SECTION IV.

During the reigns of Vespasian and Titus, when the Romans were

disembowelling the Jews, a rich Israelite fled with all the gold he had

accumulated by his occupation as a usurer, and conveyed to Ezion-Geber

the whole of his family, which consisted of his wife, then far advanced

in years, a son, and a daughter; he had in his train two eunuchs, one of

whom acted as a cook, and the other as a laborer and vine-dresser; and a

pious Essenian, who knew the Pentateuch completely by heart, acted as

his almoner. All these embarked at the port of Ezion-Geber, traversed

the sea commonly called Red, although it is far from being so, and

entered the Persian Gulf to go in search of the land of Ophir, without

knowing where it was. A dreadful tempest soon after this came on, which

drove the Hebrew family towards the coast of India; and the vessel was

wrecked on one of the Maldive islands now called Padrabranca, but which

was at that time uninhabited.

The old usurer and his wife were drowned; the son and daughter, the two

eunuchs, and the almoner were saved. They took as much of the provisions

out of the wreck as they were able; erected for themselves little cabins

on the island, and lived there with considerable convenience and

comfort. You are aware that the island of Padrabranca is within five

degrees of the line, and that it furnishes the largest cocoanuts and the

best pineapples in the world; it was pleasant to have such a lovely

asylum at a time when the favorite people of God were elsewhere exposed

to persecution and massacre; but the Essenian could not refrain from

tears when he reflected, that perhaps those on that happy island were

the only Jews remaining on the earth, and that the seed of Abraham was

to be annihilated.

"Its restoration depends entirely upon you," said the young Jew; "marry

my sister." "I would willingly," said the almoner, "but it is against

the law. I am an Essenian; I have made a vow never to marry; the law

enjoins the strictest observance of a vow; the Jewish race may come to

an end, if it must be so; but I will certainly not marry your sister in

order to prevent it, beautiful and amiable as I admit she is."

"My two eunuchs," resumed the Jew, "can be of no service in this affair;

I will therefore marry her myself, if you have no objection; and you

shall bestow the usual marriage benediction."

"I had a hundred times rather be disembowelled by the Roman soldiers,"

said the almoner, "than to be instrumental to your committing incest;

were she your sister by the father's side only, the law would allow of

your marriage; but as she is your sister by the same mother, such a

marriage would be abominable."

"I can readily admit," returned the young man, "that it would be a crime

at Jerusalem, where I might see many other young women, one of whom I

might marry; but in the isle of Padrabranca, where I see nothing but

cocoanuts, pineapples, and oysters, I consider the case to be very

allowable."

The Jew accordingly married his sister, and had a daughter by her,

notwithstanding all the protestations of the Essenian; and this was the

only offspring of a marriage which one of them thought very legitimate,

and the other absolutely abominable.

After the expiration of fourteen years, the mother died; and the father

said to the almoner, "Have you at length got rid of your old prejudices?

Will you marry my daughter?" "God preserve me from it," said the

Essenian. "Then," said the father, "I will marry her myself, come what

will of it; for I cannot bear that the seed of Abraham should be totally

annihilated." The Essenian, struck with inexpressible horror, would

dwell no longer with a man who thus violated and defiled the law, and

fled. The new-married man loudly called after him, saying, "Stay here,

my friend. I am observing the law of nature, and doing good to my

country; do not abandon your friends." The other suffered him to call,

and continue to call, in vain; his head was full of the law; and he

stopped not till he had reached, by swimming, another island.

This was the large island of Attola, highly populous and civilized; as

soon as he landed he was made a slave. He complained bitterly of the

inhospitable manner in which he had been received; he was told that such

was the law, and that, ever since the island had been very nearly

surprised and taken by the inhabitants of that of Ada, it had been

wisely enacted that all strangers landing at Attola should be made

slaves. "It is impossible that can ever be a law," said the Essenian,

"for it is not in the Pentateuch." He was told in reply, that it was to

be found in the digest of the country; and he remained a slave:

fortunately he had a kind and wealthy master, who treated him very well,

and to whom he became strongly attached.

Some murderers once came to the house in which he lived, to kill his

master and carry off his treasure. They inquired of the slaves if he was

at home, and had much money there. "We assure you, on our oaths," said

the slaves, "that he is not at home." But the Essenian said: "The law

does not allow lying; I swear to you that he is at home, and that he has

a great deal of money." The master was, in consequence, robbed and

murdered; the slaves accused the Essenian, before the judges, of having

betrayed his master. The Essenian said, that he would tell no lies, and

that nothing in the world should induce him to tell one; and he was

hanged.

This history was related to me, with many similar ones, on the last

voyage I made from India to France. When I arrived, I went to Versailles

on business, and saw in the street a beautiful woman, followed by many

others who were also beautiful. "Who is that beautiful woman?" said I to

the barrister who had accompanied me; for I had a cause then depending

before the Parliament of Paris about some dresses that I had had made in

India, and I was desirous of having my counsel as much with me as

possible. "She is the daughter of the king," said he, "she is amiable

and beneficent; it is a great pity that, in no case or circumstance

whatever, such a woman as that can become queen of France." "What!" I

replied, "if we had the misfortune to lose all her relations and the

princes of the blood--which God forbid--would not she, in that case,

succeed to the throne of her father?" "No," said the counsellor; "the

Salic law expressly forbids it." "And who made this Salic law?" said I

to the counsellor. "I do not at all know," said he; "but it is

pretended, that among an ancient people called the Salii, who were

unable either to read or write, there existed a written law, which

enacted, that in the Salic territory a daughter should not inherit any

freehold." "And I," said I to him, "I abolish that law; you assure me

that this princess is amiable and beneficent; she would, therefore,

should the calamity occur of her being the last existing personage of

royal blood, have an incontestable right to the crown: my mother

inherited from her father; and in the case supposed, I am resolved that

this princess shall inherit from hers."

On the ensuing day, my suit was decided in one of the chambers of

parliament, and I lost everything by a single vote; my counsellor told

me, that in another chamber I should have gained everything by a single

vote. "That is a very curious circumstance," said I: "at that rate each

chamber proceeds by a different law." "That is just the case," said he:

"there are twenty-five commentaries on the common law of Paris: that is

to say, it is proved five and twenty times over, that the common law of

Paris is equivocal; and if there had been five and twenty chambers of

judges, there would be just as many different systems of jurisprudence.

We have a province," continued he, "fifteen leagues distant from Paris,

called Normandy, where the judgment in your cause would have been very

different from what it was here." This statement excited in me a strong

desire to see Normandy; and I accordingly went thither with one of my

brothers. At the first inn, we met with a young man who was almost in a

state of despair. I inquired of him what was his misfortune; he told me

it was having an elder brother. "Where," said I, "can be the great

calamity of having an elder brother? The brother I have is my elder, and

yet we live very happily together." "Alas! sir," said he to me, "the law

of this place gives everything to the elder brother, and of course

leaves nothing for the younger ones." "That," said I, "is enough,

indeed, to disturb and distress you; among us everything is divided

equally; and yet, sometimes, brothers have no great affection for one

another."

These little adventures occasioned me to make some observations, which

of course were very ingenious and profound, upon the subject of laws;

and I easily perceived that it was with them as it is with our garments:

I must wear a doliman at Constantinople, and a coat at Paris.

"If all human laws," said I, "are matters of convention, nothing is

necessary but to make a good bargain." The citizens of Delhi and Agra

say that they have made a very bad one with Tamerlane: those of London

congratulate themselves on having made a very good one with King William

of Orange. A citizen of London once said to me: "Laws are made by

necessity, and observed through force." I asked him if force did not

also occasionally make laws, and if William, the bastard and conqueror,

had not chosen simply to issue his orders without condescending to make

any convention or bargain with the English at all. "True," said he, "it

was so: we were oxen at that time; William brought us under the yoke,

and drove us with a goad; since that period we have been metamorphosed

into men; the horns, however, remain with us still, and we use them as

weapons against every man who attempts making us work for him and not

for ourselves."

With my mind full of all these reflections, I could not help feeling a

sensible gratification in thinking, that there exists a natural law

entirely independent of all human conventions: The fruit of my labor

ought to be my own: I am bound to honor my father and mother: I have no

right over the life of my neighbor, nor has my neighbor over mine, etc.

But when I considered, that from Chedorlaomer to Mentzel, colonel of

hussars, every one kills and plunders his neighbor according to law, and

with his patent in his pocket, I was greatly distressed.

I was told that laws existed even among robbers, and that there were

laws also in war. I asked what were the laws of war. "They are," said

some one, "to hang up a brave officer for maintaining a weak post

without cannon; to hang a prisoner, if the enemy have hanged any of

yours; to ravage with fire and sword those villages which shall not have

delivered up their means of subsistence by an appointed day, agreeably

to the commands of the gracious sovereign of the vicinage." "Good," said

I, "that is the true spirit of laws." After acquiring a good deal of

information, I found that there existed some wise laws, by which a

shepherd is condemned to nine years' imprisonment and labor in the

galleys, for having given his sheep a little foreign salt. My neighbor

was ruined by a suit on account of two oaks belonging to him, which he

had cut down in his wood, because he had omitted a mere form of

technicality with which it was almost impossible that he should have

been acquainted; his wife died, in consequence, in misery; and his son

is languishing out a painful existence. I admit that these laws are

just, although their execution is a little severe; but I must

acknowledge I am no friend to laws which authorize a hundred thousand

neighbors loyally to set about cutting one another's throats. It appears

to me that the greater part of mankind have received from nature a

sufficient portion of what is called common sense for making laws, but

that the whole world has not justice enough to make good laws.

