SECTION IV.

A word on the question in morals, agitated by Bayle, "Whether a society

of atheists can exist." Here let us first observe the enormous

self-contradictions of men in disputation. Those who have been most

violent in opposing the opinion of Bayle, those who have denied with the

greatest virulence the possibility of a society of atheists, are the

very men who have since maintained with equal ardor that atheism is the

religion of the Chinese government.

They have most assuredly been mistaken concerning the government of

China; they had only to read the edicts of the emperors of that vast

country, and they would have seen that those edicts are sermons, in

which a Supreme Being--governing, avenging, and rewarding--is

continually spoken of.

But, at the same time, they are no less deceived respecting the

impossibility of a society of atheists; nor can I conceive how Bayle

could forget a striking instance which might have rendered his cause

victorious.

In what does the apparent impossibility of a society of atheists

consist? In this: It is judged that men without some restraint could not

live together; that laws have no power against secret crimes; and that

it is necessary to have an avenging God--punishing, in this world or in

the next, such as escape human justice.

The laws of Moses, it is true, did not teach the doctrine of a life to

come, did not threaten with chastisements after death, nor even teach

the primitive Jews the immortality of the soul; but the Jews, far from

being atheists, far from believing that they could elude the divine

vengeance, were the most religious of men. They believed not only in the

existence of an eternal God, but that He was always present among them;

they trembled lest they should be punished in themselves, their wives,

their children, their posterity to the fourth generation. This was a

very powerful check.

But among the Gentiles various sects had no restraint; the Skeptics

doubted of everything; the Academics suspended their judgment on

everything; the Epicureans were persuaded that the Divinity could not

meddle in human affairs, and in their hearts admitted no Divinity. They

were convinced that the soul is not a substance, but a faculty which is

born and perishes with the body; consequently, they had no restraint but

that of morality and honor. The Roman senators and knights were in

reality atheists; for to men who neither feared nor hoped anything from

them, the gods could not exist. The Roman senate, then, in the time of

Cæsar and Cicero, was in fact an assembly of atheists.

That great orator, in his oration for Cluentius, says to the whole

assembled senate: "What does he lose by death? We reject all the silly

fables about the infernal regions. What, then, can death take from him?

Nothing but the susceptibility of sorrow."

Does not Cæsar, wishing to save the life of his friend Catiline,

threatened by the same Cicero, object that to put a criminal to death is

not to punish him--that death is nothing--that it is but the termination

of our ills--a moment rather fortunate than calamitous? Did not Cicero

and the whole senate yield to this reasoning? The conquerors and

legislators of all the known world then, evidently, formed a society of

men who feared nothing from the gods, but were real atheists.

Bayle next examines whether idolatry is more dangerous than

atheism--whether it is a greater crime not to believe in the Divinity

than to have unworthy notions of it; in this he thinks with

Plutarch--that it is better to have no opinion than a bad opinion; but,

without offence to Plutarch, it was infinitely better that the Greeks

should fear Ceres, Neptune, and Jupiter than that they should fear

nothing at all. It is clear that the sanctity of oaths is necessary; and

that those are more to be trusted who think a false oath will be

punished, than those who think they may take a false oath with impunity.

It cannot be doubted that, in an organized society, it is better to have

even a bad religion than no religion at all.

It appears then that Bayle should rather have examined whether atheism

or fanaticism is the most dangerous. Fanaticism is certainly a thousand

times the most to be dreaded; for atheism inspires no sanguinary

passion, but fanaticism does; atheism does not oppose crime, but

fanaticism prompts to its commission. Let us suppose, with the author of

the _"Commentarium Return Gallicarum,"_ that the High-Chancellor de

l'Hôpital was an atheist; he made none but wise laws; he recommended

only moderation and concord. The massacres of St. Bartholomew were

committed by fanatics. Hobbes passed for an atheist; yet he led a life

of innocence and quiet, while the fanatics of his time deluged England,

Scotland, and Ireland with blood. Spinoza was not only an atheist--he

taught atheism; but assuredly he had no part in the judicial

assassination of Barneveldt; nor was it he who tore in pieces the two

brothers De Witt, and ate them off the gridiron.

Atheists are, for the most part, men of learning, bold but bewildered,

who reason ill and, unable to comprehend the creation, the origin of

evil, and other difficulties, have recourse to the hypothesis of the

eternity of things and of necessity.

The ambitious and the voluptuous have but little time to reason; they

have other occupations than that of comparing Lucretius with Socrates.

Such is the case with us and our time.

It was otherwise with the Roman senate, which was composed almost

entirely of theoretical and practical atheists, that is, believing

neither in Providence nor in a future state; this senate was an assembly

of philosophers, men of pleasure, and ambitious men, who were all very

dangerous, and who ruined the commonwealth. Under the emperors,

Epicureanism prevailed. The atheists of the senate had been factious in

the times of Sulla and of Cæsar; in those of Augustus and Tiberius, they

were atheistical slaves.

I should not wish to come in the way of an atheistical prince, whose

interest it should be to have me pounded in a mortar; I am quite sure

that I should be so pounded. Were I a sovereign, I would not have to do

with atheistical courtiers, whose interest it was to poison me; I should

be under the necessity of taking an antidote every day. It is then

absolutely necessary for princes and people that the idea of a Supreme

Being--creating, governing, rewarding, and punishing--be profoundly

engraved on their minds.

There are, nations of atheists, says Bayle in his "Thoughts on Comets."

The Kaffirs, the Hottentots, and many other small populations, have no

god; they neither affirm nor deny that there is one; they have never

heard of Him; tell them that there is one, and they will easily believe

it; tell them that all is done by the nature of things, and they will

believe you just the same. To pretend that they are atheists would be

like saying they are anti-Cartesians. They are neither for Descartes nor

against him; they are no more than children; a child is neither atheist

nor deist; he is nothing.

From all this, what conclusion is to be drawn? That atheism is a most

pernicious monster in those who govern; that it is the same in the men

of their cabinet, since it may extend itself from the cabinet to those

in office; that, although less to be dreaded than fanaticism, it is

almost always fatal to virtue. And especially, let it be added, that

there are fewer atheists now than ever--since philosophers have become

persuaded that there is no vegetative being without a germ, no germ

without a design, etc., and that the corn in our fields does not spring

from rottenness.

Unphilosophical geometricians have rejected final causes, but true

philosophers admit them; and, as it is elsewhere observed, a catechist

announces God to children, and Newton demonstrates Him to the wise.

If there be atheists, who are to blame? Who but the mercenary tyrants of

our souls, who, while disgusting us with their knavery, urge some weak

spirits to deny the God whom such monsters dishonor? How often have the

people's bloodsuckers forced overburdened citizens to revolt against the

king!

Men who have fattened on our substance, cry out to us: "Be persuaded

that an ass spoke; believe that a fish swallowed a man, and threw him up

three days after, safe and sound, on the shore; doubt not that the God

of the universe ordered one Jewish prophet to eat excrement, and another

to buy two prostitutes, and have bastards by them;" such are the words

put into the mouth of the God of purity and truth! Believe a hundred

things either visibly abominable or mathematically impossible; otherwise

the God of Mercy will burn you in hell-fire, not only for millions of

millions of ages, but for all eternity, whether you have a body or have

not a body.

These brutal absurdities are revolting to rash and weak minds, as well

as to firm and wise ones. They say: "Our teachers represent God to us as

the most insensate and barbarous of all beings; therefore, there is no

God." But they ought to say, "Our teachers represent God as furious and

ridiculous, therefore God is the reverse of what they describe Him; He

is as wise and good as they say He is foolish and wicked." Thus do the

wise decide. But, if a fanatic hears them, he denounces them to a

magistrate--a sort of priest's officer, which officer has them burned

alive, thinking that he is therein imitating and avenging the Divine

Majesty which he insults.

ATHEIST.

SECTION I.

There were once many atheists among the Christians; they are now much

fewer. It at first appears to be a paradox, but examination proves it to

be a truth, that theology often threw men's minds into atheism, until

philosophy at length drew them out of it. It must indeed have been

pardonable to doubt of the Divinity, when His only announcers disputed

on His nature. Nearly all the first Fathers of the Church made God

corporeal, and others, after them, giving Him no extent, lodged Him in a

part of heaven. According to some, He had created the world in Time;

while, according to others, He had created Time itself. Some gave Him a

Son like to Himself; others would not grant that the Son was like to the

Father. It was also disputed in what way a third person proceeded from

the other two.

It was agitated whether the Son had been, while on earth, composed of

two persons. So that the question undesignedly became, whether there

were five persons in the Divinity--three in heaven and two for Jesus

Christ upon earth; or four persons, reckoning Christ upon earth as only

one; or three persons, considering Christ only as God. There were

disputes about His mother, His descent into hell and into limbo; the

manner in which the body of the God-man was eaten, and the blood of the

God-man was drunk; on grace; on the saints, and a thousand other

matters. When the confidants of the Divinity were seen so much at

variance among themselves anathematizing one another from age to age,

but all agreeing in an immoderate thirst for riches and grandeur--while,

on the other hand, were beheld the prodigious number of crimes and

miseries which afflicted the earth, and of which many were caused by the

very disputes of these teachers of souls--it must be confessed that it

was allowable for rational men to doubt the existence of a being so

strangely announced, and for men of sense to imagine that a God, who

could of His own free will make so many beings miserable, did not exist.

Suppose, for example, a natural philosopher of the fifteenth century

reading these words in "St. Thomas's Dream": _"Virtus cœli, loco

spermatis, sufficit cum elementis et putrefactione ad generationem

animalium imperfectorum."_ "The virtue of heaven instead of seed is

sufficient, with the elements and putrefaction, for the generation of

imperfect animals." Our philosopher would reason thus: "If corruption

suffices with the elements to produce unformed animals, it would appear

that a little more corruption, with a little more heat, would also

produce animals more complete. The virtue of heaven is here no other

than the virtue of nature. I shall then think, with Epicurus and St.

