Madness is a malady which necessarily hinders a man from thinking and

acting like other men. Not being able to manage property, the madman is

withheld from it; incapable of ideas suitable to society, he is shut out

from it; if he be dangerous, he is confined altogether; and if he be

furious, they bind him. Sometimes he is cured by baths, by bleeding, and

by regimen.

This man is not, however, deprived of ideas; he frequently possesses

them like other men, and often when he sleeps. We might inquire how the

spiritual and immortal soul, lodged in his brain, receives all its ideas

correctly and distinctly, without the capacity of judgment. It perceives

objects, as the souls of Aristotle, of Plato, of Locke, and of Newton,

perceived them. It hears the same sounds, and possesses the same sense

of feeling--how therefore, receiving impressions like the wisest, does

the soul of the madman connect them extravagantly, and prove unable to

disperse them?

If this simple and eternal substance enjoys the same properties as the

souls which are lodged in the sagest brains, it ought to reason like

them. Why does it not? If my madman sees a thing red, while the wise men

see it blue; if when my sages hear music, my madman hears the braying of

an ass; if when they attend a sermon, he imagines himself to be

listening to a comedy; if when they understand yes, he understands no;

then I conceive clearly that his soul ought to think contrary to theirs.

But my madman having the same perceptions as they have, there is no

apparent reason why his soul, having received all the necessary

materials, cannot make a proper use of them. It is pure, they say, and

subject to no infirmity; behold it provided with all the necessary

assistance; nothing which passes in the body can change its essence; yet

it is shut up in a close carriage, and conveyed to Charenton.

This reflection may lead us to suspect that the faculty of thought,

bestowed by God upon man, is subject to derangement like the other

senses. A madman is an invalid whose brain is diseased, while the gouty

man is one who suffers in his feet and hands. People think by means of

the brain, and walk on their feet, without knowing anything of the

source of either this incomprehensible power of walking, or the equally

incomprehensible power of thinking; besides, the gout may be in the

head, instead of the feet. In short, after a thousand arguments, faith

alone can convince us of the possibility of a simple and immaterial

substance liable to disease.

The learned may say to the madman: "My friend, although deprived of

common sense, thy soul is as pure, as spiritual, and as immortal, as our

own; but our souls are happily lodged, and thine not so. The windows of

its dwelling are closed; it wants air, and is stifled."

The madman, in a lucid interval, will reply to them: "My friends, you

beg the question, as usual. My windows are as wide open as your own,

since I can perceive the same objects and listen to the same sounds. It

necessarily follows that my soul makes a bad use of my senses; or that

my soul is a vitiated sense, a depraved faculty. In a word, either my

soul is itself diseased, or I have no soul."

One of the doctors may reply: "My brother, God has possibly created

foolish souls, as well as wise ones."

The madman will answer: "If I believed what you say, I should be a still

greater madman than I am. Have the kindness, you who know so much, to

tell me why I am mad?"

Supposing the doctors to retain a little sense, they would say: "We know

nothing about the matter."

Neither are they more able to comprehend how a brain possesses regular

ideas, and makes a due use of them. They call themselves sages, and are

as weak as their patient.

If the interval of reason of the madman lasts long enough, he will say

to them: "Miserable mortals, who neither know the cause of my malady,

nor how to cure it! Tremble, lest ye become altogether like me, or even

still worse than I am! You are not of the highest rank, like Charles VI.

of France, Henry VI. of England, and the German emperor Wincenslaus, who

all lost their reason in the same century. You have not nearly so much

wit as Blaise Pascal, James Abadie, or Jonathan Swift, who all became

insane. The last of them founded a hospital for us; shall I go there and

retain places for you?"

N.B. I regret that Hippocrates should have prescribed the blood of an

ass's colt for madness; and I am still more sorry that the "_Manuel des

Dames_" asserts that it may be cured by catching the itch. Pleasant

prescriptions these, and apparently invented by those who were to take

them!

MAGIC.

Magic is a more plausible science than astrology and the doctrine of

genii. As soon as we began to think that there was in man a being quite

distinct from matter, and that the understanding exists after death, we

gave this understanding a fine, subtile, aerial body, resembling the

body in which it was lodged. Two quite natural reasons introduced this

opinion; the first is, that in all languages the soul was called spirit,

breath, wind. This spirit, this breath, this wind, was therefore very

fine and delicate. The second is, that if the soul of a man had not

retained a form similar to that which it possessed during its life, we

should not have been able after death to distinguish the soul of one man

from that of another. This soul, this shade, which existed, separated

from its body, might very well show itself upon occasion, revisit the

place which it had inhabited, its parents and friends, speak to them and

instruct them. In all this there is no incompatibility.

As departed souls might very well teach those whom they came to visit

the secret of conjuring them, they failed not to do so; and the word

"Abraxa", pronounced with some ceremonies, brought up souls with whom he

who pronounced it wished to speak. I suppose an Egyptian saying to a

philosopher: "I descend in a right line from the magicians of Pharaoh,

who changed rods into serpents, and the waters of the Nile into blood;

one of my ancestors married the witch of Endor, who conjured up the soul

of Samuel at the request of Saul; she communicated her secrets to her

husband, who made her the confidant of his own; I possess this

inheritance from my father and mother; my genealogy is well attested; I

command the spirits and elements."

The philosopher, in reply, will have nothing to do but to demand his

protection; for if disposed to deny and dispute, the magician will shut

his mouth by saying: "You cannot deny the facts; my ancestors have been

incontestably great magicians, and you doubt it not; you have no reason

to believe that I am inferior to them, particularly when a man of honor

like myself assures you that he is a sorcerer."

The philosopher, to be sure, might say to him: "Do me the pleasure to

conjure up a shade; allow me to speak to a soul; change this water into

blood, and this rod into a serpent."

The magician will answer: "I work not for philosophers; but I have shown

spirits to very respectable ladies, and to simple people who never

dispute; you should at least believe that it is very possible for me to

have these secrets, since you are forced to confess that my ancestors

possessed them. What was done formerly can be done now; and you ought to

believe in magic without my being obliged to exercise my art before

you."

These reasons are so good that all nations have had sorcerers. The

greatest sorcerers were paid by the state, in order to discover the

future clearly in the heart and liver of an ox. Why, therefore, have

others so long been punished with death? They have done more marvellous

things; they should, therefore, be more honored; above all, their power

should be feared. Nothing is more ridiculous than to condemn a true

magician to be burned; for we should presume that he can extinguish the

fire and twist the necks of his judges. All that we can do is to say to

him: "My friend, we do not burn you as a true sorcerer, but as a false

one; you boast of an admirable art which you possess not; we treat you

as a man who utters false money; the more we love the good, the more

severely we punish those who give us counterfeits; we know very well

that there were formerly venerable conjurors, but we have reason to

believe that you are not one, since you suffer yourself to be burned

like a fool."

It is true, that the magician so pushed might say: My conscience extends

not so far as to extinguish a pile without water, and to kill my judges

with words. I can only call up spirits, read the future, and change

certain substances into others; my power is bounded; but you should not

for that reason burn me at a slow fire. It is as if you caused a

physician to be hanged who could cure fever, and not a paralysis.

The judges might, however, still reasonably observe: Show us then some

secret of your art, or consent to be burned with a good grace.

MALADY--MEDICINE.

I will suppose that a fair princess who never heard speak of anatomy is

ill either from having eaten or danced too much, or having done too much

of what several princesses occasionally do. I suppose the following

controversy takes place:

PHYSICIAN.

Madam, for your health to be good, it is necessary for your cerebrum and

cerebellum to distribute a fine, well-conditioned marrow, in the spine

of your back down to your highness's rump; and that this marrow should

equally animate fifteen pairs of nerves, each right and left. It is

necessary that your heart should contract and dilate itself with a

constantly equal force; and that all the blood which it forces into your

arteries should circulate in all these arteries and veins about six

hundred times a day. This blood, in circulating with a rapidity which

surpasses that of the Rhone, ought to dispose on its passage of that

which continually forms the lymph, urine, bile, etc., of your

highness--of that which furnishes all these secretions, which insensibly

render your skin soft, fresh, and fair, that without them would be

yellow, gray, dry, and shrivelled, like old parchment.

PRINCESS.

Well, sir, the king pays you to attend to all this: fail not to put all

things in their place, and to make my liquids circulate so that I may be

comfortable. I warn you that I will not suffer with impunity.

PHYSICIAN.

Madam, address your orders to the Author of nature. The sole power which

made millions of planets and comets to revolve round millions of suns

has directed the course of your blood.

PRINCESS.

What! are you a physician, and can you prescribe nothing?

PHYSICIAN.

No, madam; we can only take away from, we can add nothing to nature.

Your servants clean your palace, but the architect built it. If your

highness has eaten greedily, I can cleanse your entrails with cassia,

manna, and pods of senna; it is a broom which I introduce to cleanse

your inside. If you have a cancer, I must cut off your breast, but I

cannot give you another. Have you a stone in your bladder? I can deliver

you from it. I can cut off a gangrened foot, leaving you to walk on the

other.

In a word, we physicians perfectly resemble teethdrawers, who extract a

decayed tooth, without the power of substituting a sound one, quacks as

they are.

PRINCESS.

You make me tremble; I believed that physicians cured all maladies.

PHYSICIAN.

We infallibly cure all those which cure themselves. It is generally, and

with very few exceptions, with internal maladies as with external

wounds. Nature alone cures those which are not mortal. Those which are

so will find no resource in it.

PRINCESS.

What! all these secrets for purifying the blood, of which my ladies have

spoken to me; this _Baume de Vie _of the Sieur de Lievre; these packets

of the Sieur Arnauld; all these pills so much praised by _femmes de

chambre_--

PHYSICIAN.

Are so many inventions to get money, and to flatter patients, while

nature alone acts.

PRINCESS.

But there are specifics?

PHYSICIAN.

Yes, madam, like the water of youth in romances.

PRINCESS.

In what, then, consists medicine?

PHYSICIAN.

I have already told you, in cleaning and keeping in order the house

which we cannot rebuild.

PRINCESS.

There are, however, salutary things, and others hurtful?

PHYSICIAN.