Simple and tranquil cultivators, collected from every part of the world,

would easily agree that every one should be free to sell the superfluity

of his own corn to his neighbor, and that every law contrary to it is

both inhuman and absurd; that the value of money, being the

representative of commodities, ought no more to be tampered with than

the produce of the earth; that the father of a family should be master

in his own house; that religion should collect men together, to unite

them in kindness and friendship, and not to make them fanatics and

persecutors; and that those who labor ought not to be deprived of the

fruits of their labor, to endow superstition and idleness. In the course

of an hour, thirty laws of this description, all of a nature beneficial

to mankind, would be unanimously agreed to.

But let Tamerlane arrive and subjugate India, and you will then see

nothing but arbitrary laws. One will oppress and grind down a whole

province, merely to enrich one of Tamerlane's collectors of revenue;

another will screw up to the crime of high treason, speaking

contemptuously of the mistress of a rajah's chief valet; a third will

extort from the farmer a moiety of his harvest, and dispute with him the

right to the remainder; in short, there will be laws by which a Tartar

sergeant will be authorized to seize your children in the cradle--to

make one, who is robust, a soldier--to convert another, who is weak,

into a eunuch--and thus to leave the father and mother without

assistance and without consolation.

But which would be preferable, being Tamerlane's dog or his subject? It

is evident that the condition of his dog would be by far the better one.

LAWS (SPIRIT OF).

It would be admirable, if from all the books upon laws by Bodin, Hobbes,

Grotius, Puffendorf, Montesquieu, Barbeyrac, and Burlamaqui, some

general law was adopted by the whole of the tribunals of Europe upon

succession, contracts, revenue offences, etc. But neither the citations

of Grotius, nor those of Puffendorf, nor those of the "Spirit of Laws,"

have ever led to a sentence in the Châtelet of Paris or the Old Bailey

of London. We weary ourselves with Grotius, pass some agreeable moments

with Montesquieu; but if process be deemed advisable, we run to our

attorney.

It has been said that the letter kills, but that in the spirit there is

life. It is decidedly the contrary in the book of Montesquieu; the

spirit is diffusive, and the letter teaches nothing.

_False Citations In The "Spirit Of Laws", And False Consequences Drawn

From Them By The Author._

It is observed, that "the English, to favor liberty, have abstracted all

the intermediate powers which formed part of their constitution."

On the contrary, they have preserved the Upper House, and the greater

part of the jurisdictions which stand between the crown and the people.

"The establishment of a vizier in a despotic state is a fundamental

law."

[Illustration: Montesquieu.]

A judicious critic has remarked that this is as much as to say that the

office of the mayors of the palace was a fundamental office. Constantine

was highly despotic, yet had no grand vizier. Louis XIV. was less

despotic, and had no first minister. The popes are sufficiently

despotic, and yet seldom possess them.

"The sale of employments is good in monarchical states, because it makes

it the profession of persons of family to undertake employments, which

they would not fulfil from disinterested motives alone."

Is it Montesquieu who writes these odious lines? What! because the vices

of Francis I. deranged the public finances, must we sell to ignorant

young men the right of deciding upon the honor, fortune, and lives of

the people? What! is it good in a monarchy, that the office of

magistrate should become a family provision? If this infamy was

salutary, some other country would have adopted it as well as France;

but there is not another monarchy on earth which has merited the

opprobrium. This monstrous anomaly sprang from the prodigality of a

ruined and spendthrift monarch, and the vanity of certain citizens whose

fathers possessed money; and the wretched abuse has always been weakly

attacked, because it was felt that reimbursement would be difficult. It

would be a thousand times better, said a great jurisconsult, to sell the

treasure of all the convents, and the plate of all the churches, than to

sell justice. When Francis I. seized the silver grating of St. Martin,

he did harm to no one; St. Martin complained not, and parted very easily

with his screen; but to sell the place of judge, and at the same time

make the judge swear that he has not bought it, is a base sacrilege.

Let us complain that Montesquieu has dishonored his work by such

paradoxes--but at the same time let us pardon him. His uncle purchased

the office of a provincial president, and bequeathed it to him. Human

nature is to be recognized in everything, and there are none of us

without weakness.

"Behold how industriously the Muscovite government seeks to emerge from

despotism."

Is it in abolishing the patriarchate and the active militia of the

strelitzes; in being the absolute master of the troops, of the revenue,

and of the church, of which the functionaries are paid from the public

treasury alone? or is it proved by making laws to render that power as

sacred as it is mighty? It is melancholy, that in so many citations and

so many maxims, the contrary of what is asserted should be almost always

the truth.

"The luxury of those who possess the necessaries of life only, will be

zero; the luxury of those who possess as much again, will be equal to

one; of those who possess double the means of the latter, three; and so

on."

The latter will possess three times the excess beyond the necessaries of

life; but it by no means follows that he will possess three times as

many luxuries; for he may be thrice as avaricious, or may employ the

superfluity in commerce, or in portions to his daughters. These

propositions are not affairs of arithmetic, and such calculations are

miserable quackery.

"The Samnites had a fine custom, which must have produced admirable

results. The young man declared the most worthy chose a wife where he

pleased; he who had the next number of suffrages in his favor followed,

and so on throughout."

The author has mistaken the Sunites, a people of Scythia, for the

Samnites, in the neighborhood of Rome. He quotes a fragment of Nicholas

de Demas, preserved by Stobæus: but is the said Nicholas a sufficient

authority? This fine custom would moreover be very injurious in a

well-governed country; for if the judges should be deceived in the young

man declared the most worthy; if the female selected should not like

him; or if he were objectionable in the eyes of the girl's parents, very

fatal results might follow.

"On reading the admirable work of Tacitus on the manners of the Germans,

it will be seen that it is from them the English drew the idea of their

political government. That admirable system originated in the woods."

The houses of peers and of commons, and the English courts of law and

equity, found in the woods! Who would have supposed it? Without doubt,

the English owe their squadrons and their commerce to the manners of the

Germans; and the sermons of Tillotson to those pious German sorcerers

who sacrificed their prisoners, and judged of their success in war by

the manner in which the blood flowed. We must believe, also, that the

English are indebted for their fine manufactures to the laudable

practice of the Germans, who, as Tacitus observers, preferred robbery to

toil.

"Aristotle ranked among monarchies the governments both of Persia and

Lacedæmon; but who cannot perceive that the one was a despotism, the

other a republic?"

Who, on the contrary, cannot perceive that Lacedæmon had a single king

for four hundred years, and two kings until the extinction of the

Heraclidæ, a period of about a thousand years? We know that no king was

despotic of right, not even in Persia; but every bold and dissembling

prince who amasses money, becomes despotic in a little time, either in

Persia or Lacedæmon; and, therefore, Aristotle distinguishes every state

possessing perpetual and hereditary chiefs, from republics.

"People of warm climates are timid, like old men; those of cold

countries are courageous, like young ones."

We should take great care how general propositions escape us. No one has

ever been able to make a Laplander or an Esquimaux warlike, while the

Arabs in fourscore years conquered a territory which exceeded that of

the whole Roman Empire. This maxim of M. Montesquieu is equally

erroneous with all the rest on the subject of climate.

"Louis XIII. was extremely averse to passing a law which made the

negroes of the French colonies slaves; but when he was given to

understand that it was the most certain way of converting them, he

consented."

Where did the author pick up this anecdote? The first arrangement for

the treatment of the negroes was made in 1673, thirty years after the

death of Louis XIII. This resembles the refusal of Francis I. to listen

to the project of Christopher Columbus, who had discovered the Antilles

before Francis I. was born.

"The Romans never exhibited any jealousy on the score of commerce. It

was as a rival, not as a commercial nation, that they attacked

Carthage."

It was both as a warlike and as a commercial nation, as the learned Huet

proves in his "Commerce of the Ancients," when he shows that the Romans

were addicted to commerce a long time before the first Punic war.

"The sterility of the territory of Athens established a popular

government there, and the fertility of that of Lacedæmon an aristocratic

one."

Whence this chimera? From enslaved Athens we still derive cotton, silk,

rice, corn, oil, and skins; and from the country of Lacedæmon nothing.

Athens was twenty times richer than Lacedæmon. With respect to the

comparative fertility of the soil, it is necessary to visit those

countries to appreciate it; but the form of a government is never

attributed to the greater or less fertility. Venice had very little corn

when her nobles governed. Genoa is assuredly not fertile, and yet is an

aristocracy. Geneva is a more popular state, and has not the means of

existing a fortnight upon its own productions. Sweden, which is equally

poor, has for a long time submitted to the yoke of a monarchy; while

fertile Poland is aristocratic. I cannot conceive how general rules can

be established, which may be falsified upon the slightest appeal to

experience.

"In Europe, empires have never been able to exist." Yet the Roman Empire

existed for five hundred years, and that of the Turks has maintained

itself since the year 1453.

"The duration of the great empires of Asia is principally owing to the

prevalence of vast plains." M. Montesquieu forgets the mountains which

cross Natolia and Syria, Caucasus, Taurus, Ararat, Imaus, and others,

the ramifications of which extend throughout Asia.

* * * * *

After thus convincing ourselves that errors abound in the "Spirit of

Laws"; after everybody is satisfied that this work wants method, and

possesses neither plan nor order, it is proper to inquire into that

which really forms its merit, and which has led to its great reputation.

In the first place, it is written with great wit, while the authors of

all the other books on this subject are tedious. It was on this account

that a lady, who possessed as much wit as Montesquieu, observed, that

his book was "_l'esprit sur les lois_." It can never be more correctly

defined.

A still stronger reason is that the book exhibits grand views, attacks

tyranny, superstition, and grinding taxation--three things which mankind

detest. The author consoles slaves in lamenting their fetters, and the

slaves in return applaud him.

One of the most bitter and absurd of his enemies, who contributed most

by his rage to exalt the name of Montesquieu throughout Europe, was the

journalist of the Convulsionaries. He called him a Spinozist and deist;

that is to say, he accused him at the same time of not believing in God

and of believing in God alone.

