SECTION VI.

_Of bad Actions which have been consecrated or excused in History._

It is but too common for historians to praise very depraved and

abandoned characters, who have done service either to a dominant sect,

or to their nation at large. The praises thus bestowed, come perhaps

from a loyal and zealous citizen; but zeal of this description is

injurious to the great society of mankind. Romulus murders his brother,

and he is made a god. Constantine cuts the throat of his son, strangles

his wife, and murders almost all his family: he has been eulogized in

general councils, but history should ever hold up such barbarities to

detestation. It is undoubtedly fortunate for us that Clovis was a

Catholic. It is fortunate for the Anglican church that Henry VIII.

abolished monks, but we must at the same time admit that Clovis and

Henry VIII. were monsters of cruelty.

When first the Jesuit Berruyer, who although a Jesuit, was a fool,

undertook to paraphrase the Old and New Testaments in the style of the

lowest populace, with no other intention than that of having them read;

he scattered some flowers of rhetoric over the two-edged knife which the

Jew Ehud thrust up to the hilt in the stomach of the king Eglon; and

over the sabre with which Judith cut off the head of Holofernes after

having prostituted herself to his pleasures; and also over many other

acts recorded, of a similar description. The parliament, respecting the

Bible which narrates these histories, nevertheless condemned the Jesuit

who extolled them, and ordered the Old and New Testaments to be

burned:--I mean merely those of the Jesuit.

But as the judgments of mankind are ever different in similar cases, the

same thing happened to Bayle in circumstances totally different. He was

condemned for not praising all the actions of David, king of the

province of Judæa. A man of the name of Jurieu, a refugee preacher in

Holland, associated with some other refugee preachers, were desirous of

obliging him to recant. But how could he recant with reference to facts

delivered in the scripture? Had not Bayle some reason to conclude that

all the facts recorded in the Jewish books are not the actions of

saints; that David, like other men, had committed some criminal acts;

and that if he is called a man after God's own heart, he is called so in

consequence of his penitence, and not of his crimes?

Let us disregard names and confine our consideration to things only. Let

us suppose, that during the reign of Henry IV. a clergyman of the League

party secretly poured out a phial of oil on the head of a shepherd of

Brie; that the shepherd comes to court; that the clergyman presents him

to Henry IV. as an excellent violin player who can completely drive away

all care and melancholy; that the king makes him his equerry, and

bestows on him one of his daughters in marriage; that afterwards, the

king having quarrelled with the shepherd, the latter takes refuge with

one of the princes of Germany, his father-in-law's enemy; that he

enlists and arms six hundred banditti overwhelmed by debt and

debauchery; that with this regiment of brigands he rushes to the field,

slays friends as well as enemies, exterminating all, even to women with

children at the breast, in order to prevent a single individual's

remaining to give intelligence of the horrid butchery. I farther suppose

this same shepherd of Brie to become king of France after the death of

Henry IV.; that he procures the murder of that king's grandson, after

having invited him to sit at meat at his own table, and delivers over to

death seven other younger children of his king and benefactor. Who is

the man that will not conceive the shepherd of Brie to act rather

harshly?

Commentators are agreed that the adultery of David, and his murder of

Uriah, are faults which God pardoned. We may therefore conclude that the

massacres above mentioned are faults which God also pardoned.

However, Bayle had no quarter given him; but at length some preachers at

London having compared George II. to David, one of that monarch's

servants prints and publishes a small book, in which he censures the

comparison. He examines the whole conduct of David; he goes infinitely

farther than Bayle, and treats David with more severity than Tacitus

applies to Domitian. This book did not raise in England the slightest

murmur; every reader felt that bad actions are always bad; that God may

pardon them when repentance is proportioned to guilt, but that certainly

no man can ever approve of them.

There was more reason, therefore, prevailing in England than there was

in Holland in the time of Bayle. We now perceive clearly and without

difficulty, that we ought not to hold up as a model of sanctity what, in

fact, deserves the severest punishment; and we see with equal clearness

that, as we ought not to consecrate guilt, so we ought not to believe

absurdity.

HONOR.

The author of the "Spirit of Laws" has founded his system on the idea

that virtue is the principle of a republican government, and honor that

of mom archism. Is there virtue then without honor, and how is a

republic established in virtue?

Let us place before the reader's eyes that which has been said in an

able little book upon this subject. Pamphlets soon sink into oblivion.

Truth ought not to be lost; it should be consigned to works possessing

durability.

"Assuredly republics have never been formed on a theoretical principle

of virtue. The public interest being opposed to the domination of an

individual, the spirit of self-importance, and the ambition of every

person, serve to curb ambition and the inclination to rapacity, wherever

they may appear. The pride of each citizen watches over that of his

neighbor, and no person would willingly be the slave of another's

caprice. Such are the feelings which establish republics, and which

preserve them. It is ridiculous to imagine that there must be more

virtue in a Grison than in a Spaniard."

That honor can be the sole principle of monarchies is a no less

chimerical idea, and the author shows it to be so himself, without being

aware of it. "The nature of honor," says he, in chapter vii. of book

iii., "is to demand preferences and distinctions. It, therefore,

naturally suits a monarchical government."

Was it not on this same principle, that the Romans demanded the

prætorship, consulship, ovation, and triumph in their republic? These

were preferences and distinctions well worth the titles and preferences

purchased in monarchies, and for which there is often a regular fixed

price.

This remark proves, in our opinion, that the "Spirit of Laws," although

sparkling with wit, and commendable by its respect for the laws and

hatred of superstition and rapine, is founded entirely upon false views.

Let us add, that it is precisely in courts that there is always least

honor:

_L'ingannare, il mentir, la frode, il furto,_

_E la rapina di pictà vestita,_

_Crescer coi damno e precipizio altrui,_

_E fare a se de l'altrui biasmo onore,_

_Son le virtù di quella gente infidà._

--PASTOR FIDO, atto v., scena i.

_Ramper avec bassesse en affectant l'audace,_

_S'engraisser de rapine en attestant les lois,_

_Étouffer en secret son ami qu'on embrasse._

_Voilà l'honneur qui règne à la suite des rois._

To basely crawl, yet wear a face of pride;

To rob the public, yet o'er law preside;

Salute a friend, yet sting in the embrace--

Such is the _honor_ which in courts takes place.

Indeed, it is in courts, that men devoid of honor often attain to the

highest dignities; and it is in republics that a known dishonorable

citizen is seldom trusted by the people with public concerns.

The celebrated saying of the regent, duke of Orleans, is sufficient to

destroy the foundation of the "Spirit of Laws": "This is a perfect

courtier--he has neither temper nor honor."

HUMILITY.

Philosophers have inquired, whether humility is a virtue; but virtue or

not, every one must agree that nothing is more rare. The Greeks called

it "_tapeinosis_" or "tapeineia." It is strongly recommended in the

fourth book of the "Laws of Plato": he rejects the proud and would

multiply the humble.

Epictetus, in five places, preaches humility: "If thou passest for a

person of consequence in the opinion of some people, distrust thyself.

No lifting up of thy eye-brows. Be nothing in thine own eyes--if thou

seekest to please, thou art lost. Give place to all men; prefer them to

thyself; assist them all." We see by these maxims that never Capuchin

went so far as Epictetus.

Some theologians, who had the misfortune to be proud, have pretended

that humility cost nothing to Epictetus, who was a slave; and that he

was humble by station, as a doctor or a Jesuit may be proud by station.

But what will they say of Marcus Antoninus, who on the throne

recommended humility? He places Alexander and his muleteer on the same

line. He said that the vanity of pomp is only a bone thrown in the midst

of dogs; that to do good, and to patiently hear himself calumniated,

constitute the virtue of a king.

Thus the master of the known world recommended humility; but propose

humility to a musician, and see how he will laugh at Marcus Aurelius.

Descartes, in his treatise on the "Passions of the Soul," places

humility among their number, who--if we may personify this quality--did

not expect to be regarded as a passion. He also distinguishes between

virtuous and vicious humility.

But we leave to philosophers more enlightened than ourselves the care of

explaining this doctrine, and will confine ourselves to saying, that

humility is "the modesty of the soul."

It is the antidote to pride. Humility could not prevent Rousseau from

believing that he knew more of music than those to whom he taught it;

but it could induce him to believe that he was not superior to Lulli in

recitative.

The reverend father Viret, cordelier, theologian, and preacher, all

humble as he is, will always firmly believe that he knows more than

those who learn to read and write; but his Christian humility, his

modesty of soul, will oblige him to confess in the bottom of his heart

that he has written nothing but nonsense. Oh, brothers Nonnotte, Guyon,

Pantouillet, vulgar scribblers! be more humble, and always bear in

recollection "the modesty of the soul."

HYPATIA.

I will suppose that Madame Dacier had been the finest woman in Paris;

and that in the quarrel on the comparative merits of the ancients and

moderns, the Carmelites pretended that the poem of the Magdalen, written

by a Carmelite, was infinitely superior to Homer, and that it was an

atrocious impiety to prefer the "Iliad" to the verses of a monk. I will

take the additional liberty of supposing that the archbishop of Paris

took the part of the Carmelites against the governor of the city, a

partisan of the beautiful Madame Dacier, and that he excited the

Carmelites to massacre this fine woman in the church of Notre Dame, and

to drag her, naked and bloody, to the Place Maubert--would not everybody

say that the archbishop of Paris had done a very wicked action, for

which he ought to do penance?

This is precisely the history of Hypatia. She taught Homer and Plato, in

Alexandria, in the time of Theodosius II. St. Cyril incensed the

Christian populace against her, as it is related by Damasius and Suidas,

and clearly proved by the most learned men of the age, such as Bruker,

La Croze, and Basnage, as is very judiciously exposed in the great

"_Dictionnaire Encyclopédique_," in the article on "Éclectisme."

A man whose intentions are no doubt very good, has printed two volumes

against this article of the "Encyclopædia." Two volumes against two

pages, my friends, are too much. I have told you a hundred times you

multiply being without necessity. Two lines against two volumes would be

quite sufficient; but write not even these two lines.

I am content with remarking, that St. Cyril was a man of parts; that he

suffered his zeal to carry him too far; that when we strip beautiful

women, it is not to massacre them; that St. Cyril, no doubt, asked

pardon of God for this abominable action; and that I pray the father of

mercies to have pity on his soul. He wrote the two volumes against

"Éclectisme," also inspires me with infinite commiseration.

IDEA.

SECTION I.

What is an idea?

It is an image painted upon my brain.

Are all your thoughts, then, images?

