to eat. Only believe that what I so give you is God. He is within you.
Shall your heart then be defiled by anything unjust or base? Behold then men receiving God within them, in the midst of an august ceremonial, by the light of a hundred tapers, under the influence of the most exquisite and enchanting music, and at the footstool of an altar of burnished gold. The imagination is led captive, the soul is rapt in ecstasy and melted! The votary scarcely breathes; he is detached from every terrestrial object, he is united with God, He is in our flesh, and in our blood! Who will dare, or who even will be able, after this, to commit a single fault, or to entertain even the idea of it? It was clearly impossible to devise a mystery better calculated to retain mankind in virtue."
Yet Louis XI., while receiving God thus within him, poisons his own brother; the archbishop of Florence, while making God, and the Pazzi while receiving Him, assassinate the Medici in the cathedral. Pope Alexander VI., after rising from the bed of his bastard daughter, administers God to Cæsar Borgia, his bastard son, and both destroy by hanging, poison, and the sword, all who are in possession of two acres of land which they find desirable.
Julius II. makes and eats God; but, with his cuirass on his back and his helmet on his head, he imbrues his hands in blood and carnage. Leo X.
contains God in his body, his mistress in his arms, and the money extorted by the sale of indulgences, in his own and his sister's coffers.
Trolle, archbishop of Upsala, has the senators of Sweden slaughtered before his face, holding a papal bull in his hand. Von Galen, bishop of Münster, makes war upon all his neighbors, and becomes celebrated for his rapine.
The Abbé N---- is full of God, speaks of nothing but God, imparts God to all the women, or weak and imbecile persons that he can obtain the direction of, and robs his penitents of their property.
What are we to conclude from these contradictions? That all these persons never really believed in God; that they still less, if possible, believed that they had eaten His body and drunk His blood; that they never imagined they had swallowed God; that if they had firmly so believed, they never would have committed any of those deliberate crimes; in a word, that this most miraculous preventive of human atrocities has been most ineffective? The more sublime such an idea, the more decidedly is it secretly rejected by human obstinacy.
The fact is, that all our grand criminals who have been at the head of government, and those also who have subordinately shared in authority, not only never believed that they received God down their throats, but never believed in God at all; at least they had entirely effaced such an idea from their minds. Their contempt for the sacrament which they created or administered was extended at length into a contempt of God Himself. What resource, then, have we remaining against depredation, insolence, outrage, calumny, and persecution? That of persuading the strong man who oppresses the weak that God really exists. He will, at least, not laugh at this opinion; and, although he may not believe that God is within him, he yet may believe that God pervades all nature. An incomprehensible mystery has shocked him. But would he be able to say that the existence of a remunerating and avenging God is an incomprehensible mystery? Finally, although he does not yield his belief to a Catholic bishop who says to him, "Behold, that is your God, whom a man consecrated by myself has put into your mouth;" he may believe the language of all the stars and of all animated beings, at once exclaiming: "God is our creator!"
EXECUTION.
SECTION I.
Yes, we here repeat the observation, a man that is hanged is good for nothing; although some executioner, as much addicted to quackery as cruelty, may have persuaded the wretched simpletons in his neighborhood that the fat of a person hanged is a cure for the epilepsy.
Cardinal Richelieu, when going to Lyons to enjoy the spectacle of the execution of Cinq-Mars and de Thou, was informed that the executioner had broken his leg. "What a dreadful thing it is," says he to the chancellor Séguier, "we have no executioner!" I certainly admit that it must have been a terrible disaster. It was a jewel wanting in his crown.
At last, however, an old worthy was found, who, after twelve strokes of the sabre, brought low the head of the innocent and philosophic de Thou.
What necessity required this death? What good could be derived from the judicial assassination of Marshal de Marillac?
