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Title: The Ruins, or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires and the Law of Nature
Author: Volney, C. F. (Constantin François), 1757-1820
Language: English
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THE RUINS,
OR, MEDITATION ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF EMPIRES:
AND
THE LAW OF NATURE,
by C. F. VOLNEY,
COMTE ET PAIR DE FRANCE. COMMANDEUR DE LA LEGION D'HONNEUR, MEMBRE DE
L'ACADEMIE FRANCAISE, ET DE PLUSIEURS AUTRES SOCIETES SAVANTES.
DEPUTY TO THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF 1789, AND AUTHOR OF "TRAVELS IN EGYPT
AND SYRIA," "NEW RESEARCHES ON ANCIENT HISTORY," ETC.
TO WHICH IS ADDED
VOLNEY'S ANSWER TO DR. PRIESTLY, A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE BY COUNT DARU,
AND THE ZODIACAL SIGNS AND CONSTELLATIONS BY THE EDITOR.
I will cherish in remembrance the love of man, I will employ myself on
the means of effecting good for him, and build my own happiness on the
promotion of his.--Volney.
NEW YORK, TWENTIETH CENTURY PUB. CO., 4 WARREN ST. 1890.
PUBLISHER'S PREFACE.
Having recently purchased a set of stereotyped plates of Volney's Ruins,
with a view of reprinting the same, I found, on examination, that they
were considerably worn by the many editions that had been printed
from them and that they greatly needed both repairs and corrections. A
careful estimate showed that the amount necessary for this purpose would
go far towards reproducing this standard work in modern type and in an
improved form. After due reflection this course was at length decided
upon, and all the more readily, as by discarding the old plates and
resetting the entire work, the publisher was enabled to greatly enhance
its value, by inserting the translator's preface as it appeared in the
original edition, and also to restore many notes and other valuable
material which had been carelessly omitted in the American reprint.
An example of an important omission of this kind may be found on the
fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth pages of this volume, which may
be appropriately referred to, in this connection. It is there stated, in
describing the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia, and the ruins of Thebes,
her opulent metropolis, that "There a people, now forgotten, discovered,
while others were yet barbarians, the elements of the arts and sciences.
A race of men, now rejected from society for their sable skin and
frizzled hair, founded on the study of the laws of nature, those civil
and religious systems which still govern the universe."
A voluminous note, in which standard authorities are cited, seems to
prove that this statement is substantially correct, and that we are in
reality indebted to the ancient Ethiopians, to the fervid imagination of
the persecuted and despised negro, for the various religious systems
now so highly revered by the different branches of both the Semitic
and Aryan races. This fact, which is so frequently referred to in Mr.
Volney's writings, may perhaps solve the question as to the origin of
all religions, and may even suggest a solution to the secret so long
concealed beneath the flat nose, thick lips, and negro features of the
Egyptian Sphinx. It may also confirm the statement of Dioderus, that
"the Ethiopians conceive themselves as the inventors of divine worship,
of festivals, of solemn assemblies, of sacrifices, and of every other
religious practice."
That an imaginative and superstitious race of black men should have
invented and founded, in the dim obscurity of past ages, a system
of religious belief that still enthralls the minds and clouds the
intellects of the leading representatives of modern theology,--that
still clings to the thoughts, and tinges with its potential influence
the literature and faith of the civilized and cultured nations of Europe
and America, is indeed a strange illustration of the mad caprice of
destiny, of the insignificant and apparently trivial causes that oft
produce the most grave and momentous results.
The translation here given closely follows that published in Paris by
Levrault, Quai Malaquais, in 1802, which was under the direction and
careful supervision of the talented author; and whatever notes Count
Volney then thought necessary to insert in his work, are here carefully
reproduced without abridgment or modification.
The portrait, maps and illustrations are from a French edition of
Volney's complete works, published by Bossange Freres at No. 12 Rue de
Seine, Paris, in 1821,--one year after the death of Mr. Volney. It is a
presentation copy "on the part of Madame, the Countess de Volney, and
of the nephew of the author," and it may therefore be taken for
granted that Mr. Volney's portrait, as here given, is correct, and was
satisfactory to his family.
An explanation of the figures and diagrams shown on the map of the
Astrological Heaven of the Ancients has been added in the appendix by
the publisher.
PETER ECKLER.
New York, January 3, 1890.
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
OF THE ENGLISH EDITION PUBLISHED IN PARIS.
To offer the public a new translation of Volney's Ruins may require some
apology in the view of those who are acquainted with the work only in
the English version which already exists, and which has had a general
circulation. But those who are conversant with the book in the author's
own language, and have taken pains to compare it with that version,
must have been struck with the errors with which the English performance
abounds. They must have regretted the loss of many original beauties,
some of which go far in composing the essential merits of the work.
The energy and dignity of the author's manner, the unaffected elevation
of his style, the conciseness, perspicuity and simplicity of his
diction, are everywhere suited to his subject, which is solemn, novel,
luminous, affecting,--a subject perhaps the most universally interesting
to the human race that has ever been presented to their contemplation.
It takes the most liberal and comprehensive view of the social state
of man, develops the sources of his errors in the most perspicuous and
convincing manner, overturns his prejudices with the greatest delicacy
and moderation, sets the wrongs he has suffered, and the rights he ought
to cherish, in the clearest point of view, and lays before him the true
foundation of morals--his only means of happiness.
As the work has already become a classical one, even in English, and as
it must become and continue to be so regarded in all languages in which
it shall be faithfully rendered, we wish it to suffer as little as
possible from a change of country;--that as much of the spirit of the
original be transfused and preserved as is consistent with the nature of
translation.
How far we have succeeded in performing this service for the English
reader we must not pretend to determine. We believe, however, that
we have made an improved translation, and this without claiming any
particular merit on our part, since we have had advantages which our
predecessor had not. We have been aided by his labors; and, what is of
still more importance, our work has been done under the inspection of
the author, whose critical knowledge of both languages has given us
a great facility in avoiding such errors as might arise from hurry or
mistake.
Paris, November 1, 1802.
PREFACE OF THE LONDON EDITION.*
* Published by T. Allman, 42 Holborn Hill, London, 1851.
The plan of this publication was formed nearly ten years ago; and
allusions to it may be seen in the preface to Travels in Syria and
Egypt, as well as at the end of that work, (published in 1787). The
performance was in some forwardness when the events of 1788 in France
interrupted it. Persuaded that a development of the theory of political
truth could not sufficiently acquit a citizen of his debt to society,
the author wished to add practice; and that particularly at a time when
a single arm was of consequence in the defence of the general cause.
The same desire of public benefit which induced him to suspend his work,
has since engaged him to resume it, and though it may not possess the
same merit as if it had appeared under the circumstances that gave rise
to it, yet he imagines that at a time when new passions are bursting
forth,--passions that must communicate their activity to the religious
opinions of men,--it is of importance to disseminate such moral truths
as are calculated to operate as a curb and restraint. It is with this
view he has endeavored to give to these truths, hitherto treated as
abstract, a form likely to gain them a reception.
It was found impossible not to shock the violent prejudices of some
readers; but the work, so far from being the fruit of a disorderly
and perturbed spirit, has been dictated by a sincere love of order and
humanity.
After reading this performance it will be asked, how it was possible in
1784 to have had an idea of what did not take place till the year
1790? The solution is simple. In the original plan the legislator was
a fictitious and hypothetical being: in the present, the author has
substituted an existing legislator; and the reality has only made the
subject additionally interesting.
PREFACE OF THE AMERICAN EDITION.*
* The copy from which this preface is reprinted was
published in Boston by Charles Gaylord, in 1833. It was
given to the writer, when a mere lad, by a lady--almost a
stranger--who was traveling through the little hamlet on the
banks of the Hudson where he then resided. This lady
assured me that the book was of great value, containing
noble and sublime truths; and the only condition she
attached to the gift was, that I should read it carefully
and endeavor to understand its meaning. This I willingly
promised and faithfully performed; and all who have "climbed
the heights," and escaped from the thraldom of superstitious
faith, will concede the inestimable value of such a gift--
rich with the peace and consolation that the truth imparts.
--Pub.
If books were to be judged of by their volume, the following would have
but little value; if appraised by their contents, it will perhaps be
reckoned among the most instructive.
In general, nothing is more important than a good elementary book; but,
also, nothing is more difficult to compose and even to read: and why?
Because, as every thing in it should be analysis and definition, all
should be expressed with truth and precision. If truth and precision are
wanting, the object has not been attained; if they exist, its very force
renders it abstract.
The first of these defects has been hitherto evident in all books of
morality. We find in them only a chaos of incoherent maxims, precepts
without causes, and actions without a motive. The pedants of the human
race have treated it like a little child: they have prescribed to it
good behavior by frightening it with spirits and hobgoblins. Now that
the growth of the human race is rapid, it is time to speak reason to it;
it is time to prove to men that the springs of their improvement are to
be found in their very organization, in the interest of their passions,
and in all that composes their existence. It is time to demonstrate that
morality is a physical and geometrical science, subject to the rules
and calculations of the other mathematical sciences: and such is the
advantage of the system expounded in this book, that the basis of
morality being laid in it on the very nature of things, it is both
constant and immutable; whereas, in all other theological systems,
morality being built upon arbritary opinions, not demonstrable and often
absurd, it changes, decays, expires with them, and leaves men in an
absolute depravation. It is true that because our system is founded
on facts and not on reveries, it will with much greater difficulty
be extended and adopted: but it will derive strength from this very
struggle, and sooner or later the eternal religion of Nature must
overturn the transient religions of the human mind.
This book was published for the first time in 1793, under the title of
The French Citizen's Catechism. It was at first intended for a national
work, but as it may be equally well entitled the Catechism of men of
sense and honor, it is to be hoped that it will become a book common
to all Europe. It is possible that its brevity may prevent it from
attaining the object of a popular classical work, but the author will be
satisfied if he has at least the merit of pointing out the way to make a
better.
ADVERTISEMENT OF THE AMERICAN EDITION.
VOLNEY'S RUINS;
OR MEDITATION ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF EMPIRES.
The superior merits of this work are too well known to require
commendation; but as it is not generally known that there are in
circulation three English translations of it, varying materially in
regard to faithfulness and elegance of diction, the publisher of the
present edition inserts the following extracts for the information of
purchasers and readers:
PARIS TRANSLATION,
First published in this Country by Dixon and Sickels.
INVOCATION.
Hail, solitary ruins! holy sepulchres, and silent walls! you I invoke;
to you I address my prayer. While your aspect averts, with secret
terror, the vulgar regard, it excites in my heart the charm of delicious
sentiments--sublime contemplations. What useful lessons! what affecting
and profound reflections you suggest to him who knows how to consult
you. When the whole earth, in chains and silence, bowed the neck before
its tyrants, you had already proclaimed the truths which they abhor,
and confounding the dust of the king with that of the meanest slave,
had announced to man the sacred dogma of Equality! Within your pale, in
solitary adoration of Liberty, I saw her Genius arise from the mansions
of the dead; not such as she is painted by the impassioned multitude,
armed with fire and sword, but under the august aspect of justice,
poising in her hand the sacred balance, wherein are weighed the actions
of men at the gates of eternity.
O Tombs! what virtues are yours! you appal the tyrant's heart, and
poison with secret alarm his impious joys; he flies, with coward step,
your incorruptible aspect, and erects afar his throne of insolence.
LONDON TRANSLATION.
INVOCATION.
Solitary ruins, sacred tombs, ye mouldering and silent walls, all hail!
To you I address my invocation. While the vulgar shrink from your aspect
with secret terror, my heart finds in the contemplation a thousand
delicious sentiments, a thousand admirable recollections. Pregnant, I
may truly call you, with useful lessons, with pathetic and irresistible
advice to the man who knows how to consult you. A while ago the whole
world bowed the neck in silence before the tyrants that oppressed it;
and yet in that hopeless moment you already proclaimed the truths that
tyrants hold in abhorrence: mixing the dust of the proudest kings with
that of the meanest slaves, you called upon us to contemplate this
example of Equality. From your caverns, whither the musing and anxious
love of Liberty led me, I saw escape its venerable shade, and with
unexpected felicity, direct its flight and marshal my steps the way to
renovated France.
Tombs! what virtues and potency do you exhibit! Tyrants tremble at your
aspect--you poison with secret alarm their impious pleasures--they turn
from you with impatience, and, coward like, endeavor to forget you amid
the sumptuousness of their palaces.
PHILADELPHIA TRANSLATION.
INVOCATION.
Hail, ye solitary ruins, ye sacred tombs, and silent walls! 'Tis your
auspicious aid that I invoke; 'tis to you my soul, wrapt in meditation,
pours forth its prayers! What though the profane and vulgar mind shrinks
with dismay from your august and awe-inspiring aspect; to me you unfold
the sublimest charms of contemplation and sentiment, and offer to my
senses the luxury of a thousand delicious and enchanting thoughts!
How sumptuous the feast to a being that has a taste to relish, and an
understanding to consult you! What rich and noble admonitions;
what exquisite and pathetic lessons do you read to a heart that is
susceptible of exalted feelings! When oppressed humanity bent in timid
silence throughout the globe beneath the galling yoke of slavery, it was
you that proclaimed aloud the birthright of those truths which tyrants
tremble at while they detect, and which, by sinking the loftiest head of
the proudest potentate, with all his boasted pageantry, to the level
of mortality with his meanest slave, confirmed and ratified by your
unerring testimony the sacred and immortal doctrine of Equality.
Musing within the precincts of your inviting scenes of philosophic
solitude, whither the insatiate love of true-born Liberty had led me, I
beheld her Genius ascending, not in the spurious character and habit of
a blood-thirsty Fury, armed with daggers and instruments of murder, and
followed by a frantic and intoxicated multitude, but under the placid
and chaste aspect of Justice, holding with a pure and unsullied hand the
sacred scales in which the actions of mortals are weighed on the brink
of eternity.
The first translation was made and published in London soon after the
appearance of the work in French, and, by a late edition, is still
adopted without alteration. Mr. Volney, when in this country in 1797,
expressed his disapprobation of this translation, alleging that the
translator must have been overawed by the government or clergy from
rendering his ideas faithfully; and, accordingly, an English gentleman,
then in Philadelphia, volunteered to correct this edition. But by his
endeavors to give the true and full meaning of the author with great
precision, he has so overloaded his composition with an exuberance
of words, as in a great measure to dissipate the simple elegance and
sublimity of the original. Mr. Volney, when he became better acquainted
with the English language, perceived this defect; and with the aid of
our countryman, Joel Barlow, made and published in Paris a new, correct,
and elegant translation, of which the present edition is a faithful and
correct copy.
CONTENTS
Publisher's Preface
Translator's Preface
Preface of London Edition
Preface of the American Edition
Advertisement of the American Edition
The Life of Volney
A List of Volney's Works
Invocation
Chap.
I. The Journey
II. The Reverie
III. The Apparition
IV. The Exposition
V. Condition of Man in the Universe
VI. The Primitive State of Man
VII. Principles of Society
VIII. Sources of the Evils of Societies
IX. Origin of Governments and Laws
X. General Causes of the Prosperity of Ancient States
XI. General Causes of the Revolutions and Ruin of Ancient States
XII. Lessons of Times Past repeated on the Present
XIII. Will the Human Race Improve
XIV. The Great Obstacle to Improvement
XV. The New Age
XVI. A Free and Legislative People
XVII. Universal Basis of all Right and all Law
XVIII. Consternation and Conspiracy of Tyrants
XIX. General Assembly of the Nations
XX. The Search of Truth
XXI. Problem of Religious Contradictions
XXII. Origin and Filiation of Religious Ideas
I. Origin of the Idea of God: Worship of the Elements
and of the Physical Powers of Nature
II. Second System. Worship of the Stars, or Sabeism
III. Third System. Worship of Symbols, or Idolatry
IV. Fourth System. Worship of two Principles, or Dualism
V. Moral and Mystical Worship, or System of a Future State
VI. Sixth System. The Animated World, or Worship of the
Universe under diverse Emblems
VII. Seventh System. Worship of the Soul of the World, that
is to say, the Element of Fire, Vital Principle
of the Universe
VIII. Eighth System. The World Machine: Worship of the Demi-
Ourgos, or Grand Artificer
IX. Religion of Moses, or Worship of the Soul of the World
(You-piter)
X. Religion of Zoroaster
XI. Budsoism, or Religion of the Samaneans
XII. Brahmism, or Indian System
XIII. Christianity, or the Allegorical Worship of the Sun
under the cabalistic names of Chrish-en or Christ
and Yesus or Jesus
XXIII. All Religions have the same Object
XXIV. Solution of the Problem of Contradictions
THE LAW OF NATURE.
Chap.
I. Of the Law of Nature
II. Characters of the Law of Nature
III. Principles of the Law of Nature relating to Man
IV. Basis of Morality: of Good, of Evil, of Sin, of Crime,
of Vice, and of Virtue
V. Of Individual Virtues
VI. On Temperance
VII. On Continence
VIII. On Courage and Activity
IX. On Cleanliness
X. On Domestic Virtues
XI. The Social Virtues; Justice
XII. Development of the Social Virtues
Volney's Answer to Dr. Priestly.
Appendix: The Zodiacal Signs and Constellations
LIFE OF VOLNEY.
By Count Daru.
Constantine Francis Chassebeuf De Volney was born in 1757 at Craon, in
that intermediate condition of life, which is of all the happiest, since
it is deprived only of fortune's too dangerous favors, and can aspire to
the social and intellectual advantages reserved for a laudable ambition.
From his earliest youth, he devoted himself to the search after truth,
without being disheartened by the serious studies which alone can
initiate us into her secrets. After having become acquainted with the
ancient languages, the natural sciences and history, and being admitted
into the society of the most eminent literary characters, he submitted,
at the age of twenty, to an illustrious academy, the solution of one of
the most difficult problems that the history of antiquity has left open
for discussion. This attempt received no encouragement from the learned
men who were appointed his judges; and the author's only appeal from
their sentence was to his courage and his efforts.
Soon after, a small inheritance having fallen to his lot, the difficulty
was how to spend it (these are his own words.) He resolved to employ
it in acquiring, by a long voyage, a new fund of information, and
determined to visit Egypt and Syria. But these countries could not be
explored to advantage without a knowledge of the language. Our young
traveller was not to be discouraged by this difficulty. Instead of
learning Arabic in Europe, he withdrew to a convent of Copts, until he
had made himself master of an idiom that is spoken by so many nations
of the East. This resolution showed one of those undaunted spirits that
remain unshaken amid the trials of life.
Although, like other travellers, he might have amused us with an account
of his hardships and the perils surmounted by his courage, he overcame
the temptation of interrupting his narrative by personal adventures. He
disdained the beaten track. He does not tell us the road he took, the
accidents he met with, or the impressions he received. He carefully
avoids appearing upon the stage; he is an inhabitant of the country,
who has long and well observed it, and who describes its physical,
political, and moral state. The allusion would be entire if an old
Arab could be supposed to possess all the erudition, all the European
philosophy, which are found united and in their maturity in a traveller
of twenty-five.
But though a master in all those artifices by which a narration is
rendered interesting, the young man is not to be discerned in the pomp
of labored descriptions. Although possessed of a lively and brilliant
imagination, he is never found unwarily explaining by conjectural
systems the physical or moral phenomena he describes. In his
observations he unites prudence with science. With these two guides he
judges with circumspection, and sometimes confesses himself unable to
account for the effects he has made known to us.
Thus his account has all the qualities that persuade--accuracy
and candor. And when, ten years later, a vast military enterprise
transported forty thousand travellers to the classic ground, which he
had trod unattended, unarmed and unprotected, they all recognized a sure
guide and an enlightened observer in the writer who had, as it seemed,
only preceded them to remove or point out a part of the difficulties of
the way.
The unanimous testimony of all parties proved the accuracy of his
account and the justness of his observations; and his Travels in Egypt
and Syria were, by universal suffrage, recommended to the gratitude and
the confidence of the public.
Before the work had undergone this trial it had obtained in the learned
world such a rapid and general success, that it found its way into
Russia. The empress, then (in 1787) upon the throne, sent the author
a medal, which he received with respect, as a mark of esteem for his
talents, and with gratitude, as a proof of the approbation given to his
principles. But when the empress declared against France, Volney sent
back the honorable present, saying: "If I obtained it from her esteem, I
can only preserve her esteem by returning it."
The revolution of 1789, which had drawn upon France the menaces of
Catharine, had opened to Volney a political career. As deputy in the
assembly of the states-general, the first words he uttered there were
in favor of the publicity of their deliberations. He also supported
the organization of the national guards, and that of the communes and
departments.
At the period when the question of the sale of the domain lands was
agitated (in 1790), he published an essay in which he lays down the
following principles: "The force of a State is in proportion to
its population; population is in proportion to plenty; plenty is in
proportion to tillage; and tillage, to personal and immediate interest,
that is to the spirit of property. Whence it follows, that the nearer
the cultivator approaches the passive condition of a mercenary, the less
industry and activity are to be expected from him; and, on the other
hand, the nearer he is to the condition of a free and entire proprietor,
the more extension he gives to his own forces, to the produce of his
lands, and the general prosperity of the State."
The author draws this conclusion, that a State is so much the more
powerful as it includes a greater number of proprietors,--that is, a
greater division of property.
Conducted into Corsica by that spirit of observation which belongs only
to men whose information is varied and extensive, he perceived at the
first glance all that could be done for the improvement of agriculture
in that country: but he knew that, for a people firmly attached to
ancient customs, there can exist no other demonstration or means of
persuasion than example. He purchased a considerable estate, and made
experiments on those kinds of tillage that he hoped to naturalize
in that climate. The sugar-cane, cotton, indigo and coffee soon
demonstrated the success of his efforts. This success drew upon him the
notice of the government. He was appointed director of agriculture and
commerce in that island, where, through ignorance, all new methods are
introduced with such difficulty.
It is impossible to calculate all the good that might have resulted from
this peaceable magistracy; and we know that neither instruction, zeal,
nor a persevering courage was wanting to him who had undertaken it.
Of this he had given convincing proofs. It was in obedience to another
sentiment, no less respectable, that he voluntarily interrupted the
course of his labors. When his fellow citizens of Angers appointed him
their deputy in the constituent assembly, he resigned the employment he
held under government, upon the principle that no man can represent
the nation and be dependent for a salary upon those by whom it is
administered.
Through respect for the independence of his legislative functions,
he had ceased to occupy the place he possessed in Corsica before his
election, but he had not ceased to be a benefactor of that country. He
returned thither after the session of the constituent assembly. Invited
into that island by the principal inhabitants, who were anxious to put
into practice his lessons, he spent there a part of the years 1792 and
1793.
On his return he published a work entitled: An Account of the Present
State of Corsica. This was an act of courage; for it was not a physical
description, but a political review of the condition of a population
divided into several factions and distracted by violent animosities.
Volney unreservedly revealed the abuses, solicited the interest of
France in favor of the Corsicans, without flattering them, and boldly
denounced their defects and vices; so that the philosopher obtained the
only recompense he could expect from his sincerity--he was accused by
the Corsicans of heresy.
To prove that he had not merited this reproach, he published soon after
a short treatise entitled: The Law of Nature, or Physical Principles of
Morality.
He was soon exposed to a much more dangerous charge, and this, it must
be confessed, he did merit. This philosopher, this worthy citizen, who
in our first National assembly had seconded with his wishes and his
talents the establishment of an order of things which he considered
favorable to the happiness of his country, was accused of not being
sincerely attached to that liberty for which he had contended; that is
to say, of being averse to anarchy. An imprisonment of ten months, which
only ended after the 9th of Thermidor, was a new trial reserved for his
courage.
The moment at which he recovered his liberty, was when the horror
inspired by criminal excesses had recalled men to those noble sentiments
which fortunately are one of the first necessaries of civilized life.
They sought for consolations in study and literature after so many
misfortunes, and organized a plan of public instruction.
It was in the first place necessary to insure the aptitude of those to
whom education should be confided; but as the systems were various, the
best methods and a unity of doctrine were to be determined. It was not
enough to interrogate the masters, they were to be formed, new ones were
to be created, and for that purpose a school was opened in 1794, wherein
the celebrity of the professors promised new instruction even to the
best informed. This was not, as was objected, beginning the edifice at
the roof, but creating architects, who were to superintend all the arts
requisite for constructing the building.
The more difficult their functions were, the greater care was to be
taken in the choice of the professors; but France, though then accused
of being plunged in barbarism, possessed men of transcendent talents,
already enjoying the esteem of all Europe, and we may be bold to say,
that by their labors, our literary glory had likewise extended its
conquests. Their names were proclaimed by the public voice, and Volney's
was associated with those of the men most illustrious in science and in
literature.*
* Lagrange, Laplace, Berthollet, Garat, Bernardin de Saint-
Pierre, Daubenton, Hauy, Volney, Sicard, Monge, Thouin, La
Harpe, Buache Mentelle.
This institution, however, did not answer the expectations that had been
formed of it, because the two thousand students that assembled from all
parts of France were not equally prepared to receive these transcendent
lessons, and because it had not been sufficiently ascertained how far
the theory of education should be kept distinct from education itself.
Volney's Lectures on History, which were attended by an immense
concourse of auditors, became one of his chief claims to literary glory.
When forced to interrupt them, by the suppression of the Normal school,
he might have reasonably expected to enjoy in his retirement that
consideration which his recent functions had added to his name. But,
disgusted with the scenes he had witnessed in his native land, he felt
that passion revive within him which, in his youth, had led him to visit
Africa and Asia. America, civilized within a century, and free only
within a few years, fixed his attention. There every thing was new,--the
inhabitants, the constitution, the earth itself. These were objects
worthy of his observation. When embarking for this voyage, however, he
felt emotions very different from those which formerly accompanied him
into Turkey. Then in the prime of life, he joyfully bid adieu to a
land where peace and plenty reigned, to travel amongst barbarians;
now, mature in years, but dismayed at the spectacle and experience of
injustice and persecution, it was with diffidence, as we learn from
himself, that he went to implore from a free people an asylum for a
sincere friend of that liberty that had been so profaned.
Our traveller had gone to seek for repose beyond the seas. He there
found himself exposed to aggression from a celebrated philosopher, Dr.
Priestley. Although the subject of this discussion was confined to the
investigation of some speculative opinions, published by the French
writer in his work entitled The Ruins, the naturalist in this attack
employed a degree of violence which added nothing to the force of his
arguments, and an acrimony of expression not to be expected from a
philosopher. M. Volney, though accused of Hottentotism and ignorance,
preserved in his defence, all the advantages that the scurrility of
his adversary gave over him. He replied in English, and Priestley's
countrymen could only recognize the Frenchman in the refinement and
politeness of his answer.
Whilst M. Volney was travelling in America, there had been formed in
France a literary body which, under the name of Institute, had attained
in a very few years a distinguished rank amongst the learned societies
of Europe. The name of the illustrious traveller was inscribed in it
at its formation, and he acquired new rights to the academical
honors conferred on him during his absence, by the publication of his
observations On the Climate and Soil of the United States.
These rights were further augmented by the historical and physiological
labors of the Academician. An examination and justification of The
Chronology of Herodotus, with numerous and profound researches on The
History of the most Ancient Nations, occupied for a long time him who
had observed their monuments and traces in the countries they inhabited.
The trial he had made of the utility of the Oriental languages inspired
him with an ardent desire to propagate the knowledge of them; and to be
propagated, he felt how necessary it was to render it less difficult.
In this view he conceived the project of applying to the study of the
idioms of Asia, a part of the grammatical notions we possess concerning
the languages of Europe. It only appertains to those conversant with
their relations of dissimilitude or conformity to appreciate the
possibility of realizing this system. The author has, however, already
received the most flattering encouragement and the most unequivocal
appreciation, by the inscription of his name amongst the members of
the learned and illustrious society founded by English commerce in the
Indian peninsula.
M. Volney developed his system in three works,* which prove that this
idea of uniting nations separated by immense distances and such various
idioms, had never ceased to occupy him for twenty-five years. Lest those
essays, of the utility of which he was persuaded, should be interrupted
by his death, with the clay-cold hand that corrected his last work, he
drew up a will which institutes a premium for the prosecution of his
labors. Thus he prolonged, beyond the term of a life entirely devoted to
letters, the glorious services he had rendered to them.
* On the Simplification of Oriental Languages, 1795. The
European Alphabet Applied to the Languages of Asia, 1819.
Hebrew Simplified, 1820.
This is not the place, nor does it belong to me to appreciate the merit
of the writings which render Volney's name illustrious. His name had
been inscribed in the list of the Senate, and afterwards of the House
of Peers. The philosopher who had travelled in the four quarters of
the world, and observed their social state, had other titles to his
admission into this body, than his literary glory. His public life, his
conduct in the constituent assembly, his independent principles, the
nobleness of his sentiments, the wisdom and fixity of his opinions, had
gained him the esteem of those who can be depended upon, and with whom
it is so agreeable to discuss political interests.
Although no man had a better right to have an opinion, no one was more
tolerant for the opinions of others. In State assemblies as well as
in Academical meetings, the man whose counsels were so wise, voted
according to his conscience, which nothing could bias; but the
philosopher forgot his superiority to hear, to oppose with moderation,
and sometimes to doubt. The extent and variety of his information,
the force of his reason, the austerity of his manners, and the noble
simplicity of his character, had procured him illustrious friends in
both hemispheres; and now that this erudition is extinct in the tomb,*
we may be allowed at least to predict that he was one of the very few
whose memory shall never die.
* He died in Paris on the 20th of April, 1820.
A list of the Works Published by Count Volney.
TRAVELS IN EGYPT AND SYRIA during the years 1783, 1784, and 1785: 2
vols. 8vo.--1787.
CHRONOLOGY OF THE TWELVE CENTURIES that preceded the entrance of Xerxes
into Greece.
CONSIDERATIONS ON THE TURKISH WAR, in 1788.
THE RUINS, or Meditations on the Revolutions of Empires--1791.
ACCOUNT OF THE PRESENT STATE OF CORSICA--1793.
THE LAW OF NATURE, or Physical Principles of Morality--1793.
ON THE SIMPLIFICATION OF ORIENTAL LANGUAGES--1795.
A LETTER TO DR. PRIESTLEY--1797.
LECTURES ON HISTORY, delivered at the Normal School in the year 3--1800.
ON THE CLIMATE AND SOIL OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, to which is
added an account of Florida, of the French colony of Scioto, of some
Canadian Colonies, and of the Savages--1803.
REPORT MADE TO THE CELTIC ACADEMY ON THE RUSSIAN WORK OF PROFESSOR
PALLAS, entitled "A Comparative Vocabulary of all the Languages in the
World."
THE CHRONOLOGY OF HERODOTUS conformable with his Text--1808 and 1809.
NEW RESEARCHES ON ANCIENT HISTORY, 3 vols. 8vo.--1814
THE EUROPEAN ALPHABET Applied to the Languages of Asia--1819.
A HISTORY OF SAMUEL--1819.
HEBREW SIMPLIFIED--1820.
INVOCATION.
Hail solitary ruins, holy sepulchres and silent walls! you I invoke; to
you I address my prayer. While your aspect averts, with secret terror,
the vulgar regard, it excites in my heart the charm of delicious
sentiments--sublime contemplations. What useful lessons, what affecting
and profound reflections you suggest to him who knows how to consult
you! When the whole earth, in chains and silence bowed the neck before
its tyrants, you had already proclaimed the truths which they abhor;
and confounding the dust of the king with that of the meanest slave,
had announced to man the sacred dogma of Equality. Within your pale, in
solitary adoration of Liberty, I saw her Genius arise from the mansions
of the dead; not such as she is painted by the impassioned multitude,
armed with fire and sword, but under the august aspect of Justice,
poising in her hand the sacred balance wherein are weighed the actions
of men at the gates of eternity!
O Tombs! what virtues are yours! You appal the tyrant's heart, and
poison with secret alarm his impious joys. He flies, with coward step,
your incorruptible aspect, and erects afar his throne of insolence.*
You punish the powerful oppressor; you wrest from avarice and extortion
their ill-gotten gold, and you avenge the feeble whom they have
despoiled; you compensate the miseries of the poor by the anxieties of
the rich; you console the wretched, by opening to him a last asylum from
distress; and you give to the soul that just equipoise of strength and
sensibility which constitutes wisdom--the true science of life. Aware
that all must return to you, the wise man loadeth not himself with the
burdens of grandeur and of useless wealth: he restrains his desires
within the limits of justice; yet, knowing that he must run his destined
course of life, he fills with employment all its hours, and enjoys the
comforts that fortune has allotted him. You thus impose on the impetuous
sallies of cupidity a salutary rein! you calm the feverish ardor
of enjoyments which disturb the senses; you free the soul from the
fatiguing conflict of the passions; elevate it above the paltry
interests which torment the crowd; and surveying, from your commanding
position, the expanse of ages and nations, the mind is only accessible
to the great affections--to the solid ideas of virtue and of glory.
* The cathedral of St. Denis is the tomb of the kings of
France; and it was because the towers of that edifice are
seen from the Castle of St. Germain, that Louis XIV. quitted
that admirable residence, and established a new one in the
savage forests of Versailles.
(This note, like many others, has been omitted from the
American editions. It seems pertinent to the subject, and
is explanatory of the text.--Pub.)
Ah! when the dream of life is over, what will then avail all its
agitations, if not one trace of utility remains behind?
O Ruins! to your school I will return! I will seek again the calm of
your solitudes; and there, far from the afflicting spectacle of the
passions, I will cherish in remembrance the love of man, I will
employ myself on the means of effecting good for him, and build my own
happiness on the promotion of his.
THE RUINS OF EMPIRES.
CHAPTER I.
THE JOURNEY.
In the eleventh year of the reign of Abd-ul-Hamid, son of Ahmid, emperor
of the Turks; when the Nogais-Tartars were driven from the Crimea, and a
Mussulman prince of the blood of Gengis-Kahn became the vassal and
guard of a Christian woman and queen,* I was travelling in the Ottoman
dominions, and through those provinces which were anciently the kingdoms
of Egypt and Syria.
* In the eleventh year of Abd-ul-Hamid, that is 1784 of the
Christian era, and 1198 of the Hegira. The emigration of
the Tartars took place in March, immediately on the
manifesto of the empress, declaring the Crimea to be
incorporated with Russia. The Mussulman prince of the blood
of Gengis-khan was Chahin-Guerai. Gengis-Khan was borne and
served by the kings whom he conquered: Chahin, on the
contrary, after selling his country for a pension of eighty
thousand roubles, accepted the commission of captain of
guards to Catherine II. He afterwards returned home, and
according to custom was strangled by the Turks.
My whole attention bent on whatever concerns the happiness of man in
a social state, I visited cities, and studied the manners of their
inhabitants; entered palaces, and observed the conduct of those who
govern; wandered over fields, and examined the condition of those
who cultivated them: and nowhere perceiving aught but robbery and
devastation, tyranny and wretchedness, my heart was oppressed with
sorrow and indignation.
I saw daily on my road fields abandoned, villages deserted, and cities
in ruin. Often I met with ancient monuments, wrecks of temples, palaces
and fortresses, columns, aqueducts and tombs. This spectacle led me to
meditate on times past, and filled my mind with contemplations the most
serious and profound.
Arrived at the city of Hems, on the border of the Orontes, and being
in the neighborhood of Palmyra of the desert, I resolved to visit its
celebrated ruins. After three days journeying through arid deserts,
having traversed the Valley of Caves and Sepulchres, on issuing into
the plain, I was suddenly struck with a scene of the most stupendous
ruins--a countless multitude of superb columns, stretching in avenues
beyond the reach of sight. Among them were magnificent edifices, some
entire, others in ruins; the earth every where strewed with fragments
of cornices, capitals, shafts, entablatures, pilasters, all of
white marble, and of the most exquisite workmanship. After a walk of
three-quarters of an hour along these ruins, I entered the enclosure of
a vast edifice, formerly a temple dedicated to the Sun; and accepting
the hospitality of some poor Arabian peasants, who had built their
hovels on the area of the temple, I determined to devote some days to
contemplate at leisure the beauty of these stupendous ruins.
Daily I visited the monuments which covered the plain; and one evening,
absorbed in reflection, I had advanced to the Valley of Sepulchres. I
ascended the heights which surround it from whence the eye commands the
whole group of ruins and the immensity of the desert. The sun had sunk
below the horizon: a red border of light still marked his track behind
the distant mountains of Syria; the full-orbed moon was rising in the
east, on a blue ground, over the plains of the Euphrates; the sky was
clear, the air calm and serene; the dying lamp of day still softened the
horrors of approaching darkness; the refreshing night breezes attempered
the sultry emanations from the heated earth; the herdsmen had given
their camels to repose, the eye perceived no motion on the dusky and
uniform plain; profound silence rested on the desert; the howlings only
of the jackal,* and the solemn notes of the bird of night, were heard
at distant intervals. Darkness now increased, and through the dusk could
only be discerned the pale phantasms of columns and walls. The solitude
of the place, the tranquillity of the hour, the majesty of the scene,
impressed on my mind a religious pensiveness. The aspect of a great city
deserted, the memory of times past, compared with its present state, all
elevated my mind to high contemplations. I sat on the shaft of a column,
my elbow reposing on my knee, and head reclining on my hand, my eyes
fixed, sometimes on the desert, sometimes on the ruins, and fell into a
profound reverie.
* An animal resembling a dog and a fox. It preys on other
small animals, and upon the bodies of the dead on the field
of battle. It is the Canis aureus of Linnaeus.
CHAPTER II.
THE REVERIE.
Here, said I, once flourished an opulent city; here was the seat of a
powerful empire. Yes! these places now so wild and desolate, were once
animated by a living multitude; a busy crowd thronged in these streets,
now so solitary. Within these walls, where now reigns the silence
of death, the noise of the arts, and the shouts of joy and festivity
incessantly resounded; these piles of marble were regular palaces; these
fallen columns adorned the majesty of temples; these ruined galleries
surrounded public places. Here assembled a numerous people for the
sacred duties of their religion, and the anxious cares of their
subsistence; here industry, parent of enjoyments, collected the riches
of all climes, and the purple of Tyre was exchanged for the precious
thread of Serica;* the soft tissues of Cassimere for the sumptuous
tapestry of Lydia; the amber of the Baltic for the pearls and perfumes
of Arabia; the gold of Ophir for the tin of Thule.
* The precious thread of Serica.--That is, the silk
originally derived from the mountainous country where the
great wall terminates, and which appears to have been the
cradle of the Chinese empire. The tissues of Cassimere.--
The shawls which Ezekiel seems to have described under the
appellation of Choud-choud. The gold of Ophir.--This
country, which was one of the twelve Arab cantons, and which
has so much and so unsuccessfully been sought for by the
antiquarians, has left, however, some trace of itself in
Ofor, in the province of Oman, upon the Persian Gulf,
neighboring on one side to the Sabeans, who are celebrated
by Strabo for their abundance of gold, and on the other to
Aula or Hevila, where the pearl fishery was carried on. See
the 27th chapter of Ezekiel, which gives a very curious and
extensive picture of the commerce of Asia at that period.
And now behold what remains of this powerful city: a miserable skeleton!
What of its vast domination: a doubtful and obscure remembrance! To
the noisy concourse which thronged under these porticoes, succeeds the
solitude of death. The silence of the grave is substituted for the busy
hum of public places; the affluence of a commercial city is changed into
wretched poverty; the palaces of kings have become a den of wild beasts;
flocks repose in the area of temples, and savage reptiles inhabit the
sanctuary of the gods. Ah! how has so much glory been eclipsed? how
have so many labors been annihilated? Do thus perish then the works of
men--thus vanish empires and nations?
And the history of former times revived in my mind; I remembered those
ancient ages when many illustrious nations inhabited these countries; I
figured to myself the Assyrian on the banks of the Tygris, the Chaldean
on the banks of the Euphrates, the Persian reigning from the Indus to
the Mediterranean. I enumerated the kingdoms of Damascus and Idumea, of
Jerusalem and Samaria, the warlike states of the Philistines, and
the commercial republics of Phoenicia. This Syria, said I, now so
depopulated, then contained a hundred flourishing cities, and abounded
with towns, villages, and hamlets.* In all parts were seen cultivated
fields, frequented roads, and crowded habitations. Ah! whither have
flown those ages of life and abundance?--whither vanished those
brilliant creations of human industry? Where are those ramparts of
Nineveh, those walls of Babylon, those palaces of Persepolis, those
temples of Balbec and of Jerusalem? Where are those fleets of Tyre,
those dock-yards of Arad, those work-shops of Sidon, and that multitude
of sailors, of pilots, of merchants, and of soldiers? Where those
husbandmen, harvests, flocks, and all the creation of living beings
in which the face of the earth rejoiced? Alas! I have passed over this
desolate land! I have visited the palaces, once the scene of so much
splendor, and I beheld nothing but solitude and desolation. I sought the
ancient inhabitants and their works, and found nothing but a trace, like
the foot-prints of a traveller over the sand. The temples are fallen,
the palaces overthrown, the ports filled up, the cities destroyed; and
the earth, stripped of inhabitants, has become a place of sepulchres.
Great God! whence proceed such fatal revolutions? What causes have so
changed the fortunes of these countries? Wherefore are so many cities
destroyed? Why has not this ancient population been reproduced and
perpetuated?
* According to Josephus and Strabo, there were in Syria
twelve millions of souls, and the traces that remain of
culture and habitation confirm the calculation.
Thus absorbed in meditation, a crowd of new reflections continually
poured in upon my mind. Every thing, continued I, bewilders my judgment,
and fills my heart with trouble and uncertainty. When these countries
enjoyed what constitutes the glory and happiness of man, they were
inhabited by infidel nations: It was the Phoenician, offering human
sacrifices to Moloch, who gathered into his stores the riches of all
climates; it was the Chaldean, prostrate before his serpent-god,*
who subjugated opulent cities, laid waste the palaces of kings, and
despoiled the temples of the gods; it was the Persian, worshipper of
fire, who received the tribute of a hundred nations; they were the
inhabitants of this very city, adorers of the sun and stars, who erected
so many monuments of prosperity and luxury. Numerous herds, fertile
fields, abundant harvests--whatsoever should be the reward of piety--was
in the hands of these idolaters. And now, when a people of saints and
believers occupy these fields, all is become sterility and solitude.
The earth, under these holy hands, produces only thorns and briers. Man
soweth in anguish, and reapeth tears and cares. War, famine, pestilence,
assail him by turns. And yet, are not these the children of the
prophets? The Mussulman, Christian, Jew, are they not the elect children
of God, loaded with favors and miracles? Why, then, do these privileged
races no longer enjoy the same advantages? Why are these fields,
sanctified by the blood of martyrs, deprived of their ancient fertility?
Why have those blessings been banished hence, and transferred for so
many ages to other nations and different climes?
* The dragon Bell.
At these words, revolving in my mind the vicissitudes which have
transmitted the sceptre of the world to people so different in religion
and manners from those in ancient Asia to the most recent of Europe,
this name of a natal land revived in me the sentiment of my country; and
turning my eyes towards France, I began to reflect on the situation in
which I had left her.*
* In the year 1782, at the close of the American war.
I recalled her fields so richly cultivated, her roads so admirably
constructed, her cities inhabited by a countless people, her fleets
spread over every sea, her ports filled with the produce of both the
Indies: and then comparing the activity of her commerce, the extent of
her navigation, the magnificence of her buildings, the arts and industry
of her inhabitants, with what Egypt and Syria had once possessed, I was
gratified to find in modern Europe the departed splendor of Asia; but
the charm of my reverie was soon dissolved by a last term of comparison.
Reflecting that such had once been the activity of the places I was
then contemplating, who knows, said I, but such may one day be the
abandonment of our countries? Who knows if on the banks of the Seine,
the Thames, the Zuyder-Zee, where now, in the tumult of so many
enjoyments, the heart and the eye suffice not for the multitude of
sensations,--who knows if some traveller, like myself, shall not one day
sit on their silent ruins, and weep in solitude over the ashes of their
inhabitants, and the memory of their former greatness.
At these words, my eyes filled with tears: and covering my head with the
fold of my mantle, I sank into gloomy meditations on all human affairs.
Ah! hapless man, said I in my grief, a blind fatality sports with thy
destiny!* A fatal necessity rules with the hand of chance the lot of
mortals! But no: it is the justice of heaven fulfilling its decrees!--a
God of mystery exercising his incomprehensible judgments! Doubtless
he has pronounced a secret anathema against this land: blasting with
maledictions the present, for the sins of past generations. Oh! who
shall dare to fathom the depths of the Omnipotent?
* Fatality is the universal and rooted prejudice of the
East. "It was written," is there the answer to every thing.
Hence result an unconcern and apathy, the most powerful
impediments to instruction and civilization.
And sunk in profound melancholy, I remained motionless.
CHAPTER III.
THE APPARITION.
While thus absorbed, a sound struck my ear, like the agitation of a
flowing robe, or that of slow footsteps on dry and rustling grass.
Startled, I opened my mantle, and looking about with fear and trembling,
suddenly, on my left, by the glimmering light of the moon, through
the columns and ruins of a neighboring temple, I thought I saw an
apparition, pale, clothed in large and flowing robes, such as spectres
are painted rising from their tombs. I shuddered: and while agitated and
hesitating whether to fly or to advance toward the object, a distinct
voice, in solemn tones, pronounced these words:
How long will man importune heaven with unjust complaint? How long, with
vain clamors, will he accuse Fate as the author of his calamities? Will
he forever shut his eyes to the light, and his heart to the admonitions
of truth and reason? The light of truth meets him everywhere; yet he
sees it not! The voice of reason strikes his ear; and he hears it
not! Unjust man! if for a moment thou canst suspend the delusion which
fascinates thy senses, if thy heart can comprehend the language of
reason, interrogate these ruins! Read the lessons which they present to
thee! And you, evidences of twenty centuries, holy temples! venerable
tombs! walls once so glorious, appear in the cause of nature herself!
Approach the tribunal of sound reason, and bear testimony against unjust
accusations! Come and confound the declamations of a false wisdom or
hypocritical piety, and avenge the heavens and the earth of man who
calumniates them both!
What is that blind fatality, which without order and without law,
sports with the destiny of mortals? What is that unjust necessity, which
confounds the effect of actions, whether of wisdom or of folly? In what
consist the anathemas of heaven over this land? Where is that divine
malediction which perpetuates the abandonment of these fields? Say,
monuments of past ages! have the heavens changed their laws and the
earth its motion? Are the fires of the sun extinct in the regions of
space? Do the seas no longer emit their vapors? Are the rains and the
dews suspended in the air? Do the mountains withhold their springs? Are
the streams dried up? And do the plants no longer bear fruit and seed?
Answer, generation of falsehood and iniquity, hath God deranged the
primitive and settled order of things which he himself assigned to
nature? Hath heaven denied to earth, and earth to its inhabitants,
the blessings they formerly dispensed? If nothing hath changed in the
creation, if the same means now exist which before existed, why then are
not the present what former generations were? Ah! it is falsely that you
accuse fate and heaven! it is unjustly that you accuse God as the cause
of your evils! Say, perverse and hypocritical race! if these places are
desolate, if these powerful cities are reduced to solitude, is it God
who has caused their ruin? Is it his hand which has overthrown these
walls, destroyed these temples, mutilated these columns, or is it the
hand of man? Is it the arm of God which has carried the sword into your
cities, and fire into your fields, which has slaughtered the people,
burned the harvests, rooted up trees, and ravaged the pastures, or is
it the hand of man? And when, after the destruction of crops, famine
has ensued, is it the vengeance of God which has produced it, or the
mad fury of mortals? When, sinking under famine, the people have fed
on impure aliments, if pestilence ensues, is it the wrath of God which
sends it, or the folly of man? When war, famine and pestilence, have
swept away the inhabitants, if the earth remains a desert, is it God
who has depopulated it? Is it his rapacity which robs the husbandman,
ravages the fruitful fields, and wastes the earth, or is it the rapacity
of those who govern? Is it his pride which excites murderous wars,
or the pride of kings and their ministers? Is it the venality of his
decisions which overthrows the fortunes of families, or the corruption
of the organs of the law? Are they his passions which, under a thousand
forms, torment individuals and nations, or are they the passions of man?
And if, in the anguish of their miseries, they see not the remedies,
is it the ignorance of God which is to blame, or their ignorance? Cease
then, mortals, to accuse the decrees of Fate, or the judgments of the
Divinity! If God is good, will he be the author of your misery? If he is
just, will he be the accomplice of your crimes? No, the caprice of which
man complains is not the caprice of fate; the darkness that misleads his
reason is not the darkness of God; the source of his calamities is
not in the distant heavens, it is beside him on the earth; it is not
concealed in the bosom of the divinity; it dwells within himself, he
bears it in his own heart.
Thou murmurest and sayest: What! have an infidel people then enjoyed the
blessings of heaven and earth? Are the holy people of God less fortunate
than the races of impiety? Deluded man! where then is the contradiction
which offends thee? Where is the inconsistency which thou imputest to
the justice of heaven? Take into thine own hands the balance of rewards
and punishments, of causes and effects. Say: when these infidels
observed the laws of the heavens and the earth, when they regulated
well-planned labors by the order of the seasons and the course of
the stars, should the Almighty have disturbed the equilibrium of the
universe to defeat their prudence? When their hands cultivated these
fields with toil and care, should he have diverted the course of the
rains, suspended the refreshing dews, and planted crops of thorns?
When, to render these arid fields productive, their industry constructed
aqueducts, dug canals, and led the distant waters across the desert,
should he have dried up their sources in the mountains? Should he have
blasted the harvests which art had nourished, wasted the plains which
peace had peopled, overthrown cities which labor had created, or
disturbed the order established by the wisdom of man? And what is that
infidelity which founded empires by its prudence, defended them by
its valor, and strengthened them by its justice--which built powerful
cities, formed capacious ports, drained pestilential marshes, covered
the ocean with ships, the earth with inhabitants; and, like the
creative spirit, spread life and motion throughout the world? If such
be infidelity, what then is the true faith? Doth sanctity consist in
destruction? The God who peoples the air with birds, the earth with
animals, the waters with fishes--the God who animates all nature--is he
then a God of ruins and tombs? Demands he devastation for homage, and
conflagration for sacrifice? Requires he groans for hymns, murderers for
votaries, a ravaged and desolate earth for his temple? Behold then, holy
and believing people, what are your works! behold the fruits of your
piety! You have massacred the people, burned their cities, destroyed
cultivation, reduced the earth to a solitude; and you ask the reward
of your works! Miracles then must be performed! The people whom you
extirpated must be recalled to life, the walls rebuilt which you have
overthrown, the harvests reproduced which you have destroyed, the waters
regathered which you have dispersed; the laws, in fine, of heaven and
earth reversed; those laws, established by God himself, in demonstration
of his magnificence and wisdom; those eternal laws, anterior to all
codes, to all the prophets those immutable laws, which neither the
passions nor the ignorance of man can pervert. But that passion which
mistaketh, that ignorance which observeth neither causes nor effects,
hath said in its folly: "All things flow from chance; a blind fatality
poureth out good and evil upon the earth; success is not to the prudent,
nor felicity to the wise;" or, assuming the language of hypocrisy, she
hath said, "all things are from God; he taketh pleasure in deceiving
wisdom and confounding reason." And Ignorance, applauding herself in her
malice, hath said, "thus will I place myself on a par with that science
which confounds me--thus will I excel that prudence which fatigues and
torments me." And Avarice hath added: "I will oppress the weak, and
devour the fruits of his labors; and I will say, it is fate which hath
so ordained." But I! I swear by the laws of heaven and earth, and by the
law which is written in the heart of man, that the hypocrite shall be
deceived in his cunning--the oppressor in his rapacity! The sun shall
change his course, before folly shall prevail over wisdom and knowledge,
or ignorance surpass prudence, in the noble and sublime art of procuring
to man his true enjoyments, and of building his happiness on an enduring
foundation.
CHAPTER IV.
THE EXPOSITION
Thus spoke the Phantom. Confused with this discourse, and my heart
agitated with different reflections, I remained long in silence. At
length, taking courage, I thus addressed him: Oh, Genius of tombs and
ruins! Thy presence, thy severity, hath disordered my senses; but the
justice of thy discourse restoreth confidence to my soul. Pardon my
ignorance. Alas, if man is blind, shall his misfortune be also his
crime? I may have mistaken the voice of reason; but never, knowingly,
have I rejected its authority. Ah! if thou readest my heart, thou
knowest with what enthusiasm it seeketh truth. Is it not in its pursuit
that thou seest me in this sequestered spot? Alas! I have wandered over
the earth, I have visited cities and countries; and seeing everywhere
misery and desolation, a sense of the evils which afflict my fellow men
hath deeply oppressed my soul. I have said, with a sigh: is man then
born but for sorrow and anguish? And I have meditated upon human misery
that I might discover a remedy. I have said, I will separate myself from
the corruption of society; I will retire far from palaces where the mind
is depraved by satiety and from the hovel where it is debased by misery.
I will go into the desert and dwell among ruins; I will interrogate
ancient monuments on the wisdom of past ages; I will invoke from the
bosom of the tombs the spirit which once in Asia gave splendor to
states, and glory to nations; I will ask of the ashes of legislators,
by what secret causes do empires rise and fall; from what sources spring
the Prosperity and misfortunes of nations, on what principles can the
Peace of Society, and the happiness of man be established?
I ceased, and with submissive look awaited the answer of the Genius.
Peace and happiness, said he, attend those who practice justice! Since
thy heart, O mortal, with sincerity seeketh truth; since thine eyes can
still recognize her through the mist of prejudice, thy prayer shall not
be in vain. I will unfold to thy view that truth thou invokest; I will
teach thy reason that knowledge thou seekest; I will reveal to thee the
science of ages and the wisdom of the tombs.
Then approaching and laying his hand on my head, he said:
Rise, mortal, and extricate thy senses from the dust in which thou
movest.
Suddenly a celestial flame seemed to dissolve the bands which held us to
the earth; and, like a light vapor, borne on the wings of the Genius,
I felt myself wafted to the regions above. Thence, from the aerial
heights, looking down upon the earth, I perceived a scene altogether
new. Under my feet, floating in the void, a globe like that of the moon,
but smaller and less luminous, presented to me one of its phases; and
that phase* had the aspect of a disk varigated with large spots, some
white and nebulous, others brown, green or gray, and while I strained my
sight to distinguish what they were, the Genius exclaimed:
* See Plate representing half the terrestrial globe,
opposite page 10.
Disciple of Truth, knowest thou that object?
O Genius, answered I, if I did not see the moon in another quarter of
the heavens, I should have supposed that to be her globe. It has
the appearance of that planet seen through the telescope during the
obscuration of an eclipse. These varigated spots might be mistaken for
seas and continents.
They are seas and continents, said he, and those of the very hemisphere
which you inhabit.
What! said I, is that the earth--the habitation of man?
Yes, replied he, that brown space which occupies irregularly a great
portion of the disk, and envelops it almost on every side, is what you
call the great ocean, which advancing from the south pole towards the
equator, forms first the great gulf of India and Africa, then extends
eastward across the Malay islands to the confines of Tartary, while
towards the west it encircles the continents of Africa and of Europe,
even to the north of Asia.
That square peninsula under our feet is the arid country of the Arabs;
the great continent on its left, almost as naked in its interior, with
a little verdure only towards its borders, is the parched soil inhabited
by black-men.* To the north, beyond a long, narrow and irregular sea,**
are the countries of Europe, rich in meadows and cultivated fields. On
its right, from the Caspian Sea, extend the snowy and naked plains of
Tartary. Returning in this direction that white space is the vast and
barren desert of Cobi, which separates China from the rest of the world.
You see that empire in the furrowed plain which obliquely rounds itself
off from our sight. On yonder coasts, those ragged tongues of land
and scattered points are the peninsulas and islands of the Malays, the
wretched possessors of the spices and perfumes. That triangle which
advances so far into the sea, is the too famous peninsula of India.***
You see the winding course of the Ganges, the rough mountains of Thibet,
the lovely valley of Cachemere, the briny deserts of Persia, the banks
of the Euphrates and Tygris, the deep bed of the Jordan and the canals
of the solitary Nile.
* Africa.
** The Mediterranean.
*** Of what real good has been the commerce of India to the
mass of the people? On the contrary, how great the evil
occasioned by the superstition of this country having been
added the general superstition!
O Genius, said I, interrupting him, the sight of a mortal reaches not
to objects at such a distance. He touched my eyes, and immediately they
became piercing as those of an eagle; nevertheless the rivers still
appeared like waving lines, the mountains winding furrows, and the
cities little compartments like the squares of a chess-board.
And the Genius proceeded to enumerate and point out the objects to
me: Those piles of ruins, said he, which you see in that narrow valley
watered by the Nile, are the remains of opulent cities, the pride of the
ancient kingdom of Ethiopia.* Behold the wrecks of her metropolis, of
Thebes with her hundred palaces,** the parent of cities, and monument of
the caprice of destiny. There a people, now forgotten, discovered, while
others were yet barbarians, the elements of the arts and sciences. A
race of men now rejected from society for their sable skin and frizzled
hair, founded on the study of the laws of nature, those civil and
religious systems which still govern the universe. Lower down, those
dusky points are the pyramids whose masses have astonished you. Beyond
that, the coast, hemmed in between the sea and a narrow ridge of
mountains, was the habitation of the Phoenicians. These were the famous
cities of Tyre, of Sidon, of Ascalon, of Gaza, and of Berytus. That
thread of water with no outlet, is the river Jordan; and those naked
rocks were once the theatre of events that have resounded throughout
the world. Behold that desert of Horeb, and that Mount Sinai; where,
by means beyond vulgar reach, a genius, profound and bold, established
institutions which have weighed on the whole human race. On that dry
shore which borders it, you perceive no longer any trace of splendor;
yet there was an emporium of riches. There were those famous Ports of
Idumea, whence the fleets of Phoenicia and Judea, coasting the Arabian
peninsula, went into the Persian gulf, to seek there the pearls of
Hevila, the gold of Saba and of Ophir. Yes, there on that coast of Oman
and of Barhain was the seat of that commerce of luxuries, which, by its
movements and revolutions, fixed the destinies of ancient nations.***
Thither came the spices and precious stones of Ceylon, the shawls of
Cassimere, the diamonds of Golconda, the amber of Maldivia, the musk of
Thibet, the aloes of Cochin, the apes and peacocks of the continent of
India, the incense of Hadramaut, the myrrh, the silver, the gold dust
and ivory of Africa; thence passing, sometimes by the Red Sea on the
vessels of Egypt and Syria, these luxuries nourished successively the
wealth of Thebes, of Sidon, of Memphis and of Jerusalem; sometimes,
ascending the Tygris and Euphrates, they awakened the activity of the
Assyrians, Medes, Chaldeans, and Persians; and that wealth, according
to the use or abuse of it, raised or reversed by turns their domination.
