CHAPTER I.

_The WORKS of VOLTAIRE_

_EDITION DE LA PACIFICATION_

_Limited to one thousand sets

for America and Great Britain._

“_Between two servants of Humanity, who appeared

eighteen hundred years apart, there is a mysterious relation.

*    *    *    *    *    Let us say it with a sentiment of

profound respect: JESUS WEPT: VOLTAIRE SMILED.

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

sweetness of the present civilization._”

_VICTOR HUGO._

[Illustration: AT THIS INTERESTING MOMENT, AS MAY EASILY BE

IMAGINED, WHO SHOULD COME IN BUT THE UNCLE]

_EDITION DE LA PACIFICATION_

THE WORKS OF

VOLTAIRE

A CONTEMPORARY VERSION

With Notes by Tobias Smollett, Revised and Modernized

New Translations by William F. Fleming, and an

Introduction by Oliver H. G. Leigh

A CRITIQUE AND BIOGRAPHY

BY

THE RT. HON. JOHN MORLEY

_FORTY-THREE VOLUMES_

ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-EIGHT DESIGNS,

COMPRISING REPRODUCTIONS OF RARE OLD

ENGRAVINGS, STEEL PLATES, PHOTOGRAVURES,

AND CURIOUS FAC-SIMILES

VOLUME IV

E. R. DuMONT

PARIS : LONDON : NEW YORK : CHICAGO

COPYRIGHT 1901

BY E. R. DUMONT

OWNED by

THE WERNER COMPANY

AKRON, OHIO

MADE BY

THE WERNER COMPANY

AKRON, OHIO

VOLTAIRE

ROMANCES

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOL. III.

CONTENTS

——————

I. ANDRÉ DES TOUCHES IN SIAM … 5

II. THE BLIND AS JUDGES OF COLOR … 13

III. THE CLERGYMAN AND HIS SOUL … 15

IV. A CONVERSATION WITH A CHINESE … 28

V. MEMNON THE PHILOSOPHER … 33

VI. PLATO’S DREAM … 42

VII. AN ADVENTURE IN INDIA … 47

VIII. BABABEC … 51

IX. ANCIENT FAITH AND FABLE … 56

X. THE TWO COMFORTERS … 61

XI. DIALOGUE BETWEEN MARCUS AURELIUS AND A RECOLLET

FRIAR … 64

XII. DIALOGUE BETWEEN A BRAHMIN AND A JESUIT … 70

XIII. DIALOGUES BETWEEN LUCRETIUS AND POSIDONIUS … 76

XIV. DIALOGUE BETWEEN A CLIENT AND HIS LAWYER … 95

XV. DIALOGUE BETWEEN MADAME DE MAINTENON AND MDLLE. DE

L’ENCLOS … 101

XVI. DIALOGUE BETWEEN A SAVAGE AND A BACHELOR OF ARTS … 108

——————

A TREATISE ON TOLERATION.

[In 1762 Jean Calas, a Protestant of Toulouse, was

done to death by torture on the wheel on the false

charge of having slain his son, a suicide. His widow

and children were put to the torture to extort a

confession, in utter lack of evidence. Voltaire

devoted years of unremitting labor to agitating the

terrible crime and raising money compensation for the

victims. His pamphlets aroused substantial sympathy

and protests in England and over the Continent. His

efforts led to the writing of over one hundred plays,

poems, and pamphlets on the case. Voltaire had the

satisfaction of witnessing the triumph of his long

struggle. He narrates the facts in this Treatise,

which expands into a sweeping exposure of the

cruelties committed in the name of religion, in all

ages and countries.]

LIST OF PLATES—VOL. IV

——————

MEMNON AND THE LADY’S UNCLE … _Frontispiece_

THE DISCONSOLATE WOMAN … 62

THE MAID OF ORLEANS AT THE STAKE … 144

WIDOW CALAS APPEALS TO THE KING … 286

ANDRÉ DES TOUCHES IN SIAM.

André Des Touches was a very agreeable musician in the brilliant

reign of Louis XIV., before the science of music was perfected by

Rameau, and before it was corrupted by those who prefer the art of

surmounting difficulties to nature and the real graces of composition.

Before he had recourse to these talents he had been a musketeer, and

before that, in 1688, he went into Siam with the Jesuit Tachard, who

gave him many marks of his affection, for the amusement he afforded

on board the ship; and Des Touches spoke with admiration of Father

Tachard for the rest of his life.

In Siam he became acquainted with the first commissary of Barcalon,

whose name was Croutef, and he committed to writing most of those

questions which he asked of Croutef, and the answers of that Siamese.

They are as follows:

DES TOUCHES.—How many soldiers have you?

CROUTEF.—Fourscore thousand, very indifferently paid.

DES TOUCHES.—And how many talapoins?

CROUTEF.—A hundred and twenty thousand, very idle and very rich. It

is true that in the last war we were beaten, but our talapoins have

lived sumptuously and built fine houses.

DES TOUCHES.—Nothing could have discovered more judgment. And your

finances, in what state are they?

CROUTEF.—In a very bad state. We have, however, about ninety thousand

men employed to render them prosperous, and if they have not

succeeded, it has not been their fault, for there is not one of them

who does not honorably seize all that he can get possession of, and

strip and plunder those who cultivate the ground for the good of the

state.

DES TOUCHES.—Bravo! And is not your jurisprudence as perfect as the

rest of your administration?

CROUTEF.—It is much superior. We have no laws, but we have five or

six thousand volumes on the laws. We are governed in general by

customs; for it is known that a custom, having been established by

chance, is the wisest principle that can be imagined. Besides, all

customs being necessarily different in different provinces, the

judges may choose at their pleasure a custom which prevailed four

hundred years ago or one which prevailed last year. It occasions a

variety in our legislation which our neighbors are forever admiring.

This yields a certain fortune to practitioners. It is a resource for

all pleaders who are destitute of honor, and a pastime of infinite

amusement for the judges, who can, with safe consciences, decide

causes without understanding them.

DES TOUCHES.—But in criminal cases—you have laws which may be

depended upon?

CROUTEF.—God forbid! We can condemn men to exile, to the galleys, to

be hanged; or we can discharge them, according to our own fancy. We

sometimes complain of the arbitrary power of the Barcalon, but we

choose that all our decisions should be arbitrary.

DES TOUCHES.—That is very just. And the torture—do you put people to

the torture?

CROUTEF.—It is our greatest pleasure. We have found it an infallible

secret to save a guilty person, who has vigorous muscles, strong

and supple hamstrings, nervous arms, and firm loins, and we gayly

break on the wheel all those innocent persons to whom nature has

given feeble organs. It is thus we conduct ourselves with wonderful

wisdom and prudence. As there are half proofs, I mean half truths,

it is certain there are persons who are half innocent and half

guilty. We commence, therefore, by rendering them half dead; we then

go to breakfast; afterwards ensues entire death, which gives us

great consideration in the world, which is one of the most valuable

advantages of our offices.

DES TOUCHES.—It must be allowed that nothing can be more prudent and

humane. Pray tell me what becomes of the property of the condemned?

CROUTEF.—The children are deprived of it. For you know that nothing

can be more equitable than to punish the single fault of a parent on

all his descendants.

DES TOUCHES.—Yes. It is a great while since I have heard of this

jurisprudence.

CROUTEF.—The people of Laos, our neighbors, admit neither the

torture, nor arbitrary punishments, nor the different customs,

nor the horrible deaths which are in use among us; but we regard

them as barbarians who have no idea of good government. All Asia

is agreed that we dance the best of all its inhabitants, and

that, consequently, it is impossible they should come near us in

jurisprudence, in commerce, in finance, and, above all, in the

military art.

DES TOUCHES.—Tell me, I beseech you, by what steps men arrive at the

magistracy in Siam.

CROUTEF.—By ready money. You perceive that it may be impossible to be

a good judge if a man has not by him thirty or forty thousand pieces

of silver. It is in vain a man may be perfectly acquainted with all

our customs; it is to no purpose that he has pleaded five hundred

causes with success—that he has a mind which is the seat of judgment,

and a heart replete with justice; no man can become a magistrate

without money. This, I say, is the circumstance which distinguishes

us from all Asia, and particularly from the barbarous inhabitants of

Laos, who have the madness to recompense all kinds of talents, and

not to sell any employment.

André Des Touches, who was a little off his guard, said to the

Siamese that most of the airs which he had just sung sounded

discordant to him, and wished to receive information concerning real

Siamese music. But Croutef, full of his subject, and enthusiastic for

his country, continued in these words:

“What does it signify that our neighbors, who live beyond our

mountains, have better music than we have, or better pictures,

provided we have always wise and humane laws? It is in that

circumstance we excel. For example:

“If a man has adroitly stolen three or four hundred thousand pieces

of gold we respect him, and we go and dine with him. But if a poor

servant gets awkwardly into his possession three or four pieces

of copper out of his mistress’ box we never fail of putting that

servant to a public death; first, lest he should not correct himself;

secondly, that he may not have it in his power to produce a great

number of children for the state, one or two of whom might possibly

steal a few little pieces of copper, or become great men; thirdly,

because it is just to proportion the punishment to the crime, and

that it would be ridiculous to give any useful employment in a prison

to a person guilty of so enormous a crime.

“But we are still more just, more merciful, more reasonable in the

chastisements which we inflict on those who have the audacity to

make use of their legs to go wherever they choose. We treat those

warriors so well who sell us their lives, we give them so prodigious

a salary, they have so considerable a part in our conquests, that

they must be the most criminal of all men to wish to return to their

parents on the recovery of their reason, because they had been

enlisted in a state of intoxication. To oblige them to remain in one

place, we lodge about a dozen leaden balls in their heads, after

which they become infinitely useful to their country.

“I will not speak of a great number of excellent institutions which

do not go so far as to shed the blood of men, but which render life

so pleasant and agreeable that it is impossible the guilty should

avoid becoming virtuous. If a farmer has not been able to pay

promptly a tax which exceeds his ability, we sell the pot in which he

dresses his food; we sell his bed in order that, being relieved of

all his superfluities, he may be in a better condition to cultivate

the earth.”

DES TOUCHES.—That is extremely harmonious!

CROUTEF.—To comprehend our profound wisdom you must know that our

fundamental principle is to acknowledge in many places as our

sovereign a shaven-headed foreigner who lives at the distance of nine

hundred miles from us. When we assign some of our best territories

to any of our talapoins, which it is very prudent in us to do, that

Siamese talapoin must pay the revenue of his first year to that

shaven-headed Tartar, without which it is clear our lands would be

unfruitful.

But the time, the happy time, is no more when that tonsured priest

induced one-half of the nation to cut the throats of the other half

in order to decide whether Sammonocodom had played at leap-frog or

at some other game; whether he had been disguised in an elephant or

in a cow; if he had slept three hundred and ninety days on the right

side or on the left. Those grand questions, which so essentially

affect morality, agitated all minds; they shook the world; blood

flowed plentifully for it; women were massacred on the bodies of

their husbands; they dashed out the brains of their little infants

on the stones with a devotion, with a grace, with a contrition truly

angelic. Woe to us! degenerate offspring of pious ancestors, who

never offer such holy sacrifices! But, heaven be praised, there are

yet among us at least a few good souls who would imitate them if they

were permitted.

DES TOUCHES.—Tell me, I beseech you, sir, if in Siam you divide the

tone major into two commas, or into two semi-commas, and if the

progress of the fundamental sounds are made by one, three, and nine?

CROUTEF.—By Sammonocodom, you are laughing at me. You observe no

bounds. You have interrogated me on the form of our government, and

you speak to me of music!

DES TOUCHES.—Music is everything. It was at the foundation of all

the politics of the Greeks. But I beg your pardon; you have not a

good ear, and we will return to our subject. You said that in order

to produce a perfect harmony—

CROUTEF.—I was telling you that formerly the tonsured Tartar

pretended to dispose of all the kingdoms of Asia, which occasioned

something very different from perfect harmony. But a very

considerable benefit resulted from it; for people were then more

devout toward Sammonocodom and his elephant than they are now, for,

at the present time, all the world pretends to common sense, with an

indiscretion truly pitiable. However, all things go on; people divert

themselves, they dance, they play, they dine, they sup, they make

love; this makes every man shudder who entertains good intentions.

DES TOUCHES.—And what would you have more? You only want good music.

If you had good music you might call your nation the happiest in the

world.

THE BLIND AS JUDGES OF COLOR.

When the hospital of the Quinze Vingt was first founded the

pensioners were all equal, and their little affairs were concluded

upon by a majority of votes. They distinguished perfectly by the

touch between copper and silver coin; they never mistook the wine

of Brie for that of Burgundy. Their sense of smell was finer than

that of their neighbors who had the use of two eyes. They reasoned

very well on the four senses; that is, they knew everything they

were permitted to know, and they lived as peaceably and as happily

as blind people could be supposed to do. But, unfortunately, one

of their professors pretended to have clear ideas in respect to

the sense of seeing; he drew attention; he intrigued; he formed

enthusiasts, and at last he was acknowledged chief of the community.

He pretended to be a judge of colors, and everything was lost.

This dictator of the Quinze Vingt chose at first a little council by

the assistance of which he got possession of all the alms. On this

account no person had the resolution to oppose him. He decreed that

all the inhabitants of the Quinze Vingt were clothed in white. The

blind pensioners believed him, and nothing was to be heard but their

talk of white garments, though, in fact, they possessed not one of

that color. All their acquaintances laughed at them. They made their

complaints to the dictator, who received them very ill; he rebuked

them as innovators, freethinkers, rebels, who had suffered themselves

to be seduced by the errors of those who had eyes, and who presumed

to doubt that their chief was infallible. This contention gave rise

to two parties.

To appease the tumult, the dictator issued a decree declaring that

all their vestments were red. There was not one vestment of that

color in the Quinze Vingt. The poor men were laughed at more than

ever. Complaints were again made by the community. The dictator

rushed furiously in, and the other blind men were as much enraged.

They fought a long time, and peace was not restored until the members

of the Quinze Vingt were permitted to suspend their judgments in

regard to the color of their dress.

A deaf man, reading this little history, allowed that these people,

being blind, were to blame in pretending to judge of colors, but he

remained steady to his own opinion that those persons who were deaf

were the only proper judges of music.

THE CLERGYMAN AND HIS SOUL.

CHAPTER I.

There can be no doubt that everything in the world is governed by

fatality. My own life is a convincing proof of this doctrine. The

earl of Chesterfield, with whom I was a great favorite, had promised

me that I should have the first living that fell to his gift. An old

incumbent of eighty happened to die, and I immediately travelled post

to London to remind the earl of his promise. I was honored with an

immediate interview, and was received with the greatest kindness. I

informed his lordship of the death of the rector, and of the hope I

cherished relative to the disposal of the vacant living. He replied

that I really looked very ill. I answered that, thanks to God, my

greatest affliction was poverty. “I am sorry for you,” said his

lordship, and he politely dismissed me with a letter of introduction

to a Mr. Sidrac, who dwelt in the vicinity of Guildhall. I ran as

fast as I could to this gentleman’s house, not doubting but that he

would immediately install me in the wished-for living. I delivered

the earl’s letter, and Mr. Sidrac, who had the honor to be my lord’s

surgeon, asked me to sit down, and, producing a case of surgical

instruments, began to assure me that he would perform an operation

which he trusted would very soon relieve me.

You must know that his lordship had understood that I was suffering

from some dreadful complaint, and that he generously intended to have

me cured at his own expense. The earl had the misfortune to be as

deaf as a post, a fact with which I, alas! had not been previously

acquainted.

During the time which I lost in defending myself against the attacks

of Mr. Sidrac, who insisted positively upon curing me, whether I

would or no, one out of the fifty candidates who were all on the

lookout, came to town, flew to my lord, begged the vacant living and

obtained it.

I was deeply in love with an interesting girl, a Miss Fidler, who

had promised to marry me upon condition of my being made rector. My

fortunate rival not only got the living, but also my mistress into

the bargain!

My patron, upon being told of his mistake, promised to make me ample

amends, but alas! he died two days afterwards.

Mr. Sidrac demonstrated to me that, according to his organic

structure, my good patron could not have lived one hour longer. He

also clearly proved that the earl’s deafness proceeded entirely from

the extreme dryness of the drums of his ears, and kindly offered, by

an application of spirits of wine, to harden both of my ears to such

a degree that I should, in one month only, become as deaf as any peer

of the realm.

I discovered Mr. Sidrac to be a man of profound knowledge. He

inspired me with a taste for the study of nature, and I could not but

be sensible of the valuable acquisition I had made in acquiring the

friendship of a man who was capable of relieving me, should I need

his services. Following his advice, I applied myself closely to the

study of nature, to console myself for the loss of the rectory and of

my enchanting Miss Fidler.

CHAPTER II.

THE STUDY OF NATURE.

After making many profound observations upon nature (having employed

in the research my five senses, my spectacles, and a very large

telescope), I said one day to Mr. Sidrac: “Unless I am much deceived,

philosophy laughs at us. I cannot discover any trace of what the

world calls nature; on the contrary, everything seems to me to be

the result of art. By art the planets are made to revolve around the

sun, while the sun revolves on its own axis. I am convinced that some

genius has arranged things in such a manner that the square of the

revolutions of the planets is always in proportion to the cubic root

from their distance to their centre, and one had need be a magician

to find out how this is accomplished. The tides of the sea are the

result of art no less profound and no less difficult to explain.

