesus
+Christ. The former enumerates only twenty-seven generations from David
+through Solomon, while Luke gives forty-two, and traces the descent
+through Nathan. The following is the method in which the learned Calmet
+solves a difficulty relating to Melchizedek: The Orientals and the
+Greeks, ever abounding in fable and invention, fabricated a genealogy
+for him, in which they give us the names of his ancestors. But, adds
+this judicious Benedictine, as falsehood always betrays itself, some
+state his genealogy according to one series, and others according to
+another. There are some who maintain that he descended from a race
+obscure and degraded, and there are some who are disposed to represent
+him as illegitimate.
+
+This passage naturally applies to Jesus, of whom, according to the
+apostle, Melchizedek was the type or figure. In fact, the gospel of
+Nicomedes expressly states that the Jews, in the presence of Pilate,
+reproached Jesus with being born of fornication; upon which the learned
+Fabricius remarks, that it does not appear from any clear and credible
+testimony that the Jews directed to Jesus Christ during His life, or
+even to His apostles, that calumny respecting His birth which they so
+assiduously and virulently circulated afterwards. The Acts of the
+Apostles, however, inform us that the Jews of Antioch opposed
+themselves, blaspheming against what Paul spoke to them concerning
+Jesus; and Origen maintains that the passage in St. John's gospel "We
+are not born of fornication, we have never been in subjection unto any
+man" was an indirect reproach thrown out by the Jews against Jesus on
+the subject of His birth. For, as this father informs us, they pretended
+that Jesus was originally from a small hamlet of Judæa, and His mother
+nothing more than a poor villager subsisting by her labor, who, having
+been found guilty of adultery with a soldier of the name of Panther, was
+turned away by her husband, whose occupation was that of a carpenter;
+that, after this disgraceful expulsion, she wandered about miserably
+from one place to another, and was privately delivered of Jesus, who,
+pressed by the necessity of His circumstances, was compelled to go and
+hire Himself as a servant in Egypt, where He acquired some of those
+secrets which the Egyptians turn to so good an account, and then
+returned to His own country, in which, full of the miracles He was
+enabled to perform, He proclaimed Himself to be God.
+
+According to a very old tradition, the name of Panther, which gave
+occasion to the mistake of the Jews, was, as we are informed by St.
+Epiphanius, the surname of Joseph's father, or rather, as is asserted by
+St. John Damascene, the proper name of Mary's grandfather.
+
+As to the situation of servant, with which Jesus was reproached, He
+declares Himself that He came not to be served, but to serve. Zoroaster,
+according to the Arabians, had in like manner been the servant of
+Esdras. Epictetus was even born in servitude. Accordingly, St. Cyril of
+Jerusalem justly observed that it is no disgrace to any man.
+
+On the subject of the miracles, we learn indeed from Pliny that the
+Egyptians had the secret of dyeing with different colors, stuffs which
+were dipped in the very same furnace, and this is one of the miracles
+which the gospel of the Infancy attributes to Jesus. But, according to
+St. Chrysostom, Jesus performed no miracle before His baptism, and those
+stated to have been wrought by Him before are absolute fabrications. The
+reason assigned by this father for such an arrangement is, that the
+wisdom of God determined against Christ's performing any miracles in His
+childhood, lest they should have been regarded as impostures.
+
+Epiphanius in vain alleges that to deny the miracles ascribed by some to
+Jesus during His infancy, would furnish heretics with a specious pretext
+for saying that He became Son of God only in consequence of the effusion
+of the Holy Spirit, which descended upon Him at His baptism; we are
+contending here, not against heretics, but against Jews.
+
+Mr. Wagenseil has presented us with a Latin translation of a Jewish work
+entitled "_Toldos Jeschu_," in which it is related that Jeschu, being at
+Bethlehem in Judah, the place of his birth, cried out aloud, "Who are
+the wicked men that pretend I am a bastard, and spring from an impure
+origin? They are themselves bastards, themselves exceedingly impure! Was
+I not born of a virgin mother? And I entered through the crown of her
+head!"
+
+This testimony appeared of such importance to M. Bergier, that that
+learned divine felt no scruple about employing it without quoting his
+authority. The following are his words, in the twenty-third page of the
+"Certainty of the Proofs of Christianity": "Jesus was born of a virgin
+by the operation of the Holy Spirit. Jesus Himself frequently assured us
+of this with His own mouth; and to the same purpose is the recital of
+the apostles." It is certain that these words are only to be found in
+the "_Toldos Jeschu_"; and the certainty of that proof, among those
+adduced by M. Bergier, subsists, although St. Matthew applies to Jesus
+the passage of "Isaiah": "He shall not dispute, he shall not cry aloud,
+and no one shall hear his voice in the streets."
+
+According to St. Jerome, there was in like manner an ancient tradition
+among the Gymnosophists of India, that Buddha, the author of their
+creed, was born of a virgin, who was delivered of him from her side. In
+the same manner was born Julius Cæsar, Scipio Africanus, Manlius, Edward
+VI. of England, and others, by means of an operation called by surgeons
+the Cæsarian operation, because it consists in abstracting the child
+from the womb by an incision in the abdomen of the mother. Simon,
+surnamed the Magician, and Manes both pretended to have been born of
+virgins. This might, however, merely mean, that their mothers were
+virgins at the time of conceiving them. But in order to be convinced of
+the uncertainty attending the marks and evidences of virginity, it will
+be perfectly sufficient to read the commentary of M. de Pompignan, the
+celebrated bishop of Puy en Velai, on the following passage in the Book
+of Proverbs: "There are three things which are too wonderful for me,
+yea, four which I know not. The way of an eagle in the air, the way of a
+serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the
+way of a man in his youth." In order to give a literal translation of
+the passage, according to this prelate (in the third chapter of the
+second part of his work entitled "Infidelity Convinced by the
+Prophecies"), it would have been necessary to say, "_Viam viri in
+virgine adolescentula_"--The way of a man with a maid. The translation
+of our Vulgate, says he, substitutes another meaning, exact indeed and
+true, but less conformable to the original text. In short, he
+corroborates his curious interpretation by the analogy between this
+verse and the following one: "Such is the life of the adulterous woman,
+who, after having eaten, wipeth her mouth and saith, I have done no
+wickedness."
+
+However this may be, the virginity of Mary was not generally admitted,
+even at the beginning of the third century. "Many have entertained the
+opinion and do still," said St. Clement of Alexandria, "that Mary was
+delivered of a son without that delivery producing any change in her
+person; for some say that a midwife who visited her after the birth
+found her to retain all the marks of virginity." It is clear that St.
+Clement refers here to the gospel of the conception of Mary, in which
+the angel Gabriel says to her, "Without intercourse with man, thou, a
+virgin, shalt conceive, thou, a virgin, shalt be delivered of a child,
+thou, a virgin, shalt give suck"; and also to the first gospel of James,
+in which the midwife exclaims, "What an unheard-of wonder! Mary has just
+brought a son into the world, and yet retains all the evidences of
+virginity." These two gospels were, nevertheless, subsequently rejected
+as apocryphal, although on this point they were conformable to the
+opinion adopted by the church; the scaffolding was removed after the
+building was completed.
+
+What is added by Jeschu--"I entered by the crown of the head"--was
+likewise the opinion held by the church. The Breviary of the Maronites
+represents the word of the Father as having entered by the ear of the
+blessed woman. St. Augustine and Pope Felix say expressly that the
+virgin became pregnant through the ear. St. Ephrem says the same in a
+hymn, and Voisin, his translator, observes that the idea came originally
+from Gregory of Neocæsarea, surnamed Thaumaturgos. Agobar relates that
+in his time the church sang in the time of public service: "The Word
+entered through the ear of the virgin, and came out at the golden gate."
+Eutychius speaks also of Elian, who attended at the Council of Nice, and
+who said that the Word entered by the ear of the virgin, and came out
+in the way of childbirth. This Elian was a rural bishop, whose name
+occurs in Selden's published Arabic List of Fathers who attended the
+Council of Nice.
+
+It is well known that the Jesuit Sanchez gravely discussed the question
+whether the Virgin Mary contributed seminally in the incarnation of
+Christ, and that, like other divines before him, he concluded in the
+affirmative. But these extravagances of a prurient and depraved
+imagination should be classed with the opinion of Aretin, who introduces
+the Holy Spirit on this occasion effecting his purpose under the figure
+of a dove; as mythology describes Jupiter to have succeeded with Leda in
+the form of a swan, or as the most eminent authors of the church--St.
+Austin, Athenagoras, Tertullian, St. Clement of Alexandria, St. Cyprian,
+Lactantius, St. Ambrose--and others believed, after Philo and Josephus,
+the historian, who were Jews, that angels had associated with the
+daughters of men, and engaged in sexual connection with them. St.
+Augustine goes so far as to charge the Manichæans with teaching, as a
+part of their religious persuasion, that beautiful young persons
+appeared in a state of nature before the princes of darkness, or evil
+angels, and deprived them of the vital substance which that father calls
+the nature of God. Herodius is still more explicit, and says that the
+divine majesty escaped through the productive organs of demons.
+
+It is true that all these fathers believed angels to be corporeal. But,
+after the works of Plato had established the idea of their spirituality,
+the ancient opinion of a corporeal union between angels and women was
+explained by the supposition that the same angel who, in a woman's form,
+had received the embraces of a man, in turn held communication with a
+woman, in the character of a man. Divines, by the terms "incubus" and
+"succubus," designate the different parts thus performed by angels.
+Those who are curious on the subject of these offensive and revolting
+reveries may see further details in "Various Readings of the Book of
+Genesis," by Otho Gualter; "Magical Disquisitions," by Delvis, and the
+"Discourses on Witchcraft," by Henry Boguet.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+No genealogy, even although reprinted in Moréri, approaches that of
+Mahomet or Mahommed, the son of Abdallah, the son of Abd'all Montaleb,
+the son of Ashem; which Mahomet was, in his younger days, groom of the
+widow Khadijah, then her factor, then her husband, then a prophet of
+God, then condemned to be hanged, then conqueror and king of Arabia; and
+who finally died an enviable death, satiated with glory and with love.
+
+The German barons do not trace back their origin beyond Witikind; and
+our modern French marquises can scarcely any of them show deeds and
+patents of an earlier date than Charlemagne. But the race of Mahomet, or
+Mohammed, which still exists, has always exhibited a genealogical tree,
+of which the trunk is Adam, and of which the branches reach from Ishmael
+down to the nobility and gentry who at the present day bear the high
+title of cousins of Mahomet.
+
+There is no difficulty about this genealogy, no dispute among the
+learned, no false calculations to be rectified, no contradictions to
+palliate, no impossibilities to be made possible.
+
+Your pride cavils against the authenticity of these titles. You tell me
+that you are descended from Adam as well as the greatest prophet, if
+Adam was the common father of our race; but that this same Adam was
+never known by any person, not even by the ancient Arabs themselves;
+that the name has never been cited except in the books of the Jews; and
+that, consequently, you take the liberty of writing down _false_ against
+the high and noble claims of Mahomet, or Mohammed.
+
+You add that, in any case, if there has been a first man, whatever his
+name might be, you are a descendant from him as decidedly as Khadijah's
+illustrious groom; and that, if there has been no first man, if the
+human race always existed, as so many of the learned pretend, then you
+are clearly a gentleman from all eternity.
+
+In answer to this you are told that you are a plebeian (_roturier_) from
+all eternity, unless you can produce a regular and complete set of
+parchments.
+
+You reply that men are equal; that one race cannot be more ancient than
+another; that parchments, with bits of wax dangling to them, are a
+recent invention; that there is no reason that compels you to yield to
+the family of Mahomet, or to that of Confucius; or to that of the
+emperors of Japan; or to the royal secretaries of the grand college. Nor
+can I oppose your opinion by arguments, physical, metaphysical, or
+moral. You think yourself equal to the dairo of Japan, and I entirely
+agree with you. All that I would advise you is, that if ever you meet
+with him, you take good care to be the stronger.
+
+
+
+
+GENESIS.
+
+
+The sacred writer having conformed himself to the ideas generally
+received, and being indeed obliged not to deviate from them, as without
+such condescension to the weakness and ignorance of those whom he
+addressed, he would not have been understood, it only remains for us to
+make some observations on the natural philosophy prevailing in those
+early periods; for, with respect to theology, we reverence it, we
+believe in it, and never either dispute or discuss it.
+
+"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Thus has the
+original passage been translated, but the translation is not correct.
+There is no one, however slightly informed upon the subject, who is not
+aware that the real meaning of the word is, "In the beginning the gods
+made _firent_ or _fit_ the heaven and the earth." This reading,
+moreover, perfectly corresponds with the ancient idea of the
+Phœnicians, who imagined that, in reducing the chaos (_chautereb_)
+into order, God employed the agency of inferior deities.
+
+The Phœnicians had been long a powerful people, having a theogony of
+their own, before the Hebrews became possessed of a few cantons of land
+near their territory. It is extremely natural to suppose that when the
+Hebrews had at length formed a small establishment near Phœnicia,
+they began to acquire its language. At that time their writers might,
+and probably did, borrow the ancient philosophy of their masters. Such
+is the regular march of the human mind.
+
+At the time in which Moses is supposed to have lived, were the
+Phœnician philosophers sufficiently enlightened to regard the earth
+as a mere point in the compass with the infinite orbs placed by God in
+the immensity of space, commonly called heaven? The idea so very
+ancient, and at the same time so utterly false, that heaven was made for
+earth, almost always prevailed in the minds of the great mass of the
+people. It would certainly be just as correct and judicious for any
+person to suppose, if told that God created all the mountains and a
+single grain of sand, that the mountains were created for that grain of
+sand. It is scarcely possible that the Phœnicians, who were such
+excellent navigators, should not have had some good astronomers; but
+the old prejudices generally prevailed, and those old prejudices were
+very properly spared and indulged by the author of the Book of Genesis,
+who wrote to instruct men in the ways of God, and not in natural
+philosophy.
+
+"The earth was without form (_tohu bohu_) and void; darkness rested upon
+the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved upon the surface of
+the waters."
+
+_Tohu bohu_ means precisely chaos, disorder. It is one of those
+imitative words which are to be found in all languages; as, for example,
+in the French we have _sens dessus dessous, tintamarre, trictrac,
+tonnerre, bombe_. The earth was not as yet formed in its present state;
+the matter existed, but the divine power had not yet arranged it. The
+spirit of God means literally the breath, the wind, which agitated the
+waters. The same idea occurs in the "Fragments" of the Phœnician
+author Sanchoniathon. The Phœnicians, like every other people,
+believed matter to be eternal. There is not a single author of antiquity
+who ever represented something to have been produced from nothing. Even
+throughout the whole Bible, no passage is to be found in which matter is
+said to have been created out of nothing. Not, however, that we mean to
+controvert the truth of such creation. It was, nevertheless, a truth not
+known by the carnal Jews.
+
+On the question of the eternity of the world, mankind has always been
+divided, but never on that of the eternity of matter. From nothing,
+nothing can proceed, nor into nothing can aught existent return. _"De
+nihilo nihilum, et in nihilum nil posse gigni reverti."_ (_Persius; Sat.
+iii._) Such was the opinion of all antiquity.
+
+"God said let there be light, and there was light; and he saw that the
+light was good, and he divided the light from the darkness; and he
+called the light day, and the darkness night; and the evening and the
+morning were the first day. And God said also, let there be a firmament
+in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the
+waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were
+under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And
+God called the firmament heaven. And the evening and the morning were
+the second day.... And he saw that it was good."
+
+We begin with examining whether Huet, bishop of Avranches, Leclerc, and
+some other commentators, are not in the right in opposing the idea of
+those who consider this passage as exhibiting the most sublime
+eloquence.
+
+Eloquence is not aimed at in any history written by the Jews. The style
+of the passage in question, like that of all the rest of the work,
+possesses the most perfect simplicity. If an orator, intending to give
+some idea of the power of God, employed for that purpose the short and
+simple expression we are considering, "He said, let there be light, and
+there was light," it would then be sublime. Exactly similar is the
+passage in one of the Psalms, "_Dixit, et facta sunt_"--"He spake, and
+they were made." It is a trait which, being unique in this place, and
+introduced purposely in order to create a majestic image, elevates and
+transports the mind. But, in the instance under examination, the
+narrative is of the most simple character. The Jewish writer is speaking
+of light just in the same unambitious manner as of other objects of
+creation; he expresses himself equally and regularly after every
+article, "and God saw that it was good." Everything is sublime in the
+course or act of creation, unquestionably, but the creation of light is
+no more so than that of the herbs of the field; the sublime is something
+which soars far from the rest, whereas all is equal throughout the
+chapter.
+
+But further, it was another very ancient opinion that light did not
+proceed from the sun. It was seen diffused throughout the atmosphere,
+before the rising and after the setting of that star; the sun was
+supposed merely to give it greater strength and clearness; accordingly
+the author of Genesis accommodates himself to this popular error, and
+even states the creation of the sun and moon not to have taken place
+until four days after the existence of light. It was impossible that
+there could be a morning and evening before the existence of a sun. The
+inspired writer deigned, in this instance, to condescend to the gross
+and wild ideas of the nation. The object of God was not to teach the
+Jews philosophy. He might have raised their minds to the truth, but he
+preferred descending to their error. This solution can never be too
+frequently repeated.
+
+The separation of the light from the darkness is a part of the same
+system of philosophy. It would seem that night and day were mixed up
+together, as grains of different species which are easily separable from
+each other. It is sufficiently known that darkness is nothing but the
+absence of light, and that there is in fact no light when our eyes
+receive no sensation of it; but at that period these truths were far
+from being known.
+
+The idea of a firmament, again, is of the very highest antiquity. The
+heavens are imagined to be a solid mass, because they always exhibited
+the same phenomena. They rolled over our heads, they were therefore
+constituted of the most solid materials. Who could suppose that the
+exhalations from the land and sea supplied the water descending from the
+clouds, or compute their corresponding quantities? No Halley then lived
+to make so curious a calculation. The heavens therefore were conceived
+to contain reservoirs. These reservoirs could be supported only on a
+strong arch, and as this arch of heaven was actually transparent, it
+must necessarily have been made of crystal. In order that the waters
+above might descend from it upon the earth, sluices, cataracts, and
+floodgates were necessary, which might be opened and shut as
+circumstances required. Such was the astronomy of the day; and, as the
+author wrote for Jews, it was incumbent upon him to adopt their gross
+ideas, borrowed from other people somewhat less gross than themselves.
+
+"God also made two great lights, one to rule the day, the other the
+night; He also made the stars."
+
+It must be admitted that we perceive throughout the same ignorance of
+nature. The Jews did not know that the moon shone only with a reflected
+light. The author here speaks of stars as of mere luminous points, such
+as they appear, although they are in fact so many suns, having each of
+them worlds revolving round it. The Holy Spirit, then, accommodated
+Himself to the spirit of the times. If He had said that the sun was a
+million times larger than the earth, and the moon fifty times smaller,
+no one would have comprehended Him. They appear to us two stars of
+nearly equal size.
+
+"God said, also, let us make man in our own image, and let him have
+dominion over the fishes."
+
+What meaning did the Jews attach to the expression, "let us make man in
+our own image?" The same as all antiquity attached to it: "_Finxit in
+effigiem moderantum cuncta deorum._" (Ovid, Metam. i. 82.)
+
+No images are made but of bodies. No nation ever imagined a God without
+body, and it is impossible to represent Him otherwise. We may indeed say
+that God is nothing that we are acquainted with, but we can have no
+idea of what He is. The Jews invariably conceived God to be corporeal,
+as well as every other people. All the first fathers of the Church,
+also, entertained the same belief till they had embraced the ideas of
+Plato, or rather until the light of Christianity became more pure.
+
+"He created them male and female." If God, of the secondary or inferior
+gods, created mankind, male and female, after their own likeness, it
+would seem in that case, as if the Jews believed that God and the gods
+who so formed them were male and female. It has been a subject of
+discussion, whether the author means to say that man had originally two
+sexes, or merely that God made Adam and Eve on the same day. The most
+natural meaning is that God formed Adam and Eve at the same time; but
+this interpretation involves an absolute contradiction to the statement
+of the woman's being made out of the rib of man after the seven days
+were concluded.
+
+"And he rested on the seventh day." The Phœnicians, Chaldæans, and
+Indians, represented God as having made the world in six periods, which
+the ancient Zoroaster calls the six "Gahanbars," so celebrated among the
+Persians.
+
+It is beyond all question that these nations possessed a theology before
+the Jews inhabited the deserts of Horeb and Sinai, and before they could
+possibly have had any writers. Many writers have considered it probable
+that the allegory of six days was imitated from that of the six
+periods. God may have permitted the idea to have prevailed in large and
+populous empires before he inspired the Jewish people with it. He had
+undoubtedly permitted other people to invent the arts before the Jews
+were in possession of any one of them.
+
+"From this pleasant place a river went out which watered the garden, and
+thence it was divided into four rivers. One was called Pison, which
+compassed the whole land of Havilah, whence cometh gold.... the second
+was called Gihon and surrounds Ethiopia.... the third is the Tigris, and
+the fourth the Euphrates."
+
+According to this version, the earthly paradise would have contained
+nearly a third part of Asia and of Africa. The sources of the Euphrates
+and the Tigris are sixty leagues distant from each other, in frightful
+mountains, bearing no possible resemblance to a garden. The river which
+borders Ethiopia, and which can be no other than the Nile, commences its
+course at the distance of more than a thousand leagues from the sources
+of the Tigris and Euphrates; and, if the Pison means the Phasis, it is
+not a little surprising that the source of a Scythian river and that of
+an African one should be situated on the same spot. We must therefore
+look for some other explanation, and for other rivers. Every commentator
+has got up a paradise of his own.
+
+It has been said that the Garden of Eden resembles the gardens of Eden
+at Saana in Arabia Felix, celebrated throughout all antiquity; that the
+Hebrews, a very recent people, might be an Arabian horde, and assume to
+themselves the honor of the most beautiful spot in the finest district
+of Arabia; and that they have always converted to their own purposes the
+ancient traditions of the vast and powerful nations in the midst of whom
+they were in bondage. They were not, however, on this account, the less
+under the divine protection and guidance.
+
+"The Lord then took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden that he
+might cultivate it." It is very respectable and pleasant for a man to
+"cultivate his garden," but it must have been somewhat difficult for
+Adam to have dressed and kept in order a garden of a thousand leagues in
+length, even although he had been supplied with some assistants.
+Commentators on this subject, therefore, we again observe, are
+completely at a loss, and must be content to exercise their ingenuity in
+conjecture. Accordingly, these four rivers have been described as
+flowing through numberless different territories.
+
+"Eat not of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil." It is
+not easy to conceive that there ever existed a tree which could teach
+good and evil, as there are trees that bear pears and apricots. And
+besides the question is asked, why is God unwilling that man should know
+good and evil? Would not his free access to this knowledge, on the
+contrary, appear--if we may venture to use such language--more
+worthy of God, and far more necessary to man? To our weak reason it
+would seem more natural and proper for God to command him to eat largely
+of such fruit; but we must bring our reason under subjection, and
+acquiesce with humility and simplicity in the conclusion that God is to
+be obeyed.
+
+[Illustration: THE TEMPTATION OF ADAM]
+
+"If thou shalt eat thereof, thou shalt die." Nevertheless, Adam ate of
+it and did not die; on the contrary, he is stated to have lived on for
+nine hundred and thirty years. Many of the fathers considered the whole
+matter as an allegory. In fact, it might be said that all other animals
+have no knowledge that they shall die, but that man, by means of his
+reason, has such knowledge. This reason is the tree of knowledge which
+enables him to foresee his end. This, perhaps, is the most rational
+interpretation that can be given. We venture not to decide positively.
+
+"The Lord said, also, it is not good for man to be alone; let us make
+him a helpmeet for him." We naturally expect that the Lord is about to
+bestow on him a wife; but first he conducts before him all the various
+tribes of animals. Perhaps the copyist may have committed here an error
+of transposition.
+
+"And the name which Adam gave to every animal is its true name." What we
+should naturally understand by the true name of an animal, would be a
+name describing all, or at least, the principal properties of its
+species. But this is not the case in any language. In each there are
+some imitative words, as "_coq_" and "_cocu_" in the Celtic, which bear
+some slight similarity to the notes of the cock and the cuckoo;
+_tintamarre, trictrac_, in French; _alali_, in Greek; _lupus_, in Latin,
+etc. But these imitative words are exceedingly few. Moreover, if Adam
+had thus thoroughly known the properties of various animals, he must
+either have previously eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, or
+it would apparently have answered no end for God to have interdicted him
+from it. He must have already known more than the Royal Society of
+London, and the Academy of the Sciences.
+
+It may be remarked that this is the first time the name of Adam occurs
+in the Book of Genesis. The first man, according to the ancient
+Brahmins, who were prodigiously anterior to the Jews, was called Adimo,
+a son of the earth, and his wife, Procris, life. This is recorded in the
+Vedas, in the history of the second formation of the world. Adam and Eve
+expressed perfectly the same meanings in the Phoenician language--a new
+evidence of the Holy Spirit's conforming Himself to commonly received
+ideas.
+
+"When Adam was asleep God took one of his ribs and put flesh instead
+thereof; and of the rib which he had taken from Adam he formed a woman,
+and he brought the woman to Adam."
+
+In the previous chapter the Lord had already created the male and the
+female; why, therefore, remove a rib from the man to form out of it a
+woman who was already in being? It is answered that the author barely
+announces in the one case what he explains in another. It is answered
+further that this allegory places the wife in subjection to her husband,
+and expresses their intimate union. Many persons have been led to
+imagine from this verse that men have one rib less than women; but this
+is a heresy, and anatomy informs us that a wife has no more ribs than
+her husband.
+
+"But the serpent was more subtle than all animals on the earth; he said
+to the woman," etc. Throughout the whole of this article there is no
+mention made of the devil. Everything in it relates to the usual course
+of nature. The serpent was considered by all oriental nations, not only
+as the most cunning of all animals, but likewise as immortal. The
+Chaldæans had a fable concerning a quarrel between God and the serpent,
+and this fable had been preserved by Pherecydes. Origen cites it in his
+sixth book against Celsus. A serpent was borne in procession at the
+feasts of Bacchus. The Egyptians, according to the statement of Eusebius
+in the first book of the tenth chapter of his "Evangelical Preparation,"
+attached a sort of divinity to the serpent. In Arabia, India, and even
+China, the serpent was regarded as a symbol of life; and hence it was
+that the emperors of China, long before the time of Moses, always bore
+upon their breast the image of a serpent.
+
+Eve expresses no astonishment at the serpent's speaking to her. In all
+ancient histories, animals have spoken; hence Pilpay and Lokman excited
+no surprise by their introduction of animals conversing and disputing.
+
+The whole of this affair appears so clearly to have been supposed in the
+natural course of events, and so unconnected with anything allegorical,
+that the narrative assigns a reason why the serpent, from that time, has
+moved creeping on its belly, why we always are eager to crush it under
+our feet, and why it always attempts--at least according to the popular
+belief--to bite and wound us. Precisely as, with respect to presumed
+changes affecting certain animals recorded in ancient fable, reasons
+were stated why the crow which originally had been white is at the
+present day black; why the owl quits his gloomy retreat only by night;
+why the wolf is devoted to carnage. The fathers, however, believed the
+affair to be an allegory at once clear and venerable. The safest way is
+to believe like them.
+
+"I will multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow shalt thou
+bring forth children. Thou shalt be under the power of the man, and he
+shall rule over thee." Why, it is asked, should the multiplication of
+conception be a punishment? It was, on the contrary, says the objector,
+esteemed a superior blessing, particularly among the Jews. The pains of
+childbirth are inconsiderable, in all except very weak or delicate
+women. Those accustomed to labor are delivered, particularly in warm
+climates, with great ease. Brutes frequently experience greater
+suffering from this process of nature: some even die under it. And with
+respect to the superiority or dominion of the man over the woman, it is
+merely in the natural course of events; it is the effect of strength of
+body, and even of strength of mind. Men, generally speaking, possess
+organs more capable of continued attention than women, and are better
+fitted by nature for labors both of the head and arm. But when a woman
+possesses both a hand and a mind more powerful than her husband's, she
+everywhere possesses the dominion over him; it is then the husband that
+is under subjection to the wife. There is certainly truth in these
+remarks; but it might, nevertheless, very easily be the fact that,
+before the commission of the original sin, neither subjection nor sorrow
+existed.
+
+"The Lord made for them coats of skins." This passage decidedly proves
+that the Jews believed God to be corporeal. A rabbi, of the name of
+Eliezer, stated in his works that God clothed Adam and Eve with the skin
+of the very serpent who had tempted them; and Origen maintains that this
+coat of skins was a new flesh, a new body, which God conferred on man.
+It is far better to adhere respectfully to the literal texts.
+
+"And the Lord said; Lo! Adam is become like one of us." It seems as if
+the Jews admitted, originally, many gods. It is somewhat more difficult
+to determine what they meant by the word "God," _Elohim_. Some
+commentators have contended that the expression "one of us" signifies
+the Trinity. But certainly there is nothing relating to the Trinity
+throughout the Bible. The Trinity is not a compound of many or several
+Gods: it is one and the same god threefold; and the Jews never heard the
+slightest mention of one god in three persons. By the words "like us,"
+or "as one of us," it is probable that the Jews understood the angels,
+_Elohim_. It is this passage which has induced many learned men very
+rashly to conclude that this book was not written until that people had
+adopted the belief of those inferior gods. But this opinion has been
+condemned.
+
+"The Lord sent him forth from the garden of Eden to cultivate the
+ground." "But," it is remarked by some, "the Lord had placed him in the
+garden of Eden to _cultivate_ that garden." If Adam, instead of being a
+gardener, merely becomes a laborer, his situation, they observe, is not
+made very much worse by the change. A good laborer is well worth a good
+gardener. These remarks must be regarded as too light and frivolous. It
+appears more judicious to say that God punished disobedience by
+banishing the offender from the place of his nativity.
+
+The whole of this history, generally speaking--according to the opinion
+of liberal, not to say licentious, commentators--proceeds upon the idea
+which has prevailed in every past age, and still exists, that the first
+times were better and happier than those which followed. Men have
+always complained of the present and extolled the past. Pressed down by
+the labors of life, they have imagined happiness to consist in
+inactivity, not considering that the most unhappy of all states is that
+of a man who has nothing to do. They felt themselves frequently
+miserable, and framed in their imaginations an ideal period in which all
+the world had been happy; although it might be just as naturally and
+truly supposed that there had existed times in which no tree decayed and
+perished, in which no beast was weak, diseased, or devoured by another,
+and in which spiders did not prey upon flies. Hence the idea of the
+golden age; of the egg pierced by Arimanes; of the serpent who stole
+from the ass the recipe for obtaining a happy and immortal life, which
+the man had placed upon his pack-saddle; of the conflict between Typhon
+and Osiris, and between Opheneus and the gods; of the famous box of
+Pandora; and of all those ancient tales, of which some are ingenious,
+but none instructive. But we are bound to believe that the fables of
+other nations are imitations of the Hebrew history, since we possess the
+ancient history of the Hebrews, and the early books of other nations are
+nearly all destroyed. Besides the testimonies in favor of the Book of
+Genesis are irrefragable.
+
+"And He placed before the garden of Eden a cherub with a flaming sword,
+which turned all round to guard the way to the tree of life." The word
+"_kerub_" signifies _ox_. An ox armed with a flaming sword is rather a
+singular exhibition, it is said, before a portal. But the Jews
+afterwards represented angels under the form of oxen and hawks although
+they were forbidden to make any images. They evidently derived these
+emblems of oxen and hawks from the Egyptians, whom they imitated in so
+many other things. The Egyptians first venerated the ox as the emblem of
+agriculture, and the hawk as that of the winds; but they never converted
+the ox into a sentinel. It is probably an allegory; and the Jews by
+"_kerub_" understood nature. It was a symbol formed of the head of an
+ox, the head and body of a man, and the wings of a hawk.
+
+"And the Lord set a mark upon Cain." What Lord? says the infidel. He
+accepts the offering of Abel, and rejects that of his elder brother,
+without the least reason being assigned for the distinction. By this
+proceeding the Lord was the cause of animosity between the two brothers.
+We are presented in this piece of history, it is true, with a moral,
+however humiliating, lesson; a lesson to be derived from all the fables
+of antiquity, that scarcely had the race of man commenced the career of
+existence, before one brother assassinates another. But what the sages,
+of this world consider contrary to everything moral, to everything just,
+to all the principles of common sense, is that God, who inflicted
+eternal damnation on the race of man, and useless crucifixion on His own
+son, on account merely of the eating of an apple, should absolutely
+pardon a fratricide! nay, that He should more than pardon, that He
+should take the offender under His peculiar protection! He declares that
+whoever shall avenge the murder of Abel shall experience sevenfold the
+punishment that Cain might have suffered. He puts a mark upon him as a
+safeguard. Here, continue these vile blasphemers, here is a fable as
+execrable as it is absurd. It is the raving of some wretched Jew, who
+wrote those infamous and revolting fooleries, in imitation of the tales
+so greedily swallowed by the neighboring population in Syria. This
+senseless Jew attributes these atrocious reveries to Moses, at a time
+when nothing was so rare as books. That fatality, which affects and
+disposes of everything, has handed down this contemptible production to
+our own times. Knaves have extolled it, and fools have believed it. Such
+is the language of a tribe of theists, who, while they adore a God, dare
+to condemn the God of Israel; and who judge of the conduct of the
+eternal Deity by the rules of our own imperfect morality, and erroneous
+justice. They admit a God, to subject Him to our laws. Let us guard
+against such rashness; and, once again it must be repeated, let us
+revere what we cannot comprehend. Let us cry out, _O Altitudo_! O the
+height and depth! with all our strength.
+
+"The gods Elohim, seeing the daughters of men that they were fair, took
+for wives those whom they chose." This imagination, again, may be traced
+in the history of every people. No nation has ever existed, unless
+perhaps we may except China, in which some god is not described as
+having had offspring from women. These corporeal gods frequently
+descended to visit their dominions upon earth; they saw the daughters of
+our race, and attached themselves to those who were most interesting and
+beautiful: the issue of this connection between gods and mortals must of
+course have been superior to other men; accordingly, Genesis informs us
+that from the association it mentions, of the gods with women, sprang a
+race of giants.
+
+"I will bring a deluge of waters upon the earth." I will merely observe
+here that St. Augustine, in his "City of God," No. 8, says, "_Maximum
+illud diluvium Græca nec Latina novit historia_"--neither Greek nor
+Latin history knows anything about the great deluge. In fact, none had
+ever been known in Greece but those of Deucalion and Ogyges. They are
+regarded as universal in the fables collected by Ovid, but are wholly
+unknown in eastern Asia. St. Augustine, therefore, is not mistaken, in
+saying that history makes no mention of this event.
+
+"God said to Noah, I will make a covenant with you, and with your seed
+after you, and with all living creatures." God make a covenant with
+beasts! What sort of a covenant? Such is the outcry of infidels. But if
+He makes a covenant with man, why not with the beast? It has feeling,
+and there is something as divine in feeling as in the most metaphysical
+meditation. Besides, beasts feel more correctly than the greater part of
+men think. It is clearly in virtue of this treaty that Francis d'Assisi,
+the founder of the Seraphic order, said to the grasshoppers and the
+hares, "Pray sing, my dear sister grasshopper; pray browse, my dear
+brother hare." But what were the conditions of the treaty? That all
+animals should devour one another; that they should feed upon our flesh,
+and we upon theirs; that, after having eaten them, we should proceed
+with wrath and fury to the extermination of our own race--nothing being
+then wanting to crown the horrid series of butchery and cruelty, but
+devouring our fellow-men, after having thus remorselessly destroyed
+them. Had there been actually such a treaty as this it could have been
+entered into only with the devil.
+
+Probably the meaning of the whole passage is neither more nor less than
+that God is equally the absolute master of everything that breathes.
+This pact can be nothing more than an order, and the word "covenant" is
+used merely as more emphatic and impressive; we should not therefore be
+startled and offended at the words, but adore the spirit, and direct our
+minds back to the period in which this book was written--a book of
+scandal to the weak, but of edification to the strong.
+
+"And I will put my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of my
+covenant." Observe that the author does not say, I _have_ put my bow in
+the clouds; he says, I _will_ put: this clearly implies it to have been
+the prevailing opinion that there had not always been a rainbow. This
+phenomenon is necessarily produced by rain; yet in this place it is
+represented as something supernatural, exhibited in order to announce
+and prove that the earth should no more be inundated. It is singular to
+choose the certain sign of rain, in order to assure men against their
+being drowned. But it may also be replied that in any danger of
+inundation, we have the cheering security of the rainbow.
+
+"But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of
+Adam had built, and he said, 'Behold a people which have but one
+language. They have begun to do this, and they will not desist until
+they have completed it. Come, then, let us go and confound their
+language, that no one may understand his neighbor.'" Observe here, that
+the sacred writer always continues to conform to the popular opinions.
+He always speaks of God as of a man who endeavors to inform himself of
+what is passing, who is desirous of seeing with his own eyes what is
+going on in his dominions, who calls together his council in order to
+deliberate with them.
+
+"And Abraham having divided his men--who were three hundred and eighteen
+in number--fell upon the five kings, and pursued them unto Hoba, on the
+left hand of Damascus." From the south bank of the lake of Sodom to
+Damascus was a distance of eighty leagues, not to mention crossing the
+mountains Libanus and Anti-Libanus. Infidels smile and triumph at such
+exaggeration. But as the Lord favored Abraham, nothing was in fact
+exaggerated.
+
+"And two angels arrived at Sodom at even." The whole history of these
+two angels, whom the inhabitants of Sodom wished to violate, is perhaps
+the most extraordinary in the records of all antiquity. But it must be
+considered that almost all Asia believed in the existence of the
+demoniacal incubus and succubus; and moreover, that these two angels
+were creatures more perfect than mankind, and must have possessed more
+beauty to stimulate their execrable tendencies. It is possible that the
+passage may be only meant as a rhetorical figure to express the
+atrocious depravity of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is not without the
+greatest diffidence that we suggest to the learned this solution.
+
+As to Lot, who proposes to the people of Sodom the substitution of his
+two daughters in the room of the angels; and his wife, who was changed
+into a statue of salt, and all the rest of that history, what shall we
+venture to say? The old Arabian tale of Kinyras and Myrrha has some
+resemblance to the incest of Lot with his daughters; and the adventure
+of Philemon and Baucis is somewhat similar to the case of the two angels
+who appeared to Lot and his wife. With respect to the statue of salt, we
+know not where to find any resemblance; perhaps in the history of
+Orpheus and Eurydice.
+
+Many ingenious men are of opinion, with the great Newton and the learned
+Leclerc that the Pentateuch was written by Samuel when the Jews had a
+little knowledge of reading and writing, and that all these histories
+are imitations of Syrian fables.
+
+But it is enough that all this is in the Holy Scripture to induce us to
+reverence it, without attempting to find out in this book anything
+besides what is written by the Holy Spirit. Let us always recollect that
+those times were not like our times; and let us not fail to repeat,
+after so many great men, that the Old Testament is a true history; and
+that all that has been written differing from it by the rest of the
+world is fabulous.
+
+Some critics have contended that all the incredible passages in the
+canonical books, which scandalize weak minds, ought to be suppressed;
+but it has been observed in answer that those critics had bad hearts,
+and ought to be burned at the stake; and that it is impossible to be a
+good man without believing that the people of Sodom wanted to violate
+two angels. Such is the reasoning of a species of monsters who wish to
+lord it over the understandings of mankind.
+
+It is true that many eminent fathers of the Church have had the prudence
+to turn all these histories into allegories, after the example of the
+Jews, and particularly of Philo. The popes, more discreet, have
+endeavored to prevent the translation of these books into the vulgar
+tongue, lest some men should in consequence be led to think and judge,
+about what was proposed to them only to adore.
+
+We are certainly justified in concluding hence, that those who
+thoroughly understand this book should tolerate those who do not
+understand it at all; for if the latter understand nothing of it, it is
+not their own fault: on the other hand, those who comprehend nothing
+that it contains should tolerate those who comprehend everything in it.
+
+Learned and ingenious men, full of their own talents and acquirements,
+have maintained that it is impossible that Moses could have written the
+Book of Genesis. One of their principal reasons is that in the history
+of Abraham that patriarch is stated to have paid for a cave which he
+purchased for the interment of his wife, in silver coin, and the king of
+Gerar is said to have given Sarah a thousand pieces of silver when he
+restored her, after having carried her off for her beauty at the age of
+seventy-five. They inform us that they have consulted all the ancient
+authors, and that it appears very certain that at the period mentioned
+silver money was not in existence. But these are evidently mere cavils,
+as the Church has always firmly believed Moses to have been the author
+of the Pentateuch. They strengthen all the doubts suggested by
+Aben-Ezra, and Baruch Spinoza. The physician Astruc, father-in-law of
+the comptroller-general Silhouette, in his book--now become very
+scarce--called "Conjectures on the Book of Genesis," adds some
+objections, inexplicable undoubtedly to human learning, but not so to a
+humble and submissive piety. The learned, many of them, contradict every
+line, but the devout consider every line sacred. Let us dread falling
+into the misfortune of believing and trusting to our reason; but let us
+bring ourselves into subjection in understanding as well as in heart.
+
+"And Abraham said that Sarah was his sister, and the king of Gerar took
+her for himself." We admit, as we have said under the article on
+"Abraham," that Sarah was at this time ninety years of age, that she had
+been already carried away by a king of Egypt, and that a king of this
+same horrid wilderness of Gerar, likewise, many years afterwards,
+carried away the wife of Isaac, Abraham's son. We have also spoken of
+his servant, Hagar, who bore him a son, and of the manner in which the
+patriarch sent her and her son away. It is well known how infidels
+triumph on the subject of all these histories, with what a disdainful
+smile they speak of them, and that they place the story of one Abimelech
+falling in love with Sarah whom Abraham had passed off as his sister,
+and of another Abimelech falling in love with Rebecca, whom Isaac also
+passes as his sister, even beneath the thousand and one nights of the
+Arabian fables. We cannot too often remark that the great error of all
+these learned critics is their wishing to try everything by the test of
+our feeble reason, and to judge of the ancient Arabs as they judge of
+the courts of France or of England.
+
+"And the soul of Shechem, King Hamor's son, was bound up with the soul
+of Dinah, and he soothed her grief by his tender caresses, and he went
+to Hamor his father, and said to him, give me that woman to be my wife."
+
+Here our critics exclaim in terms of stronger disgust than ever. "What!"
+say they; "the son of a king is desirous to marry a vagabond girl;" the
+marriage is celebrated; Jacob the father, and Dinah the daughter, are
+loaded with presents; the king of Shechem deigns to receive those
+wandering robbers called patriarchs within his city; he has the
+incredible politeness or kindness to undergo, with his son, his court,
+and his people, the rite of circumcision, thus condescending to the
+superstition of a petty horde that could not call half a league of
+territory their own! And in return for this astonishing hospitality and
+goodness, how do our holy patriarchs act? They wait for the day when the
+process of circumcision generally induces fever, when Simeon and Levi
+run through the whole city with poniards in their hands and massacre the
+king, the prince his son, and all the inhabitants. We are precluded from
+the horror appropriate to this infernal counterpart of the tragedy of
+St. Bartholomew, only by a sense of its absolute impossibility. It is an
+abominable romance; but it is evidently a ridiculous romance. It is
+impossible that two men could have slaughtered in quiet the whole
+population of a city. The people might suffer in a slight degree from
+the operation which had preceded, but notwithstanding this, they would
+have risen in self-defence against two diabolical miscreants; they would
+have instantly assembled, would have surrounded them, and destroyed them
+with the summary and complete vengeance merited by their atrocity.
+
+But there is a still more palpable impossibility. It is, that according
+to the accurate computation of time, Dinah, this daughter of Jacob,
+could be only three years old; and that, even by forcing up chronology
+as far as possible in favor of the narrative, she could at the very most
+be only five. It is here, then, that we are assailed with bursts of
+indignant exclamation! "What!" it is said, "what! is it this book, the
+book of a rejected and reprobate people; a book so long unknown to all
+the world; a book in which sound reason and decent manners are outraged
+in every page, that is held up to us as irrefragable, holy, and dictated
+by God Himself? Is it not even impious to believe it? or could anything
+less than the fury of cannibals urge to the persecution of sensible and
+modest men for not believing it?"
+
+To this we reply: "The Church declares its belief in it. The copyists
+may have mixed up some revolting absurdities with respectable and
+genuine histories. It belongs to the holy church only to decide.
+The profane ought to be guided by her. Those absurdities, those alleged
+horrors do not affect the substance of our faith. How lamentable would
+be the fate of mankind, if religion and virtue depended upon what
+formerly happened to Shechem and to little Dinah!"
+
+"These are the kings who reigned in the land of Edom before the children
+of Israel had a king." This is the celebrated passage which has proved
+one of the great stumbling stones. This it was which decided the great
+Newton, the pious and acute Samuel Clarke, the profound and philosophic
+Bolingbroke, the learned Leclerc, the ingenious Fréret, and a host of
+other enlightened men, to maintain that it was impossible Moses could
+have been the author of Genesis.
+
+We admit that in fact these words could not have been written until
+after the time that the Jews had kings.
+
+It is principally this verse that determined Astruc to give up the
+inspired authority of the whole Book of Genesis, and suppose the author
+had derived his materials from existing memoirs and records. His work is
+ingenious and accurate, but it is rash, not to say audacious. Even a
+council would scarcely have ventured on such an enterprise. And to what
+purpose has it served Astruc's thankless and dangerous labor--to double
+the darkness he wished to enlighten? Here is the fruit of the tree of
+knowledge, of which we are all so desirous of eating. Why must it be,
+that the fruit of the tree of ignorance should be more nourishing and
+more digestible?
+
+But of what consequence can it be to us, after all, whether any
+particular verse or chapter was written by Moses, or Samuel, or the
+priest (_sacrificateur_) who came to Samaria, or Esdras, or any other
+person? In what respect can our government, our laws, our fortunes, our
+morals, our well-being, be bound up with the unknown chiefs of a
+wretched and barbarous country called Edom or Idumæa, always inhabited
+by robbers? Alas! those poor Arabs, who have not shirts to their backs,
+neither know nor care whether or not we are in existence! They go on
+steadily plundering caravans, and eating barley bread, while we are
+perplexing and tormenting ourselves to know whether any petty kings
+flourished in a particular canton of Arabia Petræa, before they existed
+in a particular canton adjoining the west of the lake of Sodom!
+
+  _O miseras hominum curas! Opectora cœca!_
+                                      --LUCRETIUS, ii. 14.
+
+Blind, wretched man! in what dark paths of strife
+Thou walkest the little journey of thy life!--CREECH.
+
+
+
+
+GENII.
+
+
+The doctrines of judicial astrology and magic have spread all over the
+world. Look back to the ancient Zoroaster, and you will find that of the
+genii long established. All antiquity abounds in astrologers and
+magicians; such ideas were therefore very natural. At present, we smile
+at the number who entertained them; if we were in their situation, if
+like them we were only beginning to cultivate the sciences, we should
+perhaps believe just the same. Let us suppose ourselves intelligent
+people, beginning to reason on our own existence, and to observe the
+stars. The earth, we might say, is no doubt immovable in the midst of
+the world; the sun and planets only revolve in her service, and the
+stars are only made for us; man, therefore, is the great object of all
+nature. What is the intention of all these globes, and of the immensity
+of heaven thus destined for our use? It is very likely that all space
+and these globes are peopled with substances, and since we are the
+favorites of nature, placed in the centre of the universe, and all is
+made for man, these substances are evidently destined to watch over man.
+
+The first man who believed the thing at all possible would soon find
+disciples persuaded that it existed. We might then commence by saying,
+genii perhaps exist, and nobody could affirm the contrary; for where is
+the impossibility of the air and planets being peopled? We might
+afterwards say there _are_ genii, and certainly no one could prove that
+there are not. Soon after, some sages might see these genii, and we
+should have no right to say to them: "You have not seen them"; as these
+persons might be honorable, and altogether worthy of credit. One might
+see the genius of the empire or of his own city; another that of Mars
+or Saturn; the genii of the four elements might be manifested to several
+philosophers; more than one sage might see his own genius; all at first
+might be little more than dreaming, but dreams are the symbols of truth.
+
+It was soon known exactly how these genii were formed. To visit our
+globe, they must necessarily have wings; they therefore had wings. We
+know only of bodies; they therefore had bodies, but bodies much finer
+than ours, since they were genii, and much lighter, because they came
+from so great a distance. The sages who had the privilege of conversing
+with the genii inspired others with the hope of enjoying the same
+happiness. A skeptic would have been ill received, if he had said to
+them: "I have seen no genius, therefore there are none." They would have
+replied: "You reason ill; it does not follow that a thing exists not,
+which is unknown to you. There is no contradiction in the doctrine which
+inculcates these ethereal powers; no impossibility that they may visit
+us; they show themselves to our sages, they manifest themselves to us;
+you are not worthy of seeing genii."
+
+Everything on earth is composed of good and evil; there are therefore
+incontestably good and bad genii. The Persians had their peris and
+dives; the Greeks, their demons and cacodæmons; the Latins, _bonos et
+malos genios_. The good genii are white, and the bad black, except among
+the negroes, where it is necessarily the reverse. Plato without
+difficulty admits of a good and evil genius for every individual. The
+evil genius of Brutus appeared to him, and announced to him his death
+before the battle of Philippi. Have not grave historians said so? And
+would not Plutarch have been very injudicious to have assured us of this
+fact, if it were not true?
+
+Further, consider what a source of feasts, amusements, good tales, and
+bon mots, originated in the belief of genii!
+
+There were male and female genii. The genii of the ladies were called by
+the Romans little Junos. They also had the pleasure of seeing their
+genii grow up. In infancy, they were a kind of Cupid with wings, and
+when they protected old age, they wore long beards, and even sometimes
+the forms of serpents. At Rome, there is preserved a marble, on which is
+represented a serpent under a palm tree, to which are attached two
+crowns with this inscription: "To the genius of the Augusti"; it was the
+emblem of immortality.
+
+What demonstrative proof have we at present, that the genii, so
+universally admitted by so many enlightened nations, are only phantoms
+of the imagination? All that can be said is reduced to this: "I have
+never seen a genius, and no one of my acquaintance has ever seen one;
+Brutus has not written that his genius appeared to him before the battle
+of Philippi; neither Newton, Locke, nor even Descartes, who gave the
+reins to his imagination; neither kings nor ministers of state have
+ever been suspected of communing with their genii; therefore I do not
+believe a thing of which there is not the least truth. I confess their
+existence is not impossible; but the possibility is not a proof of the
+reality. It is possible that there may be satyrs, with little turned-up
+tails and goats' feet; but I must see several to believe in them; for if
+I saw but one, I should still doubt their existence."
+
+
+
+
+GENIUS.
+
+
+Of genius or demon, we have already spoken in the article on "angel." It
+is not easy to know precisely whether the peris of the Persians were
+invented before the demons of the Greeks, but it is very probable that
+they were. It may be, that the souls of the dead, called shades, manes,
+etc., passed for demons. Hesiod makes Hercules say that a demon dictated
+his labors.
+
+The demon of Socrates had so great a reputation, that Apuleius, the
+author of the "Golden Ass," who was himself a magician of good repute,
+says in his "Treatise on the Genius of Socrates," that a man must be
+without religion who denies it. You see that Apuleius reasons precisely
+like brothers Garasse and Bertier: "You do not believe that which I
+believe; you are therefore without religion." And the Jansenists have
+said as much of brother Bertier, as well as of all the world except
+themselves. "These demons," says the very religious and filthy
+Apuleius, "are intermediate powers between ether and our lower region.
+They live in our atmosphere, and bear our prayers and merits to the
+gods. They treat of succors and benefits, as interpreters and
+ambassadors. Plato says, that it is by their ministry that revelations,
+presages, and the miracles of magicians, are effected."--"_Cæterum sunt
+quædam divinæ mediæ potestates, inter summum æthera, et infimas terras,
+in isto intersitæ æris spatio, per quas et desideria nostra et merita ad
+deos commeant. Hos Græco nomine demonias nuncupant. Inter terricolas
+cœli colasque victores, hinc pecum, inde donorum: qui ultro citroque
+portant, hinc petitiones, inde suppetias: ceu quidam utriusque
+interpretes, et salutigeri. Per hos eosdem, ut Plato in symposio
+autumat, cuncta denuntiata; et majorum varia miracula, omnesque
+præsagium species reguntur._"
+
+St. Augustine has condescended to refute Apuleius in these words:
+
+"It is impossible for us to say that demons are neither mortal nor
+eternal, for all that has life, either lives eternally, or loses the
+breath of life by death; and Apuleius has said, that as to time, the
+demons are eternal. What then remains, but that demons hold a medium
+situation, and have one quality higher and another lower than mankind;
+and as, of these two things, eternity is the only higher thing which
+they exclusively possess, to complete the allotted medium, what must be
+the lower, if not misery?" This is powerful reasoning!
+
+As I have never seen any genii, demons, peris, or hobgoblins, whether
+beneficent or mischievous, I cannot speak of them from knowledge. I only
+relate what has been said by people who have seen them.
+
+Among the Romans, the word "genius" was not used to express a rare
+talent, as with us: the term for that quality was _ingenium_. We use the
+word "genius" indifferently in speaking of the tutelar demon of a town
+of antiquity, or an artist, or a musician. The term "genius" seems to
+have been intended to designate not great talents generally, but those
+into which invention enters. Invention, above everything, appeared a
+gift from the gods--this _ingenium, quasi ingenitum_, a kind of divine
+inspiration. Now an artist, however perfect he may be in his profession,
+if he have no invention, if he be not original, is not considered a
+genius. He is only inspired by the artists his predecessors, even when
+he surpasses them.
+
+It is very probable that many people now play at chess better than the
+inventor of the game, and that they might gain the prize of corn
+promised him by the Indian king. But this inventor was a genius, and
+those who might now gain the prize would be no such thing. Poussin, who
+was a great painter before he had seen any good pictures, had a genius
+for painting. Lulli, who never heard any good musician in France, had a
+genius for music.
+
+Which is the more desirable to possess, a genius without a master, or
+the attainment of perfection by imitating and surpassing the masters
+which precede us?
+
+If you put this question to artists, they will perhaps be divided; if
+you put it to the public, it will not hesitate. Do you like a beautiful
+Gobelin tapestry better than one made in Flanders at the commencement of
+the arts? Do you prefer modern masterpieces of engraving to the first
+wood-cuts? the music of the present day to the first airs, which
+resembled the Gregorian chant? the makers of the artillery of our time
+to the genius which invented the first cannon? everybody will answer,
+"yes." All purchasers will say: "I own that the inventor of the shuttle
+had more genius than the manufacturer who made my cloth, but my cloth is
+worth more than that of the inventor."
+
+In short, every one in conscience will confess, that we respect the
+geniuses who invented the arts, but that the minds which perfect them
+are of more present benefit.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+The article on "Genius" has been treated in the "Encyclopædia" by men
+who possess it. We shall hazard very little after them.
+
+Every town, every man possessed a genius. It was imagined that those who
+performed extraordinary things were inspired by their genius. The nine
+muses were nine genii, whom it was necessary to invoke; therefore Ovid
+says: "_Et Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo_"--"The God within
+us, He the mind inspires."
+
+But, properly speaking, is genius anything but capability? What is
+capability but a disposition to succeed in an art? Why do we say the
+genius of a language? It is, that every language, by its terminations,
+articles, participles, and shorter or longer words, will necessarily
+have exclusive properties of its own.
+
+By the genius of a nation is meant the character, manners, talents, and
+even vices, which distinguish one people from another. It is sufficient
+to see the French, English, and Spanish people, to feel this difference.
+
+We have said that the particular genius of a man for an art is a
+different thing from his general talent; but this name is given only to
+a very superior ability. How many people have talent for poetry, music,
+and painting; yet it would be ridiculous to call them geniuses.
+
+Genius, conducted by taste, will never commit a gross fault. Racine,
+since his "Andromache," "Le Poussin," and "Rameau," has never committed
+one. Genius, without taste, will often commit enormous errors; and, what
+is worse, it will not be sensible of them.
+
+
+
+
+GEOGRAPHY.
+
+
+Geography is one of those sciences which will always require to be
+perfected. Notwithstanding the pains that have been taken, it has
+hitherto been impossible to have an exact description of the earth. For
+this great work, it would be necessary that all sovereigns should come
+to an understanding, and lend mutual assistance. But they have ever
+taken more pains to ravage the world than they have to measure it.
+
+No one has yet been able to make an exact map of upper Egypt, nor of the
+regions bordering on the Red Sea, nor of the vast country of Arabia. Of
+Africa we know only the coasts; all the interior is no more known than
+it was in the times of Atlas and Hercules. There is not a single
+well-detailed map of all the Grand Turk's possessions in Asia; all is
+placed at random, excepting some few large towns, the crumbling remains
+of which are still existing. In the states of the Great Mogul something
+is known of the relative positions of Agra and Delhi; but thence to the
+kingdom of Golconda everything is laid down at a venture.
+
+It is known that Japan extends from about the thirtieth to the fortieth
+degree of north latitude; there cannot be an error of more than two
+degrees, which is about fifty leagues; so that, relying on one of our
+best maps, a pilot would be in danger of losing his track or his life.
+
+As for the longitude, the first maps of the Jesuits determined it
+between the one hundred and fifty-seventh and the one hundred and
+seventy-fifth degree; whereas, it is now determined between the one
+hundred and forty-sixth and the one hundred and sixtieth.
+
+China is the only Asiatic country of which we have an exact measurement;
+because the emperor Kam-hi employed some Jesuit astronomers to draw
+exact maps, which is the best thing the Jesuits have done. Had they been
+content with measuring the earth, they would never have been proscribed.
+
+In our western world, Italy, France, Russia, England, and the principal
+towns of the other states, have been measured by the same method as was
+employed in China; but it was not until a very few years ago, that in
+France it was undertaken to form an entire topography. A company taken
+from the Academy of Sciences despatched engineers or surveyors into
+every corner of the kingdom, to lay down even the meanest hamlet, the
+smallest rivulet, the hills, the woods, in their true places. Before
+that time, so confused was the topography, that on the eve of the battle
+of Fontenoy, the maps of the country being all examined, every one of
+them was found entirely defective.
+
+If a positive order had been sent from Versailles to an inexperienced
+general to give battle, and post himself as appeared most advisable from
+the maps, as sometimes happened in the time of the minister Chamillar,
+the battle would infallibly have been lost.
+
+A general who should carry on a war in the country of the Morlachians,
+or the Montenegrins, with no knowledge of places but from the maps,
+would be at as great a loss as if he were in the heart of Africa.
+
+Happily, that which has often been traced by geographers, according to
+their own fancy, in their closets, is rectified on the spot. In
+geography, as in morals, it is very difficult to know the world without
+going from home.
+
+It is not with this department of knowledge, as with the arts of poetry,
+music, and painting. The last works of these kinds are often the worst.
+But in the sciences, which require exactness rather than genius, the
+last are always the best, provided they are done with some degree of
+care.
+
+One of the greatest advantages of geography, in my opinion, is this:
+your fool of a neighbor, and his wife almost as stupid, are incessantly
+reproaching you with not thinking as they think in Rue St. Jacques.
+"See," say they, "what a multitude of great men have been of our
+opinion, from Peter the Lombard down to the Abbé Petit-pied. The whole
+universe has received our truths; they reign in the Faubourg St. Honoré,
+at Chaillot and at Étampes, at Rome and among the Uscoques." Take a map
+of the world; show them all Africa, the empires of Japan, China, India,
+Turkey, Persia, and that of Russia, more extensive than was the Roman
+Empire; make them pass their finger over all Scandinavia, all the north
+of Germany, the three kingdoms of Great Britain, the greater part of the
+Low Countries, and of Helvetia; in short make them observe, in the four
+great divisions of the earth, and in the fifth, which is as little known
+as it is great in extent, the prodigious number of races, who either
+never heard of those opinions, or have combated them, or have held them
+in abhorrence, and you will thus oppose the whole universe to Rue St.
+Jacques.
+
+You will tell them that Julius Cæsar, who extended his power much
+farther than that street, did not know a word of all which they think so
+universal; and that our ancestors, on whom Julius Cæsar bestowed the
+lash, knew no more of them than he did.
+
+They will then, perhaps, feel somewhat ashamed at having believed that
+the organ of St. Severin's church gave the tone to the rest of the
+world.
+
+
+
+
+GLORY--GLORIOUS.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+Glory is reputation joined with esteem, and is complete when admiration
+is superadded. It always supposes that which is brilliant in action, in
+virtue, or in talent, and the surmounting of great difficulties. Cæsar
+and Alexander had glory. The same can hardly be said of Socrates. He
+claims esteem, reverence, pity, indignation against his enemies; but the
+term "glory" applied to him would be improper; his memory is venerable
+rather than glorious. Attila had much brilliancy, but he has no glory;
+for history, which may be mistaken, attributes to him no virtues:
+Charles XII. still has glory; for his valor, his disinterestedness, his
+liberality, were extreme. Success is sufficient for reputation, but not
+for glory. The glory of Henry IV. is every day increasing; for time has
+brought to light all his virtues, which were incomparably greater than
+his defects.
+
+Glory is also the portion of inventors in the fine arts; imitators have
+only applause. It is granted, too, to great talents, but in sublime arts
+only. We may well say, the glory of Virgil, or Cicero, but not of
+Martial, nor of Aulus Gellius.
+
+Men have dared to say, the glory of God: God created this world for His
+glory; not that the Supreme Being can have glory; but that men, having
+no expressions suitable to Him, use for Him those by which they are
+themselves most flattered.
+
+Vainglory is that petty ambition which is contented with appearances,
+which is exhibited in pompous display, and never elevates itself to
+greater things. Sovereigns, having real glory, have been known to be
+nevertheless fond of vainglory--seeking too eagerly after praise, and
+being too much attached to the trappings of ostentation.
+
+False glory often verges towards vanity; but it often leads to excesses,
+while vainglory is more confined to splendid littlenesses. A prince who
+should look for honor in revenge, would seek a false glory rather than a
+vain one.
+
+To give glory signifies to acknowledge, to bear witness. Give glory to
+truth, means acknowledging truth--Give glory to the God whom you
+serve--Bear witness to the God whom you serve.
+
+Glory is taken for heaven--He dwells in glory; but this is the case in
+no religion but ours. It is not allowable to say that Bacchus or
+Hercules was received into glory, when speaking of their apotheosis. The
+saints and angels have sometimes been called the glorious, as dwelling
+in the abode of glory.
+
+Gloriously is always taken in the good sense; he reigned gloriously; he
+extricated himself gloriously from great danger or embarrassment.
+
+To glory in, is sometimes taken in the good, sometimes in the bad,
+sense, according to the nature of the object in question. He glories in
+a disgrace which is the fruit of his talents and the effect of envy. We
+say of the martyrs, that they glorified God--that is, that their
+constancy made the God whom they attested revered by men.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+That Cicero should love glory, after having stifled Catiline's
+conspiracy, may be pardoned him. That the king of Prussia, Frederick the
+Great, should have the same feelings after Rosbach and Lissa, and after
+being the legislator, the historian, the poet, and the philosopher of
+his country--that he should be passionately fond of glory, and at the
+same time, have self-command enough to be modestly so--he will, on that
+account, be the more glorified.
+
+That the empress Catherine II. should have been forced by the brutish
+insolence of a Turkish sultan to display all her genius; that from the
+far north she should have sent four squadrons which spread terror in the
+Dardanelles and in Asia Minor; and that, in 1770, she took four
+provinces from those Turks who made Europe tremble--with this sort of
+glory she will not be reproached, but will be admired for speaking of
+her successes with that air of indifference and superiority which shows
+that they were merited.
+
+In short, glory befits geniuses of this sort, though belonging to the
+very mean race of mortals.
+
+But if, at the extremity of the west, a townsman of a place called Paris
+thinks he has glory in being harangued by a teacher of the university,
+who says to him: "Monseigneur, the glory you have acquired in the
+exercise of your office, your illustrious labors with which the universe
+resounds," etc., then I ask if there are mouths enough in that universe
+to celebrate, with their hisses, the glory of our citizen, and the
+eloquence of the pedant who attends to bray out this harangue at
+monseigneur's hotel? We are such fools that we have made God glorious
+like ourselves.
+
+That worthy chief of the dervishes, Ben-al-betif, said to his brethren
+one day: "My brethren, it is good that you should frequently use that
+sacred formula of our Koran, 'In the name of the most merciful God';
+because God uses mercy, and you learn to do so too, by oft repeating the
+words that recommend virtue, without which there would be few men left
+upon the earth. But, my brethren, beware of imitating those rash ones
+who boast, on every occasion, of laboring for the glory of God.
+
+"If a young simpleton maintains a thesis on the categories, an ignoramus
+in furs presiding, he is sure to write in large characters, at the head
+of his thesis, '_Ek alha abron doxa_!--'_Ad majorem Dei gloriam_.' --To
+the greater glory of God. If a good Mussulman has had his house
+whitewashed, he cuts this foolish inscription in the door. A saka
+carries water for the greater glory of God. It is an impious usage,
+piously used. What would you say of a little chiaoux, who, while
+emptying our sultan's close-stool, should exclaim: "To the greater glory
+of our invincible monarch?" There is certainly a greater distance
+between God and the sultan than between the sultan and the little
+chiaoux.
+
+"Ye miserable earth-worms, called men, what have you resembling the
+glory of the Supreme Being? Can He love glory? Can He receive it from
+you? Can He enjoy it? How long, ye two-legged animals without feathers,
+will you make God after your own image? What! because you are vain,
+because you love glory, you would have God love it also? If there were
+several Gods, perhaps each one would seek to gain the good opinion of
+his fellows. That might be glory to God. Such a God, if infinite
+greatness may be compared with extreme lowliness, would be like King
+Alexander or Iscander, who would enter the lists with none but kings.
+But you, poor creatures! what glory can you give to God? Cease to
+profane the sacred name. An emperor, named Octavius Augustus, forbade
+his being praised in the schools of Rome, lest his name should be
+brought into contempt. You can bring the name of the Supreme Being
+neither into contempt, nor into honor. Humble yourselves in the dust;
+adore, and be silent."
+
+Thus spake Ben-al-betif; and the dervishes cried out: "Glory to God!
+Ben-al-betif has said well."
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+_Conversation with a Chinese._
+
+In 1723, there was in Holland a Chinese: this Chinese was a man of
+letters and a merchant; which two professions ought not to be
+incompatible, but which have become so amongst us, thanks to the extreme
+regard which is paid to money, and the little consideration which
+mankind have ever shown, and will ever show, for merit.
+
+This Chinese, who spoke a little Dutch, was once in a bookseller's shop
+with some men of learning. He asked for a book, and "Bossuet's Universal
+History," badly translated, was proposed to him. "Ah!" said he, "how
+fortunate! I shall now see what is said of our great empire--of our
+nation, which has existed as a national body for more than fifty
+thousand years--of that succession of emperors who have governed us for
+so many ages. I shall now see what is thought of the religion of the
+men of letters--of that simple worship which we render to the Supreme
+Being. How pleasing to see what is said in Europe of our arts, many of
+which are more ancient amongst us than any European kingdom. I guess the
+author will have made many mistakes in the history of the war which we
+had twenty-two thousand five hundred and fifty-two years ago, with the
+warlike nations of Tonquin and Japan, and of that solemn embassy which
+the mighty emperor of the Moguls sent to ask laws from us, in the year
+of the world 500,000,000,000,079,123,450,000." "Alas!" said one of the
+learned men to him, "you are not even mentioned in that book; you are
+too inconsiderable; it is almost all about the first nation in the
+world--the only nation, the great Jewish people!"
+
+"The Jewish people!" exclaimed the Chinese. "Are they, then, masters of
+at least three-quarters of the earth?" "They flatter themselves that
+they shall one day be so," was the answer; "until which time they have
+the honor of being our old-clothes-men, and, now and then, clippers of
+our coin."--"You jest," said the Chinese; "had these people ever a vast
+empire?" "They had as their own for some years," said I, "a small
+country; but it is not by the extent of their states that a people are
+to be judged; as it is not by his riches that we are to estimate a man."
+
+"But is no other people spoken of in this book?" asked the man of
+letters. "Undoubtedly," returned a learned man who stood next me, and
+who instantly replied, "there is a deal said in it of a small country
+sixty leagues broad, called Egypt, where it is asserted that there was a
+lake a hundred and fifty leagues round, cut by the hands of
+men."--"Zounds!" said the Chinese; "a lake a hundred and fifty leagues
+round in a country only sixty broad! That is fine, indeed!"--"Everybody
+was wise in that country," added the doctor. "Oh! what fine times they
+must have been," said the Chinese. "But is that all?"--"No," replied the
+European; "he also treats of that celebrated people, the Greeks." "Who
+are these Greeks?" asked the man of letters. "Ah!" continued the other,
+"they inhabited a province about a two-hundredth part as large as China,
+but which has been famous throughout the world." "I have never heard
+speak of these people, neither in Mogul nor in Japan, nor in Great
+Tartary," said the Chinese, with an ingenuous look.
+
+"Oh, ignorant, barbarous man!" politely exclaimed our scholar. "Know you
+not, then, the Theban Epaminondas; nor the harbor of Piraeus; nor the
+name of the two horses of Achilles; nor that of Silenus's ass? Have you
+not heard of Jupiter, nor of Diogenes, nor of Lais, nor of Cybele,
+nor--"
+
+"I am much afraid," replied the man of letters, "that you know nothing
+at all of the ever memorable adventure of the celebrated Xixofou
+Concochigramki, nor of the mysteries of the great Fi Psi Hi Hi. But
+pray, what are the other unknown things of which this universal history
+treats?" The scholar then spoke for a quarter of an hour on the Roman
+commonwealth: but when he came to Julius Cæsar, the Chinese interrupted
+him, saying, "As for him, I think I know him: was he not a Turk?"
+
+"What!" said the scholar, somewhat warm, "do you not at least know the
+difference between Pagans, Christians, and Mussulmans? Do you not know
+Constantine, and the history of the popes?" "We have indistinctly
+heard," answered the Asiatic, "of one Mahomet."
+
+"It is impossible," returned the other, "that you should not, at least,
+be acquainted with Luther, Zuinglius, Bellarmin, Å’colampadius." "I
+shall never remember those names," said the Chinese. He then went away
+to sell a considerable parcel of tea and fine grogram, with which he
+bought two fine girls and a ship-boy, whom he took back to his own
+country, adoring Tien, and commending himself to Confucius.
+
+For myself, who was present at this conversation, I clearly saw what
+glory is; and I said: Since Cæsar and Jupiter are unknown in the finest,
+the most ancient, the most extensive, the most populous and
+well-regulated kingdom upon earth; it beseems you, ye governors of some
+little country, ye preachers in some little parish, or some little
+town--ye doctors of Salamanca and of Bourges, ye flimsy authors, and ye
+ponderous commentators--it beseems you to make pretensions to renown!
+
+
+
+
+GOAT--SORCERY.
+
+
+The honors of every kind which antiquity paid to goats would be very
+astonishing, if anything could astonish those who have grown a little
+familiar with the world, ancient and modern. The Egyptians and the Jews
+often designated the kings and the chiefs of the people by the word
+"goat." We find in Zachariah:
+
+"Mine anger was kindled against the shepherds, and I punished the goats;
+for the Lord of Hosts hath visited his flock, the house of Judah, and
+hath made them as his goodly horse in the battle."
+
+"Remove out of the midst of Babylon," says Jeremiah to the chiefs of the
+people; "go forth out of the land of the Chaldæans, and be as the
+he-goats before the flocks."
+
+Isaiah, in chapters x. and xiv., uses the term "goat," which has been
+translated "prince." The Egyptians went much farther than calling their
+kings goats; they consecrated a goat in Mendes, and it is even said that
+they adored him. The truth very likely was, that the people took an
+emblem for a divinity, as is but too often the case.
+
+It is not likely that the Egyptian _shoën_ or _shotim_, _i.e._, priests,
+immolated goats and worshipped them at the same time. We know that they
+had their goat Hazazel, which they adorned and crowned with flowers, and
+threw down headlong, as an expiation for the people; and that the Jews
+took from them, not only this ceremony, but even the very name of
+Hazazel, as they adopted many other rites from Egypt.
+
+But goats received another, and yet more singular honor. It is beyond a
+doubt that in Egypt many women set the same example with goats, as
+Pasiphae did with her bull.
+
+The Jews but too faithfully imitated these abominations. Jeroboam
+instituted priests for the service of his calves and his goats.
+
+The worship of the goat was established in Egypt, and in the lands of a
+part of Palestine. Enchantments were believed to be operated by means of
+goats, and other monsters, which were always represented with a goat's
+head.
+
+Magic, sorcery, soon passed from the East into the West, and extended
+itself throughout the earth. The sort of sorcery that came from the Jews
+was called Sabbatum by the Romans, who thus confounded their sacred day
+with their secret abominations. Thence it was, that in the neighboring
+nations, to be a sorcerer and to go to the sabbath, meant the same
+thing.
+
+Wretched village women, deceived by knaves, and still more by the
+weakness of their own imaginations, believed that after pronouncing the
+word "_abraxa_", and rubbing themselves with an ointment mixed with
+cow-dung and goat's hair, they went to the sabbath on a broom-stick in
+their sleep, that there they adored a goat, and that he enjoyed them.
+
+This opinion was universal. All the doctors asserted that it was the
+devil, who metamorphosed himself into a goat. This may be seen in Del
+Rio's "Disquisitions," and in a hundred other authors. The theologian
+Grillandus, a great promoter of the Inquisition, quoted by Del Rio, says
+that sorcerers call the goat Martinet. He assures us that a woman who
+was attached to Martinet, mounted on his back, and was carried in an
+instant through the air to a place called the Nut of Benevento.
+
+There were books in which the mysteries of the sorcerers were written. I
+have seen one of them, at the head of which was a figure of a goat very
+badly drawn, with a woman on her knees behind him. In France, these
+books were called "_grimoires_"; and in other countries "the devil's
+alphabet." That which I saw contained only four leaves, in almost
+illegible characters, much like those of the "Shepherd's Almanac."
+
+Reasoning and better education would have sufficed in Europe for the
+extirpation of such an extravagance; but executions were employed
+instead of reasoning. The pretended sorcerers had their "_grimoire_" and
+the judges had their sorcerer's code. In 1599, the Jesuit Del Rio, a
+doctor of Louvain, published his "Magical Disquisitions." He affirms
+that all heretics are magicians, and frequently recommends that they be
+put to the torture. He has no doubt that the devil transforms himself
+into a goat and grants his favors to all women presented to him. He
+quotes various jurisconsults, called demonographers, who assert that
+Luther was the son of a woman and a goat. He assures us that at
+Brussels, in 1595, a woman was brought to bed of a child, of which the
+devil, disguised as a goat, was father, and that she was punished, but
+he does not inform us in what manner.
+
+But the jurisprudence of witchcraft has been the most profoundly treated
+by one Boguet, "_grand juge en dernier ressort_" of an abbey of St.
+Claude in Franche-Comté. He gives an account of all the executions to
+which he condemned wizards and witches, and the number is very
+considerable. Nearly all the witches are supposed to have had commerce
+with the goat.
+
+It has already been said that more than a hundred thousand sorcerers
+have been executed in Europe. Philosophy alone has at length cured men
+of this abominable delusion, and has taught judges that they should not
+burn the insane.
+
+
+
+
+GOD--GODS.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+The reader cannot too carefully bear in mind that this dictionary has
+not been written for the purpose of repeating what so many others have
+said.
+
+The knowledge of a God is not impressed upon us by the hands of nature,
+for then men would all have the same idea; and no idea is born with us.
+It does not come to us like the perception of light, of the ground,
+etc., which we receive as soon as our eyes and our understandings are
+opened. Is it a philosophical idea? No; men admitted the existence of
+gods before they were philosophers.
+
+Whence, then, is this idea derived? From feeling, and from that natural
+logic which unfolds itself with age, even in the rudest of mankind.
+Astonishing effects of nature were beheld--harvests and barrenness, fair
+weather and storms, benefits and scourges; and the hand of a master was
+felt. Chiefs were necessary to govern societies; and it was needful to
+admit sovereigns of these new sovereigns whom human weakness had given
+itself--beings before whose power these men who could bear down their
+fellow-men might tremble. The first sovereigns in their time employed
+these notions to cement their power. Such were the first steps; thus
+every little society had its god. These notions were rude because
+everything was rude. It is very natural to reason by analogy. One
+society under a chief did not deny that the neighboring tribe should
+likewise have its judge, or its captain; consequently it could not deny
+that the other should also have its god. But as it was to the interest
+of each tribe that its captain should be the best, it was also
+interested in believing, and consequently it did believe, that its god
+was the mightiest. Hence those ancient fables which have so long been
+generally diffused, that the gods of one nation fought against the gods
+of another. Hence the numerous passages in the Hebrew books, which we
+find constantly disclosing the opinion entertained by the Jews, that the
+gods of their enemies existed, but that they were inferior to the God of
+the Jews.
+
+Meanwhile, in the great states where the progress of society allowed to
+individuals the enjoyment of speculative leisure, there were priests,
+Magi, and philosophers.
+
+Some of these perfected their reason so far as to acknowledge in secret
+one only and universal god. So, although the ancient Egyptians adored
+Osiri, Osiris, or rather Osireth (which signifies this land is mine);
+though they also adored other superior beings, yet they admitted one
+supreme, one only principal god, whom they called "_Knef_", whose symbol
+was a sphere placed on the frontispiece of the temple.
+
+After this model, the Greeks had their Zeus, their Jupiter, the master
+of the other gods, who were but what the angels are with the Babylonians
+and the Hebrews, and the saints with the Christians of the Roman
+communion.
+
+It is a more thorny question than it has been considered, and one by no
+means profoundly examined, whether several gods, equal in power, can
+exist at the same time?
+
+We have no adequate idea of the Divinity; we creep on from conjecture to
+conjecture, from likelihood to probability. We have very few
+certainties. There is something; therefore there is something eternal;
+for nothing is produced from nothing. Here is a certain truth on which
+the mind reposes. Every work which shows us means and an end, announces
+a workman; then this universe, composed of springs, of means, each of
+which has its end, discovers a most mighty, a most intelligent workman.
+Here is a probability approaching the greatest certainty. But is this
+supreme artificer infinite? Is he everywhere? Is he in one place? How
+are we, with our feeble intelligence and limited knowledge, to answer
+these questions?
+
+My reason alone proves to me a being who has arranged the matter of this
+world; but my reason is unable to prove to me that he made this
+matter--that he brought it out of nothing. All the sages of antiquity,
+without exception, believed matter to be eternal, and existing by
+itself. All then that I can do, without the aid of superior light, is to
+believe that the God of this world is also eternal, and existing by
+Himself. God and matter exist by the nature of things. May not other
+gods exist, as well as other worlds? Whole nations, and very enlightened
+schools, have clearly admitted two gods in this world--one the source of
+good, the other the source of evil. They admitted an eternal war between
+two equal powers. Assuredly, nature can more easily suffer the existence
+of several independent beings in the immensity of space, than that of
+limited and powerless gods in this world, of whom one can do no good,
+and the other no harm.
+
+If God and matter exist from all eternity, as antiquity believed, here
+then are two necessary beings; now, if there be two necessary beings,
+there may be thirty. These doubts alone, which are the germ of an
+infinity of reflections, serve at least to convince us of the feebleness
+of our understanding. We must, with Cicero, confess our ignorance of the
+nature of the Divinity; we shall never know any more of it than he did.
+
+In vain do the schools tell us that God is infinite negatively and not
+privatively--"_formaliter et non materialiter_" that He is the first
+act, the middle, and the last--that He is everywhere without being in
+any place; a hundred pages of commentaries on definitions like these
+cannot give us the smallest light. We have no steps whereby to arrive at
+such knowledge.
+
+We feel that we are under the hand of an invisible being; this is all;
+we cannot advance one step farther. It is mad temerity to seek to divine
+what this being is--whether he is extended or not, whether he is in one
+place or not, how he exists, or how he operates.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+I am ever apprehensive of being mistaken; but all monuments give me
+sufficient evidence that the polished nations of antiquity acknowledged
+a supreme god. There is not a book, not a medal, not a bas-relief, not
+an inscription, in which Juno, Minerva, Neptune, Mars, or any of the
+other deities, is spoken of as a forming being, the sovereign of all
+nature. On the contrary, the most ancient profane books that we
+have--those of Hesiod and Homer--represent their Zeus as the only
+thunderer, the only master of gods and men; he even punishes the other
+gods; he ties Juno with a chain, and drives Apollo out of heaven.
+
+The ancient religion of the Brahmins--the first that admitted celestial
+creatures--the first which spoke of their rebellion--explains itself in
+sublime manner concerning the unity and power of God; as we have seen in
+the article on "Angel."
+
+The Chinese, ancient as they are, come after the Indians. They have
+acknowledged one only god from time immemorial; they have no subordinate
+gods, no t mediating demons or genii between God and man; no oracles, no
+abstract dogmas, no theological disputes among the lettered; their
+emperor was always the first pontiff; their religion was always august
+and simple; thus it is that this vast empire, though twice subjugated,
+has constantly preserved its integrity, has made its conquerors receive
+its laws, and notwithstanding the crimes and miseries inseparable from
+the human race, is still the most flourishing state upon earth.
+
+The Magi of Chaldæa, the Sabeans, acknowledged but one supreme god, whom
+they adored in the stars, which are his work. The Persians adored him in
+the sun. The sphere placed on the frontispiece of the temple of Memphis
+was the emblem of one only and perfect god, called "_Knef_" by the
+Egyptians.
+
+The title of "_Deus Optimus Maximus_" was never given by the Romans to
+any but "_Jupiter, hominum sator atque deorum_." This great truth, which
+we have elsewhere pointed out, cannot be too often repeated.
+
+This adoration of a Supreme God, from Romulus down to the total
+destruction of the empire and of its religion, is confirmed. In spite of
+all the follies of the people, who venerated secondary and ridiculous
+gods, and in spite of the Epicureans, who in reality acknowledged none,
+it is verified that, in all times, the magistrates and the wise adored
+one sovereign God.
+
+From the great number of testimonies left us to this truth, I will
+select first that of Maximus of Tyre, who flourished under the
+Antonines--those models of true piety, since they were models of
+humanity. These are his words, in his discourse entitled "Of God,"
+according to Plato. The reader who would instruct himself is requested
+to weigh them well:
+
+"Men have been so weak as to give to God a human figure, because they
+had seen nothing superior to man; but it is ridiculous to imagine, with
+Homer, that Jupiter or the Supreme Divinity has black eyebrows and
+golden hair, which he cannot shake without making the heavens tremble.
+
+"When men are questioned concerning the nature of the Divinity, their
+answers are all different. Yet, notwithstanding this prodigious variety
+of opinions, you will find one and the same feeling throughout the
+earth--viz., that there is but one God, who is the father of all...."
+
+After this formal avowal, after the immortal discourses of Cicero, of
+Antonine, of Epictetus, what becomes of the declamations which so many
+ignorant pedants are still repeating? What avail those eternal
+reproachings of base polytheism and puerile idolatry, but to convince us
+that the reproachers have not the slightest acquaintance with sterling
+antiquity? They have taken the reveries of Homer for the doctrines of
+the wise.
+
+Is it necessary to have stronger or more expressive testimony? You will
+find it in the letter from Maximus of Madaura to St. Augustine; both
+were philosophers and orators; at least, they prided themselves on being
+so; they wrote to each other freely; they were even friends as much as a
+man of the old religion and one of the new could be friends. Read
+Maximus of Madaura's letter, and the bishop of Hippo's answer:
+
+_Letter from Maximus of Madaura._
+
+"Now, that there is a sovereign God, who is without beginning, and, who,
+without having begotten anything like unto himself, is nevertheless the
+father and the former of all things, what man can be gross and stupid
+enough to doubt? He it is of whom, under different names, we adore the
+eternal power extending through every part of the world--thus honoring
+separately, by different sorts of worship, what may be called his
+several members, we adore him entirely.... May those subordinate gods
+preserve you, under whose names, and by whom all we mortals upon earth
+adore the common father of gods and men, by different sorts of worship,
+it is true, but all according in their variety, and all tending to the
+same end."
+
+By whom was this letter written? By a Numidian--one of the country of
+the Algerines!
+
+_Augustine's Answer._
+
+"In your public square there are two statues of Mars, the one naked, the
+other armed; and close by, the figure of a man who, with three fingers
+advanced towards Mars, holds in check that divinity, so dangerous to the
+whole town. With regard to what you say of such gods, being portions of
+the only true God, I take the liberty you give me, to warn you not to
+fall into such a sacrilege; for that only God, of whom you speak, is
+doubtless He who is acknowledged by the whole world, and concerning
+whom, as some of the ancients have said, the ignorant agree with the
+learned. Now, will you say that he whose strength, if not his cruelty,
+is represented by an inanimate man, is a portion of that God? I could
+easily push you hard on this subject; for you will clearly see how much
+might be said upon it; but I refrain, lest you should say that I employ
+against you the weapons of rhetoric rather than those of virtue."
+
+We know not what was signified by these two statues, of which no vestige
+is left us; but not all the statues with which Rome was filled--not the
+Pantheon and all the temples consecrated to the inferior gods, nor even
+those of the twelve greater gods prevented "_Deus Optimus
+Maximus_"--"God, most good, most great"--from being acknowledged
+throughout the empire.
+
+The misfortune of the Romans, then, was their ignorance of the Mosaic
+law, and afterwards, of the law of the disciples of our Saviour Jesus
+Christ--their want of the faith--their mixing with the worship of a
+supreme God the worship of Mars, of Venus, of Minerva, of Apollo, who
+did not exist, and their preserving that religion until the time of the
+Theodosii. Happily, the Goths, the Huns, the Vandals, the Heruli, the
+Lombards, the Franks, who destroyed that empire, submitted to the truth,
+and enjoyed a blessing denied to Scipio, to Cato, to Metellus, to
+Emilius, to Cicero, to Varro, to Virgil, and to Horace.
+
+None of these great men knew Jesus Christ, whom they could not know; yet
+they did not worship the devil, as so many pedants are every day
+repeating. How should they worship the devil, of whom they had never
+heard?
+
+_A Calumny on Cicero by Warburton, on the Subject of a Supreme God._
+
+Warburton, like his contemporaries, has calumniated Cicero and ancient
+Rome. He boldly supposes that Cicero pronounced these words, in his
+"Oration for Flaccus":
+
+"It is unworthy of the majesty of the empire to adore only one
+God"--"_Majestatem imperii non decuit ut unus tantum Deus colatur."
+
+It will, perhaps, hardly be believed that there is not a word of this in
+the "Oration for Flaccus," nor in any of Cicero's works. Flaccus, who
+had exercised the prætorship in Asia Minor, is charged with exercising
+some vexations. He was secretly persecuted by the Jews, who then
+inundated Rome; for, by their money, they had obtained privileges in
+Rome at the very time when Pompey, after Crassus, had taken Jerusalem,
+and hanged their petty king, Alexander, son of Aristobolus. Flaccus had
+forbidden the conveying of gold and silver specie to Jerusalem, because
+the money came back altered, and commerce was thereby injured; and he
+had seized the gold which was clandestinely carried. This gold, said
+Cicero, is still in the treasury. Flaccus has acted as disinterestedly
+as Pompey.
+
+Cicero, then, with his wonted irony, pronounces these words: "Each
+country has its religion; we have ours. While Jerusalem was yet free,
+while the Jews were yet at peace, even then they held in abhorrence the
+splendor of this empire, the dignity of the Roman name, the
+institutions of our ancestors. Now that nation has shown more than ever,
+by the strength of its arms, what it should think of the Roman Empire.
+It has shown us, by its valor, how dear it is to the immortal gods; it
+has proved it to us, by its being vanquished, expatriated, and
+tributary."--"_Stantibus Hierosolymis, pacatisque Judais, tamen istorum
+religio sacrorum, a splendore hujus imperii, gravitate nominis nostri,
+ma jorum institutis, abhorrebat; nunc vero hoc magis quid ilia gens,
+quid de imperio nostro sentiret, ostendit armis; quam cara diis
+immortalibus esset, docuit, quod est victa, quod elocata, quod
+servata._"
+
+It is then quite false that Cicero, or any other Roman, ever said that
+it did not become the majesty of the empire to acknowledge a supreme
+God. Their Jupiter, the Zeus of the Greeks, the Jehovah of the
+Phœnicians, was always considered as the master of the secondary
+gods. This great truth cannot be too forcibly inculcated.
+
+_Did the Romans Take Their Gods from the Greeks?_
+
+Had not the Romans served gods for whom they were not indebted to the
+Greeks? For instance, they could not be guilty of plagiarism in adoring
+Coelum, while the Greeks adored Ouranon; or in addressing themselves to
+Saturnus and Tellus, while the Greeks addressed themselves to Ge and
+Chronos. They called Ceres, her whom the Greeks named Deo and Demiter.
+
+Their Neptune was Poseidon, their Venus was Aphrodite; their Juno was
+called, in Greek, Era; their Proserpine, Core; and their favorites, Mars
+and Bellona, were Ares and Enio. In none of these instances do the names
+resemble.
+
+Did the inventive spirits of Rome and of Greece assemble? or did the one
+take from the other the _thing_, while they disguised the _name_? It is
+very natural that the Romans, without consulting the Greeks, should make
+to themselves gods of the heavens, of time; beings presiding over war,
+over generation, over harvests, without going to Greece to ask for gods,
+as they afterwards went there to ask for laws. When you find a name that
+resembles nothing else, it is but fair to believe it a native of that
+particular country.
+
+But is not Jupiter, the master of all the gods, a word belonging to
+every nation, from the Euphrates to the Tiber? Among the first Romans,
+it was _Jov_, _Jovis_; among the Greeks, _Zeus_; among the
+Phœnicians, the Syrians, and the Egyptians, _Jehovah_.
+
+Does not this resemblance serve to confirm the supposition that every
+people had the knowledge of the Supreme Being?--a knowledge confused, it
+is true; but what man can have it _distinct_?
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+_Examination of Spinoza._
+
+Spinoza cannot help admitting an intelligence acting in matter, and
+forming a whole with it.
+
+"I must conclude," he says, "that the absolute being is neither thought
+nor extent, exclusively of each other; but that extent and thought are
+necessary attributes of the absolute being."
+
+Herein he appears to differ from all the atheists of antiquity; from
+Ocellus, Lucanus, Heraclitus, Democritus, Leucippus, Strato, Epicurus,
+Pythagoras, Diagoras, Zeno of Elis, Anaximander, and so many others. He
+differs from them, above all, in his method, which he took entirely from
+the reading of Descartes, whose very style he has imitated.
+
+The multitude of those who cry out against Spinoza, without ever having
+read him, will especially be astonished by his following declaration. He
+does not make it to dazzle mankind, nor to appease theologians, nor to
+obtain protectors, nor to disarm a party; he speaks as a philosopher,
+without naming himself, without advertising himself; and expresses
+himself in Latin, so as to be understood by a very small number. Here is
+his profession of faith.
+
+_Spinoza's Profession of Faith._
+
+"If I also concluded that the idea of God, comprised in that of the
+infinity of the universe, excused me from obedience, love, and worship,
+I should make a still more pernicious use of my reason; for it is
+evident to me that the laws which I _have_ received, not by the relation
+or intervention of other men, but immediately from Him, are those which
+the light of nature points out to me as the true guides of rational
+conduct. If I failed of obedience, in this particular, I should sin, not
+only against the principle of my being and the society of my kind, but
+also against myself, in depriving myself of the most solid advantage of
+my existence. This obedience does, it is true, bind me only to the
+duties of my state, and makes me look on all besides as frivolous
+practices, invented in superstition to serve the purposes of their
+inventors.
+
+"With regard to the love of God, so far, I conceive, is this idea from
+tending to weaken it, that no other is more calculated to increase it;
+since, through it, I know that God is intimate with my being; that He
+gives me existence and my every property; but He gives me them
+liberally, without reproach, without interest, without subjecting me to
+anything but my own nature. It banishes fear, uneasiness, distrust, and
+all the effects of a vulgar or interested love. It informs me that this
+is a good which I cannot lose, and which I possess the more fully, as I
+know and love it."
+
+Are these the words of the virtuous and tender Fénelon, or those of
+Spinoza? How is it that two men so opposed to each other, have, with
+such different notions of God, concurred in the idea of loving God for
+Himself?
+
+It must be acknowledged that they went both to the same end--the one as
+a Christian, the other as a man who had the misfortune not to be so;
+the holy archbishop, as philosopher, convinced that God is distinct
+from nature; the other as a widely-erring disciple of Descartes, who
+imagined that God is all nature.
+
+The former was orthodox, the latter was mistaken, I must assent; but
+both were honest, both estimable in their sincerity, as in their mild
+and simple manners; though there is no other point of resemblance
+between the imitator of the "Odyssey," and a dry Cartesian fenced round
+with arguments; between one of the most accomplished men of the court of
+Louis XIV. invested with what is called a _high_ divinity, and a poor
+unjudaïzed Jew, living with an income of three hundred florins, in the
+most profound obscurity.
+
+If there be any similitude between them, it is that Fénelon was accused
+before the Sanhedrim of the new law, and the other before a synagogue
+without power or without reason; but the one submitted, the other
+rebelled.
+
+_Foundation of Spinoza's Philosophy._
+
+The great dialectician Bayle has refuted Spinoza. His system, therefore,
+is not demonstrated, like one of Euclid's propositions; for, if it were
+so, it could not be combated. It is, therefore, at least obscure.
+
+I have always had some suspicion that Spinoza, with his universal
+substance, his modes and accidents, had some other meaning than that in
+which he is understood by Bayle; and consequently, that Bayle may be
+right, without having confounded Spinoza. And, in particular, I have
+always thought that often Spinoza did not understand himself, and that
+this is the principal reason why he has not been understood.
+
+It seems to me that the ramparts of Spinozism might be beaten down on a
+side which Bayle has neglected. Spinoza thinks that there can exist but
+one substance; and it appears throughout his book that he builds his
+theory on the mistake of Descartes, that "nature is a plenum."
+
+The theory of a plenum is as false as that of a void. It is now
+demonstrated that motion is as impossible in absolute fulness, as it is
+impossible that, in an equal balance, a weight of two pounds in one
+scale should sink a weight of two in the other.
+
+Now, if every motion absolutely requires empty space, what becomes of
+Spinoza's one and only substance? How can the substance of a star,
+between which and us there is a void so immense, be precisely the
+substance of this earth, or the substance of myself, or the substance of
+a fly eaten by a spider?
+
+Perhaps I mistake, but I never have been able to conceive how Spinoza,
+admitting an infinite substance of which thought and matter are the two
+modalities--admitting the substance which he calls God, and of which all
+that we see is mode or accident--could nevertheless reject final causes.
+If this infinite, universal being thinks, must he not have design? If he
+has design, must he not have a will?
+
+[Illustration: Descartes.]
+
+Spinoza says, we are modes of that absolute, necessary, infinite being.
+I say to Spinoza, we will, and have design, we who are but modes;
+therefore, this infinite, necessary, absolute being cannot be deprived
+of them; therefore, he has will, design, power.
+
+I am aware that various philosophers, and especially Lucretius, have
+denied final causes; I am also aware that Lucretius, though not very
+chaste, is a very great poet in his descriptions and in his morals; but
+in philosophy I own he appears to me to be very far behind a college
+porter or a parish beadle. To affirm that the eye is not made to see,
+nor the ear to hear, nor the stomach to digest--is not this the most
+enormous absurdity, the most revolting folly, that ever entered the
+human mind? Doubter as I am, this insanity seems to me evident, and I
+say so.
+
+For my part, I see in nature, as in the arts, only final causes, and I
+believe that an apple tree is made to bear apples, as I believe that a
+watch is made to tell the hour.
+
+I must here acquaint the readers that if Spinoza, in several passages of
+his works, makes a jest of final causes, he most expressly acknowledges
+them in the first part of his "Being, in General and in Particular."
+
+Here he says, "Permit me for a few moments to dwell with admiration on
+the wonderful dispensation of nature, which, having enriched the
+constitution of man with all the resources necessary to prolong to a
+certain term the duration of his frail existence, and to animate his
+knowledge of himself by that of an infinity of distant objects, seems
+purposely to have neglected to give him the means of well knowing what
+he is obliged to make a more ordinary use of--the individuals of his own
+species. Yet, when duly considered, this appears less the effect of a
+refusal than of an extreme liberality; for, if there were any
+intelligent being that could penetrate another against his will, he
+would enjoy such an advantage as would of itself exclude him from
+society; whereas, in the present state of things, each individual
+enjoying himself in full independence communicates himself so much only
+as he finds convenient."
+
+What shall I conclude from this? That Spinoza frequently contradicted
+himself; that he had not always clear ideas; that in the great wreck of
+systems, he clung sometimes to one plank, sometimes to another; that in
+this weakness he was like Malebranche, Arnauld, Bossuet, and Claude, who
+now and then contradicted themselves in their disputes; that he was like
+numberless metaphysicians and theologians? I shall conclude that I have
+additional reason for distrusting all my metaphysical notions; that I am
+a very feeble animal, treading on quicksands, which are continually
+giving way beneath me; and that there is perhaps nothing so foolish as
+to believe ourselves always in the right.
+
+Baruch Spinoza, you are very confused; but are you as dangerous as you
+are said to be? I maintain that you are not; and my reason is, that you
+_are_ confused, that you have written in bad Latin, and that there are
+not ten persons in Europe who read you from beginning to end, although
+you have been translated into French. Who is the dangerous author? He
+who is read by the idle at court and by the ladies.
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+_The "System of Nature."_
+
+The author of the "System of Nature" has had the advantage of being read
+by both learned and ignorant, and by women. His style, then, has merits
+which that of Spinoza wanted. He is often luminous, sometimes eloquent;
+although he may be charged, like all the rest, with repetition,
+declamation, and self-contradiction. But for profundity, he is very
+often to be distrusted both in physics and in morals. The interest of
+mankind is here in question; we will, therefore, examine whether his
+doctrine is true and useful; and will, if we can, be brief.
+
+"Order and disorder do not exist." What! in physics, is not a child born
+blind, without legs, or a monster, contrary to the nature of the
+species? Is it not the ordinary regularity of nature that makes order,
+and irregularity that constitutes disorder? Is it not a great
+derangement, a dreadful disorder, when nature gives a child hunger and
+closes the Å“sophagus? The evacuations of every kind are necessary;
+yet the channels are frequently without orifices, which it is necessary
+to remedy. Doubtless this disorder has its cause; for there is no effect
+without a cause; but it is a very disordered effect.
+
+Is not the assassination of our friend, or of our brother, a horrible
+disorder in morals? Are not the calumnies of a Garasse, of a Letellier,
+of a Doucin, against Jansenists, and those of Jansenists against
+Jesuits, petty disorders? Were not the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the
+Irish massacre, etc., execrable disorders? This crime has its cause in
+passion, but the effect is execrable; the cause is fatal; this disorder
+makes us shudder. The origin of the disorder remains to be discovered,
+but the disorder exists.
+
+"Experience proves to us that the matter which we regard as inert and
+dead assumes action, intelligence, and life, when it is combined in a
+certain way."
+
+This is precisely the difficulty. How does a germ come to life? Of this
+the author and the reader are alike ignorant. Hence, are not the "System
+of Nature," and all the systems in the world, so many dreams?
+
+"It would be necessary to define the vital principle, which I deem
+impossible." Is not this definition very easy, very common? Is not life
+organization with feeling? But that you have these two properties from
+the motion of matter alone, it is impossible to give any proof; and if
+it cannot be proved, why affirm it? Why say aloud, "I know," while you
+say to yourself, "I know not"?
+
+"It will be asked, what is man?" etc. Assuredly, this article is no
+clearer than the most obscure of Spinoza's; and many readers will feel
+indignant at the decisive tone which is assumed without anything being
+explained.
+
+"Matter is eternal and necessary; but its forms and its combinations are
+transitory and contingent," etc. It is hard to comprehend, matter being,
+according to our author, necessary, and without freedom, how there can
+be anything contingent. By contingency, we understand that which may be,
+or may not be; but since all must be, of absolute necessity, every
+manner of being, which he here very erroneously calls contingent, is as
+absolutely of necessity as the being itself. Here again we are in a
+labyrinth.
+
+When you venture to affirm that there is no God, that matter acts of
+itself by an eternal necessity, it must be demonstrated like a
+proposition in Euclid, otherwise you rest your system only on a perhaps.
+What a foundation for that which is most interesting to the human race!
+
+"If man is by his nature forced to love his well-being, he is forced to
+love the means of that well-being. It were useless, and perhaps unjust,
+to ask a man to be virtuous, if he cannot be so without making himself
+unhappy. So soon as vice makes him happy, he must love vice."
+
+This maxim is yet more execrable in morals than the others are in
+physics. Were it true that a man could not be virtuous without
+suffering, he must be encouraged to suffer. Our author's proposition
+would evidently be the ruin of society. Besides, how does he know that
+we cannot be happy without having vices? On the contrary, is it not
+proved by experience that the satisfaction of having subdued them is a
+thousand times greater than the pleasure of yielding to them?--a
+pleasure always empoisoned, a pleasure leading to woe. By subduing our
+vices, we acquire tranquillity, the consoling testimony of our
+conscience; by giving ourselves up to them, we lose our health, our
+quiet--we risk everything. Thus our author himself, in twenty passages,
+wishes all to be sacrificed to virtue; and he advances this proposition
+only to give in his system a fresh proof of the necessity of being
+virtuous.
+
+"They who, with so many arguments, reject innate ideas should have
+perceived that this ineffable intelligence by which the world is said to
+be guided, and of which our senses can determine neither the existence
+nor the qualities, is a being of reason."
+
+But, truly, how does it follow from our having no innate ideas, that
+there is no God? Is not this consequence absurd? Is there any
+contradiction in saying that God gives us ideas through our senses? Is
+it not, on the contrary, most clearly evident, that if there is an
+Almighty Being from whom we have life, we owe to him our ideas and our
+senses as well as everything else? It should first have been proved
+that God does not exist, which our author has not done, which he has not
+even attempted to do before this page of his tenth chapter.
+
+Fearful of wearying the reader by an examination of all these detached
+passages, I will come at once to the foundation of the book, and the
+astonishing error upon which the author has built his system.
+
+_Story of the Eels on Which the System is Founded._
+
+About the year 1750 there was, in France, an English Jesuit called
+Needham, disguised as a secular, who was then serving as tutor to the
+nephew of M. Dillon, archbishop of Toulouse. This man made experiments
+in natural philosophy, and especially in chemistry.
+
+Having put some rye meal into well-corked bottles, and some boiled
+mutton gravy into other bottles, he thought that his mutton gravy and
+his meal had given birth to eels, which again produced others; and that
+thus a race of eels was formed indifferently from the juice of meat, or
+from a grain of rye.
+
+A natural philosopher, of some reputation, had no doubt that this
+Needham was a profound atheist. He concluded that, since eels could be
+made of rye meal, men might be made of wheat flour; that nature and
+chemistry produce all; and that it was demonstrated that we may very
+well dispense with an all-forming God.
+
+This property of meal very easily deceived one who, unfortunately, was
+already wandering amidst ideas that should make us tremble for the
+weakness of the human mind. He wanted to dig a hole in the centre of the
+earth, to see the central fire; to dissect Patagonians, that he might
+know the nature of the soul; to cover the sick with pitch, to prevent
+them from perspiring; to exalt his soul, that he might foretell the
+future. If to these things it were added, that he had the still greater
+unhappiness of seeking to oppress two of his brethren, it would do no
+honor to atheism; it would only serve to make us look into ourselves
+with confusion.
+
+It is really strange that men, while denying a creator, should have
+attributed to themselves the power of creating eels.
+
+But it is yet more deplorable that natural philosophers, of better
+information, adopted the Jesuit Needham's ridiculous system, and joined
+it to that of Maillet, who asserted that the ocean had formed the Alps
+and Pyrenees, and that men were originally porpoises, whose forked tails
+changed in the course of time into thighs and legs. Such fancies are
+worthy to be placed with the eels formed by meal. We were assured, not
+long ago, that at Brussels a hen had brought forth half a dozen young
+rabbits.
+
+This transmutation of meal and gravy into eels was demonstrated to be as
+false and ridiculous as it really is, by M. Spallanzani, a rather better
+observer than Needham. But the extravagance of so palpable an illusion
+was evident without his observations.
+
+Needham's eels soon followed the Brussels' hen.
+
+Nevertheless, in 1768, the correct, elegant, and judicious translator of
+Lucretius was so far led away, that he not only, in his notes to book
+viii. p. 361, repeats Needham's pretended experiments, but he also does
+all he can to establish their validity. Here, then, we have the new
+foundation of the "System of Nature."
+
+The author, in the second chapter, thus expresses himself: "After
+moistening meal with water, and shutting up the mixture, it is found
+after a little time, with the aid of the microscope, that it has
+produced organized beings, of whose production the water and meal were
+believed to be incapable. Thus inanimate nature can pass into life,
+which is itself but an assemblage of motions."
+
+Were this unparalleled blunder true, yet, in rigorous reasoning, I do
+not see how it would prove there is no God; I do not see why a supreme,
+intelligent, and mighty being, having formed the sun and the stars,
+might not also deign to form animalculae without a germ. Here is no
+contradiction in terms. A demonstrative proof that God has no existence
+must be sought elsewhere; and most assuredly no person has ever found,
+or will ever find, one.
+
+Our author treats final causes with contempt, because the argument is
+hackneyed; but this much-contemned argument is that of Cicero and of
+Newton. This alone might somewhat lessen the confidence of atheists in
+themselves. The number is not small of the sages who, observing the
+course of the stars, and the prodigious art that pervades the structure
+of animals and vegetables, have acknowledged a powerful hand working
+these continual wonders.
+
+The author asserts that matter, blind and without choice, produces
+intelligent animals. Produce, without intelligence, beings with
+intelligence! Is this conceivable? Is this system founded on the
+smallest verisimilitude? An opinion so contradictory requires proofs no
+less astonishing than itself. The author gives us none; he never proves
+anything; but he affirms all that he advances. What chaos! what
+confusion! and what temerity!
+
+Spinoza at least acknowledged an intelligence acting in this great
+whole, which constituted nature: in this there was philosophy. But in
+the new system, I am under the necessity of saying that there is none.
+
+Matter has extent, solidity, gravity, divisibility. I have all these as
+well as this stone: but was a stone ever known to feel and think? If I
+am extended, solid, divisible, I owe it to matter. But I have sensations
+and thoughts--to what do I owe them? Not to water, not to mire--most
+likely to something more powerful than myself. Solely to the combination
+of the elements, you will say. Then prove it to me. Show me plainly that
+my intelligence cannot have been given to me by an intelligent cause. To
+this are you reduced.
+
+Our author successively combats the God of the schoolmen--a God composed
+of discordant qualities; a God to whom, as to those of Homer, is
+attributed the passions of men; a God capricious, fickle, unreasonable,
+absurd--but he cannot combat the God of the wise. The wise,
+contemplating nature, admit an intelligent and supreme power. It is
+perhaps impossible for human reason, destitute of divine assistance, to
+go a step further.
+
+Our author asks where this being resides; and, from the impossibility
+that anyone, without being infinite, should tell where He resides, he
+concludes that He does not exist. This is not philosophical; for we are
+not, because we cannot tell where the cause of an effect is, to conclude
+that there is no cause. If you had never seen a gunner, and you saw the
+effects of a battery of cannon, you would not say it acts entirely by
+itself. Shall it, then, only be necessary for you to say there is no
+God, in order to be believed on your words?
+
+Finally, his great objection is, the woes and crimes of mankind--an
+objection alike ancient and philosophical; an objection common, but
+fatal and terrible, and to which we find no answer but in the hope of a
+better life. Yet what is this hope? We can have no certainty in it but
+from reason. But I will venture to say, that when it is proved to us
+that a vast edifice, constructed with the greatest art, is built by an
+architect, whoever he may be, we ought to believe in that architect,
+even though the edifice should be stained with our blood, polluted by
+our crimes, and should crush us in its fall. I inquire not whether the
+architect is a good one, whether I should be satisfied with his
+building, whether I should quit it rather than stay in it, nor whether
+those who are lodged in it for a few days, like myself, are content: I
+only inquire if it be true that there is an architect, or if this house,
+containing so many fine apartments and so many wretched garrets, built
+itself.
+
+
+SECTION V.
+
+_The Necessity of Believing in a Supreme Being._
+
+The great, the interesting object, as it appears to me, is, not to argue
+metaphysically, but to consider whether, for the common good of us
+miserable and thinking animals, we should admit a rewarding and avenging
+God, at once our restraint and consolation, or should reject this idea,
+and so abandon ourselves to calamity without hope, and crime without
+remorse.
+
+Hobbes says that if, in a commonwealth, in which no God should be
+acknowledged, any citizen were to propose one, he would have him hanged.
+
+Apparently, he meant by this strange exaggeration, a citizen who should
+seek to rule in the name of a god, a charlatan who would make himself a
+tyrant. We understand citizens, who, feeling the weakness of human
+nature, its perverseness, and its misery, seek some prop to support it
+through the languors and horrors of this life.
+
+From Job down to us, a great many men have cursed their existence; we
+have, therefore, perpetual need of consolation and hope. Of these your
+philosophy deprives us. The fable of Pandora was better; it left us
+hope--which you snatch from us! Philosophy, you say, furnishes no proof
+of happiness to come. No--but you have no demonstration of the contrary.
+There may be in us an indestructible monad which feels and thinks,
+without our knowing anything at all of how that monad is made. Reason is
+not absolutely opposed to this idea, though reason alone does not prove
+it. Has not this opinion a prodigious advantage over yours? Mine is
+useful to mankind, yours is baneful; say of it what you will, it may
+encourage a Nero, an Alexander VI., or a Cartouche. Mine may restrain
+them.
+
+Marcus Antoninus and Epictetus believed that their monad, of whatever
+kind it was, would be united to the monad of the Great Being; and they
+were the most virtuous of men.
+
+In the state of doubt in which we both are, I do not say to you with
+Pascal, "choose the safest." There is no safety in uncertainty. We are
+here not to talk, but to examine; we must judge, and our judgment is not
+determined by our will. I do not propose to you to believe extravagant
+things, in order to escape embarrassment. I do not say to you, "Go to
+Mecca, and instruct yourself by kissing the black stone, take hold of a
+cow's tail, muffle yourself in a scapulary, or be imbecile and fanatical
+to acquire the favor of the Being of beings." I say to you: "Continue
+to cultivate virtue, to be beneficent, to regard all superstition with
+horror, or with pity; but adore, with me, the design which is manifested
+in all nature, and consequently the Author of that design--the
+primordial and final cause of all; hope with me that our monad, which
+reasons on the great eternal being, may be happy through that same great
+Being." There is no contradiction in this. You can no more demonstrate
+its impossibility than I can demonstrate mathematically that it is so.
+In metaphysics we scarcely reason on anything but probabilities. We are
+all swimming in a sea of which we have never seen the shore. Woe be to
+those who fight while they swim! Land who can: but he that cries out to
+me, "You swim in vain, there is no land," disheartens me, and deprives
+me of all my strength.
+
+What is the object of our dispute? To console our unhappy existence. Who
+consoles it--you or I?
+
+You yourself own, in some passages of your work, that the belief in a
+God has withheld some men on the brink of crime; for me, this
+acknowledgment is enough. If this opinion had prevented but ten
+assassinations, but ten calumnies, but ten iniquitous judgments on the
+earth, I hold that the whole earth ought to embrace it.
+
+Religion, you say, has produced thousands of crimes--say, rather,
+superstition, which unhappily reigns over this globe; it is the most
+cruel enemy of the pure adoration due to the Supreme Being.
+
+Let us detest this monster which has constantly been tearing the bosom
+of its mother; they who combat it are benefactors to mankind: it is a
+serpent enclosing religion in its folds, its head must be bruised,
+without wounding the parent whom it infects and devours.
+
+You fear, "that, by adoring God, men would soon again become
+superstitious and fanatical." But is it not to be feared that in denying
+Him, they would abandon themselves to the most atrocious passions, and
+the most frightful crimes? Between these two extremes is there not a
+very rational mean? Where is the safe track between these two rocks? It
+is God, and wise laws.
+
+You affirm that it is but one step from adoration to superstition: but
+there is an infinity to well-constituted minds, and these are now very
+numerous; they are at the head of nations; they influence public
+manners, and, year by year, the fanaticism that overspread the earth is
+receding in its detestable usurpations.
+
+I shall say a few words more in answer to what you say in page 223. "If
+it be presumed that there are relations between man and this incredible
+being, then altars must be raised and presents must be made to him,
+etc.; if no conception be formed of this being, then the matter must be
+referred to priests, who...." A great evil to be sure, to assemble in
+the harvest season, and thank God for the bread that He has given us!
+Who says you should make presents to God? The idea is ridiculous! But
+where is the harm of employing a citizen, called an "elder" or "priest,"
+to render thanks to the Divinity in the name of the other
+citizens?--provided the priest is not a Gregory VII. trampling on the
+heads of kings, nor an Alexander VI. polluting by incest his daughter,
+the offspring of a rape, and, by the aid of his bastard son, poisoning
+and assassinating almost all the neighboring princes: provided that, in
+a parish, this priest is not a knave, picking the pockets of the
+penitents he confesses, and using the money to seduce the girls he
+catechises; provided that this priest is not a Letellier, putting the
+whole kingdom in combustion by rogueries worthy of the pillory, nor a
+Warburton, violating the laws of society, making public the private
+papers of a member of parliament in order to ruin him, and calumniating
+whosoever is not of his opinion. The latter cases are rare. The
+sacerdotal state is a curb which forces to good behavior.
+
+A stupid priest excites contempt; a bad priest inspires horror; a good
+priest, mild, pious, without superstition, charitable, tolerant, is one
+who ought to be cherished and revered. You dread abuses--so do I. Let us
+unite to prevent them; but let us not condemn the usage when it is
+useful to society, when it is not perverted by fanaticism, or by
+fraudulent wickedness.
+
+I have one very important thing to tell you. I am persuaded that you are
+in a great error, but I am equally convinced that you are honest in your
+self-delusion. You would have men virtuous even without a God, although
+you have unfortunately said that "so soon as vice renders man happy, he
+must love vice"--a frightful proposition, which your friends should have
+prevailed on you to erase. Everywhere else you inspire probity. This
+philosophical dispute will be only between you and a few philosophers
+scattered over Europe; the rest of the earth will not even hear of it.
+The people do not read us. If some theologian were to seek to persecute
+us, he would be impudent as well as wicked; he would but serve to
+confirm you, and to make new atheists.
+
+You are wrong: but the Greeks did not persecute Epicurus; the Romans did
+not persecute Lucretius. You are wrong: but your genius and your virtue
+must be respected, while you are refuted with all possible strength.
+
+In my opinion, the finest homage that can be rendered to God is to stand
+forward in His defence without anger; as the most unworthy portrait that
+can be drawn of Him is to paint Him vindictive and furious. He is truth
+itself; and truth is without passion. To be a disciple of God is to
+announce Him as of a mild heart and of an unalterable mind.
+
+I think, with you, that fanaticism is a monster a thousand times more
+dangerous than philosophical atheism. Spinoza did not commit a single
+bad action. Châtel and Ravaillac, both devotees, assassinated Henry IV.
+
+The atheist of the closet is almost always a quiet philosopher, while
+the fanatic is always turbulent: but the court atheist, the atheistical
+prince, might be the scourge of mankind. Borgia and his like have done
+almost as much harm as the fanatics of Münster and of the Cévennes. I
+say the fanatics on both sides. The misfortune is, that atheists of the
+closet make atheists of the court. It was Chiron who brought up
+Achilles; he fed him with lion's marrow. Achilles will one day drag
+Hector's body round the walls of Troy, and immolate twelve captives to
+his vengeance.
+
+God keep us from an abominable priest who should hew a king in pieces
+with his sacrificing knife, as also from him who, with a helmet on his
+head and a cuirass on his back, at the age of seventy, should dare to
+sign with his three bloody fingers the ridiculous excommunication of a
+king of France! and from.... and from....
+
+But also, may God preserve us from a choleric and barbarous despot, who,
+not believing in a God, should be his own God, who should render himself
+unworthy of his sacred trust by trampling on the duties which that trust
+imposes, who should remorselessly sacrifice to his passions, his
+friends, his relatives, his servants, and his people. These two tigers,
+the one shorn, the other crowned are equally to be feared. By what means
+shall we muzzle them?....
+
+If the idea of a God has made a Titus or a Trajan, an Antonine or an
+Aurelius, and those great Chinese emperors, whose memory is so dear to
+the second of the most ancient and most extensive empires in the world,
+these examples are sufficient for my cause--and my cause is that of all
+mankind.
+
+I do not believe that there is in all Europe one statesman, one man at
+all versed in the affairs of the world, who has not the most profound
+contempt for the legends with which we have been inundated, even more
+than we now are with pamphlets. If religion no longer gives birth to
+civil wars, it is to philosophy alone that we are indebted, theological
+disputes beginning to be regarded in much the same manner as the
+quarrels of Punch and Judy at the fair. A usurpation, alike odious and
+ridiculous, founded upon fraud on one side and stupidity on the other,
+is every instant undermined by reason, which is establishing its reign.
+The bull "_In cæna Domini_"--that masterpiece of insolence and folly, no
+longer dares appear, even in Rome. If a regiment of monks makes the
+least evolution against the laws of the state, it is immediately broken.
+But, because the Jesuits have been expelled, must we also expel God? On
+the contrary, we must love Him the more.
+
+
+SECTION VI.
+
+In the reign of Arcadius, Logomachos, a theologue of Constantinople,
+went into Scythia and stopped at the foot of Mount Caucasus in the
+fruitful plains of Zephirim, on the borders of Colchis. The good old man
+Dondindac was in his great hall between his large sheepfold and his
+extensive barn; he was on his knees with his wife, his five sons and
+five daughters, his kinsmen and servants; and all were singing the
+praises of God, after a light repast. "What are you doing, idolater?"
+said Logomachos to him. "I am not an idolater," said Dondindac. "You
+must be an idolater," said Logomachos, "for you are not a Greek. Come,
+tell me what you were singing in your barbarous Scythian jargon?" "All
+tongues are alike to the ears of God," answered the Scythian; "we were
+singing His praises." "Very extraordinary!" returned the theologue; "a
+Scythian family praying to God without having been instructed by us!" He
+soon entered into conversation with the Scythian Dondindac; for the
+theologue knew a little Scythian, and the other a little Greek. This
+conversation has been found in a manuscript preserved in the library of
+Constantinople.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+Let us see if you know your catechism. Why do you pray to God?
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+Because it is just to adore the Supreme Being, from whom we have
+everything.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+Very fair for a barbarian. And what do you ask of him?
+
+DONDINDAC
+
+I thank Him for the blessings I enjoy, and even for the trials which He
+sends me; but I am careful to ask nothing of Him; for He knows our wants
+better than we do; besides, I should be afraid of asking for fair
+weather while my neighbor was asking for rain.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+Ah! I thought he would say some nonsense or other. Let us begin farther
+back. Barbarian, who told you that there is a God?
+
+DONDINDAC
+
+All nature tells me.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+That is not enough. What idea have you of God?
+
+DONDINDAC
+
+The idea of my Creator; my master, who will reward me if I do good, and
+punish me if I do evil.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+Trifles! trash! Let us come to some essentials. Is God _infinite
+secundum quid_, or according to essence?
+
+DONDINDAC
+
+I don't understand you.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+Brute beast! Is God in one place, or in every place?
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+I know not ... just as you please.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+Ignoramus!... Can He cause that which has not been to have been, or that
+a stick shall not have two ends? Does He see the future as future, or as
+present? How does He draw being from nothing, and how reduce being to
+nothing?
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+I have never examined these things.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+What a stupid fellow! Well, I must come nearer to your level.... Tell
+me, friend, do you think that matter can be eternal?
+
+DONDINDAC
+
+What matters it to me whether it exists from all eternity or not? I do
+not exist from all eternity. God must still be my Master. He has given
+me the nature of justice; it is my duty to follow it: I seek not to be a
+philosopher; I wish to be a man.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+One has a great deal of trouble with these block-heads. Let us proceed
+step by step. What is God?
+
+DONDINDAC
+
+My sovereign, my judge, my father.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+That is not what I ask. What is His nature?
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+To be mighty and good.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+But is He corporeal or spiritual?
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+How should I know that?
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+What; do you not know what a spirit is?
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+Not in the least. Of what service would that knowledge be to me? Should
+I be more just? Should I be a better husband, a better father, a better
+master, or a better citizen?
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+You must absolutely be taught what a spirit is. It is--it is--it is--I
+will say what another time.
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+I much fear that you will tell me rather what it is not than what it is.
+Permit me, in turn, to ask you one question. Some time ago, I saw one of
+your temples: why do you paint God with a long beard?
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+That is a very difficult question, and requires preliminary
+instruction.
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+Before I receive your instruction, I must relate to you a thing which
+one day happened to me. I had just built a closet at the end of my
+garden, when I heard a mole arguing thus with an ant: "Here is a fine
+fabric," said the mole; "it must have been a very powerful mole that
+performed this work." "You jest," returned the ant; "the architect of
+this edifice is an ant of mighty genius." From that time I resolved
+never to dispute.
+
+
+
+
+GOOD--THE SOVEREIGN GOOD, A CHIMERA.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+Happiness is an abstract idea composed of certain pleasurable
+sensations. Plato, who wrote better than he reasoned, conceived the
+notion of his world in archetype; that is, his original world--of his
+general ideas of the beautiful, the good, the orderly, and the just, as
+if there had existed eternal beings, called order, good, beauty, and
+justice; whence might be derived the feeble copies exhibited here below
+of the just, the beautiful, and the good.
+
+It is, then, in consequence of his suggestions that philosophers have
+occupied themselves in seeking for the sovereign good, as chemists seek
+for the philosopher's stone; but the sovereign good has no more
+existence than the sovereign square, or the sovereign crimson: there is
+the crimson color, and there are squares; but there is no general
+existence so denominated. This chimerical manner of reasoning was for a
+long time the bane of philosophy.
+
+Animals feel pleasure in performing all the functions for which they are
+destined. The happiness which poetical fancy has imagined would be an
+uninterrupted series of pleasures; but such a series would be
+incompatible with our organs and our destination. There is great
+pleasure in eating, drinking, and connubial endearments; but it is clear
+that if a man were always eating, or always in the full ecstasy of
+enjoyment, his organs would be incapable of sustaining it: it is further
+evident that he would be unable to fulfil the destinies he was born to,
+and that, in the case supposed, the human race would absolutely perish
+through pleasure.
+
+To pass constantly and without interruption from one pleasure to another
+is also a chimera. The woman who has conceived must go through
+childbirth, which is a pain; the man is obliged to cleave wood and hew
+stone, which is not a pleasure.
+
+If the name of happiness is meant to be applied to some pleasures which
+are diffused over human life, there is in fact, we must admit,
+happiness. If the name attaches only to one pleasure always permanent,
+or a continued although varied range of delicious enjoyment, then
+happiness belongs not to this terraqueous globe. Go and seek for it
+elsewhere.
+
+If we make happiness consist in any particular situation that a man may
+be in, as for instance, a situation of wealth, power, or fame, we are no
+less mistaken. There are some scavengers who are happier than some
+sovereigns. Ask Cromwell whether he was more happy when he was lord
+protector of England, than when, in his youthful days, he enjoyed
+himself at a tavern; he will probably tell you in answer, that the
+period of his usurpation was not the period most productive of
+pleasures. How many plain or even ugly country women are more happy than
+were Helen and Cleopatra.
+
+We must here however make one short remark; that when we say such a
+particular man is probably happier than some other; that a young
+muleteer has advantages very superior to those of Charles V.; that a
+dressmaker has more enjoyment than a princess, we should adhere to the
+probability of the case. There is certainly every appearance that a
+muleteer, in full health, must have more pleasure than Charles the
+Fifth, laid up with the gout; but nevertheless it may also be, that
+Charles, on his crutches, revolves in his mind with such ecstasy the
+facts of his holding a king of France and a pope prisoners, that his lot
+is absolutely preferable to that of the young and vigorous muleteer.
+
+It certainly belongs to God alone, to a being capable of seeing through
+all hearts, to decide which is the happiest man. There is only one case
+in which a person can affirm that his actual state is worse or better
+than that of his neighbor; this case is that of existing rivalship, and
+the moment that of victory.
+
+I will suppose that Archimedes has an assignation at night with his
+mistress. Nomentanus has the same assignation at the same hour.
+Archimedes presents himself at the door, and it is shut in his face; but
+it is opened to his rival, who enjoys an excellent supper, which he
+enlivens by his repeated sallies of wit upon Archimedes, and after the
+conclusion of which he withdraws to still higher enjoyments, while the
+other remains exposed in the street to all the pelting of a pitiless
+storm. There can be no doubt that Nomentanus has a right to say: "I am
+more happy to-night than Archimedes: I have more pleasure than he"; but
+it is necessary, in order to admit the truth and justness of the
+inference of the successful competitors in his own favor, to suppose
+that Archimedes is thinking only about the loss of his good supper,
+about being despised and deceived by a beautiful woman, about being
+supplanted by his rival, and annoyed by the tempest; for, if the
+philosopher in the street should be calmly reflecting that his soul
+ought to be above being discomposed by a strumpet or a storm, if he
+should be absorbed in a profound and interesting problem, and if he
+should discover the proportions between the cylinder and the sphere, he
+may experience a pleasure a hundred times superior to that of
+Nomentanus.
+
+It is only therefore in the single case of actual pleasure and actual
+pain, and without a reference to anything else whatever, that a
+comparison between any two individuals can be properly made. It is
+unquestionable that he who enjoys the society of his mistress is
+happier at the moment than his scorned rival deploring over his
+misfortune. A man in health, supping on a fat partridge, is undoubtedly
+happier at the time than another under the torment of the colic; but we
+cannot safely carry our inferences farther; we cannot estimate the
+existence of one man against that of another; we possess no accurate
+balance for weighing desires and sensations.
+
+We began this article with Plato and his sovereign good; we will
+conclude it with Solon and the saying of his which has been so highly
+celebrated, that "we ought to pronounce no man happy before his death."
+This maxim, when examined into, will be found nothing more than a
+puerile remark, just like many other apothegms consecrated by their
+antiquity. The moment of death has nothing in common with the lot
+experienced by any man in life; a man may perish by a violent and
+ignominious death, and yet, up to that moment, may have enjoyed all the
+pleasures of which human nature is susceptible. It is very possible and
+very common for a happy man to cease to be so; no one can doubt it; but
+he has not the less had his happy moments.
+
+What, then, can Solon's expression strictly and fairly mean? that a man
+happy to-day is not certain of being so to-morrow! In this case it is a
+truth so incontestable and trivial that, not merely is it not worthy of
+being elevated into a maxim, but it is not worthy delivering at all.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+Well-being is a rare possession. May not the sovereign good in this
+world be considered as a sovereign chimera? The Greek philosophers
+discussed at great length, according to their usual practice, this
+celebrated question. The reader will, probably, compare them to just so
+many mendicants reasoning about the philosopher's stone.
+
+The sovereign good! What an expression! It might as well have been
+asked: What is the sovereign blue, or the sovereign ragout, or the
+sovereign walk, or the sovereign reading?
+
+Every one places his good where he can, and has as much of it as he can,
+in his own way, and in very scanty measure. Castor loved horses; his
+twin brother, to try a fall--
+
+_Quid dem? quid non dem? renuis tu quod jubet alter.... Castor gaudet
+equis, ovo prognatus eodem Pugnis, etc._
+
+The greatest good is that which delights us so powerfully as to render
+us incapable of feeling anything else; as the greatest evil is that
+which goes so far as to deprive us of all feeling. These are the two
+extremes of human nature, and these moments are short. Neither extreme
+delight nor extreme torture can last a whole life. The sovereign good
+and the sovereign evil are nothing more than chimeras.
+
+We all know the beautiful fable of Crantor. He introduces upon the stage
+at the Olympic games, Wealth, Pleasure, Health, and Virtue. Each claims
+the apple. Wealth says, I am the sovereign good, for with me all goods
+are purchased. Pleasure says, the apple belongs to me, for it is only on
+my account that wealth is desired. Health asserts, that without her
+there can be no pleasure, and wealth is useless. Finally, Virtue states
+that she is superior to the other three, because, although possessed of
+gold, pleasures, and health, a man may make himself very contemptible by
+misconduct. The apple was conferred on Virtue.
+
+The fable is very ingenious; it would be still more so if Crantor had
+said that the sovereign good consists in the combination of the four
+rivals, Virtue, Health, Wealth, and Pleasure; but this fable neither
+does, nor can, resolve the absurd question about the sovereign good.
+Virtue is not a good; it is a duty. It is of a different nature; of a
+superior order. It has nothing to do with painful or with agreeable
+sensations. A virtuous man, laboring under stone and gout, without aid,
+without friends, destitute of necessaries, persecuted, and chained down
+to the floor by a voluptuous tyrant who enjoys good health, is very
+wretched; and his insolent persecutor, caressing a new mistress on his
+bed of purple, is very happy. Say, if you please, that the persecuted
+sage is preferable to the persecuting profligate; say that you admire
+the one and detest the other; but confess that the sage in chains is
+scarcely less than mad with rage and pain; if he does not himself admit
+that he is so, he completely deceives you; he is a charlatan.
+
+
+
+
+GOOD.
+
+_Of Good and Evil, Physical and Moral._
+
+
+We here treat of a question of the greatest difficulty and importance.
+It relates to the whole of human life. It would be of much greater
+consequence to find a remedy for our evils; but no remedy is to be
+discovered, and we are reduced to the sad necessity of tracing out their
+origin. With respect to this origin, men have disputed ever since the
+days of Zoroaster, and in all probability they disputed on the same
+subject long before him. It was to explain the mixture of good and evil
+that they conceived the idea of two principles--Oromazes, the author of
+light, and Arimanes, the author of darkness; the box of Pandora; the two
+vessels of Jupiter; the apple eaten by Eve; and a variety of other
+systems. The first of dialecticians, although not the first of
+philosophers, the illustrious Bayle, has clearly shown how difficult it
+is for Christians who admit one only God, perfectly good and just, to
+reply to the objections of the Manichæans who acknowledge two Gods--one
+good, and the other evil.
+
+The foundation of the system of the Manichæans, with all its antiquity,
+was not on that account more reasonable. Lemmas, susceptible of the most
+clear and rigid geometrical demonstrations, should alone have induced
+any men to the adoption of such a theorem as the following: "There are
+two necessary beings, both supreme, both infinite, both equally
+powerful, both in conflict with each other, yet, finally, agreeing to
+pour out upon this little planet--one, all the treasures of his
+beneficence, and the other all the stores of his malice." It is in vain
+that the advocates of this hypothesis attempt to explain by it the cause
+of good and evil: even the fable of Prometheus explains it better. Every
+hypothesis which only serves to assign a reason for certain things,
+without being, in addition to that recommendation, established upon
+indisputable principles, ought invariably to be rejected.
+
+The Christian doctors--independently of revelation, which makes
+everything credible--explain the origin of good-and evil no better than
+the partner-gods of Zoroaster.
+
+When they say God is a tender father, God is a just king; when they add
+the idea of infinity to that of love, that kindness, that justice which
+they observe in the best of their own species, they soon fall into the
+most palpable and dreadful contradictions. How could this sovereign, who
+possessed in infinite fulness the principle or quality of human justice,
+how could this father, entertaining an infinite affection for his
+children; how could this being, infinitely powerful, have formed
+creatures in His own likeness, to have them immediately afterwards
+tempted by a malignant demon, to make them yield to that temptation to
+inflict death on those whom He had created immortal, and to overwhelm
+their posterity with calamities and crimes! We do not here speak of a
+contradiction still more revolting to our feeble reason. How could God,
+who ransomed the human race by the death of His only Son; or rather, how
+could God, who took upon Himself the nature of man, and died on the
+cross to save men from perdition, consign over to eternal tortures
+nearly the whole of that human race for whom He died? Certainly, when we
+consider this system merely as philosophers--without the aid of
+faith--we must consider it as absolutely monstrous and abominable. It
+makes of God either pure and unmixed malice, and that malice infinite,
+which created thinking beings, on purpose to devote them to eternal
+misery, or absolute impotence and imbecility, in not being able to
+foresee or to prevent the torments of his offspring.
+
+But the eternity of misery is not the subject of this article, which
+relates properly only to the good and evil of the present life. None of
+the doctors of the numerous churches of Christianity, all of which
+advocate the doctrine we are here contesting, have been able to convince
+a single sage.
+
+We cannot conceive how Bayle, who managed the weapons of dialectics with
+such admirable strength and dexterity, could content himself with
+introducing in a dispute a Manichæan, a Calvinist, a Molinist, and a
+Socinian. Why did he not introduce, as speaking, a reasonable and
+sensible man? Why did not Bayle speak in his own person? He would have
+said far better what we shall now venture to say ourselves. A father
+who kills his children is a monster; a king who conducts his subjects
+into a snare, in order to obtain a pretext for delivering them up to
+punishment and torture, is an execrable tyrant. If you conceive God to
+possess the same kindness which you require in a father, the same
+justice that you require in a king, no possible resource exists by
+which, if we may use the expression, God can be exculpated; and by
+allowing Him to possess infinite wisdom and infinite goodness you, in
+fact, render Him infinitely odious; you excite a wish that He had no
+existence; you furnish arms to the atheist, who will ever be justified
+in triumphantly remarking to you: Better by far is it to deny a God
+altogether, than impute to Him such conduct as you would punish, to the
+extremity of the law, in men.
+
+We begin then with observing, that it is unbecoming in us to ascribe to
+God human attributes. It is not for us to make God after our own
+likeness. Human justice, human kindness, and human wisdom can never be
+applied or made suitable to Him. We may extend these attributes in our
+imagination as far as we are able, to infinity; they will never be other
+than human qualities with boundaries perpetually or indefinitely
+removed; it would be equally rational to attribute to Him infinite
+solidity, infinite motion, infinite roundness, or infinite divisibility.
+These attributes can never be His.
+
+Philosophy informs us that this universe must have been arranged by a
+Being incomprehensible, eternal, and existing by His own nature; but,
+once again, we must observe that philosophy gives us no information on
+the subject of the attributes of that nature. We know what He is not,
+and not what He is.
+
+With respect to God, there is neither good nor evil, physically or
+morally. What is physical or natural evil? Of all evils, the greatest,
+undoubtedly, is death. Let us for a moment consider whether man could
+have been immortal.
+
+In order that a body like ours should have been indissoluble,
+imperishable, it would have been necessary that it should not be
+composed of parts; that it--should not be born; that it should have
+neither nourishment nor growth; that it should experience no change. Let
+any one examine each of these points; and let every reader extend their
+number according to his own suggestions, and it will be seen that the
+proposition of an immortal man is a contradiction.
+
+If our organized body were immortal, that of mere animals would be so
+likewise; but it is evident that, in the course of a very short time,
+the whole globe would, in this case, be incompetent to supply
+nourishment to those animals; those immortal beings which exist only in
+consequence of renovation by food, would then perish for want of the
+means of such renovation. All this involves contradiction. We might make
+various other observations on the subject, but every reader who deserves
+the name of a philosopher will perceive that death was necessary to
+everything that is born; that death can neither be an error on the part
+of God, nor an evil, an injustice, nor a chastisement to man.
+
+Man, born to die, can no more be exempt from pain than from death. To
+prevent an organized substance endowed with feeling from ever
+experiencing pain, it would be necessary that all the laws of nature
+should be changed; that matter should no longer be divisible; that it
+should neither have weight, action, nor force; that a rock might fall on
+an animal without crushing it; and that water should have no power to
+suffocate, or fire to burn it. Man, impassive, then, is as much a
+contradiction as man immortal.
+
+This feeling of pain was indispensable to stimulate us to
+self-preservation, and to impart to us such pleasures as are consistent
+with those general laws by which the whole system of nature is bound and
+regulated.
+
+If we never experienced pain, we should be every moment injuring
+ourselves without perceiving it. Without the excitement of uneasiness,
+without some sensation of pain, we should perform no function of life;
+should never communicate it, and should be destitute of all the
+pleasures of it. Hunger is the commencement of pain which compels us to
+take our required nourishment. Ennui is a pain which stimulates to
+exercise and occupation. Love itself is a necessity which becomes
+painful until it is met with corresponding attachment. In a word, every
+desire is a want, a necessity, a beginning of pain. Pain, therefore, is
+the mainspring of all the actions of animated beings. Every animal
+possessed of feeling must be liable to pain, if matter is divisible; and
+pain was as necessary as death. It is not, therefore, an error of
+Providence, nor a result of malignity, nor a creature of imagination.
+Had we seen only brutes suffer, we should, for that, never have accused
+nature of harshness or cruelty; had we, while ourselves were impassive,
+witnessed the lingering and torturing death of a dove, when a kite
+seized upon it with his murderous talons, and leisurely devouring its
+bleeding limbs, doing in that no more than we do ourselves, we should
+not express the slightest murmur of dissatisfaction. But what claim have
+we for an exemption of our own bodies from such dismemberment and
+torture beyond what might be urged in behalf of brutes? Is it that we
+possess an intellect superior to theirs? But what has intellect to do
+with the divisibility of matter? Can a few ideas more or less in a brain
+prevent fire from burning, or a rock from crushing us?
+
+Moral evil, upon which so many volumes have been written is, in fact,
+nothing but natural evil. This moral evil is a sensation of pain
+occasioned by one organized being to another. Rapine, outrage, etc., are
+evil only because they produce evil. But as we certainly are unable to
+do any evil, or occasion any pain to God, it is evident by the light of
+reason--for faith is altogether a different principle--that in relation
+to the Supreme Being and as affecting Him, moral evil can have no
+existence.
+
+As the greatest of natural evils is death, the greatest of moral evils
+is, unquestionably, war. All crimes follow in its train; false and
+calumnious declarations, perfidious violation of the treaties, pillage,
+devastation, pain, and death under every hideous and appalling form.
+
+All this is physical evil in relation to man, but can no more be
+considered moral evil in relation to God than the rage of dogs worrying
+and destroying one another. It is a mere common-place idea, and as false
+as it is feeble, that men are the only species that slaughter and
+destroy one another. Wolves, dogs, cats, cocks, quails, all war with
+their respective species: house spiders devour one another; the male
+universally fights for the female. This warfare is the result of the
+laws of nature, of principles in their very blood and essence; all is
+connected; all is necessary.
+
+Nature has granted man about two and twenty years of life, one with
+another; that is, of a thousand children born in the same month, some of
+whom have died in their infancy, and the rest lived respectively to the
+age of thirty, forty, fifty, and even eighty years, or perhaps beyond,
+the average calculation will allow to each the above-mentioned number of
+twenty-two years.
+
+How can it affect the Deity, whether a man die in battle or of a fever?
+War destroys fewer human beings than smallpox. The scourge of war is
+transient, that of smallpox reigns with paramount and permanent fatality
+throughout the earth, followed by a numerous train of others; and taking
+into consideration the combined, and nearly regular operation of the
+various causes which sweep mankind from the stage of life, the allowance
+of two and twenty years for every individual will be found in general to
+be tolerably correct.
+
+Man, you say, offends God by killing his neighbor; if this be the case,
+the directors of nations must indeed be tremendous criminals; for, while
+even invoking God to their assistance, they urge on to slaughter immense
+multitudes of their fellow-beings, for contemptible interests which it
+would show infinitely more policy, as well as humanity, to abandon. But
+how--to reason merely as philosophers--how do they offend God? Just as
+much as tigers and crocodiles offend him. It is, surely, not God whom
+they harass and torment, but their neighbor. It is only against man that
+man can be guilty. A highway robber can commit no robbery on God. What
+can it signify to the eternal Deity, whether a few pieces of yellow
+metal are in the hands of Jerome, or of Bonaventure? We have necessary
+desires, necessary passions, and necessary laws for the restraint of
+both; and while on this our ant-hill, during the little day of our
+existence, we are engaged in eager and destructive contest about a
+straw, the universe moves, on in its majestic course, directed by
+eternal and unalterable laws, which comprehend in their operation the
+atom that we call the earth.
+
+
+
+
+GOSPEL.
+
+
+It is a matter of high importance to ascertain which are the first
+gospels. It is a decided truth, whatever Abbadie may assert to the
+contrary, that none of the first fathers of the Church, down to Irenæus
+inclusively, have quoted any passage from the four gospels with which we
+are acquainted. And to this it may be added, that the Alogi, the
+Theodosians, constantly rejected the gospel of St. John, and always
+spoke of it with contempt; as we are informed by St. Epiphanius in his
+thirty-fourth homily. Our enemies further observe that the most ancient
+fathers do not merely forbear to quote anything from our gospels, but
+relate many passages or events which are to be found only in the
+apocryphal gospels rejected by the canon.
+
+St. Clement, for example, relates that our Lord, having been questioned
+concerning the time when His kingdom would come, answered, "That will be
+when what is without shall Resemble that within, and when there shall be
+neither male nor female." But we must admit that this passage does not
+occur in either of our gospels. There are innumerable other instances to
+prove this truth; which may be seen in the "Critical Examination" of M.
+Fréret, perpetual secretary of the Academy of Belles Lettres at Paris.
+
+The learned Fabricius took the pains to collect the ancient gospels
+which time has spared; that of James appears to be the first; and it is
+certain that it still possesses considerable authority with some of the
+Oriental churches. It is called "the first gospel." There remain the
+passion and the resurrection, pretended to have been written by
+Nicodemus. This gospel of Nicodemus is quoted by St. Justin and
+Tertullian. It is there we find the names of our Lord's accusers--Annas,
+Caiaphas, Soumas, Dathan, Gamaliel, Judas, Levi, and Napthali; the
+attention and particularity with which these names are given confer upon
+the work an appearance of truth and sincerity. Our adversaries have
+inferred that as so many false gospels were forged, which at first were
+recognized as true, those which constitute at the present day the
+foundation of our own faith may have been forged also. They dwell much
+on the circumstance of the first heretics suffering even death itself in
+defence of these apocryphal gospels. There have evidently been, they
+say, forgers, seducers, and men who have been seduced by them into
+error, and died in defence of that error; it is, at least, therefore, no
+proof of the truth of Christianity that it has had its martyrs who have
+died for it.
+
+They add further, that the martyrs were never asked the question,
+whether they believed the gospel of John or the gospel of James. The
+Pagans could not put a series of interrogatories about books with which
+they were not at all acquainted; the magistrates punished some
+Christians very unjustly, as disturbers of the public peace, but they
+never put particular questions to them in relation to our four gospels.
+These books were not known to the Romans before the time of Diocletian,
+and even towards the close of Diocletian's reign, they had scarcely
+obtained any publicity. It was deemed in a Christian a crime both
+abominable and unpardonable to show a gospel to any Gentile. This is so
+true, that you cannot find the word "gospel" in any profane author
+whatever.
+
+The rigid Socinians, influenced by the above-mentioned or other
+difficulties, do not consider our four divine gospels in any other light
+than as works of clandestine introduction, fabricated about a century
+after the time of Jesus Christ, and carefully concealed from the
+Gentiles for another century beyond that; works, as they express it, of
+a coarse and vulgar character, written by coarse and vulgar men, who,
+for a long time confined their discourses and appeals to the mere
+populace of their party. We will not here repeat the blasphemies uttered
+by them. This sect, although considerably diffused and numerous, is at
+present as much concealed as were the first gospels. The difficulty of
+converting them is so much the greater, in consequence of their
+obstinately refusing to listen to anything but mere reason. The other
+Christians contend against them only with the weapons of the Holy
+Scripture: it is consequently impossible that, being thus always in
+hostility with respect to principles, they should ever unite in their
+conclusions.
+
+With respect to ourselves, let us ever remain inviolably attached to our
+four gospels, in union with the infallible church. Let us reject the
+five gospels which it has rejected; let us not inquire why our Lord
+Jesus Christ permitted five false gospels, five false histories of his
+life to be written; and let us submit to our spiritual pastors and
+directors, who alone on earth are enlightened by the Holy Spirit.
+
+Into what a gross error did Abbadie fall when he considered as authentic
+the letters so ridiculously forged, from Pilate to Tiberius, and the
+pretended proposal of Tiberius to place Jesus Christ in the number of
+the gods. If Abbadie is a bad critic and a contemptible reasoner, is the
+Church on that account less enlightened? are we the less bound to
+believe it? Shall we at all the less submit to it?
+
+
+
+
+GOVERNMENT.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+The pleasure of governing must certainly be exquisite, if we may judge
+from the vast numbers who are eager to be concerned in it. We have many
+more books on government than there are monarchs in the world. Heaven
+preserve me from making any attempt here to give instruction to kings
+and their noble ministers--their valets, confessors, or financiers. I
+understand nothing about the matter; I have the profoundest respect and
+reverence for them all. It belongs only to Mr. Wilkes, with his English
+balance, to weigh the merits of those who are at the head of the human
+race. It would, besides, be exceedingly strange if, with three or four
+thousand volumes on the subject of government, with Machiavelli, and
+Bossuet's "Policy of the Holy Scripture," with the "General Financier,"
+the "Guide to Finances," the "Means of Enriching a State," etc., there
+could possibly be a single person living who was not perfectly
+acquainted with the duties of kings and the science of government.
+
+Professor Puffendorf, or, as perhaps we should rather say, Baron
+Puffendorf, says that King David, having sworn never to attempt the life
+of Shimei, his privy counsellor, did not violate his oath when,
+according to the Jewish history, he instructed his son Solomon to get
+him assassinated, "because David had only engaged that he himself would
+not kill Shimei." The baron, who rebukes so sharply the mental
+reservations of the Jesuits, allows David, in the present instance, to
+entertain one which would not be particularly palatable to privy
+counsellors.
+
+Let us consider the words of Bossuet in his "Policy of the Holy
+Scripture," addressed to Monseigneur the Dauphin. "Thus we see royalty
+established according to the order of succession in the house of David
+and Solomon, and the throne of David is secured forever--although, by
+the way, that same little joint-stool called a 'throne,' instead of
+being secured forever, lasted, in fact, only a very short time." By
+virtue of this law, the eldest son was to succeed, to the exclusion of
+his brothers, and on this account Adonijah, who was the eldest, said to
+Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon, "Thou knowest that the kingdom was
+mine, and all Israel had recognized my right; but the Lord hath
+transferred the kingdom to my brother Solomon." The right of Adonijah
+was incontestable. Bossuet expressly admits this at the close of this
+article. "The Lord has transferred" is only a usual phrase, which means,
+I have lost my property or right, I have been deprived of my right.
+Adonijah was the issue of a lawful wife; the birth of his younger
+brother was the fruit of a double crime.
+
+"Unless, then," says Bossuet, "something extraordinary occurred, the
+eldest was to succeed." But the something extraordinary, in the present
+instance, which prevented it was, that Solomon, the issue of a marriage
+arising out of a double adultery and a murder, procured the
+assassination, at the foot of the altar, of his elder brother and his
+lawful king, whose rights were supported by the high priest Abiathar and
+the chief commander Joab. After this we must acknowledge that it is more
+difficult than some seem to imagine to take lessons on the rights of
+persons, and on the true system of government from the Holy Scriptures,
+which were first given to the Jews, and afterwards to ourselves, for
+purposes of a far higher nature.
+
+"The preservation of the people is the supreme law." Such is the
+fundamental maxim of nations; but in all civil wars the safety of the
+people is made to consist in slaughtering a number of the citizens. In
+all foreign wars, the safety of a people consists in killing their
+neighbors, and taking possession of their property! It is difficult to
+perceive in this a particularly salutary "right of nations," and a
+government eminently favorable to liberty of thought and social
+happiness.
+
+There are geometrical figures exceedingly regular and complete in their
+kind; arithmetic is perfect; many trades or manufactures are carried on
+in a manner constantly uniform and excellent; but with respect to the
+government of men, is it possible for any one to be good, when all are
+founded on passions in conflict with each other?
+
+No convent of monks ever existed without discord; it is impossible,
+therefore, to exclude it from kingdoms. Every government resembles not
+merely a monastic institution, but a private household. There are none
+existing without quarrels; and quarrels between one people and another,
+between one prince and another, have ever been, sanguinary; those
+between subjects and their sovereigns have been sometimes no less
+destructive. How is an individual to act? Must he risk joining in the
+conflict, or withdraw from the scene of action?
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+More than one people are desirous of new constitutions. The English
+would have no objection to a change of ministers once in every eight
+hours, but they have no wish to change the form of their government.
+
+The modern Romans are proud of their church of St. Peter and their
+ancient Greek statues; but the people would be glad to be better fed,
+although they were not quite so rich in benedictions; the fathers of
+families would be content that the Church should have less gold, if the
+granaries had more corn; they regret the time when the apostles
+journeyed on foot, and when the citizens of Rome travelled from one
+palace to another in litters.
+
+We are incessantly reminded of the admirable republics of Greece. There
+is no question that the Greeks would prefer the government of a Pericles
+and a Demosthenes to that of a pasha; but in their most prosperous and
+palmy times they were always complaining; discord and hatred prevailed
+between all the cities without, and in every separate city within. They
+gave laws to the old Romans, who before that time had none; but their
+own were so bad for themselves that they were continually changing them.
+
+What could be said in favor of a government under which the just
+Aristides was banished, Phocion put to death, Socrates condemned to
+drink hemlock after having been exposed to banter and derision on the
+stage by Aristophanes; and under which the Amphyctions, with
+contemptible imbecility, actually delivered up Greece into the power of
+Philip, because the Phocians had ploughed up a field which was part of
+the territory of Apollo? But the government of the neighboring
+monarchies was worse.
+
+Puffendorf promises us a discussion on the best form of government. He
+tells us, "that many pronounce in favor of monarchy, and others, on the
+contrary, inveigh furiously against kings; and that it does not fall
+within the limits of his subject to examine in detail the reasons of the
+latter." If any mischievous and malicious reader expects to be told here
+more than he is told by Puffendorf, he will be much deceived.
+
+A Swiss, a Hollander, a Venetian nobleman, an English peer, a cardinal,
+and a count of the empire, were once disputing, on a journey, about the
+nature of their respective governments, and which of them deserved the
+preference: no one knew much about the matter; each remained in his own
+opinion without having any very distinct idea what that opinion was; and
+they returned without having come to any general conclusion; every one
+praising his own country from vanity, and complaining of it from
+feeling.
+
+What, then, is the destiny of mankind? Scarcely any great nation is
+governed by itself. Begin from the east, and take the circuit of the
+world. Japan closed its ports against foreigners from the well-founded
+apprehension of a dreadful revolution.
+
+China actually experienced such a revolution; she obeys Tartars of a
+mixed race, half Mantchou and half Hun. India obeys Mogul Tartars. The
+Nile, the Orontes, Greece, and Epirus are still under the yoke of the
+Turks. It is not an English race that reigns in England; it is a German
+family which succeeded to a Dutch prince, as the latter succeeded a
+Scotch family which had succeeded an Angevin family, that had replaced a
+Norman family, which had expelled a family of usurping Saxons. Spain
+obeys a French family; which succeeded to an Austrasian race, that
+Austrasian race had succeeded families that boasted of Visigoth
+extraction; these Visigoths had been long driven out by the Arabs, after
+having succeeded to the Romans, who had expelled the Carthaginians. Gaul
+obeys Franks, after having obeyed Roman prefects.
+
+The same banks of the Danube have belonged to Germans, Romans, Arabs,
+Slavonians, Bulgarians, and Huns, to twenty different families, and
+almost all foreigners.
+
+And what greater wonder has Rome had to exhibit than so many emperors
+who were born in the barbarous provinces, and so many popes born in
+provinces no less barbarous? Let him govern who can. And when any one
+has succeeded in his attempts to become master, he governs as he can.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+In 1769, a traveller delivered the following narrative: "I saw, in the
+course of my journey, a large and populous country, in which all offices
+and places were purchasable; I do not mean clandestinely, and in
+evasion of the law, but publicly, and in conformity to it. The right to
+judge, in the last resort, of the honor, property, and life of the
+citizen, was put to auction in the same manner as the right and property
+in a few acres of land. Some very high commissions in the army are
+conferred only on the highest bidder. The principal mystery of their
+religion is celebrated for the petty sum of three sesterces, and if the
+celebrator does not obtain this fee he remains idle like a porter
+without employment.
+
+"Fortunes in this country are not made by agriculture, but are derived
+from a certain game of chance, in great practice there, in which the
+parties sign their names, and transfer them from hand to hand. If they
+lose, they withdraw into the mud and mire of their original extraction;
+if they win, they share in the administration of public affairs; they
+marry their daughters to mandarins, and their sons become a species of
+mandarins also.
+
+"A considerable number of the citizens have their whole means of
+subsistence assigned upon a house, which possesses in fact nothing, and
+a hundred persons have bought for a hundred thousand crowns each the
+right of receiving and paying the money due to these citizens upon their
+assignments on this imaginary hotel; rights which they never exercise,
+as they in reality know nothing at all of what is thus supposed to pass
+through their hands.
+
+"Sometimes a proposal is made and cried about the streets, that all who
+have a little money in their chest should exchange it for a slip of
+exquisitely manufactured paper, which will free you from all pecuniary
+care, and enable you to pass through life with ease and comfort. On the
+morrow an order is published, compelling you to change this paper for
+another, much better. On the following day you are deafened with the cry
+of a new paper, cancelling the two former ones. You are ruined! But long
+heads console you with the assurance, that within a fortnight the
+newsmen will cry up some proposal more engaging.
+
+"You travel into one province of this empire, and purchase articles of
+food, drink, clothing, and lodging. If you go into another province, you
+are obliged to pay duties upon all those commodities, as if you had just
+arrived from Africa. You inquire the reason of this, but obtain no
+answer; or if, from extraordinary politeness, any one condescends to
+notice your questions, he replies that you come from a province reputed
+foreign, and that, consequently, you are obliged to pay for the
+convenience of commerce. In vain you puzzle yourself to comprehend how
+the province of a kingdom can be deemed foreign to that kingdom.
+
+"On one particular occasion, while changing horses, finding myself
+somewhat fatigued, I requested the postmaster to favor me with a glass
+of wine. 'I cannot let you have it,' says he; 'the superintendents of
+thirst, who are very considerable in number, and all of them remarkably
+sober, would accuse me of drinking to excess, which would absolutely be
+my ruin.' 'But drinking a single glass of wine,' I replied, 'to repair a
+man's strength, is not drinking to excess; and what difference can it
+make whether that single glass of wine is taken by you or me?'
+
+"'Sir,' replied the man, 'our laws relating to thirst are much more
+excellent than you appear to think them. After our vintage is finished,
+physicians are appointed by the regular authorities to visit our
+cellars. They set aside a certain quantity of wine, such as they judge
+we may drink consistently with health. At the end of the year they
+return; and if they conceive that we have exceeded their restriction by
+a single bottle; they punish us with very severe fines; and if we make
+the slightest resistance, we are sent to Toulon to drink salt-water.
+Were I to give you the wine you ask, I should most certainly be charged
+with excessive drinking. You must see to what danger I should be exposed
+from the supervisors of our health.'
+
+"I could not refrain from astonishment at the existence of such a
+system; but my astonishment was no less on meeting with a disconsolate
+and mortified pleader, who informed me that he had just then lost, a
+little beyond the nearest rivulet, a cause precisely similar to one he
+had gained on this side of it. I understood from him that, in his
+country, there are as many different codes of laws as there are cities.
+His conversation raised my curiosity. 'Our nation,' said he, 'is so
+completely wise and enlightened, that nothing is regulated in it. Laws,
+customs, the rights of corporate bodies, rank, precedence, everything is
+arbitrary; all is left to the prudence of the nation.'
+
+"I happened to be still in this same country when it became involved in
+a war with some of its neighbors. This war was nicknamed 'The Ridicule,'
+because there was much to be lost and nothing to be gained by it. I went
+upon my travels elsewhere, and did not return till the conclusion of
+peace, when the nation seemed to be in the most dreadful state of
+misery; it had lost its money, its soldiers, its fleets, and its
+commerce. I said to myself, its last hour is come; everything, alas!
+must pass away. Here is a nation absolutely annihilated. What a dreadful
+pity! for a great part of the people were amiable, industrious, and gay,
+after having been formerly coarse, superstitious, and barbarous.
+
+"I was perfectly astonished, at the end of only two years, to find its
+capital and principal cities more opulent than ever. Luxury had
+increased, and an air of enjoyment prevailed everywhere. I could not
+comprehend this prodigy; and it was only after I had examined into the
+government of the neighboring nations that I could discover the cause of
+what appeared so unaccountable. I found that the government of all the
+rest was just as bad as that of this nation, and that this nation was
+superior to all the rest in industry.
+
+"A provincial of the country I am speaking of was once bitterly
+complaining to me of all the grievances under which he labored. He was
+well acquainted with history. I asked him if he thought he should have
+been happier had he lived a hundred years before, when his country was
+in a comparative state of barbarism, and a citizen was liable to be
+hanged for having eaten flesh in Lent? He shook his head in the
+negative. Would you prefer the times of the civil wars, which began at
+the death of Francis II.; or the times of the defeats of St. Quentin and
+Pavia; or the long disorders attending the wars against the English; or
+the feudal anarchy; or the horrors of the second race of kings, or the
+barbarity of the first? At every successive question, he appeared to
+shudder more violently. The government of the Romans seemed to him the
+most intolerable of all. 'Nothing can be worse,' he said, 'than to be
+under foreign masters.' At last we came to the Druids. 'Ah!' he
+exclaimed, 'I was quite mistaken: it is still worse to be governed by
+sanguinary priests.' He admitted, at last, although with sore
+reluctance, that the time he lived in was, all things considered, the
+least intolerable and hateful."
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+An eagle governed the birds of the whole country of Ornithia. He had no
+other right, it must be allowed, than what he derived from his beak and
+claws; however, after providing liberally for his own repasts and
+pleasures, he governed as well as any other bird of prey.
+
+In his old age he was invaded by a flock of hungry vultures, who rushed
+from the depths of the North to scatter fear and desolation through his
+provinces. There appeared, just about this time, a certain owl, who was
+born in one of the most scrubby thickets of the empire, and who had long
+been known under the name of "_luci-fugax_," or light-hater. He
+possessed much cunning, and associated only with bats; and, while the
+vultures were engaged in conflict with the eagle, our politic owl and
+his party entered with great adroitness, in the character of
+pacificators, on that department of the air which was disputed by the
+combatants.
+
+The eagle and vultures, after a war of long duration, at last actually
+referred the cause of contention to the owl, who, with his solemn and
+imposing physiognomy, was well formed to deceive them both.
+
+He persuaded the eagles and vultures to suffer their claws to be a
+little pared, and just the points of their beaks to be cut off, in order
+to bring about perfect peace and reconciliation. Before this time, the
+owl had always said to the birds, "Obey the eagle"; afterwards, in
+consequence of the invasion, he had said to them, "Obey the vultures."
+He now, however, soon called out to them, "Obey me only." The poor birds
+did not know to whom to listen: they were plucked by the eagle, the
+vultures, and the owl and bats. "_Qui habet aures, audiat_."--"He that
+hath ears to hear, let him hear."
+
+
+SECTION V.
+
+"I have in my possession a great number of catapultæ and balistæ of the
+ancient Romans, which are certainly rather worm-eaten, but would still
+do very well as specimens. I have many water-clocks, but half of them
+probably out of repair and broken, some sepulchral lamps, and an old
+copper model of a quinquereme. I have also togas, pretextas, and
+laticlaves in lead; and my predecessors established a society of
+tailors; who, after inspecting ancient monuments, can make up robes
+pretty awkwardly. For these reasons thereunto moving us, after hearing
+the report of our chief antiquary, we do hereby appoint and ordain, that
+all the said venerable usages should be observed and kept up forever;
+and every person, through the whole extent of our dominions, shall dress
+and think precisely as men dressed and thought in the time of Cnidus
+Rufillus, proprietor of the province devolved to us by right," etc.
+
+It is represented to an officer belonging to the department whence this
+edict issued, that all the engines enumerated in it are become useless;
+that the understandings and the inventions of mankind are every day
+making new advances towards perfection; and that it would be more
+judicious to guide and govern men by the reins in present use, than by
+those by which they were formerly subjected; that no person could be
+found to go on board the quinquereme of his most serene highness; that
+his tailors might make as many laticlaves as they pleased, and that not
+a soul would purchase one of them; and that it would be worthy of his
+wisdom to condescend, in some small measure, to the manner of thinking
+that now prevailed among the better sort of people in his own dominions.
+
+The officer above mentioned promised to communicate this representation
+to a clerk, who promised to speak about it to the referendary, who
+promised to mention it to his most serene highness whenever an
+opportunity should offer.
+
+
+SECTION VI.
+
+_Picture of the English Government._
+
+The establishment of a government is a matter of curious and interesting
+investigation. I shall not speak, in this place, of the great Tamerlane,
+or Timerling, because I am not precisely acquainted with the mystery of
+the Great Mogul's government. But we can see our way somewhat more
+clearly into the administration of affairs in England; and I had rather
+examine that than the administration of India; as England, we are
+informed, is inhabited by free men and not by slaves; and in India,
+according to the accounts we have of it, there are many slaves and but
+few free men.
+
+Let us, in the first place, view a Norman bastard seating himself upon
+the throne of England. He had about as much right to it as St. Louis
+had, at a later period, to Grand Cairo. But St. Louis had the misfortune
+not to begin with obtaining a judicial decision in favor of his right to
+Egypt from the court of Rome; and William the Bastard failed not to
+render his cause legitimate and sacred, by obtaining in confirmation of
+the rightfulness of his claim, a decree of Pope Alexander II. issued
+without the opposite party having obtained a hearing, and simply in
+virtue of the words, "Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, shall be
+bound in heaven." His competitor, Harold, a perfectly legitimate
+monarch, being thus bound by a decree of heaven, William united to this
+virtue of the holy see another of far more powerful efficacy still,
+which was the victory of Hastings. He reigned, therefore, by the right
+of the strongest, just as Pepin and Clovis had reigned in France; the
+Goths and Lombards in Italy; the Visigoths, and afterwards the Arabs in
+Spain; the Vandals in Africa, and all the kings of the world in
+succession.
+
+It must be nevertheless admitted, that our Bastard possessed as just a
+title as the Saxons and the Danes, whose title, again, was quite as good
+as that of the Romans. And the title of all these heroes in succession
+was precisely that of "robbers on the highway," or, if you like it
+better, that of foxes and pole-cats when they commit their depredations
+on the farm-yard.
+
+All these great men were so completely highway robbers, that from the
+time of Romulus down to the buccaneers, the only question and concern
+were about the "_spolia opima_," the pillage and plunder, the cows and
+oxen carried off by the hand of violence. Mercury, in the fable, steals
+the cows of Apollo; and in the Old Testament, Isaiah assigns the name of
+robber to the son whom his wife was to bring into the world, and who was
+to be an important and sacred type. That name was Mahershalalhashbaz,
+"divide speedily the soil." We have already observed, that the names of
+soldier and robber were often synonymous.
+
+Thus then did William soon become king by divine right. William Rufus,
+who usurped the crown over his elder brother, was also king by divine
+right, without any difficulty; and the same right attached after him to
+Henry, the third usurper.
+
+The Norman barons who had joined at their own expense in the invasion of
+England, were desirous of compensation. It was necessary to grant it,
+and for this purpose to make them great vassals, and great officers of
+the crown. They became possessed of the finest estates. It is evident
+that William would rather, had he dared, have kept all to himself, and
+made all these lords his guards and lackeys. But this would have been
+too dangerous an attempt. He was obliged, therefore, to divide and
+distribute.
+
+With respect to the Anglo-Saxon lords, there was no very easy way of
+killing, or even making slaves of the whole of them. They were
+permitted in their own districts, to enjoy the rank and denomination of
+lords of the manor--_seignieurs châtelans_. They held of the great
+Norman vassals, who held of William.
+
+By this system everything was kept in equilibrium until the breaking out
+of the first quarrel. And what became of the rest of the nation? The
+same that had become of nearly all the population of Europe. They became
+serfs or villeins.
+
+At length, after the frenzy of the Crusades, the ruined princes sell
+liberty to the serfs of the glebe, who had obtained money by labor and
+commerce. Cities are made free, the commons are granted certain
+privileges; and the rights of men revive even out of anarchy itself.
+
+The barons were everywhere in contention with their king, and with one
+another. The contention became everywhere a petty intestine war, made up
+out of numberless civil wars. From this abominable and gloomy chaos
+appeared a feeble gleam, which enlightened the commons, and considerably
+improved their situation.
+
+The kings of England, being themselves great vassals of France for
+Normandy, and afterwards for Guienne and other provinces, easily adopted
+the usages of the kings from whom they held. The states of the realm
+were long made up, as in France, of barons and bishops.
+
+The English court of chancery was an imitation of the council of state,
+of which the chancellor of France was president. The court of king's
+bench was formed on the model of the parliament instituted by Philip le
+Bel. The common pleas were like the jurisdiction of the châtelat. The
+court of exchequer resembled that of the superintendents of the
+finances--_généraux des finances_--which became, in France, the court of
+aids.
+
+The maxim that the king's domain is inalienable is evidently taken from
+the system of French government.
+
+The right of the king of England to call on his subjects to pay his
+ransom, should he become a prisoner of war; that of requiring a subsidy
+when he married his eldest daughter, and when he conferred the honor of
+knighthood on his son; all these circumstances call to recollection the
+ancient usages of a kingdom of which William was the chief vassal.
+
+Scarcely had Philip le Bel summoned the commons to the states-general,
+before Edward, king of England, adopted the like measure, in order to
+balance the great power of the barons. For it was under this monarch's
+reign that the commons were first clearly and distinctly summoned to
+parliament.
+
+We perceive, then, that up to this epoch in the fourteenth century, the
+English government followed regularly in the steps of France. The two
+churches are entirely alike; the same subjection to the court of Rome;
+the same exactions which are always complained of, but, in the end,
+always paid to that rapacious court; the same dissensions, somewhat
+more or less violent; the same excommunications; the same donations to
+monks; the same chaos; the same mixture of holy rapine, superstition,
+and barbarism.
+
+As France and England, then, were for so long a period governed by the
+same principles, or rather without any principle at all, and merely by
+usages of a perfectly similar character, how is it that, at length, the
+two governments have become as different as those of Morocco and Venice?
+
+It is, perhaps, in the first place to be ascribed to the circumstance of
+England, or rather Great Britain, being an island, in consequence of
+which the king has been under no necessity of constantly keeping up a
+considerable standing army which might more frequently be employed
+against the nation itself than against foreigners.
+
+It may be further observed, that the English appear to have in the
+structure of their minds something more firm, more reflective, more
+persevering, and, perhaps, more obstinate, than some other nations.
+
+To this latter circumstance it may be probably attributed, that, after
+incessantly complaining of the court of Rome, they at length completely
+shook off its disgraceful yoke; while a people of more light and
+volatile character has continued to wear it, affecting at the same time
+to laugh and dance in its chains.
+
+The insular situation of the English, by inducing the necessity of
+urging to the particular pursuit and practice of navigation, has
+probably contributed to the result we are here considering, by giving to
+the natives a certain sternness and ruggedness of manners.
+
+These stern and rugged manners, which have made their island the theatre
+of many a bloody tragedy, have also contributed, in all probability, to
+inspire a generous frankness.
+
+It is in consequence of this combination of opposite qualities that so
+much royal blood has been shed in the field, and on the scaffold, and
+yet poison, in all their long and violent domestic contentions, has
+never been resorted to; whereas, in other countries, under priestly
+domination poison has been the prevailing weapon of destruction.
+
+The love of liberty appears to have advanced, and to have characterized
+the English, in proportion as they have advanced in knowledge and in
+wealth. All the citizens of a state cannot be equally powerful, but they
+may be equally free. And this high point of distinction and enjoyment
+the English, by their firmness and intrepidity, have at length attained.
+
+To be free is to be dependent only on the laws. The English, therefore,
+have ever loved the laws, as fathers love their children, because they
+are, or at least think themselves, the framers of them.
+
+A government like this could be established only at a late period;
+because it was necessary long to struggle with powers which commanded
+respect, or at least, impressed awe--the power of the pope, the most
+terrible of all, as it was built on prejudice and ignorance; the royal
+power ever tending to burst its proper boundary, and which it was
+requisite, however difficult, to restrain within it; the power of the
+barons, which was, in fact, an anarchy; the power of the bishops, who,
+always mixing the sacred with the profane, left no means unattempted to
+prevail over both barons and kings.
+
+The house of commons gradually became the impregnable mole, which
+successfully repelled those serious and formidable torrents.
+
+The house of commons is, in reality, the nation; for the king, who is
+the head, acts only for himself, and what is called his prerogative. The
+peers are a parliament only for themselves; and the bishops only for
+themselves, in the same manner.
+
+But the house of commons is for the people, as every member of it is
+deputed by the people. The people are to the king in the proportion of
+about eight millions to unity. To the peers and bishops they are as
+eight millions to, at most, two hundred. And these eight million free
+citizens are represented by the lower house.
+
+With respect to this establishment or constitution--in comparison with
+which the republic of Plato is merely a ridiculous reverie, and which
+might be thought to have been invented by Locke, or Newton, or Halley,
+or Archimedes--it sprang, in fact, out of abuses, of a most dreadful
+description, and such as are calculated to make human nature shudder.
+The inevitable friction of this vast machine nearly proved its
+destruction in the days of Fairfax and Cromwell. Senseless fanaticism
+broke into this noble edifice, like a devouring fire that consumes a
+beautiful building formed only of wood.
+
+In the time of William the Third it was rebuilt of stone. Philosophy
+destroyed fanaticism, which convulses to their centres states even the
+most firm and powerful. We cannot easily help believing that a
+constitution which has regulated the rights of king, lords, and people,
+and in which every individual finds security, will endure as long as
+human institutions and concerns shall have a being.
+
+We cannot but believe, also, that all states not established upon
+similar principles, will experience revolutions.
+
+The English constitution has, in fact, arrived at that point of
+excellence, in consequence of which all men are restored to those
+natural rights, which, in nearly all monarchies, they are deprived of.
+These rights are, entire liberty of person and property; freedom of the
+press; the right of being tried in all criminal cases by a jury of
+independent men--the right of being tried only according to the strict
+letter of the law; and the right of every man to profess, unmolested,
+what religion he chooses, while he renounces offices, which the members
+of the Anglican or established church alone can hold. These are
+denominated privileges. And, in truth, invaluable privileges they are
+in comparison with the usages of most other nations of the world! To be
+secure on lying down that you shall rise in possession of the same
+property with which you retired to rest; that you shall not be torn from
+the arms of your wife, and from your children, in the dead of night, to
+be thrown into a dungeon, or buried in exile in a desert; that, when
+rising from the bed of sleep, you will have the power of publishing all
+your thoughts; and that, if you are accused of having either acted,
+spoken, or written wrongly, you can be tried only according to law.
+These privileges attach to every one who sets his foot on English
+ground. A foreigner enjoys perfect liberty to dispose of his property
+and person; and, if accused of any offence, he can demand that half the
+jury shall be composed of foreigners.
+
+I will venture to assert, that, were the human race solemnly assembled
+for the purpose of making laws, such are the laws they would make for
+their security. Why then are they not adopted in other countries? But
+would it not be equally judicious to ask, why cocoanuts, which are
+brought to maturity in India, do not ripen at Rome? You answer, these
+cocoanuts did not always, or for some time, come to maturity in England;
+that the trees have not been long cultivated; that Sweden, following her
+example, planted and nursed some of them for several years, but that
+they did not thrive; and that it is possible to produce such fruit in
+other provinces, even in Bosnia and Servia. Try and plant the tree then.
+
+And you who bear authority over these benighted people, whether under
+the name of pasha, effendi, or mollah, let me advise you, although an
+unpromising subject for advice, not to act the stupid as well as
+barbarous part of riveting your nations in chains. Reflect, that the
+heavier you make the people's yoke, the more completely your own
+children, who cannot all of them be pashas, will be slaves. Surely you
+would not be so contemptible a wretch as to expose your whole posterity
+to groan in chains, for the sake of enjoying a subaltern tyranny for a
+few days! Oh, how great at present is the distance between an Englishman
+and a Bosnian!
+
+
+SECTION VII.
+
+The mixture now existing in the government of England--this concert
+between the commons, the lords, and the king--did not exist always.
+England was long a slave. She was so to the Romans, the Saxons, Danes,
+and French. William the Conqueror, in particular, ruled her with a
+sceptre of iron. He disposed of the properties and lives of his new
+subjects like an Oriental despot; he prohibited them from having either
+fire or candle in their houses after eight o'clock at night, under pain
+of death: his object being either to prevent nocturnal assemblies among
+them, or merely, by so capricious and extravagant a prohibition, to
+show how far the power of some men can extend over others. It is true,
+that both before as well as after William the Conqueror, the English had
+parliaments; they made a boast of them; as if the assemblies then called
+parliaments, made up of tyrannical churchmen and baronial robbers, had
+been the guardians of public freedom and happiness.
+
+The barbarians, who, from the shores of the Baltic poured over the rest
+of Europe, brought with them the usage of states or parliaments, about
+which a vast deal is said and very little known. The kings were not
+despotic, it is true; and it was precisely on this account that the
+people groaned in miserable slavery. The chiefs of these savages, who
+had ravaged France, Italy, Spain, and England, made themselves monarchs.
+Their captains divided among themselves the estates of the vanquished;
+hence, the margraves, lairds, barons, and the whole series of the
+subaltern tyrants, who often contested the spoils of the people with the
+monarchs, recently advanced to the throne and not firmly fixed on it.
+These were all birds of prey, battling with the eagle, in order to suck
+the blood of the doves. Every nation, instead of one good master, had a
+hundred tyrants. The priests soon took part in the contest. From time
+immemorial it had been the fate of the Gauls, the Germans, and the
+islanders of England, to be governed by their druids and the chiefs of
+their villages, an ancient species of barons, but less tyrannical than
+their successors. These druids called themselves mediators between God
+and men; they legislated, they excommunicated, they had the power of
+life and death. The bishops gradually succeeded to the authority of the
+druids, under the Goth and Vandal government. The popes put themselves
+at their head; and, with briefs, bulls, and monks, struck terror into
+the hearts of kings, whom they sometimes dethroned and occasionally
+caused to be assassinated, and drew to themselves, as nearly as they
+were able, all the money of Europe. The imbecile Ina, one of the tyrants
+of the English heptarchy, was the first who, on a pilgrimage to Rome,
+submitted to pay St. Peter's penny--which was about a crown of our
+money--for every house within his territory. The whole island soon
+followed this example; England gradually became a province of the pope;
+and the holy father sent over his legates, from time to time, to levy
+upon it his exorbitant imposts. John, called Lackland, at length made a
+full and formal cession of his kingdom to his holiness, by whom he had
+been excommunicated; the barons, who did not at all find their account
+in this proceeding, expelled that contemptible king, and substituted in
+his room Louis VIII., father of St. Louis, king of France. But they soon
+became disgusted with the new-comer, and obliged him to recross the sea.
+
+While the barons, bishops, and popes were thus harassing and tearing
+asunder England, where each of the parties strove eagerly to be the
+dominant one, the people, who form the most numerous, useful, and
+virtuous portion of a community, consisting of those who study the laws
+and sciences, merchants, artisans, and even peasants, who exercise at
+once the most important and the most despised of occupations; the
+people, I say, were looked down upon equally by all these combatants, as
+a species of beings inferior to mankind. Far, indeed, at that time, were
+the commons from having the slightest participation in the government:
+they were villeins, or serfs of the soil; both their labor and their
+blood belonged to their masters, who were called "nobles." The greater
+number of men in Europe were what they still continue to be in many
+parts of the world--the serfs of a lord, a species of cattle bought and
+sold together with the land. It required centuries to get justice done
+to humanity; to produce an adequate impression of the odious and
+execrable nature of the system, according to which the many sow, and
+only the few reap; and surely it may even be considered fortunate for
+France that the powers of these petty robbers were extinguished there by
+the legitimate authority of kings, as it was in England by that of the
+king and nation united.
+
+Happily, in consequence of the convulsions of empires by the contests
+between sovereigns and nobles, the chains of nations are more or less
+relaxed. The barons compelled John (Lackland) and Henry III to grant the
+famous charter, the great object of which, in reality, was to place the
+king in dependence on the lords, but in which the rest of the nation
+was a little favored, to induce it, when occasion might require, to
+range itself in the ranks of its pretended protectors. This great
+charter, which is regarded as the sacred origin of English liberties,
+itself clearly shows how very little liberty was understood. The very
+title proves that the king considered himself absolute by right, and
+that the barons and clergy compelled him to abate his claim to this
+absolute power only by the application of superior force. These are the
+words with which Magna Charta begins: "We grant, of our free will, the
+following privileges to the archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, and
+barons, of our kingdom," etc. Throughout the articles of it, not a word
+is said of the house of commons; a proof that it did not then exist, or
+that it existed without power. The freemen of England are specified in
+it, a melancholy demonstration that there were men who were not free. We
+perceive, from the thirty-seventh article, that the pretended freemen
+owed service to their lord. Liberty of such a description had but too
+strong a similarity to bondage. By the twenty-first article, the king
+ordains that henceforward his officers shall not take away the horses
+and ploughs of freemen, without paying for them. This regulation was
+considered by the people as true liberty, because it freed them from a
+greater tyranny. Henry VII., a successful warrior and politician, who
+pretended great attachment to the barons, but who cordially hated and
+feared them, granted them permission to alienate their lands. In
+consequence of this, the villeins, who by their industry and skill
+accumulated property, in the course of time became purchasers of the
+castles of the illustrious nobles who had ruined themselves by their
+extravagance, and, gradually, nearly all the landed property of the
+kingdom changed masters.
+
+The house of commons now advanced in power every day. The families of
+the old nobility became extinct in the progress of time; and, as in
+England, correctly speaking, peers only are nobles, there would scarcely
+have been any nobles in the country, if the kings had not, from time to
+time, created new barons, and kept up the body of peers, whom they had
+formerly so much dreaded, to counteract that of the commons, now become
+too formidable. All the new peers, who compose the upper house, receive
+from the king their title and nothing more, since none of them have the
+property of the lands of which they bear the names. One is duke of
+Dorset, without possessing a single foot of land in Dorsetshire; another
+is an earl under the name of a certain village, yet scarcely knowing
+where that village is situated. They have power in the parliament, and
+nowhere else.
+
+You hear no mention, in this country, of the high, middle, and low
+courts of justice, nor of the right of chase over the lands of private
+citizens, who have no right to fire a gun on their own estates.
+
+A man is not exempted from paying particular taxes because he is a
+noble or a clergyman. All imposts are regulated by the house of commons,
+which, although subordinate in rank, is superior in credit to that of
+the lords. The peers and bishops may reject a bill sent up to them by
+the commons, when the object is to raise money, but they can make no
+alteration in it: they must admit it or reject it, without restriction.
+When the bill is confirmed by the lords, and assented to by the king,
+then all the classes of the nation contribute. Every man pays, not
+according to his rank--which would be absurd--but according to his
+revenue. There is no arbitrary _faille_ or capitation, but a real tax on
+lands. These were all valued in the reign of the celebrated King
+William. The tax exists still unaltered, although the rents of lands
+have considerably increased; thus no one is oppressed, and no one
+complains. The feet of the cultivator are not bruised and mutilated by
+wooden shoes; he eats white bread; he is well clothed. He is not afraid
+to increase his farming-stock, nor to roof his cottage with tiles, lest
+the following year should, in consequence, bring with it an increase of
+taxation. There are numerous farmers who have an income of about five or
+six hundred pounds sterling, and still disdain not to cultivate the land
+which has enriched them, and on which they enjoy the blessing of
+freedom.
+
+
+SECTION VIII.
+
+The reader well knows that in Spain, near the coast of Malaga, there was
+discovered, in the reign of Philip II., a small community, until then
+unknown, concealed in the recesses of the Alpuxarras mountains. This
+chain of inaccessible rocks is intersected by luxuriant valleys, and
+these valleys are still cultivated by the descendants of the Moors, who
+were forced, for their own happiness, to become Christians, or at least
+to appear such.
+
+Among these Moors, as I was stating, there was, in the time of Philip, a
+small society, inhabiting a valley to which there existed no access but
+through caverns. This valley is situated between Pitos and Portugos. The
+inhabitants of this secluded abode were almost unknown to the Moors
+themselves. They spoke a language that was neither Spanish nor Arabic,
+and which was thought to be derived from that of the ancient
+Carthaginians.
+
+This society had but little increased in numbers: the reason alleged for
+which was that the Arabs, their neighbors, and before their time the
+Africans, were in the practice of coming and taking from them the young
+women.
+
+These poor and humble, but nevertheless happy, people, had never heard
+any mention of the Christian or Jewish religions; and knew very little
+about that of Mahomet, not holding it in any estimation. They offered
+up, from time immemorial, milk and fruits to a statue of Hercules. This
+was the amount of their religion. As to other matters, they spent their
+days in indolence and innocence. They were at length discovered by a
+familiar of the Inquisition. The grand inquisitor had the whole of them
+burned. This is the sole event of their history.
+
+The hallowed motives of their condemnation were, that they had never
+paid taxes, although, in fact, none had ever been demanded of them, and
+they were totally unacquainted with money; that they were not possessed
+of any Bible, although they did not understand Latin; and that no person
+had been at the pains of baptizing them. They were all invested with the
+san benito, and broiled to death with becoming ceremony.
+
+It is evident that this is a specimen of the true system of government;
+nothing can so completely contribute to the content, harmony, and
+happiness of society.
+
+
+
+
+GOURD OR CALABASH.
+
+
+This fruit grows in America on the branches of a tree as high as the
+tallest oaks.
+
+Thus, Matthew Garo, who is thought so wrong in Europe for finding fault
+with gourds creeping on the ground, would have been right in Mexico. He
+would have been still more in the right in India, where cocoas are very
+elevated. This proves that we should never hasten to conclusions. What
+God has made, He has made well, no doubt; and has placed his gourds on
+the ground in our climates, lest, in falling from on high, they should
+break Matthew Garo's nose.
+
+The calabash will only be introduced here to show that we should
+mistrust the idea that all was made for man. There are people who
+pretend that the turf is only green to refresh the sight. It would
+appear, however, that it is rather made for the animals who nibble it
+than for man, to whom dog-grass and trefoil are useless. If nature has
+produced the trees in favor of some species, it is difficult to say to
+which she has given the preference. Leaves, and even bark, nourish a
+prodigious multitude of insects: birds eat their fruits, and inhabit
+their branches, in which they build their industriously formed nests,
+while the flocks repose under their shades.
+
+The author of the "_Spectacle de la Nature_" pretends that the sea has a
+flux and reflux, only to facilitate the going out and coming in of our
+vessels. It appears that even Matthew Garo reasoned better; the
+Mediterranean, on which so many vessels sail, and which only has a tide
+in three or four places, destroys the opinion of this philosopher.
+
+Let us enjoy what we have, without believing ourselves the centre and
+object of all things.
+
+
+
+
+GRACE.
+
+
+In persons and works, grace signifies, not only that which is pleasing,
+but that which is attractive; so that the ancients imagined that the
+goddess of beauty ought never to appear without the graces. Beauty never
+displeases, but it may be deprived of this secret charm, which invites
+us to regard it, and sentimentally attracts and fills the soul. Grace
+in figure, carriage, action, discourse, depends on its attractive
+merit. A beautiful woman will have no grace, if her mouth be shut
+without a smile, and if her eyes display no sweetness. The serious is
+not always graceful, because unattractive, and approaching too near to
+the severe, which repels.
+
+A well-made man whose carriage is timid or constrained, gait precipitate
+or heavy, and gestures awkward, has no gracefulness, because he has
+nothing gentle or attractive in his exterior. The voice of an orator
+which wants flexibility or softness is without grace.
+
+It is the same in all the arts. Proportion and beauty may not be
+graceful. It cannot be said that the pyramids of Egypt are graceful; it
+cannot be said that the Colossus of Rhodes is as much so as the Venus of
+Cnidus. All that is merely strong and vigorous exhibits not the charm of
+grace.
+
+It would show but small acquaintance with Michelangelo and Caravaggio to
+attribute to them the grace of Albano. The sixth book of the "Æneid" is
+sublime; the fourth has more grace. Some of the gallant odes of Horace
+breathe gracefulness, as some of his epistles cultivate reason.
+
+It seems, in general, that the little and pretty of all kinds are more
+susceptible of grace than the large. A funeral oration, a tragedy, or a
+sermon, are badly praised, if they are only honored with the epithet of
+graceful.
+
+It is not good for any kind of work to be opposed to grace, for its
+opposite is rudeness, barbarity, and dryness. The Hercules of Farnese
+should not have the gracefulness of the Apollo of Belvidere and of
+Antinous, but it is neither rude nor clumsy. The burning of Troy is not
+described by Virgil with the graces of an elegy of Tibullus: it pleases
+by stronger beauties. A work, then, may be deprived of grace, without
+being in the least disagreeable. The terrible, or horrible, in
+description, is not to be graceful, neither should it solely affect its
+opposite; for if an artist, whatever branch he may cultivate, expresses
+only frightful things, and softens them not by agreeable contrasts, he
+will repel.
+
+Grace, in painting and sculpture, consists in softness of outline and
+harmonious expression; and painting, next to sculpture, has grace in the
+unison of parts, and of figures which animate one another, and which
+become agreeable by their attributes and their expression.
+
+Graces of diction, whether in eloquence or poetry, depend on choice of
+words and harmony of phrases, and still more upon delicacy of ideas and
+smiling descriptions. The abuse of grace is affectation, as the abuse of
+the sublime is absurdity; all perfection is nearly a fault.
+
+To have grace applies equally to persons and things. This dress, this
+work, or that woman, is graceful. What is called a good grace applies to
+manner alone. She presents herself with good grace. He has done that
+which was expected of him with a good grace. To possess the graces:
+This woman has grace in her carriage, in all that she says and does.
+
+To obtain grace is, by a metaphor, to obtain pardon, as to grant grace
+is to grant pardon. We make grace of one thing by taking away all the
+rest. The commissioners took all his effects and made him a gift--a
+grace--of his money. To grant graces, to diffuse graces, is the finest
+privilege of the sovereignty; it is to do good by something more than
+justice. To have one's good graces is usually said in relation to a
+superior: to have a lady's good graces, is to be her favorite lover. To
+be in grace, is said of a courtier who has been in disgrace: we should
+not allow our happiness to depend on the one, nor our misery on the
+other. Graces, in Greek, are "charities"; a term which signifies
+amiable.
+
+The graces, divinities of antiquity, are one of the most beautiful
+allegories of the Greek mythology. As this mythology always varied
+according either to the imagination of the poets, who were its
+theologians, or to the customs of the people, the number, names, and
+attributes of the graces often change; but it was at last agreed to fix
+them as three, Aglaia, Thalia, and Euphrosyne, that is to say,
+sparkling, blooming, mirthful. They were always near Venus. No veil
+should cover their charms. They preside over favors, concord,
+rejoicings, love, and even eloquence; they were the sensible emblem of
+all that can render life agreeable. They were painted dancing and
+holding hands; and every one who entered their temples was crowned with
+flowers. Those who have condemned the fabulous mythology should at least
+acknowledge the merit of these lively fictions, which announce truths
+intimately connected with the felicity of mankind.
+
+
+
+
+GRACE (OF).
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+This term, which signifies favor or privilege, is employed in this sense
+by theologians. They call grace a particular operation of God on
+mankind, intended to render them just and happy. Some have admitted
+universal grace, that which God gives to all men, though mankind,
+according to them, with the exception of a very small number, will be
+delivered to eternal flames: others admit grace towards Christians of
+their communion only; and lastly, others only for the elect of that
+communion.
+
+It is evident that a general grace, which leaves the universe in vice,
+error, and eternal misery, is not a grace, a favor, or privilege, but a
+contradiction in terms.
+
+Particular grace, according to theologians, is either in the first place
+"sufficing," which if resisted, suffices not--resembling a pardon given
+by a king to a criminal, who is nevertheless delivered over to the
+punishment; or "efficacious" when it is not resisted, although it _may
+be_ resisted; in this case, they just resemble famished guests to whom
+are presented delicious viands, of which they will surely eat, though,
+in general, they may be supposed at liberty not to eat; or "necessary,"
+that is, unavoidable, being nothing more than the chain of eternal
+decrees and events. We shall take care not to enter into the long and
+appalling details, subtleties, and sophisms, with which these questions
+are embarrassed. The object of this dictionary is not to be the vain
+echo of vain disputes.
+
+St. Thomas calls grace a substantial form, and the Jesuit Bouhours names
+it a _je ne sais quoi_; this is perhaps the best definition which has
+ever been given of it.
+
+If the theologians had wanted a subject on which to ridicule Providence,
+they need not have taken any other than that which they have chosen. On
+one side the Thomists assure us that man, in receiving efficacious
+grace, is not free in the compound sense, but that he is free in the
+divided sense; on the other, the Molinists invent the medium doctrine of
+God and congruity, and imagine exciting, preventing, concomitant, and
+co-operating grace.
+
+Let us quit these bad but seriously constructed jokes of the
+theologians; let us leave their books, and each consult his common
+sense; when he will see that all these reasoners have sagaciously
+deceived themselves, because they have reasoned upon a principle
+evidently false. They have supposed that God acts upon particular views;
+now, an eternal God, without general, immutable, and eternal laws, is
+an imaginary being, a phantom, a god of fable.
+
+Why, in all religions on which men pique themselves on reasoning, have
+theologians been forced to admit this grace which they do not
+comprehend? It is that they would have salvation confined to their own
+sect, and further, they would have this salvation divided among those
+who are the most submissive to themselves. These particular theologians,
+or chiefs of parties, divide among themselves. The Mussulman doctors
+entertain similar opinions and similar disputes, because they have the
+same interest to actuate them; but the universal theologian, that is to
+say, the true philosopher, sees that it is contradictory for nature to
+act on particular or single views; that it is ridiculous to imagine God
+occupying Himself in forcing one man in Europe to obey Him, while He
+leaves all the Asiatics intractable; to suppose Him wrestling with
+another man who sometimes submits, and sometimes disarms Him, and
+presenting to another a help, which is nevertheless useless. Such grace,
+considered in a true point of view, is an absurdity. The prodigious mass
+of books composed on this subject is often an exercise of intellect, but
+always the shame of reason.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+All nature, all that exists, is the grace of God; He bestows on all
+animals the grace of form and nourishment. The grace of growing seventy
+feet high is granted to the fir, and refused to the reed. He gives to
+man the grace of thinking, speaking, and knowing him; He grants me the
+grace of not understanding a word of all that Tournelli, Molina, and
+Soto, have written on the subject of grace.
+
+The first who has spoken of efficacious and gratuitous grace is, without
+contradiction, Homer. This may be astonishing to a bachelor of theology,
+who knows no author but St. Augustine; but, if he read the third book of
+the "Iliad," he will see that Paris says to his brother Hector: "If the
+gods have given you valor, and me beauty, do not reproach me with the
+presents of the beautiful Venus; no gift of the gods is despicable--it
+does not depend upon man to obtain them."
+
+Nothing is more positive than this passage. If we further remark that
+Jupiter, according to his pleasure, gave the victory sometimes to the
+Greeks, and at others to the Trojans, we shall see a new proof that all
+was done by grace from on high. Sarpedon, and afterwards Patroclus, are
+barbarians to whom by turns grace has been wanting.
+
+There have been philosophers who were not of the opinion of Homer. They
+have pretended that general Providence does not immediately interfere
+with the affairs of particular individuals; that it governs all by
+universal laws; that Thersites and Achilles were equal before it, and
+that neither Chalcas nor Talthybius ever had versatile or congruous
+graces.
+
+According to these philosophers, the dog-grass and the oak, the mite and
+the elephant, man, the elements and stars, obey invariable laws, which
+God, as immutable, has established from all eternity.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+If one were to come from the bottom of hell, to say to us on the part of
+the devil--Gentlemen, I must inform you that our sovereign lord has
+taken all mankind for his share, except a small number of people who
+live near the Vatican and its dependencies--we should all pray of this
+deputy to inscribe us on the list of the privileged; we should ask him
+what we must do to obtain this grace.
+
+If he were to answer, You cannot merit it, my master has made the list
+from the beginning of time; he has only listened to his own pleasure, he
+is continually occupied in making an infinity of _pots-de-chambre_ and
+some dozen gold vases; if you are _pots-de-chambre_ so much the worse
+for you.
+
+At these fine words we should use our pitchforks to send the ambassador
+back to his master. This is, however, what we have dared to impute to
+God---to the eternal and sovereignly good being!
+
+Man has been always reproached with having made God in his own image,
+Homer has been condemned for having transported all the vices and
+follies of earth into heaven. Plato, who has thus justly reproached him,
+has not hesitated to call him a blasphemer; while we, a hundred times
+more thoughtless, hardy, and blaspheming than this Greek, who did not
+understand conventional language, devoutly accuse God of a thing of
+which we have never accused the worst of men.
+
+It is said that the king of Morocco, Muley Ismael, had five hundred
+children. What would you say if a marabout of Mount Atlas related to you
+that the wise and good Muley Ismael, dining with his family, at the
+close of the repast, spoke thus:
+
+"I am Muley Ismael, who has forgotten you for my glory, for I am very
+glorious. I love you very tenderly, I shelter you as a hen covers her
+chickens; I have decreed that one of my youngest children shall have the
+kingdom of Tafilet, and that another shall possess Morocco; and for my
+other dear children, to the number of four hundred and ninety-eight, I
+order that one-half shall be tortured, and the other half burned, for I
+am the Lord Muley Ismael."
+
+You would assuredly take the marabout for the greatest fool that Africa
+ever produced; but if three or four thousand marabouts, well entertained
+at your expense, were to repeat to you the same story, what would you
+do? Would you not be tempted to make them fast upon bread and water
+until they recovered their senses?
+
+You will allege that my indignation is reasonable enough against the
+supralapsarians, who believe that the king of Morocco begot these five
+hundred children only for his glory; and that he had always the
+intention to torture and burn them, except two, who were destined to
+reign.
+
+But I am wrong, you say, against the infralapsarians, who avow that it
+was not the first intention of Muley Ismael to cause his children to
+perish; but that, having foreseen that they would be of no use, he
+thought he should be acting as a good father in getting rid of them by
+torture and fire.
+
+Ah, supralapsarians, infralapsarians, free-gracians, sufficers,
+efficacians, jansenists, and molinists become men, and no longer trouble
+the earth with such absurd and abominable fooleries.
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+Holy advisers of modern Rome, illustrious and infallible theologians, no
+one has more respect for your divine decisions than I; but if Paulus
+milius, Scipio, Cato, Cicero, Cæsar, Titus, Trajan, or Marcus Aurelius,
+revisited that Rome to which they formerly did such credit, you must
+confess that they would be a little astonished at your decisions on
+grace. What would they say if they heard you speak of healthful grace
+according to St. Thomas, and medicinal grace according to Cajetan; of
+exterior and interior grace, of free, sanctifying, co-operating, actual,
+habitual, and efficacious grace, which is sometimes inefficacious; of
+the sufficing which sometimes does not suffice, of the versatile and
+congruous--would they really comprehend it more than you and I?
+
+What need would these poor people have of your instructions? I fancy I
+hear them say: "Reverend fathers, you are terrible genii; we foolishly
+thought that the Eternal Being never conducted Himself by particular
+laws like vile human beings, but by general laws, eternal like Himself.
+No one among us ever imagined that God was like a senseless master, who
+gives an estate to one slave and refuses food to another; who orders one
+with a broken arm to knead a loaf, and a cripple to be his courier."
+
+All is grace on the part of God; He has given to the globe we inhabit
+the grace of form; to the trees the grace of making them grow; to
+animals that of feeding them; but will you say, because one wolf finds
+in his road a lamb for his supper, while another is dying with hunger,
+that God has given the first wolf a particular grace? Is it a preventive
+grace to cause one oak to grow in preference to another in which sap is
+wanting? If throughout nature all being is submitted to general laws,
+how can a single species of animals avoid conforming to them?
+
+Why should the absolute master of all be more occupied in directing the
+interior of a single man than in conducting the remainder of entire
+nature? By what caprice would He change something in the heart of a
+Courlander or a Biscayan, while He changes nothing in the general laws
+which He has imposed upon all the stars.
+
+What a pity to suppose that He is continually making, defacing, and
+renewing our sentiments! And what audacity in us to believe ourselves
+excepted from all beings! And further, is it not only for those who
+confess that these changes are imagined? A Savoyard, a Bergamask, on
+Monday, will have the grace to have a mass said for twelve sous; on
+Tuesday he will go to the tavern and have no grace; on Wednesday he will
+have a co-operating grace, which will conduct him to confession, but he
+will not have the efficacious grace of perfect contrition; on Thursday
+there will be a sufficing grace which will not suffice, as has been
+already said. God will labor in the head of this Bergamask--sometimes
+strongly, sometimes weakly, while the rest of the earth will no way
+concern Him! He will not deign to meddle with the interior of the
+Indians and Chinese! If you possess a grain of reason, reverend fathers,
+do you not find this system prodigiously ridiculous?
+
+Poor, miserable man! behold this oak which rears its head to the clouds,
+and this reed which bends at its feet; you do not say that efficacious
+grace has been given to the oak and withheld from the reed. Raise your
+eyes to heaven; see the eternal Demiourgos creating millions of worlds,
+which gravitate towards one another by general and eternal laws. See the
+same light reflected from the sun to Saturn, and from Saturn to us; and
+in this grant of so many stars, urged onward in their rapid course; in
+this general obedience of all nature, dare to believe, if you can, that
+God is occupied in giving a versatile grace to Sister Theresa, or a
+concomitant one to Sister Agnes.
+
+Atom--to which another foolish atom has said that the Eternal has
+particular laws for some atoms of thy neighborhood; that He gives His
+grace to that one and refuses it to this; that such as had not grace
+yesterday shall have it to-morrow--repeat not this folly. God has made
+the universe, and creates not new winds to remove a few straws in one
+corner of the universe. Theologians are like the combatants in Homer,
+who believed that the gods were sometimes armed for and sometimes
+against them. Had Homer not been considered a poet, he would be deemed a
+blasphemer.
+
+It is Marcus Aurelius who speaks, and not I; for God, who inspires you,
+has given me grace to believe all that you say, all that you have said,
+and all that you will say.
+
+
+
+
+GRAVE--GRAVITY.
+
+
+Grave, in its moral meaning, always corresponds with its physical one;
+it expresses something of weight; thus, we say--a person, an author, or
+a maxim of weight, for a grave person, author, or maxim. The grave is to
+the serious what the lively is to the agreeable. It is one degree more
+of the same thing, and that degree a considerable one. A man may be
+serious by temperament, and even from want of ideas. He is grave, either
+from a sense of decorum, or from having ideas of depth and importance,
+which induce gravity. There is a difference between being grave and
+being a grave man. It is a fault to be unseasonably grave. He who is
+grave in society is seldom much sought for; but a grave man is one who
+acquires influence and authority more by his real wisdom than his
+external carriage.
+
+     _Tum pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem_
+     _Conspexere, silent, adrectisque auribus adstant._
+                            --VIRGIL'S _Æneid_, i. 151.
+
+     If then some grave and pious man appear,
+     They hush their noise, and lend a listening ear.
+                                                   --DRYDEN.
+
+A decorous air should be always preserved, but a grave air is becoming
+only in the function of some high and important office, as, for example,
+in council. When gravity consists, as is frequently the case, only in
+the exterior carriage, frivolous remarks are delivered with a pompous
+solemnity, exciting at once ridicule and aversion. We do not easily
+pardon those who wish to impose upon us by this air of consequence and
+self-sufficiency.
+
+The duke de La Rochefoucauld said "Gravity is a mysteriousness of body
+assumed in order to conceal defects of mind." Without investigating
+whether the phrase "mysteriousness of body" is natural and judicious, it
+is sufficient to observe that the remark is applicable to all who affect
+gravity, but not to those who merely exhibit a gravity suitable to the
+office they hold, the place where they are, or the business in which
+they are engaged.
+
+A grave author is one whose opinions relate to matters obviously
+disputable. We never apply the term to one who has written on subjects
+which admit no doubt or controversy. It would be ridiculous to call
+Euclid and Archimedes grave authors.
+
+Gravity is applicable to style. Livy and de Thou have written with
+gravity. The same observations cannot with propriety be applied to
+Tacitus, whose object was brevity, and who has displayed malignity;
+still less can it be applied to Cardinal de Retz, who sometimes infuses
+into his writings a misplaced gayety, and sometimes even forgets
+decency.
+
+The grave style declines all sallies of wit or pleasantry; if it
+sometimes reaches the sublime, if on any particular occasion it is
+pathetic, it speedily returns to the didactic wisdom and noble
+simplicity which habitually characterizes it; it possesses strength
+without daring. Its greatest difficulty is to avoid monotony.
+
+A grave affair (_affaire_), a grave case (_cas_), is used concerning a
+criminal rather than a civil process. A grave disease implies danger.
+
+
+
+
+GREAT--GREATNESS.
+
+_Of the Meaning of These Words._
+
+Great is one of those words which are most frequently used in a moral
+sense, and with the least consideration and judgment. Great man, great
+genius, great captain, great philosopher, great poet; we mean by this
+language "one who has far exceeded ordinary limits." But, as it is
+difficult to define those limits, the epithet "great" is often applied
+to those who possess only mediocrity.
+
+This term is less vague and doubtful when applied to material than to
+moral subjects. We know what is meant by a great storm, a great
+misfortune, a great disease, great property, great misery.
+
+The term "large" (_gros_) is sometimes used with respect to subjects of
+the latter description, that is, material ones, as equivalent to great,
+but never with respect to moral subjects. We say large property for
+great wealth, but not a large captain for a great captain, or a large
+minister for a great minister. Great financier means a man eminently
+skilful in matters of national finance; but _gros_ financier expresses
+merely a man who has become wealthy in the department of finance.
+
+The great man is more difficult to be defined than the great artist. In
+an art or profession, the man who has far distanced his rivals, or who
+has the reputation of having done so, is called great in his art, and
+appears, therefore, to have required merit of only one description in
+order to obtain this eminence; but the great man must combine different
+species of merit. Gonsalvo, surnamed the Great Captain, who observed
+that "the web of honor was coarsely woven," was never called a great
+man. It is more easy to name those to whom this high distinction should
+be refused than those to whom it should be granted. The denomination
+appears to imply some great virtues. All agree that Cromwell was the
+most intrepid general, the most profound statesman, the man best
+qualified to conduct a party, a parliament, or an army, of his day; yet
+no writer ever gives him the title of great man; because, although he
+possessed great qualities, he possessed not a single great virtue.
+
+This title seems to fall to the lot only of the small number of men who
+have been distinguished at once by virtues, exertions, and success.
+Success is essential, because the man who is always unfortunate is
+supposed to be so by his own fault.
+
+Great (grand), by itself, expresses some dignity. In Spain it is a high
+and most distinguishing appellative (_grandee_) conferred by the king on
+those whom he wishes to honor. The grandees are covered in the presence
+of the king, either before speaking to him or after having spoken to
+him, or while taking their seats with the rest.
+
+Charles the Fifth conferred the privileges of grandeeship on sixteen
+principal noblemen. That emperor himself afterwards granted the same
+honors to many others. His successors, each in his turn, have added to
+the number. The Spanish grandees have long claimed to be considered of
+equal rank and dignity with the electors and the princes of Italy. At
+the court of France they have the same honors as peers.
+
+The title of "great" has been always given, in France, to many of the
+chief officers of the crown--as great seneschal, great master, great
+chamberlain, great equerry, great pantler, great huntsman, great
+falconer. These titles were given them to distinguish their pre-eminence
+above the persons serving in the same departments under them. The
+distinction is not given to the constable, nor to the chancellor, nor to
+the marshals, although the constable is the chief of all the household
+officers, the chancellor the second person in the state, and the marshal
+the second officer in the army. The reason obviously is, that they had
+no deputies, no vice-constables, vice-marshals, vice-chancellors, but
+officers under another denomination who executed their orders, while the
+great steward, great chamberlain, and great equerry, etc., had stewards,
+chamberlains, and equerries under them.
+
+Great (grand) in connection with _seigneur_, "great lord," has a
+signification more extensive and uncertain. We give this title of
+"_grand seigneur_" (seignor) to the Turkish sultan, who assumes that of
+pasha, to which the expression grand seignor does not correspond. The
+expression "_un grand_," "great man," is used in speaking of a man of
+distinguished birth, invested with dignities, but it is used only by the
+common people. A person of birth or consequence never applies the term
+to any one. As the words "great lord" (_grand seigneur_) are commonly
+applied to those who unite birth, dignity, and riches, poverty seems to
+deprive a man of the right to it, or at least to render it inappropriate
+or ridiculous. Accordingly, we say a poor gentleman, but not a poor
+grand seigneur.
+
+Great (grand) is different from mighty (_puissant_). A man may at the
+same time be both one and the other, but _puissant_ implies the
+possession of some office of power and consequence. "Grand" indicates
+more show and less reality; the "puissant" commands, the "grand"
+possesses honors.
+
+There is greatness (grandeur) in mind, in sentiments, in manners, and in
+conduct. The expression is not used in speaking of persons in the
+middling classes of society, but only of those who, by their rank, are
+bound to show nobility and elevation. It is perfectly true that a man of
+the most obscure birth and connections may have more greatness of mind
+than a monarch. But it would be inconsistent with the usual phraseology
+to say, "that merchant" or "that farmer acted greatly" (_avec
+grandeur_); unless, indeed, in very particular circumstances, and
+placing certain characters in striking opposition, we should, for
+example, make such a remark as the following: "The celebrated merchant
+who entertained Charles the Fifth in his own house, and lighted a fire
+of cinnamon wood with that prince's bond to him for fifty thousand
+ducats, displayed more greatness of soul than the emperor."
+
+The title of "greatness" (grandeur) was formerly given to various
+persons possessing stations of dignity. French clergymen, when writing
+to bishops, still call them "your greatness." Those titles, which are
+lavished by sycophancy and caught at by vanity, are now little used.
+
+Haughtiness is often mistaken for greatness (grandeur). He who is
+ostentatious of greatness displays vanity. But one becomes weary and
+exhausted with writing about greatness. According to the lively remark
+of Montaigne, "we cannot obtain it, let us therefore take our revenge by
+abusing it."
+
+
+
+
+GREEK.
+
+_Observations Upon the Extinction of the Greek Language at Marseilles._
+
+
+It is exceedingly strange that, as Marseilles was founded by a Greek
+colony, scarcely any vestige of the Greek language is to be found in
+Provence Languedoc, or any district of France; for we cannot consider as
+Greek the terms which were taken, at a comparatively modern date, from
+the Latins, and which had been adopted by the Romans themselves from the
+Greeks so many centuries before. We received those only at second hand.
+We have no right to say that we abandoned the word _Got_ for that of
+_Theos_, rather than that of _Deus_, from which, by a barbarous
+termination, we have made _Dieu_.
+
+It is clear that the Gauls, having received the Latin language with the
+Roman laws, and having afterwards received from those same Romans the
+Christian religion, adopted from them all the terms which were connected
+with that religion. These same Gauls did not acquire, until a late
+period, the Greek terms which relate to medicine, anatomy, and surgery.
+
+After deducting all the words originally Greek which we have derived
+through the Latin, and all the anatomical and medical terms which were,
+in comparison, so recently acquired, there is scarcely anything left;
+for surely, to derive "_abréger_" from "_brakus_," rather than from
+"_abreviare_"; "_acier_" from "_axi_" rather than from "_acies_";
+"_acre_" from "_agros_," rather than from "_ager_"; and "_aile_" from
+"_ily_" rather than from "_ala_"--this, I say, would surely be perfectly
+ridiculous.
+
+Some have even gone so far as to say that "omelette" comes from
+"_omeilaton_" because "_meli_" in Greek signifies honey, and "_oon_" an
+egg. In the "Garden of Greek Roots" there is a more curious derivation
+still; it is pretended that "_diner_" (dinner) comes from "_deipnein_,"
+which signifies supper.
+
+As some may be desirous of possessing a list of the Greek words which
+the Marseilles colony may have introduced into the language of the
+Gauls, independently of those which came through the Romans, we present
+the following one:
+
+     Aboyer, perhaps from _bauzein_.
+     Affre, affreux, from _afronos_.
+     Agacer, perhaps from _anaxein_.
+     Alali, a Greek war-cry.
+     Babiller, perhaps from _babazo_.
+     Balle, from _ballo_.
+     Bas, from _batys_.
+     Blesser, from the aorist of _blapto_.
+     Bouteille, from _bouttis_.
+     Bride, from _bryter_.
+     Brique, from _bryka_.
+     Coin, from _gonia_.
+     Colère, from _chole_.
+     Colle, from _colla_.
+     Couper, from _cop to_.
+     Cuisse, perhaps from _ischis_.
+     Entraille, from _entera_.
+     Ermite, from _eremos_.
+     Fier, from _fiaros_.
+     Gargarizer, from _gargarizein_.
+     Idiot, from _idiotes_.
+     Maraud, from _miaros_.
+     Moquer, from _mokeuo_.
+     Moustache, from _mustax_.
+     Orgueil, from _orge_.
+     Page, from _pais_.
+     Siffler, perhaps from _siffloo_.
+     Tuer, _thuein_.
+
+I am astonished to find so few words remaining of a language spoken at
+Marseilles, in the time of Augustus, in all its purity; and I am
+particularly astonished to find the greater number of the Greek words
+preserved in Provence, signifying things of little or no utility, while
+those used to express things of the first necessity and importance are
+utterly lost. We have not a single one remaining that signifies land,
+sea, sky, the sun, the moon, rivers, or the principal parts of the human
+body; the words used for which might have been expected to be
+transmitted down from the beginning through every succeeding age.
+Perhaps we must attribute the cause of this to the Visigoths, the
+Burgundians, and the Franks; to the horrible barbarism of all those
+nations which laid waste the Roman Empire, a barbarism of which so many
+traces yet remain.
+
+
+
+
+GUARANTEE.
+
+
+A guarantee is a pledge by which a person renders himself responsible to
+another for something, and binds himself to secure him in the enjoyment
+of it. The word (_garant_) is derived from the Celtic and Teutonic
+"warrant." In all the words which we have retained from those ancient
+languages we have changed the _w_ into _g_. Among the greater number of
+the nations of the North "warrant" still signifies assurance, guaranty;
+and in this sense it means, in English, an order of the king, as
+signifying the pledge of the king. When in the middle ages kings
+concluded treaties, they were guaranteed on both sides by a considerable
+number of knights, who bound themselves by oath to see that the treaty
+was observed, and even, when a superior education qualified them to do
+so, which sometimes happened, signed their names to it. When the emperor
+Frederick Barbarossa ceded so many rights to Pope Alexander III. at the
+celebrated congress of Venice, in 1117, the emperor put his seal to the
+instrument which the pope and cardinals signed. Twelve princes of the
+empire guaranteed the treaty by an oath upon the gospel; but none of
+them signed it. It is not said that the doge of Venice guaranteed that
+peace which was concluded in his palace. When Philip Augustus made peace
+in 1200 with King John of England, the principal barons of France and
+Normandy swore to the due observance of it, as cautionary or
+guaranteeing parties. The French swore that they would take arms against
+their king if he violated his word, and the Normans, in like manner, to
+oppose their sovereign if he did not adhere to his. One of the
+constables of the Montmorency family, after a negotiation with one of
+the earls of March, in 1227, swore to the observance of the treaty upon
+the soul of the king.
+
+The practice of guaranteeing the states of a third party was of great
+antiquity, although under a different name. The Romans in this manner
+guaranteed the possessions of many of the princes of Asia and Africa, by
+taking them under their protection until they secured to themselves the
+possession of the territories thus protected. We must regard as a mutual
+guaranty the ancient alliance between France and Castile, of king to
+king, kingdom to kingdom, and man to man.
+
+We do not find any treaty in which the guaranty of the states of a third
+party is expressly stipulated for before that which was concluded
+between Spain and the states-general in 1609, by the mediation of Henry
+IV. He procured from Philip III., king of Spain, the recognition of the
+United Provinces as free and sovereign states. He signed the guaranty of
+this sovereignty of the seven provinces, and obtained the signature of
+the same instrument from the king of Spain; and the republic
+acknowledged that it owed its freedom to the interference of the French
+monarch. It is principally within our own times that treaties of
+guaranty have become comparatively frequent. Unfortunately these
+engagements have occasionally produced ruptures and war; and it is
+clearly ascertained that the best of all possible guaranties is power.
+
+
+
+
+GREGORY VII.
+
+
+Bayle himself, while admitting that Gregory was the firebrand of Europe,
+concedes to him the denomination of a great man. "That old Rome," says
+he, "which plumed itself upon conquests and military virtue, should have
+brought so many other nations under its dominion, redounds, according to
+the general maxims of mankind, to her credit and glory; but, upon the
+slightest reflection, can excite little surprise. On the other hand, it
+is a subject of great surprise to see new Rome, which pretended to value
+itself only on an apostolic ministry, possessed of an authority under
+which the greatest monarchs have been constrained to bend. Caron may
+observe, with truth, that there is scarcely a single emperor who has
+opposed the popes without feeling bitter cause to regret his resistance.
+Even at the present day the conflicts of powerful princes with the court
+of Rome almost always terminate in their confusion."
+
+I am of a totally different opinion from Bayle. There will probably be
+many of a different one from mine. I deliver it however with freedom,
+and let him who is willing and able refute it.
+
+1. The differences of the princes of Orange and the seven provinces with
+Rome did not terminate in their confusion; and Bayle, who, while at
+Amsterdam, could set Rome at defiance, was a happy illustration of the
+contrary.
+
+The triumphs of Queen Elizabeth, of Gustavus Vasa in Sweden, of the
+kings of Denmark, of all the princes of the north of Germany, of the
+finest part of Helvetia, of the single and small city of Geneva--the
+triumphs, I say, of all these over the policy of the Roman court are
+perfectly satisfactory testimonies that it may be easily and
+successfully resisted, both in affairs of religion and government.
+
+2. The sacking of Rome by the troops of Charles the Fifth; the pope
+(Clement VII.) a prisoner in the castle of St. Angelo; Louis XIV.
+compelling Pope Alexander VII. to ask his pardon, and erecting even in
+Rome itself a monument of the pope's submission; and, within our own
+times, the easy subversion of that steady, and apparently most
+formidable support of the papal power, the society of Jesuits in Spain,
+in France, in Naples, in Goa, and in Paraguay--all this furnishes
+decisive evidence, that, when potent princes are in hostility with Rome,
+the quarrel is not terminated in their confusion; they may occasionally
+bend before the storm, but they will not eventually be overthrown.
+
+When the popes walked on the heads of kings, when they conferred crowns
+by a parchment bull, it appears to me, that at this extreme height of
+their power and grandeur they did no more than the caliphs, who were the
+successors of Mahomet, did in the very period of their decline. Both of
+them, in the character of priests, conferred the investiture of empires,
+in solemn ceremony, on the most powerful of contending parties.
+
+3. Maimbourg says: "What no pope ever did before, Gregory VIII. did,
+depriving Henry IV. of his dignity of emperor, and of his kingdoms of
+Germany and Italy."
+
+Maimbourg is mistaken. Pope Zachary had, long before that, placed a
+crown on the head of the Austrasian Pepin, who usurped the kingdom of
+the Franks; and Pope Leo III. had declared the son of that Pepin emperor
+of the West, and thereby deprived the empress Irene of the whole of that
+empire; and from that time, it must be admitted, there has not been a
+single priest of the Romish church who has not imagined that his bishop
+enjoyed the disposal of all crowns.
+
+This maxim was always turned to account when it was possible to be so.
+It was considered as a consecrated weapon, deposited in the sacristy of
+St. John of Lateran, which might be drawn forth in solemn and impressive
+ceremony on every occasion that required it. This prerogative is so
+commanding; it raises to such a height the dignity of an exorcist born
+at Velletri or Cività Vecchia, that if Luther, Œcolampadius, John
+Calvin, and all the prophets of the Cévennes, had been natives of any
+miserable village near Rome, and undergone the tonsure there, they would
+have supported that church with the same rage which they actually
+manifested for its destruction.
+
+4. Everything, then, depends on the time and place of a man's birth, and
+the circumstances by which he is surrounded. Gregory VII. was born in an
+age of barbarism, ignorance, and superstition; and he had to deal with a
+young, debauched, inexperienced emperor, deficient in money, and whose
+power was contested by all the powerful lords of Germany.
+
+We cannot believe, that, from the time of the Austrasian Charlemagne,
+the Roman people ever paid very willing obedience to Franks or
+Teutonians: they hated them as much as the genuine old Romans would have
+hated the Cimbri, if the Cimbri had obtained dominion in Italy. The
+Othos had left behind them in Rome a memory that was execrated, because
+they had enjoyed great power there; and, after the time of the Othos,
+Europe it is well known became involved in frightful anarchy.
+
+This anarchy was not more effectually restrained under the emperors of
+the house of Franconia. One-half of Germany was in insurrection against
+Henry IV. The countess Mathilda, grand duchess, his cousin-german, more
+powerful than himself in Italy, was his mortal enemy. She possessed,
+either as fiefs of the empire, or as allodial property, the whole duchy
+of Tuscany, the territory of Cremona, Ferrara, Mantua, and Parma; a part
+of the Marches of Ancona, Reggio, Modena, Spoleto, and Verona; and she
+had rights, that is to say pretensions, to the two Burgundies; for the
+imperial chancery claimed those territories, according to its regular
+practice of claiming everything.
+
+We admit, that Gregory VII. would have been little less than an idiot
+had he not exerted his strongest efforts to secure a complete influence
+over this powerful princess; and to obtain, by her means, a point of
+support and protection against the Germans. He became her director, and,
+after being her director, her heir.
+
+I shall not, in this place, examine whether he was really her lover, or
+whether he only pretended to be so; or whether his enemies merely
+pretended it; or whether, in his idle moments, the assuming and ardent
+little director did not occasionally abuse the influence he possessed
+with his penitent, and prevail over a feeble and capricious woman. In
+the course of human events nothing can be more natural or common; but as
+usually no registers are kept of such cases; as those interesting
+intimacies between the directors and directed do not take place before
+witnesses, and as Gregory has been reproached with this imputation only
+by his enemies, we ought not to confound accusation with proof. It is
+quite enough that Gregory claimed the whole of his penitent's property.
+
+5. The donation which he procured to be made to himself by the countess
+Mathilda, in the year 1077, is more than suspected. And one proof that
+it is not to be relied upon is that not merely was this deed never
+shown, but that, in a second deed, the first is stated to have been
+lost. It was pretended that the donation had been made in the fortress
+of Canossa, and in the second act it is said to have been made at Rome.
+These circumstances may be considered as confirming the opinion of some
+antiquaries, a little too scrupulous, who maintain that out of a
+thousand grants made in those times--and those times were of long
+duration--there are more than nine hundred evidently counterfeit.
+
+There have been two sorts of usurpers in our quarter of the world,
+Europe--robbers and forgers.
+
+6. Bayle, although allowing the title of Great to Gregory, acknowledges
+at the same time that this turbulent man disgraced his heroism by his
+prophecies. He had the audacity to create an emperor, and in that he
+did well, as the emperor Henry IV. had made a pope. Henry deposed him,
+and he deposed Henry. So far there is nothing to which to object--both
+sides are equal. But Gregory took it into his head to turn prophet; he
+predicted the death of Henry IV. for the year 1080; but Henry IV.
+conquered, and the pretended emperor Rudolph was defeated and slain in
+Thuringia by the famous Godfrey of Bouillon, a man more truly great than
+all the other three. This proves, in my opinion, that Gregory had more
+enthusiasm than talent.
+
+I subscribe with all my heart to the remark of Bayle, that "when a man
+undertakes to predict the future, he is provided against everything by a
+face of brass, and an inexhaustible magazine of equivocations." But your
+enemies deride your equivocations; they also have a face of brass like
+yourself; and they expose you as a knave, a braggart, and a fool.
+
+7. Our great man ended his public career with witnessing the taking of
+Rome by assault, in the year 1083. He was besieged in the castle, since
+called St. Angelo, by the same emperor Henry IV., whom he had dared to
+dispossess, and died in misery and contempt at Salerno, under the
+protection of Robert Guiscard the Norman.
+
+I ask pardon of modern Rome, but when I read the history of the Scipios,
+the Catos, the Pompeys, and the Cæsars, I find a difficulty in ranking
+with them a factious monk who was made a pope under the name of Gregory
+VII.
+
+But our Gregory has obtained even a yet finer title; he has been made a
+saint, at least at Rome. It was the famous cardinal Coscia who effected
+this canonization under Pope Benedict XIII. Even an office or service of
+St. Gregory VII. was printed, in which it was said, that that saint
+"absolved the faithful from the allegiance which they had sworn to their
+emperor."
+
+Many parliaments of the kingdom were desirous of having this legend
+burned by the executioner: but Bentivoglio, the nuncio--who kept one of
+the actresses at the opera, of the name of Constitution, as his
+mistress, and had by her a daughter called la Legende; a man otherwise
+extremely amiable, and a most interesting companion--procured from the
+ministry a mitigation of the threatened storm; and, after passing
+sentence of condemnation on the legend of St. Gregory, the hostile party
+were contented to suppress it and to laugh at it.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 5
+(of 10), by François-Marie Arouet (AKA Voltaire)
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 35625 ***
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+
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 35625 ***</div>
+
+
+<h1>A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY</h1>
+
+<h3>VOLUME V</h3>
+
+<h4>By</h4>
+
+<h2>VOLTAIRE</h2>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h4>EDITION DE LA PACIFICATION</h4>
+
+<h3>THE WORKS OF VOLTAIRE</h3>
+
+<h4>A CONTEMPORARY VERSION</h4>
+
+<h5>With Notes by Tobias Smollett, Revised and Modernized</h5>
+
+<h5>New Translations by William F. Fleming, and an</h5>
+
+<h5>Introduction by Oliver H.G. Leigh</h5>
+
+
+<h4>A CRITIQUE AND BIOGRAPHY</h4>
+
+<h5>BY</h5>
+
+<h4>THE RT. HON. JOHN MORLEY</h4>
+
+<h5>FORTY-THREE VOLUMES</h5>
+
+
+<h5>One hundred and sixty-eight designs, comprising reproductions</h5>
+
+<h5>of rare old engravings, steel plates, photogravures,</h5>
+
+<h5>and curious fac-similes</h5>
+
+
+<h4>VOLUME IX</h4>
+
+<h4>E.R. DuMONT</h4>
+
+<h4>PARIS&mdash;LONDON&mdash;NEW YORK&mdash;CHICAGO</h4>
+
+<h4>1901</h4>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="The_WORKS_of_VOLTAIRE" id="The_WORKS_of_VOLTAIRE"></a><i>The WORKS of VOLTAIRE</i></h2>
+
+<blockquote><p><i>"Between two servants of Humanity, who appeared eighteen hundred
+years apart, there is a mysterious relation. * * * * Let us say it
+with a sentiment of profound respect: JESUS WEPT: VOLTAIRE SMILED.
+Of that divine tear and of that human smile is composed the
+sweetness of the present civilization."</i></p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 35em;">
+<i>VICTOR HUGO.</i>
+</p></blockquote>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="caption"><a name="LIST_OF_PLATES_VOL_V" id="LIST_OF_PLATES_VOL_V"></a>LIST OF PLATES&mdash;VOL. V</p>
+
+<p class="small2">
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><a href="#Illustration_SANS_SOUCI">SANS SOUCI</a> <i>Frontispiece</i></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><a href="#NATURE_IS_NOT_A_WORK">A LAND STORM</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><a href="#THE_TEMPTATION_OF_ADAM">THE TEMPTATION OF ADAM</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><a href="#Descartes">DESCARTES</a></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 34em;"><a href="#TABLE_OF_CONTENTS">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 595px;">
+<a name="Illustration_SANS_SOUCI" id="Illustration_SANS_SOUCI"></a>
+<img src="images/img_01_sans_souci.jpg" width="595" alt="SANS SOUCI" title="" />
+<span class="caption_fig">Sans Souci</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 95%;" />
+
+<h3>A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY.</h3>
+
+<h4>IN TEN VOLUMES</h4>
+
+<h4>Vol. V</h4>
+
+<h4>FANATICISM&mdash;GREGORY VII</h4>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FANATICISM" id="FANATICISM"></a>FANATICISM.</h3>
+
+<h5>SECTION I.</h5>
+
+
+<p>Fanaticism is the effect of a false conscience, which makes religion
+subservient to the caprices of the imagination, and the excesses of the
+passions.</p>
+
+<p>It arises, in general, from legislators entertaining too narrow views,
+or from their extending their regulations beyond the limits within which
+alone they were intended to operate. Their laws are made merely for a
+select society. When extended by zeal to a whole people, and transferred
+by ambition from one climate to another, some changes of institution
+should take place, some accommodation to persons, places, and
+circumstances. But what, in fact, has been the case? Certain minds,
+constituted in a great degree like those of the small original flock,
+have received a system with equal ardor, and become its apostles, and
+even its martyrs, rather than abate a single iota of its demands.
+Others, on the contrary, less ardent, or more attached to their
+prejudices of education, have struggled with energy against the new
+yoke, and consented to receive it only after considerable softenings and
+mitigations: hence the schism between rigorists and moderates, by which
+all are urged on to vehemence and madness&mdash;the one party for servitude
+and the other for freedom.</p>
+
+<p>Let us imagine an immense rotunda, a pantheon, with innumerable altars
+placed under its dome. Let us figure to ourselves a devotee of every
+sect, whether at present existing or extinct, at the feet of that
+divinity which he worships in his own peculiar way, under all the
+extravagant forms which human imagination has been able to invent. On
+the right we perceive one stretched on his back upon a mat, absorbed in
+contemplation, and awaiting the moment when the divine light shall come
+forth to inform his soul. On the left is a prostrate energumen striking
+his forehead against the ground, with a view to obtain from it an
+abundant produce. Here we see a man with the air and manner of a
+mountebank, dancing over the grave of him whom he invokes. There we
+observe a penitent, motionless and mute as the statue before which he
+has bent himself in humiliation. One, on the principle that God will not
+blush at his own resemblance, displays openly what modesty universally
+conceals; another, as if the artist would shudder at the sight of his
+own work, covers with an impenetrable veil his whole person and
+countenance; another turns his back upon the south, because from that
+quarter blows the devil's tempest. Another stretches out his arms
+towards the east, because there God first shows His radiant face. Young
+women, suffused with tears, bruise and gash their lovely persons under
+the idea of assuaging the demon of desire, although by means tending in
+fact rather to strengthen his influence; others again, in opposite
+attitudes, solicit the approaches of the Divinity. One young man, in
+order to mortify the most urgent of his feelings, attaches to particular
+parts of his frame large iron rings, as heavy as he can bear; another
+checks still more effectually the tempter's violence by inhuman
+amputation, and suspends the bleeding sacrifice upon the altar.</p>
+
+<p>Let us observe them quit the temple, and, full of the inspiration of
+their respective deities, spread the terror and delusion over the face
+of the earth. They divide the world between them; and the four
+extremities of it are almost instantly in flames: nations obey them, and
+kings tremble before them. That almost despotic power which the
+enthusiasm of a single person exercises over a multitude who see or hear
+him; the ardor communicated to each other by assembled minds; numberless
+strong and agitating influences acting in such circumstances, augmented
+by each individual's personal anxiety and distress, require but a short
+time to operate, in order to produce universal delirium. Only let a
+single people be thus fascinated and agitated under the guidance of a
+few impostors, the seduction will spread with the speed of wild-fire,
+prodigies will be multiplied beyond calculation, and whole communities
+be led astray forever. When the human mind has once quitted the luminous
+track pointed out by nature, it returns to it no more; it wanders round
+the truth, but never obtains of it more than a few faint glimmerings,
+which, mingling with the false lights of surrounding superstition, leave
+it, in fact, in complete and palpable obscurity.</p>
+
+<p>It is dreadful to observe how the opinion that the wrath of heaven might
+be appeased by human massacre spread, after being once started, through
+almost every religion; and what various reasons have been given for the
+sacrifice, as though, in order to preclude, if possible, the escape of
+any one from extirpation. Sometimes they are enemies who must be
+immolated to Mars the exterminator. The Scythians slay upon the altars
+of this deity a hundredth part of their prisoners of war; and from this
+usage attending victory, we may form some judgment of the justice of
+war: accordingly, among other nations it was engaged in solely to supply
+these human sacrifices, so that, having first been instituted, as it
+would seem, to expiate the horrors of war, they at length came to serve
+as a justification of them.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes a barbarous deity requires victims from among the just and
+good. The Getæ eagerly dispute the honor of personally conveying to
+Zamolxis the vows and devotions of their country. He whose good fortune
+has destined him to be the sacrifice is thrown with the greatest
+violence upon a range of spears, fixed for the purpose. If on falling
+he receives a mortal wound, it augurs well as to the success of the
+negotiation and the merit of the envoy; but if he survives the wound, he
+is a wretch with whom the god would not condescend to hold any
+communication.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes children are demanded, and the respective divinities recall
+the life they had but just imparted: "Justice," says Montaigne,
+"thirsting for the blood of innocence!" Sometimes the call is for the
+dearest and nearest blood: the Carthaginians sacrificed their own sons
+to Saturn, as if Time did not devour them with sufficient speed.
+Sometimes the demand was for the blood of the most beautiful. That
+Amestris, who had buried twelve men alive in order to obtain from Pluto,
+in return for so revolting an offering, a somewhat longer life&mdash;that
+same Amestris further sacrifices to that insatiable divinity twelve
+daughters of the highest personages in Persia; as the sacrificing
+priests have always taught men that they ought to offer on the altar the
+most valuable of their possessions. It is upon this principle that among
+some nations the first-born were immolated, and that among others they
+were redeemed by offerings more valuable to the ministers of sacrifice.
+This it is, unquestionably, which introduced into Europe the practice
+prevalent for centuries of devoting children to celibacy at the early
+age of five years, and shutting up in a cloister the brothers of an
+hereditary prince, just as in Asia the practice is to murder them.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes it is the purest blood that is demanded. We read of certain
+Indians, if I recollect rightly, who hospitably entertain all who visit
+them and make a merit of killing every sensible and virtuous stranger
+who enters their country, that his talents and virtues may remain with
+them. Sometimes the blood required is that which is most sacred. With
+the majority of idolaters, priests perform the office of executioner at
+the altar; and among the Siberians, it is the practice to kill the
+priests in order to despatch them to pray in the other world for the
+fulfilment of the wishes of the people.</p>
+
+<p>But let us turn our attention to other frenzies and other spectacles.
+All Europe passes into Asia by a road inundated with the blood of Jews,
+who commit suicide to avoid falling into the hands of their enemies.
+This epidemic depopulates one-half of the inhabited world: kings,
+pontiffs, women, the young and the aged, all yield to the influence of
+the holy madness which, for a series of two hundred years, instigated
+the slaughter of innumerable nations at the tomb of a god of peace. Then
+were to be seen lying oracles, and military hermits, monarchs in
+pulpits, and prelates in camps. All the different states constitute one
+delirious populace; barriers of mountains and seas are surmounted;
+legitimate possessions are abandoned to enable their owners to fly to
+conquests which were no longer, in point of fertility, the land of
+promise; manners become corrupted under foreign skies; princes, after
+having exhausted their respective kingdoms to redeem a country which
+had never been theirs, complete the ruin of them for their personal
+ransom; thousands of soldiers, wandering under the banners of many
+chieftains, acknowledge the authority of none and hasten their defeat by
+their desertion; and the disease terminates only to be succeeded by a
+contagion still more horrible and desolating.</p>
+
+<p>The same spirit of fanaticism cherished the rage for distant conquests:
+scarcely had Europe repaired its losses when the discovery of a new
+world hastened the ruin of our own. At that terrible injunction, "Go and
+conquer," America was desolated and its inhabitants exterminated; Africa
+and Europe were exhausted in vain to repeople it; the poison of money
+and of pleasure having enervated the species, the world became nearly a
+desert and appeared likely every day to advance nearer to desolation by
+the continual wars which were kindled on our continent, from the
+ambition of extending its power to foreign lands.</p>
+
+<p>Let us now compute the immense number of slaves which fanaticism has
+made, whether in Asia, where uncircumcision was a mark of infamy, or in
+Africa, where the Christian name was a crime, or in America, where the
+pretext of baptism absolutely extinguished the feelings of humanity. Let
+us compute the thousands who have been seen to perish either on
+scaffolds in the ages of persecution, or in civil wars by the hands of
+their fellow citizens, or by their own hands through excessive
+austerities, and maceration. Let us survey the surface of the earth, and
+glance at the various standards unfurled and blazing in the name of
+religion; in Spain against the Moors, in France against the Turks, in
+Hungary against the Tartars; at the numerous military orders, founded
+for converting infidels by the point of the sword, and slaughtering one
+another at the foot of the altar they had come to defend. Let us then
+look down from the appalling tribunal thus raised on the bodies of the
+innocent and miserable, in order to judge the living, as God, with a
+balance widely different, will judge the dead.</p>
+
+<p>In a word, let us contemplate the horrors of fifteen centuries, all
+frequently renewed in the course of a single one; unarmed men slain at
+the feet of altars; kings destroyed by the dagger or by poison; a large
+state reduced to half its extent by the fury of its own citizens; the
+nation at once the most warlike and the most pacific on the face of the
+globe, divided in fierce hostility against itself; the sword unsheathed
+between the sons and the father; usurpers, tyrants, executioners,
+sacrilegious robbers, and bloodstained parricides violating, under the
+impulse of religion, every convention divine or human&mdash;such is the
+deadly picture of fanaticism.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION II.</h5>
+
+<p>If this term has at present any connection with its original meaning it
+is exceedingly slight.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Fanaticus</i>" was an honorable designation. It signified the minister or
+benefactor of a temple. According to the dictionary of Trévoux some
+antiquaries have discovered inscriptions in which Roman citizens of
+considerable consequence assumed the title of "<i>fanaticus</i>."</p>
+
+<p>In Cicero's oration "<i>pro domo sua</i>," a passage occurs in which the word
+"<i>fanaticus</i>" appears to me of difficult explanation. The seditious and
+libertine Clodius, who had brought about the banishment of Cicero for
+having saved the republic, had not only plundered and demolished the
+houses of that great man, but in order that Cicero might never be able
+to return to his city residence he procured the consecration of the land
+on which it stood; and the priests had erected there a temple to
+liberty, or rather to slavery, in which Cæsar, Pompey, Crassus, and
+Clodius then held the republic. Thus in all ages has religion been
+employed as an instrument in the persecution of great men. When at
+length, in a happier period, Cicero was recalled, he pleaded before the
+people in order to obtain the restoration of the ground on which his
+house had stood, and the rebuilding of the house at the expense of the
+Roman people. He thus expresses himself in the speech against Clodius
+(<i>Oratio pro Domo sua</i>, chap. xl): "<i>Adspicite, adspicite, pontifices,
+hominem religiosum.... monete eum, modum quemdam esse religionis; nimium
+esse superstitiosum non oportere. Quid tibi necesse fuit anili
+superstitione, homo fanatice, sacrificium, quod aliænæ domi fieret
+invisere?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Does the word "<i>fanaticus</i>," as used above, mean senseless, pitiless,
+abominable fanatic, according to the present acceptation, or does it
+rather imply the pious, religious man, the frequenter and consecrator of
+temples? Is it used here in the meaning of decided censure or ironical
+praise? I do not feel myself competent to determine, but will give a
+translation of the passage:</p>
+
+<p>"Behold, reverend pontiffs, behold the pious man.... suggest to him that
+even religion itself has its limits, that a man ought not to be so
+over-scrupulous. What occasion was there for a sacred person, a fanatic
+like yourself, to have recourse to the superstition of an old woman, in
+order to assist at a sacrifice performed in another person's house?"</p>
+
+<p>Cicero alludes here to the mysteries of the <i>Bona Dea</i>, which had been
+profaned by Clodius, who, in the disguise of a female, and accompanied
+by an old woman, had obtained an introduction to them, with a view to an
+assignation with Cæsar's wife. The passage is, in consequence, evidently
+ironical.</p>
+
+<p>Cicero calls Clodius a religious man, and the irony requires to be kept
+up through the whole passage. He employs terms of honorable meaning,
+more clearly to exhibit Clodius's infamy. It appears to me, therefore,
+that he uses the word in question, "<i>fanaticus</i>" in its respectable
+sense, as a word conveying the idea of a sacrificer, a pious man, a
+zealous minister of a temple.</p>
+
+<p>The term might be afterwards applied to those who believed themselves
+inspired by the gods, who bestowed a somewhat curious gift on the
+interpreters of their will, by ordaining that, in order to be a prophet,
+the loss of reason is indispensable.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Les Dieux à leur interprète</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><i>Ont fait un étrange don;</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Ne peut on être prophète</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>Sans qu'on perde la raison?</i></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The same dictionary of Trévoux informs us that the old chronicles of
+France call Clovis fanatic and pagan. The reader would have been pleased
+to have had the particular chronicles specified. I have not found this
+epithet applied to Clovis in any of the few books I possess at my house
+near Mount Krapak, where I now write.</p>
+
+<p>We understand by fanaticism at present a religious madness, gloomy and
+cruel. It is a malady of the mind, which is taken in the same way as
+smallpox. Books communicate it much less than meetings and discourses.
+We seldom get heated while reading in solitude, for our minds are then
+tranquil and sedate. But when an ardent man of strong imagination
+addresses himself to weak imaginations, his eyes dart fire, and that
+fire rapidly spreads; his tones, his gestures, absolutely convulse the
+nerves of his auditors. He exclaims, "The eye of God is at this moment
+upon you; sacrifice every mere human possession and feeling; fight the
+battles of the Lord"&mdash;and and they rush to the fight.</p>
+
+<p>Fanaticism is, in reference to superstition, what delirium is to fever,
+or rage to anger. He who is involved in ecstasies and visions, who takes
+dreams for realities, and his own imaginations for prophecies, is a
+fanatical novice of great hope and promise, and will probably soon
+advance to the highest form, and kill man for the love of God.</p>
+
+<p>Bartholomew Diaz was a fanatical monk. He had a brother at Nuremberg
+called John Diaz, who was an enthusiastic adherent to the doctrines of
+Luther, and completely convinced that the pope was Antichrist, and had
+the sign of the beast. Bartholomew, still more ardently convinced that
+the pope was god upon earth, quits Rome, determined either to convert or
+murder his brother; he accordingly murdered him! Here is a perfect case
+of fanaticism. We have noticed and done justice to this Diaz elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>Polyeuctes, who went to the temple on a day of solemn festival, to throw
+down and destroy the statues and ornaments, was a fanatic less horrible
+than Diaz, but not less foolish. The assassins of Francis, duke of
+Guise, of William, prince of Orange, of King Henry III., of King Henry
+IV., and various others, were equally possessed, equally laboring under
+morbid fury, with Diaz.</p>
+
+<p>The most striking example of fanaticism is that exhibited on the night
+of St. Bartholomew, when the people of Paris rushed from house to house
+to stab, slaughter, throw out of the window, and tear in pieces their
+fellow citizens not attending mass. Guyon, Patouillet, Chaudon,
+Nonnotte, and the ex-Jesuit Paulian, are merely fanatics in a
+corner&mdash;contemptible beings whom we do not think of guarding against.
+They would, however, on a day of St. Bartholomew, perform wonders.</p>
+
+<p>There are some cold-blooded fanatics; such as those judges who sentence
+men to death for no other crime than that of thinking differently from
+themselves, and these are so much the more guilty and deserving of the
+execration of mankind, as, not laboring under madness like the Clements,
+Châtels, Ravaillacs, and Damiens, they might be deemed capable of
+listening to reason.</p>
+
+<p>There is no other remedy for this epidemical malady than that spirit of
+philosophy, which, extending itself from one to another, at length
+civilizes and softens the manners of men and prevents the access of the
+disease. For when the disorder has made any progress, we should, without
+loss of time, fly from the seat of it, and wait till the air has become
+purified from contagion. Law and religion are not completely efficient
+against the spiritual pestilence. Religion, indeed, so far from
+affording proper nutriment to the minds of patients laboring under this
+infectious and infernal distemper, is converted, by the diseased process
+of their minds, into poison. These malignant devotees have incessantly
+before their eyes the example of Ehud, who assassinated the king of
+Eglon; of Judith, who cut off the head of Holofernes while in bed with
+him; of Samuel, hewing in pieces King Agag; of Jehoiada the priest, who
+murdered his queen at the horse-gate. They do not perceive that these
+instances, which are respectable in antiquity, are in the present day
+abominable. They derive their fury from religion, decidedly as religion
+condemns it.</p>
+
+<p>Laws are yet more powerless against these paroxysms of rage. To oppose
+laws to cases of such a description would be like reading a decree of
+council to a man in a frenzy. The persons in question are fully
+convinced that the Holy Spirit which animates and fills them is above
+all laws; that their own enthusiasm is, in fact, the only law which they
+are bound to obey.</p>
+
+<p>What can be said in answer to a man who says he will rather obey God
+than men, and who consequently feels certain of meriting heaven by
+cutting your throat?</p>
+
+<p>When once fanaticism has gangrened the brain of any man the disease may
+be regarded as nearly incurable. I have seen Convulsionaries who, while
+speaking of the miracles of St. Paris, gradually worked themselves up to
+higher and more vehement degrees of agitation till their eyes became
+inflamed, their whole frames shook, their countenances became distorted
+by rage, and had any man contradicted them he would inevitably have been
+murdered.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, I have seen these wretched Convulsionaries writhing their limbs and
+foaming at their mouths. They were exclaiming, "We must have blood."
+They effected the assassination of their king by a lackey, and ended
+with exclaiming against philosophers.</p>
+
+<p>Fanatics are nearly always under the direction of knaves, who place the
+dagger in their hands. These knaves resemble Montaigne's "Old Man of the
+Mountain," who, it is said, made weak persons imagine, under his
+treatment of them, that they really had experienced the joys of
+paradise, and promised them a whole eternity of such delights if they
+would go and assassinate such as he should point out to them. There has
+been only one religion in the world which has not been polluted by
+fanaticism and that is the religion of the learned in China. The
+different sects of ancient philosophers were not merely exempt from this
+pest of human society, but they were antidotes to it: for the effect of
+philosophy is to render the soul tranquil, and fanaticism and
+tranquillity are totally incompatible. That our own holy religion has
+been so frequently polluted by this infernal fury must be imputed to the
+foil and madness of mankind. Thus Icarus abused the wings which he
+received for his benefit. They were given him for his salvation and they
+insured his destruction:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Ainsi du plumage qu'il eut</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><i>Icare pervertit l'usage;</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Il le reçut pour son salut,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><i>Il s'en servit pour son dommage.</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;"><span class="small">&mdash;BERTAUT</span>, bishop of Séez.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION III.</h5>
+
+<p>Fanatics do not always fight the battles of the Lord. They do not always
+assassinate kings and princes. There are tigers among them, but there
+are more foxes.</p>
+
+<p>What a tissue of frauds, calumnies, and robberies has been woven by
+fanatics of the court of Rome against fanatics of the court of Calvin,
+by Jesuits against Jansenists, and <i>vice versa</i>! And if you go farther
+back you will find ecclesiastical history, which is the school of
+virtues, to be that of atrocities and abominations, which have been
+employed by every sect against the others. They all have the same
+bandage over their eyes whether marching out to burn down the cities and
+towns of their adversaries, to slaughter the inhabitants, or condemn
+them to judicial execution; or when merely engaged in the comparatively
+calm occupation of deceiving and defrauding, of acquiring wealth and
+exercising domination. The same fanaticism blinds them; they think that
+they are doing good. Every fanatic is a conscientious knave, but a
+sincere and honest murderer for the good cause.</p>
+
+<p>Read, if you are able, the five or six thousand volumes in which, for a
+hundred years together, the Jansenists and Molinists have dealt out
+against each other their reproaches and revilings, their mutual
+exposures of fraud and knavery, and then judge whether Scapin or
+Trevelin can be compared with them.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most curious theological knaveries ever practised is, in my
+opinion, that of a small bishop&mdash;the narrative asserts that he was a
+Biscayan bishop; however, we shall certainly, at some future period find
+out both his name and his bishopric&mdash;whose diocese was partly in Biscay
+and partly in France.</p>
+
+<p>In the French division of his diocese there was a parish which had
+formerly been inhabited by some Moors. The lord of the parish or manor
+was no Mahometan; he was perfectly catholic, as the whole universe
+should be, for the meaning of catholic is universal. My lord the bishop
+had some suspicions concerning this unfortunate seigneur, whose whole
+occupation consisted in doing good, and conceived that in his heart he
+entertained bad thoughts and sentiments savoring not a little of heresy.
+He even accused him of having said, in the way of pleasantry, that there
+were good people in Morocco as well as in Biscay, and that an honest
+inhabitant of Morocco might absolutely not be a mortal enemy of the
+Supreme Being, who is the father of all mankind.</p>
+
+<p>The fanatic, upon this, wrote a long letter to the king of France, the
+paramount sovereign of our little manorial lord. In this letter he
+entreated his majesty to transfer the manor of this stray and
+unbelieving sheep either to Lower Brittany or Lower Normandy, according
+to his good pleasure, that he might be no longer able to diffuse the
+contagion of heresy among his Biscayan neighbors, by his abominable
+jests. The king of France and his council smiled, as may naturally be
+supposed, at the extravagance and folly of the demand.</p>
+
+<p>Our Biscayan pastor learning, some time afterwards, that his French
+sheep was sick, ordered public notices to be fixed up at the church
+gates of the canton, prohibiting any one from administering the
+communion to him, unless he should previously give in a bill of
+confession, from which it might appear that he was not circumcised; that
+he condemned with his whole heart the heresy of Mahomet, and every other
+heresy of the like kind&mdash;as, for example, Calvinism and Jansenism; and
+that in every point he thought like him, the said Biscayan bishop.</p>
+
+<p>Bills of confession were at that time much in fashion. The sick man sent
+for his parish priest, who was a simple and sottish man, and threatened
+to have him hanged by the parliament of Bordeaux if he did not instantly
+administer the viaticum to him. The priest was alarmed, and accordingly
+celebrated the sacred ordinance, as desired by the patient; who, after
+the ceremony, declared aloud, before witnesses, that the Biscayan pastor
+had falsely accused him before the king of being tainted with the
+Mussulman religion; that he was a sincere Christian, and that the
+Biscayan was a calumniator. He signed this, after it had been written
+down, in presence of a notary, and every form required by law was
+complied with. He soon after became better, and rest and a good
+conscience speedily completed his recovery.</p>
+
+<p>The Biscayan, quite exasperated that the old patient should have thus
+exposed and disappointed him, resolved to have his revenge, and thus he
+set about it.</p>
+
+<p>He procured, fifteen days after the event just mentioned, the
+fabrication, in his own language or patois, of a profession of faith
+which the priest pretended to have heard and received. It was signed by
+the priest and three or four peasants, who had not been present at the
+ceremony; and the forged instrument was then passed through the
+necessary and solemn form of verification and registry, as if this form
+could give it authenticity.</p>
+
+<p>An instrument not signed by the party alone interested, signed by
+persons unknown, fifteen days after the event, an instrument disavowed
+by the real and credible witnesses of that event, involved evidently the
+crime of forgery; and, as the subject of the forgery was a matter of
+faith, the crime clearly rendered both the priest and the witnesses
+liable to the galleys in this world, and to hell in the other.</p>
+
+<p>Our lord of the manor, however, who loved a joke, but had no gall or
+malice in his heart, took compassion both upon the bodies and souls of
+these conspirators. He declined delivering them over to human justice,
+and contented himself with giving them up to ridicule. But he declared
+that after the death of the Biscayan he would, if he survived, have the
+pleasure of printing an account of all his proceedings and manœuvres
+on this business, together with the documents and evidences, just to
+amuse the small number of readers who might like anecdotes of that
+description; and not, as is often pompously announced, with a view to
+the instruction of the universe. There are so many authors who address
+themselves to the universe, who really imagine they attract, and perhaps
+absorb, the attention of the universe, that he conceived he might not
+have a dozen readers out of the whole who would attend for a moment to
+himself. But let us return to fanaticism.</p>
+
+<p>It is this rage for making proselytes, this intensely mad desire which
+men feel to bring others over to partake of their own peculiar cup or
+communion, that induced the Jesuit Châtel and the Jesuit Routh to rush
+with eagerness to the deathbed of the celebrated Montesquieu. These two
+devoted zealots desired nothing better than to be able to boast that
+they had persuaded him of the merits of contrition and of sufficing
+grace. We wrought his conversion, they said. He was, in the main, a
+worthy soul: he was much attached to the society of Jesus. We had some
+little difficulty in inducing him to admit certain fundamental truths;
+but as in these circumstances, in the crisis of life and death, the
+mind is always most clear and acute, we soon convinced him.</p>
+
+<p>This fanatical eagerness for converting men is so ardent, that the most
+debauched monk in his convent would even quit his mistress, and walk to
+the very extremity of the city, for the sake of making a single convert.</p>
+
+<p>We have all seen Father Poisson, a Cordelier of Paris, who impoverished
+his convent to pay his mistresses, and who was imprisoned in consequence
+of the depravity of his manners. He was one of the most popular
+preachers at Paris, and one of the most determined and zealous of
+converters.</p>
+
+<p>Such also was the celebrated preacher Fantin, at Versailles. The list
+might be easily enlarged; but it is unnecessary, if not also dangerous,
+to expose the freaks and freedoms of constituted authorities. You know
+what happened to Ham for having revealed his father's shame. He became
+as black as a coal.</p>
+
+<p>Let us merely pray to God, whether rising or lying down, that he would
+deliver us from fanatics, as the pilgrims of Mecca pray that they may
+meet with no sour faces on the road.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION IV.</h5>
+
+<p>Ludlow, who was rather an enthusiast for liberty than a fanatic in
+religion&mdash;that brave man, who hated Cromwell more than he did Charles
+I., relates that the parliamentary forces were always defeated by the
+royal army in the beginning of the civil war; just as the regiment of
+porters (<i>portes-cochères</i>) were unable to stand the shock of conflict,
+in the time of the Fronde against the great Condé. Cromwell said to
+General Fairfax: "How can you possibly expect a rabble of London porters
+and apprentices to resist a nobility urged on by the principle, or
+rather the phantom, of honor? Let us actuate them by a more powerful
+phantom&mdash;fanaticism! Our enemies are fighting only for their king; let
+us persuade our troops they are fighting for their God.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me a commission, and I will raise a regiment of brother murderers,
+whom I will pledge myself soon to make invincible fanatics!"</p>
+
+<p>He was as good as his word; he composed his regiment of red-coated
+brothers, of gloomy religionists, whom he made obedient tigers. Mahomet
+himself was never better served by soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>But in order to inspire this fanaticism, you must be seconded and
+supported by the spirit of the times. A French parliament at the present
+day would attempt in vain to raise a regiment of such porters as we have
+mentioned; it could, with all its efforts, merely rouse into frenzy a
+few women of the fish-market.</p>
+
+<p>Only the ablest men have the power to make and to guide fanatics. It is
+not, however, sufficient to possess the profoundest dissimulation and
+the most determined intrepidity; everything depends, after these
+previous requisites are secured, on coming into the world at a proper
+time.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION V.</h5>
+
+<p>Geometry then, it seems, is not always connected with clearness and
+correctness of understanding. Over what precipices do not men fall,
+notwithstanding their boasted leading-strings of reason! A celebrated
+Protestant, who was esteemed one of the first mathematicians of the age,
+and who followed in the train of the Newtons, the Leibnitzes, and
+Bernouillis, at the beginning of the present century, struck out some
+very singular corollaries. It is said that with a grain of faith a man
+may remove mountains; and this man of science, following up the method
+of pure geometrical analysis, reasoned thus with himself: I have many
+grains of faith, and can, therefore, remove many mountains. This was the
+man who made his appearance at London in 1707; and, associating himself
+with certain men of learning and science, some of whom, moreover, were
+not deficient in sagacity, they publicly announced that they would raise
+to life a dead person in any cemetery that might be fixed upon. Their
+reasoning was uniformly synthetical. They said, genuine disciples must
+have the power of performing miracles; we are genuine disciples, we
+therefore shall be able to perform as many as we please. The mere
+unscientific saints of the Romish church have resuscitated many worthy
+persons; therefore, <i>a fortiori</i>, we, the reformers of the reformed
+themselves, shall resuscitate as many as we may desire.</p>
+
+<p>These arguments are irrefragable, being constructed according to the
+most correct form possible. Here we have at a glance the explanation why
+all antiquity was inundated with prodigies; why the temples of
+Æsculapius at Epidaurus, and in other cities, were completely filled
+with <i>ex-votos</i>; the roofs adorned with thighs straightened, arms
+restored, and silver infants: all was miracle.</p>
+
+<p>In short, the famous Protestant geometrician whom I speak of appeared so
+perfectly sincere; he asserted so confidently that he would raise the
+dead, and his proposition was put forward with so much plausibility and
+strenuousness, that the people entertained a very strong impression on
+the subject, and Queen Anne was advised to appoint a day, an hour, and a
+cemetery, such as he should himself select, in which he might have the
+opportunity of performing his miracle legally, and under the inspection
+of justice. The holy geometrician chose St. Paul's cathedral for the
+scene of his exertion: the people ranged themselves in two rows;
+soldiers were stationed to preserve order both among the living and the
+dead; the magistrates took their seats; the register procured his
+record; it was impossible that the new miracles could be verified too
+completely. A dead body was disinterred agreeably to the holy man's
+choice and direction; he then prayed, he fell upon his knees, and made
+the most pious and devout contortions possible; his companions imitated
+him; the dead body exhibited no sign of animation; it was again
+deposited in its grave, and the professed resuscitator and his adherents
+were slightly punished. I afterwards saw one of these misled creatures;
+he declared to me that one of the party was at the time under the stain
+of a venial sin, for which the dead person suffered, and but for which
+the resurrection would have been infallible.</p>
+
+<p>Were it allowable for us to reveal the disgrace of those to whom we owe
+the sincerest respect, I should observe here, that Newton, the great
+Newton himself, discovered in the "Apocalypse" that the pope was
+Antichrist, and made many other similar discoveries. I should also
+observe that he was a decided Arian. I am aware that this deviation of
+Newton, compared to that of the other geometrician, is as unity to
+infinity. But if the exalted Newton imagined that he found the modern
+history of Europe in the "Apocalypse," we may say: Alas, poor human
+beings!</p>
+
+<p>It seems as if superstition were an epidemic disease, from which the
+strongest minds are not always exempt. There are in Turkey persons of
+great and strong sense, who would undergo empalement for the sake of
+certain opinions of Abubeker. These principles being once admitted, they
+reason with great consistency; and the Navaricians, the Radarists, and
+the Jabarites mutually consign each other to damnation in conformity to
+very shrewd and subtle argument. They all draw plausible consequences,
+but they never dare to examine principles.</p>
+
+<p>A report is publicly spread abroad by some person, that there exists a
+giant seventy feet high; the learned soon after begin to discuss and
+dispute about the color of his hair, the thickness of his thumb, the
+measurement of his nails; they exclaim, cabal, and even fight upon the
+subject. Those who maintain that the little finger of the giant is only
+fifteen lines in diameter burn those who assert that it is a foot thick.
+"But, gentlemen," modestly observes a stranger passing by, "does the
+giant you are disputing about really exist?" "What a horrible doubt!"
+all the disputants cry out together. "What blasphemy! What absurdity!" A
+short truce is then brought about to give time for stoning the poor
+stranger; and, after having duly performed that murderous ceremony, they
+resume fighting upon the everlasting subject of the nails and little
+finger.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FANCY" id="FANCY"></a>FANCY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Fancy formerly signified imagination, and the term was used simply to
+express that faculty of the soul which receives sensible objects.</p>
+
+<p>Descartes and Gassendi, and all the philosophers of their day, say that
+"the form or images of things are painted in the fancy." But the greater
+part of abstract terms are, in the course of time, received in a sense
+different from their original one, like tools which industry applies to
+new purposes.</p>
+
+<p>Fancy, at present, means "a particular desire, a transient taste"; he
+has a fancy for going to China; his fancy for gaming and dancing has
+passed away. An artist paints a fancy portrait, a portrait not taken
+from any model. To have fancies is to have extraordinary tastes, but of
+brief duration. Fancy, in this sense, falls a little short of oddity
+(<i>bizarrerie</i>) and caprice.</p>
+
+<p>Caprice may express "a sudden and unreasonable disgust." He had a fancy
+for music, and capriciously became disgusted with it. Whimsicality gives
+an idea of inconsistency and bad taste, which fancy does not; he had a
+fancy for building, but he constructed his house in a whimsical taste.</p>
+
+<p>There are shades of distinction between having fancies and being
+fantastic; the fantastic is much nearer to the capricious and the
+whimsical. The word "fantastic" expresses a character unequal and
+abrupt. The idea of charming or pleasant is excluded from it; whereas
+there are agreeable fancies.</p>
+
+<p>We sometimes hear used in conversation "odd fancies" (<i>des fantasies
+musquées</i>); but the expression was never understood to mean what the
+"Dictionary of Trévoux" supposes&mdash;"The whims of men of superior rank
+which one must not venture to condemn;" on the contrary, that expression
+is used for the very object and purpose of condemning them; and
+<i>musquée</i>, in this connection, is an expletive adding force to the term
+"fancies," as we say, <i>Sottise pommée</i>, <i>folie fieffée</i>, to express
+nonsense and folly.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FASTI" id="FASTI"></a>FASTI.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Of the Different Significations of this Word.</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>The Latin word "<i>fasti</i>" signifies festivals, and it is in this sense
+that Ovid treats of it in his poem entitled "The Fasti."</p>
+
+<p>Godeau has composed the Fasti of the church on this model, but with less
+success. The religion of the Roman Pagans was more calculated for poetry
+than that of the Christians; to which it may be added, that Ovid was a
+better poet than Godeau.</p>
+
+<p>The consular fasti were only the list of consuls.</p>
+
+<p>The fasti of the magistrates were the days in which they were permitted
+to plead; and those on which they did not plead were called <i>nefasti</i>,
+because then they could not plead for justice.</p>
+
+<p>The word "<i>nefastus</i>" in this sense does not signify unfortunate; on the
+contrary, <i>nefastus</i> and <i>nefandus</i> were the attributes of unfortunate
+days in another sense, signifying days in which people must not plead;
+days worthy only to be forgotten; <i>"ille nefasto te posuit die."</i></p>
+
+<p>Besides other fasti, the Romans had their <i>fasti urbis</i>, <i>fasti
+rustici</i>, which were calendars of the particular usages, and ceremonies
+of the city and the country.</p>
+
+<p>On these days of solemnity, every one sought to astonish by the grandeur
+of his dress, his equipage, or his banquet. This pomp, invisible on
+other days, was called <i>fastus</i>. It expresses magnificence in those who
+by their station can afford it, but vanity in others.</p>
+
+<p>Though the word "<i>fastus</i>" may not be always injurious, the word
+"pompous" is invariably so. A devotee who makes a parade of his virtue
+renders humility itself pompous.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FATHERS_MOTHERSmdashCHILDREN" id="FATHERS_MOTHERSmdashCHILDREN"></a>FATHERS&mdash;MOTHERS&mdash;CHILDREN.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Their Duties.</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>The "Encyclopædia" has been much exclaimed against in France; because it
+was produced in France, and has done France honor. In other countries,
+people have not cried out; on the contrary, they have eagerly set about
+pirating or spoiling it, because money was to be gained thereby.</p>
+
+<p>But we, who do not, like the encyclopædists of Paris, labor for glory;
+we, who are not, like them, exposed to envy; we, whose little society
+lies unnoticed in Hesse, in Würtemberg, in Switzerland, among the
+Grisons, or at Mount Krapak; and have, therefore, no apprehension of
+having to dispute with the doctor of the <i>Comédie Italienne</i>, or with a
+doctor of the Sorbonne; we, who sell not our sheets to a bookseller, but
+are free beings, and lay not black on white until we have examined, to
+the utmost of our ability, whether the said black may be of service to
+mankind; we, in short, who love virtue, shall boldly declare what we
+think.</p>
+
+<p>"Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long&mdash;" I would
+venture to say, "Honor thy father and thy mother, <i>though this day shall
+be thy last</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Tenderly love and joyfully serve the mother who bore you in her womb,
+fed you at her breast, and patiently endured all that was disgusting in
+your infancy. Discharge the same duties to your father, who brought you
+up.</p>
+
+<p>What will future ages say of a Frank, named Louis the Thirteenth, who,
+at the age of sixteen, began the exercise of his authority with having
+the door of his mother's apartment walled up, and sending her into
+exile, without giving the smallest reason for so doing, and solely
+because it was his favorite's wish?</p>
+
+<p>"But, sir, I must tell you in confidence that my father is a drunkard,
+who begot me one day by chance, not caring a jot about me; and gave me
+no education but that of beating me every day when he came home
+intoxicated. My mother was a coquette, whose only occupation was
+love-making. But for my nurse, who had taken a liking to me, and who,
+after the death of her son, received me into her house for charity, I
+should have died of want."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, honor your nurse; and bow to your father and mother when
+you meet them. It is said in the Vulgate, '<i>Honora patrem tuum et
+matrem tuam</i>'&mdash;not <i>dilige</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, sir, I shall love my father and my mother if they do me
+good; I shall honor them if they do me ill. I have thought so ever since
+I began to think, and you confirm me in my maxims."</p>
+
+<p>"Fare you well, my child, I see you will prosper, for you have a grain
+of philosophy in your composition."</p>
+
+<p>"One word more, sir. If my father were to call himself Abraham, and me
+Isaac, and were to say to me, 'My son, you are tall and strong; carry
+these fagots to the top of that hill, to burn you with after I have cut
+off your head; for God ordered me to do so when He came to see me this
+morning,'&mdash;what would you advise me to do in such critical
+circumstances?"</p>
+
+<p>"Critical, indeed! But what would you do of yourself? for you seem to be
+no blockhead."</p>
+
+<p>"I own, sir, that I should ask him to produce a written order, and that
+from regard for himself, I should say to him&mdash;'Father, you are among
+strangers, who do not allow a man to assassinate his son without an
+express condition from God, duly signed, sealed and delivered. See what
+happened to poor Calas, in the half French, half Spanish town of
+Toulouse. He was broken on the wheel; and the <i>procureur-général</i> Riquet
+decided on having Madame Calas, the mother, burned&mdash;all on the bare and
+very ill-conceived suspicion, that they had hung up their son, Mark
+Antony Calas, for the love of God. I should fear that his conclusions
+would be equally prejudicial to the well-being of yourself and your
+sister or niece, Madame Sarah, my mother. Once more I say, show me a
+<i>lettre de cachet</i> for cutting my throat, signed by God's own hand, and
+countersigned by Raphael, Michael, or Beelzebub. If not, father&mdash;your
+most obedient: I will go to Pharaoh of Egypt, or to the king of the
+desert of Gerar, who both have been in love with my mother, and will
+certainly be kind to me. Cut my brother Ishmael's throat, if you like;
+but rely upon it, you shall not cut mine.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Good; this is arguing like a true sage. The 'Encyclopædia' itself could
+not have reasoned better. I tell you, you will do great things. I admire
+you for not having said an ill word to your father Abraham&mdash;for not
+having been tempted to beat him. And tell me: had you been that Cram,
+whom his father, the Frankish King Clothaire, had burned in a barn; a
+Don Carlos, son of that fox, Philip the Second; a poor Alexis, son of
+that Czar Peter, half hero, half tiger&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, sir, say no more of those horrors; you will make me detest human
+nature."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FAVOR" id="FAVOR"></a>FAVOR.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Of What is Understood by the Word.</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Favor, from the Latin word "<i>favor</i>," rather signifies a benefit than a
+recompense.</p>
+
+<p>We earnestly beg a favor; we merit and loudly demand a recompense. The
+god Favor, according to the Roman mythologists, was the son of Beauty
+and Fortune. All favor conveys the idea of something gratuitous; he has
+done me the favor of introducing me, of presenting me, of recommending
+my friend, of correcting my work. The favor of princes is the effect of
+their fancy, and of assiduous complaisance. The favor of the people
+sometimes implies merit, but is more often attributable to lucky
+accident.</p>
+
+<p>Favor differs much from kindness. That man is in favor with the king,
+but he has not yet received any kindnesses from him. We say that he has
+been received into the good graces of a person, not he has been received
+into favor; though we say to be in favor, because favor is supposed to
+be an habitual taste; while to receive into grace is to pardon, or, at
+least, is less than to bestow a favor.</p>
+
+<p>To obtain grace is the effect of a moment; to obtain favor is a work of
+time. Nevertheless, we say indifferently, do me the kindness and do me
+the favor, to recommend my friend.</p>
+
+<p>Letters of recommendation were formerly called letters of favor. Severus
+says, in the tragedy of Polyeuctes:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Je mourrais mille fois plutôt que d'abuser</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Des lettres de faveur que j'ai pour l'épouser.</i></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Letters of favor," though I have to wed her,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">I'd rather die a thousand times than use them.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>We have the favor and good-will, not the kindness of the prince and the
+public. We may obtain the favor of our audience by modesty, but it will
+not be gracious if we are tedious.</p>
+
+<p>This expression "favor," signifies a gratuitous good-will, which we seek
+to obtain from the prince or the public. Gallantry has extended it to
+the complaisance of the ladies; and though we do not say that we have
+the favors of the king, we say that we have the favors of a lady.</p>
+
+<p>The equivalent to this expression is unknown in Asia, where the women
+possess less influence. Formerly, ribbons, gloves, buckles, and
+sword-knots given by a lady, were called favors. The earl of Essex wore
+a glove of Queen Elizabeth's in his hat, which he called the queen's
+favor.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FAVORITE" id="FAVORITE"></a>FAVORITE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>This word has sometimes a bounded and sometimes an extended sense.
+"Favorite" sometimes conveys the idea of power; and sometimes it only
+signifies a man who pleases his master.</p>
+
+<p>Henry III. had favorites who were only play-things, and he had those who
+governed the state, as the dukes of Joyeuse and Épernon. A favorite may
+be compared to a piece of gold, which is valued at whatever the prince
+pleases.</p>
+
+<p>An ancient writer has asked, "Who ought to be the king's favorite?&mdash;the
+people!" Good poets are called the favorites of the muses, as prosperous
+men are called the favorites of fortune, because both are supposed to
+receive these gifts without laboring for them. It is thus, that a
+fertile and well-situated land is called the favorite of nature.</p>
+
+<p>The woman who pleases the sultan most is called the favorite sultana.
+Somebody has written the history of favorites; that is to say, the
+mistresses of the greatest princes.</p>
+
+<p>Several princes in Germany have country houses which they call
+favorites.</p>
+
+<p>A lady's favorite is now only to be found in romances and stories of the
+last century.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FEASTS" id="FEASTS"></a>FEASTS.</h3>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION I.</h5>
+
+<p>A poor gentleman of the province of Hagenau, cultivated his small
+estate, and St. Ragonda, or Radegonda, was the patron of his parish.</p>
+
+<p>Now it happened, on the feast of St. Ragonda, that it was necessary to
+do something to this poor gentleman's field, without which great loss
+would be incurred. The master, with all his family, after having
+devoutly assisted at mass, went to cultivate his land, on which depended
+the subsistence of his family, while the rector and the other
+parishioners went to tipple as usual.</p>
+
+<p>The rector, while enjoying his glass, was informed of the enormous
+offence committed in his parish by this profane laborer, and went,
+burning with wine and anger, to seek the cultivator. "Sir, you are very
+insolent and very impious to dare to cultivate your field, instead of
+going to the tavern like other people." "I agree, sir," replied the
+gentleman, "that it is necessary to drink to the honor of the saint; but
+it is also necessary to eat, and my family would die of hunger if I did
+not labor." "Drink and die, then," said the vicar. "In what law, in what
+book is it so written?" said the laborer. "In Ovid," replied the vicar.
+"I think you are mistaken," said the gentleman; "in what part of Ovid
+have you read that I should go to the tavern rather than cultivate my
+field on St. Ragonda's day?"</p>
+
+<p>It should be remarked that both the gentleman and the pastor were well
+educated men. "Read the metamorphoses of the daughters of Minyas," said
+the vicar. "I have read it," replied the other, "and I maintain that
+they have no relation to my plough." "How, impious man! do you not
+remember that the daughters of Minyas were changed into bats for having
+spun on a feast day?" "The case is very different," replied the
+gentleman, "these ladies had not rendered any homage to Bacchus. I have
+been at the mass of St. Ragonda, you can have nothing to say to me; you
+cannot change me into a bat." "I will do worse," said the priest, "I
+will fine you." He did so. The poor gentleman was ruined: he quitted the
+country with his family&mdash;went into a strange one&mdash;became a Lutheran&mdash;and
+his ground remained uncultivated for several years.</p>
+
+<p>This affair was related to a magistrate of good sense and much piety.
+These are the reflections which he made upon it:</p>
+
+<p>"They were no doubt innkeepers," said he, "that invented this prodigious
+number of feasts; the religion of peasants and artisans consists in
+getting tipsy on the day of a saint, whom they only know by this kind of
+worship. It is on these days of idleness and debauchery that all crimes
+are committed; it is these feasts which fill the prisons, and which
+support the police officers, registers, lieutenants of police, and
+hangmen; the only excuse for feast-days among us. From this cause
+Catholic countries are scarcely-cultivated at all; whilst heretics, by
+daily cultivating their lands, produce abundant crops."</p>
+
+<p>It is all very well that the shoemakers should go in the morning to mass
+on St. Crispin's day, because <i>crepido</i> signifies the upper leather of a
+shoe; that the brush-makers should honor St. Barbara their patron; that
+those who have weak eyes should hear the mass of St. Clara: that St.&mdash;&mdash;
+should be celebrated in many provinces; but after having paid their
+devoirs to the saints they should become serviceable to men, they should
+go from the altar to the plough; it is the excess of barbarity, and
+insupportable slavery, to consecrate our days to idleness and vice.
+Priests, command, if it be necessary that the saints Roche, Eustace, and
+Fiacre, be prayed to in the morning; but, magistrates, order your fields
+to be cultivated as usual. It is labor that is necessary; the greater
+the industry the more the day is sanctified.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION II.</h5>
+
+<p class="small">Letter from a Weaver of Lyons to the Gentlemen of the Commission
+established at Paris, for the Reformation of Religious Orders, printed
+in the public papers in 1768.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Gentlemen: I am a silk-weaver, and have worked at Lyons for
+nineteen years. My wages have increased insensibly; at present I
+get thirty-five sous per day. My wife, who makes lace, would get
+fifteen more, if it were possible for her to devote her time to it;
+but as the cares of the house, illness, or other things,
+continually hinder her, I reduce her profit to ten sous, which
+makes forty-five sous daily. If from the year we deduct eighty-two
+Sundays, or holidays, we shall have two hundred and eighty-four
+profitable days, which at forty-five sous make six hundred and
+thirty-nine livres. That is my revenue; the following are my
+expenses:</p>
+
+<p>"I have eight living children, and my wife is on the point of being
+confined with the eleventh; for I have lost two. I have been
+married fifteen years: so that I annually reckon twenty-four livres
+for the expenses of her confinements and baptisms, one hundred and
+eight livres for two nurses, having generally two children out at
+nurse, and sometimes even three. I pay fifty-seven livres rent and
+fourteen taxes.</p>
+
+<p>"My income is then reduced to four hundred and thirty-six livres,
+or twenty-five sous three deniers a day, with which I have to
+clothe and furnish my family, buy wood and candles, and support my
+wife and six children.</p>
+
+<p>"I look forward to holidays with dismay. I confess that I often
+almost curse their institution. They could only have been
+instituted by usurers and innkeepers.</p>
+
+<p>"My father made me study hard in my youth, and wished me to become
+a monk, showing me in that state a sure asylum against want; but I
+always thought that every man owes his tribute to society, and that
+monks are useless drones who live upon the labor of the bees.
+Notwithstanding, I acknowledge that when I see John C&mdash;&mdash;, with
+whom I studied, and who was the most idle boy in the college,
+possessing the first place among the <i>prémontrés</i>, I cannot help
+regretting that I did not listen to my father's advice.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the third holiday in Christmas, I have pawned the little
+furniture I had, I am in a week's debt with my tradesman, and I
+want bread&mdash;how are we to get over the fourth? This is not all; I
+have the prospect of four more next week. Great God! Eight holidays
+in ten days; you cannot have commanded it!</p>
+
+<p>"One year I hoped that rents would diminish by the suppression of
+one of the monasteries of the Capuchins and Cordeliers. What
+useless houses in the centre of Lyons are those of the Jacobins,
+nuns of St. Peter, etc. Why not establish them in the suburbs if
+they are thought necessary? How many more useful inhabitants would
+supply their places!</p>
+
+<p>"All these reflections, gentlemen, have induced me to address
+myself to you who have been chosen by the king for the task of
+rectifying abuses. I am not the only one who thinks thus. How many
+laborers in Lyons and other places, how many laborers in the
+kingdom are reduced to the same extremities as myself? It is
+evident that every holiday costs the state several millions
+(livres). These considerations will lead you to take more to heart
+the interests of the people, which are rather too little attended
+to.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"I have the honor to be, etc.,</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 25em;">"BOCEN."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>This request, which was really presented, will not be misplaced in a
+work like the present.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION III.</h5>
+
+<p>The feast given to the Roman people by Julius Cæsar and the emperors who
+succeeded him are well known. The feast of twenty-two thousand tables
+served by twenty-two thousand purveyors; the naval fights on artificial
+lakes, etc., have not, however, been imitated by the Herulian, Lombard,
+and Frankish chieftains, who would have their festivity equally
+celebrated.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FERRARA" id="FERRARA"></a>FERRARA.</h3>
+
+
+<p>What we have to say of Ferrara has no relation to literature, but it has
+a very great one to justice, which is much more necessary than the
+belles-lettres, and much less cultivated, at least in Italy.</p>
+
+<p>Ferrara was constantly a fief of the empire, like Parma and Placentia.
+Pope Clement VIII. robbed Cæsar d'Este of it by force of arms, in 1597.
+The pretext for this tyranny was a very singular one for a man who
+called himself the humble vicar of Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Alphonso d'Este, the first of the name, sovereign of Ferrara, Modena,
+Este, Carpio, and Rovigno, espoused a simple gentlewoman of Ferrara,
+named Laura Eustochia, by whom he had three children before marriage.
+These children he solemnly acknowledged in the face of the Church. None
+of the formalities prescribed by the laws were wanting at this
+recognition. His successor, Alphonso d'Este, was acknowledged duke of
+Ferrara; he espoused Julia d'Urbino, the daughter of Francis, duke
+d'Urbino, by whom he had the unfortunate Cæsar d'Este, the incontestable
+heir of all the property of all the family, and declared so by the last
+duke, who died October 27, 1597. Pope Clement VIII., surnamed
+Aldobrandino, and originally of the family of a merchant of Florence,
+dared to pretend that the grandmother of Cæsar d'Este was not
+sufficiently noble, and that the children that she had brought into the
+world ought to be considered bastards. The first reason is ridiculous
+and scandalous in a bishop, the second is unwarrantable in every
+tribunal in Europe. If the duke was not legitimate, he ought to have
+lost Modena and his other states also; and if there was no flaw in his
+title, he ought to have kept Ferrara as well as Modena.</p>
+
+<p>The acquisition of Ferrara was too fine a thing for the pope not to
+procure all the decretals and decisions of those brave theologians, who
+declare that the pope can render just that which is unjust. Consequently
+he first excommunicated Cæsar d'Este, and as excommunication necessarily
+deprives a man of all his property, the common father of the faithful
+raised his troops against the excommunicated, to rob him of his
+inheritance in the name of the Church. These troops were defeated, but
+the duke of Modena soon saw his finances exhausted, and his friends
+become cool.</p>
+
+<p>To make his case still more deplorable, the king of France, Henry IV.,
+believed himself obliged to take the side of the pope, in order to
+balance the credit of Philip II. at the court of Rome; in the same
+manner that good King Louis XII. less excusably dishonored himself by
+uniting with that monster Alexander VI., and his execrable bastard, the
+duke of Borgia. The duke was obliged to return, and the pope caused
+Ferrara to be invaded by Cardinal Aldobrandino, who entered this
+flourishing city at the head of a thousand horse and five thousand foot
+soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>It is a great pity that such a man as Henry IV. descended to this
+unworthiness which is called politic. The Catos, Metelluses, Scipios,
+and Fabriciuses would not thus have betrayed justice to please a
+priest&mdash;and such a priest!</p>
+
+<p>From this time Ferrara became a desert; its uncultivated soil was
+covered with standing marshes. This province, under the house of Este,
+had been one of the finest in Italy; the people always regretted their
+ancient masters. It is true that the duke was indemnified; he was
+nominated to a bishopric and a benefice; he was even furnished with some
+measures of salt from the mines of Servia. But it is no less true that
+the house of Modena has incontestable and imprescriptable rights to the
+duchy of Ferrara, of which it was thus shamefully despoiled.</p>
+
+<p>Now, my dear reader, let us suppose that this scene took place at the
+time in which Jesus Christ appeared to his apostles after his
+resurrection, and that Simon Barjonas, surnamed Peter, wished to possess
+himself of the states of this poor duke of Ferrara. Imagine the duke
+coming to Bethany to demand justice of the Lord Jesus. Our Lord sends
+immediately for Peter and says to him, "Simon, son of Jonas, I have
+given thee the keys of heaven, but I have not given thee those of the
+earth. Because thou hast been told that the heavens surround the globe,
+and that the contained is in the containing, dost thou imagine that
+kingdoms here below belong to thee, and that thou hast only to possess
+thyself of whatever thou likest? I have already forbidden thee to draw
+the sword. Thou appearest to me a very strange compound; at one time
+cutting off the ear of Malchus, and at another even denying me. Be more
+lenient and decorous, and take neither the property nor the ears of any
+one for fear of thine own."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FEVER" id="FEVER"></a>FEVER.</h3>
+
+
+<p>It is not as a physician, but as a patient, that I wish to say a word or
+two on fever. We cannot help now and then speaking of our enemies; and
+this one has been attacking me for more than twenty years; not Fréron
+himself has been more implacable.</p>
+
+<p>I ask pardon of Sydenham, who defined fever to be "an effort of nature,
+laboring with all its power to expel the peccant matter." We might thus
+define smallpox, measles, diarrhœa, vomitings, cutaneous eruptions,
+and twenty other diseases. But, if this physician defined ill, he
+practised well. He cured, because he had experience, and he knew how to
+wait.</p>
+
+<p>Boerhaave says, in his "Aphorisms": "A more frequent opposition, and an
+increased resistance about the capillary vessels, give an absolute idea
+of an acute fever." These are the words of a great master; but he sets
+out with acknowledging that the nature of fever is profoundly hidden.</p>
+
+<p>He does not tell us what that secret principle is which develops itself
+at regular periods in intermittent fever&mdash;what that internal poison is,
+which, after the lapse of a day, is renewed&mdash;where that flame is, which
+dies and revives at stated moments.</p>
+
+<p>We know fairly well that we are liable to fever after excess, or in
+unseasonable weather. We know that quinine, judiciously administered,
+will cure it. This is quite enough; the <i>how</i> we do not know.</p>
+
+<p>Every animal that does not perish suddenly dies by fever. The fever
+seems to be the inevitable effect of the fluids that compose the blood,
+or that which is in the place of blood. The structure of every animal
+proves to natural philosophers that it must, at all times, have enjoyed
+a very short life.</p>
+
+<p>Theologians have held, as have promulgated other opinions. It is not for
+us to examine this question. The philosophers and physicians have been
+right <i>in sensu humano</i>, and the theologians, <i>in sensu divino</i>. It is
+said in Deuteronomy, xxviii, 22, that if the Jews do not serve the law
+they shall be smitten "with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an
+inflammation, and with an extreme burning." It is only in Deuteronomy,
+and in Molière's "Physician in Spite of Himself," that people have been
+threatened with fever.</p>
+
+<p>It seems impossible that fever should not be an accident natural to an
+animate body, in which so many fluids circulate; just as it is
+impossible for an animate body not to be crushed by the falling of a
+rock.</p>
+
+<p>Blood makes life; it furnishes the viscera, the limbs, the skin, the
+very extremities of the hairs and nails with the fluids, the humors
+proper for them.</p>
+
+<p>This blood, by which the animal has life, is formed by the chyle. During
+pregnancy this chyle is transmitted from the uterus to the child, and,
+after the child is born, the milk of the nurse produces this same chyle.
+The greater diversity of aliments it afterwards receives, the more the
+chyle is liable to be soured. This alone forming the blood, and this
+blood, composed of so many different humors so subject to corruption,
+circulating through the whole human body more than five hundred and
+fifty times in twenty-four hours, with the rapidity of a torrent, it is
+not only astonishing that fever is not more frequent, it is astonishing
+that man lives. In every articulation, in every gland, in every passage,
+there is danger of death; but there are also as many succors as there
+are dangers. Almost every membrane extends or contracts as occasion
+requires. All the veins have sluices which open and shut, giving passage
+to the blood and preventing a return, by which the machine would be
+destroyed. The blood, rushing through all these canals, purifies itself.