Thomas, that men may have sprung from the slime of the earth and the

rays of the sun--a noble origin, too, for beings so wretched and so

wicked. Why should I admit a creating God, presented to me under so many

contradictory and revolting aspects?" But at length physics arose, and

with them philosophy. Then it was clearly discovered that the mud of the

Nile produced not a single insect, nor a single ear of corn, and men

were found to acknowledge throughout, germs, relations, means, and an

astonishing correspondence among all beings. The particles of light have

been followed, which go from the sun to enlighten the globe and the ring

of Saturn, at the distance of three hundred millions of leagues; then,

coming to the earth, form two opposite angles in the eye of the minutest

insect, and paint all nature on its retina. A philosopher was given to

the world who discovered the simple and sublime laws by which the

celestial globes move in the immensity of space. Thus the work of the

universe, now that it is better known, bespeaks a workman, and so many

never-varying laws announce a lawgiver. Sound philosophy, therefore, has

destroyed atheism, to which obscure theology furnished weapons of

defence.

But one resource was left for the small number of difficult minds,

which, being more forcibly struck by the pretended injustices of a

Supreme Being than by his wisdom, were obstinate in denying this first

mover. Nature has existed from all eternity; everything in nature is in

motion, therefore everything in it continually changes. And if

everything is forever changing, all possible combinations must take

place; therefore the present combinations of all things may have been

the effect of this eternal motion and change alone. Take six dice, and

it is 46,655 to one that you do not throw six times six. But still there

is that one chance in 46,656. So, in the infinity of ages, any one of

the infinite number of combinations, as that of the present arrangement

of the universe, is not impossible.

Minds, otherwise rational, have been misled by these arguments; but they

have not considered that there is infinity against them, and that there

certainly is not infinity against the existence of God. They should,

moreover, consider that if everything were changing, the smallest things

could not remain unchanged, as they have so long done. They have at

least no reason to advance why new species are not formed every day. On

the contrary, it is very probable that a powerful hand, superior to

these continual changes, keeps all species within the bounds it, has

prescribed them. Thus the philosopher, who acknowledges a God, has a

number of probabilities on his side, while the atheist has only doubts.

It is evident that in morals it is much better to acknowledge a God than

not to admit one. It is certainly to the interest of all men that there

should be a Divinity to punish what human, justice cannot repress; but

it is also clear that it were better to acknowledge no God than to

worship a barbarous one, and offer Him human victims, as so many nations

have done.

We have one striking example, which places this truth beyond a doubt.

The Jews, under Moses, had no idea of the immortality of the soul, nor

of a future state. Their lawgiver announced to them, from God, only

rewards and punishments purely temporal; they, therefore, had only this

life to provide for. Moses commands the Levites to kill twenty-three

thousand of their brethren for having had a golden or gilded calf. On

another occasion twenty-four thousand of them are massacred for having

had commerce with the young women of the country; and twelve thousand

are struck dead because some few of them had wished to support the ark,

which was near falling. It may, with perfect reverence for the decrees

of Providence, be affirmed, humanly speaking, that it would have been

much better for these fifty-nine thousand men, who believed in no future

state, to have been absolute atheists and have lived, than to have been

massacred in the name of the God whom they acknowledged.

It is quite certain that atheism is not taught in the schools of the

learned of China, but many of those learned men are atheists, for they

are indifferent philosophers. Now it would undoubtedly be better to live

with them at Pekin, enjoying the mildness of their manners and their

laws, than to be at Goa, liable to groan in irons, in the prisons of the

inquisition, until brought out in a brimstone-colored garment,

variegated with devils, to perish in the flames.

They who have maintained that a society of atheists may exist have then

been right, for it is laws that form society, and these atheists, being

moreover philosophers, may lead a very wise and happy life under the

shade of those laws. They will certainly live in society more easily

than superstitious fanatics. People one town with Epicureans such as

Simonides, Protagoras, Des Barreux, Spinoza; and another with Jansenists

and Molinists. In which do you think there will be the most quarrels and

tumults? Atheism, considering it only with relation to this life, would

be very dangerous among a ferocious people, and false ideas of the

Divinity would be no less pernicious. Most of the great men of this

world live as if they were atheists. Every man who has lived with his

eyes open knows that the knowledge of a God, His presence, and His

justice, has not the slightest influence over the wars, the treaties,

the objects of ambition, interest or pleasure, in the pursuit of which

they are wholly occupied. Yet we do not see that they grossly violate

the rules established in society. It is much more agreeable to pass our

lives among them than among the superstitious and fanatical. I do, it is

true, expect more justice from one who believes in a God than from one

who has no such belief; but from the superstitious I look only for

bitterness and persecution. Atheism and fanaticism are two monsters

which may tear society in pieces; but the atheist preserves his reason,

which checks his propensity to mischief, while the fanatic is under the

influence of a madness which is constantly urging him on.

SECTION II.

In England, as everywhere else, there have been, and there still are,

many atheists by principle; for there are none but young, inexperienced

preachers, very ill-informed of what passes in the world, who affirm

that there cannot be atheists. I have known some in France, who were

quite good natural philosophers; and have, I own, been very much

surprised that men who could so ably develop the secret springs of

nature should obstinately refuse to acknowledge the hand which so

evidently puts those springs in action.

It appears to me that one of the principles which leads them to

materialism is that they believe in the plentitude and infinity of the

universe, and the eternity of matter. It must be this which misleads

them, for almost all the Newtonians whom I have met admit the void and

the termination of matter, and consequently admit a God.

Indeed, if matter be infinite, as so many philosophers, even including

Descartes, pretend, it has of itself one of the attributes of the

Supreme Being: if a void be impossible, matter exists of necessity; it

has existed from all eternity. With these principles, therefore, we may

dispense with God, creating, modifying, and preserving matter.

I am aware that Descartes, and most of the schools which have believed

in the _plenum_, and the infinity of matter, have nevertheless admitted

a God; but this is only because men scarcely ever reason or act upon

their principles.

Had men reasoned, consequently, Epicurus and his apostle Lucretius must

have been the most religious assertors of the Providence which they

combated; for when they admitted the void and the termination of matter,

a truth of which they had only an imperfect glimpse, it necessarily

followed that matter was the being of necessity, existing by itself,

since it was not indefinite. They had, therefore, in their own

philosophy, and in their own despite, a demonstration that there is a

Supreme Being, necessary, infinite, the fabricator of the universe.

Newton's philosophy, which admits and proves the void and finite matter,

also demonstratively proves the existence of a God.

Thus I regard true philosophers as the apostles of the Divinity. Each

class of men requires its particular ones; a parish catechist tells

children that there is a God, but Newton proves it to the wise.

In London, under Charles II. after Cromwell's wars, as at Paris under

Henry IV. after the war of the Guises, people took great pride in being

atheists; having passed from the excess of cruelty to that of pleasure,

and corrupted their minds successively by war and by voluptuousness,

they reasoned very indifferently. Since then the more nature has been

studied the better its Author has been known.

One thing I will venture to believe, which is, that of all religions,

theism is the most widely spread in the world. It is the prevailing

religion of China; it is that of the wise among the Mahometans; and,

among Christian philosophers, eight out of ten are of the same opinion.

It has penetrated even into the schools of theology, into the cloisters,

into the conclave; it is a sort of sect without association, without

worship, without ceremonies, without disputes, and without zeal, spread

through the world without having been preached. Theism, like Judaism, is

to be found amidst all religions; but it is singular that the latter,

which is the extreme of superstition, abhorred by the people and

contemned by the wise, is everywhere tolerated for money; while the

former, which is the opposite of superstition, unknown to the people,

and embraced by philosophers alone, is publicly exercised nowhere but in

China. There is no country in Europe where there are more theists than

in England. Some persons ask whether they have a religion or not.

There are two sorts of theists. The one sort think that God made the

world without giving man rules for good and evil. It is clear that these

should have no other name than that of philosophers.

The others believe that God gave to man a natural law. These, it is

certain, have a religion, though they have no external worship. They

are, with reference to the Christian religion, peaceful enemies, which

she carries in her bosom; they renounce without any design of destroying

her. All other sects desire to predominate, like political bodies, which

seek to feed on the substance of others, and rise upon their ruin;

theism has always lain quiet. Theists have never been found caballing in

any state.

There was in London a society of theists, who for some time continued to

meet together. They had a small book of their laws, in which religion,

on which so many ponderous volumes have been written, occupied only two

pages. Their principal axiom was this: "Morality is the same among all

men; therefore it comes from God. Worship is various; therefore it is

the work of man."

The second axiom was: "Men, being all brethren, and acknowledging the

same God, it is execrable that brethren should persecute brethren,

because they testify their love for the common father in a different

manner. Indeed," said they, "what upright man would kill his elder

brother because one of them had saluted their father after the Chinese

and the other after the Dutch fashion, especially while it was undecided

in what way the father wished their reverence to be made to him? Surely

he who should act thus would be a bad brother rather than a good son."

I am well aware that these maxims lead directly to "the abominable and

execrable dogma of toleration"; but I do no more than simply relate the

fact. I am very careful not to become a controversialist. It must,

however, be admitted that if the different sects into which Christians

have been divided had possessed this moderation, Christianity would have

been disturbed by fewer disorders, shaken by fewer revolutions, and

stained with less blood.