“All animals, vegetables, and minerals are arranged with due

regard to weight and measure, number and motion. All is performed

by springs, levers, pulleys, hydraulic machines, and chemical

combinations, from the insignificant flea to the being called man,

from the grass of the field to the far-spreading oak, from a grain of

sand to a cloud in the firmament of heaven. Assuredly, everything is

governed by art, and the word nature is but a chimera.”

“What you say,” answered Mr. Sidrac, “has been said many years ago,

and so much the better, for the probability is greater that your

remark is true. I am always astonished when I reflect that a grain

of wheat cast into the earth will produce in a short time above a

handful of the same corn.” “Stop,” said I, foolishly, “you forget

that wheat must die before it can spring up again, at least so

they say at college.” My friend Sidrac, laughing heartily at this

interruption, replied: “That assertion went down very well a few

years ago, when it was first published by an apostle called Paul, but

in our more enlightened age the meanest laborer knows that the thing

is altogether too ridiculous even for argument.”

“My dear friend,” said I, “excuse the absurdity of my remarks; I

have hitherto been a theologian, and one cannot divest one’s self in

a moment of every silly opinion.”

CHAPTER III.

GOOD ADVICE.

Some time after this conversation between the disconsolate person,

whom we shall call Goodman, and the clever anatomist, Mr. Sidrac, the

latter, one fine morning, observed his friend in St. James’s Park,

standing in an attitude of deep thought. “What is the matter?” said

the surgeon. “Is there anything amiss?” “No,” replied Goodman, “but I

am left without a patron in the world since the death of my friend,

who had the misfortune to be so deaf. Now, supposing there be only

ten thousand clergymen in England, and granting these ten thousand

have each two patrons, the odds against my obtaining a bishopric are

twenty thousand to one; a reflection quite sufficient to give any

man the blue-devils. I remember, it was once proposed to me to go

out as cabin-boy to the East Indies. I was told that I should make

my fortune. But as I did not think I should make a good admiral,

whenever I should arrive at the distinction, I declined; and so,

after turning my attention to every profession under the sun, I am

fixed for life as a poor clergyman, good for nothing.”

“Then be a clergyman no longer!” cried Sidrac, “and turn

philosopher. What is your income?” “Only thirty guineas a year,”

replied Goodman, “although at the death of my mother it will be

increased to fifty.” “Well, my dear Goodman,” continued Sidrac, “that

sum is quite sufficient to support you in comfort. Thirty guineas

are six hundred and thirty shillings, almost two shillings a day.

With this fixed income a man need do nothing to increase it, but is

at perfect liberty to say all he thinks of the East India Company,

the House of Commons, the king, and all the royal family, of man

generally and individually, and lastly, of God and His attributes;

and the liberty we enjoy of expressing our thoughts upon these most

interesting topics is certainly very agreeable and amusing.”

“Come and dine at my table every day. That will save you some little

money. We will afterwards amuse ourselves with conversation, and

your thinking faculty will have the pleasure of communicating with

mine by means of speech, which is certainly a very wonderful thing,

though its advantages are not duly appreciated by the greater part of

mankind.”

CHAPTER IV.

DIALOGUE UPON THE SOUL

AND OTHER TOPICS.

GOODMAN.—But my dear Sidrac, why do you always say _my thinking

faculty_ and not _my soul_? If you used the latter term I should

understand you much better.

SIDRAC.—And for my part, I freely confess I should not understand

myself. I _feel_, I _know_, that God has endowed me with the

faculties of thinking and speaking, but I can neither _feel_ nor

_know_ that God has given me a thing called a soul.

GOODMAN.—Truly, upon reflection, I perceive that I know as little

about the matter as you do, though I own that I have all my life been

bold enough to believe that I knew. I have often remarked that the

eastern nations apply to the soul the same word they use to express

life. After their example, the Latins understood the word _anima_

to signify the life of the animal. The Greeks called the breath the

soul. The Romans translated the word breath by _spiritus_, and thence

it is that the word spirit or soul is found in every modern nation.

As it happens that no one has ever seen this spirit or breath, our

imagination has converted it into a being which it is impossible to

see or touch. The learned tell us that the soul inhabits the body

without having any place in it, that it has the power of setting our

different organs in motion without being able to reach and touch

them; indeed, what has not been said upon the subject? The great

Locke knew into what a chaos these absurdities had plunged the human

understanding. In writing the only reasonable book upon metaphysics

that has yet appeared in the world, he did not compose a single

chapter on the soul, and if by chance he now and then makes use of

the word, he only introduces it to stand for intellect or mind.

In fact, every human being, in spite of Bishop Berkeley, is sensible

that he has a mind, and that this mind or intellect is capable of

receiving ideas; but no one can feel that there is another being—a

soul—within him, which gives him motion, feeling, and thought. It

is, in fact, ridiculous to use words we do not understand, and to

admit the existence of beings of whom we cannot have the slightest

knowledge.

SIDRAC.—We are then agreed upon a subject which, for so many

centuries, has been a matter of dispute.

GOODMAN.—And I must observe that I am surprised we should have agreed

upon it so soon.

SIDRAC.—Oh! that is not so astonishing. We really wish to know what

is truth. If we were among the academies we should argue like the

characters in Rabelais. If we had lived in those ages of darkness,

the clouds of which so long enveloped Great Britain, one of us would

very likely have burned the other. We are so fortunate as to be born

in an age comparatively reasonable; we easily discover what appears

to us to be truth, and we are not afraid to proclaim it.

GOODMAN.—You are right, but I fear that, after all, the truth we have

discovered is not worth much. In mathematics, indeed, we have done

wonders; from the most simple causes we have produced effects that

would have astonished Apollonius or Archimedes; but what have we

proved in metaphysics? Absolutely nothing but our own ignorance.

SIDRAC.—And do you call that nothing? You grant the Supreme Being

has given you the faculties of feeling and thinking; He has in the

same manner given your feet the faculty of walking, your hands their

wonderful dexterity, your stomach the capability of digesting food,

and your heart the power of throwing arterial blood into all parts

of your body. Everything we enjoy is derived from God, and yet we

are totally ignorant of the means by which He governs and conducts

the universe. For my own part, as Shakespeare says, I thank Him for

having taught me that of the principles of things I know absolutely

nothing. It has always been a question in what manner the soul acted

upon the body. Before attempting to answer this question, I must be

convinced that I have a soul. Either God has given us this wonderful

spark of intellect, or He has gifted us with some principle that

answers equally well. In either case, we are still the creatures of

His divine will and goodness, and that is all I know about the matter.

GOODMAN.—But if you do not know, tell me at least what you are

inclined to think upon the subject. You have opened skulls, and

dissected the human fœtus. Have you ever, in these dissections,

discovered any appearance of a soul?

SIDRAC.—Not the least, and I have not been able to understand how an

immortal and spiritual essence could dwell for months together in a

membrane. It appears to me difficult to conceive that this pretended

soul existed before the foundation of the body; for in what could it

have been employed during the many ages previous to its mysterious

union with flesh? Again! how can we imagine a spiritual principle

waiting patiently in idleness during a whole eternity, in order to

animate a mass of matter for a space of time which, compared with

eternity, is less than a moment?

It is worse still when I am told that God forms immortal souls out

of nothing, and then cruelly dooms them to an eternity of flames and

torments. What? burn a spirit, in which there can be nothing capable

of burning; how can He burn the sound of a voice, or the wind that

blows? though both the sound and wind were material during the short

time of their existence; but a pure spirit—a thought—a doubt—I am

lost in the labyrinth; on whichever side I turn, I find nothing but

obscurity and absurdity, impossibility and contradiction. But I

am quite at ease when I say to myself God is Master of all. He who

can cause each star to hold its particular course through the broad

expanse of the firmament can easily give to us sentiments and ideas

without the aid of this atom called the soul. It is certain that God

has endowed all animals, in a greater or lesser degree, with thought,

memory, and judgment; He has given them life; it is demonstrated that

they have feeling, since they possess all the organs of feeling; if

then they have all this without a soul, why is it improbable that we

have none? and why do mankind flatter themselves that they alone are

gifted with a spiritual and immortal principle?

GOODMAN.—Perhaps this idea arises from their inordinate vanity. I am

persuaded that if the peacock could speak he would boast of his soul,

and would affirm that it inhabited his magnificent tail. I am very

much inclined to believe with you that God has created us thinking

creatures, with the faculties of eating, drinking, feeling, etc.,

without telling us one word about the matter. We are as ignorant as

the peacock I just mentioned, and he who said that we live and die

without knowing how, why, or wherefore, spoke nothing but the truth.

SIDRAC.—A celebrated author, whose name I forget, calls us nothing

more than the puppets of Providence, and this seems to me to be a

very good definition. An infinity of movements are necessary to our

existence, but we did not ourselves invent and produce motion. There

is a Being who has created light, caused it to move from the sun

to our eyes in about seven minutes. It is only by means of motion

that my five senses are put in action, and it is only by means of my

senses that I have ideas, hence it follows that my ideas are derived

from the great author of motion, and when He informs me how He

communicates these ideas to me, I will most sincerely thank Him.

GOODMAN.—And so will I. As it is I constantly thank Him for having

permitted me, as Epictetus says, to contemplate for a period of some

years this beautiful and glorious world. It is true that He could

have made me happier by putting me in possession of Miss Fidler and a

good rectory, but still, such as I am, I consider myself as under a

great obligation to God’s parental kindness and care.

_Sidrac._—You say that it is in the power of God to give you a good

living, and to make you still happier than you are at present. There

are many persons who would not scruple flatly to contradict this

proposition of yours. Do you forget that you yourself sometimes

complain of fatality? A man, and particularly a priest, ought never

to contradict one day an assertion he has perhaps made the day

before. All is but a succession of links, and God is wiser than to

break the eternal chain of events, even for the sake of my dear

friend Goodman.

GOODMAN.—I did not foresee this argument when I was speaking of

fatality, but to come at once to the point, if it be so, God is as

much a slave as myself.

SIDRAC.—He is the slave of His will, of His wisdom, and of the laws

which He has Himself instituted; and it is impossible that He can

infringe upon any of them, because it is impossible that He can

become either weak or inconsistent.

GOODMAN.—But, my friend, what you say would tend to make us

irreligious, for, if God cannot change any of the affairs of the

world, what is the use of teasing Him with prayers, or of singing

hymns to His praise?

SIDRAC.—Well! who bids you worship or pray to God? We praise a man

because we think him vain; we entreat of him when we think him weak

and likely to change his purpose on account of our petitions. Let us

do our duty to God, by being just and true to each other. In that

consists our real prayers, and our most heartfelt praises.

A CONVERSATION WITH A CHINESE.

In the year 1723 there was a Chinese in Holland who was both a

learned man and a merchant, two things that ought by no means to be

incompatible; but which, thanks to the profound respect that is shown

to money, and the little regard that the human species pay to merit,

have become so among us.

This Chinese, who spoke a little Dutch, happened to be in a

bookseller’s shop at the same time that some literati were assembled

there. He asked for a book; they offered him Bossuet’s “Universal

History,” badly translated. At the title “Universal History”—

“How pleased am I,” cried the Oriental, “to have met with this

book. I shall now see what is said of our great empire, of a nation

that has subsisted for upwards of fifty thousand years; of that long

dynasty of emperors who have governed us for such a number of ages. I

shall see what these Europeans think of the religion of our literati,

and of that pure and simple worship we pay to the Supreme Being. What

a pleasure will it be for me to find how they speak of our arts, many

of which are of a more ancient date with us than the eras of all the

kingdoms of Europe! I fancy the author will be greatly mistaken in

relation to the war we had about twenty-two thousand five hundred and

fifty-two years ago with the martial people of Tonquin and Japan,

as well as the solemn embassy that the powerful emperor of Mogul

sent to request a body of laws from us in the year of the world

500000000000079123450000.”

“Lord bless you,” said one of the literati, “there is hardly any

mention made of that nation in this world. The only nation considered

is that marvellous people, the Jews.”

“The Jews!” said the Chinese; “those people then must certainly be

masters of three parts of the globe at least.”

“They hope to be so some day,” answered the other; “but all we have

here are those peddlers you see going about with toys and nic-nacs,

and who sometimes do us the honor to clip our gold and silver.”

“Surely you are not serious,” exclaimed the Chinese. “Could those

people ever have been in possession of a vast empire?”

Here I joined in the conversation, and told him that for a few years

they were in possession of a small country to themselves; but that we

were not to judge of a people from the extent of their dominions, any

more than of a man by his riches.

“But does not this book take notice of some other nations?” demanded

the man of letters.

“Undoubtedly,” replied a learned gentleman who stood at my elbow; “it

treats largely of a small country about sixty leagues wide, called

Egypt, in which it is said that there is a lake of one hundred and

fifty leagues in circumference, made by the hands of man.”

“My God!” exclaimed the Chinese, “a lake of one hundred and fifty

leagues in circumference within a spot of ground only sixty leagues

wide. This is very curious!”

“The inhabitants of that country,” continued the doctor, “were all

sages.”

“What happy times were those!” cried the Chinese; “but is that all?”

“No,” replied the other, “there is mention made of those famous

people the Greeks.”

“Greeks! Greeks!” said the Asiatic, “who are those Greeks?”

“Why,” replied the philosopher, “they were masters of a little

province, about the two-hundredth part as large as China, but whose

fame spread over the whole world.”

“Indeed!” said the Chinese, with an air of openness and

ingenuousness; “I declare I never heard the least mention of these

people, either in the Mogul’s country, in Japan, or in Great Tartary.”

“Oh, the barbarian! the ignorant creature!” cried out our sage very

politely. “Why, then, I suppose you know nothing of Epaminondas the

Theban, nor of the Pierian heaven, nor the names of Achilles’ two

horses, nor of Silenus’ ass? You have never heard speak of Jupiter,

nor of Diogenes, nor of Lais, nor of Cybele, nor of—”

“I am very much afraid,” said the learned Oriental, interrupting

him, “that you know nothing of that eternally memorable adventure of

the famous Xixofon Concochigramki, nor of the mysteries of the great

Fi-psi-hi-hi! But pray tell me what other unknown things does this

“Universal History” treat of?”

Upon this my learned neighbor harangued for a quarter of an hour

together about the Roman republic, and when he came to Julius Cæsar

the Chinese stopped him, and very gravely said:

“I think I have heard of him; was he not a Turk?”

“How!” cried our sage in a fury, “don’t you so much as know the

difference between pagans, Christians, and Mahometans? Did you never

hear of Constantine? Do you know nothing of the history of the popes?”

“We have heard something confusedly of one Mahomet,” replied the

Asiatic.

“It is surely impossible,” said the other, “but you must have heard

at least of Luther, Zwinglius, Bellarmine, and Œcolampadius.”

“I shall never remember all those names,” said the Chinese, and

so saying he quitted the shop, and went to sell a large quantity

of Pekoe tea and fine calico, and then, after purchasing what

merchandise he required, set sail for his own country, adoring Tien,

and recommending himself to Confucius.

As to myself, the conversation I had been witness to plainly

discovered to me the nature of vain glory; and I could not forbear

exclaiming:

“Since Cæsar and Jupiter are names unknown to the finest, most

ancient, most extensive, most populous, and most civilized kingdom

in the universe, it becomes ye well, O ye rulers of petty states!

ye pulpit orators of a narrow parish, or a little town! ye doctors

of Salamanca, or of Bourges! ye trifling authors, and ye heavy

commentators!—it becomes you well, indeed, to aspire to fame and

immortality.”

MEMNON THE PHILOSOPHER.

Memnon one day took it into his head to become a great philosopher.

“To be perfectly happy,” said he to himself, “I have nothing to do

but to divest myself entirely of passions, and nothing is more easy,

as everybody knows. In the first place, I will never be in love,

for when I see a beautiful woman I will say to myself, These cheeks

will one day grow sallow and wrinkled, these eyes be encircled with

vermilion, that bosom become lean and emaciated, that head bald and

palsied. Now, I have only to consider her at present in imagination

as she will afterwards appear in reality, and certainly a fair face

will never turn my head.

“In the second place, I shall always be temperate. It will be in vain

to tempt me with good cheer, with delicious wines, or the charms of

society. I will have only to figure to myself the consequences of

excess—an aching head, a loathing stomach, the loss of reason, of

health, and of time; I will then only eat to supply the waste of

nature; my health will be always equal, my ideas pure and luminous.

All this is so easy that there is no merit in accomplishing it.

“But,” says Memnon, “I must think a little of how I am to regulate

my fortune; why, my desires are moderate, my wealth is securely

placed with the receiver-general of the finances of Nineveh. I

have wherewithal to live independent, and that is the greatest of

blessings. I shall never be under the cruel necessity of dancing

attendance at court. I will never envy any one, and nobody will envy

me. Still all this is easy. I have friends, and I will preserve them,

for we shall never have any difference. I will never take amiss

anything they may say or do; and they will behave in the same way to

me. There is no difficulty in all this.”

Having thus laid this little plan of philosophy in his closet,

Memnon put his head out of the window. He saw two women walking

under the plane trees near his house. The one was old and appeared

quite at her ease. The other was young, handsome, and seemingly much

agitated. She sighed, she wept, and seemed on that account still

more beautiful. Our philosopher was touched, not, to be sure, with

the lady (he was too much determined not to feel any uneasiness

of that kind), but with the distress which he saw her in. He came

downstairs and accosted the young Ninevite, designing to console

her with philosophy. That lovely person related to him, with an air

of the greatest simplicity and in the most affecting manner, the

injuries she sustained from an imaginary uncle—with what art he had

deprived her of some imaginary property, and of the violence which

she pretended to dread from him.