He reproaches him with his esteem for Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and

the Stoics; and for not loving Jansenists--the Abbé de St. Cyran and

Father Quesnel. He asserts that he has committed an unpardonable crime

in calling Bayle a great man.

He pretends that the "Spirit of Laws" is one of those monstrous works

with which France has been inundated since the Bull _Unigenitus_, which

has corrupted the consciences of all people.

This tatterdemalion from his garret, deriving at least three hundred per

cent. from his ecclesiastical gazette, declaimed like a fool against

interest upon money at the legal rate. He was seconded by some pedants

of his own sort; and the whole concluded in their resembling the slaves

placed at the foot of the statue of Louis XIV.; they are crushed, and

gnaw their own flesh in revenge.

Montesquieu was almost always in error with the learned, because he was

not learned; but he was always right against the fanatics and promoters

of slavery. Europe owes him eternal gratitude.

LENT.

SECTION I.

Our questions on Lent will merely regard the police. It appeared useful

to have a time in the year in which we should eat fewer oxen, calves,

lambs, and poultry. Young fowls and pigeons are not ready in February

and March, the time in which Lent falls; and it is good to cease the

carnage for some weeks in countries in which pastures are not so fertile

as those of England and Holland.

The magistrates of police have very wisely ordered that meat should be a

little dearer at Paris during this time, and that the profit should be

given to the hospitals. It is an almost insensible tribute paid by

luxury and gluttony to indigence; for it is the rich who are not able to

keep Lent--the poor fast all the year.

There are very few farming men who eat meat once a month. If they ate of

it every day, there would not be enough for the most flourishing

kingdom. Twenty millions of pounds of meat a day would make seven

thousand three hundred millions of pounds a year. This calculation is

alarming.

The small number of the rich, financiers, prelates, principal

magistrates, great lords, and great ladies who condescend to have maigre

served at their tables, fast during six weeks on soles, salmon, turbots,

sturgeons, etc.

One of our most famous financiers had couriers, who for a hundred crowns

brought him fresh sea fish every day to Paris. This expense supported

the couriers, the dealers who sold the horses, the fishermen who

furnished the fish, the makers of nets, constructors of boats, and the

druggists from whom were procured the refined spices which give to a

fish a taste superior to that of meat. Lucullus could not have kept Lent

more voluptuously.

It should further be remarked that fresh sea fish, in coming to Paris,

pays a considerable tax. The secretaries of the rich, their valets de

chambre, ladies' maids, and stewards, partake of the dessert of

Crœsus, and fast as deliciously as he.

It is not the same with the poor; not only if for four sous they partake

of a small portion of tough mutton do they commit a great sin, but they

seek in vain for this miserable aliment. What do they therefore feed

upon? Chestnuts, rye bread, the cheeses which they have pressed from the

milk of their cows, goats or sheep, and some few of the eggs of their

poultry.

There are churches which forbid them the eggs and the milk. What then

remains for them to eat? Nothing. They consent to fast; but they consent

not to die. It is absolutely necessary that they should live, if it be

only to cultivate the lands of the fat rectors and lazy monks.

We therefore ask, if it belongs not to the magistrates of the police of

the kingdom, charged with watching over the health of the inhabitants,

to give them permission to eat the cheeses which their own hands have

formed, and the eggs which their fowls have laid?

It appears that milk, eggs, cheese, and all which can nourish the

farmer, are regulated by the police, and not by a religious rule.

We hear not that Jesus Christ forbade omelets to His apostles; He said

to them: "Eat such things as are set before you."

The Holy Church has ordained Lent, but in quality of the Church it

commands it only to the heart; it can inflict spiritual pains alone; it

cannot as formerly burn a poor man, who, having only some rusty bacon,

put a slice of it on a piece of black bread the day after Shrove

Tuesday.

Sometimes in the provinces the pastors go beyond their duty, and

forgetting the rights of the magistracy, undertake to go among the

innkeepers and cooks, to see if they have not some ounces of meat in

their saucepans, some old fowls on their hooks, or some eggs in a

cupboard; for eggs are forbidden in Lent. They intimidate the poor

people, and proceed to violence towards the unfortunates, who know not

that it belongs alone to the magistracy to interfere. It is an odious

and punishable inquisition.

The magistrates alone can be rightly informed of the more or less

abundant provisions required by the poor people of the provinces. The

clergy have occupations more sublime. Should it not therefore belong to

the magistrates to regulate what the people eat in Lent? Who should pry

into the legal consumption of a country if not the police of that

country?

SECTION II.

Did the first who were advised to fast put themselves under this regimen

by order of the physician, for indigestion? The want of appetite which

we feel in grief--was it the first origin of fast-days prescribed in

melancholy religions?

Did the Jews take the custom of fasting from the Egyptians, all of whose

rites they imitated, including flagellation and the scape-goat? Why

fasted Jesus for forty days in the desert, where He was tempted by the

devil--by the "Chathbull"? St. Matthew remarks that after this Lent He

was hungry; He was therefore not hungry during the fast.

Why, in days of abstinence, does the Roman Church consider it a crime to

eat terrestrial animals, and a good work to be served with soles and

salmon? The rich Papist who shall have five hundred francs' worth of

fish upon his table shall be saved, and the poor wretch dying with

hunger, who shall have eaten four sous' worth of salt pork, shall be

damned.

Why must we ask permission of the bishop to eat eggs? If a king ordered

his people never to eat eggs, would he not be thought the most

ridiculous of tyrants? How strange the aversion of bishops to omelets!

Can we believe that among Papists there have been tribunals imbecile,

dull, and barbarous enough to condemn to death poor citizens, who had no

other crimes than that of having eaten of horseflesh in Lent? The fact

is but too true; I have in my hands a sentence of this kind. What

renders it still more strange is that the judges who passed such

sentences believed themselves superior to the Iroquois.

Foolish and cruel priests, to whom do you order Lent? Is it to the rich?

they take good care to observe it. Is it to the poor? they keep Lent all

the year. The unhappy peasant scarcely ever eats meat, and has not

wherewithal to buy fish. Fools that you are, when will you correct your

absurd laws?

LEPROSY, ETC.

This article relates to two powerful divinities, one ancient and the

other modern, which have reigned in our hemisphere. The reverend father

Dom Calmet, a great antiquarian, that is, a great compiler of what was

said in former times and what is repeated at the present day, has

confounded lues with leprosy. He maintains that it was the lues with

which the worthy Job was afflicted, and he supposes, after a confident

and arrogant commentator of the name of Pineida, that the lues and

leprosy are precisely the same disorder. Calmet is not a physician,

neither is he a reasoner, but he is a citer of authorities; and in his

vocation of commentator, citations are always substituted for reasons.

When Astruc, in his history of lues, quotes authorities that the

disorder came in fact from San Domingo, and that the Spaniards brought

it from America, his citations are somewhat more conclusive.

There are two circumstances which, in my opinion, prove that lues

originated in America; the first is, the multitude of authors, both

medical and surgical, of the sixteenth century, who attest the fact; and

the second is, the silence of all the physicians and all the poets of

antiquity, who never were acquainted with this disease, and never had

even a name for it. I here speak of the silence of physicians and of

poets as equally demonstrative. The former, beginning with Hippocrates,

would not have failed to describe this malady, to state its symptoms, to

apply to it a name, and suggest some remedy. The poets, equally as

malicious and sarcastic as physicians are studious and investigative,

would have detailed in their satires, with minute particularity, all the

symptoms and consequences of this dreadful disorder; you do not find,

however, a single verse in Horace or Catullus, in Martial or Juvenal,

which has the slightest reference to lues, although they expatiate on

all the effects of debauchery with the utmost freedom and delight.

It is very certain that smallpox was not known to the Romans before the

sixth century; that the American lues was not introduced into Europe

until the fifteenth century; and that leprosy is as different from those

two maladies, as palsy from St. Guy's or St. Vitus' dance.

Leprosy was a scabious disease of a dreadful character. The Jews were

more subject to it than any other people living in hot climates, because

they had neither linen, nor domestic baths. These people were so

negligent of cleanliness and the decencies of life that their

legislators were obliged to make a law to compel them even to wash their

hands.

All that we gained in the end by engaging in the crusades, was leprosy;

and of all that we had taken, that was the only thing that remained with

us. It was necessary everywhere to build lazarettos, in which to confine

the unfortunate victims of a disease at once pestilential and incurable.

Leprosy, as well as fanaticism and usury, had been a distinguishing

characteristic of the Jews. These wretched people having no physicians,

the priests took upon themselves the management and regulation of

leprosy, and made it a concern of religion. This has occasioned some

indiscreet and profane critics to remark that the Jews were no better

than a nation of savages under the direction of their jugglers. Their

priests in fact never cured leprosy, but they cut off from society those

who were infected by it, and thus acquired a power of the greatest

importance. Every man laboring under this disease was imprisoned, like a

thief or a robber; and thus a woman who was desirous of getting rid of

her husband had only to secure the sanction of the priest, and the

unfortunate husband was shut up--it was the "_lettre de cachet_" of the

day. The Jews and those by whom they were governed were so ignorant that

they imagined the moth-holes in garments, and the mildew upon walls, to

be the effects of leprosy. They actually conceived their houses and

clothes to have leprosy; thus the people themselves, and their very rags

and hovels, were all brought under the rod of the priesthood.

One proof that, at the time of the first introduction of the lues, there

was no connection between that disorder and leprosy, is that the few

lepers that remained at the conclusion of the fifteenth century were

offended at any kind of comparison between themselves and those who were

affected by lues.

Some of the persons thus affected were in the first instance sent to the

hospital for lepers, but were received by them with indignation. The

lepers presented a petition to be separated from them; as persons

imprisoned for debt or affairs of honor claim a right not to be

confounded with the common herd of criminals.

