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Title: Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary

Author: Voltaire

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Voltaire's
Philosophical
Dictionary

New York

CARLTON HOUSE

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

PREFACE
This book does not demand continuous reading; but at whatever place one
opens it, one will find matter for reflection. The most useful books are those
of which readers themselves compose half; they extend the thoughts of
which the germ is presented to them; they correct what seems defective to
them, and they fortify by their reflections what seems to them weak.
It is only really by enlightened people that this book can be read; the
ordinary man is not made for such knowledge; philosophy will never be his
lot. Those who say that there are truths which must be hidden from the
people, need not be alarmed; the people do not read; they work six days of
the week, and on the seventh go to the inn. In a word, philosophical works
are made only for philosophers, and every honest man must try to be a
philosopher, without pluming himself on being one.
This alphabet is extracted from the most estimable works which are not
commonly within the reach of the many; and if the author does not always
mention the sources of his information, as being well enough known to the
learned, he must not be suspected of wishing to take the credit for other
people's work, because he himself preserves anonymity, according to this
word of the Gospel: "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth."

CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface by Voltaire 5

Adultery 11
Advocate 16
Ancients and Moderns 17
Animals 21
Antiquity 24
Arts 27
Astrology 29
Atheism 32
Authority 46
Authors 48

Banishment 50
Bankruptcy 51
Beauty 53
Bishop 55
Books 57
Bouleverd 60
Bourges 61
Brahmins 62

Character 65
Charlatan 68
Civil Laws 73
Climate 74
Common Sense 78
Concatenation of Events 80
Contradictions 83
Corn 85
Cromwell 88

Customs 94

Democracy 96
Destiny 98
Devout 102

Ecclesiastical Ministry 103
Emblem 106
English Theatre, on the 110
Envy 112
Equality 114
Expiation 118
Extreme 122
Ezourveidam 125

Faith 126
False Minds 128
Fatherland 131
Final Causes 133
Fraud 136
Free-will 142
French 146
Friendship 150

God 151

Helvetia 156
History 157

Ignorance 163
Impious 166

Joan of Arc 168

Kissing 173

Languages 178

Laws 184
Liberty 187
Library 191
Limits of the Human Mind 194
Local Crimes 195
Love 197
Luxury 200

Man 203
Man in the Iron Mask 204
Marriage 210
Master 211
Men of Letters 214
Metamorphosis 216
Milton, on the Reproach of Plagiarism Against 217
Mohammedans 220
Mountain 221

Nakedness 222
Natural Law 224
Nature 227
Necessary 231
New Novelties 236

Philosopher 237
Power, Omnipotence 240
Prayers 245
Précis of Ancient Philosophy 247
Prejudices 251

Rare 255
Reason 257
Religion 259

Sect 267
Self-esteem 271
Soul 273

States, Governments 294
Superstition 297

Tears 299
Theist 301
Tolerance 302
Truth 305
Tyranny 308

Virtue 309

Why? 313

Declaration of Admirers, Questioners and Doubters 315

ADULTERY
Note on a Magistrate Written about 1764

A senior magistrate of a French town had the misfortune to have a wife who
was debauched by a priest before her marriage, and who since covered
herself with disgrace by public scandals: he was so moderate as to leave her
without noise. This man, about forty years old, vigorous and of agreeable
appearance, needs a woman; he is too scrupulous to seek to seduce another
man's wife, he fears intercourse with a public woman or with a widow who
would serve him as concubine. In this disquieting and sad state, he
addresses to his Church a plea of which the following is a précis:
My wife is criminal, and it is I who am punished. Another woman is
necessary as a comfort to my life, to my virtue even; and the sect of which I
am a member refuses her to me; it forbids me to marry an honest girl. The
civil laws of to-day, unfortunately founded on canon law, deprive me of the
rights of humanity. The Church reduces me to seeking either the pleasures it
reproves, or the shameful compensations it condemns; it tries to force me to
be criminal.
I cast my eyes over all the peoples of the earth; there is not a single one
except the Roman Catholic people among whom divorce and a new
marriage are not natural rights.
What upheaval of the rule has therefore made among the Catholics a virtue
of undergoing adultery, and a duty of lacking a wife when one has been
infamously outraged by one's own?
Why is a bond that has rotted indissoluble in spite of the great law adopted
by the code, quidquid ligatur dissolubile est? I am allowed a separation a
mensa et thoro, and I am not allowed divorce. The law can deprive me of
my wife, and it leaves me a name called "sacrament"! What a contradiction!
what slavery! and under what laws did we receive birth!

What is still more strange is that this law of my Church is directly contrary
to the words which this Church itself believes to have been uttered by Jesus
Christ: "Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and
shall marry another, committeth adultery" (Matt. xix. 9).
I do not examine whether the pontiffs of Rome are in the right to violate at
their pleasure the law of him they regard as their master; whether when a
state has need of an heir, it is permissible to repudiate her who can give it
one. I do not inquire if a turbulent woman, demented, homicidal, a poisoner,
should not be repudiated equally with an adulteress: I limit myself to the
sad state which concerns me: God permits me to remarry, and the Bishop of
Rome does not permit me.
Divorce was a practice among Catholics under all the emperors; it was also
in all the dismembered states of the Roman Empire. The kings of France,
those called "of the first line," almost all repudiated their wives in order to
take new ones. At last came Gregory IX., enemy of the emperors and kings,
who by a decree made marriage an unshakeable yoke; his decretal became
the law of Europe. When the kings wanted to repudiate a wife who was an
adulteress according to Jesus Christ's law, they could not succeed; it was
necessary to find ridiculous pretexts. Louis the younger was obliged, to
accomplish his unfortunate divorce from Eleanor of Guienne, to allege a
relationship which did not exist. Henry IV., to repudiate Marguerite de
Valois, pretexted a still more false cause, a refusal of consent. One had to lie
to obtain a divorce legitimately.
What! a king can abdicate his crown, and without the Pope's permission he
cannot abdicate his wife! Is it possible that otherwise enlightened men have
wallowed so long in this absurd servitude!
That our priests, that our monks renounce wives, to that I consent; it is an
outrage against population, it is a misfortune for them, but they merit this
misfortune which they have made for themselves. They have been the
victims of the popes who wanted to have in them slaves, soldiers without
families and without fatherland, living solely for the Church: but I,
magistrate, who serve the state all day, I need a wife in the evening; and the
Church has not the right to deprive me of a benefit which God accords me.
The apostles were married, Joseph was married, and I want to be. If I,

Alsacian, am dependent on a priest who dwells at Rome, if this priest has
the barbarous power to rob me of a wife, let him make a eunuch of me for
the singing of Misereres in his chapel.

Note for Women

Equity demands that, having recorded this note in favour of husbands, we
should also put before the public the case in favour of wives, presented to
the junta of Portugal by a Countess of Arcira. This is the substance of it:
The Gospel has forbidden adultery for my husband just as for me; he will
be damned as I shall, nothing is better established. When he committed
twenty infidelities, when he gave my necklace to one of my rivals, and my
ear-rings to another, I did not ask the judges to have him shaved, to shut
him up among monks and to give me his property. And I, for having
imitated him once, for having done with the most handsome young man in
Lisbon what he did every day with impunity with the most idiotic strumpets
of the court and the town, have to answer at the bar before licentiates each
of whom would be at my feet if we were alone together in my closet; have
to endure at the court the usher cutting off my hair which is the most
beautiful in the world; and being shut up among nuns who have no common
sense, deprived of my dowry and my marriage covenants, with all my
property given to my coxcomb of a husband to help him seduce other
women and to commit fresh adulteries.
I ask if it is just, and if it is not evident that the laws were made by
cuckolds?
In answer to my plea I am told that I should be happy not to be stoned at the
city gate by the canons, the priests of the parish and the whole populace.
This was the practice among the first nation of the earth, the chosen nation,
the cherished nation, the only one which was right when all the others were
wrong.
To these barbarities I reply that when the poor adulteress was presented by
her accusers to the Master of the old and new law, He did not have her
stoned; that on the contrary He reproached them with their injustice, that he
laughed at them by writing on the ground with his finger, that he quoted the

old Hebraic proverb—"He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a
stone at her"; that then they all retired, the oldest fleeing first, because the
older they were the more adulteries had they committed.
The doctors of canon law answer me that this history of the adulteress is
related only in the Gospel of St. John, that it was not inserted there until
later. Leontius, Maldonat, affirm that it is not to be found in a single ancient
Greek copy; that none of the twenty-three early commentators mentions it.
Origen, St. Jerome, St. John Chrysostom, Theophilact, Nonnus, do not
recognize it at all. It is not to be found in the Syriac Bible, it is not in
Ulphilas' version.
That is what my husband's advocates say, they who would have me not only
shaved, but also stoned.
But the advocates who pleaded for me say that Ammonius, author of the
third century, recognized this story as true, and that if St. Jerome rejects it in
some places, he adopts it in others; that, in a word, it is authentic to-day. I
leave there, and I say to my husband: "If you are without sin, shave me,
imprison me, take my property; but if you have committed more sins than I
have, it is for me to shave you, to have you imprisoned, and to seize your
fortune. In justice these things should be equal."
My husband answers that he is my superior and my chief, that he is more
than an inch taller, that he is shaggy as a bear; that consequently I owe him
everything, and that he owes me nothing.
But I ask if Queen Anne of England is not her husband's chief? if her
husband the Prince of Denmark, who is her High Admiral, does not owe her
entire obedience? and if she would not have him condemned by the court of
peers if the little man's infidelity were in question? It is therefore clear that
if the women do not have the men punished, it is when they are not the
stronger.

ADVOCATE
An advocate is a man who, not having a sufficient fortune to buy one of
those resplendent offices on which the universe has its eyes, studies the
laws of Theodosius and Justinian for three years, so that he may learn the
usages of Paris, and who finally, being registered, has the right to plead
causes for money, if he have a strong voice.

ANCIENTS AND MODERNS
The great dispute between the ancients and the moderns is not yet settled; it
has been on the table since the silver age succeeded the golden age.
Mankind has always maintained that the good old times were much better
than the present day. Nestor, in the "Iliad," wishing to insinuate himself as a
wise conciliator into the minds of Achilles and Agamemnon, starts by
saying to them—"I lived formerly with better men than you; no, I have
never seen and I shall never see such great personages as Dryas, Cenæus,
Exadius, Polyphemus equal to the gods, etc."
Posterity has well avenged Achilles for Nestor's poor compliment. Nobody
knows Dryas any longer; one has hardly heard speak of Exadius, or of
Cenæus; and as for Polyphemus equal to the gods, he has not too good a
reputation, unless the possession of a big eye in one's forehead, and the
eating of men raw, are to have something of the divine.
Lucretius does not hesitate to say that nature has degenerated (lib. II. v.
1159). Antiquity is full of eulogies of another more remote antiquity.
Horace combats this prejudice with as much finesse as force in his beautiful
Epistle to Augustus (Epist. I. liv. ii.). "Must our poems, then," he says, "be
like our wines, of which the oldest are always preferred?"
The learned and ingenious Fontenelle expresses himself on this subject as
follows:
"The whole question of the pre-eminence between the ancients and the
moderns, once it is well understood, is reduced to knowing whether the
trees which formerly were in our countryside were bigger than those of to-
day. In the event that they were, Homer, Plato, Demosthenes cannot be
equalled in these latter centuries.
"Let us throw light on this paradox. If the ancients had more intellect than
us, it is that the brains of those times were better ordered, formed of firmer
or more delicate fibres, filled with more animal spirits; but in virtue of what
were the brains of those times better ordered? The trees also would have

been bigger and more beautiful; for if nature was then younger and more
vigorous, the trees, as well as men's brains, would have been conscious of
this vigour and this youth." ("Digression on the Ancients and the Moderns,"
vol. 4, 1742 edition.)
With the illustrious academician's permission, that is not at all the state of
the question. It is not a matter of knowing whether nature has been able to
produce in our day as great geniuses and as good works as those of Greek
and Latin antiquity; but to know whether we have them in fact. Without a
doubt it is not impossible for there to be as big oaks in the forest of
Chantilli as in the forest of Dodona; but supposing that the oaks of Dodona
had spoken, it would be quite clear that they had a great advantage over
ours, which in all probability will never speak.
Nature is not bizarre; but it is possible that she gave the Athenians a country
and a sky more suitable than Westphalia and the Limousin for forming
certain geniuses. Further, it is possible that the government of Athens, by
seconding the climate, put into Demosthenes' head something that the air of
Climart and La Grenouillère and the government of Cardinal de Richelieu
did not put into the heads of Omer Talon and Jérome Bignon.
This dispute is therefore a question of fact. Was antiquity more fecund in
great monuments of all kinds, up to the time of Plutarch, than modern
centuries have been from the century of the Medicis up to Louis XIV.
inclusive?
The Chinese, more than two hundred years before our era, constructed that
great wall which was not able to save them from the invasion of the Tartars.
The Egyptians, three thousand years before, had overloaded the earth with
their astonishing pyramids, which had a base of about ninety thousand
square feet. Nobody doubts that, if one wished to undertake to-day these
useless works, one could easily succeed by a lavish expenditure of money.
The great wall of China is a monument to fear; the pyramids are
monuments to vanity and superstition. Both bear witness to a great patience
in the peoples, but to no superior genius. Neither the Chinese nor the
Egyptians would have been able to make even a statue such as those which
our sculptors form to-day.

The chevalier Temple, who has made it his business to disparage all the
moderns, claims that in architecture they have nothing comparable to the
temples of Greece and Rome: but, for all that he is English, he must agree
that the Church of St. Peter is incomparably more beautiful than the Capitol
was.
It is curious with what assurance he maintains that there is nothing new in
our astronomy, nothing in the knowledge of the human body, unless
perhaps, he says, the circulation of the blood. Love of his own opinion,
founded on his vast self-esteem, makes him forget the discovery of the
satellites of Jupiter, of the five moons and the ring of Saturn, of the rotation
of the sun on its axis, of the calculated position of three thousand stars, of
the laws given by Kepler and Newton for the heavenly orbs, of the causes
of the precession of the equinoxes, and of a hundred other pieces of
knowledge of which the ancients did not suspect even the possibility.
The discoveries in anatomy are as great in number. A new universe in little,
discovered by the microscope, was counted for nothing by the chevalier
Temple; he closed his eyes to the marvels of his contemporaries, and
opened them only to admire ancient ignorance.
He goes so far as to pity us for having nothing left of the magic of the
Indians, the Chaldeans, the Egyptians; and by this magic he understands a
profound knowledge of nature, whereby they produced miracles: but he
does not cite one miracle, because in fact there never were any. "What has
become," he asks, "of the charms of that music which so often enchanted
man and beast, the fishes, the birds, the snakes, and changed their nature?"
This enemy of his century really believes the fable of Orpheus, and has not
apparently heard either the beautiful music of Italy, or even that of France,
which in truth does not charm snakes, but does charm the ears of
connoisseurs.
What is still more strange is that, having all his life cultivated belles-lettres,
he does not reason better about our good authors than about our
philosophers. He looks on Rabelais as a great man. He cites the "Amours
des Gaules" as one of our best works. He was, however, a scholar, a
courtier, a man of much wit, an ambassador, a man who had reflected

profoundly on all he had seen. He possessed great knowledge: a prejudice
sufficed to spoil all this merit.
There are beauties in Euripides, and in Sophocles still more; but they have
many more defects. One dares say that the beautiful scenes of Corneille and
the touching tragedies of Racine surpass the tragedies of Sophocles and
Euripides as much as these two Greeks surpass Thespis. Racine was quite
conscious of his great superiority over Euripides; but he praised the Greek
poet in order to humiliate Perrault.
Molière, in his good pieces, is as superior to the pure but cold Terence, and
to the droll Aristophanes, as to Dancourt the buffoon.
There are therefore spheres in which the moderns are far superior to the
ancients, and others, very few in number, in which we are their inferiors. It
is to this that the whole dispute is reduced.

ANIMALS
What a pitiful, what a sorry thing to have said that animals are machines
bereft of understanding and feeling, which perform their operations always
in the same way, which learn nothing, perfect nothing, etc.!
What! that bird which makes its nest in a semi-circle when it is attaching it
to a wall, which builds it in a quarter circle when it is in an angle, and in a
circle upon a tree; that bird acts always in the same way? That hunting-dog
which you have disciplined for three months, does it not know more at the
end of this time than it knew before your lessons? Does the canary to which
you teach a tune repeat it at once? do you not spend a considerable time in
teaching it? have you not seen that it has made a mistake and that it corrects
itself?
Is it because I speak to you, that you judge that I have feeling, memory,
ideas? Well, I do not speak to you; you see me going home looking
disconsolate, seeking a paper anxiously, opening the desk where I
remember having shut it, finding it, reading it joyfully. You judge that I
have experienced the feeling of distress and that of pleasure, that I have
memory and understanding.
Bring the same judgment to bear on this dog which has lost its master,
which has sought him on every road with sorrowful cries, which enters the
house agitated, uneasy, which goes down the stairs, up the stairs, from room
to room, which at last finds in his study the master it loves, and which
shows him its joy by its cries of delight, by its leaps, by its caresses.
Barbarians seize this dog, which in friendship surpasses man so
prodigiously; they nail it on a table, and they dissect it alive in order to
show the mesenteric veins. You discover in it all the same organs of feeling
that are in yourself. Answer me, machinist, has nature arranged all the
means of feeling in this animal, so that it may not feel? has it nerves in
order to be impassible? Do not suppose this impertinent contradiction in
nature.

But the schoolmasters ask what the soul of animals is? I do not understand
this question. A tree has the faculty of receiving in its fibres its sap which
circulates, of unfolding the buds of its leaves and its fruit; will you ask what
the soul of this tree is? it has received these gifts; the animal has received
those of feeling, of memory, of a certain number of ideas. Who has
bestowed these gifts? who has given these faculties? He who has made the
grass of the fields to grow, and who makes the earth gravitate toward the
sun.
"Animals' souls are substantial forms," said Aristotle, and after Aristotle, the
Arab school, and after the Arab school, the angelical school, and after the
angelical school, the Sorbonne, and after the Sorbonne, nobody at all.
"Animals' souls are material," cry other philosophers. These have not been
in any better fortune than the others. In vain have they been asked what a
material soul is; they have to admit that it is matter which has sensation: but
what has given it this sensation? It is a material soul, that is to say that it is
matter which gives sensation to matter; they cannot issue from this circle.
Listen to other brutes reasoning about the brutes; their soul is a spiritual
soul which dies with the body; but what proof have you of it? what idea
have you of this spiritual soul, which, in truth, has feeling, memory, and its
measure of ideas and ingenuity; but which will never be able to know what
a child of six knows? On what ground do you imagine that this being,
which is not body, dies with the body? The greatest fools are those who
have advanced that this soul is neither body nor spirit. There is a fine
system. By spirit we can understand only some unknown thing which is not
body. Thus these gentlemen's system comes back to this, that the animals'
soul is a substance which is neither body nor something which is not body.
Whence can come so many contradictory errors? From the habit men have
always had of examining what a thing is, before knowing if it exists. The
clapper, the valve of a bellows, is called in French the "soul" of a bellows.
What is this soul? It is a name that I have given to this valve which falls,
lets air enter, rises again, and thrusts it through a pipe, when I make the
bellows move.
There is not there a distinct soul in the machine: but what makes animals'
bellows move? I have already told you, what makes the stars move. The

philosopher who said, "Deus est anima brutorum," was right; but he should
go further.

ANTIQUITY
Have you sometimes seen in a village Pierre Aoudri and his wife Peronelle
wishing to go before their neighbours in the procession? "Our
grandfathers," they say, "were tolling the bells before those who jostle us to-
day owned even a pig-sty."
The vanity of Pierre Aoudri, his wife and his neighbours, knows nothing
more about it. Their minds kindle. The quarrel is important; honour is in
question. Proofs are necessary. A scholar who sings in the choir, discovers
an old rusty iron pot, marked with an "A," first letter of the name of the
potter who made the pot. Pierre Aoudri persuades himself that it was his
ancestors' helmet. In this way was Cæsar descended from a hero and from
the goddess Venus. Such is the history of nations; such is, within very small
margins, the knowledge of early antiquity.
The scholars of Armenia demonstrate that the terrestrial paradise was in
their land. Some profound Swedes demonstrate that it was near Lake Vener
which is visibly a remnant of it. Some Spaniards demonstrate also that it
was in Castille; while the Japanese, the Chinese, the Indians, the Africans,
the Americans are not sufficiently unfortunate to know even that there was
formerly a terrestrial paradise at the source of the Phison, the Gehon, the
Tigris and the Euphrates, or, if you prefer it, at the source of the
Guadalquivir, the Guadiana, the Douro and the Ebro; for from Phison one
easily makes Phaetis; and from Phaetis one makes the Baetis which is the
Guadalquivir. The Gehon is obviously the Guadiana, which begins with a
"G." The Ebro, which is in Catalonia, is incontestably the Euphrates, of
which the initial letter is "E."
But a Scotsman appears who demonstrates in his turn that the garden of
Eden was at Edinburgh, which has retained its name; and it is to be believed
that in a few centuries this opinion will make its fortune.
The whole globe was burned once upon a time, says a man versed in
ancient and modern history; for I read in a newspaper that some absolutely
black charcoal has been found in Germany at a depth of a hundred feet,

between mountains covered with wood. And it is suspected even that there
were charcoal burners in this place.
Phaeton's adventure makes it clear that everything has boiled right to the
bottom of the sea. The sulphur of Mount Vesuvius proves invincibly that the
banks of the Rhine, Danube, Ganges, Nile and the great Yellow River are
merely sulphur, nitre and Guiac oil, which only await the moment of the
explosion to reduce the earth to ashes, as it has already been. The sand on
which we walk is evident proof that the earth has been vitrified, and that our
globe is really only a glass ball, just as are our ideas.
But if fire has changed our globe, water has produced still finer revolutions.
For you see clearly that the sea, the tides of which mount as high as eight
feet in our climate, has produced mountains of a height of sixteen to
seventeen thousand feet. This is so true that some learned men who have
never been in Switzerland have found a big ship with all its rigging petrified
on Mount St. Gothard, or at the bottom of a precipice, one knows not
where; but it is quite certain that it was there. Therefore men were originally
fish, quod erat demonstrandum.
To descend to a less antique antiquity, let us speak of the times when the
greater part of the barbarous nations left their countries, to go to seek others
which were hardly any better. It is true, if there be anything true in ancient
history, that there were some Gaulish brigands who went to pillage Rome in
the time of Camillus. Other Gaulish brigands had passed, it is said, through
Illyria on the way to hire their services as murderers to other murderers, in
the direction of Thrace; they exchanged their blood for bread, and later
established themselves in Galatia. But who were these Gauls? were they
Berichons and Angevins? They were without a doubt Gauls whom the
Romans called Cisalpines, and whom we call Transalpines, famished
mountain-dwellers, neighbours of the Alps and the Apennines. The Gauls of
the Seine and the Marne did not know at that time that Rome existed, and
could not take it into their heads to pass Mount Cenis, as Hannibal did later,
to go to steal the wardrobes of Roman senators who at that time for all
furniture had a robe of poor grey stuff, ornamented with a band the colour
of ox blood; two little pummels of ivory, or rather dog's bone, on the arms
of a wooden chair; and in their kitchens a piece of rancid bacon.

The Gauls, who were dying of hunger, not finding anything to eat in Rome,
went off therefore to seek their fortune farther away, as was the practice of
the Romans later, when they ravaged so many countries one after the other;
as did the peoples of the North when they destroyed the Roman Empire.
And, further, what is it which instructs very feebly about these emigrations?
It is a few lines that the Romans wrote at hazard; because for the Celts, the
Velches or the Gauls, these men who it is desired to make pass for eloquent,
at that time did not know, they and their bards, how either to read or write.
But to infer from that that the Gauls or Celts, conquered after by a few of
Cæsar's legions, and by a horde of Bourguignons, and lastly by a horde of
Sicamores, under one Clodovic, had previously subjugated the whole
world, and given their names and laws to Asia, seems to me to be very
strange: the thing is not mathematically impossible, and if it be
demonstrated, I give way; it would be very uncivil to refuse to the Velches
what one accords to the Tartars.

ARTS
That the Newness of the Arts in no wise proves the Newness
of the Globe

All the philosophers thought matter eternal but the arts appear new. There is
not one, even to the art of making bread, which is not recent. The first
Romans ate pap; and these conquerors of so many nations never thought of
either windmills or watermills. This truth seems at first to contradict the
antiquity of the globe such as it is, or supposes terrible revolutions in this
globe. The inundations of barbarians can hardly annihilate arts which have
become necessary. I suppose that an army of negroes come among us like
locusts, from the mountains of Cobonas, through the Monomotapa, the
Monoemugi, the Nosseguais, the Maracates; that they have traversed
Abyssinia, Nubia, Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, the whole of our Europe; that
they have overthrown everything, ransacked everything; there will still
remain a few bakers, a few cobblers, a few tailors, a few carpenters: the
necessary arts will survive; only luxury will be annihilated. It is what was
seen at the fall of the Roman Empire; the art of writing even became very
rare; almost all those which contributed to the comfort of life were reborn
only long after. We invent new ones every day.
From all this one can at bottom conclude nothing against the antiquity of
the globe. For, supposing even that an influx of barbarians had made us lose
entirely all the arts even to the arts of writing and making bread; supposing,
further, that for ten years past we had no bread, pens, ink and paper; the
land which has been able to subsist for ten years without eating bread and
without writing its thoughts, would be able to pass a century, and a hundred
thousand centuries without these aids.
It is quite clear that man and the other animals can exist very well without
bakers, without novelists, and without theologians, witness the whole of
America, witness three quarters of our continent.

The newness of the arts among us does not therefore prove the newness of
the globe, as was claimed by Epicurus, one of our predecessors in reverie,
who supposed that by chance the eternal atoms in declining, had one day
formed our earth. Pomponace said: "Se il mondo non è eterno, per tutti
santi è molto vecchio."

ASTROLOGY
Astrology may rest on better foundations than Magic. For if no one has seen
either Goblins, or Lemures, or Dives, or Peris, or Demons, or Cacodemons,
the predictions of astrologers have often been seen to succeed. If of two
astrologers consulted on the life of a child and on the weather, one says that
the child will live to manhood, the other not; if one announces rain, and the
other fine weather, it is clear that one of them will be a prophet.
The great misfortune of the astrologers is that the sky has changed since the
rules of the art were established. The sun, which at the equinox was in Aries
in the time of the Argonauts, is to-day in Taurus; and the astrologers, to the
great ill-fortune of their art, to-day attribute to one house of the sun what
belongs visibly to another. However, that is not a demonstrative reason
against astrology. The masters of the art deceive themselves; but it is not
demonstrated that the art cannot exist.
There is no absurdity in saying: Such and such a child is born in the waxing
of the moon, during stormy weather, at the rising of such and such star; his
constitution has been feeble, and his life unhappy and short; which is the
ordinary lot of poor constitutions: this child, on the contrary, was born when
the moon was full, the sun strong, the weather calm, at the rising of such
and such star; his constitution has been good, his life long and happy. If
these observations had been repeated, if they had been found accurate,
experience would have been able after some thousands of years to form an
art which it would have been difficult to doubt: one would have thought,
with some likelihood, that men are like trees and vegetables which must be
planted and sown only in certain seasons. It would have been of no avail
against the astrologers to say: My son was born at a fortunate time, and
nevertheless died in his cradle; the astrologer would have answered: It often
happens that trees planted in the proper season perish; I answered to you for
the stars, but I did not answer for the flaw of conformation you
communicated to your child. Astrology operates only when no cause
opposes itself to the good the stars can do.

One would not have succeeded better in discrediting the astrologer by
saying: Of two children who were born in the same minute, one has been
king, the other has been only churchwarden of his parish; for the astrologer
could very well have defended himself by pointing out that the peasant
made his fortune when he became churchwarden, as the prince when he
became king.
And if one alleged that a bandit whom Sixtus V. had hanged was born at the
same time as Sixtus V., who from a pig-herd became Pope, the astrologers
would say one had made a mistake of a few seconds, and that it is
impossible, according to the rules, for the same star to give the triple crown
and the gibbet. It is then only because a host of experiences belied the
predictions, that men perceived at last that the art was illusory; but before
being undeceived, they were long credulous.
One of the most famous mathematicians in Europe, named Stoffler, who
flourished in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and who long worked at
the reform of the calendar, proposed at the Council of Constance, foretold a
universal flood for the year 1524. This flood was to arrive in the month of
February, and nothing is more plausible; for Saturn, Jupiter and Mars were
then in conjunction in the sign of Pisces. All the peoples of Europe, Asia
and Africa, who heard speak of the prediction, were dismayed. Everyone
expected the flood, despite the rainbow. Several contemporary authors
record that the inhabitants of the maritime provinces of Germany hastened
to sell their lands dirt cheap to those who had most money, and who were
not so credulous as they. Everyone armed himself with a boat as with an
ark. A Toulouse doctor, named Auriol, had a great ark made for himself, his
family and his friends; the same precautions were taken over a large part of
Italy. At last the month of February arrived, and not a drop of water fell:
never was month more dry, and never were the astrologers more
embarrassed. Nevertheless they were not discouraged, nor neglected among
us; almost all princes continued to consult them.
I have not the honour of being a prince; but the celebrated Count of
Boulainvilliers and an Italian, named Colonne, who had much prestige in
Paris, both foretold that I should die infallibly at the age of thirty-two. I
have been so malicious as to deceive them already by nearly thirty years,
wherefore I humbly beg their pardon.

ATHEISM
SECTION I

Of the Comparison so often made between Atheism and Idolatry
It seems to me that in the "Encyclopedic Dictionary" the opinion of the
Jesuit Richeome, on atheists and idolaters, has not been refuted as strongly
as it might have been; opinion held formerly by St. Thomas, St. Gregory of
Nazianze, St. Cyprian and Tertullian, opinion that Arnobius set forth with
much force when he said to the pagans: "Do you not blush to reproach us
with despising your gods, and is it not much more proper to believe in no
God at all, than to impute to them infamous actions?"[1] opinion established
long before by Plutarch, who says "that he much prefers people to say there
is no Plutarch, than to say—'There is an inconstant, choleric, vindictive
Plutarch'";[2] opinion strengthened finally by all the effort of Bayle's
dialectic.
Here is the ground of dispute, brought to fairly dazzling light by the Jesuit
Richeome, and rendered still more plausible by the way Bayle has turned it
to account.[3]
"There are two porters at the door of a house; they are asked: 'Can one
speak to your master?' 'He is not there,' answers one. 'He is there,' answers
the other, 'but he is busy making counterfeit money, forged contracts,
daggers and poisons, to undo those who have but accomplished his
purposes.' The atheist resembles the first of these porters, the pagan the
other. It is clear, therefore, that the pagan offends the Deity more gravely
than does the atheist."
With Father Richeome's and even Bayle's permission, that is not at all the
position of the matter. For the first porter to resemble the atheists, he must
not say—"My master is not here": he should say—"I have no master; him
whom you claim to be my master does not exist; my comrade is a fool to
tell you that he is busy compounding poisons and sharpening daggers to

assassinate those who have executed his caprices. No such being exists in
the world."
Richeome has reasoned, therefore, very badly. And Bayle, in his somewhat
diffuse discourses, has forgotten himself so far as to do Richeome the
honour of annotating him very malapropos.
Plutarch seems to express himself much better in preferring people who
affirm there is no Plutarch, to those who claim Plutarch to be an unsociable
man. In truth, what does it matter to him that people say he is not in the
world? But it matters much to him that his reputation be not tarnished. It is
not thus with the Supreme Being.
Plutarch even does not broach the real object under discussion. It is not a
question of knowing who offends more the Supreme Being, whether it be
he who denies Him, or he who distorts Him. It is impossible to know
otherwise than by revelation, if God is offended by the empty things men
say of Him.
Without a thought, philosophers fall almost always into the ideas of the
common herd, in supposing God to be jealous of His glory, to be choleric,
to love vengeance, and in taking rhetorical figures for real ideas. The
interesting subject for the whole universe, is to know if it be not better, for
the good of all mankind, to admit a rewarding and revengeful God, who
recompenses good actions hidden, and who punishes secret crimes, than to
admit none at all.
Bayle exhausts himself in recounting all the infamies imputed by fable to
the gods of antiquity. His adversaries answer him with commonplaces that
signify nothing. The partisans of Bayle and his enemies have almost always
fought without making contact. They all agree that Jupiter was an adulterer,
Venus a wanton, Mercury a rogue. But, as I see it, that is not what needs
consideration. One must distinguish between Ovid's Metamorphoses and
the religion of the ancient Romans. It is quite certain that never among the
Romans or even among the Greeks, was there a temple dedicated to
Mercury the rogue, Venus the wanton, Jupiter the adulterer.
The god whom the Romans called Deus optimus, very good, very great, was
not reputed to encourage Clodius to sleep with Cæsar's wife, or Cæsar to be

King Nicomedes' Sodomite.
Cicero does not say that Mercury incited Verres to steal Sicily, although
Mercury, in the fable, had stolen Apollo's cows. The real religion of the
ancients was that Jupiter, very good and very just, and the secondary gods,
punished the perjurer in the infernal regions. Likewise the Romans were
long the most religious observers of oaths. Religion was very useful,
therefore, to the Romans. There was no command to believe in Leda's two
eggs, in the changing of Inachus' daughter into a cow, in the love of Apollo
for Hyacinthus.
One must not say therefore that the religion of Numa dishonoured the Deity.
For a long time, therefore, people have been disputing over a chimera;
which happens only too often.
The question is then asked whether a nation of atheists can exist; it seems to
me that one must distinguish between the nation properly so called, and a
society of philosophers above the nation. It is very true that in every
country the populace has need of the greatest curb, and that if Bayle had
had only five or six hundred peasants to govern, he would not have failed to
announce to them the existence of a God, rewarder and revenger. But Bayle
would not have spoken of Him to the Epicureans who were rich people,
fond of rest, cultivating all the social virtues, and above all friendship,
fleeing the embarrassment and danger of public affairs, in fine, leading a
comfortable and innocent life. It seems to me that in this way the dispute is
finished as regards society and politics.
For entirely savage races, it has been said already that one cannot count
them among either the atheists or the theists. Asking them their belief would
be like asking them if they are for Aristotle or Democritus: they know
nothing; they are not atheists any more than they are Peripatetics.
In this case, I shall answer that the wolves live like this, and that an
assembly of cannibal barbarians such as you suppose them is not a society;
and I shall always ask you if, when you have lent your money to someone
in your society, you want neither your debtor, nor your attorney, nor your
judge, to believe in God.

Of Modern Atheists. Reasons of the Worshippers of God
We are intelligent beings: intelligent beings cannot have been formed by a
crude, blind, insensible being: there is certainly some difference between
the ideas of Newton and the dung of a mule. Newton's intelligence,
therefore, came from another intelligence.
When we see a beautiful machine, we say that there is a good engineer, and
that this engineer has excellent judgment. The world is assuredly an
admirable machine; therefore there is in the world an admirable
intelligence, wherever it may be. This argument is old, and none the worse
for that.
All living bodies are composed of levers, of pulleys, which function
according to the laws of mechanics; of liquids which the laws of
hydrostatics cause to circulate perpetually; and when one thinks that all
these beings have a perception quite unrelated to their organization, one is
overwhelmed with surprise.
The movement of the heavenly bodies, that of our little earth round the sun,
all operate by virtue of the most profound mathematical law. How Plato
who was not aware of one of these laws, eloquent but visionary Plato, who
said that the earth was erected on an equilateral triangle, and the water on a
right-angled triangle; strange Plato, who says there can be only five worlds,
because there are only five regular bodies: how, I say, did Plato, who did
not know even spherical trigonometry, have nevertheless a genius
sufficiently fine, an instinct sufficiently happy, to call God the "Eternal
Geometer," to feel the existence of a creative intelligence? Spinoza himself
admits it. It is impossible to strive against this truth which surrounds us and
which presses on us from all sides.

Reasons of the Atheists
Notwithstanding, I have known refractory persons who say that there is no
creative intelligence at all, and that movement alone has by itself formed all
that we see and all that we are. They tell you brazenly:

"The combination of this universe was possible, seeing that the combination
exists: therefore it was possible that movement alone arranged it. Take four
of the heavenly bodies only, Mars, Venus, Mercury and the Earth: let us
think first only of the place where they are, setting aside all the rest, and let
us see how many probabilities we have that movement alone put them in
their respective places. We have only twenty-four chances in this
combination, that is, there are only twenty-four chances against one to bet
that these bodies will not be where they are with reference to each other. Let
us add to these four globes that of Jupiter; there will be only a hundred and
twenty against one to bet that Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury and our globe,
will not be placed where we see them.
"Add finally Saturn: there will be only seven hundred and twenty chances
against one, for putting these six big planets in the arrangement they
preserve among themselves, according to their given distances. It is
therefore demonstrated that in seven hundred and twenty throws, movement
alone has been able to put these six principal planets in their order.
"Take then all the secondary bodies, all their combinations, all their
movements, all the beings that vegetate, that live, that feel, that think, that
function in all the globes, you will have but to increase the number of
chances; multiply this number in all eternity, up to the number which our
feebleness calls 'infinity,' there will always be a unity in favour of the
formation of the world, such as it is, by movement alone: therefore it is
possible that in all eternity the movement of matter alone has produced the
entire universe such as it exists. It is even inevitable that in eternity this
combination should occur. Thus," they say, "not only is it possible for the
world to be what it is by movement alone, but it was impossible for it not to
be likewise after an infinity of combinations."
Answer
All this supposition seems to me prodigiously fantastic, for two reasons;
first, that in this universe there are intelligent beings, and that you would
not know how to prove it possible for movement alone to produce
understanding; second, that, from your own avowal, there is infinity against
one to bet, that an intelligent creative cause animates the universe. When
one is alone face to face with the infinite, one feels very small.

Again, Spinoza himself admits this intelligence; it is the basis of his system.
You have not read it, and it must be read. Why do you want to go further
than him, and in foolish arrogance plunge your feeble reason in an abyss
into which Spinoza dared not descend? Do you realize thoroughly the
extreme folly of saying that it is a blind cause that arranges that the square
of a planet's revolution is always to the square of the revolutions of other
planets, as the cube of its distance is to the cube of the distances of the
others to the common centre? Either the heavenly bodies are great
geometers, or the Eternal Geometer has arranged the heavenly bodies.
But where is the Eternal Geometer? is He in one place or in all places,
without occupying space? I have no idea. Is it of His own substance that He
has arranged all things? I have no idea. Is He immense without quantity and
without quality? I have no idea. All that I know is that one must worship
Him and be just.

New Objection of a Modern Atheist[4]
Can one say that the parts of animals conform to their needs: what are these
needs? preservation and propagation. Is it astonishing then that, of the
infinite combinations which chance has produced, there has been able to
subsist only those that have organs adapted to the nourishment and
continuation of their species? have not all the others perished of necessity?
Answer
This objection, oft-repeated since Lucretius, is sufficiently refuted by the
gift of sensation in animals, and by the gift of intelligence in man. How
should combinations "which chance has produced," produce this sensation
and this intelligence (as has just been said in the preceding paragraph)?
Without any doubt the limbs of animals are made for their needs with
incomprehensible art, and you are not so bold as to deny it. You say no
more about it. You feel that you have nothing to answer to this great
argument which nature brings against you. The disposition of a fly's wing, a
snail's organs suffices to bring you to the ground.

Maupertuis' Objection
Modern natural philosophers have but expanded these so-called arguments,
often they have pushed them to trifling and indecency. They have found
God in the folds of the skin of the rhinoceros: one could, with equal reason,
deny His existence because of the tortoise's shell.
Answer
What reasoning! The tortoise and the rhinoceros, and all the different
species, are proof equally in their infinite variety of the same cause, the
same design, the same aim, which are preservation, generation and death.
There is unity in this infinite variety; the shell and the skin bear witness
equally. What! deny God because shell does not resemble leather! And
journalists have been prodigal of eulogies about these ineptitudes, eulogies
they have not given to Newton and Locke, both worshippers of the Deity
who spoke with full knowledge.

Maupertuis' Objection
Of what use are beauty and proportion in the construction of the snake?
They may have uses, some say, of which we are ignorant. At least let us be
silent then; let us not admire an animal which we know only by the harm it
does.
Answer
And be you silent too, seeing that you cannot conceive its utility any more
than I can; or avow that in reptiles everything is admirably proportioned.
Some are venomous, you have been so yourself. Here there is question only
of the prodigious art which has formed snakes, quadrupeds, birds, fish and
bipeds. This art is sufficiently evident. You ask why the snake does harm?
And you, why have you done harm so many times? Why have you been a
persecutor? which is the greatest of all crimes for a philosopher. That is
another question, a question of moral and physical ill. For long has one
asked why there are so many snakes and so many wicked men worse than
snakes. If flies could reason, they would complain to God of the existence

of spiders; but they would admit what Minerva admitted about Arachne, in
the fable, that she arranges her web marvellously.
One is bound therefore to recognize an ineffable intelligence which even
Spinoza admitted. One must agree that this intelligence shines in the vilest
insect as in the stars. And as regards moral and physical ill, what can one
say, what do? console oneself by enjoying physical and moral good, in
worshipping the Eternal Being who has made one and permitted the other.
One more word on this subject. Atheism is the vice of a few intelligent
persons, and superstition is the vice of fools. But rogues! what are they?
rogues.

SECTION II

Let us say a word on the moral question set in action by Bayle, to know "if
a society of atheists could exist?" Let us mark first of all in this matter what
is the enormous contradiction of men in this dispute; those who have risen
against Bayle's opinion with the greatest ardour; those who have denied
with the greatest insults the possibility of a society of atheists, have since
maintained with the same intrepidity that atheism is the religion of the
government of China.
Assuredly they are quite mistaken about the Chinese government; they had
but to read the edicts of the emperors of this vast country to have seen that
these edicts are sermons, and that everywhere there is mention of the
Supreme Being, ruler, revenger, rewarder.
But at the same time they are not less mistaken on the impossibility of a
society of atheists; and I do not know how Mr. Bayle can have forgotten
one striking example which was capable of making his cause victorious.
In what does a society of atheists appear impossible? It is that one judges
that men who had no check could never live together; that laws can do
nothing against secret crimes; that a revengeful God who punishes in this
world or the other the wicked who have escaped human justice is necessary.
The laws of Moses, it is true, did not teach a life to come, did not threaten
punishments after death, did not teach the first Jews the immortality of the

soul; but the Jews, far from being atheists, far from believing in avoiding
divine vengeance, were the most religious of all men. Not only did they
believe in the existence of an eternal God, but they believed Him always
present among them; they trembled lest they be punished in themselves, in
their wives, in their children, in their posterity, even unto the fourth
generation; this curb was very potent.
But, among the Gentiles, many sects had no curb; the sceptics doubted
everything: the academicians suspended judgment on everything; the
Epicureans were persuaded that the Deity could not mix Himself in the
affairs of men; and at bottom, they admitted no Deity. They were convinced
that the soul is not a substance, but a faculty which is born and which
perishes with the body; consequently they had no yoke other than morality
and honour. The Roman senators and knights were veritable atheists, for the
gods did not exist for men who neither feared nor hoped anything from
them. The Roman senate in the time of Cæsar and Cicero, was therefore
really an assembly of atheists.
That great orator, in his harangue for Cluentius, says to the whole senate in
assembly: "What ill does death do him? we reject all the inept fables of the
nether regions: of what then has death deprived him? of nothing but the
consciousness of suffering."
Does not Cæsar, the friend of Cataline, wishing to save his friend's life
against this same Cicero, object to him that to make a criminal die is not to
punish him at all, that death is nothing, that it is merely the end of our ills,
that it is a moment more happy than calamitous? And do not Cicero and the
whole senate surrender to these reasons? The conquerors and the legislators
of the known universe formed visibly therefore a society of men who feared
nothing from the gods, who were real atheists.
Further on Bayle examines whether idolatry is more dangerous than
atheism, if it is a greater crime not to believe in the Deity than to have
unworthy opinions thereof: in that he is of Plutarch's opinion; he believes it
is better to have no opinion than to have a bad opinion; but with all
deference to Plutarch, it was clearly infinitely better for the Greeks to fear
Ceres, Neptune and Jupiter, than to fear nothing at all. The sanctity of oaths
is clearly necessary, and one should have more confidence in those who

believe that a false oath will be punished, than in those who think they can
make a false oath with impunity. It is indubitable that in a civilized town, it
is infinitely more useful to have a religion, even a bad one, than to have
none at all.
It looks, therefore, that Bayle should have examined rather which is the
more dangerous, fanaticism or atheism. Fanaticism is certainly a thousand
times more deadly; for atheism inspires no bloody passion, whereas
fanaticism does: atheism is not opposed to crime, but fanaticism causes
crimes to be committed. Fanatics committed the massacres of St.
Bartholomew. Hobbes passed for an atheist; he led a tranquil and innocent
life. The fanatics of his time deluged England, Scotland and Ireland with
blood. Spinoza was not only atheist, but he taught atheism; it was not he
assuredly who took part in the judicial assassination of Barneveldt; it was
not he who tore the brothers De Witt in pieces, and who ate them grilled.
The atheists are for the most part impudent and misguided scholars who
reason badly, and who not being able to understand the creation, the origin
of evil, and other difficulties, have recourse to the hypothesis of the eternity
of things and of inevitability.
The ambitious, the sensual, have hardly time for reasoning, and for
embracing a bad system; they have other things to do than comparing
Lucretius with Socrates. That is how things go among us.
That was not how things went with the Roman senate which was almost
entirely composed of atheists in theory and in practice, that is to say, who
believed in neither a Providence nor a future life; this senate was an
assembly of philosophers, of sensualists and ambitious men, all very
dangerous, who ruined the republic. Epicureanism existed under the
emperors: the atheists of the senate had been rebels in the time of Sylla and
Cæsar: under Augustus and Tiberius they were atheist slaves.
I would not wish to have to deal with an atheist prince, who would find it to
his interest to have me ground to powder in a mortar: I should be quite sure
of being ground to powder. If I were a sovereign, I would not wish to have
to deal with atheist courtiers, whose interest it would be to poison me: I
should have to be taking antidotes every day. It is therefore absolutely
necessary for princes and for peoples, that the idea of a Supreme Being,

creator, ruler, rewarder, revenger, shall be deeply engraved in people's
minds.
Bayle says, in his "Thoughts on the Comets," that there are atheist peoples.
The Caffres, the Hottentots, the Topinambous, and many other small
nations, have no God: they neither deny nor affirm; they have never heard
speak of Him; tell them that there is a God: they will believe it easily; tell
them that everything happens through the nature of things; they will believe
you equally. To claim that they are atheists is to make the same imputation
as if one said they are anti-Cartesian; they are neither for nor against
Descartes. They are real children; a child is neither atheist nor deist, he is
nothing.
What conclusion shall we draw from all this? That atheism is a very
pernicious monster in those who govern; that it is also pernicious in the
persons around statesmen, although their lives may be innocent, because
from their cabinets it may pierce right to the statesmen themselves; that if it
is not so deadly as fanaticism, it is nearly always fatal to virtue. Let us add
especially that there are less atheists to-day than ever, since philosophers
have recognized that there is no being vegetating without germ, no germ
without a plan, etc., and that wheat comes in no wise from putrefaction.
Some geometers who are not philosophers have rejected final causes, but
real philosophers admit them; a catechist proclaims God to the children, and
Newton demonstrates Him to the learned.
If there are atheists, whom must one blame, if not the mercenary tyrants of
souls, who, making us revolt against their knaveries, force a few weak
minds to deny the God whom these monsters dishonour. How many times
have the people's leeches brought oppressed citizens to the point of
revolting against their king!
Men fattened on our substance cry to us: "Be persuaded that a she-ass has
spoken; believe that a fish has swallowed a man and has given him up at the
end of three days safe and sound on the shore; have no doubt that the God
of the universe ordered one Jewish prophet to eat excrement (Ezekiel), and
another prophet to buy two whores and to make with them sons of
whoredom (Hosea). These are the very words that the God of truth and
purity has been made to utter; believe a hundred things either visibly

abominable or mathematically impossible; unless you do, the God of pity
will burn you, not only during millions of thousands of millions of centuries
in the fire of hell, but through all eternity, whether you have a body,
whether you have not."
These inconceivable absurdities revolt weak and rash minds, as well as wise
and resolute minds. They say: "Our masters paint God to us as the most
insensate and the most barbarous of all beings; therefore there is no God;"
but they should say: therefore our masters attribute to God their absurdities
and their furies, therefore God is the contrary of what they proclaim,
therefore God is as wise and as good as they make him out mad and
wicked. It is thus that wise men account for things. But if a bigot hears
them, he denounces them to a magistrate who is a watchdog of the priests;
and this watchdog has them burned over a slow fire, in the belief that he is
avenging and imitating the divine majesty he outrages.