“You appear to me,” said she, “a man of such wisdom that if you will

come to my house and examine into my affairs, I am persuaded you will

be able to relieve me from the cruel embarrassment I am at present

involved in.”

Memnon did not hesitate to follow her, to examine her affairs

philosophically, and to give her sound counsel.

The afflicted lady led him into a perfumed chamber and politely

made him sit down with her on a large sofa, where they both placed

themselves opposite to each other, in the attitude of conversation,

the one eager in telling her story, the other listening with devout

attention. The lady spoke with downcast eyes, whence there sometimes

fell a tear, and which, as she now and then ventured to raise them,

always met those of the sage Memnon. Their discourse was full of

tenderness, which redoubled as often as their eyes met. Memnon took

her affairs exceedingly to heart and felt himself every instant more

and more inclined to oblige a person so virtuous and so unhappy. By

degrees, in the warmth of conversation, they drew nearer. Memnon

counselled her with great wisdom, and gave her most tender advice.

At this interesting moment, as may easily be imagined, who should

come in but the uncle? He was armed from head to foot, and the first

thing he said was that he would immediately sacrifice, as was just,

both Memnon and his niece. The latter, who made her escape, knew that

he was disposed to pardon, provided a good round sum were offered

to him. Memnon was obliged to purchase his safety with all he had

about him. In those days people were happy in getting so easily quit.

America was not then discovered, and distressed ladies were not then

so dangerous as they are now.

Memnon, covered with shame and confusion, got home to his own house.

He there found a card inviting him to attend dinner with some of his

intimate friends.

“If I remain at home alone,” said he, “I shall have my mind so

occupied with this vexatious adventure that I shall not be able

to eat a bit and I shall bring upon myself some disease. It will,

therefore be prudent in me to go to my intimate friends and partake

with them of a frugal repast. I shall forget in the sweets of their

society the folly I have this morning been guilty of.”

Accordingly he attends the meeting; he is discovered to be uneasy at

something, and he is urged to drink and banish care.

“A little wine, drunk in moderation, comforts the heart of God and

man”—so reasoned Memnon the philosopher, and he became intoxicated.

After the repast, play is proposed.

“A little play with one’s intimate friends is a harmless pastime.” He

plays and loses all in his purse and four times as much on his word.

A dispute arises on some circumstance in the game and the disputants

grow warm. One of his intimate friends throws a dice-box at his head

and strikes out one of his eyes. The philosopher Memnon is carried

home drunk and penniless, with the loss of an eye.

He sleeps out his debauch and when his head becomes clear he sends

his servant to the receiver-general of the finances of Nineveh to

draw a little money to pay his debt of honor to his intimate friends.

The servant returns and informs him that the receiver-general had

that morning been declared a fraudulent bankrupt, and that by this

means a hundred families are reduced to poverty and despair. Memnon,

almost beside himself, puts a plaster on his eye and a petition

in his pocket, and goes to court to solicit justice from the king

against the bankrupt. In the saloon he meets a number of ladies, all

in the highest spirits and sailing along with hoops four-and-twenty

feet in circumference. One of them, slightly acquainted with him,

eyed him askance, and cried aloud: “Ah! what a horrid monster!”

Another, who was better acquainted with him, thus accosts him:

“Good-morrow, Mr. Memnon; I hope you are well, Mr. Memnon. La! Mr.

Memnon, how did you lose your eye?” and, turning upon her heel, she

tripped unconcernedly away.

Memnon hid himself in a corner and waited for the moment when he

could throw himself at the feet of the monarch. That moment at last

arrived. Three times he kissed the earth and presented his petition.

His gracious majesty received him very favorably and referred the

paper to one of his satraps. The satrap takes Memnon aside and says

to him, with a haughty air and satirical grin:

“Hark ye, you fellow with the one eye; you must be a comical dog

indeed to address yourself to the king rather than to me, and still

more so to dare to demand justice against an honest bankrupt,

whom I honor with my protection, and who is also a nephew to the

waiting-maid of my mistress. Proceed no further in this business, my

good friend, if you wish to preserve the eye you have left.”

Memnon, having thus in his closet resolved to renounce women, the

excess of the table, play, and quarrelling, but especially having

determined never to go to court, had been, in the short space of

four-and-twenty hours, duped and robbed by a gentle dame, had got

drunk, had gamed, had been engaged in a quarrel, had got his eye

knocked out, and had been at court, where he was sneered at and also

insulted.

Petrified with astonishment, and his heart broken with grief, Memnon

returns homeward in despair. As he was about to enter his house,

he is repulsed by a number of officers who are carrying off his

furniture for the benefit of his creditors. He falls down almost

lifeless under a plane tree. There he finds the fair dame of the

morning, who was walking with her dear uncle, and both set up a loud

laugh on seeing Memnon with his plaster. The night approached, and

Memnon made his bed on some straw near the walls of his house. Here

the ague seized him and he fell asleep in one of the fits, when a

celestial spirit appeared to him in a dream.

It was all resplendent with light; it had six beautiful wings, but

neither feet, nor head, and could be likened to nothing.

“What art thou?” said Memnon.

“Thy good genius,” replied the spirit.

“Restore me, then, my eye, my health, my fortune, my reason,” said

Memnon, and he related how he had lost them all in one day.

“These are adventures which never happen to us in the world we

inhabit,” said the spirit.

“And what world do you inhabit?” said the man of affliction.

“My native country,” replied the other, “is five hundred millions of

leagues distant from the sun, in a little star near Sirius.”

“Charming country!” said Memnon. “And are there indeed with you no

jades to dupe a poor devil, no intimate friends that win his money

and knock out an eye for him, no fraudulent bankrupts, no satraps

that make a jest of you while they refuse you justice?”

“No,” said the inhabitant of the star, “we have nothing of the kind.

We are never duped by women because we have none among us; we never

commit excesses at table because we neither eat nor drink; we have

no bankrupts because with us there is neither silver nor gold; our

eyes cannot be knocked out because we have not bodies in the form of

yours, and satraps never do us injustice, because in our world we are

all equal.”

“Pray, my lord,” said Memnon, “without women and without eating, how

do you spend your time?”

“In watching over the other worlds that are entrusted to us, and I am

now come to give you consolation.”

“Alas!” replied Memnon, “why did you not come yesterday to hinder me

from committing so many indiscretions?”

“I was with your elder brother Hassan,” said the celestial being. “He

is still more to be pitied than you are. His most gracious majesty,

the sultan of the Indies, in whose court he has the honor to serve,

has caused both his eyes to be put out for some small indiscretion,

and he is now in a dungeon, his hands and feet loaded with chains.”

“Tis a happy thing, truly,” said Memnon, “to have a good genius in

one’s family, when out of two brothers, one is blind of an eye,

the other blind of both; one stretched upon straw, the other in a

dungeon.”

“Your fate will soon change,” said the spirit of the star. “It is

true you will never recover your eye, but, except that, you may be

sufficiently happy if you never again take it into your head to be a

perfect philosopher.”

“Is it, then, impossible?” said Memnon.

“As impossible as to be perfectly wise, perfectly strong, perfectly

powerful, perfectly happy. We ourselves are very far from it. There

is a world, indeed, where all this takes place; but, in the hundred

thousand millions of worlds dispersed over the regions of space,

everything goes on by degrees. There is less philosophy and less

enjoyment in the second than in the first, less in the third than in

the second, and so forth till the last in the scale, where all are

completely fools.”

“I am afraid,” said Memnon, “that our little terraqueous globe here

is the madhouse of those hundred thousand millions of worlds of which

your lordship does me the honor to speak.”

“Not quite,” said the spirit, “but very nearly; everything must be in

its proper place.”

“But are those poets and philosophers wrong, then, who tell us that

everything is for the best?”

“No, they are right, when we consider things in relation to the

gradation of the whole universe.”

“Oh! I shall never believe it till I recover my eye again,” said the

unfortunate Memnon.

PLATO’S DREAM.

Plato was a great dreamer, as many others have been since his

time. He dreamed that mankind were formerly double, and that, as a

punishment for their crimes, they were divided into male and female.

He undertook to prove that there can be no more than five perfect

worlds, because there are but five regular mathematical bodies. His

republic was one of his principal dreams. He dreamed, moreover, that

watching arises from sleep, and sleep from watching, and that a

person who should attempt to look at an eclipse otherwise than in a

pail of water would surely lose his sight. Dreams were at that time

in great repute.

Here follows one of his dreams, which is not one of the least

interesting. He thought that the great Demiurgos, the eternal

geometer, having peopled the immensity of space with innumerable

globes, was willing to make a trial of the knowledge of the genii

who had been witnesses of his works. He gave to each of them a small

portion of matter to arrange, nearly in the same manner as Phidias

and Zeuxis would have given their scholars a statue to carve or a

picture to paint, if we may be allowed to compare small things to

great.

Demogorgon had for his lot the lump of mould which we call the earth,

and, having formed it such as it now appears, he thought he had

executed a masterpiece. He imagined he had silenced Envy herself, and

expected to receive the highest panegyrics, even from his brethren;

but how great was his surprise, when, at his next appearing among

them, they received him with a general hiss.

One among them, more satirical than the rest, accosted him thus:

“Truly you have performed mighty feats! you have divided your world

into two parts; and, to prevent the one from communication with the

other, you have carefully placed a vast collection of waters between

the two hemispheres. The inhabitants must perish with cold under both

your poles and be scorched to death under the equator. You have, in

your great prudence, formed immense deserts of sand, so that all who

travel over them may die with hunger and thirst. I have no fault to

find with your cows, your sheep, your cocks, and your hens, but can

never be reconciled to your serpents and your spiders. Your onions

and your artichokes are very good things, but I cannot conceive what

induced you to scatter such a heap of poisonous plants over the face

of the earth, unless it was to poison its inhabitants. Moreover, if

I am not mistaken, you have created about thirty different kinds

of monkeys, a still greater number of dogs, and only four or five

species of the human race. It is true, indeed, you have bestowed

on the latter of these animals a faculty by you called reason, but,

in truth, this same reason is a very ridiculous thing, and borders

very near upon folly. Besides, you do not seem to have shown any

very great regard to this two-legged creature, seeing you have left

him with so few means of defence, subjected him to so many disorders

and provided him with so few remedies, and formed him with such a

multitude of passions and so small a portion of wisdom or prudence to

resist them. You certainly were not willing that there should remain

any great number of these animals on the earth at once, for, without

reckoning the dangers to which you have exposed them, you have so

ordered matters that, taking every day throughout the year, smallpox

will regularly carry off the tenth part of the species, and sister

maladies will taint the springs of life in the nine remaining parts;

and then, as if this were not sufficient, you have so disposed things

that one-half of those who survive will be occupied in going to law

with each other or cutting one another’s throats.

“Now, they must doubtless be under infinite obligations to you, and

it must be owned you have executed a masterpiece.”

Demogorgon blushed. He was sensible there was much moral and physical

evil in this affair, but still he insisted there was more good than

ill in it.

“It is an easy matter to find fault, good folks,” said the genius,

“but do you imagine it is so easy to form an animal, who, having the

gift of reason and free-will, shall not sometimes abuse his liberty?

Do you think that, in rearing between nine and ten thousand different

plants, it is so easy to prevent some few from having noxious

qualities? Do you suppose that with a certain quantity of water,

sand, and mud you could make a globe that should have neither seas

nor deserts?

“As for you, my sneering friend, I think you have just finished the

planet Jupiter. Let us see now what figure you make with your great

belts and your long nights with four moons to enlighten them. Let us

examine your worlds and see whether the inhabitants you have made are

exempt from follies or diseases.”

Accordingly the genius fell to examining the planet Jupiter, when

the laugh went strongly against the laugher. The serious genius who

had made the planet Saturn did not escape without his share of the

censure, and his brother operators, the makers of Mars, Mercury, and

Venus, had each in his turn some reproaches to undergo.

Several large volumes and a great number of pamphlets were written on

this occasion; smart sayings and witty repartees flew about on all

sides; they railed against and ridiculed each other, and, in short,

the disputes were carried on with all the warmth of party heat, when

the eternal Demiurgos thus imposed silence on them all:

“In your several performances there is both good and bad, because you

have a great share of understanding, but at the same time fall short

of perfection. Your works will not endure above a hundred millions of

years, after which you will acquire more knowledge and perform much

better. It belongs to me alone to create things perfect and immortal.”

This was the doctrine Plato taught his disciples. One of them, when

he had finished his harangue, cried out: “And so you then awoke?”

AN ADVENTURE IN INDIA.

All the world knows that Pythagoras, while he resided in India,

attended the school of the Gymnosophists and learned the language of

beasts and plants. One day while he was walking in a meadow near the

sea-shore he heard these words:

“How unfortunate that I was born an herb! I scarcely attain two

inches in height, when a voracious monster, a horrid animal, tramples

me under his large feet; his jaws are armed with rows of sharp

scythes, by which he cuts, then grinds, and then swallows me. Men

call this monster a sheep. I do not suppose there is in the whole

creation a more detestable creature.”

Pythagoras proceeded a little way and found an oyster yawning on a

small rock. He had not yet adopted that admirable law by which we are

enjoined not to eat those animals which have a resemblance to us. He

had scarcely taken up the oyster to swallow it, when it spoke these

affecting words:

“O Nature, how happy is the herb, which is, as I am, thy work! Though

it be cut down, it is regenerated and immortal, and we, poor oysters,

in vain are defended by a double cuirass; villains eat us by dozens

at their breakfast, and all is over with us forever. What a horrible

fate is that of an oyster, and how barbarous are men!”

Pythagoras shuddered; he felt the enormity of the crime he had nearly

committed; he begged pardon of the oyster, with tears in his eyes,

and replaced it very carefully on the rock.

As he was returning to the city, profoundly meditating on this

adventure, he saw spiders devouring flies; swallows eating spiders,

and sparrow-hawks eating swallows. “None of these,” said he, “are

philosophers.”

On his entrance, Pythagoras was stunned, bruised, and thrown down by

a lot of tatterdemalions, who were running and crying: “Well done, he

fully deserved it.” “Who? What?” said Pythagoras, as he was getting

up. The people continued running and crying: “Oh, how delightful it

will be to see them boiled!”

Pythagoras supposed they meant lentils or some other vegetables, but

he was in error; they meant two poor Indians. “Oh!” said Pythagoras,

“these Indians, without doubt, are two great philosophers weary of

their lives; they are desirous of regenerating under other forms; it

affords pleasure to a man to change his place of residence, though he

may be but indifferently lodged; there is no disputing on taste.”

He proceeded with the mob to the public square, where he perceived

a lighted pile of wood and a bench opposite to it, which was called

a tribunal. On this bench judges were seated, each of whom had a

cow’s tail in his hand and a cap on his head, with ears resembling

those of the animal which bore Silenus when he came into that country

with Bacchus, after having crossed the Erytrean sea without wetting

a foot, and stopping the sun and moon, as it is recorded with great

fidelity by the Orphics.

Among these judges there was an honest man with whom Pythagoras was

acquainted. The Indian sage explained to the sage of Samos the nature

of that festival to be given to the people of India.

“These two Indians,” said he, “have not the least desire to be

committed to the flames. My grave brethren have adjudged them to

be burnt; one for saying that the substance of Xaca is not that of

Brahma, and the other for supposing that the approbation of the

Supreme Being was to be obtained at the point of death without

holding a cow by the tail. ‘Because,’ said he, ‘we may be virtuous

at all times, and we cannot always have a cow to lay hold of just

when we may have occasion.’ The good women of the city were greatly

terrified at two such heretical opinions; they would not allow the

judges a moment’s peace until they had ordered the execution of those

unfortunate men.”

Pythagoras was convinced that from the herb up to man there were

many causes of chagrin. However, he obliged the judges and even the

devotees to listen to reason, which happened only at that time.

He went afterwards and preached toleration at Crotona; but a bigot

set fire to his house, and he was burned—the man who had delivered

the two Hindoos from the flames! Let those save themselves who can!

BABABEC.

When I was in the city of Benares, on the borders of the Ganges, the

country of the ancient Brahmins, I endeavored to instruct myself

in their religion and manners. I understood the Indian language

tolerably well. I heard a great deal and remarked everything. I

lodged at the house of my correspondent, Omri, who was the most

worthy man I ever knew. He was of the religion of the Brahmins; I

have the honor to be a Mussulman. We never exchanged one word higher

than another about Mahomet or Brahma. We performed our ablutions each

on his own side; we drank of the same sherbet, and we ate of the same

rice, as if we had been two brothers.

One day we went together to the pagoda of Gavani. There we saw

several bands of fakirs, some of whom were janguis, that is to say,

contemplative fakirs, and others were disciples of the ancient

Gymnosophists, who led an active life. They all have a learned

language peculiar to themselves; it is that of the most ancient

Brahmins; and they have a book written in this language, which they

call the “_Shasta_.” It is, beyond all contradiction, the most

ancient book in all Asia, not excepting the “_Zend_.”

I happened by chance to cross in front of a fakir who was reading in

this book.

“Ah! wretched infidel!” cried he, “thou hast made me lose a number of

vowels that I was counting, which will cause my soul to pass into the

body of a hare instead of that of a parrot, with which I had before

the greatest reason to flatter myself.”

I gave him a rupee to comfort him for the accident. In going a few

paces farther I had the misfortune to sneeze. The noise I made roused

a fakir, who was in a trance.

“Heavens!” cried he, “what a dreadful noise. Where am I? I can no

longer see the tip of my nose—the heavenly light has disappeared.”

“If I am the cause,” said I, “of your not seeing farther than the

length of your nose, here is a rupee to repair the great injury I

have done you. Squint again, my friend, and resume the heavenly

light.”