You have guessed all the secret. Eat moderately that which you know by

experience will agree with you. Nothing is good for the body but what is

easily digested. What medicine will best assist digestion? Exercise.

What best recruit your strength? Sleep. What will diminish incurable

ills? Patience. What change a bad constitution? Nothing. In all violent

maladies, we have only the recipe of Molire, "_seipnare, purgare;_" and,

if we will, "_clisterium donare._" There is not a fourth. All, I have

told you amounts only to keeping a house in order, to which we cannot

add a peg. All art consists in adaptation.

PRINCESS.

You puff not your merchandise. You are an honest man. When I am queen, I

will make you my first physician.

PHYSICIAN.

Let nature be your first physician. It is she who made all. Of those who

have lived beyond a hundred years, none were of the faculty. The king of

France has already buried forty of his physicians, as many chief

physicians, besides physicians of the establishment, and others.

PRINCESS.

And, truly, I hope to bury you also.

MAN.

To know the natural philosophy of the human race, it is necessary to

read works of anatomy, or rather to go through a course of anatomy.

To be acquainted with the man we call "moral," it is above all necessary

to have lived and reflected. Are not all moral works contained in these

words of Job? "Man that is born of a woman hath but a few days to live,

and is full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down:

he fleeth as a shadow, and continueth not."

We have already seen that the human race has not above two-and-twenty

years to live, reckoning those who die at their nurses' breasts, and

those who for a hundred years drag on the remains of a miserable and

imbecile life.

It is a fine apologue, that ancient fable of the first man who was at

first destined to live twenty years at most, and who reduced it to five

years by estimating one life with another. The man was in despair, and

had near him a caterpillar, a butterfly, a peacock, a horse, a fox, and

an ape.

"Prolong my life," said he to Jupiter; "I am more worthy than these

animals; it is just that I and my family should live long to command all

beasts." "Willingly," said Jupiter; "but I have only a certain number of

days to divide among the whole of the beings to whom I have granted

life. I can only give to thee by taking away from others; for imagine

not, that because I am Jupiter, I am infinite and all-powerful; I have

my nature and my limits. Now I will grant thee some years more, by

taking them from these six animals, of which thou art jealous, on

condition that thou shalt successively assume their manner of living.

Man shall first be a caterpillar, dragging himself along in his earliest

infancy. Until fifteen, he shall have the lightness of a butterfly; in

his youth, the vanity of a peacock. In manhood he must undergo the

labors of a horse. Towards fifty, he shall have the tricks of a fox; and

in his old age, be ugly and ridiculous like an ape. This, in general, is

the destiny of man."

Remark further, that notwithstanding these bounties of Jupiter, the

animal man has still but two or three and twenty years to live, at most.

Taking mankind in general, of this a third must be taken away for sleep,

during which we are in a certain sense dead; thus there remain fifteen,

and from these fifteen we must take at least eight for our first

infancy, which is, as it has been called, the vestibule of life. The

clear product will be seven years, and of these seven years the half at

least is consumed in grief of all kinds. Take three years and a half for

labor, fatigue, and dissatisfaction, and we shall have none remaining.

Well, poor animal, will you still be proud?

Unfortunately, in this fable Jupiter forgot to dress this animal as he

clothed the ass, horse, peacock, and even the caterpillar. Man had only

his bare skin, which, continually exposed to the sun, rain, and hail,

became chapped, tanned, and spotted. The male in our continent was

disfigured by spare hairs on his body, which rendered him frightful

without covering him. His face was hidden by these hairs. His skin

became a rough soil which bore a forest of stalks, the roots of which

tended upwards, and the branches of which grew downwards. It was in this

state and in this image, that this animal ventured to paint God, when in

course of time he learned the art of description.

The female being more weak, became still more disgusting and frightful

in her old age; and, in short, without tailors, and mantua-makers,

one-half of mankind would never have dared to show itself to the other.

Yet, before having clothes, before even knowing how to speak, some ages

must have passed away--a truth which has been proved, but which must be

often repeated.

It is a little extraordinary that we should have harassed an innocent,

estimable man of our time, the good Helvetius, for having said that if

men had not hands, they could not build houses and work tapestry.

Apparently, those who have condemned this proposition, have discovered a

secret for cutting stones and wood, and working at the needle with their

feet.

I liked the author of the work "On Mind". This man was worth more than

all his enemies together; but I never approved either the errors of his

book, or the trivial truths which he so emphatically enforced. I have,

however, boldly taken his part when absurd men have condemned him for

these same truths.

I have no terms to express the excess of my contempt for those who, for

example's sake, would magisterially proscribe this passage: "The Turks

can only be considered deists." How then, pedant! would you have them

regarded as atheists, because they adore only one God!

You condemn this other proposition: "The man of sense knows that men are

what they must be; that all hatred against them is unjust; that a fool

commits fooleries as a wild stock bears bitter fruits."

So, crabbed stocks of the schools, you persecute a man because he hates

you not! Let us, however, leave the schools, and pursue our subject.

Reason, industrious hands, a head capable of generalizing ideas, a

language pliant enough to express them--these are great benefits granted

by the Supreme Being to man, to the exclusion of other animals.

The male in general lives rather a shorter time than the female. He is

also generally larger in proportion. A man of the loftiest stature is

commonly two or three inches higher than the tallest woman.

His strength is almost always superior; he is more active; and having

all his organs stronger, he is more capable of a fixed attention. All

arts have been invented by him, and not by woman. We should remark, that

it is not the fire of imagination, but persevering meditation and

combination of ideas which have invented arts, as mechanics, gunpowder,

printing, dialling, etc.

Man alone knows that he must die, and knows it only by experience. A

child brought up alone, and transported into a desert island, would

dream of death no more than a plant or a cat.

A singular man has written that the human body is a fruit, which is

green until old age, and that the moment of death is that of maturity. A

strange maturity, ashes and putrefaction! The head of this philosopher

was not ripe. How many extravagances has the rage for telling novelties

produced?

The principal occupations of our race are the provision of food,

lodging, and clothing; all the rest are nearly accessory; and it is this

poor accessory which has produced so many ravages and murders.

Different Races Of Men.

We have elsewhere seen how many different races of men this globe

contains, and to what degrees the first negro and the first white who

met were astonished at one another.

It is likely enough that several weakly species of men and animals have

perished. It is thus that we no longer discover any of the murex, of

which the species has probably been devoured by other animals who

several ages after visited the shores inhabited by this little

shellfish.

St. Jerome, in his "History of the Father of the Desert", speaks of a

centaur who had a conversation with St. Anthony the hermit. He

afterwards gives an account of a much longer discourse that the same

Anthony had with a satyr.

St. Augustine, in his thirty-third sermon, addressed "To his Brothers in

the Desert," tell things as extraordinary as Jerome. "I was already

bishop of Hippo, when I went into Ethiopia with some servants of Christ,

there to preach the gospel. In this country we saw many men and women

without heads, who had two great eyes in their breasts. In countries

still more southerly, we saw a people who had but one eye in their

foreheads," etc.

Apparently, Augustine and Jerome then spoke "with economy"; they

augmented the works of creation to raise greater admiration of the works

of God. They sought to astonish men by fables, to render them more

submissive to the yoke of faith.

We can be very good Christians without believing in centaurs, men

without heads, or with only one eye, one leg, etc. But can we doubt that

the interior structure of a negro may be different to that of a white,

since the mucous netted membrane beneath the skin is white in the one,

and black in the other? I have already told you so, but you are deaf.

The Albinos and the Darians--the first originally of Africa, and the

second of the middle of America--are as different from us as from the

negroes. There are yellow, red, and gray races. We have already seen

that all the Americans are without beards or hair on their bodies,

except the head and eyebrows. All are equally men, but only as a fir, an

oak, and a pear tree are equally trees; the pear tree comes not from the

fir, nor the fir from the oak.

But whence comes it, that in the midst of the Pacific Ocean, in an

island named Otaheite, the men are bearded? It is to ask why we are so,

while the Peruvians, Mexicans, and Canadians are not. It is to ask, why

apes have tails, and why nature has refused us an ornament which, at

least among us, is an extreme rarity.

The inclinations and characters of men differ as much as their climates

and governments. It has never been possible to compose a regiment of

Laplanders and Samoyeds, whilst the Siberians, their neighbors, become

intrepid soldiers.

Neither can you make good grenadiers of a poor Darian or an Albino. It

is not because they have partridge eyes, or that their hair and eyebrows

are like the finest and whitest silk; but it is because their bodies,

and consequently their courage, partake of the most extreme weakness.

There is none but a blind man, and even an obstinate blind man, who can

deny the existence of all these different species. It is as great and

remarkable as that of apes.

That All Races Of Men Have Constantly Lived In Society.

All the men whom we have discovered in the most uncultivated and

frightful countries herd together like beavers, ants, bees, and several

other species of animals.

We have never seen countries in which they lived separate; or in which

the male only joined with the female by chance, and abandoned her the

moment after in disgust; or in which the mother estranged herself from

her children, after having brought them up; or in which human beings

lived without family and society. Some poor jesters have abused their

understandings so far as to hazard the astonishing paradox, that man is

originally created to live alone, and that it is society which has

depraved his nature. They might as well say that herrings were created

to swim alone in the sea; and that it is by an excess of corruption,

that they pass in a troop from the Frozen Ocean to our shores; that

formerly cranes flew in the air singly, and that, by a violation of

their natural instinct, they have subsequently chosen to travel in

company.

Every animal has its instinct, and the instinct of man, fortified by

reason, disposes him towards society, as towards eating and drinking. So

far from the want of society having degraded man, it is estrangement

from society which degrades him. Whoever lived absolutely alone, would

soon lose the faculty of thinking and expressing himself; he would be a

burden to himself, and it would only remain to metamorphose him into a

beast. An excess of powerless pride, which rises up against the pride of

others, may induce a melancholy man to fly from his fellows; but it is a

species of depravity, and punishes itself. That pride is its own

punishment, which frets itself into solitude and secretly resents being

despised and forgotten. It is enduring the most horrible slavery, in

order to be free.