We have already observed that the Parliament of Paris, on March 6, 1496,

issued an order, by which all persons laboring under lues, unless they

were citizens of Paris, were enjoined to depart within twenty-four

hours, under pain of being hanged. This order was neither Christian,

legal, nor judicious; but it proves that lues was regarded as a new

plague which had nothing in common with leprosy; as lepers were not

hanged for residing in Paris, while those afflicted by lues were so.

Men may bring the leprosy on themselves by their uncleanliness and

filth, just as is done by a species of animals to which the very lowest

of the vulgar may too naturally be compared; but with respect to lues,

it was a present made to America by nature. We have already reproached

this same nature, at once so kind and so malicious, so sagacious and yet

so blind, with defeating her own object by thus poisoning the source of

life; and we still sincerely regret that we have found no solution of

this dreadful difficulty.

We have seen elsewhere that man in general, one with another, or (as it

is expressed) on the average, does not live above two-and-twenty years;

and during these two-and-twenty years he is liable to two-and-twenty

thousand evils, many of which are incurable.

Yet even in this dreadful state men still strut and figure on the stage

of life; they make love at the hazard of destruction; and intrigue,

carry on war, and form projects, just as if they were to live in luxury

and delight for a thousand ages.

LETTERS (MEN OF).

In the barbarous times when the Franks, Germans, Bretons, Lombards, and

Spanish Mozarabians knew neither how to read nor write, we instituted

schools and universities almost entirely composed of ecclesiastics, who,

knowing only their own jargon, taught this jargon to those who would

learn it. Academies were not founded until long after; the latter have

despised the follies of the schools, but they have not always dared to

oppose them, because there are follies which we respect when they are

attached to respectable things.

Men of letters who have rendered the most service to the small number of

thinking beings scattered over the earth are isolated scholars, true

sages shut up in their closets, who have neither publicly disputed in

the universities, nor said things by halves in the academies; and such

have almost all been persecuted. Our miserable race is so created that

those who walk in the beaten path always throw stones at those who would

show them a new one.

Montesquieu says that the Scythians put out the eyes of their slaves

that they might be more attentive to the making of their butter. It is

thus that the Inquisition acts, and almost every one is blinded in the

countries in which this monster reigns. In England people have had two

eyes for more than a hundred years. The French are beginning to open one

eye--but sometimes men in place will not even permit us to be one-eyed.

These miserable statesmen are like Doctor Balouard of the Italian

comedy, who will only be served by the fool Harlequin, and who fears to

have too penetrating a servant.

Compose odes in praise of Lord Superbus Fatus, madrigals for his

mistress; dedicate a book of geography to his porter, and you will be

well received. Enlighten men, and you will be crushed.

Descartes is obliged to quit his country; Gassendi is calumniated;

Arnaud passes his days in exile; all the philosophers are treated as the

prophets were among the Jews.

Who would believe that in the eighteenth century, a philosopher has been

dragged before the secular tribunals, and treated as impious by

reasoning theologians, for having said that men could not practise the

arts if they had no hands? I expect that they will soon condemn to the

galleys the first who shall have the insolence to say that a man could

not think if he had no head; for a learned bachelor will say to him, the

soul is a pure spirit, the head is only matter; God can place the soul

in the heel as well as in the brain; therefore I denounce you as a

blasphemer.

The great misfortune of a man of letters is not perhaps being the object

of the jealousy of his brothers, the victim of cabals, and the contempt

of the powerful of the world--it is being judged by fools. Fools

sometimes go very far, particularly when fanaticism is joined to folly,

and folly to the spirit of vengeance. Further, the great misfortune of a

man of letters is generally to hold to nothing. A citizen buys a little

situation, and is maintained by his fellow-citizens. If any injustice is

done to him, he soon finds defenders. The literary man is without aid;

he resembles the flying fish; if he rises a little, the birds devour

him; if he dives, the fishes eat him up. Every public man pays tribute

to malignity; but he is repaid in deniers and honors.

LIBEL.

Small, offensive books are termed libels. These books are usually small,

because the authors, having few reasons to give, and usually writing not

to inform, but mislead, if they are desirous of being read, must

necessarily be brief. Names are rarely used on these occasions, for

assassins fear being detected in the employment of forbidden weapons.

In the time of the League and the Fronde, political libels abounded.

Every dispute in England produces hundreds; and a library might be

formed of those written against Louis XIV.

We have had theological libels for sixteen hundred years; and what is

worse, these are esteemed holy by the vulgar. Only see how St. Jerome

treats Rufinus and Vigilantius. The latest libels are those of the

Molinists and Jansenists, which amount to thousands. Of all this mass

there remains only "The Provincial Letters."

Men of letters may dispute the number of their libels with the

theologians. Boileau and Fontenelle, who attacked one another with

epigrams, both said that their chambers would not contain the libels

with which they had been assailed. All these disappear like the leaves

in autumn. Some people have maintained that anything offensive written

against a neighbor is a libel.

According to them, the railing attacks which the prophets occasionally

sang to the kings of Israel, were defamatory libels to excite the people

to rise up against them. As the populace, however, read but little

anywhere, it is believed that these half-disclosed satires never did any

great harm. Sedition is produced by speaking to assemblies of the

people, rather than by writing for them. For this reason, one of the

first things done by Queen Elizabeth of England on her accession, was to

order that for six months no one should preach without express

permission.

The "Anti-Cato" of Cæsar was a libel, but Cæsar did more harm to Cato by

the battle of Pharsalia, than by his "Diatribes". The "Philippics" of

Cicero were libels, but the proscriptions of the Triumvirs were far more

terrible libels.

St. Cyril and St. Gregory Nazianzen compiled libels against the emperor

Julian, but they were so generous as not to publish them until after his

death.

Nothing resembles libels more than certain manifestoes of sovereigns.

The secretaries of the sultan Mustapha made a libel of his declaration

of war. God has punished them for it; but the same spirit which animated

Cæsar, Cicero, and the secretaries of Mustapha, reigns in all the

reptiles who spin libels in their garrets. "_Natura est semper sibi

consona._" Who would believe that the souls of Garasse, Nonnotte,

Paulian, Fréron, and he of Langliviet, calling himself La Beaumelle,

were in this respect of the same temper as those of Cæsar, Cicero, St.

Cyril, and of the secretary of the grand seignior? Nothing is, however,

more certain.

LIBERTY.

Either I am much deceived, or Locke has very well defined liberty to be

"power". I am still further deceived, or Collins, a celebrated

magistrate of London, is the only philosopher who has profoundly

developed this idea, while Clarke has only answered him as a theologian.

Of all that has been written in France on liberty, the following little

dialogue has appeared to me the most comprehensive:

A. A battery of cannon is discharged at our ears; have you the liberty

to hear it, or not to hear it, as you please?

B. Undoubtedly I cannot hinder myself from hearing it.

A. Are you willing that these cannon shall take off your head and those

of your wife and daughter who walk with you?

B. What a question! I cannot, at least while I am in my right senses,

wish such a thing; it is impossible.

A. Good; you necessarily hear these cannon, and you necessarily wish not

for the death of yourself and your family by a discharge from them. You

have neither the power of not hearing it, nor the power of wishing to

remain here.

B. That is clear.

A. You have, I perceive, advanced thirty paces to be out of the reach of

the cannon; you have had the power of walking these few steps with me.

B. That is also very clear.

A. And if you had been paralytic, you could not have avoided being

exposed to this battery; you would necessarily have heard, and received

a wound from the cannon; and you would have as necessarily died.

B. Nothing is more true.

A. In what then consists your liberty, if not in the power that your

body has acquired of performing that which from absolute necessity your

will requires?

B. You embarrass me. Liberty then is nothing more than the power of

doing what I wish?

A. Reflect; and see whether liberty can be understood otherwise.

B. In this case, my hunting dog is as free as myself; he has necessarily

the will to run when he sees a hare; and the power of running, if there

is nothing the matter with his legs. I have therefore nothing above my

dog; you reduce me to the state of the beasts.

A. These are poor sophisms, and they are poor sophists who have

instructed you. You are unwilling to be free like your dog. Do you not

eat, sleep, and propagate like him, and nearly in the same attitudes?

Would you smell otherwise than by your nose? Why would you possess

liberty differently from your dog?

B. But I have a soul which reasons, and my dog scarcely reasons at all.

He has nothing beyond simple ideas, while I have a thousand metaphysical

ideas.

A. Well, you are a thousand times more free than he is; you have a

thousand times more power of thinking than he has; but still you are not

free in any other manner than your dog is free.

B. What! am I not free to will what I like?

A. What do you understand by that?

B. I understand what all the world understands. Is it not every day said

that the will is free?

A. An adage is not a reason; explain yourself better.

B. I understand that I am free to will as I please.

A. With your permission, that is nonsense; see you not that it is

ridiculous to say--I will will? Consequently, you necessarily will the

ideas only which are presented to you. Will you be married, yes or no?

B. Suppose I answer that I will neither the one nor the other.

A. In that case you would answer like him who said: Some believe

Cardinal Mazarin dead, others believe him living; I believe neither the

one nor the other.

B. Well, I will marry!

A. Aye, that is an answer. Why will you marry?

B. Because I am in love with a young, beautiful, sweet, well-educated,

rich girl, who sings very well, whose parents are very honest people,

and I flatter myself that I am beloved by her and welcome to the family.

A. There is a reason. You see that you cannot will without a motive. I

declare to you that you are free to marry, that is to say, that you have

the power of signing the contract, keeping the wedding, and sleeping

with your wife.

B. How! I cannot will without a motive? Then what will become of the

other proverb--"_Sit pro ratione voluntas_"--my will is my reason--I

will because I will?

A. It is an absurd one, my dear friend; you would then have an effect

without a cause.

B. What! when I play at odd or even, have I a reason for choosing even

rather than odd?

A. Undoubtedly.

B. And what is the reason, if you please?

A. It is, that the idea of even is presented to your mind rather than

the opposite idea. It would be extraordinary if there were cases in

which we will because there is a motive, and others in which we will

without one. When you would marry, you evidently perceive the

predominant reason for it; you perceive it not when you play at odd or

even, and yet there must be one.

