SECTION V.

The philosopher is the lover of wisdom and truth; to be a sage is to

avoid the senseless and the depraved. The philosopher, therefore, should

live only among philosophers.

I will suppose that there are still some sages among the Jews; if one of

these, when dining in company with some rabbis, should help himself to a

plate of eels or hare, or if he cannot refrain from a hearty laugh at

some superstitious and ridiculous observations made by them in the

course of conversation, he is forever ruined in the synagogue; the like

remark may be made of a Mussulman, a Gueber, or a Banian.

I know it is contended by many that the sage should never develop his

opinions to the vulgar; that he should be a madman with the mad, and

foolish among fools; no one, however, has yet ventured to say that he

should be a knave among knaves. But if it be required that a sage should

always join in opinion with the deluders of mankind, is not this clearly

the same as requiring that he should not be an honest man? Would any one

require that a respectable physician should always be of the same

opinion as charlatans?

The sage is a physician of souls. He ought to bestow his remedies on

those who ask them of him, and avoid the company of quacks, who will

infallibly persecute him. If, therefore, a madman of Asia Minor, or a

madman of India, says to the sage: My good friend, I think you do not

believe in the mare Borac, or in the metamorphoses of Vishnu; I will

denounce you, I will hinder you from being bostanji, I will destroy your

credit; I will persecute you--the sage ought to pity him and be silent.

If ignorant persons, but at the same time persons of good understanding

and dispositions, and willing to receive instruction, should ask him:

Are we bound to believe that the distance between the moon and Venus is

only five hundred leagues, and that between Mercury and the sun the

same, as the principal fathers of the Mussulman religion insist, in

opposition to all the most learned astronomers?--the sage may reply to

them that the fathers may possibly be mistaken. He should at all times

inculcate upon them that a hundred abstract dogmas are not of the value

of a single good action, and that it is better to relieve one individual

in distress than to be profoundly acquainted with the abolishing and

abolished. When a rustic sees a serpent ready to dart at him, he will

kill it; when a sage perceives a bigot and a fanatic, what will he do?

He will prevent them from biting.

PHILOSOPHY.

SECTION I.

Write filosophy or philosophy as you please, but agree that as soon as

it appears it is persecuted. Dogs to whom you present an aliment for

which they have no taste, bite you. You will say that I repeat myself;

but we must a hundred times remind mankind that the holy conclave

condemned Galileo; and that the pedants who declared all the good

citizens excommunicated who should submit to the great Henry IV., were

the same who condemned the only truths which could be found in the works

of Descartes.

All the spaniels of the theological kennel bark at one another, and all

together at de Thou, la Mothe, Le Vayer, and Bayle. What nonsense has

been written by little Celtic scholars against the wise Locke!

These Celts say that Cæsar, Cicero, Seneca, Pliny, and Marcus Aurelius,

might be philosophers, but that philosophy is not permitted among the

Celts. We answer that it is permitted and very useful among the French;

that nothing has done more good to the English; and that it is time to

exterminate barbarity. You reply that that will never come to pass. No;

with the uninformed and foolish it will not; but with honest people the

affair is soon concluded.

SECTION II.

One of the great misfortunes, as also one of the great follies, of

mankind, is that in all countries which we call polished, except,

perhaps, China, priests concern themselves with what belongs only to

philosophers. These priests interfered with regulating the year; it was,

they say, their right; for it was necessary that the people should know

their holy days. Thus the Chaldæan, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman priests,

believed themselves mathematicians and astronomers; but what mathematics

and astronomy! Whoever makes a trade of quackery cannot have a just and

enlightened mind. They were astrologers, and never astronomers.

The Greek priests themselves first made the year to consist only of

three hundred and sixty days. Their geometricians must have informed

them that they were deceived by five days and more. They, therefore,

corrected their year. Other geometricians further showed them that they

were deceived by six hours. Iphitus obliged them to change their Greek

almanac. They added one day in four years to their faulty year; Iphitus

celebrated this change by the institution of the Olympiads.

They were finally obliged to have recourse to the philosopher Meton,

who, combining the year of the moon with that of the sun, composed his

cycle of nineteen years, at the end of which the sun and moon returned

to the same point within an hour and a half. This cycle was graven in

gold in the public place of Athens; and it is of this famous golden

number that we still make use, with the necessary corrections.

We well know what ridiculous confusion the Roman priests introduced in

their computation of the year. Their blunders were so great that their

summer holidays arrived in winter. Cæsar, the universal Cæsar, was

obliged to bring the philosopher Sosigenes from Alexandria to repair the

enormous errors of the pontiffs. When it was necessary to correct the

calendar of Julius Cæsar, under the pontificate of Gregory XIII., to

whom did they address themselves? Was it to some inquisitor? It was to a

philosopher and physician named Lilio.

When the almanac was given to Professor Cogé, rector of the university,

to compose, he knew not even the subject. They were obliged to apply to

M. de Lalande, of the Academy of Sciences, who was burdened with this

very painful task, too poorly recompensed. The rhetorician Cogé,

therefore, made a great mistake when he proposed for the prize of the

university this subject so strangely expressed:

"_Non magis Deo quam regibus infensa est ista quæ vocatur hodie

philosophia._"--"That which we now call philosophy, is not more the

enemy of God than of kings." He would say _less_ the enemy. He has taken

_magis_ for _minus._ And the poor man ought to know that our academies

are not enemies either to the king or God.

SECTION III.

If philosophy has done so much honor to France in the "Encyclopædia," it

must also be confessed that the ignorance and envy which have dared to

condemn this work would have covered France with opprobrium, if twelve

or fifteen convulsionaries, who formed a cabal, could be regarded as the

organs of France; they were really only the ministers of fanaticism and

sedition; those who forced the king to dissolve the body which they had

seduced. Their fanatical credulity for convulsions and the miserable

impostures of St. Médard, was so strong, that they obliged a magistrate,

elsewhere wise and respectable, to say in full parliament that the

miracles of the Catholic church always existed. By these miracles, we

can only understand those of convulsions, for assuredly it never

performed any others; at least, if we believe not in the little children

resuscitated by St. Ovid. The time of miracles is passed; the triumphant

church has no longer occasion for them. Seriously, was there one of the

persecutors of the Encyclopædia who understood one word of the articles

Astronomy, Dynamics, Geometry, Metaphysics, Botany, Medicine, or

Anatomy, of which this book, become so necessary, treats in every

volume. What a crowd of absurd imputations and gross calumnies have they

accumulated against this treasure of all the sciences! They should be

reprinted at the end of the "Encyclopædia," to eternize their shame. See

what it is to judge a work which they were not even fit to study. The

fools! they have exclaimed that philosophy ruined Catholicism. What,

then, in twenty millions of people, has one been found who has vexed the

least officer of the parish! one who has failed in respect to the

churches! one who has publicly proffered against our ceremonies a single

word which approached the virulence with which these railers have

expressed themselves against the regal authority! Let us repeat that

philosophy never did evil to the state, and that fanaticism, joined to

the _esprit du corps,_ has done much in all times.

SECTION IV.

_Substance Of Ancient Philosophy._

I have consumed about forty years of my pilgrimage in two or three

corners of the world, seeking the philosopher's stone called truth. I

have consulted all the adepts of antiquity, Epicurus and Augustine,

Plato and Malebranche, and I still remain in ignorance. In all the

crucibles of philosophers, there are perhaps two or three ounces of

gold, but all the rest is _caput mortuum,_ insipid mire, from which

nothing can be extracted.

It seems to me that the Greeks, our masters, wrote much more to show

their intellect, than they made use of their intellect to instruct

themselves. I see not a single author of antiquity who has a consistent,

methodical, clear system, going from consequence to consequence.

All that I have been able to obtain by comparing and combining the

systems of Plato, of the tutor of Alexander, Pythagoras, and the

Orientals, is this: Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist

without a cause. The world is arranged according to mathematical laws;

therefore, it is arranged by an intelligence.

It is not an intelligent being like myself who presided at the formation

of the world; for I cannot form a miserable worm; therefore, the world

is the work of an intelligence prodigiously superior. Does this being,

who possesses intelligence and power in so high a degree, necessarily

exist? It must be so, for he must either have received being from

another, or through his own nature. If he has received his being from

another, which is very difficult to conceive, I must look up to this

other, which will in that case be the first cause. On whichever side I

turn, I must admit a first cause, powerful and intelligent, who by his

own nature is necessarily so.

Has this first cause created things out of nothing? We cannot conceive

that to create out of nothing is to change nothing into something. I

cannot admit such a creation, at least until I find invincible reasons

which force me to admit what my mind can never comprehend. All that

exists appears to exist necessarily, since it exists; for if to-day

there is a reason for the existence of things, there was one yesterday;

there has been one in all times; and this cause must always have had its

effect, without which it would have been a useless cause during

eternity.

But how can things have always existed, being visibly under the hand of

the first cause? This power must always have acted in like manner. There

is no sun without light, there is no motion without a being passing from

one point of space to another.

There is, therefore, a powerful and intelligent being who has always

acted; and if this being had not acted, of what use to him would have

been his existence? All things are, therefore, emanations from this

first cause. But how can we imagine that stone and clay may be

emanations of the eternal, intelligent, and puissant being? Of two

things, one must be; either that the matter of this stone and mine

necessarily exists of itself, or that it exists necessarily by this

first cause; there is no medium.

Thus, therefore, there are but two parts to take; either to admit matter

eternal of itself, or matter eternally proceeding from a powerful,

intelligent, eternal being. But existing of its own nature, or emanating

from a producing being, it exists from all eternity, because it exists;

and there is no reason that it might not have always existed.

