SECTION I.

A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY

VOLUME VI

By

VOLTAIRE

EDITION DE LA PACIFICATION

THE WORKS OF VOLTAIRE

A CONTEMPORARY VERSION

With Notes by Tobias Smollett, Revised and Modernized

New Translations by William F. Fleming, and an

Introduction by Oliver H.G. Leigh

A CRITIQUE AND BIOGRAPHY

BY

THE RT. HON. JOHN MORLEY

FORTY-THREE VOLUMES

One hundred and sixty-eight designs, comprising reproductions

of rare old engravings, steel plates, photogravures,

and curious fac-similes

VOLUME X

E.R. DuMONT

PARIS : LONDON : NEW YORK : CHICAGO

1901

_The WORKS of VOLTAIRE_

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

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

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

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

sweetness of the present civilization."_

_VICTOR HUGO._

LIST OF PLATES--VOL. VI.

VOLTAIRE'S HOME IN GENEVA _Frontispiece_

THE ACROPOLIS AT ATHENS

THE DUKE OF SULLY

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE INQUISITION IN PORTUGAL

* * * * *

VOLTAIRE

A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY

IN TEN VOLUMES

VOL. VI

HAPPY--JOB

* * * * *

HAPPY--HAPPILY.

What is called happiness is an abstract idea, composed of various ideas

of pleasure; for he who has but a moment of pleasure is not a happy man,

in like manner that a moment of grief constitutes not a miserable one.

Pleasure is more transient than happiness, and happiness than felicity.

When a person says--I am happy at this moment, he abuses the word, and

only means I am pleased. When pleasure is continuous, he may then call

himself happy. When this happiness lasts a little longer, it is a state

of felicity. We are sometimes very far from being happy in prosperity,

just as a surfeited invalid eats nothing of a great feast prepared for

him.

The ancient adage, "No person should be called happy before his death,"

seems to turn on very false principles, if we mean by this maxim that we

should not give the name of happy to a man who had been so constantly

from his birth to his last hour. This continuity of agreeable moments is

rendered impossible by the constitution of our organs, by that of the

elements on which we depend, and by that of mankind, on whom we depend

still more. Constant happiness is the philosopher's stone of the soul;

it is a great deal for us not to be a long time unhappy. A person whom

we might suppose to have always enjoyed a happy life, who perishes

miserably, would certainly merit the appellation of happy until his

death, and we might boldly pronounce that he had been the happiest of

men. Socrates might have been the happiest of the Greeks, although

superstitious, absurd, or iniquitous judges, or all together,

juridically poisoned him at the age of seventy years, on the suspicion

that he believed in only one God.

The philosophical maxim so much agitated, "_Nemo ante obitum felix_,"

therefore, appears absolutely false in every sense; and if it signifies

that a happy man may die an unhappy death, it signifies nothing of

consequence.

The proverb of being "Happy as a king" is still more false. Everybody

knows how the vulgar deceive themselves.

It is asked, if one condition is happier than another; if man in general

is happier than woman. It would be necessary to have tried all

conditions, to have been man and woman like Tiresias and Iphis, to

decide this question; still more would it be necessary to have lived in

all conditions, with a mind equally proper to each; and we must have

passed through all the possible states of man and woman to judge of it.

It is further queried, if of two men one is happier than the other. It

is very clear that he who has the gout and stone, who loses his fortune,

his honor, his wife and children, and who is condemned to be hanged

immediately after having been mangled, is less happy in this world in

everything than a young, vigorous sultan, or La Fontaine's cobbler.

But we wish to know which is the happier of two men equally healthy,

equally rich, and of an equal condition. It is clear that it is their

temper which decides it. The most moderate, the least anxious, and at

the same time the most sensible, is the most happy; but unfortunately

the most sensible is often the least moderate. It is not our condition,

it is the temper of our souls which renders us happy. This disposition

of our souls depends on our organs, and our organs have been arranged

without our having the least part in the arrangement.

It belongs to the reader to make his reflections on the above. There are

many articles on which he can say more than we ought to tell him. In

matters of art, it is necessary to instruct him; in affairs of morals,

he should be left to think for himself.

There are dogs whom we caress, comb, and feed with biscuits, and whom we

give to pretty females: there are others which are covered with the

mange, which die of hunger; others which we chase and beat, and which a

young surgeon slowly dissects, after having driven four great nails into

their paws. Has it depended upon these poor dogs to be happy or unhappy?

We say a happy thought, a happy feature, a happy repartee, a happy

physiognomy, happy climate, etc. These thoughts, these happy traits,

which strike like sudden inspirations, and which are called the happy

sallies of a man of wit, strike like flashes of light across our eyes,

without our seeking it. They are no more in our power than a happy

physiognomy; that is to say, a sweet and noble aspect, so independent of

us, and so often deceitful. The happy climate is that which nature

favors: so are happy imaginations, so is happy genius, or great talent.

And who can give himself genius? or who, when he has received some ray

of this flame, can preserve it always brilliant?

When we speak of a happy rascal, by this word we only comprehend his

success. "Felix Sulla"--the fortunate Sulla, and Alexander VI., a duke

of Borgia, have happily pillaged, betrayed, poisoned, ravaged, and

assassinated. But being villains, it is very likely that they were very

unhappy, even when not in fear of persons resembling themselves.

It may happen to an ill-disposed person, badly educated--a Turk, for

example, of whom it ought to be said, that he is permitted to doubt the

Christian faith--to put a silken cord round the necks of his viziers,

when they are rich; to strangle, massacre, or throw his brothers into

the Black Sea, and to ravage a hundred leagues of country for his glory.

It may happen, I say, that this man has no more remorse than his mufti,

and is very happy--on all which the reader may duly ponder.

There were formerly happy planets, and others unhappy, or unfortunate;

unhappily, they no longer exist. Some people would have deprived the

public of this useful Dictionary--happily, they have not succeeded.

Ungenerous minds, and absurd fanatics, every day endeavor to prejudice

the powerful and the ignorant against philosophers. If they were

unhappily listened to, we should fall back into the barbarity from which

philosophers alone have withdrawn us.

HEAVEN (CIEL MATÉRIEL).

The laws of optics, which are founded upon the nature of things, have

ordained that, from this small globe of earth on which we live, we shall

always see the material heaven as if we were the centre of it, although

we are far from being that centre; that we shall always see it as a

vaulted roof, hanging over a plane, although there is no other vaulted

roof than that of our atmosphere, which has no such plane; that our sun

and moon will always appear one-third larger at the horizon than at

their zenith, although they are nearer the spectator at the zenith than

at the horizon.

Such are the laws of optics, such is the structure of your eyes, that,

in the first place, the material heaven, the clouds, the moon, the sun,

which is at so vast a distance from you; the planets, which in their

apogee are still at a greater distance from it; all the stars placed at

distances yet vastly greater, comets and meteors, everything, must

appear to us in that vaulted roof as consisting of our atmosphere.

The sun appears to us, when in its zenith, smaller than when at fifteen

degrees below; at thirty degrees below the zenith it will appear still

larger than at fifteen; and finally, at the horizon, its size will seem

larger yet; so that its dimensions in the lower heaven decrease in

consequence of its elevations, in the following proportions:

At the horizon 100

At fifteen degrees above 68

At thirty degrees 50

At forty-five degrees 40

Its apparent magnitudes in the vaulted roof are as its apparent

elevations; and it is the same with the moon, and with a comet.

It is not habit, it is not the intervention of tracts of land, it is not

the refraction of the atmosphere which produces this effect. Malebranche

and Régis have disputed with each other on this subject; but Robert

Smith has calculated.

Observe the two stars, which, being at a prodigious distance from each

other, and at very different depths, in the immensity of space, are here

considered as placed in the circle which the sun appears to traverse.

You perceive them distant from each other in the great circle, but

approximating to each other in every circle smaller, or within that

described by the path of the sun.

It is in this manner that you see the material heaven. It is by these

invariable laws of optics that you perceive the planets sometimes

retrograde and sometimes stationary; there is in fact nothing of the

kind. Were you stationed in the sun, we should perceive all the planets

and comets moving regularly round it in those elliptical orbits which

God assigns. But we are upon the planet of the earth, in a corner of the

universe, where it is impossible for us to enjoy the sight of

everything.

Let us not then blame the errors of our senses, like Malebranche; the

steady laws of nature originating in the immutable will of the Almighty,

and adapted to the structure of our organs, cannot be errors.

We can see only the appearances of things, and not things themselves. We

are no more deceived when the sun, the work of the divinity--that star a

million times larger than our earth--appears to us quite flat and two

feet in width, than when, in a convex mirror, which is the work of our

own hands, we see a man only a few inches high.

If the Chaldæan magi were the first who employed the understanding which

God bestowed upon them, to measure and arrange in their respective

stations the heavenly bodies, other nations more gross and unintelligent

made no advance towards imitating them.

These childish and savage populations imagined the earth to be flat,

supported, I know not how, by its own weight in the air; the sun, moon,

and stars to move continually upon a solid vaulted roof called a

firmament; and this roof to sustain waters, and have flood-gates at

regular distances, through which these waters issued to moisten and

fertilize the earth.

But how did the sun, the moon, and all the stars reappear after their

setting? Of this they know nothing at all. The heaven touched the flat

earth: and there were no means by which the sun, moon, and stars could

turn under the earth, and go to rise in the east after having set in the

west. It is true that these children of ignorance were right by chance

in not entertaining the idea that the sun and fixed stars moved, round

the earth. But they were far from conceiving that the sun was immovable,

and the earth with its satellite revolving round him in space together

with the other planets. Their fables were more distant from the true

system of the world than darkness from light.

