VOLUME X (continued 2)

SECTION II.

As we already possess, I had almost said, twenty thousand works, the greater number of them extending to many volumes, on the subject, exclusively, of the history of France; and as, even a studious man, were he to live a hundred years, would find it impossible to read them, I think it a good thing to know where to stop. We are obliged to connect with the knowledge of our own country the history of our neighbors. We are still less permitted to remain ignorant of the Greeks and Romans, and their laws which are become ours; but, if to this laborious study we should resolve to add that of more remote antiquity, we should resemble the man who deserted Tacitus and Livy to study seriously the "Thousand and One Nights." All the origins of nations are evidently fables. The reason is that men must have lived long in society, and have learned to make bread and clothing (which would be matters of some difficulty) before they acquired the art of transmitting all their thoughts to posterity (a matter of greater difficulty still). The art of writing is certainly not more than six thousand years old, even among the Chinese; and, whatever may be the boast of the Chaldæans and Egyptians, it appears not at all likely that they were able to read and write earlier.

The history, therefore, of preceding periods, could be transmitted by memory alone; and we well know how the memory of past events changes from one generation to another. The first histories were written only from the imagination. Not only did every people invent its own origin, but it invented also the origin of the whole world.

If we may believe Sanchoniathon, the origin of things was a thick air, which was rarified by the wind; hence sprang desire and love, and from the union of desire and love were formed animals. The stars were later productions, and intended merely to adorn the heavens, and to rejoice the sight of the animals upon earth.

The Knef of the Egyptians, their Oshiret and Ishet, which we call Osiris and Isis, are neither less ingenious nor ridiculous. The Greeks embellished all these fictions. Ovid collected them and ornamented them with the charms of the most beautiful poetry. What he says of a god who develops or disembroils chaos, and of the formation of man, is sublime.

Sanctius his animal, mentisque capacius altæ Deerat adhuc, et quod dominari in cætera posset. Natus homo est.... —OVID, Metam., i, v. 76. A creature of a more exalted kind Was wanting yet, and then was man designed; Conscious or thought, of more capacious breast, For empire formed, and fit to rule the rest. —DRYDEN. Pronaque cum spectent animalia cætera terram; Os homini sublime dedit cœlumque tueri Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus. METAM., i, v. 84. Thus, while the mute creation downward bend Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend, Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes Beholds his own hereditary skies. —DRYDEN.

Hesiod, and other writers who lived so long before, would have been very far from expressing themselves with this elegant sublimity. But, from the interesting moment of man's formation down to the era of the Olympiads, everything is plunged in profound obscurity.

Herodotus is present at the Olympic games, and, like an old woman to children, recites his narratives, or rather tales, to the assembled Greeks. He begins by saying that the Phœnicians sailed from the Red Sea into the Mediterranean; which, if true, must necessarily imply that they had doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and made the circuit of Africa.

Then comes the rape of Io; then the fable of Gyges and Candaules; then the wondrous stories of banditti, and that of the daughter of Cheops, king of Egypt, having required a hewn stone from each of her many lovers, and obtained, in consequence, a number large enough to build one of the pyramids.

To this, add the oracles, prodigies, and frauds of priests, and you have the history of the human race.

The first periods of the Roman history appear to have been written by Herodotus; our conquerors and legislators knew no other way of counting their years as they passed away, than by driving nails into a wall by the hand of the sacred pontiff.

The great Romulus, the king of a village, is the son of the god Mars, and a recluse, who was proceeding to a well to draw water in a pitcher. He has a god for his father, a woman of loose manners for his mother, and a she-wolf for his nurse. A buckler falls from heaven expressly for Numa. The invaluable books of the Sibyls are found by accident. An augur, by divine permission, divides a large flint-stone with a razor. A vestal, with her mere girdle, draws into the water a large vessel that has been stranded. Castor and Pollux come down to fight for the Romans, and the marks of their horses' feet are imprinted on the stones. The transalpine Gauls advanced to pillage Rome; some relate that they were driven away by geese, others that they carried away with them much gold and silver; but it is probable that, at that time in Italy, geese were far more abundant than silver. We have imitated the first Roman historians, at least in their taste for fables. We have our oriflamme, our great standard, brought from heaven by an angel, and the holy phial by a pigeon; and, when to these we add the mantle of St. Martin, we feel not a little formidable.

What would constitute useful history? That which should teach us our duties and our rights, without appearing to teach them.

It is often asked whether the fable of the sacrifice of Iphigenia is taken from the history of Jephthah; whether the deluge of Deucalion is invented in imitation of that of Noah; whether the adventure of Philemon and Baucis is copied from that of Lot and his wife. The Jews admit that they had no communication with strangers, that their books were unknown to the Greeks till the translation made by the order of Ptolemy. The Jews were, long before that period, money-brokers and usurers among the Greeks at Alexandria; but the Greeks never went to sell old clothes at Jerusalem. It is evident that no people imitated the Jews, and also that the Jews imitated or adopted many things from the Babylonians, the Egyptians, and the Greeks.

All Jewish antiquities are sacred in our estimation, notwithstanding the hatred and contempt in which we hold that people. We cannot, indeed, believe them by reason, but we bring ourselves under subjection to the Jews by faith. There are about fourscore systems in existence on the subject of their chronology, and a far greater number of ways of explaining the events recorded in their histories; we know not which is the true one, but we reserve our faith for it in store against the time when that true one shall be discovered.

We have so many things to believe in this sensible and magnanimous people, that all our faith is exhausted by them, and we have none left for the prodigies with which the other nations abound. Rollin may go on repeating to us the oracles of Apollo, and the miraculous achievements of Semiramis; he may continue to transcribe all that has been narrated of the justice of those ancient Scythians who so frequently pillaged Africa, and occasionally ate men for their breakfast; yet sensible and well-educated people will still feel and express some degree of incredulity.

What I most admire in our modern compilers is the judgment and zeal with which they prove to us, that whatever happened in former ages, in the most extensive and powerful empires of the world, took place solely for the instruction of the inhabitants of Palestine. If the kings of Babylon, in the course of their conquests, overrun the territories of the Hebrew people, it is only to correct that people for their sins. If the monarch, who has been commonly named Cyrus, becomes master of Babylon, it is that he may grant permission to some captive Jews to return home. If Alexander conquers Darius, it is for the settlement of some Jew old-clothesmen at Alexandria. When the Romans join Syria to their vast dominions, and round their empire with the little district of Judæa, this is still with a view to teach a moral lesson to the Jews. The Arabs and the Turks appear upon the stage of the world solely for the correction of this amiable people. We must acknowledge that they have had an excellent education; never had any pupil so many preceptors. Such is the utility of history.

But what is still more instructive is the exact justice which the clergy have dealt out to all those sovereigns with whom they were dissatisfied. Observe with what impartial candor St. Gregory of Nazianzen judges the emperor Julian, the philosopher. He declares that that prince, who did not believe in the existence of the devil, held secret communication with that personage, and that, on a particular occasion, when the demons appeared to him under the most hideous forms, and in the midst of the most raging flames, he drove them away by making inadvertently the sign of the cross.

He denominates him madman and wretch; he asserts that Julian immolated young men and women every night in caves. Such is the description he gives of the most candid and clement of men, and who never exercised the slightest revenge against this same Gregory, notwithstanding the abuse and invectives with which he pursued him throughout his reign.

To apologize for the guilty is a happy way of justifying calumny against the innocent. Compensation is thus effected; and such compensation was amply afforded by St. Gregory. The emperor Constantius, Julian's uncle and predecessor, upon his accession to the throne, had massacred Julius, his mother's brother, and his two sons, all three of whom had been declared august; this was a system which he had adopted from his father. He afterwards procured the assassination of Gallus, Julian's brother. The cruelty which he thus displayed to his own family, he extended to the empire at large; but he was a man of prayer, and, even at the decisive battle with Maxentius, he was praying to God in a neighboring church during the whole time in which the armies were engaged. Such was the man who was eulogized by Gregory; and, if such is the way in which the saints make us acquainted with the truth, what may we not expect from the profane, particularly when they are ignorant, superstitious, and irritable?

At the present day the study of history is occasionally applied to a purpose somewhat whimsical and absurd. Certain charters of the time of Dagobert are discovered and brought forward, the greater part of them of a somewhat suspicious character in point of genuineness, and ill-understood; and from these it is inferred, that customs, rights, and prerogatives, which subsisted then, should be revived now. I would recommend it to those who adopt this method of study and reasoning, to say to the ocean, "You formerly extended to Aigues-Mortes, Fréjus, Ravenna, and Ferrara. Return to them immediately."

SECTION III.

Of the Certainty of History.

All certainty which does not consist in mathematical demonstration is nothing more than the highest probability; there is no other historical certainty.

When Marco Polo described the greatness and population of China, being the first, and for a time the only writer who had described them, he could not obtain credit. The Portuguese, who for ages afterwards had communication and commerce with that vast empire, began to render the description probable. It is now a matter of absolute certainty; of that certainty which arises from the unanimous deposition of a thousand witnesses or different nations, unopposed by the testimony of a single individual.