Let us pity the theists for combating our holy revelation. But whence

comes it that so many Calvinists, Lutherans, Anabaptists, Nestorians,

Arians, partisans of Rome, and enemies of Rome, have been so sanguinary,

so barbarous, and so miserable, now persecuting, now persecuted? It is

because they have been the multitude. Whence is it that theists, though

in error, have never done harm to mankind? Because they have been

philosophers. The Christian religion has cost the human species

seventeen millions of men, reckoning only one million per century, who

have perished either by the hands of the ordinary executioner, or by

those of executioners paid and led to battle--all for the salvation of

souls and the greater glory of God.

I have heard men express astonishment that a religion so moderate, and

so apparently conformable to reason, as theism, has not been spread

among the people. Among the great and little vulgar may be found pious

herb-women, Molinist duchesses, scrupulous seamstresses who would go to

the stake for anabaptism, devout hackney-coachmen, most determined in

the cause of Luther or of Arius, but no theists; for theism cannot so

much be called a religion as a system of philosophy, and the vulgar,

whether great or little, are not philosophers.

Locke was a declared theist. I was astonished to find, in that great

philosopher's chapter on innate ideas, that men have all different ideas

of justice. Were such the case, morality would no longer be the same;

the voice of God would not be heard by man; natural religion would be at

an end. I am willing to believe, with him, that there are nations in

which men eat their fathers, and where to lie with a neighbor's wife is

to do him a friendly office; but if this be true it does not prove that

the law, "Do not unto others that which you would not have others do

unto you," is not general. For if a father be eaten, it is when he has

grown old, is too feeble to crawl along, and would otherwise be eaten by

the enemy. And, I ask, what father would not furnish a good meal to his

son rather than to the enemies of his nation? Besides, he who eats his

father hopes that he in turn shall be eaten by his children.

If a service be rendered to a neighbor by lying with his wife, it is

when he cannot himself have a child, and is desirous of having one;

otherwise he would be very angry. In both these cases, and in all

others, the natural law, "Do not to another that which you would not

have another do to you," remains unbroken. All the other rules, so

different and so varied, may be referred to this. When, therefore, the

wise metaphysician, Locke, says that men have no innate ideas, that they

have different ideas of justice and injustice, he assuredly does not

mean to assert that God has not given to all men that instinctive

self-love by which they are of necessity guided.

ATOMS.

Epicurus, equally great as a genius, and respectable in his morals; and

after him Lucretius, who forced the Latin language to express

philosophical ideas, and--to the great admiration of Rome--to express

them in verse--Epicurus and Lucretius, I say, admitted atoms and the

void. Gassendi supported this doctrine, and Newton demonstrated it. In

vain did a remnant of Cartesianism still combat for the plenum; in vain

did Leibnitz, who had at first adopted the rational system of Epicurus,

Lucretius, Gassendi, and Newton, change his opinion respecting the void

after he had embroiled himself with his master Newton. The plenum is now

regarded as a chimera.

In this Epicurus and Lucretius appear to have been true philosophers,

and their intermediaries, who have been so much ridiculed, were no other

than the unresisting space in which Newton has demonstrated that the

planets move round their orbits in times proportioned to their areas.

Thus it was not Epicurus' intermediaries, but his opponents, that were

ridiculous. But when Epicurus afterwards tells us that his atoms

declined in the void by chance; that this declination formed men and

animals by chance; that the eyes were placed in the upper part of the

head and the feet at the end of the legs by chance; that ears were not

given to hear, but that the declination of atoms having fortuitously

composed ears, men fortuitously made use of them to hear with--this

madness, called physics, has been very justly turned into ridicule.

Sound philosophy, then, has long distinguished what is good in Epicurus

and Lucretius, from their chimeras, founded on imagination and

ignorance. The most submissive minds have adopted the doctrine of

creation in time, and the most daring have admitted that of creation

before all time. Some have received with faith a universe produced from

nothing; others, unable to comprehend this doctrine in physics, have

believed that all beings were emanations from the Great--the Supreme and

Universal Being; but all have rejected the fortuitous concurrence of

atoms; all have acknowledged that chance is a word without meaning. What

we call chance can be no other than the unknown cause of a known effect.

Whence comes it then, that philosophers are still accused of thinking

that the stupendous and indescribable arrangement of the universe is a

production of the fortuitous concurrence of atoms--an effect of chance?

Neither Spinoza nor any one else has advanced this absurdity.

Yet the son of the great Racine says, in his poem on Religion:

_O toi! qui follement fais ton Dieu du hasard,_

_Viens me développer ce nid qu'avec tant d'art,_

_Au même ordre toujours architecte fidèle,_

_A l'aide de son bee maçonne l'hirondelle;_

_Comment, pour élever ce hardi bâtiment,_

_A-t-elle en le broyant arrondi son ciment?_

Oh ye, who raise Creation out of chance,

As erst Lucretius from th' atomic dance!

Come view with me the swallow's curious nest,

Where beauty, art, and order, shine confessed.

How could rude chance, forever dark and blind,

Preside within the little builder's mind?

Could she, with accidents unnumbered crowned,

Its mass concentrate, and its structure round!

These lines are assuredly thrown away. No one makes chance his God; no

one has said that while a swallow "tempers his clay, it takes the form

of his abode by chance." On the contrary, it is said that "he makes his

nest by the laws of necessity," which is the opposite of chance.

The only question now agitated is, whether the author of nature has

formed primordial parts unsusceptible of division, or if all is

continually dividing and changing into other elements. The first system

seems to account for everything, and the second, hitherto at least, for

nothing.

If the first elements of things were not indestructible one element

might at last swallow up all the rest, and change them into its own

substance. Hence, perhaps it was that Empedocles imagined that

everything came from fire, and would be destroyed by fire.

This question of atoms involves another, that of the divisibility of

matter _ad infinitum_. The word _atom_ signifies _without parts--not to

be divided._ You divide it in thought, for if you were to divide it in

reality it would no longer be an atom.

You may divide a grain of gold into eighteen millions of visible parts;

a grain of copper dissolved in spirit of sal ammoniac has exhibited

upwards of twenty-two thousand parts; but when you have arrived at the

last element the atom escapes the microscope, and you can divide no

further except in imagination.

The infinite divisibility of atoms is like some propositions in

geometry. You may pass an infinity of curves between a circle and its

tangent, supposing the circle and the tangent to be lines without

breadth; but there are no such lines in nature.

You likewise establish that asymptotes will approach one another without

ever meeting; but it is under the supposition that they are lines

having length without breadth--things which have only a speculative

existence.

So, also, we represent unity by a line, and divide this line and this

unity into as many fractions as you please; but this infinity of

fractions will never be any other than our unity and our line.

It is not strictly demonstrated that atoms are indivisible, but it

appears that they are not divided by the laws of nature.

AVARICE.

Avarities, _amor habendi_--desire of having, avidity, covetousness.

Properly speaking, avarice is the desire of accumulating, whether in

grain, movables, money, or curiosities. There were avaricious men long

before coin was invented.

We do not call a man avaricious who has four and twenty coach horses,

yet will not lend one to his friend: or who, having two thousand bottles

of Burgundy in his cellar, will not send you half a dozen, when he knows

you to be in want of them. If he show you a hundred thousand crowns'

worth of diamonds you do not think of asking him to present you with one

worth twenty livres; you consider him as a man of great magnificence,

but not at all avaricious.

He who in finance, in army contracts, and great undertakings gained two

millions each year, and who, when possessed of forty-three millions,

besides his houses at Paris and his movables, expended fifty thousand

crowns per annum for his table, and sometimes lent money to noblemen at

five per cent, interest, did not pass, in the minds of the people, for

an avaricious man. He had, however, all his life burned with the thirst

of gain; the demon of covetousness was perpetually tormenting him; he

continued to accumulate to the last day of his life. This passion, which

was constantly gratified, has never been called avarice. He did not

expend a tenth part of his income, yet he had the reputation of a

generous man, too fond of splendor.

A father of a family who, with an income of twenty thousand livres,

expends only five or six, and accumulates his savings to portion his

children, has the reputation among his neighbors of being avaricious,

mean, stingy, a niggard, a miser, a grip-farthing; and every abusive

epithet that can be thought of is bestowed upon him.

Nevertheless this good citizen is much more to be honored than the

Crœsus I have just mentioned; he expends three times as much in

proportion. But the cause of the great difference between their

reputations is this:

Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because there is

nothing to be gained by him. The physician, the apothecary, the

wine-merchant, the draper, the grocer, the saddler, and a few girls gain

a good deal by our Croesus, who is truly avaricious. But with our close

and economical citizen there is nothing to be done. Therefore he is

loaded with maledictions.

As for those among the avaricious who deprive themselves of the

necessaries of life, we leave them to Plautus and Molière.

AUGURY.

Must not a man be very thoroughly possessed by the demon of etymology to

say, with Pezron and others, that the Roman word _augurium_ came from

the Celtic words _au_ and _gur_? According to these learned men _au_

must, among the Basques and Bas-Bretons, have signified _the liver_,

because _asu_, which, (say they) signified _left_, doubtless stood for

the liver, which is on the _right_ side; and _gur_ meant _man_, or

_yellow_, or _red_, in that Celtic tongue of which we have not one

memorial. Truly this is powerful reasoning.

Absurd curiosity (for we must call things by their right names) has been

carried so far as to seek Hebrew and Chaldee derivations from certain

Teutonic and Celtic words. This, Bochart never fails to do. It is

astonishing with what confidence these men of genius have proved that

expressions used on the banks of the Tiber were borrowed from the patois

of the savages of Biscay. Nay, they even assert that this patois was one

of the first idioms of the primitive language--the parent of all other

languages throughout the world. They have only to proceed, and say that

all the various notes of birds come from the cry of the two first

parrots, from which every other species of birds has been produced.