FOOTNOTES:
[1] Arnobius, Adversus Gentes., lib. v.
[2] Of Superstition, by Plutarch.
[3] See Bayle, Continuation of Divers Thoughts, par. 77, art. XIII.
[4] See, for this objection, Maupertuis' Essay on Cosmology, first part.

AUTHORITY
Wretched human beings, whether you wear green robes, turbans, black
robes or surplices, cloaks and neckbands, never seek to use authority where
there is question only of reason, or consent to be scoffed at throughout the
centuries as the most impertinent of all men, and to suffer public hatred as
the most unjust.
A hundred times has one spoken to you of the insolent absurdity with which
you condemned Galileo, and I speak to you for the hundred and first, and I
hope you will keep the anniversary of it for ever; I desire that there be
graved on the door of your Holy Office:
"Here seven cardinals, assisted by minor brethren, had the master of
thought in Italy thrown into prison at the age of seventy; made him fast on
bread and water because he instructed the human race, and because they
were ignorant."
There was pronounced a sentence in favour of Aristotle's categories, and
there was decreed learnedly and equitably the penalty of the galleys for
whoever should be sufficiently daring as to have an opinion different from
that of the Stagyrite, whose books were formerly burned by two councils.
Further on a faculty, which had not great faculties, issued a decree against
innate ideas, and later a decree for innate ideas, without the said faculty
being informed by its beadles what an idea is.
In the neighbouring schools judicial proceedings were instituted against the
circulation of the blood.
An action was started against inoculation, and parties have been
subpœnaed.
At the Customs of thought twenty-one folio volumes were seized, in which
it was stated treacherously and wickedly that triangles always have three
angles; that a father is older than his son; that Rhea Silvia lost her virginity
before giving birth to her child, and that flour is not an oak leaf.

In another year was judged the action: Utrum chimera bombinans in vacuo
possit comedere secundas intentiones, and was decided in the affirmative.
In consequence, everyone thought themselves far superior to Archimedes,
Euclid, Cicero, Pliny, and strutted proudly about the University quarter.

AUTHORS
Author is a generic name which can, like the name of all other professions,
signify good or bad, worthy of respect or ridicule, useful and agreeable, or
trash for the wastepaper-basket.

We think that the author of a good work should refrain from three things—
from putting his name, save very modestly, from the epistle dedicatory, and
from the preface. Others should refrain from a fourth—that is, from writing.

Prefaces are another stumbling-block. "The 'I,'" said Pascal, "is hateful."
Speak as little of yourself as possible; for you must know that the reader's
self-esteem is as great as yours. He will never forgive you for wanting to
condemn him to have a good opinion of you. It is for your book to speak for
you, if it comes to be read by the crowd.

If you want to be an author, if you want to write a book; reflect that it must
be useful and new, or at least infinitely agreeable.

If an ignoramus, a pamphleteer, presumes to criticize without
discrimination, you can confound him; but make rare mention of him, for
fear of sullying your writings.

If you are attacked as regards your style, never reply; it is for your work
alone to make answer.

Someone says you are ill, be content that you are well, without wanting to
prove to the public that you are in perfect health. And above all remember
that the public cares precious little whether you are well or ill.

A hundred authors make compilations in order to have bread, and twenty
pamphleteers make excerpts from these compilations, or apology for them,
or criticism and satire of them, also with the idea of having bread, because
they have no other trade. All these persons go on Friday to the police
lieutenant of Paris to ask permission to sell their rubbish. They have
audience immediately after the strumpets who do not look at them because
they know that these are underhand dealings.[5]

Real authors are those who have succeeded in one of the real arts, in epic
poetry, in tragedy or comedy, in history or philosophy, who have taught
men or charmed them. The others of whom we have spoken are, among
men of letters, what wasps are among birds.

FOOTNOTES:
[5] When Voltaire was writing, it was the police lieutenant of Paris who had,
under the chancellor, the inspection of books: since then, a part of his
department has been taken from him. He has kept only the inspection of
theatrical plays and works below those on printed sheets. The detail of this part
is immense. In Paris one is not permitted to print that one has lost one's dog,
unless the police are assured that in the poor beast's description there is no
proposition contrary to morality and religion (1819).

BANISHMENT
Banishment for a period or for life, punishment to which one condemns
delinquents, or those one wishes to appear as such.
Not long ago one banished outside the sphere of jurisdiction a petty thief, a
petty forger, a man guilty of an act of violence. The result was that he
became a big robber, a forger on a big scale, and murderer within the sphere
of another jurisdiction. It is as if we threw into our neighbours' fields the
stones which incommode us in our own.
Those who have written on the rights of men, have been much tormented to
know for certain if a man who has been banished from his fatherland still
belongs to his fatherland. It is nearly the same thing as asking if a gambler
who has been driven away from the gaming-table is still one of the
gamblers.
If to every man it is permitted by natural right to choose his fatherland, he
who has lost the right of citizen can, with all the more reason, choose for
himself a new fatherland; but can he bear arms against his former fellow-
citizens? There are a thousand examples of it. How many French protestants
naturalized in Holland, England and Germany have served against France,
and against armies containing their own kindred and their own brothers!
The Greeks who were in the King of Persia's armies made war on the
Greeks, their former compatriots. One has seen the Swiss in the Dutch
service fire on the Swiss in the French service. It is still worse than to fight
against those who have banished you; for, after all, it seems less dishonest
to draw the sword for vengeance than to draw it for money.

BANKRUPTCY
Few bankruptcies were known in France before the sixteenth century. The
great reason is that there were no bankers. Lombards, Jews lent on security
at ten per cent: trade was conducted in cash. Exchange, remittances to
foreign countries were a secret unknown to all judges.
It is not that many people were not ruined; but that was not called
bankruptcy; one said discomfiture; this word is sweeter to the ear. One used
the word rupture as did the Boulonnais; but rupture does not sound so well.
The bankruptcies came to us from Italy, bancorotto, bancarotta, gambarotta
e la giustizia non impicar. Every merchant had his bench (banco) in the
place of exchange; and when he had conducted his business badly, declared
himself fallito, and abandoned his property to his creditors with the proviso
that he retain a good part of it for himself, be free and reputed a very
upright man. There was nothing to be said to him, his bench was broken,
banco rotto, banca rotta; he could even, in certain towns, keep all his
property and baulk his creditors, provided he seated himself bare-bottomed
on a stone in the presence of all the merchants. This was a mild derivation
of the old Roman proverb—solvere aut in aere aut in cute, to pay either
with one's money or one's skin. But this custom no longer exists; creditors
have preferred their money to a bankrupt's hinder parts.
In England and in some other countries, one declares oneself bankrupt in
the gazettes. The partners and creditors gather together by virtue of this
announcement which is read in the coffee-houses, and they come to an
arrangement as best they can.
As among the bankruptcies there are frequently fraudulent cases, it has been
necessary to punish them. If they are taken to court they are everywhere
regarded as theft, and the guilty are condemned to ignominious penalties.
It is not true that in France the death penalty was decreed against bankrupts
without distinction. Simple failures involved no penalty; fraudulent
bankrupts suffered the penalty of death in the states of Orleans, under

Charles IX., and in the states of Blois in 1576, but these edicts, renewed by
Henry IV., were merely comminatory.
It is too difficult to prove that a man has dishonoured himself on purpose,
and has voluntarily ceded all his goods to his creditors in order to cheat
them. When there has been a doubt, one has been content with putting the
unfortunate man in the pillory, or with sending him to the galleys, although
ordinarily a banker makes a poor convict.
Bankrupts were very favourably treated in the last year of Louis XIV.'s
reign, and during the Regency. The sad state to which the interior of the
kingdom was reduced, the multitude of merchants who could not or would
not pay, the quantity of unsold or unsellable effects, the fear of interrupting
all commerce, obliged the government in 1715, 1716, 1718, 1721, 1722,
and 1726 to suspend all proceedings against all those who were in a state of
insolvency. The discussions of these actions were referred to the judge-
consuls; this is a jurisdiction of merchants very expert in these cases, and
better constituted for going into these commercial details than the
parliaments which have always been more occupied with the laws of the
kingdom than with finance. As the state was at that time going bankrupt, it
would have been too hard to punish the poor middle-class bankrupts.
Since then we have had eminent men, fraudulent bankrupts, but they have
not been punished.

BEAUTY
Ask a toad what beauty is, the to kalon? He will answer you that it is his
toad wife with two great round eyes issuing from her little head, a wide, flat
mouth, a yellow belly, a brown back. Interrogate a Guinea negro, for him
beauty is a black oily skin, deep-set eyes, a flat nose. Interrogate the devil;
he will tell you that beauty is a pair of horns, four claws and a tail. Consult,
lastly, the philosophers, they will answer you with gibberish: they have to
have something conforming to the arch-type of beauty in essence, to the to
kalon.
One day I was at a tragedy near by a philosopher. "How beautiful that is!"
he said.
"What do you find beautiful there?" I asked.
"It is beautiful," he answered, "because the author has reached his goal."
The following day he took some medicine which did him good. "The
medicine has reached its goal," I said to him. "What a beautiful medicine!"
He grasped that one cannot say a medicine is beautiful, and that to give the
name of "beauty" to something, the thing must cause you to admire it and
give you pleasure. He agreed that the tragedy had inspired these sentiments
in him, and that there was the to kalon, beauty.
We journeyed to England: the same piece, perfectly translated, was played
there; it made everybody in the audience yawn. "Ho, ho!" he said, "the to
kalon is not the same for the English and the French." After much reflection
he came to the conclusion that beauty is often very relative, just as what is
decent in Japan is indecent in Rome, and what is fashionable in Paris, is not
fashionable in Pekin; and he saved himself the trouble of composing a long
treatise on beauty.
There are actions which the whole world finds beautiful. Two of Cæsar's
officers, mortal enemies, send each other a challenge, not as to who shall
shed the other's blood with tierce and quarte behind a thicket as with us, but

as to who shall best defend the Roman camp, which the Barbarians are
about to attack. One of them, having repulsed the enemy, is near
succumbing; the other rushes to his aid, saves his life, and completes the
victory.
A friend sacrifices his life for his friend; a son for his father.... The
Algonquin, the Frenchman, the Chinaman, will all say that that is very
beautiful, that these actions give them pleasure, that they admire them.
They will say as much of the great moral maxims, of Zarathustra's—"In
doubt if an action be just, abstain..."; of Confucius'—"Forget injuries, never
forget kindnesses."
The negro with the round eyes and flat nose, who will not give the name of
"beauties" to the ladies of our courts, will without hesitation give it to these
actions and these maxims. The wicked man even will recognize the beauty
of these virtues which he dare not imitate. The beauty which strikes the
senses merely, the imagination, and that which is called "intelligence," is
often uncertain therefore. The beauty which speaks to the heart is not that.
You will find a host of people who will tell you that they have found
nothing beautiful in three-quarters of the Iliad; but nobody will deny that
Codrus' devotion to his people was very beautiful, supposing it to be true.
There are many other reasons which determine me not to write a treatise on
beauty.

BISHOP
Samuel Ornik, native of Basle, was, as you know, a very amiable young
man who, besides, knew his New Testament by heart in Greek and German.
When he was twenty his parents sent him on a journey. He was charged to
carry some books to the coadjutor of Paris, at the time of the Fronde. He
arrived at the door of the archbishop's residence; the Swiss told him that
Monseigneur saw nobody. "Comrade," said Ornik to him, "you are very
rude to your compatriots. The apostles let everyone approach, and Jesus
Christ desired that people should suffer all the little children to come to
him. I have nothing to ask of your master; on the contrary, I have brought
him something."
"Come inside, then," said the Swiss.
He waits an hour in a first antechamber. As he was very naïve, he began a
conversation with a servant, who was very fond of telling all he knew of his
master. "He must be mightily rich," said Ornik, "to have this crowd of pages
and flunkeys whom I see running about the house."
"I don't know what his income is," answered the other, "but I heard it said to
Joly and the Abbé Charier that he already had two millions of debts."
"But who is that lady coming out of the room?"
"That is Madame de Pomereu, one of his mistresses."
"She is really very pretty; but I have not read that the apostles had such
company in their bedrooms in the mornings. Ah! I think the archbishop is
going to give audience."
"Say—'His Highness, Monseigneur.'"
"Willingly." Ornik salutes His Highness, presents his books, and is received
with a very gracious smile. The archbishop says four words to him, then
climbs into his coach, escorted by fifty horsemen. In climbing,
Monseigneur lets a sheath fall. Ornik is quite astonished that Monseigneur

carries so large an ink-horn in his pocket. "Don't you see that's his dagger?"
says the chatterbox. "Everyone carries a dagger when he goes to
parliament."
"That's a pleasant way of officiating," says Ornik; and he goes away very
astonished.
He traverses France, and enlightens himself from town to town; thence he
passes into Italy. When he is in the Pope's territory, he meets one of those
bishops with a thousand crowns income, walking on foot. Ornik was very
polite; he offers him a place in his cambiature. "You are doubtless on your
way to comfort some sick man, Monseigneur?"
"Sir, I am on my way to my master's."
"Your master? that is Jesus Christ, doubtless?"
"Sir, it is Cardinal Azolin; I am his almoner. He pays me very poorly; but he
has promised to place me in the service of Donna Olimpia, the favourite
sister-in-law di nostro signore."
"What! you are in the pay of a cardinal? But do you not know that there
were no cardinals in the time of Jesus Christ and St. John?"
"Is it possible?" cried the Italian prelate.
"Nothing is more true; you have read it in the Gospel."
"I have never read it," answered the bishop; "all I know is Our Lady's
office."
"I tell you there were neither cardinals nor bishops, and when there were
bishops, the priests were their equals almost, according to Jerome's
assertions in several places."
"Holy Virgin," said the Italian. "I knew nothing about it: and the popes?"
"There were not any popes any more than cardinals."
The good bishop crossed himself; he thought he was with an evil spirit, and
jumped out of the cambiature.

BOOKS
You despise them, books, you whose whole life is plunged in the vanities of
ambition and in the search for pleasure or in idleness; but think that the
whole of the known universe, with the exception of the savage races is
governed by books alone. The whole of Africa right to Ethiopia and Nigritia
obeys the book of the Alcoran, after having staggered under the book of the
Gospel. China is ruled by the moral book of Confucius; a greater part of
India by the book of the Veidam. Persia was governed for centuries by the
books of one of the Zarathustras.
If you have a law-suit, your goods, your honour, your life even depends on
the interpretation of a book which you never read.
Robert the Devil, the Four Sons of Aymon, the Imaginings of Mr. Oufle, are
books also; but it is with books as with men; the very small number play a
great part, the rest are mingled in the crowd.
Who leads the human race in civilized countries? those who know how to
read and write. You do not know either Hippocrates, Boerhaave or
Sydenham; but you put your body in the hands of those who have read
them. You abandon your soul to those who are paid to read the Bible,
although there are not fifty among them who have read it in its entirety with
care.
To such an extent do books govern the world, that those who command to-
day in the city of the Scipios and the Catos have desired that the books of
their law should be only for them; it is their sceptre; they have made it a
crime of lèse-majesté for their subjects to look there without express
permission. In other countries it has been forbidden to think in writing
without letters patent.
There are nations among whom thought is regarded purely as an object of
commerce. The operations of the human mind are valued there only at two
sous the sheet.

In another country, the liberty of explaining oneself by books is one of the
most inviolable prerogatives. Print all that you like under pain of boring or
of being punished if you abuse too considerably your natural right.
Before the admirable invention of printing, books were rarer and more
expensive than precious stones. Almost no books among the barbarian
nations until Charlemagne, and from him to the French king Charles V.,
surnamed "the wise"; and from this Charles right to François Ier, there is an
extreme dearth.
The Arabs alone had books from the eighth century of our era to the
thirteenth.
China was filled with them when we did not know how to read or write.
Copyists were much employed in the Roman Empire from the time of the
Scipios up to the inundation of the barbarians.
The Greeks occupied themselves much in transcribing towards the time of
Amyntas, Philip and Alexander; they continued this craft especially in
Alexandria.
This craft is somewhat ungrateful. The merchants always paid the authors
and the copyists very badly. It took two years of assiduous labour for a
copyist to transcribe the Bible well on vellum. What time and what trouble
for copying correctly in Greek and Latin the works of Origen, of Clement
of Alexandria, and of all those other authors called "fathers."
The poems of Homer were long so little known that Pisistratus was the first
who put them in order, and who had them transcribed in Athens, about five
hundred years before the era of which we are making use.
To-day there are not perhaps a dozen copies of the Veidam and the Zend-
Avesta in the whole of the East.
You would not have found a single book in the whole of Russia in 1700,
with the exception of Missals and a few Bibles in the homes of aged men
drunk on brandy.

To-day people complain of a surfeit: but it is not for readers to complain;
the remedy is easy; nothing forces them to read. It is not any the more for
authors to complain. Those who make the crowd must not cry that they are
being crushed. Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people
read! and if one read profitably, one would see the deplorable follies to
which the common people offer themselves as prey every day.
What multiplies books, despite the law of not multiplying beings
unnecessarily, is that with books one makes others; it is with several
volumes already printed that a new history of France or Spain is fabricated,
without adding anything new. All dictionaries are made with dictionaries;
almost all new geography books are repetitions of geography books. The
Summation of St. Thomas has produced two thousand fat volumes of
theology; and the same family of little worms that have gnawed the mother,
gnaw likewise the children.

BOULEVERD OR BOULEVART
Boulevart, fortification, rampart. Belgrade is the boulevart of the Ottoman
Empire on the Hungarian side. Who would believe that this word originally
signified only a game of bowls? The people of Paris played bowls on the
grass of the rampart; this grass was called the verd, like the grass market.
On boulait sur le verd. From there it comes that the English, whose
language is a copy of ours in almost all the words which are not Saxon,
have called the game of bowls "bowling-green," the verd (green) of the
game of bowls. We have taken back from them what we had lent them.
Following their example, we gave the name of boulingrins, without
knowing the strength of the word, to the grass-plots we introduced into our
gardens.
I once heard two good dames who were going for a walk on the Bouleverd,
and not on the Boulevart. People laughed at them, and wrongly. But in all
matters custom carries the day; and everyone who is right against custom is
hissed or condemned.

BOURGES
Our questions barely turn on geography; but let us be permitted to mark in
two words our astonishment about the town of Bourges. The "Dictionnaire
de Trévoux" claims that "it is one of the most ancient towns of Europe, that
it was the seat of the empire of the Gauls, and gave kings to the Celts."
I do not wish to combat the ancientness of any town or any family. But was
there ever an empire of the Gauls? Did the Celts have kings? This mania for
antiquity is a malady from which one will not be healed so soon. The Gauls,
Germany, Scandinavia have nothing that is antique save the land, the trees
and the animals. If you want antiquities, go toward Asia, and even then it is
very small beer. Man is ancient and monuments new, that is what we have
in view in more than one article.
If it were a real benefit to be born in a stone or wooden enclosure more
ancient than another, it would be very reasonable to make the foundation of
one's town date back to the time of the war of the giants; but since there is
not the least advantage in this vanity, one must break away from it. That is
all I had to say about Bourges.

BRAHMINS
Is it not probable that the Brahmins were the first legislators of the earth,
the first philosophers, the first theologians?
Do not the few monuments of ancient history which remain to us form a
great presumption in their favour, since the first Greek philosophers went to
them to learn mathematics, and since the most ancient curiosities collected
by the emperors of China are all Indian?
We will speak elsewhere of the "Shasta"; it is the first book of theology of
the Brahmins, written about fifteen hundred years before their "Veidam,"
and anterior to all the other books.
Their annals make no mention of any war undertaken by them at any time.
The words for arms, to kill, to maim, are not to be found either in the
fragments of the "Shasta" which we have, or in the "Ezourveidam," or in
the "Cormoveidam." I can at least give the assurance that I did not see them
in these last two collections: and what is still more singular is that the
"Shasta" which speaks of a conspiracy in heaven, makes no mention of any
war in the great peninsula enclosed between the Indus and the Ganges.
The Hebrews, who were known so late, never name the Brahmins; they had
no knowledge of India until after the conquests of Alexander, and their
settling in Egypt, of which they had said so much evil. The name of India is
to be found only in the Book of Esther, and in that of Job which was not
Hebrew. One remarks a singular contrast between the sacred books of the
Hebrews, and those of the Indians. The Indian books announce only peace
and gentleness; they forbid the killing of animals: the Hebrew books speak
only of killing, of the massacre of men and beasts; everything is slaughtered
in the name of the Lord; it is quite another order of things.
It is incontestably from the Brahmins that we hold the idea of the fall of the
celestial beings in revolt against the Sovereign of nature; and it is from
there probably that the Greeks drew the fable of the Titans. It is there also

that the Jews at last took the idea of the revolt of Lucifer, in the first century
of our era.
How could these Indians suppose a revolt in heaven without having seen
one on earth? Such a jump from human nature to divine nature is barely
conceivable. Usually one goes from known to unknown.
One does not imagine a war of giants until one has seen some men more
robust than the others tyrannize over their fellows. The first Brahmins must
either have experienced violent discords, or at least have seen them in
heaven.
It is a very astonishing phenomenon for a society of men who have never
made war to have invented a species of war made in the imaginary spaces,
or in a globe distant from ours, or in what is called the "firmament," the
"empyrean." But it must be carefully observed that in this revolt of celestial
beings against their Sovereign no blows were struck, no celestial blood
flowed, no mountains hurled at the head, no angels cut in two, as in
Milton's sublime and grotesque poem.
According to the "Shasta," it is only a formal disobedience to the orders of
the Most High, a cabal which God punishes by relegating the rebellious
angels to a vast place of shadows called "Ondera" during the period of an
entire mononthour. A mononthour is four hundred and twenty-six millions
of our years. But God deigned to pardon the guilty after five thousand
years, and their ondera was only a purgatory.
He made "Mhurd" of them, men, and placed them in our globe on condition
that they should not eat animals, and that they should not copulate with the
males of their new species, under pain of returning to ondera.
Those are the principal articles of the Brahmins' faith, which have lasted
without interruption from immemorial times right to our day: it seems
strange to us that among them it should be as grave a sin to eat a chicken as
to commit sodomy.
This is only a small part of the ancient cosmogony of the Brahmins. Their
rites, their pagodas, prove that among them everything was allegorical; they
still represent virtue beneath the emblem of a woman who has ten arms, and
who combats ten mortal sins represented by monsters. Our missionaries

have not failed to take this image of virtue for that of the devil, and to
assure us that the devil is worshipped in India. We have never been among
these people but to enrich ourselves and to calumniate them.
Really we have forgotten a very essential thing in this little article on the
Brahmins; it is that their sacred books are filled with contradictions. But the
people do not know of them, and the doctors have solutions ready,
figurative meanings, allegories, symbols, express declarations of Birma,
Brahma and Vitsnou, which should close the mouths of all who reason.

CHARACTER
From the Greek word impression, engraving.
It is what nature has graved in us.
Can one change one's character? Yes, if one changes one's body. It is
possible for a man born blunderer, unbending and violent, being stricken
with apoplexy in his old age, to become a foolish, tearful child, timid and
peaceable. His body is no longer the same. But as long as his nerves, his
blood and his marrow are in the same state, his nature will not change any
more than a wolf's and a marten's instinct.
The character is composed of our ideas and our feelings: well, it is
substantiated that we give ourselves neither feelings nor ideas; therefore our
character does not depend on us.
If it depended on us, there is nobody who would not be perfect.
We cannot give ourselves tastes, talents; why should we give ourselves
qualities?
If one does not reflect, one thinks oneself master of everything; when one
reflects thereon, one sees that one is master of nothing.
Should you wish to change a man's character completely, purge him with
diluents every day until you have killed him. Charles XII., in his
suppurative fever on the road to Bender, was no longer the same man. One
prevailed upon him as upon a child.
If I have a crooked nose and two cat's eyes, I can hide them with a mask.
Can I do more with the character which nature has given me?
A man born violent, hasty, presented himself before François I., King of
France, to complain of an injustice; the prince's countenance, the respectful
bearing of the courtiers, the very place where he is, make a powerful
impression on this man; mechanically he lowers his eyes, his rough voice

softens, he presents his petition humbly, one would believe him born as
gentle as are (at that moment at least) the courtiers, amongst whom he is
even disconcerted; but François I. understands physiognomy, he easily
discovers in the lowered eyes, burning nevertheless with sombre fire, in the
strained facial muscles, in the compressed lips, that this man is not so gentle
as he is forced to appear. This man follows him to Pavia, is taken with him,
led to the same prison in Madrid: François I.'s majesty no longer makes the
same impression on him; he grows familiar with the object of his respect.
One day when pulling off the king's boots, and pulling them off badly, the
king, embittered by his misfortune, gets angry; my man sends the king
about his business, and throws his boots out of the window.
Sixtus V. was born petulant, stubborn, haughty, impetuous, vindictive,
arrogant; this character seemed softened during the trials of his novitiate.
He begins to enjoy a certain credit in his order; he flies into a passion with a
guard, and batters him with his fist: he is inquisitor at Venice; he performs
his duties with insolence: behold him cardinal, he is possessed dalla rabbia
papale: this fury triumphs over his nature; he buries his person and his
character in obscurity; he apes the humble and the dying man; he is elected
Pope; this moment gives back to the spring, which politics have bent, all its
long curbed elasticity; he is the haughtiest and most despotic of sovereigns.

Naturam expella furca, tamen usque recurret.

(Hor. L. I., ep. x).

Drive away nature, it returns at the gallop.

(Destouches, Glorieux,
Act 3, Sc. 5.)
Religion, morality put a brake on a nature's strength; they cannot destroy it.
The drunkard in a cloister, reduced to a half-sétier of cider at each meal,
will no longer get drunk, but he will always like wine.
Age enfeebles character; it is a tree that produces only degenerate fruit, but
the fruit is always of the same nature; it is knotted and covered with moss, it
becomes worm-eaten, but it is always oak or pear tree. If one could change
one's character, one would give oneself one, one would be master of nature.

Can one give oneself anything? do we not receive everything? Try to
animate an indolent man with a continued activity; to freeze with apathy the
boiling soul of an impetuous fellow, to inspire someone who has neither ear
nor taste with a taste for music and poetry, you will no more succeed than if
you undertook to give sight to a man born blind. We perfect, we soften, we
conceal what nature has put in us, but we do not put in ourselves anything
at all.
One says to a farmer: "You have too many fish in this pond, they will not
prosper; there are too many cattle in your meadows, grass lacks, they will
grow thin." It happens after this exhortation that the pikes eat half my man's
carp, and the wolves the half of his sheep; the rest grow fat. Will he
congratulate himself on his economy? This countryman, it is you; one of
your passions has devoured the others, and you think you have triumphed
over yourself. Do not nearly all of us resemble that old general of ninety
who, having met some young officers who were debauching themselves
with some girls, says to them angrily: "Gentlemen, is that the example I
give you?"

CHARLATAN
The article entitled "Charlatan" in the "Encyclopedic Dictionary" is filled
with useful truths agreeably presented. The Chevalier de Jaucourt has there
presented the charlatanry of medicine.
We will take the liberty of adding here a few reflections. The abode of the
doctors is in the large towns; there are barely any doctors in the country. It
is in the great towns that the rich invalids are; debauchery, the excesses of
the table, the passions, are the cause of their maladies. Dumoulin, not the
lawyer, the doctor, who was as good a practician as the other, said as he was
dying, that he left two great doctors behind him, diet and river water.
In 1728, in the time of Law, the most famous charlatan of the first species,
another, Villars by name, confided to some friends that his uncle who had
lived nearly a hundred years, and who died only by accident, had left him
the secret of a water which could easily prolong life to a hundred and fifty
years, provided a man was temperate. When he saw a funeral pass, he
shrugged his shoulders in pity; if the defunct, he observed, had drunk my
water, he would not be where he is. His friends to whom he gave
generously of the water, and who observed the prescribed regime in some
degree, thrived on it and praised it. He then sold the bottle for six francs; the
sale was prodigious. It was water from the Seine with a little nitre. Those
who took it and who subjected themselves to a certain amount of regime,
above all those who were born with a good constitution, recovered perfect
health in a few days. He said to the others: "It is your fault if you are not
entirely cured: correct these two vices and you will live at least a hundred
and fifty years." Some of them reformed; this good charlatan's fortune
increased like his reputation. The Abbé de Pons, the enthusiast, put him far
above the Maréchal de Villars: "The Maréchal kills men," he said to him,
"but you make them live."
People learned at last that Villars Water was only river water; they would
have no more of it; and went to other charlatans.

It is certain that he had done good, and that the only reproach one could
make against him was that he had sold Seine water a little too dear. He led
men to temperance by which fact he was superior to the apothecary Arnoult,
who stuffed Europe with his sachets against apoplexy, without
recommending any virtue.
I knew in London a doctor named Brown, who practised in Barbados. He
had a sugar refinery and negroes; he was robbed of a considerable sum; he
assembled his negroes: "My lads," he said to them, "the great serpent
appeared to me during the night, he told me that the thief would at this
moment have a parrot's feather on the end of his nose." The guilty man
promptly put his hand to his nose. "It is you who robbed me," said the
master; "the great serpent has just told me so." And he regained his money.
One can hardly condemn such a charlatanry; but one must be dealing with
negroes.
Scipio Africanus, this great Scipio very different otherwise from Dr. Brown,
willingly made his soldiers believe that he was inspired by the gods. This
great charlatanry was long the custom. Can one blame Scipio to have
availed himself of it? he was the man who perhaps did most honour to the
Roman Republic; but why did the gods inspire him not to render his
accounts?
Numa did better; it was necessary to police some brigands and a senate
which was the most difficult section of these brigands to govern. If he had
proposed his laws to the assembled tribes, the assassins of his predecessor
would have made a thousand difficulties. He addressed himself to the
goddess Egeria, who gave him some pandects from Jupiter; he was obeyed
without contradiction, and he reigned happily. His instructions were good,
his charlatanry did good; but if some secret enemy had discovered the
imposture, if he had said: "Exterminate an impostor who prostitutes the
name of the gods in order to deceive men," Numa ran the risk of being sent
to heaven with Romulus.
It is probable that Numa took his measures very carefully, and that he
deceived the Romans for their benefit, with a dexterity suitable to the time,
the place, the intelligence of the early Romans.

Mahomet was twenty times on the point of failing, but he succeeded at last
with the Arabs of Medina; and people believed that he was the intimate
friend of the Archangel Gabriel. If to-day someone came to Constantinople
to announce that he was the favourite of the Archangel Raphael, far superior
to Gabriel in dignity, and that it was in him alone people should believe, he
would be impaled in the public place. It is for charlatans to choose their
time well.
Was there not a little charlatanry in Socrates with his familiar demon, and
Apollo's precise declaration which proclaimed him the wisest of all men?
How can Rollin, in his history, reason from this oracle? How is it that he
does not let the young idea know that it was pure charlatanry? Socrates
chose his time badly. A hundred years earlier, maybe, he would have
governed Athens.
All leaders of sects in philosophy have been somewhat charlatans: but the
greatest of all have been those who have aspired to domination. Cromwell
was the most terrible of all our charlatans. He appeared at precisely the only
time he could succeed: under Elizabeth he would have been hanged; under
Charles II. he would have been merely ridiculous. He came happily at a
time when people were disgusted with kings; and his son, at a time when
people were weary of a protector.

Of Charlatanry in Science and Literature

The sciences can barely be without charlatanry. People wish to have their
opinions accepted; the quibbling doctor wishes to eclipse the angelic
doctor; the recondite doctor wishes to reign alone. Each builds his system of
physics, metaphysics, scholastic theology; it is a competition in turning
one's merchandise to account. You have agents who extol it, fools who
believe you, protectors who support you.
Is there a greater charlatanry than that of substituting words for things, and
of wanting others to believe what you do not believe yourself?
One establishes whirlwinds of subtle matter, ramous, globulous, striated,
channelled; the other elements of matter which are not matter at all, and a
pre-established harmony which makes the clock of the body sound the hour,

when the clock of the soul shows it with its hand. These chimeras find
partisans for a few years. When this rubbish has passed out of fashion, new
fanatics appear on the itinerant theatre; they banish germs from the world,
they say that the sea produced the mountains, and that men were once fish.
How much charlatanry has been put into history, either by astonishing the
reader with prodigies, by titillating human malignity with satire, or by
flattering the families of tyrants with infamous eulogy?
The wretched species that writes for a living is charlatan in another way. A
poor man who has no trade, who has had the misfortune to go to college,
and who thinks he knows how to write, goes to pay his court to a
bookseller, and asks him for work. The bookseller knows that the majority
of most people who live in houses want to have little libraries, that they
need abridgments and new titles; he orders from the writer an abridgment of
the "History by Rapin-Thoyras," an abridgment of the "History of the
Church," a "Collection of Witty Sayings" drawn from the "Menagiana," a
"Dictionary of Great Men," where an unknown pedant is placed beside
Cicero, and a sonettiero of Italy near Virgil.
Another bookseller orders novels, or translations of novels. "If you have no
imagination," he says to the workman, "you will take a few of the
adventures in 'Cyrus,' in 'Gusman d'Alfarache,' in the 'Secret Memoirs of a
Gentleman of Quality,' or 'Of a Lady of Quality'; and from the total you will
prepare a volume of four hundred pages at twenty sous the sheet."
Another bookseller gives the gazettes and almanacs for ten years past to a
man of genius. "You will make me an extract of all that, and you will bring
it me back in three months under the name of 'Faithful History of the
Times,' by the Chevalier de Trois Etoiles, Lieutenant of the Navy, employed
in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs."
Of this kind of book there are about fifty thousand in Europe; and it all
passes just like the secret of whitening the skin, of darkening the hair, and
the universal panacea.

CIVIL LAWS
Extract from Some Notes found among a Lawyer's Papers, which
maybe merit Examination.

Let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for
nothing, and a man condemned to public works still serves the country, and
is a living lesson.

Let all laws be clear, uniform and precise: to interpret laws is almost always
to corrupt them.

Let nothing be infamous save vice.

Let taxes be always proportional.

Let the law never be contradictory to custom: for if the custom be good, the
law is worthless.

CLIMATE
Climate influences religion as regards customs and ceremonies. A legislator
will not have had difficulty in making the Indians bathe in the Ganges at
certain seasons of the moon; it is a great pleasure for them. He would have
been stoned if he had proposed the same bath to the peoples who dwell on
the banks of the Dwina near Archangel. Forbid pig to an Arab who would
have leprosy if he ate of this flesh which is very bad and disgusting in his
country, he will obey you joyfully. Issue the same veto to a Westphalian and
he will be tempted to fight you.
Abstinence from wine is a good religious precept in Arabia where orange
water, lemon water, lime water are necessary to health. Mohammed would
not have forbidden wine in Switzerland perhaps, especially before going to
battle.
There are customs of pure fantasy. Why did the priests of Egypt imagine
circumcision? it is not for health. Cambyses who treated them as they
deserved, they and their bull Apis, Cambyses' courtiers, Cambyses' soldiers,
had not had their prepuces lopped, and were very well. Climate does
nothing to a priest's genitals. One offered one's prepuce to Isis, probably as
one presented everywhere the first fruits of the earth. It was offering the
first fruits of life.
Religions have always rolled on two pivots; observance and creed:
observance depends largely on climate; creed not at all. One could as easily
make a dogma accepted on the equator as the polar circle. It would later be
rejected equally at Batavia and in the Orkneys, while it would be
maintained unguibus et rostro at Salamanca. That depends in no way on the
soil and the atmosphere, but solely on opinion, that fickle queen of the
world.
Certain libations of wine will be precept in a vine-growing country, and it
will not occur to a legislator's mind to institute in Norway sacred mysteries
which cannot be performed without wine.

It will be expressly ordered to burn incense in the parvis of a temple where
beasts are slaughtered in the Deity's honour, and for the priests' supper. This
butcher's shop called "temple" would be a place of abominable infection if
it were not continually purified: and without the assistance of aromatics, the
religion of the ancients would have caused the plague. Even the interior of
the temple was decked with festoons of flowers in order to make the air
sweeter.
No cow will be sacrificed in the burning land of the Indian peninsula;
because this animal which furnishes necessary milk is very rare in an arid
country, its flesh is dry, tough, contains very little nourishment, and the
Brahmins would live very badly. On the contrary, the cow will become
sacred, in view of its rarity and utility.
One will only enter barefoot the temple of Jupiter Ammon where the heat is
excessive: one must be well shod to perform one's devotions in
Copenhagen.
It is not so with dogma. People have believed in polytheism in all climates;
and it is as easy for a Crimean Tartar as for an inhabitant of Mecca to
recognize a single God, incommunicable, non-begetting, non-begotten. It is
through its dogma still more than through its rites that a religion is spread
from one climate to another. The dogma of the unity of God soon passed
from Medina to the Caucasus; then the climate cedes to opinion.
The Arabs said to the Turks: "We had ourselves circumcised in Arabia
without really knowing why; it was an old fashion of the priests of Egypt to
offer to Oshireth or Osiris a little part of what they held most precious. We
had adopted this custom three thousand years before we became
Mohammedans. You will be circumcised like us; like us you will be obliged
to sleep with one of your wives every Friday, and to give each year two and
a half per cent of your income to the poor. We drink only water and sherbet;
all intoxicating liquor is forbidden us; in Arabia it is pernicious. You will
embrace this regime although you love wine passionately, and although it
may even be often necessary for you to go on the banks of the Phasis and
Araxes. Lastly, if you want to go to Heaven, and be well placed there, you
will take the road to Mecca."

The inhabitants of the north of the Caucasus submit to these laws, and
embrace throughout the country a religion which was not made for them.
In Egypt the symbolic worship of animals succeeded the dogmas of Thaut.
The gods of the Romans later shared Egypt with the dogs, the cats and the
crocodiles. To the Roman religion succeeded Christianity; it was entirely
driven out by Mohammedanism, which perhaps will cede its place to a new
religion.
In all these vicissitudes climate has counted for nothing: government has
done everything. We are considering here second causes only, without
raising profane eyes to the Providence which directs them. The Christian
religion, born in Syria, having received its principal development in
Alexandria, inhabits to-day the lands where Teutate, Irminsul, Frida, Odin
were worshipped.
There are peoples whose religion has been made by neither climate nor
government. What cause detached the north of Germany, Denmark, three-
quarters of Switzerland, Holland, England, Scotland, Ireland, from the
Roman communion? Poverty. Indulgences and deliverance from purgatory
were sold too dear to souls whose bodies had at that time very little money.
The prelates, the monks devoured a province's whole revenue. People took
a cheaper religion. At last, after twenty civil wars, people believed that the
Pope's religion was very good for great lords, and the reformed religion for
citizens. Time will show whether the Greek religion or the Turkish religion
will prevail by the Ægean Sea and the Pont-Euxine.

COMMON SENSE
There are sometimes in common expressions an image of what passes in the
depths of all men's hearts. Among the Romans sensus communis signified
not only common sense, but humanity, sensibility. As we are not as good as
the Romans, this word signifies among us only half of what it signified
among them. It means only good sense, plain reason, reason set in
operation, a first notion of ordinary things, a state midway between
stupidity and intelligence. "This man has no common sense" is a great
insult. "A common-sense man" is an insult likewise; it means that he is not
entirely stupid, and that he lacks what is called wit and understanding. But
whence comes this expression common sense, unless it be from the senses?
Men, when they invented this word, avowed that nothing entered the soul
save through the senses; otherwise, would they have used the word sense to
signify common reasoning?
People say sometimes—"Common sense is very rare." What does this
phrase signify? that in many men reason set in operation is stopped in its
progress by prejudices, that such and such man who judges very sanely in
one matter, will always be vastly deceived in another. This Arab, who will
be a good calculator, a learned chemist, an exact astronomer, will believe
nevertheless that Mohammed put half the moon in his sleeve.
Why will he go beyond common sense in the three sciences of which I
speak, and why will he be beneath common sense when there is question of
this half moon? Because in the first cases he has seen with his eyes, he has
perfected his intelligence; and in the second, he has seen with other people's
eyes, he has closed his own, he has perverted the common sense which is in
him.
How has this strange mental alienation been able to operate? How can the
ideas which move with so regular and so firm a step in the brain on a great
number of subjects limp so wretchedly on another a thousand times more
palpable and easy to comprehend? This man always has inside him the
same principles of intelligence; he must have some organ vitiated then, just

as it happens sometimes that the finest gourmet may have a depraved taste
as regards a particular kind of food.
How is the organ of this Arab, who sees half the moon in Mohammed's
sleeve, vitiated? It is through fear. He has been told that if he did not believe
in this sleeve, his soul, immediately after his death, when passing over the
pointed bridge, would fall for ever into the abyss. He has been told even
worse things: If ever you have doubts about this sleeve, one dervish will
treat you as impious; another will prove to you that you are an insensate
fool who, having all possible motives for believing, have not wished to
subordinate your superb reason to the evidence; a third will report you to
the little divan of a little province, and you will be legally impaled.
All this terrifies the good Arab, his wife, his sister, all his little family into a
state of panic. They have good sense about everything else, but on this
article their imagination is wounded, as was the imagination of Pascal, who
continually saw a precipice beside his armchair. But does our Arab believe
in fact in Mohammed's sleeve? No. He makes efforts to believe; he says it is
impossible, but that it is true; he believes what he does not believe. On the
subject of this sleeve he forms in his head a chaos of ideas which he is
afraid to disentangle; and this veritably is not to have common sense.

CONCATENATION OF EVENTS
The present is delivered, it is said, of the future. Events are linked to each
other by an invincible fatality: it is Destiny which, in Homer, is above even
Jupiter. This master of gods and men declares roundly that he cannot stop
his son Sarpedon dying in his appointed time. Sarpedon was born at the
moment when he had to be born, and could not be born at another moment;
he could not die otherwise than before Troy; he could not be buried
elsewhere than in Lycia; had at the appointed time to produce vegetables
which had to be changed into the substance of a few Lycians; his heirs had
to establish a new order in his states; this new order had to exert an
influence over the neighbouring kingdoms; from it resulted a new
arrangement of war and peace with the neighbours of the neighbours of
Lycia: thus, step by step, the destiny of the whole world has been dependent
on Sarpedon's death, which depended on Helen being carried off; and this
carrying off was necessarily linked to Hecuba's marriage, which by tracing
back to other events was linked to the origin of things.
If only one of these facts had been arranged differently, another universe
would have resulted: but it was not possible for the present universe not to
exist; therefore it was not possible for Jupiter to save his son's life, for all
that he was Jupiter.
This system of necessity and fatality has been invented in our time by
Leibnitz, according to what people say, under the name of self-sufficient
reason; it is, however, very ancient: that there is no effect without a cause
and that often the smallest cause produces the greatest effects, does not date
from to-day.
Lord Bolingbroke avows that the little quarrels of Madame Marlborough
and Madame Masham gave birth to his chance of making Queen Anne's
private treaty with Louis XIV.; this treaty led to the Peace of Utrecht; this
Peace of Utrecht established Philip V. on the throne of Spain. Philip V. took
Naples and Sicily from the house of Austria; the Spanish prince who is to-
day King of Naples clearly owes his kingdom to my lady Masham: and he

would not have had it, he would not perhaps even have been born, if the
Duchess of Marlborough had been more complaisant towards the Queen of
England. His existence at Naples depended on one foolishness more or less
at the court of London.
Examine the position of all the peoples of the universe; they are established
like this on a sequence of facts which appear to be connected with nothing
and which are connected with everything. Everything is cog, pulley, cord,
spring, in this vast machine.
It is likewise in the physical sphere. A wind which blows from the depths of
Africa and the austral seas, brings a portion of the African atmosphere,
which falls in rain in the valleys of the Alps; these rains fertilize our lands;
our north wind in its turn sends our vapours among the negroes; we do good
to Guinea, and Guinea does good to us. The chain stretches from one end of
the universe to the other.
But it seems to me that a strange abuse is made of the truth of this principle.
From it some people conclude that there is not a sole minute atom whose
movement has not exerted its influence in the present arrangement of the
world; that there is not a single minute accident, among either men or
animals, which is not an essential link in the great chain of fate.
Let us understand each other: every effect clearly has its cause, going back
from cause to cause in the abyss of eternity; but every cause has not its
effect going forward to the end of the centuries. All events are produced by
each other, I admit; if the past is delivered of the present, the present is
delivered of the future; everything has father, but everything has not always
children. Here it is precisely as with a genealogical tree; each house goes
back, as we say, to Adam; but in the family there are many persons who
have died without leaving issue.
There is a genealogical tree of the events of this world. It is incontestable
that the inhabitants of Gaul and Spain are descended from Gomer, and the
Russians from Magog, his younger brother: one finds this genealogy in so
many fat books! On this basis one cannot deny that the Great Turk, who is
also descended from Magog, was not bound to be well beaten in 1769 by
Catherine II., Empress of Russia. This adventure is clearly connected with
other great adventures. But that Magog spat to right or left, near Mount

Caucasus, and that he made two circles in a well or three, that he slept on
the left side or on the right; I do not see that that has had much influence on
present affairs.
One must think that everything is not complete in nature, as Newton has
demonstrated, and that every movement is not communicated step by step
until it makes a circuit of the world, as he has demonstrated still further.
Throw into water a body of like density, you calculate easily that after a
short time the movement of this body, and the movement it has
communicated to the water, are destroyed; the movement disappears and is
effaced; therefore the movement that Magog might produce by spitting in a
well cannot influence what is passing to-day in Moldavia and Wallachia;
therefore present events are not the children of all past events: they have
their direct lines; but a thousand little collateral lines do not serve them at
all. Once more, every being has a father, but every being has not children.