If merely two or three historians had described the adventure of King Charles XII. when he persisted in remaining in the territories of his benefactor, the sultan, in opposition to the orders of that monarch, and absolutely fought, with the few domestics that attended his person, against an army of janissaries and Tartars, I should have suspended my judgment about its truth; but, having spoken to many who actually witnessed the fact, and having never heard it called in question, I cannot possibly do otherwise than believe it; because, after all, although such conduct is neither wise nor common, there is nothing in it contradictory to the laws of nature, or the character of the hero.

That which is in opposition to the ordinary course of nature ought not to be believed, unless it is attested by persons evidently inspired by the divine mind, and whose inspiration, indeed, it is impossible to doubt. Hence we are justified in considering as a paradox the assertion made under the article on "Certainty," in the great "Encyclopædia," that we are as much bound to believe in the resuscitation of a dead man, if all Paris were to affirm it, as to believe all Paris when it states that we gained the battle of Fontenoy. It is clear that the evidence of all Paris to a thing improbable can never be equal to that evidence in favor of a probable one. These are the first principles of genuine logic. Such a dictionary as the one in question should be consecrated only to truth.

Uncertainty of History.

Periods of time are distinguished as fabulous and historical. But even in the historical times themselves it is necessary to distinguish truths from fables. I am not here speaking of fables, now universally admitted to be such. There is no question, for example, respecting the prodigies with which Livy has embellished, or rather defaced, his history. But with respect to events generally admitted, how many reasons exist for doubt!

Let it be recollected that the Roman republic was five hundred years without historians; that Livy himself deplores the loss of various public monuments or records, as almost all, he says, were destroyed in the burning of Rome: "Pleraque interiere." Let it be considered that, in the first three hundred years, the art of writing was very uncommon: "Raræ per eadem tempora literæ." Reason will be then seen for entertaining doubt on all those events which do not correspond with the usual order of human affairs.

Can it be considered very likely that Romulus, the grandson of the king of the Sabines, was compelled to carry off the Sabine women in order to obtain for his people wives? Is the history of Lucretia highly probable; can we easily believe, on the credit of Livy, that the king Porsenna betook himself to flight, full of admiration for the Romans, because a fanatic had pledged himself to assassinate him? Should we not rather be inclined to rely upon Polybius, who was two hundred years earlier than Livy? Polybius informs us that Porsenna subjugated the Romans. This is far more probable than the adventure of Scævola's burning off his hand for failing in the attempt to assassinate him. I would have defied Poltrot to do as much.

Does the adventure of Regulus, inclosed within a hogshead or tub stuck round with iron spikes, deserve belief? Would not Polybius, a contemporary, have recorded it had it been true? He says not a single word upon the subject. Is not this a striking presumption that the story was trumped up long afterwards to gratify the popular hatred against the Carthaginians?

Open "Moréri's Dictionary," at the article on "Regulus." He informs you that the torments inflicted on that Roman are recorded in Livy. The particular decade, however, in which Livy would have recorded it, if at all, is lost; and in lieu of it, we have only the supplement of Freinsheim; and thus it appears that Dictionary has merely cited a German writer of the seventeenth century, under the idea of citing a Roman of the Augustan age. Volumes might be composed out of all the celebrated events which have been generally admitted, but which may be more fairly doubted. But the limits allowed for this article will not permit us to enlarge.

Whether Temples, Festivals, Annual Ceremonies, and even Medals, are Historic Proofs.

We might be naturally led to imagine that a monument raised by any nation in celebration of a particular event, would attest the certainty of that event; if, however, these monuments were not erected by contemporaries, or if they celebrate events that carry with them but little probability, they may often be regarded as proving nothing more than a wish to consecrate a popular opinion.

The rostral column, erected in Rome by the contemporaries of Duilius, is undoubtedly a proof of the naval victory obtained by Duilius; but does the statue of the augur Nævius, who is said to have divided a large flint with a razor, prove that Nævius in reality performed that prodigy? Were the statues of Ceres and Triptolemus, at Athens, decisive evidences that Ceres came down from I know not what particular planet, to instruct the Athenians in agriculture? Or does the famous Laocoon, which exists perfect to the present day, furnish incontestable evidence of the truth of the story of the Trojan horse?

Ceremonies and annual festivals observed universally throughout any nation, are, in like manner, no better proofs of the reality of the events to which they are attributed. The festival of Orion, carried on the back of a dolphin, was celebrated among the Romans as well as the Greeks. That of Faunus was in celebration of his adventure with Hercules and Omphale, when that god, being enamored of Omphale, mistook the bed of Hercules for that of his mistress.

The famous feast of the Lupercals was instituted in honor of the she-wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus.

What was the origin of the feast of Orion, which was observed on the fifth of the ides of May? It was neither more nor less than the following adventure: Hyreus once entertained at his house the gods Jupiter, Neptune, and Mercury, and when his high and mighty guests were about to depart, the worthy host, who had no wife, and was very desirous of having a son, lamented his unfortunate fate, and expressed his anxious desire to the three divinities. We dare not exactly detail what they did to the hide of an ox which Hyreus had killed for their entertainment; however, they afterwards covered the well-soaked hide with a little earth; and thence, at the end of nine months, was born Orion.

Almost all the Roman, Syrian, Grecian, and Egyptian festivals, were founded on similar legends, as well as the temples and statues of ancient heroes. They were monuments consecrated by credulity to error.

One of our most ancient monuments is the statue of St. Denis carrying his head in his arms.

Even a medal, and a contemporary medal, is sometimes no proof. How many medals has flattery struck in celebration of battles very indecisive in themselves, but thus exalted into victories; and of enterprises, in fact, baffled and abortive, and completed only in the inscription on the medal? Finally, during the war in 1740, between the Spaniards and the English, was there not a medal struck, attesting the capture of Carthagena by Admiral Vernon, although that admiral was obliged to raise the siege?

Medals are then unexceptionable testimonies only when the event they celebrate is attested by contemporary authors; these evidences thus corroborating each other, verify the event described.

Should an Historian ascribe Fictitious Speeches to his Characters, and sketch Portraits of them?

If on any particular occasion the commander of an army, or a public minister, has spoken in a powerful and impressive manner, characteristic of his genius and his age, his discourse should unquestionably be given with the most literal exactness. Speeches of this description are perhaps the most valuable part of history. But for what purpose represent a man as saying what he never did say? It would be just as correct to attribute to him acts which he never performed. It is a fiction imitated from Homer; but that which is fiction in a poem, in strict language, is a lie in the historian. Many of the ancients adopted the method in question, which merely proves that many of the ancients were fond of parading their eloquence at the expense of truth.

Of Historical Portraiture.

Portraits, also, frequently manifest a stronger desire for display, than to communicate information. Contemporaries are justifiable in drawing the portraits of statesmen with whom they have negotiated, or of generals under whom they have fought. But how much is it to be apprehended that the pencil will in many cases be guided by the feelings? The portraits given by Lord Clarendon appear to be drawn with more impartiality, gravity, and judgment, than those which we peruse with so much delight in Cardinal de Retz.

But to attempt to paint the ancients; to elaborate in this way the development of their minds; to regard events as characters in which we may accurately read the most sacred feelings and intents of their hearts—this is an undertaking of no ordinary difficulty and discrimination, although as frequently conducted, both childish and trifling.

Of Cicero's Maxim Concerning History, that an Historian should never dare to relate a Falsehood or to Conceal a Truth.

The first part of this precept is incontestable; we must stop for a moment to examine the other. If a particular truth may be of any service to the state, your silence is censurable. But I will suppose you to write the history of a prince who had reposed in you a secret—ought you to reveal that secret? Ought you to say to all posterity what you would be criminal in disclosing to a single individual? Should the duty of an historian prevail over the higher and more imperative duty of a man?

I will suppose again, that you have witnessed a failing or weakness which has not had the slightest influence on public affairs—ought you to publish such weakness? In such a case history becomes satire.

It must be allowed, indeed, that the greater part of anecdote writers are more indiscreet than they are useful. But what opinion must we entertain of those impudent compilers who appear to glory in scattering about them calumny and slander, and print and sell scandals as Voisin sold poisons?

Of Satirical History.

If Plutarch censured Herodotus for not having sufficiently extolled the fame of some of the Grecian cities, and for omitting many known facts worthy of being recorded, how much more censurable are certain of our modern writers, who, without any of the merits of Herodotus, impute both to princes and to nations acts of the most odious character, without the slightest proof or evidence? The history of the war in 1741 has been written in England; and it relates, "that at the battle of Fontenoy the French fired at the English balls and pieces of glass which had been prepared with poison; and that the duke of Cumberland sent to the king of France a box full of those alleged poisonous articles, which had been found in the bodies of the wounded English." The same author adds, that the French having lost in that battle forty thousand men, the parliament issued an order to prevent people from talking on the subject, under pain of corporal punishment.

The fraudulent memoirs published not long since under the name of Madame de Maintenon, abound with similar absurdities. We are told in them, that at the siege of Lille the allies threw placards into the city, containing these words: "Frenchmen, be comforted—Maintenon shall never be your queen."