We have enlarged the bounds of ordinary folly so far as to say that it

is not natural for a man to be attached to a woman during the nine

months of her pregnancy. The appetite is satisfied, says the author of

these paradoxes; the man has no longer any want of woman, nor the woman

of man; and the latter need not have the least care, nor perhaps the

least idea of the effects of the transient intercourse. They go

different ways, and there is no appearance, until the end of nine

months, that they have ever been known to one another. Why should he

help her after her delivery? Why assist to bring up a child whom he

cannot instinctively know belongs to him alone?

All this is execrable; but happily nothing is more false. If this

barbarous indifference was the true instinct of nature, mankind would

always have acted thus. Instinct is unchangeable, its inconsistencies

are very rare; the father would always abandon the mother, and the

mother would abandon her child. There would have been much fewer men on

earth than voracious animals; for the wild beasts better provided and

better armed, have a more prompt instinct, more sure means of living,

and a more certain nourishment than mankind.

Our nature is very different from the frightful romance which this man,

possessed of the devil, has made of it. Except some barbarous souls

entirely brutish, or perhaps a philosopher more brutal still, the

roughest man, by a prevailing instinct, loves the child which is not yet

born, the womb which bears it; and the mother redoubles her love for him

from whom she has received the germ of a being similar to himself.

The instinct of the colliers of the Black Forest speaks to them as

loudly, and animates them as strongly in favor of their children as the

instinct of pigeons and nightingales induces them to feed their little

ones. Time has therefore been sadly lost in writing these abominable

absurdities.

The great fault of all these paradoxical books lies in always supposing

nature very different from what it is. If the satires on man and woman

written by Boileau were not pleasantries, they would sin in the

essential point of supposing all men fools and all women coquettes.

The same author, an enemy to society, like the fox without a tail who

would have his companions cut off theirs, thus in a magisterial style

expresses himself:

"The first who, having enclosed an estate, took upon himself to say:

'This is mine,' and found people simple enough to believe him, was the

true founder of society. What crimes, wars, murders, miseries, and

horrors, might have been spared to mankind if some one, seizing the

stakes, or filling up the pit, had cried to his companions: 'Take care

how you listen to this impostor; you are lost if you forget that the

fruits are common to all, and that the earth belongs to nobody!'"

Thus, according to this fine philosopher, a thief, a destroyer, would

have been the benefactor of mankind, and we should punish an honest man

who says to his children: "Let us imitate our neighbor; he has enclosed

his field, the beasts will no longer ravage it, his land will become

more fertile; let us work ours as he has labored his; it will aid us,

and we shall improve it. Each family cultivating its own enclosure, we

shall be better fed, more healthy, more peaceable, and less unhappy. We

will endeavor to establish a distributive justice, which will console

our unhappy race; and we shall be raised above the foxes and polecats,

to whom this babbler would compare us."

Would not this discourse be more sensible and honest than that of the

savage fool who would destroy the good man's orchard? What philosophy

therefore is that which says things that common sense disclaims from

China to Canada? Is it not that of a beggar, who would have all the rich

robbed by the poor, in order that fraternal union might be better

established among men?

It is true, that if all the hedges, forests, and plains were covered

with wholesome and delicious fruits, it would be impossible, unjust, and

ridiculous, to guard them.

If there are any islands in which nature produces food and all

necessaries without trouble, let us go and live there, far from the

trash of our laws; but as soon as you have peopled them, we must return

to _meum _and _tuum, _and to laws which are often very bad, but which we

cannot rationally abolish.

_Is Man Born Wicked?_

Is it not demonstrated that man is _not _born perverse and the child of

the devil? If such was his nature, he would commit enormous crimes and

barbarities as soon as he could walk; he would use the first knife he

could find, to wound whoever displeased him. He would necessarily

resemble little wolves and foxes, who bite as soon as they can.

On the contrary, throughout the world, he partakes of the nature of the

lamb, while he is an infant. Why, therefore, and how is it, that he so

often becomes a wolf and fox? Is it not that, being born neither good

nor wicked, education, example, the government into which he is

thrown--in short, occasion of every kind--determines him to virtue or

vice?

Perhaps human nature could not be otherwise. Man could not always have

false thoughts, nor always true affections; be always sweet, or always

cruel.

It is demonstrable that woman is elevated beyond men in the scale of

goodness. We see a hundred brothers enemies to each other, to one

Clytemnestra.

There are professions which necessarily render the soul pitiless--those

of the soldier, the butcher, the officer of justice, and the jailer; and

all trades which are founded on the annoyance of others.

The officer, the soldier, the jailer, for example, are only happy in

making others miserable. It is true, they are necessary against

malefactors, and so far useful to society; but of a thousand men of the

kind, there is not one who acts from the motive of the public good, or

who even reflects that it is a public good.

It is above all a curious thing to hear them speak of their prowess as

they count the number of their victims; their snares to entrap them, the

ills which they have made them suffer, and the money which they have got

by it.

Whoever has been able to descend to the subaltern detail of the bar;

whoever has only heard lawyears reason familiarly among themselves, and

applaud themselves for the miseries of their clients, must have a very

poor opinion of human nature.

There are more frightful possessions still, which are, however,

canvassed for like a canonship. There are some which change an honest

man into a rogue, and which accustom him to lie in spite of himself, to

deceive almost without perceiving it, to put a blind before the eyes of

others, to prostrate himself by the interest and vanity of his

situation, and without remorse to plunge mankind into stupid blindness.

Women, incessantly occupied with the education of their children, and

shut up in their domestic cares, are excluded from all these

professions, which pervert human nature and render it atrocious. They

are everywhere less barbarous than men.

Physics join with morals to prevent them from great crimes; their blood

is milder; they are less addicted to strong liquors, which inspire

ferocity. An evident proof is, that of a thousand victims of justice in

a thousand executed assassins, we scarcely reckon four women. It is also

proved elsewhere, I believe, that in Asia there are not two examples of

women condemned to a public punishment. It appears, therefore, that our

customs and habits have rendered the male species very wicked.

If this truth was general and without exceptions, the species would be

more horrible than spiders, wolves, and polecats are to our eyes. But

happily, professions which harden the heart and fill it with odious

passions, are very rare. Observe, that in a nation of twenty millions,

there are at most two hundred thousand soldiers. This is but one soldier

to two hundred individuals. These two hundred thousand soldiers are held

in the most severe discipline, and there are among them very honest

people, who return to their villages and finish their old age as good

fathers and husbands.

The number of other trades which are dangerous to manners, is but small.

Laborers, artisans, and artists are too much occupied often to deliver

themselves up to crime. The earth will always bear detestable wretches,

and books will always exaggerate the number, which, rather than being

greater, is less than we say.

If mankind had been under the empire of the devil, there would be no

longer any person upon earth. Let us console ourselves: we have seen,

and we shall always see, fine minds from Pekin to la Rochelle; and

whatever licentiates and bachelors may say, the Tituses, Trajans,

Antoninuses, and Peter Bayles were very honest men.

_Of Man In The State Of Pure Nature._

What would man be in the state which we call that of pure nature? An

animal much below the first Iroquois whom we found in the north of

America. He would be very inferior to these Iroquois, since they knew

how to light fires and make arrows. He would require ages to arrive at

these two arts.

Man, abandoned to pure nature, would have, for his language, only a few

inarticulate sounds; the species would be reduced to a very small

number, from the difficulty of getting nourishment and the want of help,

at least in our harsh climates. He would have no more knowledge of God

and the soul, than of mathematics; these ideas would be lost in the care

of procuring food. The race of beavers would be infinitely preferable.

Man would then be only precisely like a robust child; and we have seen

many men who are not much above that state, as it is. The Laplanders,

the Samoyeds, the inhabitants of Kamchatka, the Kaffirs, and Hottentots

are--with respect to man in a state of pure nature--that which the

courts of Cyrus and Semiramis were in comparison with the inhabitants of

the Cévennes. Yet the inhabitants of Kamchatka and the Hottentots of our

days, so superior to men entirely savage, are animals who live six

months of the year in caverns, where they eat the vermin by which they

are eaten.

In general, mankind is not above two or three degrees more civilized

than the Kamchatkans. The multitude of brute beasts called men, compared

with the little number of those who think, is at least in the proportion

of a hundred to one in many nations.

It is pleasant to contemplate on one side, Father Malebranche, who

treats familiarly of "the Word"; and on the other, these millions of

animals similar to him, who have never heard speak of "the Word," and

who have not one metaphysical idea.

Between men of pure instinct and men of genius floats this immense

number occupied solely with subsisting.

This subsistence costs us so much pains, that in the north of America an

image of God often runs five or six leagues to get a dinner; whilst

among us the image of God bedews the ground with the sweat of his brow,

in order to procure bread.

Add to this bread--or the equivalent--a hut, and a poor dress, and you

will have man such as he is in general, from one end of the universe to

the other: and it is only in a multitude of ages that he has been able

to arrive at this high degree of attainment.

Finally, after other ages, things got to the point at which we see them.

Here we represent a tragedy in music; there we kill one another on the

high seas of another hemisphere, with a thousand pieces of cannon. The

opera and a ship of war of the first rank always astonish my

imagination. I doubt whether they can be carried much farther in any of

the globes with which the heavens are studded. More than half the

habitable world, however, is still peopled with two-footed animals, who

live in the horrible state approaching to pure nature, existing and

clothing themselves with difficulty, scarcely enjoying the gift of

speech, scarcely perceiving that they are unfortunate, and living and

dying almost without knowing it.

_Examination Of A Thought Of Pascal On Man._

"I can conceive a man without hands or feet, and I could even conceive

him without a head, if experience taught me not that it is with the head

he thinks. It is therefore thought which makes the being of man, without

which we cannot conceive him."--(Thoughts of Pascal.)

How! conceive a man, without feet, hands, and head? This would be as

different a thing from a man as a gourd.

If all men were without heads, how could yours conceive that there are

animals like yourselves, since they would have nothing of what

principally constitutes your being? A head is something; the five senses

are contained in it, and thought also. An animal, which from the nape of

its neck downwards might resemble a man, or one of those apes which we

call ourang-outang or the man of the woods, would no more be a man than

an ape or a bear whose head and tail were cut off.