I will go farther. If Maximilian, duke of Sully, had not compelled that admirable King Henry IV. to yield to the execution of Marshal Birou, who was covered with wounds which had been received in his service, perhaps Henry would never have suffered assassination himself; perhaps that act of clemency, judiciously interposed after condemnation, would have soothed the still raging spirit of the league; perhaps the outcry would not then have been incessantly thundered into the ears of the populace--the king always protects heretics, the king treats good Catholics shamefully, the king is a miser, the king is an old debauchée, who, at the age of fifty-seven fell in love with the young princess of Condé, and forced her husband to fly the kingdom with her. All these embers of universal discontent would probably not have been alone sufficient to inflame the brain of the fanatical Feuillant, Ravaillac.
With respect to what is ordinarily called justice, that is, the practice of killing a man because he has stolen a crown from his master; or burning him, as was the case with Simon Morin, for having said that he had had conferences with the Holy Spirit; and as was the case also with a mad old Jesuit of the name of Malagrida, for having printed certain conversations which the holy virgin held with St. Anne, her mother, while in the womb--this practice, it must be acknowledged, is neither conformable to humanity or reason, and cannot possibly be of the least utility.
We have already inquired what advantage could ensue to the state from the execution of that poor man known under the name of the madman; who, while at supper with some monks, uttered certain nonsensical words, and who, instead of being purged and bled, was delivered over to the gallows?
We further ask, whether it was absolutely necessary that another madman, who was in the bodyguards, and who gave himself some slight cuts with a hanger, like many other impostors, to obtain remuneration, should be also hanged by the sentence of the parliament? Was this a crime of such great enormity? Would there have been any imminent danger to society in saving the life of this man?
What necessity could there be that La Barre should have his hand chopped off and his tongue cut out, that he should be put to the question ordinary and extraordinary, and be burned alive? Such was the sentence pronounced by the Solons and Lycurguses of Abbeville! What had he done?
Had he assassinated his father and mother? Had people reason to apprehend that he would burn down the city? He was accused of want of reverence in some secret circumstances, which the sentence itself does not specify. He had, it was said, sung an old song, of which no one could give an account; and had seen a procession of capuchins pass at a distance without saluting it.
It certainly appears as if some people took great delight in what Boileau calls murdering their neighbor in due form and ceremony, and inflicting on him unutterable torments. These people live in the forty-ninth degree of latitude, which is precisely the position of the Iroquois. Let us hope that they may, some time or other, become civilized.
Among this nation of barbarians, there are always to be found two or three thousand persons of great kindness and amiability, possessed of correct taste, and constituting excellent society. These will, at length, polish the others.
I should like to ask those who are so fond of erecting gibbets, piles, and scaffolds, and pouring leaden balls through the human brain, whether they are always laboring under the horrors of famine, and whether they kill their fellow-creatures from any apprehension that there are more of them than can be maintained?
I was once perfectly horror-struck at seeing a list of deserters made out for the short period merely of eight years. They amounted to sixty thousand. Here were sixty thousand co-patriots, who were to be shot through the head at the beat of drum; and with whom, if well maintained and ably commanded, a whole province might have been added to the kingdom.
I would also ask some of these subaltern Dracos, whether there are no such things wanted in their country as highways or crossways, whether there are no uncultivated lands to be broken up, and whether men who are hanged or shot can be of any service?
I will not address them on the score of humanity, but of utility: unfortunately, they will often attend to neither; and, although M.
Beccaria met with the applauses of Europe for having proved that punishments ought only to be proportioned to crimes, the Iroquois soon found out an advocate, paid by a priest, who maintained that to torture, hang, rack, and burn in all cases whatsoever, was decidedly the best way.
SECTION II.
But it is England which, more than any other country, has been distinguished for the stern delight of slaughtering men with the pretended sword of the law. Without mentioning the immense number of princes of the blood, peers of the realm, and eminent citizens, who have perished by a public death on the scaffold, it is sufficient to call to mind the execution of Queen Anne Boleyn, Queen Catherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey, Queen Mary Stuart, and King Charles I, in order to justify the sarcasm which has been frequently applied, that the history of England ought to be written by the executioner.
