SECTION I.

A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY

VOLUME II

By

VOLTAIRE

EDITION DE LA PACIFICATION

THE WORKS OF VOLTAIRE

A CONTEMPORARY VERSION

With Notes by Tobias Smollett, Revised and Modernized

New Translations by William F. Fleming, and an

Introduction by Oliver H.G. Leigh

A CRITIQUE AND BIOGRAPHY

BY

THE RT. HON. JOHN MORLEY

FORTY-THREE VOLUMES

One hundred and sixty-eight designs, comprising reproductions

of rare old engravings, steel plates, photogravures,

and curious fac-similes

VOLUME VI

E.R. DuMONT

PARIS--LONDON--NEW YORK--CHICAGO

1901

_THE WORKS of VOLTAIRE_

_"Between two servants of Humanity, who appeared eighteen hundred

years apart, there is a mysterious relation. * * * * Let us say it

with a sentiment of profound respect: JESUS WEPT: VOLTAIRE SMILED.

Of that divine tear and of that human smile is composed the

sweetness of the present civilization."_

_VICTOR HUGO._

LIST OF PLATES--VOL. II

THE BASTILLE--_Frontispiece_

AN ASTROLOGER

A TYPE OF BEAUTY

ALEXANDER'S TRIUMPH

[Illustration: The Bastille.--"For four hundred years the symbol of

oppression. Within its walls the noblest had perished. It was a

perpetual threat, it was the last and often the first argument of king

and priest."]

* * * * *

VOLTAIRE

A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY

IN TEN VOLUMES

VOL II.

APPEARANCE--CALENDS

* * * * *

APPEARANCE.

Are all appearances deceitful? Have our senses been given us only to

keep us in continual delusion? Is everything error? Do we live in a

dream, surrounded by shadowy chimeras? We see the sun setting when he is

already below the horizon; before he has yet risen we see him appear. A

square tower seems to be round. A straight stick, thrust into the water,

seems to be bent.

You see your face in a mirror and the image appears to be behind the

glass: it is, however, neither behind nor before it. This glass, which

to the sight and the touch is so smooth and even, is no other than an

unequal congregation of projections and cavities. The finest and fairest

skin is a kind of bristled network, the openings of which are

incomparably larger than the threads, and enclose an infinite number of

minute hairs. Under this network there are liquors incessantly passing,

and from it there issue continual exhalations which cover the whole

surface. What we call large is to an elephant very small, and what we

call small is to insects a world. The same motion which would be rapid

to a snail would be very slow in the eye of an eagle. This rock, which

is impenetrable by steel, is a sieve consisting of more pores than

matter, and containing a thousand avenues of prodigious width leading to

its centre, in which are lodged multitudes of animals, which may, for

aught we know, think themselves the masters of the universe.

Nothing is either as it appears to be, or in the place where we believe

it to be. Several philosophers, tired of being constantly deceived by

bodies, have in their spleen pronounced that bodies do not exist, and

that there is nothing real but our minds. As well might they have

concluded that, all appearances being false, and the nature of the soul

being as little known as that of the matter, there is no reality in

either body or soul. Perhaps it is this despair of knowing anything

which has caused some Chinese philosophers to say that nothing is the

beginning and the end of all things. This philosophy, so destructive to

being, was well known in Molière's time. Doctor Macphurius represents

the school; when teaching Sganarelle, he says, "You must not say, 'I am

come,' but 'it seems to me that I am come'; for it may seem to you,

without such being really the case." But at the present day a comic

scene is not an argument, though it is sometimes better than an

argument; and there is often as much pleasure in seeking after truth as

in laughing at philosophy.

You do not see the network, the cavities, the threads, the inequalities,

the exhalations of that white and delicate skin which you idolize.

Animals a thousand times less than a mite discern all these objects

which escape your vision; they lodge, feed, and travel about in them, as

in an extensive country, and those on the right arm are perfectly

ignorant that there are creatures of their own species on the left. If

you were so unfortunate as to see what they see, your charming skin

would strike you with horror.

The harmony of a concert, to which you listen with delight, must have on

certain classes of minute animals the effect of terrible thunder; and

perhaps it kills them. We see, touch, hear, feel things only in the way

in which they ought to be seen, touched, heard, or felt by ourselves.

All is in due proportion. The laws of optics, which show you an object

in the water where it is not, and break a right line, are in entire

accordance with those which make the sun appear to you with a diameter

of two feet, although it is a million times larger than the earth. To

see it in its true dimensions would require an eye collecting his rays

at an angle as great as his disk, which is impossible. Our senses, then,

assist much more than they deceive us.

Motion, time, hardness, softness, dimensions, distance, approximation,

strength, weakness, appearances, of whatever kind, all is relative. And

who has created these relations?

APROPOS.

All great successes, of whatever kind, are founded upon things done or

said apropos.

Arnold of Brescia, John Huss, and Jerome of Prague did not come quite

apropos; the people were not then sufficiently enlightened; the

invention of printing had not then laid the abuses complained of before

the eyes of every one. But when men began to read--when the populace,

who were solicitous to escape purgatory, but at the same time wished not

to pay too dear for indulgences, began to open their eyes, the reformers

of the sixteenth century came quite apropos, and succeeded.

It has been elsewhere observed that Cromwell under Elizabeth or Charles

the Second, or Cardinal de Retz when Louis XIV. governed by himself,

would have been very ordinary persons.

Had Cæsar been born in the time of Scipio Africanus he would not have

subjugated the Roman commonwealth; nor would Mahomet, could he rise

again at the present day, be more than sheriff of Mecca. But if

Archimedes and Virgil were restored, one would still be the best

mathematician, the other the best poet of his country.

ARABS;

AND, OCCASIONALLY, ON THE BOOK OF JOB.

If any one be desirous of obtaining a thorough knowledge of the

antiquities of Arabia, it may be presumed that he will gain no more

information than about those of Auvergne and Poitou. It is, however,

certain, that the Arabs were of some consequence long before Mahomet.

The Jews themselves say that Moses married an Arabian woman, and his

father-in-law Jethro seems to have been a man of great good sense.

Mecca is considered, and not without reason, as one of the most ancient

cities in the world. It is, indeed, a proof of its antiquity that

nothing but superstition could occasion the building of a town on such a

spot, for it is in a sandy desert, where the water is brackish, so that

the people die of hunger and thirst. The country a few miles to the east

is the most delightful upon earth, the best watered and the most

fertile. There the Arabs should have built, and not at Mecca. But it was

enough for some charlatan, some false prophet, to give out his reveries,

to make of Mecca a sacred spot and the resort of neighboring nations.

Thus it was that the temple of Jupiter Ammon was built in the midst of

sands. Arabia extends from northeast to southwest, from the desert of

Jerusalem to Aden or Eden, about the fiftieth degree of north latitude.

It is an immense country, about three times as large as Germany. It is

very likely that its deserts of sand were brought thither by the waters

of the ocean, and that its marine gulfs were once fertile lands.

The belief in this nation's antiquity is favored by the circumstance

that no historian speaks of its having been subjugated. It was not

subdued even by Alexander, nor by any king of Syria, nor by the Romans.

The Arabs, on the contrary, subjugated a hundred nations, from the Indus

to the Garonne; and, having afterwards lost their conquests, they

retired into their own country and did not mix with any other people.

Having never been subject to nor mixed with other nations it is more

than probable that they have preserved their manners and their language.

Indeed, Arabic is, in some sense, the mother tongue of all Asia as far

as the Indus; or rather, the prevailing tongue, for mother tongues have

never existed. Their genius has never changed. They still compose their

"Nights' Entertainments," as they did when they imagined one Bac or

Bacchus, who passed through the Red Sea with three millions of men,

women, and children; who stopped the sun and moon, and made streams of

wine issue forth with a blow of his rod, which, when he chose, he

changed into a serpent.

A nation so isolated, and whose blood remains unmixed, cannot change its

character. The Arabs of the desert have always been given to robbery,

and those inhabiting the towns been fond of fables, poetry, and

astronomy. It is said, in the historical preface to the Koran, that when

any one of their tribes had a good poet the other tribes never failed to

send deputies to that one on which God had vouchsafed to bestow so great

a gift.

The tribes assembled every year, by representatives, in an open place

named Ocad, where verses were recited, nearly in the same way as is now

done at Rome in the garden of the academy of the Arcadii, and this

custom continued until the time of Mahomet. In his time, each one posted

his verses on the door of the temple of Mecca. Labid, son of Rabia, was

regarded as the Homer of Mecca; but, having seen the second chapter of

the Koran, which Mahomet had posted, he fell on his knees before him,

and said, "O Mahomet, son of Abdallah, son of Motalib, son of Achem,

thou art a greater poet than I--thou art doubtless the prophet of God."

The Arabs of Maden, Naïd, and Sanaa were no less generous than those of

the desert were addicted to plunder. Among them, one friend was

dishonored if he had refused his assistance to another. In their

collection of verses, entitled _"Tograid",_ it is related that, "one

day, in the temple of Mecca, three Arabs were disputing on generosity

and friendship, and could not agree as to which, among those who then

set the greatest examples of these virtues, deserved the preference.

Some were for Abdallah, son of Giafar, uncle to Mahomet; others for

Kais, son of Saad; and others for Arabad, of the tribe of As. After a

long dispute they agreed to send a friend of Abdallah to him, a friend

of Kais to Kais, and a friend of Arabad to Arabad, to try them all

three, and to come and make their report to the assembly.

"Then the friend of Abdallah went and said to him, 'Son of the uncle of

Mahomet, I am on a journey and am destitute of everything.' Abdallah was

mounted on his camel loaded with gold and silk; he dismounted with all

speed, gave him his camel, and returned home on foot.

"The second went and made application to his friend Kais, son of Saad.

Kais was still asleep, and one of his domestics asked the traveller what

he wanted. The traveller answered that he was the friend of Kais, and

needed his assistance. The domestic said to him, 'I will not wake my

master; but here are seven thousand pieces of gold, which are all that

we at present have in the house. Take also a camel from the stable, and

a slave; these will, I think, be sufficient for you until you reach your

own house.' When Kais awoke, he chid the domestic for not having given

more.

"The third repaired to his friend Arabad, of the tribe of As. Arabad was

blind, and was coming out of his house, leaning on two slaves, to pray

to God in the temple of Mecca. As soon as he heard his friend's voice,

he said to him, 'I possess nothing but my two slaves; I beg that you

will take and sell them; I will go to the temple as well as I can, with

my stick.'

"The three disputants, having returned to the assembly, faithfully

related what had happened. Many praises were bestowed on Abdallah, son

of Giafar--on Kais, son of Saad--and on Arabad, of the tribe of As, but

the preference was given to Arabad."

The Arabs have several tales of this kind, but our western nations have

none. Our romances are not in this taste. We have, indeed, several which

turn upon trick alone, as those of Boccaccio, _"Guzman d'Alfarache,"_

"Gil Bias," etc.

_On Job, the Arab._

It is clear that the Arabs at least possessed noble and exalted ideas.

Those who are most conversant with the oriental languages think that the

Book of Job, which is of the highest antiquity, was composed by an Arab

of Idumaea. The most clear and indubitable proof is that the Hebrew

translator has left in his translation more than a hundred Arabic words,

which, apparently, he did not understand.

Job, the hero of the piece, could not be a Hebrew, for he says, in the

forty-second chapter, that having been restored to his former

circumstances, he divided his possessions equally among his sons and

daughters, which is directly contrary to the Hebrew law.

It is most likely that, if this book had been composed after the period

at which we place Moses, the author--who speaks of so many things and is

not sparing of examples--would have mentioned some one of the

astonishing prodigies worked by Moses, which were, doubtless, known to

all the nations of Asia.

In the very first chapter Satan appears before God and asks permission

to tempt Job. _Satan_ was unknown in the Pentateuch; it was a Chaldæan

word; a fresh proof that the Arabian author was in the neighborhood of

Chaldæa.

It has been thought that he might be a Jew because the Hebrew

translator has put Jehovah instead of El, or Bel, or Sadai. But what man

of the least information does not know that the word Jehovah was common

to the Phœnicians, the Syrians, the Egyptians, and every people of

the neighboring countries?

A yet stronger proof--one to which there is no reply--is the knowledge

of astronomy which appears in the Book of Job. Mention is here made of

the constellations which we call Arcturus, Orion, the Pleiades, and even

of those of "the chambers of the south." Now, the Hebrews had no

knowledge of the sphere; they had not even a term to express astronomy;

but the Arabs, like the Chaldæans, have always been famed for their

skill in this science.

It does, then, seem to be thoroughly proved that the Book of Job cannot

have been written by a Jew, and that it was anterior to all the Jewish

books, Philo and Josephus were too prudent to count it among those of

the Hebrew canon. It is incontestably an Arabian parable or allegory.

This is not all. We derive from it some knowledge of the customs of the

ancient world, and especially of Arabia. Here we read of trading with

the Indies; a commerce which the Arabs have in all ages carried on, but

which the Jews never even heard of.

Here, too, we see that the art of writing was in great cultivation, and

that they already made great books.

It cannot be denied that the commentator Calmet, profound as he is,

violates all the rules of logic in pretending that Job announces the

immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body, when he says:

"For I know that my Redeemer liveth. And though after my skin--worms

destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. But ye should say,

Why persecute we him?--seeing the root of the matter is found in me. Be

ye afraid of the sword; for wrath bringeth the punishment of the sword,

that ye may know there is a judgment."

Can anything be understood by those words, other than his hope of being

cured? The immortality of the soul, and the resurrection of the body at

the last day, are truths so indubitably announced in the New Testament,

and so clearly proved by the fathers and the councils, that there is no

need to attribute the first knowledge of them to an Arab. These great

mysteries are not explained in any passage of the Hebrew Pentateuch; how

then can they be explained in a single verse of Job and that in so

obscure a manner? Calmet has no better reason for seeing in the words of

Job the immortality of the soul, and the general resurrection, than he

would have for discovering a disgraceful disease in the malady with

which he was afflicted. Neither physics nor logic take the part of this

commentator.

As for this allegorical Book of Job: it being manifestly Arabian, we are

at liberty to say that it has neither justness, method, nor precision.

Yet it is perhaps the most ancient book that has been written, and the

most valuable monument that has been found on this side the Euphrates.

ARARAT.

This is a mountain of Armenia, on which the ark rested. The question has

long been agitated, whether the deluge was universal--whether it

inundated the whole earth without exception, or only the portion of the

earth which was then known. Those who have thought that it extended only

to the tribes then existing, have founded their opinion on the inutility

of flooding unpeopled lands, which reason seems very plausible. As for

us, we abide by the Scripture text, without pretending to explain it.

But we shall take greater liberty with Berosus, an ancient Chaldæan

writer, of whom there are fragments preserved by Abydenus, quoted by

Eusebius, and repeated word for word by George Syncellus. From these

fragments we find that the Orientals of the borders of the Euxine, in

ancient times, made Armenia the abode of their gods. In this they were

imitated by the Greeks, who placed their deities on Mount Olympus. Men

have always confounded human with divine things. Princes built their

citadels on mountains; therefore they were also made the dwelling place

of the gods, and became sacred. The summit of Mount Ararat is concealed

by mists; therefore the gods hid themselves in those mists, sometimes

vouchsafing to appear to mortals in fine weather.