They thought that the sun and stars returned by certain unknown roads

after having refreshed themselves for their course at some spot, not

precisely ascertained, in the Mediterranean Sea. This was the amount of

astronomy, even in the time of Homer, who is comparatively recent; for

the Chaldæans kept their science to themselves, in order to obtain

thereby, greater respect from other nations. Homer says, more than once,

that the sun plunges into the ocean--and this ocean, be it observed, is

nothing but the Nile--here, by the freshness of the waters, he repairs

during the night the fatigue and exhaustion of the day, after which, he

goes to the place of his regular rising by ways unknown to mortals. This

idea is very like that of Baron Fœneste, who says, that the cause of

our not seeing the sun when he goes back, is that he goes back by night.

As, at that time, the nations of Syria and the Greeks were somewhat

acquainted with Asia and a small part of Europe, and had no notion of

the countries which lie to the north of the Euxine Sea and to the south

of the Nile, they laid it down as a certainty that the earth was a full

third longer than it was wide; consequently the heaven, which touched

the earth and embraced it, was also longer than it was wide. Hence came

down to us degrees of longitude and latitude, names which we have always

retained, although with far more correct ideas than those which

originally suggested them.

The Book of Job, composed by an ancient Arab who possessed some

knowledge of astronomy, since he speaks of the constellations, contains

nevertheless the following passage: "Where wert thou, when I laid the

foundation of the earth? Who hath taken the dimensions thereof? On what

are its foundations fixed? Who hath laid the cornerstone thereof?"

The least informed schoolboy, at the present day, would tell him, in

answer: "The earth has neither cornerstone nor foundation; and, as to

its dimensions, we know them perfectly well, as from Magellan to

Bougainville, various navigators have sailed round it."

The same schoolboy would put to silence the pompous declaimer

Lactantius, and all those who before and since his time have decided

that the earth was fixed upon the water, and that there can be no heaven

under the earth; and that, consequently, it is both ridiculous and

impious to suppose the existence of antipodes.

It is curious to observe with what disdain, with what contemptuous pity,

Lactantius looks down upon all the philosophers, who, from about four

hundred years before his time, had begun to be acquainted with the

apparent revolutions of the sun and planets, with the roundness of the

earth, and the liquid and yielding nature of the heaven through which

the planets revolved in their orbits, etc. He inquires, "by what degrees

philosophers attained such excess of folly as to conceive the earth to

be a globe, and to surround that globe with heaven." These reasonings

are upon a par with those he has adduced on the subject of the sibyls.

Our young scholar would address some such language as this to all these

consequential doctors: "You are to learn that there are no such things

as solid heavens placed one over another, as you have been told; that

there are no real circles in which the stars move on a pretended

firmament; that the sun is the centre of our planetary world; and that

the earth and the planets move round it in space, in orbits not circular

but elliptical. You must learn that there is, in fact, neither above nor

below, but that the planets and the comets tend all towards the sun,

their common centre, and that the sun tends towards them, according to

an eternal law of gravitation."

Lactantius and his gabbling associates would be perfectly astonished,

were the true system of the world thus unfolded to them.

HEAVEN OF THE ANCIENTS.

Were a silkworm to denominate the small quantity of downy substance

surrounding its ball, heaven, it would reason just as correctly as all

the ancients, when they applied that term to the atmosphere; which, as

M. de Fontenelle has well observed in his "Plurality of Worlds," is the

down of our ball.

The vapors which rise from our seas and land, and which form the clouds,

meteors, and thunder, were supposed, in the early ages of the world, to

be the residence of gods. Homer always makes the gods descend in clouds

of gold; and hence painters still represent them seated on a cloud. How

can any one be seated on water? It was perfectly correct to place the

master of the gods more at ease than the rest; he had an eagle to carry

him, because the eagle soars higher than the other birds.

The ancient Greeks, observing that the lords of cities resided in

citadels on the tops of mountains, supposed that the gods might also

have their citadel, and placed it in Thessaly, on Mount Olympus, whose

summit is sometimes hidden in clouds; so that their palace was on the

same floor with their heaven.

Afterwards, the stars and planets, which appear fixed to the blue vault

of our atmosphere, became the abodes of gods; seven of them had each a

planet, and the rest found a lodging where they could. The general

council of gods was held in a spacious hall which lay beyond the Milky

Way; for it was but reasonable that the gods should have a hall in the

air, as men had town-halls and courts of assembly upon earth.

When the Titans, a species of animal between gods and men, declared

their just and necessary war against these same gods in order to recover

a part of their patrimony, by the father's side, as they were the sons

of heaven and earth; they contented themselves with piling two or three

mountains upon one another, thinking that would be quite enough to make

them masters of heaven, and of the castle of Olympus.

_Neve foret terris securior arduus æther,_

_Affectasse ferunt regnum celeste gigantes;_

_Attaque congestos struxisse ad sidera montes._

--OVID'S _Metamorph_., i. 151-153.

Nor heaven itself was more secure than earth;

Against the gods the Titans levied wars,

And piled up mountains till they reached the stars.

It is, however, more than six hundred leagues from these stars to Mount

Olympus, and from some stars infinitely farther.

Virgil (Eclogue v, 57) does not hesitate to say: "_Sub pedibusque videt

nubes et sidera Daphnis._"

Daphnis, the guest of heaven, with wondering eyes,

Views in the Milky Way, the Starry skies,

And far beneath him, from the shining sphere

Beholds the morning clouds, and rolling year.

--DRYDEN.

But where then could Daphnis possibly place himself?

At the opera, and in more serious productions, the gods are introduced

descending in the midst of tempests, clouds, and thunder; that is, God

is brought forward in the midst of the vapors of our petty globe. These

notions are so suitable to our weak minds, that they appear to us grand

and sublime.

This philosophy of children and old women was of prodigious antiquity;

it is believed, however, that the Chaldæans entertained nearly as

correct ideas as ourselves on the subject of what is called heaven. They

placed the sun in the midst of our planetary system, nearly at the same

distance from our globe as our calculation computes it; and they

supposed the earth and some planets to revolve round that star; this we

learn from Aristarchus of Samos. It is nearly the system of the world

since established by Copernicus: but the philosophers kept the secret to

themselves, in order to obtain greater respect both from kings and

people, or rather perhaps, to avoid the danger of persecution.

The language of error is so familiar to mankind that we still apply the

name of heaven to our vapors, and the space between the earth and moon.

We use the expression of ascending to heaven, just as we say the sun

turns round, although we well know that it does not. We are, probably,

the heaven of the inhabitants of the moon; and every planet places its

heaven in that planet nearest to itself.

Had Homer been asked, to what heaven the soul of Sarpedon had fled, or

where that of Hercules resided, Homer would have been a good deal

embarrassed, and would have answered by some harmonious verses.

What assurance could there be, that the ethereal soul of Hercules would

be more at its ease in the planet Venus or in Saturn, than upon our own

globe? Could its mansion be in the sun? In that flaming and consuming

furnace, it would appear difficult for it to endure its station. In

short, what was it that the ancients meant by heaven? They knew nothing

about it; they were always exclaiming, "Heaven and earth," thus placing

completely different things in most absurd connection. It would be just

as judicious to exclaim, and connect in the same manner, infinity and an

atom. Properly speaking, there is no heaven. There are a prodigious

number of globes revolving in the immensity of space, and our globe

revolves like the rest.

The ancients thought that to go to heaven was to ascend; but there is no

ascent from one globe to another. The heavenly bodies are sometimes

above our horizon, and sometimes below it. Thus, let us suppose that

Venus, after visiting Paphos, should return to her own planet, when that

planet had set; the goddess would not in that case ascend, in reference

to our horizon; she would descend, and the proper expression would be

then, descended to heaven. But the ancients did not discriminate with

such nicety; on every subject of natural philosophy, their notions were

vague, uncertain and contradictory. Volumes have been composed in order

to ascertain and point out what they thought upon many questions of this

description. Six words would have been sufficient--"they did not think

at all." We must always except a small number of sages; but they

appeared at too late a period, and but rarely disclosed their thoughts;

and when they did so, the charlatans in power took care to send them to

heaven by the shortest way.

A writer, if I am not mistaken, of the name of Pluche, has been recently

exhibiting Moses as a great natural philosopher; another had previously

harmonized Moses with Descartes, and published a book, which he called,

"_Carlesius Mosaisans_"; according to him, Moses was the real inventor

of "Vortices," and the subtile matter; but we full well know, that when

God made Moses a great legislator and prophet, it was no part of His

scheme to make him also a professor of physics. Moses instructed the

Jews in their duty, and did not teach them a single word of philosophy.

Calmet, who compiled a great deal, but never reasoned at all, talks of

the system of the Hebrews; but that stupid people never had any system.

They had not even a school of geometry; the very name was utterly

unknown to them. The whole of their science was comprised in

money-changing and usury.

We find in their books ideas on the structure of heaven, confused,

incoherent, and in every respect worthy of a people immersed in

barbarism. Their first heaven was the air, the second the firmament in

which the stars were fixed. This firmament was solid and made of glass,

and supported the superior waters which issued from the vast reservoirs

by flood-gates, sluices, and cataracts, at the time of the deluge.

Above the firmament or these superior waters was the third heaven, or

the empyream, to which St. Paul was caught up. The firmament was a sort

of demi-vault which came close down to the earth.

It is clear that, according to this opinion, there could be no

antipodes. Accordingly, St. Augustine treats the idea of antipodes as an

absurdity; and Lactantius, whom we have already quoted, expressly says

"can there possibly be any persons so simple as to believe that there

are men whose heads are lower than their feet?" etc.