Certainly; for the most abstract thoughts are only the consequences of

all the objects that I have perceived. I utter the word "being" in

general, only because I have known particular beings; I utter the word

"infinity," only because I have seen certain limits, and because I push

back those limits in my mind to a greater and still greater distance, as

far as I am able. I have ideas in my head only because I have images.

And who is the painter of this picture?

It is not myself; I cannot draw with sufficient skill; the being that

made me, makes my ideas.

And how do you know that the ideas are not made by yourself?

Because they frequently come to me involuntarily when I am awake, and

always without my consent when I dream.

You are persuaded, then, that your ideas belong to you only in the same

manner as your hairs, which grow and become white, and fall off, without

your having anything at all to do with the matter?

Nothing can possibly be clearer; all that I can do is to frizzle, cut,

and powder them; but I have nothing to do with producing them.

You must, then, I imagine, be of Malebranche's opinion, that we see all

in God?

I am at least certain of this, that if we do not see things in the Great

Being, we see them in consequence of His powerful and immediate action.

And what was the nature or process of this action?

I have already told you repeatedly, in the course of our conversation,

that I do not know a single syllable about the subject, and that God has

not communicated His secret to any one. I am completely ignorant of that

which makes my heart beat, and my blood flow through my veins; I am

ignorant of the principle of all my movements, and yet you seem to

expect how I should explain how I feel and how I think. Such an

expectation is unreasonable.

But you at least know whether your faculty of having ideas is joined to

extension?

Not in the least; It is true that Tatian, in his discourse to the

Greeks, says the soul is evidently composed of a body. Irenæus, in the

twenty-sixth chapter of his second book, says, "The Lord has taught that

our souls preserve the figure of our body in order to retain the memory

of it." Tertullian asserts, in his second book on the soul, that it is a

body. Arnobius, Lactantius, Hilary, Gregory of Nyssa, and Ambrose, are

precisely of the same opinion. It is pretended that other fathers of the

Church assert that the soul is without extension, and that in this

respect they adopt the opinion of Plato; this, however, may well be

doubted. With respect to myself, I dare not venture to form an opinion;

I see nothing but obscurity and incomprehensibility in either system;

and, after a whole life's meditation on the subject, I am not advanced a

single step beyond where I was on the first day.

The subject, then, was not worth thinking about?

That is true; the man who enjoys knows more of it, or at least knows it

better, than he who reflects; he is more happy. But what is it that you

would have? It depended not, I repeat, upon myself whether I should

admit or reject all those ideas which have crowded into my brain in

conflict with each other, and actually converted my medullary magazine

into their field of battle. After a hard-fought contest between them, I

have obtained nothing but uncertainty from the spoils.

It is a melancholy thing to possess so many ideas, and yet to have no

precise knowledge of the nature of ideas?

It is, I admit; but it is much more melancholy, and inexpressibly more

foolish, for a man to believe he knows what in fact he does not.

But, if you do not positively know what an idea is, if you are ignorant

whence ideas come, you at least know by what they come?

Yes; just in the same way as the ancient Egyptians, who, without knowing

the source of the Nile, knew perfectly well that its waters reached them

by its bed. We know perfectly that ideas come to us by the senses; but

we never know whence they come. The source of this Nile will never be

discovered.

If it is certain that all ideas are given by means of the senses, why

does the Sorbonne, which has so long adopted this doctrine from

Aristotle, condemn it with so much virulence in Helvetius?

Because the Sorbonne is composed of theologians.

SECTION II.

_All in God._

In God we live and move and have our being.

--ST. PAUL, Acts xvii, 28.

Aratus, who is thus quoted and approved by St. Paul, made this

confession of faith, we perceive among the Greeks.

The virtuous Cato says the same thing: "_Jupiter est quodcumque vides

quocumque moveris_."--Lucan's "_Pharsalia_" ix, 580. "Whate'er we see,

whate'er we feel, is Jove."

Malebranche is the commentator on Aratus, St. Paul, and Cato. He

succeeded, in the first instance, in showing the errors of the senses

and imagination; but when he attempted to develop the grand system, that

all is in God, all his readers declared the commentary to be more

obscure than the text. In short, having plunged into this abyss, his

head became bewildered; he held conversations with the Word; he was made

acquainted with what the Word had done in other planets; he became, in

truth, absolutely mad; a circumstance well calculated to excite

apprehension in our own minds, apt as we some of us are to attempt

soaring, upon our weak and puny opinions, very far beyond our reach.

In order to comprehend the notion of Malebranche, such as he held it

while he retained his faculties, we must admit nothing that we do not

clearly conceive, and reject what we do not understand. Attempting to

explain an obscurity by obscurities, is to act like an idiot.

I feel decidedly that my first ideas and my sensations have come to me

without any co-operation or volition on my part. I clearly see that I

cannot give myself a single idea. I cannot give myself anything. I have

received everything. The objects which surround me cannot, of

themselves, give me either idea or sensation; for how is it possible for

a little particle of matter to possess the faculty of producing a

thought?

I am therefore irresistibly led to conclude that the Eternal Being, who

bestows everything, gives me my ideas, in whatever manner this may be

done. But what is an idea, what is a sensation, a volition, etc.? It is

myself perceiving, myself feeling, myself willing.

We see, in short, that what is called an idea is no more a real being

than there is a real being called motion, although there are bodies

moved. In the same manner there is not any particular being called

memory, imagination, judgment; but we ourselves remember, imagine, and

judge.

The truth of all this, it must be allowed, is sufficiently plain and

trite; but it is necessary to repeat and inculcate such truth, as the

opposite errors are more trite still.

_Laws of Nature._

How, let us now ask, would the Eternal Being, who formed all, produce

all those various modes or qualities which we perceive in organized

bodies?

Did He introduce two beings in a grain of wheat, one of which should

produce germination in the other? Did He introduce two beings in the

composition of a stag, one of which should produce swiftness in the

other? Certainly not. All that we know on the subject is that the grain

is endowed with the faculty of vegetating, and the stag with that of

speed.

There is evidently a grand mathematical principle directing all nature,

and affecting everything produced. The flying of birds, the swimming of

fishes, the walking or running of quadrupeds, are visible effects of

known laws of motion. "_Mens agitat molem_." Can the sensations and

ideas of those animals, then, be anything more than the admirable

effects or mathematical laws more refined and less obvious?

_Organisation of the Senses and Ideas._

It is by these general and comprehensive laws that every animal is

impelled to seek its appropriate food. We are naturally, therefore, led

to conjecture that there is a law by which it has the idea of this food,

and without which it would not go in search of it.

The eternal intelligence has made all the actions of an animal depend

upon a certain principle; the eternal intelligence, therefore, has made

the sensations which cause those actions depend on the same principle.

Would the author of nature have disposed and adjusted those admirable

instruments, the senses, with so divine a skill; would he have exhibited

such astonishing adaptation between the eyes and light; between the

atmosphere and the ears, had it, after all, been necessary to call in

the assistance of other agency to complete his work? Nature always acts

by the shortest ways. Protracted processes indicate want of skill;

multiplicity of springs, and complexity of co-operation are the result

of weakness. We cannot but believe, therefore, that one main spring

regulates the whole system.

_The Great Being Does Everything._

Not merely are we unable to give ourselves sensations, we cannot even

imagine any beyond those which we have actually experienced. Let all the

academies of Europe propose a premium for him who shall imagine a new

sense; no one will ever gain that premium. We can do nothing, then, of

our mere selves, whether there be an invisible and intangible being

enclosed in our brain or diffused throughout our body, or whether there

be not; and it must be admitted, upon every system, that the author of

nature has given us all that we possess--organs, sensations, and the

ideas which proceed from them.

As we are thus secured under His forming hand, Malebranche,

notwithstanding all his errors, had reason to say philosophically, that

we are in God and that we see all in God; as St. Paul used the same

language in a theological sense, and Aratus and Cato in a moral one.

What then are we to understand by the words seeing all in God? They are

either words destitute of meaning, or they mean that God gives us all

our ideas.

What is the meaning of receiving an idea? We do not create it when we

receive it; it is not, therefore, so unphilosophical as has been

thought, to say it is God who produces the ideas in my head, as it is He

who produces motion in my whole body. Everything is an operation of God

upon His creatures.

_How is Everything an Action of God?_

There is in nature only one universal, eternal, and active principle.

There cannot be two such principles; for they would either be alike or

different. If they are different, they destroy one another; if they are

alike, it is the same as if they were only one. The unity of design,

visible through the grand whole in all its infinite variety, announces

one single principle, and that principle must act upon all being, or it

ceases to be a universal opinion.

If it acts upon all being, it acts upon all the modes of all being.

There is not, therefore, a single remnant, a single mode, a single idea,

which is not the immediate effect of a universal cause perpetually

present.

The matter of the universe, therefore, belongs to God, as much as the

ideas and the ideas as much as the matter. To say that anything is out

of Him would be saying that there is something out of the vast whole.

God being the universal principle of all things, all, therefore, exists

in Him, and by Him.

The system includes that of "physical premotion," but in the same manner

as an immense wheel includes a small one that endeavors to fly off from

it. The principle which we have just been unfolding is too vast to admit

of any particular and detailed view.

Physical premotion occupies the great supreme with all the changing

vagaries which take place in the head of an individual Jansenist or

Molinist; we, on the contrary, occupy the Being of Beings only with the

grand and general laws of the universe. Physical premotion makes five

propositions a matter of attention and occupation to God, which interest

only some lay-sister, the sweeper of a convent; while we attribute to

Him employment of the most simple and important description--the

arrangement of the whole system of the universe.

Physical premotion is founded upon that subtle and truly Grecian

principle, that if a thinking being can give himself an idea, he would

augment his existence; but we do not, for our parts, know what is meant

by augmenting our being. We comprehend nothing about the matter. We say

that a thinking being might give himself new modes without adding to his

existence; just in the same manner as when we dance, our sliding steps

and crossings and attitudes give us no new existence; and to suppose

they do so would appear completely absurd. We agree only so far in the

system of physical premotion, that we are convinced we give ourselves

nothing.

Both the system of premotion and our own are abused, as depriving men of

their liberty. God forbid we should advocate such deprivation. To do

away with this imputation, it is only necessary to understand the

meaning of the word liberty. We shall speak of it in its proper place;

and in the meantime the world will go on as it has gone on hitherto,

without the Thomists or their opponents, or all the disputants in the

world, having any power to change it. In the same manner we shall always

have ideas, without precisely knowing what an idea is.

IDENTITY.