Hence sprung the magnificence of Persepolis, whose columns you
still perceive; of Ecbatana, whose sevenfold wall is destroyed; of
Babylon,**** now leveled with the earth; of Nineveh, of which scarce
the name remains; of Thapsacus, of Anatho, of Gerra, and of desolated
Palmyra. O names for ever glorious! fields of renown! countries of
never-dying memory! what sublime lessons doth your aspect offer! what
profound truths are written on the surface of your soil! remembrances of
times past, return into my mind! places, witnesses of the life of man in
so many different ages, retrace for me the revolutions of his fortune!
say, what were their springs and secret causes! say, from what sources
he derived success and disgrace! unveil to himself the causes of his
evils! correct him by the spectacle of his errors! teach him the wisdom
which belongeth to him, and let the experience of past ages become a
means of instruction, and a germ of happiness to present and future
generations.
* In the new Encyclopedia 3rd vol. Antiquities is published
a memoir, respecting the chronology of the twelve ages
anterior to the passing of Xerxes into Greece, in which I
conceive myself to have proved that upper Egypt formerly
composed a distinct kingdom known to the Hebrews by the name
of Kous and to which the appellation of Ethiopia was
specially given. This kingdom preserved its independence to
the time of Psammeticus; at which period, being united to
the Lower Egypt, it lost its name of Ethiopia, which
thenceforth was bestowed upon the nations of Nubia and upon
the different tribes of blacks, including Thebes, their
metropolis.
** The idea of a city with a hundred gates, in the common
acceptation of the word, is so absurd, that I am astonished
the equivoque has not before been felt.
It has ever been the custom of the East to call palaces and
houses of the great by the name of gates, because the
principal luxury of these buildings consists in the singular
gate leading from the street into the court, at the farthest
extremity of which the palace is situated. It is under the
vestibule of this gate that conversation is held with
passengers, and a sort of audience and hospitality given.
All this was doubtless known to Homer; but poets make no
commentaries, and readers love the marvellous.
This city of Thebes, now Lougsor, reduced to the condition
of a miserable village, has left astonishing monuments of
its magnificence. Particulars of this may be seen in the
plates of Norden, in Pocock, and in the recent travels of
Bruce. These monuments give credibility to all that Homer
has related of its splendor, and lead us to infer its
political power and external commerce.
Its geographical position was favorable to this twofold
object. For, on one side, the valley of the Nile, singularly
fertile, must have early occasioned a numerous population;
and, on the other, the Red Sea, giving communication with
Arabia and India, and the Nile with Abyssinia and the
Mediterranean, Thebes was thus naturally allied to the
richest countries on the globe; an alliance that procured it
an activity so much the greater, as Lower Egypt, at first a
swamp, was nearly, if not totally, uninhabited. But when at
length this country had been drained by the canals and dikes
which Sesostris constructed, population was introduced
there, and wars arose which proved fatal to the power of
Thebes. Commerce then took another route, and descended to
the point of the Red Sea, to the canals of Sesostris (see
Strabo), and wealth and activity were transferred to
Memphis. This is manifestly what Diodorus means when he
tells us (lib. i. sect. 2), that as soon as Memphis was
established and made a wholesome and delicious abode, kings
abandoned Thebes to fix themselves there. Thus Thebes
continued to decline, and Memphis to flourish, till the time
of Alexander, who, building Alexandria on the border of the
sea, caused Memphis to fall in its turn; so that prosperity
and power seem to have descended historically step by step
along the Nile; whence it results, both physically and
historically, that the existence of Thebes was prior to that
of the other cities. The testimony of writers is very
positive in this respect. "The Thebans," says Diodorus,
"consider themselves as the most ancient people of the
earth, and assert, that with them originated philosophy and
the science of the stars. Their situation, it is true, is
infinitely favorable to astronomical observation, and they
have a more accurate division of time into mouths and years
than other nations" etc.
What Diodorus says of the Thebans, every author, and himself
elsewhere, repeat of the Ethiopians, which tends more firmly
to establish the identity of this place of which I have
spoken. "The Ethiopians conceive themselves," says he, lib.
iii., "to be of greater antiquity than any other nation: and
it is probable that, born under the sun's path, its warmth
may have ripened them earlier than other men. They suppose
themselves also to be the inventors of divine worship, of
festivals, of solemn assemblies, of sacrifices, and every
other religious practice. They affirm that the Egyptians
are one of their colonies, and that the Delta, which was
formerly sea, became land by the conglomeration of the earth
of the higher country which was washed down by the Nile.
They have, like the Egyptians, two species of letters,
hieroglyphics, and the alphabet; but among the Egyptians the
first was known only to the priests, and by them transmitted
from father to son, whereas both species were common among
the Ethiopians."
"The Ethiopians," says Lucian, page 985, "were the first who
invented the science of the stars, and gave names to the
planets, not at random and without meaning, but descriptive
of the qualities which they conceived them to possess; and
it was from them that this art passed, still in an imperfect
state, to the Egyptians."
It would be easy to multiply citations upon this subject;
from all which it follows, that we have the strongest
reasons to believe that the country neighboring to the
tropic was the cradle of the sciences, and of consequence
that the first learned nation was a nation of Blacks; for it
is incontrovertible, that, by the term Ethiopians, the
ancients meant to represent a people of black complexion,
thick lips, and woolly hair. I am therefore inclined to
believe, that the inhabitants of Lower Egypt were originally
a foreign colony imported from Syria and Arabia, a medley of
different tribes of savages, originally shepherds and
fishermen, who, by degrees formed themselves into a nation,
and who, by nature and descent, were enemies of the Thebans,
by whom they were no doubt despised and treated as
barbarians.
I have suggested the same ideas in my Travels into Syria,
founded upon the black complexion of the Sphinx. I have
since ascertained that the antique images of Thebias have
the same characteristic; and Mr. Bruce has offered a
multitude of analogous facts; but this traveller, of whom I
heard some mention at Cairo, has so interwoven these facts
with certain systematic opinions, that we should have
recourse to his narratives with caution.
It is singular that Africa, situated so near us, should be
the least known country on the earth. The English are at
this moment making explorations, the success of which ought
to excite our emulation.
*** Ailah (Eloth), and Atsiom-Gaber (Hesien-Geber.) The
name of the first of these towns still subsists in its
ruins, at the point of the gulf of the Red Sea, and in the
route which the pilgrims take to Mecca. Hesion has at
present no trace, any more than Quolzoum and Faran: it was,
however, the harbor for the fleets of Solomon. The vessels
of this prince conducted by the Tyrians, sailed along the
coast of Arabia to Ophir, in the Persian Gulf, thus opening
a communication with the merchants of India and Ceylon.
That this navigation was entirely of Tyrian invention,
appears both from the pilots and shipbuilders employed by
the Jews, and the names that were given to the trading
islands, viz. Tyrus and Aradus, now Barhain. The voyage was
performed in two different modes, either in canoes of osier
and rushes, covered on the outside with skins done over with
pitch: (these vessels were unable to quit the Red Sea, or so
much as to leave the shore.) The second mode of carrying on
the trade was by means of vessels with decks of the size of
our river boats, which were able to pass the strait and to
weather the dangers of time ocean; but for this purpose it
was necessary to bring the wood from Mount Libanus and
Cilicia, where it is very fine and in great abundance. This
wood was first conveyed in floats from Tarsus to Phoenicia,
for which reason the vessels were called ships of Tarsus;
from whence it has been ridiculously inferred, that they
went round the promontory of Africa as far as Tortosa in
Spain. From Phoenicia it was transported on the backs of
camels to the Red Sea, which practice still continues,
because the shores of this sea are absolutely unprovided
with wood even for fuel. These vessels spent a complete
year in their voyage, that is, sailed one year, sojourned
another, and did not return till the third. This
tediousness was owing first to their cruising from port to
port, as they do at present; secondly, to their being
detained by the Monsoon currents; and thirdly, because,
according to the calculations of Pliny and Strabo, it was
the ordinary practice among the ancients to spend three
years in a voyage of twelve hundred leagues. Such a
commerce must have been very expensive, particularly as they
were obliged to carry with them their provisions, and even
fresh water. For this reason Solomon made himself master of
Palmyra, which was at that time inhabited, and was already
the magazine and high road of merchants by the way of the
Euphrates. This conquest brought Solomon much nearer to the
country of gold and pearls. This alternative of a route
either by the Red Sea or by the river Euphrates was to the
ancients, what in later times has been the alternative in a
voyage to the Indies, either by crossing the isthmus of Suez
or doubling the cape of Good Hope. It appears that till the
time of Moses, this trade was carried on across the desert
of Syria and Thebais; that afterwards it fell into the hands
of the Phoenicians, who fixed its site upon the Red Sea; and
that it was mutual jealousy that induced the kings of
Nineveh and Babylon to undertake the destruction of Tyre and
Jerusalem. I insist the more upon these facts, because I
have never seen any thing reasonable upon the subject.
**** It appears that Babylon occupied on the eastern banks
of the Euphrates a space of ground six leagues in length.
Throughout this space bricks are found by means of which
daily additions are made to the town of Helle. Upon many of
these are characters written with a nail similar to those of
Persepolis. I am indebted for these facts to M. de
Beauchamp, grand vicar of Babylon, a traveller equally
distinguished for his knowledge of astronomy and for his
veracity.
CHAPTER V.
CONDITION OF MAN IN THE UNIVERSE.
The Genius, after some moments of silence, resumed in these words:
I have told thee already, O friend of truth! that man vainly ascribes
his misfortunes to obscure and imaginary agents; in vain he seeks as the
source of his evils mysterious and remote causes. In the general order
of the universe his condition is, doubtless, subject to inconveniences,
and his existence governed by superior powers; but those powers are
neither the decrees of a blind fatality, nor the caprices of whimsical
and fantastic beings. Like the world of which he forms a part, man is
governed by natural laws, regular in their course, uniform in their
effects, immutable in their essence; and those laws,--the common source
of good and evil,--are not written among the distant stars, nor hidden
in codes of mystery; inherent in the nature of terrestrial beings,
interwoven with their existence, at all times and in all places,
they are present to man; they act upon his senses, they warn his
understanding, and give to every action its reward or punishment. Let
man then know these laws! let him comprehend the nature of the elements
which surround him, and also his own nature, and he will know the
regulators of his destiny; he will know the causes of his evils and the
remedies he should apply.
When the hidden power which animates the universe, formed the globe
which man inhabits, he implanted in the beings composing it, essential
properties which became the law of their individual motion, the bond of
their reciprocal relations, the cause of the harmony of the whole; he
thereby established a regular order of causes and effects, of principles
and consequences, which, under an appearance of chance, governs the
universe, and maintains the equilibrium of the world. Thus, he gave to
fire, motion and activity; to air, elasticity; weight and density to
matter; he made air lighter than water, metal heavier than earth, wood
less cohesive than steel; he decreed flame to ascend, stones to fall,
plants to vegetate; to man, who was to be exposed to the action of so
many different beings, and still to preserve his frail life, he gave
the faculty of sensation. By this faculty all action hurtful to his
existence gives him a feeling of pain and evil, and all which is
salutary, of pleasure and happiness. By these sensations, man, sometimes
averted from that which wounds his senses, sometimes allured towards
that which soothes them, has been obliged to cherish and preserve his
own life; thus, self-love, the desire of happiness, aversion to
pain, become the essential and primary laws imposed on man by nature
herself--the laws which the directing power, whatever it be, has
established for his government--and which laws, like those of motion in
the physical world, are the simple and fruitful principle of whatever
happens in the moral world.
Such, then, is the condition of man: on one side, exposed to the action
of the elements which surround him, he is subject to many inevitable
evils; and if, in this decree, nature has been severe, on the other
hand, just and even indulgent she has not only tempered the evils with
equivalent good, she has also enabled him to increase the good and
alleviate the evil. She seems to say:
"Feeble work of my hands, I owe thee nothing, and I give thee life; the
world wherein I placed thee was not made for thee, yet I give thee the
use of it; thou wilt find in it a mixture of good and evil; it is for
thee to distinguish them; for thee to guide thy footsteps in a path
containing thorns as well as roses. Be the arbiter of thine own fate; I
put thy destiny into thine own hands!"
Yes, man is made the architect of his own destiny; he, himself, hath
been the cause of the successes or reverses of his own fortune; and if,
on a review of all the pains with which he has tormented his own
life, he finds reason to weep over his own weakness or imprudence
yet, considering the beginnings from which he sat out, and the height
attained, he has, perhaps, still reason to presume on his strength, and
to pride himself on his genius.
CHAPTER VI.
THE PRIMITIVE STATE OF MAN.
Formed naked in body and in mind, man at first found himself thrown, as
it were by chance, on a rough and savage land: an orphan, abandoned by
the unknown power which had produced him, he saw not by his side beings
descended from heaven to warn him of those wants which arise only from
his senses, nor to instruct him in those duties which spring only
from his wants. Like to other animals, without experience of the past,
without foresight of the future, he wandered in the bosom of the forest,
guided only and governed by the affections of his nature. By the pain of
hunger, he was led to seek food and provide for his subsistence; by the
inclemency of the air, he was urged to cover his body, and he made him
clothes; by the attraction of a powerful pleasure, he approached a being
like himself, and he perpetuated his kind.
Thus the impressions which he received from every object, awakening his
faculties, developed by degrees his understanding, and began to instruct
his profound ignorance: his wants excited industry, dangers formed his
courage; he learned to distinguish useful from noxious plants, to
combat the elements, to seize his prey, to defend his life; and thus he
alleviated its miseries.
Thus self-love, aversion to pain, the desire of happiness, were the
simple and powerful excitements which drew man from the savage and
barbarous condition in which nature had placed him. And now, when his
life is replete with enjoyments, when he may count each day by the
comforts it brings, he may applaud himself and say:
"It is I who have produced the comforts which surround me; it is I who
am the author of my own happiness; a safe dwelling, convenient clothing,
abundant and wholesome nourishment, smiling fields, fertile hills,
populous empires, all is my work; without me this earth, given up
to disorder, would have been but a filthy fen, a wild wood, a dreary
desert."
Yes, creative man, receive my homage! Thou hast measured the span of the
heavens, calculated the volume of the stars, arrested the lightning in
its clouds, subdued seas and storms, subjected all the elements. Ah! how
are so many sublime energies allied to so many errors?
CHAPTER VII.
PRINCIPLES OF SOCIETY.
Wandering in the woods and on the banks of rivers in pursuit of game and
fish, the first men, beset with dangers, assailed by enemies, tormented
by hunger, by reptiles, by ravenous beasts, felt their own individual
weakness; and, urged by a common need of safety, and a reciprocal
sentiment of like evils, they united their resources and their strength;
and when one incurred a danger, many aided and succored him; when
one wanted subsistence, another shared his food with him. Thus men
associated to secure their existence, to augment their powers, to
protect their enjoyments; and self-love thus became the principle of
society.
Instructed afterwards by the experience of various and repeated
accidents, by the fatigues of a wandering life, by the distress of
frequent scarcity, men reasoned with themselves and said:
"Why consume our days in seeking scattered fruits from a parsimonious
soil? why exhaust ourselves in pursuing prey which eludes us in the
woods or waters? why not collect under our hands the animals that
nourish us? why not apply our cares in multiplying and preserving them?
We will feed on their increase, be clothed in their skins, and live
exempt from the fatigues of the day and solicitude for the morrow."
And men, aiding one another, seized the nimble goat, the timid sheep;
they tamed the patient camel, the fierce bull, the impetuous horse; and,
applauding their own industry, they sat down in the joy of their souls,
and began to taste repose and comfort: and self-love, the principle of
all reasoning, became the incitement to every art, and every enjoyment.
When, therefore, men could pass long days in leisure, and in
communication of their thoughts, they began to contemplate the earth,
the heavens, and their own existence as objects of curiosity and
reflection; they remarked the course of the seasons, the action of
the elements, the properties of fruits and plants; and applied their
thoughts to the multiplication of their enjoyments. And in some
countries, having observed that certain seeds contained a wholesome
nourishment in a small volume, convenient for transportation and
preservation, they imitated the process of nature; they confided to the
earth rice, barley, and corn, which multiplied to the full measure
of their hope; and having found the means of obtaining within a small
compass and without removal, plentiful subsistence and durable stores,
they established themselves in fixed habitations; they built houses,
villages, and towns; formed societies and nations; and self-love
produced all the developments of genius and of power.
Thus by the aid of his own faculties, man has raised himself to the
astonishing height of his present fortune. Too happy if, observing
scrupulously the law of his being, he had faithfully fulfilled its
only and true object! But, by a fatal imprudence, sometimes mistaking,
sometimes transgressing its limits, he has launched forth into a
labyrinth of errors and misfortunes; and self-love, sometimes unruly,
sometimes blind, became a principle fruitful in calamities.
CHAPTER VIII.
SOURCES OF THE EVILS OF SOCIETY.
In truth, scarcely were the faculties of men developed, when, inveigled
by objects which gratify the senses, they gave themselves up to
unbridled desires. The sweet sensations which nature had attached to
their real wants, to endear to them their existence, no longer satisfied
them. Not content with the abundance offered by the earth or produced
by industry, they wished to accumulate enjoyments and coveted those
possessed by their fellow men. The strong man rose up against the
feeble, to take from him the fruit of his labor; the feeble invoked
another feeble one to repel the violence. Two strong ones then said:
"Why fatigue ourselves to produce enjoyments which we may find in the
hands of the weak? Let us join and despoil them; they shall labor for
us, and we will enjoy without labor."
And the strong associating for oppression and the weak for resistance,
men mutually afflicted each other; and a general and fatal discord
spread over the earth, in which the passions, assuming a thousand new
forms, have generated a continued chain of misfortunes.
Thus the same self-love which, moderate and prudent, was a principle of
happiness and perfection, becoming blind and disordered, was transformed
into a corrupting poison; and cupidity, offspring and companion of
ignorance, became the cause of all the evils that have desolated the
earth.
Yes, ignorance and cupidity! these are the twin sources of all the
torments of man! Biased by these into false ideas of happiness, he has
mistaken or broken the laws of nature in his own relation with external
objects; and injuring his own existence, has violated individual
morality; shutting through these his heart to compassion, and his mind
to justice, he has injured and afflicted his equal, and violated social
morality. From ignorance and cupidity, man has armed against man, family
against family, tribe against tribe; and the earth is become a theatre
of blood, of discord, and of rapine. By ignorance and cupidity, a secret
war, fermenting in the bosom of every state, has separated citizen from
citizen; and the same society has divided itself into oppressors and
oppressed, into masters and slaves; by these, the heads of a nation,
sometimes insolent and audacious, have forged its chains within its
own bowels; and mercenary avarice has founded political despotism.
Sometimes, hypocritical and cunning, they have called from heaven a
lying power, and a sacrilegious yoke; and credulous cupidity has founded
religious despotism. By these have been perverted the ideas of good and
evil, just and unjust, vice and virtue; and nations have wandered in a
labyrinth of errors and calamities.
The cupidity of man and his ignorance,--these are the evil genii
which have wasted the earth! These are the decrees of fate which have
overthrown empires! These are the celestial anathemas which have smitten
these walls once so glorious, and converted the splendor of a populous
city into a solitude of mourning and of ruins! But as in the bosom of
man have sprung all the evils which have afflicted his life, there he
also is to seek and to find their remedies.
CHAPTER IX.
ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT AND LAWS.
In fact, it soon happened that men, fatigued with the evils they
reciprocally inflicted, began to sigh for peace; and reflecting on their
misfortunes and the causes of them, they said:
"We are mutually injuring each other by our passions; and, aiming to
grasp every thing, we hold nothing. What one seizes to-day, another
takes to-morrow, and our cupidity reacts upon ourselves. Let us
establish judges, who shall arbitrate our rights, and settle our
differences! When the strong shall rise against the weak, the judge
shall restrain him, and dispose of our force to suppress violence;
and the life and property of each shall be under the guarantee and
protection of all; and all shall enjoy the good things of nature."
Conventions were thus formed in society, sometimes express, sometimes
tacit, which became the rule for the action of individuals, the measure
of their rights, the law of their reciprocal relations; and persons were
appointed to superintend their observance, to whom the people confided
the balance to weigh rights, and the sword to punish transgressions.
Thus was established among individuals a happy equilibrium of force and
action, which constituted the common security. The name of equity and of
justice was recognized and revered over the earth; every one, assured
of enjoying in peace, the fruits of his toil, pursued with energy the
objects of his attention; and industry, excited and maintained by the
reality or the hope of enjoyment, developed, all the riches of art
and of nature. The fields were covered with harvests, the valleys with
flocks, the hills with fruits, the sea with vessels, and man became
happy and powerful on the earth. Thus did his own wisdom repair the
disorder which his imprudence had occasioned; and that wisdom was only
the effect of his own organization. He respected the enjoyments of
others in order to secure his own; and cupidity found its corrective in
the enlightened love of self.
Thus the love of self, the moving principle of every individual, becomes
the necessary foundation of every association; and on the observance
of that law of our nature has depended the fate of nations. Have the
factitious and conventional laws tended to that object and accomplished
that aim? Every one, urged by a powerful instinct, has displayed all
the faculties of his being; and the sum of individual felicities has
constituted the general felicity. Have these laws, on the contrary,
restrained the effort of man toward his own happiness? His heart,
deprived of its exciting principle, has languished in inactivity, and
from the oppression of individuals has resulted the weakness of the
state.
As self-love, impetuous and improvident, is ever urging man against
his equal, and consequently tends to dissolve society, the art of
legislation and the merit of administrators consists in attempering
the conflict of individual cupidities, in maintaining an equilibrium of
powers, and securing to every one his happiness, in order that, in the
shock of society against society, all the members may have a common
interest in the preservation and defence of the public welfare.
The internal splendor and prosperity of empires then, have had for
their efficient cause the equity of their laws and government; and their
respective external powers have been in proportion to the number of
persons interested, and their degree of interest in the public welfare.
On the other hand, the multiplication of men, by complicating their
relations, having rendered the precise limitation of their rights
difficult, the perpetual play of the passions having produced incidents
not foreseen--their conventions having been vicious, inadequate, or
nugatory--in fine, the authors of the laws having sometimes mistaken,
sometimes disguised their objects; and their ministers, instead of
restraining the cupidity of others, having given themselves up to
their own; all these causes have introduced disorder and trouble into
societies; and the viciousness of laws and the injustice of governments,
flowing from cupidity and ignorance, have become the causes of the
misfortunes of nations, and the subversion of states.
CHAPTER X.
GENERAL CAUSES OF THE PROSPERITY OF ANCIENT STATES.
Such, O man who seekest wisdom, such have been the causes of revolution
in the ancient states of which thou contemplatest the ruins! To whatever
spot I direct my view, to whatever period my thoughts recur, the same
principles of growth or destruction, of rise or fall, present themselves
to my mind. Wherever a people is powerful, or an empire prosperous,
there the conventional laws are conformable with the laws of nature--the
government there procures for its citizens a free use of their
faculties, equal security for their persons and property. If, on the
contrary, an empire goes to ruin, or dissolves, it is because its laws
have been vicious, or imperfect, or trodden under foot by a corrupt
government. If the laws and government, at first wise and just, become
afterwards depraved, it is because the alternation of good and evil is
inherent to the heart of man, to a change in his propensities, to his
progress in knowledge, to a combination of circumstances and events; as
is proved by the history of the species.
In the infancy of nations, when men yet lived in the forest, subject to
the same wants, endowed with the same faculties, all were nearly equal
in strength; and that equality was a circumstance highly advantageous
in the composition of society: as every individual, thus feeling himself
sufficiently independent of every other, no one was the slave, none
thought of being the master of another. Man, then a novice, knew neither
servitude nor tyranny; furnished with resources sufficient for his
existence, he thought not of borrowing from others; owning nothing,
requiring nothing, he judged the rights of others by his own, and formed
ideas of justice sufficiently exact. Ignorant, moreover, in the art
of enjoyments, unable to produce more than his necessaries, possessing
nothing superfluous, cupidity remained dormant; or if excited, man,
attacked in his real wants, resisted it with energy, and the foresight
of such resistance ensured a happy balance.
Thus original equality, in default of compact, maintained freedom of
person, security of property, good manners, and order. Every one
labored by himself and for himself; and the mind of man, being occupied,
wandered not to culpable desires. He had few enjoyments, but his wants
were satisfied; and as indulgent nature had made them less than his
resources, the labor of his hands soon produced abundance--abundance,
population; the arts unfolded, culture extended, and the earth, covered
with numerous inhabitants, was divided into different dominions.
The relations of man becoming complicated, the internal order of
societies became more difficult to maintain. Time and industry having
generated riches, cupidity became more active; and because equality,
practicable among individuals, could not subsist among families, the
natural equilibrium was broken; it became necessary to supply it by a
factitious equilibrium; to set up chiefs, to establish laws; and in
the primitive inexperience, it necessarily happened that these
laws, occasioned by cupidity, assumed its character. But different
circumstances concurred to correct the disorder, and oblige governments
to be just.
States, in fact, being weak at first, and having foreign enemies to
fear, the chiefs found it their interest not to oppress their subjects;
for, by lessening the confidence of the citizens in their government,
they would diminish their means of resistance--they would facilitate
foreign invasion, and by exercising arbitrary power, have endangered
their very existence.
In the interior, the firmness of the people repelled tyranny; men had
contracted too long habits of independence; they had too few wants, and
too much consciousness of their own strength.
States being of a moderate size, it was difficult to divide their
citizens so as to make use of some for the oppression of others. Their
communications were too easy, their interest too clear and simple:
besides, every one being a proprietor and cultivator, no one needed to
sell himself, and the despot could find no mercenaries.
If, then, dissensions arose, they were between family and family,
faction and faction, and they interested a great number. The troubles,
indeed, were warmer; but fears from abroad pacified discord at home. If
the oppression of a party prevailed, the earth being still unoccupied,
and man, still in a state of simplicity, finding every where the same
advantages, the oppressed party emigrated, and carried elsewhere their
independence.
The ancient states then enjoyed within themselves numerous means of
prosperity and power. Every one finding his own well-being in the
constitution of his country, took a lively interest in its preservation.
If a stranger attacked it, having to defend his own field, his own
house, he carried into combat all the passions of a personal quarrel;
and, devoted to his own interests, he was devoted to his country.
As every action useful to the public attracted its esteem and gratitude,
every one became eager to be useful; and self-love multiplied talents
and civic virtues.
Every citizen contributing equally by his talents and person, armies
and funds were inexhaustible, and nations displayed formidable masses of
power.
The earth being free, and its possession secure and easy, every one
was a proprietor; and the division of property preserved morals, and
rendered luxury impossible.
Every one cultivating for himself, culture was more active, produce more
abundant; and individual riches became public wealth.
The abundance of produce rendering subsistence easy, population was
rapid and numerous, and states attained quickly the term of their
plenitude.
Productions increasing beyond consumption, the necessity of commerce
arose; and exchanges took place between people and people; which
augmented their activity and reciprocal advantages.
In fine, certain countries, at certain times, uniting the advantages
of good government with a position on the route of the most active
circulation, they became emporiums of flourishing commerce and seats of
powerful domination. And on the shores of the Nile and Mediterranean, of
the Tygris and Euphrates, the accumulated riches of India and of Europe
raised in successive splendor a hundred different cities.
The people, growing rich, applied their superfluity to works of common
and public use; and this was in every state, the epoch of those works
whose grandeur astonishes the mind; of those wells of Tyre, of those
dykes of the Euphrates, of those subterranean conduits of Media,* of
those fortresses of the desert, of those aqueducts of Palmyra, of those
temples, of those porticoes. And such labors might be immense, without
oppressing the nations; because they were the effect of an equal and
common contribution of the force of individuals animated and free.
* See respecting these monuments my Travels into Syria, vol.
ii. p. 214.
From the town or village of Samouat the course of the Euphrates is
accompanied with a double bank, which descends as far as its junction
with the Tygris, and from thence to the sea, being a length of about a
hundred leagues, French measure. The height of these artificial banks
is not uniform, but increases as you advance from the sea; it may be
estimated at from twelve to fifteen feet. But for them, the inundation
of the river would bury the country around, which is flat, to an extent
of twenty or twenty-five leagues and even notwithstanding these banks,
there has been in modern times an overflow, which has covered the whole
triangle formed by the junction of this river to the Tygris, being
a space of country of one hundred and thirty square leagues. By the
stagnation of these waters an epidemical disease of the most fatal
nature was occasioned. It follows from hence, 1. That all the flat
country bordering upon these rivers, was originally a marsh; 2. That
this marsh could not have been inhabited previously to the construction
of the banks in question; 3. That these banks could not have been the
work but of a population prior as to date; and the elevation of Babylon,
therefore, must have been posterior to that of Nineveh, as I think
I have chronologically demonstrated in the memoir above cited. See
Encyclopedia, vol. xiii, of Antiquities.
The modern Aderbidjan, which was a part of Medea, the mountains of
Koulderstan, and those of Diarbekr, abound with subterranean canals, by
means of which the ancient inhabitants conveyed water to their parched
soil in order to fertilize it. It was regarded as a meritorious act
and a religious duty prescribed by Zoroaster, who, instead of preaching
celibacy, mortifications, and other pretended virtues of the monkish
sort, repeats continually in the passages that are preserved respecting
him in the Sad-der and the Zend-avesta:
"That the action most pleasing to God is to plough and cultivate the
earth, to water it with running streams, to multiply vegetation and
living beings, to have numerous flocks, young and fruitful virgins, a
multitude of children," etc., etc.
Among the aqueducts of Palmyra it appears certain, that, besides those
which conducted water from the neighboring hills, there was one which
brought it even from the mountains of Syria. It is to be traced a long
way into the Desert where it escapes our search by going under ground.
Thus ancient states prospered, because their social institutions
conformed to the true laws of nature; and because men, enjoying liberty
and security for their persons and their property, might display all the
extent of their faculties,--all the energies of their self-love.
CHAPTER XI.
GENERAL CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTIONS AND RUIN OF ANCIENT STATES.
Cupidity had nevertheless excited among men a constant and universal
conflict, which incessantly prompting individuals and societies to
reciprocal invasions, occasioned successive revolutions, and returning
agitations.
And first, in the savage and barbarous state of the first men, this
audacious and fierce cupidity produced rapine, violence, and murder, and
retarded for a long time the progress of civilization.
When afterwards societies began to be formed, the effect of bad habits,
communicated to laws and governments, corrupted their institutions and
objects, and established arbitrary and factitious rights, which depraved
the ideas of justice, and the morality of the people.
Thus one man being stronger than another, their inequality--an accident
of nature--was taken for her law;* and the strong being able to take
the life of the weak, and yet sparing him, arrogated over his person an
abusive right of property; and the slavery of individuals prepared the
way for the slavery of nations.
*Almost all the ancient philosophers and politicians have laid it down
as a principle that men are born unequal, that nature his created some
to be free, and others to be slaves. Expressions of this kind are to be
found in Aristotle, and even in Plato, called the divine, doubtless in
the same sense as the mythological reveries which he promulgated. With
all the people of antiquity, the Gauls, the Romans, the Athenians,
the right of the strongest was the right of nations; and from the same
principle are derived all the political disorders and public national
crimes that at present exist.
Because the head of a family could be absolute in his house, he made his
own affections and desires the rule of his conduct; he gave or resumed
his goods without equality, without justice; and paternal despotism laid
the foundation of despotism in government.*
* Upon this single expression it would be easy to write a
long and important chapter. We might prove in it, beyond
contradiction, that all the abuses of national governments,
have sprung from those of domestic government, from that
government called patriarchal, which superficial minds have
extolled without having analyzed it. Numberless facts
demonstrate, that with every infant people, in every savage
and barbarous state, the father, the chief of the family, is
a despot, and a cruel and insolent despot. The wife is his
slave, the children his servants. This king sleeps or
smokes his pipe, while his wife and daughters perform all
the drudgery of the house, and even that of tillage and
cultivation, as far as occupations of this nature are
practised in such societies; and no sooner have the boys
acquired strength then they are allowed to beat the females
and make them serve and wait upon them as they do upon their
fathers. Similar to this is the state of our own
uncivilized peasants. In proportion as civilization
spreads, the manners become milder, and the condition of the
women improves, till, by a contrary excess, they arrive at
dominion, and then a nation becomes effeminate and corrupt.
It is remarkable that parental authority is great in
proportion as the government is despotic. China, India, and
Turkey are striking examples of this. One would suppose that
tyrants gave themselves accomplices and interested subaltern
despots to maintain their authority. In opposition to this
the Romans will be cited, but it remains to be proved that
the Romans were men truly free and their quick passage from
their republican despotism to their abject servility under
the emperors, gives room at least for considerable doubt as
to that freedom.
In societies formed on such foundations, when time and labor had
developed riches, cupidity restrained by the laws, became more artful,
but not less active. Under the mask of union and civil peace, it
fomented in the bosom of every state an intestine war, in which the
citizens, divided into contending corps of orders, classes, families,
unremittingly struggled to appropriate to themselves, under the name
of supreme power, the ability to plunder every thing, and render every
thing subservient to the dictates of their passions; and this spirit of
encroachment, disguised under all possible forms, but always the same in
its object and motives, has never ceased to torment the nations.
Sometimes, opposing itself to all social compact, or breaking that
which already existed, it committed the inhabitants of a country to the
tumultuous shock of all their discords; and states thus dissolved, and
reduced to the condition of anarchy, were tormented by the passions of
all their members.
Sometimes a nation, jealous of its liberty, having appointed agents to
administer its government, these agents appropriated the powers of which
they had only the guardianship: they employed the public treasures in
corrupting elections, gaining partisans, in dividing the people among
themselves. By these means, from being temporary they became perpetual;
from elective, hereditary; and the state, agitated by the intrigues of
the ambitious, by largesses from the rich and factious, by the venality
of the poor and idle, by the influence of orators, by the boldness of
the wicked, and the weakness of the virtuous, was convulsed with all the
inconveniences of democracy.
The chiefs of some countries, equal in strength and mutually fearing
each other, formed impious pacts, nefarious associations; and,
apportioning among themselves all power, rank, and honor, unjustly
arrogated privileges and immunities; erected themselves into separate
orders and distinct classes; reduced the people to their control; and,
under the name of aristocracy, the state was tormented by the passions
of the wealthy and the great.
Sacred impostors, in other countries, tending by other means to the
same object, abused the credulity of the ignorant. In the gloom of their
temples, behind the curtain of the altar, they made their gods act and
speak; gave forth oracles, worked miracles, ordered sacrifices, levied
offerings, prescribed endowments; and, under the names of theocracy and
of religion, the state became tormented by the passions of the priests.
Sometimes a nation, weary of its dissensions or of its tyrants, to
lessen the sources of evil, submitted to a single master; but if it
limited his powers, his sole aim was to enlarge them; if it left them
indefinite, he abused the trust confided to him; and, under the name of
monarchy, the state was tormented by the passions of kings and princes.
Then the factions, availing themselves of the general discontent,
flattered the people with the hope of a better master; dealt out gifts
and promises, deposed the despot to take his place; and their contests
for the succession, or its partition, tormented the state with the
disorders and devastations of civil war.
In fine, among these rivals, one more adroit, or more fortunate, gained
the ascendency, and concentrated all power within himself. By a strange
phenomenon, a single individual mastered millions of his equals, against
their will and without their consent; and the art of tyranny sprung also
from cupidity.
In fact, observing the spirit of egotism which incessantly divides
mankind, the ambitious man fomented it with dexterity, flattered the
vanity of one, excited the jealousy of another, favored the avarice of
this, inflamed the resentment of that, and irritated the passions of
all; then, placing in opposition their interests and prejudices, he
sowed divisions and hatreds, promised to the poor the spoils of the
rich, to the rich the subjection of the poor; threatened one man by
another, this class by that; and insulating all by distrust, created his
strength out of their weakness, and imposed the yoke of opinion,
which they mutually riveted on each other. With the army he levied
contributions, and with contributions he disposed of the army: dealing
out wealth and office on these principles, he enchained a whole people
in indissoluble bonds, and they languished under the slow consumption of
despotism.
Thus the same principle, varying its action under every possible form,
was forever attenuating the consistence of states, and an eternal circle
of vicissitudes flowed from an eternal circle of passions.
And this spirit of egotism and usurpation produced two effects equally
operative and fatal: the one a division and subdivision of societies
into their smallest fractions, inducing a debility which facilitated
their dissolution; the other, a preserving tendency to concentrate power
in a single hand,* which, engulfing successively societies and states,
was fatal to their peace and social existence.
* It is remarkable that this has in all instances been the
constant progress of societies; beginning with a state of
anarchy or democracy, that is, with a great division of
power they have passed to aristocracy, and from aristocracy
to monarchy. Does it not hence follow that those who
constitute states under the democratic form, destine them to
undergo all the intervening troubles between that and
monarchy; but it should at the same time be proved that
social experience is already exhausted for the human race,
and that this spontaneous movement is not solely the effect
of ignorance.
Thus, as in a state, a party absorbed the nation, a family the party,
and an individual the family; so a movement of absorption took place
between state and state, and exhibited on a larger scale in the
political order, all the particular evils of the civil order. Thus a
state having subdued a state, held it in subjection in the form of a
province; and two provinces being joined together formed a kingdom; two
kingdoms being united by conquest, gave birth to empires of gigantic
size; and in this conglomeration, the internal strength of states,
instead of increasing, diminished; and the condition of the people,
instead of ameliorating, became daily more abject and wretched, for
causes derived from the nature of things.
Because, in proportion as states increased in extent, their
administration becoming more difficult and complicated, greater energies
of power were necessary to move such masses; and there was no longer any
proportion between the duties of sovereigns and their ability to perform
their duties:
Because despots, feeling their weakness, feared whatever might develop
the strength of nations, and studied only how to enfeeble them:
Because nations, divided by the prejudices of ignorance and hatred,
seconded the wickedness of their governments; and availing themselves
reciprocally of subordinate agents, aggravated their mutual slavery:
Because, the balance between states being destroyed, the strong more
easily oppressed the weak.
Finally, because in proportion as states were concentrated, the people,
despoiled of their laws, of their usages, and of the government of
their choice, lost that spirit of personal identification with their
government, which had caused their energy.
And despots, considering empires as their private domains and the people
as their property, gave themselves up to depredations, and to all the
licentiousness of the most arbitrary authority.
And all the strength and wealth of nations were diverted to private
expense and personal caprice; and kings, fatigued with gratification,
abandoned themselves to all the extravagancies of factitious and
depraved taste.* They must have gardens mounted on arcades, rivers
raised over mountains, fertile fields converted into haunts for wild
beasts; lakes scooped in dry lands, rocks erected in lakes, palaces
built of marble and porphyry, furniture of gold and diamonds. Under
the cloak of religion, their pride founded temples, endowed indolent
priests, built, for vain skeletons, extravagant tombs, mausoleums and
pyramids;** millions of hands were employed in sterile labors; and the
luxury of princes, imitated by their parasites, and transmitted
from grade to grade to the lowest ranks, became a general source of
corruption and impoverishment.
* It is equally worthy of remark, that the conduct and
manners of princes and kings of every country and every age,
are found to be precisely the same at similar periods,
whether of the formation or dissolution of empires. History
every where presents the same pictures of luxury and folly;
of parks, gardens, lakes, rocks, palaces, furniture, excess
of the table, wine, women, concluding with brutality.
The absurd rock in the garden of Versailles has alone cost
three millions. I have sometimes calculated what might have
been done with the expense of the three pyramids of Gizah,
and I have found that it would easily have constructed from
the Red Sea to Alexandria, a canal one hundred and fifty
feet wide and thirty deep, completely covered in with cut
stones and a parapet, together with a fortified and
commercial town, consisting of four hundred houses,
furnished with cisterns. What a difference in point of
utility between such a canal and these pyramids!
** The learned Dupuis could not be persuaded that the
pyramids were tombs; but besides the positive testimony of
historians, read what Diodorus says of the religious and
superstitious importance every Egyptian attached to building
his dwelling eternal, b. 1.
During twenty years, says Herodotus, a hundred thousand men
labored every day to build the pyramid of the Egyptian
Cheops. Supposing only three hundred days a year, on
account of the sabbath, there will be 30 millions of days'
work in a year, and 600 millions in twenty years; at 15 sous
a day, this makes 450 millions of francs lost, without any
further benefit. With this sum, if the king had shut the
isthmus of Suez by a strong wall, like that of China, the
destinies of Egypt might have been entirely changed.
Foreign invasions would have been prevented, and the Arabs
of the desert would neither have conquered nor harassed that
country. Sterile labors! how many millions lost in putting
one stone upon another, under the forms of temples and
churches! Alchymists convert stones into gold; but
architects change gold into stone. Woe to the kings (as
well as subjects) who trust their purse to these two classes
of empirics!
And in the insatiable thirst of enjoyment, the ordinary revenues no
longer sufficing, they were augmented; the cultivator, seeing his
labors increase without compensation, lost all courage; the merchant,
despoiled, was disgusted with industry; the multitude, condemned to
perpetual poverty, restrained their labor to simple necessaries; and all
productive industry vanished.
The surcharge of taxes rendering lands a burdensome possession, the poor
proprietor abandoned his field, or sold it to the powerful; and fortune
became concentrated in a few hands. All the laws and institutions
favoring this accumulation, the nation became divided into a group
of wealthy drones, and a multitude of mercenary poor; the people were
degraded with indigence, the great with satiety, and the number of those
interested in the preservation of the state decreasing, its strength and
existence became proportionally precarious.
On the other hand, emulation finding no object, science no
encouragement, the mind sunk into profound ignorance.
The administration being secret and mysterious, there existed no means
of reform or amelioration. The chiefs governing by force or fraud,
the people viewed them as a faction of public enemies; and all harmony
ceased between the governors and governed.
And these vices having enervated the states of the wealthy part of Asia,
the vagrant and indigent people of the adjacent deserts and mountains
coveted the enjoyments of the fertile plains; and, urged by a cupidity
common to all, attacked the polished empires, and overturned the thrones
of their despots. These revolutions were rapid and easy; because the
policy of tyrants had enfeebled the subjects, razed the fortresses,
destroyed the warriors; and because the oppressed subjects remained
without personal interest, and the mercenary soldiers without courage.
And hordes of barbarians having reduced entire nations to slavery, the
empires, formed of conquerors and conquered, united in their bosom two
classes essentially opposite and hostile. All the principles of society
were dissolved: there was no longer any common interest, no longer any
public spirit; and there arose a distinction of casts and races, which
reduced to a regular system the maintenance of disorder; and he who was
born of this or that blood, was born a slave or a tyrant--property or
proprietor.
The oppressors being less numerous than the oppressed it was necessary
to perfect the science of oppression, in order to support this false
equilibrium. The art of governing became the art of subjecting the
many to the few. To enforce an obedience so contrary to instinct, the
severest punishments were established, and the cruelty of the laws
rendered manners atrocious. The distinction of persons establishing in
the state two codes, two orders of criminal justice, two sets of laws,
the people, placed between the propensities of the heart and the oath
uttered from the mouth, had two consciences in contradiction with
each other; and the ideas of justice and injustice had no longer any
foundation in the understanding.
Under such a system, the people fell into dejection and despair; and the
accidents of nature were added to the other evils which assailed them.
Prostrated by so many calamities, they attributed their causes to
superior and hidden powers; and, because they had tyrants on earth, they
fancied others in heaven; and superstition aggravated the misfortunes of
nations.
Fatal doctrines and gloomy and misanthropic systems of religion arose,
which painted their gods, like their despots, wicked and envious. To
appease them, man offered up the sacrifice of all his enjoyments. He
environed himself in privations, and reversed the order of nature.
Conceiving his pleasures to be crimes, his sufferings expiations, he
endeavored to love pain, and to abjure the love of self. He persecuted
his senses, hated his life; and a self-denying and anti-social morality
plunged nations into the apathy of death.
But provident nature having endowed the heart of man with hope
inexhaustible, when his desires of happiness were baffled on this earth,
he pursued it into another world. By a sweet illusion he created for
himself another country--an asylum where, far from tyrants, he should
recover the rights of nature, and thence resulted new disorders. Smitten
with an imaginary world, man despised that of nature. For chimerical
hopes, he neglected realities. His life began to appear a troublesome
journey--a painful dream; his body a prison, the obstacle to his
felicity; and the earth, a place of exile and of pilgrimage, not worthy
of culture. Then a holy indolence spread over the political world;
the fields were deserted, empires depopulated, monuments neglected and
deserts multiplied; ignorance, superstition and fanaticism, combining
their operations, overwhelmed the earth with devastation and ruin.
Thus agitated by their own passions, men, whether collectively or
individually taken, always greedy and improvident, passing from slavery
to tyranny, from pride to baseness, from presumption to despondency,
have made themselves the perpetual instruments of their own misfortunes.
These, then, are the principles, simple and natural, which regulated
the destiny of ancient states. By this regular and connected series of
causes and effects, they rose or fell, in proportion as the physical
laws of the human heart were respected or violated; and in the course
of their successive changes, a hundred different nations, a hundred
different empires, by turns humbled, elevated, conquered, overthrown,
have repeated for the earth their instructive lessons. Yet these lessons
were lost for the generations which have followed! The disorders in
times past have reappeared in the present age! The chiefs of the nations
have continued to walk in the paths of falsehood and tyranny!--the
people to wander in the darkness of superstition and ignorance!
Since then, continued the Genius, with renewed energy, since the
experience of past ages is lost for the living--since the errors of
progenitors have not instructed their descendants, the ancient examples
are about to reappear; the earth will see renewed the tremendous scenes
it has forgotten. New revolutions will agitate nations and empires;
powerful thrones will again be overturned, and terrible catastrophes
will again teach mankind that the laws of nature and the precepts of
wisdom and truth cannot be infringed with impunity.
CHAPTER XII.
LESSONS OF TIMES PAST REPEATED ON THE PRESENT.
Thus spoke the Genius. Struck with the justice and coherence of his
discourse, assailed with a crowd of ideas, repugnant to my habits yet
convincing to my reason, I remained absorbed in profound silence. At
length, while with serious and pensive mien, I kept my eyes fixed on
Asia, suddenly in the north, on the shores of the Black sea, and in the
fields of the Crimea, clouds of smoke and flame attracted my attention.
They appeared to rise at the same time from all parts of the peninsula;
and passing by the isthmus into the continent, they ran, as if driven
by a westerly wind, along the oozy lake of Azof, and disappeared in the
grassy plains of Couban; and following more attentively the course of
these clouds, I observed that they were preceded or followed by swarms
of moving creatures, which, like ants or grasshoppers disturbed by the
foot of a passenger, agitated themselves with vivacity. Sometimes these
swarms appeared to advance and rush against each other; and numbers,
after the concussion, remained motionless. While disquieted at this
spectacle, I strained my sight to distinguish the objects.
Do you see, said the Genius, those flames which spread over the earth,
and do you comprehend their causes and effects?
Oh! Genius, I answered, I see those columns of flame and smoke, and
something like insects, accompanying them; but, when I can scarcely
discern the great masses of cities and monuments, how should I discover,
such little creatures? I can just perceive that these insects mimic
battle, for they advance, retreat, attack and pursue.
It is no mimicry, said the Genius, these are real battles.
And what, said I, are those mad animalculae, which destroy each other?
Beings of a day! will they not perish soon enough?
Then the Genius, touching my sight and hearing, again directed my eyes
towards the same object. Look, said he, and listen!
Ah! wretches, cried I, oppressed with grief, these columns of flame!
these insects! oh! Genius, they are men. These are the ravages of
war! These torrents of flame rise from towns and villages! I see the
squadrons who kindle them, and who, sword in hand overrun the country:
they drive before them crowds of old men, women, and children, fugitive
and desolate: I perceive other horsemen, who with shouldered lances,
accompany and guide them. I even recognize them to be Tartars by their
led horses,* their kalpacks, and tufts of hair: and, doubtless, they who
pursue, in triangular hats and green uniforms, are Muscovites. Ah! I now
comprehend, a war is kindled between the empire of the Czars and that of
the Sultans.
* A Tartar horseman has always two horses, of which he leads
one in hand. The Kalpeck is a bonnet made of the skin of a
sheep or other animal. The part of the head covered by this
bonnet is shaved, with the exception of a tuft, about the
size of a crown piece, and which is suffered to grow to the
length of seven or eight inches, precisely where our priests
place their tonsure. It is by this tuft of hair, worn by
the majority of Mussulmen, that the angel of the tomb is to
take the elect and carry them into paradise.
Not yet, replied the Genius; this is only a preliminary. These Tartars
have been, and might still he troublesome neighbors. The Muscovites are
driving them off, finding their country would be a convenient extension
of their own limits; and as a prelude to another revolution, the throne
of the Guerais is destroyed.
And in fact, I saw the Russian standards floating over the Crimea: and
soon after their flag waving on the Euxine.
Meanwhile, at the cry of the flying Tartars, the Mussulman empire was
in commotion. They are driving off our brethren, cried the children
of Mahomet: the people of the prophet are outraged! infidels occupy a
consecrated land and profane the temples of Islamism.* Let us arm; let
us rush to combat, to avenge the glory of God and our own cause.
* It is not in the power of the Sultan to cede to a foreign
power a province inhabited by true believers. The people,
instigated by the lawyers, would not fail to revolt. This
is one reason which has led those who know the Turks, to
regard as chimerical the ceding of Candia, Cyprus, and
Egypt, projected by certain European potentates.
And a general movement of war took place in both empires. In every part
armed men assembled. Provisions, stores, and all the murderous apparatus
of battle were displayed. The temples of both nations, besieged by an
immense multitude, presented a spectacle which fixed all my attention.
On one side, the Mussulmen gathered before their mosques, washed
their hands and feet, pared their nails, and combed their beards; then
spreading carpets upon the ground, and turning towards the south,
with their arms sometimes crossed and sometimes extended, they made
genuflexions and prostrations, and recollecting the disasters of the
late war, they exclaimed:
God of mercy and clemency! hast thou then abandoned thy faithful people?
Thou who hast promised to thy Prophet dominion over nations, and stamped
his religion by so many triumphs, dost thou deliver thy true believers
to the swords of infidels?
And the Imans and the Santons said to the people:
It is in chastisement of your sins. You eat pork; you drink wine; you
touch unclean things. God hath punished you. Do penance therefore;
purify; repeat the profession of faith;* fast from the rising to the
setting sun; give the tenth of your goods to the mosques; go to Mecca;
and God will render you victorious.
* There is but one God, and Mahomet is his prophet.
And the people, recovering courage, uttered loud cries:
There is but one God, said they transported with fury, and Mahomet is
his prophet! Accursed be he who believeth not!
God of goodness, grant us to exterminate these Christians; it is for
thy glory we fight, and our death is a martyrdom for thy name. And then,
offering victims, they prepared for battle.
On the other side, the Russians, kneeling, said:
We render thanks to God, and celebrate his power. He hath strengthened
our arm to humble his enemies. Hear our prayers, thou God of mercy! To
please thee, we will pass three days without eating either meat or eggs.
Grant us to extirpate these impious Mahometans, and to overturn their
empire. To thee we will consecrate the tenth of our spoil; to thee we
will raise new temples.
And the priests filled the churches with clouds of smoke, and said to
the people:
We pray for you, God accepteth our incense, and blesseth your arms.
Continue to fast and to fight; confess to us your secret sins; give
your wealth to the church; we will absolve you from your crimes, and you
shall die in a state of grace.
And they sprinkled water upon the people, dealt out to them, as amulets
and charms, small relics of the dead, and the people breathed war and
combat.
Struck with this contrast of the same passions, and grieving for their
fatal consequences, I was considering the difficulty with which the
common judge could yield to prayers so contradictory; when the Genius,
glowing with anger, spoke with vehemence:
What accents of madness strike my ear? What blind and perverse delirium
disorders the spirits of the nations? Sacrilegious prayers rise not from
the earth! and you, oh Heavens, reject their homicidal vows and impious
thanksgivings! Deluded mortals! is it thus you revere the Divinity?
Say then; how should he, whom you style your common father, receive the
homage of his children murdering one another? Ye victors! with what eye
should he view your hands reeking in the blood he hath created? And,
what do you expect, oh vanquished, from useless groans? Hath God
the heart of a mortal, with passions ever changing? Is he, like you,
agitated with vengeance or compassion, with wrath or repentance? What
base conception of the most sublime of beings! According to them, it
would seem, that God whimsical and capricious, is angered or appeased as
a man: that he loves and hates alternately; that he punishes or favors;
that, weak or wicked, he broods over his hatred; that, contradictory
or perfidious, he lays snares to entrap; that he punishes the evils he
permits; that he foresees but hinders not crimes; that, like a corrupt
judge, he is bribed by offerings; like an ignorant despot, he makes
laws and revokes them; that, like a savage tyrant, he grants or resumes
favors without reason, and can only be appeased by servility. Ah! now
I know the lying spirit of man! Contemplating the picture which he hath
drawn of the Divinity: No, said I, it is not God who hath made man after
the image of God; but man hath made God after the image of man; he hath
given him his own mind, clothed him with his own propensities;
ascribed to him his own judgments. And when in this medley he finds
the contradiction of his own principles, with hypocritical humility,
he imputes weakness to his reason, and names the absurdities of his own
mind the mysteries of God.
He hath said, God is immutable, yet he offers prayers to change him;
he hath pronounced him incomprehensible, yet he interprets him without
ceasing.
Imposters have arisen on the earth who have called themselves the
confidants of God; and, erecting themselves into teachers of the people,
have opened the ways of falsehood and iniquity; they have ascribed merit
to practices indifferent or ridiculous; they have supposed a virtue,
in certain postures, in pronouncing certain words, articulating certain
names; they have transformed into a crime the eating of certain meats,
the drinking of certain liquors, on one day rather than another. The
Jew would rather die than labor on the sabbath; the Persian would endure
suffocation, before he would blow the fire with his breath; the Indian
places supreme perfection in besmearing himself with cow-dung, and
pronouncing mysteriously the word Aum;* the Mussulman believes he has
expiated everything in washing his head and arms; and disputes, sword
in hand, whether the ablution should commence at the elbow, or finger
ends;** the Christian would think himself damned, if he ate flesh
instead of milk or butter. Oh sublime doctrines! Doctrines truly from
heaven! Oh perfect morals, and worthy of martyrdom or the apostolate!
I will cross the seas to teach these admirable laws to the savage
people--to distant nations; I will say unto them:
* This word is, in the religion of the Hindoos, a sacred
emblem of the Divinity. It is only to be pronounced in
secret, without being heard by any one. It is formed of
three letters, of which the first, a, signifies the
principal of all, the creator, Brama; the second, u, the
conservator, Vichenou; and the last, m, the destroyer, who
puts an end to all, Chiven. It is pronounced like the
monosyllable om, and expresses the unity of those three
Gods. The idea is precisely that of the Alpha and Omega
mentioned in the New Testament.
** This is one of the grand points of schism between the
partisans of Omar and those of Ali. Suppose two Mahometans
to meet on a journey, and to accost each other with
brotherly affection: the hour of prayer arrives; one begins
his ablution at his fingers, the other at the elbow, and
instantly they are mortal enemies. O sublime importance of
religious opinions! O profound philosophy of the authors of
them!
Children of nature, how long will you walk in the paths of ignorance?
how long will you mistake the true principles of morality and religion?
Come and learn its lessons from nations truly pious and learned, in
civilized countries. They will inform you how, to gratify God, you must
in certain months of the year, languish the whole day with hunger and
thirst; how you may shed your neighbor's blood, and purify yourself from
it by professions of faith and methodical ablutions; how you may steal
his property and be absolved on sharing it with certain persons, who
devote themselves to its consumption.
Sovereign and invisible power of the universe! mysterious mover of
nature! universal soul of beings! thou who art unknown, yet revered by
mortals under so many names! being incomprehensible and infinite! God,
who in the immensity of the heavens directest the movement of worlds,
and peoplest the abyss of space with millions of suns! say what do these
human insects, which my sight no longer discerns on the earth, appear in
thy eyes? To thee, who art guiding stars in their orbits, what are
those wormlings writhing themselves in the dust? Of what import to thy
immensity, their distinctions of parties and sects? And of what concern
the subtleties with which their folly torments itself?
And you, credulous men, show me the effect of your practices! In so many
centuries, during which you have been following or altering them, what
changes have your prescriptions wrought in the laws of nature? Is the
sun brighter? Is the course of the seasons varied? Is the earth more
fruitful, or its inhabitants more happy? If God be good, can your
penances please him? If infinite, can your homage add to his glory? If
his decrees have been formed on foresight of every circumstance, can
your prayers change them? Answer, O inconsistent mortals!
Ye conquerors of the earth, who pretend you serve God! doth he need your
aid? If he wishes to punish, hath he not earthquakes, volcanoes, and
thunder? And cannot a merciful God correct without extermination?
Ye Mussulmans, if God chastiseth you for violating the five precepts,
how hath he raised up the Franks who ridicule them? If he governeth
the earth by the Koran, by what did he govern it before the days of the
prophet, when it was covered with so many nations who drank wine, ate
pork, and went not to Mecca, whom he nevertheless permitted to raise
powerful empires? How did he judge the Sabeans of Nineveh and of
Babylon; the Persian, worshipper of fire; the Greek and Roman idolators;
the ancient kingdoms of the Nile; and your own ancestors, the Arabians
and Tartars? How doth he yet judge so many nations who deny, or know
not your worship--the numerous castes of Indians, the vast empire of
the Chinese, the sable race of Africa, the islanders of the ocean, the
tribes of America?