CONTRADICTIONS
If some literary society wishes to undertake the dictionary of contradictions,
I subscribe for twenty folio volumes.
The world can exist only by contradictions: what is needed to abolish them?
to assemble the states of the human race. But from the manner in which
men are made, it would be a fresh contradiction if they were to agree.
Assemble all the rabbits of the universe, there will not be two different
opinions among them.
I know only two kinds of immutable beings on the earth, mathematicians
and animals; they are led by two invariable rules, demonstration and
instinct: and even the mathematicians have had some disputes, but the
animals have never varied.
The contrasts, the light and shade in which public men are represented in
history, are not contradictions, they are faithful portraits of human nature.
Every day people condemn and admire Alexander the murderer of Clitus,
but the avenger of Greece, the conqueror of the Persians, and the founder of
Alexandria;
Cæsar the debauchee, who robs the public treasury of Rome to reduce his
country to dependence; but whose clemency equals his valour, and whose
intelligence equals his courage;
Mohammed, impostor, brigand; but the sole religious legislator who had
courage, and who founded a great empire;
Cromwell the enthusiast, a rogue in his fanaticism even, judicial assassin of
his king, but as profound politician as brave warrior.
A thousand contrasts frequently crowd together, and these contrasts are in
nature; they are no more astonishing than a fine day followed by storm.

Men are equally mad everywhere; they have made the laws little by little, as
gaps are repaired in a wall. Here eldest sons have taken all they could from
younger sons, there younger sons share equally. Sometimes the Church has
commanded the duel, sometimes she has anathematized it. The partisans
and the enemies of Aristotle have each been excommunicated in their turn,
as have those who wore long hair and those who wore short. In this world
we have perfect law only to rule a species of madness called gaming. The
rules of gaming are the only ones which admit neither exception, relaxation,
variety nor tyranny. A man who has been a lackey, if he play at lansquenet
with kings, is paid without difficulty if he win; everywhere else the law is a
sword with which the stronger cut the weaker in pieces.
Nevertheless, this world exists as if everything were well ordered; the
irregularity is of our nature; our political world is like our globe, a
misshapen thing which always preserves itself. It would be mad to wish that
the mountains, the seas, the rivers, were traced in beautiful regular forms; it
would be still more mad to ask perfect wisdom of men; it would be wishing
to give wings to dogs or horns to eagles.

CORN
The Gauls had corn in Cæsar's time: one is curious to know where they and
the Teutons found it to sow. People answer you that the Tyrians had brought
it into Spain, the Spaniards into Gaul, the Gauls into Germany. And where
did the Tyrians get this corn? Among the Greeks probably, from whom they
received it in exchange for their alphabet.
Who had made this present to the Greeks? It was formerly Ceres without a
doubt; and when one has gone back to Ceres one can hardly go farther.
Ceres must have come down on purpose from the sky to give us wheat, rye,
barley, etc.
But as the credit of Ceres who gave the corn to the Greeks, and that of
Isheth or Isis who bestowed it on the Egyptians, is very much fallen in these
days, we remain in uncertainty as to the origin of corn.
Sanchoniathon affirms that Dagon or Dagan, one of the grandsons of Thaut,
had the control of corn in Phœnicia. Well, his Thaut is of about the same
time as our Jared. From this it results that corn is very old, and that it is of
the same antiquity as grass. Perhaps this Dagon was the first man to make
bread, but that is not demonstrated.
Strange thing! we know positively that it is to Noah that we are under an
obligation for wine, and we do not know to whom we owe bread. And, still
more strange thing, we are so ungrateful to Noah, that we have more than
two thousand songs in honour of Bacchus, and we chant barely one in
honour of Noah our benefactor.
A Jew has assured me that corn came by itself in Mesopotamia, like the
apples, wild pears, chestnuts, medlars in the West. I want to believe it until I
am sure of the contrary; for corn must certainly grow somewhere. It has
become the ordinary and indispensable food in the good climates, and
throughout the North.

Some great philosophers whose talents we esteem and whose systems we
do not follow (Buffon) have claimed on page 195 of the "Natural History of
the Dog," that mankind has made corn; that our fathers by virtue of sowing
lolium and gramina changed them into wheat. As these philosophers are not
of our opinion about shells, they will permit us not to be of theirs about
corn. We do not believe that one has ever made tulips grow from jasmin.
We find that the germ of corn is quite different from that of lolium, and we
do not believe in any transmutation. When somebody shows it to us we will
retract.
Corn assuredly is not the food of the greater part of the world. Maize,
tapioca, feed the whole of America. We have entire provinces where the
peasants eat nothing but chestnut bread, more nourishing and of better
flavour than that of rye and barley which so many people eat, and which is
much better than the ration bread which is given to the soldier. The whole
of southern Africa does not know of bread. The immense archipelago of the
Indies, Siam, Laos, Pegu, Cochin China, Tonkin, a part of China, Japan, the
coast of Malabar and Coromandel, the banks of the Ganges furnish a rice,
the cultivation of which is much easier than that of wheat, and which causes
it to be neglected. Corn is absolutely unknown for the space of fifteen
hundred leagues on the coasts of the Glacial Sea. This food, to which we are
accustomed, is among us so precious that the fear of seeing a dearth of it
alone causes riots among the most subjugated peoples. The corn trade is
everywhere one of the great objects of government; it is a part of our being,
and yet this essential commodity is sometimes squandered ridiculously. The
powder merchants use the best flour for covering the heads of our young
men and women. But over three-quarters of the earth bread is not eaten at
all. People maintain that the Ethiopians mocked at the Egyptians who lived
on bread. But since it is our chief food, corn has become one of the great
objects of trade and politics. So much has been written on this subject, that
if a husbandman sowed as much corn as the weight of the volumes we have
about this commodity, he might hope for the amplest harvest, and become
richer than those who in their gilded and lacquered drawing-rooms ignore
his exceeding labour and wretchedness.

CROMWELL
SECTION I

Cromwell is painted as a man who was an impostor all his life. I have
difficulty in believing it. I think that first of all he was an enthusiast, and
that later he made even his fanaticism serve his greatness. A novice who is
fervent at the age of twenty often becomes a skilful rogue at forty. In the
great game of human life one begins by being a dupe, and one finishes by
being a rogue. A statesman takes as almoner a monk steeped in the
pettinesses of his monastery, devout, credulous, clumsy, quite new to the
world: the monk learns, forms himself, intrigues, and supplants his master.
Cromwell did not know at first whether he would be an ecclesiastic or a
soldier. He was both. In 1622 he served a campaign in the army of
Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, a great man, brother of two great men;
and when he returned to England, he went into the service of Bishop
Williams, and was his grace's theologian, while his grace passed as his
wife's lover. His principles were those of the Puritans; thus he had to hate a
bishop with all his heart, and not have a liking for kings. He was driven
from Bishop Williams' house because he was a Puritan; and there is the
origin of his fortune. The English Parliament declared itself against the
throne and against the episcopacy; some of his friends in this parliament
procured the nomination of a village for him. Only at this time did he begin
to exist, and he was more than forty before he had ever made himself talked
of. In vain was he conversant with Holy Writ, in vain did he argue about the
rights of priests and deacons, and preach a few poor sermons and libels, he
was ignored. I have seen one of his sermons which is very insipid, and
which bears sufficient resemblance to the predications of the quakers;
assuredly there is to be found there no trace of that persuasive eloquence
with which later he carried the parliaments away. The reason is that in fact
he was much more suited to public affairs than to the Church. It was above
all in his tone and in his air that his eloquence consisted; a gesture of that
hand that had won so many battles and killed so many royalists, was more
persuasive than the periods of Cicero. It must be avowed that it was his

incomparable bravery which made him known, and which led him by
degrees to the pinnacle of greatness.
He began by launching out as a volunteer who wished to make his fortune,
in the town of Hull, besieged by the king. There he did many fine and
happy actions, for which he received a gratification of about six thousand
francs from the parliament. This present made by the parliament to an
adventurer made it clear that the rebel party must prevail. The king was not
in a position to give to his general officers what the parliament gave to
volunteers. With money and fanaticism one is bound in the long run to be
master of everything. Cromwell was made colonel. Then his great talents
for war developed to the point that when the parliament created the Count
of Manchester general of its armies, it made Cromwell lieutenant-general,
without his having passed through the other ranks. Never did man appear
more worthy of commanding; never were more activity and prudence, more
boldness and more resource seen than in Cromwell. He is wounded at the
battle of York; and while the first dressing is being put on his wound, he
learns that his general, Manchester, is retiring, and that the battle is lost. He
hastens to Manchester's side; he finds him fleeing with some officers; he
takes him by the arm, and says to him with an air of confidence and
grandeur: "You are mistaken, my lord; it is not on this side that the enemy
is." He leads him back near the battlefield, rallies during the night more
than twelve thousand men, speaks to them in the name of God, quotes
Moses, Gideon and Joshua, at daybreak recommences the battle against the
victorious royal army, and defeats it completely. Such a man had to perish
or be master. Nearly all the officers of his army were enthusiasts who
carried the New Testament at their saddle-bow: in the army as in the
parliament men spoke only of making Babylon fall, of establishing the
religion in Jerusalem, of shattering the colossus. Among so many madmen
Cromwell ceased to be mad, and thought that it was better to govern them
than to be governed by them. The habit of preaching as though he were
inspired remained to him. Picture a fakir who has put an iron belt round his
waist as a penitence, and who then takes off his belt to beat the other fakirs'
ears: there you have Cromwell. He becomes as intriguing as he was
intrepid; he associates himself with all the colonels of the army, and thus
forms among the troops a republic which forces the commander-in-chief to
resign. Another commander-in-chief is nominated, he disgusts him. He

governs the army, and by it he governs the parliament; he puts this
parliament in the necessity of making him commander-in-chief at last. All
this was a great deal; but what is essential is that he wins all the battles he
engages in in England, Scotland and Ireland; and he wins them, not in
watching the fighting and in taking care of himself, but always by charging
the enemy, rallying his troops, rushing everywhere, often wounded, killing
many royalist officers with his own hand, like a desperate and infuriated
grenadier.
Amid this frightful war Cromwell made love; he went, his Bible under his
arm, to sleep with the wife of his major-general, Lambert. She loved the
Count of Holland, who was serving in the king's army. Cromwell took him
prisoner in a battle, and enjoyed the pleasure of having his rival's head cut
off. His maxim was to shed the blood of every important enemy, either on
the field of battle, or by the executioner's hand. He always increased his
power, by always daring to abuse it; the profundity of his plans took away
nothing from his ferocious impetuosity. He goes into the House of
Parliament and, taking his watch, which he threw on the ground and which
he shattered to atoms: "I will break you," he said, "like this watch." He
returns there some time after, drives all the members out one after the other,
making them defile before him. Each is obliged, as he passes, to make him
a deep bow: one of them passes with his hat on his head; Cromwell takes
his hat from him and throws it on the ground: "Learn to respect me," he
says.
When he had outraged all kings by having his own legitimate king's head
cut off, and when he started to reign himself, he sent his portrait to a
crowned head; it was to Christine, Queen of Sweden. Marvell, a famous
English poet, who wrote very good Latin verse, accompanied this portrait
with six verses where he made Cromwell himself speak. Cromwell
corrected the last two as follows:

At tibi submittit frontem reverentior umbra,
Non sunt hi vultus regibus usque truces.

This queen was the first to recognize him as soon as he was protector of the
three kingdoms. Almost all the sovereigns of Europe sent their ambassadors
to their brother Cromwell, to this bishop's servant, who had just caused a
sovereign, their own kin, to perish at the hand of the executioner. They vied
with each in soliciting his alliance. Cardinal Mazarin, to please him, drove
out of France the two sons of Charles I., the two grandsons of Henry IV.,
the two first cousins of Louis XIV. France conquered Dunkirk for him, and
sent him the keys. After his death, Louis XIV. and all his court wore
mourning, excepting Mademoiselle, who had the courage to come to the
company in a coloured habit, and alone maintained the honour of her race.
Never was a king more absolute than he was. He said that he had preferred
governing under the name of protector rather than under that of king,
because the English knew the point to which a King of England's
prerogative extended, and did not know to what point a protector's might
go. That was to understand men, who are governed by opinion, and whose
opinion depends on a name. He had conceived a profound scorn for the
religion which had served to his fortune. There is a certain anecdote
preserved in the house of St. John, which proves sufficiently the little
account which Cromwell made of the instrument which had produced such
great effects in his hands. He was drinking one day with Ireton, Fleetwood
and St. John, great-grandfather of the celebrated Lord Bolingbroke; they
wished to uncork a bottle, and the corkscrew fell under the table; they all
looked for it and did not find it. Meanwhile a deputation from the
Presbyterian churches was waiting in the antechamber, and an usher came
to announce them. "Tell them," said Cromwell, "that I have retired, and that
I am seeking the Lord." It was the expression which the fanatics used when
they were saying their prayers. When he had thus dismissed the band of
ministers, he said these very words to his confidants: "Those puppies think
that we are seeking the Lord, and we are only seeking the corkscrew."
There is barely an example in Europe of any man who, come from so low,
raised himself so high. But what was absolutely essential to him with all his
talents? Fortune. He had this fortune; but was he happy? He lived poorly

and anxiously until he was forty-three; from that time he bathed himself in
blood, passed his life in turmoil, and died before his time at the age of fifty-
seven. Let us compare this life with that of Newton, who lived eighty-four
years, always tranquil, always honoured, always the light of all thinking
beings, seeing increase each day his renown, his reputation, his fortune,
without ever having either care or remorse; and let us judge which of the
two had the better part.

SECTION II

Oliver Cromwell was regarded with admiration by the Puritans and
independents of England; he is still their hero; but Richard Cromwell, his
son, is my man.
The first is a fanatic who would be hissed to-day in the House of Commons,
if he uttered there one single one of the unintelligible absurdities which he
gave out with so much confidence before other fanatics who listened to him
open-mouthed and wide-eyed, in the name of the Lord. If he said that one
must seek the Lord, and fight the Lord's battles; if he introduced the Jewish
jargon into the parliament of England, to the eternal shame of the human
intelligence, he would be nearer to being led to Bedlam than to being
chosen to command armies.
He was brave without a doubt; so are wolves; there are even monkeys as
fierce as tigers. From being a fanatic he became an adroit politician, that is
to say that from a wolf he became fox, climbed by imposture from the first
steps where the infuriated enthusiasm of the times had placed him, right to
the pinnacle of greatness; and the impostor walked on the heads of the
prostrated fanatics. He reigned, but he lived in the horrors of anxiety. He
knew neither serene days nor tranquil nights. The consolations of friendship
and society never approached him; he died before his time, more worthy,
without a doubt, of execution than the king whom he had conducted from a
window of his own palace to the scaffold.
Richard Cromwell, on the contrary, born with a gentle, wise spirit, refused
to keep his father's crown at the price of the blood of two or three rebels
whom he could sacrifice to his ambition. He preferred to be reduced to
private life rather than be an omnipotent assassin. He left the protectorate

without regret to live as a citizen. Free and tranquil in the country, he
enjoyed health there, and there did he possess his soul in peace for eighty-
six years, loved by his neighbours, to whom he was arbiter and father.
Readers, give your verdict. If you had to choose between the destiny of the
father and that of the son, which would you take?

CUSTOMS
Contemptible Customs do not always Suppose a Contemptible Nation

There are cases where one must not judge a nation by its customs and
popular superstitions. I suppose that Cæsar, having conquered Egypt,
wanting to make trade flourish in the Roman Empire, has sent an embassy
to China, by the port of Arsinoë, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean. The
Emperor Yventi, first of his name, was then reigning; the annals of China
represent him as a very wise and learned prince. After receiving Cæsar's
ambassadors with all the Chinese politeness, he informs himself secretly
through his interpreters of the customs, science and religion of this Roman
people, as celebrated in the West as the Chinese people is in the East. He
learns first of all that this people's pontiffs have arranged their year in so
absurd a fashion that the sun has already the heavenly signs of spring when
the Romans are celebrating the first festivals of winter.
He learns that this nation supports at great cost a college of priests who
know exactly the time when one should set sail and when one should give
battle, by inspecting an ox's liver, or by the way in which the chickens eat
barley. This sacred science was brought formerly to the Romans by a little
god named Tages, who emerged from the earth in Tuscany. These peoples
worship one supreme God whom they always call the very great and very
good God. Nevertheless, they have built a temple to a courtesan named
Flora; and almost all the good women of Rome have in their homes little
household gods four or five inches high. One of these little divinities is the
goddess of the breasts; the other the goddess of the buttocks. There is a
household god who is called the god Pet. The emperor Yventi starts
laughing: the tribunals of Nankin think first of all with him that the Roman
ambassadors are madmen or impostors who have taken the title of envoys
of the Roman Republic; but as the emperor is as just as he is polite, he has
private talks with the ambassadors. He learns that the Roman pontiffs have
been very ignorant, but that Cæsar is now reforming the calendar; they
admit to him that the college of augurs was established in early barbarous

times; that this ridiculous institution, become dear to a people long
uncivilized, has been allowed to subsist; that all honest people laugh at the
augurs; that Cæsar has never consulted them; that according to a very great
man named Cato, never has an augur been able to speak to his comrade
without laughter; and that finally Cicero, the greatest orator and the best
philosopher in Rome, has just written against the augurs a little work
entitled "Of Divination," in which he commits to eternal ridicule all the
soothsayers, all the predictions, and all the sorcery of which the world is
infatuated. The emperor of China is curious to read Cicero's book, the
interpreters translate it; he admires the book and the Roman Republic.

DEMOCRACY
Ordinarily there is no comparison between the crimes of the great who are
always ambitious, and the crimes of the people who always want, and can
want only liberty and equality. These two sentiments, Liberty and Equality,
do not lead direct to calumny, rapine, assassination, poisoning, the
devastation of one's neighbours' lands, etc.; but ambitious might and the
mania for power plunge into all these crimes whatever be the time,
whatever be the place.
Popular government is in itself, therefore, less iniquitous, less abominable
than despotic power.
The great vice of democracy is certainly not tyranny and cruelty: there have
been mountain-dwelling republicans, savage, ferocious; but it is not the
republican spirit that made them so, it is nature.
The real vice of a civilized republic is in the Turkish fable of the dragon
with many heads and the dragon with many tails. The many heads hurt each
other, and the many tails obey a single head which wants to devour
everything.
Democracy seems suitable only to a very little country, and further it must
be happily situated. Small though it be, it will make many mistakes,
because it will be composed of men. Discord will reign there as in a
monastery; but there will be no St. Bartholomew, no Irish massacres, no
Sicilian vespers, no inquisition, no condemnation to the galleys for having
taken some water from the sea without paying for it, unless one supposes
this republic composed of devils in a corner of hell.
One questions every day whether a republican government is preferable to a
king's government? The dispute ends always by agreeing that to govern
men is very difficult. The Jews had God Himself for master; see what has
happened to them on that account: nearly always have they been beaten and
slaves, and to-day do you not find that they cut a pretty figure?

DESTINY
Of all the books of the Occident which have come down to us, the most
ancient is Homer; it is there that one finds the customs of profane antiquity,
of the gross heroes, of the gross gods, made in the image of men; but it is
there that among the reveries and inconsequences, one finds too the seeds of
philosophy, and above all the idea of the destiny which is master of the
gods, as the gods are masters of the world.
When the magnanimous Hector wishes absolutely to fight the magnanimous
Achilles, and with this object starts fleeing with all his might, and three
times makes the circuit of the city before fighting, in order to have more
vigour; when Homer compares fleet-of-foot Achilles, who pursues him, to a
man who sleeps; when Madame Dacier goes into ecstasies of admiration
over the art and mighty sense of this passage, then Jupiter wants to save
great Hector who has made so many sacrifices to him, and he consults the
fates; he weighs the destinies of Hector and Achilles in the balance (Iliad,
liv. xxii.): he finds that the Trojan must absolutely be killed by the Greek;
he cannot oppose it; and from this moment, Apollo, Hector's guardian
genius, is forced to abandon him. It is not that Homer is not often prodigal,
and particularly in this place, of quite contrary ideas, following the privilege
of antiquity; but he is the first in whom one finds the notion of destiny. This
notion, therefore, was very much in vogue in his time.
The Pharisees, among the little Jewish people, did not adopt destiny until
several centuries later; for these Pharisees themselves, who were the first
literates among the Jews, were very new fangled. In Alexandria they mixed
a part of the dogmas of the Stoics with the old Jewish ideas. St. Jerome
claims even that their sect is not much anterior to the Christian era.
The philosophers never had need either of Homer or the Pharisees to
persuade themselves that everything happens through immutable laws, that
everything is arranged, that everything is a necessary effect. This is how
they argued.

Either the world exists by its own nature, by its physical laws, or a supreme
being has formed it according to his supreme laws: in both cases, these laws
are immutable; in both cases everything is necessary; heavy bodies tend
towards the centre of the earth, without being able to tend to pause in the
air. Pear-trees can never bear pineapples. A spaniel's instinct cannot be an
ostrich's instinct; everything is arranged, in gear, limited.
Man can have only a certain number of teeth, hair and ideas; there comes a
time when he necessarily loses his teeth, hair and ideas.
It would be a contradiction that what was yesterday was not, that what is to-
day is not; it is also a contradiction that what must be cannot be.
If you could disturb the destiny of a fly, there would be no reason that could
stop your making the destiny of all the other flies, of all the other animals,
of all men, of all nature; you would find yourself in the end more powerful
than God.
Imbeciles say: "My doctor has extricated my aunt from a mortal malady; he
has made my aunt live ten years longer than she ought to have lived."
Others who affect knowledge, say: "The prudent man makes his own
destiny."
But often the prudent, far from making their destinies, succumb to them; it
is destiny which makes them prudent.
Profound students of politics affirm that, if Cromwell, Ludlow, Ireton and a
dozen other parliamentarians had been assassinated a week before Charles
I.'s head was cut off, this king might have lived longer and died in his bed;
they are right; they can add further that if the whole of England had been
swallowed up in the sea, this monarch would not have perished on a
scaffold near Whitehall; but things were arranged so that Charles had to
have his neck severed.
Cardinal d'Ossat was doubtless more prudent than a madman in Bedlam;
but is it not clear that the organs of d'Ossat the sage were made otherwise
than those of the scatter-brain? just as a fox's organs are different from a
stork's and a lark's.

Your doctor saved your aunt; but assuredly he did not in that contradict
nature's order; he followed it. It is clear that your aunt could not stop herself
being born in such and such town, that she could not stop herself having a
certain malady at a particular time, that the doctor could not be elsewhere
than in the town where he was, that your aunt had to call him, that he had to
prescribe for her the drugs which cured her, or which one thinks cured her,
when nature was the only doctor.
A peasant thinks that it has hailed on his field by chance; but the
philosopher knows that there is no chance, and that it was impossible, in the
constitution of this world, for it not to hail on that day in that place.
There are persons who, frightened by this truth, admit half of it as debtors
who offer half to their creditors, and ask respite for the rest. "There are,"
they say, "some events which are necessary, and others which are not." It
would be very comic that one part of the world was arranged, and that the
other were not; that a part of what happens had to happen, and that another
part of what happens did not have to happen. If one looks closely at it, one
sees that the doctrine contrary to that of destiny is absurd; but there are
many people destined to reason badly, others not to reason at all, others to
persecute those who reason.
Some say to you: "Do not believe in fatalism; for then everything appearing
inevitable, you will work at nothing, you will wallow in indifference, you
will love neither riches, nor honours, nor glory; you will not want to acquire
anything, you will believe yourself without merit as without power; no
talent will be cultivated, everything will perish through apathy."
Be not afraid, gentlemen, we shall ever have passions and prejudices, since
it is our destiny to be subjected to prejudices and passions: we shall know
that it no more depends on us to have much merit and great talent, than to
have a good head of hair and beautiful hands: we shall be convinced that we
must not be vain about anything, and yet we shall always have vanity.
I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for
condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny.
Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in
spite of you.

The owl, which feeds on mice in its ruins, said to the nightingale: "Finish
singing under your beautiful shady trees, come into my hole, that I may eat
you"; and the nightingale answered: "I was born to sing here, and to laugh
at you."
You ask me what will become of liberty? I do not understand you. I do not
know what this liberty is of which you speak; so long have you been
disputing about its nature, that assuredly you are not acquainted with it. If
you wish, or rather, if you are able to examine peaceably with me what it is,
pass to the letter L.

DEVOUT
The word "devout" signifies "devoted"; and in the strict sense of the term
this qualification should belong only to monks and nuns who make vows.
But as in the Gospel there is no more mention of vows than of devout
persons, this title does not in fact belong to anyone. Everyone should be
equally righteous. A man who styles himself devout resembles a commoner
who styles himself a marquis; he arrogates to himself a quality he does not
possess. He thinks himself more worthy than his neighbour. One can
forgive such foolishness in women; their frailty and their frivolity render
them excusable; the poor creatures pass from a lover to a director in good
faith: but one cannot pardon the rogues who direct them, who abuse their
ignorance, who establish the throne of their pride on the credulity of the
sex. They resolve themselves into a little mystic seraglio composed of seven
or eight aged beauties, subdued by the weight of their lack of occupation,
and almost always do these persons pay tribute to their new masters. No
young woman without a lover, no aged devout woman without a director.
Oh! the Orientals are wiser than we are! Never does a pasha say: "We
supped yesterday with the Aga of the Janissaries who is my sister's lover,
and the vicar of the mosque who is my wife's director."

THE ECCLESIASTICAL MINISTRY
The institution of religion exists only to keep mankind in order, and to make
men merit the goodness of God by their virtue. Everything in a religion
which does not tend towards this goal must be considered foreign or
dangerous.
Instruction, exhortation, menaces of pains to come, promises of immortal
beatitude, prayers, counsels, spiritual help are the only means ecclesiastics
may use to try to make men virtuous here below, and happy for eternity.
All other means are repugnant to the liberty of the reason, to the nature of
the soul, to the inalterable rights of the conscience, to the essence of
religion and of the ecclesiastical ministry, to all the rights of the sovereign.
Virtue supposes liberty, as the carrying of a burden supposes active force.
Under coercion no virtue, and without virtue no religion. Make a slave of
me, I shall be no better for it.
The sovereign even has no right to use coercion to lead men to religion,
which supposes essentially choice and liberty. My thought is subordinate to
authority no more than is sickness or health.
In order to disentangle all the contradictions with which books on canon
law have been filled, and to fix our ideas on the ecclesiastical ministry, let
us investigate amid a thousand equivocations what the Church is.
The Church is the assembly of all the faithful summoned on certain days to
pray in common, and at all times to do good actions.
The priests are persons established under the authority of the sovereign to
direct these prayers and all religious worship.
A numerous Church could not exist without ecclesiastics; but these
ecclesiastics are not the Church.

It is no less evident that if the ecclesiastics, who are part of civil society,
had acquired rights which might trouble or destroy society, these rights
ought to be suppressed.
It is still more evident that, if God has attached to the Church prerogatives
or rights, neither these rights nor these prerogatives should belong
exclusively either to the chief of the Church or to the ecclesiastics, because
they are not the Church, just as the magistrates are not the sovereign in
either a democratic state or in a monarchy.
Finally, it is quite evident that it is our souls which are under the clergy's
care, solely for spiritual things.
Our soul acts internally; internal acts are thought, volition, inclinations,
acquiescence in certain truths. All these acts are above all coercion, and are
within the ecclesiastical minister's sphere only in so far as he must instruct
and never command.
This soul acts also externally. External actions are under the civil law. Here
coercion may have a place; temporal or corporal pains maintain the law by
punishing those who infringe it.
Obedience to ecclesiastical order must consequently always be free and
voluntary: no other should be possible. Submission, on the other hand, to
civil order may be coerced and compulsory.
For the same reason, ecclesiastical punishments, always spiritual, do not
reach here below any but those who are convinced inwardly of their fault.
Civil pains, on the contrary, accompanied by a physical ill, have their
physical effects, whether or no the guilty recognize their justice.
From this it results obviously that the authority of the clergy is and can be
spiritual only; that it should not have any temporal power; that no coercive
force is proper to its ministry, which would be destroyed by it.
It follows from this further that the sovereign, careful not to suffer any
partition of his authority, must permit no enterprise which puts the members
of society in external and civil dependence on an ecclesiastical body.

Such are the incontestable principles of real canon law, of which the rules
and decisions should be judged at all times by the eternal and immutable
truths which are founded on natural law and the necessary order of society.

EMBLEM
In antiquity everything is symbol or emblem. In Chaldea it starts by putting
a ram, two kids, a bull in the sky, to mark the productions of the earth in the
spring. Fire is the symbol of the Deity in Persia; the celestial dog warns the
Egyptians of the Nile floods; the serpent which hides its tail in its head,
becomes the image of eternity. The whole of nature is represented and
disguised.
In India again you find many of those old statues, uncouth and frightful, of
which we have already spoken, representing virtue provided with ten great
arms with which to combat vice, and which our poor missionaries have
taken for the picture of the devil.
Put all these symbols of antiquity before the eyes of a man of the soundest
sense, who has never heard speak of them, he will not understand anything:
it is a language to be learned.
The old theological poets were in the necessity of giving God eyes, hands,
feet; of announcing Him in the form of a man. St. Clement of Alexandria
records some verses of Xenophanes the Colophonian (Stromates liv. v.),
from which one sees that it is not merely from to-day that men have made
God in their own image. Orpheus of Thrace, the first theologian of the
Greeks, long before Homer, expresses himself similarly, according to the
same Clement of Alexandria.
Everything being symbol and emblem, the philosophers, and especially
those who had travelled in India, employed this method; their precepts were
emblems and enigmas.
Do not stir the fire with a sword, that is, do not irritate angry men.
Do not hide the light under the bushel.—Do not hide the truth from men.
Abstain from beans.—Flee frequently public assemblies in which one gave
one's suffrage with black or white beans.

Do not have swallows in your house.—That it may not be filled with
chatterers.
In the tempest worship the echo.—In times of public trouble retire to the
country.
Do not write on the snow.—Do not teach feeble and sluggish minds.
Do not eat either your heart or your brain.—Do not give yourself up to
either grief or to too difficult enterprises, etc.
Such are the maxims of Pythagoras, the sense of which is not hard to
understand.
The most beautiful of all the emblems is that of God, whom Timæus of
Locres represents by this idea: A circle the centre of which is everywhere
and the circumference nowhere. Plato adopted this emblem; Pascal had
inserted it among the material which he intended using, and which has been
called his "Thoughts."
In metaphysics, in moral philosophy, the ancients have said everything. We
coincide with them, or we repeat them. All modern books of this kind are
only repetitions.
It is above all among the Indians, the Egyptians, the Syrians, that these
emblems, which to us appear most strange, were consecrated. It is there that
the two organs of generation, the two symbols of life, were carried in
procession with the greatest respect. We laugh at it, we dare treat these
peoples as barbarous idiots, because they innocently thanked God for
having given them existence. What would they have said if they had seen us
enter our temples with the instrument of destruction at our side?
At Thebes the sins of the people were represented by a goat. On the coast of
Phœnicia a naked woman, with a fish's tail, was the emblem of nature.
One must not be astonished, therefore, if this use of symbols reached the
Hebrews when they had formed a body of people near the Syrian desert.
One of the most beautiful emblems of the Judaic books is this passage of
Ecclesiastes: "... when the grinders cease because they are few, and those
that look out of the windows be darkened, when the almond-tree shall

flourish and the grasshopper shall be a burden: or ever the silver cord be
loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the
fountain...."
That signifies that the old men lose their teeth, that their sight is dim, that
their hair whitens like the flower of the almond-tree, that their feet swell
like the grasshopper, that they are no more fit for engendering children, and
that then they must prepare for the great journey.
The "Song of Songs" is (as one knows) a continual emblem of the marriage
of Jesus Christ with the Church. It is an emblem from beginning to end.
Especially does the ingenious Dom Calmet demonstrate that the palm-tree
to which the well-beloved goes is the cross to which our Lord Jesus Christ
was condemned. But it must be avowed that a pure and healthy moral
philosophy is still preferable to these allegories.
One sees in this people's books a crowd of typical emblems which revolt us
to-day and which exercise our incredulity and our mockery, but which
appeared ordinary and simple to the Asiatic peoples.
In Ezekiel are images which appear to us as licentious and revolting: in
those times they were merely natural. There are thirty examples in the
"Song of Songs," model of the most chaste union. Remark carefully that
these expressions, these images are always quite serious, and that in no
book of this distant antiquity will you find the least mockery on the great
subject of generation. When lust is condemned it is in definite terms; but
never to excite to passion, nor to make the smallest pleasantry. This far-
distant antiquity did not have its Martial, its Catullus, or its Petronius.
It results from all the Jewish prophets and from all the Jewish books, as
from all the books which instruct us in the usages of the Chaldeans, the
Persians, the Phœnicians, the Syrians, the Indians, the Egyptians; it results,
I say, that their customs were not ours, that this ancient world in no way
resembled our world. Go from Gibraltar to Mequinez merely, the manners
are no longer the same; no longer does one find the same ideas; two leagues
of sea have changed everything.

ON THE ENGLISH THEATRE
I have cast my eyes on an edition of Shakespeare issued by Master Samuel
Johnson. I saw there that foreigners who are astonished that in the plays of
the great Shakespeare a Roman senator plays the buffoon, and that a king
appears on the stage drunk, are treated as little-minded. I do not desire to
suspect Master Johnson of being a sorry jester, and of being too fond of
wine; but I find it somewhat extraordinary that he counts buffoonery and
drunkenness among the beauties of the tragic stage: and no less singular is
the reason he gives, that the poet disdains accidental distinctions of
circumstance and country, like a painter who, content with having painted
the figure, neglects the drapery. The comparison would be more just if he
were speaking of a painter who in a noble subject should introduce
ridiculous grotesques, should paint Alexander the Great mounted on an ass
in the battle of Arbela, and Darius' wife drinking at an inn with rapscallions.
But there is one thing more extraordinary than all, that is that Shakespeare
is a genius. The Italians, the French, the men of letters of all other countries,
who have not spent some time in England, take him only for a clown, for a
joker far inferior to Harlequin, for the most contemptible buffoon who has
ever amused the populace. Nevertheless, it is in this same man that one
finds pieces which exalt the imagination and which stir the heart to its
depths. It is Truth, it is Nature herself who speaks her own language with no
admixture of artifice. It is of the sublime, and the author has in no wise
sought it.
What can one conclude from this contrast of grandeur and sordidness, of
sublime reason and uncouth folly, in short from all the contrasts that we see
in Shakespeare? That he would have been a perfect poet had he lived in the
time of Addison.
The famous Addison, who flourished under Queen Anne, is perhaps of all
English writers the one who best knew how to guide genius with taste. He
had a correct style, an imagination discreet in expression, elegance, strength
and simplicity in his verse and in his prose. A friend of propriety and

orderliness, he wanted tragedy to be written with dignity, and it is thus that
his "Cato" is composed.
From the very first act the verses are worthy of Virgil, and the sentiments
worthy of Cato. There is no theatre in Europe where the scene of Juba and
Syphax was not applauded as a masterpiece of skill, of well-developed
characters, of fine contrasts, and of pure and noble diction. Literary Europe,
which knows the translations of this piece, applauded even to the
philosophic traits with which the rôle of Cato is filled.
The piece had the great success which its beauty of detail merited, and
which was assured to it by the troubles in England to which this tragedy
was in more than one place a striking allusion. But the appositeness of these
allusions having passed, the verse being only beautiful, the maxims being
only noble and just, and the piece being cold, people no longer felt anything
more than the coldness. Nothing is more beautiful than Virgil's second
canto; recite it on the stage, it will bore: on the stage one must have passion,
live dialogue, action. People soon returned to Shakespeare's uncouth but
captivating aberrations.

ENVY
One knows well enough what antiquity has said of this shameful passion,
and what the moderns have repeated. Hesiod is the first classic author who
speaks of it.
"The potter is envious of the potter, the artisan of the artisan, the poor man
even of the poor man, the musician of the musician (or if one would give
another sense to the word Aoidos) the poet of the poet."
Long before Hesiod, Job had said: "Envy slayeth the silly one" (Job. chap.
v. verse 2).
I think that Mandeville, author of the "Fable of the Bees," was the first to
try to prove that envy is a very good thing, a very useful passion. His first
reason is that envy is as natural to man as hunger and thirst; that it can be
found in children, as well as in horses and dogs. Do you want your children
to hate each other, kiss one more than the other; the secret is infallible.
He maintains that the first thing that two young women meeting each other
do is to cast about for what is ridiculous in each other, and the second to
flatter each other.
He believes that without envy the arts would be indifferently cultivated, and
that Raphael would not have been a great painter if he had not been jealous
of Michael Angelo.
Mandeville has taken emulation for envy, maybe; maybe, also, emulation is
only envy kept within the bounds of decency.
Michael Angelo might say to Raphael: "Your envy has only led you to work
still better than me; you have not decried me, you have not intrigued against
me with the Pope, you have not tried to have me excommunicated for
having put cripples and one-eyed men in paradise, and succulent cardinals
with beautiful women naked as your hand in hell, in my picture of the last
judgment. Your envy is very praiseworthy; you are a fine envious fellow; let
us be good friends."

But if the envious man is a wretch without talent, jealous of merit as
beggars are of the rich; if, pressed by the indigence as by the turpitude of
his character he writes you some "News from Parnassus," some "Letters of
Madame la Comtesse," some "Années Littéraires," this animal displays an
envy that is good for nothing, and for which Mandeville could never make
an apology.
One asks why the ancients thought that the eye of the envious man
bewitched those who looked at it. It is the envious, rather, who are
bewitched.
Descartes says: "That envy impels the yellow bile which comes from the
lower part of the liver, and the black bile which comes from the spleen,
which is diffused from the heart through the arteries, etc." But as no kind of
bile is formed in the spleen, Descartes, by speaking thus, does not seem to
merit too much that his natural philosophy should be envied.
A certain Voët or Voëtius, a theological scamp, who accused Descartes of
atheism, was very ill with the black bile; but he knew still less than
Descartes how his detestable bile was diffused in his blood.
Madame Pernelle is right: "The envious will die, but envy never." (Tartufe,
Act v, Scene iii.)
But it is good proverb which says that "it is better to be envious than to
have pity." Let us be envious, therefore, as hard as we can.

EQUALITY
SECTION I

It is clear that men, enjoying the faculties connected with their nature, are
equal; they are equal when they perform animal functions, and when they
exercise their understanding. The King of China, the Great Mogul, the
Padisha of Turkey, cannot say to the least of men: "I forbid you to digest, to
go to the privy and to think." All the animals of each species are equal
among themselves. Animals by nature have over us the advantage of
independence. If a bull which is wooing a heifer is driven away with the
blows of the horns by a stronger bull, it goes in search of another mistress
in another field, and lives free. A cock, beaten by a cock, consoles itself in
another poultry-house. It is not so with us. A little vizier exiles a bostangi to
Lemnos: the vizier Azem exiles the little vizier to Tenedos: the padisha
exiles the little vizier Azem to Rhodes: the Janissaries put the padisha in
prison, and elect another who will exile good Mussulmans as he chooses;
people will still be very obliged to him if he limits his sacred authority to
this little exercise.
If this world were what it seems it should be, if man could find everywhere
in it an easy subsistence, and a climate suitable to his nature, it is clear that
it would be impossible for one man to enslave another. If this globe were
covered with wholesome fruits; if the air, which should contribute to our
life, gave us no diseases and a premature death; if man had no need of
lodging and bed other than those of the buck and the deer; then the Gengis-
kans and the Tamerlans would have no servants other than their children,
who would be folk honourable enough to help them in their old age.
In the natural state enjoyed by all untamed quadrupeds, birds and reptiles,
man would be as happy as they; domination would then be a chimera, an
absurdity of which no one would think; for why seek servants when you
have no need of their service?

If it came into the head of some individual of tyrannous mind and brawny
arm to enslave a neighbour less strong than he, the thing would be
impossible; the oppressed would be on the Danube before the oppressor had
taken his measures on the Volga.
All men would then be necessarily equal, if they were without needs; the
poverty connected with our species subordinates one man to another; it is
not the inequality which is the real misfortune, it is the dependence. It
matters very little that So-and-so calls himself "His Highness," and So-and-
so "His Holiness"; but to serve the one or the other is hard.
A big family has cultivated fruitful soil; two little families near by have
thankless and rebellious fields; the two poor families have to serve the
opulent family, or slaughter it: there is no difficulty in that. One of the two
indigent families offers its arms to the rich family in order to have bread;
the other goes to attack it and is beaten. The serving family is the origin of
the servants and the workmen; the beaten family is the origin of the slaves.
In our unhappy world it is impossible for men living in society not to be
divided into two classes, the one the rich that commands, the other the poor
that serves; and these two are subdivided into a thousand, and these
thousand still have different gradations.
When the prizes are drawn you come to us: "I am a man like you," you say.
"I have two hands and two feet, as much pride as you, nay more, a mind as
disordered, at least, as inconsequent, as contradictory as yours. I am a
citizen of San Marino, or of Ragusa, or Vaugirard: give me my share of the
land. In our known hemisphere there are about fifty thousand million
arpents to cultivate, some passable, some sterile. We are only about a
thousand million featherless bipeds in this continent; that makes fifty
arpents apiece: be just; give me my fifty arpents."
"Go and take them in the land of the Cafres," we answer, "or the Hottentots,
or the Samoyedes; come to an amicable arrangement with them; here all the
shares are taken. If among us you want to eat, be clothed, lodged, warmed,
work for us as your father did; serve us or amuse us, and you will be paid;
otherwise you will be obliged to ask charity, which would be too degrading
to your sublime nature, and would stop your being really the equal of kings,

and even of country parsons, according to the pretensions of your noble
pride."

SECTION II

All the poor are not unhappy. The majority were born in that state, and
continual work stops their feeling their position too keenly; but when they
feel it, then one sees wars, like that of the popular party against the senate
party in Rome, like those of the peasants in Germany, England and France.
All these wars finish sooner or later with the subjection of the people,
because the powerful have money, and money is master of everything in a
state: I say in a state; for it is not the same between nations. The nation
which makes the best use of the sword will always subjugate the nation
which has more gold and less courage.
All men are born with a sufficiently violent liking for domination, wealth
and pleasure, and with much taste for idleness; consequently, all men want
their money and the wives or daughters of others, to be their master, to
subject them to all their caprices, and to do nothing, or at least to do only
very agreeable things. You see clearly that with these fine inclinations it is
as impossible for men to be equal as it is impossible for two predicants or
two professors of theology not to be jealous of each other.
The human race, such as it is, cannot subsist unless there is an infinity of
useful men who possess nothing at all; for it is certain that a man who is
well off will not leave his own land to come to till yours; and if you have
need of a pair of shoes, it is not the Secretary to the Privy Council who will
make them for you. Equality, therefore, is at once the most natural thing and
the most fantastic.
As men go to excess in everything when they can, this inequality has been
exaggerated. It has been maintained in many countries that it was not
permissible for a citizen to leave the country where chance has caused him
to be born; the sense of this law is visibly: "This land is so bad and so badly
governed, that we forbid any individual to leave it, for fear that everyone
will leave it." Do better: make all your subjects want to live in your country,
and foreigners to come to it.

All men have the right in the bottom of their hearts to think themselves
entirely equal to other men: it does not follow from that that the cardinal's
cook should order his master to prepare him his dinner; but the cook can
say: "I am a man like my master; like him I was born crying; like me he
will die with the same pangs and the same ceremonies. Both of us perform
the same animal functions. If the Turks take possession of Rome, and if
then I am cardinal and my master cook, I shall take him into my service."
This discourse is reasonable and just; but while waiting for the Great Turk
to take possession of Rome, the cook must do his duty, or else all human
society is perverted.
As regards a man who is neither a cardinal's cook, nor endowed with any
other employment in the state; as regards a private person who is connected
with nothing, but who is vexed at being received everywhere with an air of
being patronized or scorned, who sees quite clearly that many monsignors
have no more knowledge, wit or virtue than he, and who at times is bored at
waiting in their antechambers, what should he decide to do? Why, to take
himself off.

EXPIATION
Maybe the most beautiful institution of antiquity is that solemn ceremony
which repressed crimes by warning that they must be punished, and which
calmed the despair of the guilty by making them atone for their
transgressions by penitences. Remorse must necessarily have preceded the
expiations; for the maladies are older than the medicine, and all needs have
existed before relief.
It was, therefore, before all the creeds, a natural religion, which troubled
man's heart when in his ignorance or in his hastiness he had committed an
inhuman action. A friend killed his friend in a quarrel, a brother killed his
brother, a jealous and frantic lover even killed her without whom he could
not live. The head of a nation condemned a virtuous man, a useful citizen.
These are men in despair, if they have sensibility. Their conscience harries
them; nothing is more true; and it is the height of unhappiness. Only two
choices remain, either reparation, or a settling in crime. All sensitive souls
choose the first, monsters choose the second.
As soon as religions were established, there were expiations; the
ceremonies accompanying them were ridiculous: for what connection
between the water of the Ganges and a murder? how could a man repair a
homicide by bathing himself? We have already remarked this excess of
aberration and absurdity, of imagining that he who washes his body washes
his soul, and wipes away the stains of bad actions.
The water of the Nile had later the same virtue as the water of the Ganges:
to these purifications other ceremonies were added: I avow that they were
still more impertinent. The Egyptians took two goats, and drew lots for
which of the two should be thrown below, charged with the sins of the
guilty. The name of "Hazazel," the expiator, was given to this goat. What
connection, I ask you, between a goat and a man's crime?
It is true that since, God permitted this ceremony to be sanctified among the
Jews our fathers, who took so many Egyptian rites; but doubtless it was the
repentance, and not the goat, which purified the Jewish souls.