The religious folly of auguries was originally founded on very sound and

natural observations. The birds of passage have always marked the

progress of the seasons. We see them come in flocks in the spring, and

return in the autumn. The cuckoo is heard only in fine weather, which

his note seems to invite. The swallows, skimming along the ground,

announce rain. Each climate has its bird, which is in effect its augury.

Among the observing part of mankind there were, no doubt, knaves who

persuaded fools that there was something divine in these animals, and

that their flight presaged our destinies, which were written on the

wings of a sparrow just as clearly as in the stars.

The commentators on the allegorical and interesting story of Joseph sold

by his brethren, and made Pharaoh's prime minister for having explained

his dreams, infer that Joseph was skilled in the science of auguries,

from the circumstance that Joseph's steward is commanded to say to his

brethren, "Is not this it (the silver cup) in which my lord drinketh?

and whereby indeed he divineth?" Joseph, having caused his brethren to

be brought back before him, says to them: "What deed is this that ye

have done? Wot ye not that such a man as I can certainly divine?"

Judah acknowledges, in the name of his brethren, that Joseph is a great

diviner, and that God has inspired him: "God hath found out the iniquity

of thy servants." At that time they took Joseph for an Egyptian lord. It

is evident from the text that they believe the God of the Egyptians and

of the Jews had discovered to this minister the theft of his cup.

Here, then, we have auguries or divination clearly established in the

Book of Genesis; so clearly that it is afterwards forbidden in

Leviticus: "Ye shall not eat anything with the blood; neither shall ye

use enchantment nor observe times. Ye shall not round the corners of

your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard."

As for the superstition of seeing the future in a cup, it still exists,

and is called seeing in a glass. The individual must never have known

pollution; he must turn towards the east, and pronounce the words,

_Abraxa per dominum nostrum_, after which he will see in a glass of

water whatever he pleases. Children were usually chosen for this

operation. They must retain their hair; a shaven head, or one wearing a

wig, can see nothing in a glass. This pastime was much in vogue in

France during the regency of the duke of Orleans, and still more so in

the times preceding.

As for auguries, they perished with the Roman Empire. Only the bishops

have retained the augurial staff, called the crosier; which was the

distinctive mark of the dignity of augur; so that the symbol of

falsehood has become the symbol of truth.

There were innumerable kinds of divinations, of which several have

reached our latter ages. This curiosity to read the future is a malady

which only philosophy can cure, for the weak minds that still practise

these pretended arts of divination--even the fools who give themselves

to the devils--all make religion subservient to these profanations, by

which it is outraged.

It is an observation worthy of the wise, that Cicero, who was one of the

college of augurs, wrote a book for the sole purpose of turning auguries

into ridicule; but they have likewise remarked that Cicero, at the end

of his book, says that "superstition should be destroyed, but not

religion. For," he adds, "the beauty of the universe, and the order of

the heavenly bodies force us to acknowledge an eternal and powerful

nature. We must maintain the religion which is joined with the knowledge

of this nature, by utterly extirpating superstition, for it is a monster

which pursues and presses us on every side. The meeting with a pretended

diviner, a presage, an immolated victim, a bird, a Chaldæan, an

aruspice, a flash of lightning, a clap of thunder, an event accidentally

corresponding with what has been foretold to us, everything disturbs and

makes us uneasy; sleep itself, which should make us forget all these

pains and fears, serves but to redouble them by frightful images."

Cicero thought he was addressing only a few Romans, but he was speaking

to all men and all ages.

Most of the great men of Rome no more believed in auguries than

Alexander VI., Julius II., and Leo X., believed in Our Lady of Loretto

and the blood of St. Januarius. However, Suetonius relates that

Octavius, surnamed Augustus, was so weak as to believe that a fish,

which leaped from the sea upon the shore at Actium, foreboded that he

should gain the battle. He adds that, having afterwards met an

ass-driver, he asked him the name of his ass; and the man having

answered that his ass was named Nicholas, which signifies conqueror of

nations, he had no longer any doubts about the victory; and that he

afterwards had brazen statues erected to the ass-driver, the ass, and

the jumping fish. He further assures us that these statues were placed

in the Capitol.

It is very likely that this able tyrant laughed at the superstitions of

the Romans, and that his ass, the driver, and the fish, were nothing

more than a joke. But it is no less likely that, while he despised all

the follies of the vulgar, he had a few of his own. The barbarous and

dissimulating Louis XI. had a firm faith in the cross of St. Louis.

Almost all princes, excepting such as have had time to read, and read to

advantage, are in some degree infected with superstition.

AUGUSTINE.

Augustine, a native of Tagaste, is here to be considered, not as a

bishop, a doctor, a father of the Church, but simply as a man. This is a

question in physics, respecting the climate of Africa.

When a youth, Augustine was a great libertine, and the spirit was no

less quick in him than the flesh. He says that before he was twenty

years old he had learned arithmetic, geometry and music without a

master.

Does not this prove that, in Africa, which we now call Barbary, both

minds and bodies advance to maturity more rapidly than among us?

These valuable advantages of St. Augustine would lead one to believe

that Empedocles was not altogether in the wrong when he regarded fire as

the principle of nature. It is assisted, but by subordinate agents. It

is like a king governing the actions of all his subjects, and sometimes

inflaming the imaginations of his people rather too much. It is not

without reason that Syphax says to Juba, in the Cato of Addison, that

the sun which rolls its fiery car over African heads places a deeper

tinge upon the cheeks, and a fiercer flame within their hearts. That the

dames of Zama are vastly superior to the pale beauties of the north:

The glowing dames of Zama's royal court

Have faces flushed with more exalted charms;

Were you with these, my prince, you'd soon forget

The pale unripened beauties of the north.

Where shall we find in Paris, Strasburg, Ratisbon, or Vienna young men

who have learned arithmetic, the mathematics and music without

assistance, and who have been fathers at fourteen?

Doubtless it is no fable that Atlas, prince of Mauritania, called by the

Greeks the son of heaven, was a celebrated astronomer, and constructed a

celestial sphere such as the Chinese have had for so many ages. The

ancients, who expressed everything in allegory, likened this prince to

the mountain which bears his name, because it lifts its head above the

clouds, which have been called the heavens by all mankind who have

judged of things only from the testimony of their eyes.

These Moors cultivated the sciences with success, and taught Spain and

Italy for five centuries. Things are greatly altered. The country of

Augustine is now but a den of pirates, while England, Italy, Germany,

and France, which were involved in barbarism, are greater cultivators of

the arts than ever the Arabians were.

Our only object, then, in this article is to show how changeable a scene

this world is. Augustine, from a debauchee, becomes an orator and a

philosopher; he puts himself forward in the world; he teaches rhetoric;

he turns Manichæan, and from Manichæanism passes to Christianity. He

causes himself to be baptized, together with one of his bastards, named

Deodatus; he becomes a bishop, and a father of the Church. His system of

grace has been reverenced for eleven hundred years as an article of

faith. At the end of eleven hundred years some Jesuits find means to

procure an anathema against Augustine's system, word for word, under the

names of Jansenius, St. Cyril, Arnaud, and Quesnel. We ask if this

revolution is not, in its kind, as great as that of Africa, and if there

be anything permanent upon earth?

AUGUSTUS (OCTAVIUS).

_The Morals of Augustus._

Manners can be known only from facts, which facts must be incontestable.

It is beyond doubt that this man, so immoderately praised as the

restorer of morals and of laws, was long one of the most infamous

debauchees in the Roman commonwealth. His epigram on Fulvia, written

after the horrors of the proscriptions, proves that he was no less a

despiser of decency in his language than he was a barbarian in his

conduct. This abominable epigram is one of the strongest testimonies to

Augustus' infamous immorality. Sextus Pompeius also reproached him with

shameful weaknesses: _"Effeminatum infectatus est."_ Antony, before the

triumvirate, declared that Cæsar, great-uncle to Augustus, had adopted

him as his son only because he had been subservient to his pleasures;

_"Adopt ionem avunculi stupro meritum."_

Lucius Cæsar charged him with the same crime, and even asserted that he

had been base enough to sell himself to Hirtius for a very considerable

sum. He was so shameless as to take the wife of a consul from her

husband in the midst of a supper; he took her to a neighboring closet,

staid with her there for some time, and brought her back to table

without himself, the woman, or her husband blushing at all at the

proceeding.

We have also a letter from Antony to Augustus, couched in these terms:

_"Ita valeas ut hanc epistolam cum leges, non inieris Testullam, aut

Terentillam, aut Russillam, aut Salviam, aut omnes. Anne refert ubi et

in quam arrigas?"_ We are afraid to translate this licentious letter.

Nothing is better known than the scandalous feast of five of the

companions of his pleasures with five of the principal women of Rome.

They were dressed up as gods and goddesses, and imitated all the

immodesties invented in fable--_"Bum nova Divorum cœnat adulteria."_

And on the stage he was publicly designated by this famous line:

_Videsne ut cinaedus orbem digito temperet?_

Almost every Latin author that speaks of Ovid asserts that Augustus had

the insolence to banish that Roman knight, who was a much better man

than himself, merely because the other had surprised him in an incest

with his own daughter Julia; and that he sent his daughter into exile

only through jealousy. This is the more likely, as Caligula published

aloud that his mother was born from the incest of Augustus with Julia.

So says Suetonius, in his life of Caligula.

