the wall, and communicating with the plain below. It had been made for
the purpose of fetching orders from the King, should they be
necessary. The case happened. Crenan, who commanded, sent Conillac, an
officer in one of the defending regiments, to ask for some
instructions from the King. Conillac had been stationed at the foot of
the rampart, where what was passing above could not be seen. He
mounted the steps; and as soon as his head and shoulders were at the
top, caught sight of the chair, the King, and all the assembled
company. He was not prepared for such a scene; and it struck him with
such astonishment that he stopt short, with mouth and eyes wide
open--surprize painted upon every feature. I see him now as distinctly
as I did then. The King, as well as the rest of the company, remarked
the agitation of Conillac, and said to him with emotion, "Well,
Conillac! come up." Conillac remained motionless, and the King
continued, "Come up. What is the matter?" Conillac, thus addrest,
finished his ascent, and came toward the King with slow and trembling
steps, rolling his eyes from right to left like one deranged. Then he
stammered something, but in a tone so low that it could not be heard.
"What do you say?" cried the King. "Speak up." But Conillac was
unable; and the King, finding he could get nothing out of him, told
him to go away. He did not need to be told twice, but disappeared at
once. As soon as he was gone, the King looking round said, "I don't
know what is the matter with Conillac. He has lost his wits: he did
not remember what he had to say to me." No one answered.
Toward the moment of the capitulation, Madame de Maintenon apparently
asked permission to go away; for the King cried, "The chairmen of
madame!" They came and took her away; in less than a quarter of an
hour afterward the King retired also, and nearly everybody else. There
was much interchange of glances, nudging with elbows, and then
whisperings in the ear. Everybody was full of what had taken place on
the ramparts between the King and Madame de Maintenon. Even the
soldiers asked what meant that sedan-chair, and the King every moment
stooping to put his head inside of it. It became necessary gently to
silence these questions of the troops. What effect this sight had upon
foreigners present, and what they said of it, may be imagined. All
over Europe it was as much talked of as the camp of Compiègne itself,
with all its pomp and prodigious splendor.
BARON DE MONTESQUIEU
Born near Bordeaux in 1689, died in Paris in 1755; studied
law and became a councilor in 1716; president of the
Bordeaux Parliament; devoted himself to a study of
literature and jurisprudence; published "Persian Letters" in
1721, which secured him an election to the Academy in 1728;
traveled in Austria, Italy, Germany, Holland and England;
published "Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans" in 1734,
and "Spirit of the Laws" in 1748.[37]
I
OF THE CAUSES WHICH DESTROYED ROME[38]
While the sovereignty of Rome was confined to Italy, it was easy for
the commonwealth to subsist: every soldier was at the same time a
citizen; every Consul raised an army, and other citizens marched into
the field under his successor: as their forces were not very numerous,
such persons only were received among the troops as had possessions
considerable enough to make them interested in the preservation of the
city; the Senate kept a watchful eye over the conduct of the generals,
and did not give them an opportunity of machinating anything to the
prejudice of their country.
[Footnote 37: Montesquieu is declared by Mr. Saintsbury to deserve the
title of "the greatest man of letters of the French eighteenth
century." He places him above Voltaire because "of his far greater
originality and depth of thought."]
[Footnote 38: From the "Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans," of
which an English translation was issued as early as 1751.]
But after the legions had passed the Alps and crossed the sea, the
soldiers whom the Romans had been obliged to leave during several
campaigns in the countries they were subduing, lost insensibly that
genius and turn of mind which characterized a Roman citizen; and the
generals having armies and kingdoms at their disposal were sensible of
their own strength, and would no longer obey.
The soldiers therefore began to acknowledge no superior but their
general; to found their hopes on him only, and to view the city as
from a great distance: they were no longer the soldiers of the
republic, but of Sulla, of Marius, of Pompey, and of Cæsar. The Romans
could no longer tell whether the person who headed an army in a
province was their general or their enemy.