B. Therefore, once more, I am not free.

A. Your will is not free, but your actions are. You are free to act when

you have the power of acting.

B. But all the books that I have read on the liberty of indifference--

A. What do you understand by the liberty of indifference?

B. I understand spitting on the right or the left hand--sleeping on the

right or left side--walking up and down four times or five.

A. That would be a pleasant liberty, truly! God would have made you a

fine present, much to boast of, certainly! What use to you would be a

power which could only be exercised on such futile occasions? But in

truth it is ridiculous to suppose the will of willing to spit on the

right or left. Not only is the will of willing absurd, but it is certain

that several little circumstances determine these acts which you call

indifferent. You are no more free in these acts than in others. Yet you

are free at all times, and in all places, when you can do what you wish

to do.

B. I suspect that you are right. I will think upon it.

LIBERTY OF OPINION.

Towards the year 1707, the time at which the English gained the battle

of Saragossa, protected Portugal, and for some time gave a king to

Spain, Lord Boldmind, a general officer who had been wounded, was at the

waters of Barèges. He there met with Count Medroso, who having fallen

from his horse behind the baggage, at a league and a half from the field

of battle, also came to take the waters. He was a familiar of the

Inquisition, while Lord Boldmind was only familiar in conversation. One

day after their wine, he held this dialogue with Medroso:

BOLDMIND.

--You are then the sergeant of the Dominicans? You exercise a villainous

trade.

MEDROSO.

--It is true; but I would rather be their servant than their victim, and

I have preferred the unhappiness of burning my neighbor to that of being

roasted myself.

BOLDMIND.

--What a horrible alternative! You were a hundred times happier under

the yoke of the Moors, who freely suffered you to abide in all your

superstitions, and conquerors as they were, arrogated not to themselves

the strange right of sending souls to hell.

MEDROSO.

--What would you have? It is not permitted us either to write, speak, or

even to think. If we speak, it is easy to misinterpret our words, and

still more our writings; and as we cannot be condemned in an

_auto-da-fé_ for our secret thoughts, we are menaced with being burned

eternally by the order of God himself, if we think not like the

Jacobins. They have persuaded the government that if we had common sense

the entire state would be in combustion, and the nation become the most

miserable upon earth.

BOLDMIND.

--Do you believe that we English who cover the seas with vessels, and

who go to gain battles for you in the south of Europe, can be so

unhappy? Do you perceive that the Dutch, who have ravished from you

almost all your discoveries in India, and who at present are ranked as

your protectors, are cursed of God for having given entire liberty to

the press, and for making commerce of the thoughts of men? Has the Roman

Empire been less powerful because Tullius Cicero has written with

freedom?

MEDROSO.

--Who is this Tullius Cicero? I have never heard his name pronounced at

St. Hermandad.

BOLDMIND.

--He was a bachelor of the university of Rome, who wrote that which he

thought, like Julius Cæsar, Marcus Aurelius, Titus Lucretius Carus,

Plinius, Seneca, and other sages.

MEDROSO.

--I know none of them; but I am told that the Catholic religion,

Biscayan and Roman, is lost if we begin to think.

BOLDMIND.

--It is not for you to believe it; for you are sure that your religion

is divine, and that the gates of hell cannot prevail against it. If that

is the case, nothing will ever destroy it.

MEDROSO.

--No; but it may be reduced to very little; and it is through having

thought, that Sweden, Denmark, all your island, and the half of Germany

groan under the frightful misfortune of not being subjects of the pope.

It is even said that, if men continue to follow their false lights, they

will soon have merely the simple adoration of God and of virtue. If the

gates of hell ever prevail so far, what will become of the holy office?

BOLDMIND.

--If the first Christians had not the liberty of thought, does it not

follow that there would have been no Christianity?

MEDROSO.

--I understand you not.

BOLDMIND.

--I readily believe it. I would say, that if Tiberius and the first

emperors had fostered Jacobins, they would have hindered the first

Christians from having pens and ink; and had it not been a long time

permitted in the Roman Empire to think freely, it would be impossible

for the Christians to establish their dogmas. If, therefore,

Christianity was only formed by liberty of opinion, by what

contradiction, by what injustice, would you now destroy the liberty on

which alone it is founded?

When some affair of interest is proposed to us, do we not examine it for

a long time before we conclude upon it? What interest in the world is so

great as our eternal happiness or misery? There are a hundred religions

on earth which all condemn us if we believe your dogmas, which _they

_call impious and absurd; why, therefore, not examine these dogmas?

MEDROSO.

--How can I examine them? I am not a Jacobin.

BOLDMIND.

--You are a man, and that is sufficient.

MEDROSO.

--Alas! you are more of a man than I am.

BOLDMIND.

--You have only to teach yourself to think; you are born with a mind,

you are a bird in the cage of the Inquisition, the holy office has

clipped your wings, but they will grow again. He who knows not geometry

can learn it: all men can instruct themselves. Is it not shameful to put

your soul into the hands of those to whom you would not intrust your

money? Dare to think for yourself.

MEDROSO.

--It is said that if the world thought for itself, it would produce

strange confusion.

BOLDMIND.

--Quite the contrary. When we assist at a spectacle, every one freely

tells his opinion of it, and the public peace is not thereby disturbed;

but if some insolent protector of a poet would force all people of taste

to proclaim that to be good which appears to them bad, blows would

follow, and the two parties would throw apples of discord at one

another's heads, as once happened at London. Tyrants over mind have

caused a part of the misfortunes of the world. We are happy in England

only because every one freely enjoys the right of speaking his opinion.

MEDROSO.

--We are all very tranquil at Lisbon, where no person dares speak his.

BOLDMIND.

--You are tranquil, but you are not happy: it is the tranquillity of

galley-slaves, who row in cadence and in silence.

MEDROSO.

--You believe, then, that my soul is at the galleys?

BOLDMIND.

--Yes, and I would deliver it.

MEDROSO.

--But if I find myself well at the galleys?

BOLDMIND.

--Why, then, you deserve to be there.

LIBERTY OF THE PRESS.

What harm can the prediction of Jean Jacques do to Russia? Any? We allow

him to explain it in a mystical, typical, allegorical sense, according

to custom. The nations which will destroy the Russians will possess the

belles-lettres, mathematics, wit, and politeness, which degrade man and

pervert nature.

From five to six thousand pamphlets have been printed in Holland against

Louis XIV., none of which contributed to make him lose the battles of

Blenheim, Turin, and Ramillies.

In general, we have as natural a right to make use of our pens as our

language, at our peril, risk, and fortune. I know many books which

fatigue, but I know of none which have done real evil. Theologians, or

pretended politicians, cry: "Religion is destroyed, the government is

lost, if you print certain truths or certain paradoxes. Never attempt to

think, till you have demanded permission from a monk or an officer. It

is against good order for a man to think for himself. Homer, Plato,

Cicero, Virgil, Pliny, Horace, never published anything but with the

approbation of the doctors of the Sorbonne and of the holy Inquisition."

"See into what horrible decay the liberty of the press brought England

and Holland. It is true that they possess the commerce of the whole

world, and that England is victorious on sea and land; but it is merely

a false greatness, a false opulence: they hasten with long strides to

their ruin. An enlightened people cannot exist."

None can reason more justly, my friends; but let us see, if you please,

what state has been lost by a book. The most dangerous, the most

pernicious of all, is that of Spinoza. Not only in the character of a

Jew he attacks the New Testament, but in the character of a scholar he

ruins the Old; his system of atheism is a thousand times better composed

and reasoned than those of Straton and of Epicurus. We have need of the

most profound sagacity to answer to the arguments by which he endeavors

to prove that one substance cannot form another.

Like yourself, I detest this book, which I perhaps understand better

than you, and to which you have very badly replied; but have you

discovered that this book has changed the face of the world? Has any

preacher lost a florin of his income by the publication of the works of

Spinoza? Is there a bishop whose rents have diminished? On the contrary,

their revenues have doubled since his time: all the ill is reduced to a

small number of peaceable readers, who have examined the arguments of

Spinoza in their closets, and have written for or against them works but

little known.

For yourselves, it is of little consequence to have caused to be printed

"_ad usum Delphini,_" the atheism of Lucretius--as you have already been

reproached with doing--no trouble, no scandal, has ensued from it: so

leave Spinoza to live in peace in Holland. Lucretius was left in repose

at Rome.

But if there appears among you any new book, the ideas of which shock

your own--supposing you have any--or of which the author may be of a

party contrary to yours--or what is worse, of which the author may not

be of any party at all--then you cry out Fire! and let all be noise,

scandal, and uproar in your small corner of the earth. There is an

abominable man who has printed that if we had no hands we could not make

shoes nor stockings. Devotees cry out, furred doctors assemble, alarms

multiply from college to college, from house to house, and why? For five

or six pages, about which there no longer will be a question at the end

of three months. Does a book displease you? refute it. Does it tire you?

read it not.

Oh! say you to me, the books of Luther and Calvin have destroyed the

Roman Catholic religion in one-half of Europe? Why say not also, that

the books of the patriarch Photius have destroyed this Roman religion in

Asia, Africa, Greece, and Russia?

You deceive yourself very grossly, when you think that you have been

ruined by books. The empire of Russia is two thousand leagues in extent,

and there are not six men who are aware of the points disputed by the

Greek and Latin Church. If the monk Luther, John Calvin, and the vicar

Zuinglius had been content with writing, Rome would yet subjugate all

the states that it has lost; but these people and their adherents ran

from town to town, from house to house, exciting the women, and were

maintained by princes. Fury, which tormented Amata, and which, according

to Virgil, whipped her like a top, was not more turbulent. Know, that

one enthusiastic, factious, ignorant, supple, vehement Capuchin, the

emissary of some ambitious monks, preaching, confessing, communicating,

and caballing, will much sooner overthrow a province than a hundred

authors can enlighten it. It was not the Koran which caused Mahomet to

succeed: it was Mahomet who caused the success of the Koran.