Next to that island, it is alleged that France is the country in which capital punishments have been most common. I shall say nothing of that of Queen Brunehaut, for I do not believe it. I pass by innumerable scaffolds, and stop before that of Count Montecuculi, who was cut into quarters in the presence of Francis I. and his whole court, because Francis, the dauphin, had died of pleurisy.
That event occurred in 1536. Charles V., victorious on all the coasts of Europe and Africa, was then ravaging both Provence and Picardy. During that campaign which commenced advantageously for him, the young dauphin, eighteen years of age, becomes heated at a game of tennis, in the small city of Tournon. When in high perspiration he drinks iced water, and in the course of five days dies of the pleurisy. The whole court and all France exclaim that the Emperor Charles V. had caused the dauphin of France to be poisoned. This accusation, equally horrible and absurd, has been repeated from time to time down to the present. Malherbe, in one of his odes, speaks of Francis, whom Castile, unequal to cope with in arms, bereaved of his son.
We will not stop to examine whether the emperor was unequal to the arms of Francis I., because he left Provence after having completely sacked it, nor whether to poison a dauphin is to steal him; but these bad lines decidedly show that the poisoning of the dauphin Francis by Charles V.
was received throughout France as an indisputable truth.
Daniel does not exculpate the emperor. Henault, in his "Chronological Summary," says: "Francis, the dauphin, poisoned." It is thus that all writers copy from one another. At length the author of the "History of Francis I." ventures, like myself, to investigate the fact.
It is certain that Count Montecuculi, who was in the service of the dauphin, was condemned by certain commissioners to be quartered, as guilty of having poisoned that prince.
Historians say that this Montecuculi was his cup-bearer. The dauphins have no such officer: but I will admit that they had. How could that gentleman, just at the instant, have mixed up poison in a glass of fresh water? Did he always carry poison in his pocket, ready whenever his master might call for drink? He was not the only person present with the dauphin, who was, it appears, wiped and rubbed dry by some of his attendants after the game of tennis was finished. The surgeons who opened the body declared, it is said, that the prince had taken arsenic.
Had the prince done so, he must have felt intolerable pains about his throat, the water would have been colored, and the case would not have been treated as one of pleurisy. The surgeons were ignorant pretenders, who said just what they were desired to say; a fact which happens every day.
What interest could this officer have in destroying his master? Who was more likely to advance his fortune? But, it is said, it was intended also to poison the king. Here is a new difficulty and a new improbability.
Who was to compensate him for this double crime? Charles V., it is replied--another improbability equally strong. Why begin with a youth only eighteen years and a half old, and who, moreover, had two brothers?
How was the king to be got at? Montecuculi did not wait at his table.
Charles V. had nothing to gain by taking away the life of the young dauphin, who had never drawn a sword, and who certainly would have had powerful avengers. It would have been a crime at once base and useless.
He did not fear the father, we are to believe, the bravest knight of the French court; yet he was afraid of the son, who had scarcely reached beyond the age of childhood!
But, we are informed, this Montecuculi, on the occasion of a journey to Ferrara, his own country, was presented to the emperor, and that that monarch asked him numerous questions relating to the magnificence of the king's table and the economy of his household. This certainly is decisive evidence that the Italian was engaged by Charles V. to poison the royal family!
Oh! but it was not the emperor himself who urged him to commit this crime: he was impelled to it by Anthony de Leva and the Marquis di Gonzaga. Yes, truly, Anthony de Leva, eighty years of age, and one of the most virtuous knights in Europe! and this noble veteran, moreover, was indiscreet enough to propose executing this scheme of poisoning in conjunction with a prince of Gonzaga. Others mention the Marquis del Vasto, whom we call du Gast. Contemptible impostors! Be at least agreed among yourselves. You say that Montecuculi confessed the fact before his judges. Have you seen the original documents connected with the trial?
You state that the unfortunate man was a chemist. These then are your only proofs, your only reasons, for subjecting him to the most dreadful of executions: he was an Italian, he was a chemist, and Charles V. was hated. His glory then provoked indeed a base revenge. Good God! Your court orders a man of rank to be cut into quarters upon bare suspicion, in the vain hope of disgracing that powerful emperor.