A god of that country, believed to have been Saturn, appeared one day to

Xixuter, tenth king of Chaldæa, according to the computation of

Africanus, Abydenus, and Apollodorus, and said to him:

"On the fifteenth day of the month Oesi, mankind shall be destroyed by a

deluge. Shut up close all your writings in Sipara, the city of the sun,

that the memory of things may not be lost. Build a vessel; enter it with

your relatives and friends; take with you birds and beasts; stock it

with provisions, and, when you are asked, 'Whither are you going in that

vessel?' answer, 'To the gods, to beg their favor for mankind.'"

Xixuter built his vessel, which was two stadii wide, and five long; that

it, its width was two hundred and fifty geometrical paces, and its

length six hundred and twenty-five. This ship, which was to go upon the

Black Sea, was a slow sailer. The flood came. When it had ceased Xixuter

let some of his birds fly out, but, finding nothing to eat, they

returned to the vessel. A few days afterwards he again set some of his

birds at liberty, and they returned with mud in their claws. At last

they went and returned no more. Xixuter did likewise: he quitted his

ship, which had perched upon a mountain of Armenia, and he was seen no

more; the gods took him away.

There is probably something historic in this fable. The Euxine

overflowed its banks, and inundated some portions of territory, and the

king of Chaldæa hastened to repair the damage. We have in Rabelais tales

no less ridiculous, founded on some small portion of truth. The ancient

historians are, for the most part, serious Rabelais.

As for Mount Ararat, it has been asserted that it was one of the

mountains of Phrygia, and that it was called by a name answering that of

ark, because it was enclosed by three rivers.

There are thirty opinions respecting this mountain. How shall we

distinguish the true one? That which the monks now call Ararat, was,

they say, one of the limits of the terrestrial paradise--a paradise of

which we find but few traces. It is a collection of rocks and

precipices, covered with eternal snows. Tournefort went thither by order

of Louis XIV. to seek for plants. He says that the whole neighborhood is

horrible, and the mountain itself still more so; that he found snow four

feet thick, and quite crystallized, and that there are perpendicular

precipices on every side.

The Dutch traveller, John Struys, pretends that he went thither also. He

tells us that he ascended to the very top, to cure a hermit afflicted

with a rupture.

"His hermitage," says he, "was so distant from the earth that we did not

reach it until the close of the seventh day, though each day we went

five leagues." If, in this journey, he was constantly ascending, this

Mount Ararat must be thirty-five leagues high. In the time of the

Giants' war, a few Ararats piled one upon another would have made the

ascent to the moon quite easy. John Struys, moreover, assures us that

the hermit whom he cured presented him with a cross made of the wood of

Noah's ark. Tournefort had not this advantage.

ARIANISM.

The great theological disputes, for twelve hundred years, were all

Greek. What would Homer, Sophocles, Demosthenes, Archimedes, have said,

had they witnessed the subtle cavillings which have cost so much blood.

Arius has, even at this day, the honor of being regarded as the inventor

of his opinion, as Calvin is considered to have been the founder of

Calvinism. The pride in being the head of a sect is the second of this

world's vanities; for that of conquest is said to be the first. However,

it is certain that neither Arius nor Calvin is entitled to the

melancholy glory of invention. The quarrel about the Trinity existed

long before Arius took part in it, in the disputatious town of

Alexandria, where it had been beyond the power of Euclid to make men

think calmly and justly. There never was a people more frivolous than

the Alexandrians; in this respect they far exceeded even the Parisians.

There must already have been warm disputes about the Trinity; since the

patriarch, who composed the "Alexandrian Chronicle," preserved at

Oxford, assures us that the party embraced by Arius was supported by two

thousand priests.

We will here, for the reader's convenience, give what is said of Arius

in a small book which every one may not have at hand: Here is an

incomprehensible question, which, for more than sixteen hundred years,

has furnished exercise for curiosity, for sophistic subtlety, for

animosity, for the spirit of cabal, for the fury of dominion, for the

rage of persecution, for blind and sanguinary fanaticism, for barbarous

credulity, and which has produced more horrors than the ambition of

princes, which ambition has occasioned very many. Is Jesus the Word? If

He be the Word, did He emanate from God in time or before time? If He

emanated from God, is He coeternal and consubstantial with Him, or is He

of a similar substance? Is He distinct from Him, or is He not? Is He

made or begotten? Can He beget in his turn? Has He paternity? or

productive virtue without paternity? Is the Holy Ghost made? or

begotten? or produced? or proceeding from the Father? or proceeding from

the Son? or proceeding from both? Can He beget? can He produce? is His

hypostasis consubstantial with the hypostasis of the Father and the Son?

and how is it that, having the same nature--the same essence as the

Father and the Son, He cannot do the same things done by these persons

who are Himself?

These questions, so far above reason, certainly needed the decision of

an infallible church. The Christians sophisticated, cavilled, hated, and

excommunicated one another, for some of these dogmas inaccessible to

human intellect, before the time of Arius and Athanasius. The Egyptian

Greeks were remarkably clever; they would split a hair into four, but on

this occasion they split it only into three. Alexandros, bishop of

Alexandria, thought proper to preach that God, being necessarily

individual--single--a monad in the strictest sense of the word, this

monad is triune.

The priest Arius, whom we call Arius, was quite scandalized by

Alexandros's monad, and explained the thing in quite a different way. He

cavilled in part like the priest Sabellius, who had cavilled like the

Phrygian Praxeas, who was a great caviller. Alexandros quickly assembled

a small council of those of his own opinion, and excommunicated his

priest. Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, took the part of Arius. Thus the

whole Church was in a flame.

The Emperor Constantine was a villain; I confess it--a parricide, who

had smothered his wife in a bath, cut his son's throat, assassinated his

father-in-law, his brother-in-law, and his nephew; I cannot deny it--a

man puffed up with pride and immersed in pleasure; granted--a detestable

tyrant, like his children; _transeat_--but he was a man of sense. He

would not have obtained the empire, and subdued all his rivals, had he

not reasoned justly.

When he saw the flames of civil war lighted among the scholastic brains,

he sent the celebrated Bishop Osius with dissuasive letters to the two

belligerent parties. "You are great fools," he expressly tells them in

this letter, "to quarrel about things which you do not understand. It is

unworthy the gravity of your ministry to make so much noise about so

trifling a matter."

By "so trifling a matter," Constantine meant not what regards the

Divinity, but the incomprehensible manner in which they were striving to

explain the nature of the Divinity. The Arabian patriarch, who wrote the

history of the Church of Alexandria, makes Osius, on presenting the

emperor's letter, speak in nearly the following words:

"My brethren, Christianity is just beginning to enjoy the blessings of

peace, and you would plunge it into eternal discord. The emperor has but

too much reason to tell you that you quarrel about a very trifling

matter. Certainly, had the object of the dispute been essential, Jesus

Christ, whom we all acknowledge as our legislator, would have mentioned

it. God would not have sent His Son on earth, to return without teaching

us our catechism. Whatever He has not expressly told us is the work of

men and error is their portion. Jesus has commanded you to love one

another, and you begin by hating one another and stirring up discord in

the empire. Pride alone has given birth to these disputes, and Jesus,

your Master, has commanded you to be humble. Not one among you can know

whether Jesus is made or begotten. And in what does His nature concern

you, provided your own is to be just and reasonable? What has the vain

science of words to do with the morality which should guide your

actions? You cloud our doctrines with mysteries--you, who were designed

to strengthen religion by your virtues. Would you leave the Christian

religion a mass of sophistry? Did Christ come for this? Cease to

dispute, humble yourselves, edify one another, clothe the naked, feed

the hungry, and pacify the quarrels of families, instead of giving

scandal to the whole empire by your dissensions."

But Osius addressed an obstinate audience. The Council of Nice was

assembled and the Roman Empire was torn by a spiritual civil war. This

war brought on others and mutual persecution has continued from age to

age, unto this day.

The melancholy part of the affair was that as soon as the council was

ended the persecution began; but Constantine, when he opened it, did not

yet know how he should act, nor upon whom the persecution should fall.

He was not a Christian, though he was at the head of the Christians.

Baptism alone then constituted Christianity, and he had not been

baptized; he had even rebuilt the Temple of Concord at Rome. It was,

doubtless, perfectly indifferent to him whether Alexander of Alexandria,

or Eusebius of Nicomedia, and the priest Arius, were right or wrong; it

is quite evident, from the letter given above, that he had a profound

contempt for the dispute.

But there happened that which always happens and always will happen in

every court. The enemies of those who were afterwards named Arians

accused Eusebius of Nicomedia of having formerly taken part with

Licinius against the emperor. "_I_ have proofs of it," said Constantine

in his letter to the Church of Nicomedia, "from the priests and deacons

in his train whom I have taken," etc.

Thus, from the time of the first great council, intrigue, cabal, and

persecution were established, together with the tenets of the Church,

without the power to derogate from their sanctity. Constantine gave the

chapels of those who did not believe in the consubstantiality to those

who did believe in it; confiscated the property of the dissenters to his

own profit, and used his despotic power to exile Arius and his

partisans, who were not then the strongest. It has even been said that

of his own private authority he condemned to death whosoever should not

burn the writings of Arius; but this is not true. Constantine, prodigal

as he was of human blood, did not carry his cruelty to so mad and absurd

an excess as to order his executioners to assassinate the man who should

keep an heretical book, while he suffered the heresiarch to live.

At court everything soon changes. Several non-consubstantial bishops,

with some of the eunuchs and the women, spoke in favor of Arius, and

obtained the reversal of the _lettre de cachet_. The same thing has

repeatedly happened in our modern courts on similar occasions.

The celebrated Eusebius, bishop of Cæsarea, known by his writings, which

evince no great discernment, strongly accused Eustatius, bishop of

Antioch, of being a Sabellian; and Eustatius accused Eusebius of being

an Arian. A council was assembled at Antioch; Eusebius gained his cause;

Eustatius was displaced; and the See of Antioch was offered to Eusebius,

who would not accept it; the two parties armed against each other, and

this was the prelude to controversial warfare. Constantine, who had

banished Arius for not believing in the consubstantial Son, now banished

Eustatius for believing in Him; nor are such revolutions uncommon.

St. Athanasius was then bishop of Alexandria. He would not admit Arius,

whom the emperor had sent thither, into the town, saying that "Arius was

excommunicated; that an excommunicated man ought no longer to have

either home or country; that he could neither eat nor sleep anywhere;

and that it was better to obey God than man." A new council was

forthwith held at Tyre, and new _lettres de cachet_ were issued.

Athanasius was removed by the Tyrian fathers and banished to Trèves.

Thus Arius, and Athanasius, his greatest enemy, were condemned in turn

by a man who was not yet a Christian:

The two factions alike employed artifice, fraud, and calumny, according

to the old and eternal usage. Constantine left them to dispute and

cabal, for he had other occupations. It was at that time that this _good

prince_ assassinated his son, his wife, and his nephew, the young

Licinius, the hope of the empire, who was not yet twelve years old.

Under Constantine, Arius' party was constantly victorious. The opposite

party has unblushingly written that one day St. Macarius, one of the

most ardent followers of Athanasius, knowing that Arius was on the way

to the cathedral of Constantinople, followed by several of his brethren,

prayed so ardently to God to confound this heresiarch that God could not

resist the prayer; and immediately all Arius' bowels passed through his

fundament--which is impossible. But at length Arius died.

Constantine followed him a year afterwards, and it is said he died of

leprosy. Julian, in his "Cæsars," says that baptism, which this emperor

received a few hours before his death, cured no one of this distemper.

As his children reigned after him the flattery of the Roman people, who

had long been slaves, was carried to such an excess that those of the

old religion made him a god, and those of the new made him a saint. His

feast was long kept, together with that of his mother.

After his death, the troubles caused by the single word "consubstantial"

agitated the empire with renewed violence. Constantius, son and

successor to Constantine, imitated all his father's cruelties, and,

like him, held councils--which councils anathematized one another.

Athanasius went over all Europe and Asia to support his party, but the

Eusebians overwhelmed him. Banishment, imprisonment, tumult, murder, and

assassination signalized the close of the reign of Constantius. Julian,

the Church's mortal enemy, did his utmost to restore peace to the

Church, but was unsuccessful. Jovian, and after him Valentinian, gave

entire liberty of conscience, but the two parties accepted it only as

the liberty to exercise their hatred and their fury.

Theodosius declared for the Council of Nice, but the Empress Justina,

who reigned in Italy, Illyria, and Africa, as guardian of the young

Valentinian, proscribed the great Council of Nice; and soon after the

Goths, Vandals, and Burgundians, who spread themselves over so many

provinces, finding Arianism established in them, embraced it in order to

govern the conquered nations by the religion of those nations.

But the Nicæan faith having been received by the Gauls, their conqueror,

Clovis, followed that communion for the very same reason that the other

barbarians had professed the faith of Arius.

In Italy, the great Theodoric kept peace between the two parties, and at

last the Nicæan formula prevailed in the east and in the west. Arianism

reappeared about the middle of the sixteenth century, favored by the

religious disputes which then divided Europe; and it reappeared, armed

with new strength and a still greater incredulity. Forty gentlemen of

Vicenza formed an academy, in which such tenets only were established as

appeared necessary to make men Christians. Jesus was acknowledged as the

Word, as Saviour, and as Judge; but His divinity, His consubstantiality,

and even the Trinity, were denied.

Of these dogmatizers, the principal were Lælius Socinus, Ochin, Pazuta,

and Gentilis, who were joined by Servetus. The unfortunate dispute of

the latter with Calvin is well known; they carried on for some time an

interchange of abuse by letter. Servetus was so imprudent as to pass

through Geneva, on his way to Germany. Calvin was cowardly enough to

have him arrested, and barbarous enough to have him condemned to be

roasted by a slow fire--the same punishment which Calvin himself had

narrowly escaped in France. Nearly all the theologians of that time were

by turns persecuting and persecuted, executioners and victims.

The same Calvin solicited the death of Gentilis at Geneva. He found five

advocates to subscribe that Gentilis deserved to perish in the flames.

Such horrors were worthy of that abominable age. Gentilis was put in

prison, and was on the point of being burned like Servetus, but he was

better advised than the Spaniard; he retracted, bestowed the most

ridiculous praises on Calvin, and was saved. But he had afterwards the

ill fortune, through not having made terms with a bailiff of the canton

of Berne, to be arrested as an Arian. There were witnesses who deposed

that he had said that the words _trinity, essence, hypostasis_ were not

to be found in the Scriptures, and on this deposition the judges, who

were as ignorant of the meaning of _hypostasis_ as himself, condemned

him, without at all arguing the question, to lose his head.

Faustus Socinus, nephew to Lælius Socinus, and his companions were more

fortunate in Germany. They penetrated into Silesia and Poland, founded

churches there, wrote, preached, and were successful, but at length,

their religion being divested of almost every mystery, and a

philosophical and peaceful, rather than a militant sect, they were

abandoned; and the Jesuits, who had more influence, persecuted and

dispersed them.

The remains of this sect in Poland, Germany, and Holland keep quiet and

concealed; but in England the sect has reappeared with greater strength

and éclat. The great Newton and Locke embraced it. Samuel Clarke, the

celebrated rector of St. James, and author of an excellent book on the

existence of God, openly declared himself an Arian, and his disciples

are very numerous. He would never attend his parish church on the day

when the Athanasian Creed was recited. In the course of this work will

be seen the subtleties which all these obstinate persons, who were not

so much Christians as philosophers, opposed to the purity of the

Catholic faith.