Jason, having killed Absyrthe his step-brother, comes, it is said, with
Medea, more guilty than he, to have himself absolved by Circe, queen and
priestess of Aea, who ever after passed for a great magician. Circe absolves
them with a sucking-pig and salt cakes. That may make a fairly good dish,
but can barely either pay for Absyrthe's blood or render Jason and Medea
more honourable people, unless they avow a sincere repentance while
eating their sucking-pig.
Orestes' expiation (he had avenged his father by murdering his mother) was
to go to steal a statue from the Tartars of Crimea. The statue must have been
very badly made, and there was nothing to gain on such an effect. Since
then we have done better, we have invented the mysteries; the guilty might
there receive their absolution by undergoing painful ordeals, and by
swearing that they would lead a new life. It is from this oath that the new
members were called among all nations by a name which corresponds to
initiates, qui ineunt vitam novam, who began a new career, who entered into
the path of virtue.
The Christian catechumens were called initiates only when they were
baptised.
It is undoubted that in these mysteries one was washed of one's faults only
by the oath to be virtuous; that is so true that the hierophant in all the Greek
mysteries, in sending away the assembly, pronounced these two Egyptian
words—"Koth, ompheth, watch, be pure"; which is a proof at once that the
mysteries came originally from Egypt, and that they were invented only to
make men better.
The sages in all times did what they could, therefore, to inspire virtue, and
not to reduce human frailty to despair; but also there are crimes so horrible
that no mystery accorded expiation for them. Nero, for all that he was
emperor, could not get himself initiated into the mysteries of Ceres.
Constantine, on the Report of Zosimus, could not obtain pardon for his
crimes: he was stained with the blood of his wife, his son and all his
kindred. It was in the interest of the human race that such great
transgressions should remain without expiation, in order that absolution
should not invite their committal, and that universal horror might
sometimes stop the villains.

The Roman Catholics have expiations which are called "penitences."
By the laws of the barbarians who destroyed the Roman Empire, crimes
were expiated with money. That was called compounding, componat cum
decem, viginti, triginta solidis. It cost two hundred sous of that time to kill a
priest, and four hundred for killing a bishop; so that a bishop was worth
precisely two priests.
Having thus compounded with men, one compounded with God, when
confession was generally established. Finally, Pope John XXII., who made
money out of everything, prepared a tariff of sins.
The absolution of an incest, four turonenses for a layman; ab incestu pro
laico in foro conscientiæ turonenses quatuor. For the man and the woman
who have committed incest, eighteen turonenses four ducats and nine
carlins. That is not just; if one person pays only four turonenses, the two
owed only eight turonenses.
Sodomy and bestiality are put at the same rate, with the inhibitory clause to
title XLIII: that amounts to ninety turonenses twelve ducats and six carlins:
cum inhibitione turonenses 90, ducatos 12, carlinos 6, etc.
It is very difficult to believe that Leo X. was so imprudent as to have this
impost printed in 1514, as is asserted; but it must be considered that no
spark appeared at that time of the conflagration which reformers kindled
later, that the court of Rome slumbered on the people's credulity, and
neglected to cover its exactions with the lightest veil. The public sale of
indulgences, which followed soon after, makes it clear that this court took
no precaution to hide the turpitudes to which so many nations were
accustomed. As soon as complaints against the Church's abuses burst forth,
the court did what it could to suppress the book; but it could not succeed.
If I dare give my opinion of this impost, I think that the various editions are
not reliable; the prices are not at all proportionate: these prices do not agree
with those which are alleged by d'Aubigné, grandfather of Madame de
Maintenon, in the "Confession de Sanci"; he rates virginity at six gros, and
incest with his mother and sister at five gros; this account is ridiculous. I
think that there was in fact a tariff established in the datary's office, for
those who came to Rome to be absolved, or to bargain for dispensations;

but that the enemies of Rome added much to it in order to render it more
odious.
What is quite certain is that these imposts were never authorized by any
council; that it was an enormous abuse invented by avarice, and respected
by those whose interest it was not to abolish it. The buyers and the sellers
were equally satisfied: thus, barely anybody protested, until the troubles of
the reformation. It must be admitted that an exact note of all these imposts
would be of great service to the history of the human mind.

EXTREME
We shall try to extract from this word extreme a notion which may be
useful.
One disputes every day if, in war, luck or leadership produces successes.
If, in disease, nature acts more than medicine for curing or killing.
If, in jurisprudence, it is not very advantageous to come to terms when one
is in the right, and to plead when one is in the wrong.
If literature contributes to the glory of a nation or to its decadence.
If one should or should not make the people superstitious.
If there is anything true in metaphysics, history and moral philosophy.
If taste is arbitrary, and if there is in fact good taste and bad taste, etc., etc.
To decide all these questions right away, take an example of what is the
most extreme in each; compare the two opposed extremes, and you will at
once discover which is true.
You wish to know if leadership can infallibly determine the success of the
war; look at the most extreme case, the most opposed situations, in which
leadership alone will infallibly triumph. The enemy's army is forced to pass
through a deep mountain gorge; your general knows it: he makes a forced
march, he takes possession of the heights, he holds the enemy shut in a
pass; they must either die or surrender. In this extreme case, luck cannot
have any part in the victory. It is therefore demonstrated that skill can
determine the success of a campaign; from that alone is it proved that war is
an art.
Now imagine an advantageous but less decisive position; success is not so
certain, but it is always very probable. You arrive thus, step by step, to a
perfect equality between the two armies. What will decide then? luck, that
is to say an unforeseen event, a general officer killed when he is on his way

to execute an important order, a corps which is shaken by a false rumour, a
panic and a thousand other cases which cannot be remedied by prudence;
but it still remains certain that there is an art, a generalship.
As much must be said of medicine, of this art of operating on the head and
the hand, to restore life to a man who is about to lose it.
The first man who at the right moment bled and purged a sufferer from an
apoplectic fit; the first man who thought of plunging a knife into the bladder
in order to extract a stone, and of closing the wound again; the first man
who knew how to stop gangrene in a part of the body, were without a doubt
almost divine persons, and did not resemble Molière's doctors.
Descend from this obvious example to experiments that are less striking and
more equivocal; you see fevers, ills of all kinds which are cured, without it
being well proved if it be nature or the doctor who has cured them; you see
diseases of which the result cannot be guessed; twenty doctors are deceived;
the one that has the most intelligence, the surest eye, guesses the character
of the malady. There is therefore an art; and the superior man knows the
finenesses of it. Thus did La Peyronie guess that a man of the court had
swallowed a pointed bone which had caused an ulcer, and put him in danger
of death; thus did Boerhaave guess the cause of the malady as unknown as
cruel of a count of Vassenaar. There is therefore really an art of medicine;
but in all arts there are men like Virgil and Mævius.
In jurisprudence, take a clear case, in which the law speaks clearly; a bill of
exchange properly prepared and accepted; the acceptor must be condemned
to pay it in every country. There is therefore a useful jurisprudence,
although in a thousand cases judgments are arbitrary, to the misfortune of
the human race, because the laws are badly made.
Do you desire to know if literature does good to a nation; compare the two
extremes, Cicero and an uncouth ignoramus. See if it is Pliny or Attila who
caused the fall of Rome.
One asks if one should encourage superstition in the people; see above all
what is most extreme in this disastrous matter, St. Bartholomew, the
massacres in Ireland, the crusades; the question is soon answered.

Is there any truth in metaphysics? Seize first of all the points that are most
astonishing and the most true; something exists for all eternity. An eternal
Being exists by Himself; this Being cannot be either wicked or
inconsequent. One must surrender to these truths; almost all the rest is given
over to dispute, and the justest mind unravels the truth while the others are
seeking in the shadows.
It is with all things as with colours; the weakest eyes distinguish black from
white; the better, more practised eyes, discern shades that resemble each
other.

EZOURVEIDAM
What is this "Ezourveidam" which is in the King of France's library? It is an
ancient commentary which an ancient Brahmin composed once upon a
time, before the epoch of Alexander, on the ancient "Veidam," which was
itself much less ancient than the book of the "Shasta."
Let us respect, I tell you, all these ancient Indians. They invented the game
of chess, and the Greeks went among them to learn geometry.
This "Ezourveidam" was lastly translated by a Brahmin, correspondent of
the unfortunate French India Company. It was brought to me on Mount
Krapack, where I have long been observing the snows; and I sent it to the
great Library of Paris, where it is better placed than in my home.
Those who wish to consult it will see that after many revolutions produced
by the Eternal, it pleased the Eternal to form a man who was called Adimo,
and a woman whose name corresponds to that of life.
Is this Indian anecdote taken from the Jewish books? have the Jews copied
it from the Indians? or can one say that both wrote it originally, and that
fine minds meet?
The Jews were not permitted to think that their writers had drawn anything
from the Brahmins, for they had never heard tell of them. We are not
permitted to think about Adam otherwise than the Jews. Consequently I
hold my tongue, and I do not think at all.

FAITH
We have long pondered whether or no we should print this article, which we
found in an old book. Our respect for St. Peter's see restrained us. But some
pious men having convinced us that Pope Alexander VI. had nothing in
common with St. Peter, we at last decided to bring this little piece into the
light, without scruple.
One day Prince Pico della Mirandola met Pope Alexander VI. at the house
of the courtesan Emilia, while Lucretia, the holy father's daughter, was in
child-bed, and one did not know in Rome if the child was the Pope's, or his
son's the Duke of Valentinois, or Lucretia's husband's, Alphonse of Aragon,
who passed for impotent. The conversation was at first very sprightly.
Cardinal Bembo records a part of it.
"Little Pic," said the Pope, "who do you think is my grandson's father?"
"Your son-in-law, I think," answered Pic.
"Eh! how can you believe such folly?"
"I believe it through faith."
"But do you not know quite well that a man who is impotent does not make
children?"
"Faith consists," returned Pic, "in believing things because they are
impossible; and, further, the honour of your house demands that Lucretia's
son shall not pass as the fruit of an incest. You make me believe more
incomprehensible mysteries. Have I not to be convinced that a serpent
spoke, that since then all men have been damned, that Balaam's she-ass also
spoke very eloquently, and that the walls of Jericho fell at the sound of
trumpets?" Pic forthwith ran through a litany of all the admirable things he
believed.
Alexander fell on his sofa by dint of laughing.

"I believe all that like you," he said, "for I know well that only by faith can I
be saved, and that I shall not be saved by my works."
"Ah! Holy Father," said Pic, "you have need of neither works nor faith; that
is good for poor profane people like us; but you who are vice-god can
believe and do all you want to. You have the keys of heaven; and without a
doubt St. Peter will not close the door in your face. But for myself, I avow I
should need potent protection if, being only a poor prince, I had slept with
my daughter, and if I had used the stiletto and the cantarella as often as your
Holiness."
Alexander could take a jest. "Let us talk seriously," he said to Prince della
Mirandola. "Tell me what merit one can have in telling God that one is
persuaded of things of which in fact one cannot be persuaded? What
pleasure can that give God? Between ourselves, saying that one believes
what is impossible to believe is lying."
Pico della Mirandola made a great sign of the cross. "Eh! paternal God," he
cried, "may your Holiness pardon me, you are not a Christian."
"No, by my faith," said the Pope.
"I thought as much," said Pico della Mirandola.

FALSE MINDS
We have blind men, one-eyed men, squint-eyed men, men with long sight,
short sight, clear sight, dim sight, weak sight. All that is a faithful enough
image of our understanding; but we are barely acquainted with false sight.
There are hardly men who always take a cock for a horse, or a chamber-pot
for a house. Why do we often come across minds otherwise just enough,
which are absolutely false on important things? Why does this same
Siamese who will never let himself be cheated when there is question of
counting him three rupees, firmly believe in the metamorphoses of
Sammonocodom? By what strange singularity do sensible men resemble
Don Quixote who thought he saw giants where other men saw only
windmills? Still, Don Quixote was more excusable than the Siamese who
believes that Sammonocodom came several times on earth, and than the
Turk who is persuaded that Mahomet put half the moon in his sleeve; for
Don Quixote, struck with the idea that he must fight giants, can figure to
himself that a giant must have a body as big as a mill; but from what
supposition can a sensible man set off to persuade himself that the half of
the moon has gone into a sleeve, and that a Sammonocodom has come
down from heaven to play at shuttlecock, cut down a forest, and perform
feats of legerdemain?
The greatest geniuses can have false judgment about a principle they have
accepted without examination. Newton had very false judgment when he
commentated the Apocalypse.
All that certain tyrants of the souls desire is that the men they teach shall
have false judgment. A fakir rears a child who gives much promise; he
spends five or six years in driving into his head that the god Fo appeared to
men as a white elephant, and he persuades the child that he will be whipped
after his death for five hundred thousand years if he does not believe these
metamorphoses. He adds that at the end of the world the enemy of the god
Fo will come to fight against this divinity.

The child studies and becomes a prodigy; he argues on his master's lessons;
he finds that Fo has only been able to change himself into a white elephant,
because that is the most beautiful of animals. "The kings of Siam and
Pegu," he says, "have made war for a white elephant; certainly if Fo had not
been hidden in that elephant, these kings would not have been so senseless
as to fight simply for the possession of an animal.
"The enemy of Fo will come to defy him at the end of the world; certainly
this enemy will be a rhinoceros, for the rhinoceros fights the elephant." It is
thus that in mature age the fakir's learned pupil reasons, and he becomes
one of the lights of India; the more subtle his mind, the more false is it, and
he forms later minds as false as his.
One shows all these fanatics a little geometry, and they learn it easily
enough; but strange to relate, their minds are not straightened for that; they
perceive the truths of geometry; but they do not learn to weigh
probabilities; they have got into a habit; they will reason crookedly all their
lives, and I am sorry for them.
There are unfortunately many ways of having a false mind:
1. By not examining if the principle is true, even when one deduces
accurate consequences therefrom; and this way is common.
2. By drawing false consequences from a principle recognized as true. For
example, a servant is asked if his master is in his room, by persons he
suspects of wanting his life: if he were foolish enough to tell them the truth
on the pretext that one must not lie, it is clear he would be drawing an
absurd consequence from a very true principle.
A judge who would condemn a man who has killed his assassin, because
homicide is forbidden, would be as iniquitous as he was poor reasoner.
Similar cases are subdivided in a thousand different gradations. The good
mind, the just mind, is that which distinguishes them; whence comes that
one has seen so many iniquitous judgments, not because the judges' hearts
were bad, but because they were not sufficiently enlightened.

FATHERLAND
A young journeyman pastrycook who had been to college, and who still
knew a few of Cicero's phrases, boasted one day of loving his fatherland.
"What do you mean by your fatherland?" a neighbour asked him. "Is it your
oven? is it the village where you were born and which you have never seen
since? is it the street where dwelled your father and mother who have been
ruined and have reduced you to baking little pies for a living? is it the town-
hall where you will never be police superintendent's clerk? is it the church
of Our Lady where you have not been able to become a choir-boy, while an
absurd man is archbishop and duke with an income of twenty thousand
golden louis?"
The journeyman pastrycook did not know what to answer. A thinker who
was listening to this conversation, concluded that in a fatherland of some
extent there were often many thousand men who had no fatherland.
You, pleasure loving Parisian, who have never made any great journey save
that to Dieppe to eat fresh fish; who know nothing but your varnished town
house, your pretty country house, and your box at that Opera where the rest
of Europe persists in feeling bored; who speak your own language
agreeably enough because you know no other, you love all that, and you
love further the girls you keep, the champagne which comes to you from
Rheims, the dividends which the Hôtel-de-Ville pays you every six months,
and you say you love your fatherland!
In all conscience, does a financier cordially love his fatherland?
The officer and the soldier who will pillage their winter quarters, if one lets
them, have they a very warm love for the peasants they ruin?
Where was the fatherland of the scarred Duc de Guise, was it in Nancy,
Paris, Madrid, Rome?
What fatherland have you, Cardinals de La Balue, Duprat, Lorraine,
Mazarin?

Where was the fatherland of Attila and of a hundred heroes of this type?
I would like someone to tell me which was Abraham's fatherland.
The first man to write that the fatherland is wherever one feels comfortable
was, I believe, Euripides in his "Phaeton." But the first man who left his
birthplace to seek his comfort elsewhere had said it before him.
Where then is the fatherland? Is it not a good field, whose owner, lodged in
a well-kept house, can say: "This field that I till, this house that I have built,
are mine; I live there protected by laws which no tyrant can infringe. When
those who, like me, possess fields and houses, meet in their common
interest, I have my voice in the assembly; I am a part of everything, a part
of the community, a part of the dominion; there is my fatherland."?
Well now, is it better for your fatherland to be a monarchy or a republic?
For four thousand years has this question been debated. Ask the rich for an
answer, they all prefer aristocracy; question the people, they want
democracy: only kings prefer royalty. How then is it that nearly the whole
world is governed by monarchs? Ask the rats who proposed to hang a bell
round the cat's neck. But in truth, the real reason is, as has been said, that
men are very rarely worthy of governing themselves.
It is sad that often in order to be a good patriot one is the enemy of the rest
of mankind. To be a good patriot is to wish that one's city may be enriched
by trade, and be powerful by arms. It is clear that one country cannot gain
without another loses, and that it cannot conquer without making misery.
Such then is the human state that to wish for one's country's greatness is to
wish harm to one's neighbours. He who should wish that his fatherland
might never be greater, smaller, richer, poorer, would be the citizen of the
world.

FINAL CAUSES
If a clock is not made to tell the hour, I will then admit that final causes are
chimeras; and I shall consider it quite right for people to call me "cause-
finalier," that is—an imbecile.
All the pieces of the machine of this world seem, however, made for each
other. A few philosophers affect to mock at the final causes rejected by
Epicurus and Lucretius. It is, it seems to me, at Epicurus and Lucretius
rather that they should mock. They tell you that the eye is not made for
seeing, but that man has availed himself of it for this purpose when he
perceived that eyes could be so used. According to them, the mouth is not
made for speaking, for eating, the stomach for digesting, the heart for
receiving the blood from the veins and for dispatching it through the
arteries, the feet for walking, the ears for hearing. These persons avow
nevertheless that tailors make them coats to clothe them, and masons
houses to lodge them, and they dare deny to nature, to the great Being, to
the universal Intelligence, what they accord to the least of their workmen.
Of course one must not make an abuse of final causes; we have remarked
that in vain Mr. Prieur, in "The Spectacle of Nature," maintains that the
tides are given to the ocean so that vessels may enter port more easily, and
to stop the water of the sea from putrefying. In vain would he say that legs
are made to be booted, and the nose to wear spectacles.
In order that one may be certain of the true end for which a cause functions,
it is essential that that effect shall exist at all times and in all places. There
were not ships at all times and on all the seas; hence one cannot say that the
ocean was made for the ships. One feels how ridiculous it would be to
maintain that nature had worked from all time in order to adjust herself to
the inventions of our arbitrary arts, which appeared so late; but it is quite
evident that if noses were not made for spectacles, they were for smelling,
and that there have been noses ever since there have been men. Similarly,
hands not having been given on behalf of glove-makers, they are visibly

destined for all the purposes which the metacarpal bones and the phalanges
and the circular muscle of the wrist may procure for us.
Cicero, who doubted everything, did not, however, doubt final causes.
It seems especially difficult for the organs of generation not to be destined
to perpetuate the species. This mechanism is very admirable, but the
sensation which nature has joined to this mechanism is still more admirable.
Epicurus had to avow that pleasure is divine; and that this pleasure is a final
cause, by which are ceaselessly produced sentient beings who have not
been able to give themselves sensation.
This Epicurus was a great man for his time; he saw what Descartes denied,
what Gassendi affirmed, what Newton demonstrated, that there is no
movement without space. He conceived the necessity of atoms to serve as
constituent parts of invariable species. Those are exceedingly philosophical
ideas. Nothing was especially more worthy of respect than the moral system
of the true Epicureans; it consisted in the removal to a distance of public
matters incompatible with wisdom, and in friendship, without which life is
a burden. But as regards the rest of Epicurus' physics, they do not appear
any more admissible than Descartes' channelled matter. It is, it seems to me,
to stop one's eyes and understanding to maintain that there is no design in
nature; and if there is design, there is an intelligent cause, there exists a
God.
People present to us as objections the irregularities of the globe, the
volcanoes, the plains of shifting sands, a few small mountains destroyed
and others formed by earthquakes, etc. But from the fact that the naves of
the wheels of your coach have caught fire, does it ensue that your coach
was not made expressly to carry you from one place to another?
The chains of mountains which crown the two hemispheres, and more than
six hundred rivers which flow right to the sea from the feet of these rocks;
all the streams which come down from these same reservoirs, and which
swell the rivers, after fertilizing the country; the thousands of fountains
which start from the same source, and which water animal and vegetable
kind; all these things seem no more the effect of a fortuitous cause and of a
declension of atoms, than the retina which receives the rays of light, the
crystalline lens which refracts them, the incus, the malleus, the stapes, the

tympanic membrane of the ear, which receives the sounds, the paths of the
blood in our veins, the systole and diastole of the heart, this pendulum of
the machine which makes life.

FRAUD
Bambabef the fakir one day met one of the disciples of Confutzee, whom
we call "Confucius," and this disciple was named "Ouang," and Bambabef
maintained that the people had need of being deceived, and Ouang claimed
that one should never deceive anybody; and here is the summary of their
dispute:
BAMBABEF:
We must imitate the Supreme Being who does not show us things as they
are; he makes us see the sun in a diameter of two or three feet, although this
star is a million times bigger than the earth; he makes us see the moon and
the stars set on the same blue background, whereas they are at different
depths. He requires that a square tower shall appear round to us from a
distance; he requires that fire shall seem hot to us, although it is neither hot
nor cold; in fine, he surrounds us with errors suited to our nature.
OUANG:
What you name error is not one at all. The sun, placed as it is at millions of
millions of lis[6] beyond our globe, is not the sun we see. We perceive in
reality, and we can perceive, only the sun which is depicted in our retina at
a determined angle. Our eyes have not been given us for appreciating sizes
and distances, we need other aids and other operations to appreciate them.

Bambabef seemed very astonished at this proposition. Ouang, who was
very patient, explained to him the theory of optics; and Bambabef, who had
a quick understanding, surrendered to the demonstrations of Confutzee's
disciple, then he resumed the argument.
BAMBABEF:

If God does not deceive us through the medium of our senses, as I believed,
avow at least that doctors always deceive children for their good; they tell
them that they are giving them sugar, and in fact they are giving them
rhubarb. I, a fakir, may then deceive the people who are as ignorant as the
children.
OUANG:
I have two sons; I have never deceived them; when they have been ill I have
told them that there was a very bitter medicine, and that they must have the
courage to take it; "it would harm you if it were sweet." I have never
allowed their masters and teachers to make them afraid of spirits, ghosts,
goblins, sorcerers; by this means I have made brave, wise young citizens of
them.
BAMBABEF:
The people are not born so happily as your family.
OUANG:
All men are alike, or nearly so; they are born with the same dispositions.
One must not corrupt men's natures.
BAMBABEF:
We teach them errors, I admit, but it is for their good. We make them
believe that if they do not buy the nails we have blessed, if they do not
expiate their sins by giving us money, they will become, in another life,
post-horses, dogs or lizards. That intimidates them, and they become honest
people.
OUANG:
Do you not see that you are perverting these poor people? There are among
them many more than you think who reason, who laugh at your miracles, at
your superstitions, who see quite well that they will not be changed into
either lizards or post-horses. What is the consequence? They have enough
sense to see that you are telling them impertinences, and they have not
enough to raise themselves toward a religion that is pure and free from
superstition, such as ours. Their passions make them believe that there is no

religion at all, because the only one that is taught them is ridiculous; you
become guilty of all the vices in which they are plunged.
BAMBABEF:
Not at all, for we do not teach them anything but good morality.
OUANG:
You would have yourselves stoned by the people if you taught them impure
morality. Men are so made that they want to do evil, but that they do not
want it preached to them. All that is necessary is that you should not mix a
wise moral system with absurd fables, because you weaken through your
impostures, which you can do without, the morality that you are forced to
teach.
BAMBABEF:
What! you believe that one can teach the people truth without strengthening
it with fables?
OUANG:
I firmly believe it. Our literati are of the same stuff as our tailors, our
weavers and our husbandmen. They worship a God creator, rewarder,
avenger. They do not sully their worship, either by absurd systems, or by
extravagant ceremonies; and there are far less crimes among the literati than
among the people. Why not deign to instruct our workmen as we instruct
our literati?
BAMBABEF:
You would be very foolish; it is as if you wanted them to have the same
courtesy, to be lawyers; that is neither possible nor proper. There must be
white bread for the masters, and brown bread for the servants.
OUANG:
I admit that all men should not have the same learning; but there are some
things necessary to all. It is necessary that all men should be just; and the

surest way of inspiring all men with justice is to inspire in them religion
without superstition.
BAMBABEF:
It is a fine project, but it is impracticable. Do you think that men will be
satisfied to believe in a God who punishes and rewards? You have told me
that it often happens that the most shrewd among the people revolt against
my fables; they will revolt in the same way against truth. They will say:
"Who will assure me that God punishes and rewards? where is the proof of
it? what is your mission? what miracle have you performed that I may
believe you?" They will laugh at you much more than at me.
OUANG:
That is where you are mistaken. You imagine that people will shake off the
yoke of an honest, probable idea that is useful to everyone, of an idea in
accordance with human reason, because people reject things that are
dishonest, absurd, useless, dangerous, that make good sense shudder.
The people are very disposed to believe their magistrates: when their
magistrates propose to them only a reasonable belief, they embrace it
willingly. There is no need of prodigies for believing in a just God, who
reads in man's heart; this idea is too natural, too necessary, to be combated.
It is not necessary to say precisely how God will punish and reward; it
suffices that people believe in His justice. I assure you I have seen entire
towns which have had barely any other dogma, and that it is in those towns
that I have seen most virtue.
BAMBABEF:
Take care; in those towns you will find philosophers who will deny you
both your pains and your recompenses.
OUANG:
You will admit to me that these philosophers will deny your inventions still
more strongly; so you gain nothing from that. Though there are
philosophers who do not agree with my principles, there are honest people
none the less; none the less do they cultivate the virtue of them, which must

be embraced by love, and not by fear. But, further, I maintain that no
philosopher would ever be assured that Providence did not reserve pains for
the wicked and rewards for the good. For if they ask me who told me that
God punishes? I shall ask them who has told them that God does not
punish. In fine, I maintain that these philosophers, far from contradicting
me, will help me. Would you like to be a philosopher?
BAMBABEF:
Willingly; but do not tell the fakirs.
OUANG:
Let us think above all that, if a philosopher wishes to be useful to human
society, he must announce a God.

FOOTNOTES:
[6] A li is 124 paces.

FREE-WILL
Ever since men have reasoned, the philosophers have obscured this matter:
but the theologians have rendered it unintelligible by absurd subtleties
about grace. Locke is perhaps the first man to find a thread in this labyrinth;
for he is the first who, without having the arrogance of trusting in setting
out from a general principle, examined human nature by analysis. For three
thousand years people have disputed whether or no the will is free. In the
"Essay on the Human Understanding," chapter on "Power," Locke shows
first of all that the question is absurd, and that liberty can no more belong to
the will than can colour and movement.
What is the meaning of this phrase "to be free"? it means "to be able," or
assuredly it has no sense. For the will "to be able" is as ridiculous at bottom
as to say that the will is yellow or blue, round or square. To will is to wish,
and to be free is to be able. Let us note step by step the chain of what passes
in us, without obfuscating our minds by any terms of the schools or any
antecedent principle.
It is proposed to you that you mount a horse, you must absolutely make a
choice, for it is quite clear that you either will go or that you will not go.
There is no middle way. It is therefore of absolute necessity that you wish
yes or no. Up to there it is demonstrated that the will is not free. You wish
to mount the horse; why? The reason, an ignoramus will say, is because I
wish it. This answer is idiotic, nothing happens or can happen without a
reason, a cause; there is one therefore for your wish. What is it? the
agreeable idea of going on horseback which presents itself in your brain, the
dominant idea, the determinant idea. But, you will say, can I not resist an
idea which dominates me? No, for what would be the cause of your
resistance? None. By your will you can obey only an idea which will
dominate you more.
Now you receive all your ideas; therefore you receive your wish, you wish
therefore necessarily. The word "liberty" does not therefore belong in any
way to your will.

You ask me how thought and wish are formed in us. I answer you that I
have not the remotest idea. I do not know how ideas are made any more
than how the world was made. All that is given to us is to grope for what
passes in our incomprehensible machine.
The will, therefore, is not a faculty that one can call free. A free will is an
expression absolutely void of sense, and what the scholastics have called
will of indifference, that is to say willing without cause, is a chimera
unworthy of being combated.
Where will be liberty then? in the power to do what one wills. I wish to
leave my study, the door is open, I am free to leave it.
But, say you, if the door is closed, and I wish to stay at home, I stay there
freely. Let us be explicit. You exercise then the power that you have of
staying; you have this power, but you have not that of going out.
The liberty about which so many volumes have been written is, therefore,
reduced to its accurate terms, only the power of acting.
In what sense then must one utter the phrase—"Man is free"? in the same
sense that one utters the words, health, strength, happiness. Man is not
always strong, always healthy, always happy.
A great passion, a great obstacle, deprive him of his liberty, his power of
action.
The word "liberty," "free-will," is therefore an abstract word, a general
word, like beauty, goodness, justice. These terms do not state that all men
are always beautiful, good and just; similarly, they are not always free.
Let us go further: this liberty being only the power of acting, what is this
power? It is the effect of the constitution and present state of our organs.
Leibnitz wishes to resolve a geometrical problem, he has an apoplectic fit,
he certainly has not liberty to resolve his problem. Is a vigorous young man,
madly in love, who holds his willing mistress in his arms, free to tame his
passion? undoubtedly not. He has the power of enjoying, and has not the
power of refraining. Locke was therefore very right to call liberty "power."
When is it that this young man can refrain despite the violence of his

passion? when a stronger idea determines in a contrary sense the activity of
his body and his soul.
But what! the other animals will have the same liberty, then, the same
power? Why not? They have senses, memory, feeling, perceptions, as we
have. They act with spontaneity as we act. They must have also, as we have,
the power of acting by virtue of their perceptions, by virtue of the play of
their organs.
Someone cries: "If it be so, everything is only machine, everything in the
universe is subjected to eternal laws." Well! would you have everything at
the pleasure of a million blind caprices? Either everything is the sequence
of the necessity of the nature of things, or everything is the effect of the
eternal order of an absolute master; in both cases we are only wheels in the
machine of the world.
It is a vain witticism, a commonplace to say that without the pretended
liberty of the will, all pains and rewards are useless. Reason, and you will
come to a quite contrary conclusion.
If a brigand is executed, his accomplice who sees him expire has the liberty
of not being frightened at the punishment; if his will is determined by itself,
he will go from the foot of the scaffold to assassinate on the broad highway;
if his organs, stricken with horror, make him experience an unconquerable
terror, he will stop robbing. His companion's punishment becomes useful to
him and an insurance for society only so long as his will is not free.
Liberty then is only and can be only the power to do what one will. That is
what philosophy teaches us. But if one considers liberty in the theological
sense, it is a matter so sublime that profane eyes dare not raise themselves
to it.[7]

FOOTNOTES:
[7] See "Liberty."

FRENCH
The French language did not begin to have any form until towards the tenth
century; it was born from the ruins of Latin and Celtic, mixed with a few
Germanic words. This language was first of all the romanum rusticum,
rustic Roman, and the Germanic language was the court language up to the
time of Charles the Bald; Germanic remained the sole language of Germany
after the great epoch of the partition of 843. Rustic Roman, the Romance
language, prevailed in Western France; the people of the country of Vaud,
of the Valais, of the Engadine valley, and of a few other cantons, still retain
to-day manifest vestiges of this idiom.
At the end of the tenth century French was formed; people wrote in French
at the beginning of the eleventh; but this French still retained more of
Rustic Roman than the French of to-day. The romance of Philomena,
written in the tenth century in rustic Roman, is not in a tongue very
different from that of the Norman laws. One still remarks Celtic, Latin and
German derivations. The words signifying the parts of the human body, or
things of daily use, and which have nothing in common with Latin or
German, are in old Gaulish or Celtic, such as tête, jambe, sabre, pointe,
aller, parler, écouter, regarder, aboyer, crier, coutume, ensemble, and
many others of this kind. Most of the terms of war were Frank or German:
Marche, halte, maréchal, bivouac, reitre, lansquenet. All the rest is Latin;
and all the Latin words were abridged, according to the custom and genius
of the nations of the north; thus from palatium, palais; from lupus, loup;
from Auguste, août; from Junius, juin; from unctus, oint; from purpura,
pourpre; from pretium, prix, etc. Hardly were there left any vestiges of the
Greek tongue, which had been so long spoken at Marseilles.
In the twelfth century there began to be introduced into the language some
of the terms of Aristotle's philosophy; and towards the sixteenth century one
expressed by Greek terms all the parts of the human body, their diseases,
their remedies; whence the words cardiaque, céphalique, podagre,
apoplectique, asthmatique, iliaque, empyème, and so many others. Although
the language then enriched itself from the Greek, and although since

Charles VIII. it had drawn much aid from Italian already perfected, the
French language had not yet taken regular consistence. François Ier
abolished the ancient custom of pleading, judging, contracting in Latin;
custom which bore witness to the barbarism of a language which one did
not dare use in public documents, a pernicious custom for citizens whose lot
was regulated in a language they did not understand. One was obliged then
to cultivate French; but the language was neither noble nor regular. The
syntax was left to caprice. The genius for conversation being turned to
pleasantries, the language became very fertile in burlesque and naïve
expressions, and very sterile in noble and harmonious terms: from this it
comes that in rhyming dictionaries one finds twenty terms suitable for
comic poetry, for one for more exalted use; and it is, further, a reason why
Marot never succeeded in a serious style, and why Amyot could render
Plutarch's elegance only with naïveté.
French acquired vigour beneath the pen of Montaigne; but it still had
neither nobility nor harmony. Ronsard spoiled the language by bringing into
French poetry the Greek compounds which the doctors and philosophers
used. Malherbe repaired Ronsard's mischief somewhat. The language
became more noble and more harmonious with the establishment of the
Académie Française, and acquired finally, in the reign of Louis XIV., the
perfection whereby it might be carried into all forms of composition.
The genius of this language is order and clarity; for each language has its
genius, and this genius consists in the facility which the language gives for
expressing oneself more or less happily, for using or rejecting the familiar
twists of other languages. French having no declensions, and being always
subject to the article, cannot adopt Greek and Latin inversions; it obliges
words to arrange themselves in the natural order of ideas. Only in one way
can one say "Plancus a pris soin des affaires de César." That is the only
arrangement one can give to these words. Express this phrase in Latin—Res
Cæsaris Plancus diligenter curavit: one can arrange these words in a
hundred and twenty ways, without injuring the sense and without troubling
the language. The auxiliary verbs which eke out and enervate the phrases in
modern languages, still render the French tongue little suited to the concise
lapidary style. The auxiliary verbs, its pronouns, its articles, its lack of
declinable participles, and finally its uniform gait, are injurious to the great
enthusiasm of poetry, in which it has less resources than Italian and English;

but this constraint and this bondage render it more suitable for tragedy and
comedy than any language in Europe. The natural order in which one is
obliged to express one's thoughts and construct one's phrases, diffuses in
this language a sweetness and easiness that is pleasing to all peoples; and
the genius of the nation mingling with the genius of the language has
produced more agreeably written books than can be seen among any other
people.
The pleasure and liberty of society having been long known only in France,
the language has received therefrom a delicacy of expression and a finesse
full of simplicity barely to be found elsewhere. This finesse has sometimes
been exaggerated, but people of taste have always known how to reduce it
within just limits.
Many persons have thought that the French language has become
impoverished since the time of Amyot and Montaigne: one does indeed find
in many authors expressions which are no longer admissible; but they are
for the most part familiar expressions for which equivalents have been
substituted. The language has been enriched with a quantity of noble and
energetic expressions; and without speaking here of the eloquence of things,
it has acquired the eloquence of words. It is in the reign of Louis XIV., as
has been said, that this eloquence had its greatest splendour, and that the
language was fixed. Whatever changes time and caprice prepare for it, the
good authors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries will always serve
as models.

FRIENDSHIP
Friendship is the marriage of the soul; and this marriage is subject to
divorce. It is a tacit contract between two sensitive and virtuous persons. I
say "sensitive," because a monk, a recluse can be not wicked and live
without knowing what friendship is. I say "virtuous," because the wicked
have only accomplices; voluptuaries have companions in debauch, self-
seekers have partners, politicians get partisans; the generality of idle men
have attachments; princes have courtiers; virtuous men alone have friends.
Cethegus was the accomplice of Catilina, and Maecenas the courtier of
Octavius; but Cicero was the friend of Atticus.

GOD
During the reign of Arcadius, Logomacos, lecturer in theology of
Constantinople, went to Scythia and halted at the foot of the Caucasus, in
the fertile plains of Zephirim, on the frontier of Colchis. That good old man
Dondindac was in his great lower hall, between his sheepfold and his vast
barn; he was kneeling with his wife, his five sons and five daughters, his
kindred and his servants, and after a light meal they were all singing God's
praises. "What do you there, idolator?" said Logomacos to him.
"I am not an idolator," answered Dondindac.
"You must be an idolator," said Logomacos, "seeing that you are not Greek.
Tell me, what was that you were singing in your barbarous Scythian
jargon?"
"All tongues are equal in the ears of God," answered the Scythian. "We
were singing His praises."
"That's very extraordinary," returned the theologian. "A Scythian family
who pray God without having been taught by us!" He soon engaged
Dondindac the Scythian in conversation, for he knew a little Scythian, and
the other a little Greek. The following conversation was found in a
manuscript preserved in the library of Constantinople.

LOGOMACOS:
Let us see if you know your catechism. Why do you pray God?
DONDINDAC:
Because it is right to worship the Supreme Being from whom we hold
everything.
LOGOMACOS:

Not bad for a barbarian! And what do you ask of Him?
DONDINDAC:
I thank Him for the benefits I enjoy, and even for the ills with which He
tries me; but I take good care not to ask Him for anything; He knows better
than us what we need, and besides, I am afraid to ask Him for good weather
when my neighbour is asking for rain.
LOGOMACOS:
Ah! I thought he was going to say something silly. Let us start again farther
back. Barbarian, who has told you there is a God?
DONDINDAC:
The whole of nature.
LOGOMACOS:
That does not suffice. What idea have you of God?
DONDINDAC:
The idea of my creator, of my master, who will reward me if I do good, and
who will punish me if I do ill.
LOGOMACOS:
Trash, nonsense all that! Let us come to essentials. Is God infinite
secundum quid, or in essence?
DONDINDAC:
I don't understand you.
LOGOMACOS:
Brutish fool! Is God in one place, beyond all places, or in all places?
DONDINDAC:
I have no idea ... just as you please.

LOGOMACOS:
Dolt! Is it possible for what has been not to have been, and can a stick not
have two ends? Does He see the future as future or as present? how does He
draw the being out of non-existence, and how annihilate the being?
DONDINDAC:
I have never examined these things.
LOGOMACOS:
What a blockhead! Come, one must humble oneself, see things in
proportion. Tell me, my friend, do you think that matter can be eternal?
DONDINDAC:
What does it matter to me whether it exists from all eternity or not? I do not
exist from all eternity. God is always my master; He has given me the
notion of justice, I must follow it; I do not want to be a philosopher, I want
to be a man.
LOGOMACOS:
These blockheads are troublesome. Let us go step by step. What is God?
DONDINDAC:
My sovereign, my judge, my father.
LOGOMACOS:
That's not what I'm asking you. What is His nature?
DONDINDAC:
To be potent and good.
LOGOMACOS:
But, is He corporeal or spiritual?
DONDINDAC:

How should I know?
LOGOMACOS:
What! you don't know what a spirit is?
DONDINDAC:
Not in the least: of what use would it be to me? should I be more just?
should I be a better husband, a better father, a better master, a better citizen?
LOGOMACOS:
It is absolutely essential you should learn what a spirit is. It is, it is, it is ... I
will tell you another time.
DONDINDAC:
I'm very much afraid that you may tell me less what it is than what it is not.
Allow me to put a question to you in my turn. I once saw one of your
temples; why do you depict God with a long beard?
LOGOMACOS:
That's a very difficult question which needs preliminary instruction.
DONDINDAC:
Before receiving your instruction, I must tell you what happened to me one
day. I had just built a closet at the end of my garden; I heard a mole arguing
with a cockchafer. "That's a very fine building," said the mole. "It must
have been a very powerful mole who did that piece of work."
"You're joking," said the cockchafer. "It was a cockchafer bubbling over
with genius who is the architect of this building." From that time I resolved
never to argue.

HELVETIA
Happy Helvetia! to what charter do you owe your liberty? to your courage,
to your resolution, to your mountains.
"But I am your emperor."
"But I do not want you any longer."
"But your fathers were my father's slaves."
"It is for that very reason that their children do not wish to serve you."
"But I had the right belonging to my rank."
"And we have the right of nature."
Why is liberty so rare?
Because it is the chiefest good.

HISTORY
Definition

History is the recital of facts given as true, in contradistinction to the fable,
which is the recital of facts given as false.
There is the history of opinions which is hardly anything but a collection of
human errors.
The history of the arts can be the most useful of all when it joins to the
knowledge of the invention and the progress of the arts the description of
their mechanism.
Natural history, improperly called history, is an essential part of natural
philosophy. The history of events has been divided into sacred history and
profane history; sacred history is a series of divine and miraculous
operations whereby it pleased God once on a time to lead the Jewish nation,
and to-day to exercise our faith.

First Foundations of History

The first foundations of all history are the recitals of the fathers to the
children, transmitted afterward from one generation to another; at their
origin they are at the very most probable, when they do not shock common
sense, and they lose one degree of probability in each generation. With time
the fable grows and the truth grows less; from this it comes that all the
origins of peoples are absurd. Thus the Egyptians had been governed by the
gods for many centuries; then they had been governed by demi-gods; finally
they had had kings for eleven thousand three hundred and forty years; and
in that space of time the sun had changed four times from east to west.
The Phœnicians of Alexander's time claimed to have been established in
their country for thirty thousand years; and these thirty thousand years were
filled with as many prodigies as the Egyptian chronology. I avow that

physically it is very possible that Phœnicia has existed not merely thirty
thousand years, but thirty thousand milliards of centuries, and that it
experienced like the rest of the world thirty million revolutions. But we
have no knowledge of it.
One knows what a ridiculously marvellous state of affairs ruled in the
ancient history of the Greeks.
The Romans, for all that they were serious, did not any the less envelop the
history of their early centuries in fables. This nation, so recent compared
with the Asiatic peoples, was five hundred years without historians. It is not
surprising, therefore, that Romulus was the son of Mars, that a she-wolf was
his foster mother, that he marched with a thousand men of his village of
Rome against twenty-five thousand combatants of the village of the
Sabines: that later he became a god; that Tarquin, the ancient, cut a stone
with a razor, and that a vestal drew a ship to land with her girdle, etc.
The early annals of all our modern nations are no less fabulous; the
prodigious and improbable things must sometimes be reported, but as
proofs of human credulity: they enter the history of opinions and
foolishnesses; but the field is too vast.

Of Records

In order to know with a little certainty something of ancient history, there is
only one means, it is to see if any incontestable records remain. We have
only three in writing: the first is the collection of astronomical observations
made for nineteen hundred consecutive years at Babylon, sent by Alexander
to Greece. This series of observations, which goes back to two thousand
two hundred and thirty-four years before our era, proves invincibly that the
Babylonians existed as a body of people several centuries before; for the
arts are only the work of time, and men's natural laziness leaves them for
some thousands of years without other knowledge and without other talents
than those of feeding themselves, of defending themselves against the
injuries of the air, and of slaughtering each other. Let us judge by the
Germans and by the English in Cæsar's time, by the Tartars to-day, by the
two-thirds of Africa, and by all the peoples we have found in America,
excepting in some respects the kingdoms of Peru and of Mexico, and the

republic of Tlascala. Let us remember that in the whole of this new world
nobody knew how to read or write.
The second record is the central eclipse of the sun, calculated in China two
thousand one hundred and fifty-five years before our era, and recognized
true by our astronomers. Of the Chinese the same thing must be said as of
the peoples of Babylon; they already comprised a vast civilized empire
without a doubt. But what puts the Chinese above all the peoples of the
earth is that neither their laws, nor their customs, nor the language spoken
among them by their lettered mandarins has changed for about four
thousand years. Nevertheless, this nation and the nation of India, the most
ancient of all those that exist to-day, which possess the vastest and the most
beautiful country, which invented almost all the arts before we had learned
any of them, have always been omitted right to our days in all so-called
universal histories. And when a Spaniard and a Frenchman took a census of
the nations, neither one nor the other failed to call his country the first
monarchy in the world, and his king the greatest king in the world,
flattering himself that his king would give him a pension as soon as he had
read his book.
The third record, very inferior to the two others, exists in the Arundel
marbles: the chronicle of Athens is graved there two hundred and sixty-
three years before our era; but it goes back only to Cecrops, thirteen
hundred and nineteen years beyond the time when it was engraved. In the
history of antiquity those are the sole incontestable epochs that we have.
Let us give serious attention to these marbles brought back from Greece by
Lord Arundel. Their chronicle begins fifteen hundred and eighty-two years
before our era. That is to-day (1771) an antiquity of 3,353 years, and you do
not see there a single fact touching on the miraculous, on the prodigious. It
is the same with the Olympiads; it is not there that one should say Græcia
mendax, lying Greece. The Greeks knew very well how to distinguish
between history and fable, between real facts and the tales of Herodotus:
just as in their serious affairs their orators borrowed nothing from the
speeches of the sophists or from the images of the poets.
The date of the taking of Troy is specified in these marbles; but no mention
is made of Apollo's arrows, or of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, or of the

ridiculous combats of the gods. The date of the inventions of Triptolemy
and Ceres is found there; but Ceres is not called goddess. Mention is made
of a poem on the abduction of Prosperine; it is not said that she is the
daughter of Jupiter and a goddess, and that she is wife of the god of the
infernal regions.
Hercules is initiated into the mysteries of Eleusis; but not a word on his
twelve labours, nor on his passage into Africa in his cup, nor on his divinity,
nor on the big fish by which he was swallowed, and which kept him in its
belly three days and three nights, according to Lycophron.
Among us, on the contrary, a standard is brought from heaven by an angel
to the monks of Saint-Denis; a pigeon brings a bottle of oil to a church in
Rheims; two armies of snakes give themselves over to a pitched battle in
Germany; an archbishop of Mayence is besieged and eaten by rats; and, to
crown everything, great care has been taken to mark the year of these
adventures.
All history is recent. It is not astonishing that we have no ancient profane
history beyond about four thousand years. The revolutions of this globe, the
long and universal ignorance of that art which transmits facts by writing are
the cause of it. This art was common only among a very small number of
civilized nations; and was in very few hands even. Nothing rarer among the
French and the Germans than to know how to write; up to the fourteenth
century of our era nearly all deeds were only attested by witnesses. It was,
in France, only under Charles VII., in 1454, that one started to draft in
writing some of the customs of France. The art of writing was still rarer
among the Spanish, and from that it results that their history is so dry and so
uncertain, up to the time of Ferdinand and Isabella. One sees by that to what
extent the very small number of men who knew how to write could deceive,
and how easy it was to make us believe the most enormous absurdities.
There are nations which have subjugated a part of the world without having
the usage of characters. We know that Gengis-khan conquered a part of Asia
at the beginning of the thirteenth century, but it is not through either him or
the Tartars that we know it. Their history, written by the Chinese and
translated by Father Gaubil, states that these Tartars had not at that time the
art of writing.