Some time afterwards your suspicions, always light and volatile, charge this poisoning upon Catherine de Medici, wife of Henry II., then dauphin and subsequently king of France. You say that, in order to reign, she destroyed by poison the first dauphin, who stood between her husband and the throne. Miserable impostors! Once again, I say, be consistent!
Catherine de Medici was at that time only seventeen years of age.
It has been said that Charles V. himself imputed this murder to Catherine, and the historian Pera is quoted to prove it. This however, is an error. These are the historian's words: "This year the dauphin of France died at Paris with decided indications of poison. His friends ascribed it to the orders of the Marquis del Vasto and Anthony de Leva, which led to the execution of Count Montecuculi, who was in the habit of corresponding with them: base and absurd suspicion of men so highly honorable, as by destroying the dauphin little or nothing could be gained. He was not yet known by his valor any more than his brothers, who were next in the succession to him.
"To one presumption succeeded another. It was pretended that this murder was committed by order of the duke of Orleans, his brother, at the instigation of his wife, Catherine de Medici, who was ambitious of being a queen, which, in fact, she eventually was. It is well remarked by a certain author, that the dreadful death of the duke of Orleans, afterwards Henry II., was the punishment of heaven upon him for poisoning his brother--at least, if he really did poison him--a practice too common among princes, by which they free themselves at little cost from stumbling-blocks in their career, but frequently and manifestly punished by God."
Signor di Pera, we instantly perceive, is not an absolute Tacitus; besides, he takes Montecuculi, or Montecuculo, as he calls him, for a Frenchman. He says the dauphin died at Paris, whereas it was at Tournon.
He speaks of decided indications of poison from public rumor; but it is clear that he attributes the accusation of Catherine de Medici only to the French. This charge is equally unjust and extravagant with that against Montecuculi.
In fact, this volatile temperament, so characteristic of the French, has in every period of our history led to the most tragical catastrophes. If we go back from the iniquitous execution of Montecuculi to that of the Knights Templars, we shall see a series of the most atrocious punishments, founded upon the most frivolous presumptions. Rivers of blood have flowed in France in consequence of the thoughtless character and precipitate judgment of the French people.
We may just notice the wretched pleasure that some men, and particularly those of weak minds, secretly enjoy in talking or writing of public executions, like that they derive from the subject of miracles and sorceries. In Calmet's "Dictionary of the Bible" you may find a number of fine engravings of the punishments in use among the Hebrews.
These prints are absolutely sufficient to strike every person of feeling with horror. We will take this opportunity to observe that neither the Jews nor any other people ever thought of fixing persons to the cross by nails; and that there is not even a single instance of it. It is the fiction of some painter, built upon an opinion completely erroneous.
SECTION III.
Ye sages who are scattered over the world--for some sages there are--join the philosophic Beccaria, and proclaim with all your strength that punishments ought to be proportioned to crimes: That after shooting through the head a young man of the age of twenty, who has spent six months with his father and mother or his mistress, instead of rejoining his regiment, he can no longer be of any service to his country: That if you hang on the public gallows the servant girl who stole a dozen napkins from her mistress, she will be unable to add to the number of your citizens a dozen children, whom you may be considered as strangling in embryo with their parent; that there is no proportion between a dozen napkins and human life; and, finally, that you really encourage domestic theft, because no master will be so cruel as to get his coachman hanged for stealing a few of his oats; but every master would prosecute to obtain the infliction of a punishment which should be simply proportioned to the offence: That all judges and legislators are guilty of the death of all the children which unfortunate, seduced women desert, expose, or even strangle, from a similar weakness to that which gave them birth.