St. Chrysostom exclaims, in his fourteenth homily, "Where are they who

pretend that the heavens are movable, and that their form is circular?"

Lactantius, once more, says, in the third book of his "Institutions," "I

could prove to you by many arguments that it is impossible heaven should

surround the earth."

The author of the "Spectacle of Nature" may repeat to M. le Chevalier as

often as he pleases, that Lactantius and St. Chrysostom are great

philosophers. He will be told in reply that they were great saints; and

that to be a great saint, it is not at all necessary to be a great

astronomer. It will be believed that they are in heaven, although it

will be admitted to be impossible to say precisely in what part of it.

HELL.

Infernum, subterranean; the regions below, or the infernal regions.

Nations which buried the dead placed them in the inferior or infernal

regions. Their soul, then, was with them in those regions. Such were the

first physics and the first metaphysics of the Egyptians and Greeks.

The Indians, who were far more ancient, who had invented the ingenious

doctrine of the metempsychosis, never believed that souls existed in the

infernal regions.

The Japanese, Coreans, Chinese, and the inhabitants of the vast

territory of eastern and western Tartary never knew a word of the

philosophy of the infernal regions.

The Greeks, in the course of time, constituted an immense kingdom of

these infernal regions, which they liberally conferred on Pluto and his

wife Proserpine. They assigned them three privy counsellors, three

housekeepers called Furies, and three Fates to spin, wind, and cut the

thread of human life. And, as in ancient times, every hero had his dog

to guard his gate, so was Pluto attended and guarded by an immense dog

with three heads; for everything, it seems, was to be done by threes. Of

the three privy counsellors, Minos, Æacus, and Rhadamanthus, one judged

Greece, another Asia Minor--for the Greeks were then unacquainted with

the Greater Asia--and the third was for Europe.

The poets, having invented these infernal regions, or hell, were the

first to laugh at them. Sometimes Virgil mentions hell in the "Æneid" in

a style of seriousness, because that style was then suitable to his

subject. Sometimes he speaks of it with contempt in his "Georgics" (ii.

490, etc.).

_Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas_

_Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum_

_Subjecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari!_

Happy the man whose vigorous soul can pierce

Through the formation of this universe,

Who nobly dares despise, with soul sedate,

The den of Acheron, and vulgar fears and fate.

--WHARTON.

The following lines from the "Troad" (chorus of act ii.), in which

Pluto, Cerberus, Phlegethon, Styx, etc., are treated like dreams and

childish tales, were repeated in the theatre of Rome, and applauded by

forty thousand hands:

_.... Tœnara et aspero_

_Regnum sub domino, limen et obsidens_

_Custos non facili Cerberus ostio_

_Rumores vacui, verbaque inania,_

_Et par solicito fabula somnio._

Lucretius and Horace express themselves equally strongly. Cicero and

Seneca used similar language in innumerable parts of their writings. The

great emperor Marcus Aurelius reasons still more philosophically than

those I have mentioned. "He who fears death, fears either to be deprived

of all senses, or to experience other sensations. But, if you no longer

retain your own senses, you will be no longer subject to any pain or

grief. If you have senses of a different nature, you will be a totally

different being."

To this reasoning, profane philosophy had nothing to reply. Yet,

agreeably to that contradiction or perverseness which distinguishes the

human species, and seems to constitute the very foundation of our

nature, at the very time when Cicero publicly declared that "not even an

old woman was to be found who believed in such absurdities," Lucretius

admitted that these ideas were powerfully impressive upon men's minds;

his object, he says, is to destroy them:

_.... Si certum finem esse viderent_

_Ærumnarum homines, aliqua ratione valerent_

_Religionibus atque minis obsistere vatum._

_Nunc ratio nulla est restandi, nulla facultas;_

_Æternas quoniam poenas in morte timendum._

--LUCRETIUS, i. 108.

.... If it once appear

That after death there's neither hope nor fear;

Then might men freely triumph, then disdain

The poet's tales, and scorn their fancied pain;

But now we must submit, since pains we fear

Eternal after death, we know not where.

--CREECH.

It was therefore true, that among the lowest classes of the people, some

laughed at hell, and others trembled at it. Some regarded Cerberus, the

Furies, and Pluto as ridiculous fables, others perpetually presented

offerings to the infernal gods. It was with them just as it is now among

ourselves:

_Et quocumque tamen miseri venere, parentant,_

_Et nigros mactant pecudes, et Manibus divis_

_Inferias mittunt multoque in rebus acerbis_

_Acrius admittunt animos ad religionem._

--LUCRETIUS, iii. 51.

Nay, more than that, where'er the wretches come

They sacrifice black sheep on every tomb,

To please the manes; and of all the rout,

When cares and dangers press, grow most devout.

--CREECH.

Many philosophers who had no belief in the fables about hell, were yet

desirous that the people should retain that belief. Such was Zimens of

Locris. Such was the political historian Polybius. "Hell," says he, "is

useless to sages, but necessary to the blind and brutal populace."

It is well known that the law of the Pentateuch never announces a hell.

All mankind was involved in this chaos of contradiction and uncertainty,

when Jesus Christ came into the world. He confirmed the ancient doctrine

of hell, not the doctrine of the heathen poets, not that of the Egyptian

priests, but that which Christianity adopted, and to which everything

must yield. He announced a kingdom that was about to come, and a hell

that should have no end.

He said, in express words, at Capernaum in Galilee, "Whosoever shall

call his brother '_Raca_,' shall be condemned by the sanhedrim; but

whosoever shall call him 'fool,' shall be condemned to _Gehenna Hinnom_,

Gehenna of fire."

This proves two things, first, that Jesus Christ was adverse to abuse

and reviling; for it belonged only to Him, as master, to call the

Pharisees hypocrites, and a "generation of vipers."

Secondly, that those who revile their neighbor deserve hell; for the

Gehenna of fire was in the valley of Hinnom, where victims had formerly

been burned in sacrifice to Moloch, and this Gehenna was typical of the

fire of hell.

He says, in another place, "If any one shall offend one of the weak who

believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about

his neck and he were cast into the sea.

"And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter

into life maimed, than to go into the Gehenna of inextinguishable fire,

where the worm dies not, and where the fire is not quenched.

"And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter

lame into eternal life, than to be cast with two feet into the

inextinguishable Gehenna, where the worm dies not; and where the fire is

not quenched.

"And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out; it is better to enter into

the kingdom of God with one eye, than to be cast with both eyes into the

Gehenna of fire, where the worm dies not, and the fire is not quenched.

"For everyone shall be burned with fire, and every victim shall be

salted with salt.

"Salt is good; but if the salt have lost its savor, with what will you

salt?

"You have salt in yourselves, preserve peace one with another."

He said on another occasion, on His journey to Jerusalem, "When the

master of the house shall have entered and shut the door, you will

remain without, and knock, saying, 'Lord, open unto us;' and he will

answer and say unto you, '_Nescio vos_,' I know you not; whence are you?

And then ye shall begin to say, we have eaten and drunk with thee, and

thou hast taught in our public places; and he will reply, '_Nescio

vos_,' whence are you, workers of iniquity? And there shall be weeping

and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see there Abraham, Isaac, and

Jacob, and the prophets, and yourselves cast out."

Notwithstanding the other positive declarations made by the Saviour of

mankind, which assert the eternal damnation of all who do not belong to

our church, Origen and some others were not believers in the eternity of

punishments.

The Socinians reject such punishments; but they are without the pale.

The Lutherans and Calvinists, although they have strayed beyond the

pale, yet admit the doctrine of a hell without end.

When men came to live in society, they must have perceived that a great

number of criminals eluded the severity of the laws; the laws punished

public crimes; it was necessary to establish a check upon secret crimes;

this check was to be found only in religion. The Persians, Chaldæans,

Egyptians, and Greeks, entertained the idea of punishments after the

present life, and of all the nations of antiquity that we are acquainted

with, the Jews, as we have already remarked, were the only one who

admitted solely temporal punishments. It is ridiculous to believe, or

pretend to believe, from some excessively obscure passages, that hell

was recognized by the ancient laws of the Jews, by their Leviticus, or

by their Decalogue, when the author of those laws says not a single word

which can bear the slightest relation to the chastisements of a future

life. We might have some right to address the compiler of the Pentateuch

in such language as the following: "You are a man of no consistency, as

destitute of probity as understanding, and totally unworthy of the name

which you arrogate to yourself of legislator. What! you are perfectly

acquainted, it seems, with that doctrine so eminently repressive of

human vice, so necessary to the virtue and happiness of mankind--the

doctrine of hell; and yet you do not explicitly announce it; and, while

it is admitted by all the nations which surround you, you are content to

leave it for some commentators, after four thousand years have passed

away, to suspect that this doctrine might possibly have been entertained

by you, and to twist and torture your expressions, in order to find that

in them which you have never said. Either you are grossly ignorant not

to know that this belief was universal in Egypt, Chaldæa, and Persia; or

you have committed the most disgraceful error in judgment, in not having

made it the foundation-stone of your religion."

The authors of the Jewish laws could at most only answer: "We confess

that we are excessively ignorant; that we did not learn the art of

writing until a late period; that our people were a wild and barbarous

horde, that wandered, as our own records admit, for nearly half a

century in impracticable deserts, and at length obtained possession of a

petty territory by the most odious rapine and detestable cruelty ever

mentioned in the records of history. We had no commerce with civilized

nations, and how could you suppose that, so grossly mean and grovelling

as we are in all our ideas and usages, we should have invented a system

so refined and spiritual as that in question?"