Presumptuous and ignorant men, who arrogate the earth to yourselves! if
God were to gather all the generations past and present, what would be,
in their ocean, the sects calling themselves universal, of Christians
and Mussulmans? What would be the judgments of his equal and common
justice over the real universality of mankind? Therein it is that your
knowledge loseth itself in incoherent systems; it is there that truth
shines with evidence; and there are manifested the powerful and simple
laws of nature and reason--laws of a common and general mover--of a God
impartial and just, who sheds rain on a country without asking who is
its prophet; who causeth his sun to shine alike on all the races of
men, on the white as on the black, on the Jew, on the Mussulman, the
Christian, and the Idolater; who reareth the harvest wherever cultivated
with diligence; who multiplieth every nation where industry and order
prevaileth; who prospereth every empire where justice is practised,
where the powerful are restrained, and the poor protected by the laws;
where the weak live in safety, and all enjoy the rights given by nature
and a compact formed in justice.
These are the principles by which people are judged! this the true
religion which regulates the destiny of empires, and which, O Ottomans,
hath governed yours! Interrogate your ancestors, ask of them by what
means they rose to greatness; when few, poor and idolaters, they came
from the deserts of Tartary and encamped in these fertile countries; ask
if it was by Islamism, till then unknown to them, that they conquered
the Greeks and the Arabs, or was it by their courage, their prudence,
moderation, spirit of union--the true powers of the social state? Then
the Sultan himself dispensed justice, and maintained discipline. The
prevaricating judge, the extortionate governor, were punished, and the
multitude lived at ease. The cultivator was protected from the rapine
of the janissary, and the fields prospered; the highways were safe, and
commerce caused abundance. You were a band of plunderers, but just among
yourselves. You subdued nations, but did not oppress them. Harassed by
their own princes, they preferred being your tributaries. What matters
it, said the Christian, whether my ruler breaks or adores images, if
he renders justice to me? God will judge his doctrines in the heavens
above.
You were sober and hardy; your enemies timid and enervated; you
were expert in battle, your enemies unskillful; your leaders were
experienced, your soldiers warlike and disciplined. Booty excited ardor,
bravery was rewarded, cowardice and insubordination punished, and all
the springs of the human heart were in action. Thus you vanquished
a hundred nations, and of a mass of conquered kingdoms compounded an
immense empire.
But other customs have succeeded; and in the reverses attending them,
the laws of nature have still exerted their force. After devouring your
enemies, your cupidity, still insatiable, has reacted on itself, and,
concentrated in your own bowels, has consumed you.
Having become rich, you have quarrelled for partition and enjoyment, and
disorder hath arisen in every class of society.
The Sultan, intoxicated with grandeur, has mistaken the object of his
functions; and all the vices of arbitrary power have been developed.
Meeting no obstacle to his appetites, he has become a depraved being;
weak and arrogant, he has kept the people at a distance; and their
voice has no longer instructed and guided him. Ignorant, yet flattered,
neglecting all instruction, all study, he has fallen into imbecility;
unfit for business, he has thrown its burdens on hirelings, and they
have deceived him. To satisfy their own passions, they have stimulated
and nourished his; they have multiplied his wants, and his enormous
luxury has consumed everything. The frugal table, plain clothing, simple
dwelling of his ancestors no longer sufficed. To supply his pomp, earth
and sea have been exhausted. The rarest furs have been brought from the
poles; the most costly tissues from the equator. He has devoured at
a meal the tribute of a city, and in a day that of a province. He has
surrounded himself with an army of women, eunuchs, and satellites. They
have instilled into him that the virtue of kings is to be liberal, and
the munificence and treasures of the people have been delivered into
the hands of flatterers. In imitation of their master, his servants
must also have splendid houses, the most exquisite furniture; carpets
embroidered at great cost, vases of gold and silver for the lowest uses,
and all the riches of the empire have been swallowed up in the Serai.
To supply this inordinate luxury, the slaves and women have sold their
influence, and venality has introduced a general depravation. The favor
of the sovereign has been sold to his vizier, and the vizier has sold
the empire. The law has been sold to the cadi, and the cadi has made
sale of justice. The altar has been sold to the priest, and the priest
has sold the kingdom of heaven. And gold obtaining everything, they
have sacrificed everything to obtain gold. For gold, friend has betrayed
friend, the child his parent, the servant his master, the wife her
honor, the merchant his conscience; and good faith, morals, concord, and
strength were banished from the state.
The pacha, who had purchased the government of his province, farmed
it out to others, who exercised every extortion. He sold in turn the
collection of the taxes, the command of the troops, the administration
of the villages; and as every employ has been transient, rapine, spread
from rank to rank, has been greedy and implacable. The revenue officer
has fleeced the merchant, and commerce was annihilated; the aga has
plundered the husbandman, and culture has degenerated. The laborer,
deprived of his stock, has been unable to sow; the tax was augmented,
and he could not pay it; the bastinado has been threatened, and he
has borrowed. Money, from want of security, being locked up from
circulation, interest was therefore enormous, and the usury of the rich
has aggravated the misery of the laborer.
When excessive droughts and accidents of seasons have blasted the
harvest, the government has admitted no delay, no indulgence for the
tax; and distress bearing hard on the village, a part of its inhabitants
have taken refuge in the cities; and their burdens falling on those who
remained, has completed their ruin, and depopulated the country.
If driven to extremity by tyranny and outrage, the villages have
revolted, the pacha rejoices. He wages war on them, assails their homes,
pillages their property, carries off their stock; and when the fields
have become a desert, he exclaims:
"What care I? I leave these fields to-morrow."
The earth wanting laborers, the rain of heaven and overflowing of
torrents have stagnated in marshes; and their putrid exhalations in a
warm climate, have caused epidemics, plagues, and maladies of all sorts,
whence have flowed additional suffering, penury, and ruin.
Oh! who can enumerate all the calamities of tyrannical government?
Sometimes the pachas declare war against each other, and for their
personal quarrels the provinces of the same state are laid waste.
Sometimes, fearing their masters, they attempt independence, and draw
on their subjects the chastisement of their revolt. Sometimes dreading
their subjects, they invite and subsidize strangers, and to insure their
fidelity set no bounds to their depredations. Here they persecute the
rich and despoil them under false pretences; there they suborn false
witnesses, and impose penalties for suppositious offences; everywhere
they excite the hatred of parties, encourage informations to
obtain amercements, extort property, seize persons; and when their
short-sighted avarice has accumulated into one mass all the riches of
a country, the government, by an execrable perfidy, under pretence of
avenging its oppressed people, takes to itself all their spoils, as if
they were the culprits, and uselessly sheds the blood of its agents for
a crime of which it is the accomplice.
Oh wretches, monarchs or ministers, who sport with the lives and
fortunes of the people! Is it you who gave breath to man, that you dare
take it from him? Do you give growth to the plants of the earth, that
you may waste them? Do you toil to furrow the field? Do you endure the
ardor of the sun, and the torment of thirst, to reap the harvest or
thrash the grain? Do you, like the shepherd, watch through the dews of
the night? Do you traverse deserts, like the merchant? Ah! on beholding
the pride and cruelty of the powerful, I have been transported with
indignation, and have said in my wrath, will there never then arise on
the earth men who will avenge the people and punish tyrants? A handful
of brigands devour the multitude, and the multitude submits to be
devoured! Oh! degenerate people! Know you not your rights? All authority
is from you, all power is yours. Unlawfully do kings command you on the
authority of God and of their lance--Soldiers be still; if God supports
the Sultan he needs not your aid; if his sword suffices, he needs not
yours; let us see what he can do alone. The soldiers grounded their
arms; and behold these masters of the world, feeble as the meanest of
their subjects! People! know that those who govern are your chiefs, not
your masters; your agents, not your owners; that they have no authority
over you, but by you, and for you; that your wealth is yours and they
accountable for it; that, kings or subjects, God has made all men equal,
and no mortal has the right to oppress his fellow-creatures.
But this nation and its chiefs have mistaken these holy truths. They
must abide then the consequences of their blindness. The decree is past;
the day approaches when this colossus of power shall be crushed and
crumbled under its own mass. Yes, I swear it, by the ruins of so many
empires destroyed. The empire of the Crescent shall follow the fate
of the despotism it has copied. A nation of strangers shall drive the
Sultan from his metropolis. The throne of Orkhan shall be overturned.
The last shoot of his trunk shall be broken off; and the horde of
Oguzians,* deprived of their chief, shall disperse like that of the
Nagois. In this dissolution, the people of the empire, loosened from the
yoke which united them, shall resume their ancient distinctions, and a
general anarchy shall follow, as happened in the empire of the Sophis;**
until there shall arise among the Arabians, Armenians, or Greeks,
legislators who may compose new states.
* Before the Turks took the name of their chief, Othman I.,
they bore that of Oguzians; and it was under this
appellation that they were driven out of Tartary by Gengis,
and came from the borders of Giboun to settle themselves in
Anatolia.
** In Persia, after the death of Thamas-Koulikan, each
province had its chief, and for forty years these chiefs
were in a constant state of war. In this view the Turks do
not say without reason: "Ten years of a tyrant are less
destructive than a single night of anarchy."
Oh! if there were on earth men profound and bold! what elements for
grandeur and glory! But the hour of destiny has already come; the cry of
war strikes my ear; and the catastrophe begins. In vain the Sultan leads
forth his armies; his ignorant warriors are beaten and dispersed. In
vain he calls his subjects; their hearts are ice. Is it not written? say
they, what matters who is our master? We cannot lose by the change.
In vain the true believers invoke heaven and the prophet. The prophet is
dead; and heaven without pity answers:
Cease to invoke me. You have caused your own misfortunes; cure them
yourselves. Nature has established laws; your part is to obey them.
Observe, reason, and profit by experience. It is the folly of man which
ruins him; let his wisdom save him. The people are ignorant; let them
gain instruction. Their chiefs are wicked; let them correct and amend;
for such is Nature's decree. Since the evils of society spring from
cupidity and ignorance, men will never cease to be persecuted, till they
become enlightened and wise; till they practise justice, founded on a
knowledge of their relations and of the laws of their organization.*
* A singular moral phenomenon made its appearance in Europe
in the year 1788. A great nation, jealous of its liberty,
contracted a fondness for a nation the enemy of liberty; a
nation friendly to the arts, for a nation that detests them;
a mild and tolerant nation, for a persecuting and fanatic
one; a social and gay nation, for a nation whose
characteristics are gloom and misanthropy; in a word, the
French were smitten with a passion for the Turks: they were
desirous of engaging in a war for them, and that at a time
when revolution in their own country was just at its
commencement. A man, who perceived the true nature of the
situation, wrote a book to dissuade them from the war: it
was immediately pretended that he was paid by the
government, which in reality wished the war, and which was
upon the point of shutting him up in a state prison. Another
man wrote to recommend the war: he was applauded, and his
word taken for the science, the politeness, and importance
of the Turks. It is true that he believed in his own
thesis, for he has found among them people who cast a
nativity, and alchymists who ruined his fortune; as he found
Martinists at Paris, who enabled him to sup with Sesostris,
and Magnetizers who concluded with destroying his existence.
Notwithstanding this, the Turks were beaten by the Russians,
and the man who then predicted the fall of their empire,
persists in the prediction. The result of this fall will be
a complete change of the political system, as far as it
relates to the coast of the Mediterranean. If, however, the
French become important in proportion as they become free,
and if they make use of the advantage they will obtain,
their progress may easily prove of the most honorable sort;
inasmuch as, by the wise decrees of fate, the true interest
of mankind evermore accords with their true morality.
CHAPTER XIII.
WILL THE HUMAN RACE IMPROVE?
At these words, oppressed with the painful sentiment with which their
severity overwhelmed me: Woe to the nations! cried I, melting in tears;
woe to myself! Ah! now it is that I despair of the happiness of man!
Since his miseries proceed from his heart; since the remedy is in his
own power, woe for ever to his existence! Who, indeed will ever be
able to restrain the lust of wealth in the strong and powerful? Who can
enlighten the ignorance of the weak? Who can teach the multitude to know
their rights, and force their chiefs to perform their duties? Thus the
race of man is always doomed to suffer! Thus the individual will not
cease to oppress the individual, a nation to attack a nation; and days
of prosperity, of glory, for these regions, shall never return. Alas!
conquerors will come; they will drive out the oppressors, and fix
themselves in their place; but, inheriting their power, they will
inherit their rapacity; and the earth will have changed tyrants, without
changing the tyranny.
Then, turning to the Genius, I exclaimed:
O Genius, despair hath settled on my soul. Knowing the nature of
man, the perversity of those who govern, and the debasement of the
governed--this knowledge hath disgusted me with life; and since there
is no choice but to be the accomplice or the victim of oppression, what
remains to the man of virtue but to mingle his ashes with those of the
tomb?
The Genius then gave me a look of severity, mingled with compassion; and
after a few moments of silence, he replied:
Virtue, then, consists in dying! The wicked man is indefatigable in
consummating his crime, and the just is discouraged from doing good at
the first obstacle he encounters! But such is the human heart. A
little success intoxicates man with confidence; a reverse overturns and
confounds him. Always given up to the sensation of the moment, he seldom
judges things from their nature, but from the impulse of his passion.
Mortal, who despairest of the human race, on what profound combination
of facts hast thou established thy conclusion? Hast thou scrutinized the
organization of sentient beings, to determine with precision whether the
instinctive force which moves them on to happiness is essentially weaker
than that which repels them from it? or, embracing in one glance the
history of the species, and judging the future by the past, hast thou
shown that all improvement is impossible? Say! hath human society, since
its origin, made no progress toward knowledge and a better state? Are
men still in their forests, destitute of everything, ignorant, stupid
and ferocious? Are all the nations still in that age when nothing was
seen upon the globe but brutal robbers and brutal slaves? If at any
time, in any place, individuals have ameliorated, why shall not the
whole mass ameliorate? If partial societies have made improvements, what
shall hinder the improvement of society in general? And if the first
obstacles are overcome, why should the others be insurmountable?
Art thou disposed to think that the human race degenerates? Guard
against the illusion and paradoxes of the misanthrope. Man, discontented
with the present, imagines for the past a perfection which never
existed, and which only serves to cover his chagrin. He praises the dead
out of hatred to the living, and beats the children with the bones of
their ancestors.
To prove this pretended retrograde progress from perfection we must
contradict the testimony of reason and of fact; and if the facts of
history are in any measure uncertain, we must contradict the living
fact of the organization of man; we must prove that he is born with
the enlightened use of his senses; that, without experience, he can
distinguish aliment from poison; that the child is wiser than the old
man; that the blind walks with more safety than the clear-sighted; that
the civilized man is more miserable than the savage; and, indeed, that
there is no ascending scale in experience and instruction.
Believe, young man, the testimony of monuments, and the voice of the
tombs. Some countries have doubtless fallen from what they were at
certain epochs; but if we weigh the wisdom and happiness of their
inhabitants, even in those times, we shall find more of splendor than of
reality in their glory; we shall find, in the most celebrated of ancient
states, enormous vices and cruel abuses, the true causes of their
decay; we shall find in general that the principles of government
were atrocious; that insolent robberies, barbarous wars and implacable
hatreds were raging from nation to nation;* that natural right was
unknown; that morality was perverted by senseless fanaticism and
deplorable superstition; that a dream, a vision, an oracle, were
constantly the causes of vast commotions. Perhaps the nations are not
yet entirely cured of all these evils; but their intensity at least is
diminished, and the experience of the past has not been wholly lost. For
the last three centuries, especially, knowledge has increased and been
extended; civilization, favored by happy circumstances, has made a
sensible progress; inconveniences and abuses have even turned to its
advantage; for if states have been too much extended by conquest,
the people, by uniting under the same yoke, have lost the spirit of
estrangement and division which made them all enemies one to the other.
If the powers of government have been more concentrated, there has been
more system and harmony in their exercise. If wars have become more
extensive in the mass, they are less bloody in detail. If men have gone
to battle with less personality, less energy, their struggles have been
less sanguinary and less ferocious; they have been less free, but less
turbulent; more effeminate, but more pacific. Despotism itself has
rendered them some service; for if governments have been more absolute,
they have been more quiet and less tempestuous. If thrones have become
a property and hereditary, they have excited less dissensions, and the
people have suffered fewer convulsions; finally, if the despots, jealous
and mysterious, have interdicted all knowledge of their administration,
all concurrence in the management of public affairs, the passions
of men, drawn aside from politics, have fixed upon the arts, and the
sciences of nature; and the sphere of ideas in every direction has been
enlarged; man, devoted to abstract studies, has better understood his
place in the system of nature, and his relations in society; principles
have been better discussed, final causes better explained, knowledge
more extended, individuals better instructed, manners more social, and
life more happy. The species at large, especially in certain countries,
has gained considerably; and this amelioration cannot but increase in
future, because its two principal obstacles, those even which, till
then, had rendered it slow and sometimes retrograde,--the difficulty of
transmitting ideas and of communicating them rapidly,--have been at last
removed.
* Read the history of the wars of Rome and Carthage, of
Sparta and Messina, of Athens and Syracuse, of the Hebrews
and the Phoenicians: yet these are the nations of which
antiquity boasts as being most polished!
Indeed, among the ancients, each canton, each city, being isolated
from all others by the difference of its language, the consequence was
favorable to ignorance and anarchy. There was no communication of ideas,
no participation of discoveries, no harmony of interests or of wills, no
unity of action or design; besides, the only means of transmitting and
of propagating ideas being that of speech, fugitive and limited,
and that of writing, tedious of execution, expensive and scarce, the
consequence was a hindrance of present instruction, loss of experience
from one generation to another, instability, retrogression of knowledge,
and a perpetuity of confusion and childhood.
But in the modern world, especially in Europe, great nations having
allied themselves in language, and established vast communities of
opinions, the minds of men are assimilated, and their affections
extended; there is a sympathy of opinion and a unity of action; then
that gift of heavenly Genius, the holy art of printing, having furnished
the means of communicating in an instant the same idea to millions of
men, and of fixing it in a durable manner, beyond the power of tyrants
to arrest or annihilate, there arose a mass of progressive instruction,
an expanding atmosphere of science, which assures to future ages a solid
amelioration. This amelioration is a necessary effect of the laws of
nature; for, by the law of sensibility, man as invincibly tends to
render himself happy as the flame to mount, the stone to descend, or the
water to find its level. His obstacle is his ignorance, which misleads
him in the means, and deceives him in causes and effects. He will
enlighten himself by experience; he will become right by dint of errors;
he will grow wise and good because it is his interest so to be.
Ideas being communicated through the nation, whole classes will gain
instruction; science will become a vulgar possession, and all men will
know what are the principles of individual happiness and of public
prosperity. They will know the relations they bear to society, their
duties and their rights; they will learn to guard against the illusions
of the lust of gain; they will perceive that the science of morals is
a physical science, composed, indeed, of elements complicated in their
operation, but simple and invariable in their nature, since they
are only the elements of the organization of man. They will see the
propriety of being moderate and just, because in that is found the
advantage and security of each; they will perceive that the wish to
enjoy at the expense of another is a false calculation of ignorance,
because it gives rise to reprisal, hatred, and vengeance, and that
dishonesty is the never-failing offspring of folly.
Individuals will feel that private happiness is allied to public good:
The weak, that instead of dividing their interests, they ought to unite
them, because equality constitutes their force:
The rich, that the measure of enjoyment is bounded by the constitution
of the organs, and that lassitude follows satiety:
The poor, that the employment of time, and the peace of the heart,
compose the highest happiness of man. And public opinion, reaching kings
on their thrones, will force them to confine themselves to the limits of
regular authority.
Even chance itself, serving the cause of nations, will sometimes give
them feeble chiefs, who, through weakness, will suffer them to become
free; and sometimes enlightened chiefs, who, from a principle of virtue,
will free them.
And when nations, free and enlightened, shall become like great
individuals, the whole species will have the same facilities as
particular portions now have; the communication of knowledge will extend
from one to another, and thus reach the whole. By the law of imitation,
the example of one people will be followed by others, who will adopt its
spirit and its laws. Even despots, perceiving that they can no longer
maintain their authority without justice and beneficence, will soften
their sway from necessity, from rivalship; and civilization will become
universal.
There will be established among the several nations an equilibrium of
force, which, restraining them all within the bounds of the respect due
to their reciprocal rights, shall put an end to the barbarous practice
of war, and submit their disputes to civil arbitration.* The human race
will become one great society, one individual family, governed by the
same spirit, by common laws, and enjoying all the happiness of which
their nature is susceptible.
* What is a people? An individual of the society at large.
What a war? A duel between two individual people. In what
manner ought a society to act when two of its members fight?
Interfere and reconcile, or repress them. In the days of
the Abbe de Saint Pierre this was treated as a dream, but
happily for the human race it begins to be realized.
Doubtless this great work will be long accomplishing; because the
same movement must be given to an immense body; the same leaven must
assimilate an enormous mass of heterogeneous parts. But this movement
shall be effected; its presages are already to be seen. Already the
great society, assuming in its course the same characters as partial
societies have done, is evidently tending to a like result. At first
disconnected in all its parts, it saw its members for a long time
without cohesion; and this general solitude of nations formed its
first age of anarchy and childhood; divided afterwards by chance into
irregular sections, called states and kingdoms, it has experienced
the fatal effects of an extreme inequality of wealth and rank; and the
aristocracy of great empires has formed its second age; then, these
lordly states disputing for preeminence, have exhibited the period of
the shock of factions.
At present the contending parties, wearied with discord, feel the want
of laws, and sigh for the age of order and of peace. Let but a virtuous
chief arise! a just, a powerful people appear! and the earth will raise
them to supreme power. The world is waiting for a legislative people; it
wishes and demands it; and my heart attends the cry.
Then turning towards the west: Yes, continued he, a hollow sound already
strikes my ear; a cry of liberty, proceeding from far distant shores,
resounds on the ancient continent. At this cry, a secret murmur against
oppression is raised in a powerful nation; a salutary inquietude alarms
her respecting her situation; she enquires what she is, and what she
ought to be; while, surprised at her own weakness, she interrogates her
rights, her resources, and what has been the conduct of her chiefs.
Yet another day--a little more reflection--and an immense agitation will
begin; a new-born age will open! an age of astonishment to vulgar minds,
of terror to tyrants, of freedom to a great nation, and of hope to the
human race!
CHAPTER XIV.
THE GREAT OBSTACLE TO IMPROVEMENT.
The Genius ceased. But preoccupied with melancholy thoughts, my mind
resisted persuasion; fearing, however, to shock him by my resistance, I
remained silent. After a while, turning to me with a look which pierced
my soul, he said:
Thou art silent, and thy heart is agitated with thoughts which it dares
not utter.
At last, troubled and terrified, I replied:
O Genius, pardon my weakness. Doubtless thy mouth can utter nothing but
truth; but thy celestial intelligence can seize its rays, where my gross
faculties can discern nothing but clouds. I confess it; conviction has
not penetrated my soul, and I feared that my doubts might offend thee.
And what is doubt, replied he, that it should be a crime? Can man
feel otherwise than as he is affected? If a truth be palpable, and
of importance in practice, let us pity him that misconceives it.
His punishment will arise from his blindness. If it be uncertain or
equivocal, how is he to find in it what it has not? To believe without
evidence or proof, is an act of ignorance and folly. The credulous
man loses himself in a labyrinth of contradictions; the man of sense
examines and discusses, that he may be consistent in his opinions. The
honest man will bear contradiction; because it gives rise to evidence.
Violence is the argument of falsehood; and to impose a creed by
authority is the act and indication of a tyrant.
O Genius, said I, encouraged by these words, since my reason is free, I
strive in vain to entertain the flattering hope with which you endeavor
to console me. The sensible and virtuous soul is easily caught with
dreams of happiness; but a cruel reality constantly awakens it to
suffering and wretchedness. The more I meditate on the nature of man,
the more I examine the present state of societies, the less possible it
appears to realize a world of wisdom and felicity. I cast my eye over
the whole of our hemisphere; I perceive in no place the germ, nor do
I foresee the instinctive energy of a happy revolution. All Asia lies
buried in profound darkness. The Chinese, governed by an insolent
despotism,* by strokes of the bamboo and the cast of lots, restrained
by an immutable code of gestures, and by the radical vices of an
ill-constructed language,** appear to be in their abortive civilization
nothing but a race of automatons. The Indian, borne down by prejudices,
and enchained in the sacred fetters of his castes, vegetates in an
incurable apathy. The Tartar, wandering or fixed, always ignorant and
ferocious, lives in the savageness of his ancestors. The Arab, endowed
with a happy genius, loses its force and the fruits of his virtue in
the anarchy of his tribes and the jealousy of his families. The African,
degraded from the rank of man, seems irrevocably doomed to servitude.
In the North I see nothing but vilified serfs, herds of men with which
landlords stock their estates. Ignorance, tyranny, and wretchedness
have everywhere stupified the nations; and vicious habits, depraving
the natural senses, have destroyed the very instinct of happiness and of
truth.
* The emperor of China calls himself the son of heaven; that
is, of God: for in the opinion of the Chinese, the material
of heaven, the arbiter of fatality, is the Deity himself.
"The emperor only shows himself once in ten months, lest the
people, accustomed to see him, might lose their respect; for
he holds it as a maxim that power can only be supported by
force, that the people have no idea of justice, and are not
to be governed but by coercion." Narrative of two Mahometan
travellers in 851 and 877, translated by the Abbe Renaudot
in 1718.
Notwithstanding what is asserted by the missionaries, this
situation has undergone no change. The bamboo still reigns
in China, and the son of heaven bastinades, for the most
trivial fault, the Mandarin, who in his turn bastinades the
people. The Jesuits may tell us that this is the best
governed country in the world, and its inhabitants the
happiest of men: but a single letter from Amyot has
convinced me that China is a truly Turkish government, and
the account of Sonnerat confirms it. See Vol. II. of Voyage
aux Indes, in 4to.
** As long as the Chinese shall in writing make use of their
present characters, they can be expected to make no progress
in civilization. The necessary introductory step must be
the giving them an alphabet like our own, or of substituting
in the room of their language that of the Tartars. The
improvement made in the latter by M. de Lengles, is
calculated to introduce this change. See the Mantchou
alphabet, the production of a mind truly learned in the
formation of language.
In some parts of Europe, indeed, reason has begun to dawn, but even
there, do nations partake of the knowledge of individuals? Are the
talents and genius of governors turned to the benefit of the people? And
those nations which call themselves polished, are they not the same that
for the last three centuries have filled the earth with their injustice?
Are they not those who, under the pretext of commerce, have desolated
India, depopulated a new continent, and, at present, subject Africa
to the most barbarous slavery? Can liberty be born from the bosom
of despots? and shall justice be rendered by the hands of piracy and
avarice? O Genius, I have seen the civilized countries; and the mockery
of their wisdom has vanished before my sight. I saw wealth accumulated
in the hands of a few, and the multitude poor and destitute. I have seen
all rights, all powers concentered in certain classes, and the mass of
the people passive and dependent. I have seen families of princes, but
no families of the nation. I have seen government interests, but
no public interests or spirit. I have seen that all the science of
government was to oppress prudently; and the refined servitude of
polished nations appeared to me only the more irremediable.
One obstacle above all has profoundly struck my mind. On looking over
the world, I have seen it divided into twenty different systems of
religion. Every nation has received, or formed, opposite opinions; and
every one ascribing to itself the exclusive possession of the truth,
must believe the other to be wrong. Now if, as must be the fact in this
discordance of opinion, the greater part are in error, and are honest in
it, then it follows that our mind embraces falsehood as it does truth;
and if so, how is it to be enlightened? When prejudice has once seized
the mind, how is it to be dissipated? How shall we remove the bandage
from our eyes, when the first article in every creed, the first dogma in
all religion, is the absolute proscription of doubt, the interdiction of
examination, and the rejection of our own judgment? How is truth to make
herself known?--If she resorts to arguments and proofs, the timid man
stifles the voice of his own conscience; if she invokes the authority
of celestial powers, he opposes it with another authority of the same
origin, with which he is preoccupied; and he treats all innovation as
blasphemy. Thus man in his blindness, has riveted his own chains,
and surrendered himself forever, without defence, to the sport of his
ignorance and his passions.
To dissolve such fatal chains, a miraculous concurrence of happy
events would be necessary. A whole nation, cured of the delirium of
superstition, must be inaccessible to the impulse of fanaticism. Freed
from the yoke of false doctrine, a whole people must impose upon itself
that of true morality and reason. This people should be courageous and
prudent, wise and docile. Each individual, knowing his rights, should
not transgress them. The poor should know how to resist seduction,
and the rich the allurements of avarice. There should be found leaders
disinterested and just, and their tyrants should be seized with a spirit
of madness and folly. This people, recovering its rights, should
feel its inability to exercise them in person, and should name its
representatives. Creator of its magistrates, it should know at once to
respect them and to judge them. In the sudden reform of a whole nation,
accustomed to live by abuses, each individual displaced should bear with
patience his privations, and submit to a change of habits. This nation
should have the courage to conquer its liberty; the power to defend it,
the wisdom to establish it, and the generosity to extend it to others.
And can we ever expect the union of so many circumstances? But suppose
that chance in its infinite combinations should produce them, shall I
see those fortunate days. Will not my ashes long ere then be mouldering
in the tomb?
Here, sunk in sorrow, my oppressed heart no longer found utterance. The
Genius answered not, but I heard him whisper to himself:
Let us revive the hope of this man; for if he who loves his fellow
creatures be suffered to despair, what will become of nations? The past
is perhaps too discouraging; I must anticipate futurity, and disclose to
the eye of virtue the astonishing age that is ready to begin; that, on
viewing the object she desires, she may be animated with new ardor, and
redouble her efforts to attain it.
CHAPTER XV.
THE NEW AGE.
Scarcely had he finished these words, when a great tumult arose in the
west; and turning to that quarter, I perceived, at the extremity of
the Mediterranean, in one of the nations of Europe, a prodigious
movement--such as when a violent sedition arises in a vast city--a
numberless people, rushing in all directions, pour through the streets
and fluctuate like waves in the public places. My ear, struck with the
cries which resounded to the heavens, distinguished these words:
What is this new prodigy? What cruel and mysterious scourge is this? We
are a numerous people and we want hands! We have an excellent soil, and
we are in want of subsistence? We are active and laborious, and we live
in indigence! We pay enormous tributes, and we are told they are not
sufficient! We are at peace without, and our persons and property are
not safe within. Who, then, is the secret enemy that devours us?
Some voices from the midst of the multitude replied:
Raise a discriminating standard; and let all those who maintain and
nourish mankind by useful labors gather round it; and you will discover
the enemy that preys upon you.
The standard being raised, this nation divided itself at once into
two bodies of unequal magnitude and contrasted appearance. The one,
innumerable, and almost total, exhibited in the poverty of its clothing,
in its emaciated appearance and sun-burnt faces, the marks of misery and
labor; the other, a little group, an insignificant faction, presented in
its rich attire embroidered with gold and silver, and in its sleek and
ruddy faces, the signs of leisure and abundance.
Considering these men more attentively, I found that the great body was
composed of farmers, artificers, merchants, all professions useful
to society; and that the little group was made up of priests of every
order, of financiers, of nobles, of men in livery, of commanders of
armies; in a word, of the civil, military, and religious agents of
government.
These two bodies being assembled face to face, and regarding each other
with astonishment, I saw indignation and rage arising in one side, and
a sort of panic in the other. And the large body said to the little one:
Why are you separated from us? Are you not of our number?
No, replied the group; you are the people; we are a privileged class,
who have our laws, customs, and rights, peculiar to ourselves.
PEOPLE.--And what labor do you perform in our society?
PRIVILEGED CLASS.--None; we are not made to work.
PEOPLE.--How, then, have you acquired these riches?
PRIVILEGED CLASS.--By taking the pains to govern you.
PEOPLE.--What! is this what you call governing? We toil and you enjoy!
we produce and you dissipate! Wealth proceeds from us, and you absorb
it. Privileged men! class who are not the people; form a nation apart,
and govern yourselves.*
* This dialogue between the people and the indolent classes,
is applicable to every society; it contains the seeds of all
the political vices and disorders that prevail, and which
may thus be defined: Men who do nothing, and who devour the
substance of others; and men who arrogate to themselves
particular rights and exclusive privileges of wealth and
indolence. Compare the Mamlouks of Egypt, the nobility of
Europe, the Nairs of India, the Emirs of Arabia, the
patricians of Rome, the Christian clergy, the Imans, the
Bramins, the Bonzes, the Lamas, etc., etc., and you will
find in all the same characteristic feature:--Men living in
idleness at the expense of those who labor.
Then the little group, deliberating on this new state of things, some of
the most honorable among them said: We must join the people and partake
of their labors and burdens, for they are men like us, and our riches
come from them; but others arrogantly exclaimed: It would be a shame, an
infamy, for us to mingle with the crowd; they are born to serve us.
Are we not men of another race--the noble and pure descendants of the
conquerors of this empire? This multitude must be reminded of our rights
and its own origin.
THE NOBLES.--People! know you not that our ancestors conquered this
land, and that your race was spared only on condition of serving us?
This is our social compact! this the government constituted by custom
and prescribed by time.
PEOPLE.--O conquerors, pure of blood! show us your genealogies! we
shall then see if what in an individual is robbery and plunder, can be
virtuous in a nation.
And forthwith, voices were heard in every quarter calling out the nobles
by their names; and relating their origin and parentage, they told how
the grandfather, great-grandfather, or even father, born traders and
mechanics, after acquiring wealth in every way, had purchased their
nobility for money: so that but very few families were really of the
original stock. See, said these voices, see these purse-proud commoners
who deny their parents! see these plebian recruits who look upon
themselves as illustrious veterans! and peals of laughter were heard.
And the civil governors said: these people are mild, and naturally
servile; speak to them of the king and of the law, and they will return
to their duty. People! the king wills, the sovereign ordains!
PEOPLE.--The king can will nothing but the good of the people; the
sovereign can only ordain according to law.
CIVIL GOVERNORS.--The law commands you to be submissive.
PEOPLE.--The law is the general will; and we will a new order of things.
CIVIL GOVERNORS.--You are then a rebel people.
PEOPLE.--A nation cannot revolt; tyrants only are rebels.
CIVIL GOVERNORS.--The king is on our side; he commands you to submit.
PEOPLE.--Kings are inseparable from their nations. Our king cannot be
with you; you possess only his phantom.
And the military governors came forward. The people are timorous, said
they; we must threaten them; they will submit only to force. Soldiers,
chastise this insolent multitude.
PEOPLE.--Soldiers, you are of our blood! Will you strike your brothers,
your relatives? If the people perish who will nourish the army?
And the soldiers, grounding their arms, said to the chiefs:
We are likewise the people; show us the enemy!
Then the ecclesiastical governors said: There is but one resource left.
The people are superstitious; we must frighten them with the names of
God and religion.
Our dear brethren! our children! God has ordained us to govern you.
PEOPLE.--Show us your credentials from God!
PRIESTS.--You must have faith; reason leads astray.
PEOPLE.--Do you govern without reason?
PRIESTS.--God commands peace! Religion prescribes obedience.
PEOPLE.--Peace supposes justice. Obedience implies conviction of a duty.
PRIESTS.--Suffering is the business of this world.
PEOPLE.--Show us the example.
PRIESTS.--Would you live without gods or kings?
PEOPLE.--We would live without oppressors.
PRIESTS.--You must have mediators, intercessors.
PEOPLE.--Mediators with God and with the king! courtiers and priests,
your services are too expensive: we will henceforth manage our own
affairs.
And the little group said: We are lost! the multitude are enlightened.
And the people answered: You are safe; since we are enlightened we will
commit no violence; we only claim our rights. We feel resentments, but
we will forget them. We were slaves, we might command; but we only wish
to be free, and liberty is but justice.
CHAPTER XVI.
A FREE AND LEGISLATIVE PEOPLE.
Considering that all public power was now suspended, and that the
habitual restraint of the people had suddenly ceased, I shuddered with
the apprehension that they would fall into the dissolution of anarchy.
But, taking their affairs into immediate deliberation, they said:
It is not enough that we have freed ourselves from tyrants and
parasites; we must prevent their return. We are men, and experience
has abundantly taught us that every man is fond of power, and wishes
to enjoy it at the expense of others. It is necessary, then, to guard
against a propensity which is the source of discord; we must establish
certain rules of duty and of right. But the knowledge of our rights,
and the estimation of our duties, are so abstract and difficult as to
require all the time and all the faculties of a man. Occupied in our
own affairs, we have not leisure for these studies; nor can we
exercise these functions in our own persons. Let us choose, then, among
ourselves, such persons as are capable of this employment. To them we
will delegate our powers to institute our government and laws. They
shall be the representatives of our wills and of our interests. And in
order to attain the fairest representation possible of our wills and our
interests, let it be numerous, and composed of men resembling ourselves.
Having made the election of a numerous body of delegates, the people
thus addressed them:
We have hitherto lived in a society formed by chance, without fixed
agreements, without free conventions, without a stipulation of rights,
without reciprocal engagements,--and a multitude of disorders and evils
have arisen from this precarious state. We are now determined on forming
a regular compact; and we have chosen you to adjust the articles.
Examine, then, with care what ought to be its basis and its conditions;
consider what is the end and the principles of every association;
recognize the rights which every member brings, the powers which he
delegates, and those which he reserves to himself. Point out to us the
rules of conduct--the basis of just and equitable laws. Prepare for us a
new system of government; for we realize that the one which has
hitherto guided us is corrupt. Our fathers have wandered in the paths
of ignorance, and habit has taught us to follow in their footsteps.
Everything has been done by fraud, violence, and delusion; and the true
laws of morality and reason are still obscure. Clear up, then, their
chaos; trace out their connection; publish their code, and we will adopt
it.
And the people raised a large throne, in the form of a pyramid, and
seating on it the men they had chosen, said to them:
We raise you to-day above us, that you may better discover the whole of
our relations, and be above the reach of our passions. But remember that
you are our fellow-citizens; that the power we confer on you is our own;
that we deposit it with you, but not as a property or a heritage; that
you must be the first to obey the laws you make; that to-morrow you
redescend among us, and that you will have acquired no other right but
that of our esteem and gratitude. And consider what a tribute of glory
the world, which reveres so many apostles of error, will bestow on the
first assembly of rational men, who shall have declared the unchangeable
principles of justice, and consecrated, in the face of tyrants, the
rights of nations.
CHAPTER XVII.
UNIVERSAL BASIS OF ALL RIGHT AND ALL LAW.
The men chosen by the people to investigate the true principles of
morals and of reason then proceeded in the sacred object of their
mission; and, after a long examination, having discovered a fundamental
and universal principle, a legislator arose and said to the people:
Here is the primordial basis, the physical origin of all justice and of
all right.
Whatever be the active power, the moving cause, that governs the
universe, since it has given to all men the same organs, the same
sensations, and the same wants, it has thereby declared that it has
given to all the same right to the use of its treasures, and that all
men are equal in the order of nature.
And, since this power has given to each man the necessary means of
preserving his own existence, it is evident that it has constituted them
all independent one of another; that it has created them free; that no
one is subject to another; that each one is absolute proprietor of his
own person.
Equality and liberty are, therefore, two essential attributes of man,
two laws of the Divinity, constitutional and unchangeable, like the
physical properties of matter.
Now, every individual being absolute master of his own person, it
follows that a full and free consent is a condition indispensable to all
contracts and all engagements.
Again, since each individual is equal to another, it follows that the
balance of what is received and of what is given, should be strictly in
equilibrium; so that the idea of justice, of equity, necessarily imports
that of equality.*
* The etymology of the words themselves trace out to us this
connection: equilibrium, equalitas, equitas, are all of one
family, and the physical idea of equality, in the scales of
a balance, is the source and type of all the rest.
Equality and liberty are therefore the physical and unalterable basis
of every union of men in society, and of course the necessary and
generating principle of every law and of every system of regular
government.*
* In the Declaration of Rights, there is an inversion of
ideas in the first article, liberty being placed before
equality, from which it in reality springs. This defect is
not to be wondered at; the science of the rights of man is a
new science: it was invented yesterday by the Americans,
to-day the French are perfecting it, but there yet remains a
great deal to be done. In the ideas that constitute it
there is a genealogical order which, from us basis, physical
equality, to the minutest and most remote branches of
government, ought to proceed in an uninterrupted series of
inferences.
A disregard of this basis has introduced in your nation, and in every
other, those disorders which have finally roused you. It is by returning
to this rule that you may reform them, and reorganize a happy order of
society.
But observe, this reorganization will occasion a violent shock in
your habits, your fortunes, and your prejudices. Vicious contracts and
abusive claims must be dissolved, unjust distinctions and ill founded
property renounced; you must indeed recur for a moment to a state of
nature. Consider whether you can consent to so many sacrifices.
Then, reflecting on the cupidity inherent in the heart of man, I thought
that this people would renounce all ideas of amelioration.
But, in a moment, a great number of men, advancing toward the pyramid,
made a solemn abjuration of all their distinctions and all their riches.
Establish for us, said they, the laws of equality and liberty; we will
possess nothing in future but on the title of justice.
Equality, liberty, justice,--these shall be our code, and shall be
written on our standards.
And the people immediately raised a great standard, inscribed with
these three words, in three different colors. They displayed it over the
pyramid of the legislators, and for the first time the flag of universal
justice floated on the face of the earth.
And the people raised before the pyramid a new altar, on which they
placed a golden balance, a sword, and a book with this inscription:
TO EQUAL LAW, WHICH JUDGES AND PROTECTS.
And having surrounded the pyramid and the altar with a vast
amphitheatre, all the people took their seats to hear the publication
of the law. And millions of men, raising at once their hands to heaven,
took the solemn oath to live equal, free, and just; to respect their
reciprocal properties and rights; to obey the law and its regularly
chosen representatives.
A spectacle so impressive and sublime, so replete with generous
emotions, moved me to tears; and addressing myself to the Genius, I
exclaimed: Let me now live, for in future I have everything to hope.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CONSTERNATION AND CONSPIRACY OF TYRANTS.
But scarcely had the solemn voice of liberty and equality resounded
through the earth, when a movement of confusion, of astonishment, arose
in different nations. On the one hand, the people, warmed with desire,
but wavering between hope and fear, between the sentiment of right and
the habit of obedience, began to be in motion. The kings, on the other
hand, suddenly awakened from the sleep of indolence and despotism, were
alarmed for the safety of their thrones; while, on all sides, those
clans of civil and religious tyrants, who deceive kings and oppress the
people, were seized with rage and consternation; and, concerting their
perfidious plans, they said: Woe to us, if this fatal cry of liberty
comes to the ears of the multitude! Woe to us, if this pernicious spirit
of justice be propagated!
And, pointing to the floating banner, they continued:
Consider what a swarm of evils are included in these three words! If all
men are equal, where is our exclusive right to honors and to power? If
all men are to be free, what becomes of our slaves, our vassals, our
property? If all are equal in the civil state, where is our prerogative
of birth, of inheritance? and what becomes of nobility? If they are
all equal in the sight of God, what need of mediators?--where is the
priesthood? Let us hasten, then, to destroy a germ so prolific, and so
contagious. We must employ all our cunning against this innovation. We
must frighten the kings, that they may join us in the cause. We
must divide the people by national jealousies, and occupy them with
commotions, wars, and conquests. They must be alarmed at the power
of this free nation. Let us form a league against the common enemy,
demolish that sacrilegious standard, overturn that throne of rebellion,
and stifle in its birth the flame of revolution.
And, indeed, the civil and religious tyrants of nations formed a general
combination; and, multiplying their followers by force and seduction,
they marched in hostile array against the free nation; and, surrounding
the altar and the pyramid of natural law, they demanded with loud cries:
What is this new and heretical doctrine? what this impious altar, this
sacrilegious worship? True believers and loyal subjects! can you suppose
that truth has been first discovered to-day, and that hitherto you have
been walking in error? that those men, more fortunate than you, have the
sole privilege of wisdom? And you, rebel and misguided nation, perceive
you not that your new leaders are misleading you? that they destroy the
principles of your faith, and overturn the religion of your ancestors?
Ah, tremble! lest the wrath of heaven should kindle against you; and
hasten by speedy repentance to retrieve your error.
But, inaccessible to seduction as well as to fear, the free nation kept
silence, and rising universally in arms, assumed an imposing attitude.
And the legislator said to the chiefs of nations:
If while we walked with a bandage on our eyes the light guided our
steps, why, since we are no longer blindfold, should it fly from our
search? If guides, who teach mankind to see for themselves, mislead and
deceive them, what can be expected from those who profess to keep them
in darkness?
But hark, ye leaders of nations! If you possess the truth, show it to
us, and we will receive it with gratitude, for we seek it with ardor,
and have a great interest in finding it. We are men, and liable to be
deceived; but you are also men, and equally fallible. Aid us then in
this labyrinth, where the human race has wandered for so many ages; help
us to dissipate the illusion of so many prejudices and vicious habits.
Amid the shock of so many opinions which dispute for our acceptance,
assist us in discovering the proper and distinctive character of truth.
Let us this day terminate the long combat with error. Let us establish
between it and truth a solemn contest, to which we will invite the
opinions of men of all nations. Let us convoke a general assembly of the
nations. Let them be judges in their own cause; and in the debate of all
systems, let no champion, no argument, be wanting, either on the side
of prejudice or of reason; and let the sentiment of a general and common
mass of evidence give birth to a universal concord of opinions and of
hearts.
CHAPTER XIX.
GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE NATIONS.
Thus spoke the legislator; and the multitude, seized with those emotions
which a reasonable proposition always inspires, expressed its applause;
while the tyrants, left without support, were overwhelmed with
confusion.
A scene of a new and astonishing nature then opened to my view. All that
the earth contains of people and of nations; men of every race and of
every region, converging from their various climates, seemed to assemble
in one allotted place; where, forming an immense congress, distinguished
in groups by the vast variety of their dresses, features, and
complexion, the numberless multitude presented a most unusual and
affecting sight.
On one side I saw the European, with his short close coat, pointed
triangular hat, smooth chin, and powdered hair; on the other side the
Asiatic, with a flowing robe, long beard, shaved head, and round turban.
Here stood the nations of Africa, with their ebony skins, their woolly
hair, their body girt with white and blue tissues of bark, adorned with
bracelets and necklaces of coral, shells, and glass; there the tribes
of the north, enveloped in their leathern bags; the Laplander, with his
pointed bonnet and his snow-shoes; the Samoyede, with his feverish body
and strong odor; the Tongouse, with his horned cap, and carrying his
idols pendant from his neck; the Yakoute, with his freckled face; the
Kalmuc, with his flat nose and little retorted eyes. Farther distant
were the Chinese, attired in silk, with their hair hanging in tresses;
the Japanese, of mingled race; the Malays, with wide-spreading ears,
rings in their noses, and palm-leaf hats of vast circumference;* and the
tattooed races of the isles of the southern ocean and of the continent
of the antipodes.** The view of so many varieties of the same species,
of so many extravagant inventions of the same understanding, and of so
many modifications of the same organization, affected me with a thousand
feelings and a thousand thoughts.*** I contemplated with astonishment
this gradation of color, which, passing from a bright carnation to a
light brown, a deeper brown, dusky, bronze, olive, leaden, copper, ends
in the black of ebony and of jet. And finding the Cassimerian, with his
rosy cheek, next to the sun-burnt Hindoo, and the Georgian by the side
of the Tartar, I reflected on the effects of climate hot or cold, of
soil high or low, marshy or dry, open or shaded. I compared the dwarf of
the pole with the giant of the temperate zones, the slender body of
the Arab with the ample chest of the Hollander; the squat figure of
the Samoyede with the elegant form of the Greek and the Sclavonian; the
greasy black wool of the Negro with the bright silken locks of the Dane;
the broad face of the Kalmuc, his little angular eyes and flattened
nose, with the oval prominent visage, large blue eyes, and aquiline nose
of the Circassian and Abazan. I contrasted the brilliant calicoes of the
Indian, the well-wrought stuffs of the European, the rich furs of the
Siberian, with the tissues of bark, of osiers, leaves and feathers of
savage nations; and the blue figures of serpents, flowers, and
stars, with which they painted their bodies. Sometimes the variegated
appearance of this multitude reminded me of the enamelled meadows of the
Nile and the Euphrates, when, after rains or inundations, millions of
flowers are rising on every side. Sometimes their murmurs and their
motions called to mind the numberless swarms of locusts which, issuing
from the desert, cover in the spring the plains of Hauran.
* This species of the palm-tree is called Latanier. Its
leaf, similar to a fan-mount, grows upon a stalk issuing
directly from the earth. A specimen may be seen in the
botanic garden.
** The country of the Papons of New Guinea.
*** A hall of costumes in one of the galleries of the Louvre
would, in every point of view, be an interesting
establishment. It would furnish an admirable treat to the
curiosity of a great number of persons, excellent models to
the artist, and useful subjects of meditation to the
physician, the philosopher and the legislator.
Picture to yourself a collection of the various faces and
figures of every country and nation, exhibiting accurately,
color, features and form; what a field for investigation and
enquiry as to the influence of climate, customs, food, etc.
It might truly be called the science of man! Buffon has
attempted a chapter of this nature, but it only serves to
exhibit more strikingly our actual ignorance. Such a
collection is said to have been begun at St. Petersburg, but
it is also said at the same time to be as imperfect as the
vocabulary of the three hundred languages. The enterprise
would be worthy of the French nation.
At the sight of so many rational beings, considering on the one hand the
immensity of thoughts and sensations assembled in this place, and on the
other hand, reflecting on the opposition of so many opinions, and the
shock of so many passions of men so capricious, I struggled between
astonishment, admiration, and secret dread--when the legislator
commanded silence, and attracted all my attention.
Inhabitants of earth! a free and powerful nation addresses you with
words of justice and peace, and she offers you the sure pledges of her
intentions in her own conviction and experience. Long afflicted with the
same evils as yourselves, we sought for their source, and found them
all derived from violence and injustice, erected into law by the
inexperience of past ages, and maintained by the prejudices of the
present. Then abolishing our artificial and arbitrary institutions,
and recurring to the origin of all right and reason, we have found
that there existed in the very order of nature and in the physical
constitution of man, eternal and immutable laws, which only waited his
observance to render him happy.
O men! cast your eyes on the heavens that give you light, and on the
earth that gives you bread! Since they offer the same bounties to you
all--since from the power that gives them motion you have all received
the same life, the same organs, have you not likewise all received the
same right to enjoy its benefits? Has it not hereby declared you all
equal and free? What mortal shall dare refuse to his fellow that which
nature gives him?
O nations! let us banish all tyranny and all discord; let us form but
one society, one great family; and, since human nature has but one
constitution, let there exist in future but one law, that of nature--but
one code, that of reason--but one throne, that of justice--but one
altar, that of union.
He ceased; and an immense acclamation resounded to the skies. Ten
thousand benedictions announced the transports of the multitude; and
they made the earth re-echo JUSTICE, EQUALITY and UNION.
But different emotions soon succeeded; soon the doctors and the chiefs
of nations exciting a spirit of dispute, there was heard a sullen
murmur, which growing louder, and spreading from group to group, became
a vast disorder; and each nation setting up exclusive pretensions,
claimed a preference for its own code and opinion.
You are in error, said the parties, pointing one to the other. We alone
are in possession of reason and truth. We alone have the true law,
the real rule of right and justice, the only means of happiness and
perfection. All other men are either blind or rebellious.
And great agitation prevailed.
Then the legislator, after enforcing silence, loudly exclaimed:
What, O people! is this passionate emotion? Whither will this quarrel
conduct you? What can you expect from this dissension? The earth has
been for ages a field of disputation, and you have shed torrents of
blood in your controversies. What have you gained by so many battles
and tears? When the strong has subjected the weak to his opinion, has he
thereby aided the cause of truth?
O nations! take counsel of your own wisdom. When among yourselves
disputes arise between families and individuals, how do you reconcile
them? Do you not give them arbitrators?
Yes, cried the whole multitude.
Do so then to the authors of your present dissensions. Order those who
call themselves your instructors, and who force their creeds upon
you, to discuss before you their reasons. Since they appeal to your
interests, inform yourselves how they support them.
And you, chiefs and governors of the people! before dragging the masses
into the quarrels resulting from your diverse opinions, let the reasons
for and against your views be given. Let us establish one solemn
controversy, one public scrutiny of truth--not before the tribunal of a
corruptible individual, or of a prejudiced party, but in the grand forum
of mankind--guarded by all their information and all their interests.
Let the natural sense of the whole human race be our arbiter and judge.
CHAPTER XX.
THE SEARCH OF TRUTH.
The people expressed their applause, and the legislator continued: To
proceed with order, and avoid all confusion, let a spacious semicircle
be left vacant in front of the altar of peace and union; let each system
of religion, and each particular sect, erect its proper distinctive
standard on the line of this semicircle; let its chiefs and doctors
place themselves around the standard, and their followers form a column
behind them.
The semicircle being traced, and the order published, there instantly
rose an innumerable multitude of standards, of all colors and of every
form, like what we see in a great commercial port, when, on a day of
rejoicing, a thousand different flags and streamers are floating from a
forest of masts.
At the sight of this prodigious diversity, I turned towards the Genius
and said:
I thought that the earth was divided only into eight or ten systems of
faith, and I then despaired of a reconciliation; I now behold thousands
of different sects, and how can I hope for concord?
But these, replied the Genius, are not all; and yet they will be
intolerant!
Then, as the groups advanced to take their stations, he pointed out to
me their distinctive marks, and thus began to explain their characters:
That first group, said he, with a green banner bearing a crescent, a
bandage, and a sabre, are the followers of the Arabian prophet. To say
there is a God, without knowing what he is; to believe the words of a
man, without understanding his language; to go into the desert to pray
to God, who is everywhere; to wash the hands with water, and not abstain
from blood; to fast all day, and eat all night; to give alms of their
own goods, and to plunder those of others; such are the means of
perfection instituted by Mahomet--such are the symbols of his followers;
and whoever does not bear them is a reprobate, stricken with anathema,
and devoted to the sword.
A God of clemency, the author of life, has instituted these laws of
oppression and murder: he made them for all the world, but has revealed
them only to one man; he established them from all eternity, though he
made them known but yesterday. These laws are abundantly sufficient
for all purposes, and yet a volume is added to them. This volume was
to diffuse light, to exhibit evidence, to lead men to perfection and
happiness; and yet every page was so full of obscurities, ambiguities,
and contradictions, that commentaries and explanations became necessary,
even in the life-time of its apostle. Its interpreters, differing in
opinion, divided into opposite and hostile sects. One maintains that Ali
is the true successor; the other contends for Omar and Aboubekre. This
denies the eternity of the Koran; that the necessity of ablutions and
prayers. The Carmite forbids pilgrimages, and allows the use of wine;
the Hakemite preaches the transmigration of souls. Thus they make up
the number of seventy-two sects, whose banners are before you.* In this
contestation, every one attributing the evidence of truth exclusively to
himself, and taxing all others with heresy and rebellion, turns against
them its sanguinary zeal. And their religion, which celebrates a mild
and merciful God, the common father of all men,--changed to a torch of
discord, a signal for war and murder, has not ceased for twelve hundred
years to deluge the earth in blood, and to ravage and desolate the
ancient hemisphere from centre to circumference.**
* The Mussulmen enumerate in common seventy-two sects, but I
read, while I resided among them, a work which gave an
account of more than eighty,--all equally wise and
important.
** Read the history of Islamism by its own writers, and you
will be convinced that one of the principal causes of the
wars which have desolated Asia and Africa, since the days of
Mahomet, has been the apostolical fanaticism of its
doctrine. Caesar has been supposed to have destroyed three
millions of men: it would be interesting to make a similar
calculation respecting every founder of a religious system.
Those men, distinguished by their enormous white turbans, their broad
sleeves, and their long rosaries, are the Imans, the Mollas, and the
Muftis; and near them are the Dervishes with pointed bonnets, and the
Santons with dishevelled hair. Behold with what vehemence they recite
their professions of faith! They are now beginning a dispute about
the greater and lesser impurities--about the matter and the manner of
ablutions,--about the attributes of God and his perfections--about the
Chaitan, and the good and wicked angels,--about death, the resurrection,
the interrogatory in the tomb, the judgment, the passage of the narrow
bridge not broader than a hair, the balance of works, the pains of hell,
and the joys of paradise.
Next to these, that second more numerous group, with white banners
intersected with crosses, are the followers of Jesus. Acknowledging the
same God with the Mussulmans, founding their belief on the same books,
admitting, like them, a first man who lost the human race by eating an
apple, they hold them, however, in a holy abhorrence; and, out of pure
piety, they call each other impious blasphemers.
The great point of their dissension consists in this, that after
admitting a God one and indivisible the Christian divides him into three
persons, each of which he believes to be a complete and entire God,
without ceasing to constitute an identical whole, by the indivisibility
of the three. And he adds, that this being, who fills the universe,
has reduced himself to the body of a man; and has assumed material,
perishable, and limited organs, without ceasing to be immaterial,
infinite, and eternal. The Mussulman who does not comprehend these
mysteries, rejects them as follies, and the visions of a distempered
brain; though he conceives perfectly well the eternity of the Koran, and
the mission of the prophet: hence their implacable hatreds.
Again, the Christians, divided among themselves on many points, have
formed parties not less violent than the Mussulmans; and their quarrels
are so much the more obstinate, as the objects of them are inaccessible
to the senses and incapable of demonstration: their opinions, therefore,
have no other basis but the will and caprice of the parties. Thus,
while they agree that God is a being incomprehensible and unknown, they
dispute, nevertheless, about his essence, his mode of acting, and his
attributes. While they agree that his pretended transformation into man
is an enigma above the human understanding, they dispute on the junction
or distinction of his two wills and his two natures, on his change
of substance, on the real or fictitious presence, on the mode of
incarnation, etc.
Hence those innumerable sects, of which two or three hundred have
already perished, and three or four hundred others, which still subsist,
display those numberless banners which here distract your sight.
The first in order, surrounded by a group in varied and fantastic
dress, that confused mixture of violet, red, white, black and speckled
garments--with heads shaved, or with tonsures, or with short hair--with
red hats, square bonnets, pointed mitres, or long beards, is the
standard of the Roman pontiff, who, uniting the civil government to
the priesthood, has erected the supremacy of his city into a point of
religion, and made of his pride an article of faith.