+It is a river that carries with it a thousand impurities; it discharges
+itself by perspiration, by transpiration, by all the secretions. Fever
+is itself a succor; it is a rectification when it does not kill.</p>
+
+<p>Man, by his reason, accelerates the cure by administering bitters, and,
+above all, by regimen. This reason is an oar with which he may row for
+some time on the sea of the world when disease does not swallow him up.</p>
+
+<p>It is asked: How is it that nature has abandoned the animals, her work,
+to so many horrible diseases, almost always accompanied by fever? How
+and why is it that so many disorders exist with so much order,
+formation, and destruction everywhere, side by side? This is a
+difficulty that often gives me a fever, but I beg you will read the
+letters of Memmius. Then, perhaps, you will be inclined to suspect that
+the incomprehensible artificer of vegetables, animals, and worlds,
+having made all for the best, could not have made anything better.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FICTION" id="FICTION"></a>FICTION.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Is not a fiction, which teaches new and interesting truths, a fine
+thing? Do you not admire the Arabian story of the sultan who would not
+believe that a little time could appear long, and who disputed with his
+dervish on the nature of duration? The latter to convince him of it,
+begged him only to plunge his head for a moment into the basin in which
+he was washing. Immediately the sultan finds himself transported into a
+frightful desert; he is obliged to labor to get a livelihood; he
+marries, and has children who grow up and ill treat him; finally he
+returns to his country and his palace and he there finds the dervish who
+has caused him to suffer so many evils for five and twenty years. He is
+about to kill him, and is only appeased when he is assured that all
+passed in the moment in which, with his eyes shut, he put his head into
+the water.</p>
+
+<p>You still more admire the fiction of the loves of Dido and Æneas, which
+caused the mortal hatred between Carthage and Rome, as also that which
+exhibits in Elysium the destinies of the great men of the Roman Empire.</p>
+
+<p>You also like that of Alcina, in Ariosto, who possesses the dignity of
+Minerva with the beauty of Venus, who is so charming to the eyes of her
+lovers, who intoxicates them with voluptuous delights, and unites all
+the loves and graces, but who, when she is at last reduced to her true
+self and the enchantment has passed away, is nothing more than a little
+shrivelled, disgusting, old woman.</p>
+
+<p>As to fictions which represent nothing, teach nothing, and from which
+nothing results, are they anything more than falsities? And if they are
+incoherent and heaped together without choice, are they anything better
+than dreams?</p>
+
+<p>You will possibly tell me that there are ancient fictions which are very
+incoherent, without ingenuity, and even absurd, which are still admired;
+but is it not rather owing to the fine images which are scattered over
+these fictions than to the inventions which introduce them? I will not
+dispute the point, but if you would be hissed at by all Europe, and
+afterwards forgotten forever, write fictions similar to those which you
+admire.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FIERTE" id="FIERTE"></a>FIERTÉ.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Fierté is one of those expressions, which, having been originally
+employed in an offensive sense, are afterwards used in a favorable one.
+It is censure when this word signifies high-flown, proud, haughty, and
+disdainful. It is almost praise when it means the loftiness of a noble
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>It is a just eulogium on a general who marches towards the enemy with
+<i>fierté</i>. Writers have praised the <i>fierté</i> of the gait of Louis XIV.;
+they should have contented themselves with remarking its nobleness.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fierté</i>, without dignity, is a merit incompatible with modesty. It is
+only <i>fierté</i> in air and manners which offends; it then displeases, even
+in kings.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fierté</i> of manner in society is the expression of pride; <i>fierté</i> of
+soul is greatness. The distinctions are so nice that a proud spirit is
+deemed blamable, while a proud soul is a theme of praise. By the former
+is understood one who thinks advantageously of himself while the latter
+denotes one who entertains elevated sentiments.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fierté</i>, announced by the exterior, is so great a fault that the weak,
+who abjectly praise it in the great are obliged to soften it, or rather
+to extol it, by speaking of "this noble <i>fierté</i>." It is not simply
+vanity, which consists in setting a value upon little things; it is not
+presumption, which believes itself capable of great ones; it is not
+disdain, which adds contempt of others to a great opinion of self; but
+it is intimately allied to all these faults.</p>
+
+<p>This word is used in romances, poetry, and above all, in operas, to
+express the severity of female modesty. We meet with vain <i>fierté</i>,
+vigorous <i>fierté</i>, etc. Poets are, perhaps, more in the right than they
+imagine. The <i>fierté</i> of a woman is not only rigid modesty and love of
+duty, but the high value which she sets upon her beauty. The <i>fierté</i> of
+the pencil is sometimes spoken of to signify free and fearless touches.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FIGURE" id="FIGURE"></a>FIGURE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Every one desirous of instruction should read with attention all the
+articles in the "<i>Dictionnaire Encyclopédique</i>," under the head
+"Figure," viz.:</p>
+
+<p>"Figure of the Earth," by M. d'Alembert&mdash;a work both clear and profound,
+in which we find all that can be known on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>"Figure of Rhetoric," by César Dumarsais&mdash;a piece of instruction which
+teaches at once to think and to write; and, like many other articles,
+make us regret that young people in general have not a convenient
+opportunity of reading things so useful.</p>
+
+<p>"Human Figure," as relating to painting and sculpture&mdash;an excellent
+lesson given to every artist, by M. Watelet.</p>
+
+<p>"Figure," in physiology&mdash;a very ingenious article, by M. de Caberoles.</p>
+
+<p>"Figure," in arithmetic and in algebra&mdash;by M. Mallet.</p>
+
+<p>"Figure," in logic, in metaphysics, and in polite literature, by M. le
+Chevalier de Jaucourt&mdash;a man superior to the philosophers of antiquity,
+inasmuch as he has preferred retirement, real philosophy, and
+indefatigable labor, to all the advantages that his birth might have
+procured him, in a country where birth is set above all beside,
+excepting money.</p>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>Figure or Form of the Earth.</i></p>
+
+<p>Plato, Aristotle, Eratosthenes, Posidonius, and all the geometricians of
+Asia, of Egypt, and of Greece, having acknowledged the sphericity of our
+globe, how did it happen that we, for so long a time, imagined that the
+earth was a third longer than it was broad, and thence derived the terms
+"<i>longitude</i>" and "<i>latitude</i>," which continually bear testimony to our
+ancient ignorance?</p>
+
+<p>The reverence due to the "Bible," which teaches us so many truths more
+necessary and more sublime, was the cause of this, our almost universal
+error. It had been found, in Psalm ciii, that God had stretched the
+heavens over the earth like a skin; and as a skin is commonly longer
+than it is wide, the same was concluded of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>St. Athanasius expresses himself as warmly against good astronomers as
+against the partisans of Arius and Eusebius. "Let us," says he, "stop
+the mouths of those barbarians, who, speaking without proof, dare to
+assert that the heavens also extend under the earth." The fathers
+considered the earth as a great ship, surrounded by water, with the prow
+to the east, and the stern to the west. We still find, in "Cosmos," a
+work of the fourth century, a sort of geographical chart, in which the
+earth has this figure.</p>
+
+<p>Tortato, bishop of Avila, near the close of the fifteenth century,
+declares in his commentary on Genesis, that the Christian faith is
+shaken, if the earth is believed to be round. Columbus, Vespucius, and
+Magellan, not having the fear of excommunication by this learned bishop
+before their eyes, the earth resumed its rotundity in spite of him.</p>
+
+<p>Then man went from one extreme to the other, and the earth was regarded
+as a perfect sphere. But the error of the perfect sphere was the mistake
+of philosophers, while that of a long, flat earth was the blunder of
+idiots.</p>
+
+<p>When once it began to be clearly known that our globe revolves on its
+own axis every twenty-four hours, it might have been inferred from that
+alone that its form could not be absolutely round. Not only does the
+centrifugal zone considerably raise the waters in the region of the
+equator, by the motion of the diurnal rotation, but they are moreover
+elevated about twenty-five feet, twice a day, by the tides; the lands
+about the equator must then be perfectly inundated. But they are not so;
+therefore the region of the equator is much more elevated, in
+proportion, than the rest of the earth: then the earth is a spheroid
+elevated at the equator, and cannot be a perfect sphere. This proof,
+simple as it is, had escaped the greatest geniuses: because a universal
+prejudice rarely permits investigation.</p>
+
+<p>We know that, in 1762, in a voyage to Cayenne, near the line, undertaken
+by order of Louis XIV., under the auspices of Colbert, the patron of all
+the arts, Richer, among many other observations, found that the
+oscillations or vibrations of his timepiece did not continue so frequent
+as in the latitude of Paris, and that it was absolutely necessary to
+shorten the pendulum one line and something more than a quarter. Physics
+and geometry were at that time not nearly so much cultivated as they now
+are; what man would have believed that an observation so trivial in
+appearance, a line more or less, could lead to the knowledge of the
+greatest physical truths? It was first of all discovered that the weight
+must necessarily be less on the equator than in our latitudes, since
+weight alone causes the oscillation of a pendulum. Consequently, the
+weight of bodies being the less the farther they are from the centre of
+the earth, it was inferred that the region of the equator must be much
+more elevated than our own&mdash;much more remote from the centre; so the
+earth could not be an exact sphere.</p>
+
+<p>Many philosophers acted, on the occasion of these discoveries, as all
+men act when an opinion is to be changed&mdash;they disputed on Richer's
+experiment; they pretended that our pendulums made their vibrations more
+slowly about the equator only because the metal was lengthened by the
+heat; but it was seen that the heat of the most burning summer lengthens
+it but one line in thirty feet; and here was an elongation of a line and
+a quarter, a line and a half, or even two lines, in an iron rod, only
+three feet and eight lines long.</p>
+
+<p>Some years after MM. Varin, Deshayes, Feuillée, and Couplet, repeated
+the same experiment on the pendulum, near the equator; and it was always
+found necessary to shorten it, although the heat was very often less on
+the line than fifteen or twenty degrees from it. This experiment was
+again confirmed by the academicians whom Louis XV. sent to Peru; and who
+were obliged, on the mountains about Quito, where it froze, to shorten
+the second pendulum about two lines.</p>
+
+<p>About the same time, the academicians who went to measure an arc of the
+meridian in the north, found that at Pello, within the Polar circle, it
+was necessary to lengthen the pendulum, in order to have the same
+oscillations as at Paris: consequently weight is greater at the polar
+circle than in the latitude of France, as it is greater in our latitude
+than at the equator. Weight being greater in the north, the north was
+therefore nearer the centre of the earth than the equator; therefore the
+earth was flattened at the poles.</p>
+
+<p>Never did reasoning and experiment so fully concur to establish a truth.
+The celebrated Huygens, by calculating centrifugal forces, had proved
+that the consequent diminution of weight on the surface of a sphere was
+not great enough to explain the phenomena, and that therefore the earth
+must be a spheroid flattened at the poles. Newton, by the principles of
+attraction, had found nearly the same relations: only it must be
+observed, that Huygens believed this force inherent in bodies
+determining them towards the centre of the globe, to be everywhere the
+same. He had not yet seen the discoveries of Newton; so that he
+considered the diminution of weight by the theory of centrifugal forces
+only. The effect of centrifugal forces diminishes the primitive gravity
+on the equator. The smaller the circles in which this centrifugal force
+is exercised become, the more it yields to the force of gravity; thus,
+at the pole itself the centrifugal force being null, must leave the
+primitive gravity in full action. But this principle of a gravity always
+equal, falls to nothing before the discovery made by Newton, that a body
+transported, for instance, to the distance of ten diameters from the
+centre of the earth, would weigh one hundred times less than at the
+distance of one diameter.</p>
+
+<p>It is then by the laws of gravitation, combined with those of the
+centrifugal force, that the real form of the earth must be shown. Newton
+and Gregory had such confidence in this theory that they did not
+hesitate to advance that experiments on weight were a surer means of
+knowing the form of the earth than any geographical measurement.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XIV. had signalized his reign by that meridian which was drawn
+through France: the illustrious Dominico Cassini had begun it with his
+son; and had, in 1701, drawn from the feet of the Pyrenees to the
+observatory a line as straight as it could be drawn, considering the
+almost insurmountable obstacles which the height of mountains, the
+changes of refraction in the air, and the altering of instruments were
+constantly opposing to the execution of so vast and delicate an
+undertaking; he had, in 1701, measured six degrees eighteen minutes of
+that meridian. But, from whatever cause the error might proceed, he had
+found the degrees towards Paris, that is towards the north, shorter than
+those towards the Pyrenees and the south. This measurement gave the lie
+both to the theory of Norwood and to the new theory of the earth
+flattened at the poles. Yet this new theory was beginning to be so
+generally received that the academy's secretary did not hesitate, in his
+history of 1701, to say that the new measurements made in France proved
+the earth to be a spheroid flattened at the poles. The truth was, that
+Dominico Cassini's measurement led to a conclusion directly opposite;
+but, as the figure of the earth had not yet become a question in France,
+no one at that time was at the trouble of combating this false
+conclusion. The degrees of the meridian from Collioure to Paris were
+believed to be exactly measured; and the pole, which from that
+measurement must necessarily be elongated, was believed to be flattened.</p>
+
+<p>An engineer, named M. de Roubais, astonished at this conclusion,
+demonstrated that, by the measurements taken in France, the earth must
+be an oblate spheroid, of which the meridian passing through the poles
+must be longer than the equator, the poles being elongated. But of all
+the natural philosophers to whom he addressed his dissertation, not one
+would have it printed; because it seemed that the academy had pronounced
+it as too bold in an individual to raise his voice. Some time after the
+error of 1701 was acknowledged, that which had been said was unsaid; and
+the earth was lengthened by a just conclusion drawn from a false
+principle. The meridian was continued in the same principle from Paris
+to Dunkirk; and the degrees were still found to grow shorter as they
+approached the north. People were still mistaken respecting the figure
+of the earth, as they had been concerning the nature of light. About the
+same time, some mathematicians who were performing the same operations
+in China were astonished to find a difference among their degrees,
+which they had expected to find alike; and to discover, after many
+verifications, that they were shorter towards the north than towards the
+south. This accordance of the mathematicians of France with those of
+China was another powerful reason for believing in the oblate spheroid.
+In France they did still more; they measured parallels to the equator.
+It is easily understood that on an oblate spheroid our degrees of
+longitude must be shorter than on a sphere. M. de Cassini found the
+parallel which passes through St. Malo to be shorter by one thousand and
+thirty-seven toises than it would have been on a spherical earth.</p>
+
+<p>All these measurements proved that the degrees had been found as it was
+wished to find them. They overturned, for a time, in France, the
+demonstrations of Newton and Huygens; and it was no longer doubted that
+the poles were of a form precisely contrary to that which had at first
+been attributed to them. In short, nothing at all was known about the
+matter.</p>
+
+<p>At length, other academicians, who had visited the polar circle in 1736,
+having found, by new measurements, that the degree was longer there than
+in France, people doubted between them and the Cassinis. But these
+doubts were soon after removed: for these same astronomers, returning
+from the pole, examined afresh the degree to the north of Paris,
+measured by Picard, in 1677, and found it to be a hundred and
+twenty-three toises longer than it was according to Picard's
+measurement. If, then, Picard, with all his precautions, had made his
+degree one hundred and twenty-three toises too short, it was not at all
+unlikely that the degrees towards the south had in like manner been
+found too long. Thus the first error of Picard, having furnished the
+foundations for the measurements of the meridian, also furnished an
+excuse for the almost inevitable errors which very good astronomers
+might have committed in the course of these operations.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, other men of science found that, at the Cape of Good
+Hope, the degrees of the meridian did not agree with ours. Other
+measurements, taken in Italy, likewise contradicted those of France, and
+all were falsified by those of China. People again began to doubt, and
+to suspect, in my opinion quite reasonably, that the earth had
+protuberances. As for the English, though they are fond of travelling,
+they spared themselves the fatigue, and held fast their theory.</p>
+
+<p>The difference between one diameter and the other is not more than five
+or six of our leagues&mdash;a difference immense in the eyes of a disputant,
+but almost imperceptible to those who consider the measurement of the
+globe only in reference to the purposes of utility which it may serve. A
+geographer could scarcely make this difference perceptible on a map; nor
+would a pilot be able to discover whether he was steering on a spheroid
+or on a sphere. Yet there have been men bold enough to assert that the
+lives of navigators depended on this question. Oh quackery! will you
+spare no degrees&mdash;not even those of the meridian?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FIGURED_FIGURATIVE" id="FIGURED_FIGURATIVE"></a>FIGURED&mdash;FIGURATIVE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>We say, a truth "figured" by a fable, by a parable; the church "figured"
+by the young spouse in Solomon's Song; ancient Rome "figured" by
+Babylon. A figurative style is constituted by metaphorical expressions,
+figuring the things spoken of&mdash;and disfiguring them when the metaphors
+are not correct.</p>
+
+<p>Ardent imagination, passion, desire&mdash;frequently deceived&mdash;produce the
+figurative style. We do not admit it into history, for too many
+metaphors are hurtful, not only to perspicuity, but also to truth, by
+saying more or less than the thing itself.</p>
+
+<p>In didactic works, this style should be rejected. It is much more out of
+place in a sermon than in a funeral oration, because the sermon is a
+piece of instruction in which the truth is to be announced; while the
+funeral oration is a declaration in which it is to be exaggerated.</p>
+
+<p>The poetry of enthusiasm, as the epopee and the ode, is that to which
+this style is best adapted. It is less admissible in tragedy, where the
+dialogue should be natural as well as elevated; and still less in
+comedy, where the style must be more simple.</p>
+
+<p>The limits to be set to the figurative style, in each kind, are
+determined by taste. Baltasar Gracian says, that "our thoughts depart
+from the vast shores of memory, embark on the sea of imagination, arrive
+in the harbor of intelligence, and are entered at the custom house of
+the understanding."</p>
+
+<p>This is precisely the style of Harlequin. He says to his master, "The
+ball of your commands has rebounded from the racquet of my obedience."
+Must it not be owned that such is frequently that oriental style which
+people try to admire? Another fault of the figurative style is the
+accumulating of incoherent figures. A poet, speaking of some
+philosophers, has called them:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 9.5em;"><i>D'ambitieux pygmées</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Qui sur leurs pieds vainement redressés</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Et sur des monts d'argumens entassés</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>De jour en jour superbes Encelades,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Vont redoublant leurs folles escalades.</i></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>When philosophers are to be written against, it should be done better.
+How do ambitious pygmies, reared on their hind legs on mountains of
+arguments, continue escalades? What a false and ridiculous image! What
+elaborate dulness!</p>
+
+<p>In an allegory by the same author, entitled the "Liturgy of Cytherea,"
+we find these lines:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>De toutes parts, autour de l'inconnue,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Ils vont tomber comme grêle menue,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Moissons des cœurs sur la terre jonchés,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Et des Dieux même à son char attachés.</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>De par Venus nous venons cette affaire</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Si s'en retourne aux cieux dans son sérail,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>En ruminant comment il pourra faire</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Pour ramener la brebis au bercail.</i></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Here we have harvests of hearts thrown on the ground like small hail;
+and among these hearts palpitating on the ground, are gods bound to the
+car of the unknown; while love, sent by Venus, ruminates in his seraglio
+in heaven, what he shall do to bring back to the fold this lost mutton
+surrounded by scattered hearts. All this forms a figure at once so
+false, so puerile, and so incoherent&mdash;so disgusting, so extravagant, so
+stupidly expressed, that we are astonished that a man, who made good
+verses of another kind, and was not devoid of taste, could write
+anything so miserably bad.</p>
+
+<p>Figures, metaphors, are not necessary in an allegory; what has been
+invented with imagination may be told with simplicity. Plato has more
+allegories than figures; he often expresses them elegantly and without
+ostentation.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly all the maxims of the ancient orientals and of the Greeks were in
+the figurative style. All those sentences are metaphors, or short
+allegories; and in them the figurative style has great effect in rousing
+the imagination and impressing the memory.</p>
+
+<p>We know that Pythagoras said, "In the tempest adore the echo," that is,
+during civil broils retire to the country; and "Stir not the fire with
+the sword," meaning, do not irritate minds already inflamed. In every
+language, there are many common proverbs which are in the figurative
+style.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FIGURE_IN_THEOLOGY" id="FIGURE_IN_THEOLOGY"></a>FIGURE IN THEOLOGY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>It is quite certain, and is agreed by the most pious men, that figures
+and allegories have been carried too far. Some of the fathers of the
+church regard the piece of red cloth, placed by the courtesan Rahab at
+her window, for a signal to Joshua's spies, as a figure of the blood of
+Jesus Christ. This is an error of an order of mind which would find
+mystery in everything.</p>
+
+<p>Nor can it be denied that St. Ambrose made very bad use of his taste for
+allegory, when he says, in his book of "Noah and the Ark," that the back
+door of the ark was a figure of our hinder parts.</p>
+
+<p>All men of sense have asked how it can be proved that these Hebrew
+words, "<i>maher, salas-has-has</i>," (take quick the spoils) are a figure of
+Jesus Christ? How is Judah, tying his ass to a vine, and washing his
+cloak in the wine, also a figure of Him. How can Ruth, slipping into bed
+to Boaz, figure the church, how are Sarah and Rachel the church, and
+Hagar and Leah the synagogue? How, do the kisses of the Shunamite typify
+the marriage of the church? A volume might be made of these enigmas,
+which, to the best theologians of later times, have appeared to be
+rather far-fetched than edifying.</p>
+
+<p>The danger of this abuse is fully admitted by Abbé Fleury, the author of
+the "Ecclesiastical History." It is a vestige of rabbinism; a fault
+into which the learned St. Jerome never fell. It is like oneiromancy,
+or the explanation of dreams. If a girl sees muddy water, when dreaming,
+she will be ill-married; if she sees clear water, she will have a good
+husband; a spider denotes money, etc. In short, will enlightened
+posterity believe it? The understanding of dreams has, for more than
+four thousand years, been made a serious study.</p>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>Symbolical Figures.</i></p>
+
+<p>All nations have made use of them, as we have said in the article
+"emblem." But who began? Was it the Egyptians? It is not likely. We
+think we have already more than once proved that Egypt is a country
+quite new, and that many ages were requisite to save the country from
+inundations, and render it habitable. It is impossible that the
+Egyptians should have invented the signs of the zodiac, since the
+figures denoting our seed-time and harvest cannot coincide with theirs.
+When we cut our corn, their land is covered with water; and when we sow,
+their reaping time is approaching. Thus the bull of our zodiac and the
+girl bearing ears of corn cannot have come from Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>Here is also an evident proof of the falsity of the new paradox, that
+the Chinese are an Egyptian colony. The characters are not the same. The
+Chinese mark the course of the sun by twenty-eight constellations and
+the Egyptians, after the Chaldæans, reckoned only twelve, like
+ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>The figures that denote the planets are in China and in India all
+different from those of Egypt and of Europe; so are the signs of the
+metals; so is the method of guiding the hand in writing. Nothing could
+have been more chimerical than to send the Egyptians to people China.</p>
+
+<p>All these fabulous foundations, laid in fabulous times, have caused an
+irreparable loss of time to a prodigious multitude of the learned, who
+have all been bewildered in their laborious researches, which might have
+been serviceable to mankind if directed to arts of real utility.</p>
+
+<p>Pluche, in his History, or rather his fable, of the Heavens, assures us
+that Ham, son of Noah, went and reigned in Egypt, where there was nobody
+to reign over; that his son Menes was the greatest of legislators, and
+that Thoth was his prime minister.</p>
+
+<p>According to him and his authorities, this Thoth, or somebody else,
+instituted feasts in honor of the deluge; and the joyful cry of "<i>Io
+Bacche</i>," so famous among the Greeks, was, among the Egyptians, a
+lamentation. "<i>Bacche</i>" came from the Hebrew "<i>beke</i>" signifying <i>sobs</i>,
+and that at a time when the Hebrew people did not exist. According to
+this explanation, "<i>joy</i>" means "<i>sorrow</i>," and "<i>to sing</i>" signifies
+"<i>to weep</i>."</p>
+
+<p>The Iroquois have more sense. They do not take the trouble to inquire
+what passed on the shores of Lake Ontario some thousand years ago:
+instead of making systems, they go hunting.</p>
+
+<p>The same authors affirm that the sphinxes, with which Egypt was adorned,
+signified superabundance, because some interpreters have asserted that
+the Hebrew word "<i>spang</i>" meant an "excess"; as if the Egyptians had
+taken lessons from the Hebrew tongue, which is, in great part, derived
+from the Phœnician: besides, what relation has a sphinx to an
+abundance of water? Future schoolmen will maintain, with greater
+appearance of reason, that the masks which decorate the keystones of our
+windows are emblems of our masquerades; and that these fantastic
+ornaments announced that balls were given in every house to which they
+were affixed.</p>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>Figure, Figurative, Allegorical, Mystical, Topological, Typical, etc.</i></p>
+
+<p>This is often the art of finding in books everything but what they
+really contain. For instance, Romulus killing his brother Remus shall
+signify the death of the duke of Berry, brother of Louis XI.; Regulus,
+imprisoned at Carthage, shall typify St. Louis captive at Mansurah.</p>
+
+<p>It is very justly remarked in the "Encyclopædia," that many fathers of
+the church have, perhaps, carried this taste for allegorical figures a
+little too far; but they are to be reverenced, even in their wanderings.
+If the holy fathers used and then abused this method, their little
+excesses of imagination may be pardoned, in consideration of their holy
+zeal.</p>
+
+<p>The antiquity of the usage may also be pleaded in justification, since
+it was practised by the earliest philosophers. But it is true that the
+symbolical figures employed by the fathers are in a different taste.</p>
+
+<p>For example: When St. Augustine wishes to make it appear that the
+forty-two generations of the genealogy of Jesus are announced by St.
+Matthew, who gives only forty-one, he says that Jechonias must be
+counted twice, because Jechonias is a corner-stone belonging to two
+walls; that these two walls figure the old and the new law; and that
+Jechonias, being thus the corner-stone, figures Jesus Christ, who is the
+real corner-stone.</p>
+
+<p>The same saint, in the same sermon, says that the number forty must
+prevail; and at once abandons Jechonias and his corner-stone, counted as
+two. The number forty, he says, signifies life; ten, which is perfect
+beatitude, being multiplied by four, which, being the number of the
+seasons, figures time.</p>
+
+<p>Again, in the same sermon, he explains why St. Luke gives Jesus Christ
+seventy-seven ancestors: fifty-six up to the patriarch Abraham, and
+twenty-one from Abraham up to God himself. It is true that, according to
+the Hebrew text, there would be but seventy-six; for the Hebrew does not
+reckon a Cainan, who is interpolated in the Greek translation called
+"The Septuagint."</p>
+
+<p>Thus said Augustine: "The number seventy-seven figures the abolition of
+all sins by baptism.... the number ten signifies justice and beatitude,
+resulting from, the creature, which makes seven with the Trinity, which
+is three: therefore it is that God's commandments are ten in number. The
+number eleven denotes sin, because it transgresses ten.... This number
+seventy-seven is the product of eleven, figuring sin, multiplied by
+seven, and not by ten, for seven is the symbol of the creature. Three
+represents the soul, which is in some sort an image of the Divinity; and
+four represents the body, on account of its four qualities." In these
+explanations, we find some trace of the cabalistic mysteries and the
+quaternary of Pythagoras. This taste was very long in vogue.</p>
+
+<p>St. Augustine goes much further, concerning the dimensions of matter.
+Breadth is the dilatation of the heart, which performs good works;
+length is perseverance; depth is the hope of reward. He carries the
+allegory very far, applying it to the cross, and drawing great
+consequences therefrom. The use of these figures had passed from the
+Jews to the Christians long before St. Augustine's time. It is not for
+us to know within what bounds it was right to stop.</p>
+
+<p>The examples of this fault are innumerable. No one who has studied to
+advantage will hazard the introduction of such figures, either in the
+pulpit or in the school. We find no such instances among the Romans or
+the Greeks, not even in their poets.</p>
+
+<p>In Ovid's "Metamorphoses" themselves, we find only ingenious deductions
+drawn from fables which are given as fables. Deucalion and Pyrrha threw
+stones behind them between their legs, and men were produced therefrom.
+Ovid says:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Et documenta damus qua simus origine nati.</i></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Thence we are a hardened and laborious race,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Proving full well our stony origin.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Apollo loves Daphne, but Daphne does not love Apollo. This is because
+love has two kinds of arrows; the one golden and piercing, the other
+leaden and blunt. Apollo has received in his heart a golden arrow,
+Daphne a leaden one.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Ecce sagittifera prompsit duo tela pharetra</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Diversorum operum; fugat hoc, facit illud amorem</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Quod facit auratum est, et cuspide fulget acuta;</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Quod fugat obtusum est, et habet sub arundine plumbum....</i></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Two different shafts he from his quiver draws;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">One to repel desire, and one to cause.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">One shaft is pointed with refulgent gold,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To bribe the love, and make the lover bold;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">One blunt and tipped with lead, whose base allay</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Provokes disdain, and drives desire away.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 18em;" class="small">&mdash;DRYDEN.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>These figures are all ingenious, and deceive no one.</p>
+
+<p>That Venus, the goddess of beauty, should not go unattended by the
+Graces, is a charming truth. These fables, which were in the mouths of
+all&mdash;these allegories, so natural and attractive&mdash;had so much sway over
+the minds of men, that perhaps the first Christians imitated while they
+opposed them.</p>
+
+<p>They took up the weapons of mythology to destroy it, but they could not
+wield them with the same address. They did not reflect that the sacred
+austerity of our holy religion placed these resources out of their
+power, and that a Christian hand would have dealt but awkwardly with the
+lyre of Apollo.</p>
+
+<p>However, the taste for these typical and prophetic figures was so firmly
+rooted that every prince, every statesman, every pope, every founder of
+an order, had allegories or allusions taken from the Holy Scriptures
+applied to him. Satire and flattery rivalled each other in drawing from
+this source.</p>
+
+<p>When Pope Innocent III. made a bloody crusade against the court of
+Toulouse, he was told, "<i>Innocens eris a maledictione</i>." When the order
+of the Minimes was established, it appeared that their founder had been
+foretold in Genesis: "<i>Minimus cum patre nostro</i>."</p>
+
+<p>The preacher who preached before John of Austria after the celebrated
+battle of Lepanto, took for his text, "<i>Fuit homo missus a Deo, cui
+nomen erat Johannes</i>;" A man sent from God, whose name was John; and
+this allusion was very fine, if all the rest were ridiculous. It is said
+to have been repeated for John Sobieski, after the deliverance of
+Vienna; but this latter preacher was nothing more than a plagiarist.</p>
+
+<p>In short, so constant has been this custom that no preacher of the
+present day has ever failed to take an allegory for his text. One of the
+most happy instances is the text of the funeral oration over the duke of
+Candale, delivered before his sister, who was considered a pattern of
+virtue: "<i>Die, quia soror, mea es, ut mihi bene eveniat propter,
+te</i>."&mdash;"Say, I pray thee, that thou art my sister, that it may be well
+with me for thy sake."</p>
+
+<p>It is not to be wondered at that the Cordeliers carried these figures
+rather too far in favor of St. Francis of Assisi, in the famous but
+little-known book, entitled, "Conformities of St. Francis of Assisi with
+Jesus Christ." We find in it sixty-four predictions of the coming of St.
+Francis, some in the Old Testament, others in the New; and each
+prediction contains three figures, which signify the founding of the
+Cordeliers. So that these fathers find themselves foretold in the Bible
+a hundred and ninety-two times.</p>
+
+<p>From Adam down to St. Paul, everything prefigured the blessed Francis of
+Assisi. The Scriptures were given to announce to the universe the
+sermons of Francis to the quadrupeds, the fishes, and the birds, the
+sport he had with a woman of snow, his frolics with the devil, his
+adventures with brother Elias and brother Pacificus.</p>
+
+<p>These pious reveries, which amounted even to blasphemy, have been
+condemned. But the Order of St. Francis has not suffered by them, having
+renounced these extravagancies so common to the barbarous ages.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FINAL_CAUSES" id="FINAL_CAUSES"></a>FINAL CAUSES.</h3>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION I.</h5>
+
+<p>Virgil says ("Æneid," book vi. 727):</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet.</i></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">This active mind infused, through all the space</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Unites and mingles with the mighty mass.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 18em;" class="small">&mdash;DRYDEN</span>.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Virgil said well: and Benedict Spinoza, who has not the brilliancy of
+Virgil, nor his merit, is compelled to acknowledge an intelligence
+presiding over all. Had he denied this, I should have said to him:
+Benedict, you are a fool; you possess intelligence, and you deny it, and
+to whom do you deny it?</p>
+
+<p>In the year 1770, there appeared a man, in some respects far superior to
+Spinoza, as eloquent as the Jewish Hollander is dry, less methodical,
+but infinitely more perspicuous; perhaps equal to him in mathematical
+science; but without the ridiculous affectation of applying mathematical
+reasonings to metaphysical and moral subjects. The man I mean is the
+author of the "System of Nature." He assumed the name of Mirabaud, the
+secretary of the French Academy. Alas! the worthy secretary was
+incapable of writing a single page of the book of our formidable
+opponent. I would recommend all you who are disposed to avail yourselves
+of your reason and acquire instruction, to read the following eloquent
+though dangerous passage from the "System of Nature." (Part II. v. 153.)</p>
+
+<p>It is contended that animals furnish us with a convincing evidence that
+there is some powerful cause of their existence; the admirable
+adaptation of their different parts, mutually receiving and conferring
+aid towards accomplishing their functions, and maintaining in health and
+vigor the entire being, announce to us an artificer uniting power to
+wisdom. Of the power of nature, it is impossible for us to doubt; she
+produces all the animals that we see by the help of combinations of that
+matter, which is in incessant action; the adaptation of the parts of
+these animals is the result of the necessary laws of their nature, and
+of their combination. When the adaptation ceases, the animal is
+necessarily destroyed. What then becomes of the wisdom, the
+intelligence, or the goodness of that alleged cause, to which was
+ascribed all the honor of this boasted adaptation? Those animals of so
+wonderful a structure as to be pronounced the works of an immutable God,
+do not they undergo incessant changes; and do not they end in decay and
+destruction? Where is the wisdom, the goodness, the fore-sight, the
+immutability of an artificer, whose sole object appears to be to derange
+and destroy the springs of those machines which are proclaimed to be
+masterpieces of his power and skill? If this God cannot act otherwise
+than thus, he is neither free nor omnipotent. If his will changes, he is
+not immutable. If he permits machines, which he has endowed with
+sensibility, to experience pain, he is deficient in goodness. If he has
+been unable to render his productions solid and durable, he is deficient
+in skill. Perceiving as we do the decay and ruin not only of all
+animals, but of all the other works of deity, we cannot but inevitably
+conclude, either that everything performed in the course of nature is
+absolutely necessary&mdash;the unavoidable result of its imperative and
+insuperable laws, or that the artificer who impels her various
+operations is destitute of plan, of power, of constancy, of skill, and
+of goodness.</p>
+
+<p>"Man, who considers himself the master-work of the Divinity, supplies us
+more readily and completely than any other production, with evidence of
+the incapacity or malignity of his pretended author. In this being,
+possessed of feeling, intuition, and reason, which considers itself as
+the perpetual object of divine partiality, and forms its God on the
+model of itself, we see a machine more changeable, more frail, more
+liable to derangement from its extraordinary complication, than that of
+the coarsest and grossest beings. Beasts, which are destitute of our
+mental powers and acquirements; plants, which merely vegetate; stones,
+which are unendowed with sensation, are, in many respects, beings far
+more favored than man. They are, at least, exempt from distress of mind,
+from the tortures of thought, and corrosions of care, to which the
+latter is a victim. Who would not prefer being a mere unintelligent
+animal, or a senseless stone, when his thoughts revert to the
+irreparable loss of an object dearly beloved? Would it not be infinitely
+more desirable to be an inanimate mass, than the gloomy votary and
+victim of superstition, trembling under the present yoke of his
+diabolical deity, and anticipating infinite torments in a future
+existence? Beings destitute of sensation, life, memory, and thought
+experience no affliction from the idea of what is past, present, or to
+come; they do not believe there is any danger of incurring eternal
+torture for inaccurate reasoning; which is believed, however, by many of
+those favored beings who maintain that the great architect of the world
+has created the universe for themselves.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 602px;">
+<a name="NATURE_IS_NOT_A_WORK" id="NATURE_IS_NOT_A_WORK"></a>
+<img src="images/img_02_landstorm.jpg" width="602" alt="Nature is not a work." title="" />
+<span class="caption_fig">Nature is not a work</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Let us not be told that we have no idea of a work without having that
+of the artificer distinguished from the work. <i>Nature is not a work.</i>
+She has always existed of herself. Every process takes place in her
+bosom. She is an immense manufactory, provided with materials, and she
+forms the instruments by which she acts; all her works are effects of
+her own energy, and of agents or causes which she frames, contains, and
+impels. Eternal, uncreated elements&mdash;elements indestructible, ever in
+motion, and combining in exquisite and endless diversity, originate all
+the beings and all the phenomena that we behold; all the effects, good
+or evil, that we feel; the order or disorder which we distinguish,
+merely by different modes in which they affect ourselves; and, in a
+word, all those wonders which excite our meditation and confound our
+reasoning. These elements, in order to effect objects thus comprehensive
+and important, require nothing beyond their own properties, individual
+or combined, and the motion essential to their very existence; and thus
+preclude the necessity of recurring to an unknown artificer, in order to
+arrange, mould, combine, preserve, and dissolve them.</p>
+
+<p>"But, even admitting for a moment, that it is impossible to conceive of
+the universe without an artificer who formed it, and who preserves and
+watches over his work, where shall we place that artificer? Shall he be
+within or without the universe? Is he matter or motion? Or is he mere
+space, nothingness, vacuity? In each of these cases, he will either be
+nothing, or he will be comprehended in nature, and subjected to her
+laws. If he is in nature, I think I see in her only matter in motion,
+and cannot but thence conclude that the agent impelling her is corporeal
+and material, and that he is consequently liable to dissolution. If this
+agent is out of nature, then I have no idea of what place he can occupy,
+nor of an immaterial being, nor of the manner in which a spirit, without
+extension, can operate upon the matter from which it is separated. Those
+unknown tracts of space which imagination has placed beyond the visible
+world may be considered as having no existence for a being who can
+scarcely see to the distance of his own feet; the ideal power which
+inhabits them can never be represented to my mind, unless when my
+imagination combines at random the fantastic colors which it is always
+forced to employ in the world on which I am. In this case, I shall
+merely reproduce in idea what my senses have previously actually
+perceived; and that God, which I, as it were, compel myself to
+distinguish from nature, and to place beyond her circuit, will ever, in
+opposition to all my efforts, necessarily withdraw within it.</p>
+
+<p>"It will be observed and insisted upon by some that if a statue or a
+watch were shown to a savage who had never seen them, he would
+inevitably acknowledge that they were the productions of some
+intelligent agent, more powerful and ingenious than himself; and hence
+it will be inferred that we are equally bound to acknowledge that the
+machine of the universe, that man, that the phenomena of nature, are the
+productions of an agent, whose intelligence and power are far superior
+to our own.</p>
+
+<p>"I answer, in the first place, that we cannot possibly doubt either the
+great power or the great skill of nature; we admire her skill as often
+as we are surprised by the extended, varied and complicated effects
+which we find in those of her works that we take the pains to
+investigate; she is not, however, either more or less skilful in any one
+of her works than in the rest. We no more comprehend how she could
+produce a stone or a piece of metal than how she could produce a head
+organized like that of Newton. We call that man skilful who can perform
+things which we are unable to perform ourselves. Nature can perform
+everything; and when anything exists, it is a proof that she was able to
+make it. Thus, it is only in relation to ourselves that we ever judge
+nature to be skilful; we compare it in those cases with ourselves; and,
+as we possess a quality which we call intelligence, by the aid of which
+we produce works, in which we display our skill, we thence conclude that
+the works of nature, which must excite our astonishment and admiration,
+are not in fact hers, but the productions of an artificer, intelligent
+like ourselves, and whose intelligence we proportion, in our minds, to
+the degree of astonishment excited in us by his works; that is, in fact,
+to our own weakness and ignorance."</p>
+
+<p>See the reply to these arguments under the articles on "Atheism" and
+"God," and in the following section, written long before the "System of
+Nature."</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION II.</h5>
+
+<p>If a clock is not made in order to tell the time of the day, I will then
+admit that final causes are nothing but chimeras, and be content to go
+by the name of a final-cause-finder&mdash;in plain language, fool&mdash;to the end
+of my life.</p>
+
+<p>All the parts, however, of that great machine, the world, seem made for
+one another. Some philosophers affect to deride final causes, which were
+rejected, they tell us, by Epicurus and Lucretius. But it seems to me
+that Epicurus and Lucretius rather merit the derision. They tell you
+that the eye is not made to see; but that, since it was found out that
+eyes were capable of being used for that purpose, to that purpose they
+have been applied. According to them, the mouth is not formed to speak
+and eat, nor the stomach to digest, nor the heart to receive the blood
+from the veins and impel it through the arteries, nor the feet to walk,
+nor the ears to hear. Yet, at the same time, these very shrewd and
+consistent persons admitted that tailors made garments to clothe them,
+and masons built houses to lodge them; and thus ventured to deny
+nature&mdash;the great existence, the universal intelligence&mdash;what they
+conceded to the most insignificant artificers employed by themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The doctrine of final causes ought certainly to be preserved from being
+abused. We have already remarked that M. le Prieur, in the "Spectator of
+Nature," contends in vain that the tides were attached to the ocean to
+enable ships to enter more easily into their ports, and to preserve the
+water from corruption; he might just as probably and successfully have
+urged that legs were made to wear boots, and noses to bear spectacles.</p>
+
+<p>In order to satisfy ourselves of the truth of a final cause, in any
+particular instance, it is necessary that the effect produced should be
+uniform and invariably in time and place. Ships have not existed in all
+times and upon all seas; accordingly, it cannot be said that the ocean
+was made for ships. It is impossible not to perceive how ridiculous it
+would be to maintain that nature had toiled on from the very beginning
+of time to adjust herself to the inventions of our fortuitous and
+arbitrary arts, all of which are of so late a date in their discovery;
+but it is perfectly clear that if noses were not made for spectacles,
+they were made for smelling, and there have been noses ever since there
+were men. In the same manner, hands, instead of being bestowed for the
+sake of gloves, are visibly destined for all those uses to which the
+metacarpus, the phalanges of the fingers, and the movements of the
+circular muscle of the wrist, render them applicable by us. Cicero, who
+doubted everything else, had no doubt about final causes.</p>
+
+<p>It appears particularly difficult to suppose that those parts of the
+human frame by which the perpetuation of the species is conducted should
+not, in fact, have been intended and destined for that purpose, from
+their mechanism so truly admirable, and the sensation which nature has
+connected with it more admirable still. Epicurus would be at least
+obliged to admit that pleasure is divine, and that that pleasure is a
+final cause, in consequence of which beings, endowed with sensibility,
+but who could never have communicated it to themselves, have been
+incessantly introduced into the world as others have passed away from
+it.</p>
+
+<p>This philosopher, Epicurus, was a great man for the age in which he
+lived. He saw that Descartes denied what Gassendi affirmed and what
+Newton demonstrated&mdash;that motion cannot exist without a vacuum. He
+conceived the necessity of atoms to serve as constituent parts of
+invariable species. These are philosophical ideas. Nothing, however,
+was more respectable than the morality of genuine Epicureans; it
+consisted in sequestration from public affairs, which are incompatible
+with wisdom, and in friendship, without which life is but a burden. But
+as to the rest of the philosophy of Epicurus, it appears not to be more
+admissible than the grooved or tubular matter of Descartes. It is, as it
+appears to me, wilfully to shut the eyes and the understanding, and to
+maintain that there is no design in nature; and if there is design,
+there is an intelligent cause&mdash;there exists a God.</p>
+
+<p>Some point us to the irregularities of our globe, the volcanoes, the
+plains of moving sand, some small mountains swallowed up in the ocean,
+others raised by earthquakes, etc. But does it follow from the naves of
+your chariot wheel taking fire, that your chariot was not made expressly
+for the purpose of conveying you from one place to another?</p>
+
+<p>The chains of mountains which crown both hemispheres, and more than six
+hundred rivers which flow from the foot of these rocks towards the sea;
+the various streams that swell these rivers in their courses, after
+fertilizing the fields through which they pass; the innumerable
+fountains which spring from the same source, which supply necessary
+refreshment, and growth, and beauty to animal and vegetable life; all
+this appears no more to result from a fortuitous concourse and an
+obliquity of atoms, than the retina which receives the rays of light, or
+the crystalline humor which refracts it, or the drum of the ear which
+admits sound, or the circulation of the blood in our veins, the systole
+and diastole of the heart, the regulating principle of the machine of
+life.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION III.</h5>
+
+<p>It would appear that a man must be supposed to have lost his senses
+before he can deny that stomachs are made for digestion, eyes to see,
+and ears to hear.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, a man must have a singular partiality for final
+causes, to assert that stone was made for building houses, and that
+silkworms are produced in China that we may wear satins in Europe.</p>
+
+<p>But, it is urged, if God has evidently done one thing by design, he has
+then done all things by design. It is ridiculous to admit Providence in
+the one case and to deny it in the others. Everything that is done was
+foreseen, was arranged. There is no arrangement without an object, no
+effect without a cause; all, therefore, is equally the result, the
+product of the final cause; it is, therefore, as correct to say that
+noses were made to bear spectacles, and fingers to be adorned with
+rings, as to say that the ears were formed to hear sounds, the eyes to
+receive light.</p>
+
+<p>All that this objection amounts to, in my opinion, is that everything is
+the result, nearer or more remote, of a general final cause; that
+everything is the consequence of eternal laws. When the effects are
+invariably the same in all times and places, and when these uniform
+effects are independent of the beings to which they attach, then there
+is visibly a final cause.</p>
+
+<p>All animals have eyes and see; all have ears and hear; all have mouths
+with which they eat; stomachs, or something similar, by which they
+digest their food; all have suitable means for expelling the fæces; all
+have the organs requisite for the continuation of their species; and
+these natural gifts perform their regular course and process without any
+application or intermixture of art. Here are final causes clearly
+established; and to deny a truth so universal would be a perversion of
+the faculty of reason.</p>
+
+<p>But stones, in all times and places, do not constitute the materials of
+buildings. All noses do not bear spectacles; all fingers do not carry a
+ring; all legs are not covered with silk stockings. A silkworm,
+therefore, is not made to cover my legs, exactly as your mouth is made
+for eating, and another part of your person for the "garderobe." There
+are, therefore, we see, immediate effects produced from final causes,
+and effects of a very numerous description, which are remote productions
+from those causes.</p>
+
+<p>Everything belonging to nature is uniform, immutable, and the immediate
+work of its author. It is he who has established the laws by which the
+moon contributes three-fourths to the cause of the flux and reflux of
+the ocean, and the sun the remaining fourth. It is he who has given a
+rotatory motion to the sun, in consequence of which that orb
+communicates its rays of light in the short space of seven minutes and a
+half to the eyes of men, crocodiles, and cats.</p>
+
+<p>But if, after a course of ages, we started the inventions of shears and
+spits, to clip the wool of sheep with the one, and with the other to
+roast in order to eat them, what else can be inferred from such
+circumstances, but that God formed us in such a manner that, at some
+time or other, we could not avoid becoming ingenious and carnivorous?</p>
+
+<p>Sheep, undoubtedly, were not made expressly to be roasted and eaten,
+since many nations abstain from such food with horror. Mankind are not
+created essentially to massacre one another, since the Brahmins, and the
+respectable primitives called Quakers, kill no one. But the clay out of
+which we are kneaded frequently produces massacres, as it produces
+calumnies, vanities, persecutions, and impertinences. It is not
+precisely that the formation of man is the final cause of our madnesses
+and follies, for a final cause is universal, and invariable in every age
+and place; but the horrors and absurdities of the human race are not at
+all the less included in the eternal order of things. When we thresh our
+corn, the flail is the final cause of the separation of the grain. But
+if that flail, while threshing my grain, crushes to death a thousand
+insects, that occurs not by an express and determinate act of my will,
+nor, on the other hand, is it by mere chance; the insects were, on this
+occasion, actually under my flail, and could not but be there.</p>
+
+<p>It is a consequence of the nature of things that a man should be
+ambitious; that he should enroll and discipline a number of other men;
+that he should be a conqueror, or that he should be defeated; but it can
+never be said that the man was created by God to be killed in war.</p>
+
+<p>The organs with which nature has supplied us cannot always be final
+causes in action. The eyes which are bestowed for seeing are not
+constantly open. Every sense has its season for repose. There are some
+senses that are even made no use of. An imbecile and wretched female,
+for example, shut up in a cloister at the age of fourteen years, mars
+one of the final causes of her existence; but the cause, nevertheless,
+equally exists, and whenever it is free it will operate.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FINESSE_FINENESS_ETC" id="FINESSE_FINENESS_ETC"></a>FINESSE, FINENESS, ETC.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Of the Different Significations of the Word.</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Fineness either in its proper or its figurative sense does not signify
+either light, slender, fine, or of a rare thin texture; this word
+expresses something delicate and finished. Light cloth, soft linen, thin
+lace, or slender galloon, are not always fine.</p>
+
+<p>This word has a relation to the verb "to finish," whence come the
+finishings of art; thus, we say, the finishings of Vanderwerff's pencil
+or of Mieris; we say, a fine horse, fine gold, a fine diamond. A fine
+horse is opposed to a clumsy one; the fine diamond to a false one; fine
+or refined gold to gold mixed with alloy.</p>
+
+<p>Fineness is generally applied to delicate things and lightness of
+manufacture. Although we say a fine horse, we seldom say, "the fineness
+of a horse." We speak of the fineness of hair, lace, or stuff. When by
+this word we should express the fault or wrong use of anything, we add
+the adverb "too"; as&mdash;This thread is broken, it was too fine; this stuff
+is too fine for the season.</p>
+
+<p>Fineness or finesse, in a figurative sense, applies to conduct, speech,
+and works of mind. In conduct, finesse always expresses, as in the arts,
+something delicate or subtile; it may sometimes exist without ability,
+but it is very rarely unaccompanied by a little deception; politics
+admit it, and society reproves it.</p>
+
+<p>Finesse is not exactly subtlety; we draw a person into a snare with
+finesse; we escape from it with subtlety. We act with finesse, and we
+play a subtle trick. Distrust is inspired by an unsparing use of
+finesse; yet we almost always deceive ourselves if we too generally
+suspect it.</p>
+
+<p>Finesse, in works of wit, as in conversation, consists in the art of not
+expressing a thought clearly, but leaving it so as to be easily
+perceived. It is an enigma to which people of sense readily find the
+solution.</p>
+
+<p>A chancellor one day offering his protection to parliament, the first
+president turning towards the assembly, said: "Gentlemen, thank the
+chancellor; he has given us more than we demanded of him"&mdash;a very witty
+reproof.</p>
+
+<p>Finesse, in conversation and writing, differs from delicacy; the first
+applies equally to piquant and agreeable things, even to blame and
+praise; and still more to indecencies, over which a veil is drawn,
+through which we cannot penetrate without a blush. Bold things may be
+said with finesse.</p>
+
+<p>Delicacy expresses soft and agreeable sentiments and ingenious praise;
+thus finesse belongs more to epigram, and delicacy to madrigal. It is
+delicacy which enters into a lover's jealousies, and not finesse.</p>
+
+<p>The praises given to Louis XIV. by Despréaux are not always equally
+delicate; satires are not always sufficiently ingenious in the way of
+finesse. When Iphigenia, in Racine, has received from her father the
+order never to see Achilles more, she cries: "<i>Dieux plus doux, vous
+n'aviez demandé que ma vie!</i>"&mdash;"More gentle gods, you only ask my life!"
+The true character of this partakes rather of delicacy than of finesse.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FIRE" id="FIRE"></a>FIRE.</h3>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION I.</h5>
+
+<p>Is fire anything more than an element which lights, warms, and burns us?
+Is not light always fire, though fire is not always light? And is not
+Boerhaave in the right?</p>
+
+<p>Is not the purest fire extracted from our combustibles, always gross,
+and partaking of the bodies consumed, and very different from elementary
+fire? How is fire distributed throughout nature, of which it is the
+soul?</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Ignis ubique latet, naturam amplectitur omnem,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Cuncta parit, renovat, dividit, unit, alit.</i></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Why did Newton, in speaking of rays of light, always say, "<i>De natura
+radiorum lucis, utrum corpora sint necne non disputamus</i>"; without
+examining whether they were bodies or not?</p>
+
+<p>Did he only speak geometrically? In that case, this doubt was useless.
+It is evident that he doubted of the nature of elementary fire, and
+doubted with reason.</p>
+
+<p>Is elementary fire a body like others, as earth and water? If it was a
+body of this kind, would it not gravitate like all other matter? Would
+it escape from the luminous body in the right line? Would it have a
+uniform progression? And why does light never move out of a right line
+when it is unimpeded in its rapid course?</p>
+
+<p>May not elementary fire have properties of matter little known to us,
+and properties of substance entirely so? May it not be a medium between
+matter and substances of another kind? And who can say that there are
+not a million of these substances? I do not say that there are, but I
+say it is not proved that there may not be.</p>
+
+<p>It was very difficult to believe about a hundred years ago that bodies
+acted upon one another, not only without touching, and without emission,
+but at great distances; it is, however, found to be true, and is no
+longer doubted. At present, it is difficult to believe that the rays of
+the sun are penetrable by each other, but who knows what may happen to
+prove it?</p>
+
+<p>However that may be, I wish, for the novelty of the thing, that this
+incomprehensible penetrability could be admitted. Light has something so
+divine that we should endeavor to make it a step to the discovery of
+substances still more pure.</p>
+
+<p>Come to my aid, Empedocles and Democritus; come and admire the wonders
+of electricity; see if the sparks which traverse a thousand bodies in
+the twinkling of an eye are of ordinary matter; judge if elementary fire
+does not contract the heart, and communicate that warmth which gives
+life! Judge if this element is not the source of all sensation, and if
+sensation is not the origin of thought; though ignorant and insolent
+pedants have condemned the proposition, as one which should be
+persecuted.</p>
+
+<p>Tell me, if the Supreme Being, who presides over all nature, cannot
+forever preserve these elementary atoms which he has so rarely endowed?
+<i>"Igneus est ollis vigor et cœlestis origo.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>The celebrated Le Cat calls this vivifying fluid "an amphibious being,
+endowed by its author with a superior refinement which links it to
+immaterial beings, and thereby ennobles and elevates it into that medium
+nature which we recognize, and which is the source of all its
+properties."</p>
+
+<p>You are of the opinion of Le Cat? I would be so too if I could; but
+there are so many fools and villains that I dare not. I can only think
+quietly in my own way at Mount Krapak. Let others think as well as they
+are allowed to think, whether at Salamanca or Bergamo.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION II.</h5>
+
+<h4><i>What is Understood by Fire Used Figuratively.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Fire, particularly in poetry, often signifies love, and is employed more
+elegantly in the plural than in the singular. Corneille often says "<i>un
+beau feu</i>" for a virtuous and noble love. A man has fire in his
+conversation; that does not mean that he has brilliant and enlightened
+ideas, but lively expressions animated by action.</p>
+
+<p>Fire in writing does not necessarily imply lightness and beauty, but
+vivacity, multiplied figures, and spontaneous ideas. Fire is a merit in
+speech and writing only when it is well managed. It is said that poets
+are animated with a divine fire when they are sublime; genius cannot
+exist without fire, but fire may be possessed without genius.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FIRMNESS" id="FIRMNESS"></a>FIRMNESS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Firmness comes from firm, and has a different signification from
+solidity and hardness; a squeezed cloth, a beaten negro, have firmness
+without being hard or solid.</p>
+
+<p>It must always be remembered that modifications of the soul can only be
+expressed by physical images; we say firmness of soul, and of mind,
+which does not signify that they are harder or more solid than usual.</p>
+
+<p>Firmness is the exercise of mental courage; it means a decided
+resolution; while obstinacy, on the contrary, signifies blindness. Those
+who praise the firmness of Tacitus are not so much in the wrong as P.
+Bouhours pretends; it is an accidental ill-chosen term, which expresses
+energy and strength of thought and of style. It may be said that La
+Bruyère has a firm style, and that many other writers have only a hard
+one.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FLATTERY" id="FLATTERY"></a>FLATTERY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>I find not one monument of flattery in remote antiquity; there is no
+flattery in Hesiod&mdash;none in Homer. Their stories are not addressed to a
+Greek, elevated to some dignity, nor to his lady; as each canto of
+Thomson's "Seasons" is dedicated to some person of rank, or as so many
+forgotten epistles in verse have been dedicated, in England, to
+gentlemen or ladies of quality, with a brief eulogy, and the arms of
+the patron or patroness placed at the head of the work.</p>
+
+<p>Nor is there any flattery in Demosthenes. This way of asking alms
+harmoniously began, if I mistake not, with Pindar. No hand can be
+stretched out more emphatically.</p>
+
+<p>It appears to me that among the Romans great flattery is to be dated
+from the time of Augustus. Julius Cæsar had scarcely time to be
+flattered. There is not, extant, any dedicatory epistle to Sulla,
+Marius, or Carbo, nor to their wives, or their mistresses. I can well
+believe that very bad verses were presented to Lucullus and Pompey; but,
+thank God, we do not have them.</p>
+
+<p>It is a great spectacle to behold Cicero equal in dignity to Cæsar,
+speaking before him as advocate for a king of Bithynia and Lesser
+Armenia, named Deiotarus, accused of laying ambuscades for him, and even
+designing to assassinate him. Cicero begins with acknowledging that he
+is disconcerted in his presence. He calls him the vanquisher of the
+world&mdash;"<i>victorem orbis terrarum</i>." He flatters him; but this adulation
+does not yet amount to baseness; some sense of shame still remains.</p>
+
+<p>But with Augustus there are no longer any bounds; the senate decrees his
+apotheosis during his lifetime. Under the succeeding emperors this
+flattery becomes the ordinary tribute, and is no longer anything more
+than a style. It is impossible to flatter any one, when the most
+extravagant adulation has become the ordinary currency.</p>
+
+<p>In Europe, we have had no great monuments of flattery before Louis XIV.
+His father, Louis XIII., had very little incense offered him. We find no
+mention of him, except in one or two of Malherbe's odes. There, indeed,
+according to custom, he is called "thou greatest of kings"&mdash;as the
+Spanish poets say to the king of Spain, and the English poets (laureate)
+to the king of England; but the better part of the poet's praises is
+bestowed on Cardinal Richelieu, whose soul is great and fearless; who
+practises so well the healing art of government, and who knows how to
+cure all our evils:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Dont l'âme toute grande est une âme hardîe,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Qui pratique si bien l'art de nous secourir,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Que, pourvu qu'il soit cru, nous n'avons maladie,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Qu'il ne sache guérir.</i></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Upon Louis XIV. flattery came in a deluge. But he was not like the man
+said to have been smothered by the rose leaves heaped upon him; on the
+contrary, he thrived the more.</p>
+
+<p>Flattery, when it has some plausible pretext, may not be so pernicious
+as it has been thought; it sometimes encourages to great acts; but its
+excess is vicious, like the excess of satire. La Fontaine says, and
+pretends to say it after Æsop:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>On ne peut trop louer trois sortes de personnes;</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Les dieux, sa maitresse, et son roi.</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Æsope le disait; j'y souscris quant à moi;</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Ces sont maximes toujours bonnes.</i></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Your flattery to three sorts of folks apply:&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">You cannot say too civil things</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To gods, to mistresses, and kings;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">So honest Æsop said&mdash;and so say I.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Honest Æsop said no such thing; nor do we find that he flattered any
+king, or any concubine. It must not be thought that kings are in reality
+flattered by all the flatteries that are heaped upon them; for the
+greater number never reach them.</p>
+
+<p>One common folly of orators is that of exhausting themselves in praising
+some prince who will never hear of their praises. But what is most
+lamentable of all is that Ovid should have praised Augustus even while
+he was dating "<i>de Ponto</i>."</p>
+
+<p>The perfection of the ridiculous might be found in the compliments which
+preachers address to kings, when they have the happiness of exhibiting
+before their majesties.&mdash;"To the reverend Father Gaillard, preacher to
+the king." Ah! most reverend father, do you preach only for the king?
+Are you like the monkey at the fair, which leaps "only for the king?"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FORCE_PHYSICAL" id="FORCE_PHYSICAL"></a>FORCE (PHYSICAL).</h3>
+
+
+<p>What is "force?" Where does it reside? Whence does it come? Does it
+perish? Or is it ever the same?</p>
+
+<p>It has pleased us to denominate "force" that weight which one body
+exercises upon another. Here is a ball of two hundred pounds' weight on
+this floor; it presses the floor, you say, with a force of two hundred
+pounds. And this you call a "dead force." But are not these words
+"dead" and "force" a little contradictory? Might we not as well say
+"dead alive"&mdash;yes and no at once?</p>
+
+<p>This ball "weighs." Whence comes this "weight?" and is this weight a
+"force?" If the ball were not impeded, would it go directly to the
+centre of the earth? Whence has it this incomprehensible property?</p>
+
+<p>It is supported by my floor; and you freely give to my floor the "<i>vis
+inertiæ</i>"&mdash;"inertiæ" signifying "inactivity," "impotence." Now is it not
+singular that "impotence" should be denominated "force?"</p>
+
+<p>What is the living force which acts in your arm and your leg? What is
+the source of it? How can it be supposed that this force exists when you
+are dead? Does it go and take up its abode elsewhere, as a man goes to
+another house when his own is in ruins?</p>
+
+<p>How can it have been said that there is always the same force in nature?
+There must, then, have been always the same number of men, or of active
+beings equivalent to men. Why does a body in motion communicate its
+force to another body with which it comes in contact?</p>
+
+<p>These are questions which neither geometry, nor mechanics, nor
+metaphysics can answer. Would you arrive at the first principle of the
+force of bodies, and of motion, you must ascend to a still superior
+principle. Why is there "anything?"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FORCE_STRENGTH" id="FORCE_STRENGTH"></a>FORCE&mdash;STRENGTH.</h3>
+
+
+<p>These words have been transplanted from simple to figurative speech.
+They are applied to all the parts of the body that are in motion, in
+action&mdash;the force of the heart, which some have made four hundred
+pounds, and some three ounces; the force of the viscera, the lungs, the
+voice; the force of the arm.</p>
+
+<p>The metaphor which has transported these words into morals has made them
+express a cardinal virtue. Strength, in this sense, is the courage to
+support adversity, and to undertake virtuous and difficult actions; it
+is the "<i>animi fortitudo</i>."</p>
+
+<p>The strength of the mind is penetration and depth&mdash;"<i>ingenii vis</i>."
+Nature gives it as she gives that of the body; moderate labor increases
+and excessive labor diminishes it.</p>
+
+<p>The force of an argument consists in a clear exposition of
+clearly-exhibited proofs, and a just conclusion; with mathematical
+theorems it has nothing to do; because the evidence of a demonstration
+can be made neither more nor less; only it may be arrived at by a longer
+or a shorter path&mdash;a simpler or more complicated method. It is in
+doubtful questions that the force of reasoning is truly applicable.</p>
+
+<p>The force of eloquence is not merely a train of just and vigorous
+reasoning, which is not incompatible with dryness; this force, requires
+floridity, striking images, and energetic expressions. Thus it has been
+said, that the sermons of Bourdaloue have force, those of Massillon
+more elegance. Verses may have strength, and want every other beauty.
+The strength of a line in our language consists principally in saying
+something in each hemistich.</p>
+
+<p>Strength in painting is the expression of the muscles, which, by feeling
+touches, are made to appear under the flesh that covers them. There is
+too much strength when the muscles are too strongly articulated. The
+attitudes of the combatants have great strength in the battles of
+Constantine, drawn by Raphael and Julio Romano; and in those of Cæsar,
+painted by Lebrun. Inordinate strength is harsh in painting and
+bombastic in poetry.</p>
+
+<p>Some philosophers have asserted that force is a property inherent in
+matter; that each invisible particle, or rather <i>monad</i>, is endowed with
+an active force; but it would be as difficult to demonstrate this
+assertion as it would be to prove that whiteness is a quality inherent
+in matter, as the Trévoux dictionary says in the article "Inherent."</p>
+
+<p>The strength of every animal has arrived at the highest when the animal
+has attained its full growth. It decreases when the muscles no longer
+receive the same quantity of nourishment: and this quantity ceases to be
+the same when the animal spirits no longer communicate to the muscles
+their accustomed motion. It is probable that the animal spirits are of
+fire, inasmuch as old men want motion and strength in proportion as they
+want warmth.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FRANCHISE" id="FRANCHISE"></a>FRANCHISE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>A word which always gives an idea of liberty in whatever sense it is
+taken; a word derived from the Franks, who were always free. It is so
+ancient, that when the Cid besieged and took Toledo, in the eleventh
+century, franchies or franchises were given to all the French who went
+on this expedition, and who established themselves at Toledo. All walled
+cities had franchises, liberties, and privileges, even in the greatest
+anarchy of feudal power. In all countries possessing assemblies or
+states, the sovereign swore, on his accession, to guard their liberties.</p>
+
+<p>This name, which has been given generally to the rights of the people,
+to immunities, and to sanctuaries or asylums, has been more particularly
+applied to the quarters of the ambassadors of the court of Rome. It was
+a plot of ground around their palaces, which was larger or smaller
+according to the will of the ambassador. The ground was an asylum for
+criminals, who could not be there pursued. This franchise was
+restricted, under Innocent XI. to the inside of their palaces. Churches
+and convents had the same privileges in Italy, but not in other states.
+There are in Paris several places of sanctuary, in which debtors cannot
+be seized for their debts by common justice, and where mechanics can
+pursue their trades without being freemen. Mechanics have this privilege
+in the Faubourg St. Antoine, but it is not an asylum like the Temple.</p>
+
+<p>The word "franchise," which usually expresses the liberties of a nation,
+city, or person, is sometimes used to signify liberty of speech, of
+counsel, or of a law proceeding; but there is a great difference between
+speaking with frankness and speaking with liberty. In a speech to a
+superior, liberty is a studied or excessive boldness&mdash;frankness
+outstepping its just bounds. To speak with liberty is to speak without
+fear; to speak with frankness is to conduct yourself openly and nobly.
+To speak with too much liberty is to become audacious; to speak with too
+much frankness is to be too open-hearted.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FRANCIS_XAVIER" id="FRANCIS_XAVIER"></a>FRANCIS XAVIER.</h3>
+
+
+<p>It would not be amiss to know something true concerning the celebrated
+Francis Xavero, whom we call Xavier, surnamed the Apostle of the Indies.
+Many people still imagine that he established Christianty along the
+whole southern coast of India, in a score of islands, and above all in
+Japan. But thirty years ago, even a doubt on the subject was hardly to
+be tolerated in Europe. The Jesuits have not hesitated to compare him to
+St. Paul. His travels and miracles had been written in part by
+Tursellinus and Orlandini, by Levena, and by Partoli, all Jesuits, but
+very little known in France; and the less people were acquainted with
+the details the greater was his reputation.</p>
+
+<p>When the Jesuit Bouhours composed his history, he (Bouhours) was
+considered as a man of very enlightened mind, and was living in the best
+company in Paris; I do not mean the company of Jesus, but that of men of
+the world the most distinguished for intellect and knowledge. No one
+wrote in a purer or more unaffected style; it was even proposed in the
+French Academy that it should trespass against the rules of its
+institution, by receiving Father Bouhours into its body. He had another
+great advantage in the influence of his order, which then, by an almost
+inconceivable illusion, governed all Catholic princes.</p>
+
+<p>Sound criticism was, it is true, beginning to rear its head; but its
+progress was slow: men were, in general, more anxious to write ably than
+to write what was true.</p>
+
+<p>Bouhours wrote the lives of St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier almost
+without encountering a single objection. Even his comparison of St.
+Ignatius to Cæsar, and Xavier to Alexander, passed without
+animadversion; it was tolerated as a flower of rhetoric.</p>
+
+<p>I have seen in the Jesuit's college, Rue St. Jacques, a picture twelve
+feet long and twelve high, representing Ignatius and Xavier ascending to
+heaven, each in a magnificent chariot drawn by four milk-white horses;
+and above, the Eternal Father, adorned with a fine white beard
+descending to His waist, with Jesus and the Virgin beside him; the Holy
+Ghost beneath them, in the form of a dove; and angels joining their
+hands, and bending down to receive Father Ignatius and Father Xavier.</p>
+
+<p>Had anyone publicly made a jest of this picture, the reverend Father La
+Chaise, confessor to the king, would infallibly have had the
+sacrilegious scoffer honored with a <i>lettre de cachet</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It cannot be denied that Francis Xavier is comparable to Alexander,
+inasmuch as they both went to India&mdash;so is Ignatius to Cæsar, both
+having been in Gaul. But Xavier, the vanquisher of the devil, went far
+beyond Alexander, the conqueror of Darius. How gratifying it is to see
+him going, in the capacity of a volunteer converter, from Spain into
+France, from France to Rome, from Rome to Lisbon, and from Lisbon to
+Mozambique, after making the tour of Africa. He stays a long time at
+Mozambique, where he receives from God the gift of prophecy: he then
+proceeds to Melinda, where he disputes on the Koran with the Mahometans,
+who doubtless understand his religion as well as he understands theirs,
+and where he even finds caciques, although they are to be found nowhere
+but in America. The Portuguese vessel arrives at the island of Zocotora,
+which is unquestionably that of the Amazons: there he converts all the
+islanders, and builds a church. Thence he reaches Goa, where he finds a
+pillar on which St. Thomas had engraved, that one day St. Xavier should
+come and re-establish the Christian religion, which had flourished of
+old in India. Xavier has no difficulty whatever in perusing the ancient
+characters, whether Indian or Hebrew, in which this prophecy is
+expressed. He forthwith takes up a hand-bell, assembles all the little
+boys around him, explains to them the creed, and baptizes them&mdash;but his
+great delight was to marry the Indians to their mistresses.</p>
+
+<p>From Goa he speeds to Cape Comorin, to the fishing coast, to the kingdom
+of Travancore. His greatest anxiety, on arriving in any country, is to
+quit it. He embarks in the first Portuguese ship he finds, whithersoever
+it is bound, it matters not to Xavier; provided only that he is
+travelling somewhere, he is content. He is received through charity, and
+returns two or three times to Goa, to Cochin, to Cori, to Negapatam, to
+Meliapour. A vessel is departing for Malacca, and Xavier accordingly
+takes his passage for Malacca, in great despair that he has not yet had
+an opportunity of seeing Siam, Pegu, and Tonquin. We find him in the
+island of Sumatra, at Borneo, at Macassar, in the Moluccas, and
+especially at Ternate and Amboyna. The king of Ternate had, in his
+immense seraglio, a hundred women in the capacity of wives, and seven or
+eight hundred in that of concubines. The first thing Xavier does is to
+turn them all out. Please to observe that the island of Ternate is two
+leagues across.</p>
+
+<p>Thence finding another Portugese vessel bound for Ceylon, he returns to
+Ceylon, where he makes various excursions to Goa and to Cochin. The
+Portuguese were already trading to Japan. A ship sails for that country:
+Xavier takes care to embark in it, and visits all the Japan islands. In
+short (says the Jesuit Bouhours), the whole length of Xavier's routes,
+joined together, would reach several times around the globe.</p>
+
+<p>Be it observed, that he set out on his travels in 1542, and died in
+1552. If he had time to learn the languages of all the nations he
+visited, it was no trifling miracle: if he had the gift of tongues, it
+was a greater miracle still. But unfortunately, in several of his
+letters, he says that he is obliged to employ an interpreter; and in
+others he acknowledges that he finds extreme difficulty in learning the
+Japanese language, which he cannot pronounce.</p>
+
+<p>The Jesuit Bouhours, in giving some of his letters, has no doubt that
+"St. Francis Xavier had the gift of tongues"; but he acknowledges that
+"he had it not always." "He had it," says he, "on several occasions;
+for, without having learned the Chinese tongue, he preached to the
+Chinese every morning at Amanguchi, which is the capital of a province
+in Japan."</p>
+
+<p>He must have been perfectly acquainted with all the languages of the
+East; for he made songs in them of the Paternoster, Ave-Maria, and
+Credo, for the instruction of the little boys and girls.</p>
+
+<p>But the best of all is, that this man, who had occasion for a dragoman,
+spoke every tongue at once, like the apostles; and when he spoke
+Portuguese, in which language Bouhours acknowledges that the saint
+explained himself very ill, the Indians, the Chinese, the Japanese, the
+inhabitants of Ceylon and of Sumatra, all understood him perfectly.</p>
+
+<p>One day in particular, when he was preaching on the immateriality of the
+soul, the motion of the planets, the eclipses of the sun and moon, the
+rainbow, sin and grace, paradise and purgatory, he made himself
+understood to twenty persons of different nations.</p>
+
+<p>Is it asked how such a man could make so many converts in Japan? The
+simple answer is that he did not make any; but other Jesuits, who staid
+a long time in the country, by favor of the treaties between the kings
+of Portugal and the emperors of Japan, converted so many people, that a
+civil war ensued, which is said to have cost the lives of nearly four
+hundred thousand men. This is the most noted prodigy that the
+missionaries have worked in Japan.</p>
+
+<p>But those of Francis Xavier are not without their merit. Among his host
+of miracles, we find no fewer than eight children raised from the dead.
+"Xavier's greatest miracle," says the Jesuit Bouhours, "was not his
+raising so many of the dead to life, but his not himself dying of
+fatigue."</p>
+
+<p>But the pleasantest of his miracles is, that having dropped his crucifix
+into the sea, near the island of Baranura, which I am inclined to think
+was the island of Barataria, a crab came, four-and-twenty hours after,
+bringing the cane between its claws.</p>
+
+<p>The most brilliant of all, and after which no other deserves to be
+related, is that in a storm which lasted three days, he was constantly
+in two ships, a hundred and fifty leagues apart, and served one of them
+as a pilot. The truth of this miracle was attested by all the
+passengers, who could neither deceive nor be deceived.</p>
+
+<p>Yet all this was written seriously and with success in the age of Louis
+XIV., in the age of the "Provincial Letters," of Racine's tragedies, of
+"Bayle's Dictionary," and of so many other learned works.</p>
+
+<p>It would appear to be a sort of miracle that a man of sense, like
+Bouhours, should have committed such a mass of extravagance to the
+press, if we did not know to what excesses men can be carried by the
+corporate spirit in general, and the monachal spirit in particular. We
+have more than two hundred volumes entirely in this taste, compiled by
+monks; but what is most to be lamented is, that the enemies of the monks
+also compile. They compile more agreeably, and are read. It is most
+deplorable that, in nineteen-twentieths of Europe, there is no longer
+that profound respect and just veneration for the monks which is still
+felt for them in some of the villages of Aragon and Calabria.</p>
+
+<p>The miracles of St. Francis Xavier, the achievements of Don Quixote,
+the Comic Romance, and the convulsionaries of St. Medard, have an equal
+claim on our admiration and reverence.</p>
+
+<p>After speaking of Francis Xavier it would be useless to discuss the
+history of the other Francises. If you would be instructed thoroughly,
+consult the conformities of St. Francis of Assisi.</p>
+
+<p>Since the fine history of St. Francis Xavier by the Jesuit Bouhours, we
+have had the history of St. Francis Régis by the Jesuit Daubenton,
+confessor to Philip V. of Spain: but this is small-beer after brandy. In
+the history of the blessed Régis, there is not even a single
+resuscitation.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FRANKS_FRANCEmdashFRENCH" id="FRANKS_FRANCEmdashFRENCH"></a>FRANKS&mdash;FRANCE&mdash;FRENCH</h3>
+
+
+<p>Italy has always preserved its name, notwithstanding the pretended
+establishment of Æneas, which should have left some traces of the
+language, characters, and manners of Phrygia, if he ever came with
+Achates and so many others, into the province of Rome, then almost a
+desert. The Goths, Lombards, Franks, Allemani or Germans, who have by
+turns invaded Italy, have at least left it its name.</p>
+
+<p>The Tyrians, Africans, Romans, Vandals, Visigoths, and Saracens, have,
+one after the other, been masters of Spain, yet the name of Spain
+exists. Germany has also always preserved its own name; it has merely
+joined that of Allemagne to it, which appellation it did not receive
+from any conqueror.</p>
+
+<p>The Gauls are almost the only people in the west who have lost their
+name. This name was originally Walch or Welsh; the Romans always
+substituted a G for the W, which is barbarous: of "Welsh" they made
+Galli, Gallia. They distinguished the Celtic, the Belgic, and the
+Aquitanic Gaul, each of which spoke a different jargon.</p>
+
+<p>Who were, and whence came these Franks, who in such small numbers and
+little time possessed themselves of all the Gauls, which in ten years
+Cæsar could not entirely reduce? I am reading an author who commences by
+these words: "The Franks from whom we descend." ... Ha! my friend, who
+has told you that you descend in a right line from a Frank? Clovodic,
+whom we call Clovis, probably had not more than twenty thousand men,
+badly clothed and armed, when he subjugated about eight or ten millions
+of Welsh or Gauls, held in servitude by three or four Roman legions. We
+have not a single family in France which can furnish, I do not say the
+least proof, but the least probability, that it had its origin from a
+Frank.</p>
+
+<p>When the pirates of the Baltic Sea came, to the number of seven or eight
+thousand, to give Normandy in fief, and Brittany in <i>arrière fief</i>, did
+they, leave any archives by which it may be seen whether they were the
+fathers of all the Normans of the present day?</p>
+
+<p>It has been a long time believed that the Franks came from the Trojans.
+Ammianus Marcellinus, who lived in the fourth century, says: "According
+to several ancient writers, troops of fugitive Trojans established
+themselves on the borders of the Rhine, then a desert." As to Æneas, he
+might easily have sought an asylum at the extremity of the
+Mediterranean, but Francus, the son of Hector, had too far to travel to
+go towards Düsseldorf, Worms, Solm, Ehrenbreitstein.</p>
+
+<p>Fredegarius doubts not that the Franks at first retired into Macedonia,
+and carried arms under Alexander, after having fought under Priam; on
+which alleged facts the monk Otfried compliments the emperor, Louis the
+German.</p>
+
+<p>The geographer of Ravenna, less fabulous, assigns the first habitation
+of the horde of Franks among the Cimbrians, beyond the Elbe, towards the
+Baltic Sea. These Franks might well be some remains of these barbarian
+Cimbri defeated by Marius; and the learned Leibnitz is of this opinion.</p>
+
+<p>It is very certain that, in the time of Constantine, beyond the Rhine,
+there were hordes of Franks or Sicambri, who lived by pillage. They
+assembled under bandit captains, chiefs whom historians have had the
+folly to call kings. Constantine himself pursued them to their haunts,
+caused several to be hanged, and others to be delivered to wild beasts,
+in the amphitheatre of Trier, for his amusement. Two of their pretended
+kings perished in this manner, at which the panegyrists of Constantine
+are in ecstasies.</p>
+
+<p>The Salic law, written, it is said, by these barbarians, is one of the
+absurd chimeras with which we have always been pestered. It would be
+very strange if the Franks had written such a considerable code in their
+marshes, and the French had not any written usages until the close of
+the reign of Charles VII. It might as well be said that the Algonquins
+and Chicachas had written laws. Men are never governed by authentic
+laws, consigned to public records, until they have been assembled into
+cities, and have a regular police, archives, and all that characterizes
+a civilized nation. When you find a code in a nation which was barbarous
+at the time it was written, who lived upon rapine and pillage, and which
+had not a walled town, you may be sure that this code is a pretended
+one, which has been made in much later times. Fallacies and suppositions
+never obliterate this truth from the minds of the wise.</p>
+
+<p>What is more ridiculous still, this Salic law has been given to us in
+Latin; as if savages, wandering beyond the Rhine, had learnt the Latin
+language. It is supposed to have been first digested by Clovis, and it
+ran thus: "While the illustrious nation of the Franks was still
+considered barbarous, the heads of this nation dictated the Salic law.
+They chose among themselves four chiefs, Visogast, Bodogast, Sologast,
+Vindogast"&mdash;taking, according to La Fontaine's fable, the names of
+places for those of men:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Notre magot prit pour ce coup</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Le nom d'un port pour un nom d'homme.</i></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>These names are those of some Frank cantons in the province of Worms.
+Whatever may be the epoch in which the customs denominated the Salic law
+were constructed on an ancient tradition, it is very clear that the
+Franks were not great legislators.</p>
+
+<p>What is the original meaning of the word "Frank?" That is a question of
+which we know nothing, and which above a hundred authors have endeavored
+to find out. What is the meaning of Hun, Alan, Goth, Welsh, Picard? And
+what do these words signify?</p>
+
+<p>Were the armies of Clovis all composed of Franks? It does not appear so.
+Childeric the Frank had made inroads as far as Tournay. It is said that
+Clovis was the son of Childeric, and Queen Bazine, the wife of King
+Bazin. Now Bazin and Bazine are assuredly not German names, and we have
+never seen the least proof that Clovis was their son. All the German
+cantons elected their chiefs, and the province of Franks had no doubt
+elected Clovis as they had done his father. He made his expedition
+against the Gauls, as all the other barbarians had undertaken theirs
+against the Roman Empire.</p>
+
+<p>Do you really and truly believe that the Herulian Odo, surnamed Acer by
+the Romans, and known to us by the name of Odoacer, had only Herulians
+in his train, and that Genseric conducted Vandals alone into Africa? All
+the wretches without talent or profession, who have nothing to lose, do
+they not always join the first captain of robbers who raises the
+standard of destruction?</p>
+
+<p>As soon as Clovis had the least success, his troops were no doubt joined
+by all the Belgians who panted for booty; and this army is nevertheless
+called the army of Franks. The expedition is very easy. The Visigoths
+had already invaded one-third of Gaul, and the Burgundians another. The
+rest submitted to Clovis. The Franks divided the land of the vanquished,
+and the Welsh cultivated it.</p>
+
+<p>The word "Frank" originally signified a free possessor, while the others
+were slaves. Hence come the words "franchise," and "to enfranchise"&mdash;"I
+make you a Frank," "I render you a free man." Hence, <i>francalenus</i>,
+holding freely; <i>frank aleu</i>, <i>frank dad</i>, <i>frank chamen</i>, and so many
+other terms half Latin and half barbarian, which have so long composed
+the miserable patois spoken in France.</p>
+
+<p>Hence, also, a franc in gold or silver to express the money of the king
+of the Franks, which did not appear until a long time after, but which
+reminds us of the origin of the monarchy. We still say twenty francs,
+twenty livres, which signifies nothing in itself; it gives no idea of
+the weight or value of the money, being only a vague expression, by
+which ignorant people have been continually deceived, not knowing really
+how much they receive or how much they pay.</p>
+
+<p>Charlemagne did not consider himself as a Frank; he was born in
+Austrasia, and spoke the German language. He was of the family of
+Arnold, bishop of Metz, preceptor to Dagobert. Now it is not probable
+that a man chosen for a preceptor was a Frank. He made the greatest
+glory of the most profound ignorance, and was acquainted only with the
+profession of arms. But what gives most weight to the opinion that
+Charlemagne regarded the Franks as strangers to him is the fourth
+article of one of his capitularies on his farms. "If the Franks," said
+he, "commit any ravages on our possessions, let them be judged according
+to their laws."</p>
+
+<p>The Carlovingian race always passed for German: Pope Adrian IV., in his
+letter to the archbishops of Mentz, Cologne, and Trier, expresses
+himself in these remarkable terms: "The emperor was transferred from the
+Greeks to the Germans. Their king was not emperor until after he had
+been crowned by the pope.... all that the emperor possessed he held from
+us. And as Zacharius gave the Greek Empire to the Germans, we can give
+that of the Germans to the Greeks."</p>
+
+<p>However, France having been divided into eastern and western, and the
+eastern being Austrasia, this name of France prevailed so far, that even
+in the time of the Saxon emperors, the court of Constantinople always
+called them pretended Frank emperors, as may be seen in the letters of
+Bishop Luitgrand, sent from Rome to Constantinople.</p>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>Of the French Nation.</i></p>
+
+<p>When the Franks established themselves in the country of the first
+Welsh, which the Romans called Gallia, the nation was composed of
+ancient Celts or Gauls, subjugated by Cæsar, Roman families who were
+established there, Germans who had already emigrated there, and finally
+of the Franks, who had rendered themselves masters of the country under
+their chief Clovis. While the monarchy existed, which united Gaul and
+Germany, all the people, from the source of the Weser to the seas of
+Gaul, bore the name of Franks. But when at the congress of Verdun, in
+843, under Charles the Bald, Germany and Gaul were separated, the name
+of Franks remained to the people of western France, which alone retained
+the name of France.</p>
+
+<p>The name of French was scarcely known until towards the tenth century.
+The foundation of the nation is of Gallic families, and traces of the
+character of the ancient Gauls have always existed.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, every people has its character, as well as every man; and this
+character is generally formed of all the resemblances caused by nature
+and custom among the inhabitants of the varieties which distinguish
+them. Thus French character, genius, and wit, result from that which has
+been common to the different provinces in the kingdom. The people of
+Guienne and those of Normandy differ much; there is, however, found in
+them the French genius, which forms a nation of these different
+provinces, and distinguishes them from the Indians and Germans. Climate
+and soil evidently imprint unchangeable marks on men, as well as on
+animals and plants. Those which depend on government, religion, and
+education are different. That is the knot which explains how people have
+lost one part of their ancient character and preserved the other. A
+people who formerly conquered half the world are no longer recognized
+under sacerdotal government, but the seeds of their ancient greatness of
+soul still exist, though hidden beneath weakness.</p>
+
+<p>In the same manner the barbarous government of the Turks has enervated
+the Egyptians and the Greeks, without having been able to destroy the
+original character or temper of their minds.</p>
+
+<p>The present character of the French is the same as Cæsar ascribed to the
+Gauls&mdash;prompt to resolve, ardent to combat, impetuous in attack, and
+easily discouraged. Cæsar, Agatius, and others say, that of all the
+barbarians the Gauls were the most polished. They are still in the most
+civilized times the model of politeness to all their neighbors, though
+they occasionally discover the remains of their levity, petulance, and
+barbarity.</p>
+
+<p>The inhabitants of the coasts of France were always good seamen; the
+people of Guienne always compose the best infantry; "those who inhabit
+the provinces of Blois and Tours are not," says Tasso, "robust and
+indefatigable, but bland and gentle, like the land which they inhabit."</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>.... Gente robusta, e faticosa,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>La terra molle, e lieta, e dilettosa</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Simili a se gli abitator, produce.</i></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>But how can we reconcile the character of the Parisians of our day with
+that which the Emperor Julian, the first of princes and men after Marcus
+Aurelius, gave to the Parisians of his time?&mdash;"I love this people," says
+he in his "<i>Misopogon</i>," "because they are serious and severe like
+myself." This seriousness, which seems at present banished from an
+immense city become the centre of pleasure, then reigned in a little
+town destitute of amusements: in this respect the spirit of the
+Parisians has changed notwithstanding the climate.</p>
+
+<p>The affluence, opulence, and idleness of the people who may occupy
+themselves with pleasures and the arts, and not with the government,
+have given a new turn of mind to a whole nation.</p>
+
+<p>Further, how is it to be explained by what degrees this people have
+passed from the fierceness which characterized them in the time of King
+John, Charles VI., Charles IX., Henry III., and Henry IV., to the soft
+facility of manners for which they are now the admiration of Europe? It
+is that the storms of government and religion forced constitutional
+vivacity into paroxysms of faction and fanaticism; and that this same
+vivacity, which always will exist, has at present no object but the
+pleasures of society. The Parisian is impetuous in his pleasures as he
+formerly was in his fierceness. The original character which is caused
+by the climate is always the same. If at present he cultivates the
+arts, of which he was so long deprived, it is not that he has another
+mind, since he has not other organs; but it is that he has more relief,
+and this relief has not been created by himself, as by the Greeks and
+Florentines, among whom the arts flourished like the natural fruits of
+their soil. The Frenchman has only received them, but having happily
+cultivated and adopted these exotics, he has almost perfected them.</p>
+
+<p>The French government was originally that of all the northern
+nations&mdash;of all those whose policy was regulated in general assemblies
+of the nation. Kings were the chief of these assemblies; and this was
+almost the only administration of the French in the first two
+generations, before Charles the Simple.</p>
+
+<p>When the monarchy was dismembered, in the decline of the Carlovingian
+race, when the kingdom of Aries arose, and the provinces were occupied
+by vassals little dependent on the crown, the name of French was more
+restricted. Under Hugh Capet, Henry, and Philip, the people on this side
+the Loire only, were called French. There was then seen a great
+diversity of manners and of laws in the provinces held from the crown of
+France. The particular lords who became the masters of these provinces
+introduced new customs into their new states. A Breton and a Fleming
+have at present some conformity, notwithstanding the difference of
+their character, which they hold from the sun and the climate, but
+originally there was not the least similitude between them.</p>
+
+<p>It is only since the time of Francis I. that there has been any
+uniformity in manners and customs. The court, at this time, first began
+to serve for a model to the United Provinces; but in general,
+impetuosity in war, and a lax discipline, always formed the predominant
+character of the nation.</p>
+
+<p>Gallantry and politeness began to distinguish the French under Francis
+I. Manners became odious after the death of Francis II. However, in the
+midst of their horrors, there was always a politeness at court which the
+Germans and English endeavored to imitate. The rest of Europe, in aiming
+to resemble the French, were already jealous of them. A character in one
+of Shakespeare's comedies says that it is difficult to be polite without
+having been at the court of France.</p>
+
+<p>Though the nation has been taxed with frivolity by Cæsar, and by all
+neighboring nations, yet this kingdom, so long dismembered, and so often
+ready to sink, is united and sustained principally by the wisdom of its
+negotiations, address, and patience; but above all, by the divisions of
+Germany and England. Brittany alone has been united to the kingdom by a
+marriage; Burgundy by right of fee, and by the ability of Louis XI.;
+Dauphiny by a donation, which was the fruit of policy; the county of
+Toulouse by a grant, maintained by an army; Provence by money. One
+treaty of peace has given Alsace, another Lorraine. The English have
+been driven from France, notwithstanding the most signal victories,
+because the kings of France have known how to temporize, and profit on
+all favorable occasions;&mdash;all which proves, that if the French youth are
+frivolous, the men of riper age, who govern it, have always been wise.
+Even at present the magistracy are severe in manners, as in the time of
+the Emperor Julian. If the first successes in Italy, in the time of
+Charles VIII., were owing to the warlike impetuosity of the nation, the
+disgraces which followed them were caused by the blindness of a court
+which was composed of young men alone. Francis I. was only unfortunate
+in his youth, when all was governed by favorites of his own age, and he
+rendered his kingdom more flourishing at a more advanced age.</p>
+
+<p>The French have always used the same arms as their neighbors, and have
+nearly the same discipline in war, but were the first who discarded the
+lance and pike. The battle of Ivry discouraged the use of lances, which
+were soon abolished, and under Louis XIV. pikes were also discontinued.
+They wore tunics and robes until the sixteenth century. Under Louis the
+Young they left off the custom of letting the beards grow, and retook to
+it under Francis I. Only under Louis XIV. did they begin to shave the
+entire face. Their dress is continually changing, and at the end of each
+century the French might take the portraits of their grandfathers for
+those of foreigners.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FRAUD" id="FRAUD"></a>FRAUD.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Whether pious Frauds should be practised upon the People.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Once upon a time the fakir Bambabef met one of the disciples of
+Confutzee (whom we call Confucius), and this disciple was named Whang.
+Bambabef maintained that the people require to be deceived, and Whang
+asserted that we should never deceive any one. Here is a sketch of their
+dispute:</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">BAMBABEF</span>.&mdash;We must imitate the Supreme Being, who does not show us
+things as they are. He makes us see the sun with a diameter of two or
+three feet, although it is a million of times larger than the earth. He
+makes us see the moon and the stars affixed to one and the same blue
+surface, while they are at different elevations; he chooses that a
+square tower should appear round to us at a distance; he chooses that
+fire should appear to us to be hot, although it is neither hot nor cold;
+in short, he surrounds us with errors, suitable to our nature.</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">WHANG</span>.&mdash;What you call error is not so. The sun, such as it is, placed at
+millions of millions of lis from our globe, is not that which we see,
+that which we really perceive: we perceive only the sun which is painted
+on our retina, at a determinate angle. Our eyes were not given us to
+know sizes and distances: to know these, other aids and other
+operations are necessary.</p>
+
+<p>Bambabef seemed much astonished at this position. Whang, being very
+patient, explained to him the theory of optics; and Bambabef, having
+some conception, was convinced by the demonstrations of the disciple of
+Confucius. He then resumed in these terms:</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">BAMBABEF</span>.&mdash;If God does not, as I thought, deceive us by the ministry of
+our senses, you will at least acknowledge that our physicians are
+constantly deceiving children for their good. They tell them that they
+are giving them sugar, when in reality they are giving them rhubarb. I,
+a fakir, may then deceive the people, who are as ignorant as children.</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">WHANG</span>.&mdash;I have two sons; I have never deceived them. When they have been
+sick, I have said to them: "Here is a nauseous medicine; you must have
+the courage to take it; if it were pleasant, it would injure you." I
+have never suffered their nurses and tutors to make them afraid of
+ghosts, goblins, and witches. I have thereby made them wise and
+courageous citizens.</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">BAMBABEF</span>.&mdash;The people are not born so happily as your family.</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">WHANG</span>.&mdash;Men all nearly resemble one another; they are born with the same
+dispositions. Their nature ought not to be corrupted.</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">BAMBABEF</span>.&mdash;We teach them errors, I own; but it is for their good. We
+make them believe that if they do not buy our blessed nails, if they do
+not expiate their sins by giving us money, they will, in another life,
+become post-horses, dogs, or lizards. This intimidates them, and they
+become good people.</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">WHANG</span>.&mdash;Do you not see that you are perverting these poor folks? There
+are among them many more than you think there are who reason, who make a
+jest of your miracles and your superstitions; who see very clearly that
+they will not be turned into lizards, nor into post-horses. What is the
+consequence? They have good sense enough to perceive that you talk to
+them very impertinently; but they have not enough to elevate themselves
+to a religion pure and untrammelled by superstition like ours. Their
+passions make them think there is no religion, because the only one that
+is taught them is ridiculous: thus you become guilty of all the vices
+into which they plunge.</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">BAMBABEF</span>.&mdash;Not at all, for we teach them none but good morals.</p>
+
+<p>WHANG.&mdash;The people would stone you if you taught impure morals. Men are
+so constituted that they like very well to do evil, but they will not
+have it preached to them. But a wise morality should not be mixed up
+with absurd fables: for by these impostures, which you might do without,
+you weaken that morality which you are forced to teach.</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">BAMBABEF</span>.&mdash;What! do you think that truth can be taught to the people
+without the aid of fables?</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">WHANG</span>.&mdash;I firmly believe it. Our literati are made of the same stuff as
+our tailors, our weavers, and our laborers. They worship a creating,
+rewarding, and avenging God. They do not sully their worship by absurd
+systems, nor by extravagant ceremonies. There are much fewer crimes
+among the lettered than among the people; why should we not condescend
+to instruct our working classes as we do our literati?</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">BAMBABEF</span>.&mdash;That would be great folly; as well might you wish them to
+have the same politeness, or to be all jurisconsults. It is neither
+possible nor desirable. There must be white bread for the master, and
+brown for the servant.</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">WHANG</span>.&mdash;I own that men should not all have the same science; but there
+are things necessary to all. It is necessary that each one should be
+just; and the surest way of inspiring all men with justice is to inspire
+them with religion without superstition.</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">BAMBABEF</span>.&mdash;That is a fine project, but it is impracticable. Do you think
+it is sufficient for men to believe in a being that rewards and
+punishes? You have told me that the more acute among the people often
+revolt against fables. They will, in like manner, revolt against truth.
+They will say: Who shall assure me that God rewards and punishes? Where
+is the proof? What mission have you? What miracle have you worked that I
+should believe in you? They will laugh at you much more than at me.</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">WHANG</span>.&mdash;Your error is this: You imagine that men will spurn an idea that
+is honest, likely, and useful to every one; an idea which accords with
+human reason, because they reject things which are dishonest, absurd,
+useless, dangerous, and shocking to good sense.</p>
+
+<p>The people are much disposed to believe their magistrates; and when
+their magistrates propose to them only a rational belief, they embrace
+it willingly. There is no need of prodigies to believe in a just God,
+who reads the heart of man: this is an idea too natural, too necessary,
+to be combated. It is not necessary to know precisely how God rewards
+and punishes: to believe in His justice is enough. I assure you that I
+have seen whole towns with scarcely any other tenet; and that in them I
+have seen the most virtue.</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">BAMBABEF</span>.&mdash;Take heed what you say. You will find philosophers in these
+times, who will deny both pains and rewards.</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">WHANG</span>.&mdash;But you will acknowledge that these philosophers will much more
+strongly deny your inventions; so you will gain nothing by that.
+Supposing that there are philosophers who do not agree with my
+principles, they are not the less honest men; they do not the less
+cultivate virtue, which should be embraced through love, and not through
+fear. Moreover, I maintain that no philosopher can ever be assured that
+Providence does not reserve pains for the wicked, and rewards for the
+good. For, if they ask me who has told me that God punishes, I shall ask
+them who has told them that God does not punish. In short, I maintain
+that the philosophers, far from contradicting, will aid me. Will you be
+a philosopher?</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">BAMBABEF</span>.&mdash;With all my heart. But do not tell the fakirs. And let us,
+above all, remember that if a philosopher would be of service to human
+society, he must announce a God.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FREE-WILL" id="FREE-WILL"></a>FREE-WILL.</h3>
+
+
+<p>From the commencement of the time in which men began to reason,
+philosophers have agitated this question, which theologians have
+rendered unintelligible by their absurd subtleties upon grace. Locke is
+perhaps the first who, without having the arrogance of announcing a
+general principle, has examined human nature by analysis. It has been
+disputed for three thousand years, whether the will is free or not;
+Locke shows that the question is absurd, and that liberty cannot belong
+to the will any more than color and motion.</p>
+
+<p>What is meant by the expression to be free? It signifies power, or
+rather it has no sense at all. To say that the will <i>can</i>, is in itself
+as ridiculous as if we said that it is yellow, or blue, round, or
+square.</p>
+
+<p>Will is will, and liberty is power. Let us gradually examine the chain
+of what passes within us, without confusing our minds with any
+scholastic terms, or antecedent principle.</p>
+
+<p>It is proposed to you to ride on horseback; it is absolutely necessary
+for you to make a choice, for it is very clear that you must either go
+or not; there is no medium, you must absolutely do the one or the other.
+So far it is demonstrated that the will is not free. You will get on
+horseback; why? Because I will to do so, an ignoramus will say. This
+reply is an absurdity; nothing can be done without reason or cause. Your
+will then is caused by what? The agreeable idea which is presented to
+your brain; the predominant, or determined idea; but, you will say,
+cannot I resist an idea which predominates over me? No, for what would
+be the cause of your resistance? An idea by which your will is swayed
+still more despotically.</p>
+
+<p>You receive your ideas, and, therefore, receive your will. You will then
+necessarily; consequently, the word "liberty" belongs not to will in any
+sense.</p>
+
+<p>You ask me how thought and will are formed within you? I answer that I
+know nothing about it. I no more know how ideas are created than I know
+how the world was formed. We are only allowed to grope in the dark in
+reference to all that inspires our incomprehensible machine.</p>
+
+<p>Will, then, is not a faculty which can be called free. "Free-will" is a
+word absolutely devoid of sense, and that which scholars have called
+"indifference," that is to say, will without cause, is a chimera
+unworthy to be combated.</p>
+
+<p>In what then consists liberty? In the power of doing what we will? I
+would go into my cabinet; the door is open, I am free to enter. But, say
+you, if the door is shut and I remain where I am, I remain freely. Let
+us explain ourselves&mdash;you then exercise the power that you possess of
+remaining; you possess this power, but not the power of going out.</p>
+
+<p>Liberty, then, on which so many volumes have been written, reduced to
+its proper sense, is only the power of acting.</p>
+
+<p>In what sense must the expression "this man is free" be spoken? In the
+same sense in which we use the words "health," "strength," and
+"happiness." Man is not always strong, healthy, or happy. A great
+passion, a great obstacle, may deprive him of his liberty, or power of
+action.</p>
+
+<p>The words "liberty" and "free-will" are, then, abstractions, general
+terms, like beauty, goodness, justice. These terms do not signify that
+all men are always handsome, good, and just, neither are they always
+free.</p>
+
+<p>Further, liberty being only the power of acting, what is this power? It
+is the effect of the constitution, and the actual state of our organs.
+Leibnitz would solve a problem of geometry, but falls into an apoplexy;
+he certainly has not the liberty to solve his problem. A vigorous young
+man, passionately in love, who holds his willing mistress in his arms,
+is he free to subdue his passion? Doubtless not. He has the power of
+enjoying, and has not the power to abstain. Locke then is very right in
+calling liberty, power. When can this young man abstain, notwithstanding
+the violence of his passion? When a stronger idea shall determine the
+springs of his soul and body to the contrary.</p>
+
+<p>But how? Have other animals the same liberty, the same power? Why not?
+They have sense, memory, sentiment, and perceptions like ourselves; they
+act spontaneously as we do. They must, also, like us, have the power of
+acting by virtue of their perception, and of the play of their organs.</p>
+
+<p>We exclaim: If it be thus, all things are machines merely; everything in
+the universe is subjected to the eternal laws. Well, would you have
+everything rendered subject to a million of blind caprices? Either all
+is the consequence of the nature of things, or all is the effect of the
+eternal order of an absolute master; in both cases, we are only wheels
+to the machine of the world.</p>
+
+<p>It is a foolish, common-place expression that without this pretended
+freedom of will, rewards and punishments are useless. Reason, and you
+will conclude quite the contrary.</p>
+
+<p>If, when a robber is executed, his accomplice, who sees him suffer, has
+the liberty of not being frightened at the punishment; if his will
+determines of itself, he will go from the foot of the scaffold to
+assassinate on the high road; if struck with horror, he experiences an
+insurmountable terror, he will no longer thieve. The punishment of his
+companion will become useful to him, and moreover prove to society that
+his will is not free.</p>
+
+<p>Liberty, then, is not and cannot be anything but the power of doing what
+we will. That is what philosophy teaches us. But, if we consider liberty
+in the theological sense, it is so sublime a matter that profane eyes
+may not be raised so high.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FRENCH_LANGUAGE" id="FRENCH_LANGUAGE"></a>FRENCH LANGUAGE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The French language did not begin to assume a regular form until the
+tenth century; it sprang from the remains of the Latin and the Celtic,
+mixed with a few Teutonic words. This language was, in the first
+instance, the provincial Roman, and the Teutonic was the language of the
+courts, until the time of Charles the Bald. The Teutonic remained the
+only language in Germany, after the grand epoch of the division in 433.
+The rustic Roman prevailed in Western France; the inhabitants of the
+Pays de Vaud, of the Valois, of the valley of Engadine, and some other
+cantons, still preserve some manifest vestiges of this idiom.</p>
+
+<p>At the commencement of the eleventh century, French began to be written;
+but this French retained more of Romance or rustic Roman than of the
+language of the present day. The romance of Philomena, written in the
+tenth century, is not very different in language from that of the laws
+of the Normans. We cannot yet trace the original Celtic, Latin, and
+German. The words which signify the members of the human body, or
+things in daily use, which have no relation to the Latin or German, are
+of ancient Gallic or Celtic, as <i>tête</i>, <i>jambe</i>, <i>sabre</i>, <i>point</i>,
+<i>alter</i>, <i>parler</i>, <i>écouter</i>, <i>regarder</i>, <i>crier</i>, <i>cotume</i>, <i>ensemble</i>,
+and many more of the same kind. The greater number of the warlike
+phrases were French or German, as <i>marche, halte, maréchal, bivouac,
+lansquenet</i>. Almost, all the rest are Latin, and the Latin words have
+been all abridged, according to the usage and genius of the nations of
+the north.</p>
+
+<p>In the twelfth century, some terms were borrowed from the philosophy of
+Aristotle; and toward the sixteenth century, Greek names were found for
+the parts of the human body, and for its maladies and their remedies.
+Although the language was then enriched with Greek, and aided from the
+time of Charles VIII. with considerable accessions from the Italian,
+already arrived at perfection, it did not acquire a regular form.
+Francis I. abolished the custom of pleading and of judging in Latin,
+which proved the barbarism of a language which could not be used in
+public proceedings&mdash;a pernicious custom to the natives, whose fortunes
+were regulated in a language which they could not understand. It then
+became necessary to cultivate the French, but the language was neither
+noble nor regular, and its syntax was altogether capricious. The genius
+of its conversation being turned towards pleasantry, the language became
+fertile in smart and lively expressions, but exceedingly barren in
+dignified and harmonious phrases; whence it arises that in the
+dictionaries of rhymes, twenty suitable words are found for comic poetry
+for one of poetry of a more elevated nature. This was the cause that
+Marot never succeeded in the serious style, and that Amyot was unable to
+give a version of the elegant simplicity of Plutarch.</p>
+
+<p>The French tongue acquired strength from the pen of Montaigne, but still
+wanted elevation and harmony. Ronsard injured the language by
+introducing into French poetry the Greek compounds, derivable from the
+physicians. Malherbe partly repaired the fault of Ronsard. It became
+more lofty and harmonious by the establishment of the French Academy,
+and finally in the age of Louis XIV. acquired the perfection by which it
+is now distinguished.</p>
+
+<p>The genius of the French language&mdash;for every language has its genius&mdash;is
+clearness and order. This genius consists in the facility which a
+language possesses of expressing itself more or less happily, and of
+employing or rejecting the familiar terms of other languages. The French
+tongue having no declensions, and being aided by articles, cannot adopt
+the inversions of the Greek and the Latin; the words are necessarily
+arranged agreeably to the course of the ideas. We can only say in one
+way, "<i>Plancus a pris soin des affaires de Cæsar</i>"; but this phrase in
+Latin, "<i>Res Cæsaris, Plancus diligenter curavit</i>" may be arranged in a
+hundred and twenty different forms without injuring the sense or rules
+of the language. The auxiliary verbs, which lengthen and weaken phrases
+in the modern tongues, render that of France still less adapted to the
+lapidary style. Its auxiliary verbs, its pronouns, its articles, its
+deficiency of declinable participles, and, lastly, its uniformity of
+position, preclude the exhibition of much enthusiasm in poetry; it
+possesses fewer capabilities of this nature than the Italian and the
+English; but this constraint and slavery render it more proper for
+tragedy and comedy than any language in Europe. The natural order in
+which the French people are obliged to express their thoughts and
+construct their phrases, infuses into their speech a facility and
+amenity which please everybody; and the genius of the nation suiting
+with the genius of the language, has produced a greater number of books
+agreeably written than are to be found among any other people.</p>
+
+<p>Social freedom and politeness having been for a long time established in
+France, the language has acquired a delicacy of expression, and a
+natural refinement which are seldom to be found out of it. This
+refinement has occasionally been carried too far; but men of taste have
+always known how to reduce it within due bounds.</p>
+
+<p>Many persons have maintained that the French language has been
+impoverished since the days of Montaigne and Amyot, because expressions
+abound in these authors which are no longer employed; but these are for
+the most part terms for which equivalents have been found. It has been
+enriched with a number of noble and energetic expressions, and, without
+adverting to the eloquence of matter, has certainly that of speech. It
+was during the reign of Louis XIV., as already observed, that the
+language was fixed. Whatever changes time and caprice may have in store,
+the good authors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries will always
+serve for models.</p>
+
+<p>Circumstances created no right to expect that France would be
+distinguished in philosophy. A Gothic government extinguished all kind
+of illumination during more than twelve centuries; and professors of
+error, paid for brutalizing human nature, more increased the darkness.
+Nevertheless, there is more philosophy in Paris than in any town on
+earth, and possibly than in all the towns put together, excepting
+London. The spirit of reason has even penetrated into the provinces. In
+a word, the French genius is probably at present equal to that of
+England in philosophy; while for the last four-score years France has
+been superior to all other nations in literature; and has undeniably
+taken the lead in the courtesies of society, and in that easy and
+natural politeness, which is improperly termed urbanity.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FRIENDSHIP" id="FRIENDSHIP"></a>FRIENDSHIP.</h3>
+
+<p>The temple of friendship has long been known by name, but it is well
+known that it has been very little frequented; as the following verses
+pleasantly observe, Orestes, Pylades, Pirithous, Achates, and the tender
+Nisus, were all genuine friends and great heroes; but, alas, existent
+only in fable:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>En vieux langage on voit sur la façade,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Les noms sacrés d'Oreste et de Pylade;</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Le médaillon du bon Pirithous,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Du sage Achate et du tendre Nisus;</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Tous grands héros, tous amis véritables;</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Ces noms sont beaux; mais ils sont dans les fables.</i></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Friendship commands more than love and esteem. Love your neighbor
+signifies assist your neighbor, but not&mdash;enjoy his conversation with
+pleasure, if he be tiresome; confide to him your secrets, if he be a
+tattler; or lend him your money, if he be a spendthrift.</p>
+
+<p>Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to
+divorce. It is a tacit contract between two sensible and virtuous
+persons. I say sensible, for a monk or a hermit cannot be so, who lives
+without knowing friendship. I say virtuous, for the wicked only have
+accomplices&mdash;the voluptuous, companions&mdash;the interested, associates;
+politicians assemble factions&mdash;the generality of idle men have
+connections&mdash;princes, courtiers. Virtuous men alone possess friends.</p>
+
+<p>Cethegus was the accomplice of Catiline, and Mæcenas the courtier of
+Octavius; but Cicero was the friend of Atticus.</p>
+
+<p>What is caused by this contract between two tender, honest minds? Its
+obligations are stronger or weaker according to the degrees of
+sensibility, and the number of services rendered.</p>
+
+<p>The enthusiasm of friendship has been stronger among the Greeks and
+Arabs than among us. The tales that these people have imagined on the
+subject of friendship are admirable; we have none to compare to them. We
+are rather dry and reserved&mdash;in everything. I see no great trait of
+friendship in our histories, romances, or theatre.</p>
+
+<p>The only friendship spoken of among the Jews, was that which existed
+between Jonathan and David. It is said that David loved him with a love
+stronger than that of women; but it is also said that David, after the
+death of his friend, dispossessed Mephibosheth, his son, and caused him
+to be put to death.</p>
+
+<p>Friendship was a point of religion and legislation among the Greeks. The
+Thebans had a regiment of lovers&mdash;a fine regiment; some have taken it
+for a regiment of nonconformists. They are deceived; it is taking a
+shameful accident for a noble principle. Friendship, among the Greeks,
+was prescribed by the laws and religion. Manners countenanced abuses,
+but the laws did not.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FRIVOLITY" id="FRIVOLITY"></a>FRIVOLITY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>What persuades me still more of the existence of Providence, said the
+profound author of "<i>Bacha Billeboquet</i>," is that to console us for our
+innumerable miseries, nature has made us frivolous. We are sometimes
+ruminating oxen, overcome by the weight of our yoke; sometimes
+dispersed doves, tremblingly endeavoring to avoid the claws of the
+vulture, stained with the blood of our companions; foxes, pursued by
+dogs; and tigers, who devour one another. Then we suddenly become
+butterflies; and forget, in our volatile winnowings, all the horrors
+that we have experienced.</p>
+
+<p>If we were not frivolous, what man without shuddering, could live in a
+town in which the wife of a marshal of France, a lady of honor to the
+queen, was burned, under the pretext that she had killed a white cock by
+moonlight; or in the same town in which Marshal Marillac was
+assassinated according to form, pursuant to a sentence passed by
+judicial murderers appointed by a priest in his own country house, in
+which he embraced Marion de Lorme while these robed wretches executed
+his sanguinary wishes?</p>
+
+<p>Could a man say to himself, without trembling in every nerve, and having
+his heart frozen with horror: "Here I am, in the very place which, it is
+said, was strewed with the dead and dying bodies of two thousand young
+gentlemen, murdered near the Faubourg St. Antoine, because one man in a
+red cassock displeased some others in black ones!"</p>
+
+<p>Who could pass the Rue de la Féronerie without shedding tears and
+falling into paroxysms of rage against the holy and abominable
+principles which plunged the sword into the heart of the best of men,
+and of the greatest of kings?</p>
+
+<p>We could not walk a step in the streets of Paris on St. Bartholomew's
+day, without saying: "It was here that one of my ancestors was murdered
+for the love of God; it was here that one of my mother's family was
+dragged bleeding and mangled; it was here that one-half of my countrymen
+murdered the other."</p>
+
+<p>Happily, men are so light, so frivolous, so struck with the present and
+so insensible to the past, that in ten thousand there are not above two
+or three who make these reflections.</p>
+
+<p>How many boon companions have I seen, who, after the loss of children,
+wives, mistresses, fortune, and even health itself, have eagerly
+resorted to a party to retail a piece of scandal, or to a supper to tell
+humorous stories. Solidity consists chiefly in a uniformity of ideas. It
+has been said that a man of sense should invariably think in the same
+way; reduced to such an alternative, it would be better not to have been
+born. The ancients never invented a finer fable than that which bestowed
+a cup of the water of Lethe on all who entered the Elysian fields.</p>
+
+<p>If you would tolerate life, mortals, forget yourselves, and enjoy it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GALLANT" id="GALLANT"></a>GALLANT.</h3>
+
+
+<p>This word is derived from "<i>gal</i>" the original signification of which
+was gayety and rejoicing, as may be seen in Alain Chartier, and in
+Froissart. Even in the "Romance of the Rose" we meet with the word
+"<i>galandé</i>" in the sense of ornamented, adorned.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>La belle fut bien attornie</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Et d'un filet d'or galandée.</i></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>It is probable that the <i>gala</i> of the Italians, and the <i>galan</i> of the
+Spaniards, are derived from the word "<i>gal</i>" which seems to be
+originally Celtic; hence, was insensibly formed <i>gallant</i>, which
+signifies a man forward, or eager to please. The term received an
+improved and more noble signification in the times of chivalry, when the
+desire to please manifested itself in feats of arms, and personal
+conflict. To conduct himself gallantly, to extricate himself from an
+affair gallantly, implies, even at present, a man's conducting himself
+conformably to principle and honor. A gallant man among the English,
+signifies a man of courage; in France it means more&mdash;a man of noble
+general demeanor. A gallant (<i>un homme galant</i>) is totally different
+from a gallant man (<i>un galant homme</i>); the latter means a man of
+respectable and honorable feeling&mdash;the former, something nearer the
+character of a <i>petit maître</i> a man successfully addicted to intrigue.
+Being gallant (<i>être galant</i>) in general implies an assiduity to please
+by studious attentions, and flattering deference. "He was exceedingly
+gallant to those ladies," means merely, he behaved more than politely to
+them; but being the gallant of a lady is an expression of stronger
+meaning; it signifies being her lover; the word is scarcely any longer
+in use in this sense, except in low or familiar poetry. A gallant is not
+merely a man devoted to and successful in intrigue, but the term
+implies, moreover, somewhat of impudence and effrontery, in which sense
+Fontaine uses it in the following: "<i>Mais un 'galant,' chercheur des
+pucelages</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Thus are various meanings attached to the same word. The case is similar
+with the term "gallantry," which sometimes signifies a disposition to
+coquetry, and a habit of flattery; sometimes a present of some elegant
+toy, or piece of jewelry; sometimes intrigue, with one woman or with
+many; and, latterly, it has even been applied to signify ironically the
+favors of Venus; thus, to talk gallantries, to give gallantries, to have
+gallantries, to contract a gallantry, express very different meanings.
+Nearly all the terms which occur frequently in conversation acquire, in
+the same manner, various shades of meaning, which it is difficult to
+discriminate; the meaning of terms of art is more precise and less
+arbitrary.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GARGANTUA" id="GARGANTUA"></a>GARGANTUA.</h3>
+
+
+<p>If ever a reputation was fixed on a solid basis, it is that of
+Gargantua. Yet in the present age of philosophy and criticism, some rash
+and daring minds have started forward, who have ventured to deny the
+prodigies believed respecting this extraordinary man&mdash;persons who have
+carried their skepticism so far as even to doubt his very existence.</p>
+
+<p>How is it possible, they ask, that there should have existed in the
+sixteenth century a distinguished hero, never mentioned by a single
+contemporary, by St. Ignatius, Cardinal Capitan, Galileo, or
+Guicciardini, and respecting whom the registers of the Sorbonne do not
+contain the slightest notice?</p>
+
+<p>Investigate the histories of France, of Germany, of England, Spain, and
+other countries, and you find not a single word about Gargantua. His
+whole life, from his birth to his death, is a tissue of inconceivable
+prodigies.</p>
+
+<p>His mother, Gargamelle, was delivered of him from the left ear. Almost
+at the instant of his birth he called out for a drink, with a voice that
+was heard even in the districts of Beauce and Vivarais. Sixteen ells of
+cloth were required to make him breeches, and a hundred hides of brown
+cows were used in his shoes. He had not attained the age of twelve years
+before he gained a great battle, and founded the abbey of Thélème.
+Madame Badebec was given to him in marriage, and Badebec is proved to be
+a Syrian name.</p>
+
+<p>He is represented to have devoured six pilgrims in a mere salad, and the
+river Seine is stated to have flowed entirely from his person, so that
+the Parisians are indebted for their beautiful river to him alone.</p>
+
+<p>All this is considered contrary to nature by our carping philosophers,
+who scruple to admit even what is probable, unless it is well supported
+by evidence.</p>
+
+<p>They observe, that if the Parisians have always believed in Gargantua,
+that is no reason why other nations should believe in him; that if
+Gargantua had really performed one single prodigy out of the many
+attributed to him, the whole world would have resounded with it, all
+records would have noticed it, and a hundred monuments would have
+attested it. In short, they very unceremoniously treat the Parisians who
+believe in Gargantua as ignorant simpletons and superstitious idiots,
+with whom are inter-mixed a few hypocrites, who pretend to believe in
+Gargantua, in order to obtain some convenient priorship in the abbey of
+Thélème.</p>
+
+<p>The reverend Father Viret, a Cordelier of full-sleeved dignity, a
+confessor of ladies, and a preacher to the king, has replied to our
+Pyrrhonean philosophers in a manner decisive and invincible. He very
+learnedly proves that if no writer, with the exception of Rabelais, has
+mentioned the prodigies of Gargantua, at least, no historian has
+contradicted them; that the sage de Thou, who was a believer in
+witchcraft, divination, and astrology, never denied the miracles of
+Gargantua. They were not even called in question by La Mothe le Vayer.
+Mézeray treated them with such respect as not to say a word against
+them, or indeed about them. These prodigies were performed before the
+eyes of all the world. Rabelais was a witness of them. It was impossible
+that he could be deceived, or that he would deceive. Had he deviated
+even in the smallest degree from the truth, all the nations of Europe
+would have been roused against him in indignation; all the gazetteers
+and journalists of the day would have exclaimed with one voice against
+the fraud and imposture.</p>
+
+<p>In vain do the philosophers reply&mdash;for they reply to everything&mdash;that,
+at the period in question, gazettes and journals were not in existence.
+It is said in return that there existed what was equivalent to them, and
+that is sufficient. Everything is impossible in the history of
+Gargantua, and from this circumstance itself may be inferred its
+incontestable truth. For if it were not true, no person could possibly
+have ventured to imagine it, and its incredibility constitutes the great
+proof that it ought to be believed.</p>
+
+<p>Open all the "Mercuries," all the "Journals de Trévoux"; those immortal
+works which teem with instruction to the race of man, and you will not
+find a single line which throws a doubt on the history of Gargantua. It
+was reserved for our own unfortunate age to produce monsters, who would
+establish a frightful Pyrrhonism, under the pretence of requiring
+evidence as nearly approaching to mathematical as the case will admit,
+and of a devotion to reason, truth, and justice. What a pity! Oh, for a
+single argument to confound them!</p>
+
+<p>Gargantua founded the abbey of Thélème. The title deeds, it is true,
+were never found; it never had any; but it exists, and produces an
+income of ten thousand pieces of gold a year. The river Seine exists,
+and is an eternal monument of the prodigious fountain from which
+Gargantua supplied so noble a stream. Moreover, what will it cost you to
+believe in him? Should you not take the safest side? Gargantua can
+procure for you wealth, honors, and influence. Philosophy can only
+bestow on you internal tranquillity and satisfaction, which you will of
+course estimate as a trifle. Believe, then, I again repeat, in
+Gargantua; if you possess the slightest portion of avarice, ambition, or
+knavery, it is the wisest part you can adopt.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GAZETTE" id="GAZETTE"></a>GAZETTE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>A narrative of public affairs. It was at the beginning of the
+seventeenth century that this useful practice was suggested and
+established at Venice, at the time when Italy still continued the centre
+of European negotiations, and Venice was the unfailing asylum of
+liberty. The leaves or sheets containing this narrative, which were
+published once a week, were called "Gazettes," from the word "gazetta,"
+the name of a small coin, amounting nearly to one of our demi-sous, then
+current at Venice. The example was afterwards followed in all the great
+cities of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Journals of this description have been established in China from time
+immemorial. The "<i>Imperial Gazette</i>" is published there every day by
+order of the court. Admitting this gazette to be true, we may easily
+believe it does not contain all that is true; neither in fact should it
+do so.</p>
+
+<p>Théophraste Renaudot, a physician, published the first gazettes in
+France in 1601, and he had an exclusive privilege for the publication,
+which continued for a long time a patrimony to his family. The like
+privilege became an object of importance at Amsterdam, and the greater
+part of the gazettes of the United Provinces are still a source of
+revenue to many of the families of magistrates, who pay writers for
+furnishing materials for them. The city of London alone publishes more
+than twelve gazettes in the course of a week. They can be printed only
+upon stamped paper, and produce no inconsiderable income to the State.</p>
+
+<p>The gazettes of China relate solely to that empire; those of the
+different states of Europe embrace the affairs of all countries.
+Although they frequently abound in false intelligence, they may
+nevertheless be considered as supplying good material for history;
+because, in general, the errors of each particular gazette are corrected
+by subsequent ones, and because they contain authentic copies of almost
+all state papers, which indeed are published in them by order of the
+sovereigns or governments themselves. The French gazettes have always
+been revised by the ministry. It is on this account that the writers of
+them have always adhered to certain forms and designations, with a
+strictness apparently somewhat inconsistent with the courtesies of
+polished society, bestowing the title of monsieur only on some
+particular descriptions of persons, and that of sieur upon others; the
+authors having forgotten that they were not speaking in the name of
+their king. These public journals, it must be added, to their praise,
+have never been debased by calumny, and have always been written with
+considerable correctness.</p>
+
+<p>The case is very different with respect to foreign gazettes; those of
+London, with the exception of the court gazette, abound frequently in
+that coarseness and licentiousness of observation which the national
+liberty allows. The French gazettes established in that country have
+been seldom written with purity, and have sometimes been not a little
+instrumental in corrupting the language. One of the greatest faults
+which has found a way into them arises from the authors having concluded
+that the ancient forms of expression used in public proclamations and in
+judicial and political proceedings and documents in France, and with
+which they were particularly conversant, were analogous to the regular
+syntax of our language, and from their having accordingly imitated that
+style in their narrative. This is like a Roman historian's using the
+style of the law of the twelve tables.</p>
+
+<p>In imitation of the political gazettes, literary ones began to be
+published in France in 1665; for the first journals were, in fact,
+simply advertisements of the works recently printed in Europe; to this
+mere announcement of publication was soon added a critical examination
+or review. Many authors were offended at it, notwithstanding its great
+moderation.</p>
+
+<p>We shall here speak only of those literary gazettes with which the
+public, who were previously in possession of various journals from every
+country in Europe in which the sciences were cultivated, were completely
+overwhelmed. These gazettes appeared at Paris about the year 1723, under
+many different names, as "The Parnassian Intelligencer," "Observations
+on New Books," etc. The greater number of them were written for the
+single purpose of making money; and as money is not to be made by
+praising authors, these productions consisted generally of satire and
+abuse. They often contained the most odious personalities, and for a
+time sold in proportion to the virulence of their malignity; but reason
+and good taste, which are always sure to prevail at last, consigned them
+eventually to contempt and oblivion.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GENEALOGY" id="GENEALOGY"></a>GENEALOGY.</h3>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION I.</h5>
+
+<p>Many volumes have been written by learned divines in order to reconcile
+St. Matthew with St. Luke on the subject of the genealogy of Jesus
+Christ. The former enumerates only twenty-seven generations from David
+through Solomon, while Luke gives forty-two, and traces the descent
+through Nathan. The following is the method in which the learned Calmet
+solves a difficulty relating to Melchizedek: The Orientals and the
+Greeks, ever abounding in fable and invention, fabricated a genealogy
+for him, in which they give us the names of his ancestors. But, adds
+this judicious Benedictine, as falsehood always betrays itself, some
+state his genealogy according to one series, and others according to
+another. There are some who maintain that he descended from a race
+obscure and degraded, and there are some who are disposed to represent
+him as illegitimate.</p>
+
+<p>This passage naturally applies to Jesus, of whom, according to the
+apostle, Melchizedek was the type or figure. In fact, the gospel of
+Nicomedes expressly states that the Jews, in the presence of Pilate,
+reproached Jesus with being born of fornication; upon which the learned
+Fabricius remarks, that it does not appear from any clear and credible
+testimony that the Jews directed to Jesus Christ during His life, or
+even to His apostles, that calumny respecting His birth which they so
+assiduously and virulently circulated afterwards. The Acts of the
+Apostles, however, inform us that the Jews of Antioch opposed
+themselves, blaspheming against what Paul spoke to them concerning
+Jesus; and Origen maintains that the passage in St. John's gospel "We
+are not born of fornication, we have never been in subjection unto any
+man" was an indirect reproach thrown out by the Jews against Jesus on
+the subject of His birth. For, as this father informs us, they pretended
+that Jesus was originally from a small hamlet of Judæa, and His mother
+nothing more than a poor villager subsisting by her labor, who, having
+been found guilty of adultery with a soldier of the name of Panther, was
+turned away by her husband, whose occupation was that of a carpenter;
+that, after this disgraceful expulsion, she wandered about miserably
+from one place to another, and was privately delivered of Jesus, who,
+pressed by the necessity of His circumstances, was compelled to go and
+hire Himself as a servant in Egypt, where He acquired some of those
+secrets which the Egyptians turn to so good an account, and then
+returned to His own country, in which, full of the miracles He was
+enabled to perform, He proclaimed Himself to be God.</p>
+
+<p>According to a very old tradition, the name of Panther, which gave
+occasion to the mistake of the Jews, was, as we are informed by St.
+Epiphanius, the surname of Joseph's father, or rather, as is asserted by
+St. John Damascene, the proper name of Mary's grandfather.</p>
+
+<p>As to the situation of servant, with which Jesus was reproached, He
+declares Himself that He came not to be served, but to serve. Zoroaster,
+according to the Arabians, had in like manner been the servant of
+Esdras. Epictetus was even born in servitude. Accordingly, St. Cyril of
+Jerusalem justly observed that it is no disgrace to any man.</p>
+
+<p>On the subject of the miracles, we learn indeed from Pliny that the
+Egyptians had the secret of dyeing with different colors, stuffs which
+were dipped in the very same furnace, and this is one of the miracles
+which the gospel of the Infancy attributes to Jesus. But, according to
+St. Chrysostom, Jesus performed no miracle before His baptism, and those
+stated to have been wrought by Him before are absolute fabrications. The
+reason assigned by this father for such an arrangement is, that the
+wisdom of God determined against Christ's performing any miracles in His
+childhood, lest they should have been regarded as impostures.</p>
+
+<p>Epiphanius in vain alleges that to deny the miracles ascribed by some to
+Jesus during His infancy, would furnish heretics with a specious pretext
+for saying that He became Son of God only in consequence of the effusion
+of the Holy Spirit, which descended upon Him at His baptism; we are
+contending here, not against heretics, but against Jews.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wagenseil has presented us with a Latin translation of a Jewish work
+entitled "<i>Toldos Jeschu</i>," in which it is related that Jeschu, being at
+Bethlehem in Judah, the place of his birth, cried out aloud, "Who are
+the wicked men that pretend I am a bastard, and spring from an impure
+origin? They are themselves bastards, themselves exceedingly impure! Was
+I not born of a virgin mother? And I entered through the crown of her
+head!"</p>
+
+<p>This testimony appeared of such importance to M. Bergier, that that
+learned divine felt no scruple about employing it without quoting his
+authority. The following are his words, in the twenty-third page of the
+"Certainty of the Proofs of Christianity": "Jesus was born of a virgin
+by the operation of the Holy Spirit. Jesus Himself frequently assured us
+of this with His own mouth; and to the same purpose is the recital of
+the apostles." It is certain that these words are only to be found in
+the "<i>Toldos Jeschu</i>"; and the certainty of that proof, among those
+adduced by M. Bergier, subsists, although St. Matthew applies to Jesus
+the passage of "Isaiah": "He shall not dispute, he shall not cry aloud,
+and no one shall hear his voice in the streets."</p>
+
+<p>According to St. Jerome, there was in like manner an ancient tradition
+among the Gymnosophists of India, that Buddha, the author of their
+creed, was born of a virgin, who was delivered of him from her side. In
+the same manner was born Julius Cæsar, Scipio Africanus, Manlius, Edward
+VI. of England, and others, by means of an operation called by surgeons
+the Cæsarian operation, because it consists in abstracting the child
+from the womb by an incision in the abdomen of the mother. Simon,
+surnamed the Magician, and Manes both pretended to have been born of
+virgins. This might, however, merely mean, that their mothers were
+virgins at the time of conceiving them. But in order to be convinced of
+the uncertainty attending the marks and evidences of virginity, it will
+be perfectly sufficient to read the commentary of M. de Pompignan, the
+celebrated bishop of Puy en Velai, on the following passage in the Book
+of Proverbs: "There are three things which are too wonderful for me,
+yea, four which I know not. The way of an eagle in the air, the way of a
+serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the
+way of a man in his youth." In order to give a literal translation of
+the passage, according to this prelate (in the third chapter of the
+second part of his work entitled "Infidelity Convinced by the
+Prophecies"), it would have been necessary to say, "<i>Viam viri in
+virgine adolescentula</i>"&mdash;The way of a man with a maid. The translation
+of our Vulgate, says he, substitutes another meaning, exact indeed and
+true, but less conformable to the original text. In short, he
+corroborates his curious interpretation by the analogy between this
+verse and the following one: "Such is the life of the adulterous woman,
+who, after having eaten, wipeth her mouth and saith, I have done no
+wickedness."</p>
+
+<p>However this may be, the virginity of Mary was not generally admitted,
+even at the beginning of the third century. "Many have entertained the
+opinion and do still," said St. Clement of Alexandria, "that Mary was
+delivered of a son without that delivery producing any change in her
+person; for some say that a midwife who visited her after the birth
+found her to retain all the marks of virginity." It is clear that St.
+Clement refers here to the gospel of the conception of Mary, in which
+the angel Gabriel says to her, "Without intercourse with man, thou, a
+virgin, shalt conceive, thou, a virgin, shalt be delivered of a child,
+thou, a virgin, shalt give suck"; and also to the first gospel of James,
+in which the midwife exclaims, "What an unheard-of wonder! Mary has just
+brought a son into the world, and yet retains all the evidences of
+virginity." These two gospels were, nevertheless, subsequently rejected
+as apocryphal, although on this point they were conformable to the
+opinion adopted by the church; the scaffolding was removed after the
+building was completed.</p>
+
+<p>What is added by Jeschu&mdash;"I entered by the crown of the head"&mdash;was
+likewise the opinion held by the church. The Breviary of the Maronites
+represents the word of the Father as having entered by the ear of the
+blessed woman. St. Augustine and Pope Felix say expressly that the
+virgin became pregnant through the ear. St. Ephrem says the same in a
+hymn, and Voisin, his translator, observes that the idea came originally
+from Gregory of Neocæsarea, surnamed Thaumaturgos. Agobar relates that
+in his time the church sang in the time of public service: "The Word
+entered through the ear of the virgin, and came out at the golden gate."
+Eutychius speaks also of Elian, who attended at the Council of Nice, and
+who said that the Word entered by the ear of the virgin, and came out
+in the way of childbirth. This Elian was a rural bishop, whose name
+occurs in Selden's published Arabic List of Fathers who attended the
+Council of Nice.</p>
+
+<p>It is well known that the Jesuit Sanchez gravely discussed the question
+whether the Virgin Mary contributed seminally in the incarnation of
+Christ, and that, like other divines before him, he concluded in the
+affirmative. But these extravagances of a prurient and depraved
+imagination should be classed with the opinion of Aretin, who introduces
+the Holy Spirit on this occasion effecting his purpose under the figure
+of a dove; as mythology describes Jupiter to have succeeded with Leda in
+the form of a swan, or as the most eminent authors of the church&mdash;St.
+Austin, Athenagoras, Tertullian, St. Clement of Alexandria, St. Cyprian,
+Lactantius, St. Ambrose&mdash;and others believed, after Philo and Josephus,
+the historian, who were Jews, that angels had associated with the
+daughters of men, and engaged in sexual connection with them. St.
+Augustine goes so far as to charge the Manichæans with teaching, as a
+part of their religious persuasion, that beautiful young persons
+appeared in a state of nature before the princes of darkness, or evil
+angels, and deprived them of the vital substance which that father calls
+the nature of God. Herodius is still more explicit, and says that the
+divine majesty escaped through the productive organs of demons.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that all these fathers believed angels to be corporeal. But,
+after the works of Plato had established the idea of their spirituality,
+the ancient opinion of a corporeal union between angels and women was
+explained by the supposition that the same angel who, in a woman's form,
+had received the embraces of a man, in turn held communication with a
+woman, in the character of a man. Divines, by the terms "incubus" and
+"succubus," designate the different parts thus performed by angels.
+Those who are curious on the subject of these offensive and revolting
+reveries may see further details in "Various Readings of the Book of
+Genesis," by Otho Gualter; "Magical Disquisitions," by Delvis, and the
+"Discourses on Witchcraft," by Henry Boguet.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION II.</h5>
+
+<p>No genealogy, even although reprinted in Moréri, approaches that of
+Mahomet or Mahommed, the son of Abdallah, the son of Abd'all Montaleb,
+the son of Ashem; which Mahomet was, in his younger days, groom of the
+widow Khadijah, then her factor, then her husband, then a prophet of
+God, then condemned to be hanged, then conqueror and king of Arabia; and
+who finally died an enviable death, satiated with glory and with love.</p>
+
+<p>The German barons do not trace back their origin beyond Witikind; and
+our modern French marquises can scarcely any of them show deeds and
+patents of an earlier date than Charlemagne. But the race of Mahomet, or
+Mohammed, which still exists, has always exhibited a genealogical tree,
+of which the trunk is Adam, and of which the branches reach from Ishmael
+down to the nobility and gentry who at the present day bear the high
+title of cousins of Mahomet.</p>
+
+<p>There is no difficulty about this genealogy, no dispute among the
+learned, no false calculations to be rectified, no contradictions to
+palliate, no impossibilities to be made possible.</p>
+
+<p>Your pride cavils against the authenticity of these titles. You tell me
+that you are descended from Adam as well as the greatest prophet, if
+Adam was the common father of our race; but that this same Adam was
+never known by any person, not even by the ancient Arabs themselves;
+that the name has never been cited except in the books of the Jews; and
+that, consequently, you take the liberty of writing down <i>false</i> against
+the high and noble claims of Mahomet, or Mohammed.</p>
+
+<p>You add that, in any case, if there has been a first man, whatever his
+name might be, you are a descendant from him as decidedly as Khadijah's
+illustrious groom; and that, if there has been no first man, if the
+human race always existed, as so many of the learned pretend, then you
+are clearly a gentleman from all eternity.</p>
+
+<p>In answer to this you are told that you are a plebeian (<i>roturier</i>) from
+all eternity, unless you can produce a regular and complete set of
+parchments.</p>
+
+<p>You reply that men are equal; that one race cannot be more ancient than
+another; that parchments, with bits of wax dangling to them, are a
+recent invention; that there is no reason that compels you to yield to
+the family of Mahomet, or to that of Confucius; or to that of the
+emperors of Japan; or to the royal secretaries of the grand college. Nor
+can I oppose your opinion by arguments, physical, metaphysical, or
+moral. You think yourself equal to the dairo of Japan, and I entirely
+agree with you. All that I would advise you is, that if ever you meet
+with him, you take good care to be the stronger.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GENESIS" id="GENESIS"></a>GENESIS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The sacred writer having conformed himself to the ideas generally
+received, and being indeed obliged not to deviate from them, as without
+such condescension to the weakness and ignorance of those whom he
+addressed, he would not have been understood, it only remains for us to
+make some observations on the natural philosophy prevailing in those
+early periods; for, with respect to theology, we reverence it, we
+believe in it, and never either dispute or discuss it.</p>
+
+<p>"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Thus has the
+original passage been translated, but the translation is not correct.
+There is no one, however slightly informed upon the subject, who is not
+aware that the real meaning of the word is, "In the beginning the gods
+made <i>firent</i> or <i>fit</i> the heaven and the earth." This reading,
+moreover, perfectly corresponds with the ancient idea of the
+Phœnicians, who imagined that, in reducing the chaos (<i>chautereb</i>)
+into order, God employed the agency of inferior deities.</p>
+
+<p>The Phœnicians had been long a powerful people, having a theogony of
+their own, before the Hebrews became possessed of a few cantons of land
+near their territory. It is extremely natural to suppose that when the
+Hebrews had at length formed a small establishment near Phœnicia,
+they began to acquire its language. At that time their writers might,
+and probably did, borrow the ancient philosophy of their masters. Such
+is the regular march of the human mind.</p>
+
+<p>At the time in which Moses is supposed to have lived, were the
+Phœnician philosophers sufficiently enlightened to regard the earth
+as a mere point in the compass with the infinite orbs placed by God in
+the immensity of space, commonly called heaven? The idea so very
+ancient, and at the same time so utterly false, that heaven was made for
+earth, almost always prevailed in the minds of the great mass of the
+people. It would certainly be just as correct and judicious for any
+person to suppose, if told that God created all the mountains and a
+single grain of sand, that the mountains were created for that grain of
+sand. It is scarcely possible that the Phœnicians, who were such
+excellent navigators, should not have had some good astronomers; but
+the old prejudices generally prevailed, and those old prejudices were
+very properly spared and indulged by the author of the Book of Genesis,
+who wrote to instruct men in the ways of God, and not in natural
+philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>"The earth was without form (<i>tohu bohu</i>) and void; darkness rested upon
+the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved upon the surface of
+the waters."</p>
+
+<p><i>Tohu bohu</i> means precisely chaos, disorder. It is one of those
+imitative words which are to be found in all languages; as, for example,
+in the French we have <i>sens dessus dessous, tintamarre, trictrac,
+tonnerre, bombe</i>. The earth was not as yet formed in its present state;
+the matter existed, but the divine power had not yet arranged it. The
+spirit of God means literally the breath, the wind, which agitated the
+waters. The same idea occurs in the "Fragments" of the Phœnician
+author Sanchoniathon. The Phœnicians, like every other people,
+believed matter to be eternal. There is not a single author of antiquity
+who ever represented something to have been produced from nothing. Even
+throughout the whole Bible, no passage is to be found in which matter is
+said to have been created out of nothing. Not, however, that we mean to
+controvert the truth of such creation. It was, nevertheless, a truth not
+known by the carnal Jews.</p>
+
+<p>On the question of the eternity of the world, mankind has always been
+divided, but never on that of the eternity of matter. From nothing,
+nothing can proceed, nor into nothing can aught existent return. <i>"De
+nihilo nihilum, et in nihilum nil posse gigni reverti."</i> (<i>Persius; Sat.
+iii.</i>) Such was the opinion of all antiquity.</p>
+
+<p>"God said let there be light, and there was light; and he saw that the
+light was good, and he divided the light from the darkness; and he
+called the light day, and the darkness night; and the evening and the
+morning were the first day. And God said also, let there be a firmament
+in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the
+waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were
+under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And
+God called the firmament heaven. And the evening and the morning were
+the second day.... And he saw that it was good."</p>
+
+<p>We begin with examining whether Huet, bishop of Avranches, Leclerc, and
+some other commentators, are not in the right in opposing the idea of
+those who consider this passage as exhibiting the most sublime
+eloquence.</p>
+
+<p>Eloquence is not aimed at in any history written by the Jews. The style
+of the passage in question, like that of all the rest of the work,
+possesses the most perfect simplicity. If an orator, intending to give
+some idea of the power of God, employed for that purpose the short and
+simple expression we are considering, "He said, let there be light, and
+there was light," it would then be sublime. Exactly similar is the
+passage in one of the Psalms, "<i>Dixit, et facta sunt</i>"&mdash;"He spake, and
+they were made." It is a trait which, being unique in this place, and
+introduced purposely in order to create a majestic image, elevates and
+transports the mind. But, in the instance under examination, the
+narrative is of the most simple character. The Jewish writer is speaking
+of light just in the same unambitious manner as of other objects of
+creation; he expresses himself equally and regularly after every
+article, "and God saw that it was good." Everything is sublime in the
+course or act of creation, unquestionably, but the creation of light is
+no more so than that of the herbs of the field; the sublime is something
+which soars far from the rest, whereas all is equal throughout the
+chapter.</p>
+
+<p>But further, it was another very ancient opinion that light did not
+proceed from the sun. It was seen diffused throughout the atmosphere,
+before the rising and after the setting of that star; the sun was
+supposed merely to give it greater strength and clearness; accordingly
+the author of Genesis accommodates himself to this popular error, and
+even states the creation of the sun and moon not to have taken place
+until four days after the existence of light. It was impossible that
+there could be a morning and evening before the existence of a sun. The
+inspired writer deigned, in this instance, to condescend to the gross
+and wild ideas of the nation. The object of God was not to teach the
+Jews philosophy. He might have raised their minds to the truth, but he
+preferred descending to their error. This solution can never be too
+frequently repeated.</p>
+
+<p>The separation of the light from the darkness is a part of the same
+system of philosophy. It would seem that night and day were mixed up
+together, as grains of different species which are easily separable from
+each other. It is sufficiently known that darkness is nothing but the
+absence of light, and that there is in fact no light when our eyes
+receive no sensation of it; but at that period these truths were far
+from being known.</p>
+
+<p>The idea of a firmament, again, is of the very highest antiquity. The
+heavens are imagined to be a solid mass, because they always exhibited
+the same phenomena. They rolled over our heads, they were therefore
+constituted of the most solid materials. Who could suppose that the
+exhalations from the land and sea supplied the water descending from the
+clouds, or compute their corresponding quantities? No Halley then lived
+to make so curious a calculation. The heavens therefore were conceived
+to contain reservoirs. These reservoirs could be supported only on a
+strong arch, and as this arch of heaven was actually transparent, it
+must necessarily have been made of crystal. In order that the waters
+above might descend from it upon the earth, sluices, cataracts, and
+floodgates were necessary, which might be opened and shut as
+circumstances required. Such was the astronomy of the day; and, as the
+author wrote for Jews, it was incumbent upon him to adopt their gross
+ideas, borrowed from other people somewhat less gross than themselves.</p>
+
+<p>"God also made two great lights, one to rule the day, the other the
+night; He also made the stars."</p>
+
+<p>It must be admitted that we perceive throughout the same ignorance of
+nature. The Jews did not know that the moon shone only with a reflected
+light. The author here speaks of stars as of mere luminous points, such
+as they appear, although they are in fact so many suns, having each of
+them worlds revolving round it. The Holy Spirit, then, accommodated
+Himself to the spirit of the times. If He had said that the sun was a
+million times larger than the earth, and the moon fifty times smaller,
+no one would have comprehended Him. They appear to us two stars of
+nearly equal size.</p>
+
+<p>"God said, also, let us make man in our own image, and let him have
+dominion over the fishes."</p>
+
+<p>What meaning did the Jews attach to the expression, "let us make man in
+our own image?" The same as all antiquity attached to it: "<i>Finxit in
+effigiem moderantum cuncta deorum.</i>" (Ovid, Metam. i. 82.)</p>
+
+<p>No images are made but of bodies. No nation ever imagined a God without
+body, and it is impossible to represent Him otherwise. We may indeed say
+that God is nothing that we are acquainted with, but we can have no
+idea of what He is. The Jews invariably conceived God to be corporeal,
+as well as every other people. All the first fathers of the Church,
+also, entertained the same belief till they had embraced the ideas of
+Plato, or rather until the light of Christianity became more pure.</p>
+
+<p>"He created them male and female." If God, of the secondary or inferior
+gods, created mankind, male and female, after their own likeness, it
+would seem in that case, as if the Jews believed that God and the gods
+who so formed them were male and female. It has been a subject of
+discussion, whether the author means to say that man had originally two
+sexes, or merely that God made Adam and Eve on the same day. The most
+natural meaning is that God formed Adam and Eve at the same time; but
+this interpretation involves an absolute contradiction to the statement
+of the woman's being made out of the rib of man after the seven days
+were concluded.</p>
+
+<p>"And he rested on the seventh day." The Phœnicians, Chaldæans, and
+Indians, represented God as having made the world in six periods, which
+the ancient Zoroaster calls the six "Gahanbars," so celebrated among the
+Persians.</p>
+
+<p>It is beyond all question that these nations possessed a theology before
+the Jews inhabited the deserts of Horeb and Sinai, and before they could
+possibly have had any writers. Many writers have considered it probable
+that the allegory of six days was imitated from that of the six
+periods. God may have permitted the idea to have prevailed in large and
+populous empires before he inspired the Jewish people with it. He had
+undoubtedly permitted other people to invent the arts before the Jews
+were in possession of any one of them.</p>
+
+<p>"From this pleasant place a river went out which watered the garden, and
+thence it was divided into four rivers. One was called Pison, which
+compassed the whole land of Havilah, whence cometh gold.... the second
+was called Gihon and surrounds Ethiopia.... the third is the Tigris, and
+the fourth the Euphrates."</p>
+
+<p>According to this version, the earthly paradise would have contained
+nearly a third part of Asia and of Africa. The sources of the Euphrates
+and the Tigris are sixty leagues distant from each other, in frightful
+mountains, bearing no possible resemblance to a garden. The river which
+borders Ethiopia, and which can be no other than the Nile, commences its
+course at the distance of more than a thousand leagues from the sources
+of the Tigris and Euphrates; and, if the Pison means the Phasis, it is
+not a little surprising that the source of a Scythian river and that of
+an African one should be situated on the same spot. We must therefore
+look for some other explanation, and for other rivers. Every commentator
+has got up a paradise of his own.</p>
+
+<p>It has been said that the Garden of Eden resembles the gardens of Eden
+at Saana in Arabia Felix, celebrated throughout all antiquity; that the
+Hebrews, a very recent people, might be an Arabian horde, and assume to
+themselves the honor of the most beautiful spot in the finest district
+of Arabia; and that they have always converted to their own purposes the
+ancient traditions of the vast and powerful nations in the midst of whom
+they were in bondage. They were not, however, on this account, the less
+under the divine protection and guidance.</p>
+
+<p>"The Lord then took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden that he
+might cultivate it." It is very respectable and pleasant for a man to
+"cultivate his garden," but it must have been somewhat difficult for
+Adam to have dressed and kept in order a garden of a thousand leagues in
+length, even although he had been supplied with some assistants.
+Commentators on this subject, therefore, we again observe, are
+completely at a loss, and must be content to exercise their ingenuity in
+conjecture. Accordingly, these four rivers have been described as
+flowing through numberless different territories.</p>
+
+<p>"Eat not of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil." It is
+not easy to conceive that there ever existed a tree which could teach
+good and evil, as there are trees that bear pears and apricots. And
+besides the question is asked, why is God unwilling that man should know
+good and evil? Would not his free access to this knowledge, on the
+contrary, appear&mdash;if we may venture to use such language&mdash;more
+worthy of God, and far more necessary to man? To our weak reason it
+would seem more natural and proper for God to command him to eat largely
+of such fruit; but we must bring our reason under subjection, and
+acquiesce with humility and simplicity in the conclusion that God is to
+be obeyed.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 413px;">
+<a name="THE_TEMPTATION_OF_ADAM" id="THE_TEMPTATION_OF_ADAM"></a>
+
+<span class="caption_fig">The Temptation of Adam (***Missing Image***)</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"If thou shalt eat thereof, thou shalt die." Nevertheless, Adam ate of
+it and did not die; on the contrary, he is stated to have lived on for
+nine hundred and thirty years. Many of the fathers considered the whole
+matter as an allegory. In fact, it might be said that all other animals
+have no knowledge that they shall die, but that man, by means of his
+reason, has such knowledge. This reason is the tree of knowledge which
+enables him to foresee his end. This, perhaps, is the most rational
+interpretation that can be given. We venture not to decide positively.</p>
+
+<p>"The Lord said, also, it is not good for man to be alone; let us make
+him a helpmeet for him." We naturally expect that the Lord is about to
+bestow on him a wife; but first he conducts before him all the various
+tribes of animals. Perhaps the copyist may have committed here an error
+of transposition.</p>
+
+<p>"And the name which Adam gave to every animal is its true name." What we
+should naturally understand by the true name of an animal, would be a
+name describing all, or at least, the principal properties of its
+species. But this is not the case in any language. In each there are
+some imitative words, as "<i>coq</i>" and "<i>cocu</i>" in the Celtic, which bear
+some slight similarity to the notes of the cock and the cuckoo;
+<i>tintamarre, trictrac</i>, in French; <i>alali</i>, in Greek; <i>lupus</i>, in Latin,
+etc. But these imitative words are exceedingly few. Moreover, if Adam
+had thus thoroughly known the properties of various animals, he must
+either have previously eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, or
+it would apparently have answered no end for God to have interdicted him
+from it. He must have already known more than the Royal Society of
+London, and the Academy of the Sciences.</p>
+
+<p>It may be remarked that this is the first time the name of Adam occurs
+in the Book of Genesis. The first man, according to the ancient
+Brahmins, who were prodigiously anterior to the Jews, was called Adimo,
+a son of the earth, and his wife, Procris, life. This is recorded in the
+Vedas, in the history of the second formation of the world. Adam and Eve
+expressed perfectly the same meanings in the Phoenician language&mdash;a new
+evidence of the Holy Spirit's conforming Himself to commonly received
+ideas.</p>
+
+<p>"When Adam was asleep God took one of his ribs and put flesh instead
+thereof; and of the rib which he had taken from Adam he formed a woman,
+and he brought the woman to Adam."</p>
+
+<p>In the previous chapter the Lord had already created the male and the
+female; why, therefore, remove a rib from the man to form out of it a
+woman who was already in being? It is answered that the author barely
+announces in the one case what he explains in another. It is answered
+further that this allegory places the wife in subjection to her husband,
+and expresses their intimate union. Many persons have been led to
+imagine from this verse that men have one rib less than women; but this
+is a heresy, and anatomy informs us that a wife has no more ribs than
+her husband.</p>
+
+<p>"But the serpent was more subtle than all animals on the earth; he said
+to the woman," etc. Throughout the whole of this article there is no
+mention made of the devil. Everything in it relates to the usual course
+of nature. The serpent was considered by all oriental nations, not only
+as the most cunning of all animals, but likewise as immortal. The
+Chaldæans had a fable concerning a quarrel between God and the serpent,
+and this fable had been preserved by Pherecydes. Origen cites it in his
+sixth book against Celsus. A serpent was borne in procession at the
+feasts of Bacchus. The Egyptians, according to the statement of Eusebius
+in the first book of the tenth chapter of his "Evangelical Preparation,"
+attached a sort of divinity to the serpent. In Arabia, India, and even
+China, the serpent was regarded as a symbol of life; and hence it was
+that the emperors of China, long before the time of Moses, always bore
+upon their breast the image of a serpent.</p>
+
+<p>Eve expresses no astonishment at the serpent's speaking to her. In all
+ancient histories, animals have spoken; hence Pilpay and Lokman excited
+no surprise by their introduction of animals conversing and disputing.</p>
+
+<p>The whole of this affair appears so clearly to have been supposed in the
+natural course of events, and so unconnected with anything allegorical,
+that the narrative assigns a reason why the serpent, from that time, has
+moved creeping on its belly, why we always are eager to crush it under
+our feet, and why it always attempts&mdash;at least according to the popular
+belief&mdash;to bite and wound us. Precisely as, with respect to presumed
+changes affecting certain animals recorded in ancient fable, reasons
+were stated why the crow which originally had been white is at the
+present day black; why the owl quits his gloomy retreat only by night;
+why the wolf is devoted to carnage. The fathers, however, believed the
+affair to be an allegory at once clear and venerable. The safest way is
+to believe like them.</p>
+
+<p>"I will multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow shalt thou
+bring forth children. Thou shalt be under the power of the man, and he
+shall rule over thee." Why, it is asked, should the multiplication of
+conception be a punishment? It was, on the contrary, says the objector,
+esteemed a superior blessing, particularly among the Jews. The pains of
+childbirth are inconsiderable, in all except very weak or delicate
+women. Those accustomed to labor are delivered, particularly in warm
+climates, with great ease. Brutes frequently experience greater
+suffering from this process of nature: some even die under it. And with
+respect to the superiority or dominion of the man over the woman, it is
+merely in the natural course of events; it is the effect of strength of
+body, and even of strength of mind. Men, generally speaking, possess
+organs more capable of continued attention than women, and are better
+fitted by nature for labors both of the head and arm. But when a woman
+possesses both a hand and a mind more powerful than her husband's, she
+everywhere possesses the dominion over him; it is then the husband that
+is under subjection to the wife. There is certainly truth in these
+remarks; but it might, nevertheless, very easily be the fact that,
+before the commission of the original sin, neither subjection nor sorrow
+existed.</p>
+
+<p>"The Lord made for them coats of skins." This passage decidedly proves
+that the Jews believed God to be corporeal. A rabbi, of the name of
+Eliezer, stated in his works that God clothed Adam and Eve with the skin
+of the very serpent who had tempted them; and Origen maintains that this
+coat of skins was a new flesh, a new body, which God conferred on man.
+It is far better to adhere respectfully to the literal texts.</p>
+
+<p>"And the Lord said; Lo! Adam is become like one of us." It seems as if
+the Jews admitted, originally, many gods. It is somewhat more difficult
+to determine what they meant by the word "God," <i>Elohim</i>. Some
+commentators have contended that the expression "one of us" signifies
+the Trinity. But certainly there is nothing relating to the Trinity
+throughout the Bible. The Trinity is not a compound of many or several
+Gods: it is one and the same god threefold; and the Jews never heard the
+slightest mention of one god in three persons. By the words "like us,"
+or "as one of us," it is probable that the Jews understood the angels,
+<i>Elohim</i>. It is this passage which has induced many learned men very
+rashly to conclude that this book was not written until that people had
+adopted the belief of those inferior gods. But this opinion has been
+condemned.</p>
+
+<p>"The Lord sent him forth from the garden of Eden to cultivate the
+ground." "But," it is remarked by some, "the Lord had placed him in the
+garden of Eden to <i>cultivate</i> that garden." If Adam, instead of being a
+gardener, merely becomes a laborer, his situation, they observe, is not
+made very much worse by the change. A good laborer is well worth a good
+gardener. These remarks must be regarded as too light and frivolous. It
+appears more judicious to say that God punished disobedience by
+banishing the offender from the place of his nativity.</p>
+
+<p>The whole of this history, generally speaking&mdash;according to the opinion
+of liberal, not to say licentious, commentators&mdash;proceeds upon the idea
+which has prevailed in every past age, and still exists, that the first
+times were better and happier than those which followed. Men have
+always complained of the present and extolled the past. Pressed down by
+the labors of life, they have imagined happiness to consist in
+inactivity, not considering that the most unhappy of all states is that
+of a man who has nothing to do. They felt themselves frequently
+miserable, and framed in their imaginations an ideal period in which all
+the world had been happy; although it might be just as naturally and
+truly supposed that there had existed times in which no tree decayed and
+perished, in which no beast was weak, diseased, or devoured by another,
+and in which spiders did not prey upon flies. Hence the idea of the
+golden age; of the egg pierced by Arimanes; of the serpent who stole
+from the ass the recipe for obtaining a happy and immortal life, which
+the man had placed upon his pack-saddle; of the conflict between Typhon
+and Osiris, and between Opheneus and the gods; of the famous box of
+Pandora; and of all those ancient tales, of which some are ingenious,
+but none instructive. But we are bound to believe that the fables of
+other nations are imitations of the Hebrew history, since we possess the
+ancient history of the Hebrews, and the early books of other nations are
+nearly all destroyed. Besides the testimonies in favor of the Book of
+Genesis are irrefragable.</p>
+
+<p>"And He placed before the garden of Eden a cherub with a flaming sword,
+which turned all round to guard the way to the tree of life." The word
+"<i>kerub</i>" signifies <i>ox</i>. An ox armed with a flaming sword is rather a
+singular exhibition, it is said, before a portal. But the Jews
+afterwards represented angels under the form of oxen and hawks although
+they were forbidden to make any images. They evidently derived these
+emblems of oxen and hawks from the Egyptians, whom they imitated in so
+many other things. The Egyptians first venerated the ox as the emblem of
+agriculture, and the hawk as that of the winds; but they never converted
+the ox into a sentinel. It is probably an allegory; and the Jews by
+"<i>kerub</i>" understood nature. It was a symbol formed of the head of an
+ox, the head and body of a man, and the wings of a hawk.</p>
+
+<p>"And the Lord set a mark upon Cain." What Lord? says the infidel. He
+accepts the offering of Abel, and rejects that of his elder brother,
+without the least reason being assigned for the distinction. By this
+proceeding the Lord was the cause of animosity between the two brothers.
+We are presented in this piece of history, it is true, with a moral,
+however humiliating, lesson; a lesson to be derived from all the fables
+of antiquity, that scarcely had the race of man commenced the career of
+existence, before one brother assassinates another. But what the sages,
+of this world consider contrary to everything moral, to everything just,
+to all the principles of common sense, is that God, who inflicted
+eternal damnation on the race of man, and useless crucifixion on His own
+son, on account merely of the eating of an apple, should absolutely
+pardon a fratricide! nay, that He should more than pardon, that He
+should take the offender under His peculiar protection! He declares that
+whoever shall avenge the murder of Abel shall experience sevenfold the
+punishment that Cain might have suffered. He puts a mark upon him as a
+safeguard. Here, continue these vile blasphemers, here is a fable as
+execrable as it is absurd. It is the raving of some wretched Jew, who
+wrote those infamous and revolting fooleries, in imitation of the tales
+so greedily swallowed by the neighboring population in Syria. This
+senseless Jew attributes these atrocious reveries to Moses, at a time
+when nothing was so rare as books. That fatality, which affects and
+disposes of everything, has handed down this contemptible production to
+our own times. Knaves have extolled it, and fools have believed it. Such
+is the language of a tribe of theists, who, while they adore a God, dare
+to condemn the God of Israel; and who judge of the conduct of the
+eternal Deity by the rules of our own imperfect morality, and erroneous
+justice. They admit a God, to subject Him to our laws. Let us guard
+against such rashness; and, once again it must be repeated, let us
+revere what we cannot comprehend. Let us cry out, <i>O Altitudo</i>! O the
+height and depth! with all our strength.</p>
+
+<p>"The gods Elohim, seeing the daughters of men that they were fair, took
+for wives those whom they chose." This imagination, again, may be traced
+in the history of every people. No nation has ever existed, unless
+perhaps we may except China, in which some god is not described as
+having had offspring from women. These corporeal gods frequently
+descended to visit their dominions upon earth; they saw the daughters of
+our race, and attached themselves to those who were most interesting and
+beautiful: the issue of this connection between gods and mortals must of
+course have been superior to other men; accordingly, Genesis informs us
+that from the association it mentions, of the gods with women, sprang a
+race of giants.</p>
+
+<p>"I will bring a deluge of waters upon the earth." I will merely observe
+here that St. Augustine, in his "City of God," No. 8, says, "<i>Maximum
+illud diluvium Græca nec Latina novit historia</i>"&mdash;neither Greek nor
+Latin history knows anything about the great deluge. In fact, none had
+ever been known in Greece but those of Deucalion and Ogyges. They are
+regarded as universal in the fables collected by Ovid, but are wholly
+unknown in eastern Asia. St. Augustine, therefore, is not mistaken, in
+saying that history makes no mention of this event.</p>
+
+<p>"God said to Noah, I will make a covenant with you, and with your seed
+after you, and with all living creatures." God make a covenant with
+beasts! What sort of a covenant? Such is the outcry of infidels. But if
+He makes a covenant with man, why not with the beast? It has feeling,
+and there is something as divine in feeling as in the most metaphysical
+meditation. Besides, beasts feel more correctly than the greater part of
+men think. It is clearly in virtue of this treaty that Francis d'Assisi,
+the founder of the Seraphic order, said to the grasshoppers and the
+hares, "Pray sing, my dear sister grasshopper; pray browse, my dear
+brother hare." But what were the conditions of the treaty? That all
+animals should devour one another; that they should feed upon our flesh,
+and we upon theirs; that, after having eaten them, we should proceed
+with wrath and fury to the extermination of our own race&mdash;nothing being
+then wanting to crown the horrid series of butchery and cruelty, but
+devouring our fellow-men, after having thus remorselessly destroyed
+them. Had there been actually such a treaty as this it could have been
+entered into only with the devil.</p>
+
+<p>Probably the meaning of the whole passage is neither more nor less than
+that God is equally the absolute master of everything that breathes.
+This pact can be nothing more than an order, and the word "covenant" is
+used merely as more emphatic and impressive; we should not therefore be
+startled and offended at the words, but adore the spirit, and direct our
+minds back to the period in which this book was written&mdash;a book of
+scandal to the weak, but of edification to the strong.</p>
+
+<p>"And I will put my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of my
+covenant." Observe that the author does not say, I <i>have</i> put my bow in
+the clouds; he says, I <i>will</i> put: this clearly implies it to have been
+the prevailing opinion that there had not always been a rainbow. This
+phenomenon is necessarily produced by rain; yet in this place it is
+represented as something supernatural, exhibited in order to announce
+and prove that the earth should no more be inundated. It is singular to
+choose the certain sign of rain, in order to assure men against their
+being drowned. But it may also be replied that in any danger of
+inundation, we have the cheering security of the rainbow.</p>
+
+<p>"But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of
+Adam had built, and he said, 'Behold a people which have but one
+language. They have begun to do this, and they will not desist until
+they have completed it. Come, then, let us go and confound their
+language, that no one may understand his neighbor.'" Observe here, that
+the sacred writer always continues to conform to the popular opinions.
+He always speaks of God as of a man who endeavors to inform himself of
+what is passing, who is desirous of seeing with his own eyes what is
+going on in his dominions, who calls together his council in order to
+deliberate with them.</p>
+
+<p>"And Abraham having divided his men&mdash;who were three hundred and eighteen
+in number&mdash;fell upon the five kings, and pursued them unto Hoba, on the
+left hand of Damascus." From the south bank of the lake of Sodom to
+Damascus was a distance of eighty leagues, not to mention crossing the
+mountains Libanus and Anti-Libanus. Infidels smile and triumph at such
+exaggeration. But as the Lord favored Abraham, nothing was in fact
+exaggerated.</p>
+
+<p>"And two angels arrived at Sodom at even." The whole history of these
+two angels, whom the inhabitants of Sodom wished to violate, is perhaps
+the most extraordinary in the records of all antiquity. But it must be
+considered that almost all Asia believed in the existence of the
+demoniacal incubus and succubus; and moreover, that these two angels
+were creatures more perfect than mankind, and must have possessed more
+beauty to stimulate their execrable tendencies. It is possible that the
+passage may be only meant as a rhetorical figure to express the
+atrocious depravity of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is not without the
+greatest diffidence that we suggest to the learned this solution.</p>
+
+<p>As to Lot, who proposes to the people of Sodom the substitution of his
+two daughters in the room of the angels; and his wife, who was changed
+into a statue of salt, and all the rest of that history, what shall we
+venture to say? The old Arabian tale of Kinyras and Myrrha has some
+resemblance to the incest of Lot with his daughters; and the adventure
+of Philemon and Baucis is somewhat similar to the case of the two angels
+who appeared to Lot and his wife. With respect to the statue of salt, we
+know not where to find any resemblance; perhaps in the history of
+Orpheus and Eurydice.</p>
+
+<p>Many ingenious men are of opinion, with the great Newton and the learned
+Leclerc that the Pentateuch was written by Samuel when the Jews had a
+little knowledge of reading and writing, and that all these histories
+are imitations of Syrian fables.</p>
+
+<p>But it is enough that all this is in the Holy Scripture to induce us to
+reverence it, without attempting to find out in this book anything
+besides what is written by the Holy Spirit. Let us always recollect that
+those times were not like our times; and let us not fail to repeat,
+after so many great men, that the Old Testament is a true history; and
+that all that has been written differing from it by the rest of the
+world is fabulous.</p>
+
+<p>Some critics have contended that all the incredible passages in the
+canonical books, which scandalize weak minds, ought to be suppressed;
+but it has been observed in answer that those critics had bad hearts,
+and ought to be burned at the stake; and that it is impossible to be a
+good man without believing that the people of Sodom wanted to violate
+two angels. Such is the reasoning of a species of monsters who wish to
+lord it over the understandings of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that many eminent fathers of the Church have had the prudence
+to turn all these histories into allegories, after the example of the
+Jews, and particularly of Philo. The popes, more discreet, have
+endeavored to prevent the translation of these books into the vulgar
+tongue, lest some men should in consequence be led to think and judge,
+about what was proposed to them only to adore.</p>
+
+<p>We are certainly justified in concluding hence, that those who
+thoroughly understand this book should tolerate those who do not
+understand it at all; for if the latter understand nothing of it, it is
+not their own fault: on the other hand, those who comprehend nothing
+that it contains should tolerate those who comprehend everything in it.</p>
+
+<p>Learned and ingenious men, full of their own talents and acquirements,
+have maintained that it is impossible that Moses could have written the
+Book of Genesis. One of their principal reasons is that in the history
+of Abraham that patriarch is stated to have paid for a cave which he
+purchased for the interment of his wife, in silver coin, and the king of
+Gerar is said to have given Sarah a thousand pieces of silver when he
+restored her, after having carried her off for her beauty at the age of
+seventy-five. They inform us that they have consulted all the ancient
+authors, and that it appears very certain that at the period mentioned
+silver money was not in existence. But these are evidently mere cavils,
+as the Church has always firmly believed Moses to have been the author
+of the Pentateuch. They strengthen all the doubts suggested by
+Aben-Ezra, and Baruch Spinoza. The physician Astruc, father-in-law of
+the comptroller-general Silhouette, in his book&mdash;now become very
+scarce&mdash;called "Conjectures on the Book of Genesis," adds some
+objections, inexplicable undoubtedly to human learning, but not so to a
+humble and submissive piety. The learned, many of them, contradict every
+line, but the devout consider every line sacred. Let us dread falling
+into the misfortune of believing and trusting to our reason; but let us
+bring ourselves into subjection in understanding as well as in heart.</p>
+
+<p>"And Abraham said that Sarah was his sister, and the king of Gerar took
+her for himself." We admit, as we have said under the article on
+"Abraham," that Sarah was at this time ninety years of age, that she had
+been already carried away by a king of Egypt, and that a king of this
+same horrid wilderness of Gerar, likewise, many years afterwards,
+carried away the wife of Isaac, Abraham's son. We have also spoken of
+his servant, Hagar, who bore him a son, and of the manner in which the
+patriarch sent her and her son away. It is well known how infidels
+triumph on the subject of all these histories, with what a disdainful
+smile they speak of them, and that they place the story of one Abimelech
+falling in love with Sarah whom Abraham had passed off as his sister,
+and of another Abimelech falling in love with Rebecca, whom Isaac also
+passes as his sister, even beneath the thousand and one nights of the
+Arabian fables. We cannot too often remark that the great error of all
+these learned critics is their wishing to try everything by the test of
+our feeble reason, and to judge of the ancient Arabs as they judge of
+the courts of France or of England.</p>
+
+<p>"And the soul of Shechem, King Hamor's son, was bound up with the soul
+of Dinah, and he soothed her grief by his tender caresses, and he went
+to Hamor his father, and said to him, give me that woman to be my wife."</p>
+
+<p>Here our critics exclaim in terms of stronger disgust than ever. "What!"
+say they; "the son of a king is desirous to marry a vagabond girl;" the
+marriage is celebrated; Jacob the father, and Dinah the daughter, are
+loaded with presents; the king of Shechem deigns to receive those
+wandering robbers called patriarchs within his city; he has the
+incredible politeness or kindness to undergo, with his son, his court,
+and his people, the rite of circumcision, thus condescending to the
+superstition of a petty horde that could not call half a league of
+territory their own! And in return for this astonishing hospitality and
+goodness, how do our holy patriarchs act? They wait for the day when the
+process of circumcision generally induces fever, when Simeon and Levi
+run through the whole city with poniards in their hands and massacre the
+king, the prince his son, and all the inhabitants. We are precluded from
+the horror appropriate to this infernal counterpart of the tragedy of
+St. Bartholomew, only by a sense of its absolute impossibility. It is an
+abominable romance; but it is evidently a ridiculous romance. It is
+impossible that two men could have slaughtered in quiet the whole
+population of a city. The people might suffer in a slight degree from
+the operation which had preceded, but notwithstanding this, they would
+have risen in self-defence against two diabolical miscreants; they would
+have instantly assembled, would have surrounded them, and destroyed them
+with the summary and complete vengeance merited by their atrocity.</p>
+
+<p>But there is a still more palpable impossibility. It is, that according
+to the accurate computation of time, Dinah, this daughter of Jacob,
+could be only three years old; and that, even by forcing up chronology
+as far as possible in favor of the narrative, she could at the very most
+be only five. It is here, then, that we are assailed with bursts of
+indignant exclamation! "What!" it is said, "what! is it this book, the
+book of a rejected and reprobate people; a book so long unknown to all
+the world; a book in which sound reason and decent manners are outraged
+in every page, that is held up to us as irrefragable, holy, and dictated
+by God Himself? Is it not even impious to believe it? or could anything
+less than the fury of cannibals urge to the persecution of sensible and
+modest men for not believing it?"</p>
+
+<p>To this we reply: "The Church declares its belief in it. The copyists
+may have mixed up some revolting absurdities with respectable and
+genuine histories. It belongs to the holy church only to decide.
+The profane ought to be guided by her. Those absurdities, those alleged
+horrors do not affect the substance of our faith. How lamentable would
+be the fate of mankind, if religion and virtue depended upon what
+formerly happened to Shechem and to little Dinah!"</p>
+
+<p>"These are the kings who reigned in the land of Edom before the children
+of Israel had a king." This is the celebrated passage which has proved
+one of the great stumbling stones. This it was which decided the great
+Newton, the pious and acute Samuel Clarke, the profound and philosophic
+Bolingbroke, the learned Leclerc, the ingenious Fréret, and a host of
+other enlightened men, to maintain that it was impossible Moses could
+have been the author of Genesis.</p>
+
+<p>We admit that in fact these words could not have been written until
+after the time that the Jews had kings.</p>
+
+<p>It is principally this verse that determined Astruc to give up the
+inspired authority of the whole Book of Genesis, and suppose the author
+had derived his materials from existing memoirs and records. His work is
+ingenious and accurate, but it is rash, not to say audacious. Even a
+council would scarcely have ventured on such an enterprise. And to what
+purpose has it served Astruc's thankless and dangerous labor&mdash;to double
+the darkness he wished to enlighten? Here is the fruit of the tree of
+knowledge, of which we are all so desirous of eating. Why must it be,
+that the fruit of the tree of ignorance should be more nourishing and
+more digestible?</p>
+
+<p>But of what consequence can it be to us, after all, whether any
+particular verse or chapter was written by Moses, or Samuel, or the
+priest (<i>sacrificateur</i>) who came to Samaria, or Esdras, or any other
+person? In what respect can our government, our laws, our fortunes, our
+morals, our well-being, be bound up with the unknown chiefs of a
+wretched and barbarous country called Edom or Idumæa, always inhabited
+by robbers? Alas! those poor Arabs, who have not shirts to their backs,
+neither know nor care whether or not we are in existence! They go on
+steadily plundering caravans, and eating barley bread, while we are
+perplexing and tormenting ourselves to know whether any petty kings
+flourished in a particular canton of Arabia Petræa, before they existed
+in a particular canton adjoining the west of the lake of Sodom!</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>O miseras hominum curas! Opectora cœca!</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 16em;" class="small">&mdash;LUCRETIUS, ii. 14.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Blind, wretched man! in what dark paths of strife</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Thou walkest the little journey of thy life!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 18em;" class="small">&mdash;CREECH</span>.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GENII" id="GENII"></a>GENII.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The doctrines of judicial astrology and magic have spread all over the
+world. Look back to the ancient Zoroaster, and you will find that of the
+genii long established. All antiquity abounds in astrologers and
+magicians; such ideas were therefore very natural. At present, we smile
+at the number who entertained them; if we were in their situation, if
+like them we were only beginning to cultivate the sciences, we should
+perhaps believe just the same. Let us suppose ourselves intelligent
+people, beginning to reason on our own existence, and to observe the
+stars. The earth, we might say, is no doubt immovable in the midst of
+the world; the sun and planets only revolve in her service, and the
+stars are only made for us; man, therefore, is the great object of all
+nature. What is the intention of all these globes, and of the immensity
+of heaven thus destined for our use? It is very likely that all space
+and these globes are peopled with substances, and since we are the
+favorites of nature, placed in the centre of the universe, and all is
+made for man, these substances are evidently destined to watch over man.</p>
+
+<p>The first man who believed the thing at all possible would soon find
+disciples persuaded that it existed. We might then commence by saying,
+genii perhaps exist, and nobody could affirm the contrary; for where is
+the impossibility of the air and planets being peopled? We might
+afterwards say there <i>are</i> genii, and certainly no one could prove that
+there are not. Soon after, some sages might see these genii, and we
+should have no right to say to them: "You have not seen them"; as these
+persons might be honorable, and altogether worthy of credit. One might
+see the genius of the empire or of his own city; another that of Mars
+or Saturn; the genii of the four elements might be manifested to several
+philosophers; more than one sage might see his own genius; all at first
+might be little more than dreaming, but dreams are the symbols of truth.</p>
+
+<p>It was soon known exactly how these genii were formed. To visit our
+globe, they must necessarily have wings; they therefore had wings. We
+know only of bodies; they therefore had bodies, but bodies much finer
+than ours, since they were genii, and much lighter, because they came
+from so great a distance. The sages who had the privilege of conversing
+with the genii inspired others with the hope of enjoying the same
+happiness. A skeptic would have been ill received, if he had said to
+them: "I have seen no genius, therefore there are none." They would have
+replied: "You reason ill; it does not follow that a thing exists not,
+which is unknown to you. There is no contradiction in the doctrine which
+inculcates these ethereal powers; no impossibility that they may visit
+us; they show themselves to our sages, they manifest themselves to us;
+you are not worthy of seeing genii."</p>
+
+<p>Everything on earth is composed of good and evil; there are therefore
+incontestably good and bad genii. The Persians had their peris and
+dives; the Greeks, their demons and cacodæmons; the Latins, <i>bonos et
+malos genios</i>. The good genii are white, and the bad black, except among
+the negroes, where it is necessarily the reverse. Plato without
+difficulty admits of a good and evil genius for every individual. The
+evil genius of Brutus appeared to him, and announced to him his death
+before the battle of Philippi. Have not grave historians said so? And
+would not Plutarch have been very injudicious to have assured us of this
+fact, if it were not true?</p>
+
+<p>Further, consider what a source of feasts, amusements, good tales, and
+bon mots, originated in the belief of genii!</p>
+
+<p>There were male and female genii. The genii of the ladies were called by
+the Romans little Junos. They also had the pleasure of seeing their
+genii grow up. In infancy, they were a kind of Cupid with wings, and
+when they protected old age, they wore long beards, and even sometimes
+the forms of serpents. At Rome, there is preserved a marble, on which is
+represented a serpent under a palm tree, to which are attached two
+crowns with this inscription: "To the genius of the Augusti"; it was the
+emblem of immortality.</p>
+
+<p>What demonstrative proof have we at present, that the genii, so
+universally admitted by so many enlightened nations, are only phantoms
+of the imagination? All that can be said is reduced to this: "I have
+never seen a genius, and no one of my acquaintance has ever seen one;
+Brutus has not written that his genius appeared to him before the battle
+of Philippi; neither Newton, Locke, nor even Descartes, who gave the
+reins to his imagination; neither kings nor ministers of state have
+ever been suspected of communing with their genii; therefore I do not
+believe a thing of which there is not the least truth. I confess their
+existence is not impossible; but the possibility is not a proof of the
+reality. It is possible that there may be satyrs, with little turned-up
+tails and goats' feet; but I must see several to believe in them; for if
+I saw but one, I should still doubt their existence."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GENIUS" id="GENIUS"></a>GENIUS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Of genius or demon, we have already spoken in the article on "angel." It
+is not easy to know precisely whether the peris of the Persians were
+invented before the demons of the Greeks, but it is very probable that
+they were. It may be, that the souls of the dead, called shades, manes,
+etc., passed for demons. Hesiod makes Hercules say that a demon dictated
+his labors.</p>
+
+<p>The demon of Socrates had so great a reputation, that Apuleius, the
+author of the "Golden Ass," who was himself a magician of good repute,
+says in his "Treatise on the Genius of Socrates," that a man must be
+without religion who denies it. You see that Apuleius reasons precisely
+like brothers Garasse and Bertier: "You do not believe that which I
+believe; you are therefore without religion." And the Jansenists have
+said as much of brother Bertier, as well as of all the world except
+themselves. "These demons," says the very religious and filthy
+Apuleius, "are intermediate powers between ether and our lower region.
+They live in our atmosphere, and bear our prayers and merits to the
+gods. They treat of succors and benefits, as interpreters and
+ambassadors. Plato says, that it is by their ministry that revelations,
+presages, and the miracles of magicians, are effected."&mdash;"<i>Cæterum sunt
+quædam divinæ mediæ potestates, inter summum æthera, et infimas terras,
+in isto intersitæ æris spatio, per quas et desideria nostra et merita ad
+deos commeant. Hos Græco nomine demonias nuncupant. Inter terricolas
+cœli colasque victores, hinc pecum, inde donorum: qui ultro citroque
+portant, hinc petitiones, inde suppetias: ceu quidam utriusque
+interpretes, et salutigeri. Per hos eosdem, ut Plato in symposio
+autumat, cuncta denuntiata; et majorum varia miracula, omnesque
+præsagium species reguntur.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>St. Augustine has condescended to refute Apuleius in these words:</p>
+
+<p>"It is impossible for us to say that demons are neither mortal nor
+eternal, for all that has life, either lives eternally, or loses the
+breath of life by death; and Apuleius has said, that as to time, the
+demons are eternal. What then remains, but that demons hold a medium
+situation, and have one quality higher and another lower than mankind;
+and as, of these two things, eternity is the only higher thing which
+they exclusively possess, to complete the allotted medium, what must be
+the lower, if not misery?" This is powerful reasoning!</p>
+
+<p>As I have never seen any genii, demons, peris, or hobgoblins, whether
+beneficent or mischievous, I cannot speak of them from knowledge. I only
+relate what has been said by people who have seen them.</p>
+
+<p>Among the Romans, the word "genius" was not used to express a rare
+talent, as with us: the term for that quality was <i>ingenium</i>. We use the
+word "genius" indifferently in speaking of the tutelar demon of a town
+of antiquity, or an artist, or a musician. The term "genius" seems to
+have been intended to designate not great talents generally, but those
+into which invention enters. Invention, above everything, appeared a
+gift from the gods&mdash;this <i>ingenium, quasi ingenitum</i>, a kind of divine
+inspiration. Now an artist, however perfect he may be in his profession,
+if he have no invention, if he be not original, is not considered a
+genius. He is only inspired by the artists his predecessors, even when
+he surpasses them.</p>
+
+<p>It is very probable that many people now play at chess better than the
+inventor of the game, and that they might gain the prize of corn
+promised him by the Indian king. But this inventor was a genius, and
+those who might now gain the prize would be no such thing. Poussin, who
+was a great painter before he had seen any good pictures, had a genius
+for painting. Lulli, who never heard any good musician in France, had a
+genius for music.</p>
+
+<p>Which is the more desirable to possess, a genius without a master, or
+the attainment of perfection by imitating and surpassing the masters
+which precede us?</p>
+
+<p>If you put this question to artists, they will perhaps be divided; if
+you put it to the public, it will not hesitate. Do you like a beautiful
+Gobelin tapestry better than one made in Flanders at the commencement of
+the arts? Do you prefer modern masterpieces of engraving to the first
+wood-cuts? the music of the present day to the first airs, which
+resembled the Gregorian chant? the makers of the artillery of our time
+to the genius which invented the first cannon? everybody will answer,
+"yes." All purchasers will say: "I own that the inventor of the shuttle
+had more genius than the manufacturer who made my cloth, but my cloth is
+worth more than that of the inventor."</p>
+
+<p>In short, every one in conscience will confess, that we respect the
+geniuses who invented the arts, but that the minds which perfect them
+are of more present benefit.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION II.</h5>
+
+<p>The article on "Genius" has been treated in the "Encyclopædia" by men
+who possess it. We shall hazard very little after them.</p>
+
+<p>Every town, every man possessed a genius. It was imagined that those who
+performed extraordinary things were inspired by their genius. The nine
+muses were nine genii, whom it was necessary to invoke; therefore Ovid
+says: "<i>Et Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo</i>"&mdash;"The God within
+us, He the mind inspires."</p>
+
+<p>But, properly speaking, is genius anything but capability? What is
+capability but a disposition to succeed in an art? Why do we say the
+genius of a language? It is, that every language, by its terminations,
+articles, participles, and shorter or longer words, will necessarily
+have exclusive properties of its own.</p>
+
+<p>By the genius of a nation is meant the character, manners, talents, and
+even vices, which distinguish one people from another. It is sufficient
+to see the French, English, and Spanish people, to feel this difference.</p>
+
+<p>We have said that the particular genius of a man for an art is a
+different thing from his general talent; but this name is given only to
+a very superior ability. How many people have talent for poetry, music,
+and painting; yet it would be ridiculous to call them geniuses.</p>
+
+<p>Genius, conducted by taste, will never commit a gross fault. Racine,
+since his "Andromache," "Le Poussin," and "Rameau," has never committed
+one. Genius, without taste, will often commit enormous errors; and, what
+is worse, it will not be sensible of them.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GEOGRAPHY" id="GEOGRAPHY"></a>GEOGRAPHY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Geography is one of those sciences which will always require to be
+perfected. Notwithstanding the pains that have been taken, it has
+hitherto been impossible to have an exact description of the earth. For
+this great work, it would be necessary that all sovereigns should come
+to an understanding, and lend mutual assistance. But they have ever
+taken more pains to ravage the world than they have to measure it.</p>
+
+<p>No one has yet been able to make an exact map of upper Egypt, nor of the
+regions bordering on the Red Sea, nor of the vast country of Arabia. Of
+Africa we know only the coasts; all the interior is no more known than
+it was in the times of Atlas and Hercules. There is not a single
+well-detailed map of all the Grand Turk's possessions in Asia; all is
+placed at random, excepting some few large towns, the crumbling remains
+of which are still existing. In the states of the Great Mogul something
+is known of the relative positions of Agra and Delhi; but thence to the
+kingdom of Golconda everything is laid down at a venture.</p>
+
+<p>It is known that Japan extends from about the thirtieth to the fortieth
+degree of north latitude; there cannot be an error of more than two
+degrees, which is about fifty leagues; so that, relying on one of our
+best maps, a pilot would be in danger of losing his track or his life.</p>
+
+<p>As for the longitude, the first maps of the Jesuits determined it
+between the one hundred and fifty-seventh and the one hundred and
+seventy-fifth degree; whereas, it is now determined between the one
+hundred and forty-sixth and the one hundred and sixtieth.</p>
+
+<p>China is the only Asiatic country of which we have an exact measurement;
+because the emperor Kam-hi employed some Jesuit astronomers to draw
+exact maps, which is the best thing the Jesuits have done. Had they been
+content with measuring the earth, they would never have been proscribed.</p>
+
+<p>In our western world, Italy, France, Russia, England, and the principal
+towns of the other states, have been measured by the same method as was
+employed in China; but it was not until a very few years ago, that in
+France it was undertaken to form an entire topography. A company taken
+from the Academy of Sciences despatched engineers or surveyors into
+every corner of the kingdom, to lay down even the meanest hamlet, the
+smallest rivulet, the hills, the woods, in their true places. Before
+that time, so confused was the topography, that on the eve of the battle
+of Fontenoy, the maps of the country being all examined, every one of
+them was found entirely defective.</p>
+
+<p>If a positive order had been sent from Versailles to an inexperienced
+general to give battle, and post himself as appeared most advisable from
+the maps, as sometimes happened in the time of the minister Chamillar,
+the battle would infallibly have been lost.</p>
+
+<p>A general who should carry on a war in the country of the Morlachians,
+or the Montenegrins, with no knowledge of places but from the maps,
+would be at as great a loss as if he were in the heart of Africa.</p>
+
+<p>Happily, that which has often been traced by geographers, according to
+their own fancy, in their closets, is rectified on the spot. In
+geography, as in morals, it is very difficult to know the world without
+going from home.</p>
+
+<p>It is not with this department of knowledge, as with the arts of poetry,
+music, and painting. The last works of these kinds are often the worst.
+But in the sciences, which require exactness rather than genius, the
+last are always the best, provided they are done with some degree of
+care.</p>
+
+<p>One of the greatest advantages of geography, in my opinion, is this:
+your fool of a neighbor, and his wife almost as stupid, are incessantly
+reproaching you with not thinking as they think in Rue St. Jacques.
+"See," say they, "what a multitude of great men have been of our
+opinion, from Peter the Lombard down to the Abbé Petit-pied. The whole
+universe has received our truths; they reign in the Faubourg St. Honoré,
+at Chaillot and at Étampes, at Rome and among the Uscoques." Take a map
+of the world; show them all Africa, the empires of Japan, China, India,
+Turkey, Persia, and that of Russia, more extensive than was the Roman
+Empire; make them pass their finger over all Scandinavia, all the north
+of Germany, the three kingdoms of Great Britain, the greater part of the
+Low Countries, and of Helvetia; in short make them observe, in the four
+great divisions of the earth, and in the fifth, which is as little known
+as it is great in extent, the prodigious number of races, who either
+never heard of those opinions, or have combated them, or have held them
+in abhorrence, and you will thus oppose the whole universe to Rue St.
+Jacques.</p>
+
+<p>You will tell them that Julius Cæsar, who extended his power much
+farther than that street, did not know a word of all which they think so
+universal; and that our ancestors, on whom Julius Cæsar bestowed the
+lash, knew no more of them than he did.</p>
+
+<p>They will then, perhaps, feel somewhat ashamed at having believed that
+the organ of St. Severin's church gave the tone to the rest of the
+world.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GLORY_GLORIOUS" id="GLORY_GLORIOUS"></a>GLORY&mdash;GLORIOUS.</h3>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION I.</h5>
+
+<p>Glory is reputation joined with esteem, and is complete when admiration
+is superadded. It always supposes that which is brilliant in action, in
+virtue, or in talent, and the surmounting of great difficulties. Cæsar
+and Alexander had glory. The same can hardly be said of Socrates. He
+claims esteem, reverence, pity, indignation against his enemies; but the
+term "glory" applied to him would be improper; his memory is venerable
+rather than glorious. Attila had much brilliancy, but he has no glory;
+for history, which may be mistaken, attributes to him no virtues:
+Charles XII. still has glory; for his valor, his disinterestedness, his
+liberality, were extreme. Success is sufficient for reputation, but not
+for glory. The glory of Henry IV. is every day increasing; for time has
+brought to light all his virtues, which were incomparably greater than
+his defects.</p>
+
+<p>Glory is also the portion of inventors in the fine arts; imitators have
+only applause. It is granted, too, to great talents, but in sublime arts
+only. We may well say, the glory of Virgil, or Cicero, but not of
+Martial, nor of Aulus Gellius.</p>
+
+<p>Men have dared to say, the glory of God: God created this world for His
+glory; not that the Supreme Being can have glory; but that men, having
+no expressions suitable to Him, use for Him those by which they are
+themselves most flattered.</p>
+
+<p>Vainglory is that petty ambition which is contented with appearances,
+which is exhibited in pompous display, and never elevates itself to
+greater things. Sovereigns, having real glory, have been known to be
+nevertheless fond of vainglory&mdash;seeking too eagerly after praise, and
+being too much attached to the trappings of ostentation.</p>
+
+<p>False glory often verges towards vanity; but it often leads to excesses,
+while vainglory is more confined to splendid littlenesses. A prince who
+should look for honor in revenge, would seek a false glory rather than a
+vain one.</p>
+
+<p>To give glory signifies to acknowledge, to bear witness. Give glory to
+truth, means acknowledging truth&mdash;Give glory to the God whom you
+serve&mdash;Bear witness to the God whom you serve.</p>
+
+<p>Glory is taken for heaven&mdash;He dwells in glory; but this is the case in
+no religion but ours. It is not allowable to say that Bacchus or
+Hercules was received into glory, when speaking of their apotheosis. The
+saints and angels have sometimes been called the glorious, as dwelling
+in the abode of glory.</p>
+
+<p>Gloriously is always taken in the good sense; he reigned gloriously; he
+extricated himself gloriously from great danger or embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>To glory in, is sometimes taken in the good, sometimes in the bad,
+sense, according to the nature of the object in question. He glories in
+a disgrace which is the fruit of his talents and the effect of envy. We
+say of the martyrs, that they glorified God&mdash;that is, that their
+constancy made the God whom they attested revered by men.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION II.</h5>
+
+<p>That Cicero should love glory, after having stifled Catiline's
+conspiracy, may be pardoned him. That the king of Prussia, Frederick the
+Great, should have the same feelings after Rosbach and Lissa, and after
+being the legislator, the historian, the poet, and the philosopher of
+his country&mdash;that he should be passionately fond of glory, and at the
+same time, have self-command enough to be modestly so&mdash;he will, on that
+account, be the more glorified.</p>
+
+<p>That the empress Catherine II. should have been forced by the brutish
+insolence of a Turkish sultan to display all her genius; that from the
+far north she should have sent four squadrons which spread terror in the
+Dardanelles and in Asia Minor; and that, in 1770, she took four
+provinces from those Turks who made Europe tremble&mdash;with this sort of
+glory she will not be reproached, but will be admired for speaking of
+her successes with that air of indifference and superiority which shows
+that they were merited.</p>
+
+<p>In short, glory befits geniuses of this sort, though belonging to the
+very mean race of mortals.</p>
+
+<p>But if, at the extremity of the west, a townsman of a place called Paris
+thinks he has glory in being harangued by a teacher of the university,
+who says to him: "Monseigneur, the glory you have acquired in the
+exercise of your office, your illustrious labors with which the universe
+resounds," etc., then I ask if there are mouths enough in that universe
+to celebrate, with their hisses, the glory of our citizen, and the
+eloquence of the pedant who attends to bray out this harangue at
+monseigneur's hotel? We are such fools that we have made God glorious
+like ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>That worthy chief of the dervishes, Ben-al-betif, said to his brethren
+one day: "My brethren, it is good that you should frequently use that
+sacred formula of our Koran, 'In the name of the most merciful God';
+because God uses mercy, and you learn to do so too, by oft repeating the
+words that recommend virtue, without which there would be few men left
+upon the earth. But, my brethren, beware of imitating those rash ones
+who boast, on every occasion, of laboring for the glory of God.</p>
+
+<p>"If a young simpleton maintains a thesis on the categories, an ignoramus
+in furs presiding, he is sure to write in large characters, at the head
+of his thesis, '<i>Ek alha abron doxa</i>!&mdash;'<i>Ad majorem Dei gloriam</i>.' &mdash;To
+the greater glory of God. If a good Mussulman has had his house
+whitewashed, he cuts this foolish inscription in the door. A saka
+carries water for the greater glory of God. It is an impious usage,
+piously used. What would you say of a little chiaoux, who, while
+emptying our sultan's close-stool, should exclaim: "To the greater glory
+of our invincible monarch?" There is certainly a greater distance
+between God and the sultan than between the sultan and the little
+chiaoux.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye miserable earth-worms, called men, what have you resembling the
+glory of the Supreme Being? Can He love glory? Can He receive it from
+you? Can He enjoy it? How long, ye two-legged animals without feathers,
+will you make God after your own image? What! because you are vain,
+because you love glory, you would have God love it also? If there were
+several Gods, perhaps each one would seek to gain the good opinion of
+his fellows. That might be glory to God. Such a God, if infinite
+greatness may be compared with extreme lowliness, would be like King
+Alexander or Iscander, who would enter the lists with none but kings.
+But you, poor creatures! what glory can you give to God? Cease to
+profane the sacred name. An emperor, named Octavius Augustus, forbade
+his being praised in the schools of Rome, lest his name should be
+brought into contempt. You can bring the name of the Supreme Being
+neither into contempt, nor into honor. Humble yourselves in the dust;
+adore, and be silent."</p>
+
+<p>Thus spake Ben-al-betif; and the dervishes cried out: "Glory to God!
+Ben-al-betif has said well."</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION III.</h5>
+
+<h4><i>Conversation with a Chinese.</i></h4>
+
+<p>In 1723, there was in Holland a Chinese: this Chinese was a man of
+letters and a merchant; which two professions ought not to be
+incompatible, but which have become so amongst us, thanks to the extreme
+regard which is paid to money, and the little consideration which
+mankind have ever shown, and will ever show, for merit.</p>
+
+<p>This Chinese, who spoke a little Dutch, was once in a bookseller's shop
+with some men of learning. He asked for a book, and "Bossuet's Universal
+History," badly translated, was proposed to him. "Ah!" said he, "how
+fortunate! I shall now see what is said of our great empire&mdash;of our
+nation, which has existed as a national body for more than fifty
+thousand years&mdash;of that succession of emperors who have governed us for
+so many ages. I shall now see what is thought of the religion of the
+men of letters&mdash;of that simple worship which we render to the Supreme
+Being. How pleasing to see what is said in Europe of our arts, many of
+which are more ancient amongst us than any European kingdom. I guess the
+author will have made many mistakes in the history of the war which we
+had twenty-two thousand five hundred and fifty-two years ago, with the
+warlike nations of Tonquin and Japan, and of that solemn embassy which
+the mighty emperor of the Moguls sent to ask laws from us, in the year
+of the world 500,000,000,000,079,123,450,000." "Alas!" said one of the
+learned men to him, "you are not even mentioned in that book; you are
+too inconsiderable; it is almost all about the first nation in the
+world&mdash;the only nation, the great Jewish people!"</p>
+
+<p>"The Jewish people!" exclaimed the Chinese. "Are they, then, masters of
+at least three-quarters of the earth?" "They flatter themselves that
+they shall one day be so," was the answer; "until which time they have
+the honor of being our old-clothes-men, and, now and then, clippers of
+our coin."&mdash;"You jest," said the Chinese; "had these people ever a vast
+empire?" "They had as their own for some years," said I, "a small
+country; but it is not by the extent of their states that a people are
+to be judged; as it is not by his riches that we are to estimate a man."</p>
+
+<p>"But is no other people spoken of in this book?" asked the man of
+letters. "Undoubtedly," returned a learned man who stood next me, and
+who instantly replied, "there is a deal said in it of a small country
+sixty leagues broad, called Egypt, where it is asserted that there was a
+lake a hundred and fifty leagues round, cut by the hands of
+men."&mdash;"Zounds!" said the Chinese; "a lake a hundred and fifty leagues
+round in a country only sixty broad! That is fine, indeed!"&mdash;"Everybody
+was wise in that country," added the doctor. "Oh! what fine times they
+must have been," said the Chinese. "But is that all?"&mdash;"No," replied the
+European; "he also treats of that celebrated people, the Greeks." "Who
+are these Greeks?" asked the man of letters. "Ah!" continued the other,
+"they inhabited a province about a two-hundredth part as large as China,
+but which has been famous throughout the world." "I have never heard
+speak of these people, neither in Mogul nor in Japan, nor in Great
+Tartary," said the Chinese, with an ingenuous look.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ignorant, barbarous man!" politely exclaimed our scholar. "Know you
+not, then, the Theban Epaminondas; nor the harbor of Piraeus; nor the
+name of the two horses of Achilles; nor that of Silenus's ass? Have you
+not heard of Jupiter, nor of Diogenes, nor of Lais, nor of Cybele,
+nor&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I am much afraid," replied the man of letters, "that you know nothing
+at all of the ever memorable adventure of the celebrated Xixofou
+Concochigramki, nor of the mysteries of the great Fi Psi Hi Hi. But
+pray, what are the other unknown things of which this universal history
+treats?" The scholar then spoke for a quarter of an hour on the Roman
+commonwealth: but when he came to Julius Cæsar, the Chinese interrupted
+him, saying, "As for him, I think I know him: was he not a Turk?"</p>
+
+<p>"What!" said the scholar, somewhat warm, "do you not at least know the
+difference between Pagans, Christians, and Mussulmans? Do you not know
+Constantine, and the history of the popes?" "We have indistinctly
+heard," answered the Asiatic, "of one Mahomet."</p>
+
+<p>"It is impossible," returned the other, "that you should not, at least,
+be acquainted with Luther, Zuinglius, Bellarmin, Å’colampadius." "I
+shall never remember those names," said the Chinese. He then went away
+to sell a considerable parcel of tea and fine grogram, with which he
+bought two fine girls and a ship-boy, whom he took back to his own
+country, adoring Tien, and commending himself to Confucius.</p>
+
+<p>For myself, who was present at this conversation, I clearly saw what
+glory is; and I said: Since Cæsar and Jupiter are unknown in the finest,
+the most ancient, the most extensive, the most populous and
+well-regulated kingdom upon earth; it beseems you, ye governors of some
+little country, ye preachers in some little parish, or some little
+town&mdash;ye doctors of Salamanca and of Bourges, ye flimsy authors, and ye
+ponderous commentators&mdash;it beseems you to make pretensions to renown!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GOAT_SORCERY" id="GOAT_SORCERY"></a>GOAT&mdash;SORCERY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The honors of every kind which antiquity paid to goats would be very
+astonishing, if anything could astonish those who have grown a little
+familiar with the world, ancient and modern. The Egyptians and the Jews
+often designated the kings and the chiefs of the people by the word
+"goat." We find in Zachariah:</p>
+
+<p>"Mine anger was kindled against the shepherds, and I punished the goats;
+for the Lord of Hosts hath visited his flock, the house of Judah, and
+hath made them as his goodly horse in the battle."</p>
+
+<p>"Remove out of the midst of Babylon," says Jeremiah to the chiefs of the
+people; "go forth out of the land of the Chaldæans, and be as the
+he-goats before the flocks."</p>
+
+<p>Isaiah, in chapters x. and xiv., uses the term "goat," which has been
+translated "prince." The Egyptians went much farther than calling their
+kings goats; they consecrated a goat in Mendes, and it is even said that
+they adored him. The truth very likely was, that the people took an
+emblem for a divinity, as is but too often the case.</p>
+
+<p>It is not likely that the Egyptian <i>shoën</i> or <i>shotim</i>, <i>i.e.</i>, priests,
+immolated goats and worshipped them at the same time. We know that they
+had their goat Hazazel, which they adorned and crowned with flowers, and
+threw down headlong, as an expiation for the people; and that the Jews
+took from them, not only this ceremony, but even the very name of
+Hazazel, as they adopted many other rites from Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>But goats received another, and yet more singular honor. It is beyond a
+doubt that in Egypt many women set the same example with goats, as
+Pasiphae did with her bull.</p>
+
+<p>The Jews but too faithfully imitated these abominations. Jeroboam
+instituted priests for the service of his calves and his goats.</p>
+
+<p>The worship of the goat was established in Egypt, and in the lands of a
+part of Palestine. Enchantments were believed to be operated by means of
+goats, and other monsters, which were always represented with a goat's
+head.</p>
+
+<p>Magic, sorcery, soon passed from the East into the West, and extended
+itself throughout the earth. The sort of sorcery that came from the Jews
+was called Sabbatum by the Romans, who thus confounded their sacred day
+with their secret abominations. Thence it was, that in the neighboring
+nations, to be a sorcerer and to go to the sabbath, meant the same
+thing.</p>
+
+<p>Wretched village women, deceived by knaves, and still more by the
+weakness of their own imaginations, believed that after pronouncing the
+word "<i>abraxa</i>", and rubbing themselves with an ointment mixed with
+cow-dung and goat's hair, they went to the sabbath on a broom-stick in
+their sleep, that there they adored a goat, and that he enjoyed them.</p>
+
+<p>This opinion was universal. All the doctors asserted that it was the
+devil, who metamorphosed himself into a goat. This may be seen in Del
+Rio's "Disquisitions," and in a hundred other authors. The theologian
+Grillandus, a great promoter of the Inquisition, quoted by Del Rio, says
+that sorcerers call the goat Martinet. He assures us that a woman who
+was attached to Martinet, mounted on his back, and was carried in an
+instant through the air to a place called the Nut of Benevento.</p>
+
+<p>There were books in which the mysteries of the sorcerers were written. I
+have seen one of them, at the head of which was a figure of a goat very
+badly drawn, with a woman on her knees behind him. In France, these
+books were called "<i>grimoires</i>"; and in other countries "the devil's
+alphabet." That which I saw contained only four leaves, in almost
+illegible characters, much like those of the "Shepherd's Almanac."</p>
+
+<p>Reasoning and better education would have sufficed in Europe for the
+extirpation of such an extravagance; but executions were employed
+instead of reasoning. The pretended sorcerers had their "<i>grimoire</i>" and
+the judges had their sorcerer's code. In 1599, the Jesuit Del Rio, a
+doctor of Louvain, published his "Magical Disquisitions." He affirms
+that all heretics are magicians, and frequently recommends that they be
+put to the torture. He has no doubt that the devil transforms himself
+into a goat and grants his favors to all women presented to him. He
+quotes various jurisconsults, called demonographers, who assert that
+Luther was the son of a woman and a goat. He assures us that at
+Brussels, in 1595, a woman was brought to bed of a child, of which the
+devil, disguised as a goat, was father, and that she was punished, but
+he does not inform us in what manner.</p>
+
+<p>But the jurisprudence of witchcraft has been the most profoundly treated
+by one Boguet, "<i>grand juge en dernier ressort</i>" of an abbey of St.
+Claude in Franche-Comté. He gives an account of all the executions to
+which he condemned wizards and witches, and the number is very
+considerable. Nearly all the witches are supposed to have had commerce
+with the goat.</p>
+
+<p>It has already been said that more than a hundred thousand sorcerers
+have been executed in Europe. Philosophy alone has at length cured men
+of this abominable delusion, and has taught judges that they should not
+burn the insane.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GOD_GODS" id="GOD_GODS"></a>GOD&mdash;GODS.</h3>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION I.</h5>
+
+<p>The reader cannot too carefully bear in mind that this dictionary has
+not been written for the purpose of repeating what so many others have
+said.</p>
+
+<p>The knowledge of a God is not impressed upon us by the hands of nature,
+for then men would all have the same idea; and no idea is born with us.
+It does not come to us like the perception of light, of the ground,
+etc., which we receive as soon as our eyes and our understandings are
+opened. Is it a philosophical idea? No; men admitted the existence of
+gods before they were philosophers.</p>
+
+<p>Whence, then, is this idea derived? From feeling, and from that natural
+logic which unfolds itself with age, even in the rudest of mankind.
+Astonishing effects of nature were beheld&mdash;harvests and barrenness, fair
+weather and storms, benefits and scourges; and the hand of a master was
+felt. Chiefs were necessary to govern societies; and it was needful to
+admit sovereigns of these new sovereigns whom human weakness had given
+itself&mdash;beings before whose power these men who could bear down their
+fellow-men might tremble. The first sovereigns in their time employed
+these notions to cement their power. Such were the first steps; thus
+every little society had its god. These notions were rude because
+everything was rude. It is very natural to reason by analogy. One
+society under a chief did not deny that the neighboring tribe should
+likewise have its judge, or its captain; consequently it could not deny
+that the other should also have its god. But as it was to the interest
+of each tribe that its captain should be the best, it was also
+interested in believing, and consequently it did believe, that its god
+was the mightiest. Hence those ancient fables which have so long been
+generally diffused, that the gods of one nation fought against the gods
+of another. Hence the numerous passages in the Hebrew books, which we
+find constantly disclosing the opinion entertained by the Jews, that the
+gods of their enemies existed, but that they were inferior to the God of
+the Jews.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, in the great states where the progress of society allowed to
+individuals the enjoyment of speculative leisure, there were priests,
+Magi, and philosophers.</p>
+
+<p>Some of these perfected their reason so far as to acknowledge in secret
+one only and universal god. So, although the ancient Egyptians adored
+Osiri, Osiris, or rather Osireth (which signifies this land is mine);
+though they also adored other superior beings, yet they admitted one
+supreme, one only principal god, whom they called "<i>Knef</i>", whose symbol
+was a sphere placed on the frontispiece of the temple.</p>
+
+<p>After this model, the Greeks had their Zeus, their Jupiter, the master
+of the other gods, who were but what the angels are with the Babylonians
+and the Hebrews, and the saints with the Christians of the Roman
+communion.</p>
+
+<p>It is a more thorny question than it has been considered, and one by no
+means profoundly examined, whether several gods, equal in power, can
+exist at the same time?</p>
+
+<p>We have no adequate idea of the Divinity; we creep on from conjecture to
+conjecture, from likelihood to probability. We have very few
+certainties. There is something; therefore there is something eternal;
+for nothing is produced from nothing. Here is a certain truth on which
+the mind reposes. Every work which shows us means and an end, announces
+a workman; then this universe, composed of springs, of means, each of
+which has its end, discovers a most mighty, a most intelligent workman.
+Here is a probability approaching the greatest certainty. But is this
+supreme artificer infinite? Is he everywhere? Is he in one place? How
+are we, with our feeble intelligence and limited knowledge, to answer
+these questions?</p>
+
+<p>My reason alone proves to me a being who has arranged the matter of this
+world; but my reason is unable to prove to me that he made this
+matter&mdash;that he brought it out of nothing. All the sages of antiquity,
+without exception, believed matter to be eternal, and existing by
+itself. All then that I can do, without the aid of superior light, is to
+believe that the God of this world is also eternal, and existing by
+Himself. God and matter exist by the nature of things. May not other
+gods exist, as well as other worlds? Whole nations, and very enlightened
+schools, have clearly admitted two gods in this world&mdash;one the source of
+good, the other the source of evil. They admitted an eternal war between
+two equal powers. Assuredly, nature can more easily suffer the existence
+of several independent beings in the immensity of space, than that of
+limited and powerless gods in this world, of whom one can do no good,
+and the other no harm.</p>
+
+<p>If God and matter exist from all eternity, as antiquity believed, here
+then are two necessary beings; now, if there be two necessary beings,
+there may be thirty. These doubts alone, which are the germ of an
+infinity of reflections, serve at least to convince us of the feebleness
+of our understanding. We must, with Cicero, confess our ignorance of the
+nature of the Divinity; we shall never know any more of it than he did.</p>
+
+<p>In vain do the schools tell us that God is infinite negatively and not
+privatively&mdash;"<i>formaliter et non materialiter</i>" that He is the first
+act, the middle, and the last&mdash;that He is everywhere without being in
+any place; a hundred pages of commentaries on definitions like these
+cannot give us the smallest light. We have no steps whereby to arrive at
+such knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>We feel that we are under the hand of an invisible being; this is all;
+we cannot advance one step farther. It is mad temerity to seek to divine
+what this being is&mdash;whether he is extended or not, whether he is in one
+place or not, how he exists, or how he operates.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION II.</h5>
+
+<p>I am ever apprehensive of being mistaken; but all monuments give me
+sufficient evidence that the polished nations of antiquity acknowledged
+a supreme god. There is not a book, not a medal, not a bas-relief, not
+an inscription, in which Juno, Minerva, Neptune, Mars, or any of the
+other deities, is spoken of as a forming being, the sovereign of all
+nature. On the contrary, the most ancient profane books that we
+have&mdash;those of Hesiod and Homer&mdash;represent their Zeus as the only
+thunderer, the only master of gods and men; he even punishes the other
+gods; he ties Juno with a chain, and drives Apollo out of heaven.</p>
+
+<p>The ancient religion of the Brahmins&mdash;the first that admitted celestial
+creatures&mdash;the first which spoke of their rebellion&mdash;explains itself in
+sublime manner concerning the unity and power of God; as we have seen in
+the article on "Angel."</p>
+
+<p>The Chinese, ancient as they are, come after the Indians. They have
+acknowledged one only god from time immemorial; they have no subordinate
+gods, no t mediating demons or genii between God and man; no oracles, no
+abstract dogmas, no theological disputes among the lettered; their
+emperor was always the first pontiff; their religion was always august
+and simple; thus it is that this vast empire, though twice subjugated,
+has constantly preserved its integrity, has made its conquerors receive
+its laws, and notwithstanding the crimes and miseries inseparable from
+the human race, is still the most flourishing state upon earth.</p>
+
+<p>The Magi of Chaldæa, the Sabeans, acknowledged but one supreme god, whom
+they adored in the stars, which are his work. The Persians adored him in
+the sun. The sphere placed on the frontispiece of the temple of Memphis
+was the emblem of one only and perfect god, called "<i>Knef</i>" by the
+Egyptians.</p>
+
+<p>The title of "<i>Deus Optimus Maximus</i>" was never given by the Romans to
+any but "<i>Jupiter, hominum sator atque deorum</i>." This great truth, which
+we have elsewhere pointed out, cannot be too often repeated.</p>
+
+<p>This adoration of a Supreme God, from Romulus down to the total
+destruction of the empire and of its religion, is confirmed. In spite of
+all the follies of the people, who venerated secondary and ridiculous
+gods, and in spite of the Epicureans, who in reality acknowledged none,
+it is verified that, in all times, the magistrates and the wise adored
+one sovereign God.</p>
+
+<p>From the great number of testimonies left us to this truth, I will
+select first that of Maximus of Tyre, who flourished under the
+Antonines&mdash;those models of true piety, since they were models of
+humanity. These are his words, in his discourse entitled "Of God,"
+according to Plato. The reader who would instruct himself is requested
+to weigh them well:</p>
+
+<p>"Men have been so weak as to give to God a human figure, because they
+had seen nothing superior to man; but it is ridiculous to imagine, with
+Homer, that Jupiter or the Supreme Divinity has black eyebrows and
+golden hair, which he cannot shake without making the heavens tremble.</p>
+
+<p>"When men are questioned concerning the nature of the Divinity, their
+answers are all different. Yet, notwithstanding this prodigious variety
+of opinions, you will find one and the same feeling throughout the
+earth&mdash;viz., that there is but one God, who is the father of all...."</p>
+
+<p>After this formal avowal, after the immortal discourses of Cicero, of
+Antonine, of Epictetus, what becomes of the declamations which so many
+ignorant pedants are still repeating? What avail those eternal
+reproachings of base polytheism and puerile idolatry, but to convince us
+that the reproachers have not the slightest acquaintance with sterling
+antiquity? They have taken the reveries of Homer for the doctrines of
+the wise.</p>
+
+<p>Is it necessary to have stronger or more expressive testimony? You will
+find it in the letter from Maximus of Madaura to St. Augustine; both
+were philosophers and orators; at least, they prided themselves on being
+so; they wrote to each other freely; they were even friends as much as a
+man of the old religion and one of the new could be friends. Read
+Maximus of Madaura's letter, and the bishop of Hippo's answer:</p>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>Letter from Maximus of Madaura.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Now, that there is a sovereign God, who is without beginning, and, who,
+without having begotten anything like unto himself, is nevertheless the
+father and the former of all things, what man can be gross and stupid
+enough to doubt? He it is of whom, under different names, we adore the
+eternal power extending through every part of the world&mdash;thus honoring
+separately, by different sorts of worship, what may be called his
+several members, we adore him entirely.... May those subordinate gods
+preserve you, under whose names, and by whom all we mortals upon earth
+adore the common father of gods and men, by different sorts of worship,
+it is true, but all according in their variety, and all tending to the
+same end."</p>
+
+<p>By whom was this letter written? By a Numidian&mdash;one of the country of
+the Algerines!</p>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>Augustine's Answer.</i></p>
+
+<p>"In your public square there are two statues of Mars, the one naked, the
+other armed; and close by, the figure of a man who, with three fingers
+advanced towards Mars, holds in check that divinity, so dangerous to the
+whole town. With regard to what you say of such gods, being portions of
+the only true God, I take the liberty you give me, to warn you not to
+fall into such a sacrilege; for that only God, of whom you speak, is
+doubtless He who is acknowledged by the whole world, and concerning
+whom, as some of the ancients have said, the ignorant agree with the
+learned. Now, will you say that he whose strength, if not his cruelty,
+is represented by an inanimate man, is a portion of that God? I could
+easily push you hard on this subject; for you will clearly see how much
+might be said upon it; but I refrain, lest you should say that I employ
+against you the weapons of rhetoric rather than those of virtue."</p>
+
+<p>We know not what was signified by these two statues, of which no vestige
+is left us; but not all the statues with which Rome was filled&mdash;not the
+Pantheon and all the temples consecrated to the inferior gods, nor even
+those of the twelve greater gods prevented "<i>Deus Optimus
+Maximus</i>"&mdash;"God, most good, most great"&mdash;from being acknowledged
+throughout the empire.</p>
+
+<p>The misfortune of the Romans, then, was their ignorance of the Mosaic
+law, and afterwards, of the law of the disciples of our Saviour Jesus
+Christ&mdash;their want of the faith&mdash;their mixing with the worship of a
+supreme God the worship of Mars, of Venus, of Minerva, of Apollo, who
+did not exist, and their preserving that religion until the time of the
+Theodosii. Happily, the Goths, the Huns, the Vandals, the Heruli, the
+Lombards, the Franks, who destroyed that empire, submitted to the truth,
+and enjoyed a blessing denied to Scipio, to Cato, to Metellus, to
+Emilius, to Cicero, to Varro, to Virgil, and to Horace.</p>
+
+<p>None of these great men knew Jesus Christ, whom they could not know; yet
+they did not worship the devil, as so many pedants are every day
+repeating. How should they worship the devil, of whom they had never
+heard?</p>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>A Calumny on Cicero by Warburton, on the Subject of a Supreme God.</i></p>
+
+<p>Warburton, like his contemporaries, has calumniated Cicero and ancient
+Rome. He boldly supposes that Cicero pronounced these words, in his
+"Oration for Flaccus":</p>
+
+<p>"It is unworthy of the majesty of the empire to adore only one
+God"&mdash;"<i>Majestatem imperii non decuit ut unus tantum Deus colatur.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>It will, perhaps, hardly be believed that there is not a word of this in
+the "Oration for Flaccus," nor in any of Cicero's works. Flaccus, who
+had exercised the prætorship in Asia Minor, is charged with exercising
+some vexations. He was secretly persecuted by the Jews, who then
+inundated Rome; for, by their money, they had obtained privileges in
+Rome at the very time when Pompey, after Crassus, had taken Jerusalem,
+and hanged their petty king, Alexander, son of Aristobolus. Flaccus had
+forbidden the conveying of gold and silver specie to Jerusalem, because
+the money came back altered, and commerce was thereby injured; and he
+had seized the gold which was clandestinely carried. This gold, said
+Cicero, is still in the treasury. Flaccus has acted as disinterestedly
+as Pompey.</p>
+
+<p>Cicero, then, with his wonted irony, pronounces these words: "Each
+country has its religion; we have ours. While Jerusalem was yet free,
+while the Jews were yet at peace, even then they held in abhorrence the
+splendor of this empire, the dignity of the Roman name, the
+institutions of our ancestors. Now that nation has shown more than ever,
+by the strength of its arms, what it should think of the Roman Empire.
+It has shown us, by its valor, how dear it is to the immortal gods; it
+has proved it to us, by its being vanquished, expatriated, and
+tributary."&mdash;"<i>Stantibus Hierosolymis, pacatisque Judais, tamen istorum
+religio sacrorum, a splendore hujus imperii, gravitate nominis nostri,
+ma jorum institutis, abhorrebat; nunc vero hoc magis quid ilia gens,
+quid de imperio nostro sentiret, ostendit armis; quam cara diis
+immortalibus esset, docuit, quod est victa, quod elocata, quod
+servata.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>It is then quite false that Cicero, or any other Roman, ever said that
+it did not become the majesty of the empire to acknowledge a supreme
+God. Their Jupiter, the Zeus of the Greeks, the Jehovah of the
+Phœnicians, was always considered as the master of the secondary
+gods. This great truth cannot be too forcibly inculcated.</p>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>Did the Romans Take Their Gods from the Greeks?</i></p>
+
+<p>Had not the Romans served gods for whom they were not indebted to the
+Greeks? For instance, they could not be guilty of plagiarism in adoring
+Coelum, while the Greeks adored Ouranon; or in addressing themselves to
+Saturnus and Tellus, while the Greeks addressed themselves to Ge and
+Chronos. They called Ceres, her whom the Greeks named Deo and Demiter.</p>
+
+<p>Their Neptune was Poseidon, their Venus was Aphrodite; their Juno was
+called, in Greek, Era; their Proserpine, Core; and their favorites, Mars
+and Bellona, were Ares and Enio. In none of these instances do the names
+resemble.</p>
+
+<p>Did the inventive spirits of Rome and of Greece assemble? or did the one
+take from the other the <i>thing</i>, while they disguised the <i>name</i>? It is
+very natural that the Romans, without consulting the Greeks, should make
+to themselves gods of the heavens, of time; beings presiding over war,
+over generation, over harvests, without going to Greece to ask for gods,
+as they afterwards went there to ask for laws. When you find a name that
+resembles nothing else, it is but fair to believe it a native of that
+particular country.</p>
+
+<p>But is not Jupiter, the master of all the gods, a word belonging to
+every nation, from the Euphrates to the Tiber? Among the first Romans,
+it was <i>Jov</i>, <i>Jovis</i>; among the Greeks, <i>Zeus</i>; among the
+Phœnicians, the Syrians, and the Egyptians, <i>Jehovah</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Does not this resemblance serve to confirm the supposition that every
+people had the knowledge of the Supreme Being?&mdash;a knowledge confused, it
+is true; but what man can have it <i>distinct</i>?</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION III.</h5>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>Examination of Spinoza.</i></p>
+
+<p>Spinoza cannot help admitting an intelligence acting in matter, and
+forming a whole with it.</p>
+
+<p>"I must conclude," he says, "that the absolute being is neither thought
+nor extent, exclusively of each other; but that extent and thought are
+necessary attributes of the absolute being."</p>
+
+<p>Herein he appears to differ from all the atheists of antiquity; from
+Ocellus, Lucanus, Heraclitus, Democritus, Leucippus, Strato, Epicurus,
+Pythagoras, Diagoras, Zeno of Elis, Anaximander, and so many others. He
+differs from them, above all, in his method, which he took entirely from
+the reading of Descartes, whose very style he has imitated.</p>
+
+<p>The multitude of those who cry out against Spinoza, without ever having
+read him, will especially be astonished by his following declaration. He
+does not make it to dazzle mankind, nor to appease theologians, nor to
+obtain protectors, nor to disarm a party; he speaks as a philosopher,
+without naming himself, without advertising himself; and expresses
+himself in Latin, so as to be understood by a very small number. Here is
+his profession of faith.</p>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>Spinoza's Profession of Faith.</i></p>
+
+<p>"If I also concluded that the idea of God, comprised in that of the
+infinity of the universe, excused me from obedience, love, and worship,
+I should make a still more pernicious use of my reason; for it is
+evident to me that the laws which I <i>have</i> received, not by the relation
+or intervention of other men, but immediately from Him, are those which
+the light of nature points out to me as the true guides of rational
+conduct. If I failed of obedience, in this particular, I should sin, not
+only against the principle of my being and the society of my kind, but
+also against myself, in depriving myself of the most solid advantage of
+my existence. This obedience does, it is true, bind me only to the
+duties of my state, and makes me look on all besides as frivolous
+practices, invented in superstition to serve the purposes of their
+inventors.</p>
+
+<p>"With regard to the love of God, so far, I conceive, is this idea from
+tending to weaken it, that no other is more calculated to increase it;
+since, through it, I know that God is intimate with my being; that He
+gives me existence and my every property; but He gives me them
+liberally, without reproach, without interest, without subjecting me to
+anything but my own nature. It banishes fear, uneasiness, distrust, and
+all the effects of a vulgar or interested love. It informs me that this
+is a good which I cannot lose, and which I possess the more fully, as I
+know and love it."</p>
+
+<p>Are these the words of the virtuous and tender Fénelon, or those of
+Spinoza? How is it that two men so opposed to each other, have, with
+such different notions of God, concurred in the idea of loving God for
+Himself?</p>
+
+<p>It must be acknowledged that they went both to the same end&mdash;the one as
+a Christian, the other as a man who had the misfortune not to be so;
+the holy archbishop, as philosopher, convinced that God is distinct
+from nature; the other as a widely-erring disciple of Descartes, who
+imagined that God is all nature.</p>
+
+<p>The former was orthodox, the latter was mistaken, I must assent; but
+both were honest, both estimable in their sincerity, as in their mild
+and simple manners; though there is no other point of resemblance
+between the imitator of the "Odyssey," and a dry Cartesian fenced round
+with arguments; between one of the most accomplished men of the court of
+Louis XIV. invested with what is called a <i>high</i> divinity, and a poor
+unjudaïzed Jew, living with an income of three hundred florins, in the
+most profound obscurity.</p>
+
+<p>If there be any similitude between them, it is that Fénelon was accused
+before the Sanhedrim of the new law, and the other before a synagogue
+without power or without reason; but the one submitted, the other
+rebelled.</p>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>Foundation of Spinoza's Philosophy.</i></p>
+
+<p>The great dialectician Bayle has refuted Spinoza. His system, therefore,
+is not demonstrated, like one of Euclid's propositions; for, if it were
+so, it could not be combated. It is, therefore, at least obscure.</p>
+
+<p>I have always had some suspicion that Spinoza, with his universal
+substance, his modes and accidents, had some other meaning than that in
+which he is understood by Bayle; and consequently, that Bayle may be
+right, without having confounded Spinoza. And, in particular, I have
+always thought that often Spinoza did not understand himself, and that
+this is the principal reason why he has not been understood.</p>
+
+<p>It seems to me that the ramparts of Spinozism might be beaten down on a
+side which Bayle has neglected. Spinoza thinks that there can exist but
+one substance; and it appears throughout his book that he builds his
+theory on the mistake of Descartes, that "nature is a plenum."</p>
+
+<p>The theory of a plenum is as false as that of a void. It is now
+demonstrated that motion is as impossible in absolute fulness, as it is
+impossible that, in an equal balance, a weight of two pounds in one
+scale should sink a weight of two in the other.</p>
+
+<p>Now, if every motion absolutely requires empty space, what becomes of
+Spinoza's one and only substance? How can the substance of a star,
+between which and us there is a void so immense, be precisely the
+substance of this earth, or the substance of myself, or the substance of
+a fly eaten by a spider?</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps I mistake, but I never have been able to conceive how Spinoza,
+admitting an infinite substance of which thought and matter are the two
+modalities&mdash;admitting the substance which he calls God, and of which all
+that we see is mode or accident&mdash;could nevertheless reject final causes.
+If this infinite, universal being thinks, must he not have design? If he
+has design, must he not have a will?</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 428px;">
+<a name="Descartes" id="Descartes"></a>
+<img src="images/img_04_descartes.jpg" width="428" alt="Descartes." title="" />
+<span class="caption_fig">Descartes.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Spinoza says, we are modes of that absolute, necessary, infinite being.
+I say to Spinoza, we will, and have design, we who are but modes;
+therefore, this infinite, necessary, absolute being cannot be deprived
+of them; therefore, he has will, design, power.</p>
+
+<p>I am aware that various philosophers, and especially Lucretius, have
+denied final causes; I am also aware that Lucretius, though not very
+chaste, is a very great poet in his descriptions and in his morals; but
+in philosophy I own he appears to me to be very far behind a college
+porter or a parish beadle. To affirm that the eye is not made to see,
+nor the ear to hear, nor the stomach to digest&mdash;is not this the most
+enormous absurdity, the most revolting folly, that ever entered the
+human mind? Doubter as I am, this insanity seems to me evident, and I
+say so.</p>
+
+<p>For my part, I see in nature, as in the arts, only final causes, and I
+believe that an apple tree is made to bear apples, as I believe that a
+watch is made to tell the hour.</p>
+
+<p>I must here acquaint the readers that if Spinoza, in several passages of
+his works, makes a jest of final causes, he most expressly acknowledges
+them in the first part of his "Being, in General and in Particular."</p>
+
+<p>Here he says, "Permit me for a few moments to dwell with admiration on
+the wonderful dispensation of nature, which, having enriched the
+constitution of man with all the resources necessary to prolong to a
+certain term the duration of his frail existence, and to animate his
+knowledge of himself by that of an infinity of distant objects, seems
+purposely to have neglected to give him the means of well knowing what
+he is obliged to make a more ordinary use of&mdash;the individuals of his own
+species. Yet, when duly considered, this appears less the effect of a
+refusal than of an extreme liberality; for, if there were any
+intelligent being that could penetrate another against his will, he
+would enjoy such an advantage as would of itself exclude him from
+society; whereas, in the present state of things, each individual
+enjoying himself in full independence communicates himself so much only
+as he finds convenient."</p>
+
+<p>What shall I conclude from this? That Spinoza frequently contradicted
+himself; that he had not always clear ideas; that in the great wreck of
+systems, he clung sometimes to one plank, sometimes to another; that in
+this weakness he was like Malebranche, Arnauld, Bossuet, and Claude, who
+now and then contradicted themselves in their disputes; that he was like
+numberless metaphysicians and theologians? I shall conclude that I have
+additional reason for distrusting all my metaphysical notions; that I am
+a very feeble animal, treading on quicksands, which are continually
+giving way beneath me; and that there is perhaps nothing so foolish as
+to believe ourselves always in the right.</p>
+
+<p>Baruch Spinoza, you are very confused; but are you as dangerous as you
+are said to be? I maintain that you are not; and my reason is, that you
+<i>are</i> confused, that you have written in bad Latin, and that there are
+not ten persons in Europe who read you from beginning to end, although
+you have been translated into French. Who is the dangerous author? He
+who is read by the idle at court and by the ladies.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION IV.</h5>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>The "System of Nature."</i></p>
+
+<p>The author of the "System of Nature" has had the advantage of being read
+by both learned and ignorant, and by women. His style, then, has merits
+which that of Spinoza wanted. He is often luminous, sometimes eloquent;
+although he may be charged, like all the rest, with repetition,
+declamation, and self-contradiction. But for profundity, he is very
+often to be distrusted both in physics and in morals. The interest of
+mankind is here in question; we will, therefore, examine whether his
+doctrine is true and useful; and will, if we can, be brief.</p>
+
+<p>"Order and disorder do not exist." What! in physics, is not a child born
+blind, without legs, or a monster, contrary to the nature of the
+species? Is it not the ordinary regularity of nature that makes order,
+and irregularity that constitutes disorder? Is it not a great
+derangement, a dreadful disorder, when nature gives a child hunger and
+closes the Å“sophagus? The evacuations of every kind are necessary;
+yet the channels are frequently without orifices, which it is necessary
+to remedy. Doubtless this disorder has its cause; for there is no effect
+without a cause; but it is a very disordered effect.</p>
+
+<p>Is not the assassination of our friend, or of our brother, a horrible
+disorder in morals? Are not the calumnies of a Garasse, of a Letellier,
+of a Doucin, against Jansenists, and those of Jansenists against
+Jesuits, petty disorders? Were not the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the
+Irish massacre, etc., execrable disorders? This crime has its cause in
+passion, but the effect is execrable; the cause is fatal; this disorder
+makes us shudder. The origin of the disorder remains to be discovered,
+but the disorder exists.</p>
+
+<p>"Experience proves to us that the matter which we regard as inert and
+dead assumes action, intelligence, and life, when it is combined in a
+certain way."</p>
+
+<p>This is precisely the difficulty. How does a germ come to life? Of this
+the author and the reader are alike ignorant. Hence, are not the "System
+of Nature," and all the systems in the world, so many dreams?</p>
+
+<p>"It would be necessary to define the vital principle, which I deem
+impossible." Is not this definition very easy, very common? Is not life
+organization with feeling? But that you have these two properties from
+the motion of matter alone, it is impossible to give any proof; and if
+it cannot be proved, why affirm it? Why say aloud, "I know," while you
+say to yourself, "I know not"?</p>
+
+<p>"It will be asked, what is man?" etc. Assuredly, this article is no
+clearer than the most obscure of Spinoza's; and many readers will feel
+indignant at the decisive tone which is assumed without anything being
+explained.</p>
+
+<p>"Matter is eternal and necessary; but its forms and its combinations are
+transitory and contingent," etc. It is hard to comprehend, matter being,
+according to our author, necessary, and without freedom, how there can
+be anything contingent. By contingency, we understand that which may be,
+or may not be; but since all must be, of absolute necessity, every
+manner of being, which he here very erroneously calls contingent, is as
+absolutely of necessity as the being itself. Here again we are in a
+labyrinth.</p>
+
+<p>When you venture to affirm that there is no God, that matter acts of
+itself by an eternal necessity, it must be demonstrated like a
+proposition in Euclid, otherwise you rest your system only on a perhaps.
+What a foundation for that which is most interesting to the human race!</p>
+
+<p>"If man is by his nature forced to love his well-being, he is forced to
+love the means of that well-being. It were useless, and perhaps unjust,
+to ask a man to be virtuous, if he cannot be so without making himself
+unhappy. So soon as vice makes him happy, he must love vice."</p>
+
+<p>This maxim is yet more execrable in morals than the others are in
+physics. Were it true that a man could not be virtuous without
+suffering, he must be encouraged to suffer. Our author's proposition
+would evidently be the ruin of society. Besides, how does he know that
+we cannot be happy without having vices? On the contrary, is it not
+proved by experience that the satisfaction of having subdued them is a
+thousand times greater than the pleasure of yielding to them?&mdash;a
+pleasure always empoisoned, a pleasure leading to woe. By subduing our
+vices, we acquire tranquillity, the consoling testimony of our
+conscience; by giving ourselves up to them, we lose our health, our
+quiet&mdash;we risk everything. Thus our author himself, in twenty passages,
+wishes all to be sacrificed to virtue; and he advances this proposition
+only to give in his system a fresh proof of the necessity of being
+virtuous.</p>
+
+<p>"They who, with so many arguments, reject innate ideas should have
+perceived that this ineffable intelligence by which the world is said to
+be guided, and of which our senses can determine neither the existence
+nor the qualities, is a being of reason."</p>
+
+<p>But, truly, how does it follow from our having no innate ideas, that
+there is no God? Is not this consequence absurd? Is there any
+contradiction in saying that God gives us ideas through our senses? Is
+it not, on the contrary, most clearly evident, that if there is an
+Almighty Being from whom we have life, we owe to him our ideas and our
+senses as well as everything else? It should first have been proved
+that God does not exist, which our author has not done, which he has not
+even attempted to do before this page of his tenth chapter.</p>
+
+<p>Fearful of wearying the reader by an examination of all these detached
+passages, I will come at once to the foundation of the book, and the
+astonishing error upon which the author has built his system.</p>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>Story of the Eels on Which the System is Founded.</i></p>
+
+<p>About the year 1750 there was, in France, an English Jesuit called
+Needham, disguised as a secular, who was then serving as tutor to the
+nephew of M. Dillon, archbishop of Toulouse. This man made experiments
+in natural philosophy, and especially in chemistry.</p>
+
+<p>Having put some rye meal into well-corked bottles, and some boiled
+mutton gravy into other bottles, he thought that his mutton gravy and
+his meal had given birth to eels, which again produced others; and that
+thus a race of eels was formed indifferently from the juice of meat, or
+from a grain of rye.</p>
+
+<p>A natural philosopher, of some reputation, had no doubt that this
+Needham was a profound atheist. He concluded that, since eels could be
+made of rye meal, men might be made of wheat flour; that nature and
+chemistry produce all; and that it was demonstrated that we may very
+well dispense with an all-forming God.</p>
+
+<p>This property of meal very easily deceived one who, unfortunately, was
+already wandering amidst ideas that should make us tremble for the
+weakness of the human mind. He wanted to dig a hole in the centre of the
+earth, to see the central fire; to dissect Patagonians, that he might
+know the nature of the soul; to cover the sick with pitch, to prevent
+them from perspiring; to exalt his soul, that he might foretell the
+future. If to these things it were added, that he had the still greater
+unhappiness of seeking to oppress two of his brethren, it would do no
+honor to atheism; it would only serve to make us look into ourselves
+with confusion.</p>
+
+<p>It is really strange that men, while denying a creator, should have
+attributed to themselves the power of creating eels.</p>
+
+<p>But it is yet more deplorable that natural philosophers, of better
+information, adopted the Jesuit Needham's ridiculous system, and joined
+it to that of Maillet, who asserted that the ocean had formed the Alps
+and Pyrenees, and that men were originally porpoises, whose forked tails
+changed in the course of time into thighs and legs. Such fancies are
+worthy to be placed with the eels formed by meal. We were assured, not
+long ago, that at Brussels a hen had brought forth half a dozen young
+rabbits.</p>
+
+<p>This transmutation of meal and gravy into eels was demonstrated to be as
+false and ridiculous as it really is, by M. Spallanzani, a rather better
+observer than Needham. But the extravagance of so palpable an illusion
+was evident without his observations.</p>
+
+<p>Needham's eels soon followed the Brussels' hen.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, in 1768, the correct, elegant, and judicious translator of
+Lucretius was so far led away, that he not only, in his notes to book
+viii. p. 361, repeats Needham's pretended experiments, but he also does
+all he can to establish their validity. Here, then, we have the new
+foundation of the "System of Nature."</p>
+
+<p>The author, in the second chapter, thus expresses himself: "After
+moistening meal with water, and shutting up the mixture, it is found
+after a little time, with the aid of the microscope, that it has
+produced organized beings, of whose production the water and meal were
+believed to be incapable. Thus inanimate nature can pass into life,
+which is itself but an assemblage of motions."</p>
+
+<p>Were this unparalleled blunder true, yet, in rigorous reasoning, I do
+not see how it would prove there is no God; I do not see why a supreme,
+intelligent, and mighty being, having formed the sun and the stars,
+might not also deign to form animalculae without a germ. Here is no
+contradiction in terms. A demonstrative proof that God has no existence
+must be sought elsewhere; and most assuredly no person has ever found,
+or will ever find, one.</p>
+
+<p>Our author treats final causes with contempt, because the argument is
+hackneyed; but this much-contemned argument is that of Cicero and of
+Newton. This alone might somewhat lessen the confidence of atheists in
+themselves. The number is not small of the sages who, observing the
+course of the stars, and the prodigious art that pervades the structure
+of animals and vegetables, have acknowledged a powerful hand working
+these continual wonders.</p>
+
+<p>The author asserts that matter, blind and without choice, produces
+intelligent animals. Produce, without intelligence, beings with
+intelligence! Is this conceivable? Is this system founded on the
+smallest verisimilitude? An opinion so contradictory requires proofs no
+less astonishing than itself. The author gives us none; he never proves
+anything; but he affirms all that he advances. What chaos! what
+confusion! and what temerity!</p>
+
+<p>Spinoza at least acknowledged an intelligence acting in this great
+whole, which constituted nature: in this there was philosophy. But in
+the new system, I am under the necessity of saying that there is none.</p>
+
+<p>Matter has extent, solidity, gravity, divisibility. I have all these as
+well as this stone: but was a stone ever known to feel and think? If I
+am extended, solid, divisible, I owe it to matter. But I have sensations
+and thoughts&mdash;to what do I owe them? Not to water, not to mire&mdash;most
+likely to something more powerful than myself. Solely to the combination
+of the elements, you will say. Then prove it to me. Show me plainly that
+my intelligence cannot have been given to me by an intelligent cause. To
+this are you reduced.</p>
+
+<p>Our author successively combats the God of the schoolmen&mdash;a God composed
+of discordant qualities; a God to whom, as to those of Homer, is
+attributed the passions of men; a God capricious, fickle, unreasonable,
+absurd&mdash;but he cannot combat the God of the wise. The wise,
+contemplating nature, admit an intelligent and supreme power. It is
+perhaps impossible for human reason, destitute of divine assistance, to
+go a step further.</p>
+
+<p>Our author asks where this being resides; and, from the impossibility
+that anyone, without being infinite, should tell where He resides, he
+concludes that He does not exist. This is not philosophical; for we are
+not, because we cannot tell where the cause of an effect is, to conclude
+that there is no cause. If you had never seen a gunner, and you saw the
+effects of a battery of cannon, you would not say it acts entirely by
+itself. Shall it, then, only be necessary for you to say there is no
+God, in order to be believed on your words?</p>
+
+<p>Finally, his great objection is, the woes and crimes of mankind&mdash;an
+objection alike ancient and philosophical; an objection common, but
+fatal and terrible, and to which we find no answer but in the hope of a
+better life. Yet what is this hope? We can have no certainty in it but
+from reason. But I will venture to say, that when it is proved to us
+that a vast edifice, constructed with the greatest art, is built by an
+architect, whoever he may be, we ought to believe in that architect,
+even though the edifice should be stained with our blood, polluted by
+our crimes, and should crush us in its fall. I inquire not whether the
+architect is a good one, whether I should be satisfied with his
+building, whether I should quit it rather than stay in it, nor whether
+those who are lodged in it for a few days, like myself, are content: I
+only inquire if it be true that there is an architect, or if this house,
+containing so many fine apartments and so many wretched garrets, built
+itself.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION V.</h5>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>The Necessity of Believing in a Supreme Being.</i></p>
+
+<p>The great, the interesting object, as it appears to me, is, not to argue
+metaphysically, but to consider whether, for the common good of us
+miserable and thinking animals, we should admit a rewarding and avenging
+God, at once our restraint and consolation, or should reject this idea,
+and so abandon ourselves to calamity without hope, and crime without
+remorse.</p>
+
+<p>Hobbes says that if, in a commonwealth, in which no God should be
+acknowledged, any citizen were to propose one, he would have him hanged.</p>
+
+<p>Apparently, he meant by this strange exaggeration, a citizen who should
+seek to rule in the name of a god, a charlatan who would make himself a
+tyrant. We understand citizens, who, feeling the weakness of human
+nature, its perverseness, and its misery, seek some prop to support it
+through the languors and horrors of this life.</p>
+
+<p>From Job down to us, a great many men have cursed their existence; we
+have, therefore, perpetual need of consolation and hope. Of these your
+philosophy deprives us. The fable of Pandora was better; it left us
+hope&mdash;which you snatch from us! Philosophy, you say, furnishes no proof
+of happiness to come. No&mdash;but you have no demonstration of the contrary.
+There may be in us an indestructible monad which feels and thinks,
+without our knowing anything at all of how that monad is made. Reason is
+not absolutely opposed to this idea, though reason alone does not prove
+it. Has not this opinion a prodigious advantage over yours? Mine is
+useful to mankind, yours is baneful; say of it what you will, it may
+encourage a Nero, an Alexander VI., or a Cartouche. Mine may restrain
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Marcus Antoninus and Epictetus believed that their monad, of whatever
+kind it was, would be united to the monad of the Great Being; and they
+were the most virtuous of men.</p>
+
+<p>In the state of doubt in which we both are, I do not say to you with
+Pascal, "choose the safest." There is no safety in uncertainty. We are
+here not to talk, but to examine; we must judge, and our judgment is not
+determined by our will. I do not propose to you to believe extravagant
+things, in order to escape embarrassment. I do not say to you, "Go to
+Mecca, and instruct yourself by kissing the black stone, take hold of a
+cow's tail, muffle yourself in a scapulary, or be imbecile and fanatical
+to acquire the favor of the Being of beings." I say to you: "Continue
+to cultivate virtue, to be beneficent, to regard all superstition with
+horror, or with pity; but adore, with me, the design which is manifested
+in all nature, and consequently the Author of that design&mdash;the
+primordial and final cause of all; hope with me that our monad, which
+reasons on the great eternal being, may be happy through that same great
+Being." There is no contradiction in this. You can no more demonstrate
+its impossibility than I can demonstrate mathematically that it is so.
+In metaphysics we scarcely reason on anything but probabilities. We are
+all swimming in a sea of which we have never seen the shore. Woe be to
+those who fight while they swim! Land who can: but he that cries out to
+me, "You swim in vain, there is no land," disheartens me, and deprives
+me of all my strength.</p>
+
+<p>What is the object of our dispute? To console our unhappy existence. Who
+consoles it&mdash;you or I?</p>
+
+<p>You yourself own, in some passages of your work, that the belief in a
+God has withheld some men on the brink of crime; for me, this
+acknowledgment is enough. If this opinion had prevented but ten
+assassinations, but ten calumnies, but ten iniquitous judgments on the
+earth, I hold that the whole earth ought to embrace it.</p>
+
+<p>Religion, you say, has produced thousands of crimes&mdash;say, rather,
+superstition, which unhappily reigns over this globe; it is the most
+cruel enemy of the pure adoration due to the Supreme Being.</p>
+
+<p>Let us detest this monster which has constantly been tearing the bosom
+of its mother; they who combat it are benefactors to mankind: it is a
+serpent enclosing religion in its folds, its head must be bruised,
+without wounding the parent whom it infects and devours.</p>
+
+<p>You fear, "that, by adoring God, men would soon again become
+superstitious and fanatical." But is it not to be feared that in denying
+Him, they would abandon themselves to the most atrocious passions, and
+the most frightful crimes? Between these two extremes is there not a
+very rational mean? Where is the safe track between these two rocks? It
+is God, and wise laws.</p>
+
+<p>You affirm that it is but one step from adoration to superstition: but
+there is an infinity to well-constituted minds, and these are now very
+numerous; they are at the head of nations; they influence public
+manners, and, year by year, the fanaticism that overspread the earth is
+receding in its detestable usurpations.</p>
+
+<p>I shall say a few words more in answer to what you say in page 223. "If
+it be presumed that there are relations between man and this incredible
+being, then altars must be raised and presents must be made to him,
+etc.; if no conception be formed of this being, then the matter must be
+referred to priests, who...." A great evil to be sure, to assemble in
+the harvest season, and thank God for the bread that He has given us!
+Who says you should make presents to God? The idea is ridiculous! But
+where is the harm of employing a citizen, called an "elder" or "priest,"
+to render thanks to the Divinity in the name of the other
+citizens?&mdash;provided the priest is not a Gregory VII. trampling on the
+heads of kings, nor an Alexander VI. polluting by incest his daughter,
+the offspring of a rape, and, by the aid of his bastard son, poisoning
+and assassinating almost all the neighboring princes: provided that, in
+a parish, this priest is not a knave, picking the pockets of the
+penitents he confesses, and using the money to seduce the girls he
+catechises; provided that this priest is not a Letellier, putting the
+whole kingdom in combustion by rogueries worthy of the pillory, nor a
+Warburton, violating the laws of society, making public the private
+papers of a member of parliament in order to ruin him, and calumniating
+whosoever is not of his opinion. The latter cases are rare. The
+sacerdotal state is a curb which forces to good behavior.</p>
+
+<p>A stupid priest excites contempt; a bad priest inspires horror; a good
+priest, mild, pious, without superstition, charitable, tolerant, is one
+who ought to be cherished and revered. You dread abuses&mdash;so do I. Let us
+unite to prevent them; but let us not condemn the usage when it is
+useful to society, when it is not perverted by fanaticism, or by
+fraudulent wickedness.</p>
+
+<p>I have one very important thing to tell you. I am persuaded that you are
+in a great error, but I am equally convinced that you are honest in your
+self-delusion. You would have men virtuous even without a God, although
+you have unfortunately said that "so soon as vice renders man happy, he
+must love vice"&mdash;a frightful proposition, which your friends should have
+prevailed on you to erase. Everywhere else you inspire probity. This
+philosophical dispute will be only between you and a few philosophers
+scattered over Europe; the rest of the earth will not even hear of it.
+The people do not read us. If some theologian were to seek to persecute
+us, he would be impudent as well as wicked; he would but serve to
+confirm you, and to make new atheists.</p>
+
+<p>You are wrong: but the Greeks did not persecute Epicurus; the Romans did
+not persecute Lucretius. You are wrong: but your genius and your virtue
+must be respected, while you are refuted with all possible strength.</p>
+
+<p>In my opinion, the finest homage that can be rendered to God is to stand
+forward in His defence without anger; as the most unworthy portrait that
+can be drawn of Him is to paint Him vindictive and furious. He is truth
+itself; and truth is without passion. To be a disciple of God is to
+announce Him as of a mild heart and of an unalterable mind.</p>
+
+<p>I think, with you, that fanaticism is a monster a thousand times more
+dangerous than philosophical atheism. Spinoza did not commit a single
+bad action. Châtel and Ravaillac, both devotees, assassinated Henry IV.</p>
+
+<p>The atheist of the closet is almost always a quiet philosopher, while
+the fanatic is always turbulent: but the court atheist, the atheistical
+prince, might be the scourge of mankind. Borgia and his like have done
+almost as much harm as the fanatics of Münster and of the Cévennes. I
+say the fanatics on both sides. The misfortune is, that atheists of the
+closet make atheists of the court. It was Chiron who brought up
+Achilles; he fed him with lion's marrow. Achilles will one day drag
+Hector's body round the walls of Troy, and immolate twelve captives to
+his vengeance.</p>
+
+<p>God keep us from an abominable priest who should hew a king in pieces
+with his sacrificing knife, as also from him who, with a helmet on his
+head and a cuirass on his back, at the age of seventy, should dare to
+sign with his three bloody fingers the ridiculous excommunication of a
+king of France! and from.... and from....</p>
+
+<p>But also, may God preserve us from a choleric and barbarous despot, who,
+not believing in a God, should be his own God, who should render himself
+unworthy of his sacred trust by trampling on the duties which that trust
+imposes, who should remorselessly sacrifice to his passions, his
+friends, his relatives, his servants, and his people. These two tigers,
+the one shorn, the other crowned are equally to be feared. By what means
+shall we muzzle them?....</p>
+
+<p>If the idea of a God has made a Titus or a Trajan, an Antonine or an
+Aurelius, and those great Chinese emperors, whose memory is so dear to
+the second of the most ancient and most extensive empires in the world,
+these examples are sufficient for my cause&mdash;and my cause is that of all
+mankind.</p>
+
+<p>I do not believe that there is in all Europe one statesman, one man at
+all versed in the affairs of the world, who has not the most profound
+contempt for the legends with which we have been inundated, even more
+than we now are with pamphlets. If religion no longer gives birth to
+civil wars, it is to philosophy alone that we are indebted, theological
+disputes beginning to be regarded in much the same manner as the
+quarrels of Punch and Judy at the fair. A usurpation, alike odious and
+ridiculous, founded upon fraud on one side and stupidity on the other,
+is every instant undermined by reason, which is establishing its reign.
+The bull "<i>In cæna Domini</i>"&mdash;that masterpiece of insolence and folly, no
+longer dares appear, even in Rome. If a regiment of monks makes the
+least evolution against the laws of the state, it is immediately broken.
+But, because the Jesuits have been expelled, must we also expel God? On
+the contrary, we must love Him the more.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION VI.</h5>
+
+<p>In the reign of Arcadius, Logomachos, a theologue of Constantinople,
+went into Scythia and stopped at the foot of Mount Caucasus in the
+fruitful plains of Zephirim, on the borders of Colchis. The good old man
+Dondindac was in his great hall between his large sheepfold and his
+extensive barn; he was on his knees with his wife, his five sons and
+five daughters, his kinsmen and servants; and all were singing the
+praises of God, after a light repast. "What are you doing, idolater?"
+said Logomachos to him. "I am not an idolater," said Dondindac. "You
+must be an idolater," said Logomachos, "for you are not a Greek. Come,
+tell me what you were singing in your barbarous Scythian jargon?" "All
+tongues are alike to the ears of God," answered the Scythian; "we were
+singing His praises." "Very extraordinary!" returned the theologue; "a
+Scythian family praying to God without having been instructed by us!" He
+soon entered into conversation with the Scythian Dondindac; for the
+theologue knew a little Scythian, and the other a little Greek. This
+conversation has been found in a manuscript preserved in the library of
+Constantinople.</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>Let us see if you know your catechism. Why do you pray to God?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">DONDINDAC.</p>
+
+<p>Because it is just to adore the Supreme Being, from whom we have
+everything.</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>Very fair for a barbarian. And what do you ask of him?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">DONDINDAC</p>
+
+<p>I thank Him for the blessings I enjoy, and even for the trials which He
+sends me; but I am careful to ask nothing of Him; for He knows our wants
+better than we do; besides, I should be afraid of asking for fair
+weather while my neighbor was asking for rain.</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>Ah! I thought he would say some nonsense or other. Let us begin farther
+back. Barbarian, who told you that there is a God?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">DONDINDAC</p>
+
+<p>All nature tells me.</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>That is not enough. What idea have you of God?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">DONDINDAC</p>
+
+<p>The idea of my Creator; my master, who will reward me if I do good, and
+punish me if I do evil.</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>Trifles! trash! Let us come to some essentials. Is God <i>infinite
+secundum quid</i>, or according to essence?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">DONDINDAC</p>
+
+<p>I don't understand you.</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>Brute beast! Is God in one place, or in every place?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">DONDINDAC.</p>
+
+<p>I know not ... just as you please.</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>Ignoramus!... Can He cause that which has not been to have been, or that
+a stick shall not have two ends? Does He see the future as future, or as
+present? How does He draw being from nothing, and how reduce being to
+nothing?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">DONDINDAC.</p>
+
+<p>I have never examined these things.</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>What a stupid fellow! Well, I must come nearer to your level.... Tell
+me, friend, do you think that matter can be eternal?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">DONDINDAC</p>
+
+<p>What matters it to me whether it exists from all eternity or not? I do
+not exist from all eternity. God must still be my Master. He has given
+me the nature of justice; it is my duty to follow it: I seek not to be a
+philosopher; I wish to be a man.</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>One has a great deal of trouble with these block-heads. Let us proceed
+step by step. What is God?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">DONDINDAC</p>
+
+<p>My sovereign, my judge, my father.</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>That is not what I ask. What is His nature?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">DONDINDAC.</p>
+
+<p>To be mighty and good.</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>But is He corporeal or spiritual?</p>
+
+<p>DONDINDAC.</p>
+
+<p>How should I know that?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>What; do you not know what a spirit is?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">DONDINDAC.</p>
+
+<p>Not in the least. Of what service would that knowledge be to me? Should
+I be more just? Should I be a better husband, a better father, a better
+master, or a better citizen?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>You must absolutely be taught what a spirit is. It is&mdash;it is&mdash;it is&mdash;I
+will say what another time.</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">DONDINDAC.</p>
+
+<p>I much fear that you will tell me rather what it is not than what it is.
+Permit me, in turn, to ask you one question. Some time ago, I saw one of
+your temples: why do you paint God with a long beard?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>That is a very difficult question, and requires preliminary
+instruction.</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">DONDINDAC.</p>
+
+<p>Before I receive your instruction, I must relate to you a thing which
+one day happened to me. I had just built a closet at the end of my
+garden, when I heard a mole arguing thus with an ant: "Here is a fine
+fabric," said the mole; "it must have been a very powerful mole that
+performed this work." "You jest," returned the ant; "the architect of
+this edifice is an ant of mighty genius." From that time I resolved
+never to dispute.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GOOD_THE_SOVEREIGN_GOOD_A_CHIMERA" id="GOOD_THE_SOVEREIGN_GOOD_A_CHIMERA"></a>GOOD&mdash;THE SOVEREIGN GOOD, A CHIMERA.</h3>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION I.</h5>
+
+<p>Happiness is an abstract idea composed of certain pleasurable
+sensations. Plato, who wrote better than he reasoned, conceived the
+notion of his world in archetype; that is, his original world&mdash;of his
+general ideas of the beautiful, the good, the orderly, and the just, as
+if there had existed eternal beings, called order, good, beauty, and
+justice; whence might be derived the feeble copies exhibited here below
+of the just, the beautiful, and the good.</p>
+
+<p>It is, then, in consequence of his suggestions that philosophers have
+occupied themselves in seeking for the sovereign good, as chemists seek
+for the philosopher's stone; but the sovereign good has no more
+existence than the sovereign square, or the sovereign crimson: there is
+the crimson color, and there are squares; but there is no general
+existence so denominated. This chimerical manner of reasoning was for a
+long time the bane of philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>Animals feel pleasure in performing all the functions for which they are
+destined. The happiness which poetical fancy has imagined would be an
+uninterrupted series of pleasures; but such a series would be
+incompatible with our organs and our destination. There is great
+pleasure in eating, drinking, and connubial endearments; but it is clear
+that if a man were always eating, or always in the full ecstasy of
+enjoyment, his organs would be incapable of sustaining it: it is further
+evident that he would be unable to fulfil the destinies he was born to,
+and that, in the case supposed, the human race would absolutely perish
+through pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>To pass constantly and without interruption from one pleasure to another
+is also a chimera. The woman who has conceived must go through
+childbirth, which is a pain; the man is obliged to cleave wood and hew
+stone, which is not a pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>If the name of happiness is meant to be applied to some pleasures which
+are diffused over human life, there is in fact, we must admit,
+happiness. If the name attaches only to one pleasure always permanent,
+or a continued although varied range of delicious enjoyment, then
+happiness belongs not to this terraqueous globe. Go and seek for it
+elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>If we make happiness consist in any particular situation that a man may
+be in, as for instance, a situation of wealth, power, or fame, we are no
+less mistaken. There are some scavengers who are happier than some
+sovereigns. Ask Cromwell whether he was more happy when he was lord
+protector of England, than when, in his youthful days, he enjoyed
+himself at a tavern; he will probably tell you in answer, that the
+period of his usurpation was not the period most productive of
+pleasures. How many plain or even ugly country women are more happy than
+were Helen and Cleopatra.</p>
+
+<p>We must here however make one short remark; that when we say such a
+particular man is probably happier than some other; that a young
+muleteer has advantages very superior to those of Charles V.; that a
+dressmaker has more enjoyment than a princess, we should adhere to the
+probability of the case. There is certainly every appearance that a
+muleteer, in full health, must have more pleasure than Charles the
+Fifth, laid up with the gout; but nevertheless it may also be, that
+Charles, on his crutches, revolves in his mind with such ecstasy the
+facts of his holding a king of France and a pope prisoners, that his lot
+is absolutely preferable to that of the young and vigorous muleteer.</p>
+
+<p>It certainly belongs to God alone, to a being capable of seeing through
+all hearts, to decide which is the happiest man. There is only one case
+in which a person can affirm that his actual state is worse or better
+than that of his neighbor; this case is that of existing rivalship, and
+the moment that of victory.</p>
+
+<p>I will suppose that Archimedes has an assignation at night with his
+mistress. Nomentanus has the same assignation at the same hour.
+Archimedes presents himself at the door, and it is shut in his face; but
+it is opened to his rival, who enjoys an excellent supper, which he
+enlivens by his repeated sallies of wit upon Archimedes, and after the
+conclusion of which he withdraws to still higher enjoyments, while the
+other remains exposed in the street to all the pelting of a pitiless
+storm. There can be no doubt that Nomentanus has a right to say: "I am
+more happy to-night than Archimedes: I have more pleasure than he"; but
+it is necessary, in order to admit the truth and justness of the
+inference of the successful competitors in his own favor, to suppose
+that Archimedes is thinking only about the loss of his good supper,
+about being despised and deceived by a beautiful woman, about being
+supplanted by his rival, and annoyed by the tempest; for, if the
+philosopher in the street should be calmly reflecting that his soul
+ought to be above being discomposed by a strumpet or a storm, if he
+should be absorbed in a profound and interesting problem, and if he
+should discover the proportions between the cylinder and the sphere, he
+may experience a pleasure a hundred times superior to that of
+Nomentanus.</p>
+
+<p>It is only therefore in the single case of actual pleasure and actual
+pain, and without a reference to anything else whatever, that a
+comparison between any two individuals can be properly made. It is
+unquestionable that he who enjoys the society of his mistress is
+happier at the moment than his scorned rival deploring over his
+misfortune. A man in health, supping on a fat partridge, is undoubtedly
+happier at the time than another under the torment of the colic; but we
+cannot safely carry our inferences farther; we cannot estimate the
+existence of one man against that of another; we possess no accurate
+balance for weighing desires and sensations.</p>
+
+<p>We began this article with Plato and his sovereign good; we will
+conclude it with Solon and the saying of his which has been so highly
+celebrated, that "we ought to pronounce no man happy before his death."
+This maxim, when examined into, will be found nothing more than a
+puerile remark, just like many other apothegms consecrated by their
+antiquity. The moment of death has nothing in common with the lot
+experienced by any man in life; a man may perish by a violent and
+ignominious death, and yet, up to that moment, may have enjoyed all the
+pleasures of which human nature is susceptible. It is very possible and
+very common for a happy man to cease to be so; no one can doubt it; but
+he has not the less had his happy moments.</p>
+
+<p>What, then, can Solon's expression strictly and fairly mean? that a man
+happy to-day is not certain of being so to-morrow! In this case it is a
+truth so incontestable and trivial that, not merely is it not worthy of
+being elevated into a maxim, but it is not worthy delivering at all.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION II.</h5>
+
+<p>Well-being is a rare possession. May not the sovereign good in this
+world be considered as a sovereign chimera? The Greek philosophers
+discussed at great length, according to their usual practice, this
+celebrated question. The reader will, probably, compare them to just so
+many mendicants reasoning about the philosopher's stone.</p>
+
+<p>The sovereign good! What an expression! It might as well have been
+asked: What is the sovereign blue, or the sovereign ragout, or the
+sovereign walk, or the sovereign reading?</p>
+
+<p>Every one places his good where he can, and has as much of it as he can,
+in his own way, and in very scanty measure. Castor loved horses; his
+twin brother, to try a fall&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Quid dem? quid non dem? renuis tu quod jubet alter.... Castor gaudet
+equis, ovo prognatus eodem Pugnis, etc.</i></p>
+
+<p>The greatest good is that which delights us so powerfully as to render
+us incapable of feeling anything else; as the greatest evil is that
+which goes so far as to deprive us of all feeling. These are the two
+extremes of human nature, and these moments are short. Neither extreme
+delight nor extreme torture can last a whole life. The sovereign good
+and the sovereign evil are nothing more than chimeras.</p>
+
+<p>We all know the beautiful fable of Crantor. He introduces upon the stage
+at the Olympic games, Wealth, Pleasure, Health, and Virtue. Each claims
+the apple. Wealth says, I am the sovereign good, for with me all goods
+are purchased. Pleasure says, the apple belongs to me, for it is only on
+my account that wealth is desired. Health asserts, that without her
+there can be no pleasure, and wealth is useless. Finally, Virtue states
+that she is superior to the other three, because, although possessed of
+gold, pleasures, and health, a man may make himself very contemptible by
+misconduct. The apple was conferred on Virtue.</p>
+
+<p>The fable is very ingenious; it would be still more so if Crantor had
+said that the sovereign good consists in the combination of the four
+rivals, Virtue, Health, Wealth, and Pleasure; but this fable neither
+does, nor can, resolve the absurd question about the sovereign good.
+Virtue is not a good; it is a duty. It is of a different nature; of a
+superior order. It has nothing to do with painful or with agreeable
+sensations. A virtuous man, laboring under stone and gout, without aid,
+without friends, destitute of necessaries, persecuted, and chained down
+to the floor by a voluptuous tyrant who enjoys good health, is very
+wretched; and his insolent persecutor, caressing a new mistress on his
+bed of purple, is very happy. Say, if you please, that the persecuted
+sage is preferable to the persecuting profligate; say that you admire
+the one and detest the other; but confess that the sage in chains is
+scarcely less than mad with rage and pain; if he does not himself admit
+that he is so, he completely deceives you; he is a charlatan.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GOOD" id="GOOD"></a>GOOD.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Of Good and Evil, Physical and Moral.</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>We here treat of a question of the greatest difficulty and importance.
+It relates to the whole of human life. It would be of much greater
+consequence to find a remedy for our evils; but no remedy is to be
+discovered, and we are reduced to the sad necessity of tracing out their
+origin. With respect to this origin, men have disputed ever since the
+days of Zoroaster, and in all probability they disputed on the same
+subject long before him. It was to explain the mixture of good and evil
+that they conceived the idea of two principles&mdash;Oromazes, the author of
+light, and Arimanes, the author of darkness; the box of Pandora; the two
+vessels of Jupiter; the apple eaten by Eve; and a variety of other
+systems. The first of dialecticians, although not the first of
+philosophers, the illustrious Bayle, has clearly shown how difficult it
+is for Christians who admit one only God, perfectly good and just, to
+reply to the objections of the Manichæans who acknowledge two Gods&mdash;one
+good, and the other evil.</p>
+
+<p>The foundation of the system of the Manichæans, with all its antiquity,
+was not on that account more reasonable. Lemmas, susceptible of the most
+clear and rigid geometrical demonstrations, should alone have induced
+any men to the adoption of such a theorem as the following: "There are
+two necessary beings, both supreme, both infinite, both equally
+powerful, both in conflict with each other, yet, finally, agreeing to
+pour out upon this little planet&mdash;one, all the treasures of his
+beneficence, and the other all the stores of his malice." It is in vain
+that the advocates of this hypothesis attempt to explain by it the cause
+of good and evil: even the fable of Prometheus explains it better. Every
+hypothesis which only serves to assign a reason for certain things,
+without being, in addition to that recommendation, established upon
+indisputable principles, ought invariably to be rejected.</p>
+
+<p>The Christian doctors&mdash;independently of revelation, which makes
+everything credible&mdash;explain the origin of good-and evil no better than
+the partner-gods of Zoroaster.</p>
+
+<p>When they say God is a tender father, God is a just king; when they add
+the idea of infinity to that of love, that kindness, that justice which
+they observe in the best of their own species, they soon fall into the
+most palpable and dreadful contradictions. How could this sovereign, who
+possessed in infinite fulness the principle or quality of human justice,
+how could this father, entertaining an infinite affection for his
+children; how could this being, infinitely powerful, have formed
+creatures in His own likeness, to have them immediately afterwards
+tempted by a malignant demon, to make them yield to that temptation to
+inflict death on those whom He had created immortal, and to overwhelm
+their posterity with calamities and crimes! We do not here speak of a
+contradiction still more revolting to our feeble reason. How could God,
+who ransomed the human race by the death of His only Son; or rather, how
+could God, who took upon Himself the nature of man, and died on the
+cross to save men from perdition, consign over to eternal tortures
+nearly the whole of that human race for whom He died? Certainly, when we
+consider this system merely as philosophers&mdash;without the aid of
+faith&mdash;we must consider it as absolutely monstrous and abominable. It
+makes of God either pure and unmixed malice, and that malice infinite,
+which created thinking beings, on purpose to devote them to eternal
+misery, or absolute impotence and imbecility, in not being able to
+foresee or to prevent the torments of his offspring.</p>
+
+<p>But the eternity of misery is not the subject of this article, which
+relates properly only to the good and evil of the present life. None of
+the doctors of the numerous churches of Christianity, all of which
+advocate the doctrine we are here contesting, have been able to convince
+a single sage.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot conceive how Bayle, who managed the weapons of dialectics with
+such admirable strength and dexterity, could content himself with
+introducing in a dispute a Manichæan, a Calvinist, a Molinist, and a
+Socinian. Why did he not introduce, as speaking, a reasonable and
+sensible man? Why did not Bayle speak in his own person? He would have
+said far better what we shall now venture to say ourselves. A father
+who kills his children is a monster; a king who conducts his subjects
+into a snare, in order to obtain a pretext for delivering them up to
+punishment and torture, is an execrable tyrant. If you conceive God to
+possess the same kindness which you require in a father, the same
+justice that you require in a king, no possible resource exists by
+which, if we may use the expression, God can be exculpated; and by
+allowing Him to possess infinite wisdom and infinite goodness you, in
+fact, render Him infinitely odious; you excite a wish that He had no
+existence; you furnish arms to the atheist, who will ever be justified
+in triumphantly remarking to you: Better by far is it to deny a God
+altogether, than impute to Him such conduct as you would punish, to the
+extremity of the law, in men.</p>
+
+<p>We begin then with observing, that it is unbecoming in us to ascribe to
+God human attributes. It is not for us to make God after our own
+likeness. Human justice, human kindness, and human wisdom can never be
+applied or made suitable to Him. We may extend these attributes in our
+imagination as far as we are able, to infinity; they will never be other
+than human qualities with boundaries perpetually or indefinitely
+removed; it would be equally rational to attribute to Him infinite
+solidity, infinite motion, infinite roundness, or infinite divisibility.
+These attributes can never be His.</p>
+
+<p>Philosophy informs us that this universe must have been arranged by a
+Being incomprehensible, eternal, and existing by His own nature; but,
+once again, we must observe that philosophy gives us no information on
+the subject of the attributes of that nature. We know what He is not,
+and not what He is.</p>
+
+<p>With respect to God, there is neither good nor evil, physically or
+morally. What is physical or natural evil? Of all evils, the greatest,
+undoubtedly, is death. Let us for a moment consider whether man could
+have been immortal.</p>
+
+<p>In order that a body like ours should have been indissoluble,
+imperishable, it would have been necessary that it should not be
+composed of parts; that it&mdash;should not be born; that it should have
+neither nourishment nor growth; that it should experience no change. Let
+any one examine each of these points; and let every reader extend their
+number according to his own suggestions, and it will be seen that the
+proposition of an immortal man is a contradiction.</p>
+
+<p>If our organized body were immortal, that of mere animals would be so
+likewise; but it is evident that, in the course of a very short time,
+the whole globe would, in this case, be incompetent to supply
+nourishment to those animals; those immortal beings which exist only in
+consequence of renovation by food, would then perish for want of the
+means of such renovation. All this involves contradiction. We might make
+various other observations on the subject, but every reader who deserves
+the name of a philosopher will perceive that death was necessary to
+everything that is born; that death can neither be an error on the part
+of God, nor an evil, an injustice, nor a chastisement to man.</p>
+
+<p>Man, born to die, can no more be exempt from pain than from death. To
+prevent an organized substance endowed with feeling from ever
+experiencing pain, it would be necessary that all the laws of nature
+should be changed; that matter should no longer be divisible; that it
+should neither have weight, action, nor force; that a rock might fall on
+an animal without crushing it; and that water should have no power to
+suffocate, or fire to burn it. Man, impassive, then, is as much a
+contradiction as man immortal.</p>
+
+<p>This feeling of pain was indispensable to stimulate us to
+self-preservation, and to impart to us such pleasures as are consistent
+with those general laws by which the whole system of nature is bound and
+regulated.</p>
+
+<p>If we never experienced pain, we should be every moment injuring
+ourselves without perceiving it. Without the excitement of uneasiness,
+without some sensation of pain, we should perform no function of life;
+should never communicate it, and should be destitute of all the
+pleasures of it. Hunger is the commencement of pain which compels us to
+take our required nourishment. Ennui is a pain which stimulates to
+exercise and occupation. Love itself is a necessity which becomes
+painful until it is met with corresponding attachment. In a word, every
+desire is a want, a necessity, a beginning of pain. Pain, therefore, is
+the mainspring of all the actions of animated beings. Every animal
+possessed of feeling must be liable to pain, if matter is divisible; and
+pain was as necessary as death. It is not, therefore, an error of
+Providence, nor a result of malignity, nor a creature of imagination.
+Had we seen only brutes suffer, we should, for that, never have accused
+nature of harshness or cruelty; had we, while ourselves were impassive,
+witnessed the lingering and torturing death of a dove, when a kite
+seized upon it with his murderous talons, and leisurely devouring its
+bleeding limbs, doing in that no more than we do ourselves, we should
+not express the slightest murmur of dissatisfaction. But what claim have
+we for an exemption of our own bodies from such dismemberment and
+torture beyond what might be urged in behalf of brutes? Is it that we
+possess an intellect superior to theirs? But what has intellect to do
+with the divisibility of matter? Can a few ideas more or less in a brain
+prevent fire from burning, or a rock from crushing us?</p>
+
+<p>Moral evil, upon which so many volumes have been written is, in fact,
+nothing but natural evil. This moral evil is a sensation of pain
+occasioned by one organized being to another. Rapine, outrage, etc., are
+evil only because they produce evil. But as we certainly are unable to
+do any evil, or occasion any pain to God, it is evident by the light of
+reason&mdash;for faith is altogether a different principle&mdash;that in relation
+to the Supreme Being and as affecting Him, moral evil can have no
+existence.</p>
+
+<p>As the greatest of natural evils is death, the greatest of moral evils
+is, unquestionably, war. All crimes follow in its train; false and
+calumnious declarations, perfidious violation of the treaties, pillage,
+devastation, pain, and death under every hideous and appalling form.</p>
+
+<p>All this is physical evil in relation to man, but can no more be
+considered moral evil in relation to God than the rage of dogs worrying
+and destroying one another. It is a mere common-place idea, and as false
+as it is feeble, that men are the only species that slaughter and
+destroy one another. Wolves, dogs, cats, cocks, quails, all war with
+their respective species: house spiders devour one another; the male
+universally fights for the female. This warfare is the result of the
+laws of nature, of principles in their very blood and essence; all is
+connected; all is necessary.</p>
+
+<p>Nature has granted man about two and twenty years of life, one with
+another; that is, of a thousand children born in the same month, some of
+whom have died in their infancy, and the rest lived respectively to the
+age of thirty, forty, fifty, and even eighty years, or perhaps beyond,
+the average calculation will allow to each the above-mentioned number of
+twenty-two years.</p>
+
+<p>How can it affect the Deity, whether a man die in battle or of a fever?
+War destroys fewer human beings than smallpox. The scourge of war is
+transient, that of smallpox reigns with paramount and permanent fatality
+throughout the earth, followed by a numerous train of others; and taking
+into consideration the combined, and nearly regular operation of the
+various causes which sweep mankind from the stage of life, the allowance
+of two and twenty years for every individual will be found in general to
+be tolerably correct.</p>
+
+<p>Man, you say, offends God by killing his neighbor; if this be the case,
+the directors of nations must indeed be tremendous criminals; for, while
+even invoking God to their assistance, they urge on to slaughter immense
+multitudes of their fellow-beings, for contemptible interests which it
+would show infinitely more policy, as well as humanity, to abandon. But
+how&mdash;to reason merely as philosophers&mdash;how do they offend God? Just as
+much as tigers and crocodiles offend him. It is, surely, not God whom
+they harass and torment, but their neighbor. It is only against man that
+man can be guilty. A highway robber can commit no robbery on God. What
+can it signify to the eternal Deity, whether a few pieces of yellow
+metal are in the hands of Jerome, or of Bonaventure? We have necessary
+desires, necessary passions, and necessary laws for the restraint of
+both; and while on this our ant-hill, during the little day of our
+existence, we are engaged in eager and destructive contest about a
+straw, the universe moves, on in its majestic course, directed by
+eternal and unalterable laws, which comprehend in their operation the
+atom that we call the earth.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GOSPEL" id="GOSPEL"></a>GOSPEL.</h3>
+
+
+<p>It is a matter of high importance to ascertain which are the first
+gospels. It is a decided truth, whatever Abbadie may assert to the
+contrary, that none of the first fathers of the Church, down to Irenæus
+inclusively, have quoted any passage from the four gospels with which we
+are acquainted. And to this it may be added, that the Alogi, the
+Theodosians, constantly rejected the gospel of St. John, and always
+spoke of it with contempt; as we are informed by St. Epiphanius in his
+thirty-fourth homily. Our enemies further observe that the most ancient
+fathers do not merely forbear to quote anything from our gospels, but
+relate many passages or events which are to be found only in the
+apocryphal gospels rejected by the canon.</p>
+
+<p>St. Clement, for example, relates that our Lord, having been questioned
+concerning the time when His kingdom would come, answered, "That will be
+when what is without shall Resemble that within, and when there shall be
+neither male nor female." But we must admit that this passage does not
+occur in either of our gospels. There are innumerable other instances to
+prove this truth; which may be seen in the "Critical Examination" of M.
+Fréret, perpetual secretary of the Academy of Belles Lettres at Paris.</p>
+
+<p>The learned Fabricius took the pains to collect the ancient gospels
+which time has spared; that of James appears to be the first; and it is
+certain that it still possesses considerable authority with some of the
+Oriental churches. It is called "the first gospel." There remain the
+passion and the resurrection, pretended to have been written by
+Nicodemus. This gospel of Nicodemus is quoted by St. Justin and
+Tertullian. It is there we find the names of our Lord's accusers&mdash;Annas,
+Caiaphas, Soumas, Dathan, Gamaliel, Judas, Levi, and Napthali; the
+attention and particularity with which these names are given confer upon
+the work an appearance of truth and sincerity. Our adversaries have
+inferred that as so many false gospels were forged, which at first were
+recognized as true, those which constitute at the present day the
+foundation of our own faith may have been forged also. They dwell much
+on the circumstance of the first heretics suffering even death itself in
+defence of these apocryphal gospels. There have evidently been, they
+say, forgers, seducers, and men who have been seduced by them into
+error, and died in defence of that error; it is, at least, therefore, no
+proof of the truth of Christianity that it has had its martyrs who have
+died for it.</p>
+
+<p>They add further, that the martyrs were never asked the question,
+whether they believed the gospel of John or the gospel of James. The
+Pagans could not put a series of interrogatories about books with which
+they were not at all acquainted; the magistrates punished some
+Christians very unjustly, as disturbers of the public peace, but they
+never put particular questions to them in relation to our four gospels.
+These books were not known to the Romans before the time of Diocletian,
+and even towards the close of Diocletian's reign, they had scarcely
+obtained any publicity. It was deemed in a Christian a crime both
+abominable and unpardonable to show a gospel to any Gentile. This is so
+true, that you cannot find the word "gospel" in any profane author
+whatever.</p>
+
+<p>The rigid Socinians, influenced by the above-mentioned or other
+difficulties, do not consider our four divine gospels in any other light
+than as works of clandestine introduction, fabricated about a century
+after the time of Jesus Christ, and carefully concealed from the
+Gentiles for another century beyond that; works, as they express it, of
+a coarse and vulgar character, written by coarse and vulgar men, who,
+for a long time confined their discourses and appeals to the mere
+populace of their party. We will not here repeat the blasphemies uttered
+by them. This sect, although considerably diffused and numerous, is at
+present as much concealed as were the first gospels. The difficulty of
+converting them is so much the greater, in consequence of their
+obstinately refusing to listen to anything but mere reason. The other
+Christians contend against them only with the weapons of the Holy
+Scripture: it is consequently impossible that, being thus always in
+hostility with respect to principles, they should ever unite in their
+conclusions.</p>
+
+<p>With respect to ourselves, let us ever remain inviolably attached to our
+four gospels, in union with the infallible church. Let us reject the
+five gospels which it has rejected; let us not inquire why our Lord
+Jesus Christ permitted five false gospels, five false histories of his
+life to be written; and let us submit to our spiritual pastors and
+directors, who alone on earth are enlightened by the Holy Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Into what a gross error did Abbadie fall when he considered as authentic
+the letters so ridiculously forged, from Pilate to Tiberius, and the
+pretended proposal of Tiberius to place Jesus Christ in the number of
+the gods. If Abbadie is a bad critic and a contemptible reasoner, is the
+Church on that account less enlightened? are we the less bound to
+believe it? Shall we at all the less submit to it?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GOVERNMENT" id="GOVERNMENT"></a>GOVERNMENT.</h3>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION I.</h5>
+
+<p>The pleasure of governing must certainly be exquisite, if we may judge
+from the vast numbers who are eager to be concerned in it. We have many
+more books on government than there are monarchs in the world. Heaven
+preserve me from making any attempt here to give instruction to kings
+and their noble ministers&mdash;their valets, confessors, or financiers. I
+understand nothing about the matter; I have the profoundest respect and
+reverence for them all. It belongs only to Mr. Wilkes, with his English
+balance, to weigh the merits of those who are at the head of the human
+race. It would, besides, be exceedingly strange if, with three or four
+thousand volumes on the subject of government, with Machiavelli, and
+Bossuet's "Policy of the Holy Scripture," with the "General Financier,"
+the "Guide to Finances," the "Means of Enriching a State," etc., there
+could possibly be a single person living who was not perfectly
+acquainted with the duties of kings and the science of government.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Puffendorf, or, as perhaps we should rather say, Baron
+Puffendorf, says that King David, having sworn never to attempt the life
+of Shimei, his privy counsellor, did not violate his oath when,
+according to the Jewish history, he instructed his son Solomon to get
+him assassinated, "because David had only engaged that he himself would
+not kill Shimei." The baron, who rebukes so sharply the mental
+reservations of the Jesuits, allows David, in the present instance, to
+entertain one which would not be particularly palatable to privy
+counsellors.</p>
+
+<p>Let us consider the words of Bossuet in his "Policy of the Holy
+Scripture," addressed to Monseigneur the Dauphin. "Thus we see royalty
+established according to the order of succession in the house of David
+and Solomon, and the throne of David is secured forever&mdash;although, by
+the way, that same little joint-stool called a 'throne,' instead of
+being secured forever, lasted, in fact, only a very short time." By
+virtue of this law, the eldest son was to succeed, to the exclusion of
+his brothers, and on this account Adonijah, who was the eldest, said to
+Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon, "Thou knowest that the kingdom was
+mine, and all Israel had recognized my right; but the Lord hath
+transferred the kingdom to my brother Solomon." The right of Adonijah
+was incontestable. Bossuet expressly admits this at the close of this
+article. "The Lord has transferred" is only a usual phrase, which means,
+I have lost my property or right, I have been deprived of my right.