We employed the word which most nearly corresponds with soul, merely to

signify life; we know our God and His ministers, His angels, only as

corporeal beings; the distinction of soul and body, the idea of a life

beyond death, can be the fruit only of long meditation and refined

philosophy. Ask the Hottentots and negroes, who inhabit a country a

hundred times larger than ours, whether they know anything of a life to

come? We thought we had done enough in persuading the people under our

influence that God punished offenders to the fourth generation, either

by leprosy, by sudden death, or by the loss of the little property of

which the criminal might be possessed.

To this apology it might be replied: "You have invented a system, the

ridicule and absurdity of which are as clear as the sun at noon-day; for

the offender who enjoyed good health, and whose family were in

prosperous circumstances, must absolutely have laughed you to scorn."

The apologist for the Jewish law would here rejoin: "You are much

mistaken; since for one criminal who reasoned correctly, there were a

hundred who never reasoned at all. The man who, after he had committed a

crime, found no punishment of it attached to himself or his son, would

yet tremble for his grandson. Besides, if after the time of committing

his offence he was not speedily seized with some festering sore, such as

our nation was extremely subject to, he would experience it in the

course of years. Calamities are always occurring in a family, and we,

without difficulty, instilled the belief that these calamities were

inflicted by the hand of God taking vengeance for secret offences."

It would be easy to reply to this answer by saying: "Your apology is

worth nothing; for it happens every day that very worthy and excellent

persons lose their health and their property; and, if there were no

family that did not experience calamity, and that calamity at the same

time was a chastisement from God, all the families of your community

must have been made up of scoundrels."

The Jewish priest might again answer and say that there are some

calamities inseparable from human nature, and others expressly inflicted

by the hand of God. But, in return, we should point out to such a

reasoner the absurdity of considering fever and hail-stones in some

cases as divine punishments; in others as mere natural effects.

In short, the Pharisees and the Essenians among the Jews did admit,

according to certain notions of their own, the belief of a hell. This

dogma had passed from the Greeks to the Romans, and was adopted by the

Christians.

Many of the fathers of the church rejected the doctrine of eternal

punishments. It appeared to them absurd to burn to all eternity an

unfortunate man for stealing a goat. Virgil has finely said:

_.... Sedit eternumque sedebit_

_Infelix Theseus._

Unhappy Theseus, doomed forever there,

Is fixed by fate on his eternal chair.

--DRYDEN.

But it is vain for him to maintain or imply that Theseus is forever

fixed to his chair, and that this position constitutes his punishment.

Others have imagined Theseus to be a hero who could never be seen on any

seat in hell, and who was to be found in the Elysian Fields.

A Calvinistical divine, of the name of Petit Pierre, not long since

preached and published the doctrine that the damned would at some future

period be pardoned. The rest of the ministers of his association told

him that they wished for no such thing. The dispute grew warm. It was

said that the king, whose subjects they were, wrote to him, that since

they were desirous of being damned without redemption, he could have no

reasonable objection, and freely gave his consent. The damned majority

of the church of Neufchâtel ejected poor Petit Pierre, who had thus

converted hell into a mere purgatory. It is stated that one of them said

to him: "My good friend, I no more believe in the eternity of hell than

yourself; but recollect that it may be no bad thing, perhaps, for your

servant, your tailor, and your lawyer to believe in it."

I will add, as an illustration of this passage, a short address of

exhortation to those philosophers who in their writings deny a hell; I

will say to them: "Gentlemen, we do not pass our days with Cicero,

Atticus, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, the Chancellor de l'Hôpital, La

Mothe le Vayer, Desyveteaux, René Descartes, Newton, or Locke, nor with

the respectable Bayle, who was superior to the power and frown of

fortune, nor with the too scrupulously virtuous infidel Spinoza, who,

although laboring under poverty and destitution, gave back to the

children of the grand pensionary De Witt an allowance of three hundred

florins, which had been granted him by that great statesman, whose

heart, it may be remembered, the Hollanders actually devoured, although

there was nothing to be gained by it. Every man with whom we intermingle

in life is not a des Barreaux, who paid the pleaders their fees for a

cause which he had forgotten to bring into court. Every woman is not a

Ninon de L'Enclos, who guarded deposits in trust with religious

fidelity, while the gravest personages in the state were violating them.

In a word, gentlemen, all the world are not philosophers.

"We are obliged to hold intercourse and transact business, and mix up in

life with knaves possessing little or no reflection--with vast numbers

of persons addicted to brutality, intoxication, and rapine. You may, if

you please, preach to them that there is no hell, and that the soul of

man is mortal. As for myself, I will be sure to thunder in their ears

that if they rob me they will inevitably be damned. I will imitate the

country clergyman, who, having had a great number of sheep stolen from

him, at length said to his hearers, in the course of one of his sermons:

'I cannot conceive what Jesus Christ was thinking about when he died for

such a set of scoundrels as you are.'"

There is an excellent book for fools called "The Christian Pedagogue,"

composed by the reverend father d'Outreman, of the Society of Jesus, and

enlarged by Coulon, curé of Ville-Juif-les-Paris. This book has passed,

thank God, through fifty-one editions, although not a single page in it

exhibits a gleam of common sense.

Friar Outreman asserts--in the hundred and fifty-seventh page of the

second edition in quarto--that one of Queen Elizabeth's ministers,

Baron Hunsdon, predicted to Cecil, secretary of state, and to six other

members of the cabinet council, that they as well as he would be damned;

which, he says, was actually the case, and is the case with all

heretics. It is most likely that Cecil and the other members of the

council gave no credit to the said Baron Hunsdon; but if the fictitious

baron had said the same to six common citizens, they would probably have

believed him.

Were the time ever to arrive in which no citizen of London believed in a

hell, what course of conduct would be adopted? What restraint upon

wickedness would exist? There would exist the feeling of honor, the

restraint of the laws, that of the Deity Himself, whose will it is that

mankind shall be just, whether there be a hell or not.

HELL (DESCENT INTO).

Our colleague who wrote the article on "Hell" has made no mention of the

descent of Jesus Christ into hell. This is an article of faith of high

importance; it is expressly particularized in the creed of which we have

already spoken. It is asked whence this article of faith is derived; for

it is not to be found in either of our four gospels, and the creed

called the Apostles' Creed is not older than the age of those learned

priests, Jerome, Augustine, and Rufinus.

It is thought that this descent of our Lord into hell is taken

originally from the gospel of Nicodemus, one of the oldest.

In that gospel the prince of Tartarus and Satan, after a long

conversation with Adam, Enoch, Elias the Tishbite, and David, hears a

voice like the thunder, and a voice like a tempest. David says to the

prince of Tartarus, "Now, thou foul and miscreant prince of hell, open

thy gates and let the King of Glory enter," etc. While he was thus

addressing the prince, the Lord of Majesty appeared suddenly in the form

of man, and He lighted up the eternal darkness, and broke asunder the

indissoluble bars, and by an invincible virtue He visited those who lay

in the depth of the darkness of guilt, in the shadow of the depth of

sin.

Jesus Christ appeared with St. Michael; He overcame death; He took Adam

by the hand; and the good thief followed Him, bearing the cross. All

this took place in hell, in the presence of Carinus and Lenthius, who

were resuscitated for the express purpose of giving evidence of the fact

to the priests Ananias and Caiaphas, and to Doctor Gamaliel, at that

time St. Paul's master.

This gospel of Nicodemus has long been considered as of no authority.

But a confirmation of this descent into hell is found in the First

Epistle of St. Peter, at the close of the third chapter: "Because Christ

died once for our sins, the just for the unjust, that He might offer us

to God; dead indeed in the flesh, but resuscitated in spirit, by which

He went to preach to the spirits that were in prison."

Many of the fathers interpreted this passage very differently, but all

were agreed as to the fact of the descent of Jesus into hell after His

death. A frivolous difficulty was started upon the subject. He had,

while upon the cross, said to the good thief: "This day shalt thou be

with Me in paradise." By going to hell, therefore, He failed to perform

His promise. This objection is easily answered by saying that He took

him first to hell and afterwards to paradise; but, then, what becomes of

the stay of three days?

Eusebius of Cæsarea says that Jesus left His body, without waiting for

Death to come and seize it; and that, on the contrary, He seized Death,

who, in terror and agony, embraced His feet, and afterwards attempted to

escape by flight, but was prevented by Jesus, who broke down the gates

of the dungeons which enclosed the souls of the saints, drew them forth

from their confinement, resuscitated them, then resuscitated Himself,

and conducted them in triumph to that heavenly Jerusalem _which

descended from heaven every night_, and was actually seen by the

astonished eyes of St. Justin.

It was a question much disputed whether all those who were resuscitated

died again before they ascended into heaven. St. Thomas, in his

"Summary," asserts that they died again. This also is the opinion of the

discriminating and judicious Calmet. "We maintain," says he, in his

dissertation on this great question, "that the saints who were

resuscitated, after the death of the Saviour died again, in order to

revive hereafter."

God had permitted, ages before, that the profane Gentiles should imitate

in anticipation these sacred truths. The ancients imagined that the gods

resuscitated Pelops; that Orpheus extricated Eurydice from hell, at

least for a moment; that Hercules delivered Alcestis from it; that

Æsculapius resuscitated Hippolytus, etc. Let us ever discriminate

between fable and truth, and keep our minds in the same subjection with

respect to whatever surprises and astonishes us, as with respect to

whatever appears perfectly conformable to their circumscribed and narrow

views.

HERESY.

SECTION I.

A Greek word, signifying "belief, or elected opinion." It is not greatly

to the honor of human reason that men should be hated, persecuted,

massacred, or burned at the stake, on account of their chosen opinions;

but what is exceedingly little to our honor is that this mischievous and

destructive madness has been as peculiar to us as leprosy was to the

Hebrews, or lues formerly to the Caribs.