On this subject I shall without scruple relate what has just occurred in the capital of a wise and powerful republic, which however, with all its wisdom, has unhappily retained some barbarous laws from those old, unsocial, and inhuman ages, called by some the ages of purity of manners. Near this capital a new-born infant was found dead; a girl was apprehended on suspicion of being the mother; she was shut up in a dungeon; she was strictly interrogated; she replied that she could not have been the mother of that child, as she was at the present time pregnant. She was ordered to be visited by a certain number of what are called (perfectly malapropos in the present instance) wise women--by a commission of matrons. These poor imbecile creatures declared her not to be with child, and that the appearance of pregnancy was occasioned by improper retention. The unfortunate woman was threatened with the torture; her mind became alarmed and terrified; she confessed that she had killed her supposed child; she was capitally convicted; and during the actual passing of her sentence was seized with the pains of childbirth. Her judges were taught by this most impressive case not lightly to pass sentences of death.
With respect to the numberless executions which weak fanatics have inflicted upon other fanatics equally weak, I will say nothing more about them; although it is impossible to say too much.
There are scarcely any highway robberies committed in Italy without assassinations, because the punishment of death is equally awarded to both crimes.
It cannot be doubted that M. de Beccaria, in his "Treatise on Crimes and Punishments" has noticed this very important fact.
EXECUTIONER.
It may be thought that this word should not be permitted to degrade a dictionary of arts and sciences; it has a connection however with jurisprudence and history. Our great poets have not disdained frequently to avail themselves of this word in tragedy: Clytemnestra, in Iphigenia, calls Agamemnon the executioner of his daughter.
In comedy it is used with great gayety; Mercury in the "Amphitryon" (act i. scene 2), says: "_Comment, bourreau! tu fais des cris_!"--"How, hangman! thou bellowest!"
And even the Romans permitted themselves to say: "_Quorsum vadis, carnifex?_"--"Whither goest thou, hangman?"
The Encyclopædia, under the word "Executioner," details all the privileges of the Parisian executioner; but a recent author has gone farther. In a romance on education, not altogether equal to Xenophon's "Cyropædia" or Fénelon's "Telemachus," he pretends that the monarch of a country ought, without hesitation, to bestow the daughter of an executioner in marriage on the heir apparent of the crown, if she has been well educated, and if she is of a sufficiently congruous disposition with the young prince. It is a pity that he has not mentioned the precise sum she should carry with her as a dower, and the honors that should be conferred upon her father on the day of marriage.
It is scarcely possible, with due _congruity_, to carry further the profound morality, the novel rules of decorum, the exquisite paradoxes, and divine maxims with which the author I speak of has favored and regaled the present age. He would undoubtedly feel the perfect _congruity_ of officiating as bridesman at the wedding. He would compose the princess's epithalamium, and not fail to celebrate the grand exploits of her father. The bride may then possibly impart some acrid kisses; for be it known that this same writer, in another romance called "_Héloise_," introduces a young Swiss, who had caught a particular disorder in Paris, saying to his mistress, "Keep your kisses to yourself; they are too acrid."
A time will come when it will scarcely be conceived possible that such works should have obtained a sort of celebrity; had the celebrity continued, it would have done no honor to the age. Fathers of families soon made up their minds that it was not exactly decorous to marry their eldest sons to the daughters of executioners, whatever congruity might appear to exist between the lover and the lady. There is a rule in all things, and certain limits which cannot be rationally passed.
_Est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines,_ _Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum._ EXPIATION.
_Dieu fit du repentir la vertu des mortels._ The repentance of man is accepted by God as virtue, and perhaps the finest institution of antiquity was that solemn ceremony which repressed crimes by announcing that they would be punished, and at the same time soothed the despair of the guilty by permitting them to redeem their transgressions by appointed modes of penance. Remorse, it is to be remembered, must necessarily have preceded expiation, for diseases are older than medicine, and necessities than relief.
There was, then, previously to all public and legal forms of worship, a natural and instinctive religion which inflicted grief upon the heart of any one who, through ignorance or passion, had committed an inhuman action. A man in a quarrel has killed his friend, or his brother, or a jealous and frantic lover has taken the life of her without whom he felt as if it were impossible to live. The chief of a nation has condemned to death a virtuous man and useful citizen. Such men, if they retain their senses and sensibility, become overwhelmed by despair. Their consciences pursue and haunt them; two courses only are open to them, reparation or to become hardened in guilt. All who have the slightest feeling remaining choose the former; monsters adopt the latter.