This art cannot have been less unknown to the Scythian Oguskan, named
Madies by the Persians and the Greeks, who conquered a part of Europe
and Asia so long before the reign of Cyrus. It is almost certain that at that
time of a hundred nations there were hardly two or three who used
characters. It is possible that in an ancient world destroyed, men knew
writing and the other arts; but in ours they are all very recent.
There remain records of another kind, which serve to establish merely the
remote antiquity of certain peoples, and which precede all the known
epochs, and all the books; these are the prodigies of architecture, like the
pyramids and the palaces of Egypt, which have resisted time. Herodotus,
who lived two thousand two hundred years ago, and who had seen them,
was not able to learn from the Egyptian priests at what time they had been
erected.
It is difficult to give to the most ancient of the pyramids less than four
thousand years of antiquity; but one must consider that these efforts of the
ostentation of the kings could only have been commenced long after the
establishment of the towns. But to build towns in a land inundated every
year, let us always remark that it was first necessary to raise the land of the
towns on piles in this land of mud, and to render them inaccessible to the
flood; it was essential, before taking this necessary course, and before being
in a state to attempt these great works, for the people to have practised
retreating during the rising of the Nile, amid the rocks which form two
chains right and left of this river. It was necessary for these mustered
peoples to have the instruments for tilling, those of architecture, a
knowledge of surveying, with laws and a police. All this necessarily
requires a prodigious space of time. We see by the long details which face
every day the most necessary and the smallest of our undertakings, how
difficult it is to do great things, and it needs not only indefatigable
stubbornness, but several generations animated with this stubbornness.
However, whether it be Menes, Thaut or Cheops, or Rameses who erected
one or two of these prodigious masses, we shall not be the more instructed
of the history of ancient Egypt: the language of this people is lost. We
therefore know nothing but that before the most ancient historians there was
matter for making an ancient history.

IGNORANCE
I am ignorant of how I was formed, and of how I was born. For a quarter of
my life I was absolutely ignorant of the reasons for all that I saw, heard and
felt, and I was nothing but a parrot at whom other parrots chattered.
When I looked round me and within me, I conceived that something exists
for all eternity; since there are beings who exist to-day, I concluded that
there is a being who is necessary and necessarily eternal. Thus, the first step
I took to emerge from my ignorance crossed the boundaries of all the
centuries.
But when I tried to walk in this infinite quarry open before me, I could
neither find a single path, nor discern plainly a single object; and from the
leap I made to contemplate eternity, I fell back again into the abyss of my
ignorance.
I saw what was called "matter," from the star Sirius and the stars of the
Milky Way, as distant from Sirius as Sirius is from us, right to the last atom
that can be perceived with the microscope, and I am ignorant as to what
matter is.
The light which let me see all these beings is unknown to me; I can, with
the help of a prism, dissect this light, and divide it into seven pencils of
rays; but I cannot divide these pencils; I am ignorant of what they are
composed. Light is of the nature of matter, since it has movement and
makes an impression on objects; but it does not tend toward a centre like all
bodies: on the contrary, it escapes invincibly from the centre, whereas all
matter bears towards its centre. Light seems penetrable, and matter is
impenetrable. Is this light matter? is it not matter? with what innumerable
properties can it be endowed? I am ignorant thereof.
Is this substance which is so brilliant, so swift and so unknown, are these
other substances which roll in the immensity of space, eternal as they seem
infinite? I have no idea. Has a necessary being, of sovereign intelligence,
created them out of nothing, or has he arranged them? did he produce this

order in Time or before Time? What even is this Time of which I speak? I
cannot define it. O God! Teach me, for I am enlightened neither by other
men's darkness nor by my own.
What is sensation? How have I received it? what connection is there
between the air which strikes my ear and the sensation of sound? between
this body and the sensation of colour? I am profoundly ignorant thereof, and
I shall always be ignorant thereof.
What is thought? where does it dwell? how is it formed? who gives me
thought during my sleep? is it by virtue of my will that I think? But always
during my sleep, and often while I am awake, I have ideas in spite of
myself. These ideas, long forgotten, long relegated to the back shop of my
brain, issue from it without my interfering, and present themselves to my
memory, which makes vain efforts to recall them.
External objects have not the power to form ideas in me, for one does not
give oneself what one has not; I am too sensible that it is not I who give
them to me, for they are born without my orders. Who produces them in
me? whence do they come? whither do they go? Fugitive phantoms, what
invisible hand produces you and causes you to disappear?
Why, alone of all animals, has man the mania for dominating his fellow-
men?
Why and how has it been possible that of a hundred thousand million men
more than ninety-nine have been immolated to this mania?
How is reason so precious a gift that we would not lose it for anything in
the world? and how has this reason served only to make us the most
unhappy of all beings?
Whence comes it that loving truth passionately, we are always betrayed to
the most gross impostures?
Why is life still loved by this crowd of Indians deceived and enslaved by
the bonzes, crushed by a Tartar's descendants, overburdened with work,
groaning in want, assailed by disease, exposed to every scourge?
Whence comes evil, and why does evil exist?

O atoms of a day! O my companions in infinite littleness, born like me to
suffer everything and to be ignorant of everything, are there enough
madmen among you to believe that they know all these things? No, there
are not; no, at the bottom of your hearts you feel your nonentity as I render
justice to mine. But you are arrogant enough to want people to embrace
your vain systems; unable to be tyrants over our bodies, you claim to be
tyrants over our souls.

THE IMPIOUS
Who are the impious? those who give a white beard, feet and hands to the
Being of beings, to the great Demiourgos, to the eternal intelligence by
which nature is governed. But they are only excusably impious, poor
impious people against whom one must not grow wroth.
If even they paint the great incomprehensible Being born on a cloud which
can bear nothing; if they are foolish enough to put God in a mist, in the rain,
or on a mountain, and to surround him with little chubby, flushed faces
accompanied by two wings; I laugh and I pardon them with all my heart.
The impious persons who attribute to the Being of beings preposterous
predictions and injustices would anger me if this great Being had not given
me a reason which quells my wrath. The silly fanatic repeats to me, after
others, that it is not for us to judge what is reasonable and just in the great
Being, that His reason is not like our reason, that His justice is not like our
justice. Eh! how, you mad demoniac, do you want me to judge justice and
reason otherwise than by the notions I have of them? do you want me to
walk otherwise than with my feet, and to speak otherwise than with my
mouth?
The impious man who supposes the great Being jealous, arrogant,
malignant, vindictive, is more dangerous. I would not want to sleep under
the same roof as this man.
But how would you treat the impious man who says to you: "See only
through my eyes, do not think; I announce to you a tyrannical God who has
made me to be your tyrant; I am his well-beloved: during all eternity he will
torture millions of his creatures whom he detests in order to gladden me; I
shall be your master in this world, and I shall laugh at your torments in the
other."
Do you not feel an itching to thrash this cruel, impious fellow? If you are
born gentle, will you not run with all your might to the west when this
barbarian utters his atrocious reveries in the east?

JOAN OF ARC
It is meet that the reader should be acquainted with the true history of Joan
of Arc surnamed "the Maid." The details of her adventure are very little
known and may give readers pleasure; here they are.
Paul Jove says that the courage of the French was stimulated by this girl,
and takes good care not to believe her inspired. Neither Robert, Gaguin,
Paul Emile, Polydore Vergile, Genebrard, Philip of Bergamo, Papyre
Masson, nor even Mariana, say that she was sent by God; and even though
Mariana the Jesuit had said it, that would not deceive me.
Mézerai relates "that the prince of the celestial militia appeared to her." I am
sorry for Mézerai, and I ask pardon of the prince of the celestial militia.
Most of our historians, who copy each other, suppose that the Maid uttered
prophecies, and that her prophecies were accomplished. She is made to say
that "she will drive the English out of the kingdom," and they were still
there five years after her death. She is said to have written a long letter to
the King of England, and assuredly she could neither read nor write; such
an education was not given to an inn servant in the Barois; and the
information laid against her states that she could not sign her name.
But, it is said, she found a rusted sword, the blade of which was engraved
with five golden fleurs-de-lis; and this sword was hidden in the church of
Sainte Catherine de Fierbois at Tours. There, certainly is a great miracle!
Poor Joan of Arc having been captured by the English, despite her
prophecies and her miracles, maintained first of all in her cross-examination
that St. Catherine and St. Marguerite had honoured her with many
revelations. I am astonished that she never said anything of her talks with
the prince of the celestial militia. These two saints apparently liked talking
better than St. Michael. Her judges thought her a sorceress, she thought
herself inspired.

One great proof that Charles VII.'s captains made use of the marvellous in
order to encourage the soldiers, in the deplorable state to which France was
reduced, is that Saintrailles had his shepherd, as the Comte de Dunois had
his shepherdess. The shepherd made prophecies on one side, while the
shepherdess made them on the other.
But unfortunately the Comte de Dunois' prophetess was captured at the
siege of Compiègne by a bastard of Vendôme, and Saintrailles' prophet was
captured by Talbot. The gallant Talbot was far from having the shepherd
burned. This Talbot was one of those true Englishmen who scorn
superstition, and who have not the fanaticism for punishing fanatics.
This, it seems to me, is what the historians should have observed, and what
they have neglected.
The Maid was taken to Jean de Luxembourg, Comte de Ligny. She was shut
up in the fortress of Beaulieu, then in that of Beaurevoir, and from there in
that of Crotoy in Picardy.
First of all Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, who was of the King of
England's party against his own legitimate king, claims the Maid as a
sorceress arrested on the limits of his diocese. He wishes to judge her as a
sorceress. He supported the right he claimed by a downright lie. Joan had
been captured on the territory of the bishopric of Noyon: and neither the
Bishop of Beauvais, nor the Bishop of Noyon assuredly had the right of
condemning anybody, and still less of committing to death a subject of the
Duke of Lorraine, and a warrior in the pay of the King of France.
There was at that time (who would believe it?) a vicar-general of the
Inquisition in France, by name Brother Martin.[8] It was one of the most
horrible effects of the total subversion of that unfortunate country. Brother
Martin claimed the prisoner as smelling of heresy (odorantem hæresim). He
called upon the Duke of Burgundy and the Comte de Ligny, "by the right of
his office, and of the authority given to him by the Holy See, to deliver Joan
to the Holy Inquisition."
The Sorbonne hastened to support Brother Martin, and wrote to the Duke of
Burgundy and to Jean de Luxembourg—"You have used your noble power
to apprehend this woman who calls herself the Maid, by means of whom

the honour of God has been immeasurably offended, the faith exceedingly
hurt, and the Church too greatly dishonoured; for by reason of her, idolatry,
errors, bad doctrine, and other inestimable evils have ensued in this
kingdom ... but what this woman has done would be of small account, if did
not ensue what is meet for satisfying the offence perpetrated by her against
our gentle Creator and His faith, and the Holy Church with her other
innumerable misdeeds ... and it would be intolerable offence against the
divine majesty if it happened that this woman were freed."[9]
Finally, the Maid was awarded to Jean Cauchon whom people called the
unworthy bishop, the unworthy Frenchman, and the unworthy man. Jean de
Luxembourg sold the Maid to Cauchon and the English for ten thousand
livres, and the Duke of Bedford paid them. The Sorbonne, the bishop and
Brother Martin, then presented a new petition to this Duke of Bedford,
regent of France, "in honour of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, for that
the said Joan may be briefly put into the hands of the Church." Joan was led
to Rouen. The archbishopric was vacant at that time, and the chapter
permitted the Bishop of Beauvais to work in the town. (Besogner is the term
which was used.) He chose as assessors nine doctors of the Sorbonne with
thirty-five other assistants, abbots or monks. The vicar of the Inquisition,
Martin, presided with Cauchon; and as he was only a vicar, he had but
second place.
Joan underwent fourteen examinations; they are singular. She said that she
saw St. Catherine and St. Marguerite at Poitiers. Doctor Beaupère asks her
how she recognized the saints. She answers that it was by their way of
bowing. Beaupère asks her if they are great chatterboxes. "Go look on the
register," she says. Beaupère asks her if, when she saw St. Michael, he was
naked. She answers: "Do you think our Lord had nothing to clothe him
with?"
The curious will carefully observe here that Joan had long been directed
with other religious women of the populace by a rogue named Richard,[10]
who performed miracles, and who taught these girls to perform them. One
day he gave communion three times in succession to Joan, in honour of the
Trinity. It was then the custom in matters of importance and in times of
great peril. The knights had three masses said, and communicated three

times when they went to seek fortune or to fight in a duel. It is what has
been observed on the part of the Chevalier Bayard.
The workers of miracles, Joan's companions, who were submissive to
Richard, were named Pierrone and Catherine. Pierrone affirmed that she
had seen that God appeared to her in human form as a friend to a friend.
God was "clad in a long white robe, etc."
Up to the present the ridiculous; here now is the horrible.
One of Joan's judges, doctor of theology and priest, by name Nicholas the
Bird-Catcher, comes to confess her in prison. He abuses the sacrament to
the point of hiding behind a piece of serge two priests who transcribed Joan
of Arc's confession. Thus did the judges use sacrilege in order to be
murderers. And an unfortunate idiot, who had had enough courage to render
very great services to the king and the country, was condemned to be
burned by forty-four French priests who immolated her for the English
faction.
It is sufficiently well-known how someone had the cunning and meanness
to put a man's suit beside her to tempt her to wear this suit again, and with
what absurd barbarism this transgression was claimed as a pretext for
condemning her to the flames, as if in a warrior girl it was a crime worthy
of the fire, to put on breeches instead of a skirt. All this wrings the heart,
and makes common sense shudder. One cannot conceive how we dare, after
the countless horrors of which we have been guilty, call any nation by the
name of barbarian.
Most of our historians, lovers of the so-called embellishments of history
rather than of truth, say that Joan went fearlessly to the torture; but as the
chronicles of the times bear witness, and as the historian Villaret admits, she
received her sentence with cries and tears; a weakness pardonable in her
sex, and perhaps in ours, and very compatible with the courage which this
girl had displayed amid the dangers of war; for one can be fearless in battle,
and sensitive on the scaffold.
I must add that many persons have believed without any examination that
the Maid of Orleans was not burned at Rouen at all, although we have the
official report of her execution. They have been deceived by the account we

still have of an adventuress who took the name of the "Maid," deceived
Joan of Arc's brothers, and under cover of this imposture, married in
Lorraine a nobleman of the house of Armoise. There were two other rogues
who also passed themselves off as the "Maid of Orleans." All three claimed
that Joan was not burned at all, and that another woman had been
substituted for her. Such stories can be admitted only by those who want to
be deceived.

FOOTNOTES:
[8] Beuchot says: There was at that time in France an Inquisitor-General, named
Brother Jean or Jacques le Graverend. His vice-inquisitor or vicar, who took part
in Joan's trial, was not called Brother Martin, but Brother Jean Magistri or the
Master.
[9] This is a translation of the Latin of the Sorbonne, made long after.
[10] Beuchot says that Berriat Saint-Prix, in his "Jeanne d'Arc," proves, page
341 et seq., that the imputations against Brother Richard are groundless, and that
he could exercise no influence at the trial.

KISSING
I ask pardon of the boys and the girls; but maybe they will not find here
what they will seek. This article is only for scholars and serious persons for
whom it is barely suitable.
There is but too much question of kissing in the comedies of Molière's time.
Champagne, in the comedy of "La Mère Coquette" by Quinault, asks kisses
of Laurette; she says to him—"You are not content, then; really it is
shameful; I have kissed you twice." Champagne answers her—"What! you
keep account of your kisses?" (Act I. Sc. 1.).
The valets always used to ask kisses of the soubrettes; people kissed each
other on the stage. Usually it was very dull and very intolerable, particularly
in the case of ugly actors, who were nauseating.
If the reader wants kisses, let him look for them in the "Pastor Fido"; there
is one entire chorus where nothing but kisses is mentioned; and the piece is
founded solely on a kiss that Mirtillo gave one day to Amarilli, in a game of
blind man's buff, un bacio molto saporito.
Everyone knows the chapter on kisses, in which Jean de la Casa,
Archbishop of Benevento, says that people can kiss each other from head to
foot. He pities the people with big noses who can only approach each other
with difficulty; and he counsels ladies with long noses to have flat-nosed
lovers.
The kiss was a very ordinary form of salutation throughout ancient times.
Plutarch recalls that the conspirators, before killing Cæsar, kissed his face,
hand and breast. Tacitus says that when Agricola, his father-in-law, returned
from Rome, Domitian received him with a cold kiss, said nothing to him,
and left him confounded in the crowd. The inferior who could not succeed
in greeting his superior by kissing him, put his mouth to his own hand, and
sent him a kiss that the other returned in the same way if he so wished.

This sign was used even for worshipping the gods. Job, in his parable
(Chap. xxxi.), which is perhaps the oldest of known books, says that he has
not worshipped the sun and the moon like the other Arabs, that he has not
carried his hand to his mouth as he looked at the stars.
In our Occident nothing remains of this ancient custom but the puerile and
genteel civility that is still taught to children in some small towns, of
kissing their right hands when someone has given them some sweets.
It was a horrible thing to betray with a kiss; it was that that made Cæsar's
assassination still more hateful. We know all about Judas' kisses; they have
become proverbial.
Joab, one of David's captains, being very jealous of Amasa, another captain,
says to him (2 Sam. xx. 9): "Art thou in health, my brother? And he took
Amasa by the beard with the right hand to kiss him," and with his other
hand drew his sword and "smote him therewith in the fifth rib, and shed out
his bowels on the ground."
No other kiss is to be found in the other fairly frequent assassinations which
were committed among the Jews, unless it be perhaps the kisses which
Judith gave to the captain Holophernes, before cutting off his head while he
was in bed asleep; but no mention is made of them, and the thing is merely
probable.
In one of Shakespeare's tragedies called "Othello," this Othello, who is a
black, gives two kisses to his wife before strangling her. That seems
abominable to honourable people; but Shakespeare's partisans say it is
beautifully natural, particularly in a black.
When Giovanni Galeas Sforza was assassinated in Milan Cathedral, on St.
Stephen's day, the two Medici in the Reparata church; Admiral Coligny, the
Prince of Orange, the Maréchal d'Ancre, the brothers Witt, and so many
others; at least they were not kissed.
There was among the ancients I know not what of symbolic and sacred
attached to the kiss, since one kissed the statues of the gods and their
beards, when the sculptors had shown them with a beard. Initiates kissed
each other at the mysteries of Ceres, as a sign of concord.

The early Christians, men and women, kissed each other on the mouth at
their agapæ. This word signified "love-feast." They gave each other the
holy kiss, the kiss of peace, the kiss of brother and sister, ἄγιον φίλημα.
This custom lasted for more than four centuries, and was abolished at last
on account of its consequences. It was these kisses of peace, these agapæ of
love, these names of "brother" and "sister," that long drew to the little-
known Christians, those imputations of debauchery with which the priests
of Jupiter and the priestesses of Vesta charged them. You see in Petronius,
and in other profane authors, that the libertines called themselves "brother"
and "sister." It was thought that among the Christians the same names
signified the same infamies. They were innocent accomplices in spreading
these accusations over the Roman empire.
There were in the beginning seventeen different Christian societies, just as
there were nine among the Jews, including the two kinds of Samaritans. The
societies which flattered themselves at being the most orthodox accused the
others of the most inconceivable obscenities. The term of "gnostic," which
was at first so honourable, signifying "learned," "enlightened," "pure,"
became a term of horror and scorn, a reproach of heresy. Saint Epiphanius,
in the third century, claimed that they used first to tickle each other, the men
and the women; that then they gave each other very immodest kisses, and
that they judged the degree of their faith by the voluptuousness of these
kisses; that the husband said to his wife, in presenting a young initiate to
her: "Have an agape with my brother," and that they had an agape.

We do not dare repeat here, in the chaste French tongue,[11] what Saint
Epiphanius adds in Greek (Epiphanius, contra hæres, lib. I., vol. ii). We will
say merely that perhaps this saint was somewhat imposed upon; that he
allowed himself to be too carried away by zeal, and that all heretics are not
hideous debauchees.
The sect of Pietists, wishing to imitate the early Christians, to-day give each
other kisses of peace on leaving the assembly, calling each other "my
brother, my sister"; it is what, twenty years ago, a very pretty and very
human Pietist lady avowed to me. The ancient custom was to kiss on the
mouth; the Pietists have carefully preserved it.

There was no other manner of greeting dames in France, Germany, Italy,
England; it was the right of cardinals to kiss queens on the mouth, and in
Spain even. What is singular is that they had not the same prerogative in
France, where ladies always had more liberty than anywhere else, but
"every country has its ceremonies," and there is no usage so general that
chance and custom have not provided exceptions. It would have been an
incivility, an affront, for an honourable woman, when she received a lord's
first visit, not to have kissed him, despite his moustaches. "It is a
displeasing custom," says Montaigne (Book III., chap. v.), "and offensive to
ladies, to have to lend their lips to whoever has three serving-men in his
suite, disagreeable though he be." This custom was, nevertheless, the oldest
in the world.
If it is disagreeable for a young and pretty mouth to stick itself out of
courtesy to an old and ugly mouth, there was a great danger between fresh,
red mouths of twenty to twenty-five years old; and that is what finally
brought about the abolition of the ceremony of kissing in the mysteries and
the agapæ. It is what caused women to be confined among the Orientals, so
that they might kiss only their fathers and their brothers; custom long since
introduced into Spain by the Arabs.
Behold the danger: there is one nerve of the fifth pair which goes from the
mouth to the heart, and thence lower down, with such delicate industry has
nature prepared everything! The little glands of the lips, their spongy tissue,
their velvety paps, the fine skin, ticklish, gives them an exquisite and
voluptuous sensation, which is not without analogy with a still more hidden
and still more sensitive part. Modesty may suffer from a lengthily savoured
kiss between two Pietists of eighteen.
It is to be remarked that the human species, the turtledoves and the pigeons
alone are acquainted with kisses; thence came among the Latins the word
columbatìm, which our language has not been able to render. There is
nothing of which abuse has not been made. The kiss, designed by nature for
the mouth, has often been prostituted to membranes which do not seem
made for this usage. One knows of what the templars were accused.
We cannot honestly treat this interesting subject at greater length, although
Montaigne says: "One should speak thereof shamelessly: brazenly do we

utter 'killing,' 'wounding,' 'betraying,' but of that we dare not speak but with
bated breath."

FOOTNOTES:
[11] Or the English—Translator.

LANGUAGES
There is no complete language, no language which can express all our ideas
and all our sensations; their shades are too numerous, too imperceptible.
Nobody can make known the precise degree of sensation he experiences.
One is obliged, for example, to designate by the general names of "love"
and "hate" a thousand loves and a thousand hates all different from each
other; it is the same with our pleasures and our pains. Thus all languages
are, like us, imperfect.
They have all been made successively and by degrees according to our
needs. It is the instinct common to all men which made the first grammars
without perceiving it. The Lapps, the Negroes, as well as the Greeks,
needed to express the past, the present and the future; and they did it: but as
there has never been an assembly of logicians who formed a language, no
language has been able to attain a perfectly regular plan.
All words, in all possible languages, are necessarily the images of
sensations. Men have never been able to express anything but what they
felt. Thus everything has become metaphor; everywhere the soul is
enlightened, the heart burns, the mind wanders. Among all peoples the
infinite has been the negation of the finite; immensity the negation of
measure. It is evident that our five senses have produced all languages, as
well as all our ideas. The least imperfect are like the laws: those in which
there is the least that is arbitrary are the best. The most complete are
necessarily those of the peoples who have cultivated the arts and society.
Thus the Hebraic language should be one of the poorest languages, like the
people who used to speak it. How should the Hebrews have had maritime
terms, they who before Solomon had not a boat? how the terms of
philosophy, they who were plunged in such profound ignorance up to the
time when they started to learn something in their migration to Babylon?
The language of the Phœnicians, from which the Hebrews drew their
jargon, should be very superior, because it was the idiom of an industrious,
commercial, rich people, distributed all over the earth.

The most ancient known language should be that of the nation most
anciently gathered together as a body of people. It should be, further, that of
the people which has been least subjugated, or which, having been
subjugated, has civilized its conquerors. And in this respect, it is constant
that Chinese and Arabic are the most ancient of all those that are spoken to-
day.
There is no mother-tongue. All neighbouring nations have borrowed from
each other: but one has given the name of "mother-tongue" to those from
which some known idioms are derived. For example, Latin is the mother-
tongue in respect of Italian, Spanish and French: but it was itself derived
from Tuscan; and Tuscan was derived from Celtic and Greek.
The most beautiful of all languages must be that which is at once, the most
complete, the most sonorous, the most varied in its twists and the most
regular in its progress, that which has most compound words, that which by
its prosody best expresses the soul's slow or impetuous movements, that
which most resembles music.
Greek has all these advantages: it has not the roughness of Latin, in which
so many words end in um, ur, us. It has all the pomp of Spanish, and all the
sweetness of Italian. It has above all the living languages of the world the
expression of music, by long and short syllables, and by the number and
variety of its accents. Thus all disfigured as it is to-day in Greece, it can still
be regarded as the most beautiful language in the universe.
The most beautiful language cannot be the most widely distributed, when
the people which speaks it is oppressed, not numerous, without commerce
with other nations, and when these other nations have cultivated their own
languages. Thus Greek should be less diffused than Arabic, and even
Turkish.
Of all European languages French should be the most general, because it is
the most suited to conversation: it has taken its character from that of the
people which speaks it.
The French have been, for nearly a hundred and fifty years, the people
which has best known society, which the first discarded all embarrassment,
and the first among whom women were free and even sovereign, when

elsewhere they were only slaves. The always uniform syntax of this
language, which admits no inversions, is a further facility barely possessed
by other tongues; it is more current coin than others, even though it lacks
weight. The prodigious quantity of agreeably frivolous books which this
nation has produced is a further reason for the favour which its language
has obtained among all nations.
Profound books will not give vogue to a language: they will be translated;
people will learn Newton's philosophy; but they will not learn English in
order to understand it.
What makes French still more common is the perfection to which the drama
has been carried in this tongue. It is to "Cinna," "Phèdre," the
"Misanthrope" that it owes its vogue, and not to the conquests of Louis
XIV.
It is not so copious and so flexible as Italian, or so majestic as Spanish, or
so energetic as English; and yet it has had more success than these three
languages from the sole fact that it is more suited to intercourse, and that
there are more agreeable books in it than elsewhere. It has succeeded like
the cooks of France, because it has more flattered general taste.
The same spirit which has led the nations to imitate the French in their
furniture, in the arrangement of rooms, in gardens, in dancing, in all that
gives charm, has led them also to speak their language. The great art of
good French writers is precisely that of the women of this nation, who dress
better than the other women of Europe, and who, without being more
beautiful, appear to be so by the art with which they adorn themselves, by
the noble and simple charm they give themselves so naturally.
It is by dint of good breeding that this language has managed to make the
traces of its former barbarism disappear. Everything would bear witness to
this barbarism to whosoever should look closely. One would see that the
number vingt comes from viginti, and that formerly this g and this t were
pronounced with a roughness characteristic of all the northern nations; of
the month of Augustus has been made the month of août. Not so long ago a
German prince thinking that in France one never pronounced the term
Auguste otherwise, called King Auguste of Poland King Août. All the letters

which have been suppressed in pronunciation, but retained in writing, are
our former barbarous clothes.
It was when manners were softened that the language also was softened:
before François Ier summoned women to his court, it was as clownish as we
were. It would have been as good to speak old Celtic as the French of the
time of Charles VIII. and Louis XII.: German was not more harsh.
It has taken centuries to remove this rust. The imperfections which remain
would still be intolerable, were it not for the continual care one takes to
avoid them, as a skilful horseman avoids stones in the road. Good writers
are careful to combat the faulty expressions which popular ignorance first
brings into vogue, and which, adopted by bad authors, then pass into the
gazettes and the pamphlets. Roastbeef signifies in English roasted ox, and
our waiters talk to us nowadays of a "roastbeef of mutton." Riding-coat
means a coat for going on horseback; of it people have made redingote, and
the populace thinks it an ancient word of the language. It has been
necessary to adopt this expression with the people because it signifies an
article of common use.
In matters of arts and crafts and necessary things, the common people
subjugated the court, if one dare say so; just as in matters of religion those
who most despise the common run of people are obliged to speak and to
appear to think like them.
To call things by the names which the common people has imposed on them
is not to speak badly; but one recognizes a people naturally more ingenious
than another by the proper names which it gives to each thing.
It is only through lack of imagination that a people adapts the same
expression to a hundred different ideas. It is a ridiculous sterility not to have
known how to express otherwise an arm of the sea, a scale arm, an arm of
a chair; there is poverty of thought in saying equally the head of a nail, the
head of an army.
Ignorance has introduced another custom into all modern languages. A
thousand terms no longer signify what they should signify. Idiot meant
solitary, to-day it means foolish; epiphany signified appearance, to-day it is

the festival of three kings; baptize is to dip in water, we say baptize with the
name of John or James.
To these defects in almost all languages are added barbarous irregularities.
Venus is a charming name, venereal is abominable. Another result of the
irregularity of these languages composed at hazard in uncouth times is the
quantity of compound words of which the simple form does not exist any
more. They are children who have lost their father. We have architects and
no tects; there are things which are ineffable and none which are effable.
One is intrepid, one is not trepid. There are impudent fellows, insolent
fellows, but neither pudent fellows nor solent fellows. All languages more
or less retain some of these defects; they are all irregular lands from which
the hand of the adroit artist knows how to derive advantage.
Other defects which make a nation's character evident always slip into
languages. In France there are fashions in expressions as in ways of doing
the hair. A fashionable invalid or doctor will take it into his head to say that
he has had a soupçon of fever to signify that he has had a slight attack; soon
the whole nation has soupçons of colics, soupçons of hatred, love, ridicule.
Preachers in the pulpit tell you that you must have at least a soupçon of
God's love. After a few months this fashion gives place to another.
What does most harm to the nobility of the language is not this passing
fashion with which people are soon disgusted, not the solecisms of
fashionable people into which good authors do not fall, but the affectation
of mediocre authors in speaking of serious things in a conversational style.
Everything conspires to corrupt a language that is rather widely diffused;
authors who spoil the style by affectation; those who write to foreign
countries, and who almost always mingle foreign expressions with their
natural tongue; merchants who introduce into conversation their business
terms.
All languages being imperfect, it does not follow that one should change
them. One must adhere absolutely to the manner in which the good authors
have spoken them; and when one has a sufficient number of approved
authors, a language is fixed. Thus one can no longer change anything in
Italian, Spanish, English, French, without corrupting them; the reason is

clear: it is that one would soon render unintelligible the books which
provide the instruction and the pleasure of the nations.

LAWS
Sheep live very placidly in community, they are considered very easy-
going, because we do not see the prodigious quantity of animals they
devour. It is even to be believed that they eat them innocently and without
knowing it, like us when we eat a Sassenage cheese. The republic of the
sheep is a faithful representation of the golden age.
A chicken-run is visibly the most perfect monarchic state. There is no king
comparable to a cock. If he marches proudly in the midst of his people, it is
not out of vanity. If the enemy approaches, he does not give orders to his
subjects to go to kill themselves for him by virtue of his certain knowledge
and plenary power; he goes to battle himself, ranges his chickens behind
him and fights to the death. If he is the victor, he himself sings the Te Deum.
In civil life there is no one so gallant, so honest, so disinterested. He has all
the virtues. Has he in his royal beak a grain of corn, a grub, he gives it to
the first lady among his subjects who presents herself. Solomon in his
harem did not come near a poultry-yard cock.
If it be true that the bees are governed by a queen to whom all her subjects
make love, that is a still more perfect government.
The ants are considered to be an excellent democracy. Democracy is above
all the other States, because there everyone is equal, and each individual
works for the good of all.
The republic of the beavers is still superior to that of the ants, at least if we
judge by their masonry work.
The monkeys resemble strolling players rather than a civilized people; and
they do not appear to be gathered together under fixed, fundamental laws,
like the preceding species.
We resemble the monkeys more than any other animal by the gift of
imitation, the frivolity of our ideas, and by our inconstancy which has never
allowed us to have uniform and durable laws.

When nature formed our species and gave us instincts, self-esteem for our
preservation, benevolence for the preservation of others, love which is
common to all the species, and the inexplicable gift of combining more
ideas than all the animals together; when she had thus given us our portion,
she said to us: "Do as you can."
There is no good code in any country. The reason for this is evident; the
laws have been made according to the times, the place and the need, etc.
When the needs have changed, the laws which have remained, have become
ridiculous. Thus the law which forbade the eating of pig and the drinking of
wine was very reasonable in Arabia, where pig and wine are injurious; it is
absurd at Constantinople.
The law which gives the whole fee to the eldest son is very good in times of
anarchy and pillage. Then the eldest son is the captain of the castle which
the brigands will attack sooner or later; the younger sons will be his chief
officers, the husbandmen his soldiers. All that is to be feared is that the
younger son may assassinate or poison the Salian lord his elder brother, in
order to become in his turn the master of the hovel; but these cases are rare,
because nature has so combined our instincts and our passions that we have
more horror of assassinating our elder brother than we have of being
envious of his position. But this law, suitable for the owners of dungeons in
Chilperic's time is detestable when there is question of sharing stocks in a
city.
To the shame of mankind, one knows that the laws of games are the only
ones which everywhere are just, clear, inviolable and executed. Why is the
Indian who gave us the rules of the game of chess willingly obeyed all over
the world, and why are the popes' decretals, for example, to-day an object
of horror and scorn? the reason is that the inventor of chess combined
everything with precision for the satisfaction of the players, and that the
popes, in their decretals, had nothing in view but their own interest. The
Indian wished to exercise men's minds equally, and give them pleasure; the
popes wished to besot men's minds. Also, the essence of the game of chess
has remained the same for five thousand years, it is common to all the
inhabitants of the earth; and the decretals are known only at Spoletto,

Orvieto, Loretto, where the shallowest lawyer secretly hates and despises
them.
But I delight in thinking that there is a natural law independent of all human
conventions: the fruit of my work must belong to me; I must honour my
father and my mother; I have no right over my fellow's life, and my fellow
has none over mine, etc. But when I think that from Chedorlaomer to
Mentzel,[12] colonel of hussars, everyone loyally kills and pillages his
fellow with a licence in his pocket, I am very afflicted.
I am told that there are laws among thieves, and also laws of war. I ask what
are these laws of war. I learn that they mean hanging a brave officer who
has held fast in a bad post without cannon against a royal army; that they
mean having a prisoner hanged, if the enemy has hanged one of yours; that
they mean putting to the fire and the sword villages which have not brought
their sustenance on the appointed day, according to the orders of the
gracious sovereign of the district. "Good," say I, "that is the 'Spirit of the
Laws.'"
It seems to me that most men have received from nature enough common
sense to make laws, but that everyone is not just enough to make good laws.

FOOTNOTES:
[12] Chedorlaomer was king of the Elamites, and contemporary with Abraham.
See Genesis ch. xiv.
Mentzel was a famous chief of Austrian partisans in the war of 1741. At the head
of five thousand men, he made Munich capitulate on February 13th, 1742.

LIBERTY
Either I am very much mistaken, or Locke the definer has very well defined
liberty as "power." I am mistaken again, or Collins, celebrated London
magistrate, is the only philosopher who has really sifted this idea, and
Clark's answer to him was merely that of a theologian. But of all that has
been written in France on liberty, the following little dialogue seems to me
the most clear.

A: There is a battery of guns firing in your ears, have you the liberty to hear
them or not to hear them?
B: Without doubt, I cannot stop myself hearing them.
A: Do you want this gun to carry off your head and the heads of your wife
and daughter, who are walking with you?
B: What are you talking about? as long as I am of sound mind, I cannot
want such a thing; it is impossible.
A: Good; you hear this gun necessarily, and you wish necessarily that
neither you nor your family shall die from a cannon shot while you are out
for a walk; you have not the power either of not hearing or of wishing to
remain here?
B: Clearly.
A: You have consequently taken some thirty steps in order to be sheltered
from the gun, you have had the power to walk these few steps with me?
B: Again very clearly.
A: And if you had been a paralytic, you could not have avoided being
exposed to this battery, you would necessarily have heard and received a
gun shot; and you would be dead necessarily?

B: Nothing is more true.
A: In what then does your liberty consist, unless it be in the power that your
self has exercised in performing what your will required of absolute
necessity?
B: You embarrass me; liberty then is nothing but the power of doing what I
want to do?
A: Think about it, and see if liberty can be understood otherwise.
B: In that case my hunting dog is as free as I am; he has necessarily the will
to run when he sees a hare, and the power of running if he has not a pain in
his legs. I have then nothing above my dog; you reduce me to the state of
the beasts.
A: What poor sophistry from the poor sophists who have taught you. Indeed
you are in a bad way to be free like your dog! Do you not eat, sleep,
propagate like him, even almost to the attitude? Do you want the sense of
smell other than through your nose? Why do you want to have liberty
otherwise than your dog has?
B: But I have a soul which reasons much, and my dog reasons hardly at all.
He has almost only simple ideas, and I have a thousand metaphysical ideas.
A: Well, you are a thousand times freer than he is; that is, you have a
thousand times more power of thinking than he has; but you do not think
otherwise than he does.
B: What! I am not free to wish what I wish?
A: What do you mean by that?
B: I mean what everyone means. Doesn't one say every day, wishes are
free?
A: A proverb is not a reason; explain yourself more clearly.
B: I mean that I am free to wish as I please.
A: With your permission, that has no sense; do you not see that it is
ridiculous to say, I wish to wish? You wish necessarily, as a result of the

ideas that have offered themselves to you. Do you wish to be married; yes
or no?
B: But if I tell you that I want neither the one nor the other?
A: You will be answering like someone who says: "Some believe Cardinal
Mazarin to be dead, others believe him to be alive, and as for me I believe
neither the one nor the other."
B: Well, I want to be married.
A: Ah! that is an answer. Why do you want to be married?
B: Because I am in love with a beautiful, sweet, well-bred young girl, who
is fairly rich and sings very well, whose parents are very honest people, and
because I flatter myself I am loved by her, and very welcome to her family.
A: That is a reason. You see that you cannot wish without reason. I declare
to you that you are free to marry; that is, that you have the power to sign the
contract, have your nuptials, and sleep with your wife.
B: How now! I cannot wish without reason? And what will become of that
other proverb: Sit pro ratione voluntas; my will is my reason, I wish
because I wish?
A: That is absurd, my dear fellow; there would be in you an effect without a
cause.
B: What! When I play at odds and evens, I have a reason for choosing evens
rather than odds?
A: Yes, undoubtedly.
B: And what is that reason, if you please?
A: The reason is that the idea of even rather than the opposite idea presents
itself to your mind. It would be comic that there were cases where you
wished because there was a cause of wishing, and that there were cases
where you wished without any cause. When you wish to be married, you
evidently feel the dominating reason; you do not feel it when you are
playing at odds and evens; and yet there certainly must be one.

B: But, I repeat, I am not free then?
A: Your will is not free, but your actions are. You are free to act, when you
have the power to act.
B: But all the books I have read on the liberty of indifference....
A: What do you mean by the liberty of indifference?
B: I mean the liberty of spitting on the right or on the left, of sleeping on
my right side or on my left, of taking a walk of four turns or five.
A: Really the liberty you would have there would be a comic liberty! God
would have given you a fine gift! It would really be something to boast of!
Of what use to you would be a power which was exercised only on such
futile occasions? But the fact is that it is ridiculous to suppose the will to
wish to spit on the right. Not only is this will to wish absurd, but it is certain
that several trifling circumstances determine you in these acts that you call
indifferent. You are no more free in these acts than in the others. But, I
repeat, you are free at all times, in all places, as soon as you do what you
wish to do.

B: I suspect you are right. I will think about it.[13]

FOOTNOTES:
[13] See "Free-Will."

LIBRARY
A big library has this in it of good, that it dismays those who look at it. Two
hundred thousand volumes discourage a man tempted to print; but
unfortunately he at once says to himself: "People do not read all those
books, and they may read mine." He compares himself to a drop of water
who complains of being lost in the ocean and ignored: a genius had pity on
it; he caused it to be swallowed by an oyster; it became the most beautiful
pearl in the Orient, and was the chief ornament in the throne of the Great
Mogul. Those who are only compilers, imitators, commentators, splitters of
phrases, usurious critics, in short, those on whom a genius has no pity, will
always remain drops of water.
Our man works in his garret, therefore, in the hope of becoming a pearl.
It is true that in this immense collection of books there are about a hundred
and ninety-nine thousand which will never be read, from cover to cover at
least; but one may need to consult some of them once in a lifetime. It is a
great advantage for whoever wishes to learn to find at his hand in the king's
palace the volume and page he seeks, without being kept waiting a moment.
It is one of the most noble institutions. No expense is more magnificent and
more useful.
The public library of the King of France is the finest in the whole world,
less on account of the number and rarity of the volumes than of the ease and
courtesy with which the librarians lend them to all scholars. This library is
incontestably the most precious monument there is in France.
This astounding multitude of books should not scare. We have already
remarked that Paris contains about seven hundred thousand men, that one
cannot live with them all, and that one chooses three or four friends. Thus
must one no more complain of the multitude of books than of the multitude
of citizens.
A man who wishes to learn a little about his existence, and who has no time
to waste, is quite embarrassed. He wishes to read simultaneously Hobbes,

Spinoza, Bayle who wrote against them, Leibnitz who disputed with Bayle,
Clarke who disputed with Leibnitz, Malebranche who differed from them
all, Locke who passed as having confounded Malebranche, Stillingfleet
who thought he had vanquished Locke, Cudworth who thinks himself above
them because he is understood by no one. One would die of old age before
having thumbed the hundredth part of the metaphysical romances.
One is very content to have the most ancient books, as one inquires into the
most ancient medals. It is that which makes the honour of a library. The
oldest books in the world are the "Kings" of the Chinese, the "Shastabad" of
the Brahmins, of which Mr. Holwell has brought to our knowledge
admirable passages, what remains of the ancient Zarathustra, the fragments
of Sanchoniathon which Eusebius has preserved for us and which bears the
characteristics of the most remote antiquity. I do not speak of the
"Pentateuch" which is above all one could say of it.
We still have the prayer of the real Orpheus, which the hierophant recited in
the old Greek mysteries. "Walk in the path of justice, worship the sole
master of the universe. He is one; He is sole by Himself. All beings owe
Him their existence; He acts in them and by them. He sees everything, and
never has been seen by mortal eyes."
St. Clement of Alexandria, the most learned of the fathers of the Church, or
rather the only scholar in profane antiquity, gives him almost always the
name of Orpheus of Thrace, of Orpheus the Theologian, to distinguish him
from those who wrote later under his name.
We have no longer anything either of Museus or of Linus. A few passages
from these predecessors of Homer would well be an adornment to a library.
Augustus had formed the library called the Palatine. The statue of Apollo
presided over it. The emperor embellished it with busts of the best authors.
One saw in Rome twenty-nine great public libraries. There are now more
than four thousand important libraries in Europe. Choose which suits you,
and try not to be bored.

LIMITS OF THE HUMAN MIND
Someone asked Newton one day why he walked when he wanted to, and
how his arm and his hand moved at his will. He answered manfully that he
had no idea. "But at least," his interlocutor said to him, "you who
understand so well the gravitation of the planets will tell me why they turn
in one direction rather than in another!" And he again confessed that he had
no idea.
Those who taught that the ocean was salt for fear that it might become
putrid, and that the tides were made to bring our ships into port (The Abbé
Pluche in "The Spectacle of Nature"), were somewhat ashamed when the
reply was made to them that the Mediterranean has ports and no ebb.
Musschenbroeck himself fell into this inadvertence.
Has anyone ever been able to say precisely how a log is changed on the
hearth into burning carbon, and by what mechanism lime is kindled by fresh
water?
Is the first principle of the movement of the heart in animals properly
understood? does one know clearly how generation is accomplished? has
one guessed what gives us sensations, ideas, memory? We do not
understand the essence of matter any more than the children who touch its
surface.
Who will teach us by what mechanism this grain of wheat that we throw
into the ground rises again to produce a pipe laden with an ear of corn, and
how the same soil produces an apple at the top of this tree, and a chestnut
on its neighbour? Many teachers have said—"What do I not know?"
Montaigne used to say—"What do I know?"
Ruthlessly trenchant fellow, wordy pedagogue, meddlesome theorist, you
seek the limits of your mind. They are at the end of your nose.

LOCAL CRIMES
Traverse the whole earth, you will find that theft, murder, adultery, calumny
are regarded as crimes which society condemns and curbs; but should what
is approved in England, and condemned in Italy, be punished in Italy as an
outrage against the whole of humanity? That is what I call a local crime.
Does not that which is criminal only in the enclosure of some mountains, or
between two rivers, demand of judges more indulgence than those outrages
which are held in horror in all countries? Should not the judge say to
himself: "I should not dare punish at Ragusa what I punish at Loretto"?
Should not this reflection soften in his heart the hardness that it is only too
easy to contract during the long exercise of his office?
You know the kermesses in Flanders; in the last century they were carried to
a point of indecency which might revolt eyes unaccustomed to these
spectacles. This is how Christmas was celebrated in some towns. First there
appeared a young man half naked, with wings on his back; he recited the
Ave Maria to a young girl who answered him fiat, and the angel kissed her
on the mouth: then a child enclosed in a great cardboard cock cried,
imitating the cock's cry: Puer natus est nobis. A big ox bellowed ubi, which
it pronounced oubi; a sheep bleated Bethlehem. An ass cried hihanus, to
signify eamus; a long procession, preceded by four fools with baubles and
rattles, closed the performance. There remain to-day traces of these popular
devotions, which among more educated peoples would be taken for
profanations. A bad-tempered Swiss, more drunk maybe than those who
played the rôles of ox and ass, came to words with them in Louvain; blows
were given; the people wanted to hang the Swiss, who escaped with
difficulty.
The same man had a violent quarrel at the Hague in Holland for having
stoutly taken Barneveldt's part against an extravagant Gomarist. He was put
into prison in Amsterdam for having said that priests are the scourge of
humanity and the source of all our misfortunes. "What!" he said. "If one
believes that good works make for salvation, one finds oneself in a
dungeon; if one laughs at a cock and an ass, one risks being hanged." This

adventure, burlesque though it is, makes it quite clear that one can be
reprehensible on one or two points in our hemisphere, and be absolutely
innocent in the rest of the world.