So long as the people of Rome were corrupted by their tribunes only,
on whom they could bestow nothing but their power, the Senate could
easily defend themselves, because they acted consistently and with one
regular tenor, whereas the common people were continually shifting
from the extremes of fury to the extremes of cowardice; but when they
were enabled to invest their favorites with a formidable exterior
authority, the whole wisdom of the Senate was baffled, and the
commonwealth was undone.
The reason why free states are not so permanent as other forms of
government is because the misfortunes and successes which happen to
them generally occasion the loss of liberty; whereas the successes and
misfortunes of an arbitrary government contribute equally to the
enslaving of the people. A wise republic ought not to run any hazard
which may expose it to good or ill fortune; the only happiness the
several individuals of it should aspire after is to give perpetuity to
their state.
If the unbounded extent of the Roman empire proved the ruin of the
republic, the vast compass of the city was no less fatal to it.
The Romans had subdued the whole universe by the assistance of the
nations of Italy, on whom they had bestowed various privileges at
different times. Most of those nations did not at first set any great
value on the freedom of the city of Rome, and some chose rather to
preserve their ancient usages; but when this privilege became that of
universal sovereignty--when a man who was not a Roman citizen was
considered as nothing, and with this title was everything--the people
of Italy resolved either to be Romans or die: not being able to obtain
this by cabals and entreaties, they had recourse to arms; and rising
in all that part of Italy opposite to the Ionian sea, the rest of the
allies were going to follow their example. Rome, being now forced to
combat against those who were, if I may be allowed the figure, the
hands with which they shackled the universe, was upon the brink of
ruin; the Romans were going to be confined merely to their walls: they
therefore granted this so much wished-for privilege to the allies who
had not yet been wanting in fidelity; and they indulged it, by
insensible degrees, to all other nations.
But now Rome was no longer that city the inhabitants of which had
breathed one and the same spirit, the same love for liberty, the same
hatred of tyranny; a city in which a jealousy of the power of the
Senate and of the prerogatives of the great (ever accompanied with
respect) was only a love of equality. The nations of Italy being made
citizens of Rome, every city brought thither its genius, its
particular interests, and its dependence on some mighty protector:
Rome, being now rent and divided, no longer formed one entire body,
and men were no longer citizens of it but in a kind of fictitious way;
as there were no longer the same magistrates, the same walls, the same
gods, the same temples, the same burying-places, Rome was no longer
beheld with the same eyes; the citizens were no longer fired with the
same love for their country, and the Roman sentiments were
obliterated.
Cities and nations were now invited to Rome by the ambitious, to
disconcert the suffrages, or influence them in their own favor; the
public assemblies were so many conspiracies against the state, and a
tumultuous crowd of seditious wretches was dignified with the title of
Comitia. The authority of the people and their laws--nay, that people
themselves--were no more than so many chimeras; and so universal was
the anarchy of those times that it was not possible to determine
whether the people had made a law or not.
Authors enlarge very copiously on the divisions which proved the
destruction of Rome; but their readers seldom discover those divisions
to have been always necessary and inevitable. The grandeur of the
republic was the only source of that calamity, and exasperated
popular tumults into civil wars. Dissensions were not to be prevented;
and those martial spirits which were so fierce and formidable abroad
could not be habituated to any considerable moderation at home. Those
who expect in a free state to see the people undaunted in war and
pusillanimous in peace, are certainly desirous of impossibilities; and
it may be advanced as a general rule that whenever a perfect calm is
visible, in a state that calls itself a republic, the spirit of
liberty no longer subsists.
Union, in a body politic, is a very equivocal term: true union is such
a harmony as makes all the particular parts, as opposite as they may
seem to us, concur to the general welfare of the society, in the same
manner as discords in music contribute to the general melody of sound.
Union may prevail in a state full of seeming commotions; or in other
words, there may be a harmony from whence results prosperity, which
alone is true peace; and may be considered in the same view as the
various parts of this universe, which are eternally connected by the
action of some and the reaction of others.
In a despotic state, indeed, which is every government where the power
is immoderately exerted, a real division is perpetually kindled. The
peasant, the soldier, the merchant, the magistrate, and the grandee,
have no other conjunction than what arises from the ability of the one
to oppress the other without resistance; and if at any time a union
happens to be introduced, citizens are not then united, but dead
bodies are laid in the grave contiguous to each other.