Having thus brought myself off discreetly enough, I passed over to

the side of the Gymnosophists, several of whom brought me a parcel

of mighty pretty nails to drive into my arms and thighs, in honor

of Brahma. I bought their nails and made use of them to fasten down

my boxes. Others were dancing upon their hands, others cut capers

on the slack rope, and others went always upon one foot. There were

some who dragged a heavy chain about with them, and others carried a

packsaddle; some had their heads always in a bushel—the best people

in the world to live with. My friend Omri took me to the cell of one

of the most famous of these. His name was Bababec; he was as naked

as he was born, and had a great chain about his neck that weighed

upwards of sixty pounds. He sat on a wooden chair, very neatly

decorated with little points of nails that penetrated into his flesh,

and you would have thought he had been sitting on a velvet cushion.

Numbers of women flocked to him to consult him. He was the oracle of

all the families in the neighborhood, and was, truly speaking, in

great reputation. I was witness to a long conversation that Omri had

with him.

“Do you think, father,” said my friend, “that after having gone

through seven metempsychoses, I may at length arrive at the

habitation of Brahma?”

“That is as it may happen,” said the fakir. “What sort of life do you

lead?”

“I endeavor,” answered Omri, “to be a good subject, a good husband,

a good father, and a good friend. I lend money without interest to

the rich who want it, and I give it to the poor; I always strive to

preserve peace among my neighbors.”

“But have you ever run nails into your flesh?” demanded the Brahmin.

“Never, reverend father.”

“I am sorry for it,” replied the father, “very sorry for it, indeed.

It is a thousand pities, but you will certainly not reach above the

nineteenth heaven.”

“No higher!” said Omri. “In truth, I am very well contented with

my lot. What is it to me whether I go into the nineteenth or the

twentieth, provided I do my duty in my pilgrimage, and am well

received at the end of my journey? Is it not as much as one can

desire to live with a fair character in this world and be happy with

Brahma in the next? And pray what heaven do you think of going to,

good master Bababec, with your chain?”

“Into the thirty-fifth,” said Bababec.

“I admire your modesty,” replied Omri, “to pretend to be better

lodged than me. This is surely the result of an excessive ambition.

How can you, who condemn others that covet honors in this world,

arrogate such distinguished ones to yourself in the next? What right

have you to be better treated than me? Know that I bestow more alms

to the poor in ten days than the nails you run into your flesh cost

for ten years. What is it to Brahma that you pass the whole day stark

naked with a chain about your neck? This is doing a notable service

to your country, doubtless! I have a thousand times more esteem for

the man who sows pulse or plants trees than for all your tribe, who

look at the tips of their noses or carry packsaddles to show their

magnanimity.”

Having finished this speech, Omri softened his voice, embraced the

Brahmin, and, with an endearing sweetness, besought him to throw

aside his nails and his chain, to go home with him and live with

decency and comfort.

The fakir was persuaded: he was washed clean, rubbed with essences

and perfumes and clad in a decent habit; he lived a fortnight in this

manner, behaved with prudence and wisdom and acknowledged that he was

a thousand times happier than before; but he lost his credit among

the people; the women no longer crowded to consult him; he therefore

quitted the house of the friendly Omri and returned to his nails and

his chain—to regain his reputation.

ANCIENT FAITH AND FABLE.

In order to be successful in their efforts to govern the multitude,

rulers have endeavored to instil all the visionary notions possible

into the minds of their subjects.

The good people who read Virgil, or the “Provincial Letters,” do

not know that there are twenty times more copies of the “Almanac of

Liège” and of the “_Courier Boiteux_” printed than of all the ancient

and modern books together. No one can have a greater admiration

than myself for the illustrious authors of these almanacs and their

brethren. I know that ever since the time of the ancient Chaldæans

there have been fixed and stated days for taking physic, paring our

nails, giving battle, and cleaving wood. I know that the best part of

the revenue of an illustrious academy consists in the sale of these

almanacs. May I presume to ask, with all possible submission and a

becoming diffidence of my own judgment, what harm it would do to the

world if some powerful astrologer were to assure the peasants and the

good inhabitants of little villages that they might safely pare their

nails when they please, provided it be done with a good intention?

The people, I shall be told, would not buy the almanacs of this new

astrologer. On the contrary, I will venture to affirm that there

would be found among your great geniuses many who would make a merit

in following this novelty. Should it be alleged, however, that these

geniuses, in their new-born zeal, would form factions and kindle a

civil war, I would have nothing further to say on the subject, but

readily give up for the sake of peace my too radical and dangerous

opinion.

Everybody knows the king of Boutan. He is one of the greatest princes

in the universe. He tramples under his feet the thrones of the earth,

and his shoes (if he has any) are provided with sceptres instead

of buckles. He adores the devil, as is well known, and his example

is followed by all his courtiers. He one day sent for a famous

sculptor of my country and ordered him to make a beautiful statue

of Beelzebub. The sculptor succeeded admirably. Never before was

there seen such an interesting and handsome devil. But, unhappily,

our Praxiteles had only given five clutches to his statue, whereas

the devout Boutaniers always gave him six. This serious blunder of

the artist was attributed by the grand master of ceremonies to the

devil with all the zeal of a man justly jealous of his master’s

acknowledged rights, and also of the established and sacred customs

of the kingdom of Boutan. He insisted that the sculptor should be

punished for his thoughtless innovation, by the loss of his head. The

anxious sculptor explained that his five clutches were exactly equal

in weight to six ordinary clutches; and the king of Boutan, who was

a prince of great clemency, granted him a pardon. From that time the

people of Boutan no longer believed the dogma relating to the devil’s

six clutches.

The same day it was thought necessary that his majesty should be

bled, and a surgeon of Gascony, who had come to his court in a ship

belonging to our East India company, was appointed to take from him

five ounces of his precious blood. The astrologer of that quarter

cried out that the king would be in danger of losing his life if the

surgeon opened a vein while the heavens were in their present state.

The Gascon might have told him that the only question was about the

king’s health; but he prudently waited a few moments, and then,

taking an almanac in his hand, thus addressed the astrologer:

“You were in the right, great man! The king would have died had he

been bled at the instant you mentioned, but the heavens have since

changed their aspect, and now is the favorable moment.”

The astrologer assented to the surgeon’s observation. The king was

cured; and by degrees it became an established custom among the

Boutaniers to bleed their kings whenever it was considered necessary.

Although the Indian astrologers understood the method of calculating

eclipses, yet the common people obstinately held to the old belief

that the sun, when obscured, had fallen into the throat of a great

dragon, and that the only way to free him from thence was by standing

naked in the water and making a hideous noise to frighten away the

monster, and oblige him to release his hold. This notion, which is

quite prevalent among the orientals, is an evident proof how much the

symbols of religion and natural philosophy have at all times been

perverted by the common people. The astronomers of all ages have been

wont to distinguish the two points of intersection, upon which every

eclipse happens, and which are called the lunar nodes, by marking

them with a dragon’s head and tail. Now the vulgar, who are equally

ignorant in every part of the world, took the symbol or sign for

the thing itself. Thus, when the astronomers said the sun is in the

dragon’s head, the common people said the dragon is going to swallow

up the sun; and yet these people were remarkable for their fondness

for astrology. But while we laugh at the ignorance and credulity of

the Indians, we do not reflect that there are no less than 300,000

almanacs sold yearly in Europe, all of them filled with observations

and predictions equally as false and absurd as any to be met with

among the Indians. It is surely as reasonable to say that the sun is

in the mouth or the claws of a dragon as to tell people every year

in print that they must not sow, nor plant, nor take physic, nor be

bled, but on certain days of the moon. It is high time, in an age

like ours, that some men of learning should think it worth their

while to compose a calendar that might be of use to the industrious

classes by instructing instead of deceiving them.

A blustering Dominican at Rome said to an English philosopher with

whom he was disputing:

“You are a dog; you say that it is the earth that turns round, never

reflecting that Joshua made the sun to stand still!”

“Well! my reverend father,” replied the philosopher, “ever since that

time has not the sun been immovable?”

The dog and the Dominican embraced each other, and even the devout

Italians were at length convinced that the earth turns round.

An augur and a senator lamented, in the time of Cæsar, the declining

state of the republic.

“The times, indeed, are very bad,” said the senator; “we have reason

to tremble for the liberty of Rome.”

“Ah!” said the augur, “that is not the greatest evil; the people now

begin to lose the respect which they formerly had for our order. We

seem barely to be tolerated—we cease to be necessary. Some generals

have the assurance to give battle without consulting us. And, to

complete our misfortunes, even those who sell us the sacred pullets

begin to reason.”

“Well, and why don’t you reason likewise?” replied the senator, “and

since the dealers in pullets in the time of Cæsar are more knowing

than they were in the time of Numa, ought not you modern augurs to be

better philosophers than those who lived in former ages?”

THE TWO COMFORTERS.

The great philosopher Citosile once said to a woman who was

disconsolate, and who had good reason to be so: “Madame, the queen

of England, daughter to Henry IV., was as wretched as you. She was

banished from her kingdom, was in great danger of losing her life at

sea, and saw her royal spouse expire on a scaffold.”

“I am sorry for her,” said the lady, and began again to lament her

own misfortunes.

“But,” said Citosile, “remember the fate of Mary Stuart. She loved

(but with a most chaste and virtuous affection) an excellent

musician, who played admirably on the bass-viol. Her husband killed

her musician before her face; and in the sequel her good friend and

relative, Queen Elizabeth, who called herself a virgin, caused her

head to be cut off on a scaffold covered with black, after having

confined her in prison for the space of eighteen years.”

“That was very cruel,” replied the lady, and presently relapsed into

her former melancholy.

“Perhaps,” said the comforter, “you have heard of the beautiful Joan

of Naples, who was taken prisoner and strangled.”

“I have a dim remembrance of her,” said the afflicted lady.

“I must relate to you,” continued the other, “the adventure of a

sovereign princess who, within my recollection, was dethroned after

supper and who died on a desert island.”

“I know her whole history,” replied the lady.

“Well, then,” said Citosile, “I will tell you what happened to

another great princess whom I instructed in philosophy. She had

a lover, as all great and beautiful princesses have. Her father

surprised this lover in her company, and was so displeased with

the young man’s confused manner and excited countenance that he

gave him one of the most terrible blows that had ever been given in

his province. The lover seized a pair of tongs and broke the head

of the angry parent, who was cured with great difficulty, and who

still bears the marks of the wound. The lady in a fright leaped out

of the window and dislocated her foot, in consequence of which she

habitually halts, though still possessed in other respects of a very

handsome person. The lover was condemned to death for having broken

the head of a great prince. You can imagine in what a deplorable

condition the princess must have been when her lover was led to the

gallows. I have seen her long ago when she was in prison, and she

always spoke to me of her own misfortunes.”

“And why will you not allow me to think of mine?” said the lady.

[Illustration: SO MANY GREAT LADIES HAVE BEEN SO UNFORTUNATE, IT ILL

BECOMES YOU TO DESPAIR]

“Because,” said the philosopher, “you ought not to think of

them; and since so many great ladies have been so unfortunate, it ill

becomes you to despair. Think of Hecuba—think of Niobe.”

“Ah!” said the lady, “had I lived in their time, or in that of so

many beautiful princesses, and had you endeavored to console them by

a relation of my misfortunes, would they have listened to you, do you

imagine?”

Next day the philosopher lost his only son, and was entirely

prostrated with grief. The lady caused a catalogue to be drawn up

of all the kings who had lost their children, and carried it to the

philosopher. He read it—found it very exact—and wept nevertheless.

Three months afterwards they chanced to renew their acquaintance,

and were mutually surprised to find each other in such a gay and

sprightly humor. To commemorate this event, they caused to be erected

a beautiful statue to Time, with this inscription: “TO HIM WHO

COMFORTS.”

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN

MARCUS AURELIUS AND

A RECOLLET FRIAR.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—Now I think I begin to know where I am. That’s

certainly the capitol, and that basilica, the temple. The person I

behold there is undoubtedly the priest of Jupiter. Hark ye, friend;

one word with you, if you please.

FRIAR.—Friend! very familiar, truly: you must certainly be a stranger

in Rome, to accost in this manner brother Fulgentius the recollet, an

inhabitant of the capitol, confessor to the duchess de Popoli, and

who speaks sometimes to the pope, with as much familiarity as if he

were a mere mortal.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—Brother Fulgentius in the capitol! Matters are

somewhat changed indeed. I don’t understand one word you say. Is

there no such place here as the temple of Jupiter?

FRIAR.—Get you gone about your business, honest friend; you seem to

be out of your senses. Who are you, prithee, with your antique dress

and your Jew’s beard? Whence come you, and what do you want here?

MARCUS AURELIUS.—This is my ordinary apparel: I am come back to see

Rome once more. My name is Marcus Aurelius.

FRIAR.—Marcus Aurelius! I think I remember to have heard of such a

name. If I don’t mistake, there was a Pagan emperor so called.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—I am he. I longed to have another view of that Rome

which I loved, and which was so fond of me; that capitol in which I

triumphed by my contempt of triumph; that land I formerly rendered

so happy: but now I can hardly think it to be the same place. I have

been to see the column that was erected to my honor, and have not

been able to find the statue of the sage Antonine, my father. The

face is quite altered from what it was.

FRIAR.—So it ought, M. Damned Soul. Sixtus V. erected that column;

but then he put on it a better man than you and your father to boot.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—I was always of opinion it was no difficult matter

to excel me; but I thought it no such easy affair to surpass my

father. Perhaps my piety towards him has imposed on my judgment. All

men are liable to error. But why give me the epithet of Damned Soul?

FRIAR.—Because so you are. Was it not you—let me see, I don’t

mistake—that so often persecuted a set of folks, to whom you lay

under very great obligations, and who procured you a shower of rain

which enabled you to thrash your enemies?

MARCUS AURELIUS.—Alas! I was very far from persecuting any one. I

thank Heaven, by a very happy conjuncture, a storm happened, just in

the nick of time, to save my troops, who were dying of thirst; but

I never heard before that I owed the favor of this tempest to the

folks you mention, though, to tell you the truth, they were very good

soldiers. I assure you, in the most solemn manner, I am not damned:

I have done too much good to mankind, that the Divine Being should

do me any evil. But, prithee tell me, where is the palace of the

emperor, my successor? Is it still on the Palatine hill? For really I

hardly know my own country again.

FRIAR.—I believe it, truly, we have so improved everything. If you

please, I will carry you to Monte Cavallo: you shall have the honor

to kiss the great toe of St. Peter; and you will, besides, receive a

handsome present of indulgences, which, in my humble opinion, will be

very seasonable; for I don’t doubt you stand in great need of them.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—First of all, I desire you would grant me your own;

and tell me ingenuously, is there an end of the emperors and empire

of Rome?

FRIAR.—No, no, by no means; there is still an empire and an emperor;

but then he keeps his court at the distance of about four hundred

leagues hence, at a small city called Vienna, on the Danube. My

advice is, that you go there to pay a visit to your successors;

because here you stand a great chance to visit the inquisition. I

warn you that the reverend Dominican fathers are not at all disposed

to jest in such matters, and that your Marcus Aureliuses, your

Antonines, your Trajans, and your Tituses, and such gentry as cannot

say their catechism, are treated by them after a very scurvy manner.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—The catechism! the inquisition! Dominicans!

Recollets! a pope and cardinals! and the Roman Empire in a little

city on the Danube! I could never have dreamt of such things; though

I will allow, that in sixteen hundred years things will change

strangely in this world of ours. I could like, methinks, to see one

of these Roman emperors, Marcoman, Quadus, Cimber, and Teuto.

FRIAR.—You shall not want that pleasure when you please, and a

greater than that still. You would, in all likelihood, be surprised,

were I to tell you that the Scythians hold one half of your empire,

and we the other: that the sovereign of Rome is a priest like me:

that brother Fulgentius may be that sovereign in his turn: that I

shall disperse indulgences on the very spot where you were wont to be

drawn in your car by vanquished sovereigns: and, lastly, that your

successor on the Danube has not a city he can call his own; but that

there is a certain priest that lets him have the use of his capital,

when he has occasion for it.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—You tell me strange news, indeed. All these great

changes could never have happened without great misfortunes. I own I

still love the human race, and am heartily sorry for them.

FRIAR.—You are too good. These revolutions have really cost a deluge

of blood, and a hundred provinces have been ravaged; but had it not

been so, your servant, brother Fulgentius, had never slept at his

ease in the capitol.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—Rome, that metropolis of the universe, is then most

miserably fallen.

FRIAR.—Fallen, I grant you; but as for miserably, there I must

say you nay: on the contrary, peace and the fine arts flourish

here eternally. The ancient masters of the world are now become

music-masters. Instead of sending colonies into England, we now send

them eunuchs and fiddlers. We have, it is true, none of your Scipios

now, those destroyers of Carthage; but then we have none of your

proscriptions neither. We have bartered glory for tranquillity.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—I tried what I could to become a philosopher in

my life-time, but now I am sure I have become one indeed. I find

tranquillity is at the least an equivalent for glory: but, by what

you tell me, I should be apt to suspect brother Fulgentius is no

adept in philosophy.

FRIAR.—What do you mean? Not a philosopher! I am one with a

vengeance. I once taught philosophy; nay, better still, I read

lectures in theology.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—And, pray, what may this theology of yours be, an’t

please you?