We know that Augustus repudiated the mother of Julia the very day she

was brought to bed of her, and on the same day took Livia from her

husband when she was pregnant of Tiberius--another monster, who

succeeded him. Such was the man to whom Horace said: _"Res Italas armis

tuteris, moribus ornes, Legibus emendes...."_

It is hard to repress our indignation at reading at the commencement of

the Georgics that Augustus is one of the greatest of divinities; and

that it is not known what place he will one day deign to occupy in

heaven; whether he will reign in the air, or become the protector of

cities, or vouchsafe to accept the empire of the seas:

_An Deus immensi venias maris, ac tua nauta_

_Numina sola celant tibi servial ultima Thule._

Ariosto speaks with much more sense as well as grace, when he says in

his fine thirty-fifth canto:

_Non fu si santo ne benigno Augusto_

_Come la tromba di Virgilio sonna;_

_L'aver avuto in poesia buon gusto_

_La proscriptione iniqua gli perdona._

Augustus was not quite so mild and chaste

As he's by honest Virgil represented;

But then, the tyrant had poetic taste;

With this the poet fully was contented.

_The Cruelties of Augustus._

If Augustus was long abandoned to the most shameful and frantic

dissipation, his cruelty was no less uniform and deliberate. His

proscriptions were published in the midst of feasting and revelry; he

proscribed more than three hundred senators, two thousand knights, and

one hundred obscure but wealthy heads of families, whose only crime was

their being rich, Antony and Octavius had them killed, solely that they

might get possession of their money; in which they differed not the

least from highway robbers, who are condemned to the wheel.

Octavius, immediately after the Persian war, gave his veterans all the

lands belonging to the citizens of Mantua and Cremona, thus recompensing

murder by depredation.

It is but too certain that the world was ravaged, from the Euphrates to

the extremities of Spain, by this man without shame, without faith,

honor, or probity, knavish, ungrateful, avaricious, blood-thirsty, cool

in the commission of crime, who, in any well-regulated republic, would

have been condemned to the greatest of punishments for the first of his

offences.

Nevertheless, the government of Augustus is still admired, because under

him Rome tasted peace, pleasure and abundance. Seneca says of him:

_"Clementiam non voco lassam crudelitatem"_--"I do not call exhausted

cruelty clemency."

It is thought that Augustus became milder when crime was no longer

necessary to him; and that, being absolute master, he saw that he had no

other interest than to appear just. But it appears to me that he still

was pitiless rather than clement; for, after the battle of Actium, he

had Antony's son murdered at the feet of Cæsar's statue; and he was so

barbarous as to have young Cæsarion, the son of Cæsar and Cleopatra,

beheaded, though he had recognized him as king of Egypt.

Suspecting one day that the prætor Quintus Gallius had come to an

audience with a poinard under his robe, he had him put to the torture in

his presence; and, in his indignation at hearing that senator call him a

tyrant, he tore out his eyes with his own hands; at least, so says

Suetonius.

We know that Cæsar, his adopted father, was great enough to pardon

almost all his enemies; but I do not find that Augustus pardoned one of

his. I have great doubts of his pretended clemency to Cinna. This affair

is mentioned neither by Suetonius nor by Tacitus. Suetonius, who speaks

of all the conspiracies against Augustus, would not have failed to

mention the most memorable. The singularity of giving a consulship to

Cinna in return for the blackest perfidy would not have escaped every

contemporary historian. Dion Cassius speaks of it only after Seneca; and

this passage in Seneca has the appearance rather of declamation than of

historical truth. Besides, Seneca lays the scene in Gaul, and Dion at

Rome; this contradiction deprives the occurrence of all remaining

verisimilitude. Not one of our Roman histories, compiled in haste and

without selection, has discussed this interesting fact. Lawrence

Echard's History has appeared to enlightened men to be as faulty as it

is mutilated; writers have rarely been guided by the spirit of

examination.

Cinna might be suspected, or convicted, by Augustus of some infidelity;

and, when the affair had been cleared up, he might honor him with the

vain title of consul; but it is not at all probable that Cinna sought by

a conspiracy to seize the supreme authority--he, who had never commanded

an army, was supported by no party, and was a man of no consideration in

the empire. It is not very likely that a mere subordinate courtier would

think of succeeding a sovereign who had been twenty years firmly

established on his throne, and had heirs; nor is it more likely that

Augustus would make him consul immediately after the conspiracy.

If Cinna's adventure be true, Augustus pardoned him only because he

could not do otherwise, being overcome by the reasoning or the

importunities of Livia, who had acquired great influence over him, and

persuaded him, says Seneca, that pardon would do him more service than

chastisement. It was then only through policy that he, for once, was

merciful; it certainly was not through generosity.

Shall we give a robber credit for clemency, because, being enriched and

secure, enjoying in peace the fruits of his rapine, he is not every day

assassinating the sons and grandsons of the proscribed, while they are

kneeling to and worshipping him? After being a barbarian he was a

prudent politician. It is worthy of remark that posterity never gave

him the title of virtuous, which was bestowed on Titus, on Trajan, and

the Antonines. It even became customary in the compliments paid to

emperors on their accession, to wish that they might be more fortunate

than Augustus, and more virtuous than Trajan. It is now, therefore,

allowable to consider Augustus as a clever and fortunate monster.

Louis Racine, son of the great Racine, and heir to a part of his

talents, seems to forget himself when he says, in his "Reflections on

Poetry," that "Horace and Virgil spoiled Augustus; they exhausted their

art in poisoning the mind of Augustus by their praises." These

expressions would lead one to believe that the eulogies so meanly

lavished by these two great poets, corrupted this emperor's fine

disposition. But Louis Racine very well knew that Augustus was an

exceedingly bad man, regarding crime and virtue with indifference,

availing himself alike of the horrors of the one and the appearances of

the other, attentive solely to his own interest, employing bloodshed and

peace, arms and laws, religion and pleasure, only to make himself master

of the earth, and sacrificing everything to himself. Louis Racine only

shows us that Virgil and Horace had servile souls.

He is, unfortunately, too much in the right when he reproaches Corneille

with having dedicated _"Cinna"_ to the financier Montoron, and said to

that receiver. "What you most especially have in common with Augustus

is the generosity with which," etc., for, though Augustus was the most

wicked of Roman citizens, it must be confessed that the first of the

emperors, the master, the pacificator, the legislator of the then known

world, should not be placed absolutely on a level with a clerk to a

comptroller-general in Gaul.

The same Louis Racine, in justly condemning the mean adulation of

Corneille, and the baseness of the aged Horace and Virgil, marvellously

lays hold of this passage in Massillon's _"Petit Carême!"_ "It is no

less culpable to fail in truth towards monarchs than to be wanting in

fidelity; the same penalty should be imposed on adulation as on revolt."

I ask your pardon, Father Massillon; but this stroke of yours is very

oratorical, very preacher-like, very exaggerated. The League and the

Fronde have, if I am not deceived, done more harm than Quinault's

prologues. There is no way of condemning Quinault as a rebel. _"Est

modus in rebus."_ Father Massillon, which is wanting in all

manufacturers of sermons.

AVIGNON.

Avignon and its country are monuments of what the abuse of religion,

ambition, knavery, and fanaticism united can effect. This little

country, after a thousand vicissitudes, had, in the twelfth century,

passed into the hands of the counts of Toulouse, descended from

Charlemagne by the female side.

Raymond VI., count of Toulouse, whose forefathers had been the principal

heroes in the crusades, was stripped of his states by a crusade which

the pope stirred up against him. The cause of the crusade was the desire

of having his spoils; the pretext was that in several of his towns the

citizens thought nearly as has been thought for upwards of two hundred

years in England, Sweden, Denmark, three-fourths of Switzerland,

Holland, and half of Germany.

This was hardly a sufficient reason for _giving_, in the name of God,

the states of the count of Toulouse to the first occupant, and for

devoting to slaughter and fire his subjects, crucifix in hand, and white

cross on shoulder. All that is related of the most savage people falls

far short of the barbarities committed in this war, called holy. The

ridiculous atrocity of some religious ceremonies always, accompanied

these horrid excesses. It is known that Raymond VI. was dragged to a

church of St. Giles's, before a legate, naked to the waist, without hose

or sandals, with a rope about his neck, which was held by a deacon,

while another deacon flogged him, and a third sung _miserere_ with some

monks--and all the while the legate was at dinner. Such was the origin

of the right of the popes over Avignon.

Count Raymond, who had submitted to the flagellation in order to

preserve his states, underwent this ignominy to no purpose whatever. He

had to defend by arms what he had thought to preserve by suffering a few

stripes; he saw his towns laid in ashes, and died in 1213 amid the

vicissitudes of the most sanguinary war.

His son, Raymond VII., was not, like his father, suspected of heresy;

but he was the son of a heretic, and was to be stripped of all his

possessions, by virtue of the Decretals; such was the law. The crusade,

therefore, was continued against him; he was excommunicated in the

churches, on Sundays and holidays, to the sound of bells and with tapers

extinguished.

A legate who was in France during the minority of St. Louis raised

tenths there to maintain this war in Languedoc and Provence. Raymond

defended himself with courage; but the heads of the hydra of fanaticism

were incessantly reappearing to devour him.

The pope at last made peace because all his money had been expended in

war. Raymond VII. came and signed the treaty before the portal of the

cathedral of Paris. He was forced to pay ten thousand marks of silver to

the legate, two thousand to the abbey of Citeaux, five hundred to the

abbey of Clairvaux, a thousand to that of Grand-Selve, and three hundred

to that of Belleperche---all for the salvation of his soul, as is

specified in the treaty. So it was that the Church always negotiated.

It is very remarkable that in this document the count of Toulouse

constantly puts the legate before the king: "I swear and promise to the

legate and to the king faithfully to observe all these things, and to

cause them to be observed by my vassals and subjects," etc.