On his right you see the Greek pontiff, who, proud of the rivalship of
his metropolis, sets up equal pretensions, and supports them against the
Western church by the priority of that of the East. On the left are the
standards of two recent chiefs,* who, shaking off a yoke that had become
tyrannical, have raised altar against altar in their reform, and wrested
half of Europe from the pope. Behind these are the subaltern sects,
subdivided from the principal divisions, the Nestorians, the Eutycheans,
the Jacobites, the Iconoclasts, the Anabaptists, the Presbyterians,
the Wicliffites, the Osiandrians, the Manicheans, the Pietists, the
Adamites, the Contemplatives, the Quakers, the Weepers, and a hundred
others,** all of distinct parties, persecuting when strong, tolerant
when weak, hating each other in the name of a God of peace, forming each
an exclusive heaven in a religion of universal charity, dooming each
other to pains without end in a future state, and realizing in this
world the imaginary hell of the other.
* Luther and Calvin.
** Consult upon this subject Dictionnaire des Herseies par
l'Abbe Pluquet, in two volumes 8vo.: a work admirably
calculated to inspire the mind with philosophy, in the sense
that the Lacedemonians taught the children temperance by
showing to them the drunken Helots.
After this group, observing a lonely standard of the color of hyacinth,
round which were assembled men clad in all the different dresses of
Europe and Asia:
At least, said I, to the Genius, we shall find unanimity here.
Yes, said he, at first sight and by a momentary accident. Dost thou not
know that system of worship?
Then, perceiving in Hebrew letters the monogram of the name of God, and
the palms which the Rabbins held in their hands:
True, said I, these are the children of Moses, dispersed even to this
day, abhorring every nation, and abhorred and persecuted by all.
Yes, he replied, and for this reason, that, having neither the time nor
liberty to dispute, they have the appearance of unanimity. But no sooner
will they come together, compare their principles, and reason on
their opinions, than they will separate as formerly, at least into two
principal sects;* one of which, taking advantage of the silence of their
legislator, and adhering to the literal sense of his books, will deny
everything that is not clearly expressed therein; and on this principle
will reject as profane inventions, the immortality of the soul, its
transmigration to places of pain or pleasure, its resurrection, the
final judgment, the good and bad angels, the revolt of the evil Genius,
and all the poetical belief of a world to come. And this highly-favored
people, whose perfection consists in a slight mutilation of their
persons,--this atom of a people, which forms but a small wave in the
ocean of mankind, and which insists that God has made nothing but for
them, will by its schism reduce to one-half, its present trifling weight
in the scale of the universe.
* The Sadducees and Pharisees.
He then showed me a neighboring group, composed of men dressed in white
robes, wearing a veil over their mouths, and ranged around a banner of
the color of the morning sky, on which was painted a globe cleft in two
hemispheres, black and white: The same thing will happen, said he, to
these children of Zoroaster,* the obscure remnant of a people once so
powerful. At present, persecuted like the Jews, and dispersed among
all nations, they receive without discussion the precepts of the
representative of their prophet. But as soon as the Mobed and the
Destours** shall assemble, they will renew the controversy about the
good and the bad principle; on the combats of Ormuzd, God of light, and
Ahrimanes, God of darkness; on the direct and allegorical sense; on
the good and evil Genii; on the worship of fire and the elements; on
impurities and ablutions; on the resurrection of the soul and body, or
only of the soul;*** on the renovation of the present world, and on that
which is to take its place. And the Parses will divide into sects, so
much the more numerous, as their families will have contracted, during
their dispersion, the manners and opinions of different nations.
* They are the Parses, better known by the opprobrious name
of Gaures or Guebres, another word for infidels. They are
in Asia what the Jews are in Europe. The name of their pope
or high priest is Mobed.
** That is to say, their priests. See, respecting the rites
of this religion, Henry Lord Hyde, and the Zendavesta.
Their costume is a robe with a belt of four knots, and a
veil over their mouth for fear of polluting the fire with
their breath.
*** The Zoroastrians are divided between two opinions; one
party believing that both soul and body will rise, the other
that it will be the soul only. The Christians and
Mahometans have embraced the most solid of the two.
Next to these, remark those banners of an azure ground, painted with
monstrous figures of human bodies, double, triple, and quadruple, with
heads of lions, boars, and elephants, and tails of fishes and tortoises;
these are the ensigns of the sects of India, who find their gods in
various animals, and the souls of their fathers in reptiles and insects.
These men support hospitals for hawks, serpents, and rats, and they
abhor their fellow creatures! They purify themselves with the dung and
urine of cows, and think themselves defiled by the touch of a man! They
wear a net over the mouth, lest, in a fly, they should swallow a soul
in a state of penance,* and they can see a Pariah** perish with hunger!
They acknowledge the same gods, but they separate into hostile bands.
* According to the system of the Metempsychosis, a soul, to
undergo purification, passes into the body of some insect or
animal. It is of importance not to disturb this penance, as
the work must in that case begin afresh.
** This is the name of a cast or tribe reputed unclean,
because they eat of what has enjoyed life.
The first standard, retired from the rest, bearing a figure with four
heads, is that of Brama, who, though the creator of the universe, is
without temples or followers; but, reduced to serve as a pedestal to the
Lingam,* he contents himself with a little water which the Bramin throws
every morning on his shoulder, reciting meanwhile an idle canticle in
his praise.
* See Sonnerat, Voyage aux Indes, vol. 1.
The second, bearing a kite with a scarlet body and a white head, is that
of Vichenou, who, though preserver of the world, has passed part of his
life in wicked actions. You sometimes see him under the hideous form
of a boar or a lion, tearing human entrails, or under that of a horse,*
shortly to come armed with a sword to destroy the human race, blot out
the stars, annihilate the planets, shake the earth, and force the great
serpent to vomit a fire which shall consume the spheres.
* These are the incarnations of Vichenou, or metamorphoses
of the sun. He is to come at the end of the world, that is,
at the expiration of the great period, in the form of a
horse, like the four horses of the Apocalypse.
The third is that of Chiven, God of destruction and desolation, who has,
however, for his emblem the symbol of generation. He is the most wicked
of the three, and he has the most followers. These men, proud of his
character, express in their devotions to him their contempt for
the other gods,* his equals and brothers; and, in imitation of his
inconsistencies, while they profess great modesty and chastity, they
publicly crown with flowers, and sprinkle with milk and honey, the
obscene image of the Lingam.
* When a sectary of Chiven hears the name of Vichenou
pronounced, he stops his ears, runs, and purifies himself.
In the rear of these, approach the smaller standards of a multitude of
gods--male, female, and hermaphrodite. These are friends and relations
of the principal gods, who have passed their lives in wars among
themselves, and their followers imitate them. These gods have need of
nothing, and they are constantly receiving presents; they are omnipotent
and omnipresent, and a priest, by muttering a few words, shuts them up
in an idol or a pitcher, to sell their favors for his own benefit.
Beyond these, that cloud of standards, which, on a yellow ground, common
to them all, bear various emblems, are those of the same god, who reins
under different names in the nations of the East. The Chinese adores him
in Fot,* the Japanese in Budso, the Ceylonese in Bedhou, the people of
Laos in Chekia, of Pegu in Phta, of Siam in Sommona-Kodom, of Thibet
in Budd and in La. Agreeing in some points of his history, they all
celebrate his life of penitence, his mortifications, his fastings, his
functions of mediator and expiator, the enmity between him and another
god, his adversary, their battles, and his ascendency. But as they
disagree on the means of pleasing him, they dispute about rites and
ceremonies, and about the dogmas of interior doctrine and of public
doctrine. That Japanese Bonze, with a yellow robe and naked head,
preaches the eternity of souls, and their successive transmigrations
into various bodies; near him, the Sintoist denies that souls can exist
separate from the senses,** and maintains that they are only the effect
of the organs to which they belong, and with which they must perish, as
the sound of the flute perishes with the flute. Near him, the Siamese,
with his eyebrows shaved, and a talipat screen*** in his hand,
recommends alms, offerings, and expiations, at the same time that he
preaches blind necessity and inexorable fate. The Chinese vo-chung
sacrifices to the souls of his ancestors; and next him, the follower of
Confucius interrogates his destiny in the cast of dice and the movement
of the stars.**** That child, surrounded by a swarm of priests in yellow
robes and hats, is the Grand Lama, in whom the god of Thibet has just
become incarnate.*5 But a rival has arisen who partakes this benefit
with him; and the Kalmouc on the banks of the Baikal, has a God similar
to the inhabitant of Lasa. And they agree, also, in one important
point--that god can inhabit only a human body. They both laugh at
the stupidity of the Indian who pays homage to cow-dung, though they
themselves consecrate the excrements of their high-priest.*6
* The original name of this god is Baits, which in Hebrew
signifies an egg. The Arabs pronounce it Baidh, giving to
the dh an emphatic sound which makes it approach to dz.
Kempfer, an acurate traveler, writes it Budso, which must be
pronounced Boudso, whence is derived the name of Budsoist
and of Bonze, applied to the priests. Clement of
Alexandria, in his Stromata, writes it Bedou, as it is
pronounced also by the Chingulais; and Saint Jerome, Boudda
and Boutta. At Thibet they call it Budd; and hence the name
of the country called Boud-tan and Ti-budd: it was in this
province that this system of religion was first inculcated
in Upper Asia; La is a corruption of Allah, the name of God
in the Syriac language, from which many of the eastern
dialects appear to be derived. The Chinese having neither b
nor d, have supplied their place by f and t, and have
therefore said Fout.
** See in Kempfer the doctrine of the Sintoists, which is a
mixture of that of Epicurus and of the Stoics.
*** It is a leaf of the Latanier species of the palm-tree.
Hence the bonzes of Siam take the appellation of Talapoin.
The use of this screen is an exclusive privilege.
**** The sectaries of Confucius are no less addicted to
astrology than the bonzes. It is indeed the malady of every
eastern nation.
*5 The Delai-La-Ma, or immense high priest of La, is the
same person whom we find mentioned in our old books of
travels, by the name of Prester John, from a corruption of
the Persian word Djehan, which signifies the world, to which
has been prefixed the French word prestre or pretre, priest.
Thus the priest world, and the god world are in the Persian
idiom the same.
*6 In a recent expedition the English have found certain
idols of the Lamas filled in the inside with sacred pastils
from the close stool of the high priest. Mr. Hastings, and
Colonel Pollier, who is now at Lausanne, are living
witnesses of this fact, and undoubtedly worthy of credit.
It will be very extraordinary to observe, that this
disgusting ceremony is connected with a profound
philosophical system, to wit, that of the metempsychosis,
admitted by the Lamas. When the Tartars swallow, the sacred
relics, which they are accustomed to do, they imitate the
laws of the universe, the parts of which are incessantly
absorbed and pass into the substance of each other. It is
upon the model of the serpent who devours his tail, and this
serpent is Budd and the world.
After these, a crowd of other banners, which no man could number, came
forward into sight; and the genius exclaimed:
I should never finish the detail of all the systems of faith which
divide these nations. Here the hordes of Tartars adore, in the forms
of beasts, birds, and insects, the good and evil Genii; who, under a
principal, but indolent god, govern the universe. In their idolatry
they call to mind the ancient paganism of the West. You observe the
fantastical dress of the Chamans; who, under a robe of leather, hung
round with bells and rattles, idols of iron, claws of birds, skins of
snakes and heads of owls, invoke, with frantic cries and factitious
convulsions, the dead to deceive the living. There, the black tribes of
Africa exhibit the same opinions in the worship of their fetiches. See
the inhabitant of Juida worship god in a great snake, which, unluckily,
the swine delight to eat.* The Teleutean attires his god in a coat of
several colors, like a Russian soldier.** The Kamchadale, observing that
everything goes wrong in his frozen country, considers god as an old
ill-natured man, smoking his pipe and hunting foxes and martins in his
sledge.***
* It frequently happens that the swine devour the very
species of serpents the negroes adore, which is a source of
great desolation in the country. President de Brosses has
given us, in his History of the Fetiche, a curious
collection of absurdities of this nature.
** The Teleuteans, a Tartar nation, paint God as wearing a
vesture of all colors, particularly red and green; and as
these constitute the uniform of the Russian dragoons, they
compare him to this description of soldiers. The Egyptians
also dress the God World in a garment of every color.
Eusebius Proep. Evang. p 115. The Teleuteans call God Bou,
which is only an alteration of Boudd, the God Egg and World.
*** Consult upon this subject a work entitled, Description
des Peuples, soumis a la Russie, and it will be found that
the picture is not overcharged.
But you may still behold a hundred savage nations who have none of the
ideas of civilized people respecting God, the soul, another world, and a
future life; who have formed no system of worship; and who nevertheless
enjoy the rich gifts of nature in the irreligion in which she has
created them.
CHAPTER XXI.
PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS CONTRADICTIONS.
The various groups having taken their places, an unbounded silence
succeeded to the murmurs of the multitude; and the legislator said:
Chiefs and doctors of mankind! You remark how the nations, living apart,
have hitherto followed different paths, each believing its own to be
that of truth. If, however, truth is one, and opinions are various, it
is evident that some are in error. If, then, such vast numbers of us
are in the wrong, who shall dare to say, "I am in the right?" Begin,
therefore, by being indulgent in your dissensions. Let us all seek truth
as if no one possessed it. The opinions which to this day have governed
the world, originating from chance, propagated in obscurity, admitted
without discussion, accredited by a love of novelty and imitation, have
usurped their empire in a clandestine manner. It is time, if they are
well founded, to give a solemn stamp to their certainty, and legitimize
their existence. Let us summon them this day to a general scrutiny, let
each propound his creed, let the whole assembly be the judge, and let
that alone be acknowledged as true which is so for the whole human race.
Then, by order of position, the representative of the first standard on
the left was allowed to speak:
"You are not permitted to doubt," said their chief, "that our doctrine
is the only true and infallible one. FIRST, it is revealed by God
himself--"
"So is ours," cried all the other standards, "and you are not permitted
to doubt it."
"But at least," said the legislator, "you must prove it, for we cannot
believe what we do not know."
"Our doctrine is proved," replied the first standard, "by numerous
facts, by a multitude of miracles, by resurrections of the dead, by
rivers dried up, by mountains removed--"
"And we also have numberless miracles," cried all the others, and each
began to recount the most incredible things.
"THEIR miracles," said the first standard, "are imaginary, or the
fictions of the evil spirit, who has deluded them."
"They are yours," said the others, "that are imaginary;" and each group,
speaking of itself, cried out:
"None but ours are true, all the others are false."
The legislator then asked: "Have you living witnesses of the facts?"
"No," replied they all; "the facts are ancient, the witnesses are dead,
but their writings remain."
"Be it so," replied the legislator; "but if they contradict each other,
who shall reconcile them?"
"Just judge!" cried one of the standards, "the proof that our witnesses
have seen the truth is, that they died to confirm it; and our faith is
sealed by the blood of martyrs."
"And ours too," said the other standards; "we have thousands of martyrs
who have died in the most excruciating torments, without ever denying
the truth."
Then the Christians of every sect, the Mussulmans, the Indians, the
Japanese, recited endless legends of confessors, martyrs, penitents,
etc.
And one of these parties, having denied the martyrology of the others:
"Well," said they, "we will then die ourselves to prove the truth of our
belief."
And instantly a crowd of men, of every religion and of every sect,
presented themselves to suffer the torments of death. Many even began
to tear their arms, and to beat their heads and breasts, without
discovering any symptom of pain.
But the legislator, preventing them--"O men!" said he, "hear my words
with patience. If you die to prove that two and two make four, will your
death add any thing to this truth?"
"No!" answered all.
"And if you die to prove that they make five, will that make them five?"
Again they all answered, "No."
"What, then, is your persuasion to prove, if it changes not the
existence of things? Truth is one--your persuasions are various; many of
you, therefore, are in error. Now, if man, as is evident, can persuade
himself of error, what is the persuasion of man to prove?
"If error has its martyrs, what is the sure criterion of truth?
"If the evil spirit works miracles, what is the distinctive character of
God?
"Besides, why resort forever to incomplete and insufficient miracles?
Instead of changing the course of nature, why not rather change
opinions? Why murder and terrify men, instead of instructing and
correcting them?
"O credulous, but opinionated mortals! none of us know what was done
yesterday, what is doing to-day even under our eyes; and we swear to
what was done two thousand years ago!
"Oh, the weakness and yet the pride of men! The laws of nature
are unchangeable and profound--our minds are full of illusion and
frivolity--and yet we would comprehend every thing--determine every
thing! Forgetting that it is easier for the whole human race to be in
error, than to change the nature of the smallest atom."
"Well, then," said one of the doctors, "let us lay aside the evidence
of fact, since it is uncertain; let us come to argument--to the proofs
inherent in the doctrine."
Then came forward, with a look of confidence, an Iman of the law of
Mahomet; and, having advanced into the circle, turned towards Mecca, and
recited with great fervor his confession of faith. "Praise be to God,"
said he, with a solemn and imposing voice, "the light shines with full
evidence, and the truth has no need of examination." Then, showing the
Koran, he exclaimed: "Here is the light of truth in its proper essence.
There is no doubt in this book. It conducts with safety him who walks
in darkness, and who receives without discussion the divine word which
descended on the prophet, to save the simple and confound the wise.
God has established Mahomet his minister on earth; he has given him the
world, that he may subdue with the sword whoever shall refuse to receive
his law. Infidels dispute, and will not believe; their obduracy comes
from God, who has hardened their hearts to deliver them to dreadful
punishments."*
* This passage contains the sense and nearly the very words
of the first chapter of the Koran; and the reader will
observe in general, that, in the pictures that follow, the
writer has endeavored to give as accurately as possible the
letter and spirit of the opinions of each party.
At these words a violent murmur arose on all sides, and silenced the
speaker. "Who is this man," cried all the groups, "who thus insults
us without a cause? What right has he to impose his creed on us as
conqueror and tyrant? Has not God endowed us, as well as him, with eyes,
understanding, and reason? And have we not an equal right to use them,
in choosing what to believe and what to reject? If he attacks us, shall
we not defend ourselves? If he likes to believe without examination,
must we therefore not examine before we believe?
"And what is this luminous doctrine that fears the light? What is
this apostle of a God of clemency, who preaches nothing but murder and
carnage? What is this God of justice, who punishes blindness which
he himself has made? If violence and persecution are the arguments of
truth, are gentleness and charity the signs of falsehood?"
A man then advancing from a neighboring group, said to the Iman:
"Admitting that Mahomet is the apostle of the best doctrine,--the
prophet of the true religion,--have the goodness at least to tell
us whether, in the practice of his doctrine, we are to follow his
son-in-law Ali, or his vicars Omar and Aboubekre?"*
* These are the two grand parties into which the Mussulmans
are divided. The Turks have embraced the second, the
Persians the first.
At the sound of these names a terrible schism arose among the Mussulmans
themselves. The partisans of Ali and those of Omar, calling out heretics
and blasphemers, loaded each other with execrations. The quarrel became
so violent that neighboring groups were obliged to interfere, to prevent
their coming to blows. At length, tranquillity being somewhat restored,
the legislator said to the Imans:
"See the consequences of your principles! If you yourselves were to
carry them into practice, you would destroy each other to the last man.
Is it not the first law of God that man should live?"
Then, addressing himself to the other groups, he continued:
"Doubtless this intolerant and exclusive spirit shocks every idea of
justice, and overturns the whole foundation of morals and society; but
before we totally reject this code of doctrine, is it not proper to hear
some of its dogmas? Let us not pronounce on the forms, without having
some knowledge of the substance."
The groups having consented, the Iman began to expound how God, having
sent to the nations lost in idolatry twenty-four thousand prophets, had
finally sent the last, the seal and perfection of all, Mahomet; on whom
be the salvation of peace: how, to prevent the divine word from being
any longer perverted by infidels, the supreme goodness had itself
written the pages of the Koran. Then, explaining the particular dogmas
of Islamism, the Iman unfolded how the Koran, partaking of the divine
nature, was uncreated and eternal, like its author: how it had been sent
leaf by leaf, in twenty-four thousand nocturnal apparitions of the angel
Gabriel: how the angel announced himself by a gentle knocking, which
threw the prophet into a cold sweat: how in the vision of one night
he had travelled over ninety heavens, riding on the beast Borack, half
horse and half woman: how, endowed with the gift of miracles, he walked
in the sunshine without a shadow, turned dry trees to green, filled
wells and cisterns with water, and split in two the body of the moon:
how, by divine command, Mahomet had propagated, sword in hand, the
religion the most worthy of God by its sublimity, and the most proper
for men by the simplicity of its practice; since it consisted in only
eight or ten points:--To profess the unity of God; to acknowledge
Mahomet as his only prophet; to pray five times a day; to fast one month
in the year; to go to Mecca once in our life; to pay the tenth of all
we possess; to drink no wine; to eat no pork; and to make war upon
the infidels.* He taught that by these means every Mussulman becoming
himself an apostle and martyr, should enjoy in this world many
blessings; and at his death, his soul, weighed in the balance of works,
and absolved by the two black angels, should pass the infernal pit on
the bridge as narrow as a hair and as sharp as the edge of a sword, and
should finally be received to a region of delight, which is watered with
rivers of milk and honey, and embalmed in all the perfumes of India
and Arabia; and where the celestial Houris--virgins always chaste--are
eternally crowning with repeated favors the elect of God, who preserve
an eternal youth.
* Whatever the advocates for the philosophy and civilization
of the Turks may assert, to make war upon infidels is
considered by them as an obligatory precept and an act of
religion. See Reland de Relig. Mahom.
At these words an involuntary smile was seen on all their lips; and the
various groups, reasoning on these articles of faith, exclaimed with one
voice:
"Is it possible that reasonable beings can admit such reveries? Would
you not think it a chapter from The Thousand and One Nights?"
A Samoyede advanced into the circle: "The paradise of Mahomet," said
he, "appears to me very good; but one of the means of gaining it is
embarrassing: for if we must neither eat nor drink between the rising
and setting sun, as he has ordered, how are we to practise that fast in
my country, where the sun continues above the horizon six months without
setting?"
"That is impossible," cried all the Mussulman doctors, to support the
teaching of the prophet; but a hundred nations having attested the fact,
the infallibility of Mahomet could not but receive a severe shock.
"It is singular," said an European, "that God should be constantly
revealing what takes place in heaven, without ever instructing us what
is doing on the earth."
"For my part," said an American, "I find a great difficulty in the
pilgrimage. For suppose twenty-five years to a generation, and only a
hundred millions of males on the globe,--each being obliged to go to
Mecca once in his life,--there must be four millions a year on the
journey; and as it would be impracticable for them to return the same
year, the numbers would be doubled--that is, eight millions: where
would you find provisions, lodgings, water, vessels, for this universal
procession? Here must be miracles indeed!"
"The proof," said a catholic doctor, "that the religion of Mahomet is
not revealed, is that the greater part of the ideas which serve for its
basis existed a long time before, and that it is only a confused mixture
of truths disfigured and taken from our holy religion and from that
of the Jews; which an ambitious man has made to serve his projects of
domination, and his worldly views. Look through his book; you will see
nothing there but the histories of the Bible and the Gospel travestied
into absurd fables--into a tissue of vague and contradictory
declamations, and ridiculous or dangerous precepts.
"Analyze the spirit of these precepts, and the conduct of their apostle;
you will find there an artful and audacious character, which, to obtain
its end, works ably it is true, on the passions of the people it had
to govern. It is speaking to simple men, and it entertains them with
miracles; they are ignorant and jealous, and it flatters their vanity
by despising science; they are poor and rapacious, and it excites their
cupidity by the hope of pillage; having nothing at first to give them on
earth, it tells them of treasures in heaven; it teaches them to desire
death as a supreme good; it threatens cowards with hell; it rewards the
brave with paradise; it sustains the weak with the opinion of fatality;
in short, it produces the attachment it wants by all the allurements of
sense, and all the power of the passions.
"How different is the character of our religion! and how completely does
its empire, founded on the counteraction of the natural temper, and the
mortification of all our passions, prove its divine origin! How forcibly
does its mild and compassionate morality, its affections altogether
spiritual, attest its emanation from God! Many of its doctrines, it is
true, soar above the reach of the understanding, and impose on reason
a respectful silence; but this more fully demonstrates its revelation,
since the human mind could never have imagined such mysteries."
Then, holding the Bible in one hand and the four Gospels in the other,
the doctor began to relate that, in the beginning, God, after passing an
eternity in idleness, took the resolution, without any known cause, of
making the world out of nothing; that having created the whole universe
in six days, he found himself fatigued on the seventh; that having
placed the first human pair in a garden of delights, to make them
completely happy, he forbade their tasting a particular fruit which he
placed within their reach; that these first parents, having yielded
to the temptation, all their race (which were not yet born) had been
condemned to bear the penalty of a fault which they had not committed;
that, after having left the human race to damn themselves for four or
five thousand years, this God of mercy ordered a well beloved son, whom
he had engendered without a mother, and who was as old as himself, to go
and be put to death on the earth; and this for the salvation of
mankind; of whom much the greater portion, nevertheless, have ever since
continued in the way of perdition; that to remedy this new difficulty,
this same God, born of a virgin, having died and risen from the dead,
assumes a new existence every day, and in the form of a piece of bread,
multiplies himself by millions at the voice of one of the basest of
men. Then, passing on to the doctrine of the sacraments, he was going to
treat at large on the power of absolution and reprobation, of the means
of purging all sins by a little water and a few words, when, uttering
the words indulgence, power of the pope, sufficient grace, and
efficacious grace, he was interrupted by a thousand cries.
"It is a horrible abuse," cried the Lutherans, "to pretend to remit sins
for money."
"The notion of the real presence," cried the Calvinists, "is contrary to
the text of the Gospel."
"The pope has no right to decide anything of himself," cried the
Jansenists; and thirty other sects rising up, and accusing each other
of heresies and errors, it was no longer possible to hear anything
distinctly.
Silence being at last restored, the Mussulmans observed to the
legislator:
"Since you have rejected our doctrine as containing things incredible,
can you admit that of the Christians? Is not theirs still more contrary
to common sense and justice? A God, immaterial and infinite, to become
a man! to have a son as old as himself! This god-man to become bread,
to be eaten and digested! Have we any thing equal to that? Have the
Christians an exclusive right of setting up a blind faith? And will you
grant them privileges of belief to our detriment?"
Some savage tribes then advanced: "What!" said they, "because a man
and woman ate an apple six thousand years ago, all the human race
are damned? And you call God just? What tyrant ever rendered children
responsible for the faults of their fathers? What man can answer for the
actions of another? Does not this overturn every idea of justice and of
reason?"
Others exclaimed: "Where are the proofs, the witnesses of these
pretended facts? Can we receive them without examining the evidence? The
least action in a court of justice requires two witnesses; and we are
ordered to believe all this on mere tradition and hearsay!"
A Jewish Rabbin then addressing the assembly, said: "As to the
fundamental facts, we are sureties; but with regard to their form and
their application, the case is different, and the Christians are here
condemned by their own arguments. For they cannot deny that we are the
original source from which they are derived--the primitive stock on
which they are grafted; and hence the reasoning is very short: Either
our law is from God, and then theirs is a heresy, since it differs from
ours, or our law is not from God, and then theirs falls at the same
time."
"But you must make this distinction," replied the Christian: "Your law
is from God as typical and preparative, but not as final and absolute:
you are the image of which we are the substance."
"We know," replied the Rabbin, "that such are your pretensions; but they
are absolutely gratuitous and false. Your system turns altogether on
mystical meanings, visionary and allegorical interpretations.* With
violent distortions on the letter of our books, you substitute the most
chimerical ideas for the true ones, and find in them whatever pleases
you; as a roving imagination will find figures in the clouds. Thus
you have made a spiritual Messiah of that which, in the spirit of our
prophets, is only a temporal king. You have made a redemption of the
human race out of the simple re-establishment of our nation. Your
conception of the Virgin is founded on a single phrase, of which you
have changed the meaning. Thus you make from our Scriptures whatever
your fancy dictates; you even find there your trinity; though there is
not a word that has the most distant allusion to such a thing; and it is
an invention of profane writers, admitted into your system with a host
of other opinions, of every religion and of every sect, during the
anarchy of the first three centuries of your era."
* When we read the Fathers of the church, and see upon what
arguments they have built the edifice of religion, we are
inexpressibly astonished with their credulity or their
knavery: but allegory was the rage of that period; the
Pagans employed it to explain the actions of their gods, and
the Christians acted in the same spirit when they employed
it after their fashion.
At these words, the Christian doctors, crying sacrilege and blasphemy,
sprang forward in a transport of fury to fall upon the Jew; and a troop
of monks, in motley dresses of black and white, advanced with a standard
on which were painted pincers, gridirons, lighted fagots, and the words
Justice, Charity, Mercy.* "It is necessary," said they, "to make an
example of these impious wretches, and burn them for the glory of God."
They began even to prepare the pile, when a Mussulman answered in a
strain of irony:
"This, then, is that religion of peace, that meek and beneficent system
which you so much extol! This is that evangelical charity which combats
infidelity with persuasive mildness, and repays injuries with patience!
Ye hypocrites! It is thus that you deceive mankind--thus that you
propagate your accursed errors! When you were weak, you preached
liberty, toleration, peace; when you are strong, you practise
persecution and violence--"
* This description answers exactly to the banner of the
Inquisition of Spanish Jacobins.
And he was going to begin the history of the wars and slaughters of
Christianity, when the legislator, demanding silence, suspended this
scene of discord.
The monks, affecting a tone of meekness and humility, exclaimed: "It is
not ourselves that we would avenge; it is the cause of God; it is the
glory of God that we defend."
"And what right have you, more than we," said the Imans, "to constitute
yourselves the representatives of God? Have you privileges that we have
not? Are you not men like us?"
"To defend God," said another group, "to pretend to avenge him, is to
insult his wisdom and his power. Does he not know, better than men, what
befits his dignity?"
"Yes," replied the monks, "but his ways are secret."
"And it remains for you to prove," said the Rabbins, "that you have the
exclusive privilege of understanding them."
Then, proud of finding supporters to their cause, the Jews thought that
the books of Moses were going to be triumphant, when the Mobed (high
priest) of the Parses obtained leave to speak.
"We have heard," said he, "the account of the Jews and Christians of the
origin of the world; and, though greatly mutilated, we find in it some
facts which we admit. But we deny that they are to be attributed to the
legislator of the Hebrews. It was not he who made known to men these
sublime truths, these celestial events. It was not to him that God
revealed them, but to our holy prophet Zoroaster: and the proof of this
is in the very books that they refer to. Examine with attention the
laws, the ceremonies, the precepts established by Moses in those
books; you will not find the slightest indication, either expressed or
understood, of what constitutes the basis of the Jewish and Christian
theology. You nowhere find the least trace of the immortality of the
soul, or of a future life, or of heaven, or of hell, or of the revolt of
the principal angel, author of the evils of the human race. These ideas
were not known to Moses, and the reason is very obvious: it was not
till four centuries afterwards that Zoroaster first evangelized them in
Asia.*
* See the Chronology of the Twelve Ages, in which I conceive
myself to have clearly proved that Moses lived about 1,400
years before Jesus Christ, and Zoroaster about a thousand.
"Thus," continued the Mobed, turning to the Rabbins, "it was not till
after that epoch, that is to say, in the time of your first kings, that
these ideas began to appear in your writers; and then their appearance
was obscure and gradual, according to the progress of the political
relations between your ancestors and ours. It was especially when,
having been conquered by the kings of Nineveh and Babylon and
transported to the banks of the Tygris and the Euphrates, where they
resided for three successive generations, that they imbibed manners and
opinions which had been rejected as contrary to their law. When our
king Cyrus had delivered them from slavery, their heart was won to us
by gratitude; they became our disciples and imitators; and they admitted
our dogmas in the revision of their books;* for your Genesis, in
particular, was never the work of Moses, but a compilation drawn up
after the return from the Babylonian captivity, in which are inserted
the Chaldean opinions of the origin of the world.
* In the first periods of the Christian church, not only the
most learned of those who have since been denominated
heretics, but many of the orthodox conceived Moses to have
written neither the law nor the Pentateuch, but that the
work was a compilation made by the elders of the people and
the Seventy, who, after the death of Moses, collected his
scattered ordinances, and mixed with them things that were
extraneous; similar to what happened as to the Koran of
Mahomet. See Les Clementines, Homel. 2. sect. 51. and
Homel. 3. sect. 42.
Modern critics, more enlightened or more attentive than the
ancients, have found in Genesis in particular, marks of its
having been composed on the return from the captivity; but
the principal proofs have escaped them. These I mean to
exhibit in an analysis of the book of Genesis, in which I
shall demonstrate that the tenth chapter, among others,
which treats of the pretended generations of the man called
Noah, is a real geographical picture of the world, as it was
known to the Hebrews at the epoch of the captivity, which
was bounded by Greece or Hellas at the West, mount Caucasus
at the North, Persia at the East, and Arabia and Upper Egypt
at the South. All the pretended personages from Adam to
Abraham, or his father Terah, are mythological beings,
stars, constellations, countries. Adam is Bootes: Noah is
Osiris: Xisuthrus Janus, Saturn; that is to say Capricorn,
or the celestial Genius that opened the year. The
Alexandrian Chronicle says expressly, page 85, that Nimrod
was supposed by the Persians to be their first king, as
having invented the art of hunting, and that he was
translated into heaven, where he appears under the name of
Orion.
"At first the pure followers of the law, opposing to the emigrants the
letter of the text and the absolute silence of the prophet, endeavored
to repel these innovations; but they ultimately prevailed, and our
doctrine, modified by your ideas, gave rise to a new sect.
"You expected a king to restore your political independence; we
announced a God to regenerate and save mankind. From this combination of
ideas, your Essenians laid the foundation of Christianity: and whatever
your pretensions may be, Jews, Christians, Mussulmans, you are, in your
system of spiritual beings, only the blundering followers of Zoroaster."
The Mobed, then passing on to the details of his religion, quoting from
the Zadder and the Zendavesta, recounted, in the same order as they are
found in the book of Genesis, the creation of the world in six gahans,*
the formation of a first man and a first woman, in a divine place, under
the reign of perfect good; the introduction of evil into the world by
the great snake, emblem of Ahrimanes; the revolt and battles of the
Genius of evil and darkness against Ormuzd, God of good and of light;
the division of the angels into white and black, or good and bad; their
hierarchal orders, cherubim, seraphim, thrones, dominions, etc.; the end
of the world at the close of six thousand years; the coming of the
lamb, the regenerator of nature; the new world; the future life, and the
regions of happiness and misery; the passage of souls over the bridge
of the bottomless pit; the celebration of the mysteries of Mithras;
the unleavened bread which the initiated eat; the baptism of new-born
children; the unction of the dead; the confession of sins; and, in
a word, he recited so many things analagous to those of the three
preceding religions, that his discourse seemed like a commentary or a
continuation of the Koran or the Apocalypse.**
* Or periods, or in six gahan-bars, that is six periods of
time. These periods are what Zoroaster calls the thousands
of God or of light, meaning the six summer months. In the
first, say the Persians, God created (arranged in order) the
heavens; in the second the waters; in the third the earth;
in the fourth trees; in the fifth animals; and in the sixth
man; corresponding with the account in Genesis. For
particulars see Hyde, ch. 9, and Henry Lord, ch. 2, on the
religion of the ancient Persians. It is remarkable that the
same tradition is found in the sacred books of the
Etrurians, which relate that the fabricator of all things
had comprised the duration of his work in a period of twelve
thousand years, which period was distributed to the twelve
houses of the sun. In the first thousand, God made heaven
and earth; in the second the firmament; in the third the sea
and the waters; in the fourth the sun, moon and stars; in
the fifth the souls of animals, birds, and reptiles; in the
sixth man. See Suidas, at the word Tyrrhena; which shows
first the identity of their theological and astrological
opinions; and, secondly, the identity, or rather confusion
of ideas, between absolute and systematical creation; that
is, the periods assigned for renewing the face of nature,
which were at first the period of the year, and afterwards
periods of 60, of 600, of 25,000, of 36,000 and of 432,000
years.
** The modern Parses and the ancient Mithriacs, who are the
same sect, observe all the Christian sacraments, even the
laying on of hands in confirmation. The priest of Mithra,
says Tertullian, (de Proescriptione, ch. 40) promises
absolution from sin on confession and baptism; and, if I
rightly remember, Mithra marks his soldiers in the forehead,
with the chrism called in the Egyptian Kouphi; he celebrates
the sacrifice of bread, which is the resurrection, and
presents the crown to his followers, menacing them at the
same time with the sword, etc.
In these mysteries they tried the courage of the initiated
with a thousand terrors, presenting fire to his face, a
sword to his breast, etc.; they also offered him a crown,
which he refused, saying, God is my crown: and this crown is
to be seen in the celestial sphere by the side of Bootes.
The personages in these mysteries were distinguished by the
names of the animal constellations. The ceremony of mass is
nothing more than an imitation of these mysteries and those
of Eleusis. The benediction, the Lord be with you, is a
literal translation of the formula of admission chou-k, am,
p-ka. See Beausob. Hist. Du Manicheisme, vol. ii.
But the Jewish, Christian, and Mahometan doctors, crying out against
this recital, and treating the Parses as idolaters and worshippers of
fire, charged them with falsehood, interpolations, falsification of
facts; and there arose a violent dispute as to the dates of the
events, their order and succession, the origin of the doctrines, their
transmission from nation to nation, the authenticity of the books on
which they are founded, the epoch of their composition, the character
of their compilers, and the validity of their testimony. And the various
parties, pointing out reciprocally to each other, the contradictions,
improbabilities, and forgeries, accused one another of having
established their belief on popular rumors, vague traditions, and absurd
fables, invented without discernment, and admitted without examination
by unknown, partial, or ignorant writers, at uncertain or unknown
epochs.
A great murmur now arose from under the standards of the various Indian
sects; and the Bramins, protesting against the pretensions of the Jews
and the Parses, said:
"What are these new and almost unheard of nations, who arrogantly set
themselves up as the sources of the human race, and the depositaries of
its archives? To hear their calculations of five or six thousand years,
it would seem that the world was of yesterday; whereas our monuments
prove a duration of many thousands of centuries. And for what reason are
their books to be preferred to ours? Are then the Vedes, the Chastres,
and the Pourans inferior to the Bibles, the Zendavestas, and the
Zadders?* And is not the testimony of our fathers and our gods as
valid as that of the fathers and the gods of the West? Ah! if it were
permitted to reveal our mysteries to profane men! if a sacred veil did
not justly conceal them from every eye!"
These are the sacred volumes of the Hindoos; they are sometimes written
Vedams, Pouranams, Chastrans, because the Hindoos, like the Persians,
are accustomed to give a nasal sound to the terminations of their words,
which we represent by the affixes on and an, and the Portuguese by the
affixes om and am. Many of these books have been translated, thanks
to the liberal spirit of Mr. Hastings, who has founded at Calcutta a
literary society, and a printing press. At the same time, however,
that we express our gratitude to this society, we must be permitted to
complain of its exclusive spirit; the number of copies printed of each
book being such as it is impossible to purchase them even in England;
they are wholly in the hands of the East India proprietors. Scarcely
even is the Asiatic Miscellany known in Europe; and a man must be very
learned in oriental antiquity before he so much as hears of the Jones's,
the Wilkins's, and the Halhed's, etc. As to the sacred books of the
Hindoos, all that are yet in our hands are the Bhagvat Geeta, the
Ezour-Vedam, the Bagavadam, and certain fragments of the Chastres
printed at the end of the Bhagvat Geeta. These books are in Indostan
what the Old and New Testament are in Christendom, the Koran in Turkey,
the Zadder and the Zendavesta among the Parses, etc. When I have taken
an extensive survey of their contents, I have sometimes asked myself,
what would be the loss to the human race if a new Omar condemned them
to the flames; and, unable to discover any mischief that would ensue, I
call the imaginary chest that contains them, the box of Pandora.
The Bramins stopping short at these words: "How can we admit your
doctrine," said the legislator, "if you will not make it known? And how
did its first authors propagate it, when, being alone possessed of it,
their own people were to them profane? Did heaven reveal it to be kept a
secret?"*
* The Vedas or Vedams are the sacred volumes of the Hindoos,
as the Bibles with us. They are three in number; the Rick
Veda, the Yadjour Veda, and the Sama Veda; they are so
scarce in India, that the English could with great
difficulty find an original one, of which a copy is
deposited in the British Museum; they who reckon four Vedas,
include among them the Attar Veda, concerning ceremonies,
but which is lost. There are besides commentaries named
Upanishada, one of which was published by Anquetil du Peron,
and entitled Oupnekhat, a curious work. The date of these
books is more than twenty-five centuries prior to our era;
their contents prove that all the reveries of the Greek
metaphysicians come from India and Egypt. Since the year
1788, the learned men of England are working in India a mine
of literature totally unknown in Europe, and which proves
that the civilization of India ascends to a very remote
antiquity. After the Vedas come the Chastras amounting to
six. They treat of theology and the Sciences. Afterwards
eighteen Pouranas, treating of Mythology and History. See
the Bahgouet-guita, the Baga Vadam, and the Ezour-Vedam,
etc.
But the Bramins persisting in their silence: "Let them have the honor of
the secret," said a European: "Their doctrine is now divulged; we have
their books, and I can give you the substance of them."
Then beginning with an abstract of the four Vedes, the eighteen Pourans,
and the five or six Chastres, he recounted how a being, infinite,
eternal, immaterial and round, after having passed an eternity in
self-contemplation, and determining at last to manifest himself,
separated the male and female faculties which were in him, and performed
an act of generation, of which the Lingam remains an emblem; how that
first act gave birth to three divine powers, Brama, Bichen or Vichenou,
and Chib or Chiven;* whose functions were--the first to create, the
second to preserve, and the third to destroy, or change the form of
the universe. Then, detailing the history of their operations and
adventures, he explained how Brama, proud of having created the world
and the eight bobouns, or spheres of probation, thought himself superior
to Chib, his equal; how his pride brought on a battle between them, in
which these celestial globes were crushed like a basket of eggs; how
Brama, vanquished in this conflict, was reduced to serve as a pedestal
to Chib, metamorphosed into a Lingam; how Vichenou, the god mediator,
has taken at different times to preserve the world, nine mortal forms
of animals; how first, in shape of a fish, he saved from the universal
deluge a family who repeopled the earth; how afterwards, in the form of
a tortoise,** he drew from the sea of milk the mountain Mandreguiri
(the pole); then, becoming a boar, he tore the belly of the giant
Ereuniachessen, who was drowning the earth in the abyss of Djole, from
whence he drew it out with his tusks; how, becoming incarnate in a black
shepherd, and under the name of Christ-en, he delivered the world of the
enormous serpent Calengem, and then crushed his head, after having been
wounded by him in the heel.
* These names are differently pronounced according to the
different dialects; thus they say Birmah, Bremma, Brouma.
Bichen has been turned into Vichen by the easy exchange of a
B for a V, and into Vichenou by means of a grammatical
affix. In the same manner Chib, which is synonymous with
Satan, and signifies adversary, is frequently written Chiba
and Chiv-en; he is called also Rouder and Routr-en, that is,
the destroyer.
** This is the constellation testudo, or the lyre, which was
at first a tortoise, on account of its slow motion round the
Pole; then a lyre, because it is the shell of this reptile
on which the strings of the lyre are mounted. See an
excellent memoir of M. Dupuis sur l'Origine des
Constellations.
Then, passing on to the history of the secondary Genii, he related how
the Eternal, to display his own glory, created various orders of angels,
whose business it was to sing his praises and to direct the universe;
how a part of these angels revolted under the guidance of an ambitious
chief, who strove to usurp the power of God, and to govern all; how God
plunged them into a world of darkness, there to undergo the punishment
for their crimes; how at last, touched with compassion, he consented to
release them, to receive them into favor, after they should undergo a
long series of probations; how, after creating for this purpose fifteen
orbits or regions of planets, and peopling them with bodies, he ordered
these rebel angels to undergo in them eighty-seven transmigrations; he
then explained how souls, thus purified, returned to the first source,
to the ocean of life and animation from which they had proceeded; and
since all living creatures contain portions of this universal soul,
he taught how criminal it was to deprive them of it. He was finally
proceeding to explain the rites and ceremonies, when, speaking of
offerings and libations of milk and butter made to gods of copper and
wood, and then of purifications by the dung and urine of cows,
there arose a universal murmur, mixed with peals of laughter, which
interrupted the orator.
Each of the different groups began to reason on that religion: "They are
idolators," said the Mussulmans; "and should be exterminated." "They are
deranged in their intellect," said the followers of Confucius; "we
must try to cure them." "What ridiculous gods," said others, "are these
puppets, besmeared with grease and smoke! Are gods to be washed
like dirty children, from whom you must brush away the flies, which,
attracted by honey, are fouling them with their excrements!"
But a Bramin exclaimed with indignation: "These are profound
mysteries,--emblems of truth, which you are not worthy to hear."
"And in what respect are you more worthy than we?" exclaimed a Lama of
Tibet. "Is it because you pretend to have issued from the head of Brama,
and the rest of the human race from the less noble parts of his body?
But to support the pride of your distinctions of origin and castes,
prove to us in the first place that you are different from other men;
establish, in the next place, as historical facts, the allegories
which you relate; show us, indeed, that you are the authors of all this
doctrine; for we will demonstrate, if necessary, that you have only
stolen and disfigured it; that you are only the imitators of the ancient
paganism of the West; to which, by an ill assorted mixture, you have
allied the pure and spiritual doctrine of our gods--a doctrine totally
detached from the senses, and entirely unknown on earth till Beddou
taught it to the nations."*
* All the ancient opinions of the Egyptian and Grecian
theologians are to be found in India, and they appear to
have been introduced, by means of the commerce of Arabia and
the vicinity of Persia, time immemorial.
A number of groups having asked what was this doctrine, and who was this
god, of whom the greater part had never heard the name, the Lama resumed
and said:
"In the beginning, a sole-existent and self-existent God, having passed
an eternity in the contemplation of his own being, resolved to manifest
his perfections out of himself, and created the matter of the world.
The four elements being produced, but still in a state of confusion, he
breathed on the face of the waters, which swelled like an immense bubble
in form of an egg, which unfolding, became the vault or orb of heaven,
enclosing the world.* Having made the earth, and the bodies of animals,
this God, essence of motion, imparted to them a part of his own being
to animate them; for this reason, the soul of everything that breathes
being a portion of the universal soul, no one of them can perish; they
only change their form and mould in passing successively into different
bodies. Of all these forms, the one most pleasing to God is that of
man, as most resembling his own perfections. When a man, by an absolute
disengagement from his senses, is wholly absorbed in self-contemplation,
he then discovers the divinity, and becomes himself God. Of all the
incarnations of this kind that God has hitherto taken, the greatest
and most solemn was that in which he appeared thirty centuries ago in
Kachemire, under the name of Fot or Beddou, to preach the doctrines of
self-denial and self-annihilation."
* This cosmogony of the Lamas, the Bonzes, and even the
Bramins, as Henry Lord asserts, is literally that of the
ancient Egyptians. The Egyptians, says Porphyry, call Kneph,
intelligence, or efficient cause of the universe. They
relate that this God vomited an egg, from which was produced
another God named Phtha or Vulcan, (igneous principle or the
sun) and they add, that this egg is the world. Euseb.
Proep. Evang. p. 115.
They represent, says the same author in another place, the
God Kneph, or efficient cause, under the form of a man in
deep blue (the color of the sky) having in his hand a
sceptre, a belt round his body, and a small bonnet royal of
light feathers on his head, to denote how very subtile and
fugacious the idea of that being is. Upon which I shall
observe that Kneph in Hebrew signifies a wing, a feather,
and that this color of sky-blue is to be found in the
majority of the Indian Gods, and is, under the name of
Narayan, one of their most distinguishing epithets.
Then, pursuing the history of Fot, the Lama continued:
"He was born from the right flank of a virgin of royal blood, who did
not cease to be a virgin for having become a mother; that the king of
the country, uneasy at his birth, wished to destroy him, and for this
purpose ordered a massacre of all the males born at that period, that
being saved by shepherds, Beddou lived in the desert till the age of
thirty years, at which time he began his mission to enlighten men and
cast out devils; that he performed a multitude of the most astonishing
miracles; that he spent his life in fasting and severe penitence, and at
his death, bequeathed to his disciples a book containing his doctrines."
And the Lama began to read:
"He that leaveth his father and mother to follow me," says Fot, "becomes
a perfect Samanean (a heavenly man).
"He that practices my precepts to the fourth degree of perfection,
acquires the faculty of flying in the air, of moving heaven and earth,
of prolonging or shortening his life (rising from the dead).
"The Samanean despises riches, and uses only what is strictly necessary;
he mortifies his body, silences his passions, desires nothing, forms no
attachments, meditates my doctrines without ceasing, endures injuries
with patience, and bears no malice to his neighbor.
"Heaven and earth shall perish," says Fot: "despise therefore your
bodies, which are composed of the four perishable elements, and think
only of your immortal soul.
"Listen not to the flesh: fear and sorrow spring from the passions:
stifle the passions and you destroy fear and sorrow.
"Whoever dies without having embraced my religion," says Fot, "returns
among men, until he embraces it."
The Lama was going on with his reading, when the Christians interrupted
him, crying out that this was their own religion adulterated--that Fot
was no other than Jesus himself disfigured, and that the Lamas were the
Nestorians and the Manicheans disguised and bastardized.*
* This is asserted by our missionaries, and among others by
Georgi in his unfinished work of the Thibetan alphabet: but
if it can be proved that the Manicheans were but
plagiarists, and the ignorant echo of a doctrine that
existed fifteen hundred years before them, what becomes of
the declarations of Georgi? See upon this subject, Beausob.
Hist. du Manicheisme.
But the Lama, supported by the Chamans, Bonzes, Gonnis, Talapoins of
Siam, of Ceylon, of Japan, and of China, proved to the Christians, even
from their own authors, that the doctrine of the Samaneans was known
through the East more than a thousand years before the Christian era;
that their name was cited before the time of Alexander, and that Boutta,
or Beddou, was known before Jesus.*
* The eastern writers in general agree in placing the birth
of Beddou 1027 years before Jesus Christ, which makes him
the contemporary of Zoroaster, with whom, in my opinion,
they confound him. It is certain that his doctrine
notoriously existed at that epoch; it is found entire in
that of Orpheus, Pythagoras, and the Indian gymnosophists.
But the gymnosophists are cited at the time of Alexander as
an ancient sect already divided into Brachmans and
Samaneans. See Bardesanes en Saint Jerome, Epitre a Jovien.
Pythagoras lived in the ninth century before Jesus Christ;
See chronology of the twelve ages; and Orpheus is of still
greater antiquity. If, as is the case, the doctrine of
Pythagoras and that of Orpheus are of Egyptian origin, that
of Beddou goes back to the common source; and in reality the
Egyptian priests recite, that Hermes as he was dying said:
"I have hitherto lived an exile from my country, to which I
now return. Weep not for me, I ascend to the celestial
abode where each of you will follow in his turn: there God
is: this life is only death."--Chalcidius in Thinaeum.
Such was the profession of faith of the Samaneans, the
sectaries of Orpheus, and the Pythagoreans. Farther, Hermes
is no other than Beddou himself; for among the Indians,
Chinese, Lamas, etc., the planet Mercury and the
corresponding day of the week (Wednesday) bear the name of
Beddou, and this accounts for his being placed in the rank
of mythological beings, and discovers the illusion of his
pretended existence as a man; since it is evident that
Mercury was not a human being, but the Genius or Decan, who,
placed at the summer solstice, opened the Egyptian year;
hence his attributes taken from the constellation Syrius,
and his name of Anubis, as well as that of Esculapius,
having the figure of a man and the head of a dog: hence his
serpent, which is the Hydra, emblem of the Nile (Hydor,
humidity); and from this serpent he seems to have derived
his name of Hermes, as Remes (with a schin) in the oriental
languages, signifies serpent. Now Beddou and Hermes being
the same names, it is manifest of what antiquity is the
system ascribed to the former. As to the name of Samanean,
it is precisely that of Chaman, still preserved in Tartary,
China, and India. The interpretation given to it is, man of
the woods, a hermit mortifying the flesh, such being the
characteristic of this sect; but its literal meaning is,
celestial (Samaoui) and explains the system of those who are
called by it.--The system is the same as that of the
sectaries of Orpheus, of the Essenians, of the ancient
Anchorets of Persia, and the whole eastern country. See
Porphyry, de Abstin. Animal.
These celestial and penitent men carried in India their
insanity to such an extreme as to wish not to touch the
earth, and they accordingly lived in cages suspended from
the trees, where the people, whose admiration was not less
absurd, brought them provisions. During the night there
were frequent robberies, rapes and murders, and it was at
length discovered that they were committed by those men,
who, descending from their cages, thus indemnified
themselves for their restraint during the day. The Bramins,
their rivals, embraced the opportunity of exterminating
them; and from that time their name in India has been
synonymous with hypocrite. See Hist. de la Chine, in 5
vols. quarto, at the note page 30; Hist. de Huns, 2 vols.
and preface to the Ezour-Vedam.
Then, retorting the pretensions of the Christians against themselves:
"Prove to us," said the Lama, "that you are not Samaneans degenerated,
and that the man you make the author of your sect is not Fot himself
disguised. Prove to us by historical facts that he even existed at the
epoch you pretend; for, it being destitute of authentic testimony,* we
absolutely deny it; and we maintain that your very gospels are only the
books of some Mithriacs of Persia, and the Essenians of Syria, who were
a branch of reformed Samaneans."**
* There are absolutely no other monuments of the existence
of Jesus Christ as a human being, than a passage in Josephus
(Antiq. Jud. lib. 18, c.3,) a single phrase in Tacitus
(Annal. lib. 15, c. 44), and the Gospels. But the passage
in Josephus is unanimously acknowledged to be apocryphal,
and to have been interpolated towards the close of the third
century, (See Trad. de joseph, par M. Gillet); and that of
Tacitus in so vague and so evidently taken from the
deposition of the Christians before the tribunals, that it
may be ranked in the class of evangelical records. It
remains to enquire of what authority are these records.
"All the world knows," says Faustus, who, though a
Manichean, was one of the most learned men of the third
century, "All the world knows that the gospels were neither
written by Jesus Christ, nor his apostles, but by certain
unknown persons, who rightly judging that they should not
obtain belief respecting things which they had not seen,
placed at the head of their recitals the names of
contemporary apostles." See Beausob. vol. i. and Hist. des
Apologistes de la Relig. Chret. par Burigni, a sagacious
writer, who has demonstrated the absolute uncertainty of
those foundations of the Christian religion; so that the
existence of Jesus is no better proved than that of Osiris
and Hercules, or that of Fot or Beddou, with whom, says M.
de Guignes, the Chinese continually confound him, for they
never call Jesus by any other name than Fot. Hist. de Huns.
** That is to say, from the pious romances formed out of the
sacred legends of the mysteries of Mithra, Ceres, Isis,
etc., from whence are equally derived the books of the
Hindoos and the Bonzes. Our missionaries have long remarked
a striking resemblance between those books and the gospels.
M. Wilkins expressly mentions it in a note in the Bhagvat
Geeta. All agree that Krisna, Fot, and Jesus have the same
characteristic features: but religious prejudice has stood
in the way of drawing from this circumstance the proper and
natural inference. To time and reason must it be left to
display the truth.
At these words, the Christians set up a general cry, and a new dispute
was about to begin; when a number of Chinese Chamans, and Talapoins of
Siam, came forward and said that they would settle the whole
controversy. And one of them speaking for the whole exclaimed: "It is
time to put an end to these frivolous contests by drawing aside the veil
from the interior doctrine that Fot himself revealed to his disciples on
his death bed.*
* The Budsoists have two doctrines, the one public and
ostensible, the other interior and secret, precisely like
the Egyptian priests. It may be asked, why this distinction?
It is, that as the public doctrine recommends offerings,
expiations, endowments, etc., the priests find their profit
in preaching it to the people; whereas the other, teaching
the vanity of worldly things, and attended with no lucre, it
is thought proper to make it known only to adepts. Can the
teachers and followers of this religion be better classed
than under the heads of knavery and credulity?
"All these theological opinions," continued he, "are but chimeras. All
the stories of the nature of the gods, of their actions and their lives,
are but allegories and mythological emblems, under which are enveloped
ingenious ideas of morals, and the knowledge of the operations of nature
in the action of the elements and the movement of the planets.
"The truth is, that all is reduced to nothing--that all is illusion,
appearance, dream; that the moral metempsychosis is only the figurative
sense of the physical metempsychosis, or the successive movement of
the elements of bodies which perish not, but which, having composed one
body, pass when that is dissolved, into other mediums and form other
combinations. The soul is but the vital principle which results from
the properties of matter, and from the action of the elements in those
bodies where they create a spontaneous movement. To suppose that this
product of the play of the organs, born with them, matured with them,
and which sleeps with them, can subsist when they cease, is the romance
of a wandering imagination, perhaps agreeable enough, but really
chimerical.
"God itself is nothing more than the moving principle, the occult force
inherent in all beings--the sum of their laws and properties--the
animating principle; in a word, the soul of the universe; which on
account of the infinite variety of its connections and its operations,
sometimes simple, sometimes multiple, sometimes active, sometimes
passive, has always presented to the human mind an unsolvable enigma.
All that man can comprehend with certainty is, that matter does not
perish; that it possesses essentially those properties by which the
world is held together like a living and organized being; that the
knowledge of these laws with respect to man is what constitutes wisdom;
that virtue and merit consist in their observance; and evil, sin, and
vice, in the ignorance and violation of them; that happiness and misery
result from these by the same necessity which makes heavy bodies descend
and light ones rise, and by a fatality of causes and effects, whose
chain extends from the smallest atom to the greatest of the heavenly
bodies."*
* These are the very expressions of La Loubre, in his
description of the kingdom of Siam and the theology of the
Bronzes. Their dogmas, compared with those of the ancient
philosophers of Greece and Italy, give a complete
representation of the whole system of the Stoics and
Epicureans, mixed with astrological superstitious, and some
traits of Pythagorism.