LOVE
There are so many sorts of love that one does not know to whom to address
oneself for a definition of it. The name of "love" is given boldly to a caprice
lasting a few days, a sentiment without esteem, gallants' affectations, a
frigid habit, a romantic fantasy, relish followed by prompt disrelish: people
give this name to a thousand chimeras.
If philosophers want to probe to the bottom this barely philosophical matter,
let them meditate on the banquet of Plato, in which Socrates, honourable
lover of Alcibiades and Agathon, converses with them on the metaphysics
of love.
Lucretius speaks of it more as a natural philosopher: Virgil follows in the
steps of Lucretius; amor omnibus idem.
It is the stuff of nature broidered by nature. Do you want an idea of love?
look at the sparrows in your garden; look at your pigeons; look at the bull
which is brought to the heifer; look at this proud horse which two of your
grooms lead to the quiet mare awaiting him; she draws aside her tail to
welcome him; see how her eyes sparkle; hark to the neighing; watch the
prancing, the curvetting, the ears pricked, the mouth opening with little
convulsions, the swelling nostrils, the flaring breath, the manes rising and
floating, the impetuous movement with which he hurls himself on the
object which nature has destined for him; but be not jealous of him, and
think of the advantages of the human species; in love they compensate for
all those that nature has given to the animals—strength, beauty, nimbleness,
speed.
There are animals, even, who have no enjoyment in possession. Scale fish
are deprived of this delight: the female throws millions of eggs on the mud;
the male coming across them passes over them, and fertilizes them with his
seed, without troubling about the female to whom they belong.
Most animals that pair, taste pleasure only by a single sense, and as soon as
the appetite is satisfied, everything is extinguished. No animal, apart from

you, knows what kissing is; the whole of your body is sensitive; your lips
especially enjoy a voluptuousness that nothing can tire; and this pleasure
belongs to no species but yours: you can give yourself up to love at any
time, and the animals have but a fixed time. If you reflect on these
superiorities, you will say with the Count of Rochester—"In a country of
atheists love would cause the Deity to be worshipped."
As men have received the gift of perfecting all that nature accords them,
they have perfected love. Cleanliness, the care of oneself, by rendering the
skin more delicate, increase the pleasure of contact; and attention to one's
health renders the organs of voluptuousness more sensitive. All the other
sentiments that enter into that of love, just like metals which amalgamate
with gold: friendship, regard, come to help; the faculties of mind and body
are still further chains.
Self-love above all tightens all these bonds. One applauds oneself for one's
choice, and a crowd of illusions form the decoration of the building of
which nature has laid the foundations.
That is what you have above the animals. But if you taste so many pleasures
unknown to them, how many sorrows too of which the beasts have no idea!
What is frightful for you is that over three-fourths of the earth nature has
poisoned the pleasures of love and the sources of life with an appalling
disease to which man alone is subject, and which infects in him the organs
of generation alone.
It is in no wise with this plague as with so many other maladies that are the
result of our excesses. It was not debauch that introduced it into the world.
Phryne, Lais, Flora, Messalina and those like them, were not attacked by it;
it was born in some islands where men lived in innocence, and thence
spread itself over the ancient world.
If ever one could accuse nature of despising her work, of contradicting her
plans, of acting against her designs, it is in this detestable scourge which
has soiled the earth with horror and filth. Is that the best of all possible
worlds? What! if Cæsar, Antony, Octavius never had this disease, was it not
possible for it not to cause the death of François I.? "No," people say,
"things were ordered thus for the best." I want to believe it; but it is sad for
those to whom Rabelais dedicated his book.

Erotic philosophers have often debated the question of whether Heloïse
could still really love Abelard when he was a monk and emasculate? One of
these qualities did very great harm to the other.
But console yourself, Abelard, you were loved; the root of the hewn tree
still retains a remnant of sap; the imagination aids the heart. One can still be
happy at table even though one eats no longer. Is it love? is it simply a
memory? is it friendship? All that is composed of something indescribable.
It is an obscure feeling resembling the fantastic passions retained by the
dead in the Elysian fields. The heroes who, during their lifetime, shone in
the chariot races, drove imaginary chariots when they were dead. Heloïse
lived with you on illusions and supplements. She kissed you sometimes,
and with all the more pleasure that having taken a vow at the Paraclet
monastery to love you no longer, her kisses thereby became more precious
as more guilty. A woman can barely be seized with a passion for a eunuch:
but she can keep her passion for her lover become eunuch, provided that he
remains lovable.
It is not the same, ladies, for a lover who has grown old in service; the
externals subsist no longer; the wrinkles horrify; the white eyebrows shock;
the lost teeth disgust; the infirmities estrange: all that one can do is to have
the virtue of being nurse, and of tolerating what one has loved. It is burying
a dead man.

LUXURY
People have declaimed against luxury for two thousand years, in verse and
in prose, and people have always delighted in it.
What has not been said of the early Romans when these brigands ravaged
and pillaged the harvests; when, to enlarge their poor village, they
destroyed the poor villages of the Volscians and the Samnites? They were
disinterested, virtuous men; they had not yet been able to steal either gold,
silver, or precious stones, because there were not any in the little towns they
plundered. Their woods and their marshes produced neither pheasants nor
partridges, and people praise their temperance.
When gradually they had pillaged everything, stolen everything from the far
end of the Adriatic Gulf to the Euphrates, and when they had enough
intelligence to enjoy the fruit of their plundering; when they cultivated the
arts, when they tasted of all pleasures, and when they even made the
vanquished taste of them, they ceased then, people say, to be wise and
honest men.
All these declamations reduce themselves to proving that a robber must
never either eat the dinner he has taken, or wear the coat he has pilfered, or
adorn himself with the ring he has filched. He should throw all that, people
say, in the river, so as to live like an honest man. Say rather that he should
not have stolen. Condemn brigands when they pillage; but do not treat them
as senseless when they enjoy. Honestly, when a large number of English
sailors enriched themselves at the taking of Pondicherry and Havana, were
they wrong to enjoy themselves later in London, as the price of the trouble
they had had in the depths of Asia and America?
The declaimers want one to bury in the ground the wealth one has amassed
by the fortune of arms, by agriculture, by commerce and by industry. They
cite Lacedæmon; why do they not cite also the republic of San Marino?
What good did Sparto to Greece? Did she ever have Demosthenes,
Sophocles, Apelles, Phidias? The luxury of Athens produced great men in
every sphere; Sparta had a few captains, and in less number even than other

towns. But how fine it is that as small a republic as Lacedæmon retains its
poverty.[14]
One arrives at death as well by lacking everything as by enjoying what can
make life pleasant. The Canadian savage subsists, and comes to old age like
the English citizen who has an income of fifty thousand guineas. But who
will ever compare the land of the Iroquois to England?
Let the republic of Ragusa and the canton of Zug make sumptuary laws,
they are right, the poor man must not spend beyond his powers; but I have
read somewhere:

"Learn that luxury enriches a great state, even if it ruins a small."[15]
If by luxury you understand excess, everyone knows that excess in any
form is pernicious, in abstinence as in gluttony, in economy as in
generosity. I do not know how it has happened that in my village where the
land is ungrateful, the taxes heavy, the prohibition against exporting the
corn one has sown intolerable, there is nevertheless barely a cultivator who
has not a good cloth coat, and who is not well shod and well fed. If this
cultivator toiled in his fields in his fine coat, with white linen, his hair
curled and powdered, there, certainly, would be the greatest luxury, and the
most impertinent; but that a bourgeois of Paris or London should appear at
the theatre clad like a peasant, there would be the most vulgar and
ridiculous niggardliness.
When scissors, which are certainly not of the remotest antiquity, were
invented, what did people not say against the first men who pared their
nails, and who cut part of the hair which fell on their noses? They were
treated, without a doubt, as fops and prodigals, who bought an instrument of
vanity at a high price, in order to spoil the Creator's handiwork. What an
enormous sin to cut short the horn which God made to grow at the end of
our fingers! It was an outrage against the Deity! It was much worse when
shirts and socks were invented. One knows with what fury the aged
counsellors who had never worn them cried out against the young
magistrates who were addicted to this disastrous luxury.[16]

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Lacedæmon avoided luxury only by preserving the community or equality
of property; but she did not preserve either the one or the other save by having
the land cultivated by an enslaved people. The existence of the equality or
community of property supposes the existence of an enslaved people. The
Spartans had virtue, just like highwaymen, inquisitors and all classes of men
whom habit has familiarized with a species of crime, to the point of committing
them without remorse.
[15] The sumptuary laws are by their nature a violation of the right of property.
If in a little state there is not a great inequality of fortune, there will be no
luxury; if this inequality exists, luxury is the remedy for it. It is her sumptuary
laws that have lost Geneva her liberty.
[16] If by luxury one understands everything that is beyond the necessary, luxury
is a natural consequence of the progress of the human species; and to reason
consequently every enemy of luxury should believe with Rousseau that the state
of happiness and virtue for man is that, not of the savage, but of the orang-
outang. One feels that it would be absurd to regard as an evil the comforts which
all men would enjoy: also, does one not generally give the name of luxury to the
superfluities which only a small number of individuals can enjoy. In this sense,
luxury is a necessary consequence of property, without which no society can
subsist, and of a great inequality between fortunes which is the consequence, not
of the right of property, but of bad laws. Moralists should address their sermons
to the legislators, and not to individuals, because it is in the order of possible
things that a virtuous and enlightened man may have the power to make
reasonable laws, and it is not in human nature for all the rich men of a country to
renounce through virtue procuring for themselves for money the enjoyments of
pleasure or vanity.

GENERAL REFLECTION ON MAN
It needs twenty years to lead man from the plant state in which he is within
his mother's womb, and the pure animal state which is the lot of his early
childhood, to the state when the maturity of the reason begins to appear. It
has needed thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need
eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him.

MAN IN THE IRON MASK
The author of the "Siècle de Louis XIV."[17] is the first to speak of the man
in the iron mask in an authenticated history. The reason is that he was very
well informed about the anecdote which astonishes the present century,
which will astonish posterity, and which is only too true. He was deceived
about the date of the death of this singularly unfortunate unknown. The date
of his burial at St. Paul was March 3rd, 1703, and not 1704. (Note.—
According to a certificate reported by Saint-Foix, the date was November
20th, 1703.)
He was imprisoned first of all at Pignerol before being so on St. Margaret's
Islands, and later in the Bastille; always under the same man's guard, Saint-
Mars, who saw him die. Father Griffet, Jesuit, has communicated to the
public the diary of the Bastille, which testifies to the dates. He had this
diary without difficulty, for he held the delicate position of confessor of
prisoners imprisoned in the Bastille.
The man in the iron mask is a riddle to which everyone wishes to guess the
answer. Some say that he was the Duc de Beaufort: but the Duc de Beaufort
was killed by the Turks at the defence of Candia, in 1669; and the man in
the iron mask was at Pignerol, in 1662. Besides, how would one have
arrested the Duc de Beaufort surrounded by his army? how would one have
transferred him to France without anybody knowing anything about it? and
why should he have been put in prison, and why this mask?
Others have considered the Comte de Vermandois, natural son of Louis
XIV., who died publicly of the small-pox in 1683, with the army, and was
buried in the town of Arras.
Later it was thought that the Duke of Monmouth, whose head King James
II. had cut off publicly in London in 1685, was the man in the iron mask. It
would have been necessary for him to be resuscitated, and then for him to
change the order of the times, for him to put the year 1662 in place of 1685;
for King James who never pardoned anyone, and who on that account
deserved all his misfortunes, to have pardoned the Duke of Monmouth, and

to have caused the death, in his place, of a man exactly like him. It would
have been necessary to find this double who would have been so kind as to
have his neck cut off in public in order to save the Duke of Monmouth. It
would have been necessary for the whole of England to have been under a
misapprehension; for James then to have sent his earnest entreaties to Louis
XIV. to be so good as to serve as his constable and gaoler. Then Louis XIV.
having done King James this little favour, would not have failed to have the
same consideration for King William and for Queen Anne, with whom he
was at war; and he would carefully have preserved in these two monarchs'
consideration his dignity of gaoler, with which King James had honoured
him.
All these illusions being dissipated, it remains to be learned who was this
prisoner who was always masked, the age at which he died, and under what
name he was buried. It is clear that if he was not allowed to pass into the
courtyard of the Bastille, if he was not allowed to speak to his doctor, unless
covered by a mask, it was for fear that in his features might be recognized
some too striking resemblance. He might show his tongue, and never his
face. As regards his age, he himself said to the Bastille apothecary, a few
days before his death, that he thought he was about sixty; and Master
Marsolan, surgeon to the Maréchal de Richelieu, and later to the Duc
d'Orléans, regent, son-in-law of this apothecary, has repeated it to me more
than once.
Finally, why give him an Italian name? he was always called Marchiali! He
who writes this article knows more about it, maybe, than Father Griffet, and
will not say more.

Publishers Note[18]

It is surprising to see so many scholars and so many intelligent and
sagacious writers torment themselves with guessing who can have been the
famous man in the iron mask, without the simplest, most natural, most
probable idea ever presenting itself to them. Once the fact as M. de Voltaire
reports it is admitted, with its circumstances; the existence of a prisoner of
so singular a species, put in the rank of the best authenticated historical
truths; it seems that not only is nothing easier than to imagine who this

prisoner was, but that it is even difficult for there to be two opinions on the
subject. The author of this article would have communicated his opinion
earlier, if he had not believed that this idea must already have come to many
others, and if he were not persuaded that it was not worth while giving as a
discovery what, according to him, jumps to the eyes of all who read this
anecdote.
However, as for some time past this event has divided men's minds, and as
quite recently the public has again been given a letter in which it is claimed
as proved that this celebrated prisoner was a secretary of the Duke of
Mantua (which cannot be reconciled with the great marks of respect shown
by M. de Saint-Mars to his prisoner), the author has thought it his duty to
tell at last what has been his opinion for many years. Maybe this conjecture
will put an end to all other researches, unless the secret be revealed by those
who can be its guardians, in such a way as to remove all doubts.
He will not amuse himself with refuting those who have imagined that this
prisoner could be the Comte de Vermandois, the Duc de Beaufort, or the
Duke of Monmouth. The scholarly and very wise author of this last opinion
has well refuted the others; but he had based his own opinion essentially
merely on the impossibility of finding in Europe some other prince whose
detention it would have been of the very highest importance should not be
known. M. de Saint-Foix is right, if he means to speak only of princes
whose existence was known; but why has nobody yet thought of supposing
that the iron mask might have been an unknown prince, brought up in
secret, and whose existence it was important should remain unknown?
The Duke of Monmouth was not for France a prince of such great
importance; and one does not see even what could have engaged this power,
at least after the death of this duke and of James II., to make so great a
secret of his detention, if indeed he was the iron mask. It is hardly probable
either that M. de Louvois and M. de Saint-Mars would have shown the
Duke of Monmouth the profound respect which M. de Voltaire assures they
showed the iron mask.
The author conjectures, from the way that M. de Voltaire has told the facts,
that this celebrated historian is as persuaded as he is of the suspicion which
he is going, he says, to bring to light; but that M. de Voltaire, as a

Frenchman, did not wish, he adds, to publish point-blank, particularly as he
had said enough for the answer to the riddle not to be difficult to guess.
Here it is, he continues, as I see it.
"The iron mask was undoubtedly a brother and an elder brother of Louis
XIV., whose mother had that taste for fine linen on which M. de Voltaire
lays stress. It was in reading the Memoirs of that time, which report this
anecdote about the queen, that, recalling this same taste in the iron mask, I
doubted no longer that he was her son: a fact of which all the other
circumstances had persuaded me already.
"It is known that Louis XIII. had not lived with the queen for a long time;
that the birth of Louis XIV. was due only to a happy chance skilfully
induced; a chance which absolutely obliged the king to sleep in the same
bed with the queen. This is how I think the thing came to pass.
"The queen may have thought that it was her fault that no heir was born to
Louis XIII. The birth of the iron mask will have undeceived her. The
cardinal to whom she will have confided the fact will have known, for more
than one reason, how to turn the secret to account; he will have thought of
making use of this event for his own benefit and for the benefit of the state.
Persuaded by this example that the queen could give the king children, the
plan which produced the chance of one bed for the king and the queen was
arranged in consequence. But the queen and the cardinal, equally impressed
with the necessity of hiding from Louis XIII. the iron mask's existence, will
have had him brought up in secret. This secret will have been a secret for
Louis XIV. until Cardinal Mazarin's death.
"But this monarch learning then that he had a brother, and an elder brother
whom his mother could not disacknowledge, who further bore maybe the
marked features which betrayed his origin, reflecting that this child born
during marriage could not, without great inconvenience and a horrible
scandal, be declared illegitimate after Louis XIII.'s death, Louis XIV. will
have judged that he could not use a wiser or juster means than the one he
employed in order to assure his own tranquillity and the peace of the state;
means which relieved him of committing a cruelty which policy would have
represented as necessary to a monarch less conscientious and less
magnanimous than Louis XIV.

"It seems to me, our author continues, that the more one knows of the
history of those times, the more one must be struck by these assembled
circumstances which are in favour of such a supposition."

FOOTNOTES:
[17] Voltaire.
[18] This note, given as a publisher's note in the 1771 edition, passes among
many men of letters as being by Voltaire himself. He knew of this edition, and he
never contradicted the opinion there advanced on the subject of the man in the
iron mask.
He was the first to speak of this man. He always combated all the conjectures
made about the mask: he always spoke as though better informed than others on
the subject, and as though unwilling to tell all he knew.
There is a letter in circulation from Mlle. de Valois, written to the Duke,
afterward Maréchal de Richelieu, where she boasts of having learned from the
Duc d'Orléans, her father, under strange conditions, who the man in the iron
mask was; this man, she says, was a twin brother of Louis XIV., born a few
hours after him.
Either this letter, which it was so useless, so indecent, so dangerous to read, is a
supposititious letter, or the regent, in giving his daughter the reward she had so
nobly acquired, thought to weaken the danger there was in revealing a state
secret, by altering the facts, so as to make of this prince a younger son without
right to the throne, instead of the heir-apparent to the crown.
But Louis XIV., who had a brother; Louis XIV., whose soul was magnanimous;
Louis XIV., who prided himself even on a scrupulous probity, whom history has
reproached with no crime, who indeed committed no crime apart from letting
himself be too swayed by the counsels of Louvois and the Jesuits; Louis XIV.
would never have detained one of his brothers in perpetual prison, in order to
forestall the evils announced by an astrologer, in whom he did not believe. He
needed more important motives. Eldest son of Louis XIII., acknowledged by this
prince, the throne belonged to him; but a son born of Anne of Austria, unknown
to her husband, had no rights, and could, nevertheless, try to make himself
acknowledged, rend France with a long civil war, win maybe over Louis XIII.'s
son, by alleging the right of primogeniture, and substitute a new race for the old
race of the Bourbons. These motives, if they did not entirely justify Louis XIV.'s
rigour, serve at least to excuse him; and the prisoner, too well-informed of his
fate, could be grateful to him for not having listened to more rigorous counsels,
counsels which politics have often employed against those who had pretensions
to thrones occupied by their competitors.
From his youth Voltaire was connected with the Duc de Richelieu, who was not
discreet: if Mlle. de Valois' letter is authentic, he knew of it; but, possessed of a
just mind, he felt the error, and sought other information. He was in a position to

obtain it; he rectified the truth altered in the letter, as he rectified so many other
errors.

MARRIAGE
I came across a reasoner who said: "Engage your subjects to marry as soon
as possible; let them be exempt from taxes the first year, and let their tax be
distributed over those who at the same age are celibate.
"The more married men you have, the less crime there will be. Look at the
frightful records of your registers of crime; you will find there a hundred
bachelors hanged or wheeled for one father of a family.
"Marriage makes man wiser and more virtuous. The father of a family, near
to committing a crime, is often stopped by his wife whose blood, less
feverish than his, makes her gentler, more compassionate, more fearful of
theft and murder, more timorous, more religious.
"The father of a family does not want to blush before his children. He fears
to leave them a heritage of shame.
"Marry your soldiers, they will not desert any more. Bound to their
families, they will be bound also to their fatherland. A bachelor soldier
often is nothing but a vagabond, to whom it is indifferent whether he serves
the king of Naples or the king of Morocco."
The Roman warriors were married; they fought for their wives and children;
and they enslaved the wives and children of other nations.
A great Italian politician, who further was very learned in oriental
languages, a very rare thing among our politicians, said to me in my youth:
"Caro figlio, remember that the Jews have never had but one good
institution, that of having a horror of virginity." If this little race of
superstitious intermediaries had not considered marriage as the first law of
man, if there had been among them convents of nuns, they were irreparably
lost.

MASTER
SECTION I

"Unfortunate that I am to have been born!" said Ardassan Ougli, young
page of the great Sultan of the Turks. "If it were only the great Sultan on
whom I am dependent; but I am subject to the chief of my oda, to the capigi
pasha; and when I receive my pay, I have to bow down to one of the
tefterdar's clerks who deducts half of it. Before I was seven years old I had
cut off, in spite of myself, in ceremony, the end of my prepuce, and it made
me ill for a fortnight. The dervish who prays for us is my master; an iman is
still more my master; the mollah is still more my master than the iman. The
cadi is another master; the cadi-leskier is master still more; the mufti is
much more master than all these together. The grand vizier's kaia can with a
word have me thrown into the canal; and the grand vizier, finally, can have
my neck wrung at his pleasure, and stuff the skin of my head, without
anybody even taking notice.
"How many masters, great God! even if I had as many bodies and as many
souls as I have duties to accomplish, I could not attend to everything. Oh,
Allah! if only you had made me a screech-owl! I should live free in my
hole, and I should eat mice at my ease without masters or servants. That
assuredly is man's real destiny; only since he was perverted has he masters.
No man was made to serve another man continuously. Each would have
charitably aided his fellow, if things were as they should be. The man with
eyes would have led the blind man, the active man would have acted as
crutch to the cripple. This world would have been the paradise of
Mohammed; and it is the hell which is exactly under the pointed bridge."
Thus did Ardassan Ougli speak, after receiving the stirrup-leather from one
of his masters.
After a few years Ardassan Ougli became pasha with three tails. He made a
prodigious fortune, and he firmly believed that all men, excepting the Great

Turk and the Grand Vizier, were born to serve him, and all women to give
him pleasure in accordance with his caprice.

SECTION II

How has it been possible for one man to become another man's master, and
by what species of incomprehensible magic has he been able to become the
master of many other men? On this phenomenon a great number of good
volumes have been written; but I give the preference to an Indian fable,
because it is short, and because the fables have said everything.
Adimo, the father of all the Indians, had two sons and two daughters by his
wife Procriti. The elder son was a giant, the younger was a little hunchback,
the two daughters were pretty. As soon as the giant was conscious of his
strength, he lay with his two sisters, and made the little hunchback serve
him. Of his two sisters, one was his cook, the other his gardener. When the
giant wanted to sleep, he started by chaining his little hunchback brother to
a tree; and when the brother escaped, he caught him in four strides, and
gave him twenty strokes with a length of ox sinew.
The hunchback became submissive and the best subject in the world. The
giant, satisfied to see him fulfilling his duties as subject, permitted him to
lie with one of his sisters for whom he himself had taken a distaste. The
children who came of this marriage were not entirely hunchbacked; but they
had sufficiently misshapen forms. They were reared in fear of God and the
giant. They received an excellent education; they were taught that their
great uncle was giant by divine right, that he could do with his family as
pleased him; that if he had a pretty niece or great-niece, she was for him
alone without a doubt, and that no one could lie with her until he wanted
her no longer.
The giant having died, his son, who was not by a long way as strong and as
big as he, thought nevertheless that he, like his father, was giant by divine
right. He claimed to make all the men work for him, and to lie with all the
women. The family leagued itself against him, he was beaten to death, and
the others turned themselves into a republic.

The Siamese, on the contrary, maintain that the family had started by being
republican, and that the giant did not come until after a great number of
years and dissensions; but all the authors of Benares and Siam agree that
mankind lived an infinity of centuries before having the intelligence to
make laws; and they prove it by an unanswerable reason, which is that even
to-day when everyone plumes himself on his intelligence, no way has been
found of making a score of passably good laws.
It is indeed still an insoluble question in India whether republics were
established before or after monarchies, whether confusion appeared more
horrible to mankind than despotism. I do not know what happened in order
of time; but in that of nature it must be agreed that all men being born
equal, violence and adroitness made the first masters, the laws made the
last.

MEN OF LETTERS
In our barbarous times, when the Franks, the Germans, the Bretons, the
Lombards, the Spanish Muzarabs, knew not how either to read or write,
there were instituted schools, universities, composed almost entirely of
ecclesiastics who, knowing nothing but their own jargon, taught this jargon
to those who wished to learn it; the academies came only a long time
afterwards; they despised the foolishness of the schools, but did not always
dare to rise against them, because there are foolishnesses that are respected
provided that they concern respectable things.
The men of letters who have rendered the greatest services to the small
number of thinking beings spread over the world, are the isolated writers,
the true scholars shut in their studies, who have neither argued on the
benches of the universities, nor told half-truths in the academies; and almost
all of them have been persecuted. Our wretched species is so made that
those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who
are showing a new road.
Montesquieu says that the Scythians rent their slaves' eyes, so that they
might be less distracted while they were churning their butter; that is just
how the inquisition functions, and in the land where this monster reigns
almost everybody is blind. In England people have had two eyes for more
than two hundred years; the French are starting to open one eye; but
sometimes there are men in power who do not want the people to have even
this one eye open.
These poor persons in power are like Doctor Balouard of the Italian
Comedy, who does not want to be served by anyone but the dolt Harlequin,
and who is afraid of having too shrewd a valet.
Compose some odes in praise of My Lord Superbus Fadus, some madrigals
for his mistress; dedicate a book on geography to his door-keeper, you will
be well-received; enlighten mankind, you will be exterminated.

Descartes was forced to leave his country, Gassendi was calumniated,
Arnauld dragged out his days in exile; every philosopher is treated as the
prophets were among the Jews.
Who would believe that in the eighteenth century a philosopher was
dragged before the secular tribunals, and treated as impious by the tribunals
of arguments, for having said that men could not practise the arts if they had
no hands? I do not despair that soon the first person who is so insolent as to
say that men could not think if they had no heads will be immediately
condemned to the galleys; "for," some young graduate will say to him, "the
soul is a pure spirit, the head is only matter; God can put the soul in the
heel, as well as in the brain; therefore I denounce you as impious."
The greatest misfortune of a man of letters is not perhaps being the object
of his confrères' jealousy, the victim of the cabal, the despised of the men of
power; but of being judged by fools. Fools go far sometimes, particularly
when bigotry is added to ineptitude, and to ineptitude the spirit of
vengeance. The further great misfortune of a man of letters is that ordinarily
he is unattached. A bourgeois buys himself a small position, and there he is
backed by his colleagues. If he suffers an injustice, he finds defenders at
once. The man of letters is unsuccoured; he resembles a flying-fish; if he
rises a little, the birds devour him; if he dives, the fish eat him.
Every public man pays tribute to malignity, but he is paid in honours and
gold.

METAMORPHOSIS, METEMPSYCHOSIS
Is it not very natural that all the metamorphoses with which the world is
covered should have made people imagine in the Orient, where everything
has been imagined, that our souls passed from one body to another? An
almost imperceptible speck becomes a worm, this worm becomes a
butterfly; an acorn transforms itself into an oak; an egg into a bird; water
becomes cloud and thunder; wood is changed into fire and ash; everything
in nature appears, in fine, metamorphosed. Soon people attributed to souls,
which were regarded as light figures, what they saw in more gross bodies.
The idea of metempsychosis is perhaps the most ancient dogma of the
known universe, and it still reigns in a large part of India and China.

MILTON, ON THE REPROACH OF
PLAGIARISM AGAINST
Some people have accused Milton of having taken his poem from the
tragedy of "The Banishment of Adam" by Grotius, and from the "Sarcotis"
of the Jesuit Masenius, printed at Cologne in 1654 and in 1661, long before
Milton gave his "Paradise Lost."
As regards Grotius, it was well enough known in England that Milton had
carried into his epic English poem a few Latin verses from the tragedy of
"Adam." It is in no wise to be a plagiarist to enrich one's language with the
beauties of a foreign language. No one accused Euripides of plagiarism for
having imitated in one of the choruses of "Iphigenia" the second book of the
Iliad; on the contrary, people were very grateful to him for this imitation,
which they regarded as a homage rendered to Homer on the Athenian stage.
Virgil never suffered a reproach for having happily imitated, in the Æneid, a
hundred verses by the first of Greek poets.
Against Milton the accusation was pushed a little further. A Scot, Will
Lauder by name, very attached to the memory of Charles I., whom Milton
had insulted with the most uncouth animosity, thought himself entitled to
dishonour the memory of this monarch's accuser. It was claimed that Milton
was guilty of an infamous imposture in robbing Charles I. of the sad glory
of being the author of the "Eikon Basilika," a book long dear to the
royalists, and which Charles I., it was said, had composed in his prison to
serve as consolation for his deplorable adversity.
Lauder, therefore, about the year of 1752, wanted to begin by proving that
Milton was only a plagiarist, before proving that he had acted as a forger
against the memory of the most unfortunate of kings; he procured some
editions of the poem of the "Sarcotis." It seemed evident that Milton had
imitated some passages of it, as he had imitated Grotius and Tasso.
But Lauder did not rest content there; he unearthed a bad translation in
Latin verse of the "Paradise Lost" of the English poet; and joining several

verses of this translation to those by Masenius, he thought thereby to render
the accusation more grave, and Milton's shame more complete. It was in
that, that he was badly deceived; his fraud was discovered. He wanted to
make Milton pass for a forger, and he was himself convicted of forging. No
one examined Masenius' poem of which at that time there were only a few
copies in Europe. All England, convinced of the Scot's poor trick, asked no
more about it. The accuser, confounded, was obliged to disavow his
manœuvre, and ask pardon for it.
Since then a new edition of Masenius was printed in 1757. The literary
public was surprised at the large number of very beautiful verses with
which the Sarcotis was sprinkled. It is in truth nothing but a long
declamation of the schools on the fall of man: but the exordium, the
invocation, the description of the garden of Eden, the portrait of Eve, that of
the devil, are precisely the same as in Milton. Further, it is the same subject,
the same plot, the same catastrophe. If the devil wishes, in Milton, to be
revenged on man for the harm which God has done him, he has precisely
the same plan in the work of the Jesuit Masenius; and he manifests it in
verses worthy maybe of the century of Augustus. ("Sarcotis," I., 271 et seq.)
One finds in both Masenius and Milton little episodes, trifling digressions
which are absolutely alike; both speak of Xerxes who covered the sea with
his ships. Both speak in the same tone of the Tower of Babel; both give the
same description of luxury, of pride, of avarice, of gluttony.
What most persuaded the generality of readers of Milton's plagiarism was
the perfect resemblance of the beginning of the two poems. Many
foreigners, after reading the exordium, had no doubt but that the rest of
Milton's poem was taken from Masenius. It is a very great error and easy to
recognize.
I do not think that the English poet imitated in all more than two hundred of
the Jesuit of Cologne's verses; and I dare say that he imitated only what was
worthy of being imitated. These two hundred verses are very beautiful; so
are Milton's; and the total of Masenius' poem, despite these two hundred
beautiful verses, is not worth anything at all.
Molière took two whole scenes from the ridiculous comedy of the "Pédant
Joué" by Cyrano de Bergerac. "These two scenes are good," he said as he

was jesting with his friends. "They belong to me by right: I recover my
property." After that anyone who treated the author of "Tartufe" and "Le
Misanthrope" as a plagiarist would have been very badly received.
It is certain that generally Milton, in his "Paradise", has in imitating flown
on his own wings; and it must be agreed that if he borrowed so many traits
from Grotius and from the Jesuit of Cologne, they are blended in the crowd
of original things which are his; in England he is always regarded as a very
great poet.
It is true that he should have avowed having translated two hundred of a
Jesuit's verses; but in his time, at the court of Charles II., people did not
worry themselves with either the Jesuits, or Milton, or "Paradise Lost", or
"Paradise Regained". All those things were either scoffed at, or unknown.

MOHAMMEDANS
I tell you again, ignorant imbeciles, whom other ignoramuses have made
believe that the Mohammedan religion is voluptuous and sensual, there is
not a word of truth in it; you have been deceived on this point as on so
many others.
Canons, monks, vicars even, if a law were imposed on you not to eat or
drink from four in the morning till ten at night, during the month of July,
when Lent came at this period; if you were forbidden to play at any game of
chance under pain of damnation; if wine were forbidden you under the
same pain; if you had to make a pilgrimage into the burning desert; if it
were enjoined on you to give at least two and a half per cent. of your
income to the poor; if, accustomed to enjoy possession of eighteen women,
the number were cut down suddenly by fourteen; honestly, would you dare
call that religion sensual?
The Latin Christians have so many advantages over the Mussulmans, I do
not say in the matter of war, but in the matter of doctrines; the Greek
Christians have so beaten them latterly from 1769 to 1773, that it is not
worth the trouble to indulge in unjust reproaches against Islam.
Try to retake from the Mohammedans all that they usurped; but it is easier
to calumniate them.
I hate calumny so much that I do not want even to impute foolishness to the
Turks, although I detest them as tyrants over women and enemies of the
arts.
I do not know why the historian of the Lower Empire maintains that
Mohammed speaks in his Koran of his journey into the sky: Mohammed
does not say a word about it; we have proved it.
One must combat ceaselessly. When one has destroyed an error, there is
always someone who resuscitates it.

MOUNTAIN
It is a very old, very universal fable that tells of the mountain which, having
frightened all the countryside by its outcry that it was in labour, was hissed
by all present when it brought into the world a mere mouse. The people in
the pit were not philosophers. Those who hissed should have admired. It
was as fine for the mountain to give birth to a mouse, as for the mouse to
give birth to a mountain. A rock which produces a rat is a very prodigious
thing; and never has the world seen anything approaching this miracle. All
the globes of the universe could not call a fly into existence. Where the
vulgar laugh, the philosopher admires; and he laughs where the vulgar open
their big, stupid eyes in astonishment.

NAKEDNESS
Why should one lock up a man or a woman who walked stark naked in the
street? and why is no one shocked by absolutely nude statues, by pictures of
the Madonna and of Jesus that may be seen in some churches?
It is probably that the human species lived long without being clothed.
People unacquainted with clothing have been found in more than one island
and in the American continent.
The most civilized hide the organs of generation with leaves, woven rushes,
feathers.
Whence comes this form of modesty? is it the instinct for lighting desires
by hiding what it gives pleasure to discover?
Is it really true that among slightly more civilized nations, such as the Jews
and half-Jews, there have been entire sects who would not worship God
save by stripping themselves of all their clothes? such were, it is said, the
Adamites and the Abelians. They gathered quite naked to sing the praises of
God: St. Epiphanius and St. Augustine say so. It is true that they were not
contemporary, and that they were very far from these people's country. But
at all events this madness is possible: it is not even more extraordinary,
more mad than a hundred other madnesses which have been round the
world one after the other.
We have said elsewhere that to-day even the Mohammedans still have
saints who are madmen, and who go naked like monkeys. It is very possible
that some fanatics thought it was better to present themselves to the Deity in
the state in which He formed them, than in the disguise invented by man. It
is possible that they showed everything out of piety. There are so few well-
made persons of both sexes, that nakedness might have inspired chastity, or
rather disgust, instead of increasing desire.
It is said particularly that the Abelians renounced marriage. If there were
any fine lads and pretty lasses among them, they were at least comparable

to St. Adhelme and to blessed Robert d'Arbrisselle, who slept with the
prettiest persons, that their continence might triumph all the more.
But I avow that it would have been very comic to see a hundred Helens and
Parises singing anthems, giving each other the kiss of peace, and making
agapæ.
All of which shows that there is no singularity, no extravagance, no
superstition which has not passed through the heads of mankind. Happy the
day when these superstitions do not trouble society and make of it a scene
of disorder, hatred and fury! It is better without doubt to pray God stark
naked, than to stain His altars and the public places with human blood.

NATURAL LAW
B: What is natural law?
A: The instinct which makes us feel justice.
B: What do you call just and unjust?
A: What appears such to the entire universe.
B: The universe is composed of many heads. It is said that in Lacedæmon
were applauded thefts for which people in Athens were condemned to the
mines.
A: Abuse of words, logomachy, equivocation; theft could not be committed
at Sparta, when everything was common property. What you call "theft"
was the punishment for avarice.
B: It was forbidden to marry one's sister in Rome. It was allowed among the
Egyptians, the Athenians and even among the Jews, to marry one's sister on
the father's side. It is but with regret that I cite that wretched little Jewish
people, who should assuredly not serve as a rule for anyone, and who
(putting religion aside) was never anything but a race of ignorant and
fanatic brigands. But still, according to their books, the young Thamar,
before being ravished by her brother Amnon, says to him:—"Nay, my
brother, do not thou this folly, but speak unto the king; for he will not
withhold me from thee." (2 Samuel xiii. 12, 13.)
A: Conventional law all that, arbitrary customs, fashions that pass: the
essential remains always. Show me a country where it was honourable to
rob me of the fruit of my toil, to break one's promise, to lie in order to hurt,
to calumniate, to assassinate, to poison, to be ungrateful towards a
benefactor, to beat one's father and one's mother when they offer you food.
B: Have you forgotten that Jean-Jacques, one of the fathers of the modern
Church, has said that "the first man who dared enclose and cultivate a piece
of land" was the enemy "of the human race," that he should have been

exterminated, and that "the fruits of the earth are for all, and that the land
belongs to none"? Have we not already examined together this lovely
proposition which is so useful to society (Discourse on Inequality, second
part)?
A: Who is this Jean-Jacques? he is certainly not either John the Baptist, nor
John the Evangelist, nor James the Greater, nor James the Less[19]; it must
be some Hunnish wit who wrote that abominable impertinence or some
poor joker bufo magro who wanted to laugh at what the entire world
regards as most serious. For instead of going to spoil the land of a wise and
industrious neighbour, he had only to imitate him; and every father of a
family having followed this example, behold soon a very pretty village
formed. The author of this passage seems to me a very unsociable animal.
B: You think then that by outraging and robbing the good man who has
surrounded his garden and chicken-run with a live hedge, he has been
wanting in respect towards the duties of natural law?
A: Yes, yes, once again, there is a natural law, and it does not consist either
in doing harm to others, or in rejoicing thereat.
B: I imagine that man likes and does harm only for his own advantage. But
so many people are led to look for their own interest in the misfortune of
others, vengeance is so violent a passion, there are such disastrous examples
of it; ambition, still more fatal, has inundated the world with so much
blood, that when I retrace for myself the horrible picture, I am tempted to
avow that man is a very devil. In vain have I in my heart the notion of
justice and injustice; an Attila courted by St. Leo, a Phocas flattered by St.
Gregory with the most cowardly baseness, an Alexander VI. sullied with so
many incests, so many murders, so many poisonings, with whom the weak
Louis XII., who is called "the good," makes the most infamous and intimate
alliance; a Cromwell whose protection Cardinal Mazarin seeks, and for
whom he drives out of France the heirs of Charles I., Louis XIV.'s first
cousins, etc., etc.; a hundred like examples set my ideas in disorder, and I
know no longer where I am.
A: Well, do storms stop our enjoyment of to-day's beautiful sun? Did the
earthquake which destroyed half the city of Lisbon stop your making the
voyage to Madrid very comfortably? If Attila was a brigand and Cardinal

Mazarin a rogue, are there not princes and ministers who are honest people?
Has it not been remarked that in the war of 1701, Louis XIV.'s council was
composed of the most virtuous men? The Duc de Beauvilliers, the Marquis
de Torci, the Maréchal de Villars, Chamillart lastly who passed for being
incapable, but never for dishonest. Does not the idea of justice subsist
always? It is upon that idea that all laws are founded. The Greeks called
them "daughters of heaven," which only means daughters of nature. Have
you no laws in your country?
B: Yes, some good, some bad.
A: Where, if it was not in the notions of natural law, did you get the idea
that every man has within himself when his mind is properly made? You
must have obtained it there, or nowhere.
B: You are right, there is a natural law; but it is still more natural to many
people to forget it.
A: It is natural also to be one-eyed, hump-backed, lame, deformed,
unhealthy; but one prefers people who are well made and healthy.
B: Why are there so many one-eyed and deformed minds?
A: Peace! But go to the article on "Power."

FOOTNOTES:
[19] Jean=John: Jacques=James.

NATURE
Dialogue between the Philosopher and Nature

THE PHILOSOPHER:
Who are you, Nature? I live in you; for fifty years have I been seeking you,
and I have not found you yet.
NATURE:
The ancient Egyptians, who lived, it is said, some twelve hundred years,
made me the same reproach. They called me Isis; they put a great veil on
my head, and they said that nobody could lift it.
THE PHILOSOPHER:
That is what makes me address myself to you. I have been able to measure
some of your globes, know their paths, assign the laws of motion; but I
have not been able to learn who you are.
Are you always active? are you always passive? did your elements arrange
themselves, as water deposits itself on sand, oil on water, air on oil? have
you a mind which directs all your operations, as councils are inspired as
soon as they are assembled, although their members are sometimes
ignoramuses? I pray you tell me the answer to your riddle.
NATURE:
I am the great everything. I know no more about it. I am not a
mathematician; and everything is arranged in my world according to
mathematical laws. Guess if you can how it is all done.
THE PHILOSOPHER:
Certainly, since your great everything does not know mathematics, and
since all your laws are most profoundly geometrical, there must be an

eternal geometer who directs you, a supreme intelligence who presides over
your operations.
NATURE:
You are right; I am water, earth, fire, atmosphere, metal, mineral, stone,
vegetable, animal. I feel indeed that there is in me an intelligence; you have
an intelligence, you do not see it. I do not see mine either; I feel this
invisible power; I cannot know it: why should you, who are but a small part
of me, want to know what I do not know?
THE PHILOSOPHER:
We are curious. I want to know how being so crude in your mountains, in
your deserts, in your seas, you appear nevertheless so industrious in your
animals, in your vegetables?
NATURE:
My poor child do you want me to tell you the truth? It is that I have been
given a name which does not suit me; my name is "Nature", and I am all art.
THE PHILOSOPHER:
That word upsets all my ideas. What! nature is only art?
NATURE:
Yes, without any doubt. Do you not know that there is an infinite art in
those seas and those mountains that you find so crude? do you not know
that all those waters gravitate towards the centre of the earth, and mount
only by immutable laws; that those mountains which crown the earth are
the immense reservoirs of the eternal snows which produce unceasingly
those fountains, lakes and rivers without which my animal species and my
vegetable species would perish? And as for what are called my animal
kingdom, my vegetable kingdom and my mineral kingdom, you see here
only three; learn that I have millions of kingdoms. But if you consider only
the formation of an insect, of an ear of corn, of gold, of copper, everything
will appear as marvels of art.
THE PHILOSOPHER:

It is true. The more I think about it, the more I see that you are only the art
of I know not what most potent and industrious great being, who hides
himself and who makes you appear. All reasoners since Thales, and
probably long before him, have played at blind man's buff with you; they
have said: "I have you!" and they had nothing. We all resemble Ixion; he
thought he was kissing Juno, and all that he possessed was a cloud.
NATURE:
Since I am all that is, how can a being such as you, so small a part of
myself, seize me? Be content, atoms my children, with seeing a few atoms
that surround you, with drinking a few drops of my milk, with vegetating
for a few moments on my breast, and with dying without having known
your mother and your nurse.
THE PHILOSOPHER:
My dear mother, tell me something of why you exist, of why there is
anything.
NATURE:
I will answer you as I have answered for so many centuries all those who
have interrogated me about first principles: I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT
THEM.
THE PHILOSOPHER:
Would not non-existence be better than this multitude of existences made in
order to be continually dissolved, this crowd of animals born and
reproduced in order to devour others and to be devoured, this crowd of
sentient beings formed for so many painful sensations, that other crowd of
intelligences which so rarely hear reason. What is the good of all that,
Nature?
NATURE:
Oh! go and ask Him who made me.

NECESSARY
OSMIN:
Do you not say that everything is necessary?
SELIM:
If everything were not necessary, it would follow that God had made
useless things.
OSMIN:
That is to say that it was necessary to the divine nature to make all that it
has made?
SELIM:
I think so, or at least I suspect it; there are people who think otherwise; I do
not understand them; maybe they are right. I am afraid of disputes on this
subject.
OSMIN:
It is also of another necessary that I want to talk to you.
SELIM:
What! of what is necessary to an honest man that he may live? of the
misfortune to which one is reduced when one lacks the necessary?
OSMIN:
No; for what is necessary to one is not always necessary to the other: it is
necessary for an Indian to have rice, for an Englishman to have meat; a fur
is necessary to a Russian, and a gauzy stuff to an African; this man thinks
that twelve coach-horses are necessary to him, that man limits himself to a
pair of shoes, a third walks gaily barefoot: I want to talk to you of what is
necessary to all men.

SELIM:
It seems to me that God has given all that is necessary to this species: eyes
to see with, feet for walking, a mouth for eating, an œsophagus for
swallowing, a stomach for digesting, a brain for reasoning, organs for
producing one's fellow creature.
OSMIN:
How does it happen then that men are born lacking a part of these necessary
things?
SELIM:
It is because the general laws of nature have brought about some accidents
which have made monsters to be born; but generally man is provided with
everything that is necessary to him in order to live in society.
OSMIN:
Are there notions common to all men which serve to make them live in
society?
SELIM:
Yes. I have travelled with Paul Lucas, and wherever I went, I saw that
people respected their father and their mother, that people believed
themselves to be obliged to keep their promises, that people pitied
oppressed innocents, that they hated persecution, that they regarded liberty
of thought as a rule of nature, and the enemies of this liberty as enemies of
the human race; those who think differently seemed to me badly organized
creatures, monsters like those who are born without eyes and hands.
OSMIN:
Are these necessary things in all time and in all places?
SELIM:
Yes, if they were not they would not be necessary to the human species.
OSMIN:

So a belief which is new is not necessary to this species. Men could very
well live in society and accomplish their duty to God, before believing that
Mahomet had frequent interviews with the angel Gabriel.
SELIM:
Nothing is clearer; it would be ridiculous to think that man could not
accomplish his duty to God before Mahomet came into the world; it was not
at all necessary for the human species to believe in the Alcoran: the world
went along before Mahomet just as it goes along to-day. If Mahometanism
had been necessary to the world, it would have existed in all places; God
who has given us all two eyes to see the sun, would have given us all an
intelligence to see the truth of the Mussulman religion. This sect is therefore
only like the positive laws that change according to time and place, like the
fashions, like the opinions of the natural philosophers which follow one
after the other.
The Mussulman sect could not be essentially necessary to mankind.
OSMIN:
But since it exists, God has permitted it?
SELIM:
Yes, as he permits the world to be filled with foolishness, error and
calamity; that is not to say that men are all essentially made to be fools and
miscreants. He permits that some men be eaten by snakes; but one cannot
say—"God made man to be eaten by snakes."
OSMIN:
What do you mean when you say "God permits"? can nothing happen
without His order? permit, will and do, are they not the same thing for
Him?
SELIM:
He permits crime, but He does not commit it.
OSMIN:

Committing a crime is acting against divine justice, it is disobeying God.
Well, God cannot disobey Himself, He cannot commit crime; but He has
made man in such a way that man may commit many crimes: where does
that come from?
SELIM:
There are people who know, but I do not; all that I know is that the Alcoran
is ridiculous, although from time to time it has some tolerably good things;
certainly the Alcoran was not at all necessary to man; I stick by that: I see
clearly what is false, and I know very little that is true.
OSMIN:
I thought you would instruct me, and you teach me nothing.
SELIM:
Is it not a great deal to recognize people who deceive you, and the gross and
dangerous errors which they retail to you?
OSMIN:
I should have ground for complaint against a doctor who showed me all the
harmful plants, and who did not show me one salutary plant.
SELIM:
I am not a doctor, and you are not ill; but it seems to me I should be giving
you a very good prescription if I said to you: "Put not your trust in all the
inventions of charlatans, worship God, be an honest man, and believe that
two and two make four."