No! Rome has not been vanquished by books; it has been so by having

caused Europe to revolt at its rapacity; by the public sale of

indulgences; for having insulted men, and wishing to govern them like

domestic animals; for having abused its power to such an extent that it

is astonishing a single village remains to it. Henry VIII., Elizabeth,

the duke of Saxe, the landgrave of Hesse, the princes of Orange, the

Condés and Colignys, have done all, and books nothing. Trumpets have

never gained battles, nor caused any walls to fall except those of

Jericho.

You fear books, as certain small cantons fear violins. Let us read, and

let us dance--these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.

LIFE.

The following passage is found in the "_Système de la Nature,_" London

edition, page 84: "We ought to define _life_, before we reason

concerning _soul_; but I hold it to be impossible to do so."

On the contrary, I think a definition of life quite possible. Life is

organization with the faculty of sensation. Thus all animals are said to

live. Life is attributed to plants, only by a species of metaphor or

catachresis. They are organized and vegetate; but being incapable of

sensation, do not properly possess life.

We may, however, live without actual sensation; for we feel nothing in a

complete apoplexy, in a lethargy, or in a sound sleep without dreams;

but yet possess the capacity of sensation. Many persons, it is too well

known, have been buried alive, like Roman vestals, and it is what

happens after every battle, especially in cold countries. A soldier lies

without motion, and breathless, who, if he were duly assisted, might

recover; but to settle the matter speedily, they bury him.

What is this capacity of sensation? Formerly, life and soul meant the

same thing, and the one was no better understood than the other; at

bottom, is it more understood at present?

In the sacred books of the Jews, soul is always used for life.

"_Dixit etiam Deus, producant aquæ reptile animæ viventis._" (And God

said, let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature which

hath a living soul.)

"_Creavit Deus cete grandia, et omnem animam viventem, atque motabilem

quam produxerant aquæ._ (And God created great dragons (_tannitiim_),

and every living soul that moveth, which the waters brought forth.) It

is difficult to explain the creation of these watery dragons, but such

is the text, and it is for us to submit to it.

"_Producat terra animam viventem in genere suo, jumenta et reptilia._"

(Let the earth produce the living soul after its kind, cattle and

creeping things.)

"_Et in quibus est anima vivens, ad vescendum._" (And to everything

wherein there is a living soul [every green herb], for meat.)

"_Et inspiravit in faciem ejus spiraculum vitæ, et factus est homo in

animam viventem._" (And breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,

and man became a living soul.)

"_Sanguinem enim animarum vestrarum requiram de manu cunctarum betiarum,

et de manu hominis,_" etc. (I shall require back your souls from the

hands of man and beast.)

Souls here evidently signify lives. The sacred text certainly did not

mean that beasts had swallowed the souls of men, but their blood, which

is their life; and as to the hands given by this text to beasts, it

signifies their claws.

In short, more than two hundred passages may be quoted in which the soul

is used for the life, both of beasts and man; but not one which explains

either life or soul.

If life be the faculty of sensation, whence this faculty? In reply to

this question, all the learned quote systems, and these systems are

destructive of one another. But why the anxiety to ascertain the source

of sensation? It is as difficult to conceive the power which binds all

things to a common centre as to conceive the cause of animal sensation.

The direction of the needle towards the pole, the paths of comets, and a

thousand other phenomena are equally incomprehensible.

Properties of matter exist, the principle of which will never be known

to us; and that of sensation, without which there cannot be life, is

among the number.

Is it possible to live without experiencing sensation? No. An infant

which dies in a lethargy that has lasted from its birth has existed, but

not lived.

Let us imagine an idiot unable to form complex ideas, but who possesses

sensation; he certainly lives without thinking, forming simple ideas

from his sensations. Thought, therefore, is not necessary to life, since

this idiot has lived without thinking.

Hence, certain thinkers _think _that thought is not of the essence of

man. They maintain that many idiots who think not, are men; and so

decidedly men as to produce other men, without the power of constructing

a single argument.

The doctors who maintain the essentiality of thought, reply that these

idiots have certain ideas from their sensation. Bold reasoners rejoin,

that a well-taught mind possesses more consecutive ideas, and is very

superior to these idiots, whence has sprung a grand dispute upon the

soul, of which we shall speak--possibly at too great a length--in the

article on "Soul."

LOVE.

There are so many kinds of love, that in order to define it, we scarcely

know which to direct our attention to. Some boldly apply the name of

"love" to a caprice of a few days, a connection without attachment,

passion without affection, the affectations of cicisbeism, a cold usage,

a romantic fancy, a taste speedily followed by a distaste. They apply

the name to a thousand chimeras.

Should any philosophers be inclined profoundly to investigate a subject

in itself so little philosophical, they may recur to the banquet of

Plato, in which Socrates, the decent and honorable lover of Alcibiades

and Agathon, converses with them on the metaphysics of love.

Lucretius speaks of it more as a natural philosopher; and Virgil follows

the example of Lucretius. "_Amor omnibus idem._"

It is the embroidery of imagination on the stuff of nature. If you wish

to form an idea of love, look at the sparrows in your garden; behold

your doves; contemplate the bull when introduced to the heifer; look at

that powerful and spirited horse which two of your grooms are conducting

to the mare that quietly awaits him, and is evidently pleased at his

approach; observe the flashing of his eyes, notice the strength and

loudness of his neighings, the boundings, the curvetings, the ears

erect, the mouth opening with convulsive gaspings, the distended

nostrils, the breath of fire, the raised and waving mane, and the

impetuous movement with which he rushes towards the object which nature

has destined for him; do not, however, be jealous of his happiness; but

reflect on the advantages of the human species; they afford ample

compensation in love for all those which nature has conferred on mere

animals--strength, beauty, lightness, and rapidity.

There are some classes, however, even of animals totally unacquainted

with sexual association. Fishes are destitute of this enjoyment. The

female deposits her millions of eggs on the slime of the waters, and the

male that meets them passes over them and communicates the vital

principle, never consorting with, or perhaps even perceiving the female

to whom they belong.

The greater part of those animals which copulate are sensible of the

enjoyment only by a single sense; and when appetite is satisfied, the

whole is over. No animal, besides man, is acquainted with embraces; his

whole frame is susceptible; his lips particularly experience a delight

which never wearies, and which is exclusively the portion of his

species; finally, he can surrender himself at all seasons to the

endearments of love, while mere animals possess only limited periods. If

you reflect on these high pre-eminences, you will readily join in the

earl of Rochester's remark, that love would impel a whole nation of

atheists to worship the divinity.

As men have been endowed with the talent of perfecting whatever nature

has bestowed upon them, they have accordingly perfected the gift of

love. Cleanliness, personal attention, and regard to health render the

frame more sensitive, and consequently increase its capacity of

gratification. All the other amiable and valuable sentiments enter

afterwards into that of love, like the metals which amalgamate with

gold; friendship and esteem readily fly to its support; and talents both

of body and of mind are new and strengthening bonds.

_Nam facit ipsa suis interdum femina factis,_

_Morigerisque modis, et mundo corpore cultu_

_Ut facile insuescat secum vir degere vitam._

--LUCRETIUS, iv, 1275.

Self-love, above all, draws closer all these various ties. Men pride

themselves in the choice they have made; and the numberless illusions

that crowd around constitute the ornament of the work, of which the

foundation is so firmly laid by nature.

Such are the advantages possessed by man above the various tribes of

animals. But, if he enjoys delights of which they are ignorant, howe

many vexations and disgusts, on the other hand, is he exposed to, from

which they are free! The most dreadful of these is occasioned by

nature's having poisoned the pleasures of love and sources of life over

three-quarters of the world by a terrible disease, to which man alone is

subject; nor is it with this pestilence as with various other maladies,

which are the natural consequences of excess. It was not introduced into

the world by debauchery. The Phrynes and Laises, the Floras and

Messalinas, were never attacked by it. It originated in islands where

mankind dwelt together in innocence, and has thence been spread

throughout the Old World.

If nature could in any instance be accused of despising her own work,

thwarting her own plan, and counteracting her own views, it would be in

this detestable scourge which has polluted the earth with horror and

shame. And can this, then, be the best of all possible worlds? What! if

Cæsar and Antony and Octavius never had this disease, was it not

possible to prevent Francis the First from dying of it? No, it is said;

things were so ordered all for the best; I am disposed to believe it;

but it is unfortunate for those to whom Rabelais has dedicated his book.

Erotic philosophers have frequently discussed the question, whether

Héloïse could truly love Abélard after he became a monk and mutilated?

One of these states much wronged the other.

Be comforted, however, Abélard, you were really beloved; imagination

comes in aid of the heart. Men feel a pleasure in remaining at table,

although they can no longer eat. Is it love? is it simply recollection?

is it friendship? It is a something compounded of all these. It is a

confused feeling, resembling the fantastic passions which the dead

retained in the Elysian Fields. The heroes who while living had shone in

the chariot races, guided imaginary chariots after death. Héloïse lived

with you on illusions and supplements. She sometimes caressed you, and

with so much the more pleasure as, after vowing at Paraclet that she

would love you no more, her caresses were become more precious to her in

proportion as they had become more culpable. A woman can never form a

passion for a eunuch, but she may retain her passion for her lover after

his becoming one, if he still remains amiable.

The case is different with respect to a lover grown old in the service;

the external appearance is no longer the same; wrinkles affright,

grizzly eyebrows repel, decaying teeth disgust, infirmities drive away;

all that can be done or expected is to have the virtue of being a

patient and kind nurse, and bearing with the man that was once beloved,

all which amounts to--burying the dead.

LOVE OF GOD.