This scientific term signifies no more than "the same thing." It might

be correctly translated by "sameness." This subject is of considerably

more interest than may be imagined. All agree that the guilty person

only ought to be punished--the individual perpetrator, and no other. But

a man fifty years of age is not in reality the same individual as the

man of twenty; he retains no longer any of the parts which then formed

his body; and if he has lost the memory of past events, it is certain

that there is nothing left to unite his actual existence to an existence

which to him is lost.

I am the same person only by the consciousness of what I have been

combined with that of what I am; I have no consciousness of my past

being but through memory; memory alone, therefore, establishes the

identity, the sameness of my person.

We may, in truth, be naturally and aptly resembled to a river, all whose

waters pass away in perpetual change and flow. It is the same river as

to its bed, its banks, its source, its mouth, everything, in short, that

is not itself; but changing every moment its waters, which constitute

its very being, it has no identity; there is no sameness belonging to

the river.

Were there another Xerxes like him who lashed the Hellespont for

disobedience, and ordered for it a pair of handcuffs; and were the son

of this Xerxes to be drowned in the Euphrates, and the father desirous

of punishing that river for the death of his son, the Euphrates might

very reasonably say in its vindication: "Blame the waves that were

rolling on at the time your son was bathing; those waves belong not to

me, and form no part of me; they have passed on to the Persian Gulf; a

part is mixed with the salt water of that sea, and another part, exhaled

in vapor, has been impelled by a south-east wind to Gaul, and been

incorporated with endives and lettuces, which the Gauls have since used

in their salads; seize the culprit where you can find him."

It is the same with a tree, a branch of which broken by the wind might

have fractured the skull of your great grandfather. It is no longer the

same tree; all its parts have given way to others. The branch which

killed your great grandfather is no part of this tree; it exists no

longer.

It has been asked, then, how a man, who has totally lost his memory

before his death, and whose members have been changed into other

substances, can be punished for his faults or rewarded for his virtues

when he is no longer himself? I have read in a well known book the

following question and answer:

"Question. How can I be either rewarded or punished when I shall no

longer exist; when there will be nothing remaining of that which

constituted my person? It is only by means of memory that I am always

myself; after my death, a miracle will be necessary to restore it to

me--to enable me to reenter upon my lost existence.

"Answer. That is just as much as to say that if a prince had put to

death his whole family, in order to reign himself, and if he had

tyrannized over his subjects with the most wanton cruelty, he would be

exempted from punishment on pleading before God, 'I am not the offender;

I have lost my memory; you are under a mistake; I am no longer the same

person.' Do you think this sophism would pass with God?"

This answer is a highly commendable one; but it does not completely

solve the difficulty.

It would be necessary for this purpose, in the first place, to know

whether understanding and sensation are a faculty given by God to man,

or a created substance; a question which philosophy is too weak and

uncertain to decide.

It is necessary in the next place to know whether, if the soul be a

substance and has lost all knowledge of the evil it has committed, and

be, moreover, as perfect a stranger to what it has done with its own

body, as to all the other bodies of our universe--whether, in these

circumstances, it can or should, according to our manner of reasoning,

answer in another universe for actions of which it has not the slightest

knowledge; whether, in fact, a miracle would not be necessary to impart

to this soul the recollection it no longer possesses, to render it

consciously present to the crimes which have become obliterated and

annihilated in its mind, and make it the same person that it was on

earth; or whether God will judge it nearly in the same way in which the

presidents of human tribunals proceed, condemning a criminal, although

he may have completely forgotten the crimes he has actually committed.

He remembers them no longer; but they are remembered for him; he is

punished for the sake of the example. But God cannot punish a man after

his death with a view to his being an example to the living. No living

man knows whether the deceased is condemned or absolved. God, therefore,

can punish him only because he cherished and accomplished evil desires;

but if, when after death he presents himself before the tribunal of God,

he no longer entertains any such desire; if for a period of twenty years

he has totally forgotten that he did entertain such; if he is no longer

in any respect the same person; what is it that God will punish in him?

These are questions which appear beyond the compass of the human

understanding, and there seems to exist a necessity, in these

intricacies and labyrinths, of recurring to faith alone, which is always

our last asylum.

Lucretius had partly felt these difficulties, when in his third book

(verses 890-91) he describes a man trembling at the idea of what will

happen to him when he will no longer be the same man:

_Nec radicitus e vita se tollit et evit;_

_Sed facit esse sui quiddam super inscius ipse._

But Lucretius is not the oracle to be addressed, in order to obtain any

discoveries of the future.

The celebrated Toland, who wrote his own epitaph, concluded it with

these words: "_Idem futurus Tolandus nunquam_"--"He will never again be

the same Toland."

However, it may be presumed that God would have well known how to find

and restore him, had such been his good pleasure; and it is to be

presumed, also, that the being who necessarily exists, is necessarily

good.

IDOL--IDOLATER--IDOLATRY.

SECTION I.

Idol is derived from the Greek word "_eidos_," figure; "_eidolos_," the

representation of a figure, and "_latreuein_," to serve, revere, or

adore.

It does not appear that there was ever any people on earth who took the

name of idolaters. This word is an offence, an insulting term, like that

of "_gavache_," which the Spaniards formerly gave to the French; and

that of "_maranes_," which the French gave to the Spaniards in return.

If we had demanded of the senate of the Areopagus of Athens, or at the

court of the kings of Persia: "Are you idolaters?" they would scarcely

have understood the question. None would have answered: "We adore images

and idols." This word, idolater, idolatry, is found neither in Homer,

Hesiod, Herodotus, nor any other author of the religion of the Gentiles.

There was never any edict, any law, which commanded that idols should be

adored; that they should be treated as gods and regarded as gods.

When the Roman and Carthaginian captains made a treaty, they called all

their gods to witness. "It is in their presence," said they, "that we

swear peace." Yet the statues of these gods, whose number was very

great, were not in the tents of the generals. They regarded, or

pretended to regard, the gods as present at the actions of men as

witnesses and judges. And assuredly it was not the image which

constituted the divinity.

In what view, therefore, did they see the statues of their false gods in

the temples? With the same view, if we may so express ourselves, that

the Catholics see the images, the object of _their_ veneration. The

error was not in adoring a piece of wood or marble, but in adoring a

false divinity, represented by this wood and marble. The difference

between them and the Catholics is, not that they had images, and the

Catholics had none; the difference is, that their images represented the

fantastic beings of a false religion, and that the Christian images

represent real beings in a true religion. The Greeks had the statue of

Hercules, and we have that of St. Christopher; they had Æsculapius and

his goat, we have St. Roch and his dog; they had Mars and his lance, and

we have St. Anthony of Padua and St. James of Compostella.

When the consul Pliny addresses prayers to the immortal gods in the

exordium of the panegyric of Trajan, it is not to images that he

addresses them. These images were not immortal.

Neither the latest nor the most remote times of paganism offer a single

fact which can lead to the conclusion that they adored idols. Homer

speaks only of the gods who inhabited the high Olympus. The palladium,

although fallen from heaven, was only a sacred token of the protection

of Pallas; it was herself that was venerated in the palladium. It was

our ampoule, or holy oil.

But the Romans and Greeks knelt before their statues, gave them crowns,

incense, and flowers, and carried them in triumph in the public places.

The Catholics have sanctified these customs, and yet are not called

idolaters.

The women in times of drouth carried the statues of the Gods after

having fasted. They walked barefooted with dishevelled hair, and it

quickly rained bucketfuls, says Pretonius: "_Et statim urceatim

pluebat_." Has not this custom been consecrated; illegitimate indeed

among the Gentiles, but legitimate among the Catholics? In how many

towns are not images carried to obtain the blessings of heaven through

their intercession? If a Turk, or a learned Chinese, were a witness of

these ceremonies, he would, through ignorance, accuse the Italians of

putting their trust in the figures which they thus promenade in

possession.

SECTION II.

_Examination of the Ancient Idolatry._

From the time of Charles I., the Catholic religion was declared

idolatrous in England. All the Presbyterians are persuaded that the

Catholics adore bread, which they eat, and figures, which are the work

of their sculptors and painters. With that which one part of Europe

reproaches the Catholics, they themselves reproach the Gentiles.

We are surprised at the prodigious number of declamations uttered in all

times against the idolatry of the Romans and Greeks; and we are

afterwards still more surprised when we see that they were not

idolaters.

They had some temples more privileged than others. The great Diana of

Ephesus had more reputation than a village Diana. There were more

miracles performed in the temple of Æsculapius at Epidaurus, than in any

other of his temples. The statue of the Olympian Jupiter attracted more

offerings than that of the Paphlagonian Jupiter. But to oppose the

customs of a true religion to those of a false one, have we not for

several ages had more devotion to certain altars than to others?

Has not Our Lady of Loretto been preferred to Our Lady of Neiges, to

that of Ardens, of Hall, etc.? That is not saying there is more virtue

in a statue at Loretto than in a statue of the village of Hall, but we

have felt more devotion to the one than to the other; we have believed

that she whom we invoked, at the feet of her statues, would condescend,

from the height of heaven, to diffuse more favors and to work more

miracles in Loretto than in Hall. This multiplicity of images of the

same person also proves that it is the images that we revere, and that

the worship relates to the person who is represented; for it is not

possible that every image can be the same thing. There are a thousand

images of St. Francis, which have no resemblance to him, and which do

not resemble one another; and all indicate a single Saint Francis,

invoked, on the day of his feast, by those who are devoted to this

saint.

It was precisely the same with the pagans, who supposed the existence

only of a single divinity, a single Apollo, and not as many Apollos and

Dianas as they had temples and statues. It is therefore proved, as much

as history can prove anything, that the ancients believed not the statue

to be a divinity; that worship was not paid to this statue or image, and

consequently that they were not idolaters. It is for us to ascertain how

far the imputation has been a mere pretext to accuse them of idolatry.

A gross and superstitious populace who reason not, and who know neither

how to doubt, deny, or believe; who visit the temples out of idleness,

and because the lowly are there equal to the great; who make their

contributions because it is the custom; who speak continually of

miracles without examining any of them; and who are very little in point

of intellect beyond the brutes whom they sacrifice--such a people, I

repeat, in the sight of the great Diana, or of Jupiter the Thunderer,

may well be seized with a religious horror, and adore, without

consciousness, the statue itself. This is what happens now and then, in

our own churches, to our ignorant peasantry, who, however, are informed

that it is the blessed mortals received into heaven whose intercession

they solicit, and not that of images of wood and stone.

