As we already possess, I had almost said, twenty thousand works, the
greater number of them extending to many volumes, on the subject,
exclusively, of the history of France; and as, even a studious man, were
he to live a hundred years, would find it impossible to read them, I
think it a good thing to know where to stop. We are obliged to connect
with the knowledge of our own country the history of our neighbors. We
are still less permitted to remain ignorant of the Greeks and Romans,
and their laws which are become ours; but, if to this laborious study we
should resolve to add that of more remote antiquity, we should resemble
the man who deserted Tacitus and Livy to study seriously the "Thousand
and One Nights." All the origins of nations are evidently fables. The
reason is that men must have lived long in society, and have learned to
make bread and clothing (which would be matters of some difficulty)
before they acquired the art of transmitting all their thoughts to
posterity (a matter of greater difficulty still). The art of writing is
certainly not more than six thousand years old, even among the Chinese;
and, whatever may be the boast of the Chaldæans and Egyptians, it
appears not at all likely that they were able to read and write earlier.
The history, therefore, of preceding periods, could be transmitted by
memory alone; and we well know how the memory of past events changes
from one generation to another. The first histories were written only
from the imagination. Not only did every people invent its own origin,
but it invented also the origin of the whole world.
If we may believe Sanchoniathon, the origin of things was a thick air,
which was rarified by the wind; hence sprang desire and love, and from
the union of desire and love were formed animals. The stars were later
productions, and intended merely to adorn the heavens, and to rejoice
the sight of the animals upon earth.
The Knef of the Egyptians, their Oshiret and Ishet, which we call Osiris
and Isis, are neither less ingenious nor ridiculous. The Greeks
embellished all these fictions. Ovid collected them and ornamented them
with the charms of the most beautiful poetry. What he says of a god who
develops or disembroils chaos, and of the formation of man, is sublime.
_Sanctius his animal, mentisque capacius altæ_
_Deerat adhuc, et quod dominari in cætera posset._
_Natus homo est...._
--OVID, _Metam._, i, v. 76.
A creature of a more exalted kind
Was wanting yet, and then was man designed;
Conscious or thought, of more capacious breast,
For empire formed, and fit to rule the rest.
--DRYDEN.
_Pronaque cum spectent animalia cætera terram;_
_Os homini sublime dedit cœlumque tueri_
_Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus._
METAM., i, v. 84.
Thus, while the mute creation downward bend
Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend,
Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes
Beholds his own hereditary skies.
--DRYDEN.
Hesiod, and other writers who lived so long before, would have been very
far from expressing themselves with this elegant sublimity. But, from
the interesting moment of man's formation down to the era of the
Olympiads, everything is plunged in profound obscurity.
Herodotus is present at the Olympic games, and, like an old woman to
children, recites his narratives, or rather tales, to the assembled
Greeks. He begins by saying that the Phœnicians sailed from the Red
Sea into the Mediterranean; which, if true, must necessarily imply that
they had doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and made the circuit of Africa.
Then comes the rape of Io; then the fable of Gyges and Candaules; then
the wondrous stories of banditti, and that of the daughter of Cheops,
king of Egypt, having required a hewn stone from each of her many
lovers, and obtained, in consequence, a number large enough to build one
of the pyramids.
To this, add the oracles, prodigies, and frauds of priests, and you have
the history of the human race.
The first periods of the Roman history appear to have been written by
Herodotus; our conquerors and legislators knew no other way of counting
their years as they passed away, than by driving nails into a wall by
the hand of the sacred pontiff.
The great Romulus, the king of a village, is the son of the god Mars,
and a recluse, who was proceeding to a well to draw water in a pitcher.
He has a god for his father, a woman of loose manners for his mother,
and a she-wolf for his nurse. A buckler falls from heaven expressly for
Numa. The invaluable books of the Sibyls are found by accident. An
augur, by divine permission, divides a large flint-stone with a razor. A
vestal, with her mere girdle, draws into the water a large vessel that
has been stranded. Castor and Pollux come down to fight for the Romans,
and the marks of their horses' feet are imprinted on the stones. The
transalpine Gauls advanced to pillage Rome; some relate that they were
driven away by geese, others that they carried away with them much gold
and silver; but it is probable that, at that time in Italy, geese were
far more abundant than silver. We have imitated the first Roman
historians, at least in their taste for fables. We have our oriflamme,
our great standard, brought from heaven by an angel, and the holy phial
by a pigeon; and, when to these we add the mantle of St. Martin, we feel
not a little formidable.
What would constitute useful history? That which should teach us our
duties and our rights, without appearing to teach them.