Although among the theologians of London there was a large flock of

Arians, the public mind there has been more occupied by the great

mathematical truths discovered by Newton, and the metaphysical wisdom of

Locke. Disputes on consubstantiality appear very dull to philosophers.

The same thing happened to Newton in England as to Corneille in France,

whose _"Pertharite,"_ "_Théodore,_" and _"Recueil de Vers"_ were

forgotten, while _"Cinna"_ was alone thought of. Newton was looked upon

as God's interpreter, in the calculation of fluxions, the laws of

gravitation, and the nature of light. On his death, his pall was borne

by the peers and the chancellor of the realm, and his remains were laid

near the tombs of the kings--than whom he is more revered. Servetus, who

is said to have discovered the circulation of the blood, was roasted by

a slow fire, in a little town of the Allobroges, ruled by a theologian

of Picardy.

ARISTEAS.

Shall men forever be deceived in the most indifferent as well as the

most serious things? A pretended Aristeas would make us believe that he

had the Old Testament translated into Greek for the use of Ptolemy

Philadelphus--just as the Duke de Montausier had commentaries written on

the best Latin authors for the dauphin, who made no use of them.

According to this Aristeas, Ptolemy, burning with desire to be

acquainted with the Jewish books, and to know those laws which the

meanest Jew in Alexandria could have translated for fifty crowns,

determined to send a solemn embassy to the high-priest of the Jews of

Jerusalem; to deliver a hundred and twenty thousand Jewish slaves, whom

his father, Ptolemy Soter, had made prisoners in Judæa, and in order to

assist them in performing the journey agreeably, to give them about

forty crowns each of our money--amounting in the whole to fourteen

millions four hundred thousand of our livres, or about five hundred and

seventy-six thousand pounds.

Ptolemy did not content himself with this unheard-of liberality. He sent

to the temple a large table of massive gold, enriched all over with

precious stones, and had engraved upon it a chart of the Meander, a

river of Phrygia, the course of which river was marked with rubies and

emeralds. It is obvious how charming such a chart of the Meander must

have been to the Jews. This table was loaded with two immense golden

vases, still more richly worked. He also gave thirty other golden and an

infinite number of silver vases. Never was a book so dearly paid for;

the whole Vatican library might be had for a less amount.

Eleazar, the pretended high-priest of Jerusalem, sent ambassadors in his

turn, who presented only a letter written upon fine vellum in characters

of gold. It was an act worthy of the Jews, to give a bit of parchment

for about thirty millions of livres. Ptolemy was so much delighted with

Eleazar's style that he shed tears of joy.

The ambassador dined with the king and the chief priests of Egypt. When

grace was to be said, the Egyptians yielded the honor to the Jews. With

these ambassadors came seventy-two interpreters, six from each of the

twelve tribes, who had all learned Greek perfectly at Jerusalem. It is

really a pity that of these twelve tribes ten were entirely lost, and

had disappeared from the face of the earth so many ages before; but

Eleazar, the high-priest, found them again, on purpose to send

translators to Ptolemy.

The seventy-two interpreters were shut up in the island of Pharos. Each

of them completed his translation in seventy-two days, and all the

translations were found to be word for word alike. This is called the

Septuagint or translation of the seventy, though it should have been

called the translation of the seventy-two.

As soon as the king had received these books he worshipped them--he was

so good a Jew. Each interpreter received three talents of gold, and

there were sent to the high-sacrificer--in return for his parchment--ten

couches of silver, a crown of gold, censers and cups of gold, a vase of

thirty talents of silver--that is, of the weight of about sixty thousand

crowns--with ten purple robes, and a hundred pieces of the finest linen.

Nearly all this fine story is faithfully repeated by the historian

Josephus, who never exaggerates anything. St. Justin improves upon

Josephus. He says that Ptolemy applied to King Herod, and not to the

high-priest Eleazar. He makes Ptolemy send two ambassadors to

Herod--which adds much to the marvellousness of the tale, for we know

that Herod was not born until long after the reign of Ptolemy

Philadelphus.

It is needless to point out the profusion of anachronisms in these and

all such romances, or the swarm of contradictions and enormous blunders

into which the Jewish author falls in every sentence; yet this fable was

regarded for ages as an incontestable truth; and, the better to exercise

the credulity of the human mind, every writer who repeated it added or

retrenched in his own way, so that, to believe it all, it was necessary

to believe it in a hundred different ways. Some smile at these

absurdities which whole nations have swallowed, while others sigh over

the imposture. The infinite diversity of these falsehoods multiplies the

followers of Democritus and Heraclitus.

ARISTOTLE.

It is not to be believed that Alexander's preceptor, chosen by Philip,

was wrong-headed and pedantic. Philip was assuredly a judge, being

himself well informed, and the rival of Demosthenes in eloquence.

_Aristotle's Logic._

Aristotle's logic--his art of reasoning--is so much the more to be

esteemed as he had to deal with the Greeks, who were continually holding

captious arguments, from which fault his master Plato was even less

exempt than others.

Take, for example, the article by which, in the _"Phædon"_ Plato proves

the immortality of the soul:

"Do you not say that death is the opposite of life? Yes. And that they

spring from each other? Yes. What, then, is it that springs from the

living? The dead. And what from the dead? The living. It is, then, from

the dead that all living creatures arise. Consequently, souls exist

after death in the infernal regions."

Sure and unerring rules were wanted to unravel this extraordinary

nonsense, which, through Plato's reputation, fascinated the minds of

men. It was necessary to show that Plato gave a loose meaning to all his

words.

Death does not spring from life, but the living man ceases to live. The

living springs not from the dead, but from a living man who subsequently

dies. Consequently, the conclusion that all living things spring from

dead ones is ridiculous.

From this conclusion you draw another, which is no way included in the

premises, that souls are in the infernal regions after death. It should

first have been proved that dead bodies are in the infernal regions, and

that the souls accompany them.

There is not a correct word in your argument. You should have said--That

which thinks has no parts; that which has no parts is indestructible:

therefore, the thinking faculty in us, having no parts, is

indestructible. Or--the body dies because it is divisible; the soul is

indivisible; therefore it does not die. Then you would at least have

been understood.

It is the same with all the captious reasonings of the Greeks. A master

taught rhetoric to his disciple on condition that he should pay him

after the first cause that he gained. The disciple intended never to pay

him. He commenced an action against his master, saying: "I will never

pay you anything, for, if I lose my cause I was not to pay you until I

had gained it, and if I gain it my demand is that I may not pay you."

The master retorted, saying: "If you lose you must pay; if you gain you

must also pay; for our bargain is that you shall pay me after the first

cause that you have gained."

It is evident that all this turns on an ambiguity. Aristotle teaches how

to remove it, by putting the necessary terms in the argument:

A sum is not due until the day appointed for its payment. The day

appointed is that when a cause shall have been gained. No cause has yet

been gained. Therefore the day appointed has not yet arrived. Therefore

the disciple does not yet owe anything.

But _not yet_ does not mean _never_. So that the disciple instituted a

ridiculous action. The master, too, had no right to demand anything,

since the day appointed had not arrived. He must wait until the disciple

had pleaded some other cause.

Suppose a conquering people were to stipulate that they would restore to

the conquered only one-half of their ships; then, having sawed them in

two, and having thus given back the exact half, were to pretend that

they had fulfilled the treaty. It is evident that this would be a very

criminal equivocation.

Aristotle did, then, render a great service to mankind by preventing all

ambiguity; for this it is which causes all misunderstandings in

philosophy, in theology, and in public affairs. The pretext for the

unfortunate war of 1756 was an equivocation respecting Acadia.

It is true that natural good sense, combined with the habit of

reasoning, may dispense with Aristotle's rules. A man who has a good ear

and voice may sing well without musical rules, but it is better to know

them.

_His Physics._

They are but little understood, but it is more than probable that

Aristotle understood himself, and was understood in his own time. We are

strangers to the language of the Greeks; we do not attach to the same

words the same ideas.

For instance, when he says, in his seventh chapter, that the principles

of bodies are matter, privation, and form, he seems to talk egregious

nonsense; but such is not the case. Matter, with him, is the first

principle of everything--the subject of everything--indifferent to

everything. Form is essential to its becoming any certain thing.

Privation is that which distinguishes any being from all those things

which are not in it. Matter may, indifferently, become a rose or an

apple; but, when it is an apple or a rose it is deprived of all that

would make it silver or lead. Perhaps this truth was not worth the

trouble of repeating; but we have nothing here but what is quite

intelligible, and nothing at all impertinent.

The "act of that which is in power" also seems a ridiculous phrase,

though it is no more so than the one just noticed. Matter may become

whatever you will--fire, earth, water, vapor, metal, mineral, animal,

tree, flower. This is all that is meant by the expression, _act in

power_. So that there was nothing ridiculous to the Greeks in saying

that motion was an act of power, since matter may be moved; and it is

very likely that Aristotle understood thereby that motion was not

essential to matter.

Aristotle's physics must necessarily have been very bad in detail. This

was common to all philosophers until the time when the Galileos, the

Torricellis, the Guerickes, the Drebels, and the Academy del Cimento

began to make experiments. Natural philosophy is a mine which cannot be

explored without instruments that were unknown to the ancients. They

remained on the brink of the abyss, and reasoned upon without seeing its

contents.

_Aristotle's Treatise on Animals._

His researches relative to animals formed, on the contrary, the best

book of antiquity, because here Aristotle made use of his eyes.

Alexander furnished him with all the rare animals of Europe, Asia, and

Africa. This was one fruit of his conquests. In this way that hero spent

immense sums, which at this day would terrify all the guardians of the

royal treasury, and which should immortalize Alexander's glory, of which

we have already spoken.

At the present day a hero, when he has the misfortune to make war, can

scarcely give any encouragement to the sciences; he must borrow money of

a Jew, and consult other Jews in order to make the substance of his

subjects flow into his coffer of the Danaides, whence it escapes through

a thousand openings. Alexander sent to Aristotle elephants,

rhinoceroses, tigers, lions, crocodiles, gazelles, eagles, ostriches,

etc.; and we, when by chance a rare animal is brought to our fairs, go

and admire it for sixpence, and it dies before we know anything about

it.

_Of the Eternal World._

Aristotle expressly maintains, in his book on heaven, chap, xi., that

the world is eternal. This was the opinion of all antiquity, excepting

the Epicureans. He admitted a God--a first mover--and defined Him to be

"one, eternal, immovable, indivisible, without qualities."

He must, therefore, have regarded the world as emanating from God, as

the light emanates from the sun, and is co-existent with it. About the

celestial spheres he was as ignorant as all the rest of the

philosophers. Copernicus was not yet come.

_His Metaphysics._

God being the first mover, He gives motion to the soul. But what is God,

and what is the soul, according to him? The soul is an _entelechia_. "It

is," says he, "a principle and an act--a nourishing, feeling, and

reasoning power." This can only mean that we have the faculties of

nourishing ourselves, of feeling, and of reasoning. The Greeks no more

knew what an _entelechia_ was than do the South Sea islanders; nor have

our doctors any more knowledge of what a soul is.

_His Morals._

Aristotle's morals, like all others, are good, for there are not two

systems of morality. Those of Confucius, of Zoroaster, of Pythagoras, of

Aristotle, of Epictetus, of Antoninus, are absolutely the same. God has

placed in every breast the knowledge of good, with some inclination for

evil.

Aristotle says that to be virtuous three things are necessary--nature,

reason, and habit; and nothing is more true. Without a good disposition,

virtue is too difficult; reason strengthens it; and habit renders good

actions as familiar as a daily exercise to which one is accustomed.

He enumerates all the virtues, and does not fail to place friendship

among them. He distinguishes friendship between equals, between

relatives, between guests, and between lovers. Friendship springing from

the rights of hospitality is no longer known among us. That which, among

the ancients, was the sacred bond of society is, with us, nothing but an

innkeeper's reckoning; and as for lovers, it is very rarely nowadays

that virtue has anything to do with love. We think we owe nothing to a

woman to whom we have a thousand times promised everything.

It is a melancholy reflection that our first thinkers have never ranked

friendship among the virtues--have rarely recommended friendship; but,

on the contrary, have often seemed to breathe enmity, like tyrants, who

dread all associations.

It is, moreover, with very good reason that Aristotle places all the

virtues between the two extremes. He was, perhaps, the first who

assigned them this place. He expressly says that piety is the medium

between atheism and superstition.

_His Rhetoric._

It was probably his rules for rhetoric and poetry that Cicero and

Quintilian had in view. Cicero, in his "Orator" says that "no one had

more science, sagacity, invention, or judgment." Quintilian goes so far

as to praise, not only the extent of his knowledge, but also the suavity

of his elocution--_suavitatem eloquendi._

Aristotle would have an orator well informed respecting laws, finances,

treaties, fortresses, garrisons, provisions, and merchandise. The

orators in the parliaments of England, the diets of Poland, the states

of Sweden, the _pregadi_ of Venice, etc., would not find these lessons

of Aristotle unprofitable; to other nations, perhaps, they would be so.

He would have his orator know the passions and manners of men, and the

humors of every condition.

I think there is not a single nicety of the art which has escaped him.

He particularly commends the citing of instances where public affairs

are spoken of; nothing has so great an effect on the minds of men.

What he says on this subject proves that he wrote his "Rhetoric" long

before Alexander was appointed captain-general of the Greeks against the

great king.

"If," says he, "any one had to prove to the Greeks that it is to their

interest to oppose the enterprises of the king of Persia, and to prevent

him from making himself master of Egypt, he should first remind them

that Darius Ochus would not attack Greece until Egypt was in his power;

he should remark that Xerxes had pursued the same course; he should add

that it was not to be doubted that Darius Codomannus would do the same;

and that, therefore, they must not suffer him to take possession of

Egypt."

He even permits, in speeches delivered to great assemblies, the

introduction of parables and fables; they always strike the multitude.

He relates some ingenious ones, which are of the highest antiquity, as

the horse that implored the assistance of man to avenge himself on the

stag, and became a slave through having sought a protector.

It may be remarked that, in the second book, where he treats of arguing

from the greater to the less, he gives an example which plainly shows

what was the opinion of Greece, and probably of Asia, respecting the

extent of the power of the gods.

"If," says he, "it be true that the gods themselves, enlightened as they

are, cannot know everything, much less can men." This passage clearly

proves that omniscience was not then attributed to the Divinity. It was

conceived that the gods could not know what was not; the future was not,

therefore it seemed impossible that they should know it. This is the

opinion of the Socinians at the present day.

But to return to Aristotle's "Rhetoric." What I shall chiefly remark on

in his book on elocution and diction is the good sense with which he

condemns those who would be poets in prose. He would have pathos, but he

banishes bombast, and proscribes useless epithets. Indeed, Demosthenes

and Cicero, who followed his precepts, never affected the poetic style

in their speeches. "The style," says Aristotle, "must always be

conformable to the subject."

Nothing can be more misplaced than to speak of physics poetically, and

lavish figure and ornament where there should be only method, clearness,

and truth. It is the quackery of a man who would pass off false systems

under cover of an empty noise of words. Weak minds are caught by the

bait, and strong minds disdain it.

Among us the funeral oration has taken possession of the poetic style in

prose; but this branch of oratory, consisting almost entirely of

exaggeration, seems privileged to borrow the ornaments of poetry.