FRIAR.—Why, it is—it is that which has made me be here, and the

emperor elsewhere. You seem to grudge me the honor I enjoy, and are

out of humor at the trifling revolution that has happened to your

empire.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—I adore the eternal decrees of Providence: I know

man ought not to repine at fate: I admire the vicissitude of human

affairs; but since everything is so liable to change, and since the

Roman Empire has experienced this wonderful mutability, let me hope

the recollets may also experience it in their turn.

FRIAR.—I declare you anathematized: but hold, now I think on’t, it is

time to go to matins.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—And I will go and be reunited to the Being of

Beings.

DIALOGUE   BETWEEN   A   BRAHMIN

AND A JESUIT, ON NECESSITY AND

FREE-WILL,   AND  THE  GENERAL

CONCATENATION  OF  CAUSES  AND

EFFECTS.

JESUIT.—In all probability, you are indebted to the prayers of St.

Francis Xavier for that long and happy life you have enjoyed a

hundred and fourscore years! Why, ’tis a life-time for a patriarch.

BRAHMIN.—My master, Fonfouca, lived till three hundred; it is the

ordinary course of life among us Brahmins. I have a very great regard

for Francis Xavier; but all his prayers would never have put nature

out of her destined order: had he really been able to prolong the

life of a gnat but for one single instant beyond what the general

concatenation of causes and events allows of, this globe of ours had

worn a quite different appearance from that in which you now behold

it.

JESUIT.—You have a strange opinion of future contingents: why, you

must be entirely ignorant that man is free, and that our free-will

disposes of everything in this sublunary world at its mere fancy and

pleasure. I can assure you the Jesuits alone have contributed not a

little to some very considerable revolutions.

BRAHMIN.—I have no manner of question in regard to the learning and

power of the reverend fathers, the Jesuits: they are a very valuable

part of human society; yet I cannot by any means believe them the

sovereign arbiters of human transactions: every single person, every

single being, whether Jesuit or Brahmin, is one of the springs which

act in the general movement of the universe; in which he is the

slave, and not the master of destiny. Pray, to what do you think

Genghis Khan owed the conquest of Asia? To the very moment in which

his father one day happened to awake as he was in bed with his wife;

to a word which a Tartar chanced to let fall some years before. I,

for example, the very person you behold, am one of the chief causes

of the deplorable death of Henry IV., for which, you may see, I am

still much afflicted.

JESUIT.—Your reverence is pleased to be very merry upon the matter?

You the cause of the death of Henry IV.!

BRAHMIN.—Alas! it is too true. This happened in the nine hundred and

eighty-three thousandth year of the revolution of Saturn, which makes

the fifteen hundred and fiftieth of your era. I was then young and

giddy headed. I thought proper, upon a time, to take a walk, which I

began with moving my left foot first, on the coast of Malabar, whence

most evidently followed the death of Henry IV.

JESUIT.—How so, prithee? For, as to our society, who were accused

with having had a large share in that affair, we had not the least

knowledge of it.

BRAHMIN.—I’ll tell ye how fate thought proper to order the matter.

By moving my left foot, as I told you, I unluckily tumbled my friend

Eriban, the Persian merchant, into the water, and he was drowned. My

friend, it seems, had a very handsome wife, that ran away with an

Armenian merchant: this lady had a daughter, who married a Greek; the

daughter of this Greek settled in France, and married the father of

Ravaillac. Now, had not every tittle of this happened exactly as it

did, you are very sensible the affairs of the houses of France and

Austria would have turned out in a very different manner. The system

of Europe would have been entirely changed. The wars between Turkey

and the German Empire would have had quite another issue; which issue

would have had an effect on Persia, as well as Persia on the East

Indies; so you see it is plain to a demonstration, that the whole

depended on my left foot, which was connected with all the other

events of the universe, past, present, and to come.

JESUIT.—I must have this affair laid before some of our fathers, who

are theologians.

BRAHMIN.—In the meantime, I will tell you, father, that

the maid-servant of the grandfather of the founder of the

_Feuillants_—for you must know I have dipped into your histories—was

likewise one principal cause of the death of Henry IV., and of all

the accidents which it produced.

JESUIT.—This servant-maid must then have been a domineering quean!

BRAHMIN.—Oh fie! no such thing. She was a mere idiot, by whom her

master had a child. Madame de la Barrière, poor soul, died of grief

at it. She who succeeded her was, as your chronicles tell, the

grandmother of the blessed John de la Barrière, who founded the order

of _Feuillants_. Ravaillac was a monk of this order. With them he

sucked in a certain doctrine very fashionable in those days, as you

well enough know. This doctrine taught him to believe that the most

meritorious thing he could possibly do was to assassinate the best

king in the whole world. What followed is known to everybody.

JESUIT.—In spite of your left foot, and the wench of the grandfather

of the founder of the _Feuillants_, I shall ever be of opinion that

the horrible action committed by Ravaillac was a future contingent,

which might very well not have happened: for, after all, man is

certainly a free agent.

BRAHMIN.—I do not know what you mean by a free agent. I can affix no

certain idea to these words. To be free, is to do whatever we think

proper, and not to will whatever we please. All I know of the matter

is, that Ravaillac voluntarily committed the crime, of which he was

destined by fate to be the instrument. This crime was no more than a

link of the great chain of destiny.

JESUIT.—You may say what you will, but the affairs of this world are

far from having any such dependence as you are pleased to think.

What signifies, for example, this useless conversation of ours, here

on the shores of the East Indies?

BRAHMIN.—What you and I say in conversation is doubtless sufficiently

insignificant; but, for all that, were you not here, the machine of

the universe would be extremely changed from what it is.

JESUIT.—There your Brahmin reverence is pleased to advance a huge

paradox truly.

BRAHMIN.—Your Ignatian fathership may believe me or no, as you

like it. But assuredly, we should never have had this conversation

together, had you not come into the East Indies. You had never made

this voyage, had not your St. Ignatius de Loyola been wounded at the

siege of Pampeluna, or had not the king of Portugal persisted in

discovering the passage round the Cape of Good Hope. Now, prithee,

did not the king of Portugal, with the help of the compass, entirely

change the face of this world of ours? But it was first of all

necessary that a certain Neapolitan should make this discovery of the

compass; now tell me, if you have the face, that everything is not

wholly subservient to one constant and uniform tenor of action; which

by indissoluble, but invisible, concatenation, unites all that lives,

or acts, or dies, or suffers on the surface of our globe?

JESUIT.—What then would become of our future contingents?

BRAHMIN.—What care I what become of them? but yet the order

established by the hand of an eternal and almighty God must certainly

exist forever.

JESUIT.—Were one to listen to you, we ought not to pray to God at all.

BRAHMIN.—It is our duty to adore Him. But pray what mean ye by

praying to God?

JESUIT.—What all the world means by it, to be sure: that He would

grant our petitions, and favor us in all our wants.

BRAHMIN.—I understand you. You mean, that a gardener might obtain

clear sunshine weather, at a time which God had ordained from all

eternity to produce rains; and that a pilot should have an easterly

wind, when a westerly wind ought to refresh the earth, as well as the

seas? My good father, to pray as we ought is to submit one’s self

wholly to Providence. So good evening to you. Destiny requires I

should now visit my Brahminess.

JESUIT.—And my free-will urges me to give a lesson to a young

scholar.

DIALOGUES BETWEEN

LUCRETIUS AND

POSIDONIUS.

FIRST COLLOQUY.

POSIDONIUS.—Your poetry is sometimes admirable; but the philosophy of

Epicurus is, in my opinion, very bad.

LUCRETIUS.—What! will you not allow that the atoms, of their own

accord, disposed themselves in such a manner as to produce the

universe?

POSIDONIUS.—We mathematicians can admit nothing but what is proved by

incontestable principles.

LUCRETIUS.—My principles are so.

_Ex nihilo nihil, in nihilum nil posse reverti._

_Tangere enim & tangi nisi corpus nulla potest res._

From nothing nought can spring, to nothing nought return.

Nought but a body can a body touch.

POSIDONIUS.—Should I grant you these principles, and even your atoms

and your vacuum, you can no more persuade me that the universe put

itself into the admirable order in which we now behold it, than if

you were to tell the Romans that the armillary sphere composed by

Posidonius made itself.

LUCRETIUS.—But who then could make the world?

POSIDONIUS.—An intelligent Being, much more superior to the world

and to me than I am to the brass of which I made my sphere.

LUCRETIUS.—How can you, who admit nothing but what is evident,

acknowledge a principle of which you have not the least idea?

POSIDONIUS.—In the same manner as, before I knew you, I judged that

your book was the work of a man of genius.

LUCRETIUS.—You allow that nature is eternal, and exists because it

does exist. Now if it exists by its own power, why may it not, by the

same power, have formed suns, and worlds, and plants, and animals,

and men?

POSIDONIUS.—All the ancient philosophers have supposed matter to be

eternal, but have never proved it to be really so; and even allowing

it to be eternal, it would by no means follow that it could form

works in which there are so many striking proofs of wisdom and

design. Suppose this stone to be eternal if you will, you can never

persuade me that it could have composed the “Iliad” of Homer.

LUCRETIUS.—No: a stone could never have composed the “Iliad,” any

more than it could have produced a horse: but matter organized in

process of time, and become bones, flesh, and blood, will produce a

horse; and organized more finely, will produce the “Iliad.”

POSIDONIUS.—You suppose all this without any proof; and I ought to

admit nothing without proof. I will give you bones, flesh, and blood,

ready made, and will leave you and all the Epicureans in the world

to make your best of them. Will you only consent to this alternative:

to be put in possession of the whole Roman Empire, if, with all the

ingredients ready prepared, you produce a horse, and to be hanged if

you fail in the attempt?

LUCRETIUS.—No; that surpasses my power, but not the power of nature.

It requires millions of ages for nature, after having passed through

all the possible forms, to arrive at last at the only one which can

produce living beings.

POSIDONIUS.—You might, if you pleased, continue all your lifetime to

shake in a cask all the materials of the earth mixed together, you

would never be able to form any regular figure; you could produce

nothing. If the length of your life is not sufficient to produce even

a mushroom, will the length of another man’s life be sufficient for

that purpose? Why should several ages be able to effect what one age

has not effected? One ought to have seen men and animals spring from

the bosom of the earth, and corn produced without seed, etc., before

he should venture to affirm that matter, by its own energy, could

give itself such forms; but no one that I know of has seen such an

operation, and therefore no one ought to believe it.

LUCRETIUS.—Well! men, animals, and trees must always have existed.

All the philosophers allow that matter is eternal; and they must

further allow, that generations are so likewise. It is the very

nature of matter that there should be stars that revolve, birds that

fly, horses that run, and men that compose “Iliads.”

POSIDONIUS.—In this new supposition you change your opinion; but you

always suppose the point in question, and admit a thing for which you

have not the least proof.

LUCRETIUS.—I am at liberty to believe that what is to-day was

yesterday, was a century ago, was a hundred centuries ago, and so on

backwards without end. I make use of your argument: no one has ever

seen the sun and stars begin their course, nor the first animals

formed and endowed with life. We may, therefore, safely believe that

all things were from eternity as they are at present.

POSIDONIUS.—There is a very great difference. I see an admirable

design, and I ought to believe that an intelligent being formed that

design.

LUCRETIUS.—You ought not to admit a being of whom you have no

knowledge.

POSIDONIUS.—You might as well tell me that I should not believe that

an architect built the capitol because I never saw that architect.

LUCRETIUS.—Your comparison is not just. You have seen houses built,

and you have seen architects; and therefore you ought to conclude

that it was a man like our present architects that built the capitol.

But here the case is very different: the capitol does not exist of

itself, but matter does. It must necessarily have had some form; and

why will you not allow it to possess, by its own energy, the form in

which it now is? Is it not much easier for you to admit that nature

modifies itself, than to acknowledge a being that modifies it? In the

former case you have only one difficulty to encounter, namely, to

comprehend how nature acts. In the latter you have two difficulties

to surmount: to comprehend this same nature, and the visible being

that acts on it.

POSIDONIUS.—It is quite the reverse. I see not only a difficulty, but

even an impossibility in comprehending how matter can have infinite

designs; but I see no difficulty in admitting an intelligent being,

who governs this matter by his infinite wisdom, and by his almighty

will.

LUCRETIUS.—What? is it because your mind cannot comprehend one thing

that you are to suppose another? Is it because you do not understand

the secret springs, and admirable contrivances, by which nature

disposed itself into planets, suns, and animals, that you have

recourse to another being?

POSIDONIUS.—No; I have not recourse to a god, because I cannot

comprehend nature; but I plainly perceive that nature needs a supreme

intelligence; and this reason alone would to me be a sufficient proof

of a deity had I no other.

LUCRETIUS.—And what if this matter possessed intelligence of itself?

POSIDONIUS.—It is plain to me that it does not possess it.

LUCRETIUS.—And to me it is plain that it does possess it, since I see

bodies like you and me reason.

POSIDONIUS.—If matter possesses, of itself, the faculty of thinking,

you must affirm that it possesses it necessarily and independently:

but if this property be essential to matter, it must have it at

all times and in all places; for whatever is essential to a thing

can never be separated from it. A bit of clay, and even the vilest

excrement would think; but sure you will not say that dung thinks.

Thought, therefore, is not an essential attribute of matter.

LUCRETIUS.—Your reasoning is a mere sophism. I hold motion to be

essential to matter; and yet this dung, or that piece of clay, is not

actually in motion; but they will be so when they are impelled by

some other body. In like manner thought will not be an attribute of a

body, except when that body is organized for thinking.

POSIDONIUS.—Your error proceeds from this, that you always suppose

the point in question. You do not reflect that, in order to organize

a body, to make it a man, to render it a thinking being, there must

previously be thought, there must be a fixed design. But you cannot

admit such a thing as design before the only beings in this world

capable of design are formed; you cannot admit thought before the

only beings capable of thinking exist. You likewise suppose the

point in question, when you say that motion is necessary to matter;

for what is absolutely necessary always exists, as extension, for

instance, exists always and in every part of matter; but motion does

not exist always. The pyramids of Egypt are not surely in motion.

A subtile matter perhaps, may penetrate between the stones which

compose the pyramids; but the body of the pyramid is immovable.

Motion, therefore, is not essential to matter, but is communicated to

it by a foreign cause, in the same manner as thought is to men. Hence

it follows that there must be a powerful and intelligent being, who

communicates motion, life, and thought to his creatures.

LUCRETIUS.—I can easily answer your objections by saying that there

have always been motion and intelligence in the world. This motion

and this intelligence have been distributed at all times according to

the laws of nature. Matter being eternal, it must necessarily have

been in some order; but it could not be put into any order without

thought and motion; and therefore thought and motion must have always

been inherent in it.

POSIDONIUS.—Do what you will, you can at best but make suppositions.

You suppose an order; there must, therefore, have been some

intelligent mind who formed this order. You suppose motion and

thought before matter was in motion, and before there were men and

thoughts. You must allow, that thought is not essential to matter,

since you dare not say that a flint thinks. You can oppose nothing

but a _perhaps_ to the truth that presses hard upon you. You are

sensible of the weakness of matter, and are forced to admit a

supreme intelligent and almighty being, who organized matter and

thinking beings. The designs of this superior intelligence shine

forth in every part of nature, and you must perceive them as

distinctly in a blade of grass, as in the course of the stars.

Everything is evidently directed to a certain end.

LUCRETIUS.—But do you not take for a design what is only a necessary

existence? Do you not take for an end what is no more than the use

which we make of things that exist? The Argonauts built a ship to

sail to Colchis. Will you say that the trees were created in order

that the Argonauts might build a ship, and that the sea was made to

enable them to undertake their voyage? Men wear stockings: will you

say that legs were made by the Supreme Being in order to be covered

with stockings? No, doubtless; but the Argonauts, having seen wood,

built a ship with it, and having learned that the water could carry

a ship, they undertook their voyage. In the same manner, after an

infinite number of forms and combinations which matter had assumed,

it was found that the humors, and the transparent horn which compose

the eye, and which were formerly separated in different parts of

the body, were united in the head, and animals began to see. The

organs of generation, dispersed before, were likewise collected, and

took the form they now have; and then all kinds of procreation were

conducted with regularity. The matter of the sun, which had been

long diffused and scattered through the universe, was conglobated,

and formed the luminary that enlightens our world. Is there anything

impossible in all this?

POSIDONIUS.—In fact, you cannot surely be serious when you have

recourse to such a system: for, in the first place, if you adopt this

hypothesis, you must, of course, reject the eternal generations of

which you have just now been talking: and, in the second place, you

are mistaken with regard to final causes. There are voluntary uses to

which we apply the gifts of nature; and there are likewise necessary

effects. The Argonauts need not, unless they had pleased, have

employed the trees of the forest to build a ship; but these trees

were plainly destined to grow on the earth, and to produce fruits and

leaves. We need not cover our legs with stockings; but the leg was

evidently made to support the body, and to walk, the eyes to see, the

ears to hear, and the parts of generation to perpetuate the species.

If you consider that a star, placed at the distance of four or five

hundred millions of leagues from us, sends forth rays of light, which

make precisely the same angle in the eyes of every animal, and that,

at that instant, all animals have the sensation of light, you must

acknowledge that this is an instance of the most admirable mechanism

and design. But is it not unreasonable to admit mechanism without a

mechanic, a design without intelligence, and such designs without a

Supreme Being?

LUCRETIUS.—If I admit the Supreme Being, what form must I give Him?

Is He in one place? Is He out of all place? Is He in time or out

of time? Does He fill the whole of space, or does He not fill it?

Why did He make the world? What was His end in making it? Why form

sensible and unhappy beings? Why moral and natural evil? On whatever

side I turn my mind, everything appears dark and incomprehensible.