It is often asked whether the fable of the sacrifice of Iphigenia is
taken from the history of Jephthah; whether the deluge of Deucalion is
invented in imitation of that of Noah; whether the adventure of Philemon
and Baucis is copied from that of Lot and his wife. The Jews admit that
they had no communication with strangers, that their books were unknown
to the Greeks till the translation made by the order of Ptolemy. The
Jews were, long before that period, money-brokers and usurers among the
Greeks at Alexandria; but the Greeks never went to sell old clothes at
Jerusalem. It is evident that no people imitated the Jews, and also that
the Jews imitated or adopted many things from the Babylonians, the
Egyptians, and the Greeks.
All Jewish antiquities are sacred in our estimation, notwithstanding the
hatred and contempt in which we hold that people. We cannot, indeed,
believe them by reason, but we bring ourselves under subjection to the
Jews by faith. There are about fourscore systems in existence on the
subject of their chronology, and a far greater number of ways of
explaining the events recorded in their histories; we know not which is
the true one, but we reserve our faith for it in store against the time
when that true one shall be discovered.
We have so many things to believe in this sensible and magnanimous
people, that all our faith is exhausted by them, and we have none left
for the prodigies with which the other nations abound. Rollin may go on
repeating to us the oracles of Apollo, and the miraculous achievements
of Semiramis; he may continue to transcribe all that has been narrated
of the justice of those ancient Scythians who so frequently pillaged
Africa, and occasionally ate men for their breakfast; yet sensible and
well-educated people will still feel and express some degree of
incredulity.
What I most admire in our modern compilers is the judgment and zeal with
which they prove to us, that whatever happened in former ages, in the
most extensive and powerful empires of the world, took place solely for
the instruction of the inhabitants of Palestine. If the kings of
Babylon, in the course of their conquests, overrun the territories of
the Hebrew people, it is only to correct that people for their sins. If
the monarch, who has been commonly named Cyrus, becomes master of
Babylon, it is that he may grant permission to some captive Jews to
return home. If Alexander conquers Darius, it is for the settlement of
some Jew old-clothesmen at Alexandria. When the Romans join Syria to
their vast dominions, and round their empire with the little district of
Judæa, this is still with a view to teach a moral lesson to the Jews.
The Arabs and the Turks appear upon the stage of the world solely for
the correction of this amiable people. We must acknowledge that they
have had an excellent education; never had any pupil so many preceptors.
Such is the utility of history.
But what is still more instructive is the exact justice which the clergy
have dealt out to all those sovereigns with whom they were dissatisfied.
Observe with what impartial candor St. Gregory of Nazianzen judges the
emperor Julian, the philosopher. He declares that that prince, who did
not believe in the existence of the devil, held secret communication
with that personage, and that, on a particular occasion, when the demons
appeared to him under the most hideous forms, and in the midst of the
most raging flames, he drove them away by making inadvertently the sign
of the cross.
He denominates him madman and wretch; he asserts that Julian immolated
young men and women every night in caves. Such is the description he
gives of the most candid and clement of men, and who never exercised the
slightest revenge against this same Gregory, notwithstanding the abuse
and invectives with which he pursued him throughout his reign.
To apologize for the guilty is a happy way of justifying calumny against
the innocent. Compensation is thus effected; and such compensation was
amply afforded by St. Gregory. The emperor Constantius, Julian's uncle
and predecessor, upon his accession to the throne, had massacred Julius,
his mother's brother, and his two sons, all three of whom had been
declared august; this was a system which he had adopted from his father.
He afterwards procured the assassination of Gallus, Julian's brother.
The cruelty which he thus displayed to his own family, he extended to
the empire at large; but he was a man of prayer, and, even at the
decisive battle with Maxentius, he was praying to God in a neighboring
church during the whole time in which the armies were engaged. Such was
the man who was eulogized by Gregory; and, if such is the way in which
the saints make us acquainted with the truth, what may we not expect
from the profane, particularly when they are ignorant, superstitious,
and irritable?
At the present day the study of history is occasionally applied to a
purpose somewhat whimsical and absurd. Certain charters of the time of
Dagobert are discovered and brought forward, the greater part of them of
a somewhat suspicious character in point of genuineness, and
ill-understood; and from these it is inferred, that customs, rights, and
prerogatives, which subsisted then, should be revived now. I would
recommend it to those who adopt this method of study and reasoning, to
say to the ocean, "You formerly extended to Aigues-Mortes, Fréjus,
Ravenna, and Ferrara. Return to them immediately."