The Greeks and Romans augment the number of their gods by their

apotheoses. The Greeks deified conquerors like Bacchus, Hercules, and

Perseus. Rome devoted altars to her emperors. Our apotheoses are of a

different kind; we have infinitely more saints than they have secondary

gods, but we pay respect neither to rank nor to conquest. We consecrate

temples to the simply virtuous, who would have been unknown on earth if

they had not been placed in heaven. The apotheoses of the ancients were

the effect of flattery, ours are produced by a respect for virtue.

Cicero, in his philosophical works, only allows of a suspicion that the

people may mistake the statues of the gods and confound them with the

gods themselves. His interlocutors attack the established religion, but

none of them think of accusing the Romans of taking marble and brass for

divinities. Lucretius accuses no person of this stupidity, although he

reproaches the superstitious of every class. This opinion, therefore,

has never existed; there never have been idolaters.

Horace causes an image of Priapus to speak, and makes him say: "I was

once the trunk of a fig tree, and a carpenter being doubtful whether he

should make of me a god or a bench, at length determined to make me a

divinity." What are we to gather from this pleasantry? Priapus was one

of the subaltern divinities, and a subject of raillery for the wits, and

this pleasantry is a tolerable proof that a figure placed in the garden

to frighten away the birds could not be very profoundly worshipped.

Dacier, giving way to the spirit of a commentator, observes that Baruch

predicted this adventure. "They became what the workmen chose to make

them:" but might not this be observed of all statues? Had Baruch a

visionary anticipation of the "Satires of Horace"?

A block of marble may as well be hewn into a cistern, as into a figure

of Alexander, Jupiter, or any being still more respectable. The matter

which composed the cherubim of the Holy of Holies might have been

equally appropriated to the vilest functions. Is a throne or altar the

less revered because it might have been formed into a kitchen table?

Dacier, instead of concluding that the Romans adored the statue of

Priapus, and that Baruch predicted it, should have perceived that the

Romans laughed at it. Consult all the authors who speak of the statues

of the gods, you will not find one of them allude to idolatry; their

testimony amounts to the express contrary. "It is not the workman," says

Martial, "who makes the gods, but he who prays to them."

_Qui finxit sacros auro vel marmore vultus_

_Non facit ille deos, qui rogat ille facit._

"It is Jove whom we adore in the image of Jove," writes Ovid: "_Colitur

pro Jove, forma Jovis_."

"The gods inhabit our minds and bosoms," observes Statius, "and not

images in the form of them:"

_Nulla autem effigies, nulli commissa metallo._

_Forma Dei, mentes habitare et pectora gaudet._

Lucan, too, calls the universe the abode and empire of God: "_Estne Dei,

sedes, nisi terra, et pontus, et aer?_" A volume might be filled with

passages asserting idols to be images alone.

There remains but the case in which statues became oracles; notions that

might have led to an opinion that there was something divine about them.

The predominant sentiment, however, was that the gods had chosen to

visit certain altars and images, in order to give audience to mortals,

and to reply to them. We read in Homer and in the chorus of the Greek

tragedies, of prayers to Apollo, who delivered his responses on the

mountains in such a temple, or such a town. There is not, in all

antiquity, the least trace of a prayer addressed to a statue; and if it

was believed that the divine spirit preferred certain temples and

images, as he preferred certain men, it was simply an error in

application. How many miraculous images have we? The ancients only

boasted of possessing what we possess, and if we are not idolaters for

using images, by what correct principle can we term them so?

Those who profess magic, and who either believe, or affect to believe

it, a science, pretend to possess the secret of making the gods descend

into their statues, not indeed, the superior gods, but the secondary

gods or genii. This is what Hermes Trismegistus calls "making" gods--a

doctrine which is controverted by St. Augustine in his "City of God."

But even this clearly shows that the images were not thought to possess

anything divine, since it required a magician to animate them, and it

happened very rarely that a magician was successful in these sublime

endeavors.

In a word, the images of the gods were not gods. Jupiter, and not his

statue, launched his thunderbolts; it was not the statue of Neptune

which stirred up tempests, nor that of Apollo which bestowed light. The

Greeks and the Romans were Gentiles and Polytheists, but not idolaters.

We lavished this reproach upon them when we had neither statues nor

temples, and have continued the injustice even after having employed

painting and sculpture to honor and represent our truths, precisely in

the same manner in which those we reproach employed them to honor and

personify their fiction.

SECTION III.

_Whether the Persians, the Sabæans, the Egyptians, the Tartars, or the

Turks, have been Idolaters, and the Extent of the Antiquity of the

Images Called Idols--History of Their Worship._

It is a great error to denominate those idolaters who worship the sun

and the stars. These nations for a long time had neither images nor

temples. If they were wrong, it was in rendering to the stars that which

belonged only to the creator of the stars. Moreover, the dogma of

Zoroaster, or Zerdusht, teaches a Supreme Being, an avenger and

rewarder, which opinion is very distant from idolatry. The government of

China possesses no idol, but has always preserved the simple worship of

the master of heaven, Kien-tien.

Genghis Khan, among the Tartars, was not an idolater, and used no

images. The Mahometans, who inhabit Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Persia,

India, and Africa, call the Christians idolaters and giaours, because

they imagine that Christians worship images. They break the statues

which they find in Sancta Sophia, the church of the Holy Apostles; and

others they convert into mosques. Appearances have deceived them, as

they are eternally deceiving man, and have led them to believe that

churches dedicated to saints who were formerly men, images of saints

worshipped kneeling, and miracles worked in these churches, are

invincible proofs of absolute idolatry; although all amount to nothing.

Christians, in fact, adore one God only, and even in the blessed, only

revere the virtues of God manifested in them. The image-breakers

(iconoclasts), and the Protestants, who reproach the Catholic Church

with idolatry, claim the same answer.

As men rarely form precise ideas, and still less express them with

precision, we call the Gentiles, and still more the Polytheists,

idolaters. An immense number of volumes have been written in order to

develop the various opinions upon the origin of the worship rendered to

the deity. This multitude of books and opinions proves nothing, except

ignorance.

It is not known who invented coats, shoes, and stockings, and yet we

would know who invented idols. What signifies a passage of

Sanchoniathon, who lived before the battle of Troy? What does he teach

us when he says that _Chaos_--the spirit, that is to say, the breath--in

love with his principles, draws the veil from it, which renders the air

luminous; that the wind _Colp_, and his wife _Bau_, engendered _Eon_;

that _Eon_ engendered _Genos_, that _Chronos_, their descendant, had two

eyes behind as well as before; that he became a god, and that he gave

Egypt to his son _Thaut_? Such is one of the most respectable monuments

of antiquity.

Orpheus will teach us no more in his "Theogony," than Damasius has

preserved to us. He represents the principles of the world under the

figure of a dragon with two heads, the one of a bull, the other of a

lion; a face in the middle, which he calls the face of God, and golden

wings to his shoulders.

But, from these fantastic ideas may be drawn two great truths--the one

that sensible images and hieroglyphics are of the remotest antiquity;

the other that all the ancient philosophers have recognized a First

Principle.

As to polytheism, good sense will tell you that as long as men have

existed--that is to say, weak animals capable of reason and folly,

subject to all accidents, sickness and death--these men have felt their

weakness and dependence. Obliged to acknowledge that there is something

more powerful than themselves; having discovered a principle in the

earth which furnishes their aliment; one in the air which often destroys

them; one in fire which consumes; and in water which drowns them--what

is more natural than for ignorant men to imagine beings which preside

over these elements? What is more natural than to revere the invisible

power which makes the sun and stars shine to our eyes? and, since they

would form an idea of powers superior to man, what more natural than to

figure them in a sensible manner? Could they think otherwise? The Jewish

religion, which preceded ours, and which was given by God himself, was

filled with these images, under which God is represented. He deigns to

speak the human language in a bush; He appeared once on a mountain; the

celestial spirits which he sends all come with a human form: finally,

the sanctuary is covered with cherubs, which are the bodies of men with

the wings and heads of animals. It is this which has given rise to the

error of Plutarch, Tacitus, Appian, and so many others, of reproaching

the Jews with adoring an ass's head. God, in spite of his prohibition to

paint or form likenesses, has, therefore, deigned to adapt himself to

human weakness, which required the senses to be addressed by sensible

beings.

Isaiah, in chapter vi., sees the Lord seated on a throne, and His train

filled the temple. The Lord extends His hand, and touches the mouth of

Jeremiah, in chap. i. of that prophet. Ezekiel, in chap. i., sees a

throne of sapphire, and God appeared to him like a man seated on this

throne. These images alter not the purity of the Jewish religion, which

never employed pictures, statues, or idols, to represent God to the eyes

of the people.

The learned Chinese, the Parsees, and the ancient Egyptians, had no

idols; but Isis and Osiris were soon represented. Bel, at Babylon, was a

great colossus. Brahma was a fantastic monster in the peninsula of

India. Above all, the Greeks multiplied the names of the gods, statues,

and temples, but always attributed the supreme power to their _Zeus_,

called Jupiter by the Latins, the sovereign of gods and men. The Romans

imitated the Greeks. These people always placed all the gods in heaven,

without knowing what they understood by heaven.

The Romans had their twelve great gods, six male and six female, whom

they called "_Dii majorum gentium_"; Jupiter, Neptune, Apollo, Vulcan,

Mars, Mercury, Juno, Vesta, Minerva, Ceres, Venus, and Diana; Pluto was

therefore forgotten: Vesta took his place.

Afterwards, came the gods "_minorum gentium_," the gods of mortal

origin; the heroes, as Bacchus, Hercules, and Æsculapius: the infernal

gods, Pluto and Proserpine: those of the sea, as Tethys, Amphitrite, the

Nereids, and Glaucus. The Dryads, Naiads, gods of gardens; those of

shepherds, etc. They had them, indeed, for every profession, for every

action of life, for children, marriageable girls, married, and lying-in

women: they had even the god Peditum; and finally, they idolized their

emperors. Neither these emperors nor the god Peditum, the goddess

Pertunda, nor Priapus, nor Rumilia, the goddess of nipples; nor

Stercutius, the god of the privy, were, in truth, regarded as the

masters of heaven and earth. The emperors had sometimes temples, the

petty gods--the penates--had none; but all had their representations,

their images.

There were little images with which they ornamented their closets, the

amusements of old women and children, which were not authorized by any

public worship. The superstition of every individual was left to act

according to his own taste. These small idols are still found in the

ruins of ancient towns.

If no person knows when men began to make these images, they must know

that they are of the greatest antiquity. Terah, the father of Abraham,

made them at Ur in Chaldæa. Rachel stole and carried off the images of

Laban, her father. We cannot go back further.