+Adonijah was the issue of a lawful wife; the birth of his younger
+brother was the fruit of a double crime.</p>
+
+<p>"Unless, then," says Bossuet, "something extraordinary occurred, the
+eldest was to succeed." But the something extraordinary, in the present
+instance, which prevented it was, that Solomon, the issue of a marriage
+arising out of a double adultery and a murder, procured the
+assassination, at the foot of the altar, of his elder brother and his
+lawful king, whose rights were supported by the high priest Abiathar and
+the chief commander Joab. After this we must acknowledge that it is more
+difficult than some seem to imagine to take lessons on the rights of
+persons, and on the true system of government from the Holy Scriptures,
+which were first given to the Jews, and afterwards to ourselves, for
+purposes of a far higher nature.</p>
+
+<p>"The preservation of the people is the supreme law." Such is the
+fundamental maxim of nations; but in all civil wars the safety of the
+people is made to consist in slaughtering a number of the citizens. In
+all foreign wars, the safety of a people consists in killing their
+neighbors, and taking possession of their property! It is difficult to
+perceive in this a particularly salutary "right of nations," and a
+government eminently favorable to liberty of thought and social
+happiness.</p>
+
+<p>There are geometrical figures exceedingly regular and complete in their
+kind; arithmetic is perfect; many trades or manufactures are carried on
+in a manner constantly uniform and excellent; but with respect to the
+government of men, is it possible for any one to be good, when all are
+founded on passions in conflict with each other?</p>
+
+<p>No convent of monks ever existed without discord; it is impossible,
+therefore, to exclude it from kingdoms. Every government resembles not
+merely a monastic institution, but a private household. There are none
+existing without quarrels; and quarrels between one people and another,
+between one prince and another, have ever been, sanguinary; those
+between subjects and their sovereigns have been sometimes no less
+destructive. How is an individual to act? Must he risk joining in the
+conflict, or withdraw from the scene of action?</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION II.</h5>
+
+<p>More than one people are desirous of new constitutions. The English
+would have no objection to a change of ministers once in every eight
+hours, but they have no wish to change the form of their government.</p>
+
+<p>The modern Romans are proud of their church of St. Peter and their
+ancient Greek statues; but the people would be glad to be better fed,
+although they were not quite so rich in benedictions; the fathers of
+families would be content that the Church should have less gold, if the
+granaries had more corn; they regret the time when the apostles
+journeyed on foot, and when the citizens of Rome travelled from one
+palace to another in litters.</p>
+
+<p>We are incessantly reminded of the admirable republics of Greece. There
+is no question that the Greeks would prefer the government of a Pericles
+and a Demosthenes to that of a pasha; but in their most prosperous and
+palmy times they were always complaining; discord and hatred prevailed
+between all the cities without, and in every separate city within. They
+gave laws to the old Romans, who before that time had none; but their
+own were so bad for themselves that they were continually changing them.</p>
+
+<p>What could be said in favor of a government under which the just
+Aristides was banished, Phocion put to death, Socrates condemned to
+drink hemlock after having been exposed to banter and derision on the
+stage by Aristophanes; and under which the Amphyctions, with
+contemptible imbecility, actually delivered up Greece into the power of
+Philip, because the Phocians had ploughed up a field which was part of
+the territory of Apollo? But the government of the neighboring
+monarchies was worse.</p>
+
+<p>Puffendorf promises us a discussion on the best form of government. He
+tells us, "that many pronounce in favor of monarchy, and others, on the
+contrary, inveigh furiously against kings; and that it does not fall
+within the limits of his subject to examine in detail the reasons of the
+latter." If any mischievous and malicious reader expects to be told here
+more than he is told by Puffendorf, he will be much deceived.</p>
+
+<p>A Swiss, a Hollander, a Venetian nobleman, an English peer, a cardinal,
+and a count of the empire, were once disputing, on a journey, about the
+nature of their respective governments, and which of them deserved the
+preference: no one knew much about the matter; each remained in his own
+opinion without having any very distinct idea what that opinion was; and
+they returned without having come to any general conclusion; every one
+praising his own country from vanity, and complaining of it from
+feeling.</p>
+
+<p>What, then, is the destiny of mankind? Scarcely any great nation is
+governed by itself. Begin from the east, and take the circuit of the
+world. Japan closed its ports against foreigners from the well-founded
+apprehension of a dreadful revolution.</p>
+
+<p>China actually experienced such a revolution; she obeys Tartars of a
+mixed race, half Mantchou and half Hun. India obeys Mogul Tartars. The
+Nile, the Orontes, Greece, and Epirus are still under the yoke of the
+Turks. It is not an English race that reigns in England; it is a German
+family which succeeded to a Dutch prince, as the latter succeeded a
+Scotch family which had succeeded an Angevin family, that had replaced a
+Norman family, which had expelled a family of usurping Saxons. Spain
+obeys a French family; which succeeded to an Austrasian race, that
+Austrasian race had succeeded families that boasted of Visigoth
+extraction; these Visigoths had been long driven out by the Arabs, after
+having succeeded to the Romans, who had expelled the Carthaginians. Gaul
+obeys Franks, after having obeyed Roman prefects.</p>
+
+<p>The same banks of the Danube have belonged to Germans, Romans, Arabs,
+Slavonians, Bulgarians, and Huns, to twenty different families, and
+almost all foreigners.</p>
+
+<p>And what greater wonder has Rome had to exhibit than so many emperors
+who were born in the barbarous provinces, and so many popes born in
+provinces no less barbarous? Let him govern who can. And when any one
+has succeeded in his attempts to become master, he governs as he can.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION III.</h5>
+
+<p>In 1769, a traveller delivered the following narrative: "I saw, in the
+course of my journey, a large and populous country, in which all offices
+and places were purchasable; I do not mean clandestinely, and in
+evasion of the law, but publicly, and in conformity to it. The right to
+judge, in the last resort, of the honor, property, and life of the
+citizen, was put to auction in the same manner as the right and property
+in a few acres of land. Some very high commissions in the army are
+conferred only on the highest bidder. The principal mystery of their
+religion is celebrated for the petty sum of three sesterces, and if the
+celebrator does not obtain this fee he remains idle like a porter
+without employment.</p>
+
+<p>"Fortunes in this country are not made by agriculture, but are derived
+from a certain game of chance, in great practice there, in which the
+parties sign their names, and transfer them from hand to hand. If they
+lose, they withdraw into the mud and mire of their original extraction;
+if they win, they share in the administration of public affairs; they
+marry their daughters to mandarins, and their sons become a species of
+mandarins also.</p>
+
+<p>"A considerable number of the citizens have their whole means of
+subsistence assigned upon a house, which possesses in fact nothing, and
+a hundred persons have bought for a hundred thousand crowns each the
+right of receiving and paying the money due to these citizens upon their
+assignments on this imaginary hotel; rights which they never exercise,
+as they in reality know nothing at all of what is thus supposed to pass
+through their hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes a proposal is made and cried about the streets, that all who
+have a little money in their chest should exchange it for a slip of
+exquisitely manufactured paper, which will free you from all pecuniary
+care, and enable you to pass through life with ease and comfort. On the
+morrow an order is published, compelling you to change this paper for
+another, much better. On the following day you are deafened with the cry
+of a new paper, cancelling the two former ones. You are ruined! But long
+heads console you with the assurance, that within a fortnight the
+newsmen will cry up some proposal more engaging.</p>
+
+<p>"You travel into one province of this empire, and purchase articles of
+food, drink, clothing, and lodging. If you go into another province, you
+are obliged to pay duties upon all those commodities, as if you had just
+arrived from Africa. You inquire the reason of this, but obtain no
+answer; or if, from extraordinary politeness, any one condescends to
+notice your questions, he replies that you come from a province reputed
+foreign, and that, consequently, you are obliged to pay for the
+convenience of commerce. In vain you puzzle yourself to comprehend how
+the province of a kingdom can be deemed foreign to that kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>"On one particular occasion, while changing horses, finding myself
+somewhat fatigued, I requested the postmaster to favor me with a glass
+of wine. 'I cannot let you have it,' says he; 'the superintendents of
+thirst, who are very considerable in number, and all of them remarkably
+sober, would accuse me of drinking to excess, which would absolutely be
+my ruin.' 'But drinking a single glass of wine,' I replied, 'to repair a
+man's strength, is not drinking to excess; and what difference can it
+make whether that single glass of wine is taken by you or me?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Sir,' replied the man, 'our laws relating to thirst are much more
+excellent than you appear to think them. After our vintage is finished,
+physicians are appointed by the regular authorities to visit our
+cellars. They set aside a certain quantity of wine, such as they judge
+we may drink consistently with health. At the end of the year they
+return; and if they conceive that we have exceeded their restriction by
+a single bottle; they punish us with very severe fines; and if we make
+the slightest resistance, we are sent to Toulon to drink salt-water.
+Were I to give you the wine you ask, I should most certainly be charged
+with excessive drinking. You must see to what danger I should be exposed
+from the supervisors of our health.'</p>
+
+<p>"I could not refrain from astonishment at the existence of such a
+system; but my astonishment was no less on meeting with a disconsolate
+and mortified pleader, who informed me that he had just then lost, a
+little beyond the nearest rivulet, a cause precisely similar to one he
+had gained on this side of it. I understood from him that, in his
+country, there are as many different codes of laws as there are cities.
+His conversation raised my curiosity. 'Our nation,' said he, 'is so
+completely wise and enlightened, that nothing is regulated in it. Laws,
+customs, the rights of corporate bodies, rank, precedence, everything is
+arbitrary; all is left to the prudence of the nation.'</p>
+
+<p>"I happened to be still in this same country when it became involved in
+a war with some of its neighbors. This war was nicknamed 'The Ridicule,'
+because there was much to be lost and nothing to be gained by it. I went
+upon my travels elsewhere, and did not return till the conclusion of
+peace, when the nation seemed to be in the most dreadful state of
+misery; it had lost its money, its soldiers, its fleets, and its
+commerce. I said to myself, its last hour is come; everything, alas!
+must pass away. Here is a nation absolutely annihilated. What a dreadful
+pity! for a great part of the people were amiable, industrious, and gay,
+after having been formerly coarse, superstitious, and barbarous.</p>
+
+<p>"I was perfectly astonished, at the end of only two years, to find its
+capital and principal cities more opulent than ever. Luxury had
+increased, and an air of enjoyment prevailed everywhere. I could not
+comprehend this prodigy; and it was only after I had examined into the
+government of the neighboring nations that I could discover the cause of
+what appeared so unaccountable. I found that the government of all the
+rest was just as bad as that of this nation, and that this nation was
+superior to all the rest in industry.</p>
+
+<p>"A provincial of the country I am speaking of was once bitterly
+complaining to me of all the grievances under which he labored. He was
+well acquainted with history. I asked him if he thought he should have
+been happier had he lived a hundred years before, when his country was
+in a comparative state of barbarism, and a citizen was liable to be
+hanged for having eaten flesh in Lent? He shook his head in the
+negative. Would you prefer the times of the civil wars, which began at
+the death of Francis II.; or the times of the defeats of St. Quentin and
+Pavia; or the long disorders attending the wars against the English; or
+the feudal anarchy; or the horrors of the second race of kings, or the
+barbarity of the first? At every successive question, he appeared to
+shudder more violently. The government of the Romans seemed to him the
+most intolerable of all. 'Nothing can be worse,' he said, 'than to be
+under foreign masters.' At last we came to the Druids. 'Ah!' he
+exclaimed, 'I was quite mistaken: it is still worse to be governed by
+sanguinary priests.' He admitted, at last, although with sore
+reluctance, that the time he lived in was, all things considered, the
+least intolerable and hateful."</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION IV.</h5>
+
+<p>An eagle governed the birds of the whole country of Ornithia. He had no
+other right, it must be allowed, than what he derived from his beak and
+claws; however, after providing liberally for his own repasts and
+pleasures, he governed as well as any other bird of prey.</p>
+
+<p>In his old age he was invaded by a flock of hungry vultures, who rushed
+from the depths of the North to scatter fear and desolation through his
+provinces. There appeared, just about this time, a certain owl, who was
+born in one of the most scrubby thickets of the empire, and who had long
+been known under the name of "<i>luci-fugax</i>," or light-hater. He
+possessed much cunning, and associated only with bats; and, while the
+vultures were engaged in conflict with the eagle, our politic owl and
+his party entered with great adroitness, in the character of
+pacificators, on that department of the air which was disputed by the
+combatants.</p>
+
+<p>The eagle and vultures, after a war of long duration, at last actually
+referred the cause of contention to the owl, who, with his solemn and
+imposing physiognomy, was well formed to deceive them both.</p>
+
+<p>He persuaded the eagles and vultures to suffer their claws to be a
+little pared, and just the points of their beaks to be cut off, in order
+to bring about perfect peace and reconciliation. Before this time, the
+owl had always said to the birds, "Obey the eagle"; afterwards, in
+consequence of the invasion, he had said to them, "Obey the vultures."
+He now, however, soon called out to them, "Obey me only." The poor birds
+did not know to whom to listen: they were plucked by the eagle, the
+vultures, and the owl and bats. "<i>Qui habet aures, audiat</i>."&mdash;"He that
+hath ears to hear, let him hear."</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION V.</h5>
+
+<p>"I have in my possession a great number of catapultæ and balistæ of the
+ancient Romans, which are certainly rather worm-eaten, but would still
+do very well as specimens. I have many water-clocks, but half of them
+probably out of repair and broken, some sepulchral lamps, and an old
+copper model of a quinquereme. I have also togas, pretextas, and
+laticlaves in lead; and my predecessors established a society of
+tailors; who, after inspecting ancient monuments, can make up robes
+pretty awkwardly. For these reasons thereunto moving us, after hearing
+the report of our chief antiquary, we do hereby appoint and ordain, that
+all the said venerable usages should be observed and kept up forever;
+and every person, through the whole extent of our dominions, shall dress
+and think precisely as men dressed and thought in the time of Cnidus
+Rufillus, proprietor of the province devolved to us by right," etc.</p>
+
+<p>It is represented to an officer belonging to the department whence this
+edict issued, that all the engines enumerated in it are become useless;
+that the understandings and the inventions of mankind are every day
+making new advances towards perfection; and that it would be more
+judicious to guide and govern men by the reins in present use, than by
+those by which they were formerly subjected; that no person could be
+found to go on board the quinquereme of his most serene highness; that
+his tailors might make as many laticlaves as they pleased, and that not
+a soul would purchase one of them; and that it would be worthy of his
+wisdom to condescend, in some small measure, to the manner of thinking
+that now prevailed among the better sort of people in his own dominions.</p>
+
+<p>The officer above mentioned promised to communicate this representation
+to a clerk, who promised to speak about it to the referendary, who
+promised to mention it to his most serene highness whenever an
+opportunity should offer.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION VI.</h5>
+
+<h4><i>Picture of the English Government.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The establishment of a government is a matter of curious and interesting
+investigation. I shall not speak, in this place, of the great Tamerlane,
+or Timerling, because I am not precisely acquainted with the mystery of
+the Great Mogul's government. But we can see our way somewhat more
+clearly into the administration of affairs in England; and I had rather
+examine that than the administration of India; as England, we are
+informed, is inhabited by free men and not by slaves; and in India,
+according to the accounts we have of it, there are many slaves and but
+few free men.</p>
+
+<p>Let us, in the first place, view a Norman bastard seating himself upon
+the throne of England. He had about as much right to it as St. Louis
+had, at a later period, to Grand Cairo. But St. Louis had the misfortune
+not to begin with obtaining a judicial decision in favor of his right to
+Egypt from the court of Rome; and William the Bastard failed not to
+render his cause legitimate and sacred, by obtaining in confirmation of
+the rightfulness of his claim, a decree of Pope Alexander II. issued
+without the opposite party having obtained a hearing, and simply in
+virtue of the words, "Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, shall be
+bound in heaven." His competitor, Harold, a perfectly legitimate
+monarch, being thus bound by a decree of heaven, William united to this
+virtue of the holy see another of far more powerful efficacy still,
+which was the victory of Hastings. He reigned, therefore, by the right
+of the strongest, just as Pepin and Clovis had reigned in France; the
+Goths and Lombards in Italy; the Visigoths, and afterwards the Arabs in
+Spain; the Vandals in Africa, and all the kings of the world in
+succession.</p>
+
+<p>It must be nevertheless admitted, that our Bastard possessed as just a
+title as the Saxons and the Danes, whose title, again, was quite as good
+as that of the Romans. And the title of all these heroes in succession
+was precisely that of "robbers on the highway," or, if you like it
+better, that of foxes and pole-cats when they commit their depredations
+on the farm-yard.</p>
+
+<p>All these great men were so completely highway robbers, that from the
+time of Romulus down to the buccaneers, the only question and concern
+were about the "<i>spolia opima</i>," the pillage and plunder, the cows and
+oxen carried off by the hand of violence. Mercury, in the fable, steals
+the cows of Apollo; and in the Old Testament, Isaiah assigns the name of
+robber to the son whom his wife was to bring into the world, and who was
+to be an important and sacred type. That name was Mahershalalhashbaz,
+"divide speedily the soil." We have already observed, that the names of
+soldier and robber were often synonymous.</p>
+
+<p>Thus then did William soon become king by divine right. William Rufus,
+who usurped the crown over his elder brother, was also king by divine
+right, without any difficulty; and the same right attached after him to
+Henry, the third usurper.</p>
+
+<p>The Norman barons who had joined at their own expense in the invasion of
+England, were desirous of compensation. It was necessary to grant it,
+and for this purpose to make them great vassals, and great officers of
+the crown. They became possessed of the finest estates. It is evident
+that William would rather, had he dared, have kept all to himself, and
+made all these lords his guards and lackeys. But this would have been
+too dangerous an attempt. He was obliged, therefore, to divide and
+distribute.</p>
+
+<p>With respect to the Anglo-Saxon lords, there was no very easy way of
+killing, or even making slaves of the whole of them. They were
+permitted in their own districts, to enjoy the rank and denomination of
+lords of the manor&mdash;<i>seignieurs châtelans</i>. They held of the great
+Norman vassals, who held of William.</p>
+
+<p>By this system everything was kept in equilibrium until the breaking out
+of the first quarrel. And what became of the rest of the nation? The
+same that had become of nearly all the population of Europe. They became
+serfs or villeins.</p>
+
+<p>At length, after the frenzy of the Crusades, the ruined princes sell
+liberty to the serfs of the glebe, who had obtained money by labor and
+commerce. Cities are made free, the commons are granted certain
+privileges; and the rights of men revive even out of anarchy itself.</p>
+
+<p>The barons were everywhere in contention with their king, and with one
+another. The contention became everywhere a petty intestine war, made up
+out of numberless civil wars. From this abominable and gloomy chaos
+appeared a feeble gleam, which enlightened the commons, and considerably
+improved their situation.</p>
+
+<p>The kings of England, being themselves great vassals of France for
+Normandy, and afterwards for Guienne and other provinces, easily adopted
+the usages of the kings from whom they held. The states of the realm
+were long made up, as in France, of barons and bishops.</p>
+
+<p>The English court of chancery was an imitation of the council of state,
+of which the chancellor of France was president. The court of king's
+bench was formed on the model of the parliament instituted by Philip le
+Bel. The common pleas were like the jurisdiction of the châtelat. The
+court of exchequer resembled that of the superintendents of the
+finances&mdash;<i>généraux des finances</i>&mdash;which became, in France, the court of
+aids.</p>
+
+<p>The maxim that the king's domain is inalienable is evidently taken from
+the system of French government.</p>
+
+<p>The right of the king of England to call on his subjects to pay his
+ransom, should he become a prisoner of war; that of requiring a subsidy
+when he married his eldest daughter, and when he conferred the honor of
+knighthood on his son; all these circumstances call to recollection the
+ancient usages of a kingdom of which William was the chief vassal.</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely had Philip le Bel summoned the commons to the states-general,
+before Edward, king of England, adopted the like measure, in order to
+balance the great power of the barons. For it was under this monarch's
+reign that the commons were first clearly and distinctly summoned to
+parliament.</p>
+
+<p>We perceive, then, that up to this epoch in the fourteenth century, the
+English government followed regularly in the steps of France. The two
+churches are entirely alike; the same subjection to the court of Rome;
+the same exactions which are always complained of, but, in the end,
+always paid to that rapacious court; the same dissensions, somewhat
+more or less violent; the same excommunications; the same donations to
+monks; the same chaos; the same mixture of holy rapine, superstition,
+and barbarism.</p>
+
+<p>As France and England, then, were for so long a period governed by the
+same principles, or rather without any principle at all, and merely by
+usages of a perfectly similar character, how is it that, at length, the
+two governments have become as different as those of Morocco and Venice?</p>
+
+<p>It is, perhaps, in the first place to be ascribed to the circumstance of
+England, or rather Great Britain, being an island, in consequence of
+which the king has been under no necessity of constantly keeping up a
+considerable standing army which might more frequently be employed
+against the nation itself than against foreigners.</p>
+
+<p>It may be further observed, that the English appear to have in the
+structure of their minds something more firm, more reflective, more
+persevering, and, perhaps, more obstinate, than some other nations.</p>
+
+<p>To this latter circumstance it may be probably attributed, that, after
+incessantly complaining of the court of Rome, they at length completely
+shook off its disgraceful yoke; while a people of more light and
+volatile character has continued to wear it, affecting at the same time
+to laugh and dance in its chains.</p>
+
+<p>The insular situation of the English, by inducing the necessity of
+urging to the particular pursuit and practice of navigation, has
+probably contributed to the result we are here considering, by giving to
+the natives a certain sternness and ruggedness of manners.</p>
+
+<p>These stern and rugged manners, which have made their island the theatre
+of many a bloody tragedy, have also contributed, in all probability, to
+inspire a generous frankness.</p>
+
+<p>It is in consequence of this combination of opposite qualities that so
+much royal blood has been shed in the field, and on the scaffold, and
+yet poison, in all their long and violent domestic contentions, has
+never been resorted to; whereas, in other countries, under priestly
+domination poison has been the prevailing weapon of destruction.</p>
+
+<p>The love of liberty appears to have advanced, and to have characterized
+the English, in proportion as they have advanced in knowledge and in
+wealth. All the citizens of a state cannot be equally powerful, but they
+may be equally free. And this high point of distinction and enjoyment
+the English, by their firmness and intrepidity, have at length attained.</p>
+
+<p>To be free is to be dependent only on the laws. The English, therefore,
+have ever loved the laws, as fathers love their children, because they
+are, or at least think themselves, the framers of them.</p>
+
+<p>A government like this could be established only at a late period;
+because it was necessary long to struggle with powers which commanded
+respect, or at least, impressed awe&mdash;the power of the pope, the most
+terrible of all, as it was built on prejudice and ignorance; the royal
+power ever tending to burst its proper boundary, and which it was
+requisite, however difficult, to restrain within it; the power of the
+barons, which was, in fact, an anarchy; the power of the bishops, who,
+always mixing the sacred with the profane, left no means unattempted to
+prevail over both barons and kings.</p>
+
+<p>The house of commons gradually became the impregnable mole, which
+successfully repelled those serious and formidable torrents.</p>
+
+<p>The house of commons is, in reality, the nation; for the king, who is
+the head, acts only for himself, and what is called his prerogative. The
+peers are a parliament only for themselves; and the bishops only for
+themselves, in the same manner.</p>
+
+<p>But the house of commons is for the people, as every member of it is
+deputed by the people. The people are to the king in the proportion of
+about eight millions to unity. To the peers and bishops they are as
+eight millions to, at most, two hundred. And these eight million free
+citizens are represented by the lower house.</p>
+
+<p>With respect to this establishment or constitution&mdash;in comparison with
+which the republic of Plato is merely a ridiculous reverie, and which
+might be thought to have been invented by Locke, or Newton, or Halley,
+or Archimedes&mdash;it sprang, in fact, out of abuses, of a most dreadful
+description, and such as are calculated to make human nature shudder.
+The inevitable friction of this vast machine nearly proved its
+destruction in the days of Fairfax and Cromwell. Senseless fanaticism
+broke into this noble edifice, like a devouring fire that consumes a
+beautiful building formed only of wood.</p>
+
+<p>In the time of William the Third it was rebuilt of stone. Philosophy
+destroyed fanaticism, which convulses to their centres states even the
+most firm and powerful. We cannot easily help believing that a
+constitution which has regulated the rights of king, lords, and people,
+and in which every individual finds security, will endure as long as
+human institutions and concerns shall have a being.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot but believe, also, that all states not established upon
+similar principles, will experience revolutions.</p>
+
+<p>The English constitution has, in fact, arrived at that point of
+excellence, in consequence of which all men are restored to those
+natural rights, which, in nearly all monarchies, they are deprived of.
+These rights are, entire liberty of person and property; freedom of the
+press; the right of being tried in all criminal cases by a jury of
+independent men&mdash;the right of being tried only according to the strict
+letter of the law; and the right of every man to profess, unmolested,
+what religion he chooses, while he renounces offices, which the members
+of the Anglican or established church alone can hold. These are
+denominated privileges. And, in truth, invaluable privileges they are
+in comparison with the usages of most other nations of the world! To be
+secure on lying down that you shall rise in possession of the same
+property with which you retired to rest; that you shall not be torn from
+the arms of your wife, and from your children, in the dead of night, to
+be thrown into a dungeon, or buried in exile in a desert; that, when
+rising from the bed of sleep, you will have the power of publishing all
+your thoughts; and that, if you are accused of having either acted,
+spoken, or written wrongly, you can be tried only according to law.
+These privileges attach to every one who sets his foot on English
+ground. A foreigner enjoys perfect liberty to dispose of his property
+and person; and, if accused of any offence, he can demand that half the
+jury shall be composed of foreigners.</p>
+
+<p>I will venture to assert, that, were the human race solemnly assembled
+for the purpose of making laws, such are the laws they would make for
+their security. Why then are they not adopted in other countries? But
+would it not be equally judicious to ask, why cocoanuts, which are
+brought to maturity in India, do not ripen at Rome? You answer, these
+cocoanuts did not always, or for some time, come to maturity in England;
+that the trees have not been long cultivated; that Sweden, following her
+example, planted and nursed some of them for several years, but that
+they did not thrive; and that it is possible to produce such fruit in
+other provinces, even in Bosnia and Servia. Try and plant the tree then.</p>
+
+<p>And you who bear authority over these benighted people, whether under
+the name of pasha, effendi, or mollah, let me advise you, although an
+unpromising subject for advice, not to act the stupid as well as
+barbarous part of riveting your nations in chains. Reflect, that the
+heavier you make the people's yoke, the more completely your own
+children, who cannot all of them be pashas, will be slaves. Surely you
+would not be so contemptible a wretch as to expose your whole posterity
+to groan in chains, for the sake of enjoying a subaltern tyranny for a
+few days! Oh, how great at present is the distance between an Englishman
+and a Bosnian!</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION VII.</h5>
+
+<p>The mixture now existing in the government of England&mdash;this concert
+between the commons, the lords, and the king&mdash;did not exist always.
+England was long a slave. She was so to the Romans, the Saxons, Danes,
+and French. William the Conqueror, in particular, ruled her with a
+sceptre of iron. He disposed of the properties and lives of his new
+subjects like an Oriental despot; he prohibited them from having either
+fire or candle in their houses after eight o'clock at night, under pain
+of death: his object being either to prevent nocturnal assemblies among
+them, or merely, by so capricious and extravagant a prohibition, to
+show how far the power of some men can extend over others. It is true,
+that both before as well as after William the Conqueror, the English had
+parliaments; they made a boast of them; as if the assemblies then called
+parliaments, made up of tyrannical churchmen and baronial robbers, had
+been the guardians of public freedom and happiness.</p>
+
+<p>The barbarians, who, from the shores of the Baltic poured over the rest
+of Europe, brought with them the usage of states or parliaments, about
+which a vast deal is said and very little known. The kings were not
+despotic, it is true; and it was precisely on this account that the
+people groaned in miserable slavery. The chiefs of these savages, who
+had ravaged France, Italy, Spain, and England, made themselves monarchs.
+Their captains divided among themselves the estates of the vanquished;
+hence, the margraves, lairds, barons, and the whole series of the
+subaltern tyrants, who often contested the spoils of the people with the
+monarchs, recently advanced to the throne and not firmly fixed on it.
+These were all birds of prey, battling with the eagle, in order to suck
+the blood of the doves. Every nation, instead of one good master, had a
+hundred tyrants. The priests soon took part in the contest. From time
+immemorial it had been the fate of the Gauls, the Germans, and the
+islanders of England, to be governed by their druids and the chiefs of
+their villages, an ancient species of barons, but less tyrannical than
+their successors. These druids called themselves mediators between God
+and men; they legislated, they excommunicated, they had the power of
+life and death. The bishops gradually succeeded to the authority of the
+druids, under the Goth and Vandal government. The popes put themselves
+at their head; and, with briefs, bulls, and monks, struck terror into
+the hearts of kings, whom they sometimes dethroned and occasionally
+caused to be assassinated, and drew to themselves, as nearly as they
+were able, all the money of Europe. The imbecile Ina, one of the tyrants
+of the English heptarchy, was the first who, on a pilgrimage to Rome,
+submitted to pay St. Peter's penny&mdash;which was about a crown of our
+money&mdash;for every house within his territory. The whole island soon
+followed this example; England gradually became a province of the pope;
+and the holy father sent over his legates, from time to time, to levy
+upon it his exorbitant imposts. John, called Lackland, at length made a
+full and formal cession of his kingdom to his holiness, by whom he had
+been excommunicated; the barons, who did not at all find their account
+in this proceeding, expelled that contemptible king, and substituted in
+his room Louis VIII., father of St. Louis, king of France. But they soon
+became disgusted with the new-comer, and obliged him to recross the sea.</p>
+
+<p>While the barons, bishops, and popes were thus harassing and tearing
+asunder England, where each of the parties strove eagerly to be the
+dominant one, the people, who form the most numerous, useful, and
+virtuous portion of a community, consisting of those who study the laws
+and sciences, merchants, artisans, and even peasants, who exercise at
+once the most important and the most despised of occupations; the
+people, I say, were looked down upon equally by all these combatants, as
+a species of beings inferior to mankind. Far, indeed, at that time, were
+the commons from having the slightest participation in the government:
+they were villeins, or serfs of the soil; both their labor and their
+blood belonged to their masters, who were called "nobles." The greater
+number of men in Europe were what they still continue to be in many
+parts of the world&mdash;the serfs of a lord, a species of cattle bought and
+sold together with the land. It required centuries to get justice done
+to humanity; to produce an adequate impression of the odious and
+execrable nature of the system, according to which the many sow, and
+only the few reap; and surely it may even be considered fortunate for
+France that the powers of these petty robbers were extinguished there by
+the legitimate authority of kings, as it was in England by that of the
+king and nation united.</p>
+
+<p>Happily, in consequence of the convulsions of empires by the contests
+between sovereigns and nobles, the chains of nations are more or less
+relaxed. The barons compelled John (Lackland) and Henry III to grant the
+famous charter, the great object of which, in reality, was to place the
+king in dependence on the lords, but in which the rest of the nation
+was a little favored, to induce it, when occasion might require, to
+range itself in the ranks of its pretended protectors. This great
+charter, which is regarded as the sacred origin of English liberties,
+itself clearly shows how very little liberty was understood. The very
+title proves that the king considered himself absolute by right, and
+that the barons and clergy compelled him to abate his claim to this
+absolute power only by the application of superior force. These are the
+words with which Magna Charta begins: "We grant, of our free will, the
+following privileges to the archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, and
+barons, of our kingdom," etc. Throughout the articles of it, not a word
+is said of the house of commons; a proof that it did not then exist, or
+that it existed without power. The freemen of England are specified in
+it, a melancholy demonstration that there were men who were not free. We
+perceive, from the thirty-seventh article, that the pretended freemen
+owed service to their lord. Liberty of such a description had but too
+strong a similarity to bondage. By the twenty-first article, the king
+ordains that henceforward his officers shall not take away the horses
+and ploughs of freemen, without paying for them. This regulation was
+considered by the people as true liberty, because it freed them from a
+greater tyranny. Henry VII., a successful warrior and politician, who
+pretended great attachment to the barons, but who cordially hated and
+feared them, granted them permission to alienate their lands. In
+consequence of this, the villeins, who by their industry and skill
+accumulated property, in the course of time became purchasers of the
+castles of the illustrious nobles who had ruined themselves by their
+extravagance, and, gradually, nearly all the landed property of the
+kingdom changed masters.</p>
+
+<p>The house of commons now advanced in power every day. The families of
+the old nobility became extinct in the progress of time; and, as in
+England, correctly speaking, peers only are nobles, there would scarcely
+have been any nobles in the country, if the kings had not, from time to
+time, created new barons, and kept up the body of peers, whom they had
+formerly so much dreaded, to counteract that of the commons, now become
+too formidable. All the new peers, who compose the upper house, receive
+from the king their title and nothing more, since none of them have the
+property of the lands of which they bear the names. One is duke of
+Dorset, without possessing a single foot of land in Dorsetshire; another
+is an earl under the name of a certain village, yet scarcely knowing
+where that village is situated. They have power in the parliament, and
+nowhere else.</p>
+
+<p>You hear no mention, in this country, of the high, middle, and low
+courts of justice, nor of the right of chase over the lands of private
+citizens, who have no right to fire a gun on their own estates.</p>
+
+<p>A man is not exempted from paying particular taxes because he is a
+noble or a clergyman. All imposts are regulated by the house of commons,
+which, although subordinate in rank, is superior in credit to that of
+the lords. The peers and bishops may reject a bill sent up to them by
+the commons, when the object is to raise money, but they can make no
+alteration in it: they must admit it or reject it, without restriction.
+When the bill is confirmed by the lords, and assented to by the king,
+then all the classes of the nation contribute. Every man pays, not
+according to his rank&mdash;which would be absurd&mdash;but according to his
+revenue. There is no arbitrary <i>faille</i> or capitation, but a real tax on
+lands. These were all valued in the reign of the celebrated King
+William. The tax exists still unaltered, although the rents of lands
+have considerably increased; thus no one is oppressed, and no one
+complains. The feet of the cultivator are not bruised and mutilated by
+wooden shoes; he eats white bread; he is well clothed. He is not afraid
+to increase his farming-stock, nor to roof his cottage with tiles, lest
+the following year should, in consequence, bring with it an increase of
+taxation. There are numerous farmers who have an income of about five or
+six hundred pounds sterling, and still disdain not to cultivate the land
+which has enriched them, and on which they enjoy the blessing of
+freedom.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION VIII.</h5>
+
+<p>The reader well knows that in Spain, near the coast of Malaga, there was
+discovered, in the reign of Philip II., a small community, until then
+unknown, concealed in the recesses of the Alpuxarras mountains. This
+chain of inaccessible rocks is intersected by luxuriant valleys, and
+these valleys are still cultivated by the descendants of the Moors, who
+were forced, for their own happiness, to become Christians, or at least
+to appear such.</p>
+
+<p>Among these Moors, as I was stating, there was, in the time of Philip, a
+small society, inhabiting a valley to which there existed no access but
+through caverns. This valley is situated between Pitos and Portugos. The
+inhabitants of this secluded abode were almost unknown to the Moors
+themselves. They spoke a language that was neither Spanish nor Arabic,
+and which was thought to be derived from that of the ancient
+Carthaginians.</p>
+
+<p>This society had but little increased in numbers: the reason alleged for
+which was that the Arabs, their neighbors, and before their time the
+Africans, were in the practice of coming and taking from them the young
+women.</p>
+
+<p>These poor and humble, but nevertheless happy, people, had never heard
+any mention of the Christian or Jewish religions; and knew very little
+about that of Mahomet, not holding it in any estimation. They offered
+up, from time immemorial, milk and fruits to a statue of Hercules. This
+was the amount of their religion. As to other matters, they spent their
+days in indolence and innocence. They were at length discovered by a
+familiar of the Inquisition. The grand inquisitor had the whole of them
+burned. This is the sole event of their history.</p>
+
+<p>The hallowed motives of their condemnation were, that they had never
+paid taxes, although, in fact, none had ever been demanded of them, and
+they were totally unacquainted with money; that they were not possessed
+of any Bible, although they did not understand Latin; and that no person
+had been at the pains of baptizing them. They were all invested with the
+san benito, and broiled to death with becoming ceremony.</p>
+
+<p>It is evident that this is a specimen of the true system of government;
+nothing can so completely contribute to the content, harmony, and
+happiness of society.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GOURD_OR_CALABASH" id="GOURD_OR_CALABASH"></a>GOURD OR CALABASH.</h3>
+
+
+<p>This fruit grows in America on the branches of a tree as high as the
+tallest oaks.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, Matthew Garo, who is thought so wrong in Europe for finding fault
+with gourds creeping on the ground, would have been right in Mexico. He
+would have been still more in the right in India, where cocoas are very
+elevated. This proves that we should never hasten to conclusions. What
+God has made, He has made well, no doubt; and has placed his gourds on
+the ground in our climates, lest, in falling from on high, they should
+break Matthew Garo's nose.</p>
+
+<p>The calabash will only be introduced here to show that we should
+mistrust the idea that all was made for man. There are people who
+pretend that the turf is only green to refresh the sight. It would
+appear, however, that it is rather made for the animals who nibble it
+than for man, to whom dog-grass and trefoil are useless. If nature has
+produced the trees in favor of some species, it is difficult to say to
+which she has given the preference. Leaves, and even bark, nourish a
+prodigious multitude of insects: birds eat their fruits, and inhabit
+their branches, in which they build their industriously formed nests,
+while the flocks repose under their shades.</p>
+
+<p>The author of the "<i>Spectacle de la Nature</i>" pretends that the sea has a
+flux and reflux, only to facilitate the going out and coming in of our
+vessels. It appears that even Matthew Garo reasoned better; the
+Mediterranean, on which so many vessels sail, and which only has a tide
+in three or four places, destroys the opinion of this philosopher.</p>
+
+<p>Let us enjoy what we have, without believing ourselves the centre and
+object of all things.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GRACE" id="GRACE"></a>GRACE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>In persons and works, grace signifies, not only that which is pleasing,
+but that which is attractive; so that the ancients imagined that the
+goddess of beauty ought never to appear without the graces. Beauty never
+displeases, but it may be deprived of this secret charm, which invites
+us to regard it, and sentimentally attracts and fills the soul. Grace
+in figure, carriage, action, discourse, depends on its attractive
+merit. A beautiful woman will have no grace, if her mouth be shut
+without a smile, and if her eyes display no sweetness. The serious is
+not always graceful, because unattractive, and approaching too near to
+the severe, which repels.</p>
+
+<p>A well-made man whose carriage is timid or constrained, gait precipitate
+or heavy, and gestures awkward, has no gracefulness, because he has
+nothing gentle or attractive in his exterior. The voice of an orator
+which wants flexibility or softness is without grace.</p>
+
+<p>It is the same in all the arts. Proportion and beauty may not be
+graceful. It cannot be said that the pyramids of Egypt are graceful; it
+cannot be said that the Colossus of Rhodes is as much so as the Venus of
+Cnidus. All that is merely strong and vigorous exhibits not the charm of
+grace.</p>
+
+<p>It would show but small acquaintance with Michelangelo and Caravaggio to
+attribute to them the grace of Albano. The sixth book of the "Æneid" is
+sublime; the fourth has more grace. Some of the gallant odes of Horace
+breathe gracefulness, as some of his epistles cultivate reason.</p>
+
+<p>It seems, in general, that the little and pretty of all kinds are more
+susceptible of grace than the large. A funeral oration, a tragedy, or a
+sermon, are badly praised, if they are only honored with the epithet of
+graceful.</p>
+
+<p>It is not good for any kind of work to be opposed to grace, for its
+opposite is rudeness, barbarity, and dryness. The Hercules of Farnese
+should not have the gracefulness of the Apollo of Belvidere and of
+Antinous, but it is neither rude nor clumsy. The burning of Troy is not
+described by Virgil with the graces of an elegy of Tibullus: it pleases
+by stronger beauties. A work, then, may be deprived of grace, without
+being in the least disagreeable. The terrible, or horrible, in
+description, is not to be graceful, neither should it solely affect its
+opposite; for if an artist, whatever branch he may cultivate, expresses
+only frightful things, and softens them not by agreeable contrasts, he
+will repel.</p>
+
+<p>Grace, in painting and sculpture, consists in softness of outline and
+harmonious expression; and painting, next to sculpture, has grace in the
+unison of parts, and of figures which animate one another, and which
+become agreeable by their attributes and their expression.</p>
+
+<p>Graces of diction, whether in eloquence or poetry, depend on choice of
+words and harmony of phrases, and still more upon delicacy of ideas and
+smiling descriptions. The abuse of grace is affectation, as the abuse of
+the sublime is absurdity; all perfection is nearly a fault.</p>
+
+<p>To have grace applies equally to persons and things. This dress, this
+work, or that woman, is graceful. What is called a good grace applies to
+manner alone. She presents herself with good grace. He has done that
+which was expected of him with a good grace. To possess the graces:
+This woman has grace in her carriage, in all that she says and does.</p>
+
+<p>To obtain grace is, by a metaphor, to obtain pardon, as to grant grace
+is to grant pardon. We make grace of one thing by taking away all the
+rest. The commissioners took all his effects and made him a gift&mdash;a
+grace&mdash;of his money. To grant graces, to diffuse graces, is the finest
+privilege of the sovereignty; it is to do good by something more than
+justice. To have one's good graces is usually said in relation to a
+superior: to have a lady's good graces, is to be her favorite lover. To
+be in grace, is said of a courtier who has been in disgrace: we should
+not allow our happiness to depend on the one, nor our misery on the
+other. Graces, in Greek, are "charities"; a term which signifies
+amiable.</p>
+
+<p>The graces, divinities of antiquity, are one of the most beautiful
+allegories of the Greek mythology. As this mythology always varied
+according either to the imagination of the poets, who were its
+theologians, or to the customs of the people, the number, names, and
+attributes of the graces often change; but it was at last agreed to fix
+them as three, Aglaia, Thalia, and Euphrosyne, that is to say,
+sparkling, blooming, mirthful. They were always near Venus. No veil
+should cover their charms. They preside over favors, concord,
+rejoicings, love, and even eloquence; they were the sensible emblem of
+all that can render life agreeable. They were painted dancing and
+holding hands; and every one who entered their temples was crowned with
+flowers. Those who have condemned the fabulous mythology should at least
+acknowledge the merit of these lively fictions, which announce truths
+intimately connected with the felicity of mankind.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GRACE_OF" id="GRACE_OF"></a>GRACE (OF).</h3>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION I.</h5>
+
+<p>This term, which signifies favor or privilege, is employed in this sense
+by theologians. They call grace a particular operation of God on
+mankind, intended to render them just and happy. Some have admitted
+universal grace, that which God gives to all men, though mankind,
+according to them, with the exception of a very small number, will be
+delivered to eternal flames: others admit grace towards Christians of
+their communion only; and lastly, others only for the elect of that
+communion.</p>
+
+<p>It is evident that a general grace, which leaves the universe in vice,
+error, and eternal misery, is not a grace, a favor, or privilege, but a
+contradiction in terms.</p>
+
+<p>Particular grace, according to theologians, is either in the first place
+"sufficing," which if resisted, suffices not&mdash;resembling a pardon given
+by a king to a criminal, who is nevertheless delivered over to the
+punishment; or "efficacious" when it is not resisted, although it <i>may
+be</i> resisted; in this case, they just resemble famished guests to whom
+are presented delicious viands, of which they will surely eat, though,
+in general, they may be supposed at liberty not to eat; or "necessary,"
+that is, unavoidable, being nothing more than the chain of eternal
+decrees and events. We shall take care not to enter into the long and
+appalling details, subtleties, and sophisms, with which these questions
+are embarrassed. The object of this dictionary is not to be the vain
+echo of vain disputes.</p>
+
+<p>St. Thomas calls grace a substantial form, and the Jesuit Bouhours names
+it a <i>je ne sais quoi</i>; this is perhaps the best definition which has
+ever been given of it.</p>
+
+<p>If the theologians had wanted a subject on which to ridicule Providence,
+they need not have taken any other than that which they have chosen. On
+one side the Thomists assure us that man, in receiving efficacious
+grace, is not free in the compound sense, but that he is free in the
+divided sense; on the other, the Molinists invent the medium doctrine of
+God and congruity, and imagine exciting, preventing, concomitant, and
+co-operating grace.</p>
+
+<p>Let us quit these bad but seriously constructed jokes of the
+theologians; let us leave their books, and each consult his common
+sense; when he will see that all these reasoners have sagaciously
+deceived themselves, because they have reasoned upon a principle
+evidently false. They have supposed that God acts upon particular views;
+now, an eternal God, without general, immutable, and eternal laws, is
+an imaginary being, a phantom, a god of fable.</p>
+
+<p>Why, in all religions on which men pique themselves on reasoning, have
+theologians been forced to admit this grace which they do not
+comprehend? It is that they would have salvation confined to their own
+sect, and further, they would have this salvation divided among those
+who are the most submissive to themselves. These particular theologians,
+or chiefs of parties, divide among themselves. The Mussulman doctors
+entertain similar opinions and similar disputes, because they have the
+same interest to actuate them; but the universal theologian, that is to
+say, the true philosopher, sees that it is contradictory for nature to
+act on particular or single views; that it is ridiculous to imagine God
+occupying Himself in forcing one man in Europe to obey Him, while He
+leaves all the Asiatics intractable; to suppose Him wrestling with
+another man who sometimes submits, and sometimes disarms Him, and
+presenting to another a help, which is nevertheless useless. Such grace,
+considered in a true point of view, is an absurdity. The prodigious mass
+of books composed on this subject is often an exercise of intellect, but
+always the shame of reason.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION II.</h5>
+
+<p>All nature, all that exists, is the grace of God; He bestows on all
+animals the grace of form and nourishment. The grace of growing seventy
+feet high is granted to the fir, and refused to the reed. He gives to
+man the grace of thinking, speaking, and knowing him; He grants me the
+grace of not understanding a word of all that Tournelli, Molina, and
+Soto, have written on the subject of grace.</p>
+
+<p>The first who has spoken of efficacious and gratuitous grace is, without
+contradiction, Homer. This may be astonishing to a bachelor of theology,
+who knows no author but St. Augustine; but, if he read the third book of
+the "Iliad," he will see that Paris says to his brother Hector: "If the
+gods have given you valor, and me beauty, do not reproach me with the
+presents of the beautiful Venus; no gift of the gods is despicable&mdash;it
+does not depend upon man to obtain them."</p>
+
+<p>Nothing is more positive than this passage. If we further remark that
+Jupiter, according to his pleasure, gave the victory sometimes to the
+Greeks, and at others to the Trojans, we shall see a new proof that all
+was done by grace from on high. Sarpedon, and afterwards Patroclus, are
+barbarians to whom by turns grace has been wanting.</p>
+
+<p>There have been philosophers who were not of the opinion of Homer. They
+have pretended that general Providence does not immediately interfere
+with the affairs of particular individuals; that it governs all by
+universal laws; that Thersites and Achilles were equal before it, and
+that neither Chalcas nor Talthybius ever had versatile or congruous
+graces.</p>
+
+<p>According to these philosophers, the dog-grass and the oak, the mite and
+the elephant, man, the elements and stars, obey invariable laws, which
+God, as immutable, has established from all eternity.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION III.</h5>
+
+<p>If one were to come from the bottom of hell, to say to us on the part of
+the devil&mdash;Gentlemen, I must inform you that our sovereign lord has
+taken all mankind for his share, except a small number of people who
+live near the Vatican and its dependencies&mdash;we should all pray of this
+deputy to inscribe us on the list of the privileged; we should ask him
+what we must do to obtain this grace.</p>
+
+<p>If he were to answer, You cannot merit it, my master has made the list
+from the beginning of time; he has only listened to his own pleasure, he
+is continually occupied in making an infinity of <i>pots-de-chambre</i> and
+some dozen gold vases; if you are <i>pots-de-chambre</i> so much the worse
+for you.</p>
+
+<p>At these fine words we should use our pitchforks to send the ambassador
+back to his master. This is, however, what we have dared to impute to
+God&mdash;-to the eternal and sovereignly good being!</p>
+
+<p>Man has been always reproached with having made God in his own image,
+Homer has been condemned for having transported all the vices and
+follies of earth into heaven. Plato, who has thus justly reproached him,
+has not hesitated to call him a blasphemer; while we, a hundred times
+more thoughtless, hardy, and blaspheming than this Greek, who did not
+understand conventional language, devoutly accuse God of a thing of
+which we have never accused the worst of men.</p>
+
+<p>It is said that the king of Morocco, Muley Ismael, had five hundred
+children. What would you say if a marabout of Mount Atlas related to you
+that the wise and good Muley Ismael, dining with his family, at the
+close of the repast, spoke thus:</p>
+
+<p>"I am Muley Ismael, who has forgotten you for my glory, for I am very
+glorious. I love you very tenderly, I shelter you as a hen covers her
+chickens; I have decreed that one of my youngest children shall have the
+kingdom of Tafilet, and that another shall possess Morocco; and for my
+other dear children, to the number of four hundred and ninety-eight, I
+order that one-half shall be tortured, and the other half burned, for I
+am the Lord Muley Ismael."</p>
+
+<p>You would assuredly take the marabout for the greatest fool that Africa
+ever produced; but if three or four thousand marabouts, well entertained
+at your expense, were to repeat to you the same story, what would you
+do? Would you not be tempted to make them fast upon bread and water
+until they recovered their senses?</p>
+
+<p>You will allege that my indignation is reasonable enough against the
+supralapsarians, who believe that the king of Morocco begot these five
+hundred children only for his glory; and that he had always the
+intention to torture and burn them, except two, who were destined to
+reign.</p>
+
+<p>But I am wrong, you say, against the infralapsarians, who avow that it
+was not the first intention of Muley Ismael to cause his children to
+perish; but that, having foreseen that they would be of no use, he
+thought he should be acting as a good father in getting rid of them by
+torture and fire.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, supralapsarians, infralapsarians, free-gracians, sufficers,
+efficacians, jansenists, and molinists become men, and no longer trouble
+the earth with such absurd and abominable fooleries.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION IV.</h5>
+
+<p>Holy advisers of modern Rome, illustrious and infallible theologians, no
+one has more respect for your divine decisions than I; but if Paulus
+milius, Scipio, Cato, Cicero, Cæsar, Titus, Trajan, or Marcus Aurelius,
+revisited that Rome to which they formerly did such credit, you must
+confess that they would be a little astonished at your decisions on
+grace. What would they say if they heard you speak of healthful grace
+according to St. Thomas, and medicinal grace according to Cajetan; of
+exterior and interior grace, of free, sanctifying, co-operating, actual,
+habitual, and efficacious grace, which is sometimes inefficacious; of
+the sufficing which sometimes does not suffice, of the versatile and
+congruous&mdash;would they really comprehend it more than you and I?</p>
+
+<p>What need would these poor people have of your instructions? I fancy I
+hear them say: "Reverend fathers, you are terrible genii; we foolishly
+thought that the Eternal Being never conducted Himself by particular
+laws like vile human beings, but by general laws, eternal like Himself.
+No one among us ever imagined that God was like a senseless master, who
+gives an estate to one slave and refuses food to another; who orders one
+with a broken arm to knead a loaf, and a cripple to be his courier."</p>
+
+<p>All is grace on the part of God; He has given to the globe we inhabit
+the grace of form; to the trees the grace of making them grow; to
+animals that of feeding them; but will you say, because one wolf finds
+in his road a lamb for his supper, while another is dying with hunger,
+that God has given the first wolf a particular grace? Is it a preventive
+grace to cause one oak to grow in preference to another in which sap is
+wanting? If throughout nature all being is submitted to general laws,
+how can a single species of animals avoid conforming to them?</p>
+
+<p>Why should the absolute master of all be more occupied in directing the
+interior of a single man than in conducting the remainder of entire
+nature? By what caprice would He change something in the heart of a
+Courlander or a Biscayan, while He changes nothing in the general laws
+which He has imposed upon all the stars.</p>
+
+<p>What a pity to suppose that He is continually making, defacing, and
+renewing our sentiments! And what audacity in us to believe ourselves
+excepted from all beings! And further, is it not only for those who
+confess that these changes are imagined? A Savoyard, a Bergamask, on
+Monday, will have the grace to have a mass said for twelve sous; on
+Tuesday he will go to the tavern and have no grace; on Wednesday he will
+have a co-operating grace, which will conduct him to confession, but he
+will not have the efficacious grace of perfect contrition; on Thursday
+there will be a sufficing grace which will not suffice, as has been
+already said. God will labor in the head of this Bergamask&mdash;sometimes
+strongly, sometimes weakly, while the rest of the earth will no way
+concern Him! He will not deign to meddle with the interior of the
+Indians and Chinese! If you possess a grain of reason, reverend fathers,
+do you not find this system prodigiously ridiculous?</p>
+
+<p>Poor, miserable man! behold this oak which rears its head to the clouds,
+and this reed which bends at its feet; you do not say that efficacious
+grace has been given to the oak and withheld from the reed. Raise your
+eyes to heaven; see the eternal Demiourgos creating millions of worlds,
+which gravitate towards one another by general and eternal laws. See the
+same light reflected from the sun to Saturn, and from Saturn to us; and
+in this grant of so many stars, urged onward in their rapid course; in
+this general obedience of all nature, dare to believe, if you can, that
+God is occupied in giving a versatile grace to Sister Theresa, or a
+concomitant one to Sister Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>Atom&mdash;to which another foolish atom has said that the Eternal has
+particular laws for some atoms of thy neighborhood; that He gives His
+grace to that one and refuses it to this; that such as had not grace
+yesterday shall have it to-morrow&mdash;repeat not this folly. God has made
+the universe, and creates not new winds to remove a few straws in one
+corner of the universe. Theologians are like the combatants in Homer,
+who believed that the gods were sometimes armed for and sometimes
+against them. Had Homer not been considered a poet, he would be deemed a
+blasphemer.</p>
+
+<p>It is Marcus Aurelius who speaks, and not I; for God, who inspires you,
+has given me grace to believe all that you say, all that you have said,
+and all that you will say.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GRAVE_GRAVITY" id="GRAVE_GRAVITY"></a>GRAVE&mdash;GRAVITY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Grave, in its moral meaning, always corresponds with its physical one;
+it expresses something of weight; thus, we say&mdash;a person, an author, or
+a maxim of weight, for a grave person, author, or maxim. The grave is to
+the serious what the lively is to the agreeable. It is one degree more
+of the same thing, and that degree a considerable one. A man may be
+serious by temperament, and even from want of ideas. He is grave, either
+from a sense of decorum, or from having ideas of depth and importance,
+which induce gravity. There is a difference between being grave and
+being a grave man. It is a fault to be unseasonably grave. He who is
+grave in society is seldom much sought for; but a grave man is one who
+acquires influence and authority more by his real wisdom than his
+external carriage.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Tum pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Conspexere, silent, adrectisque auribus adstant.</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 14em;">&mdash;<span class="small">VIRGIL'S</span> <i>Æneid</i>, i. 151.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">If then some grave and pious man appear,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">They hush their noise, and lend a listening ear.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 15em;">&mdash;<span class="small">DRYDEN</span>.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>A decorous air should be always preserved, but a grave air is becoming
+only in the function of some high and important office, as, for example,
+in council. When gravity consists, as is frequently the case, only in
+the exterior carriage, frivolous remarks are delivered with a pompous
+solemnity, exciting at once ridicule and aversion. We do not easily
+pardon those who wish to impose upon us by this air of consequence and
+self-sufficiency.</p>
+
+<p>The duke de La Rochefoucauld said "Gravity is a mysteriousness of body
+assumed in order to conceal defects of mind." Without investigating
+whether the phrase "mysteriousness of body" is natural and judicious, it
+is sufficient to observe that the remark is applicable to all who affect
+gravity, but not to those who merely exhibit a gravity suitable to the
+office they hold, the place where they are, or the business in which
+they are engaged.</p>
+
+<p>A grave author is one whose opinions relate to matters obviously
+disputable. We never apply the term to one who has written on subjects
+which admit no doubt or controversy. It would be ridiculous to call
+Euclid and Archimedes grave authors.</p>
+
+<p>Gravity is applicable to style. Livy and de Thou have written with
+gravity. The same observations cannot with propriety be applied to
+Tacitus, whose object was brevity, and who has displayed malignity;
+still less can it be applied to Cardinal de Retz, who sometimes infuses
+into his writings a misplaced gayety, and sometimes even forgets
+decency.</p>
+
+<p>The grave style declines all sallies of wit or pleasantry; if it
+sometimes reaches the sublime, if on any particular occasion it is
+pathetic, it speedily returns to the didactic wisdom and noble
+simplicity which habitually characterizes it; it possesses strength
+without daring. Its greatest difficulty is to avoid monotony.</p>
+
+<p>A grave affair (<i>affaire</i>), a grave case (<i>cas</i>), is used concerning a
+criminal rather than a civil process. A grave disease implies danger.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GREAT_GREATNESS" id="GREAT_GREATNESS"></a>GREAT&mdash;GREATNESS.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Of the Meaning of These Words.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Great is one of those words which are most frequently used in a moral
+sense, and with the least consideration and judgment. Great man, great
+genius, great captain, great philosopher, great poet; we mean by this
+language "one who has far exceeded ordinary limits." But, as it is
+difficult to define those limits, the epithet "great" is often applied
+to those who possess only mediocrity.</p>
+
+<p>This term is less vague and doubtful when applied to material than to
+moral subjects. We know what is meant by a great storm, a great
+misfortune, a great disease, great property, great misery.</p>
+
+<p>The term "large" (<i>gros</i>) is sometimes used with respect to subjects of
+the latter description, that is, material ones, as equivalent to great,
+but never with respect to moral subjects. We say large property for
+great wealth, but not a large captain for a great captain, or a large
+minister for a great minister. Great financier means a man eminently
+skilful in matters of national finance; but <i>gros</i> financier expresses
+merely a man who has become wealthy in the department of finance.</p>
+
+<p>The great man is more difficult to be defined than the great artist. In
+an art or profession, the man who has far distanced his rivals, or who
+has the reputation of having done so, is called great in his art, and
+appears, therefore, to have required merit of only one description in
+order to obtain this eminence; but the great man must combine different
+species of merit. Gonsalvo, surnamed the Great Captain, who observed
+that "the web of honor was coarsely woven," was never called a great
+man. It is more easy to name those to whom this high distinction should
+be refused than those to whom it should be granted. The denomination
+appears to imply some great virtues. All agree that Cromwell was the
+most intrepid general, the most profound statesman, the man best
+qualified to conduct a party, a parliament, or an army, of his day; yet
+no writer ever gives him the title of great man; because, although he
+possessed great qualities, he possessed not a single great virtue.</p>
+
+<p>This title seems to fall to the lot only of the small number of men who
+have been distinguished at once by virtues, exertions, and success.
+Success is essential, because the man who is always unfortunate is
+supposed to be so by his own fault.</p>
+
+<p>Great (grand), by itself, expresses some dignity. In Spain it is a high
+and most distinguishing appellative (<i>grandee</i>) conferred by the king on
+those whom he wishes to honor. The grandees are covered in the presence
+of the king, either before speaking to him or after having spoken to
+him, or while taking their seats with the rest.</p>
+
+<p>Charles the Fifth conferred the privileges of grandeeship on sixteen
+principal noblemen. That emperor himself afterwards granted the same
+honors to many others. His successors, each in his turn, have added to
+the number. The Spanish grandees have long claimed to be considered of
+equal rank and dignity with the electors and the princes of Italy. At
+the court of France they have the same honors as peers.</p>
+
+<p>The title of "great" has been always given, in France, to many of the
+chief officers of the crown&mdash;as great seneschal, great master, great
+chamberlain, great equerry, great pantler, great huntsman, great
+falconer. These titles were given them to distinguish their pre-eminence
+above the persons serving in the same departments under them. The
+distinction is not given to the constable, nor to the chancellor, nor to
+the marshals, although the constable is the chief of all the household
+officers, the chancellor the second person in the state, and the marshal
+the second officer in the army. The reason obviously is, that they had
+no deputies, no vice-constables, vice-marshals, vice-chancellors, but
+officers under another denomination who executed their orders, while the
+great steward, great chamberlain, and great equerry, etc., had stewards,
+chamberlains, and equerries under them.</p>
+
+<p>Great (grand) in connection with <i>seigneur</i>, "great lord," has a
+signification more extensive and uncertain. We give this title of
+"<i>grand seigneur</i>" (seignor) to the Turkish sultan, who assumes that of
+pasha, to which the expression grand seignor does not correspond. The
+expression "<i>un grand</i>," "great man," is used in speaking of a man of
+distinguished birth, invested with dignities, but it is used only by the
+common people. A person of birth or consequence never applies the term
+to any one. As the words "great lord" (<i>grand seigneur</i>) are commonly
+applied to those who unite birth, dignity, and riches, poverty seems to
+deprive a man of the right to it, or at least to render it inappropriate
+or ridiculous. Accordingly, we say a poor gentleman, but not a poor
+grand seigneur.</p>
+
+<p>Great (grand) is different from mighty (<i>puissant</i>). A man may at the
+same time be both one and the other, but <i>puissant</i> implies the
+possession of some office of power and consequence. "Grand" indicates
+more show and less reality; the "puissant" commands, the "grand"
+possesses honors.</p>
+
+<p>There is greatness (grandeur) in mind, in sentiments, in manners, and in
+conduct. The expression is not used in speaking of persons in the
+middling classes of society, but only of those who, by their rank, are
+bound to show nobility and elevation. It is perfectly true that a man of
+the most obscure birth and connections may have more greatness of mind
+than a monarch. But it would be inconsistent with the usual phraseology
+to say, "that merchant" or "that farmer acted greatly" (<i>avec
+grandeur</i>); unless, indeed, in very particular circumstances, and
+placing certain characters in striking opposition, we should, for
+example, make such a remark as the following: "The celebrated merchant
+who entertained Charles the Fifth in his own house, and lighted a fire
+of cinnamon wood with that prince's bond to him for fifty thousand
+ducats, displayed more greatness of soul than the emperor."</p>
+
+<p>The title of "greatness" (grandeur) was formerly given to various
+persons possessing stations of dignity. French clergymen, when writing
+to bishops, still call them "your greatness." Those titles, which are
+lavished by sycophancy and caught at by vanity, are now little used.</p>
+
+<p>Haughtiness is often mistaken for greatness (grandeur). He who is
+ostentatious of greatness displays vanity. But one becomes weary and
+exhausted with writing about greatness. According to the lively remark
+of Montaigne, "we cannot obtain it, let us therefore take our revenge by
+abusing it."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GREEK" id="GREEK"></a>GREEK.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Observations Upon the Extinction of the Greek Language at Marseilles.</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>It is exceedingly strange that, as Marseilles was founded by a Greek
+colony, scarcely any vestige of the Greek language is to be found in
+Provence Languedoc, or any district of France; for we cannot consider as
+Greek the terms which were taken, at a comparatively modern date, from
+the Latins, and which had been adopted by the Romans themselves from the
+Greeks so many centuries before. We received those only at second hand.
+We have no right to say that we abandoned the word <i>Got</i> for that of
+<i>Theos</i>, rather than that of <i>Deus</i>, from which, by a barbarous
+termination, we have made <i>Dieu</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It is clear that the Gauls, having received the Latin language with the
+Roman laws, and having afterwards received from those same Romans the
+Christian religion, adopted from them all the terms which were connected
+with that religion. These same Gauls did not acquire, until a late
+period, the Greek terms which relate to medicine, anatomy, and surgery.</p>
+
+<p>After deducting all the words originally Greek which we have derived
+through the Latin, and all the anatomical and medical terms which were,
+in comparison, so recently acquired, there is scarcely anything left;
+for surely, to derive "<i>abréger</i>" from "<i>brakus</i>," rather than from
+"<i>abreviare</i>"; "<i>acier</i>" from "<i>axi</i>" rather than from "<i>acies</i>";
+"<i>acre</i>" from "<i>agros</i>," rather than from "<i>ager</i>"; and "<i>aile</i>" from
+"<i>ily</i>" rather than from "<i>ala</i>"&mdash;this, I say, would surely be perfectly
+ridiculous.</p>
+
+<p>Some have even gone so far as to say that "omelette" comes from
+"<i>omeilaton</i>" because "<i>meli</i>" in Greek signifies honey, and "<i>oon</i>" an
+egg. In the "Garden of Greek Roots" there is a more curious derivation
+still; it is pretended that "<i>diner</i>" (dinner) comes from "<i>deipnein</i>,"
+which signifies supper.</p>
+
+<p>As some may be desirous of possessing a list of the Greek words which
+the Marseilles colony may have introduced into the language of the
+Gauls, independently of those which came through the Romans, we present
+the following one:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Aboyer, perhaps from <i>bauzein</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Affre, affreux, from <i>afronos</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Agacer, perhaps from <i>anaxein</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Alali, a Greek war-cry.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Babiller, perhaps from <i>babazo</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Balle, from <i>ballo</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Bas, from <i>batys</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Blesser, from the aorist of <i>blapto</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Bouteille, from <i>bouttis</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Bride, from <i>bryter</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Brique, from <i>bryka</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Coin, from <i>gonia</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Colère, from <i>chole</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Colle, from <i>colla</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Couper, from <i>cop to</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Cuisse, perhaps from <i>ischis</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Entraille, from <i>entera</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Ermite, from <i>eremos</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Fier, from <i>fiaros</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Gargarizer, from <i>gargarizein</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Idiot, from <i>idiotes</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Maraud, from <i>miaros</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Moquer, from <i>mokeuo</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Moustache, from <i>mustax</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Orgueil, from <i>orge</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Page, from <i>pais</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Siffler, perhaps from <i>siffloo</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Tuer, <i>thuein</i>.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>I am astonished to find so few words remaining of a language spoken at
+Marseilles, in the time of Augustus, in all its purity; and I am
+particularly astonished to find the greater number of the Greek words
+preserved in Provence, signifying things of little or no utility, while
+those used to express things of the first necessity and importance are
+utterly lost. We have not a single one remaining that signifies land,
+sea, sky, the sun, the moon, rivers, or the principal parts of the human
+body; the words used for which might have been expected to be
+transmitted down from the beginning through every succeeding age.
+Perhaps we must attribute the cause of this to the Visigoths, the
+Burgundians, and the Franks; to the horrible barbarism of all those
+nations which laid waste the Roman Empire, a barbarism of which so many
+traces yet remain.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GUARANTEE" id="GUARANTEE"></a>GUARANTEE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>A guarantee is a pledge by which a person renders himself responsible to
+another for something, and binds himself to secure him in the enjoyment
+of it. The word (<i>garant</i>) is derived from the Celtic and Teutonic
+"warrant." In all the words which we have retained from those ancient
+languages we have changed the <i>w</i> into <i>g</i>. Among the greater number of
+the nations of the North "warrant" still signifies assurance, guaranty;
+and in this sense it means, in English, an order of the king, as
+signifying the pledge of the king. When in the middle ages kings
+concluded treaties, they were guaranteed on both sides by a considerable
+number of knights, who bound themselves by oath to see that the treaty
+was observed, and even, when a superior education qualified them to do
+so, which sometimes happened, signed their names to it. When the emperor
+Frederick Barbarossa ceded so many rights to Pope Alexander III. at the
+celebrated congress of Venice, in 1117, the emperor put his seal to the
+instrument which the pope and cardinals signed. Twelve princes of the
+empire guaranteed the treaty by an oath upon the gospel; but none of
+them signed it. It is not said that the doge of Venice guaranteed that
+peace which was concluded in his palace. When Philip Augustus made peace
+in 1200 with King John of England, the principal barons of France and
+Normandy swore to the due observance of it, as cautionary or
+guaranteeing parties. The French swore that they would take arms against
+their king if he violated his word, and the Normans, in like manner, to
+oppose their sovereign if he did not adhere to his. One of the
+constables of the Montmorency family, after a negotiation with one of
+the earls of March, in 1227, swore to the observance of the treaty upon
+the soul of the king.</p>
+
+<p>The practice of guaranteeing the states of a third party was of great
+antiquity, although under a different name. The Romans in this manner
+guaranteed the possessions of many of the princes of Asia and Africa, by
+taking them under their protection until they secured to themselves the
+possession of the territories thus protected. We must regard as a mutual
+guaranty the ancient alliance between France and Castile, of king to
+king, kingdom to kingdom, and man to man.</p>
+
+<p>We do not find any treaty in which the guaranty of the states of a third
+party is expressly stipulated for before that which was concluded
+between Spain and the states-general in 1609, by the mediation of Henry
+IV. He procured from Philip III., king of Spain, the recognition of the
+United Provinces as free and sovereign states. He signed the guaranty of
+this sovereignty of the seven provinces, and obtained the signature of
+the same instrument from the king of Spain; and the republic
+acknowledged that it owed its freedom to the interference of the French
+monarch. It is principally within our own times that treaties of
+guaranty have become comparatively frequent. Unfortunately these
+engagements have occasionally produced ruptures and war; and it is
+clearly ascertained that the best of all possible guaranties is power.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GREGORY_VII" id="GREGORY_VII"></a>GREGORY VII.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Bayle himself, while admitting that Gregory was the firebrand of Europe,
+concedes to him the denomination of a great man. "That old Rome," says
+he, "which plumed itself upon conquests and military virtue, should have
+brought so many other nations under its dominion, redounds, according to
+the general maxims of mankind, to her credit and glory; but, upon the
+slightest reflection, can excite little surprise. On the other hand, it
+is a subject of great surprise to see new Rome, which pretended to value
+itself only on an apostolic ministry, possessed of an authority under
+which the greatest monarchs have been constrained to bend. Caron may
+observe, with truth, that there is scarcely a single emperor who has
+opposed the popes without feeling bitter cause to regret his resistance.
+Even at the present day the conflicts of powerful princes with the court
+of Rome almost always terminate in their confusion."</p>
+
+<p>I am of a totally different opinion from Bayle. There will probably be
+many of a different one from mine. I deliver it however with freedom,
+and let him who is willing and able refute it.</p>
+
+<p>1. The differences of the princes of Orange and the seven provinces with
+Rome did not terminate in their confusion; and Bayle, who, while at
+Amsterdam, could set Rome at defiance, was a happy illustration of the
+contrary.</p>
+
+<p>The triumphs of Queen Elizabeth, of Gustavus Vasa in Sweden, of the
+kings of Denmark, of all the princes of the north of Germany, of the
+finest part of Helvetia, of the single and small city of Geneva&mdash;the
+triumphs, I say, of all these over the policy of the Roman court are
+perfectly satisfactory testimonies that it may be easily and
+successfully resisted, both in affairs of religion and government.</p>
+
+<p>2. The sacking of Rome by the troops of Charles the Fifth; the pope
+(Clement VII.) a prisoner in the castle of St. Angelo; Louis XIV.
+compelling Pope Alexander VII. to ask his pardon, and erecting even in
+Rome itself a monument of the pope's submission; and, within our own
+times, the easy subversion of that steady, and apparently most
+formidable support of the papal power, the society of Jesuits in Spain,
+in France, in Naples, in Goa, and in Paraguay&mdash;all this furnishes
+decisive evidence, that, when potent princes are in hostility with Rome,
+the quarrel is not terminated in their confusion; they may occasionally
+bend before the storm, but they will not eventually be overthrown.</p>
+
+<p>When the popes walked on the heads of kings, when they conferred crowns
+by a parchment bull, it appears to me, that at this extreme height of
+their power and grandeur they did no more than the caliphs, who were the
+successors of Mahomet, did in the very period of their decline. Both of
+them, in the character of priests, conferred the investiture of empires,
+in solemn ceremony, on the most powerful of contending parties.</p>
+
+<p>3. Maimbourg says: "What no pope ever did before, Gregory VIII. did,
+depriving Henry IV. of his dignity of emperor, and of his kingdoms of
+Germany and Italy."</p>
+
+<p>Maimbourg is mistaken. Pope Zachary had, long before that, placed a
+crown on the head of the Austrasian Pepin, who usurped the kingdom of
+the Franks; and Pope Leo III. had declared the son of that Pepin emperor
+of the West, and thereby deprived the empress Irene of the whole of that
+empire; and from that time, it must be admitted, there has not been a
+single priest of the Romish church who has not imagined that his bishop
+enjoyed the disposal of all crowns.</p>
+
+<p>This maxim was always turned to account when it was possible to be so.
+It was considered as a consecrated weapon, deposited in the sacristy of
+St. John of Lateran, which might be drawn forth in solemn and impressive
+ceremony on every occasion that required it. This prerogative is so
+commanding; it raises to such a height the dignity of an exorcist born
+at Velletri or Cività Vecchia, that if Luther, Œcolampadius, John
+Calvin, and all the prophets of the Cévennes, had been natives of any
+miserable village near Rome, and undergone the tonsure there, they would
+have supported that church with the same rage which they actually
+manifested for its destruction.</p>
+
+<p>4. Everything, then, depends on the time and place of a man's birth, and
+the circumstances by which he is surrounded. Gregory VII. was born in an
+age of barbarism, ignorance, and superstition; and he had to deal with a
+young, debauched, inexperienced emperor, deficient in money, and whose
+power was contested by all the powerful lords of Germany.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot believe, that, from the time of the Austrasian Charlemagne,
+the Roman people ever paid very willing obedience to Franks or
+Teutonians: they hated them as much as the genuine old Romans would have
+hated the Cimbri, if the Cimbri had obtained dominion in Italy. The
+Othos had left behind them in Rome a memory that was execrated, because
+they had enjoyed great power there; and, after the time of the Othos,
+Europe it is well known became involved in frightful anarchy.</p>
+
+<p>This anarchy was not more effectually restrained under the emperors of
+the house of Franconia. One-half of Germany was in insurrection against
+Henry IV. The countess Mathilda, grand duchess, his cousin-german, more
+powerful than himself in Italy, was his mortal enemy. She possessed,
+either as fiefs of the empire, or as allodial property, the whole duchy
+of Tuscany, the territory of Cremona, Ferrara, Mantua, and Parma; a part
+of the Marches of Ancona, Reggio, Modena, Spoleto, and Verona; and she
+had rights, that is to say pretensions, to the two Burgundies; for the
+imperial chancery claimed those territories, according to its regular
+practice of claiming everything.</p>
+
+<p>We admit, that Gregory VII. would have been little less than an idiot
+had he not exerted his strongest efforts to secure a complete influence
+over this powerful princess; and to obtain, by her means, a point of
+support and protection against the Germans. He became her director, and,
+after being her director, her heir.</p>
+
+<p>I shall not, in this place, examine whether he was really her lover, or
+whether he only pretended to be so; or whether his enemies merely
+pretended it; or whether, in his idle moments, the assuming and ardent
+little director did not occasionally abuse the influence he possessed
+with his penitent, and prevail over a feeble and capricious woman. In
+the course of human events nothing can be more natural or common; but as
+usually no registers are kept of such cases; as those interesting
+intimacies between the directors and directed do not take place before
+witnesses, and as Gregory has been reproached with this imputation only
+by his enemies, we ought not to confound accusation with proof. It is
+quite enough that Gregory claimed the whole of his penitent's property.</p>
+
+<p>5. The donation which he procured to be made to himself by the countess
+Mathilda, in the year 1077, is more than suspected. And one proof that
+it is not to be relied upon is that not merely was this deed never
+shown, but that, in a second deed, the first is stated to have been
+lost. It was pretended that the donation had been made in the fortress
+of Canossa, and in the second act it is said to have been made at Rome.
+These circumstances may be considered as confirming the opinion of some
+antiquaries, a little too scrupulous, who maintain that out of a
+thousand grants made in those times&mdash;and those times were of long
+duration&mdash;there are more than nine hundred evidently counterfeit.</p>
+
+<p>There have been two sorts of usurpers in our quarter of the world,
+Europe&mdash;robbers and forgers.</p>
+
+<p>6. Bayle, although allowing the title of Great to Gregory, acknowledges
+at the same time that this turbulent man disgraced his heroism by his
+prophecies. He had the audacity to create an emperor, and in that he
+did well, as the emperor Henry IV. had made a pope. Henry deposed him,
+and he deposed Henry. So far there is nothing to which to object&mdash;both
+sides are equal. But Gregory took it into his head to turn prophet; he
+predicted the death of Henry IV. for the year 1080; but Henry IV.
+conquered, and the pretended emperor Rudolph was defeated and slain in
+Thuringia by the famous Godfrey of Bouillon, a man more truly great than
+all the other three. This proves, in my opinion, that Gregory had more
+enthusiasm than talent.</p>
+
+<p>I subscribe with all my heart to the remark of Bayle, that "when a man
+undertakes to predict the future, he is provided against everything by a
+face of brass, and an inexhaustible magazine of equivocations." But your
+enemies deride your equivocations; they also have a face of brass like
+yourself; and they expose you as a knave, a braggart, and a fool.</p>
+
+<p>7. Our great man ended his public career with witnessing the taking of
+Rome by assault, in the year 1083. He was besieged in the castle, since
+called St. Angelo, by the same emperor Henry IV., whom he had dared to
+dispossess, and died in misery and contempt at Salerno, under the
+protection of Robert Guiscard the Norman.</p>
+
+<p>I ask pardon of modern Rome, but when I read the history of the Scipios,
+the Catos, the Pompeys, and the Cæsars, I find a difficulty in ranking
+with them a factious monk who was made a pope under the name of Gregory
+VII.</p>
+
+<p>But our Gregory has obtained even a yet finer title; he has been made a
+saint, at least at Rome. It was the famous cardinal Coscia who effected
+this canonization under Pope Benedict XIII. Even an office or service of
+St. Gregory VII. was printed, in which it was said, that that saint
+"absolved the faithful from the allegiance which they had sworn to their
+emperor."</p>
+
+<p>Many parliaments of the kingdom were desirous of having this legend
+burned by the executioner: but Bentivoglio, the nuncio&mdash;who kept one of
+the actresses at the opera, of the name of Constitution, as his
+mistress, and had by her a daughter called la Legende; a man otherwise
+extremely amiable, and a most interesting companion&mdash;procured from the
+ministry a mitigation of the threatened storm; and, after passing
+sentence of condemnation on the legend of St. Gregory, the hostile party
+were contented to suppress it and to laugh at it.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 95%;" />
+
+
+<p class="caption"><a name="TABLE_OF_CONTENTS" id="TABLE_OF_CONTENTS"></a>TABLE OF CONTENTS</p>
+<p class="small">
+<br />
+<a href="#LIST_OF_PLATES_VOL_V"><b>LIST OF PLATES&mdash;VOL. V</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FANATICISM"><b>FANATICISM.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FANCY"><b>FANCY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FASTI"><b>FASTI.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FATHERS_MOTHERSmdashCHILDREN"><b>FATHERS&mdash;MOTHERS&mdash;CHILDREN.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FAVOR"><b>FAVOR.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FAVORITE"><b>FAVORITE.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FEASTS"><b>FEASTS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FERRARA"><b>FERRARA.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FEVER"><b>FEVER.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FICTION"><b>FICTION.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FIERTE"><b>FIERTÉ.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FIGURE"><b>FIGURE.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FIGURED_FIGURATIVE"><b>FIGURED&mdash;FIGURATIVE.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FIGURE_IN_THEOLOGY"><b>FIGURE IN THEOLOGY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FINAL_CAUSES"><b>FINAL CAUSES.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FINESSE_FINENESS_ETC"><b>FINESSE, FINENESS, ETC.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FIRE"><b>FIRE.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FIRMNESS"><b>FIRMNESS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FLATTERY"><b>FLATTERY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FORCE_PHYSICAL"><b>FORCE (PHYSICAL).</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FORCE_STRENGTH"><b>FORCE&mdash;STRENGTH.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FRANCHISE"><b>FRANCHISE.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FRANCIS_XAVIER"><b>FRANCIS XAVIER.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FRANKS_FRANCEmdashFRENCH"><b>FRANKS&mdash;FRANCE&mdash;FRENCH</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FRAUD"><b>FRAUD.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FREE-WILL"><b>FREE-WILL.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FRENCH_LANGUAGE"><b>FRENCH LANGUAGE.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FRIENDSHIP"><b>FRIENDSHIP.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FRIVOLITY"><b>FRIVOLITY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GALLANT"><b>GALLANT.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GARGANTUA"><b>GARGANTUA.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GAZETTE"><b>GAZETTE.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GENEALOGY"><b>GENEALOGY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GENESIS"><b>GENESIS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GENII"><b>GENII.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GENIUS"><b>GENIUS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GEOGRAPHY"><b>GEOGRAPHY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GLORY_GLORIOUS"><b>GLORY&mdash;GLORIOUS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GOAT_SORCERY"><b>GOAT&mdash;SORCERY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GOD_GODS"><b>GOD&mdash;GODS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GOOD_THE_SOVEREIGN_GOOD_A_CHIMERA"><b>GOOD&mdash;THE SOVEREIGN GOOD, A CHIMERA.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GOOD"><b>GOOD.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GOSPEL"><b>GOSPEL.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GOVERNMENT"><b>GOVERNMENT.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GOURD_OR_CALABASH"><b>GOURD OR CALABASH.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GRACE"><b>GRACE.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GRACE_OF"><b>GRACE (OF).</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GRAVE_GRAVITY"><b>GRAVE&mdash;GRAVITY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GREAT_GREATNESS"><b>GREAT&mdash;GREATNESS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GREEK"><b>GREEK.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GUARANTEE"><b>GUARANTEE.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GREGORY_VII"><b>GREGORY VII.</b></a><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 35625 ***</div>
+
+</body>
+</html>
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+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
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+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #35625 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35625)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 5 (of 10), by 
+François-Marie Arouet (AKA 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: A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 5 (of 10)
+       From "The Works of Voltaire - A Contemporary Version"
+
+Author: François-Marie Arouet (AKA Voltaire)
+
+Commentator: John Morley
+             Tobias Smollett
+             H.G. Leigh
+
+Translator: William F. Fleming
+
+Release Date: March 28, 2011 [EBook #35625]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Andrea Ball, Christine Bell & Marc D'Hooghe
+at http://www.freeliterature.org (From images generously
+made available by the Internet Archive.)
+
+
+
+
+
+A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY
+
+VOLUME V
+
+By
+
+VOLTAIRE
+
+
+
+
+EDITION DE LA PACIFICATION
+
+THE WORKS OF VOLTAIRE
+
+A CONTEMPORARY VERSION
+
+
+  With Notes by Tobias Smollett, Revised and Modernized
+     New Translations by William F. Fleming, and an
+           Introduction by Oliver H.G. Leigh
+
+A CRITIQUE AND BIOGRAPHY
+
+BY
+
+THE RT. HON. JOHN MORLEY
+
+FORTY-THREE VOLUMES
+
+
+  One hundred and sixty-eight designs, comprising reproductions
+      of rare old engravings, steel plates, photogravures,
+                    and curious fac-similes
+
+VOLUME IX
+
+E.R. DuMONT
+
+PARIS--LONDON--NEW YORK--CHICAGO
+
+1901
+
+
+
+
+_The WORKS of VOLTAIRE_
+
+     _"Between two servants of Humanity, who appeared eighteen hundred
+     years apart, there is a mysterious relation. * * * * Let us say it
+     with a sentiment of profound respect: JESUS WEPT: VOLTAIRE SMILED.
+     Of that divine tear and of that human smile is composed the
+     sweetness of the present civilization."_
+
+                                                    _VICTOR HUGO._
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF PLATES--VOL. V
+
+  SANS SOUCI _Frontispiece_
+  A LAND STORM
+  THE TEMPTATION OF ADAM
+  DESCARTES
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: SANS SOUCI]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY.
+
+IN TEN VOLUMES
+
+Vol. V
+
+FANATICISM--GREGORY VII
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+FANATICISM.
+
+SECTION I.
+
+
+Fanaticism is the effect of a false conscience, which makes religion
+subservient to the caprices of the imagination, and the excesses of the
+passions.
+
+It arises, in general, from legislators entertaining too narrow views,
+or from their extending their regulations beyond the limits within which
+alone they were intended to operate. Their laws are made merely for a
+select society. When extended by zeal to a whole people, and transferred
+by ambition from one climate to another, some changes of institution
+should take place, some accommodation to persons, places, and
+circumstances. But what, in fact, has been the case? Certain minds,
+constituted in a great degree like those of the small original flock,
+have received a system with equal ardor, and become its apostles, and
+even its martyrs, rather than abate a single iota of its demands.
+Others, on the contrary, less ardent, or more attached to their
+prejudices of education, have struggled with energy against the new
+yoke, and consented to receive it only after considerable softenings and
+mitigations: hence the schism between rigorists and moderates, by which
+all are urged on to vehemence and madness--the one party for servitude
+and the other for freedom.
+
+Let us imagine an immense rotunda, a pantheon, with innumerable altars
+placed under its dome. Let us figure to ourselves a devotee of every
+sect, whether at present existing or extinct, at the feet of that
+divinity which he worships in his own peculiar way, under all the
+extravagant forms which human imagination has been able to invent. On
+the right we perceive one stretched on his back upon a mat, absorbed in
+contemplation, and awaiting the moment when the divine light shall come
+forth to inform his soul. On the left is a prostrate energumen striking
+his forehead against the ground, with a view to obtain from it an
+abundant produce. Here we see a man with the air and manner of a
+mountebank, dancing over the grave of him whom he invokes. There we
+observe a penitent, motionless and mute as the statue before which he
+has bent himself in humiliation. One, on the principle that God will not
+blush at his own resemblance, displays openly what modesty universally
+conceals; another, as if the artist would shudder at the sight of his
+own work, covers with an impenetrable veil his whole person and
+countenance; another turns his back upon the south, because from that
+quarter blows the devil's tempest. Another stretches out his arms
+towards the east, because there God first shows His radiant face. Young
+women, suffused with tears, bruise and gash their lovely persons under
+the idea of assuaging the demon of desire, although by means tending in
+fact rather to strengthen his influence; others again, in opposite
+attitudes, solicit the approaches of the Divinity. One young man, in
+order to mortify the most urgent of his feelings, attaches to particular
+parts of his frame large iron rings, as heavy as he can bear; another
+checks still more effectually the tempter's violence by inhuman
+amputation, and suspends the bleeding sacrifice upon the altar.
+
+Let us observe them quit the temple, and, full of the inspiration of
+their respective deities, spread the terror and delusion over the face
+of the earth. They divide the world between them; and the four
+extremities of it are almost instantly in flames: nations obey them, and
+kings tremble before them. That almost despotic power which the
+enthusiasm of a single person exercises over a multitude who see or hear
+him; the ardor communicated to each other by assembled minds; numberless
+strong and agitating influences acting in such circumstances, augmented
+by each individual's personal anxiety and distress, require but a short
+time to operate, in order to produce universal delirium. Only let a
+single people be thus fascinated and agitated under the guidance of a
+few impostors, the seduction will spread with the speed of wild-fire,
+prodigies will be multiplied beyond calculation, and whole communities
+be led astray forever. When the human mind has once quitted the luminous
+track pointed out by nature, it returns to it no more; it wanders round
+the truth, but never obtains of it more than a few faint glimmerings,
+which, mingling with the false lights of surrounding superstition, leave
+it, in fact, in complete and palpable obscurity.
+
+It is dreadful to observe how the opinion that the wrath of heaven might
+be appeased by human massacre spread, after being once started, through
+almost every religion; and what various reasons have been given for the
+sacrifice, as though, in order to preclude, if possible, the escape of
+any one from extirpation. Sometimes they are enemies who must be
+immolated to Mars the exterminator. The Scythians slay upon the altars
+of this deity a hundredth part of their prisoners of war; and from this
+usage attending victory, we may form some judgment of the justice of
+war: accordingly, among other nations it was engaged in solely to supply
+these human sacrifices, so that, having first been instituted, as it
+would seem, to expiate the horrors of war, they at length came to serve
+as a justification of them.
+
+Sometimes a barbarous deity requires victims from among the just and
+good. The Getæ eagerly dispute the honor of personally conveying to
+Zamolxis the vows and devotions of their country. He whose good fortune
+has destined him to be the sacrifice is thrown with the greatest
+violence upon a range of spears, fixed for the purpose. If on falling
+he receives a mortal wound, it augurs well as to the success of the
+negotiation and the merit of the envoy; but if he survives the wound, he
+is a wretch with whom the god would not condescend to hold any
+communication.
+
+Sometimes children are demanded, and the respective divinities recall
+the life they had but just imparted: "Justice," says Montaigne,
+"thirsting for the blood of innocence!" Sometimes the call is for the
+dearest and nearest blood: the Carthaginians sacrificed their own sons
+to Saturn, as if Time did not devour them with sufficient speed.
+Sometimes the demand was for the blood of the most beautiful. That
+Amestris, who had buried twelve men alive in order to obtain from Pluto,
+in return for so revolting an offering, a somewhat longer life--that
+same Amestris further sacrifices to that insatiable divinity twelve
+daughters of the highest personages in Persia; as the sacrificing
+priests have always taught men that they ought to offer on the altar the
+most valuable of their possessions. It is upon this principle that among
+some nations the first-born were immolated, and that among others they
+were redeemed by offerings more valuable to the ministers of sacrifice.
+This it is, unquestionably, which introduced into Europe the practice
+prevalent for centuries of devoting children to celibacy at the early
+age of five years, and shutting up in a cloister the brothers of an
+hereditary prince, just as in Asia the practice is to murder them.
+
+Sometimes it is the purest blood that is demanded. We read of certain
+Indians, if I recollect rightly, who hospitably entertain all who visit
+them and make a merit of killing every sensible and virtuous stranger
+who enters their country, that his talents and virtues may remain with
+them. Sometimes the blood required is that which is most sacred. With
+the majority of idolaters, priests perform the office of executioner at
+the altar; and among the Siberians, it is the practice to kill the
+priests in order to despatch them to pray in the other world for the
+fulfilment of the wishes of the people.
+
+But let us turn our attention to other frenzies and other spectacles.
+All Europe passes into Asia by a road inundated with the blood of Jews,
+who commit suicide to avoid falling into the hands of their enemies.
+This epidemic depopulates one-half of the inhabited world: kings,
+pontiffs, women, the young and the aged, all yield to the influence of
+the holy madness which, for a series of two hundred years, instigated
+the slaughter of innumerable nations at the tomb of a god of peace. Then
+were to be seen lying oracles, and military hermits, monarchs in
+pulpits, and prelates in camps. All the different states constitute one
+delirious populace; barriers of mountains and seas are surmounted;
+legitimate possessions are abandoned to enable their owners to fly to
+conquests which were no longer, in point of fertility, the land of
+promise; manners become corrupted under foreign skies; princes, after
+having exhausted their respective kingdoms to redeem a country which
+had never been theirs, complete the ruin of them for their personal
+ransom; thousands of soldiers, wandering under the banners of many
+chieftains, acknowledge the authority of none and hasten their defeat by
+their desertion; and the disease terminates only to be succeeded by a
+contagion still more horrible and desolating.
+
+The same spirit of fanaticism cherished the rage for distant conquests:
+scarcely had Europe repaired its losses when the discovery of a new
+world hastened the ruin of our own. At that terrible injunction, "Go and
+conquer," America was desolated and its inhabitants exterminated; Africa
+and Europe were exhausted in vain to repeople it; the poison of money
+and of pleasure having enervated the species, the world became nearly a
+desert and appeared likely every day to advance nearer to desolation by
+the continual wars which were kindled on our continent, from the
+ambition of extending its power to foreign lands.
+
+Let us now compute the immense number of slaves which fanaticism has
+made, whether in Asia, where uncircumcision was a mark of infamy, or in
+Africa, where the Christian name was a crime, or in America, where the
+pretext of baptism absolutely extinguished the feelings of humanity. Let
+us compute the thousands who have been seen to perish either on
+scaffolds in the ages of persecution, or in civil wars by the hands of
+their fellow citizens, or by their own hands through excessive
+austerities, and maceration. Let us survey the surface of the earth, and
+glance at the various standards unfurled and blazing in the name of
+religion; in Spain against the Moors, in France against the Turks, in
+Hungary against the Tartars; at the numerous military orders, founded
+for converting infidels by the point of the sword, and slaughtering one
+another at the foot of the altar they had come to defend. Let us then
+look down from the appalling tribunal thus raised on the bodies of the
+innocent and miserable, in order to judge the living, as God, with a
+balance widely different, will judge the dead.
+
+In a word, let us contemplate the horrors of fifteen centuries, all
+frequently renewed in the course of a single one; unarmed men slain at
+the feet of altars; kings destroyed by the dagger or by poison; a large
+state reduced to half its extent by the fury of its own citizens; the
+nation at once the most warlike and the most pacific on the face of the
+globe, divided in fierce hostility against itself; the sword unsheathed
+between the sons and the father; usurpers, tyrants, executioners,
+sacrilegious robbers, and bloodstained parricides violating, under the
+impulse of religion, every convention divine or human--such is the
+deadly picture of fanaticism.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+If this term has at present any connection with its original meaning it
+is exceedingly slight.
+
+"_Fanaticus_" was an honorable designation. It signified the minister or
+benefactor of a temple. According to the dictionary of Trévoux some
+antiquaries have discovered inscriptions in which Roman citizens of
+considerable consequence assumed the title of "_fanaticus_."
+
+In Cicero's oration "_pro domo sua_," a passage occurs in which the word
+"_fanaticus_" appears to me of difficult explanation. The seditious and
+libertine Clodius, who had brought about the banishment of Cicero for
+having saved the republic, had not only plundered and demolished the
+houses of that great man, but in order that Cicero might never be able
+to return to his city residence he procured the consecration of the land
+on which it stood; and the priests had erected there a temple to
+liberty, or rather to slavery, in which Cæsar, Pompey, Crassus, and
+Clodius then held the republic. Thus in all ages has religion been
+employed as an instrument in the persecution of great men. When at
+length, in a happier period, Cicero was recalled, he pleaded before the
+people in order to obtain the restoration of the ground on which his
+house had stood, and the rebuilding of the house at the expense of the
+Roman people. He thus expresses himself in the speech against Clodius
+(_Oratio pro Domo sua_, chap. xl): "_Adspicite, adspicite, pontifices,
+hominem religiosum.... monete eum, modum quemdam esse religionis; nimium
+esse superstitiosum non oportere. Quid tibi necesse fuit anili
+superstitione, homo fanatice, sacrificium, quod aliænæ domi fieret
+invisere?_"
+
+Does the word "_fanaticus_," as used above, mean senseless, pitiless,
+abominable fanatic, according to the present acceptation, or does it
+rather imply the pious, religious man, the frequenter and consecrator of
+temples? Is it used here in the meaning of decided censure or ironical
+praise? I do not feel myself competent to determine, but will give a
+translation of the passage:
+
+"Behold, reverend pontiffs, behold the pious man.... suggest to him that
+even religion itself has its limits, that a man ought not to be so
+over-scrupulous. What occasion was there for a sacred person, a fanatic
+like yourself, to have recourse to the superstition of an old woman, in
+order to assist at a sacrifice performed in another person's house?"
+
+Cicero alludes here to the mysteries of the _Bona Dea_, which had been
+profaned by Clodius, who, in the disguise of a female, and accompanied
+by an old woman, had obtained an introduction to them, with a view to an
+assignation with Cæsar's wife. The passage is, in consequence, evidently
+ironical.
+
+Cicero calls Clodius a religious man, and the irony requires to be kept
+up through the whole passage. He employs terms of honorable meaning,
+more clearly to exhibit Clodius's infamy. It appears to me, therefore,
+that he uses the word in question, "_fanaticus_" in its respectable
+sense, as a word conveying the idea of a sacrificer, a pious man, a
+zealous minister of a temple.
+
+The term might be afterwards applied to those who believed themselves
+inspired by the gods, who bestowed a somewhat curious gift on the
+interpreters of their will, by ordaining that, in order to be a prophet,
+the loss of reason is indispensable.
+
+     _Les Dieux à leur interprète_
+       _Ont fait un étrange don;_
+     _Ne peut on être prophète_
+      _Sans qu'on perde la raison?_
+
+The same dictionary of Trévoux informs us that the old chronicles of
+France call Clovis fanatic and pagan. The reader would have been pleased
+to have had the particular chronicles specified. I have not found this
+epithet applied to Clovis in any of the few books I possess at my house
+near Mount Krapak, where I now write.
+
+We understand by fanaticism at present a religious madness, gloomy and
+cruel. It is a malady of the mind, which is taken in the same way as
+smallpox. Books communicate it much less than meetings and discourses.
+We seldom get heated while reading in solitude, for our minds are then
+tranquil and sedate. But when an ardent man of strong imagination
+addresses himself to weak imaginations, his eyes dart fire, and that
+fire rapidly spreads; his tones, his gestures, absolutely convulse the
+nerves of his auditors. He exclaims, "The eye of God is at this moment
+upon you; sacrifice every mere human possession and feeling; fight the
+battles of the Lord"--and and they rush to the fight.
+
+Fanaticism is, in reference to superstition, what delirium is to fever,
+or rage to anger. He who is involved in ecstasies and visions, who takes
+dreams for realities, and his own imaginations for prophecies, is a
+fanatical novice of great hope and promise, and will probably soon
+advance to the highest form, and kill man for the love of God.
+
+Bartholomew Diaz was a fanatical monk. He had a brother at Nuremberg
+called John Diaz, who was an enthusiastic adherent to the doctrines of
+Luther, and completely convinced that the pope was Antichrist, and had
+the sign of the beast. Bartholomew, still more ardently convinced that
+the pope was god upon earth, quits Rome, determined either to convert or
+murder his brother; he accordingly murdered him! Here is a perfect case
+of fanaticism. We have noticed and done justice to this Diaz elsewhere.
+
+Polyeuctes, who went to the temple on a day of solemn festival, to throw
+down and destroy the statues and ornaments, was a fanatic less horrible
+than Diaz, but not less foolish. The assassins of Francis, duke of
+Guise, of William, prince of Orange, of King Henry III., of King Henry
+IV., and various others, were equally possessed, equally laboring under
+morbid fury, with Diaz.
+
+The most striking example of fanaticism is that exhibited on the night
+of St. Bartholomew, when the people of Paris rushed from house to house
+to stab, slaughter, throw out of the window, and tear in pieces their
+fellow citizens not attending mass. Guyon, Patouillet, Chaudon,
+Nonnotte, and the ex-Jesuit Paulian, are merely fanatics in a
+corner--contemptible beings whom we do not think of guarding against.
+They would, however, on a day of St. Bartholomew, perform wonders.
+
+There are some cold-blooded fanatics; such as those judges who sentence
+men to death for no other crime than that of thinking differently from
+themselves, and these are so much the more guilty and deserving of the
+execration of mankind, as, not laboring under madness like the Clements,
+Châtels, Ravaillacs, and Damiens, they might be deemed capable of
+listening to reason.
+
+There is no other remedy for this epidemical malady than that spirit of
+philosophy, which, extending itself from one to another, at length
+civilizes and softens the manners of men and prevents the access of the
+disease. For when the disorder has made any progress, we should, without
+loss of time, fly from the seat of it, and wait till the air has become
+purified from contagion. Law and religion are not completely efficient
+against the spiritual pestilence. Religion, indeed, so far from
+affording proper nutriment to the minds of patients laboring under this
+infectious and infernal distemper, is converted, by the diseased process
+of their minds, into poison. These malignant devotees have incessantly
+before their eyes the example of Ehud, who assassinated the king of
+Eglon; of Judith, who cut off the head of Holofernes while in bed with
+him; of Samuel, hewing in pieces King Agag; of Jehoiada the priest, who
+murdered his queen at the horse-gate. They do not perceive that these
+instances, which are respectable in antiquity, are in the present day
+abominable. They derive their fury from religion, decidedly as religion
+condemns it.
+
+Laws are yet more powerless against these paroxysms of rage. To oppose
+laws to cases of such a description would be like reading a decree of
+council to a man in a frenzy. The persons in question are fully
+convinced that the Holy Spirit which animates and fills them is above
+all laws; that their own enthusiasm is, in fact, the only law which they
+are bound to obey.
+
+What can be said in answer to a man who says he will rather obey God
+than men, and who consequently feels certain of meriting heaven by
+cutting your throat?
+
+When once fanaticism has gangrened the brain of any man the disease may
+be regarded as nearly incurable. I have seen Convulsionaries who, while
+speaking of the miracles of St. Paris, gradually worked themselves up to
+higher and more vehement degrees of agitation till their eyes became
+inflamed, their whole frames shook, their countenances became distorted
+by rage, and had any man contradicted them he would inevitably have been
+murdered.
+
+Yes, I have seen these wretched Convulsionaries writhing their limbs and
+foaming at their mouths. They were exclaiming, "We must have blood."
+They effected the assassination of their king by a lackey, and ended
+with exclaiming against philosophers.
+
+Fanatics are nearly always under the direction of knaves, who place the
+dagger in their hands. These knaves resemble Montaigne's "Old Man of the
+Mountain," who, it is said, made weak persons imagine, under his
+treatment of them, that they really had experienced the joys of
+paradise, and promised them a whole eternity of such delights if they
+would go and assassinate such as he should point out to them. There has
+been only one religion in the world which has not been polluted by
+fanaticism and that is the religion of the learned in China. The
+different sects of ancient philosophers were not merely exempt from this
+pest of human society, but they were antidotes to it: for the effect of
+philosophy is to render the soul tranquil, and fanaticism and
+tranquillity are totally incompatible. That our own holy religion has
+been so frequently polluted by this infernal fury must be imputed to the
+foil and madness of mankind. Thus Icarus abused the wings which he
+received for his benefit. They were given him for his salvation and they
+insured his destruction:
+
+     _Ainsi du plumage qu'il eut_
+       _Icare pervertit l'usage;_
+     _Il le reçut pour son salut,_
+       _Il s'en servit pour son dommage._
+                     --BERTAUT, bishop of Séez.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+Fanatics do not always fight the battles of the Lord. They do not always
+assassinate kings and princes. There are tigers among them, but there
+are more foxes.
+
+What a tissue of frauds, calumnies, and robberies has been woven by
+fanatics of the court of Rome against fanatics of the court of Calvin,
+by Jesuits against Jansenists, and _vice versa_! And if you go farther
+back you will find ecclesiastical history, which is the school of
+virtues, to be that of atrocities and abominations, which have been
+employed by every sect against the others. They all have the same
+bandage over their eyes whether marching out to burn down the cities and
+towns of their adversaries, to slaughter the inhabitants, or condemn
+them to judicial execution; or when merely engaged in the comparatively
+calm occupation of deceiving and defrauding, of acquiring wealth and
+exercising domination. The same fanaticism blinds them; they think that
+they are doing good. Every fanatic is a conscientious knave, but a
+sincere and honest murderer for the good cause.
+
+Read, if you are able, the five or six thousand volumes in which, for a
+hundred years together, the Jansenists and Molinists have dealt out
+against each other their reproaches and revilings, their mutual
+exposures of fraud and knavery, and then judge whether Scapin or
+Trevelin can be compared with them.
+
+One of the most curious theological knaveries ever practised is, in my
+opinion, that of a small bishop--the narrative asserts that he was a
+Biscayan bishop; however, we shall certainly, at some future period find
+out both his name and his bishopric--whose diocese was partly in Biscay
+and partly in France.
+
+In the French division of his diocese there was a parish which had
+formerly been inhabited by some Moors. The lord of the parish or manor
+was no Mahometan; he was perfectly catholic, as the whole universe
+should be, for the meaning of catholic is universal. My lord the bishop
+had some suspicions concerning this unfortunate seigneur, whose whole
+occupation consisted in doing good, and conceived that in his heart he
+entertained bad thoughts and sentiments savoring not a little of heresy.
+He even accused him of having said, in the way of pleasantry, that there
+were good people in Morocco as well as in Biscay, and that an honest
+inhabitant of Morocco might absolutely not be a mortal enemy of the
+Supreme Being, who is the father of all mankind.
+
+The fanatic, upon this, wrote a long letter to the king of France, the
+paramount sovereign of our little manorial lord. In this letter he
+entreated his majesty to transfer the manor of this stray and
+unbelieving sheep either to Lower Brittany or Lower Normandy, according
+to his good pleasure, that he might be no longer able to diffuse the
+contagion of heresy among his Biscayan neighbors, by his abominable
+jests. The king of France and his council smiled, as may naturally be
+supposed, at the extravagance and folly of the demand.
+
+Our Biscayan pastor learning, some time afterwards, that his French
+sheep was sick, ordered public notices to be fixed up at the church
+gates of the canton, prohibiting any one from administering the
+communion to him, unless he should previously give in a bill of
+confession, from which it might appear that he was not circumcised; that
+he condemned with his whole heart the heresy of Mahomet, and every other
+heresy of the like kind--as, for example, Calvinism and Jansenism; and
+that in every point he thought like him, the said Biscayan bishop.
+
+Bills of confession were at that time much in fashion. The sick man sent
+for his parish priest, who was a simple and sottish man, and threatened
+to have him hanged by the parliament of Bordeaux if he did not instantly
+administer the viaticum to him. The priest was alarmed, and accordingly
+celebrated the sacred ordinance, as desired by the patient; who, after
+the ceremony, declared aloud, before witnesses, that the Biscayan pastor
+had falsely accused him before the king of being tainted with the
+Mussulman religion; that he was a sincere Christian, and that the
+Biscayan was a calumniator. He signed this, after it had been written
+down, in presence of a notary, and every form required by law was
+complied with. He soon after became better, and rest and a good
+conscience speedily completed his recovery.
+
+The Biscayan, quite exasperated that the old patient should have thus
+exposed and disappointed him, resolved to have his revenge, and thus he
+set about it.
+
+He procured, fifteen days after the event just mentioned, the
+fabrication, in his own language or patois, of a profession of faith
+which the priest pretended to have heard and received. It was signed by
+the priest and three or four peasants, who had not been present at the
+ceremony; and the forged instrument was then passed through the
+necessary and solemn form of verification and registry, as if this form
+could give it authenticity.
+
+An instrument not signed by the party alone interested, signed by
+persons unknown, fifteen days after the event, an instrument disavowed
+by the real and credible witnesses of that event, involved evidently the
+crime of forgery; and, as the subject of the forgery was a matter of
+faith, the crime clearly rendered both the priest and the witnesses
+liable to the galleys in this world, and to hell in the other.
+
+Our lord of the manor, however, who loved a joke, but had no gall or
+malice in his heart, took compassion both upon the bodies and souls of
+these conspirators. He declined delivering them over to human justice,
+and contented himself with giving them up to ridicule. But he declared
+that after the death of the Biscayan he would, if he survived, have the
+pleasure of printing an account of all his proceedings and manœuvres
+on this business, together with the documents and evidences, just to
+amuse the small number of readers who might like anecdotes of that
+description; and not, as is often pompously announced, with a view to
+the instruction of the universe. There are so many authors who address
+themselves to the universe, who really imagine they attract, and perhaps
+absorb, the attention of the universe, that he conceived he might not
+have a dozen readers out of the whole who would attend for a moment to
+himself. But let us return to fanaticism.
+
+It is this rage for making proselytes, this intensely mad desire which
+men feel to bring others over to partake of their own peculiar cup or
+communion, that induced the Jesuit Châtel and the Jesuit Routh to rush
+with eagerness to the deathbed of the celebrated Montesquieu. These two
+devoted zealots desired nothing better than to be able to boast that
+they had persuaded him of the merits of contrition and of sufficing
+grace. We wrought his conversion, they said. He was, in the main, a
+worthy soul: he was much attached to the society of Jesus. We had some
+little difficulty in inducing him to admit certain fundamental truths;
+but as in these circumstances, in the crisis of life and death, the
+mind is always most clear and acute, we soon convinced him.
+
+This fanatical eagerness for converting men is so ardent, that the most
+debauched monk in his convent would even quit his mistress, and walk to
+the very extremity of the city, for the sake of making a single convert.
+
+We have all seen Father Poisson, a Cordelier of Paris, who impoverished
+his convent to pay his mistresses, and who was imprisoned in consequence
+of the depravity of his manners. He was one of the most popular
+preachers at Paris, and one of the most determined and zealous of
+converters.
+
+Such also was the celebrated preacher Fantin, at Versailles. The list
+might be easily enlarged; but it is unnecessary, if not also dangerous,
+to expose the freaks and freedoms of constituted authorities. You know
+what happened to Ham for having revealed his father's shame. He became
+as black as a coal.
+
+Let us merely pray to God, whether rising or lying down, that he would
+deliver us from fanatics, as the pilgrims of Mecca pray that they may
+meet with no sour faces on the road.
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+Ludlow, who was rather an enthusiast for liberty than a fanatic in
+religion--that brave man, who hated Cromwell more than he did Charles
+I., relates that the parliamentary forces were always defeated by the
+royal army in the beginning of the civil war; just as the regiment of
+porters (_portes-cochères_) were unable to stand the shock of conflict,
+in the time of the Fronde against the great Condé. Cromwell said to
+General Fairfax: "How can you possibly expect a rabble of London porters
+and apprentices to resist a nobility urged on by the principle, or
+rather the phantom, of honor? Let us actuate them by a more powerful
+phantom--fanaticism! Our enemies are fighting only for their king; let
+us persuade our troops they are fighting for their God.
+
+"Give me a commission, and I will raise a regiment of brother murderers,
+whom I will pledge myself soon to make invincible fanatics!"
+
+He was as good as his word; he composed his regiment of red-coated
+brothers, of gloomy religionists, whom he made obedient tigers. Mahomet
+himself was never better served by soldiers.
+
+But in order to inspire this fanaticism, you must be seconded and
+supported by the spirit of the times. A French parliament at the present
+day would attempt in vain to raise a regiment of such porters as we have
+mentioned; it could, with all its efforts, merely rouse into frenzy a
+few women of the fish-market.
+
+Only the ablest men have the power to make and to guide fanatics. It is
+not, however, sufficient to possess the profoundest dissimulation and
+the most determined intrepidity; everything depends, after these
+previous requisites are secured, on coming into the world at a proper
+time.
+
+
+SECTION V.
+
+Geometry then, it seems, is not always connected with clearness and
+correctness of understanding. Over what precipices do not men fall,
+notwithstanding their boasted leading-strings of reason! A celebrated
+Protestant, who was esteemed one of the first mathematicians of the age,
+and who followed in the train of the Newtons, the Leibnitzes, and
+Bernouillis, at the beginning of the present century, struck out some
+very singular corollaries. It is said that with a grain of faith a man
+may remove mountains; and this man of science, following up the method
+of pure geometrical analysis, reasoned thus with himself: I have many
+grains of faith, and can, therefore, remove many mountains. This was the
+man who made his appearance at London in 1707; and, associating himself
+with certain men of learning and science, some of whom, moreover, were
+not deficient in sagacity, they publicly announced that they would raise
+to life a dead person in any cemetery that might be fixed upon. Their
+reasoning was uniformly synthetical. They said, genuine disciples must
+have the power of performing miracles; we are genuine disciples, we
+therefore shall be able to perform as many as we please. The mere
+unscientific saints of the Romish church have resuscitated many worthy
+persons; therefore, _a fortiori_, we, the reformers of the reformed
+themselves, shall resuscitate as many as we may desire.
+
+These arguments are irrefragable, being constructed according to the
+most correct form possible. Here we have at a glance the explanation why
+all antiquity was inundated with prodigies; why the temples of
+Æsculapius at Epidaurus, and in other cities, were completely filled
+with _ex-votos_; the roofs adorned with thighs straightened, arms
+restored, and silver infants: all was miracle.
+
+In short, the famous Protestant geometrician whom I speak of appeared so
+perfectly sincere; he asserted so confidently that he would raise the
+dead, and his proposition was put forward with so much plausibility and
+strenuousness, that the people entertained a very strong impression on
+the subject, and Queen Anne was advised to appoint a day, an hour, and a
+cemetery, such as he should himself select, in which he might have the
+opportunity of performing his miracle legally, and under the inspection
+of justice. The holy geometrician chose St. Paul's cathedral for the
+scene of his exertion: the people ranged themselves in two rows;
+soldiers were stationed to preserve order both among the living and the
+dead; the magistrates took their seats; the register procured his
+record; it was impossible that the new miracles could be verified too
+completely. A dead body was disinterred agreeably to the holy man's
+choice and direction; he then prayed, he fell upon his knees, and made
+the most pious and devout contortions possible; his companions imitated
+him; the dead body exhibited no sign of animation; it was again
+deposited in its grave, and the professed resuscitator and his adherents
+were slightly punished. I afterwards saw one of these misled creatures;
+he declared to me that one of the party was at the time under the stain
+of a venial sin, for which the dead person suffered, and but for which
+the resurrection would have been infallible.
+
+Were it allowable for us to reveal the disgrace of those to whom we owe
+the sincerest respect, I should observe here, that Newton, the great
+Newton himself, discovered in the "Apocalypse" that the pope was
+Antichrist, and made many other similar discoveries. I should also
+observe that he was a decided Arian. I am aware that this deviation of
+Newton, compared to that of the other geometrician, is as unity to
+infinity. But if the exalted Newton imagined that he found the modern
+history of Europe in the "Apocalypse," we may say: Alas, poor human
+beings!
+
+It seems as if superstition were an epidemic disease, from which the
+strongest minds are not always exempt. There are in Turkey persons of
+great and strong sense, who would undergo empalement for the sake of
+certain opinions of Abubeker. These principles being once admitted, they
+reason with great consistency; and the Navaricians, the Radarists, and
+the Jabarites mutually consign each other to damnation in conformity to
+very shrewd and subtle argument. They all draw plausible consequences,
+but they never dare to examine principles.
+
+A report is publicly spread abroad by some person, that there exists a
+giant seventy feet high; the learned soon after begin to discuss and
+dispute about the color of his hair, the thickness of his thumb, the
+measurement of his nails; they exclaim, cabal, and even fight upon the
+subject. Those who maintain that the little finger of the giant is only
+fifteen lines in diameter burn those who assert that it is a foot thick.
+"But, gentlemen," modestly observes a stranger passing by, "does the
+giant you are disputing about really exist?" "What a horrible doubt!"
+all the disputants cry out together. "What blasphemy! What absurdity!" A
+short truce is then brought about to give time for stoning the poor
+stranger; and, after having duly performed that murderous ceremony, they
+resume fighting upon the everlasting subject of the nails and little
+finger.
+
+
+
+
+FANCY.
+
+
+Fancy formerly signified imagination, and the term was used simply to
+express that faculty of the soul which receives sensible objects.
+
+Descartes and Gassendi, and all the philosophers of their day, say that
+"the form or images of things are painted in the fancy." But the greater
+part of abstract terms are, in the course of time, received in a sense
+different from their original one, like tools which industry applies to
+new purposes.
+
+Fancy, at present, means "a particular desire, a transient taste"; he
+has a fancy for going to China; his fancy for gaming and dancing has
+passed away. An artist paints a fancy portrait, a portrait not taken
+from any model. To have fancies is to have extraordinary tastes, but of
+brief duration. Fancy, in this sense, falls a little short of oddity
+(_bizarrerie_) and caprice.
+
+Caprice may express "a sudden and unreasonable disgust." He had a fancy
+for music, and capriciously became disgusted with it. Whimsicality gives
+an idea of inconsistency and bad taste, which fancy does not; he had a
+fancy for building, but he constructed his house in a whimsical taste.
+
+There are shades of distinction between having fancies and being
+fantastic; the fantastic is much nearer to the capricious and the
+whimsical. The word "fantastic" expresses a character unequal and
+abrupt. The idea of charming or pleasant is excluded from it; whereas
+there are agreeable fancies.
+
+We sometimes hear used in conversation "odd fancies" (_des fantasies
+musquées_); but the expression was never understood to mean what the
+"Dictionary of Trévoux" supposes--"The whims of men of superior rank
+which one must not venture to condemn;" on the contrary, that expression
+is used for the very object and purpose of condemning them; and
+_musquée_, in this connection, is an expletive adding force to the term
+"fancies," as we say, _Sottise pommée_, _folie fieffée_, to express
+nonsense and folly.
+
+
+
+
+FASTI.
+
+_Of the Different Significations of this Word._
+
+
+The Latin word "_fasti_" signifies festivals, and it is in this sense
+that Ovid treats of it in his poem entitled "The Fasti."
+
+Godeau has composed the Fasti of the church on this model, but with less
+success. The religion of the Roman Pagans was more calculated for poetry
+than that of the Christians; to which it may be added, that Ovid was a
+better poet than Godeau.
+
+The consular fasti were only the list of consuls.
+
+The fasti of the magistrates were the days in which they were permitted
+to plead; and those on which they did not plead were called _nefasti_,
+because then they could not plead for justice.
+
+The word "_nefastus_" in this sense does not signify unfortunate; on the
+contrary, _nefastus_ and _nefandus_ were the attributes of unfortunate
+days in another sense, signifying days in which people must not plead;
+days worthy only to be forgotten; _"ille nefasto te posuit die."_
+
+Besides other fasti, the Romans had their _fasti urbis_, _fasti
+rustici_, which were calendars of the particular usages, and ceremonies
+of the city and the country.
+
+On these days of solemnity, every one sought to astonish by the grandeur
+of his dress, his equipage, or his banquet. This pomp, invisible on
+other days, was called _fastus_. It expresses magnificence in those who
+by their station can afford it, but vanity in others.
+
+Though the word "_fastus_" may not be always injurious, the word
+"pompous" is invariably so. A devotee who makes a parade of his virtue
+renders humility itself pompous.
+
+
+
+
+FATHERS--MOTHERS--CHILDREN.
+
+_Their Duties._
+
+
+The "Encyclopædia" has been much exclaimed against in France; because it
+was produced in France, and has done France honor. In other countries,
+people have not cried out; on the contrary, they have eagerly set about
+pirating or spoiling it, because money was to be gained thereby.
+
+But we, who do not, like the encyclopædists of Paris, labor for glory;
+we, who are not, like them, exposed to envy; we, whose little society
+lies unnoticed in Hesse, in Würtemberg, in Switzerland, among the
+Grisons, or at Mount Krapak; and have, therefore, no apprehension of
+having to dispute with the doctor of the _Comédie Italienne_, or with a
+doctor of the Sorbonne; we, who sell not our sheets to a bookseller, but
+are free beings, and lay not black on white until we have examined, to
+the utmost of our ability, whether the said black may be of service to
+mankind; we, in short, who love virtue, shall boldly declare what we
+think.
+
+"Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long--" I would
+venture to say, "Honor thy father and thy mother, _though this day shall
+be thy last_."
+
+Tenderly love and joyfully serve the mother who bore you in her womb,
+fed you at her breast, and patiently endured all that was disgusting in
+your infancy. Discharge the same duties to your father, who brought you
+up.
+
+What will future ages say of a Frank, named Louis the Thirteenth, who,
+at the age of sixteen, began the exercise of his authority with having
+the door of his mother's apartment walled up, and sending her into
+exile, without giving the smallest reason for so doing, and solely
+because it was his favorite's wish?
+
+"But, sir, I must tell you in confidence that my father is a drunkard,
+who begot me one day by chance, not caring a jot about me; and gave me
+no education but that of beating me every day when he came home
+intoxicated. My mother was a coquette, whose only occupation was
+love-making. But for my nurse, who had taken a liking to me, and who,
+after the death of her son, received me into her house for charity, I
+should have died of want."
+
+"Well, then, honor your nurse; and bow to your father and mother when
+you meet them. It is said in the Vulgate, '_Honora patrem tuum et
+matrem tuam_'--not _dilige_."
+
+"Very well, sir, I shall love my father and my mother if they do me
+good; I shall honor them if they do me ill. I have thought so ever since
+I began to think, and you confirm me in my maxims."
+
+"Fare you well, my child, I see you will prosper, for you have a grain
+of philosophy in your composition."
+
+"One word more, sir. If my father were to call himself Abraham, and me
+Isaac, and were to say to me, 'My son, you are tall and strong; carry
+these fagots to the top of that hill, to burn you with after I have cut
+off your head; for God ordered me to do so when He came to see me this
+morning,'--what would you advise me to do in such critical
+circumstances?"
+
+"Critical, indeed! But what would you do of yourself? for you seem to be
+no blockhead."
+
+"I own, sir, that I should ask him to produce a written order, and that
+from regard for himself, I should say to him--'Father, you are among
+strangers, who do not allow a man to assassinate his son without an
+express condition from God, duly signed, sealed and delivered. See what
+happened to poor Calas, in the half French, half Spanish town of
+Toulouse. He was broken on the wheel; and the _procureur-général_ Riquet
+decided on having Madame Calas, the mother, burned--all on the bare and
+very ill-conceived suspicion, that they had hung up their son, Mark
+Antony Calas, for the love of God. I should fear that his conclusions
+would be equally prejudicial to the well-being of yourself and your
+sister or niece, Madame Sarah, my mother. Once more I say, show me a
+_lettre de cachet_ for cutting my throat, signed by God's own hand, and
+countersigned by Raphael, Michael, or Beelzebub. If not, father--your
+most obedient: I will go to Pharaoh of Egypt, or to the king of the
+desert of Gerar, who both have been in love with my mother, and will
+certainly be kind to me. Cut my brother Ishmael's throat, if you like;
+but rely upon it, you shall not cut mine.'"
+
+"Good; this is arguing like a true sage. The 'Encyclopædia' itself could
+not have reasoned better. I tell you, you will do great things. I admire
+you for not having said an ill word to your father Abraham--for not
+having been tempted to beat him. And tell me: had you been that Cram,
+whom his father, the Frankish King Clothaire, had burned in a barn; a
+Don Carlos, son of that fox, Philip the Second; a poor Alexis, son of
+that Czar Peter, half hero, half tiger--"
+
+"Ah, sir, say no more of those horrors; you will make me detest human
+nature."
+
+
+
+
+FAVOR.
+
+_Of What is Understood by the Word._
+
+
+Favor, from the Latin word "_favor_," rather signifies a benefit than a
+recompense.
+
+We earnestly beg a favor; we merit and loudly demand a recompense. The
+god Favor, according to the Roman mythologists, was the son of Beauty
+and Fortune. All favor conveys the idea of something gratuitous; he has
+done me the favor of introducing me, of presenting me, of recommending
+my friend, of correcting my work. The favor of princes is the effect of
+their fancy, and of assiduous complaisance. The favor of the people
+sometimes implies merit, but is more often attributable to lucky
+accident.
+
+Favor differs much from kindness. That man is in favor with the king,
+but he has not yet received any kindnesses from him. We say that he has
+been received into the good graces of a person, not he has been received
+into favor; though we say to be in favor, because favor is supposed to
+be an habitual taste; while to receive into grace is to pardon, or, at
+least, is less than to bestow a favor.
+
+To obtain grace is the effect of a moment; to obtain favor is a work of
+time. Nevertheless, we say indifferently, do me the kindness and do me
+the favor, to recommend my friend.
+
+Letters of recommendation were formerly called letters of favor. Severus
+says, in the tragedy of Polyeuctes:
+
+     _Je mourrais mille fois plutôt que d'abuser_
+     _Des lettres de faveur que j'ai pour l'épouser._
+
+     "Letters of favor," though I have to wed her,
+     I'd rather die a thousand times than use them.
+
+We have the favor and good-will, not the kindness of the prince and the
+public. We may obtain the favor of our audience by modesty, but it will
+not be gracious if we are tedious.
+
+This expression "favor," signifies a gratuitous good-will, which we seek
+to obtain from the prince or the public. Gallantry has extended it to
+the complaisance of the ladies; and though we do not say that we have
+the favors of the king, we say that we have the favors of a lady.
+
+The equivalent to this expression is unknown in Asia, where the women
+possess less influence. Formerly, ribbons, gloves, buckles, and
+sword-knots given by a lady, were called favors. The earl of Essex wore
+a glove of Queen Elizabeth's in his hat, which he called the queen's
+favor.
+
+
+
+
+FAVORITE.
+
+
+This word has sometimes a bounded and sometimes an extended sense.
+"Favorite" sometimes conveys the idea of power; and sometimes it only
+signifies a man who pleases his master.
+
+Henry III. had favorites who were only play-things, and he had those who
+governed the state, as the dukes of Joyeuse and Épernon. A favorite may
+be compared to a piece of gold, which is valued at whatever the prince
+pleases.
+
+An ancient writer has asked, "Who ought to be the king's favorite?--the
+people!" Good poets are called the favorites of the muses, as prosperous
+men are called the favorites of fortune, because both are supposed to
+receive these gifts without laboring for them. It is thus, that a
+fertile and well-situated land is called the favorite of nature.
+
+The woman who pleases the sultan most is called the favorite sultana.
+Somebody has written the history of favorites; that is to say, the
+mistresses of the greatest princes.
+
+Several princes in Germany have country houses which they call
+favorites.
+
+A lady's favorite is now only to be found in romances and stories of the
+last century.
+
+
+
+
+FEASTS.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+A poor gentleman of the province of Hagenau, cultivated his small
+estate, and St. Ragonda, or Radegonda, was the patron of his parish.
+
+Now it happened, on the feast of St. Ragonda, that it was necessary to
+do something to this poor gentleman's field, without which great loss
+would be incurred. The master, with all his family, after having
+devoutly assisted at mass, went to cultivate his land, on which depended
+the subsistence of his family, while the rector and the other
+parishioners went to tipple as usual.
+
+The rector, while enjoying his glass, was informed of the enormous
+offence committed in his parish by this profane laborer, and went,
+burning with wine and anger, to seek the cultivator. "Sir, you are very
+insolent and very impious to dare to cultivate your field, instead of
+going to the tavern like other people." "I agree, sir," replied the
+gentleman, "that it is necessary to drink to the honor of the saint; but
+it is also necessary to eat, and my family would die of hunger if I did
+not labor." "Drink and die, then," said the vicar. "In what law, in what
+book is it so written?" said the laborer. "In Ovid," replied the vicar.
+"I think you are mistaken," said the gentleman; "in what part of Ovid
+have you read that I should go to the tavern rather than cultivate my
+field on St. Ragonda's day?"
+
+It should be remarked that both the gentleman and the pastor were well
+educated men. "Read the metamorphoses of the daughters of Minyas," said
+the vicar. "I have read it," replied the other, "and I maintain that
+they have no relation to my plough." "How, impious man! do you not
+remember that the daughters of Minyas were changed into bats for having
+spun on a feast day?" "The case is very different," replied the
+gentleman, "these ladies had not rendered any homage to Bacchus. I have
+been at the mass of St. Ragonda, you can have nothing to say to me; you
+cannot change me into a bat." "I will do worse," said the priest, "I
+will fine you." He did so. The poor gentleman was ruined: he quitted the
+country with his family--went into a strange one--became a Lutheran--and
+his ground remained uncultivated for several years.
+
+This affair was related to a magistrate of good sense and much piety.
+These are the reflections which he made upon it:
+
+"They were no doubt innkeepers," said he, "that invented this prodigious
+number of feasts; the religion of peasants and artisans consists in
+getting tipsy on the day of a saint, whom they only know by this kind of
+worship. It is on these days of idleness and debauchery that all crimes
+are committed; it is these feasts which fill the prisons, and which
+support the police officers, registers, lieutenants of police, and
+hangmen; the only excuse for feast-days among us. From this cause
+Catholic countries are scarcely-cultivated at all; whilst heretics, by
+daily cultivating their lands, produce abundant crops."
+
+It is all very well that the shoemakers should go in the morning to mass
+on St. Crispin's day, because _crepido_ signifies the upper leather of a
+shoe; that the brush-makers should honor St. Barbara their patron; that
+those who have weak eyes should hear the mass of St. Clara: that St.----
+should be celebrated in many provinces; but after having paid their
+devoirs to the saints they should become serviceable to men, they should
+go from the altar to the plough; it is the excess of barbarity, and
+insupportable slavery, to consecrate our days to idleness and vice.
+Priests, command, if it be necessary that the saints Roche, Eustace, and
+Fiacre, be prayed to in the morning; but, magistrates, order your fields
+to be cultivated as usual. It is labor that is necessary; the greater
+the industry the more the day is sanctified.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+Letter from a Weaver of Lyons to the Gentlemen of the Commission
+established at Paris, for the Reformation of Religious Orders, printed
+in the public papers in 1768.
+
+     "Gentlemen: I am a silk-weaver, and have worked at Lyons for
+     nineteen years. My wages have increased insensibly; at present I
+     get thirty-five sous per day. My wife, who makes lace, would get
+     fifteen more, if it were possible for her to devote her time to it;
+     but as the cares of the house, illness, or other things,
+     continually hinder her, I reduce her profit to ten sous, which
+     makes forty-five sous daily. If from the year we deduct eighty-two
+     Sundays, or holidays, we shall have two hundred and eighty-four
+     profitable days, which at forty-five sous make six hundred and
+     thirty-nine livres. That is my revenue; the following are my
+     expenses:
+
+     "I have eight living children, and my wife is on the point of being
+     confined with the eleventh; for I have lost two. I have been
+     married fifteen years: so that I annually reckon twenty-four livres
+     for the expenses of her confinements and baptisms, one hundred and
+     eight livres for two nurses, having generally two children out at
+     nurse, and sometimes even three. I pay fifty-seven livres rent and
+     fourteen taxes.
+
+     "My income is then reduced to four hundred and thirty-six livres,
+     or twenty-five sous three deniers a day, with which I have to
+     clothe and furnish my family, buy wood and candles, and support my
+     wife and six children.
+
+     "I look forward to holidays with dismay. I confess that I often
+     almost curse their institution. They could only have been
+     instituted by usurers and innkeepers.
+
+     "My father made me study hard in my youth, and wished me to become
+     a monk, showing me in that state a sure asylum against want; but I
+     always thought that every man owes his tribute to society, and that
+     monks are useless drones who live upon the labor of the bees.
+     Notwithstanding, I acknowledge that when I see John C----, with
+     whom I studied, and who was the most idle boy in the college,
+     possessing the first place among the _prémontrés_, I cannot help
+     regretting that I did not listen to my father's advice.
+
+     "This is the third holiday in Christmas, I have pawned the little
+     furniture I had, I am in a week's debt with my tradesman, and I
+     want bread--how are we to get over the fourth? This is not all; I
+     have the prospect of four more next week. Great God! Eight holidays
+     in ten days; you cannot have commanded it!
+
+     "One year I hoped that rents would diminish by the suppression of
+     one of the monasteries of the Capuchins and Cordeliers. What
+     useless houses in the centre of Lyons are those of the Jacobins,
+     nuns of St. Peter, etc. Why not establish them in the suburbs if
+     they are thought necessary? How many more useful inhabitants would
+     supply their places!
+
+     "All these reflections, gentlemen, have induced me to address
+     myself to you who have been chosen by the king for the task of
+     rectifying abuses. I am not the only one who thinks thus. How many
+     laborers in Lyons and other places, how many laborers in the
+     kingdom are reduced to the same extremities as myself? It is
+     evident that every holiday costs the state several millions
+     (livres). These considerations will lead you to take more to heart
+     the interests of the people, which are rather too little attended
+     to.
+
+     "I have the honor to be, etc.,
+
+     "BOCEN."
+
+This request, which was really presented, will not be misplaced in a
+work like the present.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+The feast given to the Roman people by Julius Cæsar and the emperors who
+succeeded him are well known. The feast of twenty-two thousand tables
+served by twenty-two thousand purveyors; the naval fights on artificial
+lakes, etc., have not, however, been imitated by the Herulian, Lombard,
+and Frankish chieftains, who would have their festivity equally
+celebrated.
+
+
+
+
+FERRARA.
+
+
+What we have to say of Ferrara has no relation to literature, but it has
+a very great one to justice, which is much more necessary than the
+belles-lettres, and much less cultivated, at least in Italy.
+
+Ferrara was constantly a fief of the empire, like Parma and Placentia.
+Pope Clement VIII. robbed Cæsar d'Este of it by force of arms, in 1597.
+The pretext for this tyranny was a very singular one for a man who
+called himself the humble vicar of Jesus Christ.
+
+Alphonso d'Este, the first of the name, sovereign of Ferrara, Modena,
+Este, Carpio, and Rovigno, espoused a simple gentlewoman of Ferrara,
+named Laura Eustochia, by whom he had three children before marriage.
+These children he solemnly acknowledged in the face of the Church. None
+of the formalities prescribed by the laws were wanting at this
+recognition. His successor, Alphonso d'Este, was acknowledged duke of
+Ferrara; he espoused Julia d'Urbino, the daughter of Francis, duke
+d'Urbino, by whom he had the unfortunate Cæsar d'Este, the incontestable
+heir of all the property of all the family, and declared so by the last
+duke, who died October 27, 1597. Pope Clement VIII., surnamed
+Aldobrandino, and originally of the family of a merchant of Florence,
+dared to pretend that the grandmother of Cæsar d'Este was not
+sufficiently noble, and that the children that she had brought into the
+world ought to be considered bastards. The first reason is ridiculous
+and scandalous in a bishop, the second is unwarrantable in every
+tribunal in Europe. If the duke was not legitimate, he ought to have
+lost Modena and his other states also; and if there was no flaw in his
+title, he ought to have kept Ferrara as well as Modena.
+
+The acquisition of Ferrara was too fine a thing for the pope not to
+procure all the decretals and decisions of those brave theologians, who
+declare that the pope can render just that which is unjust. Consequently
+he first excommunicated Cæsar d'Este, and as excommunication necessarily
+deprives a man of all his property, the common father of the faithful
+raised his troops against the excommunicated, to rob him of his
+inheritance in the name of the Church. These troops were defeated, but
+the duke of Modena soon saw his finances exhausted, and his friends
+become cool.
+
+To make his case still more deplorable, the king of France, Henry IV.,
+believed himself obliged to take the side of the pope, in order to
+balance the credit of Philip II. at the court of Rome; in the same
+manner that good King Louis XII. less excusably dishonored himself by
+uniting with that monster Alexander VI., and his execrable bastard, the
+duke of Borgia. The duke was obliged to return, and the pope caused
+Ferrara to be invaded by Cardinal Aldobrandino, who entered this
+flourishing city at the head of a thousand horse and five thousand foot
+soldiers.
+
+It is a great pity that such a man as Henry IV. descended to this
+unworthiness which is called politic. The Catos, Metelluses, Scipios,
+and Fabriciuses would not thus have betrayed justice to please a
+priest--and such a priest!
+
+From this time Ferrara became a desert; its uncultivated soil was
+covered with standing marshes. This province, under the house of Este,
+had been one of the finest in Italy; the people always regretted their
+ancient masters. It is true that the duke was indemnified; he was
+nominated to a bishopric and a benefice; he was even furnished with some
+measures of salt from the mines of Servia. But it is no less true that
+the house of Modena has incontestable and imprescriptable rights to the
+duchy of Ferrara, of which it was thus shamefully despoiled.
+
+Now, my dear reader, let us suppose that this scene took place at the
+time in which Jesus Christ appeared to his apostles after his
+resurrection, and that Simon Barjonas, surnamed Peter, wished to possess
+himself of the states of this poor duke of Ferrara. Imagine the duke
+coming to Bethany to demand justice of the Lord Jesus. Our Lord sends
+immediately for Peter and says to him, "Simon, son of Jonas, I have
+given thee the keys of heaven, but I have not given thee those of the
+earth. Because thou hast been told that the heavens surround the globe,
+and that the contained is in the containing, dost thou imagine that
+kingdoms here below belong to thee, and that thou hast only to possess
+thyself of whatever thou likest? I have already forbidden thee to draw
+the sword. Thou appearest to me a very strange compound; at one time
+cutting off the ear of Malchus, and at another even denying me. Be more
+lenient and decorous, and take neither the property nor the ears of any
+one for fear of thine own."
+
+
+
+
+FEVER.
+
+
+It is not as a physician, but as a patient, that I wish to say a word or
+two on fever. We cannot help now and then speaking of our enemies; and
+this one has been attacking me for more than twenty years; not Fréron
+himself has been more implacable.
+
+I ask pardon of Sydenham, who defined fever to be "an effort of nature,
+laboring with all its power to expel the peccant matter." We might thus
+define smallpox, measles, diarrhœa, vomitings, cutaneous eruptions,
+and twenty other diseases. But, if this physician defined ill, he
+practised well. He cured, because he had experience, and he knew how to
+wait.
+
+Boerhaave says, in his "Aphorisms": "A more frequent opposition, and an
+increased resistance about the capillary vessels, give an absolute idea
+of an acute fever." These are the words of a great master; but he sets
+out with acknowledging that the nature of fever is profoundly hidden.
+
+He does not tell us what that secret principle is which develops itself
+at regular periods in intermittent fever--what that internal poison is,
+which, after the lapse of a day, is renewed--where that flame is, which
+dies and revives at stated moments.
+
+We know fairly well that we are liable to fever after excess, or in
+unseasonable weather. We know that quinine, judiciously administered,
+will cure it. This is quite enough; the _how_ we do not know.
+
+Every animal that does not perish suddenly dies by fever. The fever
+seems to be the inevitable effect of the fluids that compose the blood,
+or that which is in the place of blood. The structure of every animal
+proves to natural philosophers that it must, at all times, have enjoyed
+a very short life.
+
+Theologians have held, as have promulgated other opinions. It is not for
+us to examine this question. The philosophers and physicians have been
+right _in sensu humano_, and the theologians, _in sensu divino_. It is
+said in Deuteronomy, xxviii, 22, that if the Jews do not serve the law
+they shall be smitten "with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an
+inflammation, and with an extreme burning." It is only in Deuteronomy,
+and in Molière's "Physician in Spite of Himself," that people have been
+threatened with fever.
+
+It seems impossible that fever should not be an accident natural to an
+animate body, in which so many fluids circulate; just as it is
+impossible for an animate body not to be crushed by the falling of a
+rock.
+
+Blood makes life; it furnishes the viscera, the limbs, the skin, the
+very extremities of the hairs and nails with the fluids, the humors
+proper for them.
+
+This blood, by which the animal has life, is formed by the chyle. During
+pregnancy this chyle is transmitted from the uterus to the child, and,
+after the child is born, the milk of the nurse produces this same chyle.
+The greater diversity of aliments it afterwards receives, the more the
+chyle is liable to be soured. This alone forming the blood, and this
+blood, composed of so many different humors so subject to corruption,
+circulating through the whole human body more than five hundred and
+fifty times in twenty-four hours, with the rapidity of a torrent, it is
+not only astonishing that fever is not more frequent, it is astonishing
+that man lives. In every articulation, in every gland, in every passage,
+there is danger of death; but there are also as many succors as there
+are dangers. Almost every membrane extends or contracts as occasion
+requires. All the veins have sluices which open and shut, giving passage
+to the blood and preventing a return, by which the machine would be
+destroyed. The blood, rushing through all these canals, purifies itself.
+It is a river that carries with it a thousand impurities; it discharges
+itself by perspiration, by transpiration, by all the secretions. Fever
+is itself a succor; it is a rectification when it does not kill.
+
+Man, by his reason, accelerates the cure by administering bitters, and,
+above all, by regimen. This reason is an oar with which he may row for
+some time on the sea of the world when disease does not swallow him up.
+
+It is asked: How is it that nature has abandoned the animals, her work,
+to so many horrible diseases, almost always accompanied by fever? How
+and why is it that so many disorders exist with so much order,
+formation, and destruction everywhere, side by side? This is a
+difficulty that often gives me a fever, but I beg you will read the
+letters of Memmius. Then, perhaps, you will be inclined to suspect that
+the incomprehensible artificer of vegetables, animals, and worlds,
+having made all for the best, could not have made anything better.
+
+
+
+
+FICTION.
+
+
+Is not a fiction, which teaches new and interesting truths, a fine
+thing? Do you not admire the Arabian story of the sultan who would not
+believe that a little time could appear long, and who disputed with his
+dervish on the nature of duration? The latter to convince him of it,
+begged him only to plunge his head for a moment into the basin in which
+he was washing. Immediately the sultan finds himself transported into a
+frightful desert; he is obliged to labor to get a livelihood; he
+marries, and has children who grow up and ill treat him; finally he
+returns to his country and his palace and he there finds the dervish who
+has caused him to suffer so many evils for five and twenty years. He is
+about to kill him, and is only appeased when he is assured that all
+passed in the moment in which, with his eyes shut, he put his head into
+the water.
+
+You still more admire the fiction of the loves of Dido and Æneas, which
+caused the mortal hatred between Carthage and Rome, as also that which
+exhibits in Elysium the destinies of the great men of the Roman Empire.
+
+You also like that of Alcina, in Ariosto, who possesses the dignity of
+Minerva with the beauty of Venus, who is so charming to the eyes of her
+lovers, who intoxicates them with voluptuous delights, and unites all
+the loves and graces, but who, when she is at last reduced to her true
+self and the enchantment has passed away, is nothing more than a little
+shrivelled, disgusting, old woman.
+
+As to fictions which represent nothing, teach nothing, and from which
+nothing results, are they anything more than falsities? And if they are
+incoherent and heaped together without choice, are they anything better
+than dreams?
+
+You will possibly tell me that there are ancient fictions which are very
+incoherent, without ingenuity, and even absurd, which are still admired;
+but is it not rather owing to the fine images which are scattered over
+these fictions than to the inventions which introduce them? I will not
+dispute the point, but if you would be hissed at by all Europe, and
+afterwards forgotten forever, write fictions similar to those which you
+admire.
+
+
+
+
+FIERTÉ.
+
+
+Fierté is one of those expressions, which, having been originally
+employed in an offensive sense, are afterwards used in a favorable one.
+It is censure when this word signifies high-flown, proud, haughty, and
+disdainful. It is almost praise when it means the loftiness of a noble
+mind.
+
+It is a just eulogium on a general who marches towards the enemy with
+_fierté_. Writers have praised the _fierté_ of the gait of Louis XIV.;
+they should have contented themselves with remarking its nobleness.
+
+_Fierté_, without dignity, is a merit incompatible with modesty. It is
+only _fierté_ in air and manners which offends; it then displeases, even
+in kings.
+
+_Fierté_ of manner in society is the expression of pride; _fierté_ of
+soul is greatness. The distinctions are so nice that a proud spirit is
+deemed blamable, while a proud soul is a theme of praise. By the former
+is understood one who thinks advantageously of himself while the latter
+denotes one who entertains elevated sentiments.
+
+_Fierté_, announced by the exterior, is so great a fault that the weak,
+who abjectly praise it in the great are obliged to soften it, or rather
+to extol it, by speaking of "this noble _fierté_." It is not simply
+vanity, which consists in setting a value upon little things; it is not
+presumption, which believes itself capable of great ones; it is not
+disdain, which adds contempt of others to a great opinion of self; but
+it is intimately allied to all these faults.
+
+This word is used in romances, poetry, and above all, in operas, to
+express the severity of female modesty. We meet with vain _fierté_,
+vigorous _fierté_, etc. Poets are, perhaps, more in the right than they
+imagine. The _fierté_ of a woman is not only rigid modesty and love of
+duty, but the high value which she sets upon her beauty. The _fierté_ of
+the pencil is sometimes spoken of to signify free and fearless touches.
+
+
+
+
+FIGURE.
+
+
+Every one desirous of instruction should read with attention all the
+articles in the "_Dictionnaire Encyclopédique_," under the head
+"Figure," viz.:
+
+"Figure of the Earth," by M. d'Alembert--a work both clear and profound,
+in which we find all that can be known on the subject.
+
+"Figure of Rhetoric," by César Dumarsais--a piece of instruction which
+teaches at once to think and to write; and, like many other articles,
+make us regret that young people in general have not a convenient
+opportunity of reading things so useful.
+
+"Human Figure," as relating to painting and sculpture--an excellent
+lesson given to every artist, by M. Watelet.
+
+"Figure," in physiology--a very ingenious article, by M. de Caberoles.
+
+"Figure," in arithmetic and in algebra--by M. Mallet.
+
+"Figure," in logic, in metaphysics, and in polite literature, by M. le
+Chevalier de Jaucourt--a man superior to the philosophers of antiquity,
+inasmuch as he has preferred retirement, real philosophy, and
+indefatigable labor, to all the advantages that his birth might have
+procured him, in a country where birth is set above all beside,
+excepting money.
+
+_Figure or Form of the Earth._
+
+Plato, Aristotle, Eratosthenes, Posidonius, and all the geometricians of
+Asia, of Egypt, and of Greece, having acknowledged the sphericity of our
+globe, how did it happen that we, for so long a time, imagined that the
+earth was a third longer than it was broad, and thence derived the terms
+"_longitude_" and "_latitude_," which continually bear testimony to our
+ancient ignorance?
+
+The reverence due to the "Bible," which teaches us so many truths more
+necessary and more sublime, was the cause of this, our almost universal
+error. It had been found, in Psalm ciii, that God had stretched the
+heavens over the earth like a skin; and as a skin is commonly longer
+than it is wide, the same was concluded of the earth.
+
+St. Athanasius expresses himself as warmly against good astronomers as
+against the partisans of Arius and Eusebius. "Let us," says he, "stop
+the mouths of those barbarians, who, speaking without proof, dare to
+assert that the heavens also extend under the earth." The fathers
+considered the earth as a great ship, surrounded by water, with the prow
+to the east, and the stern to the west. We still find, in "Cosmos," a
+work of the fourth century, a sort of geographical chart, in which the
+earth has this figure.
+
+Tortato, bishop of Avila, near the close of the fifteenth century,
+declares in his commentary on Genesis, that the Christian faith is
+shaken, if the earth is believed to be round. Columbus, Vespucius, and
+Magellan, not having the fear of excommunication by this learned bishop
+before their eyes, the earth resumed its rotundity in spite of him.
+
+Then man went from one extreme to the other, and the earth was regarded
+as a perfect sphere. But the error of the perfect sphere was the mistake
+of philosophers, while that of a long, flat earth was the blunder of
+idiots.
+
+When once it began to be clearly known that our globe revolves on its
+own axis every twenty-four hours, it might have been inferred from that
+alone that its form could not be absolutely round. Not only does the
+centrifugal zone considerably raise the waters in the region of the
+equator, by the motion of the diurnal rotation, but they are moreover
+elevated about twenty-five feet, twice a day, by the tides; the lands
+about the equator must then be perfectly inundated. But they are not so;
+therefore the region of the equator is much more elevated, in
+proportion, than the rest of the earth: then the earth is a spheroid
+elevated at the equator, and cannot be a perfect sphere. This proof,
+simple as it is, had escaped the greatest geniuses: because a universal
+prejudice rarely permits investigation.
+
+We know that, in 1762, in a voyage to Cayenne, near the line, undertaken
+by order of Louis XIV., under the auspices of Colbert, the patron of all
+the arts, Richer, among many other observations, found that the
+oscillations or vibrations of his timepiece did not continue so frequent
+as in the latitude of Paris, and that it was absolutely necessary to
+shorten the pendulum one line and something more than a quarter. Physics
+and geometry were at that time not nearly so much cultivated as they now
+are; what man would have believed that an observation so trivial in
+appearance, a line more or less, could lead to the knowledge of the
+greatest physical truths? It was first of all discovered that the weight
+must necessarily be less on the equator than in our latitudes, since
+weight alone causes the oscillation of a pendulum. Consequently, the
+weight of bodies being the less the farther they are from the centre of
+the earth, it was inferred that the region of the equator must be much
+more elevated than our own--much more remote from the centre; so the
+earth could not be an exact sphere.
+
+Many philosophers acted, on the occasion of these discoveries, as all
+men act when an opinion is to be changed--they disputed on Richer's
+experiment; they pretended that our pendulums made their vibrations more
+slowly about the equator only because the metal was lengthened by the
+heat; but it was seen that the heat of the most burning summer lengthens
+it but one line in thirty feet; and here was an elongation of a line and
+a quarter, a line and a half, or even two lines, in an iron rod, only
+three feet and eight lines long.
+
+Some years after MM. Varin, Deshayes, Feuillée, and Couplet, repeated
+the same experiment on the pendulum, near the equator; and it was always
+found necessary to shorten it, although the heat was very often less on
+the line than fifteen or twenty degrees from it. This experiment was
+again confirmed by the academicians whom Louis XV. sent to Peru; and who
+were obliged, on the mountains about Quito, where it froze, to shorten
+the second pendulum about two lines.
+
+About the same time, the academicians who went to measure an arc of the
+meridian in the north, found that at Pello, within the Polar circle, it
+was necessary to lengthen the pendulum, in order to have the same
+oscillations as at Paris: consequently weight is greater at the polar
+circle than in the latitude of France, as it is greater in our latitude
+than at the equator. Weight being greater in the north, the north was
+therefore nearer the centre of the earth than the equator; therefore the
+earth was flattened at the poles.
+
+Never did reasoning and experiment so fully concur to establish a truth.
+The celebrated Huygens, by calculating centrifugal forces, had proved
+that the consequent diminution of weight on the surface of a sphere was
+not great enough to explain the phenomena, and that therefore the earth
+must be a spheroid flattened at the poles. Newton, by the principles of
+attraction, had found nearly the same relations: only it must be
+observed, that Huygens believed this force inherent in bodies
+determining them towards the centre of the globe, to be everywhere the
+same. He had not yet seen the discoveries of Newton; so that he
+considered the diminution of weight by the theory of centrifugal forces
+only. The effect of centrifugal forces diminishes the primitive gravity
+on the equator. The smaller the circles in which this centrifugal force
+is exercised become, the more it yields to the force of gravity; thus,
+at the pole itself the centrifugal force being null, must leave the
+primitive gravity in full action. But this principle of a gravity always
+equal, falls to nothing before the discovery made by Newton, that a body
+transported, for instance, to the distance of ten diameters from the
+centre of the earth, would weigh one hundred times less than at the
+distance of one diameter.
+
+It is then by the laws of gravitation, combined with those of the
+centrifugal force, that the real form of the earth must be shown. Newton
+and Gregory had such confidence in this theory that they did not
+hesitate to advance that experiments on weight were a surer means of
+knowing the form of the earth than any geographical measurement.
+
+Louis XIV. had signalized his reign by that meridian which was drawn
+through France: the illustrious Dominico Cassini had begun it with his
+son; and had, in 1701, drawn from the feet of the Pyrenees to the
+observatory a line as straight as it could be drawn, considering the
+almost insurmountable obstacles which the height of mountains, the
+changes of refraction in the air, and the altering of instruments were
+constantly opposing to the execution of so vast and delicate an
+undertaking; he had, in 1701, measured six degrees eighteen minutes of
+that meridian. But, from whatever cause the error might proceed, he had
+found the degrees towards Paris, that is towards the north, shorter than
+those towards the Pyrenees and the south. This measurement gave the lie
+both to the theory of Norwood and to the new theory of the earth
+flattened at the poles. Yet this new theory was beginning to be so
+generally received that the academy's secretary did not hesitate, in his
+history of 1701, to say that the new measurements made in France proved
+the earth to be a spheroid flattened at the poles. The truth was, that
+Dominico Cassini's measurement led to a conclusion directly opposite;
+but, as the figure of the earth had not yet become a question in France,
+no one at that time was at the trouble of combating this false
+conclusion. The degrees of the meridian from Collioure to Paris were
+believed to be exactly measured; and the pole, which from that
+measurement must necessarily be elongated, was believed to be flattened.
+
+An engineer, named M. de Roubais, astonished at this conclusion,
+demonstrated that, by the measurements taken in France, the earth must
+be an oblate spheroid, of which the meridian passing through the poles
+must be longer than the equator, the poles being elongated. But of all
+the natural philosophers to whom he addressed his dissertation, not one
+would have it printed; because it seemed that the academy had pronounced
+it as too bold in an individual to raise his voice. Some time after the
+error of 1701 was acknowledged, that which had been said was unsaid; and
+the earth was lengthened by a just conclusion drawn from a false
+principle. The meridian was continued in the same principle from Paris
+to Dunkirk; and the degrees were still found to grow shorter as they
+approached the north. People were still mistaken respecting the figure
+of the earth, as they had been concerning the nature of light. About the
+same time, some mathematicians who were performing the same operations
+in China were astonished to find a difference among their degrees,
+which they had expected to find alike; and to discover, after many
+verifications, that they were shorter towards the north than towards the
+south. This accordance of the mathematicians of France with those of
+China was another powerful reason for believing in the oblate spheroid.
+In France they did still more; they measured parallels to the equator.
+It is easily understood that on an oblate spheroid our degrees of
+longitude must be shorter than on a sphere. M. de Cassini found the
+parallel which passes through St. Malo to be shorter by one thousand and
+thirty-seven toises than it would have been on a spherical earth.
+
+All these measurements proved that the degrees had been found as it was
+wished to find them. They overturned, for a time, in France, the
+demonstrations of Newton and Huygens; and it was no longer doubted that
+the poles were of a form precisely contrary to that which had at first
+been attributed to them. In short, nothing at all was known about the
+matter.
+
+At length, other academicians, who had visited the polar circle in 1736,
+having found, by new measurements, that the degree was longer there than
+in France, people doubted between them and the Cassinis. But these
+doubts were soon after removed: for these same astronomers, returning
+from the pole, examined afresh the degree to the north of Paris,
+measured by Picard, in 1677, and found it to be a hundred and
+twenty-three toises longer than it was according to Picard's
+measurement. If, then, Picard, with all his precautions, had made his
+degree one hundred and twenty-three toises too short, it was not at all
+unlikely that the degrees towards the south had in like manner been
+found too long. Thus the first error of Picard, having furnished the
+foundations for the measurements of the meridian, also furnished an
+excuse for the almost inevitable errors which very good astronomers
+might have committed in the course of these operations.
+
+Unfortunately, other men of science found that, at the Cape of Good
+Hope, the degrees of the meridian did not agree with ours. Other
+measurements, taken in Italy, likewise contradicted those of France, and
+all were falsified by those of China. People again began to doubt, and
+to suspect, in my opinion quite reasonably, that the earth had
+protuberances. As for the English, though they are fond of travelling,
+they spared themselves the fatigue, and held fast their theory.
+
+The difference between one diameter and the other is not more than five
+or six of our leagues--a difference immense in the eyes of a disputant,
+but almost imperceptible to those who consider the measurement of the
+globe only in reference to the purposes of utility which it may serve. A
+geographer could scarcely make this difference perceptible on a map; nor
+would a pilot be able to discover whether he was steering on a spheroid
+or on a sphere. Yet there have been men bold enough to assert that the
+lives of navigators depended on this question. Oh quackery! will you
+spare no degrees--not even those of the meridian?
+
+
+
+
+FIGURED--FIGURATIVE.
+
+
+We say, a truth "figured" by a fable, by a parable; the church "figured"
+by the young spouse in Solomon's Song; ancient Rome "figured" by
+Babylon. A figurative style is constituted by metaphorical expressions,
+figuring the things spoken of--and disfiguring them when the metaphors
+are not correct.
+
+Ardent imagination, passion, desire--frequently deceived--produce the
+figurative style. We do not admit it into history, for too many
+metaphors are hurtful, not only to perspicuity, but also to truth, by
+saying more or less than the thing itself.
+
+In didactic works, this style should be rejected. It is much more out of
+place in a sermon than in a funeral oration, because the sermon is a
+piece of instruction in which the truth is to be announced; while the
+funeral oration is a declaration in which it is to be exaggerated.
+
+The poetry of enthusiasm, as the epopee and the ode, is that to which
+this style is best adapted. It is less admissible in tragedy, where the
+dialogue should be natural as well as elevated; and still less in
+comedy, where the style must be more simple.
+
+The limits to be set to the figurative style, in each kind, are
+determined by taste. Baltasar Gracian says, that "our thoughts depart
+from the vast shores of memory, embark on the sea of imagination, arrive
+in the harbor of intelligence, and are entered at the custom house of
+the understanding."
+
+This is precisely the style of Harlequin. He says to his master, "The
+ball of your commands has rebounded from the racquet of my obedience."
+Must it not be owned that such is frequently that oriental style which
+people try to admire? Another fault of the figurative style is the
+accumulating of incoherent figures. A poet, speaking of some
+philosophers, has called them:
+
+                   _D'ambitieux pygmées_
+     _Qui sur leurs pieds vainement redressés_
+     _Et sur des monts d'argumens entassés_
+     _De jour en jour superbes Encelades,_
+     _Vont redoublant leurs folles escalades._
+
+When philosophers are to be written against, it should be done better.
+How do ambitious pygmies, reared on their hind legs on mountains of
+arguments, continue escalades? What a false and ridiculous image! What
+elaborate dulness!
+
+In an allegory by the same author, entitled the "Liturgy of Cytherea,"
+we find these lines:
+
+     _De toutes parts, autour de l'inconnue,_
+     _Ils vont tomber comme grêle menue,_
+     _Moissons des cœurs sur la terre jonchés,_
+     _Et des Dieux même à son char attachés._
+     _De par Venus nous venons cette affaire_
+     _Si s'en retourne aux cieux dans son sérail,_
+     _En ruminant comment il pourra faire_
+     _Pour ramener la brebis au bercail._
+
+Here we have harvests of hearts thrown on the ground like small hail;
+and among these hearts palpitating on the ground, are gods bound to the
+car of the unknown; while love, sent by Venus, ruminates in his seraglio
+in heaven, what he shall do to bring back to the fold this lost mutton
+surrounded by scattered hearts. All this forms a figure at once so
+false, so puerile, and so incoherent--so disgusting, so extravagant, so
+stupidly expressed, that we are astonished that a man, who made good
+verses of another kind, and was not devoid of taste, could write
+anything so miserably bad.
+
+Figures, metaphors, are not necessary in an allegory; what has been
+invented with imagination may be told with simplicity. Plato has more
+allegories than figures; he often expresses them elegantly and without
+ostentation.
+
+Nearly all the maxims of the ancient orientals and of the Greeks were in
+the figurative style. All those sentences are metaphors, or short
+allegories; and in them the figurative style has great effect in rousing
+the imagination and impressing the memory.
+
+We know that Pythagoras said, "In the tempest adore the echo," that is,
+during civil broils retire to the country; and "Stir not the fire with
+the sword," meaning, do not irritate minds already inflamed. In every
+language, there are many common proverbs which are in the figurative
+style.
+
+
+
+
+FIGURE IN THEOLOGY.
+
+
+It is quite certain, and is agreed by the most pious men, that figures
+and allegories have been carried too far. Some of the fathers of the
+church regard the piece of red cloth, placed by the courtesan Rahab at
+her window, for a signal to Joshua's spies, as a figure of the blood of
+Jesus Christ. This is an error of an order of mind which would find
+mystery in everything.
+
+Nor can it be denied that St. Ambrose made very bad use of his taste for
+allegory, when he says, in his book of "Noah and the Ark," that the back
+door of the ark was a figure of our hinder parts.
+
+All men of sense have asked how it can be proved that these Hebrew
+words, "_maher, salas-has-has_," (take quick the spoils) are a figure of
+Jesus Christ? How is Judah, tying his ass to a vine, and washing his
+cloak in the wine, also a figure of Him. How can Ruth, slipping into bed
+to Boaz, figure the church, how are Sarah and Rachel the church, and
+Hagar and Leah the synagogue? How, do the kisses of the Shunamite typify
+the marriage of the church? A volume might be made of these enigmas,
+which, to the best theologians of later times, have appeared to be
+rather far-fetched than edifying.
+
+The danger of this abuse is fully admitted by Abbé Fleury, the author of
+the "Ecclesiastical History." It is a vestige of rabbinism; a fault
+into which the learned St. Jerome never fell. It is like oneiromancy,
+or the explanation of dreams. If a girl sees muddy water, when dreaming,
+she will be ill-married; if she sees clear water, she will have a good
+husband; a spider denotes money, etc. In short, will enlightened
+posterity believe it? The understanding of dreams has, for more than
+four thousand years, been made a serious study.
+
+_Symbolical Figures._
+
+All nations have made use of them, as we have said in the article
+"emblem." But who began? Was it the Egyptians? It is not likely. We
+think we have already more than once proved that Egypt is a country
+quite new, and that many ages were requisite to save the country from
+inundations, and render it habitable. It is impossible that the
+Egyptians should have invented the signs of the zodiac, since the
+figures denoting our seed-time and harvest cannot coincide with theirs.
+When we cut our corn, their land is covered with water; and when we sow,
+their reaping time is approaching. Thus the bull of our zodiac and the
+girl bearing ears of corn cannot have come from Egypt.
+
+Here is also an evident proof of the falsity of the new paradox, that
+the Chinese are an Egyptian colony. The characters are not the same. The
+Chinese mark the course of the sun by twenty-eight constellations and
+the Egyptians, after the Chaldæans, reckoned only twelve, like
+ourselves.
+
+The figures that denote the planets are in China and in India all
+different from those of Egypt and of Europe; so are the signs of the
+metals; so is the method of guiding the hand in writing. Nothing could
+have been more chimerical than to send the Egyptians to people China.
+
+All these fabulous foundations, laid in fabulous times, have caused an
+irreparable loss of time to a prodigious multitude of the learned, who
+have all been bewildered in their laborious researches, which might have
+been serviceable to mankind if directed to arts of real utility.
+
+Pluche, in his History, or rather his fable, of the Heavens, assures us
+that Ham, son of Noah, went and reigned in Egypt, where there was nobody
+to reign over; that his son Menes was the greatest of legislators, and
+that Thoth was his prime minister.
+
+According to him and his authorities, this Thoth, or somebody else,
+instituted feasts in honor of the deluge; and the joyful cry of "_Io
+Bacche_," so famous among the Greeks, was, among the Egyptians, a
+lamentation. "_Bacche_" came from the Hebrew "_beke_" signifying _sobs_,
+and that at a time when the Hebrew people did not exist. According to
+this explanation, "_joy_" means "_sorrow_," and "_to sing_" signifies
+"_to weep_."
+
+The Iroquois have more sense. They do not take the trouble to inquire
+what passed on the shores of Lake Ontario some thousand years ago:
+instead of making systems, they go hunting.
+
+The same authors affirm that the sphinxes, with which Egypt was adorned,
+signified superabundance, because some interpreters have asserted that
+the Hebrew word "_spang_" meant an "excess"; as if the Egyptians had
+taken lessons from the Hebrew tongue, which is, in great part, derived
+from the Phœnician: besides, what relation has a sphinx to an
+abundance of water? Future schoolmen will maintain, with greater
+appearance of reason, that the masks which decorate the keystones of our
+windows are emblems of our masquerades; and that these fantastic
+ornaments announced that balls were given in every house to which they
+were affixed.
+
+_Figure, Figurative, Allegorical, Mystical, Topological, Typical, etc._
+
+This is often the art of finding in books everything but what they
+really contain. For instance, Romulus killing his brother Remus shall
+signify the death of the duke of Berry, brother of Louis XI.; Regulus,
+imprisoned at Carthage, shall typify St. Louis captive at Mansurah.
+
+It is very justly remarked in the "Encyclopædia," that many fathers of
+the church have, perhaps, carried this taste for allegorical figures a
+little too far; but they are to be reverenced, even in their wanderings.
+If the holy fathers used and then abused this method, their little
+excesses of imagination may be pardoned, in consideration of their holy
+zeal.
+
+The antiquity of the usage may also be pleaded in justification, since
+it was practised by the earliest philosophers. But it is true that the
+symbolical figures employed by the fathers are in a different taste.
+
+For example: When St. Augustine wishes to make it appear that the
+forty-two generations of the genealogy of Jesus are announced by St.
+Matthew, who gives only forty-one, he says that Jechonias must be
+counted twice, because Jechonias is a corner-stone belonging to two
+walls; that these two walls figure the old and the new law; and that
+Jechonias, being thus the corner-stone, figures Jesus Christ, who is the
+real corner-stone.
+
+The same saint, in the same sermon, says that the number forty must
+prevail; and at once abandons Jechonias and his corner-stone, counted as
+two. The number forty, he says, signifies life; ten, which is perfect
+beatitude, being multiplied by four, which, being the number of the
+seasons, figures time.
+
+Again, in the same sermon, he explains why St. Luke gives Jesus Christ
+seventy-seven ancestors: fifty-six up to the patriarch Abraham, and
+twenty-one from Abraham up to God himself. It is true that, according to
+the Hebrew text, there would be but seventy-six; for the Hebrew does not
+reckon a Cainan, who is interpolated in the Greek translation called
+"The Septuagint."
+
+Thus said Augustine: "The number seventy-seven figures the abolition of
+all sins by baptism.... the number ten signifies justice and beatitude,
+resulting from, the creature, which makes seven with the Trinity, which
+is three: therefore it is that God's commandments are ten in number. The
+number eleven denotes sin, because it transgresses ten.... This number
+seventy-seven is the product of eleven, figuring sin, multiplied by
+seven, and not by ten, for seven is the symbol of the creature. Three
+represents the soul, which is in some sort an image of the Divinity; and
+four represents the body, on account of its four qualities." In these
+explanations, we find some trace of the cabalistic mysteries and the
+quaternary of Pythagoras. This taste was very long in vogue.
+
+St. Augustine goes much further, concerning the dimensions of matter.
+Breadth is the dilatation of the heart, which performs good works;
+length is perseverance; depth is the hope of reward. He carries the
+allegory very far, applying it to the cross, and drawing great
+consequences therefrom. The use of these figures had passed from the
+Jews to the Christians long before St. Augustine's time. It is not for
+us to know within what bounds it was right to stop.
+
+The examples of this fault are innumerable. No one who has studied to
+advantage will hazard the introduction of such figures, either in the
+pulpit or in the school. We find no such instances among the Romans or
+the Greeks, not even in their poets.
+
+In Ovid's "Metamorphoses" themselves, we find only ingenious deductions
+drawn from fables which are given as fables. Deucalion and Pyrrha threw
+stones behind them between their legs, and men were produced therefrom.
+Ovid says:
+
+     _Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum,_
+     _Et documenta damus qua simus origine nati._
+
+     Thence we are a hardened and laborious race,
+     Proving full well our stony origin.
+
+Apollo loves Daphne, but Daphne does not love Apollo. This is because
+love has two kinds of arrows; the one golden and piercing, the other
+leaden and blunt. Apollo has received in his heart a golden arrow,
+Daphne a leaden one.
+
+     _Ecce sagittifera prompsit duo tela pharetra_
+     _Diversorum operum; fugat hoc, facit illud amorem_
+     _Quod facit auratum est, et cuspide fulget acuta;_
+     _Quod fugat obtusum est, et habet sub arundine plumbum...._
+
+     Two different shafts he from his quiver draws;
+     One to repel desire, and one to cause.
+     One shaft is pointed with refulgent gold,
+     To bribe the love, and make the lover bold;
+     One blunt and tipped with lead, whose base allay
+     Provokes disdain, and drives desire away.--DRYDEN.
+
+These figures are all ingenious, and deceive no one.
+
+That Venus, the goddess of beauty, should not go unattended by the
+Graces, is a charming truth. These fables, which were in the mouths of
+all--these allegories, so natural and attractive--had so much sway over
+the minds of men, that perhaps the first Christians imitated while they
+opposed them.
+
+They took up the weapons of mythology to destroy it, but they could not
+wield them with the same address. They did not reflect that the sacred
+austerity of our holy religion placed these resources out of their
+power, and that a Christian hand would have dealt but awkwardly with the
+lyre of Apollo.
+
+However, the taste for these typical and prophetic figures was so firmly
+rooted that every prince, every statesman, every pope, every founder of
+an order, had allegories or allusions taken from the Holy Scriptures
+applied to him. Satire and flattery rivalled each other in drawing from
+this source.
+
+When Pope Innocent III. made a bloody crusade against the court of
+Toulouse, he was told, "_Innocens eris a maledictione_." When the order
+of the Minimes was established, it appeared that their founder had been
+foretold in Genesis: "_Minimus cum patre nostro_."
+
+The preacher who preached before John of Austria after the celebrated
+battle of Lepanto, took for his text, "_Fuit homo missus a Deo, cui
+nomen erat Johannes_;" A man sent from God, whose name was John; and
+this allusion was very fine, if all the rest were ridiculous. It is said
+to have been repeated for John Sobieski, after the deliverance of
+Vienna; but this latter preacher was nothing more than a plagiarist.
+
+In short, so constant has been this custom that no preacher of the
+present day has ever failed to take an allegory for his text. One of the
+most happy instances is the text of the funeral oration over the duke of
+Candale, delivered before his sister, who was considered a pattern of
+virtue: "_Die, quia soror, mea es, ut mihi bene eveniat propter,
+te_."--"Say, I pray thee, that thou art my sister, that it may be well
+with me for thy sake."
+
+It is not to be wondered at that the Cordeliers carried these figures
+rather too far in favor of St. Francis of Assisi, in the famous but
+little-known book, entitled, "Conformities of St. Francis of Assisi with
+Jesus Christ." We find in it sixty-four predictions of the coming of St.
+Francis, some in the Old Testament, others in the New; and each
+prediction contains three figures, which signify the founding of the
+Cordeliers. So that these fathers find themselves foretold in the Bible
+a hundred and ninety-two times.
+
+From Adam down to St. Paul, everything prefigured the blessed Francis of
+Assisi. The Scriptures were given to announce to the universe the
+sermons of Francis to the quadrupeds, the fishes, and the birds, the
+sport he had with a woman of snow, his frolics with the devil, his
+adventures with brother Elias and brother Pacificus.
+
+These pious reveries, which amounted even to blasphemy, have been
+condemned. But the Order of St. Francis has not suffered by them, having
+renounced these extravagancies so common to the barbarous ages.
+
+
+
+
+FINAL CAUSES.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+Virgil says ("Æneid," book vi. 727):
+
+     _Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet._
+
+     This active mind infused, through all the space
+     Unites and mingles with the mighty mass.--DRYDEN.
+
+Virgil said well: and Benedict Spinoza, who has not the brilliancy of
+Virgil, nor his merit, is compelled to acknowledge an intelligence
+presiding over all. Had he denied this, I should have said to him:
+Benedict, you are a fool; you possess intelligence, and you deny it, and
+to whom do you deny it?
+
+In the year 1770, there appeared a man, in some respects far superior to
+Spinoza, as eloquent as the Jewish Hollander is dry, less methodical,
+but infinitely more perspicuous; perhaps equal to him in mathematical
+science; but without the ridiculous affectation of applying mathematical
+reasonings to metaphysical and moral subjects. The man I mean is the
+author of the "System of Nature." He assumed the name of Mirabaud, the
+secretary of the French Academy. Alas! the worthy secretary was
+incapable of writing a single page of the book of our formidable
+opponent. I would recommend all you who are disposed to avail yourselves
+of your reason and acquire instruction, to read the following eloquent
+though dangerous passage from the "System of Nature." (Part II. v. 153.)
+
+It is contended that animals furnish us with a convincing evidence that
+there is some powerful cause of their existence; the admirable
+adaptation of their different parts, mutually receiving and conferring
+aid towards accomplishing their functions, and maintaining in health and
+vigor the entire being, announce to us an artificer uniting power to
+wisdom. Of the power of nature, it is impossible for us to doubt; she
+produces all the animals that we see by the help of combinations of that
+matter, which is in incessant action; the adaptation of the parts of
+these animals is the result of the necessary laws of their nature, and
+of their combination. When the adaptation ceases, the animal is
+necessarily destroyed. What then becomes of the wisdom, the
+intelligence, or the goodness of that alleged cause, to which was
+ascribed all the honor of this boasted adaptation? Those animals of so
+wonderful a structure as to be pronounced the works of an immutable God,
+do not they undergo incessant changes; and do not they end in decay and
+destruction? Where is the wisdom, the goodness, the fore-sight, the
+immutability of an artificer, whose sole object appears to be to derange
+and destroy the springs of those machines which are proclaimed to be
+masterpieces of his power and skill? If this God cannot act otherwise
+than thus, he is neither free nor omnipotent. If his will changes, he is
+not immutable. If he permits machines, which he has endowed with
+sensibility, to experience pain, he is deficient in goodness. If he has
+been unable to render his productions solid and durable, he is deficient
+in skill. Perceiving as we do the decay and ruin not only of all
+animals, but of all the other works of deity, we cannot but inevitably
+conclude, either that everything performed in the course of nature is
+absolutely necessary--the unavoidable result of its imperative and
+insuperable laws, or that the artificer who impels her various
+operations is destitute of plan, of power, of constancy, of skill, and
+of goodness.
+
+"Man, who considers himself the master-work of the Divinity, supplies us
+more readily and completely than any other production, with evidence of
+the incapacity or malignity of his pretended author. In this being,
+possessed of feeling, intuition, and reason, which considers itself as
+the perpetual object of divine partiality, and forms its God on the
+model of itself, we see a machine more changeable, more frail, more
+liable to derangement from its extraordinary complication, than that of
+the coarsest and grossest beings. Beasts, which are destitute of our
+mental powers and acquirements; plants, which merely vegetate; stones,
+which are unendowed with sensation, are, in many respects, beings far
+more favored than man. They are, at least, exempt from distress of mind,
+from the tortures of thought, and corrosions of care, to which the
+latter is a victim. Who would not prefer being a mere unintelligent
+animal, or a senseless stone, when his thoughts revert to the
+irreparable loss of an object dearly beloved? Would it not be infinitely
+more desirable to be an inanimate mass, than the gloomy votary and
+victim of superstition, trembling under the present yoke of his
+diabolical deity, and anticipating infinite torments in a future
+existence? Beings destitute of sensation, life, memory, and thought
+experience no affliction from the idea of what is past, present, or to
+come; they do not believe there is any danger of incurring eternal
+torture for inaccurate reasoning; which is believed, however, by many of
+those favored beings who maintain that the great architect of the world
+has created the universe for themselves.
+
+[Illustration: NATURE IS NOT A WORK]
+
+"Let us not be told that we have no idea of a work without having that
+of the artificer distinguished from the work. _Nature is not a work._
+She has always existed of herself. Every process takes place in her
+bosom. She is an immense manufactory, provided with materials, and she
+forms the instruments by which she acts; all her works are effects of
+her own energy, and of agents or causes which she frames, contains, and
+impels. Eternal, uncreated elements--elements indestructible, ever in
+motion, and combining in exquisite and endless diversity, originate all
+the beings and all the phenomena that we behold; all the effects, good
+or evil, that we feel; the order or disorder which we distinguish,
+merely by different modes in which they affect ourselves; and, in a
+word, all those wonders which excite our meditation and confound our
+reasoning. These elements, in order to effect objects thus comprehensive
+and important, require nothing beyond their own properties, individual
+or combined, and the motion essential to their very existence; and thus
+preclude the necessity of recurring to an unknown artificer, in order to
+arrange, mould, combine, preserve, and dissolve them.
+
+"But, even admitting for a moment, that it is impossible to conceive of
+the universe without an artificer who formed it, and who preserves and
+watches over his work, where shall we place that artificer? Shall he be
+within or without the universe? Is he matter or motion? Or is he mere
+space, nothingness, vacuity? In each of these cases, he will either be
+nothing, or he will be comprehended in nature, and subjected to her
+laws. If he is in nature, I think I see in her only matter in motion,
+and cannot but thence conclude that the agent impelling her is corporeal
+and material, and that he is consequently liable to dissolution. If this
+agent is out of nature, then I have no idea of what place he can occupy,
+nor of an immaterial being, nor of the manner in which a spirit, without
+extension, can operate upon the matter from which it is separated. Those
+unknown tracts of space which imagination has placed beyond the visible
+world may be considered as having no existence for a being who can
+scarcely see to the distance of his own feet; the ideal power which
+inhabits them can never be represented to my mind, unless when my
+imagination combines at random the fantastic colors which it is always
+forced to employ in the world on which I am. In this case, I shall
+merely reproduce in idea what my senses have previously actually
+perceived; and that God, which I, as it were, compel myself to
+distinguish from nature, and to place beyond her circuit, will ever, in
+opposition to all my efforts, necessarily withdraw within it.
+
+"It will be observed and insisted upon by some that if a statue or a
+watch were shown to a savage who had never seen them, he would
+inevitably acknowledge that they were the productions of some
+intelligent agent, more powerful and ingenious than himself; and hence
+it will be inferred that we are equally bound to acknowledge that the
+machine of the universe, that man, that the phenomena of nature, are the
+productions of an agent, whose intelligence and power are far superior
+to our own.
+
+"I answer, in the first place, that we cannot possibly doubt either the
+great power or the great skill of nature; we admire her skill as often
+as we are surprised by the extended, varied and complicated effects
+which we find in those of her works that we take the pains to
+investigate; she is not, however, either more or less skilful in any one
+of her works than in the rest. We no more comprehend how she could
+produce a stone or a piece of metal than how she could produce a head
+organized like that of Newton. We call that man skilful who can perform
+things which we are unable to perform ourselves. Nature can perform
+everything; and when anything exists, it is a proof that she was able to
+make it. Thus, it is only in relation to ourselves that we ever judge
+nature to be skilful; we compare it in those cases with ourselves; and,
+as we possess a quality which we call intelligence, by the aid of which
+we produce works, in which we display our skill, we thence conclude that
+the works of nature, which must excite our astonishment and admiration,
+are not in fact hers, but the productions of an artificer, intelligent
+like ourselves, and whose intelligence we proportion, in our minds, to
+the degree of astonishment excited in us by his works; that is, in fact,
+to our own weakness and ignorance."
+
+See the reply to these arguments under the articles on "Atheism" and
+"God," and in the following section, written long before the "System of
+Nature."
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+If a clock is not made in order to tell the time of the day, I will then
+admit that final causes are nothing but chimeras, and be content to go
+by the name of a final-cause-finder--in plain language, fool--to the end
+of my life.
+
+All the parts, however, of that great machine, the world, seem made for
+one another. Some philosophers affect to deride final causes, which were
+rejected, they tell us, by Epicurus and Lucretius. But it seems to me
+that Epicurus and Lucretius rather merit the derision. They tell you
+that the eye is not made to see; but that, since it was found out that
+eyes were capable of being used for that purpose, to that purpose they
+have been applied. According to them, the mouth is not formed to speak
+and eat, nor the stomach to digest, nor the heart to receive the blood
+from the veins and impel it through the arteries, nor the feet to walk,
+nor the ears to hear. Yet, at the same time, these very shrewd and
+consistent persons admitted that tailors made garments to clothe them,
+and masons built houses to lodge them; and thus ventured to deny
+nature--the great existence, the universal intelligence--what they
+conceded to the most insignificant artificers employed by themselves.
+
+The doctrine of final causes ought certainly to be preserved from being
+abused. We have already remarked that M. le Prieur, in the "Spectator of
+Nature," contends in vain that the tides were attached to the ocean to
+enable ships to enter more easily into their ports, and to preserve the
+water from corruption; he might just as probably and successfully have
+urged that legs were made to wear boots, and noses to bear spectacles.
+
+In order to satisfy ourselves of the truth of a final cause, in any
+particular instance, it is necessary that the effect produced should be
+uniform and invariably in time and place. Ships have not existed in all
+times and upon all seas; accordingly, it cannot be said that the ocean
+was made for ships. It is impossible not to perceive how ridiculous it
+would be to maintain that nature had toiled on from the very beginning
+of time to adjust herself to the inventions of our fortuitous and
+arbitrary arts, all of which are of so late a date in their discovery;
+but it is perfectly clear that if noses were not made for spectacles,
+they were made for smelling, and there have been noses ever since there
+were men. In the same manner, hands, instead of being bestowed for the
+sake of gloves, are visibly destined for all those uses to which the
+metacarpus, the phalanges of the fingers, and the movements of the
+circular muscle of the wrist, render them applicable by us. Cicero, who
+doubted everything else, had no doubt about final causes.
+
+It appears particularly difficult to suppose that those parts of the
+human frame by which the perpetuation of the species is conducted should
+not, in fact, have been intended and destined for that purpose, from
+their mechanism so truly admirable, and the sensation which nature has
+connected with it more admirable still. Epicurus would be at least
+obliged to admit that pleasure is divine, and that that pleasure is a
+final cause, in consequence of which beings, endowed with sensibility,
+but who could never have communicated it to themselves, have been
+incessantly introduced into the world as others have passed away from
+it.
+
+This philosopher, Epicurus, was a great man for the age in which he
+lived. He saw that Descartes denied what Gassendi affirmed and what
+Newton demonstrated--that motion cannot exist without a vacuum. He
+conceived the necessity of atoms to serve as constituent parts of
+invariable species. These are philosophical ideas. Nothing, however,
+was more respectable than the morality of genuine Epicureans; it
+consisted in sequestration from public affairs, which are incompatible
+with wisdom, and in friendship, without which life is but a burden. But
+as to the rest of the philosophy of Epicurus, it appears not to be more
+admissible than the grooved or tubular matter of Descartes. It is, as it
+appears to me, wilfully to shut the eyes and the understanding, and to
+maintain that there is no design in nature; and if there is design,
+there is an intelligent cause--there exists a God.
+
+Some point us to the irregularities of our globe, the volcanoes, the
+plains of moving sand, some small mountains swallowed up in the ocean,
+others raised by earthquakes, etc. But does it follow from the naves of
+your chariot wheel taking fire, that your chariot was not made expressly
+for the purpose of conveying you from one place to another?
+
+The chains of mountains which crown both hemispheres, and more than six
+hundred rivers which flow from the foot of these rocks towards the sea;
+the various streams that swell these rivers in their courses, after
+fertilizing the fields through which they pass; the innumerable
+fountains which spring from the same source, which supply necessary
+refreshment, and growth, and beauty to animal and vegetable life; all
+this appears no more to result from a fortuitous concourse and an
+obliquity of atoms, than the retina which receives the rays of light, or
+the crystalline humor which refracts it, or the drum of the ear which
+admits sound, or the circulation of the blood in our veins, the systole
+and diastole of the heart, the regulating principle of the machine of
+life.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+It would appear that a man must be supposed to have lost his senses
+before he can deny that stomachs are made for digestion, eyes to see,
+and ears to hear.
+
+On the other hand, a man must have a singular partiality for final
+causes, to assert that stone was made for building houses, and that
+silkworms are produced in China that we may wear satins in Europe.
+
+But, it is urged, if God has evidently done one thing by design, he has
+then done all things by design. It is ridiculous to admit Providence in
+the one case and to deny it in the others. Everything that is done was
+foreseen, was arranged. There is no arrangement without an object, no
+effect without a cause; all, therefore, is equally the result, the
+product of the final cause; it is, therefore, as correct to say that
+noses were made to bear spectacles, and fingers to be adorned with
+rings, as to say that the ears were formed to hear sounds, the eyes to
+receive light.
+
+All that this objection amounts to, in my opinion, is that everything is
+the result, nearer or more remote, of a general final cause; that
+everything is the consequence of eternal laws. When the effects are
+invariably the same in all times and places, and when these uniform
+effects are independent of the beings to which they attach, then there
+is visibly a final cause.
+
+All animals have eyes and see; all have ears and hear; all have mouths
+with which they eat; stomachs, or something similar, by which they
+digest their food; all have suitable means for expelling the fæces; all
+have the organs requisite for the continuation of their species; and
+these natural gifts perform their regular course and process without any
+application or intermixture of art. Here are final causes clearly
+established; and to deny a truth so universal would be a perversion of
+the faculty of reason.
+
+But stones, in all times and places, do not constitute the materials of
+buildings. All noses do not bear spectacles; all fingers do not carry a
+ring; all legs are not covered with silk stockings. A silkworm,
+therefore, is not made to cover my legs, exactly as your mouth is made
+for eating, and another part of your person for the "garderobe." There
+are, therefore, we see, immediate effects produced from final causes,
+and effects of a very numerous description, which are remote productions
+from those causes.
+
+Everything belonging to nature is uniform, immutable, and the immediate
+work of its author. It is he who has established the laws by which the
+moon contributes three-fourths to the cause of the flux and reflux of
+the ocean, and the sun the remaining fourth. It is he who has given a
+rotatory motion to the sun, in consequence of which that orb
+communicates its rays of light in the short space of seven minutes and a
+half to the eyes of men, crocodiles, and cats.
+
+But if, after a course of ages, we started the inventions of shears and
+spits, to clip the wool of sheep with the one, and with the other to
+roast in order to eat them, what else can be inferred from such
+circumstances, but that God formed us in such a manner that, at some
+time or other, we could not avoid becoming ingenious and carnivorous?
+
+Sheep, undoubtedly, were not made expressly to be roasted and eaten,
+since many nations abstain from such food with horror. Mankind are not
+created essentially to massacre one another, since the Brahmins, and the
+respectable primitives called Quakers, kill no one. But the clay out of
+which we are kneaded frequently produces massacres, as it produces
+calumnies, vanities, persecutions, and impertinences. It is not
+precisely that the formation of man is the final cause of our madnesses
+and follies, for a final cause is universal, and invariable in every age
+and place; but the horrors and absurdities of the human race are not at
+all the less included in the eternal order of things. When we thresh our
+corn, the flail is the final cause of the separation of the grain. But
+if that flail, while threshing my grain, crushes to death a thousand
+insects, that occurs not by an express and determinate act of my will,
+nor, on the other hand, is it by mere chance; the insects were, on this
+occasion, actually under my flail, and could not but be there.
+
+It is a consequence of the nature of things that a man should be
+ambitious; that he should enroll and discipline a number of other men;
+that he should be a conqueror, or that he should be defeated; but it can
+never be said that the man was created by God to be killed in war.
+
+The organs with which nature has supplied us cannot always be final
+causes in action. The eyes which are bestowed for seeing are not
+constantly open. Every sense has its season for repose. There are some
+senses that are even made no use of. An imbecile and wretched female,
+for example, shut up in a cloister at the age of fourteen years, mars
+one of the final causes of her existence; but the cause, nevertheless,
+equally exists, and whenever it is free it will operate.
+
+
+
+
+FINESSE, FINENESS, ETC.
+
+_Of the Different Significations of the Word._
+
+
+Fineness either in its proper or its figurative sense does not signify
+either light, slender, fine, or of a rare thin texture; this word
+expresses something delicate and finished. Light cloth, soft linen, thin
+lace, or slender galloon, are not always fine.
+
+This word has a relation to the verb "to finish," whence come the
+finishings of art; thus, we say, the finishings of Vanderwerff's pencil
+or of Mieris; we say, a fine horse, fine gold, a fine diamond. A fine
+horse is opposed to a clumsy one; the fine diamond to a false one; fine
+or refined gold to gold mixed with alloy.
+
+Fineness is generally applied to delicate things and lightness of
+manufacture. Although we say a fine horse, we seldom say, "the fineness
+of a horse." We speak of the fineness of hair, lace, or stuff. When by
+this word we should express the fault or wrong use of anything, we add
+the adverb "too"; as--This thread is broken, it was too fine; this stuff
+is too fine for the season.
+
+Fineness or finesse, in a figurative sense, applies to conduct, speech,
+and works of mind. In conduct, finesse always expresses, as in the arts,
+something delicate or subtile; it may sometimes exist without ability,
+but it is very rarely unaccompanied by a little deception; politics
+admit it, and society reproves it.
+
+Finesse is not exactly subtlety; we draw a person into a snare with
+finesse; we escape from it with subtlety. We act with finesse, and we
+play a subtle trick. Distrust is inspired by an unsparing use of
+finesse; yet we almost always deceive ourselves if we too generally
+suspect it.
+
+Finesse, in works of wit, as in conversation, consists in the art of not
+expressing a thought clearly, but leaving it so as to be easily
+perceived. It is an enigma to which people of sense readily find the
+solution.
+
+A chancellor one day offering his protection to parliament, the first
+president turning towards the assembly, said: "Gentlemen, thank the
+chancellor; he has given us more than we demanded of him"--a very witty
+reproof.
+
+Finesse, in conversation and writing, differs from delicacy; the first
+applies equally to piquant and agreeable things, even to blame and
+praise; and still more to indecencies, over which a veil is drawn,
+through which we cannot penetrate without a blush. Bold things may be
+said with finesse.
+
+Delicacy expresses soft and agreeable sentiments and ingenious praise;
+thus finesse belongs more to epigram, and delicacy to madrigal. It is
+delicacy which enters into a lover's jealousies, and not finesse.
+
+The praises given to Louis XIV. by Despréaux are not always equally
+delicate; satires are not always sufficiently ingenious in the way of
+finesse. When Iphigenia, in Racine, has received from her father the
+order never to see Achilles more, she cries: "_Dieux plus doux, vous
+n'aviez demandé que ma vie!_"--"More gentle gods, you only ask my life!"
+The true character of this partakes rather of delicacy than of finesse.
+
+
+
+
+FIRE.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+Is fire anything more than an element which lights, warms, and burns us?
+Is not light always fire, though fire is not always light? And is not
+Boerhaave in the right?
+
+Is not the purest fire extracted from our combustibles, always gross,
+and partaking of the bodies consumed, and very different from elementary
+fire? How is fire distributed throughout nature, of which it is the
+soul?
+
+     _Ignis ubique latet, naturam amplectitur omnem,_
+     _Cuncta parit, renovat, dividit, unit, alit._
+
+Why did Newton, in speaking of rays of light, always say, "_De natura
+radiorum lucis, utrum corpora sint necne non disputamus_"; without
+examining whether they were bodies or not?
+
+Did he only speak geometrically? In that case, this doubt was useless.
+It is evident that he doubted of the nature of elementary fire, and
+doubted with reason.
+
+Is elementary fire a body like others, as earth and water? If it was a
+body of this kind, would it not gravitate like all other matter? Would
+it escape from the luminous body in the right line? Would it have a
+uniform progression? And why does light never move out of a right line
+when it is unimpeded in its rapid course?
+
+May not elementary fire have properties of matter little known to us,
+and properties of substance entirely so? May it not be a medium between
+matter and substances of another kind? And who can say that there are
+not a million of these substances? I do not say that there are, but I
+say it is not proved that there may not be.
+
+It was very difficult to believe about a hundred years ago that bodies
+acted upon one another, not only without touching, and without emission,
+but at great distances; it is, however, found to be true, and is no
+longer doubted. At present, it is difficult to believe that the rays of
+the sun are penetrable by each other, but who knows what may happen to
+prove it?
+
+However that may be, I wish, for the novelty of the thing, that this
+incomprehensible penetrability could be admitted. Light has something so
+divine that we should endeavor to make it a step to the discovery of
+substances still more pure.
+
+Come to my aid, Empedocles and Democritus; come and admire the wonders
+of electricity; see if the sparks which traverse a thousand bodies in
+the twinkling of an eye are of ordinary matter; judge if elementary fire
+does not contract the heart, and communicate that warmth which gives
+life! Judge if this element is not the source of all sensation, and if
+sensation is not the origin of thought; though ignorant and insolent
+pedants have condemned the proposition, as one which should be
+persecuted.
+
+Tell me, if the Supreme Being, who presides over all nature, cannot
+forever preserve these elementary atoms which he has so rarely endowed?
+_"Igneus est ollis vigor et cœlestis origo._"
+
+The celebrated Le Cat calls this vivifying fluid "an amphibious being,
+endowed by its author with a superior refinement which links it to
+immaterial beings, and thereby ennobles and elevates it into that medium
+nature which we recognize, and which is the source of all its
+properties."
+
+You are of the opinion of Le Cat? I would be so too if I could; but
+there are so many fools and villains that I dare not. I can only think
+quietly in my own way at Mount Krapak. Let others think as well as they
+are allowed to think, whether at Salamanca or Bergamo.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+_What is Understood by Fire Used Figuratively._
+
+Fire, particularly in poetry, often signifies love, and is employed more
+elegantly in the plural than in the singular. Corneille often says "_un
+beau feu_" for a virtuous and noble love. A man has fire in his
+conversation; that does not mean that he has brilliant and enlightened
+ideas, but lively expressions animated by action.
+
+Fire in writing does not necessarily imply lightness and beauty, but
+vivacity, multiplied figures, and spontaneous ideas. Fire is a merit in
+speech and writing only when it is well managed. It is said that poets
+are animated with a divine fire when they are sublime; genius cannot
+exist without fire, but fire may be possessed without genius.
+
+
+
+
+FIRMNESS.
+
+
+Firmness comes from firm, and has a different signification from
+solidity and hardness; a squeezed cloth, a beaten negro, have firmness
+without being hard or solid.
+
+It must always be remembered that modifications of the soul can only be
+expressed by physical images; we say firmness of soul, and of mind,
+which does not signify that they are harder or more solid than usual.
+
+Firmness is the exercise of mental courage; it means a decided
+resolution; while obstinacy, on the contrary, signifies blindness. Those
+who praise the firmness of Tacitus are not so much in the wrong as P.
+Bouhours pretends; it is an accidental ill-chosen term, which expresses
+energy and strength of thought and of style. It may be said that La
+Bruyère has a firm style, and that many other writers have only a hard
+one.
+
+
+
+
+FLATTERY.
+
+
+I find not one monument of flattery in remote antiquity; there is no
+flattery in Hesiod--none in Homer. Their stories are not addressed to a
+Greek, elevated to some dignity, nor to his lady; as each canto of
+Thomson's "Seasons" is dedicated to some person of rank, or as so many
+forgotten epistles in verse have been dedicated, in England, to
+gentlemen or ladies of quality, with a brief eulogy, and the arms of
+the patron or patroness placed at the head of the work.
+
+Nor is there any flattery in Demosthenes. This way of asking alms
+harmoniously began, if I mistake not, with Pindar. No hand can be
+stretched out more emphatically.
+
+It appears to me that among the Romans great flattery is to be dated
+from the time of Augustus. Julius Cæsar had scarcely time to be
+flattered. There is not, extant, any dedicatory epistle to Sulla,
+Marius, or Carbo, nor to their wives, or their mistresses. I can well
+believe that very bad verses were presented to Lucullus and Pompey; but,
+thank God, we do not have them.
+
+It is a great spectacle to behold Cicero equal in dignity to Cæsar,
+speaking before him as advocate for a king of Bithynia and Lesser
+Armenia, named Deiotarus, accused of laying ambuscades for him, and even
+designing to assassinate him. Cicero begins with acknowledging that he
+is disconcerted in his presence. He calls him the vanquisher of the
+world--"_victorem orbis terrarum_." He flatters him; but this adulation
+does not yet amount to baseness; some sense of shame still remains.
+
+But with Augustus there are no longer any bounds; the senate decrees his
+apotheosis during his lifetime. Under the succeeding emperors this
+flattery becomes the ordinary tribute, and is no longer anything more
+than a style. It is impossible to flatter any one, when the most
+extravagant adulation has become the ordinary currency.
+
+In Europe, we have had no great monuments of flattery before Louis XIV.
+His father, Louis XIII., had very little incense offered him. We find no
+mention of him, except in one or two of Malherbe's odes. There, indeed,
+according to custom, he is called "thou greatest of kings"--as the
+Spanish poets say to the king of Spain, and the English poets (laureate)
+to the king of England; but the better part of the poet's praises is
+bestowed on Cardinal Richelieu, whose soul is great and fearless; who
+practises so well the healing art of government, and who knows how to
+cure all our evils:
+
+     _Dont l'âme toute grande est une âme hardîe,_
+     _Qui pratique si bien l'art de nous secourir,_
+     _Que, pourvu qu'il soit cru, nous n'avons maladie,_
+     _Qu'il ne sache guérir._
+
+Upon Louis XIV. flattery came in a deluge. But he was not like the man
+said to have been smothered by the rose leaves heaped upon him; on the
+contrary, he thrived the more.
+
+Flattery, when it has some plausible pretext, may not be so pernicious
+as it has been thought; it sometimes encourages to great acts; but its
+excess is vicious, like the excess of satire. La Fontaine says, and
+pretends to say it after Æsop:
+
+     _On ne peut trop louer trois sortes de personnes;_
+     _Les dieux, sa maitresse, et son roi._
+     _Æsope le disait; j'y souscris quant à moi;_
+     _Ces sont maximes toujours bonnes._
+
+     Your flattery to three sorts of folks apply:--
+     You cannot say too civil things
+     To gods, to mistresses, and kings;
+     So honest Æsop said--and so say I.
+
+Honest Æsop said no such thing; nor do we find that he flattered any
+king, or any concubine. It must not be thought that kings are in reality
+flattered by all the flatteries that are heaped upon them; for the
+greater number never reach them.
+
+One common folly of orators is that of exhausting themselves in praising
+some prince who will never hear of their praises. But what is most
+lamentable of all is that Ovid should have praised Augustus even while
+he was dating "_de Ponto_."
+
+The perfection of the ridiculous might be found in the compliments which
+preachers address to kings, when they have the happiness of exhibiting
+before their majesties.--"To the reverend Father Gaillard, preacher to
+the king." Ah! most reverend father, do you preach only for the king?
+Are you like the monkey at the fair, which leaps "only for the king?"
+
+
+
+
+FORCE (PHYSICAL).
+
+
+What is "force?" Where does it reside? Whence does it come? Does it
+perish? Or is it ever the same?
+
+It has pleased us to denominate "force" that weight which one body
+exercises upon another. Here is a ball of two hundred pounds' weight on
+this floor; it presses the floor, you say, with a force of two hundred
+pounds. And this you call a "dead force." But are not these words
+"dead" and "force" a little contradictory? Might we not as well say
+"dead alive"--yes and no at once?
+
+This ball "weighs." Whence comes this "weight?" and is this weight a
+"force?" If the ball were not impeded, would it go directly to the
+centre of the earth? Whence has it this incomprehensible property?
+
+It is supported by my floor; and you freely give to my floor the "_vis
+inertiæ_"--"inertiæ" signifying "inactivity," "impotence." Now is it not
+singular that "impotence" should be denominated "force?"
+
+What is the living force which acts in your arm and your leg? What is
+the source of it? How can it be supposed that this force exists when you
+are dead? Does it go and take up its abode elsewhere, as a man goes to
+another house when his own is in ruins?
+
+How can it have been said that there is always the same force in nature?
+There must, then, have been always the same number of men, or of active
+beings equivalent to men. Why does a body in motion communicate its
+force to another body with which it comes in contact?
+
+These are questions which neither geometry, nor mechanics, nor
+metaphysics can answer. Would you arrive at the first principle of the
+force of bodies, and of motion, you must ascend to a still superior
+principle. Why is there "anything?"
+
+
+
+
+FORCE--STRENGTH.
+
+
+These words have been transplanted from simple to figurative speech.
+They are applied to all the parts of the body that are in motion, in
+action--the force of the heart, which some have made four hundred
+pounds, and some three ounces; the force of the viscera, the lungs, the
+voice; the force of the arm.
+
+The metaphor which has transported these words into morals has made them
+express a cardinal virtue. Strength, in this sense, is the courage to
+support adversity, and to undertake virtuous and difficult actions; it
+is the "_animi fortitudo_."
+
+The strength of the mind is penetration and depth--"_ingenii vis_."
+Nature gives it as she gives that of the body; moderate labor increases
+and excessive labor diminishes it.
+
+The force of an argument consists in a clear exposition of
+clearly-exhibited proofs, and a just conclusion; with mathematical
+theorems it has nothing to do; because the evidence of a demonstration
+can be made neither more nor less; only it may be arrived at by a longer
+or a shorter path--a simpler or more complicated method. It is in
+doubtful questions that the force of reasoning is truly applicable.
+
+The force of eloquence is not merely a train of just and vigorous
+reasoning, which is not incompatible with dryness; this force, requires
+floridity, striking images, and energetic expressions. Thus it has been
+said, that the sermons of Bourdaloue have force, those of Massillon
+more elegance. Verses may have strength, and want every other beauty.
+The strength of a line in our language consists principally in saying
+something in each hemistich.
+
+Strength in painting is the expression of the muscles, which, by feeling
+touches, are made to appear under the flesh that covers them. There is
+too much strength when the muscles are too strongly articulated. The
+attitudes of the combatants have great strength in the battles of
+Constantine, drawn by Raphael and Julio Romano; and in those of Cæsar,
+painted by Lebrun. Inordinate strength is harsh in painting and
+bombastic in poetry.
+
+Some philosophers have asserted that force is a property inherent in
+matter; that each invisible particle, or rather _monad_, is endowed with
+an active force; but it would be as difficult to demonstrate this
+assertion as it would be to prove that whiteness is a quality inherent
+in matter, as the Trévoux dictionary says in the article "Inherent."
+
+The strength of every animal has arrived at the highest when the animal
+has attained its full growth. It decreases when the muscles no longer
+receive the same quantity of nourishment: and this quantity ceases to be
+the same when the animal spirits no longer communicate to the muscles
+their accustomed motion. It is probable that the animal spirits are of
+fire, inasmuch as old men want motion and strength in proportion as they
+want warmth.
+
+
+
+
+FRANCHISE.
+
+
+A word which always gives an idea of liberty in whatever sense it is
+taken; a word derived from the Franks, who were always free. It is so
+ancient, that when the Cid besieged and took Toledo, in the eleventh
+century, franchies or franchises were given to all the French who went
+on this expedition, and who established themselves at Toledo. All walled
+cities had franchises, liberties, and privileges, even in the greatest
+anarchy of feudal power. In all countries possessing assemblies or
+states, the sovereign swore, on his accession, to guard their liberties.
+
+This name, which has been given generally to the rights of the people,
+to immunities, and to sanctuaries or asylums, has been more particularly
+applied to the quarters of the ambassadors of the court of Rome. It was
+a plot of ground around their palaces, which was larger or smaller
+according to the will of the ambassador. The ground was an asylum for
+criminals, who could not be there pursued. This franchise was
+restricted, under Innocent XI. to the inside of their palaces. Churches
+and convents had the same privileges in Italy, but not in other states.
+There are in Paris several places of sanctuary, in which debtors cannot
+be seized for their debts by common justice, and where mechanics can
+pursue their trades without being freemen. Mechanics have this privilege
+in the Faubourg St. Antoine, but it is not an asylum like the Temple.
+
+The word "franchise," which usually expresses the liberties of a nation,
+city, or person, is sometimes used to signify liberty of speech, of
+counsel, or of a law proceeding; but there is a great difference between
+speaking with frankness and speaking with liberty. In a speech to a
+superior, liberty is a studied or excessive boldness--frankness
+outstepping its just bounds. To speak with liberty is to speak without
+fear; to speak with frankness is to conduct yourself openly and nobly.
+To speak with too much liberty is to become audacious; to speak with too
+much frankness is to be too open-hearted.
+
+
+
+
+FRANCIS XAVIER.
+
+
+It would not be amiss to know something true concerning the celebrated
+Francis Xavero, whom we call Xavier, surnamed the Apostle of the Indies.
+Many people still imagine that he established Christianty along the
+whole southern coast of India, in a score of islands, and above all in
+Japan. But thirty years ago, even a doubt on the subject was hardly to
+be tolerated in Europe. The Jesuits have not hesitated to compare him to
+St. Paul. His travels and miracles had been written in part by
+Tursellinus and Orlandini, by Levena, and by Partoli, all Jesuits, but
+very little known in France; and the less people were acquainted with
+the details the greater was his reputation.
+
+When the Jesuit Bouhours composed his history, he (Bouhours) was
+considered as a man of very enlightened mind, and was living in the best
+company in Paris; I do not mean the company of Jesus, but that of men of
+the world the most distinguished for intellect and knowledge. No one
+wrote in a purer or more unaffected style; it was even proposed in the
+French Academy that it should trespass against the rules of its
+institution, by receiving Father Bouhours into its body. He had another
+great advantage in the influence of his order, which then, by an almost
+inconceivable illusion, governed all Catholic princes.
+
+Sound criticism was, it is true, beginning to rear its head; but its
+progress was slow: men were, in general, more anxious to write ably than
+to write what was true.
+
+Bouhours wrote the lives of St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier almost
+without encountering a single objection. Even his comparison of St.
+Ignatius to Cæsar, and Xavier to Alexander, passed without
+animadversion; it was tolerated as a flower of rhetoric.
+
+I have seen in the Jesuit's college, Rue St. Jacques, a picture twelve
+feet long and twelve high, representing Ignatius and Xavier ascending to
+heaven, each in a magnificent chariot drawn by four milk-white horses;
+and above, the Eternal Father, adorned with a fine white beard
+descending to His waist, with Jesus and the Virgin beside him; the Holy
+Ghost beneath them, in the form of a dove; and angels joining their
+hands, and bending down to receive Father Ignatius and Father Xavier.
+
+Had anyone publicly made a jest of this picture, the reverend Father La
+Chaise, confessor to the king, would infallibly have had the
+sacrilegious scoffer honored with a _lettre de cachet_.
+
+It cannot be denied that Francis Xavier is comparable to Alexander,
+inasmuch as they both went to India--so is Ignatius to Cæsar, both
+having been in Gaul. But Xavier, the vanquisher of the devil, went far
+beyond Alexander, the conqueror of Darius. How gratifying it is to see
+him going, in the capacity of a volunteer converter, from Spain into
+France, from France to Rome, from Rome to Lisbon, and from Lisbon to
+Mozambique, after making the tour of Africa. He stays a long time at
+Mozambique, where he receives from God the gift of prophecy: he then
+proceeds to Melinda, where he disputes on the Koran with the Mahometans,
+who doubtless understand his religion as well as he understands theirs,
+and where he even finds caciques, although they are to be found nowhere
+but in America. The Portuguese vessel arrives at the island of Zocotora,
+which is unquestionably that of the Amazons: there he converts all the
+islanders, and builds a church. Thence he reaches Goa, where he finds a
+pillar on which St. Thomas had engraved, that one day St. Xavier should
+come and re-establish the Christian religion, which had flourished of
+old in India. Xavier has no difficulty whatever in perusing the ancient
+characters, whether Indian or Hebrew, in which this prophecy is
+expressed. He forthwith takes up a hand-bell, assembles all the little
+boys around him, explains to them the creed, and baptizes them--but his
+great delight was to marry the Indians to their mistresses.
+
+From Goa he speeds to Cape Comorin, to the fishing coast, to the kingdom
+of Travancore. His greatest anxiety, on arriving in any country, is to
+quit it. He embarks in the first Portuguese ship he finds, whithersoever
+it is bound, it matters not to Xavier; provided only that he is
+travelling somewhere, he is content. He is received through charity, and
+returns two or three times to Goa, to Cochin, to Cori, to Negapatam, to
+Meliapour. A vessel is departing for Malacca, and Xavier accordingly
+takes his passage for Malacca, in great despair that he has not yet had
+an opportunity of seeing Siam, Pegu, and Tonquin. We find him in the
+island of Sumatra, at Borneo, at Macassar, in the Moluccas, and
+especially at Ternate and Amboyna. The king of Ternate had, in his
+immense seraglio, a hundred women in the capacity of wives, and seven or
+eight hundred in that of concubines. The first thing Xavier does is to
+turn them all out. Please to observe that the island of Ternate is two
+leagues across.
+
+Thence finding another Portugese vessel bound for Ceylon, he returns to
+Ceylon, where he makes various excursions to Goa and to Cochin. The
+Portuguese were already trading to Japan. A ship sails for that country:
+Xavier takes care to embark in it, and visits all the Japan islands. In
+short (says the Jesuit Bouhours), the whole length of Xavier's routes,
+joined together, would reach several times around the globe.
+
+Be it observed, that he set out on his travels in 1542, and died in
+1552. If he had time to learn the languages of all the nations he
+visited, it was no trifling miracle: if he had the gift of tongues, it
+was a greater miracle still. But unfortunately, in several of his
+letters, he says that he is obliged to employ an interpreter; and in
+others he acknowledges that he finds extreme difficulty in learning the
+Japanese language, which he cannot pronounce.
+
+The Jesuit Bouhours, in giving some of his letters, has no doubt that
+"St. Francis Xavier had the gift of tongues"; but he acknowledges that
+"he had it not always." "He had it," says he, "on several occasions;
+for, without having learned the Chinese tongue, he preached to the
+Chinese every morning at Amanguchi, which is the capital of a province
+in Japan."
+
+He must have been perfectly acquainted with all the languages of the
+East; for he made songs in them of the Paternoster, Ave-Maria, and
+Credo, for the instruction of the little boys and girls.
+
+But the best of all is, that this man, who had occasion for a dragoman,
+spoke every tongue at once, like the apostles; and when he spoke
+Portuguese, in which language Bouhours acknowledges that the saint
+explained himself very ill, the Indians, the Chinese, the Japanese, the
+inhabitants of Ceylon and of Sumatra, all understood him perfectly.
+
+One day in particular, when he was preaching on the immateriality of the
+soul, the motion of the planets, the eclipses of the sun and moon, the
+rainbow, sin and grace, paradise and purgatory, he made himself
+understood to twenty persons of different nations.
+
+Is it asked how such a man could make so many converts in Japan? The
+simple answer is that he did not make any; but other Jesuits, who staid
+a long time in the country, by favor of the treaties between the kings
+of Portugal and the emperors of Japan, converted so many people, that a
+civil war ensued, which is said to have cost the lives of nearly four
+hundred thousand men. This is the most noted prodigy that the
+missionaries have worked in Japan.
+
+But those of Francis Xavier are not without their merit. Among his host
+of miracles, we find no fewer than eight children raised from the dead.
+"Xavier's greatest miracle," says the Jesuit Bouhours, "was not his
+raising so many of the dead to life, but his not himself dying of
+fatigue."
+
+But the pleasantest of his miracles is, that having dropped his crucifix
+into the sea, near the island of Baranura, which I am inclined to think
+was the island of Barataria, a crab came, four-and-twenty hours after,
+bringing the cane between its claws.
+
+The most brilliant of all, and after which no other deserves to be
+related, is that in a storm which lasted three days, he was constantly
+in two ships, a hundred and fifty leagues apart, and served one of them
+as a pilot. The truth of this miracle was attested by all the
+passengers, who could neither deceive nor be deceived.
+
+Yet all this was written seriously and with success in the age of Louis
+XIV., in the age of the "Provincial Letters," of Racine's tragedies, of
+"Bayle's Dictionary," and of so many other learned works.
+
+It would appear to be a sort of miracle that a man of sense, like
+Bouhours, should have committed such a mass of extravagance to the
+press, if we did not know to what excesses men can be carried by the
+corporate spirit in general, and the monachal spirit in particular. We
+have more than two hundred volumes entirely in this taste, compiled by
+monks; but what is most to be lamented is, that the enemies of the monks
+also compile. They compile more agreeably, and are read. It is most
+deplorable that, in nineteen-twentieths of Europe, there is no longer
+that profound respect and just veneration for the monks which is still
+felt for them in some of the villages of Aragon and Calabria.
+
+The miracles of St. Francis Xavier, the achievements of Don Quixote,
+the Comic Romance, and the convulsionaries of St. Medard, have an equal
+claim on our admiration and reverence.
+
+After speaking of Francis Xavier it would be useless to discuss the
+history of the other Francises. If you would be instructed thoroughly,
+consult the conformities of St. Francis of Assisi.
+
+Since the fine history of St. Francis Xavier by the Jesuit Bouhours, we
+have had the history of St. Francis Régis by the Jesuit Daubenton,
+confessor to Philip V. of Spain: but this is small-beer after brandy. In
+the history of the blessed Régis, there is not even a single
+resuscitation.
+
+
+
+
+FRANKS--FRANCE--FRENCH
+
+
+Italy has always preserved its name, notwithstanding the pretended
+establishment of Æneas, which should have left some traces of the
+language, characters, and manners of Phrygia, if he ever came with
+Achates and so many others, into the province of Rome, then almost a
+desert. The Goths, Lombards, Franks, Allemani or Germans, who have by
+turns invaded Italy, have at least left it its name.
+
+The Tyrians, Africans, Romans, Vandals, Visigoths, and Saracens, have,
+one after the other, been masters of Spain, yet the name of Spain
+exists. Germany has also always preserved its own name; it has merely
+joined that of Allemagne to it, which appellation it did not receive
+from any conqueror.
+
+The Gauls are almost the only people in the west who have lost their
+name. This name was originally Walch or Welsh; the Romans always
+substituted a G for the W, which is barbarous: of "Welsh" they made
+Galli, Gallia. They distinguished the Celtic, the Belgic, and the
+Aquitanic Gaul, each of which spoke a different jargon.
+
+Who were, and whence came these Franks, who in such small numbers and
+little time possessed themselves of all the Gauls, which in ten years
+Cæsar could not entirely reduce? I am reading an author who commences by
+these words: "The Franks from whom we descend." ... Ha! my friend, who
+has told you that you descend in a right line from a Frank? Clovodic,
+whom we call Clovis, probably had not more than twenty thousand men,
+badly clothed and armed, when he subjugated about eight or ten millions
+of Welsh or Gauls, held in servitude by three or four Roman legions. We
+have not a single family in France which can furnish, I do not say the
+least proof, but the least probability, that it had its origin from a
+Frank.
+
+When the pirates of the Baltic Sea came, to the number of seven or eight
+thousand, to give Normandy in fief, and Brittany in _arrière fief_, did
+they, leave any archives by which it may be seen whether they were the
+fathers of all the Normans of the present day?
+
+It has been a long time believed that the Franks came from the Trojans.
+Ammianus Marcellinus, who lived in the fourth century, says: "According
+to several ancient writers, troops of fugitive Trojans established
+themselves on the borders of the Rhine, then a desert." As to Æneas, he
+might easily have sought an asylum at the extremity of the
+Mediterranean, but Francus, the son of Hector, had too far to travel to
+go towards Düsseldorf, Worms, Solm, Ehrenbreitstein.
+
+Fredegarius doubts not that the Franks at first retired into Macedonia,
+and carried arms under Alexander, after having fought under Priam; on
+which alleged facts the monk Otfried compliments the emperor, Louis the
+German.
+
+The geographer of Ravenna, less fabulous, assigns the first habitation
+of the horde of Franks among the Cimbrians, beyond the Elbe, towards the
+Baltic Sea. These Franks might well be some remains of these barbarian
+Cimbri defeated by Marius; and the learned Leibnitz is of this opinion.
+
+It is very certain that, in the time of Constantine, beyond the Rhine,
+there were hordes of Franks or Sicambri, who lived by pillage. They
+assembled under bandit captains, chiefs whom historians have had the
+folly to call kings. Constantine himself pursued them to their haunts,
+caused several to be hanged, and others to be delivered to wild beasts,
+in the amphitheatre of Trier, for his amusement. Two of their pretended
+kings perished in this manner, at which the panegyrists of Constantine
+are in ecstasies.
+
+The Salic law, written, it is said, by these barbarians, is one of the
+absurd chimeras with which we have always been pestered. It would be
+very strange if the Franks had written such a considerable code in their
+marshes, and the French had not any written usages until the close of
+the reign of Charles VII. It might as well be said that the Algonquins
+and Chicachas had written laws. Men are never governed by authentic
+laws, consigned to public records, until they have been assembled into
+cities, and have a regular police, archives, and all that characterizes
+a civilized nation. When you find a code in a nation which was barbarous
+at the time it was written, who lived upon rapine and pillage, and which
+had not a walled town, you may be sure that this code is a pretended
+one, which has been made in much later times. Fallacies and suppositions
+never obliterate this truth from the minds of the wise.
+
+What is more ridiculous still, this Salic law has been given to us in
+Latin; as if savages, wandering beyond the Rhine, had learnt the Latin
+language. It is supposed to have been first digested by Clovis, and it
+ran thus: "While the illustrious nation of the Franks was still
+considered barbarous, the heads of this nation dictated the Salic law.
+They chose among themselves four chiefs, Visogast, Bodogast, Sologast,
+Vindogast"--taking, according to La Fontaine's fable, the names of
+places for those of men:
+
+     _Notre magot prit pour ce coup_
+     _Le nom d'un port pour un nom d'homme._
+
+These names are those of some Frank cantons in the province of Worms.
+Whatever may be the epoch in which the customs denominated the Salic law
+were constructed on an ancient tradition, it is very clear that the
+Franks were not great legislators.
+
+What is the original meaning of the word "Frank?" That is a question of
+which we know nothing, and which above a hundred authors have endeavored
+to find out. What is the meaning of Hun, Alan, Goth, Welsh, Picard? And
+what do these words signify?
+
+Were the armies of Clovis all composed of Franks? It does not appear so.
+Childeric the Frank had made inroads as far as Tournay. It is said that
+Clovis was the son of Childeric, and Queen Bazine, the wife of King
+Bazin. Now Bazin and Bazine are assuredly not German names, and we have
+never seen the least proof that Clovis was their son. All the German
+cantons elected their chiefs, and the province of Franks had no doubt
+elected Clovis as they had done his father. He made his expedition
+against the Gauls, as all the other barbarians had undertaken theirs
+against the Roman Empire.
+
+Do you really and truly believe that the Herulian Odo, surnamed Acer by
+the Romans, and known to us by the name of Odoacer, had only Herulians
+in his train, and that Genseric conducted Vandals alone into Africa? All
+the wretches without talent or profession, who have nothing to lose, do
+they not always join the first captain of robbers who raises the
+standard of destruction?
+
+As soon as Clovis had the least success, his troops were no doubt joined
+by all the Belgians who panted for booty; and this army is nevertheless
+called the army of Franks. The expedition is very easy. The Visigoths
+had already invaded one-third of Gaul, and the Burgundians another. The
+rest submitted to Clovis. The Franks divided the land of the vanquished,
+and the Welsh cultivated it.
+
+The word "Frank" originally signified a free possessor, while the others
+were slaves. Hence come the words "franchise," and "to enfranchise"--"I
+make you a Frank," "I render you a free man." Hence, _francalenus_,
+holding freely; _frank aleu_, _frank dad_, _frank chamen_, and so many
+other terms half Latin and half barbarian, which have so long composed
+the miserable patois spoken in France.
+
+Hence, also, a franc in gold or silver to express the money of the king
+of the Franks, which did not appear until a long time after, but which
+reminds us of the origin of the monarchy. We still say twenty francs,
+twenty livres, which signifies nothing in itself; it gives no idea of
+the weight or value of the money, being only a vague expression, by
+which ignorant people have been continually deceived, not knowing really
+how much they receive or how much they pay.
+
+Charlemagne did not consider himself as a Frank; he was born in
+Austrasia, and spoke the German language. He was of the family of
+Arnold, bishop of Metz, preceptor to Dagobert. Now it is not probable
+that a man chosen for a preceptor was a Frank. He made the greatest
+glory of the most profound ignorance, and was acquainted only with the
+profession of arms. But what gives most weight to the opinion that
+Charlemagne regarded the Franks as strangers to him is the fourth
+article of one of his capitularies on his farms. "If the Franks," said
+he, "commit any ravages on our possessions, let them be judged according
+to their laws."
+
+The Carlovingian race always passed for German: Pope Adrian IV., in his
+letter to the archbishops of Mentz, Cologne, and Trier, expresses
+himself in these remarkable terms: "The emperor was transferred from the
+Greeks to the Germans. Their king was not emperor until after he had
+been crowned by the pope.... all that the emperor possessed he held from
+us. And as Zacharius gave the Greek Empire to the Germans, we can give
+that of the Germans to the Greeks."
+
+However, France having been divided into eastern and western, and the
+eastern being Austrasia, this name of France prevailed so far, that even
+in the time of the Saxon emperors, the court of Constantinople always
+called them pretended Frank emperors, as may be seen in the letters of
+Bishop Luitgrand, sent from Rome to Constantinople.
+
+_Of the French Nation._
+
+When the Franks established themselves in the country of the first
+Welsh, which the Romans called Gallia, the nation was composed of
+ancient Celts or Gauls, subjugated by Cæsar, Roman families who were
+established there, Germans who had already emigrated there, and finally
+of the Franks, who had rendered themselves masters of the country under
+their chief Clovis. While the monarchy existed, which united Gaul and
+Germany, all the people, from the source of the Weser to the seas of
+Gaul, bore the name of Franks. But when at the congress of Verdun, in
+843, under Charles the Bald, Germany and Gaul were separated, the name
+of Franks remained to the people of western France, which alone retained
+the name of France.
+
+The name of French was scarcely known until towards the tenth century.
+The foundation of the nation is of Gallic families, and traces of the
+character of the ancient Gauls have always existed.
+
+Indeed, every people has its character, as well as every man; and this
+character is generally formed of all the resemblances caused by nature
+and custom among the inhabitants of the varieties which distinguish
+them. Thus French character, genius, and wit, result from that which has
+been common to the different provinces in the kingdom. The people of
+Guienne and those of Normandy differ much; there is, however, found in
+them the French genius, which forms a nation of these different
+provinces, and distinguishes them from the Indians and Germans. Climate
+and soil evidently imprint unchangeable marks on men, as well as on
+animals and plants. Those which depend on government, religion, and
+education are different. That is the knot which explains how people have
+lost one part of their ancient character and preserved the other. A
+people who formerly conquered half the world are no longer recognized
+under sacerdotal government, but the seeds of their ancient greatness of
+soul still exist, though hidden beneath weakness.
+
+In the same manner the barbarous government of the Turks has enervated
+the Egyptians and the Greeks, without having been able to destroy the
+original character or temper of their minds.
+
+The present character of the French is the same as Cæsar ascribed to the
+Gauls--prompt to resolve, ardent to combat, impetuous in attack, and
+easily discouraged. Cæsar, Agatius, and others say, that of all the
+barbarians the Gauls were the most polished. They are still in the most
+civilized times the model of politeness to all their neighbors, though
+they occasionally discover the remains of their levity, petulance, and
+barbarity.
+
+The inhabitants of the coasts of France were always good seamen; the
+people of Guienne always compose the best infantry; "those who inhabit
+the provinces of Blois and Tours are not," says Tasso, "robust and
+indefatigable, but bland and gentle, like the land which they inhabit."
+
+     _.... Gente robusta, e faticosa,_
+     _La terra molle, e lieta, e dilettosa_
+     _Simili a se gli abitator, produce._
+
+But how can we reconcile the character of the Parisians of our day with
+that which the Emperor Julian, the first of princes and men after Marcus
+Aurelius, gave to the Parisians of his time?--"I love this people," says
+he in his "_Misopogon_," "because they are serious and severe like
+myself." This seriousness, which seems at present banished from an
+immense city become the centre of pleasure, then reigned in a little
+town destitute of amusements: in this respect the spirit of the
+Parisians has changed notwithstanding the climate.
+
+The affluence, opulence, and idleness of the people who may occupy
+themselves with pleasures and the arts, and not with the government,
+have given a new turn of mind to a whole nation.
+
+Further, how is it to be explained by what degrees this people have
+passed from the fierceness which characterized them in the time of King
+John, Charles VI., Charles IX., Henry III., and Henry IV., to the soft
+facility of manners for which they are now the admiration of Europe? It
+is that the storms of government and religion forced constitutional
+vivacity into paroxysms of faction and fanaticism; and that this same
+vivacity, which always will exist, has at present no object but the
+pleasures of society. The Parisian is impetuous in his pleasures as he
+formerly was in his fierceness. The original character which is caused
+by the climate is always the same. If at present he cultivates the
+arts, of which he was so long deprived, it is not that he has another
+mind, since he has not other organs; but it is that he has more relief,
+and this relief has not been created by himself, as by the Greeks and
+Florentines, among whom the arts flourished like the natural fruits of
+their soil. The Frenchman has only received them, but having happily
+cultivated and adopted these exotics, he has almost perfected them.
+
+The French government was originally that of all the northern
+nations--of all those whose policy was regulated in general assemblies
+of the nation. Kings were the chief of these assemblies; and this was
+almost the only administration of the French in the first two
+generations, before Charles the Simple.
+
+When the monarchy was dismembered, in the decline of the Carlovingian
+race, when the kingdom of Aries arose, and the provinces were occupied
+by vassals little dependent on the crown, the name of French was more
+restricted. Under Hugh Capet, Henry, and Philip, the people on this side
+the Loire only, were called French. There was then seen a great
+diversity of manners and of laws in the provinces held from the crown of
+France. The particular lords who became the masters of these provinces
+introduced new customs into their new states. A Breton and a Fleming
+have at present some conformity, notwithstanding the difference of
+their character, which they hold from the sun and the climate, but
+originally there was not the least similitude between them.
+
+It is only since the time of Francis I. that there has been any
+uniformity in manners and customs. The court, at this time, first began
+to serve for a model to the United Provinces; but in general,
+impetuosity in war, and a lax discipline, always formed the predominant
+character of the nation.
+
+Gallantry and politeness began to distinguish the French under Francis
+I. Manners became odious after the death of Francis II. However, in the
+midst of their horrors, there was always a politeness at court which the
+Germans and English endeavored to imitate. The rest of Europe, in aiming
+to resemble the French, were already jealous of them. A character in one
+of Shakespeare's comedies says that it is difficult to be polite without
+having been at the court of France.
+
+Though the nation has been taxed with frivolity by Cæsar, and by all
+neighboring nations, yet this kingdom, so long dismembered, and so often
+ready to sink, is united and sustained principally by the wisdom of its
+negotiations, address, and patience; but above all, by the divisions of
+Germany and England. Brittany alone has been united to the kingdom by a
+marriage; Burgundy by right of fee, and by the ability of Louis XI.;
+Dauphiny by a donation, which was the fruit of policy; the county of
+Toulouse by a grant, maintained by an army; Provence by money. One
+treaty of peace has given Alsace, another Lorraine. The English have
+been driven from France, notwithstanding the most signal victories,
+because the kings of France have known how to temporize, and profit on
+all favorable occasions;--all which proves, that if the French youth are
+frivolous, the men of riper age, who govern it, have always been wise.
+Even at present the magistracy are severe in manners, as in the time of
+the Emperor Julian. If the first successes in Italy, in the time of
+Charles VIII., were owing to the warlike impetuosity of the nation, the
+disgraces which followed them were caused by the blindness of a court
+which was composed of young men alone. Francis I. was only unfortunate
+in his youth, when all was governed by favorites of his own age, and he
+rendered his kingdom more flourishing at a more advanced age.
+
+The French have always used the same arms as their neighbors, and have
+nearly the same discipline in war, but were the first who discarded the
+lance and pike. The battle of Ivry discouraged the use of lances, which
+were soon abolished, and under Louis XIV. pikes were also discontinued.
+They wore tunics and robes until the sixteenth century. Under Louis the
+Young they left off the custom of letting the beards grow, and retook to
+it under Francis I. Only under Louis XIV. did they begin to shave the
+entire face. Their dress is continually changing, and at the end of each
+century the French might take the portraits of their grandfathers for
+those of foreigners.
+
+
+
+
+FRAUD.
+
+_Whether pious Frauds should be practised upon the People._
+
+Once upon a time the fakir Bambabef met one of the disciples of
+Confutzee (whom we call Confucius), and this disciple was named Whang.
+Bambabef maintained that the people require to be deceived, and Whang
+asserted that we should never deceive any one. Here is a sketch of their
+dispute:
+
+BAMBABEF.--We must imitate the Supreme Being, who does not show us
+things as they are. He makes us see the sun with a diameter of two or
+three feet, although it is a million of times larger than the earth. He
+makes us see the moon and the stars affixed to one and the same blue
+surface, while they are at different elevations; he chooses that a
+square tower should appear round to us at a distance; he chooses that
+fire should appear to us to be hot, although it is neither hot nor cold;
+in short, he surrounds us with errors, suitable to our nature.
+
+WHANG.--What you call error is not so. The sun, such as it is, placed at
+millions of millions of lis from our globe, is not that which we see,
+that which we really perceive: we perceive only the sun which is painted
+on our retina, at a determinate angle. Our eyes were not given us to
+know sizes and distances: to know these, other aids and other
+operations are necessary.
+
+Bambabef seemed much astonished at this position. Whang, being very
+patient, explained to him the theory of optics; and Bambabef, having
+some conception, was convinced by the demonstrations of the disciple of
+Confucius. He then resumed in these terms:
+
+BAMBABEF.--If God does not, as I thought, deceive us by the ministry of
+our senses, you will at least acknowledge that our physicians are
+constantly deceiving children for their good. They tell them that they
+are giving them sugar, when in reality they are giving them rhubarb. I,
+a fakir, may then deceive the people, who are as ignorant as children.
+
+WHANG.--I have two sons; I have never deceived them. When they have been
+sick, I have said to them: "Here is a nauseous medicine; you must have
+the courage to take it; if it were pleasant, it would injure you." I
+have never suffered their nurses and tutors to make them afraid of
+ghosts, goblins, and witches. I have thereby made them wise and
+courageous citizens.
+
+BAMBABEF.--The people are not born so happily as your family.
+
+WHANG.--Men all nearly resemble one another; they are born with the same
+dispositions. Their nature ought not to be corrupted.
+
+BAMBABEF.--We teach them errors, I own; but it is for their good. We
+make them believe that if they do not buy our blessed nails, if they do
+not expiate their sins by giving us money, they will, in another life,
+become post-horses, dogs, or lizards. This intimidates them, and they
+become good people.
+
+WHANG.--Do you not see that you are perverting these poor folks? There
+are among them many more than you think there are who reason, who make a
+jest of your miracles and your superstitions; who see very clearly that
+they will not be turned into lizards, nor into post-horses. What is the
+consequence? They have good sense enough to perceive that you talk to
+them very impertinently; but they have not enough to elevate themselves
+to a religion pure and untrammelled by superstition like ours. Their
+passions make them think there is no religion, because the only one that
+is taught them is ridiculous: thus you become guilty of all the vices
+into which they plunge.
+
+BAMBABEF.--Not at all, for we teach them none but good morals.
+
+WHANG.--The people would stone you if you taught impure morals. Men are
+so constituted that they like very well to do evil, but they will not
+have it preached to them. But a wise morality should not be mixed up
+with absurd fables: for by these impostures, which you might do without,
+you weaken that morality which you are forced to teach.
+
+BAMBABEF.--What! do you think that truth can be taught to the people
+without the aid of fables?
+
+WHANG.--I firmly believe it. Our literati are made of the same stuff as
+our tailors, our weavers, and our laborers. They worship a creating,
+rewarding, and avenging God. They do not sully their worship by absurd
+systems, nor by extravagant ceremonies. There are much fewer crimes
+among the lettered than among the people; why should we not condescend
+to instruct our working classes as we do our literati?
+
+BAMBABEF.--That would be great folly; as well might you wish them to
+have the same politeness, or to be all jurisconsults. It is neither
+possible nor desirable. There must be white bread for the master, and
+brown for the servant.
+
+WHANG.--I own that men should not all have the same science; but there
+are things necessary to all. It is necessary that each one should be
+just; and the surest way of inspiring all men with justice is to inspire
+them with religion without superstition.
+
+BAMBABEF.--That is a fine project, but it is impracticable. Do you think
+it is sufficient for men to believe in a being that rewards and
+punishes? You have told me that the more acute among the people often
+revolt against fables. They will, in like manner, revolt against truth.
+They will say: Who shall assure me that God rewards and punishes? Where
+is the proof? What mission have you? What miracle have you worked that I
+should believe in you? They will laugh at you much more than at me.
+
+WHANG.--Your error is this: You imagine that men will spurn an idea that
+is honest, likely, and useful to every one; an idea which accords with
+human reason, because they reject things which are dishonest, absurd,
+useless, dangerous, and shocking to good sense.
+
+The people are much disposed to believe their magistrates; and when
+their magistrates propose to them only a rational belief, they embrace
+it willingly. There is no need of prodigies to believe in a just God,
+who reads the heart of man: this is an idea too natural, too necessary,
+to be combated. It is not necessary to know precisely how God rewards
+and punishes: to believe in His justice is enough. I assure you that I
+have seen whole towns with scarcely any other tenet; and that in them I
+have seen the most virtue.
+
+BAMBABEF.--Take heed what you say. You will find philosophers in these
+times, who will deny both pains and rewards.
+
+WHANG.--But you will acknowledge that these philosophers will much more
+strongly deny your inventions; so you will gain nothing by that.
+Supposing that there are philosophers who do not agree with my
+principles, they are not the less honest men; they do not the less
+cultivate virtue, which should be embraced through love, and not through
+fear. Moreover, I maintain that no philosopher can ever be assured that
+Providence does not reserve pains for the wicked, and rewards for the
+good. For, if they ask me who has told me that God punishes, I shall ask
+them who has told them that God does not punish. In short, I maintain
+that the philosophers, far from contradicting, will aid me. Will you be
+a philosopher?
+
+BAMBABEF.--With all my heart. But do not tell the fakirs. And let us,
+above all, remember that if a philosopher would be of service to human
+society, he must announce a God.
+
+
+
+
+FREE-WILL.
+
+
+From the commencement of the time in which men began to reason,
+philosophers have agitated this question, which theologians have
+rendered unintelligible by their absurd subtleties upon grace. Locke is
+perhaps the first who, without having the arrogance of announcing a
+general principle, has examined human nature by analysis. It has been
+disputed for three thousand years, whether the will is free or not;
+Locke shows that the question is absurd, and that liberty cannot belong
+to the will any more than color and motion.
+
+What is meant by the expression to be free? It signifies power, or
+rather it has no sense at all. To say that the will _can_, is in itself
+as ridiculous as if we said that it is yellow, or blue, round, or
+square.
+
+Will is will, and liberty is power. Let us gradually examine the chain
+of what passes within us, without confusing our minds with any
+scholastic terms, or antecedent principle.
+
+It is proposed to you to ride on horseback; it is absolutely necessary
+for you to make a choice, for it is very clear that you must either go
+or not; there is no medium, you must absolutely do the one or the other.
+So far it is demonstrated that the will is not free. You will get on
+horseback; why? Because I will to do so, an ignoramus will say. This
+reply is an absurdity; nothing can be done without reason or cause. Your
+will then is caused by what? The agreeable idea which is presented to
+your brain; the predominant, or determined idea; but, you will say,
+cannot I resist an idea which predominates over me? No, for what would
+be the cause of your resistance? An idea by which your will is swayed
+still more despotically.
+
+You receive your ideas, and, therefore, receive your will. You will then
+necessarily; consequently, the word "liberty" belongs not to will in any
+sense.
+
+You ask me how thought and will are formed within you? I answer that I
+know nothing about it. I no more know how ideas are created than I know
+how the world was formed. We are only allowed to grope in the dark in
+reference to all that inspires our incomprehensible machine.
+
+Will, then, is not a faculty which can be called free. "Free-will" is a
+word absolutely devoid of sense, and that which scholars have called
+"indifference," that is to say, will without cause, is a chimera
+unworthy to be combated.
+
+In what then consists liberty? In the power of doing what we will? I
+would go into my cabinet; the door is open, I am free to enter. But, say
+you, if the door is shut and I remain where I am, I remain freely. Let
+us explain ourselves--you then exercise the power that you possess of
+remaining; you possess this power, but not the power of going out.
+
+Liberty, then, on which so many volumes have been written, reduced to
+its proper sense, is only the power of acting.
+
+In what sense must the expression "this man is free" be spoken? In the
+same sense in which we use the words "health," "strength," and
+"happiness." Man is not always strong, healthy, or happy. A great
+passion, a great obstacle, may deprive him of his liberty, or power of
+action.
+
+The words "liberty" and "free-will" are, then, abstractions, general
+terms, like beauty, goodness, justice. These terms do not signify that
+all men are always handsome, good, and just, neither are they always
+free.
+
+Further, liberty being only the power of acting, what is this power? It
+is the effect of the constitution, and the actual state of our organs.
+Leibnitz would solve a problem of geometry, but falls into an apoplexy;
+he certainly has not the liberty to solve his problem. A vigorous young
+man, passionately in love, who holds his willing mistress in his arms,
+is he free to subdue his passion? Doubtless not. He has the power of
+enjoying, and has not the power to abstain. Locke then is very right in
+calling liberty, power. When can this young man abstain, notwithstanding
+the violence of his passion? When a stronger idea shall determine the
+springs of his soul and body to the contrary.
+
+But how? Have other animals the same liberty, the same power? Why not?
+They have sense, memory, sentiment, and perceptions like ourselves; they
+act spontaneously as we do. They must, also, like us, have the power of
+acting by virtue of their perception, and of the play of their organs.
+
+We exclaim: If it be thus, all things are machines merely; everything in
+the universe is subjected to the eternal laws. Well, would you have
+everything rendered subject to a million of blind caprices? Either all
+is the consequence of the nature of things, or all is the effect of the
+eternal order of an absolute master; in both cases, we are only wheels
+to the machine of the world.
+
+It is a foolish, common-place expression that without this pretended
+freedom of will, rewards and punishments are useless. Reason, and you
+will conclude quite the contrary.
+
+If, when a robber is executed, his accomplice, who sees him suffer, has
+the liberty of not being frightened at the punishment; if his will
+determines of itself, he will go from the foot of the scaffold to
+assassinate on the high road; if struck with horror, he experiences an
+insurmountable terror, he will no longer thieve. The punishment of his
+companion will become useful to him, and moreover prove to society that
+his will is not free.
+
+Liberty, then, is not and cannot be anything but the power of doing what
+we will. That is what philosophy teaches us. But, if we consider liberty
+in the theological sense, it is so sublime a matter that profane eyes
+may not be raised so high.
+
+
+
+
+FRENCH LANGUAGE.
+
+
+The French language did not begin to assume a regular form until the
+tenth century; it sprang from the remains of the Latin and the Celtic,
+mixed with a few Teutonic words. This language was, in the first
+instance, the provincial Roman, and the Teutonic was the language of the
+courts, until the time of Charles the Bald. The Teutonic remained the
+only language in Germany, after the grand epoch of the division in 433.
+The rustic Roman prevailed in Western France; the inhabitants of the
+Pays de Vaud, of the Valois, of the valley of Engadine, and some other
+cantons, still preserve some manifest vestiges of this idiom.
+
+At the commencement of the eleventh century, French began to be written;
+but this French retained more of Romance or rustic Roman than of the
+language of the present day. The romance of Philomena, written in the
+tenth century, is not very different in language from that of the laws
+of the Normans. We cannot yet trace the original Celtic, Latin, and
+German. The words which signify the members of the human body, or
+things in daily use, which have no relation to the Latin or German, are
+of ancient Gallic or Celtic, as _tête_, _jambe_, _sabre_, _point_,
+_alter_, _parler_, _écouter_, _regarder_, _crier_, _cotume_, _ensemble_,
+and many more of the same kind. The greater number of the warlike
+phrases were French or German, as _marche, halte, maréchal, bivouac,
+lansquenet_. Almost, all the rest are Latin, and the Latin words have
+been all abridged, according to the usage and genius of the nations of
+the north.
+
+In the twelfth century, some terms were borrowed from the philosophy of
+Aristotle; and toward the sixteenth century, Greek names were found for
+the parts of the human body, and for its maladies and their remedies.
+Although the language was then enriched with Greek, and aided from the
+time of Charles VIII. with considerable accessions from the Italian,
+already arrived at perfection, it did not acquire a regular form.
+Francis I. abolished the custom of pleading and of judging in Latin,
+which proved the barbarism of a language which could not be used in
+public proceedings--a pernicious custom to the natives, whose fortunes
+were regulated in a language which they could not understand. It then
+became necessary to cultivate the French, but the language was neither
+noble nor regular, and its syntax was altogether capricious. The genius
+of its conversation being turned towards pleasantry, the language became
+fertile in smart and lively expressions, but exceedingly barren in
+dignified and harmonious phrases; whence it arises that in the
+dictionaries of rhymes, twenty suitable words are found for comic poetry
+for one of poetry of a more elevated nature. This was the cause that
+Marot never succeeded in the serious style, and that Amyot was unable to
+give a version of the elegant simplicity of Plutarch.
+
+The French tongue acquired strength from the pen of Montaigne, but still
+wanted elevation and harmony. Ronsard injured the language by
+introducing into French poetry the Greek compounds, derivable from the
+physicians. Malherbe partly repaired the fault of Ronsard. It became
+more lofty and harmonious by the establishment of the French Academy,
+and finally in the age of Louis XIV. acquired the perfection by which it
+is now distinguished.
+
+The genius of the French language--for every language has its genius--is
+clearness and order. This genius consists in the facility which a
+language possesses of expressing itself more or less happily, and of
+employing or rejecting the familiar terms of other languages. The French
+tongue having no declensions, and being aided by articles, cannot adopt
+the inversions of the Greek and the Latin; the words are necessarily
+arranged agreeably to the course of the ideas. We can only say in one
+way, "_Plancus a pris soin des affaires de Cæsar_"; but this phrase in
+Latin, "_Res Cæsaris, Plancus diligenter curavit_" may be arranged in a
+hundred and twenty different forms without injuring the sense or rules
+of the language. The auxiliary verbs, which lengthen and weaken phrases
+in the modern tongues, render that of France still less adapted to the
+lapidary style. Its auxiliary verbs, its pronouns, its articles, its
+deficiency of declinable participles, and, lastly, its uniformity of
+position, preclude the exhibition of much enthusiasm in poetry; it
+possesses fewer capabilities of this nature than the Italian and the
+English; but this constraint and slavery render it more proper for
+tragedy and comedy than any language in Europe. The natural order in
+which the French people are obliged to express their thoughts and
+construct their phrases, infuses into their speech a facility and
+amenity which please everybody; and the genius of the nation suiting
+with the genius of the language, has produced a greater number of books
+agreeably written than are to be found among any other people.
+
+Social freedom and politeness having been for a long time established in
+France, the language has acquired a delicacy of expression, and a
+natural refinement which are seldom to be found out of it. This
+refinement has occasionally been carried too far; but men of taste have
+always known how to reduce it within due bounds.
+
+Many persons have maintained that the French language has been
+impoverished since the days of Montaigne and Amyot, because expressions
+abound in these authors which are no longer employed; but these are for
+the most part terms for which equivalents have been found. It has been
+enriched with a number of noble and energetic expressions, and, without
+adverting to the eloquence of matter, has certainly that of speech. It
+was during the reign of Louis XIV., as already observed, that the
+language was fixed. Whatever changes time and caprice may have in store,
+the good authors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries will always
+serve for models.
+
+Circumstances created no right to expect that France would be
+distinguished in philosophy. A Gothic government extinguished all kind
+of illumination during more than twelve centuries; and professors of
+error, paid for brutalizing human nature, more increased the darkness.
+Nevertheless, there is more philosophy in Paris than in any town on
+earth, and possibly than in all the towns put together, excepting
+London. The spirit of reason has even penetrated into the provinces. In
+a word, the French genius is probably at present equal to that of
+England in philosophy; while for the last four-score years France has
+been superior to all other nations in literature; and has undeniably
+taken the lead in the courtesies of society, and in that easy and
+natural politeness, which is improperly termed urbanity.
+
+
+
+
+FRIENDSHIP.
+
+The temple of friendship has long been known by name, but it is well
+known that it has been very little frequented; as the following verses
+pleasantly observe, Orestes, Pylades, Pirithous, Achates, and the tender
+Nisus, were all genuine friends and great heroes; but, alas, existent
+only in fable:
+
+     _En vieux langage on voit sur la façade,_
+     _Les noms sacrés d'Oreste et de Pylade;_
+     _Le médaillon du bon Pirithous,_
+     _Du sage Achate et du tendre Nisus;_
+     _Tous grands héros, tous amis véritables;_
+     _Ces noms sont beaux; mais ils sont dans les fables._
+
+Friendship commands more than love and esteem. Love your neighbor
+signifies assist your neighbor, but not--enjoy his conversation with
+pleasure, if he be tiresome; confide to him your secrets, if he be a
+tattler; or lend him your money, if he be a spendthrift.
+
+Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to
+divorce. It is a tacit contract between two sensible and virtuous
+persons. I say sensible, for a monk or a hermit cannot be so, who lives
+without knowing friendship. I say virtuous, for the wicked only have
+accomplices--the voluptuous, companions--the interested, associates;
+politicians assemble factions--the generality of idle men have
+connections--princes, courtiers. Virtuous men alone possess friends.
+
+Cethegus was the accomplice of Catiline, and Mæcenas the courtier of
+Octavius; but Cicero was the friend of Atticus.
+
+What is caused by this contract between two tender, honest minds? Its
+obligations are stronger or weaker according to the degrees of
+sensibility, and the number of services rendered.
+
+The enthusiasm of friendship has been stronger among the Greeks and
+Arabs than among us. The tales that these people have imagined on the
+subject of friendship are admirable; we have none to compare to them. We
+are rather dry and reserved--in everything. I see no great trait of
+friendship in our histories, romances, or theatre.
+
+The only friendship spoken of among the Jews, was that which existed
+between Jonathan and David. It is said that David loved him with a love
+stronger than that of women; but it is also said that David, after the
+death of his friend, dispossessed Mephibosheth, his son, and caused him
+to be put to death.
+
+Friendship was a point of religion and legislation among the Greeks. The
+Thebans had a regiment of lovers--a fine regiment; some have taken it
+for a regiment of nonconformists. They are deceived; it is taking a
+shameful accident for a noble principle. Friendship, among the Greeks,
+was prescribed by the laws and religion. Manners countenanced abuses,
+but the laws did not.
+
+
+
+
+FRIVOLITY.
+
+
+What persuades me still more of the existence of Providence, said the
+profound author of "_Bacha Billeboquet_," is that to console us for our
+innumerable miseries, nature has made us frivolous. We are sometimes
+ruminating oxen, overcome by the weight of our yoke; sometimes
+dispersed doves, tremblingly endeavoring to avoid the claws of the
+vulture, stained with the blood of our companions; foxes, pursued by
+dogs; and tigers, who devour one another. Then we suddenly become
+butterflies; and forget, in our volatile winnowings, all the horrors
+that we have experienced.
+
+If we were not frivolous, what man without shuddering, could live in a
+town in which the wife of a marshal of France, a lady of honor to the
+queen, was burned, under the pretext that she had killed a white cock by
+moonlight; or in the same town in which Marshal Marillac was
+assassinated according to form, pursuant to a sentence passed by
+judicial murderers appointed by a priest in his own country house, in
+which he embraced Marion de Lorme while these robed wretches executed
+his sanguinary wishes?
+
+Could a man say to himself, without trembling in every nerve, and having
+his heart frozen with horror: "Here I am, in the very place which, it is
+said, was strewed with the dead and dying bodies of two thousand young
+gentlemen, murdered near the Faubourg St. Antoine, because one man in a
+red cassock displeased some others in black ones!"
+
+Who could pass the Rue de la Féronerie without shedding tears and
+falling into paroxysms of rage against the holy and abominable
+principles which plunged the sword into the heart of the best of men,
+and of the greatest of kings?
+
+We could not walk a step in the streets of Paris on St. Bartholomew's
+day, without saying: "It was here that one of my ancestors was murdered
+for the love of God; it was here that one of my mother's family was
+dragged bleeding and mangled; it was here that one-half of my countrymen
+murdered the other."
+
+Happily, men are so light, so frivolous, so struck with the present and
+so insensible to the past, that in ten thousand there are not above two
+or three who make these reflections.
+
+How many boon companions have I seen, who, after the loss of children,
+wives, mistresses, fortune, and even health itself, have eagerly
+resorted to a party to retail a piece of scandal, or to a supper to tell
+humorous stories. Solidity consists chiefly in a uniformity of ideas. It
+has been said that a man of sense should invariably think in the same
+way; reduced to such an alternative, it would be better not to have been
+born. The ancients never invented a finer fable than that which bestowed
+a cup of the water of Lethe on all who entered the Elysian fields.
+
+If you would tolerate life, mortals, forget yourselves, and enjoy it.
+
+
+
+
+GALLANT.
+
+
+This word is derived from "_gal_" the original signification of which
+was gayety and rejoicing, as may be seen in Alain Chartier, and in
+Froissart. Even in the "Romance of the Rose" we meet with the word
+"_galandé_" in the sense of ornamented, adorned.
+
+     _La belle fut bien attornie_
+     _Et d'un filet d'or galandée._
+
+It is probable that the _gala_ of the Italians, and the _galan_ of the
+Spaniards, are derived from the word "_gal_" which seems to be
+originally Celtic; hence, was insensibly formed _gallant_, which
+signifies a man forward, or eager to please. The term received an
+improved and more noble signification in the times of chivalry, when the
+desire to please manifested itself in feats of arms, and personal
+conflict. To conduct himself gallantly, to extricate himself from an
+affair gallantly, implies, even at present, a man's conducting himself
+conformably to principle and honor. A gallant man among the English,
+signifies a man of courage; in France it means more--a man of noble
+general demeanor. A gallant (_un homme galant_) is totally different
+from a gallant man (_un galant homme_); the latter means a man of
+respectable and honorable feeling--the former, something nearer the
+character of a _petit maître_ a man successfully addicted to intrigue.
+Being gallant (_être galant_) in general implies an assiduity to please
+by studious attentions, and flattering deference. "He was exceedingly
+gallant to those ladies," means merely, he behaved more than politely to
+them; but being the gallant of a lady is an expression of stronger
+meaning; it signifies being her lover; the word is scarcely any longer
+in use in this sense, except in low or familiar poetry. A gallant is not
+merely a man devoted to and successful in intrigue, but the term
+implies, moreover, somewhat of impudence and effrontery, in which sense
+Fontaine uses it in the following: "_Mais un 'galant,' chercheur des
+pucelages_."
+
+Thus are various meanings attached to the same word. The case is similar
+with the term "gallantry," which sometimes signifies a disposition to
+coquetry, and a habit of flattery; sometimes a present of some elegant
+toy, or piece of jewelry; sometimes intrigue, with one woman or with
+many; and, latterly, it has even been applied to signify ironically the
+favors of Venus; thus, to talk gallantries, to give gallantries, to have
+gallantries, to contract a gallantry, express very different meanings.
+Nearly all the terms which occur frequently in conversation acquire, in
+the same manner, various shades of meaning, which it is difficult to
+discriminate; the meaning of terms of art is more precise and less
+arbitrary.
+
+
+
+
+GARGANTUA.
+
+
+If ever a reputation was fixed on a solid basis, it is that of
+Gargantua. Yet in the present age of philosophy and criticism, some rash
+and daring minds have started forward, who have ventured to deny the
+prodigies believed respecting this extraordinary man--persons who have
+carried their skepticism so far as even to doubt his very existence.
+
+How is it possible, they ask, that there should have existed in the
+sixteenth century a distinguished hero, never mentioned by a single
+contemporary, by St. Ignatius, Cardinal Capitan, Galileo, or
+Guicciardini, and respecting whom the registers of the Sorbonne do not
+contain the slightest notice?
+
+Investigate the histories of France, of Germany, of England, Spain, and
+other countries, and you find not a single word about Gargantua. His
+whole life, from his birth to his death, is a tissue of inconceivable
+prodigies.
+
+His mother, Gargamelle, was delivered of him from the left ear. Almost
+at the instant of his birth he called out for a drink, with a voice that
+was heard even in the districts of Beauce and Vivarais. Sixteen ells of
+cloth were required to make him breeches, and a hundred hides of brown
+cows were used in his shoes. He had not attained the age of twelve years
+before he gained a great battle, and founded the abbey of Thélème.
+Madame Badebec was given to him in marriage, and Badebec is proved to be
+a Syrian name.
+
+He is represented to have devoured six pilgrims in a mere salad, and the
+river Seine is stated to have flowed entirely from his person, so that
+the Parisians are indebted for their beautiful river to him alone.
+
+All this is considered contrary to nature by our carping philosophers,
+who scruple to admit even what is probable, unless it is well supported
+by evidence.
+
+They observe, that if the Parisians have always believed in Gargantua,
+that is no reason why other nations should believe in him; that if
+Gargantua had really performed one single prodigy out of the many
+attributed to him, the whole world would have resounded with it, all
+records would have noticed it, and a hundred monuments would have
+attested it. In short, they very unceremoniously treat the Parisians who
+believe in Gargantua as ignorant simpletons and superstitious idiots,
+with whom are inter-mixed a few hypocrites, who pretend to believe in
+Gargantua, in order to obtain some convenient priorship in the abbey of
+Thélème.
+
+The reverend Father Viret, a Cordelier of full-sleeved dignity, a
+confessor of ladies, and a preacher to the king, has replied to our
+Pyrrhonean philosophers in a manner decisive and invincible. He very
+learnedly proves that if no writer, with the exception of Rabelais, has
+mentioned the prodigies of Gargantua, at least, no historian has
+contradicted them; that the sage de Thou, who was a believer in
+witchcraft, divination, and astrology, never denied the miracles of
+Gargantua. They were not even called in question by La Mothe le Vayer.
+Mézeray treated them with such respect as not to say a word against
+them, or indeed about them. These prodigies were performed before the
+eyes of all the world. Rabelais was a witness of them. It was impossible
+that he could be deceived, or that he would deceive. Had he deviated
+even in the smallest degree from the truth, all the nations of Europe
+would have been roused against him in indignation; all the gazetteers
+and journalists of the day would have exclaimed with one voice against
+the fraud and imposture.
+
+In vain do the philosophers reply--for they reply to everything--that,
+at the period in question, gazettes and journals were not in existence.
+It is said in return that there existed what was equivalent to them, and
+that is sufficient. Everything is impossible in the history of
+Gargantua, and from this circumstance itself may be inferred its
+incontestable truth. For if it were not true, no person could possibly
+have ventured to imagine it, and its incredibility constitutes the great
+proof that it ought to be believed.
+
+Open all the "Mercuries," all the "Journals de Trévoux"; those immortal
+works which teem with instruction to the race of man, and you will not
+find a single line which throws a doubt on the history of Gargantua. It
+was reserved for our own unfortunate age to produce monsters, who would
+establish a frightful Pyrrhonism, under the pretence of requiring
+evidence as nearly approaching to mathematical as the case will admit,
+and of a devotion to reason, truth, and justice. What a pity! Oh, for a
+single argument to confound them!
+
+Gargantua founded the abbey of Thélème. The title deeds, it is true,
+were never found; it never had any; but it exists, and produces an
+income of ten thousand pieces of gold a year. The river Seine exists,
+and is an eternal monument of the prodigious fountain from which
+Gargantua supplied so noble a stream. Moreover, what will it cost you to
+believe in him? Should you not take the safest side? Gargantua can
+procure for you wealth, honors, and influence. Philosophy can only
+bestow on you internal tranquillity and satisfaction, which you will of
+course estimate as a trifle. Believe, then, I again repeat, in
+Gargantua; if you possess the slightest portion of avarice, ambition, or
+knavery, it is the wisest part you can adopt.
+
+
+
+
+GAZETTE.
+
+
+A narrative of public affairs. It was at the beginning of the
+seventeenth century that this useful practice was suggested and
+established at Venice, at the time when Italy still continued the centre
+of European negotiations, and Venice was the unfailing asylum of
+liberty. The leaves or sheets containing this narrative, which were
+published once a week, were called "Gazettes," from the word "gazetta,"
+the name of a small coin, amounting nearly to one of our demi-sous, then
+current at Venice. The example was afterwards followed in all the great
+cities of Europe.
+
+Journals of this description have been established in China from time
+immemorial. The "_Imperial Gazette_" is published there every day by
+order of the court. Admitting this gazette to be true, we may easily
+believe it does not contain all that is true; neither in fact should it
+do so.
+
+Théophraste Renaudot, a physician, published the first gazettes in
+France in 1601, and he had an exclusive privilege for the publication,
+which continued for a long time a patrimony to his family. The like
+privilege became an object of importance at Amsterdam, and the greater
+part of the gazettes of the United Provinces are still a source of
+revenue to many of the families of magistrates, who pay writers for
+furnishing materials for them. The city of London alone publishes more
+than twelve gazettes in the course of a week. They can be printed only
+upon stamped paper, and produce no inconsiderable income to the State.
+
+The gazettes of China relate solely to that empire; those of the
+different states of Europe embrace the affairs of all countries.
+Although they frequently abound in false intelligence, they may
+nevertheless be considered as supplying good material for history;
+because, in general, the errors of each particular gazette are corrected
+by subsequent ones, and because they contain authentic copies of almost
+all state papers, which indeed are published in them by order of the
+sovereigns or governments themselves. The French gazettes have always
+been revised by the ministry. It is on this account that the writers of
+them have always adhered to certain forms and designations, with a
+strictness apparently somewhat inconsistent with the courtesies of
+polished society, bestowing the title of monsieur only on some
+particular descriptions of persons, and that of sieur upon others; the
+authors having forgotten that they were not speaking in the name of
+their king. These public journals, it must be added, to their praise,
+have never been debased by calumny, and have always been written with
+considerable correctness.
+
+The case is very different with respect to foreign gazettes; those of
+London, with the exception of the court gazette, abound frequently in
+that coarseness and licentiousness of observation which the national
+liberty allows. The French gazettes established in that country have
+been seldom written with purity, and have sometimes been not a little
+instrumental in corrupting the language. One of the greatest faults
+which has found a way into them arises from the authors having concluded
+that the ancient forms of expression used in public proclamations and in
+judicial and political proceedings and documents in France, and with
+which they were particularly conversant, were analogous to the regular
+syntax of our language, and from their having accordingly imitated that
+style in their narrative. This is like a Roman historian's using the
+style of the law of the twelve tables.
+
+In imitation of the political gazettes, literary ones began to be
+published in France in 1665; for the first journals were, in fact,
+simply advertisements of the works recently printed in Europe; to this
+mere announcement of publication was soon added a critical examination
+or review. Many authors were offended at it, notwithstanding its great
+moderation.
+
+We shall here speak only of those literary gazettes with which the
+public, who were previously in possession of various journals from every
+country in Europe in which the sciences were cultivated, were completely
+overwhelmed. These gazettes appeared at Paris about the year 1723, under
+many different names, as "The Parnassian Intelligencer," "Observations
+on New Books," etc. The greater number of them were written for the
+single purpose of making money; and as money is not to be made by
+praising authors, these productions consisted generally of satire and
+abuse. They often contained the most odious personalities, and for a
+time sold in proportion to the virulence of their malignity; but reason
+and good taste, which are always sure to prevail at last, consigned them
+eventually to contempt and oblivion.
+
+
+
+
+GENEALOGY.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+Many volumes have been written by learned divines in order to reconcile
+St. Matthew with St. Luke on the subject of the genealogy of Jesus
+Christ. The former enumerates only twenty-seven generations from David
+through Solomon, while Luke gives forty-two, and traces the descent
+through Nathan. The following is the method in which the learned Calmet
+solves a difficulty relating to Melchizedek: The Orientals and the
+Greeks, ever abounding in fable and invention, fabricated a genealogy
+for him, in which they give us the names of his ancestors. But, adds
+this judicious Benedictine, as falsehood always betrays itself, some
+state his genealogy according to one series, and others according to
+another. There are some who maintain that he descended from a race
+obscure and degraded, and there are some who are disposed to represent
+him as illegitimate.
+
+This passage naturally applies to Jesus, of whom, according to the
+apostle, Melchizedek was the type or figure. In fact, the gospel of
+Nicomedes expressly states that the Jews, in the presence of Pilate,
+reproached Jesus with being born of fornication; upon which the learned
+Fabricius remarks, that it does not appear from any clear and credible
+testimony that the Jews directed to Jesus Christ during His life, or
+even to His apostles, that calumny respecting His birth which they so
+assiduously and virulently circulated afterwards. The Acts of the
+Apostles, however, inform us that the Jews of Antioch opposed
+themselves, blaspheming against what Paul spoke to them concerning
+Jesus; and Origen maintains that the passage in St. John's gospel "We
+are not born of fornication, we have never been in subjection unto any
+man" was an indirect reproach thrown out by the Jews against Jesus on
+the subject of His birth. For, as this father informs us, they pretended
+that Jesus was originally from a small hamlet of Judæa, and His mother
+nothing more than a poor villager subsisting by her labor, who, having
+been found guilty of adultery with a soldier of the name of Panther, was
+turned away by her husband, whose occupation was that of a carpenter;
+that, after this disgraceful expulsion, she wandered about miserably
+from one place to another, and was privately delivered of Jesus, who,
+pressed by the necessity of His circumstances, was compelled to go and
+hire Himself as a servant in Egypt, where He acquired some of those
+secrets which the Egyptians turn to so good an account, and then
+returned to His own country, in which, full of the miracles He was
+enabled to perform, He proclaimed Himself to be God.
+
+According to a very old tradition, the name of Panther, which gave
+occasion to the mistake of the Jews, was, as we are informed by St.
+Epiphanius, the surname of Joseph's father, or rather, as is asserted by
+St. John Damascene, the proper name of Mary's grandfather.
+
+As to the situation of servant, with which Jesus was reproached, He
+declares Himself that He came not to be served, but to serve. Zoroaster,
+according to the Arabians, had in like manner been the servant of
+Esdras. Epictetus was even born in servitude. Accordingly, St. Cyril of
+Jerusalem justly observed that it is no disgrace to any man.
+
+On the subject of the miracles, we learn indeed from Pliny that the
+Egyptians had the secret of dyeing with different colors, stuffs which
+were dipped in the very same furnace, and this is one of the miracles
+which the gospel of the Infancy attributes to Jesus. But, according to
+St. Chrysostom, Jesus performed no miracle before His baptism, and those
+stated to have been wrought by Him before are absolute fabrications. The
+reason assigned by this father for such an arrangement is, that the
+wisdom of God determined against Christ's performing any miracles in His
+childhood, lest they should have been regarded as impostures.
+
+Epiphanius in vain alleges that to deny the miracles ascribed by some to
+Jesus during His infancy, would furnish heretics with a specious pretext
+for saying that He became Son of God only in consequence of the effusion
+of the Holy Spirit, which descended upon Him at His baptism; we are
+contending here, not against heretics, but against Jews.
+
+Mr. Wagenseil has presented us with a Latin translation of a Jewish work
+entitled "_Toldos Jeschu_," in which it is related that Jeschu, being at
+Bethlehem in Judah, the place of his birth, cried out aloud, "Who are
+the wicked men that pretend I am a bastard, and spring from an impure
+origin? They are themselves bastards, themselves exceedingly impure! Was
+I not born of a virgin mother? And I entered through the crown of her
+head!"
+
+This testimony appeared of such importance to M. Bergier, that that
+learned divine felt no scruple about employing it without quoting his
+authority. The following are his words, in the twenty-third page of the
+"Certainty of the Proofs of Christianity": "Jesus was born of a virgin
+by the operation of the Holy Spirit. Jesus Himself frequently assured us
+of this with His own mouth; and to the same purpose is the recital of
+the apostles." It is certain that these words are only to be found in
+the "_Toldos Jeschu_"; and the certainty of that proof, among those
+adduced by M. Bergier, subsists, although St. Matthew applies to Jesus
+the passage of "Isaiah": "He shall not dispute, he shall not cry aloud,
+and no one shall hear his voice in the streets."
+
+According to St. Jerome, there was in like manner an ancient tradition
+among the Gymnosophists of India, that Buddha, the author of their
+creed, was born of a virgin, who was delivered of him from her side. In
+the same manner was born Julius Cæsar, Scipio Africanus, Manlius, Edward
+VI. of England, and others, by means of an operation called by surgeons
+the Cæsarian operation, because it consists in abstracting the child
+from the womb by an incision in the abdomen of the mother. Simon,
+surnamed the Magician, and Manes both pretended to have been born of
+virgins. This might, however, merely mean, that their mothers were
+virgins at the time of conceiving them. But in order to be convinced of
+the uncertainty attending the marks and evidences of virginity, it will
+be perfectly sufficient to read the commentary of M. de Pompignan, the
+celebrated bishop of Puy en Velai, on the following passage in the Book
+of Proverbs: "There are three things which are too wonderful for me,
+yea, four which I know not. The way of an eagle in the air, the way of a
+serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the
+way of a man in his youth." In order to give a literal translation of
+the passage, according to this prelate (in the third chapter of the
+second part of his work entitled "Infidelity Convinced by the
+Prophecies"), it would have been necessary to say, "_Viam viri in
+virgine adolescentula_"--The way of a man with a maid. The translation
+of our Vulgate, says he, substitutes another meaning, exact indeed and
+true, but less conformable to the original text. In short, he
+corroborates his curious interpretation by the analogy between this
+verse and the following one: "Such is the life of the adulterous woman,
+who, after having eaten, wipeth her mouth and saith, I have done no
+wickedness."
+
+However this may be, the virginity of Mary was not generally admitted,
+even at the beginning of the third century. "Many have entertained the
+opinion and do still," said St. Clement of Alexandria, "that Mary was
+delivered of a son without that delivery producing any change in her
+person; for some say that a midwife who visited her after the birth
+found her to retain all the marks of virginity." It is clear that St.
+Clement refers here to the gospel of the conception of Mary, in which
+the angel Gabriel says to her, "Without intercourse with man, thou, a
+virgin, shalt conceive, thou, a virgin, shalt be delivered of a child,
+thou, a virgin, shalt give suck"; and also to the first gospel of James,
+in which the midwife exclaims, "What an unheard-of wonder! Mary has just
+brought a son into the world, and yet retains all the evidences of
+virginity." These two gospels were, nevertheless, subsequently rejected
+as apocryphal, although on this point they were conformable to the
+opinion adopted by the church; the scaffolding was removed after the
+building was completed.
+
+What is added by Jeschu--"I entered by the crown of the head"--was
+likewise the opinion held by the church. The Breviary of the Maronites
+represents the word of the Father as having entered by the ear of the
+blessed woman. St. Augustine and Pope Felix say expressly that the
+virgin became pregnant through the ear. St. Ephrem says the same in a
+hymn, and Voisin, his translator, observes that the idea came originally
+from Gregory of Neocæsarea, surnamed Thaumaturgos. Agobar relates that
+in his time the church sang in the time of public service: "The Word
+entered through the ear of the virgin, and came out at the golden gate."
+Eutychius speaks also of Elian, who attended at the Council of Nice, and
+who said that the Word entered by the ear of the virgin, and came out
+in the way of childbirth. This Elian was a rural bishop, whose name
+occurs in Selden's published Arabic List of Fathers who attended the
+Council of Nice.
+
+It is well known that the Jesuit Sanchez gravely discussed the question
+whether the Virgin Mary contributed seminally in the incarnation of
+Christ, and that, like other divines before him, he concluded in the
+affirmative. But these extravagances of a prurient and depraved
+imagination should be classed with the opinion of Aretin, who introduces
+the Holy Spirit on this occasion effecting his purpose under the figure
+of a dove; as mythology describes Jupiter to have succeeded with Leda in
+the form of a swan, or as the most eminent authors of the church--St.
+Austin, Athenagoras, Tertullian, St. Clement of Alexandria, St. Cyprian,
+Lactantius, St. Ambrose--and others believed, after Philo and Josephus,
+the historian, who were Jews, that angels had associated with the
+daughters of men, and engaged in sexual connection with them. St.
+Augustine goes so far as to charge the Manichæans with teaching, as a
+part of their religious persuasion, that beautiful young persons
+appeared in a state of nature before the princes of darkness, or evil
+angels, and deprived them of the vital substance which that father calls
+the nature of God. Herodius is still more explicit, and says that the
+divine majesty escaped through the productive organs of demons.
+
+It is true that all these fathers believed angels to be corporeal. But,
+after the works of Plato had established the idea of their spirituality,
+the ancient opinion of a corporeal union between angels and women was
+explained by the supposition that the same angel who, in a woman's form,
+had received the embraces of a man, in turn held communication with a
+woman, in the character of a man. Divines, by the terms "incubus" and
+"succubus," designate the different parts thus performed by angels.
+Those who are curious on the subject of these offensive and revolting
+reveries may see further details in "Various Readings of the Book of
+Genesis," by Otho Gualter; "Magical Disquisitions," by Delvis, and the
+"Discourses on Witchcraft," by Henry Boguet.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+No genealogy, even although reprinted in Moréri, approaches that of
+Mahomet or Mahommed, the son of Abdallah, the son of Abd'all Montaleb,
+the son of Ashem; which Mahomet was, in his younger days, groom of the
+widow Khadijah, then her factor, then her husband, then a prophet of
+God, then condemned to be hanged, then conqueror and king of Arabia; and
+who finally died an enviable death, satiated with glory and with love.
+
+The German barons do not trace back their origin beyond Witikind; and
+our modern French marquises can scarcely any of them show deeds and
+patents of an earlier date than Charlemagne. But the race of Mahomet, or
+Mohammed, which still exists, has always exhibited a genealogical tree,
+of which the trunk is Adam, and of which the branches reach from Ishmael
+down to the nobility and gentry who at the present day bear the high
+title of cousins of Mahomet.
+
+There is no difficulty about this genealogy, no dispute among the
+learned, no false calculations to be rectified, no contradictions to
+palliate, no impossibilities to be made possible.
+
+Your pride cavils against the authenticity of these titles. You tell me
+that you are descended from Adam as well as the greatest prophet, if
+Adam was the common father of our race; but that this same Adam was
+never known by any person, not even by the ancient Arabs themselves;
+that the name has never been cited except in the books of the Jews; and
+that, consequently, you take the liberty of writing down _false_ against
+the high and noble claims of Mahomet, or Mohammed.
+
+You add that, in any case, if there has been a first man, whatever his
+name might be, you are a descendant from him as decidedly as Khadijah's
+illustrious groom; and that, if there has been no first man, if the
+human race always existed, as so many of the learned pretend, then you
+are clearly a gentleman from all eternity.
+
+In answer to this you are told that you are a plebeian (_roturier_) from
+all eternity, unless you can produce a regular and complete set of
+parchments.
+
+You reply that men are equal; that one race cannot be more ancient than
+another; that parchments, with bits of wax dangling to them, are a
+recent invention; that there is no reason that compels you to yield to
+the family of Mahomet, or to that of Confucius; or to that of the
+emperors of Japan; or to the royal secretaries of the grand college. Nor
+can I oppose your opinion by arguments, physical, metaphysical, or
+moral. You think yourself equal to the dairo of Japan, and I entirely
+agree with you. All that I would advise you is, that if ever you meet
+with him, you take good care to be the stronger.
+
+
+
+
+GENESIS.
+
+
+The sacred writer having conformed himself to the ideas generally
+received, and being indeed obliged not to deviate from them, as without
+such condescension to the weakness and ignorance of those whom he
+addressed, he would not have been understood, it only remains for us to
+make some observations on the natural philosophy prevailing in those
+early periods; for, with respect to theology, we reverence it, we
+believe in it, and never either dispute or discuss it.
+
+"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Thus has the
+original passage been translated, but the translation is not correct.
+There is no one, however slightly informed upon the subject, who is not
+aware that the real meaning of the word is, "In the beginning the gods
+made _firent_ or _fit_ the heaven and the earth." This reading,
+moreover, perfectly corresponds with the ancient idea of the
+Phœnicians, who imagined that, in reducing the chaos (_chautereb_)
+into order, God employed the agency of inferior deities.
+
+The Phœnicians had been long a powerful people, having a theogony of
+their own, before the Hebrews became possessed of a few cantons of land
+near their territory. It is extremely natural to suppose that when the
+Hebrews had at length formed a small establishment near Phœnicia,
+they began to acquire its language. At that time their writers might,
+and probably did, borrow the ancient philosophy of their masters. Such
+is the regular march of the human mind.
+
+At the time in which Moses is supposed to have lived, were the
+Phœnician philosophers sufficiently enlightened to regard the earth
+as a mere point in the compass with the infinite orbs placed by God in
+the immensity of space, commonly called heaven? The idea so very
+ancient, and at the same time so utterly false, that heaven was made for
+earth, almost always prevailed in the minds of the great mass of the
+people. It would certainly be just as correct and judicious for any
+person to suppose, if told that God created all the mountains and a
+single grain of sand, that the mountains were created for that grain of
+sand. It is scarcely possible that the Phœnicians, who were such
+excellent navigators, should not have had some good astronomers; but
+the old prejudices generally prevailed, and those old prejudices were
+very properly spared and indulged by the author of the Book of Genesis,
+who wrote to instruct men in the ways of God, and not in natural
+philosophy.
+
+"The earth was without form (_tohu bohu_) and void; darkness rested upon
+the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved upon the surface of
+the waters."
+
+_Tohu bohu_ means precisely chaos, disorder. It is one of those
+imitative words which are to be found in all languages; as, for example,
+in the French we have _sens dessus dessous, tintamarre, trictrac,
+tonnerre, bombe_. The earth was not as yet formed in its present state;
+the matter existed, but the divine power had not yet arranged it. The
+spirit of God means literally the breath, the wind, which agitated the
+waters. The same idea occurs in the "Fragments" of the Phœnician
+author Sanchoniathon. The Phœnicians, like every other people,
+believed matter to be eternal. There is not a single author of antiquity
+who ever represented something to have been produced from nothing. Even
+throughout the whole Bible, no passage is to be found in which matter is
+said to have been created out of nothing. Not, however, that we mean to
+controvert the truth of such creation. It was, nevertheless, a truth not
+known by the carnal Jews.
+
+On the question of the eternity of the world, mankind has always been
+divided, but never on that of the eternity of matter. From nothing,
+nothing can proceed, nor into nothing can aught existent return. _"De
+nihilo nihilum, et in nihilum nil posse gigni reverti."_ (_Persius; Sat.
+iii._) Such was the opinion of all antiquity.
+
+"God said let there be light, and there was light; and he saw that the
+light was good, and he divided the light from the darkness; and he
+called the light day, and the darkness night; and the evening and the
+morning were the first day. And God said also, let there be a firmament
+in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the
+waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were
+under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And
+God called the firmament heaven. And the evening and the morning were
+the second day.... And he saw that it was good."
+
+We begin with examining whether Huet, bishop of Avranches, Leclerc, and
+some other commentators, are not in the right in opposing the idea of
+those who consider this passage as exhibiting the most sublime
+eloquence.
+
+Eloquence is not aimed at in any history written by the Jews. The style
+of the passage in question, like that of all the rest of the work,
+possesses the most perfect simplicity. If an orator, intending to give
+some idea of the power of God, employed for that purpose the short and
+simple expression we are considering, "He said, let there be light, and
+there was light," it would then be sublime. Exactly similar is the
+passage in one of the Psalms, "_Dixit, et facta sunt_"--"He spake, and
+they were made." It is a trait which, being unique in this place, and
+introduced purposely in order to create a majestic image, elevates and
+transports the mind. But, in the instance under examination, the
+narrative is of the most simple character. The Jewish writer is speaking
+of light just in the same unambitious manner as of other objects of
+creation; he expresses himself equally and regularly after every
+article, "and God saw that it was good." Everything is sublime in the
+course or act of creation, unquestionably, but the creation of light is
+no more so than that of the herbs of the field; the sublime is something
+which soars far from the rest, whereas all is equal throughout the
+chapter.
+
+But further, it was another very ancient opinion that light did not
+proceed from the sun. It was seen diffused throughout the atmosphere,
+before the rising and after the setting of that star; the sun was
+supposed merely to give it greater strength and clearness; accordingly
+the author of Genesis accommodates himself to this popular error, and
+even states the creation of the sun and moon not to have taken place
+until four days after the existence of light. It was impossible that
+there could be a morning and evening before the existence of a sun. The
+inspired writer deigned, in this instance, to condescend to the gross
+and wild ideas of the nation. The object of God was not to teach the
+Jews philosophy. He might have raised their minds to the truth, but he
+preferred descending to their error. This solution can never be too
+frequently repeated.
+
+The separation of the light from the darkness is a part of the same
+system of philosophy. It would seem that night and day were mixed up
+together, as grains of different species which are easily separable from
+each other. It is sufficiently known that darkness is nothing but the
+absence of light, and that there is in fact no light when our eyes
+receive no sensation of it; but at that period these truths were far
+from being known.
+
+The idea of a firmament, again, is of the very highest antiquity. The
+heavens are imagined to be a solid mass, because they always exhibited
+the same phenomena. They rolled over our heads, they were therefore
+constituted of the most solid materials. Who could suppose that the
+exhalations from the land and sea supplied the water descending from the
+clouds, or compute their corresponding quantities? No Halley then lived
+to make so curious a calculation. The heavens therefore were conceived
+to contain reservoirs. These reservoirs could be supported only on a
+strong arch, and as this arch of heaven was actually transparent, it
+must necessarily have been made of crystal. In order that the waters
+above might descend from it upon the earth, sluices, cataracts, and
+floodgates were necessary, which might be opened and shut as
+circumstances required. Such was the astronomy of the day; and, as the
+author wrote for Jews, it was incumbent upon him to adopt their gross
+ideas, borrowed from other people somewhat less gross than themselves.
+
+"God also made two great lights, one to rule the day, the other the
+night; He also made the stars."
+
+It must be admitted that we perceive throughout the same ignorance of
+nature. The Jews did not know that the moon shone only with a reflected
+light. The author here speaks of stars as of mere luminous points, such
+as they appear, although they are in fact so many suns, having each of
+them worlds revolving round it. The Holy Spirit, then, accommodated
+Himself to the spirit of the times. If He had said that the sun was a
+million times larger than the earth, and the moon fifty times smaller,
+no one would have comprehended Him. They appear to us two stars of
+nearly equal size.
+
+"God said, also, let us make man in our own image, and let him have
+dominion over the fishes."
+
+What meaning did the Jews attach to the expression, "let us make man in
+our own image?" The same as all antiquity attached to it: "_Finxit in
+effigiem moderantum cuncta deorum._" (Ovid, Metam. i. 82.)
+
+No images are made but of bodies. No nation ever imagined a God without
+body, and it is impossible to represent Him otherwise. We may indeed say
+that God is nothing that we are acquainted with, but we can have no
+idea of what He is. The Jews invariably conceived God to be corporeal,
+as well as every other people. All the first fathers of the Church,
+also, entertained the same belief till they had embraced the ideas of
+Plato, or rather until the light of Christianity became more pure.
+
+"He created them male and female." If God, of the secondary or inferior
+gods, created mankind, male and female, after their own likeness, it
+would seem in that case, as if the Jews believed that God and the gods
+who so formed them were male and female. It has been a subject of
+discussion, whether the author means to say that man had originally two
+sexes, or merely that God made Adam and Eve on the same day. The most
+natural meaning is that God formed Adam and Eve at the same time; but
+this interpretation involves an absolute contradiction to the statement
+of the woman's being made out of the rib of man after the seven days
+were concluded.
+
+"And he rested on the seventh day." The Phœnicians, Chaldæans, and
+Indians, represented God as having made the world in six periods, which
+the ancient Zoroaster calls the six "Gahanbars," so celebrated among the
+Persians.
+
+It is beyond all question that these nations possessed a theology before
+the Jews inhabited the deserts of Horeb and Sinai, and before they could
+possibly have had any writers. Many writers have considered it probable
+that the allegory of six days was imitated from that of the six
+periods. God may have permitted the idea to have prevailed in large and
+populous empires before he inspired the Jewish people with it. He had
+undoubtedly permitted other people to invent the arts before the Jews
+were in possession of any one of them.
+
+"From this pleasant place a river went out which watered the garden, and
+thence it was divided into four rivers. One was called Pison, which
+compassed the whole land of Havilah, whence cometh gold.... the second
+was called Gihon and surrounds Ethiopia.... the third is the Tigris, and
+the fourth the Euphrates."
+
+According to this version, the earthly paradise would have contained
+nearly a third part of Asia and of Africa. The sources of the Euphrates
+and the Tigris are sixty leagues distant from each other, in frightful
+mountains, bearing no possible resemblance to a garden. The river which
+borders Ethiopia, and which can be no other than the Nile, commences its
+course at the distance of more than a thousand leagues from the sources
+of the Tigris and Euphrates; and, if the Pison means the Phasis, it is
+not a little surprising that the source of a Scythian river and that of
+an African one should be situated on the same spot. We must therefore
+look for some other explanation, and for other rivers. Every commentator
+has got up a paradise of his own.
+
+It has been said that the Garden of Eden resembles the gardens of Eden
+at Saana in Arabia Felix, celebrated throughout all antiquity; that the
+Hebrews, a very recent people, might be an Arabian horde, and assume to
+themselves the honor of the most beautiful spot in the finest district
+of Arabia; and that they have always converted to their own purposes the
+ancient traditions of the vast and powerful nations in the midst of whom
+they were in bondage. They were not, however, on this account, the less
+under the divine protection and guidance.
+
+"The Lord then took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden that he
+might cultivate it." It is very respectable and pleasant for a man to
+"cultivate his garden," but it must have been somewhat difficult for
+Adam to have dressed and kept in order a garden of a thousand leagues in
+length, even although he had been supplied with some assistants.
+Commentators on this subject, therefore, we again observe, are
+completely at a loss, and must be content to exercise their ingenuity in
+conjecture. Accordingly, these four rivers have been described as
+flowing through numberless different territories.
+
+"Eat not of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil." It is
+not easy to conceive that there ever existed a tree which could teach
+good and evil, as there are trees that bear pears and apricots. And
+besides the question is asked, why is God unwilling that man should know
+good and evil? Would not his free access to this knowledge, on the
+contrary, appear--if we may venture to use such language--more
+worthy of God, and far more necessary to man? To our weak reason it
+would seem more natural and proper for God to command him to eat largely
+of such fruit; but we must bring our reason under subjection, and
+acquiesce with humility and simplicity in the conclusion that God is to
+be obeyed.
+
+[Illustration: THE TEMPTATION OF ADAM]
+
+"If thou shalt eat thereof, thou shalt die." Nevertheless, Adam ate of
+it and did not die; on the contrary, he is stated to have lived on for
+nine hundred and thirty years. Many of the fathers considered the whole
+matter as an allegory. In fact, it might be said that all other animals
+have no knowledge that they shall die, but that man, by means of his
+reason, has such knowledge. This reason is the tree of knowledge which
+enables him to foresee his end. This, perhaps, is the most rational
+interpretation that can be given. We venture not to decide positively.
+
+"The Lord said, also, it is not good for man to be alone; let us make
+him a helpmeet for him." We naturally expect that the Lord is about to
+bestow on him a wife; but first he conducts before him all the various
+tribes of animals. Perhaps the copyist may have committed here an error
+of transposition.
+
+"And the name which Adam gave to every animal is its true name." What we
+should naturally understand by the true name of an animal, would be a
+name describing all, or at least, the principal properties of its
+species. But this is not the case in any language. In each there are
+some imitative words, as "_coq_" and "_cocu_" in the Celtic, which bear
+some slight similarity to the notes of the cock and the cuckoo;
+_tintamarre, trictrac_, in French; _alali_, in Greek; _lupus_, in Latin,
+etc. But these imitative words are exceedingly few. Moreover, if Adam
+had thus thoroughly known the properties of various animals, he must
+either have previously eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, or
+it would apparently have answered no end for God to have interdicted him
+from it. He must have already known more than the Royal Society of
+London, and the Academy of the Sciences.
+
+It may be remarked that this is the first time the name of Adam occurs
+in the Book of Genesis. The first man, according to the ancient
+Brahmins, who were prodigiously anterior to the Jews, was called Adimo,
+a son of the earth, and his wife, Procris, life. This is recorded in the
+Vedas, in the history of the second formation of the world. Adam and Eve
+expressed perfectly the same meanings in the Phoenician language--a new
+evidence of the Holy Spirit's conforming Himself to commonly received
+ideas.
+
+"When Adam was asleep God took one of his ribs and put flesh instead
+thereof; and of the rib which he had taken from Adam he formed a woman,
+and he brought the woman to Adam."
+
+In the previous chapter the Lord had already created the male and the
+female; why, therefore, remove a rib from the man to form out of it a
+woman who was already in being? It is answered that the author barely
+announces in the one case what he explains in another. It is answered
+further that this allegory places the wife in subjection to her husband,
+and expresses their intimate union. Many persons have been led to
+imagine from this verse that men have one rib less than women; but this
+is a heresy, and anatomy informs us that a wife has no more ribs than
+her husband.
+
+"But the serpent was more subtle than all animals on the earth; he said
+to the woman," etc. Throughout the whole of this article there is no
+mention made of the devil. Everything in it relates to the usual course
+of nature. The serpent was considered by all oriental nations, not only
+as the most cunning of all animals, but likewise as immortal. The
+Chaldæans had a fable concerning a quarrel between God and the serpent,
+and this fable had been preserved by Pherecydes. Origen cites it in his
+sixth book against Celsus. A serpent was borne in procession at the
+feasts of Bacchus. The Egyptians, according to the statement of Eusebius
+in the first book of the tenth chapter of his "Evangelical Preparation,"
+attached a sort of divinity to the serpent. In Arabia, India, and even
+China, the serpent was regarded as a symbol of life; and hence it was
+that the emperors of China, long before the time of Moses, always bore
+upon their breast the image of a serpent.
+
+Eve expresses no astonishment at the serpent's speaking to her. In all
+ancient histories, animals have spoken; hence Pilpay and Lokman excited
+no surprise by their introduction of animals conversing and disputing.
+
+The whole of this affair appears so clearly to have been supposed in the
+natural course of events, and so unconnected with anything allegorical,
+that the narrative assigns a reason why the serpent, from that time, has
+moved creeping on its belly, why we always are eager to crush it under
+our feet, and why it always attempts--at least according to the popular
+belief--to bite and wound us. Precisely as, with respect to presumed
+changes affecting certain animals recorded in ancient fable, reasons
+were stated why the crow which originally had been white is at the
+present day black; why the owl quits his gloomy retreat only by night;
+why the wolf is devoted to carnage. The fathers, however, believed the
+affair to be an allegory at once clear and venerable. The safest way is
+to believe like them.
+
+"I will multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow shalt thou
+bring forth children. Thou shalt be under the power of the man, and he
+shall rule over thee." Why, it is asked, should the multiplication of
+conception be a punishment? It was, on the contrary, says the objector,
+esteemed a superior blessing, particularly among the Jews. The pains of
+childbirth are inconsiderable, in all except very weak or delicate
+women. Those accustomed to labor are delivered, particularly in warm
+climates, with great ease. Brutes frequently experience greater
+suffering from this process of nature: some even die under it. And with
+respect to the superiority or dominion of the man over the woman, it is
+merely in the natural course of events; it is the effect of strength of
+body, and even of strength of mind. Men, generally speaking, possess
+organs more capable of continued attention than women, and are better
+fitted by nature for labors both of the head and arm. But when a woman
+possesses both a hand and a mind more powerful than her husband's, she
+everywhere possesses the dominion over him; it is then the husband that
+is under subjection to the wife. There is certainly truth in these
+remarks; but it might, nevertheless, very easily be the fact that,
+before the commission of the original sin, neither subjection nor sorrow
+existed.