POSIDONIUS.—’Tis a necessary consequence of the existence of this

Supreme Being that His nature should be incomprehensible; for, if

He exists, there must be an infinite distance between Him and us.

We ought to believe that He is, without endeavoring to know what

He is, or how He operates. Are you not obliged to admit asymptotes

in geometry, without comprehending how it is possible for the same

lines to be always approaching, and yet never to meet? Are there not

many things as incomprehensible as demonstrable, in the properties

of the circle? Confess, therefore, that you ought to admit what is

incomprehensible, when the existence of that incomprehensible is

proved.

LUCRETIUS.—What! must I renounce the dogmas of Epicurus?

POSIDONIUS.—It is better to renounce Epicurus than to abandon the

dictates of reason.

SECOND COLLOQUY.

LUCRETIUS.—I begin to recognize a Supreme Being, inaccessible to our

senses, and proved by our reason, who made the world, and preserves

it; but with regard to what I have said of the soul, in my third

book, which has been so much admired by all the learned men of Rome,

I hardly think you can oblige me to alter my opinion.

POSIDONIUS.—You say: “_Idque situm media regione in pectoris

hæret._”—“The mind is in the middle of the breast.”—But, when you

composed your beautiful verses, did you never make any effort of the

head? When you speak of the orators Cicero and Mark Antony, do you

not say that they had good heads? And were you to say that they had

good breasts, would not people imagine that you were talking of their

voice and lungs?

LUCRETIUS.—Are you not convinced, from experience, that the feelings

of joy, of sorrow, and of fear, are formed about the heart?

_Hic exultat enim pavor ac metus; hæc loca circum Lætitiæ mulcent._

For there our passions live, our joy, our fear, And hope.

Do you not feel your heart dilate or contract itself on the hearing

of good or bad news? Is it not possessed of some secret springs of a

yielding and elastic quality? This, therefore, must be the seat of

the soul.

POSIDONIUS.—There are two nerves which proceed from the brain, pass

through the heart and stomach, reach to the parts of generation, and

communicate motion to them; but would you therefore say, that the

human mind resides in the parts of generation?

LUCRETIUS.—No; I dare not say so. But though I should place the soul

in the head, instead of placing it in the breast, my principles will

still subsist: the soul will still be an infinitely subtile matter,

resembling the elementary fire that animates the whole machine.

POSIDONIUS.—And why do you imagine that a subtile matter can have

thoughts and sentiments of itself?

LUCRETIUS.—Because I experience it; because all the parts of my body,

when touched, presently feel the impression; because this feeling is

diffused through my whole machine; because it could not be diffused

through it but by a matter of a very subtile nature, and of a very

rapid motion; because I am a body, and one body cannot be affected

but by another; because the interior part of my body could not be

penetrated but by very small corpuscles; and, in consequence, my soul

must be an assemblage of these corpuscles.

POSIDONIUS.—We have already agreed, in our first colloquy, that it

is extremely improbable that a rock could compose the “Iliad.” Will

a ray of the sun be more capable of composing it? Suppose this ray a

hundred thousand times more subtile and rapid than usual, will this

light, or this tenuity of parts, produce thoughts and sentiments?

LUCRETIUS.—Perhaps it may, when placed in organs properly prepared.

POSIDONIUS.—You are perpetually reduced to your _perhaps_. Fire, of

itself, is no more capable of thinking than ice. Should I suppose

that it is fire that thinks, perceives, and wills in you, you would

then be forced to acknowledge that it is not by its own virtue that

it has either will, thought, or perception.

LUCRETIUS.—No; these sensations will be produced not by its own

virtue, but by the assemblage of the fire, and of my organs.

POSIDONIUS.—How can you imagine that two bodies, neither of which can

think apart, should be able to produce thought, when joined together?

LUCRETIUS.—In the same manner as a tree and earth, when taken

separately, do not produce fruit, but do so when the tree is planted

in the earth.

POSIDONIUS.—The comparison is only specious. This tree has in it

the seeds of fruit: we plainly perceive them in the buds, and the

moisture of the earth unfolds the substance of these fruits. Fire,

therefore, must possess in itself the seeds of thought, and the

organs of the body serve only to develop these seeds.

LUCRETIUS.—And do you find anything impossible in this?

POSIDONIUS.—I find that this fire, this highly refined matter, is

as devoid of the faculty of thinking as a stone. The production of

a being must have something similar to that which produced it; but

thought, will, and perception have nothing similar to fiery matter.

LUCRETIUS.—Two bodies, struck against each other, produce motion,

and yet this motion has nothing similar to the two bodies; it has

none of their three dimensions, nor has it any figure. A being,

therefore, may have nothing similar to that which produced it, and,

in consequence, thought may spring from an assemblage of two bodies

which have no thought.

POSIDONIUS.—This comparison likewise is more specious than just. I

see nothing but matter in two bodies in motion: I only see bodies

passing from one place to another. But when we reason together I see

no matter in your ideas, or in my own. I shall only observe that I

can no more conceive how one body has the power of moving another,

than I can comprehend the manner of my having ideas. To me both are

equally inexplicable, and both equally prove the existence and the

power of a Supreme Being, the author of thought and motion.

LUCRETIUS.—If our soul is not a subtile fire, an ethereal

quintessence, what is it?

POSIDONIUS.—Neither you nor I know aught of the matter. I will tell

you plainly what it is not; but I cannot tell you what it actually

is. I see that it is a power lodged in my body; that I did not give

myself this power; and, in consequence, that it must have come from

a Being superior to myself.

LUCRETIUS.—You did not give yourself life; you received it from your

father; from whom, likewise, together with life, you received the

faculty of thinking, as he had received both from his father, and so

on backwards to infinity. You no more know the true principle of life

than you do that of thought. This succession of living and thinking

beings has always existed.

POSIDONIUS.—I plainly see that you are always obliged to abandon the

system of Epicurus, and that you dare no longer maintain that the

declination of atoms produced thought. I have already, in our last

colloquy, refuted the eternal succession of sensible and thinking

beings. I showed you that, if there are material beings capable of

thinking by their own power, thought must necessarily be an attribute

essential to all matter; that, if matter thought necessarily, and

by its own virtue, all matter must of course think: but this is not

the case, and therefore it is impossible to maintain a succession of

material beings, who, of themselves, possess the faculty of thinking.

LUCRETIUS.—Notwithstanding this reasoning, which you repeat, it is

certain that a father communicates a soul to his son at the same time

that he forms his body. This soul and this body grow together; they

gradually acquire strength; they are subject to calamities, and to

the infirmities of old age. The decay of our strength draws along

with it that of our judgment; the effect at last ceases with the

cause, and the soul vanishes like smoke into air.

_Præterea, gigni pariter cum corpore, & una_

_Crescere sentimus, pariterque senescere mentem._

_Nam velet infirmo pueri, teneroque vagantur_

_Corpore, sic animi sequitur sententia tenuis._

_Inde ubi robustis adolevit viribus ætas,_

_Consilium quoque majus, & auctior est animi vis._

_Post ubi jam validis quassatum est viribus ævi_

_Corpus, & obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus:_

_Claudicat ingenium delirat linguaque, mensque;_

_Omnia deficiunt, atque uno tempore desunt,_

_Ergo dissolvi quoque convenit omnem animai_

_Naturam, ceu fumus in altas aeris auras:_

_Quandoquidem gigni pariter, pariterque videmus_

_Crescere, & (ut docui) simul ævo fessa fatiscit._

Besides, ’tis plain that souls are born, and grow;

And all by age decay, as bodies do;

To prove this truth: in infants, minds appear

Infirm, and tender as their bodies are:

In man, the mind is strong; when age prevails,

And the quick vigor of each member fails,

The mind’s powers, too, decrease, and waste apace;

And grave and reverend folly takes the place.

’Tis likely then the soul and mind must die;

Like smoke in air, its scattered atoms fly;

Since all these proofs have shown, these reasons told,

’Tis with the body born, grows strong, and old.

—CREECH.

POSIDONIUS.—These, to be sure, are very fine verses; but do you

thereby inform me of the nature of the soul?

LUCRETIUS.—No; I only give you its history, and I reason with

probability.

POSIDONIUS.—Where is the probability of a father’s communicating to

his son the faculty of thinking?

LUCRETIUS.—Do you not daily see children resembling their fathers in

their inclinations, as well as in their features?

POSIDONIUS.—But does not a father, in begetting his son, act as a

blind agent? Does he pretend, when he enjoys his wife, to make a

soul, or to make thoughts? Do either of them know the manner in

which a child is formed in the mother’s womb? Must we not, in this

case, have recourse to a superior cause, as well as in all the other

operations of nature which we have examined? Must you not see, if you

are in earnest, that men give themselves nothing, but are under the

hand of an absolute master?

LUCRETIUS.—If you know more of the matter than I do, tell me what the

soul is.

POSIDONIUS.—I do not pretend to know what it is more than you. Let us

endeavor to enlighten each other. Tell me, first, what is vegetation.

LUCRETIUS.—It is an internal motion, that carries the moisture of the

earth into plants, makes them grow, unfolds their fruits, expands

their leaves, etc.

POSIDONIUS.—Surely you do not think that there is a being called

_Vegetation_ that performs these wonders?

LUCRETIUS.—Who ever thought so?

POSIDONIUS.—From our former colloquy you ought to conclude that the

tree did not give vegetation to itself.

LUCRETIUS.—I am forced to allow it.

POSIDONIUS.—Tell me next what life is.

LUCRETIUS.—It is vegetation joined with perception in an organized

body.

POSIDONIUS.—And is there not a being called life, that gives

perception to an organized body?

LUCRETIUS.—Doubtless vegetation and life are words which signify

things that live and vegetate.

POSIDONIUS.—If a tree and an animal cannot give themselves life and

vegetation, can you give yourself thoughts?

LUCRETIUS.—I think I can, for I think of whatever I please. My

intention was to converse with you about metaphysics, and I have done

so.

POSIDONIUS.—You think that you are master of your ideas; do you know,

then, what thoughts you will have in an hour, or in a quarter of an

hour?

LUCRETIUS.—I must own that I do not.

POSIDONIUS.—You frequently have ideas in your sleep; you make verses

in a dream: Cæsar takes cities: I resolve problems; and hounds pursue

the stag in their dreams. Ideas, therefore, come to us independently

of our own will; they are given us by a Superior Being.

LUCRETIUS.—In what manner do you mean? Do you suppose that the

Supreme Being is continually employed in communicating ideas; or that

he created incorporeal substances, which were afterwards capable of

forming ideas of themselves, sometimes with the assistance of the

senses, and sometimes without it? Are these substances formed at

the moment of the animal’s conception? Or are they formed before its

conception? Do they wait for bodies, in order to insinuate themselves

into them? or are they not lodged there till the animal is capable of

receiving them? Or, in fine, is it in the Supreme Being that every

animated being sees the ideas of things? What is your opinion?

POSIDONIUS.—When you tell me how our will produces an instantaneous

motion in our bodies, how your arm obeys your will, how we receive

life, how food digests in the stomach, and how corn is transformed

into blood, I will then tell you how we have ideas. With regard to

all these particulars I frankly confess my ignorance. The world,

perhaps, may one day obtain new lights; but from the time of Thales

to the present age we have not had any. All we can do is to be

sensible of our own weakness, to acknowledge an Almighty Being, and

to be upon our guard against these systems.

DIALOGUE BETWEEN

A CLIENT AND

HIS LAWYER.

CLIENT.—Well, sir! with regard to the cause of those poor orphans?

LAWYER.—What do you mean? It is but eighteen years since their estate

has been in litigation.

CLIENT.—I don’t complain of that trifling matter; I know the custom

well enough; I respect it, but how in the name of heaven comes it to

pass that you have been these three months soliciting a hearing and

have not yet obtained it?

LAWYER.—The reason is because you have not solicited an audience in

person in behalf of your pupils; you ought to have waited on the

judge several different times, to entreat him to try your cause.

CLIENT.—It is their duty to do justice of their own accord without

waiting till it is asked them. He is a very great man that has it

in his power to sit in judgment on men’s lives and fortunes, but he

is by no means so to desire that the miserable should wait in his

antechamber. I do not go to our parson’s levee to pray and beseech

him to have the goodness to sing high mass, why ought I then to

petition my judge to discharge the function of his office? In short,

after so many and such tedious delays, are we at length going to be

so happy as to have our cause tried to-day?

LAWYER.—Why yes, and there is great likelihood of your carrying a

very material point in your process; you have a very decisive article

in “Charondas” on your side.

CLIENT.—This same Charondas was, in all probability, some

lord-chancellor in the time of one of the kings of the first race who

has passed a law in favor of orphans?

LAWYER.—By no means, he is no more than a private person who has

given his opinion in a great volume which nobody reads, but then your

advocate quotes him, the judges take it upon his credit, so there’s

your cause gained in a trice.

CLIENT.—What! do you tell me the opinion of this Judge Charondas

passes current for a law?

LAWYER.—But there is one devilish bad circumstance attends us. Turnet

and Brodeau are both against us.

CLIENT.—These, I suppose, are two other legislators whose laws have

much the same authority with those of that other hard-named gentleman.

LAWYER.—Yes, certainly, as it was impossible to explain the Roman law

sufficiently in the present case the world took different sides of

the question.

CLIENT.—What the devil signifies it to bring in the Roman law in this

affair? Do we live in the present age under Theodosius or Justinian?

LAWYER.—By no means, but our forefathers, you must know, had a

prodigious passion for tilting and fox hunting; they ran all, as if

they were mad, to the Holy Land with their doxies. You will grant

me that men in such a hurry of business of consequence could not be

supposed to have time on their hands to frame a complete body of

universal jurisprudence.

CLIENT.—Aye, aye, I understand you. For want of laws of your own you

are forced to beg of Charondas and Justinian to be so good as tell

you how you should proceed when an inheritance is to be divided.

LAWYER.—There you are mistaken, we have more laws than all Europe

besides; almost every city has a body of laws of its own.

CLIENT.—Your most obedient. Here’s another miracle.

LAWYER.—Ah! had your wards been born at Guignes-la-Putain instead of

being natives of Melun near Corbeil!

CLIENT.—Very well; what had happened then, for God’s sake?

LAWYER.—You should have gained your cause as sure as two and two

make four, that’s all, for at this same Guignes-la-Putain there is

a custom which is wholly in your favor; but were you to go but two

leagues beyond this, you would then be in a very different situation.

CLIENT.—But pray are not Guignes and Melun both in France? And can

anything be more absurd or horrible than to tell me that what’s right

in one village is wrong in another? By what fatal barbarity does

it happen that people born in the same country do yet live under

different laws?

LAWYER.—The reason is, that formerly the inhabitants of Guignes and

those of Melun were not inhabitants of the same country: these two

fine cities formed in the golden days of yore two distinct empires,

and the august sovereign of Guignes, though a vassal to the king of

France, gave laws to his own subjects. Those laws depended on the

good will and pleasure of his _major domo_, who, it seems, could

not read, so that they have been handed down by a most venerable

tradition from father to son, so that the whole race of the barons de

Guignes becoming extinct, to the irrecoverable loss of all mankind,

the conceits of their first lackeys still exist and are held for the

fundamental law of the land. The case is exactly the same in every

six leagues in the whole kingdom, so that you change laws every time

you change horses, so you may judge what a taking we poor advocates

are in when we are to plead, for instance, for an inhabitant of

Poictou against an inhabitant of Auvergne.

CLIENT.—But these same men of Poictou, Auvergne, with your Guignes

gentry, are they not all dressed in the same manner? Is it a harder

matter to use the same laws than it is to wear the same clothes? And

since it is evident the tailors and cobblers understand one another

from one end of the kingdom to the other, why cannot the judges

learn of them, and follow so excellent an example?

LAWYER.—You desire a thing altogether as impossible as it would be to

bring the nation to make use of one sort of weights and measures. Why

would you have the laws everywhere the same when you see the point is

different in all places? For my own part, after thinking till my head

was like to split, all I have been able to conclude for the soul of

me, is this: That as the measure of Paris is different from that at

St. Denis, it follows that men’s judgments must also be different in

both. The varieties of nature are infinite, and it would be wrong in

us to endeavor to render uniform what she intends shall not be so.

CLIENT.—Yet, now I think on it, I have a strong notion the English

have but one sort of weight and measures.

LAWYER.—The English! aye. Why the English are mere barbarians; they

have, it is true, but one kind of measure, but, to make amends, they

have a score of different religions.

CLIENT.—There you mention something strange indeed! Is it possible

that a nation who live under the same laws, should not likewise live

under the same religion?

LAWYER.—It is; which makes it plain they are abandoned to their own

reprobate understandings.

CLIENT.—But may not it also prove that they think laws made for

regulating the external actions of men and religion the internal?

Possibly the English, and other nations, were of opinion that laws

related to the concernments of man with man and that religion

regarded man’s relation to God. I am sure I should never quarrel with

an Anabaptist who should take it into his head to be christened at

thirty years old, but I should be horridly offended with him should

he fail paying his bill of exchange. They who sin against God ought

to be punished in the other world; they who sin against man ought to

be chastised in this.

LAWYER.—I understand nothing of all this. I am just going to plead

your cause.

CLIENT.—I wish to God you understood it better first.

DIALOGUE  BETWEEN  MADAME DE

MAINTENON AND MADEMOISELLE

DE L’ENCLOS.[1]

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—’Tis true, I did request you to come to see me

privately, perhaps you may think it was only to make a display of my

grandeur; by no means, I really meant it that I might receive in you

a real consolation—

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—Consolation, madam! I must acknowledge

that, having never been favored with hearing of you since you were

grown great, I concluded you must be perfectly happy.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—I have the good fortune to be thought so. There

are people in the world who are satisfied with this, though, to be

plain with you, it is not at all my case, I have always exceedingly

regretted your company.