The disputes that have occurred about the love of God have kindled as

much hatred as any theological quarrel. The Jesuits and Jansenists have

been contending for a hundred years as to which party loved God in the

most suitable and appropriate manner, and which should at the same time

most completely harass and torment their neighbor.

When the author of "Telemachus," who was in high reputation at the court

of Louis XIV., recommended men to love God in a manner which did not

happen to coincide with that of the author of the "Funeral Orations",

the latter, who was a complete master of the weapons of controversy,

declared open war against him, and procured his condemnation in the

ancient city of Romulus, where God was the very object most loved, after

domination, ease, luxury, pleasure, and money.

If Madame Guyon had been acquainted with the story of the good old

woman, who brought a chafingdish to burn paradise, and a pitcher of

water to extinguish hell, that God might be loved for Himself alone, she

would not perhaps have written so much as she did. She must inevitably

have felt that she could herself never say anything better than that;

but she loved God and nonsense so sincerely that she was imprisoned for

four months, on account of her affectionate attachment; treatment

decidedly rigorous and unjust. Why punish as a criminal a woman whose

only offence was composing verse in the style of the Abbé Cotin, and

prose in the taste of the popular favorite Punchinello? It is strange

that the author of "Telemachus" and the frigid loves of Eucharis should

have said in his "Maxims of Saints," after the blessed Francis de Sales:

"I have scarcely any desires; but, were I to be born again, I should not

have any at all. If God came to me, I would also go to Him; if it were

not His will to come to me, I would stay where I was, and not go to

Him."

His whole work turns upon this proposition. Francis de Sales was not

condemned, but Fénelon was. Why should that have been? the reason is,

that Francis de Sales had not a bitter enemy at the court of Turin, and

that Fénelon had one at Versailles.

The most sensible thing that was written upon this mystical controversy

is to be found perhaps in Boileau's satire, On the Love of God, although

that is certainly by no means his best work.

_Qui fait exactement ce que, ma loi commande, A pour_

_moi, dit ce Dieu, l'amour que je demande._

--EP. xii. 99.

Attend exactly to my law's command,

Such, says this God, the worship I demand.

If we must pass from the thorns of theology to those of philosophy,

which are not so long and are less piercing, it seems clear that an

object may be loved by any one without any reference to self, without

any mixture of interested self-love. We cannot compare divine things to

earthly ones, or the love of God to any other love. We have an infinity

of steps to mount above our grovelling human inclinations before we can

reach that sublime love. Since, however, we have nothing to rest upon

except the earth, let us draw our comparisons from that. We view some

masterpiece of art, in painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, or

eloquence; we hear a piece of music that absolutely enchants our ears

and souls; we admire it, we love it, without any return of the slightest

advantage to ourselves from this attachment; it is a pure and refined

feeling; we proceed sometimes so far as to entertain veneration or

friendship for the author; and were he present should cordially embrace

him.

This is almost the only way in which we can explain our profound

admiration and the impulses of our heart towards the eternal architect

of the world. We survey the work with an astonishment made up of respect

and a sense of our own nothingness, and our heart warms and rises as

much as possible towards the divine artificer.

But what is this feeling? A something vague and indeterminate--an

impression that has no connection with our ordinary affections. A soul

more susceptible than another, more withdrawn from worldly business and

cares, may be so affected by the spectacle of nature as to feel the most

ardent as well as pious aspirations towards the eternal Lord who formed

it. Could such an amiable affection of the mind, could so powerful a

charm, so strong an evidence of feeling, incur censure? Was it possible

in reality to condemn the affectionate and grateful disposition of the

archbishop of Cambray? Notwithstanding the expressions of St. Francis de

Sales, above given, he adhered steadily to this assertion, that the

author may be loved merely and simply for the beauty of his works. With

what heresy could he be reproached? The extravagances of style of a lady

of Montargis, and a few unguarded expressions of his own, were not a

little injurious to him.

Where was the harm that he had done? Nothing at present is known about

the matter. This dispute, like numberless others, is completely

annihilated. Were every dogmatist to say to himself: A few years hence

no one will care a straw for my dogmas, there would be far less

dogmatizing in the world than there is! Ah! Louis the Fourteenth! Louis

the Fourteenth! when two men of genius had departed so far from the

natural scope and direction of their talents, as to write the most

obscure and tiresome works ever written in your dominions, how much

better would it have been to have left them to their own wranglings!

_Pour finir tous ces débats-là,_

_Tu n'avais qu'à les laisser faire._

To end debates in such a tone

'Twas but to leave the men alone.

It is observable under all the articles of morality and history, by what

an invisible chain, by what unknown springs, all the ideas that disturb

our minds and all the events that poison our days are bound together and

brought to co-operate in the formation of our destinies. Fénelon dies in

exile in consequence of holding two or three mystical conversations with

a pious but fanciful woman. Cardinal Bouillon, nephew of the great

Turenne, is persecuted in consequence of not himself persecuting at Rome

the archbishop of Cambray, his friend: he is compelled to quit France,

and he also loses his whole fortune.

By a like chain of causes and effects, the son of a solicitor at Vire

detects, in a dozen of obscure phrases of a book printed at Amsterdam,

what is sufficient to fill all the dungeons of France with victims; and

at length, from the depth of those dungeons arises a cry for redress and

vengeance, the echo of which lays prostrate on the earth an able and

tyrannical society which had been established by an ignorant madman.

LOVE (SOCRATIC LOVE).

If the love called Socratic and Platonic is only a becoming sentiment,

it is to be applauded; if an unnatural license, we must blush for

Greece.

It is as certain as the knowledge of antiquity can well be, that

Socratic love was not an infamous passion. It is the word "love" which

has deceived the world. Those called the lovers of a young man were

precisely such as among us are called the minions of our

princes--honorable youths attached to the education of a child of

distinction, partaking of the same studies and the same military

exercises--a warlike and correct custom, which has been perverted into

nocturnal feasts and midnight orgies.

The company of lovers instituted by Laius was an invincible troop of

young warriors, bound by oath each to preserve the life of any other at

the expense of his own. Ancient discipline never exhibited anything more

fine.

Sextus Empiricus and others have boldly affirmed that this vice was

recommended by the laws of Persia. Let them cite the text of such a law;

let them exhibit the code of the Persians; and if such an abomination be

even found there, still I would disbelieve it, and maintain that the

thing was not true, because it is impossible. No; it is not in human

nature to make a law which contradicts and outrages nature itself--a law

which would annihilate mankind, if it were literally observed. Moreover,

I will show you the ancient law of the Persians as given in the

"Sadder." It says, in article or gate 9, that the greatest sin must not

be committed. It is in vain that a modern writer seeks to justify Sextus

Empiricus and pederasty. The laws of Zoroaster, with which he is

unacquainted, incontrovertibly prove that this vice was never

recommended to the Persians. It might as well be said that it is

recommended to the Turks. They boldly practise it, but their laws

condemn it.

How many persons have mistaken shameful practices, which are only

tolerated in a country, for its laws. Sextus Empiricus, who doubted

everything, should have doubted this piece of jurisprudence. If he had

lived in our days, and witnessed the proceedings of two or three young

Jesuits with their pupils, would he have been justified in the assertion

that such practices were permitted by the institutes of Ignatius Loyola?

It will be permitted to me here to allude to the Socratic love of the

reverend father Polycarp, a Carmelite, who was driven away from the

small town of Gex in 1771, in which place he taught religion and Latin

to about a dozen scholars. He was at once their confessor, tutor, and

something more. Few have had more occupations, spiritual and temporal.

All was discovered; and he retired into Switzerland, a country very

distant from Greece.

The monks charged with the education of youth have always exhibited a

little of this tendency, which is a necessary consequence of the

celibacy to which the poor men are condemned.

This vice was so common at Rome that it was impossible to punish a crime

which almost every one committed. Octavius Augustus, that murderer,

debauchee, and coward, who exiled Ovid, thought it right in Virgil to

sing the charms of Alexis. Horace, his other poetical favorite,

constructed small odes on Ligurinus; and this same Horace, who praised

Augustus for reforming manners, speak in his satires in much the same

way of both boys and girls. Yet the ancient law "_Scantinia,_" which

forbade pederasty, always existed, and was put in force by the emperor

Philip, who drove away from Rome the boys who made a profession of it.

If, however, Rome had witty and licentious students, like Petronius, it

had also such preceptors as Quintilian; and attend to the precautions he

lays down in his chapter of "The Preceptor," in order to preserve the

purity of early youth. "_Cavendum non solum crimine turpitudinis, sed

etiam suspicione._" We must not only beware of a shameful crime but even

of the suspicion of it. To conclude, I firmly believe that no civilized

nation ever existed which made formal laws against morals.

_Observations By Another Hand._

We may be permitted to make a few additional reflections on an odious

and disgusting subject, which however, unfortunately, forms a part of

the history of opinions and manners.

This offence may be traced to the remotest periods of civilization.

Greek and Roman history in particular allows us not to doubt it. It was

common before people formed regular societies, and were governed by

written laws.

The latter fact is the reason that the laws have treated it with so much

indulgence. Severe laws cannot be proposed to a free people against a

vice, whatever it may be, which is common and habitual. For a long time

many of the German nations had written laws which admitted of

composition and murder. Solon contented himself with forbidding these

odious practices between the citizens and slaves. The Athenians might

perceive the policy of this interdiction, and submit to it; especially

as it operated against the slaves only, and was enacted to prevent them

from corrupting the young free men. Fathers of families, however lax

their morals, had no motive to oppose it.

The severity of the manners of women in Greece, the use of public baths,

and the passion for games in which men appeared altogether naked,

fostered this turpitude, notwithstanding the progress of society and

morals. Lycurgus, by allowing more liberty to the women, and by certain

other institutions, succeeded in rendering this vice less common in

Sparta than in the other towns of Greece.

