But before that time, and since then, in all the rest of the earth where the apostles did not penetrate, each one must have said to his soul: What art thou? whence comest thou? what dost thou? whither goest thou? Thou art I know not what, thinking and feeling: and wert thou to feel and think for a hundred thousand millions of years, thou wouldst never know any more by thine own light without the assistance of God.
O man! God has given thee understanding for thy own good conduct, and not to penetrate into the essence of the things which He has created.
So thought Locke; and before Locke, Gassendi; and before Gassendi, a multitude of sages; but we have bachelors who know all of which those great men were ignorant.
Some cruel enemies of reason have dared to rise up against these truths, acknowledged by all the wise. They have carried their dishonesty and impudence so far as to charge the authors of this work with having affirmed that the soul is matter. You well know, persecutors of innocence, that we have said quite the contrary. You must have read these very words against Epicurus, Democritus, and Lucretius: "My friend, how does an atom think? Acknowledge that thou knowest nothing of the matter." It is then evident, ye are calumniators.
No one knows what that material being is, which is called "spirit," to which--be it observed--you give this material name, signifying "wind." All the first fathers of the Church believed the soul to be corporeal. It is impossible for us limited beings to know whether our intelligence is substance or faculty: we cannot thoroughly know either the extended being, or the thinking beings, or the mechanism of thought.
We exclaim to you, with the ever to be revered Gassendi and Locke, that we know nothing by ourselves of the secrets of the Creator. And are you gods, who know everything? We repeat to you, that you cannot know the nature and distinction of the soul but by revelation. And is not this revelation sufficient for you? You must surely be enemies of this revelation which we claim, since you persecute those who expect everything from it, and believe only in it.
Yes, we tell you, we defer wholly to the word of God; and you, enemies of reason and of God, treat the humble doubt and humble submission of the philosopher as the wolf in the fable treated the lamb; you say to him: You said ill of me last year; I must suck your blood. Philosophy takes no revenge; she smiles in peace at your vain endeavors; she mildly enlightens mankind, whom you would brutalize, to make them like yourselves.
SPACE.
SPACE.
What is space? "There is no space in void," exclaimed Leibnitz, after having admitted a void; but when he admitted a void, he had not embroiled himself with Newton, nor disputed with him on the calculus of fluxions, of which Newton was the inventor. This dispute breaking out, there was no longer space or a void for Leibnitz.
Fortunately, whatever may be said by philosophers on these insolvable questions, whether it be for Epicurus, for Gassendi, for Newton, for Descartes, or Rohaut, the laws of motion will be always the same.
_Que Rohaut vainement sèche pour concevoir_ _Comment tout étant plein, tout a pu se mouvoir_. --BOILEAU, Ep. v, 31-32.
That Rohaut exhausts himself by vainly endeavoring to understand how motion can exist in a plenum will not prevent our vessels from sailing to the Indies, and all motion proceeding with regularity. Pure space, you say, can neither be matter, nor spirit; and as there is nothing in this world but matter and spirit, there can therefore be no space.
So, gentlemen, you assert that there is only matter and spirit, to us who know so little either of the one or the other--a pleasant decision, truly! "There are only two things in nature, and these we know not." Montezuma reasons more justly in the English tragedy of Dryden: "Why come you here to tell me of the emperor Charles the Fifth? There are but two emperors in the world; he of Peru and myself." Montezuma spoke of two things with which he was acquainted, but we speak of two things of which we have no precise idea.
We are very pleasant atoms. We make God a spirit in a mode of our own; and because we denominate that faculty spirit, which the supreme, universal, eternal, and all-powerful Being has given us, of combining a few ideas in our little brain, of the extent of six inches more or less, we suppose God to be a spirit in the same sense. God always in _our_ image--honest souls!
But how, if there be millions of beings of another nature from our matter, of which we know only a few qualities, and from our spirit, our ideal breath of which we accurately know nothing at all? and who can assert that these millions of beings exist not; or suspects not that God, demonstrated to exist by His works, is eminently different from all these beings, and that space may not be one of them?
We are far from asserting with Lucretius-- _Ergo, præter inane et corpora, tertia per se_ _Nulla potest rerum in numero natura referri._ --LIB., i, v. 446, 447.
That all consists of body and of space.--CREECH.
But may we venture to believe with him, that space is infinite?
Has any one been ever able to answer his question: Speed an arrow from the limits of the world--will it fall into nothing, into nihility?