At these words, a crowd of theologians of every sect cried out that this
doctrine was materialism, and that those who profess it were impious
atheists, enemies to God and man, who must be exterminated. "Very well,"
replied the Chamans, "suppose we are in error, which is not impossible,
since the first attribute of the human mind is to be subject to
illusion; but what right have you to take away from men like yourselves,
the life which Heaven has given them? If Heaven holds us guilty and in
abhorrence, why does it impart to us the same blessings as to you? And
if it treats us with forbearance, what authority have you to be less
indulgent? Pious men! who speak of God with so much certainty and
confidence, be so good as to tell us what it is; give us to comprehend
what those abstract and metaphysical beings are, which you call God and
soul, substance without matter, existence without body, life without
organs or sensation. If you know those beings by your senses or their
reflections, render them in like manner perceptible to us; or if you
speak of them on testimony and tradition, show us a uniform account, and
give a determinate basis to our creed."
There now arose among the theologians a great controversy respecting God
and his nature, his manner of acting, and of manifesting himself; on the
nature of the soul and its union with the body; whether it exists before
the organs, or only after they are formed; on the future life, and the
other world. And every sect, every school, every individual, differing
on all these points, and each assigning plausible reasons, and
respectable though opposite authorities for his opinion, they fell into
an inextricable labyrinth of contradictions.
Then the legislator, having commanded silence and recalled the dispute
to its true object, said: "Chiefs and instructors of nations; you came
together in search of truth. At first, every one of you, thinking he
possessed it, demanded of the others an implicit faith; but perceiving
the contrariety of your opinions, you found it necessary to submit them
to a common rule of evidence, and to bring them to one general term of
comparison; and you agreed that each should exhibit the proofs of his
doctrine. You began by alleging facts; but each religion and every sect,
being equally furnished with miracles and martyrs, each producing an
equal number of witnesses, and offering to support them by a voluntary
death, the balance on this first point, by right of parity, remained
equal.
"You then passed to the trial of reasoning; but the same arguments
applying equally to contrary positions--the same assertions, equally
gratuitous, being advanced and repelled with equal force, and all having
an equal right to refuse his assent, nothing was demonstrated. What
is more, the confrontation of your systems has brought up more and
extraordinary difficulties; for amid the apparent or adventitious
diversities, you have discovered a fundamental resemblance, a common
groundwork; and each of you pretending to be the inventor, and first
depositary, have taxed each other with adulterations and plagiarisms;
and thence arises a difficult question concerning the transmission of
religious ideas from people to people.
"Finally, to complete your embarrassment: when you endeavored to explain
your doctrines to each other, they appeared confused and foreign, even
to their adherents; they were founded on ideas inaccessible to your
senses; you consequently had no means of judging of them, and you
confessed yourselves in this respect to be only the echoes of your
fathers. Hence follows this other question: how came they to the
knowledge of your fathers, who themselves had no other means than you to
conceive them? So that, on the one hand, the succession of these ideas
being unknown, and on the other, their origin and existence being
a mystery, all the edifice of your religious opinions becomes a
complicated problem of metaphysics and history.
"Since, however, these opinions, extraordinary as they may be, must have
had some origin; since even the most abstract and fantastical ideas
have some physical model, it may be useful to recur to this origin, and
discover this model--in a word, to find out from what source the human
understanding has drawn these ideas, at present so obscure, of God,
of the soul, of all immaterial beings, which make the basis of so many
systems; to unfold the filiation which they have followed, and the
alterations which they have undergone in their transmissions and
ramifications. If, then, there are any persons present who have made a
study of these objects, let them come forward, and endeavor, in the face
of nations, to dissipate the obscurity in which their opinions have so
long remained."
CHAPTER XXII.
ORIGIN AND FILIATION OF RELIGIOUS IDEAS.
At these words, a new group, formed in an instant by men from various
standards, but not distinguished by any, came forward into the circle;
and one of them spoke in the name of the whole:
"Delegates, friends of evidence and virtue! It is not surprising that
the subject in question should be enveloped in so many clouds, since,
besides its inherent difficulties, thought itself has always been
encumbered with superadded obstacles peculiar to this study, where all
free enquiry and discussion have been interdicted by the intolerance of
every system. But now that our views are permitted to expand, we will
expose to open day, and submit to the judgment of nations, that which
unprejudiced minds, after long researches, have found to be the most
reasonable; and we do this, not with the pretension of imposing a new
creed, but with the hope of provoking new lights, and obtaining better
information.
"Doctors and instructors of nations! You know what thick darkness covers
the nature, the origin, the history of the dogmas which you teach.
Imposed by authority, inculcated by education, and maintained by
example, they pass from age to age, and strengthen their empire from
habit and inattention. But if man, enlightened by reflection and
experience, brings to mature examination the prejudices of his
childhood, he soon discovers a multitude of incongruities and
contradictions which awaken his sagacity and excite his reasoning
powers.
"At first, remarking the diversity and opposition of the creeds which
divide the nations, he takes courage to question the infallibility
which each of them claims, and arming himself with their reciprocal
pretensions, he conceives that his senses and his reason, derived
immediately from God, are a law not less holy, a guide not less sure,
than the mediate and contradictory codes of the prophets.
"If he then examines the texture of these codes themselves, he observes
that their laws, pretended to be divine, that is, immutable and eternal,
have arisen from circumstances of times, places, and persons; that
they have issued one from the other, in a kind of genealogical order,
borrowing from each other reciprocally a common and similar fund of
ideas, which every lawgiver modifies according to his fancy.
"If he ascends to the source of these ideas, he finds it involved in
the night of time, in the infancy of nations, even to the origin of the
world, to which they claim alliance; and there, placed in the darkness
of chaos, in the empire of fables and traditions, they present
themselves, accompanied with a state of things so full of prodigies,
that it seems to forbid all access to the judgment: but this state
itself excites a first effort of reason, which resolves the difficulty;
for if the prodigies, found in the theological systems, have really
existed--if, for instance, the metamorphoses, the apparitions, the
conversations with one or many gods, recorded in the books of the
Indians, the Hebrews, the Parses, are historical events, he must agree
that nature in those times was totally different from what it is at
present; that the present race of men are quite another species from
those who then existed; and, therefore, he ought not to trouble his head
about them.
"If, on the contrary, these miraculous events have really not existed
in the physical order of things, then he readily conceives that they are
creatures of the human intellect; and this faculty being still capable
of the most fantastical combinations, explains at once the phenomenon
of these monsters in history. It only remains, then, to find how and
wherefore they have been formed in the imagination. Now, if we examine
with care the subjects of these intellectual creations, analyze the
ideas which they combine and associate, and carefully weigh all the
circumstances which they allege, we shall find that this first obscure
and incredible state of things is explained by the laws of nature.
We find that these stories of a fabulous kind have a figurative sense
different from the apparent one; that these events, pretended to be
marvellous, are simple and physical facts, which, being misconceived or
misrepresented, have been disfigured by accidental causes dependent
on the human mind, by the confusion of signs employed to represent
the ideas, the want of precision in words, permanence in language,
and perfection in writing; we find that these gods, for instance, who
display such singular characters in every system, are only the physical
agents of nature, the elements, the winds, the stars, and the meteors,
which have been personified by the necessary mechanism of language
and of the human understanding; that their lives, their manners, their
actions, are only their mechanical operations and connections; and that
all their pretended history is only the description of these phenomena,
formed by the first naturalists who observed them, and misconceived by
the vulgar who did not understand them, or by succeeding generations who
forgot them. In a word, all the theological dogmas on the origin of the
world, the nature of God, the revelation of his laws, the manifestation
of his person, are known to be only the recital of astronomical facts,
only figurative and emblematical accounts of the motion of the heavenly
bodies. We are convinced that the very idea of a God, that idea at
present so obscure, is, in its first origin, nothing but that of the
physical powers of the universe, considered sometimes as a plurality by
reason of their agencies and phenomena, sometimes as one simple and only
being by reason of the universality of the machine and the connection of
its parts; so that the being called God has been sometimes the wind,
the fire, the water, all the elements; sometimes the sun, the stars, the
planets, and their influence; sometimes the matter of the visible
world, the totality of the universe; sometimes abstract and metaphysical
qualities, such as space, duration, motion, intelligence; and we
everywhere see this conclusion, that the idea of God has not been a
miraculous revelation of invisible beings, but a natural offspring of
the human intellect--an operation of the mind, whose progress it has
followed and whose revolutions it has undergone, in all the progress
that has been made in the knowledge of the physical world and its
agents.
"It is then in vain that nations attribute their religion to heavenly
inspirations; it is in vain that their dogmas pretend to a primeval
state of supernatural events: the original barbarity of the human race,
attested by their own monuments,* belies these assertions at once.
But there is one constant and indubitable fact which refutes beyond
contradiction all these doubtful accounts of past ages. From this
position, that man acquires and receives no ideas but through the medium
of his senses,** it follows with certainty that every notion which
claims to itself any other origin than that of sensation and experience,
is the erroneous supposition of a posterior reasoning: now, it is
sufficient to cast an eye upon the sacred systems of the origin of the
world, and of the actions of the gods, to discover in every idea, in
every word, the anticipation of an order of things which could not exist
till a long time after. Reason, strengthened by these contradictions,
rejecting everything that is not in the order of nature, and admitting
no historical facts but those founded on probabilities, lays open its
own system, and pronounces itself with assurance.
* It is the unanimous testimony of history, and even of
legends, that the first human beings were every where
savages, and that it was to civilize them, and teach them to
make bread, that the Gods manifested themselves.
** The rock on which all the ancients have split, and which
has occasioned all their errors, has been their supposing
the idea of God to be innate and co-eternal with the soul;
and hence all the reveries developed in Plato and Jamblicus.
See the Timoeus, the Phedon, and De Mysteriis Egyptiorum,
sect. I, c. 3.
"Before one nation had received from another nation dogmas already
invented; before one generation had inherited ideas acquired by a
preceding generation, none of these complicated systems could have
existed in the world. The first men, being children of nature, anterior
to all events, ignorant of all science, were born without any idea of
the dogmas arising from scholastic disputes; of rites founded on
the practice of arts not then known; of precepts framed after the
development of passions; or of laws which suppose a language, a state
of society not then in being; or of God, whose attributes all refer to
physical objects, and his actions to a despotic state of government; or
of the soul, or of any of those metaphysical beings, which we are told
are not the objects of sense, and for which, however, there can be
no other means of access to the understanding. To arrive at so many
results, the necessary circle of preceding facts must have been
observed; slow experience and repeated trials must have taught the
rude man the use of his organs; the accumulated knowledge of successive
generations must have invented and improved the means of living; and
the mind, freed from the cares of the first wants of nature, must have
raised itself to the complicated art of comparing ideas, of digesting
arguments, and seizing abstract similitudes."
I. Origin of the idea of God: Worship of the elements and of the
physical powers of nature.
"It was not till after having overcome these obstacles, and gone through
a long career in the night of history, that man, reflecting on his
condition, began to perceive that he was subjected to forces superior
to his own, and independent of his will. The sun enlightened and warmed
him, the fire burned him, the thunder terrified him, the wind beat upon
him, the water overwhelmed him. All beings acted upon him powerfully and
irresistibly. He sustained this action for a long time, like a machine,
without enquiring the cause; but the moment he began his enquiries,
he fell into astonishment; and, passing from the surprise of his first
reflections to the reverie of curiosity, he began a chain of reasoning.
"First, considering the action of the elements on him, he conceived an
idea of weakness and subjection on his part, and of power and domination
on theirs; and this idea of power was the primitive and fundamental type
of every idea of God.
"Secondly, the action of these natural existences excited in him
sensations of pleasure or pain, of good or evil; and by a natural effect
of his organization, he conceived for them love or aversion; he desired
or dreaded their presence; and fear or hope gave rise to the first idea
of religion.
"Then, judging everything by comparison, and remarking in these beings a
spontaneous movement like his own, he supposed this movement directed
by a will,--an intelligence of the nature of his own; and hence, by
induction, he formed a new reasoning. Having experienced that certain
practices towards his fellow creatures had the effect to modify their
affections and direct their conduct to his advantage, he resorted to
the same practices towards these powerful beings of the universe. He
reasoned thus with himself: When my fellow creature, stronger than I, is
disposed to do me injury, I abase myself before him, and my prayer has
the art to calm him. I will pray to these powerful beings who strike me.
I will supplicate the intelligences of the winds, of the stars, of the
waters, and they will hear me. I will conjure them to avert the evil
and give me the good that is at their disposal; I will move them by my
tears, I will soften them by offerings, and I shall be happy.
"Thus simple man, in the infancy of his reason, spoke to the sun and to
the moon; he animated with his own understanding and passions the great
agents of nature; he thought by vain sounds, and vain actions, to change
their inflexible laws. Fatal error! He prayed the stone to ascend,
the water to mount above its level, the mountains to remove, and
substituting a fantastical world for the real one, he peopled it with
imaginary beings, to the terror of his mind and the torment of his race.
"In this manner the ideas of God and religion have sprung, like all
others, from physical objects; they were produced in the mind of man
from his sensations, from his wants, from the circumstances of his life,
and the progressive state of his knowledge.
"Now, as the ideas of God had their first models in physical agents, it
followed that God was at first varied and manifold, like the form under
which he appeared to act. Every being was a Power, a Genius; and the
first men conceived the universe filled with innumerable gods.
"Again the ideas of God have been created by the affections of the human
heart; they became necessarily divided into two classes, according to
the sensations of pleasure or pain, love or hatred, which they inspired.
"The forces of nature, the gods and genii, were divided into beneficent
and malignant, good and evil powers; and hence the universality of these
two characters in all the systems of religion.
"These ideas, analogous to the condition of their inventors, were for a
long time confused and ill-digested. Savage men, wandering in the woods,
beset with wants and destitute of resources, had not the leisure to
combine principles and draw conclusions; affected with more evils than
they found pleasures, their most habitual sentiment was that of fear,
their theology terror; their worship was confined to a few salutations
and offerings to beings whom they conceived as greedy and ferocious as
themselves. In their state of equality and independence, no man offered
himself as mediator between men and gods as insubordinate and poor as
himself. No one having superfluities to give, there existed no parasite
by the name of priest, no tribute by the name of victim, no empire by
the name of altar. Their dogmas and their morals were the same thing, it
was only self-preservation; and religion, that arbitrary idea, without
influence on the mutual relations of men, was a vain homage rendered to
the visible powers of nature.
"Such was the necessary and original idea of God."
And the orator, addressing himself to the savage nations, continued:
"We appeal to you, men who have received no foreign and factitious
ideas; tell us, have you ever gone beyond what I have described? And
you, learned doctors, we call you to witness; is not this the unanimous
testimony of all ancient monuments?*
* It clearly results, says Plutarch, from the verses of
Orpheus and the sacred books of the Egyptians and Phrygians,
that the ancient theology, not only of the Greeks, but of
all nations, was nothing more than a system of physics, a
picture of the operations of nature, wrapped up in
mysterious allegories and enigmatical symbols, in a manner
that the ignorant multitude attended rather to their
apparent than to their hidden meaning, and even in what they
understood of the latter, supposed there to be something
more deep than what they perceived. Fragment of a work of
Plutarch now lost, quoted by Eusebius, Proepar. Evang. lib.
3, ch. 1, p. 83.
The majority of philosophers, says Porphyry, and among
others Haeremon (who lived in Egypt in the first age of
Christianity), imagine there never to have been any other
world than the one we see, and acknowledged no other Gods of
all those recognized by the Egyptians, than such as are
commonly called planets, signs of the Zodiac, and
constellations; whose aspects, that is, rising and setting,
are supposed to influence the fortunes of men; to which they
add their divisions of the signs into decans and dispensers
of time, whom they style lords of the ascendant, whose
names, virtues in relieving distempers, rising, setting, and
presages of future events, are the subjects of almanacs (for
be it observed, that the Egyptian priests had almanacs the
exact counterpart of Matthew Lansberg's); for when the
priests affirmed that the sun was the architect of the
universe, Chaeremon presently concludes that all their
narratives respecting Isis and Osiris, together with their
other sacred fables, referred in part to the planets, the
phases of the moon, and the revolution of the sun, and in
part to the stars of the daily and nightly hemispheres and
the river Nile; in a word, in all cases to physical and
natural existences and never to such as might be immaterial
and incorporeal. . . .
All these philosophers believe that the acts of our will and
the motion of our bodies depend on those of the stars to
which they are subjected, and they refer every thing to the
laws of physical necessity, which they call destiny or
Fatum, supposing a chain of causes and effects which binds,
by I know not what connection, all beings together, from the
meanest atom to the supremest power and primary influence of
the Gods; so that, whether in their temples or in their
idols, the only subject of worship is the power of destiny.
Porphyr. Epist. ad Janebonem.
II. Second system: Worship of the Stars, or Sabeism.
"But those same monuments present us likewise a system more methodical
and more complicated--that of the worship of all the stars; adored
sometimes in their proper forms, sometimes under figurative emblems
and symbols; and this worship was the effect of the knowledge men had
acquired in physics, and was derived immediately from the first causes
of the social state; that is, from the necessities and arts of the first
degree, which are among the elements of society.
"Indeed, as soon as men began to unite in society, it became necessary
for them to multiply the means of subsistence, and consequently to
attend to agriculture: agriculture, to be carried on with success,
requires the observation and knowledge of the heavens. It was necessary
to know the periodical return of the same operations of nature, and the
same phenomena in the skies; indeed to go so far as to ascertain the
duration and succession of the seasons and the months of the year. It
was indispensable to know, in the first place, the course of the sun,
who, in his zodiacal revolution, shows himself the supreme agent of
the whole creation; then, of the moon, who, by her phases and periods,
regulates and distributes time; then, of the stars, and even of the
planets, which by their appearance and disappearance on the horizon and
nocturnal hemisphere, marked the minutest divisions. Finally, it was
necessary to form a whole system of astronomy,* or a calendar; and from
these works there naturally followed a new manner of considering these
predominant and governing powers. Having observed that the productions
of the earth had a regular and constant relation with the heavenly
bodies; that the rise, growth, and decline of each plant kept pace with
the appearance, elevation, and declination of the same star or the same
group of stars; in short, that the languor or activity of vegetation
seemed to depend on celestial influences, men drew from thence an idea
of action, of power, in those beings, superior to earthly bodies; and
the stars, dispensing plenty or scarcity, became powers, genii,** gods,
authors of good and evil.
* It continues to be repeated every day, on the indirect
authority of the book of Genesis, that astronomy was the
invention of the children of Noah. It has been gravely
said, that while wandering shepherds in the plains of
Shinar, they employed their leisure in composing a planetary
system: as if shepherds had occasion to know more than the
polar star; and if necessity was not the sole motive of
every invention! If the ancient shepherds were so studious
and sagacious, how does it happen that the modern ones are
so stupid, ignorant, and inattentive? And it is a fact that
the Arabs of the desert know not so many as six
constellations, and understand not a word of astronomy.
** It appears that by the word genius, the ancients denoted
a quality, a generative power; for the following words,
which are all of one family, convey this meaning: generare,
genos, genesis, genus, gens.
"As the state of society had already introduced a regular hierarchy
of ranks, employments and conditions, men, continuing to reason by
comparison, carried their new notions into their theology, and formed a
complicated system of divinities by gradation of rank, in which the sun,
as first god,* was a military chief or a political king: the moon was
his wife and queen; the planets were servants, bearers of commands,
messengers; and the multitude of stars were a nation, an army of heroes,
genii, whose office was to govern the world under the orders of their
chiefs. All the individuals had names, functions, attributes, drawn from
their relations and influences; and even sexes, from the gender of their
appellations.**
* The Sabeans, ancient and modern, says Maimonides,
acknowledge a principal God, the maker and inhabitant of
heaven; but on account of his great distance they conceive
him to be inaccessible; and in imitation of the conduct of
people towards their kings, they employ as mediators with
him, the planets and their angels, whom they call princes
and potentates, and whom they suppose to reside in those
luminous bodies as in palaces or tabernacles, etc. More-
Nebuchim.
** According as the gender of the object was in the language
of the nation masculine or feminine, the Divinity who bore
its name was male or female. Thus the Cappadocians called
the moon God, and the sun Goddess: a circumstance which
gives to the same beings a perpetual variety in ancient
mythology.
"And as the social state had introduced certain usages and ceremonies,
religion, keeping pace with the social state, adopted similar ones;
these ceremonies, at first simple and private, became public and
solemn; the offerings became rich and more numerous, and the rites more
methodical; they assigned certain places for the assemblies, and began
to have chapels and temples; they instituted officers to administer
them, and these became priests and pontiffs: they established liturgies,
and sanctified certain days, and religion became a civil act, a
political tie.
"But in this arrangement, religion did not change its first principles;
the idea of God was always that of physical beings, operating good or
evil, that is, impressing sensations of pleasure or pain: the dogma was
the knowledge of their laws, or their manner of acting; virtue and sin,
the observance or infraction of these laws; and morality, in its native
simplicity, was the judicious practice of whatever contributes to the
preservation of existence, the well-being of one's self and his fellow
creatures.*
* We may add, says Plutarch, that these Egyptian priests
always regarded the preservation of health as a point of the
first importance, and as indispensably necessary to the
practice of piety and the service of the gods. See his
account of Isis and Osiris, towards the end.
"Should it be asked at what epoch this system took its birth, we shall
answer on the testimony of the monuments of astronomy itself; that
its principles appear with certainty to have been established about
seventeen thousand years ago,* and if it be asked to what people it is
to be attributed, we shall answer that the same monuments, supported
by unanimous traditions, attribute it to the first tribes of Egypt; and
when reason finds in that country all the circumstances which could lead
to such a system; when it finds there a zone of sky, bordering on the
tropic, equally free from the rains of the equator and the fogs of
the North;** when it finds there a central point of the sphere of the
ancients, a salubrious climate, a great, but manageable river, a soil
fertile without art or labor, inundated without morbid exhalations, and
placed between two seas which communicate with the richest countries, it
conceives that the inhabitant of the Nile, addicted to agriculture
from the nature of his soil, to geometry from the annual necessity of
measuring his lands, to commerce from the facility of communications,
to astronomy from the state of his sky, always open to observation, must
have been the first to pass from the savage to the social state; and
consequently to attain the physical and moral sciences necessary to
civilized life.
* The historical orator follows here the opinion of M.
Dupuis, who, in his learned memoirs concerning the Origin of
the Constellations and Origin of all Worship, has assigned
many plausible reasons to prove that Libra was formerly the
sign of the vernal, and Aries of the autumnal equinox; that
is, that since the origin of the actual astronomical system,
the precession of the equinoxes has carried forward by seven
signs the primitive order of the zodiac. Now estimating the
precession at about seventy years and a half to a degree,
that is, 2,115 years to each sign; and observing that Aries
was in its fifteenth degree, 1,447 years before Christ, it
follows that the first degree of Libra could not have
coincided with the vernal equinox more lately than 15,194
years before Christ; now, if you add 1790 years since
Christ, it appears that 16,984 years have elapsed since the
origin of the Zodiac. The vernal equinox coincided with the
first degree of Aries, 2,504 years before Christ, and with
the first degree of Taurus 4,619 years before Christ. Now
it is to be observed, that the worship of the Bull is the
principal article in the theological creed of the Egyptians,
Persians, Japanese, etc.; from whence it clearly follows,
that some general revolution took place among these nations
at that time. The chronology of five or six thousand years
in Genesis is little agreeable to this hypothesis; but as
the book of Genesis cannot claim to be considered as a
history farther back than Abraham, we are at liberty to make
what arrangements we please in the eternity that preceded.
See on this subject the analysis of Genesis, in the first
volume of New Researches on Ancient History; see also Origin
of Constellatians, by Dupuis, 1781; the Origin of Worship,
in 3 vols. 1794, and the Chronological Zodiac, 1806.
** M. Balli, in placing the first astronomers at
Selingenakoy, near the Bailkal paid no attention to this
twofold circumstance: it equally argues against their being
placed at Axoum on account of the rains, and the Zimb fly of
which Mr. Bruce speaks.
"It was, then, on the borders of the upper Nile, among a black race of
men, that was organized the complicated system of the worship of the
stars, considered in relation to the productions of the earth and the
labors of agriculture; and this first worship, characterized by their
adoration under their own forms and natural attributes, was a simple
proceeding of the human mind. But in a short time, the multiplicity of
the objects of their relations, and their reciprocal influence, having
complicated the ideas, and the signs that represented them, there
followed a confusion as singular in its cause as pernicious in its
effects."
III. Third system. Worship of Symbols, or Idolatry.
"As soon as this agricultural people began to observe the stars with
attention, they found it necessary to individualize or group them; and
to assign to each a proper name, in order to understand each other in
their designation. A great difficulty must have presented itself in
this business: First, the heavenly bodies, similar in form, offered
no distinguishing characteristics by which to denominate them; and,
secondly, the language in its infancy and poverty, had no expressions
for so many new and metaphysical ideas. Necessity, the usual stimulus
of genius, surmounted everything. Having remarked that in the annual
revolution, the renewal and periodical appearance of terrestrial
productions were constantly associated with the rising and setting
of certain stars, and to their position as relative to the sun, the
fundamental term of all comparison, the mind by a natural operation
connected in thought these terrestrial and celestial objects, which were
connected in fact; and applying to them a common sign, it gave to the
stars, and their groups, the names of the terrestrial objects to which
they answered.*
* "The ancients," says Maimonides, "directing all their
attention to agriculture, gave names to the stars derived
from their occupation during the year." More Neb. pars 3.
"Thus the Ethopian of Thebes named stars of inundation, or Aquarius,
those stars under which the Nile began to overflow;* stars of the ox or
the bull, those under which they began to plow; stars of the lion, those
under which that animal, driven from the desert by thirst, appeared on
the banks of the Nile; stars of the sheaf, or of the harvest virgin,
those of the reaping season; stars of the lamb, stars of the two kids,
those under which these precious animals were brought forth: and thus
was resolved the first part of the difficulty.
* This must have been June.
"Moreover, man having remarked in the beings which surrounded him
certain qualities distinctive and proper to each species, and having
thence derived a name by which to designate them, he found in the same
source an ingenious mode of generalizing his ideas; and transferring
the name already invented to every thing which bore any resemblance or
analogy, he enriched his language with a perpetual round of metaphors.
"Thus the same Ethiopian having observed that the return of the
inundation always corresponded with the rising of a beautiful star
which appeared towards the source of the Nile, and seemed to warn the
husbandman against the coming waters, he compared this action to that
of the animal who, by his barking, gives notice of danger, and he called
this star the dog, the barker (Sirius). In the same manner he named the
stars of the crab, those where the sun, having arrived at the tropic,
retreated by a slow retrograde motion like the crab or cancer. He
named stars of the wild goat, or Capricorn, those where the sun, having
reached the highest point in his annuary tract, rests at the summit
of the horary gnomon, and imitates the goat, who delights to climb the
summit of the rocks. He named stars of the balance, or libra, those
where the days and nights, being equal, seemed in equilibrium, like that
instrument; and stars of the scorpion, those where certain periodical
winds bring vapors, burning like the venom of the scorpion. In the same
manner he called by the name of rings and serpents the figured traces of
the orbits of the stars and the planets, and such was the general mode
of naming all the stars and even the planets, taken by groups or as
individuals, according to their relations with husbandry and terrestrial
objects, and according to the analogies which each nation found between
them and the objects of its particular soil and climate.*
* The ancients had verbs from the substantives crab, goat,
tortoise, as the French have at present the verbs serpenter,
coquetter. The history of all languages is nearly the same.
"From this it appeared that abject and terrestrial beings became
associated with the superior and powerful inhabitants of heaven; and
this association became stronger every day by the mechanism of language
and the constitution of the human mind. Men would say by a natural
metaphor: The bull spreads over the earth the germs of fecundity (in
spring) he restores vegetation and plenty: the lamb (or ram) delivers
the skies from the maleficent powers of winter; he saves the world from
the serpent (emblem of the humid season) and restores the empire of
goodness (summer, joyful season): the scorpion pours out his poison
on the earth, and scatters diseases and death. The same of all similar
effects.
"This language, understood by every one, was attended at first with no
inconvenience; but in the course of time, when the calendar had been
regulated, the people, who had no longer any need of observing the
heavens, lost sight of the original meaning of these expressions; and
the allegories remaining in common use became a fatal stumbling block to
the understanding and to reason. Habituated to associate to the symbols
the ideas of their archetypes, the mind at last confounded them: then
the same animals, whom fancy had transported to the skies, returned
again to the earth; but being thus returned, clothed in the livery of
the stars, they claimed the stellary attributes, and imposed on their
own authors. Then it was that the people, believing that they saw their
gods among them, could pray to them with more convenience: they demanded
from the ram of their flock the influences which might be expected from
the heavenly ram; they prayed the scorpion not to pour out his venom
upon nature; they revered the crab of the sea, the scarabeus of the
mud, the fish of the river; and by a series of corrupt but inseparable
analogies, they lost themselves in a labyrinth of well connected
absurdities.
"Such was the origin of that ancient whimsical worship of the animals;
such is the train of ideas by which the character of the divinity became
common to the vilest of brutes, and by which was formed that theological
system, extremely comprehensive, complicated, and learned, which,
rising on the borders of the Nile, propagated from country to country by
commerce, war, and conquest, overspread the whole of the ancient world;
and which, modified by time, circumstances and prejudices, is still seen
entire among a hundred nations, and remains as the essential and secret
basis of the theology of those even who despise and reject it."
Some murmurs at these words being heard from various groups: "Yes!"
continued the orator, "hence arose, for instance, among you, nations of
Africa, the adoration of your fetiches, plants, animals, pebbles, pieces
of wood, before which your ancestors would not have had the folly to
bow, if they had not seen in them talismans endowed with the virtue of
the stars.*
* The ancient astrologers, says the most learned of the Jews
(Maimonides), having sacredly assigned to each planet a
color, an animal, a tree, a metal, a fruit, a plant, formed
from them all a figure or representation of the star, taking
care to select for the purpose a proper moment, a fortunate
day, such as the conjunction of the star, or some other
favorable aspect. They conceived that by their magic
ceremonies they could introduce into those figures or idols
the influences of the superior beings after which they were
modeled. These were the idols that the Chaldean-Sabeans
adored; and in the performance of their worship they were
obliged to be dressed in the proper color. The astrologers,
by their practices, thus introduced idolatry, desirous of
being regarded as the dispensers of the favors of heaven;
and as agriculture was the sole employment of the ancients,
they succeeded in persuading them that the rain and other
blessings of the seasons were at their disposal. Thus the
whole art of agriculture was exercised by rules of
astrology, and the priests made talismans or charms which
were to drive away locusts, flies, etc. See Maimonides,
More Nebuchim, pars 3, c. 29.
The priests of Egypt, Persia, India, etc., pretended to bind
the Gods to their idols, and to make them come from heaven
at their pleasure. They threatened the sun and moon, if
they were disobedient, to reveal the secret mysteries, to
shake the skies, etc., etc. Euseb. Proecep. Evang. p. 198,
and Jamblicus de Mysteriis Aegypt.
"Here, ye nations of Tartary, is the origin of your marmosets, and of
all that train of animals with which your chamans ornament their magical
robes. This is the origin of those figures of birds and of snakes which
savage nations imprint upon their skins with sacred and mysterious
ceremonies.
"Ye inhabitants of India! in vain you cover yourselves with the veil
of mystery: the hawk of your god Vichenou is but one of the thousand
emblems of the sun in Egypt; and your incarnations of a god in the fish,
the boar, the lion, the tortoise, and all his monstrous adventures, are
only the metamorphoses of the sun, who, passing through the signs of the
twelve animals (or the zodiac), was supposed to assume their figures,
and perform their astronomical functions.*
* These are the very words of Jamblicus de Symbolis
Aegyptiorum, c. 2, sect. 7. The sun was the grand Proteus,
the universal metamorphist.
"People of Japan, your bull, which breaks the mundane egg, is only the
bull of the zodiac, which in former times opened the seasons, the age
of creation, the vernal equinox. It is the same bull Apis which Egypt
adored, and which your ancestors, Jewish Rabbins, worshipped in the
golden calf. This is still your bull, followers of Zoroaster, which,
sacrificed in the symbolic mysteries of Mithra, poured out his blood
which fertilized the earth. And ye Christians, your bull of the
Apocalypse, with his wings, symbol of the air, has no other origin; and
your lamb of God, sacrificed, like the bull of Mithra, for the salvation
of the world, is only the same sun, in the sign of the celestial ram,
which, in a later age, opening the equinox in his turn, was supposed to
deliver the world from evil, that is to say, from the constellation of
the serpent, from that great snake, the parent of winter, the emblem of
the Ahrimanes, or Satan of the Persians, your school masters. Yes, in
vain does your imprudent zeal consign idolaters to the torments of the
Tartarus which they invented; the whole basis of your system is only
the worship of the sun, with whose attributes you have decorated your
principal personage. It is the sun which, under the name of Horus,
was born, like your God, at the winter solstice, in the arms of the
celestial virgin, and who passed a childhood of obscurity, indigence,
and want, answering to the season of cold and frost. It is he that,
under the name of Osiris, persecuted by Typhon and by the tyrants of the
air, was put to death, shut up in a dark tomb, emblem of the hemisphere
of winter, and afterwards, ascending from the inferior zone towards the
zenith of heaven, arose again from the dead triumphant over the giants
and the angels of destruction.
"Ye priests! who murmur at this relation, you wear his emblems all over
your bodies; your tonsure is the disk of the sun; your stole is his
zodiac;* your rosaries are symbols of the stars and planets. Ye pontiffs
and prelates! your mitre, your crozier, your mantle are those of Osiris;
and that cross whose mystery you extol without comprehending it, is the
cross of Serapis, traced by the hands of Egyptian priests on the plan
of the figurative world; which, passing through the equinoxes and the
tropics, became the emblem of the future life and of the resurrection,
because it touched the gates of ivory and of horn, through which the
soul passed to heaven."
* "The Arabs," says Herodotus, "shave their heads in a
circle and about the temples, in imitation of Bacchus (that
is the sun), who shaves himself is this manner." Jeremiah
speaks also of this custom. The tuft of hair which the
Mahometans preserve, is taken also from the sun, who was
painted by the Egyptians at the winter solstice, as having
but a single hair upon his head. . . .
The robes of the goddess of Syria and of Diana of Ephesus,
from whence are borrowed the dress of the priests; have the
twelve animals of the zodiac painted on them. . . .
Rosaries are found upon all the Indian idols, constructed
more than four thousand years ago, and their use in the East
has been universal from time immemorial. . . .
The crozier is precisely the staff of Bootes or Osiris.
(See plate.)
All the Lamas wear the mitre or cap in the shape of a cone,
which was an emblem of the sun.
At these words, the doctors of all the groups began to look at each
other with astonishment; but no one breaking silence, the orator
proceeded:
"Three principal causes concur to produce this confusion of ideas:
First, the figurative expressions under which an infant language was
obliged to describe the relations of objects; expressions which, passing
afterwards from a limited to a general sense, and from a physical to a
moral one, caused, by their ambiguities and synonymes, a great number of
mistakes.
"Thus, it being first said that the sun had surmounted, or finished,
twelve animals, it was thought afterwards that he had killed them,
fought them, conquered them; and of this was composed the historical
life of Hercules.*
* See the memoir of Dupuis on the Origin of the
Constellations, before cited.
"It being said that he regulated the periods of rural labor, the seed
time and the harvest, that he distributed the seasons and occupations,
ran through the climates and ruled the earth, etc., he was taken for a
legislative king, a conquering warrior; and they framed from this the
history of Osiris, of Bacchus, and others of that description.
"Having said that a planet entered into a sign, they made of this
conjunction a marriage, an adultery, an incest.* Having said that the
planet was hid or buried, when it came back to light, and ascended to
its exaltation, they said that it had died, risen again, was carried
into heaven, etc.
* These are the very words of Plutarch in his account of
Isis and Osiris. The Hebrews say, in speaking of the
generations of the Patriarchs, et ingressus est in eam.
From this continual equivoke of ancient language, proceeds
every mistake.
"A second cause of confusion was the material figures themselves,
by which men first painted thoughts; and which, under the name of
hieroglyphics, or sacred characters, were the first invention of the
mind. Thus, to give warning of the inundation, and of the necessity of
guarding against it, they painted a boat, the ship Argo; to express the
wind, they painted the wing of a bird; to designate the season, or the
month, they painted the bird of passage, the insect, or the animal which
made its appearance at that period; to describe the winter, they painted
a hog or a serpent, which delight in humid places, and the combination
of these figures carried the known sense of words and phrases.* But as
this sense could not be fixed with precision, as the number of these
figures and their combinations became excessive, and overburdened
the memory, the immediate consequence was confusion and false
interpretations. Genius afterwards having invented the more simple
art of applying signs to sounds, of which the number is limited, and
painting words, instead of thoughts, alphabetical writing thus threw
into disuetude hieroglyphical painting; and its signification, falling
daily into oblivion, gave rise to a multitude of illusions, ambiguities,
and errors.
* The reader will doubtless see with pleasure some examples
of ancient hieroglyphics.
"The Egyptians (says Hor-appolo) represent eternity by the
figures of the sun and moon. They designate the world by
the blue serpent with yellow scales (stars, it is the
Chinese Dragon). If they were desirous of expressing the
year, they drew a picture of Isis, who is also in their
language called Sothis, or dog-star, one of the first
constellations, by the rising of which the year commences;
its inscription at Sais was, It is I that rise in the
constellation of the Dog.
"They also represent the year by a palm tree, and the month
by one of its branches, because it is the nature of this
tree to produce a branch every month. They farther
represent it by the fourth part of an acre of land." The
whole acre divided into four denotes the bissextile period
of four years. The abbreviation of this figure of a field
in four divisions, is manifestly the letter ha or het, the
seventh in the Samaritan alphabet; and in general all the
letters of the alphabet are merely astronomical
hieroglyphics; and it is for this reason that the mode of
writing is from right to left, like the march of the stars.
--"They denote a prophet by the image of a dog, because the
dog star (Anoubis) by its rising gives notice of the
inundation. Noubi, in Hebrew signifies prophet--They
represent inundation by a lion, because it takes place under
that sign: and hence, says Plutarch, the custom of placing
at the gates of temples figures of lions with water issuing
from their mouths.--They express the idea of God and destiny
by a star. They also represent God, says Porphyry, by a
black stone, because his nature is dark and obscure. All
white things express the celestial and luminous Gods: all
circular ones the world, the moon, the sun, the orbits; all
semicircular ones, as bows and crescents are descriptive of
the moon. Fire and the Gods of Olympus they represent by
pyramids and obelisks (the name of the sun, Baal, is found
in this latter word): the sun by a cone (the mitre of
Osiris): the earth, by a cylinder (which revolves): the
generative power of the air by the phalus, and that of the
earth by a triangle, emblem of the female organ. Euseb.
Proecep. Evang. p. 98.
"Clay, says Jamblicus de Symbolis, sect. 7, c. 2. denotes
matter, the generative and nutrimental power, every thing
which receives the warmth and fermentation of life."
"A man sitting upon the Lotos or Nenuphar, represents the
moving spirit (the sun) which, in like manner as that plant
lives in the water without any communication with clay,
exists equally distinct from matter, swimming in empty
space, resting on itself: it is round also in all its parts,
like the leaves, the flowers, and the fruit of the Lotos.
(Brama has the eyes of the Lotos, says Chasler Nesdirsen, to
denote his intelligence: his eye swims over every thing,
like the flower of the Lotos on the waters.) A man at the
helm of a ship, adds Jamblicus, is descriptive of the sun
which governs all. And Porphyry tells us that the sun is
also represented by a man in a ship resting upon an
amphibious crocodile (emblem of air and water).
"At Elephantine they worshipped the figure of a man in a
sitting posture, painted blue, having the head of a ram, and
the horns of a goat which encompassed a disk; all which
represented the sun and moon's conjunction at the sign of
the ram; the blue color denoting the power of the moon, at
the period of junction, to raise water into the clouds.
Euseb. Proecep. Evang. p. 116.
"The hawk is an emblem of the sun and of light, on account
of his rapid flight and his soaring into the highest regions
of the air where light abounds.
A fish is the emblem of aversion, and the Hippopotamus of
violence, because it is said to kill its father and to
ravish its mother. Hence, says Plutarch, the emblematical
inscription of the temple of Sais, where we see painted on
the vestibule, 1. A child, 2. An old man, 3. A hawk, 4. A
fish, 5. A hippopotamus: which signify, 1. Entrance, into
life, 2. Departure, 3. God, 4. Hates, 5. Injustice. See
Isis and Osiris.
"The Egyptians, adds he, represent the world by a Scarabeus,
because this insect pushes, in a direction contrary to that
in which it proceeds, a ball containing its eggs, just as
the heaven of the fixed stars causes the revolution of the
sun, (the yolk of an egg) in an opposite direction to its
own.
"They represent the world also by the number five, being
that of the elements, which, says Diodorus, are earth,
water, air, fire, and ether, or spiritus. The Indians have
the same number of elements, and according to Macrobius's
mystics, they are the supreme God, or primum mobile, the
intelligence, or mens, born of him, the soul of the world
which proceeds from him, the celestial spheres, and all
things terrestrial. Hence, adds Plutarch, the analogy
between the Greek pente, five, and pan all.
"The ass," says he again, "is the emblem of Typhon, because
like that animal he is of a reddish color. Now Typhon
signifies whatever is of a mirey or clayey nature; (and in
Hebrew I find the three words clay, red, and ass to be
formed from the same root hamr). Jamblicus has farther told
us that clay was the emblem of matter and he elsewhere adds,
that all evil and corruption proceeded from matter; which
compared with the phrase of Macrobius, all is perishable,
liable to change in the celestial sphere, gives us the
theory, first physical, then moral, of the system of good
and evil of the ancients."
"Finally, a third cause of confusion was the civil organization
of ancient states. When the people began to apply themselves to
agriculture, the formation of a rural calendar, requiring a continued
series of astronomical observations, it became necessary to appoint
certain individuals charged with the functions of watching the
appearance and disappearance of certain stars, to foretell the return of
the inundation, of certain winds, of the rainy season, the proper time
to sow every kind of grain. These men, on account of their service,
were exempt from common labor, and the society provided for their
maintenance. With this provision, and wholly employed in their
observations, they soon became acquainted with the great phenomena
of nature, and even learned to penetrate the secret of many of her
operations. They discovered the movement of the stars and planets, the
coincidence of their phases and returns with the productions of
the earth and the action of vegetation; the medicinal and nutritive
properties of plants and fruits; the action of the elements, and
their reciprocal affinities. Now, as there was no other method of
communicating the knowledge of these discoveries but the laborious one
of oral instruction, they transmitted it only to their relations and
friends, it followed therefore that all science and instruction were
confined to a few families, who, arrogating it to themselves as an
exclusive privilege, assumed a professional distinction, a corporation
spirit, fatal to the public welfare. This continued succession of the
same researches and the same labors, hastened, it is true, the progress
of knowledge; but by the mystery which accompanied it, the people were
daily plunged in deeper shades, and became more superstitious and
more enslaved. Seeing their fellow mortals produce certain phenomena,
announce, as at pleasure, eclipses and comets, heal diseases, and handle
venomous serpents, they thought them in alliance with celestial powers;
and, to obtain the blessings and avert the evils which they expected
from above, they took them for mediators and interpreters; and thus
became established in the bosom of every state sacrilegious corporations
of hypocritical and deceitful men, who centered all powers in
themselves; and the priests, being at once astronomers, theologians,
naturalists, physicians, magicians, interpreters of the gods, oracles of
men, and rivals of kings, or their accomplices, established, under the
name of religion, an empire of mystery and a monopoly of instruction,
which to this day have ruined every nation. . . ."
Here the priests of all the groups interrupted the orator, and with loud
cries accused him of impiety, irreligion, blasphemy; and endeavored to
cut short his discourse; but the legislator observing that this was only
an exposition of historical facts, which, if false or forged, would be
easily refuted; that hitherto the declaration of every opinion had been
free, and without this it would be impossible to discover the truth, the
orator proceeded:
"Now, from all these causes, and from the continual associations of
ill-assorted ideas, arose a mass of disorders in theology, in morals,
and in traditions; first, because the animals represented the stars,
the characters of the animals, their appetites, their sympathies,
their aversions, passed over to the gods, and were supposed to be their
actions; thus, the god Ichneumon made war against the god Crocodile;
the god Wolf liked to eat the god Sheep; the god Ibis devoured the
god Serpent; and the deity became a strange, capricious, and ferocious
being, whose idea deranged the judgment of man, and corrupted his morals
and his reason.
"Again, because in the spirit of their worship every family, every
nation, took for its special patron a star or a constellation, the
affections or antipathies of the symbolic animal were transferred to its
sectaries; and the partisans of the god Dog were enemies to those of the
god Wolf;* those who adored the god Ox had an abhorrence to those who
ate him; and religion became the source of hatred and hostility,--the
senseless cause of frenzy and superstition.
* These are properly the words of Plutarch, who relates that
those various worships were given by a king of Egypt to the
different towns to disunite and enslave them, and these
kings had been taken from the cast of priests. See Isis and
Osiris.
"Besides, the names of those animal-stars having, for this same reason
of patronage, been conferred on countries, nations, mountains, and
rivers, these objects were taken for gods, and hence followed a mixture
of geographical, historical, and mythological beings, which confounded
all traditions.
"Finally, by the analogy of actions which were ascribed to them, the
god-stars, having been taken for men, for heroes, for kings, kings
and heroes took in their turn the actions of gods for models, and by
imitation became warriors, conquerors, proud, lascivious, indolent,
sanguinary; and religion consecrated the crimes of despots, and
perverted the principles of government."
IV. Fourth system. Worship of two Principles, or Dualism.
"In the mean time, the astronomical priests, enjoying peace and
abundance in their temples, made every day new progress in the sciences,
and the system of the world unfolding gradually to their view, they
raised successively various hypotheses as to its agents and effects,
which became so many theological systems.
"The voyages of the maritime nations and the caravans of the nomads of
Asia and Africa, having given them a knowledge of the earth from the
Fortunate Islands to Serica, and from the Baltic to the sources of the
Nile, the comparison of the phenomena of the various zones taught them
the rotundity of the earth, and gave birth to a new theory. Having
remarked that all the operations of nature during the annual period
were reducible to two principal ones, that of producing and that of
destroying; that on the greater part of the globe these two operations
were performed in the intervals of the two equinoxes; that is to
say, during the six months of summer every thing was procreating and
multiplying, and that during winter everything languished and almost
died; they supposed in Nature two contrary powers, which were in
a continual state of contention and exertion; and considering the
celestial sphere in this view, they divided the images which
they figured upon it into two halves or hemispheres; so that the
constellations which were on the summer heaven formed a direct and
superior empire; and those which were on the winter heaven composed an
antipode and inferior empire. Therefore, as the constellations of summer
accompanied the season of long, warm, and unclouded days, and that
of fruits and harvests, they were considered as the powers of light,
fecundity, and creation; and, by a transition from a physical to a moral
sense, they became genii, angels of science, of beneficence, of purity
and virtue. And as the constellations of winter were connected with long
nights and polar fogs, they were the genii of darkness, of destruction,
of death; and by transition, angels of ignorance, of wickedness, of sin
and vice. By this arrangement the heaven was divided into two domains,
two factions; and the analogy of human ideas already opened a vast field
to the errors of imagination; but the mistake and the illusion were
determined, if not occasioned by a particular circumstance. (Observe
plate Astrological Heaven of the Ancients.)
"In the projection of the celestial sphere, as traced by the
astronomical priests,* the zodiac and the constellations, disposed in
circular order, presented their halves in diametrical opposition; the
hemisphere of winter, antipode of that of summer, was adverse, contrary,
opposed to it. By a continual metaphor, these words acquired a moral
sense; and the adverse genii, or angels, became revolted enemies.**
From that moment all the astronomical history of the constellations was
changed into a political history; the heavens became a human state,
where things happened as on the earth. Now, as the earthly states, the
greater part despotic, had already their monarchs, and as the sun was
apparently the monarch of the skies, the summer hemisphere (empire of
light) and its constellations (a nation of white angels) had for king
an enlightened God, a creator intelligent and good. And as every rebel
faction must have its chief, the heaven of winter, the subterranean
empire of darkness and woe, and its stars, a nation of black angels,
giants and demons, had for their chief a malignant genius, whose
character was applied by different people to the constellation which
to them was the most remarkable. In Egypt it was at first the Scorpion,
first zodiacal sign after Libra, and for a long time chief of the winter
signs ; then it was the Bear, or the polar Ass, called Typhon, that is
to say, deluge,** on account of the rains which deluge the earth during
the dominion of that star. At a later period,*** in Persia,**** it was
the Serpent, who, under the name of Abrimanes, formed the basis of the
system of Zoroaster; and it is the same, O Christians and Jews! that
has become your serpent of Eve (the celestial virgin,) and that of the
cross; in both cases it is the emblem of Satan, the enemy and great
adversary of the Ancient of Days, sung by Daniel.
* The ancient priests had three kinds of spheres, which it
may be useful to make known to the reader.
"We read in Eusebius," says Porphyry, "that Zoroaster was
the first who, having fixed upon a cavern pleasantly
situated in the mountains adjacent to Persia, formed the
idea of consecrating it to Mithra (the sun) creator and
father of all things: that is to say, having made in this
cavern several geometrical divisions, representing the
seasons and the elements, he imitated on a small scale the
order and disposition of the universe by Mithra. After
Zoroaster, it became a custom to consecrate caverns for the
celebration of mysteries: so that in like manner as temples
were dedicated to the Gods, rural altars to heroes and
terrestrial deities, etc., subterranean abodes to infernal
deities, so caverns and grottoes were consecrated to the
world, to the universe, and to the nymphs: and from hence
Pythagoras and Plato borrowed the idea of calling the earth
a cavern, a cave, de Antro Nympharum.
Such was the first projection of the sphere in relief;
though the Persians give the honor of the invention to
Zoroaster, it is doubtless due to the Egyptians; for we may
suppose from this projection being the most simple that it
was the most ancient; the caverns of Thebes, full of similar
pictures, tend to strengthen this opinion.
The following was the second projection: "The prophets or
hierophants," says Bishop Synnesius, "who had been initiated
in the mysteries, do not permit the common workmen to form
idols or images of the Gods; but they descend themselves
into the sacred caves, where they have concealed coffers
containing certain spheres upon which they construct those
images secretly and without the knowledge of the people, who
despise simple and natural things and wish for prodigies and
fables." (Syn. in Calvit.) That is, the ancient priests
had armillary spheres like ours; and this passage, which so
well agrees with that of Chaeremon, gives us the key to all
their theological astrology.
Lastly, they had flat models of the nature of Plate V. with
the difference that they were of a very complicated nature,
having every fictitious division of decan and subdecan, with
the hieroglyphic signs of their influence. Kircher has
given us a copy of one of them in his Egyptian Oedipus, and
Gybelin a figured fragment in his book of the calendar
(under the name of the Egyptian Zodiac). The ancient
Egyptians, says the astrologer Julius Firmicus, (Astron.
lib. ii. and lib. iv., c. 16), divide each sign of the
Zodiac into three sections; and each section was under the
direction of an imaginary being whom they called decan or
chief of ten; so that there were three decans a month, and
thirty-six a year. Now these decans, who were also called
Gods (Theoi), regulated the destinies of mankind--and they
were placed particularly in certain stars. They afterwards
imagined in every ten three other Gods, whom they called
arbiters; so that there were nine for every month, and these
were farther divided into an infinite number of powers. The
Persians and Indians made their spheres on similar plans;
and if a picture thereof were to be drawn from the
description given by Scaliger at the end of Manilius, we
should find in it a complete explanation of their
hieroglyphics, for every article forms one.
** If it was for this reason the Persians always wrote the
name of Ahrimanes inverted thus: ['Ahrimanes' upside down
and backwards].
*** Typhon, pronounced Touphon by the Greeks, is precisely
the touphan of the Arabs, which signifies deluge; and these
deluges in mythology are nothing more than winter and the
rains, or the overflowing of the Nile: as their pretended
fires which are to destroy the world, are simply the summer
season. And it is for this reason that Aristotle (De
Meteor, lib. I. c. xiv), says, that the winter of the great
cyclic year is a deluge; and its summer a conflagration.
"The Egyptians," says Porphyry, "employ every year a
talisman in remembrance of the world: at the summer solstice
they mark their houses, flocks and trees with red, supposing
that on that day the whole world had been set on fire. It
was also at the same period that they celebrated the pyrric
or fire dance." And this illustrates the origin of
purification by fire and by water; for having denominated
the tropic of Cancer the gate of heaven, and the genial heat
of celestial fire, and that of Capricorn the gate of deluge
or of water, it was imagined that the spirit or souls who
passed through these gates in their way to and from heaven,
were roasted or bathed: hence the baptism of Mithra; and the
passage through flames, observed throughout the East long
before Moses.
**** That is when the ram became the equinoctial sign, or
rather when the alteration of the skies showed that it was
no longer the bull.
"In Syria, it was the hog or wild boar, enemy of Adonis; because in that
country the functions of the Northern Bear were performed by the animal
whose inclination for mire and dirt was emblematic of winter. And this
is the reason, followers of Moses and Mahomet! that you hold him in
horror, in imitation of the priests of Memphis and Balbec, who detested
him as the murderer of their God, the sun. This likewise, O Indians!
is the type of your Chib-en; and it has been likewise the Pluto of your
brethren, the Romans and Greeks; in like manner, your Brama, God the
creator, is only the Persian Ormuzd, and the Egyptian Osiris, whose
very name expresses creative power, producer of forms. And these gods
received a worship analogous to their attributes, real or imaginary;
which worship was divided into two branches, according to their
characters. The good god receives a worship of love and joy, from which
are derived all religious acts of gaiety, such as festivals, dances,
banquets, offerings of flowers, milk, honey, perfumes; in a word,
everything grateful to the senses and to the soul.* The evil god, on
the contrary, received a worship of fear and pain; whence originated
all religious acts of the gloomy sort,** tears, desolations, mournings,
self-denials, bloody offerings, and cruel sacrifices.
* All the ancient festivals respecting the return and
exaltation of the sun were of this description: hence the
hilaria of the Roman calendar at the period of the passage,
Pascha, of the vernal equinox. The dances were imitations
of the march of the planets. Those of the Dervises still
represent it to this day.
** "Sacrifices of blood," says Porphyry, "were only offered
to Demons and evil Genii to avert their wrath. Demons are
fond of blood, humidity, stench." Apud. Euseb. Proep. Ev.,
p. 173.
"The Egyptians," says Plutarch, "only offer bloody victims
to Typhon. They sacrifice to him a red ox, and the animal
immolated is held in execration and loaded with all the sins
of the people." The goat of Moses. See Isis and Osiris.
Strabo says, speaking of Moses, and the Jews, "Circumcision
and the prohibition of certain kinds of meat sprung from
superstition." And I observe, respecting the ceremony of
circumcision, that its object was to take from the symbol of
Osiris, (Phallus) the pretended obstacle to fecundity: an
obstacle which bore the seal of Typhon, "whose nature," says
Plutarch, "is made up of all that hinders, opposes, causes
obstruction."
"Hence arose that distinction of terrestrial beings into pure and
impure, sacred and abominable, according as their species were of the
number of the constellations of one of these two gods, and made part
of his domain; and this produced, on the one hand, the superstitions
concerning pollutions and purifications; and, on the other, the
pretended efficacious virtues of amulets and talismans.
"You conceive now," continued the orator, addressing himself to the
Persians, the Indians, the Jews, the Christians, the Mussulmans, "you
conceive the origin of those ideas of battles and rebellions, which
equally abound in all your mythologies. You see what is meant by white
and black angels, your cherubim and seraphim, with heads of eagles, of
lions, or of bulls; your deus, devils, demons, with horns of goats and
tails of serpents; your thrones and dominions, ranged in seven orders or
gradations, like the seven spheres of the planets; all beings acting the
same parts, and endowed with the same attributes in your Vedas, Bibles,
and Zend-avestas, whether they have for chiefs Ormuzd or Brama, Typhon
or Chiven, Michael or Satan;--whether they appear under the form
of giants with a hundred arms and feet of serpents, or that of gods
metamorphosed into lions, storks, bulls or cats, as they are in the
sacred fables of the Greeks and Egyptians. You perceive the successive
filiation of these ideas, and how, in proportion to their remoteness
from their source, and as the minds of men became refined, their gross
forms have been polished, and rendered less disgusting.
"But in the same manner as you have seen the system of two opposite
principles or gods arise from that of symbols, interwoven into its
texture, your attention shall now be called to a new system which has
grown out of this, and to which this has served in its turn as the basis
and support.
V. Moral and Mystical Worship, or System of a Future State.
"Indeed, when the vulgar heard speak of a new heaven and another world,
they soon gave a body to these fictions; they erected therein a real
theatre of action, and their notions of astronomy and geography served
to strengthen, if not to originate, this illusion.
"On the one hand, the Phoenician navigators who passed the pillars of
Hercules, to fetch the tin of Thule and the amber of the Baltic,
related that at the extremity of the world, the end of the ocean (the
Mediterranean), where the sun sets for the countries of Asia, were the
Fortunate Islands, the abode of eternal spring; and beyond were the
hyperborean regions, placed under the earth (relatively to the tropics)
where reigned an eternal night.* From these stories, misunderstood, and
no doubt confusedly related, the imagination of the people composed the
Elysian fields,** regions of delight, placed in a world below, having
their heaven, their sun, and their stars; and Tartarus, a place of
darkness, humidity, mire, and frost. Now, as man, inquisitive of that
which he knows not, and desirous of protracting his existence, had
already interrogated himself concerning what was to become of him after
his death, as he had early reasoned on the principle of life which
animates his body, and which leaves it without deforming it, and as he
had imagined airy substances, phantoms, and shades, he fondly believed
that he should continue, in the subterranean world, that life which
it was too painful for him to lose; and these lower regions seemed
commodious for the reception of the beloved objects which he could not
willingly resign.
* Nights of six months duration.
** Aliz, in the Phoenician or Hebrew language signifies
dancing and joyous.