When the manners of a people become less rustic, as they improve in

arts, luxury, and riches, if they retain their former vices, they at

least endeavor to veil them. Christian morality, by attaching shame to

connections between unmarried people, by rendering marriage

indissoluble, and proscribing concubinage by ecclesiastical censures,

has rendered adultery common. Every sort of voluptuousness having been

equally made sinful, that species is naturally preferred which is

necessarily the most secret; and thus, by a singular contradiction,

absolute crimes are often made more frequent, more tolerated, and less

shameful in public opinion, than simple weaknesses. When the western

nations began a course of refinement, they sought to conceal adultery

under the veil of what is called gallantry. Then men loudly avowed a

passion in which it was presumed the women did not share. The lovers

dared demand nothing; and it was only after more than ten years of pure

love, of combats and victories at tournaments that a cavalier might hope

to discover a moment of weakness in the object of his adoration. There

remains a sufficient number of records of these times to convince us

that the state of manners fostered this species of hypocrisy. It was

similar among the Greeks, when they had become polished. Connections

between males were not shameful; young people united themselves to each

other by oaths, but it was to live and die for their country. It was

usual for a person of ripe age to attach himself to a young man in a

state of adolescence, ostensibly to form, instruct, and guide him; and

the passion which mingled in these friendships was a sort of love--but

still innocent love. Such was the veil with which public decency

concealed vices which general opinion tolerated.

In short, in the same manner as chivalric gallantry is often made a

theme for eulogy in modern society, as proper to elevate the soul and

inspire courage, was it common among the Greeks to eulogize that love

which attached citizens to each other.

Plato said that the Thebans acted laudably in adopting it, because it

was necessary to polish their manners, supply greater energy to their

souls and to their spirits, which were benumbed by the nature of their

climate. We perceive by this, that a virtuous friendship alone was

treated of by Plato. Thus, when a Christian prince proclaimed a

tournament, at which every one appeared in the colors of his mistress,

it was with the laudable intention of exciting emulation among its

knights, and to soften manners; it was not adultery, but gallantry, that

he would encourage within his dominions. In Athens, according to Plato,

they set bounds to their toleration. In monarchical states, it was

politic to prevent these attachments between men, but in republics they

materially tended to prevent the double establishment of tyranny. In the

sacrifice of a citizen, a tyrant knew not whose vengeance he might arm

against himself, and was liable, without ceasing, to witness

conspiracies grow out of the resolutions which this ambiguous affection

produced among men.

In the meantime, in spite of ideas so remote from our sentiments and

manners, this practice was regarded as very shameful among the Greeks,

every time it was exhibited without the excuse of friendship or

political ties. When Philip of Macedon saw extended on the field of

battle of Chæronea, the soldiers who composed the sacred battalion or

band of friends at Thebes, all killed in the ranks in which they had

combated: "I will never believe," he exclaimed, "that such brave men

have committed or suffered anything shameful." This expression from a

man himself soiled with this infamy furnishes an indisputable proof of

the general opinion of Greece.

At Rome, this opinion was still stronger. Many Greek heroes, regarded as

virtuous men, have been supposed addicted to the vice; but among the

Romans it was never attributed to any of those characters in whom great

virtue was acknowledged. It only seems, that with these two nations no

idea of crime or even dishonor was attached to it unless carried to

excess, which renders even a passion for women disgraceful.

Pederasty is rare among us, and would be unknown, but for the defects of

public education.

Montesquieu pretends that it prevails in certain Mahometan nations, in

consequence of the facility of possessing women. In our opinion, for

"facility" we should read difficulty.

LUXURY.

SECTION I.

In a country where all the inhabitants went bare-footed, could luxury be

imputed to the first man who made a pair of shoes for himself? Or

rather, was he not a man of sense and industry?

Is it not just the same with him who procured the first shirt? With

respect to the man who had it washed and ironed, I consider him as an

absolute genius, abundant in resources, and qualified to govern a state.

Those however who were not used to wear clean shirts, considered him as

a rich, effeminate coxcomb who was likely to corrupt the nation.

"Beware of luxury," said Cato to the Romans; "you have conquered the

province of Phasis, but never eat any pheasants. You have subjugated the

country in which cotton grows; still however continue to sleep on the

bare ground. You have plundered the gold, and silver, and jewels of

innumerable nations, but never become such fools as to use them. After

taking everything, remain destitute of everything. Highway robbers

should be virtuous and free."

Lucullus replied, "You should rather wish, my good friend, that Crassus,

and Pompey, and Cæsar, and myself should spend all that we have taken in

luxury. Great robbers must fight about the division of the spoil; but

Rome will inevitably be enslaved, and it will be enslaved by one or

other of us much more speedily, and much more securely, if we place that

value upon money that you do, than if we spend it in superfluities and

pleasures. Wish that Pompey and Cæsar may so far impoverish themselves

as not to have money enough to pay the armies."

Not long since a Norwegian was upbraiding a Dutchman with luxury. "Where

now," says he, "are the happy times when a merchant, quitting Amsterdam

for the great Indies, left a quarter of smoked beef in his kitchen and

found it untouched on his return? Where are your wooden spoons and iron

forks? Is it not shameful for a sensible Dutchman to sleep in a bed of

damask?"

"Go to Batavia," replied the Amsterdammer; "gain, as I have done, ten

tons of gold; and then see if you have not some inclination to be well

clothed, well fed, and well lodged."

Since this conversation, twenty volumes have been written about luxury,

and these books have neither increased nor diminished it.

SECTION II.

Luxury has been declaimed against for the space of two thousand years,

both in verse and prose; and yet it has been always liked.

What has not been said of the Romans? When, in the earlier periods of

their history, these banditti ravaged and carried off their neighbor's

harvests; when, in order to augment their own wretched village, they

destroyed the poor villages of the Volsci and Samnites, they were, we

are told, men disinterested and virtuous. They could not as yet, be it

remembered, carry away gold, and silver; and jewels, because the towns

which they sacked and plundered had none; nor did their woods and swamps

produce partridges or pheasants; yet people, forsooth, extol their

temperance!

When, by a succession of violences, they had pillaged and robbed every

country from the recesses of the Adriatic to the Euphrates, and had

sense enough to enjoy the fruit of their rapine; when they cultivated

the arts, and tasted all the pleasures of life, and communicated them

also to the nations which they conquered; then, we are told, they ceased

to be wise and good.

All such declamations tend just to prove this--that a robber ought not

to eat the dinner he has taken, nor wear the habit he has stolen, nor

ornament his finger with the ring he has plundered from another. All

this, it is said, should be thrown into the river, in order to live like

good people; but how much better would it be to say, never rob--it is

your duty not to rob? Condemn the brigands when they plunder; but do not

treat them as fools or madmen for enjoying their plunder. After a number

of English sailors have obtained their prize money for the capture of

Pondicherry, or Havana, can they be blamed for purchasing a little

pleasure in London, in return for the labor and pain they have suffered

in the uncongenial climes of Asia or America?

The declaimers we have mentioned would wish men to bury the riches that

might be accumulated by the fortune of war, or by agriculture, commerce,

and industry in general. They cite Lacedæmon; why do they not also cite

the republic of San Marino? What benefit did Sparta do to Greece? Had

she ever a Demosthenes, a Sophocles, an Apelles, or a Phidias? The

luxury of Athens formed great men of every description. Sparta had

certainly some great captains, but even these in a smaller number than

other cities. But allowing that a small republic like Lacedæmon may

maintain its poverty, men uniformly die, whether they are in want of

everything, or enjoying the various means of rendering life agreeable.

The savage of Canada subsists and attains old age, as well as the

English citizen who has fifty thousand guineas a year. But who will ever

compare the country of the Iroquois to England?

Let the republic of Ragusa and the canton of Zug enact sumptuary laws;

they are right in so doing. The poor must not expend beyond their means;

but I have somewhere read, that if partially injurious, luxury benefits

a great nation upon the whole.

_Sachez surtout que le luxe enrichit_

_Un grand état, s'il en perd un petit._

If by luxury you mean excess, we know that excess is universally

pernicious, in abstinence as well as gluttony, in parsimony or

profusion. I know not how it has happened, that in my own village, where

the soil is poor and meagre, the imposts heavy, and the prohibition

against a man's exporting the corn he has himself sown and reaped,

intolerable, there is hardly a single cultivator who is not well

clothed, and who has not an ample supply of warmth and food. Should this

cultivator go to plough in his best clothes and with his hair dressed

and powdered, there would in that case exist the greatest and most

absurd luxury; but were a wealthy citizen of Paris or London to appear

at the play in the dress of this peasant, he would exhibit the grossest

and most ridiculous parsimony.

_Est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines,_

_Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum._

--HORACE, i. sat. i. v. 106.

Some certain mean in all things may be found,

To mark our virtues, and our vices, bound.

--FRANCIS.

On the invention of scissors, which are certainly not of the very

highest antiquity, what was not said of those who pared their nails and

cut off some of their hair that was hanging down over their noses? They

were undoubtedly considered as prodigals and coxcombs, who bought at an

extravagant price an instrument just calculated to spoil the work of the

Creator. What an enormous sin to pare the horn which God Himself made to

grow at our fingers' ends! It was absolutely an insult to the Divine

Being Himself. When shirts and socks were invented, it was far worse. It

is well known with what wrath and indignation the old counsellors, who

had never worn socks, exclaimed against the young magistrates who

encouraged so dreadful and fatal a luxury.

MADNESS.

What is madness? To have erroneous perceptions, and to reason correctly

from them? Let the wisest man, if he would understand madness, attend to

the succession of his ideas while he dreams. If he be troubled with

indigestion during the night, a thousand incoherent ideas torment him;

it seems as if nature punished him for having taken too much food, or

for having injudiciously selected it, by supplying involuntary

conceptions; for we think but little during sleep, except when annoyed

by a bad digestion. Unquiet dreams are in reality a transient madness.