Clarke, who spoke in the name of Newton, pretends that "space has properties, for since it is extended, it is measurable, and therefore exists." But if we answer, that something may be put where there is nothing, what answer will be made by Newton and Clarke?
Newton regards space as the sensorium of God. I thought that I understood this grand saying formerly, because I was young; at present, I understand it no more than his explanation of the Apocalypse. Space, the sensorium, the internal organ of God! I lose both Newton and myself there.
Newton thought, according to Locke, that the creation might be explained by supposing that God, by an act of His will and His power, had rendered space impenetrable. It is melancholy that a genius so profound as that possessed by Newton should suggest such unintelligible things.
STAGE (POLICE OF THE).
Kings of France were formerly excommunicated; all from Philip I. to Louis VIII. were solemnly so; as also the emperors from Henry IV. to Louis of Bavaria inclusively. The kings of England had likewise a very decent part of these favors from the court of Rome. It was the rage of the times, and this rage cost six or seven hundred thousand men their lives. They actually excommunicated the representatives of monarchs; I do not mean ambassadors, but players, who are kings and emperors three or four times a week, and who govern the universe to procure a livelihood.
I scarcely know of any but this profession, and that of magicians, to which this honor could now be paid; but as sorcerers have ceased for the eighty years that sound philosophy has been known to men, there are no longer any victims but Alexander, Cæsar, Athalie, Polyeucte, Andromache, Brutus, Zaïre, and Harlequin.
The principal reason given is, that these gentlemen and ladies represent the passions; but if depicting the human heart merits so horrible a disgrace, a greater rigor should be used with painters and sculptors. There are many licentious pictures which are publicly sold, while we do not represent a single dramatic poem which maintains not the strictest decorum. The Venus of Titian and that of Correggio are quite naked, and are at all times dangerous for our modest youth; but comedians only recite the admirable lines of "Cinna" for about two hours, and with the approbation of the magistracy under the royal authority. Why, therefore, are these living personages on the stage more condemned than these mute comedians on canvas? "_Ut pictura poesis erit_." What would Sophocles and Euripides have said, if they could have foreseen that a people, who only ceased to be barbarous by imitating them, would one day inflict this disgrace upon the stage, which in their time received such high glory?
Esopus and Roscius were not Roman senators, it is true; but the Flamen did not declare them infamous; and the art of Terence was not doubted. The great pope and prince, Leo X., to whom we owe the renewal of good tragedy and comedy in Europe, and who caused dramatic pieces to be represented in his palace with so much magnificence, foresaw not that one day, in a part of Gaul, the descendants of the Celts and the Goths would believe they had a right to disgrace that which he honored. If Cardinal Richelieu had lived--he who caused the Palais Royal to be built, and to whom France owes the stage--he would no longer have suffered them to have dared to cover with ignominy those whom he employed to recite his own works.
It must be confessed that they were heretics who began to outrage the finest of all the arts. Leo X., having revived the tragic scene, the pretended reformers required nothing more to convince them that it was the work of Satan. Thus the town of Geneva, and several illustrious places of Switzerland, have been a hundred and fifty years without suffering a violin amongst them. The Jansenists, who now dance on the tomb of St. Paris, to the great edification of the neighborhood, in the last century forbade a princess of Conti, whom they governed, to allow her son to learn dancing, saying that dancing was too profane. However, as it was necessary he should be graceful, he was taught the minuet, but they would not allow a violin, and the director was a long time before he would suffer the prince of Conti to be taught with castanets. A few Catholic Visigoths on this side the Alps, therefore, fearing the reproaches of the reformers, cried as loudly as they did. Thus, by degrees, the fashion of defaming Cæsar and Pompey, and of refusing certain ceremonies to certain persons paid by the king, and laboring under the eyes of the magistracy, was established in France. We do not declaim against this abuse; for who would embroil himself with powerful men of the present time, for hedra and heroes of past ages?
We are content with finding this rigor absurd, and with always paying our full tribute of admiration to the masterpieces of our stage.
Rome, from whom we have learned our catechism, does not use it as we do; she has always known how to temper her laws according to times and occasions; she has known how to distinguish impudent mountebanks, who were formerly rightly censured, from the dramatic pieces of Trissin, and of several bishops and cardinals who have assisted to revive tragedy. Even at present, comedies are publicly represented at Rome in religious houses. Ladies go to them without scandal; they think not that dialogues, recited on boards, are a diabolical infamy. We have even seen the piece of "George Dandin" executed at Rome by nuns, in the presence of a crowd of ecclesiastics and ladies. The wise Romans are above all careful how they excommunicate the gentlemen who sing the trebles in the Italian operas; for, in truth, it is enough to be castrated in this world, without being damned in the other.