If matter is eternally necessary, it is in consequence impossible--it is

contradictory, that it should not exist; but what man can assure you

that it is impossible, that it is contradictory, that this fly and this

flint have not always existed? We are, however, obliged to swallow this

difficulty, which more astonishes the imagination than contradicts the

principles of reasoning.

Indeed, as soon as we have conceived that all has emanated from the

supreme and intelligent being; that nothing has emanated from him

without reason; that this being, always existing, must always have

acted; that, consequently, all things must have eternally proceeded from

the bosom of his existence--we should no more be deterred from believing

the matter of which this fly and flint are formed is eternal, than we

are deterred from conceiving light to be an emanation of the

all-powerful being.

Since I am an extended and thinking being, my extent and thought are the

necessary productions of this being. It is evident to me that I cannot

give myself extent or thought. I have, therefore, received both from

this necessary being.

Can he have given me what he has not? I have intelligence; I am in

space; therefore, he is intelligent and is in space. To say that the

Eternal Being, the All-Powerful God, has from all time necessarily

filled the universe with His productions, is not taking from Him His

free-will; but on the contrary, for free-will is but the power of

acting. God has always fully acted; therefore God has always used the

plenitude of His liberty.

The liberty which we call indifference is a word without an idea--an

absurdity; for this would be to determine without reason; it would be an

effect without a cause. Therefore God cannot have this pretended

free-will, which is a contradiction in terms. He has, therefore, always

acted by the same necessity which causes His existence. It is,

therefore, impossible for the world to exist without God; it is

impossible for God to exist without the world. This world is filled with

beings who succeed each other; therefore, God has always produced beings

in succession.

These preliminary assertions are the basis of the ancient eastern

philosophy, and of that of the Greeks. We must except Democritus and

Epicurus, whose corpuscular philosophy has combated these dogmas. But

let us remark that the Epicureans were founded on an entirely erroneous

philosophy, and that the metaphysical system of all the other philosophy

subsisted with all the physical systems. All nature, except the void,

contradicts Epicurus, and no phenomenon contradicts the philosophy which

I explain. Now, a philosophy which agrees with all which passes in

nature, and which contents the most attentive mind, is it not superior

to all other unrevealed systems?

After the assertions of the most ancient philosophers, which I have

approached as nearly as possible, what remains to us? A chaos of doubts

and chimeras. I believe that there never was a philosopher of a system

who did not confess at the end of his life that he had lost his time. It

must be confessed that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been

much more useful to men than the inventors of syllogisms. He who

imagined a ship, towers much above him who imagined innate ideas.

PHYSICIANS.

Regimen is superior to medicine, especially as, from time immemorial,

out of every hundred physicians, ninety-eight are charlatans. Molière

was right in laughing at them; for nothing is more ridiculous than to

witness an infinite number of silly women, and men no less than women,

when they have eaten, drunk, sported, or abstained from repose too much,

call in a physician for the headache, invoke him like a god, and request

him to work the miracle of producing an alliance between health and

intemperance, not omitting to fee the said god, who laughs at their

folly.

It is not, however, the less true that an able physician may preserve

life on a hundred occasions, and restore to us the use of our limbs.

When a man falls into an apoplexy, it is neither a captain of infantry

nor a sergeant at law who will cure him. If cataracts are formed on my

eyes, it is not my neighbor who will relieve me. I distinguish not

between physicians and surgeons, these professions being so intimately

connected.

Men who are occupied in the restoration of health to other men, by the

joint exertion of skill and humanity, are above all the great of the

earth. They even partake of divinity, since to preserve and renew is

almost as noble as to create. The Roman people had no physicians for

more than five hundred years. This people, whose sole occupation was

slaughter, in particular cultivated not the art of prolonging life.

What, therefore, happened at Rome to those who had a putrid fever, a

fistula, a gangrene, or an inflammation of the stomach? They died. The

small number of great physicians introduced into Rome were only slaves.

A physician among the great Roman patricians was a species of luxury,

like a cook. Every rich man had his perfumers, his bathers, his harpers,

and his physician. The celebrated Musa, the physician of Augustus, was a

slave; he was freed and made a Roman knight; after which physicians

became persons of consideration.

When Christianity was so fully established as to bestow on us the

felicity of possessing monks, they were expressly forbidden, by many

councils, from practising medicine. They should have prescribed a

precisely contrary line of conduct, if it were desirable to render them

useful to mankind.

How beneficial to society were monks obliged to study medicine and to

cure our ailments for God's sake! Having nothing to gain but heaven,

they would never be charlatans; they would equally instruct themselves

in our diseases and their remedies, one of the finest of occupations,

and the only one forbidden them. It has been objected that they would

poison the impious; but even that would be advantageous to the church.

Had this been the case, Luther would never have stolen one-half of

Catholic Europe from our holy father, the pope; for in the first fever

which might have seized the Augustine Luther, a Dominican would have

prepared his pills. You will tell me that he would not have taken them;

but with a little address this might have been managed. But to proceed:

Towards the year 1517 lived a citizen, animated with a Christian zeal,

named John; I do not mean John Calvin, but John, surnamed of God, who

instituted the Brothers of Charity. This body, instituted for the

redemption of captives, is composed of the only useful monks, although

not accounted among the orders. The Dominicans, Bernardines, Norbertins,

and Benedictines, acknowledge not the Brothers of Charity. They are

simply adverted to in the continuation of the "Ecclesiastical History"

of Fleury. Why? Because they have performed cures instead of

miracles--have been useful and not caballed--cured poor women without

either directing or seducing them. Lastly, their institution being

charitable, it is proper that other monks should despise them.

Medicine, having then become a mercenary profession in the world, as the

administration of justice is in many places, it has become liable to

strange abuses. But nothing is more estimable than a physician who,

having studied nature from his youth, knows the properties of the human

body, the diseases which assail it, the remedies which will benefit it,

exercises his art with caution, and pays equal attention to the rich and

the poor. Such a man is very superior to the general of the Capuchins,

however respectable this general may be.

PIRATES OR BUCCANEERS.

In the time of Cardinal Richelieu, when the Spaniards and French

detested each other, because Ferdinand the Catholic laughed at Louis

XII., and Francis I. was taken at the battle of Pavia by an army of

Charles V.--while this hatred was so strong that the false author of the

political romance, and political piece of tediousness, called the

"Political Testament of Cardinal Richelieu," feared not to call the

Spaniards "an insatiable nation, who rendered the Indies tributaries of

hell"; when, in short, we were leagued in 1635 with Holland against

Spain; when France had nothing in America, and the Spaniards covered the

seas with their galleys--then buccaneers began to appear. They were at

first French adventurers, whose quality was at most that of corsairs.

One of them, named Legrande, a native of Dieppe, associated himself with

fifty determined men, and went to tempt fortune in a bark which had not

even a cannon. Towards the Isle of Hispaniola (St. Domingo), he

perceived a galley strayed from the great Spanish fleet; he approached

it as a captain wishing to sell provisions; he mounted, attended by his

people; he entered the chamber of the captain, who was playing at cards,

threw him down, made him prisoner with his cargo, and returned to Dieppe

with his vessel laden with immense riches. This adventure was the signal

for forty years' unheard-of exploits.

French, English, and Dutch buccaneers associated together in the caverns

of St. Domingo, of the little islands of St. Christopher and Tortola.

They chose a chief for each expedition, which was the first origin of

kings. Agriculturists would never have wished for a king; they had no

need of one to sow, thrash, and sell corn.

When the buccaneers took a great prize, they bought with it a little

vessel and cannon. One happy chance produced twenty others. If they were

a hundred in number they were believed to be a thousand; it was

difficult to escape them, still more so to follow them. They were birds

of prey who established themselves on all sides, and who retired into

inaccessible places; sometimes they ravaged from four to five hundred

leagues of coast; sometimes they advanced on foot, or horseback, two

hundred leagues up the countries. They surprised and pillaged the rich

towns of Chagra, Maracaybo, Vera Cruz, Panama, Porto Rico, Campeachy,

the island of St. Catherine, and the suburbs of Cartagena.

One of these pirates, named Olonois, penetrated to the gates of Havana,

followed by twenty men only. Having afterwards retired into his boat,

the governor sent against him a ship of war with soldiers and an

executioner. Olonois rendered himself master of the vessel, cut off the

heads of the Spanish soldiers, whom he had taken himself, and sent back

the executioner to the governor. Such astonishing actions were never

performed by the Romans, or by other robbers. The warlike voyage of

Admiral Anson round the world is only an agreeable promenade in

comparison with the passage of the buccaneers in the South Sea, and with

what they endured on terra firma.

Had their policy been equal to their invincible courage, they would have

founded a great empire in America. They wanted females; but instead of

ravishing and marrying Sabines, like the Romans, they procured them from

the brothels of Paris, which sufficed not to produce a second

generation.

They were more cruel towards the Spaniards than the Israelites ever were

to the Canaanites. A Dutchman is spoken of, named Roc, who put several

Spaniards on a spit and caused them to be eaten by his comrades. Their

expeditions were tours of thieves, and never campaigns of conquerors;

thus, in all the West Indies, they were never called anything but _los

ladrones._ When they surprised and entered the house of a father of a

family, they put him to the torture to discover his treasures. That

sufficiently proves what we say in the article "Question," that torture

was invented by robbers.

What rendered their exploits useless was, that they lavished in

debauches, as foolish as monstrous, all that they acquired by rapine and

murder. Finally, there remains nothing more of them than their name, and

scarcely that. Such were the buccaneers.