+
+"The Lord made for them coats of skins." This passage decidedly proves
+that the Jews believed God to be corporeal. A rabbi, of the name of
+Eliezer, stated in his works that God clothed Adam and Eve with the skin
+of the very serpent who had tempted them; and Origen maintains that this
+coat of skins was a new flesh, a new body, which God conferred on man.
+It is far better to adhere respectfully to the literal texts.
+
+"And the Lord said; Lo! Adam is become like one of us." It seems as if
+the Jews admitted, originally, many gods. It is somewhat more difficult
+to determine what they meant by the word "God," _Elohim_. Some
+commentators have contended that the expression "one of us" signifies
+the Trinity. But certainly there is nothing relating to the Trinity
+throughout the Bible. The Trinity is not a compound of many or several
+Gods: it is one and the same god threefold; and the Jews never heard the
+slightest mention of one god in three persons. By the words "like us,"
+or "as one of us," it is probable that the Jews understood the angels,
+_Elohim_. It is this passage which has induced many learned men very
+rashly to conclude that this book was not written until that people had
+adopted the belief of those inferior gods. But this opinion has been
+condemned.
+
+"The Lord sent him forth from the garden of Eden to cultivate the
+ground." "But," it is remarked by some, "the Lord had placed him in the
+garden of Eden to _cultivate_ that garden." If Adam, instead of being a
+gardener, merely becomes a laborer, his situation, they observe, is not
+made very much worse by the change. A good laborer is well worth a good
+gardener. These remarks must be regarded as too light and frivolous. It
+appears more judicious to say that God punished disobedience by
+banishing the offender from the place of his nativity.
+
+The whole of this history, generally speaking--according to the opinion
+of liberal, not to say licentious, commentators--proceeds upon the idea
+which has prevailed in every past age, and still exists, that the first
+times were better and happier than those which followed. Men have
+always complained of the present and extolled the past. Pressed down by
+the labors of life, they have imagined happiness to consist in
+inactivity, not considering that the most unhappy of all states is that
+of a man who has nothing to do. They felt themselves frequently
+miserable, and framed in their imaginations an ideal period in which all
+the world had been happy; although it might be just as naturally and
+truly supposed that there had existed times in which no tree decayed and
+perished, in which no beast was weak, diseased, or devoured by another,
+and in which spiders did not prey upon flies. Hence the idea of the
+golden age; of the egg pierced by Arimanes; of the serpent who stole
+from the ass the recipe for obtaining a happy and immortal life, which
+the man had placed upon his pack-saddle; of the conflict between Typhon
+and Osiris, and between Opheneus and the gods; of the famous box of
+Pandora; and of all those ancient tales, of which some are ingenious,
+but none instructive. But we are bound to believe that the fables of
+other nations are imitations of the Hebrew history, since we possess the
+ancient history of the Hebrews, and the early books of other nations are
+nearly all destroyed. Besides the testimonies in favor of the Book of
+Genesis are irrefragable.
+
+"And He placed before the garden of Eden a cherub with a flaming sword,
+which turned all round to guard the way to the tree of life." The word
+"_kerub_" signifies _ox_. An ox armed with a flaming sword is rather a
+singular exhibition, it is said, before a portal. But the Jews
+afterwards represented angels under the form of oxen and hawks although
+they were forbidden to make any images. They evidently derived these
+emblems of oxen and hawks from the Egyptians, whom they imitated in so
+many other things. The Egyptians first venerated the ox as the emblem of
+agriculture, and the hawk as that of the winds; but they never converted
+the ox into a sentinel. It is probably an allegory; and the Jews by
+"_kerub_" understood nature. It was a symbol formed of the head of an
+ox, the head and body of a man, and the wings of a hawk.
+
+"And the Lord set a mark upon Cain." What Lord? says the infidel. He
+accepts the offering of Abel, and rejects that of his elder brother,
+without the least reason being assigned for the distinction. By this
+proceeding the Lord was the cause of animosity between the two brothers.
+We are presented in this piece of history, it is true, with a moral,
+however humiliating, lesson; a lesson to be derived from all the fables
+of antiquity, that scarcely had the race of man commenced the career of
+existence, before one brother assassinates another. But what the sages,
+of this world consider contrary to everything moral, to everything just,
+to all the principles of common sense, is that God, who inflicted
+eternal damnation on the race of man, and useless crucifixion on His own
+son, on account merely of the eating of an apple, should absolutely
+pardon a fratricide! nay, that He should more than pardon, that He
+should take the offender under His peculiar protection! He declares that
+whoever shall avenge the murder of Abel shall experience sevenfold the
+punishment that Cain might have suffered. He puts a mark upon him as a
+safeguard. Here, continue these vile blasphemers, here is a fable as
+execrable as it is absurd. It is the raving of some wretched Jew, who
+wrote those infamous and revolting fooleries, in imitation of the tales
+so greedily swallowed by the neighboring population in Syria. This
+senseless Jew attributes these atrocious reveries to Moses, at a time
+when nothing was so rare as books. That fatality, which affects and
+disposes of everything, has handed down this contemptible production to
+our own times. Knaves have extolled it, and fools have believed it. Such
+is the language of a tribe of theists, who, while they adore a God, dare
+to condemn the God of Israel; and who judge of the conduct of the
+eternal Deity by the rules of our own imperfect morality, and erroneous
+justice. They admit a God, to subject Him to our laws. Let us guard
+against such rashness; and, once again it must be repeated, let us
+revere what we cannot comprehend. Let us cry out, _O Altitudo_! O the
+height and depth! with all our strength.
+
+"The gods Elohim, seeing the daughters of men that they were fair, took
+for wives those whom they chose." This imagination, again, may be traced
+in the history of every people. No nation has ever existed, unless
+perhaps we may except China, in which some god is not described as
+having had offspring from women. These corporeal gods frequently
+descended to visit their dominions upon earth; they saw the daughters of
+our race, and attached themselves to those who were most interesting and
+beautiful: the issue of this connection between gods and mortals must of
+course have been superior to other men; accordingly, Genesis informs us
+that from the association it mentions, of the gods with women, sprang a
+race of giants.
+
+"I will bring a deluge of waters upon the earth." I will merely observe
+here that St. Augustine, in his "City of God," No. 8, says, "_Maximum
+illud diluvium Græca nec Latina novit historia_"--neither Greek nor
+Latin history knows anything about the great deluge. In fact, none had
+ever been known in Greece but those of Deucalion and Ogyges. They are
+regarded as universal in the fables collected by Ovid, but are wholly
+unknown in eastern Asia. St. Augustine, therefore, is not mistaken, in
+saying that history makes no mention of this event.
+
+"God said to Noah, I will make a covenant with you, and with your seed
+after you, and with all living creatures." God make a covenant with
+beasts! What sort of a covenant? Such is the outcry of infidels. But if
+He makes a covenant with man, why not with the beast? It has feeling,
+and there is something as divine in feeling as in the most metaphysical
+meditation. Besides, beasts feel more correctly than the greater part of
+men think. It is clearly in virtue of this treaty that Francis d'Assisi,
+the founder of the Seraphic order, said to the grasshoppers and the
+hares, "Pray sing, my dear sister grasshopper; pray browse, my dear
+brother hare." But what were the conditions of the treaty? That all
+animals should devour one another; that they should feed upon our flesh,
+and we upon theirs; that, after having eaten them, we should proceed
+with wrath and fury to the extermination of our own race--nothing being
+then wanting to crown the horrid series of butchery and cruelty, but
+devouring our fellow-men, after having thus remorselessly destroyed
+them. Had there been actually such a treaty as this it could have been
+entered into only with the devil.
+
+Probably the meaning of the whole passage is neither more nor less than
+that God is equally the absolute master of everything that breathes.
+This pact can be nothing more than an order, and the word "covenant" is
+used merely as more emphatic and impressive; we should not therefore be
+startled and offended at the words, but adore the spirit, and direct our
+minds back to the period in which this book was written--a book of
+scandal to the weak, but of edification to the strong.
+
+"And I will put my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of my
+covenant." Observe that the author does not say, I _have_ put my bow in
+the clouds; he says, I _will_ put: this clearly implies it to have been
+the prevailing opinion that there had not always been a rainbow. This
+phenomenon is necessarily produced by rain; yet in this place it is
+represented as something supernatural, exhibited in order to announce
+and prove that the earth should no more be inundated. It is singular to
+choose the certain sign of rain, in order to assure men against their
+being drowned. But it may also be replied that in any danger of
+inundation, we have the cheering security of the rainbow.
+
+"But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of
+Adam had built, and he said, 'Behold a people which have but one
+language. They have begun to do this, and they will not desist until
+they have completed it. Come, then, let us go and confound their
+language, that no one may understand his neighbor.'" Observe here, that
+the sacred writer always continues to conform to the popular opinions.
+He always speaks of God as of a man who endeavors to inform himself of
+what is passing, who is desirous of seeing with his own eyes what is
+going on in his dominions, who calls together his council in order to
+deliberate with them.
+
+"And Abraham having divided his men--who were three hundred and eighteen
+in number--fell upon the five kings, and pursued them unto Hoba, on the
+left hand of Damascus." From the south bank of the lake of Sodom to
+Damascus was a distance of eighty leagues, not to mention crossing the
+mountains Libanus and Anti-Libanus. Infidels smile and triumph at such
+exaggeration. But as the Lord favored Abraham, nothing was in fact
+exaggerated.
+
+"And two angels arrived at Sodom at even." The whole history of these
+two angels, whom the inhabitants of Sodom wished to violate, is perhaps
+the most extraordinary in the records of all antiquity. But it must be
+considered that almost all Asia believed in the existence of the
+demoniacal incubus and succubus; and moreover, that these two angels
+were creatures more perfect than mankind, and must have possessed more
+beauty to stimulate their execrable tendencies. It is possible that the
+passage may be only meant as a rhetorical figure to express the
+atrocious depravity of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is not without the
+greatest diffidence that we suggest to the learned this solution.
+
+As to Lot, who proposes to the people of Sodom the substitution of his
+two daughters in the room of the angels; and his wife, who was changed
+into a statue of salt, and all the rest of that history, what shall we
+venture to say? The old Arabian tale of Kinyras and Myrrha has some
+resemblance to the incest of Lot with his daughters; and the adventure
+of Philemon and Baucis is somewhat similar to the case of the two angels
+who appeared to Lot and his wife. With respect to the statue of salt, we
+know not where to find any resemblance; perhaps in the history of
+Orpheus and Eurydice.
+
+Many ingenious men are of opinion, with the great Newton and the learned
+Leclerc that the Pentateuch was written by Samuel when the Jews had a
+little knowledge of reading and writing, and that all these histories
+are imitations of Syrian fables.
+
+But it is enough that all this is in the Holy Scripture to induce us to
+reverence it, without attempting to find out in this book anything
+besides what is written by the Holy Spirit. Let us always recollect that
+those times were not like our times; and let us not fail to repeat,
+after so many great men, that the Old Testament is a true history; and
+that all that has been written differing from it by the rest of the
+world is fabulous.
+
+Some critics have contended that all the incredible passages in the
+canonical books, which scandalize weak minds, ought to be suppressed;
+but it has been observed in answer that those critics had bad hearts,
+and ought to be burned at the stake; and that it is impossible to be a
+good man without believing that the people of Sodom wanted to violate
+two angels. Such is the reasoning of a species of monsters who wish to
+lord it over the understandings of mankind.
+
+It is true that many eminent fathers of the Church have had the prudence
+to turn all these histories into allegories, after the example of the
+Jews, and particularly of Philo. The popes, more discreet, have
+endeavored to prevent the translation of these books into the vulgar
+tongue, lest some men should in consequence be led to think and judge,
+about what was proposed to them only to adore.
+
+We are certainly justified in concluding hence, that those who
+thoroughly understand this book should tolerate those who do not
+understand it at all; for if the latter understand nothing of it, it is
+not their own fault: on the other hand, those who comprehend nothing
+that it contains should tolerate those who comprehend everything in it.
+
+Learned and ingenious men, full of their own talents and acquirements,
+have maintained that it is impossible that Moses could have written the
+Book of Genesis. One of their principal reasons is that in the history
+of Abraham that patriarch is stated to have paid for a cave which he
+purchased for the interment of his wife, in silver coin, and the king of
+Gerar is said to have given Sarah a thousand pieces of silver when he
+restored her, after having carried her off for her beauty at the age of
+seventy-five. They inform us that they have consulted all the ancient
+authors, and that it appears very certain that at the period mentioned
+silver money was not in existence. But these are evidently mere cavils,
+as the Church has always firmly believed Moses to have been the author
+of the Pentateuch. They strengthen all the doubts suggested by
+Aben-Ezra, and Baruch Spinoza. The physician Astruc, father-in-law of
+the comptroller-general Silhouette, in his book--now become very
+scarce--called "Conjectures on the Book of Genesis," adds some
+objections, inexplicable undoubtedly to human learning, but not so to a
+humble and submissive piety. The learned, many of them, contradict every
+line, but the devout consider every line sacred. Let us dread falling
+into the misfortune of believing and trusting to our reason; but let us
+bring ourselves into subjection in understanding as well as in heart.
+
+"And Abraham said that Sarah was his sister, and the king of Gerar took
+her for himself." We admit, as we have said under the article on
+"Abraham," that Sarah was at this time ninety years of age, that she had
+been already carried away by a king of Egypt, and that a king of this
+same horrid wilderness of Gerar, likewise, many years afterwards,
+carried away the wife of Isaac, Abraham's son. We have also spoken of
+his servant, Hagar, who bore him a son, and of the manner in which the
+patriarch sent her and her son away. It is well known how infidels
+triumph on the subject of all these histories, with what a disdainful
+smile they speak of them, and that they place the story of one Abimelech
+falling in love with Sarah whom Abraham had passed off as his sister,
+and of another Abimelech falling in love with Rebecca, whom Isaac also
+passes as his sister, even beneath the thousand and one nights of the
+Arabian fables. We cannot too often remark that the great error of all
+these learned critics is their wishing to try everything by the test of
+our feeble reason, and to judge of the ancient Arabs as they judge of
+the courts of France or of England.
+
+"And the soul of Shechem, King Hamor's son, was bound up with the soul
+of Dinah, and he soothed her grief by his tender caresses, and he went
+to Hamor his father, and said to him, give me that woman to be my wife."
+
+Here our critics exclaim in terms of stronger disgust than ever. "What!"
+say they; "the son of a king is desirous to marry a vagabond girl;" the
+marriage is celebrated; Jacob the father, and Dinah the daughter, are
+loaded with presents; the king of Shechem deigns to receive those
+wandering robbers called patriarchs within his city; he has the
+incredible politeness or kindness to undergo, with his son, his court,
+and his people, the rite of circumcision, thus condescending to the
+superstition of a petty horde that could not call half a league of
+territory their own! And in return for this astonishing hospitality and
+goodness, how do our holy patriarchs act? They wait for the day when the
+process of circumcision generally induces fever, when Simeon and Levi
+run through the whole city with poniards in their hands and massacre the
+king, the prince his son, and all the inhabitants. We are precluded from
+the horror appropriate to this infernal counterpart of the tragedy of
+St. Bartholomew, only by a sense of its absolute impossibility. It is an
+abominable romance; but it is evidently a ridiculous romance. It is
+impossible that two men could have slaughtered in quiet the whole
+population of a city. The people might suffer in a slight degree from
+the operation which had preceded, but notwithstanding this, they would
+have risen in self-defence against two diabolical miscreants; they would
+have instantly assembled, would have surrounded them, and destroyed them
+with the summary and complete vengeance merited by their atrocity.
+
+But there is a still more palpable impossibility. It is, that according
+to the accurate computation of time, Dinah, this daughter of Jacob,
+could be only three years old; and that, even by forcing up chronology
+as far as possible in favor of the narrative, she could at the very most
+be only five. It is here, then, that we are assailed with bursts of
+indignant exclamation! "What!" it is said, "what! is it this book, the
+book of a rejected and reprobate people; a book so long unknown to all
+the world; a book in which sound reason and decent manners are outraged
+in every page, that is held up to us as irrefragable, holy, and dictated
+by God Himself? Is it not even impious to believe it? or could anything
+less than the fury of cannibals urge to the persecution of sensible and
+modest men for not believing it?"
+
+To this we reply: "The Church declares its belief in it. The copyists
+may have mixed up some revolting absurdities with respectable and
+genuine histories. It belongs to the holy church only to decide.
+The profane ought to be guided by her. Those absurdities, those alleged
+horrors do not affect the substance of our faith. How lamentable would
+be the fate of mankind, if religion and virtue depended upon what
+formerly happened to Shechem and to little Dinah!"
+
+"These are the kings who reigned in the land of Edom before the children
+of Israel had a king." This is the celebrated passage which has proved
+one of the great stumbling stones. This it was which decided the great
+Newton, the pious and acute Samuel Clarke, the profound and philosophic
+Bolingbroke, the learned Leclerc, the ingenious Fréret, and a host of
+other enlightened men, to maintain that it was impossible Moses could
+have been the author of Genesis.
+
+We admit that in fact these words could not have been written until
+after the time that the Jews had kings.
+
+It is principally this verse that determined Astruc to give up the
+inspired authority of the whole Book of Genesis, and suppose the author
+had derived his materials from existing memoirs and records. His work is
+ingenious and accurate, but it is rash, not to say audacious. Even a
+council would scarcely have ventured on such an enterprise. And to what
+purpose has it served Astruc's thankless and dangerous labor--to double
+the darkness he wished to enlighten? Here is the fruit of the tree of
+knowledge, of which we are all so desirous of eating. Why must it be,
+that the fruit of the tree of ignorance should be more nourishing and
+more digestible?
+
+But of what consequence can it be to us, after all, whether any
+particular verse or chapter was written by Moses, or Samuel, or the
+priest (_sacrificateur_) who came to Samaria, or Esdras, or any other
+person? In what respect can our government, our laws, our fortunes, our
+morals, our well-being, be bound up with the unknown chiefs of a
+wretched and barbarous country called Edom or Idumæa, always inhabited
+by robbers? Alas! those poor Arabs, who have not shirts to their backs,
+neither know nor care whether or not we are in existence! They go on
+steadily plundering caravans, and eating barley bread, while we are
+perplexing and tormenting ourselves to know whether any petty kings
+flourished in a particular canton of Arabia Petræa, before they existed
+in a particular canton adjoining the west of the lake of Sodom!
+
+  _O miseras hominum curas! Opectora cœca!_
+                                      --LUCRETIUS, ii. 14.
+
+Blind, wretched man! in what dark paths of strife
+Thou walkest the little journey of thy life!--CREECH.
+
+
+
+
+GENII.
+
+
+The doctrines of judicial astrology and magic have spread all over the
+world. Look back to the ancient Zoroaster, and you will find that of the
+genii long established. All antiquity abounds in astrologers and
+magicians; such ideas were therefore very natural. At present, we smile
+at the number who entertained them; if we were in their situation, if
+like them we were only beginning to cultivate the sciences, we should
+perhaps believe just the same. Let us suppose ourselves intelligent
+people, beginning to reason on our own existence, and to observe the
+stars. The earth, we might say, is no doubt immovable in the midst of
+the world; the sun and planets only revolve in her service, and the
+stars are only made for us; man, therefore, is the great object of all
+nature. What is the intention of all these globes, and of the immensity
+of heaven thus destined for our use? It is very likely that all space
+and these globes are peopled with substances, and since we are the
+favorites of nature, placed in the centre of the universe, and all is
+made for man, these substances are evidently destined to watch over man.
+
+The first man who believed the thing at all possible would soon find
+disciples persuaded that it existed. We might then commence by saying,
+genii perhaps exist, and nobody could affirm the contrary; for where is
+the impossibility of the air and planets being peopled? We might
+afterwards say there _are_ genii, and certainly no one could prove that
+there are not. Soon after, some sages might see these genii, and we
+should have no right to say to them: "You have not seen them"; as these
+persons might be honorable, and altogether worthy of credit. One might
+see the genius of the empire or of his own city; another that of Mars
+or Saturn; the genii of the four elements might be manifested to several
+philosophers; more than one sage might see his own genius; all at first
+might be little more than dreaming, but dreams are the symbols of truth.
+
+It was soon known exactly how these genii were formed. To visit our
+globe, they must necessarily have wings; they therefore had wings. We
+know only of bodies; they therefore had bodies, but bodies much finer
+than ours, since they were genii, and much lighter, because they came
+from so great a distance. The sages who had the privilege of conversing
+with the genii inspired others with the hope of enjoying the same
+happiness. A skeptic would have been ill received, if he had said to
+them: "I have seen no genius, therefore there are none." They would have
+replied: "You reason ill; it does not follow that a thing exists not,
+which is unknown to you. There is no contradiction in the doctrine which
+inculcates these ethereal powers; no impossibility that they may visit
+us; they show themselves to our sages, they manifest themselves to us;
+you are not worthy of seeing genii."
+
+Everything on earth is composed of good and evil; there are therefore
+incontestably good and bad genii. The Persians had their peris and
+dives; the Greeks, their demons and cacodæmons; the Latins, _bonos et
+malos genios_. The good genii are white, and the bad black, except among
+the negroes, where it is necessarily the reverse. Plato without
+difficulty admits of a good and evil genius for every individual. The
+evil genius of Brutus appeared to him, and announced to him his death
+before the battle of Philippi. Have not grave historians said so? And
+would not Plutarch have been very injudicious to have assured us of this
+fact, if it were not true?
+
+Further, consider what a source of feasts, amusements, good tales, and
+bon mots, originated in the belief of genii!
+
+There were male and female genii. The genii of the ladies were called by
+the Romans little Junos. They also had the pleasure of seeing their
+genii grow up. In infancy, they were a kind of Cupid with wings, and
+when they protected old age, they wore long beards, and even sometimes
+the forms of serpents. At Rome, there is preserved a marble, on which is
+represented a serpent under a palm tree, to which are attached two
+crowns with this inscription: "To the genius of the Augusti"; it was the
+emblem of immortality.
+
+What demonstrative proof have we at present, that the genii, so
+universally admitted by so many enlightened nations, are only phantoms
+of the imagination? All that can be said is reduced to this: "I have
+never seen a genius, and no one of my acquaintance has ever seen one;
+Brutus has not written that his genius appeared to him before the battle
+of Philippi; neither Newton, Locke, nor even Descartes, who gave the
+reins to his imagination; neither kings nor ministers of state have
+ever been suspected of communing with their genii; therefore I do not
+believe a thing of which there is not the least truth. I confess their
+existence is not impossible; but the possibility is not a proof of the
+reality. It is possible that there may be satyrs, with little turned-up
+tails and goats' feet; but I must see several to believe in them; for if
+I saw but one, I should still doubt their existence."
+
+
+
+
+GENIUS.
+
+
+Of genius or demon, we have already spoken in the article on "angel." It
+is not easy to know precisely whether the peris of the Persians were
+invented before the demons of the Greeks, but it is very probable that
+they were. It may be, that the souls of the dead, called shades, manes,
+etc., passed for demons. Hesiod makes Hercules say that a demon dictated
+his labors.
+
+The demon of Socrates had so great a reputation, that Apuleius, the
+author of the "Golden Ass," who was himself a magician of good repute,
+says in his "Treatise on the Genius of Socrates," that a man must be
+without religion who denies it. You see that Apuleius reasons precisely
+like brothers Garasse and Bertier: "You do not believe that which I
+believe; you are therefore without religion." And the Jansenists have
+said as much of brother Bertier, as well as of all the world except
+themselves. "These demons," says the very religious and filthy
+Apuleius, "are intermediate powers between ether and our lower region.
+They live in our atmosphere, and bear our prayers and merits to the
+gods. They treat of succors and benefits, as interpreters and
+ambassadors. Plato says, that it is by their ministry that revelations,
+presages, and the miracles of magicians, are effected."--"_Cæterum sunt
+quædam divinæ mediæ potestates, inter summum æthera, et infimas terras,
+in isto intersitæ æris spatio, per quas et desideria nostra et merita ad
+deos commeant. Hos Græco nomine demonias nuncupant. Inter terricolas
+cœli colasque victores, hinc pecum, inde donorum: qui ultro citroque
+portant, hinc petitiones, inde suppetias: ceu quidam utriusque
+interpretes, et salutigeri. Per hos eosdem, ut Plato in symposio
+autumat, cuncta denuntiata; et majorum varia miracula, omnesque
+præsagium species reguntur._"
+
+St. Augustine has condescended to refute Apuleius in these words:
+
+"It is impossible for us to say that demons are neither mortal nor
+eternal, for all that has life, either lives eternally, or loses the
+breath of life by death; and Apuleius has said, that as to time, the
+demons are eternal. What then remains, but that demons hold a medium
+situation, and have one quality higher and another lower than mankind;
+and as, of these two things, eternity is the only higher thing which
+they exclusively possess, to complete the allotted medium, what must be
+the lower, if not misery?" This is powerful reasoning!
+
+As I have never seen any genii, demons, peris, or hobgoblins, whether
+beneficent or mischievous, I cannot speak of them from knowledge. I only
+relate what has been said by people who have seen them.
+
+Among the Romans, the word "genius" was not used to express a rare
+talent, as with us: the term for that quality was _ingenium_. We use the
+word "genius" indifferently in speaking of the tutelar demon of a town
+of antiquity, or an artist, or a musician. The term "genius" seems to
+have been intended to designate not great talents generally, but those
+into which invention enters. Invention, above everything, appeared a
+gift from the gods--this _ingenium, quasi ingenitum_, a kind of divine
+inspiration. Now an artist, however perfect he may be in his profession,
+if he have no invention, if he be not original, is not considered a
+genius. He is only inspired by the artists his predecessors, even when
+he surpasses them.
+
+It is very probable that many people now play at chess better than the
+inventor of the game, and that they might gain the prize of corn
+promised him by the Indian king. But this inventor was a genius, and
+those who might now gain the prize would be no such thing. Poussin, who
+was a great painter before he had seen any good pictures, had a genius
+for painting. Lulli, who never heard any good musician in France, had a
+genius for music.
+
+Which is the more desirable to possess, a genius without a master, or
+the attainment of perfection by imitating and surpassing the masters
+which precede us?
+
+If you put this question to artists, they will perhaps be divided; if
+you put it to the public, it will not hesitate. Do you like a beautiful
+Gobelin tapestry better than one made in Flanders at the commencement of
+the arts? Do you prefer modern masterpieces of engraving to the first
+wood-cuts? the music of the present day to the first airs, which
+resembled the Gregorian chant? the makers of the artillery of our time
+to the genius which invented the first cannon? everybody will answer,
+"yes." All purchasers will say: "I own that the inventor of the shuttle
+had more genius than the manufacturer who made my cloth, but my cloth is
+worth more than that of the inventor."
+
+In short, every one in conscience will confess, that we respect the
+geniuses who invented the arts, but that the minds which perfect them
+are of more present benefit.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+The article on "Genius" has been treated in the "Encyclopædia" by men
+who possess it. We shall hazard very little after them.
+
+Every town, every man possessed a genius. It was imagined that those who
+performed extraordinary things were inspired by their genius. The nine
+muses were nine genii, whom it was necessary to invoke; therefore Ovid
+says: "_Et Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo_"--"The God within
+us, He the mind inspires."
+
+But, properly speaking, is genius anything but capability? What is
+capability but a disposition to succeed in an art? Why do we say the
+genius of a language? It is, that every language, by its terminations,
+articles, participles, and shorter or longer words, will necessarily
+have exclusive properties of its own.
+
+By the genius of a nation is meant the character, manners, talents, and
+even vices, which distinguish one people from another. It is sufficient
+to see the French, English, and Spanish people, to feel this difference.
+
+We have said that the particular genius of a man for an art is a
+different thing from his general talent; but this name is given only to
+a very superior ability. How many people have talent for poetry, music,
+and painting; yet it would be ridiculous to call them geniuses.
+
+Genius, conducted by taste, will never commit a gross fault. Racine,
+since his "Andromache," "Le Poussin," and "Rameau," has never committed
+one. Genius, without taste, will often commit enormous errors; and, what
+is worse, it will not be sensible of them.
+
+
+
+
+GEOGRAPHY.
+
+
+Geography is one of those sciences which will always require to be
+perfected. Notwithstanding the pains that have been taken, it has
+hitherto been impossible to have an exact description of the earth. For
+this great work, it would be necessary that all sovereigns should come
+to an understanding, and lend mutual assistance. But they have ever
+taken more pains to ravage the world than they have to measure it.
+
+No one has yet been able to make an exact map of upper Egypt, nor of the
+regions bordering on the Red Sea, nor of the vast country of Arabia. Of
+Africa we know only the coasts; all the interior is no more known than
+it was in the times of Atlas and Hercules. There is not a single
+well-detailed map of all the Grand Turk's possessions in Asia; all is
+placed at random, excepting some few large towns, the crumbling remains
+of which are still existing. In the states of the Great Mogul something
+is known of the relative positions of Agra and Delhi; but thence to the
+kingdom of Golconda everything is laid down at a venture.
+
+It is known that Japan extends from about the thirtieth to the fortieth
+degree of north latitude; there cannot be an error of more than two
+degrees, which is about fifty leagues; so that, relying on one of our
+best maps, a pilot would be in danger of losing his track or his life.
+
+As for the longitude, the first maps of the Jesuits determined it
+between the one hundred and fifty-seventh and the one hundred and
+seventy-fifth degree; whereas, it is now determined between the one
+hundred and forty-sixth and the one hundred and sixtieth.
+
+China is the only Asiatic country of which we have an exact measurement;
+because the emperor Kam-hi employed some Jesuit astronomers to draw
+exact maps, which is the best thing the Jesuits have done. Had they been
+content with measuring the earth, they would never have been proscribed.
+
+In our western world, Italy, France, Russia, England, and the principal
+towns of the other states, have been measured by the same method as was
+employed in China; but it was not until a very few years ago, that in
+France it was undertaken to form an entire topography. A company taken
+from the Academy of Sciences despatched engineers or surveyors into
+every corner of the kingdom, to lay down even the meanest hamlet, the
+smallest rivulet, the hills, the woods, in their true places. Before
+that time, so confused was the topography, that on the eve of the battle
+of Fontenoy, the maps of the country being all examined, every one of
+them was found entirely defective.
+
+If a positive order had been sent from Versailles to an inexperienced
+general to give battle, and post himself as appeared most advisable from
+the maps, as sometimes happened in the time of the minister Chamillar,
+the battle would infallibly have been lost.
+
+A general who should carry on a war in the country of the Morlachians,
+or the Montenegrins, with no knowledge of places but from the maps,
+would be at as great a loss as if he were in the heart of Africa.
+
+Happily, that which has often been traced by geographers, according to
+their own fancy, in their closets, is rectified on the spot. In
+geography, as in morals, it is very difficult to know the world without
+going from home.
+
+It is not with this department of knowledge, as with the arts of poetry,
+music, and painting. The last works of these kinds are often the worst.
+But in the sciences, which require exactness rather than genius, the
+last are always the best, provided they are done with some degree of
+care.
+
+One of the greatest advantages of geography, in my opinion, is this:
+your fool of a neighbor, and his wife almost as stupid, are incessantly
+reproaching you with not thinking as they think in Rue St. Jacques.
+"See," say they, "what a multitude of great men have been of our
+opinion, from Peter the Lombard down to the Abbé Petit-pied. The whole
+universe has received our truths; they reign in the Faubourg St. Honoré,
+at Chaillot and at Étampes, at Rome and among the Uscoques." Take a map
+of the world; show them all Africa, the empires of Japan, China, India,
+Turkey, Persia, and that of Russia, more extensive than was the Roman
+Empire; make them pass their finger over all Scandinavia, all the north
+of Germany, the three kingdoms of Great Britain, the greater part of the
+Low Countries, and of Helvetia; in short make them observe, in the four
+great divisions of the earth, and in the fifth, which is as little known
+as it is great in extent, the prodigious number of races, who either
+never heard of those opinions, or have combated them, or have held them
+in abhorrence, and you will thus oppose the whole universe to Rue St.
+Jacques.
+
+You will tell them that Julius Cæsar, who extended his power much
+farther than that street, did not know a word of all which they think so
+universal; and that our ancestors, on whom Julius Cæsar bestowed the
+lash, knew no more of them than he did.
+
+They will then, perhaps, feel somewhat ashamed at having believed that
+the organ of St. Severin's church gave the tone to the rest of the
+world.
+
+
+
+
+GLORY--GLORIOUS.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+Glory is reputation joined with esteem, and is complete when admiration
+is superadded. It always supposes that which is brilliant in action, in
+virtue, or in talent, and the surmounting of great difficulties. Cæsar
+and Alexander had glory. The same can hardly be said of Socrates. He
+claims esteem, reverence, pity, indignation against his enemies; but the
+term "glory" applied to him would be improper; his memory is venerable
+rather than glorious. Attila had much brilliancy, but he has no glory;
+for history, which may be mistaken, attributes to him no virtues:
+Charles XII. still has glory; for his valor, his disinterestedness, his
+liberality, were extreme. Success is sufficient for reputation, but not
+for glory. The glory of Henry IV. is every day increasing; for time has
+brought to light all his virtues, which were incomparably greater than
+his defects.
+
+Glory is also the portion of inventors in the fine arts; imitators have
+only applause. It is granted, too, to great talents, but in sublime arts
+only. We may well say, the glory of Virgil, or Cicero, but not of
+Martial, nor of Aulus Gellius.
+
+Men have dared to say, the glory of God: God created this world for His
+glory; not that the Supreme Being can have glory; but that men, having
+no expressions suitable to Him, use for Him those by which they are
+themselves most flattered.
+
+Vainglory is that petty ambition which is contented with appearances,
+which is exhibited in pompous display, and never elevates itself to
+greater things. Sovereigns, having real glory, have been known to be
+nevertheless fond of vainglory--seeking too eagerly after praise, and
+being too much attached to the trappings of ostentation.
+
+False glory often verges towards vanity; but it often leads to excesses,
+while vainglory is more confined to splendid littlenesses. A prince who
+should look for honor in revenge, would seek a false glory rather than a
+vain one.
+
+To give glory signifies to acknowledge, to bear witness. Give glory to
+truth, means acknowledging truth--Give glory to the God whom you
+serve--Bear witness to the God whom you serve.
+
+Glory is taken for heaven--He dwells in glory; but this is the case in
+no religion but ours. It is not allowable to say that Bacchus or
+Hercules was received into glory, when speaking of their apotheosis. The
+saints and angels have sometimes been called the glorious, as dwelling
+in the abode of glory.
+
+Gloriously is always taken in the good sense; he reigned gloriously; he
+extricated himself gloriously from great danger or embarrassment.
+
+To glory in, is sometimes taken in the good, sometimes in the bad,
+sense, according to the nature of the object in question. He glories in
+a disgrace which is the fruit of his talents and the effect of envy. We
+say of the martyrs, that they glorified God--that is, that their
+constancy made the God whom they attested revered by men.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+That Cicero should love glory, after having stifled Catiline's
+conspiracy, may be pardoned him. That the king of Prussia, Frederick the
+Great, should have the same feelings after Rosbach and Lissa, and after
+being the legislator, the historian, the poet, and the philosopher of
+his country--that he should be passionately fond of glory, and at the
+same time, have self-command enough to be modestly so--he will, on that
+account, be the more glorified.
+
+That the empress Catherine II. should have been forced by the brutish
+insolence of a Turkish sultan to display all her genius; that from the
+far north she should have sent four squadrons which spread terror in the
+Dardanelles and in Asia Minor; and that, in 1770, she took four
+provinces from those Turks who made Europe tremble--with this sort of
+glory she will not be reproached, but will be admired for speaking of
+her successes with that air of indifference and superiority which shows
+that they were merited.
+
+In short, glory befits geniuses of this sort, though belonging to the
+very mean race of mortals.
+
+But if, at the extremity of the west, a townsman of a place called Paris
+thinks he has glory in being harangued by a teacher of the university,
+who says to him: "Monseigneur, the glory you have acquired in the
+exercise of your office, your illustrious labors with which the universe
+resounds," etc., then I ask if there are mouths enough in that universe
+to celebrate, with their hisses, the glory of our citizen, and the
+eloquence of the pedant who attends to bray out this harangue at
+monseigneur's hotel? We are such fools that we have made God glorious
+like ourselves.
+
+That worthy chief of the dervishes, Ben-al-betif, said to his brethren
+one day: "My brethren, it is good that you should frequently use that
+sacred formula of our Koran, 'In the name of the most merciful God';
+because God uses mercy, and you learn to do so too, by oft repeating the
+words that recommend virtue, without which there would be few men left
+upon the earth. But, my brethren, beware of imitating those rash ones
+who boast, on every occasion, of laboring for the glory of God.
+
+"If a young simpleton maintains a thesis on the categories, an ignoramus
+in furs presiding, he is sure to write in large characters, at the head
+of his thesis, '_Ek alha abron doxa_!--'_Ad majorem Dei gloriam_.' --To
+the greater glory of God. If a good Mussulman has had his house
+whitewashed, he cuts this foolish inscription in the door. A saka
+carries water for the greater glory of God. It is an impious usage,
+piously used. What would you say of a little chiaoux, who, while
+emptying our sultan's close-stool, should exclaim: "To the greater glory
+of our invincible monarch?" There is certainly a greater distance
+between God and the sultan than between the sultan and the little
+chiaoux.
+
+"Ye miserable earth-worms, called men, what have you resembling the
+glory of the Supreme Being? Can He love glory? Can He receive it from
+you? Can He enjoy it? How long, ye two-legged animals without feathers,
+will you make God after your own image? What! because you are vain,
+because you love glory, you would have God love it also? If there were
+several Gods, perhaps each one would seek to gain the good opinion of
+his fellows. That might be glory to God. Such a God, if infinite
+greatness may be compared with extreme lowliness, would be like King
+Alexander or Iscander, who would enter the lists with none but kings.
+But you, poor creatures! what glory can you give to God? Cease to
+profane the sacred name. An emperor, named Octavius Augustus, forbade
+his being praised in the schools of Rome, lest his name should be
+brought into contempt. You can bring the name of the Supreme Being
+neither into contempt, nor into honor. Humble yourselves in the dust;
+adore, and be silent."
+
+Thus spake Ben-al-betif; and the dervishes cried out: "Glory to God!
+Ben-al-betif has said well."
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+_Conversation with a Chinese._
+
+In 1723, there was in Holland a Chinese: this Chinese was a man of
+letters and a merchant; which two professions ought not to be
+incompatible, but which have become so amongst us, thanks to the extreme
+regard which is paid to money, and the little consideration which
+mankind have ever shown, and will ever show, for merit.
+
+This Chinese, who spoke a little Dutch, was once in a bookseller's shop
+with some men of learning. He asked for a book, and "Bossuet's Universal
+History," badly translated, was proposed to him. "Ah!" said he, "how
+fortunate! I shall now see what is said of our great empire--of our
+nation, which has existed as a national body for more than fifty
+thousand years--of that succession of emperors who have governed us for
+so many ages. I shall now see what is thought of the religion of the
+men of letters--of that simple worship which we render to the Supreme
+Being. How pleasing to see what is said in Europe of our arts, many of
+which are more ancient amongst us than any European kingdom. I guess the
+author will have made many mistakes in the history of the war which we
+had twenty-two thousand five hundred and fifty-two years ago, with the
+warlike nations of Tonquin and Japan, and of that solemn embassy which
+the mighty emperor of the Moguls sent to ask laws from us, in the year
+of the world 500,000,000,000,079,123,450,000." "Alas!" said one of the
+learned men to him, "you are not even mentioned in that book; you are
+too inconsiderable; it is almost all about the first nation in the
+world--the only nation, the great Jewish people!"
+
+"The Jewish people!" exclaimed the Chinese. "Are they, then, masters of
+at least three-quarters of the earth?" "They flatter themselves that
+they shall one day be so," was the answer; "until which time they have
+the honor of being our old-clothes-men, and, now and then, clippers of
+our coin."--"You jest," said the Chinese; "had these people ever a vast
+empire?" "They had as their own for some years," said I, "a small
+country; but it is not by the extent of their states that a people are
+to be judged; as it is not by his riches that we are to estimate a man."
+
+"But is no other people spoken of in this book?" asked the man of
+letters. "Undoubtedly," returned a learned man who stood next me, and
+who instantly replied, "there is a deal said in it of a small country
+sixty leagues broad, called Egypt, where it is asserted that there was a
+lake a hundred and fifty leagues round, cut by the hands of
+men."--"Zounds!" said the Chinese; "a lake a hundred and fifty leagues
+round in a country only sixty broad! That is fine, indeed!"--"Everybody
+was wise in that country," added the doctor. "Oh! what fine times they
+must have been," said the Chinese. "But is that all?"--"No," replied the
+European; "he also treats of that celebrated people, the Greeks." "Who
+are these Greeks?" asked the man of letters. "Ah!" continued the other,
+"they inhabited a province about a two-hundredth part as large as China,
+but which has been famous throughout the world." "I have never heard
+speak of these people, neither in Mogul nor in Japan, nor in Great
+Tartary," said the Chinese, with an ingenuous look.
+
+"Oh, ignorant, barbarous man!" politely exclaimed our scholar. "Know you
+not, then, the Theban Epaminondas; nor the harbor of Piraeus; nor the
+name of the two horses of Achilles; nor that of Silenus's ass? Have you
+not heard of Jupiter, nor of Diogenes, nor of Lais, nor of Cybele,
+nor--"
+
+"I am much afraid," replied the man of letters, "that you know nothing
+at all of the ever memorable adventure of the celebrated Xixofou
+Concochigramki, nor of the mysteries of the great Fi Psi Hi Hi. But
+pray, what are the other unknown things of which this universal history
+treats?" The scholar then spoke for a quarter of an hour on the Roman
+commonwealth: but when he came to Julius Cæsar, the Chinese interrupted
+him, saying, "As for him, I think I know him: was he not a Turk?"
+
+"What!" said the scholar, somewhat warm, "do you not at least know the
+difference between Pagans, Christians, and Mussulmans? Do you not know
+Constantine, and the history of the popes?" "We have indistinctly
+heard," answered the Asiatic, "of one Mahomet."
+
+"It is impossible," returned the other, "that you should not, at least,
+be acquainted with Luther, Zuinglius, Bellarmin, Å’colampadius." "I
+shall never remember those names," said the Chinese. He then went away
+to sell a considerable parcel of tea and fine grogram, with which he
+bought two fine girls and a ship-boy, whom he took back to his own
+country, adoring Tien, and commending himself to Confucius.
+
+For myself, who was present at this conversation, I clearly saw what
+glory is; and I said: Since Cæsar and Jupiter are unknown in the finest,
+the most ancient, the most extensive, the most populous and
+well-regulated kingdom upon earth; it beseems you, ye governors of some
+little country, ye preachers in some little parish, or some little
+town--ye doctors of Salamanca and of Bourges, ye flimsy authors, and ye
+ponderous commentators--it beseems you to make pretensions to renown!
+
+
+
+
+GOAT--SORCERY.
+
+
+The honors of every kind which antiquity paid to goats would be very
+astonishing, if anything could astonish those who have grown a little
+familiar with the world, ancient and modern. The Egyptians and the Jews
+often designated the kings and the chiefs of the people by the word
+"goat." We find in Zachariah:
+
+"Mine anger was kindled against the shepherds, and I punished the goats;
+for the Lord of Hosts hath visited his flock, the house of Judah, and
+hath made them as his goodly horse in the battle."
+
+"Remove out of the midst of Babylon," says Jeremiah to the chiefs of the
+people; "go forth out of the land of the Chaldæans, and be as the
+he-goats before the flocks."
+
+Isaiah, in chapters x. and xiv., uses the term "goat," which has been
+translated "prince." The Egyptians went much farther than calling their
+kings goats; they consecrated a goat in Mendes, and it is even said that
+they adored him. The truth very likely was, that the people took an
+emblem for a divinity, as is but too often the case.
+
+It is not likely that the Egyptian _shoën_ or _shotim_, _i.e._, priests,
+immolated goats and worshipped them at the same time. We know that they
+had their goat Hazazel, which they adorned and crowned with flowers, and
+threw down headlong, as an expiation for the people; and that the Jews
+took from them, not only this ceremony, but even the very name of
+Hazazel, as they adopted many other rites from Egypt.
+
+But goats received another, and yet more singular honor. It is beyond a
+doubt that in Egypt many women set the same example with goats, as
+Pasiphae did with her bull.
+
+The Jews but too faithfully imitated these abominations. Jeroboam
+instituted priests for the service of his calves and his goats.
+
+The worship of the goat was established in Egypt, and in the lands of a
+part of Palestine. Enchantments were believed to be operated by means of
+goats, and other monsters, which were always represented with a goat's
+head.
+
+Magic, sorcery, soon passed from the East into the West, and extended
+itself throughout the earth. The sort of sorcery that came from the Jews
+was called Sabbatum by the Romans, who thus confounded their sacred day
+with their secret abominations. Thence it was, that in the neighboring
+nations, to be a sorcerer and to go to the sabbath, meant the same
+thing.
+
+Wretched village women, deceived by knaves, and still more by the
+weakness of their own imaginations, believed that after pronouncing the
+word "_abraxa_", and rubbing themselves with an ointment mixed with
+cow-dung and goat's hair, they went to the sabbath on a broom-stick in
+their sleep, that there they adored a goat, and that he enjoyed them.
+
+This opinion was universal. All the doctors asserted that it was the
+devil, who metamorphosed himself into a goat. This may be seen in Del
+Rio's "Disquisitions," and in a hundred other authors. The theologian
+Grillandus, a great promoter of the Inquisition, quoted by Del Rio, says
+that sorcerers call the goat Martinet. He assures us that a woman who
+was attached to Martinet, mounted on his back, and was carried in an
+instant through the air to a place called the Nut of Benevento.
+
+There were books in which the mysteries of the sorcerers were written. I
+have seen one of them, at the head of which was a figure of a goat very
+badly drawn, with a woman on her knees behind him. In France, these
+books were called "_grimoires_"; and in other countries "the devil's
+alphabet." That which I saw contained only four leaves, in almost
+illegible characters, much like those of the "Shepherd's Almanac."
+
+Reasoning and better education would have sufficed in Europe for the
+extirpation of such an extravagance; but executions were employed
+instead of reasoning. The pretended sorcerers had their "_grimoire_" and
+the judges had their sorcerer's code. In 1599, the Jesuit Del Rio, a
+doctor of Louvain, published his "Magical Disquisitions." He affirms
+that all heretics are magicians, and frequently recommends that they be
+put to the torture. He has no doubt that the devil transforms himself
+into a goat and grants his favors to all women presented to him. He
+quotes various jurisconsults, called demonographers, who assert that
+Luther was the son of a woman and a goat. He assures us that at
+Brussels, in 1595, a woman was brought to bed of a child, of which the
+devil, disguised as a goat, was father, and that she was punished, but
+he does not inform us in what manner.
+
+But the jurisprudence of witchcraft has been the most profoundly treated
+by one Boguet, "_grand juge en dernier ressort_" of an abbey of St.
+Claude in Franche-Comté. He gives an account of all the executions to
+which he condemned wizards and witches, and the number is very
+considerable. Nearly all the witches are supposed to have had commerce
+with the goat.
+
+It has already been said that more than a hundred thousand sorcerers
+have been executed in Europe. Philosophy alone has at length cured men
+of this abominable delusion, and has taught judges that they should not
+burn the insane.
+
+
+
+
+GOD--GODS.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+The reader cannot too carefully bear in mind that this dictionary has
+not been written for the purpose of repeating what so many others have
+said.
+
+The knowledge of a God is not impressed upon us by the hands of nature,
+for then men would all have the same idea; and no idea is born with us.
+It does not come to us like the perception of light, of the ground,
+etc., which we receive as soon as our eyes and our understandings are
+opened. Is it a philosophical idea? No; men admitted the existence of
+gods before they were philosophers.
+
+Whence, then, is this idea derived? From feeling, and from that natural
+logic which unfolds itself with age, even in the rudest of mankind.
+Astonishing effects of nature were beheld--harvests and barrenness, fair
+weather and storms, benefits and scourges; and the hand of a master was
+felt. Chiefs were necessary to govern societies; and it was needful to
+admit sovereigns of these new sovereigns whom human weakness had given
+itself--beings before whose power these men who could bear down their
+fellow-men might tremble. The first sovereigns in their time employed
+these notions to cement their power. Such were the first steps; thus
+every little society had its god. These notions were rude because
+everything was rude. It is very natural to reason by analogy. One
+society under a chief did not deny that the neighboring tribe should
+likewise have its judge, or its captain; consequently it could not deny
+that the other should also have its god. But as it was to the interest
+of each tribe that its captain should be the best, it was also
+interested in believing, and consequently it did believe, that its god
+was the mightiest. Hence those ancient fables which have so long been
+generally diffused, that the gods of one nation fought against the gods
+of another. Hence the numerous passages in the Hebrew books, which we
+find constantly disclosing the opinion entertained by the Jews, that the
+gods of their enemies existed, but that they were inferior to the God of
+the Jews.
+
+Meanwhile, in the great states where the progress of society allowed to
+individuals the enjoyment of speculative leisure, there were priests,
+Magi, and philosophers.
+
+Some of these perfected their reason so far as to acknowledge in secret
+one only and universal god. So, although the ancient Egyptians adored
+Osiri, Osiris, or rather Osireth (which signifies this land is mine);
+though they also adored other superior beings, yet they admitted one
+supreme, one only principal god, whom they called "_Knef_", whose symbol
+was a sphere placed on the frontispiece of the temple.
+
+After this model, the Greeks had their Zeus, their Jupiter, the master
+of the other gods, who were but what the angels are with the Babylonians
+and the Hebrews, and the saints with the Christians of the Roman
+communion.
+
+It is a more thorny question than it has been considered, and one by no
+means profoundly examined, whether several gods, equal in power, can
+exist at the same time?
+
+We have no adequate idea of the Divinity; we creep on from conjecture to
+conjecture, from likelihood to probability. We have very few
+certainties. There is something; therefore there is something eternal;
+for nothing is produced from nothing. Here is a certain truth on which
+the mind reposes. Every work which shows us means and an end, announces
+a workman; then this universe, composed of springs, of means, each of
+which has its end, discovers a most mighty, a most intelligent workman.
+Here is a probability approaching the greatest certainty. But is this
+supreme artificer infinite? Is he everywhere? Is he in one place? How
+are we, with our feeble intelligence and limited knowledge, to answer
+these questions?
+
+My reason alone proves to me a being who has arranged the matter of this
+world; but my reason is unable to prove to me that he made this
+matter--that he brought it out of nothing. All the sages of antiquity,
+without exception, believed matter to be eternal, and existing by
+itself. All then that I can do, without the aid of superior light, is to
+believe that the God of this world is also eternal, and existing by
+Himself. God and matter exist by the nature of things. May not other
+gods exist, as well as other worlds? Whole nations, and very enlightened
+schools, have clearly admitted two gods in this world--one the source of
+good, the other the source of evil. They admitted an eternal war between
+two equal powers. Assuredly, nature can more easily suffer the existence
+of several independent beings in the immensity of space, than that of
+limited and powerless gods in this world, of whom one can do no good,
+and the other no harm.
+
+If God and matter exist from all eternity, as antiquity believed, here
+then are two necessary beings; now, if there be two necessary beings,
+there may be thirty. These doubts alone, which are the germ of an
+infinity of reflections, serve at least to convince us of the feebleness
+of our understanding. We must, with Cicero, confess our ignorance of the
+nature of the Divinity; we shall never know any more of it than he did.
+
+In vain do the schools tell us that God is infinite negatively and not
+privatively--"_formaliter et non materialiter_" that He is the first
+act, the middle, and the last--that He is everywhere without being in
+any place; a hundred pages of commentaries on definitions like these
+cannot give us the smallest light. We have no steps whereby to arrive at
+such knowledge.
+
+We feel that we are under the hand of an invisible being; this is all;
+we cannot advance one step farther. It is mad temerity to seek to divine
+what this being is--whether he is extended or not, whether he is in one
+place or not, how he exists, or how he operates.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+I am ever apprehensive of being mistaken; but all monuments give me
+sufficient evidence that the polished nations of antiquity acknowledged
+a supreme god. There is not a book, not a medal, not a bas-relief, not
+an inscription, in which Juno, Minerva, Neptune, Mars, or any of the
+other deities, is spoken of as a forming being, the sovereign of all
+nature. On the contrary, the most ancient profane books that we
+have--those of Hesiod and Homer--represent their Zeus as the only
+thunderer, the only master of gods and men; he even punishes the other
+gods; he ties Juno with a chain, and drives Apollo out of heaven.
+
+The ancient religion of the Brahmins--the first that admitted celestial
+creatures--the first which spoke of their rebellion--explains itself in
+sublime manner concerning the unity and power of God; as we have seen in
+the article on "Angel."
+
+The Chinese, ancient as they are, come after the Indians. They have
+acknowledged one only god from time immemorial; they have no subordinate
+gods, no t mediating demons or genii between God and man; no oracles, no
+abstract dogmas, no theological disputes among the lettered; their
+emperor was always the first pontiff; their religion was always august
+and simple; thus it is that this vast empire, though twice subjugated,
+has constantly preserved its integrity, has made its conquerors receive
+its laws, and notwithstanding the crimes and miseries inseparable from
+the human race, is still the most flourishing state upon earth.
+
+The Magi of Chaldæa, the Sabeans, acknowledged but one supreme god, whom
+they adored in the stars, which are his work. The Persians adored him in
+the sun. The sphere placed on the frontispiece of the temple of Memphis
+was the emblem of one only and perfect god, called "_Knef_" by the
+Egyptians.
+
+The title of "_Deus Optimus Maximus_" was never given by the Romans to
+any but "_Jupiter, hominum sator atque deorum_." This great truth, which
+we have elsewhere pointed out, cannot be too often repeated.
+
+This adoration of a Supreme God, from Romulus down to the total
+destruction of the empire and of its religion, is confirmed. In spite of
+all the follies of the people, who venerated secondary and ridiculous
+gods, and in spite of the Epicureans, who in reality acknowledged none,
+it is verified that, in all times, the magistrates and the wise adored
+one sovereign God.
+
+From the great number of testimonies left us to this truth, I will
+select first that of Maximus of Tyre, who flourished under the
+Antonines--those models of true piety, since they were models of
+humanity. These are his words, in his discourse entitled "Of God,"
+according to Plato. The reader who would instruct himself is requested
+to weigh them well:
+
+"Men have been so weak as to give to God a human figure, because they
+had seen nothing superior to man; but it is ridiculous to imagine, with
+Homer, that Jupiter or the Supreme Divinity has black eyebrows and
+golden hair, which he cannot shake without making the heavens tremble.
+
+"When men are questioned concerning the nature of the Divinity, their
+answers are all different. Yet, notwithstanding this prodigious variety
+of opinions, you will find one and the same feeling throughout the
+earth--viz., that there is but one God, who is the father of all...."
+
+After this formal avowal, after the immortal discourses of Cicero, of
+Antonine, of Epictetus, what becomes of the declamations which so many
+ignorant pedants are still repeating? What avail those eternal
+reproachings of base polytheism and puerile idolatry, but to convince us
+that the reproachers have not the slightest acquaintance with sterling
+antiquity? They have taken the reveries of Homer for the doctrines of
+the wise.
+
+Is it necessary to have stronger or more expressive testimony? You will
+find it in the letter from Maximus of Madaura to St. Augustine; both
+were philosophers and orators; at least, they prided themselves on being
+so; they wrote to each other freely; they were even friends as much as a
+man of the old religion and one of the new could be friends. Read
+Maximus of Madaura's letter, and the bishop of Hippo's answer:
+
+_Letter from Maximus of Madaura._
+
+"Now, that there is a sovereign God, who is without beginning, and, who,
+without having begotten anything like unto himself, is nevertheless the
+father and the former of all things, what man can be gross and stupid
+enough to doubt? He it is of whom, under different names, we adore the
+eternal power extending through every part of the world--thus honoring
+separately, by different sorts of worship, what may be called his
+several members, we adore him entirely.... May those subordinate gods
+preserve you, under whose names, and by whom all we mortals upon earth
+adore the common father of gods and men, by different sorts of worship,
+it is true, but all according in their variety, and all tending to the
+same end."
+
+By whom was this letter written? By a Numidian--one of the country of
+the Algerines!
+
+_Augustine's Answer._
+
+"In your public square there are two statues of Mars, the one naked, the
+other armed; and close by, the figure of a man who, with three fingers
+advanced towards Mars, holds in check that divinity, so dangerous to the
+whole town. With regard to what you say of such gods, being portions of
+the only true God, I take the liberty you give me, to warn you not to
+fall into such a sacrilege; for that only God, of whom you speak, is
+doubtless He who is acknowledged by the whole world, and concerning
+whom, as some of the ancients have said, the ignorant agree with the
+learned. Now, will you say that he whose strength, if not his cruelty,
+is represented by an inanimate man, is a portion of that God? I could
+easily push you hard on this subject; for you will clearly see how much
+might be said upon it; but I refrain, lest you should say that I employ
+against you the weapons of rhetoric rather than those of virtue."
+
+We know not what was signified by these two statues, of which no vestige
+is left us; but not all the statues with which Rome was filled--not the
+Pantheon and all the temples consecrated to the inferior gods, nor even
+those of the twelve greater gods prevented "_Deus Optimus
+Maximus_"--"God, most good, most great"--from being acknowledged
+throughout the empire.
+
+The misfortune of the Romans, then, was their ignorance of the Mosaic
+law, and afterwards, of the law of the disciples of our Saviour Jesus
+Christ--their want of the faith--their mixing with the worship of a
+supreme God the worship of Mars, of Venus, of Minerva, of Apollo, who
+did not exist, and their preserving that religion until the time of the
+Theodosii. Happily, the Goths, the Huns, the Vandals, the Heruli, the
+Lombards, the Franks, who destroyed that empire, submitted to the truth,
+and enjoyed a blessing denied to Scipio, to Cato, to Metellus, to
+Emilius, to Cicero, to Varro, to Virgil, and to Horace.
+
+None of these great men knew Jesus Christ, whom they could not know; yet
+they did not worship the devil, as so many pedants are every day
+repeating. How should they worship the devil, of whom they had never
+heard?
+
+_A Calumny on Cicero by Warburton, on the Subject of a Supreme God._
+
+Warburton, like his contemporaries, has calumniated Cicero and ancient
+Rome. He boldly supposes that Cicero pronounced these words, in his
+"Oration for Flaccus":
+
+"It is unworthy of the majesty of the empire to adore only one
+God"--"_Majestatem imperii non decuit ut unus tantum Deus colatur."
+
+It will, perhaps, hardly be believed that there is not a word of this in
+the "Oration for Flaccus," nor in any of Cicero's works. Flaccus, who
+had exercised the prætorship in Asia Minor, is charged with exercising
+some vexations. He was secretly persecuted by the Jews, who then
+inundated Rome; for, by their money, they had obtained privileges in
+Rome at the very time when Pompey, after Crassus, had taken Jerusalem,
+and hanged their petty king, Alexander, son of Aristobolus. Flaccus had
+forbidden the conveying of gold and silver specie to Jerusalem, because
+the money came back altered, and commerce was thereby injured; and he
+had seized the gold which was clandestinely carried. This gold, said
+Cicero, is still in the treasury. Flaccus has acted as disinterestedly
+as Pompey.
+
+Cicero, then, with his wonted irony, pronounces these words: "Each
+country has its religion; we have ours. While Jerusalem was yet free,
+while the Jews were yet at peace, even then they held in abhorrence the
+splendor of this empire, the dignity of the Roman name, the
+institutions of our ancestors. Now that nation has shown more than ever,
+by the strength of its arms, what it should think of the Roman Empire.
+It has shown us, by its valor, how dear it is to the immortal gods; it
+has proved it to us, by its being vanquished, expatriated, and
+tributary."--"_Stantibus Hierosolymis, pacatisque Judais, tamen istorum
+religio sacrorum, a splendore hujus imperii, gravitate nominis nostri,
+ma jorum institutis, abhorrebat; nunc vero hoc magis quid ilia gens,
+quid de imperio nostro sentiret, ostendit armis; quam cara diis
+immortalibus esset, docuit, quod est victa, quod elocata, quod
+servata._"
+
+It is then quite false that Cicero, or any other Roman, ever said that
+it did not become the majesty of the empire to acknowledge a supreme
+God. Their Jupiter, the Zeus of the Greeks, the Jehovah of the
+Phœnicians, was always considered as the master of the secondary
+gods. This great truth cannot be too forcibly inculcated.
+
+_Did the Romans Take Their Gods from the Greeks?_
+
+Had not the Romans served gods for whom they were not indebted to the
+Greeks? For instance, they could not be guilty of plagiarism in adoring
+Coelum, while the Greeks adored Ouranon; or in addressing themselves to
+Saturnus and Tellus, while the Greeks addressed themselves to Ge and
+Chronos. They called Ceres, her whom the Greeks named Deo and Demiter.
+
+Their Neptune was Poseidon, their Venus was Aphrodite; their Juno was
+called, in Greek, Era; their Proserpine, Core; and their favorites, Mars
+and Bellona, were Ares and Enio. In none of these instances do the names
+resemble.
+
+Did the inventive spirits of Rome and of Greece assemble? or did the one
+take from the other the _thing_, while they disguised the _name_? It is
+very natural that the Romans, without consulting the Greeks, should make
+to themselves gods of the heavens, of time; beings presiding over war,
+over generation, over harvests, without going to Greece to ask for gods,
+as they afterwards went there to ask for laws. When you find a name that
+resembles nothing else, it is but fair to believe it a native of that
+particular country.
+
+But is not Jupiter, the master of all the gods, a word belonging to
+every nation, from the Euphrates to the Tiber? Among the first Romans,
+it was _Jov_, _Jovis_; among the Greeks, _Zeus_; among the
+Phœnicians, the Syrians, and the Egyptians, _Jehovah_.
+
+Does not this resemblance serve to confirm the supposition that every
+people had the knowledge of the Supreme Being?--a knowledge confused, it
+is true; but what man can have it _distinct_?
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+_Examination of Spinoza._
+
+Spinoza cannot help admitting an intelligence acting in matter, and
+forming a whole with it.
+
+"I must conclude," he says, "that the absolute being is neither thought
+nor extent, exclusively of each other; but that extent and thought are
+necessary attributes of the absolute being."
+
+Herein he appears to differ from all the atheists of antiquity; from
+Ocellus, Lucanus, Heraclitus, Democritus, Leucippus, Strato, Epicurus,
+Pythagoras, Diagoras, Zeno of Elis, Anaximander, and so many others. He
+differs from them, above all, in his method, which he took entirely from
+the reading of Descartes, whose very style he has imitated.
+
+The multitude of those who cry out against Spinoza, without ever having
+read him, will especially be astonished by his following declaration. He
+does not make it to dazzle mankind, nor to appease theologians, nor to
+obtain protectors, nor to disarm a party; he speaks as a philosopher,
+without naming himself, without advertising himself; and expresses
+himself in Latin, so as to be understood by a very small number. Here is
+his profession of faith.
+
+_Spinoza's Profession of Faith._
+
+"If I also concluded that the idea of God, comprised in that of the
+infinity of the universe, excused me from obedience, love, and worship,
+I should make a still more pernicious use of my reason; for it is
+evident to me that the laws which I _have_ received, not by the relation
+or intervention of other men, but immediately from Him, are those which
+the light of nature points out to me as the true guides of rational
+conduct. If I failed of obedience, in this particular, I should sin, not
+only against the principle of my being and the society of my kind, but
+also against myself, in depriving myself of the most solid advantage of
+my existence. This obedience does, it is true, bind me only to the
+duties of my state, and makes me look on all besides as frivolous
+practices, invented in superstition to serve the purposes of their
+inventors.
+
+"With regard to the love of God, so far, I conceive, is this idea from
+tending to weaken it, that no other is more calculated to increase it;
+since, through it, I know that God is intimate with my being; that He
+gives me existence and my every property; but He gives me them
+liberally, without reproach, without interest, without subjecting me to
+anything but my own nature. It banishes fear, uneasiness, distrust, and
+all the effects of a vulgar or interested love. It informs me that this
+is a good which I cannot lose, and which I possess the more fully, as I
+know and love it."
+
+Are these the words of the virtuous and tender Fénelon, or those of
+Spinoza? How is it that two men so opposed to each other, have, with
+such different notions of God, concurred in the idea of loving God for
+Himself?
+
+It must be acknowledged that they went both to the same end--the one as
+a Christian, the other as a man who had the misfortune not to be so;
+the holy archbishop, as philosopher, convinced that God is distinct
+from nature; the other as a widely-erring disciple of Descartes, who
+imagined that God is all nature.
+
+The former was orthodox, the latter was mistaken, I must assent; but
+both were honest, both estimable in their sincerity, as in their mild
+and simple manners; though there is no other point of resemblance
+between the imitator of the "Odyssey," and a dry Cartesian fenced round
+with arguments; between one of the most accomplished men of the court of
+Louis XIV. invested with what is called a _high_ divinity, and a poor
+unjudaïzed Jew, living with an income of three hundred florins, in the
+most profound obscurity.
+
+If there be any similitude between them, it is that Fénelon was accused
+before the Sanhedrim of the new law, and the other before a synagogue
+without power or without reason; but the one submitted, the other
+rebelled.
+
+_Foundation of Spinoza's Philosophy._
+
+The great dialectician Bayle has refuted Spinoza. His system, therefore,
+is not demonstrated, like one of Euclid's propositions; for, if it were
+so, it could not be combated. It is, therefore, at least obscure.
+
+I have always had some suspicion that Spinoza, with his universal
+substance, his modes and accidents, had some other meaning than that in
+which he is understood by Bayle; and consequently, that Bayle may be
+right, without having confounded Spinoza. And, in particular, I have
+always thought that often Spinoza did not understand himself, and that
+this is the principal reason why he has not been understood.
+
+It seems to me that the ramparts of Spinozism might be beaten down on a
+side which Bayle has neglected. Spinoza thinks that there can exist but
+one substance; and it appears throughout his book that he builds his
+theory on the mistake of Descartes, that "nature is a plenum."
+
+The theory of a plenum is as false as that of a void. It is now
+demonstrated that motion is as impossible in absolute fulness, as it is
+impossible that, in an equal balance, a weight of two pounds in one
+scale should sink a weight of two in the other.
+
+Now, if every motion absolutely requires empty space, what becomes of
+Spinoza's one and only substance? How can the substance of a star,
+between which and us there is a void so immense, be precisely the
+substance of this earth, or the substance of myself, or the substance of
+a fly eaten by a spider?
+
+Perhaps I mistake, but I never have been able to conceive how Spinoza,
+admitting an infinite substance of which thought and matter are the two
+modalities--admitting the substance which he calls God, and of which all
+that we see is mode or accident--could nevertheless reject final causes.
+If this infinite, universal being thinks, must he not have design? If he
+has design, must he not have a will?
+
+[Illustration: Descartes.]
+
+Spinoza says, we are modes of that absolute, necessary, infinite being.
+I say to Spinoza, we will, and have design, we who are but modes;
+therefore, this infinite, necessary, absolute being cannot be deprived
+of them; therefore, he has will, design, power.
+
+I am aware that various philosophers, and especially Lucretius, have
+denied final causes; I am also aware that Lucretius, though not very
+chaste, is a very great poet in his descriptions and in his morals; but
+in philosophy I own he appears to me to be very far behind a college
+porter or a parish beadle. To affirm that the eye is not made to see,
+nor the ear to hear, nor the stomach to digest--is not this the most
+enormous absurdity, the most revolting folly, that ever entered the
+human mind? Doubter as I am, this insanity seems to me evident, and I
+say so.
+
+For my part, I see in nature, as in the arts, only final causes, and I
+believe that an apple tree is made to bear apples, as I believe that a
+watch is made to tell the hour.
+
+I must here acquaint the readers that if Spinoza, in several passages of
+his works, makes a jest of final causes, he most expressly acknowledges
+them in the first part of his "Being, in General and in Particular."
+
+Here he says, "Permit me for a few moments to dwell with admiration on
+the wonderful dispensation of nature, which, having enriched the
+constitution of man with all the resources necessary to prolong to a
+certain term the duration of his frail existence, and to animate his
+knowledge of himself by that of an infinity of distant objects, seems
+purposely to have neglected to give him the means of well knowing what
+he is obliged to make a more ordinary use of--the individuals of his own
+species. Yet, when duly considered, this appears less the effect of a
+refusal than of an extreme liberality; for, if there were any
+intelligent being that could penetrate another against his will, he
+would enjoy such an advantage as would of itself exclude him from
+society; whereas, in the present state of things, each individual
+enjoying himself in full independence communicates himself so much only
+as he finds convenient."
+
+What shall I conclude from this? That Spinoza frequently contradicted
+himself; that he had not always clear ideas; that in the great wreck of
+systems, he clung sometimes to one plank, sometimes to another; that in
+this weakness he was like Malebranche, Arnauld, Bossuet, and Claude, who
+now and then contradicted themselves in their disputes; that he was like
+numberless metaphysicians and theologians? I shall conclude that I have
+additional reason for distrusting all my metaphysical notions; that I am
+a very feeble animal, treading on quicksands, which are continually
+giving way beneath me; and that there is perhaps nothing so foolish as
+to believe ourselves always in the right.
+
+Baruch Spinoza, you are very confused; but are you as dangerous as you
+are said to be? I maintain that you are not; and my reason is, that you
+_are_ confused, that you have written in bad Latin, and that there are
+not ten persons in Europe who read you from beginning to end, although
+you have been translated into French. Who is the dangerous author? He
+who is read by the idle at court and by the ladies.
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+_The "System of Nature."_
+
+The author of the "System of Nature" has had the advantage of being read
+by both learned and ignorant, and by women. His style, then, has merits
+which that of Spinoza wanted. He is often luminous, sometimes eloquent;
+although he may be charged, like all the rest, with repetition,
+declamation, and self-contradiction. But for profundity, he is very
+often to be distrusted both in physics and in morals. The interest of
+mankind is here in question; we will, therefore, examine whether his
+doctrine is true and useful; and will, if we can, be brief.
+
+"Order and disorder do not exist." What! in physics, is not a child born
+blind, without legs, or a monster, contrary to the nature of the
+species? Is it not the ordinary regularity of nature that makes order,
+and irregularity that constitutes disorder? Is it not a great
+derangement, a dreadful disorder, when nature gives a child hunger and
+closes the Å“sophagus? The evacuations of every kind are necessary;
+yet the channels are frequently without orifices, which it is necessary
+to remedy. Doubtless this disorder has its cause; for there is no effect
+without a cause; but it is a very disordered effect.
+
+Is not the assassination of our friend, or of our brother, a horrible
+disorder in morals? Are not the calumnies of a Garasse, of a Letellier,
+of a Doucin, against Jansenists, and those of Jansenists against
+Jesuits, petty disorders? Were not the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the
+Irish massacre, etc., execrable disorders? This crime has its cause in
+passion, but the effect is execrable; the cause is fatal; this disorder
+makes us shudder. The origin of the disorder remains to be discovered,
+but the disorder exists.
+
+"Experience proves to us that the matter which we regard as inert and
+dead assumes action, intelligence, and life, when it is combined in a
+certain way."
+
+This is precisely the difficulty. How does a germ come to life? Of this
+the author and the reader are alike ignorant. Hence, are not the "System
+of Nature," and all the systems in the world, so many dreams?
+
+"It would be necessary to define the vital principle, which I deem
+impossible." Is not this definition very easy, very common? Is not life
+organization with feeling? But that you have these two properties from
+the motion of matter alone, it is impossible to give any proof; and if
+it cannot be proved, why affirm it? Why say aloud, "I know," while you
+say to yourself, "I know not"?
+
+"It will be asked, what is man?" etc. Assuredly, this article is no
+clearer than the most obscure of Spinoza's; and many readers will feel
+indignant at the decisive tone which is assumed without anything being
+explained.
+
+"Matter is eternal and necessary; but its forms and its combinations are
+transitory and contingent," etc. It is hard to comprehend, matter being,
+according to our author, necessary, and without freedom, how there can
+be anything contingent. By contingency, we understand that which may be,
+or may not be; but since all must be, of absolute necessity, every
+manner of being, which he here very erroneously calls contingent, is as
+absolutely of necessity as the being itself. Here again we are in a
+labyrinth.
+
+When you venture to affirm that there is no God, that matter acts of
+itself by an eternal necessity, it must be demonstrated like a
+proposition in Euclid, otherwise you rest your system only on a perhaps.
+What a foundation for that which is most interesting to the human race!
+
+"If man is by his nature forced to love his well-being, he is forced to
+love the means of that well-being. It were useless, and perhaps unjust,
+to ask a man to be virtuous, if he cannot be so without making himself
+unhappy. So soon as vice makes him happy, he must love vice."
+
+This maxim is yet more execrable in morals than the others are in
+physics. Were it true that a man could not be virtuous without
+suffering, he must be encouraged to suffer. Our author's proposition
+would evidently be the ruin of society. Besides, how does he know that
+we cannot be happy without having vices? On the contrary, is it not
+proved by experience that the satisfaction of having subdued them is a
+thousand times greater than the pleasure of yielding to them?--a
+pleasure always empoisoned, a pleasure leading to woe. By subduing our
+vices, we acquire tranquillity, the consoling testimony of our
+conscience; by giving ourselves up to them, we lose our health, our
+quiet--we risk everything. Thus our author himself, in twenty passages,
+wishes all to be sacrificed to virtue; and he advances this proposition
+only to give in his system a fresh proof of the necessity of being
+virtuous.
+
+"They who, with so many arguments, reject innate ideas should have
+perceived that this ineffable intelligence by which the world is said to
+be guided, and of which our senses can determine neither the existence
+nor the qualities, is a being of reason."
+
+But, truly, how does it follow from our having no innate ideas, that
+there is no God? Is not this consequence absurd? Is there any
+contradiction in saying that God gives us ideas through our senses? Is
+it not, on the contrary, most clearly evident, that if there is an
+Almighty Being from whom we have life, we owe to him our ideas and our
+senses as well as everything else? It should first have been proved
+that God does not exist, which our author has not done, which he has not
+even attempted to do before this page of his tenth chapter.
+
+Fearful of wearying the reader by an examination of all these detached
+passages, I will come at once to the foundation of the book, and the
+astonishing error upon which the author has built his system.
+
+_Story of the Eels on Which the System is Founded._
+
+About the year 1750 there was, in France, an English Jesuit called
+Needham, disguised as a secular, who was then serving as tutor to the
+nephew of M. Dillon, archbishop of Toulouse. This man made experiments
+in natural philosophy, and especially in chemistry.
+
+Having put some rye meal into well-corked bottles, and some boiled
+mutton gravy into other bottles, he thought that his mutton gravy and
+his meal had given birth to eels, which again produced others; and that
+thus a race of eels was formed indifferently from the juice of meat, or
+from a grain of rye.
+
+A natural philosopher, of some reputation, had no doubt that this
+Needham was a profound atheist. He concluded that, since eels could be
+made of rye meal, men might be made of wheat flour; that nature and
+chemistry produce all; and that it was demonstrated that we may very
+well dispense with an all-forming God.
+
+This property of meal very easily deceived one who, unfortunately, was
+already wandering amidst ideas that should make us tremble for the
+weakness of the human mind. He wanted to dig a hole in the centre of the
+earth, to see the central fire; to dissect Patagonians, that he might
+know the nature of the soul; to cover the sick with pitch, to prevent
+them from perspiring; to exalt his soul, that he might foretell the
+future. If to these things it were added, that he had the still greater
+unhappiness of seeking to oppress two of his brethren, it would do no
+honor to atheism; it would only serve to make us look into ourselves
+with confusion.
+
+It is really strange that men, while denying a creator, should have
+attributed to themselves the power of creating eels.
+
+But it is yet more deplorable that natural philosophers, of better
+information, adopted the Jesuit Needham's ridiculous system, and joined
+it to that of Maillet, who asserted that the ocean had formed the Alps
+and Pyrenees, and that men were originally porpoises, whose forked tails
+changed in the course of time into thighs and legs. Such fancies are
+worthy to be placed with the eels formed by meal. We were assured, not
+long ago, that at Brussels a hen had brought forth half a dozen young
+rabbits.
+
+This transmutation of meal and gravy into eels was demonstrated to be as
+false and ridiculous as it really is, by M. Spallanzani, a rather better
+observer than Needham. But the extravagance of so palpable an illusion
+was evident without his observations.
+
+Needham's eels soon followed the Brussels' hen.
+
+Nevertheless, in 1768, the correct, elegant, and judicious translator of
+Lucretius was so far led away, that he not only, in his notes to book
+viii. p. 361, repeats Needham's pretended experiments, but he also does
+all he can to establish their validity. Here, then, we have the new
+foundation of the "System of Nature."
+
+The author, in the second chapter, thus expresses himself: "After
+moistening meal with water, and shutting up the mixture, it is found
+after a little time, with the aid of the microscope, that it has
+produced organized beings, of whose production the water and meal were
+believed to be incapable. Thus inanimate nature can pass into life,
+which is itself but an assemblage of motions."
+
+Were this unparalleled blunder true, yet, in rigorous reasoning, I do
+not see how it would prove there is no God; I do not see why a supreme,
+intelligent, and mighty being, having formed the sun and the stars,
+might not also deign to form animalculae without a germ. Here is no
+contradiction in terms. A demonstrative proof that God has no existence
+must be sought elsewhere; and most assuredly no person has ever found,
+or will ever find, one.
+
+Our author treats final causes with contempt, because the argument is
+hackneyed; but this much-contemned argument is that of Cicero and of
+Newton. This alone might somewhat lessen the confidence of atheists in
+themselves. The number is not small of the sages who, observing the
+course of the stars, and the prodigious art that pervades the structure
+of animals and vegetables, have acknowledged a powerful hand working
+these continual wonders.
+
+The author asserts that matter, blind and without choice, produces
+intelligent animals. Produce, without intelligence, beings with
+intelligence! Is this conceivable? Is this system founded on the
+smallest verisimilitude? An opinion so contradictory requires proofs no
+less astonishing than itself. The author gives us none; he never proves
+anything; but he affirms all that he advances. What chaos! what
+confusion! and what temerity!
+
+Spinoza at least acknowledged an intelligence acting in this great
+whole, which constituted nature: in this there was philosophy. But in
+the new system, I am under the necessity of saying that there is none.
+
+Matter has extent, solidity, gravity, divisibility. I have all these as
+well as this stone: but was a stone ever known to feel and think? If I
+am extended, solid, divisible, I owe it to matter. But I have sensations
+and thoughts--to what do I owe them? Not to water, not to mire--most
+likely to something more powerful than myself. Solely to the combination
+of the elements, you will say. Then prove it to me. Show me plainly that
+my intelligence cannot have been given to me by an intelligent cause. To
+this are you reduced.
+
+Our author successively combats the God of the schoolmen--a God composed
+of discordant qualities; a God to whom, as to those of Homer, is
+attributed the passions of men; a God capricious, fickle, unreasonable,
+absurd--but he cannot combat the God of the wise. The wise,
+contemplating nature, admit an intelligent and supreme power. It is
+perhaps impossible for human reason, destitute of divine assistance, to
+go a step further.
+
+Our author asks where this being resides; and, from the impossibility
+that anyone, without being infinite, should tell where He resides, he
+concludes that He does not exist. This is not philosophical; for we are
+not, because we cannot tell where the cause of an effect is, to conclude
+that there is no cause. If you had never seen a gunner, and you saw the
+effects of a battery of cannon, you would not say it acts entirely by
+itself. Shall it, then, only be necessary for you to say there is no
+God, in order to be believed on your words?
+
+Finally, his great objection is, the woes and crimes of mankind--an
+objection alike ancient and philosophical; an objection common, but
+fatal and terrible, and to which we find no answer but in the hope of a
+better life. Yet what is this hope? We can have no certainty in it but
+from reason. But I will venture to say, that when it is proved to us
+that a vast edifice, constructed with the greatest art, is built by an
+architect, whoever he may be, we ought to believe in that architect,
+even though the edifice should be stained with our blood, polluted by
+our crimes, and should crush us in its fall. I inquire not whether the
+architect is a good one, whether I should be satisfied with his
+building, whether I should quit it rather than stay in it, nor whether
+those who are lodged in it for a few days, like myself, are content: I
+only inquire if it be true that there is an architect, or if this house,
+containing so many fine apartments and so many wretched garrets, built
+itself.
+
+
+SECTION V.
+
+_The Necessity of Believing in a Supreme Being._
+
+The great, the interesting object, as it appears to me, is, not to argue
+metaphysically, but to consider whether, for the common good of us
+miserable and thinking animals, we should admit a rewarding and avenging
+God, at once our restraint and consolation, or should reject this idea,
+and so abandon ourselves to calamity without hope, and crime without
+remorse.
+
+Hobbes says that if, in a commonwealth, in which no God should be
+acknowledged, any citizen were to propose one, he would have him hanged.
+
+Apparently, he meant by this strange exaggeration, a citizen who should
+seek to rule in the name of a god, a charlatan who would make himself a
+tyrant. We understand citizens, who, feeling the weakness of human
+nature, its perverseness, and its misery, seek some prop to support it
+through the languors and horrors of this life.
+
+From Job down to us, a great many men have cursed their existence; we
+have, therefore, perpetual need of consolation and hope. Of these your
+philosophy deprives us. The fable of Pandora was better; it left us
+hope--which you snatch from us! Philosophy, you say, furnishes no proof
+of happiness to come. No--but you have no demonstration of the contrary.
+There may be in us an indestructible monad which feels and thinks,
+without our knowing anything at all of how that monad is made. Reason is
+not absolutely opposed to this idea, though reason alone does not prove
+it. Has not this opinion a prodigious advantage over yours? Mine is
+useful to mankind, yours is baneful; say of it what you will, it may
+encourage a Nero, an Alexander VI., or a Cartouche. Mine may restrain
+them.
+
+Marcus Antoninus and Epictetus believed that their monad, of whatever
+kind it was, would be united to the monad of the Great Being; and they
+were the most virtuous of men.
+
+In the state of doubt in which we both are, I do not say to you with
+Pascal, "choose the safest." There is no safety in uncertainty. We are
+here not to talk, but to examine; we must judge, and our judgment is not
+determined by our will. I do not propose to you to believe extravagant
+things, in order to escape embarrassment. I do not say to you, "Go to
+Mecca, and instruct yourself by kissing the black stone, take hold of a
+cow's tail, muffle yourself in a scapulary, or be imbecile and fanatical
+to acquire the favor of the Being of beings." I say to you: "Continue
+to cultivate virtue, to be beneficent, to regard all superstition with
+horror, or with pity; but adore, with me, the design which is manifested
+in all nature, and consequently the Author of that design--the
+primordial and final cause of all; hope with me that our monad, which
+reasons on the great eternal being, may be happy through that same great
+Being." There is no contradiction in this. You can no more demonstrate
+its impossibility than I can demonstrate mathematically that it is so.
+In metaphysics we scarcely reason on anything but probabilities. We are
+all swimming in a sea of which we have never seen the shore. Woe be to
+those who fight while they swim! Land who can: but he that cries out to
+me, "You swim in vain, there is no land," disheartens me, and deprives
+me of all my strength.
+
+What is the object of our dispute? To console our unhappy existence. Who
+consoles it--you or I?
+
+You yourself own, in some passages of your work, that the belief in a
+God has withheld some men on the brink of crime; for me, this
+acknowledgment is enough. If this opinion had prevented but ten
+assassinations, but ten calumnies, but ten iniquitous judgments on the
+earth, I hold that the whole earth ought to embrace it.
+
+Religion, you say, has produced thousands of crimes--say, rather,
+superstition, which unhappily reigns over this globe; it is the most
+cruel enemy of the pure adoration due to the Supreme Being.
+
+Let us detest this monster which has constantly been tearing the bosom
+of its mother; they who combat it are benefactors to mankind: it is a
+serpent enclosing religion in its folds, its head must be bruised,
+without wounding the parent whom it infects and devours.
+
+You fear, "that, by adoring God, men would soon again become
+superstitious and fanatical." But is it not to be feared that in denying
+Him, they would abandon themselves to the most atrocious passions, and
+the most frightful crimes? Between these two extremes is there not a
+very rational mean? Where is the safe track between these two rocks? It
+is God, and wise laws.
+
+You affirm that it is but one step from adoration to superstition: but
+there is an infinity to well-constituted minds, and these are now very
+numerous; they are at the head of nations; they influence public
+manners, and, year by year, the fanaticism that overspread the earth is
+receding in its detestable usurpations.
+
+I shall say a few words more in answer to what you say in page 223. "If
+it be presumed that there are relations between man and this incredible
+being, then altars must be raised and presents must be made to him,
+etc.; if no conception be formed of this being, then the matter must be
+referred to priests, who...." A great evil to be sure, to assemble in
+the harvest season, and thank God for the bread that He has given us!
+Who says you should make presents to God? The idea is ridiculous! But
+where is the harm of employing a citizen, called an "elder" or "priest,"
+to render thanks to the Divinity in the name of the other
+citizens?--provided the priest is not a Gregory VII. trampling on the
+heads of kings, nor an Alexander VI. polluting by incest his daughter,
+the offspring of a rape, and, by the aid of his bastard son, poisoning
+and assassinating almost all the neighboring princes: provided that, in
+a parish, this priest is not a knave, picking the pockets of the
+penitents he confesses, and using the money to seduce the girls he
+catechises; provided that this priest is not a Letellier, putting the
+whole kingdom in combustion by rogueries worthy of the pillory, nor a
+Warburton, violating the laws of society, making public the private
+papers of a member of parliament in order to ruin him, and calumniating
+whosoever is not of his opinion. The latter cases are rare. The
+sacerdotal state is a curb which forces to good behavior.
+
+A stupid priest excites contempt; a bad priest inspires horror; a good
+priest, mild, pious, without superstition, charitable, tolerant, is one
+who ought to be cherished and revered. You dread abuses--so do I. Let us
+unite to prevent them; but let us not condemn the usage when it is
+useful to society, when it is not perverted by fanaticism, or by
+fraudulent wickedness.
+
+I have one very important thing to tell you. I am persuaded that you are
+in a great error, but I am equally convinced that you are honest in your
+self-delusion. You would have men virtuous even without a God, although
+you have unfortunately said that "so soon as vice renders man happy, he
+must love vice"--a frightful proposition, which your friends should have
+prevailed on you to erase. Everywhere else you inspire probity. This
+philosophical dispute will be only between you and a few philosophers
+scattered over Europe; the rest of the earth will not even hear of it.
+The people do not read us. If some theologian were to seek to persecute
+us, he would be impudent as well as wicked; he would but serve to
+confirm you, and to make new atheists.
+
+You are wrong: but the Greeks did not persecute Epicurus; the Romans did
+not persecute Lucretius. You are wrong: but your genius and your virtue
+must be respected, while you are refuted with all possible strength.
+
+In my opinion, the finest homage that can be rendered to God is to stand
+forward in His defence without anger; as the most unworthy portrait that
+can be drawn of Him is to paint Him vindictive and furious. He is truth
+itself; and truth is without passion. To be a disciple of God is to
+announce Him as of a mild heart and of an unalterable mind.
+
+I think, with you, that fanaticism is a monster a thousand times more
+dangerous than philosophical atheism. Spinoza did not commit a single
+bad action. Châtel and Ravaillac, both devotees, assassinated Henry IV.
+
+The atheist of the closet is almost always a quiet philosopher, while
+the fanatic is always turbulent: but the court atheist, the atheistical
+prince, might be the scourge of mankind. Borgia and his like have done
+almost as much harm as the fanatics of Münster and of the Cévennes. I
+say the fanatics on both sides. The misfortune is, that atheists of the
+closet make atheists of the court. It was Chiron who brought up
+Achilles; he fed him with lion's marrow. Achilles will one day drag
+Hector's body round the walls of Troy, and immolate twelve captives to
+his vengeance.
+
+God keep us from an abominable priest who should hew a king in pieces
+with his sacrificing knife, as also from him who, with a helmet on his
+head and a cuirass on his back, at the age of seventy, should dare to
+sign with his three bloody fingers the ridiculous excommunication of a
+king of France! and from.... and from....
+
+But also, may God preserve us from a choleric and barbarous despot, who,
+not believing in a God, should be his own God, who should render himself
+unworthy of his sacred trust by trampling on the duties which that trust
+imposes, who should remorselessly sacrifice to his passions, his
+friends, his relatives, his servants, and his people. These two tigers,
+the one shorn, the other crowned are equally to be feared. By what means
+shall we muzzle them?....
+
+If the idea of a God has made a Titus or a Trajan, an Antonine or an
+Aurelius, and those great Chinese emperors, whose memory is so dear to
+the second of the most ancient and most extensive empires in the world,
+these examples are sufficient for my cause--and my cause is that of all
+mankind.
+
+I do not believe that there is in all Europe one statesman, one man at
+all versed in the affairs of the world, who has not the most profound
+contempt for the legends with which we have been inundated, even more
+than we now are with pamphlets. If religion no longer gives birth to
+civil wars, it is to philosophy alone that we are indebted, theological
+disputes beginning to be regarded in much the same manner as the
+quarrels of Punch and Judy at the fair. A usurpation, alike odious and
+ridiculous, founded upon fraud on one side and stupidity on the other,
+is every instant undermined by reason, which is establishing its reign.
+The bull "_In cæna Domini_"--that masterpiece of insolence and folly, no
+longer dares appear, even in Rome. If a regiment of monks makes the
+least evolution against the laws of the state, it is immediately broken.
+But, because the Jesuits have been expelled, must we also expel God? On
+the contrary, we must love Him the more.
+
+
+SECTION VI.
+
+In the reign of Arcadius, Logomachos, a theologue of Constantinople,
+went into Scythia and stopped at the foot of Mount Caucasus in the
+fruitful plains of Zephirim, on the borders of Colchis. The good old man
+Dondindac was in his great hall between his large sheepfold and his
+extensive barn; he was on his knees with his wife, his five sons and
+five daughters, his kinsmen and servants; and all were singing the
+praises of God, after a light repast. "What are you doing, idolater?"
+said Logomachos to him. "I am not an idolater," said Dondindac. "You
+must be an idolater," said Logomachos, "for you are not a Greek. Come,
+tell me what you were singing in your barbarous Scythian jargon?" "All
+tongues are alike to the ears of God," answered the Scythian; "we were
+singing His praises." "Very extraordinary!" returned the theologue; "a
+Scythian family praying to God without having been instructed by us!" He
+soon entered into conversation with the Scythian Dondindac; for the
+theologue knew a little Scythian, and the other a little Greek. This
+conversation has been found in a manuscript preserved in the library of
+Constantinople.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+Let us see if you know your catechism. Why do you pray to God?
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+Because it is just to adore the Supreme Being, from whom we have
+everything.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+Very fair for a barbarian. And what do you ask of him?
+
+DONDINDAC
+
+I thank Him for the blessings I enjoy, and even for the trials which He
+sends me; but I am careful to ask nothing of Him; for He knows our wants
+better than we do; besides, I should be afraid of asking for fair
+weather while my neighbor was asking for rain.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+Ah! I thought he would say some nonsense or other. Let us begin farther
+back. Barbarian, who told you that there is a God?
+
+DONDINDAC
+
+All nature tells me.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+That is not enough. What idea have you of God?
+
+DONDINDAC
+
+The idea of my Creator; my master, who will reward me if I do good, and
+punish me if I do evil.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+Trifles! trash! Let us come to some essentials. Is God _infinite
+secundum quid_, or according to essence?
+
+DONDINDAC
+
+I don't understand you.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+Brute beast! Is God in one place, or in every place?
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+I know not ... just as you please.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+Ignoramus!... Can He cause that which has not been to have been, or that
+a stick shall not have two ends? Does He see the future as future, or as
+present? How does He draw being from nothing, and how reduce being to
+nothing?
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+I have never examined these things.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+What a stupid fellow! Well, I must come nearer to your level.... Tell
+me, friend, do you think that matter can be eternal?
+
+DONDINDAC
+
+What matters it to me whether it exists from all eternity or not? I do
+not exist from all eternity. God must still be my Master. He has given
+me the nature of justice; it is my duty to follow it: I seek not to be a
+philosopher; I wish to be a man.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+One has a great deal of trouble with these block-heads. Let us proceed
+step by step. What is God?
+
+DONDINDAC
+
+My sovereign, my judge, my father.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+That is not what I ask. What is His nature?
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+To be mighty and good.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+But is He corporeal or spiritual?
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+How should I know that?
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+What; do you not know what a spirit is?
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+Not in the least. Of what service would that knowledge be to me? Should
+I be more just? Should I be a better husband, a better father, a better
+master, or a better citizen?
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+You must absolutely be taught what a spirit is. It is--it is--it is--I
+will say what another time.
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+I much fear that you will tell me rather what it is not than what it is.
+Permit me, in turn, to ask you one question. Some time ago, I saw one of
+your temples: why do you paint God with a long beard?
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+That is a very difficult question, and requires preliminary
+instruction.
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+Before I receive your instruction, I must relate to you a thing which
+one day happened to me. I had just built a closet at the end of my
+garden, when I heard a mole arguing thus with an ant: "Here is a fine
+fabric," said the mole; "it must have been a very powerful mole that
+performed this work." "You jest," returned the ant; "the architect of
+this edifice is an ant of mighty genius." From that time I resolved
+never to dispute.
+
+
+
+
+GOOD--THE SOVEREIGN GOOD, A CHIMERA.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+Happiness is an abstract idea composed of certain pleasurable
+sensations. Plato, who wrote better than he reasoned, conceived the
+notion of his world in archetype; that is, his original world--of his
+general ideas of the beautiful, the good, the orderly, and the just, as
+if there had existed eternal beings, called order, good, beauty, and
+justice; whence might be derived the feeble copies exhibited here below
+of the just, the beautiful, and the good.
+
+It is, then, in consequence of his suggestions that philosophers have
+occupied themselves in seeking for the sovereign good, as chemists seek
+for the philosopher's stone; but the sovereign good has no more
+existence than the sovereign square, or the sovereign crimson: there is
+the crimson color, and there are squares; but there is no general
+existence so denominated. This chimerical manner of reasoning was for a
+long time the bane of philosophy.
+
+Animals feel pleasure in performing all the functions for which they are
+destined. The happiness which poetical fancy has imagined would be an
+uninterrupted series of pleasures; but such a series would be
+incompatible with our organs and our destination. There is great
+pleasure in eating, drinking, and connubial endearments; but it is clear
+that if a man were always eating, or always in the full ecstasy of
+enjoyment, his organs would be incapable of sustaining it: it is further
+evident that he would be unable to fulfil the destinies he was born to,
+and that, in the case supposed, the human race would absolutely perish
+through pleasure.
+
+To pass constantly and without interruption from one pleasure to another
+is also a chimera. The woman who has conceived must go through
+childbirth, which is a pain; the man is obliged to cleave wood and hew
+stone, which is not a pleasure.
+
+If the name of happiness is meant to be applied to some pleasures which
+are diffused over human life, there is in fact, we must admit,
+happiness. If the name attaches only to one pleasure always permanent,
+or a continued although varied range of delicious enjoyment, then
+happiness belongs not to this terraqueous globe. Go and seek for it
+elsewhere.
+
+If we make happiness consist in any particular situation that a man may
+be in, as for instance, a situation of wealth, power, or fame, we are no
+less mistaken. There are some scavengers who are happier than some
+sovereigns. Ask Cromwell whether he was more happy when he was lord
+protector of England, than when, in his youthful days, he enjoyed
+himself at a tavern; he will probably tell you in answer, that the
+period of his usurpation was not the period most productive of
+pleasures. How many plain or even ugly country women are more happy than
+were Helen and Cleopatra.
+
+We must here however make one short remark; that when we say such a
+particular man is probably happier than some other; that a young
+muleteer has advantages very superior to those of Charles V.; that a
+dressmaker has more enjoyment than a princess, we should adhere to the
+probability of the case. There is certainly every appearance that a
+muleteer, in full health, must have more pleasure than Charles the
+Fifth, laid up with the gout; but nevertheless it may also be, that
+Charles, on his crutches, revolves in his mind with such ecstasy the
+facts of his holding a king of France and a pope prisoners, that his lot
+is absolutely preferable to that of the young and vigorous muleteer.
+
+It certainly belongs to God alone, to a being capable of seeing through
+all hearts, to decide which is the happiest man. There is only one case
+in which a person can affirm that his actual state is worse or better
+than that of his neighbor; this case is that of existing rivalship, and
+the moment that of victory.
+
+I will suppose that Archimedes has an assignation at night with his
+mistress. Nomentanus has the same assignation at the same hour.
+Archimedes presents himself at the door, and it is shut in his face; but
+it is opened to his rival, who enjoys an excellent supper, which he
+enlivens by his repeated sallies of wit upon Archimedes, and after the
+conclusion of which he withdraws to still higher enjoyments, while the
+other remains exposed in the street to all the pelting of a pitiless
+storm. There can be no doubt that Nomentanus has a right to say: "I am
+more happy to-night than Archimedes: I have more pleasure than he"; but
+it is necessary, in order to admit the truth and justness of the
+inference of the successful competitors in his own favor, to suppose
+that Archimedes is thinking only about the loss of his good supper,
+about being despised and deceived by a beautiful woman, about being
+supplanted by his rival, and annoyed by the tempest; for, if the
+philosopher in the street should be calmly reflecting that his soul
+ought to be above being discomposed by a strumpet or a storm, if he
+should be absorbed in a profound and interesting problem, and if he
+should discover the proportions between the cylinder and the sphere, he
+may experience a pleasure a hundred times superior to that of
+Nomentanus.
+
+It is only therefore in the single case of actual pleasure and actual
+pain, and without a reference to anything else whatever, that a
+comparison between any two individuals can be properly made. It is
+unquestionable that he who enjoys the society of his mistress is
+happier at the moment than his scorned rival deploring over his
+misfortune. A man in health, supping on a fat partridge, is undoubtedly
+happier at the time than another under the torment of the colic; but we
+cannot safely carry our inferences farther; we cannot estimate the
+existence of one man against that of another; we possess no accurate
+balance for weighing desires and sensations.
+
+We began this article with Plato and his sovereign good; we will
+conclude it with Solon and the saying of his which has been so highly
+celebrated, that "we ought to pronounce no man happy before his death."
+This maxim, when examined into, will be found nothing more than a
+puerile remark, just like many other apothegms consecrated by their
+antiquity. The moment of death has nothing in common with the lot
+experienced by any man in life; a man may perish by a violent and
+ignominious death, and yet, up to that moment, may have enjoyed all the
+pleasures of which human nature is susceptible. It is very possible and
+very common for a happy man to cease to be so; no one can doubt it; but
+he has not the less had his happy moments.
+
+What, then, can Solon's expression strictly and fairly mean? that a man
+happy to-day is not certain of being so to-morrow! In this case it is a
+truth so incontestable and trivial that, not merely is it not worthy of
+being elevated into a maxim, but it is not worthy delivering at all.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+Well-being is a rare possession. May not the sovereign good in this
+world be considered as a sovereign chimera? The Greek philosophers
+discussed at great length, according to their usual practice, this
+celebrated question. The reader will, probably, compare them to just so
+many mendicants reasoning about the philosopher's stone.
+
+The sovereign good! What an expression! It might as well have been
+asked: What is the sovereign blue, or the sovereign ragout, or the
+sovereign walk, or the sovereign reading?
+
+Every one places his good where he can, and has as much of it as he can,
+in his own way, and in very scanty measure. Castor loved horses; his
+twin brother, to try a fall--
+
+_Quid dem? quid non dem? renuis tu quod jubet alter.... Castor gaudet
+equis, ovo prognatus eodem Pugnis, etc._
+
+The greatest good is that which delights us so powerfully as to render
+us incapable of feeling anything else; as the greatest evil is that
+which goes so far as to deprive us of all feeling. These are the two
+extremes of human nature, and these moments are short. Neither extreme
+delight nor extreme torture can last a whole life. The sovereign good
+and the sovereign evil are nothing more than chimeras.
+
+We all know the beautiful fable of Crantor. He introduces upon the stage
+at the Olympic games, Wealth, Pleasure, Health, and Virtue. Each claims
+the apple. Wealth says, I am the sovereign good, for with me all goods
+are purchased. Pleasure says, the apple belongs to me, for it is only on
+my account that wealth is desired. Health asserts, that without her
+there can be no pleasure, and wealth is useless. Finally, Virtue states
+that she is superior to the other three, because, although possessed of
+gold, pleasures, and health, a man may make himself very contemptible by
+misconduct. The apple was conferred on Virtue.
+
+The fable is very ingenious; it would be still more so if Crantor had
+said that the sovereign good consists in the combination of the four
+rivals, Virtue, Health, Wealth, and Pleasure; but this fable neither
+does, nor can, resolve the absurd question about the sovereign good.
+Virtue is not a good; it is a duty. It is of a different nature; of a
+superior order. It has nothing to do with painful or with agreeable
+sensations. A virtuous man, laboring under stone and gout, without aid,
+without friends, destitute of necessaries, persecuted, and chained down
+to the floor by a voluptuous tyrant who enjoys good health, is very
+wretched; and his insolent persecutor, caressing a new mistress on his
+bed of purple, is very happy. Say, if you please, that the persecuted
+sage is preferable to the persecuting profligate; say that you admire
+the one and detest the other; but confess that the sage in chains is
+scarcely less than mad with rage and pain; if he does not himself admit
+that he is so, he completely deceives you; he is a charlatan.
+
+
+
+
+GOOD.
+
+_Of Good and Evil, Physical and Moral._
+
+
+We here treat of a question of the greatest difficulty and importance.
+It relates to the whole of human life. It would be of much greater
+consequence to find a remedy for our evils; but no remedy is to be
+discovered, and we are reduced to the sad necessity of tracing out their
+origin. With respect to this origin, men have disputed ever since the
+days of Zoroaster, and in all probability they disputed on the same
+subject long before him. It was to explain the mixture of good and evil
+that they conceived the idea of two principles--Oromazes, the author of
+light, and Arimanes, the author of darkness; the box of Pandora; the two
+vessels of Jupiter; the apple eaten by Eve; and a variety of other
+systems. The first of dialecticians, although not the first of
+philosophers, the illustrious Bayle, has clearly shown how difficult it
+is for Christians who admit one only God, perfectly good and just, to
+reply to the objections of the Manichæans who acknowledge two Gods--one
+good, and the other evil.
+
+The foundation of the system of the Manichæans, with all its antiquity,
+was not on that account more reasonable. Lemmas, susceptible of the most
+clear and rigid geometrical demonstrations, should alone have induced
+any men to the adoption of such a theorem as the following: "There are
+two necessary beings, both supreme, both infinite, both equally
+powerful, both in conflict with each other, yet, finally, agreeing to
+pour out upon this little planet--one, all the treasures of his
+beneficence, and the other all the stores of his malice." It is in vain
+that the advocates of this hypothesis attempt to explain by it the cause
+of good and evil: even the fable of Prometheus explains it better. Every
+hypothesis which only serves to assign a reason for certain things,
+without being, in addition to that recommendation, established upon
+indisputable principles, ought invariably to be rejected.
+
+The Christian doctors--independently of revelation, which makes
+everything credible--explain the origin of good-and evil no better than
+the partner-gods of Zoroaster.
+
+When they say God is a tender father, God is a just king; when they add
+the idea of infinity to that of love, that kindness, that justice which
+they observe in the best of their own species, they soon fall into the
+most palpable and dreadful contradictions. How could this sovereign, who
+possessed in infinite fulness the principle or quality of human justice,
+how could this father, entertaining an infinite affection for his
+children; how could this being, infinitely powerful, have formed
+creatures in His own likeness, to have them immediately afterwards
+tempted by a malignant demon, to make them yield to that temptation to
+inflict death on those whom He had created immortal, and to overwhelm
+their posterity with calamities and crimes! We do not here speak of a
+contradiction still more revolting to our feeble reason. How could God,
+who ransomed the human race by the death of His only Son; or rather, how
+could God, who took upon Himself the nature of man, and died on the
+cross to save men from perdition, consign over to eternal tortures
+nearly the whole of that human race for whom He died? Certainly, when we
+consider this system merely as philosophers--without the aid of
+faith--we must consider it as absolutely monstrous and abominable. It
+makes of God either pure and unmixed malice, and that malice infinite,
+which created thinking beings, on purpose to devote them to eternal
+misery, or absolute impotence and imbecility, in not being able to
+foresee or to prevent the torments of his offspring.
+
+But the eternity of misery is not the subject of this article, which
+relates properly only to the good and evil of the present life. None of
+the doctors of the numerous churches of Christianity, all of which
+advocate the doctrine we are here contesting, have been able to convince
+a single sage.
+
+We cannot conceive how Bayle, who managed the weapons of dialectics with
+such admirable strength and dexterity, could content himself with
+introducing in a dispute a Manichæan, a Calvinist, a Molinist, and a
+Socinian. Why did he not introduce, as speaking, a reasonable and
+sensible man? Why did not Bayle speak in his own person? He would have
+said far better what we shall now venture to say ourselves. A father
+who kills his children is a monster; a king who conducts his subjects
+into a snare, in order to obtain a pretext for delivering them up to
+punishment and torture, is an execrable tyrant. If you conceive God to
+possess the same kindness which you require in a father, the same
+justice that you require in a king, no possible resource exists by
+which, if we may use the expression, God can be exculpated; and by
+allowing Him to possess infinite wisdom and infinite goodness you, in
+fact, render Him infinitely odious; you excite a wish that He had no
+existence; you furnish arms to the atheist, who will ever be justified
+in triumphantly remarking to you: Better by far is it to deny a God
+altogether, than impute to Him such conduct as you would punish, to the
+extremity of the law, in men.
+
+We begin then with observing, that it is unbecoming in us to ascribe to
+God human attributes. It is not for us to make God after our own
+likeness. Human justice, human kindness, and human wisdom can never be
+applied or made suitable to Him. We may extend these attributes in our
+imagination as far as we are able, to infinity; they will never be other
+than human qualities with boundaries perpetually or indefinitely
+removed; it would be equally rational to attribute to Him infinite
+solidity, infinite motion, infinite roundness, or infinite divisibility.
+These attributes can never be His.
+
+Philosophy informs us that this universe must have been arranged by a
+Being incomprehensible, eternal, and existing by His own nature; but,
+once again, we must observe that philosophy gives us no information on
+the subject of the attributes of that nature. We know what He is not,
+and not what He is.
+
+With respect to God, there is neither good nor evil, physically or
+morally. What is physical or natural evil? Of all evils, the greatest,
+undoubtedly, is death. Let us for a moment consider whether man could
+have been immortal.
+
+In order that a body like ours should have been indissoluble,
+imperishable, it would have been necessary that it should not be
+composed of parts; that it--should not be born; that it should have
+neither nourishment nor growth; that it should experience no change. Let
+any one examine each of these points; and let every reader extend their
+number according to his own suggestions, and it will be seen that the
+proposition of an immortal man is a contradiction.
+
+If our organized body were immortal, that of mere animals would be so
+likewise; but it is evident that, in the course of a very short time,
+the whole globe would, in this case, be incompetent to supply
+nourishment to those animals; those immortal beings which exist only in
+consequence of renovation by food, would then perish for want of the
+means of such renovation. All this involves contradiction. We might make
+various other observations on the subject, but every reader who deserves
+the name of a philosopher will perceive that death was necessary to
+everything that is born; that death can neither be an error on the part
+of God, nor an evil, an injustice, nor a chastisement to man.
+
+Man, born to die, can no more be exempt from pain than from death. To
+prevent an organized substance endowed with feeling from ever
+experiencing pain, it would be necessary that all the laws of nature
+should be changed; that matter should no longer be divisible; that it
+should neither have weight, action, nor force; that a rock might fall on
+an animal without crushing it; and that water should have no power to
+suffocate, or fire to burn it. Man, impassive, then, is as much a
+contradiction as man immortal.
+
+This feeling of pain was indispensable to stimulate us to
+self-preservation, and to impart to us such pleasures as are consistent
+with those general laws by which the whole system of nature is bound and
+regulated.
+
+If we never experienced pain, we should be every moment injuring
+ourselves without perceiving it. Without the excitement of uneasiness,
+without some sensation of pain, we should perform no function of life;
+should never communicate it, and should be destitute of all the
+pleasures of it. Hunger is the commencement of pain which compels us to
+take our required nourishment. Ennui is a pain which stimulates to
+exercise and occupation. Love itself is a necessity which becomes
+painful until it is met with corresponding attachment. In a word, every
+desire is a want, a necessity, a beginning of pain. Pain, therefore, is
+the mainspring of all the actions of animated beings. Every animal
+possessed of feeling must be liable to pain, if matter is divisible; and
+pain was as necessary as death. It is not, therefore, an error of
+Providence, nor a result of malignity, nor a creature of imagination.
+Had we seen only brutes suffer, we should, for that, never have accused
+nature of harshness or cruelty; had we, while ourselves were impassive,
+witnessed the lingering and torturing death of a dove, when a kite
+seized upon it with his murderous talons, and leisurely devouring its
+bleeding limbs, doing in that no more than we do ourselves, we should
+not express the slightest murmur of dissatisfaction. But what claim have
+we for an exemption of our own bodies from such dismemberment and
+torture beyond what might be urged in behalf of brutes? Is it that we
+possess an intellect superior to theirs? But what has intellect to do
+with the divisibility of matter? Can a few ideas more or less in a brain
+prevent fire from burning, or a rock from crushing us?
+
+Moral evil, upon which so many volumes have been written is, in fact,
+nothing but natural evil. This moral evil is a sensation of pain
+occasioned by one organized being to another. Rapine, outrage, etc., are
+evil only because they produce evil. But as we certainly are unable to
+do any evil, or occasion any pain to God, it is evident by the light of
+reason--for faith is altogether a different principle--that in relation
+to the Supreme Being and as affecting Him, moral evil can have no
+existence.
+
+As the greatest of natural evils is death, the greatest of moral evils
+is, unquestionably, war. All crimes follow in its train; false and
+calumnious declarations, perfidious violation of the treaties, pillage,
+devastation, pain, and death under every hideous and appalling form.
+
+All this is physical evil in relation to man, but can no more be
+considered moral evil in relation to God than the rage of dogs worrying
+and destroying one another. It is a mere common-place idea, and as false
+as it is feeble, that men are the only species that slaughter and
+destroy one another. Wolves, dogs, cats, cocks, quails, all war with
+their respective species: house spiders devour one another; the male
+universally fights for the female. This warfare is the result of the
+laws of nature, of principles in their very blood and essence; all is
+connected; all is necessary.
+
+Nature has granted man about two and twenty years of life, one with
+another; that is, of a thousand children born in the same month, some of
+whom have died in their infancy, and the rest lived respectively to the
+age of thirty, forty, fifty, and even eighty years, or perhaps beyond,
+the average calculation will allow to each the above-mentioned number of
+twenty-two years.
+
+How can it affect the Deity, whether a man die in battle or of a fever?
+War destroys fewer human beings than smallpox. The scourge of war is
+transient, that of smallpox reigns with paramount and permanent fatality
+throughout the earth, followed by a numerous train of others; and taking
+into consideration the combined, and nearly regular operation of the
+various causes which sweep mankind from the stage of life, the allowance
+of two and twenty years for every individual will be found in general to
+be tolerably correct.
+
+Man, you say, offends God by killing his neighbor; if this be the case,
+the directors of nations must indeed be tremendous criminals; for, while
+even invoking God to their assistance, they urge on to slaughter immense
+multitudes of their fellow-beings, for contemptible interests which it
+would show infinitely more policy, as well as humanity, to abandon. But
+how--to reason merely as philosophers--how do they offend God? Just as
+much as tigers and crocodiles offend him. It is, surely, not God whom
+they harass and torment, but their neighbor. It is only against man that
+man can be guilty. A highway robber can commit no robbery on God. What
+can it signify to the eternal Deity, whether a few pieces of yellow
+metal are in the hands of Jerome, or of Bonaventure? We have necessary
+desires, necessary passions, and necessary laws for the restraint of
+both; and while on this our ant-hill, during the little day of our
+existence, we are engaged in eager and destructive contest about a
+straw, the universe moves, on in its majestic course, directed by
+eternal and unalterable laws, which comprehend in their operation the
+atom that we call the earth.
+
+
+
+
+GOSPEL.
+
+
+It is a matter of high importance to ascertain which are the first
+gospels. It is a decided truth, whatever Abbadie may assert to the
+contrary, that none of the first fathers of the Church, down to Irenæus
+inclusively, have quoted any passage from the four gospels with which we
+are acquainted. And to this it may be added, that the Alogi, the
+Theodosians, constantly rejected the gospel of St. John, and always
+spoke of it with contempt; as we are informed by St. Epiphanius in his
+thirty-fourth homily. Our enemies further observe that the most ancient
+fathers do not merely forbear to quote anything from our gospels, but
+relate many passages or events which are to be found only in the
+apocryphal gospels rejected by the canon.
+
+St. Clement, for example, relates that our Lord, having been questioned
+concerning the time when His kingdom would come, answered, "That will be
+when what is without shall Resemble that within, and when there shall be
+neither male nor female." But we must admit that this passage does not
+occur in either of our gospels. There are innumerable other instances to
+prove this truth; which may be seen in the "Critical Examination" of M.
+Fréret, perpetual secretary of the Academy of Belles Lettres at Paris.
+
+The learned Fabricius took the pains to collect the ancient gospels
+which time has spared; that of James appears to be the first; and it is
+certain that it still possesses considerable authority with some of the
+Oriental churches. It is called "the first gospel." There remain the
+passion and the resurrection, pretended to have been written by
+Nicodemus. This gospel of Nicodemus is quoted by St. Justin and
+Tertullian. It is there we find the names of our Lord's accusers--Annas,
+Caiaphas, Soumas, Dathan, Gamaliel, Judas, Levi, and Napthali; the
+attention and particularity with which these names are given confer upon
+the work an appearance of truth and sincerity. Our adversaries have
+inferred that as so many false gospels were forged, which at first were
+recognized as true, those which constitute at the present day the
+foundation of our own faith may have been forged also. They dwell much
+on the circumstance of the first heretics suffering even death itself in
+defence of these apocryphal gospels. There have evidently been, they
+say, forgers, seducers, and men who have been seduced by them into
+error, and died in defence of that error; it is, at least, therefore, no
+proof of the truth of Christianity that it has had its martyrs who have
+died for it.
+
+They add further, that the martyrs were never asked the question,
+whether they believed the gospel of John or the gospel of James. The
+Pagans could not put a series of interrogatories about books with which
+they were not at all acquainted; the magistrates punished some
+Christians very unjustly, as disturbers of the public peace, but they
+never put particular questions to them in relation to our four gospels.
+These books were not known to the Romans before the time of Diocletian,
+and even towards the close of Diocletian's reign, they had scarcely
+obtained any publicity. It was deemed in a Christian a crime both
+abominable and unpardonable to show a gospel to any Gentile. This is so
+true, that you cannot find the word "gospel" in any profane author
+whatever.
+
+The rigid Socinians, influenced by the above-mentioned or other
+difficulties, do not consider our four divine gospels in any other light
+than as works of clandestine introduction, fabricated about a century
+after the time of Jesus Christ, and carefully concealed from the
+Gentiles for another century beyond that; works, as they express it, of
+a coarse and vulgar character, written by coarse and vulgar men, who,
+for a long time confined their discourses and appeals to the mere
+populace of their party. We will not here repeat the blasphemies uttered
+by them. This sect, although considerably diffused and numerous, is at
+present as much concealed as were the first gospels. The difficulty of
+converting them is so much the greater, in consequence of their
+obstinately refusing to listen to anything but mere reason. The other
+Christians contend against them only with the weapons of the Holy
+Scripture: it is consequently impossible that, being thus always in
+hostility with respect to principles, they should ever unite in their
+conclusions.
+
+With respect to ourselves, let us ever remain inviolably attached to our
+four gospels, in union with the infallible church. Let us reject the
+five gospels which it has rejected; let us not inquire why our Lord
+Jesus Christ permitted five false gospels, five false histories of his
+life to be written; and let us submit to our spiritual pastors and
+directors, who alone on earth are enlightened by the Holy Spirit.
+
+Into what a gross error did Abbadie fall when he considered as authentic
+the letters so ridiculously forged, from Pilate to Tiberius, and the
+pretended proposal of Tiberius to place Jesus Christ in the number of
+the gods. If Abbadie is a bad critic and a contemptible reasoner, is the
+Church on that account less enlightened? are we the less bound to
+believe it? Shall we at all the less submit to it?
+
+
+
+
+GOVERNMENT.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+The pleasure of governing must certainly be exquisite, if we may judge
+from the vast numbers who are eager to be concerned in it. We have many
+more books on government than there are monarchs in the world. Heaven
+preserve me from making any attempt here to give instruction to kings
+and their noble ministers--their valets, confessors, or financiers. I
+understand nothing about the matter; I have the profoundest respect and
+reverence for them all. It belongs only to Mr. Wilkes, with his English
+balance, to weigh the merits of those who are at the head of the human
+race. It would, besides, be exceedingly strange if, with three or four
+thousand volumes on the subject of government, with Machiavelli, and
+Bossuet's "Policy of the Holy Scripture," with the "General Financier,"
+the "Guide to Finances," the "Means of Enriching a State," etc., there
+could possibly be a single person living who was not perfectly
+acquainted with the duties of kings and the science of government.
+
+Professor Puffendorf, or, as perhaps we should rather say, Baron
+Puffendorf, says that King David, having sworn never to attempt the life
+of Shimei, his privy counsellor, did not violate his oath when,
+according to the Jewish history, he instructed his son Solomon to get
+him assassinated, "because David had only engaged that he himself would
+not kill Shimei." The baron, who rebukes so sharply the mental
+reservations of the Jesuits, allows David, in the present instance, to
+entertain one which would not be particularly palatable to privy
+counsellors.
+
+Let us consider the words of Bossuet in his "Policy of the Holy
+Scripture," addressed to Monseigneur the Dauphin. "Thus we see royalty
+established according to the order of succession in the house of David
+and Solomon, and the throne of David is secured forever--although, by
+the way, that same little joint-stool called a 'throne,' instead of
+being secured forever, lasted, in fact, only a very short time." By
+virtue of this law, the eldest son was to succeed, to the exclusion of
+his brothers, and on this account Adonijah, who was the eldest, said to
+Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon, "Thou knowest that the kingdom was
+mine, and all Israel had recognized my right; but the Lord hath
+transferred the kingdom to my brother Solomon." The right of Adonijah
+was incontestable. Bossuet expressly admits this at the close of this
+article. "The Lord has transferred" is only a usual phrase, which means,
+I have lost my property or right, I have been deprived of my right.
+Adonijah was the issue of a lawful wife; the birth of his younger
+brother was the fruit of a double crime.
+
+"Unless, then," says Bossuet, "something extraordinary occurred, the
+eldest was to succeed." But the something extraordinary, in the present
+instance, which prevented it was, that Solomon, the issue of a marriage
+arising out of a double adultery and a murder, procured the
+assassination, at the foot of the altar, of his elder brother and his
+lawful king, whose rights were supported by the high priest Abiathar and
+the chief commander Joab. After this we must acknowledge that it is more
+difficult than some seem to imagine to take lessons on the rights of
+persons, and on the true system of government from the Holy Scriptures,
+which were first given to the Jews, and afterwards to ourselves, for
+purposes of a far higher nature.
+
+"The preservation of the people is the supreme law." Such is the
+fundamental maxim of nations; but in all civil wars the safety of the
+people is made to consist in slaughtering a number of the citizens. In
+all foreign wars, the safety of a people consists in killing their
+neighbors, and taking possession of their property! It is difficult to
+perceive in this a particularly salutary "right of nations," and a
+government eminently favorable to liberty of thought and social
+happiness.
+
+There are geometrical figures exceedingly regular and complete in their
+kind; arithmetic is perfect; many trades or manufactures are carried on
+in a manner constantly uniform and excellent; but with respect to the
+government of men, is it possible for any one to be good, when all are
+founded on passions in conflict with each other?
+
+No convent of monks ever existed without discord; it is impossible,
+therefore, to exclude it from kingdoms. Every government resembles not
+merely a monastic institution, but a private household. There are none
+existing without quarrels; and quarrels between one people and another,
+between one prince and another, have ever been, sanguinary; those
+between subjects and their sovereigns have been sometimes no less
+destructive. How is an individual to act? Must he risk joining in the
+conflict, or withdraw from the scene of action?
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+More than one people are desirous of new constitutions. The English
+would have no objection to a change of ministers once in every eight
+hours, but they have no wish to change the form of their government.
+
+The modern Romans are proud of their church of St. Peter and their
+ancient Greek statues; but the people would be glad to be better fed,
+although they were not quite so rich in benedictions; the fathers of
+families would be content that the Church should have less gold, if the
+granaries had more corn; they regret the time when the apostles
+journeyed on foot, and when the citizens of Rome travelled from one
+palace to another in litters.
+
+We are incessantly reminded of the admirable republics of Greece. There
+is no question that the Greeks would prefer the government of a Pericles
+and a Demosthenes to that of a pasha; but in their most prosperous and
+palmy times they were always complaining; discord and hatred prevailed
+between all the cities without, and in every separate city within. They
+gave laws to the old Romans, who before that time had none; but their
+own were so bad for themselves that they were continually changing them.
+
+What could be said in favor of a government under which the just
+Aristides was banished, Phocion put to death, Socrates condemned to
+drink hemlock after having been exposed to banter and derision on the
+stage by Aristophanes; and under which the Amphyctions, with
+contemptible imbecility, actually delivered up Greece into the power of
+Philip, because the Phocians had ploughed up a field which was part of
+the territory of Apollo? But the government of the neighboring
+monarchies was worse.
+
+Puffendorf promises us a discussion on the best form of government. He
+tells us, "that many pronounce in favor of monarchy, and others, on the
+contrary, inveigh furiously against kings; and that it does not fall
+within the limits of his subject to examine in detail the reasons of the
+latter." If any mischievous and malicious reader expects to be told here
+more than he is told by Puffendorf, he will be much deceived.
+
+A Swiss, a Hollander, a Venetian nobleman, an English peer, a cardinal,
+and a count of the empire, were once disputing, on a journey, about the
+nature of their respective governments, and which of them deserved the
+preference: no one knew much about the matter; each remained in his own
+opinion without having any very distinct idea what that opinion was; and
+they returned without having come to any general conclusion; every one
+praising his own country from vanity, and complaining of it from
+feeling.
+
+What, then, is the destiny of mankind? Scarcely any great nation is
+governed by itself. Begin from the east, and take the circuit of the
+world. Japan closed its ports against foreigners from the well-founded
+apprehension of a dreadful revolution.
+
+China actually experienced such a revolution; she obeys Tartars of a
+mixed race, half Mantchou and half Hun. India obeys Mogul Tartars. The
+Nile, the Orontes, Greece, and Epirus are still under the yoke of the
+Turks. It is not an English race that reigns in England; it is a German
+family which succeeded to a Dutch prince, as the latter succeeded a
+Scotch family which had succeeded an Angevin family, that had replaced a
+Norman family, which had expelled a family of usurping Saxons. Spain
+obeys a French family; which succeeded to an Austrasian race, that
+Austrasian race had succeeded families that boasted of Visigoth
+extraction; these Visigoths had been long driven out by the Arabs, after
+having succeeded to the Romans, who had expelled the Carthaginians. Gaul
+obeys Franks, after having obeyed Roman prefects.
+
+The same banks of the Danube have belonged to Germans, Romans, Arabs,
+Slavonians, Bulgarians, and Huns, to twenty different families, and
+almost all foreigners.
+
+And what greater wonder has Rome had to exhibit than so many emperors
+who were born in the barbarous provinces, and so many popes born in
+provinces no less barbarous? Let him govern who can. And when any one
+has succeeded in his attempts to become master, he governs as he can.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+In 1769, a traveller delivered the following narrative: "I saw, in the
+course of my journey, a large and populous country, in which all offices
+and places were purchasable; I do not mean clandestinely, and in
+evasion of the law, but publicly, and in conformity to it. The right to
+judge, in the last resort, of the honor, property, and life of the
+citizen, was put to auction in the same manner as the right and property
+in a few acres of land. Some very high commissions in the army are
+conferred only on the highest bidder. The principal mystery of their
+religion is celebrated for the petty sum of three sesterces, and if the
+celebrator does not obtain this fee he remains idle like a porter
+without employment.
+
+"Fortunes in this country are not made by agriculture, but are derived
+from a certain game of chance, in great practice there, in which the
+parties sign their names, and transfer them from hand to hand. If they
+lose, they withdraw into the mud and mire of their original extraction;
+if they win, they share in the administration of public affairs; they
+marry their daughters to mandarins, and their sons become a species of
+mandarins also.
+
+"A considerable number of the citizens have their whole means of
+subsistence assigned upon a house, which possesses in fact nothing, and
+a hundred persons have bought for a hundred thousand crowns each the
+right of receiving and paying the money due to these citizens upon their
+assignments on this imaginary hotel; rights which they never exercise,
+as they in reality know nothing at all of what is thus supposed to pass
+through their hands.
+
+"Sometimes a proposal is made and cried about the streets, that all who
+have a little money in their chest should exchange it for a slip of
+exquisitely manufactured paper, which will free you from all pecuniary
+care, and enable you to pass through life with ease and comfort. On the
+morrow an order is published, compelling you to change this paper for
+another, much better. On the following day you are deafened with the cry
+of a new paper, cancelling the two former ones. You are ruined! But long
+heads console you with the assurance, that within a fortnight the
+newsmen will cry up some proposal more engaging.
+
+"You travel into one province of this empire, and purchase articles of
+food, drink, clothing, and lodging. If you go into another province, you
+are obliged to pay duties upon all those commodities, as if you had just
+arrived from Africa. You inquire the reason of this, but obtain no
+answer; or if, from extraordinary politeness, any one condescends to
+notice your questions, he replies that you come from a province reputed
+foreign, and that, consequently, you are obliged to pay for the
+convenience of commerce. In vain you puzzle yourself to comprehend how
+the province of a kingdom can be deemed foreign to that kingdom.
+
+"On one particular occasion, while changing horses, finding myself
+somewhat fatigued, I requested the postmaster to favor me with a glass
+of wine. 'I cannot let you have it,' says he; 'the superintendents of
+thirst, who are very considerable in number, and all of them remarkably
+sober, would accuse me of drinking to excess, which would absolutely be
+my ruin.' 'But drinking a single glass of wine,' I replied, 'to repair a
+man's strength, is not drinking to excess; and what difference can it
+make whether that single glass of wine is taken by you or me?'
+
+"'Sir,' replied the man, 'our laws relating to thirst are much more
+excellent than you appear to think them. After our vintage is finished,
+physicians are appointed by the regular authorities to visit our
+cellars. They set aside a certain quantity of wine, such as they judge
+we may drink consistently with health. At the end of the year they
+return; and if they conceive that we have exceeded their restriction by
+a single bottle; they punish us with very severe fines; and if we make
+the slightest resistance, we are sent to Toulon to drink salt-water.
+Were I to give you the wine you ask, I should most certainly be charged
+with excessive drinking. You must see to what danger I should be exposed
+from the supervisors of our health.'
+
+"I could not refrain from astonishment at the existence of such a
+system; but my astonishment was no less on meeting with a disconsolate
+and mortified pleader, who informed me that he had just then lost, a
+little beyond the nearest rivulet, a cause precisely similar to one he
+had gained on this side of it. I understood from him that, in his
+country, there are as many different codes of laws as there are cities.
+His conversation raised my curiosity. 'Our nation,' said he, 'is so
+completely wise and enlightened, that nothing is regulated in it. Laws,
+customs, the rights of corporate bodies, rank, precedence, everything is
+arbitrary; all is left to the prudence of the nation.'
+
+"I happened to be still in this same country when it became involved in
+a war with some of its neighbors. This war was nicknamed 'The Ridicule,'
+because there was much to be lost and nothing to be gained by it. I went
+upon my travels elsewhere, and did not return till the conclusion of
+peace, when the nation seemed to be in the most dreadful state of
+misery; it had lost its money, its soldiers, its fleets, and its
+commerce. I said to myself, its last hour is come; everything, alas!
+must pass away. Here is a nation absolutely annihilated. What a dreadful
+pity! for a great part of the people were amiable, industrious, and gay,
+after having been formerly coarse, superstitious, and barbarous.
+
+"I was perfectly astonished, at the end of only two years, to find its
+capital and principal cities more opulent than ever. Luxury had
+increased, and an air of enjoyment prevailed everywhere. I could not
+comprehend this prodigy; and it was only after I had examined into the
+government of the neighboring nations that I could discover the cause of
+what appeared so unaccountable. I found that the government of all the
+rest was just as bad as that of this nation, and that this nation was
+superior to all the rest in industry.
+
+"A provincial of the country I am speaking of was once bitterly
+complaining to me of all the grievances under which he labored. He was
+well acquainted with history. I asked him if he thought he should have
+been happier had he lived a hundred years before, when his country was
+in a comparative state of barbarism, and a citizen was liable to be
+hanged for having eaten flesh in Lent? He shook his head in the
+negative. Would you prefer the times of the civil wars, which began at
+the death of Francis II.; or the times of the defeats of St. Quentin and
+Pavia; or the long disorders attending the wars against the English; or
+the feudal anarchy; or the horrors of the second race of kings, or the
+barbarity of the first? At every successive question, he appeared to
+shudder more violently. The government of the Romans seemed to him the
+most intolerable of all. 'Nothing can be worse,' he said, 'than to be
+under foreign masters.' At last we came to the Druids. 'Ah!' he
+exclaimed, 'I was quite mistaken: it is still worse to be governed by
+sanguinary priests.' He admitted, at last, although with sore
+reluctance, that the time he lived in was, all things considered, the
+least intolerable and hateful."
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+An eagle governed the birds of the whole country of Ornithia. He had no
+other right, it must be allowed, than what he derived from his beak and
+claws; however, after providing liberally for his own repasts and
+pleasures, he governed as well as any other bird of prey.
+
+In his old age he was invaded by a flock of hungry vultures, who rushed
+from the depths of the North to scatter fear and desolation through his
+provinces. There appeared, just about this time, a certain owl, who was
+born in one of the most scrubby thickets of the empire, and who had long
+been known under the name of "_luci-fugax_," or light-hater. He
+possessed much cunning, and associated only with bats; and, while the
+vultures were engaged in conflict with the eagle, our politic owl and
+his party entered with great adroitness, in the character of
+pacificators, on that department of the air which was disputed by the
+combatants.
+
+The eagle and vultures, after a war of long duration, at last actually
+referred the cause of contention to the owl, who, with his solemn and
+imposing physiognomy, was well formed to deceive them both.
+
+He persuaded the eagles and vultures to suffer their claws to be a
+little pared, and just the points of their beaks to be cut off, in order
+to bring about perfect peace and reconciliation. Before this time, the
+owl had always said to the birds, "Obey the eagle"; afterwards, in
+consequence of the invasion, he had said to them, "Obey the vultures."
+He now, however, soon called out to them, "Obey me only." The poor birds
+did not know to whom to listen: they were plucked by the eagle, the
+vultures, and the owl and bats. "_Qui habet aures, audiat_."--"He that
+hath ears to hear, let him hear."
+
+
+SECTION V.
+
+"I have in my possession a great number of catapultæ and balistæ of the
+ancient Romans, which are certainly rather worm-eaten, but would still
+do very well as specimens. I have many water-clocks, but half of them
+probably out of repair and broken, some sepulchral lamps, and an old
+copper model of a quinquereme. I have also togas, pretextas, and
+laticlaves in lead; and my predecessors established a society of
+tailors; who, after inspecting ancient monuments, can make up robes
+pretty awkwardly. For these reasons thereunto moving us, after hearing
+the report of our chief antiquary, we do hereby appoint and ordain, that
+all the said venerable usages should be observed and kept up forever;
+and every person, through the whole extent of our dominions, shall dress
+and think precisely as men dressed and thought in the time of Cnidus
+Rufillus, proprietor of the province devolved to us by right," etc.
+
+It is represented to an officer belonging to the department whence this
+edict issued, that all the engines enumerated in it are become useless;
+that the understandings and the inventions of mankind are every day
+making new advances towards perfection; and that it would be more
+judicious to guide and govern men by the reins in present use, than by
+those by which they were formerly subjected; that no person could be
+found to go on board the quinquereme of his most serene highness; that
+his tailors might make as many laticlaves as they pleased, and that not
+a soul would purchase one of them; and that it would be worthy of his
+wisdom to condescend, in some small measure, to the manner of thinking
+that now prevailed among the better sort of people in his own dominions.
+
+The officer above mentioned promised to communicate this representation
+to a clerk, who promised to speak about it to the referendary, who
+promised to mention it to his most serene highness whenever an
+opportunity should offer.
+
+
+SECTION VI.
+
+_Picture of the English Government._
+
+The establishment of a government is a matter of curious and interesting
+investigation. I shall not speak, in this place, of the great Tamerlane,
+or Timerling, because I am not precisely acquainted with the mystery of
+the Great Mogul's government. But we can see our way somewhat more
+clearly into the administration of affairs in England; and I had rather
+examine that than the administration of India; as England, we are
+informed, is inhabited by free men and not by slaves; and in India,
+according to the accounts we have of it, there are many slaves and but
+few free men.
+
+Let us, in the first place, view a Norman bastard seating himself upon
+the throne of England. He had about as much right to it as St. Louis
+had, at a later period, to Grand Cairo. But St. Louis had the misfortune
+not to begin with obtaining a judicial decision in favor of his right to
+Egypt from the court of Rome; and William the Bastard failed not to
+render his cause legitimate and sacred, by obtaining in confirmation of
+the rightfulness of his claim, a decree of Pope Alexander II. issued
+without the opposite party having obtained a hearing, and simply in
+virtue of the words, "Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, shall be
+bound in heaven." His competitor, Harold, a perfectly legitimate
+monarch, being thus bound by a decree of heaven, William united to this
+virtue of the holy see another of far more powerful efficacy still,
+which was the victory of Hastings. He reigned, therefore, by the right
+of the strongest, just as Pepin and Clovis had reigned in France; the
+Goths and Lombards in Italy; the Visigoths, and afterwards the Arabs in
+Spain; the Vandals in Africa, and all the kings of the world in
+succession.
+
+It must be nevertheless admitted, that our Bastard possessed as just a
+title as the Saxons and the Danes, whose title, again, was quite as good
+as that of the Romans. And the title of all these heroes in succession
+was precisely that of "robbers on the highway," or, if you like it
+better, that of foxes and pole-cats when they commit their depredations
+on the farm-yard.
+
+All these great men were so completely highway robbers, that from the
+time of Romulus down to the buccaneers, the only question and concern
+were about the "_spolia opima_," the pillage and plunder, the cows and
+oxen carried off by the hand of violence. Mercury, in the fable, steals
+the cows of Apollo; and in the Old Testament, Isaiah assigns the name of
+robber to the son whom his wife was to bring into the world, and who was
+to be an important and sacred type. That name was Mahershalalhashbaz,
+"divide speedily the soil." We have already observed, that the names of
+soldier and robber were often synonymous.
+
+Thus then did William soon become king by divine right. William Rufus,
+who usurped the crown over his elder brother, was also king by divine
+right, without any difficulty; and the same right attached after him to
+Henry, the third usurper.
+
+The Norman barons who had joined at their own expense in the invasion of
+England, were desirous of compensation. It was necessary to grant it,
+and for this purpose to make them great vassals, and great officers of
+the crown. They became possessed of the finest estates. It is evident
+that William would rather, had he dared, have kept all to himself, and
+made all these lords his guards and lackeys. But this would have been
+too dangerous an attempt. He was obliged, therefore, to divide and
+distribute.
+
+With respect to the Anglo-Saxon lords, there was no very easy way of
+killing, or even making slaves of the whole of them. They were
+permitted in their own districts, to enjoy the rank and denomination of
+lords of the manor--_seignieurs châtelans_. They held of the great
+Norman vassals, who held of William.
+
+By this system everything was kept in equilibrium until the breaking out
+of the first quarrel. And what became of the rest of the nation? The
+same that had become of nearly all the population of Europe. They became
+serfs or villeins.
+
+At length, after the frenzy of the Crusades, the ruined princes sell
+liberty to the serfs of the glebe, who had obtained money by labor and
+commerce. Cities are made free, the commons are granted certain
+privileges; and the rights of men revive even out of anarchy itself.
+
+The barons were everywhere in contention with their king, and with one
+another. The contention became everywhere a petty intestine war, made up
+out of numberless civil wars. From this abominable and gloomy chaos
+appeared a feeble gleam, which enlightened the commons, and considerably
+improved their situation.
+
+The kings of England, being themselves great vassals of France for
+Normandy, and afterwards for Guienne and other provinces, easily adopted
+the usages of the kings from whom they held. The states of the realm
+were long made up, as in France, of barons and bishops.
+
+The English court of chancery was an imitation of the council of state,
+of which the chancellor of France was president. The court of king's
+bench was formed on the model of the parliament instituted by Philip le
+Bel. The common pleas were like the jurisdiction of the châtelat. The
+court of exchequer resembled that of the superintendents of the
+finances--_généraux des finances_--which became, in France, the court of
+aids.
+
+The maxim that the king's domain is inalienable is evidently taken from
+the system of French government.
+
+The right of the king of England to call on his subjects to pay his
+ransom, should he become a prisoner of war; that of requiring a subsidy
+when he married his eldest daughter, and when he conferred the honor of
+knighthood on his son; all these circumstances call to recollection the
+ancient usages of a kingdom of which William was the chief vassal.
+
+Scarcely had Philip le Bel summoned the commons to the states-general,
+before Edward, king of England, adopted the like measure, in order to
+balance the great power of the barons. For it was under this monarch's
+reign that the commons were first clearly and distinctly summoned to
+parliament.
+
+We perceive, then, that up to this epoch in the fourteenth century, the
+English government followed regularly in the steps of France. The two
+churches are entirely alike; the same subjection to the court of Rome;
+the same exactions which are always complained of, but, in the end,
+always paid to that rapacious court; the same dissensions, somewhat
+more or less violent; the same excommunications; the same donations to
+monks; the same chaos; the same mixture of holy rapine, superstition,
+and barbarism.
+
+As France and England, then, were for so long a period governed by the
+same principles, or rather without any principle at all, and merely by
+usages of a perfectly similar character, how is it that, at length, the
+two governments have become as different as those of Morocco and Venice?
+
+It is, perhaps, in the first place to be ascribed to the circumstance of
+England, or rather Great Britain, being an island, in consequence of
+which the king has been under no necessity of constantly keeping up a
+considerable standing army which might more frequently be employed
+against the nation itself than against foreigners.
+
+It may be further observed, that the English appear to have in the
+structure of their minds something more firm, more reflective, more
+persevering, and, perhaps, more obstinate, than some other nations.
+
+To this latter circumstance it may be probably attributed, that, after
+incessantly complaining of the court of Rome, they at length completely
+shook off its disgraceful yoke; while a people of more light and
+volatile character has continued to wear it, affecting at the same time
+to laugh and dance in its chains.
+
+The insular situation of the English, by inducing the necessity of
+urging to the particular pursuit and practice of navigation, has
+probably contributed to the result we are here considering, by giving to
+the natives a certain sternness and ruggedness of manners.
+
+These stern and rugged manners, which have made their island the theatre
+of many a bloody tragedy, have also contributed, in all probability, to
+inspire a generous frankness.
+
+It is in consequence of this combination of opposite qualities that so
+much royal blood has been shed in the field, and on the scaffold, and
+yet poison, in all their long and violent domestic contentions, has
+never been resorted to; whereas, in other countries, under priestly
+domination poison has been the prevailing weapon of destruction.
+
+The love of liberty appears to have advanced, and to have characterized
+the English, in proportion as they have advanced in knowledge and in
+wealth. All the citizens of a state cannot be equally powerful, but they
+may be equally free. And this high point of distinction and enjoyment
+the English, by their firmness and intrepidity, have at length attained.
+
+To be free is to be dependent only on the laws. The English, therefore,
+have ever loved the laws, as fathers love their children, because they
+are, or at least think themselves, the framers of them.
+
+A government like this could be established only at a late period;
+because it was necessary long to struggle with powers which commanded
+respect, or at least, impressed awe--the power of the pope, the most
+terrible of all, as it was built on prejudice and ignorance; the royal
+power ever tending to burst its proper boundary, and which it was
+requisite, however difficult, to restrain within it; the power of the
+barons, which was, in fact, an anarchy; the power of the bishops, who,
+always mixing the sacred with the profane, left no means unattempted to
+prevail over both barons and kings.
+
+The house of commons gradually became the impregnable mole, which
+successfully repelled those serious and formidable torrents.
+
+The house of commons is, in reality, the nation; for the king, who is
+the head, acts only for himself, and what is called his prerogative. The
+peers are a parliament only for themselves; and the bishops only for
+themselves, in the same manner.
+
+But the house of commons is for the people, as every member of it is
+deputed by the people. The people are to the king in the proportion of
+about eight millions to unity. To the peers and bishops they are as
+eight millions to, at most, two hundred. And these eight million free
+citizens are represented by the lower house.
+
+With respect to this establishment or constitution--in comparison with
+which the republic of Plato is merely a ridiculous reverie, and which
+might be thought to have been invented by Locke, or Newton, or Halley,
+or Archimedes--it sprang, in fact, out of abuses, of a most dreadful
+description, and such as are calculated to make human nature shudder.
+The inevitable friction of this vast machine nearly proved its
+destruction in the days of Fairfax and Cromwell. Senseless fanaticism
+broke into this noble edifice, like a devouring fire that consumes a
+beautiful building formed only of wood.
+
+In the time of William the Third it was rebuilt of stone. Philosophy
+destroyed fanaticism, which convulses to their centres states even the
+most firm and powerful. We cannot easily help believing that a
+constitution which has regulated the rights of king, lords, and people,
+and in which every individual finds security, will endure as long as
+human institutions and concerns shall have a being.
+
+We cannot but believe, also, that all states not established upon
+similar principles, will experience revolutions.
+
+The English constitution has, in fact, arrived at that point of
+excellence, in consequence of which all men are restored to those
+natural rights, which, in nearly all monarchies, they are deprived of.
+These rights are, entire liberty of person and property; freedom of the
+press; the right of being tried in all criminal cases by a jury of
+independent men--the right of being tried only according to the strict
+letter of the law; and the right of every man to profess, unmolested,
+what religion he chooses, while he renounces offices, which the members
+of the Anglican or established church alone can hold. These are
+denominated privileges. And, in truth, invaluable privileges they are
+in comparison with the usages of most other nations of the world! To be
+secure on lying down that you shall rise in possession of the same
+property with which you retired to rest; that you shall not be torn from
+the arms of your wife, and from your children, in the dead of night, to
+be thrown into a dungeon, or buried in exile in a desert; that, when
+rising from the bed of sleep, you will have the power of publishing all
+your thoughts; and that, if you are accused of having either acted,
+spoken, or written wrongly, you can be tried only according to law.
+These privileges attach to every one who sets his foot on English
+ground. A foreigner enjoys perfect liberty to dispose of his property
+and person; and, if accused of any offence, he can demand that half the
+jury shall be composed of foreigners.
+
+I will venture to assert, that, were the human race solemnly assembled
+for the purpose of making laws, such are the laws they would make for
+their security. Why then are they not adopted in other countries? But
+would it not be equally judicious to ask, why cocoanuts, which are
+brought to maturity in India, do not ripen at Rome? You answer, these
+cocoanuts did not always, or for some time, come to maturity in England;
+that the trees have not been long cultivated; that Sweden, following her
+example, planted and nursed some of them for several years, but that
+they did not thrive; and that it is possible to produce such fruit in
+other provinces, even in Bosnia and Servia. Try and plant the tree then.
+
+And you who bear authority over these benighted people, whether under
+the name of pasha, effendi, or mollah, let me advise you, although an
+unpromising subject for advice, not to act the stupid as well as
+barbarous part of riveting your nations in chains. Reflect, that the
+heavier you make the people's yoke, the more completely your own
+children, who cannot all of them be pashas, will be slaves. Surely you
+would not be so contemptible a wretch as to expose your whole posterity
+to groan in chains, for the sake of enjoying a subaltern tyranny for a
+few days! Oh, how great at present is the distance between an Englishman
+and a Bosnian!
+
+
+SECTION VII.
+
+The mixture now existing in the government of England--this concert
+between the commons, the lords, and the king--did not exist always.
+England was long a slave. She was so to the Romans, the Saxons, Danes,
+and French. William the Conqueror, in particular, ruled her with a
+sceptre of iron. He disposed of the properties and lives of his new
+subjects like an Oriental despot; he prohibited them from having either
+fire or candle in their houses after eight o'clock at night, under pain
+of death: his object being either to prevent nocturnal assemblies among
+them, or merely, by so capricious and extravagant a prohibition, to
+show how far the power of some men can extend over others. It is true,
+that both before as well as after William the Conqueror, the English had
+parliaments; they made a boast of them; as if the assemblies then called
+parliaments, made up of tyrannical churchmen and baronial robbers, had
+been the guardians of public freedom and happiness.
+
+The barbarians, who, from the shores of the Baltic poured over the rest
+of Europe, brought with them the usage of states or parliaments, about
+which a vast deal is said and very little known. The kings were not
+despotic, it is true; and it was precisely on this account that the
+people groaned in miserable slavery. The chiefs of these savages, who
+had ravaged France, Italy, Spain, and England, made themselves monarchs.
+Their captains divided among themselves the estates of the vanquished;
+hence, the margraves, lairds, barons, and the whole series of the
+subaltern tyrants, who often contested the spoils of the people with the
+monarchs, recently advanced to the throne and not firmly fixed on it.
+These were all birds of prey, battling with the eagle, in order to suck
+the blood of the doves. Every nation, instead of one good master, had a
+hundred tyrants. The priests soon took part in the contest. From time
+immemorial it had been the fate of the Gauls, the Germans, and the
+islanders of England, to be governed by their druids and the chiefs of
+their villages, an ancient species of barons, but less tyrannical than
+their successors. These druids called themselves mediators between God
+and men; they legislated, they excommunicated, they had the power of
+life and death. The bishops gradually succeeded to the authority of the
+druids, under the Goth and Vandal government. The popes put themselves
+at their head; and, with briefs, bulls, and monks, struck terror into
+the hearts of kings, whom they sometimes dethroned and occasionally
+caused to be assassinated, and drew to themselves, as nearly as they
+were able, all the money of Europe. The imbecile Ina, one of the tyrants
+of the English heptarchy, was the first who, on a pilgrimage to Rome,
+submitted to pay St. Peter's penny--which was about a crown of our
+money--for every house within his territory. The whole island soon
+followed this example; England gradually became a province of the pope;
+and the holy father sent over his legates, from time to time, to levy
+upon it his exorbitant imposts. John, called Lackland, at length made a
+full and formal cession of his kingdom to his holiness, by whom he had
+been excommunicated; the barons, who did not at all find their account
+in this proceeding, expelled that contemptible king, and substituted in
+his room Louis VIII., father of St. Louis, king of France. But they soon
+became disgusted with the new-comer, and obliged him to recross the sea.
+
+While the barons, bishops, and popes were thus harassing and tearing
+asunder England, where each of the parties strove eagerly to be the
+dominant one, the people, who form the most numerous, useful, and
+virtuous portion of a community, consisting of those who study the laws
+and sciences, merchants, artisans, and even peasants, who exercise at
+once the most important and the most despised of occupations; the
+people, I say, were looked down upon equally by all these combatants, as
+a species of beings inferior to mankind. Far, indeed, at that time, were
+the commons from having the slightest participation in the government:
+they were villeins, or serfs of the soil; both their labor and their
+blood belonged to their masters, who were called "nobles." The greater
+number of men in Europe were what they still continue to be in many
+parts of the world--the serfs of a lord, a species of cattle bought and
+sold together with the land. It required centuries to get justice done
+to humanity; to produce an adequate impression of the odious and
+execrable nature of the system, according to which the many sow, and
+only the few reap; and surely it may even be considered fortunate for
+France that the powers of these petty robbers were extinguished there by
+the legitimate authority of kings, as it was in England by that of the
+king and nation united.
+
+Happily, in consequence of the convulsions of empires by the contests
+between sovereigns and nobles, the chains of nations are more or less
+relaxed. The barons compelled John (Lackland) and Henry III to grant the
+famous charter, the great object of which, in reality, was to place the
+king in dependence on the lords, but in which the rest of the nation
+was a little favored, to induce it, when occasion might require, to
+range itself in the ranks of its pretended protectors. This great
+charter, which is regarded as the sacred origin of English liberties,
+itself clearly shows how very little liberty was understood. The very
+title proves that the king considered himself absolute by right, and
+that the barons and clergy compelled him to abate his claim to this
+absolute power only by the application of superior force. These are the
+words with which Magna Charta begins: "We grant, of our free will, the
+following privileges to the archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, and
+barons, of our kingdom," etc. Throughout the articles of it, not a word
+is said of the house of commons; a proof that it did not then exist, or
+that it existed without power. The freemen of England are specified in
+it, a melancholy demonstration that there were men who were not free. We
+perceive, from the thirty-seventh article, that the pretended freemen
+owed service to their lord. Liberty of such a description had but too
+strong a similarity to bondage. By the twenty-first article, the king
+ordains that henceforward his officers shall not take away the horses
+and ploughs of freemen, without paying for them. This regulation was
+considered by the people as true liberty, because it freed them from a
+greater tyranny. Henry VII., a successful warrior and politician, who
+pretended great attachment to the barons, but who cordially hated and
+feared them, granted them permission to alienate their lands. In
+consequence of this, the villeins, who by their industry and skill
+accumulated property, in the course of time became purchasers of the
+castles of the illustrious nobles who had ruined themselves by their
+extravagance, and, gradually, nearly all the landed property of the
+kingdom changed masters.
+
+The house of commons now advanced in power every day. The families of
+the old nobility became extinct in the progress of time; and, as in
+England, correctly speaking, peers only are nobles, there would scarcely
+have been any nobles in the country, if the kings had not, from time to
+time, created new barons, and kept up the body of peers, whom they had
+formerly so much dreaded, to counteract that of the commons, now become
+too formidable. All the new peers, who compose the upper house, receive
+from the king their title and nothing more, since none of them have the
+property of the lands of which they bear the names. One is duke of
+Dorset, without possessing a single foot of land in Dorsetshire; another
+is an earl under the name of a certain village, yet scarcely knowing
+where that village is situated. They have power in the parliament, and
+nowhere else.
+
+You hear no mention, in this country, of the high, middle, and low
+courts of justice, nor of the right of chase over the lands of private
+citizens, who have no right to fire a gun on their own estates.
+
+A man is not exempted from paying particular taxes because he is a
+noble or a clergyman. All imposts are regulated by the house of commons,
+which, although subordinate in rank, is superior in credit to that of
+the lords. The peers and bishops may reject a bill sent up to them by
+the commons, when the object is to raise money, but they can make no
+alteration in it: they must admit it or reject it, without restriction.
+When the bill is confirmed by the lords, and assented to by the king,
+then all the classes of the nation contribute. Every man pays, not
+according to his rank--which would be absurd--but according to his
+revenue. There is no arbitrary _faille_ or capitation, but a real tax on
+lands. These were all valued in the reign of the celebrated King
+William. The tax exists still unaltered, although the rents of lands
+have considerably increased; thus no one is oppressed, and no one
+complains. The feet of the cultivator are not bruised and mutilated by
+wooden shoes; he eats white bread; he is well clothed. He is not afraid
+to increase his farming-stock, nor to roof his cottage with tiles, lest
+the following year should, in consequence, bring with it an increase of
+taxation. There are numerous farmers who have an income of about five or
+six hundred pounds sterling, and still disdain not to cultivate the land
+which has enriched them, and on which they enjoy the blessing of
+freedom.
+
+
+SECTION VIII.
+
+The reader well knows that in Spain, near the coast of Malaga, there was
+discovered, in the reign of Philip II., a small community, until then
+unknown, concealed in the recesses of the Alpuxarras mountains. This
+chain of inaccessible rocks is intersected by luxuriant valleys, and
+these valleys are still cultivated by the descendants of the Moors, who
+were forced, for their own happiness, to become Christians, or at least
+to appear such.
+
+Among these Moors, as I was stating, there was, in the time of Philip, a
+small society, inhabiting a valley to which there existed no access but
+through caverns. This valley is situated between Pitos and Portugos. The
+inhabitants of this secluded abode were almost unknown to the Moors
+themselves. They spoke a language that was neither Spanish nor Arabic,
+and which was thought to be derived from that of the ancient
+Carthaginians.
+
+This society had but little increased in numbers: the reason alleged for
+which was that the Arabs, their neighbors, and before their time the
+Africans, were in the practice of coming and taking from them the young
+women.
+
+These poor and humble, but nevertheless happy, people, had never heard
+any mention of the Christian or Jewish religions; and knew very little
+about that of Mahomet, not holding it in any estimation. They offered
+up, from time immemorial, milk and fruits to a statue of Hercules. This
+was the amount of their religion. As to other matters, they spent their
+days in indolence and innocence. They were at length discovered by a
+familiar of the Inquisition. The grand inquisitor had the whole of them
+burned. This is the sole event of their history.
+
+The hallowed motives of their condemnation were, that they had never
+paid taxes, although, in fact, none had ever been demanded of them, and
+they were totally unacquainted with money; that they were not possessed
+of any Bible, although they did not understand Latin; and that no person
+had been at the pains of baptizing them. They were all invested with the
+san benito, and broiled to death with becoming ceremony.
+
+It is evident that this is a specimen of the true system of government;
+nothing can so completely contribute to the content, harmony, and
+happiness of society.
+
+
+
+
+GOURD OR CALABASH.
+
+
+This fruit grows in America on the branches of a tree as high as the
+tallest oaks.
+
+Thus, Matthew Garo, who is thought so wrong in Europe for finding fault
+with gourds creeping on the ground, would have been right in Mexico. He
+would have been still more in the right in India, where cocoas are very
+elevated. This proves that we should never hasten to conclusions. What
+God has made, He has made well, no doubt; and has placed his gourds on
+the ground in our climates, lest, in falling from on high, they should
+break Matthew Garo's nose.
+
+The calabash will only be introduced here to show that we should
+mistrust the idea that all was made for man. There are people who
+pretend that the turf is only green to refresh the sight. It would
+appear, however, that it is rather made for the animals who nibble it
+than for man, to whom dog-grass and trefoil are useless. If nature has
+produced the trees in favor of some species, it is difficult to say to
+which she has given the preference. Leaves, and even bark, nourish a
+prodigious multitude of insects: birds eat their fruits, and inhabit
+their branches, in which they build their industriously formed nests,
+while the flocks repose under their shades.
+
+The author of the "_Spectacle de la Nature_" pretends that the sea has a
+flux and reflux, only to facilitate the going out and coming in of our
+vessels. It appears that even Matthew Garo reasoned better; the
+Mediterranean, on which so many vessels sail, and which only has a tide
+in three or four places, destroys the opinion of this philosopher.
+
+Let us enjoy what we have, without believing ourselves the centre and
+object of all things.
+
+
+
+
+GRACE.
+
+
+In persons and works, grace signifies, not only that which is pleasing,
+but that which is attractive; so that the ancients imagined that the
+goddess of beauty ought never to appear without the graces. Beauty never
+displeases, but it may be deprived of this secret charm, which invites
+us to regard it, and sentimentally attracts and fills the soul. Grace
+in figure, carriage, action, discourse, depends on its attractive
+merit. A beautiful woman will have no grace, if her mouth be shut
+without a smile, and if her eyes display no sweetness. The serious is
+not always graceful, because unattractive, and approaching too near to
+the severe, which repels.
+
+A well-made man whose carriage is timid or constrained, gait precipitate
+or heavy, and gestures awkward, has no gracefulness, because he has
+nothing gentle or attractive in his exterior. The voice of an orator
+which wants flexibility or softness is without grace.
+
+It is the same in all the arts. Proportion and beauty may not be
+graceful. It cannot be said that the pyramids of Egypt are graceful; it
+cannot be said that the Colossus of Rhodes is as much so as the Venus of
+Cnidus. All that is merely strong and vigorous exhibits not the charm of
+grace.
+
+It would show but small acquaintance with Michelangelo and Caravaggio to
+attribute to them the grace of Albano. The sixth book of the "Æneid" is
+sublime; the fourth has more grace. Some of the gallant odes of Horace
+breathe gracefulness, as some of his epistles cultivate reason.
+
+It seems, in general, that the little and pretty of all kinds are more
+susceptible of grace than the large. A funeral oration, a tragedy, or a
+sermon, are badly praised, if they are only honored with the epithet of
+graceful.
+
+It is not good for any kind of work to be opposed to grace, for its
+opposite is rudeness, barbarity, and dryness. The Hercules of Farnese
+should not have the gracefulness of the Apollo of Belvidere and of
+Antinous, but it is neither rude nor clumsy. The burning of Troy is not
+described by Virgil with the graces of an elegy of Tibullus: it pleases
+by stronger beauties. A work, then, may be deprived of grace, without
+being in the least disagreeable. The terrible, or horrible, in
+description, is not to be graceful, neither should it solely affect its
+opposite; for if an artist, whatever branch he may cultivate, expresses
+only frightful things, and softens them not by agreeable contrasts, he
+will repel.
+
+Grace, in painting and sculpture, consists in softness of outline and
+harmonious expression; and painting, next to sculpture, has grace in the
+unison of parts, and of figures which animate one another, and which
+become agreeable by their attributes and their expression.
+
+Graces of diction, whether in eloquence or poetry, depend on choice of
+words and harmony of phrases, and still more upon delicacy of ideas and
+smiling descriptions. The abuse of grace is affectation, as the abuse of
+the sublime is absurdity; all perfection is nearly a fault.
+
+To have grace applies equally to persons and things. This dress, this
+work, or that woman, is graceful. What is called a good grace applies to
+manner alone. She presents herself with good grace. He has done that
+which was expected of him with a good grace. To possess the graces:
+This woman has grace in her carriage, in all that she says and does.
+
+To obtain grace is, by a metaphor, to obtain pardon, as to grant grace
+is to grant pardon. We make grace of one thing by taking away all the
+rest. The commissioners took all his effects and made him a gift--a
+grace--of his money. To grant graces, to diffuse graces, is the finest
+privilege of the sovereignty; it is to do good by something more than
+justice. To have one's good graces is usually said in relation to a
+superior: to have a lady's good graces, is to be her favorite lover. To
+be in grace, is said of a courtier who has been in disgrace: we should
+not allow our happiness to depend on the one, nor our misery on the
+other. Graces, in Greek, are "charities"; a term which signifies
+amiable.
+
+The graces, divinities of antiquity, are one of the most beautiful
+allegories of the Greek mythology. As this mythology always varied
+according either to the imagination of the poets, who were its
+theologians, or to the customs of the people, the number, names, and
+attributes of the graces often change; but it was at last agreed to fix
+them as three, Aglaia, Thalia, and Euphrosyne, that is to say,
+sparkling, blooming, mirthful. They were always near Venus. No veil
+should cover their charms. They preside over favors, concord,
+rejoicings, love, and even eloquence; they were the sensible emblem of
+all that can render life agreeable. They were painted dancing and
+holding hands; and every one who entered their temples was crowned with
+flowers. Those who have condemned the fabulous mythology should at least
+acknowledge the merit of these lively fictions, which announce truths
+intimately connected with the felicity of mankind.
+
+
+
+
+GRACE (OF).
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+This term, which signifies favor or privilege, is employed in this sense
+by theologians. They call grace a particular operation of God on
+mankind, intended to render them just and happy. Some have admitted
+universal grace, that which God gives to all men, though mankind,
+according to them, with the exception of a very small number, will be
+delivered to eternal flames: others admit grace towards Christians of
+their communion only; and lastly, others only for the elect of that
+communion.
+
+It is evident that a general grace, which leaves the universe in vice,
+error, and eternal misery, is not a grace, a favor, or privilege, but a
+contradiction in terms.
+
+Particular grace, according to theologians, is either in the first place
+"sufficing," which if resisted, suffices not--resembling a pardon given
+by a king to a criminal, who is nevertheless delivered over to the
+punishment; or "efficacious" when it is not resisted, although it _may
+be_ resisted; in this case, they just resemble famished guests to whom
+are presented delicious viands, of which they will surely eat, though,
+in general, they may be supposed at liberty not to eat; or "necessary,"
+that is, unavoidable, being nothing more than the chain of eternal
+decrees and events. We shall take care not to enter into the long and
+appalling details, subtleties, and sophisms, with which these questions
+are embarrassed. The object of this dictionary is not to be the vain
+echo of vain disputes.
+
+St. Thomas calls grace a substantial form, and the Jesuit Bouhours names
+it a _je ne sais quoi_; this is perhaps the best definition which has
+ever been given of it.
+
+If the theologians had wanted a subject on which to ridicule Providence,
+they need not have taken any other than that which they have chosen. On
+one side the Thomists assure us that man, in receiving efficacious
+grace, is not free in the compound sense, but that he is free in the
+divided sense; on the other, the Molinists invent the medium doctrine of
+God and congruity, and imagine exciting, preventing, concomitant, and
+co-operating grace.
+
+Let us quit these bad but seriously constructed jokes of the
+theologians; let us leave their books, and each consult his common
+sense; when he will see that all these reasoners have sagaciously
+deceived themselves, because they have reasoned upon a principle
+evidently false. They have supposed that God acts upon particular views;
+now, an eternal God, without general, immutable, and eternal laws, is
+an imaginary being, a phantom, a god of fable.
+
+Why, in all religions on which men pique themselves on reasoning, have
+theologians been forced to admit this grace which they do not
+comprehend? It is that they would have salvation confined to their own
+sect, and further, they would have this salvation divided among those
+who are the most submissive to themselves. These particular theologians,
+or chiefs of parties, divide among themselves. The Mussulman doctors
+entertain similar opinions and similar disputes, because they have the
+same interest to actuate them; but the universal theologian, that is to
+say, the true philosopher, sees that it is contradictory for nature to
+act on particular or single views; that it is ridiculous to imagine God
+occupying Himself in forcing one man in Europe to obey Him, while He
+leaves all the Asiatics intractable; to suppose Him wrestling with
+another man who sometimes submits, and sometimes disarms Him, and
+presenting to another a help, which is nevertheless useless. Such grace,
+considered in a true point of view, is an absurdity. The prodigious mass
+of books composed on this subject is often an exercise of intellect, but
+always the shame of reason.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+All nature, all that exists, is the grace of God; He bestows on all
+animals the grace of form and nourishment. The grace of growing seventy
+feet high is granted to the fir, and refused to the reed. He gives to
+man the grace of thinking, speaking, and knowing him; He grants me the
+grace of not understanding a word of all that Tournelli, Molina, and
+Soto, have written on the subject of grace.
+
+The first who has spoken of efficacious and gratuitous grace is, without
+contradiction, Homer. This may be astonishing to a bachelor of theology,
+who knows no author but St. Augustine; but, if he read the third book of
+the "Iliad," he will see that Paris says to his brother Hector: "If the
+gods have given you valor, and me beauty, do not reproach me with the
+presents of the beautiful Venus; no gift of the gods is despicable--it
+does not depend upon man to obtain them."
+
+Nothing is more positive than this passage. If we further remark that
+Jupiter, according to his pleasure, gave the victory sometimes to the
+Greeks, and at others to the Trojans, we shall see a new proof that all
+was done by grace from on high. Sarpedon, and afterwards Patroclus, are
+barbarians to whom by turns grace has been wanting.
+
+There have been philosophers who were not of the opinion of Homer. They
+have pretended that general Providence does not immediately interfere
+with the affairs of particular individuals; that it governs all by
+universal laws; that Thersites and Achilles were equal before it, and
+that neither Chalcas nor Talthybius ever had versatile or congruous
+graces.
+
+According to these philosophers, the dog-grass and the oak, the mite and
+the elephant, man, the elements and stars, obey invariable laws, which
+God, as immutable, has established from all eternity.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+If one were to come from the bottom of hell, to say to us on the part of
+the devil--Gentlemen, I must inform you that our sovereign lord has
+taken all mankind for his share, except a small number of people who
+live near the Vatican and its dependencies--we should all pray of this
+deputy to inscribe us on the list of the privileged; we should ask him
+what we must do to obtain this grace.
+
+If he were to answer, You cannot merit it, my master has made the list
+from the beginning of time; he has only listened to his own pleasure, he
+is continually occupied in making an infinity of _pots-de-chambre_ and
+some dozen gold vases; if you are _pots-de-chambre_ so much the worse
+for you.
+
+At these fine words we should use our pitchforks to send the ambassador
+back to his master. This is, however, what we have dared to impute to
+God---to the eternal and sovereignly good being!
+
+Man has been always reproached with having made God in his own image,
+Homer has been condemned for having transported all the vices and
+follies of earth into heaven. Plato, who has thus justly reproached him,
+has not hesitated to call him a blasphemer; while we, a hundred times
+more thoughtless, hardy, and blaspheming than this Greek, who did not
+understand conventional language, devoutly accuse God of a thing of
+which we have never accused the worst of men.
+
+It is said that the king of Morocco, Muley Ismael, had five hundred
+children. What would you say if a marabout of Mount Atlas related to you
+that the wise and good Muley Ismael, dining with his family, at the
+close of the repast, spoke thus:
+
+"I am Muley Ismael, who has forgotten you for my glory, for I am very
+glorious. I love you very tenderly, I shelter you as a hen covers her
+chickens; I have decreed that one of my youngest children shall have the
+kingdom of Tafilet, and that another shall possess Morocco; and for my
+other dear children, to the number of four hundred and ninety-eight, I
+order that one-half shall be tortured, and the other half burned, for I
+am the Lord Muley Ismael."
+
+You would assuredly take the marabout for the greatest fool that Africa
+ever produced; but if three or four thousand marabouts, well entertained
+at your expense, were to repeat to you the same story, what would you
+do? Would you not be tempted to make them fast upon bread and water
+until they recovered their senses?
+
+You will allege that my indignation is reasonable enough against the
+supralapsarians, who believe that the king of Morocco begot these five
+hundred children only for his glory; and that he had always the
+intention to torture and burn them, except two, who were destined to
+reign.
+
+But I am wrong, you say, against the infralapsarians, who avow that it
+was not the first intention of Muley Ismael to cause his children to
+perish; but that, having foreseen that they would be of no use, he
+thought he should be acting as a good father in getting rid of them by
+torture and fire.
+
+Ah, supralapsarians, infralapsarians, free-gracians, sufficers,
+efficacians, jansenists, and molinists become men, and no longer trouble
+the earth with such absurd and abominable fooleries.
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+Holy advisers of modern Rome, illustrious and infallible theologians, no
+one has more respect for your divine decisions than I; but if Paulus
+milius, Scipio, Cato, Cicero, Cæsar, Titus, Trajan, or Marcus Aurelius,
+revisited that Rome to which they formerly did such credit, you must
+confess that they would be a little astonished at your decisions on
+grace. What would they say if they heard you speak of healthful grace
+according to St. Thomas, and medicinal grace according to Cajetan; of
+exterior and interior grace, of free, sanctifying, co-operating, actual,
+habitual, and efficacious grace, which is sometimes inefficacious; of
+the sufficing which sometimes does not suffice, of the versatile and
+congruous--would they really comprehend it more than you and I?
+
+What need would these poor people have of your instructions? I fancy I
+hear them say: "Reverend fathers, you are terrible genii; we foolishly
+thought that the Eternal Being never conducted Himself by particular
+laws like vile human beings, but by general laws, eternal like Himself.
+No one among us ever imagined that God was like a senseless master, who
+gives an estate to one slave and refuses food to another; who orders one
+with a broken arm to knead a loaf, and a cripple to be his courier."
+
+All is grace on the part of God; He has given to the globe we inhabit
+the grace of form; to the trees the grace of making them grow; to
+animals that of feeding them; but will you say, because one wolf finds
+in his road a lamb for his supper, while another is dying with hunger,
+that God has given the first wolf a particular grace? Is it a preventive
+grace to cause one oak to grow in preference to another in which sap is
+wanting? If throughout nature all being is submitted to general laws,
+how can a single species of animals avoid conforming to them?
+
+Why should the absolute master of all be more occupied in directing the
+interior of a single man than in conducting the remainder of entire
+nature? By what caprice would He change something in the heart of a
+Courlander or a Biscayan, while He changes nothing in the general laws
+which He has imposed upon all the stars.
+
+What a pity to suppose that He is continually making, defacing, and
+renewing our sentiments! And what audacity in us to believe ourselves
+excepted from all beings! And further, is it not only for those who
+confess that these changes are imagined? A Savoyard, a Bergamask, on
+Monday, will have the grace to have a mass said for twelve sous; on
+Tuesday he will go to the tavern and have no grace; on Wednesday he will
+have a co-operating grace, which will conduct him to confession, but he
+will not have the efficacious grace of perfect contrition; on Thursday
+there will be a sufficing grace which will not suffice, as has been
+already said. God will labor in the head of this Bergamask--sometimes
+strongly, sometimes weakly, while the rest of the earth will no way
+concern Him! He will not deign to meddle with the interior of the
+Indians and Chinese! If you possess a grain of reason, reverend fathers,
+do you not find this system prodigiously ridiculous?
+
+Poor, miserable man! behold this oak which rears its head to the clouds,
+and this reed which bends at its feet; you do not say that efficacious
+grace has been given to the oak and withheld from the reed. Raise your
+eyes to heaven; see the eternal Demiourgos creating millions of worlds,
+which gravitate towards one another by general and eternal laws. See the
+same light reflected from the sun to Saturn, and from Saturn to us; and
+in this grant of so many stars, urged onward in their rapid course; in
+this general obedience of all nature, dare to believe, if you can, that
+God is occupied in giving a versatile grace to Sister Theresa, or a
+concomitant one to Sister Agnes.
+
+Atom--to which another foolish atom has said that the Eternal has
+particular laws for some atoms of thy neighborhood; that He gives His
+grace to that one and refuses it to this; that such as had not grace
+yesterday shall have it to-morrow--repeat not this folly. God has made
+the universe, and creates not new winds to remove a few straws in one
+corner of the universe. Theologians are like the combatants in Homer,
+who believed that the gods were sometimes armed for and sometimes
+against them. Had Homer not been considered a poet, he would be deemed a
+blasphemer.
+
+It is Marcus Aurelius who speaks, and not I; for God, who inspires you,
+has given me grace to believe all that you say, all that you have said,
+and all that you will say.
+
+
+
+
+GRAVE--GRAVITY.
+
+
+Grave, in its moral meaning, always corresponds with its physical one;
+it expresses something of weight; thus, we say--a person, an author, or
+a maxim of weight, for a grave person, author, or maxim. The grave is to
+the serious what the lively is to the agreeable. It is one degree more
+of the same thing, and that degree a considerable one. A man may be
+serious by temperament, and even from want of ideas. He is grave, either
+from a sense of decorum, or from having ideas of depth and importance,
+which induce gravity. There is a difference between being grave and
+being a grave man. It is a fault to be unseasonably grave. He who is
+grave in society is seldom much sought for; but a grave man is one who
+acquires influence and authority more by his real wisdom than his
+external carriage.
+
+     _Tum pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem_
+     _Conspexere, silent, adrectisque auribus adstant._
+                            --VIRGIL'S _Æneid_, i. 151.
+
+     If then some grave and pious man appear,
+     They hush their noise, and lend a listening ear.
+                                                   --DRYDEN.
+
+A decorous air should be always preserved, but a grave air is becoming
+only in the function of some high and important office, as, for example,
+in council. When gravity consists, as is frequently the case, only in
+the exterior carriage, frivolous remarks are delivered with a pompous
+solemnity, exciting at once ridicule and aversion. We do not easily
+pardon those who wish to impose upon us by this air of consequence and
+self-sufficiency.
+
+The duke de La Rochefoucauld said "Gravity is a mysteriousness of body
+assumed in order to conceal defects of mind." Without investigating
+whether the phrase "mysteriousness of body" is natural and judicious, it
+is sufficient to observe that the remark is applicable to all who affect
+gravity, but not to those who merely exhibit a gravity suitable to the
+office they hold, the place where they are, or the business in which
+they are engaged.
+
+A grave author is one whose opinions relate to matters obviously
+disputable. We never apply the term to one who has written on subjects
+which admit no doubt or controversy. It would be ridiculous to call
+Euclid and Archimedes grave authors.
+
+Gravity is applicable to style. Livy and de Thou have written with
+gravity. The same observations cannot with propriety be applied to
+Tacitus, whose object was brevity, and who has displayed malignity;
+still less can it be applied to Cardinal de Retz, who sometimes infuses
+into his writings a misplaced gayety, and sometimes even forgets
+decency.
+
+The grave style declines all sallies of wit or pleasantry; if it
+sometimes reaches the sublime, if on any particular occasion it is
+pathetic, it speedily returns to the didactic wisdom and noble
+simplicity which habitually characterizes it; it possesses strength
+without daring. Its greatest difficulty is to avoid monotony.
+
+A grave affair (_affaire_), a grave case (_cas_), is used concerning a
+criminal rather than a civil process. A grave disease implies danger.
+
+
+
+
+GREAT--GREATNESS.
+
+_Of the Meaning of These Words._
+
+Great is one of those words which are most frequently used in a moral
+sense, and with the least consideration and judgment. Great man, great
+genius, great captain, great philosopher, great poet; we mean by this
+language "one who has far exceeded ordinary limits." But, as it is
+difficult to define those limits, the epithet "great" is often applied
+to those who possess only mediocrity.
+
+This term is less vague and doubtful when applied to material than to
+moral subjects. We know what is meant by a great storm, a great
+misfortune, a great disease, great property, great misery.
+
+The term "large" (_gros_) is sometimes used with respect to subjects of
+the latter description, that is, material ones, as equivalent to great,
+but never with respect to moral subjects. We say large property for
+great wealth, but not a large captain for a great captain, or a large
+minister for a great minister. Great financier means a man eminently
+skilful in matters of national finance; but _gros_ financier expresses
+merely a man who has become wealthy in the department of finance.
+
+The great man is more difficult to be defined than the great artist. In
+an art or profession, the man who has far distanced his rivals, or who
+has the reputation of having done so, is called great in his art, and
+appears, therefore, to have required merit of only one description in
+order to obtain this eminence; but the great man must combine different
+species of merit. Gonsalvo, surnamed the Great Captain, who observed
+that "the web of honor was coarsely woven," was never called a great
+man. It is more easy to name those to whom this high distinction should
+be refused than those to whom it should be granted. The denomination
+appears to imply some great virtues. All agree that Cromwell was the
+most intrepid general, the most profound statesman, the man best
+qualified to conduct a party, a parliament, or an army, of his day; yet
+no writer ever gives him the title of great man; because, although he
+possessed great qualities, he possessed not a single great virtue.
+
+This title seems to fall to the lot only of the small number of men who
+have been distinguished at once by virtues, exertions, and success.
+Success is essential, because the man who is always unfortunate is
+supposed to be so by his own fault.
+
+Great (grand), by itself, expresses some dignity. In Spain it is a high
+and most distinguishing appellative (_grandee_) conferred by the king on
+those whom he wishes to honor. The grandees are covered in the presence
+of the king, either before speaking to him or after having spoken to
+him, or while taking their seats with the rest.
+
+Charles the Fifth conferred the privileges of grandeeship on sixteen
+principal noblemen. That emperor himself afterwards granted the same
+honors to many others. His successors, each in his turn, have added to
+the number. The Spanish grandees have long claimed to be considered of
+equal rank and dignity with the electors and the princes of Italy. At
+the court of France they have the same honors as peers.
+
+The title of "great" has been always given, in France, to many of the
+chief officers of the crown--as great seneschal, great master, great
+chamberlain, great equerry, great pantler, great huntsman, great
+falconer. These titles were given them to distinguish their pre-eminence
+above the persons serving in the same departments under them. The
+distinction is not given to the constable, nor to the chancellor, nor to
+the marshals, although the constable is the chief of all the household
+officers, the chancellor the second person in the state, and the marshal
+the second officer in the army. The reason obviously is, that they had
+no deputies, no vice-constables, vice-marshals, vice-chancellors, but
+officers under another denomination who executed their orders, while the
+great steward, great chamberlain, and great equerry, etc., had stewards,
+chamberlains, and equerries under them.
+
+Great (grand) in connection with _seigneur_, "great lord," has a
+signification more extensive and uncertain. We give this title of
+"_grand seigneur_" (seignor) to the Turkish sultan, who assumes that of
+pasha, to which the expression grand seignor does not correspond. The
+expression "_un grand_," "great man," is used in speaking of a man of
+distinguished birth, invested with dignities, but it is used only by the
+common people. A person of birth or consequence never applies the term
+to any one. As the words "great lord" (_grand seigneur_) are commonly
+applied to those who unite birth, dignity, and riches, poverty seems to
+deprive a man of the right to it, or at least to render it inappropriate
+or ridiculous. Accordingly, we say a poor gentleman, but not a poor
+grand seigneur.
+
+Great (grand) is different from mighty (_puissant_). A man may at the
+same time be both one and the other, but _puissant_ implies the
+possession of some office of power and consequence. "Grand" indicates
+more show and less reality; the "puissant" commands, the "grand"
+possesses honors.
+
+There is greatness (grandeur) in mind, in sentiments, in manners, and in
+conduct. The expression is not used in speaking of persons in the
+middling classes of society, but only of those who, by their rank, are
+bound to show nobility and elevation. It is perfectly true that a man of
+the most obscure birth and connections may have more greatness of mind
+than a monarch. But it would be inconsistent with the usual phraseology
+to say, "that merchant" or "that farmer acted greatly" (_avec
+grandeur_); unless, indeed, in very particular circumstances, and
+placing certain characters in striking opposition, we should, for
+example, make such a remark as the following: "The celebrated merchant
+who entertained Charles the Fifth in his own house, and lighted a fire
+of cinnamon wood with that prince's bond to him for fifty thousand
+ducats, displayed more greatness of soul than the emperor."
+
+The title of "greatness" (grandeur) was formerly given to various
+persons possessing stations of dignity. French clergymen, when writing
+to bishops, still call them "your greatness." Those titles, which are
+lavished by sycophancy and caught at by vanity, are now little used.
+
+Haughtiness is often mistaken for greatness (grandeur). He who is
+ostentatious of greatness displays vanity. But one becomes weary and
+exhausted with writing about greatness. According to the lively remark
+of Montaigne, "we cannot obtain it, let us therefore take our revenge by
+abusing it."
+
+
+
+
+GREEK.
+
+_Observations Upon the Extinction of the Greek Language at Marseilles._
+
+
+It is exceedingly strange that, as Marseilles was founded by a Greek
+colony, scarcely any vestige of the Greek language is to be found in
+Provence Languedoc, or any district of France; for we cannot consider as
+Greek the terms which were taken, at a comparatively modern date, from
+the Latins, and which had been adopted by the Romans themselves from the
+Greeks so many centuries before. We received those only at second hand.
+We have no right to say that we abandoned the word _Got_ for that of
+_Theos_, rather than that of _Deus_, from which, by a barbarous
+termination, we have made _Dieu_.
+
+It is clear that the Gauls, having received the Latin language with the
+Roman laws, and having afterwards received from those same Romans the
+Christian religion, adopted from them all the terms which were connected
+with that religion. These same Gauls did not acquire, until a late
+period, the Greek terms which relate to medicine, anatomy, and surgery.
+
+After deducting all the words originally Greek which we have derived
+through the Latin, and all the anatomical and medical terms which were,
+in comparison, so recently acquired, there is scarcely anything left;
+for surely, to derive "_abréger_" from "_brakus_," rather than from
+"_abreviare_"; "_acier_" from "_axi_" rather than from "_acies_";
+"_acre_" from "_agros_," rather than from "_ager_"; and "_aile_" from
+"_ily_" rather than from "_ala_"--this, I say, would surely be perfectly
+ridiculous.
+
+Some have even gone so far as to say that "omelette" comes from
+"_omeilaton_" because "_meli_" in Greek signifies honey, and "_oon_" an
+egg. In the "Garden of Greek Roots" there is a more curious derivation
+still; it is pretended that "_diner_" (dinner) comes from "_deipnein_,"
+which signifies supper.
+
+As some may be desirous of possessing a list of the Greek words which
+the Marseilles colony may have introduced into the language of the
+Gauls, independently of those which came through the Romans, we present
+the following one:
+
+     Aboyer, perhaps from _bauzein_.
+     Affre, affreux, from _afronos_.
+     Agacer, perhaps from _anaxein_.
+     Alali, a Greek war-cry.
+     Babiller, perhaps from _babazo_.
+     Balle, from _ballo_.
+     Bas, from _batys_.
+     Blesser, from the aorist of _blapto_.
+     Bouteille, from _bouttis_.
+     Bride, from _bryter_.
+     Brique, from _bryka_.
+     Coin, from _gonia_.
+     Colère, from _chole_.
+     Colle, from _colla_.
+     Couper, from _cop to_.
+     Cuisse, perhaps from _ischis_.
+     Entraille, from _entera_.
+     Ermite, from _eremos_.
+     Fier, from _fiaros_.
+     Gargarizer, from _gargarizein_.
+     Idiot, from _idiotes_.
+     Maraud, from _miaros_.
+     Moquer, from _mokeuo_.
+     Moustache, from _mustax_.
+     Orgueil, from _orge_.
+     Page, from _pais_.
+     Siffler, perhaps from _siffloo_.
+     Tuer, _thuein_.
+
+I am astonished to find so few words remaining of a language spoken at
+Marseilles, in the time of Augustus, in all its purity; and I am
+particularly astonished to find the greater number of the Greek words
+preserved in Provence, signifying things of little or no utility, while
+those used to express things of the first necessity and importance are
+utterly lost. We have not a single one remaining that signifies land,
+sea, sky, the sun, the moon, rivers, or the principal parts of the human
+body; the words used for which might have been expected to be
+transmitted down from the beginning through every succeeding age.
+Perhaps we must attribute the cause of this to the Visigoths, the
+Burgundians, and the Franks; to the horrible barbarism of all those
+nations which laid waste the Roman Empire, a barbarism of which so many
+traces yet remain.
+
+
+
+
+GUARANTEE.
+
+
+A guarantee is a pledge by which a person renders himself responsible to
+another for something, and binds himself to secure him in the enjoyment
+of it. The word (_garant_) is derived from the Celtic and Teutonic
+"warrant." In all the words which we have retained from those ancient
+languages we have changed the _w_ into _g_. Among the greater number of
+the nations of the North "warrant" still signifies assurance, guaranty;
+and in this sense it means, in English, an order of the king, as
+signifying the pledge of the king. When in the middle ages kings
+concluded treaties, they were guaranteed on both sides by a considerable
+number of knights, who bound themselves by oath to see that the treaty
+was observed, and even, when a superior education qualified them to do
+so, which sometimes happened, signed their names to it. When the emperor
+Frederick Barbarossa ceded so many rights to Pope Alexander III. at the
+celebrated congress of Venice, in 1117, the emperor put his seal to the
+instrument which the pope and cardinals signed. Twelve princes of the
+empire guaranteed the treaty by an oath upon the gospel; but none of
+them signed it. It is not said that the doge of Venice guaranteed that
+peace which was concluded in his palace. When Philip Augustus made peace
+in 1200 with King John of England, the principal barons of France and
+Normandy swore to the due observance of it, as cautionary or
+guaranteeing parties. The French swore that they would take arms against
+their king if he violated his word, and the Normans, in like manner, to
+oppose their sovereign if he did not adhere to his. One of the
+constables of the Montmorency family, after a negotiation with one of
+the earls of March, in 1227, swore to the observance of the treaty upon
+the soul of the king.
+
+The practice of guaranteeing the states of a third party was of great
+antiquity, although under a different name. The Romans in this manner
+guaranteed the possessions of many of the princes of Asia and Africa, by
+taking them under their protection until they secured to themselves the
+possession of the territories thus protected. We must regard as a mutual
+guaranty the ancient alliance between France and Castile, of king to
+king, kingdom to kingdom, and man to man.
+
+We do not find any treaty in which the guaranty of the states of a third
+party is expressly stipulated for before that which was concluded
+between Spain and the states-general in 1609, by the mediation of Henry
+IV. He procured from Philip III., king of Spain, the recognition of the
+United Provinces as free and sovereign states. He signed the guaranty of
+this sovereignty of the seven provinces, and obtained the signature of
+the same instrument from the king of Spain; and the republic
+acknowledged that it owed its freedom to the interference of the French
+monarch. It is principally within our own times that treaties of
+guaranty have become comparatively frequent. Unfortunately these
+engagements have occasionally produced ruptures and war; and it is
+clearly ascertained that the best of all possible guaranties is power.
+
+
+
+
+GREGORY VII.
+
+
+Bayle himself, while admitting that Gregory was the firebrand of Europe,
+concedes to him the denomination of a great man. "That old Rome," says
+he, "which plumed itself upon conquests and military virtue, should have
+brought so many other nations under its dominion, redounds, according to
+the general maxims of mankind, to her credit and glory; but, upon the
+slightest reflection, can excite little surprise. On the other hand, it
+is a subject of great surprise to see new Rome, which pretended to value
+itself only on an apostolic ministry, possessed of an authority under
+which the greatest monarchs have been constrained to bend. Caron may
+observe, with truth, that there is scarcely a single emperor who has
+opposed the popes without feeling bitter cause to regret his resistance.
+Even at the present day the conflicts of powerful princes with the court
+of Rome almost always terminate in their confusion."
+
+I am of a totally different opinion from Bayle. There will probably be
+many of a different one from mine. I deliver it however with freedom,
+and let him who is willing and able refute it.
+
+1. The differences of the princes of Orange and the seven provinces with
+Rome did not terminate in their confusion; and Bayle, who, while at
+Amsterdam, could set Rome at defiance, was a happy illustration of the
+contrary.
+
+The triumphs of Queen Elizabeth, of Gustavus Vasa in Sweden, of the
+kings of Denmark, of all the princes of the north of Germany, of the
+finest part of Helvetia, of the single and small city of Geneva--the
+triumphs, I say, of all these over the policy of the Roman court are
+perfectly satisfactory testimonies that it may be easily and
+successfully resisted, both in affairs of religion and government.
+
+2. The sacking of Rome by the troops of Charles the Fifth; the pope
+(Clement VII.) a prisoner in the castle of St. Angelo; Louis XIV.
+compelling Pope Alexander VII. to ask his pardon, and erecting even in
+Rome itself a monument of the pope's submission; and, within our own
+times, the easy subversion of that steady, and apparently most
+formidable support of the papal power, the society of Jesuits in Spain,
+in France, in Naples, in Goa, and in Paraguay--all this furnishes
+decisive evidence, that, when potent princes are in hostility with Rome,
+the quarrel is not terminated in their confusion; they may occasionally
+bend before the storm, but they will not eventually be overthrown.
+
+When the popes walked on the heads of kings, when they conferred crowns
+by a parchment bull, it appears to me, that at this extreme height of
+their power and grandeur they did no more than the caliphs, who were the
+successors of Mahomet, did in the very period of their decline. Both of
+them, in the character of priests, conferred the investiture of empires,
+in solemn ceremony, on the most powerful of contending parties.
+
+3. Maimbourg says: "What no pope ever did before, Gregory VIII. did,
+depriving Henry IV. of his dignity of emperor, and of his kingdoms of
+Germany and Italy."
+
+Maimbourg is mistaken. Pope Zachary had, long before that, placed a
+crown on the head of the Austrasian Pepin, who usurped the kingdom of
+the Franks; and Pope Leo III. had declared the son of that Pepin emperor
+of the West, and thereby deprived the empress Irene of the whole of that
+empire; and from that time, it must be admitted, there has not been a
+single priest of the Romish church who has not imagined that his bishop
+enjoyed the disposal of all crowns.
+
+This maxim was always turned to account when it was possible to be so.
+It was considered as a consecrated weapon, deposited in the sacristy of
+St. John of Lateran, which might be drawn forth in solemn and impressive
+ceremony on every occasion that required it. This prerogative is so
+commanding; it raises to such a height the dignity of an exorcist born
+at Velletri or Cività Vecchia, that if Luther, Œcolampadius, John
+Calvin, and all the prophets of the Cévennes, had been natives of any
+miserable village near Rome, and undergone the tonsure there, they would
+have supported that church with the same rage which they actually
+manifested for its destruction.
+
+4. Everything, then, depends on the time and place of a man's birth, and
+the circumstances by which he is surrounded. Gregory VII. was born in an
+age of barbarism, ignorance, and superstition; and he had to deal with a
+young, debauched, inexperienced emperor, deficient in money, and whose
+power was contested by all the powerful lords of Germany.
+
+We cannot believe, that, from the time of the Austrasian Charlemagne,
+the Roman people ever paid very willing obedience to Franks or
+Teutonians: they hated them as much as the genuine old Romans would have
+hated the Cimbri, if the Cimbri had obtained dominion in Italy. The
+Othos had left behind them in Rome a memory that was execrated, because
+they had enjoyed great power there; and, after the time of the Othos,
+Europe it is well known became involved in frightful anarchy.
+
+This anarchy was not more effectually restrained under the emperors of
+the house of Franconia. One-half of Germany was in insurrection against
+Henry IV. The countess Mathilda, grand duchess, his cousin-german, more
+powerful than himself in Italy, was his mortal enemy. She possessed,
+either as fiefs of the empire, or as allodial property, the whole duchy
+of Tuscany, the territory of Cremona, Ferrara, Mantua, and Parma; a part
+of the Marches of Ancona, Reggio, Modena, Spoleto, and Verona; and she
+had rights, that is to say pretensions, to the two Burgundies; for the
+imperial chancery claimed those territories, according to its regular
+practice of claiming everything.
+
+We admit, that Gregory VII. would have been little less than an idiot
+had he not exerted his strongest efforts to secure a complete influence
+over this powerful princess; and to obtain, by her means, a point of
+support and protection against the Germans. He became her director, and,
+after being her director, her heir.
+
+I shall not, in this place, examine whether he was really her lover, or
+whether he only pretended to be so; or whether his enemies merely
+pretended it; or whether, in his idle moments, the assuming and ardent
+little director did not occasionally abuse the influence he possessed
+with his penitent, and prevail over a feeble and capricious woman. In
+the course of human events nothing can be more natural or common; but as
+usually no registers are kept of such cases; as those interesting
+intimacies between the directors and directed do not take place before
+witnesses, and as Gregory has been reproached with this imputation only
+by his enemies, we ought not to confound accusation with proof. It is
+quite enough that Gregory claimed the whole of his penitent's property.
+
+5. The donation which he procured to be made to himself by the countess
+Mathilda, in the year 1077, is more than suspected. And one proof that
+it is not to be relied upon is that not merely was this deed never
+shown, but that, in a second deed, the first is stated to have been
+lost. It was pretended that the donation had been made in the fortress
+of Canossa, and in the second act it is said to have been made at Rome.
+These circumstances may be considered as confirming the opinion of some
+antiquaries, a little too scrupulous, who maintain that out of a
+thousand grants made in those times--and those times were of long
+duration--there are more than nine hundred evidently counterfeit.
+
+There have been two sorts of usurpers in our quarter of the world,
+Europe--robbers and forgers.
+
+6. Bayle, although allowing the title of Great to Gregory, acknowledges
+at the same time that this turbulent man disgraced his heroism by his
+prophecies. He had the audacity to create an emperor, and in that he
+did well, as the emperor Henry IV. had made a pope. Henry deposed him,
+and he deposed Henry. So far there is nothing to which to object--both
+sides are equal. But Gregory took it into his head to turn prophet; he
+predicted the death of Henry IV. for the year 1080; but Henry IV.
+conquered, and the pretended emperor Rudolph was defeated and slain in
+Thuringia by the famous Godfrey of Bouillon, a man more truly great than
+all the other three. This proves, in my opinion, that Gregory had more
+enthusiasm than talent.
+
+I subscribe with all my heart to the remark of Bayle, that "when a man
+undertakes to predict the future, he is provided against everything by a
+face of brass, and an inexhaustible magazine of equivocations." But your
+enemies deride your equivocations; they also have a face of brass like
+yourself; and they expose you as a knave, a braggart, and a fool.
+
+7. Our great man ended his public career with witnessing the taking of
+Rome by assault, in the year 1083. He was besieged in the castle, since
+called St. Angelo, by the same emperor Henry IV., whom he had dared to
+dispossess, and died in misery and contempt at Salerno, under the
+protection of Robert Guiscard the Norman.
+
+I ask pardon of modern Rome, but when I read the history of the Scipios,
+the Catos, the Pompeys, and the Cæsars, I find a difficulty in ranking
+with them a factious monk who was made a pope under the name of Gregory
+VII.
+
+But our Gregory has obtained even a yet finer title; he has been made a
+saint, at least at Rome. It was the famous cardinal Coscia who effected
+this canonization under Pope Benedict XIII. Even an office or service of
+St. Gregory VII. was printed, in which it was said, that that saint
+"absolved the faithful from the allegiance which they had sworn to their
+emperor."
+
+Many parliaments of the kingdom were desirous of having this legend
+burned by the executioner: but Bentivoglio, the nuncio--who kept one of
+the actresses at the opera, of the name of Constitution, as his
+mistress, and had by her a daughter called la Legende; a man otherwise
+extremely amiable, and a most interesting companion--procured from the
+ministry a mitigation of the threatened storm; and, after passing
+sentence of condemnation on the legend of St. Gregory, the hostile party
+were contented to suppress it and to laugh at it.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 5
+(of 10), by François-Marie Arouet (AKA Voltaire)
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 5 (of 10), by 
+François-Marie Arouet (AKA 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: A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 5 (of 10)
+       From "The Works of Voltaire - A Contemporary Version"
+
+Author: François-Marie Arouet (AKA Voltaire)
+
+Commentator: John Morley
+             Tobias Smollett
+             H.G. Leigh
+
+Translator: William F. Fleming
+
+Release Date: March 28, 2011 [EBook #35625]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Andrea Ball, Christine Bell & Marc D'Hooghe
+at http://www.freeliterature.org (From images generously
+made available by the Internet Archive.)
+
+
+
+
+
+A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY
+
+VOLUME V
+
+By
+
+VOLTAIRE
+
+
+
+
+EDITION DE LA PACIFICATION
+
+THE WORKS OF VOLTAIRE
+
+A CONTEMPORARY VERSION
+
+
+  With Notes by Tobias Smollett, Revised and Modernized
+     New Translations by William F. Fleming, and an
+           Introduction by Oliver H.G. Leigh
+
+A CRITIQUE AND BIOGRAPHY
+
+BY
+
+THE RT. HON. JOHN MORLEY
+
+FORTY-THREE VOLUMES
+
+
+  One hundred and sixty-eight designs, comprising reproductions
+      of rare old engravings, steel plates, photogravures,
+                    and curious fac-similes
+
+VOLUME IX
+
+E.R. DuMONT
+
+PARIS--LONDON--NEW YORK--CHICAGO
+
+1901
+
+
+
+
+_The WORKS of VOLTAIRE_
+
+     _"Between two servants of Humanity, who appeared eighteen hundred
+     years apart, there is a mysterious relation. * * * * Let us say it
+     with a sentiment of profound respect: JESUS WEPT: VOLTAIRE SMILED.
+     Of that divine tear and of that human smile is composed the
+     sweetness of the present civilization."_
+
+                                                    _VICTOR HUGO._
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF PLATES--VOL. V
+
+  SANS SOUCI _Frontispiece_
+  A LAND STORM
+  THE TEMPTATION OF ADAM
+  DESCARTES
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: SANS SOUCI]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY.
+
+IN TEN VOLUMES
+
+Vol. V
+
+FANATICISM--GREGORY VII
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+FANATICISM.
+
+SECTION I.
+
+
+Fanaticism is the effect of a false conscience, which makes religion
+subservient to the caprices of the imagination, and the excesses of the
+passions.
+
+It arises, in general, from legislators entertaining too narrow views,
+or from their extending their regulations beyond the limits within which
+alone they were intended to operate. Their laws are made merely for a
+select society. When extended by zeal to a whole people, and transferred
+by ambition from one climate to another, some changes of institution
+should take place, some accommodation to persons, places, and
+circumstances. But what, in fact, has been the case? Certain minds,
+constituted in a great degree like those of the small original flock,
+have received a system with equal ardor, and become its apostles, and
+even its martyrs, rather than abate a single iota of its demands.
+Others, on the contrary, less ardent, or more attached to their
+prejudices of education, have struggled with energy against the new
+yoke, and consented to receive it only after considerable softenings and
+mitigations: hence the schism between rigorists and moderates, by which
+all are urged on to vehemence and madness--the one party for servitude
+and the other for freedom.
+
+Let us imagine an immense rotunda, a pantheon, with innumerable altars
+placed under its dome. Let us figure to ourselves a devotee of every
+sect, whether at present existing or extinct, at the feet of that
+divinity which he worships in his own peculiar way, under all the
+extravagant forms which human imagination has been able to invent. On
+the right we perceive one stretched on his back upon a mat, absorbed in
+contemplation, and awaiting the moment when the divine light shall come
+forth to inform his soul. On the left is a prostrate energumen striking
+his forehead against the ground, with a view to obtain from it an
+abundant produce. Here we see a man with the air and manner of a
+mountebank, dancing over the grave of him whom he invokes. There we
+observe a penitent, motionless and mute as the statue before which he
+has bent himself in humiliation. One, on the principle that God will not
+blush at his own resemblance, displays openly what modesty universally
+conceals; another, as if the artist would shudder at the sight of his
+own work, covers with an impenetrable veil his whole person and
+countenance; another turns his back upon the south, because from that
+quarter blows the devil's tempest. Another stretches out his arms
+towards the east, because there God first shows His radiant face. Young
+women, suffused with tears, bruise and gash their lovely persons under
+the idea of assuaging the demon of desire, although by means tending in
+fact rather to strengthen his influence; others again, in opposite
+attitudes, solicit the approaches of the Divinity. One young man, in
+order to mortify the most urgent of his feelings, attaches to particular
+parts of his frame large iron rings, as heavy as he can bear; another
+checks still more effectually the tempter's violence by inhuman
+amputation, and suspends the bleeding sacrifice upon the altar.
+
+Let us observe them quit the temple, and, full of the inspiration of
+their respective deities, spread the terror and delusion over the face
+of the earth. They divide the world between them; and the four
+extremities of it are almost instantly in flames: nations obey them, and
+kings tremble before them. That almost despotic power which the
+enthusiasm of a single person exercises over a multitude who see or hear
+him; the ardor communicated to each other by assembled minds; numberless
+strong and agitating influences acting in such circumstances, augmented
+by each individual's personal anxiety and distress, require but a short
+time to operate, in order to produce universal delirium. Only let a
+single people be thus fascinated and agitated under the guidance of a
+few impostors, the seduction will spread with the speed of wild-fire,
+prodigies will be multiplied beyond calculation, and whole communities
+be led astray forever. When the human mind has once quitted the luminous
+track pointed out by nature, it returns to it no more; it wanders round
+the truth, but never obtains of it more than a few faint glimmerings,
+which, mingling with the false lights of surrounding superstition, leave
+it, in fact, in complete and palpable obscurity.
+
+It is dreadful to observe how the opinion that the wrath of heaven might
+be appeased by human massacre spread, after being once started, through
+almost every religion; and what various reasons have been given for the
+sacrifice, as though, in order to preclude, if possible, the escape of
+any one from extirpation. Sometimes they are enemies who must be
+immolated to Mars the exterminator. The Scythians slay upon the altars
+of this deity a hundredth part of their prisoners of war; and from this
+usage attending victory, we may form some judgment of the justice of
+war: accordingly, among other nations it was engaged in solely to supply
+these human sacrifices, so that, having first been instituted, as it
+would seem, to expiate the horrors of war, they at length came to serve
+as a justification of them.
+
+Sometimes a barbarous deity requires victims from among the just and
+good. The Getæ eagerly dispute the honor of personally conveying to
+Zamolxis the vows and devotions of their country. He whose good fortune
+has destined him to be the sacrifice is thrown with the greatest
+violence upon a range of spears, fixed for the purpose. If on falling
+he receives a mortal wound, it augurs well as to the success of the
+negotiation and the merit of the envoy; but if he survives the wound, he
+is a wretch with whom the god would not condescend to hold any
+communication.
+
+Sometimes children are demanded, and the respective divinities recall
+the life they had but just imparted: "Justice," says Montaigne,
+"thirsting for the blood of innocence!" Sometimes the call is for the
+dearest and nearest blood: the Carthaginians sacrificed their own sons
+to Saturn, as if Time did not devour them with sufficient speed.
+Sometimes the demand was for the blood of the most beautiful. That
+Amestris, who had buried twelve men alive in order to obtain from Pluto,
+in return for so revolting an offering, a somewhat longer life--that
+same Amestris further sacrifices to that insatiable divinity twelve
+daughters of the highest personages in Persia; as the sacrificing
+priests have always taught men that they ought to offer on the altar the
+most valuable of their possessions. It is upon this principle that among
+some nations the first-born were immolated, and that among others they
+were redeemed by offerings more valuable to the ministers of sacrifice.
+This it is, unquestionably, which introduced into Europe the practice
+prevalent for centuries of devoting children to celibacy at the early
+age of five years, and shutting up in a cloister the brothers of an
+hereditary prince, just as in Asia the practice is to murder them.
+
+Sometimes it is the purest blood that is demanded. We read of certain
+Indians, if I recollect rightly, who hospitably entertain all who visit
+them and make a merit of killing every sensible and virtuous stranger
+who enters their country, that his talents and virtues may remain with
+them. Sometimes the blood required is that which is most sacred. With
+the majority of idolaters, priests perform the office of executioner at
+the altar; and among the Siberians, it is the practice to kill the
+priests in order to despatch them to pray in the other world for the
+fulfilment of the wishes of the people.
+
+But let us turn our attention to other frenzies and other spectacles.
+All Europe passes into Asia by a road inundated with the blood of Jews,
+who commit suicide to avoid falling into the hands of their enemies.
+This epidemic depopulates one-half of the inhabited world: kings,
+pontiffs, women, the young and the aged, all yield to the influence of
+the holy madness which, for a series of two hundred years, instigated
+the slaughter of innumerable nations at the tomb of a god of peace. Then
+were to be seen lying oracles, and military hermits, monarchs in
+pulpits, and prelates in camps. All the different states constitute one
+delirious populace; barriers of mountains and seas are surmounted;
+legitimate possessions are abandoned to enable their owners to fly to
+conquests which were no longer, in point of fertility, the land of
+promise; manners become corrupted under foreign skies; princes, after
+having exhausted their respective kingdoms to redeem a country which
+had never been theirs, complete the ruin of them for their personal
+ransom; thousands of soldiers, wandering under the banners of many
+chieftains, acknowledge the authority of none and hasten their defeat by
+their desertion; and the disease terminates only to be succeeded by a
+contagion still more horrible and desolating.
+
+The same spirit of fanaticism cherished the rage for distant conquests:
+scarcely had Europe repaired its losses when the discovery of a new
+world hastened the ruin of our own. At that terrible injunction, "Go and
+conquer," America was desolated and its inhabitants exterminated; Africa
+and Europe were exhausted in vain to repeople it; the poison of money
+and of pleasure having enervated the species, the world became nearly a
+desert and appeared likely every day to advance nearer to desolation by
+the continual wars which were kindled on our continent, from the
+ambition of extending its power to foreign lands.
+
+Let us now compute the immense number of slaves which fanaticism has
+made, whether in Asia, where uncircumcision was a mark of infamy, or in
+Africa, where the Christian name was a crime, or in America, where the
+pretext of baptism absolutely extinguished the feelings of humanity. Let
+us compute the thousands who have been seen to perish either on
+scaffolds in the ages of persecution, or in civil wars by the hands of
+their fellow citizens, or by their own hands through excessive
+austerities, and maceration. Let us survey the surface of the earth, and
+glance at the various standards unfurled and blazing in the name of
+religion; in Spain against the Moors, in France against the Turks, in
+Hungary against the Tartars; at the numerous military orders, founded
+for converting infidels by the point of the sword, and slaughtering one
+another at the foot of the altar they had come to defend. Let us then
+look down from the appalling tribunal thus raised on the bodies of the
+innocent and miserable, in order to judge the living, as God, with a
+balance widely different, will judge the dead.
+
+In a word, let us contemplate the horrors of fifteen centuries, all
+frequently renewed in the course of a single one; unarmed men slain at
+the feet of altars; kings destroyed by the dagger or by poison; a large
+state reduced to half its extent by the fury of its own citizens; the
+nation at once the most warlike and the most pacific on the face of the
+globe, divided in fierce hostility against itself; the sword unsheathed
+between the sons and the father; usurpers, tyrants, executioners,
+sacrilegious robbers, and bloodstained parricides violating, under the
+impulse of religion, every convention divine or human--such is the
+deadly picture of fanaticism.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+If this term has at present any connection with its original meaning it
+is exceedingly slight.
+
+"_Fanaticus_" was an honorable designation. It signified the minister or
+benefactor of a temple. According to the dictionary of Trévoux some
+antiquaries have discovered inscriptions in which Roman citizens of
+considerable consequence assumed the title of "_fanaticus_."
+
+In Cicero's oration "_pro domo sua_," a passage occurs in which the word
+"_fanaticus_" appears to me of difficult explanation. The seditious and
+libertine Clodius, who had brought about the banishment of Cicero for
+having saved the republic, had not only plundered and demolished the
+houses of that great man, but in order that Cicero might never be able
+to return to his city residence he procured the consecration of the land
+on which it stood; and the priests had erected there a temple to
+liberty, or rather to slavery, in which Cæsar, Pompey, Crassus, and
+Clodius then held the republic. Thus in all ages has religion been
+employed as an instrument in the persecution of great men. When at
+length, in a happier period, Cicero was recalled, he pleaded before the
+people in order to obtain the restoration of the ground on which his
+house had stood, and the rebuilding of the house at the expense of the
+Roman people. He thus expresses himself in the speech against Clodius
+(_Oratio pro Domo sua_, chap. xl): "_Adspicite, adspicite, pontifices,
+hominem religiosum.... monete eum, modum quemdam esse religionis; nimium
+esse superstitiosum non oportere. Quid tibi necesse fuit anili
+superstitione, homo fanatice, sacrificium, quod aliænæ domi fieret
+invisere?_"
+
+Does the word "_fanaticus_," as used above, mean senseless, pitiless,
+abominable fanatic, according to the present acceptation, or does it
+rather imply the pious, religious man, the frequenter and consecrator of
+temples? Is it used here in the meaning of decided censure or ironical
+praise? I do not feel myself competent to determine, but will give a
+translation of the passage:
+
+"Behold, reverend pontiffs, behold the pious man.... suggest to him that
+even religion itself has its limits, that a man ought not to be so
+over-scrupulous. What occasion was there for a sacred person, a fanatic
+like yourself, to have recourse to the superstition of an old woman, in
+order to assist at a sacrifice performed in another person's house?"
+
+Cicero alludes here to the mysteries of the _Bona Dea_, which had been
+profaned by Clodius, who, in the disguise of a female, and accompanied
+by an old woman, had obtained an introduction to them, with a view to an
+assignation with Cæsar's wife. The passage is, in consequence, evidently
+ironical.
+
+Cicero calls Clodius a religious man, and the irony requires to be kept
+up through the whole passage. He employs terms of honorable meaning,
+more clearly to exhibit Clodius's infamy. It appears to me, therefore,
+that he uses the word in question, "_fanaticus_" in its respectable
+sense, as a word conveying the idea of a sacrificer, a pious man, a
+zealous minister of a temple.
+
+The term might be afterwards applied to those who believed themselves
+inspired by the gods, who bestowed a somewhat curious gift on the
+interpreters of their will, by ordaining that, in order to be a prophet,
+the loss of reason is indispensable.
+
+     _Les Dieux à leur interprète_
+       _Ont fait un étrange don;_
+     _Ne peut on être prophète_
+      _Sans qu'on perde la raison?_
+
+The same dictionary of Trévoux informs us that the old chronicles of
+France call Clovis fanatic and pagan. The reader would have been pleased
+to have had the particular chronicles specified. I have not found this
+epithet applied to Clovis in any of the few books I possess at my house
+near Mount Krapak, where I now write.
+
+We understand by fanaticism at present a religious madness, gloomy and
+cruel. It is a malady of the mind, which is taken in the same way as
+smallpox. Books communicate it much less than meetings and discourses.
+We seldom get heated while reading in solitude, for our minds are then
+tranquil and sedate. But when an ardent man of strong imagination
+addresses himself to weak imaginations, his eyes dart fire, and that
+fire rapidly spreads; his tones, his gestures, absolutely convulse the
+nerves of his auditors. He exclaims, "The eye of God is at this moment
+upon you; sacrifice every mere human possession and feeling; fight the
+battles of the Lord"--and and they rush to the fight.
+
+Fanaticism is, in reference to superstition, what delirium is to fever,
+or rage to anger. He who is involved in ecstasies and visions, who takes
+dreams for realities, and his own imaginations for prophecies, is a
+fanatical novice of great hope and promise, and will probably soon
+advance to the highest form, and kill man for the love of God.
+
+Bartholomew Diaz was a fanatical monk. He had a brother at Nuremberg
+called John Diaz, who was an enthusiastic adherent to the doctrines of
+Luther, and completely convinced that the pope was Antichrist, and had
+the sign of the beast. Bartholomew, still more ardently convinced that
+the pope was god upon earth, quits Rome, determined either to convert or
+murder his brother; he accordingly murdered him! Here is a perfect case
+of fanaticism. We have noticed and done justice to this Diaz elsewhere.
+
+Polyeuctes, who went to the temple on a day of solemn festival, to throw
+down and destroy the statues and ornaments, was a fanatic less horrible
+than Diaz, but not less foolish. The assassins of Francis, duke of
+Guise, of William, prince of Orange, of King Henry III., of King Henry
+IV., and various others, were equally possessed, equally laboring under
+morbid fury, with Diaz.
+
+The most striking example of fanaticism is that exhibited on the night
+of St. Bartholomew, when the people of Paris rushed from house to house
+to stab, slaughter, throw out of the window, and tear in pieces their
+fellow citizens not attending mass. Guyon, Patouillet, Chaudon,
+Nonnotte, and the ex-Jesuit Paulian, are merely fanatics in a
+corner--contemptible beings whom we do not think of guarding against.
+They would, however, on a day of St. Bartholomew, perform wonders.
+
+There are some cold-blooded fanatics; such as those judges who sentence
+men to death for no other crime than that of thinking differently from
+themselves, and these are so much the more guilty and deserving of the
+execration of mankind, as, not laboring under madness like the Clements,
+Châtels, Ravaillacs, and Damiens, they might be deemed capable of
+listening to reason.
+
+There is no other remedy for this epidemical malady than that spirit of
+philosophy, which, extending itself from one to another, at length
+civilizes and softens the manners of men and prevents the access of the
+disease. For when the disorder has made any progress, we should, without
+loss of time, fly from the seat of it, and wait till the air has become
+purified from contagion. Law and religion are not completely efficient
+against the spiritual pestilence. Religion, indeed, so far from
+affording proper nutriment to the minds of patients laboring under this
+infectious and infernal distemper, is converted, by the diseased process
+of their minds, into poison. These malignant devotees have incessantly
+before their eyes the example of Ehud, who assassinated the king of
+Eglon; of Judith, who cut off the head of Holofernes while in bed with
+him; of Samuel, hewing in pieces King Agag; of Jehoiada the priest, who
+murdered his queen at the horse-gate. They do not perceive that these
+instances, which are respectable in antiquity, are in the present day
+abominable. They derive their fury from religion, decidedly as religion
+condemns it.
+
+Laws are yet more powerless against these paroxysms of rage. To oppose
+laws to cases of such a description would be like reading a decree of
+council to a man in a frenzy. The persons in question are fully
+convinced that the Holy Spirit which animates and fills them is above
+all laws; that their own enthusiasm is, in fact, the only law which they
+are bound to obey.
+
+What can be said in answer to a man who says he will rather obey God
+than men, and who consequently feels certain of meriting heaven by
+cutting your throat?
+
+When once fanaticism has gangrened the brain of any man the disease may
+be regarded as nearly incurable. I have seen Convulsionaries who, while
+speaking of the miracles of St. Paris, gradually worked themselves up to
+higher and more vehement degrees of agitation till their eyes became
+inflamed, their whole frames shook, their countenances became distorted
+by rage, and had any man contradicted them he would inevitably have been
+murdered.
+
+Yes, I have seen these wretched Convulsionaries writhing their limbs and
+foaming at their mouths. They were exclaiming, "We must have blood."
+They effected the assassination of their king by a lackey, and ended
+with exclaiming against philosophers.
+
+Fanatics are nearly always under the direction of knaves, who place the
+dagger in their hands. These knaves resemble Montaigne's "Old Man of the
+Mountain," who, it is said, made weak persons imagine, under his
+treatment of them, that they really had experienced the joys of
+paradise, and promised them a whole eternity of such delights if they
+would go and assassinate such as he should point out to them. There has
+been only one religion in the world which has not been polluted by
+fanaticism and that is the religion of the learned in China. The
+different sects of ancient philosophers were not merely exempt from this
+pest of human society, but they were antidotes to it: for the effect of
+philosophy is to render the soul tranquil, and fanaticism and
+tranquillity are totally incompatible. That our own holy religion has
+been so frequently polluted by this infernal fury must be imputed to the
+foil and madness of mankind. Thus Icarus abused the wings which he
+received for his benefit. They were given him for his salvation and they
+insured his destruction:
+
+     _Ainsi du plumage qu'il eut_
+       _Icare pervertit l'usage;_
+     _Il le reçut pour son salut,_
+       _Il s'en servit pour son dommage._
+                     --BERTAUT, bishop of Séez.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+Fanatics do not always fight the battles of the Lord. They do not always
+assassinate kings and princes. There are tigers among them, but there
+are more foxes.
+
+What a tissue of frauds, calumnies, and robberies has been woven by
+fanatics of the court of Rome against fanatics of the court of Calvin,
+by Jesuits against Jansenists, and _vice versa_! And if you go farther
+back you will find ecclesiastical history, which is the school of
+virtues, to be that of atrocities and abominations, which have been
+employed by every sect against the others. They all have the same
+bandage over their eyes whether marching out to burn down the cities and
+towns of their adversaries, to slaughter the inhabitants, or condemn
+them to judicial execution; or when merely engaged in the comparatively
+calm occupation of deceiving and defrauding, of acquiring wealth and
+exercising domination. The same fanaticism blinds them; they think that
+they are doing good. Every fanatic is a conscientious knave, but a
+sincere and honest murderer for the good cause.
+
+Read, if you are able, the five or six thousand volumes in which, for a
+hundred years together, the Jansenists and Molinists have dealt out
+against each other their reproaches and revilings, their mutual
+exposures of fraud and knavery, and then judge whether Scapin or
+Trevelin can be compared with them.
+
+One of the most curious theological knaveries ever practised is, in my
+opinion, that of a small bishop--the narrative asserts that he was a
+Biscayan bishop; however, we shall certainly, at some future period find
+out both his name and his bishopric--whose diocese was partly in Biscay
+and partly in France.
+
+In the French division of his diocese there was a parish which had
+formerly been inhabited by some Moors. The lord of the parish or manor
+was no Mahometan; he was perfectly catholic, as the whole universe
+should be, for the meaning of catholic is universal. My lord the bishop
+had some suspicions concerning this unfortunate seigneur, whose whole
+occupation consisted in doing good, and conceived that in his heart he
+entertained bad thoughts and sentiments savoring not a little of heresy.
+He even accused him of having said, in the way of pleasantry, that there
+were good people in Morocco as well as in Biscay, and that an honest
+inhabitant of Morocco might absolutely not be a mortal enemy of the
+Supreme Being, who is the father of all mankind.
+
+The fanatic, upon this, wrote a long letter to the king of France, the
+paramount sovereign of our little manorial lord. In this letter he
+entreated his majesty to transfer the manor of this stray and
+unbelieving sheep either to Lower Brittany or Lower Normandy, according
+to his good pleasure, that he might be no longer able to diffuse the
+contagion of heresy among his Biscayan neighbors, by his abominable
+jests. The king of France and his council smiled, as may naturally be
+supposed, at the extravagance and folly of the demand.
+
+Our Biscayan pastor learning, some time afterwards, that his French
+sheep was sick, ordered public notices to be fixed up at the church
+gates of the canton, prohibiting any one from administering the
+communion to him, unless he should previously give in a bill of
+confession, from which it might appear that he was not circumcised; that
+he condemned with his whole heart the heresy of Mahomet, and every other
+heresy of the like kind--as, for example, Calvinism and Jansenism; and
+that in every point he thought like him, the said Biscayan bishop.
+
+Bills of confession were at that time much in fashion. The sick man sent
+for his parish priest, who was a simple and sottish man, and threatened
+to have him hanged by the parliament of Bordeaux if he did not instantly
+administer the viaticum to him. The priest was alarmed, and accordingly
+celebrated the sacred ordinance, as desired by the patient; who, after
+the ceremony, declared aloud, before witnesses, that the Biscayan pastor
+had falsely accused him before the king of being tainted with the
+Mussulman religion; that he was a sincere Christian, and that the
+Biscayan was a calumniator. He signed this, after it had been written
+down, in presence of a notary, and every form required by law was
+complied with. He soon after became better, and rest and a good
+conscience speedily completed his recovery.
+
+The Biscayan, quite exasperated that the old patient should have thus
+exposed and disappointed him, resolved to have his revenge, and thus he
+set about it.
+
+He procured, fifteen days after the event just mentioned, the
+fabrication, in his own language or patois, of a profession of faith
+which the priest pretended to have heard and received. It was signed by
+the priest and three or four peasants, who had not been present at the
+ceremony; and the forged instrument was then passed through the
+necessary and solemn form of verification and registry, as if this form
+could give it authenticity.
+
+An instrument not signed by the party alone interested, signed by
+persons unknown, fifteen days after the event, an instrument disavowed
+by the real and credible witnesses of that event, involved evidently the
+crime of forgery; and, as the subject of the forgery was a matter of
+faith, the crime clearly rendered both the priest and the witnesses
+liable to the galleys in this world, and to hell in the other.
+
+Our lord of the manor, however, who loved a joke, but had no gall or
+malice in his heart, took compassion both upon the bodies and souls of
+these conspirators. He declined delivering them over to human justice,
+and contented himself with giving them up to ridicule. But he declared
+that after the death of the Biscayan he would, if he survived, have the
+pleasure of printing an account of all his proceedings and manoeuvres
+on this business, together with the documents and evidences, just to
+amuse the small number of readers who might like anecdotes of that
+description; and not, as is often pompously announced, with a view to
+the instruction of the universe. There are so many authors who address
+themselves to the universe, who really imagine they attract, and perhaps
+absorb, the attention of the universe, that he conceived he might not
+have a dozen readers out of the whole who would attend for a moment to
+himself. But let us return to fanaticism.
+
+It is this rage for making proselytes, this intensely mad desire which
+men feel to bring others over to partake of their own peculiar cup or
+communion, that induced the Jesuit Châtel and the Jesuit Routh to rush
+with eagerness to the deathbed of the celebrated Montesquieu. These two
+devoted zealots desired nothing better than to be able to boast that
+they had persuaded him of the merits of contrition and of sufficing
+grace. We wrought his conversion, they said. He was, in the main, a
+worthy soul: he was much attached to the society of Jesus. We had some
+little difficulty in inducing him to admit certain fundamental truths;
+but as in these circumstances, in the crisis of life and death, the
+mind is always most clear and acute, we soon convinced him.
+
+This fanatical eagerness for converting men is so ardent, that the most
+debauched monk in his convent would even quit his mistress, and walk to
+the very extremity of the city, for the sake of making a single convert.
+
+We have all seen Father Poisson, a Cordelier of Paris, who impoverished
+his convent to pay his mistresses, and who was imprisoned in consequence
+of the depravity of his manners. He was one of the most popular
+preachers at Paris, and one of the most determined and zealous of
+converters.
+
+Such also was the celebrated preacher Fantin, at Versailles. The list
+might be easily enlarged; but it is unnecessary, if not also dangerous,
+to expose the freaks and freedoms of constituted authorities. You know
+what happened to Ham for having revealed his father's shame. He became
+as black as a coal.
+
+Let us merely pray to God, whether rising or lying down, that he would
+deliver us from fanatics, as the pilgrims of Mecca pray that they may
+meet with no sour faces on the road.
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+Ludlow, who was rather an enthusiast for liberty than a fanatic in
+religion--that brave man, who hated Cromwell more than he did Charles
+I., relates that the parliamentary forces were always defeated by the
+royal army in the beginning of the civil war; just as the regiment of
+porters (_portes-cochères_) were unable to stand the shock of conflict,
+in the time of the Fronde against the great Condé. Cromwell said to
+General Fairfax: "How can you possibly expect a rabble of London porters
+and apprentices to resist a nobility urged on by the principle, or
+rather the phantom, of honor? Let us actuate them by a more powerful
+phantom--fanaticism! Our enemies are fighting only for their king; let
+us persuade our troops they are fighting for their God.
+
+"Give me a commission, and I will raise a regiment of brother murderers,
+whom I will pledge myself soon to make invincible fanatics!"
+
+He was as good as his word; he composed his regiment of red-coated
+brothers, of gloomy religionists, whom he made obedient tigers. Mahomet
+himself was never better served by soldiers.
+
+But in order to inspire this fanaticism, you must be seconded and
+supported by the spirit of the times. A French parliament at the present
+day would attempt in vain to raise a regiment of such porters as we have
+mentioned; it could, with all its efforts, merely rouse into frenzy a
+few women of the fish-market.
+
+Only the ablest men have the power to make and to guide fanatics. It is
+not, however, sufficient to possess the profoundest dissimulation and
+the most determined intrepidity; everything depends, after these
+previous requisites are secured, on coming into the world at a proper
+time.
+
+
+SECTION V.
+
+Geometry then, it seems, is not always connected with clearness and
+correctness of understanding. Over what precipices do not men fall,
+notwithstanding their boasted leading-strings of reason! A celebrated
+Protestant, who was esteemed one of the first mathematicians of the age,
+and who followed in the train of the Newtons, the Leibnitzes, and
+Bernouillis, at the beginning of the present century, struck out some
+very singular corollaries. It is said that with a grain of faith a man
+may remove mountains; and this man of science, following up the method
+of pure geometrical analysis, reasoned thus with himself: I have many
+grains of faith, and can, therefore, remove many mountains. This was the
+man who made his appearance at London in 1707; and, associating himself
+with certain men of learning and science, some of whom, moreover, were
+not deficient in sagacity, they publicly announced that they would raise
+to life a dead person in any cemetery that might be fixed upon. Their
+reasoning was uniformly synthetical. They said, genuine disciples must
+have the power of performing miracles; we are genuine disciples, we
+therefore shall be able to perform as many as we please. The mere
+unscientific saints of the Romish church have resuscitated many worthy
+persons; therefore, _a fortiori_, we, the reformers of the reformed
+themselves, shall resuscitate as many as we may desire.
+
+These arguments are irrefragable, being constructed according to the
+most correct form possible. Here we have at a glance the explanation why
+all antiquity was inundated with prodigies; why the temples of
+Æsculapius at Epidaurus, and in other cities, were completely filled
+with _ex-votos_; the roofs adorned with thighs straightened, arms
+restored, and silver infants: all was miracle.
+
+In short, the famous Protestant geometrician whom I speak of appeared so
+perfectly sincere; he asserted so confidently that he would raise the
+dead, and his proposition was put forward with so much plausibility and
+strenuousness, that the people entertained a very strong impression on
+the subject, and Queen Anne was advised to appoint a day, an hour, and a
+cemetery, such as he should himself select, in which he might have the
+opportunity of performing his miracle legally, and under the inspection
+of justice. The holy geometrician chose St. Paul's cathedral for the
+scene of his exertion: the people ranged themselves in two rows;
+soldiers were stationed to preserve order both among the living and the
+dead; the magistrates took their seats; the register procured his
+record; it was impossible that the new miracles could be verified too
+completely. A dead body was disinterred agreeably to the holy man's
+choice and direction; he then prayed, he fell upon his knees, and made
+the most pious and devout contortions possible; his companions imitated
+him; the dead body exhibited no sign of animation; it was again
+deposited in its grave, and the professed resuscitator and his adherents
+were slightly punished. I afterwards saw one of these misled creatures;
+he declared to me that one of the party was at the time under the stain
+of a venial sin, for which the dead person suffered, and but for which
+the resurrection would have been infallible.
+
+Were it allowable for us to reveal the disgrace of those to whom we owe
+the sincerest respect, I should observe here, that Newton, the great
+Newton himself, discovered in the "Apocalypse" that the pope was
+Antichrist, and made many other similar discoveries. I should also
+observe that he was a decided Arian. I am aware that this deviation of
+Newton, compared to that of the other geometrician, is as unity to
+infinity. But if the exalted Newton imagined that he found the modern
+history of Europe in the "Apocalypse," we may say: Alas, poor human
+beings!
+
+It seems as if superstition were an epidemic disease, from which the
+strongest minds are not always exempt. There are in Turkey persons of
+great and strong sense, who would undergo empalement for the sake of
+certain opinions of Abubeker. These principles being once admitted, they
+reason with great consistency; and the Navaricians, the Radarists, and
+the Jabarites mutually consign each other to damnation in conformity to
+very shrewd and subtle argument. They all draw plausible consequences,
+but they never dare to examine principles.
+
+A report is publicly spread abroad by some person, that there exists a
+giant seventy feet high; the learned soon after begin to discuss and
+dispute about the color of his hair, the thickness of his thumb, the
+measurement of his nails; they exclaim, cabal, and even fight upon the
+subject. Those who maintain that the little finger of the giant is only
+fifteen lines in diameter burn those who assert that it is a foot thick.
+"But, gentlemen," modestly observes a stranger passing by, "does the
+giant you are disputing about really exist?" "What a horrible doubt!"
+all the disputants cry out together. "What blasphemy! What absurdity!" A
+short truce is then brought about to give time for stoning the poor
+stranger; and, after having duly performed that murderous ceremony, they
+resume fighting upon the everlasting subject of the nails and little
+finger.
+
+
+
+
+FANCY.
+
+
+Fancy formerly signified imagination, and the term was used simply to
+express that faculty of the soul which receives sensible objects.
+
+Descartes and Gassendi, and all the philosophers of their day, say that
+"the form or images of things are painted in the fancy." But the greater
+part of abstract terms are, in the course of time, received in a sense
+different from their original one, like tools which industry applies to
+new purposes.
+
+Fancy, at present, means "a particular desire, a transient taste"; he
+has a fancy for going to China; his fancy for gaming and dancing has
+passed away. An artist paints a fancy portrait, a portrait not taken
+from any model. To have fancies is to have extraordinary tastes, but of
+brief duration. Fancy, in this sense, falls a little short of oddity
+(_bizarrerie_) and caprice.
+
+Caprice may express "a sudden and unreasonable disgust." He had a fancy
+for music, and capriciously became disgusted with it. Whimsicality gives
+an idea of inconsistency and bad taste, which fancy does not; he had a
+fancy for building, but he constructed his house in a whimsical taste.
+
+There are shades of distinction between having fancies and being
+fantastic; the fantastic is much nearer to the capricious and the
+whimsical. The word "fantastic" expresses a character unequal and
+abrupt. The idea of charming or pleasant is excluded from it; whereas
+there are agreeable fancies.
+
+We sometimes hear used in conversation "odd fancies" (_des fantasies
+musquées_); but the expression was never understood to mean what the
+"Dictionary of Trévoux" supposes--"The whims of men of superior rank
+which one must not venture to condemn;" on the contrary, that expression
+is used for the very object and purpose of condemning them; and
+_musquée_, in this connection, is an expletive adding force to the term
+"fancies," as we say, _Sottise pommée_, _folie fieffée_, to express
+nonsense and folly.
+
+
+
+
+FASTI.
+
+_Of the Different Significations of this Word._
+
+
+The Latin word "_fasti_" signifies festivals, and it is in this sense
+that Ovid treats of it in his poem entitled "The Fasti."
+
+Godeau has composed the Fasti of the church on this model, but with less
+success. The religion of the Roman Pagans was more calculated for poetry
+than that of the Christians; to which it may be added, that Ovid was a
+better poet than Godeau.
+
+The consular fasti were only the list of consuls.
+
+The fasti of the magistrates were the days in which they were permitted
+to plead; and those on which they did not plead were called _nefasti_,
+because then they could not plead for justice.
+
+The word "_nefastus_" in this sense does not signify unfortunate; on the
+contrary, _nefastus_ and _nefandus_ were the attributes of unfortunate
+days in another sense, signifying days in which people must not plead;
+days worthy only to be forgotten; _"ille nefasto te posuit die."_
+
+Besides other fasti, the Romans had their _fasti urbis_, _fasti
+rustici_, which were calendars of the particular usages, and ceremonies
+of the city and the country.
+
+On these days of solemnity, every one sought to astonish by the grandeur
+of his dress, his equipage, or his banquet. This pomp, invisible on
+other days, was called _fastus_. It expresses magnificence in those who
+by their station can afford it, but vanity in others.
+
+Though the word "_fastus_" may not be always injurious, the word
+"pompous" is invariably so. A devotee who makes a parade of his virtue
+renders humility itself pompous.
+
+
+
+
+FATHERS--MOTHERS--CHILDREN.
+
+_Their Duties._
+
+
+The "Encyclopædia" has been much exclaimed against in France; because it
+was produced in France, and has done France honor. In other countries,
+people have not cried out; on the contrary, they have eagerly set about
+pirating or spoiling it, because money was to be gained thereby.
+
+But we, who do not, like the encyclopædists of Paris, labor for glory;
+we, who are not, like them, exposed to envy; we, whose little society
+lies unnoticed in Hesse, in Würtemberg, in Switzerland, among the
+Grisons, or at Mount Krapak; and have, therefore, no apprehension of
+having to dispute with the doctor of the _Comédie Italienne_, or with a
+doctor of the Sorbonne; we, who sell not our sheets to a bookseller, but
+are free beings, and lay not black on white until we have examined, to
+the utmost of our ability, whether the said black may be of service to
+mankind; we, in short, who love virtue, shall boldly declare what we
+think.
+
+"Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long--" I would
+venture to say, "Honor thy father and thy mother, _though this day shall
+be thy last_."
+
+Tenderly love and joyfully serve the mother who bore you in her womb,
+fed you at her breast, and patiently endured all that was disgusting in
+your infancy. Discharge the same duties to your father, who brought you
+up.
+
+What will future ages say of a Frank, named Louis the Thirteenth, who,
+at the age of sixteen, began the exercise of his authority with having
+the door of his mother's apartment walled up, and sending her into
+exile, without giving the smallest reason for so doing, and solely
+because it was his favorite's wish?
+
+"But, sir, I must tell you in confidence that my father is a drunkard,
+who begot me one day by chance, not caring a jot about me; and gave me
+no education but that of beating me every day when he came home
+intoxicated. My mother was a coquette, whose only occupation was
+love-making. But for my nurse, who had taken a liking to me, and who,
+after the death of her son, received me into her house for charity, I
+should have died of want."
+
+"Well, then, honor your nurse; and bow to your father and mother when
+you meet them. It is said in the Vulgate, '_Honora patrem tuum et
+matrem tuam_'--not _dilige_."
+
+"Very well, sir, I shall love my father and my mother if they do me
+good; I shall honor them if they do me ill. I have thought so ever since
+I began to think, and you confirm me in my maxims."
+
+"Fare you well, my child, I see you will prosper, for you have a grain
+of philosophy in your composition."
+
+"One word more, sir. If my father were to call himself Abraham, and me
+Isaac, and were to say to me, 'My son, you are tall and strong; carry
+these fagots to the top of that hill, to burn you with after I have cut
+off your head; for God ordered me to do so when He came to see me this
+morning,'--what would you advise me to do in such critical
+circumstances?"
+
+"Critical, indeed! But what would you do of yourself? for you seem to be
+no blockhead."
+
+"I own, sir, that I should ask him to produce a written order, and that
+from regard for himself, I should say to him--'Father, you are among
+strangers, who do not allow a man to assassinate his son without an
+express condition from God, duly signed, sealed and delivered. See what
+happened to poor Calas, in the half French, half Spanish town of
+Toulouse. He was broken on the wheel; and the _procureur-général_ Riquet
+decided on having Madame Calas, the mother, burned--all on the bare and
+very ill-conceived suspicion, that they had hung up their son, Mark
+Antony Calas, for the love of God. I should fear that his conclusions
+would be equally prejudicial to the well-being of yourself and your
+sister or niece, Madame Sarah, my mother. Once more I say, show me a
+_lettre de cachet_ for cutting my throat, signed by God's own hand, and
+countersigned by Raphael, Michael, or Beelzebub. If not, father--your
+most obedient: I will go to Pharaoh of Egypt, or to the king of the
+desert of Gerar, who both have been in love with my mother, and will
+certainly be kind to me. Cut my brother Ishmael's throat, if you like;
+but rely upon it, you shall not cut mine.'"
+
+"Good; this is arguing like a true sage. The 'Encyclopædia' itself could
+not have reasoned better. I tell you, you will do great things. I admire
+you for not having said an ill word to your father Abraham--for not
+having been tempted to beat him. And tell me: had you been that Cram,
+whom his father, the Frankish King Clothaire, had burned in a barn; a
+Don Carlos, son of that fox, Philip the Second; a poor Alexis, son of
+that Czar Peter, half hero, half tiger--"
+
+"Ah, sir, say no more of those horrors; you will make me detest human
+nature."
+
+
+
+
+FAVOR.
+
+_Of What is Understood by the Word._
+
+
+Favor, from the Latin word "_favor_," rather signifies a benefit than a
+recompense.
+
+We earnestly beg a favor; we merit and loudly demand a recompense. The
+god Favor, according to the Roman mythologists, was the son of Beauty
+and Fortune. All favor conveys the idea of something gratuitous; he has
+done me the favor of introducing me, of presenting me, of recommending
+my friend, of correcting my work. The favor of princes is the effect of
+their fancy, and of assiduous complaisance. The favor of the people
+sometimes implies merit, but is more often attributable to lucky
+accident.
+
+Favor differs much from kindness. That man is in favor with the king,
+but he has not yet received any kindnesses from him. We say that he has
+been received into the good graces of a person, not he has been received
+into favor; though we say to be in favor, because favor is supposed to
+be an habitual taste; while to receive into grace is to pardon, or, at
+least, is less than to bestow a favor.
+
+To obtain grace is the effect of a moment; to obtain favor is a work of
+time. Nevertheless, we say indifferently, do me the kindness and do me
+the favor, to recommend my friend.
+
+Letters of recommendation were formerly called letters of favor. Severus
+says, in the tragedy of Polyeuctes:
+
+     _Je mourrais mille fois plutôt que d'abuser_
+     _Des lettres de faveur que j'ai pour l'épouser._
+
+     "Letters of favor," though I have to wed her,
+     I'd rather die a thousand times than use them.
+
+We have the favor and good-will, not the kindness of the prince and the
+public. We may obtain the favor of our audience by modesty, but it will
+not be gracious if we are tedious.
+
+This expression "favor," signifies a gratuitous good-will, which we seek
+to obtain from the prince or the public. Gallantry has extended it to
+the complaisance of the ladies; and though we do not say that we have
+the favors of the king, we say that we have the favors of a lady.
+
+The equivalent to this expression is unknown in Asia, where the women
+possess less influence. Formerly, ribbons, gloves, buckles, and
+sword-knots given by a lady, were called favors. The earl of Essex wore
+a glove of Queen Elizabeth's in his hat, which he called the queen's
+favor.
+
+
+
+
+FAVORITE.
+
+
+This word has sometimes a bounded and sometimes an extended sense.
+"Favorite" sometimes conveys the idea of power; and sometimes it only
+signifies a man who pleases his master.
+
+Henry III. had favorites who were only play-things, and he had those who
+governed the state, as the dukes of Joyeuse and Épernon. A favorite may
+be compared to a piece of gold, which is valued at whatever the prince
+pleases.
+
+An ancient writer has asked, "Who ought to be the king's favorite?--the
+people!" Good poets are called the favorites of the muses, as prosperous
+men are called the favorites of fortune, because both are supposed to
+receive these gifts without laboring for them. It is thus, that a
+fertile and well-situated land is called the favorite of nature.
+
+The woman who pleases the sultan most is called the favorite sultana.
+Somebody has written the history of favorites; that is to say, the
+mistresses of the greatest princes.
+
+Several princes in Germany have country houses which they call
+favorites.
+
+A lady's favorite is now only to be found in romances and stories of the
+last century.
+
+
+
+
+FEASTS.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+A poor gentleman of the province of Hagenau, cultivated his small
+estate, and St. Ragonda, or Radegonda, was the patron of his parish.
+
+Now it happened, on the feast of St. Ragonda, that it was necessary to
+do something to this poor gentleman's field, without which great loss
+would be incurred. The master, with all his family, after having
+devoutly assisted at mass, went to cultivate his land, on which depended
+the subsistence of his family, while the rector and the other
+parishioners went to tipple as usual.
+
+The rector, while enjoying his glass, was informed of the enormous
+offence committed in his parish by this profane laborer, and went,
+burning with wine and anger, to seek the cultivator. "Sir, you are very
+insolent and very impious to dare to cultivate your field, instead of
+going to the tavern like other people." "I agree, sir," replied the
+gentleman, "that it is necessary to drink to the honor of the saint; but
+it is also necessary to eat, and my family would die of hunger if I did
+not labor." "Drink and die, then," said the vicar. "In what law, in what
+book is it so written?" said the laborer. "In Ovid," replied the vicar.
+"I think you are mistaken," said the gentleman; "in what part of Ovid
+have you read that I should go to the tavern rather than cultivate my
+field on St. Ragonda's day?"
+
+It should be remarked that both the gentleman and the pastor were well
+educated men. "Read the metamorphoses of the daughters of Minyas," said
+the vicar. "I have read it," replied the other, "and I maintain that
+they have no relation to my plough." "How, impious man! do you not
+remember that the daughters of Minyas were changed into bats for having
+spun on a feast day?" "The case is very different," replied the
+gentleman, "these ladies had not rendered any homage to Bacchus. I have
+been at the mass of St. Ragonda, you can have nothing to say to me; you
+cannot change me into a bat." "I will do worse," said the priest, "I
+will fine you." He did so. The poor gentleman was ruined: he quitted the
+country with his family--went into a strange one--became a Lutheran--and
+his ground remained uncultivated for several years.
+
+This affair was related to a magistrate of good sense and much piety.
+These are the reflections which he made upon it:
+
+"They were no doubt innkeepers," said he, "that invented this prodigious
+number of feasts; the religion of peasants and artisans consists in
+getting tipsy on the day of a saint, whom they only know by this kind of
+worship. It is on these days of idleness and debauchery that all crimes
+are committed; it is these feasts which fill the prisons, and which
+support the police officers, registers, lieutenants of police, and
+hangmen; the only excuse for feast-days among us. From this cause
+Catholic countries are scarcely-cultivated at all; whilst heretics, by
+daily cultivating their lands, produce abundant crops."
+
+It is all very well that the shoemakers should go in the morning to mass
+on St. Crispin's day, because _crepido_ signifies the upper leather of a
+shoe; that the brush-makers should honor St. Barbara their patron; that
+those who have weak eyes should hear the mass of St. Clara: that St.----
+should be celebrated in many provinces; but after having paid their
+devoirs to the saints they should become serviceable to men, they should
+go from the altar to the plough; it is the excess of barbarity, and
+insupportable slavery, to consecrate our days to idleness and vice.
+Priests, command, if it be necessary that the saints Roche, Eustace, and
+Fiacre, be prayed to in the morning; but, magistrates, order your fields
+to be cultivated as usual. It is labor that is necessary; the greater
+the industry the more the day is sanctified.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+Letter from a Weaver of Lyons to the Gentlemen of the Commission
+established at Paris, for the Reformation of Religious Orders, printed
+in the public papers in 1768.
+
+     "Gentlemen: I am a silk-weaver, and have worked at Lyons for
+     nineteen years. My wages have increased insensibly; at present I
+     get thirty-five sous per day. My wife, who makes lace, would get
+     fifteen more, if it were possible for her to devote her time to it;
+     but as the cares of the house, illness, or other things,
+     continually hinder her, I reduce her profit to ten sous, which
+     makes forty-five sous daily. If from the year we deduct eighty-two
+     Sundays, or holidays, we shall have two hundred and eighty-four
+     profitable days, which at forty-five sous make six hundred and
+     thirty-nine livres. That is my revenue; the following are my
+     expenses:
+
+     "I have eight living children, and my wife is on the point of being
+     confined with the eleventh; for I have lost two. I have been
+     married fifteen years: so that I annually reckon twenty-four livres
+     for the expenses of her confinements and baptisms, one hundred and
+     eight livres for two nurses, having generally two children out at
+     nurse, and sometimes even three. I pay fifty-seven livres rent and
+     fourteen taxes.
+
+     "My income is then reduced to four hundred and thirty-six livres,
+     or twenty-five sous three deniers a day, with which I have to
+     clothe and furnish my family, buy wood and candles, and support my
+     wife and six children.
+
+     "I look forward to holidays with dismay. I confess that I often
+     almost curse their institution. They could only have been
+     instituted by usurers and innkeepers.
+
+     "My father made me study hard in my youth, and wished me to become
+     a monk, showing me in that state a sure asylum against want; but I
+     always thought that every man owes his tribute to society, and that
+     monks are useless drones who live upon the labor of the bees.
+     Notwithstanding, I acknowledge that when I see John C----, with
+     whom I studied, and who was the most idle boy in the college,
+     possessing the first place among the _prémontrés_, I cannot help
+     regretting that I did not listen to my father's advice.
+
+     "This is the third holiday in Christmas, I have pawned the little
+     furniture I had, I am in a week's debt with my tradesman, and I
+     want bread--how are we to get over the fourth? This is not all; I
+     have the prospect of four more next week. Great God! Eight holidays
+     in ten days; you cannot have commanded it!
+
+     "One year I hoped that rents would diminish by the suppression of
+     one of the monasteries of the Capuchins and Cordeliers. What
+     useless houses in the centre of Lyons are those of the Jacobins,
+     nuns of St. Peter, etc. Why not establish them in the suburbs if
+     they are thought necessary? How many more useful inhabitants would
+     supply their places!
+
+     "All these reflections, gentlemen, have induced me to address
+     myself to you who have been chosen by the king for the task of
+     rectifying abuses. I am not the only one who thinks thus. How many
+     laborers in Lyons and other places, how many laborers in the
+     kingdom are reduced to the same extremities as myself? It is
+     evident that every holiday costs the state several millions
+     (livres). These considerations will lead you to take more to heart
+     the interests of the people, which are rather too little attended
+     to.
+
+     "I have the honor to be, etc.,
+
+     "BOCEN."
+
+This request, which was really presented, will not be misplaced in a
+work like the present.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+The feast given to the Roman people by Julius Cæsar and the emperors who
+succeeded him are well known. The feast of twenty-two thousand tables
+served by twenty-two thousand purveyors; the naval fights on artificial
+lakes, etc., have not, however, been imitated by the Herulian, Lombard,
+and Frankish chieftains, who would have their festivity equally
+celebrated.
+
+
+
+
+FERRARA.
+
+
+What we have to say of Ferrara has no relation to literature, but it has
+a very great one to justice, which is much more necessary than the
+belles-lettres, and much less cultivated, at least in Italy.
+
+Ferrara was constantly a fief of the empire, like Parma and Placentia.
+Pope Clement VIII. robbed Cæsar d'Este of it by force of arms, in 1597.
+The pretext for this tyranny was a very singular one for a man who
+called himself the humble vicar of Jesus Christ.
+
+Alphonso d'Este, the first of the name, sovereign of Ferrara, Modena,
+Este, Carpio, and Rovigno, espoused a simple gentlewoman of Ferrara,
+named Laura Eustochia, by whom he had three children before marriage.
+These children he solemnly acknowledged in the face of the Church. None
+of the formalities prescribed by the laws were wanting at this
+recognition. His successor, Alphonso d'Este, was acknowledged duke of
+Ferrara; he espoused Julia d'Urbino, the daughter of Francis, duke
+d'Urbino, by whom he had the unfortunate Cæsar d'Este, the incontestable
+heir of all the property of all the family, and declared so by the last
+duke, who died October 27, 1597. Pope Clement VIII., surnamed
+Aldobrandino, and originally of the family of a merchant of Florence,
+dared to pretend that the grandmother of Cæsar d'Este was not
+sufficiently noble, and that the children that she had brought into the
+world ought to be considered bastards. The first reason is ridiculous
+and scandalous in a bishop, the second is unwarrantable in every
+tribunal in Europe. If the duke was not legitimate, he ought to have
+lost Modena and his other states also; and if there was no flaw in his
+title, he ought to have kept Ferrara as well as Modena.
+
+The acquisition of Ferrara was too fine a thing for the pope not to
+procure all the decretals and decisions of those brave theologians, who
+declare that the pope can render just that which is unjust. Consequently
+he first excommunicated Cæsar d'Este, and as excommunication necessarily
+deprives a man of all his property, the common father of the faithful
+raised his troops against the excommunicated, to rob him of his
+inheritance in the name of the Church. These troops were defeated, but
+the duke of Modena soon saw his finances exhausted, and his friends
+become cool.
+
+To make his case still more deplorable, the king of France, Henry IV.,
+believed himself obliged to take the side of the pope, in order to
+balance the credit of Philip II. at the court of Rome; in the same
+manner that good King Louis XII. less excusably dishonored himself by
+uniting with that monster Alexander VI., and his execrable bastard, the
+duke of Borgia. The duke was obliged to return, and the pope caused
+Ferrara to be invaded by Cardinal Aldobrandino, who entered this
+flourishing city at the head of a thousand horse and five thousand foot
+soldiers.
+
+It is a great pity that such a man as Henry IV. descended to this
+unworthiness which is called politic. The Catos, Metelluses, Scipios,
+and Fabriciuses would not thus have betrayed justice to please a
+priest--and such a priest!
+
+From this time Ferrara became a desert; its uncultivated soil was
+covered with standing marshes. This province, under the house of Este,
+had been one of the finest in Italy; the people always regretted their
+ancient masters. It is true that the duke was indemnified; he was
+nominated to a bishopric and a benefice; he was even furnished with some
+measures of salt from the mines of Servia. But it is no less true that
+the house of Modena has incontestable and imprescriptable rights to the
+duchy of Ferrara, of which it was thus shamefully despoiled.
+
+Now, my dear reader, let us suppose that this scene took place at the
+time in which Jesus Christ appeared to his apostles after his
+resurrection, and that Simon Barjonas, surnamed Peter, wished to possess
+himself of the states of this poor duke of Ferrara. Imagine the duke
+coming to Bethany to demand justice of the Lord Jesus. Our Lord sends
+immediately for Peter and says to him, "Simon, son of Jonas, I have
+given thee the keys of heaven, but I have not given thee those of the
+earth. Because thou hast been told that the heavens surround the globe,
+and that the contained is in the containing, dost thou imagine that
+kingdoms here below belong to thee, and that thou hast only to possess
+thyself of whatever thou likest? I have already forbidden thee to draw
+the sword. Thou appearest to me a very strange compound; at one time
+cutting off the ear of Malchus, and at another even denying me. Be more
+lenient and decorous, and take neither the property nor the ears of any
+one for fear of thine own."
+
+
+
+
+FEVER.
+
+
+It is not as a physician, but as a patient, that I wish to say a word or
+two on fever. We cannot help now and then speaking of our enemies; and
+this one has been attacking me for more than twenty years; not Fréron
+himself has been more implacable.
+
+I ask pardon of Sydenham, who defined fever to be "an effort of nature,
+laboring with all its power to expel the peccant matter." We might thus
+define smallpox, measles, diarrhoea, vomitings, cutaneous eruptions,
+and twenty other diseases. But, if this physician defined ill, he
+practised well. He cured, because he had experience, and he knew how to
+wait.
+
+Boerhaave says, in his "Aphorisms": "A more frequent opposition, and an
+increased resistance about the capillary vessels, give an absolute idea
+of an acute fever." These are the words of a great master; but he sets
+out with acknowledging that the nature of fever is profoundly hidden.
+
+He does not tell us what that secret principle is which develops itself
+at regular periods in intermittent fever--what that internal poison is,
+which, after the lapse of a day, is renewed--where that flame is, which
+dies and revives at stated moments.
+
+We know fairly well that we are liable to fever after excess, or in
+unseasonable weather. We know that quinine, judiciously administered,
+will cure it. This is quite enough; the _how_ we do not know.
+
+Every animal that does not perish suddenly dies by fever. The fever
+seems to be the inevitable effect of the fluids that compose the blood,
+or that which is in the place of blood. The structure of every animal
+proves to natural philosophers that it must, at all times, have enjoyed
+a very short life.
+
+Theologians have held, as have promulgated other opinions. It is not for
+us to examine this question. The philosophers and physicians have been
+right _in sensu humano_, and the theologians, _in sensu divino_. It is
+said in Deuteronomy, xxviii, 22, that if the Jews do not serve the law
+they shall be smitten "with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an
+inflammation, and with an extreme burning." It is only in Deuteronomy,
+and in Molière's "Physician in Spite of Himself," that people have been
+threatened with fever.
+
+It seems impossible that fever should not be an accident natural to an
+animate body, in which so many fluids circulate; just as it is
+impossible for an animate body not to be crushed by the falling of a
+rock.
+
+Blood makes life; it furnishes the viscera, the limbs, the skin, the
+very extremities of the hairs and nails with the fluids, the humors
+proper for them.
+
+This blood, by which the animal has life, is formed by the chyle. During
+pregnancy this chyle is transmitted from the uterus to the child, and,
+after the child is born, the milk of the nurse produces this same chyle.
+The greater diversity of aliments it afterwards receives, the more the
+chyle is liable to be soured. This alone forming the blood, and this
+blood, composed of so many different humors so subject to corruption,
+circulating through the whole human body more than five hundred and
+fifty times in twenty-four hours, with the rapidity of a torrent, it is
+not only astonishing that fever is not more frequent, it is astonishing
+that man lives. In every articulation, in every gland, in every passage,
+there is danger of death; but there are also as many succors as there
+are dangers. Almost every membrane extends or contracts as occasion
+requires. All the veins have sluices which open and shut, giving passage
+to the blood and preventing a return, by which the machine would be
+destroyed. The blood, rushing through all these canals, purifies itself.
+It is a river that carries with it a thousand impurities; it discharges
+itself by perspiration, by transpiration, by all the secretions. Fever
+is itself a succor; it is a rectification when it does not kill.
+
+Man, by his reason, accelerates the cure by administering bitters, and,
+above all, by regimen. This reason is an oar with which he may row for
+some time on the sea of the world when disease does not swallow him up.
+
+It is asked: How is it that nature has abandoned the animals, her work,
+to so many horrible diseases, almost always accompanied by fever? How
+and why is it that so many disorders exist with so much order,
+formation, and destruction everywhere, side by side? This is a
+difficulty that often gives me a fever, but I beg you will read the
+letters of Memmius. Then, perhaps, you will be inclined to suspect that
+the incomprehensible artificer of vegetables, animals, and worlds,
+having made all for the best, could not have made anything better.
+
+
+
+
+FICTION.
+
+
+Is not a fiction, which teaches new and interesting truths, a fine
+thing? Do you not admire the Arabian story of the sultan who would not
+believe that a little time could appear long, and who disputed with his
+dervish on the nature of duration? The latter to convince him of it,
+begged him only to plunge his head for a moment into the basin in which
+he was washing. Immediately the sultan finds himself transported into a
+frightful desert; he is obliged to labor to get a livelihood; he
+marries, and has children who grow up and ill treat him; finally he
+returns to his country and his palace and he there finds the dervish who
+has caused him to suffer so many evils for five and twenty years. He is
+about to kill him, and is only appeased when he is assured that all
+passed in the moment in which, with his eyes shut, he put his head into
+the water.
+
+You still more admire the fiction of the loves of Dido and Æneas, which
+caused the mortal hatred between Carthage and Rome, as also that which
+exhibits in Elysium the destinies of the great men of the Roman Empire.
+
+You also like that of Alcina, in Ariosto, who possesses the dignity of
+Minerva with the beauty of Venus, who is so charming to the eyes of her
+lovers, who intoxicates them with voluptuous delights, and unites all
+the loves and graces, but who, when she is at last reduced to her true
+self and the enchantment has passed away, is nothing more than a little
+shrivelled, disgusting, old woman.
+
+As to fictions which represent nothing, teach nothing, and from which
+nothing results, are they anything more than falsities? And if they are
+incoherent and heaped together without choice, are they anything better
+than dreams?
+
+You will possibly tell me that there are ancient fictions which are very
+incoherent, without ingenuity, and even absurd, which are still admired;
+but is it not rather owing to the fine images which are scattered over
+these fictions than to the inventions which introduce them? I will not
+dispute the point, but if you would be hissed at by all Europe, and
+afterwards forgotten forever, write fictions similar to those which you
+admire.
+
+
+
+
+FIERTÉ.
+
+
+Fierté is one of those expressions, which, having been originally
+employed in an offensive sense, are afterwards used in a favorable one.
+It is censure when this word signifies high-flown, proud, haughty, and
+disdainful. It is almost praise when it means the loftiness of a noble
+mind.
+
+It is a just eulogium on a general who marches towards the enemy with
+_fierté_. Writers have praised the _fierté_ of the gait of Louis XIV.;
+they should have contented themselves with remarking its nobleness.
+
+_Fierté_, without dignity, is a merit incompatible with modesty. It is
+only _fierté_ in air and manners which offends; it then displeases, even
+in kings.
+
+_Fierté_ of manner in society is the expression of pride; _fierté_ of
+soul is greatness. The distinctions are so nice that a proud spirit is
+deemed blamable, while a proud soul is a theme of praise. By the former
+is understood one who thinks advantageously of himself while the latter
+denotes one who entertains elevated sentiments.
+
+_Fierté_, announced by the exterior, is so great a fault that the weak,
+who abjectly praise it in the great are obliged to soften it, or rather
+to extol it, by speaking of "this noble _fierté_." It is not simply
+vanity, which consists in setting a value upon little things; it is not
+presumption, which believes itself capable of great ones; it is not
+disdain, which adds contempt of others to a great opinion of self; but
+it is intimately allied to all these faults.
+
+This word is used in romances, poetry, and above all, in operas, to
+express the severity of female modesty. We meet with vain _fierté_,
+vigorous _fierté_, etc. Poets are, perhaps, more in the right than they
+imagine. The _fierté_ of a woman is not only rigid modesty and love of
+duty, but the high value which she sets upon her beauty. The _fierté_ of
+the pencil is sometimes spoken of to signify free and fearless touches.
+
+
+
+
+FIGURE.
+
+
+Every one desirous of instruction should read with attention all the
+articles in the "_Dictionnaire Encyclopédique_," under the head
+"Figure," viz.:
+
+"Figure of the Earth," by M. d'Alembert--a work both clear and profound,
+in which we find all that can be known on the subject.
+
+"Figure of Rhetoric," by César Dumarsais--a piece of instruction which
+teaches at once to think and to write; and, like many other articles,
+make us regret that young people in general have not a convenient
+opportunity of reading things so useful.
+
+"Human Figure," as relating to painting and sculpture--an excellent
+lesson given to every artist, by M. Watelet.
+
+"Figure," in physiology--a very ingenious article, by M. de Caberoles.
+
+"Figure," in arithmetic and in algebra--by M. Mallet.
+
+"Figure," in logic, in metaphysics, and in polite literature, by M. le
+Chevalier de Jaucourt--a man superior to the philosophers of antiquity,
+inasmuch as he has preferred retirement, real philosophy, and
+indefatigable labor, to all the advantages that his birth might have
+procured him, in a country where birth is set above all beside,
+excepting money.
+
+_Figure or Form of the Earth._
+
+Plato, Aristotle, Eratosthenes, Posidonius, and all the geometricians of
+Asia, of Egypt, and of Greece, having acknowledged the sphericity of our
+globe, how did it happen that we, for so long a time, imagined that the
+earth was a third longer than it was broad, and thence derived the terms
+"_longitude_" and "_latitude_," which continually bear testimony to our
+ancient ignorance?
+
+The reverence due to the "Bible," which teaches us so many truths more
+necessary and more sublime, was the cause of this, our almost universal
+error. It had been found, in Psalm ciii, that God had stretched the
+heavens over the earth like a skin; and as a skin is commonly longer
+than it is wide, the same was concluded of the earth.
+
+St. Athanasius expresses himself as warmly against good astronomers as
+against the partisans of Arius and Eusebius. "Let us," says he, "stop
+the mouths of those barbarians, who, speaking without proof, dare to
+assert that the heavens also extend under the earth." The fathers
+considered the earth as a great ship, surrounded by water, with the prow
+to the east, and the stern to the west. We still find, in "Cosmos," a
+work of the fourth century, a sort of geographical chart, in which the
+earth has this figure.
+
+Tortato, bishop of Avila, near the close of the fifteenth century,
+declares in his commentary on Genesis, that the Christian faith is
+shaken, if the earth is believed to be round. Columbus, Vespucius, and
+Magellan, not having the fear of excommunication by this learned bishop
+before their eyes, the earth resumed its rotundity in spite of him.
+
+Then man went from one extreme to the other, and the earth was regarded
+as a perfect sphere. But the error of the perfect sphere was the mistake
+of philosophers, while that of a long, flat earth was the blunder of
+idiots.
+
+When once it began to be clearly known that our globe revolves on its
+own axis every twenty-four hours, it might have been inferred from that
+alone that its form could not be absolutely round. Not only does the
+centrifugal zone considerably raise the waters in the region of the
+equator, by the motion of the diurnal rotation, but they are moreover
+elevated about twenty-five feet, twice a day, by the tides; the lands
+about the equator must then be perfectly inundated. But they are not so;
+therefore the region of the equator is much more elevated, in
+proportion, than the rest of the earth: then the earth is a spheroid
+elevated at the equator, and cannot be a perfect sphere. This proof,
+simple as it is, had escaped the greatest geniuses: because a universal
+prejudice rarely permits investigation.
+
+We know that, in 1762, in a voyage to Cayenne, near the line, undertaken
+by order of Louis XIV., under the auspices of Colbert, the patron of all
+the arts, Richer, among many other observations, found that the
+oscillations or vibrations of his timepiece did not continue so frequent
+as in the latitude of Paris, and that it was absolutely necessary to
+shorten the pendulum one line and something more than a quarter. Physics
+and geometry were at that time not nearly so much cultivated as they now
+are; what man would have believed that an observation so trivial in
+appearance, a line more or less, could lead to the knowledge of the
+greatest physical truths? It was first of all discovered that the weight
+must necessarily be less on the equator than in our latitudes, since
+weight alone causes the oscillation of a pendulum. Consequently, the
+weight of bodies being the less the farther they are from the centre of
+the earth, it was inferred that the region of the equator must be much
+more elevated than our own--much more remote from the centre; so the
+earth could not be an exact sphere.
+
+Many philosophers acted, on the occasion of these discoveries, as all
+men act when an opinion is to be changed--they disputed on Richer's
+experiment; they pretended that our pendulums made their vibrations more
+slowly about the equator only because the metal was lengthened by the
+heat; but it was seen that the heat of the most burning summer lengthens
+it but one line in thirty feet; and here was an elongation of a line and
+a quarter, a line and a half, or even two lines, in an iron rod, only
+three feet and eight lines long.
+
+Some years after MM. Varin, Deshayes, Feuillée, and Couplet, repeated
+the same experiment on the pendulum, near the equator; and it was always
+found necessary to shorten it, although the heat was very often less on
+the line than fifteen or twenty degrees from it. This experiment was
+again confirmed by the academicians whom Louis XV. sent to Peru; and who
+were obliged, on the mountains about Quito, where it froze, to shorten
+the second pendulum about two lines.
+
+About the same time, the academicians who went to measure an arc of the
+meridian in the north, found that at Pello, within the Polar circle, it
+was necessary to lengthen the pendulum, in order to have the same
+oscillations as at Paris: consequently weight is greater at the polar
+circle than in the latitude of France, as it is greater in our latitude
+than at the equator. Weight being greater in the north, the north was
+therefore nearer the centre of the earth than the equator; therefore the
+earth was flattened at the poles.
+
+Never did reasoning and experiment so fully concur to establish a truth.
+The celebrated Huygens, by calculating centrifugal forces, had proved
+that the consequent diminution of weight on the surface of a sphere was
+not great enough to explain the phenomena, and that therefore the earth
+must be a spheroid flattened at the poles. Newton, by the principles of
+attraction, had found nearly the same relations: only it must be
+observed, that Huygens believed this force inherent in bodies
+determining them towards the centre of the globe, to be everywhere the
+same. He had not yet seen the discoveries of Newton; so that he
+considered the diminution of weight by the theory of centrifugal forces
+only. The effect of centrifugal forces diminishes the primitive gravity
+on the equator. The smaller the circles in which this centrifugal force
+is exercised become, the more it yields to the force of gravity; thus,
+at the pole itself the centrifugal force being null, must leave the
+primitive gravity in full action. But this principle of a gravity always
+equal, falls to nothing before the discovery made by Newton, that a body
+transported, for instance, to the distance of ten diameters from the
+centre of the earth, would weigh one hundred times less than at the
+distance of one diameter.
+
+It is then by the laws of gravitation, combined with those of the
+centrifugal force, that the real form of the earth must be shown. Newton
+and Gregory had such confidence in this theory that they did not
+hesitate to advance that experiments on weight were a surer means of
+knowing the form of the earth than any geographical measurement.
+
+Louis XIV. had signalized his reign by that meridian which was drawn
+through France: the illustrious Dominico Cassini had begun it with his
+son; and had, in 1701, drawn from the feet of the Pyrenees to the
+observatory a line as straight as it could be drawn, considering the
+almost insurmountable obstacles which the height of mountains, the
+changes of refraction in the air, and the altering of instruments were
+constantly opposing to the execution of so vast and delicate an
+undertaking; he had, in 1701, measured six degrees eighteen minutes of
+that meridian. But, from whatever cause the error might proceed, he had
+found the degrees towards Paris, that is towards the north, shorter than
+those towards the Pyrenees and the south. This measurement gave the lie
+both to the theory of Norwood and to the new theory of the earth
+flattened at the poles. Yet this new theory was beginning to be so
+generally received that the academy's secretary did not hesitate, in his
+history of 1701, to say that the new measurements made in France proved
+the earth to be a spheroid flattened at the poles. The truth was, that
+Dominico Cassini's measurement led to a conclusion directly opposite;
+but, as the figure of the earth had not yet become a question in France,
+no one at that time was at the trouble of combating this false
+conclusion. The degrees of the meridian from Collioure to Paris were
+believed to be exactly measured; and the pole, which from that
+measurement must necessarily be elongated, was believed to be flattened.
+
+An engineer, named M. de Roubais, astonished at this conclusion,
+demonstrated that, by the measurements taken in France, the earth must
+be an oblate spheroid, of which the meridian passing through the poles
+must be longer than the equator, the poles being elongated. But of all
+the natural philosophers to whom he addressed his dissertation, not one
+would have it printed; because it seemed that the academy had pronounced
+it as too bold in an individual to raise his voice. Some time after the
+error of 1701 was acknowledged, that which had been said was unsaid; and
+the earth was lengthened by a just conclusion drawn from a false
+principle. The meridian was continued in the same principle from Paris
+to Dunkirk; and the degrees were still found to grow shorter as they
+approached the north. People were still mistaken respecting the figure
+of the earth, as they had been concerning the nature of light. About the
+same time, some mathematicians who were performing the same operations
+in China were astonished to find a difference among their degrees,
+which they had expected to find alike; and to discover, after many
+verifications, that they were shorter towards the north than towards the
+south. This accordance of the mathematicians of France with those of
+China was another powerful reason for believing in the oblate spheroid.
+In France they did still more; they measured parallels to the equator.
+It is easily understood that on an oblate spheroid our degrees of
+longitude must be shorter than on a sphere. M. de Cassini found the
+parallel which passes through St. Malo to be shorter by one thousand and
+thirty-seven toises than it would have been on a spherical earth.
+
+All these measurements proved that the degrees had been found as it was
+wished to find them. They overturned, for a time, in France, the
+demonstrations of Newton and Huygens; and it was no longer doubted that
+the poles were of a form precisely contrary to that which had at first
+been attributed to them. In short, nothing at all was known about the
+matter.
+
+At length, other academicians, who had visited the polar circle in 1736,
+having found, by new measurements, that the degree was longer there than
+in France, people doubted between them and the Cassinis. But these
+doubts were soon after removed: for these same astronomers, returning
+from the pole, examined afresh the degree to the north of Paris,
+measured by Picard, in 1677, and found it to be a hundred and
+twenty-three toises longer than it was according to Picard's
+measurement. If, then, Picard, with all his precautions, had made his
+degree one hundred and twenty-three toises too short, it was not at all
+unlikely that the degrees towards the south had in like manner been
+found too long. Thus the first error of Picard, having furnished the
+foundations for the measurements of the meridian, also furnished an
+excuse for the almost inevitable errors which very good astronomers
+might have committed in the course of these operations.
+
+Unfortunately, other men of science found that, at the Cape of Good
+Hope, the degrees of the meridian did not agree with ours. Other
+measurements, taken in Italy, likewise contradicted those of France, and
+all were falsified by those of China. People again began to doubt, and
+to suspect, in my opinion quite reasonably, that the earth had
+protuberances. As for the English, though they are fond of travelling,
+they spared themselves the fatigue, and held fast their theory.
+
+The difference between one diameter and the other is not more than five
+or six of our leagues--a difference immense in the eyes of a disputant,
+but almost imperceptible to those who consider the measurement of the
+globe only in reference to the purposes of utility which it may serve. A
+geographer could scarcely make this difference perceptible on a map; nor
+would a pilot be able to discover whether he was steering on a spheroid
+or on a sphere. Yet there have been men bold enough to assert that the
+lives of navigators depended on this question. Oh quackery! will you
+spare no degrees--not even those of the meridian?
+
+
+
+
+FIGURED--FIGURATIVE.
+
+
+We say, a truth "figured" by a fable, by a parable; the church "figured"
+by the young spouse in Solomon's Song; ancient Rome "figured" by
+Babylon. A figurative style is constituted by metaphorical expressions,
+figuring the things spoken of--and disfiguring them when the metaphors
+are not correct.
+
+Ardent imagination, passion, desire--frequently deceived--produce the
+figurative style. We do not admit it into history, for too many
+metaphors are hurtful, not only to perspicuity, but also to truth, by
+saying more or less than the thing itself.
+
+In didactic works, this style should be rejected. It is much more out of
+place in a sermon than in a funeral oration, because the sermon is a
+piece of instruction in which the truth is to be announced; while the
+funeral oration is a declaration in which it is to be exaggerated.
+
+The poetry of enthusiasm, as the epopee and the ode, is that to which
+this style is best adapted. It is less admissible in tragedy, where the
+dialogue should be natural as well as elevated; and still less in
+comedy, where the style must be more simple.
+
+The limits to be set to the figurative style, in each kind, are
+determined by taste. Baltasar Gracian says, that "our thoughts depart
+from the vast shores of memory, embark on the sea of imagination, arrive
+in the harbor of intelligence, and are entered at the custom house of
+the understanding."
+
+This is precisely the style of Harlequin. He says to his master, "The
+ball of your commands has rebounded from the racquet of my obedience."
+Must it not be owned that such is frequently that oriental style which
+people try to admire? Another fault of the figurative style is the
+accumulating of incoherent figures. A poet, speaking of some
+philosophers, has called them:
+
+                   _D'ambitieux pygmées_
+     _Qui sur leurs pieds vainement redressés_
+     _Et sur des monts d'argumens entassés_
+     _De jour en jour superbes Encelades,_
+     _Vont redoublant leurs folles escalades._
+
+When philosophers are to be written against, it should be done better.
+How do ambitious pygmies, reared on their hind legs on mountains of
+arguments, continue escalades? What a false and ridiculous image! What
+elaborate dulness!
+
+In an allegory by the same author, entitled the "Liturgy of Cytherea,"
+we find these lines:
+
+     _De toutes parts, autour de l'inconnue,_
+     _Ils vont tomber comme grêle menue,_
+     _Moissons des coeurs sur la terre jonchés,_
+     _Et des Dieux même à son char attachés._
+     _De par Venus nous venons cette affaire_
+     _Si s'en retourne aux cieux dans son sérail,_
+     _En ruminant comment il pourra faire_
+     _Pour ramener la brebis au bercail._
+
+Here we have harvests of hearts thrown on the ground like small hail;
+and among these hearts palpitating on the ground, are gods bound to the
+car of the unknown; while love, sent by Venus, ruminates in his seraglio
+in heaven, what he shall do to bring back to the fold this lost mutton
+surrounded by scattered hearts. All this forms a figure at once so
+false, so puerile, and so incoherent--so disgusting, so extravagant, so
+stupidly expressed, that we are astonished that a man, who made good
+verses of another kind, and was not devoid of taste, could write
+anything so miserably bad.
+
+Figures, metaphors, are not necessary in an allegory; what has been
+invented with imagination may be told with simplicity. Plato has more
+allegories than figures; he often expresses them elegantly and without
+ostentation.
+
+Nearly all the maxims of the ancient orientals and of the Greeks were in
+the figurative style. All those sentences are metaphors, or short
+allegories; and in them the figurative style has great effect in rousing
+the imagination and impressing the memory.
+
+We know that Pythagoras said, "In the tempest adore the echo," that is,
+during civil broils retire to the country; and "Stir not the fire with
+the sword," meaning, do not irritate minds already inflamed. In every
+language, there are many common proverbs which are in the figurative
+style.
+
+
+
+
+FIGURE IN THEOLOGY.
+
+
+It is quite certain, and is agreed by the most pious men, that figures
+and allegories have been carried too far. Some of the fathers of the
+church regard the piece of red cloth, placed by the courtesan Rahab at
+her window, for a signal to Joshua's spies, as a figure of the blood of
+Jesus Christ. This is an error of an order of mind which would find
+mystery in everything.
+
+Nor can it be denied that St. Ambrose made very bad use of his taste for
+allegory, when he says, in his book of "Noah and the Ark," that the back
+door of the ark was a figure of our hinder parts.
+
+All men of sense have asked how it can be proved that these Hebrew
+words, "_maher, salas-has-has_," (take quick the spoils) are a figure of
+Jesus Christ? How is Judah, tying his ass to a vine, and washing his
+cloak in the wine, also a figure of Him. How can Ruth, slipping into bed
+to Boaz, figure the church, how are Sarah and Rachel the church, and
+Hagar and Leah the synagogue? How, do the kisses of the Shunamite typify
+the marriage of the church? A volume might be made of these enigmas,
+which, to the best theologians of later times, have appeared to be
+rather far-fetched than edifying.
+
+The danger of this abuse is fully admitted by Abbé Fleury, the author of
+the "Ecclesiastical History." It is a vestige of rabbinism; a fault
+into which the learned St. Jerome never fell. It is like oneiromancy,
+or the explanation of dreams. If a girl sees muddy water, when dreaming,
+she will be ill-married; if she sees clear water, she will have a good
+husband; a spider denotes money, etc. In short, will enlightened
+posterity believe it? The understanding of dreams has, for more than
+four thousand years, been made a serious study.
+
+_Symbolical Figures._
+
+All nations have made use of them, as we have said in the article
+"emblem." But who began? Was it the Egyptians? It is not likely. We
+think we have already more than once proved that Egypt is a country
+quite new, and that many ages were requisite to save the country from
+inundations, and render it habitable. It is impossible that the
+Egyptians should have invented the signs of the zodiac, since the
+figures denoting our seed-time and harvest cannot coincide with theirs.
+When we cut our corn, their land is covered with water; and when we sow,
+their reaping time is approaching. Thus the bull of our zodiac and the
+girl bearing ears of corn cannot have come from Egypt.
+
+Here is also an evident proof of the falsity of the new paradox, that
+the Chinese are an Egyptian colony. The characters are not the same. The
+Chinese mark the course of the sun by twenty-eight constellations and
+the Egyptians, after the Chaldæans, reckoned only twelve, like
+ourselves.
+
+The figures that denote the planets are in China and in India all
+different from those of Egypt and of Europe; so are the signs of the
+metals; so is the method of guiding the hand in writing. Nothing could
+have been more chimerical than to send the Egyptians to people China.
+
+All these fabulous foundations, laid in fabulous times, have caused an
+irreparable loss of time to a prodigious multitude of the learned, who
+have all been bewildered in their laborious researches, which might have
+been serviceable to mankind if directed to arts of real utility.
+
+Pluche, in his History, or rather his fable, of the Heavens, assures us
+that Ham, son of Noah, went and reigned in Egypt, where there was nobody
+to reign over; that his son Menes was the greatest of legislators, and
+that Thoth was his prime minister.
+
+According to him and his authorities, this Thoth, or somebody else,
+instituted feasts in honor of the deluge; and the joyful cry of "_Io
+Bacche_," so famous among the Greeks, was, among the Egyptians, a
+lamentation. "_Bacche_" came from the Hebrew "_beke_" signifying _sobs_,
+and that at a time when the Hebrew people did not exist. According to
+this explanation, "_joy_" means "_sorrow_," and "_to sing_" signifies
+"_to weep_."
+
+The Iroquois have more sense. They do not take the trouble to inquire
+what passed on the shores of Lake Ontario some thousand years ago:
+instead of making systems, they go hunting.
+
+The same authors affirm that the sphinxes, with which Egypt was adorned,
+signified superabundance, because some interpreters have asserted that
+the Hebrew word "_spang_" meant an "excess"; as if the Egyptians had
+taken lessons from the Hebrew tongue, which is, in great part, derived
+from the Phoenician: besides, what relation has a sphinx to an
+abundance of water? Future schoolmen will maintain, with greater
+appearance of reason, that the masks which decorate the keystones of our
+windows are emblems of our masquerades; and that these fantastic
+ornaments announced that balls were given in every house to which they
+were affixed.
+
+_Figure, Figurative, Allegorical, Mystical, Topological, Typical, etc._
+
+This is often the art of finding in books everything but what they
+really contain. For instance, Romulus killing his brother Remus shall
+signify the death of the duke of Berry, brother of Louis XI.; Regulus,
+imprisoned at Carthage, shall typify St. Louis captive at Mansurah.
+
+It is very justly remarked in the "Encyclopædia," that many fathers of
+the church have, perhaps, carried this taste for allegorical figures a
+little too far; but they are to be reverenced, even in their wanderings.
+If the holy fathers used and then abused this method, their little
+excesses of imagination may be pardoned, in consideration of their holy
+zeal.
+
+The antiquity of the usage may also be pleaded in justification, since
+it was practised by the earliest philosophers. But it is true that the
+symbolical figures employed by the fathers are in a different taste.
+
+For example: When St. Augustine wishes to make it appear that the
+forty-two generations of the genealogy of Jesus are announced by St.
+Matthew, who gives only forty-one, he says that Jechonias must be
+counted twice, because Jechonias is a corner-stone belonging to two
+walls; that these two walls figure the old and the new law; and that
+Jechonias, being thus the corner-stone, figures Jesus Christ, who is the
+real corner-stone.
+
+The same saint, in the same sermon, says that the number forty must
+prevail; and at once abandons Jechonias and his corner-stone, counted as
+two. The number forty, he says, signifies life; ten, which is perfect
+beatitude, being multiplied by four, which, being the number of the
+seasons, figures time.
+
+Again, in the same sermon, he explains why St. Luke gives Jesus Christ
+seventy-seven ancestors: fifty-six up to the patriarch Abraham, and
+twenty-one from Abraham up to God himself. It is true that, according to
+the Hebrew text, there would be but seventy-six; for the Hebrew does not
+reckon a Cainan, who is interpolated in the Greek translation called
+"The Septuagint."
+
+Thus said Augustine: "The number seventy-seven figures the abolition of
+all sins by baptism.... the number ten signifies justice and beatitude,
+resulting from, the creature, which makes seven with the Trinity, which
+is three: therefore it is that God's commandments are ten in number. The
+number eleven denotes sin, because it transgresses ten.... This number
+seventy-seven is the product of eleven, figuring sin, multiplied by
+seven, and not by ten, for seven is the symbol of the creature. Three
+represents the soul, which is in some sort an image of the Divinity; and
+four represents the body, on account of its four qualities." In these
+explanations, we find some trace of the cabalistic mysteries and the
+quaternary of Pythagoras. This taste was very long in vogue.
+
+St. Augustine goes much further, concerning the dimensions of matter.
+Breadth is the dilatation of the heart, which performs good works;
+length is perseverance; depth is the hope of reward. He carries the
+allegory very far, applying it to the cross, and drawing great
+consequences therefrom. The use of these figures had passed from the
+Jews to the Christians long before St. Augustine's time. It is not for
+us to know within what bounds it was right to stop.
+
+The examples of this fault are innumerable. No one who has studied to
+advantage will hazard the introduction of such figures, either in the
+pulpit or in the school. We find no such instances among the Romans or
+the Greeks, not even in their poets.
+
+In Ovid's "Metamorphoses" themselves, we find only ingenious deductions
+drawn from fables which are given as fables. Deucalion and Pyrrha threw
+stones behind them between their legs, and men were produced therefrom.
+Ovid says:
+
+     _Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum,_
+     _Et documenta damus qua simus origine nati._
+
+     Thence we are a hardened and laborious race,
+     Proving full well our stony origin.
+
+Apollo loves Daphne, but Daphne does not love Apollo. This is because
+love has two kinds of arrows; the one golden and piercing, the other
+leaden and blunt. Apollo has received in his heart a golden arrow,
+Daphne a leaden one.
+
+     _Ecce sagittifera prompsit duo tela pharetra_
+     _Diversorum operum; fugat hoc, facit illud amorem_
+     _Quod facit auratum est, et cuspide fulget acuta;_
+     _Quod fugat obtusum est, et habet sub arundine plumbum...._
+
+     Two different shafts he from his quiver draws;
+     One to repel desire, and one to cause.
+     One shaft is pointed with refulgent gold,
+     To bribe the love, and make the lover bold;
+     One blunt and tipped with lead, whose base allay
+     Provokes disdain, and drives desire away.--DRYDEN.
+
+These figures are all ingenious, and deceive no one.
+
+That Venus, the goddess of beauty, should not go unattended by the
+Graces, is a charming truth. These fables, which were in the mouths of
+all--these allegories, so natural and attractive--had so much sway over
+the minds of men, that perhaps the first Christians imitated while they
+opposed them.
+
+They took up the weapons of mythology to destroy it, but they could not
+wield them with the same address. They did not reflect that the sacred
+austerity of our holy religion placed these resources out of their
+power, and that a Christian hand would have dealt but awkwardly with the
+lyre of Apollo.
+
+However, the taste for these typical and prophetic figures was so firmly
+rooted that every prince, every statesman, every pope, every founder of
+an order, had allegories or allusions taken from the Holy Scriptures
+applied to him. Satire and flattery rivalled each other in drawing from
+this source.
+
+When Pope Innocent III. made a bloody crusade against the court of
+Toulouse, he was told, "_Innocens eris a maledictione_." When the order
+of the Minimes was established, it appeared that their founder had been
+foretold in Genesis: "_Minimus cum patre nostro_."
+
+The preacher who preached before John of Austria after the celebrated
+battle of Lepanto, took for his text, "_Fuit homo missus a Deo, cui
+nomen erat Johannes_;" A man sent from God, whose name was John; and
+this allusion was very fine, if all the rest were ridiculous. It is said
+to have been repeated for John Sobieski, after the deliverance of
+Vienna; but this latter preacher was nothing more than a plagiarist.
+
+In short, so constant has been this custom that no preacher of the
+present day has ever failed to take an allegory for his text. One of the
+most happy instances is the text of the funeral oration over the duke of
+Candale, delivered before his sister, who was considered a pattern of
+virtue: "_Die, quia soror, mea es, ut mihi bene eveniat propter,
+te_."--"Say, I pray thee, that thou art my sister, that it may be well
+with me for thy sake."
+
+It is not to be wondered at that the Cordeliers carried these figures
+rather too far in favor of St. Francis of Assisi, in the famous but
+little-known book, entitled, "Conformities of St. Francis of Assisi with
+Jesus Christ." We find in it sixty-four predictions of the coming of St.
+Francis, some in the Old Testament, others in the New; and each
+prediction contains three figures, which signify the founding of the
+Cordeliers. So that these fathers find themselves foretold in the Bible
+a hundred and ninety-two times.
+
+From Adam down to St. Paul, everything prefigured the blessed Francis of
+Assisi. The Scriptures were given to announce to the universe the
+sermons of Francis to the quadrupeds, the fishes, and the birds, the
+sport he had with a woman of snow, his frolics with the devil, his
+adventures with brother Elias and brother Pacificus.
+
+These pious reveries, which amounted even to blasphemy, have been
+condemned. But the Order of St. Francis has not suffered by them, having
+renounced these extravagancies so common to the barbarous ages.
+
+
+
+
+FINAL CAUSES.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+Virgil says ("Æneid," book vi. 727):
+
+     _Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet._
+
+     This active mind infused, through all the space
+     Unites and mingles with the mighty mass.--DRYDEN.
+
+Virgil said well: and Benedict Spinoza, who has not the brilliancy of
+Virgil, nor his merit, is compelled to acknowledge an intelligence
+presiding over all. Had he denied this, I should have said to him:
+Benedict, you are a fool; you possess intelligence, and you deny it, and
+to whom do you deny it?