Almost every page is polluted by false statements and abuse of the royal family and other leading families in the kingdom, without the author's making out the smallest probability to give a color to his calumnies. This is not writing history; it is writing slanders which deserve the pillory.

A vast number of works have been printed in Holland, under the name of history, of which the style is as vulgar and coarse as the abuse, and the facts as false as they are ill-narrated. This, it has been observed, is a bad fruit of the noble tree of liberty. But if the contemptible authors of this trash have the liberty thus to deceive their readers, it becomes us here to take the liberty to undeceive them.

A thirst for despicable gain, and the insolence of vulgar and grovelling manners, were the only motives which led that Protestant refugee from Languedoc, of the name of Langlevieux, but commonly called La Beaumelle, to attempt the most infamous trick that ever disgraced literature. He sold to Eslinger, the bookseller of Frankfort, in 1751, for seventeen louis d'or, the "History of the Age of Louis XIV.," which is not his; and, either to make it believed that he was the proprietor, or to earn his money, he loaded it with abusive and abominable notes against Louis XIV., his son, and his grandson, the duke of Burgundy, whom he abuses in the most unmeasured terms, and calls a traitor to his grandfather and his country. He pours upon the duke of Orleans, the regent, calumnies at once the most horrible and the most absurd; no person of consequence is spared, and yet no person of consequence did he ever know. He retails against the marshals Villars and Villeroi, against ministers, and even against ladies, all the petty, dirty, and scandalous tales that could be collected from the lowest taverns and wine-houses; and he speaks of the greatest princes as if they were amenable to himself, and under his own personal jurisdiction. He expresses himself, indeed, as if he were a formal and authorized judge of kings: "Give me," says he, "a Stuart, and I will make him king of England."

This most ridiculous and abominable conduct, proceeding from an author obscure and unknown, has incurred no prosecution; it would have been severely punished in a man whose words would have carried any weight. But we must here observe, that these works of darkness frequently circulate through all Europe; they are sold at the fairs of Frankfort and Leipsic, and the whole of the North is overrun with them. Foreigners, who are not well informed, derive from books of this description their knowledge of modern history. German authors are not always sufficiently on their guard against memoirs of this character, but employ them as materials; which has been the case with the memoirs of Pontis, Montbrun, Rochefort, and Pordac; with all the pretended political testaments of ministers of state, which have proceeded from the pen of forgery; with the "Royal Tenth" of Boisguillebert, impudently published under the name of Marshal Vauban; and with innumerable compilations of anas and anecdotes.

History is sometimes even still more shamefully abused in England. As there are always two parties in furious hostility against each other, until some common danger for a season unites them, the writers of one faction condemn everything that the others approve. The same individual is represented as a Cato and a Catiline. How is truth to be extricated from this adulation and satire? Perhaps there is only one rule to be depended upon, which is, to believe all the good which the historian of a party ventures to allow to the leaders of the opposite faction; and all the ills which he ventures to impute to the chiefs of his own—a rule, of which neither party can severely complain.

With regard to memoirs actually written by agents in the events recorded, as those of Clarendon, Ludlow, and Burnet, in England, and de la Rochefoucauld and de Retz in France, if they agree, they are true; if they contradict each other, doubt them.

With respect to anas and anecdotes, there may perhaps be one in a hundred of them that contain some shadow of truth.

SECTION IV.

Of the Method or Manner of Writing History, and of Style.

We have said so much upon this subject, that we must here say very little. It is sufficiently known and fully admitted, that the method and style of Livy —his gravity, and instructive eloquence, are suitable to the majesty of the Roman republic; that Tacitus is more calculated to portray tyrants, Polybius to give lessons on war, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus to investigate antiquities.

But, while he forms himself on the general model of these great masters, a weighty responsibility is attached to the modern historian from which they were exempt. He is required to give more minute details, facts more completely authenticated, correct dates, precise authorities, more attention to customs, laws, manners, commerce, finance, agriculture, and population. It is with history, as it is with mathematics and natural philosophy; the field of it is immensely enlarged. The more easy it is to compile newspapers, the more difficult it is at the present day to write history.

Daniel thought himself a historian, because he transcribed dates and narratives of battles, of which I can understand nothing. He should have informed me of the rights of the nation, the rights of the chief corporate establishments in it; its laws, usages, manners, with the alterations by which they have been affected in the progress of time. This nation might not improperly address him in some such language as the following:—I want from you my own history rather than that of Louis le Gros and Louis Hutin; you tell me, copying from some old, unauthenticated, and carelessly-written chronicle, that when Louis VIII. was attacked by a mortal disease, and lay languishing and powerless, the physicians ordered the more than half-dead monarch to take to his bed a blooming damsel, who might cherish the few sparks of remaining life; and that the pious king rejected the unholy advice with indignation. Alas! Daniel, you are unacquainted, it seems, with the Italian proverb—"Donna ignuda manda l'uomo sotto la terra." You ought to possess a little stronger tincture of political and natural history.

The history of a foreign country should be formed on a different model to that of our own.

If we compose a history of France, we are under no necessity to describe the course of the Seine and the Loire; but if we publish a history of the conquests of the Portuguese in Asia, a topographical description of the recently explored country is required. It is desirable that we should, as it were, conduct the reader by the hand round Africa, and along the coasts of Persia and India; and it is expected that we should treat with information and judgment, of manners, laws, and customs so new to Europe.

We have a great variety of histories of the establishment of the Portuguese in India, written by our countrymen, but not one of them has made us acquainted with the different governments of that country, with its religious antiquities, Brahmins, disciples of St. John, Guebers, and Banians. Some letters of Xavier and his successors have, it is true, been preserved to us. We have had histories of the Indies composed at Paris, from the accounts of those missionaries who were unacquainted with the language of the Brahmins. We have it repeated, in a hundred works, that the Indians worship the devil. The chaplains of a company of merchants quit our country under these impressions, and, as soon as they perceive on the coast some symbolical figures, they fail not to write home that they are the portraits and likenesses of the devil, that they are in the devil's empire, and that they are going to engage in battle with him. They do not reflect that we are the real worshippers of the devil Mammon, and that we travel six thousand leagues from our native land to offer our vows at his shrine, and to obtain the grant of some portion of his treasures.

As to those who hire themselves out at Paris to some bookseller in the Rue de St. Jacques, and at so much per job, and who are ordered to write a history of Japan, Canada, or the Canaries, as the case requires and opportunity suggests, from the memoirs of a few Capuchin friars—to such I have nothing to say.

It is sufficient, if it be clearly understood, that the method which would be proper in writing a history of our own country is not suitable in describing the discoveries of the new world; that we should not write on a small city as on a great empire; and that the private history of a prince should be composed in a very different manner from the history of France and England.

If you have nothing to tell us, but that on the banks of the Oxus and the Jaxartes, one barbarian has been succeeded by another barbarian, in what respect do you benefit the public?

These rules are well known; but the art of writing history well will always be very uncommon. It obviously requires a style grave, pure, varied, and smooth. But we may say with respect to rules for writing history, as in reference to those for all the intellectual arts—there are many precepts, but few masters.

SECTION V.

History of the Jewish Kings, and of the "Paralipomena."

Every nation, as soon as it was able to write, has written its own history, and the Jews have accordingly written theirs. Before they had kings, they lived under a theocracy; it was their destiny to be governed by God himself.

When the Jews were desirous of having a king, like the adjoining nations, the prophet Samuel, who was exceedingly interested in preventing it, declared to them, on the part of God, that they were rejecting God himself. Thus the Jewish theocracy ceased when the monarchy commenced.

We may therefore remark, without the imputation of blasphemy, that the history of the Jewish kings was written like that of other nations, and that God did not take the pains Himself to dictate the history of a people whom He no longer governed.

We advance this opinion with the greatest diffidence. What may perhaps be considered as confirming it, is, that the "Paralipomena" very frequently contradict the Book of Kings, both with respect to chronology and facts, just as profane historians sometimes contradict one another. Moreover, if God always wrote the history of the Jews, it seems only consistent and natural to think that He writes it still; for the Jews are always His cherished people. They are on some future day to be converted, and it seems that whenever that event happens, they will have as complete a right to consider the history of their dispersion as sacred, as they have now to say, that God wrote the history of their kings.

We may be allowed here to make one reflection; which is, that as God was for a very long period their king, and afterwards became their historian, we are bound to entertain for all Jews the most profound respect. There is not a single Jew broker, or slop-man, who is not infinitely superior to Cæsar and Alexander. How can we avoid bending in prostration before an old-clothes man, who proves to us that his history has been written by God Himself, while the histories of Greece and Rome have been transmitted to us merely by the profane hand of man?

If the style of the history of the kings, and of the "Paralipomena," is divine, it may nevertheless be true that the acts recorded in these histories are not divine. David murders Uriah; Ishbosheth and Mephibosheth are murdered; Absalom murders Ammon; Joab murders Absalom; Solomon murders his brother Adonijah; Baasha murders Nadab; Zimri murders Ela; Omri murders Zimri; Ahab murders Naboth; Jehu murders Ahab and Joram; the inhabitants of Jerusalem murder Amaziah, son of Joash; Shallum, son of Jabesh, murders Zachariah, son of Jeroboam; Menahhem murders Shallum, son of Jabesh; Pekah, son of Remaliah, murders Pekahiah, son of Manehem; and Hoshea, son of Elah, murders Pekah, son of Remaliah. We pass over, in silence, many other minor murders. It must be acknowledged, that, if the Holy Spirit did write this history, He did not choose a subject particularly edifying.