"On the other hand, the astrological and geological priests told
such stories and made such descriptions of their heavens, as accorded
perfectly well with these fictions. Having, in their metaphorical
language, called the equinoxes and solstices the gates of heaven, the
entrance of the seasons, they explained these terrestrial phenomena by
saying, that through the gate of horn (first the bull, afterwards the
ram) and through the gate of Cancer, descended the vivifying fires which
give life to vegetation in the spring, and the aqueous spirits which
bring, at the solstice, the inundation of the Nile; that through the
gate of ivory (Libra, formerly Sagittarius, or the bowman) and that
of Capricorn, or the urn, the emanations or influences of the heavens
returned to their source, and reascended to their origin; and the Milky
Way, which passed through the gates of the solstices, seemed to be
placed there to serve them as a road or vehicle.* Besides, in their
atlas, the celestial scene presented a river (the Nile, designated by
the windings of the hydra), a boat, (the ship Argo) and the dog Sirius,
both relative to this river, whose inundation they foretold. These
circumstances, added to the preceding, and still further explaining
them, increased their probability, and to arrive at Tartarus or Elysium,
souls were obliged to cross the rivers Styx and Acheron in the boat of
the ferryman Charon, and to pass through the gates of horn or ivory,
guarded by the dog Cerberus. Finally, these inventions were applied to a
civil use, and thence received a further consistency.
*See Macrob. Som. Scrip. c. 12.
"Having remarked that in their burning climate the putrefaction of dead
bodies was a cause of pestilential diseases, the Egyptians, in many of
their towns, had adopted the practice of burying their dead beyond the
limits of the inhabited country, in the desert of the West. To go there,
it was necessary to pass the channels of the river, and consequently
to be received into a boat, and pay something to the ferryman, without
which the body, deprived of sepulture, must have been the prey of wild
beasts. This custom suggested to the civil and religious legislators the
means of a powerful influence on manners; and, addressing uncultivated
and ferocious men with the motives of filial piety and a reverence for
the dead, they established, as a necessary condition, their undergoing
a previous trial, which should decide whether the deceased merited to
be admitted to the rank of the family in the black city. Such an idea
accorded too well with all the others, not to be incorporated with them:
the people soon adopted it; and hell had its Minos and its Rhadamanthus,
with the wand, the bench, the ushers, and the urn, as in the earthly and
civil state. It was then that God became a moral and political being,
a lawgiver to men, and so much the more to be dreaded, as this supreme
legislator, this final judge, was inaccessible and invisible. Then it
was that this fabulous and mythological world, composed of such odd
materials and disjointed parts, became a place of punishments and of
rewards, where divine justice was supposed to correct what was vicious
and erroneous in the judgment of men. This spiritual and mystical
system acquired the more credit, as it took possession of man by all his
natural inclinations. The oppressed found in it the hope of indemnity,
and the consolation of future vengeance; the oppressor, expecting by
rich offerings to purchase his impunity, formed out of the errors of the
vulgar an additional weapon of oppression; the chiefs of nations, the
kings and priests, found in this a new instrument of domination by the
privilege which they reserved to themselves of distributing the favors
and punishments of the great judge, according to the merit or demerit
of actions, which they took care to characterize as best suited their
system.
"This, then, is the manner in which an invisible and imaginary world
has been introduced into the real and visible one; this is the origin of
those regions of pleasure and pain, of which you Persians have made your
regenerated earth, your city of resurrection, placed under the equator,
with this singular attribute, that in it the blessed cast no shade.* Of
these materials, Jews and Christians, disciples of the Persians, have
you formed your New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse, your paradise, your
heaven, copied in all its parts from the astrological heaven of Hermes:
and your hell, ye Mussulmans, your bottomless pit, surmounted by a
bridge, your balance for weighing souls and good works, your last
judgment by the angels Monkir and Nekir, are likewise modeled from the
mysterious ceremonies of the cave of Mithras** and your heaven differs
not in the least from that of Osiris, of Ormuzd, and of Brama.
* There is on this subject a passage in Plutarch, so
interesting and explanatory of the whole of this system,
that we shall cite it entire. Having observed that the
theory of good and evil had at all times occupied the
attention of philosophers and theologians, he adds: "Many
suppose there to be two gods of opposite inclinations, one
delighting in good, the other in evil; the first of these is
called particularly by the name of God, the second by that
of Genius or Demon. Zoroaster has denominated them Oromaze
and Ahrimanes, and has said that of whatever falls under the
cognizance of our senses, light is the best representation
of the one, and darkness and ignorance of the other. He
adds, that Mithra is an intermediate being, and it is for
this reason the Persians call Mithra the mediator or
intermediator. Each of these Gods has distinct plants and
animals consecrated to him: for example, dogs, birds and
hedge-hogs belong to the good Genius, and all aquatic
animals to the evil one.
"The Persians also say, that Oromaze was born or formed out
of the purest light; Ahrimanes, on the contrary, out of the
thickest darkness: that Oromaze made six gods as good as
himself, and Ahrimanes opposed to them six wicked ones: that
Oromaze afterwards multiplied himself threefold (Hermes
trismegistus) and removed to a distance as remote from the
sun as the sun is remote from the earth that he there formed
stars, and, among others, Sirius, which he placed in the
heavens as a guard and sentinel. He made also twenty-four
other Gods, which he inclosed in an egg; but Ahrimanes
created an equal number on his part, who broke the egg, and
from that moment good and evil were mixed (in the universe).
But Ahrimanes is one day to be conquered, and the earth to
be made equal and smooth, that all men may live happy.
"Theopompus adds, from the books of the Magi, that one of
these Gods reigns in turn every three thousand years during
which the other is kept in subjection; that they afterwards
contend with equal weapons during a similar portion of time,
but that in the end the evil Genius will fall (never to rise
again). Then men will become happy, and their bodies cast
no shade. The God who mediates all these things reclines at
present in repose, waiting till he shall be pleased to
execute them." See Isis and Osiris.
There is an apparent allegory through the whole of this
passage. The egg is the fixed sphere, the world: the six
Gods of Oromaze are the six signs of summer, those of
Ahrimanes the six signs of winter. The forty-eight other
Gods are the forty-eight constellations of the ancient
sphere, divided equally between Ahrimanes and Oronmze. The
office of Sirius, as guard and sentinel, tells us that the
origin of these ideas was Egyptian: finally, the expression
that the earth is to become equal and smooth, and that the
bodies of happy beings are to cast no shade, proves that the
equator was considered as their true paradise.
** In the caves which priests every where constructed, they
celebrated mysteries which consisted (says Origen against
Celsus) in imitating the motion of the stars, the planets
and the heavens. The initiated took the name of
constellations, and assumed the figures of animals. One was
a lion, another a raven, and a third a ram. Hence the use
of masks in the first representation of the drama. See Ant.
Devoile, vol. iii., p. 244. "In the mysteries of Ceres the
chief in the procession called himself the creator; the
bearer of the torch was denominated the sun; the person
nearest to the altar, the moon; the herald or deacon,
Mercury. In Egypt there was a festival in which the men and
women represented the year, the age, the seasons, the
different parts of the day, and they walked in precession
after Bacchus. Athen. lib. v., ch. 7. In the cave of
Mithra was a ladder with seven steps, representing the seven
spheres of the planets, by means of which souls ascended and
descended. This is precisely the ladder in Jacob's vision,
which shows that at that epoch a the whole system was
formed. There is in the French king's library a superb
volume of pictures of the Indian Gods, in which the ladder
is represented with the souls of men mounting it."
VI. Sixth System. The Animated World, or Worship of the Universe under
diverse Emblems.
"While the nations were wandering in the dark labyrinth of mythology and
fables, the physical priests, pursuing their studies and enquiries into
the order and disposition of the universe, came to new conclusions, and
formed new systems concerning powers and first causes.
"Long confined to simple appearances, they saw nothing in the movement
of the stars but an unknown play of luminous bodies rolling round the
earth, which they believed the central point of all the spheres; but as
soon as they discovered the rotundity of our planet, the consequences
of this first fact led them to new considerations; and from induction to
induction they rose to the highest conceptions in astronomy and physics.
"Indeed, after having conceived this luminous idea, that the terrestrial
globe is a little circle inscribed in the greater circle of the heavens,
the theory of concentric circles came naturally into their hypothesis,
to determine the unknown circle of the terrestrial globe by certain
known portions of the celestial circle; and the measurement of one
or more degrees of the meridian gave with precision the whole
circumference. Then, taking for a compass the known diameter of
the earth, some fortunate genius applied it with a bold hand to the
boundless orbits of the heavens; and man, the inhabitant of a grain of
sand, embracing the infinite distances of the stars, launches into the
immensity of space and the eternity of time: there he is presented with
a new order of the universe of which the atom-globe which he inhabited
appeared no longer to be the centre; this important post was reserved to
the enormous mass of the sun; and that body became the flaming pivot of
eight surrounding spheres, whose movements were henceforth subjected to
precise calculations.
"It was indeed a great effort for the human mind to have undertaken to
determine the disposition and order of the great engines of nature; but
not content with this first effort, it still endeavored to develop the
mechanism, and discover the origin and the instinctive principle. Hence,
engaged in the abstract and metaphysical nature of motion and its
first cause, of the inherent or incidental properties of matter, its
successive forms and its extension, that is to say, of time and space
unbounded, the physical theologians lost themselves in a chaos of
subtile reasoning and scholastic controversy.*
* Consult the Ancient Astronomy of M. Bailly, and you will
find our assertions respecting the knowledge of the priests
amply proved.
"In the first place, the action of the sun on terrestrial bodies,
teaching them to regard his substance as a pure and elementary fire,
they made it the focus and reservoir of an ocean of igneous and luminous
fluid, which, under the name of ether, filled the universe and nourished
all beings. Afterwards, having discovered, by a physical and attentive
analysis, this same fire, or another perfectly resembling it, in the
composition of all bodies, and having perceived it to be the essential
agent of that spontaneous movement which is called life in animals and
vegetation in plants, they conceived the mechanism and harmony of the
universe, as of a homogeneous whole, of one identical body, whose parts,
though distant, had nevertheless an intimate relation;* and the world
was a living being, animated by the organic circulation of an igneous
and even electrical fluid,** which, by a term of comparison borrowed
first from men and animals, had the sun for a heart and a focus.***
* These are the very words of Jamblicus. De Myst. Egypt.
** The more I consider what the ancients understood by ether
and spirit, and what the Indians call akache, the stronger
do I find the analogy between it and the electrial fluid. A
luminous fluid, principle of warmth and motion, pervading
the universe, forming the matter of the stars, having small
round particles, which insinuate themselves into bodies, and
fill them by dilating itself, be their extent what it will.
What can more strongly resemble electricity?
*** Natural philosophers, says Macrobius, call the sun the
heart of the world. Som. Scrip. c. 20. The Egyptians, says
Plutarch, call the East the face, the North the right side,
and the South the left side of the world, because there the
heart is placed. They continually compare the universe to a
man; and hence the celebrated microcosm of the Alchymists.
We observe, by the bye, that the Alchymists, Cabalists,
Free-masons, Magnetisers, Martinists, and every other such
sort of visionaries, are but the mistaken disciples of this
ancient school: we say mistaken, because, in spite of their
pretensions, the thread of the occult science is broken.
"From this time the physical theologians seem to have divided into
several classes; one class, grounding itself on these principles
resulting from observation; that nothing can be annihilated in the
world; that the elements are indestructible; that they change their
combinations but not their nature; that the life and death of beings are
but the different modifications of the same atoms; that matter itself
possesses properties which give rise to all its modes of existence; that
the world is eternal,* or unlimited in space and duration; said that the
whole universe was God; and, according to them, God was a being, effect
and cause, agent and patient, moving principle and thing moved, having
for laws the invariable properties that constitute fatality; and this
class conveyed their idea by the emblem of Pan (the great whole); or of
Jupiter, with a forehead of stars, body of planets, and feet of animals;
or of the Orphic Egg,** whose yolk, suspended in the center of a liquid,
surrounded by a vault, represented the globe of the sun, swimming in
ether in the midst of the vault of heaven;*** sometimes by a great
round serpent, representing the heavens where they placed the moving
principle, and for that reason of an azure color, studded with spots
of gold, (the stars) devouring his tail--that is, folding and unfolding
himself eternally, like the revolutions of the spheres; sometimes by
that of a man, having his feet joined together and tied, to signify
immutable existence, wrapped in a cloak of all colors, like the face
of nature, and bearing on his head a sphere of gold,**** emblem of the
sphere of the stars; or by that of another man, sometimes seated on the
flower of the lotos borne on the abyss of waters, sometimes lying on a
pile of twelve cushions, denoting the twelve celestial signs. And here,
Indians, Japanese, Siamese, Tibetans, and Chinese, is the theology,
which, founded by the Egyptians and transmitted to you, is preserved in
the pictures which you compose of Brama, of Beddou, of Somona-Kodom of
Omito. This, ye Jews and Christians, is likewise the opinion of which
you have preserved a part in your God moving on the face of the waters,
by an allusion to the wind*5 which, at the beginning of the world, that
is, the departure of the sun from the sign of Cancer, announced the
inundation of the Nile, and seemed to prepare the creation."
* See the Pythagorean, Ocellus Lacunus.
** Vide Oedip. Aegypt. Tome II., page 205.
*** This comparison of the sun with the yolk of an egg
refers: 1. To its round and yellow figure; 2. To its central
situation; 3. To the germ or principle of life contained in
the yolk. May not the oval form of the egg allude to the
elipsis of the orbs? I am inclined to this opinion. The
word Orphic offers a farther observation. Macrobius says
(Som. Scrip. c. 14. and c. 20), that the sun is the brain of
the universe, and that it is from analogy that the skull of
a human being is round, like the planet, the seat of
intelligence. Now the word Oerph signifies in Hebrew the
brain and its seat (cervix): Orpheus, then, is the same as
Bedou or Baits; and the Bonzes are those very Orphics which
Plutarch represents as quacks, who ate no meat, vended
talismans and little stones, and deceived individuals, and
even governments themselves. See a learned memoir of Freret
sur les Orphiques, Acad. des Inscrp. vol. 25, in quarto.
**** See Porphyry in Eusebus. Proep. Evang., lib. 3, p. 115.
*5 The Northern or Etesian wind, which commences regularly
at the solstice, with the inundation.
VII. Seventh System. Worship of the SOUL of the WORLD, that is to say,
the Element of Fire, vital Principle of the Universe.
"But others, disgusted at the idea of a being at once effect and cause,
agent and patient, and uniting contrary natures in the same nature,
distinguished the moving principle from the thing moved; and premising
that matter in itself was inert they pretended that its properties were
communicated to it by a distinct agent, of which itself was only the
cover or the case. This agent was called by some the igneous principle,
known to be the author of all motion; by others it was supposed to be
the fluid called ether, which was thought more active and subtile;
and, as in animals the vital and moving principle was called a soul, a
spirit, and as they reasoned constantly by comparisons, especially
those drawn from human beings, they gave to the moving principle of the
universe the name of soul, intelligence, spirit; and God was the vital
spirit, which extended through all beings and animated the vast body of
the world. And this class conveyed their idea sometimes by Youpiter,*
essence of motion and animation, principle of existence, or rather
existence itself; sometimes by Vulcan or Phtha, elementary principle of
fire; or by the altar of Vesta, placed in the center of her temple like
the sun in the heavens; sometimes by Kneph, a human figure, dressed in
dark blue, having in one hand a sceptre and a girdle (the zodiac), with
a cap of feathers to express the fugacity of thought, and producing from
his mouth the great egg.
* This is the true pronunciation of the Jupiter of the
Latins. . . . Existence itself. This is the signification
of the word You.
"Now, as a consequence of this system, every being containing in itself
a portion of the igneous and etherial fluid, common and universal mover,
and this fluid soul of the world being God, it followed that the
souls of all beings were portions of God himself partaking of all
his attributes, that is, being a substance indivisible, simple, and
immortal; and hence the whole system of the immortality of the soul,
which at first was eternity.*
* In the system of the first spiritualists, the soul was not
created with, or at the same time as the body, in order to
be inserted in it: its existence was supposed to be anterior
and from all eternity. Such, in a few words, is the
doctrine of Macrobius on this head. Som. Seip. passim.
"There exists a luminous, igneous, subtile fluid, which
under the name of ether and spiritus, fills the universe.
It is the essential principle and agent of motion and life,
it is the Deity. When an earthly body is to be animated, a
small round particle of this fluid gravitates through the
milky way towards the lunar sphere; where, when it arrives,
it unites with a grosser air, and becomes fit to associate
with matter: it then enters and entirely fills the body,
animates it, suffers, grows, increases, and diminishes with
it; lastly, when the body dies, and its gross elements
dissolve, this incorruptible particle takes its leave of it,
and returns to the grand ocean of ether, if not retained by
its union with the lunar air: it is this air or gas, which,
retaining the shape of the body, becomes a phantom or ghost,
the perfect representation of the deceased. The Greeks
called this phantom the image or idol of the soul; the
Pythagoreans, its chariot, its frame; and the Rabbinical
school, its vessel, or boat. When a man had conducted
himself well in this world, his whole soul, that is its
chariot and ether, ascended to the moon, where a separation
took place: the chariot lived in the lunar Elysium, and the
ether returned to the fixed sphere, that is, to God: for the
fixed heaven, says Macrobius, was by many called by the name
of God (c. 14). If a man had not lived virtuously, the soul
remained on earth to undergo purification, and was to wander
to and fro, like the ghosts of Homer, to whom this doctrine
must have been known, since he wrote after the time of
Pherecydes and Pythagoras, who were its promulgators in
Greece. Herodotus upon this occasion says, that the whole
romance of the soul and its transmigrations was invented by
the Egyptians, and propagated in Greece by men, who
pretended to be its authors. I know their names, adds he,
but shall not mention them (lib. 2). Cicero, however, has
positively informed us, that it was Pherecydes, master of
Pythagoras. Tuscul. lib. 1, sect. 16. Now admitting that
this system was at that period a novelty, it accounts for
Solomon's treating it as a fable, who lived 130 years before
Pherecydes. 'Who knoweth,' said he, 'the spirit of a man
that it goeth upwards? I said in my heart concerning the
estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them and
that they might see that they themselves are beasts. For
that which befalleth the sons of men, befalleth beasts; even
one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the
other; yea they have all one breath, so that a man hath no
pre-eminence above a beast: for all is vanity.'" Eccles. c.
iii: v. 18.
And such had been the opinion of Moses, as a translator of
Herodotus (M. Archer of the Academy of Inscriptions) justly
observes in note 389 of the second book; where he says also
that the immortality of the soul was not introduced among
the Hebrews till their intercourse with the Assyrians. In
other respects, the whole Pythagorean system, properly
analysed, appears to be merely a system of physics badly
understood.
"Hence, also its transmigrations, known by the name of metempsychosis,
that is, the passage of the vital principle from one body to another; an
idea which arose from the real transmigration of the material elements.
And behold, ye Indians, ye Boudhists, ye Christians, ye Mussulmans!
whence are derived all your opinions on the spirituality of the soul;
behold what was the source of the dreams of Pythagoras and Plato, your
masters, who were themselves but the echoes of another, the last sect of
visionary philosophers, which we will proceed to examine.
VIII. Eighth system. The WORLD-MACHINE: Worship of the Demi-Ourgos, or
Grand Artificer.
"Hitherto the theologians, employing themselves in examining the
fine and subtile substances of ether or the generating fire, had not,
however, ceased to treat of beings palpable and perceptible to the
senses; and theology continued to be the theory of physical powers,
placed sometimes exclusively in the stars, and sometimes disseminated
through the universe; but at this period, certain superficial minds,
losing the chain of ideas which had directed them in their profound
studies, or ignorant of the facts on which they were founded, distorted
all the conclusions that flowed from them by the introduction of a
strange and novel chimera. They pretended that this universe, these
heavens, these stars, this sun, differed in no respect from an ordinary
machine; and applying to this first hypothesis a comparison drawn from
the works of art, they raised an edifice of the most whimsical sophisms.
A machine, said they, does not make itself; it has had an anterior
workman; its very existence proves it. The world is a machine; therefore
it had an artificer.*
* All the arguments of the spiritualists are founded on
this. See Macrobius, at the end of the second book, and
Plato, with the comments of Marcilius Ficinus.
"Here, then, is the Demi-Ourgos or grand artificer, constituted God
autocratical and supreme. In vain the ancient philosophy objected to
this by saying that the artificer himself must have had parents and
progenitors; and that they only added another step to the ladder by
taking eternity from the world, and giving it to its supposed author.
The innovators, not content with this first paradox, passed on to
a second; and, applying to their artificer the theory of the human
understanding, they pretended that the Demi-Ourgos had framed his
machine on a plan already existing in his understanding. Now, as their
masters, the naturalists, had placed in the regions of the fixed stars
the great primum mobile, under the name of intelligence and reason, so
their mimics, the spiritualists, seizing this idea, applied it to their
Demi-Ourgos, and making it a substance distinct and self-existent, they
called it mens or logos (reason or word). And, as they likewise admitted
the existence of the soul of the world, or solar principle, they found
themselves obliged to compose three grades of divine beings, which were:
first, the Demi-Ourgos, or working god; secondly, the logos, word
or reason; thirdly, the spirit or soul (of the world).* And here,
Christians! is the romance on which you have founded your trinity; here
is the system which, born a heretic in the temples of Egypt, transported
a pagan into the schools of Greece and Italy, is now found to be
good, catholic, and orthodox, by the conversion of its partisans, the
disciples of Pythagoras and Plato, to Christianity.
* These are the real types of the Christian Trinity.
"It is thus that God, after having been, First, The visible and various
action of the meteors and the elements;
"Secondly, The combined powers of the stars, considered in their
relations to terrestrial beings;
Thirdly, These terrestrial beings themselves, by confounding the symbols
with their archetypes;
Fourthly, The double power of nature in its two principal operations of
producing and destroying;
"Fifthly, The animated world, with distinction of agent and patient, of
effect and cause;
"Sixthly, The solar principle, or the element of fire considered as the
only mover;
"Has thus become, finally, in the last resort, a chimerical and abstract
being, a scholastic subtilty, of substance without form, a body without
a figure, a very delirium of the mind, beyond the power of reason to
comprehend. But vainly does it seek in this last transformation to elude
the senses; the seal of its origin is imprinted upon it too deep to be
effaced; and its attributes, all borrowed from the physical attributes
of the universe, such as immensity, eternity, indivisibility,
incomprehensibility; or on the moral affections of man, such as
goodness, justice, majesty; its names* even, all derived from the
physical beings which were its types, and especially from the sun, from
the planets, and from the world, constantly bring to mind, in spite of
its corrupters, indelible marks of its real nature.
* In our last analysis we found all the names of the Deity
to be derived from some material object in which it was
supposed to reside. We have given a considerable number of
instances; let us add one more relative to our word God.
This is known to be the Deus of the Latins, and the Theos of
the Greeks. Now by the confession of Plato (in Cratylo), of
Macrobius (Saturn, lib. 1, c. 24,) and of Plutarch (Isis and
Osiris) its root is thein, which signifies to wander, like
planein, that is to say, it is synonymous with planets;
because, add our authors, both the ancient Greeks and
Barbarians particularly worshipped the planets. I know that
such enquiries into etymologies have been much decried: but
if, as is the case, words are the representative signs of
ideas, the genealogy of the one becomes that of the other,
and a good etymological dictionary would be the most perfect
history of the human understanding. It would only be
necessary in this enquiry to observe certain precautions,
which have hitherto been neglected, and particularly to make
an exact comparison of the value of the letters of the
different alphabets. But, to continue our subject, we shall
add, that in the Phoenician language, the word thah (with
ain) signifies also to wander, and appears to be the
derivation of thein. If we suppose Deus to be derived from
the Greek Zeus, a proper name of You-piter, having zaw, I
live, for its root, its sense will be precisely that of you,
and will mean soul of the world, igneous principle. (See
note p. 143). Div-us, which only signifies Genius, God of
the second order, appears to me to come from the oriental
word div substituted for dib, wolf and chacal, one of the
emblems of the sun. At Thebes, says Macrobius, the sun was
painted under the form of a wolf or chacal, for there are no
wolves in Egypt. The reason of this emblem, doubtless, is
that the chacal, like the cock announces by its cries the
sun's rising; and this reason is confirmed by the analogy of
the words lykos, wolf, and lyke, light of the morning,
whence comes lux.
Dius, which is to be understood also of the sun, must be
derived from dih, a hawk. "The Egyptians," says Porphyry
(Euseb. Proecep. Evang. p. 92,) "represent the sun under the
emblem of a hawk, because this bird soars to the highest
regions of air where light abounds." And in reality we
continually see at Cairo large flights of these birds,
hovering in the air, from whence they descend not but to
stun us with their shrieks, which are like the monosyllable
dih: and here, as in the preceding example, we find an
analogy between the word dies, day, light, and dius, god,
sun.
"Such is the chain of ideas which the human mind had already run
through at an epoch previous to the records of history; and since their
continuity proves that they were the produce of the same series of
studies and labors, we have every reason to place their origin in Egypt,
the cradle of their first elements. This progress there may have been
rapid; because the physical priests had no other food, in the retirement
of the temples, but the enigma of the universe, always present to their
minds; and because in the political districts into which that country
was for a long time divided, every state had its college of priests,
who, being by turns auxiliaries or rivals, hastened by their disputes
the progress of science and discovery.*
* One of the proofs that all these systems were invented in
Egypt, is that this is the only country where we see a
complete body of doctrine formed from the remotest
antiquity.
Clemens Alexandrinus has transmitted to us (Stromat. lib.
6,) a curious detail of the forty-two volumes which were
borne in the procession of Isis. "The priest," says he, "or
chanter, carries one of the symbolic instruments of music,
and two of the books of Mercury; one containing hymns of the
gods, the other the list of kings. Next to him the
horoscope (the regulator of time,) carries a palm and a
dial, symbols of astrology; he must know by heart the four
books of Mercury which treat of astrology: the first on the
order of the planets, the second on the risings of the sun
and moon, and the two last on the rising and aspect of the
stars. Then comes the sacred author, with feathers on his
head (like Kneph) and a book in his hand, together with ink,
and a reed to write with, (as is still the practice among
the Arabs). He must be versed in hieroglyphics, must
understand the description of the universe, the course of
the sun, moon, stars, and planets, be acquainted with the
division of Egypt into thirty-six nomes, with the course of
the Nile, with instruments, measures, sacred ornaments, and
sacred places. Next comes the stole bearer, who carries the
cubit of justice, or measure of the Nile, and a cup for the
libations; he bears also in the procession ten volumes on
the subject of sacrifices, hymns, prayers, offerings,
ceremonies, festivals. Lastly arrives the prophet, bearing
in his bosom a pitcher, so as to be exposed to view; he is
followed by persons carrying bread (as at the marriage of
Cana.) This prophet, as president of the mysteries, learns
ten other sacred volumes, which treat of the laws, the gods,
and the discipline of the priests. Now there are in all
forty-two volumes, thirty-six of which are studied and got
by heart by these personages, and the remaining six are set
apart to be consulted by the pastophores; they treat of
medicine, the construction of the human body (anatomy),
diseases, remedies, instruments, etc., etc."
We leave the reader to deduce all the consequences of an
Encyclopedia. It is ascribed to Mercury; but Jamblicus
tells us that each book, composed by priests, was dedicated
to that god, who, on account of his title of genius or decan
opening the zodiac, presided over every enterprise. He is
the Janus of the Romans, and the Guianesa of the Indians,
and it is remarkable that Yanus and Guianes are homonymous.
In short it appears that these books are the source of all
that has been transmitted to us by the Greeks and Latins in
every science, even in alchymy, necromancy, etc. What is
most to be regretted in their loss is that part which
related to the principles of medicine and diet, in which the
Egyptians appear to have made a considerable progress, and
to have delivered many useful observations.
"There happened early on the borders of the Nile, what has since been
repeated in every country; as soon as a new system was formed
its novelty excited quarrels and schisms; then, gaining credit by
persecution itself, sometimes it effaced antecedent ideas, sometimes it
modified and incorporated them; then, by the intervention of political
revolutions, the aggregation of states and the mixture of nations
confused all opinions; and the filiation of ideas being lost, theology
fell into a chaos, and became a mere logogriph of old traditions no
longer understood. Religion, having strayed from its object was now
nothing more than a political engine to conduct the credulous vulgar;
and it was used for this purpose, sometimes by men credulous themselves
and dupes of their own visions, and sometimes by bold and energetic
spirits in pursuit of great objects of ambition.
IX. Religion of Moses, or Worship of the Soul of the World (You-piter).
"Such was the legislator of the Hebrews; who, wishing to separate his
nation from all others, and to form a distinct and solitary empire,
conceived the design of establishing its basis on religious prejudices,
and of raising around it a sacred rampart of opinions and of rites. But
in vain did he prescribe the worship of the symbols which prevailed in
lower Egypt and in Phoenicia;* for his god was nevertheless an Egyptian
god, invented by those priests of whom Moses had been the disciple; and
Yahouh,** betrayed by its very name, essence (of beings), and by its
symbol, the burning bush, is only the soul of the world, the
moving principle which the Greeks soon after adopted under the same
denomination in their you-piter, regenerating being, and under that of
Ei, existence,*** which the Thebans consecrated by the name of Kneph,
which Sais worshipped under the emblem of Isis veiled, with this
inscription: I am al that has been, all that is, and all that is to
come, and no mortal has raised my veil; which Pythagoras honored under
the name of Vesta, and which the stoic philosophy defined precisely by
calling it the principle of fire. In vain did Moses wish to blot from
his religion every thing which had relation to the stars; many traits
call them to mind in spite of all he has done. The seven planetary
luminaries of the great candlestick; the twelve stones, or signs in the
Urim of the high priests; the feast of the two equinoxes, (entrances and
gates of the two hemispheres); the ceremony of the lamb, (the celestial
ram then in his fifteenth degree); lastly, the name even of Osiris
preserved in his song,**** and the ark, or coffer, an imitation of the
tomb in which that God was laid, all remain as so many witnesses of the
filiation of his ideas, and of their extraction from the common source.
* "At a certain period," says Plutarch (de Iside) "all the
Egyptians have their animal gods painted. The Thebans are
the only people who do not employ painters, because they
worship a god whose form comes not under the senses, and
cannot be represented." And this is the god whom Moses,
educated at Heliopolis, adopted; but the idea was not of his
invention.
** Such is the true pronunciation of the Jehovah of the
moderns, who violate, in this respect, every rule of
criticism; since it is evident that the ancients,
particularly the eastern Syrians and Phoenicians, were
acquainted neither with the J nor the P which are of Tartar
origin. The subsisting usage of the Arabs, which we have
re-established here, is confirmed by Diodorus, who calls the
god of Moses Iaw, (lib. 1), and Iaw and Yahouh are
manifestly the same word: the identity continues in that of
You-piter; but in order to render it more complete, we shall
demonstrate the signification to be the same.
In Hebrew, that is to say, in one of the dialects of the
common language of lower Asia, Yahouh is the participle of
the verb hih, to exist, to be, and signifies existing: in
other words, the principle of life, the mover or even motion
(the universal soul of beings). Now what is Jupiter? Let
us hear the Greeks and Latins explain their theology. "The
Egyptians," says Diodorus, after Manatho, priest of Memphis,
"in giving names to the five elements, called spirit, or
ether, You-piter, on account of the true meaning of that
word: for spirit is the source of life, author of the vital
principle in animals; and for this reason they considered
him as the father, the generator of beings." For the same
reason Homer says, father, and king of men and gods. (Diod.
lib. 1, sect 1).
"Theologians," says Macrobius, "consider You-piter as the
soul of the world." Hence the words of Virgil: " Muses let
us begin with You-piter; the world is full of You-piter."
(Somn. Scrip., ch. 17). And in the Saturnalia, he says,
"Jupiter is the sun himself." It was this also which made
Virgil say, "The spirit nourishes the life (of beings), and
the soul diffused through the vast members (of the
universe), agitates the whole mass, and forms but one
immense body."
"Ioupiter," says the ancient verses of the Orphic sect,
which originated in Egypt; verses collected by Onomacritus
in the days of Pisistratus, "Ioupiter, represented with the
thunder in his hand, is the beginning, origin, end, and
middle of all things: a single and universal power, he
governs every thing; heaven, earth, fire, water, the
elements, day, and night. These are what constitute his
immense body: his eyes are the sun and moon: he is space and
eternity: in fine," adds Porphyry. "Jupiter is the world,
the universe, that which constitutes the essence and life of
all beings. Now," continues the same author, "as
philosophers differed in opinion respecting the nature and
constituent parts of this god, and as they could invent no
figure that should represent all his attributes, they
painted him in the form of a man. He is in a sitting
posture, in allusion to his immutable essence; the upper
part of his body is uncovered, because it is in the upper
regions of the universe (the stars) that he most
conspicuously displays himself. He is covered from the
waist downwards, because respecting terrestrial things he is
more secret and concealed. He holds a scepter in his left
hand, because on the left side is the heart, and the heart
is the seat of the understanding, which, (in human beings)
regulates every action." Euseb. Proeper. Evang., p 100.
The following passage of the geographer and philosopher,
Strabo, removes every doubt as to the identity of the ideas
of Moses and those of the heathen theologians.
"Moses, who was one of the Egyptian priests, taught his
followers that it was an egregious error to represent the
Deity under the form of animals, as the Egyptians did, or in
the shape of man, as was the practice of the Greeks and
Africans. That alone is the Deity, said he, which
constitutes heaven, earth, and every living thing; that
which we call the world, the sum of all things, nature; and
no reasonable person will think of representing such a being
by the image of any one of the objects around us. It is for
this reason, that, rejecting every species of images or
idols, Moses wished the Deity to be worshipped without
emblems, and according to his proper nature; and he
accordingly ordered a temple worthy of him to be erected,
etc. Geograph. lib. 16, p. 1104, edition of 1707.
The theology of Moses has, then, differed in no respect from
that of his followers, that is to say, from that of the
Stoics and Epicureans, who consider the Deity as the soul of
the world. This philosophy appears to have taken birth, or
to have been disseminated when Abraham came into Egypt (200
years before Moses), since he quitted his system of idols
for that of the god Yahouh; so that we may place its
promulgation about the seventeenth or eighteenth century
before Christ; which corresponds with what we have said
before.
As to the history of Moses, Diodorus properly represents it
when he says, lib. 34 and 40, "That the Jews were driven out
of Egypt at a time of dearth, when the country was full of
foreigners, and that Moses, a man of extraordinary prudence
seized this opportunity of establishing his religion in the
mountains of Judea." It will seem paradoxical to assert,
that the 600,000 armed men whom he conducted thither ought
to be reduced to 6,000; but I can confirm the assertion by
so many proofs drawn from the books themselves, that it will
be necessary to correct an error which appears to have
arisen from the mistake of the transcribers.
*** This was the monosyllable written on the gates of the
temple of Delphos. Plutarch has made it the subject of a
dissertation.
**** These are the literal expressions of the book of
Deuteronomy, chap. XXXII. "The works of Tsour are perfect."
Now Tsour has been translated by the word creator; its
proper signification is to give forms, and this is one of
the definitions of Osiris in Plutarch.
X. Religion of Zoroaster.
"Such also was Zoroaster; who, five centuries after Moses, and in the
time of David, revived and moralized among the Medes and Bactrians, the
whole Egyptian system of Osiris and Typhon, under the names Ormuzd and
Ahrimanes; who called the reign of summer, virtue and good; the reign of
winter, sin and evil; the renewal of nature in spring, creation of the
world; the conjunction of the spheres at secular periods, resurrection;
and the Tartarus and Elysium of the astrologers and geographers were
named future life, hell and paradise. In a word, he did nothing but
consecrate the existing dreams of the mystical system.
XI. Budsoism, or Religion of the Samaneans.
"Such again are the propagators of the dismal doctrine of the Samaneans;
who, on the basis of the Metempsychosis, have erected the misanthropic
system of self-denial, and of privations; who, laying it down as a
principle that the body is only a prison where the soul lives in an
impure confinement, that life is only a dream, an illusion, and the
world only a passage to another country, to a life without end, placed
virtue and perfection in absolute immobility, in the destruction of all
sentiment, in the abnegation of physical organs, in the annihilation of
all our being; whence resulted fasts, penances, macerations, solitude,
contemplations, and all the practices of the deplorable delirium of the
Anchorites.
XII. Brahmism, or Indian System.
"And such, too, were the founders of the Indian System; who, refining
after Zoroaster on the two principles of creation and destruction,
introduced an intermediary principle, that of preservation, and on
their trinity in unity, of Brama, Chiven, and Vichenou, accumulated the
allegories of their ancient traditions, and the alembicated subtilities
of their metaphysics.
"These are the materials which existed in a scattered state for
many centuries in Asia; when a fortuitous concourse of events and
circumstances, on the borders of the Euphrates and the Mediterranean,
served to form them into new combinations.
XIII. Christianity, or the Allegorical Worship of the Sun, under the
cabalistical names of Chrish-en, or Christ, and Ye-sus or Jesus.
"In constituting a separate nation, Moses strove in vain to defend it
against the invasion of foreign ideas. An invisible inclination, founded
on the affinity of their origin, had constantly brought back the Hebrews
towards the worship of the neighboring nations; and the commercial and
political relations which necessarily existed between them, strengthened
this propensity from day to day. As long as the constitution of the
state remained entire, the coercive force of the government and the laws
opposed these innovations, and retarded their progress; nevertheless
the high places were full of idols; and the god Sun had his chariot and
horses painted in the palaces of the kings, and even in the temples of
Yahouh; but when the conquests of the sultans of Nineveh and Babylon had
dissolved the bands of civil power, the people, left to themselves and
solicited by their conquerors, restrained no longer their inclination
for profane opinions, and they were publicly established in Judea.
First, the Assyrian colonies, which came and occupied the lands of the
tribes, filled the kingdom of Samaria with dogmas of the Magi, which
very soon penetrated into the kingdom of Judea. Afterwards, Jerusalem
being subjugated, the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Arabs, entering this
defenceless country, introduced their opinions; and the religion of
Moses was doubly mutilated. Besides the priests and great men, being
transported to Babylon and educated in the sciences of the Chaldeans,
imbibed, during a residence of seventy years, the whole of their
theology; and from that moment the dogmas of the hostile Genius (Satan),
the archangel Michael,* the ancient of days (Ormuzd), the rebel
angels, the battles in heaven, the immortality of the soul, and the
resurrection, all unknown to Moses, or rejected by his total silence
respecting them, were introduced and naturalized among the Jews.
* "The names of the angels and of the months, such as
Gabriel, Michael, Yar, Nisan, etc., came from Babylon with
the Jews:" says expressly the Talmud of Jerusalem. See
Beousob. Hist. du Manich. Vol. II, p. 624, where he proves
that the saints of the Almanac are an imitation of the 365
angels of the Persians; and Jamblicus in his Egyptian
Mysteries, sect. 2, c. 3, speaks of angels, archangels,
seraphims, etc., like a true Christian.
"The emigrants returned to their country with these ideas; and their
innovation at first excited disputes between their partisans the
Pharisees, and their opponents the Saducees, who maintained the ancient
national worship; but the former, aided by the propensities of the
people and their habits already contracted, and supported by the
Persians, their deliverers and masters, gained the ascendant over the
latter; and the Sons of Moses consecrated the theology of Zoroaster.*
* "The whole philosophy of the gymnosophists," says Diogenes
Laertius on the authority of an ancient writer, "is derived
from that of the Magi, and many assert that of the Jews to
have the same origin." Lib. 1. c. 9. Megasthenes, an
historian of repute in the days of Seleucus Nicanor, and who
wrote particularly upon India, speaking of the philosophy of
the ancients respecting natural things, puts the Brachmans
and the Jews precisely on the same footing.
"A fortuitous analogy between two leading ideas was highly favorable
to this coalition, and became the basis of a last system, not less
surprising in the fortune it has had in the world, than in the causes of
its formation.
"After the Assyrians had destroyed the kingdom of Samaria, some
judicious men foresaw the same destiny for Jerusalem, which they did not
fail to predict and publish; and their predictions had the particular
turn of being terminated by prayers for a re-establishment and
regeneration, uttered in the form of prophecies. The Hierophants,
in their enthusiasm, had painted a king as a deliverer, who was to
re-establish the nation in its ancient glory; the Hebrews were to become
once more a powerful, a conquering nation, and Jerusalem the capital of
an empire extended over the whole earth.
"Events having realized the first part of these predictions, the ruin of
Jerusalem, the people adhered to the second with a firmness of belief in
proportion to their misfortunes; and the afflicted Jews expected, with
the impatience of want and desire, this victorious king and deliverer,
who was to come and save the nation of Moses, and restore the empire of
David.
"On the other hand, the sacred and mythological traditions of preceding
times had spread through all Asia a dogma perfectly analogous. The cry
there was a great mediator, a final judge, a future saviour, a king,
god, conqueror and legislator, who was to restore the golden age upon
earth,* to deliver it from the dominion of evil, and restore men to the
empire of good, peace, and happiness. The people seized and cherished
these ideas with so much the more avidity, as they found in them a
consolation under that deplorable state of suffering into which they
had been plunged by the devastations of successive conquests, and the
barbarous despotism of their governments. This conformity between the
oracles of different nations, and those of the prophets, excited the
attention of the Jews; and doubtless the prophets had the art to compose
their descriptions after the style and genius of the sacred books
employed in the Pagan mysteries. There was therefore a general
expectation in Judea of a great ambassador, a final Saviour; when a
singular circumstance determined the epoch of his coming.
* This is the reason of the application of the many Pagan
oracles to Jesus, and particularly the fourth eclogue of
Virgil, and the Sybilline verses so celebrated among the
ancients.
"It is found in the sacred books of the Persians and Chaldeans, that the
world, composed of a total revolution of twelve thousand, was divided
into two partial revolutions; one of which, the age and reign of good,
terminated in six thousand; the other, the age and reign of evil, was to
terminate in six thousand more.
"By these records, the first authors had understood the annual
revolution of the great celestial orb called the world, (a revolution
composed of twelve months or signs, divided each into a thousand parts),
and the two systematic periods, of winter and summer, composed each of
six thousand. These expressions, wholly equivocal and badly explained,
having received an absolute and moral, instead of a physical and
astrological sense, it happened that the annual world was taken for the
secular world, the thousand of the zodiacal divisions, for a thousand of
years; and supposing, from the state of things, that they lived in
the age of evil, they inferred that it would end with the six thousand
pretended years.*
* We have already seen this tradition current among the
Tuscans; it was disseminated through most nations, and shows
us what we ought to think of all the pretended creations and
terminations of the world, which are merely the beginnings
and endings of astronomical periods invented by astrologers.
That of the year or solar revolution, being the most simple
and perceptible, served as a model to the rest, and its
comparison gave rise to the most whimsical ideas. Of this
description is the idea of the four ages of the world among
the Indians. Originally these four ages were merely the
four seasons; and as each season was under the supposed
influence of a planet, it bore the name of the metal
appropriated to that planet; thus spring was the age of the
sun, or of gold; summer the age of the moon, or of silver;
autumn the age of Venus, or of brass; and winter the age of
Mars, or of iron. Afterwards when astronomers invented the
great year of 25 and 36 thousand common years, which had for
its object the bringing back all the stars to one point of
departure and a general conjunction, the ambiguity of the
terms introduced a similar ambiguity of ideas; and the
myriads of celestial signs and periods of duration which
were thus measured were easily converted into so many
revolutions of the sun. Thus the different periods of
creation which have been so great a source of difficulty and
misapprehension to curious enquirers, were in reality
nothing more than hypothetical calculations of astronomical
periods. In the same manner the creation of the world has
been attributed to different seasons of the year, just as
these different seasons have served for the fictitious
period of these conjunctions; and of consequence has been
adopted by different nations for the commencement of an
ordinary year. Among the Egyptians this period fell upon
the summer solstice, which was the commencement of their
year; and the departure of the spheres, according to their
conjectures, fell in like manner upon the period when the
sun enters cancer. Among the Persians the year commenced at
first in the spring, or when the sun enters Aries; and from
thence the first Christians were led to suppose that God
created the world in the spring: this opinion is also
favored by the book of Genesis; and it is farther
remarkable, that the world is not there said to be created
by the God of Moses (Yahouh), but by the Elohim or gods in
the plural, that is by the angels or genii, for so the word
constantly means in the Hebrew books. If we farther observe
that the root of the word Elohim signifies strong or
powerful, and that the Egyptians called their decans strong
and powerful leaders, attributing to them the creation of
the world, we shall presently perceive that the book of
Genesis affirms neither more nor less than that the world
was created by the decans, by those very genii whom,
according to Sanchoniathon, Mercury excited against Saturn,
and who were called Elohim. It may be farther asked why the
plural substantive Elohim is made to agree with the singular
verb bara (the Elohim creates). The reason is that after the
Babylonish captivity the unity of the Supreme Being was the
prevailing opinion of the Jews; it was therefore thought
proper to introduce a pious solecism in language, which it
is evident had no existence before Moses; thus in the names
of the children of Jacob many of them are compounded of a
plural verb, to which Elohim is the nominative case
understood, as Raouben (Reuben), they have looked upon me,
and Samaonni (Simeon), they have granted me my prayer; to
wit, the Elohim. The reason of this etymology is to be
found in the religious creeds of the wives of Jacob, whose
gods were the taraphim of Laban, that is, the angels of the
Persians, and Egyptian decans.
"Now, according to calculations admitted by the Jews, they began to
reckon near six thousand years since the supposed creation of the
world.* This coincidence caused a fermentation in the public mind.
Nothing was thought of but the approaching end. They consulted the
hierophants and the mystical books, which differed as to the term; the
great mediator, the final judge, was expected and desired, to put an
end to so many calamities. This being was so much spoken of, that some
person finally was said to have seen him; and a first rumor of this sort
was sufficient to establish a general certainty. Popular report became
an established fact: the imaginary being was realized; and all the
circumstances of mythological tradition, being assembled around this
phantom, produced a regular history, of which it was no longer permitted
to doubt.
* According to the computation of the Seventy, the period
elapsed consisted of about 5,600 years, and this computation
was principally followed. It is well known how much, in the
first ages of the church, this opinion of the end of the
world agitated the minds of men. In the sequel, the general
councils encouraged by finding that the general
conflagration did not come, pronounced the expectation that
prevailed heretical, and its believers were called
Millenarians; a circumstance curious enough, since it is
evident from the history of the gospels that Jesus Christ
was a Millenarian, and of consequence a heretic.
"These mythological traditions recounted that, in the beginning, a woman
and a man had by their fall introduced sin and misery into the world.
(Consult plate of the Astrological Heaven of the Ancients.)
"By this was denoted the astronomical fact, that the celestial virgin
and the herdsman (Bootes), by setting heliacally at the autumnal
equinox, delivered the world to the wintry constellations, and seemed,
on falling below the horizon, to introduce into the world the genius of
evil, Ahrimanes, represented by the constellation of the Serpent.*
* "The Persians," says Chardin, "call the constellation of
the serpent Ophiucus, serpent of Eve: and this serpent
Ophiucas or Ophioneus plays a similar part in the theology
of the Phoenicians," for Pherecydes, their disciple and the
master of Pythagoras, said "that Ophioneus Serpentinus had
been chief of the rebels against Jupiter." See Mars. Ficin.
Apol. Socrat. p. m. 797, col. 2. I shall add that ephah
(with ain) signifies in Hebrew, serpent.
These traditions related that the woman had decoyed and seduced the
man.*
* In a physical sense to seduce, seducere, means only to
attract, to draw after us.
"And in fact, the virgin, setting first, seems to draw the herdsman
after her.
"That the woman tempted him by offering him fruit fair to the sight and
good to eat, which gave the knowledge of good and evil.
"And in fact, the Virgin holds in her hand a branch of fruit, which she
seems to offer to the Herdsman; and the branch, emblem of autumn, placed
in the picture of Mithra* between winter and summer, seems to open the
door and give knowledge, the key of good and evil.
* See this picture in Hyde, page 111, edition of 1760.
That this couple had been driven from the celestial garden, and that a
cherub with a flaming sword had been placed at the gate to guard it.
"And in fact, when the virgin and the herdsman fall beneath the horizon,
Perseus rises on the other side;* and this Genius, with a sword in
his hand, seems to drive them from the summer heaven, the garden and
dominion of fruits and flowers.
* Rather the head of Medusa; that head of a woman once so
beautiful, which Perseus cut off and which beholds in his
hand, is only that of the virgin, whose head sinks below the
horizon at the very moment that Perseus rises; and the
serpents which surround it are Orphiucus and the Polar
Dragon, who then occupy the zenith. This shows us in what
manner the ancients composed all their figures and fables.
They took such constellations as they found at the same time
on the circle of the horizon, and collecting the different
parts, they formed groups which served them as an almanac in
hieroglyphic characters. Such is the secret of all their
pictures, and the solution of all their mythological
monsters. The virgin is also Andromeda, delivered by
Perseus from the whale that pursues her (pro-sequitor).
That of this virgin should be born, spring up, an offspring, a child,
who should bruise the head of the serpent, and deliver the world from
sin.
"This denotes the son, which, at the moment of the winter solstice,
precisely when the Persian Magi drew the horoscope of the new year,
was placed on the bosom of the Virgin, rising heliacally in the eastern
horizon; on this account he was figured in their astrological pictures
under the form of a child suckled by a chaste virgin,* and became
afterwards, at the vernal equinox, the ram, or the lamb, triumphant over
the constellation of the Serpent, which disappeared from the skies.
* Such was the picture of the Persian sphere, cited by Aben
Ezra in the Coelam Poeticum of Blaeu, p. 71. "The picture
of the first decan of the Virgin," says that writer.
"represents a beautiful virgin with flowing hair; sitting in
a chair, with two ears of corn in her hand, and suckling an
infant, called Jesus by some nations, and Christ in Greek."
In the library of the king of France is a manuscript in
Arabic, marked 1165, in which is a picture of the twelve
signs; and that of the Virgin represents a young woman with
an infant by her side: the whole scene indeed of the birth
of Jesus is to be found in the adjacent part of the heavens.
The stable is the constellation of the charioteer and the
goat, formerly Capricorn: a constellation called proesepe
Jovis Heniochi, stable of Iou; and the word Iou is found in
the name Iou-seph (Joseph). At no great distance is the ass
of Typhon (the great she-bear), and the ox or bull, the
ancient attendants of the manger. Peter the porter, is
Janus with his keys and bald forehead: the twelve apostles
are the genii of the twelve months, etc. This Virgin has
acted very different parts in the various systems of
mythology: she has been the Isis of the Egyptians, who said
of her in one of their inscriptions cited by Julian, the
fruit I have brought forth is the sun. The majority of
traits drawn by Plutarch apply to her, in the same manner as
those of Osiris apply to Bootes: also the seven principal
stars of the she-bear, called David's chariot, were called
the chariot of Osiris (See Kirker); and the crown that is
situated behind, formed of ivy, was called Chen-Osiris, the
tree of Osiris. The Virgin has likewise been Ceres, whose
mysteries were the same with those of Isis and Mithra; she
has been the Diana of the Ephesians; the great goddess of
Syria, Cybele, drawn by lions; Minerva, the mother of
Bacchus; Astraea, a chaste virgin taken up into heaven at
the end of a golden age; Themis at whose feet is the balance
that was put in her hands; the Sybil of Virgil, who descends
into hell, or sinks below the hemisphere with a branch in
her hand, etc.
That, in his infancy, this restorer of divine and celestial nature would
live abased, humble, obscure and indigent.
"And this, because the winter sun is abased below the horizon; and that
this first period of his four ages or seasons, is a time of obscurity,
scarcity, fasting, and want.
"That, being put to death by the wicked, he had risen gloriously; that
he had reascended from hell to heaven, where he would reign forever
"This is a sketch of the life of the sun; who, finishing his career at
the winter solstice, when Typhon and the rebel angels gain the dominion,
seems to be put to death by them; but who soon after is born again, and
rises* into the vault of heaven, where he reigns.
* Resurgere, to rise a second time, cannot signify to return
to life, but in a metaphorical sense; but we see continually
mistakes of this kind result from the ambiguous meaning of
the words made use of in ancient tradition.
"Finally, these traditions went so far as to mention even his
astrological and mythological names, and inform us that he was called
sometimes Chris, that is to say, preserver,* and from that, ye Indians,
you have made your god Chrish-en or Chrish-na; and, ye Greek and Western
Christians, your Chris-tos, son of Mary, is the same; sometimes he is
called Yes, by the union of three letters, which by their numerical
value form the number 608, one of the solar periods.** And this,
Europeans, is the name which, with the Latin termination, is become your
Yes-us or Jesus, the ancient and cabalistic name attributed to young
Bacchus, the clandestine son (nocturnal) of the Virgin Minerva, who, in
the history of his whole life, and even of his death, brings to mind the
history of the god of the Christians, that is, of the star of day, of
which they are each of them the emblems."
* The Greeks used to express by X, or Spanish iota, the
aspirated ha of the Orientals, who said haris. In Hebrew
heres signifies the sun, but in Arabic the meaning of the
radical word is, to guard, to preserve, and of haris,
guardian, preserver. It is the proper epithet of Vichenou,
which demonstrates at once the identity of the Indian and
Christian Trinities, and their common origin. It is
manifestly but one system, which divided into two branches,
one extending to the east, and the other to the west,
assumed two different forms: Its principal trunk is the
Pythagorean system of the soul of the world, or Iou-piter.
The epithet piter, or father, having been applied to the
demi-ourgos of Plato, gave rise to an ambiguity which caused
an enquiry to be made respecting the son of this father. In
the opinion of the philosophers the son was understanding,
Nous and Logos, from which the Latins made their Verbum.
And thus we clearly perceive the origin of the eternal
father and of the Verbum his son, proceeding from him (Mens
Ex Deo nata, says Macrobius): the oenima or spiritus mundi,
was the Holy Ghost; and it is for this reason that Manes,
Pasilides, Valentinius, and other pretended heretics of the
first ages, who traced things to their source, said, that
God the Father was the supreme inaccessible light (that of
the heaven, the primum mobile, or the aplanes); the Son the
secondary light resident in the sun, and the Holy Ghost the
atmosphere of the earth (See Beausob. vol. II, p. 586):
hence, among the Syrians, the representation of the Holy
Ghost by a dove, the bird of Venus Urania, that is of the
air. The Syrians (says Nigidius de Germaico) assert that a
dove sat for a certain number of days on the egg of a fish,
and that from this incubation Venus was born: Sextus
Empiricus also observes (Inst. Pyrrh. lib. 3, c. 23) that
the Syrians abstain from eating doves; which intimates to us
a period commencing in the sign Pisces, in the winter
solstice. We may farther observe, that if Chris comes from
Harisch by a chin, it will signify artificer, an epithet
belonging to the sun. These variations, which must have
embarrassed the ancients, prove it to be the real type of
Jesus, as had been already remarked in the time of
Tertullian. "Many, says this writer, suppose with greater
probability that the sun is our God, and they refer us to
the religion of the Persians." Apologet. c. 16.
** See a curious ode to the sun, by Martianus Capella,
translated by Gebelin.
Here a great murmur having arisen among all the Christian groups, the
Lamas, the Mussulmans and the Indians called them to order, and the
orator went on to finish his discourse:
"You know at present," said he, "how the rest of this system was
composed in the chaos and anarchy of the three first centuries; what a
multitude of singular opinions divided the minds of men, and armed them
with an enthusiasm and a reciprocal obstinacy; because, being equally
founded on ancient tradition, they were equally sacred. You know how the
government, after three centuries, having embraced one of these sects,
made it the orthodox, that is to say, the pre-dominant religion, to the
exclusion of the rest; which, being less in number, became heretics; you
know how and by what means of violence and seduction this religion was
propagated, extended, divided, and enfeebled; how, six hundred years
after the Christian innovation, another system was formed from it and
from that of the Jews; and how Mahomet found the means of composing a
political and theological empire at the expense of those of Moses and
the vicars of Jesus.
"Now, if you take a review of the whole history of the spirit of all
religion, you will see that in its origin it has had no other author
than the sensations and wants of man; that the idea of God has had no
other type and model than those of physical powers, material beings,
producing either good or evil, by impressions of pleasure or pain on
sensitive beings; that in the formation of all these systems the spirit
of religion has always followed the same course, and been uniform in
its proceedings; that in all of them the dogma has never failed to
represent, under the name of gods, the operations of nature, and
passions and prejudices of men; that the moral of them all has had for
its object the desire of happiness and the aversion to pain; but that
the people, and the greater part of legislators, not knowing the route
to be pursued, have formed false, and therefore discordant, ideas of
virtue and vice of good and evil, that is to say, of what renders man
happy or miserable; that in every instance, the means and the causes of
propagating and establishing systems have exhibited the same scenes of
passion and the same events; everywhere disputes about words, pretexts
for zeal, revolutions and wars excited by the ambition of princes, the
knavery of apostles, the credulity of proselytes, the ignorance of the
vulgar, the exclusive cupidity and intolerant arrogance of all. Indeed,
you will see that the whole history of the spirit of religion is only
the history of the errors of the human mind, which, placed in a world
that it does not comprehend, endeavors nevertheless to solve the enigma;
and which, beholding with astonishment this mysterious and visible
prodigy, imagines causes, supposes reasons, builds systems; then,
finding one defective, destroys it for another not less so; hates the
error that it abandons, misconceives the one that it embraces, rejects
the truth that it is seeking, composes chimeras of discordant beings;
and thus, while always dreaming of wisdom and happiness, wanders blindly
in a labyrinth of illusion and doubt."
CHAPTER XXIII.
ALL RELIGIONS HAVE THE SAME OBJECT.
Thus spoke the orator in the name of those men who had studied the
origin and succession of religious ideas.
The theologians of various systems, reasoning on this discourse: "It is
an impious representation," said some, "whose tendency is nothing less
than to overturn all belief, to destroy subordination in the minds of
men, and annihilate our ministry and power." "It is a romance," said
others, "a tissue of conjectures, composed with art, but without
foundation." The moderate and prudent men added: "Supposing all this to
be true, why reveal these mysteries? Doubtless our opinions are full of
errors; but these errors are a necessary restraint on the multitude. The
world has gone thus for two thousand years; why change it now?"