It is therefore thought which makes the being of a man. In this case,

thought would be his essence, as extent and solidity are the essence of

matter. Man would think essentially and always, as matter is always

extended and solid. He would think in a profound sleep without dreams,

in a fit, in a lethargy, in the womb of his mother. I well know that I

never thought in any of these states; I confess it often; and I doubt

not that others are like myself.

If thought was as essential to man as extent is to matter, it would

follow that God cannot deprive this animal of understanding, since he

cannot deprive matter of extent--for then it would be no longer matter.

Now, if understanding be essential to man, he is a thinking being by

nature, as God is God by nature.

If desirous to define God, as such poor beings as ourselves can define

Him, I should say, that thought is _His _being, _His _essence; but as to

man--!

We have the faculties of thinking, walking, talking, eating, and

sleeping, but we do not always use these faculties, it is not in our

nature.

Thought, with us, is it not an attribute? and so much an attribute that

it is sometimes weak, sometimes strong, sometimes reasonable, and

sometimes extravagant? It hides itself, shows itself, flies, returns, is

nothing, is reproduced. Essence is quite another thing; it never varies;

it knows nothing of more or less.

What, therefore, would be the animal supposed by Pascal? A being of

reason. He might just as well have supposed a tree to which God might

have given thought, as it is said that the gods granted voices to the

trees of Dodona.

_Operation Of God On Man._

People who have founded systems on the communication of God with man

have said that God acts directly physically on man in certain cases

only, when God grants certain particular gifts; and they have called

this action "physical premotion." Diocles and Erophiles, those two great

enthusiasts, maintain this opinion, and have partisans.

Now we recognize a God quite as well as these people, because we cannot

conceive that any one of the beings which surround us could be produced

of itself. By the fact alone that something exists, the necessary

Eternal Being must be necessarily the cause of all. With these

reasoners, we admit the possibility of God making himself understood to

some favorites; but we go farther, we believe that He makes Himself

understood by all men, in all places, and in all times, since to all he

gives life, motion, digestion, thought, and instinct.

Is there in the vilest of animals, and in the most sublime philosophers,

a being who can will motion, digestion, desire, love, instinct, or

thought? No; but we act, we love, we have instincts; as for example, an

invincible liking to certain objects, an insupportable aversion to

others, a promptitude to execute the movements necessary to our

preservation, as those of sucking the breasts of our nurses, swimming

when we are strong and our bosoms large enough, biting our bread,

drinking, stooping to avoid a blow from a stone, collecting our force to

clear a ditch, etc. We accomplish a thousand such actions without

thinking of them, though they are all profoundly mathematical. In short,

we think and feel without knowing how.

In good earnest, is it more difficult for God to work all within us by

means of which we are ignorant, than to stir us internally sometimes, by

the efficacious grace of Jupiter, of which these gentlemen talk to us

unceasingly?

Where is the man who, when he looks into himself, perceives not that he

is a puppet of Providence? I think--but can I give myself a thought?

Alas! if I thought of myself, I should know what ideas I might entertain

the next moment--a thing which nobody knows.

I acquire a knowledge, but I could not give it to myself. My

intelligence cannot be the cause of it; for the cause must contain the

effect: Now, my first acquired knowledge was not in my understanding;

being the first, it was given to me by him who formed me, and who gives

all, whatever it may be.

I am astonished, when I am told that my first knowledge cannot alone

give me a second; that it must contain it.

The proof that we give ourselves no ideas is that we receive them in our

dreams; and certainly, it is neither our will nor attention which makes

us think in dreams. There are poets who make verses sleeping;

geometricians who measure triangles. All proves to us that there is a

power which acts within us without consulting us.

All our sentiments, are they not involuntary? Hearing, taste, and sight

are nothing by themselves. We feel, in spite of ourselves: we do nothing

of ourselves: we are nothing without a Supreme Power which enacts all

things.

The most superstitious allow these truths, but they apply them only to

people of their own class. They affirm that God acts physically on

certain privileged persons. We are more religious than they; we believe

that the Great Being acts on all living things, as on all matter. Is it

therefore more difficult for Him to stir all men than to stir some of

them? Will God be God for your little sect alone? He is equally so for

me, who do not belong to it.

A new philosopher goes further than you; it seemed to him that God alone

exists. He pretends that we are all in Him; and we say that it is God

who sees and acts in all that has life. "_Jupiter est quodcumque vides;

quodcumque moveris._"

To proceed. Your physical premotion introduces God acting in you. What

need have you then of a soul? Of what good is this little unknown and

incomprehensible being? Do you give a soul to the sun, which enlightens

so many globes? And if this star so great, so astonishing, and so

necessary, has no soul, why should man have one? God who made us, does

He not suffice for us? What, therefore, is become of the axiom? Effect

not that by many, which can be accomplished by one.

This soul, which you have imagined to be a substance, is therefore

really only a faculty, granted by the Great Being, and not by a person.

It is a property given to our organs, and not a substance. Man, his

reason uncorrupted by metaphysics, could never imagine that he was

double; that he was composed of two beings, the one mortal, visible, and

palpable--the other immortal, invisible, and impalpable. Would it not

require ages of controversy to arrive at this expedient of joining

together two substances so dissimilar; tangible and intangible, simple

and compound, invulnerable and suffering, eternal and fleeting?

Men have only supposed a soul by the same error which made them suppose

in us a being called memory, which being they afterwards made a

divinity.

They made this memory the mother of the Muses; they embodied the various

talents of nature in so many goddesses, the daughters of memory. They

also made a god of the secret power by which nature forms the blood of

animals, and called it the god of sanguification. The Roman people

indeed had similar gods for the faculties of eating and drinking, for

the act of marriage, for the act of voiding excrements. They were so

many particular souls, which produced in us all these actions. It was

the metaphysics of the populace. This shameful and ridiculous

superstition was evidently derived from that which imagined in man a

small divine substance, different from man himself.

This substance is still admitted in all the schools; and with

condescension we grant to the Great Being, to the Eternal Maker, to God,

the permission of joining His concurrence to the soul. Thus we suppose,

that for will and deed, both God and our souls are necessary.

But to concur signifies to aid, to participate. God therefore is only

second with us; it is degrading Him; it is putting Him on a level with

us, or making Him play the most inferior part. Take not from Him His

rank and pre-eminence: make not of the Sovereign of Nature the mere

servant of mankind.

Two species of reasoners, well credited in the world--atheists and

theologians--will oppose our doubts.

The atheists will say, that in admitting reason in man and instinct in

brutes, as properties, it is very useless to admit a God into this

system; that God is still more incomprehensible than a soul; that it is

unworthy a sage to believe that which he conceives not. They let fly

against us all the arguments of Straton and Lucretius. We will answer

them by one word only: "You exist; therefore there is a God."

Theologians will give us more trouble. They will first tell us: "We

agree with you that God is the first cause of all; but He is not the

only one." A high priest of Minerva says expressly: "The second agent

operates by virtue of the first; the first induces a second; the second

involves a third; all are acting by virtue of God, and He is the cause

of all actions acting."

We will answer, with all the respect we owe to this high priest: "There

is, and there can only exist, one true cause. All the others, which are

subsequent, are but instruments. I discover a spring--I make use of it

to move a machine; I discovered the spring and made the machine. I am

the sole cause. That is undoubted."

The high priest will reply: "You take liberty away from men." I reply:

"No; liberty consists in the faculty of willing, and in that of doing

what you will, when nothing prevents you. God has made man upon these

conditions, and he must be contented with them."

My priest will persist, and say, that we make God the author of sin.

Then we shall answer him: "I am sorry for it; but God is made the author

of sin in all systems, except in that of the atheists. For if He concurs

with the actions of perverse men, as with those of the just, it is

evident that to concur is to do, since He who concurs is also the

creator of all."

If God alone permits sin, it is He who commits it; since to permit and

to do is the same thing to the absolute master of all. If He foresees

that men will do evil, he should not form men. We have never eluded the

force of these ancient arguments; we have never weakened them. Whoever

has produced all, has certainly produced good and evil. The system of

absolute predestination, the doctrine of concurrence, equally plunge us

into this labyrinth, from which we cannot extricate ourselves.

All that we can say is, that evil is for us, and not for God. Nero

assassinates his preceptor and his mother; another murders his relations

and neighbors; a high priest poisons, strangles, and beheads twenty

Roman lords, on rising from the bed of his daughter. This is of no more

importance to the Being, the Universal Soul of the World, than sheep

eaten by the wolves or by us, or than flies devoured by spiders. There

is no evil for the Great Being; to Him it is only the play of the great

machine which incessantly moves by eternal laws. If the wicked

become--whether during their lives or subsequently--more unhappy than

those whom they have sacrificed to their passions; if they suffer as

they have made others suffer, it is still an inevitable consequence of

the immutable laws by which the Great Being necessarily acts. We know

but a very small part of these laws; we have but a very weak portion of

understanding; we have only resignation in our power. Of all systems, is

not that which makes us acquainted with our insignificance the most

reasonable? Men--as all philosophers of antiquity have said--made God in

their own image; which is the reason why the first Anaxagoras, as

ancient as Orpheus, expresses himself thus in his verses: "If the birds

figured to themselves a God, he would have wings; that of horses would

run with four legs."

The vulgar imagine God to be a king, who holds his seat of justice in

his court. Tender hearts represent him as a father who takes care of his

children. The sage attributes to Him no human affection. He acknowledges

a necessary eternal power which animates all nature, and resigns himself

to it.

_General Reflection On Man._

It requires twenty years to raise man from the state of a plant, in

which he abides in his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state,

which is the lot of his earliest infancy, to that in which the maturity

of reason begins to dawn. He has required thirty ages to become a little

acquainted with his own bodily structure. He would require eternity to

become acquainted with his soul. He requires but an instant to kill

himself.

MARRIAGE.

SECTION I.

I once met with a reasoner who said: "Induce your subjects to marry as

early as possible. Let them be exempt from taxes the first year; and let

their portion be assessed on those who at the same age are in a state of

celibacy.

"The more married men you have, the fewer crimes there will be. Examine

the frightful columns of your criminal calendars; you will there find a

hundred youths executed for one father of a family.

"Marriage renders men more virtuous and more wise. The father of a

family is not willing to blush before his children; he is afraid to make

shame their inheritance.