+
+In the year 1770, there appeared a man, in some respects far superior to
+Spinoza, as eloquent as the Jewish Hollander is dry, less methodical,
+but infinitely more perspicuous; perhaps equal to him in mathematical
+science; but without the ridiculous affectation of applying mathematical
+reasonings to metaphysical and moral subjects. The man I mean is the
+author of the "System of Nature." He assumed the name of Mirabaud, the
+secretary of the French Academy. Alas! the worthy secretary was
+incapable of writing a single page of the book of our formidable
+opponent. I would recommend all you who are disposed to avail yourselves
+of your reason and acquire instruction, to read the following eloquent
+though dangerous passage from the "System of Nature." (Part II. v. 153.)
+
+It is contended that animals furnish us with a convincing evidence that
+there is some powerful cause of their existence; the admirable
+adaptation of their different parts, mutually receiving and conferring
+aid towards accomplishing their functions, and maintaining in health and
+vigor the entire being, announce to us an artificer uniting power to
+wisdom. Of the power of nature, it is impossible for us to doubt; she
+produces all the animals that we see by the help of combinations of that
+matter, which is in incessant action; the adaptation of the parts of
+these animals is the result of the necessary laws of their nature, and
+of their combination. When the adaptation ceases, the animal is
+necessarily destroyed. What then becomes of the wisdom, the
+intelligence, or the goodness of that alleged cause, to which was
+ascribed all the honor of this boasted adaptation? Those animals of so
+wonderful a structure as to be pronounced the works of an immutable God,
+do not they undergo incessant changes; and do not they end in decay and
+destruction? Where is the wisdom, the goodness, the fore-sight, the
+immutability of an artificer, whose sole object appears to be to derange
+and destroy the springs of those machines which are proclaimed to be
+masterpieces of his power and skill? If this God cannot act otherwise
+than thus, he is neither free nor omnipotent. If his will changes, he is
+not immutable. If he permits machines, which he has endowed with
+sensibility, to experience pain, he is deficient in goodness. If he has
+been unable to render his productions solid and durable, he is deficient
+in skill. Perceiving as we do the decay and ruin not only of all
+animals, but of all the other works of deity, we cannot but inevitably
+conclude, either that everything performed in the course of nature is
+absolutely necessary--the unavoidable result of its imperative and
+insuperable laws, or that the artificer who impels her various
+operations is destitute of plan, of power, of constancy, of skill, and
+of goodness.
+
+"Man, who considers himself the master-work of the Divinity, supplies us
+more readily and completely than any other production, with evidence of
+the incapacity or malignity of his pretended author. In this being,
+possessed of feeling, intuition, and reason, which considers itself as
+the perpetual object of divine partiality, and forms its God on the
+model of itself, we see a machine more changeable, more frail, more
+liable to derangement from its extraordinary complication, than that of
+the coarsest and grossest beings. Beasts, which are destitute of our
+mental powers and acquirements; plants, which merely vegetate; stones,
+which are unendowed with sensation, are, in many respects, beings far
+more favored than man. They are, at least, exempt from distress of mind,
+from the tortures of thought, and corrosions of care, to which the
+latter is a victim. Who would not prefer being a mere unintelligent
+animal, or a senseless stone, when his thoughts revert to the
+irreparable loss of an object dearly beloved? Would it not be infinitely
+more desirable to be an inanimate mass, than the gloomy votary and
+victim of superstition, trembling under the present yoke of his
+diabolical deity, and anticipating infinite torments in a future
+existence? Beings destitute of sensation, life, memory, and thought
+experience no affliction from the idea of what is past, present, or to
+come; they do not believe there is any danger of incurring eternal
+torture for inaccurate reasoning; which is believed, however, by many of
+those favored beings who maintain that the great architect of the world
+has created the universe for themselves.
+
+[Illustration: NATURE IS NOT A WORK]
+
+"Let us not be told that we have no idea of a work without having that
+of the artificer distinguished from the work. _Nature is not a work._
+She has always existed of herself. Every process takes place in her
+bosom. She is an immense manufactory, provided with materials, and she
+forms the instruments by which she acts; all her works are effects of
+her own energy, and of agents or causes which she frames, contains, and
+impels. Eternal, uncreated elements--elements indestructible, ever in
+motion, and combining in exquisite and endless diversity, originate all
+the beings and all the phenomena that we behold; all the effects, good
+or evil, that we feel; the order or disorder which we distinguish,
+merely by different modes in which they affect ourselves; and, in a
+word, all those wonders which excite our meditation and confound our
+reasoning. These elements, in order to effect objects thus comprehensive
+and important, require nothing beyond their own properties, individual
+or combined, and the motion essential to their very existence; and thus
+preclude the necessity of recurring to an unknown artificer, in order to
+arrange, mould, combine, preserve, and dissolve them.
+
+"But, even admitting for a moment, that it is impossible to conceive of
+the universe without an artificer who formed it, and who preserves and
+watches over his work, where shall we place that artificer? Shall he be
+within or without the universe? Is he matter or motion? Or is he mere
+space, nothingness, vacuity? In each of these cases, he will either be
+nothing, or he will be comprehended in nature, and subjected to her
+laws. If he is in nature, I think I see in her only matter in motion,
+and cannot but thence conclude that the agent impelling her is corporeal
+and material, and that he is consequently liable to dissolution. If this
+agent is out of nature, then I have no idea of what place he can occupy,
+nor of an immaterial being, nor of the manner in which a spirit, without
+extension, can operate upon the matter from which it is separated. Those
+unknown tracts of space which imagination has placed beyond the visible
+world may be considered as having no existence for a being who can
+scarcely see to the distance of his own feet; the ideal power which
+inhabits them can never be represented to my mind, unless when my
+imagination combines at random the fantastic colors which it is always
+forced to employ in the world on which I am. In this case, I shall
+merely reproduce in idea what my senses have previously actually
+perceived; and that God, which I, as it were, compel myself to
+distinguish from nature, and to place beyond her circuit, will ever, in
+opposition to all my efforts, necessarily withdraw within it.
+
+"It will be observed and insisted upon by some that if a statue or a
+watch were shown to a savage who had never seen them, he would
+inevitably acknowledge that they were the productions of some
+intelligent agent, more powerful and ingenious than himself; and hence
+it will be inferred that we are equally bound to acknowledge that the
+machine of the universe, that man, that the phenomena of nature, are the
+productions of an agent, whose intelligence and power are far superior
+to our own.
+
+"I answer, in the first place, that we cannot possibly doubt either the
+great power or the great skill of nature; we admire her skill as often
+as we are surprised by the extended, varied and complicated effects
+which we find in those of her works that we take the pains to
+investigate; she is not, however, either more or less skilful in any one
+of her works than in the rest. We no more comprehend how she could
+produce a stone or a piece of metal than how she could produce a head
+organized like that of Newton. We call that man skilful who can perform
+things which we are unable to perform ourselves. Nature can perform
+everything; and when anything exists, it is a proof that she was able to
+make it. Thus, it is only in relation to ourselves that we ever judge
+nature to be skilful; we compare it in those cases with ourselves; and,
+as we possess a quality which we call intelligence, by the aid of which
+we produce works, in which we display our skill, we thence conclude that
+the works of nature, which must excite our astonishment and admiration,
+are not in fact hers, but the productions of an artificer, intelligent
+like ourselves, and whose intelligence we proportion, in our minds, to
+the degree of astonishment excited in us by his works; that is, in fact,
+to our own weakness and ignorance."
+
+See the reply to these arguments under the articles on "Atheism" and
+"God," and in the following section, written long before the "System of
+Nature."
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+If a clock is not made in order to tell the time of the day, I will then
+admit that final causes are nothing but chimeras, and be content to go
+by the name of a final-cause-finder--in plain language, fool--to the end
+of my life.
+
+All the parts, however, of that great machine, the world, seem made for
+one another. Some philosophers affect to deride final causes, which were
+rejected, they tell us, by Epicurus and Lucretius. But it seems to me
+that Epicurus and Lucretius rather merit the derision. They tell you
+that the eye is not made to see; but that, since it was found out that
+eyes were capable of being used for that purpose, to that purpose they
+have been applied. According to them, the mouth is not formed to speak
+and eat, nor the stomach to digest, nor the heart to receive the blood
+from the veins and impel it through the arteries, nor the feet to walk,
+nor the ears to hear. Yet, at the same time, these very shrewd and
+consistent persons admitted that tailors made garments to clothe them,
+and masons built houses to lodge them; and thus ventured to deny
+nature--the great existence, the universal intelligence--what they
+conceded to the most insignificant artificers employed by themselves.
+
+The doctrine of final causes ought certainly to be preserved from being
+abused. We have already remarked that M. le Prieur, in the "Spectator of
+Nature," contends in vain that the tides were attached to the ocean to
+enable ships to enter more easily into their ports, and to preserve the
+water from corruption; he might just as probably and successfully have
+urged that legs were made to wear boots, and noses to bear spectacles.
+
+In order to satisfy ourselves of the truth of a final cause, in any
+particular instance, it is necessary that the effect produced should be
+uniform and invariably in time and place. Ships have not existed in all
+times and upon all seas; accordingly, it cannot be said that the ocean
+was made for ships. It is impossible not to perceive how ridiculous it
+would be to maintain that nature had toiled on from the very beginning
+of time to adjust herself to the inventions of our fortuitous and
+arbitrary arts, all of which are of so late a date in their discovery;
+but it is perfectly clear that if noses were not made for spectacles,
+they were made for smelling, and there have been noses ever since there
+were men. In the same manner, hands, instead of being bestowed for the
+sake of gloves, are visibly destined for all those uses to which the
+metacarpus, the phalanges of the fingers, and the movements of the
+circular muscle of the wrist, render them applicable by us. Cicero, who
+doubted everything else, had no doubt about final causes.
+
+It appears particularly difficult to suppose that those parts of the
+human frame by which the perpetuation of the species is conducted should
+not, in fact, have been intended and destined for that purpose, from
+their mechanism so truly admirable, and the sensation which nature has
+connected with it more admirable still. Epicurus would be at least
+obliged to admit that pleasure is divine, and that that pleasure is a
+final cause, in consequence of which beings, endowed with sensibility,
+but who could never have communicated it to themselves, have been
+incessantly introduced into the world as others have passed away from
+it.
+
+This philosopher, Epicurus, was a great man for the age in which he
+lived. He saw that Descartes denied what Gassendi affirmed and what
+Newton demonstrated--that motion cannot exist without a vacuum. He
+conceived the necessity of atoms to serve as constituent parts of
+invariable species. These are philosophical ideas. Nothing, however,
+was more respectable than the morality of genuine Epicureans; it
+consisted in sequestration from public affairs, which are incompatible
+with wisdom, and in friendship, without which life is but a burden. But
+as to the rest of the philosophy of Epicurus, it appears not to be more
+admissible than the grooved or tubular matter of Descartes. It is, as it
+appears to me, wilfully to shut the eyes and the understanding, and to
+maintain that there is no design in nature; and if there is design,
+there is an intelligent cause--there exists a God.
+
+Some point us to the irregularities of our globe, the volcanoes, the
+plains of moving sand, some small mountains swallowed up in the ocean,
+others raised by earthquakes, etc. But does it follow from the naves of
+your chariot wheel taking fire, that your chariot was not made expressly
+for the purpose of conveying you from one place to another?
+
+The chains of mountains which crown both hemispheres, and more than six
+hundred rivers which flow from the foot of these rocks towards the sea;
+the various streams that swell these rivers in their courses, after
+fertilizing the fields through which they pass; the innumerable
+fountains which spring from the same source, which supply necessary
+refreshment, and growth, and beauty to animal and vegetable life; all
+this appears no more to result from a fortuitous concourse and an
+obliquity of atoms, than the retina which receives the rays of light, or
+the crystalline humor which refracts it, or the drum of the ear which
+admits sound, or the circulation of the blood in our veins, the systole
+and diastole of the heart, the regulating principle of the machine of
+life.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+It would appear that a man must be supposed to have lost his senses
+before he can deny that stomachs are made for digestion, eyes to see,
+and ears to hear.
+
+On the other hand, a man must have a singular partiality for final
+causes, to assert that stone was made for building houses, and that
+silkworms are produced in China that we may wear satins in Europe.
+
+But, it is urged, if God has evidently done one thing by design, he has
+then done all things by design. It is ridiculous to admit Providence in
+the one case and to deny it in the others. Everything that is done was
+foreseen, was arranged. There is no arrangement without an object, no
+effect without a cause; all, therefore, is equally the result, the
+product of the final cause; it is, therefore, as correct to say that
+noses were made to bear spectacles, and fingers to be adorned with
+rings, as to say that the ears were formed to hear sounds, the eyes to
+receive light.
+
+All that this objection amounts to, in my opinion, is that everything is
+the result, nearer or more remote, of a general final cause; that
+everything is the consequence of eternal laws. When the effects are
+invariably the same in all times and places, and when these uniform
+effects are independent of the beings to which they attach, then there
+is visibly a final cause.
+
+All animals have eyes and see; all have ears and hear; all have mouths
+with which they eat; stomachs, or something similar, by which they
+digest their food; all have suitable means for expelling the fæces; all
+have the organs requisite for the continuation of their species; and
+these natural gifts perform their regular course and process without any
+application or intermixture of art. Here are final causes clearly
+established; and to deny a truth so universal would be a perversion of
+the faculty of reason.
+
+But stones, in all times and places, do not constitute the materials of
+buildings. All noses do not bear spectacles; all fingers do not carry a
+ring; all legs are not covered with silk stockings. A silkworm,
+therefore, is not made to cover my legs, exactly as your mouth is made
+for eating, and another part of your person for the "garderobe." There
+are, therefore, we see, immediate effects produced from final causes,
+and effects of a very numerous description, which are remote productions
+from those causes.
+
+Everything belonging to nature is uniform, immutable, and the immediate
+work of its author. It is he who has established the laws by which the
+moon contributes three-fourths to the cause of the flux and reflux of
+the ocean, and the sun the remaining fourth. It is he who has given a
+rotatory motion to the sun, in consequence of which that orb
+communicates its rays of light in the short space of seven minutes and a
+half to the eyes of men, crocodiles, and cats.
+
+But if, after a course of ages, we started the inventions of shears and
+spits, to clip the wool of sheep with the one, and with the other to
+roast in order to eat them, what else can be inferred from such
+circumstances, but that God formed us in such a manner that, at some
+time or other, we could not avoid becoming ingenious and carnivorous?
+
+Sheep, undoubtedly, were not made expressly to be roasted and eaten,
+since many nations abstain from such food with horror. Mankind are not
+created essentially to massacre one another, since the Brahmins, and the
+respectable primitives called Quakers, kill no one. But the clay out of
+which we are kneaded frequently produces massacres, as it produces
+calumnies, vanities, persecutions, and impertinences. It is not
+precisely that the formation of man is the final cause of our madnesses
+and follies, for a final cause is universal, and invariable in every age
+and place; but the horrors and absurdities of the human race are not at
+all the less included in the eternal order of things. When we thresh our
+corn, the flail is the final cause of the separation of the grain. But
+if that flail, while threshing my grain, crushes to death a thousand
+insects, that occurs not by an express and determinate act of my will,
+nor, on the other hand, is it by mere chance; the insects were, on this
+occasion, actually under my flail, and could not but be there.
+
+It is a consequence of the nature of things that a man should be
+ambitious; that he should enroll and discipline a number of other men;
+that he should be a conqueror, or that he should be defeated; but it can
+never be said that the man was created by God to be killed in war.
+
+The organs with which nature has supplied us cannot always be final
+causes in action. The eyes which are bestowed for seeing are not
+constantly open. Every sense has its season for repose. There are some
+senses that are even made no use of. An imbecile and wretched female,
+for example, shut up in a cloister at the age of fourteen years, mars
+one of the final causes of her existence; but the cause, nevertheless,
+equally exists, and whenever it is free it will operate.
+
+
+
+
+FINESSE, FINENESS, ETC.
+
+_Of the Different Significations of the Word._
+
+
+Fineness either in its proper or its figurative sense does not signify
+either light, slender, fine, or of a rare thin texture; this word
+expresses something delicate and finished. Light cloth, soft linen, thin
+lace, or slender galloon, are not always fine.
+
+This word has a relation to the verb "to finish," whence come the
+finishings of art; thus, we say, the finishings of Vanderwerff's pencil
+or of Mieris; we say, a fine horse, fine gold, a fine diamond. A fine
+horse is opposed to a clumsy one; the fine diamond to a false one; fine
+or refined gold to gold mixed with alloy.
+
+Fineness is generally applied to delicate things and lightness of
+manufacture. Although we say a fine horse, we seldom say, "the fineness
+of a horse." We speak of the fineness of hair, lace, or stuff. When by
+this word we should express the fault or wrong use of anything, we add
+the adverb "too"; as--This thread is broken, it was too fine; this stuff
+is too fine for the season.
+
+Fineness or finesse, in a figurative sense, applies to conduct, speech,
+and works of mind. In conduct, finesse always expresses, as in the arts,
+something delicate or subtile; it may sometimes exist without ability,
+but it is very rarely unaccompanied by a little deception; politics
+admit it, and society reproves it.
+
+Finesse is not exactly subtlety; we draw a person into a snare with
+finesse; we escape from it with subtlety. We act with finesse, and we
+play a subtle trick. Distrust is inspired by an unsparing use of
+finesse; yet we almost always deceive ourselves if we too generally
+suspect it.
+
+Finesse, in works of wit, as in conversation, consists in the art of not
+expressing a thought clearly, but leaving it so as to be easily
+perceived. It is an enigma to which people of sense readily find the
+solution.
+
+A chancellor one day offering his protection to parliament, the first
+president turning towards the assembly, said: "Gentlemen, thank the
+chancellor; he has given us more than we demanded of him"--a very witty
+reproof.
+
+Finesse, in conversation and writing, differs from delicacy; the first
+applies equally to piquant and agreeable things, even to blame and
+praise; and still more to indecencies, over which a veil is drawn,
+through which we cannot penetrate without a blush. Bold things may be
+said with finesse.
+
+Delicacy expresses soft and agreeable sentiments and ingenious praise;
+thus finesse belongs more to epigram, and delicacy to madrigal. It is
+delicacy which enters into a lover's jealousies, and not finesse.
+
+The praises given to Louis XIV. by Despréaux are not always equally
+delicate; satires are not always sufficiently ingenious in the way of
+finesse. When Iphigenia, in Racine, has received from her father the
+order never to see Achilles more, she cries: "_Dieux plus doux, vous
+n'aviez demandé que ma vie!_"--"More gentle gods, you only ask my life!"
+The true character of this partakes rather of delicacy than of finesse.
+
+
+
+
+FIRE.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+Is fire anything more than an element which lights, warms, and burns us?
+Is not light always fire, though fire is not always light? And is not
+Boerhaave in the right?
+
+Is not the purest fire extracted from our combustibles, always gross,
+and partaking of the bodies consumed, and very different from elementary
+fire? How is fire distributed throughout nature, of which it is the
+soul?
+
+     _Ignis ubique latet, naturam amplectitur omnem,_
+     _Cuncta parit, renovat, dividit, unit, alit._
+
+Why did Newton, in speaking of rays of light, always say, "_De natura
+radiorum lucis, utrum corpora sint necne non disputamus_"; without
+examining whether they were bodies or not?
+
+Did he only speak geometrically? In that case, this doubt was useless.
+It is evident that he doubted of the nature of elementary fire, and
+doubted with reason.
+
+Is elementary fire a body like others, as earth and water? If it was a
+body of this kind, would it not gravitate like all other matter? Would
+it escape from the luminous body in the right line? Would it have a
+uniform progression? And why does light never move out of a right line
+when it is unimpeded in its rapid course?
+
+May not elementary fire have properties of matter little known to us,
+and properties of substance entirely so? May it not be a medium between
+matter and substances of another kind? And who can say that there are
+not a million of these substances? I do not say that there are, but I
+say it is not proved that there may not be.
+
+It was very difficult to believe about a hundred years ago that bodies
+acted upon one another, not only without touching, and without emission,
+but at great distances; it is, however, found to be true, and is no
+longer doubted. At present, it is difficult to believe that the rays of
+the sun are penetrable by each other, but who knows what may happen to
+prove it?
+
+However that may be, I wish, for the novelty of the thing, that this
+incomprehensible penetrability could be admitted. Light has something so
+divine that we should endeavor to make it a step to the discovery of
+substances still more pure.
+
+Come to my aid, Empedocles and Democritus; come and admire the wonders
+of electricity; see if the sparks which traverse a thousand bodies in
+the twinkling of an eye are of ordinary matter; judge if elementary fire
+does not contract the heart, and communicate that warmth which gives
+life! Judge if this element is not the source of all sensation, and if
+sensation is not the origin of thought; though ignorant and insolent
+pedants have condemned the proposition, as one which should be
+persecuted.
+
+Tell me, if the Supreme Being, who presides over all nature, cannot
+forever preserve these elementary atoms which he has so rarely endowed?
+_"Igneus est ollis vigor et coelestis origo._"
+
+The celebrated Le Cat calls this vivifying fluid "an amphibious being,
+endowed by its author with a superior refinement which links it to
+immaterial beings, and thereby ennobles and elevates it into that medium
+nature which we recognize, and which is the source of all its
+properties."
+
+You are of the opinion of Le Cat? I would be so too if I could; but
+there are so many fools and villains that I dare not. I can only think
+quietly in my own way at Mount Krapak. Let others think as well as they
+are allowed to think, whether at Salamanca or Bergamo.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+_What is Understood by Fire Used Figuratively._
+
+Fire, particularly in poetry, often signifies love, and is employed more
+elegantly in the plural than in the singular. Corneille often says "_un
+beau feu_" for a virtuous and noble love. A man has fire in his
+conversation; that does not mean that he has brilliant and enlightened
+ideas, but lively expressions animated by action.
+
+Fire in writing does not necessarily imply lightness and beauty, but
+vivacity, multiplied figures, and spontaneous ideas. Fire is a merit in
+speech and writing only when it is well managed. It is said that poets
+are animated with a divine fire when they are sublime; genius cannot
+exist without fire, but fire may be possessed without genius.
+
+
+
+
+FIRMNESS.
+
+
+Firmness comes from firm, and has a different signification from
+solidity and hardness; a squeezed cloth, a beaten negro, have firmness
+without being hard or solid.
+
+It must always be remembered that modifications of the soul can only be
+expressed by physical images; we say firmness of soul, and of mind,
+which does not signify that they are harder or more solid than usual.
+
+Firmness is the exercise of mental courage; it means a decided
+resolution; while obstinacy, on the contrary, signifies blindness. Those
+who praise the firmness of Tacitus are not so much in the wrong as P.
+Bouhours pretends; it is an accidental ill-chosen term, which expresses
+energy and strength of thought and of style. It may be said that La
+Bruyère has a firm style, and that many other writers have only a hard
+one.
+
+
+
+
+FLATTERY.
+
+
+I find not one monument of flattery in remote antiquity; there is no
+flattery in Hesiod--none in Homer. Their stories are not addressed to a
+Greek, elevated to some dignity, nor to his lady; as each canto of
+Thomson's "Seasons" is dedicated to some person of rank, or as so many
+forgotten epistles in verse have been dedicated, in England, to
+gentlemen or ladies of quality, with a brief eulogy, and the arms of
+the patron or patroness placed at the head of the work.
+
+Nor is there any flattery in Demosthenes. This way of asking alms
+harmoniously began, if I mistake not, with Pindar. No hand can be
+stretched out more emphatically.
+
+It appears to me that among the Romans great flattery is to be dated
+from the time of Augustus. Julius Cæsar had scarcely time to be
+flattered. There is not, extant, any dedicatory epistle to Sulla,
+Marius, or Carbo, nor to their wives, or their mistresses. I can well
+believe that very bad verses were presented to Lucullus and Pompey; but,
+thank God, we do not have them.
+
+It is a great spectacle to behold Cicero equal in dignity to Cæsar,
+speaking before him as advocate for a king of Bithynia and Lesser
+Armenia, named Deiotarus, accused of laying ambuscades for him, and even
+designing to assassinate him. Cicero begins with acknowledging that he
+is disconcerted in his presence. He calls him the vanquisher of the
+world--"_victorem orbis terrarum_." He flatters him; but this adulation
+does not yet amount to baseness; some sense of shame still remains.
+
+But with Augustus there are no longer any bounds; the senate decrees his
+apotheosis during his lifetime. Under the succeeding emperors this
+flattery becomes the ordinary tribute, and is no longer anything more
+than a style. It is impossible to flatter any one, when the most
+extravagant adulation has become the ordinary currency.
+
+In Europe, we have had no great monuments of flattery before Louis XIV.
+His father, Louis XIII., had very little incense offered him. We find no
+mention of him, except in one or two of Malherbe's odes. There, indeed,
+according to custom, he is called "thou greatest of kings"--as the
+Spanish poets say to the king of Spain, and the English poets (laureate)
+to the king of England; but the better part of the poet's praises is
+bestowed on Cardinal Richelieu, whose soul is great and fearless; who
+practises so well the healing art of government, and who knows how to
+cure all our evils:
+
+     _Dont l'âme toute grande est une âme hardîe,_
+     _Qui pratique si bien l'art de nous secourir,_
+     _Que, pourvu qu'il soit cru, nous n'avons maladie,_
+     _Qu'il ne sache guérir._
+
+Upon Louis XIV. flattery came in a deluge. But he was not like the man
+said to have been smothered by the rose leaves heaped upon him; on the
+contrary, he thrived the more.
+
+Flattery, when it has some plausible pretext, may not be so pernicious
+as it has been thought; it sometimes encourages to great acts; but its
+excess is vicious, like the excess of satire. La Fontaine says, and
+pretends to say it after Æsop:
+
+     _On ne peut trop louer trois sortes de personnes;_
+     _Les dieux, sa maitresse, et son roi._
+     _Æsope le disait; j'y souscris quant à moi;_
+     _Ces sont maximes toujours bonnes._
+
+     Your flattery to three sorts of folks apply:--
+     You cannot say too civil things
+     To gods, to mistresses, and kings;
+     So honest Æsop said--and so say I.
+
+Honest Æsop said no such thing; nor do we find that he flattered any
+king, or any concubine. It must not be thought that kings are in reality
+flattered by all the flatteries that are heaped upon them; for the
+greater number never reach them.
+
+One common folly of orators is that of exhausting themselves in praising
+some prince who will never hear of their praises. But what is most
+lamentable of all is that Ovid should have praised Augustus even while
+he was dating "_de Ponto_."
+
+The perfection of the ridiculous might be found in the compliments which
+preachers address to kings, when they have the happiness of exhibiting
+before their majesties.--"To the reverend Father Gaillard, preacher to
+the king." Ah! most reverend father, do you preach only for the king?
+Are you like the monkey at the fair, which leaps "only for the king?"
+
+
+
+
+FORCE (PHYSICAL).
+
+
+What is "force?" Where does it reside? Whence does it come? Does it
+perish? Or is it ever the same?
+
+It has pleased us to denominate "force" that weight which one body
+exercises upon another. Here is a ball of two hundred pounds' weight on
+this floor; it presses the floor, you say, with a force of two hundred
+pounds. And this you call a "dead force." But are not these words
+"dead" and "force" a little contradictory? Might we not as well say
+"dead alive"--yes and no at once?
+
+This ball "weighs." Whence comes this "weight?" and is this weight a
+"force?" If the ball were not impeded, would it go directly to the
+centre of the earth? Whence has it this incomprehensible property?
+
+It is supported by my floor; and you freely give to my floor the "_vis
+inertiæ_"--"inertiæ" signifying "inactivity," "impotence." Now is it not
+singular that "impotence" should be denominated "force?"
+
+What is the living force which acts in your arm and your leg? What is
+the source of it? How can it be supposed that this force exists when you
+are dead? Does it go and take up its abode elsewhere, as a man goes to
+another house when his own is in ruins?
+
+How can it have been said that there is always the same force in nature?
+There must, then, have been always the same number of men, or of active
+beings equivalent to men. Why does a body in motion communicate its
+force to another body with which it comes in contact?
+
+These are questions which neither geometry, nor mechanics, nor
+metaphysics can answer. Would you arrive at the first principle of the
+force of bodies, and of motion, you must ascend to a still superior
+principle. Why is there "anything?"
+
+
+
+
+FORCE--STRENGTH.
+
+
+These words have been transplanted from simple to figurative speech.
+They are applied to all the parts of the body that are in motion, in
+action--the force of the heart, which some have made four hundred
+pounds, and some three ounces; the force of the viscera, the lungs, the
+voice; the force of the arm.
+
+The metaphor which has transported these words into morals has made them
+express a cardinal virtue. Strength, in this sense, is the courage to
+support adversity, and to undertake virtuous and difficult actions; it
+is the "_animi fortitudo_."
+
+The strength of the mind is penetration and depth--"_ingenii vis_."
+Nature gives it as she gives that of the body; moderate labor increases
+and excessive labor diminishes it.
+
+The force of an argument consists in a clear exposition of
+clearly-exhibited proofs, and a just conclusion; with mathematical
+theorems it has nothing to do; because the evidence of a demonstration
+can be made neither more nor less; only it may be arrived at by a longer
+or a shorter path--a simpler or more complicated method. It is in
+doubtful questions that the force of reasoning is truly applicable.
+
+The force of eloquence is not merely a train of just and vigorous
+reasoning, which is not incompatible with dryness; this force, requires
+floridity, striking images, and energetic expressions. Thus it has been
+said, that the sermons of Bourdaloue have force, those of Massillon
+more elegance. Verses may have strength, and want every other beauty.
+The strength of a line in our language consists principally in saying
+something in each hemistich.
+
+Strength in painting is the expression of the muscles, which, by feeling
+touches, are made to appear under the flesh that covers them. There is
+too much strength when the muscles are too strongly articulated. The
+attitudes of the combatants have great strength in the battles of
+Constantine, drawn by Raphael and Julio Romano; and in those of Cæsar,
+painted by Lebrun. Inordinate strength is harsh in painting and
+bombastic in poetry.
+
+Some philosophers have asserted that force is a property inherent in
+matter; that each invisible particle, or rather _monad_, is endowed with
+an active force; but it would be as difficult to demonstrate this
+assertion as it would be to prove that whiteness is a quality inherent
+in matter, as the Trévoux dictionary says in the article "Inherent."
+
+The strength of every animal has arrived at the highest when the animal
+has attained its full growth. It decreases when the muscles no longer
+receive the same quantity of nourishment: and this quantity ceases to be
+the same when the animal spirits no longer communicate to the muscles
+their accustomed motion. It is probable that the animal spirits are of
+fire, inasmuch as old men want motion and strength in proportion as they
+want warmth.
+
+
+
+
+FRANCHISE.
+
+
+A word which always gives an idea of liberty in whatever sense it is
+taken; a word derived from the Franks, who were always free. It is so
+ancient, that when the Cid besieged and took Toledo, in the eleventh
+century, franchies or franchises were given to all the French who went
+on this expedition, and who established themselves at Toledo. All walled
+cities had franchises, liberties, and privileges, even in the greatest
+anarchy of feudal power. In all countries possessing assemblies or
+states, the sovereign swore, on his accession, to guard their liberties.
+
+This name, which has been given generally to the rights of the people,
+to immunities, and to sanctuaries or asylums, has been more particularly
+applied to the quarters of the ambassadors of the court of Rome. It was
+a plot of ground around their palaces, which was larger or smaller
+according to the will of the ambassador. The ground was an asylum for
+criminals, who could not be there pursued. This franchise was
+restricted, under Innocent XI. to the inside of their palaces. Churches
+and convents had the same privileges in Italy, but not in other states.
+There are in Paris several places of sanctuary, in which debtors cannot
+be seized for their debts by common justice, and where mechanics can
+pursue their trades without being freemen. Mechanics have this privilege
+in the Faubourg St. Antoine, but it is not an asylum like the Temple.
+
+The word "franchise," which usually expresses the liberties of a nation,
+city, or person, is sometimes used to signify liberty of speech, of
+counsel, or of a law proceeding; but there is a great difference between
+speaking with frankness and speaking with liberty. In a speech to a
+superior, liberty is a studied or excessive boldness--frankness
+outstepping its just bounds. To speak with liberty is to speak without
+fear; to speak with frankness is to conduct yourself openly and nobly.
+To speak with too much liberty is to become audacious; to speak with too
+much frankness is to be too open-hearted.
+
+
+
+
+FRANCIS XAVIER.
+
+
+It would not be amiss to know something true concerning the celebrated
+Francis Xavero, whom we call Xavier, surnamed the Apostle of the Indies.
+Many people still imagine that he established Christianty along the
+whole southern coast of India, in a score of islands, and above all in
+Japan. But thirty years ago, even a doubt on the subject was hardly to
+be tolerated in Europe. The Jesuits have not hesitated to compare him to
+St. Paul. His travels and miracles had been written in part by
+Tursellinus and Orlandini, by Levena, and by Partoli, all Jesuits, but
+very little known in France; and the less people were acquainted with
+the details the greater was his reputation.
+
+When the Jesuit Bouhours composed his history, he (Bouhours) was
+considered as a man of very enlightened mind, and was living in the best
+company in Paris; I do not mean the company of Jesus, but that of men of
+the world the most distinguished for intellect and knowledge. No one
+wrote in a purer or more unaffected style; it was even proposed in the
+French Academy that it should trespass against the rules of its
+institution, by receiving Father Bouhours into its body. He had another
+great advantage in the influence of his order, which then, by an almost
+inconceivable illusion, governed all Catholic princes.
+
+Sound criticism was, it is true, beginning to rear its head; but its
+progress was slow: men were, in general, more anxious to write ably than
+to write what was true.
+
+Bouhours wrote the lives of St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier almost
+without encountering a single objection. Even his comparison of St.
+Ignatius to Cæsar, and Xavier to Alexander, passed without
+animadversion; it was tolerated as a flower of rhetoric.
+
+I have seen in the Jesuit's college, Rue St. Jacques, a picture twelve
+feet long and twelve high, representing Ignatius and Xavier ascending to
+heaven, each in a magnificent chariot drawn by four milk-white horses;
+and above, the Eternal Father, adorned with a fine white beard
+descending to His waist, with Jesus and the Virgin beside him; the Holy
+Ghost beneath them, in the form of a dove; and angels joining their
+hands, and bending down to receive Father Ignatius and Father Xavier.
+
+Had anyone publicly made a jest of this picture, the reverend Father La
+Chaise, confessor to the king, would infallibly have had the
+sacrilegious scoffer honored with a _lettre de cachet_.
+
+It cannot be denied that Francis Xavier is comparable to Alexander,
+inasmuch as they both went to India--so is Ignatius to Cæsar, both
+having been in Gaul. But Xavier, the vanquisher of the devil, went far
+beyond Alexander, the conqueror of Darius. How gratifying it is to see
+him going, in the capacity of a volunteer converter, from Spain into
+France, from France to Rome, from Rome to Lisbon, and from Lisbon to
+Mozambique, after making the tour of Africa. He stays a long time at
+Mozambique, where he receives from God the gift of prophecy: he then
+proceeds to Melinda, where he disputes on the Koran with the Mahometans,
+who doubtless understand his religion as well as he understands theirs,
+and where he even finds caciques, although they are to be found nowhere
+but in America. The Portuguese vessel arrives at the island of Zocotora,
+which is unquestionably that of the Amazons: there he converts all the
+islanders, and builds a church. Thence he reaches Goa, where he finds a
+pillar on which St. Thomas had engraved, that one day St. Xavier should
+come and re-establish the Christian religion, which had flourished of
+old in India. Xavier has no difficulty whatever in perusing the ancient
+characters, whether Indian or Hebrew, in which this prophecy is
+expressed. He forthwith takes up a hand-bell, assembles all the little
+boys around him, explains to them the creed, and baptizes them--but his
+great delight was to marry the Indians to their mistresses.
+
+From Goa he speeds to Cape Comorin, to the fishing coast, to the kingdom
+of Travancore. His greatest anxiety, on arriving in any country, is to
+quit it. He embarks in the first Portuguese ship he finds, whithersoever
+it is bound, it matters not to Xavier; provided only that he is
+travelling somewhere, he is content. He is received through charity, and
+returns two or three times to Goa, to Cochin, to Cori, to Negapatam, to
+Meliapour. A vessel is departing for Malacca, and Xavier accordingly
+takes his passage for Malacca, in great despair that he has not yet had
+an opportunity of seeing Siam, Pegu, and Tonquin. We find him in the
+island of Sumatra, at Borneo, at Macassar, in the Moluccas, and
+especially at Ternate and Amboyna. The king of Ternate had, in his
+immense seraglio, a hundred women in the capacity of wives, and seven or
+eight hundred in that of concubines. The first thing Xavier does is to
+turn them all out. Please to observe that the island of Ternate is two
+leagues across.
+
+Thence finding another Portugese vessel bound for Ceylon, he returns to
+Ceylon, where he makes various excursions to Goa and to Cochin. The
+Portuguese were already trading to Japan. A ship sails for that country:
+Xavier takes care to embark in it, and visits all the Japan islands. In
+short (says the Jesuit Bouhours), the whole length of Xavier's routes,
+joined together, would reach several times around the globe.
+
+Be it observed, that he set out on his travels in 1542, and died in
+1552. If he had time to learn the languages of all the nations he
+visited, it was no trifling miracle: if he had the gift of tongues, it
+was a greater miracle still. But unfortunately, in several of his
+letters, he says that he is obliged to employ an interpreter; and in
+others he acknowledges that he finds extreme difficulty in learning the
+Japanese language, which he cannot pronounce.
+
+The Jesuit Bouhours, in giving some of his letters, has no doubt that
+"St. Francis Xavier had the gift of tongues"; but he acknowledges that
+"he had it not always." "He had it," says he, "on several occasions;
+for, without having learned the Chinese tongue, he preached to the
+Chinese every morning at Amanguchi, which is the capital of a province
+in Japan."
+
+He must have been perfectly acquainted with all the languages of the
+East; for he made songs in them of the Paternoster, Ave-Maria, and
+Credo, for the instruction of the little boys and girls.
+
+But the best of all is, that this man, who had occasion for a dragoman,
+spoke every tongue at once, like the apostles; and when he spoke
+Portuguese, in which language Bouhours acknowledges that the saint
+explained himself very ill, the Indians, the Chinese, the Japanese, the
+inhabitants of Ceylon and of Sumatra, all understood him perfectly.
+
+One day in particular, when he was preaching on the immateriality of the
+soul, the motion of the planets, the eclipses of the sun and moon, the
+rainbow, sin and grace, paradise and purgatory, he made himself
+understood to twenty persons of different nations.
+
+Is it asked how such a man could make so many converts in Japan? The
+simple answer is that he did not make any; but other Jesuits, who staid
+a long time in the country, by favor of the treaties between the kings
+of Portugal and the emperors of Japan, converted so many people, that a
+civil war ensued, which is said to have cost the lives of nearly four
+hundred thousand men. This is the most noted prodigy that the
+missionaries have worked in Japan.
+
+But those of Francis Xavier are not without their merit. Among his host
+of miracles, we find no fewer than eight children raised from the dead.
+"Xavier's greatest miracle," says the Jesuit Bouhours, "was not his
+raising so many of the dead to life, but his not himself dying of
+fatigue."
+
+But the pleasantest of his miracles is, that having dropped his crucifix
+into the sea, near the island of Baranura, which I am inclined to think
+was the island of Barataria, a crab came, four-and-twenty hours after,
+bringing the cane between its claws.
+
+The most brilliant of all, and after which no other deserves to be
+related, is that in a storm which lasted three days, he was constantly
+in two ships, a hundred and fifty leagues apart, and served one of them
+as a pilot. The truth of this miracle was attested by all the
+passengers, who could neither deceive nor be deceived.
+
+Yet all this was written seriously and with success in the age of Louis
+XIV., in the age of the "Provincial Letters," of Racine's tragedies, of
+"Bayle's Dictionary," and of so many other learned works.
+
+It would appear to be a sort of miracle that a man of sense, like
+Bouhours, should have committed such a mass of extravagance to the
+press, if we did not know to what excesses men can be carried by the
+corporate spirit in general, and the monachal spirit in particular. We
+have more than two hundred volumes entirely in this taste, compiled by
+monks; but what is most to be lamented is, that the enemies of the monks
+also compile. They compile more agreeably, and are read. It is most
+deplorable that, in nineteen-twentieths of Europe, there is no longer
+that profound respect and just veneration for the monks which is still
+felt for them in some of the villages of Aragon and Calabria.
+
+The miracles of St. Francis Xavier, the achievements of Don Quixote,
+the Comic Romance, and the convulsionaries of St. Medard, have an equal
+claim on our admiration and reverence.
+
+After speaking of Francis Xavier it would be useless to discuss the
+history of the other Francises. If you would be instructed thoroughly,
+consult the conformities of St. Francis of Assisi.
+
+Since the fine history of St. Francis Xavier by the Jesuit Bouhours, we
+have had the history of St. Francis Régis by the Jesuit Daubenton,
+confessor to Philip V. of Spain: but this is small-beer after brandy. In
+the history of the blessed Régis, there is not even a single
+resuscitation.
+
+
+
+
+FRANKS--FRANCE--FRENCH
+
+
+Italy has always preserved its name, notwithstanding the pretended
+establishment of Æneas, which should have left some traces of the
+language, characters, and manners of Phrygia, if he ever came with
+Achates and so many others, into the province of Rome, then almost a
+desert. The Goths, Lombards, Franks, Allemani or Germans, who have by
+turns invaded Italy, have at least left it its name.
+
+The Tyrians, Africans, Romans, Vandals, Visigoths, and Saracens, have,
+one after the other, been masters of Spain, yet the name of Spain
+exists. Germany has also always preserved its own name; it has merely
+joined that of Allemagne to it, which appellation it did not receive
+from any conqueror.
+
+The Gauls are almost the only people in the west who have lost their
+name. This name was originally Walch or Welsh; the Romans always
+substituted a G for the W, which is barbarous: of "Welsh" they made
+Galli, Gallia. They distinguished the Celtic, the Belgic, and the
+Aquitanic Gaul, each of which spoke a different jargon.
+
+Who were, and whence came these Franks, who in such small numbers and
+little time possessed themselves of all the Gauls, which in ten years
+Cæsar could not entirely reduce? I am reading an author who commences by
+these words: "The Franks from whom we descend." ... Ha! my friend, who
+has told you that you descend in a right line from a Frank? Clovodic,
+whom we call Clovis, probably had not more than twenty thousand men,
+badly clothed and armed, when he subjugated about eight or ten millions
+of Welsh or Gauls, held in servitude by three or four Roman legions. We
+have not a single family in France which can furnish, I do not say the
+least proof, but the least probability, that it had its origin from a
+Frank.
+
+When the pirates of the Baltic Sea came, to the number of seven or eight
+thousand, to give Normandy in fief, and Brittany in _arrière fief_, did
+they, leave any archives by which it may be seen whether they were the
+fathers of all the Normans of the present day?
+
+It has been a long time believed that the Franks came from the Trojans.
+Ammianus Marcellinus, who lived in the fourth century, says: "According
+to several ancient writers, troops of fugitive Trojans established
+themselves on the borders of the Rhine, then a desert." As to Æneas, he
+might easily have sought an asylum at the extremity of the
+Mediterranean, but Francus, the son of Hector, had too far to travel to
+go towards Düsseldorf, Worms, Solm, Ehrenbreitstein.
+
+Fredegarius doubts not that the Franks at first retired into Macedonia,
+and carried arms under Alexander, after having fought under Priam; on
+which alleged facts the monk Otfried compliments the emperor, Louis the
+German.
+
+The geographer of Ravenna, less fabulous, assigns the first habitation
+of the horde of Franks among the Cimbrians, beyond the Elbe, towards the
+Baltic Sea. These Franks might well be some remains of these barbarian
+Cimbri defeated by Marius; and the learned Leibnitz is of this opinion.
+
+It is very certain that, in the time of Constantine, beyond the Rhine,
+there were hordes of Franks or Sicambri, who lived by pillage. They
+assembled under bandit captains, chiefs whom historians have had the
+folly to call kings. Constantine himself pursued them to their haunts,
+caused several to be hanged, and others to be delivered to wild beasts,
+in the amphitheatre of Trier, for his amusement. Two of their pretended
+kings perished in this manner, at which the panegyrists of Constantine
+are in ecstasies.
+
+The Salic law, written, it is said, by these barbarians, is one of the
+absurd chimeras with which we have always been pestered. It would be
+very strange if the Franks had written such a considerable code in their
+marshes, and the French had not any written usages until the close of
+the reign of Charles VII. It might as well be said that the Algonquins
+and Chicachas had written laws. Men are never governed by authentic
+laws, consigned to public records, until they have been assembled into
+cities, and have a regular police, archives, and all that characterizes
+a civilized nation. When you find a code in a nation which was barbarous
+at the time it was written, who lived upon rapine and pillage, and which
+had not a walled town, you may be sure that this code is a pretended
+one, which has been made in much later times. Fallacies and suppositions
+never obliterate this truth from the minds of the wise.
+
+What is more ridiculous still, this Salic law has been given to us in
+Latin; as if savages, wandering beyond the Rhine, had learnt the Latin
+language. It is supposed to have been first digested by Clovis, and it
+ran thus: "While the illustrious nation of the Franks was still
+considered barbarous, the heads of this nation dictated the Salic law.
+They chose among themselves four chiefs, Visogast, Bodogast, Sologast,
+Vindogast"--taking, according to La Fontaine's fable, the names of
+places for those of men:
+
+     _Notre magot prit pour ce coup_
+     _Le nom d'un port pour un nom d'homme._
+
+These names are those of some Frank cantons in the province of Worms.
+Whatever may be the epoch in which the customs denominated the Salic law
+were constructed on an ancient tradition, it is very clear that the
+Franks were not great legislators.
+
+What is the original meaning of the word "Frank?" That is a question of
+which we know nothing, and which above a hundred authors have endeavored
+to find out. What is the meaning of Hun, Alan, Goth, Welsh, Picard? And
+what do these words signify?
+
+Were the armies of Clovis all composed of Franks? It does not appear so.
+Childeric the Frank had made inroads as far as Tournay. It is said that
+Clovis was the son of Childeric, and Queen Bazine, the wife of King
+Bazin. Now Bazin and Bazine are assuredly not German names, and we have
+never seen the least proof that Clovis was their son. All the German
+cantons elected their chiefs, and the province of Franks had no doubt
+elected Clovis as they had done his father. He made his expedition
+against the Gauls, as all the other barbarians had undertaken theirs
+against the Roman Empire.
+
+Do you really and truly believe that the Herulian Odo, surnamed Acer by
+the Romans, and known to us by the name of Odoacer, had only Herulians
+in his train, and that Genseric conducted Vandals alone into Africa? All
+the wretches without talent or profession, who have nothing to lose, do
+they not always join the first captain of robbers who raises the
+standard of destruction?
+
+As soon as Clovis had the least success, his troops were no doubt joined
+by all the Belgians who panted for booty; and this army is nevertheless
+called the army of Franks. The expedition is very easy. The Visigoths
+had already invaded one-third of Gaul, and the Burgundians another. The
+rest submitted to Clovis. The Franks divided the land of the vanquished,
+and the Welsh cultivated it.
+
+The word "Frank" originally signified a free possessor, while the others
+were slaves. Hence come the words "franchise," and "to enfranchise"--"I
+make you a Frank," "I render you a free man." Hence, _francalenus_,
+holding freely; _frank aleu_, _frank dad_, _frank chamen_, and so many
+other terms half Latin and half barbarian, which have so long composed
+the miserable patois spoken in France.
+
+Hence, also, a franc in gold or silver to express the money of the king
+of the Franks, which did not appear until a long time after, but which
+reminds us of the origin of the monarchy. We still say twenty francs,
+twenty livres, which signifies nothing in itself; it gives no idea of
+the weight or value of the money, being only a vague expression, by
+which ignorant people have been continually deceived, not knowing really
+how much they receive or how much they pay.
+
+Charlemagne did not consider himself as a Frank; he was born in
+Austrasia, and spoke the German language. He was of the family of
+Arnold, bishop of Metz, preceptor to Dagobert. Now it is not probable
+that a man chosen for a preceptor was a Frank. He made the greatest
+glory of the most profound ignorance, and was acquainted only with the
+profession of arms. But what gives most weight to the opinion that
+Charlemagne regarded the Franks as strangers to him is the fourth
+article of one of his capitularies on his farms. "If the Franks," said
+he, "commit any ravages on our possessions, let them be judged according
+to their laws."
+
+The Carlovingian race always passed for German: Pope Adrian IV., in his
+letter to the archbishops of Mentz, Cologne, and Trier, expresses
+himself in these remarkable terms: "The emperor was transferred from the
+Greeks to the Germans. Their king was not emperor until after he had
+been crowned by the pope.... all that the emperor possessed he held from
+us. And as Zacharius gave the Greek Empire to the Germans, we can give
+that of the Germans to the Greeks."
+
+However, France having been divided into eastern and western, and the
+eastern being Austrasia, this name of France prevailed so far, that even
+in the time of the Saxon emperors, the court of Constantinople always
+called them pretended Frank emperors, as may be seen in the letters of
+Bishop Luitgrand, sent from Rome to Constantinople.
+
+_Of the French Nation._
+
+When the Franks established themselves in the country of the first
+Welsh, which the Romans called Gallia, the nation was composed of
+ancient Celts or Gauls, subjugated by Cæsar, Roman families who were
+established there, Germans who had already emigrated there, and finally
+of the Franks, who had rendered themselves masters of the country under
+their chief Clovis. While the monarchy existed, which united Gaul and
+Germany, all the people, from the source of the Weser to the seas of
+Gaul, bore the name of Franks. But when at the congress of Verdun, in
+843, under Charles the Bald, Germany and Gaul were separated, the name
+of Franks remained to the people of western France, which alone retained
+the name of France.
+
+The name of French was scarcely known until towards the tenth century.
+The foundation of the nation is of Gallic families, and traces of the
+character of the ancient Gauls have always existed.
+
+Indeed, every people has its character, as well as every man; and this
+character is generally formed of all the resemblances caused by nature
+and custom among the inhabitants of the varieties which distinguish
+them. Thus French character, genius, and wit, result from that which has
+been common to the different provinces in the kingdom. The people of
+Guienne and those of Normandy differ much; there is, however, found in
+them the French genius, which forms a nation of these different
+provinces, and distinguishes them from the Indians and Germans. Climate
+and soil evidently imprint unchangeable marks on men, as well as on
+animals and plants. Those which depend on government, religion, and
+education are different. That is the knot which explains how people have
+lost one part of their ancient character and preserved the other. A
+people who formerly conquered half the world are no longer recognized
+under sacerdotal government, but the seeds of their ancient greatness of
+soul still exist, though hidden beneath weakness.
+
+In the same manner the barbarous government of the Turks has enervated
+the Egyptians and the Greeks, without having been able to destroy the
+original character or temper of their minds.
+
+The present character of the French is the same as Cæsar ascribed to the
+Gauls--prompt to resolve, ardent to combat, impetuous in attack, and
+easily discouraged. Cæsar, Agatius, and others say, that of all the
+barbarians the Gauls were the most polished. They are still in the most
+civilized times the model of politeness to all their neighbors, though
+they occasionally discover the remains of their levity, petulance, and
+barbarity.
+
+The inhabitants of the coasts of France were always good seamen; the
+people of Guienne always compose the best infantry; "those who inhabit
+the provinces of Blois and Tours are not," says Tasso, "robust and
+indefatigable, but bland and gentle, like the land which they inhabit."
+
+     _.... Gente robusta, e faticosa,_
+     _La terra molle, e lieta, e dilettosa_
+     _Simili a se gli abitator, produce._
+
+But how can we reconcile the character of the Parisians of our day with
+that which the Emperor Julian, the first of princes and men after Marcus
+Aurelius, gave to the Parisians of his time?--"I love this people," says
+he in his "_Misopogon_," "because they are serious and severe like
+myself." This seriousness, which seems at present banished from an
+immense city become the centre of pleasure, then reigned in a little
+town destitute of amusements: in this respect the spirit of the
+Parisians has changed notwithstanding the climate.
+
+The affluence, opulence, and idleness of the people who may occupy
+themselves with pleasures and the arts, and not with the government,
+have given a new turn of mind to a whole nation.
+
+Further, how is it to be explained by what degrees this people have
+passed from the fierceness which characterized them in the time of King
+John, Charles VI., Charles IX., Henry III., and Henry IV., to the soft
+facility of manners for which they are now the admiration of Europe? It
+is that the storms of government and religion forced constitutional
+vivacity into paroxysms of faction and fanaticism; and that this same
+vivacity, which always will exist, has at present no object but the
+pleasures of society. The Parisian is impetuous in his pleasures as he
+formerly was in his fierceness. The original character which is caused
+by the climate is always the same. If at present he cultivates the
+arts, of which he was so long deprived, it is not that he has another
+mind, since he has not other organs; but it is that he has more relief,
+and this relief has not been created by himself, as by the Greeks and
+Florentines, among whom the arts flourished like the natural fruits of
+their soil. The Frenchman has only received them, but having happily
+cultivated and adopted these exotics, he has almost perfected them.
+
+The French government was originally that of all the northern
+nations--of all those whose policy was regulated in general assemblies
+of the nation. Kings were the chief of these assemblies; and this was
+almost the only administration of the French in the first two
+generations, before Charles the Simple.
+
+When the monarchy was dismembered, in the decline of the Carlovingian
+race, when the kingdom of Aries arose, and the provinces were occupied
+by vassals little dependent on the crown, the name of French was more
+restricted. Under Hugh Capet, Henry, and Philip, the people on this side
+the Loire only, were called French. There was then seen a great
+diversity of manners and of laws in the provinces held from the crown of
+France. The particular lords who became the masters of these provinces
+introduced new customs into their new states. A Breton and a Fleming
+have at present some conformity, notwithstanding the difference of
+their character, which they hold from the sun and the climate, but
+originally there was not the least similitude between them.
+
+It is only since the time of Francis I. that there has been any
+uniformity in manners and customs. The court, at this time, first began
+to serve for a model to the United Provinces; but in general,
+impetuosity in war, and a lax discipline, always formed the predominant
+character of the nation.
+
+Gallantry and politeness began to distinguish the French under Francis
+I. Manners became odious after the death of Francis II. However, in the
+midst of their horrors, there was always a politeness at court which the
+Germans and English endeavored to imitate. The rest of Europe, in aiming
+to resemble the French, were already jealous of them. A character in one
+of Shakespeare's comedies says that it is difficult to be polite without
+having been at the court of France.
+
+Though the nation has been taxed with frivolity by Cæsar, and by all
+neighboring nations, yet this kingdom, so long dismembered, and so often
+ready to sink, is united and sustained principally by the wisdom of its
+negotiations, address, and patience; but above all, by the divisions of
+Germany and England. Brittany alone has been united to the kingdom by a
+marriage; Burgundy by right of fee, and by the ability of Louis XI.;
+Dauphiny by a donation, which was the fruit of policy; the county of
+Toulouse by a grant, maintained by an army; Provence by money. One
+treaty of peace has given Alsace, another Lorraine. The English have
+been driven from France, notwithstanding the most signal victories,
+because the kings of France have known how to temporize, and profit on
+all favorable occasions;--all which proves, that if the French youth are
+frivolous, the men of riper age, who govern it, have always been wise.
+Even at present the magistracy are severe in manners, as in the time of
+the Emperor Julian. If the first successes in Italy, in the time of
+Charles VIII., were owing to the warlike impetuosity of the nation, the
+disgraces which followed them were caused by the blindness of a court
+which was composed of young men alone. Francis I. was only unfortunate
+in his youth, when all was governed by favorites of his own age, and he
+rendered his kingdom more flourishing at a more advanced age.
+
+The French have always used the same arms as their neighbors, and have
+nearly the same discipline in war, but were the first who discarded the
+lance and pike. The battle of Ivry discouraged the use of lances, which
+were soon abolished, and under Louis XIV. pikes were also discontinued.
+They wore tunics and robes until the sixteenth century. Under Louis the
+Young they left off the custom of letting the beards grow, and retook to
+it under Francis I. Only under Louis XIV. did they begin to shave the
+entire face. Their dress is continually changing, and at the end of each
+century the French might take the portraits of their grandfathers for
+those of foreigners.
+
+
+
+
+FRAUD.
+
+_Whether pious Frauds should be practised upon the People._
+
+Once upon a time the fakir Bambabef met one of the disciples of
+Confutzee (whom we call Confucius), and this disciple was named Whang.
+Bambabef maintained that the people require to be deceived, and Whang
+asserted that we should never deceive any one. Here is a sketch of their
+dispute:
+
+BAMBABEF.--We must imitate the Supreme Being, who does not show us
+things as they are. He makes us see the sun with a diameter of two or
+three feet, although it is a million of times larger than the earth. He
+makes us see the moon and the stars affixed to one and the same blue
+surface, while they are at different elevations; he chooses that a
+square tower should appear round to us at a distance; he chooses that
+fire should appear to us to be hot, although it is neither hot nor cold;
+in short, he surrounds us with errors, suitable to our nature.
+
+WHANG.--What you call error is not so. The sun, such as it is, placed at
+millions of millions of lis from our globe, is not that which we see,
+that which we really perceive: we perceive only the sun which is painted
+on our retina, at a determinate angle. Our eyes were not given us to
+know sizes and distances: to know these, other aids and other
+operations are necessary.
+
+Bambabef seemed much astonished at this position. Whang, being very
+patient, explained to him the theory of optics; and Bambabef, having
+some conception, was convinced by the demonstrations of the disciple of
+Confucius. He then resumed in these terms:
+
+BAMBABEF.--If God does not, as I thought, deceive us by the ministry of
+our senses, you will at least acknowledge that our physicians are
+constantly deceiving children for their good. They tell them that they
+are giving them sugar, when in reality they are giving them rhubarb. I,
+a fakir, may then deceive the people, who are as ignorant as children.
+
+WHANG.--I have two sons; I have never deceived them. When they have been
+sick, I have said to them: "Here is a nauseous medicine; you must have
+the courage to take it; if it were pleasant, it would injure you." I
+have never suffered their nurses and tutors to make them afraid of
+ghosts, goblins, and witches. I have thereby made them wise and
+courageous citizens.
+
+BAMBABEF.--The people are not born so happily as your family.
+
+WHANG.--Men all nearly resemble one another; they are born with the same
+dispositions. Their nature ought not to be corrupted.
+
+BAMBABEF.--We teach them errors, I own; but it is for their good. We
+make them believe that if they do not buy our blessed nails, if they do
+not expiate their sins by giving us money, they will, in another life,
+become post-horses, dogs, or lizards. This intimidates them, and they
+become good people.
+
+WHANG.--Do you not see that you are perverting these poor folks? There
+are among them many more than you think there are who reason, who make a
+jest of your miracles and your superstitions; who see very clearly that
+they will not be turned into lizards, nor into post-horses. What is the
+consequence? They have good sense enough to perceive that you talk to
+them very impertinently; but they have not enough to elevate themselves
+to a religion pure and untrammelled by superstition like ours. Their
+passions make them think there is no religion, because the only one that
+is taught them is ridiculous: thus you become guilty of all the vices
+into which they plunge.
+
+BAMBABEF.--Not at all, for we teach them none but good morals.
+
+WHANG.--The people would stone you if you taught impure morals. Men are
+so constituted that they like very well to do evil, but they will not
+have it preached to them. But a wise morality should not be mixed up
+with absurd fables: for by these impostures, which you might do without,
+you weaken that morality which you are forced to teach.
+
+BAMBABEF.--What! do you think that truth can be taught to the people
+without the aid of fables?
+
+WHANG.--I firmly believe it. Our literati are made of the same stuff as
+our tailors, our weavers, and our laborers. They worship a creating,
+rewarding, and avenging God. They do not sully their worship by absurd
+systems, nor by extravagant ceremonies. There are much fewer crimes
+among the lettered than among the people; why should we not condescend
+to instruct our working classes as we do our literati?
+
+BAMBABEF.--That would be great folly; as well might you wish them to
+have the same politeness, or to be all jurisconsults. It is neither
+possible nor desirable. There must be white bread for the master, and
+brown for the servant.
+
+WHANG.--I own that men should not all have the same science; but there
+are things necessary to all. It is necessary that each one should be
+just; and the surest way of inspiring all men with justice is to inspire
+them with religion without superstition.
+
+BAMBABEF.--That is a fine project, but it is impracticable. Do you think
+it is sufficient for men to believe in a being that rewards and
+punishes? You have told me that the more acute among the people often
+revolt against fables. They will, in like manner, revolt against truth.
+They will say: Who shall assure me that God rewards and punishes? Where
+is the proof? What mission have you? What miracle have you worked that I
+should believe in you? They will laugh at you much more than at me.
+
+WHANG.--Your error is this: You imagine that men will spurn an idea that
+is honest, likely, and useful to every one; an idea which accords with
+human reason, because they reject things which are dishonest, absurd,
+useless, dangerous, and shocking to good sense.
+
+The people are much disposed to believe their magistrates; and when
+their magistrates propose to them only a rational belief, they embrace
+it willingly. There is no need of prodigies to believe in a just God,
+who reads the heart of man: this is an idea too natural, too necessary,
+to be combated. It is not necessary to know precisely how God rewards
+and punishes: to believe in His justice is enough. I assure you that I
+have seen whole towns with scarcely any other tenet; and that in them I
+have seen the most virtue.
+
+BAMBABEF.--Take heed what you say. You will find philosophers in these
+times, who will deny both pains and rewards.
+
+WHANG.--But you will acknowledge that these philosophers will much more
+strongly deny your inventions; so you will gain nothing by that.
+Supposing that there are philosophers who do not agree with my
+principles, they are not the less honest men; they do not the less
+cultivate virtue, which should be embraced through love, and not through
+fear. Moreover, I maintain that no philosopher can ever be assured that
+Providence does not reserve pains for the wicked, and rewards for the
+good. For, if they ask me who has told me that God punishes, I shall ask
+them who has told them that God does not punish. In short, I maintain
+that the philosophers, far from contradicting, will aid me. Will you be
+a philosopher?
+
+BAMBABEF.--With all my heart. But do not tell the fakirs. And let us,
+above all, remember that if a philosopher would be of service to human
+society, he must announce a God.
+
+
+
+
+FREE-WILL.
+
+
+From the commencement of the time in which men began to reason,
+philosophers have agitated this question, which theologians have
+rendered unintelligible by their absurd subtleties upon grace. Locke is
+perhaps the first who, without having the arrogance of announcing a
+general principle, has examined human nature by analysis. It has been
+disputed for three thousand years, whether the will is free or not;
+Locke shows that the question is absurd, and that liberty cannot belong
+to the will any more than color and motion.
+
+What is meant by the expression to be free? It signifies power, or
+rather it has no sense at all. To say that the will _can_, is in itself
+as ridiculous as if we said that it is yellow, or blue, round, or
+square.
+
+Will is will, and liberty is power. Let us gradually examine the chain
+of what passes within us, without confusing our minds with any
+scholastic terms, or antecedent principle.
+
+It is proposed to you to ride on horseback; it is absolutely necessary
+for you to make a choice, for it is very clear that you must either go
+or not; there is no medium, you must absolutely do the one or the other.
+So far it is demonstrated that the will is not free. You will get on
+horseback; why? Because I will to do so, an ignoramus will say. This
+reply is an absurdity; nothing can be done without reason or cause. Your
+will then is caused by what? The agreeable idea which is presented to
+your brain; the predominant, or determined idea; but, you will say,
+cannot I resist an idea which predominates over me? No, for what would
+be the cause of your resistance? An idea by which your will is swayed
+still more despotically.
+
+You receive your ideas, and, therefore, receive your will. You will then
+necessarily; consequently, the word "liberty" belongs not to will in any
+sense.
+
+You ask me how thought and will are formed within you? I answer that I
+know nothing about it. I no more know how ideas are created than I know
+how the world was formed. We are only allowed to grope in the dark in
+reference to all that inspires our incomprehensible machine.
+
+Will, then, is not a faculty which can be called free. "Free-will" is a
+word absolutely devoid of sense, and that which scholars have called
+"indifference," that is to say, will without cause, is a chimera
+unworthy to be combated.
+
+In what then consists liberty? In the power of doing what we will? I
+would go into my cabinet; the door is open, I am free to enter. But, say
+you, if the door is shut and I remain where I am, I remain freely. Let
+us explain ourselves--you then exercise the power that you possess of
+remaining; you possess this power, but not the power of going out.
+
+Liberty, then, on which so many volumes have been written, reduced to
+its proper sense, is only the power of acting.
+
+In what sense must the expression "this man is free" be spoken? In the
+same sense in which we use the words "health," "strength," and
+"happiness." Man is not always strong, healthy, or happy. A great
+passion, a great obstacle, may deprive him of his liberty, or power of
+action.
+
+The words "liberty" and "free-will" are, then, abstractions, general
+terms, like beauty, goodness, justice. These terms do not signify that
+all men are always handsome, good, and just, neither are they always
+free.
+
+Further, liberty being only the power of acting, what is this power? It
+is the effect of the constitution, and the actual state of our organs.
+Leibnitz would solve a problem of geometry, but falls into an apoplexy;
+he certainly has not the liberty to solve his problem. A vigorous young
+man, passionately in love, who holds his willing mistress in his arms,
+is he free to subdue his passion? Doubtless not. He has the power of
+enjoying, and has not the power to abstain. Locke then is very right in
+calling liberty, power. When can this young man abstain, notwithstanding
+the violence of his passion? When a stronger idea shall determine the
+springs of his soul and body to the contrary.
+
+But how? Have other animals the same liberty, the same power? Why not?
+They have sense, memory, sentiment, and perceptions like ourselves; they
+act spontaneously as we do. They must, also, like us, have the power of
+acting by virtue of their perception, and of the play of their organs.
+
+We exclaim: If it be thus, all things are machines merely; everything in
+the universe is subjected to the eternal laws. Well, would you have
+everything rendered subject to a million of blind caprices? Either all
+is the consequence of the nature of things, or all is the effect of the
+eternal order of an absolute master; in both cases, we are only wheels
+to the machine of the world.
+
+It is a foolish, common-place expression that without this pretended
+freedom of will, rewards and punishments are useless. Reason, and you
+will conclude quite the contrary.
+
+If, when a robber is executed, his accomplice, who sees him suffer, has
+the liberty of not being frightened at the punishment; if his will
+determines of itself, he will go from the foot of the scaffold to
+assassinate on the high road; if struck with horror, he experiences an
+insurmountable terror, he will no longer thieve. The punishment of his
+companion will become useful to him, and moreover prove to society that
+his will is not free.
+
+Liberty, then, is not and cannot be anything but the power of doing what
+we will. That is what philosophy teaches us. But, if we consider liberty
+in the theological sense, it is so sublime a matter that profane eyes
+may not be raised so high.
+
+
+
+
+FRENCH LANGUAGE.
+
+
+The French language did not begin to assume a regular form until the
+tenth century; it sprang from the remains of the Latin and the Celtic,
+mixed with a few Teutonic words. This language was, in the first
+instance, the provincial Roman, and the Teutonic was the language of the
+courts, until the time of Charles the Bald. The Teutonic remained the
+only language in Germany, after the grand epoch of the division in 433.
+The rustic Roman prevailed in Western France; the inhabitants of the
+Pays de Vaud, of the Valois, of the valley of Engadine, and some other
+cantons, still preserve some manifest vestiges of this idiom.
+
+At the commencement of the eleventh century, French began to be written;
+but this French retained more of Romance or rustic Roman than of the
+language of the present day. The romance of Philomena, written in the
+tenth century, is not very different in language from that of the laws
+of the Normans. We cannot yet trace the original Celtic, Latin, and
+German. The words which signify the members of the human body, or
+things in daily use, which have no relation to the Latin or German, are
+of ancient Gallic or Celtic, as _tête_, _jambe_, _sabre_, _point_,
+_alter_, _parler_, _écouter_, _regarder_, _crier_, _cotume_, _ensemble_,
+and many more of the same kind. The greater number of the warlike
+phrases were French or German, as _marche, halte, maréchal, bivouac,
+lansquenet_. Almost, all the rest are Latin, and the Latin words have
+been all abridged, according to the usage and genius of the nations of
+the north.
+
+In the twelfth century, some terms were borrowed from the philosophy of
+Aristotle; and toward the sixteenth century, Greek names were found for
+the parts of the human body, and for its maladies and their remedies.
+Although the language was then enriched with Greek, and aided from the
+time of Charles VIII. with considerable accessions from the Italian,
+already arrived at perfection, it did not acquire a regular form.
+Francis I. abolished the custom of pleading and of judging in Latin,
+which proved the barbarism of a language which could not be used in
+public proceedings--a pernicious custom to the natives, whose fortunes
+were regulated in a language which they could not understand. It then
+became necessary to cultivate the French, but the language was neither
+noble nor regular, and its syntax was altogether capricious. The genius
+of its conversation being turned towards pleasantry, the language became
+fertile in smart and lively expressions, but exceedingly barren in
+dignified and harmonious phrases; whence it arises that in the
+dictionaries of rhymes, twenty suitable words are found for comic poetry
+for one of poetry of a more elevated nature. This was the cause that
+Marot never succeeded in the serious style, and that Amyot was unable to
+give a version of the elegant simplicity of Plutarch.
+
+The French tongue acquired strength from the pen of Montaigne, but still
+wanted elevation and harmony. Ronsard injured the language by
+introducing into French poetry the Greek compounds, derivable from the
+physicians. Malherbe partly repaired the fault of Ronsard. It became
+more lofty and harmonious by the establishment of the French Academy,
+and finally in the age of Louis XIV. acquired the perfection by which it
+is now distinguished.
+
+The genius of the French language--for every language has its genius--is
+clearness and order. This genius consists in the facility which a
+language possesses of expressing itself more or less happily, and of
+employing or rejecting the familiar terms of other languages. The French
+tongue having no declensions, and being aided by articles, cannot adopt
+the inversions of the Greek and the Latin; the words are necessarily
+arranged agreeably to the course of the ideas. We can only say in one
+way, "_Plancus a pris soin des affaires de Cæsar_"; but this phrase in
+Latin, "_Res Cæsaris, Plancus diligenter curavit_" may be arranged in a
+hundred and twenty different forms without injuring the sense or rules
+of the language. The auxiliary verbs, which lengthen and weaken phrases
+in the modern tongues, render that of France still less adapted to the
+lapidary style. Its auxiliary verbs, its pronouns, its articles, its
+deficiency of declinable participles, and, lastly, its uniformity of
+position, preclude the exhibition of much enthusiasm in poetry; it
+possesses fewer capabilities of this nature than the Italian and the
+English; but this constraint and slavery render it more proper for
+tragedy and comedy than any language in Europe. The natural order in
+which the French people are obliged to express their thoughts and
+construct their phrases, infuses into their speech a facility and
+amenity which please everybody; and the genius of the nation suiting
+with the genius of the language, has produced a greater number of books
+agreeably written than are to be found among any other people.
+
+Social freedom and politeness having been for a long time established in
+France, the language has acquired a delicacy of expression, and a
+natural refinement which are seldom to be found out of it. This
+refinement has occasionally been carried too far; but men of taste have
+always known how to reduce it within due bounds.
+
+Many persons have maintained that the French language has been
+impoverished since the days of Montaigne and Amyot, because expressions
+abound in these authors which are no longer employed; but these are for
+the most part terms for which equivalents have been found. It has been
+enriched with a number of noble and energetic expressions, and, without
+adverting to the eloquence of matter, has certainly that of speech. It
+was during the reign of Louis XIV., as already observed, that the
+language was fixed. Whatever changes time and caprice may have in store,
+the good authors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries will always
+serve for models.
+
+Circumstances created no right to expect that France would be
+distinguished in philosophy. A Gothic government extinguished all kind
+of illumination during more than twelve centuries; and professors of
+error, paid for brutalizing human nature, more increased the darkness.
+Nevertheless, there is more philosophy in Paris than in any town on
+earth, and possibly than in all the towns put together, excepting
+London. The spirit of reason has even penetrated into the provinces. In
+a word, the French genius is probably at present equal to that of
+England in philosophy; while for the last four-score years France has
+been superior to all other nations in literature; and has undeniably
+taken the lead in the courtesies of society, and in that easy and
+natural politeness, which is improperly termed urbanity.
+
+
+
+
+FRIENDSHIP.
+
+The temple of friendship has long been known by name, but it is well
+known that it has been very little frequented; as the following verses
+pleasantly observe, Orestes, Pylades, Pirithous, Achates, and the tender
+Nisus, were all genuine friends and great heroes; but, alas, existent
+only in fable:
+
+     _En vieux langage on voit sur la façade,_
+     _Les noms sacrés d'Oreste et de Pylade;_
+     _Le médaillon du bon Pirithous,_
+     _Du sage Achate et du tendre Nisus;_
+     _Tous grands héros, tous amis véritables;_
+     _Ces noms sont beaux; mais ils sont dans les fables._
+
+Friendship commands more than love and esteem. Love your neighbor
+signifies assist your neighbor, but not--enjoy his conversation with
+pleasure, if he be tiresome; confide to him your secrets, if he be a
+tattler; or lend him your money, if he be a spendthrift.
+
+Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to
+divorce. It is a tacit contract between two sensible and virtuous
+persons. I say sensible, for a monk or a hermit cannot be so, who lives
+without knowing friendship. I say virtuous, for the wicked only have
+accomplices--the voluptuous, companions--the interested, associates;
+politicians assemble factions--the generality of idle men have
+connections--princes, courtiers. Virtuous men alone possess friends.
+
+Cethegus was the accomplice of Catiline, and Mæcenas the courtier of
+Octavius; but Cicero was the friend of Atticus.
+
+What is caused by this contract between two tender, honest minds? Its
+obligations are stronger or weaker according to the degrees of
+sensibility, and the number of services rendered.
+
+The enthusiasm of friendship has been stronger among the Greeks and
+Arabs than among us. The tales that these people have imagined on the
+subject of friendship are admirable; we have none to compare to them. We
+are rather dry and reserved--in everything. I see no great trait of
+friendship in our histories, romances, or theatre.
+
+The only friendship spoken of among the Jews, was that which existed
+between Jonathan and David. It is said that David loved him with a love
+stronger than that of women; but it is also said that David, after the
+death of his friend, dispossessed Mephibosheth, his son, and caused him
+to be put to death.
+
+Friendship was a point of religion and legislation among the Greeks. The
+Thebans had a regiment of lovers--a fine regiment; some have taken it
+for a regiment of nonconformists. They are deceived; it is taking a
+shameful accident for a noble principle. Friendship, among the Greeks,
+was prescribed by the laws and religion. Manners countenanced abuses,
+but the laws did not.
+
+
+
+
+FRIVOLITY.
+
+
+What persuades me still more of the existence of Providence, said the
+profound author of "_Bacha Billeboquet_," is that to console us for our
+innumerable miseries, nature has made us frivolous. We are sometimes
+ruminating oxen, overcome by the weight of our yoke; sometimes
+dispersed doves, tremblingly endeavoring to avoid the claws of the
+vulture, stained with the blood of our companions; foxes, pursued by
+dogs; and tigers, who devour one another. Then we suddenly become
+butterflies; and forget, in our volatile winnowings, all the horrors
+that we have experienced.
+
+If we were not frivolous, what man without shuddering, could live in a
+town in which the wife of a marshal of France, a lady of honor to the
+queen, was burned, under the pretext that she had killed a white cock by
+moonlight; or in the same town in which Marshal Marillac was
+assassinated according to form, pursuant to a sentence passed by
+judicial murderers appointed by a priest in his own country house, in
+which he embraced Marion de Lorme while these robed wretches executed
+his sanguinary wishes?
+
+Could a man say to himself, without trembling in every nerve, and having
+his heart frozen with horror: "Here I am, in the very place which, it is
+said, was strewed with the dead and dying bodies of two thousand young
+gentlemen, murdered near the Faubourg St. Antoine, because one man in a
+red cassock displeased some others in black ones!"
+
+Who could pass the Rue de la Féronerie without shedding tears and
+falling into paroxysms of rage against the holy and abominable
+principles which plunged the sword into the heart of the best of men,
+and of the greatest of kings?
+
+We could not walk a step in the streets of Paris on St. Bartholomew's
+day, without saying: "It was here that one of my ancestors was murdered
+for the love of God; it was here that one of my mother's family was
+dragged bleeding and mangled; it was here that one-half of my countrymen
+murdered the other."
+
+Happily, men are so light, so frivolous, so struck with the present and
+so insensible to the past, that in ten thousand there are not above two
+or three who make these reflections.
+
+How many boon companions have I seen, who, after the loss of children,
+wives, mistresses, fortune, and even health itself, have eagerly
+resorted to a party to retail a piece of scandal, or to a supper to tell
+humorous stories. Solidity consists chiefly in a uniformity of ideas. It
+has been said that a man of sense should invariably think in the same
+way; reduced to such an alternative, it would be better not to have been
+born. The ancients never invented a finer fable than that which bestowed
+a cup of the water of Lethe on all who entered the Elysian fields.
+
+If you would tolerate life, mortals, forget yourselves, and enjoy it.
+
+
+
+
+GALLANT.
+
+
+This word is derived from "_gal_" the original signification of which
+was gayety and rejoicing, as may be seen in Alain Chartier, and in
+Froissart. Even in the "Romance of the Rose" we meet with the word
+"_galandé_" in the sense of ornamented, adorned.
+
+     _La belle fut bien attornie_
+     _Et d'un filet d'or galandée._
+
+It is probable that the _gala_ of the Italians, and the _galan_ of the
+Spaniards, are derived from the word "_gal_" which seems to be
+originally Celtic; hence, was insensibly formed _gallant_, which
+signifies a man forward, or eager to please. The term received an
+improved and more noble signification in the times of chivalry, when the
+desire to please manifested itself in feats of arms, and personal
+conflict. To conduct himself gallantly, to extricate himself from an
+affair gallantly, implies, even at present, a man's conducting himself
+conformably to principle and honor. A gallant man among the English,
+signifies a man of courage; in France it means more--a man of noble
+general demeanor. A gallant (_un homme galant_) is totally different
+from a gallant man (_un galant homme_); the latter means a man of
+respectable and honorable feeling--the former, something nearer the
+character of a _petit maître_ a man successfully addicted to intrigue.
+Being gallant (_être galant_) in general implies an assiduity to please
+by studious attentions, and flattering deference. "He was exceedingly
+gallant to those ladies," means merely, he behaved more than politely to
+them; but being the gallant of a lady is an expression of stronger
+meaning; it signifies being her lover; the word is scarcely any longer
+in use in this sense, except in low or familiar poetry. A gallant is not
+merely a man devoted to and successful in intrigue, but the term
+implies, moreover, somewhat of impudence and effrontery, in which sense
+Fontaine uses it in the following: "_Mais un 'galant,' chercheur des
+pucelages_."
+
+Thus are various meanings attached to the same word. The case is similar
+with the term "gallantry," which sometimes signifies a disposition to
+coquetry, and a habit of flattery; sometimes a present of some elegant
+toy, or piece of jewelry; sometimes intrigue, with one woman or with
+many; and, latterly, it has even been applied to signify ironically the
+favors of Venus; thus, to talk gallantries, to give gallantries, to have
+gallantries, to contract a gallantry, express very different meanings.
+Nearly all the terms which occur frequently in conversation acquire, in
+the same manner, various shades of meaning, which it is difficult to
+discriminate; the meaning of terms of art is more precise and less
+arbitrary.
+
+
+
+
+GARGANTUA.
+
+
+If ever a reputation was fixed on a solid basis, it is that of
+Gargantua. Yet in the present age of philosophy and criticism, some rash
+and daring minds have started forward, who have ventured to deny the
+prodigies believed respecting this extraordinary man--persons who have
+carried their skepticism so far as even to doubt his very existence.
+
+How is it possible, they ask, that there should have existed in the
+sixteenth century a distinguished hero, never mentioned by a single
+contemporary, by St. Ignatius, Cardinal Capitan, Galileo, or
+Guicciardini, and respecting whom the registers of the Sorbonne do not
+contain the slightest notice?
+
+Investigate the histories of France, of Germany, of England, Spain, and
+other countries, and you find not a single word about Gargantua. His
+whole life, from his birth to his death, is a tissue of inconceivable
+prodigies.
+
+His mother, Gargamelle, was delivered of him from the left ear. Almost
+at the instant of his birth he called out for a drink, with a voice that
+was heard even in the districts of Beauce and Vivarais. Sixteen ells of
+cloth were required to make him breeches, and a hundred hides of brown
+cows were used in his shoes. He had not attained the age of twelve years
+before he gained a great battle, and founded the abbey of Thélème.
+Madame Badebec was given to him in marriage, and Badebec is proved to be
+a Syrian name.
+
+He is represented to have devoured six pilgrims in a mere salad, and the
+river Seine is stated to have flowed entirely from his person, so that
+the Parisians are indebted for their beautiful river to him alone.
+
+All this is considered contrary to nature by our carping philosophers,
+who scruple to admit even what is probable, unless it is well supported
+by evidence.
+
+They observe, that if the Parisians have always believed in Gargantua,
+that is no reason why other nations should believe in him; that if
+Gargantua had really performed one single prodigy out of the many
+attributed to him, the whole world would have resounded with it, all
+records would have noticed it, and a hundred monuments would have
+attested it. In short, they very unceremoniously treat the Parisians who
+believe in Gargantua as ignorant simpletons and superstitious idiots,
+with whom are inter-mixed a few hypocrites, who pretend to believe in
+Gargantua, in order to obtain some convenient priorship in the abbey of
+Thélème.
+
+The reverend Father Viret, a Cordelier of full-sleeved dignity, a
+confessor of ladies, and a preacher to the king, has replied to our
+Pyrrhonean philosophers in a manner decisive and invincible. He very
+learnedly proves that if no writer, with the exception of Rabelais, has
+mentioned the prodigies of Gargantua, at least, no historian has
+contradicted them; that the sage de Thou, who was a believer in
+witchcraft, divination, and astrology, never denied the miracles of
+Gargantua. They were not even called in question by La Mothe le Vayer.
+Mézeray treated them with such respect as not to say a word against
+them, or indeed about them. These prodigies were performed before the
+eyes of all the world. Rabelais was a witness of them. It was impossible
+that he could be deceived, or that he would deceive. Had he deviated
+even in the smallest degree from the truth, all the nations of Europe
+would have been roused against him in indignation; all the gazetteers
+and journalists of the day would have exclaimed with one voice against
+the fraud and imposture.
+
+In vain do the philosophers reply--for they reply to everything--that,
+at the period in question, gazettes and journals were not in existence.
+It is said in return that there existed what was equivalent to them, and
+that is sufficient. Everything is impossible in the history of
+Gargantua, and from this circumstance itself may be inferred its
+incontestable truth. For if it were not true, no person could possibly
+have ventured to imagine it, and its incredibility constitutes the great
+proof that it ought to be believed.
+
+Open all the "Mercuries," all the "Journals de Trévoux"; those immortal
+works which teem with instruction to the race of man, and you will not
+find a single line which throws a doubt on the history of Gargantua. It
+was reserved for our own unfortunate age to produce monsters, who would
+establish a frightful Pyrrhonism, under the pretence of requiring
+evidence as nearly approaching to mathematical as the case will admit,
+and of a devotion to reason, truth, and justice. What a pity! Oh, for a
+single argument to confound them!
+
+Gargantua founded the abbey of Thélème. The title deeds, it is true,
+were never found; it never had any; but it exists, and produces an
+income of ten thousand pieces of gold a year. The river Seine exists,
+and is an eternal monument of the prodigious fountain from which
+Gargantua supplied so noble a stream. Moreover, what will it cost you to
+believe in him? Should you not take the safest side? Gargantua can
+procure for you wealth, honors, and influence. Philosophy can only
+bestow on you internal tranquillity and satisfaction, which you will of
+course estimate as a trifle. Believe, then, I again repeat, in
+Gargantua; if you possess the slightest portion of avarice, ambition, or
+knavery, it is the wisest part you can adopt.
+
+
+
+
+GAZETTE.
+
+
+A narrative of public affairs. It was at the beginning of the
+seventeenth century that this useful practice was suggested and
+established at Venice, at the time when Italy still continued the centre
+of European negotiations, and Venice was the unfailing asylum of
+liberty. The leaves or sheets containing this narrative, which were
+published once a week, were called "Gazettes," from the word "gazetta,"
+the name of a small coin, amounting nearly to one of our demi-sous, then
+current at Venice. The example was afterwards followed in all the great
+cities of Europe.
+
+Journals of this description have been established in China from time
+immemorial. The "_Imperial Gazette_" is published there every day by
+order of the court. Admitting this gazette to be true, we may easily
+believe it does not contain all that is true; neither in fact should it
+do so.
+
+Théophraste Renaudot, a physician, published the first gazettes in
+France in 1601, and he had an exclusive privilege for the publication,
+which continued for a long time a patrimony to his family. The like
+privilege became an object of importance at Amsterdam, and the greater
+part of the gazettes of the United Provinces are still a source of
+revenue to many of the families of magistrates, who pay writers for
+furnishing materials for them. The city of London alone publishes more
+than twelve gazettes in the course of a week. They can be printed only
+upon stamped paper, and produce no inconsiderable income to the State.
+
+The gazettes of China relate solely to that empire; those of the
+different states of Europe embrace the affairs of all countries.
+Although they frequently abound in false intelligence, they may
+nevertheless be considered as supplying good material for history;
+because, in general, the errors of each particular gazette are corrected
+by subsequent ones, and because they contain authentic copies of almost
+all state papers, which indeed are published in them by order of the
+sovereigns or governments themselves. The French gazettes have always
+been revised by the ministry. It is on this account that the writers of
+them have always adhered to certain forms and designations, with a
+strictness apparently somewhat inconsistent with the courtesies of
+polished society, bestowing the title of monsieur only on some
+particular descriptions of persons, and that of sieur upon others; the
+authors having forgotten that they were not speaking in the name of
+their king. These public journals, it must be added, to their praise,
+have never been debased by calumny, and have always been written with
+considerable correctness.
+
+The case is very different with respect to foreign gazettes; those of
+London, with the exception of the court gazette, abound frequently in
+that coarseness and licentiousness of observation which the national
+liberty allows. The French gazettes established in that country have
+been seldom written with purity, and have sometimes been not a little
+instrumental in corrupting the language. One of the greatest faults
+which has found a way into them arises from the authors having concluded
+that the ancient forms of expression used in public proclamations and in
+judicial and political proceedings and documents in France, and with
+which they were particularly conversant, were analogous to the regular
+syntax of our language, and from their having accordingly imitated that
+style in their narrative. This is like a Roman historian's using the
+style of the law of the twelve tables.
+
+In imitation of the political gazettes, literary ones began to be
+published in France in 1665; for the first journals were, in fact,
+simply advertisements of the works recently printed in Europe; to this
+mere announcement of publication was soon added a critical examination
+or review. Many authors were offended at it, notwithstanding its great
+moderation.
+
+We shall here speak only of those literary gazettes with which the
+public, who were previously in possession of various journals from every
+country in Europe in which the sciences were cultivated, were completely
+overwhelmed. These gazettes appeared at Paris about the year 1723, under
+many different names, as "The Parnassian Intelligencer," "Observations
+on New Books," etc. The greater number of them were written for the
+single purpose of making money; and as money is not to be made by
+praising authors, these productions consisted generally of satire and
+abuse. They often contained the most odious personalities, and for a
+time sold in proportion to the virulence of their malignity; but reason
+and good taste, which are always sure to prevail at last, consigned them
+eventually to contempt and oblivion.
+
+
+
+
+GENEALOGY.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+Many volumes have been written by learned divines in order to reconcile
+St. Matthew with St. Luke on the subject of the genealogy of Jesus
+Christ. The former enumerates only twenty-seven generations from David
+through Solomon, while Luke gives forty-two, and traces the descent
+through Nathan. The following is the method in which the learned Calmet
+solves a difficulty relating to Melchizedek: The Orientals and the
+Greeks, ever abounding in fable and invention, fabricated a genealogy
+for him, in which they give us the names of his ancestors. But, adds
+this judicious Benedictine, as falsehood always betrays itself, some
+state his genealogy according to one series, and others according to
+another. There are some who maintain that he descended from a race
+obscure and degraded, and there are some who are disposed to represent
+him as illegitimate.
+
+This passage naturally applies to Jesus, of whom, according to the
+apostle, Melchizedek was the type or figure. In fact, the gospel of
+Nicomedes expressly states that the Jews, in the presence of Pilate,
+reproached Jesus with being born of fornication; upon which the learned
+Fabricius remarks, that it does not appear from any clear and credible
+testimony that the Jews directed to Jesus Christ during His life, or
+even to His apostles, that calumny respecting His birth which they so
+assiduously and virulently circulated afterwards. The Acts of the
+Apostles, however, inform us that the Jews of Antioch opposed
+themselves, blaspheming against what Paul spoke to them concerning
+Jesus; and Origen maintains that the passage in St. John's gospel "We
+are not born of fornication, we have never been in subjection unto any
+man" was an indirect reproach thrown out by the Jews against Jesus on
+the subject of His birth. For, as this father informs us, they pretended
+that Jesus was originally from a small hamlet of Judæa, and His mother
+nothing more than a poor villager subsisting by her labor, who, having
+been found guilty of adultery with a soldier of the name of Panther, was
+turned away by her husband, whose occupation was that of a carpenter;
+that, after this disgraceful expulsion, she wandered about miserably
+from one place to another, and was privately delivered of Jesus, who,
+pressed by the necessity of His circumstances, was compelled to go and
+hire Himself as a servant in Egypt, where He acquired some of those
+secrets which the Egyptians turn to so good an account, and then
+returned to His own country, in which, full of the miracles He was
+enabled to perform, He proclaimed Himself to be God.
+
+According to a very old tradition, the name of Panther, which gave
+occasion to the mistake of the Jews, was, as we are informed by St.
+Epiphanius, the surname of Joseph's father, or rather, as is asserted by
+St. John Damascene, the proper name of Mary's grandfather.
+
+As to the situation of servant, with which Jesus was reproached, He
+declares Himself that He came not to be served, but to serve. Zoroaster,
+according to the Arabians, had in like manner been the servant of
+Esdras. Epictetus was even born in servitude. Accordingly, St. Cyril of
+Jerusalem justly observed that it is no disgrace to any man.
+
+On the subject of the miracles, we learn indeed from Pliny that the
+Egyptians had the secret of dyeing with different colors, stuffs which
+were dipped in the very same furnace, and this is one of the miracles
+which the gospel of the Infancy attributes to Jesus. But, according to
+St. Chrysostom, Jesus performed no miracle before His baptism, and those
+stated to have been wrought by Him before are absolute fabrications. The
+reason assigned by this father for such an arrangement is, that the
+wisdom of God determined against Christ's performing any miracles in His
+childhood, lest they should have been regarded as impostures.
+
+Epiphanius in vain alleges that to deny the miracles ascribed by some to
+Jesus during His infancy, would furnish heretics with a specious pretext
+for saying that He became Son of God only in consequence of the effusion
+of the Holy Spirit, which descended upon Him at His baptism; we are
+contending here, not against heretics, but against Jews.
+
+Mr. Wagenseil has presented us with a Latin translation of a Jewish work
+entitled "_Toldos Jeschu_," in which it is related that Jeschu, being at
+Bethlehem in Judah, the place of his birth, cried out aloud, "Who are
+the wicked men that pretend I am a bastard, and spring from an impure
+origin? They are themselves bastards, themselves exceedingly impure! Was
+I not born of a virgin mother? And I entered through the crown of her
+head!"
+
+This testimony appeared of such importance to M. Bergier, that that
+learned divine felt no scruple about employing it without quoting his
+authority. The following are his words, in the twenty-third page of the
+"Certainty of the Proofs of Christianity": "Jesus was born of a virgin
+by the operation of the Holy Spirit. Jesus Himself frequently assured us
+of this with His own mouth; and to the same purpose is the recital of
+the apostles." It is certain that these words are only to be found in
+the "_Toldos Jeschu_"; and the certainty of that proof, among those
+adduced by M. Bergier, subsists, although St. Matthew applies to Jesus
+the passage of "Isaiah": "He shall not dispute, he shall not cry aloud,
+and no one shall hear his voice in the streets."
+
+According to St. Jerome, there was in like manner an ancient tradition
+among the Gymnosophists of India, that Buddha, the author of their
+creed, was born of a virgin, who was delivered of him from her side. In
+the same manner was born Julius Cæsar, Scipio Africanus, Manlius, Edward
+VI. of England, and others, by means of an operation called by surgeons
+the Cæsarian operation, because it consists in abstracting the child
+from the womb by an incision in the abdomen of the mother. Simon,
+surnamed the Magician, and Manes both pretended to have been born of
+virgins. This might, however, merely mean, that their mothers were
+virgins at the time of conceiving them. But in order to be convinced of
+the uncertainty attending the marks and evidences of virginity, it will
+be perfectly sufficient to read the commentary of M. de Pompignan, the
+celebrated bishop of Puy en Velai, on the following passage in the Book
+of Proverbs: "There are three things which are too wonderful for me,
+yea, four which I know not. The way of an eagle in the air, the way of a
+serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the
+way of a man in his youth." In order to give a literal translation of
+the passage, according to this prelate (in the third chapter of the
+second part of his work entitled "Infidelity Convinced by the
+Prophecies"), it would have been necessary to say, "_Viam viri in
+virgine adolescentula_"--The way of a man with a maid. The translation
+of our Vulgate, says he, substitutes another meaning, exact indeed and
+true, but less conformable to the original text. In short, he
+corroborates his curious interpretation by the analogy between this
+verse and the following one: "Such is the life of the adulterous woman,
+who, after having eaten, wipeth her mouth and saith, I have done no
+wickedness."
+
+However this may be, the virginity of Mary was not generally admitted,
+even at the beginning of the third century. "Many have entertained the
+opinion and do still," said St. Clement of Alexandria, "that Mary was
+delivered of a son without that delivery producing any change in her
+person; for some say that a midwife who visited her after the birth
+found her to retain all the marks of virginity." It is clear that St.
+Clement refers here to the gospel of the conception of Mary, in which
+the angel Gabriel says to her, "Without intercourse with man, thou, a
+virgin, shalt conceive, thou, a virgin, shalt be delivered of a child,
+thou, a virgin, shalt give suck"; and also to the first gospel of James,
+in which the midwife exclaims, "What an unheard-of wonder! Mary has just
+brought a son into the world, and yet retains all the evidences of
+virginity." These two gospels were, nevertheless, subsequently rejected
+as apocryphal, although on this point they were conformable to the
+opinion adopted by the church; the scaffolding was removed after the
+building was completed.
+
+What is added by Jeschu--"I entered by the crown of the head"--was
+likewise the opinion held by the church. The Breviary of the Maronites
+represents the word of the Father as having entered by the ear of the
+blessed woman. St. Augustine and Pope Felix say expressly that the
+virgin became pregnant through the ear. St. Ephrem says the same in a
+hymn, and Voisin, his translator, observes that the idea came originally
+from Gregory of Neocæsarea, surnamed Thaumaturgos. Agobar relates that
+in his time the church sang in the time of public service: "The Word
+entered through the ear of the virgin, and came out at the golden gate."
+Eutychius speaks also of Elian, who attended at the Council of Nice, and
+who said that the Word entered by the ear of the virgin, and came out
+in the way of childbirth. This Elian was a rural bishop, whose name
+occurs in Selden's published Arabic List of Fathers who attended the
+Council of Nice.
+
+It is well known that the Jesuit Sanchez gravely discussed the question
+whether the Virgin Mary contributed seminally in the incarnation of
+Christ, and that, like other divines before him, he concluded in the
+affirmative. But these extravagances of a prurient and depraved
+imagination should be classed with the opinion of Aretin, who introduces
+the Holy Spirit on this occasion effecting his purpose under the figure
+of a dove; as mythology describes Jupiter to have succeeded with Leda in
+the form of a swan, or as the most eminent authors of the church--St.
+Austin, Athenagoras, Tertullian, St. Clement of Alexandria, St. Cyprian,
+Lactantius, St. Ambrose--and others believed, after Philo and Josephus,
+the historian, who were Jews, that angels had associated with the
+daughters of men, and engaged in sexual connection with them. St.
+Augustine goes so far as to charge the Manichæans with teaching, as a
+part of their religious persuasion, that beautiful young persons
+appeared in a state of nature before the princes of darkness, or evil
+angels, and deprived them of the vital substance which that father calls
+the nature of God. Herodius is still more explicit, and says that the
+divine majesty escaped through the productive organs of demons.
+
+It is true that all these fathers believed angels to be corporeal. But,
+after the works of Plato had established the idea of their spirituality,
+the ancient opinion of a corporeal union between angels and women was
+explained by the supposition that the same angel who, in a woman's form,
+had received the embraces of a man, in turn held communication with a
+woman, in the character of a man. Divines, by the terms "incubus" and
+"succubus," designate the different parts thus performed by angels.
+Those who are curious on the subject of these offensive and revolting
+reveries may see further details in "Various Readings of the Book of
+Genesis," by Otho Gualter; "Magical Disquisitions," by Delvis, and the
+"Discourses on Witchcraft," by Henry Boguet.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+No genealogy, even although reprinted in Moréri, approaches that of
+Mahomet or Mahommed, the son of Abdallah, the son of Abd'all Montaleb,
+the son of Ashem; which Mahomet was, in his younger days, groom of the
+widow Khadijah, then her factor, then her husband, then a prophet of
+God, then condemned to be hanged, then conqueror and king of Arabia; and
+who finally died an enviable death, satiated with glory and with love.
+
+The German barons do not trace back their origin beyond Witikind; and
+our modern French marquises can scarcely any of them show deeds and
+patents of an earlier date than Charlemagne. But the race of Mahomet, or
+Mohammed, which still exists, has always exhibited a genealogical tree,
+of which the trunk is Adam, and of which the branches reach from Ishmael
+down to the nobility and gentry who at the present day bear the high
+title of cousins of Mahomet.
+
+There is no difficulty about this genealogy, no dispute among the
+learned, no false calculations to be rectified, no contradictions to
+palliate, no impossibilities to be made possible.
+
+Your pride cavils against the authenticity of these titles. You tell me
+that you are descended from Adam as well as the greatest prophet, if
+Adam was the common father of our race; but that this same Adam was
+never known by any person, not even by the ancient Arabs themselves;
+that the name has never been cited except in the books of the Jews; and
+that, consequently, you take the liberty of writing down _false_ against
+the high and noble claims of Mahomet, or Mohammed.
+
+You add that, in any case, if there has been a first man, whatever his
+name might be, you are a descendant from him as decidedly as Khadijah's
+illustrious groom; and that, if there has been no first man, if the
+human race always existed, as so many of the learned pretend, then you
+are clearly a gentleman from all eternity.
+
+In answer to this you are told that you are a plebeian (_roturier_) from
+all eternity, unless you can produce a regular and complete set of
+parchments.
+
+You reply that men are equal; that one race cannot be more ancient than
+another; that parchments, with bits of wax dangling to them, are a
+recent invention; that there is no reason that compels you to yield to
+the family of Mahomet, or to that of Confucius; or to that of the
+emperors of Japan; or to the royal secretaries of the grand college. Nor
+can I oppose your opinion by arguments, physical, metaphysical, or
+moral. You think yourself equal to the dairo of Japan, and I entirely
+agree with you. All that I would advise you is, that if ever you meet
+with him, you take good care to be the stronger.
+
+
+
+
+GENESIS.
+
+
+The sacred writer having conformed himself to the ideas generally
+received, and being indeed obliged not to deviate from them, as without
+such condescension to the weakness and ignorance of those whom he
+addressed, he would not have been understood, it only remains for us to
+make some observations on the natural philosophy prevailing in those
+early periods; for, with respect to theology, we reverence it, we
+believe in it, and never either dispute or discuss it.
+
+"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Thus has the
+original passage been translated, but the translation is not correct.
+There is no one, however slightly informed upon the subject, who is not
+aware that the real meaning of the word is, "In the beginning the gods
+made _firent_ or _fit_ the heaven and the earth." This reading,
+moreover, perfectly corresponds with the ancient idea of the
+Phoenicians, who imagined that, in reducing the chaos (_chautereb_)
+into order, God employed the agency of inferior deities.
+
+The Phoenicians had been long a powerful people, having a theogony of
+their own, before the Hebrews became possessed of a few cantons of land
+near their territory. It is extremely natural to suppose that when the
+Hebrews had at length formed a small establishment near Phoenicia,
+they began to acquire its language. At that time their writers might,
+and probably did, borrow the ancient philosophy of their masters. Such
+is the regular march of the human mind.
+
+At the time in which Moses is supposed to have lived, were the
+Phoenician philosophers sufficiently enlightened to regard the earth
+as a mere point in the compass with the infinite orbs placed by God in
+the immensity of space, commonly called heaven? The idea so very
+ancient, and at the same time so utterly false, that heaven was made for
+earth, almost always prevailed in the minds of the great mass of the
+people. It would certainly be just as correct and judicious for any
+person to suppose, if told that God created all the mountains and a
+single grain of sand, that the mountains were created for that grain of
+sand. It is scarcely possible that the Phoenicians, who were such
+excellent navigators, should not have had some good astronomers; but
+the old prejudices generally prevailed, and those old prejudices were
+very properly spared and indulged by the author of the Book of Genesis,
+who wrote to instruct men in the ways of God, and not in natural
+philosophy.
+
+"The earth was without form (_tohu bohu_) and void; darkness rested upon
+the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved upon the surface of
+the waters."
+
+_Tohu bohu_ means precisely chaos, disorder. It is one of those
+imitative words which are to be found in all languages; as, for example,
+in the French we have _sens dessus dessous, tintamarre, trictrac,
+tonnerre, bombe_. The earth was not as yet formed in its present state;
+the matter existed, but the divine power had not yet arranged it. The
+spirit of God means literally the breath, the wind, which agitated the
+waters. The same idea occurs in the "Fragments" of the Phoenician
+author Sanchoniathon. The Phoenicians, like every other people,
+believed matter to be eternal. There is not a single author of antiquity
+who ever represented something to have been produced from nothing. Even
+throughout the whole Bible, no passage is to be found in which matter is
+said to have been created out of nothing. Not, however, that we mean to
+controvert the truth of such creation. It was, nevertheless, a truth not
+known by the carnal Jews.
+
+On the question of the eternity of the world, mankind has always been
+divided, but never on that of the eternity of matter. From nothing,
+nothing can proceed, nor into nothing can aught existent return. _"De
+nihilo nihilum, et in nihilum nil posse gigni reverti."_ (_Persius; Sat.
+iii._) Such was the opinion of all antiquity.
+
+"God said let there be light, and there was light; and he saw that the
+light was good, and he divided the light from the darkness; and he
+called the light day, and the darkness night; and the evening and the
+morning were the first day. And God said also, let there be a firmament
+in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the
+waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were
+under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And
+God called the firmament heaven. And the evening and the morning were
+the second day.... And he saw that it was good."
+
+We begin with examining whether Huet, bishop of Avranches, Leclerc, and
+some other commentators, are not in the right in opposing the idea of
+those who consider this passage as exhibiting the most sublime
+eloquence.
+
+Eloquence is not aimed at in any history written by the Jews. The style
+of the passage in question, like that of all the rest of the work,
+possesses the most perfect simplicity. If an orator, intending to give
+some idea of the power of God, employed for that purpose the short and
+simple expression we are considering, "He said, let there be light, and
+there was light," it would then be sublime. Exactly similar is the
+passage in one of the Psalms, "_Dixit, et facta sunt_"--"He spake, and
+they were made." It is a trait which, being unique in this place, and
+introduced purposely in order to create a majestic image, elevates and
+transports the mind. But, in the instance under examination, the
+narrative is of the most simple character. The Jewish writer is speaking
+of light just in the same unambitious manner as of other objects of
+creation; he expresses himself equally and regularly after every
+article, "and God saw that it was good." Everything is sublime in the
+course or act of creation, unquestionably, but the creation of light is
+no more so than that of the herbs of the field; the sublime is something
+which soars far from the rest, whereas all is equal throughout the
+chapter.
+
+But further, it was another very ancient opinion that light did not
+proceed from the sun. It was seen diffused throughout the atmosphere,
+before the rising and after the setting of that star; the sun was
+supposed merely to give it greater strength and clearness; accordingly
+the author of Genesis accommodates himself to this popular error, and
+even states the creation of the sun and moon not to have taken place
+until four days after the existence of light. It was impossible that
+there could be a morning and evening before the existence of a sun. The
+inspired writer deigned, in this instance, to condescend to the gross
+and wild ideas of the nation. The object of God was not to teach the
+Jews philosophy. He might have raised their minds to the truth, but he
+preferred descending to their error. This solution can never be too
+frequently repeated.
+
+The separation of the light from the darkness is a part of the same
+system of philosophy. It would seem that night and day were mixed up
+together, as grains of different species which are easily separable from
+each other. It is sufficiently known that darkness is nothing but the
+absence of light, and that there is in fact no light when our eyes
+receive no sensation of it; but at that period these truths were far
+from being known.
+
+The idea of a firmament, again, is of the very highest antiquity. The
+heavens are imagined to be a solid mass, because they always exhibited
+the same phenomena. They rolled over our heads, they were therefore
+constituted of the most solid materials. Who could suppose that the
+exhalations from the land and sea supplied the water descending from the
+clouds, or compute their corresponding quantities? No Halley then lived
+to make so curious a calculation. The heavens therefore were conceived
+to contain reservoirs. These reservoirs could be supported only on a
+strong arch, and as this arch of heaven was actually transparent, it
+must necessarily have been made of crystal. In order that the waters
+above might descend from it upon the earth, sluices, cataracts, and
+floodgates were necessary, which might be opened and shut as
+circumstances required. Such was the astronomy of the day; and, as the
+author wrote for Jews, it was incumbent upon him to adopt their gross
+ideas, borrowed from other people somewhat less gross than themselves.
+
+"God also made two great lights, one to rule the day, the other the
+night; He also made the stars."
+
+It must be admitted that we perceive throughout the same ignorance of
+nature. The Jews did not know that the moon shone only with a reflected
+light. The author here speaks of stars as of mere luminous points, such
+as they appear, although they are in fact so many suns, having each of
+them worlds revolving round it. The Holy Spirit, then, accommodated
+Himself to the spirit of the times. If He had said that the sun was a
+million times larger than the earth, and the moon fifty times smaller,
+no one would have comprehended Him. They appear to us two stars of
+nearly equal size.
+
+"God said, also, let us make man in our own image, and let him have
+dominion over the fishes."
+
+What meaning did the Jews attach to the expression, "let us make man in
+our own image?" The same as all antiquity attached to it: "_Finxit in
+effigiem moderantum cuncta deorum._" (Ovid, Metam. i. 82.)
+
+No images are made but of bodies. No nation ever imagined a God without
+body, and it is impossible to represent Him otherwise. We may indeed say
+that God is nothing that we are acquainted with, but we can have no
+idea of what He is. The Jews invariably conceived God to be corporeal,
+as well as every other people. All the first fathers of the Church,
+also, entertained the same belief till they had embraced the ideas of
+Plato, or rather until the light of Christianity became more pure.
+
+"He created them male and female." If God, of the secondary or inferior
+gods, created mankind, male and female, after their own likeness, it
+would seem in that case, as if the Jews believed that God and the gods
+who so formed them were male and female. It has been a subject of
+discussion, whether the author means to say that man had originally two
+sexes, or merely that God made Adam and Eve on the same day. The most
+natural meaning is that God formed Adam and Eve at the same time; but
+this interpretation involves an absolute contradiction to the statement
+of the woman's being made out of the rib of man after the seven days
+were concluded.
+
+"And he rested on the seventh day." The Phoenicians, Chaldæans, and
+Indians, represented God as having made the world in six periods, which
+the ancient Zoroaster calls the six "Gahanbars," so celebrated among the
+Persians.
+
+It is beyond all question that these nations possessed a theology before
+the Jews inhabited the deserts of Horeb and Sinai, and before they could
+possibly have had any writers. Many writers have considered it probable
+that the allegory of six days was imitated from that of the six
+periods. God may have permitted the idea to have prevailed in large and
+populous empires before he inspired the Jewish people with it. He had
+undoubtedly permitted other people to invent the arts before the Jews
+were in possession of any one of them.
+
+"From this pleasant place a river went out which watered the garden, and
+thence it was divided into four rivers. One was called Pison, which
+compassed the whole land of Havilah, whence cometh gold.... the second
+was called Gihon and surrounds Ethiopia.... the third is the Tigris, and
+the fourth the Euphrates."
+
+According to this version, the earthly paradise would have contained
+nearly a third part of Asia and of Africa. The sources of the Euphrates
+and the Tigris are sixty leagues distant from each other, in frightful
+mountains, bearing no possible resemblance to a garden. The river which
+borders Ethiopia, and which can be no other than the Nile, commences its
+course at the distance of more than a thousand leagues from the sources
+of the Tigris and Euphrates; and, if the Pison means the Phasis, it is
+not a little surprising that the source of a Scythian river and that of
+an African one should be situated on the same spot. We must therefore
+look for some other explanation, and for other rivers. Every commentator
+has got up a paradise of his own.
+
+It has been said that the Garden of Eden resembles the gardens of Eden
+at Saana in Arabia Felix, celebrated throughout all antiquity; that the
+Hebrews, a very recent people, might be an Arabian horde, and assume to
+themselves the honor of the most beautiful spot in the finest district
+of Arabia; and that they have always converted to their own purposes the
+ancient traditions of the vast and powerful nations in the midst of whom
+they were in bondage. They were not, however, on this account, the less
+under the divine protection and guidance.
+
+"The Lord then took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden that he
+might cultivate it." It is very respectable and pleasant for a man to
+"cultivate his garden," but it must have been somewhat difficult for
+Adam to have dressed and kept in order a garden of a thousand leagues in
+length, even although he had been supplied with some assistants.
+Commentators on this subject, therefore, we again observe, are
+completely at a loss, and must be content to exercise their ingenuity in
+conjecture. Accordingly, these four rivers have been described as
+flowing through numberless different territories.
+
+"Eat not of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil." It is
+not easy to conceive that there ever existed a tree which could teach
+good and evil, as there are trees that bear pears and apricots. And
+besides the question is asked, why is God unwilling that man should know
+good and evil? Would not his free access to this knowledge, on the
+contrary, appear--if we may venture to use such language--more
+worthy of God, and far more necessary to man? To our weak reason it
+would seem more natural and proper for God to command him to eat largely
+of such fruit; but we must bring our reason under subjection, and
+acquiesce with humility and simplicity in the conclusion that God is to
+be obeyed.
+
+[Illustration: THE TEMPTATION OF ADAM]
+
+"If thou shalt eat thereof, thou shalt die." Nevertheless, Adam ate of
+it and did not die; on the contrary, he is stated to have lived on for
+nine hundred and thirty years. Many of the fathers considered the whole
+matter as an allegory. In fact, it might be said that all other animals
+have no knowledge that they shall die, but that man, by means of his
+reason, has such knowledge. This reason is the tree of knowledge which
+enables him to foresee his end. This, perhaps, is the most rational
+interpretation that can be given. We venture not to decide positively.
+
+"The Lord said, also, it is not good for man to be alone; let us make
+him a helpmeet for him." We naturally expect that the Lord is about to
+bestow on him a wife; but first he conducts before him all the various
+tribes of animals. Perhaps the copyist may have committed here an error
+of transposition.
+
+"And the name which Adam gave to every animal is its true name." What we
+should naturally understand by the true name of an animal, would be a
+name describing all, or at least, the principal properties of its
+species. But this is not the case in any language. In each there are
+some imitative words, as "_coq_" and "_cocu_" in the Celtic, which bear
+some slight similarity to the notes of the cock and the cuckoo;
+_tintamarre, trictrac_, in French; _alali_, in Greek; _lupus_, in Latin,
+etc. But these imitative words are exceedingly few. Moreover, if Adam
+had thus thoroughly known the properties of various animals, he must
+either have previously eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, or
+it would apparently have answered no end for God to have interdicted him
+from it. He must have already known more than the Royal Society of
+London, and the Academy of the Sciences.
+
+It may be remarked that this is the first time the name of Adam occurs
+in the Book of Genesis. The first man, according to the ancient
+Brahmins, who were prodigiously anterior to the Jews, was called Adimo,
+a son of the earth, and his wife, Procris, life. This is recorded in the
+Vedas, in the history of the second formation of the world. Adam and Eve
+expressed perfectly the same meanings in the Phoenician language--a new
+evidence of the Holy Spirit's conforming Himself to commonly received
+ideas.
+
+"When Adam was asleep God took one of his ribs and put flesh instead
+thereof; and of the rib which he had taken from Adam he formed a woman,
+and he brought the woman to Adam."
+
+In the previous chapter the Lord had already created the male and the
+female; why, therefore, remove a rib from the man to form out of it a
+woman who was already in being? It is answered that the author barely
+announces in the one case what he explains in another. It is answered
+further that this allegory places the wife in subjection to her husband,
+and expresses their intimate union. Many persons have been led to
+imagine from this verse that men have one rib less than women; but this
+is a heresy, and anatomy informs us that a wife has no more ribs than
+her husband.
+
+"But the serpent was more subtle than all animals on the earth; he said
+to the woman," etc. Throughout the whole of this article there is no
+mention made of the devil. Everything in it relates to the usual course
+of nature. The serpent was considered by all oriental nations, not only
+as the most cunning of all animals, but likewise as immortal. The
+Chaldæans had a fable concerning a quarrel between God and the serpent,
+and this fable had been preserved by Pherecydes. Origen cites it in his
+sixth book against Celsus. A serpent was borne in procession at the
+feasts of Bacchus. The Egyptians, according to the statement of Eusebius
+in the first book of the tenth chapter of his "Evangelical Preparation,"
+attached a sort of divinity to the serpent. In Arabia, India, and even
+China, the serpent was regarded as a symbol of life; and hence it was
+that the emperors of China, long before the time of Moses, always bore
+upon their breast the image of a serpent.
+
+Eve expresses no astonishment at the serpent's speaking to her. In all
+ancient histories, animals have spoken; hence Pilpay and Lokman excited
+no surprise by their introduction of animals conversing and disputing.
+
+The whole of this affair appears so clearly to have been supposed in the
+natural course of events, and so unconnected with anything allegorical,
+that the narrative assigns a reason why the serpent, from that time, has
+moved creeping on its belly, why we always are eager to crush it under
+our feet, and why it always attempts--at least according to the popular
+belief--to bite and wound us. Precisely as, with respect to presumed
+changes affecting certain animals recorded in ancient fable, reasons
+were stated why the crow which originally had been white is at the
+present day black; why the owl quits his gloomy retreat only by night;
+why the wolf is devoted to carnage. The fathers, however, believed the
+affair to be an allegory at once clear and venerable. The safest way is
+to believe like them.
+
+"I will multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow shalt thou
+bring forth children. Thou shalt be under the power of the man, and he
+shall rule over thee." Why, it is asked, should the multiplication of
+conception be a punishment? It was, on the contrary, says the objector,
+esteemed a superior blessing, particularly among the Jews. The pains of
+childbirth are inconsiderable, in all except very weak or delicate
+women. Those accustomed to labor are delivered, particularly in warm
+climates, with great ease. Brutes frequently experience greater
+suffering from this process of nature: some even die under it. And with
+respect to the superiority or dominion of the man over the woman, it is
+merely in the natural course of events; it is the effect of strength of
+body, and even of strength of mind. Men, generally speaking, possess
+organs more capable of continued attention than women, and are better
+fitted by nature for labors both of the head and arm. But when a woman
+possesses both a hand and a mind more powerful than her husband's, she
+everywhere possesses the dominion over him; it is then the husband that
+is under subjection to the wife. There is certainly truth in these
+remarks; but it might, nevertheless, very easily be the fact that,
+before the commission of the original sin, neither subjection nor sorrow
+existed.
+
+"The Lord made for them coats of skins." This passage decidedly proves
+that the Jews believed God to be corporeal. A rabbi, of the name of
+Eliezer, stated in his works that God clothed Adam and Eve with the skin
+of the very serpent who had tempted them; and Origen maintains that this
+coat of skins was a new flesh, a new body, which God conferred on man.
+It is far better to adhere respectfully to the literal texts.
+
+"And the Lord said; Lo! Adam is become like one of us." It seems as if
+the Jews admitted, originally, many gods. It is somewhat more difficult
+to determine what they meant by the word "God," _Elohim_. Some
+commentators have contended that the expression "one of us" signifies
+the Trinity. But certainly there is nothing relating to the Trinity
+throughout the Bible. The Trinity is not a compound of many or several
+Gods: it is one and the same god threefold; and the Jews never heard the
+slightest mention of one god in three persons. By the words "like us,"
+or "as one of us," it is probable that the Jews understood the angels,
+_Elohim_. It is this passage which has induced many learned men very
+rashly to conclude that this book was not written until that people had
+adopted the belief of those inferior gods. But this opinion has been
+condemned.
+
+"The Lord sent him forth from the garden of Eden to cultivate the
+ground." "But," it is remarked by some, "the Lord had placed him in the
+garden of Eden to _cultivate_ that garden." If Adam, instead of being a
+gardener, merely becomes a laborer, his situation, they observe, is not
+made very much worse by the change. A good laborer is well worth a good
+gardener. These remarks must be regarded as too light and frivolous. It
+appears more judicious to say that God punished disobedience by
+banishing the offender from the place of his nativity.
+
+The whole of this history, generally speaking--according to the opinion
+of liberal, not to say licentious, commentators--proceeds upon the idea
+which has prevailed in every past age, and still exists, that the first
+times were better and happier than those which followed. Men have
+always complained of the present and extolled the past. Pressed down by
+the labors of life, they have imagined happiness to consist in
+inactivity, not considering that the most unhappy of all states is that
+of a man who has nothing to do. They felt themselves frequently
+miserable, and framed in their imaginations an ideal period in which all
+the world had been happy; although it might be just as naturally and
+truly supposed that there had existed times in which no tree decayed and
+perished, in which no beast was weak, diseased, or devoured by another,
+and in which spiders did not prey upon flies. Hence the idea of the
+golden age; of the egg pierced by Arimanes; of the serpent who stole
+from the ass the recipe for obtaining a happy and immortal life, which
+the man had placed upon his pack-saddle; of the conflict between Typhon
+and Osiris, and between Opheneus and the gods; of the famous box of
+Pandora; and of all those ancient tales, of which some are ingenious,
+but none instructive. But we are bound to believe that the fables of
+other nations are imitations of the Hebrew history, since we possess the
+ancient history of the Hebrews, and the early books of other nations are
+nearly all destroyed. Besides the testimonies in favor of the Book of
+Genesis are irrefragable.
+
+"And He placed before the garden of Eden a cherub with a flaming sword,
+which turned all round to guard the way to the tree of life." The word
+"_kerub_" signifies _ox_. An ox armed with a flaming sword is rather a
+singular exhibition, it is said, before a portal. But the Jews
+afterwards represented angels under the form of oxen and hawks although
+they were forbidden to make any images. They evidently derived these
+emblems of oxen and hawks from the Egyptians, whom they imitated in so
+many other things. The Egyptians first venerated the ox as the emblem of
+agriculture, and the hawk as that of the winds; but they never converted
+the ox into a sentinel. It is probably an allegory; and the Jews by
+"_kerub_" understood nature. It was a symbol formed of the head of an
+ox, the head and body of a man, and the wings of a hawk.
+
+"And the Lord set a mark upon Cain." What Lord? says the infidel. He
+accepts the offering of Abel, and rejects that of his elder brother,
+without the least reason being assigned for the distinction. By this
+proceeding the Lord was the cause of animosity between the two brothers.
+We are presented in this piece of history, it is true, with a moral,
+however humiliating, lesson; a lesson to be derived from all the fables
+of antiquity, that scarcely had the race of man commenced the career of
+existence, before one brother assassinates another. But what the sages,
+of this world consider contrary to everything moral, to everything just,
+to all the principles of common sense, is that God, who inflicted
+eternal damnation on the race of man, and useless crucifixion on His own
+son, on account merely of the eating of an apple, should absolutely
+pardon a fratricide! nay, that He should more than pardon, that He
+should take the offender under His peculiar protection! He declares that
+whoever shall avenge the murder of Abel shall experience sevenfold the
+punishment that Cain might have suffered. He puts a mark upon him as a
+safeguard. Here, continue these vile blasphemers, here is a fable as
+execrable as it is absurd. It is the raving of some wretched Jew, who
+wrote those infamous and revolting fooleries, in imitation of the tales
+so greedily swallowed by the neighboring population in Syria. This
+senseless Jew attributes these atrocious reveries to Moses, at a time
+when nothing was so rare as books. That fatality, which affects and
+disposes of everything, has handed down this contemptible production to
+our own times. Knaves have extolled it, and fools have believed it. Such
+is the language of a tribe of theists, who, while they adore a God, dare
+to condemn the God of Israel; and who judge of the conduct of the
+eternal Deity by the rules of our own imperfect morality, and erroneous
+justice. They admit a God, to subject Him to our laws. Let us guard
+against such rashness; and, once again it must be repeated, let us
+revere what we cannot comprehend. Let us cry out, _O Altitudo_! O the
+height and depth! with all our strength.
+
+"The gods Elohim, seeing the daughters of men that they were fair, took
+for wives those whom they chose." This imagination, again, may be traced
+in the history of every people. No nation has ever existed, unless
+perhaps we may except China, in which some god is not described as
+having had offspring from women. These corporeal gods frequently
+descended to visit their dominions upon earth; they saw the daughters of
+our race, and attached themselves to those who were most interesting and
+beautiful: the issue of this connection between gods and mortals must of
+course have been superior to other men; accordingly, Genesis informs us
+that from the association it mentions, of the gods with women, sprang a
+race of giants.
+
+"I will bring a deluge of waters upon the earth." I will merely observe
+here that St. Augustine, in his "City of God," No. 8, says, "_Maximum
+illud diluvium Græca nec Latina novit historia_"--neither Greek nor
+Latin history knows anything about the great deluge. In fact, none had
+ever been known in Greece but those of Deucalion and Ogyges. They are
+regarded as universal in the fables collected by Ovid, but are wholly
+unknown in eastern Asia. St. Augustine, therefore, is not mistaken, in
+saying that history makes no mention of this event.
+
+"God said to Noah, I will make a covenant with you, and with your seed
+after you, and with all living creatures." God make a covenant with
+beasts! What sort of a covenant? Such is the outcry of infidels. But if
+He makes a covenant with man, why not with the beast? It has feeling,
+and there is something as divine in feeling as in the most metaphysical
+meditation. Besides, beasts feel more correctly than the greater part of
+men think. It is clearly in virtue of this treaty that Francis d'Assisi,
+the founder of the Seraphic order, said to the grasshoppers and the
+hares, "Pray sing, my dear sister grasshopper; pray browse, my dear
+brother hare." But what were the conditions of the treaty? That all
+animals should devour one another; that they should feed upon our flesh,
+and we upon theirs; that, after having eaten them, we should proceed
+with wrath and fury to the extermination of our own race--nothing being
+then wanting to crown the horrid series of butchery and cruelty, but
+devouring our fellow-men, after having thus remorselessly destroyed
+them. Had there been actually such a treaty as this it could have been
+entered into only with the devil.
+
+Probably the meaning of the whole passage is neither more nor less than
+that God is equally the absolute master of everything that breathes.
+This pact can be nothing more than an order, and the word "covenant" is
+used merely as more emphatic and impressive; we should not therefore be
+startled and offended at the words, but adore the spirit, and direct our
+minds back to the period in which this book was written--a book of
+scandal to the weak, but of edification to the strong.
+
+"And I will put my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of my
+covenant." Observe that the author does not say, I _have_ put my bow in
+the clouds; he says, I _will_ put: this clearly implies it to have been
+the prevailing opinion that there had not always been a rainbow. This
+phenomenon is necessarily produced by rain; yet in this place it is
+represented as something supernatural, exhibited in order to announce
+and prove that the earth should no more be inundated. It is singular to
+choose the certain sign of rain, in order to assure men against their
+being drowned. But it may also be replied that in any danger of
+inundation, we have the cheering security of the rainbow.
+
+"But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of
+Adam had built, and he said, 'Behold a people which have but one
+language. They have begun to do this, and they will not desist until
+they have completed it. Come, then, let us go and confound their
+language, that no one may understand his neighbor.'" Observe here, that
+the sacred writer always continues to conform to the popular opinions.
+He always speaks of God as of a man who endeavors to inform himself of
+what is passing, who is desirous of seeing with his own eyes what is
+going on in his dominions, who calls together his council in order to
+deliberate with them.
+
+"And Abraham having divided his men--who were three hundred and eighteen
+in number--fell upon the five kings, and pursued them unto Hoba, on the
+left hand of Damascus." From the south bank of the lake of Sodom to
+Damascus was a distance of eighty leagues, not to mention crossing the
+mountains Libanus and Anti-Libanus. Infidels smile and triumph at such
+exaggeration. But as the Lord favored Abraham, nothing was in fact
+exaggerated.
+
+"And two angels arrived at Sodom at even." The whole history of these
+two angels, whom the inhabitants of Sodom wished to violate, is perhaps
+the most extraordinary in the records of all antiquity. But it must be
+considered that almost all Asia believed in the existence of the
+demoniacal incubus and succubus; and moreover, that these two angels
+were creatures more perfect than mankind, and must have possessed more
+beauty to stimulate their execrable tendencies. It is possible that the
+passage may be only meant as a rhetorical figure to express the
+atrocious depravity of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is not without the
+greatest diffidence that we suggest to the learned this solution.
+
+As to Lot, who proposes to the people of Sodom the substitution of his
+two daughters in the room of the angels; and his wife, who was changed
+into a statue of salt, and all the rest of that history, what shall we
+venture to say? The old Arabian tale of Kinyras and Myrrha has some
+resemblance to the incest of Lot with his daughters; and the adventure
+of Philemon and Baucis is somewhat similar to the case of the two angels
+who appeared to Lot and his wife. With respect to the statue of salt, we
+know not where to find any resemblance; perhaps in the history of
+Orpheus and Eurydice.
+
+Many ingenious men are of opinion, with the great Newton and the learned
+Leclerc that the Pentateuch was written by Samuel when the Jews had a
+little knowledge of reading and writing, and that all these histories
+are imitations of Syrian fables.
+
+But it is enough that all this is in the Holy Scripture to induce us to
+reverence it, without attempting to find out in this book anything
+besides what is written by the Holy Spirit. Let us always recollect that
+those times were not like our times; and let us not fail to repeat,
+after so many great men, that the Old Testament is a true history; and
+that all that has been written differing from it by the rest of the
+world is fabulous.
+
+Some critics have contended that all the incredible passages in the
+canonical books, which scandalize weak minds, ought to be suppressed;
+but it has been observed in answer that those critics had bad hearts,
+and ought to be burned at the stake; and that it is impossible to be a
+good man without believing that the people of Sodom wanted to violate
+two angels. Such is the reasoning of a species of monsters who wish to
+lord it over the understandings of mankind.
+
+It is true that many eminent fathers of the Church have had the prudence
+to turn all these histories into allegories, after the example of the
+Jews, and particularly of Philo. The popes, more discreet, have
+endeavored to prevent the translation of these books into the vulgar
+tongue, lest some men should in consequence be led to think and judge,
+about what was proposed to them only to adore.
+
+We are certainly justified in concluding hence, that those who
+thoroughly understand this book should tolerate those who do not
+understand it at all; for if the latter understand nothing of it, it is
+not their own fault: on the other hand, those who comprehend nothing
+that it contains should tolerate those who comprehend everything in it.
+
+Learned and ingenious men, full of their own talents and acquirements,
+have maintained that it is impossible that Moses could have written the
+Book of Genesis. One of their principal reasons is that in the history
+of Abraham that patriarch is stated to have paid for a cave which he
+purchased for the interment of his wife, in silver coin, and the king of
+Gerar is said to have given Sarah a thousand pieces of silver when he
+restored her, after having carried her off for her beauty at the age of
+seventy-five. They inform us that they have consulted all the ancient
+authors, and that it appears very certain that at the period mentioned
+silver money was not in existence. But these are evidently mere cavils,
+as the Church has always firmly believed Moses to have been the author
+of the Pentateuch. They strengthen all the doubts suggested by
+Aben-Ezra, and Baruch Spinoza. The physician Astruc, father-in-law of
+the comptroller-general Silhouette, in his book--now become very
+scarce--called "Conjectures on the Book of Genesis," adds some
+objections, inexplicable undoubtedly to human learning, but not so to a
+humble and submissive piety. The learned, many of them, contradict every
+line, but the devout consider every line sacred. Let us dread falling
+into the misfortune of believing and trusting to our reason; but let us
+bring ourselves into subjection in understanding as well as in heart.
+
+"And Abraham said that Sarah was his sister, and the king of Gerar took
+her for himself." We admit, as we have said under the article on
+"Abraham," that Sarah was at this time ninety years of age, that she had
+been already carried away by a king of Egypt, and that a king of this
+same horrid wilderness of Gerar, likewise, many years afterwards,
+carried away the wife of Isaac, Abraham's son. We have also spoken of
+his servant, Hagar, who bore him a son, and of the manner in which the
+patriarch sent her and her son away. It is well known how infidels
+triumph on the subject of all these histories, with what a disdainful
+smile they speak of them, and that they place the story of one Abimelech
+falling in love with Sarah whom Abraham had passed off as his sister,
+and of another Abimelech falling in love with Rebecca, whom Isaac also
+passes as his sister, even beneath the thousand and one nights of the
+Arabian fables. We cannot too often remark that the great error of all
+these learned critics is their wishing to try everything by the test of
+our feeble reason, and to judge of the ancient Arabs as they judge of
+the courts of France or of England.
+
+"And the soul of Shechem, King Hamor's son, was bound up with the soul
+of Dinah, and he soothed her grief by his tender caresses, and he went
+to Hamor his father, and said to him, give me that woman to be my wife."
+
+Here our critics exclaim in terms of stronger disgust than ever. "What!"
+say they; "the son of a king is desirous to marry a vagabond girl;" the
+marriage is celebrated; Jacob the father, and Dinah the daughter, are
+loaded with presents; the king of Shechem deigns to receive those
+wandering robbers called patriarchs within his city; he has the
+incredible politeness or kindness to undergo, with his son, his court,
+and his people, the rite of circumcision, thus condescending to the
+superstition of a petty horde that could not call half a league of
+territory their own! And in return for this astonishing hospitality and
+goodness, how do our holy patriarchs act? They wait for the day when the
+process of circumcision generally induces fever, when Simeon and Levi
+run through the whole city with poniards in their hands and massacre the
+king, the prince his son, and all the inhabitants. We are precluded from
+the horror appropriate to this infernal counterpart of the tragedy of
+St. Bartholomew, only by a sense of its absolute impossibility. It is an
+abominable romance; but it is evidently a ridiculous romance. It is
+impossible that two men could have slaughtered in quiet the whole
+population of a city. The people might suffer in a slight degree from
+the operation which had preceded, but notwithstanding this, they would
+have risen in self-defence against two diabolical miscreants; they would
+have instantly assembled, would have surrounded them, and destroyed them
+with the summary and complete vengeance merited by their atrocity.
+
+But there is a still more palpable impossibility. It is, that according
+to the accurate computation of time, Dinah, this daughter of Jacob,
+could be only three years old; and that, even by forcing up chronology
+as far as possible in favor of the narrative, she could at the very most
+be only five. It is here, then, that we are assailed with bursts of
+indignant exclamation! "What!" it is said, "what! is it this book, the
+book of a rejected and reprobate people; a book so long unknown to all
+the world; a book in which sound reason and decent manners are outraged
+in every page, that is held up to us as irrefragable, holy, and dictated
+by God Himself? Is it not even impious to believe it? or could anything
+less than the fury of cannibals urge to the persecution of sensible and
+modest men for not believing it?"
+
+To this we reply: "The Church declares its belief in it. The copyists
+may have mixed up some revolting absurdities with respectable and
+genuine histories. It belongs to the holy church only to decide.
+The profane ought to be guided by her. Those absurdities, those alleged
+horrors do not affect the substance of our faith. How lamentable would
+be the fate of mankind, if religion and virtue depended upon what
+formerly happened to Shechem and to little Dinah!"
+
+"These are the kings who reigned in the land of Edom before the children
+of Israel had a king." This is the celebrated passage which has proved
+one of the great stumbling stones. This it was which decided the great
+Newton, the pious and acute Samuel Clarke, the profound and philosophic
+Bolingbroke, the learned Leclerc, the ingenious Fréret, and a host of
+other enlightened men, to maintain that it was impossible Moses could
+have been the author of Genesis.
+
+We admit that in fact these words could not have been written until
+after the time that the Jews had kings.
+
+It is principally this verse that determined Astruc to give up the
+inspired authority of the whole Book of Genesis, and suppose the author
+had derived his materials from existing memoirs and records. His work is
+ingenious and accurate, but it is rash, not to say audacious. Even a
+council would scarcely have ventured on such an enterprise. And to what
+purpose has it served Astruc's thankless and dangerous labor--to double
+the darkness he wished to enlighten? Here is the fruit of the tree of
+knowledge, of which we are all so desirous of eating. Why must it be,
+that the fruit of the tree of ignorance should be more nourishing and
+more digestible?
+
+But of what consequence can it be to us, after all, whether any
+particular verse or chapter was written by Moses, or Samuel, or the
+priest (_sacrificateur_) who came to Samaria, or Esdras, or any other
+person? In what respect can our government, our laws, our fortunes, our
+morals, our well-being, be bound up with the unknown chiefs of a
+wretched and barbarous country called Edom or Idumæa, always inhabited
+by robbers? Alas! those poor Arabs, who have not shirts to their backs,
+neither know nor care whether or not we are in existence! They go on
+steadily plundering caravans, and eating barley bread, while we are
+perplexing and tormenting ourselves to know whether any petty kings
+flourished in a particular canton of Arabia Petræa, before they existed
+in a particular canton adjoining the west of the lake of Sodom!
+
+  _O miseras hominum curas! Opectora coeca!_
+                                      --LUCRETIUS, ii. 14.
+
+Blind, wretched man! in what dark paths of strife
+Thou walkest the little journey of thy life!--CREECH.
+
+
+
+
+GENII.
+
+
+The doctrines of judicial astrology and magic have spread all over the
+world. Look back to the ancient Zoroaster, and you will find that of the
+genii long established. All antiquity abounds in astrologers and
+magicians; such ideas were therefore very natural. At present, we smile
+at the number who entertained them; if we were in their situation, if
+like them we were only beginning to cultivate the sciences, we should
+perhaps believe just the same. Let us suppose ourselves intelligent
+people, beginning to reason on our own existence, and to observe the
+stars. The earth, we might say, is no doubt immovable in the midst of
+the world; the sun and planets only revolve in her service, and the
+stars are only made for us; man, therefore, is the great object of all
+nature. What is the intention of all these globes, and of the immensity
+of heaven thus destined for our use? It is very likely that all space
+and these globes are peopled with substances, and since we are the
+favorites of nature, placed in the centre of the universe, and all is
+made for man, these substances are evidently destined to watch over man.
+
+The first man who believed the thing at all possible would soon find
+disciples persuaded that it existed. We might then commence by saying,
+genii perhaps exist, and nobody could affirm the contrary; for where is
+the impossibility of the air and planets being peopled? We might
+afterwards say there _are_ genii, and certainly no one could prove that
+there are not. Soon after, some sages might see these genii, and we
+should have no right to say to them: "You have not seen them"; as these
+persons might be honorable, and altogether worthy of credit. One might
+see the genius of the empire or of his own city; another that of Mars
+or Saturn; the genii of the four elements might be manifested to several
+philosophers; more than one sage might see his own genius; all at first
+might be little more than dreaming, but dreams are the symbols of truth.
+
+It was soon known exactly how these genii were formed. To visit our
+globe, they must necessarily have wings; they therefore had wings. We
+know only of bodies; they therefore had bodies, but bodies much finer
+than ours, since they were genii, and much lighter, because they came
+from so great a distance. The sages who had the privilege of conversing
+with the genii inspired others with the hope of enjoying the same
+happiness. A skeptic would have been ill received, if he had said to
+them: "I have seen no genius, therefore there are none." They would have
+replied: "You reason ill; it does not follow that a thing exists not,
+which is unknown to you. There is no contradiction in the doctrine which
+inculcates these ethereal powers; no impossibility that they may visit
+us; they show themselves to our sages, they manifest themselves to us;
+you are not worthy of seeing genii."
+
+Everything on earth is composed of good and evil; there are therefore
+incontestably good and bad genii. The Persians had their peris and
+dives; the Greeks, their demons and cacodæmons; the Latins, _bonos et
+malos genios_. The good genii are white, and the bad black, except among
+the negroes, where it is necessarily the reverse. Plato without
+difficulty admits of a good and evil genius for every individual. The
+evil genius of Brutus appeared to him, and announced to him his death
+before the battle of Philippi. Have not grave historians said so? And
+would not Plutarch have been very injudicious to have assured us of this
+fact, if it were not true?
+
+Further, consider what a source of feasts, amusements, good tales, and
+bon mots, originated in the belief of genii!
+
+There were male and female genii. The genii of the ladies were called by
+the Romans little Junos. They also had the pleasure of seeing their
+genii grow up. In infancy, they were a kind of Cupid with wings, and
+when they protected old age, they wore long beards, and even sometimes
+the forms of serpents. At Rome, there is preserved a marble, on which is
+represented a serpent under a palm tree, to which are attached two
+crowns with this inscription: "To the genius of the Augusti"; it was the
+emblem of immortality.
+
+What demonstrative proof have we at present, that the genii, so
+universally admitted by so many enlightened nations, are only phantoms
+of the imagination? All that can be said is reduced to this: "I have
+never seen a genius, and no one of my acquaintance has ever seen one;
+Brutus has not written that his genius appeared to him before the battle
+of Philippi; neither Newton, Locke, nor even Descartes, who gave the
+reins to his imagination; neither kings nor ministers of state have
+ever been suspected of communing with their genii; therefore I do not
+believe a thing of which there is not the least truth. I confess their
+existence is not impossible; but the possibility is not a proof of the
+reality. It is possible that there may be satyrs, with little turned-up
+tails and goats' feet; but I must see several to believe in them; for if
+I saw but one, I should still doubt their existence."
+
+
+
+
+GENIUS.
+
+
+Of genius or demon, we have already spoken in the article on "angel." It
+is not easy to know precisely whether the peris of the Persians were
+invented before the demons of the Greeks, but it is very probable that
+they were. It may be, that the souls of the dead, called shades, manes,
+etc., passed for demons. Hesiod makes Hercules say that a demon dictated
+his labors.
+
+The demon of Socrates had so great a reputation, that Apuleius, the
+author of the "Golden Ass," who was himself a magician of good repute,
+says in his "Treatise on the Genius of Socrates," that a man must be
+without religion who denies it. You see that Apuleius reasons precisely
+like brothers Garasse and Bertier: "You do not believe that which I
+believe; you are therefore without religion." And the Jansenists have
+said as much of brother Bertier, as well as of all the world except
+themselves. "These demons," says the very religious and filthy
+Apuleius, "are intermediate powers between ether and our lower region.
+They live in our atmosphere, and bear our prayers and merits to the
+gods. They treat of succors and benefits, as interpreters and
+ambassadors. Plato says, that it is by their ministry that revelations,
+presages, and the miracles of magicians, are effected."--"_Cæterum sunt
+quædam divinæ mediæ potestates, inter summum æthera, et infimas terras,
+in isto intersitæ æris spatio, per quas et desideria nostra et merita ad
+deos commeant. Hos Græco nomine demonias nuncupant. Inter terricolas
+coeli colasque victores, hinc pecum, inde donorum: qui ultro citroque
+portant, hinc petitiones, inde suppetias: ceu quidam utriusque
+interpretes, et salutigeri. Per hos eosdem, ut Plato in symposio
+autumat, cuncta denuntiata; et majorum varia miracula, omnesque
+præsagium species reguntur._"
+
+St. Augustine has condescended to refute Apuleius in these words:
+
+"It is impossible for us to say that demons are neither mortal nor
+eternal, for all that has life, either lives eternally, or loses the
+breath of life by death; and Apuleius has said, that as to time, the
+demons are eternal. What then remains, but that demons hold a medium
+situation, and have one quality higher and another lower than mankind;
+and as, of these two things, eternity is the only higher thing which
+they exclusively possess, to complete the allotted medium, what must be
+the lower, if not misery?" This is powerful reasoning!
+
+As I have never seen any genii, demons, peris, or hobgoblins, whether
+beneficent or mischievous, I cannot speak of them from knowledge. I only
+relate what has been said by people who have seen them.
+
+Among the Romans, the word "genius" was not used to express a rare
+talent, as with us: the term for that quality was _ingenium_. We use the
+word "genius" indifferently in speaking of the tutelar demon of a town
+of antiquity, or an artist, or a musician. The term "genius" seems to
+have been intended to designate not great talents generally, but those
+into which invention enters. Invention, above everything, appeared a
+gift from the gods--this _ingenium, quasi ingenitum_, a kind of divine
+inspiration. Now an artist, however perfect he may be in his profession,
+if he have no invention, if he be not original, is not considered a
+genius. He is only inspired by the artists his predecessors, even when
+he surpasses them.
+
+It is very probable that many people now play at chess better than the
+inventor of the game, and that they might gain the prize of corn
+promised him by the Indian king. But this inventor was a genius, and
+those who might now gain the prize would be no such thing. Poussin, who
+was a great painter before he had seen any good pictures, had a genius
+for painting. Lulli, who never heard any good musician in France, had a
+genius for music.
+
+Which is the more desirable to possess, a genius without a master, or
+the attainment of perfection by imitating and surpassing the masters
+which precede us?
+
+If you put this question to artists, they will perhaps be divided; if
+you put it to the public, it will not hesitate. Do you like a beautiful
+Gobelin tapestry better than one made in Flanders at the commencement of
+the arts? Do you prefer modern masterpieces of engraving to the first
+wood-cuts? the music of the present day to the first airs, which
+resembled the Gregorian chant? the makers of the artillery of our time
+to the genius which invented the first cannon? everybody will answer,
+"yes." All purchasers will say: "I own that the inventor of the shuttle
+had more genius than the manufacturer who made my cloth, but my cloth is
+worth more than that of the inventor."
+
+In short, every one in conscience will confess, that we respect the
+geniuses who invented the arts, but that the minds which perfect them
+are of more present benefit.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+The article on "Genius" has been treated in the "Encyclopædia" by men
+who possess it. We shall hazard very little after them.
+
+Every town, every man possessed a genius. It was imagined that those who
+performed extraordinary things were inspired by their genius. The nine
+muses were nine genii, whom it was necessary to invoke; therefore Ovid
+says: "_Et Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo_"--"The God within
+us, He the mind inspires."
+
+But, properly speaking, is genius anything but capability? What is
+capability but a disposition to succeed in an art? Why do we say the
+genius of a language? It is, that every language, by its terminations,
+articles, participles, and shorter or longer words, will necessarily
+have exclusive properties of its own.
+
+By the genius of a nation is meant the character, manners, talents, and
+even vices, which distinguish one people from another. It is sufficient
+to see the French, English, and Spanish people, to feel this difference.
+
+We have said that the particular genius of a man for an art is a
+different thing from his general talent; but this name is given only to
+a very superior ability. How many people have talent for poetry, music,
+and painting; yet it would be ridiculous to call them geniuses.
+
+Genius, conducted by taste, will never commit a gross fault. Racine,
+since his "Andromache," "Le Poussin," and "Rameau," has never committed
+one. Genius, without taste, will often commit enormous errors; and, what
+is worse, it will not be sensible of them.
+
+
+
+
+GEOGRAPHY.
+
+
+Geography is one of those sciences which will always require to be
+perfected. Notwithstanding the pains that have been taken, it has
+hitherto been impossible to have an exact description of the earth. For
+this great work, it would be necessary that all sovereigns should come
+to an understanding, and lend mutual assistance. But they have ever
+taken more pains to ravage the world than they have to measure it.
+
+No one has yet been able to make an exact map of upper Egypt, nor of the
+regions bordering on the Red Sea, nor of the vast country of Arabia. Of
+Africa we know only the coasts; all the interior is no more known than
+it was in the times of Atlas and Hercules. There is not a single
+well-detailed map of all the Grand Turk's possessions in Asia; all is
+placed at random, excepting some few large towns, the crumbling remains
+of which are still existing. In the states of the Great Mogul something
+is known of the relative positions of Agra and Delhi; but thence to the
+kingdom of Golconda everything is laid down at a venture.
+
+It is known that Japan extends from about the thirtieth to the fortieth
+degree of north latitude; there cannot be an error of more than two
+degrees, which is about fifty leagues; so that, relying on one of our
+best maps, a pilot would be in danger of losing his track or his life.
+
+As for the longitude, the first maps of the Jesuits determined it
+between the one hundred and fifty-seventh and the one hundred and
+seventy-fifth degree; whereas, it is now determined between the one
+hundred and forty-sixth and the one hundred and sixtieth.
+
+China is the only Asiatic country of which we have an exact measurement;
+because the emperor Kam-hi employed some Jesuit astronomers to draw
+exact maps, which is the best thing the Jesuits have done. Had they been
+content with measuring the earth, they would never have been proscribed.
+
+In our western world, Italy, France, Russia, England, and the principal
+towns of the other states, have been measured by the same method as was
+employed in China; but it was not until a very few years ago, that in
+France it was undertaken to form an entire topography. A company taken
+from the Academy of Sciences despatched engineers or surveyors into
+every corner of the kingdom, to lay down even the meanest hamlet, the
+smallest rivulet, the hills, the woods, in their true places. Before
+that time, so confused was the topography, that on the eve of the battle
+of Fontenoy, the maps of the country being all examined, every one of
+them was found entirely defective.
+
+If a positive order had been sent from Versailles to an inexperienced
+general to give battle, and post himself as appeared most advisable from
+the maps, as sometimes happened in the time of the minister Chamillar,
+the battle would infallibly have been lost.
+
+A general who should carry on a war in the country of the Morlachians,
+or the Montenegrins, with no knowledge of places but from the maps,
+would be at as great a loss as if he were in the heart of Africa.
+
+Happily, that which has often been traced by geographers, according to
+their own fancy, in their closets, is rectified on the spot. In
+geography, as in morals, it is very difficult to know the world without
+going from home.
+
+It is not with this department of knowledge, as with the arts of poetry,
+music, and painting. The last works of these kinds are often the worst.
+But in the sciences, which require exactness rather than genius, the
+last are always the best, provided they are done with some degree of
+care.
+
+One of the greatest advantages of geography, in my opinion, is this:
+your fool of a neighbor, and his wife almost as stupid, are incessantly
+reproaching you with not thinking as they think in Rue St. Jacques.
+"See," say they, "what a multitude of great men have been of our
+opinion, from Peter the Lombard down to the Abbé Petit-pied. The whole
+universe has received our truths; they reign in the Faubourg St. Honoré,
+at Chaillot and at Étampes, at Rome and among the Uscoques." Take a map
+of the world; show them all Africa, the empires of Japan, China, India,
+Turkey, Persia, and that of Russia, more extensive than was the Roman
+Empire; make them pass their finger over all Scandinavia, all the north
+of Germany, the three kingdoms of Great Britain, the greater part of the
+Low Countries, and of Helvetia; in short make them observe, in the four
+great divisions of the earth, and in the fifth, which is as little known
+as it is great in extent, the prodigious number of races, who either
+never heard of those opinions, or have combated them, or have held them
+in abhorrence, and you will thus oppose the whole universe to Rue St.
+Jacques.
+
+You will tell them that Julius Cæsar, who extended his power much
+farther than that street, did not know a word of all which they think so
+universal; and that our ancestors, on whom Julius Cæsar bestowed the
+lash, knew no more of them than he did.
+
+They will then, perhaps, feel somewhat ashamed at having believed that
+the organ of St. Severin's church gave the tone to the rest of the
+world.
+
+
+
+
+GLORY--GLORIOUS.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+Glory is reputation joined with esteem, and is complete when admiration
+is superadded. It always supposes that which is brilliant in action, in
+virtue, or in talent, and the surmounting of great difficulties. Cæsar
+and Alexander had glory. The same can hardly be said of Socrates. He
+claims esteem, reverence, pity, indignation against his enemies; but the
+term "glory" applied to him would be improper; his memory is venerable
+rather than glorious. Attila had much brilliancy, but he has no glory;
+for history, which may be mistaken, attributes to him no virtues:
+Charles XII. still has glory; for his valor, his disinterestedness, his
+liberality, were extreme. Success is sufficient for reputation, but not
+for glory. The glory of Henry IV. is every day increasing; for time has
+brought to light all his virtues, which were incomparably greater than
+his defects.
+
+Glory is also the portion of inventors in the fine arts; imitators have
+only applause. It is granted, too, to great talents, but in sublime arts
+only. We may well say, the glory of Virgil, or Cicero, but not of
+Martial, nor of Aulus Gellius.
+
+Men have dared to say, the glory of God: God created this world for His
+glory; not that the Supreme Being can have glory; but that men, having
+no expressions suitable to Him, use for Him those by which they are
+themselves most flattered.
+
+Vainglory is that petty ambition which is contented with appearances,
+which is exhibited in pompous display, and never elevates itself to
+greater things. Sovereigns, having real glory, have been known to be
+nevertheless fond of vainglory--seeking too eagerly after praise, and
+being too much attached to the trappings of ostentation.
+
+False glory often verges towards vanity; but it often leads to excesses,
+while vainglory is more confined to splendid littlenesses. A prince who
+should look for honor in revenge, would seek a false glory rather than a
+vain one.
+
+To give glory signifies to acknowledge, to bear witness. Give glory to
+truth, means acknowledging truth--Give glory to the God whom you
+serve--Bear witness to the God whom you serve.
+
+Glory is taken for heaven--He dwells in glory; but this is the case in
+no religion but ours. It is not allowable to say that Bacchus or
+Hercules was received into glory, when speaking of their apotheosis. The
+saints and angels have sometimes been called the glorious, as dwelling
+in the abode of glory.
+
+Gloriously is always taken in the good sense; he reigned gloriously; he
+extricated himself gloriously from great danger or embarrassment.
+
+To glory in, is sometimes taken in the good, sometimes in the bad,
+sense, according to the nature of the object in question. He glories in
+a disgrace which is the fruit of his talents and the effect of envy. We
+say of the martyrs, that they glorified God--that is, that their
+constancy made the God whom they attested revered by men.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+That Cicero should love glory, after having stifled Catiline's
+conspiracy, may be pardoned him. That the king of Prussia, Frederick the
+Great, should have the same feelings after Rosbach and Lissa, and after
+being the legislator, the historian, the poet, and the philosopher of
+his country--that he should be passionately fond of glory, and at the
+same time, have self-command enough to be modestly so--he will, on that
+account, be the more glorified.
+
+That the empress Catherine II. should have been forced by the brutish
+insolence of a Turkish sultan to display all her genius; that from the
+far north she should have sent four squadrons which spread terror in the
+Dardanelles and in Asia Minor; and that, in 1770, she took four
+provinces from those Turks who made Europe tremble--with this sort of
+glory she will not be reproached, but will be admired for speaking of
+her successes with that air of indifference and superiority which shows
+that they were merited.
+
+In short, glory befits geniuses of this sort, though belonging to the
+very mean race of mortals.
+
+But if, at the extremity of the west, a townsman of a place called Paris
+thinks he has glory in being harangued by a teacher of the university,
+who says to him: "Monseigneur, the glory you have acquired in the
+exercise of your office, your illustrious labors with which the universe
+resounds," etc., then I ask if there are mouths enough in that universe
+to celebrate, with their hisses, the glory of our citizen, and the
+eloquence of the pedant who attends to bray out this harangue at
+monseigneur's hotel? We are such fools that we have made God glorious
+like ourselves.
+
+That worthy chief of the dervishes, Ben-al-betif, said to his brethren
+one day: "My brethren, it is good that you should frequently use that
+sacred formula of our Koran, 'In the name of the most merciful God';
+because God uses mercy, and you learn to do so too, by oft repeating the
+words that recommend virtue, without which there would be few men left
+upon the earth. But, my brethren, beware of imitating those rash ones
+who boast, on every occasion, of laboring for the glory of God.
+
+"If a young simpleton maintains a thesis on the categories, an ignoramus
+in furs presiding, he is sure to write in large characters, at the head
+of his thesis, '_Ek alha abron doxa_!--'_Ad majorem Dei gloriam_.' --To
+the greater glory of God. If a good Mussulman has had his house
+whitewashed, he cuts this foolish inscription in the door. A saka
+carries water for the greater glory of God. It is an impious usage,
+piously used. What would you say of a little chiaoux, who, while
+emptying our sultan's close-stool, should exclaim: "To the greater glory
+of our invincible monarch?" There is certainly a greater distance
+between God and the sultan than between the sultan and the little
+chiaoux.
+
+"Ye miserable earth-worms, called men, what have you resembling the
+glory of the Supreme Being? Can He love glory? Can He receive it from
+you? Can He enjoy it? How long, ye two-legged animals without feathers,
+will you make God after your own image? What! because you are vain,
+because you love glory, you would have God love it also? If there were
+several Gods, perhaps each one would seek to gain the good opinion of
+his fellows. That might be glory to God. Such a God, if infinite
+greatness may be compared with extreme lowliness, would be like King
+Alexander or Iscander, who would enter the lists with none but kings.
+But you, poor creatures! what glory can you give to God? Cease to
+profane the sacred name. An emperor, named Octavius Augustus, forbade
+his being praised in the schools of Rome, lest his name should be
+brought into contempt. You can bring the name of the Supreme Being
+neither into contempt, nor into honor. Humble yourselves in the dust;
+adore, and be silent."
+
+Thus spake Ben-al-betif; and the dervishes cried out: "Glory to God!
+Ben-al-betif has said well."
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+_Conversation with a Chinese._
+
+In 1723, there was in Holland a Chinese: this Chinese was a man of
+letters and a merchant; which two professions ought not to be
+incompatible, but which have become so amongst us, thanks to the extreme
+regard which is paid to money, and the little consideration which
+mankind have ever shown, and will ever show, for merit.
+
+This Chinese, who spoke a little Dutch, was once in a bookseller's shop
+with some men of learning. He asked for a book, and "Bossuet's Universal
+History," badly translated, was proposed to him. "Ah!" said he, "how
+fortunate! I shall now see what is said of our great empire--of our
+nation, which has existed as a national body for more than fifty
+thousand years--of that succession of emperors who have governed us for
+so many ages. I shall now see what is thought of the religion of the
+men of letters--of that simple worship which we render to the Supreme
+Being. How pleasing to see what is said in Europe of our arts, many of
+which are more ancient amongst us than any European kingdom. I guess the
+author will have made many mistakes in the history of the war which we
+had twenty-two thousand five hundred and fifty-two years ago, with the
+warlike nations of Tonquin and Japan, and of that solemn embassy which
+the mighty emperor of the Moguls sent to ask laws from us, in the year
+of the world 500,000,000,000,079,123,450,000." "Alas!" said one of the
+learned men to him, "you are not even mentioned in that book; you are
+too inconsiderable; it is almost all about the first nation in the
+world--the only nation, the great Jewish people!"
+
+"The Jewish people!" exclaimed the Chinese. "Are they, then, masters of
+at least three-quarters of the earth?" "They flatter themselves that
+they shall one day be so," was the answer; "until which time they have
+the honor of being our old-clothes-men, and, now and then, clippers of
+our coin."--"You jest," said the Chinese; "had these people ever a vast
+empire?" "They had as their own for some years," said I, "a small
+country; but it is not by the extent of their states that a people are
+to be judged; as it is not by his riches that we are to estimate a man."
+
+"But is no other people spoken of in this book?" asked the man of
+letters. "Undoubtedly," returned a learned man who stood next me, and
+who instantly replied, "there is a deal said in it of a small country
+sixty leagues broad, called Egypt, where it is asserted that there was a
+lake a hundred and fifty leagues round, cut by the hands of
+men."--"Zounds!" said the Chinese; "a lake a hundred and fifty leagues
+round in a country only sixty broad! That is fine, indeed!"--"Everybody
+was wise in that country," added the doctor. "Oh! what fine times they
+must have been," said the Chinese. "But is that all?"--"No," replied the
+European; "he also treats of that celebrated people, the Greeks." "Who
+are these Greeks?" asked the man of letters. "Ah!" continued the other,
+"they inhabited a province about a two-hundredth part as large as China,
+but which has been famous throughout the world." "I have never heard
+speak of these people, neither in Mogul nor in Japan, nor in Great
+Tartary," said the Chinese, with an ingenuous look.
+
+"Oh, ignorant, barbarous man!" politely exclaimed our scholar. "Know you
+not, then, the Theban Epaminondas; nor the harbor of Piraeus; nor the
+name of the two horses of Achilles; nor that of Silenus's ass? Have you
+not heard of Jupiter, nor of Diogenes, nor of Lais, nor of Cybele,
+nor--"
+
+"I am much afraid," replied the man of letters, "that you know nothing
+at all of the ever memorable adventure of the celebrated Xixofou
+Concochigramki, nor of the mysteries of the great Fi Psi Hi Hi. But
+pray, what are the other unknown things of which this universal history
+treats?" The scholar then spoke for a quarter of an hour on the Roman
+commonwealth: but when he came to Julius Cæsar, the Chinese interrupted
+him, saying, "As for him, I think I know him: was he not a Turk?"
+
+"What!" said the scholar, somewhat warm, "do you not at least know the
+difference between Pagans, Christians, and Mussulmans? Do you not know
+Constantine, and the history of the popes?" "We have indistinctly
+heard," answered the Asiatic, "of one Mahomet."
+
+"It is impossible," returned the other, "that you should not, at least,
+be acquainted with Luther, Zuinglius, Bellarmin, Oecolampadius." "I
+shall never remember those names," said the Chinese. He then went away
+to sell a considerable parcel of tea and fine grogram, with which he
+bought two fine girls and a ship-boy, whom he took back to his own
+country, adoring Tien, and commending himself to Confucius.
+
+For myself, who was present at this conversation, I clearly saw what
+glory is; and I said: Since Cæsar and Jupiter are unknown in the finest,
+the most ancient, the most extensive, the most populous and
+well-regulated kingdom upon earth; it beseems you, ye governors of some
+little country, ye preachers in some little parish, or some little
+town--ye doctors of Salamanca and of Bourges, ye flimsy authors, and ye
+ponderous commentators--it beseems you to make pretensions to renown!
+
+
+
+
+GOAT--SORCERY.
+
+
+The honors of every kind which antiquity paid to goats would be very
+astonishing, if anything could astonish those who have grown a little
+familiar with the world, ancient and modern. The Egyptians and the Jews
+often designated the kings and the chiefs of the people by the word
+"goat." We find in Zachariah:
+
+"Mine anger was kindled against the shepherds, and I punished the goats;
+for the Lord of Hosts hath visited his flock, the house of Judah, and
+hath made them as his goodly horse in the battle."
+
+"Remove out of the midst of Babylon," says Jeremiah to the chiefs of the
+people; "go forth out of the land of the Chaldæans, and be as the
+he-goats before the flocks."
+
+Isaiah, in chapters x. and xiv., uses the term "goat," which has been
+translated "prince." The Egyptians went much farther than calling their
+kings goats; they consecrated a goat in Mendes, and it is even said that
+they adored him. The truth very likely was, that the people took an
+emblem for a divinity, as is but too often the case.
+
+It is not likely that the Egyptian _shoën_ or _shotim_, _i.e._, priests,
+immolated goats and worshipped them at the same time. We know that they
+had their goat Hazazel, which they adorned and crowned with flowers, and
+threw down headlong, as an expiation for the people; and that the Jews
+took from them, not only this ceremony, but even the very name of
+Hazazel, as they adopted many other rites from Egypt.
+
+But goats received another, and yet more singular honor. It is beyond a
+doubt that in Egypt many women set the same example with goats, as
+Pasiphae did with her bull.
+
+The Jews but too faithfully imitated these abominations. Jeroboam
+instituted priests for the service of his calves and his goats.
+
+The worship of the goat was established in Egypt, and in the lands of a
+part of Palestine. Enchantments were believed to be operated by means of
+goats, and other monsters, which were always represented with a goat's
+head.
+
+Magic, sorcery, soon passed from the East into the West, and extended
+itself throughout the earth. The sort of sorcery that came from the Jews
+was called Sabbatum by the Romans, who thus confounded their sacred day
+with their secret abominations. Thence it was, that in the neighboring
+nations, to be a sorcerer and to go to the sabbath, meant the same
+thing.
+
+Wretched village women, deceived by knaves, and still more by the
+weakness of their own imaginations, believed that after pronouncing the
+word "_abraxa_", and rubbing themselves with an ointment mixed with
+cow-dung and goat's hair, they went to the sabbath on a broom-stick in
+their sleep, that there they adored a goat, and that he enjoyed them.
+
+This opinion was universal. All the doctors asserted that it was the
+devil, who metamorphosed himself into a goat. This may be seen in Del
+Rio's "Disquisitions," and in a hundred other authors. The theologian
+Grillandus, a great promoter of the Inquisition, quoted by Del Rio, says
+that sorcerers call the goat Martinet. He assures us that a woman who
+was attached to Martinet, mounted on his back, and was carried in an
+instant through the air to a place called the Nut of Benevento.
+
+There were books in which the mysteries of the sorcerers were written. I
+have seen one of them, at the head of which was a figure of a goat very
+badly drawn, with a woman on her knees behind him. In France, these
+books were called "_grimoires_"; and in other countries "the devil's
+alphabet." That which I saw contained only four leaves, in almost
+illegible characters, much like those of the "Shepherd's Almanac."
+
+Reasoning and better education would have sufficed in Europe for the
+extirpation of such an extravagance; but executions were employed
+instead of reasoning. The pretended sorcerers had their "_grimoire_" and
+the judges had their sorcerer's code. In 1599, the Jesuit Del Rio, a
+doctor of Louvain, published his "Magical Disquisitions." He affirms
+that all heretics are magicians, and frequently recommends that they be
+put to the torture. He has no doubt that the devil transforms himself
+into a goat and grants his favors to all women presented to him. He
+quotes various jurisconsults, called demonographers, who assert that
+Luther was the son of a woman and a goat. He assures us that at
+Brussels, in 1595, a woman was brought to bed of a child, of which the
+devil, disguised as a goat, was father, and that she was punished, but
+he does not inform us in what manner.
+
+But the jurisprudence of witchcraft has been the most profoundly treated
+by one Boguet, "_grand juge en dernier ressort_" of an abbey of St.
+Claude in Franche-Comté. He gives an account of all the executions to
+which he condemned wizards and witches, and the number is very
+considerable. Nearly all the witches are supposed to have had commerce
+with the goat.
+
+It has already been said that more than a hundred thousand sorcerers
+have been executed in Europe. Philosophy alone has at length cured men
+of this abominable delusion, and has taught judges that they should not
+burn the insane.
+
+
+
+
+GOD--GODS.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+The reader cannot too carefully bear in mind that this dictionary has
+not been written for the purpose of repeating what so many others have
+said.
+
+The knowledge of a God is not impressed upon us by the hands of nature,
+for then men would all have the same idea; and no idea is born with us.
+It does not come to us like the perception of light, of the ground,
+etc., which we receive as soon as our eyes and our understandings are
+opened. Is it a philosophical idea? No; men admitted the existence of
+gods before they were philosophers.
+
+Whence, then, is this idea derived? From feeling, and from that natural
+logic which unfolds itself with age, even in the rudest of mankind.
+Astonishing effects of nature were beheld--harvests and barrenness, fair
+weather and storms, benefits and scourges; and the hand of a master was
+felt. Chiefs were necessary to govern societies; and it was needful to
+admit sovereigns of these new sovereigns whom human weakness had given
+itself--beings before whose power these men who could bear down their
+fellow-men might tremble. The first sovereigns in their time employed
+these notions to cement their power. Such were the first steps; thus
+every little society had its god. These notions were rude because
+everything was rude. It is very natural to reason by analogy. One
+society under a chief did not deny that the neighboring tribe should
+likewise have its judge, or its captain; consequently it could not deny
+that the other should also have its god. But as it was to the interest
+of each tribe that its captain should be the best, it was also
+interested in believing, and consequently it did believe, that its god
+was the mightiest. Hence those ancient fables which have so long been
+generally diffused, that the gods of one nation fought against the gods
+of another. Hence the numerous passages in the Hebrew books, which we
+find constantly disclosing the opinion entertained by the Jews, that the
+gods of their enemies existed, but that they were inferior to the God of
+the Jews.
+
+Meanwhile, in the great states where the progress of society allowed to
+individuals the enjoyment of speculative leisure, there were priests,
+Magi, and philosophers.
+
+Some of these perfected their reason so far as to acknowledge in secret
+one only and universal god. So, although the ancient Egyptians adored
+Osiri, Osiris, or rather Osireth (which signifies this land is mine);
+though they also adored other superior beings, yet they admitted one
+supreme, one only principal god, whom they called "_Knef_", whose symbol
+was a sphere placed on the frontispiece of the temple.
+
+After this model, the Greeks had their Zeus, their Jupiter, the master
+of the other gods, who were but what the angels are with the Babylonians
+and the Hebrews, and the saints with the Christians of the Roman
+communion.
+
+It is a more thorny question than it has been considered, and one by no
+means profoundly examined, whether several gods, equal in power, can
+exist at the same time?
+
+We have no adequate idea of the Divinity; we creep on from conjecture to
+conjecture, from likelihood to probability. We have very few
+certainties. There is something; therefore there is something eternal;
+for nothing is produced from nothing. Here is a certain truth on which
+the mind reposes. Every work which shows us means and an end, announces
+a workman; then this universe, composed of springs, of means, each of
+which has its end, discovers a most mighty, a most intelligent workman.
+Here is a probability approaching the greatest certainty. But is this
+supreme artificer infinite? Is he everywhere? Is he in one place? How
+are we, with our feeble intelligence and limited knowledge, to answer
+these questions?
+
+My reason alone proves to me a being who has arranged the matter of this
+world; but my reason is unable to prove to me that he made this
+matter--that he brought it out of nothing. All the sages of antiquity,
+without exception, believed matter to be eternal, and existing by
+itself. All then that I can do, without the aid of superior light, is to
+believe that the God of this world is also eternal, and existing by
+Himself. God and matter exist by the nature of things. May not other
+gods exist, as well as other worlds? Whole nations, and very enlightened
+schools, have clearly admitted two gods in this world--one the source of
+good, the other the source of evil. They admitted an eternal war between
+two equal powers. Assuredly, nature can more easily suffer the existence
+of several independent beings in the immensity of space, than that of
+limited and powerless gods in this world, of whom one can do no good,
+and the other no harm.
+
+If God and matter exist from all eternity, as antiquity believed, here
+then are two necessary beings; now, if there be two necessary beings,
+there may be thirty. These doubts alone, which are the germ of an
+infinity of reflections, serve at least to convince us of the feebleness
+of our understanding. We must, with Cicero, confess our ignorance of the
+nature of the Divinity; we shall never know any more of it than he did.
+
+In vain do the schools tell us that God is infinite negatively and not
+privatively--"_formaliter et non materialiter_" that He is the first
+act, the middle, and the last--that He is everywhere without being in
+any place; a hundred pages of commentaries on definitions like these
+cannot give us the smallest light. We have no steps whereby to arrive at
+such knowledge.
+
+We feel that we are under the hand of an invisible being; this is all;
+we cannot advance one step farther. It is mad temerity to seek to divine
+what this being is--whether he is extended or not, whether he is in one
+place or not, how he exists, or how he operates.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+I am ever apprehensive of being mistaken; but all monuments give me
+sufficient evidence that the polished nations of antiquity acknowledged
+a supreme god. There is not a book, not a medal, not a bas-relief, not
+an inscription, in which Juno, Minerva, Neptune, Mars, or any of the
+other deities, is spoken of as a forming being, the sovereign of all
+nature. On the contrary, the most ancient profane books that we
+have--those of Hesiod and Homer--represent their Zeus as the only
+thunderer, the only master of gods and men; he even punishes the other
+gods; he ties Juno with a chain, and drives Apollo out of heaven.
+
+The ancient religion of the Brahmins--the first that admitted celestial
+creatures--the first which spoke of their rebellion--explains itself in
+sublime manner concerning the unity and power of God; as we have seen in
+the article on "Angel."
+
+The Chinese, ancient as they are, come after the Indians. They have
+acknowledged one only god from time immemorial; they have no subordinate
+gods, no t mediating demons or genii between God and man; no oracles, no
+abstract dogmas, no theological disputes among the lettered; their
+emperor was always the first pontiff; their religion was always august
+and simple; thus it is that this vast empire, though twice subjugated,
+has constantly preserved its integrity, has made its conquerors receive
+its laws, and notwithstanding the crimes and miseries inseparable from
+the human race, is still the most flourishing state upon earth.
+
+The Magi of Chaldæa, the Sabeans, acknowledged but one supreme god, whom
+they adored in the stars, which are his work. The Persians adored him in
+the sun. The sphere placed on the frontispiece of the temple of Memphis
+was the emblem of one only and perfect god, called "_Knef_" by the
+Egyptians.
+
+The title of "_Deus Optimus Maximus_" was never given by the Romans to
+any but "_Jupiter, hominum sator atque deorum_." This great truth, which
+we have elsewhere pointed out, cannot be too often repeated.
+
+This adoration of a Supreme God, from Romulus down to the total
+destruction of the empire and of its religion, is confirmed. In spite of
+all the follies of the people, who venerated secondary and ridiculous
+gods, and in spite of the Epicureans, who in reality acknowledged none,
+it is verified that, in all times, the magistrates and the wise adored
+one sovereign God.
+
+From the great number of testimonies left us to this truth, I will
+select first that of Maximus of Tyre, who flourished under the
+Antonines--those models of true piety, since they were models of
+humanity. These are his words, in his discourse entitled "Of God,"
+according to Plato. The reader who would instruct himself is requested
+to weigh them well:
+
+"Men have been so weak as to give to God a human figure, because they
+had seen nothing superior to man; but it is ridiculous to imagine, with
+Homer, that Jupiter or the Supreme Divinity has black eyebrows and
+golden hair, which he cannot shake without making the heavens tremble.
+
+"When men are questioned concerning the nature of the Divinity, their
+answers are all different. Yet, notwithstanding this prodigious variety
+of opinions, you will find one and the same feeling throughout the
+earth--viz., that there is but one God, who is the father of all...."
+
+After this formal avowal, after the immortal discourses of Cicero, of
+Antonine, of Epictetus, what becomes of the declamations which so many
+ignorant pedants are still repeating? What avail those eternal
+reproachings of base polytheism and puerile idolatry, but to convince us
+that the reproachers have not the slightest acquaintance with sterling
+antiquity? They have taken the reveries of Homer for the doctrines of
+the wise.
+
+Is it necessary to have stronger or more expressive testimony? You will
+find it in the letter from Maximus of Madaura to St. Augustine; both
+were philosophers and orators; at least, they prided themselves on being
+so; they wrote to each other freely; they were even friends as much as a
+man of the old religion and one of the new could be friends. Read
+Maximus of Madaura's letter, and the bishop of Hippo's answer:
+
+_Letter from Maximus of Madaura._
+
+"Now, that there is a sovereign God, who is without beginning, and, who,
+without having begotten anything like unto himself, is nevertheless the
+father and the former of all things, what man can be gross and stupid
+enough to doubt? He it is of whom, under different names, we adore the
+eternal power extending through every part of the world--thus honoring
+separately, by different sorts of worship, what may be called his
+several members, we adore him entirely.... May those subordinate gods
+preserve you, under whose names, and by whom all we mortals upon earth
+adore the common father of gods and men, by different sorts of worship,
+it is true, but all according in their variety, and all tending to the
+same end."
+
+By whom was this letter written? By a Numidian--one of the country of
+the Algerines!
+
+_Augustine's Answer._
+
+"In your public square there are two statues of Mars, the one naked, the
+other armed; and close by, the figure of a man who, with three fingers
+advanced towards Mars, holds in check that divinity, so dangerous to the
+whole town. With regard to what you say of such gods, being portions of
+the only true God, I take the liberty you give me, to warn you not to
+fall into such a sacrilege; for that only God, of whom you speak, is
+doubtless He who is acknowledged by the whole world, and concerning
+whom, as some of the ancients have said, the ignorant agree with the
+learned. Now, will you say that he whose strength, if not his cruelty,
+is represented by an inanimate man, is a portion of that God? I could
+easily push you hard on this subject; for you will clearly see how much
+might be said upon it; but I refrain, lest you should say that I employ
+against you the weapons of rhetoric rather than those of virtue."
+
+We know not what was signified by these two statues, of which no vestige
+is left us; but not all the statues with which Rome was filled--not the
+Pantheon and all the temples consecrated to the inferior gods, nor even
+those of the twelve greater gods prevented "_Deus Optimus
+Maximus_"--"God, most good, most great"--from being acknowledged
+throughout the empire.
+
+The misfortune of the Romans, then, was their ignorance of the Mosaic
+law, and afterwards, of the law of the disciples of our Saviour Jesus
+Christ--their want of the faith--their mixing with the worship of a
+supreme God the worship of Mars, of Venus, of Minerva, of Apollo, who
+did not exist, and their preserving that religion until the time of the
+Theodosii. Happily, the Goths, the Huns, the Vandals, the Heruli, the
+Lombards, the Franks, who destroyed that empire, submitted to the truth,
+and enjoyed a blessing denied to Scipio, to Cato, to Metellus, to
+Emilius, to Cicero, to Varro, to Virgil, and to Horace.
+
+None of these great men knew Jesus Christ, whom they could not know; yet
+they did not worship the devil, as so many pedants are every day
+repeating. How should they worship the devil, of whom they had never
+heard?
+
+_A Calumny on Cicero by Warburton, on the Subject of a Supreme God._
+
+Warburton, like his contemporaries, has calumniated Cicero and ancient
+Rome. He boldly supposes that Cicero pronounced these words, in his
+"Oration for Flaccus":
+
+"It is unworthy of the majesty of the empire to adore only one
+God"--"_Majestatem imperii non decuit ut unus tantum Deus colatur."
+
+It will, perhaps, hardly be believed that there is not a word of this in
+the "Oration for Flaccus," nor in any of Cicero's works. Flaccus, who
+had exercised the prætorship in Asia Minor, is charged with exercising
+some vexations. He was secretly persecuted by the Jews, who then
+inundated Rome; for, by their money, they had obtained privileges in
+Rome at the very time when Pompey, after Crassus, had taken Jerusalem,
+and hanged their petty king, Alexander, son of Aristobolus. Flaccus had
+forbidden the conveying of gold and silver specie to Jerusalem, because
+the money came back altered, and commerce was thereby injured; and he
+had seized the gold which was clandestinely carried. This gold, said
+Cicero, is still in the treasury. Flaccus has acted as disinterestedly
+as Pompey.
+
+Cicero, then, with his wonted irony, pronounces these words: "Each
+country has its religion; we have ours. While Jerusalem was yet free,
+while the Jews were yet at peace, even then they held in abhorrence the
+splendor of this empire, the dignity of the Roman name, the
+institutions of our ancestors. Now that nation has shown more than ever,
+by the strength of its arms, what it should think of the Roman Empire.
+It has shown us, by its valor, how dear it is to the immortal gods; it
+has proved it to us, by its being vanquished, expatriated, and
+tributary."--"_Stantibus Hierosolymis, pacatisque Judais, tamen istorum
+religio sacrorum, a splendore hujus imperii, gravitate nominis nostri,
+ma jorum institutis, abhorrebat; nunc vero hoc magis quid ilia gens,
+quid de imperio nostro sentiret, ostendit armis; quam cara diis
+immortalibus esset, docuit, quod est victa, quod elocata, quod
+servata._"
+
+It is then quite false that Cicero, or any other Roman, ever said that
+it did not become the majesty of the empire to acknowledge a supreme
+God. Their Jupiter, the Zeus of the Greeks, the Jehovah of the
+Phoenicians, was always considered as the master of the secondary
+gods. This great truth cannot be too forcibly inculcated.
+
+_Did the Romans Take Their Gods from the Greeks?_
+
+Had not the Romans served gods for whom they were not indebted to the
+Greeks? For instance, they could not be guilty of plagiarism in adoring
+Coelum, while the Greeks adored Ouranon; or in addressing themselves to
+Saturnus and Tellus, while the Greeks addressed themselves to Ge and
+Chronos. They called Ceres, her whom the Greeks named Deo and Demiter.
+
+Their Neptune was Poseidon, their Venus was Aphrodite; their Juno was
+called, in Greek, Era; their Proserpine, Core; and their favorites, Mars
+and Bellona, were Ares and Enio. In none of these instances do the names
+resemble.
+
+Did the inventive spirits of Rome and of Greece assemble? or did the one
+take from the other the _thing_, while they disguised the _name_? It is
+very natural that the Romans, without consulting the Greeks, should make
+to themselves gods of the heavens, of time; beings presiding over war,
+over generation, over harvests, without going to Greece to ask for gods,
+as they afterwards went there to ask for laws. When you find a name that
+resembles nothing else, it is but fair to believe it a native of that
+particular country.
+
+But is not Jupiter, the master of all the gods, a word belonging to
+every nation, from the Euphrates to the Tiber? Among the first Romans,
+it was _Jov_, _Jovis_; among the Greeks, _Zeus_; among the
+Phoenicians, the Syrians, and the Egyptians, _Jehovah_.
+
+Does not this resemblance serve to confirm the supposition that every
+people had the knowledge of the Supreme Being?--a knowledge confused, it
+is true; but what man can have it _distinct_?
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+_Examination of Spinoza._
+
+Spinoza cannot help admitting an intelligence acting in matter, and
+forming a whole with it.
+
+"I must conclude," he says, "that the absolute being is neither thought
+nor extent, exclusively of each other; but that extent and thought are
+necessary attributes of the absolute being."
+
+Herein he appears to differ from all the atheists of antiquity; from
+Ocellus, Lucanus, Heraclitus, Democritus, Leucippus, Strato, Epicurus,
+Pythagoras, Diagoras, Zeno of Elis, Anaximander, and so many others. He
+differs from them, above all, in his method, which he took entirely from
+the reading of Descartes, whose very style he has imitated.
+
+The multitude of those who cry out against Spinoza, without ever having
+read him, will especially be astonished by his following declaration. He
+does not make it to dazzle mankind, nor to appease theologians, nor to
+obtain protectors, nor to disarm a party; he speaks as a philosopher,
+without naming himself, without advertising himself; and expresses
+himself in Latin, so as to be understood by a very small number. Here is
+his profession of faith.
+
+_Spinoza's Profession of Faith._
+
+"If I also concluded that the idea of God, comprised in that of the
+infinity of the universe, excused me from obedience, love, and worship,
+I should make a still more pernicious use of my reason; for it is
+evident to me that the laws which I _have_ received, not by the relation
+or intervention of other men, but immediately from Him, are those which
+the light of nature points out to me as the true guides of rational
+conduct. If I failed of obedience, in this particular, I should sin, not
+only against the principle of my being and the society of my kind, but
+also against myself, in depriving myself of the most solid advantage of
+my existence. This obedience does, it is true, bind me only to the
+duties of my state, and makes me look on all besides as frivolous
+practices, invented in superstition to serve the purposes of their
+inventors.
+
+"With regard to the love of God, so far, I conceive, is this idea from
+tending to weaken it, that no other is more calculated to increase it;
+since, through it, I know that God is intimate with my being; that He
+gives me existence and my every property; but He gives me them
+liberally, without reproach, without interest, without subjecting me to
+anything but my own nature. It banishes fear, uneasiness, distrust, and
+all the effects of a vulgar or interested love. It informs me that this
+is a good which I cannot lose, and which I possess the more fully, as I
+know and love it."
+
+Are these the words of the virtuous and tender Fénelon, or those of
+Spinoza? How is it that two men so opposed to each other, have, with
+such different notions of God, concurred in the idea of loving God for
+Himself?
+
+It must be acknowledged that they went both to the same end--the one as
+a Christian, the other as a man who had the misfortune not to be so;
+the holy archbishop, as philosopher, convinced that God is distinct
+from nature; the other as a widely-erring disciple of Descartes, who
+imagined that God is all nature.
+
+The former was orthodox, the latter was mistaken, I must assent; but
+both were honest, both estimable in their sincerity, as in their mild
+and simple manners; though there is no other point of resemblance
+between the imitator of the "Odyssey," and a dry Cartesian fenced round
+with arguments; between one of the most accomplished men of the court of
+Louis XIV. invested with what is called a _high_ divinity, and a poor
+unjudaïzed Jew, living with an income of three hundred florins, in the
+most profound obscurity.
+
+If there be any similitude between them, it is that Fénelon was accused
+before the Sanhedrim of the new law, and the other before a synagogue
+without power or without reason; but the one submitted, the other
+rebelled.
+
+_Foundation of Spinoza's Philosophy._
+
+The great dialectician Bayle has refuted Spinoza. His system, therefore,
+is not demonstrated, like one of Euclid's propositions; for, if it were
+so, it could not be combated. It is, therefore, at least obscure.
+
+I have always had some suspicion that Spinoza, with his universal
+substance, his modes and accidents, had some other meaning than that in
+which he is understood by Bayle; and consequently, that Bayle may be
+right, without having confounded Spinoza. And, in particular, I have
+always thought that often Spinoza did not understand himself, and that
+this is the principal reason why he has not been understood.
+
+It seems to me that the ramparts of Spinozism might be beaten down on a
+side which Bayle has neglected. Spinoza thinks that there can exist but
+one substance; and it appears throughout his book that he builds his
+theory on the mistake of Descartes, that "nature is a plenum."
+
+The theory of a plenum is as false as that of a void. It is now
+demonstrated that motion is as impossible in absolute fulness, as it is
+impossible that, in an equal balance, a weight of two pounds in one
+scale should sink a weight of two in the other.
+
+Now, if every motion absolutely requires empty space, what becomes of
+Spinoza's one and only substance? How can the substance of a star,
+between which and us there is a void so immense, be precisely the
+substance of this earth, or the substance of myself, or the substance of
+a fly eaten by a spider?
+
+Perhaps I mistake, but I never have been able to conceive how Spinoza,
+admitting an infinite substance of which thought and matter are the two
+modalities--admitting the substance which he calls God, and of which all
+that we see is mode or accident--could nevertheless reject final causes.
+If this infinite, universal being thinks, must he not have design? If he
+has design, must he not have a will?
+
+[Illustration: Descartes.]
+
+Spinoza says, we are modes of that absolute, necessary, infinite being.
+I say to Spinoza, we will, and have design, we who are but modes;
+therefore, this infinite, necessary, absolute being cannot be deprived
+of them; therefore, he has will, design, power.
+
+I am aware that various philosophers, and especially Lucretius, have
+denied final causes; I am also aware that Lucretius, though not very
+chaste, is a very great poet in his descriptions and in his morals; but
+in philosophy I own he appears to me to be very far behind a college
+porter or a parish beadle. To affirm that the eye is not made to see,
+nor the ear to hear, nor the stomach to digest--is not this the most
+enormous absurdity, the most revolting folly, that ever entered the
+human mind? Doubter as I am, this insanity seems to me evident, and I
+say so.
+
+For my part, I see in nature, as in the arts, only final causes, and I
+believe that an apple tree is made to bear apples, as I believe that a
+watch is made to tell the hour.
+
+I must here acquaint the readers that if Spinoza, in several passages of
+his works, makes a jest of final causes, he most expressly acknowledges
+them in the first part of his "Being, in General and in Particular."
+
+Here he says, "Permit me for a few moments to dwell with admiration on
+the wonderful dispensation of nature, which, having enriched the
+constitution of man with all the resources necessary to prolong to a
+certain term the duration of his frail existence, and to animate his
+knowledge of himself by that of an infinity of distant objects, seems
+purposely to have neglected to give him the means of well knowing what
+he is obliged to make a more ordinary use of--the individuals of his own
+species. Yet, when duly considered, this appears less the effect of a
+refusal than of an extreme liberality; for, if there were any
+intelligent being that could penetrate another against his will, he
+would enjoy such an advantage as would of itself exclude him from
+society; whereas, in the present state of things, each individual
+enjoying himself in full independence communicates himself so much only
+as he finds convenient."
+
+What shall I conclude from this? That Spinoza frequently contradicted
+himself; that he had not always clear ideas; that in the great wreck of
+systems, he clung sometimes to one plank, sometimes to another; that in
+this weakness he was like Malebranche, Arnauld, Bossuet, and Claude, who
+now and then contradicted themselves in their disputes; that he was like
+numberless metaphysicians and theologians? I shall conclude that I have
+additional reason for distrusting all my metaphysical notions; that I am
+a very feeble animal, treading on quicksands, which are continually
+giving way beneath me; and that there is perhaps nothing so foolish as
+to believe ourselves always in the right.
+
+Baruch Spinoza, you are very confused; but are you as dangerous as you
+are said to be? I maintain that you are not; and my reason is, that you
+_are_ confused, that you have written in bad Latin, and that there are
+not ten persons in Europe who read you from beginning to end, although
+you have been translated into French. Who is the dangerous author? He
+who is read by the idle at court and by the ladies.
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+_The "System of Nature."_
+
+The author of the "System of Nature" has had the advantage of being read
+by both learned and ignorant, and by women. His style, then, has merits
+which that of Spinoza wanted. He is often luminous, sometimes eloquent;
+although he may be charged, like all the rest, with repetition,
+declamation, and self-contradiction. But for profundity, he is very
+often to be distrusted both in physics and in morals. The interest of
+mankind is here in question; we will, therefore, examine whether his
+doctrine is true and useful; and will, if we can, be brief.
+
+"Order and disorder do not exist." What! in physics, is not a child born
+blind, without legs, or a monster, contrary to the nature of the
+species? Is it not the ordinary regularity of nature that makes order,
+and irregularity that constitutes disorder? Is it not a great
+derangement, a dreadful disorder, when nature gives a child hunger and
+closes the oesophagus? The evacuations of every kind are necessary;
+yet the channels are frequently without orifices, which it is necessary
+to remedy. Doubtless this disorder has its cause; for there is no effect
+without a cause; but it is a very disordered effect.
+
+Is not the assassination of our friend, or of our brother, a horrible
+disorder in morals? Are not the calumnies of a Garasse, of a Letellier,
+of a Doucin, against Jansenists, and those of Jansenists against
+Jesuits, petty disorders? Were not the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the
+Irish massacre, etc., execrable disorders? This crime has its cause in
+passion, but the effect is execrable; the cause is fatal; this disorder
+makes us shudder. The origin of the disorder remains to be discovered,
+but the disorder exists.
+
+"Experience proves to us that the matter which we regard as inert and
+dead assumes action, intelligence, and life, when it is combined in a
+certain way."
+
+This is precisely the difficulty. How does a germ come to life? Of this
+the author and the reader are alike ignorant. Hence, are not the "System
+of Nature," and all the systems in the world, so many dreams?
+
+"It would be necessary to define the vital principle, which I deem
+impossible." Is not this definition very easy, very common? Is not life
+organization with feeling? But that you have these two properties from
+the motion of matter alone, it is impossible to give any proof; and if
+it cannot be proved, why affirm it? Why say aloud, "I know," while you
+say to yourself, "I know not"?
+
+"It will be asked, what is man?" etc. Assuredly, this article is no
+clearer than the most obscure of Spinoza's; and many readers will feel
+indignant at the decisive tone which is assumed without anything being
+explained.
+
+"Matter is eternal and necessary; but its forms and its combinations are
+transitory and contingent," etc. It is hard to comprehend, matter being,
+according to our author, necessary, and without freedom, how there can
+be anything contingent. By contingency, we understand that which may be,
+or may not be; but since all must be, of absolute necessity, every
+manner of being, which he here very erroneously calls contingent, is as
+absolutely of necessity as the being itself. Here again we are in a
+labyrinth.
+
+When you venture to affirm that there is no God, that matter acts of
+itself by an eternal necessity, it must be demonstrated like a
+proposition in Euclid, otherwise you rest your system only on a perhaps.
+What a foundation for that which is most interesting to the human race!
+
+"If man is by his nature forced to love his well-being, he is forced to
+love the means of that well-being. It were useless, and perhaps unjust,
+to ask a man to be virtuous, if he cannot be so without making himself
+unhappy. So soon as vice makes him happy, he must love vice."
+
+This maxim is yet more execrable in morals than the others are in
+physics. Were it true that a man could not be virtuous without
+suffering, he must be encouraged to suffer. Our author's proposition
+would evidently be the ruin of society. Besides, how does he know that
+we cannot be happy without having vices? On the contrary, is it not
+proved by experience that the satisfaction of having subdued them is a
+thousand times greater than the pleasure of yielding to them?--a
+pleasure always empoisoned, a pleasure leading to woe. By subduing our
+vices, we acquire tranquillity, the consoling testimony of our
+conscience; by giving ourselves up to them, we lose our health, our
+quiet--we risk everything. Thus our author himself, in twenty passages,
+wishes all to be sacrificed to virtue; and he advances this proposition
+only to give in his system a fresh proof of the necessity of being
+virtuous.
+
+"They who, with so many arguments, reject innate ideas should have
+perceived that this ineffable intelligence by which the world is said to
+be guided, and of which our senses can determine neither the existence
+nor the qualities, is a being of reason."
+
+But, truly, how does it follow from our having no innate ideas, that
+there is no God? Is not this consequence absurd? Is there any
+contradiction in saying that God gives us ideas through our senses? Is
+it not, on the contrary, most clearly evident, that if there is an
+Almighty Being from whom we have life, we owe to him our ideas and our
+senses as well as everything else? It should first have been proved
+that God does not exist, which our author has not done, which he has not
+even attempted to do before this page of his tenth chapter.
+
+Fearful of wearying the reader by an examination of all these detached
+passages, I will come at once to the foundation of the book, and the
+astonishing error upon which the author has built his system.
+
+_Story of the Eels on Which the System is Founded._
+
+About the year 1750 there was, in France, an English Jesuit called
+Needham, disguised as a secular, who was then serving as tutor to the
+nephew of M. Dillon, archbishop of Toulouse. This man made experiments
+in natural philosophy, and especially in chemistry.
+
+Having put some rye meal into well-corked bottles, and some boiled
+mutton gravy into other bottles, he thought that his mutton gravy and
+his meal had given birth to eels, which again produced others; and that
+thus a race of eels was formed indifferently from the juice of meat, or
+from a grain of rye.
+
+A natural philosopher, of some reputation, had no doubt that this
+Needham was a profound atheist. He concluded that, since eels could be
+made of rye meal, men might be made of wheat flour; that nature and
+chemistry produce all; and that it was demonstrated that we may very
+well dispense with an all-forming God.
+
+This property of meal very easily deceived one who, unfortunately, was
+already wandering amidst ideas that should make us tremble for the
+weakness of the human mind. He wanted to dig a hole in the centre of the
+earth, to see the central fire; to dissect Patagonians, that he might
+know the nature of the soul; to cover the sick with pitch, to prevent
+them from perspiring; to exalt his soul, that he might foretell the
+future. If to these things it were added, that he had the still greater
+unhappiness of seeking to oppress two of his brethren, it would do no
+honor to atheism; it would only serve to make us look into ourselves
+with confusion.
+
+It is really strange that men, while denying a creator, should have
+attributed to themselves the power of creating eels.
+
+But it is yet more deplorable that natural philosophers, of better
+information, adopted the Jesuit Needham's ridiculous system, and joined
+it to that of Maillet, who asserted that the ocean had formed the Alps
+and Pyrenees, and that men were originally porpoises, whose forked tails
+changed in the course of time into thighs and legs. Such fancies are
+worthy to be placed with the eels formed by meal. We were assured, not
+long ago, that at Brussels a hen had brought forth half a dozen young
+rabbits.
+
+This transmutation of meal and gravy into eels was demonstrated to be as
+false and ridiculous as it really is, by M. Spallanzani, a rather better
+observer than Needham. But the extravagance of so palpable an illusion
+was evident without his observations.
+
+Needham's eels soon followed the Brussels' hen.
+
+Nevertheless, in 1768, the correct, elegant, and judicious translator of
+Lucretius was so far led away, that he not only, in his notes to book
+viii. p. 361, repeats Needham's pretended experiments, but he also does
+all he can to establish their validity. Here, then, we have the new
+foundation of the "System of Nature."
+
+The author, in the second chapter, thus expresses himself: "After
+moistening meal with water, and shutting up the mixture, it is found
+after a little time, with the aid of the microscope, that it has
+produced organized beings, of whose production the water and meal were
+believed to be incapable. Thus inanimate nature can pass into life,
+which is itself but an assemblage of motions."
+
+Were this unparalleled blunder true, yet, in rigorous reasoning, I do
+not see how it would prove there is no God; I do not see why a supreme,
+intelligent, and mighty being, having formed the sun and the stars,
+might not also deign to form animalculae without a germ. Here is no
+contradiction in terms. A demonstrative proof that God has no existence
+must be sought elsewhere; and most assuredly no person has ever found,
+or will ever find, one.
+
+Our author treats final causes with contempt, because the argument is
+hackneyed; but this much-contemned argument is that of Cicero and of
+Newton. This alone might somewhat lessen the confidence of atheists in
+themselves. The number is not small of the sages who, observing the
+course of the stars, and the prodigious art that pervades the structure
+of animals and vegetables, have acknowledged a powerful hand working
+these continual wonders.
+
+The author asserts that matter, blind and without choice, produces
+intelligent animals. Produce, without intelligence, beings with
+intelligence! Is this conceivable? Is this system founded on the
+smallest verisimilitude? An opinion so contradictory requires proofs no
+less astonishing than itself. The author gives us none; he never proves
+anything; but he affirms all that he advances. What chaos! what
+confusion! and what temerity!
+
+Spinoza at least acknowledged an intelligence acting in this great
+whole, which constituted nature: in this there was philosophy. But in
+the new system, I am under the necessity of saying that there is none.
+
+Matter has extent, solidity, gravity, divisibility. I have all these as
+well as this stone: but was a stone ever known to feel and think? If I
+am extended, solid, divisible, I owe it to matter. But I have sensations
+and thoughts--to what do I owe them? Not to water, not to mire--most
+likely to something more powerful than myself. Solely to the combination
+of the elements, you will say. Then prove it to me. Show me plainly that
+my intelligence cannot have been given to me by an intelligent cause. To
+this are you reduced.
+
+Our author successively combats the God of the schoolmen--a God composed
+of discordant qualities; a God to whom, as to those of Homer, is
+attributed the passions of men; a God capricious, fickle, unreasonable,
+absurd--but he cannot combat the God of the wise. The wise,
+contemplating nature, admit an intelligent and supreme power. It is
+perhaps impossible for human reason, destitute of divine assistance, to
+go a step further.
+
+Our author asks where this being resides; and, from the impossibility
+that anyone, without being infinite, should tell where He resides, he
+concludes that He does not exist. This is not philosophical; for we are
+not, because we cannot tell where the cause of an effect is, to conclude
+that there is no cause. If you had never seen a gunner, and you saw the
+effects of a battery of cannon, you would not say it acts entirely by
+itself. Shall it, then, only be necessary for you to say there is no
+God, in order to be believed on your words?
+
+Finally, his great objection is, the woes and crimes of mankind--an
+objection alike ancient and philosophical; an objection common, but
+fatal and terrible, and to which we find no answer but in the hope of a
+better life. Yet what is this hope? We can have no certainty in it but
+from reason. But I will venture to say, that when it is proved to us
+that a vast edifice, constructed with the greatest art, is built by an
+architect, whoever he may be, we ought to believe in that architect,
+even though the edifice should be stained with our blood, polluted by
+our crimes, and should crush us in its fall. I inquire not whether the
+architect is a good one, whether I should be satisfied with his
+building, whether I should quit it rather than stay in it, nor whether
+those who are lodged in it for a few days, like myself, are content: I
+only inquire if it be true that there is an architect, or if this house,
+containing so many fine apartments and so many wretched garrets, built
+itself.
+
+
+SECTION V.
+
+_The Necessity of Believing in a Supreme Being._
+
+The great, the interesting object, as it appears to me, is, not to argue
+metaphysically, but to consider whether, for the common good of us
+miserable and thinking animals, we should admit a rewarding and avenging
+God, at once our restraint and consolation, or should reject this idea,
+and so abandon ourselves to calamity without hope, and crime without
+remorse.
+
+Hobbes says that if, in a commonwealth, in which no God should be
+acknowledged, any citizen were to propose one, he would have him hanged.
+
+Apparently, he meant by this strange exaggeration, a citizen who should
+seek to rule in the name of a god, a charlatan who would make himself a
+tyrant. We understand citizens, who, feeling the weakness of human
+nature, its perverseness, and its misery, seek some prop to support it
+through the languors and horrors of this life.
+
+From Job down to us, a great many men have cursed their existence; we
+have, therefore, perpetual need of consolation and hope. Of these your
+philosophy deprives us. The fable of Pandora was better; it left us
+hope--which you snatch from us! Philosophy, you say, furnishes no proof
+of happiness to come. No--but you have no demonstration of the contrary.
+There may be in us an indestructible monad which feels and thinks,
+without our knowing anything at all of how that monad is made. Reason is
+not absolutely opposed to this idea, though reason alone does not prove
+it. Has not this opinion a prodigious advantage over yours? Mine is
+useful to mankind, yours is baneful; say of it what you will, it may
+encourage a Nero, an Alexander VI., or a Cartouche. Mine may restrain
+them.
+
+Marcus Antoninus and Epictetus believed that their monad, of whatever
+kind it was, would be united to the monad of the Great Being; and they
+were the most virtuous of men.
+
+In the state of doubt in which we both are, I do not say to you with
+Pascal, "choose the safest." There is no safety in uncertainty. We are
+here not to talk, but to examine; we must judge, and our judgment is not
+determined by our will. I do not propose to you to believe extravagant
+things, in order to escape embarrassment. I do not say to you, "Go to
+Mecca, and instruct yourself by kissing the black stone, take hold of a
+cow's tail, muffle yourself in a scapulary, or be imbecile and fanatical
+to acquire the favor of the Being of beings." I say to you: "Continue
+to cultivate virtue, to be beneficent, to regard all superstition with
+horror, or with pity; but adore, with me, the design which is manifested
+in all nature, and consequently the Author of that design--the
+primordial and final cause of all; hope with me that our monad, which
+reasons on the great eternal being, may be happy through that same great
+Being." There is no contradiction in this. You can no more demonstrate
+its impossibility than I can demonstrate mathematically that it is so.
+In metaphysics we scarcely reason on anything but probabilities. We are
+all swimming in a sea of which we have never seen the shore. Woe be to
+those who fight while they swim! Land who can: but he that cries out to
+me, "You swim in vain, there is no land," disheartens me, and deprives
+me of all my strength.
+
+What is the object of our dispute? To console our unhappy existence. Who
+consoles it--you or I?
+
+You yourself own, in some passages of your work, that the belief in a
+God has withheld some men on the brink of crime; for me, this
+acknowledgment is enough. If this opinion had prevented but ten
+assassinations, but ten calumnies, but ten iniquitous judgments on the
+earth, I hold that the whole earth ought to embrace it.
+
+Religion, you say, has produced thousands of crimes--say, rather,
+superstition, which unhappily reigns over this globe; it is the most
+cruel enemy of the pure adoration due to the Supreme Being.
+
+Let us detest this monster which has constantly been tearing the bosom
+of its mother; they who combat it are benefactors to mankind: it is a
+serpent enclosing religion in its folds, its head must be bruised,
+without wounding the parent whom it infects and devours.
+
+You fear, "that, by adoring God, men would soon again become
+superstitious and fanatical." But is it not to be feared that in denying
+Him, they would abandon themselves to the most atrocious passions, and
+the most frightful crimes? Between these two extremes is there not a
+very rational mean? Where is the safe track between these two rocks? It
+is God, and wise laws.
+
+You affirm that it is but one step from adoration to superstition: but
+there is an infinity to well-constituted minds, and these are now very
+numerous; they are at the head of nations; they influence public
+manners, and, year by year, the fanaticism that overspread the earth is
+receding in its detestable usurpations.
+
+I shall say a few words more in answer to what you say in page 223. "If
+it be presumed that there are relations between man and this incredible
+being, then altars must be raised and presents must be made to him,
+etc.; if no conception be formed of this being, then the matter must be
+referred to priests, who...." A great evil to be sure, to assemble in
+the harvest season, and thank God for the bread that He has given us!
+Who says you should make presents to God? The idea is ridiculous! But
+where is the harm of employing a citizen, called an "elder" or "priest,"
+to render thanks to the Divinity in the name of the other
+citizens?--provided the priest is not a Gregory VII. trampling on the
+heads of kings, nor an Alexander VI. polluting by incest his daughter,
+the offspring of a rape, and, by the aid of his bastard son, poisoning
+and assassinating almost all the neighboring princes: provided that, in
+a parish, this priest is not a knave, picking the pockets of the
+penitents he confesses, and using the money to seduce the girls he
+catechises; provided that this priest is not a Letellier, putting the
+whole kingdom in combustion by rogueries worthy of the pillory, nor a
+Warburton, violating the laws of society, making public the private
+papers of a member of parliament in order to ruin him, and calumniating
+whosoever is not of his opinion. The latter cases are rare. The
+sacerdotal state is a curb which forces to good behavior.
+
+A stupid priest excites contempt; a bad priest inspires horror; a good
+priest, mild, pious, without superstition, charitable, tolerant, is one
+who ought to be cherished and revered. You dread abuses--so do I. Let us
+unite to prevent them; but let us not condemn the usage when it is
+useful to society, when it is not perverted by fanaticism, or by
+fraudulent wickedness.
+
+I have one very important thing to tell you. I am persuaded that you are
+in a great error, but I am equally convinced that you are honest in your
+self-delusion. You would have men virtuous even without a God, although
+you have unfortunately said that "so soon as vice renders man happy, he
+must love vice"--a frightful proposition, which your friends should have
+prevailed on you to erase. Everywhere else you inspire probity. This
+philosophical dispute will be only between you and a few philosophers
+scattered over Europe; the rest of the earth will not even hear of it.
+The people do not read us. If some theologian were to seek to persecute
+us, he would be impudent as well as wicked; he would but serve to
+confirm you, and to make new atheists.
+
+You are wrong: but the Greeks did not persecute Epicurus; the Romans did
+not persecute Lucretius. You are wrong: but your genius and your virtue
+must be respected, while you are refuted with all possible strength.
+
+In my opinion, the finest homage that can be rendered to God is to stand
+forward in His defence without anger; as the most unworthy portrait that
+can be drawn of Him is to paint Him vindictive and furious. He is truth
+itself; and truth is without passion. To be a disciple of God is to
+announce Him as of a mild heart and of an unalterable mind.
+
+I think, with you, that fanaticism is a monster a thousand times more
+dangerous than philosophical atheism. Spinoza did not commit a single
+bad action. Châtel and Ravaillac, both devotees, assassinated Henry IV.
+
+The atheist of the closet is almost always a quiet philosopher, while
+the fanatic is always turbulent: but the court atheist, the atheistical
+prince, might be the scourge of mankind. Borgia and his like have done
+almost as much harm as the fanatics of Münster and of the Cévennes. I
+say the fanatics on both sides. The misfortune is, that atheists of the
+closet make atheists of the court. It was Chiron who brought up
+Achilles; he fed him with lion's marrow. Achilles will one day drag
+Hector's body round the walls of Troy, and immolate twelve captives to
+his vengeance.
+
+God keep us from an abominable priest who should hew a king in pieces
+with his sacrificing knife, as also from him who, with a helmet on his
+head and a cuirass on his back, at the age of seventy, should dare to
+sign with his three bloody fingers the ridiculous excommunication of a
+king of France! and from.... and from....
+
+But also, may God preserve us from a choleric and barbarous despot, who,
+not believing in a God, should be his own God, who should render himself
+unworthy of his sacred trust by trampling on the duties which that trust
+imposes, who should remorselessly sacrifice to his passions, his
+friends, his relatives, his servants, and his people. These two tigers,
+the one shorn, the other crowned are equally to be feared. By what means
+shall we muzzle them?....
+
+If the idea of a God has made a Titus or a Trajan, an Antonine or an
+Aurelius, and those great Chinese emperors, whose memory is so dear to
+the second of the most ancient and most extensive empires in the world,
+these examples are sufficient for my cause--and my cause is that of all
+mankind.
+
+I do not believe that there is in all Europe one statesman, one man at
+all versed in the affairs of the world, who has not the most profound
+contempt for the legends with which we have been inundated, even more
+than we now are with pamphlets. If religion no longer gives birth to
+civil wars, it is to philosophy alone that we are indebted, theological
+disputes beginning to be regarded in much the same manner as the
+quarrels of Punch and Judy at the fair. A usurpation, alike odious and
+ridiculous, founded upon fraud on one side and stupidity on the other,
+is every instant undermined by reason, which is establishing its reign.
+The bull "_In cæna Domini_"--that masterpiece of insolence and folly, no
+longer dares appear, even in Rome. If a regiment of monks makes the
+least evolution against the laws of the state, it is immediately broken.
+But, because the Jesuits have been expelled, must we also expel God? On
+the contrary, we must love Him the more.
+
+
+SECTION VI.
+
+In the reign of Arcadius, Logomachos, a theologue of Constantinople,
+went into Scythia and stopped at the foot of Mount Caucasus in the
+fruitful plains of Zephirim, on the borders of Colchis. The good old man
+Dondindac was in his great hall between his large sheepfold and his
+extensive barn; he was on his knees with his wife, his five sons and
+five daughters, his kinsmen and servants; and all were singing the
+praises of God, after a light repast. "What are you doing, idolater?"
+said Logomachos to him. "I am not an idolater," said Dondindac. "You
+must be an idolater," said Logomachos, "for you are not a Greek. Come,
+tell me what you were singing in your barbarous Scythian jargon?" "All
+tongues are alike to the ears of God," answered the Scythian; "we were
+singing His praises." "Very extraordinary!" returned the theologue; "a
+Scythian family praying to God without having been instructed by us!" He
+soon entered into conversation with the Scythian Dondindac; for the
+theologue knew a little Scythian, and the other a little Greek. This
+conversation has been found in a manuscript preserved in the library of
+Constantinople.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+Let us see if you know your catechism. Why do you pray to God?
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+Because it is just to adore the Supreme Being, from whom we have
+everything.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+Very fair for a barbarian. And what do you ask of him?
+
+DONDINDAC
+
+I thank Him for the blessings I enjoy, and even for the trials which He
+sends me; but I am careful to ask nothing of Him; for He knows our wants
+better than we do; besides, I should be afraid of asking for fair
+weather while my neighbor was asking for rain.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+Ah! I thought he would say some nonsense or other. Let us begin farther
+back. Barbarian, who told you that there is a God?
+
+DONDINDAC
+
+All nature tells me.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+That is not enough. What idea have you of God?
+
+DONDINDAC
+
+The idea of my Creator; my master, who will reward me if I do good, and
+punish me if I do evil.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+Trifles! trash! Let us come to some essentials. Is God _infinite
+secundum quid_, or according to essence?
+
+DONDINDAC
+
+I don't understand you.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+Brute beast! Is God in one place, or in every place?
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+I know not ... just as you please.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+Ignoramus!... Can He cause that which has not been to have been, or that
+a stick shall not have two ends? Does He see the future as future, or as
+present? How does He draw being from nothing, and how reduce being to
+nothing?
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+I have never examined these things.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+What a stupid fellow! Well, I must come nearer to your level.... Tell
+me, friend, do you think that matter can be eternal?
+
+DONDINDAC
+
+What matters it to me whether it exists from all eternity or not? I do
+not exist from all eternity. God must still be my Master. He has given
+me the nature of justice; it is my duty to follow it: I seek not to be a
+philosopher; I wish to be a man.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+One has a great deal of trouble with these block-heads. Let us proceed
+step by step. What is God?
+
+DONDINDAC
+
+My sovereign, my judge, my father.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+That is not what I ask. What is His nature?
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+To be mighty and good.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+But is He corporeal or spiritual?
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+How should I know that?
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+What; do you not know what a spirit is?
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+Not in the least. Of what service would that knowledge be to me? Should
+I be more just? Should I be a better husband, a better father, a better
+master, or a better citizen?
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+You must absolutely be taught what a spirit is. It is--it is--it is--I
+will say what another time.
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+I much fear that you will tell me rather what it is not than what it is.
+Permit me, in turn, to ask you one question. Some time ago, I saw one of
+your temples: why do you paint God with a long beard?
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+That is a very difficult question, and requires preliminary
+instruction.
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+Before I receive your instruction, I must relate to you a thing which
+one day happened to me. I had just built a closet at the end of my
+garden, when I heard a mole arguing thus with an ant: "Here is a fine
+fabric," said the mole; "it must have been a very powerful mole that
+performed this work." "You jest," returned the ant; "the architect of
+this edifice is an ant of mighty genius." From that time I resolved
+never to dispute.
+
+
+
+
+GOOD--THE SOVEREIGN GOOD, A CHIMERA.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+Happiness is an abstract idea composed of certain pleasurable
+sensations. Plato, who wrote better than he reasoned, conceived the
+notion of his world in archetype; that is, his original world--of his
+general ideas of the beautiful, the good, the orderly, and the just, as
+if there had existed eternal beings, called order, good, beauty, and
+justice; whence might be derived the feeble copies exhibited here below
+of the just, the beautiful, and the good.
+
+It is, then, in consequence of his suggestions that philosophers have
+occupied themselves in seeking for the sovereign good, as chemists seek
+for the philosopher's stone; but the sovereign good has no more
+existence than the sovereign square, or the sovereign crimson: there is
+the crimson color, and there are squares; but there is no general
+existence so denominated. This chimerical manner of reasoning was for a
+long time the bane of philosophy.
+
+Animals feel pleasure in performing all the functions for which they are
+destined. The happiness which poetical fancy has imagined would be an
+uninterrupted series of pleasures; but such a series would be
+incompatible with our organs and our destination. There is great
+pleasure in eating, drinking, and connubial endearments; but it is clear
+that if a man were always eating, or always in the full ecstasy of
+enjoyment, his organs would be incapable of sustaining it: it is further
+evident that he would be unable to fulfil the destinies he was born to,
+and that, in the case supposed, the human race would absolutely perish
+through pleasure.
+
+To pass constantly and without interruption from one pleasure to another
+is also a chimera. The woman who has conceived must go through
+childbirth, which is a pain; the man is obliged to cleave wood and hew
+stone, which is not a pleasure.
+
+If the name of happiness is meant to be applied to some pleasures which
+are diffused over human life, there is in fact, we must admit,
+happiness. If the name attaches only to one pleasure always permanent,
+or a continued although varied range of delicious enjoyment, then
+happiness belongs not to this terraqueous globe. Go and seek for it
+elsewhere.
+
+If we make happiness consist in any particular situation that a man may
+be in, as for instance, a situation of wealth, power, or fame, we are no
+less mistaken. There are some scavengers who are happier than some
+sovereigns. Ask Cromwell whether he was more happy when he was lord
+protector of England, than when, in his youthful days, he enjoyed
+himself at a tavern; he will probably tell you in answer, that the
+period of his usurpation was not the period most productive of
+pleasures. How many plain or even ugly country women are more happy than
+were Helen and Cleopatra.
+
+We must here however make one short remark; that when we say such a
+particular man is probably happier than some other; that a young
+muleteer has advantages very superior to those of Charles V.; that a
+dressmaker has more enjoyment than a princess, we should adhere to the
+probability of the case. There is certainly every appearance that a
+muleteer, in full health, must have more pleasure than Charles the
+Fifth, laid up with the gout; but nevertheless it may also be, that
+Charles, on his crutches, revolves in his mind with such ecstasy the
+facts of his holding a king of France and a pope prisoners, that his lot
+is absolutely preferable to that of the young and vigorous muleteer.
+
+It certainly belongs to God alone, to a being capable of seeing through
+all hearts, to decide which is the happiest man. There is only one case
+in which a person can affirm that his actual state is worse or better
+than that of his neighbor; this case is that of existing rivalship, and
+the moment that of victory.
+
+I will suppose that Archimedes has an assignation at night with his
+mistress. Nomentanus has the same assignation at the same hour.
+Archimedes presents himself at the door, and it is shut in his face; but
+it is opened to his rival, who enjoys an excellent supper, which he
+enlivens by his repeated sallies of wit upon Archimedes, and after the
+conclusion of which he withdraws to still higher enjoyments, while the
+other remains exposed in the street to all the pelting of a pitiless
+storm. There can be no doubt that Nomentanus has a right to say: "I am
+more happy to-night than Archimedes: I have more pleasure than he"; but
+it is necessary, in order to admit the truth and justness of the
+inference of the successful competitors in his own favor, to suppose
+that Archimedes is thinking only about the loss of his good supper,
+about being despised and deceived by a beautiful woman, about being
+supplanted by his rival, and annoyed by the tempest; for, if the
+philosopher in the street should be calmly reflecting that his soul
+ought to be above being discomposed by a strumpet or a storm, if he
+should be absorbed in a profound and interesting problem, and if he
+should discover the proportions between the cylinder and the sphere, he
+may experience a pleasure a hundred times superior to that of
+Nomentanus.
+
+It is only therefore in the single case of actual pleasure and actual
+pain, and without a reference to anything else whatever, that a
+comparison between any two individuals can be properly made. It is
+unquestionable that he who enjoys the society of his mistress is
+happier at the moment than his scorned rival deploring over his
+misfortune. A man in health, supping on a fat partridge, is undoubtedly
+happier at the time than another under the torment of the colic; but we
+cannot safely carry our inferences farther; we cannot estimate the
+existence of one man against that of another; we possess no accurate
+balance for weighing desires and sensations.
+
+We began this article with Plato and his sovereign good; we will
+conclude it with Solon and the saying of his which has been so highly
+celebrated, that "we ought to pronounce no man happy before his death."
+This maxim, when examined into, will be found nothing more than a
+puerile remark, just like many other apothegms consecrated by their
+antiquity. The moment of death has nothing in common with the lot
+experienced by any man in life; a man may perish by a violent and
+ignominious death, and yet, up to that moment, may have enjoyed all the
+pleasures of which human nature is susceptible. It is very possible and
+very common for a happy man to cease to be so; no one can doubt it; but
+he has not the less had his happy moments.
+
+What, then, can Solon's expression strictly and fairly mean? that a man
+happy to-day is not certain of being so to-morrow! In this case it is a
+truth so incontestable and trivial that, not merely is it not worthy of
+being elevated into a maxim, but it is not worthy delivering at all.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+Well-being is a rare possession. May not the sovereign good in this
+world be considered as a sovereign chimera? The Greek philosophers
+discussed at great length, according to their usual practice, this
+celebrated question. The reader will, probably, compare them to just so
+many mendicants reasoning about the philosopher's stone.
+
+The sovereign good! What an expression! It might as well have been
+asked: What is the sovereign blue, or the sovereign ragout, or the
+sovereign walk, or the sovereign reading?
+
+Every one places his good where he can, and has as much of it as he can,
+in his own way, and in very scanty measure. Castor loved horses; his
+twin brother, to try a fall--
+
+_Quid dem? quid non dem? renuis tu quod jubet alter.... Castor gaudet
+equis, ovo prognatus eodem Pugnis, etc._
+
+The greatest good is that which delights us so powerfully as to render
+us incapable of feeling anything else; as the greatest evil is that
+which goes so far as to deprive us of all feeling. These are the two
+extremes of human nature, and these moments are short. Neither extreme
+delight nor extreme torture can last a whole life. The sovereign good
+and the sovereign evil are nothing more than chimeras.
+
+We all know the beautiful fable of Crantor. He introduces upon the stage
+at the Olympic games, Wealth, Pleasure, Health, and Virtue. Each claims
+the apple. Wealth says, I am the sovereign good, for with me all goods
+are purchased. Pleasure says, the apple belongs to me, for it is only on
+my account that wealth is desired. Health asserts, that without her
+there can be no pleasure, and wealth is useless. Finally, Virtue states
+that she is superior to the other three, because, although possessed of
+gold, pleasures, and health, a man may make himself very contemptible by
+misconduct. The apple was conferred on Virtue.
+
+The fable is very ingenious; it would be still more so if Crantor had
+said that the sovereign good consists in the combination of the four
+rivals, Virtue, Health, Wealth, and Pleasure; but this fable neither
+does, nor can, resolve the absurd question about the sovereign good.
+Virtue is not a good; it is a duty. It is of a different nature; of a
+superior order. It has nothing to do with painful or with agreeable
+sensations. A virtuous man, laboring under stone and gout, without aid,
+without friends, destitute of necessaries, persecuted, and chained down
+to the floor by a voluptuous tyrant who enjoys good health, is very
+wretched; and his insolent persecutor, caressing a new mistress on his
+bed of purple, is very happy. Say, if you please, that the persecuted
+sage is preferable to the persecuting profligate; say that you admire
+the one and detest the other; but confess that the sage in chains is
+scarcely less than mad with rage and pain; if he does not himself admit
+that he is so, he completely deceives you; he is a charlatan.
+
+
+
+
+GOOD.
+
+_Of Good and Evil, Physical and Moral._
+
+
+We here treat of a question of the greatest difficulty and importance.
+It relates to the whole of human life. It would be of much greater
+consequence to find a remedy for our evils; but no remedy is to be
+discovered, and we are reduced to the sad necessity of tracing out their
+origin. With respect to this origin, men have disputed ever since the
+days of Zoroaster, and in all probability they disputed on the same
+subject long before him. It was to explain the mixture of good and evil
+that they conceived the idea of two principles--Oromazes, the author of
+light, and Arimanes, the author of darkness; the box of Pandora; the two
+vessels of Jupiter; the apple eaten by Eve; and a variety of other
+systems. The first of dialecticians, although not the first of
+philosophers, the illustrious Bayle, has clearly shown how difficult it
+is for Christians who admit one only God, perfectly good and just, to
+reply to the objections of the Manichæans who acknowledge two Gods--one
+good, and the other evil.
+
+The foundation of the system of the Manichæans, with all its antiquity,
+was not on that account more reasonable. Lemmas, susceptible of the most
+clear and rigid geometrical demonstrations, should alone have induced
+any men to the adoption of such a theorem as the following: "There are
+two necessary beings, both supreme, both infinite, both equally
+powerful, both in conflict with each other, yet, finally, agreeing to
+pour out upon this little planet--one, all the treasures of his
+beneficence, and the other all the stores of his malice." It is in vain
+that the advocates of this hypothesis attempt to explain by it the cause
+of good and evil: even the fable of Prometheus explains it better. Every
+hypothesis which only serves to assign a reason for certain things,
+without being, in addition to that recommendation, established upon
+indisputable principles, ought invariably to be rejected.
+
+The Christian doctors--independently of revelation, which makes
+everything credible--explain the origin of good-and evil no better than
+the partner-gods of Zoroaster.
+
+When they say God is a tender father, God is a just king; when they add
+the idea of infinity to that of love, that kindness, that justice which
+they observe in the best of their own species, they soon fall into the
+most palpable and dreadful contradictions. How could this sovereign, who
+possessed in infinite fulness the principle or quality of human justice,
+how could this father, entertaining an infinite affection for his
+children; how could this being, infinitely powerful, have formed
+creatures in His own likeness, to have them immediately afterwards
+tempted by a malignant demon, to make them yield to that temptation to
+inflict death on those whom He had created immortal, and to overwhelm
+their posterity with calamities and crimes! We do not here speak of a
+contradiction still more revolting to our feeble reason. How could God,
+who ransomed the human race by the death of His only Son; or rather, how
+could God, who took upon Himself the nature of man, and died on the
+cross to save men from perdition, consign over to eternal tortures
+nearly the whole of that human race for whom He died? Certainly, when we
+consider this system merely as philosophers--without the aid of
+faith--we must consider it as absolutely monstrous and abominable. It
+makes of God either pure and unmixed malice, and that malice infinite,
+which created thinking beings, on purpose to devote them to eternal
+misery, or absolute impotence and imbecility, in not being able to
+foresee or to prevent the torments of his offspring.
+
+But the eternity of misery is not the subject of this article, which
+relates properly only to the good and evil of the present life. None of
+the doctors of the numerous churches of Christianity, all of which
+advocate the doctrine we are here contesting, have been able to convince
+a single sage.
+
+We cannot conceive how Bayle, who managed the weapons of dialectics with
+such admirable strength and dexterity, could content himself with
+introducing in a dispute a Manichæan, a Calvinist, a Molinist, and a
+Socinian. Why did he not introduce, as speaking, a reasonable and
+sensible man? Why did not Bayle speak in his own person? He would have
+said far better what we shall now venture to say ourselves. A father
+who kills his children is a monster; a king who conducts his subjects
+into a snare, in order to obtain a pretext for delivering them up to
+punishment and torture, is an execrable tyrant. If you conceive God to
+possess the same kindness which you require in a father, the same
+justice that you require in a king, no possible resource exists by
+which, if we may use the expression, God can be exculpated; and by
+allowing Him to possess infinite wisdom and infinite goodness you, in
+fact, render Him infinitely odious; you excite a wish that He had no
+existence; you furnish arms to the atheist, who will ever be justified
+in triumphantly remarking to you: Better by far is it to deny a God
+altogether, than impute to Him such conduct as you would punish, to the
+extremity of the law, in men.
+
+We begin then with observing, that it is unbecoming in us to ascribe to
+God human attributes. It is not for us to make God after our own
+likeness. Human justice, human kindness, and human wisdom can never be
+applied or made suitable to Him. We may extend these attributes in our
+imagination as far as we are able, to infinity; they will never be other
+than human qualities with boundaries perpetually or indefinitely
+removed; it would be equally rational to attribute to Him infinite
+solidity, infinite motion, infinite roundness, or infinite divisibility.
+These attributes can never be His.
+
+Philosophy informs us that this universe must have been arranged by a
+Being incomprehensible, eternal, and existing by His own nature; but,
+once again, we must observe that philosophy gives us no information on
+the subject of the attributes of that nature. We know what He is not,
+and not what He is.
+
+With respect to God, there is neither good nor evil, physically or
+morally. What is physical or natural evil? Of all evils, the greatest,
+undoubtedly, is death. Let us for a moment consider whether man could
+have been immortal.
+
+In order that a body like ours should have been indissoluble,
+imperishable, it would have been necessary that it should not be
+composed of parts; that it--should not be born; that it should have
+neither nourishment nor growth; that it should experience no change. Let
+any one examine each of these points; and let every reader extend their
+number according to his own suggestions, and it will be seen that the
+proposition of an immortal man is a contradiction.
+
+If our organized body were immortal, that of mere animals would be so
+likewise; but it is evident that, in the course of a very short time,
+the whole globe would, in this case, be incompetent to supply
+nourishment to those animals; those immortal beings which exist only in
+consequence of renovation by food, would then perish for want of the
+means of such renovation. All this involves contradiction. We might make
+various other observations on the subject, but every reader who deserves
+the name of a philosopher will perceive that death was necessary to
+everything that is born; that death can neither be an error on the part
+of God, nor an evil, an injustice, nor a chastisement to man.
+
+Man, born to die, can no more be exempt from pain than from death. To
+prevent an organized substance endowed with feeling from ever
+experiencing pain, it would be necessary that all the laws of nature
+should be changed; that matter should no longer be divisible; that it
+should neither have weight, action, nor force; that a rock might fall on
+an animal without crushing it; and that water should have no power to
+suffocate, or fire to burn it. Man, impassive, then, is as much a
+contradiction as man immortal.
+
+This feeling of pain was indispensable to stimulate us to
+self-preservation, and to impart to us such pleasures as are consistent
+with those general laws by which the whole system of nature is bound and
+regulated.
+
+If we never experienced pain, we should be every moment injuring
+ourselves without perceiving it. Without the excitement of uneasiness,
+without some sensation of pain, we should perform no function of life;
+should never communicate it, and should be destitute of all the
+pleasures of it. Hunger is the commencement of pain which compels us to
+take our required nourishment. Ennui is a pain which stimulates to
+exercise and occupation. Love itself is a necessity which becomes
+painful until it is met with corresponding attachment. In a word, every
+desire is a want, a necessity, a beginning of pain. Pain, therefore, is
+the mainspring of all the actions of animated beings. Every animal
+possessed of feeling must be liable to pain, if matter is divisible; and
+pain was as necessary as death. It is not, therefore, an error of
+Providence, nor a result of malignity, nor a creature of imagination.
+Had we seen only brutes suffer, we should, for that, never have accused
+nature of harshness or cruelty; had we, while ourselves were impassive,
+witnessed the lingering and torturing death of a dove, when a kite
+seized upon it with his murderous talons, and leisurely devouring its
+bleeding limbs, doing in that no more than we do ourselves, we should
+not express the slightest murmur of dissatisfaction. But what claim have
+we for an exemption of our own bodies from such dismemberment and
+torture beyond what might be urged in behalf of brutes? Is it that we
+possess an intellect superior to theirs? But what has intellect to do
+with the divisibility of matter? Can a few ideas more or less in a brain
+prevent fire from burning, or a rock from crushing us?
+
+Moral evil, upon which so many volumes have been written is, in fact,
+nothing but natural evil. This moral evil is a sensation of pain
+occasioned by one organized being to another. Rapine, outrage, etc., are
+evil only because they produce evil. But as we certainly are unable to
+do any evil, or occasion any pain to God, it is evident by the light of
+reason--for faith is altogether a different principle--that in relation
+to the Supreme Being and as affecting Him, moral evil can have no
+existence.
+
+As the greatest of natural evils is death, the greatest of moral evils
+is, unquestionably, war. All crimes follow in its train; false and
+calumnious declarations, perfidious violation of the treaties, pillage,
+devastation, pain, and death under every hideous and appalling form.
+
+All this is physical evil in relation to man, but can no more be
+considered moral evil in relation to God than the rage of dogs worrying
+and destroying one another. It is a mere common-place idea, and as false
+as it is feeble, that men are the only species that slaughter and
+destroy one another. Wolves, dogs, cats, cocks, quails, all war with
+their respective species: house spiders devour one another; the male
+universally fights for the female. This warfare is the result of the
+laws of nature, of principles in their very blood and essence; all is
+connected; all is necessary.
+
+Nature has granted man about two and twenty years of life, one with
+another; that is, of a thousand children born in the same month, some of
+whom have died in their infancy, and the rest lived respectively to the
+age of thirty, forty, fifty, and even eighty years, or perhaps beyond,
+the average calculation will allow to each the above-mentioned number of
+twenty-two years.
+
+How can it affect the Deity, whether a man die in battle or of a fever?
+War destroys fewer human beings than smallpox. The scourge of war is
+transient, that of smallpox reigns with paramount and permanent fatality
+throughout the earth, followed by a numerous train of others; and taking
+into consideration the combined, and nearly regular operation of the
+various causes which sweep mankind from the stage of life, the allowance
+of two and twenty years for every individual will be found in general to
+be tolerably correct.
+
+Man, you say, offends God by killing his neighbor; if this be the case,
+the directors of nations must indeed be tremendous criminals; for, while
+even invoking God to their assistance, they urge on to slaughter immense
+multitudes of their fellow-beings, for contemptible interests which it
+would show infinitely more policy, as well as humanity, to abandon. But
+how--to reason merely as philosophers--how do they offend God? Just as
+much as tigers and crocodiles offend him. It is, surely, not God whom
+they harass and torment, but their neighbor. It is only against man that
+man can be guilty. A highway robber can commit no robbery on God. What
+can it signify to the eternal Deity, whether a few pieces of yellow
+metal are in the hands of Jerome, or of Bonaventure? We have necessary
+desires, necessary passions, and necessary laws for the restraint of
+both; and while on this our ant-hill, during the little day of our
+existence, we are engaged in eager and destructive contest about a
+straw, the universe moves, on in its majestic course, directed by
+eternal and unalterable laws, which comprehend in their operation the
+atom that we call the earth.
+
+
+
+
+GOSPEL.
+
+
+It is a matter of high importance to ascertain which are the first
+gospels. It is a decided truth, whatever Abbadie may assert to the
+contrary, that none of the first fathers of the Church, down to Irenæus
+inclusively, have quoted any passage from the four gospels with which we
+are acquainted. And to this it may be added, that the Alogi, the
+Theodosians, constantly rejected the gospel of St. John, and always
+spoke of it with contempt; as we are informed by St. Epiphanius in his
+thirty-fourth homily. Our enemies further observe that the most ancient
+fathers do not merely forbear to quote anything from our gospels, but
+relate many passages or events which are to be found only in the
+apocryphal gospels rejected by the canon.
+
+St. Clement, for example, relates that our Lord, having been questioned
+concerning the time when His kingdom would come, answered, "That will be
+when what is without shall Resemble that within, and when there shall be
+neither male nor female." But we must admit that this passage does not
+occur in either of our gospels. There are innumerable other instances to
+prove this truth; which may be seen in the "Critical Examination" of M.
+Fréret, perpetual secretary of the Academy of Belles Lettres at Paris.
+
+The learned Fabricius took the pains to collect the ancient gospels
+which time has spared; that of James appears to be the first; and it is
+certain that it still possesses considerable authority with some of the
+Oriental churches. It is called "the first gospel." There remain the
+passion and the resurrection, pretended to have been written by
+Nicodemus. This gospel of Nicodemus is quoted by St. Justin and
+Tertullian. It is there we find the names of our Lord's accusers--Annas,
+Caiaphas, Soumas, Dathan, Gamaliel, Judas, Levi, and Napthali; the
+attention and particularity with which these names are given confer upon
+the work an appearance of truth and sincerity. Our adversaries have
+inferred that as so many false gospels were forged, which at first were
+recognized as true, those which constitute at the present day the
+foundation of our own faith may have been forged also. They dwell much
+on the circumstance of the first heretics suffering even death itself in
+defence of these apocryphal gospels. There have evidently been, they
+say, forgers, seducers, and men who have been seduced by them into
+error, and died in defence of that error; it is, at least, therefore, no
+proof of the truth of Christianity that it has had its martyrs who have
+died for it.
+
+They add further, that the martyrs were never asked the question,
+whether they believed the gospel of John or the gospel of James. The
+Pagans could not put a series of interrogatories about books with which
+they were not at all acquainted; the magistrates punished some
+Christians very unjustly, as disturbers of the public peace, but they
+never put particular questions to them in relation to our four gospels.
+These books were not known to the Romans before the time of Diocletian,
+and even towards the close of Diocletian's reign, they had scarcely
+obtained any publicity. It was deemed in a Christian a crime both
+abominable and unpardonable to show a gospel to any Gentile. This is so
+true, that you cannot find the word "gospel" in any profane author
+whatever.
+
+The rigid Socinians, influenced by the above-mentioned or other
+difficulties, do not consider our four divine gospels in any other light
+than as works of clandestine introduction, fabricated about a century
+after the time of Jesus Christ, and carefully concealed from the
+Gentiles for another century beyond that; works, as they express it, of
+a coarse and vulgar character, written by coarse and vulgar men, who,
+for a long time confined their discourses and appeals to the mere
+populace of their party. We will not here repeat the blasphemies uttered
+by them. This sect, although considerably diffused and numerous, is at
+present as much concealed as were the first gospels. The difficulty of
+converting them is so much the greater, in consequence of their
+obstinately refusing to listen to anything but mere reason. The other
+Christians contend against them only with the weapons of the Holy
+Scripture: it is consequently impossible that, being thus always in
+hostility with respect to principles, they should ever unite in their
+conclusions.
+
+With respect to ourselves, let us ever remain inviolably attached to our
+four gospels, in union with the infallible church. Let us reject the
+five gospels which it has rejected; let us not inquire why our Lord
+Jesus Christ permitted five false gospels, five false histories of his
+life to be written; and let us submit to our spiritual pastors and
+directors, who alone on earth are enlightened by the Holy Spirit.
+
+Into what a gross error did Abbadie fall when he considered as authentic
+the letters so ridiculously forged, from Pilate to Tiberius, and the
+pretended proposal of Tiberius to place Jesus Christ in the number of
+the gods. If Abbadie is a bad critic and a contemptible reasoner, is the
+Church on that account less enlightened? are we the less bound to
+believe it? Shall we at all the less submit to it?
+
+
+
+
+GOVERNMENT.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+The pleasure of governing must certainly be exquisite, if we may judge
+from the vast numbers who are eager to be concerned in it. We have many
+more books on government than there are monarchs in the world. Heaven
+preserve me from making any attempt here to give instruction to kings
+and their noble ministers--their valets, confessors, or financiers. I
+understand nothing about the matter; I have the profoundest respect and
+reverence for them all. It belongs only to Mr. Wilkes, with his English
+balance, to weigh the merits of those who are at the head of the human
+race. It would, besides, be exceedingly strange if, with three or four
+thousand volumes on the subject of government, with Machiavelli, and
+Bossuet's "Policy of the Holy Scripture," with the "General Financier,"
+the "Guide to Finances," the "Means of Enriching a State," etc., there
+could possibly be a single person living who was not perfectly
+acquainted with the duties of kings and the science of government.
+
+Professor Puffendorf, or, as perhaps we should rather say, Baron
+Puffendorf, says that King David, having sworn never to attempt the life
+of Shimei, his privy counsellor, did not violate his oath when,
+according to the Jewish history, he instructed his son Solomon to get
+him assassinated, "because David had only engaged that he himself would
+not kill Shimei." The baron, who rebukes so sharply the mental
+reservations of the Jesuits, allows David, in the present instance, to
+entertain one which would not be particularly palatable to privy
+counsellors.
+
+Let us consider the words of Bossuet in his "Policy of the Holy
+Scripture," addressed to Monseigneur the Dauphin. "Thus we see royalty
+established according to the order of succession in the house of David
+and Solomon, and the throne of David is secured forever--although, by
+the way, that same little joint-stool called a 'throne,' instead of
+being secured forever, lasted, in fact, only a very short time." By
+virtue of this law, the eldest son was to succeed, to the exclusion of
+his brothers, and on this account Adonijah, who was the eldest, said to
+Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon, "Thou knowest that the kingdom was
+mine, and all Israel had recognized my right; but the Lord hath
+transferred the kingdom to my brother Solomon." The right of Adonijah
+was incontestable. Bossuet expressly admits this at the close of this
+article. "The Lord has transferred" is only a usual phrase, which means,
+I have lost my property or right, I have been deprived of my right.
+Adonijah was the issue of a lawful wife; the birth of his younger
+brother was the fruit of a double crime.
+
+"Unless, then," says Bossuet, "something extraordinary occurred, the
+eldest was to succeed." But the something extraordinary, in the present
+instance, which prevented it was, that Solomon, the issue of a marriage
+arising out of a double adultery and a murder, procured the
+assassination, at the foot of the altar, of his elder brother and his
+lawful king, whose rights were supported by the high priest Abiathar and
+the chief commander Joab. After this we must acknowledge that it is more
+difficult than some seem to imagine to take lessons on the rights of
+persons, and on the true system of government from the Holy Scriptures,
+which were first given to the Jews, and afterwards to ourselves, for
+purposes of a far higher nature.
+
+"The preservation of the people is the supreme law." Such is the
+fundamental maxim of nations; but in all civil wars the safety of the
+people is made to consist in slaughtering a number of the citizens. In
+all foreign wars, the safety of a people consists in killing their
+neighbors, and taking possession of their property! It is difficult to
+perceive in this a particularly salutary "right of nations," and a
+government eminently favorable to liberty of thought and social
+happiness.
+
+There are geometrical figures exceedingly regular and complete in their
+kind; arithmetic is perfect; many trades or manufactures are carried on
+in a manner constantly uniform and excellent; but with respect to the
+government of men, is it possible for any one to be good, when all are
+founded on passions in conflict with each other?
+
+No convent of monks ever existed without discord; it is impossible,
+therefore, to exclude it from kingdoms. Every government resembles not
+merely a monastic institution, but a private household. There are none
+existing without quarrels; and quarrels between one people and another,
+between one prince and another, have ever been, sanguinary; those
+between subjects and their sovereigns have been sometimes no less
+destructive. How is an individual to act? Must he risk joining in the
+conflict, or withdraw from the scene of action?
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+More than one people are desirous of new constitutions. The English
+would have no objection to a change of ministers once in every eight
+hours, but they have no wish to change the form of their government.
+
+The modern Romans are proud of their church of St. Peter and their
+ancient Greek statues; but the people would be glad to be better fed,
+although they were not quite so rich in benedictions; the fathers of
+families would be content that the Church should have less gold, if the
+granaries had more corn; they regret the time when the apostles
+journeyed on foot, and when the citizens of Rome travelled from one
+palace to another in litters.
+
+We are incessantly reminded of the admirable republics of Greece. There
+is no question that the Greeks would prefer the government of a Pericles
+and a Demosthenes to that of a pasha; but in their most prosperous and
+palmy times they were always complaining; discord and hatred prevailed
+between all the cities without, and in every separate city within. They
+gave laws to the old Romans, who before that time had none; but their
+own were so bad for themselves that they were continually changing them.
+
+What could be said in favor of a government under which the just
+Aristides was banished, Phocion put to death, Socrates condemned to
+drink hemlock after having been exposed to banter and derision on the
+stage by Aristophanes; and under which the Amphyctions, with
+contemptible imbecility, actually delivered up Greece into the power of
+Philip, because the Phocians had ploughed up a field which was part of
+the territory of Apollo? But the government of the neighboring
+monarchies was worse.
+
+Puffendorf promises us a discussion on the best form of government. He
+tells us, "that many pronounce in favor of monarchy, and others, on the
+contrary, inveigh furiously against kings; and that it does not fall
+within the limits of his subject to examine in detail the reasons of the
+latter." If any mischievous and malicious reader expects to be told here
+more than he is told by Puffendorf, he will be much deceived.
+
+A Swiss, a Hollander, a Venetian nobleman, an English peer, a cardinal,
+and a count of the empire, were once disputing, on a journey, about the
+nature of their respective governments, and which of them deserved the
+preference: no one knew much about the matter; each remained in his own
+opinion without having any very distinct idea what that opinion was; and
+they returned without having come to any general conclusion; every one
+praising his own country from vanity, and complaining of it from
+feeling.
+
+What, then, is the destiny of mankind? Scarcely any great nation is
+governed by itself. Begin from the east, and take the circuit of the
+world. Japan closed its ports against foreigners from the well-founded
+apprehension of a dreadful revolution.
+
+China actually experienced such a revolution; she obeys Tartars of a
+mixed race, half Mantchou and half Hun. India obeys Mogul Tartars. The
+Nile, the Orontes, Greece, and Epirus are still under the yoke of the
+Turks. It is not an English race that reigns in England; it is a German
+family which succeeded to a Dutch prince, as the latter succeeded a
+Scotch family which had succeeded an Angevin family, that had replaced a
+Norman family, which had expelled a family of usurping Saxons. Spain
+obeys a French family; which succeeded to an Austrasian race, that
+Austrasian race had succeeded families that boasted of Visigoth
+extraction; these Visigoths had been long driven out by the Arabs, after
+having succeeded to the Romans, who had expelled the Carthaginians. Gaul
+obeys Franks, after having obeyed Roman prefects.
+
+The same banks of the Danube have belonged to Germans, Romans, Arabs,
+Slavonians, Bulgarians, and Huns, to twenty different families, and
+almost all foreigners.
+
+And what greater wonder has Rome had to exhibit than so many emperors
+who were born in the barbarous provinces, and so many popes born in
+provinces no less barbarous? Let him govern who can. And when any one
+has succeeded in his attempts to become master, he governs as he can.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+In 1769, a traveller delivered the following narrative: "I saw, in the
+course of my journey, a large and populous country, in which all offices
+and places were purchasable; I do not mean clandestinely, and in
+evasion of the law, but publicly, and in conformity to it. The right to
+judge, in the last resort, of the honor, property, and life of the
+citizen, was put to auction in the same manner as the right and property
+in a few acres of land. Some very high commissions in the army are
+conferred only on the highest bidder. The principal mystery of their
+religion is celebrated for the petty sum of three sesterces, and if the
+celebrator does not obtain this fee he remains idle like a porter
+without employment.
+
+"Fortunes in this country are not made by agriculture, but are derived
+from a certain game of chance, in great practice there, in which the
+parties sign their names, and transfer them from hand to hand. If they
+lose, they withdraw into the mud and mire of their original extraction;
+if they win, they share in the administration of public affairs; they
+marry their daughters to mandarins, and their sons become a species of
+mandarins also.
+
+"A considerable number of the citizens have their whole means of
+subsistence assigned upon a house, which possesses in fact nothing, and
+a hundred persons have bought for a hundred thousand crowns each the
+right of receiving and paying the money due to these citizens upon their
+assignments on this imaginary hotel; rights which they never exercise,
+as they in reality know nothing at all of what is thus supposed to pass
+through their hands.
+
+"Sometimes a proposal is made and cried about the streets, that all who
+have a little money in their chest should exchange it for a slip of
+exquisitely manufactured paper, which will free you from all pecuniary
+care, and enable you to pass through life with ease and comfort. On the
+morrow an order is published, compelling you to change this paper for
+another, much better. On the following day you are deafened with the cry
+of a new paper, cancelling the two former ones. You are ruined! But long
+heads console you with the assurance, that within a fortnight the
+newsmen will cry up some proposal more engaging.
+
+"You travel into one province of this empire, and purchase articles of
+food, drink, clothing, and lodging. If you go into another province, you
+are obliged to pay duties upon all those commodities, as if you had just
+arrived from Africa. You inquire the reason of this, but obtain no
+answer; or if, from extraordinary politeness, any one condescends to
+notice your questions, he replies that you come from a province reputed
+foreign, and that, consequently, you are obliged to pay for the
+convenience of commerce. In vain you puzzle yourself to comprehend how
+the province of a kingdom can be deemed foreign to that kingdom.
+
+"On one particular occasion, while changing horses, finding myself
+somewhat fatigued, I requested the postmaster to favor me with a glass
+of wine. 'I cannot let you have it,' says he; 'the superintendents of
+thirst, who are very considerable in number, and all of them remarkably
+sober, would accuse me of drinking to excess, which would absolutely be
+my ruin.' 'But drinking a single glass of wine,' I replied, 'to repair a
+man's strength, is not drinking to excess; and what difference can it
+make whether that single glass of wine is taken by you or me?'
+
+"'Sir,' replied the man, 'our laws relating to thirst are much more
+excellent than you appear to think them. After our vintage is finished,
+physicians are appointed by the regular authorities to visit our
+cellars. They set aside a certain quantity of wine, such as they judge
+we may drink consistently with health. At the end of the year they
+return; and if they conceive that we have exceeded their restriction by
+a single bottle; they punish us with very severe fines; and if we make
+the slightest resistance, we are sent to Toulon to drink salt-water.
+Were I to give you the wine you ask, I should most certainly be charged
+with excessive drinking. You must see to what danger I should be exposed
+from the supervisors of our health.'
+
+"I could not refrain from astonishment at the existence of such a
+system; but my astonishment was no less on meeting with a disconsolate
+and mortified pleader, who informed me that he had just then lost, a
+little beyond the nearest rivulet, a cause precisely similar to one he
+had gained on this side of it. I understood from him that, in his
+country, there are as many different codes of laws as there are cities.
+His conversation raised my curiosity. 'Our nation,' said he, 'is so
+completely wise and enlightened, that nothing is regulated in it. Laws,
+customs, the rights of corporate bodies, rank, precedence, everything is
+arbitrary; all is left to the prudence of the nation.'
+
+"I happened to be still in this same country when it became involved in
+a war with some of its neighbors. This war was nicknamed 'The Ridicule,'
+because there was much to be lost and nothing to be gained by it. I went
+upon my travels elsewhere, and did not return till the conclusion of
+peace, when the nation seemed to be in the most dreadful state of
+misery; it had lost its money, its soldiers, its fleets, and its
+commerce. I said to myself, its last hour is come; everything, alas!
+must pass away. Here is a nation absolutely annihilated. What a dreadful
+pity! for a great part of the people were amiable, industrious, and gay,
+after having been formerly coarse, superstitious, and barbarous.
+
+"I was perfectly astonished, at the end of only two years, to find its
+capital and principal cities more opulent than ever. Luxury had
+increased, and an air of enjoyment prevailed everywhere. I could not
+comprehend this prodigy; and it was only after I had examined into the
+government of the neighboring nations that I could discover the cause of
+what appeared so unaccountable. I found that the government of all the
+rest was just as bad as that of this nation, and that this nation was
+superior to all the rest in industry.
+
+"A provincial of the country I am speaking of was once bitterly
+complaining to me of all the grievances under which he labored. He was
+well acquainted with history. I asked him if he thought he should have
+been happier had he lived a hundred years before, when his country was
+in a comparative state of barbarism, and a citizen was liable to be
+hanged for having eaten flesh in Lent? He shook his head in the
+negative. Would you prefer the times of the civil wars, which began at
+the death of Francis II.; or the times of the defeats of St. Quentin and
+Pavia; or the long disorders attending the wars against the English; or
+the feudal anarchy; or the horrors of the second race of kings, or the
+barbarity of the first? At every successive question, he appeared to
+shudder more violently. The government of the Romans seemed to him the
+most intolerable of all. 'Nothing can be worse,' he said, 'than to be
+under foreign masters.' At last we came to the Druids. 'Ah!' he
+exclaimed, 'I was quite mistaken: it is still worse to be governed by
+sanguinary priests.' He admitted, at last, although with sore
+reluctance, that the time he lived in was, all things considered, the
+least intolerable and hateful."
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+An eagle governed the birds of the whole country of Ornithia. He had no
+other right, it must be allowed, than what he derived from his beak and
+claws; however, after providing liberally for his own repasts and
+pleasures, he governed as well as any other bird of prey.
+
+In his old age he was invaded by a flock of hungry vultures, who rushed
+from the depths of the North to scatter fear and desolation through his
+provinces. There appeared, just about this time, a certain owl, who was
+born in one of the most scrubby thickets of the empire, and who had long
+been known under the name of "_luci-fugax_," or light-hater. He
+possessed much cunning, and associated only with bats; and, while the
+vultures were engaged in conflict with the eagle, our politic owl and
+his party entered with great adroitness, in the character of
+pacificators, on that department of the air which was disputed by the
+combatants.
+
+The eagle and vultures, after a war of long duration, at last actually
+referred the cause of contention to the owl, who, with his solemn and
+imposing physiognomy, was well formed to deceive them both.
+
+He persuaded the eagles and vultures to suffer their claws to be a
+little pared, and just the points of their beaks to be cut off, in order
+to bring about perfect peace and reconciliation. Before this time, the
+owl had always said to the birds, "Obey the eagle"; afterwards, in
+consequence of the invasion, he had said to them, "Obey the vultures."
+He now, however, soon called out to them, "Obey me only." The poor birds
+did not know to whom to listen: they were plucked by the eagle, the
+vultures, and the owl and bats. "_Qui habet aures, audiat_."--"He that
+hath ears to hear, let him hear."
+
+
+SECTION V.
+
+"I have in my possession a great number of catapultæ and balistæ of the
+ancient Romans, which are certainly rather worm-eaten, but would still
+do very well as specimens. I have many water-clocks, but half of them
+probably out of repair and broken, some sepulchral lamps, and an old
+copper model of a quinquereme. I have also togas, pretextas, and
+laticlaves in lead; and my predecessors established a society of
+tailors; who, after inspecting ancient monuments, can make up robes
+pretty awkwardly. For these reasons thereunto moving us, after hearing
+the report of our chief antiquary, we do hereby appoint and ordain, that
+all the said venerable usages should be observed and kept up forever;
+and every person, through the whole extent of our dominions, shall dress
+and think precisely as men dressed and thought in the time of Cnidus
+Rufillus, proprietor of the province devolved to us by right," etc.
+
+It is represented to an officer belonging to the department whence this
+edict issued, that all the engines enumerated in it are become useless;
+that the understandings and the inventions of mankind are every day
+making new advances towards perfection; and that it would be more
+judicious to guide and govern men by the reins in present use, than by
+those by which they were formerly subjected; that no person could be
+found to go on board the quinquereme of his most serene highness; that
+his tailors might make as many laticlaves as they pleased, and that not
+a soul would purchase one of them; and that it would be worthy of his
+wisdom to condescend, in some small measure, to the manner of thinking
+that now prevailed among the better sort of people in his own dominions.
+
+The officer above mentioned promised to communicate this representation
+to a clerk, who promised to speak about it to the referendary, who
+promised to mention it to his most serene highness whenever an
+opportunity should offer.
+
+
+SECTION VI.
+
+_Picture of the English Government._
+
+The establishment of a government is a matter of curious and interesting
+investigation. I shall not speak, in this place, of the great Tamerlane,
+or Timerling, because I am not precisely acquainted with the mystery of
+the Great Mogul's government. But we can see our way somewhat more
+clearly into the administration of affairs in England; and I had rather
+examine that than the administration of India; as England, we are
+informed, is inhabited by free men and not by slaves; and in India,
+according to the accounts we have of it, there are many slaves and but
+few free men.
+
+Let us, in the first place, view a Norman bastard seating himself upon
+the throne of England. He had about as much right to it as St. Louis
+had, at a later period, to Grand Cairo. But St. Louis had the misfortune
+not to begin with obtaining a judicial decision in favor of his right to
+Egypt from the court of Rome; and William the Bastard failed not to
+render his cause legitimate and sacred, by obtaining in confirmation of
+the rightfulness of his claim, a decree of Pope Alexander II. issued
+without the opposite party having obtained a hearing, and simply in
+virtue of the words, "Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, shall be
+bound in heaven." His competitor, Harold, a perfectly legitimate
+monarch, being thus bound by a decree of heaven, William united to this
+virtue of the holy see another of far more powerful efficacy still,
+which was the victory of Hastings. He reigned, therefore, by the right
+of the strongest, just as Pepin and Clovis had reigned in France; the
+Goths and Lombards in Italy; the Visigoths, and afterwards the Arabs in
+Spain; the Vandals in Africa, and all the kings of the world in
+succession.
+
+It must be nevertheless admitted, that our Bastard possessed as just a
+title as the Saxons and the Danes, whose title, again, was quite as good
+as that of the Romans. And the title of all these heroes in succession
+was precisely that of "robbers on the highway," or, if you like it
+better, that of foxes and pole-cats when they commit their depredations
+on the farm-yard.
+
+All these great men were so completely highway robbers, that from the
+time of Romulus down to the buccaneers, the only question and concern
+were about the "_spolia opima_," the pillage and plunder, the cows and
+oxen carried off by the hand of violence. Mercury, in the fable, steals
+the cows of Apollo; and in the Old Testament, Isaiah assigns the name of
+robber to the son whom his wife was to bring into the world, and who was
+to be an important and sacred type. That name was Mahershalalhashbaz,
+"divide speedily the soil." We have already observed, that the names of
+soldier and robber were often synonymous.
+
+Thus then did William soon become king by divine right. William Rufus,
+who usurped the crown over his elder brother, was also king by divine
+right, without any difficulty; and the same right attached after him to
+Henry, the third usurper.
+
+The Norman barons who had joined at their own expense in the invasion of
+England, were desirous of compensation. It was necessary to grant it,
+and for this purpose to make them great vassals, and great officers of
+the crown. They became possessed of the finest estates. It is evident
+that William would rather, had he dared, have kept all to himself, and
+made all these lords his guards and lackeys. But this would have been
+too dangerous an attempt. He was obliged, therefore, to divide and
+distribute.
+
+With respect to the Anglo-Saxon lords, there was no very easy way of
+killing, or even making slaves of the whole of them. They were
+permitted in their own districts, to enjoy the rank and denomination of
+lords of the manor--_seignieurs châtelans_. They held of the great
+Norman vassals, who held of William.
+
+By this system everything was kept in equilibrium until the breaking out
+of the first quarrel. And what became of the rest of the nation? The
+same that had become of nearly all the population of Europe. They became
+serfs or villeins.
+
+At length, after the frenzy of the Crusades, the ruined princes sell
+liberty to the serfs of the glebe, who had obtained money by labor and
+commerce. Cities are made free, the commons are granted certain
+privileges; and the rights of men revive even out of anarchy itself.
+
+The barons were everywhere in contention with their king, and with one
+another. The contention became everywhere a petty intestine war, made up
+out of numberless civil wars. From this abominable and gloomy chaos
+appeared a feeble gleam, which enlightened the commons, and considerably
+improved their situation.
+
+The kings of England, being themselves great vassals of France for
+Normandy, and afterwards for Guienne and other provinces, easily adopted
+the usages of the kings from whom they held. The states of the realm
+were long made up, as in France, of barons and bishops.
+
+The English court of chancery was an imitation of the council of state,
+of which the chancellor of France was president. The court of king's
+bench was formed on the model of the parliament instituted by Philip le
+Bel. The common pleas were like the jurisdiction of the châtelat. The
+court of exchequer resembled that of the superintendents of the
+finances--_généraux des finances_--which became, in France, the court of
+aids.
+
+The maxim that the king's domain is inalienable is evidently taken from
+the system of French government.
+
+The right of the king of England to call on his subjects to pay his
+ransom, should he become a prisoner of war; that of requiring a subsidy
+when he married his eldest daughter, and when he conferred the honor of
+knighthood on his son; all these circumstances call to recollection the
+ancient usages of a kingdom of which William was the chief vassal.
+
+Scarcely had Philip le Bel summoned the commons to the states-general,
+before Edward, king of England, adopted the like measure, in order to
+balance the great power of the barons. For it was under this monarch's
+reign that the commons were first clearly and distinctly summoned to
+parliament.
+
+We perceive, then, that up to this epoch in the fourteenth century, the
+English government followed regularly in the steps of France. The two
+churches are entirely alike; the same subjection to the court of Rome;
+the same exactions which are always complained of, but, in the end,
+always paid to that rapacious court; the same dissensions, somewhat
+more or less violent; the same excommunications; the same donations to
+monks; the same chaos; the same mixture of holy rapine, superstition,
+and barbarism.
+
+As France and England, then, were for so long a period governed by the
+same principles, or rather without any principle at all, and merely by
+usages of a perfectly similar character, how is it that, at length, the
+two governments have become as different as those of Morocco and Venice?
+
+It is, perhaps, in the first place to be ascribed to the circumstance of
+England, or rather Great Britain, being an island, in consequence of
+which the king has been under no necessity of constantly keeping up a
+considerable standing army which might more frequently be employed
+against the nation itself than against foreigners.
+
+It may be further observed, that the English appear to have in the
+structure of their minds something more firm, more reflective, more
+persevering, and, perhaps, more obstinate, than some other nations.
+
+To this latter circumstance it may be probably attributed, that, after
+incessantly complaining of the court of Rome, they at length completely
+shook off its disgraceful yoke; while a people of more light and
+volatile character has continued to wear it, affecting at the same time
+to laugh and dance in its chains.
+
+The insular situation of the English, by inducing the necessity of
+urging to the particular pursuit and practice of navigation, has
+probably contributed to the result we are here considering, by giving to
+the natives a certain sternness and ruggedness of manners.
+
+These stern and rugged manners, which have made their island the theatre
+of many a bloody tragedy, have also contributed, in all probability, to
+inspire a generous frankness.
+
+It is in consequence of this combination of opposite qualities that so
+much royal blood has been shed in the field, and on the scaffold, and
+yet poison, in all their long and violent domestic contentions, has
+never been resorted to; whereas, in other countries, under priestly
+domination poison has been the prevailing weapon of destruction.
+
+The love of liberty appears to have advanced, and to have characterized
+the English, in proportion as they have advanced in knowledge and in
+wealth. All the citizens of a state cannot be equally powerful, but they
+may be equally free. And this high point of distinction and enjoyment
+the English, by their firmness and intrepidity, have at length attained.
+
+To be free is to be dependent only on the laws. The English, therefore,
+have ever loved the laws, as fathers love their children, because they
+are, or at least think themselves, the framers of them.
+
+A government like this could be established only at a late period;
+because it was necessary long to struggle with powers which commanded
+respect, or at least, impressed awe--the power of the pope, the most
+terrible of all, as it was built on prejudice and ignorance; the royal
+power ever tending to burst its proper boundary, and which it was
+requisite, however difficult, to restrain within it; the power of the
+barons, which was, in fact, an anarchy; the power of the bishops, who,
+always mixing the sacred with the profane, left no means unattempted to
+prevail over both barons and kings.
+
+The house of commons gradually became the impregnable mole, which
+successfully repelled those serious and formidable torrents.
+
+The house of commons is, in reality, the nation; for the king, who is
+the head, acts only for himself, and what is called his prerogative. The
+peers are a parliament only for themselves; and the bishops only for
+themselves, in the same manner.
+
+But the house of commons is for the people, as every member of it is
+deputed by the people. The people are to the king in the proportion of
+about eight millions to unity. To the peers and bishops they are as
+eight millions to, at most, two hundred. And these eight million free
+citizens are represented by the lower house.
+
+With respect to this establishment or constitution--in comparison with
+which the republic of Plato is merely a ridiculous reverie, and which
+might be thought to have been invented by Locke, or Newton, or Halley,
+or Archimedes--it sprang, in fact, out of abuses, of a most dreadful
+description, and such as are calculated to make human nature shudder.
+The inevitable friction of this vast machine nearly proved its
+destruction in the days of Fairfax and Cromwell. Senseless fanaticism
+broke into this noble edifice, like a devouring fire that consumes a
+beautiful building formed only of wood.
+
+In the time of William the Third it was rebuilt of stone. Philosophy
+destroyed fanaticism, which convulses to their centres states even the
+most firm and powerful. We cannot easily help believing that a
+constitution which has regulated the rights of king, lords, and people,
+and in which every individual finds security, will endure as long as
+human institutions and concerns shall have a being.
+
+We cannot but believe, also, that all states not established upon
+similar principles, will experience revolutions.
+
+The English constitution has, in fact, arrived at that point of
+excellence, in consequence of which all men are restored to those
+natural rights, which, in nearly all monarchies, they are deprived of.
+These rights are, entire liberty of person and property; freedom of the
+press; the right of being tried in all criminal cases by a jury of
+independent men--the right of being tried only according to the strict
+letter of the law; and the right of every man to profess, unmolested,
+what religion he chooses, while he renounces offices, which the members
+of the Anglican or established church alone can hold. These are
+denominated privileges. And, in truth, invaluable privileges they are
+in comparison with the usages of most other nations of the world! To be
+secure on lying down that you shall rise in possession of the same
+property with which you retired to rest; that you shall not be torn from
+the arms of your wife, and from your children, in the dead of night, to
+be thrown into a dungeon, or buried in exile in a desert; that, when
+rising from the bed of sleep, you will have the power of publishing all
+your thoughts; and that, if you are accused of having either acted,
+spoken, or written wrongly, you can be tried only according to law.
+These privileges attach to every one who sets his foot on English
+ground. A foreigner enjoys perfect liberty to dispose of his property
+and person; and, if accused of any offence, he can demand that half the
+jury shall be composed of foreigners.
+
+I will venture to assert, that, were the human race solemnly assembled
+for the purpose of making laws, such are the laws they would make for
+their security. Why then are they not adopted in other countries? But
+would it not be equally judicious to ask, why cocoanuts, which are
+brought to maturity in India, do not ripen at Rome? You answer, these
+cocoanuts did not always, or for some time, come to maturity in England;
+that the trees have not been long cultivated; that Sweden, following her
+example, planted and nursed some of them for several years, but that
+they did not thrive; and that it is possible to produce such fruit in
+other provinces, even in Bosnia and Servia. Try and plant the tree then.
+
+And you who bear authority over these benighted people, whether under
+the name of pasha, effendi, or mollah, let me advise you, although an
+unpromising subject for advice, not to act the stupid as well as
+barbarous part of riveting your nations in chains. Reflect, that the
+heavier you make the people's yoke, the more completely your own
+children, who cannot all of them be pashas, will be slaves. Surely you
+would not be so contemptible a wretch as to expose your whole posterity
+to groan in chains, for the sake of enjoying a subaltern tyranny for a
+few days! Oh, how great at present is the distance between an Englishman
+and a Bosnian!
+
+
+SECTION VII.
+
+The mixture now existing in the government of England--this concert
+between the commons, the lords, and the king--did not exist always.
+England was long a slave. She was so to the Romans, the Saxons, Danes,
+and French. William the Conqueror, in particular, ruled her with a
+sceptre of iron. He disposed of the properties and lives of his new
+subjects like an Oriental despot; he prohibited them from having either
+fire or candle in their houses after eight o'clock at night, under pain
+of death: his object being either to prevent nocturnal assemblies among
+them, or merely, by so capricious and extravagant a prohibition, to
+show how far the power of some men can extend over others. It is true,
+that both before as well as after William the Conqueror, the English had
+parliaments; they made a boast of them; as if the assemblies then called
+parliaments, made up of tyrannical churchmen and baronial robbers, had
+been the guardians of public freedom and happiness.
+
+The barbarians, who, from the shores of the Baltic poured over the rest
+of Europe, brought with them the usage of states or parliaments, about
+which a vast deal is said and very little known. The kings were not
+despotic, it is true; and it was precisely on this account that the
+people groaned in miserable slavery. The chiefs of these savages, who
+had ravaged France, Italy, Spain, and England, made themselves monarchs.
+Their captains divided among themselves the estates of the vanquished;
+hence, the margraves, lairds, barons, and the whole series of the
+subaltern tyrants, who often contested the spoils of the people with the
+monarchs, recently advanced to the throne and not firmly fixed on it.
+These were all birds of prey, battling with the eagle, in order to suck
+the blood of the doves. Every nation, instead of one good master, had a
+hundred tyrants. The priests soon took part in the contest. From time
+immemorial it had been the fate of the Gauls, the Germans, and the
+islanders of England, to be governed by their druids and the chiefs of
+their villages, an ancient species of barons, but less tyrannical than
+their successors. These druids called themselves mediators between God
+and men; they legislated, they excommunicated, they had the power of
+life and death. The bishops gradually succeeded to the authority of the
+druids, under the Goth and Vandal government. The popes put themselves
+at their head; and, with briefs, bulls, and monks, struck terror into
+the hearts of kings, whom they sometimes dethroned and occasionally
+caused to be assassinated, and drew to themselves, as nearly as they
+were able, all the money of Europe. The imbecile Ina, one of the tyrants
+of the English heptarchy, was the first who, on a pilgrimage to Rome,
+submitted to pay St. Peter's penny--which was about a crown of our
+money--for every house within his territory. The whole island soon
+followed this example; England gradually became a province of the pope;
+and the holy father sent over his legates, from time to time, to levy
+upon it his exorbitant imposts. John, called Lackland, at length made a
+full and formal cession of his kingdom to his holiness, by whom he had
+been excommunicated; the barons, who did not at all find their account
+in this proceeding, expelled that contemptible king, and substituted in
+his room Louis VIII., father of St. Louis, king of France. But they soon
+became disgusted with the new-comer, and obliged him to recross the sea.
+
+While the barons, bishops, and popes were thus harassing and tearing
+asunder England, where each of the parties strove eagerly to be the
+dominant one, the people, who form the most numerous, useful, and
+virtuous portion of a community, consisting of those who study the laws
+and sciences, merchants, artisans, and even peasants, who exercise at
+once the most important and the most despised of occupations; the
+people, I say, were looked down upon equally by all these combatants, as
+a species of beings inferior to mankind. Far, indeed, at that time, were
+the commons from having the slightest participation in the government:
+they were villeins, or serfs of the soil; both their labor and their
+blood belonged to their masters, who were called "nobles." The greater
+number of men in Europe were what they still continue to be in many
+parts of the world--the serfs of a lord, a species of cattle bought and
+sold together with the land. It required centuries to get justice done
+to humanity; to produce an adequate impression of the odious and
+execrable nature of the system, according to which the many sow, and
+only the few reap; and surely it may even be considered fortunate for
+France that the powers of these petty robbers were extinguished there by
+the legitimate authority of kings, as it was in England by that of the
+king and nation united.
+
+Happily, in consequence of the convulsions of empires by the contests
+between sovereigns and nobles, the chains of nations are more or less
+relaxed. The barons compelled John (Lackland) and Henry III to grant the
+famous charter, the great object of which, in reality, was to place the
+king in dependence on the lords, but in which the rest of the nation
+was a little favored, to induce it, when occasion might require, to
+range itself in the ranks of its pretended protectors. This great
+charter, which is regarded as the sacred origin of English liberties,
+itself clearly shows how very little liberty was understood. The very
+title proves that the king considered himself absolute by right, and
+that the barons and clergy compelled him to abate his claim to this
+absolute power only by the application of superior force. These are the
+words with which Magna Charta begins: "We grant, of our free will, the
+following privileges to the archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, and
+barons, of our kingdom," etc. Throughout the articles of it, not a word
+is said of the house of commons; a proof that it did not then exist, or
+that it existed without power. The freemen of England are specified in
+it, a melancholy demonstration that there were men who were not free. We
+perceive, from the thirty-seventh article, that the pretended freemen
+owed service to their lord. Liberty of such a description had but too
+strong a similarity to bondage. By the twenty-first article, the king
+ordains that henceforward his officers shall not take away the horses
+and ploughs of freemen, without paying for them. This regulation was
+considered by the people as true liberty, because it freed them from a
+greater tyranny. Henry VII., a successful warrior and politician, who
+pretended great attachment to the barons, but who cordially hated and
+feared them, granted them permission to alienate their lands. In
+consequence of this, the villeins, who by their industry and skill
+accumulated property, in the course of time became purchasers of the
+castles of the illustrious nobles who had ruined themselves by their
+extravagance, and, gradually, nearly all the landed property of the
+kingdom changed masters.
+
+The house of commons now advanced in power every day. The families of
+the old nobility became extinct in the progress of time; and, as in
+England, correctly speaking, peers only are nobles, there would scarcely
+have been any nobles in the country, if the kings had not, from time to
+time, created new barons, and kept up the body of peers, whom they had
+formerly so much dreaded, to counteract that of the commons, now become
+too formidable. All the new peers, who compose the upper house, receive
+from the king their title and nothing more, since none of them have the
+property of the lands of which they bear the names. One is duke of
+Dorset, without possessing a single foot of land in Dorsetshire; another
+is an earl under the name of a certain village, yet scarcely knowing
+where that village is situated. They have power in the parliament, and
+nowhere else.
+
+You hear no mention, in this country, of the high, middle, and low
+courts of justice, nor of the right of chase over the lands of private
+citizens, who have no right to fire a gun on their own estates.
+
+A man is not exempted from paying particular taxes because he is a
+noble or a clergyman. All imposts are regulated by the house of commons,
+which, although subordinate in rank, is superior in credit to that of
+the lords. The peers and bishops may reject a bill sent up to them by
+the commons, when the object is to raise money, but they can make no
+alteration in it: they must admit it or reject it, without restriction.
+When the bill is confirmed by the lords, and assented to by the king,
+then all the classes of the nation contribute. Every man pays, not
+according to his rank--which would be absurd--but according to his
+revenue. There is no arbitrary _faille_ or capitation, but a real tax on
+lands. These were all valued in the reign of the celebrated King
+William. The tax exists still unaltered, although the rents of lands
+have considerably increased; thus no one is oppressed, and no one
+complains. The feet of the cultivator are not bruised and mutilated by
+wooden shoes; he eats white bread; he is well clothed. He is not afraid
+to increase his farming-stock, nor to roof his cottage with tiles, lest
+the following year should, in consequence, bring with it an increase of
+taxation. There are numerous farmers who have an income of about five or
+six hundred pounds sterling, and still disdain not to cultivate the land
+which has enriched them, and on which they enjoy the blessing of
+freedom.
+
+
+SECTION VIII.
+
+The reader well knows that in Spain, near the coast of Malaga, there was
+discovered, in the reign of Philip II., a small community, until then
+unknown, concealed in the recesses of the Alpuxarras mountains. This
+chain of inaccessible rocks is intersected by luxuriant valleys, and
+these valleys are still cultivated by the descendants of the Moors, who
+were forced, for their own happiness, to become Christians, or at least
+to appear such.
+
+Among these Moors, as I was stating, there was, in the time of Philip, a
+small society, inhabiting a valley to which there existed no access but
+through caverns. This valley is situated between Pitos and Portugos. The
+inhabitants of this secluded abode were almost unknown to the Moors
+themselves. They spoke a language that was neither Spanish nor Arabic,
+and which was thought to be derived from that of the ancient
+Carthaginians.
+
+This society had but little increased in numbers: the reason alleged for
+which was that the Arabs, their neighbors, and before their time the
+Africans, were in the practice of coming and taking from them the young
+women.
+
+These poor and humble, but nevertheless happy, people, had never heard
+any mention of the Christian or Jewish religions; and knew very little
+about that of Mahomet, not holding it in any estimation. They offered
+up, from time immemorial, milk and fruits to a statue of Hercules. This
+was the amount of their religion. As to other matters, they spent their
+days in indolence and innocence. They were at length discovered by a
+familiar of the Inquisition. The grand inquisitor had the whole of them
+burned. This is the sole event of their history.
+
+The hallowed motives of their condemnation were, that they had never
+paid taxes, although, in fact, none had ever been demanded of them, and
+they were totally unacquainted with money; that they were not possessed
+of any Bible, although they did not understand Latin; and that no person
+had been at the pains of baptizing them. They were all invested with the
+san benito, and broiled to death with becoming ceremony.
+
+It is evident that this is a specimen of the true system of government;
+nothing can so completely contribute to the content, harmony, and
+happiness of society.
+
+
+
+
+GOURD OR CALABASH.
+
+
+This fruit grows in America on the branches of a tree as high as the
+tallest oaks.
+
+Thus, Matthew Garo, who is thought so wrong in Europe for finding fault
+with gourds creeping on the ground, would have been right in Mexico. He
+would have been still more in the right in India, where cocoas are very
+elevated. This proves that we should never hasten to conclusions. What
+God has made, He has made well, no doubt; and has placed his gourds on
+the ground in our climates, lest, in falling from on high, they should
+break Matthew Garo's nose.
+
+The calabash will only be introduced here to show that we should
+mistrust the idea that all was made for man. There are people who
+pretend that the turf is only green to refresh the sight. It would
+appear, however, that it is rather made for the animals who nibble it
+than for man, to whom dog-grass and trefoil are useless. If nature has
+produced the trees in favor of some species, it is difficult to say to
+which she has given the preference. Leaves, and even bark, nourish a
+prodigious multitude of insects: birds eat their fruits, and inhabit
+their branches, in which they build their industriously formed nests,
+while the flocks repose under their shades.
+
+The author of the "_Spectacle de la Nature_" pretends that the sea has a
+flux and reflux, only to facilitate the going out and coming in of our
+vessels. It appears that even Matthew Garo reasoned better; the
+Mediterranean, on which so many vessels sail, and which only has a tide
+in three or four places, destroys the opinion of this philosopher.
+
+Let us enjoy what we have, without believing ourselves the centre and
+object of all things.
+
+
+
+
+GRACE.
+
+
+In persons and works, grace signifies, not only that which is pleasing,
+but that which is attractive; so that the ancients imagined that the
+goddess of beauty ought never to appear without the graces. Beauty never
+displeases, but it may be deprived of this secret charm, which invites
+us to regard it, and sentimentally attracts and fills the soul. Grace
+in figure, carriage, action, discourse, depends on its attractive
+merit. A beautiful woman will have no grace, if her mouth be shut
+without a smile, and if her eyes display no sweetness. The serious is
+not always graceful, because unattractive, and approaching too near to
+the severe, which repels.
+
+A well-made man whose carriage is timid or constrained, gait precipitate
+or heavy, and gestures awkward, has no gracefulness, because he has
+nothing gentle or attractive in his exterior. The voice of an orator
+which wants flexibility or softness is without grace.
+
+It is the same in all the arts. Proportion and beauty may not be
+graceful. It cannot be said that the pyramids of Egypt are graceful; it
+cannot be said that the Colossus of Rhodes is as much so as the Venus of
+Cnidus. All that is merely strong and vigorous exhibits not the charm of
+grace.
+
+It would show but small acquaintance with Michelangelo and Caravaggio to
+attribute to them the grace of Albano. The sixth book of the "Æneid" is
+sublime; the fourth has more grace. Some of the gallant odes of Horace
+breathe gracefulness, as some of his epistles cultivate reason.
+
+It seems, in general, that the little and pretty of all kinds are more
+susceptible of grace than the large. A funeral oration, a tragedy, or a
+sermon, are badly praised, if they are only honored with the epithet of
+graceful.
+
+It is not good for any kind of work to be opposed to grace, for its
+opposite is rudeness, barbarity, and dryness. The Hercules of Farnese
+should not have the gracefulness of the Apollo of Belvidere and of
+Antinous, but it is neither rude nor clumsy. The burning of Troy is not
+described by Virgil with the graces of an elegy of Tibullus: it pleases
+by stronger beauties. A work, then, may be deprived of grace, without
+being in the least disagreeable. The terrible, or horrible, in
+description, is not to be graceful, neither should it solely affect its
+opposite; for if an artist, whatever branch he may cultivate, expresses
+only frightful things, and softens them not by agreeable contrasts, he
+will repel.
+
+Grace, in painting and sculpture, consists in softness of outline and
+harmonious expression; and painting, next to sculpture, has grace in the
+unison of parts, and of figures which animate one another, and which
+become agreeable by their attributes and their expression.
+
+Graces of diction, whether in eloquence or poetry, depend on choice of
+words and harmony of phrases, and still more upon delicacy of ideas and
+smiling descriptions. The abuse of grace is affectation, as the abuse of
+the sublime is absurdity; all perfection is nearly a fault.
+
+To have grace applies equally to persons and things. This dress, this
+work, or that woman, is graceful. What is called a good grace applies to
+manner alone. She presents herself with good grace. He has done that
+which was expected of him with a good grace. To possess the graces:
+This woman has grace in her carriage, in all that she says and does.
+
+To obtain grace is, by a metaphor, to obtain pardon, as to grant grace
+is to grant pardon. We make grace of one thing by taking away all the
+rest. The commissioners took all his effects and made him a gift--a
+grace--of his money. To grant graces, to diffuse graces, is the finest
+privilege of the sovereignty; it is to do good by something more than
+justice. To have one's good graces is usually said in relation to a
+superior: to have a lady's good graces, is to be her favorite lover. To
+be in grace, is said of a courtier who has been in disgrace: we should
+not allow our happiness to depend on the one, nor our misery on the
+other. Graces, in Greek, are "charities"; a term which signifies
+amiable.
+
+The graces, divinities of antiquity, are one of the most beautiful
+allegories of the Greek mythology. As this mythology always varied
+according either to the imagination of the poets, who were its
+theologians, or to the customs of the people, the number, names, and
+attributes of the graces often change; but it was at last agreed to fix
+them as three, Aglaia, Thalia, and Euphrosyne, that is to say,
+sparkling, blooming, mirthful. They were always near Venus. No veil
+should cover their charms. They preside over favors, concord,
+rejoicings, love, and even eloquence; they were the sensible emblem of
+all that can render life agreeable. They were painted dancing and
+holding hands; and every one who entered their temples was crowned with
+flowers. Those who have condemned the fabulous mythology should at least
+acknowledge the merit of these lively fictions, which announce truths
+intimately connected with the felicity of mankind.
+
+
+
+
+GRACE (OF).
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+This term, which signifies favor or privilege, is employed in this sense
+by theologians. They call grace a particular operation of God on
+mankind, intended to render them just and happy. Some have admitted
+universal grace, that which God gives to all men, though mankind,
+according to them, with the exception of a very small number, will be
+delivered to eternal flames: others admit grace towards Christians of
+their communion only; and lastly, others only for the elect of that
+communion.
+
+It is evident that a general grace, which leaves the universe in vice,
+error, and eternal misery, is not a grace, a favor, or privilege, but a
+contradiction in terms.
+
+Particular grace, according to theologians, is either in the first place
+"sufficing," which if resisted, suffices not--resembling a pardon given
+by a king to a criminal, who is nevertheless delivered over to the
+punishment; or "efficacious" when it is not resisted, although it _may
+be_ resisted; in this case, they just resemble famished guests to whom
+are presented delicious viands, of which they will surely eat, though,
+in general, they may be supposed at liberty not to eat; or "necessary,"
+that is, unavoidable, being nothing more than the chain of eternal
+decrees and events. We shall take care not to enter into the long and
+appalling details, subtleties, and sophisms, with which these questions
+are embarrassed. The object of this dictionary is not to be the vain
+echo of vain disputes.
+
+St. Thomas calls grace a substantial form, and the Jesuit Bouhours names
+it a _je ne sais quoi_; this is perhaps the best definition which has
+ever been given of it.
+
+If the theologians had wanted a subject on which to ridicule Providence,
+they need not have taken any other than that which they have chosen. On
+one side the Thomists assure us that man, in receiving efficacious
+grace, is not free in the compound sense, but that he is free in the
+divided sense; on the other, the Molinists invent the medium doctrine of
+God and congruity, and imagine exciting, preventing, concomitant, and
+co-operating grace.
+
+Let us quit these bad but seriously constructed jokes of the
+theologians; let us leave their books, and each consult his common
+sense; when he will see that all these reasoners have sagaciously
+deceived themselves, because they have reasoned upon a principle
+evidently false. They have supposed that God acts upon particular views;
+now, an eternal God, without general, immutable, and eternal laws, is
+an imaginary being, a phantom, a god of fable.
+
+Why, in all religions on which men pique themselves on reasoning, have
+theologians been forced to admit this grace which they do not
+comprehend? It is that they would have salvation confined to their own
+sect, and further, they would have this salvation divided among those
+who are the most submissive to themselves. These particular theologians,
+or chiefs of parties, divide among themselves. The Mussulman doctors
+entertain similar opinions and similar disputes, because they have the
+same interest to actuate them; but the universal theologian, that is to
+say, the true philosopher, sees that it is contradictory for nature to
+act on particular or single views; that it is ridiculous to imagine God
+occupying Himself in forcing one man in Europe to obey Him, while He
+leaves all the Asiatics intractable; to suppose Him wrestling with
+another man who sometimes submits, and sometimes disarms Him, and
+presenting to another a help, which is nevertheless useless. Such grace,
+considered in a true point of view, is an absurdity. The prodigious mass
+of books composed on this subject is often an exercise of intellect, but
+always the shame of reason.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+All nature, all that exists, is the grace of God; He bestows on all
+animals the grace of form and nourishment. The grace of growing seventy
+feet high is granted to the fir, and refused to the reed. He gives to
+man the grace of thinking, speaking, and knowing him; He grants me the
+grace of not understanding a word of all that Tournelli, Molina, and
+Soto, have written on the subject of grace.
+
+The first who has spoken of efficacious and gratuitous grace is, without
+contradiction, Homer. This may be astonishing to a bachelor of theology,
+who knows no author but St. Augustine; but, if he read the third book of
+the "Iliad," he will see that Paris says to his brother Hector: "If the
+gods have given you valor, and me beauty, do not reproach me with the
+presents of the beautiful Venus; no gift of the gods is despicable--it
+does not depend upon man to obtain them."
+
+Nothing is more positive than this passage. If we further remark that
+Jupiter, according to his pleasure, gave the victory sometimes to the
+Greeks, and at others to the Trojans, we shall see a new proof that all
+was done by grace from on high. Sarpedon, and afterwards Patroclus, are
+barbarians to whom by turns grace has been wanting.
+
+There have been philosophers who were not of the opinion of Homer. They
+have pretended that general Providence does not immediately interfere
+with the affairs of particular individuals; that it governs all by
+universal laws; that Thersites and Achilles were equal before it, and
+that neither Chalcas nor Talthybius ever had versatile or congruous
+graces.
+
+According to these philosophers, the dog-grass and the oak, the mite and
+the elephant, man, the elements and stars, obey invariable laws, which
+God, as immutable, has established from all eternity.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+If one were to come from the bottom of hell, to say to us on the part of
+the devil--Gentlemen, I must inform you that our sovereign lord has
+taken all mankind for his share, except a small number of people who
+live near the Vatican and its dependencies--we should all pray of this
+deputy to inscribe us on the list of the privileged; we should ask him
+what we must do to obtain this grace.
+
+If he were to answer, You cannot merit it, my master has made the list
+from the beginning of time; he has only listened to his own pleasure, he
+is continually occupied in making an infinity of _pots-de-chambre_ and
+some dozen gold vases; if you are _pots-de-chambre_ so much the worse
+for you.
+
+At these fine words we should use our pitchforks to send the ambassador
+back to his master. This is, however, what we have dared to impute to
+God---to the eternal and sovereignly good being!
+
+Man has been always reproached with having made God in his own image,
+Homer has been condemned for having transported all the vices and
+follies of earth into heaven. Plato, who has thus justly reproached him,
+has not hesitated to call him a blasphemer; while we, a hundred times
+more thoughtless, hardy, and blaspheming than this Greek, who did not
+understand conventional language, devoutly accuse God of a thing of
+which we have never accused the worst of men.
+
+It is said that the king of Morocco, Muley Ismael, had five hundred
+children. What would you say if a marabout of Mount Atlas related to you
+that the wise and good Muley Ismael, dining with his family, at the
+close of the repast, spoke thus:
+
+"I am Muley Ismael, who has forgotten you for my glory, for I am very
+glorious. I love you very tenderly, I shelter you as a hen covers her
+chickens; I have decreed that one of my youngest children shall have the
+kingdom of Tafilet, and that another shall possess Morocco; and for my
+other dear children, to the number of four hundred and ninety-eight, I
+order that one-half shall be tortured, and the other half burned, for I
+am the Lord Muley Ismael."
+
+You would assuredly take the marabout for the greatest fool that Africa
+ever produced; but if three or four thousand marabouts, well entertained
+at your expense, were to repeat to you the same story, what would you
+do? Would you not be tempted to make them fast upon bread and water
+until they recovered their senses?
+
+You will allege that my indignation is reasonable enough against the
+supralapsarians, who believe that the king of Morocco begot these five
+hundred children only for his glory; and that he had always the
+intention to torture and burn them, except two, who were destined to
+reign.