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—I understand you. In the midst of your

grandeur you were sensible of the want of friendship; and I, on

the other hand, who am entirely engrossed by friendship, never had

occasion to wish for grandeur; but how then comes it to pass you

forgot me so long?

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—You know the necessity I was under to seem at

least to forget you. Believe me, amidst all the misfortunes attached

to my elevation I always considered this restraint the chief.

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—As for my part, I neither forget my former

pleasures nor my old friends; but if you are really unhappy, as you

say you are, you impose prodigiously on the whole world who believe

you otherwise.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—I was the first person deceived in this manner

myself. If, while we were at supper together, in company with

Villarfaux and Nantouillet at our little house the Tournelles,

when the mediocrity of our fortune was scarce worth thinking of,

somebody had said, You will, before ’tis long, approach very near

to the throne; the most powerful monarch in the world will soon

make you his sole confidante; all favors will pass through your

hands; you will be regarded as a sovereign: if, said I, any one had

made me such predictions I should have answered, The accomplishment

of this strange prognostication must certainly kill one with mere

astonishment. The whole of it was actually accomplished. I felt some

surprise in the first moments but, in hoping for joy, I found myself

entirely mistaken.

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—A philosopher might possibly believe this,

but the public will with great difficulty be brought to believe

you were dissatisfied, and should they really think so they would

certainly blame you for it.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—The world must then be as much in the wrong as

I was. This world of ours is a vast amphitheatre where every one is

placed on his bench by mere chance. They imagine the supreme degree

of felicity to be on the uppermost benches. What an egregious mistake!

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—I take this mistake to be necessary to

human nature: they would never give themselves any trouble about

getting higher were they not led by an opinion that happiness

is placed above them. Both of us are acquainted with pleasures

infinitely less deceiving or fanciful, but, for Heaven’s sake, how

did you contrive to be so exceedingly wretched on your exalted seat?

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—Alas! my dear Ninon! from the time I left off

calling you anything but Mademoiselle de l’Enclos, I from that moment

began to be less happy. It was decreed I must be a prude. This is

telling all in one word. My heart is empty, my mind under restraint.

I make the first figure in France, but it is really no more than a

figure, a shadow! I live only a kind of borrowed life. Ah! did you

but know what a burden it must be to a drooping soul to animate

another soul or to amuse a mind no longer capable of amusement!

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—I easily guess the uneasiness of your

situation. I fear insulting you should I mention the reflection

that Ninon is happier at Paris in her little house with the Abbé de

Châteauneuf, and some friends, than you at Versailles in the company

of the most respectable personage in all Europe, who lays all his

power at your feet. I am afraid to show you the superiority of my

situation; I know it is wrong to discover too sensible a relish of

our felicity in the presence of the unhappy. Endeavor, madam, to

bear the load of your grandeur with patience, try to forget that

delightful obscurity in which we formerly lived together, in the same

manner you have been obliged to forget your ancient friends. The

sole remedy in your painful state is to avoid reflection as much as

possible, crying out with the poet,

_Félicité passée,_

_Qui ne peut revenir,_

_Tourment de ma pensée,_

_Que n’ai-je en te perdant, perdu le souvenir!_

Tormenting thought of former happiness gone, never to return! Why,

when I was bereft of the joy, did I not lose the remembrance of it

also!

Drink of the river Lethe, and above all, comfort yourself with having

before your eyes so many royal dames whose time lies as heavy on

their hands as yours can do.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—Ah, my dear! what felicity can one find in being

alone? I would fain make a proposal to you but I am afraid to open

myself.

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—Indeed, madam, to be plain with you, you

have reason to be a little mistrustful, but take courage.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—I mean that you will barter, at least in

appearance, your philosophy for prudery, and then you will become a

truly respectable woman. You shall live with me in Versailles, you

shall be more my friend than ever, and help me to support my present

condition.

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—I still have a great affection for you,

madam, but I must freely own to you I love myself still better, and

can never consent to turn hypocrite and render myself miserable

forever because fortune has treated you cruelly.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—Ah, cruel Ninon! you have a heart more hard than

even the very courtiers themselves. Can you then abandon me without

the least remorse?

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—By no means; I am still but too sensible.

You really melt me, and, to convince you I have the same regard

for you as ever I now make you the last offer in my power; quit

Versailles and come and live with me at the rues des Tournelles.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—You pierce my very heart. I cannot be happy near

the throne, nor can I enjoy pleasure in a retired life. This is one

of the fatal effects of living in a court.

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—There is no remedy for an incurable

disorder. I shall take the opinion of the philosophers who frequent

my house concerning your malady, but I cannot promise you they will

effect impossibilities.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—Good heavens! what a cruel situation! to behold

myself on the very pinnacle of greatness, to be worshipped as a

deity, and yet not to be able to taste of happiness!

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—Hold, my dear friend, I fancy there is

some mistake in this; you believe yourself unhappy merely on account

of your greatness, but may not the misfortune proceed from another

cause, that your eyes have no longer the same lustre, your appetite

no longer so good, nor your relish for pleasures so lively as

heretofore? You have lost your youth, beauty, and feelings; this,

this is your real misfortune. This is the reason why so many women

turn devotees at fifty and so fly from one chagrin into the arms of

another.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—But, after all, you have more years over your

head than I have and you are neither unhappy nor a devotee.

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—Let us understand each other. We ought not

to imagine that at your age and mine we can enjoy complete happiness.

It requires a soul glowing with the most exquisite sensations and

the five senses in their highest perfection to taste this kind of

felicity. But with a few friends, a little philosophy, and liberty,

one may be as much at one’s ease as this age will admit of. The mind

is never unhappy but when out of its sphere. So e’en take my advice

and come and live with me and my philosophical friends.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—I see two ministers of state coming this way.

They are very different company from philosophers, so fare you well,

my dear Ninon.

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—Adieu, illustrious unfortunate.

FOOTNOTE

[1] Madame de Maintenon and Mademoiselle Ninon de l’Enclos had

lived long together. The author has often heard the late Abbé de

Châteauneuf say, that Madame de Maintenon had used her utmost

endeavors to engage Ninon to turn nun, and to come and comfort her at

Versailles.

DIALOGUE BETWEEN A SAVAGE

AND A BACHELOR OF ARTS.

A governor of Cayenne, having brought over with him a savage from

Guiana, who had a great share of good natural understanding, and

spoke French tolerably well; a bachelor of arts at Paris had the

honor of entering into the following conversation with him:

BACHELOR.—I suppose, Mr. Savage, you have seen a number of your

country people who pass their lives all alone, for it is said that

this is the true way of living natural to man, and that society is

only an artificial depravity?

SAVAGE.—Indeed I never did see any of those people you speak of.

Man appears to me to be born for society, as well as several other

species of animals. Each species follows the dictates of its nature;

as for us, we live all together in a community.

BACHELOR.—How! in community? Why, then, you have fine towns, and

cities with walls, and kings who keep a court. You have shows,

convents, universities, libraries, and taverns, have you?

SAVAGE.—No; but have I not frequently heard it said that in your

continent you have Arabians and Scythians who never knew anything of

these matters, and yet form considerable nations? Now we live like

these people; neighboring families assist each other. We inhabit a

warm climate, and so have very few necessities; we can easily procure

ourselves food; we marry; we get children; we bring them up, and

then we die. You see this is just the same as among you; some few

ceremonies excepted.

BACHELOR.—Why, my good sir, then you are not a savage?

SAVAGE.—I do not know what you mean by that word.

BACHELOR.—Nor, to tell you the truth, do I myself—stay—let me

consider a little—Oh!—a savage?—Why—a savage is—what we call a

savage, is a man of a morose, unsociable disposition, who flies all

company.

SAVAGE.—I have told you already that we live together in families.

BACHELOR.—We also give the name of savage to those beasts who are

not tamed, but roam wild about the forests; and from hence we have

transferred that appellation to men who inhabit the woods.

SAVAGE.—I go into the woods sometimes, as well as you do, to hunt.

BACHELOR.—Pray, now, do you think sometimes?

SAVAGE.—It is impossible to be without some sort of ideas.

BACHELOR.—I have a great curiosity to know what your ideas are. What

think you of man?

SAVAGE.—Think of him! Why, that he is a two-footed animal, who has

the faculty of reasoning, speaking, and who uses his hands much more

dexterously than the monkey. I have seen several kinds of men, some

white, like you, others copper-colored, like me, and others black,

like those that wait upon the governor of Cayenne. You have a beard,

we have none; the negroes have wool, you and I have hair. They say,

that in your more northerly climates the inhabitants have white hair,

whereas that of the Americans is black. This is all I know about man.

BACHELOR.—But your soul, my dear sir? your soul? what notion have you

of that? whence comes it? what is it? what does it do? how does it

act? where does it go?

SAVAGE.—I know nothing about all this, indeed; for I never saw the

soul.

BACHELOR.—Apropos; do you think that brutes are machines?

SAVAGE.—They appear to me to be organized machines, that have

sentiment and memory.

BACHELOR.—Well; and pray now, Mr. Savage, what do you think that you,

you yourself, I say, possess above those brutes?

SAVAGE.—The gifts of an infinitely superior memory, a much greater

share of ideas, and, as I have already told you, a tongue capable

of forming many more sounds than those of brutes; with hands more

ready at executing; and the faculty of laughing, which a long-winded

argumentator always makes me exercise.

BACHELOR.—But tell me, if you please, how came you by all this? What

is the nature of your mind? How does your soul animate your body? Do

you always think? Is your will free?

SAVAGE.—Here are a great number of questions; you ask me how I came

to possess what God has given to man? You might as well ask me how I

was born? For certainly, since I am born a man, I must possess the

things that constitute a man in the same manner as a tree has its

bark, roots, and leaves. You would have me to know what is the nature

of my mind. I did not give it to myself, and therefore I cannot know

what it is; and as to how my soul animates my body, I am as much a

stranger to that, too; and, in my opinion, you must first have seen

the springs that put your watch in motion before you can tell how

it shows the hour. You ask me if I always think? No, for sometimes

I have half-formed ideas, in the same manner as I see objects at a

distance, confusedly; sometimes my ideas are much stronger, as I

can distinguish an object better when it is nearer to me; sometimes

I have no ideas at all, as when I shut my eyes I can see nothing.

Lastly, you ask me, if my will is free? Here I do not understand you;

these are things with which you are perfectly well acquainted, no

doubt, therefore I shall be glad you will explain them to me.

BACHELOR.—Yes, yes, I have studied all these matters thoroughly; I

could talk to you about them for a month together without ceasing,

in such a manner as would surpass your understanding. But tell me,

do you know good and evil, right and wrong? Do you know which is the

best form of government? which the best worship? what is the law of

nations? the common law? the civil law? the canon law? Do you know

the names of the first man and woman who peopled America? Do you know

the reason why rain falls into the sea; and why you have no beard?

SAVAGE.—Upon my word, sir, you take rather too great advantage of the

confession I made just now, that man has a superior memory to the

brutes; for I can hardly recollect the many questions you have asked

me; you talk of good and evil, right and wrong; now, I think that

whatever gives you pleasure, and does injury to no one, is very good

and very right; that what injures our fellow-creatures, and gives us

no pleasure, is abominable; and what gives us pleasure but, at the

same time, hurts others, may be good with respect to us for the time,

but it is in itself both dangerous to us, and very wrong in regard to

others.

BACHELOR.—And do you live in society with these maxims?

SAVAGE.—Yes, with our relatives and neighbors, and, without much

pain or vexation, we quietly attain our hundredth year; some indeed

reach to a hundred and twenty, after which our bodies serve to

fertilize the earth that has nourished us.

BACHELOR.—You seem to me to have a clear understanding, I would

very fain puzzle it. Let us dine together, after which we will

philosophize methodically.

* * * * *

SAVAGE.—I find that I have swallowed foods that are not made for me,

notwithstanding I have a good stomach; you have made me eat after my

stomach was satisfied, and drink when I was no longer dry. My legs

are not so firm under me as they were before dinner; my head feels

heavy, and my ideas are confused. I never felt this diminution of my

faculties in my own country. For my part, I think the more a man puts

into his body here, the more he takes away from his understanding.

Pray, tell me, what is the reason of all this damage and disorder?

BACHELOR.—I will tell you. In the first place, as to what passes in

your legs, I know nothing about the matter, you must consult the

physicians about that; they will satisfy you in a trice. But I am

perfectly well acquainted with how things go in your head. You must

know, then, that the soul being confined to no place, has fixed her

seat either in the pineal gland, or callous body in the middle of the

brain. The animal spirits that rise from the stomach fly up to the

soul, which they cannot affect, they being matter and it immaterial.

Now, as neither can act upon the other, therefore the soul takes

their impression, and, as it is a simple principle, and consequently

subject to no change, therefore it suffers a change, and becomes

heavy and dull when we eat too much; and this is the reason that so

many great men sleep after dinner.

SAVAGE.—What you tell me appears very ingenious and profound, but I

should take it as a favor if you would explain it to me in such a

manner as I might comprehend.

BACHELOR.—Why, I have told you everything that can be said upon

this weighty affair; but, to satisfy you, I will be a little more

explicit. Let us go step by step. First, then, do you know that this

is the best of all possible worlds?

SAVAGE.—How! is it impossible for the Infinite Being to create

anything better than what we now see?

BACHELOR.—Undoubtedly; for nothing can be better than what we see.

It is true, indeed, that mankind rob and murder each other, but they

all the while extol equity and moderation. Several years ago they

massacred about twelve millions of your Americans, but then it was to

make the rest more reasonable. A famous calculator has proved that

from a certain war of Troy, which you know nothing of, to the last

war in North America, which you do know something of, there have been

killed in pitched battles no less than five hundred and fifty-five

million six hundred and fifty thousand men, without reckoning young

children and women buried under the ruins of cities and towns which

have been set on fire; but this was all for the good of community;

four or five thousand dreadful maladies, to which mankind are

subject, teach us the true value of health; and the crimes that cover

the face of the earth greatly enhance the merit of religious men,

of which I am one; you see that everything goes in the best manner

possible, at least as to me.

Now things could never be in this state of perfection, if the soul

was not placed in the pineal gland. For—but let me take you along

with me in the argument. Let us go step by step. What notion have you

of laws, and of the rule of right and wrong; of the _to Kalon_, as

Plato calls it?

SAVAGE.—Well, but my good sir, while you talk of going step by step,

you speak to me of a hundred different things at a time.

BACHELOR.—Every one converses in this manner. But tell me who made

the laws in your country?

SAVAGE.—The public good.

BACHELOR.—That word _public good_ means a great deal. We have not any

so expressive; pray, in what sense do you understand?

SAVAGE.—I understand by it that those who have a plantation of cocoa

trees or maize, have forbidden others to meddle with them, and that

those who had them not, are obliged to work, in order to have a

right to eat part of them. Everything that I have seen, either in

your country or my own, teaches me that there can be no other spirit

of the laws.

BACHELOR.—But as to women, Mr. Savage, women?

SAVAGE.—As to women, they please me when they are handsome and

sweet-tempered; I prize them even before our cocoa trees; they are a

fruit which we are not willing to have plucked by any but ourselves.

A man has no more right to take my wife from me than to take my

child. However, I have heard it said, that there are people who will

suffer this; they have it certainly in their will; every one may do

what he pleases with his own property.

BACHELOR.—But as to successors, legatees, heirs, and collateral

kindred?

SAVAGE.—Every one must have a successor. I can no longer possess my

field when I am buried in it, I leave it to my son; if I have two,

I divide it equally between them. I hear that among you Europeans,

there are several nations where the law gives the whole to the eldest

child, and nothing to the younger. It must have been sordid interest

that dictated such unequal and ridiculous laws. I suppose either the

elder children made it themselves, or their fathers, who were willing

they should have the pre-eminence.

BACHELOR.—What body of laws appears to you the best?

SAVAGE.—Those in which the interests of mankind, my fellow

creatures, have been most consulted.

BACHELOR.—And where are such laws to be found?

SAVAGE.—In no place that I have ever heard of.

BACHELOR.—You must tell me from whence the inhabitants of your

country first came? Who do you think first peopled America?

SAVAGE.—God—whom else should we think?

BACHELOR.—That is no answer. I ask you from what country your people

first came?

SAVAGE.—The same country from which our trees came; really the

Europeans appear to me a very pleasant kind of people, to pretend

that we can have nothing without them; we have just as much reason to

suppose ourselves your ancestors as you have to imagine yourselves

ours.

BACHELOR.—You are an obstinate little savage.

SAVAGE.—You a very babbling bachelor.

BACHELOR.—But, hark ye, Mr. Savage, one word more with you, if you

please. Do you think it right in Guiana to put those to death who are

not of the same opinion with yourselves?

SAVAGE.—Undoubtedly, provided you eat them afterwards.

BACHELOR.—Now you are joking. What do think of the constitution?

SAVAGE.—Your servant.

A TREATISE ON TOLERATION.

CHAPTER I.

A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE DEATH OF JOHN CALAS.

The murder of John Calas, committed in Toulouse with the sword of

justice, the 9th of March, 1762, is an event which, on account of its

singularity, calls for the attention of the present age, and that of

posterity. We soon forget the crowd of victims who have fallen in the

course of innumerable battles, not only because this is a destiny

inevitably connected with a life of warfare, but because those who

thus fell might also have given death to their enemies, and did not

lose their lives till after having first stood in their own defence.