It must be acknowledged that the Roman laws were too weak to govern
the republic; but experience has proved it to be an invariable fact
that good laws, which raise the reputation and power of a small
republic, become incommodious to it when once its grandeur is
established, because it was their natural effect to make a great
people but not to govern them.
The difference is very considerable between good laws and those which
may be called convenient; between such laws as give a people dominion
over others, and such as continue them in the possession of power when
they have once acquired it.
There is at this time a republic in the world (the Canton of Berne),
of which few persons have any knowledge, and which, by plans
accomplished in silence and secrecy, is daily enlarging its power. And
certain it is that if it ever rises to that height of grandeur for
which it seems preordained by its wisdom, it must inevitably change
its laws; and the necessary innovations will not be effected by any
legislator, but must spring from corruption itself.
Rome was founded for grandeur, and her laws had an admirable tendency
to bestow it; for which reason, in all the variations of her
government, whether monarchy, aristocracy, or popular, she constantly
engaged in enterprises which required conduct to accomplish them, and
always succeeded. The experience of a day did not furnish her with
more wisdom than all other nations, but she obtained it by a long
succession of events. She sustained a small, a moderate, and an
immense fortune with the same superiority, derived true welfare from
the whole train of her prosperities, and refined every instance of
calamity into beneficial instructions.
She lost her liberty because she completed her work too soon.
II
OF THE RELATION OF LAWS TO DIFFERENT HUMAN BEINGS[39]
Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations
arising from the nature of things. In this sense all beings have their
laws; the Deity His laws, the material world its laws, the
intelligences superior to man their laws, the beasts their laws, man
his laws.
[Footnote 39: From "The Spirit of Laws." The translation of Thomas
Nugent was published in 1756.]
They who assert that a blind fatality produced the various effects we
behold in this world talk very absurdly; for can anything be more
unreasonable than to pretend that a blind fatality could be productive
of intelligent beings?
There is, then, a primitive reason; and laws are the relations
subsisting between it and different beings, and the relations of these
to one another.
God is related to the universe, as Creator and Preserver; the laws by
which He created all things are those by which He preserves them. He
acts according to these rules, because He knows them; He knows them,
because He made them; and He made them, because they are relative to
His wisdom and power.
Since we observe that the world, tho formed by the motion of matter,
and void of understanding, subsists through so long a succession of
ages, its motions must certainly be directed by invariable laws; and
could we imagine another world, it must also have constant rules, or
it would inevitably perish.
Thus the creation, which seems an arbitrary net, supposes laws as
invariable as those of the fatality of the atheists. It would be
absurd to say that the Creator might govern the world without these
rules, since without them it could not subsist.
These rules are a fixt and variable relation. In bodies moved, the
motion is received, increased, diminished, lost, according to the
relations of the quantity of matter and velocity; each diversity is
uniformity, each change is constancy.
Particular intelligent beings may have laws of their own making, but
they have some likewise which they never made. Before they were
intelligent beings, they were possible; they had therefore possible
relations, and consequently possible laws. Before laws were made,
there were relations of possible justice. To say that there is nothing
just or unjust but what is commanded or forbidden by positive laws is
the same as saying that before the describing of a circle all the
radii were not equal.
We must therefore acknowledge relations of justice antecedent to the
positive law by which they are established: as for instance, that if
human societies existed it would be right to conform to their laws; if
there were intelligent beings that had received a benefit of another
being, they ought to show their gratitude; if one intelligent being
had created another intelligent being, the latter ought to continue in
its original state of dependence; if one intelligent being injures
another, it deserves a retaliation; and so on.
But the intelligent world is far from being so well governed as the
physical. For tho the former has also its laws, which of their own
nature are invariable, it does not conform to them so exactly as the
physical world. This is because, on the one hand, particular
intelligent beings are of a finite nature, and consequently liable to
error; and on the other, their nature requires them to be free agents.
Hence they do not steadily conform to their primitive laws; and even,
those of their own instituting they frequently infringe.