+
+But I am wrong, you say, against the infralapsarians, who avow that it
+was not the first intention of Muley Ismael to cause his children to
+perish; but that, having foreseen that they would be of no use, he
+thought he should be acting as a good father in getting rid of them by
+torture and fire.
+
+Ah, supralapsarians, infralapsarians, free-gracians, sufficers,
+efficacians, jansenists, and molinists become men, and no longer trouble
+the earth with such absurd and abominable fooleries.
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+Holy advisers of modern Rome, illustrious and infallible theologians, no
+one has more respect for your divine decisions than I; but if Paulus
+milius, Scipio, Cato, Cicero, Cæsar, Titus, Trajan, or Marcus Aurelius,
+revisited that Rome to which they formerly did such credit, you must
+confess that they would be a little astonished at your decisions on
+grace. What would they say if they heard you speak of healthful grace
+according to St. Thomas, and medicinal grace according to Cajetan; of
+exterior and interior grace, of free, sanctifying, co-operating, actual,
+habitual, and efficacious grace, which is sometimes inefficacious; of
+the sufficing which sometimes does not suffice, of the versatile and
+congruous--would they really comprehend it more than you and I?
+
+What need would these poor people have of your instructions? I fancy I
+hear them say: "Reverend fathers, you are terrible genii; we foolishly
+thought that the Eternal Being never conducted Himself by particular
+laws like vile human beings, but by general laws, eternal like Himself.
+No one among us ever imagined that God was like a senseless master, who
+gives an estate to one slave and refuses food to another; who orders one
+with a broken arm to knead a loaf, and a cripple to be his courier."
+
+All is grace on the part of God; He has given to the globe we inhabit
+the grace of form; to the trees the grace of making them grow; to
+animals that of feeding them; but will you say, because one wolf finds
+in his road a lamb for his supper, while another is dying with hunger,
+that God has given the first wolf a particular grace? Is it a preventive
+grace to cause one oak to grow in preference to another in which sap is
+wanting? If throughout nature all being is submitted to general laws,
+how can a single species of animals avoid conforming to them?
+
+Why should the absolute master of all be more occupied in directing the
+interior of a single man than in conducting the remainder of entire
+nature? By what caprice would He change something in the heart of a
+Courlander or a Biscayan, while He changes nothing in the general laws
+which He has imposed upon all the stars.
+
+What a pity to suppose that He is continually making, defacing, and
+renewing our sentiments! And what audacity in us to believe ourselves
+excepted from all beings! And further, is it not only for those who
+confess that these changes are imagined? A Savoyard, a Bergamask, on
+Monday, will have the grace to have a mass said for twelve sous; on
+Tuesday he will go to the tavern and have no grace; on Wednesday he will
+have a co-operating grace, which will conduct him to confession, but he
+will not have the efficacious grace of perfect contrition; on Thursday
+there will be a sufficing grace which will not suffice, as has been
+already said. God will labor in the head of this Bergamask--sometimes
+strongly, sometimes weakly, while the rest of the earth will no way
+concern Him! He will not deign to meddle with the interior of the
+Indians and Chinese! If you possess a grain of reason, reverend fathers,
+do you not find this system prodigiously ridiculous?
+
+Poor, miserable man! behold this oak which rears its head to the clouds,
+and this reed which bends at its feet; you do not say that efficacious
+grace has been given to the oak and withheld from the reed. Raise your
+eyes to heaven; see the eternal Demiourgos creating millions of worlds,
+which gravitate towards one another by general and eternal laws. See the
+same light reflected from the sun to Saturn, and from Saturn to us; and
+in this grant of so many stars, urged onward in their rapid course; in
+this general obedience of all nature, dare to believe, if you can, that
+God is occupied in giving a versatile grace to Sister Theresa, or a
+concomitant one to Sister Agnes.
+
+Atom--to which another foolish atom has said that the Eternal has
+particular laws for some atoms of thy neighborhood; that He gives His
+grace to that one and refuses it to this; that such as had not grace
+yesterday shall have it to-morrow--repeat not this folly. God has made
+the universe, and creates not new winds to remove a few straws in one
+corner of the universe. Theologians are like the combatants in Homer,
+who believed that the gods were sometimes armed for and sometimes
+against them. Had Homer not been considered a poet, he would be deemed a
+blasphemer.
+
+It is Marcus Aurelius who speaks, and not I; for God, who inspires you,
+has given me grace to believe all that you say, all that you have said,
+and all that you will say.
+
+
+
+
+GRAVE--GRAVITY.
+
+
+Grave, in its moral meaning, always corresponds with its physical one;
+it expresses something of weight; thus, we say--a person, an author, or
+a maxim of weight, for a grave person, author, or maxim. The grave is to
+the serious what the lively is to the agreeable. It is one degree more
+of the same thing, and that degree a considerable one. A man may be
+serious by temperament, and even from want of ideas. He is grave, either
+from a sense of decorum, or from having ideas of depth and importance,
+which induce gravity. There is a difference between being grave and
+being a grave man. It is a fault to be unseasonably grave. He who is
+grave in society is seldom much sought for; but a grave man is one who
+acquires influence and authority more by his real wisdom than his
+external carriage.
+
+     _Tum pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem_
+     _Conspexere, silent, adrectisque auribus adstant._
+                            --VIRGIL'S _Æneid_, i. 151.
+
+     If then some grave and pious man appear,
+     They hush their noise, and lend a listening ear.
+                                              --DRYDEN.
+
+A decorous air should be always preserved, but a grave air is becoming
+only in the function of some high and important office, as, for example,
+in council. When gravity consists, as is frequently the case, only in
+the exterior carriage, frivolous remarks are delivered with a pompous
+solemnity, exciting at once ridicule and aversion. We do not easily
+pardon those who wish to impose upon us by this air of consequence and
+self-sufficiency.
+
+The duke de La Rochefoucauld said "Gravity is a mysteriousness of body
+assumed in order to conceal defects of mind." Without investigating
+whether the phrase "mysteriousness of body" is natural and judicious, it
+is sufficient to observe that the remark is applicable to all who affect
+gravity, but not to those who merely exhibit a gravity suitable to the
+office they hold, the place where they are, or the business in which
+they are engaged.
+
+A grave author is one whose opinions relate to matters obviously
+disputable. We never apply the term to one who has written on subjects
+which admit no doubt or controversy. It would be ridiculous to call
+Euclid and Archimedes grave authors.
+
+Gravity is applicable to style. Livy and de Thou have written with
+gravity. The same observations cannot with propriety be applied to
+Tacitus, whose object was brevity, and who has displayed malignity;
+still less can it be applied to Cardinal de Retz, who sometimes infuses
+into his writings a misplaced gayety, and sometimes even forgets
+decency.
+
+The grave style declines all sallies of wit or pleasantry; if it
+sometimes reaches the sublime, if on any particular occasion it is
+pathetic, it speedily returns to the didactic wisdom and noble
+simplicity which habitually characterizes it; it possesses strength
+without daring. Its greatest difficulty is to avoid monotony.
+
+A grave affair (_affaire_), a grave case (_cas_), is used concerning a
+criminal rather than a civil process. A grave disease implies danger.
+
+
+
+
+GREAT--GREATNESS.
+
+_Of the Meaning of These Words._
+
+Great is one of those words which are most frequently used in a moral
+sense, and with the least consideration and judgment. Great man, great
+genius, great captain, great philosopher, great poet; we mean by this
+language "one who has far exceeded ordinary limits." But, as it is
+difficult to define those limits, the epithet "great" is often applied
+to those who possess only mediocrity.
+
+This term is less vague and doubtful when applied to material than to
+moral subjects. We know what is meant by a great storm, a great
+misfortune, a great disease, great property, great misery.
+
+The term "large" (_gros_) is sometimes used with respect to subjects of
+the latter description, that is, material ones, as equivalent to great,
+but never with respect to moral subjects. We say large property for
+great wealth, but not a large captain for a great captain, or a large
+minister for a great minister. Great financier means a man eminently
+skilful in matters of national finance; but _gros_ financier expresses
+merely a man who has become wealthy in the department of finance.
+
+The great man is more difficult to be defined than the great artist. In
+an art or profession, the man who has far distanced his rivals, or who
+has the reputation of having done so, is called great in his art, and
+appears, therefore, to have required merit of only one description in
+order to obtain this eminence; but the great man must combine different
+species of merit. Gonsalvo, surnamed the Great Captain, who observed
+that "the web of honor was coarsely woven," was never called a great
+man. It is more easy to name those to whom this high distinction should
+be refused than those to whom it should be granted. The denomination
+appears to imply some great virtues. All agree that Cromwell was the
+most intrepid general, the most profound statesman, the man best
+qualified to conduct a party, a parliament, or an army, of his day; yet
+no writer ever gives him the title of great man; because, although he
+possessed great qualities, he possessed not a single great virtue.
+
+This title seems to fall to the lot only of the small number of men who
+have been distinguished at once by virtues, exertions, and success.
+Success is essential, because the man who is always unfortunate is
+supposed to be so by his own fault.
+
+Great (grand), by itself, expresses some dignity. In Spain it is a high
+and most distinguishing appellative (_grandee_) conferred by the king on
+those whom he wishes to honor. The grandees are covered in the presence
+of the king, either before speaking to him or after having spoken to
+him, or while taking their seats with the rest.
+
+Charles the Fifth conferred the privileges of grandeeship on sixteen
+principal noblemen. That emperor himself afterwards granted the same
+honors to many others. His successors, each in his turn, have added to
+the number. The Spanish grandees have long claimed to be considered of
+equal rank and dignity with the electors and the princes of Italy. At
+the court of France they have the same honors as peers.
+
+The title of "great" has been always given, in France, to many of the
+chief officers of the crown--as great seneschal, great master, great
+chamberlain, great equerry, great pantler, great huntsman, great
+falconer. These titles were given them to distinguish their pre-eminence
+above the persons serving in the same departments under them. The
+distinction is not given to the constable, nor to the chancellor, nor to
+the marshals, although the constable is the chief of all the household
+officers, the chancellor the second person in the state, and the marshal
+the second officer in the army. The reason obviously is, that they had
+no deputies, no vice-constables, vice-marshals, vice-chancellors, but
+officers under another denomination who executed their orders, while the
+great steward, great chamberlain, and great equerry, etc., had stewards,
+chamberlains, and equerries under them.
+
+Great (grand) in connection with _seigneur_, "great lord," has a
+signification more extensive and uncertain. We give this title of
+"_grand seigneur_" (seignor) to the Turkish sultan, who assumes that of
+pasha, to which the expression grand seignor does not correspond. The
+expression "_un grand_," "great man," is used in speaking of a man of
+distinguished birth, invested with dignities, but it is used only by the
+common people. A person of birth or consequence never applies the term
+to any one. As the words "great lord" (_grand seigneur_) are commonly
+applied to those who unite birth, dignity, and riches, poverty seems to
+deprive a man of the right to it, or at least to render it inappropriate
+or ridiculous. Accordingly, we say a poor gentleman, but not a poor
+grand seigneur.
+
+Great (grand) is different from mighty (_puissant_). A man may at the
+same time be both one and the other, but _puissant_ implies the
+possession of some office of power and consequence. "Grand" indicates
+more show and less reality; the "puissant" commands, the "grand"
+possesses honors.
+
+There is greatness (grandeur) in mind, in sentiments, in manners, and in
+conduct. The expression is not used in speaking of persons in the
+middling classes of society, but only of those who, by their rank, are
+bound to show nobility and elevation. It is perfectly true that a man of
+the most obscure birth and connections may have more greatness of mind
+than a monarch. But it would be inconsistent with the usual phraseology
+to say, "that merchant" or "that farmer acted greatly" (_avec
+grandeur_); unless, indeed, in very particular circumstances, and
+placing certain characters in striking opposition, we should, for
+example, make such a remark as the following: "The celebrated merchant
+who entertained Charles the Fifth in his own house, and lighted a fire
+of cinnamon wood with that prince's bond to him for fifty thousand
+ducats, displayed more greatness of soul than the emperor."
+
+The title of "greatness" (grandeur) was formerly given to various
+persons possessing stations of dignity. French clergymen, when writing
+to bishops, still call them "your greatness." Those titles, which are
+lavished by sycophancy and caught at by vanity, are now little used.
+
+Haughtiness is often mistaken for greatness (grandeur). He who is
+ostentatious of greatness displays vanity. But one becomes weary and
+exhausted with writing about greatness. According to the lively remark
+of Montaigne, "we cannot obtain it, let us therefore take our revenge by
+abusing it."
+
+
+
+
+GREEK.
+
+_Observations Upon the Extinction of the Greek Language at Marseilles._
+
+
+It is exceedingly strange that, as Marseilles was founded by a Greek
+colony, scarcely any vestige of the Greek language is to be found in
+Provence Languedoc, or any district of France; for we cannot consider as
+Greek the terms which were taken, at a comparatively modern date, from
+the Latins, and which had been adopted by the Romans themselves from the
+Greeks so many centuries before. We received those only at second hand.
+We have no right to say that we abandoned the word _Got_ for that of
+_Theos_, rather than that of _Deus_, from which, by a barbarous
+termination, we have made _Dieu_.
+
+It is clear that the Gauls, having received the Latin language with the
+Roman laws, and having afterwards received from those same Romans the
+Christian religion, adopted from them all the terms which were connected
+with that religion. These same Gauls did not acquire, until a late
+period, the Greek terms which relate to medicine, anatomy, and surgery.
+
+After deducting all the words originally Greek which we have derived
+through the Latin, and all the anatomical and medical terms which were,
+in comparison, so recently acquired, there is scarcely anything left;
+for surely, to derive "_abréger_" from "_brakus_," rather than from
+"_abreviare_"; "_acier_" from "_axi_" rather than from "_acies_";
+"_acre_" from "_agros_," rather than from "_ager_"; and "_aile_" from
+"_ily_" rather than from "_ala_"--this, I say, would surely be perfectly
+ridiculous.
+
+Some have even gone so far as to say that "omelette" comes from
+"_omeilaton_" because "_meli_" in Greek signifies honey, and "_oon_" an
+egg. In the "Garden of Greek Roots" there is a more curious derivation
+still; it is pretended that "_diner_" (dinner) comes from "_deipnein_,"
+which signifies supper.
+
+As some may be desirous of possessing a list of the Greek words which
+the Marseilles colony may have introduced into the language of the
+Gauls, independently of those which came through the Romans, we present
+the following one:
+
+     Aboyer, perhaps from _bauzein_.
+     Affre, affreux, from _afronos_.
+     Agacer, perhaps from _anaxein_.
+     Alali, a Greek war-cry.
+     Babiller, perhaps from _babazo_.
+     Balle, from _ballo_.
+     Bas, from _batys_.
+     Blesser, from the aorist of _blapto_.
+     Bouteille, from _bouttis_.
+     Bride, from _bryter_.
+     Brique, from _bryka_.
+     Coin, from _gonia_.
+     Colère, from _chole_.
+     Colle, from _colla_.
+     Couper, from _cop to_.
+     Cuisse, perhaps from _ischis_.
+     Entraille, from _entera_.
+     Ermite, from _eremos_.
+     Fier, from _fiaros_.
+     Gargarizer, from _gargarizein_.
+     Idiot, from _idiotes_.
+     Maraud, from _miaros_.
+     Moquer, from _mokeuo_.
+     Moustache, from _mustax_.
+     Orgueil, from _orge_.
+     Page, from _pais_.
+     Siffler, perhaps from _siffloo_.
+     Tuer, _thuein_.
+
+I am astonished to find so few words remaining of a language spoken at
+Marseilles, in the time of Augustus, in all its purity; and I am
+particularly astonished to find the greater number of the Greek words
+preserved in Provence, signifying things of little or no utility, while
+those used to express things of the first necessity and importance are
+utterly lost. We have not a single one remaining that signifies land,
+sea, sky, the sun, the moon, rivers, or the principal parts of the human
+body; the words used for which might have been expected to be
+transmitted down from the beginning through every succeeding age.
+Perhaps we must attribute the cause of this to the Visigoths, the
+Burgundians, and the Franks; to the horrible barbarism of all those
+nations which laid waste the Roman Empire, a barbarism of which so many
+traces yet remain.
+
+
+
+
+GUARANTEE.
+
+
+A guarantee is a pledge by which a person renders himself responsible to
+another for something, and binds himself to secure him in the enjoyment
+of it. The word (_garant_) is derived from the Celtic and Teutonic
+"warrant." In all the words which we have retained from those ancient
+languages we have changed the _w_ into _g_. Among the greater number of
+the nations of the North "warrant" still signifies assurance, guaranty;
+and in this sense it means, in English, an order of the king, as
+signifying the pledge of the king. When in the middle ages kings
+concluded treaties, they were guaranteed on both sides by a considerable
+number of knights, who bound themselves by oath to see that the treaty
+was observed, and even, when a superior education qualified them to do
+so, which sometimes happened, signed their names to it. When the emperor
+Frederick Barbarossa ceded so many rights to Pope Alexander III. at the
+celebrated congress of Venice, in 1117, the emperor put his seal to the
+instrument which the pope and cardinals signed. Twelve princes of the
+empire guaranteed the treaty by an oath upon the gospel; but none of
+them signed it. It is not said that the doge of Venice guaranteed that
+peace which was concluded in his palace. When Philip Augustus made peace
+in 1200 with King John of England, the principal barons of France and
+Normandy swore to the due observance of it, as cautionary or
+guaranteeing parties. The French swore that they would take arms against
+their king if he violated his word, and the Normans, in like manner, to
+oppose their sovereign if he did not adhere to his. One of the
+constables of the Montmorency family, after a negotiation with one of
+the earls of March, in 1227, swore to the observance of the treaty upon
+the soul of the king.
+
+The practice of guaranteeing the states of a third party was of great
+antiquity, although under a different name. The Romans in this manner
+guaranteed the possessions of many of the princes of Asia and Africa, by
+taking them under their protection until they secured to themselves the
+possession of the territories thus protected. We must regard as a mutual
+guaranty the ancient alliance between France and Castile, of king to
+king, kingdom to kingdom, and man to man.
+
+We do not find any treaty in which the guaranty of the states of a third
+party is expressly stipulated for before that which was concluded
+between Spain and the states-general in 1609, by the mediation of Henry
+IV. He procured from Philip III., king of Spain, the recognition of the
+United Provinces as free and sovereign states. He signed the guaranty of
+this sovereignty of the seven provinces, and obtained the signature of
+the same instrument from the king of Spain; and the republic
+acknowledged that it owed its freedom to the interference of the French
+monarch. It is principally within our own times that treaties of
+guaranty have become comparatively frequent. Unfortunately these
+engagements have occasionally produced ruptures and war; and it is
+clearly ascertained that the best of all possible guaranties is power.
+
+
+
+
+GREGORY VII.
+
+
+Bayle himself, while admitting that Gregory was the firebrand of Europe,
+concedes to him the denomination of a great man. "That old Rome," says
+he, "which plumed itself upon conquests and military virtue, should have
+brought so many other nations under its dominion, redounds, according to
+the general maxims of mankind, to her credit and glory; but, upon the
+slightest reflection, can excite little surprise. On the other hand, it
+is a subject of great surprise to see new Rome, which pretended to value
+itself only on an apostolic ministry, possessed of an authority under
+which the greatest monarchs have been constrained to bend. Caron may
+observe, with truth, that there is scarcely a single emperor who has
+opposed the popes without feeling bitter cause to regret his resistance.
+Even at the present day the conflicts of powerful princes with the court
+of Rome almost always terminate in their confusion."
+
+I am of a totally different opinion from Bayle. There will probably be
+many of a different one from mine. I deliver it however with freedom,
+and let him who is willing and able refute it.
+
+1. The differences of the princes of Orange and the seven provinces with
+Rome did not terminate in their confusion; and Bayle, who, while at
+Amsterdam, could set Rome at defiance, was a happy illustration of the
+contrary.
+
+The triumphs of Queen Elizabeth, of Gustavus Vasa in Sweden, of the
+kings of Denmark, of all the princes of the north of Germany, of the
+finest part of Helvetia, of the single and small city of Geneva--the
+triumphs, I say, of all these over the policy of the Roman court are
+perfectly satisfactory testimonies that it may be easily and
+successfully resisted, both in affairs of religion and government.
+
+2. The sacking of Rome by the troops of Charles the Fifth; the pope
+(Clement VII.) a prisoner in the castle of St. Angelo; Louis XIV.
+compelling Pope Alexander VII. to ask his pardon, and erecting even in
+Rome itself a monument of the pope's submission; and, within our own
+times, the easy subversion of that steady, and apparently most
+formidable support of the papal power, the society of Jesuits in Spain,
+in France, in Naples, in Goa, and in Paraguay--all this furnishes
+decisive evidence, that, when potent princes are in hostility with Rome,
+the quarrel is not terminated in their confusion; they may occasionally
+bend before the storm, but they will not eventually be overthrown.
+
+When the popes walked on the heads of kings, when they conferred crowns
+by a parchment bull, it appears to me, that at this extreme height of
+their power and grandeur they did no more than the caliphs, who were the
+successors of Mahomet, did in the very period of their decline. Both of
+them, in the character of priests, conferred the investiture of empires,
+in solemn ceremony, on the most powerful of contending parties.
+
+3. Maimbourg says: "What no pope ever did before, Gregory VIII. did,
+depriving Henry IV. of his dignity of emperor, and of his kingdoms of
+Germany and Italy."
+
+Maimbourg is mistaken. Pope Zachary had, long before that, placed a
+crown on the head of the Austrasian Pepin, who usurped the kingdom of
+the Franks; and Pope Leo III. had declared the son of that Pepin emperor
+of the West, and thereby deprived the empress Irene of the whole of that
+empire; and from that time, it must be admitted, there has not been a
+single priest of the Romish church who has not imagined that his bishop
+enjoyed the disposal of all crowns.
+
+This maxim was always turned to account when it was possible to be so.
+It was considered as a consecrated weapon, deposited in the sacristy of
+St. John of Lateran, which might be drawn forth in solemn and impressive
+ceremony on every occasion that required it. This prerogative is so
+commanding; it raises to such a height the dignity of an exorcist born
+at Velletri or Cività Vecchia, that if Luther, Oecolampadius, John
+Calvin, and all the prophets of the Cévennes, had been natives of any
+miserable village near Rome, and undergone the tonsure there, they would
+have supported that church with the same rage which they actually
+manifested for its destruction.
+
+4. Everything, then, depends on the time and place of a man's birth, and
+the circumstances by which he is surrounded. Gregory VII. was born in an
+age of barbarism, ignorance, and superstition; and he had to deal with a
+young, debauched, inexperienced emperor, deficient in money, and whose
+power was contested by all the powerful lords of Germany.
+
+We cannot believe, that, from the time of the Austrasian Charlemagne,
+the Roman people ever paid very willing obedience to Franks or
+Teutonians: they hated them as much as the genuine old Romans would have
+hated the Cimbri, if the Cimbri had obtained dominion in Italy. The
+Othos had left behind them in Rome a memory that was execrated, because
+they had enjoyed great power there; and, after the time of the Othos,
+Europe it is well known became involved in frightful anarchy.
+
+This anarchy was not more effectually restrained under the emperors of
+the house of Franconia. One-half of Germany was in insurrection against
+Henry IV. The countess Mathilda, grand duchess, his cousin-german, more
+powerful than himself in Italy, was his mortal enemy. She possessed,
+either as fiefs of the empire, or as allodial property, the whole duchy
+of Tuscany, the territory of Cremona, Ferrara, Mantua, and Parma; a part
+of the Marches of Ancona, Reggio, Modena, Spoleto, and Verona; and she
+had rights, that is to say pretensions, to the two Burgundies; for the
+imperial chancery claimed those territories, according to its regular
+practice of claiming everything.
+
+We admit, that Gregory VII. would have been little less than an idiot
+had he not exerted his strongest efforts to secure a complete influence
+over this powerful princess; and to obtain, by her means, a point of
+support and protection against the Germans. He became her director, and,
+after being her director, her heir.
+
+I shall not, in this place, examine whether he was really her lover, or
+whether he only pretended to be so; or whether his enemies merely
+pretended it; or whether, in his idle moments, the assuming and ardent
+little director did not occasionally abuse the influence he possessed
+with his penitent, and prevail over a feeble and capricious woman. In
+the course of human events nothing can be more natural or common; but as
+usually no registers are kept of such cases; as those interesting
+intimacies between the directors and directed do not take place before
+witnesses, and as Gregory has been reproached with this imputation only
+by his enemies, we ought not to confound accusation with proof. It is
+quite enough that Gregory claimed the whole of his penitent's property.
+
+5. The donation which he procured to be made to himself by the countess
+Mathilda, in the year 1077, is more than suspected. And one proof that
+it is not to be relied upon is that not merely was this deed never
+shown, but that, in a second deed, the first is stated to have been
+lost. It was pretended that the donation had been made in the fortress
+of Canossa, and in the second act it is said to have been made at Rome.
+These circumstances may be considered as confirming the opinion of some
+antiquaries, a little too scrupulous, who maintain that out of a
+thousand grants made in those times--and those times were of long
+duration--there are more than nine hundred evidently counterfeit.
+
+There have been two sorts of usurpers in our quarter of the world,
+Europe--robbers and forgers.
+
+6. Bayle, although allowing the title of Great to Gregory, acknowledges
+at the same time that this turbulent man disgraced his heroism by his
+prophecies. He had the audacity to create an emperor, and in that he
+did well, as the emperor Henry IV. had made a pope. Henry deposed him,
+and he deposed Henry. So far there is nothing to which to object--both
+sides are equal. But Gregory took it into his head to turn prophet; he
+predicted the death of Henry IV. for the year 1080; but Henry IV.
+conquered, and the pretended emperor Rudolph was defeated and slain in
+Thuringia by the famous Godfrey of Bouillon, a man more truly great than
+all the other three. This proves, in my opinion, that Gregory had more
+enthusiasm than talent.
+
+I subscribe with all my heart to the remark of Bayle, that "when a man
+undertakes to predict the future, he is provided against everything by a
+face of brass, and an inexhaustible magazine of equivocations." But your
+enemies deride your equivocations; they also have a face of brass like
+yourself; and they expose you as a knave, a braggart, and a fool.
+
+7. Our great man ended his public career with witnessing the taking of
+Rome by assault, in the year 1083. He was besieged in the castle, since
+called St. Angelo, by the same emperor Henry IV., whom he had dared to
+dispossess, and died in misery and contempt at Salerno, under the
+protection of Robert Guiscard the Norman.
+
+I ask pardon of modern Rome, but when I read the history of the Scipios,
+the Catos, the Pompeys, and the Cæsars, I find a difficulty in ranking
+with them a factious monk who was made a pope under the name of Gregory
+VII.
+
+But our Gregory has obtained even a yet finer title; he has been made a
+saint, at least at Rome. It was the famous cardinal Coscia who effected
+this canonization under Pope Benedict XIII. Even an office or service of
+St. Gregory VII. was printed, in which it was said, that that saint
+"absolved the faithful from the allegiance which they had sworn to their
+emperor."
+
+Many parliaments of the kingdom were desirous of having this legend
+burned by the executioner: but Bentivoglio, the nuncio--who kept one of
+the actresses at the opera, of the name of Constitution, as his
+mistress, and had by her a daughter called la Legende; a man otherwise
+extremely amiable, and a most interesting companion--procured from the
+ministry a mitigation of the threatened storm; and, after passing
+sentence of condemnation on the legend of St. Gregory, the hostile party
+were contented to suppress it and to laugh at it.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 5
+(of 10), by François-Marie Arouet (AKA Voltaire)
+
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Philosophical Dictionary, by Voltaire.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 5 (of 10), by
+François-Marie Arouet (AKA 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: A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 5 (of 10)
+       From "The Works of Voltaire - A Contemporary Version"
+
+Author: François-Marie Arouet (AKA Voltaire)
+
+Commentator: John Morley
+             Tobias Smollett
+             H.G. Leigh
+
+Translator: William F. Fleming
+
+Release Date: March 28, 2011 [EBook #35625]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Andrea Ball, Christine Bell & Marc D'Hooghe
+at http://www.freeliterature.org (From images generously
+made available by the Internet Archive.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<h1>A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY</h1>
+
+<h3>VOLUME V</h3>
+
+<h4>By</h4>
+
+<h2>VOLTAIRE</h2>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h4>EDITION DE LA PACIFICATION</h4>
+
+<h3>THE WORKS OF VOLTAIRE</h3>
+
+<h4>A CONTEMPORARY VERSION</h4>
+
+<h5>With Notes by Tobias Smollett, Revised and Modernized</h5>
+
+<h5>New Translations by William F. Fleming, and an</h5>
+
+<h5>Introduction by Oliver H.G. Leigh</h5>
+
+
+<h4>A CRITIQUE AND BIOGRAPHY</h4>
+
+<h5>BY</h5>
+
+<h4>THE RT. HON. JOHN MORLEY</h4>
+
+<h5>FORTY-THREE VOLUMES</h5>
+
+
+<h5>One hundred and sixty-eight designs, comprising reproductions</h5>
+
+<h5>of rare old engravings, steel plates, photogravures,</h5>
+
+<h5>and curious fac-similes</h5>
+
+
+<h4>VOLUME IX</h4>
+
+<h4>E.R. DuMONT</h4>
+
+<h4>PARIS&mdash;LONDON&mdash;NEW YORK&mdash;CHICAGO</h4>
+
+<h4>1901</h4>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="The_WORKS_of_VOLTAIRE" id="The_WORKS_of_VOLTAIRE"></a><i>The WORKS of VOLTAIRE</i></h2>
+
+<blockquote><p><i>"Between two servants of Humanity, who appeared eighteen hundred
+years apart, there is a mysterious relation. * * * * Let us say it
+with a sentiment of profound respect: JESUS WEPT: VOLTAIRE SMILED.
+Of that divine tear and of that human smile is composed the
+sweetness of the present civilization."</i></p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 35em;">
+<i>VICTOR HUGO.</i>
+</p></blockquote>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="caption"><a name="LIST_OF_PLATES_VOL_V" id="LIST_OF_PLATES_VOL_V"></a>LIST OF PLATES&mdash;VOL. V</p>
+
+<p class="small2">
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><a href="#Illustration_SANS_SOUCI">SANS SOUCI</a> <i>Frontispiece</i></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><a href="#NATURE_IS_NOT_A_WORK">A LAND STORM</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><a href="#THE_TEMPTATION_OF_ADAM">THE TEMPTATION OF ADAM</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><a href="#Descartes">DESCARTES</a></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 34em;"><a href="#TABLE_OF_CONTENTS">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 595px;">
+<a name="Illustration_SANS_SOUCI" id="Illustration_SANS_SOUCI"></a>
+<img src="images/img_01_sans_souci.jpg" width="595" alt="SANS SOUCI" title="" />
+<span class="caption_fig">Sans Souci</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 95%;" />
+
+<h3>A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY.</h3>
+
+<h4>IN TEN VOLUMES</h4>
+
+<h4>Vol. V</h4>
+
+<h4>FANATICISM&mdash;GREGORY VII</h4>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FANATICISM" id="FANATICISM"></a>FANATICISM.</h3>
+
+<h5>SECTION I.</h5>
+
+
+<p>Fanaticism is the effect of a false conscience, which makes religion
+subservient to the caprices of the imagination, and the excesses of the
+passions.</p>
+
+<p>It arises, in general, from legislators entertaining too narrow views,
+or from their extending their regulations beyond the limits within which
+alone they were intended to operate. Their laws are made merely for a
+select society. When extended by zeal to a whole people, and transferred
+by ambition from one climate to another, some changes of institution
+should take place, some accommodation to persons, places, and
+circumstances. But what, in fact, has been the case? Certain minds,
+constituted in a great degree like those of the small original flock,
+have received a system with equal ardor, and become its apostles, and
+even its martyrs, rather than abate a single iota of its demands.
+Others, on the contrary, less ardent, or more attached to their
+prejudices of education, have struggled with energy against the new
+yoke, and consented to receive it only after considerable softenings and
+mitigations: hence the schism between rigorists and moderates, by which
+all are urged on to vehemence and madness&mdash;the one party for servitude
+and the other for freedom.</p>
+
+<p>Let us imagine an immense rotunda, a pantheon, with innumerable altars
+placed under its dome. Let us figure to ourselves a devotee of every
+sect, whether at present existing or extinct, at the feet of that
+divinity which he worships in his own peculiar way, under all the
+extravagant forms which human imagination has been able to invent. On
+the right we perceive one stretched on his back upon a mat, absorbed in
+contemplation, and awaiting the moment when the divine light shall come
+forth to inform his soul. On the left is a prostrate energumen striking
+his forehead against the ground, with a view to obtain from it an
+abundant produce. Here we see a man with the air and manner of a
+mountebank, dancing over the grave of him whom he invokes. There we
+observe a penitent, motionless and mute as the statue before which he
+has bent himself in humiliation. One, on the principle that God will not
+blush at his own resemblance, displays openly what modesty universally
+conceals; another, as if the artist would shudder at the sight of his
+own work, covers with an impenetrable veil his whole person and
+countenance; another turns his back upon the south, because from that
+quarter blows the devil's tempest. Another stretches out his arms
+towards the east, because there God first shows His radiant face. Young
+women, suffused with tears, bruise and gash their lovely persons under
+the idea of assuaging the demon of desire, although by means tending in
+fact rather to strengthen his influence; others again, in opposite
+attitudes, solicit the approaches of the Divinity. One young man, in
+order to mortify the most urgent of his feelings, attaches to particular
+parts of his frame large iron rings, as heavy as he can bear; another
+checks still more effectually the tempter's violence by inhuman
+amputation, and suspends the bleeding sacrifice upon the altar.</p>
+
+<p>Let us observe them quit the temple, and, full of the inspiration of
+their respective deities, spread the terror and delusion over the face
+of the earth. They divide the world between them; and the four
+extremities of it are almost instantly in flames: nations obey them, and
+kings tremble before them. That almost despotic power which the
+enthusiasm of a single person exercises over a multitude who see or hear
+him; the ardor communicated to each other by assembled minds; numberless
+strong and agitating influences acting in such circumstances, augmented
+by each individual's personal anxiety and distress, require but a short
+time to operate, in order to produce universal delirium. Only let a
+single people be thus fascinated and agitated under the guidance of a
+few impostors, the seduction will spread with the speed of wild-fire,
+prodigies will be multiplied beyond calculation, and whole communities
+be led astray forever. When the human mind has once quitted the luminous
+track pointed out by nature, it returns to it no more; it wanders round
+the truth, but never obtains of it more than a few faint glimmerings,
+which, mingling with the false lights of surrounding superstition, leave
+it, in fact, in complete and palpable obscurity.</p>
+
+<p>It is dreadful to observe how the opinion that the wrath of heaven might
+be appeased by human massacre spread, after being once started, through
+almost every religion; and what various reasons have been given for the
+sacrifice, as though, in order to preclude, if possible, the escape of
+any one from extirpation. Sometimes they are enemies who must be
+immolated to Mars the exterminator. The Scythians slay upon the altars
+of this deity a hundredth part of their prisoners of war; and from this
+usage attending victory, we may form some judgment of the justice of
+war: accordingly, among other nations it was engaged in solely to supply
+these human sacrifices, so that, having first been instituted, as it
+would seem, to expiate the horrors of war, they at length came to serve
+as a justification of them.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes a barbarous deity requires victims from among the just and
+good. The Getæ eagerly dispute the honor of personally conveying to
+Zamolxis the vows and devotions of their country. He whose good fortune
+has destined him to be the sacrifice is thrown with the greatest
+violence upon a range of spears, fixed for the purpose. If on falling
+he receives a mortal wound, it augurs well as to the success of the
+negotiation and the merit of the envoy; but if he survives the wound, he
+is a wretch with whom the god would not condescend to hold any
+communication.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes children are demanded, and the respective divinities recall
+the life they had but just imparted: "Justice," says Montaigne,
+"thirsting for the blood of innocence!" Sometimes the call is for the
+dearest and nearest blood: the Carthaginians sacrificed their own sons
+to Saturn, as if Time did not devour them with sufficient speed.
+Sometimes the demand was for the blood of the most beautiful. That
+Amestris, who had buried twelve men alive in order to obtain from Pluto,
+in return for so revolting an offering, a somewhat longer life&mdash;that
+same Amestris further sacrifices to that insatiable divinity twelve
+daughters of the highest personages in Persia; as the sacrificing
+priests have always taught men that they ought to offer on the altar the
+most valuable of their possessions. It is upon this principle that among
+some nations the first-born were immolated, and that among others they
+were redeemed by offerings more valuable to the ministers of sacrifice.
+This it is, unquestionably, which introduced into Europe the practice
+prevalent for centuries of devoting children to celibacy at the early
+age of five years, and shutting up in a cloister the brothers of an
+hereditary prince, just as in Asia the practice is to murder them.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes it is the purest blood that is demanded. We read of certain
+Indians, if I recollect rightly, who hospitably entertain all who visit
+them and make a merit of killing every sensible and virtuous stranger
+who enters their country, that his talents and virtues may remain with
+them. Sometimes the blood required is that which is most sacred. With
+the majority of idolaters, priests perform the office of executioner at
+the altar; and among the Siberians, it is the practice to kill the
+priests in order to despatch them to pray in the other world for the
+fulfilment of the wishes of the people.</p>
+
+<p>But let us turn our attention to other frenzies and other spectacles.
+All Europe passes into Asia by a road inundated with the blood of Jews,
+who commit suicide to avoid falling into the hands of their enemies.
+This epidemic depopulates one-half of the inhabited world: kings,
+pontiffs, women, the young and the aged, all yield to the influence of
+the holy madness which, for a series of two hundred years, instigated
+the slaughter of innumerable nations at the tomb of a god of peace. Then
+were to be seen lying oracles, and military hermits, monarchs in
+pulpits, and prelates in camps. All the different states constitute one
+delirious populace; barriers of mountains and seas are surmounted;
+legitimate possessions are abandoned to enable their owners to fly to
+conquests which were no longer, in point of fertility, the land of
+promise; manners become corrupted under foreign skies; princes, after
+having exhausted their respective kingdoms to redeem a country which
+had never been theirs, complete the ruin of them for their personal
+ransom; thousands of soldiers, wandering under the banners of many
+chieftains, acknowledge the authority of none and hasten their defeat by
+their desertion; and the disease terminates only to be succeeded by a
+contagion still more horrible and desolating.</p>
+
+<p>The same spirit of fanaticism cherished the rage for distant conquests:
+scarcely had Europe repaired its losses when the discovery of a new
+world hastened the ruin of our own. At that terrible injunction, "Go and
+conquer," America was desolated and its inhabitants exterminated; Africa
+and Europe were exhausted in vain to repeople it; the poison of money
+and of pleasure having enervated the species, the world became nearly a
+desert and appeared likely every day to advance nearer to desolation by
+the continual wars which were kindled on our continent, from the
+ambition of extending its power to foreign lands.</p>
+
+<p>Let us now compute the immense number of slaves which fanaticism has
+made, whether in Asia, where uncircumcision was a mark of infamy, or in
+Africa, where the Christian name was a crime, or in America, where the
+pretext of baptism absolutely extinguished the feelings of humanity. Let
+us compute the thousands who have been seen to perish either on
+scaffolds in the ages of persecution, or in civil wars by the hands of
+their fellow citizens, or by their own hands through excessive
+austerities, and maceration. Let us survey the surface of the earth, and
+glance at the various standards unfurled and blazing in the name of
+religion; in Spain against the Moors, in France against the Turks, in
+Hungary against the Tartars; at the numerous military orders, founded
+for converting infidels by the point of the sword, and slaughtering one
+another at the foot of the altar they had come to defend. Let us then
+look down from the appalling tribunal thus raised on the bodies of the
+innocent and miserable, in order to judge the living, as God, with a
+balance widely different, will judge the dead.</p>
+
+<p>In a word, let us contemplate the horrors of fifteen centuries, all
+frequently renewed in the course of a single one; unarmed men slain at
+the feet of altars; kings destroyed by the dagger or by poison; a large
+state reduced to half its extent by the fury of its own citizens; the
+nation at once the most warlike and the most pacific on the face of the
+globe, divided in fierce hostility against itself; the sword unsheathed
+between the sons and the father; usurpers, tyrants, executioners,
+sacrilegious robbers, and bloodstained parricides violating, under the
+impulse of religion, every convention divine or human&mdash;such is the
+deadly picture of fanaticism.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION II.</h5>
+
+<p>If this term has at present any connection with its original meaning it
+is exceedingly slight.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Fanaticus</i>" was an honorable designation. It signified the minister or
+benefactor of a temple. According to the dictionary of Trévoux some
+antiquaries have discovered inscriptions in which Roman citizens of
+considerable consequence assumed the title of "<i>fanaticus</i>."</p>
+
+<p>In Cicero's oration "<i>pro domo sua</i>," a passage occurs in which the word
+"<i>fanaticus</i>" appears to me of difficult explanation. The seditious and
+libertine Clodius, who had brought about the banishment of Cicero for
+having saved the republic, had not only plundered and demolished the
+houses of that great man, but in order that Cicero might never be able
+to return to his city residence he procured the consecration of the land
+on which it stood; and the priests had erected there a temple to
+liberty, or rather to slavery, in which Cæsar, Pompey, Crassus, and
+Clodius then held the republic. Thus in all ages has religion been
+employed as an instrument in the persecution of great men. When at
+length, in a happier period, Cicero was recalled, he pleaded before the
+people in order to obtain the restoration of the ground on which his
+house had stood, and the rebuilding of the house at the expense of the
+Roman people. He thus expresses himself in the speech against Clodius
+(<i>Oratio pro Domo sua</i>, chap. xl): "<i>Adspicite, adspicite, pontifices,
+hominem religiosum.... monete eum, modum quemdam esse religionis; nimium
+esse superstitiosum non oportere. Quid tibi necesse fuit anili
+superstitione, homo fanatice, sacrificium, quod aliænæ domi fieret
+invisere?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Does the word "<i>fanaticus</i>," as used above, mean senseless, pitiless,
+abominable fanatic, according to the present acceptation, or does it
+rather imply the pious, religious man, the frequenter and consecrator of
+temples? Is it used here in the meaning of decided censure or ironical
+praise? I do not feel myself competent to determine, but will give a
+translation of the passage:</p>
+
+<p>"Behold, reverend pontiffs, behold the pious man.... suggest to him that
+even religion itself has its limits, that a man ought not to be so
+over-scrupulous. What occasion was there for a sacred person, a fanatic
+like yourself, to have recourse to the superstition of an old woman, in
+order to assist at a sacrifice performed in another person's house?"</p>
+
+<p>Cicero alludes here to the mysteries of the <i>Bona Dea</i>, which had been
+profaned by Clodius, who, in the disguise of a female, and accompanied
+by an old woman, had obtained an introduction to them, with a view to an
+assignation with Cæsar's wife. The passage is, in consequence, evidently
+ironical.</p>
+
+<p>Cicero calls Clodius a religious man, and the irony requires to be kept
+up through the whole passage. He employs terms of honorable meaning,
+more clearly to exhibit Clodius's infamy. It appears to me, therefore,
+that he uses the word in question, "<i>fanaticus</i>" in its respectable
+sense, as a word conveying the idea of a sacrificer, a pious man, a
+zealous minister of a temple.</p>
+
+<p>The term might be afterwards applied to those who believed themselves
+inspired by the gods, who bestowed a somewhat curious gift on the
+interpreters of their will, by ordaining that, in order to be a prophet,
+the loss of reason is indispensable.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Les Dieux à leur interprète</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><i>Ont fait un étrange don;</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Ne peut on être prophète</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>Sans qu'on perde la raison?</i></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The same dictionary of Trévoux informs us that the old chronicles of
+France call Clovis fanatic and pagan. The reader would have been pleased
+to have had the particular chronicles specified. I have not found this
+epithet applied to Clovis in any of the few books I possess at my house
+near Mount Krapak, where I now write.</p>
+
+<p>We understand by fanaticism at present a religious madness, gloomy and
+cruel. It is a malady of the mind, which is taken in the same way as
+smallpox. Books communicate it much less than meetings and discourses.
+We seldom get heated while reading in solitude, for our minds are then
+tranquil and sedate. But when an ardent man of strong imagination
+addresses himself to weak imaginations, his eyes dart fire, and that
+fire rapidly spreads; his tones, his gestures, absolutely convulse the
+nerves of his auditors. He exclaims, "The eye of God is at this moment
+upon you; sacrifice every mere human possession and feeling; fight the
+battles of the Lord"&mdash;and and they rush to the fight.</p>
+
+<p>Fanaticism is, in reference to superstition, what delirium is to fever,
+or rage to anger. He who is involved in ecstasies and visions, who takes
+dreams for realities, and his own imaginations for prophecies, is a
+fanatical novice of great hope and promise, and will probably soon
+advance to the highest form, and kill man for the love of God.</p>
+
+<p>Bartholomew Diaz was a fanatical monk. He had a brother at Nuremberg
+called John Diaz, who was an enthusiastic adherent to the doctrines of
+Luther, and completely convinced that the pope was Antichrist, and had
+the sign of the beast. Bartholomew, still more ardently convinced that
+the pope was god upon earth, quits Rome, determined either to convert or
+murder his brother; he accordingly murdered him! Here is a perfect case
+of fanaticism. We have noticed and done justice to this Diaz elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>Polyeuctes, who went to the temple on a day of solemn festival, to throw
+down and destroy the statues and ornaments, was a fanatic less horrible
+than Diaz, but not less foolish. The assassins of Francis, duke of
+Guise, of William, prince of Orange, of King Henry III., of King Henry
+IV., and various others, were equally possessed, equally laboring under
+morbid fury, with Diaz.</p>
+
+<p>The most striking example of fanaticism is that exhibited on the night
+of St. Bartholomew, when the people of Paris rushed from house to house
+to stab, slaughter, throw out of the window, and tear in pieces their
+fellow citizens not attending mass. Guyon, Patouillet, Chaudon,
+Nonnotte, and the ex-Jesuit Paulian, are merely fanatics in a
+corner&mdash;contemptible beings whom we do not think of guarding against.
+They would, however, on a day of St. Bartholomew, perform wonders.</p>
+
+<p>There are some cold-blooded fanatics; such as those judges who sentence
+men to death for no other crime than that of thinking differently from
+themselves, and these are so much the more guilty and deserving of the
+execration of mankind, as, not laboring under madness like the Clements,
+Châtels, Ravaillacs, and Damiens, they might be deemed capable of
+listening to reason.</p>
+
+<p>There is no other remedy for this epidemical malady than that spirit of
+philosophy, which, extending itself from one to another, at length
+civilizes and softens the manners of men and prevents the access of the
+disease. For when the disorder has made any progress, we should, without
+loss of time, fly from the seat of it, and wait till the air has become
+purified from contagion. Law and religion are not completely efficient
+against the spiritual pestilence. Religion, indeed, so far from
+affording proper nutriment to the minds of patients laboring under this
+infectious and infernal distemper, is converted, by the diseased process
+of their minds, into poison. These malignant devotees have incessantly
+before their eyes the example of Ehud, who assassinated the king of
+Eglon; of Judith, who cut off the head of Holofernes while in bed with
+him; of Samuel, hewing in pieces King Agag; of Jehoiada the priest, who
+murdered his queen at the horse-gate. They do not perceive that these
+instances, which are respectable in antiquity, are in the present day
+abominable. They derive their fury from religion, decidedly as religion
+condemns it.</p>
+
+<p>Laws are yet more powerless against these paroxysms of rage. To oppose
+laws to cases of such a description would be like reading a decree of
+council to a man in a frenzy. The persons in question are fully
+convinced that the Holy Spirit which animates and fills them is above
+all laws; that their own enthusiasm is, in fact, the only law which they
+are bound to obey.</p>
+
+<p>What can be said in answer to a man who says he will rather obey God
+than men, and who consequently feels certain of meriting heaven by
+cutting your throat?</p>
+
+<p>When once fanaticism has gangrened the brain of any man the disease may
+be regarded as nearly incurable. I have seen Convulsionaries who, while
+speaking of the miracles of St. Paris, gradually worked themselves up to
+higher and more vehement degrees of agitation till their eyes became
+inflamed, their whole frames shook, their countenances became distorted
+by rage, and had any man contradicted them he would inevitably have been
+murdered.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, I have seen these wretched Convulsionaries writhing their limbs and
+foaming at their mouths. They were exclaiming, "We must have blood."
+They effected the assassination of their king by a lackey, and ended
+with exclaiming against philosophers.</p>
+
+<p>Fanatics are nearly always under the direction of knaves, who place the
+dagger in their hands. These knaves resemble Montaigne's "Old Man of the
+Mountain," who, it is said, made weak persons imagine, under his
+treatment of them, that they really had experienced the joys of
+paradise, and promised them a whole eternity of such delights if they
+would go and assassinate such as he should point out to them. There has
+been only one religion in the world which has not been polluted by
+fanaticism and that is the religion of the learned in China. The
+different sects of ancient philosophers were not merely exempt from this
+pest of human society, but they were antidotes to it: for the effect of
+philosophy is to render the soul tranquil, and fanaticism and
+tranquillity are totally incompatible. That our own holy religion has
+been so frequently polluted by this infernal fury must be imputed to the
+foil and madness of mankind. Thus Icarus abused the wings which he
+received for his benefit. They were given him for his salvation and they
+insured his destruction:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Ainsi du plumage qu'il eut</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><i>Icare pervertit l'usage;</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Il le reçut pour son salut,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><i>Il s'en servit pour son dommage.</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;"><span class="small">&mdash;BERTAUT</span>, bishop of Séez.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION III.</h5>
+
+<p>Fanatics do not always fight the battles of the Lord. They do not always
+assassinate kings and princes. There are tigers among them, but there
+are more foxes.</p>
+
+<p>What a tissue of frauds, calumnies, and robberies has been woven by
+fanatics of the court of Rome against fanatics of the court of Calvin,
+by Jesuits against Jansenists, and <i>vice versa</i>! And if you go farther
+back you will find ecclesiastical history, which is the school of
+virtues, to be that of atrocities and abominations, which have been
+employed by every sect against the others. They all have the same
+bandage over their eyes whether marching out to burn down the cities and
+towns of their adversaries, to slaughter the inhabitants, or condemn
+them to judicial execution; or when merely engaged in the comparatively
+calm occupation of deceiving and defrauding, of acquiring wealth and
+exercising domination. The same fanaticism blinds them; they think that
+they are doing good. Every fanatic is a conscientious knave, but a
+sincere and honest murderer for the good cause.</p>
+
+<p>Read, if you are able, the five or six thousand volumes in which, for a
+hundred years together, the Jansenists and Molinists have dealt out
+against each other their reproaches and revilings, their mutual
+exposures of fraud and knavery, and then judge whether Scapin or
+Trevelin can be compared with them.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most curious theological knaveries ever practised is, in my
+opinion, that of a small bishop&mdash;the narrative asserts that he was a
+Biscayan bishop; however, we shall certainly, at some future period find
+out both his name and his bishopric&mdash;whose diocese was partly in Biscay
+and partly in France.</p>
+
+<p>In the French division of his diocese there was a parish which had
+formerly been inhabited by some Moors. The lord of the parish or manor
+was no Mahometan; he was perfectly catholic, as the whole universe
+should be, for the meaning of catholic is universal. My lord the bishop
+had some suspicions concerning this unfortunate seigneur, whose whole
+occupation consisted in doing good, and conceived that in his heart he
+entertained bad thoughts and sentiments savoring not a little of heresy.
+He even accused him of having said, in the way of pleasantry, that there
+were good people in Morocco as well as in Biscay, and that an honest
+inhabitant of Morocco might absolutely not be a mortal enemy of the
+Supreme Being, who is the father of all mankind.</p>
+
+<p>The fanatic, upon this, wrote a long letter to the king of France, the
+paramount sovereign of our little manorial lord. In this letter he
+entreated his majesty to transfer the manor of this stray and
+unbelieving sheep either to Lower Brittany or Lower Normandy, according
+to his good pleasure, that he might be no longer able to diffuse the
+contagion of heresy among his Biscayan neighbors, by his abominable
+jests. The king of France and his council smiled, as may naturally be
+supposed, at the extravagance and folly of the demand.</p>
+
+<p>Our Biscayan pastor learning, some time afterwards, that his French
+sheep was sick, ordered public notices to be fixed up at the church
+gates of the canton, prohibiting any one from administering the
+communion to him, unless he should previously give in a bill of
+confession, from which it might appear that he was not circumcised; that
+he condemned with his whole heart the heresy of Mahomet, and every other
+heresy of the like kind&mdash;as, for example, Calvinism and Jansenism; and
+that in every point he thought like him, the said Biscayan bishop.</p>
+
+<p>Bills of confession were at that time much in fashion. The sick man sent
+for his parish priest, who was a simple and sottish man, and threatened
+to have him hanged by the parliament of Bordeaux if he did not instantly
+administer the viaticum to him. The priest was alarmed, and accordingly
+celebrated the sacred ordinance, as desired by the patient; who, after
+the ceremony, declared aloud, before witnesses, that the Biscayan pastor
+had falsely accused him before the king of being tainted with the
+Mussulman religion; that he was a sincere Christian, and that the
+Biscayan was a calumniator. He signed this, after it had been written
+down, in presence of a notary, and every form required by law was
+complied with. He soon after became better, and rest and a good
+conscience speedily completed his recovery.</p>
+
+<p>The Biscayan, quite exasperated that the old patient should have thus
+exposed and disappointed him, resolved to have his revenge, and thus he
+set about it.</p>
+
+<p>He procured, fifteen days after the event just mentioned, the
+fabrication, in his own language or patois, of a profession of faith
+which the priest pretended to have heard and received. It was signed by
+the priest and three or four peasants, who had not been present at the
+ceremony; and the forged instrument was then passed through the
+necessary and solemn form of verification and registry, as if this form
+could give it authenticity.</p>
+
+<p>An instrument not signed by the party alone interested, signed by
+persons unknown, fifteen days after the event, an instrument disavowed
+by the real and credible witnesses of that event, involved evidently the
+crime of forgery; and, as the subject of the forgery was a matter of
+faith, the crime clearly rendered both the priest and the witnesses
+liable to the galleys in this world, and to hell in the other.</p>
+
+<p>Our lord of the manor, however, who loved a joke, but had no gall or
+malice in his heart, took compassion both upon the bodies and souls of
+these conspirators. He declined delivering them over to human justice,
+and contented himself with giving them up to ridicule. But he declared
+that after the death of the Biscayan he would, if he survived, have the
+pleasure of printing an account of all his proceedings and manœuvres
+on this business, together with the documents and evidences, just to
+amuse the small number of readers who might like anecdotes of that
+description; and not, as is often pompously announced, with a view to
+the instruction of the universe. There are so many authors who address
+themselves to the universe, who really imagine they attract, and perhaps
+absorb, the attention of the universe, that he conceived he might not
+have a dozen readers out of the whole who would attend for a moment to
+himself. But let us return to fanaticism.</p>
+
+<p>It is this rage for making proselytes, this intensely mad desire which
+men feel to bring others over to partake of their own peculiar cup or
+communion, that induced the Jesuit Châtel and the Jesuit Routh to rush
+with eagerness to the deathbed of the celebrated Montesquieu. These two
+devoted zealots desired nothing better than to be able to boast that
+they had persuaded him of the merits of contrition and of sufficing
+grace. We wrought his conversion, they said. He was, in the main, a
+worthy soul: he was much attached to the society of Jesus. We had some
+little difficulty in inducing him to admit certain fundamental truths;
+but as in these circumstances, in the crisis of life and death, the
+mind is always most clear and acute, we soon convinced him.</p>
+
+<p>This fanatical eagerness for converting men is so ardent, that the most
+debauched monk in his convent would even quit his mistress, and walk to
+the very extremity of the city, for the sake of making a single convert.</p>
+
+<p>We have all seen Father Poisson, a Cordelier of Paris, who impoverished
+his convent to pay his mistresses, and who was imprisoned in consequence
+of the depravity of his manners. He was one of the most popular
+preachers at Paris, and one of the most determined and zealous of
+converters.</p>
+
+<p>Such also was the celebrated preacher Fantin, at Versailles. The list
+might be easily enlarged; but it is unnecessary, if not also dangerous,
+to expose the freaks and freedoms of constituted authorities. You know
+what happened to Ham for having revealed his father's shame. He became
+as black as a coal.</p>
+
+<p>Let us merely pray to God, whether rising or lying down, that he would
+deliver us from fanatics, as the pilgrims of Mecca pray that they may
+meet with no sour faces on the road.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION IV.</h5>
+
+<p>Ludlow, who was rather an enthusiast for liberty than a fanatic in
+religion&mdash;that brave man, who hated Cromwell more than he did Charles
+I., relates that the parliamentary forces were always defeated by the
+royal army in the beginning of the civil war; just as the regiment of
+porters (<i>portes-cochères</i>) were unable to stand the shock of conflict,
+in the time of the Fronde against the great Condé. Cromwell said to
+General Fairfax: "How can you possibly expect a rabble of London porters
+and apprentices to resist a nobility urged on by the principle, or
+rather the phantom, of honor? Let us actuate them by a more powerful
+phantom&mdash;fanaticism! Our enemies are fighting only for their king; let
+us persuade our troops they are fighting for their God.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me a commission, and I will raise a regiment of brother murderers,
+whom I will pledge myself soon to make invincible fanatics!"</p>
+
+<p>He was as good as his word; he composed his regiment of red-coated
+brothers, of gloomy religionists, whom he made obedient tigers. Mahomet
+himself was never better served by soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>But in order to inspire this fanaticism, you must be seconded and
+supported by the spirit of the times. A French parliament at the present
+day would attempt in vain to raise a regiment of such porters as we have
+mentioned; it could, with all its efforts, merely rouse into frenzy a
+few women of the fish-market.</p>
+
+<p>Only the ablest men have the power to make and to guide fanatics. It is
+not, however, sufficient to possess the profoundest dissimulation and
+the most determined intrepidity; everything depends, after these
+previous requisites are secured, on coming into the world at a proper
+time.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION V.</h5>
+
+<p>Geometry then, it seems, is not always connected with clearness and
+correctness of understanding. Over what precipices do not men fall,
+notwithstanding their boasted leading-strings of reason! A celebrated
+Protestant, who was esteemed one of the first mathematicians of the age,
+and who followed in the train of the Newtons, the Leibnitzes, and
+Bernouillis, at the beginning of the present century, struck out some
+very singular corollaries. It is said that with a grain of faith a man
+may remove mountains; and this man of science, following up the method
+of pure geometrical analysis, reasoned thus with himself: I have many
+grains of faith, and can, therefore, remove many mountains. This was the
+man who made his appearance at London in 1707; and, associating himself
+with certain men of learning and science, some of whom, moreover, were
+not deficient in sagacity, they publicly announced that they would raise
+to life a dead person in any cemetery that might be fixed upon. Their
+reasoning was uniformly synthetical. They said, genuine disciples must
+have the power of performing miracles; we are genuine disciples, we
+therefore shall be able to perform as many as we please. The mere
+unscientific saints of the Romish church have resuscitated many worthy
+persons; therefore, <i>a fortiori</i>, we, the reformers of the reformed
+themselves, shall resuscitate as many as we may desire.</p>
+
+<p>These arguments are irrefragable, being constructed according to the
+most correct form possible. Here we have at a glance the explanation why
+all antiquity was inundated with prodigies; why the temples of
+Æsculapius at Epidaurus, and in other cities, were completely filled
+with <i>ex-votos</i>; the roofs adorned with thighs straightened, arms
+restored, and silver infants: all was miracle.</p>
+
+<p>In short, the famous Protestant geometrician whom I speak of appeared so
+perfectly sincere; he asserted so confidently that he would raise the
+dead, and his proposition was put forward with so much plausibility and
+strenuousness, that the people entertained a very strong impression on
+the subject, and Queen Anne was advised to appoint a day, an hour, and a
+cemetery, such as he should himself select, in which he might have the
+opportunity of performing his miracle legally, and under the inspection
+of justice. The holy geometrician chose St. Paul's cathedral for the
+scene of his exertion: the people ranged themselves in two rows;
+soldiers were stationed to preserve order both among the living and the
+dead; the magistrates took their seats; the register procured his
+record; it was impossible that the new miracles could be verified too
+completely. A dead body was disinterred agreeably to the holy man's
+choice and direction; he then prayed, he fell upon his knees, and made
+the most pious and devout contortions possible; his companions imitated
+him; the dead body exhibited no sign of animation; it was again
+deposited in its grave, and the professed resuscitator and his adherents
+were slightly punished. I afterwards saw one of these misled creatures;
+he declared to me that one of the party was at the time under the stain
+of a venial sin, for which the dead person suffered, and but for which
+the resurrection would have been infallible.</p>
+
+<p>Were it allowable for us to reveal the disgrace of those to whom we owe
+the sincerest respect, I should observe here, that Newton, the great
+Newton himself, discovered in the "Apocalypse" that the pope was
+Antichrist, and made many other similar discoveries. I should also
+observe that he was a decided Arian. I am aware that this deviation of
+Newton, compared to that of the other geometrician, is as unity to
+infinity. But if the exalted Newton imagined that he found the modern
+history of Europe in the "Apocalypse," we may say: Alas, poor human
+beings!</p>
+
+<p>It seems as if superstition were an epidemic disease, from which the
+strongest minds are not always exempt. There are in Turkey persons of
+great and strong sense, who would undergo empalement for the sake of
+certain opinions of Abubeker. These principles being once admitted, they
+reason with great consistency; and the Navaricians, the Radarists, and
+the Jabarites mutually consign each other to damnation in conformity to
+very shrewd and subtle argument. They all draw plausible consequences,
+but they never dare to examine principles.</p>
+
+<p>A report is publicly spread abroad by some person, that there exists a
+giant seventy feet high; the learned soon after begin to discuss and
+dispute about the color of his hair, the thickness of his thumb, the
+measurement of his nails; they exclaim, cabal, and even fight upon the
+subject. Those who maintain that the little finger of the giant is only
+fifteen lines in diameter burn those who assert that it is a foot thick.
+"But, gentlemen," modestly observes a stranger passing by, "does the
+giant you are disputing about really exist?" "What a horrible doubt!"
+all the disputants cry out together. "What blasphemy! What absurdity!" A
+short truce is then brought about to give time for stoning the poor
+stranger; and, after having duly performed that murderous ceremony, they
+resume fighting upon the everlasting subject of the nails and little
+finger.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FANCY" id="FANCY"></a>FANCY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Fancy formerly signified imagination, and the term was used simply to
+express that faculty of the soul which receives sensible objects.</p>
+
+<p>Descartes and Gassendi, and all the philosophers of their day, say that
+"the form or images of things are painted in the fancy." But the greater
+part of abstract terms are, in the course of time, received in a sense
+different from their original one, like tools which industry applies to
+new purposes.</p>
+
+<p>Fancy, at present, means "a particular desire, a transient taste"; he
+has a fancy for going to China; his fancy for gaming and dancing has
+passed away. An artist paints a fancy portrait, a portrait not taken
+from any model. To have fancies is to have extraordinary tastes, but of
+brief duration. Fancy, in this sense, falls a little short of oddity
+(<i>bizarrerie</i>) and caprice.</p>
+
+<p>Caprice may express "a sudden and unreasonable disgust." He had a fancy
+for music, and capriciously became disgusted with it. Whimsicality gives
+an idea of inconsistency and bad taste, which fancy does not; he had a
+fancy for building, but he constructed his house in a whimsical taste.</p>
+
+<p>There are shades of distinction between having fancies and being
+fantastic; the fantastic is much nearer to the capricious and the
+whimsical. The word "fantastic" expresses a character unequal and
+abrupt. The idea of charming or pleasant is excluded from it; whereas
+there are agreeable fancies.</p>
+
+<p>We sometimes hear used in conversation "odd fancies" (<i>des fantasies
+musquées</i>); but the expression was never understood to mean what the
+"Dictionary of Trévoux" supposes&mdash;"The whims of men of superior rank
+which one must not venture to condemn;" on the contrary, that expression
+is used for the very object and purpose of condemning them; and
+<i>musquée</i>, in this connection, is an expletive adding force to the term
+"fancies," as we say, <i>Sottise pommée</i>, <i>folie fieffée</i>, to express
+nonsense and folly.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FASTI" id="FASTI"></a>FASTI.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Of the Different Significations of this Word.</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>The Latin word "<i>fasti</i>" signifies festivals, and it is in this sense
+that Ovid treats of it in his poem entitled "The Fasti."</p>
+
+<p>Godeau has composed the Fasti of the church on this model, but with less
+success. The religion of the Roman Pagans was more calculated for poetry
+than that of the Christians; to which it may be added, that Ovid was a
+better poet than Godeau.</p>
+
+<p>The consular fasti were only the list of consuls.</p>
+
+<p>The fasti of the magistrates were the days in which they were permitted
+to plead; and those on which they did not plead were called <i>nefasti</i>,
+because then they could not plead for justice.</p>
+
+<p>The word "<i>nefastus</i>" in this sense does not signify unfortunate; on the
+contrary, <i>nefastus</i> and <i>nefandus</i> were the attributes of unfortunate
+days in another sense, signifying days in which people must not plead;
+days worthy only to be forgotten; <i>"ille nefasto te posuit die."</i></p>
+
+<p>Besides other fasti, the Romans had their <i>fasti urbis</i>, <i>fasti
+rustici</i>, which were calendars of the particular usages, and ceremonies
+of the city and the country.</p>
+
+<p>On these days of solemnity, every one sought to astonish by the grandeur
+of his dress, his equipage, or his banquet. This pomp, invisible on
+other days, was called <i>fastus</i>. It expresses magnificence in those who
+by their station can afford it, but vanity in others.</p>
+
+<p>Though the word "<i>fastus</i>" may not be always injurious, the word
+"pompous" is invariably so. A devotee who makes a parade of his virtue
+renders humility itself pompous.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FATHERS_MOTHERSmdashCHILDREN" id="FATHERS_MOTHERSmdashCHILDREN"></a>FATHERS&mdash;MOTHERS&mdash;CHILDREN.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Their Duties.</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>The "Encyclopædia" has been much exclaimed against in France; because it
+was produced in France, and has done France honor. In other countries,
+people have not cried out; on the contrary, they have eagerly set about
+pirating or spoiling it, because money was to be gained thereby.</p>
+
+<p>But we, who do not, like the encyclopædists of Paris, labor for glory;
+we, who are not, like them, exposed to envy; we, whose little society
+lies unnoticed in Hesse, in Würtemberg, in Switzerland, among the
+Grisons, or at Mount Krapak; and have, therefore, no apprehension of
+having to dispute with the doctor of the <i>Comédie Italienne</i>, or with a
+doctor of the Sorbonne; we, who sell not our sheets to a bookseller, but
+are free beings, and lay not black on white until we have examined, to
+the utmost of our ability, whether the said black may be of service to
+mankind; we, in short, who love virtue, shall boldly declare what we
+think.</p>
+
+<p>"Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long&mdash;" I would
+venture to say, "Honor thy father and thy mother, <i>though this day shall
+be thy last</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Tenderly love and joyfully serve the mother who bore you in her womb,
+fed you at her breast, and patiently endured all that was disgusting in
+your infancy. Discharge the same duties to your father, who brought you
+up.</p>
+
+<p>What will future ages say of a Frank, named Louis the Thirteenth, who,
+at the age of sixteen, began the exercise of his authority with having
+the door of his mother's apartment walled up, and sending her into
+exile, without giving the smallest reason for so doing, and solely
+because it was his favorite's wish?</p>
+
+<p>"But, sir, I must tell you in confidence that my father is a drunkard,
+who begot me one day by chance, not caring a jot about me; and gave me
+no education but that of beating me every day when he came home
+intoxicated. My mother was a coquette, whose only occupation was
+love-making. But for my nurse, who had taken a liking to me, and who,
+after the death of her son, received me into her house for charity, I
+should have died of want."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, honor your nurse; and bow to your father and mother when
+you meet them. It is said in the Vulgate, '<i>Honora patrem tuum et
+matrem tuam</i>'&mdash;not <i>dilige</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, sir, I shall love my father and my mother if they do me
+good; I shall honor them if they do me ill. I have thought so ever since
+I began to think, and you confirm me in my maxims."</p>
+
+<p>"Fare you well, my child, I see you will prosper, for you have a grain
+of philosophy in your composition."</p>
+
+<p>"One word more, sir. If my father were to call himself Abraham, and me
+Isaac, and were to say to me, 'My son, you are tall and strong; carry
+these fagots to the top of that hill, to burn you with after I have cut
+off your head; for God ordered me to do so when He came to see me this
+morning,'&mdash;what would you advise me to do in such critical
+circumstances?"</p>
+
+<p>"Critical, indeed! But what would you do of yourself? for you seem to be
+no blockhead."</p>
+
+<p>"I own, sir, that I should ask him to produce a written order, and that
+from regard for himself, I should say to him&mdash;'Father, you are among
+strangers, who do not allow a man to assassinate his son without an
+express condition from God, duly signed, sealed and delivered. See what
+happened to poor Calas, in the half French, half Spanish town of
+Toulouse. He was broken on the wheel; and the <i>procureur-général</i> Riquet
+decided on having Madame Calas, the mother, burned&mdash;all on the bare and
+very ill-conceived suspicion, that they had hung up their son, Mark
+Antony Calas, for the love of God. I should fear that his conclusions
+would be equally prejudicial to the well-being of yourself and your
+sister or niece, Madame Sarah, my mother. Once more I say, show me a
+<i>lettre de cachet</i> for cutting my throat, signed by God's own hand, and
+countersigned by Raphael, Michael, or Beelzebub. If not, father&mdash;your
+most obedient: I will go to Pharaoh of Egypt, or to the king of the
+desert of Gerar, who both have been in love with my mother, and will
+certainly be kind to me. Cut my brother Ishmael's throat, if you like;
+but rely upon it, you shall not cut mine.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Good; this is arguing like a true sage. The 'Encyclopædia' itself could
+not have reasoned better. I tell you, you will do great things. I admire
+you for not having said an ill word to your father Abraham&mdash;for not
+having been tempted to beat him. And tell me: had you been that Cram,
+whom his father, the Frankish King Clothaire, had burned in a barn; a
+Don Carlos, son of that fox, Philip the Second; a poor Alexis, son of
+that Czar Peter, half hero, half tiger&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, sir, say no more of those horrors; you will make me detest human
+nature."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FAVOR" id="FAVOR"></a>FAVOR.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Of What is Understood by the Word.</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Favor, from the Latin word "<i>favor</i>," rather signifies a benefit than a
+recompense.</p>
+
+<p>We earnestly beg a favor; we merit and loudly demand a recompense. The
+god Favor, according to the Roman mythologists, was the son of Beauty
+and Fortune. All favor conveys the idea of something gratuitous; he has
+done me the favor of introducing me, of presenting me, of recommending
+my friend, of correcting my work. The favor of princes is the effect of
+their fancy, and of assiduous complaisance. The favor of the people
+sometimes implies merit, but is more often attributable to lucky
+accident.</p>
+
+<p>Favor differs much from kindness. That man is in favor with the king,
+but he has not yet received any kindnesses from him. We say that he has
+been received into the good graces of a person, not he has been received
+into favor; though we say to be in favor, because favor is supposed to
+be an habitual taste; while to receive into grace is to pardon, or, at
+least, is less than to bestow a favor.</p>
+
+<p>To obtain grace is the effect of a moment; to obtain favor is a work of
+time. Nevertheless, we say indifferently, do me the kindness and do me
+the favor, to recommend my friend.</p>
+
+<p>Letters of recommendation were formerly called letters of favor. Severus
+says, in the tragedy of Polyeuctes:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Je mourrais mille fois plutôt que d'abuser</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Des lettres de faveur que j'ai pour l'épouser.</i></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Letters of favor," though I have to wed her,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">I'd rather die a thousand times than use them.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>We have the favor and good-will, not the kindness of the prince and the
+public. We may obtain the favor of our audience by modesty, but it will
+not be gracious if we are tedious.</p>
+
+<p>This expression "favor," signifies a gratuitous good-will, which we seek
+to obtain from the prince or the public. Gallantry has extended it to
+the complaisance of the ladies; and though we do not say that we have
+the favors of the king, we say that we have the favors of a lady.</p>
+
+<p>The equivalent to this expression is unknown in Asia, where the women
+possess less influence. Formerly, ribbons, gloves, buckles, and
+sword-knots given by a lady, were called favors. The earl of Essex wore
+a glove of Queen Elizabeth's in his hat, which he called the queen's
+favor.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FAVORITE" id="FAVORITE"></a>FAVORITE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>This word has sometimes a bounded and sometimes an extended sense.
+"Favorite" sometimes conveys the idea of power; and sometimes it only
+signifies a man who pleases his master.</p>
+
+<p>Henry III. had favorites who were only play-things, and he had those who
+governed the state, as the dukes of Joyeuse and Épernon. A favorite may
+be compared to a piece of gold, which is valued at whatever the prince
+pleases.</p>
+
+<p>An ancient writer has asked, "Who ought to be the king's favorite?&mdash;the
+people!" Good poets are called the favorites of the muses, as prosperous
+men are called the favorites of fortune, because both are supposed to
+receive these gifts without laboring for them. It is thus, that a
+fertile and well-situated land is called the favorite of nature.</p>
+
+<p>The woman who pleases the sultan most is called the favorite sultana.
+Somebody has written the history of favorites; that is to say, the
+mistresses of the greatest princes.</p>
+
+<p>Several princes in Germany have country houses which they call
+favorites.</p>
+
+<p>A lady's favorite is now only to be found in romances and stories of the
+last century.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FEASTS" id="FEASTS"></a>FEASTS.</h3>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION I.</h5>
+
+<p>A poor gentleman of the province of Hagenau, cultivated his small
+estate, and St. Ragonda, or Radegonda, was the patron of his parish.</p>
+
+<p>Now it happened, on the feast of St. Ragonda, that it was necessary to
+do something to this poor gentleman's field, without which great loss
+would be incurred. The master, with all his family, after having
+devoutly assisted at mass, went to cultivate his land, on which depended
+the subsistence of his family, while the rector and the other
+parishioners went to tipple as usual.</p>
+
+<p>The rector, while enjoying his glass, was informed of the enormous
+offence committed in his parish by this profane laborer, and went,
+burning with wine and anger, to seek the cultivator. "Sir, you are very
+insolent and very impious to dare to cultivate your field, instead of
+going to the tavern like other people." "I agree, sir," replied the
+gentleman, "that it is necessary to drink to the honor of the saint; but
+it is also necessary to eat, and my family would die of hunger if I did
+not labor." "Drink and die, then," said the vicar. "In what law, in what
+book is it so written?" said the laborer. "In Ovid," replied the vicar.
+"I think you are mistaken," said the gentleman; "in what part of Ovid
+have you read that I should go to the tavern rather than cultivate my
+field on St. Ragonda's day?"</p>
+
+<p>It should be remarked that both the gentleman and the pastor were well
+educated men. "Read the metamorphoses of the daughters of Minyas," said
+the vicar. "I have read it," replied the other, "and I maintain that
+they have no relation to my plough." "How, impious man! do you not
+remember that the daughters of Minyas were changed into bats for having
+spun on a feast day?" "The case is very different," replied the
+gentleman, "these ladies had not rendered any homage to Bacchus. I have
+been at the mass of St. Ragonda, you can have nothing to say to me; you
+cannot change me into a bat." "I will do worse," said the priest, "I
+will fine you." He did so. The poor gentleman was ruined: he quitted the
+country with his family&mdash;went into a strange one&mdash;became a Lutheran&mdash;and
+his ground remained uncultivated for several years.</p>
+
+<p>This affair was related to a magistrate of good sense and much piety.
+These are the reflections which he made upon it:</p>
+
+<p>"They were no doubt innkeepers," said he, "that invented this prodigious
+number of feasts; the religion of peasants and artisans consists in
+getting tipsy on the day of a saint, whom they only know by this kind of
+worship. It is on these days of idleness and debauchery that all crimes
+are committed; it is these feasts which fill the prisons, and which
+support the police officers, registers, lieutenants of police, and
+hangmen; the only excuse for feast-days among us. From this cause
+Catholic countries are scarcely-cultivated at all; whilst heretics, by
+daily cultivating their lands, produce abundant crops."</p>
+
+<p>It is all very well that the shoemakers should go in the morning to mass
+on St. Crispin's day, because <i>crepido</i> signifies the upper leather of a
+shoe; that the brush-makers should honor St. Barbara their patron; that
+those who have weak eyes should hear the mass of St. Clara: that St.&mdash;&mdash;
+should be celebrated in many provinces; but after having paid their
+devoirs to the saints they should become serviceable to men, they should
+go from the altar to the plough; it is the excess of barbarity, and
+insupportable slavery, to consecrate our days to idleness and vice.
+Priests, command, if it be necessary that the saints Roche, Eustace, and
+Fiacre, be prayed to in the morning; but, magistrates, order your fields
+to be cultivated as usual. It is labor that is necessary; the greater
+the industry the more the day is sanctified.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION II.</h5>
+
+<p class="small">Letter from a Weaver of Lyons to the Gentlemen of the Commission
+established at Paris, for the Reformation of Religious Orders, printed
+in the public papers in 1768.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Gentlemen: I am a silk-weaver, and have worked at Lyons for
+nineteen years. My wages have increased insensibly; at present I
+get thirty-five sous per day. My wife, who makes lace, would get
+fifteen more, if it were possible for her to devote her time to it;
+but as the cares of the house, illness, or other things,
+continually hinder her, I reduce her profit to ten sous, which
+makes forty-five sous daily. If from the year we deduct eighty-two
+Sundays, or holidays, we shall have two hundred and eighty-four
+profitable days, which at forty-five sous make six hundred and
+thirty-nine livres. That is my revenue; the following are my
+expenses:</p>
+
+<p>"I have eight living children, and my wife is on the point of being
+confined with the eleventh; for I have lost two. I have been
+married fifteen years: so that I annually reckon twenty-four livres
+for the expenses of her confinements and baptisms, one hundred and
+eight livres for two nurses, having generally two children out at
+nurse, and sometimes even three. I pay fifty-seven livres rent and
+fourteen taxes.</p>
+
+<p>"My income is then reduced to four hundred and thirty-six livres,
+or twenty-five sous three deniers a day, with which I have to
+clothe and furnish my family, buy wood and candles, and support my
+wife and six children.</p>
+
+<p>"I look forward to holidays with dismay. I confess that I often
+almost curse their institution. They could only have been
+instituted by usurers and innkeepers.</p>
+
+<p>"My father made me study hard in my youth, and wished me to become
+a monk, showing me in that state a sure asylum against want; but I
+always thought that every man owes his tribute to society, and that
+monks are useless drones who live upon the labor of the bees.
+Notwithstanding, I acknowledge that when I see John C&mdash;&mdash;, with
+whom I studied, and who was the most idle boy in the college,
+possessing the first place among the <i>prémontrés</i>, I cannot help
+regretting that I did not listen to my father's advice.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the third holiday in Christmas, I have pawned the little
+furniture I had, I am in a week's debt with my tradesman, and I
+want bread&mdash;how are we to get over the fourth? This is not all; I
+have the prospect of four more next week. Great God! Eight holidays
+in ten days; you cannot have commanded it!</p>
+
+<p>"One year I hoped that rents would diminish by the suppression of
+one of the monasteries of the Capuchins and Cordeliers. What
+useless houses in the centre of Lyons are those of the Jacobins,
+nuns of St. Peter, etc. Why not establish them in the suburbs if
+they are thought necessary? How many more useful inhabitants would
+supply their places!</p>
+
+<p>"All these reflections, gentlemen, have induced me to address
+myself to you who have been chosen by the king for the task of
+rectifying abuses. I am not the only one who thinks thus. How many
+laborers in Lyons and other places, how many laborers in the
+kingdom are reduced to the same extremities as myself? It is
+evident that every holiday costs the state several millions
+(livres). These considerations will lead you to take more to heart
+the interests of the people, which are rather too little attended
+to.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"I have the honor to be, etc.,</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 25em;">"BOCEN."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>This request, which was really presented, will not be misplaced in a
+work like the present.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION III.</h5>
+
+<p>The feast given to the Roman people by Julius Cæsar and the emperors who
+succeeded him are well known. The feast of twenty-two thousand tables
+served by twenty-two thousand purveyors; the naval fights on artificial
+lakes, etc., have not, however, been imitated by the Herulian, Lombard,
+and Frankish chieftains, who would have their festivity equally
+celebrated.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FERRARA" id="FERRARA"></a>FERRARA.</h3>
+
+
+<p>What we have to say of Ferrara has no relation to literature, but it has
+a very great one to justice, which is much more necessary than the
+belles-lettres, and much less cultivated, at least in Italy.</p>
+
+<p>Ferrara was constantly a fief of the empire, like Parma and Placentia.
+Pope Clement VIII. robbed Cæsar d'Este of it by force of arms, in 1597.
+The pretext for this tyranny was a very singular one for a man who
+called himself the humble vicar of Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Alphonso d'Este, the first of the name, sovereign of Ferrara, Modena,
+Este, Carpio, and Rovigno, espoused a simple gentlewoman of Ferrara,
+named Laura Eustochia, by whom he had three children before marriage.
+These children he solemnly acknowledged in the face of the Church. None
+of the formalities prescribed by the laws were wanting at this
+recognition. His successor, Alphonso d'Este, was acknowledged duke of
+Ferrara; he espoused Julia d'Urbino, the daughter of Francis, duke
+d'Urbino, by whom he had the unfortunate Cæsar d'Este, the incontestable
+heir of all the property of all the family, and declared so by the last
+duke, who died October 27, 1597. Pope Clement VIII., surnamed
+Aldobrandino, and originally of the family of a merchant of Florence,
+dared to pretend that the grandmother of Cæsar d'Este was not
+sufficiently noble, and that the children that she had brought into the
+world ought to be considered bastards. The first reason is ridiculous
+and scandalous in a bishop, the second is unwarrantable in every
+tribunal in Europe. If the duke was not legitimate, he ought to have
+lost Modena and his other states also; and if there was no flaw in his
+title, he ought to have kept Ferrara as well as Modena.</p>
+
+<p>The acquisition of Ferrara was too fine a thing for the pope not to
+procure all the decretals and decisions of those brave theologians, who
+declare that the pope can render just that which is unjust. Consequently
+he first excommunicated Cæsar d'Este, and as excommunication necessarily
+deprives a man of all his property, the common father of the faithful
+raised his troops against the excommunicated, to rob him of his
+inheritance in the name of the Church. These troops were defeated, but
+the duke of Modena soon saw his finances exhausted, and his friends
+become cool.</p>
+
+<p>To make his case still more deplorable, the king of France, Henry IV.,
+believed himself obliged to take the side of the pope, in order to
+balance the credit of Philip II. at the court of Rome; in the same
+manner that good King Louis XII. less excusably dishonored himself by
+uniting with that monster Alexander VI., and his execrable bastard, the
+duke of Borgia. The duke was obliged to return, and the pope caused
+Ferrara to be invaded by Cardinal Aldobrandino, who entered this
+flourishing city at the head of a thousand horse and five thousand foot
+soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>It is a great pity that such a man as Henry IV. descended to this
+unworthiness which is called politic. The Catos, Metelluses, Scipios,
+and Fabriciuses would not thus have betrayed justice to please a
+priest&mdash;and such a priest!</p>
+
+<p>From this time Ferrara became a desert; its uncultivated soil was
+covered with standing marshes. This province, under the house of Este,
+had been one of the finest in Italy; the people always regretted their
+ancient masters. It is true that the duke was indemnified; he was
+nominated to a bishopric and a benefice; he was even furnished with some
+measures of salt from the mines of Servia. But it is no less true that
+the house of Modena has incontestable and imprescriptable rights to the
+duchy of Ferrara, of which it was thus shamefully despoiled.</p>
+
+<p>Now, my dear reader, let us suppose that this scene took place at the
+time in which Jesus Christ appeared to his apostles after his
+resurrection, and that Simon Barjonas, surnamed Peter, wished to possess
+himself of the states of this poor duke of Ferrara. Imagine the duke
+coming to Bethany to demand justice of the Lord Jesus. Our Lord sends
+immediately for Peter and says to him, "Simon, son of Jonas, I have
+given thee the keys of heaven, but I have not given thee those of the
+earth. Because thou hast been told that the heavens surround the globe,
+and that the contained is in the containing, dost thou imagine that
+kingdoms here below belong to thee, and that thou hast only to possess
+thyself of whatever thou likest? I have already forbidden thee to draw
+the sword. Thou appearest to me a very strange compound; at one time
+cutting off the ear of Malchus, and at another even denying me. Be more
+lenient and decorous, and take neither the property nor the ears of any
+one for fear of thine own."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FEVER" id="FEVER"></a>FEVER.</h3>
+
+
+<p>It is not as a physician, but as a patient, that I wish to say a word or
+two on fever. We cannot help now and then speaking of our enemies; and
+this one has been attacking me for more than twenty years; not Fréron
+himself has been more implacable.</p>
+
+<p>I ask pardon of Sydenham, who defined fever to be "an effort of nature,
+laboring with all its power to expel the peccant matter." We might thus
+define smallpox, measles, diarrhœa, vomitings, cutaneous eruptions,
+and twenty other diseases. But, if this physician defined ill, he
+practised well. He cured, because he had experience, and he knew how to
+wait.</p>
+
+<p>Boerhaave says, in his "Aphorisms": "A more frequent opposition, and an
+increased resistance about the capillary vessels, give an absolute idea
+of an acute fever." These are the words of a great master; but he sets
+out with acknowledging that the nature of fever is profoundly hidden.</p>
+
+<p>He does not tell us what that secret principle is which develops itself
+at regular periods in intermittent fever&mdash;what that internal poison is,
+which, after the lapse of a day, is renewed&mdash;where that flame is, which
+dies and revives at stated moments.</p>
+
+<p>We know fairly well that we are liable to fever after excess, or in
+unseasonable weather. We know that quinine, judiciously administered,
+will cure it. This is quite enough; the <i>how</i> we do not know.</p>
+
+<p>Every animal that does not perish suddenly dies by fever. The fever
+seems to be the inevitable effect of the fluids that compose the blood,
+or that which is in the place of blood. The structure of every animal
+proves to natural philosophers that it must, at all times, have enjoyed
+a very short life.</p>
+
+<p>Theologians have held, as have promulgated other opinions. It is not for
+us to examine this question. The philosophers and physicians have been
+right <i>in sensu humano</i>, and the theologians, <i>in sensu divino</i>. It is
+said in Deuteronomy, xxviii, 22, that if the Jews do not serve the law
+they shall be smitten "with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an
+inflammation, and with an extreme burning." It is only in Deuteronomy,
+and in Molière's "Physician in Spite of Himself," that people have been
+threatened with fever.</p>
+
+<p>It seems impossible that fever should not be an accident natural to an
+animate body, in which so many fluids circulate; just as it is
+impossible for an animate body not to be crushed by the falling of a
+rock.</p>
+
+<p>Blood makes life; it furnishes the viscera, the limbs, the skin, the
+very extremities of the hairs and nails with the fluids, the humors
+proper for them.</p>
+
+<p>This blood, by which the animal has life, is formed by the chyle. During
+pregnancy this chyle is transmitted from the uterus to the child, and,
+after the child is born, the milk of the nurse produces this same chyle.
+The greater diversity of aliments it afterwards receives, the more the
+chyle is liable to be soured. This alone forming the blood, and this
+blood, composed of so many different humors so subject to corruption,
+circulating through the whole human body more than five hundred and
+fifty times in twenty-four hours, with the rapidity of a torrent, it is
+not only astonishing that fever is not more frequent, it is astonishing
+that man lives. In every articulation, in every gland, in every passage,
+there is danger of death; but there are also as many succors as there
+are dangers. Almost every membrane extends or contracts as occasion
+requires. All the veins have sluices which open and shut, giving passage
+to the blood and preventing a return, by which the machine would be
+destroyed. The blood, rushing through all these canals, purifies itself.
+It is a river that carries with it a thousand impurities; it discharges
+itself by perspiration, by transpiration, by all the secretions. Fever
+is itself a succor; it is a rectification when it does not kill.</p>
+
+<p>Man, by his reason, accelerates the cure by administering bitters, and,
+above all, by regimen. This reason is an oar with which he may row for
+some time on the sea of the world when disease does not swallow him up.</p>
+
+<p>It is asked: How is it that nature has abandoned the animals, her work,
+to so many horrible diseases, almost always accompanied by fever? How
+and why is it that so many disorders exist with so much order,
+formation, and destruction everywhere, side by side? This is a
+difficulty that often gives me a fever, but I beg you will read the
+letters of Memmius. Then, perhaps, you will be inclined to suspect that
+the incomprehensible artificer of vegetables, animals, and worlds,
+having made all for the best, could not have made anything better.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FICTION" id="FICTION"></a>FICTION.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Is not a fiction, which teaches new and interesting truths, a fine
+thing? Do you not admire the Arabian story of the sultan who would not
+believe that a little time could appear long, and who disputed with his
+dervish on the nature of duration? The latter to convince him of it,
+begged him only to plunge his head for a moment into the basin in which
+he was washing. Immediately the sultan finds himself transported into a
+frightful desert; he is obliged to labor to get a livelihood; he
+marries, and has children who grow up and ill treat him; finally he
+returns to his country and his palace and he there finds the dervish who
+has caused him to suffer so many evils for five and twenty years. He is
+about to kill him, and is only appeased when he is assured that all
+passed in the moment in which, with his eyes shut, he put his head into
+the water.</p>
+
+<p>You still more admire the fiction of the loves of Dido and Æneas, which
+caused the mortal hatred between Carthage and Rome, as also that which
+exhibits in Elysium the destinies of the great men of the Roman Empire.</p>
+
+<p>You also like that of Alcina, in Ariosto, who possesses the dignity of
+Minerva with the beauty of Venus, who is so charming to the eyes of her
+lovers, who intoxicates them with voluptuous delights, and unites all
+the loves and graces, but who, when she is at last reduced to her true
+self and the enchantment has passed away, is nothing more than a little
+shrivelled, disgusting, old woman.</p>
+
+<p>As to fictions which represent nothing, teach nothing, and from which
+nothing results, are they anything more than falsities? And if they are
+incoherent and heaped together without choice, are they anything better
+than dreams?</p>
+
+<p>You will possibly tell me that there are ancient fictions which are very
+incoherent, without ingenuity, and even absurd, which are still admired;
+but is it not rather owing to the fine images which are scattered over
+these fictions than to the inventions which introduce them? I will not
+dispute the point, but if you would be hissed at by all Europe, and
+afterwards forgotten forever, write fictions similar to those which you
+admire.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FIERTE" id="FIERTE"></a>FIERTÉ.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Fierté is one of those expressions, which, having been originally
+employed in an offensive sense, are afterwards used in a favorable one.
+It is censure when this word signifies high-flown, proud, haughty, and
+disdainful. It is almost praise when it means the loftiness of a noble
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>It is a just eulogium on a general who marches towards the enemy with
+<i>fierté</i>. Writers have praised the <i>fierté</i> of the gait of Louis XIV.;
+they should have contented themselves with remarking its nobleness.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fierté</i>, without dignity, is a merit incompatible with modesty. It is
+only <i>fierté</i> in air and manners which offends; it then displeases, even
+in kings.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fierté</i> of manner in society is the expression of pride; <i>fierté</i> of
+soul is greatness. The distinctions are so nice that a proud spirit is
+deemed blamable, while a proud soul is a theme of praise. By the former
+is understood one who thinks advantageously of himself while the latter
+denotes one who entertains elevated sentiments.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fierté</i>, announced by the exterior, is so great a fault that the weak,
+who abjectly praise it in the great are obliged to soften it, or rather
+to extol it, by speaking of "this noble <i>fierté</i>." It is not simply
+vanity, which consists in setting a value upon little things; it is not
+presumption, which believes itself capable of great ones; it is not
+disdain, which adds contempt of others to a great opinion of self; but
+it is intimately allied to all these faults.</p>
+
+<p>This word is used in romances, poetry, and above all, in operas, to
+express the severity of female modesty. We meet with vain <i>fierté</i>,
+vigorous <i>fierté</i>, etc. Poets are, perhaps, more in the right than they
+imagine. The <i>fierté</i> of a woman is not only rigid modesty and love of
+duty, but the high value which she sets upon her beauty. The <i>fierté</i> of
+the pencil is sometimes spoken of to signify free and fearless touches.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FIGURE" id="FIGURE"></a>FIGURE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Every one desirous of instruction should read with attention all the
+articles in the "<i>Dictionnaire Encyclopédique</i>," under the head
+"Figure," viz.:</p>
+
+<p>"Figure of the Earth," by M. d'Alembert&mdash;a work both clear and profound,
+in which we find all that can be known on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>"Figure of Rhetoric," by César Dumarsais&mdash;a piece of instruction which
+teaches at once to think and to write; and, like many other articles,
+make us regret that young people in general have not a convenient
+opportunity of reading things so useful.</p>
+
+<p>"Human Figure," as relating to painting and sculpture&mdash;an excellent
+lesson given to every artist, by M. Watelet.</p>
+
+<p>"Figure," in physiology&mdash;a very ingenious article, by M. de Caberoles.</p>
+
+<p>"Figure," in arithmetic and in algebra&mdash;by M. Mallet.</p>
+
+<p>"Figure," in logic, in metaphysics, and in polite literature, by M. le
+Chevalier de Jaucourt&mdash;a man superior to the philosophers of antiquity,
+inasmuch as he has preferred retirement, real philosophy, and
+indefatigable labor, to all the advantages that his birth might have
+procured him, in a country where birth is set above all beside,
+excepting money.</p>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>Figure or Form of the Earth.</i></p>
+
+<p>Plato, Aristotle, Eratosthenes, Posidonius, and all the geometricians of
+Asia, of Egypt, and of Greece, having acknowledged the sphericity of our
+globe, how did it happen that we, for so long a time, imagined that the
+earth was a third longer than it was broad, and thence derived the terms
+"<i>longitude</i>" and "<i>latitude</i>," which continually bear testimony to our
+ancient ignorance?</p>
+
+<p>The reverence due to the "Bible," which teaches us so many truths more
+necessary and more sublime, was the cause of this, our almost universal
+error. It had been found, in Psalm ciii, that God had stretched the
+heavens over the earth like a skin; and as a skin is commonly longer
+than it is wide, the same was concluded of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>St. Athanasius expresses himself as warmly against good astronomers as
+against the partisans of Arius and Eusebius. "Let us," says he, "stop
+the mouths of those barbarians, who, speaking without proof, dare to
+assert that the heavens also extend under the earth." The fathers
+considered the earth as a great ship, surrounded by water, with the prow
+to the east, and the stern to the west. We still find, in "Cosmos," a
+work of the fourth century, a sort of geographical chart, in which the
+earth has this figure.</p>
+
+<p>Tortato, bishop of Avila, near the close of the fifteenth century,
+declares in his commentary on Genesis, that the Christian faith is
+shaken, if the earth is believed to be round. Columbus, Vespucius, and
+Magellan, not having the fear of excommunication by this learned bishop
+before their eyes, the earth resumed its rotundity in spite of him.</p>
+
+<p>Then man went from one extreme to the other, and the earth was regarded
+as a perfect sphere. But the error of the perfect sphere was the mistake
+of philosophers, while that of a long, flat earth was the blunder of
+idiots.</p>
+
+<p>When once it began to be clearly known that our globe revolves on its
+own axis every twenty-four hours, it might have been inferred from that
+alone that its form could not be absolutely round. Not only does the
+centrifugal zone considerably raise the waters in the region of the
+equator, by the motion of the diurnal rotation, but they are moreover
+elevated about twenty-five feet, twice a day, by the tides; the lands
+about the equator must then be perfectly inundated. But they are not so;
+therefore the region of the equator is much more elevated, in
+proportion, than the rest of the earth: then the earth is a spheroid
+elevated at the equator, and cannot be a perfect sphere. This proof,
+simple as it is, had escaped the greatest geniuses: because a universal
+prejudice rarely permits investigation.</p>
+
+<p>We know that, in 1762, in a voyage to Cayenne, near the line, undertaken
+by order of Louis XIV., under the auspices of Colbert, the patron of all
+the arts, Richer, among many other observations, found that the
+oscillations or vibrations of his timepiece did not continue so frequent
+as in the latitude of Paris, and that it was absolutely necessary to
+shorten the pendulum one line and something more than a quarter. Physics
+and geometry were at that time not nearly so much cultivated as they now
+are; what man would have believed that an observation so trivial in
+appearance, a line more or less, could lead to the knowledge of the
+greatest physical truths? It was first of all discovered that the weight
+must necessarily be less on the equator than in our latitudes, since
+weight alone causes the oscillation of a pendulum. Consequently, the
+weight of bodies being the less the farther they are from the centre of
+the earth, it was inferred that the region of the equator must be much
+more elevated than our own&mdash;much more remote from the centre; so the
+earth could not be an exact sphere.</p>
+
+<p>Many philosophers acted, on the occasion of these discoveries, as all
+men act when an opinion is to be changed&mdash;they disputed on Richer's
+experiment; they pretended that our pendulums made their vibrations more
+slowly about the equator only because the metal was lengthened by the
+heat; but it was seen that the heat of the most burning summer lengthens
+it but one line in thirty feet; and here was an elongation of a line and
+a quarter, a line and a half, or even two lines, in an iron rod, only
+three feet and eight lines long.</p>
+
+<p>Some years after MM. Varin, Deshayes, Feuillée, and Couplet, repeated
+the same experiment on the pendulum, near the equator; and it was always
+found necessary to shorten it, although the heat was very often less on
+the line than fifteen or twenty degrees from it. This experiment was
+again confirmed by the academicians whom Louis XV. sent to Peru; and who
+were obliged, on the mountains about Quito, where it froze, to shorten
+the second pendulum about two lines.</p>
+
+<p>About the same time, the academicians who went to measure an arc of the
+meridian in the north, found that at Pello, within the Polar circle, it
+was necessary to lengthen the pendulum, in order to have the same
+oscillations as at Paris: consequently weight is greater at the polar
+circle than in the latitude of France, as it is greater in our latitude
+than at the equator. Weight being greater in the north, the north was
+therefore nearer the centre of the earth than the equator; therefore the
+earth was flattened at the poles.</p>
+
+<p>Never did reasoning and experiment so fully concur to establish a truth.
+The celebrated Huygens, by calculating centrifugal forces, had proved
+that the consequent diminution of weight on the surface of a sphere was
+not great enough to explain the phenomena, and that therefore the earth
+must be a spheroid flattened at the poles. Newton, by the principles of
+attraction, had found nearly the same relations: only it must be
+observed, that Huygens believed this force inherent in bodies
+determining them towards the centre of the globe, to be everywhere the
+same. He had not yet seen the discoveries of Newton; so that he
+considered the diminution of weight by the theory of centrifugal forces
+only. The effect of centrifugal forces diminishes the primitive gravity
+on the equator. The smaller the circles in which this centrifugal force
+is exercised become, the more it yields to the force of gravity; thus,
+at the pole itself the centrifugal force being null, must leave the
+primitive gravity in full action. But this principle of a gravity always
+equal, falls to nothing before the discovery made by Newton, that a body
+transported, for instance, to the distance of ten diameters from the
+centre of the earth, would weigh one hundred times less than at the
+distance of one diameter.</p>
+
+<p>It is then by the laws of gravitation, combined with those of the
+centrifugal force, that the real form of the earth must be shown. Newton
+and Gregory had such confidence in this theory that they did not
+hesitate to advance that experiments on weight were a surer means of
+knowing the form of the earth than any geographical measurement.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XIV. had signalized his reign by that meridian which was drawn
+through France: the illustrious Dominico Cassini had begun it with his
+son; and had, in 1701, drawn from the feet of the Pyrenees to the
+observatory a line as straight as it could be drawn, considering the
+almost insurmountable obstacles which the height of mountains, the
+changes of refraction in the air, and the altering of instruments were
+constantly opposing to the execution of so vast and delicate an
+undertaking; he had, in 1701, measured six degrees eighteen minutes of
+that meridian. But, from whatever cause the error might proceed, he had
+found the degrees towards Paris, that is towards the north, shorter than
+those towards the Pyrenees and the south. This measurement gave the lie
+both to the theory of Norwood and to the new theory of the earth
+flattened at the poles. Yet this new theory was beginning to be so
+generally received that the academy's secretary did not hesitate, in his
+history of 1701, to say that the new measurements made in France proved
+the earth to be a spheroid flattened at the poles. The truth was, that
+Dominico Cassini's measurement led to a conclusion directly opposite;
+but, as the figure of the earth had not yet become a question in France,
+no one at that time was at the trouble of combating this false
+conclusion. The degrees of the meridian from Collioure to Paris were
+believed to be exactly measured; and the pole, which from that
+measurement must necessarily be elongated, was believed to be flattened.</p>
+
+<p>An engineer, named M. de Roubais, astonished at this conclusion,
+demonstrated that, by the measurements taken in France, the earth must
+be an oblate spheroid, of which the meridian passing through the poles
+must be longer than the equator, the poles being elongated. But of all
+the natural philosophers to whom he addressed his dissertation, not one
+would have it printed; because it seemed that the academy had pronounced
+it as too bold in an individual to raise his voice. Some time after the
+error of 1701 was acknowledged, that which had been said was unsaid; and
+the earth was lengthened by a just conclusion drawn from a false
+principle. The meridian was continued in the same principle from Paris
+to Dunkirk; and the degrees were still found to grow shorter as they
+approached the north. People were still mistaken respecting the figure
+of the earth, as they had been concerning the nature of light. About the
+same time, some mathematicians who were performing the same operations
+in China were astonished to find a difference among their degrees,
+which they had expected to find alike; and to discover, after many
+verifications, that they were shorter towards the north than towards the
+south. This accordance of the mathematicians of France with those of
+China was another powerful reason for believing in the oblate spheroid.
+In France they did still more; they measured parallels to the equator.
+It is easily understood that on an oblate spheroid our degrees of
+longitude must be shorter than on a sphere. M. de Cassini found the
+parallel which passes through St. Malo to be shorter by one thousand and
+thirty-seven toises than it would have been on a spherical earth.</p>
+
+<p>All these measurements proved that the degrees had been found as it was
+wished to find them. They overturned, for a time, in France, the
+demonstrations of Newton and Huygens; and it was no longer doubted that
+the poles were of a form precisely contrary to that which had at first
+been attributed to them. In short, nothing at all was known about the
+matter.</p>
+
+<p>At length, other academicians, who had visited the polar circle in 1736,
+having found, by new measurements, that the degree was longer there than
+in France, people doubted between them and the Cassinis. But these
+doubts were soon after removed: for these same astronomers, returning
+from the pole, examined afresh the degree to the north of Paris,
+measured by Picard, in 1677, and found it to be a hundred and
+twenty-three toises longer than it was according to Picard's
+measurement. If, then, Picard, with all his precautions, had made his
+degree one hundred and twenty-three toises too short, it was not at all
+unlikely that the degrees towards the south had in like manner been
+found too long. Thus the first error of Picard, having furnished the
+foundations for the measurements of the meridian, also furnished an
+excuse for the almost inevitable errors which very good astronomers
+might have committed in the course of these operations.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, other men of science found that, at the Cape of Good
+Hope, the degrees of the meridian did not agree with ours. Other
+measurements, taken in Italy, likewise contradicted those of France, and
+all were falsified by those of China. People again began to doubt, and
+to suspect, in my opinion quite reasonably, that the earth had
+protuberances. As for the English, though they are fond of travelling,
+they spared themselves the fatigue, and held fast their theory.</p>
+
+<p>The difference between one diameter and the other is not more than five
+or six of our leagues&mdash;a difference immense in the eyes of a disputant,
+but almost imperceptible to those who consider the measurement of the
+globe only in reference to the purposes of utility which it may serve. A
+geographer could scarcely make this difference perceptible on a map; nor
+would a pilot be able to discover whether he was steering on a spheroid
+or on a sphere. Yet there have been men bold enough to assert that the
+lives of navigators depended on this question. Oh quackery! will you
+spare no degrees&mdash;not even those of the meridian?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FIGURED_FIGURATIVE" id="FIGURED_FIGURATIVE"></a>FIGURED&mdash;FIGURATIVE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>We say, a truth "figured" by a fable, by a parable; the church "figured"
+by the young spouse in Solomon's Song; ancient Rome "figured" by
+Babylon. A figurative style is constituted by metaphorical expressions,
+figuring the things spoken of&mdash;and disfiguring them when the metaphors
+are not correct.</p>
+
+<p>Ardent imagination, passion, desire&mdash;frequently deceived&mdash;produce the
+figurative style. We do not admit it into history, for too many
+metaphors are hurtful, not only to perspicuity, but also to truth, by
+saying more or less than the thing itself.</p>
+
+<p>In didactic works, this style should be rejected. It is much more out of
+place in a sermon than in a funeral oration, because the sermon is a
+piece of instruction in which the truth is to be announced; while the
+funeral oration is a declaration in which it is to be exaggerated.</p>
+
+<p>The poetry of enthusiasm, as the epopee and the ode, is that to which
+this style is best adapted. It is less admissible in tragedy, where the
+dialogue should be natural as well as elevated; and still less in
+comedy, where the style must be more simple.</p>
+
+<p>The limits to be set to the figurative style, in each kind, are
+determined by taste. Baltasar Gracian says, that "our thoughts depart
+from the vast shores of memory, embark on the sea of imagination, arrive
+in the harbor of intelligence, and are entered at the custom house of
+the understanding."</p>
+
+<p>This is precisely the style of Harlequin. He says to his master, "The
+ball of your commands has rebounded from the racquet of my obedience."
+Must it not be owned that such is frequently that oriental style which
+people try to admire? Another fault of the figurative style is the
+accumulating of incoherent figures. A poet, speaking of some
+philosophers, has called them:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 9.5em;"><i>D'ambitieux pygmées</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Qui sur leurs pieds vainement redressés</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Et sur des monts d'argumens entassés</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>De jour en jour superbes Encelades,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Vont redoublant leurs folles escalades.</i></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>When philosophers are to be written against, it should be done better.
+How do ambitious pygmies, reared on their hind legs on mountains of
+arguments, continue escalades? What a false and ridiculous image! What
+elaborate dulness!</p>
+
+<p>In an allegory by the same author, entitled the "Liturgy of Cytherea,"
+we find these lines:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>De toutes parts, autour de l'inconnue,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Ils vont tomber comme grêle menue,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Moissons des cœurs sur la terre jonchés,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Et des Dieux même à son char attachés.</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>De par Venus nous venons cette affaire</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Si s'en retourne aux cieux dans son sérail,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>En ruminant comment il pourra faire</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Pour ramener la brebis au bercail.</i></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Here we have harvests of hearts thrown on the ground like small hail;
+and among these hearts palpitating on the ground, are gods bound to the
+car of the unknown; while love, sent by Venus, ruminates in his seraglio
+in heaven, what he shall do to bring back to the fold this lost mutton
+surrounded by scattered hearts. All this forms a figure at once so
+false, so puerile, and so incoherent&mdash;so disgusting, so extravagant, so
+stupidly expressed, that we are astonished that a man, who made good
+verses of another kind, and was not devoid of taste, could write
+anything so miserably bad.</p>
+
+<p>Figures, metaphors, are not necessary in an allegory; what has been
+invented with imagination may be told with simplicity. Plato has more
+allegories than figures; he often expresses them elegantly and without
+ostentation.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly all the maxims of the ancient orientals and of the Greeks were in
+the figurative style. All those sentences are metaphors, or short
+allegories; and in them the figurative style has great effect in rousing
+the imagination and impressing the memory.</p>
+
+<p>We know that Pythagoras said, "In the tempest adore the echo," that is,
+during civil broils retire to the country; and "Stir not the fire with
+the sword," meaning, do not irritate minds already inflamed. In every
+language, there are many common proverbs which are in the figurative
+style.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FIGURE_IN_THEOLOGY" id="FIGURE_IN_THEOLOGY"></a>FIGURE IN THEOLOGY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>It is quite certain, and is agreed by the most pious men, that figures
+and allegories have been carried too far. Some of the fathers of the
+church regard the piece of red cloth, placed by the courtesan Rahab at
+her window, for a signal to Joshua's spies, as a figure of the blood of
+Jesus Christ. This is an error of an order of mind which would find
+mystery in everything.</p>
+
+<p>Nor can it be denied that St. Ambrose made very bad use of his taste for
+allegory, when he says, in his book of "Noah and the Ark," that the back
+door of the ark was a figure of our hinder parts.</p>
+
+<p>All men of sense have asked how it can be proved that these Hebrew
+words, "<i>maher, salas-has-has</i>," (take quick the spoils) are a figure of
+Jesus Christ? How is Judah, tying his ass to a vine, and washing his
+cloak in the wine, also a figure of Him. How can Ruth, slipping into bed
+to Boaz, figure the church, how are Sarah and Rachel the church, and
+Hagar and Leah the synagogue? How, do the kisses of the Shunamite typify
+the marriage of the church? A volume might be made of these enigmas,
+which, to the best theologians of later times, have appeared to be
+rather far-fetched than edifying.</p>
+
+<p>The danger of this abuse is fully admitted by Abbé Fleury, the author of
+the "Ecclesiastical History." It is a vestige of rabbinism; a fault
+into which the learned St. Jerome never fell. It is like oneiromancy,
+or the explanation of dreams. If a girl sees muddy water, when dreaming,
+she will be ill-married; if she sees clear water, she will have a good
+husband; a spider denotes money, etc. In short, will enlightened
+posterity believe it? The understanding of dreams has, for more than
+four thousand years, been made a serious study.</p>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>Symbolical Figures.</i></p>
+
+<p>All nations have made use of them, as we have said in the article
+"emblem." But who began? Was it the Egyptians? It is not likely. We
+think we have already more than once proved that Egypt is a country
+quite new, and that many ages were requisite to save the country from
+inundations, and render it habitable. It is impossible that the
+Egyptians should have invented the signs of the zodiac, since the
+figures denoting our seed-time and harvest cannot coincide with theirs.
+When we cut our corn, their land is covered with water; and when we sow,
+their reaping time is approaching. Thus the bull of our zodiac and the
+girl bearing ears of corn cannot have come from Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>Here is also an evident proof of the falsity of the new paradox, that
+the Chinese are an Egyptian colony. The characters are not the same. The
+Chinese mark the course of the sun by twenty-eight constellations and
+the Egyptians, after the Chaldæans, reckoned only twelve, like
+ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>The figures that denote the planets are in China and in India all
+different from those of Egypt and of Europe; so are the signs of the
+metals; so is the method of guiding the hand in writing. Nothing could
+have been more chimerical than to send the Egyptians to people China.</p>
+
+<p>All these fabulous foundations, laid in fabulous times, have caused an
+irreparable loss of time to a prodigious multitude of the learned, who
+have all been bewildered in their laborious researches, which might have
+been serviceable to mankind if directed to arts of real utility.</p>
+
+<p>Pluche, in his History, or rather his fable, of the Heavens, assures us
+that Ham, son of Noah, went and reigned in Egypt, where there was nobody
+to reign over; that his son Menes was the greatest of legislators, and
+that Thoth was his prime minister.</p>
+
+<p>According to him and his authorities, this Thoth, or somebody else,
+instituted feasts in honor of the deluge; and the joyful cry of "<i>Io
+Bacche</i>," so famous among the Greeks, was, among the Egyptians, a
+lamentation. "<i>Bacche</i>" came from the Hebrew "<i>beke</i>" signifying <i>sobs</i>,
+and that at a time when the Hebrew people did not exist. According to
+this explanation, "<i>joy</i>" means "<i>sorrow</i>," and "<i>to sing</i>" signifies
+"<i>to weep</i>."</p>
+
+<p>The Iroquois have more sense. They do not take the trouble to inquire
+what passed on the shores of Lake Ontario some thousand years ago:
+instead of making systems, they go hunting.</p>
+
+<p>The same authors affirm that the sphinxes, with which Egypt was adorned,
+signified superabundance, because some interpreters have asserted that
+the Hebrew word "<i>spang</i>" meant an "excess"; as if the Egyptians had
+taken lessons from the Hebrew tongue, which is, in great part, derived
+from the Phœnician: besides, what relation has a sphinx to an
+abundance of water? Future schoolmen will maintain, with greater
+appearance of reason, that the masks which decorate the keystones of our
+windows are emblems of our masquerades; and that these fantastic
+ornaments announced that balls were given in every house to which they
+were affixed.</p>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>Figure, Figurative, Allegorical, Mystical, Topological, Typical, etc.</i></p>
+
+<p>This is often the art of finding in books everything but what they
+really contain. For instance, Romulus killing his brother Remus shall
+signify the death of the duke of Berry, brother of Louis XI.; Regulus,
+imprisoned at Carthage, shall typify St. Louis captive at Mansurah.</p>
+
+<p>It is very justly remarked in the "Encyclopædia," that many fathers of
+the church have, perhaps, carried this taste for allegorical figures a
+little too far; but they are to be reverenced, even in their wanderings.
+If the holy fathers used and then abused this method, their little
+excesses of imagination may be pardoned, in consideration of their holy
+zeal.</p>
+
+<p>The antiquity of the usage may also be pleaded in justification, since
+it was practised by the earliest philosophers. But it is true that the
+symbolical figures employed by the fathers are in a different taste.</p>
+
+<p>For example: When St. Augustine wishes to make it appear that the
+forty-two generations of the genealogy of Jesus are announced by St.
+Matthew, who gives only forty-one, he says that Jechonias must be
+counted twice, because Jechonias is a corner-stone belonging to two
+walls; that these two walls figure the old and the new law; and that
+Jechonias, being thus the corner-stone, figures Jesus Christ, who is the
+real corner-stone.</p>
+
+<p>The same saint, in the same sermon, says that the number forty must
+prevail; and at once abandons Jechonias and his corner-stone, counted as
+two. The number forty, he says, signifies life; ten, which is perfect
+beatitude, being multiplied by four, which, being the number of the
+seasons, figures time.</p>
+
+<p>Again, in the same sermon, he explains why St. Luke gives Jesus Christ
+seventy-seven ancestors: fifty-six up to the patriarch Abraham, and
+twenty-one from Abraham up to God himself. It is true that, according to
+the Hebrew text, there would be but seventy-six; for the Hebrew does not
+reckon a Cainan, who is interpolated in the Greek translation called
+"The Septuagint."</p>
+
+<p>Thus said Augustine: "The number seventy-seven figures the abolition of
+all sins by baptism.... the number ten signifies justice and beatitude,
+resulting from, the creature, which makes seven with the Trinity, which
+is three: therefore it is that God's commandments are ten in number. The
+number eleven denotes sin, because it transgresses ten.... This number
+seventy-seven is the product of eleven, figuring sin, multiplied by
+seven, and not by ten, for seven is the symbol of the creature. Three
+represents the soul, which is in some sort an image of the Divinity; and
+four represents the body, on account of its four qualities." In these
+explanations, we find some trace of the cabalistic mysteries and the
+quaternary of Pythagoras. This taste was very long in vogue.</p>
+
+<p>St. Augustine goes much further, concerning the dimensions of matter.
+Breadth is the dilatation of the heart, which performs good works;
+length is perseverance; depth is the hope of reward. He carries the
+allegory very far, applying it to the cross, and drawing great
+consequences therefrom. The use of these figures had passed from the
+Jews to the Christians long before St. Augustine's time. It is not for
+us to know within what bounds it was right to stop.</p>
+
+<p>The examples of this fault are innumerable. No one who has studied to
+advantage will hazard the introduction of such figures, either in the
+pulpit or in the school. We find no such instances among the Romans or
+the Greeks, not even in their poets.</p>
+
+<p>In Ovid's "Metamorphoses" themselves, we find only ingenious deductions
+drawn from fables which are given as fables. Deucalion and Pyrrha threw
+stones behind them between their legs, and men were produced therefrom.
+Ovid says:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Et documenta damus qua simus origine nati.</i></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Thence we are a hardened and laborious race,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Proving full well our stony origin.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Apollo loves Daphne, but Daphne does not love Apollo. This is because
+love has two kinds of arrows; the one golden and piercing, the other
+leaden and blunt. Apollo has received in his heart a golden arrow,
+Daphne a leaden one.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Ecce sagittifera prompsit duo tela pharetra</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Diversorum operum; fugat hoc, facit illud amorem</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Quod facit auratum est, et cuspide fulget acuta;</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Quod fugat obtusum est, et habet sub arundine plumbum....</i></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Two different shafts he from his quiver draws;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">One to repel desire, and one to cause.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">One shaft is pointed with refulgent gold,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To bribe the love, and make the lover bold;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">One blunt and tipped with lead, whose base allay</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Provokes disdain, and drives desire away.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 18em;" class="small">&mdash;DRYDEN.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>These figures are all ingenious, and deceive no one.</p>
+
+<p>That Venus, the goddess of beauty, should not go unattended by the
+Graces, is a charming truth. These fables, which were in the mouths of
+all&mdash;these allegories, so natural and attractive&mdash;had so much sway over
+the minds of men, that perhaps the first Christians imitated while they
+opposed them.</p>
+
+<p>They took up the weapons of mythology to destroy it, but they could not
+wield them with the same address. They did not reflect that the sacred
+austerity of our holy religion placed these resources out of their
+power, and that a Christian hand would have dealt but awkwardly with the
+lyre of Apollo.</p>
+
+<p>However, the taste for these typical and prophetic figures was so firmly
+rooted that every prince, every statesman, every pope, every founder of
+an order, had allegories or allusions taken from the Holy Scriptures
+applied to him. Satire and flattery rivalled each other in drawing from
+this source.</p>
+
+<p>When Pope Innocent III. made a bloody crusade against the court of
+Toulouse, he was told, "<i>Innocens eris a maledictione</i>." When the order
+of the Minimes was established, it appeared that their founder had been
+foretold in Genesis: "<i>Minimus cum patre nostro</i>."</p>
+
+<p>The preacher who preached before John of Austria after the celebrated
+battle of Lepanto, took for his text, "<i>Fuit homo missus a Deo, cui
+nomen erat Johannes</i>;" A man sent from God, whose name was John; and
+this allusion was very fine, if all the rest were ridiculous. It is said
+to have been repeated for John Sobieski, after the deliverance of
+Vienna; but this latter preacher was nothing more than a plagiarist.</p>
+
+<p>In short, so constant has been this custom that no preacher of the
+present day has ever failed to take an allegory for his text. One of the
+most happy instances is the text of the funeral oration over the duke of
+Candale, delivered before his sister, who was considered a pattern of
+virtue: "<i>Die, quia soror, mea es, ut mihi bene eveniat propter,
+te</i>."&mdash;"Say, I pray thee, that thou art my sister, that it may be well
+with me for thy sake."</p>
+
+<p>It is not to be wondered at that the Cordeliers carried these figures
+rather too far in favor of St. Francis of Assisi, in the famous but
+little-known book, entitled, "Conformities of St. Francis of Assisi with
+Jesus Christ." We find in it sixty-four predictions of the coming of St.
+Francis, some in the Old Testament, others in the New; and each
+prediction contains three figures, which signify the founding of the
+Cordeliers. So that these fathers find themselves foretold in the Bible
+a hundred and ninety-two times.</p>
+
+<p>From Adam down to St. Paul, everything prefigured the blessed Francis of
+Assisi. The Scriptures were given to announce to the universe the
+sermons of Francis to the quadrupeds, the fishes, and the birds, the
+sport he had with a woman of snow, his frolics with the devil, his
+adventures with brother Elias and brother Pacificus.</p>
+
+<p>These pious reveries, which amounted even to blasphemy, have been
+condemned. But the Order of St. Francis has not suffered by them, having
+renounced these extravagancies so common to the barbarous ages.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FINAL_CAUSES" id="FINAL_CAUSES"></a>FINAL CAUSES.</h3>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION I.</h5>
+
+<p>Virgil says ("Æneid," book vi. 727):</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet.</i></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">This active mind infused, through all the space</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Unites and mingles with the mighty mass.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 18em;" class="small">&mdash;DRYDEN</span>.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Virgil said well: and Benedict Spinoza, who has not the brilliancy of
+Virgil, nor his merit, is compelled to acknowledge an intelligence
+presiding over all. Had he denied this, I should have said to him:
+Benedict, you are a fool; you possess intelligence, and you deny it, and
+to whom do you deny it?</p>
+
+<p>In the year 1770, there appeared a man, in some respects far superior to
+Spinoza, as eloquent as the Jewish Hollander is dry, less methodical,
+but infinitely more perspicuous; perhaps equal to him in mathematical
+science; but without the ridiculous affectation of applying mathematical
+reasonings to metaphysical and moral subjects. The man I mean is the
+author of the "System of Nature." He assumed the name of Mirabaud, the
+secretary of the French Academy. Alas! the worthy secretary was
+incapable of writing a single page of the book of our formidable
+opponent. I would recommend all you who are disposed to avail yourselves
+of your reason and acquire instruction, to read the following eloquent
+though dangerous passage from the "System of Nature." (Part II. v. 153.)</p>
+
+<p>It is contended that animals furnish us with a convincing evidence that
+there is some powerful cause of their existence; the admirable
+adaptation of their different parts, mutually receiving and conferring
+aid towards accomplishing their functions, and maintaining in health and
+vigor the entire being, announce to us an artificer uniting power to
+wisdom. Of the power of nature, it is impossible for us to doubt; she
+produces all the animals that we see by the help of combinations of that
+matter, which is in incessant action; the adaptation of the parts of
+these animals is the result of the necessary laws of their nature, and
+of their combination. When the adaptation ceases, the animal is
+necessarily destroyed. What then becomes of the wisdom, the
+intelligence, or the goodness of that alleged cause, to which was
+ascribed all the honor of this boasted adaptation? Those animals of so
+wonderful a structure as to be pronounced the works of an immutable God,
+do not they undergo incessant changes; and do not they end in decay and
+destruction? Where is the wisdom, the goodness, the fore-sight, the
+immutability of an artificer, whose sole object appears to be to derange
+and destroy the springs of those machines which are proclaimed to be
+masterpieces of his power and skill? If this God cannot act otherwise
+than thus, he is neither free nor omnipotent. If his will changes, he is
+not immutable. If he permits machines, which he has endowed with
+sensibility, to experience pain, he is deficient in goodness. If he has
+been unable to render his productions solid and durable, he is deficient
+in skill. Perceiving as we do the decay and ruin not only of all
+animals, but of all the other works of deity, we cannot but inevitably
+conclude, either that everything performed in the course of nature is
+absolutely necessary&mdash;the unavoidable result of its imperative and
+insuperable laws, or that the artificer who impels her various
+operations is destitute of plan, of power, of constancy, of skill, and
+of goodness.</p>
+
+<p>"Man, who considers himself the master-work of the Divinity, supplies us
+more readily and completely than any other production, with evidence of
+the incapacity or malignity of his pretended author. In this being,
+possessed of feeling, intuition, and reason, which considers itself as
+the perpetual object of divine partiality, and forms its God on the
+model of itself, we see a machine more changeable, more frail, more
+liable to derangement from its extraordinary complication, than that of
+the coarsest and grossest beings. Beasts, which are destitute of our
+mental powers and acquirements; plants, which merely vegetate; stones,
+which are unendowed with sensation, are, in many respects, beings far
+more favored than man. They are, at least, exempt from distress of mind,
+from the tortures of thought, and corrosions of care, to which the
+latter is a victim. Who would not prefer being a mere unintelligent
+animal, or a senseless stone, when his thoughts revert to the
+irreparable loss of an object dearly beloved? Would it not be infinitely
+more desirable to be an inanimate mass, than the gloomy votary and
+victim of superstition, trembling under the present yoke of his
+diabolical deity, and anticipating infinite torments in a future
+existence? Beings destitute of sensation, life, memory, and thought
+experience no affliction from the idea of what is past, present, or to
+come; they do not believe there is any danger of incurring eternal
+torture for inaccurate reasoning; which is believed, however, by many of
+those favored beings who maintain that the great architect of the world
+has created the universe for themselves.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 602px;">
+<a name="NATURE_IS_NOT_A_WORK" id="NATURE_IS_NOT_A_WORK"></a>
+<img src="images/img_02_landstorm.jpg" width="602" alt="Nature is not a work." title="" />
+<span class="caption_fig">Nature is not a work</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Let us not be told that we have no idea of a work without having that
+of the artificer distinguished from the work. <i>Nature is not a work.</i>
+She has always existed of herself. Every process takes place in her
+bosom. She is an immense manufactory, provided with materials, and she
+forms the instruments by which she acts; all her works are effects of
+her own energy, and of agents or causes which she frames, contains, and
+impels. Eternal, uncreated elements&mdash;elements indestructible, ever in
+motion, and combining in exquisite and endless diversity, originate all
+the beings and all the phenomena that we behold; all the effects, good
+or evil, that we feel; the order or disorder which we distinguish,
+merely by different modes in which they affect ourselves; and, in a
+word, all those wonders which excite our meditation and confound our
+reasoning. These elements, in order to effect objects thus comprehensive
+and important, require nothing beyond their own properties, individual
+or combined, and the motion essential to their very existence; and thus
+preclude the necessity of recurring to an unknown artificer, in order to
+arrange, mould, combine, preserve, and dissolve them.</p>
+
+<p>"But, even admitting for a moment, that it is impossible to conceive of
+the universe without an artificer who formed it, and who preserves and
+watches over his work, where shall we place that artificer? Shall he be
+within or without the universe? Is he matter or motion? Or is he mere
+space, nothingness, vacuity? In each of these cases, he will either be
+nothing, or he will be comprehended in nature, and subjected to her
+laws. If he is in nature, I think I see in her only matter in motion,
+and cannot but thence conclude that the agent impelling her is corporeal
+and material, and that he is consequently liable to dissolution. If this
+agent is out of nature, then I have no idea of what place he can occupy,
+nor of an immaterial being, nor of the manner in which a spirit, without
+extension, can operate upon the matter from which it is separated. Those
+unknown tracts of space which imagination has placed beyond the visible
+world may be considered as having no existence for a being who can
+scarcely see to the distance of his own feet; the ideal power which
+inhabits them can never be represented to my mind, unless when my
+imagination combines at random the fantastic colors which it is always
+forced to employ in the world on which I am. In this case, I shall
+merely reproduce in idea what my senses have previously actually
+perceived; and that God, which I, as it were, compel myself to
+distinguish from nature, and to place beyond her circuit, will ever, in
+opposition to all my efforts, necessarily withdraw within it.</p>
+
+<p>"It will be observed and insisted upon by some that if a statue or a
+watch were shown to a savage who had never seen them, he would
+inevitably acknowledge that they were the productions of some
+intelligent agent, more powerful and ingenious than himself; and hence
+it will be inferred that we are equally bound to acknowledge that the
+machine of the universe, that man, that the phenomena of nature, are the
+productions of an agent, whose intelligence and power are far superior
+to our own.</p>
+
+<p>"I answer, in the first place, that we cannot possibly doubt either the
+great power or the great skill of nature; we admire her skill as often
+as we are surprised by the extended, varied and complicated effects
+which we find in those of her works that we take the pains to
+investigate; she is not, however, either more or less skilful in any one
+of her works than in the rest. We no more comprehend how she could
+produce a stone or a piece of metal than how she could produce a head
+organized like that of Newton. We call that man skilful who can perform
+things which we are unable to perform ourselves. Nature can perform
+everything; and when anything exists, it is a proof that she was able to
+make it. Thus, it is only in relation to ourselves that we ever judge
+nature to be skilful; we compare it in those cases with ourselves; and,
+as we possess a quality which we call intelligence, by the aid of which
+we produce works, in which we display our skill, we thence conclude that
+the works of nature, which must excite our astonishment and admiration,
+are not in fact hers, but the productions of an artificer, intelligent
+like ourselves, and whose intelligence we proportion, in our minds, to
+the degree of astonishment excited in us by his works; that is, in fact,
+to our own weakness and ignorance."</p>
+
+<p>See the reply to these arguments under the articles on "Atheism" and
+"God," and in the following section, written long before the "System of
+Nature."</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION II.</h5>
+
+<p>If a clock is not made in order to tell the time of the day, I will then
+admit that final causes are nothing but chimeras, and be content to go
+by the name of a final-cause-finder&mdash;in plain language, fool&mdash;to the end
+of my life.</p>
+
+<p>All the parts, however, of that great machine, the world, seem made for
+one another. Some philosophers affect to deride final causes, which were
+rejected, they tell us, by Epicurus and Lucretius. But it seems to me
+that Epicurus and Lucretius rather merit the derision. They tell you
+that the eye is not made to see; but that, since it was found out that
+eyes were capable of being used for that purpose, to that purpose they
+have been applied. According to them, the mouth is not formed to speak
+and eat, nor the stomach to digest, nor the heart to receive the blood
+from the veins and impel it through the arteries, nor the feet to walk,
+nor the ears to hear. Yet, at the same time, these very shrewd and
+consistent persons admitted that tailors made garments to clothe them,
+and masons built houses to lodge them; and thus ventured to deny
+nature&mdash;the great existence, the universal intelligence&mdash;what they
+conceded to the most insignificant artificers employed by themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The doctrine of final causes ought certainly to be preserved from being
+abused. We have already remarked that M. le Prieur, in the "Spectator of
+Nature," contends in vain that the tides were attached to the ocean to
+enable ships to enter more easily into their ports, and to preserve the
+water from corruption; he might just as probably and successfully have
+urged that legs were made to wear boots, and noses to bear spectacles.</p>
+
+<p>In order to satisfy ourselves of the truth of a final cause, in any
+particular instance, it is necessary that the effect produced should be
+uniform and invariably in time and place. Ships have not existed in all
+times and upon all seas; accordingly, it cannot be said that the ocean
+was made for ships. It is impossible not to perceive how ridiculous it
+would be to maintain that nature had toiled on from the very beginning
+of time to adjust herself to the inventions of our fortuitous and
+arbitrary arts, all of which are of so late a date in their discovery;
+but it is perfectly clear that if noses were not made for spectacles,
+they were made for smelling, and there have been noses ever since there
+were men. In the same manner, hands, instead of being bestowed for the
+sake of gloves, are visibly destined for all those uses to which the
+metacarpus, the phalanges of the fingers, and the movements of the
+circular muscle of the wrist, render them applicable by us. Cicero, who
+doubted everything else, had no doubt about final causes.</p>
+
+<p>It appears particularly difficult to suppose that those parts of the
+human frame by which the perpetuation of the species is conducted should
+not, in fact, have been intended and destined for that purpose, from
+their mechanism so truly admirable, and the sensation which nature has
+connected with it more admirable still. Epicurus would be at least
+obliged to admit that pleasure is divine, and that that pleasure is a
+final cause, in consequence of which beings, endowed with sensibility,
+but who could never have communicated it to themselves, have been
+incessantly introduced into the world as others have passed away from
+it.</p>
+
+<p>This philosopher, Epicurus, was a great man for the age in which he
+lived. He saw that Descartes denied what Gassendi affirmed and what
+Newton demonstrated&mdash;that motion cannot exist without a vacuum. He
+conceived the necessity of atoms to serve as constituent parts of
+invariable species. These are philosophical ideas. Nothing, however,
+was more respectable than the morality of genuine Epicureans; it
+consisted in sequestration from public affairs, which are incompatible
+with wisdom, and in friendship, without which life is but a burden. But
+as to the rest of the philosophy of Epicurus, it appears not to be more
+admissible than the grooved or tubular matter of Descartes. It is, as it
+appears to me, wilfully to shut the eyes and the understanding, and to
+maintain that there is no design in nature; and if there is design,
+there is an intelligent cause&mdash;there exists a God.</p>
+
+<p>Some point us to the irregularities of our globe, the volcanoes, the
+plains of moving sand, some small mountains swallowed up in the ocean,
+others raised by earthquakes, etc. But does it follow from the naves of
+your chariot wheel taking fire, that your chariot was not made expressly
+for the purpose of conveying you from one place to another?</p>
+
+<p>The chains of mountains which crown both hemispheres, and more than six
+hundred rivers which flow from the foot of these rocks towards the sea;
+the various streams that swell these rivers in their courses, after
+fertilizing the fields through which they pass; the innumerable
+fountains which spring from the same source, which supply necessary
+refreshment, and growth, and beauty to animal and vegetable life; all
+this appears no more to result from a fortuitous concourse and an
+obliquity of atoms, than the retina which receives the rays of light, or
+the crystalline humor which refracts it, or the drum of the ear which
+admits sound, or the circulation of the blood in our veins, the systole
+and diastole of the heart, the regulating principle of the machine of
+life.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION III.</h5>
+
+<p>It would appear that a man must be supposed to have lost his senses
+before he can deny that stomachs are made for digestion, eyes to see,
+and ears to hear.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, a man must have a singular partiality for final
+causes, to assert that stone was made for building houses, and that
+silkworms are produced in China that we may wear satins in Europe.</p>
+
+<p>But, it is urged, if God has evidently done one thing by design, he has
+then done all things by design. It is ridiculous to admit Providence in
+the one case and to deny it in the others. Everything that is done was
+foreseen, was arranged. There is no arrangement without an object, no
+effect without a cause; all, therefore, is equally the result, the
+product of the final cause; it is, therefore, as correct to say that
+noses were made to bear spectacles, and fingers to be adorned with
+rings, as to say that the ears were formed to hear sounds, the eyes to
+receive light.</p>
+
+<p>All that this objection amounts to, in my opinion, is that everything is
+the result, nearer or more remote, of a general final cause; that
+everything is the consequence of eternal laws. When the effects are
+invariably the same in all times and places, and when these uniform
+effects are independent of the beings to which they attach, then there
+is visibly a final cause.</p>
+
+<p>All animals have eyes and see; all have ears and hear; all have mouths
+with which they eat; stomachs, or something similar, by which they
+digest their food; all have suitable means for expelling the fæces; all
+have the organs requisite for the continuation of their species; and
+these natural gifts perform their regular course and process without any
+application or intermixture of art. Here are final causes clearly
+established; and to deny a truth so universal would be a perversion of
+the faculty of reason.</p>
+
+<p>But stones, in all times and places, do not constitute the materials of
+buildings. All noses do not bear spectacles; all fingers do not carry a
+ring; all legs are not covered with silk stockings. A silkworm,
+therefore, is not made to cover my legs, exactly as your mouth is made
+for eating, and another part of your person for the "garderobe." There
+are, therefore, we see, immediate effects produced from final causes,
+and effects of a very numerous description, which are remote productions
+from those causes.</p>
+
+<p>Everything belonging to nature is uniform, immutable, and the immediate
+work of its author. It is he who has established the laws by which the
+moon contributes three-fourths to the cause of the flux and reflux of
+the ocean, and the sun the remaining fourth. It is he who has given a
+rotatory motion to the sun, in consequence of which that orb
+communicates its rays of light in the short space of seven minutes and a
+half to the eyes of men, crocodiles, and cats.</p>
+
+<p>But if, after a course of ages, we started the inventions of shears and
+spits, to clip the wool of sheep with the one, and with the other to
+roast in order to eat them, what else can be inferred from such
+circumstances, but that God formed us in such a manner that, at some
+time or other, we could not avoid becoming ingenious and carnivorous?</p>
+
+<p>Sheep, undoubtedly, were not made expressly to be roasted and eaten,
+since many nations abstain from such food with horror. Mankind are not
+created essentially to massacre one another, since the Brahmins, and the
+respectable primitives called Quakers, kill no one. But the clay out of
+which we are kneaded frequently produces massacres, as it produces
+calumnies, vanities, persecutions, and impertinences. It is not
+precisely that the formation of man is the final cause of our madnesses
+and follies, for a final cause is universal, and invariable in every age
+and place; but the horrors and absurdities of the human race are not at
+all the less included in the eternal order of things. When we thresh our
+corn, the flail is the final cause of the separation of the grain. But
+if that flail, while threshing my grain, crushes to death a thousand
+insects, that occurs not by an express and determinate act of my will,
+nor, on the other hand, is it by mere chance; the insects were, on this
+occasion, actually under my flail, and could not but be there.</p>
+
+<p>It is a consequence of the nature of things that a man should be
+ambitious; that he should enroll and discipline a number of other men;
+that he should be a conqueror, or that he should be defeated; but it can
+never be said that the man was created by God to be killed in war.</p>
+
+<p>The organs with which nature has supplied us cannot always be final
+causes in action. The eyes which are bestowed for seeing are not
+constantly open. Every sense has its season for repose. There are some
+senses that are even made no use of. An imbecile and wretched female,
+for example, shut up in a cloister at the age of fourteen years, mars
+one of the final causes of her existence; but the cause, nevertheless,
+equally exists, and whenever it is free it will operate.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FINESSE_FINENESS_ETC" id="FINESSE_FINENESS_ETC"></a>FINESSE, FINENESS, ETC.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Of the Different Significations of the Word.</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>Fineness either in its proper or its figurative sense does not signify
+either light, slender, fine, or of a rare thin texture; this word
+expresses something delicate and finished. Light cloth, soft linen, thin
+lace, or slender galloon, are not always fine.</p>
+
+<p>This word has a relation to the verb "to finish," whence come the
+finishings of art; thus, we say, the finishings of Vanderwerff's pencil
+or of Mieris; we say, a fine horse, fine gold, a fine diamond. A fine
+horse is opposed to a clumsy one; the fine diamond to a false one; fine
+or refined gold to gold mixed with alloy.</p>
+
+<p>Fineness is generally applied to delicate things and lightness of
+manufacture. Although we say a fine horse, we seldom say, "the fineness
+of a horse." We speak of the fineness of hair, lace, or stuff. When by
+this word we should express the fault or wrong use of anything, we add
+the adverb "too"; as&mdash;This thread is broken, it was too fine; this stuff
+is too fine for the season.</p>
+
+<p>Fineness or finesse, in a figurative sense, applies to conduct, speech,
+and works of mind. In conduct, finesse always expresses, as in the arts,
+something delicate or subtile; it may sometimes exist without ability,
+but it is very rarely unaccompanied by a little deception; politics
+admit it, and society reproves it.</p>
+
+<p>Finesse is not exactly subtlety; we draw a person into a snare with
+finesse; we escape from it with subtlety. We act with finesse, and we
+play a subtle trick. Distrust is inspired by an unsparing use of
+finesse; yet we almost always deceive ourselves if we too generally
+suspect it.</p>
+
+<p>Finesse, in works of wit, as in conversation, consists in the art of not
+expressing a thought clearly, but leaving it so as to be easily
+perceived. It is an enigma to which people of sense readily find the
+solution.</p>
+
+<p>A chancellor one day offering his protection to parliament, the first
+president turning towards the assembly, said: "Gentlemen, thank the
+chancellor; he has given us more than we demanded of him"&mdash;a very witty
+reproof.</p>
+
+<p>Finesse, in conversation and writing, differs from delicacy; the first
+applies equally to piquant and agreeable things, even to blame and
+praise; and still more to indecencies, over which a veil is drawn,
+through which we cannot penetrate without a blush. Bold things may be
+said with finesse.</p>
+
+<p>Delicacy expresses soft and agreeable sentiments and ingenious praise;
+thus finesse belongs more to epigram, and delicacy to madrigal. It is
+delicacy which enters into a lover's jealousies, and not finesse.</p>
+
+<p>The praises given to Louis XIV. by Despréaux are not always equally
+delicate; satires are not always sufficiently ingenious in the way of
+finesse. When Iphigenia, in Racine, has received from her father the
+order never to see Achilles more, she cries: "<i>Dieux plus doux, vous
+n'aviez demandé que ma vie!</i>"&mdash;"More gentle gods, you only ask my life!"
+The true character of this partakes rather of delicacy than of finesse.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FIRE" id="FIRE"></a>FIRE.</h3>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION I.</h5>
+
+<p>Is fire anything more than an element which lights, warms, and burns us?
+Is not light always fire, though fire is not always light? And is not
+Boerhaave in the right?</p>
+
+<p>Is not the purest fire extracted from our combustibles, always gross,
+and partaking of the bodies consumed, and very different from elementary
+fire? How is fire distributed throughout nature, of which it is the
+soul?</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Ignis ubique latet, naturam amplectitur omnem,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Cuncta parit, renovat, dividit, unit, alit.</i></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Why did Newton, in speaking of rays of light, always say, "<i>De natura
+radiorum lucis, utrum corpora sint necne non disputamus</i>"; without
+examining whether they were bodies or not?</p>
+
+<p>Did he only speak geometrically? In that case, this doubt was useless.
+It is evident that he doubted of the nature of elementary fire, and
+doubted with reason.</p>
+
+<p>Is elementary fire a body like others, as earth and water? If it was a
+body of this kind, would it not gravitate like all other matter? Would
+it escape from the luminous body in the right line? Would it have a
+uniform progression? And why does light never move out of a right line
+when it is unimpeded in its rapid course?</p>
+
+<p>May not elementary fire have properties of matter little known to us,
+and properties of substance entirely so? May it not be a medium between
+matter and substances of another kind? And who can say that there are
+not a million of these substances? I do not say that there are, but I
+say it is not proved that there may not be.</p>
+
+<p>It was very difficult to believe about a hundred years ago that bodies
+acted upon one another, not only without touching, and without emission,
+but at great distances; it is, however, found to be true, and is no
+longer doubted. At present, it is difficult to believe that the rays of
+the sun are penetrable by each other, but who knows what may happen to
+prove it?</p>
+
+<p>However that may be, I wish, for the novelty of the thing, that this
+incomprehensible penetrability could be admitted. Light has something so
+divine that we should endeavor to make it a step to the discovery of
+substances still more pure.</p>
+
+<p>Come to my aid, Empedocles and Democritus; come and admire the wonders
+of electricity; see if the sparks which traverse a thousand bodies in
+the twinkling of an eye are of ordinary matter; judge if elementary fire
+does not contract the heart, and communicate that warmth which gives
+life! Judge if this element is not the source of all sensation, and if
+sensation is not the origin of thought; though ignorant and insolent
+pedants have condemned the proposition, as one which should be
+persecuted.</p>
+
+<p>Tell me, if the Supreme Being, who presides over all nature, cannot
+forever preserve these elementary atoms which he has so rarely endowed?
+<i>"Igneus est ollis vigor et cœlestis origo.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>The celebrated Le Cat calls this vivifying fluid "an amphibious being,
+endowed by its author with a superior refinement which links it to
+immaterial beings, and thereby ennobles and elevates it into that medium
+nature which we recognize, and which is the source of all its
+properties."</p>
+
+<p>You are of the opinion of Le Cat? I would be so too if I could; but
+there are so many fools and villains that I dare not. I can only think
+quietly in my own way at Mount Krapak. Let others think as well as they
+are allowed to think, whether at Salamanca or Bergamo.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION II.</h5>
+
+<h4><i>What is Understood by Fire Used Figuratively.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Fire, particularly in poetry, often signifies love, and is employed more
+elegantly in the plural than in the singular. Corneille often says "<i>un
+beau feu</i>" for a virtuous and noble love. A man has fire in his
+conversation; that does not mean that he has brilliant and enlightened
+ideas, but lively expressions animated by action.</p>
+
+<p>Fire in writing does not necessarily imply lightness and beauty, but
+vivacity, multiplied figures, and spontaneous ideas. Fire is a merit in
+speech and writing only when it is well managed. It is said that poets
+are animated with a divine fire when they are sublime; genius cannot
+exist without fire, but fire may be possessed without genius.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FIRMNESS" id="FIRMNESS"></a>FIRMNESS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Firmness comes from firm, and has a different signification from
+solidity and hardness; a squeezed cloth, a beaten negro, have firmness
+without being hard or solid.</p>
+
+<p>It must always be remembered that modifications of the soul can only be
+expressed by physical images; we say firmness of soul, and of mind,
+which does not signify that they are harder or more solid than usual.</p>
+
+<p>Firmness is the exercise of mental courage; it means a decided
+resolution; while obstinacy, on the contrary, signifies blindness. Those
+who praise the firmness of Tacitus are not so much in the wrong as P.
+Bouhours pretends; it is an accidental ill-chosen term, which expresses
+energy and strength of thought and of style. It may be said that La
+Bruyère has a firm style, and that many other writers have only a hard
+one.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FLATTERY" id="FLATTERY"></a>FLATTERY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>I find not one monument of flattery in remote antiquity; there is no
+flattery in Hesiod&mdash;none in Homer. Their stories are not addressed to a
+Greek, elevated to some dignity, nor to his lady; as each canto of
+Thomson's "Seasons" is dedicated to some person of rank, or as so many
+forgotten epistles in verse have been dedicated, in England, to
+gentlemen or ladies of quality, with a brief eulogy, and the arms of
+the patron or patroness placed at the head of the work.</p>
+
+<p>Nor is there any flattery in Demosthenes. This way of asking alms
+harmoniously began, if I mistake not, with Pindar. No hand can be
+stretched out more emphatically.</p>
+
+<p>It appears to me that among the Romans great flattery is to be dated
+from the time of Augustus. Julius Cæsar had scarcely time to be
+flattered. There is not, extant, any dedicatory epistle to Sulla,
+Marius, or Carbo, nor to their wives, or their mistresses. I can well
+believe that very bad verses were presented to Lucullus and Pompey; but,
+thank God, we do not have them.</p>
+
+<p>It is a great spectacle to behold Cicero equal in dignity to Cæsar,
+speaking before him as advocate for a king of Bithynia and Lesser
+Armenia, named Deiotarus, accused of laying ambuscades for him, and even
+designing to assassinate him. Cicero begins with acknowledging that he
+is disconcerted in his presence. He calls him the vanquisher of the
+world&mdash;"<i>victorem orbis terrarum</i>." He flatters him; but this adulation
+does not yet amount to baseness; some sense of shame still remains.</p>
+
+<p>But with Augustus there are no longer any bounds; the senate decrees his
+apotheosis during his lifetime. Under the succeeding emperors this
+flattery becomes the ordinary tribute, and is no longer anything more
+than a style. It is impossible to flatter any one, when the most
+extravagant adulation has become the ordinary currency.</p>
+
+<p>In Europe, we have had no great monuments of flattery before Louis XIV.
+His father, Louis XIII., had very little incense offered him. We find no
+mention of him, except in one or two of Malherbe's odes. There, indeed,
+according to custom, he is called "thou greatest of kings"&mdash;as the
+Spanish poets say to the king of Spain, and the English poets (laureate)
+to the king of England; but the better part of the poet's praises is
+bestowed on Cardinal Richelieu, whose soul is great and fearless; who
+practises so well the healing art of government, and who knows how to
+cure all our evils:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Dont l'âme toute grande est une âme hardîe,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Qui pratique si bien l'art de nous secourir,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Que, pourvu qu'il soit cru, nous n'avons maladie,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Qu'il ne sache guérir.</i></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Upon Louis XIV. flattery came in a deluge. But he was not like the man
+said to have been smothered by the rose leaves heaped upon him; on the
+contrary, he thrived the more.</p>
+
+<p>Flattery, when it has some plausible pretext, may not be so pernicious
+as it has been thought; it sometimes encourages to great acts; but its
+excess is vicious, like the excess of satire. La Fontaine says, and
+pretends to say it after Æsop:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>On ne peut trop louer trois sortes de personnes;</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Les dieux, sa maitresse, et son roi.</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Æsope le disait; j'y souscris quant à moi;</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Ces sont maximes toujours bonnes.</i></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Your flattery to three sorts of folks apply:&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">You cannot say too civil things</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">To gods, to mistresses, and kings;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">So honest Æsop said&mdash;and so say I.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Honest Æsop said no such thing; nor do we find that he flattered any
+king, or any concubine. It must not be thought that kings are in reality
+flattered by all the flatteries that are heaped upon them; for the
+greater number never reach them.</p>
+
+<p>One common folly of orators is that of exhausting themselves in praising
+some prince who will never hear of their praises. But what is most
+lamentable of all is that Ovid should have praised Augustus even while
+he was dating "<i>de Ponto</i>."</p>
+
+<p>The perfection of the ridiculous might be found in the compliments which
+preachers address to kings, when they have the happiness of exhibiting
+before their majesties.&mdash;"To the reverend Father Gaillard, preacher to
+the king." Ah! most reverend father, do you preach only for the king?
+Are you like the monkey at the fair, which leaps "only for the king?"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FORCE_PHYSICAL" id="FORCE_PHYSICAL"></a>FORCE (PHYSICAL).</h3>
+
+
+<p>What is "force?" Where does it reside? Whence does it come? Does it
+perish? Or is it ever the same?</p>
+
+<p>It has pleased us to denominate "force" that weight which one body
+exercises upon another. Here is a ball of two hundred pounds' weight on
+this floor; it presses the floor, you say, with a force of two hundred
+pounds. And this you call a "dead force." But are not these words
+"dead" and "force" a little contradictory? Might we not as well say
+"dead alive"&mdash;yes and no at once?</p>
+
+<p>This ball "weighs." Whence comes this "weight?" and is this weight a
+"force?" If the ball were not impeded, would it go directly to the
+centre of the earth? Whence has it this incomprehensible property?</p>
+
+<p>It is supported by my floor; and you freely give to my floor the "<i>vis
+inertiæ</i>"&mdash;"inertiæ" signifying "inactivity," "impotence." Now is it not
+singular that "impotence" should be denominated "force?"</p>
+
+<p>What is the living force which acts in your arm and your leg? What is
+the source of it? How can it be supposed that this force exists when you
+are dead? Does it go and take up its abode elsewhere, as a man goes to
+another house when his own is in ruins?</p>
+
+<p>How can it have been said that there is always the same force in nature?
+There must, then, have been always the same number of men, or of active
+beings equivalent to men. Why does a body in motion communicate its
+force to another body with which it comes in contact?</p>
+
+<p>These are questions which neither geometry, nor mechanics, nor
+metaphysics can answer. Would you arrive at the first principle of the
+force of bodies, and of motion, you must ascend to a still superior
+principle. Why is there "anything?"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FORCE_STRENGTH" id="FORCE_STRENGTH"></a>FORCE&mdash;STRENGTH.</h3>
+
+
+<p>These words have been transplanted from simple to figurative speech.
+They are applied to all the parts of the body that are in motion, in
+action&mdash;the force of the heart, which some have made four hundred
+pounds, and some three ounces; the force of the viscera, the lungs, the
+voice; the force of the arm.</p>
+
+<p>The metaphor which has transported these words into morals has made them
+express a cardinal virtue. Strength, in this sense, is the courage to
+support adversity, and to undertake virtuous and difficult actions; it
+is the "<i>animi fortitudo</i>."</p>
+
+<p>The strength of the mind is penetration and depth&mdash;"<i>ingenii vis</i>."
+Nature gives it as she gives that of the body; moderate labor increases
+and excessive labor diminishes it.</p>
+
+<p>The force of an argument consists in a clear exposition of
+clearly-exhibited proofs, and a just conclusion; with mathematical
+theorems it has nothing to do; because the evidence of a demonstration
+can be made neither more nor less; only it may be arrived at by a longer
+or a shorter path&mdash;a simpler or more complicated method. It is in
+doubtful questions that the force of reasoning is truly applicable.</p>
+
+<p>The force of eloquence is not merely a train of just and vigorous
+reasoning, which is not incompatible with dryness; this force, requires
+floridity, striking images, and energetic expressions. Thus it has been
+said, that the sermons of Bourdaloue have force, those of Massillon
+more elegance. Verses may have strength, and want every other beauty.
+The strength of a line in our language consists principally in saying
+something in each hemistich.</p>
+
+<p>Strength in painting is the expression of the muscles, which, by feeling
+touches, are made to appear under the flesh that covers them. There is
+too much strength when the muscles are too strongly articulated. The
+attitudes of the combatants have great strength in the battles of
+Constantine, drawn by Raphael and Julio Romano; and in those of Cæsar,
+painted by Lebrun. Inordinate strength is harsh in painting and
+bombastic in poetry.</p>
+
+<p>Some philosophers have asserted that force is a property inherent in
+matter; that each invisible particle, or rather <i>monad</i>, is endowed with
+an active force; but it would be as difficult to demonstrate this
+assertion as it would be to prove that whiteness is a quality inherent
+in matter, as the Trévoux dictionary says in the article "Inherent."</p>
+
+<p>The strength of every animal has arrived at the highest when the animal
+has attained its full growth. It decreases when the muscles no longer
+receive the same quantity of nourishment: and this quantity ceases to be
+the same when the animal spirits no longer communicate to the muscles
+their accustomed motion. It is probable that the animal spirits are of
+fire, inasmuch as old men want motion and strength in proportion as they
+want warmth.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FRANCHISE" id="FRANCHISE"></a>FRANCHISE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>A word which always gives an idea of liberty in whatever sense it is
+taken; a word derived from the Franks, who were always free. It is so
+ancient, that when the Cid besieged and took Toledo, in the eleventh
+century, franchies or franchises were given to all the French who went
+on this expedition, and who established themselves at Toledo. All walled
+cities had franchises, liberties, and privileges, even in the greatest
+anarchy of feudal power. In all countries possessing assemblies or
+states, the sovereign swore, on his accession, to guard their liberties.</p>
+
+<p>This name, which has been given generally to the rights of the people,
+to immunities, and to sanctuaries or asylums, has been more particularly
+applied to the quarters of the ambassadors of the court of Rome. It was
+a plot of ground around their palaces, which was larger or smaller
+according to the will of the ambassador. The ground was an asylum for
+criminals, who could not be there pursued. This franchise was
+restricted, under Innocent XI. to the inside of their palaces. Churches
+and convents had the same privileges in Italy, but not in other states.
+There are in Paris several places of sanctuary, in which debtors cannot
+be seized for their debts by common justice, and where mechanics can
+pursue their trades without being freemen. Mechanics have this privilege
+in the Faubourg St. Antoine, but it is not an asylum like the Temple.</p>
+
+<p>The word "franchise," which usually expresses the liberties of a nation,
+city, or person, is sometimes used to signify liberty of speech, of
+counsel, or of a law proceeding; but there is a great difference between
+speaking with frankness and speaking with liberty. In a speech to a
+superior, liberty is a studied or excessive boldness&mdash;frankness
+outstepping its just bounds. To speak with liberty is to speak without
+fear; to speak with frankness is to conduct yourself openly and nobly.
+To speak with too much liberty is to become audacious; to speak with too
+much frankness is to be too open-hearted.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FRANCIS_XAVIER" id="FRANCIS_XAVIER"></a>FRANCIS XAVIER.</h3>
+
+
+<p>It would not be amiss to know something true concerning the celebrated
+Francis Xavero, whom we call Xavier, surnamed the Apostle of the Indies.
+Many people still imagine that he established Christianty along the
+whole southern coast of India, in a score of islands, and above all in
+Japan. But thirty years ago, even a doubt on the subject was hardly to
+be tolerated in Europe. The Jesuits have not hesitated to compare him to
+St. Paul. His travels and miracles had been written in part by
+Tursellinus and Orlandini, by Levena, and by Partoli, all Jesuits, but
+very little known in France; and the less people were acquainted with
+the details the greater was his reputation.</p>
+
+<p>When the Jesuit Bouhours composed his history, he (Bouhours) was
+considered as a man of very enlightened mind, and was living in the best
+company in Paris; I do not mean the company of Jesus, but that of men of
+the world the most distinguished for intellect and knowledge. No one
+wrote in a purer or more unaffected style; it was even proposed in the
+French Academy that it should trespass against the rules of its
+institution, by receiving Father Bouhours into its body. He had another
+great advantage in the influence of his order, which then, by an almost
+inconceivable illusion, governed all Catholic princes.</p>
+
+<p>Sound criticism was, it is true, beginning to rear its head; but its
+progress was slow: men were, in general, more anxious to write ably than
+to write what was true.</p>
+
+<p>Bouhours wrote the lives of St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier almost
+without encountering a single objection. Even his comparison of St.
+Ignatius to Cæsar, and Xavier to Alexander, passed without
+animadversion; it was tolerated as a flower of rhetoric.</p>
+
+<p>I have seen in the Jesuit's college, Rue St. Jacques, a picture twelve
+feet long and twelve high, representing Ignatius and Xavier ascending to
+heaven, each in a magnificent chariot drawn by four milk-white horses;
+and above, the Eternal Father, adorned with a fine white beard
+descending to His waist, with Jesus and the Virgin beside him; the Holy
+Ghost beneath them, in the form of a dove; and angels joining their
+hands, and bending down to receive Father Ignatius and Father Xavier.</p>
+
+<p>Had anyone publicly made a jest of this picture, the reverend Father La
+Chaise, confessor to the king, would infallibly have had the
+sacrilegious scoffer honored with a <i>lettre de cachet</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It cannot be denied that Francis Xavier is comparable to Alexander,
+inasmuch as they both went to India&mdash;so is Ignatius to Cæsar, both
+having been in Gaul. But Xavier, the vanquisher of the devil, went far
+beyond Alexander, the conqueror of Darius. How gratifying it is to see
+him going, in the capacity of a volunteer converter, from Spain into
+France, from France to Rome, from Rome to Lisbon, and from Lisbon to
+Mozambique, after making the tour of Africa. He stays a long time at
+Mozambique, where he receives from God the gift of prophecy: he then
+proceeds to Melinda, where he disputes on the Koran with the Mahometans,
+who doubtless understand his religion as well as he understands theirs,
+and where he even finds caciques, although they are to be found nowhere
+but in America. The Portuguese vessel arrives at the island of Zocotora,
+which is unquestionably that of the Amazons: there he converts all the
+islanders, and builds a church. Thence he reaches Goa, where he finds a
+pillar on which St. Thomas had engraved, that one day St. Xavier should
+come and re-establish the Christian religion, which had flourished of
+old in India. Xavier has no difficulty whatever in perusing the ancient
+characters, whether Indian or Hebrew, in which this prophecy is
+expressed. He forthwith takes up a hand-bell, assembles all the little
+boys around him, explains to them the creed, and baptizes them&mdash;but his
+great delight was to marry the Indians to their mistresses.</p>
+
+<p>From Goa he speeds to Cape Comorin, to the fishing coast, to the kingdom
+of Travancore. His greatest anxiety, on arriving in any country, is to
+quit it. He embarks in the first Portuguese ship he finds, whithersoever
+it is bound, it matters not to Xavier; provided only that he is
+travelling somewhere, he is content. He is received through charity, and
+returns two or three times to Goa, to Cochin, to Cori, to Negapatam, to
+Meliapour. A vessel is departing for Malacca, and Xavier accordingly
+takes his passage for Malacca, in great despair that he has not yet had
+an opportunity of seeing Siam, Pegu, and Tonquin. We find him in the
+island of Sumatra, at Borneo, at Macassar, in the Moluccas, and
+especially at Ternate and Amboyna. The king of Ternate had, in his
+immense seraglio, a hundred women in the capacity of wives, and seven or
+eight hundred in that of concubines. The first thing Xavier does is to
+turn them all out. Please to observe that the island of Ternate is two
+leagues across.</p>
+
+<p>Thence finding another Portugese vessel bound for Ceylon, he returns to
+Ceylon, where he makes various excursions to Goa and to Cochin. The
+Portuguese were already trading to Japan. A ship sails for that country:
+Xavier takes care to embark in it, and visits all the Japan islands. In
+short (says the Jesuit Bouhours), the whole length of Xavier's routes,
+joined together, would reach several times around the globe.</p>
+
+<p>Be it observed, that he set out on his travels in 1542, and died in
+1552. If he had time to learn the languages of all the nations he
+visited, it was no trifling miracle: if he had the gift of tongues, it
+was a greater miracle still. But unfortunately, in several of his
+letters, he says that he is obliged to employ an interpreter; and in
+others he acknowledges that he finds extreme difficulty in learning the
+Japanese language, which he cannot pronounce.</p>
+
+<p>The Jesuit Bouhours, in giving some of his letters, has no doubt that
+"St. Francis Xavier had the gift of tongues"; but he acknowledges that
+"he had it not always." "He had it," says he, "on several occasions;
+for, without having learned the Chinese tongue, he preached to the
+Chinese every morning at Amanguchi, which is the capital of a province
+in Japan."</p>
+
+<p>He must have been perfectly acquainted with all the languages of the
+East; for he made songs in them of the Paternoster, Ave-Maria, and
+Credo, for the instruction of the little boys and girls.</p>
+
+<p>But the best of all is, that this man, who had occasion for a dragoman,
+spoke every tongue at once, like the apostles; and when he spoke
+Portuguese, in which language Bouhours acknowledges that the saint
+explained himself very ill, the Indians, the Chinese, the Japanese, the
+inhabitants of Ceylon and of Sumatra, all understood him perfectly.</p>
+
+<p>One day in particular, when he was preaching on the immateriality of the
+soul, the motion of the planets, the eclipses of the sun and moon, the
+rainbow, sin and grace, paradise and purgatory, he made himself
+understood to twenty persons of different nations.</p>
+
+<p>Is it asked how such a man could make so many converts in Japan? The
+simple answer is that he did not make any; but other Jesuits, who staid
+a long time in the country, by favor of the treaties between the kings
+of Portugal and the emperors of Japan, converted so many people, that a
+civil war ensued, which is said to have cost the lives of nearly four
+hundred thousand men. This is the most noted prodigy that the
+missionaries have worked in Japan.</p>
+
+<p>But those of Francis Xavier are not without their merit. Among his host
+of miracles, we find no fewer than eight children raised from the dead.
+"Xavier's greatest miracle," says the Jesuit Bouhours, "was not his
+raising so many of the dead to life, but his not himself dying of
+fatigue."</p>
+
+<p>But the pleasantest of his miracles is, that having dropped his crucifix
+into the sea, near the island of Baranura, which I am inclined to think
+was the island of Barataria, a crab came, four-and-twenty hours after,
+bringing the cane between its claws.</p>
+
+<p>The most brilliant of all, and after which no other deserves to be
+related, is that in a storm which lasted three days, he was constantly
+in two ships, a hundred and fifty leagues apart, and served one of them
+as a pilot. The truth of this miracle was attested by all the
+passengers, who could neither deceive nor be deceived.</p>
+
+<p>Yet all this was written seriously and with success in the age of Louis
+XIV., in the age of the "Provincial Letters," of Racine's tragedies, of
+"Bayle's Dictionary," and of so many other learned works.</p>
+
+<p>It would appear to be a sort of miracle that a man of sense, like
+Bouhours, should have committed such a mass of extravagance to the
+press, if we did not know to what excesses men can be carried by the
+corporate spirit in general, and the monachal spirit in particular. We
+have more than two hundred volumes entirely in this taste, compiled by
+monks; but what is most to be lamented is, that the enemies of the monks
+also compile. They compile more agreeably, and are read. It is most
+deplorable that, in nineteen-twentieths of Europe, there is no longer
+that profound respect and just veneration for the monks which is still
+felt for them in some of the villages of Aragon and Calabria.</p>
+
+<p>The miracles of St. Francis Xavier, the achievements of Don Quixote,
+the Comic Romance, and the convulsionaries of St. Medard, have an equal
+claim on our admiration and reverence.</p>
+
+<p>After speaking of Francis Xavier it would be useless to discuss the
+history of the other Francises. If you would be instructed thoroughly,
+consult the conformities of St. Francis of Assisi.</p>
+
+<p>Since the fine history of St. Francis Xavier by the Jesuit Bouhours, we
+have had the history of St. Francis Régis by the Jesuit Daubenton,
+confessor to Philip V. of Spain: but this is small-beer after brandy. In
+the history of the blessed Régis, there is not even a single
+resuscitation.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FRANKS_FRANCEmdashFRENCH" id="FRANKS_FRANCEmdashFRENCH"></a>FRANKS&mdash;FRANCE&mdash;FRENCH</h3>
+
+
+<p>Italy has always preserved its name, notwithstanding the pretended
+establishment of Æneas, which should have left some traces of the
+language, characters, and manners of Phrygia, if he ever came with
+Achates and so many others, into the province of Rome, then almost a
+desert. The Goths, Lombards, Franks, Allemani or Germans, who have by
+turns invaded Italy, have at least left it its name.</p>
+
+<p>The Tyrians, Africans, Romans, Vandals, Visigoths, and Saracens, have,
+one after the other, been masters of Spain, yet the name of Spain
+exists. Germany has also always preserved its own name; it has merely
+joined that of Allemagne to it, which appellation it did not receive
+from any conqueror.</p>
+
+<p>The Gauls are almost the only people in the west who have lost their
+name. This name was originally Walch or Welsh; the Romans always
+substituted a G for the W, which is barbarous: of "Welsh" they made
+Galli, Gallia. They distinguished the Celtic, the Belgic, and the
+Aquitanic Gaul, each of which spoke a different jargon.</p>
+
+<p>Who were, and whence came these Franks, who in such small numbers and
+little time possessed themselves of all the Gauls, which in ten years
+Cæsar could not entirely reduce? I am reading an author who commences by
+these words: "The Franks from whom we descend." ... Ha! my friend, who
+has told you that you descend in a right line from a Frank? Clovodic,
+whom we call Clovis, probably had not more than twenty thousand men,
+badly clothed and armed, when he subjugated about eight or ten millions
+of Welsh or Gauls, held in servitude by three or four Roman legions. We
+have not a single family in France which can furnish, I do not say the
+least proof, but the least probability, that it had its origin from a
+Frank.</p>
+
+<p>When the pirates of the Baltic Sea came, to the number of seven or eight
+thousand, to give Normandy in fief, and Brittany in <i>arrière fief</i>, did
+they, leave any archives by which it may be seen whether they were the
+fathers of all the Normans of the present day?</p>
+
+<p>It has been a long time believed that the Franks came from the Trojans.
+Ammianus Marcellinus, who lived in the fourth century, says: "According
+to several ancient writers, troops of fugitive Trojans established
+themselves on the borders of the Rhine, then a desert." As to Æneas, he
+might easily have sought an asylum at the extremity of the
+Mediterranean, but Francus, the son of Hector, had too far to travel to
+go towards Düsseldorf, Worms, Solm, Ehrenbreitstein.</p>
+
+<p>Fredegarius doubts not that the Franks at first retired into Macedonia,
+and carried arms under Alexander, after having fought under Priam; on
+which alleged facts the monk Otfried compliments the emperor, Louis the
+German.</p>
+
+<p>The geographer of Ravenna, less fabulous, assigns the first habitation
+of the horde of Franks among the Cimbrians, beyond the Elbe, towards the
+Baltic Sea. These Franks might well be some remains of these barbarian
+Cimbri defeated by Marius; and the learned Leibnitz is of this opinion.</p>
+
+<p>It is very certain that, in the time of Constantine, beyond the Rhine,
+there were hordes of Franks or Sicambri, who lived by pillage. They
+assembled under bandit captains, chiefs whom historians have had the
+folly to call kings. Constantine himself pursued them to their haunts,
+caused several to be hanged, and others to be delivered to wild beasts,
+in the amphitheatre of Trier, for his amusement. Two of their pretended
+kings perished in this manner, at which the panegyrists of Constantine
+are in ecstasies.</p>
+
+<p>The Salic law, written, it is said, by these barbarians, is one of the
+absurd chimeras with which we have always been pestered. It would be
+very strange if the Franks had written such a considerable code in their
+marshes, and the French had not any written usages until the close of
+the reign of Charles VII. It might as well be said that the Algonquins
+and Chicachas had written laws. Men are never governed by authentic
+laws, consigned to public records, until they have been assembled into
+cities, and have a regular police, archives, and all that characterizes
+a civilized nation. When you find a code in a nation which was barbarous
+at the time it was written, who lived upon rapine and pillage, and which
+had not a walled town, you may be sure that this code is a pretended
+one, which has been made in much later times. Fallacies and suppositions
+never obliterate this truth from the minds of the wise.</p>
+
+<p>What is more ridiculous still, this Salic law has been given to us in
+Latin; as if savages, wandering beyond the Rhine, had learnt the Latin
+language. It is supposed to have been first digested by Clovis, and it
+ran thus: "While the illustrious nation of the Franks was still
+considered barbarous, the heads of this nation dictated the Salic law.
+They chose among themselves four chiefs, Visogast, Bodogast, Sologast,
+Vindogast"&mdash;taking, according to La Fontaine's fable, the names of
+places for those of men:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Notre magot prit pour ce coup</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Le nom d'un port pour un nom d'homme.</i></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>These names are those of some Frank cantons in the province of Worms.
+Whatever may be the epoch in which the customs denominated the Salic law
+were constructed on an ancient tradition, it is very clear that the
+Franks were not great legislators.</p>
+
+<p>What is the original meaning of the word "Frank?" That is a question of
+which we know nothing, and which above a hundred authors have endeavored
+to find out. What is the meaning of Hun, Alan, Goth, Welsh, Picard? And
+what do these words signify?</p>
+
+<p>Were the armies of Clovis all composed of Franks? It does not appear so.
+Childeric the Frank had made inroads as far as Tournay. It is said that
+Clovis was the son of Childeric, and Queen Bazine, the wife of King
+Bazin. Now Bazin and Bazine are assuredly not German names, and we have
+never seen the least proof that Clovis was their son. All the German
+cantons elected their chiefs, and the province of Franks had no doubt
+elected Clovis as they had done his father. He made his expedition
+against the Gauls, as all the other barbarians had undertaken theirs
+against the Roman Empire.</p>
+
+<p>Do you really and truly believe that the Herulian Odo, surnamed Acer by
+the Romans, and known to us by the name of Odoacer, had only Herulians
+in his train, and that Genseric conducted Vandals alone into Africa? All
+the wretches without talent or profession, who have nothing to lose, do
+they not always join the first captain of robbers who raises the
+standard of destruction?</p>
+
+<p>As soon as Clovis had the least success, his troops were no doubt joined
+by all the Belgians who panted for booty; and this army is nevertheless
+called the army of Franks. The expedition is very easy. The Visigoths
+had already invaded one-third of Gaul, and the Burgundians another. The
+rest submitted to Clovis. The Franks divided the land of the vanquished,
+and the Welsh cultivated it.</p>
+
+<p>The word "Frank" originally signified a free possessor, while the others
+were slaves. Hence come the words "franchise," and "to enfranchise"&mdash;"I
+make you a Frank," "I render you a free man." Hence, <i>francalenus</i>,
+holding freely; <i>frank aleu</i>, <i>frank dad</i>, <i>frank chamen</i>, and so many
+other terms half Latin and half barbarian, which have so long composed
+the miserable patois spoken in France.</p>
+
+<p>Hence, also, a franc in gold or silver to express the money of the king
+of the Franks, which did not appear until a long time after, but which
+reminds us of the origin of the monarchy. We still say twenty francs,
+twenty livres, which signifies nothing in itself; it gives no idea of
+the weight or value of the money, being only a vague expression, by
+which ignorant people have been continually deceived, not knowing really
+how much they receive or how much they pay.</p>
+
+<p>Charlemagne did not consider himself as a Frank; he was born in
+Austrasia, and spoke the German language. He was of the family of
+Arnold, bishop of Metz, preceptor to Dagobert. Now it is not probable
+that a man chosen for a preceptor was a Frank. He made the greatest
+glory of the most profound ignorance, and was acquainted only with the
+profession of arms. But what gives most weight to the opinion that
+Charlemagne regarded the Franks as strangers to him is the fourth
+article of one of his capitularies on his farms. "If the Franks," said
+he, "commit any ravages on our possessions, let them be judged according
+to their laws."</p>
+
+<p>The Carlovingian race always passed for German: Pope Adrian IV., in his
+letter to the archbishops of Mentz, Cologne, and Trier, expresses
+himself in these remarkable terms: "The emperor was transferred from the
+Greeks to the Germans. Their king was not emperor until after he had
+been crowned by the pope.... all that the emperor possessed he held from
+us. And as Zacharius gave the Greek Empire to the Germans, we can give
+that of the Germans to the Greeks."</p>
+
+<p>However, France having been divided into eastern and western, and the
+eastern being Austrasia, this name of France prevailed so far, that even
+in the time of the Saxon emperors, the court of Constantinople always
+called them pretended Frank emperors, as may be seen in the letters of
+Bishop Luitgrand, sent from Rome to Constantinople.</p>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>Of the French Nation.</i></p>
+
+<p>When the Franks established themselves in the country of the first
+Welsh, which the Romans called Gallia, the nation was composed of
+ancient Celts or Gauls, subjugated by Cæsar, Roman families who were
+established there, Germans who had already emigrated there, and finally
+of the Franks, who had rendered themselves masters of the country under
+their chief Clovis. While the monarchy existed, which united Gaul and
+Germany, all the people, from the source of the Weser to the seas of
+Gaul, bore the name of Franks. But when at the congress of Verdun, in
+843, under Charles the Bald, Germany and Gaul were separated, the name
+of Franks remained to the people of western France, which alone retained
+the name of France.</p>
+
+<p>The name of French was scarcely known until towards the tenth century.
+The foundation of the nation is of Gallic families, and traces of the
+character of the ancient Gauls have always existed.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, every people has its character, as well as every man; and this
+character is generally formed of all the resemblances caused by nature
+and custom among the inhabitants of the varieties which distinguish
+them. Thus French character, genius, and wit, result from that which has
+been common to the different provinces in the kingdom. The people of
+Guienne and those of Normandy differ much; there is, however, found in
+them the French genius, which forms a nation of these different
+provinces, and distinguishes them from the Indians and Germans. Climate
+and soil evidently imprint unchangeable marks on men, as well as on
+animals and plants. Those which depend on government, religion, and
+education are different. That is the knot which explains how people have
+lost one part of their ancient character and preserved the other. A
+people who formerly conquered half the world are no longer recognized
+under sacerdotal government, but the seeds of their ancient greatness of
+soul still exist, though hidden beneath weakness.</p>
+
+<p>In the same manner the barbarous government of the Turks has enervated
+the Egyptians and the Greeks, without having been able to destroy the
+original character or temper of their minds.</p>
+
+<p>The present character of the French is the same as Cæsar ascribed to the
+Gauls&mdash;prompt to resolve, ardent to combat, impetuous in attack, and
+easily discouraged. Cæsar, Agatius, and others say, that of all the
+barbarians the Gauls were the most polished. They are still in the most
+civilized times the model of politeness to all their neighbors, though
+they occasionally discover the remains of their levity, petulance, and
+barbarity.</p>
+
+<p>The inhabitants of the coasts of France were always good seamen; the
+people of Guienne always compose the best infantry; "those who inhabit
+the provinces of Blois and Tours are not," says Tasso, "robust and
+indefatigable, but bland and gentle, like the land which they inhabit."</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>.... Gente robusta, e faticosa,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>La terra molle, e lieta, e dilettosa</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Simili a se gli abitator, produce.</i></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>But how can we reconcile the character of the Parisians of our day with
+that which the Emperor Julian, the first of princes and men after Marcus
+Aurelius, gave to the Parisians of his time?&mdash;"I love this people," says
+he in his "<i>Misopogon</i>," "because they are serious and severe like
+myself." This seriousness, which seems at present banished from an
+immense city become the centre of pleasure, then reigned in a little
+town destitute of amusements: in this respect the spirit of the
+Parisians has changed notwithstanding the climate.</p>
+
+<p>The affluence, opulence, and idleness of the people who may occupy
+themselves with pleasures and the arts, and not with the government,
+have given a new turn of mind to a whole nation.</p>
+
+<p>Further, how is it to be explained by what degrees this people have
+passed from the fierceness which characterized them in the time of King
+John, Charles VI., Charles IX., Henry III., and Henry IV., to the soft
+facility of manners for which they are now the admiration of Europe? It
+is that the storms of government and religion forced constitutional
+vivacity into paroxysms of faction and fanaticism; and that this same
+vivacity, which always will exist, has at present no object but the
+pleasures of society. The Parisian is impetuous in his pleasures as he
+formerly was in his fierceness. The original character which is caused
+by the climate is always the same. If at present he cultivates the
+arts, of which he was so long deprived, it is not that he has another
+mind, since he has not other organs; but it is that he has more relief,
+and this relief has not been created by himself, as by the Greeks and
+Florentines, among whom the arts flourished like the natural fruits of
+their soil. The Frenchman has only received them, but having happily
+cultivated and adopted these exotics, he has almost perfected them.</p>
+
+<p>The French government was originally that of all the northern
+nations&mdash;of all those whose policy was regulated in general assemblies
+of the nation. Kings were the chief of these assemblies; and this was
+almost the only administration of the French in the first two
+generations, before Charles the Simple.</p>
+
+<p>When the monarchy was dismembered, in the decline of the Carlovingian
+race, when the kingdom of Aries arose, and the provinces were occupied
+by vassals little dependent on the crown, the name of French was more
+restricted. Under Hugh Capet, Henry, and Philip, the people on this side
+the Loire only, were called French. There was then seen a great
+diversity of manners and of laws in the provinces held from the crown of
+France. The particular lords who became the masters of these provinces
+introduced new customs into their new states. A Breton and a Fleming
+have at present some conformity, notwithstanding the difference of
+their character, which they hold from the sun and the climate, but
+originally there was not the least similitude between them.</p>
+
+<p>It is only since the time of Francis I. that there has been any
+uniformity in manners and customs. The court, at this time, first began
+to serve for a model to the United Provinces; but in general,
+impetuosity in war, and a lax discipline, always formed the predominant
+character of the nation.</p>
+
+<p>Gallantry and politeness began to distinguish the French under Francis
+I. Manners became odious after the death of Francis II. However, in the
+midst of their horrors, there was always a politeness at court which the
+Germans and English endeavored to imitate. The rest of Europe, in aiming
+to resemble the French, were already jealous of them. A character in one
+of Shakespeare's comedies says that it is difficult to be polite without
+having been at the court of France.</p>
+
+<p>Though the nation has been taxed with frivolity by Cæsar, and by all
+neighboring nations, yet this kingdom, so long dismembered, and so often
+ready to sink, is united and sustained principally by the wisdom of its
+negotiations, address, and patience; but above all, by the divisions of
+Germany and England. Brittany alone has been united to the kingdom by a
+marriage; Burgundy by right of fee, and by the ability of Louis XI.;
+Dauphiny by a donation, which was the fruit of policy; the county of
+Toulouse by a grant, maintained by an army; Provence by money. One
+treaty of peace has given Alsace, another Lorraine. The English have
+been driven from France, notwithstanding the most signal victories,
+because the kings of France have known how to temporize, and profit on
+all favorable occasions;&mdash;all which proves, that if the French youth are
+frivolous, the men of riper age, who govern it, have always been wise.
+Even at present the magistracy are severe in manners, as in the time of
+the Emperor Julian. If the first successes in Italy, in the time of
+Charles VIII., were owing to the warlike impetuosity of the nation, the
+disgraces which followed them were caused by the blindness of a court
+which was composed of young men alone. Francis I. was only unfortunate
+in his youth, when all was governed by favorites of his own age, and he
+rendered his kingdom more flourishing at a more advanced age.</p>
+
+<p>The French have always used the same arms as their neighbors, and have
+nearly the same discipline in war, but were the first who discarded the
+lance and pike. The battle of Ivry discouraged the use of lances, which
+were soon abolished, and under Louis XIV. pikes were also discontinued.
+They wore tunics and robes until the sixteenth century. Under Louis the
+Young they left off the custom of letting the beards grow, and retook to
+it under Francis I. Only under Louis XIV. did they begin to shave the
+entire face. Their dress is continually changing, and at the end of each
+century the French might take the portraits of their grandfathers for
+those of foreigners.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FRAUD" id="FRAUD"></a>FRAUD.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Whether pious Frauds should be practised upon the People.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Once upon a time the fakir Bambabef met one of the disciples of
+Confutzee (whom we call Confucius), and this disciple was named Whang.
+Bambabef maintained that the people require to be deceived, and Whang
+asserted that we should never deceive any one. Here is a sketch of their
+dispute:</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">BAMBABEF</span>.&mdash;We must imitate the Supreme Being, who does not show us
+things as they are. He makes us see the sun with a diameter of two or
+three feet, although it is a million of times larger than the earth. He
+makes us see the moon and the stars affixed to one and the same blue
+surface, while they are at different elevations; he chooses that a
+square tower should appear round to us at a distance; he chooses that
+fire should appear to us to be hot, although it is neither hot nor cold;
+in short, he surrounds us with errors, suitable to our nature.</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">WHANG</span>.&mdash;What you call error is not so. The sun, such as it is, placed at
+millions of millions of lis from our globe, is not that which we see,
+that which we really perceive: we perceive only the sun which is painted
+on our retina, at a determinate angle. Our eyes were not given us to
+know sizes and distances: to know these, other aids and other
+operations are necessary.</p>
+
+<p>Bambabef seemed much astonished at this position. Whang, being very
+patient, explained to him the theory of optics; and Bambabef, having
+some conception, was convinced by the demonstrations of the disciple of
+Confucius. He then resumed in these terms:</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">BAMBABEF</span>.&mdash;If God does not, as I thought, deceive us by the ministry of
+our senses, you will at least acknowledge that our physicians are
+constantly deceiving children for their good. They tell them that they
+are giving them sugar, when in reality they are giving them rhubarb. I,
+a fakir, may then deceive the people, who are as ignorant as children.</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">WHANG</span>.&mdash;I have two sons; I have never deceived them. When they have been
+sick, I have said to them: "Here is a nauseous medicine; you must have
+the courage to take it; if it were pleasant, it would injure you." I
+have never suffered their nurses and tutors to make them afraid of
+ghosts, goblins, and witches. I have thereby made them wise and
+courageous citizens.</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">BAMBABEF</span>.&mdash;The people are not born so happily as your family.</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">WHANG</span>.&mdash;Men all nearly resemble one another; they are born with the same
+dispositions. Their nature ought not to be corrupted.</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">BAMBABEF</span>.&mdash;We teach them errors, I own; but it is for their good. We
+make them believe that if they do not buy our blessed nails, if they do
+not expiate their sins by giving us money, they will, in another life,
+become post-horses, dogs, or lizards. This intimidates them, and they
+become good people.</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">WHANG</span>.&mdash;Do you not see that you are perverting these poor folks? There
+are among them many more than you think there are who reason, who make a
+jest of your miracles and your superstitions; who see very clearly that
+they will not be turned into lizards, nor into post-horses. What is the
+consequence? They have good sense enough to perceive that you talk to
+them very impertinently; but they have not enough to elevate themselves
+to a religion pure and untrammelled by superstition like ours. Their
+passions make them think there is no religion, because the only one that
+is taught them is ridiculous: thus you become guilty of all the vices
+into which they plunge.</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">BAMBABEF</span>.&mdash;Not at all, for we teach them none but good morals.</p>
+
+<p>WHANG.&mdash;The people would stone you if you taught impure morals. Men are
+so constituted that they like very well to do evil, but they will not
+have it preached to them. But a wise morality should not be mixed up
+with absurd fables: for by these impostures, which you might do without,
+you weaken that morality which you are forced to teach.</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">BAMBABEF</span>.&mdash;What! do you think that truth can be taught to the people
+without the aid of fables?</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">WHANG</span>.&mdash;I firmly believe it. Our literati are made of the same stuff as
+our tailors, our weavers, and our laborers. They worship a creating,
+rewarding, and avenging God. They do not sully their worship by absurd
+systems, nor by extravagant ceremonies. There are much fewer crimes
+among the lettered than among the people; why should we not condescend
+to instruct our working classes as we do our literati?</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">BAMBABEF</span>.&mdash;That would be great folly; as well might you wish them to
+have the same politeness, or to be all jurisconsults. It is neither
+possible nor desirable. There must be white bread for the master, and
+brown for the servant.</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">WHANG</span>.&mdash;I own that men should not all have the same science; but there
+are things necessary to all. It is necessary that each one should be
+just; and the surest way of inspiring all men with justice is to inspire
+them with religion without superstition.</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">BAMBABEF</span>.&mdash;That is a fine project, but it is impracticable. Do you think
+it is sufficient for men to believe in a being that rewards and
+punishes? You have told me that the more acute among the people often
+revolt against fables. They will, in like manner, revolt against truth.
+They will say: Who shall assure me that God rewards and punishes? Where
+is the proof? What mission have you? What miracle have you worked that I
+should believe in you? They will laugh at you much more than at me.</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">WHANG</span>.&mdash;Your error is this: You imagine that men will spurn an idea that
+is honest, likely, and useful to every one; an idea which accords with
+human reason, because they reject things which are dishonest, absurd,
+useless, dangerous, and shocking to good sense.</p>
+
+<p>The people are much disposed to believe their magistrates; and when
+their magistrates propose to them only a rational belief, they embrace
+it willingly. There is no need of prodigies to believe in a just God,
+who reads the heart of man: this is an idea too natural, too necessary,
+to be combated. It is not necessary to know precisely how God rewards
+and punishes: to believe in His justice is enough. I assure you that I
+have seen whole towns with scarcely any other tenet; and that in them I
+have seen the most virtue.</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">BAMBABEF</span>.&mdash;Take heed what you say. You will find philosophers in these
+times, who will deny both pains and rewards.</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">WHANG</span>.&mdash;But you will acknowledge that these philosophers will much more
+strongly deny your inventions; so you will gain nothing by that.
+Supposing that there are philosophers who do not agree with my
+principles, they are not the less honest men; they do not the less
+cultivate virtue, which should be embraced through love, and not through
+fear. Moreover, I maintain that no philosopher can ever be assured that
+Providence does not reserve pains for the wicked, and rewards for the
+good. For, if they ask me who has told me that God punishes, I shall ask
+them who has told them that God does not punish. In short, I maintain
+that the philosophers, far from contradicting, will aid me. Will you be
+a philosopher?</p>
+
+<p><span class="small">BAMBABEF</span>.&mdash;With all my heart. But do not tell the fakirs. And let us,
+above all, remember that if a philosopher would be of service to human
+society, he must announce a God.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FREE-WILL" id="FREE-WILL"></a>FREE-WILL.</h3>
+
+
+<p>From the commencement of the time in which men began to reason,
+philosophers have agitated this question, which theologians have
+rendered unintelligible by their absurd subtleties upon grace. Locke is
+perhaps the first who, without having the arrogance of announcing a
+general principle, has examined human nature by analysis. It has been
+disputed for three thousand years, whether the will is free or not;
+Locke shows that the question is absurd, and that liberty cannot belong
+to the will any more than color and motion.</p>
+
+<p>What is meant by the expression to be free? It signifies power, or
+rather it has no sense at all. To say that the will <i>can</i>, is in itself
+as ridiculous as if we said that it is yellow, or blue, round, or
+square.</p>
+
+<p>Will is will, and liberty is power. Let us gradually examine the chain
+of what passes within us, without confusing our minds with any
+scholastic terms, or antecedent principle.</p>
+
+<p>It is proposed to you to ride on horseback; it is absolutely necessary
+for you to make a choice, for it is very clear that you must either go
+or not; there is no medium, you must absolutely do the one or the other.
+So far it is demonstrated that the will is not free. You will get on
+horseback; why? Because I will to do so, an ignoramus will say. This
+reply is an absurdity; nothing can be done without reason or cause. Your
+will then is caused by what? The agreeable idea which is presented to
+your brain; the predominant, or determined idea; but, you will say,
+cannot I resist an idea which predominates over me? No, for what would
+be the cause of your resistance? An idea by which your will is swayed
+still more despotically.</p>
+
+<p>You receive your ideas, and, therefore, receive your will. You will then
+necessarily; consequently, the word "liberty" belongs not to will in any
+sense.</p>
+
+<p>You ask me how thought and will are formed within you? I answer that I
+know nothing about it. I no more know how ideas are created than I know
+how the world was formed. We are only allowed to grope in the dark in
+reference to all that inspires our incomprehensible machine.</p>
+
+<p>Will, then, is not a faculty which can be called free. "Free-will" is a
+word absolutely devoid of sense, and that which scholars have called
+"indifference," that is to say, will without cause, is a chimera
+unworthy to be combated.</p>
+
+<p>In what then consists liberty? In the power of doing what we will? I
+would go into my cabinet; the door is open, I am free to enter. But, say
+you, if the door is shut and I remain where I am, I remain freely. Let
+us explain ourselves&mdash;you then exercise the power that you possess of
+remaining; you possess this power, but not the power of going out.</p>
+
+<p>Liberty, then, on which so many volumes have been written, reduced to
+its proper sense, is only the power of acting.</p>
+
+<p>In what sense must the expression "this man is free" be spoken? In the
+same sense in which we use the words "health," "strength," and
+"happiness." Man is not always strong, healthy, or happy. A great
+passion, a great obstacle, may deprive him of his liberty, or power of
+action.</p>
+
+<p>The words "liberty" and "free-will" are, then, abstractions, general
+terms, like beauty, goodness, justice. These terms do not signify that
+all men are always handsome, good, and just, neither are they always
+free.</p>
+
+<p>Further, liberty being only the power of acting, what is this power? It
+is the effect of the constitution, and the actual state of our organs.
+Leibnitz would solve a problem of geometry, but falls into an apoplexy;
+he certainly has not the liberty to solve his problem. A vigorous young
+man, passionately in love, who holds his willing mistress in his arms,
+is he free to subdue his passion? Doubtless not. He has the power of
+enjoying, and has not the power to abstain. Locke then is very right in
+calling liberty, power. When can this young man abstain, notwithstanding
+the violence of his passion? When a stronger idea shall determine the
+springs of his soul and body to the contrary.</p>
+
+<p>But how? Have other animals the same liberty, the same power? Why not?
+They have sense, memory, sentiment, and perceptions like ourselves; they
+act spontaneously as we do. They must, also, like us, have the power of
+acting by virtue of their perception, and of the play of their organs.</p>
+
+<p>We exclaim: If it be thus, all things are machines merely; everything in
+the universe is subjected to the eternal laws. Well, would you have
+everything rendered subject to a million of blind caprices? Either all
+is the consequence of the nature of things, or all is the effect of the
+eternal order of an absolute master; in both cases, we are only wheels
+to the machine of the world.</p>
+
+<p>It is a foolish, common-place expression that without this pretended
+freedom of will, rewards and punishments are useless. Reason, and you
+will conclude quite the contrary.</p>
+
+<p>If, when a robber is executed, his accomplice, who sees him suffer, has
+the liberty of not being frightened at the punishment; if his will
+determines of itself, he will go from the foot of the scaffold to
+assassinate on the high road; if struck with horror, he experiences an
+insurmountable terror, he will no longer thieve. The punishment of his
+companion will become useful to him, and moreover prove to society that
+his will is not free.</p>
+
+<p>Liberty, then, is not and cannot be anything but the power of doing what
+we will. That is what philosophy teaches us. But, if we consider liberty
+in the theological sense, it is so sublime a matter that profane eyes
+may not be raised so high.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FRENCH_LANGUAGE" id="FRENCH_LANGUAGE"></a>FRENCH LANGUAGE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The French language did not begin to assume a regular form until the
+tenth century; it sprang from the remains of the Latin and the Celtic,
+mixed with a few Teutonic words. This language was, in the first
+instance, the provincial Roman, and the Teutonic was the language of the
+courts, until the time of Charles the Bald. The Teutonic remained the
+only language in Germany, after the grand epoch of the division in 433.
+The rustic Roman prevailed in Western France; the inhabitants of the
+Pays de Vaud, of the Valois, of the valley of Engadine, and some other
+cantons, still preserve some manifest vestiges of this idiom.</p>
+
+<p>At the commencement of the eleventh century, French began to be written;
+but this French retained more of Romance or rustic Roman than of the
+language of the present day. The romance of Philomena, written in the
+tenth century, is not very different in language from that of the laws
+of the Normans. We cannot yet trace the original Celtic, Latin, and
+German. The words which signify the members of the human body, or
+things in daily use, which have no relation to the Latin or German, are
+of ancient Gallic or Celtic, as <i>tête</i>, <i>jambe</i>, <i>sabre</i>, <i>point</i>,
+<i>alter</i>, <i>parler</i>, <i>écouter</i>, <i>regarder</i>, <i>crier</i>, <i>cotume</i>, <i>ensemble</i>,
+and many more of the same kind. The greater number of the warlike
+phrases were French or German, as <i>marche, halte, maréchal, bivouac,
+lansquenet</i>. Almost, all the rest are Latin, and the Latin words have
+been all abridged, according to the usage and genius of the nations of
+the north.</p>
+
+<p>In the twelfth century, some terms were borrowed from the philosophy of
+Aristotle; and toward the sixteenth century, Greek names were found for
+the parts of the human body, and for its maladies and their remedies.
+Although the language was then enriched with Greek, and aided from the
+time of Charles VIII. with considerable accessions from the Italian,
+already arrived at perfection, it did not acquire a regular form.
+Francis I. abolished the custom of pleading and of judging in Latin,
+which proved the barbarism of a language which could not be used in
+public proceedings&mdash;a pernicious custom to the natives, whose fortunes
+were regulated in a language which they could not understand. It then
+became necessary to cultivate the French, but the language was neither
+noble nor regular, and its syntax was altogether capricious. The genius
+of its conversation being turned towards pleasantry, the language became
+fertile in smart and lively expressions, but exceedingly barren in
+dignified and harmonious phrases; whence it arises that in the
+dictionaries of rhymes, twenty suitable words are found for comic poetry
+for one of poetry of a more elevated nature. This was the cause that
+Marot never succeeded in the serious style, and that Amyot was unable to
+give a version of the elegant simplicity of Plutarch.</p>
+
+<p>The French tongue acquired strength from the pen of Montaigne, but still
+wanted elevation and harmony. Ronsard injured the language by
+introducing into French poetry the Greek compounds, derivable from the
+physicians. Malherbe partly repaired the fault of Ronsard. It became
+more lofty and harmonious by the establishment of the French Academy,
+and finally in the age of Louis XIV. acquired the perfection by which it
+is now distinguished.</p>
+
+<p>The genius of the French language&mdash;for every language has its genius&mdash;is
+clearness and order. This genius consists in the facility which a
+language possesses of expressing itself more or less happily, and of
+employing or rejecting the familiar terms of other languages. The French
+tongue having no declensions, and being aided by articles, cannot adopt
+the inversions of the Greek and the Latin; the words are necessarily
+arranged agreeably to the course of the ideas. We can only say in one
+way, "<i>Plancus a pris soin des affaires de Cæsar</i>"; but this phrase in
+Latin, "<i>Res Cæsaris, Plancus diligenter curavit</i>" may be arranged in a
+hundred and twenty different forms without injuring the sense or rules
+of the language. The auxiliary verbs, which lengthen and weaken phrases
+in the modern tongues, render that of France still less adapted to the
+lapidary style. Its auxiliary verbs, its pronouns, its articles, its
+deficiency of declinable participles, and, lastly, its uniformity of
+position, preclude the exhibition of much enthusiasm in poetry; it
+possesses fewer capabilities of this nature than the Italian and the
+English; but this constraint and slavery render it more proper for
+tragedy and comedy than any language in Europe. The natural order in
+which the French people are obliged to express their thoughts and
+construct their phrases, infuses into their speech a facility and
+amenity which please everybody; and the genius of the nation suiting
+with the genius of the language, has produced a greater number of books
+agreeably written than are to be found among any other people.</p>
+
+<p>Social freedom and politeness having been for a long time established in
+France, the language has acquired a delicacy of expression, and a
+natural refinement which are seldom to be found out of it. This
+refinement has occasionally been carried too far; but men of taste have
+always known how to reduce it within due bounds.</p>
+
+<p>Many persons have maintained that the French language has been
+impoverished since the days of Montaigne and Amyot, because expressions
+abound in these authors which are no longer employed; but these are for
+the most part terms for which equivalents have been found. It has been
+enriched with a number of noble and energetic expressions, and, without
+adverting to the eloquence of matter, has certainly that of speech. It
+was during the reign of Louis XIV., as already observed, that the
+language was fixed. Whatever changes time and caprice may have in store,
+the good authors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries will always
+serve for models.</p>
+
+<p>Circumstances created no right to expect that France would be
+distinguished in philosophy. A Gothic government extinguished all kind
+of illumination during more than twelve centuries; and professors of
+error, paid for brutalizing human nature, more increased the darkness.
+Nevertheless, there is more philosophy in Paris than in any town on
+earth, and possibly than in all the towns put together, excepting
+London. The spirit of reason has even penetrated into the provinces. In
+a word, the French genius is probably at present equal to that of
+England in philosophy; while for the last four-score years France has
+been superior to all other nations in literature; and has undeniably
+taken the lead in the courtesies of society, and in that easy and
+natural politeness, which is improperly termed urbanity.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FRIENDSHIP" id="FRIENDSHIP"></a>FRIENDSHIP.</h3>
+
+<p>The temple of friendship has long been known by name, but it is well
+known that it has been very little frequented; as the following verses
+pleasantly observe, Orestes, Pylades, Pirithous, Achates, and the tender
+Nisus, were all genuine friends and great heroes; but, alas, existent
+only in fable:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>En vieux langage on voit sur la façade,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Les noms sacrés d'Oreste et de Pylade;</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Le médaillon du bon Pirithous,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Du sage Achate et du tendre Nisus;</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Tous grands héros, tous amis véritables;</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Ces noms sont beaux; mais ils sont dans les fables.</i></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Friendship commands more than love and esteem. Love your neighbor
+signifies assist your neighbor, but not&mdash;enjoy his conversation with
+pleasure, if he be tiresome; confide to him your secrets, if he be a
+tattler; or lend him your money, if he be a spendthrift.</p>
+
+<p>Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to
+divorce. It is a tacit contract between two sensible and virtuous
+persons. I say sensible, for a monk or a hermit cannot be so, who lives
+without knowing friendship. I say virtuous, for the wicked only have
+accomplices&mdash;the voluptuous, companions&mdash;the interested, associates;
+politicians assemble factions&mdash;the generality of idle men have
+connections&mdash;princes, courtiers. Virtuous men alone possess friends.</p>
+
+<p>Cethegus was the accomplice of Catiline, and Mæcenas the courtier of
+Octavius; but Cicero was the friend of Atticus.</p>
+
+<p>What is caused by this contract between two tender, honest minds? Its
+obligations are stronger or weaker according to the degrees of
+sensibility, and the number of services rendered.</p>
+
+<p>The enthusiasm of friendship has been stronger among the Greeks and
+Arabs than among us. The tales that these people have imagined on the
+subject of friendship are admirable; we have none to compare to them. We
+are rather dry and reserved&mdash;in everything. I see no great trait of
+friendship in our histories, romances, or theatre.</p>
+
+<p>The only friendship spoken of among the Jews, was that which existed
+between Jonathan and David. It is said that David loved him with a love
+stronger than that of women; but it is also said that David, after the
+death of his friend, dispossessed Mephibosheth, his son, and caused him
+to be put to death.</p>
+
+<p>Friendship was a point of religion and legislation among the Greeks. The
+Thebans had a regiment of lovers&mdash;a fine regiment; some have taken it
+for a regiment of nonconformists. They are deceived; it is taking a
+shameful accident for a noble principle. Friendship, among the Greeks,
+was prescribed by the laws and religion. Manners countenanced abuses,
+but the laws did not.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="FRIVOLITY" id="FRIVOLITY"></a>FRIVOLITY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>What persuades me still more of the existence of Providence, said the
+profound author of "<i>Bacha Billeboquet</i>," is that to console us for our
+innumerable miseries, nature has made us frivolous. We are sometimes
+ruminating oxen, overcome by the weight of our yoke; sometimes
+dispersed doves, tremblingly endeavoring to avoid the claws of the
+vulture, stained with the blood of our companions; foxes, pursued by
+dogs; and tigers, who devour one another. Then we suddenly become
+butterflies; and forget, in our volatile winnowings, all the horrors
+that we have experienced.</p>
+
+<p>If we were not frivolous, what man without shuddering, could live in a
+town in which the wife of a marshal of France, a lady of honor to the
+queen, was burned, under the pretext that she had killed a white cock by
+moonlight; or in the same town in which Marshal Marillac was
+assassinated according to form, pursuant to a sentence passed by
+judicial murderers appointed by a priest in his own country house, in
+which he embraced Marion de Lorme while these robed wretches executed
+his sanguinary wishes?</p>
+
+<p>Could a man say to himself, without trembling in every nerve, and having
+his heart frozen with horror: "Here I am, in the very place which, it is
+said, was strewed with the dead and dying bodies of two thousand young
+gentlemen, murdered near the Faubourg St. Antoine, because one man in a
+red cassock displeased some others in black ones!"</p>
+
+<p>Who could pass the Rue de la Féronerie without shedding tears and
+falling into paroxysms of rage against the holy and abominable
+principles which plunged the sword into the heart of the best of men,
+and of the greatest of kings?</p>
+
+<p>We could not walk a step in the streets of Paris on St. Bartholomew's
+day, without saying: "It was here that one of my ancestors was murdered
+for the love of God; it was here that one of my mother's family was
+dragged bleeding and mangled; it was here that one-half of my countrymen
+murdered the other."</p>
+
+<p>Happily, men are so light, so frivolous, so struck with the present and
+so insensible to the past, that in ten thousand there are not above two
+or three who make these reflections.</p>
+
+<p>How many boon companions have I seen, who, after the loss of children,
+wives, mistresses, fortune, and even health itself, have eagerly
+resorted to a party to retail a piece of scandal, or to a supper to tell
+humorous stories. Solidity consists chiefly in a uniformity of ideas. It
+has been said that a man of sense should invariably think in the same
+way; reduced to such an alternative, it would be better not to have been
+born. The ancients never invented a finer fable than that which bestowed
+a cup of the water of Lethe on all who entered the Elysian fields.</p>
+
+<p>If you would tolerate life, mortals, forget yourselves, and enjoy it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GALLANT" id="GALLANT"></a>GALLANT.</h3>
+
+
+<p>This word is derived from "<i>gal</i>" the original signification of which
+was gayety and rejoicing, as may be seen in Alain Chartier, and in
+Froissart. Even in the "Romance of the Rose" we meet with the word
+"<i>galandé</i>" in the sense of ornamented, adorned.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>La belle fut bien attornie</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Et d'un filet d'or galandée.</i></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>It is probable that the <i>gala</i> of the Italians, and the <i>galan</i> of the
+Spaniards, are derived from the word "<i>gal</i>" which seems to be
+originally Celtic; hence, was insensibly formed <i>gallant</i>, which
+signifies a man forward, or eager to please. The term received an
+improved and more noble signification in the times of chivalry, when the
+desire to please manifested itself in feats of arms, and personal
+conflict. To conduct himself gallantly, to extricate himself from an
+affair gallantly, implies, even at present, a man's conducting himself
+conformably to principle and honor. A gallant man among the English,
+signifies a man of courage; in France it means more&mdash;a man of noble
+general demeanor. A gallant (<i>un homme galant</i>) is totally different
+from a gallant man (<i>un galant homme</i>); the latter means a man of
+respectable and honorable feeling&mdash;the former, something nearer the
+character of a <i>petit maître</i> a man successfully addicted to intrigue.
+Being gallant (<i>être galant</i>) in general implies an assiduity to please
+by studious attentions, and flattering deference. "He was exceedingly
+gallant to those ladies," means merely, he behaved more than politely to
+them; but being the gallant of a lady is an expression of stronger
+meaning; it signifies being her lover; the word is scarcely any longer
+in use in this sense, except in low or familiar poetry. A gallant is not
+merely a man devoted to and successful in intrigue, but the term
+implies, moreover, somewhat of impudence and effrontery, in which sense
+Fontaine uses it in the following: "<i>Mais un 'galant,' chercheur des
+pucelages</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Thus are various meanings attached to the same word. The case is similar
+with the term "gallantry," which sometimes signifies a disposition to
+coquetry, and a habit of flattery; sometimes a present of some elegant
+toy, or piece of jewelry; sometimes intrigue, with one woman or with
+many; and, latterly, it has even been applied to signify ironically the
+favors of Venus; thus, to talk gallantries, to give gallantries, to have
+gallantries, to contract a gallantry, express very different meanings.
+Nearly all the terms which occur frequently in conversation acquire, in
+the same manner, various shades of meaning, which it is difficult to
+discriminate; the meaning of terms of art is more precise and less
+arbitrary.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GARGANTUA" id="GARGANTUA"></a>GARGANTUA.</h3>
+
+
+<p>If ever a reputation was fixed on a solid basis, it is that of
+Gargantua. Yet in the present age of philosophy and criticism, some rash
+and daring minds have started forward, who have ventured to deny the
+prodigies believed respecting this extraordinary man&mdash;persons who have
+carried their skepticism so far as even to doubt his very existence.</p>
+
+<p>How is it possible, they ask, that there should have existed in the
+sixteenth century a distinguished hero, never mentioned by a single
+contemporary, by St. Ignatius, Cardinal Capitan, Galileo, or
+Guicciardini, and respecting whom the registers of the Sorbonne do not
+contain the slightest notice?</p>
+
+<p>Investigate the histories of France, of Germany, of England, Spain, and
+other countries, and you find not a single word about Gargantua. His
+whole life, from his birth to his death, is a tissue of inconceivable
+prodigies.</p>
+
+<p>His mother, Gargamelle, was delivered of him from the left ear. Almost
+at the instant of his birth he called out for a drink, with a voice that
+was heard even in the districts of Beauce and Vivarais. Sixteen ells of
+cloth were required to make him breeches, and a hundred hides of brown
+cows were used in his shoes. He had not attained the age of twelve years
+before he gained a great battle, and founded the abbey of Thélème.
+Madame Badebec was given to him in marriage, and Badebec is proved to be
+a Syrian name.</p>
+
+<p>He is represented to have devoured six pilgrims in a mere salad, and the
+river Seine is stated to have flowed entirely from his person, so that
+the Parisians are indebted for their beautiful river to him alone.</p>
+
+<p>All this is considered contrary to nature by our carping philosophers,
+who scruple to admit even what is probable, unless it is well supported
+by evidence.</p>
+
+<p>They observe, that if the Parisians have always believed in Gargantua,
+that is no reason why other nations should believe in him; that if
+Gargantua had really performed one single prodigy out of the many
+attributed to him, the whole world would have resounded with it, all
+records would have noticed it, and a hundred monuments would have
+attested it. In short, they very unceremoniously treat the Parisians who
+believe in Gargantua as ignorant simpletons and superstitious idiots,
+with whom are inter-mixed a few hypocrites, who pretend to believe in
+Gargantua, in order to obtain some convenient priorship in the abbey of
+Thélème.</p>
+
+<p>The reverend Father Viret, a Cordelier of full-sleeved dignity, a
+confessor of ladies, and a preacher to the king, has replied to our
+Pyrrhonean philosophers in a manner decisive and invincible. He very
+learnedly proves that if no writer, with the exception of Rabelais, has
+mentioned the prodigies of Gargantua, at least, no historian has
+contradicted them; that the sage de Thou, who was a believer in
+witchcraft, divination, and astrology, never denied the miracles of
+Gargantua. They were not even called in question by La Mothe le Vayer.
+Mézeray treated them with such respect as not to say a word against
+them, or indeed about them. These prodigies were performed before the
+eyes of all the world. Rabelais was a witness of them. It was impossible
+that he could be deceived, or that he would deceive. Had he deviated
+even in the smallest degree from the truth, all the nations of Europe
+would have been roused against him in indignation; all the gazetteers
+and journalists of the day would have exclaimed with one voice against
+the fraud and imposture.</p>
+
+<p>In vain do the philosophers reply&mdash;for they reply to everything&mdash;that,
+at the period in question, gazettes and journals were not in existence.
+It is said in return that there existed what was equivalent to them, and
+that is sufficient. Everything is impossible in the history of
+Gargantua, and from this circumstance itself may be inferred its
+incontestable truth. For if it were not true, no person could possibly
+have ventured to imagine it, and its incredibility constitutes the great
+proof that it ought to be believed.</p>
+
+<p>Open all the "Mercuries," all the "Journals de Trévoux"; those immortal
+works which teem with instruction to the race of man, and you will not
+find a single line which throws a doubt on the history of Gargantua. It
+was reserved for our own unfortunate age to produce monsters, who would
+establish a frightful Pyrrhonism, under the pretence of requiring
+evidence as nearly approaching to mathematical as the case will admit,
+and of a devotion to reason, truth, and justice. What a pity! Oh, for a
+single argument to confound them!</p>
+
+<p>Gargantua founded the abbey of Thélème. The title deeds, it is true,
+were never found; it never had any; but it exists, and produces an
+income of ten thousand pieces of gold a year. The river Seine exists,
+and is an eternal monument of the prodigious fountain from which
+Gargantua supplied so noble a stream. Moreover, what will it cost you to
+believe in him? Should you not take the safest side? Gargantua can
+procure for you wealth, honors, and influence. Philosophy can only
+bestow on you internal tranquillity and satisfaction, which you will of
+course estimate as a trifle. Believe, then, I again repeat, in
+Gargantua; if you possess the slightest portion of avarice, ambition, or
+knavery, it is the wisest part you can adopt.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GAZETTE" id="GAZETTE"></a>GAZETTE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>A narrative of public affairs. It was at the beginning of the
+seventeenth century that this useful practice was suggested and
+established at Venice, at the time when Italy still continued the centre
+of European negotiations, and Venice was the unfailing asylum of
+liberty. The leaves or sheets containing this narrative, which were
+published once a week, were called "Gazettes," from the word "gazetta,"
+the name of a small coin, amounting nearly to one of our demi-sous, then
+current at Venice. The example was afterwards followed in all the great
+cities of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Journals of this description have been established in China from time
+immemorial. The "<i>Imperial Gazette</i>" is published there every day by
+order of the court. Admitting this gazette to be true, we may easily
+believe it does not contain all that is true; neither in fact should it
+do so.</p>
+
+<p>Théophraste Renaudot, a physician, published the first gazettes in
+France in 1601, and he had an exclusive privilege for the publication,
+which continued for a long time a patrimony to his family. The like
+privilege became an object of importance at Amsterdam, and the greater
+part of the gazettes of the United Provinces are still a source of
+revenue to many of the families of magistrates, who pay writers for
+furnishing materials for them. The city of London alone publishes more
+than twelve gazettes in the course of a week. They can be printed only
+upon stamped paper, and produce no inconsiderable income to the State.</p>
+
+<p>The gazettes of China relate solely to that empire; those of the
+different states of Europe embrace the affairs of all countries.
+Although they frequently abound in false intelligence, they may
+nevertheless be considered as supplying good material for history;
+because, in general, the errors of each particular gazette are corrected
+by subsequent ones, and because they contain authentic copies of almost
+all state papers, which indeed are published in them by order of the
+sovereigns or governments themselves. The French gazettes have always
+been revised by the ministry. It is on this account that the writers of
+them have always adhered to certain forms and designations, with a
+strictness apparently somewhat inconsistent with the courtesies of
+polished society, bestowing the title of monsieur only on some
+particular descriptions of persons, and that of sieur upon others; the
+authors having forgotten that they were not speaking in the name of
+their king. These public journals, it must be added, to their praise,
+have never been debased by calumny, and have always been written with
+considerable correctness.</p>
+
+<p>The case is very different with respect to foreign gazettes; those of
+London, with the exception of the court gazette, abound frequently in
+that coarseness and licentiousness of observation which the national
+liberty allows. The French gazettes established in that country have
+been seldom written with purity, and have sometimes been not a little
+instrumental in corrupting the language. One of the greatest faults
+which has found a way into them arises from the authors having concluded
+that the ancient forms of expression used in public proclamations and in
+judicial and political proceedings and documents in France, and with
+which they were particularly conversant, were analogous to the regular
+syntax of our language, and from their having accordingly imitated that
+style in their narrative. This is like a Roman historian's using the
+style of the law of the twelve tables.</p>
+
+<p>In imitation of the political gazettes, literary ones began to be
+published in France in 1665; for the first journals were, in fact,
+simply advertisements of the works recently printed in Europe; to this
+mere announcement of publication was soon added a critical examination
+or review. Many authors were offended at it, notwithstanding its great
+moderation.</p>
+
+<p>We shall here speak only of those literary gazettes with which the
+public, who were previously in possession of various journals from every
+country in Europe in which the sciences were cultivated, were completely
+overwhelmed. These gazettes appeared at Paris about the year 1723, under
+many different names, as "The Parnassian Intelligencer," "Observations
+on New Books," etc. The greater number of them were written for the
+single purpose of making money; and as money is not to be made by
+praising authors, these productions consisted generally of satire and
+abuse. They often contained the most odious personalities, and for a
+time sold in proportion to the virulence of their malignity; but reason
+and good taste, which are always sure to prevail at last, consigned them
+eventually to contempt and oblivion.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GENEALOGY" id="GENEALOGY"></a>GENEALOGY.</h3>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION I.</h5>
+
+<p>Many volumes have been written by learned divines in order to reconcile
+St. Matthew with St. Luke on the subject of the genealogy of Jesus
+Christ. The former enumerates only twenty-seven generations from David
+through Solomon, while Luke gives forty-two, and traces the descent
+through Nathan. The following is the method in which the learned Calmet
+solves a difficulty relating to Melchizedek: The Orientals and the
+Greeks, ever abounding in fable and invention, fabricated a genealogy
+for him, in which they give us the names of his ancestors. But, adds
+this judicious Benedictine, as falsehood always betrays itself, some
+state his genealogy according to one series, and others according to
+another. There are some who maintain that he descended from a race
+obscure and degraded, and there are some who are disposed to represent
+him as illegitimate.</p>
+
+<p>This passage naturally applies to Jesus, of whom, according to the
+apostle, Melchizedek was the type or figure. In fact, the gospel of
+Nicomedes expressly states that the Jews, in the presence of Pilate,
+reproached Jesus with being born of fornication; upon which the learned
+Fabricius remarks, that it does not appear from any clear and credible
+testimony that the Jews directed to Jesus Christ during His life, or
+even to His apostles, that calumny respecting His birth which they so
+assiduously and virulently circulated afterwards. The Acts of the
+Apostles, however, inform us that the Jews of Antioch opposed
+themselves, blaspheming against what Paul spoke to them concerning
+Jesus; and Origen maintains that the passage in St. John's gospel "We
+are not born of fornication, we have never been in subjection unto any
+man" was an indirect reproach thrown out by the Jews against Jesus on
+the subject of His birth. For, as this father informs us, they pretended
+that Jesus was originally from a small hamlet of Judæa, and His mother
+nothing more than a poor villager subsisting by her labor, who, having
+been found guilty of adultery with a soldier of the name of Panther, was
+turned away by her husband, whose occupation was that of a carpenter;
+that, after this disgraceful expulsion, she wandered about miserably
+from one place to another, and was privately delivered of Jesus, who,
+pressed by the necessity of His circumstances, was compelled to go and
+hire Himself as a servant in Egypt, where He acquired some of those
+secrets which the Egyptians turn to so good an account, and then
+returned to His own country, in which, full of the miracles He was
+enabled to perform, He proclaimed Himself to be God.</p>
+
+<p>According to a very old tradition, the name of Panther, which gave
+occasion to the mistake of the Jews, was, as we are informed by St.
+Epiphanius, the surname of Joseph's father, or rather, as is asserted by
+St. John Damascene, the proper name of Mary's grandfather.</p>
+
+<p>As to the situation of servant, with which Jesus was reproached, He
+declares Himself that He came not to be served, but to serve. Zoroaster,
+according to the Arabians, had in like manner been the servant of
+Esdras. Epictetus was even born in servitude. Accordingly, St. Cyril of
+Jerusalem justly observed that it is no disgrace to any man.</p>
+
+<p>On the subject of the miracles, we learn indeed from Pliny that the
+Egyptians had the secret of dyeing with different colors, stuffs which
+were dipped in the very same furnace, and this is one of the miracles
+which the gospel of the Infancy attributes to Jesus. But, according to
+St. Chrysostom, Jesus performed no miracle before His baptism, and those
+stated to have been wrought by Him before are absolute fabrications. The
+reason assigned by this father for such an arrangement is, that the
+wisdom of God determined against Christ's performing any miracles in His
+childhood, lest they should have been regarded as impostures.</p>
+
+<p>Epiphanius in vain alleges that to deny the miracles ascribed by some to
+Jesus during His infancy, would furnish heretics with a specious pretext
+for saying that He became Son of God only in consequence of the effusion
+of the Holy Spirit, which descended upon Him at His baptism; we are
+contending here, not against heretics, but against Jews.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wagenseil has presented us with a Latin translation of a Jewish work
+entitled "<i>Toldos Jeschu</i>," in which it is related that Jeschu, being at
+Bethlehem in Judah, the place of his birth, cried out aloud, "Who are
+the wicked men that pretend I am a bastard, and spring from an impure
+origin? They are themselves bastards, themselves exceedingly impure! Was
+I not born of a virgin mother? And I entered through the crown of her
+head!"</p>
+
+<p>This testimony appeared of such importance to M. Bergier, that that
+learned divine felt no scruple about employing it without quoting his
+authority. The following are his words, in the twenty-third page of the
+"Certainty of the Proofs of Christianity": "Jesus was born of a virgin
+by the operation of the Holy Spirit. Jesus Himself frequently assured us
+of this with His own mouth; and to the same purpose is the recital of
+the apostles." It is certain that these words are only to be found in
+the "<i>Toldos Jeschu</i>"; and the certainty of that proof, among those
+adduced by M. Bergier, subsists, although St. Matthew applies to Jesus
+the passage of "Isaiah": "He shall not dispute, he shall not cry aloud,
+and no one shall hear his voice in the streets."</p>
+
+<p>According to St. Jerome, there was in like manner an ancient tradition
+among the Gymnosophists of India, that Buddha, the author of their
+creed, was born of a virgin, who was delivered of him from her side. In
+the same manner was born Julius Cæsar, Scipio Africanus, Manlius, Edward
+VI. of England, and others, by means of an operation called by surgeons
+the Cæsarian operation, because it consists in abstracting the child
+from the womb by an incision in the abdomen of the mother. Simon,
+surnamed the Magician, and Manes both pretended to have been born of
+virgins. This might, however, merely mean, that their mothers were
+virgins at the time of conceiving them. But in order to be convinced of
+the uncertainty attending the marks and evidences of virginity, it will
+be perfectly sufficient to read the commentary of M. de Pompignan, the
+celebrated bishop of Puy en Velai, on the following passage in the Book
+of Proverbs: "There are three things which are too wonderful for me,
+yea, four which I know not. The way of an eagle in the air, the way of a
+serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the
+way of a man in his youth." In order to give a literal translation of
+the passage, according to this prelate (in the third chapter of the
+second part of his work entitled "Infidelity Convinced by the
+Prophecies"), it would have been necessary to say, "<i>Viam viri in
+virgine adolescentula</i>"&mdash;The way of a man with a maid. The translation
+of our Vulgate, says he, substitutes another meaning, exact indeed and
+true, but less conformable to the original text. In short, he
+corroborates his curious interpretation by the analogy between this
+verse and the following one: "Such is the life of the adulterous woman,
+who, after having eaten, wipeth her mouth and saith, I have done no
+wickedness."</p>
+
+<p>However this may be, the virginity of Mary was not generally admitted,
+even at the beginning of the third century. "Many have entertained the
+opinion and do still," said St. Clement of Alexandria, "that Mary was
+delivered of a son without that delivery producing any change in her
+person; for some say that a midwife who visited her after the birth
+found her to retain all the marks of virginity." It is clear that St.
+Clement refers here to the gospel of the conception of Mary, in which
+the angel Gabriel says to her, "Without intercourse with man, thou, a
+virgin, shalt conceive, thou, a virgin, shalt be delivered of a child,
+thou, a virgin, shalt give suck"; and also to the first gospel of James,
+in which the midwife exclaims, "What an unheard-of wonder! Mary has just
+brought a son into the world, and yet retains all the evidences of
+virginity." These two gospels were, nevertheless, subsequently rejected
+as apocryphal, although on this point they were conformable to the
+opinion adopted by the church; the scaffolding was removed after the
+building was completed.</p>
+
+<p>What is added by Jeschu&mdash;"I entered by the crown of the head"&mdash;was
+likewise the opinion held by the church. The Breviary of the Maronites
+represents the word of the Father as having entered by the ear of the
+blessed woman. St. Augustine and Pope Felix say expressly that the
+virgin became pregnant through the ear. St. Ephrem says the same in a
+hymn, and Voisin, his translator, observes that the idea came originally
+from Gregory of Neocæsarea, surnamed Thaumaturgos. Agobar relates that
+in his time the church sang in the time of public service: "The Word
+entered through the ear of the virgin, and came out at the golden gate."
+Eutychius speaks also of Elian, who attended at the Council of Nice, and
+who said that the Word entered by the ear of the virgin, and came out
+in the way of childbirth. This Elian was a rural bishop, whose name
+occurs in Selden's published Arabic List of Fathers who attended the
+Council of Nice.</p>
+
+<p>It is well known that the Jesuit Sanchez gravely discussed the question
+whether the Virgin Mary contributed seminally in the incarnation of
+Christ, and that, like other divines before him, he concluded in the
+affirmative. But these extravagances of a prurient and depraved
+imagination should be classed with the opinion of Aretin, who introduces
+the Holy Spirit on this occasion effecting his purpose under the figure
+of a dove; as mythology describes Jupiter to have succeeded with Leda in
+the form of a swan, or as the most eminent authors of the church&mdash;St.
+Austin, Athenagoras, Tertullian, St. Clement of Alexandria, St. Cyprian,
+Lactantius, St. Ambrose&mdash;and others believed, after Philo and Josephus,
+the historian, who were Jews, that angels had associated with the
+daughters of men, and engaged in sexual connection with them. St.
+Augustine goes so far as to charge the Manichæans with teaching, as a
+part of their religious persuasion, that beautiful young persons
+appeared in a state of nature before the princes of darkness, or evil
+angels, and deprived them of the vital substance which that father calls
+the nature of God. Herodius is still more explicit, and says that the
+divine majesty escaped through the productive organs of demons.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that all these fathers believed angels to be corporeal. But,
+after the works of Plato had established the idea of their spirituality,
+the ancient opinion of a corporeal union between angels and women was
+explained by the supposition that the same angel who, in a woman's form,
+had received the embraces of a man, in turn held communication with a
+woman, in the character of a man. Divines, by the terms "incubus" and
+"succubus," designate the different parts thus performed by angels.
+Those who are curious on the subject of these offensive and revolting
+reveries may see further details in "Various Readings of the Book of
+Genesis," by Otho Gualter; "Magical Disquisitions," by Delvis, and the
+"Discourses on Witchcraft," by Henry Boguet.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION II.</h5>
+
+<p>No genealogy, even although reprinted in Moréri, approaches that of
+Mahomet or Mahommed, the son of Abdallah, the son of Abd'all Montaleb,
+the son of Ashem; which Mahomet was, in his younger days, groom of the
+widow Khadijah, then her factor, then her husband, then a prophet of
+God, then condemned to be hanged, then conqueror and king of Arabia; and
+who finally died an enviable death, satiated with glory and with love.</p>
+
+<p>The German barons do not trace back their origin beyond Witikind; and
+our modern French marquises can scarcely any of them show deeds and
+patents of an earlier date than Charlemagne. But the race of Mahomet, or
+Mohammed, which still exists, has always exhibited a genealogical tree,
+of which the trunk is Adam, and of which the branches reach from Ishmael
+down to the nobility and gentry who at the present day bear the high
+title of cousins of Mahomet.</p>
+
+<p>There is no difficulty about this genealogy, no dispute among the
+learned, no false calculations to be rectified, no contradictions to
+palliate, no impossibilities to be made possible.</p>
+
+<p>Your pride cavils against the authenticity of these titles. You tell me
+that you are descended from Adam as well as the greatest prophet, if
+Adam was the common father of our race; but that this same Adam was
+never known by any person, not even by the ancient Arabs themselves;
+that the name has never been cited except in the books of the Jews; and
+that, consequently, you take the liberty of writing down <i>false</i> against
+the high and noble claims of Mahomet, or Mohammed.</p>
+
+<p>You add that, in any case, if there has been a first man, whatever his
+name might be, you are a descendant from him as decidedly as Khadijah's
+illustrious groom; and that, if there has been no first man, if the
+human race always existed, as so many of the learned pretend, then you
+are clearly a gentleman from all eternity.</p>
+
+<p>In answer to this you are told that you are a plebeian (<i>roturier</i>) from
+all eternity, unless you can produce a regular and complete set of
+parchments.</p>
+
+<p>You reply that men are equal; that one race cannot be more ancient than
+another; that parchments, with bits of wax dangling to them, are a
+recent invention; that there is no reason that compels you to yield to
+the family of Mahomet, or to that of Confucius; or to that of the
+emperors of Japan; or to the royal secretaries of the grand college. Nor
+can I oppose your opinion by arguments, physical, metaphysical, or
+moral. You think yourself equal to the dairo of Japan, and I entirely
+agree with you. All that I would advise you is, that if ever you meet
+with him, you take good care to be the stronger.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GENESIS" id="GENESIS"></a>GENESIS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The sacred writer having conformed himself to the ideas generally
+received, and being indeed obliged not to deviate from them, as without
+such condescension to the weakness and ignorance of those whom he
+addressed, he would not have been understood, it only remains for us to
+make some observations on the natural philosophy prevailing in those
+early periods; for, with respect to theology, we reverence it, we
+believe in it, and never either dispute or discuss it.</p>
+
+<p>"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Thus has the
+original passage been translated, but the translation is not correct.
+There is no one, however slightly informed upon the subject, who is not
+aware that the real meaning of the word is, "In the beginning the gods
+made <i>firent</i> or <i>fit</i> the heaven and the earth." This reading,
+moreover, perfectly corresponds with the ancient idea of the
+Phœnicians, who imagined that, in reducing the chaos (<i>chautereb</i>)
+into order, God employed the agency of inferior deities.</p>
+
+<p>The Phœnicians had been long a powerful people, having a theogony of
+their own, before the Hebrews became possessed of a few cantons of land
+near their territory. It is extremely natural to suppose that when the
+Hebrews had at length formed a small establishment near Phœnicia,
+they began to acquire its language. At that time their writers might,
+and probably did, borrow the ancient philosophy of their masters. Such
+is the regular march of the human mind.</p>
+
+<p>At the time in which Moses is supposed to have lived, were the
+Phœnician philosophers sufficiently enlightened to regard the earth
+as a mere point in the compass with the infinite orbs placed by God in
+the immensity of space, commonly called heaven? The idea so very
+ancient, and at the same time so utterly false, that heaven was made for
+earth, almost always prevailed in the minds of the great mass of the
+people. It would certainly be just as correct and judicious for any
+person to suppose, if told that God created all the mountains and a
+single grain of sand, that the mountains were created for that grain of
+sand. It is scarcely possible that the Phœnicians, who were such
+excellent navigators, should not have had some good astronomers; but
+the old prejudices generally prevailed, and those old prejudices were
+very properly spared and indulged by the author of the Book of Genesis,
+who wrote to instruct men in the ways of God, and not in natural
+philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>"The earth was without form (<i>tohu bohu</i>) and void; darkness rested upon
+the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved upon the surface of
+the waters."</p>
+
+<p><i>Tohu bohu</i> means precisely chaos, disorder. It is one of those
+imitative words which are to be found in all languages; as, for example,
+in the French we have <i>sens dessus dessous, tintamarre, trictrac,
+tonnerre, bombe</i>. The earth was not as yet formed in its present state;
+the matter existed, but the divine power had not yet arranged it. The
+spirit of God means literally the breath, the wind, which agitated the
+waters. The same idea occurs in the "Fragments" of the Phœnician
+author Sanchoniathon. The Phœnicians, like every other people,
+believed matter to be eternal. There is not a single author of antiquity
+who ever represented something to have been produced from nothing. Even
+throughout the whole Bible, no passage is to be found in which matter is
+said to have been created out of nothing. Not, however, that we mean to
+controvert the truth of such creation. It was, nevertheless, a truth not
+known by the carnal Jews.</p>
+
+<p>On the question of the eternity of the world, mankind has always been
+divided, but never on that of the eternity of matter. From nothing,
+nothing can proceed, nor into nothing can aught existent return. <i>"De
+nihilo nihilum, et in nihilum nil posse gigni reverti."</i> (<i>Persius; Sat.
+iii.</i>) Such was the opinion of all antiquity.</p>
+
+<p>"God said let there be light, and there was light; and he saw that the
+light was good, and he divided the light from the darkness; and he
+called the light day, and the darkness night; and the evening and the
+morning were the first day. And God said also, let there be a firmament
+in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the
+waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were
+under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And
+God called the firmament heaven. And the evening and the morning were
+the second day.... And he saw that it was good."</p>
+
+<p>We begin with examining whether Huet, bishop of Avranches, Leclerc, and
+some other commentators, are not in the right in opposing the idea of
+those who consider this passage as exhibiting the most sublime
+eloquence.</p>
+
+<p>Eloquence is not aimed at in any history written by the Jews. The style
+of the passage in question, like that of all the rest of the work,
+possesses the most perfect simplicity. If an orator, intending to give
+some idea of the power of God, employed for that purpose the short and
+simple expression we are considering, "He said, let there be light, and
+there was light," it would then be sublime. Exactly similar is the
+passage in one of the Psalms, "<i>Dixit, et facta sunt</i>"&mdash;"He spake, and
+they were made." It is a trait which, being unique in this place, and
+introduced purposely in order to create a majestic image, elevates and
+transports the mind. But, in the instance under examination, the
+narrative is of the most simple character. The Jewish writer is speaking
+of light just in the same unambitious manner as of other objects of
+creation; he expresses himself equally and regularly after every
+article, "and God saw that it was good." Everything is sublime in the
+course or act of creation, unquestionably, but the creation of light is
+no more so than that of the herbs of the field; the sublime is something
+which soars far from the rest, whereas all is equal throughout the
+chapter.</p>
+
+<p>But further, it was another very ancient opinion that light did not
+proceed from the sun. It was seen diffused throughout the atmosphere,
+before the rising and after the setting of that star; the sun was
+supposed merely to give it greater strength and clearness; accordingly
+the author of Genesis accommodates himself to this popular error, and
+even states the creation of the sun and moon not to have taken place
+until four days after the existence of light. It was impossible that
+there could be a morning and evening before the existence of a sun. The
+inspired writer deigned, in this instance, to condescend to the gross
+and wild ideas of the nation. The object of God was not to teach the
+Jews philosophy. He might have raised their minds to the truth, but he
+preferred descending to their error. This solution can never be too
+frequently repeated.</p>
+
+<p>The separation of the light from the darkness is a part of the same
+system of philosophy. It would seem that night and day were mixed up
+together, as grains of different species which are easily separable from
+each other. It is sufficiently known that darkness is nothing but the
+absence of light, and that there is in fact no light when our eyes
+receive no sensation of it; but at that period these truths were far
+from being known.</p>
+
+<p>The idea of a firmament, again, is of the very highest antiquity. The
+heavens are imagined to be a solid mass, because they always exhibited
+the same phenomena. They rolled over our heads, they were therefore
+constituted of the most solid materials. Who could suppose that the
+exhalations from the land and sea supplied the water descending from the
+clouds, or compute their corresponding quantities? No Halley then lived
+to make so curious a calculation. The heavens therefore were conceived
+to contain reservoirs. These reservoirs could be supported only on a
+strong arch, and as this arch of heaven was actually transparent, it
+must necessarily have been made of crystal. In order that the waters
+above might descend from it upon the earth, sluices, cataracts, and
+floodgates were necessary, which might be opened and shut as
+circumstances required. Such was the astronomy of the day; and, as the
+author wrote for Jews, it was incumbent upon him to adopt their gross
+ideas, borrowed from other people somewhat less gross than themselves.</p>
+
+<p>"God also made two great lights, one to rule the day, the other the
+night; He also made the stars."</p>
+
+<p>It must be admitted that we perceive throughout the same ignorance of
+nature. The Jews did not know that the moon shone only with a reflected
+light. The author here speaks of stars as of mere luminous points, such
+as they appear, although they are in fact so many suns, having each of
+them worlds revolving round it. The Holy Spirit, then, accommodated
+Himself to the spirit of the times. If He had said that the sun was a
+million times larger than the earth, and the moon fifty times smaller,
+no one would have comprehended Him. They appear to us two stars of
+nearly equal size.</p>
+
+<p>"God said, also, let us make man in our own image, and let him have
+dominion over the fishes."</p>
+
+<p>What meaning did the Jews attach to the expression, "let us make man in
+our own image?" The same as all antiquity attached to it: "<i>Finxit in
+effigiem moderantum cuncta deorum.</i>" (Ovid, Metam. i. 82.)</p>
+
+<p>No images are made but of bodies. No nation ever imagined a God without
+body, and it is impossible to represent Him otherwise. We may indeed say
+that God is nothing that we are acquainted with, but we can have no
+idea of what He is. The Jews invariably conceived God to be corporeal,
+as well as every other people. All the first fathers of the Church,
+also, entertained the same belief till they had embraced the ideas of
+Plato, or rather until the light of Christianity became more pure.</p>
+
+<p>"He created them male and female." If God, of the secondary or inferior
+gods, created mankind, male and female, after their own likeness, it
+would seem in that case, as if the Jews believed that God and the gods
+who so formed them were male and female. It has been a subject of
+discussion, whether the author means to say that man had originally two
+sexes, or merely that God made Adam and Eve on the same day. The most
+natural meaning is that God formed Adam and Eve at the same time; but
+this interpretation involves an absolute contradiction to the statement
+of the woman's being made out of the rib of man after the seven days
+were concluded.</p>
+
+<p>"And he rested on the seventh day." The Phœnicians, Chaldæans, and
+Indians, represented God as having made the world in six periods, which
+the ancient Zoroaster calls the six "Gahanbars," so celebrated among the
+Persians.</p>
+
+<p>It is beyond all question that these nations possessed a theology before
+the Jews inhabited the deserts of Horeb and Sinai, and before they could
+possibly have had any writers. Many writers have considered it probable
+that the allegory of six days was imitated from that of the six
+periods. God may have permitted the idea to have prevailed in large and
+populous empires before he inspired the Jewish people with it. He had
+undoubtedly permitted other people to invent the arts before the Jews
+were in possession of any one of them.</p>
+
+<p>"From this pleasant place a river went out which watered the garden, and
+thence it was divided into four rivers. One was called Pison, which
+compassed the whole land of Havilah, whence cometh gold.... the second
+was called Gihon and surrounds Ethiopia.... the third is the Tigris, and
+the fourth the Euphrates."</p>
+
+<p>According to this version, the earthly paradise would have contained
+nearly a third part of Asia and of Africa. The sources of the Euphrates
+and the Tigris are sixty leagues distant from each other, in frightful
+mountains, bearing no possible resemblance to a garden. The river which
+borders Ethiopia, and which can be no other than the Nile, commences its
+course at the distance of more than a thousand leagues from the sources
+of the Tigris and Euphrates; and, if the Pison means the Phasis, it is
+not a little surprising that the source of a Scythian river and that of
+an African one should be situated on the same spot. We must therefore
+look for some other explanation, and for other rivers. Every commentator
+has got up a paradise of his own.</p>
+
+<p>It has been said that the Garden of Eden resembles the gardens of Eden
+at Saana in Arabia Felix, celebrated throughout all antiquity; that the
+Hebrews, a very recent people, might be an Arabian horde, and assume to
+themselves the honor of the most beautiful spot in the finest district
+of Arabia; and that they have always converted to their own purposes the
+ancient traditions of the vast and powerful nations in the midst of whom
+they were in bondage. They were not, however, on this account, the less
+under the divine protection and guidance.</p>
+
+<p>"The Lord then took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden that he
+might cultivate it." It is very respectable and pleasant for a man to
+"cultivate his garden," but it must have been somewhat difficult for
+Adam to have dressed and kept in order a garden of a thousand leagues in
+length, even although he had been supplied with some assistants.
+Commentators on this subject, therefore, we again observe, are
+completely at a loss, and must be content to exercise their ingenuity in
+conjecture. Accordingly, these four rivers have been described as
+flowing through numberless different territories.</p>
+
+<p>"Eat not of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil." It is
+not easy to conceive that there ever existed a tree which could teach
+good and evil, as there are trees that bear pears and apricots. And
+besides the question is asked, why is God unwilling that man should know
+good and evil? Would not his free access to this knowledge, on the
+contrary, appear&mdash;if we may venture to use such language&mdash;more
+worthy of God, and far more necessary to man? To our weak reason it
+would seem more natural and proper for God to command him to eat largely
+of such fruit; but we must bring our reason under subjection, and
+acquiesce with humility and simplicity in the conclusion that God is to
+be obeyed.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 413px;">
+<a name="THE_TEMPTATION_OF_ADAM" id="THE_TEMPTATION_OF_ADAM"></a>
+
+<span class="caption_fig">The Temptation of Adam (***Missing Image***)</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"If thou shalt eat thereof, thou shalt die." Nevertheless, Adam ate of
+it and did not die; on the contrary, he is stated to have lived on for
+nine hundred and thirty years. Many of the fathers considered the whole
+matter as an allegory. In fact, it might be said that all other animals
+have no knowledge that they shall die, but that man, by means of his
+reason, has such knowledge. This reason is the tree of knowledge which
+enables him to foresee his end. This, perhaps, is the most rational
+interpretation that can be given. We venture not to decide positively.</p>
+
+<p>"The Lord said, also, it is not good for man to be alone; let us make
+him a helpmeet for him." We naturally expect that the Lord is about to
+bestow on him a wife; but first he conducts before him all the various
+tribes of animals. Perhaps the copyist may have committed here an error
+of transposition.</p>
+
+<p>"And the name which Adam gave to every animal is its true name." What we
+should naturally understand by the true name of an animal, would be a
+name describing all, or at least, the principal properties of its
+species. But this is not the case in any language. In each there are
+some imitative words, as "<i>coq</i>" and "<i>cocu</i>" in the Celtic, which bear
+some slight similarity to the notes of the cock and the cuckoo;
+<i>tintamarre, trictrac</i>, in French; <i>alali</i>, in Greek; <i>lupus</i>, in Latin,
+etc. But these imitative words are exceedingly few. Moreover, if Adam
+had thus thoroughly known the properties of various animals, he must
+either have previously eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, or
+it would apparently have answered no end for God to have interdicted him
+from it. He must have already known more than the Royal Society of
+London, and the Academy of the Sciences.</p>
+
+<p>It may be remarked that this is the first time the name of Adam occurs
+in the Book of Genesis. The first man, according to the ancient
+Brahmins, who were prodigiously anterior to the Jews, was called Adimo,
+a son of the earth, and his wife, Procris, life. This is recorded in the
+Vedas, in the history of the second formation of the world. Adam and Eve
+expressed perfectly the same meanings in the Phoenician language&mdash;a new
+evidence of the Holy Spirit's conforming Himself to commonly received
+ideas.</p>
+
+<p>"When Adam was asleep God took one of his ribs and put flesh instead
+thereof; and of the rib which he had taken from Adam he formed a woman,
+and he brought the woman to Adam."</p>
+
+<p>In the previous chapter the Lord had already created the male and the
+female; why, therefore, remove a rib from the man to form out of it a
+woman who was already in being? It is answered that the author barely
+announces in the one case what he explains in another. It is answered
+further that this allegory places the wife in subjection to her husband,
+and expresses their intimate union. Many persons have been led to
+imagine from this verse that men have one rib less than women; but this
+is a heresy, and anatomy informs us that a wife has no more ribs than
+her husband.</p>
+
+<p>"But the serpent was more subtle than all animals on the earth; he said
+to the woman," etc. Throughout the whole of this article there is no
+mention made of the devil. Everything in it relates to the usual course
+of nature. The serpent was considered by all oriental nations, not only
+as the most cunning of all animals, but likewise as immortal. The
+Chaldæans had a fable concerning a quarrel between God and the serpent,
+and this fable had been preserved by Pherecydes. Origen cites it in his
+sixth book against Celsus. A serpent was borne in procession at the
+feasts of Bacchus. The Egyptians, according to the statement of Eusebius
+in the first book of the tenth chapter of his "Evangelical Preparation,"
+attached a sort of divinity to the serpent. In Arabia, India, and even
+China, the serpent was regarded as a symbol of life; and hence it was
+that the emperors of China, long before the time of Moses, always bore
+upon their breast the image of a serpent.</p>
+
+<p>Eve expresses no astonishment at the serpent's speaking to her. In all
+ancient histories, animals have spoken; hence Pilpay and Lokman excited
+no surprise by their introduction of animals conversing and disputing.</p>
+
+<p>The whole of this affair appears so clearly to have been supposed in the
+natural course of events, and so unconnected with anything allegorical,
+that the narrative assigns a reason why the serpent, from that time, has
+moved creeping on its belly, why we always are eager to crush it under
+our feet, and why it always attempts&mdash;at least according to the popular
+belief&mdash;to bite and wound us. Precisely as, with respect to presumed
+changes affecting certain animals recorded in ancient fable, reasons
+were stated why the crow which originally had been white is at the
+present day black; why the owl quits his gloomy retreat only by night;
+why the wolf is devoted to carnage. The fathers, however, believed the
+affair to be an allegory at once clear and venerable. The safest way is
+to believe like them.</p>
+
+<p>"I will multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow shalt thou
+bring forth children. Thou shalt be under the power of the man, and he
+shall rule over thee." Why, it is asked, should the multiplication of
+conception be a punishment? It was, on the contrary, says the objector,
+esteemed a superior blessing, particularly among the Jews. The pains of
+childbirth are inconsiderable, in all except very weak or delicate
+women. Those accustomed to labor are delivered, particularly in warm
+climates, with great ease. Brutes frequently experience greater
+suffering from this process of nature: some even die under it. And with
+respect to the superiority or dominion of the man over the woman, it is
+merely in the natural course of events; it is the effect of strength of
+body, and even of strength of mind. Men, generally speaking, possess
+organs more capable of continued attention than women, and are better
+fitted by nature for labors both of the head and arm. But when a woman
+possesses both a hand and a mind more powerful than her husband's, she
+everywhere possesses the dominion over him; it is then the husband that
+is under subjection to the wife. There is certainly truth in these
+remarks; but it might, nevertheless, very easily be the fact that,
+before the commission of the original sin, neither subjection nor sorrow
+existed.</p>
+
+<p>"The Lord made for them coats of skins." This passage decidedly proves
+that the Jews believed God to be corporeal. A rabbi, of the name of
+Eliezer, stated in his works that God clothed Adam and Eve with the skin
+of the very serpent who had tempted them; and Origen maintains that this
+coat of skins was a new flesh, a new body, which God conferred on man.
+It is far better to adhere respectfully to the literal texts.</p>
+
+<p>"And the Lord said; Lo! Adam is become like one of us." It seems as if
+the Jews admitted, originally, many gods. It is somewhat more difficult
+to determine what they meant by the word "God," <i>Elohim</i>. Some
+commentators have contended that the expression "one of us" signifies
+the Trinity. But certainly there is nothing relating to the Trinity
+throughout the Bible. The Trinity is not a compound of many or several
+Gods: it is one and the same god threefold; and the Jews never heard the
+slightest mention of one god in three persons. By the words "like us,"
+or "as one of us," it is probable that the Jews understood the angels,
+<i>Elohim</i>. It is this passage which has induced many learned men very
+rashly to conclude that this book was not written until that people had
+adopted the belief of those inferior gods. But this opinion has been
+condemned.</p>
+
+<p>"The Lord sent him forth from the garden of Eden to cultivate the
+ground." "But," it is remarked by some, "the Lord had placed him in the
+garden of Eden to <i>cultivate</i> that garden." If Adam, instead of being a
+gardener, merely becomes a laborer, his situation, they observe, is not
+made very much worse by the change. A good laborer is well worth a good
+gardener. These remarks must be regarded as too light and frivolous. It
+appears more judicious to say that God punished disobedience by
+banishing the offender from the place of his nativity.</p>
+
+<p>The whole of this history, generally speaking&mdash;according to the opinion
+of liberal, not to say licentious, commentators&mdash;proceeds upon the idea
+which has prevailed in every past age, and still exists, that the first
+times were better and happier than those which followed. Men have
+always complained of the present and extolled the past. Pressed down by
+the labors of life, they have imagined happiness to consist in
+inactivity, not considering that the most unhappy of all states is that
+of a man who has nothing to do. They felt themselves frequently
+miserable, and framed in their imaginations an ideal period in which all
+the world had been happy; although it might be just as naturally and
+truly supposed that there had existed times in which no tree decayed and
+perished, in which no beast was weak, diseased, or devoured by another,
+and in which spiders did not prey upon flies. Hence the idea of the
+golden age; of the egg pierced by Arimanes; of the serpent who stole
+from the ass the recipe for obtaining a happy and immortal life, which
+the man had placed upon his pack-saddle; of the conflict between Typhon
+and Osiris, and between Opheneus and the gods; of the famous box of
+Pandora; and of all those ancient tales, of which some are ingenious,
+but none instructive. But we are bound to believe that the fables of
+other nations are imitations of the Hebrew history, since we possess the
+ancient history of the Hebrews, and the early books of other nations are
+nearly all destroyed. Besides the testimonies in favor of the Book of
+Genesis are irrefragable.</p>
+
+<p>"And He placed before the garden of Eden a cherub with a flaming sword,
+which turned all round to guard the way to the tree of life." The word
+"<i>kerub</i>" signifies <i>ox</i>. An ox armed with a flaming sword is rather a
+singular exhibition, it is said, before a portal. But the Jews
+afterwards represented angels under the form of oxen and hawks although
+they were forbidden to make any images. They evidently derived these
+emblems of oxen and hawks from the Egyptians, whom they imitated in so
+many other things. The Egyptians first venerated the ox as the emblem of
+agriculture, and the hawk as that of the winds; but they never converted
+the ox into a sentinel. It is probably an allegory; and the Jews by
+"<i>kerub</i>" understood nature. It was a symbol formed of the head of an
+ox, the head and body of a man, and the wings of a hawk.</p>
+
+<p>"And the Lord set a mark upon Cain." What Lord? says the infidel. He
+accepts the offering of Abel, and rejects that of his elder brother,
+without the least reason being assigned for the distinction. By this
+proceeding the Lord was the cause of animosity between the two brothers.
+We are presented in this piece of history, it is true, with a moral,
+however humiliating, lesson; a lesson to be derived from all the fables
+of antiquity, that scarcely had the race of man commenced the career of
+existence, before one brother assassinates another. But what the sages,
+of this world consider contrary to everything moral, to everything just,
+to all the principles of common sense, is that God, who inflicted
+eternal damnation on the race of man, and useless crucifixion on His own
+son, on account merely of the eating of an apple, should absolutely
+pardon a fratricide! nay, that He should more than pardon, that He
+should take the offender under His peculiar protection! He declares that
+whoever shall avenge the murder of Abel shall experience sevenfold the
+punishment that Cain might have suffered. He puts a mark upon him as a
+safeguard. Here, continue these vile blasphemers, here is a fable as
+execrable as it is absurd. It is the raving of some wretched Jew, who
+wrote those infamous and revolting fooleries, in imitation of the tales
+so greedily swallowed by the neighboring population in Syria. This
+senseless Jew attributes these atrocious reveries to Moses, at a time
+when nothing was so rare as books. That fatality, which affects and
+disposes of everything, has handed down this contemptible production to
+our own times. Knaves have extolled it, and fools have believed it. Such
+is the language of a tribe of theists, who, while they adore a God, dare
+to condemn the God of Israel; and who judge of the conduct of the
+eternal Deity by the rules of our own imperfect morality, and erroneous
+justice. They admit a God, to subject Him to our laws. Let us guard
+against such rashness; and, once again it must be repeated, let us
+revere what we cannot comprehend. Let us cry out, <i>O Altitudo</i>! O the
+height and depth! with all our strength.</p>
+
+<p>"The gods Elohim, seeing the daughters of men that they were fair, took
+for wives those whom they chose." This imagination, again, may be traced
+in the history of every people. No nation has ever existed, unless
+perhaps we may except China, in which some god is not described as
+having had offspring from women. These corporeal gods frequently
+descended to visit their dominions upon earth; they saw the daughters of
+our race, and attached themselves to those who were most interesting and
+beautiful: the issue of this connection between gods and mortals must of
+course have been superior to other men; accordingly, Genesis informs us
+that from the association it mentions, of the gods with women, sprang a
+race of giants.</p>
+
+<p>"I will bring a deluge of waters upon the earth." I will merely observe
+here that St. Augustine, in his "City of God," No. 8, says, "<i>Maximum
+illud diluvium Græca nec Latina novit historia</i>"&mdash;neither Greek nor
+Latin history knows anything about the great deluge. In fact, none had
+ever been known in Greece but those of Deucalion and Ogyges. They are
+regarded as universal in the fables collected by Ovid, but are wholly
+unknown in eastern Asia. St. Augustine, therefore, is not mistaken, in
+saying that history makes no mention of this event.</p>
+
+<p>"God said to Noah, I will make a covenant with you, and with your seed
+after you, and with all living creatures." God make a covenant with
+beasts! What sort of a covenant? Such is the outcry of infidels. But if
+He makes a covenant with man, why not with the beast? It has feeling,
+and there is something as divine in feeling as in the most metaphysical
+meditation. Besides, beasts feel more correctly than the greater part of
+men think. It is clearly in virtue of this treaty that Francis d'Assisi,
+the founder of the Seraphic order, said to the grasshoppers and the
+hares, "Pray sing, my dear sister grasshopper; pray browse, my dear
+brother hare." But what were the conditions of the treaty? That all
+animals should devour one another; that they should feed upon our flesh,
+and we upon theirs; that, after having eaten them, we should proceed
+with wrath and fury to the extermination of our own race&mdash;nothing being
+then wanting to crown the horrid series of butchery and cruelty, but
+devouring our fellow-men, after having thus remorselessly destroyed
+them. Had there been actually such a treaty as this it could have been
+entered into only with the devil.</p>
+
+<p>Probably the meaning of the whole passage is neither more nor less than
+that God is equally the absolute master of everything that breathes.
+This pact can be nothing more than an order, and the word "covenant" is
+used merely as more emphatic and impressive; we should not therefore be
+startled and offended at the words, but adore the spirit, and direct our
+minds back to the period in which this book was written&mdash;a book of
+scandal to the weak, but of edification to the strong.</p>
+
+<p>"And I will put my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of my
+covenant." Observe that the author does not say, I <i>have</i> put my bow in
+the clouds; he says, I <i>will</i> put: this clearly implies it to have been
+the prevailing opinion that there had not always been a rainbow. This
+phenomenon is necessarily produced by rain; yet in this place it is
+represented as something supernatural, exhibited in order to announce
+and prove that the earth should no more be inundated. It is singular to
+choose the certain sign of rain, in order to assure men against their
+being drowned. But it may also be replied that in any danger of
+inundation, we have the cheering security of the rainbow.</p>
+
+<p>"But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of
+Adam had built, and he said, 'Behold a people which have but one
+language. They have begun to do this, and they will not desist until
+they have completed it. Come, then, let us go and confound their
+language, that no one may understand his neighbor.'" Observe here, that
+the sacred writer always continues to conform to the popular opinions.
+He always speaks of God as of a man who endeavors to inform himself of
+what is passing, who is desirous of seeing with his own eyes what is
+going on in his dominions, who calls together his council in order to
+deliberate with them.</p>
+
+<p>"And Abraham having divided his men&mdash;who were three hundred and eighteen
+in number&mdash;fell upon the five kings, and pursued them unto Hoba, on the
+left hand of Damascus." From the south bank of the lake of Sodom to
+Damascus was a distance of eighty leagues, not to mention crossing the
+mountains Libanus and Anti-Libanus. Infidels smile and triumph at such
+exaggeration. But as the Lord favored Abraham, nothing was in fact
+exaggerated.</p>
+
+<p>"And two angels arrived at Sodom at even." The whole history of these
+two angels, whom the inhabitants of Sodom wished to violate, is perhaps
+the most extraordinary in the records of all antiquity. But it must be
+considered that almost all Asia believed in the existence of the
+demoniacal incubus and succubus; and moreover, that these two angels
+were creatures more perfect than mankind, and must have possessed more
+beauty to stimulate their execrable tendencies. It is possible that the
+passage may be only meant as a rhetorical figure to express the
+atrocious depravity of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is not without the
+greatest diffidence that we suggest to the learned this solution.</p>
+
+<p>As to Lot, who proposes to the people of Sodom the substitution of his
+two daughters in the room of the angels; and his wife, who was changed
+into a statue of salt, and all the rest of that history, what shall we
+venture to say? The old Arabian tale of Kinyras and Myrrha has some
+resemblance to the incest of Lot with his daughters; and the adventure
+of Philemon and Baucis is somewhat similar to the case of the two angels
+who appeared to Lot and his wife. With respect to the statue of salt, we
+know not where to find any resemblance; perhaps in the history of
+Orpheus and Eurydice.</p>
+
+<p>Many ingenious men are of opinion, with the great Newton and the learned
+Leclerc that the Pentateuch was written by Samuel when the Jews had a
+little knowledge of reading and writing, and that all these histories
+are imitations of Syrian fables.</p>
+
+<p>But it is enough that all this is in the Holy Scripture to induce us to
+reverence it, without attempting to find out in this book anything
+besides what is written by the Holy Spirit. Let us always recollect that
+those times were not like our times; and let us not fail to repeat,
+after so many great men, that the Old Testament is a true history; and
+that all that has been written differing from it by the rest of the
+world is fabulous.</p>
+
+<p>Some critics have contended that all the incredible passages in the
+canonical books, which scandalize weak minds, ought to be suppressed;
+but it has been observed in answer that those critics had bad hearts,
+and ought to be burned at the stake; and that it is impossible to be a
+good man without believing that the people of Sodom wanted to violate
+two angels. Such is the reasoning of a species of monsters who wish to
+lord it over the understandings of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that many eminent fathers of the Church have had the prudence
+to turn all these histories into allegories, after the example of the
+Jews, and particularly of Philo. The popes, more discreet, have
+endeavored to prevent the translation of these books into the vulgar
+tongue, lest some men should in consequence be led to think and judge,
+about what was proposed to them only to adore.</p>
+
+<p>We are certainly justified in concluding hence, that those who
+thoroughly understand this book should tolerate those who do not
+understand it at all; for if the latter understand nothing of it, it is
+not their own fault: on the other hand, those who comprehend nothing
+that it contains should tolerate those who comprehend everything in it.</p>
+
+<p>Learned and ingenious men, full of their own talents and acquirements,
+have maintained that it is impossible that Moses could have written the
+Book of Genesis. One of their principal reasons is that in the history
+of Abraham that patriarch is stated to have paid for a cave which he
+purchased for the interment of his wife, in silver coin, and the king of
+Gerar is said to have given Sarah a thousand pieces of silver when he
+restored her, after having carried her off for her beauty at the age of
+seventy-five. They inform us that they have consulted all the ancient
+authors, and that it appears very certain that at the period mentioned
+silver money was not in existence. But these are evidently mere cavils,
+as the Church has always firmly believed Moses to have been the author
+of the Pentateuch. They strengthen all the doubts suggested by
+Aben-Ezra, and Baruch Spinoza. The physician Astruc, father-in-law of
+the comptroller-general Silhouette, in his book&mdash;now become very
+scarce&mdash;called "Conjectures on the Book of Genesis," adds some
+objections, inexplicable undoubtedly to human learning, but not so to a
+humble and submissive piety. The learned, many of them, contradict every
+line, but the devout consider every line sacred. Let us dread falling
+into the misfortune of believing and trusting to our reason; but let us
+bring ourselves into subjection in understanding as well as in heart.</p>
+
+<p>"And Abraham said that Sarah was his sister, and the king of Gerar took
+her for himself." We admit, as we have said under the article on
+"Abraham," that Sarah was at this time ninety years of age, that she had
+been already carried away by a king of Egypt, and that a king of this
+same horrid wilderness of Gerar, likewise, many years afterwards,
+carried away the wife of Isaac, Abraham's son. We have also spoken of
+his servant, Hagar, who bore him a son, and of the manner in which the
+patriarch sent her and her son away. It is well known how infidels
+triumph on the subject of all these histories, with what a disdainful
+smile they speak of them, and that they place the story of one Abimelech
+falling in love with Sarah whom Abraham had passed off as his sister,
+and of another Abimelech falling in love with Rebecca, whom Isaac also
+passes as his sister, even beneath the thousand and one nights of the
+Arabian fables. We cannot too often remark that the great error of all
+these learned critics is their wishing to try everything by the test of
+our feeble reason, and to judge of the ancient Arabs as they judge of
+the courts of France or of England.</p>
+
+<p>"And the soul of Shechem, King Hamor's son, was bound up with the soul
+of Dinah, and he soothed her grief by his tender caresses, and he went
+to Hamor his father, and said to him, give me that woman to be my wife."</p>
+
+<p>Here our critics exclaim in terms of stronger disgust than ever. "What!"
+say they; "the son of a king is desirous to marry a vagabond girl;" the
+marriage is celebrated; Jacob the father, and Dinah the daughter, are
+loaded with presents; the king of Shechem deigns to receive those
+wandering robbers called patriarchs within his city; he has the
+incredible politeness or kindness to undergo, with his son, his court,
+and his people, the rite of circumcision, thus condescending to the
+superstition of a petty horde that could not call half a league of
+territory their own! And in return for this astonishing hospitality and
+goodness, how do our holy patriarchs act? They wait for the day when the
+process of circumcision generally induces fever, when Simeon and Levi
+run through the whole city with poniards in their hands and massacre the
+king, the prince his son, and all the inhabitants. We are precluded from
+the horror appropriate to this infernal counterpart of the tragedy of
+St. Bartholomew, only by a sense of its absolute impossibility. It is an
+abominable romance; but it is evidently a ridiculous romance. It is
+impossible that two men could have slaughtered in quiet the whole
+population of a city. The people might suffer in a slight degree from
+the operation which had preceded, but notwithstanding this, they would
+have risen in self-defence against two diabolical miscreants; they would
+have instantly assembled, would have surrounded them, and destroyed them
+with the summary and complete vengeance merited by their atrocity.</p>
+
+<p>But there is a still more palpable impossibility. It is, that according
+to the accurate computation of time, Dinah, this daughter of Jacob,
+could be only three years old; and that, even by forcing up chronology
+as far as possible in favor of the narrative, she could at the very most
+be only five. It is here, then, that we are assailed with bursts of
+indignant exclamation! "What!" it is said, "what! is it this book, the
+book of a rejected and reprobate people; a book so long unknown to all
+the world; a book in which sound reason and decent manners are outraged
+in every page, that is held up to us as irrefragable, holy, and dictated
+by God Himself? Is it not even impious to believe it? or could anything
+less than the fury of cannibals urge to the persecution of sensible and
+modest men for not believing it?"</p>
+
+<p>To this we reply: "The Church declares its belief in it. The copyists
+may have mixed up some revolting absurdities with respectable and
+genuine histories. It belongs to the holy church only to decide.
+The profane ought to be guided by her. Those absurdities, those alleged
+horrors do not affect the substance of our faith. How lamentable would
+be the fate of mankind, if religion and virtue depended upon what
+formerly happened to Shechem and to little Dinah!"</p>
+
+<p>"These are the kings who reigned in the land of Edom before the children
+of Israel had a king." This is the celebrated passage which has proved
+one of the great stumbling stones. This it was which decided the great
+Newton, the pious and acute Samuel Clarke, the profound and philosophic
+Bolingbroke, the learned Leclerc, the ingenious Fréret, and a host of
+other enlightened men, to maintain that it was impossible Moses could
+have been the author of Genesis.</p>
+
+<p>We admit that in fact these words could not have been written until
+after the time that the Jews had kings.</p>
+
+<p>It is principally this verse that determined Astruc to give up the
+inspired authority of the whole Book of Genesis, and suppose the author
+had derived his materials from existing memoirs and records. His work is
+ingenious and accurate, but it is rash, not to say audacious. Even a
+council would scarcely have ventured on such an enterprise. And to what
+purpose has it served Astruc's thankless and dangerous labor&mdash;to double
+the darkness he wished to enlighten? Here is the fruit of the tree of
+knowledge, of which we are all so desirous of eating. Why must it be,
+that the fruit of the tree of ignorance should be more nourishing and
+more digestible?</p>
+
+<p>But of what consequence can it be to us, after all, whether any
+particular verse or chapter was written by Moses, or Samuel, or the
+priest (<i>sacrificateur</i>) who came to Samaria, or Esdras, or any other
+person? In what respect can our government, our laws, our fortunes, our
+morals, our well-being, be bound up with the unknown chiefs of a
+wretched and barbarous country called Edom or Idumæa, always inhabited
+by robbers? Alas! those poor Arabs, who have not shirts to their backs,
+neither know nor care whether or not we are in existence! They go on
+steadily plundering caravans, and eating barley bread, while we are
+perplexing and tormenting ourselves to know whether any petty kings
+flourished in a particular canton of Arabia Petræa, before they existed
+in a particular canton adjoining the west of the lake of Sodom!</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>O miseras hominum curas! Opectora cœca!</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 16em;" class="small">&mdash;LUCRETIUS, ii. 14.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Blind, wretched man! in what dark paths of strife</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Thou walkest the little journey of thy life!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 18em;" class="small">&mdash;CREECH</span>.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GENII" id="GENII"></a>GENII.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The doctrines of judicial astrology and magic have spread all over the
+world. Look back to the ancient Zoroaster, and you will find that of the
+genii long established. All antiquity abounds in astrologers and
+magicians; such ideas were therefore very natural. At present, we smile
+at the number who entertained them; if we were in their situation, if
+like them we were only beginning to cultivate the sciences, we should
+perhaps believe just the same. Let us suppose ourselves intelligent
+people, beginning to reason on our own existence, and to observe the
+stars. The earth, we might say, is no doubt immovable in the midst of
+the world; the sun and planets only revolve in her service, and the
+stars are only made for us; man, therefore, is the great object of all
+nature. What is the intention of all these globes, and of the immensity
+of heaven thus destined for our use? It is very likely that all space
+and these globes are peopled with substances, and since we are the
+favorites of nature, placed in the centre of the universe, and all is
+made for man, these substances are evidently destined to watch over man.</p>
+
+<p>The first man who believed the thing at all possible would soon find
+disciples persuaded that it existed. We might then commence by saying,
+genii perhaps exist, and nobody could affirm the contrary; for where is
+the impossibility of the air and planets being peopled? We might
+afterwards say there <i>are</i> genii, and certainly no one could prove that
+there are not. Soon after, some sages might see these genii, and we
+should have no right to say to them: "You have not seen them"; as these
+persons might be honorable, and altogether worthy of credit. One might
+see the genius of the empire or of his own city; another that of Mars
+or Saturn; the genii of the four elements might be manifested to several
+philosophers; more than one sage might see his own genius; all at first
+might be little more than dreaming, but dreams are the symbols of truth.</p>
+
+<p>It was soon known exactly how these genii were formed. To visit our
+globe, they must necessarily have wings; they therefore had wings. We
+know only of bodies; they therefore had bodies, but bodies much finer
+than ours, since they were genii, and much lighter, because they came
+from so great a distance. The sages who had the privilege of conversing
+with the genii inspired others with the hope of enjoying the same
+happiness. A skeptic would have been ill received, if he had said to
+them: "I have seen no genius, therefore there are none." They would have
+replied: "You reason ill; it does not follow that a thing exists not,
+which is unknown to you. There is no contradiction in the doctrine which
+inculcates these ethereal powers; no impossibility that they may visit
+us; they show themselves to our sages, they manifest themselves to us;
+you are not worthy of seeing genii."</p>
+
+<p>Everything on earth is composed of good and evil; there are therefore
+incontestably good and bad genii. The Persians had their peris and
+dives; the Greeks, their demons and cacodæmons; the Latins, <i>bonos et
+malos genios</i>. The good genii are white, and the bad black, except among
+the negroes, where it is necessarily the reverse. Plato without
+difficulty admits of a good and evil genius for every individual. The
+evil genius of Brutus appeared to him, and announced to him his death
+before the battle of Philippi. Have not grave historians said so? And
+would not Plutarch have been very injudicious to have assured us of this
+fact, if it were not true?</p>
+
+<p>Further, consider what a source of feasts, amusements, good tales, and
+bon mots, originated in the belief of genii!</p>
+
+<p>There were male and female genii. The genii of the ladies were called by
+the Romans little Junos. They also had the pleasure of seeing their
+genii grow up. In infancy, they were a kind of Cupid with wings, and
+when they protected old age, they wore long beards, and even sometimes
+the forms of serpents. At Rome, there is preserved a marble, on which is
+represented a serpent under a palm tree, to which are attached two
+crowns with this inscription: "To the genius of the Augusti"; it was the
+emblem of immortality.</p>
+
+<p>What demonstrative proof have we at present, that the genii, so
+universally admitted by so many enlightened nations, are only phantoms
+of the imagination? All that can be said is reduced to this: "I have
+never seen a genius, and no one of my acquaintance has ever seen one;
+Brutus has not written that his genius appeared to him before the battle
+of Philippi; neither Newton, Locke, nor even Descartes, who gave the
+reins to his imagination; neither kings nor ministers of state have
+ever been suspected of communing with their genii; therefore I do not
+believe a thing of which there is not the least truth. I confess their
+existence is not impossible; but the possibility is not a proof of the
+reality. It is possible that there may be satyrs, with little turned-up
+tails and goats' feet; but I must see several to believe in them; for if
+I saw but one, I should still doubt their existence."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GENIUS" id="GENIUS"></a>GENIUS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Of genius or demon, we have already spoken in the article on "angel." It
+is not easy to know precisely whether the peris of the Persians were
+invented before the demons of the Greeks, but it is very probable that
+they were. It may be, that the souls of the dead, called shades, manes,
+etc., passed for demons. Hesiod makes Hercules say that a demon dictated
+his labors.</p>
+
+<p>The demon of Socrates had so great a reputation, that Apuleius, the
+author of the "Golden Ass," who was himself a magician of good repute,
+says in his "Treatise on the Genius of Socrates," that a man must be
+without religion who denies it. You see that Apuleius reasons precisely
+like brothers Garasse and Bertier: "You do not believe that which I
+believe; you are therefore without religion." And the Jansenists have
+said as much of brother Bertier, as well as of all the world except
+themselves. "These demons," says the very religious and filthy
+Apuleius, "are intermediate powers between ether and our lower region.
+They live in our atmosphere, and bear our prayers and merits to the
+gods. They treat of succors and benefits, as interpreters and
+ambassadors. Plato says, that it is by their ministry that revelations,
+presages, and the miracles of magicians, are effected."&mdash;"<i>Cæterum sunt
+quædam divinæ mediæ potestates, inter summum æthera, et infimas terras,
+in isto intersitæ æris spatio, per quas et desideria nostra et merita ad
+deos commeant. Hos Græco nomine demonias nuncupant. Inter terricolas
+cœli colasque victores, hinc pecum, inde donorum: qui ultro citroque
+portant, hinc petitiones, inde suppetias: ceu quidam utriusque
+interpretes, et salutigeri. Per hos eosdem, ut Plato in symposio
+autumat, cuncta denuntiata; et majorum varia miracula, omnesque
+præsagium species reguntur.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>St. Augustine has condescended to refute Apuleius in these words:</p>
+
+<p>"It is impossible for us to say that demons are neither mortal nor
+eternal, for all that has life, either lives eternally, or loses the
+breath of life by death; and Apuleius has said, that as to time, the
+demons are eternal. What then remains, but that demons hold a medium
+situation, and have one quality higher and another lower than mankind;
+and as, of these two things, eternity is the only higher thing which
+they exclusively possess, to complete the allotted medium, what must be
+the lower, if not misery?" This is powerful reasoning!</p>
+
+<p>As I have never seen any genii, demons, peris, or hobgoblins, whether
+beneficent or mischievous, I cannot speak of them from knowledge. I only
+relate what has been said by people who have seen them.</p>
+
+<p>Among the Romans, the word "genius" was not used to express a rare
+talent, as with us: the term for that quality was <i>ingenium</i>. We use the
+word "genius" indifferently in speaking of the tutelar demon of a town
+of antiquity, or an artist, or a musician. The term "genius" seems to
+have been intended to designate not great talents generally, but those
+into which invention enters. Invention, above everything, appeared a
+gift from the gods&mdash;this <i>ingenium, quasi ingenitum</i>, a kind of divine
+inspiration. Now an artist, however perfect he may be in his profession,
+if he have no invention, if he be not original, is not considered a
+genius. He is only inspired by the artists his predecessors, even when
+he surpasses them.</p>
+
+<p>It is very probable that many people now play at chess better than the
+inventor of the game, and that they might gain the prize of corn
+promised him by the Indian king. But this inventor was a genius, and
+those who might now gain the prize would be no such thing. Poussin, who
+was a great painter before he had seen any good pictures, had a genius
+for painting. Lulli, who never heard any good musician in France, had a
+genius for music.</p>
+
+<p>Which is the more desirable to possess, a genius without a master, or
+the attainment of perfection by imitating and surpassing the masters
+which precede us?</p>
+
+<p>If you put this question to artists, they will perhaps be divided; if
+you put it to the public, it will not hesitate. Do you like a beautiful
+Gobelin tapestry better than one made in Flanders at the commencement of
+the arts? Do you prefer modern masterpieces of engraving to the first
+wood-cuts? the music of the present day to the first airs, which
+resembled the Gregorian chant? the makers of the artillery of our time
+to the genius which invented the first cannon? everybody will answer,
+"yes." All purchasers will say: "I own that the inventor of the shuttle
+had more genius than the manufacturer who made my cloth, but my cloth is
+worth more than that of the inventor."</p>
+
+<p>In short, every one in conscience will confess, that we respect the
+geniuses who invented the arts, but that the minds which perfect them
+are of more present benefit.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION II.</h5>
+
+<p>The article on "Genius" has been treated in the "Encyclopædia" by men
+who possess it. We shall hazard very little after them.</p>
+
+<p>Every town, every man possessed a genius. It was imagined that those who
+performed extraordinary things were inspired by their genius. The nine
+muses were nine genii, whom it was necessary to invoke; therefore Ovid
+says: "<i>Et Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo</i>"&mdash;"The God within
+us, He the mind inspires."</p>
+
+<p>But, properly speaking, is genius anything but capability? What is
+capability but a disposition to succeed in an art? Why do we say the
+genius of a language? It is, that every language, by its terminations,
+articles, participles, and shorter or longer words, will necessarily
+have exclusive properties of its own.</p>
+
+<p>By the genius of a nation is meant the character, manners, talents, and
+even vices, which distinguish one people from another. It is sufficient
+to see the French, English, and Spanish people, to feel this difference.</p>
+
+<p>We have said that the particular genius of a man for an art is a
+different thing from his general talent; but this name is given only to
+a very superior ability. How many people have talent for poetry, music,
+and painting; yet it would be ridiculous to call them geniuses.</p>
+
+<p>Genius, conducted by taste, will never commit a gross fault. Racine,
+since his "Andromache," "Le Poussin," and "Rameau," has never committed
+one. Genius, without taste, will often commit enormous errors; and, what
+is worse, it will not be sensible of them.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GEOGRAPHY" id="GEOGRAPHY"></a>GEOGRAPHY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Geography is one of those sciences which will always require to be
+perfected. Notwithstanding the pains that have been taken, it has
+hitherto been impossible to have an exact description of the earth. For
+this great work, it would be necessary that all sovereigns should come
+to an understanding, and lend mutual assistance. But they have ever
+taken more pains to ravage the world than they have to measure it.</p>
+
+<p>No one has yet been able to make an exact map of upper Egypt, nor of the
+regions bordering on the Red Sea, nor of the vast country of Arabia. Of
+Africa we know only the coasts; all the interior is no more known than
+it was in the times of Atlas and Hercules. There is not a single
+well-detailed map of all the Grand Turk's possessions in Asia; all is
+placed at random, excepting some few large towns, the crumbling remains
+of which are still existing. In the states of the Great Mogul something
+is known of the relative positions of Agra and Delhi; but thence to the
+kingdom of Golconda everything is laid down at a venture.</p>
+
+<p>It is known that Japan extends from about the thirtieth to the fortieth
+degree of north latitude; there cannot be an error of more than two
+degrees, which is about fifty leagues; so that, relying on one of our
+best maps, a pilot would be in danger of losing his track or his life.</p>
+
+<p>As for the longitude, the first maps of the Jesuits determined it
+between the one hundred and fifty-seventh and the one hundred and
+seventy-fifth degree; whereas, it is now determined between the one
+hundred and forty-sixth and the one hundred and sixtieth.</p>
+
+<p>China is the only Asiatic country of which we have an exact measurement;
+because the emperor Kam-hi employed some Jesuit astronomers to draw
+exact maps, which is the best thing the Jesuits have done. Had they been
+content with measuring the earth, they would never have been proscribed.</p>
+
+<p>In our western world, Italy, France, Russia, England, and the principal
+towns of the other states, have been measured by the same method as was
+employed in China; but it was not until a very few years ago, that in
+France it was undertaken to form an entire topography. A company taken
+from the Academy of Sciences despatched engineers or surveyors into
+every corner of the kingdom, to lay down even the meanest hamlet, the
+smallest rivulet, the hills, the woods, in their true places. Before
+that time, so confused was the topography, that on the eve of the battle
+of Fontenoy, the maps of the country being all examined, every one of
+them was found entirely defective.</p>
+
+<p>If a positive order had been sent from Versailles to an inexperienced
+general to give battle, and post himself as appeared most advisable from
+the maps, as sometimes happened in the time of the minister Chamillar,
+the battle would infallibly have been lost.</p>
+
+<p>A general who should carry on a war in the country of the Morlachians,
+or the Montenegrins, with no knowledge of places but from the maps,
+would be at as great a loss as if he were in the heart of Africa.</p>
+
+<p>Happily, that which has often been traced by geographers, according to
+their own fancy, in their closets, is rectified on the spot. In
+geography, as in morals, it is very difficult to know the world without
+going from home.</p>
+
+<p>It is not with this department of knowledge, as with the arts of poetry,
+music, and painting. The last works of these kinds are often the worst.
+But in the sciences, which require exactness rather than genius, the
+last are always the best, provided they are done with some degree of
+care.</p>
+
+<p>One of the greatest advantages of geography, in my opinion, is this:
+your fool of a neighbor, and his wife almost as stupid, are incessantly
+reproaching you with not thinking as they think in Rue St. Jacques.
+"See," say they, "what a multitude of great men have been of our
+opinion, from Peter the Lombard down to the Abbé Petit-pied. The whole
+universe has received our truths; they reign in the Faubourg St. Honoré,
+at Chaillot and at Étampes, at Rome and among the Uscoques." Take a map
+of the world; show them all Africa, the empires of Japan, China, India,
+Turkey, Persia, and that of Russia, more extensive than was the Roman
+Empire; make them pass their finger over all Scandinavia, all the north
+of Germany, the three kingdoms of Great Britain, the greater part of the
+Low Countries, and of Helvetia; in short make them observe, in the four
+great divisions of the earth, and in the fifth, which is as little known
+as it is great in extent, the prodigious number of races, who either
+never heard of those opinions, or have combated them, or have held them
+in abhorrence, and you will thus oppose the whole universe to Rue St.
+Jacques.</p>
+
+<p>You will tell them that Julius Cæsar, who extended his power much
+farther than that street, did not know a word of all which they think so
+universal; and that our ancestors, on whom Julius Cæsar bestowed the
+lash, knew no more of them than he did.</p>
+
+<p>They will then, perhaps, feel somewhat ashamed at having believed that
+the organ of St. Severin's church gave the tone to the rest of the
+world.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GLORY_GLORIOUS" id="GLORY_GLORIOUS"></a>GLORY&mdash;GLORIOUS.</h3>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION I.</h5>
+
+<p>Glory is reputation joined with esteem, and is complete when admiration
+is superadded. It always supposes that which is brilliant in action, in
+virtue, or in talent, and the surmounting of great difficulties. Cæsar
+and Alexander had glory. The same can hardly be said of Socrates. He
+claims esteem, reverence, pity, indignation against his enemies; but the
+term "glory" applied to him would be improper; his memory is venerable
+rather than glorious. Attila had much brilliancy, but he has no glory;
+for history, which may be mistaken, attributes to him no virtues:
+Charles XII. still has glory; for his valor, his disinterestedness, his
+liberality, were extreme. Success is sufficient for reputation, but not
+for glory. The glory of Henry IV. is every day increasing; for time has
+brought to light all his virtues, which were incomparably greater than
+his defects.</p>
+
+<p>Glory is also the portion of inventors in the fine arts; imitators have
+only applause. It is granted, too, to great talents, but in sublime arts
+only. We may well say, the glory of Virgil, or Cicero, but not of
+Martial, nor of Aulus Gellius.</p>
+
+<p>Men have dared to say, the glory of God: God created this world for His
+glory; not that the Supreme Being can have glory; but that men, having
+no expressions suitable to Him, use for Him those by which they are
+themselves most flattered.</p>
+
+<p>Vainglory is that petty ambition which is contented with appearances,
+which is exhibited in pompous display, and never elevates itself to
+greater things. Sovereigns, having real glory, have been known to be
+nevertheless fond of vainglory&mdash;seeking too eagerly after praise, and
+being too much attached to the trappings of ostentation.</p>
+
+<p>False glory often verges towards vanity; but it often leads to excesses,
+while vainglory is more confined to splendid littlenesses. A prince who
+should look for honor in revenge, would seek a false glory rather than a
+vain one.</p>
+
+<p>To give glory signifies to acknowledge, to bear witness. Give glory to
+truth, means acknowledging truth&mdash;Give glory to the God whom you
+serve&mdash;Bear witness to the God whom you serve.</p>
+
+<p>Glory is taken for heaven&mdash;He dwells in glory; but this is the case in
+no religion but ours. It is not allowable to say that Bacchus or
+Hercules was received into glory, when speaking of their apotheosis. The
+saints and angels have sometimes been called the glorious, as dwelling
+in the abode of glory.</p>
+
+<p>Gloriously is always taken in the good sense; he reigned gloriously; he
+extricated himself gloriously from great danger or embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>To glory in, is sometimes taken in the good, sometimes in the bad,
+sense, according to the nature of the object in question. He glories in
+a disgrace which is the fruit of his talents and the effect of envy. We
+say of the martyrs, that they glorified God&mdash;that is, that their
+constancy made the God whom they attested revered by men.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION II.</h5>
+
+<p>That Cicero should love glory, after having stifled Catiline's
+conspiracy, may be pardoned him. That the king of Prussia, Frederick the
+Great, should have the same feelings after Rosbach and Lissa, and after
+being the legislator, the historian, the poet, and the philosopher of
+his country&mdash;that he should be passionately fond of glory, and at the
+same time, have self-command enough to be modestly so&mdash;he will, on that
+account, be the more glorified.</p>
+
+<p>That the empress Catherine II. should have been forced by the brutish
+insolence of a Turkish sultan to display all her genius; that from the
+far north she should have sent four squadrons which spread terror in the
+Dardanelles and in Asia Minor; and that, in 1770, she took four
+provinces from those Turks who made Europe tremble&mdash;with this sort of
+glory she will not be reproached, but will be admired for speaking of
+her successes with that air of indifference and superiority which shows
+that they were merited.</p>
+
+<p>In short, glory befits geniuses of this sort, though belonging to the
+very mean race of mortals.</p>
+
+<p>But if, at the extremity of the west, a townsman of a place called Paris
+thinks he has glory in being harangued by a teacher of the university,
+who says to him: "Monseigneur, the glory you have acquired in the
+exercise of your office, your illustrious labors with which the universe
+resounds," etc., then I ask if there are mouths enough in that universe
+to celebrate, with their hisses, the glory of our citizen, and the
+eloquence of the pedant who attends to bray out this harangue at
+monseigneur's hotel? We are such fools that we have made God glorious
+like ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>That worthy chief of the dervishes, Ben-al-betif, said to his brethren
+one day: "My brethren, it is good that you should frequently use that
+sacred formula of our Koran, 'In the name of the most merciful God';
+because God uses mercy, and you learn to do so too, by oft repeating the
+words that recommend virtue, without which there would be few men left
+upon the earth. But, my brethren, beware of imitating those rash ones
+who boast, on every occasion, of laboring for the glory of God.</p>
+
+<p>"If a young simpleton maintains a thesis on the categories, an ignoramus
+in furs presiding, he is sure to write in large characters, at the head
+of his thesis, '<i>Ek alha abron doxa</i>!&mdash;'<i>Ad majorem Dei gloriam</i>.' &mdash;To
+the greater glory of God. If a good Mussulman has had his house
+whitewashed, he cuts this foolish inscription in the door. A saka
+carries water for the greater glory of God. It is an impious usage,
+piously used. What would you say of a little chiaoux, who, while
+emptying our sultan's close-stool, should exclaim: "To the greater glory
+of our invincible monarch?" There is certainly a greater distance
+between God and the sultan than between the sultan and the little
+chiaoux.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye miserable earth-worms, called men, what have you resembling the
+glory of the Supreme Being? Can He love glory? Can He receive it from
+you? Can He enjoy it? How long, ye two-legged animals without feathers,
+will you make God after your own image? What! because you are vain,
+because you love glory, you would have God love it also? If there were
+several Gods, perhaps each one would seek to gain the good opinion of
+his fellows. That might be glory to God. Such a God, if infinite
+greatness may be compared with extreme lowliness, would be like King
+Alexander or Iscander, who would enter the lists with none but kings.
+But you, poor creatures! what glory can you give to God? Cease to
+profane the sacred name. An emperor, named Octavius Augustus, forbade
+his being praised in the schools of Rome, lest his name should be
+brought into contempt. You can bring the name of the Supreme Being
+neither into contempt, nor into honor. Humble yourselves in the dust;
+adore, and be silent."</p>
+
+<p>Thus spake Ben-al-betif; and the dervishes cried out: "Glory to God!