A murmur of disapprobation, which never fails to rise at every
innovation, now began to increase; when a numerous group of the common
classes of people, and of untaught men of all countries and of every
nation, without prophets, without doctors, and without doctrine,
advancing in the circle, drew the attention of the whole assembly; and
one of them, in the name of all, thus addressed the multitude:
"Mediators and arbiters of nations! the strange relations which have
occupied the present debate were unknown to us until this day. Our
understanding, confounded and amazed at so many statements, some of them
learned, others absurd and all incomprehensible, remains in uncertainty
and doubt. One only reflection has struck us: on reviewing so many
prodigious facts, so many contradictory assertions, we ask ourselves:
What are all these discussions to us? What need have we of knowing what
passed five or six thousand years ago, in countries we never heard
of, and among men who will ever be unknown to us? True or false, what
interest have we in knowing whether the world has existed six thousand,
or twenty-five thousand years? Whether it was made of nothing, or of
something; by itself, or by a maker, who in his turn would require
another maker? What! we are not sure of what happens near us, and shall
we answer for what happens in the sun, in the moon, or in imaginary
regions of space? We have forgotten our own infancy, and shall we know
the infancy of the world? And who will attest what no one has seen? who
will certify what no man comprehends?
"Besides, what addition or diminution will it make to our existence, to
answer yes or no to all these chimeras? Hitherto neither our fathers nor
ourselves have had the least knowledge or notion of them, and we do not
perceive that we have had on this account either more or less of the
sun, more or less of subsistence, more or less of good or of evil.
"If the knowledge of these things is so necessary, why have we lived as
well without it as those who have taken so much trouble concerning it?
If this knowledge is superfluous, why should we burden ourselves with it
to-day?"
Then addressing himself to the doctors and theologians:
"What!" said he, "is it necessary that we, poor and ignorant men, whose
every moment is scarcely sufficient for the cares of life, and the
labors of which you take the profit,--is it necessary for us to learn
the numberless histories that you have recounted, to read the quantity
of books that you have cited, and to study the various languages in
which they are composed! A thousand years of life would not suffice--"
"It is not necessary," replied the doctors, "that you should acquire all
this science; we have it for you--"
"But even you," replied the simple men, "with all your science, you are
not agreed; of what advantage, then, is your science? Besides, how can
you answer for us? If the faith of one man is applicable to many, what
need have even you to believe? your fathers may have believed for you;
and this would be reasonable, since they have seen for you.
"Farther, what is believing, if believing influences no action? And what
action is influenced by believing, for instance, that the world is or is
not eternal?"
"The latter would be offensive to God," said the doctors.
"How prove you that?" replied the simple men.
"In our books," answered the doctors.
"We do not understand them," returned the simple men.
"We understand them for you," said the doctors.
"That is the difficulty," replied the simple men. "By what right do you
constitute yourselves mediators between God and us?"
"By his orders," said the doctors.
"Where is the proof of these orders?" said the simple men.
"In our books," said the doctors.
"We understand them not," said the simple men; "and how came this just
God to give you this privilege over us? Why did this common father
oblige us to believe on a less degree of evidence than you? He has
spoken to you; be it so; he is infallible, and deceives you not. But
it is you who speak to us! And who shall assure us that you are not in
error yourselves, or that you will not lead us into error? And if we
should be deceived, how will that just God save us contrary to law, or
condemn us on a law which we have not known?"
"He has given you the natural law," said the doctors.
"And what is the natural law?" replied the simple men. "If that law is
sufficient, why has he given any other? If it is not sufficient, why did
he make it imperfect?"
"His judgments are mysteries," said the doctors, "and his justice is not
like that of men."
"If his justice," replied the simple men, "is not like ours, by what
rule are we to judge of it? And, moreover, why all these laws, and what
is the object proposed by them?"
"To render you more happy," replied a doctor, "by rendering you better
and more virtuous. It is to teach man to enjoy his benefits, and not
injure his fellows, that God has manifested himself by so many oracles
and prodigies."
"In that case," said the simple men, "there is no necessity for so many
studies, nor of such a variety of arguments; only tell us which is the
religion that best answers the end which they all propose."
Immediately, on this, every group, extolling its own morality above
that of all others, there arose among the different sects a new and most
violent dispute.
"It is we," said the Mussulmans, "who possess the most excellent morals,
who teach all the virtues useful to men and agreeable to God. We profess
justice, disinterestedness, resignation to providence, charity to
our brethren, alms-giving, and devotion; we torment not the soul with
superstitious fears; we live without alarm, and die without remorse."
"How dare you speak of morals," answered the Christian priests, "you,
whose chief lived in licentiousness and preached impurity? You, whose
first precept is homicide and war? For this we appeal to experience: for
these twelve hundred years your fanatical zeal has not ceased to spread
commotion and carnage among the nations. If Asia, so flourishing in
former times, is now languishing in barbarity and depopulation, it is in
your doctrine that we find the cause; in that doctrine, the enemy of
all instruction, which sanctifies ignorance, which consecrates the most
absolute despotism in the governors, imposes the most blind and passive
obedience in the people, that has stupefied the faculties of man, and
brutalized the nations.
"It is not so with our sublime and celestial morals; it was they which
raised the world from its primitive barbarity, from the senseless
and cruel superstitions of idolatry, from human sacrifices,* from the
shameful orgies of pagan mysteries; they it was that purified manners,
proscribed incest and adultery, polished savage nations, banished
slavery, and introduced new and unknown virtues, charity for men, their
equality in the sight of God, forgiveness and forgetfulness of injuries,
the restraint of all the passions, the contempt of worldly greatness, a
life completely spiritual and completely holy!"
* Read the cold declaration of Eusebius (Proep. Evang. lib.
I, p. 11,), who pretends that, since the coming of Christ,
there have been neither wars, nor tyrants, nor cannibals,
nor sodomites, nor persons committing incest, nor savages
destroying their parents, etc. When we read these fathers
of the church we are astonished at their insincerity or
infatuation.
"We admire," said the Mussulmans, "the ease with which you reconcile
that evangelical meekness, of which you are so ostentatious, with
the injuries and outrages with which you are constantly galling your
neighbors. When you criminate so severely the great man whom we revere,
we might fairly retort on the conduct of him whom you adore; but we
scorn such advantages, and confining ourselves to the real object in
question, we maintain that the morals of your gospel have by no means
that perfection which you ascribe to them; it is not true that they
have introduced into the world new and unknown virtues: for example,
the equality of men in the sight of God,--that fraternity and that
benevolence which follow from it, were formal doctrines of the sect
of the Hermatics or Samaneans,* from whom you descend. As to the
forgiveness of injuries, the Pagans themselves had taught it; but in
the extent that you give it, far from being a virtue, it becomes an
immorality, a vice. Your so much boasted precept of turning one cheek
after the other, is not only contrary to every sentiment of man, but is
opposed to all ideas of justice. It emboldens the wicked by impunity,
debases the virtuous by servility, delivers up the world to despotism
and tyranny, and dissolves all society. Such is the true spirit of your
doctrines. Your gospels in their precepts and their parables, never
represent God but as a despot without any rules of equity; a partial
father treating a debauched and prodigal son with more favor than his
respectful and virtuous children; a capricious master, who gives the
same wages to workmen who had wrought but one hour, as to those who had
labored through the whole day; one who prefers the last comers to the
first. The moral is everywhere misanthropic and antisocial; it disgusts
men with life and with society; and tends only to encourage hermitism
and celibacy.
* The equality of mankind in a state of nature and in the
eyes of God was one of the principal tenets of the
Samaneans, and they appear to be the only ancients that
entertained this opinion.
"As to the manner in which you have practised these morals, we appeal
in our turn to the testimony of facts. We ask whether it is this
evangelical meekness which has excited your interminable wars between
your sects, your atrocious persecutions of pretended heretics, your
crusades against Arianism, Manicheism, Protestantism, without speaking
of your crusades against us, and of those sacrilegious associations,
still subsisting, of men who take an oath to continue them?* We ask
you whether it be gospel charity which has made you exterminate whole
nations in America, to annihilate the empires of Mexico and Peru; which
makes you continue to dispeople Africa and sell its inhabitants like
cattle, notwithstanding your abolition of slavery; which makes you
ravage India and usurp its dominions; and whether it be the same charity
which, for three centuries past, has led you to harrass the habitations
of the people of three continents, of whom the most prudent, the Chinese
and Japanese, were constrained to drive you off, that they might escape
your chains and recover their internal peace?"
* The oath taken by the knights of the Order of Malta, is to
kill, or make the Mahometans prisoners, for the glory of
God.
Here the Bramins, the Rabbins, the Bonzes, the Chamans, the Priests of
the Molucca islands, and the coasts of Guinea, loading the Christian
doctors with reproaches: "Yes!" cried they, "these men are robbers and
hypocrites, who preach simplicity, to surprise confidence; humility,
to enslave with more ease; poverty, to appropriate all riches to
themselves. They promise another world, the better to usurp the present;
and while they speak to you of tolerance and charity, they burn, in the
name of God, the men who do not worship him in their manner."
"Lying priests," retorted the missionaries, "it is you who abuse the
credulity of ignorant nations to subjugate them. It is you who have made
of your ministry an art of cheating and imposture; you have converted
religion into a traffic of cupidity and avarice. You pretend to hold
communications with spirits, and they give for oracles nothing but
your wills. You feign to read the stars, and destiny decrees only your
desires. You cause idols to speak, and the gods are but the instruments
of your passions. You have invented sacrifices and libations, to
collect for your own profit the milk of flocks, and the flesh and fat
of victims; and under the cloak of piety you devour the offerings of the
gods, who cannot eat, and the substance of the people who are forced to
labor."
"And you," replied the Bramins, the Bonzes, the Chamans, "you sell to
the credulous living, your vain prayers for the souls of the dead. With
your indulgences and your absolutions you have usurped the power of God
himself; and making a traffic of his favors and pardons, you have put
heaven at auction; and by your system of expiations you have formed a
tariff of crimes, which has perverted all consciences."*
* As long as it shall be possible to obtain purification
from crimes and exemption from punishment by means of money
or other frivolous practices; as long as kings and great men
shall suppose that building temples or instituting
foundations, will absolve them from the guilt of oppression
and homicide; as long as individuals shall imagine that they
may rob and cheat, provided they observe fast during Lent,
go to confession, and receive extreme unction, it is
impossible there should exist in society any morality or
virtue; and it is from a deep conviction of truth, that a
modern philosopher has called the doctrine of expiations la
verola des societes.
"Add to this," said the Imans, "that these men have invented the
most insidious of all systems of wickedness,--the absurd and impious
obligation of recounting to them the most intimate secrets of actions
and of thoughts (confessions); so their insolent curiosity has carried
their inquisition even into the sanctuary of the marriage bed,* and the
inviolable recesses of the heart."
* Confession is a very ancient invention of the priests, who
did not fail to avail themselves of that means of governing.
It was practised in the Egyptian, Greek, Phrygian, Persian
mysteries, etc. Plutarch has transmitted us the remarkable
answer of a Spartan whom a priest wanted to confess. "Is it
to you or to God I am to confess?" "To God," answered the
priest: "In that case," replied the Spartan, "man, begone!"
(Remarkable Savings of the Lacedemonians.) The first
Christians confessed their faults publicly, like the
Essenians. Afterwards, priests began to be established,
with power of absolution from the sin of idolatry. In the
time of Theodosius, a woman having publicly confessed an
intrigue with a deacon, bishop Necterius, and his successor
Chrysostom, granted communion without confession. It was
not until the seventh century that the abbots of convents
exacted from monks and nuns confession twice a year; and it
was at a still later period that bishops of Rome generalized
it.
The Mussulmen, who suppose women to have no souls, are
shocked at the idea of confession; and say; How can an
honest man think of listening to the recital of the actions
or the secret thoughts of a woman? May we not also ask, on
the other hand, how can an honest woman consent to reveal
them?
Thus by mutual reproaches the doctors of the different sects began to
reveal all the crimes of their ministry--all the vices of their craft;
and it was found that among all nations the spirit of the priesthood,
their system of conduct, their actions their morals, were absolutely the
same:
That they had everywhere formed secret associations and corporations at
enmity with the rest of society:*
* That we may understand the general feelings of priests
respecting the rest of mankind, whom they always call by the
name of the people, let us hear one of the doctors of the
church. "The people," says Bishop Synnesius, in Calvit.
page 315, "are desirous of being deceived, we cannot act
otherwise respecting them. The case was similar with the
ancient priests of Egypt, and for this reason they shut
themselves up in their temples, and there composed their
mysteries, out of the reach of the eye of the people." And
forgetting what he has before just said, he adds: "for had
the people been in the secret they might have been offended
at the deception played upon them. In the mean time how is
it possible to conduct one's self otherwise with the people
so long as they are people? For my own part, to myself I
shall always be a philosopher, but in dealing with the mass
of mankind, I shall be a priest."
"A little jargon," says Geogory Nazianzen to St. Jerome
(Hieron. ad. Nep.) "is all that is necessary to impose on
the people. The less they comprehend, the more they admire.
Our forefathers and doctors of the church have often said,
not what they thought, but what circumstances and necessity
dictated to them."
"We endeavor," says Sanchoniaton, "to excite admiration by
means of the marvellous." (Proep. Evang. lib. 3.)
Such was the conduct of all the priests of antiquity, and is
still that of the Bramins and Lamas who are the exact
counterpart of the Egyptian priests. Such was the practice
of the Jesuits, who marched with hasty strides in the same
career. It is useless to point out the whole depravity of
such a doctrine. In general every association which has
mystery for its basis, or an oath of secrecy, is a league of
robbers against society, a league divided in its very bosom
into knaves and dupes, or in other words agents and
instruments. It is thus we ought to judge of those modern
clubs, which, under the name of Illuminatists, Martinists,
Cagliostronists, and Mesmerites, infest Europe. These
societies are the follies and deceptions of the ancient
Cabalists, Magicians, Orphies, etc., "who," says Plutarch,
"led into errors of considerable magnitude, not only
individuals, but kings and nations."
That they had everywhere attributed to themselves prerogatives and
immunities, by means of which they lived exempt from the burdens of
other classes:
That they everywhere avoided the toils of the laborer, the dangers of
the soldier, and the disappointments of the merchant:
That they lived everywhere in celibacy, to shun even the cares of a
family:
That, under the cloak of poverty, they found everywhere the secret of
procuring wealth and all sorts of enjoyments:
That under the name of mendicity they raised taxes to a greater amount
than princes:
That in the form of gifts and offerings they had established fixed and
certain revenues exempt from charges:
That under pretence of retirement and devotion they lived in idleness
and licentiousness:
That they had made a virtue of alms-giving, to live quietly on the
labors of others:
That they had invented the ceremonies of worship, as a means of
attracting the reverence of the people, while they were playing the
parts of gods, of whom they styled themselves the interpreters and
mediators, to assume all their powers; that, with this design, they had
(according to the degree of ignorance or information of their people)
assumed by turns the character of astrologers, drawers of horoscopes,
fortune-tellers, magicians,* necromancers, quacks, physicians,
courtiers, confessors of princes, always aiming at the great object to
govern for their own advantage:
* What is a magician, in the sense in which people
understand the word? A man who by words and gestures
pretends to act on supernatural beings, and compel them to
descend at his call and obey his orders. Such was the
conduct of the ancient priests, and such is still that of
all priests in idolatrous nations; for which reason we have
given them the denomination of Magicians.
And when a Christian priest pretends to make God descend
from heaven, to fix him to a morsel of leaven, and render,
by means of this talisman, souls pure and in a state of
grace, what is this but a trick of magic? And where is the
difference between a Chaman of Tartary who invokes the
Genii, or an Indian Bramin, who makes Vichenou descend in a
vessel of water to drive away evil spirits? Yes, the
identity of the spirit of priests in every age and country
is fully established! Every where it is the assumption of
an exclusive privilege, the pretended faculty of moving at
will the powers of nature; and this assumption is so direct
a violation of the right of equality, that whenever the
people shall regain their importance, they will forever
abolish this sacrilegious kind of nobility, which has been
the type and parent stock of the other species of nobility.
That sometimes they had exalted the power of kings and consecrated their
persons, to monopolize their favors, or participate their sway:
That sometimes they had preached up the murder of tyrants (reserving it
to themselves to define tyranny), to avenge themselves of their contempt
or their disobedience:
And that they always stigmatised with impiety whatever crossed their
interests; that they hindered all public instruction, to exercise the
monopoly of science; that finally, at all times and in all places, they
had found the secret of living in peace in the midst of the anarchy they
created, in safety under the despotism that they favored, in idleness
amidst the industry they preached, and in abundance while surrounded
with scarcity; and all this by carrying on the singular trade of selling
words and gestures to credulous people, who purchase them as commodities
of the greatest value.*
* A curious work would be the comparative history of the
agnuses of the pope and the pastils of the grand Lama. It
would be worth while to extend this idea to religions
ceremonies in general, and to confront column by column, the
analogous or contrasting points of faith and superstitious
practices in all nations. There is one more species of
superstition which it would be equally salutary to cure,
blind veneration for the great; and for this purpose it
would be alone sufficient to write a minute detail of the
private life of kings and princes. No work could be so
philosophical as this; and accordingly we have seen what a
general outcry was excited among kings and the panders of
kings, when the Anecdotes of the Court of Berlin first
appeared. What would be the alarm were the public put in
possession of the sequel of this work? Were the people
fairly acquainted with all the absurdities of this species
of idol, they would no longer be exposed to covet their
specious pleasures of which the plausible and hollow
appearance disturbs their peace, and hinders them from
enjoying the much more solid happiness of their own
condition.
Then the different nations, in a transport of fury, were going to
tear in pieces the men who had thus abused them; but the legislator,
arresting this movement of violence, addressed the chiefs and doctors:
"What!" said he, "instructors of nations, is it thus that you have
deceived them?"
And the terrified priests replied.
"O legislator! we are men. The people are so superstitious! they have
themselves encouraged these errors."*
* Consider in this view the Brabanters.
And the kings said:
"O legislator! the people are so servile and so ignorant! they
prostrated themselves before the yoke, which we scarcely dared to show
them."*
* The inhabitants of Vienna, for example, who harnessed
themselves like cattle and drew the chariot of Leopold.
Then the legislator, turning to the people--"People!" said he, "remember
what you have just heard; they are two indelible truths. Yes, you
yourselves cause the evils of which you complain; yourselves encourage
the tyrants, by a base adulation of their power, by an imprudent
admiration of their false beneficence, by servility in obedience,
by licentiousness in liberty, and by a credulous reception of every
imposition. On whom shall you wreak vengeance for the faults committed
by your own ignorance and cupidity?"
And the people, struck with confusion, remained in mournful silence.
CHAPTER XXIV.
SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF CONTRADICTIONS.
The legislator then resumed his discourse: "O nations!" said he, "we
have heard the discussion of your opinions. The different sentiments
which divide you have given rise to many reflections, and furnished
several questions which we shall propose to you to solve.
"First, considering the diversity and opposition of the creeds to which
you are attached, we ask on what motives you found your persuasion? Is
it from a deliberate choice that you follow the standard of one prophet
rather than another? Before adopting this doctrine, rather than that,
did you first compare? did you carefully examine them? Or have you
received them only from the chance of birth, from the empire of
education and habit? Are you not born Christians on the borders of the
Tiber, Mussulmans on those of the Euphrates, Idolaters on the Indus,
just as you are born fair in cold climates, and sable under the
scorching sun of Africa? And if your opinions are the effect of your
fortuitous position on the earth, of consanguinity, of imitation, how is
it that such a hazard should be a ground of conviction, an argument of
truth?
"Secondly, when we reflect on the mutual proscriptions and arbitrary
intolerance of your pretensions, we are frightened at the consequences
that flow from your own principles. Nations! who reciprocally devote
each other to the bolts of heavenly wrath, suppose that the universal
Being, whom you revere, should this moment descend from heaven on this
multitude; and, clothed with all his power, should sit on this throne
to judge you; suppose that he should say to you: Mortals! it is your own
justice that I am going to exercise upon you. Yes, of all the religious
systems that divide you, one alone shall this day be preferred; all the
others, all this multitude of standards, of nations, of prophets, shall
be condemned to eternal destruction. This is not enough: among the
particular sects of the chosen system, one only can be favored; all
the others must be condemned: neither is this enough;--from this little
remnant of a group I must exclude all those who have not fulfilled the
conditions enjoined by its precepts. O men! to what a small number of
elect have you limited your race! to what a penury of beneficence do you
reduce the immensity of my goodness! to what a solitude of beholders do
you condemn my greatness and my glory!
"But," said the legislator rising, "no matter you have willed it so.
Nations! here is an urn in which all your names are placed: one only is
a prize: approach, and draw this tremendous lottery!" And the nations,
seized with terror cried: "No, no; we are all brothers, all equal; we
cannot condemn each other."
"Then," said the legislator, resuming his seat: "O men! who dispute
on so many subjects, lend an attentive ear to one problem which you
exhibit, and which you ought to decide yourselves."
And the people, giving great attention, he lifted an arm towards heaven,
and, pointing to the sun, said:
"Nations, does that sun, which enlightens you, appear square or
triangular?"
"No," answered they with one voice, "it is round."
Then, taking the golden balance that was on the altar:
"This gold," said the legislator, "that you handle every day, is it
heavier than the same volume of copper?"
"Yes," answered all the people, "gold is heavier than Copper."
Then, taking the sword:
"Is this iron," said the legislator, "softer than lead?"
"No," said the people.
"Is sugar sweet, and gall bitter?"
"Yes."
"Do you love pleasure and hate pain?"
"Yes."
"Thus, then, you are agreed in these points, and many others of the same
nature.
"Now, tell us, is there a cavern in the centre of the earth, or
inhabitants in the moon?"
This question caused a universal murmur. Every one answered
differently--some yes, others no; one said it was probable, another said
it was an idle and ridiculous question; some, that it was worth knowing.
And the discord was universal.
After some time the legislator, having obtained silence, said:
"Explain to us, O Nations! this problem: we have put to you several
questions which you have answered with one voice, without distinction
of race or of sect: white men, black men, followers of Mahomet and of
Moses, worshippers of Boudha and of Jesus, all have returned the same
answer. We then proposed another question, and you have all disagreed!
Why this unanimity in one case, and this discordance in the other?"
And the group of simple men and savages answered and said: "The reason
of this is plain. In the first case we see and feel the objects, and we
speak from sensation; in the second, they are beyond the reach of our
senses--we speak of them only from conjecture."
"You have resolved the problem," said the legislator; "and your own
consent has established this first truth:
"That whenever objects can be examined and judged of by your senses,
you are agreed in opinion; and that you only differ when the objects are
absent and beyond your reach.
"From this first truth flows another equally clear and worthy of notice.
Since you agree on things which you know with certainty, it follows that
you disagree only on those which you know not with certainty, and about
which you are not sure; that is to say, you dispute, you quarrel, you
fight, for that which is uncertain, that of which you doubt. O men! is
this wisdom?
"Is it not, then, demonstrated that truth is not the object of your
contests? that it is not her cause which you defend, but that of your
affections, and your prejudices? that it is not the object, as it really
is in itself, that you would verify, but the object as you would have
it; that is to say, it is not the evidence of the thing that you would
enforce, but your own personal opinion, your particular manner of seeing
and judging? It is a power that you wish to exercise, an interest that
you wish to satisfy, a prerogative that you arrogate to yourself; it is
a contest of vanity. Now, as each of you, on comparing himself to every
other, finds himself his equal and his fellow, he resists by a feeling
of the same right. And your disputes, your combats, your intolerance,
are the effect of this right which you deny each other, and of the
intimate conviction of your equality.
"Now, the only means of establishing harmony is to return to nature,
and to take for a guide and regulator the order of things which she has
founded; and then your accord will prove this other truth:
"That real beings have in themselves an identical, constant and uniform
mode of existence; and that there is in your organs a like mode of being
affected by them.
"But at the same time, by reason of the mobility of these organs as
subject to your will, you may conceive different affections, and find
yourselves in different relations with the same objects; so that you are
to them like a mirror, capable of reflecting them truly as they are, or
of distorting and disfiguring them.
"Hence it follows, that whenever you perceive objects as they are,
you agree among yourselves, and with the objects; and this similitude
between your sensations and their manner of existence, is what
constitutes their truth with respect to you; and, on the contrary,
whenever you differ in opinion, your disagreement is a proof that you do
not represent them such as they are,--that you change them.
"Hence, also, it follows, that the causes of your disagreement exist
not in the objects themselves, but in your minds, in your manner of
perceiving or judging.
"To establish, therefore, a uniformity of opinion, it is necessary first
to establish the certainty, completely verified, that the portraits
which the mind forms are perfectly like the originals; that it reflects
the objects correctly as they exist. Now, this result cannot be obtained
but in those cases where the objects can be brought to the test, and
submitted to the examination of the senses. Everything which cannot
be brought to this trial is, for that reason alone, impossible to be
determined; there exists no rule, no term of comparison, no means of
certainty, respecting it.
"From this we conclude, that, to live in harmony and peace, we must
agree never to decide on such subjects, and to attach to them no
importance; in a word, we must trace a line of distinction between those
that are capable of verification, and those that are not; and separate
by an inviolable barrier the world of fantastical beings from the world
of realities; that is to say, all civil effect must be taken away from
theological and religious opinions.
"This, O ye people of the earth! is the object proposed by a great
nation freed from her fetters and her prejudices; this is the work
which, under her eye and by her orders, we had undertaken, when your
kings and your priests came to interrupt it. O kings and priests! you
may suspend, yet for a while, the solemn publication of the laws of
nature; but it is no longer in your power to annihilate or to subvert
them."
A general shout then arose from every part of the assembly; and the
nations universally, and with one voice, testified their assent to the
proposals of the delegates: "Resume," said they, "your holy and sublime
labors, and bring them to perfection. Investigate the laws which nature,
for our guidance, has implanted in our breasts, and collect from them
an authentic and immutable code; nor let this code be any longer for one
family only, but for us all without exception. Be the legislators of the
whole human race, as you are the interpreters of nature herself. Show
us the line of partition between the world of chimeras and that of
realities; and teach us, after so many religions of error and delusion,
the religion of evidence and truth!"
Then the delegates, having resumed their enquiries into the physical and
constituent attributes of man, and examined the motives and affections
which govern him in his individual and social state, unfolded in these
words the laws on which nature herself has founded his happiness.
THE LAW OF NATURE.
CHAPTER 1.
OF THE LAW OF NATURE.
Q. What is the law of nature?
A. It is the constant and regular order of events, by which God governs
the universe; an order which his wisdom presents to the senses and
reason of men, as an equal and common rule for their actions, to guide
them, without distinction of country or sect, towards perfection and
happiness.
Q. Give a clear definition of the word law.
A. The word law, taken literary, signifies lecture,* because originally,
ordinances and regulations were the lectures, preferably to all others,
made to the people, in order that they might observe them, and not incur
the penalties attached to their infraction: whence follows the original
custom explaining the true idea.
The definition of law is, "An order or prohibition to act with the
express clause of a penalty attached to the infraction, or of a
recompense attached to the observance of that order."
* From the Latin word lex, lectio. Alcoran likewise
signifies lecture and is only a literal translation of the
word law.
Q. Do such orders exist in nature?
A. Yes.
Q. What does the word nature signify?
A. The word nature bears three different significations.
1. It signifies the universe, the material world: in this first sense
we say the beauties of nature, the riches of nature, that is to say, the
objects in the heavens and on the earth exposed to our sight;
2. It signifies the power that animates, that moves the universe,
considering it as a distinct being, such as the soul is to the body;
in this second sense we say, "The intentions of nature, the
incomprehensible secrets of nature."
3. It signifies the partial operations of that power on each being, or
on each class of beings; and in this third sense we say, "The nature of
man is an enigma; every being acts according to its nature."
Wherefore, as the actions of each being, or of each species of beings,
are subjected to constant and general rules, which cannot be infringed
without interrupting and troubling the general or particular order,
those rules of action and of motion are called natural laws, or laws of
nature.
Q. Give me examples of those laws.
A. It is a law of nature, that the sun illuminates successively the
surface of the terrestrial globe;--that its presence causes both light
and heat;--that heat acting upon water, produces vapors;--that those
vapors rising in clouds into the regions of the air, dissolve into rain
or snow, and renew incessantly the waters of fountains and rivers.
It is a law of nature, that water flows downwards; that it endeavors
to find its level; that it is heavier than air; that all bodies tend
towards the earth; that flame ascends towards the heavens;--that it
disorganizes vegetables and animals; that air is essential to the life
of certain animals; that, in certain circumstances, water suffocates and
kills them; that certain juices of plants, certain minerals attack
their organs, and destroy their life, and so on in a multitude of other
instances.
Wherefore, as all those and similar facts are immutable, constant, and
regular, so many real orders result from them for man to conform himself
to, with the express clause of punishment attending the infraction of
them, or of welfare attending their observance. So that if man pretends
to see clear in darkness, if he goes in contradiction to the course of
the seasons, or the action of the elements; if he pretends to remain
under water without being drowned, to touch fire without burning
himself, to deprive himself of air without being suffocated, to swallow
poison without destroying himself, he receives from each of those
infractions of the laws of nature a corporeal punishment proportionate
to his fault; but if on the contrary, he observes and practises each of
those laws according to the regular and exact relations they have to him
he preserves his existence, and renders it as happy as it can be: and
as the only and common end of all those laws, considered relatively to
mankind, is to preserve, and render them happy, it has been agreed
upon to reduce the idea to one simple expression, and to call them
collectively the law of nature.
CHAPTER II.
CHARACTERS OF THE LAW OF NATURE.
Q. What are the characters of the law of nature?
A. There can be assigned ten principal ones.
Q. Which is the first?
A. To be inherent to the existence of things, and, consequently,
primitive and anterior to every other law: so that all those which
man has received, are only imitations of it, and their perfection is
ascertained by the resemblance they bear to this primordial model.
Q. Which is the second?
A. To be derived immediately from God, and presented by him to each man,
whereas all other laws are presented to us by men, who may be either
deceived or deceivers.
Q. Which is the third?
A. To be common to all times, and to all countries, that is to say, one
and universal.
Q. Is no other law universal?
A. No: for no other is agreeable or applicable to all the people of the
earth; they are all local and accidental, originating from circumstances
of places and of persons; so that if such a man had not existed, or such
an event happened, such a law would never have been enacted.
Q. Which is the fourth character?
A. To be uniform and invariable.
Q. Is no other law uniform and invariable?
A. No: for what is good and virtue according to one, is evil and vice
according to another; and what one and the same law approves of at one
time, it often condemns at another.
Q. Which is the fifth character?
A. To be evident and palpable, because it consists entirely of facts
incessantly present to the senses, and to demonstration.
Q. Are not other laws evident?
A. No: for they are founded on past and doubtful facts, on equivocal and
suspicious testimonies, and on proofs inaccessible to the senses.
Q. Which is the sixth character?
A. To be reasonable, because its precepts and entire doctrine are
conformable to reason, and to the human understanding.
Q. Is no other law reasonable?
A. No: for all are in contradiction to the reason and the understanding
of men, and tyrannically impose on him a blind and impracticable belief.
Q. Which is the seventh character?
A. To be just, because in that law, the penalties are proportionate to
the infractions.
Q. Are not other laws just?
A. No: for they often exceed bounds, either in rewarding deserts, or in
punishing delinquencies, and consider as meritorious or criminal, null
or indifferent actions.
Q. Which is the eighth character?
A. To be pacific and tolerant, because in the law of nature, all men
being brothers and equal in rights, it recommends to them only peace and
toleration, even for errors.
Q. Are not other laws pacific?
A. No: for all preach dissension, discord, and war, and divide mankind
by exclusive pretensions of truth and domination.
Q. Which is the ninth character?
A. To be equally beneficent to all men, in teaching them the true means
of becoming better and happier.
Q. Are not other laws beneficent likewise?
A. No: for none of them teach the real means of attaining happiness; all
are confined to pernicious or futile practices; and this is evident from
facts, since after so many laws, so many religions, so many legislators
and prophets, men are still as unhappy and ignorant, as they were six
thousand years ago.
Q. Which is the last character of the law of nature?
A. That it is alone sufficient to render men happier and better, because
it comprises all that is good and useful in other laws, either civil or
religious, that is to say, it constitutes essentially the moral part of
them; so that if other laws were divested of it, they would be reduced
to chimerical and imaginary opinions devoid of any practical utility.
Q. Recapitulate all those characters.
A. We have said that the law of nature is,
1. Primitive; 6. Reasonable;
2. Immediate; 7. Just;
3. Universal; 8. Pacific;
4. Invariable; 9. Beneficent: and
5. Evident; 10. Alone sufficient.
And such is the power of all these attributes of perfection and truth,
that when in their disputes the theologians can agree upon no article of
belief, they recur to the law of nature, the neglect of which, say they,
forced God to send from time to time prophets to proclaim new laws; as
if God enacted laws for particular circumstances, as men do; especially
when the first subsists in such force, that we may assert it to have
been at all times and in all countries the rule of conscience for every
man of sense or understanding.
Q. If, as you say, it emanates immediately from God, does it teach his
existence?
A. Yes, most positively: for, to any man whatever, who observes with
reflection the astonishing spectacle of the universe, the more he
meditates on the properties and attributes of each being, on
the admirable order and harmony of their motions, the more it is
demonstrated that there exists a supreme agent, a universal and identic
mover, designated by the appellation of God; and so true it is that the
law of nature suffices to elevate him to the knowledge of God, that all
which men have pretended to know by supernatural means, has constantly
turned out ridiculous and absurd, and that they have ever been obliged
to recur to the immutable conceptions of natural reason.
Q. Then it is not true that the followers of the law of nature are
atheists?
A. No; it is not true; on the contrary, they entertain stronger and
nobler ideas of the Divinity than most other men; for they do not
sully him with the foul ingredients of all the weaknesses and passions
entailed on humanity.
Q. What worship do they pay to him?
A. A worship wholly of action; the practice and observance of all the
rules which the supreme wisdom has imposed on the motion of each being;
eternal and unalterable rules, by which it maintains the order
and harmony of the universe, and which, in their relations to man,
constitute the law of nature.
Q. Was the law of nature known before this period:
A. It has been at all times spoken of: most legislators pretend to adopt
it as the basis of their laws; but they only quote some of its precepts,
and have only vague ideas of its totality.
Q. Why.
A. Because, though simple in its basis, it forms in its developements
and consequences, a complicated whole which requires an extensive
knowledge of facts, joined to all the sagacity of reasoning.
Q. Does not instinct alone teach the law of nature?
A. No; for by instinct is meant nothing more than that blind sentiment
by which we are actuated indiscriminately towards everything that
flatters the senses.
Q. Why, then, is it said that the law of nature is engraved in the
hearts of all men.
A. It is said for two reasons: first, because it has been remarked, that
there are acts and sentiments common to all men, and this proceeds from
their common organization; secondly, because the first philosophers
believed that men were born with ideas already formed, which is now
demonstrated to be erroneous.
Q. Philosophers, then, are fallible?
A. Yes, sometimes.
Q. Why so?
A. First, because they are men; secondly, because the ignorant call all
those who reason, right or wrong, philosophers; thirdly, because those
who reason on many subjects, and who are the first to reason on them,
are liable to be deceived.
Q. If the law of nature be not written, must it not become arbitrary and
ideal?
A. No: because it consists entirely in facts, the demonstration of which
can be incessantly renewed to the senses, and constitutes a science as
accurate and precise as geometry and mathematics; and it is because the
law of nature forms an exact science, that men, born ignorant and living
inattentive and heedless, have had hitherto only a superficial knowledge
of it.
CHAPTER III.
PRINCIPLES OF THE LAW OF NATURE RELATING TO MAN.
Q. Explain the principles of the law of nature with relation to man.
A. They are simple; all of them are comprised in one fundamental and
single precept.
Q. What is that precept?
A. It is self-preservation.
Q. Is not happiness also a precept of the law of nature?
A. Yes: but as happiness is an accidental state, resulting only from
the development of man's faculties and his social system, it is not
the immediate and direct object of nature; it is in some measure,
a superfluity annexed to the necessary and fundamental object of
preservation.
Q. How does nature order man to preserve himself?
A. By two powerful and involuntary sensations, which it has attached,
as two guides, two guardian Geniuses to all his actions: the one a
sensation of pain, by which it admonishes him of, and deters him
from, everything that tends to destroy him; the other, a sensation of
pleasure, by which it attracts and carries him towards everything that
tends to his preservation and the development of his existence.
Q. Pleasure, then, is not an evil, a sin, as casuists pretend?
A. No, only inasmuch as it tends to destroy life and health which, by
the avowal of those same casuists, we derive from God himself.
Q. Is pleasure the principal object of our existence, as some
philosophers have asserted?
A. No; not more than pain; pleasure is an incitement to live as pain is
a repulsion from death.
Q. How do you prove this assertion?
A. By two palpable facts: One, that pleasure, when taken immoderately,
leads to destruction; for instance, a man who abuses the pleasure of
eating or drinking, attacks his health, and injures his life. The other,
that pain sometimes leads to self-preservation; for instance, a man who
permits a mortified member to be cut off, suffers pain in order not to
perish totally.
Q. But does not even this prove that our sensations can deceive us
respecting the end of our preservation?
A. Yes; they can momentarily.
Q. How do our sensations deceive us?
A. In two ways: by ignorance, and by passion.
Q. When do they deceive us by ignorance?
A. When we act without knowing the action and effect of objects on our
senses: for example, when a man touches nettles without knowing
their stinging quality, or when he swallows opium without knowing its
soporiferous effects.
Q. When do they deceive us by passion?
A. When, conscious of the pernicious action of objects, we abandon
ourselves, nevertheless, to the impetuosity of our desires and
appetites: for example, when a man who knows that wine intoxicates, does
nevertheless drink it to excess.
Q. What is the result?
A. That the ignorance in which we are born, and the unbridled appetites
to which we abandon ourselves, are contrary to our preservation; that,
therefore, the instruction of our minds and the moderation of our
passions are two obligations, two laws, which spring directly from the
first law of preservation.
Q. But being born ignorant, is not ignorance a law of nature?
A. No more than to remain in the naked and feeble state of infancy. Far
from being a law of nature, ignorance is an obstacle to the practice of
all its laws. It is the real original sin.
Q. Why, then, have there been moralists who have looked upon it as a
virtue and perfection?
A. Because, from a strange or perverted disposition, they confounded the
abuse of knowledge with knowledge itself; as if, because men abuse the
power of speech, their tongues should be cut out; as if perfection and
virtue consisted in the nullity, and not in the proper development of
our faculties.
Q. Instruction, then, is indispensable to man's existence?
A. Yes, so indispensable, that without it he is every instant assailed
and wounded by all that surrounds him; for if he does not know the
effects of fire, he burns himself; those of water he drowns himself;
those of opium, he poisons himself; if, in the savage state, he does
not know the wiles of animals, and the art of seizing game, he perishes
through hunger; if in the social state, he does not know the course
of the seasons, he can neither cultivate the ground, nor procure
nourishment; and so on, of all his actions, respecting all his wants.
Q. But can man individually acquire this knowledge necessary to his
existence, and to the development of his faculties?
A. No; not without the assistance of his fellow men, and by living in
society.
Q. But is not society to man a state against nature?
A. No: it is on the contrary a necessity, a law that nature imposed
on him by the very act of his organization; for, first, nature has so
constituted man, that he cannot see his species of another sex without
feeling emotions and an attraction which induce him to live in a family,
which is already a state of society; secondly, by endowing him with
sensibility, she organized him so that the sensations of others reflect
within him, and excite reciprocal sentiments of pleasure and of grief,
which are attractions, and indissoluble ties of society; thirdly, and
finally, the state of society, founded on the wants of man, is only a
further means of fulfilling the law of preservation: and to pretend that
this state is out of nature, because it is more perfect, is the same
as to say, that a bitter and wild fruit of the forest, is no longer the
production of nature, when rendered sweet and delicious by cultivation
in our gardens.
Q. Why, then, have philosophers called the savage state the state of
perfection?
A. Because, as I have told you, the vulgar have often given the name of
philosophers to whimsical geniuses, who, from moroseness, from wounded
vanity, or from a disgust to the vices of society, have conceived
chimerical ideas of the savage state, in contradiction with their own
system of a perfect man.
Q. What is the true meaning of the word philosopher?
A. The word philosopher signifies a lover of wisdom; and as wisdom
consists in the practice of the laws of nature, the true philosopher is
he who knows those laws, and conforms the whole tenor of his conduct to
them.
Q. What is man in the savage state?
A. A brutal, ignorant animal, a wicked and ferocious beast.
Q. Is he happy in that state?
A. No; for he only feels momentary sensations, which are habitually of
violent wants which he cannot satisfy, since he is ignorant by nature,
and weak by being isolated from his race.
Q. Is he free?
A. No; he is the most abject slave that exists; for his life depends
on everything that surrounds him: he is not free to eat when hungry,
to rest when tired, to warm himself when cold; he is every instant in
danger of perishing; wherefore nature offers but fortuitous examples of
such beings; and we see that all the efforts of the human species,
since its origin, sorely tends to emerge from that violent state by the
pressing necessity of self-preservation.
Q. But does not this necessity of preservation engender in individuals
egotism, that is to say self-love? and is not egotism contrary to the
social state?
A. No; for if by egotism you mean a propensity to hurt our neighbor, it
is no longer self-love, but the hatred of others. Self-love, taken in
its true sense, not only is not contrary to society, but is its firmest
support, by the necessity we lie under of not injuring others, lest in
return they should injure us.
Thus mans preservation, and the unfolding of his faculties, directed
towards this end, teach the true law of nature in the production of the
human being; and it is from this essential principle that are derived,
are referred, and in its scale are weighed, all ideas of good and evil,
of vice and virtue, of just and unjust, of truth or error, of lawful or
forbidden, on which is founded the morality of individual, or of social
man.
CHAPTER IV.
BASIS OF MORALITY; OF GOOD, OF EVIL, OF SIN, OF CRIME, OF VICE AND OF
VIRTUE.
Q. What is good, according to the law of nature?
A. It is everything that tends to preserve and perfect man.
Q. What is evil?
A. That which tends to man's destruction or deterioration.
Q. What is meant by physical good and evil, and by moral good and evil?
A. By the word physical is understood, whatever acts immediately on the
body. Health is a physical good; and sickness a physical evil. By moral,
is meant what acts by consequences more or less remote. Calumny is a
moral evil; a fair reputation is a moral good, because both one and the
other occasion towards us, on the part of other men, dispositions and
habitudes,* which are useful or hurtful to our preservation, and which
attack or favor our means of existence.
* It is from this word habitudes, (reiterated actions,) in
Latin mores, that the word moral, and all its family, are
derived.
Q. Everything that tends to preserve, or to produce is therefore a good?
A. Yes; and it is for that reason that certain legislators have classed
among the works agreeable to the divinity, the cultivation of a field
and the fecundity of a woman.
Q. Whatever tends to cause death is, therefore, an evil?
A. Yes; and it is for that reason some legislators have extended the
idea of evil and of sin even to the killing of animals.
Q. The murdering of a man is, therefore, a crime in the law of nature?
A. Yes, and the greatest that can be committed; for every other evil can
be repaired, but murder alone is irreparable.
Q. What is a sin in the law of nature?
A. Whatever tends to disturb the order established by nature for the
preservation and perfection of man and of society.
Q. Can intention be a merit or a crime?
A. No, for it is only an idea void of reality: but it is a commencement
of sin and evil, by the impulse it gives to action.
Q. What is virtue according to the law of nature?
A. It is the practice of actions useful to the individual and to
society.
Q. What is meant by the word individual?
A. It means a man considered separately from every other.
Q. What is vice according to the law of nature?
A. It is the practice of actions prejudicial to the individual and to
society.
Q. Have not virtue and vice an object purely spiritual and abstracted
from the senses?
A. No; it is always to a physical end that they finally relate, and that
end is always to destroy or preserve the body.
Q. Have vice and virtue degrees of strength and intensity?
A. Yes: according to the importance of the faculties, which they attack
or which they favor; and according to the number of persons in whom
those faculties are favored or injured.
Q. Give me some examples?
A. The action of saving a man's life is more virtuous than that of
saving his property; the action of saving the lives of ten men, than
that of saving only the life of one, and an action useful to the whole
human race is more virtuous than an action that is only useful to one
single nation.
Q. How does the law of nature prescribe the practice of good and virtue,
and forbid that of evil and vice?
A. By the advantages resulting from the practice of good and virtue
for the preservation of our body, and by the losses which result to our
existence from the practice of evil and vice.
Q. Its precepts are then in action?
A. Yes: they are action itself, considered in its present effect and in
its future consequences.
Q. How do you divide the virtues?
A. We divide them in three classes, first, individual virtues, as
relative to man alone; secondly, domestic virtues, as relative to a
family; thirdly, social virtues, as relative to society.
CHAPTER V.
OF INDIVIDUAL VIRTUES.
Q. Which are the individual virtues?
A. There are five principal ones, to wit: first, science, which
comprises prudence and wisdom; secondly, temperance, comprising sobriety
and chastity; thirdly, courage, or strength of body and mind; fourthly,
activity, that is to say, love of labor and employment of time; fifthly,
and finally, cleanliness, or purity of body, as well in dress as in
habitation.
Q. How does the law of nature prescribe science?
A. Because the man acquainted with the causes and effects of things
attends in a careful and sure manner to his preservation, and to the
development of his faculties. Science is to him the eye and the light,
which enable him to discern clearly and accurately all the objects
with which he is conversant, and hence by an enlightened man is meant a
learned and well-informed man. With science and instruction a man never
wants for resources and means of subsistence; and upon this principle a
philosopher, who had been shipwrecked, said to his companions, that were
inconsolable for the loss of their wealth: "For my part, I carry all my
wealth within me."
Q. Which is the vice contrary to science?
A. It is ignorance.
Q. How does the law of nature forbid ignorance?
A. By the grievous detriments resulting from it to our existence; for
the ignorant man who knows neither causes nor effects, commits every
instant errors most pernicious to himself and to others; he resembles a
blind man groping his way at random, and who, at every step, jostles or
is jostled by every one he meets.
Q. What difference is there between an ignorant and a silly man?
A. The same difference as between him who frankly avows his blindness
and the blind man who pretends to sight; silliness is the reality of
ignorance, to which is superadded the vanity of knowledge.
Q. Are ignorance and silliness common?
A. Yes, very common; they are the usual and general distempers of
mankind: more than three thousand years ago the wisest of men said: "The
number of fools is infinite;" and the world has not changed.
Q. What is the reason of it?
A. Because much labor and time are necessary to acquire instruction,
and because men, born ignorant and indolent, find it more convenient to
remain blind, and pretend to see clear.
Q. What difference is there between a learned and a wise man?
A. The learned knows, and the wise man practices.
Q. What is prudence?
A. It is the anticipated perception, the foresight of the effects and
consequences of every action; by means of which foresight, man
avoids the dangers which threaten him, while he seizes on and creates
opportunities favorable to him: he thereby provides for his present and
future safety in a certain and secure manner, whereas the imprudent
man, who calculates neither his steps nor his conduct, nor efforts, nor
resistance, falls every instant into difficulties and dangers, which
sooner or later impair his faculties and destroy his existence.
Q. When the Gospel says, "Happy are the poor of spirit," does it mean
the ignorant and imprudent?
A. No; for, at the same time that it recommends the simplicity of doves,
it adds the prudent cunning of serpents. By simplicity of mind is meant
uprightness, and the precept of the Gospel is that of nature.
CHAPTER VI.
ON TEMPERANCE.
Q. What is temperance?
A. It is a regular use of our faculties, which makes us never exceed in
our sensations the end of nature to preserve us; it is the moderation of
the passions.
Q. Which is the vice contrary to temperance?
A. The disorder of the passions, the avidity of all kind of enjoyments,
in a word, cupidity.
Q. Which are the principal branches of temperance?
A. Sobriety, and continence or chastity.
Q. How does the law of nature prescribe sobriety?
A. By its powerful influence over our health. The sober man digests with
comfort; he is not overpowered by the weight of aliments; his ideas are
clear and easy; he fulfills all his functions properly; he conducts his
business with intelligence; his old age is exempt from infirmity;
he does not spend his money in remedies, and he enjoys, in mirth and
gladness, the wealth which chance and his own prudence have procured
him. Thus, from one virtue alone, generous nature derives innumerable
recompenses.
Q. How does it prohibit gluttony?
A. By the numerous evils that are attached to it. The glutton, oppressed
with aliments, digests with anxiety; his head, troubled by the fumes
of indigestion, is incapable of conceiving clear and distinct ideas;
he abandons himself with violence to the disorderly impulse of lust and
anger, which impair his health; his body becomes bloated, heavy, and
unfit for labor; he endures painful and expensive distempers; he seldom
lives to be old; and his age is replete with infirmities and sorrow.
Q. Should abstinence and fasting be considered as virtuous actions?
A. Yes, when one has eaten too much; for then abstinence and fasting
are simple and efficacious remedies; but when the body is in want of
aliment, to refuse it any, and let it suffer from hunger or thirst, is
delirium and a real sin against the law of nature.
Q. How is drunkenness considered in the law of nature?
A. As a most vile and pernicious vice. The drunkard, deprived of
the sense and reason given us by God, profanes the donations of the
divinity: he debases himself to the condition of brutes; unable even to
guide his steps, he staggers and falls as if he were epileptic; he hurts
and even risks killing himself; his debility in this state exposes him
to the ridicule and contempt of every person that sees him; he makes
in his drunkenness, prejudicial and ruinous bargains, and injures his
fortune; he makes use of opprobrious language, which creates him enemies
and repentance; he fills his house with trouble and sorrow, and ends by
a premature death or by a cacochymical old age.
Q. Does the law of nature interdict absolutely the use of wine?
A. No; it only forbids the abuse; but as the transition from the use to
the abuse is easy and prompt among the generality of men, perhaps
the legislators, who have proscribed the use of wine, have rendered a
service to humanity.
Q. Does the law of nature forbid the use of certain kinds of meat, or of
certain vegetables, on particular days, during certain seasons?
A. No; it absolutely forbids only whatever is injurious to health;
its precepts, in this respect, vary according to persons, and even
constitute a very delicate and important science for the quality, the
quantity, and the combination of aliments have the greatest influence,
not only over the momentary affections of the soul, but even over its
habitual disposition. A man is not the same when fasting as after a
meal, even if he were sober. A glass of spirituous liquor, or a dish of
coffee, gives degrees of vivacity, of mobility, of disposition to anger,
sadness, or gaiety; such a meat, because it lies heavy on the
stomach, engenders moroseness and melancholy; such another, because
it facilitates digestion, creates sprightliness, and an inclination
to oblige and to love. The use of vegetables, because they have little
nourishment, enfeebles the body, and gives a disposition to repose,
indolence, and ease; the use of meat, because it is full of nourishment,
and of spirituous liquors, because they stimulate the nerves, creates
vivacity, uneasiness, and audacity. Now from those habitudes of aliment
result habits of constitution and of the organs, which form afterwards
different kinds of temperaments, each of which is distinguished by
a peculiar characteristic. And it is for this reason that, in hot
countries especially, legislators have made laws respecting regimen
or food. The ancients were taught by long experience that the dietetic
science constituted a considerable part of morality; among the
Egyptians, the ancient Persians, and even among the Greeks, at the
Areopagus, important affairs were examined fasting; and it has been
remarked that, among those people, where public affairs were discussed
during the heat of meals, and the fumes of digestion, deliberations were
hasty and violent, and the results of them frequently unreasonable, and
productive of turbulence and confusion.
CHAPTER VII.
ON CONTINENCE.
Q. Does the law of nature prescribe continence?
A. Yes: because a moderate use of the most lively of pleasures is not
only useful, but indispensable, to the support of strength and health:
and because a simple calculation proves that, for some minutes of
privation, you increase the number of your days, both in vigor of body
and of mind.
Q. How does it forbid libertinism?
A. By the numerous evils which result from it to the physical and the
moral existence. He who carries it to an excess enervates and pines
away; he can no longer attend to study or labor; he contracts idle
and expensive habits, which destroy his means of existence, his
public consideration, and his credit; his intrigues occasion continual
embarrassment, cares, quarrels and lawsuits, without mentioning the
grievous deep-rooted distempers, and the loss of his strength by
an inward and slow poison; the stupid dullness of his mind, by the
exhaustion of the nervous system; and, in fine, a premature and infirm
old age.
Q. Does the law of nature look on that absolute chastity so recommended
in monastical institutions, as a virtue?
A. No: for that chastity is of no use either to the society that
witnesses, or the individual who practises it; it is even prejudicial to
both. First, it injures society by depriving it of population, which
is one of its principal sources of wealth and power; and as bachelors
confine all their views and affections to the term of their lives, they
have in general an egotism unfavorable to the interests of society.
In the second place, it injures the individuals who practise it, because
it deprives them of a number of affections and relations which are
the springs of most domestic and social virtues; and besides, it often
happens, from circumstances of age, regimen, or temperament, that
absolute continence injures the constitution and causes severe diseases,
because it is contrary to the physical laws on which nature has founded
the system of the reproduction of beings; and they who recommend
so strongly chastity, even supposing them to be sincere, are in
contradiction with their own doctrine, which consecrates the law of
nature by the well known commandment: increase and multiply.
Q. Why is chastity considered a greater virtue in women than in men?
A. Because a want of chastity in women is attended with inconveniences
much more serious and dangerous for them and for society; for, without
taking into account the pains and diseases they have in common with
men, they are further exposed to all the disadvantages and perils that
precede, attend, and follow child-birth. When pregnant contrary to law,
they become an object of public scandal and contempt, and spend the
remainder of their lives in bitterness and misery. Moreover, all the
expense of maintaining and educating their fatherless children falls on
them: which expense impoverishes them, and is every way prejudicial to
their physical and moral existence. In this situation, deprived of the
freshness and health that constitute their charm, carrying with them an
extraneous and expensive burden, they are less prized by men, they
find no solid establishment, they fall into poverty, misery, and
wretchedness, and thus drag on in sorrow their unhappy existence.
Q. Does the law of nature extend so far as the scruples of desires and
thoughts.
A. Yes; because, in the physical laws of the human body, thoughts and
desires inflame the senses, and soon provoke to action: now, by another
law of nature in the organization of our body, those actions become
mechanical wants which recur at certain periods of days or of weeks, so
that, at such a time, the want is renewed of such an action and such a
secretion; if this action and this secretion be injurious to health, the
habitude of them becomes destructive of life itself. Thus thoughts and
desires have a true and natural importance.
Q. Should modesty be considered as a virtue?
A. Yes; because modesty, inasmuch as it is a shame of certain actions,
maintains the soul and body in all those habits useful to good order,
and to self-preservation. The modest woman is esteemed, courted, and
established, with advantages of fortune which ensure her existence,
and render it agreeable to her, while the immodest and prostitute are
despised, repulsed, and abandoned to misery and infamy.
CHAPTER VIII.
ON COURAGE AND ACTIVITY.
Q. Are courage and strength of body and mind virtues in the law of
nature?
A. Yes, and most important virtues; for they are the efficacious and
indispensable means of attending to our preservation and welfare. The
courageous and strong man repulses oppression, defends his life, his
liberty, and his property; by his labor he procures himself an abundant
subsistence, which he enjoys in tranquillity and peace of mind. If he
falls into misfortunes, from which his prudence could not protect him,
he supports them with fortitude and resignation; and it is for this
reason that the ancient moralists have reckoned strength and courage
among the four principal virtues.
Q. Should weakness and cowardice be considered as vices?
A. Yes, since it is certain that they produce innumerable calamities.
The weak or cowardly man lives in perpetual cares and agonies; he
undermines his health by the dread, oftentimes ill founded, of attacks
and dangers: and this dread which is an evil, is not a remedy; it
renders him, on the contrary, the slave of him who wishes to oppress
him; and by the servitude and debasement of all his faculties, it
degrades and diminishes his means of existence, so far as the seeing his
life depend on the will and caprice of another man.
Q. But, after what you have said on the influence of aliments, are not
courage and force, as well as many other virtues, in a great measure the
effect of our physical constitution and temperament?
A. Yes, it is true; and so far, that those qualities are transmitted by
generation and blood, with the elements on which they depend: the most
reiterated and constant facts prove that in the breed of animals of
every kind, we see certain physical and moral qualities, attached to
the individuals of those species, increase or decay according to the
combinations and mixtures they make with other breeds.
Q. But, then, as our will is not sufficient to procure us those
qualities, is it a crime to be destitute of them?
A. No, it is not a crime, but a misfortune; it is what the ancients
call an unlucky fatality; but even then we have it yet in our power to
acquire them; for, as soon as we know on what physical elements such
or such a quality is founded, we can promote its growth, and hasten its
developments, by a skillful management of those elements; and in this
consists the science of education, which, according as it is directed,
meliorates or degrades individuals, or the whole race, to such a pitch
as totally to change their nature and inclinations; for which reason it
is of the greatest importance to be acquainted with the laws of nature
by which those operations and changes are certainly and necessarily
effected.
Q. Why do you say that activity is a virtue according to the law of
nature?
A. Because the man who works and employs his time usefully, derives from
it a thousand precious advantages to his existence. If he is born poor,
his labor furnishes him with subsistence; and still more so, if he is
sober, continent, and prudent, for he soon acquires a competency, and
enjoys the sweets of life; his very labor gives him virtues; for, while
he occupies his body and mind, he is not affected with unruly desires,
time does not lie heavy on him, he contracts mild habits, he augments
his strength and health, and attains a peaceful and happy old age.
Q. Are idleness and sloth vices in the law of nature?
A. Yes, and the most pernicious of all vices, for they lead to all the
others. By idleness and sloth man remains ignorant, he forgets even
the science he had acquired, and falls into all the misfortunes which
accompany ignorance and folly; by idleness and sloth man, devoured
with disquietude, in order to dissipate it, abandons himself to all the
desires of his senses, which, becoming every day more inordinate, render
him intemperate, gluttonous, lascivious, enervated, cowardly, vile, and
contemptible. By the certain effect of all those vices, he ruins his
fortune, consumes his health, and terminates his life in all the agonies
of sickness and of poverty.