NEW NOVELTIES
It seems that the first words of Ovid's "Metamorphoses," In nova fert
animus, are the motto of the human race. Nobody is touched by the
admirable spectacle of the sun which rises, or rather seems to rise, every
day; everybody runs to see the smallest little meteor which appears for an
instant in that accumulation of vapours, called the sky, that surround the
earth.
An itinerant bookseller does not burden himself with a Virgil, with a
Horace, but with a new book, even though it be detestable. He draws you
aside and says to you: "Sir, do you want some books from Holland?"
From the beginning of the world women have complained of the fickleness
that is imputed to them in favour of the first new object which presents
itself, and whose novelty is often its only merit. Many ladies (it must be
confessed, despite the infinite respect we have for them) have treated men
as they complain they have themselves been treated; and the story of
Gioconda is much older than Ariosto.
Perhaps this universal taste for novelty is one of nature's favours. People cry
to us: "Be content with what you have, desire nothing that is beyond your
estate, restrain your curiosity, tame your intellectual disquiet." These are
very good maxims; but if we had always followed them, we should still be
eating acorns, we should be sleeping in the open air, and we should not
have had Corneille, Racine, Molière, Poussin, Lebrun, Lemoine or Pigalle.

PHILOSOPHER
Philosopher, lover of wisdom, that is to say, of truth. All philosophers have
had this dual character; there is not one in antiquity who has not given
mankind examples of virtue and lessons in moral truths. They have all
contrived to be deceived about natural philosophy; but natural philosophy is
so little necessary for the conduct of life, that the philosophers had no need
of it. It has taken centuries to learn a part of nature's laws. One day was
sufficient for a wise man to learn the duties of man.
The philosopher is not enthusiastic; he does not set himself up as a prophet;
he does not say that he is inspired by the gods. Thus I shall not put in the
rank of philosophers either the ancient Zarathustra, or Hermes, or the
ancient Orpheus, or any of those legislators of whom the nations of
Chaldea, Persia, Syria, Egypt and Greece boasted. Those who styled
themselves children of the gods were the fathers of imposture; and if they
used lies for the teaching of truths, they were unworthy of teaching them;
they were not philosophers; they were at best very prudent liars.
By what fatality, shameful maybe for the Western peoples, is it necessary to
go to the far Orient to find a wise man who is simple, unostentatious, free
from imposture, who taught men to live happily six hundred years before
our vulgar era, at a time when the whole of the North was ignorant of the
usage of letters, and when the Greeks were barely beginning to distinguish
themselves by their wisdom?
This wise man is Confucius, who being legislator never wanted to deceive
men. What more beautiful rule of conduct has ever been given since him in
the whole world?
"Rule a state as you rule a family; one can only govern one's family well by
setting the example.
"Virtue should be common to both husbandman and monarch.

"Apply thyself to the trouble of preventing crimes in order to lessen the
trouble of punishing them.
"Under the good kings Yao and Xu the Chinese were good; under the bad
kings Kie and Chu they were wicked.
"Do to others as to thyself.
"Love all men; but cherish honest people. Forget injuries, and never
kindnesses.
"I have seen men incapable of study; I have never seen them incapable of
virtue."
Let us admit that there is no legislator who has proclaimed truths more
useful to the human race.
A host of Greek philosophers have since taught an equally pure moral
philosophy. If they had limited themselves to their empty systems of natural
philosophy, their names would be pronounced to-day in mockery only. If
they are still respected, it is because they were just and that they taught men
to be so.
One cannot read certain passages of Plato, and notably the admirable
exordium of the laws of Zaleucus, without feeling in one's heart the love of
honourable and generous actions. The Romans have their Cicero, who alone
is worth perhaps all the philosophers of Greece. After him come men still
more worthy of respect, but whom one almost despairs of imitating;
Epictetus in bondage, the Antonines and the Julians on the throne.
Which is the citizen among us who would deprive himself, like Julian,
Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius, of all the delicacies of our flabby and
effeminate lives? who would sleep as they did on the ground? who would
impose on himself their frugality? who, as they did, would march barefoot
and bareheaded at the head of the armies, exposed now to the heat of the
sun, now to the hoar-frost? who would command all their passions as they
did? There are pious men among us; but where are the wise men? where are
the resolute, just and tolerant souls?

There have been philosophers of the study in France; and all, except
Montaigne, have been persecuted. It is, I think, the last degree of the
malignity of our nature, to wish to oppress these very philosophers who
would correct it.
I quite understand that the fanatics of one sect slaughter the enthusiasts of
another sect, that the Franciscans hate the Dominicans, and that a bad artist
intrigues to ruin one who surpasses him; but that the wise Charron should
have been threatened with the loss of his life, that the learned and generous
Ramus should have been assassinated, that Descartes should have been
forced to flee to Holland to escape the fury of the ignorant, that Gassendi
should have been obliged to withdraw several times to Digne, far from the
calumnies of Paris; these things are a nation's eternal shame.

POWER, OMNIPOTENCE
I suppose that the man who reads this article is convinced that this world is
formed with intelligence, and that a little astronomy and anatomy suffices to
make this universal and supreme intelligence admired.
Can he know by himself if this intelligence is omnipotent, that is to say,
infinitely powerful? Has he the least notion of the infinite, to understand
what is an infinite power?
The celebrated historian philosopher, David Hume, says in "Particular
Providence": "A weight of ten ounces is lifted in a balance by another
weight; therefore this other weight is of more than ten ounces; but one can
adduce no reason why it should weigh a hundred ounces."
One can say likewise: You recognize a supreme intelligence strong enough
to form you, to preserve you for a limited time, to reward you, to punish
you. Do you know enough of this power to demonstrate that it can do still
more?
How can you prove by your reason that this being can do more than he has
done?
The life of all animals is short. Could he make it longer?
All animals are the prey of each other: everything is born to be devoured.
Could he form without destroying?
You do not know what nature is. You cannot therefore know if nature has
not forced him to do only the things he has done.
This globe is only a vast field of destruction and carnage. Either the great
Being has been able to make of it an eternal abode of delight for all sentient
beings, or He has not been able. If He has been able and if He has not done
so, fear to regard him as malevolent; but if He has not been able, fear not to
look on Him as a very great power, circumscribed by nature in His limits.

Whether or no His power is infinite does not regard you. It is a matter of
indifference to a subject whether his master possesses five hundred leagues
of land or five thousand; he is subject neither more nor less.
Which would be the greater insult to this ineffable Being, to say: "He has
made miserable men without being able to dispense with them, or He has
made them for His pleasure?"
Many sects represent Him as cruel; others, for fear of admitting a wicked
God, have the audacity to deny His existence. Is it not better to say that
probably the necessity of His nature and the necessity of things have
determined everything?
The world is the theatre of moral ill and physical ill; one is only too aware
of it: and the "All is good" of Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke and Pope, is only a
witty paradox, a poor joke.
The two principles of Zarathustra and Manes, so carefully scrutinized by
Bayle, are a still poorer joke. They are, as has been observed already,
Molière's two doctors, one of whom says to the other: "Grant me the
emetic, and I will grant you the bleeding." Manichæism is absurd; and that
is why it has had so many supporters.
I admit that I have not been enlightened by all that Bayle says about the
Manichæans and the Paulicians. That is controversy; I would have preferred
pure philosophy. Why discuss our mysteries beside Zarathustra's? As soon
as you dare to treat of our mysteries, which need only faith and no
reasoning, you open precipices for yourself.
The trash in our scholastic theology has nothing to do with the trash in
Zarathustra's reveries.
Why debate original sin with Zarathustra? There was never any question of
it save in St. Augustine's time. Neither Zarathustra nor any legislator of
antiquity had ever heard speak of it.
If you dispute with Zarathustra, put under lock and key the old and the new
Testaments which he did not know, and which one must revere without
desiring to explain them.

What then should I have said to Zarathustra? My reason cannot admit two
gods who fight, that is good only in a poem where Minerva quarrels with
Mars. My feeble reason is much more content with a single great Being,
whose essence was to make, and who has made all that nature has permitted
Him, than it is satisfied with two great Beings, one of whom spoils the
works of the other. Your bad principle Ahriman, has not been able to upset a
single one of the astronomical and physical laws of the good principle
Ormuzd; everything progresses in the heavens with the greatest regularity.
Why should the wicked Ahriman have had power over this little globe of
the world?
If I had been Ahriman, I should have attacked Ormuzd in his fine grand
provinces of so many suns and stars. I should not have limited myself to
making war on him in a little village.
There is much evil in this village: but whence have you the knowledge that
this evil is not inevitable?
You are forced to admit an intelligence diffused over the universe; but (1)
do you know, for instance, if this power reaches right to foreseeing the
future? You have asserted it a thousand times; but you have never been able
either to prove it, or to understand it. You cannot know how any being
whatever sees what is not. Well, the future is not; therefore no being can see
it. You are reduced to saying that He foresees it; but foreseeing is
conjecturing. This is the opinion of the Socinians.
Well, a God who, according to you, conjectures, can be mistaken. In your
system He is really mistaken; for if He had foreseen that His enemy would
poison all His works here below, He would not have produced them; He
would not have prepared for Himself the shame of being continually
vanquished.
(2) Do I not do Him much more honour by saying that He has made
everything by the necessity of His nature, than you do Him by raising an
enemy who disfigures, who soils, who destroys all His works here below?
(3) It is not to have an unworthy idea of God to say that, having formed
thousands of millions of worlds where death and evil do not dwell, it was
necessary that evil and death should dwell in this world.

(4) It is not to disparage God to say that He could not form man without
giving him self-esteem; that this self-esteem could not lead him without
misguiding him almost always; that his passions are necessary, but that they
are disastrous; that propagation cannot be executed without desire; that
desire cannot animate man without quarrels; that these quarrels necessarily
bring wars in their train, etc.
(5) When he sees part of the combinations of the animal, vegetable and
mineral kingdoms, and this globe pierced everywhere like a sieve, from
which escape in crowds so many exhalations, what philosopher will be bold
enough, what scholastic foolish enough to see clearly that nature could stop
the effects of volcanoes, the inclemencies of the atmosphere, the violence of
the winds, the plagues, and all the destructive scourges?
(6) One must be very powerful, very strong, very industrious, to have
formed lions which devour bulls, and to have produced men who invent
arms to kill at one blow, not only bulls and lions, but even each other. One
must be very powerful to have caused to be born spiders which spin webs to
catch flies; but that is not to be omnipotent, infinitely powerful.
(7) If the great Being had been infinitely powerful, there is no reason why
He should not have made sentient animals infinitely happy; He has not done
so, therefore He was not able.
(8) All the sects of the philosophers have stranded on the reef of moral and
physical ill. It only remains to avow that God having acted for the best has
not been able to act better.
(9) This necessity settles all the difficulties and finishes all the disputes. We
have not the impudence to say—"All is good." We say—"All is the least
bad that is possible."
(10) Why does a child often die in its mother's womb? Why is another who
has had the misfortune to be born, reserved for torments as long as his life,
terminated by a frightful death?
Why has the source of life been poisoned all over the world since the
discovery of America? why since the seventh century of our era does
smallpox carry off the eighth part of the human race? why since all time
have bladders been subject to being stone quarries? why the plague, war,

famine, the inquisition? Turn in every direction, you will find no other
solution than that everything has been necessary.
I speak here to philosophers only and not to theologians. We know well that
faith is the thread in the labyrinth. We know that the fall of Adam and Eve,
original sin, the immense power given to the devil, the predilection
accorded by the great Being to the Jewish people, and the baptism
substituted for the amputation of the prepuce, are the answers which explain
everything. We have argued only against Zarathustra and not against the
university of Conimbre or Coïmbre, to which we submit in our articles.

PRAYERS
We do not know any religion without prayers, even the Jews had some,
although there was not among them any public form, until the time when
they sang canticles in their synagogues, which happened very late.
All men, in their desires and their fears, invoked the aid of a deity. Some
philosophers, more respectful to the Supreme Being, and less
condescending to human frailty, for all prayer desired only resignation. It is
indeed what seems proper as between creature and creator. But philosophy
is not made to govern the world; she rises above the common herd; she
speaks a language that the crowd cannot understand. It would be suggesting
to fishwives that they should study conic sections.
Even among the philosophers, I do not believe that anyone apart from
Maximus of Tyre has treated of this matter; this is the substance of
Maximus' ideas.
The Eternal has His intentions from all eternity. If prayer accords with His
immutable wishes, it is quite useless to ask of Him what He has resolved to
do. If one prays Him to do the contrary of what He has resolved, it is
praying Him to be weak, frivolous, inconstant; it is believing that He is
thus, it is to mock Him. Either you ask Him a just thing; in this case He
must do it, and the thing will be done without your praying Him for it;
entreating Him is even to distrust Him: or the thing is unjust, and then you
outrage Him. You are worthy or unworthy of the grace you implore: if
worthy, He knows it better than you; if unworthy, you commit a crime the
more in asking for what you do not deserve.
In a word, we pray to God only because we have made Him in our own
image. We treat Him like a pasha, like a sultan whom one may provoke and
appease.
In short, all nations pray to God: wise men resign themselves and obey
Him.

Let us pray with the people, and resign ourselves with the wise men.

PRÉCIS OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY
I have spent nearly forty years of my pilgrimage in two or three corners of
this world seeking the philosopher's stone that is called Truth. I have
consulted all the adepts of antiquity, Epicurus and Augustine, Plato and
Malebranche, and I have remained in my poverty. Maybe in all these
philosophers' crucibles there are one or two ounces of gold; but all the rest
is residue, dull mud, from which nothing can be born.
It seems to me that the Greeks our masters wrote much more to show their
intelligence than that they used their intelligence in order to learn. I do not
see a single author of antiquity who had a coherent system, a clear,
methodical system progressing from consequence to consequence.
When I wanted to compare and combine the systems of Plato, of the
preceptor of Alexander, of Pythagoras and of the Orientals, here, more or
less, is what I was able to gather:
Chance is a word empty of sense; nothing can exist without a cause. The
world is arranged according to mathematical laws; it is therefore arranged
by an intelligence.
It is not an intelligent being such as I am, who directed the formation of this
world, for I cannot form a mite; therefore this world is the work of a
prodigiously superior intelligence.
Does this being, who possesses intelligence and power in so high a degree,
exist necessarily? It must be so, for either the being received existence from
another, or from its own nature. If the being received existence from
another, which is very difficult to imagine, I must have recourse to this
other, and this other will be the prime author. To whichever side I turn I
have to admit a prime author, potent and intelligent, who is such necessarily
by his own nature.
Did this prime author produce things out of nothing? that is not imaginable;
to create out of nothing is to change nothing into something. I must not

admit such a production unless I find invincible reasons which force me to
admit what my intelligence can never comprehend.
All that exists appears to exist necessarily, since it exists. For if to-day there
is a reason for the existence of things, there was one yesterday, there was
one in all time; and this cause must always have had its effect, without
which it would have been during eternity a useless cause.
But how shall things have always existed, being visibly under the hand of
the prime author? This power therefore must always have acted; in the same
way, nearly, that there is no sun without light, so there is no movement
without a being that passes from one point of space to another point.
There is therefore a potent and intelligent being who has always acted; and
if this being had never acted, of what use would his existence have been to
him?
All things are therefore eternal emanations of this prime author.
But how imagine that stone and mud are emanations of the eternal Being,
potent and intelligent?
Of two things one, either the matter of this stone and this mud exist
necessarily by themselves, or they exist necessarily through this prime
author; there is no middle course.
Thus, therefore, there are only two choices to make, admit either matter
eternal by itself, or matter issuing eternally from the potent, intelligent
eternal Being.
But, either subsisting by its own nature, or emanated from the producing
Being, it exists from all eternity, because it exists, and there is no reason
why it should not have existed before.
If matter is eternally necessary, it is therefore impossible, it is therefore
contradictory that it does not exist; but what man can affirm that it is
impossible, that it is contradictory that this pebble and this fly have not
existence? One is, nevertheless, forced to suppress this difficulty which
astonishes the imagination more than it contradicts the principles of
reasoning.

In fact, as soon as you have imagined that everything has emanated from
the supreme and intelligent Being, that nothing has emanated from the
Being without reason, that this Being existing always, must always have
acted, that consequently all things must have eternally issued from the
womb of His existence, you should no more refuse to believe in the matter
of which this pebble and this fly, an eternal production, are formed, than
you refuse to imagine light as an eternal emanation from the omnipotent
Being.
Since I am a being with extension and thought, my extension and my
thought are therefore necessary productions of this Being. It is evident to
me that I cannot give myself either extension or thought. I have therefore
received both from this necessary Being.
Can He give me what He has not? I have intelligence and I am in space;
therefore He is intelligent, and He is in space.
To say that this eternal Being, this omnipotent God, has from all time
necessarily filled the universe with His productions, is not to deprive Him
of His liberty; on the contrary, for liberty is only the power of acting. God
has always acted to the full; therefore God has always made use of the
fullness of His liberty.
The liberty that is called liberty of indifference is a phrase without idea, an
absurdity; for it would be determination without reason; it would be an
effect without a cause. Therefore, God cannot have this so-called liberty
which is a contradiction in terms. He has therefore always acted through
this same necessity which makes His existence.
It is therefore impossible for the world to be without God, it is impossible
for God to be without the world.
This world is filled with beings who succeed each other, therefore God has
always produced beings who succeed each other.
These preliminary assertions are the basis of the ancient Oriental
philosophy and of that of the Greeks. One must except Democritus and
Epicurus, whose corpuscular philosophy combated these dogmas. But let us
remark that the Epicureans relied on an entirely erroneous natural
philosophy, and that the metaphysical system of all the other philosophers

holds good with all the systems of natural philosophy. The whole of nature,
excepting the vacuum, contradicts Epicurus; and no phenomenon
contradicts the philosophy which I have just explained. Well, is not a
philosophy which is in accord with all that passes in nature, and which
contents the most careful minds, superior to all other non-revealed systems?
After the assertions of the ancient philosophers, which I have reconciled as
far as has been possible for me, what is left to us? a chaos of doubts and
chimeras. I do not think that there has ever been a philosopher with a
system who did not at the end of his life avow that he had wasted his time.
It must be admitted that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been
much more useful to mankind than the inventors of syllogisms: the man
who invented the shuttle surpasses with a vengeance the man who imagined
innate ideas.

PREJUDICES
Prejudice is an opinion without judgment. Thus all over the world do people
inspire children with all the opinions they desire, before the children can
judge.
There are some universal, necessary prejudices, which even make virtue. In
all countries children are taught to recognize a rewarding and revenging
God; to respect and love their father and their mother; to look on theft as a
crime, selfish lying as a vice before they can guess what is a vice and what
a virtue.
There are then some very good prejudices; they are those which are ratified
by judgment when one reasons.
Sentiment is not a simple prejudice; it is something much stronger. A
mother does not love her son because she has been told she must love him;
she cherishes him happily in spite of herself. It is not through prejudice that
you run to the help of an unknown child about to fall into a precipice, or be
eaten by a beast.
But it is through prejudice that you will respect a man clad in certain
clothes, walking gravely, speaking likewise. Your parents have told you that
you should bow before this man; you respect him before knowing whether
he merits your respect; you grow in years and in knowledge; you perceive
that this man is a charlatan steeped in arrogance, self-interest and artifice;
you despise what you revered, and the prejudice cedes to judgment.
Through prejudice you have believed the fables with which your childhood
was cradled; you have been told that the Titans made war on the gods, and
Venus was amorous of Adonis; when you are twelve you accept these fables
as truths; when you are twenty you look on them as ingenious allegories.
Let us examine briefly the different sorts of prejudices, so as to set our
affairs in order. We shall be perhaps like those who, at the time of Law's
system, perceived that they had calculated imaginary riches.

Prejudices of the Senses

Is it not strange that our eyes always deceive us, even when we have very
good sight, and that on the contrary our ears do not deceive us? Let your
well-informed ear hear "You are beautiful, I love you"; it is quite certain
that someone has not said "I hate you, you are ugly": but you see a smooth
mirror; it is demonstrated that you are mistaken, it has a very uneven
surface. You see the sun as about two feet in diameter; it is demonstrated
that it is a million times bigger than the earth.
It seems that God has put truth in your ears, and error in your eyes; but
study optics, and you will see that God has not deceived you, and that it is
impossible for objects to appear to you otherwise than you see them in the
present state of things.

Physical Prejudices

The sun rises, the moon also, the earth is motionless: these are natural
physical prejudices. But that lobsters are good for the blood, because when
cooked they are red; that eels cure paralysis because they wriggle; that the
moon affects our maladies because one day someone observed that a sick
man had an increase of fever during the waning of the moon; these ideas
and a thousand others are the errors of ancient charlatans who judged
without reasoning, and who, being deceived, deceived others.

Historical Prejudices

Most historical stories have been believed without examination, and this
belief is a prejudice. Fabius Pictor relates that many centuries before him, a
vestal of the town of Alba, going to draw water in her pitcher, was ravished,
that she gave birth to Romulus and Remus, that they were fed by a she-
wolf, etc. The Roman people believed this fable; they did not examine
whether at that time there were vestals in Latium, whether it were probable
that a king's daughter would leave her convent with her pitcher, whether it
were likely that a she-wolf would suckle two children instead of eating
them; the prejudice established itself.

A monk writes that Clovis, being in great danger at the battle of Tolbiac,
made a vow to turn Christian if he escaped; but is it natural to address
oneself to a foreign god on such an occasion? is it not then that the religion
in which one was born acts most potently? Which is the Christian who, in a
battle against the Turks, will not address himself to the Holy Virgin rather
than to Mohammed? It is added that a pigeon brought the holy phial in its
beak to anoint Clovis, and that an angel brought the oriflamme to lead him;
prejudice believed all the little stories of this kind. Those who understand
human nature know well that Clovis the usurper and Rolon (or Rol) the
usurper turned Christian in order to govern the Christians more surely, just
as the Turkish usurpers turned Mussulman in order to govern the
Mussulmans more surely.

Religious Prejudices

If your nurse has told you that Ceres rules over the crops, or that Vistnou
and Xaca made themselves men several times, or that Sammonocodom
came to cut down a forest, or that Odin awaits you in his hall near Jutland,
or that Mohammed or somebody else made a journey into the sky; if lastly
your tutor comes to drive into your brain what your nurse has imprinted on
it you keep it for life. If your judgment wishes to rise against these
prejudices, your neighbours and, above all, your neighbours' wives cry out
"Impious reprobate," and dismay you; your dervish, fearing to see his
income diminish, accuses you to the cadi, and this cadi has you impaled if
he can, because he likes ruling over fools, and thinks that fools obey better
than others: and that will last until your neighbours and the dervish and the
cadi begin to understand that foolishness is good for nothing, and that
persecution is abominable.

RARE
Rare in natural philosophy is the opposite of dense. In moral philosophy, it
is the opposite of common.
This last variety of rare is what excites admiration. One never admires what
is common, one enjoys it.
An eccentric thinks himself above the rest of wretched mortals when he has
in his study a rare medal that is good for nothing, a rare book that nobody
has the courage to read, an old engraving by Albrecht Durer, badly designed
and badly printed: he triumphs if he has in his garden a stunted tree from
America. This eccentric has no taste; he has only vanity. He has heard say
that the beautiful is rare; but he should know that all that is rare is not
beautiful.
Beauty is rare in all nature's works, and in all works of art.
Whatever ill things have been said of women, I maintain that it is rarer to
find women perfectly beautiful than passibly good.
You will meet in the country ten thousand women attached to their homes,
laborious, sober, feeding, rearing, teaching their children; and you will find
barely one whom you could show at the theatres of Paris, London, Naples,
or in the public gardens, and who would be looked on as a beauty.
Likewise, in works of art, you have ten thousand daubs and scrawls to one
masterpiece.
If everything were beautiful and good, it is clear that one would no longer
admire anything; one would enjoy. But would one have pleasure in
enjoying? that is a big question.
Why have the beautiful passages in "The Cid," "The Horaces," "Cinna," had
such a prodigious success? Because in the profound night in which people
were plunged, they suddenly saw shine a new light that they did not expect.
It was because this beauty was the rarest thing in the world.

The groves of Versailles were a beauty unique in the world, as were then
certain passages of Corneille. St. Peter's, Rome, is unique.
But let us suppose that all the churches of Europe were equal to St. Peter's,
Rome, that all statues were Venus dei Medici, that all tragedies were as
beautiful as Racine's "Iphigénie", all works of poetry as well written as
Boileau's "Art Poétique", all comedies as good as "Tartufe", and thus in
every sphere; would you then have as much pleasure in enjoying
masterpieces become common as they made you taste when they were rare?
I say boldly "No!"; and I believe that the ancient school, which so rarely
was right, was right when it said: Ab assuetis non fit passio, habit does not
make passion.
But, my dear reader, will it be the same with the works of nature? Will you
be disgusted if all the maids are so beautiful as Helen; and you, ladies, if all
the lads are like Paris? Let us suppose that all wines are excellent, will you
have less desire to drink? if the partridges, pheasants, pullets are common at
all times, will you have less appetite? I say boldly again "No!", despite the
axiom of the schools, "Habit does not make passion": and the reason, you
know it, is that all the pleasures which nature gives us are always recurring
needs, necessary enjoyments, and that the pleasures of the arts are not
necessary. It is not necessary for a man to have groves where water gushes
to a height of a hundred feet from the mouth of a marble face, and on
leaving these groves to go to see a fine tragedy. But the two sexes are
always necessary to each other. The table and the bed are necessities. The
habit of being alternately on these two thrones will never disgust you.
In Paris a few years ago people admired a rhinoceros. If there were in one
province ten thousand rhinoceroses, men would run after them only to kill
them. But let there be a hundred thousand beautiful women men will always
run after them to ... honour them.

REASON
At the time when all France was mad about Law's system, and Law was
controller-general, there came to him in the presence of a great assembly a
man who was always right, who always had reason on his side. Said he to
Law:
"Sir, you are the biggest madman, the biggest fool, or the biggest rogue who
has yet appeared among us; and that is saying a great deal: this is how I
prove it. You have imagined that a state's wealth can be increased tenfold
with paper; but as this paper can represent only the money that is
representative of true wealth, the products of the land and industry, you
should have begun by giving us ten times more corn, wine, cloth, canvas,
etc. That is not enough, you must be sure of your market. But you make ten
times as many notes as we have of silver and commodities, therefore you
are ten times more extravagant, or more inept, or more of a rogue than all
the comptrollers who have preceded you. This is how I prove my major."
Hardly had he started his major than he was conducted to Saint-Lazare.
When he came out of Saint-Lazare, where he studied much and
strengthened his reason, he went to Rome; he asked for a public audience of
the Pope, on condition that he was not interrupted in his harangue; and he
spoke to the Pope in these terms:
"Holy Father, you are an antichrist and this is how I prove it to Your
Holiness. I call antichrist the man who does the contrary to what Christ did
and commanded. Now Christ was poor, and you are very rich; he paid
tribute, and you exact tribute; he submitted to the powers that were, and you
have become a power; he walked on foot, and you go to Castel-Gandolfo in
a sumptuous equipage; he ate all that one was so good as to give him, and
you want us to eat fish on Friday and Saturday, when we live far from sea
and river; he forbade Simon Barjona to use a sword, and you have swords
in your service, etc., etc., etc. Therefore in this sense Your Holiness is
antichrist. In every other sense I hold you in great veneration, and I ask you
for an indulgence in articulo mortis."

My man was put in the Castello St. Angelo.
When he came out of the Castello St. Angelo, he rushed to Venice, and
asked to speak to the doge.
"Your Serenity," he said, "must be a scatter-brain to marry the sea every
year: for firstly, one only marries the same person once; secondly, your
marriage resembles Harlequin's which was half made, seeing that it lacked
but the consent of the bride; thirdly, who has told you that one day other
maritime powers will not declare you incapable of consummating the
marriage?"
He spoke, and was shut up in the Tower of St. Mark's.
When he came out of the Tower of St. Mark's, he went to Constantinople;
he had audience of the mufti; and spoke to him in these terms:
"Your religion, although it has some good points, such as worship of the
great Being, and the necessity of being just and charitable, is otherwise
nothing but a rehash of Judaism and a tedious collection of fairy tales. If the
archangel Gabriel had brought the leaves of the Koran to Mahomet from
some planet, all Arabia would have seen Gabriel come down: nobody saw
him; therefore Mahomet was a brazen impostor who deceived imbeciles."
Hardly had he pronounced these words than he was impaled. Nevertheless
he had always been right, and had always had reason on his side.

RELIGION
I meditated last night; I was absorbed in the contemplation of nature; I
admired the immensity, the course, the harmony of these infinite globes
which the vulgar do not know how to admire.
I admired still more the intelligence which directs these vast forces. I said to
myself: "One must be blind not to be dazzled by this spectacle; one must be
stupid not to recognize the author of it; one must be mad not to worship
Him. What tribute of worship should I render Him? Should not this tribute
be the same in the whole of space, since it is the same supreme power
which reigns equally in all space? Should not a thinking being who dwells
in a star in the Milky Way offer Him the same homage as the thinking being
on this little globe where we are? Light is uniform for the star Sirius and for
us; moral philosophy must be uniform. If a sentient, thinking animal in
Sirius is born of a tender father and mother who have been occupied with
his happiness, he owes them as much love and care as we owe to our
parents. If someone in the Milky Way sees a needy cripple, if he can relieve
him and if he does not do it, he is guilty toward all globes. Everywhere the
heart has the same duties: on the steps of the throne of God, if He has a
throne; and in the depth of the abyss, if He is an abyss."
I was plunged in these ideas when one of those genii who fill the
intermundane spaces came down to me. I recognized this same aerial
creature who had appeared to me on another occasion to teach me how
different God's judgments were from our own, and how a good action is
preferable to a controversy.
He transported me into a desert all covered with piled up bones; and
between these heaps of dead men there were walks of ever-green trees, and
at the end of each walk a tall man of august mien, who regarded these sad
remains with pity.
"Alas! my archangel," said I, "where have you brought me?"
"To desolation," he answered.

"And who are these fine patriarchs whom I see sad and motionless at the
end of these green walks? they seem to be weeping over this countless
crowd of dead."
"You shall know, poor human creature," answered the genius from the
intermundane spaces; "but first of all you must weep."
He began with the first pile. "These," he said, "are the twenty-three
thousand Jews who danced before a calf, with the twenty-four thousand
who were killed while lying with Midianitish women. The number of those
massacred for such errors and offences amounts to nearly three hundred
thousand.
"In the other walks are the bones of the Christians slaughtered by each other
for metaphysical disputes. They are divided into several heaps of four
centuries each. One heap would have mounted right to the sky; they had to
be divided."
"What!" I cried, "brothers have treated their brothers like this, and I have
the misfortune to be of this brotherhood!"
"Here," said the spirit, "are the twelve million Americans killed in their
fatherland because they had not been baptized."
"My God! why did you not leave these frightful bones to dry in the
hemisphere where their bodies were born, and where they were consigned
to so many different deaths? Why assemble here all these abominable
monuments to barbarism and fanaticism?"
"To instruct you."
"Since you wish to instruct me," I said to the genius, "tell me if there have
been peoples other than the Christians and the Jews in whom zeal and
religion wretchedly transformed into fanaticism, have inspired so many
horrible cruelties."
"Yes," he said. "The Mohammedans were sullied with the same
inhumanities, but rarely; and when one asked amman, pity, of them and
offered them tribute, they pardoned. As for the other nations there has not

been one right from the existence of the world which has ever made a
purely religious war. Follow me now." I followed him.
A little beyond these piles of dead men we found other piles; they were
composed of sacks of gold and silver, and each had its label: Substance of
the heretics massacred in the eighteenth century, the seventeenth and the
sixteenth. And so on in going back: Gold and silver of Americans
slaughtered, etc., etc. And all these piles were surmounted with crosses,
mitres, croziers, triple crowns studded with precious stones.
"What, my genius! it was then to have these riches that these dead were
piled up?"
"Yes, my son."
I wept; and when by my grief I had merited to be led to the end of the green
walks, he led me there.
"Contemplate," he said, "the heroes of humanity who were the world's
benefactors, and who were all united in banishing from the world, as far as
they were able, violence and rapine. Question them."
I ran to the first of the band; he had a crown on his head, and a little censer
in his hand; I humbly asked him his name. "I am Numa Pompilius," he said
to me. "I succeeded a brigand, and I had brigands to govern: I taught them
virtue and the worship of God; after me they forgot both more than once; I
forbade that in the temples there should be any image, because the Deity
which animates nature cannot be represented. During my reign the Romans
had neither wars nor seditions, and my religion did nothing but good. All
the neighbouring peoples came to honour me at my funeral: that happened
to no one but me."
I kissed his hand, and I went to the second. He was a fine old man about a
hundred years old, clad in a white robe. He put his middle-finger on his
mouth, and with the other hand he cast some beans behind him. I
recognized Pythagoras. He assured me he had never had a golden thigh, and
that he had never been a cock; but that he had governed the Crotoniates
with as much justice as Numa governed the Romans, almost at the same
time; and that this justice was the rarest and most necessary thing in the
world. I learned that the Pythagoreans examined their consciences twice a

day. The honest people! how far we are from them! But we who have been
nothing but assassins for thirteen hundred years, we say that these wise men
were arrogant.
In order to please Pythagoras, I did not say a word to him and I passed to
Zarathustra, who was occupied in concentrating the celestial fire in the
focus of a concave mirror, in the middle of a hall with a hundred doors
which all led to wisdom. (Zarathustra's precepts are called doors, and are a
hundred in number.) Over the principal door I read these words which are
the précis of all moral philosophy, and which cut short all the disputes of
the casuists: "When in doubt if an action is good or bad, refrain."
"Certainly," I said to my genius, "the barbarians who immolated all these
victims had never read these beautiful words."
We then saw the Zaleucus, the Thales, the Aniximanders, and all the sages
who had sought truth and practised virtue.
When we came to Socrates, I recognized him very quickly by his flat nose.
"Well," I said to him, "here you are then among the number of the
Almighty's confidants! All the inhabitants of Europe, except the Turks and
the Tartars of the Crimea, who know nothing, pronounce your name with
respect. It is revered, loved, this great name, to the point that people have
wanted to know those of your persecutors. Melitus and Anitus are known
because of you, just as Ravaillac is known because of Henry IV.; but I know
only this name of Anitus. I do not know precisely who was the scoundrel
who calumniated you, and who succeeded in having you condemned to take
hemlock."
"Since my adventure," replied Socrates, "I have never thought about that
man; but seeing that you make me remember it, I have much pity for him.
He was a wicked priest who secretly conducted a business in hides, a trade
reputed shameful among us. He sent his two children to my school. The
other disciples taunted them with having a father who was a currier; they
were obliged to leave. The irritated father had no rest until he had stirred up
all the priests and all the sophists against me. They persuaded the counsel of
the five hundred that I was an impious fellow who did not believe that the
Moon, Mercury and Mars were gods. Indeed, I used to think, as I think now,
that there is only one God, master of all nature. The judges handed me over

to the poisoner of the republic; he cut short my life by a few days: I died
peacefully at the age of seventy; and since that time I pass a happy life with
all these great men whom you see, and of whom I am the least."
After enjoying some time in conversation with Socrates, I went forward
with my guide into a grove situated above the thickets where all the sages
of antiquity seemed to be tasting sweet repose.
I saw a man of gentle, simple countenance, who seemed to me to be about
thirty-five years old. From afar he cast compassionate glances on these piles
of whitened bones, across which I had had to pass to reach the sages' abode.
I was astonished to find his feet swollen and bleeding, his hands likewise,
his side pierced, and his ribs flayed with whip cuts. "Good Heavens!" I said
to him, "is it possible for a just man, a sage, to be in this state? I have just
seen one who was treated in a very hateful way, but there is no comparison
between his torture and yours. Wicked priests and wicked judges poisoned
him; is it by priests and judges that you have been so cruelly assassinated?"
He answered with much courtesy—"Yes."
"And who were these monsters?"
"They were hypocrites."
"Ah! that says everything; I understand by this single word that they must
have condemned you to death. Had you then proved to them, as Socrates
did, that the Moon was not a goddess, and that Mercury was not a god?"
"No, these planets were not in question. My compatriots did not know at all
what a planet is; they were all arrant ignoramuses. Their superstitions were
quite different from those of the Greeks."
"You wanted to teach them a new religion, then?"
"Not at all; I said to them simply—'Love God with all your heart and your
fellow-creature as yourself, for that is man's whole duty.' Judge if this
precept is not as old as the universe; judge if I brought them a new religion.
I did not stop telling them that I had come not to destroy the law but to fulfil
it; I had observed all their rites; circumcised as they all were, baptized as
were the most zealous among them, like them I paid the Corban; I observed

the Passover as they did, eating standing up a lamb cooked with lettuces. I
and my friends went to pray in the temple; my friends even frequented this
temple after my death; in a word, I fulfilled all their laws without a single
exception."
"What! these wretches could not even reproach you with swerving from
their laws?"
"No, without a doubt."
"Why then did they put you in the condition in which I now see you?"
"What do you expect me to say! they were very arrogant and selfish. They
saw that I knew them; they knew that I was making the citizens acquainted
with them; they were the stronger; they took away my life: and people like
them will always do as much, if they can, to whoever does them too much
justice."
"But did you say nothing, do nothing that could serve them as a pretext?"
"To the wicked everything serves as pretext.
""Did you not say once that you were come not to send peace, but a
sword?"
"It is a copyist's error; I told them that I sent peace and not a sword. I have
never written anything; what I said can have been changed without evil
intention."
"You therefore contributed in no way by your speeches, badly reported,
badly interpreted, to these frightful piles of bones which I saw on my road
in coming to consult you?"
"It is with horror only that I have seen those who have made themselves
guilty of these murders."
"And these monuments of power and wealth, of pride and avarice, these
treasures, these ornaments, these signs of grandeur, which I have seen piled
up on the road while I was seeking wisdom, do they come from you?"

"That is impossible; I and my people lived in poverty and meanness: my
grandeur was in virtue only."
I was about to beg him to be so good as to tell me just who he was. My
guide warned me to do nothing of the sort. He told me that I was not made
to understand these sublime mysteries. Only did I conjure him to tell me in
what true religion consisted.
"Have I not already told you? Love God and your fellow-creature as
yourself."
"What! if one loves God, one can eat meat on Friday?"
"I always ate what was given me; for I was too poor to give anyone food."
"In loving God, in being just, should one not be rather cautious not to
confide all the adventures of one's life to an unknown man?"
"That was always my practice."
"Can I not, by doing good, dispense with making a pilgrimage to St. James
of Compostella?"
"I have never been in that country."
"Is it necessary for me to imprison myself in a retreat with fools?"
"As for me, I always made little journeys from town to town."
"Is it necessary for me to take sides either for the Greek Church or the
Latin?"
"When I was in the world I never made any difference between the Jew and
the Samaritan."
"Well, if that is so, I take you for my only master." Then he made me a sign
with his head which filled me with consolation. The vision disappeared, and
a clear conscience stayed with me.

SECT
SECTION I

Every sect, in whatever sphere, is the rallying-point of doubt and error.
Scotist, Thomist, Realist, Nominalist, Papist, Calvinist, Molinist, Jansenist,
are only pseudonyms.
There are no sects in geometry; one does not speak of a Euclidian, an
Archimedean.
When the truth is evident, it is impossible for parties and factions to arise.
Never has there been a dispute as to whether there is daylight at noon.
The branch of astronomy which determines the course of the stars and the
return of eclipses being once known, there is no more dispute among
astronomers.
In England one does not say—"I am a Newtonian, a Lockian, a Halleyan."
Why? Those who have read cannot refuse their assent to the truths taught
by these three great men. The more Newton is revered, the less do people
style themselves Newtonians; this word supposes that there are anti-
Newtonians in England. Maybe we still have a few Cartesians in France;
that is solely because Descartes' system is a tissue of erroneous and
ridiculous imaginings.
It is likewise with the small number of truths of fact which are well
established. The records of the Tower of London having been authentically
gathered by Rymer, there are no Rymerians, because it occurs to no one to
combat this collection. In it one finds neither contradictions, absurdities nor
prodigies; nothing which revolts the reason, nothing, consequently, which
sectarians strive to maintain or upset by absurd arguments. Everyone
agrees, therefore, that Rymer's records are worthy of belief.
You are Mohammedan, therefore there are people who are not, therefore
you might well be wrong.

What would be the true religion if Christianity did not exist? the religion in
which there were no sects; the religion in which all minds were necessarily
in agreement.
Well, to what dogma do all minds agree? to the worship of a God and to
integrity. All the philosophers of the world who have had a religion have
said in all time—"There is a God, and one must be just." There, then, is the
universal religion established in all time and throughout mankind.
The point in which they all agree is therefore true, and the systems through
which they differ are therefore false.
"My sect is the best," says a Brahmin to me. But, my friend, if your sect is
good, it is necessary; for if it were not absolutely necessary you would
admit to me that it was useless: if it is absolutely necessary, it is for all men;
how then can it be that all men have not what is absolutely necessary to
them? How is it possible for the rest of the world to laugh at you and your
Brahma?
When Zarathustra, Hermes, Orpheus, Minos and all the great men say
—"Let us worship God, and let us be just," nobody laughs; but everyone
hisses the man who claims that one cannot please God unless when one dies
one is holding a cow's tail, and the man who wants one to have the end of
one's prepuce cut off, and the man who consecrates crocodiles and onions,
and the man who attaches eternal salvation to the dead men's bones one
carries under one's shirt, or to a plenary indulgence which one buys at
Rome for two and a half sous.
Whence comes this universal competition in hisses and derision from one
end of the world to the other? It is clear that the things at which everyone
sneers are not of a very evident truth. What shall we say of one of Sejan's
secretaries who dedicated to Petronius a bombastic book entitled—"The
Truths of the Sibylline Oracles, Proved by the Facts"?
This secretary proves to you first that it was necessary for God to send on
earth several sibyls one after the other; for He had no other means of
teaching mankind. It is demonstrated that God spoke to these sibyls, for the
word sibyl signifies God's counsel. They had to live a long time, for it is the
very least that persons to whom God speaks should have this privilege.

They were twelve in number, for this number is sacred. They had certainly
predicted all the events in the world, for Tarquinius Superbus bought three
of their Books from an old woman for a hundred crowns. "What
incredulous fellow," adds the secretary, "will dare deny all these evident
facts which happened in a corner before the whole world? Who can deny
the fulfilment of their prophecies? Has not Virgil himself quoted the
predictions of the sibyls? If we have not the first examples of the Sibylline
Books, written at a time when people did not know how to read or write,
have we not authentic copies? Impiety must be silent before such proofs."
Thus did Houttevillus speak to Sejan. He hoped to have a position as augur
which would be worth an income of fifty thousand francs, and he had
nothing.[20]
"What my sect teaches is obscure, I admit it," says a fanatic; "and it is
because of this obscurity that it must be believed; for the sect itself says it is
full of obscurities. My sect is extravagant, therefore it is divine; for how
should what appears so mad have been embraced by so many peoples, if it
were not divine?" It is precisely like the Alcoran which the Sonnites say has
an angel's face and an animal's snout; be not scandalized by the animal's
snout, and worship the angel's face. Thus speaks this insensate fellow. But a
fanatic of another sect answers—"It is you who are the animal, and I who
am the angel."
Well, who shall judge the suit? who shall decide between these two
fanatics? The reasonable, impartial man learned in a knowledge that is not
that of words; the man free from prejudice and lover of truth and justice; in
short, the man who is not the foolish animal, and who does not think he is
the angel.

SECTION II

Sect and error are synonymous. You are Peripatetic and I Platonician; we
are therefore both wrong; for you combat Plato only because his fantasies
have revolted you, and I am alienated from Aristotle only because it seems
to me that he does not know what he is talking about. If one or the other had
demonstrated the truth, there would be a sect no longer. To declare oneself
for the opinion of the one or the other is to take sides in a civil war. There
are no sects in mathematics, in experimental physics. A man who examines

FOOTNOTES:
[20] Reference to the Abbé Houtteville, author of a book entitled—"The Truth of
the Christian Religion, Proved by the Facts."

SELF-ESTEEM
Nicole in his "Essais de Morale," written after two or three thousand
volumes of ethics ("Treatise on Charity," Chap. II), says that "by means of
the wheels and gibbets which people establish in common are repressed the
tyrannous thoughts and designs of each individual's self-esteem."
I shall not examine whether people have gibbets in common, as they have
meadows and woods in common, and a common purse, and if one represses
ideas with wheels; but it seems very strange to me that Nicole should take
highway robbery and assassination for self-esteem. One should distinguish
shades of difference a little better. The man who said that Nero had his
mother assassinated through self-esteem, that Cartouche had much self-
esteem, would not be expressing himself very correctly. Self-esteem is not
wickedness, it is a sentiment that is natural to all men; it is much nearer
vanity than crime.
A beggar in the suburbs of Madrid nobly begged charity; a passer-by says to
him: "Are you not ashamed to practise this infamous calling when you are
able to work?"
"Sir," answered the beggar, "I ask for money, not advice." And he turned on
his heel with full Castillian dignity.
This gentleman was a proud beggar, his vanity was wounded by a trifle. He
asked charity out of love for himself, and could not tolerate the reprimand
out of further love for himself.
A missionary travelling in India met a fakir laden with chains, naked as a
monkey, lying on his stomach, and having himself whipped for the sins of
his compatriots, the Indians, who gave him a few farthings.
"What self-denial!" said one of the lookers-on.
"Self-denial!" answered the fakir. "Learn that I have myself flogged in this
world in order to return it in another, when you will be horses and I
horseman."

Those who have said that love of ourselves is the basis of all our opinions
and all our actions, have therefore been quite right in India, Spain, and all
the habitable world: and as one does not write to prove to men that they
have faces, it is not necessary to prove to them that they have self-esteem.
Self-esteem is the instrument of our conservation; it resembles the
instrument of the perpetuity of the species: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it
gives us pleasure, and it has to be hidden.