But what people in Europe have not been pirates? The Goths, Alans,

Vandals, and Huns, were they anything else? What were Rollo, who

established himself in Normandy, and William Fier-a-bras, but the most

able pirates? Was not Clovis a pirate, who came from the borders of the

Rhine into Gaul?

PLAGIARISM.

It is said that this word is derived from the Latin word _plaga,_ and

that it signifies the condemnation to the scourge of those who sold

freemen for slaves. This has nothing in common with the plagiarism of

authors, who sell not men either enslaved or free. They only for a

little money occasionally sell themselves.

When an author sells the thoughts of another man for his own, the

larceny is called plagiarism. All the makers of dictionaries, all

compilers who do nothing else than repeat backwards and forwards the

opinions, the errors, the impostures, and the truths already printed, we

may term plagiarists, but honest plagiarists, who arrogate not the merit

of invention. They pretend not even to have collected from the ancients

the materials which they get together; they only copy the laborious

compilers of the sixteenth century. They will sell you in quarto that

which already exists in folio. Call them if you please bookmakers, not

authors; range them rather among second-hand dealers than plagiarists.

The true plagiarist is he who gives the works of another for his own,

who inserts in his rhapsodies long passages from a good book a little

modified. The enlightened reader, seeing this patch of cloth of gold

upon a blanket, soon detects the bungling purloiner.

Ramsay, who after having been a Presbyterian in his native Scotland, an

Anglican in London, then a Quaker, and who finally persuaded Fénelon

that he was a Catholic, and even pretended a penchant for celestial

love--Ramsay, I say, compiled the "Travels of Cyrus," because his master

made his Telemachus travel. So far he only imitated; but in these

travels he copies from an old English author, who introduces a young

solitary dissecting his dead goat, and arriving at a knowledge of the

Deity by the process, which is very much like plagiarism. On conducting

Cyrus into Egypt, in describing that singular country, he employs the

same expressions as Bossuet, whom he copies word for word without

citing; this is plagiarism complete. One of my friends reproached him

with this one day; Ramsay replied that he was not aware of it, and that

it was not surprising he should think like Fénelon and write like

Bossuet. This was making out the adage, "Proud as a Scotsman."

The most singular of all plagiarism is possibly that of Father Barre,

author of a large history of Germany in ten volumes. The history of

Charles XII. had just been printed, and he inserted more than two

hundred pages of it in his work; making a duke of Lorraine say precisely

that which was said by Charles XII.

He attributes to the emperor Arnold that which happened to the Swedish

monarch. He relates of the emperor Rudolph that which was said of King

Stanislaus. Waldemar, king of Denmark, acts precisely like Charles at

Bender, etc.

The most pleasant part of the story is, that a journalist, perceiving

this extraordinary resemblance between the two works, failed not to

impute the plagiarism to the author of the history of Charles XII., who

had composed his work twenty years before the appearance of that of

Father Barre. It is chiefly in poetry that plagiarism is allowed to

pass; and certainly, of all larcenies, it is that which is least

dangerous to society.

PLATO.

SECTION I.

_Of The Timæus Of Plato And Some Other Things._

The fathers of the Church, of the first four centuries, were all Greeks

and Platonists: you find not one Roman who wrote for Christianity, or

who had the slightest tincture of philosophy. I will here observe, by

the way, that it is strange enough, the great Church of Rome, which

contributed in nothing to this establishment, has alone reaped all the

advantage. It has been with this revolution, as with all those produced

by civil wars: the first who trouble a state, always unknowingly labor

for others rather than for themselves.

The school of Alexandria, founded by one named Mark, to whom succeeded

Athenagoras, Clement, and Origen, was the centre of the Christian

philosophy. Plato was regarded by all the Greeks of Alexandria as the

master of wisdom, the interpreter of the divinity. If the first

Christians had not embraced the dogmas of Plato, they would never have

had any philosophers, any man of mind in their party. I set aside

inspiration and grace which are above all philosophy, and speak only of

the ordinary course of human events.

It is said that it was principally in the "Timæus" of Plato that the

Greek fathers were instructed. This "Timæus" passes for the most sublime

work of all ancient philosophy. It is almost the only one which Dacier

has not translated, and I think the reason is, because he did not

understand it, and that he feared to discover to clear-sighted readers

the face of this Greek divinity, who is only adored because he is

veiled.

Plato, in this fine dialogue, commences by introducing an Egyptian

priest, who teaches Solon the ancient history of the city of Athens,

which was preserved faithfully for nine thousand years in the archives

of Egypt.

Athens, says the priest, was once the finest city of Greece, and the

most renowned in the world for the arts of war and peace. She alone

resisted the warriors of the famous island Atlantis, who came in

innumerable vessels to subjugate a great part of Europe and Asia. Athens

had the glory of freeing so many vanquished people, and of preserving

Egypt from the servitude which menaced us. But after this illustrious

victory and service rendered to mankind, a frightful earthquake in

twenty-four hours swallowed the territory of Athens, and all the great

island of Atlantis. This island is now only a vast sea, which the ruins

of this ancient world and the slime mixed with its waters rendered

unnavigable.

This is what the priest relates to Solon: and such is the manner in

which Plato prepares to explain to us subsequently, the formation of the

soul, the operations of the "Word," and his trinity. It is not

physically impossible that there might be an island Atlantis, which had

not existed for nine thousand years, and which perished by an

earthquake, like Herculaneum and so many other cities; but our priest,

in adding that the sea which washes Mount Atlas is inaccessible to

vessels, renders the history a little suspicious.

It may be, after all, that since Solon--that is to say, in the course of

three thousand years--vessels have dispersed the slime of the ancient

island Atlantis and rendered the sea navigable; but it is still

surprising that he should prepare by this island to speak of the "Word."

Perhaps in telling this priest's or old woman's story, Plato wished to

insinuate something contrary to the vicissitudes which have so often

changed the face of the globe. Perhaps he would merely say what

Pythagoras and Timæus of Locris have said so long before him, and what

our eyes tell us every day--that everything in nature perishes and is

renewed. The history of Deucalion and Pyrrha, the fall of Phæthon, are

fables: but inundations and conflagrations are truths.

Plato departs from his imaginary island, to speak of things which the

best of philosophers of our days would not disavow. "That which is

produced has necessarily a cause, an author. It is difficult to discover

the author of this world; and when he is found it is dangerous to speak

of him to the people."

Nothing is more true, even now, than that if a sage, in passing by our

Lady of Loretto, said to another sage, his friend, that our Lady of

Loretto, with her little black face, governs not the entire universe,

and a good woman overheard these words, and related them to other good

women of the march of Ancona, the sage would be stoned like Orpheus.

This is precisely the situation in which the first Christians were

believed to be, who spoke not well of Cybele and Diana, which alone

should attach them to Plato. The unintelligible things which he

afterwards treats of, ought not to disgust us with him.

I will not reproach Plato with saying, in his "Timæus," that the world

is an animal; for he no doubt understands that the elements in motion

animate the world; and he means not, by animal, a dog or a man, who

walks, feels, eats, sleeps, and engenders. An author should always be

explained in the most favorable sense; and it is not while we accuse

people, or when we denounce their books, that it is right to interpret

malignantly and poison all their words; nor is it thus that I shall

treat Plato.

According to him there is a kind of trinity which is the soul of matter.

These are his words: "From the indivisible substance, always similar to

itself, and the divisible substance, a third substance is composed,

which partakes of the same and of others."

Afterwards came the Pythagorean number, which renders the thing still

more unintelligible, and consequently more respectable. What ammunition

for people commencing a paper war! Friend reader, a little patience and

attention, if you please: "When God had formed the soul of the world of

these three substances, the soul shot itself into the midst of the

universe, to the extremities of being; spreading itself everywhere, and

reacting upon itself, it formed at all times a divine origin of eternal

wisdom."

And some lines afterwards: "Thus the nature of the immense animal which

we call _the world,_ is eternal." Plato, following the example of his

predecessors, then introduces the Supreme Being, the Creator of the

world, forming this world before time; so that God could not exist

without the world, nor the world without God; as the sun cannot exist

without shedding light into space, nor this light steal into space

without the sun.

I pass in silence many Greek, or rather Oriental ideas; as for

example--that there are four sorts of animals--celestial gods, birds of

the air, fishes, and terrestrial animals, to which last we have the

honor to belong.

I hasten to arrive at a second trinity: "the being engendered, the being

who engenders, and the being which resembles the engendered and the

engenderer." This trinity is formal enough, and the fathers have found

their account in it.

This trinity is followed by a rather singular theory of the four

elements. The earth is founded on an equilateral triangle, water on a

right-angled triangle, air on a scalene, and fire on an isosceles

triangle. After which he demonstratively proves that there can be but

five worlds, because there are but five regular solid bodies, and yet

that there is but one world which is round.

I confess that no philosopher in Bedlam has ever reasoned so powerfully.

Rouse yourself, friend reader, to hear me speak of the other famous

trinity of Plato, which his commentators have so much vaunted: it is the

Eternal Being, the Eternal Creator of the world; His word, intelligence,

or idea; and the good which results from it. I assure you that I have

sought for it diligently in this "Timæus," and I have never found it

there; it may be there "_totidem literis,_" but it is not "_totidem

verbis,_" or I am much mistaken.