As soon as religion was established, expiations were admitted. The ceremonies attending them were, unquestionably, ridiculous; for what connection is there between the water of the Ganges and a murder? How could a man repair homicide by bathing? We have already commented on the excess of absurdity and insanity which can imagine that what washes the body, washes the soul also, and expunges from it the stain of evil actions.
The water of the Nile had afterwards the same virtue as that of the Ganges; other ceremonies were added to these ablutions. The Egyptians took two he-goats and drew lots which of the two should be cast out loaded with the sins of the guilty. This goat was called Hazazel, the expiator. What connection is there, pray, between a goat and the crime of a human being?
It is certainly true that in after times this ceremony was sanctified among our fathers the Jews, who adopted many of the Egyptian rites; but the souls of the Jews were undoubtedly purified, not by the goat but by repentance.
Jason, having killed Absyrtus, his brother-in-law, went, we are told, with Medea, who was more guilty than himself, to be absolved by Circe, the queen and priestess of Æa, who passed in those days for a most powerful sorceress. Circe absolved them with a sucking pig and salt cakes. This might possibly be a very good dish, but it could neither compensate for the blood of Absyrtus, nor make Jason and Medea more worthy people, unless while eating their pig they also manifested the sincerity of their repentance.
The expiation of Orestes, who had avenged his father by the murder of his mother, consisted in going and stealing a statue from the Tartars of the Crimea. The statue was probably extremely ill executed, and there appeared nothing to be gained by such an enterprise. In later times these things were contrived better: mysteries were invented, and the offenders might obtain absolution at these mysteries by submitting to certain painful trials, and swearing to lead a new life. It is from this oath that the persons taking it had attached to them, among all nations, a name corresponding to that of initiated "_qui ineunt vitam novam_,"--who begin a new career, who enter upon the path of virtue.
We have seen under the article on "Baptism" that the Christian catechumens were not called initiated till after they had been baptized.
It is indisputable, that persons had not their sins washed away in these mysteries, but by virtue of their oath to become virtuous: the hierophant in all the Grecian mysteries, when dismissing the assembly, pronounced the two Egyptian words, "_Koth, ompheth_," "watch, be pure"; which at once proves that the mysteries came originally from Egypt, and that they were invented solely for the purpose of making mankind better.
Wise men, we thus see, have, in every age, done all in their power to inspire the love of virtue, and to prevent the weakness of man from sinking under despair; but, at the same time there have existed crimes of such magnitude and horror that no mystery could admit of their expiation. Nero, although an emperor, could not obtain initiation into the mysteries of Ceres. Constantine, according to the narrative of Zosimus, was unable to procure the pardon of his crimes: he was polluted with the blood of his wife, his son, and all his relations. It was necessary, for the protection of the human race, that crimes so flagitious should be deemed incapable of expiation, that the prospect of absolution might not invite to their committal, and that hideous atrocity might be checked by universal horror.
The Roman Catholics have expiations which they call penances. We have seen, under the article on "Austerities," how grossly so salutary an institution has been abused.
According to the laws of the barbarians who subverted the Roman Empire, crimes were expiated by money. This was called compounding: "Let the offender compound by paying ten, twenty, thirty shillings." Two hundred sous constituted the composition price for killing a priest, and four hundred for killing a bishop; so that a bishop was worth exactly two priests.
After having thus compounded with men, God Himself was compounded with, when the practice of confession became generally established. At length Pope John XXII. established a tariff of sins.
The absolution of incest, committed by a layman, cost four livres tournois: "_Ab incestu pro laico in foro conscienticæ turonenses quatuor_." For a man and woman who have committed incest, eighteen livres tournois, four ducats, and nine carlines. This is certainly unjust; if one person pays only four livres tournois, two persons ought not to pay more than eight.
Even crimes against nature have actually their affixed rates, amounting to ninety livres tournois, twelve ducats, and six carlines: "_Cum inhibitione turonenses 90, ducatos 12, carlinos 90_," etc.