But what precise notion had the ancient nations of all these

representations? What virtue, what power, was attributed to them?

Believed they that the gods descended from heaven to conceal themselves

in these statues; or that they communicated to them a part of the divine

spirit; or that they communicated to them nothing at all? There has been

much very uselessly written on this subject; it is clear that every man

judged of it according to the degree of his reason, credulity, or

fanaticism. It is evident that the priests attached as much divinity to

their statues as they possibly could, to attract more offerings. We know

that the philosophers reproved these superstitions, that warriors

laughed at them, that the magistrates tolerated them, and that the

people, always absurd, knew not what they did. In a word, this is the

history of all nations to which God has not made himself known.

The same idea may be formed of the worship which all Egypt rendered to

the cow, and that several towns paid to a dog, an ape, a cat, and to

onions. It appears that these were first emblems. Afterwards, a certain

ox Apis, and a certain dog Anubis, were adored; they always ate beef and

onions; but it is difficult to know what the old women of Egypt thought

of the holy cows and onions.

Idols also often spoke. On the day of the feast of Cybele at Rome, those

fine words were commemorated which the statue pronounced when it was

translated from the palace of King Attilus: "I wish to depart; take me

away quickly; Rome is worthy the residence of every god."

_Ipsa peti volui; ne sit mora, mitte volentum;_

_Dignus Roma locus quo Deus omnis eat._

--OVID'S _Fasti_, iv, 269-270.

The statue of Fortune spoke; the Scipios, the Ciceros, and the Cæsars,

indeed, believed nothing of it; but the old woman, to whom Encolpus gave

a crown to buy geese and gods, might credit it.

Idols also gave oracles, and priests hidden in the hollow of the statues

spoke in the name of the divinity.

How happens it, in the midst of so many gods and different théogonies

and particular worships, that there was never any religious war among

the people called idolaters? This peace was a good produced from an

evil, even from error; for each nation, acknowledging several inferior

gods, found it good for his neighbors also to have theirs. If you except

Cambyses, who is reproached with having killed the ox Apis, you will not

see any conqueror in profane history who ill-treated the gods of a

vanquished people. The heathens had no exclusive religion, and the

priests thought only of multiplying the offerings and sacrifices.

The first offerings were fruits. Soon after, animals were required for

the table of the priests; they killed them themselves, and became cruel

butchers; finally, they introduced the horrible custom of sacrificing

human victims, and above all, children and young girls. The Chinese,

Parsees, and Indians, were never guilty of these abominations; but at

Hieropolis, in Egypt, according to Porphyrius, they immolated men.

Strangers were sacrificed at Taurida: happily, the priests of Taurida

had not much practice. The first Greeks, the Cypriots, Phœnicians,

Tyrians, and Carthaginians, possessed this abominable superstition. The

Romans themselves fell into this religious crime; and Plutarch relates,

that they immolated two Greeks and two Gauls to expiate the gallantries

of three vestals. Procopius, contemporary with the king of the Franks,

Theodobert, says that the Franks sacrificed men when they entered Italy

with that prince. The Gauls and Germans commonly made these frightful

sacrifices. We can scarcely read history without conceiving horror at

mankind.

It is true that among the Jews, Jeptha sacrificed his daughter, and Saul

was ready to immolate his son; it is also true that those who were

devoted to the Lord by anathema could not be redeemed, as other beasts

were, but were doomed to perish.

We will now speak of the human victims sacrificed in all religions.

To console mankind for the horrible picture of these pious sacrifices,

it is important to know, that amongst almost all nations called

idolatrous, there have been holy theologies and popular error, secret

worship and public ceremonies; the religion of sages, and that of the

vulgar. To know that one God alone was taught to those initiated into

the mysteries, it is only necessary to look at the hymn attributed to

the ancient Orpheus, which was sung in the mysteries of the Eleusinian

Ceres, so celebrated in Europe and Asia: "Contemplate divine nature;

illuminate thy mind; govern thy heart; walk in the path of justice, that

the God of heaven and earth may be always present to thy eyes: He only

self-exists, all beings derive their existence from Him; He sustains

them all; He has never been seen by mortals, and He sees all things."

We may also read the passage of the philosopher Maximus, whom we have

already quoted: "What man is so gross and stupid as to doubt that there

is a supreme, eternal, and infinite God, who has engendered nothing like

Himself, and who is the common father of all things?"

There are a thousand proofs that the ancient sages not only abhorred

idolatry, but polytheism.

Epictetus, that model of resignation and patience, that man so great in

a humble condition, never speaks of but one God. Read over these maxims:

"God has created me; God is within me; I carry Him everywhere. Can I

defile Him by obscene thoughts, unjust actions, or infamous desires? My

duty is to thank God for all, to praise Him for all; and only to cease

blessing Him in ceasing to live." All the ideas of Epictetus turn on

this principle. Is this an idolater?

Marcus Aurelius, perhaps as great on the throne of the Roman Empire as

Epictetus was in slavery, often speaks, indeed, of the gods, either to

conform himself to the received language, or to express intermediate

beings between the Supreme Being and men; but in how many places does he

show that he recognizes one eternal, infinite God alone? "Our soul,"

says he, "is an emanation from the divinity. My children, my body, my

mind, are derived from God."

The Stoics and Platonics admitted a divine and universal nature; the

Epicureans denied it. The pontiffs spoke only of a single God in their

mysteries. Where then were the idolaters? All our declaimers exclaim

against idolatry like little dogs, that yelp when they hear a great one

bark.

As to the rest, it is one of the greatest errors of the "Dictionary" of

Moréri to say, that in the time of Theodosius the younger, there

remained no idolaters except in the retired countries of Asia and

Africa. Even in the seventh century there were many people still heathen

in Italy. The north of Germany, from the Weser, was not Christian in the

time of Charlemagne. Poland and all the south remained a long time after

him in what was called idolatry; the half of Africa, all the kingdoms

beyond the Ganges, Japan, the populace of China, and a hundred hordes of

Tartars, have preserved their ancient religion. In Europe there are only

a few Laplanders, Samoyedes, and Tartars, who have persevered in the

religion of their ancestors.

Let us conclude with remarking, that in the time which we call the

middle ages, we dominated the country of the Mahometans pagan; we

treated as idolaters and adorers of images, a people who hold all images

in abhorrence. Let us once more avow, that the Turks are more excusable

in believing us idolaters, when they see our altars loaded with images

and statues.

A gentleman belonging to Prince Ragotski assured me upon his honor, that

being in a coffee-house at Constantinople, the mistress ordered that he

should not be served because he was an idolater. He was a Protestant,

and swore to her that he adored neither host nor images. "Ah! if that is

the case," said the woman, "come to me every day, and you shall be

served for nothing."

IGNATIUS LOYOLA.

If you are desirous of obtaining a great name, of becoming the founder

of a sect or establishment, be completely mad; but be sure that your

madness corresponds with the turn and temper of your age. Have in your

madness reason enough to guide your extravagances; and forget not to be

excessively opinionated and obstinate. It is certainly possible that you

may get hanged; but if you escape hanging, you will have altars erected

to you.

In real truth, was there ever a fitter subject for the Petites-Maisons,

or Bedlam, than Ignatius, or St. Inigo the Biscayan, for that was his

true name? His head became deranged in consequence of his reading the

"Golden Legend"; as Don Quixote's was, afterwards, by reading the

romances of chivalry. Our Biscayan hero, in the first place, dubs

himself a knight of the Holy Virgin, and performs the Watch of Arms in

honor of his lady. The virgin appears to him and accepts his services;

she often repeats her visit, and introduces to him her son. The devil,

who watches his opportunity, and clearly foresees the injury he must in

the course of time suffer from the Jesuits, comes and makes a tremendous

noise in the house, and breaks all the windows; the Biscayan drives him

away with the sign of the cross; and the devil flies through the wall,

leaving in it a large opening, which was shown to the curious fifty

years after the happy event.

His family, seeing the very disordered state of his mind, is desirous of

his being confined and put under a course of regimen and medicine. He

extricates himself from his family as easily as he did from the devil,

and escapes without knowing where to go. He meets with a Moor, and

disputes with him about the immaculate conception. The Moor, who takes

him exactly for what he is, quits him as speedily as possible. The

Biscayan hesitates whether he shall kill the Moor or pray to God for his

conversion; he leaves the decision to his horse, and the animal, rather

wiser than its master, takes the road leading to the stable.

Our hero, after this adventure, undertakes a pilgrimage to Bethlehem,

begging his bread on the way: his madness increases as he proceeds; the

Dominicans take pity on him at Manrosa, and keep him in their

establishment for some days, and then dismiss him uncured.

He embarks at Barcelona, and goes to Venice; he returns to Barcelona,

still travelling as a mendicant, always experiencing trances and

ecstacies, and frequently visited by the Holy Virgin and Jesus Christ.

At length, he was given to understand that, in order to go to the Holy

Land with any fair view of converting the Turks, the Christians of the

Greek church, the Armenians, and the Jews, it was necessary to begin

with a little study of theology. Our hero desires nothing better; but,

to become a theologian, it was requisite to know something of grammar

and a little Latin; this gives him no embarrassment whatever: he goes to

college at the age of thirty-three; he is there laughed at, and learns

nothing.

He was almost broken-hearted at the idea of not being able to go and

convert the infidels. The devil, for this once, took pity on him. He

appeared to him, and swore to him, on the faith of a Christian, that, if

he would deliver himself over to him, he would make him the most learned

and able man in the church of God. Ignatius, however, was not to be

cajoled to place himself under the discipline of such a master; he went

back to his class; he occasionally experienced the rod, but his learning

made no progress.

Expelled from the college of Barcelona, persecuted by the devil, who

punished him for refusing to submit to his instructions, and abandoned

by the Virgin Mary, who took no pains about assisting her devoted

knight, he, nevertheless, does not give way to despair. He joins the

pilgrims of St. James in their wanderings over the country. He preaches

in the streets and public places, from city to city, and is shut up in

the dungeons of the Inquisition. Delivered from the Inquisition, he is

put in prison at Alcala. He escapes thence to Salamanca, and is there

again imprisoned. At length, perceiving that he is no prophet in his own

country, he forms a resolution to go to Paris. He travels thither on

foot, driving before him an ass which carried his baggage, money, and

manuscripts. Don Quixote had a horse and an esquire, but Ignatius was

not provided with either.

He experiences at Paris the same insults and injuries as he had endured

in Spain. He is absolutely flogged, in all the regular form and ceremony

of scholastic discipline, at the college of St. Barbe. His vocation, at

length, calls him to Rome.