SECTION VI.

Of bad Actions which have been consecrated or excused in History.

It is but too common for historians to praise very depraved and abandoned characters, who have done service either to a dominant sect, or to their nation at large. The praises thus bestowed, come perhaps from a loyal and zealous citizen; but zeal of this description is injurious to the great society of mankind. Romulus murders his brother, and he is made a god. Constantine cuts the throat of his son, strangles his wife, and murders almost all his family: he has been eulogized in general councils, but history should ever hold up such barbarities to detestation. It is undoubtedly fortunate for us that Clovis was a Catholic. It is fortunate for the Anglican church that Henry VIII. abolished monks, but we must at the same time admit that Clovis and Henry VIII. were monsters of cruelty.

When first the Jesuit Berruyer, who although a Jesuit, was a fool, undertook to paraphrase the Old and New Testaments in the style of the lowest populace, with no other intention than that of having them read; he scattered some flowers of rhetoric over the two-edged knife which the Jew Ehud thrust up to the hilt in the stomach of the king Eglon; and over the sabre with which Judith cut off the head of Holofernes after having prostituted herself to his pleasures; and also over many other acts recorded, of a similar description. The parliament, respecting the Bible which narrates these histories, nevertheless condemned the Jesuit who extolled them, and ordered the Old and New Testaments to be burned:—I mean merely those of the Jesuit.

But as the judgments of mankind are ever different in similar cases, the same thing happened to Bayle in circumstances totally different. He was condemned for not praising all the actions of David, king of the province of Judæa. A man of the name of Jurieu, a refugee preacher in Holland, associated with some other refugee preachers, were desirous of obliging him to recant. But how could he recant with reference to facts delivered in the scripture? Had not Bayle some reason to conclude that all the facts recorded in the Jewish books are not the actions of saints; that David, like other men, had committed some criminal acts; and that if he is called a man after God's own heart, he is called so in consequence of his penitence, and not of his crimes?

Let us disregard names and confine our consideration to things only. Let us suppose, that during the reign of Henry IV. a clergyman of the League party secretly poured out a phial of oil on the head of a shepherd of Brie; that the shepherd comes to court; that the clergyman presents him to Henry IV. as an excellent violin player who can completely drive away all care and melancholy; that the king makes him his equerry, and bestows on him one of his daughters in marriage; that afterwards, the king having quarrelled with the shepherd, the latter takes refuge with one of the princes of Germany, his father-in-law's enemy; that he enlists and arms six hundred banditti overwhelmed by debt and debauchery; that with this regiment of brigands he rushes to the field, slays friends as well as enemies, exterminating all, even to women with children at the breast, in order to prevent a single individual's remaining to give intelligence of the horrid butchery. I farther suppose this same shepherd of Brie to become king of France after the death of Henry IV.; that he procures the murder of that king's grandson, after having invited him to sit at meat at his own table, and delivers over to death seven other younger children of his king and benefactor. Who is the man that will not conceive the shepherd of Brie to act rather harshly?

Commentators are agreed that the adultery of David, and his murder of Uriah, are faults which God pardoned. We may therefore conclude that the massacres above mentioned are faults which God also pardoned.

However, Bayle had no quarter given him; but at length some preachers at London having compared George II. to David, one of that monarch's servants prints and publishes a small book, in which he censures the comparison. He examines the whole conduct of David; he goes infinitely farther than Bayle, and treats David with more severity than Tacitus applies to Domitian. This book did not raise in England the slightest murmur; every reader felt that bad actions are always bad; that God may pardon them when repentance is proportioned to guilt, but that certainly no man can ever approve of them.

There was more reason, therefore, prevailing in England than there was in Holland in the time of Bayle. We now perceive clearly and without difficulty, that we ought not to hold up as a model of sanctity what, in fact, deserves the severest punishment; and we see with equal clearness that, as we ought not to consecrate guilt, so we ought not to believe absurdity.

HONOR.

The author of the "Spirit of Laws" has founded his system on the idea that virtue is the principle of a republican government, and honor that of mom archism. Is there virtue then without honor, and how is a republic established in virtue?

Let us place before the reader's eyes that which has been said in an able little book upon this subject. Pamphlets soon sink into oblivion. Truth ought not to be lost; it should be consigned to works possessing durability.

"Assuredly republics have never been formed on a theoretical principle of virtue. The public interest being opposed to the domination of an individual, the spirit of self-importance, and the ambition of every person, serve to curb ambition and the inclination to rapacity, wherever they may appear. The pride of each citizen watches over that of his neighbor, and no person would willingly be the slave of another's caprice. Such are the feelings which establish republics, and which preserve them. It is ridiculous to imagine that there must be more virtue in a Grison than in a Spaniard."

That honor can be the sole principle of monarchies is a no less chimerical idea, and the author shows it to be so himself, without being aware of it. "The nature of honor," says he, in chapter vii. of book iii., "is to demand preferences and distinctions. It, therefore, naturally suits a monarchical government."

Was it not on this same principle, that the Romans demanded the prætorship, consulship, ovation, and triumph in their republic? These were preferences and distinctions well worth the titles and preferences purchased in monarchies, and for which there is often a regular fixed price.

This remark proves, in our opinion, that the "Spirit of Laws," although sparkling with wit, and commendable by its respect for the laws and hatred of superstition and rapine, is founded entirely upon false views.

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

L'ingannare, il mentir, la frode, il furto, E la rapina di pictà vestita, Crescer coi damno e precipizio altrui, E fare a se de l'altrui biasmo onore, Son le virtù di quella gente infidà. —PASTOR FIDO, atto v., scena i. Ramper avec bassesse en affectant l'audace, S'engraisser de rapine en attestant les lois, Étouffer en secret son ami qu'on embrasse. Voilà l'honneur qui règne à la suite des rois. To basely crawl, yet wear a face of pride; To rob the public, yet o'er law preside; Salute a friend, yet sting in the embrace— Such is the honor which in courts takes place.

Indeed, it is in courts, that men devoid of honor often attain to the highest dignities; and it is in republics that a known dishonorable citizen is seldom trusted by the people with public concerns.

The celebrated saying of the regent, duke of Orleans, is sufficient to destroy the foundation of the "Spirit of Laws": "This is a perfect courtier—he has neither temper nor honor."

HUMILITY.

Philosophers have inquired, whether humility is a virtue; but virtue or not, every one must agree that nothing is more rare. The Greeks called it "tapeinosis" or "tapeineia." It is strongly recommended in the fourth book of the "Laws of Plato": he rejects the proud and would multiply the humble.

Epictetus, in five places, preaches humility: "If thou passest for a person of consequence in the opinion of some people, distrust thyself. No lifting up of thy eye-brows. Be nothing in thine own eyes—if thou seekest to please, thou art lost. Give place to all men; prefer them to thyself; assist them all." We see by these maxims that never Capuchin went so far as Epictetus.

Some theologians, who had the misfortune to be proud, have pretended that humility cost nothing to Epictetus, who was a slave; and that he was humble by station, as a doctor or a Jesuit may be proud by station.

But what will they say of Marcus Antoninus, who on the throne recommended humility? He places Alexander and his muleteer on the same line. He said that the vanity of pomp is only a bone thrown in the midst of dogs; that to do good, and to patiently hear himself calumniated, constitute the virtue of a king.

Thus the master of the known world recommended humility; but propose humility to a musician, and see how he will laugh at Marcus Aurelius.

Descartes, in his treatise on the "Passions of the Soul," places humility among their number, who—if we may personify this quality—did not expect to be regarded as a passion. He also distinguishes between virtuous and vicious humility.

But we leave to philosophers more enlightened than ourselves the care of explaining this doctrine, and will confine ourselves to saying, that humility is "the modesty of the soul."

It is the antidote to pride. Humility could not prevent Rousseau from believing that he knew more of music than those to whom he taught it; but it could induce him to believe that he was not superior to Lulli in recitative.

The reverend father Viret, cordelier, theologian, and preacher, all humble as he is, will always firmly believe that he knows more than those who learn to read and write; but his Christian humility, his modesty of soul, will oblige him to confess in the bottom of his heart that he has written nothing but nonsense. Oh, brothers Nonnotte, Guyon, Pantouillet, vulgar scribblers! be more humble, and always bear in recollection "the modesty of the soul."

HYPATIA.

I will suppose that Madame Dacier had been the finest woman in Paris; and that in the quarrel on the comparative merits of the ancients and moderns, the Carmelites pretended that the poem of the Magdalen, written by a Carmelite, was infinitely superior to Homer, and that it was an atrocious impiety to prefer the "Iliad" to the verses of a monk. I will take the additional liberty of supposing that the archbishop of Paris took the part of the Carmelites against the governor of the city, a partisan of the beautiful Madame Dacier, and that he excited the Carmelites to massacre this fine woman in the church of Notre Dame, and to drag her, naked and bloody, to the Place Maubert—would not everybody say that the archbishop of Paris had done a very wicked action, for which he ought to do penance?