"Let your soldiers marry, and they will no longer desert. Bound to their

families, they will be bound to their country. An unmarried soldier is

frequently nothing but a vagabond, to whom it matters not whether he

serves the king of Naples or the king of Morocco."

The Roman warriors were married: they fought for their wives and their

children; and they made slaves of the wives and the children of other

nations.

A great Italian politician, who was, besides, learned in the Eastern

tongues, a thing rare among our politicians, said to me in my youth:

"_Caro figlio,_" remember that the Jews never had but one good

institution--that of abhorring virginity. If that little nation of

superstitious jobbers had not regarded marriage as the first of the

human obligations--if there had been among them convents of nuns--they

would have been inevitably lost.

_The Marriage Contract._

Marriage is a contract in the law of nations, of which the Roman

Catholics have made a sacrament.

But the sacrament and the contract are two very different things; with

the one are connected the civil effects, with the other the graces of

the church.

So when the contract is conformable to the law of nations, it must

produce every civil effect. The absence of the sacrament can operate

only in the privation of spiritual graces.

Such has been the jurisprudence of all ages, and of all nations,

excepting the French. Such was the opinion of the most accredited

fathers of the Church. Go through the Theodosian and Justinian codes,

and you will find no law proscribing the marriages of persons of another

creed, not even when contracted between them and Catholics.

It is true, that Constantius--that son of Constantine as cruel as his

father--forbade the Jews, on pain of death, to marry Christian women;

and that Valentinian, Theodosius, and Arcadius made the same

prohibition, under the like penalty, to the Jewish women. But under the

emperor Marcian these laws had ceased to be observed; and Justinian

rejected them from his code. Besides, they were made against the Jews

only; no one ever thought of applying them to the marriage of pagans or

heretics with the followers of the prevailing religion.

Consult St. Augustine, and he will tell you that in his time the

marriages of believers with unbelievers were not considered illicit,

because no gospel text had condemned them: "_Quæ matrimonia cum in

fidelibus, nostris temporibus, jam non putantur esse peccata; quoniam in

Novo Testamento nihil inde preceptum est, et ideo aut licere creditum

est, aut velut dubium derelictum._"

Augustine says, moreover, that these marriages often work the conversion

of the unbelieving party. He cites the example of his own father, who

embraced the Christian religion because his wife, Manica, professed

Christianity. Clotilda, by the conversion of Clovis, and Theolinda, by

that of Agilulf, king of the Lombards, rendered greater service to the

Church than if they had married orthodox princes.

Consult the declaration of Pope Benedict XIV. of Nov. 4, 1741. You will

find in it these words: "_Quod vero spectat ad ea conjugia quæ, absque

forma a Tridentino statuta, contrahuntur a catholicis cum hæreticis,

sive catholicus vir hæriticam feminam ducat, sive catholica fæmina

heretico viro nubat; si hujusmodi matrimonium sit contractum aut in

posterum contracti contingat, Tridentini forma non servata, declarat

Sanctitas sua, alio non concurrente impedimento, validum habendum esse,

sciat conjux catholicus se istius matrimonii vinculo perpetuo

ligatum._"--With respect to such marriages as, transgressing the

enactment of the Council of Trent, are contracted by Catholics with

heretics; whether by a Catholic man with a heretical woman, or by a

Catholic woman with a heretical man; if such matrimony already is, or

hereafter shall be contracted, the rules of the council not being

observed, his holiness declares, that if there be no other impediment,

it shall be held valid, the Catholic man or woman understanding that he

or she is by such matrimony bound until death.

By what astonishing contradiction is it, that the French laws in this

matter are more severe than those of the Church? The first law by which

this severity was established in France was the edict of Louis XIV., of

November, 1680, which deserves to be repeated.

"Louis,... The canons of the councils having forbidden marriages of

Catholics with heretics, as a public scandal and a profanation of the

sacrament, we have deemed it the more necessary to prevent them for the

future, as we have found that the toleration of such marriages exposes

Catholics to the continual temptation of perverting it, etc. For these

causes,... it is our will and pleasure, that in future our subjects of

the Roman Catholic and Apostolic religion may not, under any pretext

whatsoever, contract marriage with those of the pretended reformed

religion, declaring such marriages to be invalid, and the issue of them

illegitimate."

It is singular enough, that the laws of the Church should have been made

the foundation for annulling marriages which the Church never annulled.

In this edict we find the sacrament confounded with the civil contract;

and from this confusion have proceeded the strange laws in France

concerning marriage.

St. Augustine approved marriages of the orthodox with heretics, for he

hoped that the faithful spouse would convert the other; and Louis XIV.

condemns them, lest the heterodox should pervert the believer.

In Franche-Comté there exists a yet more cruel law. This is an edict of

the archduke Albert and his wife Isabella, of Dec. 20, 1599, which

forbids Catholics to marry heretics, on pain of confiscation of body and

goods.

The same edict pronounces the same penalty on such as shall be convicted

of eating mutton on Friday or Saturday. What laws! and what

law-givers!--"_A quels maîtres, grand Dieu, livrez-vous l'univers!_"

SECTION II.

If our laws reprove marriages of Catholics with persons of a different

religion, do they grant the civil effects at least to marriages of

French Protestants with French persons of the same sect?

There are now in the kingdom a million of Protestants; yet the validity

of their marriage is still a question in the tribunals.

Here again is one of those cases in which our jurisprudence is

contradictory to the decisions of the Church, and also to itself.

In the papal declaration, quoted in the foregoing section, Benedict XIV.

decides that marriages of Protestants, contracted according to their

rites, are no less valid than if they had been performed according to

the forms established by the Council of Trent; and that a husband who

turns Catholic cannot break this tie and form a new one with a person of

his new religion.

Barak Levi, by birth a Jew, and a native of Haguenan, had there married

Mendel Cerf, of the same town and the same religion.

This Jew came to Paris in 1752; and on May 13, 1754, he was baptized. He

sent a summons to his wife at Haguenan to come and join him at Paris. In

a second summons he consented that this wife, when she had come to join

him, should continue to live in her own Jewish sect.

To these summonses Mendel Cerf replied that she would not return with

him, and that she required him to send her, according to the Jewish

forms, a bill of divorce, in order that she might marry another Jew.

Levi was not satisfied with this answer; he sent no bill of divorce; but

he caused his wife to appear before the official of Strasburg, who, by a

sentence of Sept. 7, 1754, declared that, in the sight of the Church, he

was at liberty to marry a Catholic woman.

Furnished with this sentence, the Christianized Jew came into the

diocese of Soissons, and there made promise of marriage to a young woman

of Villeneuve. The clergyman refused to publish the banns. Levi

communicated to him the summonses he had sent to his wife, the sentence

of the official of Strasburg, and a certificate from the secretary of

the bishopric of that place, attesting, that in that diocese baptized

Jews had at all times been permitted to contract new marriages with

Catholics, and that this usage had constantly been recognized by the

Supreme Council of Colmar. But these documents appeared to the parson of

Villeneuve to be insufficient. Levi was obliged to summon him before the

official of Soissons.

This official did not think, like him of Strasburg, that the marriage of

Levi with Mendel Cerf was null or dissoluble. By his sentence of Feb. 5,

1756, he declared the Jew's claim to be inadmissible. The latter

appealed from this sentence to the Parliament of Paris, where he was not

only opposed by the public ministry, but, by a decree of Jan. 2, 1758,

the sentence was confirmed, and Levi was again forbidden to contract any

marriage during the life of Mendel Cerf.

Here, then, a marriage contracted between French Jews, according to the

Jewish rites, was declared valid by the first court in the kingdom.

But, some years afterwards, the same question was decided differently in

another parliament, on the subject of a marriage contracted between two

French Protestants, who had been married in the presence of their

parents by a minister of their own communion. The Protestant spouse had,

like the Jew, changed his religion; and after he had concluded a second

marriage with a Catholic, the Parliament of Grenoble confirmed this

second marriage, and declared the first to be null.

If we pass from jurisprudence to legislation, we shall find it as

obscure on this important matter as on so many others.

A decree of the council, of Sept. 15, 1685, says: "Protestants may

marry, provided, however, that it be in the presence of the principal

officer of justice, and that the publication preceding such marriages

shall be made at the royal see nearest the place of abode of each of the

Protestants desirous of marrying, and at the audience only."

This decree was not revoked by the edict which, three weeks after,

suppressed the Edict of Nantes. But after the declaration of May 14,

1724, drawn up by Cardinal Fleury, the judges would no longer preside

over the marriages of Protestants, nor permit their banns to be

published in their audiences.

By Article XV. of this law, the forms prescribed by the canons are to be

observed in marriages, as well of new converts as of all the rest of the

king's subjects.

This general expression, "all the rest of the king's subjects," has been

thought to comprehend the Protestants, as well as the Catholics, and on

this interpretation, such marriages of Protestants as were not

solemnized according to the canonical forms have been annulled.

Nevertheless, it seems that the marriages of Protestants having been

authorized by an express law, they cannot now be admitted but by another

express law carrying with it this penalty. Besides, the term "new

converts", mentioned in the declaration, appears to indicate that the

term that follows relates to the Catholics only. In short, when the

civil law is obscure or ambiguous, ought not the judges to decide

according to the natural and the moral law?

Does it not result from all this that laws often have need of

reformation, and princes of consulting better informed counsellors,

rejecting priestly ministers, and distrusting courtiers in the garb of

confessors?

MARY MAGDALEN.

I must own that I know not where the author of the "Critical History of

Jesus Christ" found that St. Mary Magdalen had a criminal intimacy (_des

complaisances criminelles_) with the "Saviour of the world." He says

(page 130, line 11 of the note) that this is an assertion of the

Albigenses. I have never read this horrible blasphemy either in the

history of the Albigenses, or in their profession of faith. It is one of

the great many things of which I am ignorant. I know that the Albigenses

had the dire misfortune of not being Roman Catholics; but, otherwise, it

seems to me, they had the most profound reverence for the person of

Jesus.