We well know, theologically speaking, that heresy having become a crime,

as even the word itself is a reproach; we well know, I say, that the

Latin church, which alone can possess reason, has also possessed the

right of reproving all who were of a different opinion from her own.

On the other side, the Greek church had the same right; accordingly, it

reproved the Romans when they chose a different opinion from the Greeks

on the procession of the Holy Spirit, the viands which might be taken in

Lent, the authority of the pope, etc.

But upon what ground did any arrive finally at the conclusion that, when

they were the strongest, they might burn those who entertained chosen

opinions of their own? Those who had such opinions were undoubtedly

criminal in the sight of God, since they were obstinate. They will,

therefore, as no one can possibly doubt, be burned to all eternity in

another world; but why burn them by a slow fire in this? The sufferers

have represented that such conduct is a usurpation of the jurisdiction

of God; that this punishment is very hard and severe, considered as an

infliction by men; and that it is, moreover, of no utility, since one

hour of suffering added to eternity is an absolute cipher.

The pious inflicters, however, replied to these reproaches that nothing

was more just than to put upon burning coals whoever had a self-formed

opinion; that to burn those whom God Himself would burn, was in fact a

holy conformity to God; and finally, that since, by admission, the

burning for an hour or two was a mere cipher in comparison with

eternity, the burning of five or six provinces for chosen opinions--for

heresies--was a matter in reality of very little consequence.

In the present day it is asked, "Among what cannibals have these

questions been agitated, and their solutions proved by facts?" We must

admit with sorrow and humiliation that it was asked even among

ourselves, and in the very same cities where nothing is minded but

operas, comedies, balls, fashions, and intrigue.

Unfortunately, it was a tyrant who introduced the practice of destroying

heretics--not one of those equivocal tyrants who are regarded as saints

by one party, and monsters by another, but one Maximus, competitor of

Theodosius I., a decided tyrant, in the strictest meaning of the term,

over the whole empire.

He destroyed at Trier, by the hands of the executioner, the Spaniard

Priscillian and his adherents, whose opinions were pronounced erroneous

by some bishops of Spain. These prelates solicited the capital

punishment of the Priscillianists with a charity so ardent that Maximus

could refuse them nothing. It was by no means owing to them that St.

Martin was not beheaded as a heretic. He was fortunate enough to quit

Trier and escape back to Tours.

A single example is sufficient to establish a usage. The first Scythian

who scooped out the brains of his enemy and made a drinking-cup of his

skull, was allowed all the rank and consequence in Scythia. Thus was

consecrated the practice of employing the executioner to cut off

"opinions."

No such thing as heresy existed among the religions of antiquity,

because they had reference only to moral conduct and public worship.

When metaphysics became connected with Christianity, controversy

prevailed; and from controversy arose different parties, as in the

schools of philosophy. It was impossible that metaphysics should not

mingle the uncertainties essential to their nature with the faith due to

Jesus Christ. He had Himself written nothing; and His incarnation was a

problem which the new Christians, whom He had not Himself inspired,

solved in many different ways. "Each," as St. Paul expressly observes,

"had his peculiar party; some were for Apollos, others for Cephas."

Christians in general, for a long time, assumed the name of Nazarenes,

and even the Gentiles gave them no other appellations during the two

first centuries. But there soon arose a particular school of Nazarenes,

who believed a gospel different from the four canonical ones. It has

even been pretended that this gospel differed only very slightly from

that of St. Matthew, and was in fact anterior to it. St. Epiphanius and

St. Jerome place the Nazarenes in the cradle of Christianity.

Those who considered themselves as knowing more than the rest, took the

denomination of gnostics, "knowers"; and this denomination was for a

long time so honorable that St. Clement of Alexandria, in his

"_Stromata_" always calls the good Christians true gnostics. "Happy are

they who have entered into the gnostic holiness! He who deserves the

name of gnostic resists seducers and gives to every one that asks." The

fifth and sixth books of the "_Stromata_" turn entirely upon the

perfection of gnosticism.

The Ebionites existed incontestably in the time of the apostles. That

name, which signifies "poor," was intended to express how dear to them

was the poverty in which Jesus was born.

Cerinthus was equally ancient. The "Apocalypse" of St. John was

attributed to him. It is even thought that St. Paul and he had violent

disputes with each other.

It seems to our weak understandings very natural to expect from the

first disciples a solemn declaration, a complete and unalterable

profession of faith, which might terminate all past, and preclude any

future quarrels; but God permitted it not so to be. The creed called the

"Apostles' Creed," which is short, and in which are not to be found the

consubstantiality, the word trinity, or the seven sacraments, did not

make its appearance before the time of St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and

the celebrated priest Rufinus. It was by this priest, the enemy of St.

Jerome, that we are told it was compiled. Heresies had had time to

multiply, and more than fifty were enumerated as existing in the fifth

century.

Without daring to scrutinize the ways of Providence, which are

impenetrable by the human mind, and merely consulting, as far as we are

permitted, our feeble reason, it would seem that of so many opinions on

so many articles, there would always exist one which must prevail, which

was the orthodox, "the right of teaching." The other societies, besides

the really orthodox, soon assumed that title also; but being the weaker

parties, they had given to them the designation of "heretics."

When, in the progress of time, the Christian church in the East, which

was the mother of that in the West, had irreparably broken with her

daughter, each remained sovereign in her distinct sphere, and each had

her particular heresies, arising out of the dominant opinion.

The barbarians of the North, having but recently become Christians,

could not entertain the same opinions as Southern countries, because

they could not adopt the same usages. They could not, for example, for a

long time adore images, as they had neither painters nor sculptors. It

also was somewhat dangerous to baptize an infant in winter, in the

Danube, the Weser, or the Elbe.

It was no easy matter for the inhabitants of the shores of the Baltic to

know precisely the opinions held in the Milanese and the march of

Ancona. The people of the South and of the North of Europe had therefore

chosen opinions different from each other. This seems to me to be the

reason why Claude, bishop of Turin, preserved in the ninth century all

the usages and dogmas received in the seventh and eighth, from the

country of the Allobroges, as far as the Elbe and the Danube.

These dogmas and usages became fixed and permanent among the inhabitants

of valleys and mountainous recesses, and near the banks of the Rhône,

among a sequestered and almost unknown people, whom the general

desolation left untouched in their seclusion and poverty, until they at

length became known, under the name of the Vaudois in the twelfth, and

that of the Albigenses in the thirteenth century. It is known how their

chosen opinions were treated; what crusades were preached against them;

what carnage was made among them; and that, from that period to the

present day, Europe has not enjoyed a single year of tranquillity and

toleration.

It is a great evil to be a heretic; but is it a great good to maintain

orthodoxy by soldiers and executioners? Would it not be better that

every man should eat his bread in peace under the shade of his own

fig-tree? I suggest so bold a proposition with fear and trembling.

SECTION II.

_Of the Extirpation of Heresies._

It appears to me that, in relation to heresies, we ought to distinguish

between opinion and faction. From the earliest times of Christianity

opinions were divided, as we have already seen. The Christians of

Alexandria did not think, on many points, like those of Antioch. The

Achaians were opposed to the Asiatics. This difference has existed

through all past periods of our religion, and probably will always

continue. Jesus Christ, who might have united all believers in the same

sentiment, has not, in fact, done so; we must, therefore, presume that

He did not desire it, and that it was His design to exercise in all

churches the spirit of indulgence and charity, by permitting the

existence of different systems of faith, while all should be united in

acknowledging Him for their chief and master. All the varying sects, a

long while tolerated by the emperors, or concealed from their

observation, had no power to persecute and proscribe one another, as

they were all equally subject to the Roman magistrates. They possessed

only the power of disputing with each other. When the magistrates

prosecuted them, they all claimed the rights of nature. They said:

"Permit us to worship God in peace; do not deprive us of the liberty you

allow to the Jews."

All the different sects existing at present may hold the same language

to those who oppress them. They may say to the nations who have granted

privileges to the Jews: Treat us as you treat these sons of Jacob; let

us, like them, worship God according to the dictates of conscience. Our

opinion is not more injurious to your state or realm than Judaism. You

tolerate the enemies of Jesus Christ; tolerate us, therefore, who adore

Jesus Christ, and differ from yourselves only upon subtle points of

theology; do not deprive yourselves of the services of useful subjects.

It is of consequence to you to obtain their labor and skill in your

manufactures, your marine, and your agriculture, and it is of no

consequence at all to you that they hold a few articles of faith

different from your own. What you want is their work, and not their

catechism.

Faction is a thing perfectly different. It always happens, as a matter

of necessity, that a persecuted sect degenerates into a faction. The

oppressed unite, and console and encourage one another. They have more

industry to strengthen their party than the dominant sect has for their

extermination. To crush them or be crushed by them is the inevitable

alternative. Such was the case after the persecution raised in 303 by

the Cæsar, Galerius, during the last two years of the reign of

Diocletian. The Christians, after having been favored by Diocletian for

the long period of eighteen years, had become too numerous and wealthy

to be extirpated. They joined the party of Constantius Chlorus; they

fought for Constantine his son; and a complete revolution took place in

the empire.

We may compare small things to great, when both are under the direction

of the same principle or spirit. A similar revolution happened in

Holland, in Scotland, and in Switzerland. When Ferdinand and Isabella

expelled from Spain the Jews,--who were settled there not merely before

the reigning dynasty, but before the Moors and Goths, and even the

Carthaginians--the Jews would have effected a revolution in that country

if they had been as warlike as they were opulent, and if they could have

come to an understanding with the Arabs.

