XXXII. If only the interest of the prince of the state, or of religion,
attracted the pen of the historian, and caused it to deviate from the
truth; we should at least have the satisfaction to suppose, that with
respect to those facts which have no relation to the party he follows,
or the power he obeys, an historian would not wish to deceive us. But
the private or particular motives which may excite him to deception are
so numerous, that even with respect to these facts, we can seldom say
we are secure. Who can form an idea of the affections which possess the
heart of an author, whom he does not know, nor has had any intercourse
with? Who can determine to how many objects his love or hatred extend?
Even with regard to those facts which seem the most remote, either from
his affections or his interest, he may be swayed by his prejudices or his
convenience; and sometimes historians lie, when their motives for doing
it are incomprehensible, of which we will proceed to give an example.
XXXIII. Peter Mathé, a famous French historian, tells us, that one la
Brosse, a physician and mathematician at Paris, had foretold the death
of Henry the fourth, and had communicated his prediction in confidence
to the Duke de Vendome. Peter Petit, another historian, who was much
celebrated for his knowledge of human nature, assures us, that such a
prediction never existed. These two men were both contemporaries, both
resided at Paris, were both there at the death of Henry the fourth,
and both knew the physician la Brosse; but with all this, as they give
diametrically opposite testimonies, it is very clear that one or other of
them must lie. If it should be urged, that one of them might be deceived
by some sinister information, I answer, that could not be the case, for
they both quote the Duke de Vendome as their author. Peter Mathé says, he
had the thing just as he relates it from the duke himself: Peter Petit
says, he asked the Duke de Vendome if what Peter Mathé had related was
true; and that the duke replied, it was false.
XXXIV. This is a contradiction, capable of exciting many reflexions on
the uncertainty of history. If it had not happened, that an author in the
situation and circumstances of Peter Petit had contradicted Peter Mathé,
who would have ventured to question the prediction of la Brosse? In what
author could concur superior requisites to establish a fact? A historian
of reputation, who was contemporary with the event, lived in the same
city with the astrologer where the tragical death of Henry happened, and
who heard the prediction from the only witness who could possibly give
testimony to the truth of it; and this was a man of the rank and quality
of the Duke de Vendome. What further evidence could the most rigid critic
demand, to engage his assent to an historical fact? With all this, unless
we transfer the deception to Peter Petit, we are under a necessity
of declaring, that Peter Mathé advanced a falshood; for the same
circumstances equally concurred, to induce giving credit to the first as
the last of them. Thus are we reduced to a necessity of acknowledging, in
spite of all the critical aid we can call in to our assistance, that we
are unable to ascertain the truth of this relation. Nor will transferring
the deception to the Duke de Vendome, and saying, that he told one person
one thing, and another another, remove the historical difficulty; for,
as historians seldom relate events of which they were eye witnesses, and
as the most they can do, is to make use of the testimony of credible
evidences, your calling in question whether they were so or not, would,
by extending to them the danger of propagating falshoods, be adding a new
difficulty to the certainty of history; for at this rate, it would not
suffice that an historian himself is a man of veracity; but it would be
also requisite, that those from whom he had his information should be men
of veracity likewise; and sometimes the intelligence passes through so
many different channels, from the æra of the fact to its arrival at the
pen of the historian, that it seems exceedingly improbable to suppose,
that in its passage through one or other of these channels, there shall
not be something added or diminished; nor can it be insured, that it
shall not come to him totally changed and disfigured; for the same thing
happens in this case as in morality, _malum ex quocumque defectu_. If,
from one to another, a relation goes through the mouths of ten different
individuals, by its passage through the mouth of one of them, who is not
a scrupulous observer of the truth, it will be vitiated, and occasion its
appearing corrupted in the page of history. Who, upon contemplation of
this, will not be astonished at those, who believe every thing to be true
as the Gospel, which they read in an author who writes the history of his
own times?
XXXV. We may with great probability, and without any violent or strained
supposition, conclude, that the facility with which the verification of
astrological predictions has been imposed on the world, was owing solely
to their not having in their origin met with the contradiction which that
of Peter Mathé did. If the refutation of a fable does not immediately
follow its invention, there is afterwards no remedy.
XXXVI. But leaving it for the present undetermined at whose door the
deception lay, what can we suppose could be the motive of either of these
historians, to quote the Duke de Vendome falsely as his author? It might,
in Peter Mathé, be his friendship for the astrologer, whose fame he
wanted to raise as a foreteller of events: it might proceed also, from a
desire of adorning his history with a curious and pleasing anecdote. On
the part of Peter Petit, might intervene his dislike to astrologers; or
he might also deny the truth of the prediction, because it clashed with
the system of his dissertation upon comets, which is the book in which
he denies it. According to this mode of reasoning, it is easy to assign
other motives of inducement; but it is not quite so easy to hit upon the
true one.