This author of the "Critical History of Jesus Christ" refers us to the

"_Christiade,_" a sort of poem in prose--granting that there are such

things as poems in prose. I have, therefore, been obliged to consult the

passage of the "_Christiade_" in which this accusation is made. It is in

the fourth book or canto, page 335, note 1; the poet of the

"_Christiade_" cites no authority. In an epic poem, indeed, citations

may be spared; but great authorities are requisite in prose, when so

grave an assertion is made--one which makes every Christian's hair stand

erect.

Whether the Albigenses advanced this impiety or not, the only result is

that the author of the "_Christiade_" sports on the brink of

criminality. He somewhat imitates the famous sermon of Menot. He

introduces us to Mary Magdalen, the sister of Martha and Lazarus,

brilliant with all the charms of youth and beauty, burning with every

desire, and immersed in every voluptuousness. According to him, she is a

lady at court, exalted in birth and in riches; her brother Lazarus was

count of Bethany, and herself marchioness of Magdalet. Martha had a

splendid portion, but he does not tell us where her estates lay. "She

had," says the man of the "_Christiade,_" "a hundred servants, and a

crowd of lovers; she might have threatened the liberty of the whole

world. But riches, dignities, ambitions, grandeur, never were so dear to

Magdalen as the seductive error which caused her to be named the sinner.

Such was the sovereign beauty of the capital when the young and divine

hero arrived there from the extremities of Galilee. Her other passions

yielded to the ambition of subduing the hero of whom she had heard."

The author of the "_Christiade_" then imitates Virgil. The marchioness

of Magdalet conjures her portioned sister to furnish her coquettish

designs upon her young hero, as Dido employed her sister Anna to gain

the pious Æneas.

She goes to hear Christ's sermon in the temple, although he never

preached there. "Her heart flies before her to the hero she adores; she

awaits but one favorable look to triumph over him, to subdue this master

of hearts and make him her captive."

She then goes to him at the house of Simon the Leper, a very rich man,

who was giving him a grand supper, although the women were never

admitted at these feastings, especially among the Pharisees. She pours a

large pot of perfumes upon his legs, wipes them with her beautiful fair

hair, and kisses them.

I shall not inquire whether the picture which the author draws of

Magdalen's holy transports is not more worldly than devout; whether the

kisses given are not expressed rather too warmly; nor whether this fine

hair with which she wipes her hero's legs, does not remind one too

strongly of Trimalcion, who, at dinner, wiped his hands with the hair of

a young and beautiful slave. He must himself have felt that his pictures

might be fancied too glowing; for he anticipates criticism by giving

some pieces from a sermon of Massillon's on Magdalen. One passage is as

follows:

"Magdalen had sacrificed her reputation to the world. Her bashfulness

and her birth at first defended her against the emotions of her passion;

and it is most likely, that to the first shaft which assailed her, she

opposed the barrier of her modesty and her pride; but when she had lent

her ear to the serpent, and consulted her own wisdom, her heart was open

to all assaults of passion. Magdalen loved the world, and thenceforward

all was sacrificed to this love; neither the pride that springs from

birth, nor the modesty which is the ornament of her sex, is spared in

this sacrifice; nothing can withhold her; neither the railleries of

worldlings, nor the infidelities of her infatuated lovers, whom she fain

would please, but by whom she cannot make herself esteemed--for virtue

only is estimable; nothing can make her ashamed; and like the prostitute

in the "Apocalypse," she bears on her forehead the name of mystery; that

is, she was veiled, and was no longer known but in the character of the

foolish passion."

I have sought this passage in Massillon's sermons, but it certainly is

not in the edition which I possess. I will venture to say more--it is

not in his style.

The author of the "_Christiade_" should have informed us where he picked

up this rhapsody of Massillon's, as he should have told us where he read

that the Albigenses dared to impute to Jesus Christ an unworthy

intercourse with Mary Magdalen.

As for the marchioness, she is not again mentioned in the work. The

author spares us her voyage to Marseilles with Lazarus, and the rest of

her adventures.

What could induce a man of learning, and sometimes of eloquence, as the

author of the "_Christiade_" appears to be, to compose this pretended

poem? It was, as he tells us in his preface, the example of Milton; but

we well know how deceitful are examples. Milton, who--be it

observed--did not hazard that weakly monstrosity, a poem in

prose--Milton, who in his Paradise Lost, has, amid the multitude of

harsh and obscure lines of which it is full, scattered some very fine

blank verse--could not please any but fanatical Whigs, as the Abbé

Grécourt says:

_En chantant l'univers perdu pour une pomme,_

_Et Dieu pour le damner créant le premier homme._

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . By singing

How God made man on purpose for hell-fire,

And how a stolen apple damned us all.

He might delight the Presbyterians by making Sin cohabit with Death; by

firing off twenty-four pounders in heaven; by making dryness fight with

damp, and heat with cold; by cleaving angels in two, whose halves

immediately joined again; by building a bridge over chaos; by

representing the Messiah taking from a chest in heaven a great pair of

compasses to describe the circuit of the earth, etc. Virgil and Horace

would, perhaps, have thought these ideas rather strange. But if they

succeeded in England by the aid of some very happy lines, the author of

the "_Christiade_" was mistaken in expecting his romance to succeed

without the assistance of fine verses, which are indeed very difficult

to make.

But, says our author, one Jerome Vida, bishop of Alba, once wrote a very

powerful "_Christiade_" in Latin verse, in which he transcribes many

lines from Virgil. Well, my friend, why did you write yours in French

prose? Why did not you, too, imitate Virgil?

But the late M. d'Escorbiac, of Toulouse, also wrote a "_Christiade._"

Alas! why were you so unfortunate as to become the ape of M.

d'Escorbiac?

But Milton, too, wrote his romance of the New Testament, his "Paradise

Regained," in blank verse, frequently resembling the worst prose. Leave

it, then, to Milton to set Satan and Jesus constantly at war. Let it be

his to cause a drove of swine to be driven along by a legion of devils;

that is, by six thousand seven hundred, who take possession of these

swine--there being three devils and seven-twentieths per pig--and drown

them in a lake. It well becomes Milton to make the devil propose to God

that they shall take a good supper together. In Milton, the devil may at

his ease cover the table with ortolans, partridges, soles, sturgeons,

and make Hebe and Ganymede hand wine to Jesus Christ. In Milton, the

devil may take God up a little hill, from the top of which he shows him

the capital, the Molucca Islands, and the Indian city; the birthplace of

the beauteous Angelica, who turned Orlando's brain; after which he may

offer to God all this, provided that God will adore him. But even Milton

labored in vain; people have laughed at him. They have laughed at poor

brother Berruyer, the Jesuit. They have laughed at you. Bear it with

patience!

MARTYRS.

SECTION I.

Martyr, "witness"; martyrdom, testimony. The early Christian community

at first gave the name of "martyrs" to those who announced new truths to

mankind, who gave testimony to Jesus; who confessed Jesus; in the same

manner as they gave the name of "saints" to the presbyters, to the

supervisors of the community, and to their female benefactors; this is

the reason why St. Jerome, in his letters, often calls his initiated

Paul, St. Paul. All the first bishops were called saints.

Subsequently, the name of martyrs was given only to deceased Christians,

or to those who had been tortured for punishment; and the little chapels

that were erected to them received afterwards the name of "martyrion."

It is a great question, why the Roman Empire always tolerated in its

bosom the Jewish sect, even after the two horrible wars of Titus and

Adrian; why it tolerated the worship of Isis at several times; and why

it frequently persecuted Christianity. It is evident that the Jews, who

paid dearly for their synagogues, denounced the Christians as mortal

foes, and excited the people against them. It is moreover evident that

the Jews, occupied with the trade of brokers and usurers, did not preach

against the ancient religion of the empire, and that the Christians, who

were all busy in controversy, preached against the public worship,

sought to destroy it, often burned the temples, and broke the

consecrated statues, as St. Theodosius did at Amasia, and St. Polyeuctus

in Mitylene.

The orthodox Christians, sure that their religion was the only true one,

did not tolerate any other. In consequence, they themselves were hardly

tolerated. Some of them were punished and died for the faith--and these

were the martyrs.

This name is so respectable that it should not be prodigally bestowed;

it is not right to assume the name and arms of a family to which one

does not belong. Very heavy penalties have been established against

those who have the audacity to decorate themselves with the cross of

Malta or of St. Louis, without being chevaliers of those orders.

The learned Dodwell, the dexterous Middleton, the judicious Blondel, the

exact Tillemont, the scrutinizing Launoy, and many others, all zealous

for the glory of the true martyrs, have excluded from their catalogue an

obscure multitude on whom this great title had been lavished. We have

remarked that these learned men were sanctioned by the direct

acknowledgment of Origen, who, in his "Refutation of Celsus," confesses

that there are very few martyrs, and those at a great distance of time,

and that it is easy to reckon them.

Nevertheless, the Benedictine Ruinart--who calls himself Don Ruinart,

although he was no Spaniard--has contradicted all these learned persons!

He has candidly given us many stories of martyrs which have appeared to

the critics very suspicious. Many sensible persons have doubted various

anecdotes relating to the legends recounted by Don Ruinart, from

beginning to end.

_1. Of Saint Symphorosia And Her Seven Children._

Their scruples commence with St. Symphorosia and her seven children who

suffered martyrdom with her; which appears, at first sight, too much

imitated from the seven Maccabees. It is not known whence this legend

comes; and that is at once a great cause of skepticism.

It is therein related that the emperor Adrian himself wished to

interrogate the unknown Symphorosia, to ascertain if she was a

Christian. This would have been more extraordinary than if Louis XIV.

had subjected a Huguenot to an interrogatory. You will further observe

that Adrian, far from being a persecutor of the Christians, was their

greatest protector.

He had then a long conversation with Symphorosia, and putting himself in

a passion, he said to her: "I will sacrifice you to the gods"; as if the

Roman emperors sacrificed women in their devotions. In the sequel, he

caused her to be thrown into the Anio--which was not a usual mode of

immolation. He afterwards had one of her sons cloven in two from the top

of his head to his middle; a second from side to side; a third was

broken on the wheel; a fourth was only stabbed in the stomach; a fifth

right to the heart; a sixth had his throat cut; the seventh died of a

parcel of needles thrust into his breast. The emperor Adrian was fond of

variety. He commanded that they should be buried near the temple of

Hercules--although no one is ever buried in Rome, much less near the

temples, which would have been a horrible profanation. The legend adds

that the chief priest of the temple named the place of their interment

"the Seven Biotanates".