In a word, no sect has ever changed the government of a country but when

it was furnished with arms by despair. Mahomet himself would not have

succeeded had he not been expelled from Mecca and a price set upon his

head.

If you are desirous, therefore, to prevent the overflow of a state by

any sect, show it toleration. Imitate the wise conduct exhibited at the

present day by Germany, England, Holland, Denmark, and Russia. There is

no other policy to be adopted with respect to a new sect than to

destroy, without remorse, both leaders and followers, men, women, and

children, without a single exception, or to tolerate them when they are

numerous. The first method is that of a monster, the second that of a

sage.

Bind to the state all the subjects of that state by their interest; let

the Quaker and the Turk find their advantage in living under your laws.

Religion is between God and man; civil law is between you and your

people.

SECTION III.

It is impossible not to regret the loss of a "History of Heresies,"

which Strategius wrote by order of Constantine. Ammianus Marcellinus

informs us that the emperor, wishing to ascertain the opinions of the

different sects, and not finding any other person who could give correct

ideas on the subject, imposed the office of drawing up a report or

narrative upon it on that officer, who acquitted himself so well, that

Constantine was desirous of his being honored in consequence with the

name of Musonianus. M. de Valois, in his notes upon Ammianus, observes

that Strategius, who was appointed prefect of the East, possessed as

much knowledge and eloquence, as moderation and mildness; such, at

least, is the eulogium passed upon him by Libanius.

The choice of a layman by the emperor shows that an ecclesiastic at that

time had not the qualities indispensable for a task so delicate. In

fact, St. Augustine remarks that a bishop of Bresse, called Philastrius,

whose work is to be found in the collection of the fathers, having

collected all the heresies, even including those which existed among the

Jews before the coming of Jesus Christ, reckons twenty-eight of the

latter and one hundred and twenty-eight from the coming of Christ; while

St. Epiphanius, comprising both together, makes the whole number but

eighty. The reason assigned by St. Augustine for this difference is,

that what appears heresy to the one, does not appear so to the other.

Accordingly this father tells the Manichæans: "We take the greatest care

not to treat you with rigor; such conduct we leave to those who know not

what pains are necessary for the discovery of truth, and how difficult

it is to avoid falling into errors; we leave it to those who know not

with what sighs and groans even a very slight knowledge of the divine

nature is alone to be acquired. For my own part, I consider it my duty

to bear with you as I was borne with formerly myself, and to show you

the same tolerance which I experienced when I was in error."

If, however, any one considers the infamous imputations, which we have

noticed under the article on "Genealogy," and the abominations of which

this professedly indulgent and candid father accused the Manichæans in

the celebration of their mysteries--as we shall see under the article on

"Zeal"--we shall be convinced that toleration was never the virtue of

the clergy. We have already seen, under the article on "Council," what

seditions were excited by the ecclesiastics in relation to Arianism.

Eusebius informs us that in some places the statues of Constantine were

thrown down because he wished the Arians to be tolerated; and Sozomen

says that on the death of Eusebius of Nicomedia, when Macedonius, an

Arian, contested the see of Constantinople with Paul, a Catholic, the

disturbance and confusion became so dreadful in the church, from which

each endeavored to expel the other, that the soldiers, thinking the

people in a state of insurrection, actually charged upon them; a fierce

and sanguinary conflict ensued, and more than three thousand persons

were slain or suffocated. Macedonius ascended the episcopal throne, took

speedy possession of all the churches, and persecuted with great cruelty

the Novatians and Catholics. It was in revenge against the latter of

these that he denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit, just as he

recognized the divinity of the Word, which was denied by the Arians out

of mere defiance to their protector Constantius, who had deposed him.

The same historian adds that on the death of Athanasius, the Arians,

supported by Valens, apprehended, bound in chains, and put to death

those who remained attached to Peter, whom Athanasius had pointed out as

his successor. Alexandria resembled a city taken by assault. The Arians

soon possessed themselves of the churches, and the bishop, installed by

them, obtained the power of banishing from Egypt all who remained

attached to the Nicean creed.

We read in Socrates that, after the death of Sisinnius, the church of

Constantinople became again divided on the choice of a successor, and

Theodosius the Younger placed in the patriarchal see the violent and

fiery Nestorius. In his first sermon he addresses the following language

to the emperor: "Give me the land purged of heretics, and I will give

you the kingdom of Heaven; second me in the extermination of heretics,

and I engage to furnish you with effectual assistance against the

Persians." He afterwards expelled the Arians from the capital, armed the

people against them, pulled down their churches, and obtained from the

emperor rigorous and persecuting edicts to effect their extirpation. He

employed his powerful influence subsequently in procuring the arrest,

imprisonment, and even whipping of the principal persons among the

people who had interrupted him in the middle of a discourse, in which he

was delivering his distinguishing system of doctrine, which was soon

condemned at the Council of Ephesus.

Photius relates that when the priest reached the altar, it was customary

in the church of Constantinople for the people to chant: "Holy God,

powerful God, immortal God"; and the name given to this part of the

service was "the trisagion." The priest, Peter had added: "Who hast been

crucified for us, have mercy upon us." The Catholics considered this

addition as containing the error of the Eutychian Theopathists, who

maintained that the divinity had suffered; they, however, chanted the

trisagion with the addition, to avoid irritating the emperor Anastasius,

who had just deposed another Macedonius, and placed in his stead

Timotheus, by whose order this addition was ordered to be chanted. But

on a particular day the monks entered the church, and, instead of the

addition in question, chanted a verse from one of the Psalms: the people

instantly exclaimed: "The orthodox have arrived very seasonably!" All

the partisans of the Council of Chalcedon chanted, in union with the

monks, the verse from the Psalm; the Eutychians were offended; the

service was interrupted; a battle commenced in the church; the people

rushed out, obtained arms as speedily as possible, spread carnage and

conflagration through the city, and were pacified only by the

destruction of ten thousand lives.

The imperial power at length established through all Egypt the authority

of this Council of Chalcedon; but the massacre of more than a hundred

thousand Egyptians, on different occasions, for having refused to

acknowledge the council, had planted in the hearts of the whole

population an implacable hatred against the emperors. A part of those

who were hostile to the council withdrew to Upper Egypt, others quitted

altogether the dominions of the empire and passed over to Africa and

among the Arabs, where all religions were tolerated.

We have already observed that under the reign of the empress Irene the

worship of images was re-established and confirmed by the second Council

of Nice. Leo the Armenian, Michael the Stammerer, and Theophilus,

neglected nothing to effect its abolition; and this opposition caused

further disturbance in the empire of Constantinople, till the reign of

the empress Theodora, who gave the force of law to the second Council of

Nice, extinguished the party of Iconoclasts, or image-breakers, and

exerted the utmost extent of her authority against the Manichæans. She

despatched orders throughout the empire to seek for them everywhere, and

put all those to death who would not recant. More than a hundred

thousand perished by different modes of execution. Four thousand, who

escaped from this severe scrutiny and extensive punishment, took refuge

among the Saracens, united their own strength with theirs, ravaged the

territories of the empire, and erected fortresses in which the

Manichæans, who had remained concealed through terror of capital

punishment, found an asylum, and constituted a hostile force, formidable

from their numbers, and from their burning hatred both of the emperors

and Catholics. They frequently inflicted on the territories of the

empire dread and devastation, and cut to pieces its disciplined armies.

We abridge the details of these dreadful massacres; those of Ireland,

those of the valleys of Piedmont, those which we shall speak of in the

article on "Inquisition," and lastly, the massacre of St. Bartholomew,

displayed in the West the same spirit of intolerance, against which

nothing more pertinent and sensible has been written than what we find

in the works of Salvian.

The following is the language employed respecting the followers of one

of the principal heresies by this excellent priest of Marseilles, who

was surnamed the master of bishops, who deplored with bitterness the

violence and vices of his age, and who was called the Jeremiah of the

fifth century. "The Arians," says he, "are heretics; but they do not

know it; they are heretics among us, but they are not so among

themselves; for they consider themselves so perfectly and completely

Catholic, that they treat us as heretics. We are convinced that they

entertain an opinion injurious to the divine generation, inasmuch as

they say that the Son is less than the Father. They, on the other hand,

think that we hold an opinion injurious to the Father, because we regard

the Father and the Son equal. The truth is with us, but they consider it

as favoring them. We give to God the honor which is due to Him, but

they, according to their peculiar way of thinking, maintain that they do

the same. They do not acquit themselves of their duty; but in the very

point where they fail in doing so, they make the greatest duty of

religion consist. They are impious, but even in being so they consider

themselves as following, and as practising, genuine piety. They are then

mistaken, but from a principle of love to God; and, although they have

not the true faith, they regard that which they have actually embraced

as the perfect love of God.

"The sovereign judge of the universe alone knows how they will be

punished for their errors in the day of judgment. In the meantime he

patiently bears with them, because he sees that if they are in error,

they err from pure motives of piety."

HERMES.

_Hermes, or Ermes, Mercury Trismegistus, or Thaut, or Taut, or Thot._

We neglect reading the ancient book of Mercury Trismegistus, and we are

not wrong in so doing. To philosophers it has appeared a sublime piece

of jargon, and it is perhaps for this reason that they believed it the

work of a great Platonist.

Nevertheless, in this theological chaos, how many things there are to

astonish and subdue the human mind! God, whose triple essence is wisdom,

power and bounty; God, forming the world by His thought, His word; God

creating subaltern gods; God commanding these gods to direct the

celestial orbs, and to preside over the world; the sun; the Son of God;

man His image in thought; light, His principal work a divine

essence--all these grand and lively images dazzle a subdued imagination.