This is precisely the history of Hypatia. She taught Homer and Plato, in Alexandria, in the time of Theodosius II. St. Cyril incensed the Christian populace against her, as it is related by Damasius and Suidas, and clearly proved by the most learned men of the age, such as Bruker, La Croze, and Basnage, as is very judiciously exposed in the great "Dictionnaire Encyclopédique," in the article on "Éclectisme."

A man whose intentions are no doubt very good, has printed two volumes against this article of the "Encyclopædia." Two volumes against two pages, my friends, are too much. I have told you a hundred times you multiply being without necessity. Two lines against two volumes would be quite sufficient; but write not even these two lines.

I am content with remarking, that St. Cyril was a man of parts; that he suffered his zeal to carry him too far; that when we strip beautiful women, it is not to massacre them; that St. Cyril, no doubt, asked pardon of God for this abominable action; and that I pray the father of mercies to have pity on his soul. He wrote the two volumes against "Éclectisme," also inspires me with infinite commiseration.

IDEA.

SECTION I.

What is an idea?

It is an image painted upon my brain.

Are all your thoughts, then, images?

Certainly; for the most abstract thoughts are only the consequences of all the objects that I have perceived. I utter the word "being" in general, only because I have known particular beings; I utter the word "infinity," only because I have seen certain limits, and because I push back those limits in my mind to a greater and still greater distance, as far as I am able. I have ideas in my head only because I have images.

And who is the painter of this picture?

It is not myself; I cannot draw with sufficient skill; the being that made me, makes my ideas.

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

Because they frequently come to me involuntarily when I am awake, and always without my consent when I dream.

You are persuaded, then, that your ideas belong to you only in the same manner as your hairs, which grow and become white, and fall off, without your having anything at all to do with the matter?

Nothing can possibly be clearer; all that I can do is to frizzle, cut, and powder them; but I have nothing to do with producing them.

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

I am at least certain of this, that if we do not see things in the Great Being, we see them in consequence of His powerful and immediate action.

And what was the nature or process of this action?

I have already told you repeatedly, in the course of our conversation, that I do not know a single syllable about the subject, and that God has not communicated His secret to any one. I am completely ignorant of that which makes my heart beat, and my blood flow through my veins; I am ignorant of the principle of all my movements, and yet you seem to expect how I should explain how I feel and how I think. Such an expectation is unreasonable.

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

Not in the least; It is true that Tatian, in his discourse to the Greeks, says the soul is evidently composed of a body. Irenæus, in the twenty-sixth chapter of his second book, says, "The Lord has taught that our souls preserve the figure of our body in order to retain the memory of it." Tertullian asserts, in his second book on the soul, that it is a body. Arnobius, Lactantius, Hilary, Gregory of Nyssa, and Ambrose, are precisely of the same opinion. It is pretended that other fathers of the Church assert that the soul is without extension, and that in this respect they adopt the opinion of Plato; this, however, may well be doubted. With respect to myself, I dare not venture to form an opinion; I see nothing but obscurity and incomprehensibility in either system; and, after a whole life's meditation on the subject, I am not advanced a single step beyond where I was on the first day.

The subject, then, was not worth thinking about?

That is true; the man who enjoys knows more of it, or at least knows it better, than he who reflects; he is more happy. But what is it that you would have? It depended not, I repeat, upon myself whether I should admit or reject all those ideas which have crowded into my brain in conflict with each other, and actually converted my medullary magazine into their field of battle. After a hard-fought contest between them, I have obtained nothing but uncertainty from the spoils.

It is a melancholy thing to possess so many ideas, and yet to have no precise knowledge of the nature of ideas?

It is, I admit; but it is much more melancholy, and inexpressibly more foolish, for a man to believe he knows what in fact he does not.

But, if you do not positively know what an idea is, if you are ignorant whence ideas come, you at least know by what they come?

Yes; just in the same way as the ancient Egyptians, who, without knowing the source of the Nile, knew perfectly well that its waters reached them by its bed. We know perfectly that ideas come to us by the senses; but we never know whence they come. The source of this Nile will never be discovered.

If it is certain that all ideas are given by means of the senses, why does the Sorbonne, which has so long adopted this doctrine from Aristotle, condemn it with so much virulence in Helvetius?

Because the Sorbonne is composed of theologians.

SECTION II.

All in God.

In God we live and move and have our being. —ST. PAUL, Acts xvii, 28.

Aratus, who is thus quoted and approved by St. Paul, made this confession of faith, we perceive among the Greeks.

The virtuous Cato says the same thing: "Jupiter est quodcumque vides quocumque moveris."—Lucan's "Pharsalia" ix, 580. "Whate'er we see, whate'er we feel, is Jove."

Malebranche is the commentator on Aratus, St. Paul, and Cato. He succeeded, in the first instance, in showing the errors of the senses and imagination; but when he attempted to develop the grand system, that all is in God, all his readers declared the commentary to be more obscure than the text. In short, having plunged into this abyss, his head became bewildered; he held conversations with the Word; he was made acquainted with what the Word had done in other planets; he became, in truth, absolutely mad; a circumstance well calculated to excite apprehension in our own minds, apt as we some of us are to attempt soaring, upon our weak and puny opinions, very far beyond our reach.

In order to comprehend the notion of Malebranche, such as he held it while he retained his faculties, we must admit nothing that we do not clearly conceive, and reject what we do not understand. Attempting to explain an obscurity by obscurities, is to act like an idiot.

I feel decidedly that my first ideas and my sensations have come to me without any co-operation or volition on my part. I clearly see that I cannot give myself a single idea. I cannot give myself anything. I have received everything. The objects which surround me cannot, of themselves, give me either idea or sensation; for how is it possible for a little particle of matter to possess the faculty of producing a thought?

I am therefore irresistibly led to conclude that the Eternal Being, who bestows everything, gives me my ideas, in whatever manner this may be done. But what is an idea, what is a sensation, a volition, etc.? It is myself perceiving, myself feeling, myself willing.

We see, in short, that what is called an idea is no more a real being than there is a real being called motion, although there are bodies moved. In the same manner there is not any particular being called memory, imagination, judgment; but we ourselves remember, imagine, and judge.

The truth of all this, it must be allowed, is sufficiently plain and trite; but it is necessary to repeat and inculcate such truth, as the opposite errors are more trite still.

Laws of Nature.

How, let us now ask, would the Eternal Being, who formed all, produce all those various modes or qualities which we perceive in organized bodies?

Did He introduce two beings in a grain of wheat, one of which should produce germination in the other? Did He introduce two beings in the composition of a stag, one of which should produce swiftness in the other? Certainly not. All that we know on the subject is that the grain is endowed with the faculty of vegetating, and the stag with that of speed.

There is evidently a grand mathematical principle directing all nature, and affecting everything produced. The flying of birds, the swimming of fishes, the walking or running of quadrupeds, are visible effects of known laws of motion. "Mens agitat molem." Can the sensations and ideas of those animals, then, be anything more than the admirable effects or mathematical laws more refined and less obvious?

Organisation of the Senses and Ideas.

It is by these general and comprehensive laws that every animal is impelled to seek its appropriate food. We are naturally, therefore, led to conjecture that there is a law by which it has the idea of this food, and without which it would not go in search of it.

The eternal intelligence has made all the actions of an animal depend upon a certain principle; the eternal intelligence, therefore, has made the sensations which cause those actions depend on the same principle.

Would the author of nature have disposed and adjusted those admirable instruments, the senses, with so divine a skill; would he have exhibited such astonishing adaptation between the eyes and light; between the atmosphere and the ears, had it, after all, been necessary to call in the assistance of other agency to complete his work? Nature always acts by the shortest ways. Protracted processes indicate want of skill; multiplicity of springs, and complexity of co-operation are the result of weakness. We cannot but believe, therefore, that one main spring regulates the whole system.

The Great Being Does Everything.

Not merely are we unable to give ourselves sensations, we cannot even imagine any beyond those which we have actually experienced. Let all the academies of Europe propose a premium for him who shall imagine a new sense; no one will ever gain that premium. We can do nothing, then, of our mere selves, whether there be an invisible and intangible being enclosed in our brain or diffused throughout our body, or whether there be not; and it must be admitted, upon every system, that the author of nature has given us all that we possess—organs, sensations, and the ideas which proceed from them.

As we are thus secured under His forming hand, Malebranche, notwithstanding all his errors, had reason to say philosophically, that we are in God and that we see all in God; as St. Paul used the same language in a theological sense, and Aratus and Cato in a moral one.

What then are we to understand by the words seeing all in God? They are either words destitute of meaning, or they mean that God gives us all our ideas.

What is the meaning of receiving an idea? We do not create it when we receive it; it is not, therefore, so unphilosophical as has been thought, to say it is God who produces the ideas in my head, as it is He who produces motion in my whole body. Everything is an operation of God upon His creatures.

How is Everything an Action of God?