The writers of romances have sometimes taken this licence. La Calprenède

was, I think, the first who thus transposed the limits of the arts, and

abused this facility. The author of "Telemachus" was pardoned through

consideration for Homer, whom he imitated, though he could not make

verses, and still more in consideration of his morality, in which he

infinitely surpasses Homer, who has none at all. But he owed his

popularity chiefly to the criticism on the pride of Louis XIV. and the

harshness of Louvois, which, it was thought, were discoverable in

"Telemachus."

Be this as it may, nothing can be a better proof of Aristotle's good

sense and good taste than his having assigned to everything its proper

place.

_Aristotle on Poetry._

Where, in our modern nations, shall we find a natural philosopher, a

geometrician, a metaphysician, or even a moralist who has spoken well on

the subject of poetry? They teem with the names of Homer, Virgil,

Sophocles, Ariosto, Tasso, and so many others who have charmed the world

by the harmonious productions of their genius, but they feel not their

beauties; or if they feel them they would annihilate them.

How ridiculous is it in Pascal to say: "As we say poetical beauty, we

should likewise say geometrical beauty, and medicinal beauty. Yet we do

not say so, and the reason is that we well know what is the object of

geometry, and what is the object of medicine, but we do not know in what

the peculiar charm--which is the object of poetry--consists. We know not

what that natural model is which must be imitated; and for want of this

knowledge we have invented certain fantastic terms, as age of gold,

wonder of the age, fatal wreath, fair star, etc. And this jargon we call

poetic beauty."

The pitifulness of this passage is sufficiently obvious. We know that

there is nothing beautiful in a medicine, nor in the properties of a

triangle; and that we apply the term "beautiful" only to that which

raises admiration in our minds and gives pleasure to our senses. Thus

reasons Aristotle; and Pascal here reasons very ill. Fatal wreath, fair

star, have never been poetic beauties. If he wished to know what is

poetic beauty, he had only to read.

Nicole wrote against the stage, about which he had not a single idea;

and was seconded by one Dubois, who was as ignorant of the _belles

lettres_ as himself.

Even Montesquieu, in his amusing "Persian Letters," has the petty vanity

to think that Homer and Virgil are nothing in comparison with one who

imitates with spirit and success Dufrénoy's _"Siamois,"_ and fills his

book with bold assertions, without which it would not have been read.

"What," says he, "are epic poems? I know them not. I despise the lyric

as much as I esteem the tragic poets." He should not, however, have

despised Pindar and Horace quite so much. Aristotle did not despise

Pindar.

Descartes did, it is true, write for Queen Christina a little

_divertissement_ in verse, which was quite worthy of his _matière

cannelée_.

Malebranche could not distinguish Corneille's _"Qu'il mourût"_ from a

line of Jodèle's or Garnier's.

What a man, then, was Aristotle, who traced the rules of tragedy with

the same hand with which he had laid down those of dialectics, of

morals, of politics, and lifted, as far as he found it possible, the

great veil of nature!

To his fourth chapter on poetry Boileau is indebted for these fine

lines:

_Il n'est point de serpent, ni de monstre odieux_

_Qui, par l'art imité, ne puisse plaire aux yeux._

_D'un pinceau délicat l'artifice agréable_

_Du plus affreux object fait un objet aimable;_

_Ainsi, pour nous charmer, la tragédie eut pleurs_

_D'Œdipe tout-sanglant fit parler les douleurs._

Each horrid shape, each object of affright,

Nice imitation teaches to delight;

So does the skilful painter's pleasing art

Attractions to the darkest form impart;

So does the tragic Muse, dissolved in tears.

With tales of woe and sorrow charm our ears.

Aristotle says: "Imitation and harmony have produced poetry. We see

terrible animals, dead or dying men, in a picture, with

pleasure--objects which in nature would inspire us only with fear and

sorrow. The better they are imitated the more complete is our

satisfaction."

This fourth chapter of Aristotle's reappears almost entire in Horace and

Boileau. The laws which he gives in the following chapters are at this

day those of our good writers, excepting only what relates to the

choruses and music. His idea that tragedy was instituted to purify the

passions has been warmly combated; but if he meant, as I believe he did,

that an incestuous love might be subdued by witnessing the misfortune of

Phædra, or anger be repressed by beholding the melancholy example of

Ajax, there is no longer any difficulty.

This philosopher expressly commands that there be always the heroic in

tragedy and the ridiculous in comedy. This is a rule from which it is,

perhaps, now becoming too customary to depart.

ARMS--ARMIES.

It is worthy of consideration that there have been and still are, upon

the earth societies without armies. The Brahmins, who long governed

nearly all the great Indian Chersonesus; the primitives, called Quakers,

who governed Pennsylvania; some American tribes, some in the centre of

Africa, the Samoyedes, the Laplanders, the Kamchadales, have never

marched with colors flying to destroy their neighbors.

The Brahmins were the most considerable of all these pacific nations;

their caste, which is so ancient, which is still existing, and compared

with which all other institutions are quite recent, is a prodigy which

cannot be sufficiently admired. Their religion and their policy always

concurred in abstaining from the shedding of blood, even of that of the

meanest animal. Where such is the regime, subjugation is easy; they have

been subjugated, but have not changed.

The Pennsylvanians never had an army; they always held war in

abhorrence.

Several of the American tribes did not know what an army was until the

Spaniards came to exterminate them all. The people on the borders of the

Icy Sea are ignorant alike of armies, of the god of armies, of

battalions, and of squadrons.

Besides these populations, the priests and monks do not bear arms in

any country--at least when they observe the laws of their institution.

It is only among Christians that there have been religious societies

established for the purpose of fighting--as the Knights Templars, the

Knights of St. John, the Knights of the Teutonic Order, the Knights

Swordbearers. These religious orders were instituted in imitation of the

Levites, who fought like the rest of the Jewish tribes.

Neither armies nor arms were the same in antiquity as at present. The

Egyptians hardly ever had cavalry. It would have been of little use in a

country intersected by canals, inundated during five months of the year,

and miry during five more. The inhabitants of a great part of Asia used

chariots of war.

They are mentioned in the annals of China. Confucius says that in his

time each governor of a province furnished to the emperor a thousand war

chariots, each drawn by four horses. The Greeks and Trojans fought in

chariots drawn by two horses.

Cavalry and chariots were unknown to the Jews in a mountainous tract,

where their first king, when he was elected, had nothing but she-asses.

Thirty sons of Jair, princes of thirty cities, according to the text

(Judges, x, 4), rode each upon an ass. Saul, afterwards king of Judah,

had only she-asses; and the sons of David all fled upon mules when

Absalom had slain his brother Amnon. Absalom was mounted on a mule in

the battle which he fought against his father's troops; which proves,

according to the Jewish historians, either that mares were beginning to

be used in Palestine, or that they were already rich enough there to buy

mules from the neighboring country.

The Greeks made but little use of cavalry. It was chiefly with the

Macedonian phalanx that Alexander gained the battles which laid Persia

at his feet. It was the Roman infantry that subjugated the greater part

of the world. At the battle of Pharsalia, Cæsar had but one thousand

horsemen.

It is not known at what time the Indians and the Africans first began to

march elephants at the head of their armies. We cannot read without

surprise of Hannibal's elephants crossing the Alps, which were much

harder to pass then than they are now.

There have long been disputes about the disposition of the Greek and

Roman armies, their arms, and their evolutions. Each one has given his

plan of the battles of Zama and Pharsalia.

The commentator Calmet, a Benedictine, has printed three great volumes

of his "Dictionary of the Bible," in which, the better to explain God's

commandments, are inserted a hundred engravings, where you see plans of

battles and sieges in copper-plate. The God of the Jews was the God of

armies, but Calmet was not His secretary; he cannot have known, but by

revelation, how the armies of the Amalekites, the Moabites, the Syrians,

and the Philistines were arranged on the days of general murder. These

plates of carnage, designed at a venture, made his hook five or six

louis dearer, but made it no better.

It is a great question whether the Franks, whom the Jesuit Daniel calls

French by anticipation, used bows and arrows in their armies, and

whether they had helmets and cuirasses.

Supposing that they went to combat almost naked, and armed, as they are

said to have been, with only a small carpenter's ax, a sword, and a

knife, we must infer that the Romans, masters of Gaul, so easily

conquered by Clovis, had lost all their ancient valor, and that the

Gauls were as willing to be subject to a small number of Franks as to a

small number of Romans. Warlike accoutrements have since changed, as

everything else changes.

In the days of knights, squires, and varlets, the armed forces of

Germany, France, Italy, England, and Spain consisted almost entirely of

horsemen, who, as well as their horses, were covered with steel. The

infantry performed the functions rather of pioneers than of soldiers.

But the English always had good archers among their foot, which

contributed, in a great measure, to their gaining almost every battle.

Who would believe that armies nowadays do but make experiments in

natural philosophy? A soldier would be much astonished if some learned

man were to say to him:

"My friend, you are a better machinist than Archimedes. Five parts of

saltpetre, one of sulphur, and one of _carbo ligneus_ have been

separately prepared. Your saltpetre dissolved, well filtered, well

evaporated, well crystallized, well turned, well dried, has been

incorporated with the yellow purified sulphur. These two ingredients,

mixed with powdered charcoal, have, by means of a little vinegar, or

solution of sal-ammoniac, or urine, formed large balls, which balls have

been reduced _in pulverem pyrium_ by a mill. The effect of this mixture

is a dilatation, which is nearly as four thousand to unity; and the lead

in your barrel exhibits another effect, which is the product of its bulk

multiplied by its velocity.

"The first who discovered a part of this mathematical secret was a

Benedictine named Roger Bacon. The invention was perfected, in Germany,

in the fourteenth century, by another Benedictine named Schwartz. So

that you owe to two monks the art of being an excellent murderer, when

you aim well, and your powder is good.

"Du Cange has in vain pretended that, in 1338, the registers of the

_Chambre des Comptes_, at Paris, mention a bill paid for gunpowder. Do

not believe it. It was artillery which is there spoken of--a name

attached to ancient as well as to modern warlike machines.

"Gunpowder entirely superseded the Greek fire, of which the Moors still

made use. In fine, you are the depositary of an art, which not only

imitates the thunder, but is also much more terrible."

There is, however, nothing but truth in this speech. Two monks have, in

reality, changed the face of the earth.

Before cannon were known, the northern nations had subjugated nearly the

whole hemisphere, and could come again, like famishing wolves, to seize

upon the lands as their ancestors had done.

In all armies, the victory, and consequently the fate of kingdoms, was

decided by bodily strength and agility--a sort of sanguinary fury--a

desperate struggle, man to man. Intrepid men took towns by scaling their

walls. During the decline of the Roman Empire there was hardly more

discipline in the armies of the North than among carnivorous beasts

rushing on their prey.

Now a single frontier fortress would suffice to stop the armies of

Genghis or Attila. It is not long since a victorious army of Russians

were unavailably consumed before Custrin, which is nothing more than a

little fortress in a marsh.

In battle, the weakest in body may, with well-directed artillery,

prevail against the stoutest. At the battle of Fontenoy a few cannon

were sufficient to compel the retreat of the whole English column,

though it had been master of the field.

The combatants no longer close. The soldier has no longer that ardor,

that impetuosity, which is redoubled in the heat of action, when the

fight is hand to hand. Strength, skill, and even the temper of the

weapons, are useless. Rarely is a charge with the bayonet made in the

course of a war, though the bayonet is the most terrible of weapons.

In a plain, frequently surrounded by redoubts furnished with heavy

artillery, two armies advance in silence, each division taking with it

flying artillery. The first lines lire at one another and after one

another: they are victims presented in turn to the bullets. Squadrons at

the wings are often exposed to a cannonading while waiting for the

general's orders. They who first tire of this manœuvre, which gives

no scope for the display of impetuous bravery, disperse and quit the

field; and are rallied, if possible, a few miles off. The victorious

enemies besiege a town, which sometimes costs them more men, money, and

time than they would have lost by several battles. The progress made is

rarely rapid; and at the end of five or six years, both sides, being

equally exhausted, are compelled to make peace.

Thus, at all events, the invention of artillery and the new mode of

warfare have established among the respective powers an equality which

secures mankind from devastations like those of former times, and

thereby renders war less fatal in its consequences, though it is still

prodigiously so.

The Greeks in all ages, the Romans in the time of Sulla, and the other

nations of the west and south, had no standing army; every citizen was a

soldier, and enrolled himself in time of war. It is, at this day,

precisely the same in Switzerland. Go through the whole country, and

you will not find a battalion, except at the time of the reviews. If it

goes to war, you all at once see eighty thousand men in arms.

Those who usurped the supreme power after Sulla always had a permanent

force, paid with the money of the citizens, to keep the citizens in

subjection, much more than to subjugate other nations. The bishop of

Rome himself keeps a small army in his pay. Who, in the time of the

apostles, would have said that the servant of the servants of God should

have regiments, and have them in Rome?

Nothing is so much feared in England as a great standing army. The

janissaries have raised the sultans to greatness, but they have also

strangled them. The sultans would have avoided the rope, if instead of

these large bodies of troops, they had established small ones.

AROT AND MAROT.

WITH A SHORT REVIEW OF THE KORAN.

This article may serve to show how much the most learned men may be

deceived, and to develop some useful truths. In the _"Dictionnaire

Encyclopédique"_ there is the following passage concerning Arot and

Marot:

"These are the names of two angels, who, the impostor Mahomet said, had

been sent from God to teach man, and to order him to abstain from

murder, false judgments, and excesses of every kind. This false prophet

adds that a very beautiful woman, having invited these two angels to her

table, made them drink wine, with which being heated, they solicited her

as lovers; that she feigned to yield to their passion, provided they

would first teach her the words by pronouncing which they said it was

easy to ascend to heaven; that having obtained from them what she asked,

she would not keep her promise; and that she was then taken up into

heaven, where, having related to God what had passed, she was changed

into the morning star called Lucifer or Aurora, and the angels were

severely punished. Hence it was, according to Mahomet, that God took

occasion to forbid wine to men."

It would be in vain to seek in the Koran for a single word of this

absurd story and pretended reason for Mahomet's forbidding his followers

the use of wine. He forbids it only in the second and fifth chapters.

"They will question thee about wine and strong liquors: thou shalt

answer, that it is a great sin. The just, who believe and do good works,

must not be reproached with having drunk, and played at games of chance,

before games of chance were forbidden."

It is averred by all the Mahometans that their prophet forbade wine and

liquors solely to preserve their health and prevent quarrels, in the

burning climate of Arabia. The use of any fermented liquor soon affects

the head, and may destroy both health and reason.

The fable of Arot and Marot descending from heaven, and wanting to lie

with an Arab woman, after drinking wine with her, is not in any

Mahometan author. It is to be found only among the impostures which

various Christian writers, more indiscreet than enlightened, have

printed against the Mussulman religion, through a zeal which is not

according to knowledge. The names of Arot and Marot are in no part of

the Koran. It is one Sylburgius who says, in an old book which nobody

reads, that he anathematizes the angels Arot, Marot, Safah, and Merwah.

Observe, kind reader, that Safah and Merwah are two little hills near

Mecca; so that our learned Sylburgius has taken two hills for two

angels. Thus it was with every writer on Mahometanism among us, almost

without exception, until the intelligent Reland gave us clear ideas of

the Mussulman belief, and the learned Sale, after living twenty-four

years in and about Arabia, at length enlightened us by his faithful

translation of the Koran, and his most instructive preface.