It remains to be known whether this work, as much celebrated as little

read, was the work of a Greek or of an Egyptian. St. Augustine hesitates

not in believing that it is the work of an Egyptian, who pretended to be

descended from the ancient Mercury, from the ancient Thaut, the first

legislator of Egypt. It is true that St. Augustine knew no more of the

Egyptian than of the Greek; but in his time it was necessary that we

should not doubt that Hermes, from whom we received theology, was an

Egyptian sage, probably anterior to the time of Alexander, and one of

the priests whom Plato consulted.

It has always appeared to me that the theology of Plato in nothing

resembled that of other Greeks, with the exception of Timæus, who had

travelled in Egypt, as well as Pythagoras.

The Hermes Trismegistus that we possess is written in barbarous Greek,

and in a foreign idiom. This is a proof that it is a translation in

which the words have been followed more than the sense.

Joseph Scaliger, who assisted the lord of Candale, bishop of Aire, to

translate the Hermes, or Mercury Trismegistus, doubts not that the

original was Egyptian. Add to these reasons that it is not very probable

that a Greek would have addressed himself so often to Thaut. It is not

natural for us to address ourselves to strangers with so much

warm-heartedness; at least, we see no example of it in antiquity.

The Egyptian Æsculapius, who is made to speak in this book, and who is

perhaps the author of it, wrote to Ammon, king of Egypt: "Take great

care how you suffer the Greeks to translate the books of our Mercury,

our Thaut, because they would disfigure them." Certainly a Greek would

not have spoken thus; there is therefore every appearance of this book

being Egyptian.

There is another reflection to be made, which is, that the systems of

Hermes and Plato were equally formed to extend themselves through all

the Jewish schools, from the time of the Ptolemies. This doctrine made

great progress in them; you see it completely displayed by the Jew

Philo, a learned man after the manner of those times.

He copies entire passages from Mercury Trismegistus in his chapter on

the formation of the world. "Firstly," says he, "God made the world

intelligible, the Heavens incorporeal, and the earth invisible; he

afterwards created the incorporeal essence of water and spirit; and

finally the essence of incorporeal light, the origin of the sun and of

the stars."

Such is the pure doctrine of Hermes. He adds that the word, or invisible

and intellectual thought, is the image of God. Here is the creation of

the world by the word, by thought, by the _logos_, very strongly

expressed.

Afterwards follows the doctrine of Numbers, which descended from the

Egyptians to the Jews. He calls reason the relation of God. The number

of seven is the accomplishment of all things, "which is the reason,"

says he, "that the lyre has only seven strings."

In a word Philo possessed all the philosophy of his time.

We are therefore deceived, when we believe that the Jews, under the

reign of Herod, were plunged in the same state of ignorance in which

they were previously immersed. It is evident that St. Paul was well

informed. It is only necessary to read the first chapter of St. John,

which is so different from those of the others, to perceive that the

author wrote precisely like Hermes and Plato. "In the beginning was the

word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. The same was in

the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was

not anything made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of man."

It is thus that St. Paul says: "God made the worlds by His Son."

In the time of the apostles were seen whole societies of Christians who

were only too learned, and thence substituted a fantastic philosophy for

simplicity of faith. The Simons, Menanders, and Cerinthuses, taught

precisely the doctrines of Hermes. Their Æons were only the subaltern

gods, created by the great Being. All the first Christians, therefore,

were not ignorant men, as it always has been asserted; since there were

several of them who abused their literature; even in the Acts the

governor Festus says to St. Paul: "Paul, thou art beside thyself; much

learning doth make thee mad."

Cerinthus dogmatized in the time of St. John the Evangelist. His errors

were of a profound, refined, and metaphysical cast. The faults which he

remarked in the construction of the world made him think--at least so

says Dr. Dupin--that it was not the sovereign God who created it, but a

virtue inferior to this first principle, which had not the knowledge of

the sovereign God. This was wishing to correct even the system of Plato,

and deceiving himself, both as a Christian and a philosopher; but at the

same time it displayed a refined and well-exercised mind.

It is the same with the primitives called Quakers, of whom we have so

much spoken. They have been taken for men who cannot see beyond their

noses, and who make no use of their reason. However, there have been

among them several who employed all the subtleties of logic. Enthusiasm

is not always the companion of total ignorance, it is often that of

erroneous information.

HISTORIOGRAPHER.

This is a title very different from that of historian. In France we

commonly see men of letters pensioned, and, as it was said formerly,

appointed to write history. Alain Chartier was the historiographer of

Charles VII.; he says that he interrogated the domestics of this prince,

and put them on their oaths, according to the duty of his charge, to

ascertain whether Charles really had Agnes Sorel for his mistress. He

concludes that nothing improper ever passed between these lovers; and

that all was reduced to a few honest caresses, to which these domestics

had been the innocent witnesses. However, it is proved, not by

historiographers, but by historians supported by family titles, that

Charles VII. had three daughters by Agnes Sorel, the eldest of whom,

married to one Breze, was stabbed by her husband. From this time there

were often titled historiographers in France, and it was the custom to

give them commissions of councillors of state, with the provisions of

their charge. They were commensal officers of the king's house. Matthieu

had these privileges under Henry IV., but did not therefore write a

better history.

At Venice it is always a noble of the senate who possesses this title

and function, and the celebrated Nani has filled them with general

approbation. It is very difficult for the historiographer of a prince

not to be a liar; that of a republic flatters less; but he does not tell

all the truth. In China historiographers are charged with collecting all

the events and original titles under a dynasty. They throw the leaves

numbered into a vast hall, through an orifice resembling the lion's

mouth at Venice, into which is cast all secret intelligence. When the

dynasty is extinct the hall is opened and the materials digested, of

which an authentic history is composed. The general journal of the

empire also serves to form the body of history; this journal is superior

to our newspapers, being made under the superintendence of the mandarins

of each province, revised by a supreme tribunal, and every piece bearing

an authenticity which is decisive in contentious matters.

Every sovereign chose his own historiographer. Vittorio Siri was one;

Pelisson was first chosen by Louis XIV. to write the events of his

reign, and acquitted himself of his task with eloquence in the history

of Franche-Comté. Racine, the most elegant of poets, and Boileau, the

most correct, were afterwards substituted for Pelisson. Some curious

persons have collected "Memoirs of the Passage of the Rhine," written by

Racine. We cannot judge by these memoirs whether Louis XIV. passed the

Rhine or not with his troops, who swam across the river. This example

sufficiently demonstrates how rarely it happens that an historiographer

dare tell the truth. Several also, who have possessed this title, have

taken good care of writing history; they have followed the example of

Amyot, who said that he was too much attached to his masters to write

their lives. Father Daniel had the patent of historiographer, after

having given his "History of France"; he had a pension of 600 livres,

regarded merely as a suitable stipend for a monk.

It is very difficult to assign true bounds to the arts, sciences, and

literary labor. Perhaps it is the proper duty of an historiographer to

collect materials, and that of an historian to put them in order. The

first can amass everything, the second arrange and select. The

historiographer is more of the simple annalist, while the historian

seems to have a more open field for reflection and eloquence.

We need scarcely say here that both should equally tell the truth, but

we can examine this great law of Cicero: "_Ne quid veri tacere non

audeat_."--"That we ought not to dare to conceal any truth." This rule

is of the number of those that want illustration. Suppose a prince

confides to his historiographer an important secret to which his honor

is attached, or that the good of the state requires should not be

revealed--should the historiographer or historian break his word with

the prince, or betray his country to obey Cicero? The curiosity of the

public seems to exact it; honor and duty forbid it. Perhaps in this case

he should renounce writing history.

If a truth dishonors a family, ought the historiographer or historian to

inform the public of it? No; doubtless he is not bound to reveal the

shame of individuals; history is no satire.

But if this scandalous truth belongs to public events, if it enters into

the interests of the state--if it has produced evils of which it imports

to know the cause, it is then that the maxims of Cicero should be

observed; for this law is like all others which must be executed,

tempered, or neglected, according to circumstances.

Let us beware of this humane respect when treating of acknowledged

public faults, prevarications, and injustices, into which the

misfortunes of the times have betrayed respectable bodies. They cannot

be too much exposed; they are beacons which warn these always-existing

bodies against splitting again on similar rocks. If an English

parliament has condemned a man of fortune to the torture--if an assembly

of theologians had demanded the blood of an unfortunate who differed in

opinion from themselves, it should be the duty of an historian to

inspire all ages with horror for these juridical assassins. We should

always make the Athenians blush for the death of Socrates.

Happily, even an entire people always find it good to have the crimes of

their ancestors placed before them; they like to condemn them, and to

believe themselves superior. The historiographer or historian encourages

them in these sentiments, and, in retracing the wars of government and

religion, prevents their repetition.

HISTORY.

SECTION I.

_Definition of History._

History is the recital of facts represented as true. Fable, on the

contrary, is the recital of facts represented as fiction. There is the

history of human opinions, which is scarcely anything more than the

history of human errors.

The history of the arts may be made the most useful of all, when to a

knowledge of their invention and progress it adds a description of their

mechanical means and processes.

Natural history, improperly designated "history," is an essential part

of natural philosophy. The history of events has been divided into

sacred and profane. Sacred history is a series of divine and miraculous

operations, by which it has pleased God formerly to direct and govern

the Jewish nation, and, in the present day, to try our faith. "To learn

Hebrew, the sciences, and history," says La Fontaine, "is to drink up

the sea."

_Si j'apprenois l'Hébreu, les sciences, l'histoire,_

_Tout cela, c'est la mer à boire._

--LA FONTAINE, book viii, fable 25.