After reading all Plato with great reluctance, I perceived some shadow

of the trinity for which he is so much honored. It is in the sixth book

of his "Chimerical Republic," in which he says: "Let us speak of the

Son, the wonderful production of good, and His perfect image." But

unfortunately he discovers this perfect image of God to be the sun. It

was therefore the physical sun, which with the Word and the Father

composed the platonic trinity. In the "Epinomis" of Plato there are very

curious absurdities, one of which I translate as reasonably as I can,

for the convenience of the reader:

"Know that there are eight virtues in heaven: I have observed them,

which is easy to all the world. The sun is one of its virtues, the moon

another; the third is the assemblage of stars; and the five planets,

with these three virtues, make the number eight. Be careful of thinking

that these virtues, or those which they contain, and which animate them,

either move of themselves or are carried in vehicles; be careful, I say,

of believing that some may be gods and others not; that some may be

adorable, and others such as we should neither adore or invoke. They are

all brothers; each has his share; we owe them all the same honors; they

fill all the situations which the Word assigned to them, when it formed

the visible universe."

Here is the Word already found: we must now find the three persons. They

are in the second letter from Plato to Dionysius, which letters

assuredly are not forged; the style is the same as that of his

dialogues. He often says to Dionysius and Dion things very difficult to

comprehend, and which we might believe to be written in numbers, but he

also tells us very clear ones, which have been found true a long time

after him. For example, he expresses himself thus in his seventh letter

to Dion:

"I have been convinced that all states are very badly governed; there is

scarcely any good institution or administration. We see, as it were, day

after day, that all follow the path of fortune rather than that of

wisdom." After this short digression on temporal affairs, let us return

to spiritual ones, to the Trinity. Plato says to Dionysius:

"The King of the universe is surrounded by His works: all is the effect

of His grace. The finest of things have their first cause in Him; the

second in perfection have in Him their second cause, and He is further

the third cause of works of the third degree."

The Trinity, such as we acknowledge, could not be recognized in this

letter; but it was a great point to have in a Greek author a guaranty of

the dogmas of the dawning Church. Every Greek church was therefore

Platonic, as every Latin church was peripatetic, from the commencement

of the third century. Thus two Greeks whom we have never understood,

were the masters of our opinions until the time in which men at the end

of two thousand years were obliged to think for themselves.

SECTION II.

_Questions On Plato And Some Other Trifles._

Plato, in saying to the Greeks what so many philosophers of other

nations have said before him, in assuring them that there is a Supreme

Intelligence which arranged the universe--did he think that this Supreme

Intelligence resided in a single place, like a king of the East in his

seraglio? Or rather did he believe that this Powerful Intelligence

spread itself everywhere like light, or a being still more delicate,

prompt, active, and penetrating than light? The God of Plato, in a word,

is he in matter, or is he separated from it? Oh, you who have read Plato

attentively, that is to say, seven or eight fantastical dreams hidden in

some garret in Europe, if ever these questions reach you, I implore you

to answer them.

The barbarous island of Cassite rides, in which men lived in the woods

in the time of Plato, has finally produced philosophers who are as much

beyond him as Plato was beyond those of his contemporaries who reasoned

not at all. Among these philosophers, Clarke is perhaps altogether the

clearest, the most profound, the most methodical, and the strongest of

all those who have spoken of the Supreme Being.

When he gave his excellent book to the public he found a young gentleman

of the county of Gloucester who candidly advanced objections as strong

as his demonstrations. We can see them at the end of the first volume of

Clarke; it was not on the necessary existence of the Supreme Being that

he reasoned; it was on His infinity and immensity.

It appears not indeed, that Clarke has proved that there is a being who

penetrates intimately all which exists, and that this being whose

properties we cannot conceive has the property of extending Himself to

the greatest imaginable distance.

The great Newton has demonstrated that there is a void in nature; but

what philosopher could demonstrate to me that God is in this void; that

He touches it; that He fills it? How, bounded as we are, can we attain

to the knowledge of these mysteries? Does it not suffice, that it proves

to us that a Supreme Master exists? It is not given to us to know what

He is nor how He is.

It seems as if Locke and Clarke had the keys of the intelligible world.

Locke has opened all the apartments which can be entered; but has not

Clarke wished to penetrate a little above the edifice? How could a

philosopher like Samuel Clarke, after so admirable a work on the

existence of God, write so pitiable a one on matters of fact?

How could Benedict Spinoza, who had as much profundity of mind as Samuel

Clarke, after raising himself to the most sublime metaphysics, how could

he not perceive that a Supreme Intelligence presides over works visibly

arranged with a supreme intelligence--if it is true after all that such

is the system of Spinoza?

How could Newton, the greatest of men, comment upon the Apocalypse, as

we have already remarked? How could Locke, after having so well

developed the human understanding, degrade his own in another work? I

fancy I see eagles, who after darting into a cloud go to rest on a

dunghill.

POETS.

A young man on leaving college deliberates whether he shall be an

advocate, a physician, a theologian, or a poet--whether he shall take

care of our body, our soul, or our entertainment. We have already spoken

of advocates and physicians; we will now speak of the prodigious fortune

which is sometimes made by the theologian.

The theologian becomes pope, and has not only his theological valets,

cooks, singers, chamberlains, physicians, surgeons, sweepers, _agnus

dei_ makers, confectioners, and preachers, but also his poet. I know not

what inspired personage was the poet of Leo X., as David was for some

time the poet of Saul.

It is surely of all the employments in a great house, that which is the

most useless. The kings of England, who have preserved in their island

many of the ancient usages which are lost on the continent, have their

official poet. He is obliged once a year to make an ode in praise of St.

Cecilia, who played so marvellously on the organ or psalterium that an

angel descended from the ninth heaven to listen to her more

conveniently--the harmony of the psaltery, in ascending from this place

to the land of angels, necessarily losing a small portion of its volume.

Moses is the first poet that we know of; but it is thought that before

him the Chaldæans, the Syrians, and the Indians practised poetry, since

they possessed music. Nevertheless, the fine canticle which Moses

chanted with his sister Miriam, when they came out of the Red Sea, is

the most ancient poetical monument in hexameter verse that we possess. I

am not of the opinion of those impious and ignorant rogues, Newton, Le

Clerc, and others, who prove that all this was written about eight

hundred years after the event, and who insolently maintain that Moses

could not write in Hebrew, since Hebrew is only a comparatively modern

dialect of the Phœnician, of which Moses could know nothing at all. I

examine not with the learned Huet how Moses was able to sing so well,

who stammered and could not speak.

If we listened to many of these authors, Moses would be less ancient

than Orpheus, Musæus, Homer, and Hesiod. We perceive at the first glance

the absurdity of this opinion; as if a Greek could be an ancient as a

Jew!

Neither will I reply to those impertinent persons who suspect that Moses

is only an imaginary personage, a fabulous imitation of the fable of the

ancient Bacchus; and that all the prodigies of Bacchus, since attributed

to Moses, were sung in orgies before it was known that Jews existed in

the world. This idea refutes itself; it is obvious to good sense that it

is impossible that Bacchus could have existed before Moses.

We have still, however, an excellent Jewish poet undeniably anterior to

Horace--King David; and we know well how infinitely superior the

"_Miserere,_" is to the "_Justum ac tenacem propositi virum._" But what

is most astonishing, legislators and kings have been our earliest poets.

We find even at present people so good as to become poets for kings.

Virgil indeed had not the office of poet to Augustus, nor Lucan that of

poet to Nero; but I confess that it would have debased the profession

not a little to make gods of either the one or the other.

It is asked, why poetry, being so unnecessary to the world, occupies so

high a rank among the fine arts? The same question may be put with

regard to music. Poetry is the music of the soul, and above all of great

and of feeling souls. One merit of poetry few persons will deny; it says

more and in fewer words than prose. Who was ever able to translate the

following Latin words with the brevity with which they came from the

brain of the poet: "_Vive memor lethi, fugit hora, hoc quod loquor inde

est?_"

I speak not of the other charms of poetry, as they are well known; but I

insist upon the grand precept of Horace, "_Sapere est principium et

fons._" There can be no great poetry without great wisdom; but how

connect this wisdom with enthusiasm, like Cæsar, who formed his plan of

battle with circumspection, and fought with all possible ardor?

There have no doubt been ignorant poets, but then they have been bad

poets. A man acquainted only with dactyls and spondees, and with a head

full of rhymes, is rarely a man of sense; but Virgil is endowed with

superior reason.

Lucretius, in common with all the ancients, was miserably ignorant of

physical laws, a knowledge of which is not to be acquired by wit. It is

a knowledge which is only to be obtained by instruments, which in his

time had not been invented. Glasses are necessary--microscopes,

pneumatic machines, barometers, etc., to have even a distant idea of the

operations of nature.

Descartes knew little more than Lucretius, when his keys opened the

sanctuary; and an hundred times more of the path has been trodden from

the time of Galileo, who was better instructed physically than

Descartes, to the present day, than from the first Hermes to Lucretius.

All ancient physics are absurd: it was not thus with the philosophy of

mind, and that good sense which, assisted by strength of intellect, can

acutely balance between doubts and appearances. This is the chief merit

of Lucretius; his third book is a masterpiece of reasoning. He argues

like Cicero, and expresses himself like Virgil; and it must be confessed

that when our illustrious Polignac attacked his third book, he refuted

it only like a cardinal.

When I say, that Lucretius reasons in his third book like an able

metaphysician, I do not say that he was right. We may argue very

soundly, and deceive ourselves, if not instructed by revelation.

Lucretius was not a Jew, and we know that Jews alone were in the right

in the days of Cicero, of Posidonius, of Cæsar, and of Cato. Lastly,

under Tiberius, the Jews were no longer in the right, and common sense

was possessed by the Christians exclusively.

Thus it was impossible that Lucretius, Cicero, and Cæsar could be

anything but imbecile, in comparison with the Jews and ourselves; but it

must be allowed that in the eyes of the rest of the world they were very

great men. I allow that Lucretius killed himself, as also did Cato,

Cassius, and Brutus, but they might very well kill themselves, and still

reason like men of intellect during their lives.