+Ben-al-betif has said well."</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION III.</h5>
+
+<h4><i>Conversation with a Chinese.</i></h4>
+
+<p>In 1723, there was in Holland a Chinese: this Chinese was a man of
+letters and a merchant; which two professions ought not to be
+incompatible, but which have become so amongst us, thanks to the extreme
+regard which is paid to money, and the little consideration which
+mankind have ever shown, and will ever show, for merit.</p>
+
+<p>This Chinese, who spoke a little Dutch, was once in a bookseller's shop
+with some men of learning. He asked for a book, and "Bossuet's Universal
+History," badly translated, was proposed to him. "Ah!" said he, "how
+fortunate! I shall now see what is said of our great empire&mdash;of our
+nation, which has existed as a national body for more than fifty
+thousand years&mdash;of that succession of emperors who have governed us for
+so many ages. I shall now see what is thought of the religion of the
+men of letters&mdash;of that simple worship which we render to the Supreme
+Being. How pleasing to see what is said in Europe of our arts, many of
+which are more ancient amongst us than any European kingdom. I guess the
+author will have made many mistakes in the history of the war which we
+had twenty-two thousand five hundred and fifty-two years ago, with the
+warlike nations of Tonquin and Japan, and of that solemn embassy which
+the mighty emperor of the Moguls sent to ask laws from us, in the year
+of the world 500,000,000,000,079,123,450,000." "Alas!" said one of the
+learned men to him, "you are not even mentioned in that book; you are
+too inconsiderable; it is almost all about the first nation in the
+world&mdash;the only nation, the great Jewish people!"</p>
+
+<p>"The Jewish people!" exclaimed the Chinese. "Are they, then, masters of
+at least three-quarters of the earth?" "They flatter themselves that
+they shall one day be so," was the answer; "until which time they have
+the honor of being our old-clothes-men, and, now and then, clippers of
+our coin."&mdash;"You jest," said the Chinese; "had these people ever a vast
+empire?" "They had as their own for some years," said I, "a small
+country; but it is not by the extent of their states that a people are
+to be judged; as it is not by his riches that we are to estimate a man."</p>
+
+<p>"But is no other people spoken of in this book?" asked the man of
+letters. "Undoubtedly," returned a learned man who stood next me, and
+who instantly replied, "there is a deal said in it of a small country
+sixty leagues broad, called Egypt, where it is asserted that there was a
+lake a hundred and fifty leagues round, cut by the hands of
+men."&mdash;"Zounds!" said the Chinese; "a lake a hundred and fifty leagues
+round in a country only sixty broad! That is fine, indeed!"&mdash;"Everybody
+was wise in that country," added the doctor. "Oh! what fine times they
+must have been," said the Chinese. "But is that all?"&mdash;"No," replied the
+European; "he also treats of that celebrated people, the Greeks." "Who
+are these Greeks?" asked the man of letters. "Ah!" continued the other,
+"they inhabited a province about a two-hundredth part as large as China,
+but which has been famous throughout the world." "I have never heard
+speak of these people, neither in Mogul nor in Japan, nor in Great
+Tartary," said the Chinese, with an ingenuous look.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ignorant, barbarous man!" politely exclaimed our scholar. "Know you
+not, then, the Theban Epaminondas; nor the harbor of Piraeus; nor the
+name of the two horses of Achilles; nor that of Silenus's ass? Have you
+not heard of Jupiter, nor of Diogenes, nor of Lais, nor of Cybele,
+nor&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I am much afraid," replied the man of letters, "that you know nothing
+at all of the ever memorable adventure of the celebrated Xixofou
+Concochigramki, nor of the mysteries of the great Fi Psi Hi Hi. But
+pray, what are the other unknown things of which this universal history
+treats?" The scholar then spoke for a quarter of an hour on the Roman
+commonwealth: but when he came to Julius Cæsar, the Chinese interrupted
+him, saying, "As for him, I think I know him: was he not a Turk?"</p>
+
+<p>"What!" said the scholar, somewhat warm, "do you not at least know the
+difference between Pagans, Christians, and Mussulmans? Do you not know
+Constantine, and the history of the popes?" "We have indistinctly
+heard," answered the Asiatic, "of one Mahomet."</p>
+
+<p>"It is impossible," returned the other, "that you should not, at least,
+be acquainted with Luther, Zuinglius, Bellarmin, Å’colampadius." "I
+shall never remember those names," said the Chinese. He then went away
+to sell a considerable parcel of tea and fine grogram, with which he
+bought two fine girls and a ship-boy, whom he took back to his own
+country, adoring Tien, and commending himself to Confucius.</p>
+
+<p>For myself, who was present at this conversation, I clearly saw what
+glory is; and I said: Since Cæsar and Jupiter are unknown in the finest,
+the most ancient, the most extensive, the most populous and
+well-regulated kingdom upon earth; it beseems you, ye governors of some
+little country, ye preachers in some little parish, or some little
+town&mdash;ye doctors of Salamanca and of Bourges, ye flimsy authors, and ye
+ponderous commentators&mdash;it beseems you to make pretensions to renown!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GOAT_SORCERY" id="GOAT_SORCERY"></a>GOAT&mdash;SORCERY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The honors of every kind which antiquity paid to goats would be very
+astonishing, if anything could astonish those who have grown a little
+familiar with the world, ancient and modern. The Egyptians and the Jews
+often designated the kings and the chiefs of the people by the word
+"goat." We find in Zachariah:</p>
+
+<p>"Mine anger was kindled against the shepherds, and I punished the goats;
+for the Lord of Hosts hath visited his flock, the house of Judah, and
+hath made them as his goodly horse in the battle."</p>
+
+<p>"Remove out of the midst of Babylon," says Jeremiah to the chiefs of the
+people; "go forth out of the land of the Chaldæans, and be as the
+he-goats before the flocks."</p>
+
+<p>Isaiah, in chapters x. and xiv., uses the term "goat," which has been
+translated "prince." The Egyptians went much farther than calling their
+kings goats; they consecrated a goat in Mendes, and it is even said that
+they adored him. The truth very likely was, that the people took an
+emblem for a divinity, as is but too often the case.</p>
+
+<p>It is not likely that the Egyptian <i>shoën</i> or <i>shotim</i>, <i>i.e.</i>, priests,
+immolated goats and worshipped them at the same time. We know that they
+had their goat Hazazel, which they adorned and crowned with flowers, and
+threw down headlong, as an expiation for the people; and that the Jews
+took from them, not only this ceremony, but even the very name of
+Hazazel, as they adopted many other rites from Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>But goats received another, and yet more singular honor. It is beyond a
+doubt that in Egypt many women set the same example with goats, as
+Pasiphae did with her bull.</p>
+
+<p>The Jews but too faithfully imitated these abominations. Jeroboam
+instituted priests for the service of his calves and his goats.</p>
+
+<p>The worship of the goat was established in Egypt, and in the lands of a
+part of Palestine. Enchantments were believed to be operated by means of
+goats, and other monsters, which were always represented with a goat's
+head.</p>
+
+<p>Magic, sorcery, soon passed from the East into the West, and extended
+itself throughout the earth. The sort of sorcery that came from the Jews
+was called Sabbatum by the Romans, who thus confounded their sacred day
+with their secret abominations. Thence it was, that in the neighboring
+nations, to be a sorcerer and to go to the sabbath, meant the same
+thing.</p>
+
+<p>Wretched village women, deceived by knaves, and still more by the
+weakness of their own imaginations, believed that after pronouncing the
+word "<i>abraxa</i>", and rubbing themselves with an ointment mixed with
+cow-dung and goat's hair, they went to the sabbath on a broom-stick in
+their sleep, that there they adored a goat, and that he enjoyed them.</p>
+
+<p>This opinion was universal. All the doctors asserted that it was the
+devil, who metamorphosed himself into a goat. This may be seen in Del
+Rio's "Disquisitions," and in a hundred other authors. The theologian
+Grillandus, a great promoter of the Inquisition, quoted by Del Rio, says
+that sorcerers call the goat Martinet. He assures us that a woman who
+was attached to Martinet, mounted on his back, and was carried in an
+instant through the air to a place called the Nut of Benevento.</p>
+
+<p>There were books in which the mysteries of the sorcerers were written. I
+have seen one of them, at the head of which was a figure of a goat very
+badly drawn, with a woman on her knees behind him. In France, these
+books were called "<i>grimoires</i>"; and in other countries "the devil's
+alphabet." That which I saw contained only four leaves, in almost
+illegible characters, much like those of the "Shepherd's Almanac."</p>
+
+<p>Reasoning and better education would have sufficed in Europe for the
+extirpation of such an extravagance; but executions were employed
+instead of reasoning. The pretended sorcerers had their "<i>grimoire</i>" and
+the judges had their sorcerer's code. In 1599, the Jesuit Del Rio, a
+doctor of Louvain, published his "Magical Disquisitions." He affirms
+that all heretics are magicians, and frequently recommends that they be
+put to the torture. He has no doubt that the devil transforms himself
+into a goat and grants his favors to all women presented to him. He
+quotes various jurisconsults, called demonographers, who assert that
+Luther was the son of a woman and a goat. He assures us that at
+Brussels, in 1595, a woman was brought to bed of a child, of which the
+devil, disguised as a goat, was father, and that she was punished, but
+he does not inform us in what manner.</p>
+
+<p>But the jurisprudence of witchcraft has been the most profoundly treated
+by one Boguet, "<i>grand juge en dernier ressort</i>" of an abbey of St.
+Claude in Franche-Comté. He gives an account of all the executions to
+which he condemned wizards and witches, and the number is very
+considerable. Nearly all the witches are supposed to have had commerce
+with the goat.</p>
+
+<p>It has already been said that more than a hundred thousand sorcerers
+have been executed in Europe. Philosophy alone has at length cured men
+of this abominable delusion, and has taught judges that they should not
+burn the insane.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GOD_GODS" id="GOD_GODS"></a>GOD&mdash;GODS.</h3>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION I.</h5>
+
+<p>The reader cannot too carefully bear in mind that this dictionary has
+not been written for the purpose of repeating what so many others have
+said.</p>
+
+<p>The knowledge of a God is not impressed upon us by the hands of nature,
+for then men would all have the same idea; and no idea is born with us.
+It does not come to us like the perception of light, of the ground,
+etc., which we receive as soon as our eyes and our understandings are
+opened. Is it a philosophical idea? No; men admitted the existence of
+gods before they were philosophers.</p>
+
+<p>Whence, then, is this idea derived? From feeling, and from that natural
+logic which unfolds itself with age, even in the rudest of mankind.
+Astonishing effects of nature were beheld&mdash;harvests and barrenness, fair
+weather and storms, benefits and scourges; and the hand of a master was
+felt. Chiefs were necessary to govern societies; and it was needful to
+admit sovereigns of these new sovereigns whom human weakness had given
+itself&mdash;beings before whose power these men who could bear down their
+fellow-men might tremble. The first sovereigns in their time employed
+these notions to cement their power. Such were the first steps; thus
+every little society had its god. These notions were rude because
+everything was rude. It is very natural to reason by analogy. One
+society under a chief did not deny that the neighboring tribe should
+likewise have its judge, or its captain; consequently it could not deny
+that the other should also have its god. But as it was to the interest
+of each tribe that its captain should be the best, it was also
+interested in believing, and consequently it did believe, that its god
+was the mightiest. Hence those ancient fables which have so long been
+generally diffused, that the gods of one nation fought against the gods
+of another. Hence the numerous passages in the Hebrew books, which we
+find constantly disclosing the opinion entertained by the Jews, that the
+gods of their enemies existed, but that they were inferior to the God of
+the Jews.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, in the great states where the progress of society allowed to
+individuals the enjoyment of speculative leisure, there were priests,
+Magi, and philosophers.</p>
+
+<p>Some of these perfected their reason so far as to acknowledge in secret
+one only and universal god. So, although the ancient Egyptians adored
+Osiri, Osiris, or rather Osireth (which signifies this land is mine);
+though they also adored other superior beings, yet they admitted one
+supreme, one only principal god, whom they called "<i>Knef</i>", whose symbol
+was a sphere placed on the frontispiece of the temple.</p>
+
+<p>After this model, the Greeks had their Zeus, their Jupiter, the master
+of the other gods, who were but what the angels are with the Babylonians
+and the Hebrews, and the saints with the Christians of the Roman
+communion.</p>
+
+<p>It is a more thorny question than it has been considered, and one by no
+means profoundly examined, whether several gods, equal in power, can
+exist at the same time?</p>
+
+<p>We have no adequate idea of the Divinity; we creep on from conjecture to
+conjecture, from likelihood to probability. We have very few
+certainties. There is something; therefore there is something eternal;
+for nothing is produced from nothing. Here is a certain truth on which
+the mind reposes. Every work which shows us means and an end, announces
+a workman; then this universe, composed of springs, of means, each of
+which has its end, discovers a most mighty, a most intelligent workman.
+Here is a probability approaching the greatest certainty. But is this
+supreme artificer infinite? Is he everywhere? Is he in one place? How
+are we, with our feeble intelligence and limited knowledge, to answer
+these questions?</p>
+
+<p>My reason alone proves to me a being who has arranged the matter of this
+world; but my reason is unable to prove to me that he made this
+matter&mdash;that he brought it out of nothing. All the sages of antiquity,
+without exception, believed matter to be eternal, and existing by
+itself. All then that I can do, without the aid of superior light, is to
+believe that the God of this world is also eternal, and existing by
+Himself. God and matter exist by the nature of things. May not other
+gods exist, as well as other worlds? Whole nations, and very enlightened
+schools, have clearly admitted two gods in this world&mdash;one the source of
+good, the other the source of evil. They admitted an eternal war between
+two equal powers. Assuredly, nature can more easily suffer the existence
+of several independent beings in the immensity of space, than that of
+limited and powerless gods in this world, of whom one can do no good,
+and the other no harm.</p>
+
+<p>If God and matter exist from all eternity, as antiquity believed, here
+then are two necessary beings; now, if there be two necessary beings,
+there may be thirty. These doubts alone, which are the germ of an
+infinity of reflections, serve at least to convince us of the feebleness
+of our understanding. We must, with Cicero, confess our ignorance of the
+nature of the Divinity; we shall never know any more of it than he did.</p>
+
+<p>In vain do the schools tell us that God is infinite negatively and not
+privatively&mdash;"<i>formaliter et non materialiter</i>" that He is the first
+act, the middle, and the last&mdash;that He is everywhere without being in
+any place; a hundred pages of commentaries on definitions like these
+cannot give us the smallest light. We have no steps whereby to arrive at
+such knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>We feel that we are under the hand of an invisible being; this is all;
+we cannot advance one step farther. It is mad temerity to seek to divine
+what this being is&mdash;whether he is extended or not, whether he is in one
+place or not, how he exists, or how he operates.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION II.</h5>
+
+<p>I am ever apprehensive of being mistaken; but all monuments give me
+sufficient evidence that the polished nations of antiquity acknowledged
+a supreme god. There is not a book, not a medal, not a bas-relief, not
+an inscription, in which Juno, Minerva, Neptune, Mars, or any of the
+other deities, is spoken of as a forming being, the sovereign of all
+nature. On the contrary, the most ancient profane books that we
+have&mdash;those of Hesiod and Homer&mdash;represent their Zeus as the only
+thunderer, the only master of gods and men; he even punishes the other
+gods; he ties Juno with a chain, and drives Apollo out of heaven.</p>
+
+<p>The ancient religion of the Brahmins&mdash;the first that admitted celestial
+creatures&mdash;the first which spoke of their rebellion&mdash;explains itself in
+sublime manner concerning the unity and power of God; as we have seen in
+the article on "Angel."</p>
+
+<p>The Chinese, ancient as they are, come after the Indians. They have
+acknowledged one only god from time immemorial; they have no subordinate
+gods, no t mediating demons or genii between God and man; no oracles, no
+abstract dogmas, no theological disputes among the lettered; their
+emperor was always the first pontiff; their religion was always august
+and simple; thus it is that this vast empire, though twice subjugated,
+has constantly preserved its integrity, has made its conquerors receive
+its laws, and notwithstanding the crimes and miseries inseparable from
+the human race, is still the most flourishing state upon earth.</p>
+
+<p>The Magi of Chaldæa, the Sabeans, acknowledged but one supreme god, whom
+they adored in the stars, which are his work. The Persians adored him in
+the sun. The sphere placed on the frontispiece of the temple of Memphis
+was the emblem of one only and perfect god, called "<i>Knef</i>" by the
+Egyptians.</p>
+
+<p>The title of "<i>Deus Optimus Maximus</i>" was never given by the Romans to
+any but "<i>Jupiter, hominum sator atque deorum</i>." This great truth, which
+we have elsewhere pointed out, cannot be too often repeated.</p>
+
+<p>This adoration of a Supreme God, from Romulus down to the total
+destruction of the empire and of its religion, is confirmed. In spite of
+all the follies of the people, who venerated secondary and ridiculous
+gods, and in spite of the Epicureans, who in reality acknowledged none,
+it is verified that, in all times, the magistrates and the wise adored
+one sovereign God.</p>
+
+<p>From the great number of testimonies left us to this truth, I will
+select first that of Maximus of Tyre, who flourished under the
+Antonines&mdash;those models of true piety, since they were models of
+humanity. These are his words, in his discourse entitled "Of God,"
+according to Plato. The reader who would instruct himself is requested
+to weigh them well:</p>
+
+<p>"Men have been so weak as to give to God a human figure, because they
+had seen nothing superior to man; but it is ridiculous to imagine, with
+Homer, that Jupiter or the Supreme Divinity has black eyebrows and
+golden hair, which he cannot shake without making the heavens tremble.</p>
+
+<p>"When men are questioned concerning the nature of the Divinity, their
+answers are all different. Yet, notwithstanding this prodigious variety
+of opinions, you will find one and the same feeling throughout the
+earth&mdash;viz., that there is but one God, who is the father of all...."</p>
+
+<p>After this formal avowal, after the immortal discourses of Cicero, of
+Antonine, of Epictetus, what becomes of the declamations which so many
+ignorant pedants are still repeating? What avail those eternal
+reproachings of base polytheism and puerile idolatry, but to convince us
+that the reproachers have not the slightest acquaintance with sterling
+antiquity? They have taken the reveries of Homer for the doctrines of
+the wise.</p>
+
+<p>Is it necessary to have stronger or more expressive testimony? You will
+find it in the letter from Maximus of Madaura to St. Augustine; both
+were philosophers and orators; at least, they prided themselves on being
+so; they wrote to each other freely; they were even friends as much as a
+man of the old religion and one of the new could be friends. Read
+Maximus of Madaura's letter, and the bishop of Hippo's answer:</p>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>Letter from Maximus of Madaura.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Now, that there is a sovereign God, who is without beginning, and, who,
+without having begotten anything like unto himself, is nevertheless the
+father and the former of all things, what man can be gross and stupid
+enough to doubt? He it is of whom, under different names, we adore the
+eternal power extending through every part of the world&mdash;thus honoring
+separately, by different sorts of worship, what may be called his
+several members, we adore him entirely.... May those subordinate gods
+preserve you, under whose names, and by whom all we mortals upon earth
+adore the common father of gods and men, by different sorts of worship,
+it is true, but all according in their variety, and all tending to the
+same end."</p>
+
+<p>By whom was this letter written? By a Numidian&mdash;one of the country of
+the Algerines!</p>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>Augustine's Answer.</i></p>
+
+<p>"In your public square there are two statues of Mars, the one naked, the
+other armed; and close by, the figure of a man who, with three fingers
+advanced towards Mars, holds in check that divinity, so dangerous to the
+whole town. With regard to what you say of such gods, being portions of
+the only true God, I take the liberty you give me, to warn you not to
+fall into such a sacrilege; for that only God, of whom you speak, is
+doubtless He who is acknowledged by the whole world, and concerning
+whom, as some of the ancients have said, the ignorant agree with the
+learned. Now, will you say that he whose strength, if not his cruelty,
+is represented by an inanimate man, is a portion of that God? I could
+easily push you hard on this subject; for you will clearly see how much
+might be said upon it; but I refrain, lest you should say that I employ
+against you the weapons of rhetoric rather than those of virtue."</p>
+
+<p>We know not what was signified by these two statues, of which no vestige
+is left us; but not all the statues with which Rome was filled&mdash;not the
+Pantheon and all the temples consecrated to the inferior gods, nor even
+those of the twelve greater gods prevented "<i>Deus Optimus
+Maximus</i>"&mdash;"God, most good, most great"&mdash;from being acknowledged
+throughout the empire.</p>
+
+<p>The misfortune of the Romans, then, was their ignorance of the Mosaic
+law, and afterwards, of the law of the disciples of our Saviour Jesus
+Christ&mdash;their want of the faith&mdash;their mixing with the worship of a
+supreme God the worship of Mars, of Venus, of Minerva, of Apollo, who
+did not exist, and their preserving that religion until the time of the
+Theodosii. Happily, the Goths, the Huns, the Vandals, the Heruli, the
+Lombards, the Franks, who destroyed that empire, submitted to the truth,
+and enjoyed a blessing denied to Scipio, to Cato, to Metellus, to
+Emilius, to Cicero, to Varro, to Virgil, and to Horace.</p>
+
+<p>None of these great men knew Jesus Christ, whom they could not know; yet
+they did not worship the devil, as so many pedants are every day
+repeating. How should they worship the devil, of whom they had never
+heard?</p>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>A Calumny on Cicero by Warburton, on the Subject of a Supreme God.</i></p>
+
+<p>Warburton, like his contemporaries, has calumniated Cicero and ancient
+Rome. He boldly supposes that Cicero pronounced these words, in his
+"Oration for Flaccus":</p>
+
+<p>"It is unworthy of the majesty of the empire to adore only one
+God"&mdash;"<i>Majestatem imperii non decuit ut unus tantum Deus colatur.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>It will, perhaps, hardly be believed that there is not a word of this in
+the "Oration for Flaccus," nor in any of Cicero's works. Flaccus, who
+had exercised the prætorship in Asia Minor, is charged with exercising
+some vexations. He was secretly persecuted by the Jews, who then
+inundated Rome; for, by their money, they had obtained privileges in
+Rome at the very time when Pompey, after Crassus, had taken Jerusalem,
+and hanged their petty king, Alexander, son of Aristobolus. Flaccus had
+forbidden the conveying of gold and silver specie to Jerusalem, because
+the money came back altered, and commerce was thereby injured; and he
+had seized the gold which was clandestinely carried. This gold, said
+Cicero, is still in the treasury. Flaccus has acted as disinterestedly
+as Pompey.</p>
+
+<p>Cicero, then, with his wonted irony, pronounces these words: "Each
+country has its religion; we have ours. While Jerusalem was yet free,
+while the Jews were yet at peace, even then they held in abhorrence the
+splendor of this empire, the dignity of the Roman name, the
+institutions of our ancestors. Now that nation has shown more than ever,
+by the strength of its arms, what it should think of the Roman Empire.
+It has shown us, by its valor, how dear it is to the immortal gods; it
+has proved it to us, by its being vanquished, expatriated, and
+tributary."&mdash;"<i>Stantibus Hierosolymis, pacatisque Judais, tamen istorum
+religio sacrorum, a splendore hujus imperii, gravitate nominis nostri,
+ma jorum institutis, abhorrebat; nunc vero hoc magis quid ilia gens,
+quid de imperio nostro sentiret, ostendit armis; quam cara diis
+immortalibus esset, docuit, quod est victa, quod elocata, quod
+servata.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>It is then quite false that Cicero, or any other Roman, ever said that
+it did not become the majesty of the empire to acknowledge a supreme
+God. Their Jupiter, the Zeus of the Greeks, the Jehovah of the
+Phœnicians, was always considered as the master of the secondary
+gods. This great truth cannot be too forcibly inculcated.</p>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>Did the Romans Take Their Gods from the Greeks?</i></p>
+
+<p>Had not the Romans served gods for whom they were not indebted to the
+Greeks? For instance, they could not be guilty of plagiarism in adoring
+Coelum, while the Greeks adored Ouranon; or in addressing themselves to
+Saturnus and Tellus, while the Greeks addressed themselves to Ge and
+Chronos. They called Ceres, her whom the Greeks named Deo and Demiter.</p>
+
+<p>Their Neptune was Poseidon, their Venus was Aphrodite; their Juno was
+called, in Greek, Era; their Proserpine, Core; and their favorites, Mars
+and Bellona, were Ares and Enio. In none of these instances do the names
+resemble.</p>
+
+<p>Did the inventive spirits of Rome and of Greece assemble? or did the one
+take from the other the <i>thing</i>, while they disguised the <i>name</i>? It is
+very natural that the Romans, without consulting the Greeks, should make
+to themselves gods of the heavens, of time; beings presiding over war,
+over generation, over harvests, without going to Greece to ask for gods,
+as they afterwards went there to ask for laws. When you find a name that
+resembles nothing else, it is but fair to believe it a native of that
+particular country.</p>
+
+<p>But is not Jupiter, the master of all the gods, a word belonging to
+every nation, from the Euphrates to the Tiber? Among the first Romans,
+it was <i>Jov</i>, <i>Jovis</i>; among the Greeks, <i>Zeus</i>; among the
+Phœnicians, the Syrians, and the Egyptians, <i>Jehovah</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Does not this resemblance serve to confirm the supposition that every
+people had the knowledge of the Supreme Being?&mdash;a knowledge confused, it
+is true; but what man can have it <i>distinct</i>?</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION III.</h5>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>Examination of Spinoza.</i></p>
+
+<p>Spinoza cannot help admitting an intelligence acting in matter, and
+forming a whole with it.</p>
+
+<p>"I must conclude," he says, "that the absolute being is neither thought
+nor extent, exclusively of each other; but that extent and thought are
+necessary attributes of the absolute being."</p>
+
+<p>Herein he appears to differ from all the atheists of antiquity; from
+Ocellus, Lucanus, Heraclitus, Democritus, Leucippus, Strato, Epicurus,
+Pythagoras, Diagoras, Zeno of Elis, Anaximander, and so many others. He
+differs from them, above all, in his method, which he took entirely from
+the reading of Descartes, whose very style he has imitated.</p>
+
+<p>The multitude of those who cry out against Spinoza, without ever having
+read him, will especially be astonished by his following declaration. He
+does not make it to dazzle mankind, nor to appease theologians, nor to
+obtain protectors, nor to disarm a party; he speaks as a philosopher,
+without naming himself, without advertising himself; and expresses
+himself in Latin, so as to be understood by a very small number. Here is
+his profession of faith.</p>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>Spinoza's Profession of Faith.</i></p>
+
+<p>"If I also concluded that the idea of God, comprised in that of the
+infinity of the universe, excused me from obedience, love, and worship,
+I should make a still more pernicious use of my reason; for it is
+evident to me that the laws which I <i>have</i> received, not by the relation
+or intervention of other men, but immediately from Him, are those which
+the light of nature points out to me as the true guides of rational
+conduct. If I failed of obedience, in this particular, I should sin, not
+only against the principle of my being and the society of my kind, but
+also against myself, in depriving myself of the most solid advantage of
+my existence. This obedience does, it is true, bind me only to the
+duties of my state, and makes me look on all besides as frivolous
+practices, invented in superstition to serve the purposes of their
+inventors.</p>
+
+<p>"With regard to the love of God, so far, I conceive, is this idea from
+tending to weaken it, that no other is more calculated to increase it;
+since, through it, I know that God is intimate with my being; that He
+gives me existence and my every property; but He gives me them
+liberally, without reproach, without interest, without subjecting me to
+anything but my own nature. It banishes fear, uneasiness, distrust, and
+all the effects of a vulgar or interested love. It informs me that this
+is a good which I cannot lose, and which I possess the more fully, as I
+know and love it."</p>
+
+<p>Are these the words of the virtuous and tender Fénelon, or those of
+Spinoza? How is it that two men so opposed to each other, have, with
+such different notions of God, concurred in the idea of loving God for
+Himself?</p>
+
+<p>It must be acknowledged that they went both to the same end&mdash;the one as
+a Christian, the other as a man who had the misfortune not to be so;
+the holy archbishop, as philosopher, convinced that God is distinct
+from nature; the other as a widely-erring disciple of Descartes, who
+imagined that God is all nature.</p>
+
+<p>The former was orthodox, the latter was mistaken, I must assent; but
+both were honest, both estimable in their sincerity, as in their mild
+and simple manners; though there is no other point of resemblance
+between the imitator of the "Odyssey," and a dry Cartesian fenced round
+with arguments; between one of the most accomplished men of the court of
+Louis XIV. invested with what is called a <i>high</i> divinity, and a poor
+unjudaïzed Jew, living with an income of three hundred florins, in the
+most profound obscurity.</p>
+
+<p>If there be any similitude between them, it is that Fénelon was accused
+before the Sanhedrim of the new law, and the other before a synagogue
+without power or without reason; but the one submitted, the other
+rebelled.</p>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>Foundation of Spinoza's Philosophy.</i></p>
+
+<p>The great dialectician Bayle has refuted Spinoza. His system, therefore,
+is not demonstrated, like one of Euclid's propositions; for, if it were
+so, it could not be combated. It is, therefore, at least obscure.</p>
+
+<p>I have always had some suspicion that Spinoza, with his universal
+substance, his modes and accidents, had some other meaning than that in
+which he is understood by Bayle; and consequently, that Bayle may be
+right, without having confounded Spinoza. And, in particular, I have
+always thought that often Spinoza did not understand himself, and that
+this is the principal reason why he has not been understood.</p>
+
+<p>It seems to me that the ramparts of Spinozism might be beaten down on a
+side which Bayle has neglected. Spinoza thinks that there can exist but
+one substance; and it appears throughout his book that he builds his
+theory on the mistake of Descartes, that "nature is a plenum."</p>
+
+<p>The theory of a plenum is as false as that of a void. It is now
+demonstrated that motion is as impossible in absolute fulness, as it is
+impossible that, in an equal balance, a weight of two pounds in one
+scale should sink a weight of two in the other.</p>
+
+<p>Now, if every motion absolutely requires empty space, what becomes of
+Spinoza's one and only substance? How can the substance of a star,
+between which and us there is a void so immense, be precisely the
+substance of this earth, or the substance of myself, or the substance of
+a fly eaten by a spider?</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps I mistake, but I never have been able to conceive how Spinoza,
+admitting an infinite substance of which thought and matter are the two
+modalities&mdash;admitting the substance which he calls God, and of which all
+that we see is mode or accident&mdash;could nevertheless reject final causes.
+If this infinite, universal being thinks, must he not have design? If he
+has design, must he not have a will?</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 428px;">
+<a name="Descartes" id="Descartes"></a>
+<img src="images/img_04_descartes.jpg" width="428" alt="Descartes." title="" />
+<span class="caption_fig">Descartes.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Spinoza says, we are modes of that absolute, necessary, infinite being.
+I say to Spinoza, we will, and have design, we who are but modes;
+therefore, this infinite, necessary, absolute being cannot be deprived
+of them; therefore, he has will, design, power.</p>
+
+<p>I am aware that various philosophers, and especially Lucretius, have
+denied final causes; I am also aware that Lucretius, though not very
+chaste, is a very great poet in his descriptions and in his morals; but
+in philosophy I own he appears to me to be very far behind a college
+porter or a parish beadle. To affirm that the eye is not made to see,
+nor the ear to hear, nor the stomach to digest&mdash;is not this the most
+enormous absurdity, the most revolting folly, that ever entered the
+human mind? Doubter as I am, this insanity seems to me evident, and I
+say so.</p>
+
+<p>For my part, I see in nature, as in the arts, only final causes, and I
+believe that an apple tree is made to bear apples, as I believe that a
+watch is made to tell the hour.</p>
+
+<p>I must here acquaint the readers that if Spinoza, in several passages of
+his works, makes a jest of final causes, he most expressly acknowledges
+them in the first part of his "Being, in General and in Particular."</p>
+
+<p>Here he says, "Permit me for a few moments to dwell with admiration on
+the wonderful dispensation of nature, which, having enriched the
+constitution of man with all the resources necessary to prolong to a
+certain term the duration of his frail existence, and to animate his
+knowledge of himself by that of an infinity of distant objects, seems
+purposely to have neglected to give him the means of well knowing what
+he is obliged to make a more ordinary use of&mdash;the individuals of his own
+species. Yet, when duly considered, this appears less the effect of a
+refusal than of an extreme liberality; for, if there were any
+intelligent being that could penetrate another against his will, he
+would enjoy such an advantage as would of itself exclude him from
+society; whereas, in the present state of things, each individual
+enjoying himself in full independence communicates himself so much only
+as he finds convenient."</p>
+
+<p>What shall I conclude from this? That Spinoza frequently contradicted
+himself; that he had not always clear ideas; that in the great wreck of
+systems, he clung sometimes to one plank, sometimes to another; that in
+this weakness he was like Malebranche, Arnauld, Bossuet, and Claude, who
+now and then contradicted themselves in their disputes; that he was like
+numberless metaphysicians and theologians? I shall conclude that I have
+additional reason for distrusting all my metaphysical notions; that I am
+a very feeble animal, treading on quicksands, which are continually
+giving way beneath me; and that there is perhaps nothing so foolish as
+to believe ourselves always in the right.</p>
+
+<p>Baruch Spinoza, you are very confused; but are you as dangerous as you
+are said to be? I maintain that you are not; and my reason is, that you
+<i>are</i> confused, that you have written in bad Latin, and that there are
+not ten persons in Europe who read you from beginning to end, although
+you have been translated into French. Who is the dangerous author? He
+who is read by the idle at court and by the ladies.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION IV.</h5>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>The "System of Nature."</i></p>
+
+<p>The author of the "System of Nature" has had the advantage of being read
+by both learned and ignorant, and by women. His style, then, has merits
+which that of Spinoza wanted. He is often luminous, sometimes eloquent;
+although he may be charged, like all the rest, with repetition,
+declamation, and self-contradiction. But for profundity, he is very
+often to be distrusted both in physics and in morals. The interest of
+mankind is here in question; we will, therefore, examine whether his
+doctrine is true and useful; and will, if we can, be brief.</p>
+
+<p>"Order and disorder do not exist." What! in physics, is not a child born
+blind, without legs, or a monster, contrary to the nature of the
+species? Is it not the ordinary regularity of nature that makes order,
+and irregularity that constitutes disorder? Is it not a great
+derangement, a dreadful disorder, when nature gives a child hunger and
+closes the Å“sophagus? The evacuations of every kind are necessary;
+yet the channels are frequently without orifices, which it is necessary
+to remedy. Doubtless this disorder has its cause; for there is no effect
+without a cause; but it is a very disordered effect.</p>
+
+<p>Is not the assassination of our friend, or of our brother, a horrible
+disorder in morals? Are not the calumnies of a Garasse, of a Letellier,
+of a Doucin, against Jansenists, and those of Jansenists against
+Jesuits, petty disorders? Were not the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the
+Irish massacre, etc., execrable disorders? This crime has its cause in
+passion, but the effect is execrable; the cause is fatal; this disorder
+makes us shudder. The origin of the disorder remains to be discovered,
+but the disorder exists.</p>
+
+<p>"Experience proves to us that the matter which we regard as inert and
+dead assumes action, intelligence, and life, when it is combined in a
+certain way."</p>
+
+<p>This is precisely the difficulty. How does a germ come to life? Of this
+the author and the reader are alike ignorant. Hence, are not the "System
+of Nature," and all the systems in the world, so many dreams?</p>
+
+<p>"It would be necessary to define the vital principle, which I deem
+impossible." Is not this definition very easy, very common? Is not life
+organization with feeling? But that you have these two properties from
+the motion of matter alone, it is impossible to give any proof; and if
+it cannot be proved, why affirm it? Why say aloud, "I know," while you
+say to yourself, "I know not"?</p>
+
+<p>"It will be asked, what is man?" etc. Assuredly, this article is no
+clearer than the most obscure of Spinoza's; and many readers will feel
+indignant at the decisive tone which is assumed without anything being
+explained.</p>
+
+<p>"Matter is eternal and necessary; but its forms and its combinations are
+transitory and contingent," etc. It is hard to comprehend, matter being,
+according to our author, necessary, and without freedom, how there can
+be anything contingent. By contingency, we understand that which may be,
+or may not be; but since all must be, of absolute necessity, every
+manner of being, which he here very erroneously calls contingent, is as
+absolutely of necessity as the being itself. Here again we are in a
+labyrinth.</p>
+
+<p>When you venture to affirm that there is no God, that matter acts of
+itself by an eternal necessity, it must be demonstrated like a
+proposition in Euclid, otherwise you rest your system only on a perhaps.
+What a foundation for that which is most interesting to the human race!</p>
+
+<p>"If man is by his nature forced to love his well-being, he is forced to
+love the means of that well-being. It were useless, and perhaps unjust,
+to ask a man to be virtuous, if he cannot be so without making himself
+unhappy. So soon as vice makes him happy, he must love vice."</p>
+
+<p>This maxim is yet more execrable in morals than the others are in
+physics. Were it true that a man could not be virtuous without
+suffering, he must be encouraged to suffer. Our author's proposition
+would evidently be the ruin of society. Besides, how does he know that
+we cannot be happy without having vices? On the contrary, is it not
+proved by experience that the satisfaction of having subdued them is a
+thousand times greater than the pleasure of yielding to them?&mdash;a
+pleasure always empoisoned, a pleasure leading to woe. By subduing our
+vices, we acquire tranquillity, the consoling testimony of our
+conscience; by giving ourselves up to them, we lose our health, our
+quiet&mdash;we risk everything. Thus our author himself, in twenty passages,
+wishes all to be sacrificed to virtue; and he advances this proposition
+only to give in his system a fresh proof of the necessity of being
+virtuous.</p>
+
+<p>"They who, with so many arguments, reject innate ideas should have
+perceived that this ineffable intelligence by which the world is said to
+be guided, and of which our senses can determine neither the existence
+nor the qualities, is a being of reason."</p>
+
+<p>But, truly, how does it follow from our having no innate ideas, that
+there is no God? Is not this consequence absurd? Is there any
+contradiction in saying that God gives us ideas through our senses? Is
+it not, on the contrary, most clearly evident, that if there is an
+Almighty Being from whom we have life, we owe to him our ideas and our
+senses as well as everything else? It should first have been proved
+that God does not exist, which our author has not done, which he has not
+even attempted to do before this page of his tenth chapter.</p>
+
+<p>Fearful of wearying the reader by an examination of all these detached
+passages, I will come at once to the foundation of the book, and the
+astonishing error upon which the author has built his system.</p>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>Story of the Eels on Which the System is Founded.</i></p>
+
+<p>About the year 1750 there was, in France, an English Jesuit called
+Needham, disguised as a secular, who was then serving as tutor to the
+nephew of M. Dillon, archbishop of Toulouse. This man made experiments
+in natural philosophy, and especially in chemistry.</p>
+
+<p>Having put some rye meal into well-corked bottles, and some boiled
+mutton gravy into other bottles, he thought that his mutton gravy and
+his meal had given birth to eels, which again produced others; and that
+thus a race of eels was formed indifferently from the juice of meat, or
+from a grain of rye.</p>
+
+<p>A natural philosopher, of some reputation, had no doubt that this
+Needham was a profound atheist. He concluded that, since eels could be
+made of rye meal, men might be made of wheat flour; that nature and
+chemistry produce all; and that it was demonstrated that we may very
+well dispense with an all-forming God.</p>
+
+<p>This property of meal very easily deceived one who, unfortunately, was
+already wandering amidst ideas that should make us tremble for the
+weakness of the human mind. He wanted to dig a hole in the centre of the
+earth, to see the central fire; to dissect Patagonians, that he might
+know the nature of the soul; to cover the sick with pitch, to prevent
+them from perspiring; to exalt his soul, that he might foretell the
+future. If to these things it were added, that he had the still greater
+unhappiness of seeking to oppress two of his brethren, it would do no
+honor to atheism; it would only serve to make us look into ourselves
+with confusion.</p>
+
+<p>It is really strange that men, while denying a creator, should have
+attributed to themselves the power of creating eels.</p>
+
+<p>But it is yet more deplorable that natural philosophers, of better
+information, adopted the Jesuit Needham's ridiculous system, and joined
+it to that of Maillet, who asserted that the ocean had formed the Alps
+and Pyrenees, and that men were originally porpoises, whose forked tails
+changed in the course of time into thighs and legs. Such fancies are
+worthy to be placed with the eels formed by meal. We were assured, not
+long ago, that at Brussels a hen had brought forth half a dozen young
+rabbits.</p>
+
+<p>This transmutation of meal and gravy into eels was demonstrated to be as
+false and ridiculous as it really is, by M. Spallanzani, a rather better
+observer than Needham. But the extravagance of so palpable an illusion
+was evident without his observations.</p>
+
+<p>Needham's eels soon followed the Brussels' hen.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, in 1768, the correct, elegant, and judicious translator of
+Lucretius was so far led away, that he not only, in his notes to book
+viii. p. 361, repeats Needham's pretended experiments, but he also does
+all he can to establish their validity. Here, then, we have the new
+foundation of the "System of Nature."</p>
+
+<p>The author, in the second chapter, thus expresses himself: "After
+moistening meal with water, and shutting up the mixture, it is found
+after a little time, with the aid of the microscope, that it has
+produced organized beings, of whose production the water and meal were
+believed to be incapable. Thus inanimate nature can pass into life,
+which is itself but an assemblage of motions."</p>
+
+<p>Were this unparalleled blunder true, yet, in rigorous reasoning, I do
+not see how it would prove there is no God; I do not see why a supreme,
+intelligent, and mighty being, having formed the sun and the stars,
+might not also deign to form animalculae without a germ. Here is no
+contradiction in terms. A demonstrative proof that God has no existence
+must be sought elsewhere; and most assuredly no person has ever found,
+or will ever find, one.</p>
+
+<p>Our author treats final causes with contempt, because the argument is
+hackneyed; but this much-contemned argument is that of Cicero and of
+Newton. This alone might somewhat lessen the confidence of atheists in
+themselves. The number is not small of the sages who, observing the
+course of the stars, and the prodigious art that pervades the structure
+of animals and vegetables, have acknowledged a powerful hand working
+these continual wonders.</p>
+
+<p>The author asserts that matter, blind and without choice, produces
+intelligent animals. Produce, without intelligence, beings with
+intelligence! Is this conceivable? Is this system founded on the
+smallest verisimilitude? An opinion so contradictory requires proofs no
+less astonishing than itself. The author gives us none; he never proves
+anything; but he affirms all that he advances. What chaos! what
+confusion! and what temerity!</p>
+
+<p>Spinoza at least acknowledged an intelligence acting in this great
+whole, which constituted nature: in this there was philosophy. But in
+the new system, I am under the necessity of saying that there is none.</p>
+
+<p>Matter has extent, solidity, gravity, divisibility. I have all these as
+well as this stone: but was a stone ever known to feel and think? If I
+am extended, solid, divisible, I owe it to matter. But I have sensations
+and thoughts&mdash;to what do I owe them? Not to water, not to mire&mdash;most
+likely to something more powerful than myself. Solely to the combination
+of the elements, you will say. Then prove it to me. Show me plainly that
+my intelligence cannot have been given to me by an intelligent cause. To
+this are you reduced.</p>
+
+<p>Our author successively combats the God of the schoolmen&mdash;a God composed
+of discordant qualities; a God to whom, as to those of Homer, is
+attributed the passions of men; a God capricious, fickle, unreasonable,
+absurd&mdash;but he cannot combat the God of the wise. The wise,
+contemplating nature, admit an intelligent and supreme power. It is
+perhaps impossible for human reason, destitute of divine assistance, to
+go a step further.</p>
+
+<p>Our author asks where this being resides; and, from the impossibility
+that anyone, without being infinite, should tell where He resides, he
+concludes that He does not exist. This is not philosophical; for we are
+not, because we cannot tell where the cause of an effect is, to conclude
+that there is no cause. If you had never seen a gunner, and you saw the
+effects of a battery of cannon, you would not say it acts entirely by
+itself. Shall it, then, only be necessary for you to say there is no
+God, in order to be believed on your words?</p>
+
+<p>Finally, his great objection is, the woes and crimes of mankind&mdash;an
+objection alike ancient and philosophical; an objection common, but
+fatal and terrible, and to which we find no answer but in the hope of a
+better life. Yet what is this hope? We can have no certainty in it but
+from reason. But I will venture to say, that when it is proved to us
+that a vast edifice, constructed with the greatest art, is built by an
+architect, whoever he may be, we ought to believe in that architect,
+even though the edifice should be stained with our blood, polluted by
+our crimes, and should crush us in its fall. I inquire not whether the
+architect is a good one, whether I should be satisfied with his
+building, whether I should quit it rather than stay in it, nor whether
+those who are lodged in it for a few days, like myself, are content: I
+only inquire if it be true that there is an architect, or if this house,
+containing so many fine apartments and so many wretched garrets, built
+itself.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION V.</h5>
+
+<p class="caption"><i>The Necessity of Believing in a Supreme Being.</i></p>
+
+<p>The great, the interesting object, as it appears to me, is, not to argue
+metaphysically, but to consider whether, for the common good of us
+miserable and thinking animals, we should admit a rewarding and avenging
+God, at once our restraint and consolation, or should reject this idea,
+and so abandon ourselves to calamity without hope, and crime without
+remorse.</p>
+
+<p>Hobbes says that if, in a commonwealth, in which no God should be
+acknowledged, any citizen were to propose one, he would have him hanged.</p>
+
+<p>Apparently, he meant by this strange exaggeration, a citizen who should
+seek to rule in the name of a god, a charlatan who would make himself a
+tyrant. We understand citizens, who, feeling the weakness of human
+nature, its perverseness, and its misery, seek some prop to support it
+through the languors and horrors of this life.</p>
+
+<p>From Job down to us, a great many men have cursed their existence; we
+have, therefore, perpetual need of consolation and hope. Of these your
+philosophy deprives us. The fable of Pandora was better; it left us
+hope&mdash;which you snatch from us! Philosophy, you say, furnishes no proof
+of happiness to come. No&mdash;but you have no demonstration of the contrary.
+There may be in us an indestructible monad which feels and thinks,
+without our knowing anything at all of how that monad is made. Reason is
+not absolutely opposed to this idea, though reason alone does not prove
+it. Has not this opinion a prodigious advantage over yours? Mine is
+useful to mankind, yours is baneful; say of it what you will, it may
+encourage a Nero, an Alexander VI., or a Cartouche. Mine may restrain
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Marcus Antoninus and Epictetus believed that their monad, of whatever
+kind it was, would be united to the monad of the Great Being; and they
+were the most virtuous of men.</p>
+
+<p>In the state of doubt in which we both are, I do not say to you with
+Pascal, "choose the safest." There is no safety in uncertainty. We are
+here not to talk, but to examine; we must judge, and our judgment is not
+determined by our will. I do not propose to you to believe extravagant
+things, in order to escape embarrassment. I do not say to you, "Go to
+Mecca, and instruct yourself by kissing the black stone, take hold of a
+cow's tail, muffle yourself in a scapulary, or be imbecile and fanatical
+to acquire the favor of the Being of beings." I say to you: "Continue
+to cultivate virtue, to be beneficent, to regard all superstition with
+horror, or with pity; but adore, with me, the design which is manifested
+in all nature, and consequently the Author of that design&mdash;the
+primordial and final cause of all; hope with me that our monad, which
+reasons on the great eternal being, may be happy through that same great
+Being." There is no contradiction in this. You can no more demonstrate
+its impossibility than I can demonstrate mathematically that it is so.
+In metaphysics we scarcely reason on anything but probabilities. We are
+all swimming in a sea of which we have never seen the shore. Woe be to
+those who fight while they swim! Land who can: but he that cries out to
+me, "You swim in vain, there is no land," disheartens me, and deprives
+me of all my strength.</p>
+
+<p>What is the object of our dispute? To console our unhappy existence. Who
+consoles it&mdash;you or I?</p>
+
+<p>You yourself own, in some passages of your work, that the belief in a
+God has withheld some men on the brink of crime; for me, this
+acknowledgment is enough. If this opinion had prevented but ten
+assassinations, but ten calumnies, but ten iniquitous judgments on the
+earth, I hold that the whole earth ought to embrace it.</p>
+
+<p>Religion, you say, has produced thousands of crimes&mdash;say, rather,
+superstition, which unhappily reigns over this globe; it is the most
+cruel enemy of the pure adoration due to the Supreme Being.</p>
+
+<p>Let us detest this monster which has constantly been tearing the bosom
+of its mother; they who combat it are benefactors to mankind: it is a
+serpent enclosing religion in its folds, its head must be bruised,
+without wounding the parent whom it infects and devours.</p>
+
+<p>You fear, "that, by adoring God, men would soon again become
+superstitious and fanatical." But is it not to be feared that in denying
+Him, they would abandon themselves to the most atrocious passions, and
+the most frightful crimes? Between these two extremes is there not a
+very rational mean? Where is the safe track between these two rocks? It
+is God, and wise laws.</p>
+
+<p>You affirm that it is but one step from adoration to superstition: but
+there is an infinity to well-constituted minds, and these are now very
+numerous; they are at the head of nations; they influence public
+manners, and, year by year, the fanaticism that overspread the earth is
+receding in its detestable usurpations.</p>
+
+<p>I shall say a few words more in answer to what you say in page 223. "If
+it be presumed that there are relations between man and this incredible
+being, then altars must be raised and presents must be made to him,
+etc.; if no conception be formed of this being, then the matter must be
+referred to priests, who...." A great evil to be sure, to assemble in
+the harvest season, and thank God for the bread that He has given us!
+Who says you should make presents to God? The idea is ridiculous! But
+where is the harm of employing a citizen, called an "elder" or "priest,"
+to render thanks to the Divinity in the name of the other
+citizens?&mdash;provided the priest is not a Gregory VII. trampling on the
+heads of kings, nor an Alexander VI. polluting by incest his daughter,
+the offspring of a rape, and, by the aid of his bastard son, poisoning
+and assassinating almost all the neighboring princes: provided that, in
+a parish, this priest is not a knave, picking the pockets of the
+penitents he confesses, and using the money to seduce the girls he
+catechises; provided that this priest is not a Letellier, putting the
+whole kingdom in combustion by rogueries worthy of the pillory, nor a
+Warburton, violating the laws of society, making public the private
+papers of a member of parliament in order to ruin him, and calumniating
+whosoever is not of his opinion. The latter cases are rare. The
+sacerdotal state is a curb which forces to good behavior.</p>
+
+<p>A stupid priest excites contempt; a bad priest inspires horror; a good
+priest, mild, pious, without superstition, charitable, tolerant, is one
+who ought to be cherished and revered. You dread abuses&mdash;so do I. Let us
+unite to prevent them; but let us not condemn the usage when it is
+useful to society, when it is not perverted by fanaticism, or by
+fraudulent wickedness.</p>
+
+<p>I have one very important thing to tell you. I am persuaded that you are
+in a great error, but I am equally convinced that you are honest in your
+self-delusion. You would have men virtuous even without a God, although
+you have unfortunately said that "so soon as vice renders man happy, he
+must love vice"&mdash;a frightful proposition, which your friends should have
+prevailed on you to erase. Everywhere else you inspire probity. This
+philosophical dispute will be only between you and a few philosophers
+scattered over Europe; the rest of the earth will not even hear of it.
+The people do not read us. If some theologian were to seek to persecute
+us, he would be impudent as well as wicked; he would but serve to
+confirm you, and to make new atheists.</p>
+
+<p>You are wrong: but the Greeks did not persecute Epicurus; the Romans did
+not persecute Lucretius. You are wrong: but your genius and your virtue
+must be respected, while you are refuted with all possible strength.</p>
+
+<p>In my opinion, the finest homage that can be rendered to God is to stand
+forward in His defence without anger; as the most unworthy portrait that
+can be drawn of Him is to paint Him vindictive and furious. He is truth
+itself; and truth is without passion. To be a disciple of God is to
+announce Him as of a mild heart and of an unalterable mind.</p>
+
+<p>I think, with you, that fanaticism is a monster a thousand times more
+dangerous than philosophical atheism. Spinoza did not commit a single
+bad action. Châtel and Ravaillac, both devotees, assassinated Henry IV.</p>
+
+<p>The atheist of the closet is almost always a quiet philosopher, while
+the fanatic is always turbulent: but the court atheist, the atheistical
+prince, might be the scourge of mankind. Borgia and his like have done
+almost as much harm as the fanatics of Münster and of the Cévennes. I
+say the fanatics on both sides. The misfortune is, that atheists of the
+closet make atheists of the court. It was Chiron who brought up
+Achilles; he fed him with lion's marrow. Achilles will one day drag
+Hector's body round the walls of Troy, and immolate twelve captives to
+his vengeance.</p>
+
+<p>God keep us from an abominable priest who should hew a king in pieces
+with his sacrificing knife, as also from him who, with a helmet on his
+head and a cuirass on his back, at the age of seventy, should dare to
+sign with his three bloody fingers the ridiculous excommunication of a
+king of France! and from.... and from....</p>
+
+<p>But also, may God preserve us from a choleric and barbarous despot, who,
+not believing in a God, should be his own God, who should render himself
+unworthy of his sacred trust by trampling on the duties which that trust
+imposes, who should remorselessly sacrifice to his passions, his
+friends, his relatives, his servants, and his people. These two tigers,
+the one shorn, the other crowned are equally to be feared. By what means
+shall we muzzle them?....</p>
+
+<p>If the idea of a God has made a Titus or a Trajan, an Antonine or an
+Aurelius, and those great Chinese emperors, whose memory is so dear to
+the second of the most ancient and most extensive empires in the world,
+these examples are sufficient for my cause&mdash;and my cause is that of all
+mankind.</p>
+
+<p>I do not believe that there is in all Europe one statesman, one man at
+all versed in the affairs of the world, who has not the most profound
+contempt for the legends with which we have been inundated, even more
+than we now are with pamphlets. If religion no longer gives birth to
+civil wars, it is to philosophy alone that we are indebted, theological
+disputes beginning to be regarded in much the same manner as the
+quarrels of Punch and Judy at the fair. A usurpation, alike odious and
+ridiculous, founded upon fraud on one side and stupidity on the other,
+is every instant undermined by reason, which is establishing its reign.
+The bull "<i>In cæna Domini</i>"&mdash;that masterpiece of insolence and folly, no
+longer dares appear, even in Rome. If a regiment of monks makes the
+least evolution against the laws of the state, it is immediately broken.
+But, because the Jesuits have been expelled, must we also expel God? On
+the contrary, we must love Him the more.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION VI.</h5>
+
+<p>In the reign of Arcadius, Logomachos, a theologue of Constantinople,
+went into Scythia and stopped at the foot of Mount Caucasus in the
+fruitful plains of Zephirim, on the borders of Colchis. The good old man
+Dondindac was in his great hall between his large sheepfold and his
+extensive barn; he was on his knees with his wife, his five sons and
+five daughters, his kinsmen and servants; and all were singing the
+praises of God, after a light repast. "What are you doing, idolater?"
+said Logomachos to him. "I am not an idolater," said Dondindac. "You
+must be an idolater," said Logomachos, "for you are not a Greek. Come,
+tell me what you were singing in your barbarous Scythian jargon?" "All
+tongues are alike to the ears of God," answered the Scythian; "we were
+singing His praises." "Very extraordinary!" returned the theologue; "a
+Scythian family praying to God without having been instructed by us!" He
+soon entered into conversation with the Scythian Dondindac; for the
+theologue knew a little Scythian, and the other a little Greek. This
+conversation has been found in a manuscript preserved in the library of
+Constantinople.</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>Let us see if you know your catechism. Why do you pray to God?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">DONDINDAC.</p>
+
+<p>Because it is just to adore the Supreme Being, from whom we have
+everything.</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>Very fair for a barbarian. And what do you ask of him?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">DONDINDAC</p>
+
+<p>I thank Him for the blessings I enjoy, and even for the trials which He
+sends me; but I am careful to ask nothing of Him; for He knows our wants
+better than we do; besides, I should be afraid of asking for fair
+weather while my neighbor was asking for rain.</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>Ah! I thought he would say some nonsense or other. Let us begin farther
+back. Barbarian, who told you that there is a God?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">DONDINDAC</p>
+
+<p>All nature tells me.</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>That is not enough. What idea have you of God?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">DONDINDAC</p>
+
+<p>The idea of my Creator; my master, who will reward me if I do good, and
+punish me if I do evil.</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>Trifles! trash! Let us come to some essentials. Is God <i>infinite
+secundum quid</i>, or according to essence?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">DONDINDAC</p>
+
+<p>I don't understand you.</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>Brute beast! Is God in one place, or in every place?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">DONDINDAC.</p>
+
+<p>I know not ... just as you please.</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>Ignoramus!... Can He cause that which has not been to have been, or that
+a stick shall not have two ends? Does He see the future as future, or as
+present? How does He draw being from nothing, and how reduce being to
+nothing?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">DONDINDAC.</p>
+
+<p>I have never examined these things.</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>What a stupid fellow! Well, I must come nearer to your level.... Tell
+me, friend, do you think that matter can be eternal?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">DONDINDAC</p>
+
+<p>What matters it to me whether it exists from all eternity or not? I do
+not exist from all eternity. God must still be my Master. He has given
+me the nature of justice; it is my duty to follow it: I seek not to be a
+philosopher; I wish to be a man.</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>One has a great deal of trouble with these block-heads. Let us proceed
+step by step. What is God?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">DONDINDAC</p>
+
+<p>My sovereign, my judge, my father.</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>That is not what I ask. What is His nature?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">DONDINDAC.</p>
+
+<p>To be mighty and good.</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>But is He corporeal or spiritual?</p>
+
+<p>DONDINDAC.</p>
+
+<p>How should I know that?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>What; do you not know what a spirit is?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">DONDINDAC.</p>
+
+<p>Not in the least. Of what service would that knowledge be to me? Should
+I be more just? Should I be a better husband, a better father, a better
+master, or a better citizen?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>You must absolutely be taught what a spirit is. It is&mdash;it is&mdash;it is&mdash;I
+will say what another time.</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">DONDINDAC.</p>
+
+<p>I much fear that you will tell me rather what it is not than what it is.
+Permit me, in turn, to ask you one question. Some time ago, I saw one of
+your temples: why do you paint God with a long beard?</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">LOGOMACHOS.</p>
+
+<p>That is a very difficult question, and requires preliminary
+instruction.</p>
+
+<p class="dialogue">DONDINDAC.</p>
+
+<p>Before I receive your instruction, I must relate to you a thing which
+one day happened to me. I had just built a closet at the end of my
+garden, when I heard a mole arguing thus with an ant: "Here is a fine
+fabric," said the mole; "it must have been a very powerful mole that
+performed this work." "You jest," returned the ant; "the architect of
+this edifice is an ant of mighty genius." From that time I resolved
+never to dispute.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GOOD_THE_SOVEREIGN_GOOD_A_CHIMERA" id="GOOD_THE_SOVEREIGN_GOOD_A_CHIMERA"></a>GOOD&mdash;THE SOVEREIGN GOOD, A CHIMERA.</h3>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION I.</h5>
+
+<p>Happiness is an abstract idea composed of certain pleasurable
+sensations. Plato, who wrote better than he reasoned, conceived the
+notion of his world in archetype; that is, his original world&mdash;of his
+general ideas of the beautiful, the good, the orderly, and the just, as
+if there had existed eternal beings, called order, good, beauty, and
+justice; whence might be derived the feeble copies exhibited here below
+of the just, the beautiful, and the good.</p>
+
+<p>It is, then, in consequence of his suggestions that philosophers have
+occupied themselves in seeking for the sovereign good, as chemists seek
+for the philosopher's stone; but the sovereign good has no more
+existence than the sovereign square, or the sovereign crimson: there is
+the crimson color, and there are squares; but there is no general
+existence so denominated. This chimerical manner of reasoning was for a
+long time the bane of philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>Animals feel pleasure in performing all the functions for which they are
+destined. The happiness which poetical fancy has imagined would be an
+uninterrupted series of pleasures; but such a series would be
+incompatible with our organs and our destination. There is great
+pleasure in eating, drinking, and connubial endearments; but it is clear
+that if a man were always eating, or always in the full ecstasy of
+enjoyment, his organs would be incapable of sustaining it: it is further
+evident that he would be unable to fulfil the destinies he was born to,
+and that, in the case supposed, the human race would absolutely perish
+through pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>To pass constantly and without interruption from one pleasure to another
+is also a chimera. The woman who has conceived must go through
+childbirth, which is a pain; the man is obliged to cleave wood and hew
+stone, which is not a pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>If the name of happiness is meant to be applied to some pleasures which
+are diffused over human life, there is in fact, we must admit,
+happiness. If the name attaches only to one pleasure always permanent,
+or a continued although varied range of delicious enjoyment, then
+happiness belongs not to this terraqueous globe. Go and seek for it
+elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>If we make happiness consist in any particular situation that a man may
+be in, as for instance, a situation of wealth, power, or fame, we are no
+less mistaken. There are some scavengers who are happier than some
+sovereigns. Ask Cromwell whether he was more happy when he was lord
+protector of England, than when, in his youthful days, he enjoyed
+himself at a tavern; he will probably tell you in answer, that the
+period of his usurpation was not the period most productive of
+pleasures. How many plain or even ugly country women are more happy than
+were Helen and Cleopatra.</p>
+
+<p>We must here however make one short remark; that when we say such a
+particular man is probably happier than some other; that a young
+muleteer has advantages very superior to those of Charles V.; that a
+dressmaker has more enjoyment than a princess, we should adhere to the
+probability of the case. There is certainly every appearance that a
+muleteer, in full health, must have more pleasure than Charles the
+Fifth, laid up with the gout; but nevertheless it may also be, that
+Charles, on his crutches, revolves in his mind with such ecstasy the
+facts of his holding a king of France and a pope prisoners, that his lot
+is absolutely preferable to that of the young and vigorous muleteer.</p>
+
+<p>It certainly belongs to God alone, to a being capable of seeing through
+all hearts, to decide which is the happiest man. There is only one case
+in which a person can affirm that his actual state is worse or better
+than that of his neighbor; this case is that of existing rivalship, and
+the moment that of victory.</p>
+
+<p>I will suppose that Archimedes has an assignation at night with his
+mistress. Nomentanus has the same assignation at the same hour.
+Archimedes presents himself at the door, and it is shut in his face; but
+it is opened to his rival, who enjoys an excellent supper, which he
+enlivens by his repeated sallies of wit upon Archimedes, and after the
+conclusion of which he withdraws to still higher enjoyments, while the
+other remains exposed in the street to all the pelting of a pitiless
+storm. There can be no doubt that Nomentanus has a right to say: "I am
+more happy to-night than Archimedes: I have more pleasure than he"; but
+it is necessary, in order to admit the truth and justness of the
+inference of the successful competitors in his own favor, to suppose
+that Archimedes is thinking only about the loss of his good supper,
+about being despised and deceived by a beautiful woman, about being
+supplanted by his rival, and annoyed by the tempest; for, if the
+philosopher in the street should be calmly reflecting that his soul
+ought to be above being discomposed by a strumpet or a storm, if he
+should be absorbed in a profound and interesting problem, and if he
+should discover the proportions between the cylinder and the sphere, he
+may experience a pleasure a hundred times superior to that of
+Nomentanus.</p>
+
+<p>It is only therefore in the single case of actual pleasure and actual
+pain, and without a reference to anything else whatever, that a
+comparison between any two individuals can be properly made. It is
+unquestionable that he who enjoys the society of his mistress is
+happier at the moment than his scorned rival deploring over his
+misfortune. A man in health, supping on a fat partridge, is undoubtedly
+happier at the time than another under the torment of the colic; but we
+cannot safely carry our inferences farther; we cannot estimate the
+existence of one man against that of another; we possess no accurate
+balance for weighing desires and sensations.</p>
+
+<p>We began this article with Plato and his sovereign good; we will
+conclude it with Solon and the saying of his which has been so highly
+celebrated, that "we ought to pronounce no man happy before his death."
+This maxim, when examined into, will be found nothing more than a
+puerile remark, just like many other apothegms consecrated by their
+antiquity. The moment of death has nothing in common with the lot
+experienced by any man in life; a man may perish by a violent and
+ignominious death, and yet, up to that moment, may have enjoyed all the
+pleasures of which human nature is susceptible. It is very possible and
+very common for a happy man to cease to be so; no one can doubt it; but
+he has not the less had his happy moments.</p>
+
+<p>What, then, can Solon's expression strictly and fairly mean? that a man
+happy to-day is not certain of being so to-morrow! In this case it is a
+truth so incontestable and trivial that, not merely is it not worthy of
+being elevated into a maxim, but it is not worthy delivering at all.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION II.</h5>
+
+<p>Well-being is a rare possession. May not the sovereign good in this
+world be considered as a sovereign chimera? The Greek philosophers
+discussed at great length, according to their usual practice, this
+celebrated question. The reader will, probably, compare them to just so
+many mendicants reasoning about the philosopher's stone.</p>
+
+<p>The sovereign good! What an expression! It might as well have been
+asked: What is the sovereign blue, or the sovereign ragout, or the
+sovereign walk, or the sovereign reading?</p>
+
+<p>Every one places his good where he can, and has as much of it as he can,
+in his own way, and in very scanty measure. Castor loved horses; his
+twin brother, to try a fall&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Quid dem? quid non dem? renuis tu quod jubet alter.... Castor gaudet
+equis, ovo prognatus eodem Pugnis, etc.</i></p>
+
+<p>The greatest good is that which delights us so powerfully as to render
+us incapable of feeling anything else; as the greatest evil is that
+which goes so far as to deprive us of all feeling. These are the two
+extremes of human nature, and these moments are short. Neither extreme
+delight nor extreme torture can last a whole life. The sovereign good
+and the sovereign evil are nothing more than chimeras.</p>
+
+<p>We all know the beautiful fable of Crantor. He introduces upon the stage
+at the Olympic games, Wealth, Pleasure, Health, and Virtue. Each claims
+the apple. Wealth says, I am the sovereign good, for with me all goods
+are purchased. Pleasure says, the apple belongs to me, for it is only on
+my account that wealth is desired. Health asserts, that without her
+there can be no pleasure, and wealth is useless. Finally, Virtue states
+that she is superior to the other three, because, although possessed of
+gold, pleasures, and health, a man may make himself very contemptible by
+misconduct. The apple was conferred on Virtue.</p>
+
+<p>The fable is very ingenious; it would be still more so if Crantor had
+said that the sovereign good consists in the combination of the four
+rivals, Virtue, Health, Wealth, and Pleasure; but this fable neither
+does, nor can, resolve the absurd question about the sovereign good.
+Virtue is not a good; it is a duty. It is of a different nature; of a
+superior order. It has nothing to do with painful or with agreeable
+sensations. A virtuous man, laboring under stone and gout, without aid,
+without friends, destitute of necessaries, persecuted, and chained down
+to the floor by a voluptuous tyrant who enjoys good health, is very
+wretched; and his insolent persecutor, caressing a new mistress on his
+bed of purple, is very happy. Say, if you please, that the persecuted
+sage is preferable to the persecuting profligate; say that you admire
+the one and detest the other; but confess that the sage in chains is
+scarcely less than mad with rage and pain; if he does not himself admit
+that he is so, he completely deceives you; he is a charlatan.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GOOD" id="GOOD"></a>GOOD.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Of Good and Evil, Physical and Moral.</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>We here treat of a question of the greatest difficulty and importance.
+It relates to the whole of human life. It would be of much greater
+consequence to find a remedy for our evils; but no remedy is to be
+discovered, and we are reduced to the sad necessity of tracing out their
+origin. With respect to this origin, men have disputed ever since the
+days of Zoroaster, and in all probability they disputed on the same
+subject long before him. It was to explain the mixture of good and evil
+that they conceived the idea of two principles&mdash;Oromazes, the author of
+light, and Arimanes, the author of darkness; the box of Pandora; the two
+vessels of Jupiter; the apple eaten by Eve; and a variety of other
+systems. The first of dialecticians, although not the first of
+philosophers, the illustrious Bayle, has clearly shown how difficult it
+is for Christians who admit one only God, perfectly good and just, to
+reply to the objections of the Manichæans who acknowledge two Gods&mdash;one
+good, and the other evil.</p>
+
+<p>The foundation of the system of the Manichæans, with all its antiquity,
+was not on that account more reasonable. Lemmas, susceptible of the most
+clear and rigid geometrical demonstrations, should alone have induced
+any men to the adoption of such a theorem as the following: "There are
+two necessary beings, both supreme, both infinite, both equally
+powerful, both in conflict with each other, yet, finally, agreeing to
+pour out upon this little planet&mdash;one, all the treasures of his
+beneficence, and the other all the stores of his malice." It is in vain
+that the advocates of this hypothesis attempt to explain by it the cause
+of good and evil: even the fable of Prometheus explains it better. Every
+hypothesis which only serves to assign a reason for certain things,
+without being, in addition to that recommendation, established upon
+indisputable principles, ought invariably to be rejected.</p>
+
+<p>The Christian doctors&mdash;independently of revelation, which makes
+everything credible&mdash;explain the origin of good-and evil no better than
+the partner-gods of Zoroaster.</p>
+
+<p>When they say God is a tender father, God is a just king; when they add
+the idea of infinity to that of love, that kindness, that justice which
+they observe in the best of their own species, they soon fall into the
+most palpable and dreadful contradictions. How could this sovereign, who
+possessed in infinite fulness the principle or quality of human justice,
+how could this father, entertaining an infinite affection for his
+children; how could this being, infinitely powerful, have formed
+creatures in His own likeness, to have them immediately afterwards
+tempted by a malignant demon, to make them yield to that temptation to
+inflict death on those whom He had created immortal, and to overwhelm
+their posterity with calamities and crimes! We do not here speak of a
+contradiction still more revolting to our feeble reason. How could God,
+who ransomed the human race by the death of His only Son; or rather, how
+could God, who took upon Himself the nature of man, and died on the
+cross to save men from perdition, consign over to eternal tortures
+nearly the whole of that human race for whom He died? Certainly, when we
+consider this system merely as philosophers&mdash;without the aid of
+faith&mdash;we must consider it as absolutely monstrous and abominable. It
+makes of God either pure and unmixed malice, and that malice infinite,
+which created thinking beings, on purpose to devote them to eternal
+misery, or absolute impotence and imbecility, in not being able to
+foresee or to prevent the torments of his offspring.</p>
+
+<p>But the eternity of misery is not the subject of this article, which
+relates properly only to the good and evil of the present life. None of
+the doctors of the numerous churches of Christianity, all of which
+advocate the doctrine we are here contesting, have been able to convince
+a single sage.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot conceive how Bayle, who managed the weapons of dialectics with
+such admirable strength and dexterity, could content himself with
+introducing in a dispute a Manichæan, a Calvinist, a Molinist, and a
+Socinian. Why did he not introduce, as speaking, a reasonable and
+sensible man? Why did not Bayle speak in his own person? He would have
+said far better what we shall now venture to say ourselves. A father
+who kills his children is a monster; a king who conducts his subjects
+into a snare, in order to obtain a pretext for delivering them up to
+punishment and torture, is an execrable tyrant. If you conceive God to
+possess the same kindness which you require in a father, the same
+justice that you require in a king, no possible resource exists by
+which, if we may use the expression, God can be exculpated; and by
+allowing Him to possess infinite wisdom and infinite goodness you, in
+fact, render Him infinitely odious; you excite a wish that He had no
+existence; you furnish arms to the atheist, who will ever be justified
+in triumphantly remarking to you: Better by far is it to deny a God
+altogether, than impute to Him such conduct as you would punish, to the
+extremity of the law, in men.</p>
+
+<p>We begin then with observing, that it is unbecoming in us to ascribe to
+God human attributes. It is not for us to make God after our own
+likeness. Human justice, human kindness, and human wisdom can never be
+applied or made suitable to Him. We may extend these attributes in our
+imagination as far as we are able, to infinity; they will never be other
+than human qualities with boundaries perpetually or indefinitely
+removed; it would be equally rational to attribute to Him infinite
+solidity, infinite motion, infinite roundness, or infinite divisibility.
+These attributes can never be His.</p>
+
+<p>Philosophy informs us that this universe must have been arranged by a
+Being incomprehensible, eternal, and existing by His own nature; but,
+once again, we must observe that philosophy gives us no information on
+the subject of the attributes of that nature. We know what He is not,
+and not what He is.</p>
+
+<p>With respect to God, there is neither good nor evil, physically or
+morally. What is physical or natural evil? Of all evils, the greatest,
+undoubtedly, is death. Let us for a moment consider whether man could
+have been immortal.</p>
+
+<p>In order that a body like ours should have been indissoluble,
+imperishable, it would have been necessary that it should not be
+composed of parts; that it&mdash;should not be born; that it should have
+neither nourishment nor growth; that it should experience no change. Let
+any one examine each of these points; and let every reader extend their
+number according to his own suggestions, and it will be seen that the
+proposition of an immortal man is a contradiction.</p>
+
+<p>If our organized body were immortal, that of mere animals would be so
+likewise; but it is evident that, in the course of a very short time,
+the whole globe would, in this case, be incompetent to supply
+nourishment to those animals; those immortal beings which exist only in
+consequence of renovation by food, would then perish for want of the
+means of such renovation. All this involves contradiction. We might make
+various other observations on the subject, but every reader who deserves
+the name of a philosopher will perceive that death was necessary to
+everything that is born; that death can neither be an error on the part
+of God, nor an evil, an injustice, nor a chastisement to man.</p>
+
+<p>Man, born to die, can no more be exempt from pain than from death. To
+prevent an organized substance endowed with feeling from ever
+experiencing pain, it would be necessary that all the laws of nature
+should be changed; that matter should no longer be divisible; that it
+should neither have weight, action, nor force; that a rock might fall on
+an animal without crushing it; and that water should have no power to
+suffocate, or fire to burn it. Man, impassive, then, is as much a
+contradiction as man immortal.</p>
+
+<p>This feeling of pain was indispensable to stimulate us to
+self-preservation, and to impart to us such pleasures as are consistent
+with those general laws by which the whole system of nature is bound and
+regulated.</p>
+
+<p>If we never experienced pain, we should be every moment injuring
+ourselves without perceiving it. Without the excitement of uneasiness,
+without some sensation of pain, we should perform no function of life;
+should never communicate it, and should be destitute of all the
+pleasures of it. Hunger is the commencement of pain which compels us to
+take our required nourishment. Ennui is a pain which stimulates to
+exercise and occupation. Love itself is a necessity which becomes
+painful until it is met with corresponding attachment. In a word, every
+desire is a want, a necessity, a beginning of pain. Pain, therefore, is
+the mainspring of all the actions of animated beings. Every animal
+possessed of feeling must be liable to pain, if matter is divisible; and
+pain was as necessary as death. It is not, therefore, an error of
+Providence, nor a result of malignity, nor a creature of imagination.
+Had we seen only brutes suffer, we should, for that, never have accused
+nature of harshness or cruelty; had we, while ourselves were impassive,
+witnessed the lingering and torturing death of a dove, when a kite
+seized upon it with his murderous talons, and leisurely devouring its
+bleeding limbs, doing in that no more than we do ourselves, we should
+not express the slightest murmur of dissatisfaction. But what claim have
+we for an exemption of our own bodies from such dismemberment and
+torture beyond what might be urged in behalf of brutes? Is it that we
+possess an intellect superior to theirs? But what has intellect to do
+with the divisibility of matter? Can a few ideas more or less in a brain
+prevent fire from burning, or a rock from crushing us?</p>
+
+<p>Moral evil, upon which so many volumes have been written is, in fact,
+nothing but natural evil. This moral evil is a sensation of pain
+occasioned by one organized being to another. Rapine, outrage, etc., are
+evil only because they produce evil. But as we certainly are unable to
+do any evil, or occasion any pain to God, it is evident by the light of
+reason&mdash;for faith is altogether a different principle&mdash;that in relation
+to the Supreme Being and as affecting Him, moral evil can have no
+existence.</p>
+
+<p>As the greatest of natural evils is death, the greatest of moral evils
+is, unquestionably, war. All crimes follow in its train; false and
+calumnious declarations, perfidious violation of the treaties, pillage,
+devastation, pain, and death under every hideous and appalling form.</p>
+
+<p>All this is physical evil in relation to man, but can no more be
+considered moral evil in relation to God than the rage of dogs worrying
+and destroying one another. It is a mere common-place idea, and as false
+as it is feeble, that men are the only species that slaughter and
+destroy one another. Wolves, dogs, cats, cocks, quails, all war with
+their respective species: house spiders devour one another; the male
+universally fights for the female. This warfare is the result of the
+laws of nature, of principles in their very blood and essence; all is
+connected; all is necessary.</p>
+
+<p>Nature has granted man about two and twenty years of life, one with
+another; that is, of a thousand children born in the same month, some of
+whom have died in their infancy, and the rest lived respectively to the
+age of thirty, forty, fifty, and even eighty years, or perhaps beyond,
+the average calculation will allow to each the above-mentioned number of
+twenty-two years.</p>
+
+<p>How can it affect the Deity, whether a man die in battle or of a fever?
+War destroys fewer human beings than smallpox. The scourge of war is
+transient, that of smallpox reigns with paramount and permanent fatality
+throughout the earth, followed by a numerous train of others; and taking
+into consideration the combined, and nearly regular operation of the
+various causes which sweep mankind from the stage of life, the allowance
+of two and twenty years for every individual will be found in general to
+be tolerably correct.</p>
+
+<p>Man, you say, offends God by killing his neighbor; if this be the case,
+the directors of nations must indeed be tremendous criminals; for, while
+even invoking God to their assistance, they urge on to slaughter immense
+multitudes of their fellow-beings, for contemptible interests which it
+would show infinitely more policy, as well as humanity, to abandon. But
+how&mdash;to reason merely as philosophers&mdash;how do they offend God? Just as
+much as tigers and crocodiles offend him. It is, surely, not God whom
+they harass and torment, but their neighbor. It is only against man that
+man can be guilty. A highway robber can commit no robbery on God. What
+can it signify to the eternal Deity, whether a few pieces of yellow
+metal are in the hands of Jerome, or of Bonaventure? We have necessary
+desires, necessary passions, and necessary laws for the restraint of
+both; and while on this our ant-hill, during the little day of our
+existence, we are engaged in eager and destructive contest about a
+straw, the universe moves, on in its majestic course, directed by
+eternal and unalterable laws, which comprehend in their operation the
+atom that we call the earth.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GOSPEL" id="GOSPEL"></a>GOSPEL.</h3>
+
+
+<p>It is a matter of high importance to ascertain which are the first
+gospels. It is a decided truth, whatever Abbadie may assert to the
+contrary, that none of the first fathers of the Church, down to Irenæus
+inclusively, have quoted any passage from the four gospels with which we
+are acquainted. And to this it may be added, that the Alogi, the
+Theodosians, constantly rejected the gospel of St. John, and always
+spoke of it with contempt; as we are informed by St. Epiphanius in his
+thirty-fourth homily. Our enemies further observe that the most ancient
+fathers do not merely forbear to quote anything from our gospels, but
+relate many passages or events which are to be found only in the
+apocryphal gospels rejected by the canon.</p>
+
+<p>St. Clement, for example, relates that our Lord, having been questioned
+concerning the time when His kingdom would come, answered, "That will be
+when what is without shall Resemble that within, and when there shall be
+neither male nor female." But we must admit that this passage does not
+occur in either of our gospels. There are innumerable other instances to
+prove this truth; which may be seen in the "Critical Examination" of M.
+Fréret, perpetual secretary of the Academy of Belles Lettres at Paris.</p>
+
+<p>The learned Fabricius took the pains to collect the ancient gospels
+which time has spared; that of James appears to be the first; and it is
+certain that it still possesses considerable authority with some of the
+Oriental churches. It is called "the first gospel." There remain the
+passion and the resurrection, pretended to have been written by
+Nicodemus. This gospel of Nicodemus is quoted by St. Justin and
+Tertullian. It is there we find the names of our Lord's accusers&mdash;Annas,
+Caiaphas, Soumas, Dathan, Gamaliel, Judas, Levi, and Napthali; the
+attention and particularity with which these names are given confer upon
+the work an appearance of truth and sincerity. Our adversaries have
+inferred that as so many false gospels were forged, which at first were
+recognized as true, those which constitute at the present day the
+foundation of our own faith may have been forged also. They dwell much
+on the circumstance of the first heretics suffering even death itself in
+defence of these apocryphal gospels. There have evidently been, they
+say, forgers, seducers, and men who have been seduced by them into
+error, and died in defence of that error; it is, at least, therefore, no
+proof of the truth of Christianity that it has had its martyrs who have
+died for it.</p>
+
+<p>They add further, that the martyrs were never asked the question,
+whether they believed the gospel of John or the gospel of James. The
+Pagans could not put a series of interrogatories about books with which
+they were not at all acquainted; the magistrates punished some
+Christians very unjustly, as disturbers of the public peace, but they
+never put particular questions to them in relation to our four gospels.
+These books were not known to the Romans before the time of Diocletian,
+and even towards the close of Diocletian's reign, they had scarcely
+obtained any publicity. It was deemed in a Christian a crime both
+abominable and unpardonable to show a gospel to any Gentile. This is so
+true, that you cannot find the word "gospel" in any profane author
+whatever.</p>
+
+<p>The rigid Socinians, influenced by the above-mentioned or other
+difficulties, do not consider our four divine gospels in any other light
+than as works of clandestine introduction, fabricated about a century
+after the time of Jesus Christ, and carefully concealed from the
+Gentiles for another century beyond that; works, as they express it, of
+a coarse and vulgar character, written by coarse and vulgar men, who,
+for a long time confined their discourses and appeals to the mere
+populace of their party. We will not here repeat the blasphemies uttered
+by them. This sect, although considerably diffused and numerous, is at
+present as much concealed as were the first gospels. The difficulty of
+converting them is so much the greater, in consequence of their
+obstinately refusing to listen to anything but mere reason. The other
+Christians contend against them only with the weapons of the Holy
+Scripture: it is consequently impossible that, being thus always in
+hostility with respect to principles, they should ever unite in their
+conclusions.</p>
+
+<p>With respect to ourselves, let us ever remain inviolably attached to our
+four gospels, in union with the infallible church. Let us reject the
+five gospels which it has rejected; let us not inquire why our Lord
+Jesus Christ permitted five false gospels, five false histories of his
+life to be written; and let us submit to our spiritual pastors and
+directors, who alone on earth are enlightened by the Holy Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Into what a gross error did Abbadie fall when he considered as authentic
+the letters so ridiculously forged, from Pilate to Tiberius, and the
+pretended proposal of Tiberius to place Jesus Christ in the number of
+the gods. If Abbadie is a bad critic and a contemptible reasoner, is the
+Church on that account less enlightened? are we the less bound to
+believe it? Shall we at all the less submit to it?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GOVERNMENT" id="GOVERNMENT"></a>GOVERNMENT.</h3>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION I.</h5>
+
+<p>The pleasure of governing must certainly be exquisite, if we may judge
+from the vast numbers who are eager to be concerned in it. We have many
+more books on government than there are monarchs in the world. Heaven
+preserve me from making any attempt here to give instruction to kings
+and their noble ministers&mdash;their valets, confessors, or financiers. I
+understand nothing about the matter; I have the profoundest respect and
+reverence for them all. It belongs only to Mr. Wilkes, with his English
+balance, to weigh the merits of those who are at the head of the human
+race. It would, besides, be exceedingly strange if, with three or four
+thousand volumes on the subject of government, with Machiavelli, and
+Bossuet's "Policy of the Holy Scripture," with the "General Financier,"
+the "Guide to Finances," the "Means of Enriching a State," etc., there
+could possibly be a single person living who was not perfectly
+acquainted with the duties of kings and the science of government.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Puffendorf, or, as perhaps we should rather say, Baron
+Puffendorf, says that King David, having sworn never to attempt the life
+of Shimei, his privy counsellor, did not violate his oath when,
+according to the Jewish history, he instructed his son Solomon to get
+him assassinated, "because David had only engaged that he himself would
+not kill Shimei." The baron, who rebukes so sharply the mental
+reservations of the Jesuits, allows David, in the present instance, to
+entertain one which would not be particularly palatable to privy
+counsellors.</p>
+
+<p>Let us consider the words of Bossuet in his "Policy of the Holy
+Scripture," addressed to Monseigneur the Dauphin. "Thus we see royalty
+established according to the order of succession in the house of David
+and Solomon, and the throne of David is secured forever&mdash;although, by
+the way, that same little joint-stool called a 'throne,' instead of
+being secured forever, lasted, in fact, only a very short time." By
+virtue of this law, the eldest son was to succeed, to the exclusion of
+his brothers, and on this account Adonijah, who was the eldest, said to
+Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon, "Thou knowest that the kingdom was
+mine, and all Israel had recognized my right; but the Lord hath
+transferred the kingdom to my brother Solomon." The right of Adonijah
+was incontestable. Bossuet expressly admits this at the close of this
+article. "The Lord has transferred" is only a usual phrase, which means,
+I have lost my property or right, I have been deprived of my right.
+Adonijah was the issue of a lawful wife; the birth of his younger
+brother was the fruit of a double crime.</p>
+
+<p>"Unless, then," says Bossuet, "something extraordinary occurred, the
+eldest was to succeed." But the something extraordinary, in the present
+instance, which prevented it was, that Solomon, the issue of a marriage
+arising out of a double adultery and a murder, procured the
+assassination, at the foot of the altar, of his elder brother and his
+lawful king, whose rights were supported by the high priest Abiathar and
+the chief commander Joab. After this we must acknowledge that it is more
+difficult than some seem to imagine to take lessons on the rights of
+persons, and on the true system of government from the Holy Scriptures,
+which were first given to the Jews, and afterwards to ourselves, for
+purposes of a far higher nature.</p>
+
+<p>"The preservation of the people is the supreme law." Such is the
+fundamental maxim of nations; but in all civil wars the safety of the
+people is made to consist in slaughtering a number of the citizens. In
+all foreign wars, the safety of a people consists in killing their
+neighbors, and taking possession of their property! It is difficult to
+perceive in this a particularly salutary "right of nations," and a
+government eminently favorable to liberty of thought and social
+happiness.</p>
+
+<p>There are geometrical figures exceedingly regular and complete in their
+kind; arithmetic is perfect; many trades or manufactures are carried on
+in a manner constantly uniform and excellent; but with respect to the
+government of men, is it possible for any one to be good, when all are
+founded on passions in conflict with each other?</p>
+
+<p>No convent of monks ever existed without discord; it is impossible,
+therefore, to exclude it from kingdoms. Every government resembles not
+merely a monastic institution, but a private household. There are none
+existing without quarrels; and quarrels between one people and another,
+between one prince and another, have ever been, sanguinary; those
+between subjects and their sovereigns have been sometimes no less
+destructive. How is an individual to act? Must he risk joining in the
+conflict, or withdraw from the scene of action?</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION II.</h5>
+
+<p>More than one people are desirous of new constitutions. The English
+would have no objection to a change of ministers once in every eight
+hours, but they have no wish to change the form of their government.</p>
+
+<p>The modern Romans are proud of their church of St. Peter and their
+ancient Greek statues; but the people would be glad to be better fed,
+although they were not quite so rich in benedictions; the fathers of
+families would be content that the Church should have less gold, if the
+granaries had more corn; they regret the time when the apostles
+journeyed on foot, and when the citizens of Rome travelled from one
+palace to another in litters.</p>
+
+<p>We are incessantly reminded of the admirable republics of Greece. There
+is no question that the Greeks would prefer the government of a Pericles
+and a Demosthenes to that of a pasha; but in their most prosperous and
+palmy times they were always complaining; discord and hatred prevailed
+between all the cities without, and in every separate city within. They
+gave laws to the old Romans, who before that time had none; but their
+own were so bad for themselves that they were continually changing them.</p>
+
+<p>What could be said in favor of a government under which the just
+Aristides was banished, Phocion put to death, Socrates condemned to
+drink hemlock after having been exposed to banter and derision on the
+stage by Aristophanes; and under which the Amphyctions, with
+contemptible imbecility, actually delivered up Greece into the power of
+Philip, because the Phocians had ploughed up a field which was part of
+the territory of Apollo? But the government of the neighboring
+monarchies was worse.</p>
+
+<p>Puffendorf promises us a discussion on the best form of government. He
+tells us, "that many pronounce in favor of monarchy, and others, on the
+contrary, inveigh furiously against kings; and that it does not fall
+within the limits of his subject to examine in detail the reasons of the
+latter." If any mischievous and malicious reader expects to be told here
+more than he is told by Puffendorf, he will be much deceived.</p>
+
+<p>A Swiss, a Hollander, a Venetian nobleman, an English peer, a cardinal,
+and a count of the empire, were once disputing, on a journey, about the
+nature of their respective governments, and which of them deserved the
+preference: no one knew much about the matter; each remained in his own
+opinion without having any very distinct idea what that opinion was; and
+they returned without having come to any general conclusion; every one
+praising his own country from vanity, and complaining of it from
+feeling.</p>
+
+<p>What, then, is the destiny of mankind? Scarcely any great nation is
+governed by itself. Begin from the east, and take the circuit of the
+world. Japan closed its ports against foreigners from the well-founded
+apprehension of a dreadful revolution.</p>
+
+<p>China actually experienced such a revolution; she obeys Tartars of a
+mixed race, half Mantchou and half Hun. India obeys Mogul Tartars. The
+Nile, the Orontes, Greece, and Epirus are still under the yoke of the
+Turks. It is not an English race that reigns in England; it is a German
+family which succeeded to a Dutch prince, as the latter succeeded a
+Scotch family which had succeeded an Angevin family, that had replaced a
+Norman family, which had expelled a family of usurping Saxons. Spain
+obeys a French family; which succeeded to an Austrasian race, that
+Austrasian race had succeeded families that boasted of Visigoth
+extraction; these Visigoths had been long driven out by the Arabs, after
+having succeeded to the Romans, who had expelled the Carthaginians. Gaul
+obeys Franks, after having obeyed Roman prefects.</p>
+
+<p>The same banks of the Danube have belonged to Germans, Romans, Arabs,
+Slavonians, Bulgarians, and Huns, to twenty different families, and
+almost all foreigners.</p>
+
+<p>And what greater wonder has Rome had to exhibit than so many emperors
+who were born in the barbarous provinces, and so many popes born in
+provinces no less barbarous? Let him govern who can. And when any one
+has succeeded in his attempts to become master, he governs as he can.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION III.</h5>
+
+<p>In 1769, a traveller delivered the following narrative: "I saw, in the
+course of my journey, a large and populous country, in which all offices
+and places were purchasable; I do not mean clandestinely, and in
+evasion of the law, but publicly, and in conformity to it. The right to
+judge, in the last resort, of the honor, property, and life of the
+citizen, was put to auction in the same manner as the right and property
+in a few acres of land. Some very high commissions in the army are
+conferred only on the highest bidder. The principal mystery of their
+religion is celebrated for the petty sum of three sesterces, and if the
+celebrator does not obtain this fee he remains idle like a porter
+without employment.</p>
+
+<p>"Fortunes in this country are not made by agriculture, but are derived
+from a certain game of chance, in great practice there, in which the
+parties sign their names, and transfer them from hand to hand. If they
+lose, they withdraw into the mud and mire of their original extraction;
+if they win, they share in the administration of public affairs; they
+marry their daughters to mandarins, and their sons become a species of
+mandarins also.</p>
+
+<p>"A considerable number of the citizens have their whole means of
+subsistence assigned upon a house, which possesses in fact nothing, and
+a hundred persons have bought for a hundred thousand crowns each the
+right of receiving and paying the money due to these citizens upon their
+assignments on this imaginary hotel; rights which they never exercise,
+as they in reality know nothing at all of what is thus supposed to pass
+through their hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes a proposal is made and cried about the streets, that all who
+have a little money in their chest should exchange it for a slip of
+exquisitely manufactured paper, which will free you from all pecuniary
+care, and enable you to pass through life with ease and comfort. On the
+morrow an order is published, compelling you to change this paper for
+another, much better. On the following day you are deafened with the cry
+of a new paper, cancelling the two former ones. You are ruined! But long
+heads console you with the assurance, that within a fortnight the
+newsmen will cry up some proposal more engaging.</p>
+
+<p>"You travel into one province of this empire, and purchase articles of
+food, drink, clothing, and lodging. If you go into another province, you
+are obliged to pay duties upon all those commodities, as if you had just
+arrived from Africa. You inquire the reason of this, but obtain no
+answer; or if, from extraordinary politeness, any one condescends to
+notice your questions, he replies that you come from a province reputed
+foreign, and that, consequently, you are obliged to pay for the
+convenience of commerce. In vain you puzzle yourself to comprehend how
+the province of a kingdom can be deemed foreign to that kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>"On one particular occasion, while changing horses, finding myself
+somewhat fatigued, I requested the postmaster to favor me with a glass
+of wine. 'I cannot let you have it,' says he; 'the superintendents of
+thirst, who are very considerable in number, and all of them remarkably
+sober, would accuse me of drinking to excess, which would absolutely be
+my ruin.' 'But drinking a single glass of wine,' I replied, 'to repair a
+man's strength, is not drinking to excess; and what difference can it
+make whether that single glass of wine is taken by you or me?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Sir,' replied the man, 'our laws relating to thirst are much more
+excellent than you appear to think them. After our vintage is finished,
+physicians are appointed by the regular authorities to visit our
+cellars. They set aside a certain quantity of wine, such as they judge
+we may drink consistently with health. At the end of the year they
+return; and if they conceive that we have exceeded their restriction by
+a single bottle; they punish us with very severe fines; and if we make
+the slightest resistance, we are sent to Toulon to drink salt-water.
+Were I to give you the wine you ask, I should most certainly be charged
+with excessive drinking. You must see to what danger I should be exposed
+from the supervisors of our health.'</p>
+
+<p>"I could not refrain from astonishment at the existence of such a
+system; but my astonishment was no less on meeting with a disconsolate
+and mortified pleader, who informed me that he had just then lost, a
+little beyond the nearest rivulet, a cause precisely similar to one he
+had gained on this side of it. I understood from him that, in his
+country, there are as many different codes of laws as there are cities.
+His conversation raised my curiosity. 'Our nation,' said he, 'is so
+completely wise and enlightened, that nothing is regulated in it. Laws,
+customs, the rights of corporate bodies, rank, precedence, everything is
+arbitrary; all is left to the prudence of the nation.'</p>
+
+<p>"I happened to be still in this same country when it became involved in
+a war with some of its neighbors. This war was nicknamed 'The Ridicule,'
+because there was much to be lost and nothing to be gained by it. I went
+upon my travels elsewhere, and did not return till the conclusion of
+peace, when the nation seemed to be in the most dreadful state of
+misery; it had lost its money, its soldiers, its fleets, and its
+commerce. I said to myself, its last hour is come; everything, alas!
+must pass away. Here is a nation absolutely annihilated. What a dreadful
+pity! for a great part of the people were amiable, industrious, and gay,
+after having been formerly coarse, superstitious, and barbarous.</p>
+
+<p>"I was perfectly astonished, at the end of only two years, to find its
+capital and principal cities more opulent than ever. Luxury had
+increased, and an air of enjoyment prevailed everywhere. I could not
+comprehend this prodigy; and it was only after I had examined into the
+government of the neighboring nations that I could discover the cause of
+what appeared so unaccountable. I found that the government of all the
+rest was just as bad as that of this nation, and that this nation was
+superior to all the rest in industry.</p>
+
+<p>"A provincial of the country I am speaking of was once bitterly
+complaining to me of all the grievances under which he labored. He was
+well acquainted with history. I asked him if he thought he should have
+been happier had he lived a hundred years before, when his country was
+in a comparative state of barbarism, and a citizen was liable to be
+hanged for having eaten flesh in Lent? He shook his head in the
+negative. Would you prefer the times of the civil wars, which began at
+the death of Francis II.; or the times of the defeats of St. Quentin and
+Pavia; or the long disorders attending the wars against the English; or
+the feudal anarchy; or the horrors of the second race of kings, or the
+barbarity of the first? At every successive question, he appeared to
+shudder more violently. The government of the Romans seemed to him the
+most intolerable of all. 'Nothing can be worse,' he said, 'than to be
+under foreign masters.' At last we came to the Druids. 'Ah!' he
+exclaimed, 'I was quite mistaken: it is still worse to be governed by
+sanguinary priests.' He admitted, at last, although with sore
+reluctance, that the time he lived in was, all things considered, the
+least intolerable and hateful."</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION IV.</h5>
+
+<p>An eagle governed the birds of the whole country of Ornithia. He had no
+other right, it must be allowed, than what he derived from his beak and
+claws; however, after providing liberally for his own repasts and
+pleasures, he governed as well as any other bird of prey.</p>
+
+<p>In his old age he was invaded by a flock of hungry vultures, who rushed
+from the depths of the North to scatter fear and desolation through his
+provinces. There appeared, just about this time, a certain owl, who was
+born in one of the most scrubby thickets of the empire, and who had long
+been known under the name of "<i>luci-fugax</i>," or light-hater. He
+possessed much cunning, and associated only with bats; and, while the
+vultures were engaged in conflict with the eagle, our politic owl and
+his party entered with great adroitness, in the character of
+pacificators, on that department of the air which was disputed by the
+combatants.</p>
+
+<p>The eagle and vultures, after a war of long duration, at last actually
+referred the cause of contention to the owl, who, with his solemn and
+imposing physiognomy, was well formed to deceive them both.</p>
+
+<p>He persuaded the eagles and vultures to suffer their claws to be a
+little pared, and just the points of their beaks to be cut off, in order
+to bring about perfect peace and reconciliation. Before this time, the
+owl had always said to the birds, "Obey the eagle"; afterwards, in
+consequence of the invasion, he had said to them, "Obey the vultures."
+He now, however, soon called out to them, "Obey me only." The poor birds
+did not know to whom to listen: they were plucked by the eagle, the
+vultures, and the owl and bats. "<i>Qui habet aures, audiat</i>."&mdash;"He that
+hath ears to hear, let him hear."</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION V.</h5>
+
+<p>"I have in my possession a great number of catapultæ and balistæ of the
+ancient Romans, which are certainly rather worm-eaten, but would still
+do very well as specimens. I have many water-clocks, but half of them
+probably out of repair and broken, some sepulchral lamps, and an old
+copper model of a quinquereme. I have also togas, pretextas, and
+laticlaves in lead; and my predecessors established a society of
+tailors; who, after inspecting ancient monuments, can make up robes
+pretty awkwardly. For these reasons thereunto moving us, after hearing
+the report of our chief antiquary, we do hereby appoint and ordain, that
+all the said venerable usages should be observed and kept up forever;
+and every person, through the whole extent of our dominions, shall dress
+and think precisely as men dressed and thought in the time of Cnidus
+Rufillus, proprietor of the province devolved to us by right," etc.</p>
+
+<p>It is represented to an officer belonging to the department whence this
+edict issued, that all the engines enumerated in it are become useless;
+that the understandings and the inventions of mankind are every day
+making new advances towards perfection; and that it would be more
+judicious to guide and govern men by the reins in present use, than by
+those by which they were formerly subjected; that no person could be
+found to go on board the quinquereme of his most serene highness; that
+his tailors might make as many laticlaves as they pleased, and that not
+a soul would purchase one of them; and that it would be worthy of his
+wisdom to condescend, in some small measure, to the manner of thinking
+that now prevailed among the better sort of people in his own dominions.</p>
+
+<p>The officer above mentioned promised to communicate this representation
+to a clerk, who promised to speak about it to the referendary, who
+promised to mention it to his most serene highness whenever an
+opportunity should offer.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION VI.</h5>
+
+<h4><i>Picture of the English Government.</i></h4>
+
+<p>The establishment of a government is a matter of curious and interesting
+investigation. I shall not speak, in this place, of the great Tamerlane,
+or Timerling, because I am not precisely acquainted with the mystery of
+the Great Mogul's government. But we can see our way somewhat more
+clearly into the administration of affairs in England; and I had rather
+examine that than the administration of India; as England, we are
+informed, is inhabited by free men and not by slaves; and in India,
+according to the accounts we have of it, there are many slaves and but
+few free men.</p>
+
+<p>Let us, in the first place, view a Norman bastard seating himself upon
+the throne of England. He had about as much right to it as St. Louis
+had, at a later period, to Grand Cairo. But St. Louis had the misfortune
+not to begin with obtaining a judicial decision in favor of his right to
+Egypt from the court of Rome; and William the Bastard failed not to
+render his cause legitimate and sacred, by obtaining in confirmation of
+the rightfulness of his claim, a decree of Pope Alexander II. issued
+without the opposite party having obtained a hearing, and simply in
+virtue of the words, "Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, shall be
+bound in heaven." His competitor, Harold, a perfectly legitimate
+monarch, being thus bound by a decree of heaven, William united to this
+virtue of the holy see another of far more powerful efficacy still,
+which was the victory of Hastings. He reigned, therefore, by the right
+of the strongest, just as Pepin and Clovis had reigned in France; the
+Goths and Lombards in Italy; the Visigoths, and afterwards the Arabs in
+Spain; the Vandals in Africa, and all the kings of the world in
+succession.</p>
+
+<p>It must be nevertheless admitted, that our Bastard possessed as just a
+title as the Saxons and the Danes, whose title, again, was quite as good
+as that of the Romans. And the title of all these heroes in succession
+was precisely that of "robbers on the highway," or, if you like it
+better, that of foxes and pole-cats when they commit their depredations
+on the farm-yard.</p>
+
+<p>All these great men were so completely highway robbers, that from the
+time of Romulus down to the buccaneers, the only question and concern
+were about the "<i>spolia opima</i>," the pillage and plunder, the cows and
+oxen carried off by the hand of violence. Mercury, in the fable, steals
+the cows of Apollo; and in the Old Testament, Isaiah assigns the name of
+robber to the son whom his wife was to bring into the world, and who was
+to be an important and sacred type. That name was Mahershalalhashbaz,
+"divide speedily the soil." We have already observed, that the names of
+soldier and robber were often synonymous.</p>
+
+<p>Thus then did William soon become king by divine right. William Rufus,
+who usurped the crown over his elder brother, was also king by divine
+right, without any difficulty; and the same right attached after him to
+Henry, the third usurper.</p>
+
+<p>The Norman barons who had joined at their own expense in the invasion of
+England, were desirous of compensation. It was necessary to grant it,
+and for this purpose to make them great vassals, and great officers of
+the crown. They became possessed of the finest estates. It is evident
+that William would rather, had he dared, have kept all to himself, and
+made all these lords his guards and lackeys. But this would have been
+too dangerous an attempt. He was obliged, therefore, to divide and
+distribute.</p>
+
+<p>With respect to the Anglo-Saxon lords, there was no very easy way of
+killing, or even making slaves of the whole of them. They were
+permitted in their own districts, to enjoy the rank and denomination of
+lords of the manor&mdash;<i>seignieurs châtelans</i>. They held of the great
+Norman vassals, who held of William.</p>
+
+<p>By this system everything was kept in equilibrium until the breaking out
+of the first quarrel. And what became of the rest of the nation? The
+same that had become of nearly all the population of Europe. They became
+serfs or villeins.</p>
+
+<p>At length, after the frenzy of the Crusades, the ruined princes sell
+liberty to the serfs of the glebe, who had obtained money by labor and
+commerce. Cities are made free, the commons are granted certain
+privileges; and the rights of men revive even out of anarchy itself.</p>
+
+<p>The barons were everywhere in contention with their king, and with one
+another. The contention became everywhere a petty intestine war, made up
+out of numberless civil wars. From this abominable and gloomy chaos
+appeared a feeble gleam, which enlightened the commons, and considerably
+improved their situation.</p>
+
+<p>The kings of England, being themselves great vassals of France for
+Normandy, and afterwards for Guienne and other provinces, easily adopted
+the usages of the kings from whom they held. The states of the realm
+were long made up, as in France, of barons and bishops.</p>
+
+<p>The English court of chancery was an imitation of the council of state,
+of which the chancellor of France was president. The court of king's
+bench was formed on the model of the parliament instituted by Philip le
+Bel. The common pleas were like the jurisdiction of the châtelat. The
+court of exchequer resembled that of the superintendents of the
+finances&mdash;<i>généraux des finances</i>&mdash;which became, in France, the court of
+aids.</p>
+
+<p>The maxim that the king's domain is inalienable is evidently taken from
+the system of French government.</p>
+
+<p>The right of the king of England to call on his subjects to pay his
+ransom, should he become a prisoner of war; that of requiring a subsidy
+when he married his eldest daughter, and when he conferred the honor of
+knighthood on his son; all these circumstances call to recollection the
+ancient usages of a kingdom of which William was the chief vassal.</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely had Philip le Bel summoned the commons to the states-general,
+before Edward, king of England, adopted the like measure, in order to
+balance the great power of the barons. For it was under this monarch's
+reign that the commons were first clearly and distinctly summoned to
+parliament.</p>
+
+<p>We perceive, then, that up to this epoch in the fourteenth century, the
+English government followed regularly in the steps of France. The two
+churches are entirely alike; the same subjection to the court of Rome;
+the same exactions which are always complained of, but, in the end,
+always paid to that rapacious court; the same dissensions, somewhat
+more or less violent; the same excommunications; the same donations to
+monks; the same chaos; the same mixture of holy rapine, superstition,
+and barbarism.</p>
+
+<p>As France and England, then, were for so long a period governed by the
+same principles, or rather without any principle at all, and merely by
+usages of a perfectly similar character, how is it that, at length, the
+two governments have become as different as those of Morocco and Venice?</p>
+
+<p>It is, perhaps, in the first place to be ascribed to the circumstance of
+England, or rather Great Britain, being an island, in consequence of
+which the king has been under no necessity of constantly keeping up a
+considerable standing army which might more frequently be employed
+against the nation itself than against foreigners.</p>
+
+<p>It may be further observed, that the English appear to have in the
+structure of their minds something more firm, more reflective, more
+persevering, and, perhaps, more obstinate, than some other nations.</p>
+
+<p>To this latter circumstance it may be probably attributed, that, after
+incessantly complaining of the court of Rome, they at length completely
+shook off its disgraceful yoke; while a people of more light and
+volatile character has continued to wear it, affecting at the same time
+to laugh and dance in its chains.</p>
+
+<p>The insular situation of the English, by inducing the necessity of
+urging to the particular pursuit and practice of navigation, has
+probably contributed to the result we are here considering, by giving to
+the natives a certain sternness and ruggedness of manners.</p>
+
+<p>These stern and rugged manners, which have made their island the theatre
+of many a bloody tragedy, have also contributed, in all probability, to
+inspire a generous frankness.</p>
+
+<p>It is in consequence of this combination of opposite qualities that so
+much royal blood has been shed in the field, and on the scaffold, and
+yet poison, in all their long and violent domestic contentions, has
+never been resorted to; whereas, in other countries, under priestly
+domination poison has been the prevailing weapon of destruction.</p>
+
+<p>The love of liberty appears to have advanced, and to have characterized
+the English, in proportion as they have advanced in knowledge and in
+wealth. All the citizens of a state cannot be equally powerful, but they
+may be equally free. And this high point of distinction and enjoyment
+the English, by their firmness and intrepidity, have at length attained.</p>
+
+<p>To be free is to be dependent only on the laws. The English, therefore,
+have ever loved the laws, as fathers love their children, because they
+are, or at least think themselves, the framers of them.</p>
+
+<p>A government like this could be established only at a late period;
+because it was necessary long to struggle with powers which commanded
+respect, or at least, impressed awe&mdash;the power of the pope, the most
+terrible of all, as it was built on prejudice and ignorance; the royal
+power ever tending to burst its proper boundary, and which it was
+requisite, however difficult, to restrain within it; the power of the
+barons, which was, in fact, an anarchy; the power of the bishops, who,
+always mixing the sacred with the profane, left no means unattempted to
+prevail over both barons and kings.</p>
+
+<p>The house of commons gradually became the impregnable mole, which
+successfully repelled those serious and formidable torrents.</p>
+
+<p>The house of commons is, in reality, the nation; for the king, who is
+the head, acts only for himself, and what is called his prerogative. The
+peers are a parliament only for themselves; and the bishops only for
+themselves, in the same manner.</p>
+
+<p>But the house of commons is for the people, as every member of it is
+deputed by the people. The people are to the king in the proportion of
+about eight millions to unity. To the peers and bishops they are as
+eight millions to, at most, two hundred. And these eight million free
+citizens are represented by the lower house.</p>
+
+<p>With respect to this establishment or constitution&mdash;in comparison with
+which the republic of Plato is merely a ridiculous reverie, and which
+might be thought to have been invented by Locke, or Newton, or Halley,
+or Archimedes&mdash;it sprang, in fact, out of abuses, of a most dreadful
+description, and such as are calculated to make human nature shudder.
+The inevitable friction of this vast machine nearly proved its
+destruction in the days of Fairfax and Cromwell. Senseless fanaticism
+broke into this noble edifice, like a devouring fire that consumes a
+beautiful building formed only of wood.</p>
+
+<p>In the time of William the Third it was rebuilt of stone. Philosophy
+destroyed fanaticism, which convulses to their centres states even the
+most firm and powerful. We cannot easily help believing that a
+constitution which has regulated the rights of king, lords, and people,
+and in which every individual finds security, will endure as long as
+human institutions and concerns shall have a being.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot but believe, also, that all states not established upon
+similar principles, will experience revolutions.</p>
+
+<p>The English constitution has, in fact, arrived at that point of
+excellence, in consequence of which all men are restored to those
+natural rights, which, in nearly all monarchies, they are deprived of.
+These rights are, entire liberty of person and property; freedom of the
+press; the right of being tried in all criminal cases by a jury of
+independent men&mdash;the right of being tried only according to the strict
+letter of the law; and the right of every man to profess, unmolested,
+what religion he chooses, while he renounces offices, which the members
+of the Anglican or established church alone can hold. These are
+denominated privileges. And, in truth, invaluable privileges they are
+in comparison with the usages of most other nations of the world! To be
+secure on lying down that you shall rise in possession of the same
+property with which you retired to rest; that you shall not be torn from
+the arms of your wife, and from your children, in the dead of night, to
+be thrown into a dungeon, or buried in exile in a desert; that, when
+rising from the bed of sleep, you will have the power of publishing all
+your thoughts; and that, if you are accused of having either acted,
+spoken, or written wrongly, you can be tried only according to law.
+These privileges attach to every one who sets his foot on English
+ground. A foreigner enjoys perfect liberty to dispose of his property
+and person; and, if accused of any offence, he can demand that half the
+jury shall be composed of foreigners.</p>
+
+<p>I will venture to assert, that, were the human race solemnly assembled
+for the purpose of making laws, such are the laws they would make for
+their security. Why then are they not adopted in other countries? But
+would it not be equally judicious to ask, why cocoanuts, which are
+brought to maturity in India, do not ripen at Rome? You answer, these
+cocoanuts did not always, or for some time, come to maturity in England;
+that the trees have not been long cultivated; that Sweden, following her
+example, planted and nursed some of them for several years, but that
+they did not thrive; and that it is possible to produce such fruit in
+other provinces, even in Bosnia and Servia. Try and plant the tree then.</p>
+
+<p>And you who bear authority over these benighted people, whether under
+the name of pasha, effendi, or mollah, let me advise you, although an
+unpromising subject for advice, not to act the stupid as well as
+barbarous part of riveting your nations in chains. Reflect, that the
+heavier you make the people's yoke, the more completely your own
+children, who cannot all of them be pashas, will be slaves. Surely you
+would not be so contemptible a wretch as to expose your whole posterity
+to groan in chains, for the sake of enjoying a subaltern tyranny for a
+few days! Oh, how great at present is the distance between an Englishman
+and a Bosnian!</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION VII.</h5>
+
+<p>The mixture now existing in the government of England&mdash;this concert
+between the commons, the lords, and the king&mdash;did not exist always.
+England was long a slave. She was so to the Romans, the Saxons, Danes,
+and French. William the Conqueror, in particular, ruled her with a
+sceptre of iron. He disposed of the properties and lives of his new
+subjects like an Oriental despot; he prohibited them from having either
+fire or candle in their houses after eight o'clock at night, under pain
+of death: his object being either to prevent nocturnal assemblies among
+them, or merely, by so capricious and extravagant a prohibition, to
+show how far the power of some men can extend over others. It is true,
+that both before as well as after William the Conqueror, the English had
+parliaments; they made a boast of them; as if the assemblies then called
+parliaments, made up of tyrannical churchmen and baronial robbers, had
+been the guardians of public freedom and happiness.</p>
+
+<p>The barbarians, who, from the shores of the Baltic poured over the rest
+of Europe, brought with them the usage of states or parliaments, about
+which a vast deal is said and very little known. The kings were not
+despotic, it is true; and it was precisely on this account that the
+people groaned in miserable slavery. The chiefs of these savages, who
+had ravaged France, Italy, Spain, and England, made themselves monarchs.
+Their captains divided among themselves the estates of the vanquished;
+hence, the margraves, lairds, barons, and the whole series of the
+subaltern tyrants, who often contested the spoils of the people with the
+monarchs, recently advanced to the throne and not firmly fixed on it.
+These were all birds of prey, battling with the eagle, in order to suck
+the blood of the doves. Every nation, instead of one good master, had a
+hundred tyrants. The priests soon took part in the contest. From time
+immemorial it had been the fate of the Gauls, the Germans, and the
+islanders of England, to be governed by their druids and the chiefs of
+their villages, an ancient species of barons, but less tyrannical than
+their successors. These druids called themselves mediators between God
+and men; they legislated, they excommunicated, they had the power of
+life and death. The bishops gradually succeeded to the authority of the
+druids, under the Goth and Vandal government. The popes put themselves
+at their head; and, with briefs, bulls, and monks, struck terror into
+the hearts of kings, whom they sometimes dethroned and occasionally
+caused to be assassinated, and drew to themselves, as nearly as they
+were able, all the money of Europe. The imbecile Ina, one of the tyrants
+of the English heptarchy, was the first who, on a pilgrimage to Rome,
+submitted to pay St. Peter's penny&mdash;which was about a crown of our
+money&mdash;for every house within his territory. The whole island soon
+followed this example; England gradually became a province of the pope;
+and the holy father sent over his legates, from time to time, to levy
+upon it his exorbitant imposts. John, called Lackland, at length made a
+full and formal cession of his kingdom to his holiness, by whom he had
+been excommunicated; the barons, who did not at all find their account
+in this proceeding, expelled that contemptible king, and substituted in
+his room Louis VIII., father of St. Louis, king of France. But they soon
+became disgusted with the new-comer, and obliged him to recross the sea.</p>
+
+<p>While the barons, bishops, and popes were thus harassing and tearing
+asunder England, where each of the parties strove eagerly to be the
+dominant one, the people, who form the most numerous, useful, and
+virtuous portion of a community, consisting of those who study the laws
+and sciences, merchants, artisans, and even peasants, who exercise at
+once the most important and the most despised of occupations; the
+people, I say, were looked down upon equally by all these combatants, as
+a species of beings inferior to mankind. Far, indeed, at that time, were
+the commons from having the slightest participation in the government:
+they were villeins, or serfs of the soil; both their labor and their
+blood belonged to their masters, who were called "nobles." The greater
+number of men in Europe were what they still continue to be in many
+parts of the world&mdash;the serfs of a lord, a species of cattle bought and
+sold together with the land. It required centuries to get justice done
+to humanity; to produce an adequate impression of the odious and
+execrable nature of the system, according to which the many sow, and
+only the few reap; and surely it may even be considered fortunate for
+France that the powers of these petty robbers were extinguished there by
+the legitimate authority of kings, as it was in England by that of the
+king and nation united.</p>
+
+<p>Happily, in consequence of the convulsions of empires by the contests
+between sovereigns and nobles, the chains of nations are more or less
+relaxed. The barons compelled John (Lackland) and Henry III to grant the
+famous charter, the great object of which, in reality, was to place the
+king in dependence on the lords, but in which the rest of the nation
+was a little favored, to induce it, when occasion might require, to
+range itself in the ranks of its pretended protectors. This great
+charter, which is regarded as the sacred origin of English liberties,
+itself clearly shows how very little liberty was understood. The very
+title proves that the king considered himself absolute by right, and
+that the barons and clergy compelled him to abate his claim to this
+absolute power only by the application of superior force. These are the
+words with which Magna Charta begins: "We grant, of our free will, the
+following privileges to the archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, and
+barons, of our kingdom," etc. Throughout the articles of it, not a word
+is said of the house of commons; a proof that it did not then exist, or
+that it existed without power. The freemen of England are specified in
+it, a melancholy demonstration that there were men who were not free. We
+perceive, from the thirty-seventh article, that the pretended freemen
+owed service to their lord. Liberty of such a description had but too
+strong a similarity to bondage. By the twenty-first article, the king
+ordains that henceforward his officers shall not take away the horses
+and ploughs of freemen, without paying for them. This regulation was
+considered by the people as true liberty, because it freed them from a
+greater tyranny. Henry VII., a successful warrior and politician, who
+pretended great attachment to the barons, but who cordially hated and
+feared them, granted them permission to alienate their lands. In
+consequence of this, the villeins, who by their industry and skill
+accumulated property, in the course of time became purchasers of the
+castles of the illustrious nobles who had ruined themselves by their
+extravagance, and, gradually, nearly all the landed property of the
+kingdom changed masters.</p>
+
+<p>The house of commons now advanced in power every day. The families of
+the old nobility became extinct in the progress of time; and, as in
+England, correctly speaking, peers only are nobles, there would scarcely
+have been any nobles in the country, if the kings had not, from time to
+time, created new barons, and kept up the body of peers, whom they had
+formerly so much dreaded, to counteract that of the commons, now become
+too formidable. All the new peers, who compose the upper house, receive
+from the king their title and nothing more, since none of them have the
+property of the lands of which they bear the names. One is duke of
+Dorset, without possessing a single foot of land in Dorsetshire; another
+is an earl under the name of a certain village, yet scarcely knowing
+where that village is situated. They have power in the parliament, and
+nowhere else.</p>
+
+<p>You hear no mention, in this country, of the high, middle, and low
+courts of justice, nor of the right of chase over the lands of private
+citizens, who have no right to fire a gun on their own estates.</p>
+
+<p>A man is not exempted from paying particular taxes because he is a
+noble or a clergyman. All imposts are regulated by the house of commons,
+which, although subordinate in rank, is superior in credit to that of
+the lords. The peers and bishops may reject a bill sent up to them by
+the commons, when the object is to raise money, but they can make no
+alteration in it: they must admit it or reject it, without restriction.
+When the bill is confirmed by the lords, and assented to by the king,
+then all the classes of the nation contribute. Every man pays, not
+according to his rank&mdash;which would be absurd&mdash;but according to his
+revenue. There is no arbitrary <i>faille</i> or capitation, but a real tax on
+lands. These were all valued in the reign of the celebrated King
+William. The tax exists still unaltered, although the rents of lands
+have considerably increased; thus no one is oppressed, and no one
+complains. The feet of the cultivator are not bruised and mutilated by
+wooden shoes; he eats white bread; he is well clothed. He is not afraid
+to increase his farming-stock, nor to roof his cottage with tiles, lest
+the following year should, in consequence, bring with it an increase of
+taxation. There are numerous farmers who have an income of about five or
+six hundred pounds sterling, and still disdain not to cultivate the land
+which has enriched them, and on which they enjoy the blessing of
+freedom.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION VIII.</h5>
+
+<p>The reader well knows that in Spain, near the coast of Malaga, there was
+discovered, in the reign of Philip II., a small community, until then
+unknown, concealed in the recesses of the Alpuxarras mountains. This
+chain of inaccessible rocks is intersected by luxuriant valleys, and
+these valleys are still cultivated by the descendants of the Moors, who
+were forced, for their own happiness, to become Christians, or at least
+to appear such.</p>
+
+<p>Among these Moors, as I was stating, there was, in the time of Philip, a
+small society, inhabiting a valley to which there existed no access but
+through caverns. This valley is situated between Pitos and Portugos. The
+inhabitants of this secluded abode were almost unknown to the Moors
+themselves. They spoke a language that was neither Spanish nor Arabic,
+and which was thought to be derived from that of the ancient
+Carthaginians.</p>
+
+<p>This society had but little increased in numbers: the reason alleged for
+which was that the Arabs, their neighbors, and before their time the
+Africans, were in the practice of coming and taking from them the young
+women.</p>
+
+<p>These poor and humble, but nevertheless happy, people, had never heard
+any mention of the Christian or Jewish religions; and knew very little
+about that of Mahomet, not holding it in any estimation. They offered
+up, from time immemorial, milk and fruits to a statue of Hercules. This
+was the amount of their religion. As to other matters, they spent their
+days in indolence and innocence. They were at length discovered by a
+familiar of the Inquisition. The grand inquisitor had the whole of them
+burned. This is the sole event of their history.</p>
+
+<p>The hallowed motives of their condemnation were, that they had never
+paid taxes, although, in fact, none had ever been demanded of them, and
+they were totally unacquainted with money; that they were not possessed
+of any Bible, although they did not understand Latin; and that no person
+had been at the pains of baptizing them. They were all invested with the
+san benito, and broiled to death with becoming ceremony.</p>
+
+<p>It is evident that this is a specimen of the true system of government;
+nothing can so completely contribute to the content, harmony, and
+happiness of society.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GOURD_OR_CALABASH" id="GOURD_OR_CALABASH"></a>GOURD OR CALABASH.</h3>
+
+
+<p>This fruit grows in America on the branches of a tree as high as the
+tallest oaks.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, Matthew Garo, who is thought so wrong in Europe for finding fault
+with gourds creeping on the ground, would have been right in Mexico. He
+would have been still more in the right in India, where cocoas are very
+elevated. This proves that we should never hasten to conclusions. What
+God has made, He has made well, no doubt; and has placed his gourds on
+the ground in our climates, lest, in falling from on high, they should
+break Matthew Garo's nose.</p>
+
+<p>The calabash will only be introduced here to show that we should
+mistrust the idea that all was made for man. There are people who
+pretend that the turf is only green to refresh the sight. It would
+appear, however, that it is rather made for the animals who nibble it
+than for man, to whom dog-grass and trefoil are useless. If nature has
+produced the trees in favor of some species, it is difficult to say to
+which she has given the preference. Leaves, and even bark, nourish a
+prodigious multitude of insects: birds eat their fruits, and inhabit
+their branches, in which they build their industriously formed nests,
+while the flocks repose under their shades.</p>
+
+<p>The author of the "<i>Spectacle de la Nature</i>" pretends that the sea has a
+flux and reflux, only to facilitate the going out and coming in of our
+vessels. It appears that even Matthew Garo reasoned better; the
+Mediterranean, on which so many vessels sail, and which only has a tide
+in three or four places, destroys the opinion of this philosopher.</p>
+
+<p>Let us enjoy what we have, without believing ourselves the centre and
+object of all things.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GRACE" id="GRACE"></a>GRACE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>In persons and works, grace signifies, not only that which is pleasing,
+but that which is attractive; so that the ancients imagined that the
+goddess of beauty ought never to appear without the graces. Beauty never
+displeases, but it may be deprived of this secret charm, which invites
+us to regard it, and sentimentally attracts and fills the soul. Grace
+in figure, carriage, action, discourse, depends on its attractive
+merit. A beautiful woman will have no grace, if her mouth be shut
+without a smile, and if her eyes display no sweetness. The serious is
+not always graceful, because unattractive, and approaching too near to
+the severe, which repels.</p>
+
+<p>A well-made man whose carriage is timid or constrained, gait precipitate
+or heavy, and gestures awkward, has no gracefulness, because he has
+nothing gentle or attractive in his exterior. The voice of an orator
+which wants flexibility or softness is without grace.</p>
+
+<p>It is the same in all the arts. Proportion and beauty may not be
+graceful. It cannot be said that the pyramids of Egypt are graceful; it
+cannot be said that the Colossus of Rhodes is as much so as the Venus of
+Cnidus. All that is merely strong and vigorous exhibits not the charm of
+grace.</p>
+
+<p>It would show but small acquaintance with Michelangelo and Caravaggio to
+attribute to them the grace of Albano. The sixth book of the "Æneid" is
+sublime; the fourth has more grace. Some of the gallant odes of Horace
+breathe gracefulness, as some of his epistles cultivate reason.</p>
+
+<p>It seems, in general, that the little and pretty of all kinds are more
+susceptible of grace than the large. A funeral oration, a tragedy, or a
+sermon, are badly praised, if they are only honored with the epithet of
+graceful.</p>
+
+<p>It is not good for any kind of work to be opposed to grace, for its
+opposite is rudeness, barbarity, and dryness. The Hercules of Farnese
+should not have the gracefulness of the Apollo of Belvidere and of
+Antinous, but it is neither rude nor clumsy. The burning of Troy is not
+described by Virgil with the graces of an elegy of Tibullus: it pleases
+by stronger beauties. A work, then, may be deprived of grace, without
+being in the least disagreeable. The terrible, or horrible, in
+description, is not to be graceful, neither should it solely affect its
+opposite; for if an artist, whatever branch he may cultivate, expresses
+only frightful things, and softens them not by agreeable contrasts, he
+will repel.</p>
+
+<p>Grace, in painting and sculpture, consists in softness of outline and
+harmonious expression; and painting, next to sculpture, has grace in the
+unison of parts, and of figures which animate one another, and which
+become agreeable by their attributes and their expression.</p>
+
+<p>Graces of diction, whether in eloquence or poetry, depend on choice of
+words and harmony of phrases, and still more upon delicacy of ideas and
+smiling descriptions. The abuse of grace is affectation, as the abuse of
+the sublime is absurdity; all perfection is nearly a fault.</p>
+
+<p>To have grace applies equally to persons and things. This dress, this
+work, or that woman, is graceful. What is called a good grace applies to
+manner alone. She presents herself with good grace. He has done that
+which was expected of him with a good grace. To possess the graces:
+This woman has grace in her carriage, in all that she says and does.</p>
+
+<p>To obtain grace is, by a metaphor, to obtain pardon, as to grant grace
+is to grant pardon. We make grace of one thing by taking away all the
+rest. The commissioners took all his effects and made him a gift&mdash;a
+grace&mdash;of his money. To grant graces, to diffuse graces, is the finest
+privilege of the sovereignty; it is to do good by something more than
+justice. To have one's good graces is usually said in relation to a
+superior: to have a lady's good graces, is to be her favorite lover. To
+be in grace, is said of a courtier who has been in disgrace: we should
+not allow our happiness to depend on the one, nor our misery on the
+other. Graces, in Greek, are "charities"; a term which signifies
+amiable.</p>
+
+<p>The graces, divinities of antiquity, are one of the most beautiful
+allegories of the Greek mythology. As this mythology always varied
+according either to the imagination of the poets, who were its
+theologians, or to the customs of the people, the number, names, and
+attributes of the graces often change; but it was at last agreed to fix
+them as three, Aglaia, Thalia, and Euphrosyne, that is to say,
+sparkling, blooming, mirthful. They were always near Venus. No veil
+should cover their charms. They preside over favors, concord,
+rejoicings, love, and even eloquence; they were the sensible emblem of
+all that can render life agreeable. They were painted dancing and
+holding hands; and every one who entered their temples was crowned with
+flowers. Those who have condemned the fabulous mythology should at least
+acknowledge the merit of these lively fictions, which announce truths
+intimately connected with the felicity of mankind.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GRACE_OF" id="GRACE_OF"></a>GRACE (OF).</h3>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION I.</h5>
+
+<p>This term, which signifies favor or privilege, is employed in this sense
+by theologians. They call grace a particular operation of God on
+mankind, intended to render them just and happy. Some have admitted
+universal grace, that which God gives to all men, though mankind,
+according to them, with the exception of a very small number, will be
+delivered to eternal flames: others admit grace towards Christians of
+their communion only; and lastly, others only for the elect of that
+communion.</p>
+
+<p>It is evident that a general grace, which leaves the universe in vice,
+error, and eternal misery, is not a grace, a favor, or privilege, but a
+contradiction in terms.</p>
+
+<p>Particular grace, according to theologians, is either in the first place
+"sufficing," which if resisted, suffices not&mdash;resembling a pardon given
+by a king to a criminal, who is nevertheless delivered over to the
+punishment; or "efficacious" when it is not resisted, although it <i>may
+be</i> resisted; in this case, they just resemble famished guests to whom
+are presented delicious viands, of which they will surely eat, though,
+in general, they may be supposed at liberty not to eat; or "necessary,"
+that is, unavoidable, being nothing more than the chain of eternal
+decrees and events. We shall take care not to enter into the long and
+appalling details, subtleties, and sophisms, with which these questions
+are embarrassed. The object of this dictionary is not to be the vain
+echo of vain disputes.</p>
+
+<p>St. Thomas calls grace a substantial form, and the Jesuit Bouhours names
+it a <i>je ne sais quoi</i>; this is perhaps the best definition which has
+ever been given of it.</p>
+
+<p>If the theologians had wanted a subject on which to ridicule Providence,
+they need not have taken any other than that which they have chosen. On
+one side the Thomists assure us that man, in receiving efficacious
+grace, is not free in the compound sense, but that he is free in the
+divided sense; on the other, the Molinists invent the medium doctrine of
+God and congruity, and imagine exciting, preventing, concomitant, and
+co-operating grace.</p>
+
+<p>Let us quit these bad but seriously constructed jokes of the
+theologians; let us leave their books, and each consult his common
+sense; when he will see that all these reasoners have sagaciously
+deceived themselves, because they have reasoned upon a principle
+evidently false. They have supposed that God acts upon particular views;
+now, an eternal God, without general, immutable, and eternal laws, is
+an imaginary being, a phantom, a god of fable.</p>
+
+<p>Why, in all religions on which men pique themselves on reasoning, have
+theologians been forced to admit this grace which they do not
+comprehend? It is that they would have salvation confined to their own
+sect, and further, they would have this salvation divided among those
+who are the most submissive to themselves. These particular theologians,
+or chiefs of parties, divide among themselves. The Mussulman doctors
+entertain similar opinions and similar disputes, because they have the
+same interest to actuate them; but the universal theologian, that is to
+say, the true philosopher, sees that it is contradictory for nature to
+act on particular or single views; that it is ridiculous to imagine God
+occupying Himself in forcing one man in Europe to obey Him, while He
+leaves all the Asiatics intractable; to suppose Him wrestling with
+another man who sometimes submits, and sometimes disarms Him, and
+presenting to another a help, which is nevertheless useless. Such grace,
+considered in a true point of view, is an absurdity. The prodigious mass
+of books composed on this subject is often an exercise of intellect, but
+always the shame of reason.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION II.</h5>
+
+<p>All nature, all that exists, is the grace of God; He bestows on all
+animals the grace of form and nourishment. The grace of growing seventy
+feet high is granted to the fir, and refused to the reed. He gives to
+man the grace of thinking, speaking, and knowing him; He grants me the
+grace of not understanding a word of all that Tournelli, Molina, and
+Soto, have written on the subject of grace.</p>
+
+<p>The first who has spoken of efficacious and gratuitous grace is, without
+contradiction, Homer. This may be astonishing to a bachelor of theology,
+who knows no author but St. Augustine; but, if he read the third book of
+the "Iliad," he will see that Paris says to his brother Hector: "If the
+gods have given you valor, and me beauty, do not reproach me with the
+presents of the beautiful Venus; no gift of the gods is despicable&mdash;it
+does not depend upon man to obtain them."</p>
+
+<p>Nothing is more positive than this passage. If we further remark that
+Jupiter, according to his pleasure, gave the victory sometimes to the
+Greeks, and at others to the Trojans, we shall see a new proof that all
+was done by grace from on high. Sarpedon, and afterwards Patroclus, are
+barbarians to whom by turns grace has been wanting.</p>
+
+<p>There have been philosophers who were not of the opinion of Homer. They
+have pretended that general Providence does not immediately interfere
+with the affairs of particular individuals; that it governs all by
+universal laws; that Thersites and Achilles were equal before it, and
+that neither Chalcas nor Talthybius ever had versatile or congruous
+graces.</p>
+
+<p>According to these philosophers, the dog-grass and the oak, the mite and
+the elephant, man, the elements and stars, obey invariable laws, which
+God, as immutable, has established from all eternity.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION III.</h5>
+
+<p>If one were to come from the bottom of hell, to say to us on the part of
+the devil&mdash;Gentlemen, I must inform you that our sovereign lord has
+taken all mankind for his share, except a small number of people who
+live near the Vatican and its dependencies&mdash;we should all pray of this
+deputy to inscribe us on the list of the privileged; we should ask him
+what we must do to obtain this grace.</p>
+
+<p>If he were to answer, You cannot merit it, my master has made the list
+from the beginning of time; he has only listened to his own pleasure, he
+is continually occupied in making an infinity of <i>pots-de-chambre</i> and
+some dozen gold vases; if you are <i>pots-de-chambre</i> so much the worse
+for you.</p>
+
+<p>At these fine words we should use our pitchforks to send the ambassador
+back to his master. This is, however, what we have dared to impute to
+God&mdash;-to the eternal and sovereignly good being!</p>
+
+<p>Man has been always reproached with having made God in his own image,
+Homer has been condemned for having transported all the vices and
+follies of earth into heaven. Plato, who has thus justly reproached him,
+has not hesitated to call him a blasphemer; while we, a hundred times
+more thoughtless, hardy, and blaspheming than this Greek, who did not
+understand conventional language, devoutly accuse God of a thing of
+which we have never accused the worst of men.</p>
+
+<p>It is said that the king of Morocco, Muley Ismael, had five hundred
+children. What would you say if a marabout of Mount Atlas related to you
+that the wise and good Muley Ismael, dining with his family, at the
+close of the repast, spoke thus:</p>
+
+<p>"I am Muley Ismael, who has forgotten you for my glory, for I am very
+glorious. I love you very tenderly, I shelter you as a hen covers her
+chickens; I have decreed that one of my youngest children shall have the
+kingdom of Tafilet, and that another shall possess Morocco; and for my
+other dear children, to the number of four hundred and ninety-eight, I
+order that one-half shall be tortured, and the other half burned, for I
+am the Lord Muley Ismael."</p>
+
+<p>You would assuredly take the marabout for the greatest fool that Africa
+ever produced; but if three or four thousand marabouts, well entertained
+at your expense, were to repeat to you the same story, what would you
+do? Would you not be tempted to make them fast upon bread and water
+until they recovered their senses?</p>
+
+<p>You will allege that my indignation is reasonable enough against the
+supralapsarians, who believe that the king of Morocco begot these five
+hundred children only for his glory; and that he had always the
+intention to torture and burn them, except two, who were destined to
+reign.</p>
+
+<p>But I am wrong, you say, against the infralapsarians, who avow that it
+was not the first intention of Muley Ismael to cause his children to
+perish; but that, having foreseen that they would be of no use, he
+thought he should be acting as a good father in getting rid of them by
+torture and fire.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, supralapsarians, infralapsarians, free-gracians, sufficers,
+efficacians, jansenists, and molinists become men, and no longer trouble
+the earth with such absurd and abominable fooleries.</p>
+
+
+<h5>SECTION IV.</h5>
+
+<p>Holy advisers of modern Rome, illustrious and infallible theologians, no
+one has more respect for your divine decisions than I; but if Paulus
+milius, Scipio, Cato, Cicero, Cæsar, Titus, Trajan, or Marcus Aurelius,
+revisited that Rome to which they formerly did such credit, you must
+confess that they would be a little astonished at your decisions on
+grace. What would they say if they heard you speak of healthful grace
+according to St. Thomas, and medicinal grace according to Cajetan; of
+exterior and interior grace, of free, sanctifying, co-operating, actual,
+habitual, and efficacious grace, which is sometimes inefficacious; of
+the sufficing which sometimes does not suffice, of the versatile and
+congruous&mdash;would they really comprehend it more than you and I?</p>
+
+<p>What need would these poor people have of your instructions? I fancy I
+hear them say: "Reverend fathers, you are terrible genii; we foolishly
+thought that the Eternal Being never conducted Himself by particular
+laws like vile human beings, but by general laws, eternal like Himself.
+No one among us ever imagined that God was like a senseless master, who
+gives an estate to one slave and refuses food to another; who orders one
+with a broken arm to knead a loaf, and a cripple to be his courier."</p>
+
+<p>All is grace on the part of God; He has given to the globe we inhabit
+the grace of form; to the trees the grace of making them grow; to
+animals that of feeding them; but will you say, because one wolf finds
+in his road a lamb for his supper, while another is dying with hunger,
+that God has given the first wolf a particular grace? Is it a preventive
+grace to cause one oak to grow in preference to another in which sap is
+wanting? If throughout nature all being is submitted to general laws,
+how can a single species of animals avoid conforming to them?</p>
+
+<p>Why should the absolute master of all be more occupied in directing the
+interior of a single man than in conducting the remainder of entire
+nature? By what caprice would He change something in the heart of a
+Courlander or a Biscayan, while He changes nothing in the general laws
+which He has imposed upon all the stars.</p>
+
+<p>What a pity to suppose that He is continually making, defacing, and
+renewing our sentiments! And what audacity in us to believe ourselves
+excepted from all beings! And further, is it not only for those who
+confess that these changes are imagined? A Savoyard, a Bergamask, on
+Monday, will have the grace to have a mass said for twelve sous; on
+Tuesday he will go to the tavern and have no grace; on Wednesday he will
+have a co-operating grace, which will conduct him to confession, but he
+will not have the efficacious grace of perfect contrition; on Thursday
+there will be a sufficing grace which will not suffice, as has been
+already said. God will labor in the head of this Bergamask&mdash;sometimes
+strongly, sometimes weakly, while the rest of the earth will no way
+concern Him! He will not deign to meddle with the interior of the
+Indians and Chinese! If you possess a grain of reason, reverend fathers,
+do you not find this system prodigiously ridiculous?</p>
+
+<p>Poor, miserable man! behold this oak which rears its head to the clouds,
+and this reed which bends at its feet; you do not say that efficacious
+grace has been given to the oak and withheld from the reed. Raise your
+eyes to heaven; see the eternal Demiourgos creating millions of worlds,
+which gravitate towards one another by general and eternal laws. See the
+same light reflected from the sun to Saturn, and from Saturn to us; and
+in this grant of so many stars, urged onward in their rapid course; in
+this general obedience of all nature, dare to believe, if you can, that
+God is occupied in giving a versatile grace to Sister Theresa, or a
+concomitant one to Sister Agnes.</p>
+
+<p>Atom&mdash;to which another foolish atom has said that the Eternal has
+particular laws for some atoms of thy neighborhood; that He gives His
+grace to that one and refuses it to this; that such as had not grace
+yesterday shall have it to-morrow&mdash;repeat not this folly. God has made
+the universe, and creates not new winds to remove a few straws in one
+corner of the universe. Theologians are like the combatants in Homer,
+who believed that the gods were sometimes armed for and sometimes
+against them. Had Homer not been considered a poet, he would be deemed a
+blasphemer.</p>
+
+<p>It is Marcus Aurelius who speaks, and not I; for God, who inspires you,
+has given me grace to believe all that you say, all that you have said,
+and all that you will say.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GRAVE_GRAVITY" id="GRAVE_GRAVITY"></a>GRAVE&mdash;GRAVITY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Grave, in its moral meaning, always corresponds with its physical one;
+it expresses something of weight; thus, we say&mdash;a person, an author, or
+a maxim of weight, for a grave person, author, or maxim. The grave is to
+the serious what the lively is to the agreeable. It is one degree more
+of the same thing, and that degree a considerable one. A man may be
+serious by temperament, and even from want of ideas. He is grave, either
+from a sense of decorum, or from having ideas of depth and importance,
+which induce gravity. There is a difference between being grave and
+being a grave man. It is a fault to be unseasonably grave. He who is
+grave in society is seldom much sought for; but a grave man is one who
+acquires influence and authority more by his real wisdom than his
+external carriage.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Tum pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"><i>Conspexere, silent, adrectisque auribus adstant.</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 14em;">&mdash;<span class="small">VIRGIL'S</span> <i>Æneid</i>, i. 151.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">If then some grave and pious man appear,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">They hush their noise, and lend a listening ear.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 15em;">&mdash;<span class="small">DRYDEN</span>.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>A decorous air should be always preserved, but a grave air is becoming
+only in the function of some high and important office, as, for example,
+in council. When gravity consists, as is frequently the case, only in
+the exterior carriage, frivolous remarks are delivered with a pompous
+solemnity, exciting at once ridicule and aversion. We do not easily
+pardon those who wish to impose upon us by this air of consequence and
+self-sufficiency.</p>
+
+<p>The duke de La Rochefoucauld said "Gravity is a mysteriousness of body
+assumed in order to conceal defects of mind." Without investigating
+whether the phrase "mysteriousness of body" is natural and judicious, it
+is sufficient to observe that the remark is applicable to all who affect
+gravity, but not to those who merely exhibit a gravity suitable to the
+office they hold, the place where they are, or the business in which
+they are engaged.</p>
+
+<p>A grave author is one whose opinions relate to matters obviously
+disputable. We never apply the term to one who has written on subjects
+which admit no doubt or controversy. It would be ridiculous to call
+Euclid and Archimedes grave authors.</p>
+
+<p>Gravity is applicable to style. Livy and de Thou have written with
+gravity. The same observations cannot with propriety be applied to
+Tacitus, whose object was brevity, and who has displayed malignity;
+still less can it be applied to Cardinal de Retz, who sometimes infuses
+into his writings a misplaced gayety, and sometimes even forgets
+decency.</p>
+
+<p>The grave style declines all sallies of wit or pleasantry; if it
+sometimes reaches the sublime, if on any particular occasion it is
+pathetic, it speedily returns to the didactic wisdom and noble
+simplicity which habitually characterizes it; it possesses strength
+without daring. Its greatest difficulty is to avoid monotony.</p>
+
+<p>A grave affair (<i>affaire</i>), a grave case (<i>cas</i>), is used concerning a
+criminal rather than a civil process. A grave disease implies danger.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GREAT_GREATNESS" id="GREAT_GREATNESS"></a>GREAT&mdash;GREATNESS.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Of the Meaning of These Words.</i></h4>
+
+<p>Great is one of those words which are most frequently used in a moral
+sense, and with the least consideration and judgment. Great man, great
+genius, great captain, great philosopher, great poet; we mean by this
+language "one who has far exceeded ordinary limits." But, as it is
+difficult to define those limits, the epithet "great" is often applied
+to those who possess only mediocrity.</p>
+
+<p>This term is less vague and doubtful when applied to material than to
+moral subjects. We know what is meant by a great storm, a great
+misfortune, a great disease, great property, great misery.</p>
+
+<p>The term "large" (<i>gros</i>) is sometimes used with respect to subjects of
+the latter description, that is, material ones, as equivalent to great,
+but never with respect to moral subjects. We say large property for
+great wealth, but not a large captain for a great captain, or a large
+minister for a great minister. Great financier means a man eminently
+skilful in matters of national finance; but <i>gros</i> financier expresses
+merely a man who has become wealthy in the department of finance.</p>
+
+<p>The great man is more difficult to be defined than the great artist. In
+an art or profession, the man who has far distanced his rivals, or who
+has the reputation of having done so, is called great in his art, and
+appears, therefore, to have required merit of only one description in
+order to obtain this eminence; but the great man must combine different
+species of merit. Gonsalvo, surnamed the Great Captain, who observed
+that "the web of honor was coarsely woven," was never called a great
+man. It is more easy to name those to whom this high distinction should
+be refused than those to whom it should be granted. The denomination
+appears to imply some great virtues. All agree that Cromwell was the
+most intrepid general, the most profound statesman, the man best
+qualified to conduct a party, a parliament, or an army, of his day; yet
+no writer ever gives him the title of great man; because, although he
+possessed great qualities, he possessed not a single great virtue.</p>
+
+<p>This title seems to fall to the lot only of the small number of men who
+have been distinguished at once by virtues, exertions, and success.
+Success is essential, because the man who is always unfortunate is
+supposed to be so by his own fault.</p>
+
+<p>Great (grand), by itself, expresses some dignity. In Spain it is a high
+and most distinguishing appellative (<i>grandee</i>) conferred by the king on
+those whom he wishes to honor. The grandees are covered in the presence
+of the king, either before speaking to him or after having spoken to
+him, or while taking their seats with the rest.</p>
+
+<p>Charles the Fifth conferred the privileges of grandeeship on sixteen
+principal noblemen. That emperor himself afterwards granted the same
+honors to many others. His successors, each in his turn, have added to
+the number. The Spanish grandees have long claimed to be considered of
+equal rank and dignity with the electors and the princes of Italy. At
+the court of France they have the same honors as peers.</p>
+
+<p>The title of "great" has been always given, in France, to many of the
+chief officers of the crown&mdash;as great seneschal, great master, great
+chamberlain, great equerry, great pantler, great huntsman, great
+falconer. These titles were given them to distinguish their pre-eminence
+above the persons serving in the same departments under them. The
+distinction is not given to the constable, nor to the chancellor, nor to
+the marshals, although the constable is the chief of all the household
+officers, the chancellor the second person in the state, and the marshal
+the second officer in the army. The reason obviously is, that they had
+no deputies, no vice-constables, vice-marshals, vice-chancellors, but
+officers under another denomination who executed their orders, while the
+great steward, great chamberlain, and great equerry, etc., had stewards,
+chamberlains, and equerries under them.</p>
+
+<p>Great (grand) in connection with <i>seigneur</i>, "great lord," has a
+signification more extensive and uncertain. We give this title of
+"<i>grand seigneur</i>" (seignor) to the Turkish sultan, who assumes that of
+pasha, to which the expression grand seignor does not correspond. The
+expression "<i>un grand</i>," "great man," is used in speaking of a man of
+distinguished birth, invested with dignities, but it is used only by the
+common people. A person of birth or consequence never applies the term
+to any one. As the words "great lord" (<i>grand seigneur</i>) are commonly
+applied to those who unite birth, dignity, and riches, poverty seems to
+deprive a man of the right to it, or at least to render it inappropriate
+or ridiculous. Accordingly, we say a poor gentleman, but not a poor
+grand seigneur.</p>
+
+<p>Great (grand) is different from mighty (<i>puissant</i>). A man may at the
+same time be both one and the other, but <i>puissant</i> implies the
+possession of some office of power and consequence. "Grand" indicates
+more show and less reality; the "puissant" commands, the "grand"
+possesses honors.</p>
+
+<p>There is greatness (grandeur) in mind, in sentiments, in manners, and in
+conduct. The expression is not used in speaking of persons in the
+middling classes of society, but only of those who, by their rank, are
+bound to show nobility and elevation. It is perfectly true that a man of
+the most obscure birth and connections may have more greatness of mind
+than a monarch. But it would be inconsistent with the usual phraseology
+to say, "that merchant" or "that farmer acted greatly" (<i>avec
+grandeur</i>); unless, indeed, in very particular circumstances, and
+placing certain characters in striking opposition, we should, for
+example, make such a remark as the following: "The celebrated merchant
+who entertained Charles the Fifth in his own house, and lighted a fire
+of cinnamon wood with that prince's bond to him for fifty thousand
+ducats, displayed more greatness of soul than the emperor."</p>
+
+<p>The title of "greatness" (grandeur) was formerly given to various
+persons possessing stations of dignity. French clergymen, when writing
+to bishops, still call them "your greatness." Those titles, which are
+lavished by sycophancy and caught at by vanity, are now little used.</p>
+
+<p>Haughtiness is often mistaken for greatness (grandeur). He who is
+ostentatious of greatness displays vanity. But one becomes weary and
+exhausted with writing about greatness. According to the lively remark
+of Montaigne, "we cannot obtain it, let us therefore take our revenge by
+abusing it."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GREEK" id="GREEK"></a>GREEK.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>Observations Upon the Extinction of the Greek Language at Marseilles.</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>It is exceedingly strange that, as Marseilles was founded by a Greek
+colony, scarcely any vestige of the Greek language is to be found in
+Provence Languedoc, or any district of France; for we cannot consider as
+Greek the terms which were taken, at a comparatively modern date, from
+the Latins, and which had been adopted by the Romans themselves from the
+Greeks so many centuries before. We received those only at second hand.
+We have no right to say that we abandoned the word <i>Got</i> for that of
+<i>Theos</i>, rather than that of <i>Deus</i>, from which, by a barbarous
+termination, we have made <i>Dieu</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It is clear that the Gauls, having received the Latin language with the
+Roman laws, and having afterwards received from those same Romans the
+Christian religion, adopted from them all the terms which were connected
+with that religion. These same Gauls did not acquire, until a late
+period, the Greek terms which relate to medicine, anatomy, and surgery.</p>
+
+<p>After deducting all the words originally Greek which we have derived
+through the Latin, and all the anatomical and medical terms which were,
+in comparison, so recently acquired, there is scarcely anything left;
+for surely, to derive "<i>abréger</i>" from "<i>brakus</i>," rather than from
+"<i>abreviare</i>"; "<i>acier</i>" from "<i>axi</i>" rather than from "<i>acies</i>";
+"<i>acre</i>" from "<i>agros</i>," rather than from "<i>ager</i>"; and "<i>aile</i>" from
+"<i>ily</i>" rather than from "<i>ala</i>"&mdash;this, I say, would surely be perfectly
+ridiculous.</p>
+
+<p>Some have even gone so far as to say that "omelette" comes from
+"<i>omeilaton</i>" because "<i>meli</i>" in Greek signifies honey, and "<i>oon</i>" an
+egg. In the "Garden of Greek Roots" there is a more curious derivation
+still; it is pretended that "<i>diner</i>" (dinner) comes from "<i>deipnein</i>,"
+which signifies supper.</p>
+
+<p>As some may be desirous of possessing a list of the Greek words which
+the Marseilles colony may have introduced into the language of the
+Gauls, independently of those which came through the Romans, we present
+the following one:</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Aboyer, perhaps from <i>bauzein</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Affre, affreux, from <i>afronos</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Agacer, perhaps from <i>anaxein</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Alali, a Greek war-cry.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Babiller, perhaps from <i>babazo</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Balle, from <i>ballo</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Bas, from <i>batys</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Blesser, from the aorist of <i>blapto</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Bouteille, from <i>bouttis</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Bride, from <i>bryter</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Brique, from <i>bryka</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Coin, from <i>gonia</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Colère, from <i>chole</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Colle, from <i>colla</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Couper, from <i>cop to</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Cuisse, perhaps from <i>ischis</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Entraille, from <i>entera</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Ermite, from <i>eremos</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Fier, from <i>fiaros</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Gargarizer, from <i>gargarizein</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Idiot, from <i>idiotes</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Maraud, from <i>miaros</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Moquer, from <i>mokeuo</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Moustache, from <i>mustax</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Orgueil, from <i>orge</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Page, from <i>pais</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Siffler, perhaps from <i>siffloo</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Tuer, <i>thuein</i>.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>I am astonished to find so few words remaining of a language spoken at
+Marseilles, in the time of Augustus, in all its purity; and I am
+particularly astonished to find the greater number of the Greek words
+preserved in Provence, signifying things of little or no utility, while
+those used to express things of the first necessity and importance are
+utterly lost. We have not a single one remaining that signifies land,
+sea, sky, the sun, the moon, rivers, or the principal parts of the human
+body; the words used for which might have been expected to be
+transmitted down from the beginning through every succeeding age.
+Perhaps we must attribute the cause of this to the Visigoths, the
+Burgundians, and the Franks; to the horrible barbarism of all those
+nations which laid waste the Roman Empire, a barbarism of which so many
+traces yet remain.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GUARANTEE" id="GUARANTEE"></a>GUARANTEE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>A guarantee is a pledge by which a person renders himself responsible to
+another for something, and binds himself to secure him in the enjoyment
+of it. The word (<i>garant</i>) is derived from the Celtic and Teutonic
+"warrant." In all the words which we have retained from those ancient
+languages we have changed the <i>w</i> into <i>g</i>. Among the greater number of
+the nations of the North "warrant" still signifies assurance, guaranty;
+and in this sense it means, in English, an order of the king, as
+signifying the pledge of the king. When in the middle ages kings
+concluded treaties, they were guaranteed on both sides by a considerable
+number of knights, who bound themselves by oath to see that the treaty
+was observed, and even, when a superior education qualified them to do
+so, which sometimes happened, signed their names to it. When the emperor
+Frederick Barbarossa ceded so many rights to Pope Alexander III. at the
+celebrated congress of Venice, in 1117, the emperor put his seal to the
+instrument which the pope and cardinals signed. Twelve princes of the
+empire guaranteed the treaty by an oath upon the gospel; but none of
+them signed it. It is not said that the doge of Venice guaranteed that
+peace which was concluded in his palace. When Philip Augustus made peace
+in 1200 with King John of England, the principal barons of France and
+Normandy swore to the due observance of it, as cautionary or
+guaranteeing parties. The French swore that they would take arms against
+their king if he violated his word, and the Normans, in like manner, to
+oppose their sovereign if he did not adhere to his. One of the
+constables of the Montmorency family, after a negotiation with one of
+the earls of March, in 1227, swore to the observance of the treaty upon
+the soul of the king.</p>
+
+<p>The practice of guaranteeing the states of a third party was of great
+antiquity, although under a different name. The Romans in this manner
+guaranteed the possessions of many of the princes of Asia and Africa, by
+taking them under their protection until they secured to themselves the
+possession of the territories thus protected. We must regard as a mutual
+guaranty the ancient alliance between France and Castile, of king to
+king, kingdom to kingdom, and man to man.</p>
+
+<p>We do not find any treaty in which the guaranty of the states of a third
+party is expressly stipulated for before that which was concluded
+between Spain and the states-general in 1609, by the mediation of Henry
+IV. He procured from Philip III., king of Spain, the recognition of the
+United Provinces as free and sovereign states. He signed the guaranty of
+this sovereignty of the seven provinces, and obtained the signature of
+the same instrument from the king of Spain; and the republic
+acknowledged that it owed its freedom to the interference of the French
+monarch. It is principally within our own times that treaties of
+guaranty have become comparatively frequent. Unfortunately these
+engagements have occasionally produced ruptures and war; and it is
+clearly ascertained that the best of all possible guaranties is power.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="GREGORY_VII" id="GREGORY_VII"></a>GREGORY VII.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Bayle himself, while admitting that Gregory was the firebrand of Europe,
+concedes to him the denomination of a great man. "That old Rome," says
+he, "which plumed itself upon conquests and military virtue, should have
+brought so many other nations under its dominion, redounds, according to
+the general maxims of mankind, to her credit and glory; but, upon the
+slightest reflection, can excite little surprise. On the other hand, it
+is a subject of great surprise to see new Rome, which pretended to value
+itself only on an apostolic ministry, possessed of an authority under
+which the greatest monarchs have been constrained to bend. Caron may
+observe, with truth, that there is scarcely a single emperor who has
+opposed the popes without feeling bitter cause to regret his resistance.
+Even at the present day the conflicts of powerful princes with the court
+of Rome almost always terminate in their confusion."</p>
+
+<p>I am of a totally different opinion from Bayle. There will probably be
+many of a different one from mine. I deliver it however with freedom,
+and let him who is willing and able refute it.</p>
+
+<p>1. The differences of the princes of Orange and the seven provinces with
+Rome did not terminate in their confusion; and Bayle, who, while at
+Amsterdam, could set Rome at defiance, was a happy illustration of the
+contrary.</p>
+
+<p>The triumphs of Queen Elizabeth, of Gustavus Vasa in Sweden, of the
+kings of Denmark, of all the princes of the north of Germany, of the
+finest part of Helvetia, of the single and small city of Geneva&mdash;the
+triumphs, I say, of all these over the policy of the Roman court are
+perfectly satisfactory testimonies that it may be easily and
+successfully resisted, both in affairs of religion and government.</p>
+
+<p>2. The sacking of Rome by the troops of Charles the Fifth; the pope
+(Clement VII.) a prisoner in the castle of St. Angelo; Louis XIV.
+compelling Pope Alexander VII. to ask his pardon, and erecting even in
+Rome itself a monument of the pope's submission; and, within our own
+times, the easy subversion of that steady, and apparently most
+formidable support of the papal power, the society of Jesuits in Spain,
+in France, in Naples, in Goa, and in Paraguay&mdash;all this furnishes
+decisive evidence, that, when potent princes are in hostility with Rome,
+the quarrel is not terminated in their confusion; they may occasionally
+bend before the storm, but they will not eventually be overthrown.</p>
+
+<p>When the popes walked on the heads of kings, when they conferred crowns
+by a parchment bull, it appears to me, that at this extreme height of
+their power and grandeur they did no more than the caliphs, who were the
+successors of Mahomet, did in the very period of their decline. Both of
+them, in the character of priests, conferred the investiture of empires,
+in solemn ceremony, on the most powerful of contending parties.</p>
+
+<p>3. Maimbourg says: "What no pope ever did before, Gregory VIII. did,
+depriving Henry IV. of his dignity of emperor, and of his kingdoms of
+Germany and Italy."</p>
+
+<p>Maimbourg is mistaken. Pope Zachary had, long before that, placed a
+crown on the head of the Austrasian Pepin, who usurped the kingdom of
+the Franks; and Pope Leo III. had declared the son of that Pepin emperor
+of the West, and thereby deprived the empress Irene of the whole of that
+empire; and from that time, it must be admitted, there has not been a
+single priest of the Romish church who has not imagined that his bishop
+enjoyed the disposal of all crowns.</p>
+
+<p>This maxim was always turned to account when it was possible to be so.
+It was considered as a consecrated weapon, deposited in the sacristy of
+St. John of Lateran, which might be drawn forth in solemn and impressive
+ceremony on every occasion that required it. This prerogative is so
+commanding; it raises to such a height the dignity of an exorcist born
+at Velletri or Cività Vecchia, that if Luther, Œcolampadius, John
+Calvin, and all the prophets of the Cévennes, had been natives of any
+miserable village near Rome, and undergone the tonsure there, they would
+have supported that church with the same rage which they actually
+manifested for its destruction.</p>
+
+<p>4. Everything, then, depends on the time and place of a man's birth, and
+the circumstances by which he is surrounded. Gregory VII. was born in an
+age of barbarism, ignorance, and superstition; and he had to deal with a
+young, debauched, inexperienced emperor, deficient in money, and whose
+power was contested by all the powerful lords of Germany.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot believe, that, from the time of the Austrasian Charlemagne,
+the Roman people ever paid very willing obedience to Franks or
+Teutonians: they hated them as much as the genuine old Romans would have
+hated the Cimbri, if the Cimbri had obtained dominion in Italy. The
+Othos had left behind them in Rome a memory that was execrated, because
+they had enjoyed great power there; and, after the time of the Othos,
+Europe it is well known became involved in frightful anarchy.</p>
+
+<p>This anarchy was not more effectually restrained under the emperors of
+the house of Franconia. One-half of Germany was in insurrection against
+Henry IV. The countess Mathilda, grand duchess, his cousin-german, more
+powerful than himself in Italy, was his mortal enemy. She possessed,
+either as fiefs of the empire, or as allodial property, the whole duchy
+of Tuscany, the territory of Cremona, Ferrara, Mantua, and Parma; a part
+of the Marches of Ancona, Reggio, Modena, Spoleto, and Verona; and she
+had rights, that is to say pretensions, to the two Burgundies; for the
+imperial chancery claimed those territories, according to its regular
+practice of claiming everything.</p>
+
+<p>We admit, that Gregory VII. would have been little less than an idiot
+had he not exerted his strongest efforts to secure a complete influence
+over this powerful princess; and to obtain, by her means, a point of
+support and protection against the Germans. He became her director, and,
+after being her director, her heir.</p>
+
+<p>I shall not, in this place, examine whether he was really her lover, or
+whether he only pretended to be so; or whether his enemies merely
+pretended it; or whether, in his idle moments, the assuming and ardent
+little director did not occasionally abuse the influence he possessed
+with his penitent, and prevail over a feeble and capricious woman. In
+the course of human events nothing can be more natural or common; but as
+usually no registers are kept of such cases; as those interesting
+intimacies between the directors and directed do not take place before
+witnesses, and as Gregory has been reproached with this imputation only
+by his enemies, we ought not to confound accusation with proof. It is
+quite enough that Gregory claimed the whole of his penitent's property.</p>
+
+<p>5. The donation which he procured to be made to himself by the countess
+Mathilda, in the year 1077, is more than suspected. And one proof that
+it is not to be relied upon is that not merely was this deed never
+shown, but that, in a second deed, the first is stated to have been
+lost. It was pretended that the donation had been made in the fortress
+of Canossa, and in the second act it is said to have been made at Rome.
+These circumstances may be considered as confirming the opinion of some
+antiquaries, a little too scrupulous, who maintain that out of a
+thousand grants made in those times&mdash;and those times were of long
+duration&mdash;there are more than nine hundred evidently counterfeit.</p>
+
+<p>There have been two sorts of usurpers in our quarter of the world,
+Europe&mdash;robbers and forgers.</p>
+
+<p>6. Bayle, although allowing the title of Great to Gregory, acknowledges
+at the same time that this turbulent man disgraced his heroism by his
+prophecies. He had the audacity to create an emperor, and in that he
+did well, as the emperor Henry IV. had made a pope. Henry deposed him,
+and he deposed Henry. So far there is nothing to which to object&mdash;both
+sides are equal. But Gregory took it into his head to turn prophet; he
+predicted the death of Henry IV. for the year 1080; but Henry IV.
+conquered, and the pretended emperor Rudolph was defeated and slain in
+Thuringia by the famous Godfrey of Bouillon, a man more truly great than
+all the other three. This proves, in my opinion, that Gregory had more
+enthusiasm than talent.</p>
+
+<p>I subscribe with all my heart to the remark of Bayle, that "when a man
+undertakes to predict the future, he is provided against everything by a
+face of brass, and an inexhaustible magazine of equivocations." But your
+enemies deride your equivocations; they also have a face of brass like
+yourself; and they expose you as a knave, a braggart, and a fool.</p>
+
+<p>7. Our great man ended his public career with witnessing the taking of
+Rome by assault, in the year 1083. He was besieged in the castle, since
+called St. Angelo, by the same emperor Henry IV., whom he had dared to
+dispossess, and died in misery and contempt at Salerno, under the
+protection of Robert Guiscard the Norman.</p>
+
+<p>I ask pardon of modern Rome, but when I read the history of the Scipios,
+the Catos, the Pompeys, and the Cæsars, I find a difficulty in ranking
+with them a factious monk who was made a pope under the name of Gregory
+VII.</p>
+
+<p>But our Gregory has obtained even a yet finer title; he has been made a
+saint, at least at Rome. It was the famous cardinal Coscia who effected
+this canonization under Pope Benedict XIII. Even an office or service of
+St. Gregory VII. was printed, in which it was said, that that saint
+"absolved the faithful from the allegiance which they had sworn to their
+emperor."</p>
+
+<p>Many parliaments of the kingdom were desirous of having this legend
+burned by the executioner: but Bentivoglio, the nuncio&mdash;who kept one of
+the actresses at the opera, of the name of Constitution, as his
+mistress, and had by her a daughter called la Legende; a man otherwise
+extremely amiable, and a most interesting companion&mdash;procured from the
+ministry a mitigation of the threatened storm; and, after passing
+sentence of condemnation on the legend of St. Gregory, the hostile party
+were contented to suppress it and to laugh at it.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 95%;" />
+
+
+<p class="caption"><a name="TABLE_OF_CONTENTS" id="TABLE_OF_CONTENTS"></a>TABLE OF CONTENTS</p>
+<p class="small">
+<br />
+<a href="#LIST_OF_PLATES_VOL_V"><b>LIST OF PLATES&mdash;VOL. V</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FANATICISM"><b>FANATICISM.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FANCY"><b>FANCY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FASTI"><b>FASTI.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FATHERS_MOTHERSmdashCHILDREN"><b>FATHERS&mdash;MOTHERS&mdash;CHILDREN.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FAVOR"><b>FAVOR.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FAVORITE"><b>FAVORITE.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FEASTS"><b>FEASTS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FERRARA"><b>FERRARA.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FEVER"><b>FEVER.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FICTION"><b>FICTION.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FIERTE"><b>FIERTÉ.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FIGURE"><b>FIGURE.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FIGURED_FIGURATIVE"><b>FIGURED&mdash;FIGURATIVE.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FIGURE_IN_THEOLOGY"><b>FIGURE IN THEOLOGY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FINAL_CAUSES"><b>FINAL CAUSES.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FINESSE_FINENESS_ETC"><b>FINESSE, FINENESS, ETC.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FIRE"><b>FIRE.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FIRMNESS"><b>FIRMNESS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FLATTERY"><b>FLATTERY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FORCE_PHYSICAL"><b>FORCE (PHYSICAL).</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FORCE_STRENGTH"><b>FORCE&mdash;STRENGTH.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FRANCHISE"><b>FRANCHISE.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FRANCIS_XAVIER"><b>FRANCIS XAVIER.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FRANKS_FRANCEmdashFRENCH"><b>FRANKS&mdash;FRANCE&mdash;FRENCH</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FRAUD"><b>FRAUD.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FREE-WILL"><b>FREE-WILL.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FRENCH_LANGUAGE"><b>FRENCH LANGUAGE.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FRIENDSHIP"><b>FRIENDSHIP.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FRIVOLITY"><b>FRIVOLITY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GALLANT"><b>GALLANT.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GARGANTUA"><b>GARGANTUA.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GAZETTE"><b>GAZETTE.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GENEALOGY"><b>GENEALOGY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GENESIS"><b>GENESIS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GENII"><b>GENII.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GENIUS"><b>GENIUS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GEOGRAPHY"><b>GEOGRAPHY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GLORY_GLORIOUS"><b>GLORY&mdash;GLORIOUS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GOAT_SORCERY"><b>GOAT&mdash;SORCERY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GOD_GODS"><b>GOD&mdash;GODS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GOOD_THE_SOVEREIGN_GOOD_A_CHIMERA"><b>GOOD&mdash;THE SOVEREIGN GOOD, A CHIMERA.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GOOD"><b>GOOD.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GOSPEL"><b>GOSPEL.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GOVERNMENT"><b>GOVERNMENT.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GOURD_OR_CALABASH"><b>GOURD OR CALABASH.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GRACE"><b>GRACE.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GRACE_OF"><b>GRACE (OF).</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GRAVE_GRAVITY"><b>GRAVE&mdash;GRAVITY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GREAT_GREATNESS"><b>GREAT&mdash;GREATNESS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GREEK"><b>GREEK.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GUARANTEE"><b>GUARANTEE.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#GREGORY_VII"><b>GREGORY VII.</b></a><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 5
+(of 10), by François-Marie Arouet (AKA Voltaire)
+
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,9141 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 5 (of 10), by
+Francois-Marie Arouet (AKA 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: A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 5 (of 10)
+       From "The Works of Voltaire - A Contemporary Version"
+
+Author: Francois-Marie Arouet (AKA Voltaire)
+
+Commentator: John Morley
+             Tobias Smollett
+             H.G. Leigh
+
+Translator: William F. Fleming
+
+Release Date: March 28, 2011 [EBook #35625]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Andrea Ball, Christine Bell & Marc D'Hooghe
+at http://www.freeliterature.org (From images generously
+made available by the Internet Archive.)
+
+
+
+
+
+A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY
+
+VOLUME V
+
+By
+
+VOLTAIRE
+
+
+
+
+EDITION DE LA PACIFICATION
+
+THE WORKS OF VOLTAIRE
+
+A CONTEMPORARY VERSION
+
+
+  With Notes by Tobias Smollett, Revised and Modernized
+     New Translations by William F. Fleming, and an
+           Introduction by Oliver H.G. Leigh
+
+A CRITIQUE AND BIOGRAPHY
+
+BY
+
+THE RT. HON. JOHN MORLEY
+
+FORTY-THREE VOLUMES
+
+
+  One hundred and sixty-eight designs, comprising reproductions
+      of rare old engravings, steel plates, photogravures,
+                    and curious fac-similes
+
+VOLUME IX
+
+E.R. DuMONT
+
+PARIS--LONDON--NEW YORK--CHICAGO
+
+1901
+
+
+
+
+_The WORKS of VOLTAIRE_
+
+     _"Between two servants of Humanity, who appeared eighteen hundred
+     years apart, there is a mysterious relation. * * * * Let us say it
+     with a sentiment of profound respect: JESUS WEPT: VOLTAIRE SMILED.
+     Of that divine tear and of that human smile is composed the
+     sweetness of the present civilization."_
+
+                                                    _VICTOR HUGO._
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF PLATES--VOL. V
+
+  SANS SOUCI _Frontispiece_
+  A LAND STORM
+  THE TEMPTATION OF ADAM
+  DESCARTES
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: SANS SOUCI]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY.
+
+IN TEN VOLUMES
+
+Vol. V
+
+FANATICISM--GREGORY VII
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+FANATICISM.
+
+SECTION I.
+
+
+Fanaticism is the effect of a false conscience, which makes religion
+subservient to the caprices of the imagination, and the excesses of the
+passions.
+
+It arises, in general, from legislators entertaining too narrow views,
+or from their extending their regulations beyond the limits within which
+alone they were intended to operate. Their laws are made merely for a
+select society. When extended by zeal to a whole people, and transferred
+by ambition from one climate to another, some changes of institution
+should take place, some accommodation to persons, places, and
+circumstances. But what, in fact, has been the case? Certain minds,
+constituted in a great degree like those of the small original flock,
+have received a system with equal ardor, and become its apostles, and
+even its martyrs, rather than abate a single iota of its demands.
+Others, on the contrary, less ardent, or more attached to their
+prejudices of education, have struggled with energy against the new
+yoke, and consented to receive it only after considerable softenings and
+mitigations: hence the schism between rigorists and moderates, by which
+all are urged on to vehemence and madness--the one party for servitude
+and the other for freedom.
+
+Let us imagine an immense rotunda, a pantheon, with innumerable altars
+placed under its dome. Let us figure to ourselves a devotee of every
+sect, whether at present existing or extinct, at the feet of that
+divinity which he worships in his own peculiar way, under all the
+extravagant forms which human imagination has been able to invent. On
+the right we perceive one stretched on his back upon a mat, absorbed in
+contemplation, and awaiting the moment when the divine light shall come
+forth to inform his soul. On the left is a prostrate energumen striking
+his forehead against the ground, with a view to obtain from it an
+abundant produce. Here we see a man with the air and manner of a
+mountebank, dancing over the grave of him whom he invokes. There we
+observe a penitent, motionless and mute as the statue before which he
+has bent himself in humiliation. One, on the principle that God will not
+blush at his own resemblance, displays openly what modesty universally
+conceals; another, as if the artist would shudder at the sight of his
+own work, covers with an impenetrable veil his whole person and
+countenance; another turns his back upon the south, because from that
+quarter blows the devil's tempest. Another stretches out his arms
+towards the east, because there God first shows His radiant face. Young
+women, suffused with tears, bruise and gash their lovely persons under
+the idea of assuaging the demon of desire, although by means tending in
+fact rather to strengthen his influence; others again, in opposite
+attitudes, solicit the approaches of the Divinity. One young man, in
+order to mortify the most urgent of his feelings, attaches to particular
+parts of his frame large iron rings, as heavy as he can bear; another
+checks still more effectually the tempter's violence by inhuman
+amputation, and suspends the bleeding sacrifice upon the altar.
+
+Let us observe them quit the temple, and, full of the inspiration of
+their respective deities, spread the terror and delusion over the face
+of the earth. They divide the world between them; and the four
+extremities of it are almost instantly in flames: nations obey them, and
+kings tremble before them. That almost despotic power which the
+enthusiasm of a single person exercises over a multitude who see or hear
+him; the ardor communicated to each other by assembled minds; numberless
+strong and agitating influences acting in such circumstances, augmented
+by each individual's personal anxiety and distress, require but a short
+time to operate, in order to produce universal delirium. Only let a
+single people be thus fascinated and agitated under the guidance of a
+few impostors, the seduction will spread with the speed of wild-fire,
+prodigies will be multiplied beyond calculation, and whole communities
+be led astray forever. When the human mind has once quitted the luminous
+track pointed out by nature, it returns to it no more; it wanders round
+the truth, but never obtains of it more than a few faint glimmerings,
+which, mingling with the false lights of surrounding superstition, leave
+it, in fact, in complete and palpable obscurity.
+
+It is dreadful to observe how the opinion that the wrath of heaven might
+be appeased by human massacre spread, after being once started, through
+almost every religion; and what various reasons have been given for the
+sacrifice, as though, in order to preclude, if possible, the escape of
+any one from extirpation. Sometimes they are enemies who must be
+immolated to Mars the exterminator. The Scythians slay upon the altars
+of this deity a hundredth part of their prisoners of war; and from this
+usage attending victory, we may form some judgment of the justice of
+war: accordingly, among other nations it was engaged in solely to supply
+these human sacrifices, so that, having first been instituted, as it
+would seem, to expiate the horrors of war, they at length came to serve
+as a justification of them.
+
+Sometimes a barbarous deity requires victims from among the just and
+good. The Getae eagerly dispute the honor of personally conveying to
+Zamolxis the vows and devotions of their country. He whose good fortune
+has destined him to be the sacrifice is thrown with the greatest
+violence upon a range of spears, fixed for the purpose. If on falling
+he receives a mortal wound, it augurs well as to the success of the
+negotiation and the merit of the envoy; but if he survives the wound, he
+is a wretch with whom the god would not condescend to hold any
+communication.
+
+Sometimes children are demanded, and the respective divinities recall
+the life they had but just imparted: "Justice," says Montaigne,
+"thirsting for the blood of innocence!" Sometimes the call is for the
+dearest and nearest blood: the Carthaginians sacrificed their own sons
+to Saturn, as if Time did not devour them with sufficient speed.
+Sometimes the demand was for the blood of the most beautiful. That
+Amestris, who had buried twelve men alive in order to obtain from Pluto,
+in return for so revolting an offering, a somewhat longer life--that
+same Amestris further sacrifices to that insatiable divinity twelve
+daughters of the highest personages in Persia; as the sacrificing
+priests have always taught men that they ought to offer on the altar the
+most valuable of their possessions. It is upon this principle that among
+some nations the first-born were immolated, and that among others they
+were redeemed by offerings more valuable to the ministers of sacrifice.
+This it is, unquestionably, which introduced into Europe the practice
+prevalent for centuries of devoting children to celibacy at the early
+age of five years, and shutting up in a cloister the brothers of an
+hereditary prince, just as in Asia the practice is to murder them.
+
+Sometimes it is the purest blood that is demanded. We read of certain
+Indians, if I recollect rightly, who hospitably entertain all who visit
+them and make a merit of killing every sensible and virtuous stranger
+who enters their country, that his talents and virtues may remain with
+them. Sometimes the blood required is that which is most sacred. With
+the majority of idolaters, priests perform the office of executioner at
+the altar; and among the Siberians, it is the practice to kill the
+priests in order to despatch them to pray in the other world for the
+fulfilment of the wishes of the people.
+
+But let us turn our attention to other frenzies and other spectacles.
+All Europe passes into Asia by a road inundated with the blood of Jews,
+who commit suicide to avoid falling into the hands of their enemies.
+This epidemic depopulates one-half of the inhabited world: kings,
+pontiffs, women, the young and the aged, all yield to the influence of
+the holy madness which, for a series of two hundred years, instigated
+the slaughter of innumerable nations at the tomb of a god of peace. Then
+were to be seen lying oracles, and military hermits, monarchs in
+pulpits, and prelates in camps. All the different states constitute one
+delirious populace; barriers of mountains and seas are surmounted;
+legitimate possessions are abandoned to enable their owners to fly to
+conquests which were no longer, in point of fertility, the land of
+promise; manners become corrupted under foreign skies; princes, after
+having exhausted their respective kingdoms to redeem a country which
+had never been theirs, complete the ruin of them for their personal
+ransom; thousands of soldiers, wandering under the banners of many
+chieftains, acknowledge the authority of none and hasten their defeat by
+their desertion; and the disease terminates only to be succeeded by a
+contagion still more horrible and desolating.
+
+The same spirit of fanaticism cherished the rage for distant conquests:
+scarcely had Europe repaired its losses when the discovery of a new
+world hastened the ruin of our own. At that terrible injunction, "Go and
+conquer," America was desolated and its inhabitants exterminated; Africa
+and Europe were exhausted in vain to repeople it; the poison of money
+and of pleasure having enervated the species, the world became nearly a
+desert and appeared likely every day to advance nearer to desolation by
+the continual wars which were kindled on our continent, from the
+ambition of extending its power to foreign lands.
+
+Let us now compute the immense number of slaves which fanaticism has
+made, whether in Asia, where uncircumcision was a mark of infamy, or in
+Africa, where the Christian name was a crime, or in America, where the
+pretext of baptism absolutely extinguished the feelings of humanity. Let
+us compute the thousands who have been seen to perish either on
+scaffolds in the ages of persecution, or in civil wars by the hands of
+their fellow citizens, or by their own hands through excessive
+austerities, and maceration. Let us survey the surface of the earth, and
+glance at the various standards unfurled and blazing in the name of
+religion; in Spain against the Moors, in France against the Turks, in
+Hungary against the Tartars; at the numerous military orders, founded
+for converting infidels by the point of the sword, and slaughtering one
+another at the foot of the altar they had come to defend. Let us then
+look down from the appalling tribunal thus raised on the bodies of the
+innocent and miserable, in order to judge the living, as God, with a
+balance widely different, will judge the dead.
+
+In a word, let us contemplate the horrors of fifteen centuries, all
+frequently renewed in the course of a single one; unarmed men slain at
+the feet of altars; kings destroyed by the dagger or by poison; a large
+state reduced to half its extent by the fury of its own citizens; the
+nation at once the most warlike and the most pacific on the face of the
+globe, divided in fierce hostility against itself; the sword unsheathed
+between the sons and the father; usurpers, tyrants, executioners,
+sacrilegious robbers, and bloodstained parricides violating, under the
+impulse of religion, every convention divine or human--such is the
+deadly picture of fanaticism.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+If this term has at present any connection with its original meaning it
+is exceedingly slight.
+
+"_Fanaticus_" was an honorable designation. It signified the minister or
+benefactor of a temple. According to the dictionary of Trevoux some
+antiquaries have discovered inscriptions in which Roman citizens of
+considerable consequence assumed the title of "_fanaticus_."
+
+In Cicero's oration "_pro domo sua_," a passage occurs in which the word
+"_fanaticus_" appears to me of difficult explanation. The seditious and
+libertine Clodius, who had brought about the banishment of Cicero for
+having saved the republic, had not only plundered and demolished the
+houses of that great man, but in order that Cicero might never be able
+to return to his city residence he procured the consecration of the land
+on which it stood; and the priests had erected there a temple to
+liberty, or rather to slavery, in which Caesar, Pompey, Crassus, and
+Clodius then held the republic. Thus in all ages has religion been
+employed as an instrument in the persecution of great men. When at
+length, in a happier period, Cicero was recalled, he pleaded before the
+people in order to obtain the restoration of the ground on which his
+house had stood, and the rebuilding of the house at the expense of the
+Roman people. He thus expresses himself in the speech against Clodius
+(_Oratio pro Domo sua_, chap. xl): "_Adspicite, adspicite, pontifices,
+hominem religiosum.... monete eum, modum quemdam esse religionis; nimium
+esse superstitiosum non oportere. Quid tibi necesse fuit anili
+superstitione, homo fanatice, sacrificium, quod aliaenae domi fieret
+invisere?_"
+
+Does the word "_fanaticus_," as used above, mean senseless, pitiless,
+abominable fanatic, according to the present acceptation, or does it
+rather imply the pious, religious man, the frequenter and consecrator of
+temples? Is it used here in the meaning of decided censure or ironical
+praise? I do not feel myself competent to determine, but will give a
+translation of the passage:
+
+"Behold, reverend pontiffs, behold the pious man.... suggest to him that
+even religion itself has its limits, that a man ought not to be so
+over-scrupulous. What occasion was there for a sacred person, a fanatic
+like yourself, to have recourse to the superstition of an old woman, in
+order to assist at a sacrifice performed in another person's house?"
+
+Cicero alludes here to the mysteries of the _Bona Dea_, which had been
+profaned by Clodius, who, in the disguise of a female, and accompanied
+by an old woman, had obtained an introduction to them, with a view to an
+assignation with Caesar's wife. The passage is, in consequence, evidently
+ironical.
+
+Cicero calls Clodius a religious man, and the irony requires to be kept
+up through the whole passage. He employs terms of honorable meaning,
+more clearly to exhibit Clodius's infamy. It appears to me, therefore,
+that he uses the word in question, "_fanaticus_" in its respectable
+sense, as a word conveying the idea of a sacrificer, a pious man, a
+zealous minister of a temple.
+
+The term might be afterwards applied to those who believed themselves
+inspired by the gods, who bestowed a somewhat curious gift on the
+interpreters of their will, by ordaining that, in order to be a prophet,
+the loss of reason is indispensable.
+
+     _Les Dieux a leur interprete_
+       _Ont fait un etrange don;_
+     _Ne peut on etre prophete_
+      _Sans qu'on perde la raison?_
+
+The same dictionary of Trevoux informs us that the old chronicles of
+France call Clovis fanatic and pagan. The reader would have been pleased
+to have had the particular chronicles specified. I have not found this
+epithet applied to Clovis in any of the few books I possess at my house
+near Mount Krapak, where I now write.
+
+We understand by fanaticism at present a religious madness, gloomy and
+cruel. It is a malady of the mind, which is taken in the same way as
+smallpox. Books communicate it much less than meetings and discourses.
+We seldom get heated while reading in solitude, for our minds are then
+tranquil and sedate. But when an ardent man of strong imagination
+addresses himself to weak imaginations, his eyes dart fire, and that
+fire rapidly spreads; his tones, his gestures, absolutely convulse the
+nerves of his auditors. He exclaims, "The eye of God is at this moment
+upon you; sacrifice every mere human possession and feeling; fight the
+battles of the Lord"--and and they rush to the fight.
+
+Fanaticism is, in reference to superstition, what delirium is to fever,
+or rage to anger. He who is involved in ecstasies and visions, who takes
+dreams for realities, and his own imaginations for prophecies, is a
+fanatical novice of great hope and promise, and will probably soon
+advance to the highest form, and kill man for the love of God.
+
+Bartholomew Diaz was a fanatical monk. He had a brother at Nuremberg
+called John Diaz, who was an enthusiastic adherent to the doctrines of
+Luther, and completely convinced that the pope was Antichrist, and had
+the sign of the beast. Bartholomew, still more ardently convinced that
+the pope was god upon earth, quits Rome, determined either to convert or
+murder his brother; he accordingly murdered him! Here is a perfect case
+of fanaticism. We have noticed and done justice to this Diaz elsewhere.
+
+Polyeuctes, who went to the temple on a day of solemn festival, to throw
+down and destroy the statues and ornaments, was a fanatic less horrible
+than Diaz, but not less foolish. The assassins of Francis, duke of
+Guise, of William, prince of Orange, of King Henry III., of King Henry
+IV., and various others, were equally possessed, equally laboring under
+morbid fury, with Diaz.
+
+The most striking example of fanaticism is that exhibited on the night
+of St. Bartholomew, when the people of Paris rushed from house to house
+to stab, slaughter, throw out of the window, and tear in pieces their
+fellow citizens not attending mass. Guyon, Patouillet, Chaudon,
+Nonnotte, and the ex-Jesuit Paulian, are merely fanatics in a
+corner--contemptible beings whom we do not think of guarding against.
+They would, however, on a day of St. Bartholomew, perform wonders.
+
+There are some cold-blooded fanatics; such as those judges who sentence
+men to death for no other crime than that of thinking differently from
+themselves, and these are so much the more guilty and deserving of the
+execration of mankind, as, not laboring under madness like the Clements,
+Chatels, Ravaillacs, and Damiens, they might be deemed capable of
+listening to reason.
+
+There is no other remedy for this epidemical malady than that spirit of
+philosophy, which, extending itself from one to another, at length
+civilizes and softens the manners of men and prevents the access of the
+disease. For when the disorder has made any progress, we should, without
+loss of time, fly from the seat of it, and wait till the air has become
+purified from contagion. Law and religion are not completely efficient
+against the spiritual pestilence. Religion, indeed, so far from
+affording proper nutriment to the minds of patients laboring under this
+infectious and infernal distemper, is converted, by the diseased process
+of their minds, into poison. These malignant devotees have incessantly
+before their eyes the example of Ehud, who assassinated the king of
+Eglon; of Judith, who cut off the head of Holofernes while in bed with
+him; of Samuel, hewing in pieces King Agag; of Jehoiada the priest, who
+murdered his queen at the horse-gate. They do not perceive that these
+instances, which are respectable in antiquity, are in the present day
+abominable. They derive their fury from religion, decidedly as religion
+condemns it.
+
+Laws are yet more powerless against these paroxysms of rage. To oppose
+laws to cases of such a description would be like reading a decree of
+council to a man in a frenzy. The persons in question are fully
+convinced that the Holy Spirit which animates and fills them is above
+all laws; that their own enthusiasm is, in fact, the only law which they
+are bound to obey.
+
+What can be said in answer to a man who says he will rather obey God
+than men, and who consequently feels certain of meriting heaven by
+cutting your throat?
+
+When once fanaticism has gangrened the brain of any man the disease may
+be regarded as nearly incurable. I have seen Convulsionaries who, while
+speaking of the miracles of St. Paris, gradually worked themselves up to
+higher and more vehement degrees of agitation till their eyes became
+inflamed, their whole frames shook, their countenances became distorted
+by rage, and had any man contradicted them he would inevitably have been
+murdered.
+
+Yes, I have seen these wretched Convulsionaries writhing their limbs and
+foaming at their mouths. They were exclaiming, "We must have blood."
+They effected the assassination of their king by a lackey, and ended
+with exclaiming against philosophers.
+
+Fanatics are nearly always under the direction of knaves, who place the
+dagger in their hands. These knaves resemble Montaigne's "Old Man of the
+Mountain," who, it is said, made weak persons imagine, under his
+treatment of them, that they really had experienced the joys of
+paradise, and promised them a whole eternity of such delights if they
+would go and assassinate such as he should point out to them. There has
+been only one religion in the world which has not been polluted by
+fanaticism and that is the religion of the learned in China. The
+different sects of ancient philosophers were not merely exempt from this
+pest of human society, but they were antidotes to it: for the effect of
+philosophy is to render the soul tranquil, and fanaticism and
+tranquillity are totally incompatible. That our own holy religion has
+been so frequently polluted by this infernal fury must be imputed to the
+foil and madness of mankind. Thus Icarus abused the wings which he
+received for his benefit. They were given him for his salvation and they
+insured his destruction:
+
+     _Ainsi du plumage qu'il eut_
+       _Icare pervertit l'usage;_
+     _Il le recut pour son salut,_
+       _Il s'en servit pour son dommage._
+                     --BERTAUT, bishop of Seez.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+Fanatics do not always fight the battles of the Lord. They do not always
+assassinate kings and princes. There are tigers among them, but there
+are more foxes.
+
+What a tissue of frauds, calumnies, and robberies has been woven by
+fanatics of the court of Rome against fanatics of the court of Calvin,
+by Jesuits against Jansenists, and _vice versa_! And if you go farther
+back you will find ecclesiastical history, which is the school of
+virtues, to be that of atrocities and abominations, which have been
+employed by every sect against the others. They all have the same
+bandage over their eyes whether marching out to burn down the cities and
+towns of their adversaries, to slaughter the inhabitants, or condemn
+them to judicial execution; or when merely engaged in the comparatively
+calm occupation of deceiving and defrauding, of acquiring wealth and
+exercising domination. The same fanaticism blinds them; they think that
+they are doing good. Every fanatic is a conscientious knave, but a
+sincere and honest murderer for the good cause.
+
+Read, if you are able, the five or six thousand volumes in which, for a
+hundred years together, the Jansenists and Molinists have dealt out
+against each other their reproaches and revilings, their mutual
+exposures of fraud and knavery, and then judge whether Scapin or
+Trevelin can be compared with them.
+
+One of the most curious theological knaveries ever practised is, in my
+opinion, that of a small bishop--the narrative asserts that he was a
+Biscayan bishop; however, we shall certainly, at some future period find
+out both his name and his bishopric--whose diocese was partly in Biscay
+and partly in France.
+
+In the French division of his diocese there was a parish which had
+formerly been inhabited by some Moors. The lord of the parish or manor
+was no Mahometan; he was perfectly catholic, as the whole universe
+should be, for the meaning of catholic is universal. My lord the bishop
+had some suspicions concerning this unfortunate seigneur, whose whole
+occupation consisted in doing good, and conceived that in his heart he
+entertained bad thoughts and sentiments savoring not a little of heresy.
+He even accused him of having said, in the way of pleasantry, that there
+were good people in Morocco as well as in Biscay, and that an honest
+inhabitant of Morocco might absolutely not be a mortal enemy of the
+Supreme Being, who is the father of all mankind.
+
+The fanatic, upon this, wrote a long letter to the king of France, the
+paramount sovereign of our little manorial lord. In this letter he
+entreated his majesty to transfer the manor of this stray and
+unbelieving sheep either to Lower Brittany or Lower Normandy, according
+to his good pleasure, that he might be no longer able to diffuse the
+contagion of heresy among his Biscayan neighbors, by his abominable
+jests. The king of France and his council smiled, as may naturally be
+supposed, at the extravagance and folly of the demand.
+
+Our Biscayan pastor learning, some time afterwards, that his French
+sheep was sick, ordered public notices to be fixed up at the church
+gates of the canton, prohibiting any one from administering the
+communion to him, unless he should previously give in a bill of
+confession, from which it might appear that he was not circumcised; that
+he condemned with his whole heart the heresy of Mahomet, and every other
+heresy of the like kind--as, for example, Calvinism and Jansenism; and
+that in every point he thought like him, the said Biscayan bishop.
+
+Bills of confession were at that time much in fashion. The sick man sent
+for his parish priest, who was a simple and sottish man, and threatened
+to have him hanged by the parliament of Bordeaux if he did not instantly
+administer the viaticum to him. The priest was alarmed, and accordingly
+celebrated the sacred ordinance, as desired by the patient; who, after
+the ceremony, declared aloud, before witnesses, that the Biscayan pastor
+had falsely accused him before the king of being tainted with the
+Mussulman religion; that he was a sincere Christian, and that the
+Biscayan was a calumniator. He signed this, after it had been written
+down, in presence of a notary, and every form required by law was
+complied with. He soon after became better, and rest and a good
+conscience speedily completed his recovery.
+
+The Biscayan, quite exasperated that the old patient should have thus
+exposed and disappointed him, resolved to have his revenge, and thus he
+set about it.
+
+He procured, fifteen days after the event just mentioned, the
+fabrication, in his own language or patois, of a profession of faith
+which the priest pretended to have heard and received. It was signed by
+the priest and three or four peasants, who had not been present at the
+ceremony; and the forged instrument was then passed through the
+necessary and solemn form of verification and registry, as if this form
+could give it authenticity.
+
+An instrument not signed by the party alone interested, signed by
+persons unknown, fifteen days after the event, an instrument disavowed
+by the real and credible witnesses of that event, involved evidently the
+crime of forgery; and, as the subject of the forgery was a matter of
+faith, the crime clearly rendered both the priest and the witnesses
+liable to the galleys in this world, and to hell in the other.
+
+Our lord of the manor, however, who loved a joke, but had no gall or
+malice in his heart, took compassion both upon the bodies and souls of
+these conspirators. He declined delivering them over to human justice,
+and contented himself with giving them up to ridicule. But he declared
+that after the death of the Biscayan he would, if he survived, have the
+pleasure of printing an account of all his proceedings and manoeuvres
+on this business, together with the documents and evidences, just to
+amuse the small number of readers who might like anecdotes of that
+description; and not, as is often pompously announced, with a view to
+the instruction of the universe. There are so many authors who address
+themselves to the universe, who really imagine they attract, and perhaps
+absorb, the attention of the universe, that he conceived he might not
+have a dozen readers out of the whole who would attend for a moment to
+himself. But let us return to fanaticism.
+
+It is this rage for making proselytes, this intensely mad desire which
+men feel to bring others over to partake of their own peculiar cup or
+communion, that induced the Jesuit Chatel and the Jesuit Routh to rush
+with eagerness to the deathbed of the celebrated Montesquieu. These two
+devoted zealots desired nothing better than to be able to boast that
+they had persuaded him of the merits of contrition and of sufficing
+grace. We wrought his conversion, they said. He was, in the main, a
+worthy soul: he was much attached to the society of Jesus. We had some
+little difficulty in inducing him to admit certain fundamental truths;
+but as in these circumstances, in the crisis of life and death, the
+mind is always most clear and acute, we soon convinced him.
+
+This fanatical eagerness for converting men is so ardent, that the most
+debauched monk in his convent would even quit his mistress, and walk to
+the very extremity of the city, for the sake of making a single convert.
+
+We have all seen Father Poisson, a Cordelier of Paris, who impoverished
+his convent to pay his mistresses, and who was imprisoned in consequence
+of the depravity of his manners. He was one of the most popular
+preachers at Paris, and one of the most determined and zealous of
+converters.
+
+Such also was the celebrated preacher Fantin, at Versailles. The list
+might be easily enlarged; but it is unnecessary, if not also dangerous,
+to expose the freaks and freedoms of constituted authorities. You know
+what happened to Ham for having revealed his father's shame. He became
+as black as a coal.
+
+Let us merely pray to God, whether rising or lying down, that he would
+deliver us from fanatics, as the pilgrims of Mecca pray that they may
+meet with no sour faces on the road.
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+Ludlow, who was rather an enthusiast for liberty than a fanatic in
+religion--that brave man, who hated Cromwell more than he did Charles
+I., relates that the parliamentary forces were always defeated by the
+royal army in the beginning of the civil war; just as the regiment of
+porters (_portes-cocheres_) were unable to stand the shock of conflict,
+in the time of the Fronde against the great Conde. Cromwell said to
+General Fairfax: "How can you possibly expect a rabble of London porters
+and apprentices to resist a nobility urged on by the principle, or
+rather the phantom, of honor? Let us actuate them by a more powerful
+phantom--fanaticism! Our enemies are fighting only for their king; let
+us persuade our troops they are fighting for their God.
+
+"Give me a commission, and I will raise a regiment of brother murderers,
+whom I will pledge myself soon to make invincible fanatics!"
+
+He was as good as his word; he composed his regiment of red-coated
+brothers, of gloomy religionists, whom he made obedient tigers. Mahomet
+himself was never better served by soldiers.
+
+But in order to inspire this fanaticism, you must be seconded and
+supported by the spirit of the times. A French parliament at the present
+day would attempt in vain to raise a regiment of such porters as we have
+mentioned; it could, with all its efforts, merely rouse into frenzy a
+few women of the fish-market.
+
+Only the ablest men have the power to make and to guide fanatics. It is
+not, however, sufficient to possess the profoundest dissimulation and
+the most determined intrepidity; everything depends, after these
+previous requisites are secured, on coming into the world at a proper
+time.
+
+
+SECTION V.
+
+Geometry then, it seems, is not always connected with clearness and
+correctness of understanding. Over what precipices do not men fall,
+notwithstanding their boasted leading-strings of reason! A celebrated
+Protestant, who was esteemed one of the first mathematicians of the age,
+and who followed in the train of the Newtons, the Leibnitzes, and
+Bernouillis, at the beginning of the present century, struck out some
+very singular corollaries. It is said that with a grain of faith a man
+may remove mountains; and this man of science, following up the method
+of pure geometrical analysis, reasoned thus with himself: I have many
+grains of faith, and can, therefore, remove many mountains. This was the
+man who made his appearance at London in 1707; and, associating himself
+with certain men of learning and science, some of whom, moreover, were
+not deficient in sagacity, they publicly announced that they would raise
+to life a dead person in any cemetery that might be fixed upon. Their
+reasoning was uniformly synthetical. They said, genuine disciples must
+have the power of performing miracles; we are genuine disciples, we
+therefore shall be able to perform as many as we please. The mere
+unscientific saints of the Romish church have resuscitated many worthy
+persons; therefore, _a fortiori_, we, the reformers of the reformed
+themselves, shall resuscitate as many as we may desire.
+
+These arguments are irrefragable, being constructed according to the
+most correct form possible. Here we have at a glance the explanation why
+all antiquity was inundated with prodigies; why the temples of
+AEsculapius at Epidaurus, and in other cities, were completely filled
+with _ex-votos_; the roofs adorned with thighs straightened, arms
+restored, and silver infants: all was miracle.
+
+In short, the famous Protestant geometrician whom I speak of appeared so
+perfectly sincere; he asserted so confidently that he would raise the
+dead, and his proposition was put forward with so much plausibility and
+strenuousness, that the people entertained a very strong impression on
+the subject, and Queen Anne was advised to appoint a day, an hour, and a
+cemetery, such as he should himself select, in which he might have the
+opportunity of performing his miracle legally, and under the inspection
+of justice. The holy geometrician chose St. Paul's cathedral for the
+scene of his exertion: the people ranged themselves in two rows;
+soldiers were stationed to preserve order both among the living and the
+dead; the magistrates took their seats; the register procured his
+record; it was impossible that the new miracles could be verified too
+completely. A dead body was disinterred agreeably to the holy man's
+choice and direction; he then prayed, he fell upon his knees, and made
+the most pious and devout contortions possible; his companions imitated
+him; the dead body exhibited no sign of animation; it was again
+deposited in its grave, and the professed resuscitator and his adherents
+were slightly punished. I afterwards saw one of these misled creatures;
+he declared to me that one of the party was at the time under the stain
+of a venial sin, for which the dead person suffered, and but for which
+the resurrection would have been infallible.
+
+Were it allowable for us to reveal the disgrace of those to whom we owe
+the sincerest respect, I should observe here, that Newton, the great
+Newton himself, discovered in the "Apocalypse" that the pope was
+Antichrist, and made many other similar discoveries. I should also
+observe that he was a decided Arian. I am aware that this deviation of
+Newton, compared to that of the other geometrician, is as unity to
+infinity. But if the exalted Newton imagined that he found the modern
+history of Europe in the "Apocalypse," we may say: Alas, poor human
+beings!
+
+It seems as if superstition were an epidemic disease, from which the
+strongest minds are not always exempt. There are in Turkey persons of
+great and strong sense, who would undergo empalement for the sake of
+certain opinions of Abubeker. These principles being once admitted, they
+reason with great consistency; and the Navaricians, the Radarists, and
+the Jabarites mutually consign each other to damnation in conformity to
+very shrewd and subtle argument. They all draw plausible consequences,
+but they never dare to examine principles.
+
+A report is publicly spread abroad by some person, that there exists a
+giant seventy feet high; the learned soon after begin to discuss and
+dispute about the color of his hair, the thickness of his thumb, the
+measurement of his nails; they exclaim, cabal, and even fight upon the
+subject. Those who maintain that the little finger of the giant is only
+fifteen lines in diameter burn those who assert that it is a foot thick.
+"But, gentlemen," modestly observes a stranger passing by, "does the
+giant you are disputing about really exist?" "What a horrible doubt!"
+all the disputants cry out together. "What blasphemy! What absurdity!" A
+short truce is then brought about to give time for stoning the poor
+stranger; and, after having duly performed that murderous ceremony, they
+resume fighting upon the everlasting subject of the nails and little
+finger.
+
+
+
+
+FANCY.
+
+
+Fancy formerly signified imagination, and the term was used simply to
+express that faculty of the soul which receives sensible objects.
+
+Descartes and Gassendi, and all the philosophers of their day, say that
+"the form or images of things are painted in the fancy." But the greater
+part of abstract terms are, in the course of time, received in a sense
+different from their original one, like tools which industry applies to
+new purposes.
+
+Fancy, at present, means "a particular desire, a transient taste"; he
+has a fancy for going to China; his fancy for gaming and dancing has
+passed away. An artist paints a fancy portrait, a portrait not taken
+from any model. To have fancies is to have extraordinary tastes, but of
+brief duration. Fancy, in this sense, falls a little short of oddity
+(_bizarrerie_) and caprice.
+
+Caprice may express "a sudden and unreasonable disgust." He had a fancy
+for music, and capriciously became disgusted with it. Whimsicality gives
+an idea of inconsistency and bad taste, which fancy does not; he had a
+fancy for building, but he constructed his house in a whimsical taste.
+
+There are shades of distinction between having fancies and being
+fantastic; the fantastic is much nearer to the capricious and the
+whimsical. The word "fantastic" expresses a character unequal and
+abrupt. The idea of charming or pleasant is excluded from it; whereas
+there are agreeable fancies.
+
+We sometimes hear used in conversation "odd fancies" (_des fantasies
+musquees_); but the expression was never understood to mean what the
+"Dictionary of Trevoux" supposes--"The whims of men of superior rank
+which one must not venture to condemn;" on the contrary, that expression
+is used for the very object and purpose of condemning them; and
+_musquee_, in this connection, is an expletive adding force to the term
+"fancies," as we say, _Sottise pommee_, _folie fieffee_, to express
+nonsense and folly.
+
+
+
+
+FASTI.
+
+_Of the Different Significations of this Word._
+
+
+The Latin word "_fasti_" signifies festivals, and it is in this sense
+that Ovid treats of it in his poem entitled "The Fasti."
+
+Godeau has composed the Fasti of the church on this model, but with less
+success. The religion of the Roman Pagans was more calculated for poetry
+than that of the Christians; to which it may be added, that Ovid was a
+better poet than Godeau.
+
+The consular fasti were only the list of consuls.
+
+The fasti of the magistrates were the days in which they were permitted
+to plead; and those on which they did not plead were called _nefasti_,
+because then they could not plead for justice.
+
+The word "_nefastus_" in this sense does not signify unfortunate; on the
+contrary, _nefastus_ and _nefandus_ were the attributes of unfortunate
+days in another sense, signifying days in which people must not plead;
+days worthy only to be forgotten; _"ille nefasto te posuit die."_
+
+Besides other fasti, the Romans had their _fasti urbis_, _fasti
+rustici_, which were calendars of the particular usages, and ceremonies
+of the city and the country.
+
+On these days of solemnity, every one sought to astonish by the grandeur
+of his dress, his equipage, or his banquet. This pomp, invisible on
+other days, was called _fastus_. It expresses magnificence in those who
+by their station can afford it, but vanity in others.
+
+Though the word "_fastus_" may not be always injurious, the word
+"pompous" is invariably so. A devotee who makes a parade of his virtue
+renders humility itself pompous.
+
+
+
+
+FATHERS--MOTHERS--CHILDREN.
+
+_Their Duties._
+
+
+The "Encyclopaedia" has been much exclaimed against in France; because it
+was produced in France, and has done France honor. In other countries,
+people have not cried out; on the contrary, they have eagerly set about
+pirating or spoiling it, because money was to be gained thereby.
+
+But we, who do not, like the encyclopaedists of Paris, labor for glory;
+we, who are not, like them, exposed to envy; we, whose little society
+lies unnoticed in Hesse, in Wuertemberg, in Switzerland, among the
+Grisons, or at Mount Krapak; and have, therefore, no apprehension of
+having to dispute with the doctor of the _Comedie Italienne_, or with a
+doctor of the Sorbonne; we, who sell not our sheets to a bookseller, but
+are free beings, and lay not black on white until we have examined, to
+the utmost of our ability, whether the said black may be of service to
+mankind; we, in short, who love virtue, shall boldly declare what we
+think.
+
+"Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long--" I would
+venture to say, "Honor thy father and thy mother, _though this day shall
+be thy last_."
+
+Tenderly love and joyfully serve the mother who bore you in her womb,
+fed you at her breast, and patiently endured all that was disgusting in
+your infancy. Discharge the same duties to your father, who brought you
+up.
+
+What will future ages say of a Frank, named Louis the Thirteenth, who,
+at the age of sixteen, began the exercise of his authority with having
+the door of his mother's apartment walled up, and sending her into
+exile, without giving the smallest reason for so doing, and solely
+because it was his favorite's wish?
+
+"But, sir, I must tell you in confidence that my father is a drunkard,
+who begot me one day by chance, not caring a jot about me; and gave me
+no education but that of beating me every day when he came home
+intoxicated. My mother was a coquette, whose only occupation was
+love-making. But for my nurse, who had taken a liking to me, and who,
+after the death of her son, received me into her house for charity, I
+should have died of want."
+
+"Well, then, honor your nurse; and bow to your father and mother when
+you meet them. It is said in the Vulgate, '_Honora patrem tuum et
+matrem tuam_'--not _dilige_."
+
+"Very well, sir, I shall love my father and my mother if they do me
+good; I shall honor them if they do me ill. I have thought so ever since
+I began to think, and you confirm me in my maxims."
+
+"Fare you well, my child, I see you will prosper, for you have a grain
+of philosophy in your composition."
+
+"One word more, sir. If my father were to call himself Abraham, and me
+Isaac, and were to say to me, 'My son, you are tall and strong; carry
+these fagots to the top of that hill, to burn you with after I have cut
+off your head; for God ordered me to do so when He came to see me this
+morning,'--what would you advise me to do in such critical
+circumstances?"
+
+"Critical, indeed! But what would you do of yourself? for you seem to be
+no blockhead."
+
+"I own, sir, that I should ask him to produce a written order, and that
+from regard for himself, I should say to him--'Father, you are among
+strangers, who do not allow a man to assassinate his son without an
+express condition from God, duly signed, sealed and delivered. See what
+happened to poor Calas, in the half French, half Spanish town of
+Toulouse. He was broken on the wheel; and the _procureur-general_ Riquet
+decided on having Madame Calas, the mother, burned--all on the bare and
+very ill-conceived suspicion, that they had hung up their son, Mark
+Antony Calas, for the love of God. I should fear that his conclusions
+would be equally prejudicial to the well-being of yourself and your
+sister or niece, Madame Sarah, my mother. Once more I say, show me a
+_lettre de cachet_ for cutting my throat, signed by God's own hand, and
+countersigned by Raphael, Michael, or Beelzebub. If not, father--your
+most obedient: I will go to Pharaoh of Egypt, or to the king of the
+desert of Gerar, who both have been in love with my mother, and will
+certainly be kind to me. Cut my brother Ishmael's throat, if you like;
+but rely upon it, you shall not cut mine.'"
+
+"Good; this is arguing like a true sage. The 'Encyclopaedia' itself could
+not have reasoned better. I tell you, you will do great things. I admire
+you for not having said an ill word to your father Abraham--for not
+having been tempted to beat him. And tell me: had you been that Cram,
+whom his father, the Frankish King Clothaire, had burned in a barn; a
+Don Carlos, son of that fox, Philip the Second; a poor Alexis, son of
+that Czar Peter, half hero, half tiger--"
+
+"Ah, sir, say no more of those horrors; you will make me detest human
+nature."
+
+
+
+
+FAVOR.
+
+_Of What is Understood by the Word._
+
+
+Favor, from the Latin word "_favor_," rather signifies a benefit than a
+recompense.
+
+We earnestly beg a favor; we merit and loudly demand a recompense. The
+god Favor, according to the Roman mythologists, was the son of Beauty
+and Fortune. All favor conveys the idea of something gratuitous; he has
+done me the favor of introducing me, of presenting me, of recommending
+my friend, of correcting my work. The favor of princes is the effect of
+their fancy, and of assiduous complaisance. The favor of the people
+sometimes implies merit, but is more often attributable to lucky
+accident.
+
+Favor differs much from kindness. That man is in favor with the king,
+but he has not yet received any kindnesses from him. We say that he has
+been received into the good graces of a person, not he has been received
+into favor; though we say to be in favor, because favor is supposed to
+be an habitual taste; while to receive into grace is to pardon, or, at
+least, is less than to bestow a favor.
+
+To obtain grace is the effect of a moment; to obtain favor is a work of
+time. Nevertheless, we say indifferently, do me the kindness and do me
+the favor, to recommend my friend.
+
+Letters of recommendation were formerly called letters of favor. Severus
+says, in the tragedy of Polyeuctes:
+
+     _Je mourrais mille fois plutot que d'abuser_
+     _Des lettres de faveur que j'ai pour l'epouser._
+
+     "Letters of favor," though I have to wed her,
+     I'd rather die a thousand times than use them.
+
+We have the favor and good-will, not the kindness of the prince and the
+public. We may obtain the favor of our audience by modesty, but it will
+not be gracious if we are tedious.
+
+This expression "favor," signifies a gratuitous good-will, which we seek
+to obtain from the prince or the public. Gallantry has extended it to
+the complaisance of the ladies; and though we do not say that we have
+the favors of the king, we say that we have the favors of a lady.
+
+The equivalent to this expression is unknown in Asia, where the women
+possess less influence. Formerly, ribbons, gloves, buckles, and
+sword-knots given by a lady, were called favors. The earl of Essex wore
+a glove of Queen Elizabeth's in his hat, which he called the queen's
+favor.
+
+
+
+
+FAVORITE.
+
+
+This word has sometimes a bounded and sometimes an extended sense.
+"Favorite" sometimes conveys the idea of power; and sometimes it only
+signifies a man who pleases his master.
+
+Henry III. had favorites who were only play-things, and he had those who
+governed the state, as the dukes of Joyeuse and Epernon. A favorite may
+be compared to a piece of gold, which is valued at whatever the prince
+pleases.
+
+An ancient writer has asked, "Who ought to be the king's favorite?--the
+people!" Good poets are called the favorites of the muses, as prosperous
+men are called the favorites of fortune, because both are supposed to
+receive these gifts without laboring for them. It is thus, that a
+fertile and well-situated land is called the favorite of nature.
+
+The woman who pleases the sultan most is called the favorite sultana.
+Somebody has written the history of favorites; that is to say, the
+mistresses of the greatest princes.
+
+Several princes in Germany have country houses which they call
+favorites.
+
+A lady's favorite is now only to be found in romances and stories of the
+last century.
+
+
+
+
+FEASTS.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+A poor gentleman of the province of Hagenau, cultivated his small
+estate, and St. Ragonda, or Radegonda, was the patron of his parish.
+
+Now it happened, on the feast of St. Ragonda, that it was necessary to
+do something to this poor gentleman's field, without which great loss
+would be incurred. The master, with all his family, after having
+devoutly assisted at mass, went to cultivate his land, on which depended
+the subsistence of his family, while the rector and the other
+parishioners went to tipple as usual.
+
+The rector, while enjoying his glass, was informed of the enormous
+offence committed in his parish by this profane laborer, and went,
+burning with wine and anger, to seek the cultivator. "Sir, you are very
+insolent and very impious to dare to cultivate your field, instead of
+going to the tavern like other people." "I agree, sir," replied the
+gentleman, "that it is necessary to drink to the honor of the saint; but
+it is also necessary to eat, and my family would die of hunger if I did
+not labor." "Drink and die, then," said the vicar. "In what law, in what
+book is it so written?" said the laborer. "In Ovid," replied the vicar.
+"I think you are mistaken," said the gentleman; "in what part of Ovid
+have you read that I should go to the tavern rather than cultivate my
+field on St. Ragonda's day?"
+
+It should be remarked that both the gentleman and the pastor were well
+educated men. "Read the metamorphoses of the daughters of Minyas," said
+the vicar. "I have read it," replied the other, "and I maintain that
+they have no relation to my plough." "How, impious man! do you not
+remember that the daughters of Minyas were changed into bats for having
+spun on a feast day?" "The case is very different," replied the
+gentleman, "these ladies had not rendered any homage to Bacchus. I have
+been at the mass of St. Ragonda, you can have nothing to say to me; you
+cannot change me into a bat." "I will do worse," said the priest, "I
+will fine you." He did so. The poor gentleman was ruined: he quitted the
+country with his family--went into a strange one--became a Lutheran--and
+his ground remained uncultivated for several years.
+
+This affair was related to a magistrate of good sense and much piety.
+These are the reflections which he made upon it:
+
+"They were no doubt innkeepers," said he, "that invented this prodigious
+number of feasts; the religion of peasants and artisans consists in
+getting tipsy on the day of a saint, whom they only know by this kind of
+worship. It is on these days of idleness and debauchery that all crimes
+are committed; it is these feasts which fill the prisons, and which
+support the police officers, registers, lieutenants of police, and
+hangmen; the only excuse for feast-days among us. From this cause
+Catholic countries are scarcely-cultivated at all; whilst heretics, by
+daily cultivating their lands, produce abundant crops."
+
+It is all very well that the shoemakers should go in the morning to mass
+on St. Crispin's day, because _crepido_ signifies the upper leather of a
+shoe; that the brush-makers should honor St. Barbara their patron; that
+those who have weak eyes should hear the mass of St. Clara: that St.----
+should be celebrated in many provinces; but after having paid their
+devoirs to the saints they should become serviceable to men, they should
+go from the altar to the plough; it is the excess of barbarity, and
+insupportable slavery, to consecrate our days to idleness and vice.
+Priests, command, if it be necessary that the saints Roche, Eustace, and
+Fiacre, be prayed to in the morning; but, magistrates, order your fields
+to be cultivated as usual. It is labor that is necessary; the greater
+the industry the more the day is sanctified.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+Letter from a Weaver of Lyons to the Gentlemen of the Commission
+established at Paris, for the Reformation of Religious Orders, printed
+in the public papers in 1768.
+
+     "Gentlemen: I am a silk-weaver, and have worked at Lyons for
+     nineteen years. My wages have increased insensibly; at present I
+     get thirty-five sous per day. My wife, who makes lace, would get
+     fifteen more, if it were possible for her to devote her time to it;
+     but as the cares of the house, illness, or other things,
+     continually hinder her, I reduce her profit to ten sous, which
+     makes forty-five sous daily. If from the year we deduct eighty-two
+     Sundays, or holidays, we shall have two hundred and eighty-four
+     profitable days, which at forty-five sous make six hundred and
+     thirty-nine livres. That is my revenue; the following are my
+     expenses:
+
+     "I have eight living children, and my wife is on the point of being
+     confined with the eleventh; for I have lost two. I have been
+     married fifteen years: so that I annually reckon twenty-four livres
+     for the expenses of her confinements and baptisms, one hundred and
+     eight livres for two nurses, having generally two children out at
+     nurse, and sometimes even three. I pay fifty-seven livres rent and
+     fourteen taxes.
+
+     "My income is then reduced to four hundred and thirty-six livres,
+     or twenty-five sous three deniers a day, with which I have to
+     clothe and furnish my family, buy wood and candles, and support my
+     wife and six children.
+
+     "I look forward to holidays with dismay. I confess that I often
+     almost curse their institution. They could only have been
+     instituted by usurers and innkeepers.
+
+     "My father made me study hard in my youth, and wished me to become
+     a monk, showing me in that state a sure asylum against want; but I
+     always thought that every man owes his tribute to society, and that
+     monks are useless drones who live upon the labor of the bees.
+     Notwithstanding, I acknowledge that when I see John C----, with
+     whom I studied, and who was the most idle boy in the college,
+     possessing the first place among the _premontres_, I cannot help
+     regretting that I did not listen to my father's advice.
+
+     "This is the third holiday in Christmas, I have pawned the little
+     furniture I had, I am in a week's debt with my tradesman, and I
+     want bread--how are we to get over the fourth? This is not all; I
+     have the prospect of four more next week. Great God! Eight holidays
+     in ten days; you cannot have commanded it!
+
+     "One year I hoped that rents would diminish by the suppression of
+     one of the monasteries of the Capuchins and Cordeliers. What
+     useless houses in the centre of Lyons are those of the Jacobins,
+     nuns of St. Peter, etc. Why not establish them in the suburbs if
+     they are thought necessary? How many more useful inhabitants would
+     supply their places!
+
+     "All these reflections, gentlemen, have induced me to address
+     myself to you who have been chosen by the king for the task of
+     rectifying abuses. I am not the only one who thinks thus. How many
+     laborers in Lyons and other places, how many laborers in the
+     kingdom are reduced to the same extremities as myself? It is
+     evident that every holiday costs the state several millions
+     (livres). These considerations will lead you to take more to heart
+     the interests of the people, which are rather too little attended
+     to.
+
+     "I have the honor to be, etc.,
+
+     "BOCEN."
+
+This request, which was really presented, will not be misplaced in a
+work like the present.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+The feast given to the Roman people by Julius Caesar and the emperors who
+succeeded him are well known. The feast of twenty-two thousand tables
+served by twenty-two thousand purveyors; the naval fights on artificial
+lakes, etc., have not, however, been imitated by the Herulian, Lombard,
+and Frankish chieftains, who would have their festivity equally
+celebrated.
+
+
+
+
+FERRARA.
+
+
+What we have to say of Ferrara has no relation to literature, but it has
+a very great one to justice, which is much more necessary than the
+belles-lettres, and much less cultivated, at least in Italy.
+
+Ferrara was constantly a fief of the empire, like Parma and Placentia.
+Pope Clement VIII. robbed Caesar d'Este of it by force of arms, in 1597.
+The pretext for this tyranny was a very singular one for a man who
+called himself the humble vicar of Jesus Christ.
+
+Alphonso d'Este, the first of the name, sovereign of Ferrara, Modena,
+Este, Carpio, and Rovigno, espoused a simple gentlewoman of Ferrara,
+named Laura Eustochia, by whom he had three children before marriage.
+These children he solemnly acknowledged in the face of the Church. None
+of the formalities prescribed by the laws were wanting at this
+recognition. His successor, Alphonso d'Este, was acknowledged duke of
+Ferrara; he espoused Julia d'Urbino, the daughter of Francis, duke
+d'Urbino, by whom he had the unfortunate Caesar d'Este, the incontestable
+heir of all the property of all the family, and declared so by the last
+duke, who died October 27, 1597. Pope Clement VIII., surnamed
+Aldobrandino, and originally of the family of a merchant of Florence,
+dared to pretend that the grandmother of Caesar d'Este was not
+sufficiently noble, and that the children that she had brought into the
+world ought to be considered bastards. The first reason is ridiculous
+and scandalous in a bishop, the second is unwarrantable in every
+tribunal in Europe. If the duke was not legitimate, he ought to have
+lost Modena and his other states also; and if there was no flaw in his
+title, he ought to have kept Ferrara as well as Modena.
+
+The acquisition of Ferrara was too fine a thing for the pope not to
+procure all the decretals and decisions of those brave theologians, who
+declare that the pope can render just that which is unjust. Consequently
+he first excommunicated Caesar d'Este, and as excommunication necessarily
+deprives a man of all his property, the common father of the faithful
+raised his troops against the excommunicated, to rob him of his
+inheritance in the name of the Church. These troops were defeated, but
+the duke of Modena soon saw his finances exhausted, and his friends
+become cool.
+
+To make his case still more deplorable, the king of France, Henry IV.,
+believed himself obliged to take the side of the pope, in order to
+balance the credit of Philip II. at the court of Rome; in the same
+manner that good King Louis XII. less excusably dishonored himself by
+uniting with that monster Alexander VI., and his execrable bastard, the
+duke of Borgia. The duke was obliged to return, and the pope caused
+Ferrara to be invaded by Cardinal Aldobrandino, who entered this
+flourishing city at the head of a thousand horse and five thousand foot
+soldiers.
+
+It is a great pity that such a man as Henry IV. descended to this
+unworthiness which is called politic. The Catos, Metelluses, Scipios,
+and Fabriciuses would not thus have betrayed justice to please a
+priest--and such a priest!
+
+From this time Ferrara became a desert; its uncultivated soil was
+covered with standing marshes. This province, under the house of Este,
+had been one of the finest in Italy; the people always regretted their
+ancient masters. It is true that the duke was indemnified; he was
+nominated to a bishopric and a benefice; he was even furnished with some
+measures of salt from the mines of Servia. But it is no less true that
+the house of Modena has incontestable and imprescriptable rights to the
+duchy of Ferrara, of which it was thus shamefully despoiled.
+
+Now, my dear reader, let us suppose that this scene took place at the
+time in which Jesus Christ appeared to his apostles after his
+resurrection, and that Simon Barjonas, surnamed Peter, wished to possess
+himself of the states of this poor duke of Ferrara. Imagine the duke
+coming to Bethany to demand justice of the Lord Jesus. Our Lord sends
+immediately for Peter and says to him, "Simon, son of Jonas, I have
+given thee the keys of heaven, but I have not given thee those of the
+earth. Because thou hast been told that the heavens surround the globe,
+and that the contained is in the containing, dost thou imagine that
+kingdoms here below belong to thee, and that thou hast only to possess
+thyself of whatever thou likest? I have already forbidden thee to draw
+the sword. Thou appearest to me a very strange compound; at one time
+cutting off the ear of Malchus, and at another even denying me. Be more
+lenient and decorous, and take neither the property nor the ears of any
+one for fear of thine own."
+
+
+
+
+FEVER.
+
+
+It is not as a physician, but as a patient, that I wish to say a word or
+two on fever. We cannot help now and then speaking of our enemies; and
+this one has been attacking me for more than twenty years; not Freron
+himself has been more implacable.
+
+I ask pardon of Sydenham, who defined fever to be "an effort of nature,
+laboring with all its power to expel the peccant matter." We might thus
+define smallpox, measles, diarrhoea, vomitings, cutaneous eruptions,
+and twenty other diseases. But, if this physician defined ill, he
+practised well. He cured, because he had experience, and he knew how to
+wait.
+
+Boerhaave says, in his "Aphorisms": "A more frequent opposition, and an
+increased resistance about the capillary vessels, give an absolute idea
+of an acute fever." These are the words of a great master; but he sets
+out with acknowledging that the nature of fever is profoundly hidden.
+
+He does not tell us what that secret principle is which develops itself
+at regular periods in intermittent fever--what that internal poison is,
+which, after the lapse of a day, is renewed--where that flame is, which
+dies and revives at stated moments.
+
+We know fairly well that we are liable to fever after excess, or in
+unseasonable weather. We know that quinine, judiciously administered,
+will cure it. This is quite enough; the _how_ we do not know.
+
+Every animal that does not perish suddenly dies by fever. The fever
+seems to be the inevitable effect of the fluids that compose the blood,
+or that which is in the place of blood. The structure of every animal
+proves to natural philosophers that it must, at all times, have enjoyed
+a very short life.
+
+Theologians have held, as have promulgated other opinions. It is not for
+us to examine this question. The philosophers and physicians have been
+right _in sensu humano_, and the theologians, _in sensu divino_. It is
+said in Deuteronomy, xxviii, 22, that if the Jews do not serve the law
+they shall be smitten "with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an
+inflammation, and with an extreme burning." It is only in Deuteronomy,
+and in Moliere's "Physician in Spite of Himself," that people have been
+threatened with fever.
+
+It seems impossible that fever should not be an accident natural to an
+animate body, in which so many fluids circulate; just as it is
+impossible for an animate body not to be crushed by the falling of a
+rock.
+
+Blood makes life; it furnishes the viscera, the limbs, the skin, the
+very extremities of the hairs and nails with the fluids, the humors
+proper for them.
+
+This blood, by which the animal has life, is formed by the chyle. During
+pregnancy this chyle is transmitted from the uterus to the child, and,
+after the child is born, the milk of the nurse produces this same chyle.
+The greater diversity of aliments it afterwards receives, the more the
+chyle is liable to be soured. This alone forming the blood, and this
+blood, composed of so many different humors so subject to corruption,
+circulating through the whole human body more than five hundred and
+fifty times in twenty-four hours, with the rapidity of a torrent, it is
+not only astonishing that fever is not more frequent, it is astonishing
+that man lives. In every articulation, in every gland, in every passage,
+there is danger of death; but there are also as many succors as there
+are dangers. Almost every membrane extends or contracts as occasion
+requires. All the veins have sluices which open and shut, giving passage
+to the blood and preventing a return, by which the machine would be
+destroyed. The blood, rushing through all these canals, purifies itself.
+It is a river that carries with it a thousand impurities; it discharges
+itself by perspiration, by transpiration, by all the secretions. Fever
+is itself a succor; it is a rectification when it does not kill.
+
+Man, by his reason, accelerates the cure by administering bitters, and,
+above all, by regimen. This reason is an oar with which he may row for
+some time on the sea of the world when disease does not swallow him up.
+
+It is asked: How is it that nature has abandoned the animals, her work,
+to so many horrible diseases, almost always accompanied by fever? How
+and why is it that so many disorders exist with so much order,
+formation, and destruction everywhere, side by side? This is a
+difficulty that often gives me a fever, but I beg you will read the
+letters of Memmius. Then, perhaps, you will be inclined to suspect that
+the incomprehensible artificer of vegetables, animals, and worlds,
+having made all for the best, could not have made anything better.
+
+
+
+
+FICTION.
+
+
+Is not a fiction, which teaches new and interesting truths, a fine
+thing? Do you not admire the Arabian story of the sultan who would not
+believe that a little time could appear long, and who disputed with his
+dervish on the nature of duration? The latter to convince him of it,
+begged him only to plunge his head for a moment into the basin in which
+he was washing. Immediately the sultan finds himself transported into a
+frightful desert; he is obliged to labor to get a livelihood; he
+marries, and has children who grow up and ill treat him; finally he
+returns to his country and his palace and he there finds the dervish who
+has caused him to suffer so many evils for five and twenty years. He is
+about to kill him, and is only appeased when he is assured that all
+passed in the moment in which, with his eyes shut, he put his head into
+the water.
+
+You still more admire the fiction of the loves of Dido and AEneas, which
+caused the mortal hatred between Carthage and Rome, as also that which
+exhibits in Elysium the destinies of the great men of the Roman Empire.
+
+You also like that of Alcina, in Ariosto, who possesses the dignity of
+Minerva with the beauty of Venus, who is so charming to the eyes of her
+lovers, who intoxicates them with voluptuous delights, and unites all
+the loves and graces, but who, when she is at last reduced to her true
+self and the enchantment has passed away, is nothing more than a little
+shrivelled, disgusting, old woman.
+
+As to fictions which represent nothing, teach nothing, and from which
+nothing results, are they anything more than falsities? And if they are
+incoherent and heaped together without choice, are they anything better
+than dreams?
+
+You will possibly tell me that there are ancient fictions which are very
+incoherent, without ingenuity, and even absurd, which are still admired;
+but is it not rather owing to the fine images which are scattered over
+these fictions than to the inventions which introduce them? I will not
+dispute the point, but if you would be hissed at by all Europe, and
+afterwards forgotten forever, write fictions similar to those which you
+admire.
+
+
+
+
+FIERTE.
+
+
+Fierte is one of those expressions, which, having been originally
+employed in an offensive sense, are afterwards used in a favorable one.
+It is censure when this word signifies high-flown, proud, haughty, and
+disdainful. It is almost praise when it means the loftiness of a noble
+mind.
+
+It is a just eulogium on a general who marches towards the enemy with
+_fierte_. Writers have praised the _fierte_ of the gait of Louis XIV.;
+they should have contented themselves with remarking its nobleness.
+
+_Fierte_, without dignity, is a merit incompatible with modesty. It is
+only _fierte_ in air and manners which offends; it then displeases, even
+in kings.
+
+_Fierte_ of manner in society is the expression of pride; _fierte_ of
+soul is greatness. The distinctions are so nice that a proud spirit is
+deemed blamable, while a proud soul is a theme of praise. By the former
+is understood one who thinks advantageously of himself while the latter
+denotes one who entertains elevated sentiments.
+
+_Fierte_, announced by the exterior, is so great a fault that the weak,
+who abjectly praise it in the great are obliged to soften it, or rather
+to extol it, by speaking of "this noble _fierte_." It is not simply
+vanity, which consists in setting a value upon little things; it is not
+presumption, which believes itself capable of great ones; it is not
+disdain, which adds contempt of others to a great opinion of self; but
+it is intimately allied to all these faults.
+
+This word is used in romances, poetry, and above all, in operas, to
+express the severity of female modesty. We meet with vain _fierte_,
+vigorous _fierte_, etc. Poets are, perhaps, more in the right than they
+imagine. The _fierte_ of a woman is not only rigid modesty and love of
+duty, but the high value which she sets upon her beauty. The _fierte_ of
+the pencil is sometimes spoken of to signify free and fearless touches.
+
+
+
+
+FIGURE.
+
+
+Every one desirous of instruction should read with attention all the
+articles in the "_Dictionnaire Encyclopedique_," under the head
+"Figure," viz.:
+
+"Figure of the Earth," by M. d'Alembert--a work both clear and profound,
+in which we find all that can be known on the subject.
+
+"Figure of Rhetoric," by Cesar Dumarsais--a piece of instruction which
+teaches at once to think and to write; and, like many other articles,
+make us regret that young people in general have not a convenient
+opportunity of reading things so useful.
+
+"Human Figure," as relating to painting and sculpture--an excellent
+lesson given to every artist, by M. Watelet.
+
+"Figure," in physiology--a very ingenious article, by M. de Caberoles.
+
+"Figure," in arithmetic and in algebra--by M. Mallet.
+
+"Figure," in logic, in metaphysics, and in polite literature, by M. le
+Chevalier de Jaucourt--a man superior to the philosophers of antiquity,
+inasmuch as he has preferred retirement, real philosophy, and
+indefatigable labor, to all the advantages that his birth might have
+procured him, in a country where birth is set above all beside,
+excepting money.
+
+_Figure or Form of the Earth._
+
+Plato, Aristotle, Eratosthenes, Posidonius, and all the geometricians of
+Asia, of Egypt, and of Greece, having acknowledged the sphericity of our
+globe, how did it happen that we, for so long a time, imagined that the
+earth was a third longer than it was broad, and thence derived the terms
+"_longitude_" and "_latitude_," which continually bear testimony to our
+ancient ignorance?
+
+The reverence due to the "Bible," which teaches us so many truths more
+necessary and more sublime, was the cause of this, our almost universal
+error. It had been found, in Psalm ciii, that God had stretched the
+heavens over the earth like a skin; and as a skin is commonly longer
+than it is wide, the same was concluded of the earth.
+
+St. Athanasius expresses himself as warmly against good astronomers as
+against the partisans of Arius and Eusebius. "Let us," says he, "stop
+the mouths of those barbarians, who, speaking without proof, dare to
+assert that the heavens also extend under the earth." The fathers
+considered the earth as a great ship, surrounded by water, with the prow
+to the east, and the stern to the west. We still find, in "Cosmos," a
+work of the fourth century, a sort of geographical chart, in which the
+earth has this figure.
+
+Tortato, bishop of Avila, near the close of the fifteenth century,
+declares in his commentary on Genesis, that the Christian faith is
+shaken, if the earth is believed to be round. Columbus, Vespucius, and
+Magellan, not having the fear of excommunication by this learned bishop
+before their eyes, the earth resumed its rotundity in spite of him.
+
+Then man went from one extreme to the other, and the earth was regarded
+as a perfect sphere. But the error of the perfect sphere was the mistake
+of philosophers, while that of a long, flat earth was the blunder of
+idiots.
+
+When once it began to be clearly known that our globe revolves on its
+own axis every twenty-four hours, it might have been inferred from that
+alone that its form could not be absolutely round. Not only does the
+centrifugal zone considerably raise the waters in the region of the
+equator, by the motion of the diurnal rotation, but they are moreover
+elevated about twenty-five feet, twice a day, by the tides; the lands
+about the equator must then be perfectly inundated. But they are not so;
+therefore the region of the equator is much more elevated, in
+proportion, than the rest of the earth: then the earth is a spheroid
+elevated at the equator, and cannot be a perfect sphere. This proof,
+simple as it is, had escaped the greatest geniuses: because a universal
+prejudice rarely permits investigation.
+
+We know that, in 1762, in a voyage to Cayenne, near the line, undertaken
+by order of Louis XIV., under the auspices of Colbert, the patron of all
+the arts, Richer, among many other observations, found that the
+oscillations or vibrations of his timepiece did not continue so frequent
+as in the latitude of Paris, and that it was absolutely necessary to
+shorten the pendulum one line and something more than a quarter. Physics
+and geometry were at that time not nearly so much cultivated as they now
+are; what man would have believed that an observation so trivial in
+appearance, a line more or less, could lead to the knowledge of the
+greatest physical truths? It was first of all discovered that the weight
+must necessarily be less on the equator than in our latitudes, since
+weight alone causes the oscillation of a pendulum. Consequently, the
+weight of bodies being the less the farther they are from the centre of
+the earth, it was inferred that the region of the equator must be much
+more elevated than our own--much more remote from the centre; so the
+earth could not be an exact sphere.
+
+Many philosophers acted, on the occasion of these discoveries, as all
+men act when an opinion is to be changed--they disputed on Richer's
+experiment; they pretended that our pendulums made their vibrations more
+slowly about the equator only because the metal was lengthened by the
+heat; but it was seen that the heat of the most burning summer lengthens
+it but one line in thirty feet; and here was an elongation of a line and
+a quarter, a line and a half, or even two lines, in an iron rod, only
+three feet and eight lines long.
+
+Some years after MM. Varin, Deshayes, Feuillee, and Couplet, repeated
+the same experiment on the pendulum, near the equator; and it was always
+found necessary to shorten it, although the heat was very often less on
+the line than fifteen or twenty degrees from it. This experiment was
+again confirmed by the academicians whom Louis XV. sent to Peru; and who
+were obliged, on the mountains about Quito, where it froze, to shorten
+the second pendulum about two lines.
+
+About the same time, the academicians who went to measure an arc of the
+meridian in the north, found that at Pello, within the Polar circle, it
+was necessary to lengthen the pendulum, in order to have the same
+oscillations as at Paris: consequently weight is greater at the polar
+circle than in the latitude of France, as it is greater in our latitude
+than at the equator. Weight being greater in the north, the north was
+therefore nearer the centre of the earth than the equator; therefore the
+earth was flattened at the poles.
+
+Never did reasoning and experiment so fully concur to establish a truth.
+The celebrated Huygens, by calculating centrifugal forces, had proved
+that the consequent diminution of weight on the surface of a sphere was
+not great enough to explain the phenomena, and that therefore the earth
+must be a spheroid flattened at the poles. Newton, by the principles of
+attraction, had found nearly the same relations: only it must be
+observed, that Huygens believed this force inherent in bodies
+determining them towards the centre of the globe, to be everywhere the
+same. He had not yet seen the discoveries of Newton; so that he
+considered the diminution of weight by the theory of centrifugal forces
+only. The effect of centrifugal forces diminishes the primitive gravity
+on the equator. The smaller the circles in which this centrifugal force
+is exercised become, the more it yields to the force of gravity; thus,
+at the pole itself the centrifugal force being null, must leave the
+primitive gravity in full action. But this principle of a gravity always
+equal, falls to nothing before the discovery made by Newton, that a body
+transported, for instance, to the distance of ten diameters from the
+centre of the earth, would weigh one hundred times less than at the
+distance of one diameter.
+
+It is then by the laws of gravitation, combined with those of the
+centrifugal force, that the real form of the earth must be shown. Newton
+and Gregory had such confidence in this theory that they did not
+hesitate to advance that experiments on weight were a surer means of
+knowing the form of the earth than any geographical measurement.
+
+Louis XIV. had signalized his reign by that meridian which was drawn
+through France: the illustrious Dominico Cassini had begun it with his
+son; and had, in 1701, drawn from the feet of the Pyrenees to the
+observatory a line as straight as it could be drawn, considering the
+almost insurmountable obstacles which the height of mountains, the
+changes of refraction in the air, and the altering of instruments were
+constantly opposing to the execution of so vast and delicate an
+undertaking; he had, in 1701, measured six degrees eighteen minutes of
+that meridian. But, from whatever cause the error might proceed, he had
+found the degrees towards Paris, that is towards the north, shorter than
+those towards the Pyrenees and the south. This measurement gave the lie
+both to the theory of Norwood and to the new theory of the earth
+flattened at the poles. Yet this new theory was beginning to be so
+generally received that the academy's secretary did not hesitate, in his
+history of 1701, to say that the new measurements made in France proved
+the earth to be a spheroid flattened at the poles. The truth was, that
+Dominico Cassini's measurement led to a conclusion directly opposite;
+but, as the figure of the earth had not yet become a question in France,
+no one at that time was at the trouble of combating this false
+conclusion. The degrees of the meridian from Collioure to Paris were
+believed to be exactly measured; and the pole, which from that
+measurement must necessarily be elongated, was believed to be flattened.
+
+An engineer, named M. de Roubais, astonished at this conclusion,
+demonstrated that, by the measurements taken in France, the earth must
+be an oblate spheroid, of which the meridian passing through the poles
+must be longer than the equator, the poles being elongated. But of all
+the natural philosophers to whom he addressed his dissertation, not one
+would have it printed; because it seemed that the academy had pronounced
+it as too bold in an individual to raise his voice. Some time after the
+error of 1701 was acknowledged, that which had been said was unsaid; and
+the earth was lengthened by a just conclusion drawn from a false
+principle. The meridian was continued in the same principle from Paris
+to Dunkirk; and the degrees were still found to grow shorter as they
+approached the north. People were still mistaken respecting the figure
+of the earth, as they had been concerning the nature of light. About the
+same time, some mathematicians who were performing the same operations
+in China were astonished to find a difference among their degrees,
+which they had expected to find alike; and to discover, after many
+verifications, that they were shorter towards the north than towards the
+south. This accordance of the mathematicians of France with those of
+China was another powerful reason for believing in the oblate spheroid.
+In France they did still more; they measured parallels to the equator.
+It is easily understood that on an oblate spheroid our degrees of
+longitude must be shorter than on a sphere. M. de Cassini found the
+parallel which passes through St. Malo to be shorter by one thousand and
+thirty-seven toises than it would have been on a spherical earth.
+
+All these measurements proved that the degrees had been found as it was
+wished to find them. They overturned, for a time, in France, the
+demonstrations of Newton and Huygens; and it was no longer doubted that
+the poles were of a form precisely contrary to that which had at first
+been attributed to them. In short, nothing at all was known about the
+matter.
+
+At length, other academicians, who had visited the polar circle in 1736,
+having found, by new measurements, that the degree was longer there than
+in France, people doubted between them and the Cassinis. But these
+doubts were soon after removed: for these same astronomers, returning
+from the pole, examined afresh the degree to the north of Paris,
+measured by Picard, in 1677, and found it to be a hundred and
+twenty-three toises longer than it was according to Picard's
+measurement. If, then, Picard, with all his precautions, had made his
+degree one hundred and twenty-three toises too short, it was not at all
+unlikely that the degrees towards the south had in like manner been
+found too long. Thus the first error of Picard, having furnished the
+foundations for the measurements of the meridian, also furnished an
+excuse for the almost inevitable errors which very good astronomers
+might have committed in the course of these operations.
+
+Unfortunately, other men of science found that, at the Cape of Good
+Hope, the degrees of the meridian did not agree with ours. Other
+measurements, taken in Italy, likewise contradicted those of France, and
+all were falsified by those of China. People again began to doubt, and
+to suspect, in my opinion quite reasonably, that the earth had
+protuberances. As for the English, though they are fond of travelling,
+they spared themselves the fatigue, and held fast their theory.
+
+The difference between one diameter and the other is not more than five
+or six of our leagues--a difference immense in the eyes of a disputant,
+but almost imperceptible to those who consider the measurement of the
+globe only in reference to the purposes of utility which it may serve. A
+geographer could scarcely make this difference perceptible on a map; nor
+would a pilot be able to discover whether he was steering on a spheroid
+or on a sphere. Yet there have been men bold enough to assert that the
+lives of navigators depended on this question. Oh quackery! will you
+spare no degrees--not even those of the meridian?
+
+
+
+
+FIGURED--FIGURATIVE.
+
+
+We say, a truth "figured" by a fable, by a parable; the church "figured"
+by the young spouse in Solomon's Song; ancient Rome "figured" by
+Babylon. A figurative style is constituted by metaphorical expressions,
+figuring the things spoken of--and disfiguring them when the metaphors
+are not correct.
+
+Ardent imagination, passion, desire--frequently deceived--produce the
+figurative style. We do not admit it into history, for too many
+metaphors are hurtful, not only to perspicuity, but also to truth, by
+saying more or less than the thing itself.
+
+In didactic works, this style should be rejected. It is much more out of
+place in a sermon than in a funeral oration, because the sermon is a
+piece of instruction in which the truth is to be announced; while the
+funeral oration is a declaration in which it is to be exaggerated.
+
+The poetry of enthusiasm, as the epopee and the ode, is that to which
+this style is best adapted. It is less admissible in tragedy, where the
+dialogue should be natural as well as elevated; and still less in
+comedy, where the style must be more simple.
+
+The limits to be set to the figurative style, in each kind, are
+determined by taste. Baltasar Gracian says, that "our thoughts depart
+from the vast shores of memory, embark on the sea of imagination, arrive
+in the harbor of intelligence, and are entered at the custom house of
+the understanding."
+
+This is precisely the style of Harlequin. He says to his master, "The
+ball of your commands has rebounded from the racquet of my obedience."
+Must it not be owned that such is frequently that oriental style which
+people try to admire? Another fault of the figurative style is the
+accumulating of incoherent figures. A poet, speaking of some
+philosophers, has called them:
+
+                   _D'ambitieux pygmees_
+     _Qui sur leurs pieds vainement redresses_
+     _Et sur des monts d'argumens entasses_
+     _De jour en jour superbes Encelades,_
+     _Vont redoublant leurs folles escalades._
+
+When philosophers are to be written against, it should be done better.
+How do ambitious pygmies, reared on their hind legs on mountains of
+arguments, continue escalades? What a false and ridiculous image! What
+elaborate dulness!
+
+In an allegory by the same author, entitled the "Liturgy of Cytherea,"
+we find these lines:
+
+     _De toutes parts, autour de l'inconnue,_
+     _Ils vont tomber comme grele menue,_
+     _Moissons des coeurs sur la terre jonches,_
+     _Et des Dieux meme a son char attaches._
+     _De par Venus nous venons cette affaire_
+     _Si s'en retourne aux cieux dans son serail,_
+     _En ruminant comment il pourra faire_
+     _Pour ramener la brebis au bercail._
+
+Here we have harvests of hearts thrown on the ground like small hail;
+and among these hearts palpitating on the ground, are gods bound to the
+car of the unknown; while love, sent by Venus, ruminates in his seraglio
+in heaven, what he shall do to bring back to the fold this lost mutton
+surrounded by scattered hearts. All this forms a figure at once so
+false, so puerile, and so incoherent--so disgusting, so extravagant, so
+stupidly expressed, that we are astonished that a man, who made good
+verses of another kind, and was not devoid of taste, could write
+anything so miserably bad.
+
+Figures, metaphors, are not necessary in an allegory; what has been
+invented with imagination may be told with simplicity. Plato has more
+allegories than figures; he often expresses them elegantly and without
+ostentation.
+
+Nearly all the maxims of the ancient orientals and of the Greeks were in
+the figurative style. All those sentences are metaphors, or short
+allegories; and in them the figurative style has great effect in rousing
+the imagination and impressing the memory.
+
+We know that Pythagoras said, "In the tempest adore the echo," that is,
+during civil broils retire to the country; and "Stir not the fire with
+the sword," meaning, do not irritate minds already inflamed. In every
+language, there are many common proverbs which are in the figurative
+style.
+
+
+
+
+FIGURE IN THEOLOGY.
+
+
+It is quite certain, and is agreed by the most pious men, that figures
+and allegories have been carried too far. Some of the fathers of the
+church regard the piece of red cloth, placed by the courtesan Rahab at
+her window, for a signal to Joshua's spies, as a figure of the blood of
+Jesus Christ. This is an error of an order of mind which would find
+mystery in everything.
+
+Nor can it be denied that St. Ambrose made very bad use of his taste for
+allegory, when he says, in his book of "Noah and the Ark," that the back
+door of the ark was a figure of our hinder parts.
+
+All men of sense have asked how it can be proved that these Hebrew
+words, "_maher, salas-has-has_," (take quick the spoils) are a figure of
+Jesus Christ? How is Judah, tying his ass to a vine, and washing his
+cloak in the wine, also a figure of Him. How can Ruth, slipping into bed
+to Boaz, figure the church, how are Sarah and Rachel the church, and
+Hagar and Leah the synagogue? How, do the kisses of the Shunamite typify
+the marriage of the church? A volume might be made of these enigmas,
+which, to the best theologians of later times, have appeared to be
+rather far-fetched than edifying.
+
+The danger of this abuse is fully admitted by Abbe Fleury, the author of
+the "Ecclesiastical History." It is a vestige of rabbinism; a fault
+into which the learned St. Jerome never fell. It is like oneiromancy,
+or the explanation of dreams. If a girl sees muddy water, when dreaming,
+she will be ill-married; if she sees clear water, she will have a good
+husband; a spider denotes money, etc. In short, will enlightened
+posterity believe it? The understanding of dreams has, for more than
+four thousand years, been made a serious study.
+
+_Symbolical Figures._
+
+All nations have made use of them, as we have said in the article
+"emblem." But who began? Was it the Egyptians? It is not likely. We
+think we have already more than once proved that Egypt is a country
+quite new, and that many ages were requisite to save the country from
+inundations, and render it habitable. It is impossible that the
+Egyptians should have invented the signs of the zodiac, since the
+figures denoting our seed-time and harvest cannot coincide with theirs.
+When we cut our corn, their land is covered with water; and when we sow,
+their reaping time is approaching. Thus the bull of our zodiac and the
+girl bearing ears of corn cannot have come from Egypt.
+
+Here is also an evident proof of the falsity of the new paradox, that
+the Chinese are an Egyptian colony. The characters are not the same. The
+Chinese mark the course of the sun by twenty-eight constellations and
+the Egyptians, after the Chaldaeans, reckoned only twelve, like
+ourselves.
+
+The figures that denote the planets are in China and in India all
+different from those of Egypt and of Europe; so are the signs of the
+metals; so is the method of guiding the hand in writing. Nothing could
+have been more chimerical than to send the Egyptians to people China.
+
+All these fabulous foundations, laid in fabulous times, have caused an
+irreparable loss of time to a prodigious multitude of the learned, who
+have all been bewildered in their laborious researches, which might have
+been serviceable to mankind if directed to arts of real utility.
+
+Pluche, in his History, or rather his fable, of the Heavens, assures us
+that Ham, son of Noah, went and reigned in Egypt, where there was nobody
+to reign over; that his son Menes was the greatest of legislators, and
+that Thoth was his prime minister.
+
+According to him and his authorities, this Thoth, or somebody else,
+instituted feasts in honor of the deluge; and the joyful cry of "_Io
+Bacche_," so famous among the Greeks, was, among the Egyptians, a
+lamentation. "_Bacche_" came from the Hebrew "_beke_" signifying _sobs_,
+and that at a time when the Hebrew people did not exist. According to
+this explanation, "_joy_" means "_sorrow_," and "_to sing_" signifies
+"_to weep_."
+
+The Iroquois have more sense. They do not take the trouble to inquire
+what passed on the shores of Lake Ontario some thousand years ago:
+instead of making systems, they go hunting.
+
+The same authors affirm that the sphinxes, with which Egypt was adorned,
+signified superabundance, because some interpreters have asserted that
+the Hebrew word "_spang_" meant an "excess"; as if the Egyptians had
+taken lessons from the Hebrew tongue, which is, in great part, derived
+from the Phoenician: besides, what relation has a sphinx to an
+abundance of water? Future schoolmen will maintain, with greater
+appearance of reason, that the masks which decorate the keystones of our
+windows are emblems of our masquerades; and that these fantastic
+ornaments announced that balls were given in every house to which they
+were affixed.
+
+_Figure, Figurative, Allegorical, Mystical, Topological, Typical, etc._
+
+This is often the art of finding in books everything but what they
+really contain. For instance, Romulus killing his brother Remus shall
+signify the death of the duke of Berry, brother of Louis XI.; Regulus,
+imprisoned at Carthage, shall typify St. Louis captive at Mansurah.
+
+It is very justly remarked in the "Encyclopaedia," that many fathers of
+the church have, perhaps, carried this taste for allegorical figures a
+little too far; but they are to be reverenced, even in their wanderings.
+If the holy fathers used and then abused this method, their little
+excesses of imagination may be pardoned, in consideration of their holy
+zeal.
+
+The antiquity of the usage may also be pleaded in justification, since
+it was practised by the earliest philosophers. But it is true that the
+symbolical figures employed by the fathers are in a different taste.
+
+For example: When St. Augustine wishes to make it appear that the
+forty-two generations of the genealogy of Jesus are announced by St.
+Matthew, who gives only forty-one, he says that Jechonias must be
+counted twice, because Jechonias is a corner-stone belonging to two
+walls; that these two walls figure the old and the new law; and that
+Jechonias, being thus the corner-stone, figures Jesus Christ, who is the
+real corner-stone.
+
+The same saint, in the same sermon, says that the number forty must
+prevail; and at once abandons Jechonias and his corner-stone, counted as
+two. The number forty, he says, signifies life; ten, which is perfect
+beatitude, being multiplied by four, which, being the number of the
+seasons, figures time.
+
+Again, in the same sermon, he explains why St. Luke gives Jesus Christ
+seventy-seven ancestors: fifty-six up to the patriarch Abraham, and
+twenty-one from Abraham up to God himself. It is true that, according to
+the Hebrew text, there would be but seventy-six; for the Hebrew does not
+reckon a Cainan, who is interpolated in the Greek translation called
+"The Septuagint."
+
+Thus said Augustine: "The number seventy-seven figures the abolition of
+all sins by baptism.... the number ten signifies justice and beatitude,
+resulting from, the creature, which makes seven with the Trinity, which
+is three: therefore it is that God's commandments are ten in number. The
+number eleven denotes sin, because it transgresses ten.... This number
+seventy-seven is the product of eleven, figuring sin, multiplied by
+seven, and not by ten, for seven is the symbol of the creature. Three
+represents the soul, which is in some sort an image of the Divinity; and
+four represents the body, on account of its four qualities." In these
+explanations, we find some trace of the cabalistic mysteries and the
+quaternary of Pythagoras. This taste was very long in vogue.
+
+St. Augustine goes much further, concerning the dimensions of matter.
+Breadth is the dilatation of the heart, which performs good works;
+length is perseverance; depth is the hope of reward. He carries the
+allegory very far, applying it to the cross, and drawing great
+consequences therefrom. The use of these figures had passed from the
+Jews to the Christians long before St. Augustine's time. It is not for
+us to know within what bounds it was right to stop.
+
+The examples of this fault are innumerable. No one who has studied to
+advantage will hazard the introduction of such figures, either in the
+pulpit or in the school. We find no such instances among the Romans or
+the Greeks, not even in their poets.
+
+In Ovid's "Metamorphoses" themselves, we find only ingenious deductions
+drawn from fables which are given as fables. Deucalion and Pyrrha threw
+stones behind them between their legs, and men were produced therefrom.
+Ovid says:
+
+     _Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum,_
+     _Et documenta damus qua simus origine nati._
+
+     Thence we are a hardened and laborious race,
+     Proving full well our stony origin.
+
+Apollo loves Daphne, but Daphne does not love Apollo. This is because
+love has two kinds of arrows; the one golden and piercing, the other
+leaden and blunt. Apollo has received in his heart a golden arrow,
+Daphne a leaden one.
+
+     _Ecce sagittifera prompsit duo tela pharetra_
+     _Diversorum operum; fugat hoc, facit illud amorem_
+     _Quod facit auratum est, et cuspide fulget acuta;_
+     _Quod fugat obtusum est, et habet sub arundine plumbum...._
+
+     Two different shafts he from his quiver draws;
+     One to repel desire, and one to cause.
+     One shaft is pointed with refulgent gold,
+     To bribe the love, and make the lover bold;
+     One blunt and tipped with lead, whose base allay
+     Provokes disdain, and drives desire away.--DRYDEN.
+
+These figures are all ingenious, and deceive no one.
+
+That Venus, the goddess of beauty, should not go unattended by the
+Graces, is a charming truth. These fables, which were in the mouths of
+all--these allegories, so natural and attractive--had so much sway over
+the minds of men, that perhaps the first Christians imitated while they
+opposed them.
+
+They took up the weapons of mythology to destroy it, but they could not
+wield them with the same address. They did not reflect that the sacred
+austerity of our holy religion placed these resources out of their
+power, and that a Christian hand would have dealt but awkwardly with the
+lyre of Apollo.
+
+However, the taste for these typical and prophetic figures was so firmly
+rooted that every prince, every statesman, every pope, every founder of
+an order, had allegories or allusions taken from the Holy Scriptures
+applied to him. Satire and flattery rivalled each other in drawing from
+this source.
+
+When Pope Innocent III. made a bloody crusade against the court of
+Toulouse, he was told, "_Innocens eris a maledictione_." When the order
+of the Minimes was established, it appeared that their founder had been
+foretold in Genesis: "_Minimus cum patre nostro_."
+
+The preacher who preached before John of Austria after the celebrated
+battle of Lepanto, took for his text, "_Fuit homo missus a Deo, cui
+nomen erat Johannes_;" A man sent from God, whose name was John; and
+this allusion was very fine, if all the rest were ridiculous. It is said
+to have been repeated for John Sobieski, after the deliverance of
+Vienna; but this latter preacher was nothing more than a plagiarist.
+
+In short, so constant has been this custom that no preacher of the
+present day has ever failed to take an allegory for his text. One of the
+most happy instances is the text of the funeral oration over the duke of
+Candale, delivered before his sister, who was considered a pattern of
+virtue: "_Die, quia soror, mea es, ut mihi bene eveniat propter,
+te_."--"Say, I pray thee, that thou art my sister, that it may be well
+with me for thy sake."
+
+It is not to be wondered at that the Cordeliers carried these figures
+rather too far in favor of St. Francis of Assisi, in the famous but
+little-known book, entitled, "Conformities of St. Francis of Assisi with
+Jesus Christ." We find in it sixty-four predictions of the coming of St.
+Francis, some in the Old Testament, others in the New; and each
+prediction contains three figures, which signify the founding of the
+Cordeliers. So that these fathers find themselves foretold in the Bible
+a hundred and ninety-two times.
+
+From Adam down to St. Paul, everything prefigured the blessed Francis of
+Assisi. The Scriptures were given to announce to the universe the
+sermons of Francis to the quadrupeds, the fishes, and the birds, the
+sport he had with a woman of snow, his frolics with the devil, his
+adventures with brother Elias and brother Pacificus.
+
+These pious reveries, which amounted even to blasphemy, have been
+condemned. But the Order of St. Francis has not suffered by them, having
+renounced these extravagancies so common to the barbarous ages.
+
+
+
+
+FINAL CAUSES.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+Virgil says ("AEneid," book vi. 727):
+
+     _Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet._
+
+     This active mind infused, through all the space
+     Unites and mingles with the mighty mass.--DRYDEN.
+
+Virgil said well: and Benedict Spinoza, who has not the brilliancy of
+Virgil, nor his merit, is compelled to acknowledge an intelligence
+presiding over all. Had he denied this, I should have said to him:
+Benedict, you are a fool; you possess intelligence, and you deny it, and
+to whom do you deny it?
+
+In the year 1770, there appeared a man, in some respects far superior to
+Spinoza, as eloquent as the Jewish Hollander is dry, less methodical,
+but infinitely more perspicuous; perhaps equal to him in mathematical
+science; but without the ridiculous affectation of applying mathematical
+reasonings to metaphysical and moral subjects. The man I mean is the
+author of the "System of Nature." He assumed the name of Mirabaud, the
+secretary of the French Academy. Alas! the worthy secretary was
+incapable of writing a single page of the book of our formidable
+opponent. I would recommend all you who are disposed to avail yourselves
+of your reason and acquire instruction, to read the following eloquent
+though dangerous passage from the "System of Nature." (Part II. v. 153.)
+
+It is contended that animals furnish us with a convincing evidence that
+there is some powerful cause of their existence; the admirable
+adaptation of their different parts, mutually receiving and conferring
+aid towards accomplishing their functions, and maintaining in health and
+vigor the entire being, announce to us an artificer uniting power to
+wisdom. Of the power of nature, it is impossible for us to doubt; she
+produces all the animals that we see by the help of combinations of that
+matter, which is in incessant action; the adaptation of the parts of
+these animals is the result of the necessary laws of their nature, and
+of their combination. When the adaptation ceases, the animal is
+necessarily destroyed. What then becomes of the wisdom, the
+intelligence, or the goodness of that alleged cause, to which was
+ascribed all the honor of this boasted adaptation? Those animals of so
+wonderful a structure as to be pronounced the works of an immutable God,
+do not they undergo incessant changes; and do not they end in decay and
+destruction? Where is the wisdom, the goodness, the fore-sight, the
+immutability of an artificer, whose sole object appears to be to derange
+and destroy the springs of those machines which are proclaimed to be
+masterpieces of his power and skill? If this God cannot act otherwise
+than thus, he is neither free nor omnipotent. If his will changes, he is
+not immutable. If he permits machines, which he has endowed with
+sensibility, to experience pain, he is deficient in goodness. If he has
+been unable to render his productions solid and durable, he is deficient
+in skill. Perceiving as we do the decay and ruin not only of all
+animals, but of all the other works of deity, we cannot but inevitably
+conclude, either that everything performed in the course of nature is
+absolutely necessary--the unavoidable result of its imperative and
+insuperable laws, or that the artificer who impels her various
+operations is destitute of plan, of power, of constancy, of skill, and
+of goodness.
+
+"Man, who considers himself the master-work of the Divinity, supplies us
+more readily and completely than any other production, with evidence of
+the incapacity or malignity of his pretended author. In this being,
+possessed of feeling, intuition, and reason, which considers itself as
+the perpetual object of divine partiality, and forms its God on the
+model of itself, we see a machine more changeable, more frail, more
+liable to derangement from its extraordinary complication, than that of
+the coarsest and grossest beings. Beasts, which are destitute of our
+mental powers and acquirements; plants, which merely vegetate; stones,
+which are unendowed with sensation, are, in many respects, beings far
+more favored than man. They are, at least, exempt from distress of mind,
+from the tortures of thought, and corrosions of care, to which the
+latter is a victim. Who would not prefer being a mere unintelligent
+animal, or a senseless stone, when his thoughts revert to the
+irreparable loss of an object dearly beloved? Would it not be infinitely
+more desirable to be an inanimate mass, than the gloomy votary and
+victim of superstition, trembling under the present yoke of his
+diabolical deity, and anticipating infinite torments in a future
+existence? Beings destitute of sensation, life, memory, and thought
+experience no affliction from the idea of what is past, present, or to
+come; they do not believe there is any danger of incurring eternal
+torture for inaccurate reasoning; which is believed, however, by many of
+those favored beings who maintain that the great architect of the world
+has created the universe for themselves.
+
+[Illustration: NATURE IS NOT A WORK]
+
+"Let us not be told that we have no idea of a work without having that
+of the artificer distinguished from the work. _Nature is not a work._
+She has always existed of herself. Every process takes place in her
+bosom. She is an immense manufactory, provided with materials, and she
+forms the instruments by which she acts; all her works are effects of
+her own energy, and of agents or causes which she frames, contains, and
+impels. Eternal, uncreated elements--elements indestructible, ever in
+motion, and combining in exquisite and endless diversity, originate all
+the beings and all the phenomena that we behold; all the effects, good
+or evil, that we feel; the order or disorder which we distinguish,
+merely by different modes in which they affect ourselves; and, in a
+word, all those wonders which excite our meditation and confound our
+reasoning. These elements, in order to effect objects thus comprehensive
+and important, require nothing beyond their own properties, individual
+or combined, and the motion essential to their very existence; and thus
+preclude the necessity of recurring to an unknown artificer, in order to
+arrange, mould, combine, preserve, and dissolve them.
+
+"But, even admitting for a moment, that it is impossible to conceive of
+the universe without an artificer who formed it, and who preserves and
+watches over his work, where shall we place that artificer? Shall he be
+within or without the universe? Is he matter or motion? Or is he mere
+space, nothingness, vacuity? In each of these cases, he will either be
+nothing, or he will be comprehended in nature, and subjected to her
+laws. If he is in nature, I think I see in her only matter in motion,
+and cannot but thence conclude that the agent impelling her is corporeal
+and material, and that he is consequently liable to dissolution. If this
+agent is out of nature, then I have no idea of what place he can occupy,
+nor of an immaterial being, nor of the manner in which a spirit, without
+extension, can operate upon the matter from which it is separated. Those
+unknown tracts of space which imagination has placed beyond the visible
+world may be considered as having no existence for a being who can
+scarcely see to the distance of his own feet; the ideal power which
+inhabits them can never be represented to my mind, unless when my
+imagination combines at random the fantastic colors which it is always
+forced to employ in the world on which I am. In this case, I shall
+merely reproduce in idea what my senses have previously actually
+perceived; and that God, which I, as it were, compel myself to
+distinguish from nature, and to place beyond her circuit, will ever, in
+opposition to all my efforts, necessarily withdraw within it.
+
+"It will be observed and insisted upon by some that if a statue or a
+watch were shown to a savage who had never seen them, he would
+inevitably acknowledge that they were the productions of some
+intelligent agent, more powerful and ingenious than himself; and hence
+it will be inferred that we are equally bound to acknowledge that the
+machine of the universe, that man, that the phenomena of nature, are the
+productions of an agent, whose intelligence and power are far superior
+to our own.
+
+"I answer, in the first place, that we cannot possibly doubt either the
+great power or the great skill of nature; we admire her skill as often
+as we are surprised by the extended, varied and complicated effects
+which we find in those of her works that we take the pains to
+investigate; she is not, however, either more or less skilful in any one
+of her works than in the rest. We no more comprehend how she could
+produce a stone or a piece of metal than how she could produce a head
+organized like that of Newton. We call that man skilful who can perform
+things which we are unable to perform ourselves. Nature can perform
+everything; and when anything exists, it is a proof that she was able to
+make it. Thus, it is only in relation to ourselves that we ever judge
+nature to be skilful; we compare it in those cases with ourselves; and,
+as we possess a quality which we call intelligence, by the aid of which
+we produce works, in which we display our skill, we thence conclude that
+the works of nature, which must excite our astonishment and admiration,
+are not in fact hers, but the productions of an artificer, intelligent
+like ourselves, and whose intelligence we proportion, in our minds, to
+the degree of astonishment excited in us by his works; that is, in fact,
+to our own weakness and ignorance."
+
+See the reply to these arguments under the articles on "Atheism" and
+"God," and in the following section, written long before the "System of
+Nature."
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+If a clock is not made in order to tell the time of the day, I will then
+admit that final causes are nothing but chimeras, and be content to go
+by the name of a final-cause-finder--in plain language, fool--to the end
+of my life.
+
+All the parts, however, of that great machine, the world, seem made for
+one another. Some philosophers affect to deride final causes, which were
+rejected, they tell us, by Epicurus and Lucretius. But it seems to me
+that Epicurus and Lucretius rather merit the derision. They tell you
+that the eye is not made to see; but that, since it was found out that
+eyes were capable of being used for that purpose, to that purpose they
+have been applied. According to them, the mouth is not formed to speak
+and eat, nor the stomach to digest, nor the heart to receive the blood
+from the veins and impel it through the arteries, nor the feet to walk,
+nor the ears to hear. Yet, at the same time, these very shrewd and
+consistent persons admitted that tailors made garments to clothe them,
+and masons built houses to lodge them; and thus ventured to deny
+nature--the great existence, the universal intelligence--what they
+conceded to the most insignificant artificers employed by themselves.
+
+The doctrine of final causes ought certainly to be preserved from being
+abused. We have already remarked that M. le Prieur, in the "Spectator of
+Nature," contends in vain that the tides were attached to the ocean to
+enable ships to enter more easily into their ports, and to preserve the
+water from corruption; he might just as probably and successfully have
+urged that legs were made to wear boots, and noses to bear spectacles.
+
+In order to satisfy ourselves of the truth of a final cause, in any
+particular instance, it is necessary that the effect produced should be
+uniform and invariably in time and place. Ships have not existed in all
+times and upon all seas; accordingly, it cannot be said that the ocean
+was made for ships. It is impossible not to perceive how ridiculous it
+would be to maintain that nature had toiled on from the very beginning
+of time to adjust herself to the inventions of our fortuitous and
+arbitrary arts, all of which are of so late a date in their discovery;
+but it is perfectly clear that if noses were not made for spectacles,
+they were made for smelling, and there have been noses ever since there
+were men. In the same manner, hands, instead of being bestowed for the
+sake of gloves, are visibly destined for all those uses to which the
+metacarpus, the phalanges of the fingers, and the movements of the
+circular muscle of the wrist, render them applicable by us. Cicero, who
+doubted everything else, had no doubt about final causes.
+
+It appears particularly difficult to suppose that those parts of the
+human frame by which the perpetuation of the species is conducted should
+not, in fact, have been intended and destined for that purpose, from
+their mechanism so truly admirable, and the sensation which nature has
+connected with it more admirable still. Epicurus would be at least
+obliged to admit that pleasure is divine, and that that pleasure is a
+final cause, in consequence of which beings, endowed with sensibility,
+but who could never have communicated it to themselves, have been
+incessantly introduced into the world as others have passed away from
+it.
+
+This philosopher, Epicurus, was a great man for the age in which he
+lived. He saw that Descartes denied what Gassendi affirmed and what
+Newton demonstrated--that motion cannot exist without a vacuum. He
+conceived the necessity of atoms to serve as constituent parts of
+invariable species. These are philosophical ideas. Nothing, however,
+was more respectable than the morality of genuine Epicureans; it
+consisted in sequestration from public affairs, which are incompatible
+with wisdom, and in friendship, without which life is but a burden. But
+as to the rest of the philosophy of Epicurus, it appears not to be more
+admissible than the grooved or tubular matter of Descartes. It is, as it
+appears to me, wilfully to shut the eyes and the understanding, and to
+maintain that there is no design in nature; and if there is design,
+there is an intelligent cause--there exists a God.
+
+Some point us to the irregularities of our globe, the volcanoes, the
+plains of moving sand, some small mountains swallowed up in the ocean,
+others raised by earthquakes, etc. But does it follow from the naves of
+your chariot wheel taking fire, that your chariot was not made expressly
+for the purpose of conveying you from one place to another?
+
+The chains of mountains which crown both hemispheres, and more than six
+hundred rivers which flow from the foot of these rocks towards the sea;
+the various streams that swell these rivers in their courses, after
+fertilizing the fields through which they pass; the innumerable
+fountains which spring from the same source, which supply necessary
+refreshment, and growth, and beauty to animal and vegetable life; all
+this appears no more to result from a fortuitous concourse and an
+obliquity of atoms, than the retina which receives the rays of light, or
+the crystalline humor which refracts it, or the drum of the ear which
+admits sound, or the circulation of the blood in our veins, the systole
+and diastole of the heart, the regulating principle of the machine of
+life.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+It would appear that a man must be supposed to have lost his senses
+before he can deny that stomachs are made for digestion, eyes to see,
+and ears to hear.
+
+On the other hand, a man must have a singular partiality for final
+causes, to assert that stone was made for building houses, and that
+silkworms are produced in China that we may wear satins in Europe.
+
+But, it is urged, if God has evidently done one thing by design, he has
+then done all things by design. It is ridiculous to admit Providence in
+the one case and to deny it in the others. Everything that is done was
+foreseen, was arranged. There is no arrangement without an object, no
+effect without a cause; all, therefore, is equally the result, the
+product of the final cause; it is, therefore, as correct to say that
+noses were made to bear spectacles, and fingers to be adorned with
+rings, as to say that the ears were formed to hear sounds, the eyes to
+receive light.
+
+All that this objection amounts to, in my opinion, is that everything is
+the result, nearer or more remote, of a general final cause; that
+everything is the consequence of eternal laws. When the effects are
+invariably the same in all times and places, and when these uniform
+effects are independent of the beings to which they attach, then there
+is visibly a final cause.
+
+All animals have eyes and see; all have ears and hear; all have mouths
+with which they eat; stomachs, or something similar, by which they
+digest their food; all have suitable means for expelling the faeces; all
+have the organs requisite for the continuation of their species; and
+these natural gifts perform their regular course and process without any
+application or intermixture of art. Here are final causes clearly
+established; and to deny a truth so universal would be a perversion of
+the faculty of reason.
+
+But stones, in all times and places, do not constitute the materials of
+buildings. All noses do not bear spectacles; all fingers do not carry a
+ring; all legs are not covered with silk stockings. A silkworm,
+therefore, is not made to cover my legs, exactly as your mouth is made
+for eating, and another part of your person for the "garderobe." There
+are, therefore, we see, immediate effects produced from final causes,
+and effects of a very numerous description, which are remote productions
+from those causes.
+
+Everything belonging to nature is uniform, immutable, and the immediate
+work of its author. It is he who has established the laws by which the
+moon contributes three-fourths to the cause of the flux and reflux of
+the ocean, and the sun the remaining fourth. It is he who has given a
+rotatory motion to the sun, in consequence of which that orb
+communicates its rays of light in the short space of seven minutes and a
+half to the eyes of men, crocodiles, and cats.
+
+But if, after a course of ages, we started the inventions of shears and
+spits, to clip the wool of sheep with the one, and with the other to
+roast in order to eat them, what else can be inferred from such
+circumstances, but that God formed us in such a manner that, at some
+time or other, we could not avoid becoming ingenious and carnivorous?
+
+Sheep, undoubtedly, were not made expressly to be roasted and eaten,
+since many nations abstain from such food with horror. Mankind are not
+created essentially to massacre one another, since the Brahmins, and the
+respectable primitives called Quakers, kill no one. But the clay out of
+which we are kneaded frequently produces massacres, as it produces
+calumnies, vanities, persecutions, and impertinences. It is not
+precisely that the formation of man is the final cause of our madnesses
+and follies, for a final cause is universal, and invariable in every age
+and place; but the horrors and absurdities of the human race are not at
+all the less included in the eternal order of things. When we thresh our
+corn, the flail is the final cause of the separation of the grain. But
+if that flail, while threshing my grain, crushes to death a thousand
+insects, that occurs not by an express and determinate act of my will,
+nor, on the other hand, is it by mere chance; the insects were, on this
+occasion, actually under my flail, and could not but be there.
+
+It is a consequence of the nature of things that a man should be
+ambitious; that he should enroll and discipline a number of other men;
+that he should be a conqueror, or that he should be defeated; but it can
+never be said that the man was created by God to be killed in war.
+
+The organs with which nature has supplied us cannot always be final
+causes in action. The eyes which are bestowed for seeing are not
+constantly open. Every sense has its season for repose. There are some
+senses that are even made no use of. An imbecile and wretched female,
+for example, shut up in a cloister at the age of fourteen years, mars
+one of the final causes of her existence; but the cause, nevertheless,
+equally exists, and whenever it is free it will operate.
+
+
+
+
+FINESSE, FINENESS, ETC.
+
+_Of the Different Significations of the Word._
+
+
+Fineness either in its proper or its figurative sense does not signify
+either light, slender, fine, or of a rare thin texture; this word
+expresses something delicate and finished. Light cloth, soft linen, thin
+lace, or slender galloon, are not always fine.
+
+This word has a relation to the verb "to finish," whence come the
+finishings of art; thus, we say, the finishings of Vanderwerff's pencil
+or of Mieris; we say, a fine horse, fine gold, a fine diamond. A fine
+horse is opposed to a clumsy one; the fine diamond to a false one; fine
+or refined gold to gold mixed with alloy.
+
+Fineness is generally applied to delicate things and lightness of
+manufacture. Although we say a fine horse, we seldom say, "the fineness
+of a horse." We speak of the fineness of hair, lace, or stuff. When by
+this word we should express the fault or wrong use of anything, we add
+the adverb "too"; as--This thread is broken, it was too fine; this stuff
+is too fine for the season.
+
+Fineness or finesse, in a figurative sense, applies to conduct, speech,
+and works of mind. In conduct, finesse always expresses, as in the arts,
+something delicate or subtile; it may sometimes exist without ability,
+but it is very rarely unaccompanied by a little deception; politics
+admit it, and society reproves it.
+
+Finesse is not exactly subtlety; we draw a person into a snare with
+finesse; we escape from it with subtlety. We act with finesse, and we
+play a subtle trick. Distrust is inspired by an unsparing use of
+finesse; yet we almost always deceive ourselves if we too generally
+suspect it.
+
+Finesse, in works of wit, as in conversation, consists in the art of not
+expressing a thought clearly, but leaving it so as to be easily
+perceived. It is an enigma to which people of sense readily find the
+solution.
+
+A chancellor one day offering his protection to parliament, the first
+president turning towards the assembly, said: "Gentlemen, thank the
+chancellor; he has given us more than we demanded of him"--a very witty
+reproof.
+
+Finesse, in conversation and writing, differs from delicacy; the first
+applies equally to piquant and agreeable things, even to blame and
+praise; and still more to indecencies, over which a veil is drawn,
+through which we cannot penetrate without a blush. Bold things may be
+said with finesse.
+
+Delicacy expresses soft and agreeable sentiments and ingenious praise;
+thus finesse belongs more to epigram, and delicacy to madrigal. It is
+delicacy which enters into a lover's jealousies, and not finesse.
+
+The praises given to Louis XIV. by Despreaux are not always equally
+delicate; satires are not always sufficiently ingenious in the way of
+finesse. When Iphigenia, in Racine, has received from her father the
+order never to see Achilles more, she cries: "_Dieux plus doux, vous
+n'aviez demande que ma vie!_"--"More gentle gods, you only ask my life!"
+The true character of this partakes rather of delicacy than of finesse.
+
+
+
+
+FIRE.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+Is fire anything more than an element which lights, warms, and burns us?
+Is not light always fire, though fire is not always light? And is not
+Boerhaave in the right?
+
+Is not the purest fire extracted from our combustibles, always gross,
+and partaking of the bodies consumed, and very different from elementary
+fire? How is fire distributed throughout nature, of which it is the
+soul?
+
+     _Ignis ubique latet, naturam amplectitur omnem,_
+     _Cuncta parit, renovat, dividit, unit, alit._
+
+Why did Newton, in speaking of rays of light, always say, "_De natura
+radiorum lucis, utrum corpora sint necne non disputamus_"; without
+examining whether they were bodies or not?
+
+Did he only speak geometrically? In that case, this doubt was useless.
+It is evident that he doubted of the nature of elementary fire, and
+doubted with reason.
+
+Is elementary fire a body like others, as earth and water? If it was a
+body of this kind, would it not gravitate like all other matter? Would
+it escape from the luminous body in the right line? Would it have a
+uniform progression? And why does light never move out of a right line
+when it is unimpeded in its rapid course?
+
+May not elementary fire have properties of matter little known to us,
+and properties of substance entirely so? May it not be a medium between
+matter and substances of another kind? And who can say that there are
+not a million of these substances? I do not say that there are, but I
+say it is not proved that there may not be.
+
+It was very difficult to believe about a hundred years ago that bodies
+acted upon one another, not only without touching, and without emission,
+but at great distances; it is, however, found to be true, and is no
+longer doubted. At present, it is difficult to believe that the rays of
+the sun are penetrable by each other, but who knows what may happen to
+prove it?
+
+However that may be, I wish, for the novelty of the thing, that this
+incomprehensible penetrability could be admitted. Light has something so
+divine that we should endeavor to make it a step to the discovery of
+substances still more pure.
+
+Come to my aid, Empedocles and Democritus; come and admire the wonders
+of electricity; see if the sparks which traverse a thousand bodies in
+the twinkling of an eye are of ordinary matter; judge if elementary fire
+does not contract the heart, and communicate that warmth which gives
+life! Judge if this element is not the source of all sensation, and if
+sensation is not the origin of thought; though ignorant and insolent
+pedants have condemned the proposition, as one which should be
+persecuted.
+
+Tell me, if the Supreme Being, who presides over all nature, cannot
+forever preserve these elementary atoms which he has so rarely endowed?
+_"Igneus est ollis vigor et coelestis origo._"
+
+The celebrated Le Cat calls this vivifying fluid "an amphibious being,
+endowed by its author with a superior refinement which links it to
+immaterial beings, and thereby ennobles and elevates it into that medium
+nature which we recognize, and which is the source of all its
+properties."
+
+You are of the opinion of Le Cat? I would be so too if I could; but
+there are so many fools and villains that I dare not. I can only think
+quietly in my own way at Mount Krapak. Let others think as well as they
+are allowed to think, whether at Salamanca or Bergamo.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+_What is Understood by Fire Used Figuratively._
+
+Fire, particularly in poetry, often signifies love, and is employed more
+elegantly in the plural than in the singular. Corneille often says "_un
+beau feu_" for a virtuous and noble love. A man has fire in his
+conversation; that does not mean that he has brilliant and enlightened
+ideas, but lively expressions animated by action.
+
+Fire in writing does not necessarily imply lightness and beauty, but
+vivacity, multiplied figures, and spontaneous ideas. Fire is a merit in
+speech and writing only when it is well managed. It is said that poets
+are animated with a divine fire when they are sublime; genius cannot
+exist without fire, but fire may be possessed without genius.
+
+
+
+
+FIRMNESS.
+
+
+Firmness comes from firm, and has a different signification from
+solidity and hardness; a squeezed cloth, a beaten negro, have firmness
+without being hard or solid.
+
+It must always be remembered that modifications of the soul can only be
+expressed by physical images; we say firmness of soul, and of mind,
+which does not signify that they are harder or more solid than usual.
+
+Firmness is the exercise of mental courage; it means a decided
+resolution; while obstinacy, on the contrary, signifies blindness. Those
+who praise the firmness of Tacitus are not so much in the wrong as P.
+Bouhours pretends; it is an accidental ill-chosen term, which expresses
+energy and strength of thought and of style. It may be said that La
+Bruyere has a firm style, and that many other writers have only a hard
+one.
+
+
+
+
+FLATTERY.
+
+
+I find not one monument of flattery in remote antiquity; there is no
+flattery in Hesiod--none in Homer. Their stories are not addressed to a
+Greek, elevated to some dignity, nor to his lady; as each canto of
+Thomson's "Seasons" is dedicated to some person of rank, or as so many
+forgotten epistles in verse have been dedicated, in England, to
+gentlemen or ladies of quality, with a brief eulogy, and the arms of
+the patron or patroness placed at the head of the work.
+
+Nor is there any flattery in Demosthenes. This way of asking alms
+harmoniously began, if I mistake not, with Pindar. No hand can be
+stretched out more emphatically.
+
+It appears to me that among the Romans great flattery is to be dated
+from the time of Augustus. Julius Caesar had scarcely time to be
+flattered. There is not, extant, any dedicatory epistle to Sulla,
+Marius, or Carbo, nor to their wives, or their mistresses. I can well
+believe that very bad verses were presented to Lucullus and Pompey; but,
+thank God, we do not have them.
+
+It is a great spectacle to behold Cicero equal in dignity to Caesar,
+speaking before him as advocate for a king of Bithynia and Lesser
+Armenia, named Deiotarus, accused of laying ambuscades for him, and even
+designing to assassinate him. Cicero begins with acknowledging that he
+is disconcerted in his presence. He calls him the vanquisher of the
+world--"_victorem orbis terrarum_." He flatters him; but this adulation
+does not yet amount to baseness; some sense of shame still remains.
+
+But with Augustus there are no longer any bounds; the senate decrees his
+apotheosis during his lifetime. Under the succeeding emperors this
+flattery becomes the ordinary tribute, and is no longer anything more
+than a style. It is impossible to flatter any one, when the most
+extravagant adulation has become the ordinary currency.
+
+In Europe, we have had no great monuments of flattery before Louis XIV.
+His father, Louis XIII., had very little incense offered him. We find no
+mention of him, except in one or two of Malherbe's odes. There, indeed,
+according to custom, he is called "thou greatest of kings"--as the
+Spanish poets say to the king of Spain, and the English poets (laureate)
+to the king of England; but the better part of the poet's praises is
+bestowed on Cardinal Richelieu, whose soul is great and fearless; who
+practises so well the healing art of government, and who knows how to
+cure all our evils:
+
+     _Dont l'ame toute grande est une ame hardie,_
+     _Qui pratique si bien l'art de nous secourir,_
+     _Que, pourvu qu'il soit cru, nous n'avons maladie,_
+     _Qu'il ne sache guerir._
+
+Upon Louis XIV. flattery came in a deluge. But he was not like the man
+said to have been smothered by the rose leaves heaped upon him; on the
+contrary, he thrived the more.
+
+Flattery, when it has some plausible pretext, may not be so pernicious
+as it has been thought; it sometimes encourages to great acts; but its
+excess is vicious, like the excess of satire. La Fontaine says, and
+pretends to say it after AEsop:
+
+     _On ne peut trop louer trois sortes de personnes;_
+     _Les dieux, sa maitresse, et son roi._
+     _AEsope le disait; j'y souscris quant a moi;_
+     _Ces sont maximes toujours bonnes._
+
+     Your flattery to three sorts of folks apply:--
+     You cannot say too civil things
+     To gods, to mistresses, and kings;
+     So honest AEsop said--and so say I.
+
+Honest AEsop said no such thing; nor do we find that he flattered any
+king, or any concubine. It must not be thought that kings are in reality
+flattered by all the flatteries that are heaped upon them; for the
+greater number never reach them.
+
+One common folly of orators is that of exhausting themselves in praising
+some prince who will never hear of their praises. But what is most
+lamentable of all is that Ovid should have praised Augustus even while
+he was dating "_de Ponto_."
+
+The perfection of the ridiculous might be found in the compliments which
+preachers address to kings, when they have the happiness of exhibiting
+before their majesties.--"To the reverend Father Gaillard, preacher to
+the king." Ah! most reverend father, do you preach only for the king?
+Are you like the monkey at the fair, which leaps "only for the king?"
+
+
+
+
+FORCE (PHYSICAL).
+
+
+What is "force?" Where does it reside? Whence does it come? Does it
+perish? Or is it ever the same?
+
+It has pleased us to denominate "force" that weight which one body
+exercises upon another. Here is a ball of two hundred pounds' weight on
+this floor; it presses the floor, you say, with a force of two hundred
+pounds. And this you call a "dead force." But are not these words
+"dead" and "force" a little contradictory? Might we not as well say
+"dead alive"--yes and no at once?
+
+This ball "weighs." Whence comes this "weight?" and is this weight a
+"force?" If the ball were not impeded, would it go directly to the
+centre of the earth? Whence has it this incomprehensible property?
+
+It is supported by my floor; and you freely give to my floor the "_vis
+inertiae_"--"inertiae" signifying "inactivity," "impotence." Now is it not
+singular that "impotence" should be denominated "force?"
+
+What is the living force which acts in your arm and your leg? What is
+the source of it? How can it be supposed that this force exists when you
+are dead? Does it go and take up its abode elsewhere, as a man goes to
+another house when his own is in ruins?