This was not all. He ceded to Pope Gregory IX. the country of Venaissin

beyond the Rhône, and the sovereignty of seventy-three castles on this

side the same river. The pope adjudged this fine to himself by a

particular act, desirous that, in a public instrument, the

acknowledgment of having exterminated so many Christians for the purpose

of seizing upon his neighbor's goods, should not appear in so glaring a

light. Besides, he demanded what Raymond could not grant, without the

consent of the Emperor Frederick II. The count's lands, on the left bank

of the Rhône, were an imperial fief, and Frederick II. never sanctioned

this exaction.

Alphonso, brother of St. Louis, having married this unfortunate prince's

daughter, by whom he had no children, all the states of Raymond VII. in

Languedoc, devolved to the crown of France, as had been stipulated in

the marriage contract.

The country of Venaissin, which is in Provence, had been magnanimously

given up by the Emperor Frederick II. to the count of Toulouse. His

daughter Joan, before her death, had disposed of them by will in favor

of Charles of Anjou, count of Provence, and king of Naples.

Philip the Bold, son of St. Louis, being pressed by Pope Gregory IX.,

gave the country of Venaissin to the Roman church in 1274. It must be

confessed that Philip the Bold gave what in no way belonged to him; that

this cession was absolutely null and void, and that no act ever was more

contrary to all law.

It is the same with the town of Avignon. Joan of France, queen of

Naples, descended from the brother of St. Louis, having been, with but

too great an appearance of justice, accused of causing her husband to be

strangled, desired the protection of Pope Clement VI., whose see was

then the town of Avignon, in Joan's domains. She was countess of

Provence. In 1347 the Provencals made her swear, on the gospel, that she

would sell none of her sovereignties. She had scarcely taken this oath

before she went and sold Avignon to the pope. The authentic act was not

signed until June 14, 1348; the sum stipulated for was eighty thousand

florins of gold. The pope declared her innocent of her husband's murder,

but never paid her. Joan's receipt has never been produced. She

protested juridically four several times against this deceitful

purchase.

So that Avignon and its country were never considered to have been

dismembered from Provence, otherwise than by a rapine, which was the

more manifest, as it had been sought to cover it with the cloak of

religion.

When Louis XI. acquired Provence he acquired it with all the rights

appertaining thereto; and, as appears by a letter from John of Foix to

that monarch, had in 1464 resolved to enforce them. But the intrigues of

the court of Rome were always so powerful that the kings of France

condescended to allow it the enjoyment of this small province. They

never acknowledged in the popes a lawful possession, but only a simple

enjoyment.

In the treaty of Pisa, made by Louis XIV. with Alexander VII., in 1664,

it is said that, "every obstacle shall be removed, in order that the

pope may enjoy Avignon as before." The pope, then, had this province

only as cardinals have pensions from the king, which pensions are

discretional. Avignon and its country were a constant source of

embarrassment to the French government; they afforded a refuge to all

the bankrupts and smugglers, though very little profit thence accrued to

the pope.

Louis XIV. twice resumed his rights; but it was rather to chastise the

pope than to reunite Avignon and its country with his crown. At length

Louis XV. did justice to his dignity and to his subjects. The gross and

indecent conduct of Pope Rezzonico (Clement XIII.) forced him in 1768 to

revive the rights of his crown. This pope had acted as if he belonged

to the fourteenth century. He was, however, with the applause of all

Europe, convinced that he lived in the eighteenth.

When the officer bearing the king's orders entered Avignon, he went

straight to the legate's apartment, without being announced, and said to

him, "Sir, the king takes possession of his town." There is some

difference between this proceeding and a count of Toulouse being flogged

by a deacon, while a legate is at dinner. Things, we see, change with

times.

AUSTERITIES.

MORTIFICATIONS. FLAGELLATIONS.

Suppose that some chosen individuals, lovers of study, united together

after a thousand catastrophes had happened to the world, and employed

themselves in worshipping God and regulating the time of the year, as is

said of the ancient Brahmins and Magi; all this is perfectly good and

honest. They might, by their frugal life, set an example to the rest of

the world; they might abstain, during the celebration of their feasts,

from all intoxicating liquors, and all commerce with their wives; they

might be clothed modestly and decently; if they were wise, other men

consulted them; if they were just, they were loved and reverenced. But

did not superstition, brawling, and vanity soon take the place of the

virtues?

Was not the first madman that flogged himself publicly to appease the

gods the original of the priests of the Syrian goddess, who flogged

themselves in her honor; of the priests of Isis, who did the same on

certain days; of the priests of Dodona, named Salii, who inflicted

wounds on themselves; of the priests of Bellona, who struck themselves

with sabres; of the priests of Diana, who drew blood from their backs

with rods; of the priests of Cybele, who made themselves eunuchs; of the

fakirs of India, who loaded themselves with chains? Has the hope of

obtaining abundant alms nothing at all to do with the practice of these

austerities?

Is there not some similarity between the beggars, who make their legs

swell by a certain application and cover their bodies with sores, in

order to force a few pence from the passengers, and the impostors of

antiquity, who seated themselves upon nails, and sold the holy nails to

the devout of their country?

And had vanity never any share in promoting these public mortifications,

which attracted the eyes of the multitude? "I scourge myself, but it is

to expiate your faults; I go naked, but it is to reproach you with the

richness of your garments; I feed on herbs and snails, but it is to

correct in you the vice of gluttony; I wear an iron ring to make you

blush at your lewdness. Reverence me as one cherished by the gods, and

who will bring down their favors upon you. When you shall be accustomed

to reverence me, you will not find it hard to obey me; I will be your

master, in the name of the gods; and then, if any one of you disobey my

will in the smallest particular, I will have you impaled to appease the

wrath of heaven."

If the first fakirs did not pronounce these words, it is very probable

that they had them engraved at the bottom of their hearts.

Human sacrifices, perhaps, had their origin in these frantic

austerities. Men who drew their blood in public with rods, and mangled

their arms and thighs to gain consideration, would easily make imbecile

savages believe that they must sacrifice to the gods whatever was

dearest to them; that to have a fair wind, they must immolate a

daughter; to avert pestilence, precipitate a son from a rock; to have

infallibly a good harvest, throw a daughter into the Nile.

These Asiatic superstitions gave rise to the flagellations which we have

imitated from the Jews. Their devotees still flog themselves, and flog

one another, as the priests of Egypt and Syria did of old. Among us the

abbots flogged their monks, and the confessors their penitents--of both

sexes. St. Augustine wrote to Marcellinus, the tribune, that "the

Donatists must be whipped as schoolmasters whip their scholars."

It is said that it was not until the tenth century that monks and nuns

began to scourge themselves on certain days of the year. The custom of

scourging sinners as a penance was so well established that St. Louis's

confessor often gave him the whip. Henry II. was flogged by the monks

of Canterbury (in 1207). Raymond, count of Toulouse, with a rope round

his neck, was flogged by a deacon, at the door of St. Giles's church, as

has before been said.

The chaplains to Louis VIII., king of France, were condemned by the

pope's legate to go at the four great feasts to the door of the

cathedral of Paris, and present rods to the canons, that they might flog

them in expiation for the crime of the king, their master, who had

accepted the crown of England, which the pope had taken from him by

virtue of the plenitude of his power. Indeed, the pope showed great

indulgence in not having the king himself whipped, but contenting

himself with commanding him, on pain of damnation, to pay to the

apostolic chamber the amount of two years' revenue.

From this custom is derived that which still exists, of arming all the

grand-penitentiaries in St. Peter's at Rome with long wands instead of

rods, with which they give gentle taps to the penitents, lying all their

length on the floor. In this manner it was that Henry IV., of France,

had his posteriors flogged by Cardinal Ossat and Duperron. So true is it

that we have scarcely yet emerged from barbarism.

At the commencement of the thirteenth century fraternities of penitents

were formed at Perosia and Bologna. Young men almost naked, with a rod

in one hand and a small crucifix in the other, flogged themselves in

the streets; while the women peeped through the window-blinds and

whipped themselves in their chambers.

These flagellators inundated Europe; there are many of them still to be

found in Italy, in Spain, and even in France, at Perpignan. At the

beginning of the sixteenth century it was very common for confessors to

whip the posteriors of their penitents. A history of the Low Countries,

composed by Meteren, relates that a cordelier named Adriacem, a great

preacher at Bruges, used to whip his female penitents quite naked.

The Jesuit Edmund Auger, confessor to Henry III., persuaded that

unfortunate prince to put himself at the head of the flagellators.

Flogging the posteriors is practised in various convents of monks and

nuns; from which custom there have sometimes resulted strange

immodesties, over which _we_ must throw a veil, in order to spare the

blushes of such as wear the _sacred_ veil, and whose sex and profession

are worthy of our highest regard.

AUTHORS.

Author is a generic term, which, like the names of all other

professions, may signify author of the good, or of the bad; of the

respectable, or of the ridiculous; of the useful, or the agreeable; or

lastly, the producer of disgusting trash.

This name is also common to different things. We say equally the author

of nature and the author of the songs of the Pont Neuf, or of the

literary age. The author of a good work should beware of three

things--title, dedication, and preface. Others should take care of the

fourth, which is writing at all.

As to the title, if the author has the wish to put his name to it, which

is often very dangerous, it should at least be under a modest form; it

is not pleasant to see a pious work, full of lessons of humanity, by Sir

or My Lord. The reader; who is always malicious, and who often is

wearied, usually turns into ridicule a book that is announced with so

much ostentation. The author of the "Imitation of Jesus Christ" did not

put his name to it.

But the apostles, you will say, put their names to their works; that is

not true, they were too modest. The apostle Matthew never entitled his

book the Gospel of St. Matthew; it is a homage that has been paid to him

since. St. Luke himself, who collected all that he had heard said, and

who dedicated his book to Theophilus, did not call it the Gospel of St.