How could it possibly come to pass, that a man of such extravagant

character and manners, should at length obtain consideration at the

court of Rome, gain over a number of disciples, and become the founder

of a powerful order, among whom are to be found men of unquestionable

worth and learning? The reason is, that he was opinionated, obstinate,

and enthusiastic; and found enthusiasts like himself, with whom he

associated. These, having rather a greater share of reason than himself,

were instrumental in somewhat restoring and re-establishing his own; he

became more prudent and regular towards the close of his life, and

occasionally even displayed in his conduct proofs of ability.

Perhaps Mahomet, in his first conversations with the angel Gabriel,

began his career with being as much deranged as Ignatius; and perhaps

Ignatius, in Mahomet's circumstances, would have performed as great

achievements as the prophet; for he was equally ignorant, and quite as

visionary and intrepid.

It is a common observation, that such cases occur only once: however, it

is not long since an English rustic, more ignorant than the Spaniard

Ignatius, formed the society of people called "Quakers"; a society far

superior to that of Ignatius. Count Zinzendorf has, in our own time,

formed the sect of Moravians; and the Convulsionaries of Paris were very

nearly upon the point of effecting a revolution. They were quite mad

enough, but they were not sufficiently persevering and obstinate.

IGNORANCE.

SECTION I.

There are many kinds of ignorance; but the worst of all is that of

critics, who, it is well known, are doubly bound to possess information

and judgment as persons who undertake to affirm and to censure. When

they pronounce erroneously, therefore, they are doubly culpable.

A man, for example, composes two large volumes upon a few pages of a

valuable book which he has not understood, and in the first place

examines the following words:

"The sea has covered immense tracts.... The deep beds of shells which

are found in Touraine and elsewhere, could have been deposited there

only by the sea."

True, if those beds of shells exist in fact; but the critic ought to be

aware that the author himself discovered, or thought he had discovered,

that those regular beds of shells have no existence.

He ought to have said:

"The universal Deluge is related by Moses with the agreement of all

nations."

1. Because the Pentateuch was long unknown, not only to the other

nations of the world, but to the Jews themselves.

2. Because only a single copy of the law was found at the bottom of an

old chest in the time of King Josiah.

3. Because that book was lost during the captivity.

4. Because it was restored by Esdras.

5. Because it was always unknown to every other nation till the time of

its being translated by the Seventy.

6. Because, even after the translation ascribed to the Seventy, we have

not a single author among the Gentiles who quotes a single passage from

this book, down to the time of Longinus, who lived under the Emperor

Aurelian.

7. Because no other nation ever admitted a universal deluge before

Ovid's "Metamorphoses"; and even Ovid himself does not make his deluge

extend beyond the Mediterranean.

8. Because St. Augustine expressly acknowledges that the universal

deluge was unknown to all antiquity.

9. Because the first deluge of which any notice is taken by the

Gentiles, is that mentioned by Berosus, and which he fixes at about four

thousand four hundred years before our vulgar era; which deluge did not

extend beyond the Euxine Sea.

10. Finally, because no monument of a universal deluge remains in any

nation in the world.

In addition to all these reasons, it must be observed, that the critic

did not even understand the simple state of the question. The only

inquiry is, whether we have any natural proof that the sea has

successively abandoned many tracts of territory? and upon this plain and

mere matter-of-fact subject, M. Abbé François has taken occasion to

abuse men whom he certainly neither knows nor understands. It is far

better to be silent, than merely to increase the quantity of bad books.

The same critic, in order to prop up old ideas, now almost universally

despised and derided, and which have not the slightest relation to

Moses, thinks proper to say: "Berosus perfectly agrees with Moses in the

number of generations before the Deluge."

Be it known to you, my dear reader, that this same Berosus is the writer

who informs us that the fish Oannes came out to the river Euphrates

every day, to go and preach to the Chaldæans; and that the same fish

wrote with one of its bones a capital book about the origin of things.

Such is the writer whom the ingenious abbé brings forward as a voucher

for Moses.

"Is it not evident," he says, "that a great number of European families,

transplanted to the coasts of Africa, have become, without any mixture

of African blood, as black as any of the natives of the country?"

It is just the contrary of this, M. l'Abbé, that is evident. You are

ignorant that the "_reticulum mucosum_" of the negroes is black,

although I have mentioned the fact times innumerable. Were you to have

ever so large a number of children born to you in Guinea, of a European

wife, they would not one of them have that black unctuous skin, those

dark and thick lips, those round eyes, or that woolly hair, which form

the specific differences of the negro race. In the same manner, were

your family established in America, they would have beards, while a

native American will have none. Now extricate yourself from the

difficulty, with Adam and Eve only, if you can.

"Who was this 'Melchom,' you ask, who had taken possession of the

country of God? A pleasant sort of god, certainly, whom the God of

Jeremiah would carry off to be dragged into captivity."

Ah, M. l'Abbé! you are quite smart and lively. You ask, who is this

Melchom? I will immediately inform you. Melek or Melkom signified the

Lord, as did Adoni or Adonai, Baal or Bel, Adad or Shadai, Eloi or Eloa.

Almost all the nations of Syria gave such names to their gods; each had

its lord, its protector, its god. Even the name of Jehovah was a

Phoenician and proper name; this we learn from Sanchoniathon, who was

certainly anterior to Moses; and also from Diodorus.

We well know that God is equally the God, the absolute master, of

Egyptians and Jews, of all men and all worlds; but it is not in this

light that he is represented when Moses appears before Pharaoh. He never

speaks to that monarch but in the name of the God of the Hebrews, as an

ambassador delivers the orders of the king his master. He speaks so

little in the name of the Master of all Nature, that Pharaoh replies to

him, "I do not know him." Moses performs prodigies in the name of this

God; but the magicians of Pharaoh perform precisely the same prodigies

in the name of their own. Hitherto both sides are equal; the contest is,

who shall be deemed most powerful, not who shall be deemed alone

powerful. At length, the God of the Hebrews decidedly carries the day;

he manifests a power by far the greater; but not the only power. Thus,

speaking after the manner of men, Pharaoh's incredulity is very

excusable. It is the same incredulity as Montezuma exhibited before

Cortes, and Atahualpa before the Pizarros.

When Joshua called together the Jews, he said to them: "Choose ye this

day whom ye will serve, whether the gods which your father served, that

were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites in

whose land ye dwell; but as for me and my house, we will serve the

Lord." The people, therefore, had already given themselves up to other

gods, and might serve whom they pleased.

When the family of Micah, in Ephraim, hire a Levitical priest to conduct

the service of a strange god, when the whole tribe of Dan serve the same

god as the family of Micah; when a grandson of Moses himself becomes a

hired priest of the same god--no one murmurs; every one has his own god,

undisturbed; and the grandson of Moses becomes an idolater without any

one's reviling or accusing him. At that time, therefore, every one chose

his own local god, his own protector.

The same Jews, after the death of Gideon, adore Baal-berith, which means

precisely the same as Adonai--the lord, the protector; they change their

protector.

Adonai, in the time of Joshua, becomes master of the mountains; but he

is unable to overcome the inhabitants of the valleys, because they had

chariots armed with scythes. Can anything more correctly represent the

idea of a local deity, a god who is strong in one place, but not so in

another?

Jephthah, the son of Gilead, and a concubine, says to the Moabites:

"Wilt thou not possess what Chemosh, thy god, giveth thee to possess?

So, whomsoever the Lord our God shall drive out from before us, them

will we possess."

It is then perfectly proved, that the undistinguishing Jews, although

chosen by the God of the universe, regarded him notwithstanding as a

mere local god, the god of a particular territory of people, like the

god of the Amorites, or that of the Moabites, of the mountains or of the

valleys.

It is unfortunately very evident that it was perfectly indifferent to

the grandson of Moses whether he served Micah's god or his

grandfather's. It is clear, and cannot but be admitted, that the Jewish

religion was not formed, that it was not uniform, till the time of

Esdras; and we must, even then, except the Samaritans.

You may now, probably, have some idea of the meaning of this lord or god

Melchom. I am not in favor of his cause--the Lord deliver me from such

folly!--but when you remark, "the god which Jeremiah threatened to carry

into slavery must be a curious and pleasant sort of deity," I will

answer you, M. l'Abbé, with this short piece of advice:--"From your own

house of glass do not throw stones at those of your neighbors."

They were the Jews who were at that very time carried off in slavery to

Babylon. It was the good Jeremiah himself who was accused of being

bribed by the court of Babylon, and of having consequently prophesied in

his favor. It was he who was the object of public scorn and hatred, and

who it is thought ended his career by being stoned to death by the Jews

themselves. This Jeremiah, be assured from me, was never before

understood to be a joker.

The God of the Jews, I again repeat, is the God of all nature. I

expressly make this repetition that you may have no ground for

pretending ignorance of it, and that you may not accuse me before the

ecclesiastical court. I still, however, assert and maintain, that the

stupid Jews frequently knew no other God than a local one.

"It is not natural to attribute the tides to the phases of the moon.

They are not the high tides which occur at the full moon, that are

ascribed to the phases of that planet." Here we see ignorance of a

different description.

It occasionally happens that persons of a certain description are so

much ashamed of the part they play in the world, that they are desirous

of disguising themselves sometimes as wits, and sometimes as

philosophers.

In the first place, it is proper to inform M. l'Abbé, that nothing is

more natural than to attribute an effect to that which is always

followed by this effect. If a particular wind is constantly followed by

rain, it is natural to attribute the rain to the wind. Now, over all the

shores of the ocean, the tides are always higher in the moon's

"syzygies"--if you happen to know the meaning of the term--than at its

quarterings. The moon rises every day later; the tide is also every day

later. The nearer the moon approaches our zenith, the greater is the

tide; the nearer the moon approaches its perigee, the higher the tide

still rises. These experiences and various others, these invariable

correspondences with the phases of the moon, were the foundation of the

ancient and just opinion, that that body is a principal cause of the

flux and reflux of the ocean.

After numerous centuries appeared the great Newton--Are you at all

acquainted with Newton? Did you ever hear, that after calculating the

square of the progress of the moon in its orbit during the space of a

minute, and dividing that square by the diameter of that orbit, he found

the quotient to be fifteen feet? that he thence demonstrated that the

moon gravitates towards the earth three thousand six hundred times less

than if she were near the earth? that he afterwards demonstrated that

its attractive force is the cause of three-fourths of the elevation of

the sea by the tide, and that the force of the sun is the cause of the

remaining fourth? You appear perfectly astonished. You never read

anything like this in the "Christian Pedagogue." Endeavor henceforward,

both you and the porters of your parish, never to speak about things of

which you have not even the slightest idea.