SOUL
SECTION I

This is a vague, indeterminate term, which expresses an unknown principle
of known effects that we feel in us. The word soul corresponds to the Latin
anima, to the Greek πνεῦμα, to the term of which all nations have made use
to express what they did not understand any better than we do.
In the proper and literal sense of the Latin and the languages derived from
Latin, it signifies that which animates. Thus people have spoken of the soul
of men, of animals, sometimes of plants, to signify their principal of
vegetation and life. In pronouncing this word, people have never had other
than a confused idea, as when it is said in Genesis—"And the Lord God
formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life; and man became a living soul; and the soul of animals is in
the blood; and kill not my soul, etc."
Thus the soul was generally taken for the origin and the cause of life, for
life itself. That is why all known nations long imagined that everything died
with the body. If one can disentangle anything in the chaos of ancient
histories, it seems that the Egyptians at least were the first to distinguish
between the intelligence and the soul: and the Greeks learned from them to
distinguish their νοῦς, their πνεῦμα, their σκιὰ. The Latins, following their
example, distinguish animus and anima; and we, finally, have also had our
soul and our understanding. But is that which is the principle of our life
different from that which is the principle of our thoughts? is it the same
being? Does that which directs us and gives us sensation and memory
resemble that which is in animals the cause of digestion and the cause of
their sensations and of their memory?
There is the eternal object of the disputes of mankind; I say eternal object;
for not having any first notion from which we can descend in this
examination, we can only rest for ever in a labyrinth of doubt and feeble
conjecture.

We have not the smallest step where we may place a foot in order to reach
the most superficial knowledge of what makes us live and of what makes us
think. How should we have? we should have had to see life and thought
enter a body. Does a father know how he has produced his son? does a
mother how she conceived him? Has anyone ever been able to divine how
he acts, how he wakes, how he sleeps? Does anyone know how his limbs
obey his will? has anyone discovered by what art ideas are marked out in
his brain and issue from it at his command? Frail automatons moved by the
invisible hand which directs us on this stage of the world, which of us has
been able to detect the wire which guides us?
We dare question whether the soul is "spirit" or "matter"; if it is created
before us, if it issues from non-existence at our birth, if after animating us
for one day on earth, it lives after us into eternity. These questions appear
sublime; what are they? questions of blind men saying to other blind men
—"What is light?"
When we want to learn something roughly about a piece of metal, we put it
in a crucible in the fire. But have we a crucible in which to put the soul?
"The soul is spirit," says one. But what is spirit? Assuredly no one has any
idea; it is a word that is so void of sense that one is obliged to say what
spirit is not, not being able to say what it is. "The soul is matter," says
another. But what is matter? We know merely some of its appearances and
some of its properties; and not one of these properties, not one of these
appearances, seems to have the slightest connection with thought.
"Thought is something distinct from matter," say you. But what proof of it
have you? Is it because matter is divisible and figurable, and thought is not?
But who has told you that the first principles of matter are divisible and
figurable? It is very probable that they are not; entire sects of philosophers
maintain that the elements of matter have neither form nor extension. With
a triumphant air you cry—"Thought is neither wood, nor stone, nor sand,
nor metal, therefore thought does not belong to matter." Weak, reckless
reasoners! gravitation is neither wood, nor sand, nor metal, nor stone;
movement, vegetation, life are not these things either, and yet life,
vegetation, movement, gravitation, are given to matter. To say that God
cannot make matter think is to say the most insolently absurd thing that
anyone has ever dared utter in the privileged schools of lunacy. We are not

certain that God has treated matter like this; we are only certain that He can.
But what matters all that has been said and all that will be said about the
soul? what does it matter that it has been called entelechy, quintessence,
flame, ether? that it has been thought universal, uncreated, transmigrant,
etc.?
In these matters that are inaccessible to the reason, what do these romances
of our uncertain imaginations matter? What does it matter that the Fathers
of the first four centuries thought the soul corporeal? What does it matter
that Tertullian, by a contradiction frequent in him, has decided that it is
simultaneously corporeal, formed and simple? We have a thousand
witnesses to ignorance, and not one that gives a glimmer of probability.
How then are we so bold as to assert what the soul is? We know certainly
that we exist, that we feel, that we think. Do we want to take a step beyond?
we fall into a shadowy abyss; and in this abyss we are still so madly
reckless as to dispute whether this soul, of which we have not the least idea,
was made before us or with us, and whether it perishes or is immortal.
The article SOUL, and all the articles of the nature of metaphysics, must
start by a sincere submission to the incontrovertible dogmas of the Church.
Revelation is worth more, without doubt, than the whole of philosophy.
Systems exercise the mind, but faith illumines and guides it.
Do we not often pronounce words of which we have only a very confused
idea, or even of which we have none at all? Is not the word soul an
instance? When the clapper or valve of a bellows is out of order, and when
air which is in the bellows leaves it by some unexpected opening in this
valve, so that it is no longer compressed against the two blades, and is not
thrust violently towards the hearth which it has to light, French servants say
—"The soul of the bellows has burst." They know no more about it than
that; and this question in no wise disturbs their peace of mind.
The gardener utters the phrase "the soul of the plants," and cultivates them
very well without knowing what he means by this term.
The violin-maker poses, draws forward or back the "soul of a violin"
beneath the bridge in the belly of the instrument; a puny piece of wood
more or less gives the violin or takes away from it a harmonious soul.

We have many industries in which the workmen give the qualification of
"soul" to their machines. Never does one hear them dispute about this word.
Such is not the case with philosophers.
For us the word "soul" signifies generally that which animates. Our
ancestors the Celts gave to their soul the name of seel, from which the
English soul, and the German seel; and probably the ancient Teutons and
the ancient Britons had no quarrels in their universities over this expression.
The Greeks distinguished three sorts of souls—ψυχὴ, which signified the
sensitive soul, the soul of the senses; and that is why Love, child of
Aphrodite, had so much passion for Psyche, and why Psyche loved him so
tenderly: πνεῦμα, the breath which gives life and movement to the whole
machine, and which we have translated by spiritus, spirit; vague word to
which have been given a thousand different meanings: and finally νοῦς, the
intelligence.
We possessed therefore three souls, without having the least notion of any
of them. St. Thomas Aquinas (Summation of St. Thomas. Lyons edition,
1738) admits these three souls as a peripatetic, and distinguishes each of
these three souls in three parts. ψυχὴ was in the breast, πνεῦμα was
distributed throughout the body, and νοῦς was in the head. There has been
no other philosophy in our schools up to our day, and woe betide any man
who took one of these souls for the other.
In this chaos of ideas there was, nevertheless, a foundation. Men had
noticed that in their passions of love, hate, anger, fear, their internal organs
were stimulated to movement. The liver and the heart were the seat of the
passions. If one thought deeply, one felt a strife in the organs of the head;
therefore the intellectual soul was in the head. Without respiration no
vegetation, no life; therefore the vegetative soul was in the breast which
receives the breath of air.
When men saw in dreams their dead relatives or friends, they had to seek
what had appeared to them. It was not the body which had been consumed
on a funeral pyre, or swallowed up in the sea and eaten by the fishes. It was,
however, something, so they maintained; for they had seen it; the dead man
had spoken; the dreamer had questioned him. Was it ψυχὴ, was it πνεῦμα,
was it νοῦς, with whom one had conversed in the dream? One imagined a

phantom, an airy figure: it was σκιὰ, it was δαίμων, a ghost from the
shades, a little soul of air and fire, very unrestricted, which wandered I
know not where.
Eventually, when one wanted to sift the matter, it became a constant that
this soul was corporeal; and the whole of antiquity never had any other
idea. At last came Plato who so subtilized this soul that it was doubtful if he
did not separate it entirely from matter; but that was a problem that was
never solved until faith came to enlighten us.
In vain do the materialists quote some of the fathers of the Church who did
not express themselves with precision. St. Irenæus says (liv. v. chaps. vi and
vii) that the soul is only the breath of life, that it is incorporeal only by
comparison with the mortal body, and that it preserves the form of man so
that it may be recognized.
In vain does Tertullian express himself like this—"The corporeality of the
soul shines bright in the Gospel." (Corporalitas animæ in ipso Evangelio
relucescit, De Anima, cap. vii.) For if the soul did not have a body, the
image of the soul would not have the image of the body.
In vain does he record the vision of a holy woman who had seen a very
shining soul, of the colour of air.
In vain does Tatien say expressly (Oratio ad Græcos, c. xxiii.)—"The soul
of man is composed of many parts."
In vain is St. Hilarius quoted as saying in later times (St. Hilarius on St.
Matthew)—"There is nothing created which is not corporeal, either in
heaven, or on earth, or among the visible, or among the invisible:
everything is formed of elements; and souls, whether they inhabit a body, or
issue from it, have always a corporeal substance."
In vain does St. Ambrose, in the sixth century, say (On Abraham, liv. ii., ch.
viii.)—"We recognize nothing but the material, except the venerable Trinity
alone."
The body of the entire Church has decided that the soul is immaterial. These
saints fell into an error at that time universal; they were men; but they were

not mistaken over immortality, because that is clearly announced in the
Gospels.
We have so evident a need of the decision of the infallible Church on these
points of philosophy, that we have not indeed by ourselves any sufficient
notion of what is called "pure spirit," and of what is named "matter." Pure
spirit is an expression which gives us no idea; and we know matter only by
a few phenomena. We know it so little that we call it "substance"; well, the
word substance means "that which is under"; but what is under will be
eternally hidden from us. What is under is the Creator's secret; and this
secret of the Creator is everywhere. We do not know either how we receive
life, or how we give it, or how we grow, or how we digest, or how we sleep,
or how we think, or how we feel.
The great difficulty is to understand how a being, whoever he be, has
thoughts.

SECTION II

The author of the article SOUL in the "Encyclopedia" (the Abbé Yvon)
followed Jaquelot scrupulously; but Jaquelot teaches us nothing. He sets
himself also against Locke, because the modest Locke said (liv. iv, ch. iii,
para. vi.)—"We possibly shall never be able to know whether any mere
material being thinks or no; it being impossible for us, by the contemplation
of our own ideas without revelation, to discover whether Omnipotency has
not given to some systems of matter, fitly disposed, a power to perceive and
think, or else joined and fixed to matter, so disposed, a thinking immaterial
substance: it being, in respect of our notions, not much more remote from
our comprehension to conceive that God can, if he pleases, superadd to
matter a faculty of thinking, than that he should superadd to it another
substance with a faculty of thinking; since we know not wherein thinking
consists, nor to what sort of substances the Almighty has been pleased to
give that power which cannot be in any created being but merely by the
good pleasure and bounty of the Creator, for I see no contradiction in it, that
the first eternal thinking Being should, if he pleased, give to certain systems
of created senseless matter, put together as he thinks fit, some degrees of
sense, perception and thought."

Those are the words of a profound, religious and modest man.
We know what quarrels he had to undergo on account of this opinion which
appeared bold, but which was in fact in him only a consequence of his
conviction of the omnipotence of God and the weakness of man. He did not
say that matter thought; but he said that we have not enough knowledge to
demonstrate that it is impossible for God to add the gift of thought to the
unknown being called "matter", after according it the gift of gravitation and
the gift of movement, both of which are equally incomprehensible.
Locke was not assuredly the only one who had advanced this opinion; it
was the opinion of all antiquity, who, regarding the soul as very unrestricted
matter, affirmed consequently that matter could feel and think.
It was Gassendi's opinion, as may be seen in his objections to Descartes. "It
is true," says Gassendi, "that you know what you think; but you are ignorant
of what species of substance you are, you who think. Thus although the
operation of thought is known to you, the principle of your essence is
hidden from you; and you do not know what is the nature of this substance,
one of the operations of which is to think. You are like a blind man who,
feeling the heat of the sun and being informed that it is caused by the heat
of the sun, thinks he has a clear and distinct idea of this luminary; because
if he were asked what the sun was, he could reply that it is a thing which
heats, etc."
The same Gassendi, in his "Epicurean Philosophy," repeats several times
that there is no mathematical evidence of the pure spirituality of the soul.
Descartes, in one of his letters to the Palatine Princess Elisabeth, says to her
—"I confess that by the natural reason alone we can make many conjectures
on the soul, and have gratifying hopes, but no certainty." And in that
sentence Descartes combats in his letters what he puts forward in his works;
a too ordinary contradiction.
In fine we have seen that all the Fathers of the first centuries of the Church,
while believing the soul immortal, believed it at the same time material;
they thought that it is as easy for God to conserve as to create. They said
—"God made the soul thinking, He will preserve it thinking."

Malebranche has proved very well that we have no idea by ourselves, and
that objects are incapable of giving us ideas: from that he concludes that we
see everything in God. That is at the bottom the same thing as making God
the author of all our ideas; for with what should we see in Him, if we had
not instruments for seeing? and these instruments, it is He alone who holds
them and guides them. This system is a labyrinth, one lane of which would
lead you to Spinozism, another to Stoicism, another to chaos.
When one has had a good argument about spirit and matter, one always
finishes by not understanding each other. No philosopher has been able with
his own strength to lift this veil stretched by nature over all the first
principles of things. Men argue, nature acts.

SECTION III

Of the Soul of Animals, and of some Empty Ideas

Before the strange system which supposes animals to be pure machines
without any sensation, men had never thought that the beasts possessed an
immaterial soul; and nobody had pushed recklessness to the point of saying
that an oyster has a spiritual soul. Everyone concurred peaceably in
agreeing that the beasts had received from God feeling, memory, ideas, and
no pure spirit. Nobody had abused the gift of reason to the point of saying
that nature had given the beasts all the organs of feeling so that they might
not feel anything. Nobody had said that they cry when they are wounded,
and that they fly when pursued, without experiencing pain or fear.
At that time people did not deny the omnipotence of God; He had been able
to communicate to the organized matter of animals pleasure, pain,
remembrance, the combination of a few ideas; He had been able to give to
several of them, such as the monkey, the elephant, the hunting-dog, the
talent of perfecting themselves in the arts which were taught to them; not
only had He been able to endow nearly all carnivorous animals with the
talent of warring better in their experienced old age than in their too trustful
youth; not only, I say, had He been able to do these things, but He had done
them: the universe bore witness thereto.

Pereira and Descartes maintained that the universe was mistaken, that God
was a juggler, that He had given animals all the instruments of life and
sensation, so that they might have neither life nor sensation, properly
speaking. But I do not know what so-called philosophers, in order to answer
Descartes' chimera, leaped into the opposite chimera; they gave liberally of
pure spirit to the toads and the insects.
Between these two madnesses, the one refusing feeling to the organs of
feeling, the other lodging a pure spirit in a bug, somebody thought of a
middle path. It was instinct. And what is instinct? Oh, oh, it is a substantial
form; it is a plastic form; it is I do not know what! it is instinct. I shall be of
your opinion so long as you will call the majority of things, "I do not know
what"; so long as your philosophy begins and ends with "I do not know
what", I shall quote Prior to you in his poem on the vanity of the world.
The author of the article soul in the "Encyclopedia" explains himself like
this:—"I picture the animals' soul as an immaterial and intelligent
substance, but of what species? It must, it seems to me, be an active
principle which has sensations, and which has only that.... If we reflect on
the nature of the soul of animals, it supplies us with groundwork which
might lead us to think that its spirituality will save it from annihilation."
I do not know how one pictures an immaterial substance. To picture
something is to make an image of it; and up till now nobody has been able
to paint the spirit. For the word "picture", I want the author to understand "I
conceive"; speaking for myself, I confess I do not conceive it. I confess still
less that a spiritual soul may be annihilated, because I do not conceive
either creation or non-existence; because I have never been present at God's
council; because I know nothing at all about the principle of things.
If I wish to prove that the soul is a real being, someone stops me by telling
me that it is a faculty. If I assert that it is a faculty, and that I have the
faculty of thinking, I am told that I am mistaken; that God, the eternal
master of all nature, does everything in me, and directs all my actions and
all my thoughts; that if I produced my thoughts, I should know the thought I
will have in a minute; that I never know it; that I am only an automaton
with sensations and ideas, necessarily dependent, and in the hands of the
Supreme Being, infinitely more compliant to Him than clay is to the potter.

I confess my ignorance, therefore; I avow that four thousand tomes of
metaphysics will not teach us what our soul is.
An orthodox philosopher said to a heterodox philosopher—"How have you
been able to come to the point of imagining that the soul is mortal by
nature, and eternal only by the pure wish of God?"
"By my own experience," said the other.
"How! are you dead?"
"Yes, very often. I suffered from epilepsy in my youth, and I assure you that
I was completely dead for several hours. No sensation, no remembrance
even of the moment that I fell ill. The same thing happens to me now nearly
every night. I never feel the precise moment that I go to sleep; my sleep is
absolutely dreamless. I cannot imagine by conjecture how long I have slept.
I am dead regularly six hours out of the twenty-four. That is a quarter of my
life."
The orthodox then asserted that he always thought during his sleep without
knowing anything about it. The heterodox answered him—"I believe
through revelation that I shall always think in the other life; but I assure you
I think rarely in this one."
The orthodox was not mistaken in asserting the immortality of the soul, for
faith and reason demonstrate this truth; but he might be mistaken in
asserting that a sleeping man always thinks.
Locke admitted frankly that he did not always think while he was asleep:
another philosopher has said—"Thought is characteristic of man; but it is
not his essence."
Let us leave to each man the liberty and consolation of seeking himself, and
of losing himself in his ideas.

It is good, however, to know, that in 1730 a philosopher[21] suffered a
severe enough persecution for having confessed, with Locke, that his
understanding was not exercised at every moment of the day and night, just
as he did not use his arms and his legs at all moments. Not only did court
ignorance persecute him, but the malignant influence of a few so-called

men of letters was let loose against him. What in England had produced
merely a few philosophical disputes, produced in France the most cowardly
atrocities; a Frenchman suffered by Locke.
There have always been in the mud of our literature more than one of these
miscreants who have sold their pens, and intrigued against their benefactors
even. This remark is rather foreign to the article soul; but should one miss
an opportunity of dismaying those who make themselves unworthy of the
name of men of letters, who prostitute the little mind and conscience they
have to a vile self-interest, to a fantastic policy, who betray their friends to
flatter fools, who in secret powder the hemlock which the powerful and
malicious ignoramus wants to make useful citizens drink?
In short, while we worship God with all our soul, let us confess always our
profound ignorance of this soul, of this faculty of feeling and thinking
which we possess from His infinite goodness. Let us avow that our feeble
reasonings can take nothing away from, or add anything to revelation and
faith. Let us conclude in fine that we should use this intelligence, the nature
of which is unknown, for perfecting the sciences which are the object of the
"Encyclopedia"; just as watchmakers use springs in their watches, without
knowing what a spring is.

SECTION IV

About the Soul, and About our Little Knowledge

On the testimony of our acquired knowledge, we have dared question
whether the soul is created before us, whether it comes from non-existence
into our body? at what age it came to settle between a bladder and the
intestines cæcum and rectum? if it brought ideas with it or received them
there, and what are these ideas? if after animating us for a few moments, its
essence is to live after us into eternity without the intervention of God
Himself? if being spirit, and God being spirit, they are both of like nature?
These questions seem sublime; what are they? questions about light by men
born blind.
What have all the philosophers, ancient and modern, taught us? a child is
wiser than they are; he does not think about things of which he can form no

conception.
You will say that it is sad for our insatiable curiosity, for our inexhaustible
thirst for happiness, to be thus ignorant of ourselves! I agree, and there are
still sadder things; but I shall answer you:

Sors tua mortalis, non est mortale quod optas.

—Ovid, Met. II. 56

"You have a man's fate, and a god's desires."

Once again, it seems that the nature of every principle of things is the
Creator's secret. How does the air carry sound? how are animals formed?
how do some of our limbs constantly obey our wills? what hand puts ideas
in our memory, keeps them there as in a register, and pulls them out
sometimes when we want them and sometimes in spite of ourselves? Our
nature, the nature of the universe, the nature of the least plant, everything
for us is sunk in a shadowy pit.
Man is an acting, feeling, thinking being: that is all we know of him: it is
not given to us to know what makes us feel and think, or what makes us act,
or what makes us exist. The acting faculty is as incomprehensible for us as
the thinking faculty. The difficulty is less to conceive how a body of mud
has feelings and ideas, than to conceive how a being, whatever it be, has
ideas and feelings.
Here on one side the soul of Archimedes, on the other the soul of an idiot;
are they of the same nature? If their essence is to think, they think always,
and independently of the body which cannot act without them. If they think
by their own nature, can the species of a soul which cannot do a sum in
arithmetic be the same as that which measured the heavens? If it is the
organs of the body which made Archimedes think, why is it that my idiot,
who has a stronger constitution than Archimedes, who is more vigorous,
digests better and performs all his functions better, does not think at all? It
is, you say, because his brain is not so good. But you are making a
supposition; you do not know at all. No difference has ever been found
between healthy brains that have been dissected. It is even very probable

that a fool's cerebellum will be in better condition than Archimedes', which
has worked prodigiously, and which might be worn out and shrivelled.
Let us conclude therefore what we have already concluded, that we are
ignoramuses about all first principles. As regards ignoramuses who pride
themselves on their knowledge, they are far inferior to monkeys.
Now dispute, choleric arguers: present your petitions against each other;
proffer your insults, pronounce your sentences, you who do not know one
word about the matter.

SECTION V

Of Warburton's Paradox on the Immortality of the Soul

Warburton, editor and commentator of Shakespeare and Bishop of
Gloucester, making use of English freedom, and abuse of the custom of
hurling insults at one's adversaries, has composed four volumes to prove
that the immortality of the soul was never announced in the Pentateuch, and
to conclude from this same proof that Moses' mission is divine. Here is the
précis of his book, which he himself gives, pages 7 and 8 of the first
volume.
"1. The doctrine of a life to come, of rewards and punishments after death,
is necessary to all civil society.
"2. The whole human race (and this is where he is mistaken), and especially
the wisest and most learned nations of antiquity, concurred in believing and
teaching this doctrine.
"3. It cannot be found in any passage of the law of Moses; therefore the law
of Moses is of divine origin. Which I am going to prove by the two
following syllogisms:
First Syllogism
"Every religion, every society that has not the immortality of the soul for its
basis, can be maintained only by an extraordinary providence; the Jewish

religion had not the immortality of the soul for basis; therefore the Jewish
religion was maintained by an extraordinary providence.
Second Syllogism
"All the ancient legislators have said that a religion which did not teach the
immortality of the soul could not be maintained but by an extraordinary
providence; Moses founded a religion which is not founded on the
immortality of the soul; therefore Moses believed his religion maintained
by an extraordinary providence."
What is much more extraordinary is this assertion of Warburton's, which he
has put in big letters at the beginning of his book. He has often been
reproached with the extreme rashness and bad faith with which he dares to
say that all the ancient legislators believed that a religion which is not
founded on pains and recompenses after death, can be maintained only by
an extraordinary providence; not one of them ever said it. He does not
undertake even to give any example in his huge book stuffed with a vast
number of quotations, all of which are foreign to his subject. He has buried
himself beneath a pile of Greek and Latin authors, ancient and modern, for
fear one might see through him on the other side of a horrible multitude of
envelopes. When criticism finally probed to the bottom, he was resurrected
from among all these dead men in order to load all his adversaries with
insults.
It is true that towards the end of his fourth volume, after having walked
through a hundred labyrinths, and having fought with everybody he met on
the road, he comes at last to his great question which he had left there. He
lays all the blame on the Book of Job which passes among scholars for an
Arab work, and he tries to prove that Job did not believe in the immortality
of the soul. Later he explains in his own way all the texts of Holy Writ by
which people have tried to combat this opinion.
All one can say about it is that, if he was right, it was not for a bishop to be
right in such a way. He should have felt that one might draw dangerous
inferences; but everything in this world is a mass of contradiction. This
man, who became accuser and persecutor, was not made bishop by a
minister of state's patronage until immediately after he had written his book.

At Salamanca, Coimbre or Rome, he would have been obliged to recant and
to ask pardon. In England he became a peer of the realm with an income of
a hundred thousand livres; it was enough to modify his methods.

SECTION VI

Of the Need of Revelation

The greatest benefit we owe to the New Testament is that it has revealed to
us the immortality of the soul. It is in vain, therefore, that this fellow
Warburton tried to cloud over this important truth, by continually
representing in his legation of Moses that "the ancient Jews knew nothing
of this necessary dogma, and that the Sadducees did not admit it in the time
of our Lord Jesus."
He interprets in his own way the very words that have been put into Jesus
Christ's mouth: "... have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by
God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God
of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living" (St. Matt. xxii.
31, 32). He gives to the parable of the wicked rich man a sense contrary to
that of all the Churches. Sherlock, Bishop of London, and twenty other
scholars refuted him. English philosophers even reproached him with the
scandal of an Anglican bishop manifesting an opinion so contrary to the
Anglican Church; and after that, this man takes it into his head to treat these
persons as impious: like the character of Arlequin in the comedy of the
Dévaliseur de maisons, who, after throwing the furniture out of the window,
sees a man carrying some of it off, and cries with all his might "Stop thief!"
One should bless the revelation of the immortality of the soul, and of
rewards and punishments after death, all the more that mankind's vain
philosophy has always been sceptical of it. The great Cæsar did not believe
in it at all, he made himself quite clear in full senate when, in order to stop
Catalina being put to death, he represented that death left man without
sensation, that everything died with him; and nobody refuted this view.
The Roman Empire was divided between two principal sects: that of
Epicurus which asserted that deity was useless to the world, and that the
soul perished with the body: and that of the Stoics who regarded the soul as

part of the Deity, which after death was joined again to its origin, to the
great everything from which it emanated. Thus, whether one believed the
soul mortal, or whether one believed it immortal, all the sects were agreed
in laughing at pains and punishments after death.
We still have a hundred monuments of this belief of the Romans. It is by
virtue of this opinion graved profoundly in their hearts, that so many simple
Roman citizens killed themselves without the least scruple; they did not
wait for a tyrant to hand them over to the executioners.
The most virtuous men even, and those most persuaded of the existence of a
God, hoped for no reward, and feared no punishment. Clement, who later
was Pope and saint, began by himself doubting what the early Christians
said of another life, and consulted St. Peter at Cæsarea. We are far from
believing that St. Clement wrote the history that is attributed to him; but
this history makes evident the need the human race had of a precise
revelation. All that can surprise us is that so repressive and salutary a
doctrine has left a prey to so many horrible crimes men who have so little
time to live, and who see themselves squeezed between two eternities.

SECTION VII

Souls of Fools and Monsters

A deformed child is born absolutely imbecile, it has no ideas and lives
without ideas; we have seen examples of this. How shall this animal be
defined? doctors have said that it is something between man and beast;
others have said that it had a sensitive soul, but not an intellectual soul. It
eats, drinks, sleeps, wakes, has sensations; but it does not think.
Is there another life for this creature, or is there none? The question has
been posed, and has not yet been completely answered.
Some say that this creature must have a soul, because its father and mother
had one. But by this reasoning one would prove that if it came into the
world without a nose it would be deemed to have one, because its father and
its mother had noses.

A woman gives birth to child with no chin, its forehead is receding and
rather black, its nose is slim and pointed, its eyes are round, it bears not a
bad resemblance to a swallow; the rest of its body, nevertheless, is made
like ours. The parents have it baptised; by a plurality of votes it is
considered a man and possessor of an immortal soul. But if this ridiculous
little figure has pointed nails and beak-like mouth, it is declared a monster,
it has no soul, and is not baptised.
It is well known that in London in 1726 there was a woman who gave birth
every week to a rabbit. No difficulty was made about refusing baptism to
this child, despite the epidemic mania there was for three weeks in London
for believing that this poor rogue was making wild rabbits. The surgeon
who attended her, St. André by name, swore that nothing was more true,
and people believed him. But what reason did the credulous have for
refusing a soul to this woman's children? she had a soul, her children should
be provided with souls also; whether they had hands, whether they had
paws, whether they were born with a little snout or with a face; cannot the
Supreme Being bestow the gift of thought and sensation on a little I know
not what, born of a woman, shaped like a rabbit, as well as to a little I know
not what, shaped like a man? Shall the soul that was ready to lodge in this
woman's fœtus go back again into space?
Locke makes the sound observation, about monsters, that one must not
attribute immortality to the exterior of a body; that the form has nothing to
do with it. This immortality, he says, is no more attached to the form of his
face or his chest, than to the way his beard is dressed or his coat cut.
He asks what is the exact measure of deformity by which you can recognize
whether or no a child has a soul? What is the precise degree at which it
must be declared a monster and deprived of a soul?
One asks still further what would be a soul which never has any but
fantastic ideas? there are some which never escape from them. Are they
worthy or unworthy? what is to be done with their pure spirit?
What is one to think of a child with two heads? without deformity apart
from this? Some say that it has two souls because it is provided with two
pineal glands, with two corpus callosum, with two sensorium commune.

Others reply that one cannot have two souls when one has only one chest
and one navel.[22]
In fine, so many questions have been asked about this poor human soul, that
if it were necessary to answer them all, this examination of its own person
would cause it the most intolerable boredom. There would happen to it what
happened to Cardinal de Polignac at a conclave. His steward, tired of never
being able to make him settle his accounts, made the journey from Rome,
and came to the little window of his cell burdened with an immense bundle
of papers. He read for nearly two hours. At last, seeing that no reply was
forthcoming, he put his head forward. The cardinal had departed nearly two
hours before. Our souls will depart before their stewards have acquainted
them with the facts: but let us be exact before God, whatever sort of
ignoramuses we are, we and our stewards.

FOOTNOTES:
[21] Voltaire himself.
[22] The Chevalier d'Angos, learned astronomer, has carefully observed a two-
headed lizard for several days; and he has assured himself that the lizard had two
independent wills, each of which had an almost equal power over the body.
When the lizard was given a piece of bread, in such a way that it could see it
with only one head, this head wanted to go after the bread, and the other wanted
the body to remain at rest.

STATES, GOVERNMENTS
The ins and outs of all governments have been closely examined recently.
Tell me then, you who have travelled, in what state, under what sort of
government you would choose to be born. I imagine that a great land-
owning lord in France would not be vexed to be born in Germany; he would
be sovereign instead of subject. A peer of France would be very glad to
have the privileges of the English peerage; he would be legislator. The
lawyer and the financier would be better off in France than elsewhere.
But what country would a wise, free man, a man with a moderate fortune,
and without prejudices, choose?
A member of the government of Pondicherry, a learned man enough,
returned to Europe by land with a Brahmin better educated than the
ordinary Brahmin. "What do you think of the government of the Great
Mogul?" asked the councillor.
"I think it abominable," answered the Brahmin. "How can you expect a
state to be happily governed by the Tartars? Our rajahs, our omrahs, our
nabobs, are very content, but the citizens are hardly so; and millions of
citizens are something."
Reasoning, the councillor and the Brahmin traversed the whole of Upper
Asia. "I make the observation," said the Brahmin, "that there is not one
republic in all this vast part of the world."
"Formerly there was the republic of Tyre," said the councillor, "but it did
not last long; there was still another one in the direction of Arabia Petrea, in
a little corner called Palestine, if one can honour with the name of republic
a horde of thieves and usurers sometimes governed by judges, sometimes
by a species of kings, sometimes by grand-pontiffs, become slave seven or
eight times, and finally driven out of the country which it had usurped."
"I imagine," said the Brahmin, "that one ought to find very few republics on
the earth. Men are rarely worthy of governing themselves. This happiness

should belong only to little peoples who hide themselves in islands, or
among the mountains, like rabbits who shun carnivorous beasts; but in the
long run they are discovered and devoured."
When the two travellers reached Asia Minor, the councillor said to the
Brahmin: "Would you believe that a republic was formed in a corner of
Italy, which lasted more than five hundred years, and which owned Asia
Minor, Asia, Africa, Greece, Gaul, Spain and the whole of Italy?"
"She soon became a monarchy, then," said the Brahmin.
"You have guessed right," said the other. "But this monarchy fell, and every
day we compose beautiful dissertations in order to find the cause of its
decadence and downfall."
"You take a deal of trouble," said the Indian. "This empire fell because it
existed. Everything has to fall. I hope as much will happen to the Grand
Mogul's empire."
"By the way," said the European, "do you consider that there should be
more honour in a despotic state, and more virtue in a republic?"
The Indian, having had explained to him what we mean by honour,
answered that honour was more necessary in a republic, and that one had
more need of virtue in a monarchical state. "For," said he, "a man who
claims to be elected by the people, will not be if he is dishonoured; whereas
at the court he could easily obtain a place, in accordance with a great
prince's maxim, that in order to succeed a courtier should have neither
honour nor character. As regards virtue, one must be prodigiously virtuous
to dare to say the truth. The virtuous man is much more at his ease in a
republic; he has no one to flatter."
"Do you think," said the man from Europe, "that laws and religions are
made for climates, just as one has to have furs in Moscow, and gauzy stuffs
in Delhi?"
"Without a doubt," answered the Brahmin. "All the laws which concern
material things are calculated for the meridian one lives in. A German needs
only one wife, and a Persian three or four.

"The rites of religion are of the same nature. How, if I were Christian,
should I say mass in my province where there is neither bread nor wine? As
regards dogmas, that is another matter; the climate has nothing to do with
them. Did not your religion begin in Asia, whence it was driven out? does it
not exist near the Baltic Sea, where it was unknown?"
"In what state, under what domination, would you like best to live?" asked
the councillor.
"Anywhere but where I do live," answered his companion. "And I have met
many Siamese, Tonkinese, Persians and Turks who said as much."
"But, once again," persisted the European, "what state would you choose?"
The Brahmin answered: "The state where only the laws are obeyed."
"That is an old answer," said the councillor.
"It is none the worse for that," said the Brahmin.
"Where is that country?" asked the councillor.
"We must look for it," answered the Brahmin.

SUPERSTITION
The superstitious man is to the rogue what the slave is to the tyrant. Further,
the superstitious man is governed by the fanatic and becomes fanatic.
Superstition born in Paganism, adopted by Judaism, infested the Christian
Church from the earliest times. All the fathers of the Church, without
exception, believed in the power of magic. The Church always condemned
magic, but she always believed in it: she did not excommunicate sorcerers
as madmen who were mistaken, but as men who were really in
communication with the devil.
To-day one half of Europe thinks that the other half has long been and still
is superstitious. The Protestants regard the relics, the indulgences, the
mortifications, the prayers for the dead, the holy water, and almost all the
rites of the Roman Church, as a superstitious dementia. Superstition,
according to them, consists in taking useless practices for necessary
practices. Among the Roman Catholics there are some more enlightened
than their ancestors, who have renounced many of these usages formerly
considered sacred; and they defend themselves against the others who have
retained them, by saying: "They are indifferent, and what is merely
indifferent cannot be an evil."
It is difficult to mark the limits of superstition. A Frenchman travelling in
Italy finds almost everything superstitious, and is hardly mistaken. The
Archbishop of Canterbury maintains that the Archbishop of Paris is
superstitious; the Presbyterians make the same reproach against His Grace
of Canterbury, and are in their turn treated as superstitious by the Quakers,
who are the most superstitious of all in the eyes of other Christians.
In Christian societies, therefore, no one agrees as to what superstition is.
The sect which seems to be the least attacked by this malady of the
intelligence is that which has the fewest rites. But if with few ceremonies it
is still strongly attached to an absurd belief, this absurd belief is equivalent
alone to all the superstitious practices observed from the time of Simon the
magician to that of Father Gauffridi.

It is therefore clear that it is the fundamentals of the religion of one sect
which is considered as superstition by another sect.
The Moslems accuse all Christian societies of it, and are themselves
accused. Who will judge this great matter? Will it be reason? But each sect
claims to have reason on its side. It will therefore be force which will judge,
while awaiting the time when reason will penetrate a sufficient number of
heads to disarm force.
Up to what point does statecraft permit superstition to be destroyed? This is
a very thorny question; it is like asking up to what point one should make
an incision in a dropsical person, who may die under the operation. It is a
matter for the doctor's discretion.
Can there exist a people free from all superstitious prejudices? That is to
ask—Can there exist a nation of philosophers? It is said that there is no
superstition in the magistrature of China. It is probable that none will
remain in the magistrature of a few towns of Europe.
Then the magistrates will stop the superstition of the people from being
dangerous. These magistrates' example will not enlighten the mob, but the
principal persons of the middle-classes will hold the mob in check. There is
not perhaps a single riot, a single religious outrage in which the middle-
classes were not formerly imbrued, because these middle classes were then
the mob; but reason and time will have changed them. Their softened
manners will soften those of the lowest and most savage populace; it is a
thing of which we have striking examples in more than one country. In a
word, less superstition, less fanaticism; and less fanaticism, less misery.

TEARS
Tears are the mute language of sorrow. But why? What connection is there
between a sad idea and this limpid, salt liquid, filtered through a little gland
at the external corner of the eye, which moistens the conjunctiva and the
small lachrymal points, whence it descends into the nose and mouth
through the reservoir called the lachrymal sack and its ducts?
Why in women and children, whose organs are part of a frail and delicate
network, are tears more easily excited by sorrow than in grown men, whose
tissue is firmer?
Did nature wish compassion to be born in us at sight of these tears which
soften us, and lead us to help those who shed them? The woman of a savage
race is as firmly determined to help the child that cries as would be a
woman of the court, and maybe more, because she has fewer distractions
and passions.
In the animal body everything has an object without a doubt. The eyes
especially bear such evident, such proven, such admirable relation to the
rays of light; this mechanism is so divine, that I should be tempted to take
for a delirium of burning fever the audacity which denies the final causes of
the structure of our eyes.
The use of tears does not seem to have so well determined and striking an
object; but it would be beautiful that nature made them flow in order to stir
us to pity.
There are women who are accused of weeping when they wish. I am not at
all surprised at their talent. A live, sensitive, tender imagination can fix
itself on some object, on some sorrowful memory, and picture it in such
dominating colours that they wring tears from it. It is what happens to many
actors, and principally to actresses, on the stage.
The women who imitate them in their own homes add to this talent the
petty fraud of appearing to weep for their husbands, whereas in fact they are

weeping for their lovers. Their tears are true, but the object of them is false.
One asks why the same man who has watched the most atrocious events
dry-eyed, who even has committed cold-blooded crimes, will weep at the
theatre at the representation of these events and crimes? It is that he does
not see them with the same eyes, he sees them with the eyes of the author
and the actor. He is no longer the same man; he was a barbarian, he was
agitated by furious passions when he saw an innocent woman killed, when
he stained himself with his friend's blood. His soul was filled with stormy
tumult; it is tranquil, it is empty; nature returns to it; he sheds virtuous tears.
That is the true merit, the great good of the theatres; there is achieved what
can never be achieved by the frigid declamations of an orator paid to bore
the whole of an audience for an hour.
David the capitoul, who, without emotion, caused and saw the death of
innocent Calas on the wheel, would have shed tears at the sight of his own
crime in a well-written and well-spoken tragedy.
It is thus that Pope has said in the prologue to Addison's Cato:—

"Tyrants no more their savage nature kept;
And foes to virtue wondered how they wept."

THEIST
The theist is a man firmly persuaded of the existence of a Supreme Being as
good as He is powerful, who has formed all beings with extension,
vegetating, sentient and reflecting; who perpetuates their species, who
punishes crimes without cruelty, and rewards virtuous actions with
kindness.
The theist does not know how God punishes, how he protects, how he
pardons, for he is not reckless enough to flatter himself that he knows how
God acts, but he knows that God acts and that He is just. Difficulties against
Providence do not shake him in his faith, because they are merely great
difficulties, and not proofs. He submits to this Providence, although he
perceives but a few effects and a few signs of this Providence: and, judging
of the things he does not see by the things he sees, he considers that this
Providence reaches all places and all centuries.
Reconciled in this principle with the rest of the universe, he does not
embrace any of the sects, all of which contradict each other; his religion is
the most ancient and the most widespread; for the simple worship of a God
has preceded all the systems of the world. He speaks a language that all
peoples understand, while they do not understand one another. He has
brothers from Pekin to Cayenne, and he counts all wise men as his brethren.
He believes that religion does not consist either in the opinions of an
unintelligible metaphysic, or in vain display, but in worship and justice. The
doing of good, there is his service; being submissive to God, there is his
doctrine. The Mahometan cries to him—"Have a care if you do not make
the pilgrimage to Mecca!" "Woe unto you," says a Recollet, "if you do not
make a journey to Notre-Dame de Lorette!" He laughs at Lorette and at
Mecca; but he succours the needy and defends the oppressed.

TOLERANCE
What is tolerance? it is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of
frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly—that is the
first law of nature.
It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he
is not of the same opinion, is a monster. That admits of no difficulty. But the
government! but the magistrates! but the princes! how do they treat those
who have another worship than theirs? If they are powerful strangers, it is
certain that a prince will make an alliance with them. François I., very
Christian, will unite with Mussulmans against Charles V., very Catholic.
François I. will give money to the Lutherans of Germany to support them in
their revolt against the emperor; but, in accordance with custom, he will
start by having Lutherans burned at home. For political reasons he pays
them in Saxony; for political reasons he burns them in Paris. But what will
happen? Persecutions make proselytes? Soon France will be full of new
Protestants. At first they will let themselves be hanged, later they in their
turn will hang. There will be civil wars, then will come the St.
Bartholomew; and this corner of the world will be worse than all that the
ancients and moderns have ever told of hell.
Madmen, who have never been able to give worship to the God who made
you! Miscreants, whom the example of the Noachides, the learned Chinese,
the Parsees and all the sages, has never been able to lead! Monsters, who
need superstitions as crows' gizzards need carrion! you have been told it
already, and there is nothing else to tell you—if you have two religions in
your countries, they will cut each other's throat; if you have thirty religions,
they will dwell in peace. Look at the great Turk, he governs Guebres,
Banians, Greek Christians, Nestorians, Romans. The first who tried to stir
up tumult would be impaled; and everyone is tranquil.
Of all religions, the Christian is without doubt the one which should inspire
tolerance most, although up to now the Christians have been the most
intolerant of all men. The Christian Church was divided in its cradle, and

was divided even in the persecutions which under the first emperors it
sometimes endured. Often the martyr was regarded as an apostate by his
brethren, and the Carpocratian Christian expired beneath the sword of the
Roman executioners, excommunicated by the Ebionite Christian, the which
Ebionite was anathema to the Sabellian.
This horrible discord, which has lasted for so many centuries, is a very
striking lesson that we should pardon each other's errors; discord is the
great ill of mankind; and tolerance is the only remedy for it.
There is nobody who is not in agreement with this truth, whether he
meditates soberly in his study, or peaceably examines the truth with his
friends. Why then do the same men who admit in private indulgence,
kindness, justice, rise in public with so much fury against these virtues?
Why? it is that their own interest is their god, and that they sacrifice
everything to this monster that they worship.
I possess a dignity and a power founded on ignorance and credulity; I walk
on the heads of the men who lie prostrate at my feet; if they should rise and
look me in the face, I am lost; I must bind them to the ground, therefore,
with iron chains.
Thus have reasoned the men whom centuries of bigotry have made
powerful. They have other powerful men beneath them, and these have still
others, who all enrich themselves with the spoils of the poor, grow fat on
their blood, and laugh at their stupidity. They all detest tolerance, as
partisans grown rich at the public expense fear to render their accounts, and
as tyrants dread the word liberty. And then, to crown everything, they hire
fanatics to cry at the top of their voices: "Respect my master's absurdities,
tremble, pay, and keep your mouths shut."
It is thus that a great part of the world long was treated; but to-day when so
many sects make a balance of power, what course to take with them? Every
sect, as one knows, is a ground of error; there are no sects of geometers,
algebraists, arithmeticians, because all the propositions of geometry, algebra
and arithmetic are true. In every other science one may be deceived. What
Thomist or Scotist theologian would dare say seriously that he is sure of his
case?

If it were permitted to reason consistently in religious matters, it is clear
that we all ought to become Jews, because Jesus Christ our Saviour was
born a Jew, lived a Jew, died a Jew, and that he said expressly that he was
accomplishing, that he was fulfilling the Jewish religion. But it is clearer
still that we ought to be tolerant of one another, because we are all weak,
inconsistent, liable to fickleness and error. Shall a reed laid low in the mud
by the wind say to a fellow reed fallen in the opposite direction: "Crawl as I
crawl, wretch, or I shall petition that you be torn up by the roots and
burned?"

TRUTH
"Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou
sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I
into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Everyone that is of
the truth heareth my voice.
"Pilate saith unto Him, What is truth? And when he had said this he went
out, etc." (St. John xviii. 37.)
It is a sad thing for the human race that Pilate went out without waiting for
the answer; we should know what truth is. Pilate had very little curiosity.
The accused led before him, says he is king, that he was to be king; and
Pilate does not inquire how that can be. He is supreme judge in Cæsar's
name, he has power of life and death; his duty was to probe the sense of
these words. He ought to say—"Tell me what you understand by being
king. How were you born to be king and to bear witness to the truth? It is
maintained that truth reaches but with difficulty to the ear of kings. I am
judge, I have always had great trouble in finding it. While your enemies are
howling against you without, give me some information on the point; you
will be doing me the greatest service that has ever been done a judge; and I
much prefer to learn to recognize truth, than to accede to the Jews'
clamorous demand to have you hanged."
We shall not dare, to be sure, seek what the author of all truth would have
been able to reply to Pilate.
Would he have said: "Truth is an abstract word which most men use
indifferently in their books and judgments, for error and falsehood?" This
definition would have been marvellously appropriate to all makers of
systems. Similarly is the word "wisdom" taken often for folly, and "wit" for
nonsense.
Humanly speaking, let us define truth, while waiting for a better definition,
as—"a statement of the facts as they are."

I suppose that if one had given only six months to teaching Pilate the truths
of logic, he would assuredly have made this conclusive syllogism. One
must not take away the life of a man who has only preached good morality:
well, the man who has been impeached has, on the showing of his enemies
even, often preached excellent morality; therefore he should not be
punished with death.
He might have drawn this further argument.
My duty is to disperse the riotous assemblage of a seditious people who
demand a man's death, unreasonably and without legal form; well, that is
the position of the Jews in this instance; therefore I must drive them away
and break up their meeting.
We suppose that Pilate knew arithmetic; hence we will not speak of those
forms of truth.
As regards mathematical truths, I think it would have taken at least three
years before he could have learned higher geometry. The truths of physics
combined with those of geometry would have demanded more than four
years. We spend six, ordinarily, in studying theology; I ask twelve for
Pilate, seeing that he was pagan, and that six years would not have been too
much for eradicating all his old errors, and six years more for making him
fit to receive a doctor's hood.
If Pilate had had a well-balanced mind, I should have asked only two years
to teach him metaphysical truth; and as metaphysical truth is necessarily
allied to moral truth, I flatter myself that in less than nine years he would
have become a real scholar and a perfectly honest man.
I should then have said to Pilate:—Historical truths are merely probabilities.
If you had fought at the battle of Philippi, that is for you a truth which you
know by intuition, by perception. But for us who dwell near the Syrian
desert, it is merely a very probable thing, which we know by hearsay. How
much hearsay is necessary to form a conviction equal to that of a man who,
having seen the thing, can flatter himself that he has a sort of certainty?
He who has heard the thing told by twelve thousand eyewitnesses, has only
twelve thousand probabilities, equal to one strong probability, which is not
equal to certainty.