Luke. St. John alone mentions himself in the Apocalypse; and it is

supposed that this book was written by Cerinthus, who took the name of

John to give authority to his production.

However it may have been in past ages, it appears to me very bold in

authors now to put names and titles at the head of their works. The

bishops never fail to do so, and the thick quartos which they give us

under the title of mandaments are decorated with armorial bearings and

the insignia of their station; a word, no doubt, is said about Christian

humility, but this word is often followed by atrocious calumnies against

those who are of another communion or party. We only speak here,

however, of poor profane authors. The duke de la Rochefoucauld did not

announce his thoughts as the production of _Monseigneur le dud de la

Rochefoucauld, pair de France_. Some persons who only make compilations

in which there may be fine things, will find it injudicious to announce

them as the work of A.B., professor of the university of ----, doctor of

divinity, member of this or of that academy, and so on. So many

dignities do not render the book better. It will still be wished that it

was shorter, more philosophical, less filled with old stories. With

respect to titles and quality, nobody cares about them.

Dedications are often only offerings from interested baseness to

disdainful vanity. Who would believe that Rohaut, _soi-disant_

physician, in his dedication to the duke of Guise, told him that his

ancestors had maintained, at the expense of their blood, political

truth, the fundamental laws of the state, and the rights of sovereigns?

Le Balafré and the duke of Mayenne would be a little surprised if this

epistle were read to them in the other world. And what would Henry IV.

say? Most of the dedications in England are made for money, just as the

capuchins present us with salad on condition of our giving them drink.

Men of letters in France are ignorant of this shameful abasement, and

have never exhibited so much meanness, except some unfortunates, who

call themselves men of letters in the same sense that sign-daubers boast

of being of the profession of Raphael, and that the coachman of

Vertamont was a poet.

Prefaces are another rock. "The _I_ is hateful," says Pascal. Speak of

yourself as little as you can, for you ought to be aware that the

self-love of the reader is as great as your own. He will never pardon

you for wishing to oblige him to esteem you. It is for your book to

speak to him, should it happen to be read among the crowd.

"The illustrious suffrages with which my piece has been honored will

make me dispense with answering my adversaries--the applauses of the

public." Erase all that, sir; believe me you have had no illustrious

suffrages; your piece is eternally forgotten.

"Some censors have pretended that there are too many events in the third

act; and that in the fourth the princess is too late in discovering the

tender sentiments of her heart for her lover. To that I answer--" Answer

nothing, my friend, for nobody has spoken-, or will speak of thy

princess. Thy piece has fallen because it is tiresome, and written in

flat and barbarous verse; thy preface is a prayer for the dead, but it

will not revive them.

Others attest that all Europe has not understood their treatises on

compatibility--on the Supralapsarians--on the difference which should be

made between the Macedonian and Valentinian heresies, etc. Truly, I

believe that nobody understands them, since nobody reads them.

We are inundated with this trash and with continual repetition; with

insipid romances which copy their predecessors; with new systems founded

on ancient reveries; and little histories taken from larger ones.

Do you wish to be an author? Do you wish to make a book? Recollect that

it must be new and useful, or at least agreeable. Why from your

provincial retreat would you assassinate me with another quarto, to

teach me that a king ought to be just, and that Trajan was more virtuous

than Caligula? You insist upon printing the sermons which have lulled

your little obscure town to repose, and will put all our histories under

contributions to extract from them the life of a prince of whom you can

say nothing new.

If you have written a history of your own time, doubt not but you will

find some learned chronologist, or newspaper commentator, who will

relieve you as to a date, a Christian name, or a squadron which you have

wrongly placed at the distance of three hundred paces from the place

where if really stood. Be grateful, and correct these important errors

forthwith.

If an ignoramus, or an empty fool, pretend to criticise this thing or

the other, you may properly confute him; but name him rarely, for fear

of soiling your writings. If you are attacked on your style, never

answer; your work alone should reply.

If you are said to be sick, content yourself that you are well, without

wishing to prove to the people that you are in perfect health; and,

above all, remember that the world cares very little whether you are

well or ill.

A hundred authors compile to get their bread, and twenty fools extract,

criticise, apologize, and satirize these compilations to get bread also,

because they have no profession. All these people repair on Fridays to

the lieutenant of the police at Paris to demand permission to sell their

drugs. They have audience immediately after the courtesans, who do not

regard them, because they know that they are poor customers.

They return with a tacit permission to sell and distribute throughout

the kingdom their stories; their collection of bon-mots; the life of the

unfortunate Régis; the translation of a German poem; new discoveries on

eels; a new copy of verses; a treatise on the origin of bells, or on the

loves of the toads. A bookseller buys their productions for ten crowns;

they give five of them to the journalist, on condition that he will

speak well of them in his newspaper. The critic takes their money, and

says all the ill he can of their books. The aggrieved parties go to

complain to the Jew, who protects the wife of the journalist, and the

scene closes by the critic being carried to Fort Evêque; and these are

they who call themselves authors!

These poor people are divided into two or three bands, and go begging

like mendicant friars; but not having taken vows their society lasts

only for a few days, for they betray one another like priests who run

after the same benefice, though they have no benefice to hope for. But

they still call themselves authors!

The misfortune of these men is that their fathers did not make them

learn a trade, which is a great defect in modern policy. Every man of

the people who can bring up his son in a useful art, and does not,

merits punishment. The son of a mason becomes a Jesuit at seventeen; he

is chased from society at four and twenty, because the levity of his

manners is too glaring. Behold him without bread! He turns journalist,

he cultivates the lowest kind of literature, and becomes the contempt

and horror of even the mob. And such as these, again, call themselves

authors!

The only authors are they who have succeeded in a genuine art, be it

epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, history, or philosophy, and who teach or

delight mankind. The others, of whom we have spoken, are, among men of

letters, like bats among the birds. We cite, comment, criticise,

neglect, forget, and, above all, despise an author who is an author

_only_.

Apropos of citing an author, I must amuse myself with relating a

singular mistake of the reverend Father Viret, cordelier and professor

of theology. He read in the "Philosophy of History" of the good abbé

Bazin that no author ever cited a passage of Moses before Longinus, who

lived and died in the time of the Emperor Aurelian. Forthwith the zeal

of St. Francis was kindled in him. Viret cries out that it is not true;

that several writers have said that there had been a Moses, that even

Josephus had spoken at length upon him, and that the Abbé Bazin is a

wretch who would destroy the seven sacraments. But, dear Father Viret,

you ought to inform yourself of the meaning of the word, to _cite_.

There is a great deal of difference between mentioning an author and

citing him. To speak, to make mention of an author, is to say that he

has lived--that he has written in such a time; to cite is to give one of

his passages--as Moses says in his Exodus--as Moses has written in his

Genesis. Now the Abbé Brazin affirms that no foreign writers--that none

even of the Jewish prophets have ever quoted a single passage of Moses,

though he was a divine author. Truly, Father Viret, you are very

malicious, but we shall know at least, by this little paragraph, that

_you_ have been an author.

The most voluminous authors that we have had in France are the

comptrollers-general of the finances. Ten great volumes might be made of

their declarations, since the reign of Louis XIV. Parliaments have been

sometimes the critics of these works, and have found erroneous

propositions and contradictions in them. But where are the good authors

who have not been censured?

AUTHORITY.

Miserable human beings, whether in green robes or in turbans, whether in

black gowns or in surplices, or in mantles and bands, never seek to

employ authority where nothing is concerned but reason, or consent to be

reviled in all ages as the most impertinent of men, as well as to endure

public hatred as the most unjust.

You have been told a hundred times of the insolent absurdity with which

you condemned Galileo, and I speak to you of it for the hundred and

first. I would have it inscribed over the door of your holy office.

Seven cardinals, assisted by certain minorite friars, threw into prison

the master of thinking in Italy, at the age of seventy; and made him

live upon bread and water because he instructed mankind in that of which

they were ignorant.

Having passed a decree in favor of the categories of Aristotle, the

above junta learnedly and equitably doomed to the penalty of the galleys

whoever should dare to be of another opinion from the Stagyrite, of

whom two councils had burned the books.

Further, a Faculty, which possessed very small faculties, made a decree

_against_ innate ideas, and afterwards another _for_ them, without the

said Faculty being informed, except by its beadles, of what an idea was.

In neighboring schools legal proceedings were commenced against the

circulation of the blood. A process was issued against inoculation, and

the parties cited by summons.

One and twenty volumes of thoughts in folio have been seized, in which

it was wickedly and falsely said that triangles have always three

angles; that a father was older than his son; that Rhea Silvia lost her

virginity before her accouchement; and that farina differs from oak

leaves.

In another year the following question was decided: _"Utrum chimæra

bombinans in vacuo possit comedere secundas intentiones?"_ and decided

in the affirmative. These judges, of course, considered themselves much

superior to Archimedes, Euclid, Cicero, or Pliny, and strutted about the

Universities accordingly.

AXIS.

How is it that the axis of the earth is not perpendicular to the

equator? Why is it raised toward the north and inclined towards the

south pole, in a position which does not appear natural, and which

seems the consequence of some derangement, or the result of a period of

a prodigious number of years?

Is it true that the ecliptic continually inclines by an insensible

movement towards the equator and that the angle formed by these two

lines has a little diminished in two thousand years?

Is it true that the ecliptic has been formerly perpendicular to the

equator, that the Egyptians have said so, and that Herodotus has related

it? This motion of the ecliptic would form a period of about two

millions of years. It is not that which astounds us, for the axis of the

earth has an imperceptible movement in about twenty-six thousand years

which occasions the precession of the equinoxes. It is as easy for

nature to produce a rotation of twenty thousand as of two hundred and

sixty ages.