You can form no conception of the injury you do to religion by your

ignorance, and still more by your reasonings. In order to preserve in

the world the little faith that remains in it, it would be the most

judicious measure possible to restrain you, and such as you, from

writing and publishing in behalf of it.

I should absolutely make your astonished eyes stare almost to starting,

were I to inform you, that this same Newton was persuaded that Samuel is

the author of the Pentateuch. I do not mean to say that he demonstrated

it in the same way as he calculated and deduced the power of

gravitation. Learn, then, to doubt and to be modest. I believe in the

Pentateuch, remember; but I believe, also, that you have printed and

published the most enormous absurdities. I could here transcribe a large

volume of instances of your own individual ignorance and imbecility, and

many of those of your brethren and colleagues. I shall not, however,

take the trouble of doing it. Let us go on with our questions.

SECTION II.

I am ignorant how I was formed, and how I was born. I was perfectly

ignorant, for a quarter of my life, of the reasons of all that I saw,

heard, and felt, and was a mere parrot, talking by rote in imitation of

other parrots.

When I looked about me and within me, I conceived that something existed

from all eternity. Since there are beings actually existing, I concluded

that there is some being necessary and necessarily eternal. Thus the

first step I took to extricate myself from my ignorance, overpassed the

limits of all ages--the boundaries of time.

But when I was desirous of proceeding in this infinite career, I could

neither perceive a single path, nor clearly distinguish a single object;

and from the flight which I took to contemplate eternity, I have fallen

back into the abyss of my original ignorance.

I have seen what is denominated "matter," from the star Sirius, and the

stars of the "milky way," as distant from Sirius as that is from us, to

the smallest atom that can be perceived by the microscope; and yet I

know not what matter is.

Light, which has enabled me to see all these different and distant

beings, is perfectly unknown to me; I am able by the help of a prism to

anatomize this light, and divide it into seven pencillings of rays; but

I cannot divide these pencillings themselves; I know not of what they

are composed. Light resembles matter in having motion and impinging upon

objects, but it does not tend towards a common centre like all other

bodies; on the contrary it flies off by some invincible power from the

centre, while all matter gravitates towards a centre. Light appears to

be penetrable, and matter is impenetrable. Is light matter, or is it not

matter? What is it? With what numberless properties can it be invested?

I am completely ignorant.

This substance so brilliant, so rapid, and so unknown, and those other

substances which float in the immensity of space--seeming to be

infinite--are they eternal? I know nothing on the subject. Has a

necessary being, sovereignly intelligent, created them from nothing, or

has he only arranged them? Did he produce this order in time, or before

_time_? Alas! what is this time, of which I am speaking? I am incapable

of defining it. O God, it is Thou alone by whom I can be instructed, for

I am neither enlightened by the darkness of other men nor by my own.

Mice and moles have their resemblances of structure, in certain

respects, to the human frame. What difference can it make to the Supreme

Being whether animals like ourselves, or such as mice, exist upon this

globe revolving in space with innumerable globes around it?

Why have we being? Why are there any beings? What is sensation? How have

I received it? What connection is there between the air which vibrates

on my ear and the sensation of sound? between this body and the

sensation of colors? I am perfectly ignorant, and shall ever remain

ignorant.

What is thought? Where does it reside? How is it formed? Who gives me

thoughts during my sleep? Is it in virtue of my will that I think? No,

for always during sleep, and often when I am awake, I have ideas

against, or at least without, my will. These ideas, long forgotten, long

put away, and banished in the lumber room of my brain, issue from it

without any effort or volition of mine, and suddenly present themselves

to my memory, which had, perhaps, previously made various vain attempts

to recall them.

External objects have not the power of forming ideas in me, for nothing

can communicate what it does not possess; I am well assured that they

are not given me by myself, for they are produced without my orders. Who

then produces them in me? Whence do they come? Whither do they go?

Fugitive phantoms! What invisible hand produces and disperses you?

Why, of all the various tribes of animals, has man alone the mad

ambition of domineering over his fellow? Why and how could it happen,

that out of a thousand millions of men, more than nine hundred and

ninety-nine have been sacrificed to this mad ambition?

How is it that reason is a gift so precious that we would none of us

lose it for all the pomp or wealth of the world, and yet at the same

time that it has merely served to render us, in almost all cases, the

most miserable of beings? Whence comes it, that with a passionate

attachment to truth, we are always yielding to the most palpable

impostures?

Why do the vast tribes of India, deceived and enslaved by the bonzes,

trampled upon by the descendant of a Tartar, bowed down by labor,

groaning in misery, assailed by diseases, and a mark for all the

scourges and plagues of life, still fondly cling to that life? Whence

comes evil, and why does it exist?

O atoms of a day! O companions in littleness, born like me to suffer

everything, and be ignorant of everything!--are there in reality any

among you so completely mad as to imagine you know all this, or that you

can solve all these difficulties? Certainly there can be none. No; in

the bottom of your heart you feel your own nothingness, as completely as

I do justice to mine. But you are nevertheless arrogant and conceited

enough to be eager for our embracing your vain systems; and not having

the power to tyrannize over our bodies, you aim at becoming the tyrants

of our souls.

IMAGINATION.

SECTION I.

Imagination is the power which every being, endowed with perception and

reason, is conscious he possesses of representing to himself sensible

objects. This faculty is dependent upon memory. We see men, animals,

gardens, which perceptions are introduced by the senses; the memory

retains them, and the imagination compounds them. On this account the

ancient Greeks called the muses, "the daughters of memory."

It is of great importance to observe, that these faculties of receiving

ideas, retaining them, and compounding them, are among the many things

of which we can give no explanation. These invisible springs of our

being are of nature's workmanship, and not of our own.

Perhaps this gift of God, imagination, is the sole instrument with which

we compound ideas, even those which are abstract and metaphysical.

You pronounce the word "triangle;" but you merely utter a sound, if you

do not represent to yourself the image of some particular triangle. You

certainly have no idea of a triangle but in consequence of having seen

triangles, if you have the gift of sight, or of having felt them, if you

are blind. You cannot think of a triangle in general, unless your

imagination figures to itself, at least in a confused way, some

particular triangle. You calculate; but it is necessary that you should

represent to yourself units added to each other, or your mind will be

totally insensible to the operation of your hand.

You utter the abstract terms--greatness, truth, justice, finite,

infinite; but is the term "greatness" thus uttered, anything more or

less, than a mere sound, from the action of your tongue, producing

vibrations in the air, unless you have the image of some greatness in

your mind? What meaning is there in the words "truth" and "falsehood,"

if you have not perceived, by means of your senses, that some particular

thing which you were told existed, did exist in fact; and that another

of which you were told the same, did not exist? And, is it not from this

experience, that you frame the general idea of truth and falsehood? And,

when asked what you mean by these words, can you help figuring to

yourself some sensible image, occasioning you to recollect that you have

sometimes been told, as a fact, what really and truly happened, and very

often what was not so?

Have you any other notion of just and unjust, than what is derived from

particular actions, which appeared to you respectively of these

descriptions? You began in your childhood by learning to read under some

master: you endeavored to spell well, but you really spelled ill: your

master chastised you: this appeared to you very unjust. You have

observed a laborer refused his wages, and innumerable instances of the

like nature. Is the abstract idea of just and unjust anything more than

facts of this character confusedly mixed up in your imagination?

Is "finite" anything else in your conception than the image of some

limited quantity or extent? Is "infinite" anything but the image of the

same extent or quantity enlarged indefinitely? Do not all these

operations take place in your mind just in the same manner as you read a

book? You read circumstances and events recorded in it, and never think

at the time of the alphabetical characters, without which, however, you

would have no notion of these events and circumstances. Attend to this

point for a single moment, and then you will distinctly perceive the

essential importance of those characters over which your eye previously

glided without thinking of them. In the same manner all your reasonings,

all your accumulations of knowledge are founded on images traced in your

brain. You have, in general, no distinct perception or recollection of

them; but give the case only a moment's attention, and you will then

clearly discern, that these images are the foundation of all the notions

you possess. It may be worth the reader's while to dwell a little upon

this idea, to extend it, and to rectify it.

The celebrated Addison, in the eleven essays on the imagination with

which he has enriched the volumes of the "Spectator," begins with

observing, that "the sense of sight is the only one which furnishes the

imagination with ideas." Yet certainly it must be allowed, that the

other senses contribute some share. A man born blind still hears, in his

imagination, the harmony which no longer vibrates upon his ear; he still

continues listening as in a trance or dream; the objects which have

resisted or yielded to his hands produce a similar effect in his head or

mind. It is true that the sense of sight alone supplies images; and as

it is a kind of touching or feeling which extends even to the distance

of the stars, its immense diffusion enriches the imagination more than

all the other senses put together.

There are two descriptions of imagination; one consists in retaining a

simple impression of objects; the other arranges the images received,

and combines them in endless diversity. The first has been called

passive imagination, and the second active. The passive scarcely

advances beyond memory, and is common to man and to animals. From this

power or faculty it arises, that the sportsman and his dog both follow

the hunted game in their dreams, that they both hear the sound of the

horn, and the one shouts and the other barks in their sleep. Both men

and brutes do something more than recollect on these occasions, for

dreams are never faithful and accurate images. This species of

imagination compounds objects, but it is not the understanding which

acts in it; it is the memory laboring under error.

This passive imagination certainly requires no assistance from volition,

whether we are asleep or awake; it paints, independently of ourselves,

what our eyes have seen; it hears what our ears have heard, and touches

what we have touched; it adds to it or takes from it. It is an internal

sense, acting necessarily, and accordingly there is nothing more common,

in speaking of any particular individual, than to say, "he has no

command over his imagination."

In this respect we cannot but see, and be astonished at the slight share

of power we really possess. Whence comes it, that occasionally in dreams

we compose most coherent and eloquent discourses, and verses far

superior to what we should write on the same subject if perfectly

awake?--that we even solve complicated problems in mathematics? Here

certainly there are very combined and complex ideas in no degree

dependent on ourselves. But if it is incontestable that coherent ideas

are formed within us independently of our will in sleep, who can safely

assert that they are not produced in the same manner when we are awake?

Is there a man living who foresees the idea which he will form in his

mind the ensuing minute? Does it not seem as if ideas were given to us

as much as the motions of our fibres; and had Father Malebranche merely

maintained the principle that all ideas are given by God, could any one

have successfully opposed him?