_The Foundations of History._

The foundations of all history are the recitals of events, made by

fathers to their children, and afterwards transmitted from one

generation to another. They are, at most, only probable in their origin

when they do not shock common sense, and they lose a degree of

probability at every successive transmission. With time the fabulous

increases and the true disappears; hence it arises that the original

traditions and records of all nations are absurd. Thus the Egyptians had

been governed for many ages by the gods. They had next been under the

government of demi-gods; and, finally, they had kings for eleven

thousand three hundred and forty years, and during that period the sun

had changed four times from east and west.

The Phœnicians, in the time of Alexander, pretended that they had

been settled in their own country for thirty thousand years; and those

thirty thousand years were as full of prodigies as the Egyptian

chronology. I admit it to be perfectly consistent with physical

possibility that Phœnicia may have existed, not merely for thirty

thousand years, but thirty thousand millions of ages, and that it may

have endured, as well as the other portions of the globe, thirty

millions of revolutions. But of all this we possess no knowledge.

The ridiculous miracles which abound in the ancient history of Greece

are universally known.

The Romans, although a serious and grave people, have, nevertheless,

equally involved in fables the early periods of their history. That

nation, so recent in comparison with those of Asia, was five hundred

years without historians. It is impossible, therefore, to be surprised

on finding that Romulus was the son of Mars; that a she-wolf was his

nurse; that he marched with a thousand men from his own village, Rome,

against twenty thousand warriors belonging to the city of the Sabines;

that he afterwards became a god; that the elder Tarquin cut through a

stone with a razor, and that a vestal drew a ship to land with her

girdle, etc.

The first annals of modern nations are no less fabulous; things

prodigious and improbable ought sometimes, undoubtedly, to be related,

but only as proofs of human credulity. They constitute part of the

history of human opinion and absurdities; but the field is too immense.

_Of Monuments or Memorials._

The only proper method of endeavoring to acquire some knowledge of

ancient history is to ascertain whether there remain any incontestable

public monuments. We possess only three such, in the way of writing or

inscription. The first is the collection of astronomical observations

made during nineteen hundred successive years at Babylon, and

transferred by Alexander to Greece. This series of observations, which

goes back two thousand two hundred and thirty-four years beyond our

vulgar era, decidedly proves that the Babylonians existed as an

associated and incorporated people many ages before; for the arts are

struck out and elaborated only in the slow course of time, and the

indolence natural to mankind permits thousands of years to roll away

without their acquiring any other knowledge or talents than what are

required for food, clothing, shelter, and mutual destruction. Let the

truth of these remarks be judged of from the state of the Germans and

the English in the time of Cæsar, from that of the Tartars at the

present day, from that of two-thirds of Africa, and from that of all the

various nations found in the vast continent of America, excepting, in

some respects, the kingdoms of Peru and Mexico, and the republic of

Tlascala. Let it be recollected that in the whole of the new world not a

single individual could write or read.

The second monument is the central eclipse of the sun, calculated in

China two thousand one hundred and fifty-five years before our vulgar

era, and admitted by all our astronomers to have actually occurred. We

must apply the same remark to the Chinese as to, the people of Babylon.

They had undoubtedly, long before this period, constituted a vast empire

and social polity. But what places the Chinese above all the other

nations of the world is that neither their laws, nor manners, nor the

language exclusively spoken by their men of learning, have experienced

any change in the course of about four thousand years. Yet this nation

and that of India, the most ancient of all that are now subsisting,

those which possess the largest and most fertile tracts of territory,

those which had invented nearly all the arts almost before we were in

possession even of any of them, have been always omitted, down to our

time, in our pretended universal histories. And whenever a Spaniard or a

Frenchman enumerated the various nations of the globe, neither of them

failed to represent his own country as the first monarchy on earth, and

his king as the greatest sovereign, under the flattering hope, no doubt,

that that greatest of sovereigns, after having read his book, would

confer upon him a pension.

The third monument, but very inferior to the two others, is the Arundel

Marbles. The chronicle of Athens was inscribed on these marbles two

hundred and sixty-three years before our era, but it goes no further

back than the time of Cecrops, thirteen hundred and nineteen years

beyond the time of its inscription. In the history of all antiquity

these are the only incontestable epochs that we possess.

Let us attend a little particularly to these marbles, which were brought

from Greece by Lord Arundel. The chronicle contained in them commences

fifteen hundred and seventy-seven years before our era. This, at the

present time, makes an antiquity of 3,348 years, and in the course of

that period you do not find a single miraculous or prodigious event on

record. It is the same with the Olympiads. It must not be in reference

to these that the expression can be applied of "_Græcia mendax_" (lying

Greece). The Greeks well knew how to distinguish history from fable, and

real facts from the tales of Herodotus; just as in relation to important

public affairs, their orators borrowed nothing from the discourses of

the sophists or the imagery of the poets.

The date of the taking of Troy is specified in these marbles, but there

is no mention made of Apollo's arrows, or the sacrifice of Iphigenia, or

the ridiculous battles of the gods. The date of the inventions of

Triptolemus and Ceres is given; but Ceres is not called goddess. Notice

is taken of a poem upon the rape of Proserpine; but it is not said that

she is the daughter of Jupiter and a goddess, and the wife of the god of

hell.

Hercules is initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries, but not a single word

is mentioned of the twelve labors, nor of his passage to Africa in his

cup, nor of his divinity, nor of the great fish by which he was

swallowed, and which, according to Lycophron, kept him in its belly

three days and three nights.

Among us, on the contrary, a standard is brought by an angel from heaven

to the monks of St. Denis; a pigeon brings a bottle of oil to the church

of Rheims; two armies of serpents engage in pitched battle in Germany;

an archbishop of Mentz is besieged and devoured by rats; and to complete

and crown the whole, the year in which these adventures occurred, is

given with the most particular precision. The abbé Langlet, also

condescending to compile, compiles these contemptible fooleries, while

the almanacs, for the hundredth time, repeat them. In this manner are

our youth instructed and enlightened; and all these trumpery fables are

put in requisition even for the education of princes!

All history is comparatively recent. It is by no means astonishing to

find that we have, in fact, no profane history that goes back beyond

about four thousand years. The cause of this is to be found in the

revolutions of the globe, and the long and universal ignorance of the

art which transmits events by writing. There are still many nations

totally unacquainted with the practice of this art. It existed only in a

small number of civilized states, and even in them was confined to

comparatively few hands. Nothing was more rare among the French and

Germans than knowing how to write; down to the fourteenth century of our

era, scarcely any public acts were attested by witnesses. It was not

till the reign of Charles VII. in France, in 1454, that an attempt was

made to reduce to writing some of the customs of France. The art was

still more uncommon among the Spaniards, and hence it arises that their

history is so dry and doubtful till the time of Ferdinand and Isabella.

We perceive, from what has been said, with what facility the very small

number of persons who possessed the art of writing might impose by means

of it, and how easy it has been to produce a belief in the most enormous

absurdities.

There have been nations who have subjugated a considerable part of the

world, and who yet have not been acquainted with the use of characters.

We know that Genghis Khan conquered a part of Asia in the beginning of

the thirteenth century; but it is not from him, nor from the Tartars,

that we have derived that knowledge. Their history, written by the

Chinese, and translated by Father Gaubil, states that these Tartars were

at that time unacquainted with the art of writing.

This art was, unquestionably, not likely to be less unknown to the

Scythian Ogus-kan, called by the Persians and Greeks Madies, who

conquered a part of Europe and Asia long before the reign of Cyrus. It

is almost a certainty that at that time, out of a hundred nations, there

were only two or three that employed characters. It is undoubtedly

possible, that in an ancient world destroyed, mankind were acquainted

with the art of writing and the other arts, but in our world they are

all of recent date.

There remain monuments of another kind, which serve to prove merely the

remote antiquity of certain nations, an antiquity preceding all known

epochs, and all books; these are the prodigies of architecture, such as

the pyramids and palaces of Egypt, which have resisted and wearied the

power of time. Herodotus, who lived two thousand two hundred years ago,

and who had seen them, was unable to learn from the Egyptian priests at

what periods these structures were raised.

[Illustration: "A MONUMENT OF ANTIQUITY"--THE ACROPOLIS, ATHENS]

It is difficult to ascribe to the oldest of the pyramids an antiquity of

less than four thousand years, and, it is necessary to consider, that

those ostentatious piles, erected by monarchs, could not have been

commenced till long after the establishment of cities. But, in order to

build cities in a country every year inundated, it must always be

recollected that it would have been previously necessary in this land of

slime and mud, to lay the foundation upon piles, that they might thus be

inaccessible to the inundation; it would have been necessary, even

before taking this indispensable measure of precaution, and before the

inhabitants could be in a state to engage in such important and even

dangerous labors, that the people should have contrived retreats, during

the swelling of the Nile, between the two chains of rocks which exist on

the right and left banks of the river. It would have been necessary that

these collected multitudes should have instruments of tillage, and of

architecture, a knowledge of architecture and surveying, regular laws,

and an active police. All these things require a space of time

absolutely prodigious. We see, every day, by the long details which

relate even to those of our undertakings, which are most necessary and

most diminutive, how difficult it is to execute works of magnitude, and

that they not only require unwearied perseverance, but many generations

animated by the same spirit.

However, whether we admit that one or two of those immense masses were

erected by Menés, or Thaut, or Cheops, or Rameses, we shall not, in

consequence, have the slightest further insight into the ancient history

of Egypt. The language of that people is lost; and all we know in

reference to the subject is that before the most ancient historians

existed, there existed materials for writing ancient history.