If it was extraordinary that a monument should be erected at Rome to

persons thus treated, it was no less so that a high priest should

concern himself with the inscription; and further, that this Roman

priest should make a Greek epitaph for them. But what is still more

strange is that it is pretended that this word biotanates signifies the

seven tortured. Biotanates is a fabricated word, which one does not meet

with in any author; and this signification can only be given to it by a

play upon words, falsely using the word "thenon." There is scarcely any

fable worse constructed. The writers of legends knew how to lie, but

none of them knew how to lie skilfully.

The learned Lacroze, librarian to Frederick the Great, king of Prussia,

observed: "I know not whether Ruinart is sincere, but I am afraid he is

silly."

_2. Of St. Felicita And Seven More Children._

It is from Surius that this legend is taken. This Surius is rather

notorious for his absurdities. He was a monk of the sixteenth century,

who writes about the martyrs of the second as if he had been present.

He pretends that that wicked man, that tyrant, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Pius, ordered the prefect of Rome to institute a process against St.

Felicita, to have her and her seven children put to death, because there

was a rumor that she was a Christian.

The prefect held his tribunal in the Campus Martius, which, however, was

at that time used only for the reviewing of troops; and the first thing

the prefect did was to cause a blow to be given her in full assembly.

The long discourses of the magistrates and the accused are worthy of the

historian. He finishes by putting the seven brothers to death by

different punishments, like the seven children of St. Symphorosia. This

is only a duplicate affair. But as for St. Felicita, he leaves her

there, and does not say another word about her.

_3. Of Saint Polycarp._

Eusebius relates that St. Polycarp, being informed in a dream that he

should be burned in three days, made it known to his friends. The

legend-maker adds that the lieutenant of police at Smyrna, whose name

was Herodius, had him seized by his archers; that he was abandoned to

the wild beasts in the amphitheatre; that the sky opened, and a heavenly

voice cried to him: "Be of good courage, Polycarp"; that the hour of

letting loose the lions in the amphitheatre having passed, the people

went about collecting wood from all the houses to burn him with; that

the saint addressed himself to the God of the "archangels"--although the

word archangel was not then known--that the flames formed themselves

round him into a triumphal arch without touching him; that his body had

the smell of baked bread; but that, having resisted the fire, he could

not preserve himself against a sabre-cut; that his blood put out the

burning pile, and that there sprung from it a dove which flew straight

to heaven. To which planet is not precisely known.

_4. Of Saint Ptolomais._

We follow the order of Don Ruinart; but we have no wish to call in

question the martyrdom of St. Ptolomais, which is extracted from "St.

Justin's Apology."

We could make some difficulties with regard to the woman who was accused

by her husband of being a Christian, and who baffled him by giving him a

bill of divorce. We might ask why, in this history, there is no further

mention of this woman? We might make it manifest that in the time of

Marcus Aurelius, women were not permitted to demand divorces of their

husbands; that this permission was only granted them under the emperor

Julian; and that this so much repeated story of the Christian woman who

repudiated her husband--while no pagan would have dared to imagine such

a thing--cannot well be other than a fable. But we do not desire to

raise unpleasant disputes. As for the little probability there is in the

compilation of Don Ruinart, we have too much respect for the subject he

treats of to start objections.

We have not made any to the "Letter of the Churches of Vienna and

Lyons," because there is still a great deal of obscurity connected with

it; but we shall be pardoned for defending the memory of the great

Marcus Aurelius, thus outraged in the life of "St. Symphorian of Autun,"

who was probably a relation of St. Symphorosia.

_5. Of St. Symphorian Of Autun._

This legend, the author of which is unknown, begins thus: "The emperor

Marcus Aurelius had just raised a frightful tempest against the Church,

and his fulminating edicts assailed on all sides the religion of Jesus

Christ, at the time when St. Symphorian lived at Autun in all the

splendor that high birth and uncommon virtue can confer. He was of a

Christian family, one of the most considerable of the city," etc.

Marcus Aurelius issued no sanguinary edicts against the Christians. It

is a very criminal calumny. Tillemont himself admits that "he was the

best prince the Romans ever had; that his reign was a golden age; and

that he verified what he often quoted from Plato, that nations would

only be happy when kings were philosophers."

Of all the emperors, this was the one who promulgated the best laws; he

protected the wise, but persecuted no Christians, of whom he had a great

many in his service.

The writer of the legend relates that St. Symphorian having refused to

adore Cybele, the city judge inquired: "Who is this man?" Now it is

impossible that the judge of Autun should not have known the most

considerable person in Autun.

He was declared by the sentence to be guilty of treason, "divine and

human." The Romans never employed this formula; and that alone should

deprive the pretended martyr of Autun of all credit.

In order the better to refute this calumny against the sacred memory of

Marcus Aurelius, let us bring under view the discourse of Meliton,

bishop of Sardis, to this best of emperors, reported verbatim by

Eusebius:

"The continual succession of good fortune which has attended the empire,

without its happiness being disturbed by a single disgrace, since our

religion, which was born with it, has grown in its bosom, is an evident

proof that it contributes eminently to its greatness and glory. Among

all the emperors, Nero and Domitian alone, deceived by certain

impostors, have spread calumnies against us, which, as usual, have found

some partial credence among the people. But your pious ancestors have

corrected the people's ignorance, and by public edicts have repressed

the audacity of those who attempted to treat us ill. Your grandfather

Adrian wrote in our favor to Fundanus, governor of Asia, and to many

other persons. The emperor, your father, during the period when you

divided with him the cares of government, wrote to the inhabitants of

Larissa, of Thessalonica, of Athens, and in short to all the people of

Greece, to repress the seditions and tumults which have been excited

against us."

This declaration by a most pious, learned, and veracious bishop is

sufficient to confound forever all the lies and legends which may be

regarded as the Arabian tales of Christianity.

_6. Of Another Saint Felicita, And Of Saint Perpetua._

If it were an object to dispute the legend of Felicita and Perpetua, it

would not be difficult to show how suspicious it is. These Carthaginian

martyrs are only known by a writing, without date, of the church of

Salzburg. Now, it is a great way from this part of Bavaria to Goletta.

We are not informed under what emperor this Felicita and this Perpetua

received the crown of martyrdom. The astounding sights with which this

history is filled do not discover a very profound historian. A ladder

entirely of gold, bordered with lances and swords; a dragon at the top

of the ladder; a large garden near the dragon; sheep from which an old

man drew milk; a reservoir full of water; a bottle of water whence they

drank without diminishing the liquid; St. Perpetua fighting entirely

naked against a wicked Egyptian; some handsome young men, all naked, who

took her part; herself at last become a man and a vigorous wrestler;

these are, it appears to me, conceits which should not have place in a

respectable book.

There is one other reflection very important to make. It is that the

style of all these stories of martyrdom, which took place at such

different periods, is everywhere alike, everywhere equally puerile and

bombastic. You find the same turns of expression, the same phrases, in

the history of a martyr under Domitian and of another under Galerius.

There are the same epithets, the same exaggerations. By the little we

understand of style, we perceive that the same hand has compiled them

all.

I do not here pretend to make a book against Don Ruinart; and while I

always respect, admire, and invoke the true martyrs with the Holy

Church, I confine myself to making it perceived, by one or two striking

examples, how dangerous it is to mix what is purely ridiculous with what

ought to be venerated.

_7. Of Saint Theodotus Of The City Of Ancyra, And Of The Seven Virgins;

Written By Nisus, An Eye-Witness, And Extracted From Bollandus._

Many critics, as eminent for wisdom as for true piety, have already

given us to understand that the legend of St. Theodotus the Publican is

a profanation and a species of impiety which ought to have been

suppressed. The following is the story of Theodotus. We shall often

employ the exact words of the "Genuine Acts," compiled by Don Ruinart.

"His trade of publican supplied him with the means of exercising his

episcopal functions. Illustrious tavern! consecrated to piety instead of

debauchery.... Sometimes Theodotus was a physician, sometimes he

furnished tit-bits to the faithful. A tavern was seen to be to the

Christians what Noah's ark was to those whom God wished to save from the

deluge."

This publican Theodotus, walking by the river Halis with his companions

towards a town adjacent to the city of Ancyra, "a fresh and soft plot of

turf offered them a delicious couch; a spring which issued a few steps

off, from the foot of the rock, and which by a channel crowned with

flowers came running past them in order to quench their thirst, offered

them clear and pure water. Trees bearing fruit, mixed with wild ones,

furnished them with shade and fruits; and an assemblage of skilful

nightingales, whom the grasshoppers relieved every now and then, formed

a charming concert," etc.

The clergyman of the place, named Fronton, having arrived, and the

publican having drunk with him on the grass, "the fresh green of which

was relieved by the various gradations of color in the flowers, he said

to the clergyman: 'Ah, father! what a pleasure it would be to build a

chapel here.' 'Yes,' said Fronton, 'but it would be necessary to have

some relics to begin with.' 'Well, well,' replied St. Theodotus, 'you

shall have some soon, I give you my word; here is my ring, which I give

you as a pledge; build your chapel quickly.'"

The publican had the gift of prophecy, and knew well what he was saying.

He went away to the city of Ancyra, while the clergyman Fronton set

himself about building. He found there the most horrible persecution,

which lasted very long. Seven Christian virgins, of whom the youngest

was seventy years old, had just been condemned, according to custom, to

lose their virginity, through the agency of all the young men of the

city. The youth of Ancyra, who had probably more urgent affairs, were in

no hurry to execute the sentence. One only could be found obedient to

justice. He applied himself to St. Thecusa, and carried her into a

closet with surprising courage. Thecusa threw herself on her knees, and

said to him, "For God's sake, my son, a little shame! Behold these

lacklustre eyes, this half-dead flesh, these greasy wrinkles, which

seventy years have ploughed in my forehead, this face of the color of

the earth; abandon thoughts so unworthy of a young man like you--Jesus

Christ entreats you by my mouth. He asks it of you as a favor, and if

you grant it Him, you may expect His entire gratitude." The discourse of

the old woman, and her countenance made the executioner recollect

himself. The seven virgins were not deflowered.