In every author let us distinguish the man from his works. Racine wrote

like Virgil, but he became Jansenist through weakness, and he died in

consequence of weakness equally great--because a man in passing through

a gallery did not bestow a look upon him. I am very sorry for all this;

but the part of Phædra is not therefore the less admirable.

POISONINGS.

Let us often repeat useful truths. There have always been fewer

poisonings than have been spoken of: it is almost with them as with

parricides; the accusations have been very common, and the crimes very

rare. One proof is, that we have a long time taken for poison that which

is not so. How many princes have got rid of those who were suspected by

them by making them drink bullock's blood! How many other princes have

swallowed it themselves to avoid falling into the hands of their

enemies! All ancient historians, and even Plutarch, attest it.

I was so infatuated with these tales in my childhood that I bled one of

my bulls, in the idea that his blood belonged to me, since he was born

in my stable--an ancient pretension of which I will not here dispute the

validity. I drank this blood, like Atreus and Mademoiselle de Vergi, and

it did me no more harm than horse's blood does to the Tartars, or

pudding does to us every day, if it be not too rich.

Why should the blood of a bull be a poison, when that of a goat is

considered a remedy? The peasants of my province swallow the blood of a

cow, which they call fricassée, every day; that of a bull is not more

dangerous. Be sure, dear reader, that Themistocles died not of it.

Some speculators of the court of Louis XIV. believed they discovered

that his sister-in-law, Henrietta of England, was poisoned with powder

of diamonds, which was put into a bowl of strawberries, instead of

grated sugar; but neither the impalpable powder of glass or diamonds,

nor that of any production of nature which was not in itself venomous,

could be hurtful.

They are only sharp-cutting active points which can become violent. The

exact observer, Mead, a celebrated English physician, saw through a

microscope the liquor shot from the gums of irritated vipers. He

pretends that he has always found them strewn with these cutting,

pointed blades, the immense number of which tear and pierce the internal

membranes.

The cantarella, of which it is pretended that Pope Alexander VI. and his

bastard, the duke of Borgia, made great use, was, it is said, the foam

of a hog rendered furious by suspending him by the feet with his head

downwards, in which situation he was beaten to death; it was a poison as

prompt and violent as that of the viper. A great apothecary assures me

that Madame la Tofana, that celebrated poisoner of Naples, principally

made use of this receipt; all which is perhaps untrue. This science is

one of those of which we should be ignorant.

Poisons which coagulate the blood, instead of tearing the membranes, are

opium, hemlock, henbane, aconite, and several others. The Athenians

became so refined as to cause their countrymen, condemned to death, to

die by poisons reputed cold; an apothecary was the executioner of the

republic. It is said that Socrates died very peacefully, and as if he

slept: I can scarcely believe it.

I made one remark on the Jewish books, which is, that among this people

we see no one who was poisoned. A crowd of kings and priests perished by

assassination; the history of the nation is the history of murders and

robberies; but a single instance only is mentioned of a man who was

poisoned, and this man was not a Jew--he was a Syrian named Lysias,

general of the armies of Antiochus Epiphanes. The second Book of

Maccabees says that he poisoned himself--"_veneno vitam finivit_;" but

these Books of Maccabees are very suspicious. My dear reader, I have

already desired you to believe nothing lightly.

What astonishes me most in the history of the manners of the ancient

Romans is the conspiracy of the Roman women to cause to perish by

poison, not only their husbands, but the principal citizens in general.

"It was," says Titus Livius, "in the year 423 from the foundation of

Rome, and therefore in the time of the most austere virtue; it was

before there was any mention of divorce, though divorce was authorized;

it was when women drank no wine, and scarcely ever went out of their

houses, except to the temples." How can we imagine, that they suddenly

applied themselves to the knowledge of poisons; that they assembled to

compose them; and, without any apparent interest, thus administered

death to the first men in Rome?

Lawrence Echard, in his abridged compilation, contents himself with

saying, that "the virtue of the Roman ladies was strangely belied; that

one hundred and seventy who meddled with the art of making poisons, and

of reducing this art into precepts, were all at once accused, convicted,

and punished." Titus Livius assuredly does not say that they reduced

this art into rules. That would signify that they held a school of

poisons, that they professed it as a science; which is ridiculous. He

says nothing about a hundred and seventy professors in corrosive

sublimate and verdigris. Finally, he does not affirm that there were

poisoners among the wives of the senators and knights.

The people were extremely foolish, and reasoned at Rome as elsewhere.

These are the words of Titus Livius: "The year 423 was of the number of

unfortunate ones; there was a mortality caused by the temperature of the

air or by human malice. I wish that we could affirm with some author

that the corruption of the air caused this epidemic, rather than

attribute the death of so many Romans to poison, as many historians have

falsely written, to decry this year."

They have therefore written falsely, according to Titus Livius, who

believes not that the ladies of Rome were poisoners: but what interest

had authors in decrying this year? I know not.

"I relate the fact," continues he, "as it was related before me." This

is not the speech of a satisfied man; besides, the alleged fact much

resembles a fable. A slave accuses about seventy women, among whom are

several of the patrician rank, of causing the plague in Rome by

preparing poisons. Some of the accused demand permission to swallow

their drugs, and expire on the spot; and their accomplices are condemned

to death without the manner of their punishment being specified.

I suspect that this story to which Titus Livius gives no credit,

deserves to be banished to the place in which the vessel is preserved

which a vestal drew to shore with a girdle; where Jupiter in person

stopped the flight of the Romans; where Castor and Pollux came to combat

on horseback in their behalf; where a flint was cut with a razor; and

where Simon Barjonas, surnamed Peter, disputed miracles with Simon the

magician.

There is scarcely any poison of which we cannot prevent the consequences

by combating it immediately. There is no medicine which is not a poison

when taken in too strong a dose. All indigestion is a poison. An

ignorant physician, and even a learned but inattentive one, is often a

poisoner. A good cook is a certain slow poisoner, if you are not

temperate.

One day the marquis d'Argenson, minister of state for the foreign

department, whilst his brother was minister of war, received from London

a letter from a fool--as ministers do by every post; this fool proposed

an infallible means of poisoning all the inhabitants of the capital of

England. "This does not concern me," said the marquis d'Argenson to us;

"it is a packet to my brother."

POLICY.

The policy of man consists, at first, in endeavoring to arrive at a

state equal to that of animals, whom nature has furnished with food,

clothing, and shelter. To attain this state is a matter of no little

time and difficulty. How to procure for himself subsistence and

accommodation, and protect himself from evil, comprises the whole object

and business of man.

This evil exists everywhere; the four elements of nature conspire to

form it. The barrenness of one-quarter part of the world, the numberless

diseases to which we are subject, the multitude of strong and hostile

animals by which we are surrounded, oblige us to be constantly on the

alert in body and in mind, to guard against the various forms of evil.

No man, by his own individual care and exertion, can secure himself from

evil; he requires assistance. Society therefore is as ancient as the

world. This society consists sometimes of too many, and sometimes of too

few. The vicissitudes of the world have often destroyed whole races of

men and other animals, in many countries, and have multiplied them in

others.

To enable a species to multiply, a tolerable climate and soil are

necessary; and even with these advantages, men may be under the

necessity of going unclothed, of suffering hunger, of being destitute of

everything, and of perishing in misery.

Men are not like beavers, or bees, or silk-worms; they have no sure and

infallible instinct which procures for them necessaries. Among a hundred

men, there is scarcely one that possesses genius; and among women,

scarcely one among five hundred.

It is only by means of genius that those arts are invented, which

eventually furnish something of that accommodation which is the great

object of all policy.

To attempt these arts with success, the assistance of others is

requisite; hands to aid you, and minds sufficiently acute and

unprejudiced to comprehend you, and sufficiently docile to obey you.

Before, however, all this can be discovered and brought together,

thousands of years roll on in ignorance and barbarism; thousands of

efforts for improvement terminate only in abortion. At length, the

outlines of an art are formed, but thousands of ages are still requisite

to carry it to perfection.

_Foreign Policy._

When any one nation has become acquainted with metallurgy, it will

certainly beat its neighbors and make slaves of them. You possess arrows

and sabres, and were born in a climate that has rendered you robust. We

are weak, and have only clubs and stones. You kill us, or if you permit

us to live, it is that we may till your fields and build your houses. We

sing some rustic ditty to dissipate your spleen or animate your languor,

if we have any voice; or we blow on some pipes, in order to obtain from

you clothing and bread. If our wives and daughters are handsome, you

appropriate them without scruple to yourselves. The young gentleman,

your son, not only takes advantage of the established policy, but adds

new discoveries to this growing art. His servants proceed, by his

orders, to emasculate my unfortunate boys, whom he then honors with the

guardianship of his wives and mistresses. Such has been policy, the

great art of making mankind contribute to individual advantage and

enjoyment; and such is still policy throughout the largest portion of

Asia.

Some nations, or rather hordes, having thus by superior strength and

skill brought into subjection others, begin afterwards to fight with one

another for the division of the spoil. Each petty nation maintains and

pays soldiers. To encourage, and at the same time to control these

soldiers, each possesses its gods, its oracles, and prophecies; each

maintains and pays its soothsayers and slaughtering priests. These

soothsayers or augurs begin with prophesying in favor of the heads of

the nation; they afterwards prophesy for themselves and obtain a share

in the government. The most powerful and shrewd prevail at last over the

others, after ages of carnage which excite our horror, and of impostures

which excite our laughter. Such is the regular course and completion of

policy.