Gagnier himself, notwithstanding his Arabic professorship at Oxford, has

been pleased to put forth a few falsehoods concerning Mahomet, as if we

had need of lies to maintain the truth of our religion against a false

prophet. He gives us at full length Mahomet's journey through the seven

heavens on the mare Alborac, and even ventures to cite the fifty-third

sura or chapter; but neither in this fifty-third sura, nor in any other,

is there so much as an allusion to this pretended journey through the

heavens.

This strange story is related by Abulfeda, seven hundred years after

Mahomet. It is taken, he says, from ancient manuscripts which were

current in Mahomet's time. But it is evident that they were not

Mahomet's; for, after his death, Abubeker gathered together all the

leaves of the Koran, in the presence of all the chiefs of tribes, and

nothing was inserted in the collection that did not appear to be

authentic.

Besides, the chapter concerning the journey to heaven, not only is not

in the Koran, but is in a very different style, and is at least four

times as long as any of the received chapters. Compare all the other

chapters of the Koran with this, and you will find a prodigious

difference. It begins thus:

"One night, I fell asleep between the two hills of Safah and Merwah.

That night was very dark, but so still that the dogs were not heard to

bark, nor the cocks to crow. All at once, the angel Gabriel appeared

before me in the form in which the Most High God created him. His skin

was white as snow. His fair hair, admirably disposed, fell in ringlets

over his shoulders; his forehead was clear, majestic, and serene, his

teeth beautiful and shining, and his legs of a saffron hue; his garments

were glittering with pearls, and with thread of pure gold. On his

forehead was a plate of gold, on which were written two lines, brilliant

and dazzling with light; in the first were these words, 'There is no God

but God'; and in the second these, 'Mahomet is God's Apostle.' On

beholding this, I remained the most astonished and confused of men. I

observed about him seventy thousand little boxes or bags of musk and

saffron. He had five hundred pairs of wings; and the distance from one

wing to another was five hundred years' journey.

"Thus did Gabriel appear before me. He touched me, and said, 'Arise,

thou sleeper!' I was seized with fear and trembling, and starting up,

said to him, 'Who art thou?' He answered, 'God have mercy upon thee! I

am thy brother Gabriel.' 'O my dearly beloved Gabriel,' said I, 'I ask

thy pardon; is it a revelation of something new, or is it some

afflicting threat that thou bringest me?' 'It is something new,'

returned he; 'rise, my dearly beloved, and tie thy mantle over thy

shoulders; thou wilt have need of it, for thou must this night pay a

visit to thy Lord.' So saying, Gabriel, taking my hand, raised me from

the ground, and having mounted me on the mare Alborac, led her himself

by the bridle."

In fine, it is averred by the Mussulmans that this chapter, which has no

authenticity, was imagined by Abu-Horaïrah, who is said to have been

contemporary with the prophet. What should we say of a Turk who should

come and insult our religion by telling us that we reckon among our

sacred books the letters of St. Paul to Seneca, and Seneca's letters to

St. Paul; the acts of Pilate; the life of Pilate's wife; the letters of

the pretended King Abgarus to Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ's answer to

the same; the story of St. Peter's challenge to Simon the magician; the

predictions of the sibyls; the testament of the twelve patriarchs; and

so many other books of the same kind?

We should answer the Turk by saying that he was very ill informed and

that not one of these works was regarded as authentic. The Turk will

make the same answer to us, when to confound him we reproach him with

Mahomet's journey to the seven heavens. He will tell us that this is

nothing more than a pious fraud of latter times, and that this journey

is not in the Koran. Assuredly I am not here comparing truth with

error--Christianity with Mahometanism--the Gospel with the Koran; but

false tradition with false tradition--abuse with abuse--absurdity with

absurdity.

This absurdity has been carried to such a length that Grotius charges

Mahomet with having said that God's hands are cold, for he has felt

them; that God is carried about in a chair; and that, in Noah's ark, the

rat was produced from the elephant's dung, and the cat from the lion's

breath.

Grotius reproaches Mahomet with having imagined that Jesus Christ was

taken up into heaven instead of suffering execution. He forgets that

there were entire heretical communions of primitive Christians who

spread this opinion, which was preserved in Syria and Arabia until

Mahomet's time.

How many times has it been repeated that Mahomet had accustomed a pigeon

to eat grain out of his ear, and made his followers believe that this

pigeon brought him messages from God?

Is it not enough for us that we are persuaded of the falseness of his

sect, and invincibly convinced by faith of the truth of our own, without

losing our time in calumniating the Mahometans, who have established

themselves from Mount Caucasus to Mount Atlas, and from the confines of

Epirus to the extremities of India? We are incessantly writing bad books

against them, of which they know nothing. We cry out that their religion

has been embraced by so many nations only because it flatters the

senses. But where is the sensuality in ordering abstinence from the wine

and liquors in which we indulge to such excess; in pronouncing to every

one an indispensable command to give to the poor each year two and a

half per cent, of his income, to fast with the greatest rigor, to

undergo a painful operation in the earliest stage of puberty, to make,

over arid sands a pilgrimage of sometimes five hundred leagues, and to

pray to God five times a day, even when in the field?

But, say you, they are allowed four wives in this world, and in the next

they will have celestial brides. Grotius expressly says: "It must have

required a great share of stupidity to admit reveries so gross and

disgusting."

We agree with Grotius that the Mahometans have been prodigal of

reveries. The man who was constantly receiving the chapters of his Koran

from the angel Gabriel was worse than a visionary; he was an impostor,

who supported his seductions by his courage; but certainly there is

nothing either stupid or sensual in reducing to four the unlimited

number of wives whom the princes, the satraps, the nabobs, and the

omrahs of the East kept in their seraglios. It is said that Solomon had

three hundred wives and seven hundred concubines. The Arabs, like the

Jews, were at liberty to marry two sisters; Mahomet was the first who

forbade these marriages. Where, then, is the grossness?

And with regard to the celestial brides, where is the impurity? Certes,

there is nothing impure in marriage, which is acknowledged to have been

ordained on earth, and blessed by God Himself. The incomprehensible

mystery of generation is the seal of the Eternal Being. It is the

clearest mark of His power that He has created pleasure, and through

that very pleasure perpetuated all sensible beings.

If we consult our reason alone it will tell us that it is very likely

that the Eternal Being, who does nothing in vain, will not cause us to

rise again with our organs to no purpose. It will not be unworthy of the

Divine Majesty to feed us with delicious fruits if he cause us to rise

again with stomachs to receive them. The Holy Scriptures inform us

that, in the beginning, God placed the first man and the first woman in

a paradise of delights. They were then in a state of innocence and

glory, incapable of experiencing disease or death. This is nearly the

state in which the just will be when, after their resurrection, they

shall be for all eternity what our first parents were for a few days.

Those, then, must be pardoned, who have thought that, having a body,

that body will be constantly satisfied. Our fathers of the Church had no

other idea of the heavenly Jerusalem. St. Irenæus says, "There each vine

shall bear ten thousand branches, each branch ten thousand clusters, and

each cluster ten thousand grapes."

Several fathers of the Church have, indeed, thought that the blessed in

heaven would enjoy all their senses. St. Thomas says that the sense of

seeing will be infinitely perfect; that the elements will be so too;

that the surface of the earth will be transparent as glass, the water

like crystal, the air like the heavens, and the fire like the stars. St.

Augustine, in his "Christian Doctrine," says that the sense of hearing

will enjoy the pleasures of singing and of speech.

One of our great Italian theologians, named Piazza, in his "Dissertation

on Paradise," informs us that the elect will forever sing and play the

guitar: "They will have," says he, "three nobilities--three advantages,

viz.: desire without excitement, caresses without wantonness, and

voluptuousness without excess"--_"tres nobilitates; illecebra sine

titillatione, blanditia sine mollitudine, et voluptas sine

exuberantia."_

St. Thomas assures us that the smell of the glorified bodies will be

perfect, and will not be diminished by perspiration. _"Corporibus

gloriosi serit odor ultima perfectione, nullo modo per humidum

repressus."_ This question has been profoundly treated by a great many

other doctors.

Suarez, in his "Wisdom," thus expresses himself concerning taste: "It is

not difficult for God purposely to make some rapid humor act on the

organ of taste." _"Non est Deo difficile facere ut sapidus humor sit

intra organum gustus, qui sensum illum intentionaliter afficere."_

And, to conclude, St. Prosper, recapitulating the whole, pronounces that

the blessed shall find gratification without satiety, and enjoy health

without disease. _"Saturitas sine fastidio, et tota sanitas sine

morbo._"

It is not then so much to be wondered at that the Mahometans have

admitted the use of the five senses in their paradise. They say that the

first beatitude will be the union with God; but this does not exclude

the rest. Mahomet's paradise is a fable; but; once more be it observed,

there is in it neither contradiction nor impurity.

Philosophy requires clear and precise ideas, which Grotius had not. He

quotes a great deal, and makes a show of reasoning which will not bear

a close examination. The unjust imputations cast on the Mahometans would

suffice to make a very large book. They have subjugated one of the

largest and most beautiful countries upon earth; to drive them from it

would have been a finer exploit than to abuse them.

The empress of Russia supplies a great example. She takes from them Azov

and Tangarok, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Georgia; she pushes her conquests

to the ramparts of Erzerum; she sends against them fleets from the

remotest parts of the Baltic, and others covering the Euxine; but she

does not say in her manifestos that a pigeon whispered in Mahomet's ear.

ART OF POETRY.

A MAN

A man of almost universal learning--a man even of genius, who joins

philosophy with imagination, uses, in his excellent article

"Encyclopedia," these remarkable words: "If we except this Perrault, and

some others, whose merits the versifier Boileau was not capable of

appreciating."

This philosopher is right in doing justice to Claude Perrault, the

learned translator of Vitruvius, a man useful in more arts than one, and

to whom we are indebted for the fine front of the Louvre and for other

great monuments; but justice should also be rendered to Boileau. Had he

been only a versifier, he would scarcely have been known; he would not

have been one of the few great men who will hand down the age of Louis

XIV. to posterity. His tart satires, his fine epistles, and above all,

his art of poetry, are masterpieces of reasoning as well as

poetry--_"sapere est principium et fons."_ The art of versifying is,

indeed, prodigiously difficult, especially in our language, where

alexandrines follow one another two by two; where it is rare to avoid

monotony; where it is absolutely necessary to rhyme; where noble and

pleasing rhymes are too limited in number; and where a word out of its

place, or a harsh syllable, is sufficient to spoil a happy thought. It

is like dancing in fetters on a rope; the greatest success is of itself

nothing.

Boileau's art of poetry is to be admired, because he always says true

and useful things in a pleasing manner, because he always gives both

precept and example, and because he is varied, passing with perfect

ease, and without ever failing in purity of language, "From grave to

gay, from lively to severe."

His reputation among men of taste is proved by the fact that his verses

are known by heart; and to philosophers it must be pleasing to find that

he is almost always in the right.

As we have spoken of the preference which may sometimes be given to the

moderns over the ancients, we will here venture to presume that

Boileau's art of poetry is superior to that of Horace. Method is

certainly a beauty in a didactic poem; and Horace has no method. We do

not mention this as a reproach; for his poem is a familiar epistle to

the Pisos, and not a regular work like the "Georgics": but there is this

additional merit in Boileau, a merit for which philosophers should give

him credit.

The Latin art of poetry does not seem nearly so finely labored as the

French. Horace expresses himself, almost throughout, in the free and

familiar tone of his other epistles. He displays an extreme clearness of

understanding and a refined taste, in verses which are happy and

spirited, but often without connection, and sometimes destitute of

harmony; he has not the elegance and correctness of Virgil. His work is

good, but Boileau's appears to be still better: and, if we except the

tragedies of Racine, which have the superior merit of treating the

passions and surmounting all the difficulties of the stage, Despréaux's

"Art of Poetry" is, indisputably, the poem that does most honor to the

French language.

It is lamentable when philosophers are enemies to poetry. Literature

should be like the house of Mæcenas--_"est locus unicuique suus."_ The

author of the "Persian Letters"--so easy to write and among which some

are very pretty, others very bold, others indifferent, and others

frivolous--this author, I say, though otherwise much to be recommended,

yet having never been able to make verses, although he possesses

imagination and often superiority of style, makes himself amends by

saying that "contempt is heaped upon poetry," that "lyric poetry is

harmonious extravagance." Thus do men often seek to depreciate the

talents which they cannot attain.

"We cannot reach it," says Montaigne; "let us revenge ourselves by

speaking ill of it." But Montaigne, Montesquieu's predecessor and master

in imagination and philosophy, thought very differently of poetry.

Had Montesquieu been as just as he was witty, he could not but have felt

that several of our fine odes and good operas are worth infinitely more

than the pleasantries of Rica to Usbeck, imitated from Dufrénoy's

_"Siamois,"_ and the details of what passed in Usbeck's seraglio at

Ispahan.

We shall speak more fully of this too frequent injustice, in the article

on "Criticism."

ARTS--FINE ARTS.

[ARTICLE DEDICATED TO THE KING OF PRUSSIA.]

Sire: The small society of amateurs, a part of whom are laboring at

these rhapsodies at Mount Krapak, will say nothing to your majesty on

the art of war. It is heroic, or--it may be--an abominable art. If there

were anything fine in it, we would tell your majesty, without fear of

contradiction, that you are the finest man in Europe.

You know, sire, the four ages of the arts. Almost everything sprung up

and was brought to perfection under Louis XIV.; after which many of

these arts, banished from France, went to embellish and enrich the rest

of Europe, at the fatal period of the destruction of the celebrated

edict of Henry IV.--pronounced _irrevocable_, yet so easily revoked.

Thus, the greatest injury which Louis XIV. could do to himself did good

to other princes against his will: this is proved by what you have said

in your history of Brandenburg.

If that monarch were known only from his banishment of six or seven

hundred thousand useful citizens--from his irruption into Holland,

whence he was soon forced to retreat--from his greatness, which stayed

him at the bank, while his troops were swimming across the Rhine; if

there were no other monuments of his glory than the prologues to his

operas, followed by the battle of Hochstet, his person and his reign

would go down to posterity with but little éclat. But the encouragement

of all the fine arts by his taste and munificence; the conferring of so

many benefits on the literary men of other countries; the rise of his

kingdom's commerce at his voice; the establishment of so many

manufactories; the building of so many fine citadels; the construction

of so many admirable ports; the union of the two seas by immense labor,

etc., still oblige Europe to regard Louis XIV. and his age with respect.

And, above all, those great men, unique in every branch of art and

science, whom nature then produced at one time, will render his reign

eternally memorable. The age was greater than Louis XIV., but it shed

its glory upon him.

Emulation in art has changed the face of the continent, from the

Pyrenees to the icy sea. There is hardly a prince in Germany who has not

made useful and glorious establishments.

What have the Turks done for glory? Nothing. They have ravaged three

empires and twenty kingdoms; but any one city of ancient Greece will

always have a greater reputation than all the Ottoman cities together.

See what has been done in the course of a few years at St. Petersburg,

which was a bog at the beginning of the seventeenth century. All the

arts are there assembled, while in the country of Orpheus, Linus, and

Homer, they are annihilated.