This passive faculty, independent of reflection, is the source of our

passions and our errors; far from being dependent on the will, the will

is determined by it. It urges us towards the objects which it paints

before us, or diverts us from them, just according to the nature of the

exhibition thus made of them by it. The image of a danger inspires fear;

that of a benefit excites desire. It is this faculty alone which

produces the enthusiasm of glory, of party, of fanaticism; it is this

which produces so many mental alienations and disorders, making weak

brains, when powerfully impressed, conceive that their bodies are

metamorphosed into various animals, that they are possessed by demons,

that they are under the infernal dominion of witchcraft, and that they

are in reality going to unite with sorcerers in the worship of the

devil, because they have been told that they were going to do so. This

species of slavish imagination, which generally is the lot of ignorant

people, has been the instrument which the imagination of some men has

employed to acquire and retain power. It is, moreover, this passive

imagination of brains easily excited and agitated, which sometimes

produces on the bodies of children evident marks of the impression

received by the mother; examples of this kind are indeed innumerable,

and the writer of this article has seen some so striking that, were he

to deny them, he must contradict his own ocular demonstration. This

effect of imagination is incapable of being explained; but every other

operation of nature is equally so; we have no clearer idea how we have

perceptions, how we retain them, or how we combine them. There is an

infinity between us and the springs or first principles of our nature.

Active imagination is that which joins combination and reflection to

memory. It brings near to us many objects at a distance; it separates

those mixed together, compounds them, and changes them; it seems to

create, while in fact it merely arranges; for it has not been given to

man to make ideas--he is only able to modify them.

This active imagination then is in reality a faculty as independent of

ourselves as passive imagination; and one proof of its not depending

upon ourselves is that, if we propose to a hundred persons, equally

ignorant, to imagine a certain new machine, ninety-nine of them will

form no imagination at all about it, notwithstanding all their

endeavors. If the hundredth imagines something, is it not clear that it

is a particular gift or talent which he has received? It is this gift

which is called "genius"; it is in this that we recognize something

inspired and divine.

This gift of nature is an imagination inventive in the arts--in the

disposition of a picture, in the structure of a poem. It cannot exist

without memory, but it uses memory as an instrument with which it

produces all its performances.

In consequence of having seen that a large stone which the hand of man

could not move, might be moved by means of a staff, active imagination

invented levers, and afterwards compound moving forces, which are no

other than disguised levers. It is necessary to figure in the mind the

machines with their various effects and processes, in order to the

actual production of them.

It is not this description of imagination that is called by the vulgar

the enemy of judgment. On the contrary, it can only act in union with

profound judgment; it incessantly combines its pictures, corrects its

errors, and raises all its edifices according to calculation and upon a

plan. There is an astonishing imagination in practical mathematics; and

Archimedes had at least as much imagination as Homer. It is by this

power that a poet creates his personages, appropriates to them

characters and manners, invents his fable, presents the exposition of

it, constructs its complexity, and prepares its development; a labor,

all this, requiring judgment the most profound and the most delicately

discriminative.

A very high degree of art is necessary in all these imaginative

inventions, and even in romances. Those which are deficient in this

quality are neglected and despised by all minds of natural good taste.

An invariably sound judgment pervades all the fables of Æsop. They will

never cease to be the delight of mankind. There is more imagination in

the "Fairy Tales"; but these fantastic imaginations, destitute of order

and good sense, can never be in high esteem; they are read childishly,

and must be condemned by reason.

The second part of active imagination is that of detail, and it is this

to which the world distinguishingly applies the term. It is this which

constitutes the charm of conversation, for it is constantly presenting

to the mind what mankind are most fond of--new objects. It paints in

vivid colors what men of cold and reserved temperament hardly sketch; it

employs the most striking circumstances; it cites the most appropriate

examples; and when this talent displays itself in union with the modesty

and simplicity which become and adorn all talents, it conciliates to

itself an empire over society. Man is so completely a machine that wine

sometimes produces this imagination, as intoxication destroys it. This

is a topic to excite at once humiliation and wonder. How can it happen

that a small quantity of a certain liquor, which would prevent a man

from effecting an important calculation, shall at the same time bestow

on him the most brilliant ideas?

It is in poetry particularly that this imagination of detail and

expression ought to prevail. It is always agreeable, but there it is

necessary. In Homer, Virgil, and Horace, almost all is imagery, without

even the reader's perceiving it. Tragedy requires fewer images, fewer

picturesque expressions and sublime metaphors and allegories than the

epic poem and the ode; but the greater part of these beauties, under

discreet and able management, produce an admirable effect in tragedy;

they should never, however, be forced, stilted, or gigantic.

Active imagination, which constitutes men poets, confers on them

enthusiasm, according to the true meaning of the Greek word, that

internal emotion which in reality agitates the mind and transforms the

author into the personage whom he introduces as the speaker; for such is

the true enthusiasm, which consists in emotion and imagery. An author

under this influence says precisely what would be said by the character

he is exhibiting.

Less imagination is admissible in eloquence than in poetry. The reason

is obvious--ordinary discourse should be less remote from common ideas.

The orator speaks the language of all; the foundation of the poet's

performance is fiction. Accordingly, imagination is the essence of his

art; to the orator it is only an accessory.

Particular traits or touches of imagination have, it is observed, added

great beauties to painting. That artifice especially is often cited, by

which the artist covers with a veil the head of Agamemnon at the

sacrifice of Iphigenia; an expedient, nevertheless, far less beautiful

than if the painter had possessed the secret of exhibiting in the

countenance of Agamemnon the conflict between the grief of a father, the

majesty of a monarch, and the resignation of a good man to the will of

heaven; as Rubens had the skill to paint in the looks and attitude of

Mary de Medici the pain of childbirth, the joy of being delivered of a

son, and the maternal affection with which she looks upon her child.

In general, the imaginations of painters when they are merely ingenious,

contribute more to exhibit the learning in the artist than to increase

the beauty of the art. All the allegorical compositions in the world are

not worth the masterly execution and fine finish which constitute the

true value of paintings.

In all the arts, the most beautiful imagination is always the most

natural. The false is that which brings together objects incompatible;

the extravagant paints objects which have no analogy, allegory, or

resemblance. A strong imagination explores everything to the bottom; a

weak one skims over the surface; the placid one reposes in agreeable

pictures; the ardent one piles images upon images. The judicious or sage

imagination is that which employs with discrimination all these

different characters, but which rarely admits the extravagant and always

rejects the false.

If memory nourished and exercised be the source of all imagination, that

same faculty of memory, when overcharged, becomes the extinction of it.

Accordingly, the man whose head is full of names and dates does not

possess that storehouse of materials from which he can derive compound

images. Men occupied in calculation, or with intricate matters of

business, have generally a very barren imagination.

When imagination is remarkably stirring and ardent, it may easily

degenerate into madness; but it has been observed that this morbid

affection of the organs of the brain more frequently attaches to those

passive imaginations which are limited to receiving strong impressions

of objects than to those fervid and active ones which collect and

combine ideas; for this active imagination always requires the

association of judgment, the other is independent of it.

It is not perhaps useless to add to this essay, that by the words

perception, memory, imagination, and judgment, we do not mean distinct

and separate organs, one of which has the gift of perceiving, another of

recollecting, the third of imagining, and the last of judging. Men are

more inclined, than some are aware, to consider these as completely

distinct and separate faculties. It is, however, one and the same being

that performs all these operations, which we know only by their effects,

without being able to know anything of that being itself.

SECTION II.

Brutes possess imagination as well as ourselves; your dog, for example,

hunts in his dreams. "Objects are painted in the fancy," says Descartes,

as others have also said. Certainly they are; but what is the fancy, and

how are objects painted in it? Is it with "the subtle matter"? "How can

I tell" is the appropriate answer to all questions thus affecting the

first principles of human organization.

Nothing enters the understanding without an image. It was necessary, in

order to our obtaining the confused idea we possess of infinite space,

that we should have an idea of a space of a few feet. It is necessary,

in order to our having the idea of God, that the image of something more

powerful than ourselves should have long dwelt upon our minds.

We do not create a single idea or image. I defy you to create one.

Ariosto did not make Astolpho travel to the moon till long after he had

heard of the moon, of St. John, and of the Paladins.

We make no images; we only collect and combine them. The extravagances

of the "Thousand and One Nights" and the "Fairy Tales" are merely

combinations. He who comprises most images in the storehouse of his

memory is the person who possesses most imagination.

The difficulty is in not bringing together these images in profusion,

without any selection. You might employ a whole day in representing,

without any toilsome effort, and almost without any attention, a fine

old man with a long beard, clothed in ample drapery, and borne in the

midst of a cloud resting on chubby children with beautiful wings

attached to their shoulders, or upon an eagle of immense size and

grandeur; all the gods and animals surrounding him; golden tripods

running to arrive at his council; wheels revolving by their own

self-motion, advancing as they revolve; having four faces covered with

eyes, ears, tongues, and noses; and between these tripods and wheels an

immense multitude of dead resuscitated by the crash of thunder; the

celestial spheres dancing and joining in harmonious concert, etc. The

lunatic asylum abounds in such imaginations.

We may, in dealing with the subject of imagination distinguish:

1. The imagination which disposes of the events of a poem, romance,

tragedy, or comedy, and which attaches the characters and passions to

the different personages. This requires the profoundest judgment and the

most exquisite knowledge of the human heart; talents absolutely

indispensable; but with which, however, nothing has yet been done but

merely laying the foundation of the edifice.

2. The imagination which gives to all these personages the eloquence or

diction appropriate to their rank, suitable to their station. Here is

the great art and difficulty; but even after doing this they have not

done enough.

3. The imagination in the expression, by which every word paints an

image in the mind without astonishing or overwhelming it; as in Virgil:

_.... Remigium alarum_.--ÆNEID, vi, 19.

_Mærentem abjungens fraterna morte juvencum._

--GEORGICS, iii, 517.

_.... Velorum pandimus alas_.--ÆNEID, iii, 520.

_Pendent circum oscula nati_.--GEORGICS, ii, 523.

_Immortale jecur tundens fecundaque pœnis_

_Viscera_.--ÆNEID, vi, 598-599.

_Et caligantem nigra formidine lucum._

--GEORGICS, iv, 468.

_Fata vocant, conditque natantia lumina somnus._

--GEORGICS, iv, 496.

Virgil is full of these picturesque expressions, with which he enriches

the Latin language, and which are so difficult to be translated into our

European jargons--the crooked and lame offspring of a well-formed and

majestic sire, but which, however, have some merit of their own, and

have done some tolerably good things in their way.