There is in nature only one universal, eternal, and active principle. There cannot be two such principles; for they would either be alike or different. If they are different, they destroy one another; if they are alike, it is the same as if they were only one. The unity of design, visible through the grand whole in all its infinite variety, announces one single principle, and that principle must act upon all being, or it ceases to be a universal opinion.

If it acts upon all being, it acts upon all the modes of all being. There is not, therefore, a single remnant, a single mode, a single idea, which is not the immediate effect of a universal cause perpetually present.

The matter of the universe, therefore, belongs to God, as much as the ideas and the ideas as much as the matter. To say that anything is out of Him would be saying that there is something out of the vast whole. God being the universal principle of all things, all, therefore, exists in Him, and by Him.

The system includes that of "physical premotion," but in the same manner as an immense wheel includes a small one that endeavors to fly off from it. The principle which we have just been unfolding is too vast to admit of any particular and detailed view.

Physical premotion occupies the great supreme with all the changing vagaries which take place in the head of an individual Jansenist or Molinist; we, on the contrary, occupy the Being of Beings only with the grand and general laws of the universe. Physical premotion makes five propositions a matter of attention and occupation to God, which interest only some lay-sister, the sweeper of a convent; while we attribute to Him employment of the most simple and important description—the arrangement of the whole system of the universe.

Physical premotion is founded upon that subtle and truly Grecian principle, that if a thinking being can give himself an idea, he would augment his existence; but we do not, for our parts, know what is meant by augmenting our being. We comprehend nothing about the matter. We say that a thinking being might give himself new modes without adding to his existence; just in the same manner as when we dance, our sliding steps and crossings and attitudes give us no new existence; and to suppose they do so would appear completely absurd. We agree only so far in the system of physical premotion, that we are convinced we give ourselves nothing.

Both the system of premotion and our own are abused, as depriving men of their liberty. God forbid we should advocate such deprivation. To do away with this imputation, it is only necessary to understand the meaning of the word liberty. We shall speak of it in its proper place; and in the meantime the world will go on as it has gone on hitherto, without the Thomists or their opponents, or all the disputants in the world, having any power to change it. In the same manner we shall always have ideas, without precisely knowing what an idea is.

IDENTITY.

This scientific term signifies no more than "the same thing." It might be correctly translated by "sameness." This subject is of considerably more interest than may be imagined. All agree that the guilty person only ought to be punished—the individual perpetrator, and no other. But a man fifty years of age is not in reality the same individual as the man of twenty; he retains no longer any of the parts which then formed his body; and if he has lost the memory of past events, it is certain that there is nothing left to unite his actual existence to an existence which to him is lost.

I am the same person only by the consciousness of what I have been combined with that of what I am; I have no consciousness of my past being but through memory; memory alone, therefore, establishes the identity, the sameness of my person.

We may, in truth, be naturally and aptly resembled to a river, all whose waters pass away in perpetual change and flow. It is the same river as to its bed, its banks, its source, its mouth, everything, in short, that is not itself; but changing every moment its waters, which constitute its very being, it has no identity; there is no sameness belonging to the river.

Were there another Xerxes like him who lashed the Hellespont for disobedience, and ordered for it a pair of handcuffs; and were the son of this Xerxes to be drowned in the Euphrates, and the father desirous of punishing that river for the death of his son, the Euphrates might very reasonably say in its vindication: "Blame the waves that were rolling on at the time your son was bathing; those waves belong not to me, and form no part of me; they have passed on to the Persian Gulf; a part is mixed with the salt water of that sea, and another part, exhaled in vapor, has been impelled by a south-east wind to Gaul, and been incorporated with endives and lettuces, which the Gauls have since used in their salads; seize the culprit where you can find him."

It is the same with a tree, a branch of which broken by the wind might have fractured the skull of your great grandfather. It is no longer the same tree; all its parts have given way to others. The branch which killed your great grandfather is no part of this tree; it exists no longer.

It has been asked, then, how a man, who has totally lost his memory before his death, and whose members have been changed into other substances, can be punished for his faults or rewarded for his virtues when he is no longer himself? I have read in a well known book the following question and answer:

"Question. How can I be either rewarded or punished when I shall no longer exist; when there will be nothing remaining of that which constituted my person? It is only by means of memory that I am always myself; after my death, a miracle will be necessary to restore it to me—to enable me to reenter upon my lost existence.

"Answer. That is just as much as to say that if a prince had put to death his whole family, in order to reign himself, and if he had tyrannized over his subjects with the most wanton cruelty, he would be exempted from punishment on pleading before God, 'I am not the offender; I have lost my memory; you are under a mistake; I am no longer the same person.' Do you think this sophism would pass with God?"

This answer is a highly commendable one; but it does not completely solve the difficulty.

It would be necessary for this purpose, in the first place, to know whether understanding and sensation are a faculty given by God to man, or a created substance; a question which philosophy is too weak and uncertain to decide.

It is necessary in the next place to know whether, if the soul be a substance and has lost all knowledge of the evil it has committed, and be, moreover, as perfect a stranger to what it has done with its own body, as to all the other bodies of our universe—whether, in these circumstances, it can or should, according to our manner of reasoning, answer in another universe for actions of which it has not the slightest knowledge; whether, in fact, a miracle would not be necessary to impart to this soul the recollection it no longer possesses, to render it consciously present to the crimes which have become obliterated and annihilated in its mind, and make it the same person that it was on earth; or whether God will judge it nearly in the same way in which the presidents of human tribunals proceed, condemning a criminal, although he may have completely forgotten the crimes he has actually committed. He remembers them no longer; but they are remembered for him; he is punished for the sake of the example. But God cannot punish a man after his death with a view to his being an example to the living. No living man knows whether the deceased is condemned or absolved. God, therefore, can punish him only because he cherished and accomplished evil desires; but if, when after death he presents himself before the tribunal of God, he no longer entertains any such desire; if for a period of twenty years he has totally forgotten that he did entertain such; if he is no longer in any respect the same person; what is it that God will punish in him?

These are questions which appear beyond the compass of the human understanding, and there seems to exist a necessity, in these intricacies and labyrinths, of recurring to faith alone, which is always our last asylum.

Lucretius had partly felt these difficulties, when in his third book (verses 890-91) he describes a man trembling at the idea of what will happen to him when he will no longer be the same man:

Nec radicitus e vita se tollit et evit; Sed facit esse sui quiddam super inscius ipse.

But Lucretius is not the oracle to be addressed, in order to obtain any discoveries of the future.

The celebrated Toland, who wrote his own epitaph, concluded it with these words: "Idem futurus Tolandus nunquam"—"He will never again be the same Toland."

However, it may be presumed that God would have well known how to find and restore him, had such been his good pleasure; and it is to be presumed, also, that the being who necessarily exists, is necessarily good.

IDOL—IDOLATER—IDOLATRY.

SECTION I.

Idol is derived from the Greek word "eidos," figure; "eidolos," the representation of a figure, and "latreuein," to serve, revere, or adore.

It does not appear that there was ever any people on earth who took the name of idolaters. This word is an offence, an insulting term, like that of "gavache," which the Spaniards formerly gave to the French; and that of "maranes," which the French gave to the Spaniards in return. If we had demanded of the senate of the Areopagus of Athens, or at the court of the kings of Persia: "Are you idolaters?" they would scarcely have understood the question. None would have answered: "We adore images and idols." This word, idolater, idolatry, is found neither in Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, nor any other author of the religion of the Gentiles. There was never any edict, any law, which commanded that idols should be adored; that they should be treated as gods and regarded as gods.

When the Roman and Carthaginian captains made a treaty, they called all their gods to witness. "It is in their presence," said they, "that we swear peace." Yet the statues of these gods, whose number was very great, were not in the tents of the generals. They regarded, or pretended to regard, the gods as present at the actions of men as witnesses and judges. And assuredly it was not the image which constituted the divinity.

In what view, therefore, did they see the statues of their false gods in the temples? With the same view, if we may so express ourselves, that the Catholics see the images, the object of their veneration. The error was not in adoring a piece of wood or marble, but in adoring a false divinity, represented by this wood and marble. The difference between them and the Catholics is, not that they had images, and the Catholics had none; the difference is, that their images represented the fantastic beings of a false religion, and that the Christian images represent real beings in a true religion. The Greeks had the statue of Hercules, and we have that of St. Christopher; they had Æsculapius and his goat, we have St. Roch and his dog; they had Mars and his lance, and we have St. Anthony of Padua and St. James of Compostella.

When the consul Pliny addresses prayers to the immortal gods in the exordium of the panegyric of Trajan, it is not to images that he addresses them. These images were not immortal.

Neither the latest nor the most remote times of paganism offer a single fact which can lead to the conclusion that they adored idols. Homer speaks only of the gods who inhabited the high Olympus. The palladium, although fallen from heaven, was only a sacred token of the protection of Pallas; it was herself that was venerated in the palladium. It was our ampoule, or holy oil.

But the Romans and Greeks knelt before their statues, gave them crowns, incense, and flowers, and carried them in triumph in the public places. The Catholics have sanctified these customs, and yet are not called idolaters.