Where the danger and the advantage are equal, our wonder ceases, and

even pity itself is in some measure lessened; but where the father of

an innocent family is delivered up to the sword of error, prejudice,

or enthusiasm, where the accused person has no other defence but his

conscious virtue; where the arbiters of his destiny have nothing to

hazard in putting him to death but the having been mistaken, and

where they may murder with impunity under the sanction of a judicial

process, then every one is ready to cry out, every one brings the

case home to himself, and sees with fear and trembling that no

person’s life is in safety in a court erected to watch over the lives

of the subject, the public unite in demanding vengeance.

In this strange affair, we find religion, self-murder and parricide

blended. The object of inquiry was, whether a father and a mother

had murdered their own son with a view to please God, and whether a

brother had murdered his brother, or a friend his friend; or whether

the judges had to reproach themselves with having publicly executed

an innocent father, or with having acquitted a guilty mother,

brother, and friend.

John Calas, a person of sixty-eight years of age, had followed the

profession of a merchant in Toulouse for upwards of forty years,

and had always borne the character of a tender parent in his family

and neighborhood; he was himself by religion a Protestant, as was

also his wife, and all his children, one son only excepted, who had

abjured heresy, and to whom the father allowed a small annuity;

indeed, the good man appeared so far from being infected with that

absurd zeal which destroys the bands of society, that he even

approved of the conversion of his son, Louis Calas. He had for above

thirty years kept in his house a maid-servant, who was a zealous

Catholic, and who had brought up all his children.

Another of his sons, whose name was Mark Antony, was a man of

letters, but, at the same time, of a restless, gloomy, and impetuous

disposition. This young man finding that he had no prospect of

getting into business as a merchant, for which indeed he was very

unfit, nor of being admitted to the bar as a lawyer, as not being

able to obtain the requisite certificates of his being a Catholic,

resolved to lay violent hands upon himself, and gave some intimation

of his design to one of his friends. In order to confirm himself in

the resolution he had formed, he carefully collected everything that

had been written upon the subject of suicide, all of which he read

with great attention; at length, one day, having lost all his money

at play, he chose that as a most proper opportunity for putting his

design into execution. One Lavaisse, a young man of nineteen years

of age, the son of a lawyer in great repute at Toulouse, and who was

esteemed by every one who knew him, happened to come from Bordeaux

the evening before,[2] when he went by chance to sup with the Calas

family at their house, being an acquaintance of that family’s, and of

Mark Antony Calas in particular. Old Calas, his wife, Mark Antony,

their eldest son, and Peter their second son, supped all together

that evening; after supper was over, they retired into another room,

where Mark Antony suddenly disappeared. After some time, young

Lavaisse took his leave, and Peter Calas accompanied him downstairs;

when they came to the warehouse they saw Mark Antony hanging in his

shirt behind the door, and his coat and waistcoat folded up and laid

upon the counter; his shirt was not in the least rumpled, nor his

hair, which he had dressed that day, in any wise disordered; there

was no wound upon his body, nor any other mark of violence.[3]

We shall not here enter into all the minute circumstances with

which the lawyers have filled their briefs; nor shall we attempt to

describe the grief and distraction of the unhappy parents; their

cries were heard by the whole neighborhood. Lavaisse and Peter Calas,

almost beside themselves, ran, the one to fetch a surgeon, and the

other an officer of justice. While they were thus employed, and

old Calas and his wife in all the agonies of grief, the people of

the town gathered in crowds about the house. The Toulousians are a

superstitious and headstrong people, and look upon all persons, even

their own relations, who are not of the same religion as themselves,

as monsters and objects of detestation. It was at Toulouse that a

solemn thanksgiving was ordered for the death of Henry III. and that

the inhabitants took an oath to murder the first person who should

propose to acknowledge that great and good prince Henry IV. for their

sovereign; and this same city still continues to solemnize, by an

annual procession, illuminations, and bonfires, the day on which,

about two hundred years ago, it ordered the massacre of four thousand

of its citizens for being heretics. In vain has the council issued

six decrees prohibiting the keeping of this detestable anniversary,

the Toulousians still continuing to celebrate it as a high festival.

Some one among the mob, a greater enthusiast than the rest, cried out

that John Calas himself had hanged his son; this cry became in an

instant unanimous, some persons taking occasion to observe that the

deceased was to have made his abjuration the next day, and that his

own family and young Lavaisse had murdered him out of the hatred they

bore to the Catholic religion. No sooner was this opinion broached,

than it was fully believed by every one; and the whole town was

persuaded that it is one of the articles of the Protestant religion

for a father or mother to murder their own son, if he attempts to

show any inclination to change his faith.

When the minds of the populace are once put into a ferment they are

not easily appeased; it was now imagined that all the Protestants of

Languedoc had assembled together the preceding night, and had chosen

by a plurality of voices one of their sect for an executioner; that

the choice had fallen upon Lavaisse; that this young man had, in less

than four and twenty hours, received the news of his election, and

had come from Bordeaux to assist John Calas, his wife, and their son

Peter, to murder a son, a brother, and a friend.

The Sieur David, capitoul of Toulouse, instigated by these rumors,

and being desirous of bringing himself into notice, by the ready

execution of his office, took a step contrary to all the established

rules and ordinances, by ordering the Calas family, together with

their Catholic maid-servant and Lavaisse, to be put in irons.

After this a monitory was published, which was as erroneous as the

former step. Nay, matters were carried still farther; Mark Antony

Calas had certainly died a Calvinist, and as such, if he had laid

violent hands on himself, his body ought to have been dragged on a

hurdle; whereas it was interred with the greatest funeral pomp in the

church of St. Stephen, notwithstanding the curate entered his protest

against this profanation of holy ground.

There are in Languedoc four orders of penitents, the white, the blue,

the gray, and the black, who wear a long capuchin or hood, having a

mask of cloth falling down over the face, in which are two holes for

the sight. These orders wanted the Duke of Fitz-James to become one

of their body, but he refused them. On the present occasion the white

penitents performed a solemn service for Mark Antony Calas as for a

martyr; nor was the festival of a real martyr ever celebrated with

greater pomp by any church: but then this pomp was truly terrible.

Beneath a magnificent canopy was placed a skeleton, which was made to

move by springs; this skeleton was to represent Mark Antony Calas,

holding in one hand a branch of palm, and, in the other, the pen

with which he was to sign his abjuration of heresy; or rather, as the

sequel proved, the death-warrant of his father.

And now nothing more remained to be done for this wretch who had been

his own murderer but the office of canonization; the people, already

to a man, looked on him as a saint; some invoked him, some went to

pray at his tomb, some besought him to work miracles, while others

gravely recounted those he had already performed; a monk pulled out

one or two of his teeth, in order to have some lasting relics; an

old woman, more pious than the rest, but unhappily troubled with a

deafness, declared that she had heard the sound of bells very plainly

at his interment; and a priest was cured of an apoplectic fit, after

taking a stout emetic; protocols were drawn up of these stupendous

miracles, and the author of this account has in his possession an

affidavit to prove that a young man of Toulouse had his brain turned,

on having prayed several nights successively at the tomb of the new

saint, without having been able to obtain the miracle he requested of

him.

Among the order of the white penitents there were some magistrates of

justice; the death of John Calas seemed then inevitable.

But what more particularly hastened his fate was the approach of

that singular festival, which, as I have already observed, the

Toulousians celebrate every year, in commemoration of the massacre

of four thousand Huguenots; the year 1762 happened to be the _annum

seculare_ of this execrable deed. The inhabitants were busied in

making preparations for the solemnity; this circumstance added fresh

fuel to the heated imagination of the populace; every one cried out

that a scaffold for the execution of the Calas family would be one of

the greatest ornaments of the ceremony; and that heaven itself seemed

to have brought them thither as victims, to be sacrificed to our holy

religion. Twenty persons were ear-witnesses to these speeches, and to

others still more outrageous. And this, in the present age! this at

a time when philosophy has made so great a progress! and while the

pens of a hundred academies are employed in inculcating humanity and

gentleness of manners. It should seem that enthusiasm enraged at the

late success of reason, fought under her standard with redoubled fury.

Thirteen judges met every day to try this cause; they had not, they

could not, have any proof against this unhappy family; but mistaken

zeal held the place of proofs. Six of the judges continued a long

time obstinate, being resolved to sentence John Calas, his son, and

Lavaisse, to be broken on the wheel, and his wife to be burned at

the stake; the other seven judges, rather more moderate, were at

least for having the accused examined; the debates were frequent

and long. One of the judges, convinced in his mind of the innocence

of the parties, and of the impossibility of the crime laid to their

charge, spoke warmly in their favor; he opposed the zeal of humanity

to that of cruelty, and openly pleaded the cause of the Calas family

in all the houses of Toulouse where misguided religion demanded with

incessant cries the blood of these unfortunate wretches. Another

judge, well known for his violence and severity, went about the town,

raving with as much fury against the accused as his brother had been

earnest in defending them. In short, the contest became so warm that

both were obliged to enter protests against each other’s proceedings,

and retire into the country.

But by a strange fatality, the judge who had been on the favorable

side had the delicacy to persist in his exceptions, and the other

returned to give his vote against those on whom he could no longer

sit as judge; and it was his single vote which carried the sentence

of being broken upon the wheel against them, there being eight voices

against five, one of the six merciful judges being at last, after

much contestation, brought over to the rigorous side.

In my opinion, in cases of parricide, and where the master of a

family is to be devoted to the most dreadful punishment, the sentence

ought to be unanimous, inasmuch as the proofs of so unparalleled[4]

a crime ought to be proved in such a manner as to satisfy all the

world, and the least shadow of a doubt in a case of this nature

should be sufficient to make the judge tremble who is about to pass

sentence of death. The weakness of our reason, and the insufficiency

of our laws, become every day more obvious; but surely there cannot

be a greater example of this deficiency than that one single casting

vote should be sufficient to condemn a fellow-citizen to be broken

alive on the wheel; the Athenians required at least fifty voices,

over and above the one-half of the judges, before they would dare to

pronounce sentence of death; but to what does all this tend? Why, to

what we know, but make very little use of, that the Greeks were wiser

and more humane than ourselves.

It appeared altogether impossible that John Calas, who was an old man

of sixty-eight, and had a long while been troubled with a swelling

and weakness in his legs, should have been able by himself to have

mastered his son and hanged him, who was a stout young fellow of

eight and twenty, and more than commonly robust; therefore he must

absolutely have been assisted in this act by his wife, his other

son, Peter Calas, Lavaisse, and by the servant-maid, and they had

been together the whole night of this fatal adventure. But this

supposition is altogether as absurd as the other; for can any one

believe that a servant, who was a zealous Catholic, would have

permitted those whom she looked on as heretics to murder a young man

whom she herself had brought up, for his attachment to a religion

to which she herself was devoted; that Lavaisse would have come

purposely from Bordeaux to assist in hanging his friend, of whose

pretended conversion he knew nothing, or that an affectionate mother

would have joined in laying violent hands on her own son? And lastly,

how could they all together have been able to strangle a young man

stronger than them all, without a long and violent struggle, or

without his making such a noise as must have been heard by the whole

neighborhood, without repeated blows passing between them, without

any marks of violence, or without any of their clothes being in the

least soiled or disordered!

It was evident that if this murder could in the nature of things have

been committed, the accused persons were all of them equally guilty,

because they did not quit each other’s company an instant the whole

night; but then it was equally evident that they were not guilty, and

that the father alone could not be so, and yet, by the sentence of

the judges, the father alone was condemned to suffer.

The motive on which this sentence was passed was as unaccountable

as all the rest of the proceeding. Those judges who had given their

opinion for the execution of John Calas persuaded the others that

this poor old man, unable to support the torments, would, when on

the wheel, make a full confession of his own guilt and that of his

accomplices; but how wretchedly were they confounded, when yielding

up his breath on that instrument of execution, he called God as a

witness of his innocence, and besought Him to forgive his judges!

They were afterwards obliged to pass a second decree, which

contradicted the first, namely to set at liberty the mother, her

son Peter, young Lavaisse, and the maid-servant; but one of the

counsellors having made them sensible that this latter decree

contradicted the other, and that they condemned themselves, inasmuch

as, it having been proved that all the accused parties had been

constantly together during the whole time the murder was supposed

to be committed, the setting at liberty the survivors was an

incontestable proof of the innocence of the master of the family whom

they had ordered to be executed; on this it was determined to banish

Peter Calas, the son, which was an act as ill-grounded and absurd as

any of the rest, for Peter Calas was either guilty or not guilty of

the murder; if he was guilty, he ought to have suffered in the same

manner as his father; if he was innocent, there was no reason for

banishing him. But the judges, frightened with the sufferings of the

father, and with that affecting piety with which he had resigned his

life, thought to preserve their characters by making people believe

that they showed mercy to the son; as if this was not a new degree

of prevarication, and that, thinking no bad consequences could arise

from banishing this young man, who was poor and destitute of friends,

was not a very great additional act of injustice after that which

they had been already so unfortunate as to commit.

They now began to go to work with Peter Calas in his confinement,

threatening to treat him as they had done his father, if he would

not abjure his religion. This the young man has declared on oath, as

follows:

“A Dominican friar came to me to my cell, and threatened me with the

same kind of death if I did not abjure; this I attest before God,

this 23d day of July, 1762. PETER CALAS.”

As Peter was going out of the town, he was met by one of the abbés

with a converting spirit, who made him return back to Toulouse, where

he was shut up in a convent of Dominicans, and there compelled to

perform all the functions of a convert to the Catholic religion;

this was in part what his persecutors aimed at, it was the price of

his father’s blood, and due atonement now seemed to be made to the

religion of which they looked on themselves as the avengers.

The daughters were next taken from their mother, and shut up in a

convent. This unhappy woman, who had been, as it were, sprinkled with

the blood of her husband, who had held her eldest son lifeless within

her arms, had seen the other banished, her daughters taken from her,

herself stripped of her effects, and left alone in the wide world

destitute of bread, and bereft of hopes, was almost weighed down to

the grave with the excess of her misfortunes. Some certain persons,

who had maturely weighed all the circumstances of this horrible

adventure, were so struck with them that they pressed Mrs. Calas, who

now led a life of retirement and solitude, to exert herself, and go

and demand justice at the foot of the throne. At this time she was

scarcely able to drag about the remains of a miserable life; besides,

having been born in England and brought over to a distant province in

France when very young, the very name of the city of Paris frightened

her. She imagined that in the capital of the kingdom they must be

still more cruel than in Toulouse; at length, however, the duty of

revenging the death of her husband got the better of her weakness.

She set out for Paris, arrived there half dead, and was surprised

to find herself received with tenderness, sympathy, and offers of

assistance.

In Paris reason always triumphs over enthusiasm, however great,

whereas in the more distant provinces of the kingdom, enthusiasm

almost always triumphs over reason.

M. de Beaumont, a famous lawyer of the Parliament of Paris,

immediately took her cause in hand, and drew up an opinion, which

was signed by fifteen other lawyers. M. Loiseau, equally famous for

his eloquence, likewise drew up a memorial in favor of this unhappy

family; and M. Mariette, solicitor to the council, drew up a formal

statement of the case, which struck every one who read it with

conviction.

These three noble defenders of the laws and of innocence made the

widow a present of all the profits arising from the publication of

these pieces,[5] which filled not only Paris but all Europe with pity

for this unfortunate woman, and every one cried aloud for justice to

be done her. In a word, the public passed sentence on this affair

long before it was determined by the council.

The soft infection made its way even to the Cabinet, notwithstanding

the continual round of business, which often excludes pity, and the

familiarity of beholding miserable objects, which too frequently

steels the heart of the statesman against the cries of distress. The

daughters were restored to their disconsolate mother, and all three

in deep mourning, and bathed in tears, drew a sympathetic flood from

the eyes of their judges, before whom they prostrated themselves in

thankful acknowledgment.

Nevertheless, this family had still some enemies to encounter, for

it is to be considered that this was an affair of religion. Several

persons, whom in France we call _dévots_,[6] declared publicly that

it was much better to suffer an old Calvinist, though innocent, to

be broken alive upon the wheel, than to expose eight counsellors of

Languedoc to the mortification of being obliged to own that they had

been mistaken; nay, these people made use of this very expression:

“That there were more magistrates than Calases”; by which it would

seem they inferred that the Calas family ought to be sacrificed

to the honor of the magistracy. Alas! they never reflected that

the honor of a judge, like that of another man, consists in making

reparation for the faults he may have committed.

In France no one believes that the pope, even when assisted by his

cardinals, is infallible; ought they then to have believed that eight

judges of Toulouse were so? Every sensible and disinterested person

did without scruple declare that the decree of the court of justice

of Toulouse would be looked upon as void by all Europe, even though

particular considerations might prevent it from being declared so by

the council.

Such was the state of this surprising affair when it occasioned

certain impartial, but sensible, persons to form the design of laying

before the public a few reflections upon toleration, indulgence,

and commiseration, which the Abbé Houteville in his bombastic and

declamatory work, which is false in all the facts, calls a _monstrous

doctrine_, but which reason calls the portion of human nature.

Either the judges of Toulouse, carried away by popular enthusiasm,

caused the innocent master of a family to be put to a painful

and ignominious death, a thing which is without example; or this

master of a family and his wife murdered their eldest son, with the

assistance of another son and a friend, which is altogether contrary

to nature. In either case, the most holy of all religions has been

perverted to the production of an enormous crime. It is therefore

to the interest of mankind to examine how far charity or cruelty is

consistent with true religion.