_That the Recent Birth of the Arts does not Prove the Recent Formation

of the Globe._

All philosophers have thought matter eternal; but the arts appear to be

new. Even the art of making bread is of recent origin. The first Romans

ate boiled grain; those conquerors of so many nations had neither

windmills nor watermills. This truth seems, at first sight, to

controvert the doctrine of the antiquity of the globe as it now is, or

to suppose terrible revolutions in it. Irruptions of barbarians can

hardly annihilate arts which have become necessary. Suppose that an army

of negroes were to come upon us, like locusts, from the mountains of

southern Africa, through Monomotapa, Monoëmugi, etc., traversing

Abyssinia, Nubia, Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and all Europe, ravaging

and overturning everything in its way; there would still be a few

bakers, tailors, shoemakers, and carpenters left; the necessary arts

would revive; luxury alone would be annihilated. Such was the case at

the fall of the Roman Empire; even the art of writing became very rare;

nearly all those arts which contributed to render life agreeable were

for a long time extinct. Now, we are inventing new ones every day.

From all this, no well-grounded inference can be drawn against the

antiquity of the globe. For, supposing that a flood of barbarians had

entirely swept away the arts of writing and making bread; supposing even

that we had had bread, or pens, ink, and paper, only for ten years--the

country which could exist for ten years without eating bread or writing

down its thoughts could exist for an age, or a hundred thousand ages,

without these helps.

It is quite clear that man and the other animals can very well subsist

without bakers, without romance-writers, and without divines, as witness

America, and as witness also three-fourths of our own continent. The

recent birth of the arts among us does not prove the recent formation of

the globe, as was pretended by Epicurus, one of our predecessors in

reverie, who supposed that, by chance, the declination of atoms one day

formed our earth. Pomponatius used to say: _"Se il mondo non é eterno,

per tutti santi é molto vecchio"_--"If this world be not eternal, by all

the saints, it is very old."

_Slight Inconveniences Attached to the Arts._

Those who handle lead and quicksilver are subject to dangerous colics,

and very serious affections of the nerves. Those who use pen and ink are

attacked by vermin, which they have continually to shake off; these

vermin are some ex-Jesuits, who employ themselves in manufacturing

libels. You, Sire, do not know this race of animals; they are driven

from your states, as well as from those of the empress of Russia, the

king of Sweden, and the king of Denmark, my other protectors. The

ex-Jesuits Polian and Nonotte, who like me cultivate the fine arts,

persecute me even unto Mount Krapak, crushing me under the weight of

their reputation, and that of their genius, the specific gravity of

which is still greater. Unless your majesty vouchsafe to assist me

against these great men, I am undone.

ASMODEUS.

No one at all versed in antiquity is ignorant that the Jews knew nothing

of the angels but what they gleaned from the Persians and Chaldæans,

during captivity. It was they, who, according to Calmet, taught them

that there are seven principal angels before the throne of the Lord.

They also taught them the names of the devils. He whom we call Asmodeus,

was named Hashmodaï or Chammadaï. "We know," says Calmet, "that there

are various sorts of devils, some of them princes and master-demons, the

rest subalterns."

How was it that this Hashmodaï was sufficiently powerful to twist the

necks of seven young men who successively espoused the beautiful Sarah,

a native of Rages, fifteen leagues from Ecbatana? The Medes must have

been seven times as great as the Persians. The good principle gives a

husband to this maiden; and behold! the bad principle, this king of

demons, Hashmodaï, destroys the work of the beneficent principle seven

times in succession.

But Sarah was a Jewess, daughter of the Jew Raguel, and a captive in the

country of Ecbatana. How could a Median demon have such power over

Jewish bodies? It has been thought that Asmodeus or Chammadaï was a Jew

likewise; that he was the old serpent which had seduced Eve; and that he

was passionately fond of women, sometimes seducing them, and sometimes

killing their husbands through an excess of love and jealousy.

Indeed the Greek version of the Book of Tobit gives us to understand

that Asmodeus was in love with Sarah--_"oti daimonion philei autein."_

It was the opinion of all the learned of antiquity that the genii,

whether good or evil, had a great inclination for our virgins, and the

fairies for our youths. Even the Scriptures, accommodating themselves to

our weakness, and condescending to speak in the language of the vulgar,

say, figuratively, that "the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that

they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose."

But the angel Raphael, the conductor of young Tobit, gives him a reason

more worthy of his ministry, and better calculated to enlighten the

person whom he is guiding. He tells him that Sarah's seven husbands were

given up to the cruelty of Asmodeus, only because, like horses or mules,

they had married her for their pleasure alone. "Her husband," says the

angel, "must observe continence with her for three days, during which

time they must pray to God together."

This instruction would seem to have been quite sufficient to keep off

Asmodeus; but Raphael adds that it is also necessary to have the heart

of a fish grilled over burning coals. Why, then, was not this infallible

secret afterwards resorted to in order to drive the devil from the

bodies of women? Why did the apostles, who were sent on purpose to cast

out devils never lay a fish's heart upon the gridiron? Why was not this

expedient made use of in the affair of Martha Brossier; that of the nuns

of Loudun; that of the mistresses of Urban Gandier; that of La Cadière;

that of Father Girard; and those of a thousand other demoniacs in the

times when there were demoniacs?

The Greeks and Romans, who had so many philters wherewith to make

themselves beloved, had others to cure love; they employed herbs and

roots. The _agnus castus_ had great reputation. The moderns have

administered it to young nuns, on whom it has had but little effect.

Apollo, long ago, complained to Daphne that, physician as he was, he

had never yet met with a simple that would cure love:

_Heu mihi! quod nullis amor est medicabilis herbis._

What balm can heal the wounds that love has made?

The smoke of sulphur was tried; but Ovid, who was a great master,

declares that this recipe was useless:

_Nec fugiat viro sulphure victus amor._

Sulphur--believe me--drives not love away.

The smoke from the heart or liver of a fish was more efficacious against

Asmodeus. The reverend father Calmet is consequently in great trouble,

being unable to comprehend how this fumigation could act upon a pure

spirit. But he might have taken courage from the recollection that all

the ancients gave bodies to the angels and demons. They were very

slender bodies; as light as the small particles that rise from a broiled

fish; they were like smoke; and the smoke from a fried fish acted upon

them by sympathy.

Not only did Asmodeus flee, but Gabriel went and chained him in Upper

Egypt, where he still is. He dwells in a grotto near the city of Saata

or Taata. Paul Lucas saw and spoke to him. They cut this serpent in

pieces, and the pieces immediately joined again. To this fact Calmet

cites the testimony of Paul Lucas, which testimony I must also cite. It

is thought that Paul Lucas's theory may be joined with that of the

vampires, in the next compilation of the Abbé Guyon.

ASPHALTUS.

ASPHALTIC LAKE.--SODOM.

Asphaltus is a Chaldæan word, signifying a species of bitumen. There is

a great deal of it in the countries watered by the Euphrates; it is also

to be found in Europe, but of a bad quality. An experiment was made by

covering the tops of the watch-houses on each side of one of the gates

of Geneva; the covering did not last a year, and the mine has been

abandoned. However, when mixed with rosin, it may be used for lining

cisterns; perhaps it will some day be applied to a more useful purpose.

The real asphaltus is that which was obtained in the vicinity of

Babylon, and with which it is said that the Greek fire was fed. Several

lakes are full of asphaltus, or a bitumen resembling it, as others are

strongly impregnated with nitre. There is a great lake of nitre in the

desert of Egypt, which extends from lake Mœris to the entrance of the

Delta; and it has no other name than the Nitre Lake.

The Lake Asphaltites, known by the name of Sodom, was long famed for its

bitumen; but the Turks now make no use of it, either because the mine

under the water is diminished, because its quality is altered, or

because there is too much difficulty in drawing it from under the water.

Oily particles of it, and sometimes large masses, separate and float on

the surface; these are gathered together, mixed up, and sold for balm of

Mecca.

Flavius Josephus, who was of that country, says that, in his time, there

were no fish in the lake of Sodom, and the water was so light that the

heaviest bodies would not go to the bottom. It seems that he meant to

say so heavy instead of so light. It would appear that he had not made

the experiment. After all, a stagnant water, impregnated with salts and

compact matter, its specific matter being then greater than that of the

body of a man or a beast, might force it to float. Josephus's error

consists in assigning a false cause to a phenomenon which may be

perfectly true.

As for the want of fish, it is not incredible. It is, however, likely

that this lake, which is fifty or sixty miles long, is not all

asphaltic, and that while receiving the waters of the Jordan it also

receives the fishes of that river; but perhaps the Jordan, too, is

without fish, and they are to be found only in the upper lake of

Tiberias.

Josephus adds, that the trees which grow on the borders of the Dead Sea

bear fruits of the most beautiful appearance, but which fall into dust

if you attempt to taste them. This is less probable; and disposes one to

believe that Josephus either had not been on the spot, for has

exaggerated according to his own and his countrymen's custom. No soil

seems more calculated to produce good as well as beautiful fruits than a

salt and sulphurous one, like that of Naples, of Catania, and of Sodom.

The Holy Scriptures speak of five cities being destroyed by fire from

heaven. On this occasion natural philosophy bears testimony in favor of

the Old Testament, although the latter has no need of it, and they are

sometimes at variance. We have instances of earthquakes, accompanied by

thunder and lightning, which have destroyed much more considerable towns

than Sodom and Gomorrah.

But the River Jordan necessarily discharging itself into this lake

without an outlet, this Dead Sea, in the same manner as the Caspian,

must have existed as long as there has been a River Jordan; therefore,

these towns could never stand on the spot now occupied by the lake of

Sodom. The Scripture, too, says nothing at all about this ground being

changed into a lake; it says quite the contrary: "Then the Lord rained

upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire, from the Lord out of

heaven. And Abraham got up early in the morning, and he looked toward

Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld;

and lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace."

These five towns, Sodom, Gomorrah, Zeboin, Adamah, and Segor, must then

have been situated on the borders of the Dead Sea. How, it will be

asked, in a desert so uninhabitable as it now is, where there are to be

found only a few hordes of plundering Arabs, could there be five cities,

so opulent as to be immersed in luxury, and even in those shameful

pleasures which are the last effect of the refinement of the debauchery

attached to wealth?

It may be answered that the country was then much better.

Other critics will say--how could five towns exist at the extremities of

a lake, the water of which, before their destruction, was not potable?

The Scripture itself informs us that all this land was asphaltic before

the burning of Sodom: "And the vale of Sodom was full of slime-pits; and

the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled and fell there."

Another objection is also stated. Isaiah and Jeremiah say that Sodom and

Gomorrah shall never be rebuilt; but Stephen, the geographer, speaks of

Sodom and Gomorrah on the coast of the Dead Sea; and the "History of the

Councils" mentions bishops of Sodom and Segor. To this it may be

answered that God filled these towns, when rebuilt, with less guilty

inhabitants; for at that time there was no bishop _in partibus_.

But, it will be said, with what water could these new inhabitants quench

their thirst? All the wells are brackish; you find asphaltus and

corrosive salt on first striking a spade into the ground.

It will be answered that some Arabs still subsist there, and may be

habituated to drinking very bad water; that the Sodom and Gomorrah of

the Eastern Empire were wretched hamlets, and that at that time there

were many bishops whose whole diocese consisted in a poor village. It

may also be said that the people who colonized these villages prepared

the asphaltus, and carried on a useful trade in it.

The arid and burning desert, extending from Segor to the territory of

Jerusalem, produces balm and aromatic herbs for the same reason that it

supplies naphtha, corrosive salt and sulphur.

It is said that petrifaction takes place in this desert with astonishing

rapidity; and this, according to some natural philosophers, makes the

petrifaction of Lot's wife Edith a very plausible story.

But it is said that this woman, "having looked back, became a pillar of

salt." This, then, was not a natural petrifaction, operated by asphaltus

and salt, but an evident miracle. Flavius Josephus says that he saw this

pillar. St. Justin and St. Irenæus speak of it as a prodigy, which in

their time was still existing.

These testimonies have been looked upon as ridiculous fables. It would,

however, be very natural for some Jews to amuse themselves with cutting

a heap of asphaltus into a rude figure, and calling it Lot's wife. I

have seen cisterns of asphaltus, very well made, which may last a long

time. But it must be owned that St. Irenæus goes a little too far when

he says that Lot's wife remained in the country of Sodom no longer in

corruptible flesh, but as a permanent statue of salt, her feminine

nature still producing the ordinary effect: _"Uxor remansit in Sodomis,

jam non caro corruptibilis sed statua salis semper manens, et per

naturalia ea quæsunt consuetudmis hominis ostendens."_

St. Irenæus does not seem to express himself with all the precision of

a good naturalist when he says Lot's wife is no longer of corruptible

flesh, but still retains her feminine nature.

In the poem of Sodom, attributed to Tertullian, this is expressed with

still greater energy:

_Dicitur et vivens alio sub corpore se us,_

_Mirifice solito dispungere sanguine menses._

This was translated by a poet of the time of Henry II., in his Gallic

style:

_La femme à Loth, quoique sel devenue,_

_Est femme encore; car elle a sa menstrue._

The land of aromatics was also the land of fables. Into the deserts of

Arabia Petræa the ancient mythologists pretend that Myrrha, the

granddaughter of a statue, fled after committing incest with her father,

as Lot's daughters did with theirs, and that she was metamorphosed into

the tree that bears myrrh. Other profound mythologists assure us that

she fled into Arabia Felix; and this opinion is as well supported as the

other.

Be this as it may, not one of our travellers has yet thought fit to

examine the soil of Sodom, with its asphaltus, its salt, its trees and

their fruits, to weigh the water of the lake, to analyze it, to

ascertain whether bodies of greater specific gravity than common water

float upon its surface, and to give us a faithful account of the natural

history of the country. Our pilgrims to Jerusalem do not care to go and

make these researches; this desert has become infested by wandering

Arabs, who range as far as Damascus, and retire into the caverns of the

mountains, the authority of the pasha of Damascus having hitherto been

inadequate to repress them. Thus the curious have but little information

about anything concerning the Asphaltic Lake.

As to Sodom, it is a melancholy reflection for the learned that, among

so many who may be deemed natives, not one has furnished us with any

notion whatever of this capital city.

ASS.

We will add a little to the article "Ass" in the "Encyclopædia,"

concerning Lucian's ass, which became golden in the hands of Apuleius.

The pleasantest part of the adventure, however, is in Lucian: That a

lady fell in love with this gentleman while he was an ass, but would

have nothing more to say to him when he was but a man. These

metamorphoses were very common throughout antiquity. Silenus's ass had

spoken; and the learned had thought that he explained himself in Arabic;

for he was probably a man turned into an ass by the power of Bacchus,

and Bacchus, we know, was an Arab.

Virgil speaks of the transformation of Mœris into a wolf, as a thing

of very ordinary occurrence:

_Saepe lupum fieri Mœrim, et se condere silvis._

Oft changed to wolf, he seeks the forest shade.

Was this doctrine of metamorphoses derived from the old fables of Egypt,

which gave out that the gods had changed themselves into animals in the

war against the giants?

The Greeks, great imitators and improvers of the Oriental fables,

metamorphosed almost all the gods into men or into beasts, to make them

succeed the better in their amorous designs. If the gods changed

themselves into bulls, horses, swans, doves, etc., why should not men

have undergone the same operation?

Several commentators, forgetting the respect due to the Holy Scriptures,

have cited the example of Nebuchadnezzar changed into an ox; but this

was a miracle--a divine vengeance--a thing quite out of the course of

nature, which ought not to be examined with profane eyes, and cannot

become an object of our researches.