Whether brutes be governed by the general laws of motion or by a
particular movement we can not determine. Be that as it may, they have
not a more intimate relation to God than the rest of the material
world; and sensation is of no other use to them than in the relation
they have either to other particular beings or to themselves.
By the allurements of pleasure they preserve the individual, and by
the same allurements they preserve their species. They have natural
laws, because they are united by sensation; positive laws they have
none, because they are not connected by knowledge. And yet they do not
invariably conform to their natural laws; these are better observed
by vegetables, that have neither understanding nor sense.
Brutes are deprived of the high advantages which we have; but they
have some which we have not. They have not our hopes, but they are
without our fears; they are subject like us to death, but without
knowing it; even most of them are more attentive than we to
self-preservation, and do not make so bad a use of their passions.
Man, as a physical being, is like other bodies, governed by invariable
laws. As an intelligent being, he incessantly transgresses the laws
established by God, and changes those of his own instituting. He is
left to his private direction, tho a limited being, and subject, like
all finite intelligences, to ignorance and error; even his imperfect
knowledge he loses; and as a sensible creature, he is hurried away by
a thousand impetuous passions. Such a being might every instant forget
his Creator; God has therefore reminded him of his duty by the laws of
religion. Such a being is liable every moment to forget himself;
philosophy has provided against this by the laws of morality. Formed
to live in society, he might forget his fellow creatures; legislators
have therefore by political and civil laws confined him to his duty.
FRANÇOIS AROUET VOLTAIRE
Born in Paris in 1694, died in 1778; his original name
Arouet; educated at the College of Louis-le-Grand; exiled
because of his freedom of speech; twice imprisoned in the
Bastille; resided in England in 1726-29; went to Prussia at
the invitation of Frederick the Great in 1750, remaining
three years, the friendship ending in bitter enmity; wrote
in Prussia his "Le Siècle de Louis XIV"; settled at Geneva
in 1756, and two years later at Ferney, where he lived until
his death in 1778; visited Paris in 1778, being received
with great honors; his works very numerous, one edition
comprizing seventy-two volumes.
I
OF BACON'S GREATNESS[40]
Not long since the trite and frivolous question following was debated
in a very polite and learned company, viz., Who was the greatest man,
Cæsar, Alexander, Tamerlane, Cromwell, etc.?
[Footnote 40: From the "Letters on England." Voltaire's visit to
England followed immediately upon his release from imprisonment in the
Bastille. During the two years he spent there, he acquired an intimate
knowledge of English life, and came to know most of the eminent
Englishmen of the time.
An English version of Voltaire's writings, in thirty-five volumes, was
published in 1761-69, with notes by Smollett and others. The "Letters
from England" seem to have first appeared in English in 1734.]
Somebody answered that Sir Isaac Newton excelled them all. The
gentleman's assertion was very just; for if true greatness consists in
having received from heaven a mighty genius, and in having employed
it to enlighten our own mind and that of others, a man like Sir Isaac
Newton, whose equal is hardly found in a thousand years, is the truly
great man. And those politicians and conquerors (and all ages produce
some) were generally so many illustrious wicked men. That man claims
our respect who commands over the minds of the rest of the world by
the force of truth, not those who enslave their fellow creatures; he
who is acquainted with the universe, not they who deface it.
The most singular and the best of all his pieces is that which, at
this time, is the most useless and the least read. I mean his "Novum
Scientiarum Organum." This is the scaffold with which the new
philosophy was raised; and when the edifice was built, part of it, at
least the scaffold was no longer of service.
Lord Bacon was not yet acquainted with nature, but then he knew, and
pointed out the several paths that lead to it. He had despised in his
younger years the thing called philosophy in the universities, and did
all that lay in his power to prevent those societies of men instituted
to improve human reason from depraving it by their quiddities, their
horrors of the vacuum, their substantial forms, and all those
impertinent terms which not only ignorance had rendered venerable, but
which had been made sacred by their being ridiculously blended with
religion.
He is the father of experimental philosophy. It must, indeed, be
confest that very surprizing secrets had been found out before his
time--the sea compass, printing, engraving on copper plates, oil
painting, looking-glasses; the art of restoring, in some measure, old
men to their sight by spectacles; gunpowder, etc., had been
discovered. A new world had been fought for, found, and conquered.