The women in times of drouth carried the statues of the Gods after having fasted. They walked barefooted with dishevelled hair, and it quickly rained bucketfuls, says Pretonius: "Et statim urceatim pluebat." Has not this custom been consecrated; illegitimate indeed among the Gentiles, but legitimate among the Catholics? In how many towns are not images carried to obtain the blessings of heaven through their intercession? If a Turk, or a learned Chinese, were a witness of these ceremonies, he would, through ignorance, accuse the Italians of putting their trust in the figures which they thus promenade in possession.

SECTION II.

Examination of the Ancient Idolatry.

From the time of Charles I., the Catholic religion was declared idolatrous in England. All the Presbyterians are persuaded that the Catholics adore bread, which they eat, and figures, which are the work of their sculptors and painters. With that which one part of Europe reproaches the Catholics, they themselves reproach the Gentiles.

We are surprised at the prodigious number of declamations uttered in all times against the idolatry of the Romans and Greeks; and we are afterwards still more surprised when we see that they were not idolaters.

They had some temples more privileged than others. The great Diana of Ephesus had more reputation than a village Diana. There were more miracles performed in the temple of Æsculapius at Epidaurus, than in any other of his temples. The statue of the Olympian Jupiter attracted more offerings than that of the Paphlagonian Jupiter. But to oppose the customs of a true religion to those of a false one, have we not for several ages had more devotion to certain altars than to others?

Has not Our Lady of Loretto been preferred to Our Lady of Neiges, to that of Ardens, of Hall, etc.? That is not saying there is more virtue in a statue at Loretto than in a statue of the village of Hall, but we have felt more devotion to the one than to the other; we have believed that she whom we invoked, at the feet of her statues, would condescend, from the height of heaven, to diffuse more favors and to work more miracles in Loretto than in Hall. This multiplicity of images of the same person also proves that it is the images that we revere, and that the worship relates to the person who is represented; for it is not possible that every image can be the same thing. There are a thousand images of St. Francis, which have no resemblance to him, and which do not resemble one another; and all indicate a single Saint Francis, invoked, on the day of his feast, by those who are devoted to this saint.

It was precisely the same with the pagans, who supposed the existence only of a single divinity, a single Apollo, and not as many Apollos and Dianas as they had temples and statues. It is therefore proved, as much as history can prove anything, that the ancients believed not the statue to be a divinity; that worship was not paid to this statue or image, and consequently that they were not idolaters. It is for us to ascertain how far the imputation has been a mere pretext to accuse them of idolatry.

A gross and superstitious populace who reason not, and who know neither how to doubt, deny, or believe; who visit the temples out of idleness, and because the lowly are there equal to the great; who make their contributions because it is the custom; who speak continually of miracles without examining any of them; and who are very little in point of intellect beyond the brutes whom they sacrifice—such a people, I repeat, in the sight of the great Diana, or of Jupiter the Thunderer, may well be seized with a religious horror, and adore, without consciousness, the statue itself. This is what happens now and then, in our own churches, to our ignorant peasantry, who, however, are informed that it is the blessed mortals received into heaven whose intercession they solicit, and not that of images of wood and stone.

The Greeks and Romans augment the number of their gods by their apotheoses. The Greeks deified conquerors like Bacchus, Hercules, and Perseus. Rome devoted altars to her emperors. Our apotheoses are of a different kind; we have infinitely more saints than they have secondary gods, but we pay respect neither to rank nor to conquest. We consecrate temples to the simply virtuous, who would have been unknown on earth if they had not been placed in heaven. The apotheoses of the ancients were the effect of flattery, ours are produced by a respect for virtue.

Cicero, in his philosophical works, only allows of a suspicion that the people may mistake the statues of the gods and confound them with the gods themselves. His interlocutors attack the established religion, but none of them think of accusing the Romans of taking marble and brass for divinities. Lucretius accuses no person of this stupidity, although he reproaches the superstitious of every class. This opinion, therefore, has never existed; there never have been idolaters.

Horace causes an image of Priapus to speak, and makes him say: "I was once the trunk of a fig tree, and a carpenter being doubtful whether he should make of me a god or a bench, at length determined to make me a divinity." What are we to gather from this pleasantry? Priapus was one of the subaltern divinities, and a subject of raillery for the wits, and this pleasantry is a tolerable proof that a figure placed in the garden to frighten away the birds could not be very profoundly worshipped.

Dacier, giving way to the spirit of a commentator, observes that Baruch predicted this adventure. "They became what the workmen chose to make them:" but might not this be observed of all statues? Had Baruch a visionary anticipation of the "Satires of Horace"?

A block of marble may as well be hewn into a cistern, as into a figure of Alexander, Jupiter, or any being still more respectable. The matter which composed the cherubim of the Holy of Holies might have been equally appropriated to the vilest functions. Is a throne or altar the less revered because it might have been formed into a kitchen table?

Dacier, instead of concluding that the Romans adored the statue of Priapus, and that Baruch predicted it, should have perceived that the Romans laughed at it. Consult all the authors who speak of the statues of the gods, you will not find one of them allude to idolatry; their testimony amounts to the express contrary. "It is not the workman," says Martial, "who makes the gods, but he who prays to them."

Qui finxit sacros auro vel marmore vultus Non facit ille deos, qui rogat ille facit.

"It is Jove whom we adore in the image of Jove," writes Ovid: "Colitur pro Jove, forma Jovis."

"The gods inhabit our minds and bosoms," observes Statius, "and not images in the form of them:"

Nulla autem effigies, nulli commissa metallo. Forma Dei, mentes habitare et pectora gaudet.

Lucan, too, calls the universe the abode and empire of God: "Estne Dei, sedes, nisi terra, et pontus, et aer?" A volume might be filled with passages asserting idols to be images alone.

There remains but the case in which statues became oracles; notions that might have led to an opinion that there was something divine about them. The predominant sentiment, however, was that the gods had chosen to visit certain altars and images, in order to give audience to mortals, and to reply to them. We read in Homer and in the chorus of the Greek tragedies, of prayers to Apollo, who delivered his responses on the mountains in such a temple, or such a town. There is not, in all antiquity, the least trace of a prayer addressed to a statue; and if it was believed that the divine spirit preferred certain temples and images, as he preferred certain men, it was simply an error in application. How many miraculous images have we? The ancients only boasted of possessing what we possess, and if we are not idolaters for using images, by what correct principle can we term them so?

Those who profess magic, and who either believe, or affect to believe it, a science, pretend to possess the secret of making the gods descend into their statues, not indeed, the superior gods, but the secondary gods or genii. This is what Hermes Trismegistus calls "making" gods—a doctrine which is controverted by St. Augustine in his "City of God." But even this clearly shows that the images were not thought to possess anything divine, since it required a magician to animate them, and it happened very rarely that a magician was successful in these sublime endeavors.

In a word, the images of the gods were not gods. Jupiter, and not his statue, launched his thunderbolts; it was not the statue of Neptune which stirred up tempests, nor that of Apollo which bestowed light. The Greeks and the Romans were Gentiles and Polytheists, but not idolaters.

We lavished this reproach upon them when we had neither statues nor temples, and have continued the injustice even after having employed painting and sculpture to honor and represent our truths, precisely in the same manner in which those we reproach employed them to honor and personify their fiction.

SECTION III.

Whether the Persians, the Sabæans, the Egyptians, the Tartars, or the Turks, have been Idolaters, and the Extent of the Antiquity of the Images Called Idols—History of Their Worship.

It is a great error to denominate those idolaters who worship the sun and the stars. These nations for a long time had neither images nor temples. If they were wrong, it was in rendering to the stars that which belonged only to the creator of the stars. Moreover, the dogma of Zoroaster, or Zerdusht, teaches a Supreme Being, an avenger and rewarder, which opinion is very distant from idolatry. The government of China possesses no idol, but has always preserved the simple worship of the master of heaven, Kien-tien.

Genghis Khan, among the Tartars, was not an idolater, and used no images. The Mahometans, who inhabit Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Persia, India, and Africa, call the Christians idolaters and giaours, because they imagine that Christians worship images. They break the statues which they find in Sancta Sophia, the church of the Holy Apostles; and others they convert into mosques. Appearances have deceived them, as they are eternally deceiving man, and have led them to believe that churches dedicated to saints who were formerly men, images of saints worshipped kneeling, and miracles worked in these churches, are invincible proofs of absolute idolatry; although all amount to nothing. Christians, in fact, adore one God only, and even in the blessed, only revere the virtues of God manifested in them. The image-breakers (iconoclasts), and the Protestants, who reproach the Catholic Church with idolatry, claim the same answer.

As men rarely form precise ideas, and still less express them with precision, we call the Gentiles, and still more the Polytheists, idolaters. An immense number of volumes have been written in order to develop the various opinions upon the origin of the worship rendered to the deity. This multitude of books and opinions proves nothing, except ignorance.