Others of the learned, perhaps with equal indiscretion, avail themselves

of what is related in the Gospel of the Infancy. An Egyptian maiden

having entered the chamber of some women, saw there a mule with a silken

cloth over his back, and an ebony pendant at his neck.

These women were in tears, kissing him and giving him to eat. The mule

was their own brother. Some sorceresses had deprived him of the human

figure; but the Master of Nature soon restored it.

Although this gospel is apocryphal, the very name that it bears prevents

us from examining this adventure in detail; only it may serve to show

how much metamorphoses were in vogue almost throughout the earth. The

Christians who composed their gospel were undoubtedly honest men. They

did not seek to fabricate a romance; they related with simplicity what

they had heard. The church, which afterwards rejected their gospel,

together with forty-nine others, did not accuse its authority of impiety

and prevarication; those obscure individuals addressed the populace in

language comformable with the prejudices of the age in which they lived.

China was perhaps the only country exempt from these superstitions.

The adventure of the companions of Ulysses, changed into beasts by

Circe, was much more ancient than the dogma of the metempsychosis,

broached in Greece and Italy by Pythagoras.

On what can the assertion be founded that there is no universal error

which is not the abuse of some truth; that there have been quacks only

because there have been true physicians; and that false prodigies have

been believed only because there have been true ones?

Were there any certain testimonies that men had become wolves, oxen,

horses, or asses? This universal error had for its principle only the

love of the marvellous and the natural inclination to superstition.

One erroneous opinion is enough to fill the whole world with fables. An

Indian doctor sees that animals have feeling and memory. He concludes

that they have a soul. Men have one likewise. What becomes of the soul

of man after death? What becomes of that of the beast? They must go

somewhere. They go into the nearest body that is beginning to be formed.

The soul of a Brahmin takes up its abode in the body of an elephant, the

soul of an ass is that of a little Brahmin. Such is the dogma of the

metempsychosis, which was built upon simple deduction.

But it is a wide step from this dogma to that of metamorphosis. We have

no longer a soul without a tenement, seeking a lodging; but one body

changed into another, the soul remaining as before. Now, we certainly

have not in nature any example of such legerdemain.

Let us then inquire into the origin of so extravagant yet so general an

opinion. If some father had characterized his son, sunk in ignorance and

filthy debauchery, as a hog, a horse, or an ass, and afterwards made him

do penance with an ass's cap on his head, and some servant girl of the

neighborhood gave it out that this young man had been turned into an ass

as a punishment for his faults, her neighbors would repeat it to other

neighbors, and from mouth to mouth this story, with a thousand

embellishments, would make the tour of the world. An ambiguous

expression would suffice to deceive the whole earth.

Here then let us confess, with Boileau, that ambiguity has been the

parent of most of our ridiculous follies. Add to this the power of

magic, which has been acknowledged as indisputable in all nations, and

you will no longer be astonished at anything.

One word more on asses. It is said that in Mesopotamia they are warlike

and that Mervan, the twenty-first caliph, was surnamed "the Ass" for his

valor.

The patriarch Photius relates, in the extract from the Life of Isidorus,

that Ammonius had an ass which had a great taste for poetry, and would

leave his manger to go and hear verses. The fable of Midas is better

than the tale of Photius.

_Machiavelli's Golden Ass._

Machiavelli's ass is but little known. The dictionaries which speak of

it say that it was a production of his youth; it would seem, however,

that he was of mature age; for he speaks in it of the misfortunes which

he had formerly and for a long time experienced. The work is a satire on

his contemporaries. The author sees a number of Florentines, of whom one

is changed into a cat, another into a dragon, a third into a dog that

bays the moon, a fourth into a fox who does not suffer himself to be

caught; each character is drawn under the name of an animal. The

factions of the house of Medicis and their enemies are doubtless figured

therein; and the key to this comic apocalypse would admit us to the

secrets of Pope Leo and the troubles of Florence. This poem is full of

morality and philosophy. It ends with the very rational reflections of

a large hog, which addresses man in nearly the following terms:

Ye naked bipeds, without beaks or claws.

Hairless, and featherless, and tender-hided,

Weeping ye come into the world--because

Ye feel your evil destiny decided;

Nature has given you industrious paws;

You, like the parrots, are with speech provided;

But have ye honest hearts?--Alas! alas!

In this we swine your bipedships surpass!

Man is far worse than we--more fierce, more wild--

Coward or madman, sinning every minute;

By frenzy and by fear in turn beguiled,

He dreads the grave, yet plunges headlong in it;

If pigs fall out, they soon are reconciled;

Their quarrel's ended ere they well begin it.

If crime with manhood always must combine,

Good Lord! let me forever be a swine.

This is the original of Boileau's "Satire on Man," and La Fontaine's

fable of the "Companions of Ulysses"; but it is quite likely that

neither La Fontaine nor Boileau had ever heard of Machiavelli's ass.

_The Ass of Verona._

I must speak the truth, and not deceive my readers. I do not very

clearly know whether the Ass of Verona still exists in all his splendor;

but the travellers who saw him forty or fifty years ago agree in saying

that the relics were enclosed in the body of an artificial ass made on

purpose, which was in the keeping of forty monks of Our Lady of the

Organ, at Verona, and was carried in procession twice a year. This was

one of the most ancient relics of the town. According to the tradition,

this ass, having carried our Lord in his entry into Jerusalem, did not

choose to abide any longer in that city, but trotted over the sea--which

for that purpose became as hard as his hoof--by way of Cyprus, Rhodes,

Candia, Malta, and Sicily. There he went to sojourn at Aquilea; and at

last he settled at Verona, where he lived a long while.

This fable originated in the circumstance that most asses have a sort of

black cross on their backs. There possibly might be an old ass in the

neighborhood of Verona, on whose back the populace remarked a finer

cross than his brethren could boast of; some good old woman would be at

hand to say that this was the ass on which Christ rode into Jerusalem;

and the ass would be honored with a magnificent funeral. The feast

established at Verona passed into other countries, and was especially

celebrated in France. In the mass was sung:

_Orientis partibus_

_Adventabit asinus,_

_Pulcher et fortissimus._

There was a long procession, headed by a young woman with a child in her

arms, mounted on an ass, representing the Virgin Mary going into Egypt.

At the end of the mass the priest, instead of saying _Ite missa est_,

brayed three times with all his might, and the people answered in

chorus.

We have books on the feast of the ass, and the feast of fools; they

furnish material towards a universal history of the human mind.

ASSASSIN--ASSASSINATION.

SECTION I.

A name corrupted from the word Ehissessin. Nothing is more common to

those who go into a distant country than to write, repeat, and

understand incorrectly in their own language what they have

misunderstood in a language entirely foreign to them, and afterwards to

deceive their countrymen as well as themselves. Error flies from mouth

to mouth, from pen, to pen, and to destroy it requires ages.

In the time of the Crusades there was a wretched little people of

mountaineers inhabiting the caverns near the road to Damascus. These

brigands elected a chief, whom they named Cheik Elchassissin. It is said

that this honorific title of _cheik_ originally signified _old_, as with

us the title of _seigneur_ comes from _senior_, elder, and the word

_graf_, a count, signifies _old_ among the Germans; for, in ancient

times almost every people conferred the civil command upon the old men.

Afterwards, the command having become hereditary, the title of _cheik,

graf, seigneur, or count_ has been given to children; and the Germans

call a little master of four years old, _the count_--that is, the _old

gentleman_.

The Crusaders named the old man of the Arabian mountains, the Old Man of

the Hill, and imagined him to be a great prince, because he had caused a

count of Montserrat and some other crusading nobles to be robbed and

murdered on the highway. These people were called _the assassins_, and

their cheik the king of the vast country of _the assassins_. This vast

territory is five or six leagues long by two or three broad, being part

of Anti-Libanus, a horrible country, full of rocks, like almost all

Palestine, but intersected by pleasant meadowlands, which feed numerous

flocks, as is attested by all who have made the journey from Aleppo to

Damascus.

The cheik or senior of these _assassins_ could be nothing more than a

chief of banditti; for there was at that time a sultan of Damascus who

was very powerful.

Our romance-writers of that day, as fond of chimeras as the Crusaders,

thought proper to relate that in 1236 this great prince of the

assassins, fearing that Louis IX., of whom he had never heard, would put

himself at the head of a crusade, and come and take from him his

territory, sent two great men of his court from the caverns of

Anti-Libanus to Paris to assassinate that king; but that having the next

day heard how generous and amiable a prince Louis was, he immediately

sent out to sea two more great men to countermand the assassination. I

say out to sea, for neither the two emissaries sent to kill Louis, nor

the two others sent to save him, could make the voyage without embarking

at Joppa, which was then in the power of the Crusaders, which rendered

the enterprise doubly marvellous. The two first must have found a

Crusaders' vessel ready to convey them in an amicable manner, and the

two last must have found another.

However, a hundred authors, one after another, have related this

adventure, though Joinville, a contemporary, who was on the spot, says

nothing about it--_"Et voilà justement comme on écrit l'histoire."_

The Jesuit Maimbourg, the Jesuit Daniel, twenty other Jesuits, and

Mézeray--though he was not a Jesuit--have repeated this absurdity. The

Abbé Véli, in his history of France, tells it over again with perfect

complaisance, without any discussion, without any examination, and on

the word of one William of Nangis, who wrote about sixty years after

this fine affair is said to have happened at a time when history was

composed from nothing but town talk.

If none but true and useful things were recorded, our immense historical

libraries would be reduced to a very narrow compass; but we should know

more, and know it better.

For six hundred years the story has been told over and over again, of

the Old Man of the Hill--_le vieux de la montagne_--who, in his

delightful gardens, intoxicated his young elect with voluptuous

pleasures, made them believe that they were in paradise, and sent them

to the ends of the earth to assassinate kings in order to merit an

eternal paradise.

Near the Levantine shores there dwelt of old

An aged ruler, feared in every land;

Not that he owned enormous heaps of gold,

Not that vast armies marched at his command,--

But on his people's minds he things impressed,

Which filled with desperate courage every breast

The boldest of his subjects first he took,

Of paradise to give them a foretaste--

The paradise his lawgiver had painted;

With every joy the lying prophet's book

Within his falsely-pictured heaven had placed,

They thought their senses had become acquainted.

And how was this effected? 'Twas by wine--

Of this they drank till every sense gave way,

And, while in drunken lethargy they lay,

Were borne, according to their chief's design,

To sports of pleasantness--to sunshine glades,

Delightful gardens and inviting shades.

Young tender beauties were abundant there,

In earliest bloom, and exquisitely fair;

These gayly thronged around the sleeping men,

Who, when at length they were awake again,

Wondering to see the beauteous objects round,

Believed that some way they'd already found

Those fields of bliss, in every beauty decked,

The false Mahomet promised his elect.

Acquaintance quickly made, the Turks advance;

The maidens join them in a sprightly dance;

Sweet music charms them as they trip along;

And every feathered warbler adds his song.

The joys that could for every sense suffice.

Were found within this earthly paradise.

Wine, too, was there--and its effects the same;

These people drank, till they could drink no more,

Were earned to the place from whence they came.

And what resulted from this trickery?

These men believed that they should surely be

Again transported to that place of pleasure,

If, without fear of suffering or of death,

They showed devotion to Mahomet's faith,

And to their prince obedience without measure.

Thus might their sovereign with reason say,

And that, now his device had made them so,

His was the mightiest empire here below....

All this might be very well in one of La Fontaine's tales--setting apart

the weakness of the verse; and there are a hundred historical anecdotes

which could be tolerated there only.

SECTION II.

Assassination being, next to poisoning, the crime most cowardly and most

deserving of punishment, it is not astonishing that it has found an

apologist in a man whose singular reasoning is, in some things, at

variance with the reason of the rest of mankind.

In a romance entitled "Emilius," he imagines that he is the guardian of

a young man, to whom he is very careful to give an education such as is

received in the military school--teaching him languages, geometry,

tactics, fortification, and the history of his country. He does not seek

to inspire him with love for his king and his country, but contents

himself with making him a joiner. He would have this gentleman-joiner,

when he has received a blow or a challenge, instead of returning it and

fighting, "prudently assassinate the man." Molière does, it is true, say

jestingly, in _"L'Amour Peintre,"_ "assassination is the safest"; but

the author of this romance asserts that it is the most just and

reasonable. He says this very seriously, and, in the immensity of his

paradoxes, this is one of the three or four things which he first says.

The same spirit of wisdom and decency which makes him declare that a

preceptor should often accompany his pupil to a place of prostitution,

makes him decide that this disciple should be an assassin. So that the

education which Jean Jacques would give to a young man consists in

teaching him how to handle the plane, and in fitting him for salivation

and the rope.

We doubt whether fathers of families will be eager to give such

preceptors to their children. It seems to us that the romance of Emilius

departs rather too much from the maxims of Mentor in "Telemachus"; but

it must also be acknowledged that our age has in all things very much

varied from the great age of Louis XIV.

Happily, none of these horrible infatuations are to be found in the

"Encyclopædia." It often displays a philosophy seemingly bold, but never

that atrocious and extravagant babbling which two or three fools have

called philosophy, and two or three ladies, eloquence.

ASTROLOGY.

Astrology might rest on a better foundation than magic. For if no one

has seen farfadets, or lemures, or dives, or peris, or demons, or

cacodemons, the predictions of astrologers have often been found true.

Let two astrologers be consulted on the life of an infant, and on the

weather; if one of them say that the child shall five to the age of man,

the other that he shall not; if one foretell rain and the other fair

weather, it is quite clear that there will be a prophet.

The great misfortune of astrologers is that the heavens have changed

since the rules of the art were laid down. The sun, which at the equinox

was in the Ram in the time of the Argonauts, is now in the Bull; and

astrologers, most unfortunately for their art, now attribute to one

house of the sun that which visibly belongs to another. Still, this is

not a demonstrative argument against astrology. The masters of the art

are mistaken; but it is not proved that the art cannot exist.

There would be no absurdity in saying, "Such a child was born during the

moon's increase, in a stormy season, at the rising of a certain star;

its constitution was bad, and its life short and miserable, which is the

ordinary lot of weak temperaments; another, on the contrary, was born

when the moon was at the full, and the sun in all his power, in calm

weather, at the rising of another particular star; his constitution was

good, and his life long and happy." If such observations had been

frequently repeated, and found just, experience might, at the end of a

few thousand centuries, have formed an art which it would have been

difficult to call in question; it would have been thought, not without

some appearance of truth, that men are like trees and vegetables, which

must be planted only in certain seasons. It would have been of no

service against the astrologers to say, "My son was born in fine

weather, yet he died in his cradle." The astrologer would have answered,

"It often happens that trees planted in the proper season perish

prematurely; I will answer for the stars, but not for the particular

conformation which you communicated to your child; astrology operates

only when there is no cause opposed to the good which they have power to

work."

[Illustration: An Astrologer.]

Nor would astrology have suffered any more discredit from it being said:

"Of two children who were born in the same minute, one became a king,

the other nothing more than churchwarden of his parish;" for a defence

would easily have been made by showing that the peasant made his fortune

in becoming churchwarden, just as much as the prince did in becoming

king.

And if it were alleged that a bandit, hung up by order of Sixtus the

Fifth, was born at the same time as Sixtus, who, from being a swineherd,

became pope, the astrologers would say that there was a mistake of a few

seconds, and that, according to the rules, the same star could not

bestow the tiara and the gallows. It was, then, only because

long-accumulated experience gave the lie to the predictions that men at

length perceived that the art was illusory; but their credulity was of

long duration.