In the good time of Louis XIV., there was always a bench at the spectacles, which was called the bench of bishops. I have been a witness, that in the minority of Louis XV., Cardinal Fleury, then bishop of Fréjus, was very anxious to revive this custom. With other times and other manners, we are apparently much wiser than in the times in which the whole of Europe came to admire our shows, when Richelieu revived the stage in France, when Leo X. renewed the age of Augustus in Italy: but a time will come in which our children, seeing the impertinent work of Father Le Brun against the art of Sophocles, and the works of our great men printed at the same time, will exclaim: Is it possible that the French could thus contradict themselves, and that the most absurd barbarity has so proudly raised its head against some of the finest productions of the human mind?
St. Thomas of Aquinas, whose morals were equal to those of Calvin and Father Quesnel--St. Thomas, who had never seen good comedy, and who knew only miserable players, thinks however that the theatre might be useful. He had sufficient good sense and justice to feel the merit of this art, unfinished as it was, and permitted and approved of it. St. Charles Borromeo personally examined the pieces which were played at Milan, and gave them his approbation and signature. Who after that will be Visigoths enough to treat Roderigo and Chimene as soul-corrupters? Would to God that these barbarians, the enemies of the finest of arts, had the piety of Polyeucte, the clemency of Augustus, the virtue of Burrhus, and would die like the husband of Al-zira!
Which is the best? I have not hitherto known any person who has not governed some state. I speak not of messieurs the ministers, who really govern; some two or three years, others six months, and others six weeks; I speak of all other men, who, at supper or in their closet, unfold their systems of government, and reform armies, the Church, the gown, and finances.
The Abbé de Bourzeis began to govern France towards the year 1645, under the name of Cardinal Richelieu, and made the "Political Testament," in which he would enlist the nobility into the cavalry for three years, make chambers of accounts and parliaments pay the poll-tax, and deprive the king of the produce of the excise. He asserts, above all, that to enter a country with fifty thousand men, it is essential to economy that a hundred thousand should be raised. He affirms that "Provence alone has more fine seaports than Spain and Italy together."
The Abbé de Bourzeis had not travelled. As to the rest, his work abounds with anachronisms and errors; and as he makes Cardinal Richelieu sign in a manner in which he never signed, so he makes him speak as he had never spoken. Moreover, he fills a whole chapter with saying that reason should guide a state, and in endeavoring to prove this discovery. This work of obscurities, this bastard of the Abbé de Bourzeis, has long passed for the legitimate offspring of the Cardinal Richelieu; and all academicians, in their speeches of reception, fail not to praise extravagantly this political masterpiece.
The Sieur Gatien de Courtilz, seeing the success of the "_Testament Politique_" of Richelieu, published at The Hague the "_Testament de Colbert_" with a fine letter of M. Colbert to the king. It is clear that if this minister made such a testament, it must have been suppressed; yet this book has been quoted by several authors.
Another ignoramus, of whose name we are ignorant, failed not to produce the "_Testament de Louis_" still worse, if possible, than that of Colbert. An abbé of Chevremont also made Charles, duke of Lorraine, form a testament. We have had the political testaments of Cardinal Alberoni, Marshal Belle-Isle, and finally that of Mandrin.
M. de Boisguillebert, author of the "Détail de la France" published in 1695, produced the impracticable project of the royal tithe, under the name of the marshal de Vauban.
A madman, named La Jonchere, wanting bread, wrote, in 1720, a "Project of Finance," in four volumes; and some fools have quoted this production as a work of La Jonchere, the treasurer-general, imagining that a treasurer could not write a bad book on finance.
But it must be confessed that very wise men, perhaps very worthy to govern, have written on the administration of states in France, Spain, and England. Their books have done much good; not that they have corrected ministers who were in place when these books appeared, for a minister does not and cannot correct himself. He has attained his growth, and more instruction, more counsel, he has not time to listen to. The current of affairs carries him away; but good books form, young people, destined for their places; and princes and statesmen of a succeeding generation are instructed.
The strength and weakness of all governments has been narrowly examined in latter times. Tell me, then, you who have travelled, who have read and have seen, in what state, under what sort of government, would you be born? I conceive that a great landed lord in France would have no objection to be born in Germany: he would be a sovereign instead of a subject. A peer of France would be very glad to have the privileges of the English peerage: he would be a legislator. The gownsman and financier would find himself better off in France than elsewhere. But what country would a wise freeman choose--a man of small fortune, without prejudices?