We are deceived when we are told that the Egyptians had, according to

Herodotus, a tradition that the ecliptic had been formerly perpendicular

to the equator. The tradition of which Herodotus speaks has no relation

to the coincidence of the equinoctial and ecliptic lines; that is quite

another affair.

The pretended scholars of Egypt said that the sun in the space of eleven

thousand years had set twice in the east and risen twice in the west.

When the equator and the ecliptic coincided, and when the days were

everywhere equal to the nights the sun did not on that account change

its setting and rising, but the earth turned on its axis from west to

east, as at this day. This idea of making the sun set in the east is a

chimera only worthy of the brains of the priests of Egypt and shows the

profound ignorance of those jugglers who have had so much reputation.

The tale should be classed with those of the satyrs who sang and danced

in the train of Osiris; with the little boys whom they would not feed

till after they had run eight leagues, to teach them to conquer the

world; with the two children who cried _bec_ in asking for bread and who

by that means discovered that the Phrygian was the original language;

with King Psammeticus, who gave his daughter to a thief who had

dexterously stolen his money, etc.

Ancient history, ancient astronomy, ancient physics, ancient medicine

(up to Hippocrates), ancient geography, ancient metaphysics, all are

nothing but ancient absurdities which ought to make us feel the

happiness of being born in later times.

There is, no doubt, more truth in two pages of the French Encyclopædia

in relation to physics than in all the library of Alexandria, the loss

of which is so much regretted.

BABEL.

SECTION I.

Babel signifies among the Orientals, God the Father, the power of God,

the gate of God, according to the way in which the word is pronounced.

It appears, therefore, that Babylon was the city of God, the holy city.

Every capital of a state was a city of God, the sacred city. The Greeks

called them all Hieropolis, and there were more than thirty of this

name. The tower of Babel, then, signifies the tower of God the Father.

Josephus says truly that Babel signifies confusion; Calmet says, with

others, that Bilba, in Chaldæan, signifies confounded, but all the

Orientals have been of a contrary opinion. The word confusion would be a

strange etymon for the capital of a vast empire. I very much like the

opinion of Rabelais, who pretends that Paris was formerly called Lutetia

on account of the ladies' white legs.

Be that as it may, commentators have tormented themselves to know to

what height men had raised this famous tower of Babel. St. Jerome gives

it twenty thousand feet. The ancient Jewish book entitled _"Jacult"_

gave it eighty-one thousand. Paul Lucas has seen the remains of it and

it is a fine thing to be as keen-sighted as Paul Lucas, but these

dimensions are not the only difficulties which have exercised the

learned.

People have wished to know how the children of Noah, after having

divided among themselves the islands of the nations and established

themselves in various lands, with each one his particular language,

families, and people, should all find themselves in the plain of

Shinaar, to build there a tower saying, "Let us make us a name lest we

be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."

The Book of Genesis speaks of the states which the sons of Noah founded.

It has related how the people of Europe, Africa, and Asia, all came to

Shinaar speaking one language only, and purposing the same thing.

The Vulgate places the Deluge in the year of the world 1656, and the

construction of the tower of Babel 1771, that is to say, one hundred and

fifteen years after the destruction of mankind, and even during the life

of Noah.

Men then must have multiplied with prodigious celerity; all the arts

revived in a very little time. When we reflect on the great number of

trades which must have been employed to raise a tower so high we are

amazed at so stupendous a work.

The patriarch Abraham was born, according to the Bible, about four

hundred years after the deluge, and already we see a line of powerful

kings in Egypt and in Asia. Bochart and other sages have pleasantly

filled their great books with Phœnician and Chaldæan words and

systems which they do not understand. They have learnedly taken Thrace

for Cappadocia, Greece for Crete, and the island of Cyprus for Tyre;

they sport in an ocean of ignorance which has neither bottom nor shore.

It would have been shorter for them to have avowed that God, after

several ages, has given us sacred books to render us better men and not

to make us geographers, chronologists, or etymologists.

Babel is Babylon. It was founded, according to the Persian historians,

by a prince named Tamurath. The only knowledge we have of its

antiquities consists in the astronomical observations of nineteen

hundred and three years, sent by Callisthenes by order of Alexander, to

his preceptor Aristotle. To this certainty is joined the extreme

probability that a nation which had made a series of celestial

observations for nearly two thousand years had congregated and formed a

considerable power several ages before the first of these observations.

It is a pity that none of the calculations of the ancient profane

authors agree with our sacred ones, and that none of the names of the

princes who reigned after the different epochs assigned to the Deluge

have been known by either Egyptians, Syrians, Babylonians, or Greeks.

It is no less a pity that there remains not on the earth among the

profane authors one vestige of the famous tower of Babel; nothing of

this story of the confusion of tongues is found in any book. This

memorable adventure was as unknown to the whole universe as the names of

Noah, Methuselah, Cain, and Adam and Eve.

This difficulty tantalizes our curiosity. Herodotus, who travelled so

much, speaks neither of Noah, or Shem, Reu, Salah, or Nimrod. The name

of Nimrod is unknown to all profane antiquity; there are only a few

Arabs and some modern Persians who have made mention of Nimrod in

falsifying the books of the Jews.

Nothing remains to conduct us through these ancient ruins, unknown to

all the nations of the universe during so many ages, but faith in the

Bible, and happily that is an infallible guide.

Herodotus, who has mingled many fables with some truths, pretends that

in his time, which was that of greatest power of the Persian sovereigns

of Babylon, all the women of the immense city were obliged to go once in

their lives to the temple of Mylitta, a goddess who was thought to be

the same as Aphrodite, or Venus, in order to prostitute themselves to

strangers, and that the law commanded them to receive money as a sacred

tribute, which was paid over to the priesthood of the goddess.

But even this Arabian tale is more likely than that which the same

author tells of Cyrus dividing the Indus into three hundred and sixty

canals, which all discharged themselves into the Caspian Sea! What

should we say of Mézeray if he had told us that Charlemagne divided the

Rhine into three hundred and sixty canals, which fell into the

Mediterranean, and that all the ladies of his court were obliged once in

their lives to present themselves at the church of St. Genevieve to

prostitute themselves to all comers for money?

It must be remarked that such a fable is still more absurd in relation

to the time of Xerxes, in which Herodotus lived, than it would be in

that of Charlemagne. The Orientals were a thousand times more jealous

than the Franks and Gauls. The wives of all the great lords were

carefully guarded by eunuchs. This custom existed from time immemorial.

It is seen even in the Jewish history that when that little nation

wished like the others to have a king, Samuel, to dissuade them from it

and to retain his authority, said "that a king would tyrannize over them

and that he would take the tenths of their vines and corn to give to his

eunuchs." The kings accomplished this prediction, for it is written in

the First Book of Kings that King Ahab had eunuchs, and in the Second

that Joram, Jehu, Jehoiakim, and Zedekiah had them also.

The eunuchs of Pharaoh are spoken of a long time previously in the Book

of Genesis, and it is said that Potiphar, to whom Joseph was sold, was

one of the king's eunuchs. It is clear, therefore, that there were great

numbers of eunuchs at Babylon to guard the women. It was not then a duty

for them to prostitute themselves to the first comer, nor was Babylon,

the city of God, a vast brothel as it has been pretended.

These tales of Herodotus, as well as all others in the same taste, are

now so decried by all people of sense--reason has made so great progress

that even old women and children will no longer believe such

extravagances--_"Non est vetula quæ credat nec pueri credunt, nisi qui

nondum ære lavantur."_

There is in our days only one man who, not partaking of the spirit of

the age in which he lives, would justify the fable of Herodotus. The

infamy appears to him a very simple affair. He would prove that the

Babylonian princesses prostituted themselves through piety, to the

first passengers, because it is said in the holy writings that the

Ammonites made their children pass through the fire in presenting them

to Moloch. But what relation has this custom of some barbarous

hordes--this superstition of passing their children through the flames,

or even of burning them on piles, in honor of I know not whom--of

Moloch; these Iroquois horrors of a petty, infamous people to a

prostitution so incredible in a nation known to be the most jealous and

orderly of the East? Would what passes among the Iroquois be among us a

proof of the customs of the courts of France and of Spain?

He also brings, in further proof, the Lupercal feast among the Romans

during which he says the young people of quality and respectable

magistrates ran naked through the city with whips in their hands, with

which they struck the pregnant women of quality, who unblushingly

presented themselves to them in the hope of thereby obtaining a happy

deliverance.

Now, in the first place, it is not said that these Romans of quality ran

quite naked, on the contrary, Plutarch expressly observes, in his

remarks on the custom, that they were covered from the waist downwards.

Secondly, it seems by the manner in which this defender of infamous

customs expresses himself that the Roman ladies stripped naked to

receive these blows of the whip, which is absolutely false.

Thirdly, the Lupercal feast has no relation whatever to the pretended

law of Babylon, which commands the wives and daughters of the king, the

satraps, and the magi to sell and prostitute themselves to strangers out

of pure devotion.

When an author, without knowing either the human mind or the manners of

nations, has the misfortune to be obliged to compile from passages of

old authors, who are almost all contradictory, he should advance his

opinions with modesty and know how to doubt, and to shake off the dust

of the college. Above all he should never express himself with

outrageous insolence.

Herodotus, or Ctesias, or Diodorus of Sicily, relate a fact: you have

read it in Greek, therefore this fact is true. This manner of reasoning,

which is not that of Euclid, is surprising enough in the time in which

we live; but all minds will not be instructed with equal facility; and

there are always more persons who compile than people who think.