While these scenes of ravage and fraud are carried on in one portion of

the globe, other nations, or rather clans, retire to mountain caverns,

or districts surrounded by inaccessible swamps, marshes, or some verdant

and solitary spot in the midst of vast deserts of burning sand, or some

peninsular and consequently easily protected territory, to secure

themselves against the tyrants of the continent. At length all become

armed with nearly the same description of weapons; and blood flows from

one extremity of the world to the other.

Men, however, cannot forever go on killing one another; and peace is

consequently made, till either party thinks itself sufficiently strong

to recommence the war. Those who can write draw up these treaties of

peace; and the chiefs of every nation, with a view more successfully to

impose upon their enemies, invoke the gods to attest with what sincerity

they bind themselves to the observance of these compacts. Oaths of the

most solemn character are invented and employed, and one party engages

in the name of the great Somonocodom, and the other in that of Jupiter

the Avenger, to live forever in peace and amity; while in the same names

of Somonocodom and Jupiter, they take the first opportunity of cutting

one another's throats.

In times of the greatest civilization and refinement, the lion of Æsop

made a treaty with three animals, who were his neighbors. The object was

to divide the common spoil into four equal parts. The lion, for certain

incontestable and satisfactory reasons which he did not then deem it

necessary to detail, but which he would be always ready to give in due

time and place, first takes three parts out of the four for himself, and

then threatens instant strangulation to whoever shall dare to touch the

fourth. This is the true sublime of policy.

_Internal Policy._

The object here is to accumulate for our own country the greatest

quantity of power, honor, and enjoyment possible. To attain these in any

extraordinary degree, much money is indispensable. In a democracy it is

very difficult to accomplish this object. Every citizen is your rival; a

democracy can never subsist but in a small territory. You may have

wealth almost equal to your wishes through your own mercantile dealings,

or transmitted in patrimony from your industrious and opulent

grandfather; your fortune will excite jealousy and envy, but will

purchase little real co-operation and service. If an affluent family

ever bears sway in a democracy, it is not for a long time.

In an aristocracy, honors, pleasures, power, and money, are more easily

obtainable. Great discretion, however, is necessary. If abuse is

flagrant, revolution will be the consequence. Thus in a democracy all

the citizens are equal. This species of government is at present rare,

and appears to but little advantage, although it is in itself natural

and wise. In aristocracy, inequality or superiority makes itself

sensibly felt; but the less arrogant its demeanor, the more secure and

successful will be its course.

Monarchy remains to be mentioned. In this, all mankind are made for one

individual: he accumulates all honors with which he chooses to decorate

himself, tastes all pleasures to which he feels an inclination, and

exercises a power absolutely without control; provided, let it be

remembered, that he has plenty of money. If he is deficient in that, he

will be unsuccessful at home as well as abroad, and will soon be left

destitute of power, pleasures, honors, and perhaps even of life.

While this personage has money, not only is he successful and happy

himself, but his relations and principal servants are flourishing in

full enjoyment also; and an immense multitude of hirelings labor for

them the whole year round, in the vain hope that they shall themselves,

some time or other, enjoy in their cottages the leisure and comfort

which their sultans and pashas enjoy in their harems. Observe, however,

what will probably happen.

A jolly, full-fed farmer was formerly in possession of a vast estate,

consisting of fields, meadows, vineyards, orchards, and forests. A

hundred laborers worked for him, while he dined with his family, drank

his wine, and went to sleep. His principal domestics, who plundered him,

dined next, and ate up nearly everything. Then came the laborers, for

whom there was left only a very meagre and insufficient meal. They at

first murmured, then openly complained, speedily lost all patience, and

at last ate up the dinner prepared for their master, and turned him out

of his house. The master said they were a set of scoundrels, a pack of

undutiful and rebellious children who assaulted and abused their own

father. The laborers replied that they had only obeyed the sacred law of

nature, which he had violated. The dispute was finally referred to a

soothsayer in the neighborhood, who was thought to be actually inspired.

The holy man takes the farm into his own hands, and nearly famishes both

the laborers and the master; till at length their feelings counteract

their superstition, and the saint is in the end expelled in his turn.

This is domestic policy.

There have been more examples than one of this description; and some

consequences of this species of policy still subsist in all their

strength. We may hope that in the course of ten or twelve thousand ages,

when mankind become more enlightened, the great proprietors of estates,

grown also more wise, will on the one hand treat their laborers rather

better, and on the other take care not to be duped by soothsayers.

POLYPUS.

In quality of a doubter, I have a long time filled my vocation. I have

doubted when they would persuade me, that the _glossopetres_ which I

have seen formed in my fields, were originally the tongues of sea-dogs,

that the lime used in my barn was composed of shells only, that corals

were the production of the excrement of certain little fishes, that the

sea by its currents has formed Mount Cenis and Mount Taurus, and that

Niobe was formerly changed into marble.

It is not that I love not the extraordinary, the marvellous, as well as

any traveller or man of system; but to believe firmly, I would see with

my own eyes, touch with my own hands, and that several times. Even that

is not enough; I would still be aided by the eyes and hands of others.

Two of my companions, who, like myself, form questions on the

"Encyclopædia," have for some time amused themselves with me in studying

the nature of several of the little films which grow in ditches by the

side of water lentils. These light herbs, which we call polypi of soft

water, have several roots, from which circumstance we have given them

the name of polypi. These little parasite plants were merely plants,

until the commencement of the age in which we live. Leuenhoeck raises

them to the rank of animals. We know not if they have gained much by it.

We think that, to be considered as an animal, it is necessary to be

endowed with sensation. They therefore commence by showing us, that

these soft water polypi have feeling, in order that we should present

them with our right of citizenship.

We have not dared to grant it the dignity of sensation, though it

appeared to have the greatest pretensions to it. Why should we give it

to a species of small rush? Is it because it appears to bud? This

property is common to all trees growing by the water-side; to willows,

poplars, aspens, etc. It is so light, that it changes place at the least

motion of the drop of water which bears it; thence it has been concluded

that it walked. In like manner, we may suppose that the little,

floating, marshy islands of St. Omer are animals, for they often change

their place.

It is said its roots are its feet, its stalk its body, its branches are

its arms; the pipe which composes its stalk is pierced at the top--it is

its mouth. In this pipe there is a light white pith, of which some

almost imperceptible animalcules are very greedy; they enter the hollow

of this little pipe by making it bend, and eat this light paste;--it is

the polypus who captures these animals with his snout, though it has not

the least appearance of head, mouth, or stomach.

We have examined this sport of nature with all the attention of which we

are capable. It appeared to us that the production called polypus

resembled an animal much less than a carrot or asparagus. In vain we

have opposed to our eyes all the reasonings which we formerly read; the

evidence of our eyes has overthrown them. It is a pity to lose an

illusion. We know how pleasant it would be to have an animal which could

reproduce itself by offshoots, and which, having all the appearances of

a plant, could join the animal to the vegetable kingdom.

It would be much more natural to give the rank of an animal to the

newly-discovered plant of Anglo-America, to which the pleasant name of

Venus' fly-trap has been given. It is a kind of prickly sensitive-plant,

the leaves of which fold of themselves; the flies are taken in these

leaves and perish there more certainly than in the web of a spider. If

any of our physicians would call this plant an animal, he would have

partisans.

But if you would have something more extraordinary, more worthy of the

observation of philosophers, observe the snail, which lives one and two

whole months after its head is cut off, and which afterwards has a

second head, containing all the organs possessed by the first. This

truth, to which all children can be witnesses, is more worthy than the

illusion of polypi of soft water. What becomes of its sensorium, its

magazine of ideas, and soul, when its head is cut off? How do all these

return? A soul which is renewed is a very curious phenomenon; not that

it is more strange than a soul begotten, a soul which sleeps and awakes,

or a condemned soul.

POLYTHEISM.

The plurality of gods is the great reproach at present cast upon the

Greeks and Romans: but let any man show me, if he can, a single fact in

the whole of their histories, or a single word in the whole of their

books, from which it may be fairly inferred that they believed in many

supreme gods; and if neither that fact nor word can be found, if, on the

contrary, all antiquity is full of monuments and records which attest

one sovereign God, superior to all other gods, let us candidly admit

that we have judged the ancients as harshly as we too often judge our

contemporaries.

We read in numberless passages that Zeus, Jupiter, is the master of gods

and men. "_Jovis omnia plena._"--"All things are full of Jupiter." And

St. Paul gives this testimony in favor of the ancients: "_In ipso

vivimus, movemur, et sumus, ut quidam vestrorum poetarum dixit._"--"In

God we live, and move, and have our being, as one of your own poets has

said." After such an acknowledgment as this, how can we dare to accuse

our instructors of not having recognized a supreme God?

We have no occasion whatever to examine upon this subject, whether there

was formerly a Jupiter who was king of Crete, and who may possibly have

been considered and ranked as a god; or whether the Egyptians had twelve

superior gods, or eight, among whom the deity called Jupiter by the

Latins might be one. The single point to be investigated and ascertained

here is, whether the Greeks and Romans acknowledged one celestial being

as the master or sovereign of other celestial beings. They constantly

tell us that they do; and we ought therefore to believe them.

The admirable letter of the philosopher Maximus of Madaura to St.

Augustine is completely to our purpose: "There is a God," says he,

"without any beginning, the common Father of all, but who never produced

a being like Himself. What man is so stupid and besotted as to doubt

it?" Such is the testimony of a pagan of the fourth century on behalf of

all antiquity.