+
+How can it have been said that there is always the same force in nature?
+There must, then, have been always the same number of men, or of active
+beings equivalent to men. Why does a body in motion communicate its
+force to another body with which it comes in contact?
+
+These are questions which neither geometry, nor mechanics, nor
+metaphysics can answer. Would you arrive at the first principle of the
+force of bodies, and of motion, you must ascend to a still superior
+principle. Why is there "anything?"
+
+
+
+
+FORCE--STRENGTH.
+
+
+These words have been transplanted from simple to figurative speech.
+They are applied to all the parts of the body that are in motion, in
+action--the force of the heart, which some have made four hundred
+pounds, and some three ounces; the force of the viscera, the lungs, the
+voice; the force of the arm.
+
+The metaphor which has transported these words into morals has made them
+express a cardinal virtue. Strength, in this sense, is the courage to
+support adversity, and to undertake virtuous and difficult actions; it
+is the "_animi fortitudo_."
+
+The strength of the mind is penetration and depth--"_ingenii vis_."
+Nature gives it as she gives that of the body; moderate labor increases
+and excessive labor diminishes it.
+
+The force of an argument consists in a clear exposition of
+clearly-exhibited proofs, and a just conclusion; with mathematical
+theorems it has nothing to do; because the evidence of a demonstration
+can be made neither more nor less; only it may be arrived at by a longer
+or a shorter path--a simpler or more complicated method. It is in
+doubtful questions that the force of reasoning is truly applicable.
+
+The force of eloquence is not merely a train of just and vigorous
+reasoning, which is not incompatible with dryness; this force, requires
+floridity, striking images, and energetic expressions. Thus it has been
+said, that the sermons of Bourdaloue have force, those of Massillon
+more elegance. Verses may have strength, and want every other beauty.
+The strength of a line in our language consists principally in saying
+something in each hemistich.
+
+Strength in painting is the expression of the muscles, which, by feeling
+touches, are made to appear under the flesh that covers them. There is
+too much strength when the muscles are too strongly articulated. The
+attitudes of the combatants have great strength in the battles of
+Constantine, drawn by Raphael and Julio Romano; and in those of Caesar,
+painted by Lebrun. Inordinate strength is harsh in painting and
+bombastic in poetry.
+
+Some philosophers have asserted that force is a property inherent in
+matter; that each invisible particle, or rather _monad_, is endowed with
+an active force; but it would be as difficult to demonstrate this
+assertion as it would be to prove that whiteness is a quality inherent
+in matter, as the Trevoux dictionary says in the article "Inherent."
+
+The strength of every animal has arrived at the highest when the animal
+has attained its full growth. It decreases when the muscles no longer
+receive the same quantity of nourishment: and this quantity ceases to be
+the same when the animal spirits no longer communicate to the muscles
+their accustomed motion. It is probable that the animal spirits are of
+fire, inasmuch as old men want motion and strength in proportion as they
+want warmth.
+
+
+
+
+FRANCHISE.
+
+
+A word which always gives an idea of liberty in whatever sense it is
+taken; a word derived from the Franks, who were always free. It is so
+ancient, that when the Cid besieged and took Toledo, in the eleventh
+century, franchies or franchises were given to all the French who went
+on this expedition, and who established themselves at Toledo. All walled
+cities had franchises, liberties, and privileges, even in the greatest
+anarchy of feudal power. In all countries possessing assemblies or
+states, the sovereign swore, on his accession, to guard their liberties.
+
+This name, which has been given generally to the rights of the people,
+to immunities, and to sanctuaries or asylums, has been more particularly
+applied to the quarters of the ambassadors of the court of Rome. It was
+a plot of ground around their palaces, which was larger or smaller
+according to the will of the ambassador. The ground was an asylum for
+criminals, who could not be there pursued. This franchise was
+restricted, under Innocent XI. to the inside of their palaces. Churches
+and convents had the same privileges in Italy, but not in other states.
+There are in Paris several places of sanctuary, in which debtors cannot
+be seized for their debts by common justice, and where mechanics can
+pursue their trades without being freemen. Mechanics have this privilege
+in the Faubourg St. Antoine, but it is not an asylum like the Temple.
+
+The word "franchise," which usually expresses the liberties of a nation,
+city, or person, is sometimes used to signify liberty of speech, of
+counsel, or of a law proceeding; but there is a great difference between
+speaking with frankness and speaking with liberty. In a speech to a
+superior, liberty is a studied or excessive boldness--frankness
+outstepping its just bounds. To speak with liberty is to speak without
+fear; to speak with frankness is to conduct yourself openly and nobly.
+To speak with too much liberty is to become audacious; to speak with too
+much frankness is to be too open-hearted.
+
+
+
+
+FRANCIS XAVIER.
+
+
+It would not be amiss to know something true concerning the celebrated
+Francis Xavero, whom we call Xavier, surnamed the Apostle of the Indies.
+Many people still imagine that he established Christianty along the
+whole southern coast of India, in a score of islands, and above all in
+Japan. But thirty years ago, even a doubt on the subject was hardly to
+be tolerated in Europe. The Jesuits have not hesitated to compare him to
+St. Paul. His travels and miracles had been written in part by
+Tursellinus and Orlandini, by Levena, and by Partoli, all Jesuits, but
+very little known in France; and the less people were acquainted with
+the details the greater was his reputation.
+
+When the Jesuit Bouhours composed his history, he (Bouhours) was
+considered as a man of very enlightened mind, and was living in the best
+company in Paris; I do not mean the company of Jesus, but that of men of
+the world the most distinguished for intellect and knowledge. No one
+wrote in a purer or more unaffected style; it was even proposed in the
+French Academy that it should trespass against the rules of its
+institution, by receiving Father Bouhours into its body. He had another
+great advantage in the influence of his order, which then, by an almost
+inconceivable illusion, governed all Catholic princes.
+
+Sound criticism was, it is true, beginning to rear its head; but its
+progress was slow: men were, in general, more anxious to write ably than
+to write what was true.
+
+Bouhours wrote the lives of St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier almost
+without encountering a single objection. Even his comparison of St.
+Ignatius to Caesar, and Xavier to Alexander, passed without
+animadversion; it was tolerated as a flower of rhetoric.
+
+I have seen in the Jesuit's college, Rue St. Jacques, a picture twelve
+feet long and twelve high, representing Ignatius and Xavier ascending to
+heaven, each in a magnificent chariot drawn by four milk-white horses;
+and above, the Eternal Father, adorned with a fine white beard
+descending to His waist, with Jesus and the Virgin beside him; the Holy
+Ghost beneath them, in the form of a dove; and angels joining their
+hands, and bending down to receive Father Ignatius and Father Xavier.
+
+Had anyone publicly made a jest of this picture, the reverend Father La
+Chaise, confessor to the king, would infallibly have had the
+sacrilegious scoffer honored with a _lettre de cachet_.
+
+It cannot be denied that Francis Xavier is comparable to Alexander,
+inasmuch as they both went to India--so is Ignatius to Caesar, both
+having been in Gaul. But Xavier, the vanquisher of the devil, went far
+beyond Alexander, the conqueror of Darius. How gratifying it is to see
+him going, in the capacity of a volunteer converter, from Spain into
+France, from France to Rome, from Rome to Lisbon, and from Lisbon to
+Mozambique, after making the tour of Africa. He stays a long time at
+Mozambique, where he receives from God the gift of prophecy: he then
+proceeds to Melinda, where he disputes on the Koran with the Mahometans,
+who doubtless understand his religion as well as he understands theirs,
+and where he even finds caciques, although they are to be found nowhere
+but in America. The Portuguese vessel arrives at the island of Zocotora,
+which is unquestionably that of the Amazons: there he converts all the
+islanders, and builds a church. Thence he reaches Goa, where he finds a
+pillar on which St. Thomas had engraved, that one day St. Xavier should
+come and re-establish the Christian religion, which had flourished of
+old in India. Xavier has no difficulty whatever in perusing the ancient
+characters, whether Indian or Hebrew, in which this prophecy is
+expressed. He forthwith takes up a hand-bell, assembles all the little
+boys around him, explains to them the creed, and baptizes them--but his
+great delight was to marry the Indians to their mistresses.
+
+From Goa he speeds to Cape Comorin, to the fishing coast, to the kingdom
+of Travancore. His greatest anxiety, on arriving in any country, is to
+quit it. He embarks in the first Portuguese ship he finds, whithersoever
+it is bound, it matters not to Xavier; provided only that he is
+travelling somewhere, he is content. He is received through charity, and
+returns two or three times to Goa, to Cochin, to Cori, to Negapatam, to
+Meliapour. A vessel is departing for Malacca, and Xavier accordingly
+takes his passage for Malacca, in great despair that he has not yet had
+an opportunity of seeing Siam, Pegu, and Tonquin. We find him in the
+island of Sumatra, at Borneo, at Macassar, in the Moluccas, and
+especially at Ternate and Amboyna. The king of Ternate had, in his
+immense seraglio, a hundred women in the capacity of wives, and seven or
+eight hundred in that of concubines. The first thing Xavier does is to
+turn them all out. Please to observe that the island of Ternate is two
+leagues across.
+
+Thence finding another Portugese vessel bound for Ceylon, he returns to
+Ceylon, where he makes various excursions to Goa and to Cochin. The
+Portuguese were already trading to Japan. A ship sails for that country:
+Xavier takes care to embark in it, and visits all the Japan islands. In
+short (says the Jesuit Bouhours), the whole length of Xavier's routes,
+joined together, would reach several times around the globe.
+
+Be it observed, that he set out on his travels in 1542, and died in
+1552. If he had time to learn the languages of all the nations he
+visited, it was no trifling miracle: if he had the gift of tongues, it
+was a greater miracle still. But unfortunately, in several of his
+letters, he says that he is obliged to employ an interpreter; and in
+others he acknowledges that he finds extreme difficulty in learning the
+Japanese language, which he cannot pronounce.
+
+The Jesuit Bouhours, in giving some of his letters, has no doubt that
+"St. Francis Xavier had the gift of tongues"; but he acknowledges that
+"he had it not always." "He had it," says he, "on several occasions;
+for, without having learned the Chinese tongue, he preached to the
+Chinese every morning at Amanguchi, which is the capital of a province
+in Japan."
+
+He must have been perfectly acquainted with all the languages of the
+East; for he made songs in them of the Paternoster, Ave-Maria, and
+Credo, for the instruction of the little boys and girls.
+
+But the best of all is, that this man, who had occasion for a dragoman,
+spoke every tongue at once, like the apostles; and when he spoke
+Portuguese, in which language Bouhours acknowledges that the saint
+explained himself very ill, the Indians, the Chinese, the Japanese, the
+inhabitants of Ceylon and of Sumatra, all understood him perfectly.
+
+One day in particular, when he was preaching on the immateriality of the
+soul, the motion of the planets, the eclipses of the sun and moon, the
+rainbow, sin and grace, paradise and purgatory, he made himself
+understood to twenty persons of different nations.
+
+Is it asked how such a man could make so many converts in Japan? The
+simple answer is that he did not make any; but other Jesuits, who staid
+a long time in the country, by favor of the treaties between the kings
+of Portugal and the emperors of Japan, converted so many people, that a
+civil war ensued, which is said to have cost the lives of nearly four
+hundred thousand men. This is the most noted prodigy that the
+missionaries have worked in Japan.
+
+But those of Francis Xavier are not without their merit. Among his host
+of miracles, we find no fewer than eight children raised from the dead.
+"Xavier's greatest miracle," says the Jesuit Bouhours, "was not his
+raising so many of the dead to life, but his not himself dying of
+fatigue."
+
+But the pleasantest of his miracles is, that having dropped his crucifix
+into the sea, near the island of Baranura, which I am inclined to think
+was the island of Barataria, a crab came, four-and-twenty hours after,
+bringing the cane between its claws.
+
+The most brilliant of all, and after which no other deserves to be
+related, is that in a storm which lasted three days, he was constantly
+in two ships, a hundred and fifty leagues apart, and served one of them
+as a pilot. The truth of this miracle was attested by all the
+passengers, who could neither deceive nor be deceived.
+
+Yet all this was written seriously and with success in the age of Louis
+XIV., in the age of the "Provincial Letters," of Racine's tragedies, of
+"Bayle's Dictionary," and of so many other learned works.
+
+It would appear to be a sort of miracle that a man of sense, like
+Bouhours, should have committed such a mass of extravagance to the
+press, if we did not know to what excesses men can be carried by the
+corporate spirit in general, and the monachal spirit in particular. We
+have more than two hundred volumes entirely in this taste, compiled by
+monks; but what is most to be lamented is, that the enemies of the monks
+also compile. They compile more agreeably, and are read. It is most
+deplorable that, in nineteen-twentieths of Europe, there is no longer
+that profound respect and just veneration for the monks which is still
+felt for them in some of the villages of Aragon and Calabria.
+
+The miracles of St. Francis Xavier, the achievements of Don Quixote,
+the Comic Romance, and the convulsionaries of St. Medard, have an equal
+claim on our admiration and reverence.
+
+After speaking of Francis Xavier it would be useless to discuss the
+history of the other Francises. If you would be instructed thoroughly,
+consult the conformities of St. Francis of Assisi.
+
+Since the fine history of St. Francis Xavier by the Jesuit Bouhours, we
+have had the history of St. Francis Regis by the Jesuit Daubenton,
+confessor to Philip V. of Spain: but this is small-beer after brandy. In
+the history of the blessed Regis, there is not even a single
+resuscitation.
+
+
+
+
+FRANKS--FRANCE--FRENCH
+
+
+Italy has always preserved its name, notwithstanding the pretended
+establishment of AEneas, which should have left some traces of the
+language, characters, and manners of Phrygia, if he ever came with
+Achates and so many others, into the province of Rome, then almost a
+desert. The Goths, Lombards, Franks, Allemani or Germans, who have by
+turns invaded Italy, have at least left it its name.
+
+The Tyrians, Africans, Romans, Vandals, Visigoths, and Saracens, have,
+one after the other, been masters of Spain, yet the name of Spain
+exists. Germany has also always preserved its own name; it has merely
+joined that of Allemagne to it, which appellation it did not receive
+from any conqueror.
+
+The Gauls are almost the only people in the west who have lost their
+name. This name was originally Walch or Welsh; the Romans always
+substituted a G for the W, which is barbarous: of "Welsh" they made
+Galli, Gallia. They distinguished the Celtic, the Belgic, and the
+Aquitanic Gaul, each of which spoke a different jargon.
+
+Who were, and whence came these Franks, who in such small numbers and
+little time possessed themselves of all the Gauls, which in ten years
+Caesar could not entirely reduce? I am reading an author who commences by
+these words: "The Franks from whom we descend." ... Ha! my friend, who
+has told you that you descend in a right line from a Frank? Clovodic,
+whom we call Clovis, probably had not more than twenty thousand men,
+badly clothed and armed, when he subjugated about eight or ten millions
+of Welsh or Gauls, held in servitude by three or four Roman legions. We
+have not a single family in France which can furnish, I do not say the
+least proof, but the least probability, that it had its origin from a
+Frank.
+
+When the pirates of the Baltic Sea came, to the number of seven or eight
+thousand, to give Normandy in fief, and Brittany in _arriere fief_, did
+they, leave any archives by which it may be seen whether they were the
+fathers of all the Normans of the present day?
+
+It has been a long time believed that the Franks came from the Trojans.
+Ammianus Marcellinus, who lived in the fourth century, says: "According
+to several ancient writers, troops of fugitive Trojans established
+themselves on the borders of the Rhine, then a desert." As to AEneas, he
+might easily have sought an asylum at the extremity of the
+Mediterranean, but Francus, the son of Hector, had too far to travel to
+go towards Duesseldorf, Worms, Solm, Ehrenbreitstein.
+
+Fredegarius doubts not that the Franks at first retired into Macedonia,
+and carried arms under Alexander, after having fought under Priam; on
+which alleged facts the monk Otfried compliments the emperor, Louis the
+German.
+
+The geographer of Ravenna, less fabulous, assigns the first habitation
+of the horde of Franks among the Cimbrians, beyond the Elbe, towards the
+Baltic Sea. These Franks might well be some remains of these barbarian
+Cimbri defeated by Marius; and the learned Leibnitz is of this opinion.
+
+It is very certain that, in the time of Constantine, beyond the Rhine,
+there were hordes of Franks or Sicambri, who lived by pillage. They
+assembled under bandit captains, chiefs whom historians have had the
+folly to call kings. Constantine himself pursued them to their haunts,
+caused several to be hanged, and others to be delivered to wild beasts,
+in the amphitheatre of Trier, for his amusement. Two of their pretended
+kings perished in this manner, at which the panegyrists of Constantine
+are in ecstasies.
+
+The Salic law, written, it is said, by these barbarians, is one of the
+absurd chimeras with which we have always been pestered. It would be
+very strange if the Franks had written such a considerable code in their
+marshes, and the French had not any written usages until the close of
+the reign of Charles VII. It might as well be said that the Algonquins
+and Chicachas had written laws. Men are never governed by authentic
+laws, consigned to public records, until they have been assembled into
+cities, and have a regular police, archives, and all that characterizes
+a civilized nation. When you find a code in a nation which was barbarous
+at the time it was written, who lived upon rapine and pillage, and which
+had not a walled town, you may be sure that this code is a pretended
+one, which has been made in much later times. Fallacies and suppositions
+never obliterate this truth from the minds of the wise.
+
+What is more ridiculous still, this Salic law has been given to us in
+Latin; as if savages, wandering beyond the Rhine, had learnt the Latin
+language. It is supposed to have been first digested by Clovis, and it
+ran thus: "While the illustrious nation of the Franks was still
+considered barbarous, the heads of this nation dictated the Salic law.
+They chose among themselves four chiefs, Visogast, Bodogast, Sologast,
+Vindogast"--taking, according to La Fontaine's fable, the names of
+places for those of men:
+
+     _Notre magot prit pour ce coup_
+     _Le nom d'un port pour un nom d'homme._
+
+These names are those of some Frank cantons in the province of Worms.
+Whatever may be the epoch in which the customs denominated the Salic law
+were constructed on an ancient tradition, it is very clear that the
+Franks were not great legislators.
+
+What is the original meaning of the word "Frank?" That is a question of
+which we know nothing, and which above a hundred authors have endeavored
+to find out. What is the meaning of Hun, Alan, Goth, Welsh, Picard? And
+what do these words signify?
+
+Were the armies of Clovis all composed of Franks? It does not appear so.
+Childeric the Frank had made inroads as far as Tournay. It is said that
+Clovis was the son of Childeric, and Queen Bazine, the wife of King
+Bazin. Now Bazin and Bazine are assuredly not German names, and we have
+never seen the least proof that Clovis was their son. All the German
+cantons elected their chiefs, and the province of Franks had no doubt
+elected Clovis as they had done his father. He made his expedition
+against the Gauls, as all the other barbarians had undertaken theirs
+against the Roman Empire.
+
+Do you really and truly believe that the Herulian Odo, surnamed Acer by
+the Romans, and known to us by the name of Odoacer, had only Herulians
+in his train, and that Genseric conducted Vandals alone into Africa? All
+the wretches without talent or profession, who have nothing to lose, do
+they not always join the first captain of robbers who raises the
+standard of destruction?
+
+As soon as Clovis had the least success, his troops were no doubt joined
+by all the Belgians who panted for booty; and this army is nevertheless
+called the army of Franks. The expedition is very easy. The Visigoths
+had already invaded one-third of Gaul, and the Burgundians another. The
+rest submitted to Clovis. The Franks divided the land of the vanquished,
+and the Welsh cultivated it.
+
+The word "Frank" originally signified a free possessor, while the others
+were slaves. Hence come the words "franchise," and "to enfranchise"--"I
+make you a Frank," "I render you a free man." Hence, _francalenus_,
+holding freely; _frank aleu_, _frank dad_, _frank chamen_, and so many
+other terms half Latin and half barbarian, which have so long composed
+the miserable patois spoken in France.
+
+Hence, also, a franc in gold or silver to express the money of the king
+of the Franks, which did not appear until a long time after, but which
+reminds us of the origin of the monarchy. We still say twenty francs,
+twenty livres, which signifies nothing in itself; it gives no idea of
+the weight or value of the money, being only a vague expression, by
+which ignorant people have been continually deceived, not knowing really
+how much they receive or how much they pay.
+
+Charlemagne did not consider himself as a Frank; he was born in
+Austrasia, and spoke the German language. He was of the family of
+Arnold, bishop of Metz, preceptor to Dagobert. Now it is not probable
+that a man chosen for a preceptor was a Frank. He made the greatest
+glory of the most profound ignorance, and was acquainted only with the
+profession of arms. But what gives most weight to the opinion that
+Charlemagne regarded the Franks as strangers to him is the fourth
+article of one of his capitularies on his farms. "If the Franks," said
+he, "commit any ravages on our possessions, let them be judged according
+to their laws."
+
+The Carlovingian race always passed for German: Pope Adrian IV., in his
+letter to the archbishops of Mentz, Cologne, and Trier, expresses
+himself in these remarkable terms: "The emperor was transferred from the
+Greeks to the Germans. Their king was not emperor until after he had
+been crowned by the pope.... all that the emperor possessed he held from
+us. And as Zacharius gave the Greek Empire to the Germans, we can give
+that of the Germans to the Greeks."
+
+However, France having been divided into eastern and western, and the
+eastern being Austrasia, this name of France prevailed so far, that even
+in the time of the Saxon emperors, the court of Constantinople always
+called them pretended Frank emperors, as may be seen in the letters of
+Bishop Luitgrand, sent from Rome to Constantinople.
+
+_Of the French Nation._
+
+When the Franks established themselves in the country of the first
+Welsh, which the Romans called Gallia, the nation was composed of
+ancient Celts or Gauls, subjugated by Caesar, Roman families who were
+established there, Germans who had already emigrated there, and finally
+of the Franks, who had rendered themselves masters of the country under
+their chief Clovis. While the monarchy existed, which united Gaul and
+Germany, all the people, from the source of the Weser to the seas of
+Gaul, bore the name of Franks. But when at the congress of Verdun, in
+843, under Charles the Bald, Germany and Gaul were separated, the name
+of Franks remained to the people of western France, which alone retained
+the name of France.
+
+The name of French was scarcely known until towards the tenth century.
+The foundation of the nation is of Gallic families, and traces of the
+character of the ancient Gauls have always existed.
+
+Indeed, every people has its character, as well as every man; and this
+character is generally formed of all the resemblances caused by nature
+and custom among the inhabitants of the varieties which distinguish
+them. Thus French character, genius, and wit, result from that which has
+been common to the different provinces in the kingdom. The people of
+Guienne and those of Normandy differ much; there is, however, found in
+them the French genius, which forms a nation of these different
+provinces, and distinguishes them from the Indians and Germans. Climate
+and soil evidently imprint unchangeable marks on men, as well as on
+animals and plants. Those which depend on government, religion, and
+education are different. That is the knot which explains how people have
+lost one part of their ancient character and preserved the other. A
+people who formerly conquered half the world are no longer recognized
+under sacerdotal government, but the seeds of their ancient greatness of
+soul still exist, though hidden beneath weakness.
+
+In the same manner the barbarous government of the Turks has enervated
+the Egyptians and the Greeks, without having been able to destroy the
+original character or temper of their minds.
+
+The present character of the French is the same as Caesar ascribed to the
+Gauls--prompt to resolve, ardent to combat, impetuous in attack, and
+easily discouraged. Caesar, Agatius, and others say, that of all the
+barbarians the Gauls were the most polished. They are still in the most
+civilized times the model of politeness to all their neighbors, though
+they occasionally discover the remains of their levity, petulance, and
+barbarity.
+
+The inhabitants of the coasts of France were always good seamen; the
+people of Guienne always compose the best infantry; "those who inhabit
+the provinces of Blois and Tours are not," says Tasso, "robust and
+indefatigable, but bland and gentle, like the land which they inhabit."
+
+     _.... Gente robusta, e faticosa,_
+     _La terra molle, e lieta, e dilettosa_
+     _Simili a se gli abitator, produce._
+
+But how can we reconcile the character of the Parisians of our day with
+that which the Emperor Julian, the first of princes and men after Marcus
+Aurelius, gave to the Parisians of his time?--"I love this people," says
+he in his "_Misopogon_," "because they are serious and severe like
+myself." This seriousness, which seems at present banished from an
+immense city become the centre of pleasure, then reigned in a little
+town destitute of amusements: in this respect the spirit of the
+Parisians has changed notwithstanding the climate.
+
+The affluence, opulence, and idleness of the people who may occupy
+themselves with pleasures and the arts, and not with the government,
+have given a new turn of mind to a whole nation.
+
+Further, how is it to be explained by what degrees this people have
+passed from the fierceness which characterized them in the time of King
+John, Charles VI., Charles IX., Henry III., and Henry IV., to the soft
+facility of manners for which they are now the admiration of Europe? It
+is that the storms of government and religion forced constitutional
+vivacity into paroxysms of faction and fanaticism; and that this same
+vivacity, which always will exist, has at present no object but the
+pleasures of society. The Parisian is impetuous in his pleasures as he
+formerly was in his fierceness. The original character which is caused
+by the climate is always the same. If at present he cultivates the
+arts, of which he was so long deprived, it is not that he has another
+mind, since he has not other organs; but it is that he has more relief,
+and this relief has not been created by himself, as by the Greeks and
+Florentines, among whom the arts flourished like the natural fruits of
+their soil. The Frenchman has only received them, but having happily
+cultivated and adopted these exotics, he has almost perfected them.
+
+The French government was originally that of all the northern
+nations--of all those whose policy was regulated in general assemblies
+of the nation. Kings were the chief of these assemblies; and this was
+almost the only administration of the French in the first two
+generations, before Charles the Simple.
+
+When the monarchy was dismembered, in the decline of the Carlovingian
+race, when the kingdom of Aries arose, and the provinces were occupied
+by vassals little dependent on the crown, the name of French was more
+restricted. Under Hugh Capet, Henry, and Philip, the people on this side
+the Loire only, were called French. There was then seen a great
+diversity of manners and of laws in the provinces held from the crown of
+France. The particular lords who became the masters of these provinces
+introduced new customs into their new states. A Breton and a Fleming
+have at present some conformity, notwithstanding the difference of
+their character, which they hold from the sun and the climate, but
+originally there was not the least similitude between them.
+
+It is only since the time of Francis I. that there has been any
+uniformity in manners and customs. The court, at this time, first began
+to serve for a model to the United Provinces; but in general,
+impetuosity in war, and a lax discipline, always formed the predominant
+character of the nation.
+
+Gallantry and politeness began to distinguish the French under Francis
+I. Manners became odious after the death of Francis II. However, in the
+midst of their horrors, there was always a politeness at court which the
+Germans and English endeavored to imitate. The rest of Europe, in aiming
+to resemble the French, were already jealous of them. A character in one
+of Shakespeare's comedies says that it is difficult to be polite without
+having been at the court of France.
+
+Though the nation has been taxed with frivolity by Caesar, and by all
+neighboring nations, yet this kingdom, so long dismembered, and so often
+ready to sink, is united and sustained principally by the wisdom of its
+negotiations, address, and patience; but above all, by the divisions of
+Germany and England. Brittany alone has been united to the kingdom by a
+marriage; Burgundy by right of fee, and by the ability of Louis XI.;
+Dauphiny by a donation, which was the fruit of policy; the county of
+Toulouse by a grant, maintained by an army; Provence by money. One
+treaty of peace has given Alsace, another Lorraine. The English have
+been driven from France, notwithstanding the most signal victories,
+because the kings of France have known how to temporize, and profit on
+all favorable occasions;--all which proves, that if the French youth are
+frivolous, the men of riper age, who govern it, have always been wise.
+Even at present the magistracy are severe in manners, as in the time of
+the Emperor Julian. If the first successes in Italy, in the time of
+Charles VIII., were owing to the warlike impetuosity of the nation, the
+disgraces which followed them were caused by the blindness of a court
+which was composed of young men alone. Francis I. was only unfortunate
+in his youth, when all was governed by favorites of his own age, and he
+rendered his kingdom more flourishing at a more advanced age.
+
+The French have always used the same arms as their neighbors, and have
+nearly the same discipline in war, but were the first who discarded the
+lance and pike. The battle of Ivry discouraged the use of lances, which
+were soon abolished, and under Louis XIV. pikes were also discontinued.
+They wore tunics and robes until the sixteenth century. Under Louis the
+Young they left off the custom of letting the beards grow, and retook to
+it under Francis I. Only under Louis XIV. did they begin to shave the
+entire face. Their dress is continually changing, and at the end of each
+century the French might take the portraits of their grandfathers for
+those of foreigners.
+
+
+
+
+FRAUD.
+
+_Whether pious Frauds should be practised upon the People._
+
+Once upon a time the fakir Bambabef met one of the disciples of
+Confutzee (whom we call Confucius), and this disciple was named Whang.
+Bambabef maintained that the people require to be deceived, and Whang
+asserted that we should never deceive any one. Here is a sketch of their
+dispute:
+
+BAMBABEF.--We must imitate the Supreme Being, who does not show us
+things as they are. He makes us see the sun with a diameter of two or
+three feet, although it is a million of times larger than the earth. He
+makes us see the moon and the stars affixed to one and the same blue
+surface, while they are at different elevations; he chooses that a
+square tower should appear round to us at a distance; he chooses that
+fire should appear to us to be hot, although it is neither hot nor cold;
+in short, he surrounds us with errors, suitable to our nature.
+
+WHANG.--What you call error is not so. The sun, such as it is, placed at
+millions of millions of lis from our globe, is not that which we see,
+that which we really perceive: we perceive only the sun which is painted
+on our retina, at a determinate angle. Our eyes were not given us to
+know sizes and distances: to know these, other aids and other
+operations are necessary.
+
+Bambabef seemed much astonished at this position. Whang, being very
+patient, explained to him the theory of optics; and Bambabef, having
+some conception, was convinced by the demonstrations of the disciple of
+Confucius. He then resumed in these terms:
+
+BAMBABEF.--If God does not, as I thought, deceive us by the ministry of
+our senses, you will at least acknowledge that our physicians are
+constantly deceiving children for their good. They tell them that they
+are giving them sugar, when in reality they are giving them rhubarb. I,
+a fakir, may then deceive the people, who are as ignorant as children.
+
+WHANG.--I have two sons; I have never deceived them. When they have been
+sick, I have said to them: "Here is a nauseous medicine; you must have
+the courage to take it; if it were pleasant, it would injure you." I
+have never suffered their nurses and tutors to make them afraid of
+ghosts, goblins, and witches. I have thereby made them wise and
+courageous citizens.
+
+BAMBABEF.--The people are not born so happily as your family.
+
+WHANG.--Men all nearly resemble one another; they are born with the same
+dispositions. Their nature ought not to be corrupted.
+
+BAMBABEF.--We teach them errors, I own; but it is for their good. We
+make them believe that if they do not buy our blessed nails, if they do
+not expiate their sins by giving us money, they will, in another life,
+become post-horses, dogs, or lizards. This intimidates them, and they
+become good people.
+
+WHANG.--Do you not see that you are perverting these poor folks? There
+are among them many more than you think there are who reason, who make a
+jest of your miracles and your superstitions; who see very clearly that
+they will not be turned into lizards, nor into post-horses. What is the
+consequence? They have good sense enough to perceive that you talk to
+them very impertinently; but they have not enough to elevate themselves
+to a religion pure and untrammelled by superstition like ours. Their
+passions make them think there is no religion, because the only one that
+is taught them is ridiculous: thus you become guilty of all the vices
+into which they plunge.
+
+BAMBABEF.--Not at all, for we teach them none but good morals.
+
+WHANG.--The people would stone you if you taught impure morals. Men are
+so constituted that they like very well to do evil, but they will not
+have it preached to them. But a wise morality should not be mixed up
+with absurd fables: for by these impostures, which you might do without,
+you weaken that morality which you are forced to teach.
+
+BAMBABEF.--What! do you think that truth can be taught to the people
+without the aid of fables?
+
+WHANG.--I firmly believe it. Our literati are made of the same stuff as
+our tailors, our weavers, and our laborers. They worship a creating,
+rewarding, and avenging God. They do not sully their worship by absurd
+systems, nor by extravagant ceremonies. There are much fewer crimes
+among the lettered than among the people; why should we not condescend
+to instruct our working classes as we do our literati?
+
+BAMBABEF.--That would be great folly; as well might you wish them to
+have the same politeness, or to be all jurisconsults. It is neither
+possible nor desirable. There must be white bread for the master, and
+brown for the servant.
+
+WHANG.--I own that men should not all have the same science; but there
+are things necessary to all. It is necessary that each one should be
+just; and the surest way of inspiring all men with justice is to inspire
+them with religion without superstition.
+
+BAMBABEF.--That is a fine project, but it is impracticable. Do you think
+it is sufficient for men to believe in a being that rewards and
+punishes? You have told me that the more acute among the people often
+revolt against fables. They will, in like manner, revolt against truth.
+They will say: Who shall assure me that God rewards and punishes? Where
+is the proof? What mission have you? What miracle have you worked that I
+should believe in you? They will laugh at you much more than at me.
+
+WHANG.--Your error is this: You imagine that men will spurn an idea that
+is honest, likely, and useful to every one; an idea which accords with
+human reason, because they reject things which are dishonest, absurd,
+useless, dangerous, and shocking to good sense.
+
+The people are much disposed to believe their magistrates; and when
+their magistrates propose to them only a rational belief, they embrace
+it willingly. There is no need of prodigies to believe in a just God,
+who reads the heart of man: this is an idea too natural, too necessary,
+to be combated. It is not necessary to know precisely how God rewards
+and punishes: to believe in His justice is enough. I assure you that I
+have seen whole towns with scarcely any other tenet; and that in them I
+have seen the most virtue.
+
+BAMBABEF.--Take heed what you say. You will find philosophers in these
+times, who will deny both pains and rewards.
+
+WHANG.--But you will acknowledge that these philosophers will much more
+strongly deny your inventions; so you will gain nothing by that.
+Supposing that there are philosophers who do not agree with my
+principles, they are not the less honest men; they do not the less
+cultivate virtue, which should be embraced through love, and not through
+fear. Moreover, I maintain that no philosopher can ever be assured that
+Providence does not reserve pains for the wicked, and rewards for the
+good. For, if they ask me who has told me that God punishes, I shall ask
+them who has told them that God does not punish. In short, I maintain
+that the philosophers, far from contradicting, will aid me. Will you be
+a philosopher?
+
+BAMBABEF.--With all my heart. But do not tell the fakirs. And let us,
+above all, remember that if a philosopher would be of service to human
+society, he must announce a God.
+
+
+
+
+FREE-WILL.
+
+
+From the commencement of the time in which men began to reason,
+philosophers have agitated this question, which theologians have
+rendered unintelligible by their absurd subtleties upon grace. Locke is
+perhaps the first who, without having the arrogance of announcing a
+general principle, has examined human nature by analysis. It has been
+disputed for three thousand years, whether the will is free or not;
+Locke shows that the question is absurd, and that liberty cannot belong
+to the will any more than color and motion.
+
+What is meant by the expression to be free? It signifies power, or
+rather it has no sense at all. To say that the will _can_, is in itself
+as ridiculous as if we said that it is yellow, or blue, round, or
+square.
+
+Will is will, and liberty is power. Let us gradually examine the chain
+of what passes within us, without confusing our minds with any
+scholastic terms, or antecedent principle.
+
+It is proposed to you to ride on horseback; it is absolutely necessary
+for you to make a choice, for it is very clear that you must either go
+or not; there is no medium, you must absolutely do the one or the other.
+So far it is demonstrated that the will is not free. You will get on
+horseback; why? Because I will to do so, an ignoramus will say. This
+reply is an absurdity; nothing can be done without reason or cause. Your
+will then is caused by what? The agreeable idea which is presented to
+your brain; the predominant, or determined idea; but, you will say,
+cannot I resist an idea which predominates over me? No, for what would
+be the cause of your resistance? An idea by which your will is swayed
+still more despotically.
+
+You receive your ideas, and, therefore, receive your will. You will then
+necessarily; consequently, the word "liberty" belongs not to will in any
+sense.
+
+You ask me how thought and will are formed within you? I answer that I
+know nothing about it. I no more know how ideas are created than I know
+how the world was formed. We are only allowed to grope in the dark in
+reference to all that inspires our incomprehensible machine.
+
+Will, then, is not a faculty which can be called free. "Free-will" is a
+word absolutely devoid of sense, and that which scholars have called
+"indifference," that is to say, will without cause, is a chimera
+unworthy to be combated.
+
+In what then consists liberty? In the power of doing what we will? I
+would go into my cabinet; the door is open, I am free to enter. But, say
+you, if the door is shut and I remain where I am, I remain freely. Let
+us explain ourselves--you then exercise the power that you possess of
+remaining; you possess this power, but not the power of going out.
+
+Liberty, then, on which so many volumes have been written, reduced to
+its proper sense, is only the power of acting.
+
+In what sense must the expression "this man is free" be spoken? In the
+same sense in which we use the words "health," "strength," and
+"happiness." Man is not always strong, healthy, or happy. A great
+passion, a great obstacle, may deprive him of his liberty, or power of
+action.
+
+The words "liberty" and "free-will" are, then, abstractions, general
+terms, like beauty, goodness, justice. These terms do not signify that
+all men are always handsome, good, and just, neither are they always
+free.
+
+Further, liberty being only the power of acting, what is this power? It
+is the effect of the constitution, and the actual state of our organs.
+Leibnitz would solve a problem of geometry, but falls into an apoplexy;
+he certainly has not the liberty to solve his problem. A vigorous young
+man, passionately in love, who holds his willing mistress in his arms,
+is he free to subdue his passion? Doubtless not. He has the power of
+enjoying, and has not the power to abstain. Locke then is very right in
+calling liberty, power. When can this young man abstain, notwithstanding
+the violence of his passion? When a stronger idea shall determine the
+springs of his soul and body to the contrary.
+
+But how? Have other animals the same liberty, the same power? Why not?
+They have sense, memory, sentiment, and perceptions like ourselves; they
+act spontaneously as we do. They must, also, like us, have the power of
+acting by virtue of their perception, and of the play of their organs.
+
+We exclaim: If it be thus, all things are machines merely; everything in
+the universe is subjected to the eternal laws. Well, would you have
+everything rendered subject to a million of blind caprices? Either all
+is the consequence of the nature of things, or all is the effect of the
+eternal order of an absolute master; in both cases, we are only wheels
+to the machine of the world.
+
+It is a foolish, common-place expression that without this pretended
+freedom of will, rewards and punishments are useless. Reason, and you
+will conclude quite the contrary.
+
+If, when a robber is executed, his accomplice, who sees him suffer, has
+the liberty of not being frightened at the punishment; if his will
+determines of itself, he will go from the foot of the scaffold to
+assassinate on the high road; if struck with horror, he experiences an
+insurmountable terror, he will no longer thieve. The punishment of his
+companion will become useful to him, and moreover prove to society that
+his will is not free.
+
+Liberty, then, is not and cannot be anything but the power of doing what
+we will. That is what philosophy teaches us. But, if we consider liberty
+in the theological sense, it is so sublime a matter that profane eyes
+may not be raised so high.
+
+
+
+
+FRENCH LANGUAGE.
+
+
+The French language did not begin to assume a regular form until the
+tenth century; it sprang from the remains of the Latin and the Celtic,
+mixed with a few Teutonic words. This language was, in the first
+instance, the provincial Roman, and the Teutonic was the language of the
+courts, until the time of Charles the Bald. The Teutonic remained the
+only language in Germany, after the grand epoch of the division in 433.
+The rustic Roman prevailed in Western France; the inhabitants of the
+Pays de Vaud, of the Valois, of the valley of Engadine, and some other
+cantons, still preserve some manifest vestiges of this idiom.
+
+At the commencement of the eleventh century, French began to be written;
+but this French retained more of Romance or rustic Roman than of the
+language of the present day. The romance of Philomena, written in the
+tenth century, is not very different in language from that of the laws
+of the Normans. We cannot yet trace the original Celtic, Latin, and
+German. The words which signify the members of the human body, or
+things in daily use, which have no relation to the Latin or German, are
+of ancient Gallic or Celtic, as _tete_, _jambe_, _sabre_, _point_,
+_alter_, _parler_, _ecouter_, _regarder_, _crier_, _cotume_, _ensemble_,
+and many more of the same kind. The greater number of the warlike
+phrases were French or German, as _marche, halte, marechal, bivouac,
+lansquenet_. Almost, all the rest are Latin, and the Latin words have
+been all abridged, according to the usage and genius of the nations of
+the north.
+
+In the twelfth century, some terms were borrowed from the philosophy of
+Aristotle; and toward the sixteenth century, Greek names were found for
+the parts of the human body, and for its maladies and their remedies.
+Although the language was then enriched with Greek, and aided from the
+time of Charles VIII. with considerable accessions from the Italian,
+already arrived at perfection, it did not acquire a regular form.
+Francis I. abolished the custom of pleading and of judging in Latin,
+which proved the barbarism of a language which could not be used in
+public proceedings--a pernicious custom to the natives, whose fortunes
+were regulated in a language which they could not understand. It then
+became necessary to cultivate the French, but the language was neither
+noble nor regular, and its syntax was altogether capricious. The genius
+of its conversation being turned towards pleasantry, the language became
+fertile in smart and lively expressions, but exceedingly barren in
+dignified and harmonious phrases; whence it arises that in the
+dictionaries of rhymes, twenty suitable words are found for comic poetry
+for one of poetry of a more elevated nature. This was the cause that
+Marot never succeeded in the serious style, and that Amyot was unable to
+give a version of the elegant simplicity of Plutarch.
+
+The French tongue acquired strength from the pen of Montaigne, but still
+wanted elevation and harmony. Ronsard injured the language by
+introducing into French poetry the Greek compounds, derivable from the
+physicians. Malherbe partly repaired the fault of Ronsard. It became
+more lofty and harmonious by the establishment of the French Academy,
+and finally in the age of Louis XIV. acquired the perfection by which it
+is now distinguished.
+
+The genius of the French language--for every language has its genius--is
+clearness and order. This genius consists in the facility which a
+language possesses of expressing itself more or less happily, and of
+employing or rejecting the familiar terms of other languages. The French
+tongue having no declensions, and being aided by articles, cannot adopt
+the inversions of the Greek and the Latin; the words are necessarily
+arranged agreeably to the course of the ideas. We can only say in one
+way, "_Plancus a pris soin des affaires de Caesar_"; but this phrase in
+Latin, "_Res Caesaris, Plancus diligenter curavit_" may be arranged in a
+hundred and twenty different forms without injuring the sense or rules
+of the language. The auxiliary verbs, which lengthen and weaken phrases
+in the modern tongues, render that of France still less adapted to the
+lapidary style. Its auxiliary verbs, its pronouns, its articles, its
+deficiency of declinable participles, and, lastly, its uniformity of
+position, preclude the exhibition of much enthusiasm in poetry; it
+possesses fewer capabilities of this nature than the Italian and the
+English; but this constraint and slavery render it more proper for
+tragedy and comedy than any language in Europe. The natural order in
+which the French people are obliged to express their thoughts and
+construct their phrases, infuses into their speech a facility and
+amenity which please everybody; and the genius of the nation suiting
+with the genius of the language, has produced a greater number of books
+agreeably written than are to be found among any other people.
+
+Social freedom and politeness having been for a long time established in
+France, the language has acquired a delicacy of expression, and a
+natural refinement which are seldom to be found out of it. This
+refinement has occasionally been carried too far; but men of taste have
+always known how to reduce it within due bounds.
+
+Many persons have maintained that the French language has been
+impoverished since the days of Montaigne and Amyot, because expressions
+abound in these authors which are no longer employed; but these are for
+the most part terms for which equivalents have been found. It has been
+enriched with a number of noble and energetic expressions, and, without
+adverting to the eloquence of matter, has certainly that of speech. It
+was during the reign of Louis XIV., as already observed, that the
+language was fixed. Whatever changes time and caprice may have in store,
+the good authors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries will always
+serve for models.
+
+Circumstances created no right to expect that France would be
+distinguished in philosophy. A Gothic government extinguished all kind
+of illumination during more than twelve centuries; and professors of
+error, paid for brutalizing human nature, more increased the darkness.
+Nevertheless, there is more philosophy in Paris than in any town on
+earth, and possibly than in all the towns put together, excepting
+London. The spirit of reason has even penetrated into the provinces. In
+a word, the French genius is probably at present equal to that of
+England in philosophy; while for the last four-score years France has
+been superior to all other nations in literature; and has undeniably
+taken the lead in the courtesies of society, and in that easy and
+natural politeness, which is improperly termed urbanity.
+
+
+
+
+FRIENDSHIP.
+
+The temple of friendship has long been known by name, but it is well
+known that it has been very little frequented; as the following verses
+pleasantly observe, Orestes, Pylades, Pirithous, Achates, and the tender
+Nisus, were all genuine friends and great heroes; but, alas, existent
+only in fable:
+
+     _En vieux langage on voit sur la facade,_
+     _Les noms sacres d'Oreste et de Pylade;_
+     _Le medaillon du bon Pirithous,_
+     _Du sage Achate et du tendre Nisus;_
+     _Tous grands heros, tous amis veritables;_
+     _Ces noms sont beaux; mais ils sont dans les fables._
+
+Friendship commands more than love and esteem. Love your neighbor
+signifies assist your neighbor, but not--enjoy his conversation with
+pleasure, if he be tiresome; confide to him your secrets, if he be a
+tattler; or lend him your money, if he be a spendthrift.
+
+Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to
+divorce. It is a tacit contract between two sensible and virtuous
+persons. I say sensible, for a monk or a hermit cannot be so, who lives
+without knowing friendship. I say virtuous, for the wicked only have
+accomplices--the voluptuous, companions--the interested, associates;
+politicians assemble factions--the generality of idle men have
+connections--princes, courtiers. Virtuous men alone possess friends.
+
+Cethegus was the accomplice of Catiline, and Maecenas the courtier of
+Octavius; but Cicero was the friend of Atticus.
+
+What is caused by this contract between two tender, honest minds? Its
+obligations are stronger or weaker according to the degrees of
+sensibility, and the number of services rendered.
+
+The enthusiasm of friendship has been stronger among the Greeks and
+Arabs than among us. The tales that these people have imagined on the
+subject of friendship are admirable; we have none to compare to them. We
+are rather dry and reserved--in everything. I see no great trait of
+friendship in our histories, romances, or theatre.
+
+The only friendship spoken of among the Jews, was that which existed
+between Jonathan and David. It is said that David loved him with a love
+stronger than that of women; but it is also said that David, after the
+death of his friend, dispossessed Mephibosheth, his son, and caused him
+to be put to death.
+
+Friendship was a point of religion and legislation among the Greeks. The
+Thebans had a regiment of lovers--a fine regiment; some have taken it
+for a regiment of nonconformists. They are deceived; it is taking a
+shameful accident for a noble principle. Friendship, among the Greeks,
+was prescribed by the laws and religion. Manners countenanced abuses,
+but the laws did not.
+
+
+
+
+FRIVOLITY.
+
+
+What persuades me still more of the existence of Providence, said the
+profound author of "_Bacha Billeboquet_," is that to console us for our
+innumerable miseries, nature has made us frivolous. We are sometimes
+ruminating oxen, overcome by the weight of our yoke; sometimes
+dispersed doves, tremblingly endeavoring to avoid the claws of the
+vulture, stained with the blood of our companions; foxes, pursued by
+dogs; and tigers, who devour one another. Then we suddenly become
+butterflies; and forget, in our volatile winnowings, all the horrors
+that we have experienced.
+
+If we were not frivolous, what man without shuddering, could live in a
+town in which the wife of a marshal of France, a lady of honor to the
+queen, was burned, under the pretext that she had killed a white cock by
+moonlight; or in the same town in which Marshal Marillac was
+assassinated according to form, pursuant to a sentence passed by
+judicial murderers appointed by a priest in his own country house, in
+which he embraced Marion de Lorme while these robed wretches executed
+his sanguinary wishes?
+
+Could a man say to himself, without trembling in every nerve, and having
+his heart frozen with horror: "Here I am, in the very place which, it is
+said, was strewed with the dead and dying bodies of two thousand young
+gentlemen, murdered near the Faubourg St. Antoine, because one man in a
+red cassock displeased some others in black ones!"
+
+Who could pass the Rue de la Feronerie without shedding tears and
+falling into paroxysms of rage against the holy and abominable
+principles which plunged the sword into the heart of the best of men,
+and of the greatest of kings?
+
+We could not walk a step in the streets of Paris on St. Bartholomew's
+day, without saying: "It was here that one of my ancestors was murdered
+for the love of God; it was here that one of my mother's family was
+dragged bleeding and mangled; it was here that one-half of my countrymen
+murdered the other."
+
+Happily, men are so light, so frivolous, so struck with the present and
+so insensible to the past, that in ten thousand there are not above two
+or three who make these reflections.
+
+How many boon companions have I seen, who, after the loss of children,
+wives, mistresses, fortune, and even health itself, have eagerly
+resorted to a party to retail a piece of scandal, or to a supper to tell
+humorous stories. Solidity consists chiefly in a uniformity of ideas. It
+has been said that a man of sense should invariably think in the same
+way; reduced to such an alternative, it would be better not to have been
+born. The ancients never invented a finer fable than that which bestowed
+a cup of the water of Lethe on all who entered the Elysian fields.
+
+If you would tolerate life, mortals, forget yourselves, and enjoy it.
+
+
+
+
+GALLANT.
+
+
+This word is derived from "_gal_" the original signification of which
+was gayety and rejoicing, as may be seen in Alain Chartier, and in
+Froissart. Even in the "Romance of the Rose" we meet with the word
+"_galande_" in the sense of ornamented, adorned.
+
+     _La belle fut bien attornie_
+     _Et d'un filet d'or galandee._
+
+It is probable that the _gala_ of the Italians, and the _galan_ of the
+Spaniards, are derived from the word "_gal_" which seems to be
+originally Celtic; hence, was insensibly formed _gallant_, which
+signifies a man forward, or eager to please. The term received an
+improved and more noble signification in the times of chivalry, when the
+desire to please manifested itself in feats of arms, and personal
+conflict. To conduct himself gallantly, to extricate himself from an
+affair gallantly, implies, even at present, a man's conducting himself
+conformably to principle and honor. A gallant man among the English,
+signifies a man of courage; in France it means more--a man of noble
+general demeanor. A gallant (_un homme galant_) is totally different
+from a gallant man (_un galant homme_); the latter means a man of
+respectable and honorable feeling--the former, something nearer the
+character of a _petit maitre_ a man successfully addicted to intrigue.
+Being gallant (_etre galant_) in general implies an assiduity to please
+by studious attentions, and flattering deference. "He was exceedingly
+gallant to those ladies," means merely, he behaved more than politely to
+them; but being the gallant of a lady is an expression of stronger
+meaning; it signifies being her lover; the word is scarcely any longer
+in use in this sense, except in low or familiar poetry. A gallant is not
+merely a man devoted to and successful in intrigue, but the term
+implies, moreover, somewhat of impudence and effrontery, in which sense
+Fontaine uses it in the following: "_Mais un 'galant,' chercheur des
+pucelages_."
+
+Thus are various meanings attached to the same word. The case is similar
+with the term "gallantry," which sometimes signifies a disposition to
+coquetry, and a habit of flattery; sometimes a present of some elegant
+toy, or piece of jewelry; sometimes intrigue, with one woman or with
+many; and, latterly, it has even been applied to signify ironically the
+favors of Venus; thus, to talk gallantries, to give gallantries, to have
+gallantries, to contract a gallantry, express very different meanings.
+Nearly all the terms which occur frequently in conversation acquire, in
+the same manner, various shades of meaning, which it is difficult to
+discriminate; the meaning of terms of art is more precise and less
+arbitrary.
+
+
+
+
+GARGANTUA.
+
+
+If ever a reputation was fixed on a solid basis, it is that of
+Gargantua. Yet in the present age of philosophy and criticism, some rash
+and daring minds have started forward, who have ventured to deny the
+prodigies believed respecting this extraordinary man--persons who have
+carried their skepticism so far as even to doubt his very existence.
+
+How is it possible, they ask, that there should have existed in the
+sixteenth century a distinguished hero, never mentioned by a single
+contemporary, by St. Ignatius, Cardinal Capitan, Galileo, or
+Guicciardini, and respecting whom the registers of the Sorbonne do not
+contain the slightest notice?
+
+Investigate the histories of France, of Germany, of England, Spain, and
+other countries, and you find not a single word about Gargantua. His
+whole life, from his birth to his death, is a tissue of inconceivable
+prodigies.
+
+His mother, Gargamelle, was delivered of him from the left ear. Almost
+at the instant of his birth he called out for a drink, with a voice that
+was heard even in the districts of Beauce and Vivarais. Sixteen ells of
+cloth were required to make him breeches, and a hundred hides of brown
+cows were used in his shoes. He had not attained the age of twelve years
+before he gained a great battle, and founded the abbey of Theleme.
+Madame Badebec was given to him in marriage, and Badebec is proved to be
+a Syrian name.
+
+He is represented to have devoured six pilgrims in a mere salad, and the
+river Seine is stated to have flowed entirely from his person, so that
+the Parisians are indebted for their beautiful river to him alone.
+
+All this is considered contrary to nature by our carping philosophers,
+who scruple to admit even what is probable, unless it is well supported
+by evidence.
+
+They observe, that if the Parisians have always believed in Gargantua,
+that is no reason why other nations should believe in him; that if
+Gargantua had really performed one single prodigy out of the many
+attributed to him, the whole world would have resounded with it, all
+records would have noticed it, and a hundred monuments would have
+attested it. In short, they very unceremoniously treat the Parisians who
+believe in Gargantua as ignorant simpletons and superstitious idiots,
+with whom are inter-mixed a few hypocrites, who pretend to believe in
+Gargantua, in order to obtain some convenient priorship in the abbey of
+Theleme.
+
+The reverend Father Viret, a Cordelier of full-sleeved dignity, a
+confessor of ladies, and a preacher to the king, has replied to our
+Pyrrhonean philosophers in a manner decisive and invincible. He very
+learnedly proves that if no writer, with the exception of Rabelais, has
+mentioned the prodigies of Gargantua, at least, no historian has
+contradicted them; that the sage de Thou, who was a believer in
+witchcraft, divination, and astrology, never denied the miracles of
+Gargantua. They were not even called in question by La Mothe le Vayer.
+Mezeray treated them with such respect as not to say a word against
+them, or indeed about them. These prodigies were performed before the
+eyes of all the world. Rabelais was a witness of them. It was impossible
+that he could be deceived, or that he would deceive. Had he deviated
+even in the smallest degree from the truth, all the nations of Europe
+would have been roused against him in indignation; all the gazetteers
+and journalists of the day would have exclaimed with one voice against
+the fraud and imposture.
+
+In vain do the philosophers reply--for they reply to everything--that,
+at the period in question, gazettes and journals were not in existence.
+It is said in return that there existed what was equivalent to them, and
+that is sufficient. Everything is impossible in the history of
+Gargantua, and from this circumstance itself may be inferred its
+incontestable truth. For if it were not true, no person could possibly
+have ventured to imagine it, and its incredibility constitutes the great
+proof that it ought to be believed.
+
+Open all the "Mercuries," all the "Journals de Trevoux"; those immortal
+works which teem with instruction to the race of man, and you will not
+find a single line which throws a doubt on the history of Gargantua. It
+was reserved for our own unfortunate age to produce monsters, who would
+establish a frightful Pyrrhonism, under the pretence of requiring
+evidence as nearly approaching to mathematical as the case will admit,
+and of a devotion to reason, truth, and justice. What a pity! Oh, for a
+single argument to confound them!
+
+Gargantua founded the abbey of Theleme. The title deeds, it is true,
+were never found; it never had any; but it exists, and produces an
+income of ten thousand pieces of gold a year. The river Seine exists,
+and is an eternal monument of the prodigious fountain from which
+Gargantua supplied so noble a stream. Moreover, what will it cost you to
+believe in him? Should you not take the safest side? Gargantua can
+procure for you wealth, honors, and influence. Philosophy can only
+bestow on you internal tranquillity and satisfaction, which you will of
+course estimate as a trifle. Believe, then, I again repeat, in
+Gargantua; if you possess the slightest portion of avarice, ambition, or
+knavery, it is the wisest part you can adopt.
+
+
+
+
+GAZETTE.
+
+
+A narrative of public affairs. It was at the beginning of the
+seventeenth century that this useful practice was suggested and
+established at Venice, at the time when Italy still continued the centre
+of European negotiations, and Venice was the unfailing asylum of
+liberty. The leaves or sheets containing this narrative, which were
+published once a week, were called "Gazettes," from the word "gazetta,"
+the name of a small coin, amounting nearly to one of our demi-sous, then
+current at Venice. The example was afterwards followed in all the great
+cities of Europe.
+
+Journals of this description have been established in China from time
+immemorial. The "_Imperial Gazette_" is published there every day by
+order of the court. Admitting this gazette to be true, we may easily
+believe it does not contain all that is true; neither in fact should it
+do so.
+
+Theophraste Renaudot, a physician, published the first gazettes in
+France in 1601, and he had an exclusive privilege for the publication,
+which continued for a long time a patrimony to his family. The like
+privilege became an object of importance at Amsterdam, and the greater
+part of the gazettes of the United Provinces are still a source of
+revenue to many of the families of magistrates, who pay writers for
+furnishing materials for them. The city of London alone publishes more
+than twelve gazettes in the course of a week. They can be printed only
+upon stamped paper, and produce no inconsiderable income to the State.
+
+The gazettes of China relate solely to that empire; those of the
+different states of Europe embrace the affairs of all countries.
+Although they frequently abound in false intelligence, they may
+nevertheless be considered as supplying good material for history;
+because, in general, the errors of each particular gazette are corrected
+by subsequent ones, and because they contain authentic copies of almost
+all state papers, which indeed are published in them by order of the
+sovereigns or governments themselves. The French gazettes have always
+been revised by the ministry. It is on this account that the writers of
+them have always adhered to certain forms and designations, with a
+strictness apparently somewhat inconsistent with the courtesies of
+polished society, bestowing the title of monsieur only on some
+particular descriptions of persons, and that of sieur upon others; the
+authors having forgotten that they were not speaking in the name of
+their king. These public journals, it must be added, to their praise,
+have never been debased by calumny, and have always been written with
+considerable correctness.
+
+The case is very different with respect to foreign gazettes; those of
+London, with the exception of the court gazette, abound frequently in
+that coarseness and licentiousness of observation which the national
+liberty allows. The French gazettes established in that country have
+been seldom written with purity, and have sometimes been not a little
+instrumental in corrupting the language. One of the greatest faults
+which has found a way into them arises from the authors having concluded
+that the ancient forms of expression used in public proclamations and in
+judicial and political proceedings and documents in France, and with
+which they were particularly conversant, were analogous to the regular
+syntax of our language, and from their having accordingly imitated that
+style in their narrative. This is like a Roman historian's using the
+style of the law of the twelve tables.
+
+In imitation of the political gazettes, literary ones began to be
+published in France in 1665; for the first journals were, in fact,
+simply advertisements of the works recently printed in Europe; to this
+mere announcement of publication was soon added a critical examination
+or review. Many authors were offended at it, notwithstanding its great
+moderation.
+
+We shall here speak only of those literary gazettes with which the
+public, who were previously in possession of various journals from every
+country in Europe in which the sciences were cultivated, were completely
+overwhelmed. These gazettes appeared at Paris about the year 1723, under
+many different names, as "The Parnassian Intelligencer," "Observations
+on New Books," etc. The greater number of them were written for the
+single purpose of making money; and as money is not to be made by
+praising authors, these productions consisted generally of satire and
+abuse. They often contained the most odious personalities, and for a
+time sold in proportion to the virulence of their malignity; but reason
+and good taste, which are always sure to prevail at last, consigned them
+eventually to contempt and oblivion.
+
+
+
+
+GENEALOGY.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+Many volumes have been written by learned divines in order to reconcile
+St. Matthew with St. Luke on the subject of the genealogy of Jesus
+Christ. The former enumerates only twenty-seven generations from David
+through Solomon, while Luke gives forty-two, and traces the descent
+through Nathan. The following is the method in which the learned Calmet
+solves a difficulty relating to Melchizedek: The Orientals and the
+Greeks, ever abounding in fable and invention, fabricated a genealogy
+for him, in which they give us the names of his ancestors. But, adds
+this judicious Benedictine, as falsehood always betrays itself, some
+state his genealogy according to one series, and others according to
+another. There are some who maintain that he descended from a race
+obscure and degraded, and there are some who are disposed to represent
+him as illegitimate.
+
+This passage naturally applies to Jesus, of whom, according to the
+apostle, Melchizedek was the type or figure. In fact, the gospel of
+Nicomedes expressly states that the Jews, in the presence of Pilate,
+reproached Jesus with being born of fornication; upon which the learned
+Fabricius remarks, that it does not appear from any clear and credible
+testimony that the Jews directed to Jesus Christ during His life, or
+even to His apostles, that calumny respecting His birth which they so
+assiduously and virulently circulated afterwards. The Acts of the
+Apostles, however, inform us that the Jews of Antioch opposed
+themselves, blaspheming against what Paul spoke to them concerning
+Jesus; and Origen maintains that the passage in St. John's gospel "We
+are not born of fornication, we have never been in subjection unto any
+man" was an indirect reproach thrown out by the Jews against Jesus on
+the subject of His birth. For, as this father informs us, they pretended
+that Jesus was originally from a small hamlet of Judaea, and His mother
+nothing more than a poor villager subsisting by her labor, who, having
+been found guilty of adultery with a soldier of the name of Panther, was
+turned away by her husband, whose occupation was that of a carpenter;
+that, after this disgraceful expulsion, she wandered about miserably
+from one place to another, and was privately delivered of Jesus, who,
+pressed by the necessity of His circumstances, was compelled to go and
+hire Himself as a servant in Egypt, where He acquired some of those
+secrets which the Egyptians turn to so good an account, and then
+returned to His own country, in which, full of the miracles He was
+enabled to perform, He proclaimed Himself to be God.
+
+According to a very old tradition, the name of Panther, which gave
+occasion to the mistake of the Jews, was, as we are informed by St.
+Epiphanius, the surname of Joseph's father, or rather, as is asserted by
+St. John Damascene, the proper name of Mary's grandfather.
+
+As to the situation of servant, with which Jesus was reproached, He
+declares Himself that He came not to be served, but to serve. Zoroaster,
+according to the Arabians, had in like manner been the servant of
+Esdras. Epictetus was even born in servitude. Accordingly, St. Cyril of
+Jerusalem justly observed that it is no disgrace to any man.
+
+On the subject of the miracles, we learn indeed from Pliny that the
+Egyptians had the secret of dyeing with different colors, stuffs which
+were dipped in the very same furnace, and this is one of the miracles
+which the gospel of the Infancy attributes to Jesus. But, according to
+St. Chrysostom, Jesus performed no miracle before His baptism, and those
+stated to have been wrought by Him before are absolute fabrications. The
+reason assigned by this father for such an arrangement is, that the
+wisdom of God determined against Christ's performing any miracles in His
+childhood, lest they should have been regarded as impostures.
+
+Epiphanius in vain alleges that to deny the miracles ascribed by some to
+Jesus during His infancy, would furnish heretics with a specious pretext
+for saying that He became Son of God only in consequence of the effusion
+of the Holy Spirit, which descended upon Him at His baptism; we are
+contending here, not against heretics, but against Jews.
+
+Mr. Wagenseil has presented us with a Latin translation of a Jewish work
+entitled "_Toldos Jeschu_," in which it is related that Jeschu, being at
+Bethlehem in Judah, the place of his birth, cried out aloud, "Who are
+the wicked men that pretend I am a bastard, and spring from an impure
+origin? They are themselves bastards, themselves exceedingly impure! Was
+I not born of a virgin mother? And I entered through the crown of her
+head!"
+
+This testimony appeared of such importance to M. Bergier, that that
+learned divine felt no scruple about employing it without quoting his
+authority. The following are his words, in the twenty-third page of the
+"Certainty of the Proofs of Christianity": "Jesus was born of a virgin
+by the operation of the Holy Spirit. Jesus Himself frequently assured us
+of this with His own mouth; and to the same purpose is the recital of
+the apostles." It is certain that these words are only to be found in
+the "_Toldos Jeschu_"; and the certainty of that proof, among those
+adduced by M. Bergier, subsists, although St. Matthew applies to Jesus
+the passage of "Isaiah": "He shall not dispute, he shall not cry aloud,
+and no one shall hear his voice in the streets."
+
+According to St. Jerome, there was in like manner an ancient tradition
+among the Gymnosophists of India, that Buddha, the author of their
+creed, was born of a virgin, who was delivered of him from her side. In
+the same manner was born Julius Caesar, Scipio Africanus, Manlius, Edward
+VI. of England, and others, by means of an operation called by surgeons
+the Caesarian operation, because it consists in abstracting the child
+from the womb by an incision in the abdomen of the mother. Simon,
+surnamed the Magician, and Manes both pretended to have been born of
+virgins. This might, however, merely mean, that their mothers were
+virgins at the time of conceiving them. But in order to be convinced of
+the uncertainty attending the marks and evidences of virginity, it will
+be perfectly sufficient to read the commentary of M. de Pompignan, the
+celebrated bishop of Puy en Velai, on the following passage in the Book
+of Proverbs: "There are three things which are too wonderful for me,
+yea, four which I know not. The way of an eagle in the air, the way of a
+serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the
+way of a man in his youth." In order to give a literal translation of
+the passage, according to this prelate (in the third chapter of the
+second part of his work entitled "Infidelity Convinced by the
+Prophecies"), it would have been necessary to say, "_Viam viri in
+virgine adolescentula_"--The way of a man with a maid. The translation
+of our Vulgate, says he, substitutes another meaning, exact indeed and
+true, but less conformable to the original text. In short, he
+corroborates his curious interpretation by the analogy between this
+verse and the following one: "Such is the life of the adulterous woman,
+who, after having eaten, wipeth her mouth and saith, I have done no
+wickedness."
+
+However this may be, the virginity of Mary was not generally admitted,
+even at the beginning of the third century. "Many have entertained the
+opinion and do still," said St. Clement of Alexandria, "that Mary was
+delivered of a son without that delivery producing any change in her
+person; for some say that a midwife who visited her after the birth
+found her to retain all the marks of virginity." It is clear that St.
+Clement refers here to the gospel of the conception of Mary, in which
+the angel Gabriel says to her, "Without intercourse with man, thou, a
+virgin, shalt conceive, thou, a virgin, shalt be delivered of a child,
+thou, a virgin, shalt give suck"; and also to the first gospel of James,
+in which the midwife exclaims, "What an unheard-of wonder! Mary has just
+brought a son into the world, and yet retains all the evidences of
+virginity." These two gospels were, nevertheless, subsequently rejected
+as apocryphal, although on this point they were conformable to the
+opinion adopted by the church; the scaffolding was removed after the
+building was completed.
+
+What is added by Jeschu--"I entered by the crown of the head"--was
+likewise the opinion held by the church. The Breviary of the Maronites
+represents the word of the Father as having entered by the ear of the
+blessed woman. St. Augustine and Pope Felix say expressly that the
+virgin became pregnant through the ear. St. Ephrem says the same in a
+hymn, and Voisin, his translator, observes that the idea came originally
+from Gregory of Neocaesarea, surnamed Thaumaturgos. Agobar relates that
+in his time the church sang in the time of public service: "The Word
+entered through the ear of the virgin, and came out at the golden gate."
+Eutychius speaks also of Elian, who attended at the Council of Nice, and
+who said that the Word entered by the ear of the virgin, and came out
+in the way of childbirth. This Elian was a rural bishop, whose name
+occurs in Selden's published Arabic List of Fathers who attended the
+Council of Nice.
+
+It is well known that the Jesuit Sanchez gravely discussed the question
+whether the Virgin Mary contributed seminally in the incarnation of
+Christ, and that, like other divines before him, he concluded in the
+affirmative. But these extravagances of a prurient and depraved
+imagination should be classed with the opinion of Aretin, who introduces
+the Holy Spirit on this occasion effecting his purpose under the figure
+of a dove; as mythology describes Jupiter to have succeeded with Leda in
+the form of a swan, or as the most eminent authors of the church--St.
+Austin, Athenagoras, Tertullian, St. Clement of Alexandria, St. Cyprian,
+Lactantius, St. Ambrose--and others believed, after Philo and Josephus,
+the historian, who were Jews, that angels had associated with the
+daughters of men, and engaged in sexual connection with them. St.
+Augustine goes so far as to charge the Manichaeans with teaching, as a
+part of their religious persuasion, that beautiful young persons
+appeared in a state of nature before the princes of darkness, or evil
+angels, and deprived them of the vital substance which that father calls
+the nature of God. Herodius is still more explicit, and says that the
+divine majesty escaped through the productive organs of demons.
+
+It is true that all these fathers believed angels to be corporeal. But,
+after the works of Plato had established the idea of their spirituality,
+the ancient opinion of a corporeal union between angels and women was
+explained by the supposition that the same angel who, in a woman's form,
+had received the embraces of a man, in turn held communication with a
+woman, in the character of a man. Divines, by the terms "incubus" and
+"succubus," designate the different parts thus performed by angels.
+Those who are curious on the subject of these offensive and revolting
+reveries may see further details in "Various Readings of the Book of
+Genesis," by Otho Gualter; "Magical Disquisitions," by Delvis, and the
+"Discourses on Witchcraft," by Henry Boguet.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+No genealogy, even although reprinted in Moreri, approaches that of
+Mahomet or Mahommed, the son of Abdallah, the son of Abd'all Montaleb,
+the son of Ashem; which Mahomet was, in his younger days, groom of the
+widow Khadijah, then her factor, then her husband, then a prophet of
+God, then condemned to be hanged, then conqueror and king of Arabia; and
+who finally died an enviable death, satiated with glory and with love.
+
+The German barons do not trace back their origin beyond Witikind; and
+our modern French marquises can scarcely any of them show deeds and
+patents of an earlier date than Charlemagne. But the race of Mahomet, or
+Mohammed, which still exists, has always exhibited a genealogical tree,
+of which the trunk is Adam, and of which the branches reach from Ishmael
+down to the nobility and gentry who at the present day bear the high
+title of cousins of Mahomet.
+
+There is no difficulty about this genealogy, no dispute among the
+learned, no false calculations to be rectified, no contradictions to
+palliate, no impossibilities to be made possible.
+
+Your pride cavils against the authenticity of these titles. You tell me
+that you are descended from Adam as well as the greatest prophet, if
+Adam was the common father of our race; but that this same Adam was
+never known by any person, not even by the ancient Arabs themselves;
+that the name has never been cited except in the books of the Jews; and
+that, consequently, you take the liberty of writing down _false_ against
+the high and noble claims of Mahomet, or Mohammed.
+
+You add that, in any case, if there has been a first man, whatever his
+name might be, you are a descendant from him as decidedly as Khadijah's
+illustrious groom; and that, if there has been no first man, if the
+human race always existed, as so many of the learned pretend, then you
+are clearly a gentleman from all eternity.
+
+In answer to this you are told that you are a plebeian (_roturier_) from
+all eternity, unless you can produce a regular and complete set of
+parchments.
+
+You reply that men are equal; that one race cannot be more ancient than
+another; that parchments, with bits of wax dangling to them, are a
+recent invention; that there is no reason that compels you to yield to
+the family of Mahomet, or to that of Confucius; or to that of the
+emperors of Japan; or to the royal secretaries of the grand college. Nor
+can I oppose your opinion by arguments, physical, metaphysical, or
+moral. You think yourself equal to the dairo of Japan, and I entirely
+agree with you. All that I would advise you is, that if ever you meet
+with him, you take good care to be the stronger.
+
+
+
+
+GENESIS.
+
+
+The sacred writer having conformed himself to the ideas generally
+received, and being indeed obliged not to deviate from them, as without
+such condescension to the weakness and ignorance of those whom he
+addressed, he would not have been understood, it only remains for us to
+make some observations on the natural philosophy prevailing in those
+early periods; for, with respect to theology, we reverence it, we
+believe in it, and never either dispute or discuss it.
+
+"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Thus has the
+original passage been translated, but the translation is not correct.
+There is no one, however slightly informed upon the subject, who is not
+aware that the real meaning of the word is, "In the beginning the gods
+made _firent_ or _fit_ the heaven and the earth." This reading,
+moreover, perfectly corresponds with the ancient idea of the
+Phoenicians, who imagined that, in reducing the chaos (_chautereb_)
+into order, God employed the agency of inferior deities.
+
+The Phoenicians had been long a powerful people, having a theogony of
+their own, before the Hebrews became possessed of a few cantons of land
+near their territory. It is extremely natural to suppose that when the
+Hebrews had at length formed a small establishment near Phoenicia,
+they began to acquire its language. At that time their writers might,
+and probably did, borrow the ancient philosophy of their masters. Such
+is the regular march of the human mind.
+
+At the time in which Moses is supposed to have lived, were the
+Phoenician philosophers sufficiently enlightened to regard the earth
+as a mere point in the compass with the infinite orbs placed by God in
+the immensity of space, commonly called heaven? The idea so very
+ancient, and at the same time so utterly false, that heaven was made for
+earth, almost always prevailed in the minds of the great mass of the
+people. It would certainly be just as correct and judicious for any
+person to suppose, if told that God created all the mountains and a
+single grain of sand, that the mountains were created for that grain of
+sand. It is scarcely possible that the Phoenicians, who were such
+excellent navigators, should not have had some good astronomers; but
+the old prejudices generally prevailed, and those old prejudices were
+very properly spared and indulged by the author of the Book of Genesis,
+who wrote to instruct men in the ways of God, and not in natural
+philosophy.
+
+"The earth was without form (_tohu bohu_) and void; darkness rested upon
+the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved upon the surface of
+the waters."
+
+_Tohu bohu_ means precisely chaos, disorder. It is one of those
+imitative words which are to be found in all languages; as, for example,
+in the French we have _sens dessus dessous, tintamarre, trictrac,
+tonnerre, bombe_. The earth was not as yet formed in its present state;
+the matter existed, but the divine power had not yet arranged it. The
+spirit of God means literally the breath, the wind, which agitated the
+waters. The same idea occurs in the "Fragments" of the Phoenician
+author Sanchoniathon. The Phoenicians, like every other people,
+believed matter to be eternal. There is not a single author of antiquity
+who ever represented something to have been produced from nothing. Even
+throughout the whole Bible, no passage is to be found in which matter is
+said to have been created out of nothing. Not, however, that we mean to
+controvert the truth of such creation. It was, nevertheless, a truth not
+known by the carnal Jews.
+
+On the question of the eternity of the world, mankind has always been
+divided, but never on that of the eternity of matter. From nothing,
+nothing can proceed, nor into nothing can aught existent return. _"De
+nihilo nihilum, et in nihilum nil posse gigni reverti."_ (_Persius; Sat.
+iii._) Such was the opinion of all antiquity.
+
+"God said let there be light, and there was light; and he saw that the
+light was good, and he divided the light from the darkness; and he
+called the light day, and the darkness night; and the evening and the
+morning were the first day. And God said also, let there be a firmament
+in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the
+waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were
+under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And
+God called the firmament heaven. And the evening and the morning were
+the second day.... And he saw that it was good."
+
+We begin with examining whether Huet, bishop of Avranches, Leclerc, and
+some other commentators, are not in the right in opposing the idea of
+those who consider this passage as exhibiting the most sublime
+eloquence.
+
+Eloquence is not aimed at in any history written by the Jews. The style
+of the passage in question, like that of all the rest of the work,
+possesses the most perfect simplicity. If an orator, intending to give
+some idea of the power of God, employed for that purpose the short and
+simple expression we are considering, "He said, let there be light, and
+there was light," it would then be sublime. Exactly similar is the
+passage in one of the Psalms, "_Dixit, et facta sunt_"--"He spake, and
+they were made." It is a trait which, being unique in this place, and
+introduced purposely in order to create a majestic image, elevates and
+transports the mind. But, in the instance under examination, the
+narrative is of the most simple character. The Jewish writer is speaking
+of light just in the same unambitious manner as of other objects of
+creation; he expresses himself equally and regularly after every
+article, "and God saw that it was good." Everything is sublime in the
+course or act of creation, unquestionably, but the creation of light is
+no more so than that of the herbs of the field; the sublime is something
+which soars far from the rest, whereas all is equal throughout the
+chapter.
+
+But further, it was another very ancient opinion that light did not
+proceed from the sun. It was seen diffused throughout the atmosphere,
+before the rising and after the setting of that star; the sun was
+supposed merely to give it greater strength and clearness; accordingly
+the author of Genesis accommodates himself to this popular error, and
+even states the creation of the sun and moon not to have taken place
+until four days after the existence of light. It was impossible that
+there could be a morning and evening before the existence of a sun. The
+inspired writer deigned, in this instance, to condescend to the gross
+and wild ideas of the nation. The object of God was not to teach the
+Jews philosophy. He might have raised their minds to the truth, but he
+preferred descending to their error. This solution can never be too
+frequently repeated.
+
+The separation of the light from the darkness is a part of the same
+system of philosophy. It would seem that night and day were mixed up
+together, as grains of different species which are easily separable from
+each other. It is sufficiently known that darkness is nothing but the
+absence of light, and that there is in fact no light when our eyes
+receive no sensation of it; but at that period these truths were far
+from being known.
+
+The idea of a firmament, again, is of the very highest antiquity. The
+heavens are imagined to be a solid mass, because they always exhibited
+the same phenomena. They rolled over our heads, they were therefore
+constituted of the most solid materials. Who could suppose that the
+exhalations from the land and sea supplied the water descending from the
+clouds, or compute their corresponding quantities? No Halley then lived
+to make so curious a calculation. The heavens therefore were conceived
+to contain reservoirs. These reservoirs could be supported only on a
+strong arch, and as this arch of heaven was actually transparent, it
+must necessarily have been made of crystal. In order that the waters
+above might descend from it upon the earth, sluices, cataracts, and
+floodgates were necessary, which might be opened and shut as
+circumstances required. Such was the astronomy of the day; and, as the
+author wrote for Jews, it was incumbent upon him to adopt their gross
+ideas, borrowed from other people somewhat less gross than themselves.
+
+"God also made two great lights, one to rule the day, the other the
+night; He also made the stars."
+
+It must be admitted that we perceive throughout the same ignorance of
+nature. The Jews did not know that the moon shone only with a reflected
+light. The author here speaks of stars as of mere luminous points, such
+as they appear, although they are in fact so many suns, having each of
+them worlds revolving round it. The Holy Spirit, then, accommodated
+Himself to the spirit of the times. If He had said that the sun was a
+million times larger than the earth, and the moon fifty times smaller,
+no one would have comprehended Him. They appear to us two stars of
+nearly equal size.
+
+"God said, also, let us make man in our own image, and let him have
+dominion over the fishes."
+
+What meaning did the Jews attach to the expression, "let us make man in
+our own image?" The same as all antiquity attached to it: "_Finxit in
+effigiem moderantum cuncta deorum._" (Ovid, Metam. i. 82.)
+
+No images are made but of bodies. No nation ever imagined a God without
+body, and it is impossible to represent Him otherwise. We may indeed say
+that God is nothing that we are acquainted with, but we can have no
+idea of what He is. The Jews invariably conceived God to be corporeal,
+as well as every other people. All the first fathers of the Church,
+also, entertained the same belief till they had embraced the ideas of
+Plato, or rather until the light of Christianity became more pure.
+
+"He created them male and female." If God, of the secondary or inferior
+gods, created mankind, male and female, after their own likeness, it
+would seem in that case, as if the Jews believed that God and the gods
+who so formed them were male and female. It has been a subject of
+discussion, whether the author means to say that man had originally two
+sexes, or merely that God made Adam and Eve on the same day. The most
+natural meaning is that God formed Adam and Eve at the same time; but
+this interpretation involves an absolute contradiction to the statement
+of the woman's being made out of the rib of man after the seven days
+were concluded.
+
+"And he rested on the seventh day." The Phoenicians, Chaldaeans, and
+Indians, represented God as having made the world in six periods, which
+the ancient Zoroaster calls the six "Gahanbars," so celebrated among the
+Persians.
+
+It is beyond all question that these nations possessed a theology before
+the Jews inhabited the deserts of Horeb and Sinai, and before they could
+possibly have had any writers. Many writers have considered it probable
+that the allegory of six days was imitated from that of the six
+periods. God may have permitted the idea to have prevailed in large and
+populous empires before he inspired the Jewish people with it. He had
+undoubtedly permitted other people to invent the arts before the Jews
+were in possession of any one of them.
+
+"From this pleasant place a river went out which watered the garden, and
+thence it was divided into four rivers. One was called Pison, which
+compassed the whole land of Havilah, whence cometh gold.... the second
+was called Gihon and surrounds Ethiopia.... the third is the Tigris, and
+the fourth the Euphrates."
+
+According to this version, the earthly paradise would have contained
+nearly a third part of Asia and of Africa. The sources of the Euphrates
+and the Tigris are sixty leagues distant from each other, in frightful
+mountains, bearing no possible resemblance to a garden. The river which
+borders Ethiopia, and which can be no other than the Nile, commences its
+course at the distance of more than a thousand leagues from the sources
+of the Tigris and Euphrates; and, if the Pison means the Phasis, it is
+not a little surprising that the source of a Scythian river and that of
+an African one should be situated on the same spot. We must therefore
+look for some other explanation, and for other rivers. Every commentator
+has got up a paradise of his own.
+
+It has been said that the Garden of Eden resembles the gardens of Eden
+at Saana in Arabia Felix, celebrated throughout all antiquity; that the
+Hebrews, a very recent people, might be an Arabian horde, and assume to
+themselves the honor of the most beautiful spot in the finest district
+of Arabia; and that they have always converted to their own purposes the
+ancient traditions of the vast and powerful nations in the midst of whom
+they were in bondage. They were not, however, on this account, the less
+under the divine protection and guidance.
+
+"The Lord then took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden that he
+might cultivate it." It is very respectable and pleasant for a man to
+"cultivate his garden," but it must have been somewhat difficult for
+Adam to have dressed and kept in order a garden of a thousand leagues in
+length, even although he had been supplied with some assistants.
+Commentators on this subject, therefore, we again observe, are
+completely at a loss, and must be content to exercise their ingenuity in
+conjecture. Accordingly, these four rivers have been described as
+flowing through numberless different territories.
+
+"Eat not of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil." It is
+not easy to conceive that there ever existed a tree which could teach
+good and evil, as there are trees that bear pears and apricots. And
+besides the question is asked, why is God unwilling that man should know
+good and evil? Would not his free access to this knowledge, on the
+contrary, appear--if we may venture to use such language--more
+worthy of God, and far more necessary to man? To our weak reason it
+would seem more natural and proper for God to command him to eat largely
+of such fruit; but we must bring our reason under subjection, and
+acquiesce with humility and simplicity in the conclusion that God is to
+be obeyed.
+
+[Illustration: THE TEMPTATION OF ADAM]
+
+"If thou shalt eat thereof, thou shalt die." Nevertheless, Adam ate of
+it and did not die; on the contrary, he is stated to have lived on for
+nine hundred and thirty years. Many of the fathers considered the whole
+matter as an allegory. In fact, it might be said that all other animals
+have no knowledge that they shall die, but that man, by means of his
+reason, has such knowledge. This reason is the tree of knowledge which
+enables him to foresee his end. This, perhaps, is the most rational
+interpretation that can be given. We venture not to decide positively.
+
+"The Lord said, also, it is not good for man to be alone; let us make
+him a helpmeet for him." We naturally expect that the Lord is about to
+bestow on him a wife; but first he conducts before him all the various
+tribes of animals. Perhaps the copyist may have committed here an error
+of transposition.
+
+"And the name which Adam gave to every animal is its true name." What we
+should naturally understand by the true name of an animal, would be a
+name describing all, or at least, the principal properties of its
+species. But this is not the case in any language. In each there are
+some imitative words, as "_coq_" and "_cocu_" in the Celtic, which bear
+some slight similarity to the notes of the cock and the cuckoo;
+_tintamarre, trictrac_, in French; _alali_, in Greek; _lupus_, in Latin,
+etc. But these imitative words are exceedingly few. Moreover, if Adam
+had thus thoroughly known the properties of various animals, he must
+either have previously eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, or
+it would apparently have answered no end for God to have interdicted him
+from it. He must have already known more than the Royal Society of
+London, and the Academy of the Sciences.
+
+It may be remarked that this is the first time the name of Adam occurs
+in the Book of Genesis. The first man, according to the ancient
+Brahmins, who were prodigiously anterior to the Jews, was called Adimo,
+a son of the earth, and his wife, Procris, life. This is recorded in the
+Vedas, in the history of the second formation of the world. Adam and Eve
+expressed perfectly the same meanings in the Phoenician language--a new
+evidence of the Holy Spirit's conforming Himself to commonly received
+ideas.
+
+"When Adam was asleep God took one of his ribs and put flesh instead
+thereof; and of the rib which he had taken from Adam he formed a woman,
+and he brought the woman to Adam."
+
+In the previous chapter the Lord had already created the male and the
+female; why, therefore, remove a rib from the man to form out of it a
+woman who was already in being? It is answered that the author barely
+announces in the one case what he explains in another. It is answered
+further that this allegory places the wife in subjection to her husband,
+and expresses their intimate union. Many persons have been led to
+imagine from this verse that men have one rib less than women; but this
+is a heresy, and anatomy informs us that a wife has no more ribs than
+her husband.
+
+"But the serpent was more subtle than all animals on the earth; he said
+to the woman," etc. Throughout the whole of this article there is no
+mention made of the devil. Everything in it relates to the usual course
+of nature. The serpent was considered by all oriental nations, not only
+as the most cunning of all animals, but likewise as immortal. The
+Chaldaeans had a fable concerning a quarrel between God and the serpent,
+and this fable had been preserved by Pherecydes. Origen cites it in his
+sixth book against Celsus. A serpent was borne in procession at the
+feasts of Bacchus. The Egyptians, according to the statement of Eusebius
+in the first book of the tenth chapter of his "Evangelical Preparation,"
+attached a sort of divinity to the serpent. In Arabia, India, and even
+China, the serpent was regarded as a symbol of life; and hence it was
+that the emperors of China, long before the time of Moses, always bore
+upon their breast the image of a serpent.
+
+Eve expresses no astonishment at the serpent's speaking to her. In all
+ancient histories, animals have spoken; hence Pilpay and Lokman excited
+no surprise by their introduction of animals conversing and disputing.
+
+The whole of this affair appears so clearly to have been supposed in the
+natural course of events, and so unconnected with anything allegorical,
+that the narrative assigns a reason why the serpent, from that time, has
+moved creeping on its belly, why we always are eager to crush it under
+our feet, and why it always attempts--at least according to the popular
+belief--to bite and wound us. Precisely as, with respect to presumed
+changes affecting certain animals recorded in ancient fable, reasons
+were stated why the crow which originally had been white is at the
+present day black; why the owl quits his gloomy retreat only by night;
+why the wolf is devoted to carnage. The fathers, however, believed the
+affair to be an allegory at once clear and venerable. The safest way is
+to believe like them.
+
+"I will multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow shalt thou
+bring forth children. Thou shalt be under the power of the man, and he
+shall rule over thee." Why, it is asked, should the multiplication of
+conception be a punishment? It was, on the contrary, says the objector,
+esteemed a superior blessing, particularly among the Jews. The pains of
+childbirth are inconsiderable, in all except very weak or delicate
+women. Those accustomed to labor are delivered, particularly in warm
+climates, with great ease. Brutes frequently experience greater
+suffering from this process of nature: some even die under it. And with
+respect to the superiority or dominion of the man over the woman, it is
+merely in the natural course of events; it is the effect of strength of
+body, and even of strength of mind. Men, generally speaking, possess
+organs more capable of continued attention than women, and are better
+fitted by nature for labors both of the head and arm. But when a woman
+possesses both a hand and a mind more powerful than her husband's, she
+everywhere possesses the dominion over him; it is then the husband that
+is under subjection to the wife. There is certainly truth in these
+remarks; but it might, nevertheless, very easily be the fact that,
+before the commission of the original sin, neither subjection nor sorrow
+existed.
+
+"The Lord made for them coats of skins." This passage decidedly proves
+that the Jews believed God to be corporeal. A rabbi, of the name of
+Eliezer, stated in his works that God clothed Adam and Eve with the skin
+of the very serpent who had tempted them; and Origen maintains that this
+coat of skins was a new flesh, a new body, which God conferred on man.
+It is far better to adhere respectfully to the literal texts.
+
+"And the Lord said; Lo! Adam is become like one of us." It seems as if
+the Jews admitted, originally, many gods. It is somewhat more difficult
+to determine what they meant by the word "God," _Elohim_. Some
+commentators have contended that the expression "one of us" signifies
+the Trinity. But certainly there is nothing relating to the Trinity
+throughout the Bible. The Trinity is not a compound of many or several
+Gods: it is one and the same god threefold; and the Jews never heard the
+slightest mention of one god in three persons. By the words "like us,"
+or "as one of us," it is probable that the Jews understood the angels,
+_Elohim_. It is this passage which has induced many learned men very
+rashly to conclude that this book was not written until that people had
+adopted the belief of those inferior gods. But this opinion has been
+condemned.
+
+"The Lord sent him forth from the garden of Eden to cultivate the
+ground." "But," it is remarked by some, "the Lord had placed him in the
+garden of Eden to _cultivate_ that garden." If Adam, instead of being a
+gardener, merely becomes a laborer, his situation, they observe, is not
+made very much worse by the change. A good laborer is well worth a good
+gardener. These remarks must be regarded as too light and frivolous. It
+appears more judicious to say that God punished disobedience by
+banishing the offender from the place of his nativity.
+
+The whole of this history, generally speaking--according to the opinion
+of liberal, not to say licentious, commentators--proceeds upon the idea
+which has prevailed in every past age, and still exists, that the first
+times were better and happier than those which followed. Men have
+always complained of the present and extolled the past. Pressed down by
+the labors of life, they have imagined happiness to consist in
+inactivity, not considering that the most unhappy of all states is that
+of a man who has nothing to do. They felt themselves frequently
+miserable, and framed in their imaginations an ideal period in which all
+the world had been happy; although it might be just as naturally and
+truly supposed that there had existed times in which no tree decayed and
+perished, in which no beast was weak, diseased, or devoured by another,
+and in which spiders did not prey upon flies. Hence the idea of the
+golden age; of the egg pierced by Arimanes; of the serpent who stole
+from the ass the recipe for obtaining a happy and immortal life, which
+the man had placed upon his pack-saddle; of the conflict between Typhon
+and Osiris, and between Opheneus and the gods; of the famous box of
+Pandora; and of all those ancient tales, of which some are ingenious,
+but none instructive. But we are bound to believe that the fables of
+other nations are imitations of the Hebrew history, since we possess the
+ancient history of the Hebrews, and the early books of other nations are
+nearly all destroyed. Besides the testimonies in favor of the Book of
+Genesis are irrefragable.
+
+"And He placed before the garden of Eden a cherub with a flaming sword,
+which turned all round to guard the way to the tree of life." The word
+"_kerub_" signifies _ox_. An ox armed with a flaming sword is rather a
+singular exhibition, it is said, before a portal. But the Jews
+afterwards represented angels under the form of oxen and hawks although
+they were forbidden to make any images. They evidently derived these
+emblems of oxen and hawks from the Egyptians, whom they imitated in so
+many other things. The Egyptians first venerated the ox as the emblem of
+agriculture, and the hawk as that of the winds; but they never converted
+the ox into a sentinel. It is probably an allegory; and the Jews by
+"_kerub_" understood nature. It was a symbol formed of the head of an
+ox, the head and body of a man, and the wings of a hawk.
+
+"And the Lord set a mark upon Cain." What Lord? says the infidel. He
+accepts the offering of Abel, and rejects that of his elder brother,
+without the least reason being assigned for the distinction. By this
+proceeding the Lord was the cause of animosity between the two brothers.
+We are presented in this piece of history, it is true, with a moral,
+however humiliating, lesson; a lesson to be derived from all the fables
+of antiquity, that scarcely had the race of man commenced the career of
+existence, before one brother assassinates another. But what the sages,
+of this world consider contrary to everything moral, to everything just,
+to all the principles of common sense, is that God, who inflicted
+eternal damnation on the race of man, and useless crucifixion on His own
+son, on account merely of the eating of an apple, should absolutely
+pardon a fratricide! nay, that He should more than pardon, that He
+should take the offender under His peculiar protection! He declares that
+whoever shall avenge the murder of Abel shall experience sevenfold the
+punishment that Cain might have suffered. He puts a mark upon him as a
+safeguard. Here, continue these vile blasphemers, here is a fable as
+execrable as it is absurd. It is the raving of some wretched Jew, who
+wrote those infamous and revolting fooleries, in imitation of the tales
+so greedily swallowed by the neighboring population in Syria. This
+senseless Jew attributes these atrocious reveries to Moses, at a time
+when nothing was so rare as books. That fatality, which affects and
+disposes of everything, has handed down this contemptible production to
+our own times. Knaves have extolled it, and fools have believed it. Such
+is the language of a tribe of theists, who, while they adore a God, dare
+to condemn the God of Israel; and who judge of the conduct of the
+eternal Deity by the rules of our own imperfect morality, and erroneous
+justice. They admit a God, to subject Him to our laws. Let us guard
+against such rashness; and, once again it must be repeated, let us
+revere what we cannot comprehend. Let us cry out, _O Altitudo_! O the
+height and depth! with all our strength.
+
+"The gods Elohim, seeing the daughters of men that they were fair, took
+for wives those whom they chose." This imagination, again, may be traced
+in the history of every people. No nation has ever existed, unless
+perhaps we may except China, in which some god is not described as
+having had offspring from women. These corporeal gods frequently
+descended to visit their dominions upon earth; they saw the daughters of
+our race, and attached themselves to those who were most interesting and
+beautiful: the issue of this connection between gods and mortals must of
+course have been superior to other men; accordingly, Genesis informs us
+that from the association it mentions, of the gods with women, sprang a
+race of giants.
+
+"I will bring a deluge of waters upon the earth." I will merely observe
+here that St. Augustine, in his "City of God," No. 8, says, "_Maximum
+illud diluvium Graeca nec Latina novit historia_"--neither Greek nor
+Latin history knows anything about the great deluge. In fact, none had
+ever been known in Greece but those of Deucalion and Ogyges. They are
+regarded as universal in the fables collected by Ovid, but are wholly
+unknown in eastern Asia. St. Augustine, therefore, is not mistaken, in
+saying that history makes no mention of this event.
+
+"God said to Noah, I will make a covenant with you, and with your seed
+after you, and with all living creatures." God make a covenant with
+beasts! What sort of a covenant? Such is the outcry of infidels. But if
+He makes a covenant with man, why not with the beast? It has feeling,
+and there is something as divine in feeling as in the most metaphysical
+meditation. Besides, beasts feel more correctly than the greater part of
+men think. It is clearly in virtue of this treaty that Francis d'Assisi,
+the founder of the Seraphic order, said to the grasshoppers and the
+hares, "Pray sing, my dear sister grasshopper; pray browse, my dear
+brother hare." But what were the conditions of the treaty? That all
+animals should devour one another; that they should feed upon our flesh,
+and we upon theirs; that, after having eaten them, we should proceed
+with wrath and fury to the extermination of our own race--nothing being
+then wanting to crown the horrid series of butchery and cruelty, but
+devouring our fellow-men, after having thus remorselessly destroyed
+them. Had there been actually such a treaty as this it could have been
+entered into only with the devil.
+
+Probably the meaning of the whole passage is neither more nor less than
+that God is equally the absolute master of everything that breathes.
+This pact can be nothing more than an order, and the word "covenant" is
+used merely as more emphatic and impressive; we should not therefore be
+startled and offended at the words, but adore the spirit, and direct our
+minds back to the period in which this book was written--a book of
+scandal to the weak, but of edification to the strong.
+
+"And I will put my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of my
+covenant." Observe that the author does not say, I _have_ put my bow in
+the clouds; he says, I _will_ put: this clearly implies it to have been
+the prevailing opinion that there had not always been a rainbow. This
+phenomenon is necessarily produced by rain; yet in this place it is
+represented as something supernatural, exhibited in order to announce
+and prove that the earth should no more be inundated. It is singular to
+choose the certain sign of rain, in order to assure men against their
+being drowned. But it may also be replied that in any danger of
+inundation, we have the cheering security of the rainbow.
+
+"But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of
+Adam had built, and he said, 'Behold a people which have but one
+language. They have begun to do this, and they will not desist until
+they have completed it. Come, then, let us go and confound their
+language, that no one may understand his neighbor.'" Observe here, that
+the sacred writer always continues to conform to the popular opinions.
+He always speaks of God as of a man who endeavors to inform himself of
+what is passing, who is desirous of seeing with his own eyes what is
+going on in his dominions, who calls together his council in order to
+deliberate with them.
+
+"And Abraham having divided his men--who were three hundred and eighteen
+in number--fell upon the five kings, and pursued them unto Hoba, on the
+left hand of Damascus." From the south bank of the lake of Sodom to
+Damascus was a distance of eighty leagues, not to mention crossing the
+mountains Libanus and Anti-Libanus. Infidels smile and triumph at such
+exaggeration. But as the Lord favored Abraham, nothing was in fact
+exaggerated.
+
+"And two angels arrived at Sodom at even." The whole history of these
+two angels, whom the inhabitants of Sodom wished to violate, is perhaps
+the most extraordinary in the records of all antiquity. But it must be
+considered that almost all Asia believed in the existence of the
+demoniacal incubus and succubus; and moreover, that these two angels
+were creatures more perfect than mankind, and must have possessed more
+beauty to stimulate their execrable tendencies. It is possible that the
+passage may be only meant as a rhetorical figure to express the
+atrocious depravity of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is not without the
+greatest diffidence that we suggest to the learned this solution.
+
+As to Lot, who proposes to the people of Sodom the substitution of his
+two daughters in the room of the angels; and his wife, who was changed
+into a statue of salt, and all the rest of that history, what shall we
+venture to say? The old Arabian tale of Kinyras and Myrrha has some
+resemblance to the incest of Lot with his daughters; and the adventure
+of Philemon and Baucis is somewhat similar to the case of the two angels
+who appeared to Lot and his wife. With respect to the statue of salt, we
+know not where to find any resemblance; perhaps in the history of
+Orpheus and Eurydice.
+
+Many ingenious men are of opinion, with the great Newton and the learned
+Leclerc that the Pentateuch was written by Samuel when the Jews had a
+little knowledge of reading and writing, and that all these histories
+are imitations of Syrian fables.
+
+But it is enough that all this is in the Holy Scripture to induce us to
+reverence it, without attempting to find out in this book anything
+besides what is written by the Holy Spirit. Let us always recollect that
+those times were not like our times; and let us not fail to repeat,
+after so many great men, that the Old Testament is a true history; and
+that all that has been written differing from it by the rest of the
+world is fabulous.
+
+Some critics have contended that all the incredible passages in the
+canonical books, which scandalize weak minds, ought to be suppressed;
+but it has been observed in answer that those critics had bad hearts,
+and ought to be burned at the stake; and that it is impossible to be a
+good man without believing that the people of Sodom wanted to violate
+two angels. Such is the reasoning of a species of monsters who wish to
+lord it over the understandings of mankind.
+
+It is true that many eminent fathers of the Church have had the prudence
+to turn all these histories into allegories, after the example of the
+Jews, and particularly of Philo. The popes, more discreet, have
+endeavored to prevent the translation of these books into the vulgar
+tongue, lest some men should in consequence be led to think and judge,
+about what was proposed to them only to adore.
+
+We are certainly justified in concluding hence, that those who
+thoroughly understand this book should tolerate those who do not
+understand it at all; for if the latter understand nothing of it, it is
+not their own fault: on the other hand, those who comprehend nothing
+that it contains should tolerate those who comprehend everything in it.
+
+Learned and ingenious men, full of their own talents and acquirements,
+have maintained that it is impossible that Moses could have written the
+Book of Genesis. One of their principal reasons is that in the history
+of Abraham that patriarch is stated to have paid for a cave which he
+purchased for the interment of his wife, in silver coin, and the king of
+Gerar is said to have given Sarah a thousand pieces of silver when he
+restored her, after having carried her off for her beauty at the age of
+seventy-five. They inform us that they have consulted all the ancient
+authors, and that it appears very certain that at the period mentioned
+silver money was not in existence. But these are evidently mere cavils,
+as the Church has always firmly believed Moses to have been the author
+of the Pentateuch. They strengthen all the doubts suggested by
+Aben-Ezra, and Baruch Spinoza. The physician Astruc, father-in-law of
+the comptroller-general Silhouette, in his book--now become very
+scarce--called "Conjectures on the Book of Genesis," adds some
+objections, inexplicable undoubtedly to human learning, but not so to a
+humble and submissive piety. The learned, many of them, contradict every
+line, but the devout consider every line sacred. Let us dread falling
+into the misfortune of believing and trusting to our reason; but let us
+bring ourselves into subjection in understanding as well as in heart.
+
+"And Abraham said that Sarah was his sister, and the king of Gerar took
+her for himself." We admit, as we have said under the article on
+"Abraham," that Sarah was at this time ninety years of age, that she had
+been already carried away by a king of Egypt, and that a king of this
+same horrid wilderness of Gerar, likewise, many years afterwards,
+carried away the wife of Isaac, Abraham's son. We have also spoken of
+his servant, Hagar, who bore him a son, and of the manner in which the
+patriarch sent her and her son away. It is well known how infidels
+triumph on the subject of all these histories, with what a disdainful
+smile they speak of them, and that they place the story of one Abimelech
+falling in love with Sarah whom Abraham had passed off as his sister,
+and of another Abimelech falling in love with Rebecca, whom Isaac also
+passes as his sister, even beneath the thousand and one nights of the
+Arabian fables. We cannot too often remark that the great error of all
+these learned critics is their wishing to try everything by the test of
+our feeble reason, and to judge of the ancient Arabs as they judge of
+the courts of France or of England.
+
+"And the soul of Shechem, King Hamor's son, was bound up with the soul
+of Dinah, and he soothed her grief by his tender caresses, and he went
+to Hamor his father, and said to him, give me that woman to be my wife."
+
+Here our critics exclaim in terms of stronger disgust than ever. "What!"
+say they; "the son of a king is desirous to marry a vagabond girl;" the
+marriage is celebrated; Jacob the father, and Dinah the daughter, are
+loaded with presents; the king of Shechem deigns to receive those
+wandering robbers called patriarchs within his city; he has the
+incredible politeness or kindness to undergo, with his son, his court,
+and his people, the rite of circumcision, thus condescending to the
+superstition of a petty horde that could not call half a league of
+territory their own! And in return for this astonishing hospitality and
+goodness, how do our holy patriarchs act? They wait for the day when the
+process of circumcision generally induces fever, when Simeon and Levi
+run through the whole city with poniards in their hands and massacre the
+king, the prince his son, and all the inhabitants. We are precluded from
+the horror appropriate to this infernal counterpart of the tragedy of
+St. Bartholomew, only by a sense of its absolute impossibility. It is an
+abominable romance; but it is evidently a ridiculous romance. It is
+impossible that two men could have slaughtered in quiet the whole
+population of a city. The people might suffer in a slight degree from
+the operation which had preceded, but notwithstanding this, they would
+have risen in self-defence against two diabolical miscreants; they would
+have instantly assembled, would have surrounded them, and destroyed them
+with the summary and complete vengeance merited by their atrocity.
+
+But there is a still more palpable impossibility. It is, that according
+to the accurate computation of time, Dinah, this daughter of Jacob,
+could be only three years old; and that, even by forcing up chronology
+as far as possible in favor of the narrative, she could at the very most
+be only five. It is here, then, that we are assailed with bursts of
+indignant exclamation! "What!" it is said, "what! is it this book, the
+book of a rejected and reprobate people; a book so long unknown to all
+the world; a book in which sound reason and decent manners are outraged
+in every page, that is held up to us as irrefragable, holy, and dictated
+by God Himself? Is it not even impious to believe it? or could anything
+less than the fury of cannibals urge to the persecution of sensible and
+modest men for not believing it?"
+
+To this we reply: "The Church declares its belief in it. The copyists
+may have mixed up some revolting absurdities with respectable and
+genuine histories. It belongs to the holy church only to decide.
+The profane ought to be guided by her. Those absurdities, those alleged
+horrors do not affect the substance of our faith. How lamentable would
+be the fate of mankind, if religion and virtue depended upon what
+formerly happened to Shechem and to little Dinah!"
+
+"These are the kings who reigned in the land of Edom before the children
+of Israel had a king." This is the celebrated passage which has proved
+one of the great stumbling stones. This it was which decided the great
+Newton, the pious and acute Samuel Clarke, the profound and philosophic
+Bolingbroke, the learned Leclerc, the ingenious Freret, and a host of
+other enlightened men, to maintain that it was impossible Moses could
+have been the author of Genesis.
+
+We admit that in fact these words could not have been written until
+after the time that the Jews had kings.
+
+It is principally this verse that determined Astruc to give up the
+inspired authority of the whole Book of Genesis, and suppose the author
+had derived his materials from existing memoirs and records. His work is
+ingenious and accurate, but it is rash, not to say audacious. Even a
+council would scarcely have ventured on such an enterprise. And to what
+purpose has it served Astruc's thankless and dangerous labor--to double
+the darkness he wished to enlighten? Here is the fruit of the tree of
+knowledge, of which we are all so desirous of eating. Why must it be,
+that the fruit of the tree of ignorance should be more nourishing and
+more digestible?
+
+But of what consequence can it be to us, after all, whether any
+particular verse or chapter was written by Moses, or Samuel, or the
+priest (_sacrificateur_) who came to Samaria, or Esdras, or any other
+person? In what respect can our government, our laws, our fortunes, our
+morals, our well-being, be bound up with the unknown chiefs of a
+wretched and barbarous country called Edom or Idumaea, always inhabited
+by robbers? Alas! those poor Arabs, who have not shirts to their backs,
+neither know nor care whether or not we are in existence! They go on
+steadily plundering caravans, and eating barley bread, while we are
+perplexing and tormenting ourselves to know whether any petty kings
+flourished in a particular canton of Arabia Petraea, before they existed
+in a particular canton adjoining the west of the lake of Sodom!
+
+  _O miseras hominum curas! Opectora coeca!_
+                                      --LUCRETIUS, ii. 14.
+
+Blind, wretched man! in what dark paths of strife
+Thou walkest the little journey of thy life!--CREECH.
+
+
+
+
+GENII.
+
+
+The doctrines of judicial astrology and magic have spread all over the
+world. Look back to the ancient Zoroaster, and you will find that of the
+genii long established. All antiquity abounds in astrologers and
+magicians; such ideas were therefore very natural. At present, we smile
+at the number who entertained them; if we were in their situation, if
+like them we were only beginning to cultivate the sciences, we should
+perhaps believe just the same. Let us suppose ourselves intelligent
+people, beginning to reason on our own existence, and to observe the
+stars. The earth, we might say, is no doubt immovable in the midst of
+the world; the sun and planets only revolve in her service, and the
+stars are only made for us; man, therefore, is the great object of all
+nature. What is the intention of all these globes, and of the immensity
+of heaven thus destined for our use? It is very likely that all space
+and these globes are peopled with substances, and since we are the
+favorites of nature, placed in the centre of the universe, and all is
+made for man, these substances are evidently destined to watch over man.
+
+The first man who believed the thing at all possible would soon find
+disciples persuaded that it existed. We might then commence by saying,
+genii perhaps exist, and nobody could affirm the contrary; for where is
+the impossibility of the air and planets being peopled? We might
+afterwards say there _are_ genii, and certainly no one could prove that
+there are not. Soon after, some sages might see these genii, and we
+should have no right to say to them: "You have not seen them"; as these
+persons might be honorable, and altogether worthy of credit. One might
+see the genius of the empire or of his own city; another that of Mars
+or Saturn; the genii of the four elements might be manifested to several
+philosophers; more than one sage might see his own genius; all at first
+might be little more than dreaming, but dreams are the symbols of truth.
+
+It was soon known exactly how these genii were formed. To visit our
+globe, they must necessarily have wings; they therefore had wings. We
+know only of bodies; they therefore had bodies, but bodies much finer
+than ours, since they were genii, and much lighter, because they came
+from so great a distance. The sages who had the privilege of conversing
+with the genii inspired others with the hope of enjoying the same
+happiness. A skeptic would have been ill received, if he had said to
+them: "I have seen no genius, therefore there are none." They would have
+replied: "You reason ill; it does not follow that a thing exists not,
+which is unknown to you. There is no contradiction in the doctrine which
+inculcates these ethereal powers; no impossibility that they may visit
+us; they show themselves to our sages, they manifest themselves to us;
+you are not worthy of seeing genii."
+
+Everything on earth is composed of good and evil; there are therefore
+incontestably good and bad genii. The Persians had their peris and
+dives; the Greeks, their demons and cacodaemons; the Latins, _bonos et
+malos genios_. The good genii are white, and the bad black, except among
+the negroes, where it is necessarily the reverse. Plato without
+difficulty admits of a good and evil genius for every individual. The
+evil genius of Brutus appeared to him, and announced to him his death
+before the battle of Philippi. Have not grave historians said so? And
+would not Plutarch have been very injudicious to have assured us of this
+fact, if it were not true?
+
+Further, consider what a source of feasts, amusements, good tales, and
+bon mots, originated in the belief of genii!
+
+There were male and female genii. The genii of the ladies were called by
+the Romans little Junos. They also had the pleasure of seeing their
+genii grow up. In infancy, they were a kind of Cupid with wings, and
+when they protected old age, they wore long beards, and even sometimes
+the forms of serpents. At Rome, there is preserved a marble, on which is
+represented a serpent under a palm tree, to which are attached two
+crowns with this inscription: "To the genius of the Augusti"; it was the
+emblem of immortality.
+
+What demonstrative proof have we at present, that the genii, so
+universally admitted by so many enlightened nations, are only phantoms
+of the imagination? All that can be said is reduced to this: "I have
+never seen a genius, and no one of my acquaintance has ever seen one;
+Brutus has not written that his genius appeared to him before the battle
+of Philippi; neither Newton, Locke, nor even Descartes, who gave the
+reins to his imagination; neither kings nor ministers of state have
+ever been suspected of communing with their genii; therefore I do not
+believe a thing of which there is not the least truth. I confess their
+existence is not impossible; but the possibility is not a proof of the
+reality. It is possible that there may be satyrs, with little turned-up
+tails and goats' feet; but I must see several to believe in them; for if
+I saw but one, I should still doubt their existence."
+
+
+
+
+GENIUS.
+
+
+Of genius or demon, we have already spoken in the article on "angel." It
+is not easy to know precisely whether the peris of the Persians were
+invented before the demons of the Greeks, but it is very probable that
+they were. It may be, that the souls of the dead, called shades, manes,
+etc., passed for demons. Hesiod makes Hercules say that a demon dictated
+his labors.
+
+The demon of Socrates had so great a reputation, that Apuleius, the
+author of the "Golden Ass," who was himself a magician of good repute,
+says in his "Treatise on the Genius of Socrates," that a man must be
+without religion who denies it. You see that Apuleius reasons precisely
+like brothers Garasse and Bertier: "You do not believe that which I
+believe; you are therefore without religion." And the Jansenists have
+said as much of brother Bertier, as well as of all the world except
+themselves. "These demons," says the very religious and filthy
+Apuleius, "are intermediate powers between ether and our lower region.
+They live in our atmosphere, and bear our prayers and merits to the
+gods. They treat of succors and benefits, as interpreters and
+ambassadors. Plato says, that it is by their ministry that revelations,
+presages, and the miracles of magicians, are effected."--"_Caeterum sunt
+quaedam divinae mediae potestates, inter summum aethera, et infimas terras,
+in isto intersitae aeris spatio, per quas et desideria nostra et merita ad
+deos commeant. Hos Graeco nomine demonias nuncupant. Inter terricolas
+coeli colasque victores, hinc pecum, inde donorum: qui ultro citroque
+portant, hinc petitiones, inde suppetias: ceu quidam utriusque
+interpretes, et salutigeri. Per hos eosdem, ut Plato in symposio
+autumat, cuncta denuntiata; et majorum varia miracula, omnesque
+praesagium species reguntur._"
+
+St. Augustine has condescended to refute Apuleius in these words:
+
+"It is impossible for us to say that demons are neither mortal nor
+eternal, for all that has life, either lives eternally, or loses the
+breath of life by death; and Apuleius has said, that as to time, the
+demons are eternal. What then remains, but that demons hold a medium
+situation, and have one quality higher and another lower than mankind;
+and as, of these two things, eternity is the only higher thing which
+they exclusively possess, to complete the allotted medium, what must be
+the lower, if not misery?" This is powerful reasoning!
+
+As I have never seen any genii, demons, peris, or hobgoblins, whether
+beneficent or mischievous, I cannot speak of them from knowledge. I only
+relate what has been said by people who have seen them.
+
+Among the Romans, the word "genius" was not used to express a rare
+talent, as with us: the term for that quality was _ingenium_. We use the
+word "genius" indifferently in speaking of the tutelar demon of a town
+of antiquity, or an artist, or a musician. The term "genius" seems to
+have been intended to designate not great talents generally, but those
+into which invention enters. Invention, above everything, appeared a
+gift from the gods--this _ingenium, quasi ingenitum_, a kind of divine
+inspiration. Now an artist, however perfect he may be in his profession,
+if he have no invention, if he be not original, is not considered a
+genius. He is only inspired by the artists his predecessors, even when
+he surpasses them.
+
+It is very probable that many people now play at chess better than the
+inventor of the game, and that they might gain the prize of corn
+promised him by the Indian king. But this inventor was a genius, and
+those who might now gain the prize would be no such thing. Poussin, who
+was a great painter before he had seen any good pictures, had a genius
+for painting. Lulli, who never heard any good musician in France, had a
+genius for music.
+
+Which is the more desirable to possess, a genius without a master, or
+the attainment of perfection by imitating and surpassing the masters
+which precede us?
+
+If you put this question to artists, they will perhaps be divided; if
+you put it to the public, it will not hesitate. Do you like a beautiful
+Gobelin tapestry better than one made in Flanders at the commencement of
+the arts? Do you prefer modern masterpieces of engraving to the first
+wood-cuts? the music of the present day to the first airs, which
+resembled the Gregorian chant? the makers of the artillery of our time
+to the genius which invented the first cannon? everybody will answer,
+"yes." All purchasers will say: "I own that the inventor of the shuttle
+had more genius than the manufacturer who made my cloth, but my cloth is
+worth more than that of the inventor."
+
+In short, every one in conscience will confess, that we respect the
+geniuses who invented the arts, but that the minds which perfect them
+are of more present benefit.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+The article on "Genius" has been treated in the "Encyclopaedia" by men
+who possess it. We shall hazard very little after them.
+
+Every town, every man possessed a genius. It was imagined that those who
+performed extraordinary things were inspired by their genius. The nine
+muses were nine genii, whom it was necessary to invoke; therefore Ovid
+says: "_Et Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo_"--"The God within
+us, He the mind inspires."
+
+But, properly speaking, is genius anything but capability? What is
+capability but a disposition to succeed in an art? Why do we say the
+genius of a language? It is, that every language, by its terminations,
+articles, participles, and shorter or longer words, will necessarily
+have exclusive properties of its own.
+
+By the genius of a nation is meant the character, manners, talents, and
+even vices, which distinguish one people from another. It is sufficient
+to see the French, English, and Spanish people, to feel this difference.
+
+We have said that the particular genius of a man for an art is a
+different thing from his general talent; but this name is given only to
+a very superior ability. How many people have talent for poetry, music,
+and painting; yet it would be ridiculous to call them geniuses.
+
+Genius, conducted by taste, will never commit a gross fault. Racine,
+since his "Andromache," "Le Poussin," and "Rameau," has never committed
+one. Genius, without taste, will often commit enormous errors; and, what
+is worse, it will not be sensible of them.
+
+
+
+
+GEOGRAPHY.
+
+
+Geography is one of those sciences which will always require to be
+perfected. Notwithstanding the pains that have been taken, it has
+hitherto been impossible to have an exact description of the earth. For
+this great work, it would be necessary that all sovereigns should come
+to an understanding, and lend mutual assistance. But they have ever
+taken more pains to ravage the world than they have to measure it.
+
+No one has yet been able to make an exact map of upper Egypt, nor of the
+regions bordering on the Red Sea, nor of the vast country of Arabia. Of
+Africa we know only the coasts; all the interior is no more known than
+it was in the times of Atlas and Hercules. There is not a single
+well-detailed map of all the Grand Turk's possessions in Asia; all is
+placed at random, excepting some few large towns, the crumbling remains
+of which are still existing. In the states of the Great Mogul something
+is known of the relative positions of Agra and Delhi; but thence to the
+kingdom of Golconda everything is laid down at a venture.
+
+It is known that Japan extends from about the thirtieth to the fortieth
+degree of north latitude; there cannot be an error of more than two
+degrees, which is about fifty leagues; so that, relying on one of our
+best maps, a pilot would be in danger of losing his track or his life.
+
+As for the longitude, the first maps of the Jesuits determined it
+between the one hundred and fifty-seventh and the one hundred and
+seventy-fifth degree; whereas, it is now determined between the one
+hundred and forty-sixth and the one hundred and sixtieth.
+
+China is the only Asiatic country of which we have an exact measurement;
+because the emperor Kam-hi employed some Jesuit astronomers to draw
+exact maps, which is the best thing the Jesuits have done. Had they been
+content with measuring the earth, they would never have been proscribed.
+
+In our western world, Italy, France, Russia, England, and the principal
+towns of the other states, have been measured by the same method as was
+employed in China; but it was not until a very few years ago, that in
+France it was undertaken to form an entire topography. A company taken
+from the Academy of Sciences despatched engineers or surveyors into
+every corner of the kingdom, to lay down even the meanest hamlet, the
+smallest rivulet, the hills, the woods, in their true places. Before
+that time, so confused was the topography, that on the eve of the battle
+of Fontenoy, the maps of the country being all examined, every one of
+them was found entirely defective.
+
+If a positive order had been sent from Versailles to an inexperienced
+general to give battle, and post himself as appeared most advisable from
+the maps, as sometimes happened in the time of the minister Chamillar,
+the battle would infallibly have been lost.
+
+A general who should carry on a war in the country of the Morlachians,
+or the Montenegrins, with no knowledge of places but from the maps,
+would be at as great a loss as if he were in the heart of Africa.
+
+Happily, that which has often been traced by geographers, according to
+their own fancy, in their closets, is rectified on the spot. In
+geography, as in morals, it is very difficult to know the world without
+going from home.
+
+It is not with this department of knowledge, as with the arts of poetry,
+music, and painting. The last works of these kinds are often the worst.
+But in the sciences, which require exactness rather than genius, the
+last are always the best, provided they are done with some degree of
+care.
+
+One of the greatest advantages of geography, in my opinion, is this:
+your fool of a neighbor, and his wife almost as stupid, are incessantly
+reproaching you with not thinking as they think in Rue St. Jacques.
+"See," say they, "what a multitude of great men have been of our
+opinion, from Peter the Lombard down to the Abbe Petit-pied. The whole
+universe has received our truths; they reign in the Faubourg St. Honore,
+at Chaillot and at Etampes, at Rome and among the Uscoques." Take a map
+of the world; show them all Africa, the empires of Japan, China, India,
+Turkey, Persia, and that of Russia, more extensive than was the Roman
+Empire; make them pass their finger over all Scandinavia, all the north
+of Germany, the three kingdoms of Great Britain, the greater part of the
+Low Countries, and of Helvetia; in short make them observe, in the four
+great divisions of the earth, and in the fifth, which is as little known
+as it is great in extent, the prodigious number of races, who either
+never heard of those opinions, or have combated them, or have held them
+in abhorrence, and you will thus oppose the whole universe to Rue St.
+Jacques.
+
+You will tell them that Julius Caesar, who extended his power much
+farther than that street, did not know a word of all which they think so
+universal; and that our ancestors, on whom Julius Caesar bestowed the
+lash, knew no more of them than he did.
+
+They will then, perhaps, feel somewhat ashamed at having believed that
+the organ of St. Severin's church gave the tone to the rest of the
+world.
+
+
+
+
+GLORY--GLORIOUS.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+Glory is reputation joined with esteem, and is complete when admiration
+is superadded. It always supposes that which is brilliant in action, in
+virtue, or in talent, and the surmounting of great difficulties. Caesar
+and Alexander had glory. The same can hardly be said of Socrates. He
+claims esteem, reverence, pity, indignation against his enemies; but the
+term "glory" applied to him would be improper; his memory is venerable
+rather than glorious. Attila had much brilliancy, but he has no glory;
+for history, which may be mistaken, attributes to him no virtues:
+Charles XII. still has glory; for his valor, his disinterestedness, his
+liberality, were extreme. Success is sufficient for reputation, but not
+for glory. The glory of Henry IV. is every day increasing; for time has
+brought to light all his virtues, which were incomparably greater than
+his defects.
+
+Glory is also the portion of inventors in the fine arts; imitators have
+only applause. It is granted, too, to great talents, but in sublime arts
+only. We may well say, the glory of Virgil, or Cicero, but not of
+Martial, nor of Aulus Gellius.
+
+Men have dared to say, the glory of God: God created this world for His
+glory; not that the Supreme Being can have glory; but that men, having
+no expressions suitable to Him, use for Him those by which they are
+themselves most flattered.
+
+Vainglory is that petty ambition which is contented with appearances,
+which is exhibited in pompous display, and never elevates itself to
+greater things. Sovereigns, having real glory, have been known to be
+nevertheless fond of vainglory--seeking too eagerly after praise, and
+being too much attached to the trappings of ostentation.
+
+False glory often verges towards vanity; but it often leads to excesses,
+while vainglory is more confined to splendid littlenesses. A prince who
+should look for honor in revenge, would seek a false glory rather than a
+vain one.
+
+To give glory signifies to acknowledge, to bear witness. Give glory to
+truth, means acknowledging truth--Give glory to the God whom you
+serve--Bear witness to the God whom you serve.
+
+Glory is taken for heaven--He dwells in glory; but this is the case in
+no religion but ours. It is not allowable to say that Bacchus or
+Hercules was received into glory, when speaking of their apotheosis. The
+saints and angels have sometimes been called the glorious, as dwelling
+in the abode of glory.
+
+Gloriously is always taken in the good sense; he reigned gloriously; he
+extricated himself gloriously from great danger or embarrassment.
+
+To glory in, is sometimes taken in the good, sometimes in the bad,
+sense, according to the nature of the object in question. He glories in
+a disgrace which is the fruit of his talents and the effect of envy. We
+say of the martyrs, that they glorified God--that is, that their
+constancy made the God whom they attested revered by men.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+That Cicero should love glory, after having stifled Catiline's
+conspiracy, may be pardoned him. That the king of Prussia, Frederick the
+Great, should have the same feelings after Rosbach and Lissa, and after
+being the legislator, the historian, the poet, and the philosopher of
+his country--that he should be passionately fond of glory, and at the
+same time, have self-command enough to be modestly so--he will, on that
+account, be the more glorified.
+
+That the empress Catherine II. should have been forced by the brutish
+insolence of a Turkish sultan to display all her genius; that from the
+far north she should have sent four squadrons which spread terror in the
+Dardanelles and in Asia Minor; and that, in 1770, she took four
+provinces from those Turks who made Europe tremble--with this sort of
+glory she will not be reproached, but will be admired for speaking of
+her successes with that air of indifference and superiority which shows
+that they were merited.
+
+In short, glory befits geniuses of this sort, though belonging to the
+very mean race of mortals.
+
+But if, at the extremity of the west, a townsman of a place called Paris
+thinks he has glory in being harangued by a teacher of the university,
+who says to him: "Monseigneur, the glory you have acquired in the
+exercise of your office, your illustrious labors with which the universe
+resounds," etc., then I ask if there are mouths enough in that universe
+to celebrate, with their hisses, the glory of our citizen, and the
+eloquence of the pedant who attends to bray out this harangue at
+monseigneur's hotel? We are such fools that we have made God glorious
+like ourselves.
+
+That worthy chief of the dervishes, Ben-al-betif, said to his brethren
+one day: "My brethren, it is good that you should frequently use that
+sacred formula of our Koran, 'In the name of the most merciful God';
+because God uses mercy, and you learn to do so too, by oft repeating the
+words that recommend virtue, without which there would be few men left
+upon the earth. But, my brethren, beware of imitating those rash ones
+who boast, on every occasion, of laboring for the glory of God.
+
+"If a young simpleton maintains a thesis on the categories, an ignoramus
+in furs presiding, he is sure to write in large characters, at the head
+of his thesis, '_Ek alha abron doxa_!--'_Ad majorem Dei gloriam_.' --To
+the greater glory of God. If a good Mussulman has had his house
+whitewashed, he cuts this foolish inscription in the door. A saka
+carries water for the greater glory of God. It is an impious usage,
+piously used. What would you say of a little chiaoux, who, while
+emptying our sultan's close-stool, should exclaim: "To the greater glory
+of our invincible monarch?" There is certainly a greater distance
+between God and the sultan than between the sultan and the little
+chiaoux.
+
+"Ye miserable earth-worms, called men, what have you resembling the
+glory of the Supreme Being? Can He love glory? Can He receive it from
+you? Can He enjoy it? How long, ye two-legged animals without feathers,
+will you make God after your own image? What! because you are vain,
+because you love glory, you would have God love it also? If there were
+several Gods, perhaps each one would seek to gain the good opinion of
+his fellows. That might be glory to God. Such a God, if infinite
+greatness may be compared with extreme lowliness, would be like King
+Alexander or Iscander, who would enter the lists with none but kings.
+But you, poor creatures! what glory can you give to God? Cease to
+profane the sacred name. An emperor, named Octavius Augustus, forbade
+his being praised in the schools of Rome, lest his name should be
+brought into contempt. You can bring the name of the Supreme Being
+neither into contempt, nor into honor. Humble yourselves in the dust;
+adore, and be silent."
+
+Thus spake Ben-al-betif; and the dervishes cried out: "Glory to God!
+Ben-al-betif has said well."
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+_Conversation with a Chinese._
+
+In 1723, there was in Holland a Chinese: this Chinese was a man of
+letters and a merchant; which two professions ought not to be
+incompatible, but which have become so amongst us, thanks to the extreme
+regard which is paid to money, and the little consideration which
+mankind have ever shown, and will ever show, for merit.
+
+This Chinese, who spoke a little Dutch, was once in a bookseller's shop
+with some men of learning. He asked for a book, and "Bossuet's Universal
+History," badly translated, was proposed to him. "Ah!" said he, "how
+fortunate! I shall now see what is said of our great empire--of our
+nation, which has existed as a national body for more than fifty
+thousand years--of that succession of emperors who have governed us for
+so many ages. I shall now see what is thought of the religion of the
+men of letters--of that simple worship which we render to the Supreme
+Being. How pleasing to see what is said in Europe of our arts, many of
+which are more ancient amongst us than any European kingdom. I guess the
+author will have made many mistakes in the history of the war which we
+had twenty-two thousand five hundred and fifty-two years ago, with the
+warlike nations of Tonquin and Japan, and of that solemn embassy which
+the mighty emperor of the Moguls sent to ask laws from us, in the year
+of the world 500,000,000,000,079,123,450,000." "Alas!" said one of the
+learned men to him, "you are not even mentioned in that book; you are
+too inconsiderable; it is almost all about the first nation in the
+world--the only nation, the great Jewish people!"
+
+"The Jewish people!" exclaimed the Chinese. "Are they, then, masters of
+at least three-quarters of the earth?" "They flatter themselves that
+they shall one day be so," was the answer; "until which time they have
+the honor of being our old-clothes-men, and, now and then, clippers of
+our coin."--"You jest," said the Chinese; "had these people ever a vast
+empire?" "They had as their own for some years," said I, "a small
+country; but it is not by the extent of their states that a people are
+to be judged; as it is not by his riches that we are to estimate a man."
+
+"But is no other people spoken of in this book?" asked the man of
+letters. "Undoubtedly," returned a learned man who stood next me, and
+who instantly replied, "there is a deal said in it of a small country
+sixty leagues broad, called Egypt, where it is asserted that there was a
+lake a hundred and fifty leagues round, cut by the hands of
+men."--"Zounds!" said the Chinese; "a lake a hundred and fifty leagues
+round in a country only sixty broad! That is fine, indeed!"--"Everybody
+was wise in that country," added the doctor. "Oh! what fine times they
+must have been," said the Chinese. "But is that all?"--"No," replied the
+European; "he also treats of that celebrated people, the Greeks." "Who
+are these Greeks?" asked the man of letters. "Ah!" continued the other,
+"they inhabited a province about a two-hundredth part as large as China,
+but which has been famous throughout the world." "I have never heard
+speak of these people, neither in Mogul nor in Japan, nor in Great
+Tartary," said the Chinese, with an ingenuous look.
+
+"Oh, ignorant, barbarous man!" politely exclaimed our scholar. "Know you
+not, then, the Theban Epaminondas; nor the harbor of Piraeus; nor the
+name of the two horses of Achilles; nor that of Silenus's ass? Have you
+not heard of Jupiter, nor of Diogenes, nor of Lais, nor of Cybele,
+nor--"
+
+"I am much afraid," replied the man of letters, "that you know nothing
+at all of the ever memorable adventure of the celebrated Xixofou
+Concochigramki, nor of the mysteries of the great Fi Psi Hi Hi. But
+pray, what are the other unknown things of which this universal history
+treats?" The scholar then spoke for a quarter of an hour on the Roman
+commonwealth: but when he came to Julius Caesar, the Chinese interrupted
+him, saying, "As for him, I think I know him: was he not a Turk?"
+
+"What!" said the scholar, somewhat warm, "do you not at least know the
+difference between Pagans, Christians, and Mussulmans? Do you not know
+Constantine, and the history of the popes?" "We have indistinctly
+heard," answered the Asiatic, "of one Mahomet."
+
+"It is impossible," returned the other, "that you should not, at least,
+be acquainted with Luther, Zuinglius, Bellarmin, Oecolampadius." "I
+shall never remember those names," said the Chinese. He then went away
+to sell a considerable parcel of tea and fine grogram, with which he
+bought two fine girls and a ship-boy, whom he took back to his own
+country, adoring Tien, and commending himself to Confucius.
+
+For myself, who was present at this conversation, I clearly saw what
+glory is; and I said: Since Caesar and Jupiter are unknown in the finest,
+the most ancient, the most extensive, the most populous and
+well-regulated kingdom upon earth; it beseems you, ye governors of some
+little country, ye preachers in some little parish, or some little
+town--ye doctors of Salamanca and of Bourges, ye flimsy authors, and ye
+ponderous commentators--it beseems you to make pretensions to renown!
+
+
+
+
+GOAT--SORCERY.
+
+
+The honors of every kind which antiquity paid to goats would be very
+astonishing, if anything could astonish those who have grown a little
+familiar with the world, ancient and modern. The Egyptians and the Jews
+often designated the kings and the chiefs of the people by the word
+"goat." We find in Zachariah:
+
+"Mine anger was kindled against the shepherds, and I punished the goats;
+for the Lord of Hosts hath visited his flock, the house of Judah, and
+hath made them as his goodly horse in the battle."
+
+"Remove out of the midst of Babylon," says Jeremiah to the chiefs of the
+people; "go forth out of the land of the Chaldaeans, and be as the
+he-goats before the flocks."
+
+Isaiah, in chapters x. and xiv., uses the term "goat," which has been
+translated "prince." The Egyptians went much farther than calling their
+kings goats; they consecrated a goat in Mendes, and it is even said that
+they adored him. The truth very likely was, that the people took an
+emblem for a divinity, as is but too often the case.
+
+It is not likely that the Egyptian _shoen_ or _shotim_, _i.e._, priests,
+immolated goats and worshipped them at the same time. We know that they
+had their goat Hazazel, which they adorned and crowned with flowers, and
+threw down headlong, as an expiation for the people; and that the Jews
+took from them, not only this ceremony, but even the very name of
+Hazazel, as they adopted many other rites from Egypt.
+
+But goats received another, and yet more singular honor. It is beyond a
+doubt that in Egypt many women set the same example with goats, as
+Pasiphae did with her bull.
+
+The Jews but too faithfully imitated these abominations. Jeroboam
+instituted priests for the service of his calves and his goats.
+
+The worship of the goat was established in Egypt, and in the lands of a
+part of Palestine. Enchantments were believed to be operated by means of
+goats, and other monsters, which were always represented with a goat's
+head.
+
+Magic, sorcery, soon passed from the East into the West, and extended
+itself throughout the earth. The sort of sorcery that came from the Jews
+was called Sabbatum by the Romans, who thus confounded their sacred day
+with their secret abominations. Thence it was, that in the neighboring
+nations, to be a sorcerer and to go to the sabbath, meant the same
+thing.
+
+Wretched village women, deceived by knaves, and still more by the
+weakness of their own imaginations, believed that after pronouncing the
+word "_abraxa_", and rubbing themselves with an ointment mixed with
+cow-dung and goat's hair, they went to the sabbath on a broom-stick in
+their sleep, that there they adored a goat, and that he enjoyed them.
+
+This opinion was universal. All the doctors asserted that it was the
+devil, who metamorphosed himself into a goat. This may be seen in Del
+Rio's "Disquisitions," and in a hundred other authors. The theologian
+Grillandus, a great promoter of the Inquisition, quoted by Del Rio, says
+that sorcerers call the goat Martinet. He assures us that a woman who
+was attached to Martinet, mounted on his back, and was carried in an
+instant through the air to a place called the Nut of Benevento.
+
+There were books in which the mysteries of the sorcerers were written. I
+have seen one of them, at the head of which was a figure of a goat very
+badly drawn, with a woman on her knees behind him. In France, these
+books were called "_grimoires_"; and in other countries "the devil's
+alphabet." That which I saw contained only four leaves, in almost
+illegible characters, much like those of the "Shepherd's Almanac."
+
+Reasoning and better education would have sufficed in Europe for the
+extirpation of such an extravagance; but executions were employed
+instead of reasoning. The pretended sorcerers had their "_grimoire_" and
+the judges had their sorcerer's code. In 1599, the Jesuit Del Rio, a
+doctor of Louvain, published his "Magical Disquisitions." He affirms
+that all heretics are magicians, and frequently recommends that they be
+put to the torture. He has no doubt that the devil transforms himself
+into a goat and grants his favors to all women presented to him. He
+quotes various jurisconsults, called demonographers, who assert that
+Luther was the son of a woman and a goat. He assures us that at
+Brussels, in 1595, a woman was brought to bed of a child, of which the
+devil, disguised as a goat, was father, and that she was punished, but
+he does not inform us in what manner.
+
+But the jurisprudence of witchcraft has been the most profoundly treated
+by one Boguet, "_grand juge en dernier ressort_" of an abbey of St.
+Claude in Franche-Comte. He gives an account of all the executions to
+which he condemned wizards and witches, and the number is very
+considerable. Nearly all the witches are supposed to have had commerce
+with the goat.
+
+It has already been said that more than a hundred thousand sorcerers
+have been executed in Europe. Philosophy alone has at length cured men
+of this abominable delusion, and has taught judges that they should not
+burn the insane.
+
+
+
+
+GOD--GODS.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+The reader cannot too carefully bear in mind that this dictionary has
+not been written for the purpose of repeating what so many others have
+said.
+
+The knowledge of a God is not impressed upon us by the hands of nature,
+for then men would all have the same idea; and no idea is born with us.
+It does not come to us like the perception of light, of the ground,
+etc., which we receive as soon as our eyes and our understandings are
+opened. Is it a philosophical idea? No; men admitted the existence of
+gods before they were philosophers.
+
+Whence, then, is this idea derived? From feeling, and from that natural
+logic which unfolds itself with age, even in the rudest of mankind.
+Astonishing effects of nature were beheld--harvests and barrenness, fair
+weather and storms, benefits and scourges; and the hand of a master was
+felt. Chiefs were necessary to govern societies; and it was needful to
+admit sovereigns of these new sovereigns whom human weakness had given
+itself--beings before whose power these men who could bear down their
+fellow-men might tremble. The first sovereigns in their time employed
+these notions to cement their power. Such were the first steps; thus
+every little society had its god. These notions were rude because
+everything was rude. It is very natural to reason by analogy. One
+society under a chief did not deny that the neighboring tribe should
+likewise have its judge, or its captain; consequently it could not deny
+that the other should also have its god. But as it was to the interest
+of each tribe that its captain should be the best, it was also
+interested in believing, and consequently it did believe, that its god
+was the mightiest. Hence those ancient fables which have so long been
+generally diffused, that the gods of one nation fought against the gods
+of another. Hence the numerous passages in the Hebrew books, which we
+find constantly disclosing the opinion entertained by the Jews, that the
+gods of their enemies existed, but that they were inferior to the God of
+the Jews.
+
+Meanwhile, in the great states where the progress of society allowed to
+individuals the enjoyment of speculative leisure, there were priests,
+Magi, and philosophers.
+
+Some of these perfected their reason so far as to acknowledge in secret
+one only and universal god. So, although the ancient Egyptians adored
+Osiri, Osiris, or rather Osireth (which signifies this land is mine);
+though they also adored other superior beings, yet they admitted one
+supreme, one only principal god, whom they called "_Knef_", whose symbol
+was a sphere placed on the frontispiece of the temple.
+
+After this model, the Greeks had their Zeus, their Jupiter, the master
+of the other gods, who were but what the angels are with the Babylonians
+and the Hebrews, and the saints with the Christians of the Roman
+communion.
+
+It is a more thorny question than it has been considered, and one by no
+means profoundly examined, whether several gods, equal in power, can
+exist at the same time?
+
+We have no adequate idea of the Divinity; we creep on from conjecture to
+conjecture, from likelihood to probability. We have very few
+certainties. There is something; therefore there is something eternal;
+for nothing is produced from nothing. Here is a certain truth on which
+the mind reposes. Every work which shows us means and an end, announces
+a workman; then this universe, composed of springs, of means, each of
+which has its end, discovers a most mighty, a most intelligent workman.
+Here is a probability approaching the greatest certainty. But is this
+supreme artificer infinite? Is he everywhere? Is he in one place? How
+are we, with our feeble intelligence and limited knowledge, to answer
+these questions?
+
+My reason alone proves to me a being who has arranged the matter of this
+world; but my reason is unable to prove to me that he made this
+matter--that he brought it out of nothing. All the sages of antiquity,
+without exception, believed matter to be eternal, and existing by
+itself. All then that I can do, without the aid of superior light, is to
+believe that the God of this world is also eternal, and existing by
+Himself. God and matter exist by the nature of things. May not other
+gods exist, as well as other worlds? Whole nations, and very enlightened
+schools, have clearly admitted two gods in this world--one the source of
+good, the other the source of evil. They admitted an eternal war between
+two equal powers. Assuredly, nature can more easily suffer the existence
+of several independent beings in the immensity of space, than that of
+limited and powerless gods in this world, of whom one can do no good,
+and the other no harm.
+
+If God and matter exist from all eternity, as antiquity believed, here
+then are two necessary beings; now, if there be two necessary beings,
+there may be thirty. These doubts alone, which are the germ of an
+infinity of reflections, serve at least to convince us of the feebleness
+of our understanding. We must, with Cicero, confess our ignorance of the
+nature of the Divinity; we shall never know any more of it than he did.
+
+In vain do the schools tell us that God is infinite negatively and not
+privatively--"_formaliter et non materialiter_" that He is the first
+act, the middle, and the last--that He is everywhere without being in
+any place; a hundred pages of commentaries on definitions like these
+cannot give us the smallest light. We have no steps whereby to arrive at
+such knowledge.
+
+We feel that we are under the hand of an invisible being; this is all;
+we cannot advance one step farther. It is mad temerity to seek to divine
+what this being is--whether he is extended or not, whether he is in one
+place or not, how he exists, or how he operates.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+I am ever apprehensive of being mistaken; but all monuments give me
+sufficient evidence that the polished nations of antiquity acknowledged
+a supreme god. There is not a book, not a medal, not a bas-relief, not
+an inscription, in which Juno, Minerva, Neptune, Mars, or any of the
+other deities, is spoken of as a forming being, the sovereign of all
+nature. On the contrary, the most ancient profane books that we
+have--those of Hesiod and Homer--represent their Zeus as the only
+thunderer, the only master of gods and men; he even punishes the other
+gods; he ties Juno with a chain, and drives Apollo out of heaven.
+
+The ancient religion of the Brahmins--the first that admitted celestial
+creatures--the first which spoke of their rebellion--explains itself in
+sublime manner concerning the unity and power of God; as we have seen in
+the article on "Angel."
+
+The Chinese, ancient as they are, come after the Indians. They have
+acknowledged one only god from time immemorial; they have no subordinate
+gods, no t mediating demons or genii between God and man; no oracles, no
+abstract dogmas, no theological disputes among the lettered; their
+emperor was always the first pontiff; their religion was always august
+and simple; thus it is that this vast empire, though twice subjugated,
+has constantly preserved its integrity, has made its conquerors receive
+its laws, and notwithstanding the crimes and miseries inseparable from
+the human race, is still the most flourishing state upon earth.
+
+The Magi of Chaldaea, the Sabeans, acknowledged but one supreme god, whom
+they adored in the stars, which are his work. The Persians adored him in
+the sun. The sphere placed on the frontispiece of the temple of Memphis
+was the emblem of one only and perfect god, called "_Knef_" by the
+Egyptians.
+
+The title of "_Deus Optimus Maximus_" was never given by the Romans to
+any but "_Jupiter, hominum sator atque deorum_." This great truth, which
+we have elsewhere pointed out, cannot be too often repeated.
+
+This adoration of a Supreme God, from Romulus down to the total
+destruction of the empire and of its religion, is confirmed. In spite of
+all the follies of the people, who venerated secondary and ridiculous
+gods, and in spite of the Epicureans, who in reality acknowledged none,
+it is verified that, in all times, the magistrates and the wise adored
+one sovereign God.
+
+From the great number of testimonies left us to this truth, I will
+select first that of Maximus of Tyre, who flourished under the
+Antonines--those models of true piety, since they were models of
+humanity. These are his words, in his discourse entitled "Of God,"
+according to Plato. The reader who would instruct himself is requested
+to weigh them well:
+
+"Men have been so weak as to give to God a human figure, because they
+had seen nothing superior to man; but it is ridiculous to imagine, with
+Homer, that Jupiter or the Supreme Divinity has black eyebrows and
+golden hair, which he cannot shake without making the heavens tremble.
+
+"When men are questioned concerning the nature of the Divinity, their
+answers are all different. Yet, notwithstanding this prodigious variety
+of opinions, you will find one and the same feeling throughout the
+earth--viz., that there is but one God, who is the father of all...."
+
+After this formal avowal, after the immortal discourses of Cicero, of
+Antonine, of Epictetus, what becomes of the declamations which so many
+ignorant pedants are still repeating? What avail those eternal
+reproachings of base polytheism and puerile idolatry, but to convince us
+that the reproachers have not the slightest acquaintance with sterling
+antiquity? They have taken the reveries of Homer for the doctrines of
+the wise.
+
+Is it necessary to have stronger or more expressive testimony? You will
+find it in the letter from Maximus of Madaura to St. Augustine; both
+were philosophers and orators; at least, they prided themselves on being
+so; they wrote to each other freely; they were even friends as much as a
+man of the old religion and one of the new could be friends. Read
+Maximus of Madaura's letter, and the bishop of Hippo's answer:
+
+_Letter from Maximus of Madaura._
+
+"Now, that there is a sovereign God, who is without beginning, and, who,
+without having begotten anything like unto himself, is nevertheless the
+father and the former of all things, what man can be gross and stupid
+enough to doubt? He it is of whom, under different names, we adore the
+eternal power extending through every part of the world--thus honoring
+separately, by different sorts of worship, what may be called his
+several members, we adore him entirely.... May those subordinate gods
+preserve you, under whose names, and by whom all we mortals upon earth
+adore the common father of gods and men, by different sorts of worship,
+it is true, but all according in their variety, and all tending to the
+same end."
+
+By whom was this letter written? By a Numidian--one of the country of
+the Algerines!
+
+_Augustine's Answer._
+
+"In your public square there are two statues of Mars, the one naked, the
+other armed; and close by, the figure of a man who, with three fingers
+advanced towards Mars, holds in check that divinity, so dangerous to the
+whole town. With regard to what you say of such gods, being portions of
+the only true God, I take the liberty you give me, to warn you not to
+fall into such a sacrilege; for that only God, of whom you speak, is
+doubtless He who is acknowledged by the whole world, and concerning
+whom, as some of the ancients have said, the ignorant agree with the
+learned. Now, will you say that he whose strength, if not his cruelty,
+is represented by an inanimate man, is a portion of that God? I could
+easily push you hard on this subject; for you will clearly see how much
+might be said upon it; but I refrain, lest you should say that I employ
+against you the weapons of rhetoric rather than those of virtue."
+
+We know not what was signified by these two statues, of which no vestige
+is left us; but not all the statues with which Rome was filled--not the
+Pantheon and all the temples consecrated to the inferior gods, nor even
+those of the twelve greater gods prevented "_Deus Optimus
+Maximus_"--"God, most good, most great"--from being acknowledged
+throughout the empire.
+
+The misfortune of the Romans, then, was their ignorance of the Mosaic
+law, and afterwards, of the law of the disciples of our Saviour Jesus
+Christ--their want of the faith--their mixing with the worship of a
+supreme God the worship of Mars, of Venus, of Minerva, of Apollo, who
+did not exist, and their preserving that religion until the time of the
+Theodosii. Happily, the Goths, the Huns, the Vandals, the Heruli, the
+Lombards, the Franks, who destroyed that empire, submitted to the truth,
+and enjoyed a blessing denied to Scipio, to Cato, to Metellus, to
+Emilius, to Cicero, to Varro, to Virgil, and to Horace.
+
+None of these great men knew Jesus Christ, whom they could not know; yet
+they did not worship the devil, as so many pedants are every day
+repeating. How should they worship the devil, of whom they had never
+heard?
+
+_A Calumny on Cicero by Warburton, on the Subject of a Supreme God._
+
+Warburton, like his contemporaries, has calumniated Cicero and ancient
+Rome. He boldly supposes that Cicero pronounced these words, in his
+"Oration for Flaccus":
+
+"It is unworthy of the majesty of the empire to adore only one
+God"--"_Majestatem imperii non decuit ut unus tantum Deus colatur."
+
+It will, perhaps, hardly be believed that there is not a word of this in
+the "Oration for Flaccus," nor in any of Cicero's works. Flaccus, who
+had exercised the praetorship in Asia Minor, is charged with exercising
+some vexations. He was secretly persecuted by the Jews, who then
+inundated Rome; for, by their money, they had obtained privileges in
+Rome at the very time when Pompey, after Crassus, had taken Jerusalem,
+and hanged their petty king, Alexander, son of Aristobolus. Flaccus had
+forbidden the conveying of gold and silver specie to Jerusalem, because
+the money came back altered, and commerce was thereby injured; and he
+had seized the gold which was clandestinely carried. This gold, said
+Cicero, is still in the treasury. Flaccus has acted as disinterestedly
+as Pompey.
+
+Cicero, then, with his wonted irony, pronounces these words: "Each
+country has its religion; we have ours. While Jerusalem was yet free,
+while the Jews were yet at peace, even then they held in abhorrence the
+splendor of this empire, the dignity of the Roman name, the
+institutions of our ancestors. Now that nation has shown more than ever,
+by the strength of its arms, what it should think of the Roman Empire.
+It has shown us, by its valor, how dear it is to the immortal gods; it
+has proved it to us, by its being vanquished, expatriated, and
+tributary."--"_Stantibus Hierosolymis, pacatisque Judais, tamen istorum
+religio sacrorum, a splendore hujus imperii, gravitate nominis nostri,
+ma jorum institutis, abhorrebat; nunc vero hoc magis quid ilia gens,
+quid de imperio nostro sentiret, ostendit armis; quam cara diis
+immortalibus esset, docuit, quod est victa, quod elocata, quod
+servata._"
+
+It is then quite false that Cicero, or any other Roman, ever said that
+it did not become the majesty of the empire to acknowledge a supreme
+God. Their Jupiter, the Zeus of the Greeks, the Jehovah of the
+Phoenicians, was always considered as the master of the secondary
+gods. This great truth cannot be too forcibly inculcated.
+
+_Did the Romans Take Their Gods from the Greeks?_
+
+Had not the Romans served gods for whom they were not indebted to the
+Greeks? For instance, they could not be guilty of plagiarism in adoring
+Coelum, while the Greeks adored Ouranon; or in addressing themselves to
+Saturnus and Tellus, while the Greeks addressed themselves to Ge and
+Chronos. They called Ceres, her whom the Greeks named Deo and Demiter.
+
+Their Neptune was Poseidon, their Venus was Aphrodite; their Juno was
+called, in Greek, Era; their Proserpine, Core; and their favorites, Mars
+and Bellona, were Ares and Enio. In none of these instances do the names
+resemble.
+
+Did the inventive spirits of Rome and of Greece assemble? or did the one
+take from the other the _thing_, while they disguised the _name_? It is
+very natural that the Romans, without consulting the Greeks, should make
+to themselves gods of the heavens, of time; beings presiding over war,
+over generation, over harvests, without going to Greece to ask for gods,
+as they afterwards went there to ask for laws. When you find a name that
+resembles nothing else, it is but fair to believe it a native of that
+particular country.
+
+But is not Jupiter, the master of all the gods, a word belonging to
+every nation, from the Euphrates to the Tiber? Among the first Romans,
+it was _Jov_, _Jovis_; among the Greeks, _Zeus_; among the
+Phoenicians, the Syrians, and the Egyptians, _Jehovah_.
+
+Does not this resemblance serve to confirm the supposition that every
+people had the knowledge of the Supreme Being?--a knowledge confused, it
+is true; but what man can have it _distinct_?
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+_Examination of Spinoza._
+
+Spinoza cannot help admitting an intelligence acting in matter, and
+forming a whole with it.
+
+"I must conclude," he says, "that the absolute being is neither thought
+nor extent, exclusively of each other; but that extent and thought are
+necessary attributes of the absolute being."
+
+Herein he appears to differ from all the atheists of antiquity; from
+Ocellus, Lucanus, Heraclitus, Democritus, Leucippus, Strato, Epicurus,
+Pythagoras, Diagoras, Zeno of Elis, Anaximander, and so many others. He
+differs from them, above all, in his method, which he took entirely from
+the reading of Descartes, whose very style he has imitated.
+
+The multitude of those who cry out against Spinoza, without ever having
+read him, will especially be astonished by his following declaration. He
+does not make it to dazzle mankind, nor to appease theologians, nor to
+obtain protectors, nor to disarm a party; he speaks as a philosopher,
+without naming himself, without advertising himself; and expresses
+himself in Latin, so as to be understood by a very small number. Here is
+his profession of faith.
+
+_Spinoza's Profession of Faith._
+
+"If I also concluded that the idea of God, comprised in that of the
+infinity of the universe, excused me from obedience, love, and worship,
+I should make a still more pernicious use of my reason; for it is
+evident to me that the laws which I _have_ received, not by the relation
+or intervention of other men, but immediately from Him, are those which
+the light of nature points out to me as the true guides of rational
+conduct. If I failed of obedience, in this particular, I should sin, not
+only against the principle of my being and the society of my kind, but
+also against myself, in depriving myself of the most solid advantage of
+my existence. This obedience does, it is true, bind me only to the
+duties of my state, and makes me look on all besides as frivolous
+practices, invented in superstition to serve the purposes of their
+inventors.
+
+"With regard to the love of God, so far, I conceive, is this idea from
+tending to weaken it, that no other is more calculated to increase it;
+since, through it, I know that God is intimate with my being; that He
+gives me existence and my every property; but He gives me them
+liberally, without reproach, without interest, without subjecting me to
+anything but my own nature. It banishes fear, uneasiness, distrust, and
+all the effects of a vulgar or interested love. It informs me that this
+is a good which I cannot lose, and which I possess the more fully, as I
+know and love it."
+
+Are these the words of the virtuous and tender Fenelon, or those of
+Spinoza? How is it that two men so opposed to each other, have, with
+such different notions of God, concurred in the idea of loving God for
+Himself?
+
+It must be acknowledged that they went both to the same end--the one as
+a Christian, the other as a man who had the misfortune not to be so;
+the holy archbishop, as philosopher, convinced that God is distinct
+from nature; the other as a widely-erring disciple of Descartes, who
+imagined that God is all nature.
+
+The former was orthodox, the latter was mistaken, I must assent; but
+both were honest, both estimable in their sincerity, as in their mild
+and simple manners; though there is no other point of resemblance
+between the imitator of the "Odyssey," and a dry Cartesian fenced round
+with arguments; between one of the most accomplished men of the court of
+Louis XIV. invested with what is called a _high_ divinity, and a poor
+unjudaized Jew, living with an income of three hundred florins, in the
+most profound obscurity.
+
+If there be any similitude between them, it is that Fenelon was accused
+before the Sanhedrim of the new law, and the other before a synagogue
+without power or without reason; but the one submitted, the other
+rebelled.
+
+_Foundation of Spinoza's Philosophy._
+
+The great dialectician Bayle has refuted Spinoza. His system, therefore,
+is not demonstrated, like one of Euclid's propositions; for, if it were
+so, it could not be combated. It is, therefore, at least obscure.
+
+I have always had some suspicion that Spinoza, with his universal
+substance, his modes and accidents, had some other meaning than that in
+which he is understood by Bayle; and consequently, that Bayle may be
+right, without having confounded Spinoza. And, in particular, I have
+always thought that often Spinoza did not understand himself, and that
+this is the principal reason why he has not been understood.
+
+It seems to me that the ramparts of Spinozism might be beaten down on a
+side which Bayle has neglected. Spinoza thinks that there can exist but
+one substance; and it appears throughout his book that he builds his
+theory on the mistake of Descartes, that "nature is a plenum."
+
+The theory of a plenum is as false as that of a void. It is now
+demonstrated that motion is as impossible in absolute fulness, as it is
+impossible that, in an equal balance, a weight of two pounds in one
+scale should sink a weight of two in the other.
+
+Now, if every motion absolutely requires empty space, what becomes of
+Spinoza's one and only substance? How can the substance of a star,
+between which and us there is a void so immense, be precisely the
+substance of this earth, or the substance of myself, or the substance of
+a fly eaten by a spider?
+
+Perhaps I mistake, but I never have been able to conceive how Spinoza,
+admitting an infinite substance of which thought and matter are the two
+modalities--admitting the substance which he calls God, and of which all
+that we see is mode or accident--could nevertheless reject final causes.
+If this infinite, universal being thinks, must he not have design? If he
+has design, must he not have a will?
+
+[Illustration: Descartes.]
+
+Spinoza says, we are modes of that absolute, necessary, infinite being.
+I say to Spinoza, we will, and have design, we who are but modes;
+therefore, this infinite, necessary, absolute being cannot be deprived
+of them; therefore, he has will, design, power.
+
+I am aware that various philosophers, and especially Lucretius, have
+denied final causes; I am also aware that Lucretius, though not very
+chaste, is a very great poet in his descriptions and in his morals; but
+in philosophy I own he appears to me to be very far behind a college
+porter or a parish beadle. To affirm that the eye is not made to see,
+nor the ear to hear, nor the stomach to digest--is not this the most
+enormous absurdity, the most revolting folly, that ever entered the
+human mind? Doubter as I am, this insanity seems to me evident, and I
+say so.
+
+For my part, I see in nature, as in the arts, only final causes, and I
+believe that an apple tree is made to bear apples, as I believe that a
+watch is made to tell the hour.
+
+I must here acquaint the readers that if Spinoza, in several passages of
+his works, makes a jest of final causes, he most expressly acknowledges
+them in the first part of his "Being, in General and in Particular."
+
+Here he says, "Permit me for a few moments to dwell with admiration on
+the wonderful dispensation of nature, which, having enriched the
+constitution of man with all the resources necessary to prolong to a
+certain term the duration of his frail existence, and to animate his
+knowledge of himself by that of an infinity of distant objects, seems
+purposely to have neglected to give him the means of well knowing what
+he is obliged to make a more ordinary use of--the individuals of his own
+species. Yet, when duly considered, this appears less the effect of a
+refusal than of an extreme liberality; for, if there were any
+intelligent being that could penetrate another against his will, he
+would enjoy such an advantage as would of itself exclude him from
+society; whereas, in the present state of things, each individual
+enjoying himself in full independence communicates himself so much only
+as he finds convenient."
+
+What shall I conclude from this? That Spinoza frequently contradicted
+himself; that he had not always clear ideas; that in the great wreck of
+systems, he clung sometimes to one plank, sometimes to another; that in
+this weakness he was like Malebranche, Arnauld, Bossuet, and Claude, who
+now and then contradicted themselves in their disputes; that he was like
+numberless metaphysicians and theologians? I shall conclude that I have
+additional reason for distrusting all my metaphysical notions; that I am
+a very feeble animal, treading on quicksands, which are continually
+giving way beneath me; and that there is perhaps nothing so foolish as
+to believe ourselves always in the right.
+
+Baruch Spinoza, you are very confused; but are you as dangerous as you
+are said to be? I maintain that you are not; and my reason is, that you
+_are_ confused, that you have written in bad Latin, and that there are
+not ten persons in Europe who read you from beginning to end, although
+you have been translated into French. Who is the dangerous author? He
+who is read by the idle at court and by the ladies.
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+_The "System of Nature."_
+
+The author of the "System of Nature" has had the advantage of being read
+by both learned and ignorant, and by women. His style, then, has merits
+which that of Spinoza wanted. He is often luminous, sometimes eloquent;
+although he may be charged, like all the rest, with repetition,
+declamation, and self-contradiction. But for profundity, he is very
+often to be distrusted both in physics and in morals. The interest of
+mankind is here in question; we will, therefore, examine whether his
+doctrine is true and useful; and will, if we can, be brief.
+
+"Order and disorder do not exist." What! in physics, is not a child born
+blind, without legs, or a monster, contrary to the nature of the
+species? Is it not the ordinary regularity of nature that makes order,
+and irregularity that constitutes disorder? Is it not a great
+derangement, a dreadful disorder, when nature gives a child hunger and
+closes the oesophagus? The evacuations of every kind are necessary;
+yet the channels are frequently without orifices, which it is necessary
+to remedy. Doubtless this disorder has its cause; for there is no effect
+without a cause; but it is a very disordered effect.
+
+Is not the assassination of our friend, or of our brother, a horrible
+disorder in morals? Are not the calumnies of a Garasse, of a Letellier,
+of a Doucin, against Jansenists, and those of Jansenists against
+Jesuits, petty disorders? Were not the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the
+Irish massacre, etc., execrable disorders? This crime has its cause in
+passion, but the effect is execrable; the cause is fatal; this disorder
+makes us shudder. The origin of the disorder remains to be discovered,
+but the disorder exists.
+
+"Experience proves to us that the matter which we regard as inert and
+dead assumes action, intelligence, and life, when it is combined in a
+certain way."
+
+This is precisely the difficulty. How does a germ come to life? Of this
+the author and the reader are alike ignorant. Hence, are not the "System
+of Nature," and all the systems in the world, so many dreams?
+
+"It would be necessary to define the vital principle, which I deem
+impossible." Is not this definition very easy, very common? Is not life
+organization with feeling? But that you have these two properties from
+the motion of matter alone, it is impossible to give any proof; and if
+it cannot be proved, why affirm it? Why say aloud, "I know," while you
+say to yourself, "I know not"?
+
+"It will be asked, what is man?" etc. Assuredly, this article is no
+clearer than the most obscure of Spinoza's; and many readers will feel
+indignant at the decisive tone which is assumed without anything being
+explained.
+
+"Matter is eternal and necessary; but its forms and its combinations are
+transitory and contingent," etc. It is hard to comprehend, matter being,
+according to our author, necessary, and without freedom, how there can
+be anything contingent. By contingency, we understand that which may be,
+or may not be; but since all must be, of absolute necessity, every
+manner of being, which he here very erroneously calls contingent, is as
+absolutely of necessity as the being itself. Here again we are in a
+labyrinth.
+
+When you venture to affirm that there is no God, that matter acts of
+itself by an eternal necessity, it must be demonstrated like a
+proposition in Euclid, otherwise you rest your system only on a perhaps.
+What a foundation for that which is most interesting to the human race!
+
+"If man is by his nature forced to love his well-being, he is forced to
+love the means of that well-being. It were useless, and perhaps unjust,
+to ask a man to be virtuous, if he cannot be so without making himself
+unhappy. So soon as vice makes him happy, he must love vice."
+
+This maxim is yet more execrable in morals than the others are in
+physics. Were it true that a man could not be virtuous without
+suffering, he must be encouraged to suffer. Our author's proposition
+would evidently be the ruin of society. Besides, how does he know that
+we cannot be happy without having vices? On the contrary, is it not
+proved by experience that the satisfaction of having subdued them is a
+thousand times greater than the pleasure of yielding to them?--a
+pleasure always empoisoned, a pleasure leading to woe. By subduing our
+vices, we acquire tranquillity, the consoling testimony of our
+conscience; by giving ourselves up to them, we lose our health, our
+quiet--we risk everything. Thus our author himself, in twenty passages,
+wishes all to be sacrificed to virtue; and he advances this proposition
+only to give in his system a fresh proof of the necessity of being
+virtuous.
+
+"They who, with so many arguments, reject innate ideas should have
+perceived that this ineffable intelligence by which the world is said to
+be guided, and of which our senses can determine neither the existence
+nor the qualities, is a being of reason."
+
+But, truly, how does it follow from our having no innate ideas, that
+there is no God? Is not this consequence absurd? Is there any
+contradiction in saying that God gives us ideas through our senses? Is
+it not, on the contrary, most clearly evident, that if there is an
+Almighty Being from whom we have life, we owe to him our ideas and our
+senses as well as everything else? It should first have been proved
+that God does not exist, which our author has not done, which he has not
+even attempted to do before this page of his tenth chapter.
+
+Fearful of wearying the reader by an examination of all these detached
+passages, I will come at once to the foundation of the book, and the
+astonishing error upon which the author has built his system.
+
+_Story of the Eels on Which the System is Founded._
+
+About the year 1750 there was, in France, an English Jesuit called
+Needham, disguised as a secular, who was then serving as tutor to the
+nephew of M. Dillon, archbishop of Toulouse. This man made experiments
+in natural philosophy, and especially in chemistry.
+
+Having put some rye meal into well-corked bottles, and some boiled
+mutton gravy into other bottles, he thought that his mutton gravy and
+his meal had given birth to eels, which again produced others; and that
+thus a race of eels was formed indifferently from the juice of meat, or
+from a grain of rye.
+
+A natural philosopher, of some reputation, had no doubt that this
+Needham was a profound atheist. He concluded that, since eels could be
+made of rye meal, men might be made of wheat flour; that nature and
+chemistry produce all; and that it was demonstrated that we may very
+well dispense with an all-forming God.
+
+This property of meal very easily deceived one who, unfortunately, was
+already wandering amidst ideas that should make us tremble for the
+weakness of the human mind. He wanted to dig a hole in the centre of the
+earth, to see the central fire; to dissect Patagonians, that he might
+know the nature of the soul; to cover the sick with pitch, to prevent
+them from perspiring; to exalt his soul, that he might foretell the
+future. If to these things it were added, that he had the still greater
+unhappiness of seeking to oppress two of his brethren, it would do no
+honor to atheism; it would only serve to make us look into ourselves
+with confusion.
+
+It is really strange that men, while denying a creator, should have
+attributed to themselves the power of creating eels.
+
+But it is yet more deplorable that natural philosophers, of better
+information, adopted the Jesuit Needham's ridiculous system, and joined
+it to that of Maillet, who asserted that the ocean had formed the Alps
+and Pyrenees, and that men were originally porpoises, whose forked tails
+changed in the course of time into thighs and legs. Such fancies are
+worthy to be placed with the eels formed by meal. We were assured, not
+long ago, that at Brussels a hen had brought forth half a dozen young
+rabbits.
+
+This transmutation of meal and gravy into eels was demonstrated to be as
+false and ridiculous as it really is, by M. Spallanzani, a rather better
+observer than Needham. But the extravagance of so palpable an illusion
+was evident without his observations.
+
+Needham's eels soon followed the Brussels' hen.
+
+Nevertheless, in 1768, the correct, elegant, and judicious translator of
+Lucretius was so far led away, that he not only, in his notes to book
+viii. p. 361, repeats Needham's pretended experiments, but he also does
+all he can to establish their validity. Here, then, we have the new
+foundation of the "System of Nature."
+
+The author, in the second chapter, thus expresses himself: "After
+moistening meal with water, and shutting up the mixture, it is found
+after a little time, with the aid of the microscope, that it has
+produced organized beings, of whose production the water and meal were
+believed to be incapable. Thus inanimate nature can pass into life,
+which is itself but an assemblage of motions."
+
+Were this unparalleled blunder true, yet, in rigorous reasoning, I do
+not see how it would prove there is no God; I do not see why a supreme,
+intelligent, and mighty being, having formed the sun and the stars,
+might not also deign to form animalculae without a germ. Here is no
+contradiction in terms. A demonstrative proof that God has no existence
+must be sought elsewhere; and most assuredly no person has ever found,
+or will ever find, one.
+
+Our author treats final causes with contempt, because the argument is
+hackneyed; but this much-contemned argument is that of Cicero and of
+Newton. This alone might somewhat lessen the confidence of atheists in
+themselves. The number is not small of the sages who, observing the
+course of the stars, and the prodigious art that pervades the structure
+of animals and vegetables, have acknowledged a powerful hand working
+these continual wonders.
+
+The author asserts that matter, blind and without choice, produces
+intelligent animals. Produce, without intelligence, beings with
+intelligence! Is this conceivable? Is this system founded on the
+smallest verisimilitude? An opinion so contradictory requires proofs no
+less astonishing than itself. The author gives us none; he never proves
+anything; but he affirms all that he advances. What chaos! what
+confusion! and what temerity!
+
+Spinoza at least acknowledged an intelligence acting in this great
+whole, which constituted nature: in this there was philosophy. But in
+the new system, I am under the necessity of saying that there is none.
+
+Matter has extent, solidity, gravity, divisibility. I have all these as
+well as this stone: but was a stone ever known to feel and think? If I
+am extended, solid, divisible, I owe it to matter. But I have sensations
+and thoughts--to what do I owe them? Not to water, not to mire--most
+likely to something more powerful than myself. Solely to the combination
+of the elements, you will say. Then prove it to me. Show me plainly that
+my intelligence cannot have been given to me by an intelligent cause. To
+this are you reduced.
+
+Our author successively combats the God of the schoolmen--a God composed
+of discordant qualities; a God to whom, as to those of Homer, is
+attributed the passions of men; a God capricious, fickle, unreasonable,
+absurd--but he cannot combat the God of the wise. The wise,
+contemplating nature, admit an intelligent and supreme power. It is
+perhaps impossible for human reason, destitute of divine assistance, to
+go a step further.
+
+Our author asks where this being resides; and, from the impossibility
+that anyone, without being infinite, should tell where He resides, he
+concludes that He does not exist. This is not philosophical; for we are
+not, because we cannot tell where the cause of an effect is, to conclude
+that there is no cause. If you had never seen a gunner, and you saw the
+effects of a battery of cannon, you would not say it acts entirely by
+itself. Shall it, then, only be necessary for you to say there is no
+God, in order to be believed on your words?
+
+Finally, his great objection is, the woes and crimes of mankind--an
+objection alike ancient and philosophical; an objection common, but
+fatal and terrible, and to which we find no answer but in the hope of a
+better life. Yet what is this hope? We can have no certainty in it but
+from reason. But I will venture to say, that when it is proved to us
+that a vast edifice, constructed with the greatest art, is built by an
+architect, whoever he may be, we ought to believe in that architect,
+even though the edifice should be stained with our blood, polluted by
+our crimes, and should crush us in its fall. I inquire not whether the
+architect is a good one, whether I should be satisfied with his
+building, whether I should quit it rather than stay in it, nor whether
+those who are lodged in it for a few days, like myself, are content: I
+only inquire if it be true that there is an architect, or if this house,
+containing so many fine apartments and so many wretched garrets, built
+itself.
+
+
+SECTION V.
+
+_The Necessity of Believing in a Supreme Being._
+
+The great, the interesting object, as it appears to me, is, not to argue
+metaphysically, but to consider whether, for the common good of us
+miserable and thinking animals, we should admit a rewarding and avenging
+God, at once our restraint and consolation, or should reject this idea,
+and so abandon ourselves to calamity without hope, and crime without
+remorse.
+
+Hobbes says that if, in a commonwealth, in which no God should be
+acknowledged, any citizen were to propose one, he would have him hanged.
+
+Apparently, he meant by this strange exaggeration, a citizen who should
+seek to rule in the name of a god, a charlatan who would make himself a
+tyrant. We understand citizens, who, feeling the weakness of human
+nature, its perverseness, and its misery, seek some prop to support it
+through the languors and horrors of this life.
+
+From Job down to us, a great many men have cursed their existence; we
+have, therefore, perpetual need of consolation and hope. Of these your
+philosophy deprives us. The fable of Pandora was better; it left us
+hope--which you snatch from us! Philosophy, you say, furnishes no proof
+of happiness to come. No--but you have no demonstration of the contrary.
+There may be in us an indestructible monad which feels and thinks,
+without our knowing anything at all of how that monad is made. Reason is
+not absolutely opposed to this idea, though reason alone does not prove
+it. Has not this opinion a prodigious advantage over yours? Mine is
+useful to mankind, yours is baneful; say of it what you will, it may
+encourage a Nero, an Alexander VI., or a Cartouche. Mine may restrain
+them.
+
+Marcus Antoninus and Epictetus believed that their monad, of whatever
+kind it was, would be united to the monad of the Great Being; and they
+were the most virtuous of men.
+
+In the state of doubt in which we both are, I do not say to you with
+Pascal, "choose the safest." There is no safety in uncertainty. We are
+here not to talk, but to examine; we must judge, and our judgment is not
+determined by our will. I do not propose to you to believe extravagant
+things, in order to escape embarrassment. I do not say to you, "Go to
+Mecca, and instruct yourself by kissing the black stone, take hold of a
+cow's tail, muffle yourself in a scapulary, or be imbecile and fanatical
+to acquire the favor of the Being of beings." I say to you: "Continue
+to cultivate virtue, to be beneficent, to regard all superstition with
+horror, or with pity; but adore, with me, the design which is manifested
+in all nature, and consequently the Author of that design--the
+primordial and final cause of all; hope with me that our monad, which
+reasons on the great eternal being, may be happy through that same great
+Being." There is no contradiction in this. You can no more demonstrate
+its impossibility than I can demonstrate mathematically that it is so.
+In metaphysics we scarcely reason on anything but probabilities. We are
+all swimming in a sea of which we have never seen the shore. Woe be to
+those who fight while they swim! Land who can: but he that cries out to
+me, "You swim in vain, there is no land," disheartens me, and deprives
+me of all my strength.
+
+What is the object of our dispute? To console our unhappy existence. Who
+consoles it--you or I?
+
+You yourself own, in some passages of your work, that the belief in a
+God has withheld some men on the brink of crime; for me, this
+acknowledgment is enough. If this opinion had prevented but ten
+assassinations, but ten calumnies, but ten iniquitous judgments on the
+earth, I hold that the whole earth ought to embrace it.
+
+Religion, you say, has produced thousands of crimes--say, rather,
+superstition, which unhappily reigns over this globe; it is the most
+cruel enemy of the pure adoration due to the Supreme Being.
+
+Let us detest this monster which has constantly been tearing the bosom
+of its mother; they who combat it are benefactors to mankind: it is a
+serpent enclosing religion in its folds, its head must be bruised,
+without wounding the parent whom it infects and devours.
+
+You fear, "that, by adoring God, men would soon again become
+superstitious and fanatical." But is it not to be feared that in denying
+Him, they would abandon themselves to the most atrocious passions, and
+the most frightful crimes? Between these two extremes is there not a
+very rational mean? Where is the safe track between these two rocks? It
+is God, and wise laws.
+
+You affirm that it is but one step from adoration to superstition: but
+there is an infinity to well-constituted minds, and these are now very
+numerous; they are at the head of nations; they influence public
+manners, and, year by year, the fanaticism that overspread the earth is
+receding in its detestable usurpations.
+
+I shall say a few words more in answer to what you say in page 223. "If
+it be presumed that there are relations between man and this incredible
+being, then altars must be raised and presents must be made to him,
+etc.; if no conception be formed of this being, then the matter must be
+referred to priests, who...." A great evil to be sure, to assemble in
+the harvest season, and thank God for the bread that He has given us!
+Who says you should make presents to God? The idea is ridiculous! But
+where is the harm of employing a citizen, called an "elder" or "priest,"
+to render thanks to the Divinity in the name of the other
+citizens?--provided the priest is not a Gregory VII. trampling on the
+heads of kings, nor an Alexander VI. polluting by incest his daughter,
+the offspring of a rape, and, by the aid of his bastard son, poisoning
+and assassinating almost all the neighboring princes: provided that, in
+a parish, this priest is not a knave, picking the pockets of the
+penitents he confesses, and using the money to seduce the girls he
+catechises; provided that this priest is not a Letellier, putting the
+whole kingdom in combustion by rogueries worthy of the pillory, nor a
+Warburton, violating the laws of society, making public the private
+papers of a member of parliament in order to ruin him, and calumniating
+whosoever is not of his opinion. The latter cases are rare. The
+sacerdotal state is a curb which forces to good behavior.
+
+A stupid priest excites contempt; a bad priest inspires horror; a good
+priest, mild, pious, without superstition, charitable, tolerant, is one
+who ought to be cherished and revered. You dread abuses--so do I. Let us
+unite to prevent them; but let us not condemn the usage when it is
+useful to society, when it is not perverted by fanaticism, or by
+fraudulent wickedness.
+
+I have one very important thing to tell you. I am persuaded that you are
+in a great error, but I am equally convinced that you are honest in your
+self-delusion. You would have men virtuous even without a God, although
+you have unfortunately said that "so soon as vice renders man happy, he
+must love vice"--a frightful proposition, which your friends should have
+prevailed on you to erase. Everywhere else you inspire probity. This
+philosophical dispute will be only between you and a few philosophers
+scattered over Europe; the rest of the earth will not even hear of it.
+The people do not read us. If some theologian were to seek to persecute
+us, he would be impudent as well as wicked; he would but serve to
+confirm you, and to make new atheists.
+
+You are wrong: but the Greeks did not persecute Epicurus; the Romans did
+not persecute Lucretius. You are wrong: but your genius and your virtue
+must be respected, while you are refuted with all possible strength.
+
+In my opinion, the finest homage that can be rendered to God is to stand
+forward in His defence without anger; as the most unworthy portrait that
+can be drawn of Him is to paint Him vindictive and furious. He is truth
+itself; and truth is without passion. To be a disciple of God is to
+announce Him as of a mild heart and of an unalterable mind.
+
+I think, with you, that fanaticism is a monster a thousand times more
+dangerous than philosophical atheism. Spinoza did not commit a single
+bad action. Chatel and Ravaillac, both devotees, assassinated Henry IV.
+
+The atheist of the closet is almost always a quiet philosopher, while
+the fanatic is always turbulent: but the court atheist, the atheistical
+prince, might be the scourge of mankind. Borgia and his like have done
+almost as much harm as the fanatics of Muenster and of the Cevennes. I
+say the fanatics on both sides. The misfortune is, that atheists of the
+closet make atheists of the court. It was Chiron who brought up
+Achilles; he fed him with lion's marrow. Achilles will one day drag
+Hector's body round the walls of Troy, and immolate twelve captives to
+his vengeance.
+
+God keep us from an abominable priest who should hew a king in pieces
+with his sacrificing knife, as also from him who, with a helmet on his
+head and a cuirass on his back, at the age of seventy, should dare to
+sign with his three bloody fingers the ridiculous excommunication of a
+king of France! and from.... and from....
+
+But also, may God preserve us from a choleric and barbarous despot, who,
+not believing in a God, should be his own God, who should render himself
+unworthy of his sacred trust by trampling on the duties which that trust
+imposes, who should remorselessly sacrifice to his passions, his
+friends, his relatives, his servants, and his people. These two tigers,
+the one shorn, the other crowned are equally to be feared. By what means
+shall we muzzle them?....
+
+If the idea of a God has made a Titus or a Trajan, an Antonine or an
+Aurelius, and those great Chinese emperors, whose memory is so dear to
+the second of the most ancient and most extensive empires in the world,
+these examples are sufficient for my cause--and my cause is that of all
+mankind.
+
+I do not believe that there is in all Europe one statesman, one man at
+all versed in the affairs of the world, who has not the most profound
+contempt for the legends with which we have been inundated, even more
+than we now are with pamphlets. If religion no longer gives birth to
+civil wars, it is to philosophy alone that we are indebted, theological
+disputes beginning to be regarded in much the same manner as the
+quarrels of Punch and Judy at the fair. A usurpation, alike odious and
+ridiculous, founded upon fraud on one side and stupidity on the other,
+is every instant undermined by reason, which is establishing its reign.
+The bull "_In caena Domini_"--that masterpiece of insolence and folly, no
+longer dares appear, even in Rome. If a regiment of monks makes the
+least evolution against the laws of the state, it is immediately broken.
+But, because the Jesuits have been expelled, must we also expel God? On
+the contrary, we must love Him the more.
+
+
+SECTION VI.
+
+In the reign of Arcadius, Logomachos, a theologue of Constantinople,
+went into Scythia and stopped at the foot of Mount Caucasus in the
+fruitful plains of Zephirim, on the borders of Colchis. The good old man
+Dondindac was in his great hall between his large sheepfold and his
+extensive barn; he was on his knees with his wife, his five sons and
+five daughters, his kinsmen and servants; and all were singing the
+praises of God, after a light repast. "What are you doing, idolater?"
+said Logomachos to him. "I am not an idolater," said Dondindac. "You
+must be an idolater," said Logomachos, "for you are not a Greek. Come,
+tell me what you were singing in your barbarous Scythian jargon?" "All
+tongues are alike to the ears of God," answered the Scythian; "we were
+singing His praises." "Very extraordinary!" returned the theologue; "a
+Scythian family praying to God without having been instructed by us!" He
+soon entered into conversation with the Scythian Dondindac; for the
+theologue knew a little Scythian, and the other a little Greek. This
+conversation has been found in a manuscript preserved in the library of
+Constantinople.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+Let us see if you know your catechism. Why do you pray to God?
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+Because it is just to adore the Supreme Being, from whom we have
+everything.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+Very fair for a barbarian. And what do you ask of him?
+
+DONDINDAC
+
+I thank Him for the blessings I enjoy, and even for the trials which He
+sends me; but I am careful to ask nothing of Him; for He knows our wants
+better than we do; besides, I should be afraid of asking for fair
+weather while my neighbor was asking for rain.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+Ah! I thought he would say some nonsense or other. Let us begin farther
+back. Barbarian, who told you that there is a God?
+
+DONDINDAC
+
+All nature tells me.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+That is not enough. What idea have you of God?
+
+DONDINDAC
+
+The idea of my Creator; my master, who will reward me if I do good, and
+punish me if I do evil.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+Trifles! trash! Let us come to some essentials. Is God _infinite
+secundum quid_, or according to essence?
+
+DONDINDAC
+
+I don't understand you.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+Brute beast! Is God in one place, or in every place?
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+I know not ... just as you please.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+Ignoramus!... Can He cause that which has not been to have been, or that
+a stick shall not have two ends? Does He see the future as future, or as
+present? How does He draw being from nothing, and how reduce being to
+nothing?
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+I have never examined these things.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+What a stupid fellow! Well, I must come nearer to your level.... Tell
+me, friend, do you think that matter can be eternal?
+
+DONDINDAC
+
+What matters it to me whether it exists from all eternity or not? I do
+not exist from all eternity. God must still be my Master. He has given
+me the nature of justice; it is my duty to follow it: I seek not to be a
+philosopher; I wish to be a man.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+One has a great deal of trouble with these block-heads. Let us proceed
+step by step. What is God?
+
+DONDINDAC
+
+My sovereign, my judge, my father.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+That is not what I ask. What is His nature?
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+To be mighty and good.
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+But is He corporeal or spiritual?
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+How should I know that?
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+What; do you not know what a spirit is?
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+Not in the least. Of what service would that knowledge be to me? Should
+I be more just? Should I be a better husband, a better father, a better
+master, or a better citizen?
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+You must absolutely be taught what a spirit is. It is--it is--it is--I
+will say what another time.
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+I much fear that you will tell me rather what it is not than what it is.
+Permit me, in turn, to ask you one question. Some time ago, I saw one of
+your temples: why do you paint God with a long beard?
+
+LOGOMACHOS.
+
+That is a very difficult question, and requires preliminary
+instruction.
+
+DONDINDAC.
+
+Before I receive your instruction, I must relate to you a thing which
+one day happened to me. I had just built a closet at the end of my
+garden, when I heard a mole arguing thus with an ant: "Here is a fine
+fabric," said the mole; "it must have been a very powerful mole that
+performed this work." "You jest," returned the ant; "the architect of
+this edifice is an ant of mighty genius." From that time I resolved
+never to dispute.
+
+
+
+
+GOOD--THE SOVEREIGN GOOD, A CHIMERA.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+Happiness is an abstract idea composed of certain pleasurable
+sensations. Plato, who wrote better than he reasoned, conceived the
+notion of his world in archetype; that is, his original world--of his
+general ideas of the beautiful, the good, the orderly, and the just, as
+if there had existed eternal beings, called order, good, beauty, and
+justice; whence might be derived the feeble copies exhibited here below
+of the just, the beautiful, and the good.
+
+It is, then, in consequence of his suggestions that philosophers have
+occupied themselves in seeking for the sovereign good, as chemists seek
+for the philosopher's stone; but the sovereign good has no more
+existence than the sovereign square, or the sovereign crimson: there is
+the crimson color, and there are squares; but there is no general
+existence so denominated. This chimerical manner of reasoning was for a
+long time the bane of philosophy.
+
+Animals feel pleasure in performing all the functions for which they are
+destined. The happiness which poetical fancy has imagined would be an
+uninterrupted series of pleasures; but such a series would be
+incompatible with our organs and our destination. There is great
+pleasure in eating, drinking, and connubial endearments; but it is clear
+that if a man were always eating, or always in the full ecstasy of
+enjoyment, his organs would be incapable of sustaining it: it is further
+evident that he would be unable to fulfil the destinies he was born to,
+and that, in the case supposed, the human race would absolutely perish
+through pleasure.
+
+To pass constantly and without interruption from one pleasure to another
+is also a chimera. The woman who has conceived must go through
+childbirth, which is a pain; the man is obliged to cleave wood and hew
+stone, which is not a pleasure.
+
+If the name of happiness is meant to be applied to some pleasures which
+are diffused over human life, there is in fact, we must admit,
+happiness. If the name attaches only to one pleasure always permanent,
+or a continued although varied range of delicious enjoyment, then
+happiness belongs not to this terraqueous globe. Go and seek for it
+elsewhere.
+
+If we make happiness consist in any particular situation that a man may
+be in, as for instance, a situation of wealth, power, or fame, we are no
+less mistaken. There are some scavengers who are happier than some
+sovereigns. Ask Cromwell whether he was more happy when he was lord
+protector of England, than when, in his youthful days, he enjoyed
+himself at a tavern; he will probably tell you in answer, that the
+period of his usurpation was not the period most productive of
+pleasures. How many plain or even ugly country women are more happy than
+were Helen and Cleopatra.
+
+We must here however make one short remark; that when we say such a
+particular man is probably happier than some other; that a young
+muleteer has advantages very superior to those of Charles V.; that a
+dressmaker has more enjoyment than a princess, we should adhere to the
+probability of the case. There is certainly every appearance that a
+muleteer, in full health, must have more pleasure than Charles the
+Fifth, laid up with the gout; but nevertheless it may also be, that
+Charles, on his crutches, revolves in his mind with such ecstasy the
+facts of his holding a king of France and a pope prisoners, that his lot
+is absolutely preferable to that of the young and vigorous muleteer.
+
+It certainly belongs to God alone, to a being capable of seeing through
+all hearts, to decide which is the happiest man. There is only one case
+in which a person can affirm that his actual state is worse or better
+than that of his neighbor; this case is that of existing rivalship, and
+the moment that of victory.
+
+I will suppose that Archimedes has an assignation at night with his
+mistress. Nomentanus has the same assignation at the same hour.
+Archimedes presents himself at the door, and it is shut in his face; but
+it is opened to his rival, who enjoys an excellent supper, which he
+enlivens by his repeated sallies of wit upon Archimedes, and after the
+conclusion of which he withdraws to still higher enjoyments, while the
+other remains exposed in the street to all the pelting of a pitiless
+storm. There can be no doubt that Nomentanus has a right to say: "I am
+more happy to-night than Archimedes: I have more pleasure than he"; but
+it is necessary, in order to admit the truth and justness of the
+inference of the successful competitors in his own favor, to suppose
+that Archimedes is thinking only about the loss of his good supper,
+about being despised and deceived by a beautiful woman, about being
+supplanted by his rival, and annoyed by the tempest; for, if the
+philosopher in the street should be calmly reflecting that his soul
+ought to be above being discomposed by a strumpet or a storm, if he
+should be absorbed in a profound and interesting problem, and if he
+should discover the proportions between the cylinder and the sphere, he
+may experience a pleasure a hundred times superior to that of
+Nomentanus.
+
+It is only therefore in the single case of actual pleasure and actual
+pain, and without a reference to anything else whatever, that a
+comparison between any two individuals can be properly made. It is
+unquestionable that he who enjoys the society of his mistress is
+happier at the moment than his scorned rival deploring over his
+misfortune. A man in health, supping on a fat partridge, is undoubtedly
+happier at the time than another under the torment of the colic; but we
+cannot safely carry our inferences farther; we cannot estimate the
+existence of one man against that of another; we possess no accurate
+balance for weighing desires and sensations.
+
+We began this article with Plato and his sovereign good; we will
+conclude it with Solon and the saying of his which has been so highly
+celebrated, that "we ought to pronounce no man happy before his death."
+This maxim, when examined into, will be found nothing more than a
+puerile remark, just like many other apothegms consecrated by their
+antiquity. The moment of death has nothing in common with the lot
+experienced by any man in life; a man may perish by a violent and
+ignominious death, and yet, up to that moment, may have enjoyed all the
+pleasures of which human nature is susceptible. It is very possible and
+very common for a happy man to cease to be so; no one can doubt it; but
+he has not the less had his happy moments.
+
+What, then, can Solon's expression strictly and fairly mean? that a man
+happy to-day is not certain of being so to-morrow! In this case it is a
+truth so incontestable and trivial that, not merely is it not worthy of
+being elevated into a maxim, but it is not worthy delivering at all.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+Well-being is a rare possession. May not the sovereign good in this
+world be considered as a sovereign chimera? The Greek philosophers
+discussed at great length, according to their usual practice, this
+celebrated question. The reader will, probably, compare them to just so
+many mendicants reasoning about the philosopher's stone.
+
+The sovereign good! What an expression! It might as well have been
+asked: What is the sovereign blue, or the sovereign ragout, or the
+sovereign walk, or the sovereign reading?
+
+Every one places his good where he can, and has as much of it as he can,
+in his own way, and in very scanty measure. Castor loved horses; his
+twin brother, to try a fall--
+
+_Quid dem? quid non dem? renuis tu quod jubet alter.... Castor gaudet
+equis, ovo prognatus eodem Pugnis, etc._
+
+The greatest good is that which delights us so powerfully as to render
+us incapable of feeling anything else; as the greatest evil is that
+which goes so far as to deprive us of all feeling. These are the two
+extremes of human nature, and these moments are short. Neither extreme
+delight nor extreme torture can last a whole life. The sovereign good
+and the sovereign evil are nothing more than chimeras.
+
+We all know the beautiful fable of Crantor. He introduces upon the stage
+at the Olympic games, Wealth, Pleasure, Health, and Virtue. Each claims
+the apple. Wealth says, I am the sovereign good, for with me all goods
+are purchased. Pleasure says, the apple belongs to me, for it is only on
+my account that wealth is desired. Health asserts, that without her
+there can be no pleasure, and wealth is useless. Finally, Virtue states
+that she is superior to the other three, because, although possessed of
+gold, pleasures, and health, a man may make himself very contemptible by
+misconduct. The apple was conferred on Virtue.
+
+The fable is very ingenious; it would be still more so if Crantor had
+said that the sovereign good consists in the combination of the four
+rivals, Virtue, Health, Wealth, and Pleasure; but this fable neither
+does, nor can, resolve the absurd question about the sovereign good.
+Virtue is not a good; it is a duty. It is of a different nature; of a
+superior order. It has nothing to do with painful or with agreeable
+sensations. A virtuous man, laboring under stone and gout, without aid,
+without friends, destitute of necessaries, persecuted, and chained down
+to the floor by a voluptuous tyrant who enjoys good health, is very
+wretched; and his insolent persecutor, caressing a new mistress on his
+bed of purple, is very happy. Say, if you please, that the persecuted
+sage is preferable to the persecuting profligate; say that you admire
+the one and detest the other; but confess that the sage in chains is
+scarcely less than mad with rage and pain; if he does not himself admit
+that he is so, he completely deceives you; he is a charlatan.
+
+
+
+
+GOOD.
+
+_Of Good and Evil, Physical and Moral._
+
+
+We here treat of a question of the greatest difficulty and importance.
+It relates to the whole of human life. It would be of much greater
+consequence to find a remedy for our evils; but no remedy is to be
+discovered, and we are reduced to the sad necessity of tracing out their
+origin. With respect to this origin, men have disputed ever since the
+days of Zoroaster, and in all probability they disputed on the same
+subject long before him. It was to explain the mixture of good and evil
+that they conceived the idea of two principles--Oromazes, the author of
+light, and Arimanes, the author of darkness; the box of Pandora; the two
+vessels of Jupiter; the apple eaten by Eve; and a variety of other
+systems. The first of dialecticians, although not the first of
+philosophers, the illustrious Bayle, has clearly shown how difficult it
+is for Christians who admit one only God, perfectly good and just, to
+reply to the objections of the Manichaeans who acknowledge two Gods--one
+good, and the other evil.
+
+The foundation of the system of the Manichaeans, with all its antiquity,
+was not on that account more reasonable. Lemmas, susceptible of the most
+clear and rigid geometrical demonstrations, should alone have induced
+any men to the adoption of such a theorem as the following: "There are
+two necessary beings, both supreme, both infinite, both equally
+powerful, both in conflict with each other, yet, finally, agreeing to
+pour out upon this little planet--one, all the treasures of his
+beneficence, and the other all the stores of his malice." It is in vain
+that the advocates of this hypothesis attempt to explain by it the cause
+of good and evil: even the fable of Prometheus explains it better. Every
+hypothesis which only serves to assign a reason for certain things,
+without being, in addition to that recommendation, established upon
+indisputable principles, ought invariably to be rejected.
+
+The Christian doctors--independently of revelation, which makes
+everything credible--explain the origin of good-and evil no better than
+the partner-gods of Zoroaster.
+
+When they say God is a tender father, God is a just king; when they add
+the idea of infinity to that of love, that kindness, that justice which
+they observe in the best of their own species, they soon fall into the
+most palpable and dreadful contradictions. How could this sovereign, who
+possessed in infinite fulness the principle or quality of human justice,
+how could this father, entertaining an infinite affection for his
+children; how could this being, infinitely powerful, have formed
+creatures in His own likeness, to have them immediately afterwards
+tempted by a malignant demon, to make them yield to that temptation to
+inflict death on those whom He had created immortal, and to overwhelm
+their posterity with calamities and crimes! We do not here speak of a
+contradiction still more revolting to our feeble reason. How could God,
+who ransomed the human race by the death of His only Son; or rather, how
+could God, who took upon Himself the nature of man, and died on the
+cross to save men from perdition, consign over to eternal tortures
+nearly the whole of that human race for whom He died? Certainly, when we
+consider this system merely as philosophers--without the aid of
+faith--we must consider it as absolutely monstrous and abominable. It
+makes of God either pure and unmixed malice, and that malice infinite,
+which created thinking beings, on purpose to devote them to eternal
+misery, or absolute impotence and imbecility, in not being able to
+foresee or to prevent the torments of his offspring.
+
+But the eternity of misery is not the subject of this article, which
+relates properly only to the good and evil of the present life. None of
+the doctors of the numerous churches of Christianity, all of which
+advocate the doctrine we are here contesting, have been able to convince
+a single sage.
+
+We cannot conceive how Bayle, who managed the weapons of dialectics with
+such admirable strength and dexterity, could content himself with
+introducing in a dispute a Manichaean, a Calvinist, a Molinist, and a
+Socinian. Why did he not introduce, as speaking, a reasonable and
+sensible man? Why did not Bayle speak in his own person? He would have
+said far better what we shall now venture to say ourselves. A father
+who kills his children is a monster; a king who conducts his subjects
+into a snare, in order to obtain a pretext for delivering them up to
+punishment and torture, is an execrable tyrant. If you conceive God to
+possess the same kindness which you require in a father, the same
+justice that you require in a king, no possible resource exists by
+which, if we may use the expression, God can be exculpated; and by
+allowing Him to possess infinite wisdom and infinite goodness you, in
+fact, render Him infinitely odious; you excite a wish that He had no
+existence; you furnish arms to the atheist, who will ever be justified
+in triumphantly remarking to you: Better by far is it to deny a God
+altogether, than impute to Him such conduct as you would punish, to the
+extremity of the law, in men.
+
+We begin then with observing, that it is unbecoming in us to ascribe to
+God human attributes. It is not for us to make God after our own
+likeness. Human justice, human kindness, and human wisdom can never be
+applied or made suitable to Him. We may extend these attributes in our
+imagination as far as we are able, to infinity; they will never be other
+than human qualities with boundaries perpetually or indefinitely
+removed; it would be equally rational to attribute to Him infinite
+solidity, infinite motion, infinite roundness, or infinite divisibility.
+These attributes can never be His.
+
+Philosophy informs us that this universe must have been arranged by a
+Being incomprehensible, eternal, and existing by His own nature; but,
+once again, we must observe that philosophy gives us no information on
+the subject of the attributes of that nature. We know what He is not,
+and not what He is.
+
+With respect to God, there is neither good nor evil, physically or
+morally. What is physical or natural evil? Of all evils, the greatest,
+undoubtedly, is death. Let us for a moment consider whether man could
+have been immortal.
+
+In order that a body like ours should have been indissoluble,
+imperishable, it would have been necessary that it should not be
+composed of parts; that it--should not be born; that it should have
+neither nourishment nor growth; that it should experience no change. Let
+any one examine each of these points; and let every reader extend their
+number according to his own suggestions, and it will be seen that the
+proposition of an immortal man is a contradiction.
+
+If our organized body were immortal, that of mere animals would be so
+likewise; but it is evident that, in the course of a very short time,
+the whole globe would, in this case, be incompetent to supply
+nourishment to those animals; those immortal beings which exist only in
+consequence of renovation by food, would then perish for want of the
+means of such renovation. All this involves contradiction. We might make
+various other observations on the subject, but every reader who deserves
+the name of a philosopher will perceive that death was necessary to
+everything that is born; that death can neither be an error on the part
+of God, nor an evil, an injustice, nor a chastisement to man.
+
+Man, born to die, can no more be exempt from pain than from death. To
+prevent an organized substance endowed with feeling from ever
+experiencing pain, it would be necessary that all the laws of nature
+should be changed; that matter should no longer be divisible; that it
+should neither have weight, action, nor force; that a rock might fall on
+an animal without crushing it; and that water should have no power to
+suffocate, or fire to burn it. Man, impassive, then, is as much a
+contradiction as man immortal.
+
+This feeling of pain was indispensable to stimulate us to
+self-preservation, and to impart to us such pleasures as are consistent
+with those general laws by which the whole system of nature is bound and
+regulated.
+
+If we never experienced pain, we should be every moment injuring
+ourselves without perceiving it. Without the excitement of uneasiness,
+without some sensation of pain, we should perform no function of life;
+should never communicate it, and should be destitute of all the
+pleasures of it. Hunger is the commencement of pain which compels us to
+take our required nourishment. Ennui is a pain which stimulates to
+exercise and occupation. Love itself is a necessity which becomes
+painful until it is met with corresponding attachment. In a word, every
+desire is a want, a necessity, a beginning of pain. Pain, therefore, is
+the mainspring of all the actions of animated beings. Every animal
+possessed of feeling must be liable to pain, if matter is divisible; and
+pain was as necessary as death. It is not, therefore, an error of
+Providence, nor a result of malignity, nor a creature of imagination.
+Had we seen only brutes suffer, we should, for that, never have accused
+nature of harshness or cruelty; had we, while ourselves were impassive,
+witnessed the lingering and torturing death of a dove, when a kite
+seized upon it with his murderous talons, and leisurely devouring its
+bleeding limbs, doing in that no more than we do ourselves, we should
+not express the slightest murmur of dissatisfaction. But what claim have
+we for an exemption of our own bodies from such dismemberment and
+torture beyond what might be urged in behalf of brutes? Is it that we
+possess an intellect superior to theirs? But what has intellect to do
+with the divisibility of matter? Can a few ideas more or less in a brain
+prevent fire from burning, or a rock from crushing us?
+
+Moral evil, upon which so many volumes have been written is, in fact,
+nothing but natural evil. This moral evil is a sensation of pain
+occasioned by one organized being to another. Rapine, outrage, etc., are
+evil only because they produce evil. But as we certainly are unable to
+do any evil, or occasion any pain to God, it is evident by the light of
+reason--for faith is altogether a different principle--that in relation
+to the Supreme Being and as affecting Him, moral evil can have no
+existence.
+
+As the greatest of natural evils is death, the greatest of moral evils
+is, unquestionably, war. All crimes follow in its train; false and
+calumnious declarations, perfidious violation of the treaties, pillage,
+devastation, pain, and death under every hideous and appalling form.
+
+All this is physical evil in relation to man, but can no more be
+considered moral evil in relation to God than the rage of dogs worrying
+and destroying one another. It is a mere common-place idea, and as false
+as it is feeble, that men are the only species that slaughter and
+destroy one another. Wolves, dogs, cats, cocks, quails, all war with
+their respective species: house spiders devour one another; the male
+universally fights for the female. This warfare is the result of the
+laws of nature, of principles in their very blood and essence; all is
+connected; all is necessary.
+
+Nature has granted man about two and twenty years of life, one with
+another; that is, of a thousand children born in the same month, some of
+whom have died in their infancy, and the rest lived respectively to the
+age of thirty, forty, fifty, and even eighty years, or perhaps beyond,
+the average calculation will allow to each the above-mentioned number of
+twenty-two years.
+
+How can it affect the Deity, whether a man die in battle or of a fever?
+War destroys fewer human beings than smallpox. The scourge of war is
+transient, that of smallpox reigns with paramount and permanent fatality
+throughout the earth, followed by a numerous train of others; and taking
+into consideration the combined, and nearly regular operation of the
+various causes which sweep mankind from the stage of life, the allowance
+of two and twenty years for every individual will be found in general to
+be tolerably correct.
+
+Man, you say, offends God by killing his neighbor; if this be the case,
+the directors of nations must indeed be tremendous criminals; for, while
+even invoking God to their assistance, they urge on to slaughter immense
+multitudes of their fellow-beings, for contemptible interests which it
+would show infinitely more policy, as well as humanity, to abandon. But
+how--to reason merely as philosophers--how do they offend God? Just as
+much as tigers and crocodiles offend him. It is, surely, not God whom
+they harass and torment, but their neighbor. It is only against man that
+man can be guilty. A highway robber can commit no robbery on God. What
+can it signify to the eternal Deity, whether a few pieces of yellow
+metal are in the hands of Jerome, or of Bonaventure? We have necessary
+desires, necessary passions, and necessary laws for the restraint of
+both; and while on this our ant-hill, during the little day of our
+existence, we are engaged in eager and destructive contest about a
+straw, the universe moves, on in its majestic course, directed by
+eternal and unalterable laws, which comprehend in their operation the
+atom that we call the earth.
+
+
+
+
+GOSPEL.
+
+
+It is a matter of high importance to ascertain which are the first
+gospels. It is a decided truth, whatever Abbadie may assert to the
+contrary, that none of the first fathers of the Church, down to Irenaeus
+inclusively, have quoted any passage from the four gospels with which we
+are acquainted. And to this it may be added, that the Alogi, the
+Theodosians, constantly rejected the gospel of St. John, and always
+spoke of it with contempt; as we are informed by St. Epiphanius in his
+thirty-fourth homily. Our enemies further observe that the most ancient
+fathers do not merely forbear to quote anything from our gospels, but
+relate many passages or events which are to be found only in the
+apocryphal gospels rejected by the canon.
+
+St. Clement, for example, relates that our Lord, having been questioned
+concerning the time when His kingdom would come, answered, "That will be
+when what is without shall Resemble that within, and when there shall be
+neither male nor female." But we must admit that this passage does not
+occur in either of our gospels. There are innumerable other instances to
+prove this truth; which may be seen in the "Critical Examination" of M.
+Freret, perpetual secretary of the Academy of Belles Lettres at Paris.
+
+The learned Fabricius took the pains to collect the ancient gospels
+which time has spared; that of James appears to be the first; and it is
+certain that it still possesses considerable authority with some of the
+Oriental churches. It is called "the first gospel." There remain the
+passion and the resurrection, pretended to have been written by
+Nicodemus. This gospel of Nicodemus is quoted by St. Justin and
+Tertullian. It is there we find the names of our Lord's accusers--Annas,
+Caiaphas, Soumas, Dathan, Gamaliel, Judas, Levi, and Napthali; the
+attention and particularity with which these names are given confer upon
+the work an appearance of truth and sincerity. Our adversaries have
+inferred that as so many false gospels were forged, which at first were
+recognized as true, those which constitute at the present day the
+foundation of our own faith may have been forged also. They dwell much
+on the circumstance of the first heretics suffering even death itself in
+defence of these apocryphal gospels. There have evidently been, they
+say, forgers, seducers, and men who have been seduced by them into
+error, and died in defence of that error; it is, at least, therefore, no
+proof of the truth of Christianity that it has had its martyrs who have
+died for it.
+
+They add further, that the martyrs were never asked the question,
+whether they believed the gospel of John or the gospel of James. The
+Pagans could not put a series of interrogatories about books with which
+they were not at all acquainted; the magistrates punished some
+Christians very unjustly, as disturbers of the public peace, but they
+never put particular questions to them in relation to our four gospels.
+These books were not known to the Romans before the time of Diocletian,
+and even towards the close of Diocletian's reign, they had scarcely
+obtained any publicity. It was deemed in a Christian a crime both
+abominable and unpardonable to show a gospel to any Gentile. This is so
+true, that you cannot find the word "gospel" in any profane author
+whatever.
+
+The rigid Socinians, influenced by the above-mentioned or other
+difficulties, do not consider our four divine gospels in any other light
+than as works of clandestine introduction, fabricated about a century
+after the time of Jesus Christ, and carefully concealed from the
+Gentiles for another century beyond that; works, as they express it, of
+a coarse and vulgar character, written by coarse and vulgar men, who,
+for a long time confined their discourses and appeals to the mere
+populace of their party. We will not here repeat the blasphemies uttered
+by them. This sect, although considerably diffused and numerous, is at
+present as much concealed as were the first gospels. The difficulty of
+converting them is so much the greater, in consequence of their
+obstinately refusing to listen to anything but mere reason. The other
+Christians contend against them only with the weapons of the Holy
+Scripture: it is consequently impossible that, being thus always in
+hostility with respect to principles, they should ever unite in their
+conclusions.
+
+With respect to ourselves, let us ever remain inviolably attached to our
+four gospels, in union with the infallible church. Let us reject the
+five gospels which it has rejected; let us not inquire why our Lord
+Jesus Christ permitted five false gospels, five false histories of his
+life to be written; and let us submit to our spiritual pastors and
+directors, who alone on earth are enlightened by the Holy Spirit.
+
+Into what a gross error did Abbadie fall when he considered as authentic
+the letters so ridiculously forged, from Pilate to Tiberius, and the
+pretended proposal of Tiberius to place Jesus Christ in the number of
+the gods. If Abbadie is a bad critic and a contemptible reasoner, is the
+Church on that account less enlightened? are we the less bound to
+believe it? Shall we at all the less submit to it?
+
+
+
+
+GOVERNMENT.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+The pleasure of governing must certainly be exquisite, if we may judge
+from the vast numbers who are eager to be concerned in it. We have many
+more books on government than there are monarchs in the world. Heaven
+preserve me from making any attempt here to give instruction to kings
+and their noble ministers--their valets, confessors, or financiers. I
+understand nothing about the matter; I have the profoundest respect and
+reverence for them all. It belongs only to Mr. Wilkes, with his English
+balance, to weigh the merits of those who are at the head of the human
+race. It would, besides, be exceedingly strange if, with three or four
+thousand volumes on the subject of government, with Machiavelli, and
+Bossuet's "Policy of the Holy Scripture," with the "General Financier,"
+the "Guide to Finances," the "Means of Enriching a State," etc., there
+could possibly be a single person living who was not perfectly
+acquainted with the duties of kings and the science of government.
+
+Professor Puffendorf, or, as perhaps we should rather say, Baron
+Puffendorf, says that King David, having sworn never to attempt the life
+of Shimei, his privy counsellor, did not violate his oath when,
+according to the Jewish history, he instructed his son Solomon to get
+him assassinated, "because David had only engaged that he himself would
+not kill Shimei." The baron, who rebukes so sharply the mental
+reservations of the Jesuits, allows David, in the present instance, to
+entertain one which would not be particularly palatable to privy
+counsellors.
+
+Let us consider the words of Bossuet in his "Policy of the Holy
+Scripture," addressed to Monseigneur the Dauphin. "Thus we see royalty
+established according to the order of succession in the house of David
+and Solomon, and the throne of David is secured forever--although, by
+the way, that same little joint-stool called a 'throne,' instead of
+being secured forever, lasted, in fact, only a very short time." By
+virtue of this law, the eldest son was to succeed, to the exclusion of
+his brothers, and on this account Adonijah, who was the eldest, said to
+Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon, "Thou knowest that the kingdom was
+mine, and all Israel had recognized my right; but the Lord hath
+transferred the kingdom to my brother Solomon." The right of Adonijah
+was incontestable. Bossuet expressly admits this at the close of this
+article. "The Lord has transferred" is only a usual phrase, which means,
+I have lost my property or right, I have been deprived of my right.
+Adonijah was the issue of a lawful wife; the birth of his younger
+brother was the fruit of a double crime.
+
+"Unless, then," says Bossuet, "something extraordinary occurred, the
+eldest was to succeed." But the something extraordinary, in the present
+instance, which prevented it was, that Solomon, the issue of a marriage
+arising out of a double adultery and a murder, procured the
+assassination, at the foot of the altar, of his elder brother and his
+lawful king, whose rights were supported by the high priest Abiathar and
+the chief commander Joab. After this we must acknowledge that it is more
+difficult than some seem to imagine to take lessons on the rights of
+persons, and on the true system of government from the Holy Scriptures,
+which were first given to the Jews, and afterwards to ourselves, for
+purposes of a far higher nature.
+
+"The preservation of the people is the supreme law." Such is the
+fundamental maxim of nations; but in all civil wars the safety of the
+people is made to consist in slaughtering a number of the citizens. In
+all foreign wars, the safety of a people consists in killing their
+neighbors, and taking possession of their property! It is difficult to
+perceive in this a particularly salutary "right of nations," and a
+government eminently favorable to liberty of thought and social
+happiness.
+
+There are geometrical figures exceedingly regular and complete in their
+kind; arithmetic is perfect; many trades or manufactures are carried on
+in a manner constantly uniform and excellent; but with respect to the
+government of men, is it possible for any one to be good, when all are
+founded on passions in conflict with each other?
+
+No convent of monks ever existed without discord; it is impossible,
+therefore, to exclude it from kingdoms. Every government resembles not
+merely a monastic institution, but a private household. There are none
+existing without quarrels; and quarrels between one people and another,
+between one prince and another, have ever been, sanguinary; those
+between subjects and their sovereigns have been sometimes no less
+destructive. How is an individual to act? Must he risk joining in the
+conflict, or withdraw from the scene of action?
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+More than one people are desirous of new constitutions. The English
+would have no objection to a change of ministers once in every eight
+hours, but they have no wish to change the form of their government.
+
+The modern Romans are proud of their church of St. Peter and their
+ancient Greek statues; but the people would be glad to be better fed,
+although they were not quite so rich in benedictions; the fathers of
+families would be content that the Church should have less gold, if the
+granaries had more corn; they regret the time when the apostles
+journeyed on foot, and when the citizens of Rome travelled from one
+palace to another in litters.
+
+We are incessantly reminded of the admirable republics of Greece. There
+is no question that the Greeks would prefer the government of a Pericles
+and a Demosthenes to that of a pasha; but in their most prosperous and
+palmy times they were always complaining; discord and hatred prevailed
+between all the cities without, and in every separate city within. They
+gave laws to the old Romans, who before that time had none; but their
+own were so bad for themselves that they were continually changing them.
+
+What could be said in favor of a government under which the just
+Aristides was banished, Phocion put to death, Socrates condemned to
+drink hemlock after having been exposed to banter and derision on the
+stage by Aristophanes; and under which the Amphyctions, with
+contemptible imbecility, actually delivered up Greece into the power of
+Philip, because the Phocians had ploughed up a field which was part of
+the territory of Apollo? But the government of the neighboring
+monarchies was worse.
+
+Puffendorf promises us a discussion on the best form of government. He
+tells us, "that many pronounce in favor of monarchy, and others, on the
+contrary, inveigh furiously against kings; and that it does not fall
+within the limits of his subject to examine in detail the reasons of the
+latter." If any mischievous and malicious reader expects to be told here
+more than he is told by Puffendorf, he will be much deceived.
+
+A Swiss, a Hollander, a Venetian nobleman, an English peer, a cardinal,
+and a count of the empire, were once disputing, on a journey, about the
+nature of their respective governments, and which of them deserved the
+preference: no one knew much about the matter; each remained in his own
+opinion without having any very distinct idea what that opinion was; and
+they returned without having come to any general conclusion; every one
+praising his own country from vanity, and complaining of it from
+feeling.
+
+What, then, is the destiny of mankind? Scarcely any great nation is
+governed by itself. Begin from the east, and take the circuit of the
+world. Japan closed its ports against foreigners from the well-founded
+apprehension of a dreadful revolution.
+
+China actually experienced such a revolution; she obeys Tartars of a
+mixed race, half Mantchou and half Hun. India obeys Mogul Tartars. The
+Nile, the Orontes, Greece, and Epirus are still under the yoke of the
+Turks. It is not an English race that reigns in England; it is a German
+family which succeeded to a Dutch prince, as the latter succeeded a
+Scotch family which had succeeded an Angevin family, that had replaced a
+Norman family, which had expelled a family of usurping Saxons. Spain
+obeys a French family; which succeeded to an Austrasian race, that
+Austrasian race had succeeded families that boasted of Visigoth
+extraction; these Visigoths had been long driven out by the Arabs, after
+having succeeded to the Romans, who had expelled the Carthaginians. Gaul
+obeys Franks, after having obeyed Roman prefects.
+
+The same banks of the Danube have belonged to Germans, Romans, Arabs,
+Slavonians, Bulgarians, and Huns, to twenty different families, and
+almost all foreigners.
+
+And what greater wonder has Rome had to exhibit than so many emperors
+who were born in the barbarous provinces, and so many popes born in
+provinces no less barbarous? Let him govern who can. And when any one
+has succeeded in his attempts to become master, he governs as he can.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+In 1769, a traveller delivered the following narrative: "I saw, in the
+course of my journey, a large and populous country, in which all offices
+and places were purchasable; I do not mean clandestinely, and in
+evasion of the law, but publicly, and in conformity to it. The right to
+judge, in the last resort, of the honor, property, and life of the
+citizen, was put to auction in the same manner as the right and property
+in a few acres of land. Some very high commissions in the army are
+conferred only on the highest bidder. The principal mystery of their
+religion is celebrated for the petty sum of three sesterces, and if the
+celebrator does not obtain this fee he remains idle like a porter
+without employment.
+
+"Fortunes in this country are not made by agriculture, but are derived
+from a certain game of chance, in great practice there, in which the
+parties sign their names, and transfer them from hand to hand. If they
+lose, they withdraw into the mud and mire of their original extraction;
+if they win, they share in the administration of public affairs; they
+marry their daughters to mandarins, and their sons become a species of
+mandarins also.
+
+"A considerable number of the citizens have their whole means of
+subsistence assigned upon a house, which possesses in fact nothing, and
+a hundred persons have bought for a hundred thousand crowns each the
+right of receiving and paying the money due to these citizens upon their
+assignments on this imaginary hotel; rights which they never exercise,
+as they in reality know nothing at all of what is thus supposed to pass
+through their hands.
+
+"Sometimes a proposal is made and cried about the streets, that all who
+have a little money in their chest should exchange it for a slip of
+exquisitely manufactured paper, which will free you from all pecuniary
+care, and enable you to pass through life with ease and comfort. On the
+morrow an order is published, compelling you to change this paper for
+another, much better. On the following day you are deafened with the cry
+of a new paper, cancelling the two former ones. You are ruined! But long
+heads console you with the assurance, that within a fortnight the
+newsmen will cry up some proposal more engaging.
+
+"You travel into one province of this empire, and purchase articles of
+food, drink, clothing, and lodging. If you go into another province, you
+are obliged to pay duties upon all those commodities, as if you had just
+arrived from Africa. You inquire the reason of this, but obtain no
+answer; or if, from extraordinary politeness, any one condescends to
+notice your questions, he replies that you come from a province reputed
+foreign, and that, consequently, you are obliged to pay for the
+convenience of commerce. In vain you puzzle yourself to comprehend how
+the province of a kingdom can be deemed foreign to that kingdom.
+
+"On one particular occasion, while changing horses, finding myself
+somewhat fatigued, I requested the postmaster to favor me with a glass
+of wine. 'I cannot let you have it,' says he; 'the superintendents of
+thirst, who are very considerable in number, and all of them remarkably
+sober, would accuse me of drinking to excess, which would absolutely be
+my ruin.' 'But drinking a single glass of wine,' I replied, 'to repair a
+man's strength, is not drinking to excess; and what difference can it
+make whether that single glass of wine is taken by you or me?'
+
+"'Sir,' replied the man, 'our laws relating to thirst are much more
+excellent than you appear to think them. After our vintage is finished,
+physicians are appointed by the regular authorities to visit our
+cellars. They set aside a certain quantity of wine, such as they judge
+we may drink consistently with health. At the end of the year they
+return; and if they conceive that we have exceeded their restriction by
+a single bottle; they punish us with very severe fines; and if we make
+the slightest resistance, we are sent to Toulon to drink salt-water.
+Were I to give you the wine you ask, I should most certainly be charged
+with excessive drinking. You must see to what danger I should be exposed
+from the supervisors of our health.'
+
+"I could not refrain from astonishment at the existence of such a
+system; but my astonishment was no less on meeting with a disconsolate
+and mortified pleader, who informed me that he had just then lost, a
+little beyond the nearest rivulet, a cause precisely similar to one he
+had gained on this side of it. I understood from him that, in his
+country, there are as many different codes of laws as there are cities.
+His conversation raised my curiosity. 'Our nation,' said he, 'is so
+completely wise and enlightened, that nothing is regulated in it. Laws,
+customs, the rights of corporate bodies, rank, precedence, everything is
+arbitrary; all is left to the prudence of the nation.'
+
+"I happened to be still in this same country when it became involved in
+a war with some of its neighbors. This war was nicknamed 'The Ridicule,'
+because there was much to be lost and nothing to be gained by it. I went
+upon my travels elsewhere, and did not return till the conclusion of
+peace, when the nation seemed to be in the most dreadful state of
+misery; it had lost its money, its soldiers, its fleets, and its
+commerce. I said to myself, its last hour is come; everything, alas!
+must pass away. Here is a nation absolutely annihilated. What a dreadful
+pity! for a great part of the people were amiable, industrious, and gay,
+after having been formerly coarse, superstitious, and barbarous.
+
+"I was perfectly astonished, at the end of only two years, to find its
+capital and principal cities more opulent than ever. Luxury had
+increased, and an air of enjoyment prevailed everywhere. I could not
+comprehend this prodigy; and it was only after I had examined into the
+government of the neighboring nations that I could discover the cause of
+what appeared so unaccountable. I found that the government of all the
+rest was just as bad as that of this nation, and that this nation was
+superior to all the rest in industry.
+
+"A provincial of the country I am speaking of was once bitterly
+complaining to me of all the grievances under which he labored. He was
+well acquainted with history. I asked him if he thought he should have
+been happier had he lived a hundred years before, when his country was
+in a comparative state of barbarism, and a citizen was liable to be
+hanged for having eaten flesh in Lent? He shook his head in the
+negative. Would you prefer the times of the civil wars, which began at
+the death of Francis II.; or the times of the defeats of St. Quentin and
+Pavia; or the long disorders attending the wars against the English; or
+the feudal anarchy; or the horrors of the second race of kings, or the
+barbarity of the first? At every successive question, he appeared to
+shudder more violently. The government of the Romans seemed to him the
+most intolerable of all. 'Nothing can be worse,' he said, 'than to be
+under foreign masters.' At last we came to the Druids. 'Ah!' he
+exclaimed, 'I was quite mistaken: it is still worse to be governed by
+sanguinary priests.' He admitted, at last, although with sore
+reluctance, that the time he lived in was, all things considered, the
+least intolerable and hateful."
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+An eagle governed the birds of the whole country of Ornithia. He had no
+other right, it must be allowed, than what he derived from his beak and
+claws; however, after providing liberally for his own repasts and
+pleasures, he governed as well as any other bird of prey.
+
+In his old age he was invaded by a flock of hungry vultures, who rushed
+from the depths of the North to scatter fear and desolation through his
+provinces. There appeared, just about this time, a certain owl, who was
+born in one of the most scrubby thickets of the empire, and who had long
+been known under the name of "_luci-fugax_," or light-hater. He
+possessed much cunning, and associated only with bats; and, while the
+vultures were engaged in conflict with the eagle, our politic owl and
+his party entered with great adroitness, in the character of
+pacificators, on that department of the air which was disputed by the
+combatants.
+
+The eagle and vultures, after a war of long duration, at last actually
+referred the cause of contention to the owl, who, with his solemn and
+imposing physiognomy, was well formed to deceive them both.
+
+He persuaded the eagles and vultures to suffer their claws to be a
+little pared, and just the points of their beaks to be cut off, in order
+to bring about perfect peace and reconciliation. Before this time, the
+owl had always said to the birds, "Obey the eagle"; afterwards, in
+consequence of the invasion, he had said to them, "Obey the vultures."
+He now, however, soon called out to them, "Obey me only." The poor birds
+did not know to whom to listen: they were plucked by the eagle, the
+vultures, and the owl and bats. "_Qui habet aures, audiat_."--"He that
+hath ears to hear, let him hear."
+
+
+SECTION V.
+
+"I have in my possession a great number of catapultae and balistae of the
+ancient Romans, which are certainly rather worm-eaten, but would still
+do very well as specimens. I have many water-clocks, but half of them
+probably out of repair and broken, some sepulchral lamps, and an old
+copper model of a quinquereme. I have also togas, pretextas, and
+laticlaves in lead; and my predecessors established a society of
+tailors; who, after inspecting ancient monuments, can make up robes
+pretty awkwardly. For these reasons thereunto moving us, after hearing
+the report of our chief antiquary, we do hereby appoint and ordain, that
+all the said venerable usages should be observed and kept up forever;
+and every person, through the whole extent of our dominions, shall dress
+and think precisely as men dressed and thought in the time of Cnidus
+Rufillus, proprietor of the province devolved to us by right," etc.
+
+It is represented to an officer belonging to the department whence this
+edict issued, that all the engines enumerated in it are become useless;
+that the understandings and the inventions of mankind are every day
+making new advances towards perfection; and that it would be more
+judicious to guide and govern men by the reins in present use, than by
+those by which they were formerly subjected; that no person could be
+found to go on board the quinquereme of his most serene highness; that
+his tailors might make as many laticlaves as they pleased, and that not
+a soul would purchase one of them; and that it would be worthy of his
+wisdom to condescend, in some small measure, to the manner of thinking
+that now prevailed among the better sort of people in his own dominions.
+
+The officer above mentioned promised to communicate this representation
+to a clerk, who promised to speak about it to the referendary, who
+promised to mention it to his most serene highness whenever an
+opportunity should offer.
+
+
+SECTION VI.
+
+_Picture of the English Government._
+
+The establishment of a government is a matter of curious and interesting
+investigation. I shall not speak, in this place, of the great Tamerlane,
+or Timerling, because I am not precisely acquainted with the mystery of
+the Great Mogul's government. But we can see our way somewhat more
+clearly into the administration of affairs in England; and I had rather
+examine that than the administration of India; as England, we are
+informed, is inhabited by free men and not by slaves; and in India,
+according to the accounts we have of it, there are many slaves and but
+few free men.
+
+Let us, in the first place, view a Norman bastard seating himself upon
+the throne of England. He had about as much right to it as St. Louis
+had, at a later period, to Grand Cairo. But St. Louis had the misfortune
+not to begin with obtaining a judicial decision in favor of his right to
+Egypt from the court of Rome; and William the Bastard failed not to
+render his cause legitimate and sacred, by obtaining in confirmation of
+the rightfulness of his claim, a decree of Pope Alexander II. issued
+without the opposite party having obtained a hearing, and simply in
+virtue of the words, "Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, shall be
+bound in heaven." His competitor, Harold, a perfectly legitimate
+monarch, being thus bound by a decree of heaven, William united to this
+virtue of the holy see another of far more powerful efficacy still,
+which was the victory of Hastings. He reigned, therefore, by the right
+of the strongest, just as Pepin and Clovis had reigned in France; the
+Goths and Lombards in Italy; the Visigoths, and afterwards the Arabs in
+Spain; the Vandals in Africa, and all the kings of the world in
+succession.
+
+It must be nevertheless admitted, that our Bastard possessed as just a
+title as the Saxons and the Danes, whose title, again, was quite as good
+as that of the Romans. And the title of all these heroes in succession
+was precisely that of "robbers on the highway," or, if you like it
+better, that of foxes and pole-cats when they commit their depredations
+on the farm-yard.
+
+All these great men were so completely highway robbers, that from the
+time of Romulus down to the buccaneers, the only question and concern
+were about the "_spolia opima_," the pillage and plunder, the cows and
+oxen carried off by the hand of violence. Mercury, in the fable, steals
+the cows of Apollo; and in the Old Testament, Isaiah assigns the name of
+robber to the son whom his wife was to bring into the world, and who was
+to be an important and sacred type. That name was Mahershalalhashbaz,
+"divide speedily the soil." We have already observed, that the names of
+soldier and robber were often synonymous.
+
+Thus then did William soon become king by divine right. William Rufus,
+who usurped the crown over his elder brother, was also king by divine
+right, without any difficulty; and the same right attached after him to
+Henry, the third usurper.
+
+The Norman barons who had joined at their own expense in the invasion of
+England, were desirous of compensation. It was necessary to grant it,
+and for this purpose to make them great vassals, and great officers of
+the crown. They became possessed of the finest estates. It is evident
+that William would rather, had he dared, have kept all to himself, and
+made all these lords his guards and lackeys. But this would have been
+too dangerous an attempt. He was obliged, therefore, to divide and
+distribute.
+
+With respect to the Anglo-Saxon lords, there was no very easy way of
+killing, or even making slaves of the whole of them. They were
+permitted in their own districts, to enjoy the rank and denomination of
+lords of the manor--_seignieurs chatelans_. They held of the great
+Norman vassals, who held of William.
+
+By this system everything was kept in equilibrium until the breaking out
+of the first quarrel. And what became of the rest of the nation? The
+same that had become of nearly all the population of Europe. They became
+serfs or villeins.
+
+At length, after the frenzy of the Crusades, the ruined princes sell
+liberty to the serfs of the glebe, who had obtained money by labor and
+commerce. Cities are made free, the commons are granted certain
+privileges; and the rights of men revive even out of anarchy itself.
+
+The barons were everywhere in contention with their king, and with one
+another. The contention became everywhere a petty intestine war, made up
+out of numberless civil wars. From this abominable and gloomy chaos
+appeared a feeble gleam, which enlightened the commons, and considerably
+improved their situation.
+
+The kings of England, being themselves great vassals of France for
+Normandy, and afterwards for Guienne and other provinces, easily adopted
+the usages of the kings from whom they held. The states of the realm
+were long made up, as in France, of barons and bishops.
+
+The English court of chancery was an imitation of the council of state,
+of which the chancellor of France was president. The court of king's
+bench was formed on the model of the parliament instituted by Philip le
+Bel. The common pleas were like the jurisdiction of the chatelat. The
+court of exchequer resembled that of the superintendents of the
+finances--_generaux des finances_--which became, in France, the court of
+aids.
+
+The maxim that the king's domain is inalienable is evidently taken from
+the system of French government.
+
+The right of the king of England to call on his subjects to pay his
+ransom, should he become a prisoner of war; that of requiring a subsidy
+when he married his eldest daughter, and when he conferred the honor of
+knighthood on his son; all these circumstances call to recollection the
+ancient usages of a kingdom of which William was the chief vassal.
+
+Scarcely had Philip le Bel summoned the commons to the states-general,
+before Edward, king of England, adopted the like measure, in order to
+balance the great power of the barons. For it was under this monarch's
+reign that the commons were first clearly and distinctly summoned to
+parliament.
+
+We perceive, then, that up to this epoch in the fourteenth century, the
+English government followed regularly in the steps of France. The two
+churches are entirely alike; the same subjection to the court of Rome;
+the same exactions which are always complained of, but, in the end,
+always paid to that rapacious court; the same dissensions, somewhat
+more or less violent; the same excommunications; the same donations to
+monks; the same chaos; the same mixture of holy rapine, superstition,
+and barbarism.
+
+As France and England, then, were for so long a period governed by the
+same principles, or rather without any principle at all, and merely by
+usages of a perfectly similar character, how is it that, at length, the
+two governments have become as different as those of Morocco and Venice?
+
+It is, perhaps, in the first place to be ascribed to the circumstance of
+England, or rather Great Britain, being an island, in consequence of
+which the king has been under no necessity of constantly keeping up a
+considerable standing army which might more frequently be employed
+against the nation itself than against foreigners.
+
+It may be further observed, that the English appear to have in the
+structure of their minds something more firm, more reflective, more
+persevering, and, perhaps, more obstinate, than some other nations.
+
+To this latter circumstance it may be probably attributed, that, after
+incessantly complaining of the court of Rome, they at length completely
+shook off its disgraceful yoke; while a people of more light and
+volatile character has continued to wear it, affecting at the same time
+to laugh and dance in its chains.
+
+The insular situation of the English, by inducing the necessity of
+urging to the particular pursuit and practice of navigation, has
+probably contributed to the result we are here considering, by giving to
+the natives a certain sternness and ruggedness of manners.
+
+These stern and rugged manners, which have made their island the theatre
+of many a bloody tragedy, have also contributed, in all probability, to
+inspire a generous frankness.
+
+It is in consequence of this combination of opposite qualities that so
+much royal blood has been shed in the field, and on the scaffold, and
+yet poison, in all their long and violent domestic contentions, has
+never been resorted to; whereas, in other countries, under priestly
+domination poison has been the prevailing weapon of destruction.
+
+The love of liberty appears to have advanced, and to have characterized
+the English, in proportion as they have advanced in knowledge and in
+wealth. All the citizens of a state cannot be equally powerful, but they
+may be equally free. And this high point of distinction and enjoyment
+the English, by their firmness and intrepidity, have at length attained.
+
+To be free is to be dependent only on the laws. The English, therefore,
+have ever loved the laws, as fathers love their children, because they
+are, or at least think themselves, the framers of them.
+
+A government like this could be established only at a late period;
+because it was necessary long to struggle with powers which commanded
+respect, or at least, impressed awe--the power of the pope, the most
+terrible of all, as it was built on prejudice and ignorance; the royal
+power ever tending to burst its proper boundary, and which it was
+requisite, however difficult, to restrain within it; the power of the
+barons, which was, in fact, an anarchy; the power of the bishops, who,
+always mixing the sacred with the profane, left no means unattempted to
+prevail over both barons and kings.
+
+The house of commons gradually became the impregnable mole, which
+successfully repelled those serious and formidable torrents.
+
+The house of commons is, in reality, the nation; for the king, who is
+the head, acts only for himself, and what is called his prerogative. The
+peers are a parliament only for themselves; and the bishops only for
+themselves, in the same manner.
+
+But the house of commons is for the people, as every member of it is
+deputed by the people. The people are to the king in the proportion of
+about eight millions to unity. To the peers and bishops they are as
+eight millions to, at most, two hundred. And these eight million free
+citizens are represented by the lower house.
+
+With respect to this establishment or constitution--in comparison with
+which the republic of Plato is merely a ridiculous reverie, and which
+might be thought to have been invented by Locke, or Newton, or Halley,
+or Archimedes--it sprang, in fact, out of abuses, of a most dreadful
+description, and such as are calculated to make human nature shudder.
+The inevitable friction of this vast machine nearly proved its
+destruction in the days of Fairfax and Cromwell. Senseless fanaticism
+broke into this noble edifice, like a devouring fire that consumes a
+beautiful building formed only of wood.
+
+In the time of William the Third it was rebuilt of stone. Philosophy
+destroyed fanaticism, which convulses to their centres states even the
+most firm and powerful. We cannot easily help believing that a
+constitution which has regulated the rights of king, lords, and people,
+and in which every individual finds security, will endure as long as
+human institutions and concerns shall have a being.
+
+We cannot but believe, also, that all states not established upon
+similar principles, will experience revolutions.
+
+The English constitution has, in fact, arrived at that point of
+excellence, in consequence of which all men are restored to those
+natural rights, which, in nearly all monarchies, they are deprived of.
+These rights are, entire liberty of person and property; freedom of the
+press; the right of being tried in all criminal cases by a jury of
+independent men--the right of being tried only according to the strict
+letter of the law; and the right of every man to profess, unmolested,
+what religion he chooses, while he renounces offices, which the members
+of the Anglican or established church alone can hold. These are
+denominated privileges. And, in truth, invaluable privileges they are
+in comparison with the usages of most other nations of the world! To be
+secure on lying down that you shall rise in possession of the same
+property with which you retired to rest; that you shall not be torn from
+the arms of your wife, and from your children, in the dead of night, to
+be thrown into a dungeon, or buried in exile in a desert; that, when
+rising from the bed of sleep, you will have the power of publishing all
+your thoughts; and that, if you are accused of having either acted,
+spoken, or written wrongly, you can be tried only according to law.
+These privileges attach to every one who sets his foot on English
+ground. A foreigner enjoys perfect liberty to dispose of his property
+and person; and, if accused of any offence, he can demand that half the
+jury shall be composed of foreigners.
+
+I will venture to assert, that, were the human race solemnly assembled
+for the purpose of making laws, such are the laws they would make for
+their security. Why then are they not adopted in other countries? But
+would it not be equally judicious to ask, why cocoanuts, which are
+brought to maturity in India, do not ripen at Rome? You answer, these
+cocoanuts did not always, or for some time, come to maturity in England;
+that the trees have not been long cultivated; that Sweden, following her
+example, planted and nursed some of them for several years, but that
+they did not thrive; and that it is possible to produce such fruit in
+other provinces, even in Bosnia and Servia. Try and plant the tree then.
+
+And you who bear authority over these benighted people, whether under
+the name of pasha, effendi, or mollah, let me advise you, although an
+unpromising subject for advice, not to act the stupid as well as
+barbarous part of riveting your nations in chains. Reflect, that the
+heavier you make the people's yoke, the more completely your own
+children, who cannot all of them be pashas, will be slaves. Surely you
+would not be so contemptible a wretch as to expose your whole posterity
+to groan in chains, for the sake of enjoying a subaltern tyranny for a
+few days! Oh, how great at present is the distance between an Englishman
+and a Bosnian!
+
+
+SECTION VII.
+
+The mixture now existing in the government of England--this concert
+between the commons, the lords, and the king--did not exist always.
+England was long a slave. She was so to the Romans, the Saxons, Danes,
+and French. William the Conqueror, in particular, ruled her with a
+sceptre of iron. He disposed of the properties and lives of his new
+subjects like an Oriental despot; he prohibited them from having either
+fire or candle in their houses after eight o'clock at night, under pain
+of death: his object being either to prevent nocturnal assemblies among
+them, or merely, by so capricious and extravagant a prohibition, to
+show how far the power of some men can extend over others. It is true,
+that both before as well as after William the Conqueror, the English had
+parliaments; they made a boast of them; as if the assemblies then called
+parliaments, made up of tyrannical churchmen and baronial robbers, had
+been the guardians of public freedom and happiness.
+
+The barbarians, who, from the shores of the Baltic poured over the rest
+of Europe, brought with them the usage of states or parliaments, about
+which a vast deal is said and very little known. The kings were not
+despotic, it is true; and it was precisely on this account that the
+people groaned in miserable slavery. The chiefs of these savages, who
+had ravaged France, Italy, Spain, and England, made themselves monarchs.
+Their captains divided among themselves the estates of the vanquished;
+hence, the margraves, lairds, barons, and the whole series of the
+subaltern tyrants, who often contested the spoils of the people with the
+monarchs, recently advanced to the throne and not firmly fixed on it.
+These were all birds of prey, battling with the eagle, in order to suck
+the blood of the doves. Every nation, instead of one good master, had a
+hundred tyrants. The priests soon took part in the contest. From time
+immemorial it had been the fate of the Gauls, the Germans, and the
+islanders of England, to be governed by their druids and the chiefs of
+their villages, an ancient species of barons, but less tyrannical than
+their successors. These druids called themselves mediators between God
+and men; they legislated, they excommunicated, they had the power of
+life and death. The bishops gradually succeeded to the authority of the
+druids, under the Goth and Vandal government. The popes put themselves
+at their head; and, with briefs, bulls, and monks, struck terror into
+the hearts of kings, whom they sometimes dethroned and occasionally
+caused to be assassinated, and drew to themselves, as nearly as they
+were able, all the money of Europe. The imbecile Ina, one of the tyrants
+of the English heptarchy, was the first who, on a pilgrimage to Rome,
+submitted to pay St. Peter's penny--which was about a crown of our
+money--for every house within his territory. The whole island soon
+followed this example; England gradually became a province of the pope;
+and the holy father sent over his legates, from time to time, to levy
+upon it his exorbitant imposts. John, called Lackland, at length made a
+full and formal cession of his kingdom to his holiness, by whom he had
+been excommunicated; the barons, who did not at all find their account
+in this proceeding, expelled that contemptible king, and substituted in
+his room Louis VIII., father of St. Louis, king of France. But they soon
+became disgusted with the new-comer, and obliged him to recross the sea.
+
+While the barons, bishops, and popes were thus harassing and tearing
+asunder England, where each of the parties strove eagerly to be the
+dominant one, the people, who form the most numerous, useful, and
+virtuous portion of a community, consisting of those who study the laws
+and sciences, merchants, artisans, and even peasants, who exercise at
+once the most important and the most despised of occupations; the
+people, I say, were looked down upon equally by all these combatants, as
+a species of beings inferior to mankind. Far, indeed, at that time, were
+the commons from having the slightest participation in the government:
+they were villeins, or serfs of the soil; both their labor and their
+blood belonged to their masters, who were called "nobles." The greater
+number of men in Europe were what they still continue to be in many
+parts of the world--the serfs of a lord, a species of cattle bought and
+sold together with the land. It required centuries to get justice done
+to humanity; to produce an adequate impression of the odious and
+execrable nature of the system, according to which the many sow, and
+only the few reap; and surely it may even be considered fortunate for
+France that the powers of these petty robbers were extinguished there by
+the legitimate authority of kings, as it was in England by that of the
+king and nation united.
+
+Happily, in consequence of the convulsions of empires by the contests
+between sovereigns and nobles, the chains of nations are more or less
+relaxed. The barons compelled John (Lackland) and Henry III to grant the
+famous charter, the great object of which, in reality, was to place the
+king in dependence on the lords, but in which the rest of the nation
+was a little favored, to induce it, when occasion might require, to
+range itself in the ranks of its pretended protectors. This great
+charter, which is regarded as the sacred origin of English liberties,
+itself clearly shows how very little liberty was understood. The very
+title proves that the king considered himself absolute by right, and
+that the barons and clergy compelled him to abate his claim to this
+absolute power only by the application of superior force. These are the
+words with which Magna Charta begins: "We grant, of our free will, the
+following privileges to the archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, and
+barons, of our kingdom," etc. Throughout the articles of it, not a word
+is said of the house of commons; a proof that it did not then exist, or
+that it existed without power. The freemen of England are specified in
+it, a melancholy demonstration that there were men who were not free. We
+perceive, from the thirty-seventh article, that the pretended freemen
+owed service to their lord. Liberty of such a description had but too
+strong a similarity to bondage. By the twenty-first article, the king
+ordains that henceforward his officers shall not take away the horses
+and ploughs of freemen, without paying for them. This regulation was
+considered by the people as true liberty, because it freed them from a
+greater tyranny. Henry VII., a successful warrior and politician, who
+pretended great attachment to the barons, but who cordially hated and
+feared them, granted them permission to alienate their lands. In
+consequence of this, the villeins, who by their industry and skill
+accumulated property, in the course of time became purchasers of the
+castles of the illustrious nobles who had ruined themselves by their
+extravagance, and, gradually, nearly all the landed property of the
+kingdom changed masters.
+
+The house of commons now advanced in power every day. The families of
+the old nobility became extinct in the progress of time; and, as in
+England, correctly speaking, peers only are nobles, there would scarcely
+have been any nobles in the country, if the kings had not, from time to
+time, created new barons, and kept up the body of peers, whom they had
+formerly so much dreaded, to counteract that of the commons, now become
+too formidable. All the new peers, who compose the upper house, receive
+from the king their title and nothing more, since none of them have the
+property of the lands of which they bear the names. One is duke of
+Dorset, without possessing a single foot of land in Dorsetshire; another
+is an earl under the name of a certain village, yet scarcely knowing
+where that village is situated. They have power in the parliament, and
+nowhere else.
+
+You hear no mention, in this country, of the high, middle, and low
+courts of justice, nor of the right of chase over the lands of private
+citizens, who have no right to fire a gun on their own estates.
+
+A man is not exempted from paying particular taxes because he is a
+noble or a clergyman. All imposts are regulated by the house of commons,
+which, although subordinate in rank, is superior in credit to that of
+the lords. The peers and bishops may reject a bill sent up to them by
+the commons, when the object is to raise money, but they can make no
+alteration in it: they must admit it or reject it, without restriction.
+When the bill is confirmed by the lords, and assented to by the king,
+then all the classes of the nation contribute. Every man pays, not
+according to his rank--which would be absurd--but according to his
+revenue. There is no arbitrary _faille_ or capitation, but a real tax on
+lands. These were all valued in the reign of the celebrated King
+William. The tax exists still unaltered, although the rents of lands
+have considerably increased; thus no one is oppressed, and no one
+complains. The feet of the cultivator are not bruised and mutilated by
+wooden shoes; he eats white bread; he is well clothed. He is not afraid
+to increase his farming-stock, nor to roof his cottage with tiles, lest
+the following year should, in consequence, bring with it an increase of
+taxation. There are numerous farmers who have an income of about five or
+six hundred pounds sterling, and still disdain not to cultivate the land
+which has enriched them, and on which they enjoy the blessing of
+freedom.
+
+
+SECTION VIII.
+
+The reader well knows that in Spain, near the coast of Malaga, there was
+discovered, in the reign of Philip II., a small community, until then
+unknown, concealed in the recesses of the Alpuxarras mountains. This
+chain of inaccessible rocks is intersected by luxuriant valleys, and
+these valleys are still cultivated by the descendants of the Moors, who
+were forced, for their own happiness, to become Christians, or at least
+to appear such.
+
+Among these Moors, as I was stating, there was, in the time of Philip, a
+small society, inhabiting a valley to which there existed no access but
+through caverns. This valley is situated between Pitos and Portugos. The
+inhabitants of this secluded abode were almost unknown to the Moors
+themselves. They spoke a language that was neither Spanish nor Arabic,
+and which was thought to be derived from that of the ancient
+Carthaginians.
+
+This society had but little increased in numbers: the reason alleged for
+which was that the Arabs, their neighbors, and before their time the
+Africans, were in the practice of coming and taking from them the young
+women.
+
+These poor and humble, but nevertheless happy, people, had never heard
+any mention of the Christian or Jewish religions; and knew very little
+about that of Mahomet, not holding it in any estimation. They offered
+up, from time immemorial, milk and fruits to a statue of Hercules. This
+was the amount of their religion. As to other matters, they spent their
+days in indolence and innocence. They were at length discovered by a
+familiar of the Inquisition. The grand inquisitor had the whole of them
+burned. This is the sole event of their history.
+
+The hallowed motives of their condemnation were, that they had never
+paid taxes, although, in fact, none had ever been demanded of them, and
+they were totally unacquainted with money; that they were not possessed
+of any Bible, although they did not understand Latin; and that no person
+had been at the pains of baptizing them. They were all invested with the
+san benito, and broiled to death with becoming ceremony.
+
+It is evident that this is a specimen of the true system of government;
+nothing can so completely contribute to the content, harmony, and
+happiness of society.
+
+
+
+
+GOURD OR CALABASH.
+
+
+This fruit grows in America on the branches of a tree as high as the
+tallest oaks.
+
+Thus, Matthew Garo, who is thought so wrong in Europe for finding fault
+with gourds creeping on the ground, would have been right in Mexico. He
+would have been still more in the right in India, where cocoas are very
+elevated. This proves that we should never hasten to conclusions. What
+God has made, He has made well, no doubt; and has placed his gourds on
+the ground in our climates, lest, in falling from on high, they should
+break Matthew Garo's nose.
+
+The calabash will only be introduced here to show that we should
+mistrust the idea that all was made for man. There are people who
+pretend that the turf is only green to refresh the sight. It would
+appear, however, that it is rather made for the animals who nibble it
+than for man, to whom dog-grass and trefoil are useless. If nature has
+produced the trees in favor of some species, it is difficult to say to
+which she has given the preference. Leaves, and even bark, nourish a
+prodigious multitude of insects: birds eat their fruits, and inhabit
+their branches, in which they build their industriously formed nests,
+while the flocks repose under their shades.
+
+The author of the "_Spectacle de la Nature_" pretends that the sea has a
+flux and reflux, only to facilitate the going out and coming in of our
+vessels. It appears that even Matthew Garo reasoned better; the
+Mediterranean, on which so many vessels sail, and which only has a tide
+in three or four places, destroys the opinion of this philosopher.
+
+Let us enjoy what we have, without believing ourselves the centre and
+object of all things.
+
+
+
+
+GRACE.
+
+
+In persons and works, grace signifies, not only that which is pleasing,
+but that which is attractive; so that the ancients imagined that the
+goddess of beauty ought never to appear without the graces. Beauty never
+displeases, but it may be deprived of this secret charm, which invites
+us to regard it, and sentimentally attracts and fills the soul. Grace
+in figure, carriage, action, discourse, depends on its attractive
+merit. A beautiful woman will have no grace, if her mouth be shut
+without a smile, and if her eyes display no sweetness. The serious is
+not always graceful, because unattractive, and approaching too near to
+the severe, which repels.
+
+A well-made man whose carriage is timid or constrained, gait precipitate
+or heavy, and gestures awkward, has no gracefulness, because he has
+nothing gentle or attractive in his exterior. The voice of an orator
+which wants flexibility or softness is without grace.
+
+It is the same in all the arts. Proportion and beauty may not be
+graceful. It cannot be said that the pyramids of Egypt are graceful; it
+cannot be said that the Colossus of Rhodes is as much so as the Venus of
+Cnidus. All that is merely strong and vigorous exhibits not the charm of
+grace.
+
+It would show but small acquaintance with Michelangelo and Caravaggio to
+attribute to them the grace of Albano. The sixth book of the "AEneid" is
+sublime; the fourth has more grace. Some of the gallant odes of Horace
+breathe gracefulness, as some of his epistles cultivate reason.
+
+It seems, in general, that the little and pretty of all kinds are more
+susceptible of grace than the large. A funeral oration, a tragedy, or a
+sermon, are badly praised, if they are only honored with the epithet of
+graceful.
+
+It is not good for any kind of work to be opposed to grace, for its
+opposite is rudeness, barbarity, and dryness. The Hercules of Farnese
+should not have the gracefulness of the Apollo of Belvidere and of
+Antinous, but it is neither rude nor clumsy. The burning of Troy is not
+described by Virgil with the graces of an elegy of Tibullus: it pleases
+by stronger beauties. A work, then, may be deprived of grace, without
+being in the least disagreeable. The terrible, or horrible, in
+description, is not to be graceful, neither should it solely affect its
+opposite; for if an artist, whatever branch he may cultivate, expresses
+only frightful things, and softens them not by agreeable contrasts, he
+will repel.
+
+Grace, in painting and sculpture, consists in softness of outline and
+harmonious expression; and painting, next to sculpture, has grace in the
+unison of parts, and of figures which animate one another, and which
+become agreeable by their attributes and their expression.
+
+Graces of diction, whether in eloquence or poetry, depend on choice of
+words and harmony of phrases, and still more upon delicacy of ideas and
+smiling descriptions. The abuse of grace is affectation, as the abuse of
+the sublime is absurdity; all perfection is nearly a fault.
+
+To have grace applies equally to persons and things. This dress, this
+work, or that woman, is graceful. What is called a good grace applies to
+manner alone. She presents herself with good grace. He has done that
+which was expected of him with a good grace. To possess the graces:
+This woman has grace in her carriage, in all that she says and does.
+
+To obtain grace is, by a metaphor, to obtain pardon, as to grant grace
+is to grant pardon. We make grace of one thing by taking away all the
+rest. The commissioners took all his effects and made him a gift--a
+grace--of his money. To grant graces, to diffuse graces, is the finest
+privilege of the sovereignty; it is to do good by something more than
+justice. To have one's good graces is usually said in relation to a
+superior: to have a lady's good graces, is to be her favorite lover. To
+be in grace, is said of a courtier who has been in disgrace: we should
+not allow our happiness to depend on the one, nor our misery on the
+other. Graces, in Greek, are "charities"; a term which signifies
+amiable.
+
+The graces, divinities of antiquity, are one of the most beautiful
+allegories of the Greek mythology. As this mythology always varied
+according either to the imagination of the poets, who were its
+theologians, or to the customs of the people, the number, names, and
+attributes of the graces often change; but it was at last agreed to fix
+them as three, Aglaia, Thalia, and Euphrosyne, that is to say,
+sparkling, blooming, mirthful. They were always near Venus. No veil
+should cover their charms. They preside over favors, concord,
+rejoicings, love, and even eloquence; they were the sensible emblem of
+all that can render life agreeable. They were painted dancing and
+holding hands; and every one who entered their temples was crowned with
+flowers. Those who have condemned the fabulous mythology should at least
+acknowledge the merit of these lively fictions, which announce truths
+intimately connected with the felicity of mankind.
+
+
+
+
+GRACE (OF).
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+This term, which signifies favor or privilege, is employed in this sense
+by theologians. They call grace a particular operation of God on
+mankind, intended to render them just and happy. Some have admitted
+universal grace, that which God gives to all men, though mankind,
+according to them, with the exception of a very small number, will be
+delivered to eternal flames: others admit grace towards Christians of
+their communion only; and lastly, others only for the elect of that
+communion.
+
+It is evident that a general grace, which leaves the universe in vice,
+error, and eternal misery, is not a grace, a favor, or privilege, but a
+contradiction in terms.
+
+Particular grace, according to theologians, is either in the first place
+"sufficing," which if resisted, suffices not--resembling a pardon given
+by a king to a criminal, who is nevertheless delivered over to the
+punishment; or "efficacious" when it is not resisted, although it _may
+be_ resisted; in this case, they just resemble famished guests to whom
+are presented delicious viands, of which they will surely eat, though,
+in general, they may be supposed at liberty not to eat; or "necessary,"
+that is, unavoidable, being nothing more than the chain of eternal
+decrees and events. We shall take care not to enter into the long and
+appalling details, subtleties, and sophisms, with which these questions
+are embarrassed. The object of this dictionary is not to be the vain
+echo of vain disputes.
+
+St. Thomas calls grace a substantial form, and the Jesuit Bouhours names
+it a _je ne sais quoi_; this is perhaps the best definition which has
+ever been given of it.
+
+If the theologians had wanted a subject on which to ridicule Providence,
+they need not have taken any other than that which they have chosen. On
+one side the Thomists assure us that man, in receiving efficacious
+grace, is not free in the compound sense, but that he is free in the
+divided sense; on the other, the Molinists invent the medium doctrine of
+God and congruity, and imagine exciting, preventing, concomitant, and
+co-operating grace.
+
+Let us quit these bad but seriously constructed jokes of the
+theologians; let us leave their books, and each consult his common
+sense; when he will see that all these reasoners have sagaciously
+deceived themselves, because they have reasoned upon a principle
+evidently false. They have supposed that God acts upon particular views;
+now, an eternal God, without general, immutable, and eternal laws, is
+an imaginary being, a phantom, a god of fable.
+
+Why, in all religions on which men pique themselves on reasoning, have
+theologians been forced to admit this grace which they do not
+comprehend? It is that they would have salvation confined to their own
+sect, and further, they would have this salvation divided among those
+who are the most submissive to themselves. These particular theologians,
+or chiefs of parties, divide among themselves. The Mussulman doctors
+entertain similar opinions and similar disputes, because they have the
+same interest to actuate them; but the universal theologian, that is to
+say, the true philosopher, sees that it is contradictory for nature to
+act on particular or single views; that it is ridiculous to imagine God
+occupying Himself in forcing one man in Europe to obey Him, while He
+leaves all the Asiatics intractable; to suppose Him wrestling with
+another man who sometimes submits, and sometimes disarms Him, and
+presenting to another a help, which is nevertheless useless. Such grace,
+considered in a true point of view, is an absurdity. The prodigious mass
+of books composed on this subject is often an exercise of intellect, but
+always the shame of reason.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+All nature, all that exists, is the grace of God; He bestows on all
+animals the grace of form and nourishment. The grace of growing seventy
+feet high is granted to the fir, and refused to the reed. He gives to
+man the grace of thinking, speaking, and knowing him; He grants me the
+grace of not understanding a word of all that Tournelli, Molina, and
+Soto, have written on the subject of grace.
+
+The first who has spoken of efficacious and gratuitous grace is, without
+contradiction, Homer. This may be astonishing to a bachelor of theology,
+who knows no author but St. Augustine; but, if he read the third book of
+the "Iliad," he will see that Paris says to his brother Hector: "If the
+gods have given you valor, and me beauty, do not reproach me with the
+presents of the beautiful Venus; no gift of the gods is despicable--it
+does not depend upon man to obtain them."
+
+Nothing is more positive than this passage. If we further remark that
+Jupiter, according to his pleasure, gave the victory sometimes to the
+Greeks, and at others to the Trojans, we shall see a new proof that all
+was done by grace from on high. Sarpedon, and afterwards Patroclus, are
+barbarians to whom by turns grace has been wanting.
+
+There have been philosophers who were not of the opinion of Homer. They
+have pretended that general Providence does not immediately interfere
+with the affairs of particular individuals; that it governs all by
+universal laws; that Thersites and Achilles were equal before it, and
+that neither Chalcas nor Talthybius ever had versatile or congruous
+graces.
+
+According to these philosophers, the dog-grass and the oak, the mite and
+the elephant, man, the elements and stars, obey invariable laws, which
+God, as immutable, has established from all eternity.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+If one were to come from the bottom of hell, to say to us on the part of
+the devil--Gentlemen, I must inform you that our sovereign lord has
+taken all mankind for his share, except a small number of people who
+live near the Vatican and its dependencies--we should all pray of this
+deputy to inscribe us on the list of the privileged; we should ask him
+what we must do to obtain this grace.
+
+If he were to answer, You cannot merit it, my master has made the list
+from the beginning of time; he has only listened to his own pleasure, he
+is continually occupied in making an infinity of _pots-de-chambre_ and
+some dozen gold vases; if you are _pots-de-chambre_ so much the worse
+for you.
+
+At these fine words we should use our pitchforks to send the ambassador
+back to his master. This is, however, what we have dared to impute to
+God---to the eternal and sovereignly good being!
+
+Man has been always reproached with having made God in his own image,
+Homer has been condemned for having transported all the vices and
+follies of earth into heaven. Plato, who has thus justly reproached him,
+has not hesitated to call him a blasphemer; while we, a hundred times
+more thoughtless, hardy, and blaspheming than this Greek, who did not
+understand conventional language, devoutly accuse God of a thing of
+which we have never accused the worst of men.
+
+It is said that the king of Morocco, Muley Ismael, had five hundred
+children. What would you say if a marabout of Mount Atlas related to you
+that the wise and good Muley Ismael, dining with his family, at the
+close of the repast, spoke thus:
+
+"I am Muley Ismael, who has forgotten you for my glory, for I am very
+glorious. I love you very tenderly, I shelter you as a hen covers her
+chickens; I have decreed that one of my youngest children shall have the
+kingdom of Tafilet, and that another shall possess Morocco; and for my
+other dear children, to the number of four hundred and ninety-eight, I
+order that one-half shall be tortured, and the other half burned, for I
+am the Lord Muley Ismael."
+
+You would assuredly take the marabout for the greatest fool that Africa
+ever produced; but if three or four thousand marabouts, well entertained
+at your expense, were to repeat to you the same story, what would you
+do? Would you not be tempted to make them fast upon bread and water
+until they recovered their senses?
+
+You will allege that my indignation is reasonable enough against the
+supralapsarians, who believe that the king of Morocco begot these five
+hundred children only for his glory; and that he had always the
+intention to torture and burn them, except two, who were destined to
+reign.
+
+But I am wrong, you say, against the infralapsarians, who avow that it
+was not the first intention of Muley Ismael to cause his children to
+perish; but that, having foreseen that they would be of no use, he
+thought he should be acting as a good father in getting rid of them by
+torture and fire.
+
+Ah, supralapsarians, infralapsarians, free-gracians, sufficers,
+efficacians, jansenists, and molinists become men, and no longer trouble
+the earth with such absurd and abominable fooleries.
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+Holy advisers of modern Rome, illustrious and infallible theologians, no
+one has more respect for your divine decisions than I; but if Paulus
+milius, Scipio, Cato, Cicero, Caesar, Titus, Trajan, or Marcus Aurelius,
+revisited that Rome to which they formerly did such credit, you must
+confess that they would be a little astonished at your decisions on
+grace. What would they say if they heard you speak of healthful grace
+according to St. Thomas, and medicinal grace according to Cajetan; of
+exterior and interior grace, of free, sanctifying, co-operating, actual,
+habitual, and efficacious grace, which is sometimes inefficacious; of
+the sufficing which sometimes does not suffice, of the versatile and
+congruous--would they really comprehend it more than you and I?
+
+What need would these poor people have of your instructions? I fancy I
+hear them say: "Reverend fathers, you are terrible genii; we foolishly
+thought that the Eternal Being never conducted Himself by particular
+laws like vile human beings, but by general laws, eternal like Himself.
+No one among us ever imagined that God was like a senseless master, who
+gives an estate to one slave and refuses food to another; who orders one
+with a broken arm to knead a loaf, and a cripple to be his courier."
+
+All is grace on the part of God; He has given to the globe we inhabit
+the grace of form; to the trees the grace of making them grow; to
+animals that of feeding them; but will you say, because one wolf finds
+in his road a lamb for his supper, while another is dying with hunger,
+that God has given the first wolf a particular grace? Is it a preventive
+grace to cause one oak to grow in preference to another in which sap is
+wanting? If throughout nature all being is submitted to general laws,
+how can a single species of animals avoid conforming to them?
+
+Why should the absolute master of all be more occupied in directing the
+interior of a single man than in conducting the remainder of entire
+nature? By what caprice would He change something in the heart of a
+Courlander or a Biscayan, while He changes nothing in the general laws
+which He has imposed upon all the stars.
+
+What a pity to suppose that He is continually making, defacing, and
+renewing our sentiments! And what audacity in us to believe ourselves
+excepted from all beings! And further, is it not only for those who
+confess that these changes are imagined? A Savoyard, a Bergamask, on
+Monday, will have the grace to have a mass said for twelve sous; on
+Tuesday he will go to the tavern and have no grace; on Wednesday he will
+have a co-operating grace, which will conduct him to confession, but he
+will not have the efficacious grace of perfect contrition; on Thursday
+there will be a sufficing grace which will not suffice, as has been
+already said. God will labor in the head of this Bergamask--sometimes
+strongly, sometimes weakly, while the rest of the earth will no way
+concern Him! He will not deign to meddle with the interior of the
+Indians and Chinese! If you possess a grain of reason, reverend fathers,
+do you not find this system prodigiously ridiculous?
+
+Poor, miserable man! behold this oak which rears its head to the clouds,
+and this reed which bends at its feet; you do not say that efficacious
+grace has been given to the oak and withheld from the reed. Raise your
+eyes to heaven; see the eternal Demiourgos creating millions of worlds,
+which gravitate towards one another by general and eternal laws. See the
+same light reflected from the sun to Saturn, and from Saturn to us; and
+in this grant of so many stars, urged onward in their rapid course; in
+this general obedience of all nature, dare to believe, if you can, that
+God is occupied in giving a versatile grace to Sister Theresa, or a
+concomitant one to Sister Agnes.
+
+Atom--to which another foolish atom has said that the Eternal has
+particular laws for some atoms of thy neighborhood; that He gives His
+grace to that one and refuses it to this; that such as had not grace
+yesterday shall have it to-morrow--repeat not this folly. God has made
+the universe, and creates not new winds to remove a few straws in one
+corner of the universe. Theologians are like the combatants in Homer,
+who believed that the gods were sometimes armed for and sometimes
+against them. Had Homer not been considered a poet, he would be deemed a
+blasphemer.
+
+It is Marcus Aurelius who speaks, and not I; for God, who inspires you,
+has given me grace to believe all that you say, all that you have said,
+and all that you will say.
+
+
+
+
+GRAVE--GRAVITY.
+
+
+Grave, in its moral meaning, always corresponds with its physical one;
+it expresses something of weight; thus, we say--a person, an author, or
+a maxim of weight, for a grave person, author, or maxim. The grave is to
+the serious what the lively is to the agreeable. It is one degree more
+of the same thing, and that degree a considerable one. A man may be
+serious by temperament, and even from want of ideas. He is grave, either
+from a sense of decorum, or from having ideas of depth and importance,
+which induce gravity. There is a difference between being grave and
+being a grave man. It is a fault to be unseasonably grave. He who is
+grave in society is seldom much sought for; but a grave man is one who
+acquires influence and authority more by his real wisdom than his
+external carriage.
+
+     _Tum pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem_
+     _Conspexere, silent, adrectisque auribus adstant._
+                            --VIRGIL'S _AEneid_, i. 151.
+
+     If then some grave and pious man appear,
+     They hush their noise, and lend a listening ear.
+                                              --DRYDEN.
+
+A decorous air should be always preserved, but a grave air is becoming
+only in the function of some high and important office, as, for example,
+in council. When gravity consists, as is frequently the case, only in
+the exterior carriage, frivolous remarks are delivered with a pompous
+solemnity, exciting at once ridicule and aversion. We do not easily
+pardon those who wish to impose upon us by this air of consequence and
+self-sufficiency.
+
+The duke de La Rochefoucauld said "Gravity is a mysteriousness of body
+assumed in order to conceal defects of mind." Without investigating
+whether the phrase "mysteriousness of body" is natural and judicious, it
+is sufficient to observe that the remark is applicable to all who affect
+gravity, but not to those who merely exhibit a gravity suitable to the
+office they hold, the place where they are, or the business in which
+they are engaged.
+
+A grave author is one whose opinions relate to matters obviously
+disputable. We never apply the term to one who has written on subjects
+which admit no doubt or controversy. It would be ridiculous to call
+Euclid and Archimedes grave authors.
+
+Gravity is applicable to style. Livy and de Thou have written with
+gravity. The same observations cannot with propriety be applied to
+Tacitus, whose object was brevity, and who has displayed malignity;
+still less can it be applied to Cardinal de Retz, who sometimes infuses
+into his writings a misplaced gayety, and sometimes even forgets
+decency.
+
+The grave style declines all sallies of wit or pleasantry; if it
+sometimes reaches the sublime, if on any particular occasion it is
+pathetic, it speedily returns to the didactic wisdom and noble
+simplicity which habitually characterizes it; it possesses strength
+without daring. Its greatest difficulty is to avoid monotony.
+
+A grave affair (_affaire_), a grave case (_cas_), is used concerning a
+criminal rather than a civil process. A grave disease implies danger.
+
+
+
+
+GREAT--GREATNESS.
+
+_Of the Meaning of These Words._
+
+Great is one of those words which are most frequently used in a moral
+sense, and with the least consideration and judgment. Great man, great
+genius, great captain, great philosopher, great poet; we mean by this
+language "one who has far exceeded ordinary limits." But, as it is
+difficult to define those limits, the epithet "great" is often applied
+to those who possess only mediocrity.
+
+This term is less vague and doubtful when applied to material than to
+moral subjects. We know what is meant by a great storm, a great
+misfortune, a great disease, great property, great misery.
+
+The term "large" (_gros_) is sometimes used with respect to subjects of
+the latter description, that is, material ones, as equivalent to great,
+but never with respect to moral subjects. We say large property for
+great wealth, but not a large captain for a great captain, or a large
+minister for a great minister. Great financier means a man eminently
+skilful in matters of national finance; but _gros_ financier expresses
+merely a man who has become wealthy in the department of finance.
+
+The great man is more difficult to be defined than the great artist. In
+an art or profession, the man who has far distanced his rivals, or who
+has the reputation of having done so, is called great in his art, and
+appears, therefore, to have required merit of only one description in
+order to obtain this eminence; but the great man must combine different
+species of merit. Gonsalvo, surnamed the Great Captain, who observed
+that "the web of honor was coarsely woven," was never called a great
+man. It is more easy to name those to whom this high distinction should
+be refused than those to whom it should be granted. The denomination
+appears to imply some great virtues. All agree that Cromwell was the
+most intrepid general, the most profound statesman, the man best
+qualified to conduct a party, a parliament, or an army, of his day; yet
+no writer ever gives him the title of great man; because, although he
+possessed great qualities, he possessed not a single great virtue.
+
+This title seems to fall to the lot only of the small number of men who
+have been distinguished at once by virtues, exertions, and success.
+Success is essential, because the man who is always unfortunate is
+supposed to be so by his own fault.
+
+Great (grand), by itself, expresses some dignity. In Spain it is a high
+and most distinguishing appellative (_grandee_) conferred by the king on
+those whom he wishes to honor. The grandees are covered in the presence
+of the king, either before speaking to him or after having spoken to
+him, or while taking their seats with the rest.
+
+Charles the Fifth conferred the privileges of grandeeship on sixteen
+principal noblemen. That emperor himself afterwards granted the same
+honors to many others. His successors, each in his turn, have added to
+the number. The Spanish grandees have long claimed to be considered of
+equal rank and dignity with the electors and the princes of Italy. At
+the court of France they have the same honors as peers.
+
+The title of "great" has been always given, in France, to many of the
+chief officers of the crown--as great seneschal, great master, great
+chamberlain, great equerry, great pantler, great huntsman, great
+falconer. These titles were given them to distinguish their pre-eminence
+above the persons serving in the same departments under them. The
+distinction is not given to the constable, nor to the chancellor, nor to
+the marshals, although the constable is the chief of all the household
+officers, the chancellor the second person in the state, and the marshal
+the second officer in the army. The reason obviously is, that they had
+no deputies, no vice-constables, vice-marshals, vice-chancellors, but
+officers under another denomination who executed their orders, while the
+great steward, great chamberlain, and great equerry, etc., had stewards,
+chamberlains, and equerries under them.
+
+Great (grand) in connection with _seigneur_, "great lord," has a
+signification more extensive and uncertain. We give this title of
+"_grand seigneur_" (seignor) to the Turkish sultan, who assumes that of
+pasha, to which the expression grand seignor does not correspond. The
+expression "_un grand_," "great man," is used in speaking of a man of
+distinguished birth, invested with dignities, but it is used only by the
+common people. A person of birth or consequence never applies the term
+to any one. As the words "great lord" (_grand seigneur_) are commonly
+applied to those who unite birth, dignity, and riches, poverty seems to
+deprive a man of the right to it, or at least to render it inappropriate
+or ridiculous. Accordingly, we say a poor gentleman, but not a poor
+grand seigneur.
+
+Great (grand) is different from mighty (_puissant_). A man may at the
+same time be both one and the other, but _puissant_ implies the
+possession of some office of power and consequence. "Grand" indicates
+more show and less reality; the "puissant" commands, the "grand"
+possesses honors.
+
+There is greatness (grandeur) in mind, in sentiments, in manners, and in
+conduct. The expression is not used in speaking of persons in the
+middling classes of society, but only of those who, by their rank, are
+bound to show nobility and elevation. It is perfectly true that a man of
+the most obscure birth and connections may have more greatness of mind
+than a monarch. But it would be inconsistent with the usual phraseology
+to say, "that merchant" or "that farmer acted greatly" (_avec
+grandeur_); unless, indeed, in very particular circumstances, and
+placing certain characters in striking opposition, we should, for
+example, make such a remark as the following: "The celebrated merchant
+who entertained Charles the Fifth in his own house, and lighted a fire
+of cinnamon wood with that prince's bond to him for fifty thousand
+ducats, displayed more greatness of soul than the emperor."
+
+The title of "greatness" (grandeur) was formerly given to various
+persons possessing stations of dignity. French clergymen, when writing
+to bishops, still call them "your greatness." Those titles, which are
+lavished by sycophancy and caught at by vanity, are now little used.
+
+Haughtiness is often mistaken for greatness (grandeur). He who is
+ostentatious of greatness displays vanity. But one becomes weary and
+exhausted with writing about greatness. According to the lively remark
+of Montaigne, "we cannot obtain it, let us therefore take our revenge by
+abusing it."
+
+
+
+
+GREEK.
+
+_Observations Upon the Extinction of the Greek Language at Marseilles._
+
+
+It is exceedingly strange that, as Marseilles was founded by a Greek
+colony, scarcely any vestige of the Greek language is to be found in
+Provence Languedoc, or any district of France; for we cannot consider as
+Greek the terms which were taken, at a comparatively modern date, from
+the Latins, and which had been adopted by the Romans themselves from the
+Greeks so many centuries before. We received those only at second hand.
+We have no right to say that we abandoned the word _Got_ for that of
+_Theos_, rather than that of _Deus_, from which, by a barbarous
+termination, we have made _Dieu_.
+
+It is clear that the Gauls, having received the Latin language with the
+Roman laws, and having afterwards received from those same Romans the
+Christian religion, adopted from them all the terms which were connected
+with that religion. These same Gauls did not acquire, until a late
+period, the Greek terms which relate to medicine, anatomy, and surgery.
+
+After deducting all the words originally Greek which we have derived
+through the Latin, and all the anatomical and medical terms which were,
+in comparison, so recently acquired, there is scarcely anything left;
+for surely, to derive "_abreger_" from "_brakus_," rather than from
+"_abreviare_"; "_acier_" from "_axi_" rather than from "_acies_";
+"_acre_" from "_agros_," rather than from "_ager_"; and "_aile_" from
+"_ily_" rather than from "_ala_"--this, I say, would surely be perfectly
+ridiculous.
+
+Some have even gone so far as to say that "omelette" comes from
+"_omeilaton_" because "_meli_" in Greek signifies honey, and "_oon_" an
+egg. In the "Garden of Greek Roots" there is a more curious derivation
+still; it is pretended that "_diner_" (dinner) comes from "_deipnein_,"
+which signifies supper.
+
+As some may be desirous of possessing a list of the Greek words which
+the Marseilles colony may have introduced into the language of the
+Gauls, independently of those which came through the Romans, we present
+the following one:
+
+     Aboyer, perhaps from _bauzein_.
+     Affre, affreux, from _afronos_.
+     Agacer, perhaps from _anaxein_.
+     Alali, a Greek war-cry.
+     Babiller, perhaps from _babazo_.
+     Balle, from _ballo_.
+     Bas, from _batys_.
+     Blesser, from the aorist of _blapto_.
+     Bouteille, from _bouttis_.
+     Bride, from _bryter_.
+     Brique, from _bryka_.
+     Coin, from _gonia_.
+     Colere, from _chole_.
+     Colle, from _colla_.
+     Couper, from _cop to_.
+     Cuisse, perhaps from _ischis_.
+     Entraille, from _entera_.
+     Ermite, from _eremos_.
+     Fier, from _fiaros_.
+     Gargarizer, from _gargarizein_.
+     Idiot, from _idiotes_.
+     Maraud, from _miaros_.
+     Moquer, from _mokeuo_.
+     Moustache, from _mustax_.
+     Orgueil, from _orge_.
+     Page, from _pais_.
+     Siffler, perhaps from _siffloo_.
+     Tuer, _thuein_.
+
+I am astonished to find so few words remaining of a language spoken at
+Marseilles, in the time of Augustus, in all its purity; and I am
+particularly astonished to find the greater number of the Greek words
+preserved in Provence, signifying things of little or no utility, while
+those used to express things of the first necessity and importance are
+utterly lost. We have not a single one remaining that signifies land,
+sea, sky, the sun, the moon, rivers, or the principal parts of the human
+body; the words used for which might have been expected to be
+transmitted down from the beginning through every succeeding age.
+Perhaps we must attribute the cause of this to the Visigoths, the
+Burgundians, and the Franks; to the horrible barbarism of all those
+nations which laid waste the Roman Empire, a barbarism of which so many
+traces yet remain.
+
+
+
+
+GUARANTEE.
+
+
+A guarantee is a pledge by which a person renders himself responsible to
+another for something, and binds himself to secure him in the enjoyment
+of it. The word (_garant_) is derived from the Celtic and Teutonic
+"warrant." In all the words which we have retained from those ancient
+languages we have changed the _w_ into _g_. Among the greater number of
+the nations of the North "warrant" still signifies assurance, guaranty;
+and in this sense it means, in English, an order of the king, as
+signifying the pledge of the king. When in the middle ages kings
+concluded treaties, they were guaranteed on both sides by a considerable
+number of knights, who bound themselves by oath to see that the treaty
+was observed, and even, when a superior education qualified them to do
+so, which sometimes happened, signed their names to it. When the emperor
+Frederick Barbarossa ceded so many rights to Pope Alexander III. at the
+celebrated congress of Venice, in 1117, the emperor put his seal to the
+instrument which the pope and cardinals signed. Twelve princes of the
+empire guaranteed the treaty by an oath upon the gospel; but none of
+them signed it. It is not said that the doge of Venice guaranteed that
+peace which was concluded in his palace. When Philip Augustus made peace
+in 1200 with King John of England, the principal barons of France and
+Normandy swore to the due observance of it, as cautionary or
+guaranteeing parties. The French swore that they would take arms against
+their king if he violated his word, and the Normans, in like manner, to
+oppose their sovereign if he did not adhere to his. One of the
+constables of the Montmorency family, after a negotiation with one of
+the earls of March, in 1227, swore to the observance of the treaty upon
+the soul of the king.
+
+The practice of guaranteeing the states of a third party was of great
+antiquity, although under a different name. The Romans in this manner
+guaranteed the possessions of many of the princes of Asia and Africa, by
+taking them under their protection until they secured to themselves the
+possession of the territories thus protected. We must regard as a mutual
+guaranty the ancient alliance between France and Castile, of king to
+king, kingdom to kingdom, and man to man.
+
+We do not find any treaty in which the guaranty of the states of a third
+party is expressly stipulated for before that which was concluded
+between Spain and the states-general in 1609, by the mediation of Henry
+IV. He procured from Philip III., king of Spain, the recognition of the
+United Provinces as free and sovereign states. He signed the guaranty of
+this sovereignty of the seven provinces, and obtained the signature of
+the same instrument from the king of Spain; and the republic
+acknowledged that it owed its freedom to the interference of the French
+monarch. It is principally within our own times that treaties of
+guaranty have become comparatively frequent. Unfortunately these
+engagements have occasionally produced ruptures and war; and it is
+clearly ascertained that the best of all possible guaranties is power.
+
+
+
+
+GREGORY VII.
+
+
+Bayle himself, while admitting that Gregory was the firebrand of Europe,
+concedes to him the denomination of a great man. "That old Rome," says
+he, "which plumed itself upon conquests and military virtue, should have
+brought so many other nations under its dominion, redounds, according to
+the general maxims of mankind, to her credit and glory; but, upon the
+slightest reflection, can excite little surprise. On the other hand, it
+is a subject of great surprise to see new Rome, which pretended to value
+itself only on an apostolic ministry, possessed of an authority under
+which the greatest monarchs have been constrained to bend. Caron may
+observe, with truth, that there is scarcely a single emperor who has
+opposed the popes without feeling bitter cause to regret his resistance.
+Even at the present day the conflicts of powerful princes with the court
+of Rome almost always terminate in their confusion."
+
+I am of a totally different opinion from Bayle. There will probably be
+many of a different one from mine. I deliver it however with freedom,
+and let him who is willing and able refute it.
+
+1. The differences of the princes of Orange and the seven provinces with
+Rome did not terminate in their confusion; and Bayle, who, while at
+Amsterdam, could set Rome at defiance, was a happy illustration of the
+contrary.
+
+The triumphs of Queen Elizabeth, of Gustavus Vasa in Sweden, of the
+kings of Denmark, of all the princes of the north of Germany, of the
+finest part of Helvetia, of the single and small city of Geneva--the
+triumphs, I say, of all these over the policy of the Roman court are
+perfectly satisfactory testimonies that it may be easily and
+successfully resisted, both in affairs of religion and government.
+
+2. The sacking of Rome by the troops of Charles the Fifth; the pope
+(Clement VII.) a prisoner in the castle of St. Angelo; Louis XIV.
+compelling Pope Alexander VII. to ask his pardon, and erecting even in
+Rome itself a monument of the pope's submission; and, within our own
+times, the easy subversion of that steady, and apparently most
+formidable support of the papal power, the society of Jesuits in Spain,
+in France, in Naples, in Goa, and in Paraguay--all this furnishes
+decisive evidence, that, when potent princes are in hostility with Rome,
+the quarrel is not terminated in their confusion; they may occasionally
+bend before the storm, but they will not eventually be overthrown.
+
+When the popes walked on the heads of kings, when they conferred crowns
+by a parchment bull, it appears to me, that at this extreme height of
+their power and grandeur they did no more than the caliphs, who were the
+successors of Mahomet, did in the very period of their decline. Both of
+them, in the character of priests, conferred the investiture of empires,
+in solemn ceremony, on the most powerful of contending parties.
+
+3. Maimbourg says: "What no pope ever did before, Gregory VIII. did,
+depriving Henry IV. of his dignity of emperor, and of his kingdoms of
+Germany and Italy."
+
+Maimbourg is mistaken. Pope Zachary had, long before that, placed a
+crown on the head of the Austrasian Pepin, who usurped the kingdom of
+the Franks; and Pope Leo III. had declared the son of that Pepin emperor
+of the West, and thereby deprived the empress Irene of the whole of that
+empire; and from that time, it must be admitted, there has not been a
+single priest of the Romish church who has not imagined that his bishop
+enjoyed the disposal of all crowns.
+
+This maxim was always turned to account when it was possible to be so.
+It was considered as a consecrated weapon, deposited in the sacristy of
+St. John of Lateran, which might be drawn forth in solemn and impressive
+ceremony on every occasion that required it. This prerogative is so
+commanding; it raises to such a height the dignity of an exorcist born
+at Velletri or Civita Vecchia, that if Luther, Oecolampadius, John
+Calvin, and all the prophets of the Cevennes, had been natives of any
+miserable village near Rome, and undergone the tonsure there, they would
+have supported that church with the same rage which they actually
+manifested for its destruction.
+
+4. Everything, then, depends on the time and place of a man's birth, and
+the circumstances by which he is surrounded. Gregory VII. was born in an
+age of barbarism, ignorance, and superstition; and he had to deal with a
+young, debauched, inexperienced emperor, deficient in money, and whose
+power was contested by all the powerful lords of Germany.
+
+We cannot believe, that, from the time of the Austrasian Charlemagne,
+the Roman people ever paid very willing obedience to Franks or
+Teutonians: they hated them as much as the genuine old Romans would have
+hated the Cimbri, if the Cimbri had obtained dominion in Italy. The
+Othos had left behind them in Rome a memory that was execrated, because
+they had enjoyed great power there; and, after the time of the Othos,
+Europe it is well known became involved in frightful anarchy.
+
+This anarchy was not more effectually restrained under the emperors of
+the house of Franconia. One-half of Germany was in insurrection against
+Henry IV. The countess Mathilda, grand duchess, his cousin-german, more
+powerful than himself in Italy, was his mortal enemy. She possessed,
+either as fiefs of the empire, or as allodial property, the whole duchy
+of Tuscany, the territory of Cremona, Ferrara, Mantua, and Parma; a part
+of the Marches of Ancona, Reggio, Modena, Spoleto, and Verona; and she
+had rights, that is to say pretensions, to the two Burgundies; for the
+imperial chancery claimed those territories, according to its regular
+practice of claiming everything.
+
+We admit, that Gregory VII. would have been little less than an idiot
+had he not exerted his strongest efforts to secure a complete influence
+over this powerful princess; and to obtain, by her means, a point of
+support and protection against the Germans. He became her director, and,
+after being her director, her heir.
+
+I shall not, in this place, examine whether he was really her lover, or
+whether he only pretended to be so; or whether his enemies merely
+pretended it; or whether, in his idle moments, the assuming and ardent
+little director did not occasionally abuse the influence he possessed
+with his penitent, and prevail over a feeble and capricious woman. In
+the course of human events nothing can be more natural or common; but as
+usually no registers are kept of such cases; as those interesting
+intimacies between the directors and directed do not take place before
+witnesses, and as Gregory has been reproached with this imputation only
+by his enemies, we ought not to confound accusation with proof. It is
+quite enough that Gregory claimed the whole of his penitent's property.
+
+5. The donation which he procured to be made to himself by the countess
+Mathilda, in the year 1077, is more than suspected. And one proof that
+it is not to be relied upon is that not merely was this deed never
+shown, but that, in a second deed, the first is stated to have been
+lost. It was pretended that the donation had been made in the fortress
+of Canossa, and in the second act it is said to have been made at Rome.
+These circumstances may be considered as confirming the opinion of some
+antiquaries, a little too scrupulous, who maintain that out of a
+thousand grants made in those times--and those times were of long
+duration--there are more than nine hundred evidently counterfeit.
+
+There have been two sorts of usurpers in our quarter of the world,
+Europe--robbers and forgers.
+
+6. Bayle, although allowing the title of Great to Gregory, acknowledges
+at the same time that this turbulent man disgraced his heroism by his
+prophecies. He had the audacity to create an emperor, and in that he
+did well, as the emperor Henry IV. had made a pope. Henry deposed him,
+and he deposed Henry. So far there is nothing to which to object--both
+sides are equal. But Gregory took it into his head to turn prophet; he
+predicted the death of Henry IV. for the year 1080; but Henry IV.
+conquered, and the pretended emperor Rudolph was defeated and slain in
+Thuringia by the famous Godfrey of Bouillon, a man more truly great than
+all the other three. This proves, in my opinion, that Gregory had more
+enthusiasm than talent.
+
+I subscribe with all my heart to the remark of Bayle, that "when a man
+undertakes to predict the future, he is provided against everything by a
+face of brass, and an inexhaustible magazine of equivocations." But your
+enemies deride your equivocations; they also have a face of brass like
+yourself; and they expose you as a knave, a braggart, and a fool.
+
+7. Our great man ended his public career with witnessing the taking of
+Rome by assault, in the year 1083. He was besieged in the castle, since
+called St. Angelo, by the same emperor Henry IV., whom he had dared to
+dispossess, and died in misery and contempt at Salerno, under the
+protection of Robert Guiscard the Norman.
+
+I ask pardon of modern Rome, but when I read the history of the Scipios,
+the Catos, the Pompeys, and the Caesars, I find a difficulty in ranking
+with them a factious monk who was made a pope under the name of Gregory
+VII.
+
+But our Gregory has obtained even a yet finer title; he has been made a
+saint, at least at Rome. It was the famous cardinal Coscia who effected
+this canonization under Pope Benedict XIII. Even an office or service of
+St. Gregory VII. was printed, in which it was said, that that saint
+"absolved the faithful from the allegiance which they had sworn to their
+emperor."
+
+Many parliaments of the kingdom were desirous of having this legend
+burned by the executioner: but Bentivoglio, the nuncio--who kept one of
+the actresses at the opera, of the name of Constitution, as his
+mistress, and had by her a daughter called la Legende; a man otherwise
+extremely amiable, and a most interesting companion--procured from the
+ministry a mitigation of the threatened storm; and, after passing
+sentence of condemnation on the legend of St. Gregory, the hostile party
+were contented to suppress it and to laugh at it.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 5
+(of 10), by Francois-Marie Arouet (AKA Voltaire)
+
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