It is scarcely credible that Leo X. should have been so imprudent as to print this book of rates or indulgences in 1514, which, however, we are assured he did; at the same time it must be considered that no spark had then appeared of that conflagration, kindled afterwards by the reformers; and that the court of Rome reposed implicitly upon the credulity of the people, and neglected to throw even the slightest veil over its impositions. The public sale of indulgences, which soon followed, shows that that court took no precaution whatever to conceal its gross abominations from the various nations which had been so long accustomed to them. When the complaints against the abuses of the Romish church burst forth, it did all in its power to suppress this publication, but all was in vain.
If I may give my opinion upon this book of rates, I must say that I do not believe the editions of it are genuine; the rates are not in any kind of proportion and do not at all coincide with those stated by d'Aubigné, the grandfather of Madame de Maintenon, in the confession of de Sancy. Depriving a woman of her virginity is estimated at six gros, and committing incest with a mother or a sister, at five gros. This is evidently ridiculous. I think that there really was a system of rates or taxes established for those who went to Rome to obtain absolution or purchase dispensations, but that the enemies of the Holy See added largely, in order to increase the odium against it. Consult Bayle, under the articles on "Bank," "Dupinet," "Drelincourt."
It is at least positively certain that these rates were never authorized by any council; that they constituted an enormous abuse, invented by avarice, and respected by those who were interested in its not being abolished. The sellers and the purchasers equally found their account in it; and accordingly none opposed it before the breaking out of the disturbances attending the Reformation. It must be acknowledged that an exact list of all these rates or taxes would be eminently useful in the formation of a history of the human mind.
EXTREME.
We will here attempt to draw from the word "extreme" an idea that may be attended with some utility.
It is every day disputed whether in war success is ascribable to conduct or to fortune.
Whether in diseases, nature or medicine is most operative in healing or destroying.
Whether in law it is not judicious for a man to compromise, although he is in the right, and to defend a cause although he is in the wrong.
Whether the fine arts contribute to the glory or to the decline of a state.
Whether it is wise or injudicious to encourage superstition in a people.
Whether there is any truth in metaphysics, history, or morals.
Whether taste is arbitrary, and whether there is in reality a good and a bad taste.
In order to decide at once all these questions, take an advantage of the extreme cases under each, compare these two extremes, and you will immediately discover the truth.
You wish to know whether success in war can be infallibly decided by conduct; consider the most extreme case, the most opposed situations in which conduct alone will infallibly triumph. The hostile army must necessarily pass through a deep mountain gorge; your commander knows this circumstance; he makes a forced march, gets possession of the heights, and completely encloses the enemy in the defile; there they must either perish or surrender. In this extreme case fortune can have no share in the victory. It is demonstrable, therefore, that skill may decide the success of a campaign, and it hence necessarily follows that war is an art.
Afterwards imagine an advantageous but not a decisive position; success is not certain, but it is exceedingly probable. And thus, from one gradation to another, you arrive at what may be considered a perfect equality between the two armies. Who shall then decide? Fortune; that is, some unexpected circumstance or event; the death of a general officer going to execute some important order; the derangement of a division in consequence of a false report, the operation of sudden panic, or various other causes for which prudence can find no remedy; yet it is still always certain that there is an art, that there is a science in war.
The same must be observed concerning medicine; the art of operating with the head or hand to preserve the life which appears likely to be lost.
The first who applied bleeding as speedily as possible to a patient under apoplexy; the first who conceived the idea of plunging a bistoury into the bladder to extract the stone from it, and of closing up the wound; the first who found out the method of stopping gangrene in any part of the human frame, were undoubtedly men, almost divine, and totally unlike the physicians of Molière.
Descend from this strong and decisive example to cases less striking and more equivocal; you perceive fevers and various other maladies cured without its being possible to ascertain whether this is done by the physician or by nature; you perceive diseases, the issue of which cannot be judged; various physicians are mistaken in their opinions of the seat or nature of them; he who has the acutest genius, the keenest eye,