Would not one suppose that these sublime discoveries had been made by
the greatest philosophers, and in ages much more enlightened than the
present? But it was far otherwise; all these great changes happened in
the most stupid and barbarous times. Chance only gave birth to most of
those inventions; and it is very probable that what is called chance
contributed very much to the discovery of America; at least it has
been always thought that Christopher Columbus undertook his voyage
merely on the relation of a captain of a ship which a storm had driven
as far westward as the Caribbean Island. Be this as it will, men had
sailed round the world, and could destroy cities by an artificial
thunder more dreadful than the real one; but, then, they were not
acquainted with the circulation of the blood, the weight of the air,
the laws of motions, light, the number of our planets, etc. And a man
who maintained a thesis on Aristotle's "Categories," on the universals
_a parte rei_, or such-like nonsense, was looked upon as a prodigy.
The most astonishing, the most useful inventions, are not those which
reflect the greatest honor on the human mind. It is to a mechanical
instinct, which is found in many men, and not to true philosophy that
most arts owe their origin.
The discovery of fire, the art of making bread, of melting and
preparing metals, of building houses, and the invention of the shuttle
are infinitely more beneficial to mankind than printing or the sea
compass; and yet these arts were invented by uncultivated, savage men.
What a prodigious use the Greeks and Romans made afterward of
mechanics! Nevertheless, they believed that there were crystal
heavens, that the stars were small lamps which sometimes fell into the
sea, and one of their greatest philosophers, after long researches,
found that the stars were so many flints which had been detached from
the earth.
In a word, no one before Lord Bacon was acquainted with experimental
philosophy, nor with the several physical experiments which have been
made since his time. Scarce one of them but is hinted at in his work,
and he himself had made several. He made a kind of pneumatic engine,
by which he guessed the elasticity of the air. He approached on all
sides, as it were, to the discovery of its weight, and had very near
attained it, but some time after Torricelli seized upon this truth. In
a little time experimental philosophy began to be cultivated on a
sudden in most parts of Europe. It was a hidden treasure which Lord
Bacon had some notion of, and which all the philosophers, encouraged
by his promises, endeavored to dig up.
But that which surprized me most was to read in his work, in express
terms, the new attraction, the invention of which is ascribed to Sir
Isaac Newton.
We must search, says Lord Bacon, whether there may not be a kind of
magnetic power which operates between the earth and heavy bodies,
between the moon and the ocean, between the planets, etc. In another
place he says, either heavy bodies must be carried toward the center
of the earth, or must be reciprocally attracted by it; and in the
latter case it is evident that the nearer bodies in their falling,
draw toward the earth, the stronger they will attract one another. We
must, says he, make an experiment to see whether the same clock will
go faster on the top of a mountain or at the bottom of a mine; whether
the strength of the weights decreases on the mountain and increases in
the mine. It is probable that the earth has a true attractive power.
This forerunner in philosophy was also an elegant writer, a historian,
and a wit.
His moral essays are greatly esteemed, but they were drawn up in the
view of instructing rather than of pleasing; and, as they are not a
satire upon mankind, like Rochefoucauld's "Maxims," nor written upon a
skeptical plan, like Montaigne's "Essays," they are not so much read
as those two ingenious authors.
II
ENGLAND'S REGARD FOR MEN OF LETTERS[41]
Neither the English nor any other people have foundations established
in favor of the polite arts like those in France. There are
universities in most countries, but it is in France only that we meet
with so beneficial an encouragement for astronomy and all parts of the
mathematics, for physic, for researches into antiquity, for painting,
sculpture, and architecture. Louis XIV has immortalized his name by
these several foundations, and this immortality did not cost him two
hundred thousand livres a year.
[Footnote 41: From the "Letters on England."]
I must confess that one of the things I very much wonder at is that as
the Parliament of Great Britain have promised a reward of £20,000 to
any person who may discover the longitude, they should never have once
thought to imitate Louis XIV in his munificence with regard to the
arts and sciences.