The irritated governor sought for another punishment; he caused them to

be initiated forthwith in the mysteries of Diana and Minerva. It is true

that great feasts had been instituted in honor of those divinities, but

the mysteries of Diana and Minerva were not known to antiquity. St. Nil,

an intimate friend of the publican Theodotus, and the author of this

marvellous story, was not quite correct.

According to him, these seven pretty lasses were placed quite naked on

the car which carried the great Diana and the wise Minerva to the banks

of a neighboring lake. The Thucydides St. Nil still appears to be very

ill-informed here. The priestesses were always covered with veils; and

the Roman magistrates never caused the goddesses of chastity and wisdom

to be attended by girls who showed themselves both before and behind to

the people.

St. Nil adds that the car was preceded by two choirs of priestesses of

Bacchus, who carried the thyrses in their hands. St. Nil has here

mistaken the priestesses of Minerva for those of Bacchus. He was not

versed in the liturgy of Ancyra.

Entering the city, the publican saw this sad spectacle--the governor,

the priestesses, the car, Minerva, and the seven maidens. He runs to

throw himself on his knees in a hut, along with a nephew of St. Thecusa.

He beseeches heaven that the seven ladies should be dead rather than

naked. His prayer is heard; he learns that the seven damsels, instead of

being deflowered, have been thrown into the lake with stones round their

necks, by order of the governor. Their virginity is in safe-keeping. At

this news the saint, raising himself from the ground and placing himself

upon his knees, turned his eyes towards heaven; and in the midst of the

various emotions he experienced of love, joy, and gratitude, he said, "I

give Thee thanks, O Lord! that Thou has not rejected the prayer of Thy

servant."

He slept; and during his sleep, St. Thecusa, the youngest of the drowned

women, appeared to him. "How now, son Theodotus!" she said, "you are

sleeping without thinking of us: have you forgotten so soon the care I

took of your youth? Do not, dear Theodotus, suffer our bodies to be

devoured by the fishes. Go to the lake, but beware of a traitor." This

traitor was, in fact, the nephew of St. Thecusa.

I omit here a multitude of miraculous adventures that happened to the

publican, in order to come to the most important. A celestial cavalier,

armed _cap-a-pie, _preceded by a celestial flambeau, descends from the

height of the empyrean, conducts the publican to the lake in the midst

of storms, drives away all the soldiers who guard the shore, and gives

Theodotus time to fish up the seven old women and to bury them.

The nephew of St. Thecusa unfortunately went and told all. Theodotus was

seized, and for three days all sorts of punishments were tried in vain

to kill him. They could only attain their object by cleaving his skull;

an operation which saints are never proof against.

He was still to be buried. His friend the minister Fronton--to whom

Theodotus, in his capacity of publican, had given two leathern bottles

filled with wine--made the guards drunk, and carried off the body.

Theodotus then appeared in body and spirit to the minister: "Well, my

friend," he said to him, "did I not say well, that you should have

relics for your chapel?"

Such is what is narrated by St. Nil, an eye-witness, who could neither

be deceived nor deceive; such is what Don Ruinart has quoted as a

genuine act. Now every man of sense, every intelligent Christian, will

ask himself, whether a better mode could be adopted of dishonoring the

most holy and venerated religion in the world, and of turning it into

ridicule?

I shall not speak of the Eleven Thousand Virgins; I shall not discuss

the fable of the Theban legion, composed--says the author--of six

thousand six hundred men, all Christians coming from the East by Mount

St. Bernard, suffering martyrdom in the year 286, the period of the most

profound peace as regarded the Church, and in the gorge of a mountain

where it is impossible to place 300 men abreast; a fable written more

than 550 years after the event; a fable in which a king of Burgundy is

spoken of who never existed; a fable, in short, acknowledged to be

absurd by all the learned who have not lost their reason.

Behold what Don Ruinart narrates seriously! Let us pray to God for the

good sense of Don Ruinart!

SECTION II.

How does it happen that, in the enlightened age in which we live,

learned and useful writers are still found who nevertheless follow the

stream of old errors, and who corrupt many truths by admitted fables?

They reckon the era of the martyrs from the first year of the empire of

Diocletian, who was then far enough from inflicting martyrdom on

anybody. They forget that his wife Prisca was a Christian, that the

principal officers of his household were Christians; that he protected

them constantly during eighteen years; that they built at Nicomedia a

church more sumptuous than his palace; and that they would never have

been persecuted if they had not outraged the Cæsar Valerius.

Is it possible that any one should still dare to assert "that Diocletian

died of age, despair, and misery;" he who was seen to quit life like a

philosopher, as he had quitted the empire; he who, solicited to resume

the supreme power loved better to cultivate his fine gardens at

Salonica, than to reign again over the whole of the then known world?

Oh, ye compilers! will you never cease to compile? You have usefully

employed your three fingers; employ still more usefully your reason.

What! you repeat to me that St. Peter reigned over the faithful at Rome

for twenty-five years, and that Nero had him put to death together with

St. Paul, in order to avenge the death of Simon the Magician, whose legs

they had broken by their prayers?

To report such fables, though with the best motive, is to insult

Christianity.

The poor creatures who still repeat these absurdities are copyists who

renew in octavo and duodecimo old stories that honest men no longer

read, and who have never opened a book of wholesome criticism. They rake

up the antiquated tales of the Church; they know nothing of either

Middleton, or Dodwell, or Bruker, or Dumoulin, or Fabricius, or Grabius,

or even Dupin, or of any one of those who have lately carried light into

the darkness.

SECTION III.

We are fooled with martyrdoms that make us break out into laughter. The

Tituses, the Trajans, the Marcus Aureliuses, are painted as monsters of

cruelty. Fleury, abbé of Loc Dieu, has disgraced his ecclesiastical

history by tales which a sensible old woman would not tell to little

children.

Can it be seriously repeated, that the Romans condemned seven virgins,

each seventy years old, to pass through the hands of all the young men

of the city of Ancyra--those Romans who punished the Vestals with death

for the least gallantry?

A hundred tales of this sort are found in the martyrologies. The

narrators have hoped to render the ancient Romans odious, and they have

rendered themselves ridiculous. Do you want good, well-authenticated

barbarities--good and well-attested massacres, rivers of blood which

have actually flowed--fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, infants at the

breast, who have in reality had their throats cut, and been heaped on

one another? Persecuting monsters! seek these truths only in your own

annals: you will find them in the crusades against the Albigenses, in

the massacres of Merindol and Cabrière, in the frightful day of St.

Bartholomew, in the massacres of Ireland, in the valleys of the Pays de

Vaud. It becomes you well, barbarians as you are, to impute extravagant

cruelties to the best of emperors; you who have deluged Europe with

blood, and covered it with corpses, in order to prove that the same body

can be in a thousand places at once, and that the pope can sell

indulgences! Cease to calumniate the Romans, your law-givers, and ask

pardon of God for the abominations of your forefathers!

It is not the torture, you say, which makes martyrdom; it is the cause.

Well! I agree with you that your victims ought not to be designated by

the name of martyr, which signifies witness; but what name shall we give

to your executioners? Phalaris and Busiris were the gentlest of men in

comparison with you. Does not your Inquisition, which still remains,

make reason, nature, and religion boil with indignation! Great God! if

mankind should reduce to ashes that infernal tribunal, would they be

unacceptable in thy avenging eyes?

MASS.

The mass, in ordinary language, is the greatest and most august of the

ceremonies of the Church. Different names are given to it, according to

the rites practised in the various countries where it is celebrated; as

the Mozarabian or Gothic mass, the Greek mass, the Latin mass. Durandus

and Eckius call those masses dry, in which no consecration is made, as

that which is appointed to be said in particular by aspirants to the

priesthood; and Cardinal Bona relates, on the authority of William of

Nangis, that St. Louis, in his voyage abroad, had it said in this

manner, lest the motion of the vessel should spill the consecrated wine.

He also quoted Génébrard, who says that he assisted at Turin, in 1587,

at a similar mass, celebrated in a church, but after dinner and very

late, for the funeral of a person of rank.

Pierre le Chantre also speaks of the two-fold, three-fold, and even

four-fold mass, in which the priest celebrated the mass of the day or

the feast, as far as the offertory, then began a second, third, and

sometimes a fourth, as far as the same place; after which he said as

many secretas as he had begun masses; he recited the canon only once for

the whole; and at the end he added as many collects as he had joined

together masses.

It was not until about the close of the fourth century that the word

"mass" began to signify the celebration of the eucharist. The learned

Beatus Rhenanus, in his notes on Tertullian, observes, that St. Ambrose

consecrated this popular expression, "_missa,_" taken from the sending

out of the catechumens, after the reading of the gospel.

In the "Apostolical Constitutions," we find a liturgy in the name of St.

James, by which it appears, that instead of invoking the saints in the

canon of the mass, the primitive Church prayed for them. "We also offer

to Thee, O Lord," said the celebrator, "this bread and this chalice for

all the saints that have been pleasing in Thy sight from the beginning

of ages: for the patriarchs, the prophets, the just, the apostles, the

martyrs, the confessors, bishops, priests, deacons, subdeacons, readers,

chanters, virgins, widows, laymen, and all whose names are known unto

Thee." But St. Cyril of Jerusalem, who lived in the fourth century,

substituted this explanation: "After which," says he, "we commemorate

those who die before us, and first the patriarchs, apostles, and

martyrs, that God may receive our prayers through their intercession."

This proves--as will be said in the article on "Relics"--that the

worship of the saints was then beginning to be introduced into the

Church.

[Illustration: Ancient Rome.]

Noel Alexander cites acts of St. Andrew, in which that apostle is made

to say: "I offer up every day, on the altar of the only true God, not

the flesh of bulls, nor the blood of goats, but the unspotted lamb,

which still remains living and entire after it is sacrificed, and all

the faithful eat of its flesh"; but this learned Dominican acknowledges

that this piece was unknown until the eighth century. The first who

cited it was Ætherius, bishop of Osma in Spain, who wrote against

Ælipard in 788.