Q. From what you say, one would think that poverty was a vice?
A. No, it is not a vice; but it is still less a virtue, for it is by far
more ready to injure than to be useful; it is even commonly the result,
or the beginning of vice, for the effect of all individual vices is to
lead to indigence, and to the privation of the necessaries of life; and
when a man is in want of necessaries, he is tempted to procure them by
vicious means, that is to say, by means injurious to society. All
the individual virtues tend, on the contrary, to procure to a man an
abundant subsistence; and when he has more than he can consume, it
is much easier for him to give to others, and to practice the actions
useful to society.
Q. Do you look upon opulence as a virtue?
A. No; but still less as a vice: it is the use alone of wealth that
can be called virtuous or vicious, according as it is serviceable or
prejudicial to man and to society. Wealth is an instrument, the use and
employment alone of which determine its virtue or vice.
CHAPTER IX.
ON CLEANLINESS.
Q. Why is cleanliness included among the virtues?
A. Because it is, in reality, one of the most important among them, on
account of its powerful influence over the health and preservation of
the body. Cleanliness, as well in dress as in residence, obviates
the pernicious effects of the humidity, baneful odors, and contagious
exhalations, proceeding from all things abandoned to putrefaction.
Cleanliness, maintains free transpiration; it renews the air, refreshes
the blood, and disposes even the mind to cheerfulness.
From this it appears that persons attentive to the cleanliness of their
bodies and habitations are, in general, more healthy, and less subject
to disease, than those who live in filth and nastiness; and it is
further remarked, that cleanliness carries with it, throughout all the
branches of domestic administration, habits of order and arrangement,
which are the chief means and first elements of happiness.
Q. Uncleanliness or filthiness is, then, a real vice?
A. Yes, as real a one as drunkenness, or as idleness, from which in a
great measure it is derived. Uncleanliness is the second, and often the
first, cause of many inconveniences, and even of grievous disorders; it
is a fact in medicine, that it brings on the itch, the scurf, tetters,
leprosies, as much as the use of tainted or sour aliments; that it
favors the contagious influence of the plague and malignant fevers,
that it even produces them in hospitals and prisons; that it occasions
rheumatisms, by incrusting the skin with dirt, and thereby preventing
transpiration; without reckoning the shameful inconvenience of being
devoured by vermin--the foul appendage of misery and depravity.
Most ancient legislators, therefore, considered cleanliness, which they
called purity, as one of the essential dogmas of their religions. It
was for this reason that they expelled from society, and even punished
corporeally those who were infected with distempers produced by
uncleanliness; that they instituted and consecrated ceremonies of
ablutions baths, baptisms, and of purifications, even by fire and the
aromatic fumes of incense, myrrh, benjamin, etc., so that the entire
system of pollutions, all those rites of clean and unclean things,
degenerated since into abuses and prejudices, were only founded
originally on the judicious observation, which wise and learned men
had made, of the extreme influence that cleanliness in dress and abode
exercises over the health of the body, and by an immediate consequence
over that of the mind and moral faculties.
Thus all the individual virtues have for their object, more or less
direct, more or less near, the preservation of the man who practises
them and by the preservation of each man, they lead to that of families
and society, which are composed of the united sum of individuals.
CHAPTER X.
ON DOMESTIC VIRTUES.
Q. What do you mean be domestic virtues?
A. I mean the practice of actions useful to a family, supposed to live
in the same house.*
* Domestic is derived from the Latin word domus, a house.
Q. What are those virtues?
A. They are economy, paternal love, filial love, conjugal love,
fraternal love, and the accomplishment of the duties of master and
servant.
Q. What is economy?
A. It is, according to the most extensive meaning of the word, the
proper administration of every thing that concerns the existence of
the family or house; and as subsistence holds the first rank, the word
economy in confined to the employment of money for the wants of life.
Q. Why is economy a virtue?
A. Because a man who makes no useless expenses acquires a
superabundancy, which is true wealth, and by means of which he procures
for himself and his family everything that is really convenient and
useful; without mentioning his securing thereby resources against
accidental and unforeseen losses, so that he and his family enjoy
an agreeable and undisturbed competency, which is the basis of human
felicity.
Q. Dissipation and prodigality, therefore, are vices?
A. Yes, for by them man, in the end, is deprived of the necessaries
of life; he falls into poverty and wretchedness; and his very friends,
fearing to be obliged to restore to him what he has spent with or for
them, avoid him as a debtor does his creditor, and he remains abandoned
by the whole world.
Q. What is paternal love?
A. It is the assiduous care taken by parents to make their children
contract the habit of every action useful to themselves and to society.
Q. Why is paternal tenderness a virtue in parents?
A. Because parents, who rear their children in those habits, procure for
themselves, during the course of their lives, enjoyments and helps that
give a sensible satisfaction at every instant, and which assure to them,
when advanced in years, supports and consolations against the wants and
calamities of all kinds with which old age is beset.
Q. Is paternal love a common virtue?
A. No; notwithstanding the ostentation made of it by parents, it is
a rare virtue. They do not love their children, they caress and spoil
them. In them they love only the agents of their will, the instruments
of their power, the trophies of their vanity, the pastime of their
idleness. It is not so much the welfare of their children that they
propose to themselves, as their submission and obedience; and if among
children so many are seen ungrateful for benefits received, it
is because there are among parents as many despotic and ignorant
benefactors.
Q. Why do you say that conjugal love is a virtue?
A. Because the concord and union resulting from the love of the married,
establish in the heart of the family a multitude of habits useful to its
prosperity and preservation. The united pair are attached to, and seldom
quit their home; they superintend each particular direction of it; they
attend to the education of their children; they maintain the respect and
fidelity of domestics; they prevent all disorder and dissipation;
and from the whole of their good conduct, they live in ease and
consideration; while married persons who do not love one another, fill
their house with quarrels and troubles, create dissension between their
children and the servants, leaving both indiscriminately to all kinds of
vicious habits; every one in turn spoils, robs, and plunders the house;
the revenues are absorbed without profit; debts accumulate; the married
pair avoid each other, or contend in lawsuits; and the whole family
falls into disorder, ruin, disgrace and want.
Q. Is adultery an offence in the law of nature?
A. Yes; for it is attended with a number of habits injurious to the
married and to their families. The wife or husband, whose affections
are estranged, neglect their house, avoid it, and deprive it, as much as
they can, of its revenues or income, to expend them with the object of
their affections; hence arise quarrels, scandal, lawsuits, the neglect
of their children and servants, and at last the plundering and ruin of
the whole family; without reckoning that the adulterous woman commits
a most grievous theft, in giving to her husband heirs of foreign blood,
who deprive his real children of their legitimate portion.
Q. What is filial love?
A. It is, on the side of children, the practice of those actions useful
to themselves and to their parents.
Q. How does the law of nature prescribe filial love?
A. By three principal motives:
1. By sentiment; for the affectionate care of parents inspires, from the
most tender age, mild habits of attachment.
2. By justice; for children owe to their parents a return and indemnity
for the cares, and even for the expenses, they have caused them.
3. By personal interest; for, if they use them ill, they give to their
own children examples of revolt and ingratitude, which authorize them,
at a future day, to behave to themselves in a similar manner.
Q. Are we to understand by filial love a passive and blind submission?
A. No; but a reasonable submission, founded on the knowledge of the
mutual rights and duties of parents and children; rights and duties,
without the observance of which their mutual conduct is nothing but
disorder.
Q. Why is fraternal love a virtue?
A. Because the concord and union, which result from the love of
brothers, establish the strength, security, and conservation of the
family: brothers united defend themselves against all oppression,
they aid one another in their wants, they help one another in their
misfortunes, and thus secure their common existence; while brothers
disunited, abandoned each to his own personal strength, fall into
all the inconveniences attendant on an insulated state and individual
weakness. This is what a certain Scythian king ingeniously expressed
when, on his death-bed, calling his children to him, he ordered them to
break a bundle of arrows. The young men, though strong, being unable to
effect it, he took them in his turn, and untieing them, broke each of
the arrows separately with his fingers. "Behold," said he, "the effects
of union; united together, you will be invincible; taken separately, you
will be broken like reeds."
Q. What are the reciprocal duties of masters and of servants?
A. They consist in the practice of the actions which are respectively
and justly useful to them; and here begin the relations of society; for
the rule and measure of those respective actions is the equilibrium or
equality between the service and the recompense, between what the one
returns and the other gives; which is the fundamental basis of all
society.
Thus all the domestic and individual virtues refer, more or less
mediately, but always with certitude, to the physical object of the
amelioration and preservation of man, and are thereby precepts resulting
from the fundamental law of nature in his formation.
CHAPTER XI.
THE SOCIAL VIRTUES; JUSTICE.
Q. What is society?
A. It is every reunion of men living together under the clauses of
an expressed or tacit contract, which has for its end their common
preservation.
Q. Are the social virtues numerous?
A. Yes; they are in as great number as the kinds of actions useful to
society; but all may be reduced to one principle.
Q. What is that fundamental principle?
A. It is justice, which alone comprises all the virtues of society.
Q. Why do you say that justice is the fundamental and almost only virtue
of society?
A. Because it alone embraces the practice of all the actions useful
to it; and because all the other virtues, under the denominations
of charity, humanity, probity, love of one's country, sincerity,
generosity, simplicity of manners, and modesty, are only varied forms
and diversified applications of the axiom, "Do not to another what you
do not wish to be done to yourself," which is the definition of justice.
Q. How does the law of nature prescribe justice?
A. By three physical attributes, inherent in the organization of man.
Q. What are those attributes?
A. They are equality, liberty, and property.
Q. How is equality a physical attribute of man?
A. Because all men, having equally eyes, hands, mouths, ears, and the
necessity of making use of them, in order to live, have, by this reason
alone, an equal right to life, and to the use of the aliments which
maintain it; they are all equal before God.
Q. Do you suppose that all men hear equally, see equally, feel equally,
have equal wants, and equal passions?
A. No; for it is evident, and daily demonstrated, that one is short, and
another long-sighted; that one eats much, another little; that one has
mild, another violent passions; in a word, that one is weak in body and
mind, while another is strong in both.
Q. They are, therefore, really unequal?
A. Yes, in the development of their means, but not in the nature and
essence of those means. They are made of the same stuff, but not in
the same dimensions; nor are the weight and value equal. Our language
possesses no one word capable of expressing the identity of nature, and
the diversity of its form and employment. It is a proportional equality;
and it is for this reason I have said, equal before God, and in the
order of nature.
Q. How is liberty a physical attribute of man?
A. Because all men having senses sufficient for their preservation--no
one wanting the eye of another to see, his ear to hear, his mouth to
eat, his feet to walk--they are all, by this very reason, constituted
naturally independent and free; no man is necessarily subjected to
another, nor has he a right to dominate over him.
Q. But if a man is born strong, has he a natural right to master the
weak man?
A. No; for it is neither a necessity for him, nor a convention between
them; it is an abusive extension of his strength; and here an abuse is
made of the word right, which in its true meaning implies, justice or
reciprocal faculty.
Q. How is property a physical attribute of man?
A. Inasmuch as all men being constituted equal or similar to one
another, and consequently independent and free, each is the absolute
master, the full proprietor of his body and of the produce of his labor.
Q. How is justice derived from these three attributes?
A. In this, that men being equal and free, owing nothing to each other,
have no right to require anything from one another only inasmuch as
they return an equal value for it; or inasmuch as the balance of what is
given is in equilibrium with what is returned: and it is this equality,
this equilibrium which is called justice, equity;* that is to say that
equality and justice are but one and the same word, the same law
of nature, of which the social virtues are only applications and
derivatives.
* Aequitas, aequilibrium, aequalitas, are all of the same
family.
CHAPTER XII.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOCIAL VIRTUES.
Q. Explain how the social virtues are derived from the law of nature.
How is charity or the love of one's neighbor a precept and application
of it?
A. By reason of equality and reciprocity; for when we injure another,
we give him a right to injure us in return; thus, by attacking the
existence of our neighbor, we endanger our own, from the effect of
reciprocity; on the other hand, by doing good to others, we have room
and right to expect an equivalent exchange; and such is the character of
all social virtues, that they are useful to the man who practises them,
by the right of reciprocity which they give him over those who are
benefited by them.
Q. Charity is then nothing but justice?
A. No: it is only justice; with this slight difference, that strict
justice confines itself to saying, "Do not to another the harm you would
not wish he should do to you;" and that charity, or the love of one's
neighbor, extends so far as to say, "Do to another the good which you
would wish to receive from him." Thus when the gospel said, that this
precept contained the whole of the law and the prophets, it announced
nothing more than the precept of the law of nature.
Q. Does it enjoin forgiveness of injuries?
A. Yes, when that forgiveness implies self-preservation.
Q. Does it prescribe to us, after having received a blow on one cheek,
to hold out the other?
A. No; for it is, in the first place, contrary to the precept of loving
our neighbor as ourselves, since thereby we should love, more than
ourselves, him who makes an attack on our preservation. Secondly, such
a precept in its literal sense, encourages the wicked to oppression
and injustice. The law of nature has been more wise in prescribing a
calculated proportion of courage and moderation, which induces us to
forget a first or unpremediated injury, but which punishes every act
tending to oppression.
Q. Does the law of nature prescribe to do good to others beyond the
bounds of reason and measure?
A. No; for it is a sure way of leading them to ingratitude. Such is the
force of sentiment and justice implanted in the heart of man, that he
is not even grateful for benefits conferred without discretion. There is
only one measure with them, and that is to be just.
Q. Is alms-giving a virtuous action?
A. Yes, when it is practised according to the rule first mentioned;
without which it degenerates into imprudence and vice, inasmuch as it
encourages laziness, which is hurtful to the beggar and to society;
no one has a right to partake of the property and fruits of another's
labor, without rendering an equivalent of his own industry.
Q. Does the law of nature consider as virtues faith and hope, which are
often joined with charity?
A. No; for they are ideas without reality; and if any effects result
from them, they turn rather to the profit of those who have not those
ideas, than of those who have them; so that faith and hope may be called
the virtues of dupes for the benefit of knaves.
Q. Does the law of nature prescribe probity?
A. Yes, for probity is nothing more than respect for one's own rights
in those of another; a respect founded on a prudent and well combined
calculation of our interests compared to those of others.
Q. But does not this calculation, which embraces the complicated
interests and rights of the social state, require an enlightened
understanding and knowledge, which make it a difficult science?
A. Yes, and a science so much the more delicate as the honest man
pronounces in his own cause.
Q. Probity, then, shows an extension and justice in the mind?
A. Yes, for an honest man almost always neglects a present interest, in
order not to destroy a future one; whereas the knave does the contrary,
and loses a great future interest for a present smaller one.
Q. Improbity, therefore, is a sign of false judgment and a narrow mind?
A. Yes, and rogues may be defined ignorant and silly calculators; for
they do not understand their true interest, and they pretend to cunning:
nevertheless, their cunning only ends in making known what they are--in
losing all confidence and esteem, and the good services resulting from
them for their physical and social existence. They neither live in
peace with others, nor with themselves; and incessantly menaced by their
conscience and their enemies, they enjoy no other real happiness but
that of not being hanged.
Q. Does the law of nature forbid robbery?
A. Yes, for the man who robs another gives him a right to rob him; from
that moment there is no security in his property, nor in his means of
preservation: thus in injuring others, he, by a counterblow, injures
himself.
Q. Does it interdict even an inclination to rob?
A. Yes; for that inclination leads naturally to action, and it is for
this reason that envy is considered a sin?
Q. How does it forbid murder?
A. By the most powerful motives of self-preservation; for, first, the
man who attacks exposes himself to the risk of being killed, by the
right of defence; secondly, if he kills, he gives to the relations and
friends of the deceased, and to society at large, an equal right of
killing him; so that his life is no longer in safety.
Q. How can we, by the law of nature, repair the evil we have done?
A. By rendering a proportionate good to those whom we have injured.
Q. Does it allow us to repair it by prayers, vows, offerings to God,
fasting and mortifications?
A. No: for all those things are foreign to the action we wish to repair:
they neither restore the ox to him from whom it has been stolen, honor
to him whom we have deprived of it, nor life to him from whom it has
been taken away; consequently they miss the end of justice; they are
only perverse contracts by which a man sells to another goods which do
not belong to him; they are a real depravation of morality, inasmuch
as they embolden to commit crimes through the hope of expiating them;
wherefore, they have been the real cause of all the evils by which
the people among whom those expiatory practices were used, have been
continually tormented.
Q. Does the law of nature order sincerity?
A. Yes; for lying, perfidy, and perjury create distrust, quarrels,
hatred, revenge, and a crowd of evils among men, which tend to their
common destruction; while sincerity and fidelity establish confidence,
concord, and peace, besides the infinite good resulting from such a
state of things to society.
Q. Does it prescribe mildness and modesty?
A. Yes; for harshness and obduracy, by alienating from us the hearts of
other men, give them an inclination to hurt us; ostentation and vanity,
by wounding their self-love and jealousy, occasion us to miss the end of
a real utility.
Q. Does it prescribe humility as a virtue?
A. No; for it is a propensity in the human heart to despise secretly
everything that presents to it the idea of weakness; and self-debasement
encourages pride and oppression in others; the balance must be kept in
equipoise.
Q. You have reckoned simplicity of manners among the social virtues;
what do you understand by that word?
A. I mean the restricting our wants and desires to what is truly useful
to the existence of the citizen and his family; that is to say, the man
of simple manners has but few wants, and lives content with a little.
Q. How is this virtue prescribed to us?
A. By the numerous advantages which the practice of it procures to the
individual and to society; for the man whose wants are few, is free at
once from a crowd of cares, perplexities, and labors; he avoids many
quarrels and contests arising from avidity and a desire of gain; he
spares himself the anxiety of ambition, the inquietudes of possession,
and the uneasiness of losses; finding superfluity everywhere, he is the
real rich man; always content with what he has, he is happy at little
expense; and other men, not fearing any competition from him, leave him
in quiet, and are disposed to render him the services he should stand
in need of. And if this virtue of simplicity extends to a whole people,
they insure to themselves abundance; rich in everything they do not
consume, they acquire immense means of exchange and commerce; they work,
fabricate, and sell at a lower price than others, and attain to all
kinds of prosperity, both at home and abroad.
Q. What is the vice contrary to this virtue?
A. It is cupidity and luxury.
Q. Is luxury a vice in the individual and in society?
A. Yes, and to that degree, that it may be said to include all the
others; for the man who stands in need of many things, imposes thereby
on himself all the anxiety, and submits to all the means just or unjust
of acquiring them. Does he possess an enjoyment, he covets another; and
in the bosom of superfluity, he is never rich; a commodious dwelling is
not sufficient for him, he must have a beautiful hotel; not content with
a plenteous table, he must have rare and costly viands: he must have
splendid furniture, expensive clothes, a train of attendants, horses,
carriages, women, theatrical representations and games. Now, to supply
so many expenses, much money must be had; and he looks on every method
of procuring it as good and even necessary; at first he borrows,
afterwards he steals, robs, plunders, turns bankrupt, is at war with
every one, ruins and is ruined.
Should a nation be involved in luxury, it occasions on a larger scale
the same devastations; by reason that it consumes its entire produce,
it finds itself poor even with abundance; it has nothing to sell to
foreigners; its manufactures are carried on at a great expense, and
are sold too dear; it becomes tributary for everything it imports; it
attacks externally its consideration, power, strength, and means of
defence and preservation, while internally it undermines and falls
into the dissolution of its members. All its citizens being covetous
of enjoyments, are engaged in a perpetual struggle to obtain them; all
injure or are near injuring themselves; and hence arise those habits
and actions of usurpation, which constitute what is denominated moral
corruption, intestine war between citizen and citizen. From luxury
arises avidity, from avidity, invasion by violence and perfidy; from
luxury arises the iniquity of the judge, the venality of the witness,
the improbity of the husband, the prostitution of the wife, the obduracy
of parents, the ingratitude of children, the avarice of the master, the
dishonesty of the servant, the dilapidation of the administrator, the
perversity of the legislator, lying, perfidy, perjury, assassination,
and all the disorders of the social state; so that it was with a
profound sense of truth, that ancient moralists have laid the basis of
the social virtues on simplicity of manners, restriction of wants, and
contentment with a little; and a sure way of knowing the extent of
a man's virtues and vices is, to find out if his expenses are
proportionate to his fortune, and calculate, from his want of money, his
probity, his integrity in fulfilling his engagements, his devotion to
the public weal, and his sincere or pretended love of his country.
Q. What do you mean by the word country?
A. I mean the community of citizens who, united by fraternal sentiments,
and reciprocal wants, make of their respective strength one common
force, the reaction of which on each of them assumes the noble and
beneficent character of paternity. In society, citizens form a bank of
interest; in our country we form a family of endearing attachments; it
is charity, the love of one's neighbor extended to a whole nation. Now
as charity cannot be separated from justice, no member of the family can
pretend to the enjoyment of its advantages, except in proportion to his
labor; if he consumes more than it produces, he necessarily encroaches
on his fellow-citizens; and it is only by consuming less than what
he produces or possesses, that he can acquire the means of making
sacrifices and being generous.
Q. What do you conclude from all this?
A. I conclude from it that all the social virtues are only the habitude
of actions useful to society and to the individual who practices them;
That they refer to the physical object of man's preservation; That
nature having implanted in us the want of that preservation, has made
a law to us of all its consequences, and a crime of everything that
deviates from it; That we carry in us the seed of every virtue, and of
every perfection; That it only requires to be developed; That we are
only happy inasmuch as we observe the rules established by nature for
the end of our preservation; And that all wisdom, all perfection, all
law, all virtue, all philosophy, consist in the practice of these axioms
founded on our own organization:
Preserve thyself; Instruct thyself; Moderate thyself; Live for thy
fellow citizens, that they may live for thee.
VOLNEY'S ANSWER TO DR. PRIESTLY.*
* In 1797, Dr. Priestly published a pamphlet, entitled,
"Observation on the increase of infidelity, with
animadversions upon the writings of several modern
unbelievers, and especially the Ruins of Mr. Volney." The
motto to this tract was:
"Minds of little penetration rest naturally on the surface of things.
They do not like to pierce deep into them, for fear of labor and
trouble; sometimes still more for fear of truth."
This Letter is an answer from Volney, taken from the Anti-Jacobin Review
of March and April, 1799.
SIR.--I received in due time your pamphlet on the increase of
infidelity, together with the note without date which accompanied it.*
My answer has been delayed by the incidents of business, and even by
ill health, which you will surely excuse: this delay has, besides, no
inconvenience in it. The question between us is not of a very urgent
nature: the world would not go on less well with or without my answer
as with or without your book. I might, indeed, have dispensed with
returning you any answer at all; and I should have been warranted in
so doing, by the manner in which you have stated the debate, and by the
opinion pretty generally received that, on certain occasions, and with
certain persons, the most noble reply is silence. You seem to have been
aware of this yourself, considering the extreme precautions you have
taken to deprive me of this resource; but as according to our French
customs, any answer is an act of civility, I am not willing to concede
the advantage of politeness--besides, although silence is sometimes
very significant, its eloquence is not understood by every one, and
the public which has not leisure to analyze disputes (often of little
interest) has a reasonable right to require at least some preliminary
explanations; reserving to itself, should the discussion degenerate into
the recriminative clamors of an irritated self-love, to allow the right
of silence to him in whom it becomes the virtue of moderation.
* Dr. Priestly sent his pamphlet to Volney, desiring his
answer to the strictures on his opinions in his Ruins of
Empires.
I have read, therefore, your animadversions on my Ruins, which you are
pleased to class among the writings of modern unbelievers, and since you
absolutely insist on my expressing my opinion before the public, I shall
now fulfill this rather disagreeable task with all possible brevity,
for the sake of economizing the time of our readers. In the first place,
sir, it appears evidently, from your pamphlet, that your design is less
to attack my book than my personal and moral character; and in order
that the public may pronounce with accuracy on this point, I submit
several passages fitted to throw light on the subject.
You say, in the preface of your discourses, p. 12, "There are, however,
unbelievers more ignorant than Mr. Paine, Mr. Volney, Lequino, and
others in France say," &c.
Also in the preface of your present observations, p. 20. "I can
truly say that in the writings of Hume, Mr. Gibbon, Voltaire, Mr.
Volney--there is nothing of solid argument: all abound in gross mistakes
and misrepresentations." Idem, p. 38--"Whereas had he (Mr. Volney)
given attention to the history of the times in which Christianity was
promulgated . . . he could have no more doubt . . . &c., it is as much
in vain to argue with such a person as this, as with a Chinese or even a
Hottentot."
Idem, p. 119--"Mr. Volney, if we may judge from his numerous quotations
of ancient writers in all the learned languages, oriental as well as
occidental, must be acquainted with all; for he makes no mention of any
translation, and yet if we judge from this specimen of his knowledge of
them, he cannot have the smallest tincture of that of the Hebrew or even
of the Greek."
And, at last, after having published and posted me in your very title
page, as an unbeliever and an infidel; after having pointed me out in
your motto as one of those superficial spirits who know not how to find
out, and are unwilling to encounter, truth; you add, p. 124,
immediately after an article in which you speak of me under all these
denominations--
"The progress of infidelity, in the present age, is attended with a
circumstance which did not so frequently accompany it in any former
period, at least, in England, which is, that unbelievers in revelation
generally proceed to the disbelief of the being and providence of God
so as to become properly Atheists." So that, according to you, I am a
Chinese, a Hottentot, an unbeliever, an Atheist, an ignoramus, a man of
no sincerity; whose writings are full of nothing but gross mistakes and
misrepresentations. Now I ask you, sir, What has all this to do with the
main question? What has my book in common with my person? And how can
you hold any converse with a man of such bad connexions? In the second
place, your invitation, or rather, your summons to me, to point out
the mistakes which I think you have made with respect to my opinions,
suggest to me several observations.
First. You suppose that the public attaches a high importance to your
mistakes and to my opinions: but I cannot act upon a supposition. Am I
not an unbeliever?
Secondly. You say, p. 18, that the public will expect it from me: Where
are the powers by which you make the public speak and act? Is this also
a revelation?
Thirdly. You require me to point out your mistakes. I do not know that I
am under any such obligation: I have not reproached you with them; it
is not, indeed, very correct to ascribe to me, by selection or
indiscriminately, as you have done, all the opinions scattered through
my book, since, having introduced many different persons, I was under
the necessity of making them deliver different sentiments, according to
their different characters. The part which belongs to me is that of a
traveler, resting upon the ruins and meditating on the causes of the
misfortunes of the human race. To be consistent with yourself you ought
to have assigned to me that of the Hottentot or Samoyde savage, who
argues with the Doctors, chap. xxiii, and I should have accepted it; you
have preferred that of the erudite historian, chap. xxii, nor do I look
upon this as a mistake; I discover on the contrary, an insidious design
to engage me in a duel of self-love before the public, wherein you would
excite the exclusive interest of the spectators by supporting the cause
which they approve; while the task which you would impose on me,
would only, in the event of success, be attended with sentiments of
disapprobation. Such is your artful purpose, that, in attacking me
as doubting the existence of Jesus, you might secure to yourself,
by surprise, the favor of every Christian sect, although your own
incredulity in his divine nature is not less subversive of Christianity
than the profane opinion, which does not find in history the proof
required by the English law to establish a fact: to say nothing of
the extraordinary kind of pride assumed in the silent, but palpable,
comparison of yourself to Paul and to Christ, by likening your labors to
theirs as tending to the same object, p. 10, preface. Nevertheless, as
the first impression of an attack always confers an advantage, you
have some ground for expecting you may obtain the apostolic crown;
unfortunately for your purpose I entertain no disposition to that of
martrydom: and however glorious it might be to me to fall under the arm
of him who has overcome Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire and even Frederick II., I
find myself under the necessity of declining your theological challenge,
for a number of substantial reasons.
1. Because, to religious quarrels there is no end, since the prejudices
of infancy and education almost unavoidably exclude impartial reasoning,
and besides, the vanity of the champions becomes committed by the very
publicity of the contest, never to give up a first assertion, whence
result a spirit of sectarism and faction.
2. Because no one has a right to ask of me an account of my religious
opinions. Every inquisition of this kind is a pretension to sovereignty,
a first step towards persecution; and the tolerant spirit of this
country, which you invoke, has much less in view to engage men to speak,
than to invite them to be silent.
3. Because, supposing I do hold the opinions you attribute to me, I wish
not to engage my vanity so as never to retract, nor to deprive myself
of the resource of a conversion on some future day after more ample
information.
4. And because, reverend sir, if, in the support of your own thesis, you
should happen to be discomfited before the Christian audience, it would
be a dreadful scandal; and I will not be a cause for scandal, even for
the sake of good.
5. Because in this metaphysical contest our arms are too unequal; you
speaking in your mother tongue, which I scarcely lisp, might bring forth
huge volumes, while I could hardly oppose pages; and the public, who
would read neither production, might take the weight of the books for
that of reasoning.
6. And because, being endowed with the gift of faith in a pretty
sufficient quantity, you might swallow in a quarter of an hour more
articles than my logic would digest in a week.
7. Because again, if you were to oblige me to attend your sermons, as
you have compelled me to read your pamphlet, the congregation would
never believe that a man powdered and adorned like any worldling, could
be in the right against a man dressed out in a large hat, with straight
hair,* and a mortified countenance, although the gospel, speaking of the
pharisees of other times, who were unpowdered, says that when one fasts
he must anoint his head and wash his face.**
* Dr. Priestly has discarded his wig since he went to
America, and wears his own hair. Editor A. J. Reveiw.
** St. Matthew, Chapter VI. verses 16 and 17.
8. Because, finally, a dispute to one having nothing else to do would be
a gratification, while to me, who can employ my time better, it would be
an absolute loss.
I shall not then, reverend sir, make you my confessor in matters of
religion, but I will disclose to you my opinion, as a man of letters, on
the composition of your book. Having in former days, read many works of
theology, I was curious to learn whether by any chemical process you had
discovered real beings in that world of invisibles. Unfortunately, I am
obliged to declare to the public, which, according to your expression,
p. 19, "hopes to be instructed, to be led into truth, and not into error
by me," that I have not found in your book a single new argument,
but the mere repetition of what is told over and over in thousands of
volumes, the whole fruit of which has been to procure for their authors
a cursory mention in the dictionary of heresies. You everywhere lay down
that as proved which remains to be proved; with this peculiarity,
that, as Gibbon says, firing away your double battery against those who
believe too much, and those who believe too little, you hold out your
own peculiar sensations, as to the precise criterion of truth; so that
we must all be just of your size in order to pass the gate of that
New Jerusalem which you are building. After this, your reputation as
a divine might have become problematical with me; but recollecting the
principle of the association of ideas so well developed by Locke, whom
you hold in estimation, and whom, for that reason I am happy to cite to
you, although to him I owe that pernicious use of my understanding which
makes me disbelieve what I do not comprehend--I perceive why the public
having originally attached the idea of talents to the name of Mr.
Priestly, doctor in chemistry, continued by habit to associate it with
the name of Mr. Priestly, doctor in divinity; which, however, is not the
same thing: an association of ideas the more vicious as it is liable
to be moved inversely.* Happily you have yourself raised a bar of
separation between your admirers, by advising us in the first page
of your preface, that your present book is especially destined for
believers. To cooperate, however, with you, sir, in this judicious
design, I must observe that it is necessary to retrench two passages,
seeing they afford the greatest support to the arguments of unbelievers.
* Mr. Blair, doctor of divinity, and Mr. Black, doctor in
chemistry, met at the coffee house in Edinburg: a new
theological pamphlet written by doctor Priestly was thrown
upon the table, "Really," said Dr. Blair, "this man had
better confine himself to chemistry, for he is absolutely
ignorant in theology:"--"I beg your pardon," answered Dr.
Black, "he is in the right, he is a minister of the gospel,
he ought to adhere to his profession, for in truth he knows
nothing of chemistry."
You say, p. 15, "What is manifestly contrary to natural reason cannot be
received by it;"--and p. 62, "With respect to intellect, men and brute
animals are born in the same state, having the same external senses,
which are the only inlets to all ideas, and consequently the source of
all the knowledge and of all the mental habits they ever acquire."
Now if you admit, with Locke, and with us infidels, that every one has
the right of rejecting whatever is contrary to his natural reason, and
that all our ideas and all our knowledge are acquired only by the inlets
of our external senses; What becomes of the system of revelation, and of
that order of things in times past, which is so contradictory to that
of the time present? unless we consider it as a dream of the human brain
during the state of superstitious ignorance.
With these two single phrases, I could overturn the whole edifice of
your faith. Dread not, however, sir, in me such overflowing zeal. For
the same reason that I have not the frenzy of martyrdom, I have not that
of making proselytes. It becomes those ardent, or rather acrimonious
tempers, who mistake the violence of their sentiments for the enthusiasm
of truth; the ambition of noise and rumor, for the love of glory; and
for the love of their neighbor, the detestation of his opinions, and the
secret desire of dominion.
As for me, who have not received from nature the turbulent qualities of
an apostle, and never sustained in Europe the character of a dissenter,
I am come to America neither to agitate the conscience of men, nor to
form a sect, nor to establish a colony, in which, under the pretext of
religion, I might erect a little empire to myself. I have never been
seen evangelizing my ideas, either in temples or in public meetings. I
have never likewise practiced that quackery of beneficence, by which
a certain divine, imposing a tax upon the generosity of the public,
procures for himself the honors of a more numerous audience, and the
merit of distributing at his pleasure a bounty which costs him nothing,
and for which he receives grateful thanks dexterously stolen from the
original donors.
Either in the capacity of a stranger, or in that of a citizen, a sincere
friend to peace, I carry into society neither the spirit of dissension,
nor the desire of commotion; and because I respect in every one what
I wish him to respect in me, the name of liberty is in my mind nothing
else but the synonyma of justice.
As a man, whether from moderation or indolence, a spectator of the world
rather than an actor in it, I am every day less tempted to take on me
the management of the minds or bodies of men: it is sufficient for an
individual to govern his own passions and caprices.
If by one of these caprices, I am induced to think it may be useful,
sometimes, to publish my reflections, I do it without obstinacy or
pretension to that implicit faith, the ridicule of which you desire
to impart to me, p. 123. My whole book of the Ruins which you treat so
ungratefully, since you thought it amusing, p. 122, evidently bears this
character. By means of the contrasted opinions I have scattered through
it, it breathes that spirit of doubt and uncertainty which appears to me
the best suited to the weakness of the human mind, and the most adapted
to its improvement, inasmuch as it always leaves a door open to new
truths; while the spirit of dogmatism and immovable belief, limiting our
progress to a first received opinion, binds us at hazard, and without
resource, to the yoke of error or falsehood, and occasions the most
serious mischiefs to society; since by combining with the passions, it
engenders fanaticism, which, sometimes misled and sometimes misleading,
though always intolerant and despotic, attacks whatever is not of
its own nature; drawing upon itself persecution when it is weak, and
practising persecution when it is powerful; establishing a religion of
terror, which annihilates the faculties, and vitiates the conscience:
so that, whether under a political or a religious aspect, the spirit
of doubt is friendly to all ideas of liberty, truth, or genius, while a
spirit of confidence is connected with the ideas of tyranny, servility,
and ignorance.
If, as is the fact, our own experience and that of others daily teaches
us that what at one time appeared true, afterwards appeared demonstrably
false, how can we connect with our judgments that blind and presumptuous
confidence which pursues those of others with so much hatred?
No doubt it is reasonable, and even honest, to act according to our
present feelings and conviction: but if these feelings and their causes
do vary by the very nature of things, how dare we impose upon ourselves
or others an invariable conviction? How, above all, dare we require this
conviction in cases where there is really no sensation, as happens
in purely speculative questions, in which no palpable fact can be
presented?
Therefore, when opening the book of nature, (a more authentic one and
more easy to be read than leaves of paper blackened over with Greek or
Hebrew,) and when I reflected that the slightest change in the material
world has not been in times past, nor is at present effected by the
difference of so many religions and sects which have appeared and still
exist on the globe, and that the course of the seasons, the path of the
sun, the return of rain and drought, are the same for the inhabitants
of each country, whether Christians, Mussulmans, Idolaters, Catholics,
Protestants, etc., I am induced to believe that the universe is governed
by laws of wisdom and justice, very different from those which human
ignorance and intolerance would enact.
And as in living with men of very opposite religious persuasions, I
have had occasion to remark that their manners were, nevertheless, very
analogous; that is to say, among the different Christian sects, among
the Mahometans, and even among those people who were of no sect, I have
found men who practise all the virtues, public and private, and that too
without affectation; while others, who were incessantly declaiming of
God and religion, abandoned themselves to every vicious habit which
their belief condemned, I thereby became convinced that Ethics,
the doctrines of morality, are the only essential, as they are only
demonstrable, part of religion. And as, by your own avowal, the only end
of religion is to render men better, in order to add to their happiness,
p. 62, I have concluded that there are but two great systems of religion
in the world, that of good sense and beneficence, and that of malice and
hypocrisy.
In closing this letter, I find myself embarrassed by the nature of the
sentiment which I ought to express to you, for in declaring as you
have done, p. 123, that you do not care for the contempt of such as me*
(ignorant as you were of my opinion), you tell me plainly that you do
not care for their esteem. I leave, therefore, to your discernment and
taste to determine the sentiment most congenial to my situation and your
desert.
* "And what does it do for me here, except, perhaps, expose
me to the contempt of such men as Mr. Volney, which,
however, I feel myself pretty well able to bear?" p. 124.
This language is the more surprising, as Dr. Priestly never
received anything from me but civilities. In the year 1791
I sent him a dissertation of mine on the Chronology of the
Ancients, in consequence of some charts which he had himself
published. His only answer was to abuse me in a pamphlet in
1792. After this first abuse, on meeting me here last
winter, he procured me an invitation to dine with his friend
Mr. Russell, at whose house he lodged; after having shown me
polite attention at that dinner, he abuses me in his new
pamphlet. After this second abuse he meets me in Spruce
Street, and takes me by the hand as a friend, and speaks of
me in a large company under that denomination. Now I ask
the public, what kind of a man is Dr. Priestly?
C. F. VOLNEY.
Philadelphia, March 10, 1797.
P. S. I do not accompany this public letter with a private note to Dr.
Priestly, because communications of that nature carry an appearance of
bravado, which, even in exercising the right of a necessary defence,
appear to me imcompatible with decency and politeness.
THE ZODIACAL SIGNS AND CONSTELLATIONS.
(Compiled by the publisher from recognized authorities.)
The Zodiac is an imaginary girdle or belt in the celestial sphere, which
extends about eight degrees on each side of the Ecliptic. It is divided
into twelve portions, called the signs of the Zodiac, within which all
the planets make their revolutions. The Zodiac is so called from the
animals represented upon it, and is supposed to have originated
in remote ages and in latitudes where the camel and elephant were
comparatively unknown. This pictorial representation of the zodiac was
probably the origin, as M. Dupuis suggests, of the Arabian and Egyptian
adoration of animals and birds, and has led in the natural progress of
events to the adoration of images by both Christians and pagans.
"The Signs of the Zodiac, (says Godfrey Higgins in The Anacalypsis) with
the exception of the Scorpion, which was exchanged by Dan for the
Eagle, were carried by the different tribes of the Israelites on their
standards; and Taurus, Leo, Aquarius, and Scorpio or the Eagle--the
four signs of Reuben, Judah, Ephriam, and Dan--were placed at the four
corners, (the four cardinal points), of their encampment, evidently
in allusion to the cardinal points of the sphere, the equinoxes and
solstices, when the equinox was in Taurus. (See Parkhurst's Lexicon.)
These coincidences prove that this religious system had its origin
before the bull ceased to be an equinoctial sign, and prove also, that
the religion of Moses was originally the same in its secret mysteries as
that of the Heathen, or, if my reader likes it better, that the Heathen
secret mysteries were the same as those of Moses."
The Ecliptic, a great circle of the sphere, (shown on the preceding map
by two parallel lines), is supposed to be drawn through the middle of
the Zodiac, cutting the Equator at two points, (called the Equinoctial
points), at an angle with the equinoctial of 23 degrees 28 minutes, (the
sun's greatest declination), and is the path which the earth is supposed
to describe amidst the fixed stars in performing its annual circuit
around the sun. It is called the Ecliptic because the eclipses of the
sun and moon always occur under it.
The Signs are each the twelfth part of the Ecliptic or Zodiac, (30
degrees,) and are reckoned from the point of intersection of the
ecliptic and equator at the vernal equinox. They are named respectively
Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius,
Capricornus, Aquarius, Pisces. These names are borrowed from
the constellations of the zodiac of the same denomination, which
corresponded when these divisions were originally made; but in
consequence of the precession, recession, or retrocession of the
equinoxes, (about 50 1/10" yearly, at the rate of about 72 years to a
degree, displacing an entire sign in about 2152 years, and making
an entire revolution of the equinoctial in about 25,868 years), the
positions of these constellations in the heavens no longer correspond
with the divisions of the ecliptic of the same name, but are in advance
of them. Thus, the constellation Aries is now in that part of the
ecliptic called Taurus, and the stars of Taurus are in Gemini, those of
Gemini in Cancer, and so on throughout the ecliptic.
The relative positions of the signs and constellations in the zodiac and
ecliptic seem thus to have gradually changed with the revolving years;
and the worship of the three constellations, Taurus, Aries, and Pisces,
with which Christianity is so intimately connected, seems to have
changed in a corresponding degree. The worship of the bull of Egypt--the
celestial Taurus--has given place to that of the lamb of Palestine--the
celestial Aries; and under the astronomical emblem Pisces--the twelfth
sign of the zodiac--the dominant faith of to-day was appropriately
taught by the twelve apostolic fishermen.
It is from one of these chosen fishermen, St. Peter, that the Pope of
Rome claims to have derived his arbitrary power for binding and loosing
on earth those who are to be bound and loosed in heaven. (Matt. xvi,
19.) The grave responsibility of wielding with justice and equity this
tremendous power over the future destiny of mankind, seems never to have
disconcerted any of the successors of St. Peter. They have all proved
to be equally arrogant and intolerant, zealous for both temporal and
spiritual domination, and merciless to those who have opposed their
pretensions. The present incumbent of the papal chair, who modestly
claims the attribute of infallibility, seems proud of his inherited
title, The Great Fisherman! and hopes in the progress of time, with the
assistance of his monks, bishops, and cardinals, to entangle all nations
in his net of faith, and to dictate with unquestioned authority the
religious worship of the entire human race.
As the precession of the equinoxes still continues as of yore, and as
the masses still continue credulous and devout, they may in succeeding
ages be again called upon to worship the god Apis, when the sign of
Taurus shall again coincide in the zodiac and the ecliptic; and Aries,
"the lamb of God," may again be offered in the "fullness of time" as a
sacrifice for mankind, again be crucified, and again shed his redeeming
blood to wash away the sins of a believing world.
M. Dupuis has satisfactorily shown in The History of all Religions that
the twelve labors of the god and saviour Hercules were astronomical
allegories--the history of the passage of the sun through the twelve
signs of the zodiac--and these labors are so similar to the sufferings
of Jesus, that the Rev. Mr. Parkhurst has been obliged, much against
his inclination, to acknowledge that they "were types of what the
real Saviour was to do and suffer." (Parkhurst, p.47.) An intimate
connection, if not identity, is thus shown between ancient and modern
belief--between the paganism of the past and the orthodoxy of the
present.
THE ZODIACAL SIGNS.
ARIES, the Ram: (marked [symbol for ARIES])--A northern constellation,
usually named as the first sign in the zodiac, into which, when the sun
enters at the vernal equinox in March, the days and nights are of equal
length. Aries has been regarded by the devout during many ages as the
celestial representative, visible in the heavens, of "the Lamb of God
that taketh away the sins of the world."
TAURUS, the Bull:(marked thus, [symbol for TAURUS])--The second sign in
the zodiac, which by the Arabians is called Ataur. This constellation
was worshipped for ages by the idolatrous Egyptians as the heavenly
representative of their god Osiris; and derives its name, according to
Grecian fable, from the bull into which Jupiter transformed himself
in order to carry Europa over into Crete; but the constellation was
probably so named by the Egyptians to designate that period of the year,
(April), in which cows mostly bring forth their young.
"The Rev. Mr. Maurice in his work on the antiquities of India, has shown
that the May-day festival and the May-pole of Great Britain with its
garlands, etc., are the remains of an ancient festival of Egypt and
India, and probably of Phoenicia, when these nations, in countries
very distant, and from times very remote, have all, with one consent,
celebrated the entrance of the sun into the sign of Taurus at the vernal
equinox."
GEMINI, the Twins: (marked thus, [symbol for GEMINI])--A zodiacal
constellation, visible in May, containing the two bright stars Castor
and Pollux, the fabled sons of Leda and Jupiter, who during their lives
had cleared the Hellespont and neighboring seas of pirates, and were
therefore deemed the protectors of navigators and sailors.
CANCER, the Crab: (marked thus, [symbol for CANCER])--Is the fourth
sign of the zodiac, which the sun enters on the 21st day of June, and is
thence called the summer solstice. According to Grecian fable, the crab
was transported to heaven at the request of Juno, after it had been
slain by Hercules during his battle with the serpent Python, but the
evident design of the name is to represent the apparent backward motion
of the sun in June, which is said to resemble the motions of a crab.
LEO, the Lion: ([symbol for LEO]).--Is the fifth sign in the zodiac,
and contains one star of the first magnitude, called Regulus, or Cor
Leonis--the Lion's Heart. The fervid heat of July, when the sun has
attained its greatest power, is now symbolized in our almanacs by
the figure of an enraged lion; and the feasts or sacrifices formerly
celebrated among the ancients during this month, in honor of the sun,
(which they also represented under the form of a lion,) were called
Leonitica. The priests who performed the sacred rites were called
Leones. This feast was sometimes called Mithriaca, because Mithra was
the name of the sun among the Persians. The sacred writings abound with
references to the "king of beasts;" among the most interesting of which
is the story of the battle between the lion and Samson, the Jewish
Herculus; while the most wonderful example of animal evolution on record
is found in the sixty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, where we are gravely
informed that "the lion shall eat straw like the bullock."
VIRGO, Virgin Mother, Venus, Eve, Isis, &c.--([symbol for VIRGO]).--Is
the sixth sign of the zodiac, which the sun enters about the 21st of
August. The myths and fables regarding the virgin which abound among all
nations and all religions, are both various and voluminous, and we may
add somewhat improbable. They all agree, however, in this, that the
female, shown on the preceding diagram, holding in her right hand a
branch of ripened fruit,--the apples of Paradise,--was intended
to represent the reproductive powers of nature,--the abundance,
satisfaction and contentment which mortals enjoy during the happy period
of harvest.
LIBRA, the Balance.--The seventh sign of the zodiac, directly opposite
to Aries, from which it is distant 180 degrees. It is marked thus
[symbol for LIBRA], after the manner of a pair of scales; to denote,
probably, that when the sun arrives at this part of the ecliptic, the
days and nights are equal, as if weighed in a balance. Hence the
period when the sun enters Libra, (about September 21st,) is called the
Autumnal equinox. On the 25th of September was born John the Baptist,
the forerunner of his cousin Jesus, who came to his exaltation of glory
on the 25th of March, the Vernal equinox. "The equinoxes and solstices,"
says Higgins, "equally marked the births and deaths of John and Jesus."
The one preceded and prepared the way for the other, who receded.
One advanced, the other declined. Jesus ascended, John descended.
Astrologically speaking, "He must increase, but I must decrease." (John
iii, 30.)
SCORPIO, the Scorpion.--The eighth sign of the zodiac, which the sun
enters on the 23d of October, is marked thus [symbol for SCORPIO].
Scorpio is fabled to have killed the great hunter Orion, and for that
exploit to have been placed among the constellations. For this reason it
is also said that when Scorpio rises Orion sets.
SAGITTARIUS, the Archer: (marked thus, [symbol for SAGITTARIUS]) is the
ninth zodiacal sign, and corresponds with the month of November. This
sign is represented like a centaur and was fabled to be Crotus, the son
of Eupheme, the nurse of the Muses.
CAPRICORNUS, the Goat.([symbol for CAPRICORNUS])--The tenth sign of the
zodiac, which the sun enters the 21st of December, (the longest night in
the year,) called the winter solstice. This sign is drawn to represent
the horns of a goat, and is fabled to have been Pan, who in the war of
the giants was taken to heaven in the shape of a goat. Others claim
that it was the goat of Amalthaea, which fed Jupiter with her milk.
Macrobius, who calls Cancer and Capricorn the gates of the sun, makes
the latter sign to represent his motion, after the manner of a goat
climbing the mountains.
AQUARIUS, the Water Bearer.--A constellation in the heavens so called,
because during its rising there is usually an abundance of rain. It
is the eleventh sign in the zodiac, reckoned from Aries, and is marked
thus, [symbol for AQUARIUS]. It rises in January and sets in February,
and is supposed by the poets to be Ganymede.
PISCES, the Fishes, [symbol for PISCES].--The twelfth sign of the
zodiac, rises in February and is represented by two fishes tied together
by the tails. These fishes are fabled by the Greeks to be those into
which Venus and Cupid were changed to escape from the giant Typhon. This
fable may not be true, but that wonderful miracles were once performed
with two small fishes is stated in the ninth chapter of the Gospel of
St. Luke, where it is said that 5000 hungry mortals were cheaply, if
not sumptuously regaled with two small fishes and five loaves of bread;
while a large surplus of this piscatory diet, larger indeed than the
original stock, still remained intact.
In the vestibule or approaches to catholic churches is usually found a
vase filled with water, (called Piscina,) and this water is considered
holy. The Fish-days are observed as holy days, or fast days, in which
Fish may be eaten and meat is forbidden; and learned writers have
asserted that in the worship of Pisces may be found the true secret of
the origin of the rite of baptism. The Fish-god Oannes, is said to have
come out of the Erythraean Sea and taught the Babylonians all kinds of
useful knowledge. Ionnes or Jonas went headlong into the sea and into
a fish, and has kindly recorded for our instruction his remarkable
adventures. The miraculous draughts of fishes in the apostolic age still
excite the emulation of modern fishermen, who cannot even hope to rival
the wonders that have been recorded. St. Peter is said to have secured
ready money from the mouth of a fish that he caught with a hook and
line in the sea of Galilee. (Matthew xvii, 27.) His success was justly
rewarded, and to him was delegated the power of ruling the infant
church. Pisces thus displaced Aries. The fisherman succeeded the
shepherd. The precession of the equinoxes produced a new avatar; a new
sign arose in the heavens; and a new saviour was born to save mankind.
THE CONSTELLATIONS.
SIRIUS, the Dog Star.--A bright star of the first magnitude in the
mouth of the constellation Canis Major. This is the brightest star that
appears in our firmament, and is supposed by some to be the nearest.
LEPUS.--One of the southern constellations, placed near Orion, according
to Grecian fable, because it was one of the animals which he hunted.
ERIDANUS.--A winding southern constellation, near the Cetus, containing
the bright star Achemar.
CETUS, the Whale.--A southern constellation, and one of the forty-eight
old asterisms. It is fabled to have been the sea monster sent by Neptune
to devour Andromeda, which was killed by Perseus.
CRATER, the Cup.--A southern constellation, near Hydra. This is supposed
by Hyainus to be the cup which Apollo gave to the Corvus, or Raven.
CORVUS.--One of the old constellations in the southern hemisphere, near
Sagittarius. This bird is fabled to have been translated to heaven by
Apollo for discovering to him the infidelity of the nymph Coronis.
ARGO NAVIS, the Ship.--A constellation near to the Canis Major, and the
name of the ship which carried Jason and his fifty-four companions
to Colchis in quest of the golden fleece, and was said to have been
translated into the heavens.
CANOPUS.--The name formerly given to a star in the second bend of
Eridanus. A bright star of the first magnitude in the rudder of the ship
Argo, which, according to Pliny, was visible at Alexandria in Egypt.
CENTAURUS.--One of the forty-eight old constellations in the southern
hemisphere, represented in the form of half man and half horse, who was
fabled by the Greeks to have been Chiron, the tutor of Achilles.
AVA, or ALTAR.--One of the old constellations, and fabled to have been
that at which the giants entered into their conspiracy against the gods;
wherefore Jupiter, in commemoration of the event, transplanted the altar
into the heavens.
PEGASUS.--One of the forty-eight old constellations of the northern
hemisphere, figured in the form of a flying horse.
DELPHINUS, or DOLPHIN.--A northern constellation, near Pegasus. The
Dolphin is fabled to have been translated to heaven by Neptune.
AQUILA, the Eagle.--In the Arabic Altair, but in the Persian tables the
Flying Vulture. This is one of the old constellations, situated near
Delphinus in the northern hemisphere. According to Grecian fable, Aquila
represented Ganymede or Hebe, who was transported to heaven and made
cup-bearer to Jupiter.
SAGITTA--the Dart or Arrow, called by the Arabians Schahan. One of
the old constellations in the northern hemisphere, near Aquila and
Delphinus. It is fabled to have been the arrow with which Hercules slew
the vulture that was devouring the liver of Prometheus who was, like
Jesus, crucified for loving mankind.
CYGNUS, the Swan.--An old constellation in the milky-way, between
Equus and the Dragon. This is fabled to be the swan into which Jupiter
transformed himself in order to deceive the virtuous Leda, wife of
Tyndareus, king of Sparta. The Grecian matron, like the Jewish virgin,
thus became the mother of a God.
LYRA.--A northern constellation between Hercules and Cygnus, containing
a white star of the first magnitude.
MILKY-WAY.--Galaxy, or Via Lactia.--A broad luminous path or circle
encompassing the heavens, which is easily discernible by its white
appearance, from which it derives its name. It is supposed to be the
blended light of innumerable fixed stars, which are not distinguishable
with ordinary telescopes.
HYDRA, the Serpent.--A southern constellation of great length, which is
drawn to represent a serpent. The Hydra is fabled to have been placed in
the heavens by Apollo, to frighten the Raven from drinking.
ORION, the hunter.--A constellation of the southern hemisphere with
respect to the ecliptic, but half southern and half northern with
respect to the equinoctial. It is placed near the feet of the bull, and
is composed of seventeen stars in the form of a sword, which has given
occasion to the poets to speak of Orion's sword. He was described by
the Greeks as a "mighty hunter," who for his exploits was placed in the
heavens by Jupiter, between the Canis and the Lepus. He is believed by
many to have been the "mighty hunter" spoken of in the bible, under the
name of Nimrod. (See Gen. x: 8, 9; 1 Chron. i: 10; Micha v: 6, Job ix,
9; Amos v, 8.)
PERSEUS.--This constellation is named from Perseus, the son of Jupiter
by Danae, who was translated into the heavens by the assistance of
Minerva, for having released Andromeda from her confinement on the
rock to which she was chained. He is represented in the preceding
illustration holding a drawn sword in his right hand and in his left the
head of Medusa, the Gorgon, whose terrifying appearance changed all who
beheld her into stone, and whom he had destroyed with the assistance of
the wings he had borrowed from Mercury, the helmet from Pluto, the sword
from Vulcan, and the shield from Minerva.
JOSEPH'S STABLE; AURIGA, the Wagoner:--A northern constellation between
Perseus and Gemini, represented by the figure of an old man supporting
a goat. He is said to have been taken to heaven by Jupiter after the
invention of wagons.
URSA MAJOR, the Bear.--One of the prominent northern constellations,
situated near the north pole. It contains the stars called the Dipper.
Ursa Minor contains the pole-star, which is shown in the extremity of
the tail of the bear.
ANDROMEDA.--A northern constellation, represented by a woman chained;
as, according to Grecian fable, Andromeda, the daughter of Cassiopia,
was bound to a rock by the Nereides, and afterwards released by Perseus.
Minerva changed her into a constellation after her death, and placed her
in the heavens.
DRACO OR DRAGON.--A northern constellation, supposed to represent the
Dragon that guarded the Hesperian fruit, and was killed by Hercules.
It is said that Juno took it up to heaven and placed it among the
constellations.
BOOTIS, the Ox driver: so called because this constellation seems
to follow the Great Bear as the driver follows his oxen. Bootis is
represented as grasping in his right hand a sickle and in his left a
club, and is fabled to have been Icarius, who was transported to heaven
because he was a great cultivator of the vine; for when Bootes rises the
works of ploughing and cultivation go forward.
CORONA BOREALIS. Northern Crown.--One of the old northern
constellations, between Hercules and Bootes.
CORONA AUSTRALIS--Southern Crown.--One of the old constellations in the
southern hemisphere, between Sagittarius and Scorpio. The Corona
were fabled to be Menippe and Metioche, two daughters of Orion, who
sacrificed themselves at the suggestion of an oracle, to protect
Boeotia, their native country, from the ravages of a pestilence: it
being the belief of idolatrous nations that an angry god could be
propitiated by human sacrifices, and that the death of the innocent
might atone for the sins of the guilty. The deities of Hades were
astonished, it is said, at the patriotism and devotion of these Grecian
maidens, who had so generously and uselessly sacrificed their lives.
After their death two stars were seen to issue from the altars that
still smoked with their blood, and these stars were placed in the
heavens in the form of a crown or coronet.
CEPHEUS AND CASSIOPIA.--One of the old asterism in the northern
hemisphere, near the pole. According to Grecian fables, Cassiopia
and her husband Cepheus, king of Etheopia, were placed among the
constellations to witness the punishment inflicted on their daughter,
Andromeda.
TRIANGULARIUM.--A name for both one of the old and new constellations in
the northern hemisphere, between Andromeda and Aries.
SERPENTARIUS, called Ophiucus, is a constellation in the northern
hemisphere, between Scorpio and Hercules.
HERCULES, one of the old northern constellations. In Grecian mythology
it was taught and believed that Hercules, the Theban, was born of a
human mother and an immortal father, like other so-called saviours of
mankind. His mother, the fair Alcmena, wife of Amphitryon, having found
favor in the eyes of the god Jupiter, soon fell an unwilling victim
to his celestial wiles. The life of the infant Hercules, born of this
unnatural union, was threatened by the jealous Juno, the same as the
life of the infant Jesus was threatened by the tyrant Herod. Like Jesus,
Hercules devoted his life to the benefit of the human race, and like
Jesus he was also worshipped after his death as a God in heaven. He is
shown in the astrological chart, enveloped in the skin of the lion he
has slain, with his club upraised, and his foot placed threateningly
above the head of the Dragon, as if about to fulfill the scriptural
prophecy, that "the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head."
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Ruins, or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires and the Law of Nature" ***
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