One of the most famous mathematicians of Europe, named Stoffler, who

flourished in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, foretold a

universal deluge for the year 1524. This deluge was to happen in the

month of February, and nothing can be more plausible, for Saturn,

Jupiter, and Mars were then in conjunction in the sign of the Fishes.

Every nation in Europe, Asia, and Africa that heard of the prediction

was in consternation. The whole world expected the deluge, in spite of

the rainbow. Several contemporary authors relate that the inhabitants of

the maritime provinces of Germany hastened to sell their lands, at any

price, to such as had more money and less credulity than themselves.

Each one provided himself with a boat to serve as an ark. A doctor of

Toulouse, in particular, named Auriol, had an ark built for himself, his

family, and friends; and the same precautions were taken in a great part

of Italy. At last the month of February arrived, and not a drop of rain

fell, never was a month more dry, never were the astrologers more

embarrassed. However, we neither discouraged nor neglected them; almost

all our princes continued to consult them.

I have not the honor to be a prince; nevertheless, the celebrated Count

de Boulainvilliers and an Italian, named Colonna, who had great

reputation at Paris, both foretold to me that I should assuredly die at

the age of thirty-two. I have already been so malicious as to deceive

them thirty years in their calculation--for which I most humbly ask

their pardon.

ASTRONOMY,

WITH A FEW MORE REFLECTIONS ON ASTROLOGY.

M. Duval, who, if I mistake not, was librarian to the Emperor Francis

I., gives us an account of the manner in which, in his childhood, pure

instinct gave him the first ideas of astronomy. He was contemplating the

moon which, as it declined towards the west, seemed to touch the trees

of a wood. He doubted not that he should find it behind the trees, and,

on running thither, was astonished to see it at the extremity of the

horizon.

The following days his curiosity prompted him to watch the course of

this luminary, and he was still more surprised to find that it rose and

set at various hours. The different forms which it took from week to

week, and its total disappearance for some nights, also contributed to

fix his attention. All that a child could do was to observe and to

admire, and this was doing much; not one in ten thousand has this

curiosity and perseverance.

He studied, as he could, for three years, with no other book than the

heavens, no other master than his eyes. He observed that the stars did

not change their relative positions; but the brilliancy of the planet

Venus having caught his attention, it seemed to him to have a particular

course, like that of the moon. He watched it every night; it disappeared

for a long time; and at length he saw it become the morning instead of

the evening star. The course of the sun, which from month to month, rose

and set in different parts of the heavens, did not escape him. He marked

the solstices with two staves, without knowing what the solstices were.

It appears to me that some profit might be derived from this example,

in teaching astronomy to a child of ten or twelve years of age, and with

much greater facility than this extraordinary child, of whom I have

spoken, taught himself its first elements.

It is a very attractive spectacle for a mind disposed to the

contemplation of nature to see that the different phases of the moon are

precisely the same as those of a globe round which a lighted candle is

moved, showing here a quarter, here the half of its surface, and

becoming invisible when an opaque body is interposed between it and the

candle. In this manner it was that Galileo explained the true principles

of astronomy before the doge and senators of Venice on St. Mark's tower;

he demonstrated everything to the eyes.

Indeed, not only a child, but even a man of mature age, who has seen the

constellations only on maps or globes, finds it difficult to recognize

them in the heavens. In a little time the child will quite well

comprehend the causes of the sun's apparent course, and the daily

revolutions of the fixed stars.

He will, in particular, discover the constellations with the aid of

these four Latin lines, made by an astronomer about fifty years ago, and

which are not sufficiently known:

_Delta Aries, Perseum Taurus, Geminique Capellam; Nil Cancer, Plaustrum

Leo, Virgo Coman, atque Bootem, Libra Anguem, Anguiferum fert Scorpios;

Antinoum Arcus; Delphinum Caper, Amphora Equos, Cepheida Pisces._

Nothing should be said to him about the systems of Ptolemy and Tycho

Brahe, because they are false; they can never be of any other service

than to explain some passages in ancient authors, relating to the errors

of antiquity. For instance, in the second book of Ovid's

_"Metamorphoses"_ the sun says to Phaëton:

_Adde, quod assidua rapitur vertigine cœlum;_

_Nitor in adversum; nec me, qui cætera, vincit_

_Impetus; et rapido contrarius evehor orbi._

A rapid motion carries round the heavens;

But I--and I alone--resist its force,

Marching secure in my opposing path.

This idea of a first mover turning the heavens round in twenty-four

hours with an impossible motion, and of the sun, though acted upon by

this first motion, yet imperceptibly advancing from west to east by a

motion peculiar to itself, and without a cause, would but embarrass a

young beginner.

It is sufficient for him to know that, whether the earth revolves on its

own axis and round the sun, or the sun completes his revolution in a

year, appearances are nearly the same, and that, in astronomy, we are

obliged to judge of things by our eyes before we examine them as natural

philosophers.

He will soon know the cause of the eclipses of the sun and the moon, and

why they do not occur every night. It will at first appear to him that,

the moon being every month in opposition to and in conjunction with the

sun, we should have an eclipse of the sun and one of the moon every

month. But when he finds that these two luminaries are not in the same

plane and are seldom in the same line with the earth, he will no longer

be surprised.

He will easily be made to understand how it is that eclipses have been

foretold, by knowing the exact circle in which the apparent motion of

the sun and the real motion of the moon are accomplished. He will be

told that observers found by experience and calculation the number of

times that these two bodies are precisely in the same line with the

earth in the space of nineteen years and a few hours, after which they

seem to recommence the same course; so that, making the necessary

allowances for the little inequalities that occurred during those

nineteen years, the exact day, hour, and minute of an eclipse of the sun

or moon were foretold. These first elements are soon acquired by a child

of clear conceptions.

Not even the precession of the equinoxes will terrify him. It will be

enough to tell him that the sun has constantly appeared to advance in

his annual course, one degree in seventy-two years, towards the east;

and this is what Ovid meant to express: _"Contrarius evehor

orbi"_;--"Marching secure in my opposing path."

Thus the Ram, which the sun formerly entered at the beginning of spring,

is now in the place where the Bull was then. This change which has taken

place in the heavens, and the entrance of the sun into other

constellations than those which he formerly occupied, were the

strongest arguments against the pretended rules of judicial astrology.

It does not, however, appear that this proof was employed before the

present century to destroy this universal extravagance which so long

infected all mankind, and is still in great vogue in Persia.

A man born, according to the almanac, when the sun was in the sign of

the Lion, was necessarily to be courageous; but, unfortunately, he was

in reality born under the sign of the Virgin. So that Gauric and Michael

Morin should have changed all the rules of their art.

It is indeed odd that all the laws of astrology were contrary to those

of astronomy. The wretched charlatans of antiquity and their stupid

disciples, who have been so well received and so well paid by all the

princes of Europe, talked of nothing but Mars and Venus, stationary and

retrograde. Such as had Mars stationary were always to conquer. Venus

stationary made all lovers happy. Nothing was worse than to be born

under Venus retrograde. But the fact is that these planets have never

been either retrograde or stationary, which a very slight knowledge of

optics would have sufficed to show.

How, then, can it have been that, in spite of physics and geometry, the

ridiculous chimera of astrology is entertained even to this day, so that

we have seen men distinguished for their general knowledge, and

especially profound in history, who have all their lives been infatuated

by so despicable an error? But the error was ancient, and that was

enough.

The Egyptians, the Chaldæans, the Jews, foretold the future; therefore,

it may be foretold now. Serpents were charmed and spirits were raised in

those days; therefore, spirits may be raised and serpents charmed now.

It is only necessary to know the precise formula made use of for the

purpose. If predictions are at an end, it is the fault, not of the art,

but of the artist. Michael Morin and his secret died together. It is

thus that the alchemists speak of the philosopher's stone; if, say they,

we do not now find it, it is because we do not yet know precisely how to

seek it; but it is certainly in Solomon's collar-bone. And, with this

glorious certainty, more than two hundred families in France and Germany

have ruined themselves.

It is not then to be wondered at that the whole world has been duped by

astrology. The wretched argument, "there are false prodigies, therefore

there are true ones," is neither that of a philosopher, nor of a man

acquainted with the world. "That is false and absurd, therefore it will

be believed by the multitude," is a much truer maxim.

It is still less astonishing that so many men, raised in other things so

far above the vulgar; so many princes, so many popes, whom it would have

been impossible to mislead in the smallest affair of interest, have been

so ridiculously seduced by this astrological nonsense. They were very

proud and very ignorant. The stars were for them alone; the rest of the

world a rabble, with whom the stars had nothing to do. They were like

the prince who trembled at the sight of a comet, and said gravely to

those who did not fear it, "You may behold it without concern; you are

not princes."

The famous German leader, Wallenstein, was one of those infatuated by

this chimera; he called himself a prince, and consequently thought that

the zodiac had been made on purpose for him. He never besieged a town,

nor fought a battle, until he had held a council with the heavens; but,

as this great man was very ignorant, he placed at the head of this

council a rogue of an Italian, named Seni, keeping him a coach and six,

and giving him a pension of twenty thousand livres. Seni, however, never

foresaw that Wallenstein would be assassinated by order of his most

gracious sovereign, and that he himself would return to Italy on foot.

It is quite evident that nothing can be known of the future, otherwise

than by conjectures. These conjectures may be so well-founded as to

approach certainty. You see a shark swallow a little boy; you may wager

ten thousand to one that he will be devoured; but you cannot be

absolutely sure of it, after the adventures of Hercules, Jonas, and

Orlando Furioso, who each lived so long in a fish's belly.

It cannot be too often repeated that Albertus Magnus and Cardinal

d'Ailli both made the horoscope of Jesus Christ. It would appear that

they read in the stars how many devils he would cast out of the bodies

of the possessed, and what sort of death he was to die. But it was

unfortunate that these learned astrologers _foretold_ all these things

so long _after_ they happened.

We shall elsewhere see that in a sect which passes for Christian, it is

believed to be impossible for the Supreme Intelligence to see the future

otherwise than by supreme conjecture; for, as the future does not exist,

it is, say they, a contradiction in terms to talk of seeing at the

present time that which is not.

ATHEISM.

SECTION I.

_On the Comparison so Often Made between Atheism and Idolatry._

It seems to me that, in the _"Dictionnaire Encyclopédique,"_ a more

powerful refutation might have been brought against the Jesuit

Richeome's opinion concerning atheists and idolaters--an opinion

formerly maintained by St. Thomas, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Cyprian,

and Tertullian--an opinion which Arnobius placed in a strong light when

he said to the pagans, "Do you not blush to reproach us with contempt

for your gods? Is it not better to believe in no god than to impute to

them infamous actions?"--an opinion long before established by

Plutarch, who stated that he would rather have it said that there was

no Plutarch than that there was a Plutarch, inconstant, choleric, and

vindictive--an opinion, too, fortified by all the dialectical efforts of

Bayle.

Such is the ground of dispute, placed in a very striking point of view

by the Jesuit Richeome, and made still more specious by the way in which

Bayle sets it off:

"There are two porters at the door of a house. You ask to speak to the

master. He is not at home, answers one. He is at home, answers the

other, but is busied in making false money, false contracts, daggers,

and poisons, to destroy those who have only accomplished his designs.

The atheist resembles the former of these porters, the pagan the latter.

It is then evident that the pagan offends the Divinity more grievously

than the atheist."

With the permission of Father Richeome, and that of Bayle himself, this

is not at all the state of the question. For the first porter to be like

the atheist, he must say, not "My master is not here," but "I have no

master; he who you pretend is my master does not exist. My comrade is a

blockhead to tell you that the gentleman is engaged in mixing poisons

and wetting poniards to assassinate those who have executed his will.

There is no such being in the world."

Richeome, therefore, has reasoned very ill; and Bayle, in his rather

diffuse discourses, has so far forgotten himself as to do Richeome the

honor of making a very lame comment upon him.

Plutarch seems to express himself much better, in declaring that he

prefers those who say there is no Plutarch to those who assert that

Plutarch is unfit for society. Indeed, of what consequence to him was

its being said that he was not in the world? But it was of great

consequence that his reputation should not be injured. With the Supreme

Being it is otherwise.

Still Plutarch does not come to the real point in discussion. It is only

asked who most offends the Supreme Being--he who denies Him, or he who

disfigures Him? It is impossible to know, otherwise than by revelation,

whether God is offended at the vain discourses which men hold about Him.

Philosophers almost always fall unconsciously into the ideas of the

vulgar, in supposing that God is jealous of His glory, wrathful, and

given to revenge, and in taking rhetorical figures for real ideas. That

which interests the whole world is to know whether it is not better to

admit a rewarding and avenging God, recompensing hidden good actions,

and punishing secret crimes, than to admit no God at all.

Bayle exhausts himself in repeating all the infamous things imputed to

the gods of antiquity. His adversaries answer him by unmeaning

commonplaces. The partisans and the enemies of Bayle have almost always

fought without coming to close quarters. They all agree that Jupiter

was an adulterer, Venus a wanton, Mercury a rogue. But this, I conceive,

ought not to be considered; the religion of the ancient Romans should be

distinguished from Ovid's _"Metamorphoses."_ It is quite certain that

neither they nor even the Greeks ever had a temple dedicated to Mercury

the Rogue, Venus the Wanton, or Jupiter the Adulterer.

The god whom the Romans called _"Deus optimus maximus"_--most good, most

great--was not believed to have encouraged Clodius to lie with Cæsar's

wife, nor Cæsar to become the minion of King Nicomedes.

Cicero does not say that Mercury incited Verres to rob Sicily, though,

in the fable, Mercury had stolen Apollo's cows. The real religion of the

ancients was that Jupiter, most good and just, with the secondary

divinities, punished perjury in the infernal regions. Thus, the Romans

were long the most religious observers of their oaths. It was in no wise

ordained that they should believe in Leda's two eggs, in the

transformation of Inachus's daughter into a cow, or in Apollo's love for

Hyacinthus. Therefore it must not be said that the religion of Numa was

dishonoring to the Divinity. So that, as but too often happens, there

has been a long dispute about a chimera.

Then, it is asked, can a people of atheists exist? I consider that a

distinction must be made between the people, properly so called, and a

society of philosophers above the people. It is true that, in every

country, the populace require the strongest curb; and that if Bayle had

had but five or six hundred peasants to govern, he would not have failed

to announce to them a rewarding and avenging God. But Bayle would have

said nothing about them to the Epicureans, who were people of wealth,

fond of quiet, cultivating all the social virtues, and friendship in

particular, shunning the dangers and embarrassments of public

affairs--leading, in short, a life of ease and innocence. The dispute,

so far as it regards policy and society, seems to me to end here.

As for people entirely savage, they can be counted neither among the

theists nor among the atheists. To ask them what is their creed would be

like asking them if they are for Aristotle or Democritus. They know

nothing; they are no more atheists than they are peripatetics.

But, it may be insisted, that they live in society, though they have no

God, and that, therefore, society may subsist without religion.

In this case I shall reply that wolves live so; and that an assemblage

of barbarous cannibals, as you suppose them to be, is not a society.

And, further, I will ask you if, when you have lent your money to any

one of your society, you would have neither your debtor, nor your

attorney, nor your notary, nor your judge, believe in a God?