Were I inclined to lift the veil that conceals the mysteries of Egypt, I

should find the deity adored under the name of Knef, who produced all

things and presides over all the other deities; I should discover also a

Mithra among the Persians, and a Brahma among the Indians, and could

perhaps show, that every civilized nation admitted one supreme being,

together with a multitude of dependent divinities. I do not speak of the

Chinese, whose government, more respectable than all the rest, has

acknowledged one God only for a period of more than four thousand years.

Let us here confine ourselves to the Greeks and Romans, who are the

objects of our immediate researches. They had among them innumerable

superstitions--it is impossible to doubt it; they adopted fables

absolutely ridiculous--everybody knows it; and I may safely add, that

they were themselves sufficiently disposed to ridicule them. After all,

however, the foundation of their theology was conformable to reason.

In the first place, with respect to the Greeks placing heroes in heaven

as a reward for their virtues, it was one of the most wise and useful of

religious institutions. What nobler recompense could possibly be

bestowed upon them; what more animating and inspiring hope could be held

out to them? Is it becoming that we, above all others, should censure

such a practice--we who, enlightened by the truth, have piously

consecrated the very usage which the ancients imagined? We have a far

greater number of the blessed in honor of whom we have created altars,

than the Greeks and Romans had of heroes and demi-gods; the difference

is, that they granted the apotheosis to the most illustrious and

resplendent actions, and we grant it to the most meek and retired

virtues. But their deified heroes never shared the throne of Jupiter,

the great architect, the eternal sovereign of the universe; they were

admitted to his court and enjoyed his favors. What is there unreasonable

in this? Is it not a faint shadow and resemblance of the celestial

hierarchy presented to us by our religion? Nothing can be of a more

salutary moral tendency than such an idea; and the reality is not

physically impossible in itself. We have surely, upon this subject, no

fair ground for ridiculing nations to whom we are indebted even for our

alphabet.

The second object of our reproaches, is the multitude of gods admitted

to the government of the world; Neptune presiding over the sea, Juno

over the air, Æolus over the winds, and Pluto or Vesta over the earth,

and Mars over armies. We set aside the genealogies of all these

divinities, which are as false as those which are every day fabricated

and printed respecting individuals among ourselves; we pass sentence of

condemnation on all their light and loose adventures, worthy of being

recorded in the pages of the "Thousand and One Nights," and which never

constituted the foundation or essence of the Greek and Roman faith; but

let us at the same time candidly ask, where is the folly and stupidity

of having adopted beings of a secondary order, who, whatever they may be

in relation to the great supreme, have at least some power over our very

differently-constituted race, which, instead of belonging to the second,

belongs perhaps to the hundred thousandth order of existence? Does this

doctrine necessarily imply either bad metaphysics or bad natural

philosophy? Have we not ourselves nine choirs of celestial spirits, more

ancient than mankind? Has not each of these choirs a peculiar name? Did

not the Jews take the greater number of these names from the Persians?

Have not many angels their peculiar functions assigned them? There was

an exterminating angel, who fought for the Jews, and the angel of

travellers, who conducted Tobit. Michael was the particular angel of the

Hebrews; and, according to Daniel, he fights against the angel of the

Persians, and speaks to the angel of the Greeks. An angel of inferior

rank gives an account to Michael, in the book of Zachariah, of the state

in which he had found the country. Every nation possessed its angel; the

version of the Seventy Days, in Deuteronomy, that the Lord allotted the

nations according to the number of angels. St. Paul, in the Acts of the

Apostles, talks to the angel of Macedonia. These celestial spirits are

frequently called gods in Scripture, _Eloim._ For among all nations, the

word that corresponds with that of Theos, Deus, Dieu, God, by no means

universally signifies the Sovereign Lord of heaven and earth; it

frequently signifies a celestial being, a being superior to man, but

dependent upon the great Sovereign of Nature; and it is sometimes

bestowed even on princes and judges.

Since to us it is a matter of truth and reality, that celestial

substances actually exist, who are intrusted with the care of men and

empires, the people who have admitted this truth without the light of

revelation are more worthy of our esteem than our contempt.

The ridicule, therefore, does not attach to polytheism itself, but to

the abuse of it; to the popular fables of superstition; to the multitude

of absurd divinities which have been supposed to exist and to the number

of which every individual might add at his pleasure.

The goddess of nipples, "_dea Rumilia_"; the goddess of conjugal union,

"_dea Pertunda_"; the god of the water-closet, "_deus Stercutius_"; the

god of flatulence, "_deus Crepitus_"; are certainly not calculated to

attract the highest degree of veneration. These ridiculous absurdities,

the amusement of the old women and children of Rome, merely prove that

the word _deus_ had acceptations of a widely different nature. Nothing

can be more certain or obvious, than that the god of flatulence, "_deus

Crepitus,_" could never excite the same idea as _deus divûm et hominum

sator,_ the source of gods and men. The Roman pontiffs did not admit the

little burlesque and baboon-looking deities which silly women introduced

into their cabinets. The Roman religion was in fact, in its intrinsic

character, both serious and austere. Oaths were inviolable; war could

not be commenced before the college of heralds had declared it just; and

a vestal convicted of having violated her vow of virginity, was

condemned to death. These circumstances announce a people inclined to

austerities, rather than a people volatile, frivolous, and addicted to

ridicule.

I confine myself here to showing that the senate did not reason absurdly

in adopting polytheism. It is asked, how that senate, to two or three

deputies from which we were indebted both for chains and laws, could

permit so many extravagances among the people, and authorize so many

fables among the pontiffs? It would be by no means difficult to answer

this question. The wise have in every age made use of fools. They freely

leave to the people their lupercals and their saturnalia, if they only

continue loyal and obedient; and the sacred pullets that promised

victory to the armies, are judiciously secured against the sacrilege of

being slaughtered for the table. Let us never be surprised at seeing,

that the most enlightened governments have permitted customs and fables

of the most senseless character. These customs and fables existed before

government was formed; and no one would pull down an immense city,

however irregular in its buildings, to erect it precisely according to

line and level.

How can it arise, we are asked, that on one side we see so much

philosophy and science, and on the other so much fanaticism? The reason

is, that science and philosophy were scarcely born before Cicero, and

that fanaticism reigned for centuries. Policy, in such circumstances,

says to philosophy and fanaticism: Let us all three live together as

well as we can.

POPERY.

PAPIST.--His highness has within his principality Lutherans, Calvinists,

Quakers, Anabaptists, and even Jews; and you wish that he would admit

Unitarians?

TREASURER.--Certainly, if these Unitarians bring with them wealth and

industry. You will only be the better paid your wages.

PAPIST.--I must confess that a diminution of my wages would be more

disagreeable to me than the admission of these persons; but, then, they

do not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

TREASURER.--What does that signify to you, provided that you are

permitted to believe it, and are well lodged, well clothed, and well

fed? The Jews are far from believing that He is the Son of God, and yet

you are very easy with the Jews, with whom you deposit your money at six

per cent. St. Paul himself has never spoken of the divinity of Jesus

Christ, who is undisguisedly called a man. Death, says he, entered into

the world by the sin of one man ... and by one man, Jesus Christ, the

gift of grace hath abounded unto many, etc. All the early fathers of the

Church thought like Paul. It is evident that, for three hundred years,

Jesus was content with His humanity; imagine yourself a Christian of one

of the first three centuries.

PAPIST.--Yes, sir; but neither do they believe in eternal punishments.

TREASURER.--Nor I either; be you damned eternally if you please; for my

own part, I do not look for that advantage.

PAPIST.--Ah, sir! it is very hard not to be able to damn at pleasure all

the heretics in the world; but the rage which the Unitarian displays for

rendering everybody finally happy is not my only complaint. Know, that

these monsters believe the resurrection of the body no more than the

Sadducees. They say, that we are all anthropophagi, and that the

particles which compose our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, having

been necessarily dispersed in the atmosphere, become carrots and

asparagus, and that it is possible we may have devoured a portion of our

ancestors.

TREASURER.--Be it so; our children will do as much by us; it is but

repayment, and Papists will be as much benefited as others. This is no

reason for driving you from the states of his highness; and why any more

so for ejecting the Unitarians? Rise again, if you are able; it matters

little whether the Unitarians rise again or no, provided they are useful

during their lives.

PAPIST.--And what, sir, do you say to original sin, which they boldly

deny? Are you not scandalized by their assertion, that the Pentateuch

says not a word about it, that the bishop of Hippo, St. Augustine, is

the first who decidedly taught this dogma, although it is evidently

indicated by St. Paul?

TREASURER.--Truly, if the Pentateuch does not mention it, that is not my

fault. Why not add a text or two about original sin to the Old

Testament, as it is said you have added on other subjects? I know

nothing of these subtleties; it is my business only to pay you your

stipend, when I have the money to do so.

POPULATION.

SECTION I.

There were very few caterpillars in my canton last year, and we killed

nearly the whole of them. God has rendered them this year more numerous

than the leaves. Is it not nearly thus with other animals, and above all

with mankind? Famine, pestilence, death, and the two sister diseases

which have visited us from Arabia and America, destroy the inhabitants

of a province, and we are surprised at finding it abound with people a

hundred years afterwards.

I admit that it is a sacred duty to people this world, and that all

animals are stimulated by pleasure to fulfil this intention of the great

Demiourgos. Why this inhabiting of the earth? and to what purpose form

so many beings to devour one another, and the animal man to cut the

throat of his fellow, from one end of the earth to the other? I am

assured that I shall one day be in the possession of this secret, and in

my character of an inquisitive man I exceedingly desire it.