It is not known who invented coats, shoes, and stockings, and yet we would know who invented idols. What signifies a passage of Sanchoniathon, who lived before the battle of Troy? What does he teach us when he says that Chaos—the spirit, that is to say, the breath—in love with his principles, draws the veil from it, which renders the air luminous; that the wind Colp, and his wife Bau, engendered Eon; that Eon engendered Genos, that Chronos, their descendant, had two eyes behind as well as before; that he became a god, and that he gave Egypt to his son Thaut? Such is one of the most respectable monuments of antiquity.

Orpheus will teach us no more in his "Theogony," than Damasius has preserved to us. He represents the principles of the world under the figure of a dragon with two heads, the one of a bull, the other of a lion; a face in the middle, which he calls the face of God, and golden wings to his shoulders.

But, from these fantastic ideas may be drawn two great truths—the one that sensible images and hieroglyphics are of the remotest antiquity; the other that all the ancient philosophers have recognized a First Principle.

As to polytheism, good sense will tell you that as long as men have existed—that is to say, weak animals capable of reason and folly, subject to all accidents, sickness and death—these men have felt their weakness and dependence. Obliged to acknowledge that there is something more powerful than themselves; having discovered a principle in the earth which furnishes their aliment; one in the air which often destroys them; one in fire which consumes; and in water which drowns them—what is more natural than for ignorant men to imagine beings which preside over these elements? What is more natural than to revere the invisible power which makes the sun and stars shine to our eyes? and, since they would form an idea of powers superior to man, what more natural than to figure them in a sensible manner? Could they think otherwise? The Jewish religion, which preceded ours, and which was given by God himself, was filled with these images, under which God is represented. He deigns to speak the human language in a bush; He appeared once on a mountain; the celestial spirits which he sends all come with a human form: finally, the sanctuary is covered with cherubs, which are the bodies of men with the wings and heads of animals. It is this which has given rise to the error of Plutarch, Tacitus, Appian, and so many others, of reproaching the Jews with adoring an ass's head. God, in spite of his prohibition to paint or form likenesses, has, therefore, deigned to adapt himself to human weakness, which required the senses to be addressed by sensible beings.

Isaiah, in chapter vi., sees the Lord seated on a throne, and His train filled the temple. The Lord extends His hand, and touches the mouth of Jeremiah, in chap. i. of that prophet. Ezekiel, in chap. i., sees a throne of sapphire, and God appeared to him like a man seated on this throne. These images alter not the purity of the Jewish religion, which never employed pictures, statues, or idols, to represent God to the eyes of the people.

The learned Chinese, the Parsees, and the ancient Egyptians, had no idols; but Isis and Osiris were soon represented. Bel, at Babylon, was a great colossus. Brahma was a fantastic monster in the peninsula of India. Above all, the Greeks multiplied the names of the gods, statues, and temples, but always attributed the supreme power to their Zeus, called Jupiter by the Latins, the sovereign of gods and men. The Romans imitated the Greeks. These people always placed all the gods in heaven, without knowing what they understood by heaven.

The Romans had their twelve great gods, six male and six female, whom they called "Dii majorum gentium"; Jupiter, Neptune, Apollo, Vulcan, Mars, Mercury, Juno, Vesta, Minerva, Ceres, Venus, and Diana; Pluto was therefore forgotten: Vesta took his place.

Afterwards, came the gods "minorum gentium," the gods of mortal origin; the heroes, as Bacchus, Hercules, and Æsculapius: the infernal gods, Pluto and Proserpine: those of the sea, as Tethys, Amphitrite, the Nereids, and Glaucus. The Dryads, Naiads, gods of gardens; those of shepherds, etc. They had them, indeed, for every profession, for every action of life, for children, marriageable girls, married, and lying-in women: they had even the god Peditum; and finally, they idolized their emperors. Neither these emperors nor the god Peditum, the goddess Pertunda, nor Priapus, nor Rumilia, the goddess of nipples; nor Stercutius, the god of the privy, were, in truth, regarded as the masters of heaven and earth. The emperors had sometimes temples, the petty gods—the penates—had none; but all had their representations, their images.

There were little images with which they ornamented their closets, the amusements of old women and children, which were not authorized by any public worship. The superstition of every individual was left to act according to his own taste. These small idols are still found in the ruins of ancient towns.

If no person knows when men began to make these images, they must know that they are of the greatest antiquity. Terah, the father of Abraham, made them at Ur in Chaldæa. Rachel stole and carried off the images of Laban, her father. We cannot go back further.

But what precise notion had the ancient nations of all these representations? What virtue, what power, was attributed to them? Believed they that the gods descended from heaven to conceal themselves in these statues; or that they communicated to them a part of the divine spirit; or that they communicated to them nothing at all? There has been much very uselessly written on this subject; it is clear that every man judged of it according to the degree of his reason, credulity, or fanaticism. It is evident that the priests attached as much divinity to their statues as they possibly could, to attract more offerings. We know that the philosophers reproved these superstitions, that warriors laughed at them, that the magistrates tolerated them, and that the people, always absurd, knew not what they did. In a word, this is the history of all nations to which God has not made himself known.

The same idea may be formed of the worship which all Egypt rendered to the cow, and that several towns paid to a dog, an ape, a cat, and to onions. It appears that these were first emblems. Afterwards, a certain ox Apis, and a certain dog Anubis, were adored; they always ate beef and onions; but it is difficult to know what the old women of Egypt thought of the holy cows and onions.

Idols also often spoke. On the day of the feast of Cybele at Rome, those fine words were commemorated which the statue pronounced when it was translated from the palace of King Attilus: "I wish to depart; take me away quickly; Rome is worthy the residence of every god."

Ipsa peti volui; ne sit mora, mitte volentum; Dignus Roma locus quo Deus omnis eat. —OVID'S Fasti, iv, 269-270.

The statue of Fortune spoke; the Scipios, the Ciceros, and the Cæsars, indeed, believed nothing of it; but the old woman, to whom Encolpus gave a crown to buy geese and gods, might credit it.

Idols also gave oracles, and priests hidden in the hollow of the statues spoke in the name of the divinity.

How happens it, in the midst of so many gods and different théogonies and particular worships, that there was never any religious war among the people called idolaters? This peace was a good produced from an evil, even from error; for each nation, acknowledging several inferior gods, found it good for his neighbors also to have theirs. If you except Cambyses, who is reproached with having killed the ox Apis, you will not see any conqueror in profane history who ill-treated the gods of a vanquished people. The heathens had no exclusive religion, and the priests thought only of multiplying the offerings and sacrifices.

The first offerings were fruits. Soon after, animals were required for the table of the priests; they killed them themselves, and became cruel butchers; finally, they introduced the horrible custom of sacrificing human victims, and above all, children and young girls. The Chinese, Parsees, and Indians, were never guilty of these abominations; but at Hieropolis, in Egypt, according to Porphyrius, they immolated men.

Strangers were sacrificed at Taurida: happily, the priests of Taurida had not much practice. The first Greeks, the Cypriots, Phœnicians, Tyrians, and Carthaginians, possessed this abominable superstition. The Romans themselves fell into this religious crime; and Plutarch relates, that they immolated two Greeks and two Gauls to expiate the gallantries of three vestals. Procopius, contemporary with the king of the Franks, Theodobert, says that the Franks sacrificed men when they entered Italy with that prince. The Gauls and Germans commonly made these frightful sacrifices. We can scarcely read history without conceiving horror at mankind.

It is true that among the Jews, Jeptha sacrificed his daughter, and Saul was ready to immolate his son; it is also true that those who were devoted to the Lord by anathema could not be redeemed, as other beasts were, but were doomed to perish.

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

To console mankind for the horrible picture of these pious sacrifices, it is important to know, that amongst almost all nations called idolatrous, there have been holy theologies and popular error, secret worship and public ceremonies; the religion of sages, and that of the vulgar. To know that one God alone was taught to those initiated into the mysteries, it is only necessary to look at the hymn attributed to the ancient Orpheus, which was sung in the mysteries of the Eleusinian Ceres, so celebrated in Europe and Asia: "Contemplate divine nature; illuminate thy mind; govern thy heart; walk in the path of justice, that the God of heaven and earth may be always present to thy eyes: He only self-exists, all beings derive their existence from Him; He sustains them all; He has never been seen by mortals, and He sees all things."

We may also read the passage of the philosopher Maximus, whom we have already quoted: "What man is so gross and stupid as to doubt that there is a supreme, eternal, and infinite God, who has engendered nothing like Himself, and who is the common father of all things?"

There are a thousand proofs that the ancient sages not only abhorred idolatry, but polytheism.

Epictetus, that model of resignation and patience, that man so great in a humble condition, never speaks of but one God. Read over these maxims: "God has created me; God is within me; I carry Him everywhere. Can I defile Him by obscene thoughts, unjust actions, or infamous desires? My duty is to thank God for all, to praise Him for all; and only to cease blessing Him in ceasing to live." All the ideas of Epictetus turn on this principle. Is this an idolater?

Marcus Aurelius, perhaps as great on the throne of the Roman Empire as Epictetus was in slavery, often speaks, indeed, of the gods, either to conform himself to the received language, or to express intermediate beings between the Supreme Being and men; but in how many places does he show that he recognizes one eternal, infinite God alone? "Our soul," says he, "is an emanation from the divinity. My children, my body, my mind, are derived from God."