It is clear that we ought to people the earth as much as we are able;

even our health renders it necessary. The wise Arabians, the robbers of

the desert, in the treaties which they made with travellers, always

stipulated for girls. When they conquered Spain, they imposed a tribute

of girls. The country of Media pays the Turks in girls. The buccaneers

brought girls from Paris to the little island of which they took

possession; and it is related that, at the fine spectacle with which

Romulus entertained the Sabines, he stole from them three hundred girls.

I cannot conceive why the Jews, whom moreover I revere, killed everybody

in Jericho, even to the girls; and why they say in the Psalms, that it

will be sweet to massacre the infants at the mother's breast, without

excepting even girls. All other people, whether Tartars, Cannibals,

Teutons, or Celts, have always held girls in great request.

Owing to this happy instinct, it seems that the earth may one day be

covered with animals of our own kind. Father Petau makes the inhabitants

of the earth seven hundred millions, two hundred and eighty years after

the deluge. It is not, however, at the end of the "Arabian Nights" that

he has printed this pleasant enumeration.

I reckon at present on our globe about nine hundred millions of

contemporaries, and an equal number of each sex. Wallace makes them a

thousand millions. Am I in error, or is he? Possibly both of us; but a

tenth is a small matter; the arithmetic of historians is usually much

more erroneous.

I am somewhat surprised that the arithmetician Wallace, who extends the

number of people at present existing to a thousand millions, should

pretend in the same page, that in the year 966, after the creation, our

forefathers amounted to sixteen hundred and ten millions.

In the first place, I wish the epoch of the creation to be clearly

established; and as, in our western world, we have no less than eighty

theories of this event, there will be some difficulty to hit on the

correct one. In the second place, the Egyptians, the Chaldæans, the

Persians, the Indians, and the Chinese, have all different calculations;

and it is still more difficult to agree with them. Thirdly, why, in the

nine hundred and sixty-sixth year of the world, should there be more

people than there are at present?

To explain this absurdity, we are told that matters occurred otherwise

than at present; that nature, being more vigorous, was better concocted

and more prolific; and, moreover, that people lived longer. Why do they

not add, that the sun was warmer, and the moon more beautiful.

We are told, that in the time of Cæsar, although men had begun to

greatly degenerate, the world was like an ants' nest of bipeds; but that

at present it is a desert. Montesquieu, who always exaggerates, and who

sacrifices anything to an itching desire of displaying his wit, ventures

to believe, and in his "Persian Letters" would have others believe, that

there were thirty times as many people in the world in the days of Cæsar

as at present.

Wallace acknowledges that this calculation made at random is too much;

but for what reason? Because, before the days of Cæsar, the world

possessed more inhabitants than during the most brilliant period of the

Roman republic. He then ascends to the time of Semiramis, and if

possible exaggerates more than Montesquieu.

Lastly, in conformity with the taste which is always attributed to the

Holy Spirit for hyperbole, they fail not to instance the eleven hundred

and sixty thousand men, who marched so fiercely under the standards of

the great monarch, Josophat, or Jehosophat, king of the province of

Judah. Enough, enough, Mr. Wallace; the Holy Spirit cannot deceive; but

its agents and copyists have badly calculated and numbered. All your

Scotland would not furnish eleven hundred thousand men to attend your

sermons, and the kingdom of Judah was not a twentieth part of Scotland.

See, again, what St. Jerome says of this poor Holy Land, in which he so

long resided. Have you well calculated the quantity of money the great

King Jehosophat must have possessed, to pay, feed, clothe, and arm

eleven hundred thousand chosen men? But thus is history written.

Mr. Wallace returns from Jehosophat to Cæsar, and concludes, that since

the time of this dictator of short duration, the world has visibly

decreased in the number of its inhabitants. Behold, said he, the Swiss:

according to the relation of Cæsar, they amounted to three hundred and

sixty-eight thousand, when they so wisely quitted their country to seek

their fortunes, like the Cimbri.

I wish by this example to recall those partisans into a little due

consideration, who gift the ancients with such wonders in the way of

generation, at the expense of the moderns. The canton of Berne alone,

according to an accurate census, possesses a greater number of

inhabitants than quitted the whole of Helvetia in the time of Cæsar. The

human species is, therefore, doubled in Helvetia since that expedition.

I likewise believe, that Germany, France, and England are much better

peopled now than at that time; and for this reason: I adduce the vast

clearance of forests, the number of great towns built and increased

during the last eight hundred years, and the number of arts which have

originated in proportion. This I regard as a sufficient answer to the

brazen declamation, repeated every day in books, in which truth is

sacrificed to sallies, and which are rendered useless by their abundant

wit.

"_L'Ami des Hommes_" says, that in the time of Cæsar fifty-two millions

of men were assigned to Spain, which Strabo observes has always been

badly peopled, owing to the interior being so deficient in water. Strabo

is apparently right, and "_L'Ami des Hommes_" erroneous. But they scare

us by asking what has become of the prodigious quantity of Huns, Alans,

Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, and Lombards, who spread like a torrent

over Europe in the fifth century.

I distrust these multitudes, and suspect that twenty or thirty thousand

ferocious animals, more or less, were sufficient to overwhelm with

fright the whole Roman Empire, governed by a Pulcheria, by eunuchs, and

by monks. It was enough for ten thousand barbarians to pass the Danube;

for every parish rumor, or homily, to make them more numerous than the

locusts in the plains of Egypt; and call them a scourge from God, in

order to inspire penitence, and produce gifts of money to the convents.

Fear seized all the inhabitants, and they fled in crowds. Behold

precisely the fright which a wolf caused in the district of Gevanden in

the year 1766.

Mandarin the robber, at the head of fifty vagabonds, put an entire town

under contribution. As soon as he entered at one gate, it was said at

the other, that he brought with him four thousand men and artillery. If

Attila, followed by fifty thousand hungry assassins, ravaged province

after province, report would call them five hundred thousand.

The millions of men who followed Xerxes, Cyrus, Tomyris, the thirty or

forty-four millions of Egyptians, Thebes with her hundred gates--"_Et

quicquid Grecia mendax audet in historia_"--resemble the five hundred

thousand men of Attila, which company of pleasant travellers it would

have been difficult to find on the journey.

These Huns came from Siberia, and thence I conclude that they came in

very small numbers. Siberia was certainly not more fertile than in our

own days. I doubt whether in the reign of Tomyris a town existed equal

to Tobolsk, or that these frightful deserts can feed a great number of

inhabitants.

India, China, Persia, and Asia Minor were thickly peopled; this I can

credit without difficulty; and possibly they are not less so at present,

notwithstanding the destructive prevalence of invasions and wars.

Throughout, Nature has clothed them with pasturage; the bull freely

unites with the heifer, the ram with the sheep, and man with woman.

The deserts of Barca, of Arabia, and of Oreb, of Sinai, of Jerusalem, of

Gobi, etc., were never peopled, are not peopled at present, and never

will be peopled; at least, until some natural revolution happens to

transform these plains of sand and flint into fertile land.

The land of France is tolerably good, and it is sufficiently inhabited

by consumers, since of all kinds there are more than are well supplied;

since there are two hundred thousand impostors, who beg from one end of

the country to the other, and sustain their despicable lives at the

expense of the rich; and lastly, since France supports more than eighty

thousand monks, of which not a single one assists to produce an ear of

corn.

SECTION II.

I believe that England, Protestant Germany, and Holland are better

peopled in proportion than France. The reason is evident; those

countries harbor not monks who vow to God to be useless to man. In these

countries, the clergy, having little else to do, occupy themselves with

study and propagation. They give birth to robust children, and give them

a better education than that which is bestowed on the offspring of

French and Italian marquises.

Rome, on the contrary, would be a desert without cardinals, ambassadors,

and travellers. It would be only an illustrious monument, like the

temple of Jupiter Ammon. In the time of the first Cæsar, it was computed

that this sterile territory, rendered fertile by manure and the labor of

slaves, contained some millions of men. It was an exception to the

general law, that population is ordinarily in proportion to fertility of

soil.

Conquest rendered this barren country fertile and populous. A form of

government as strange and contradictory as any which ever astonished

mankind, has restored to the territory of Romulus its primitive

character. The whole country is depopulated from Orvieto to Terracina.

Rome, reduced to its own citizens, would be to London only as one to

twelve; and in respect to money and commerce, would be to the towns of

Amsterdam and London as one to a thousand.

That which Rome has lost, Europe has not only regained, but the

population has almost tripled since the days of Charlemagne. I say

tripled, which is much; for propagation is _not_ in geometrical

progression. All the calculations made on the idea of this pretended

multiplication, amount only to absurd chimeras.

If a family of human beings or of apes multiplied in this manner, at the

end of two hundred years the earth would not be able to contain them.

Nature has taken care at once to preserve and restrain the various

species. She resembles the fates, who spin and cut threads continually.

She is occupied with birth and destruction alone.

If she has given to man more ideas and memory than to other animals; if

she has rendered him capable of generalizing his ideas and combining

them; if he has the advantage of the gift of speech, she has not

bestowed on him that of multiplication equal to insects. There are more

ants in a square league of heath, than of men in the world, counting all

that have ever existed.

When a country possesses a great number of idlers, be sure that it is

well peopled; since these idlers are lodged, clothed, fed, amused, and

respected by those who labor. The principal object, however, is not to

possess a superfluity of men, but to render such as we have as little

unhappy as possible.

Let us thank nature for placing us in the temperate zone, peopled almost

throughout by a more than sufficient number of inhabitants, who

cultivate all the arts; and let us endeavor not to lessen this advantage

by our absurdities.

SECTION III.

It must be confessed, that we ordinarily people and depopulate the world

a little at random; and everybody acts in this manner. We are little

adapted to obtain an accurate notion of things; the _nearly_ is our only

guide, and it often leads us astray.