A rather learned member of the council of Pondicherry came into Europe, by land, with a brahmin, more learned than the generality of them. "How do you find the government of the Great Mogul?" said the counsellor. "Abominable," answered the brahmin; "how can you expect a state to be happily governed by Tartars? Our rajahs, our omras, and our nabobs are very contented, but the citizens are by no means so; and millions of citizens are something."
The counsellor and the brahmin traversed all Upper Asia, reasoning on their way. "I reflect," said the brahmin, "that there is not a republic in all this vast part of the world." "There was formerly that of Tyre," said the counsellor, "but it lasted not long; there was another towards Arabia Petræa, in a little nook called Palestine--if we can honor with the name of republic a horde of thieves and usurers, sometimes governed by judges, sometimes by a sort of kings, sometimes by high priests; who became slaves seven or eight times, and were finally driven from the country which they had usurped."
"I fancy," said the brahmin, "that we should find very few republics on earth. Men are seldom worthy to govern themselves. This happiness should only belong to little people, who conceal themselves in islands, or between mountains, like rabbits who steal away from carnivorous animals, but at length are discovered and devoured."
When the travellers arrived in Asia Minor, the counsellor said to the brahmin, "Would you believe that there was a republic formed in a corner of Italy, which lasted more than five hundred years, and which possessed this Asia Minor, Asia, Africa, Greece, the Gauls, Spain, and the whole of Italy?" "It was therefore soon turned into a monarchy?" said the brahmin. "You have guessed it," said the other; "but this monarchy has fallen, and every day we make fine dissertations to discover the causes of its decay and fall." "You take much useless pains," said the Indian: "this empire has fallen because it existed. All must fall. I hope that the same will happen to the empire of the Great Mogul." "Apropos," said the European, "do you believe that more honor is required in a despotic state, and more virtue in a republic?" The term "honor" being first explained to the Indian, he replied, that honor was more necessary in a republic, and that there is more need of virtue in a monarchical state. "For," said he, "a man who pretends to be elected by the people, will not be so, if he is dishonored; while at court he can easily obtain a place, according to the maxim of a great prince, that to succeed, a courtier should have neither honor nor a will of his own. With respect to virtue, it is prodigiously required in a court, in order to dare to tell the truth. The virtuous man is much more at his ease in a republic, having nobody to flatter."
"Do you believe," said the European, "that laws and religions can be formed for climates, the same as furs are required at Moscow, and gauze stuffs at Delhi?" "Yes, doubtless," said the brahmin; "all laws which concern physics are calculated for the meridian which we inhabit; a German requires only one wife, and a Persian must have two or three.
"Rites of religion are of the same nature. If I were a Christian, how would you have me say mass in my province, where there is neither bread nor wine? With regard to dogmas, it is another thing; climate has nothing to do with them. Did not your religion commence in Asia, from whence it was driven? does it not exist towards the Baltic Sea, where it was unknown?"
"In what state, under what dominion, would you like to live?" said the counsellor. "Under any but my own," said his companion, "and I have found many Siamese, Tonquinese, Persians, and Turks who have said the same." "But, once more," said the European, "what state would you choose?" The brahmin answered, "That in which the laws alone are obeyed." "That is an odd answer," said the counsellor. "It is not the worse for that," said the brahmin. "Where is this country?" said the counsellor. The brahmin: "We must seek it."
STATES-GENERAL.
STATES-GENERAL.
There have been always such in Europe, and probably in all the earth, so natural is it to assemble the family, to know its interests, and to provide for its wants! The Tartars had their _cour-ilté_. The Germans, according to Tacitus, assembled to consult. The Saxons and people of the North had their _witenagemot_. The people at large formed states-general in the Greek and Roman republics.
We see none among the Egyptians, Persians, or Chinese, because we have but very imperfect fragments of their histories: we scarcely know anything of them until since the time in which their kings were absolute, or at least since the time in which they had only priests to balance their authority.
When the comitia were abolished at Rome, the Prætorian guards took their place: insolent, greedy, barbarous, and idle soldiers were the republic. Septimius Severus conquered and disbanded them.
The states-general of the Ottoman Empire are the janissaries and cavalry; in Algiers and Tunis, it is the militia. The greatest and most singular example of these states-general is the Diet of Ratisbon, which has lasted a hundred years, where the representatives of the empire, the ministers of electors, princes, counts, prelates and imperial cities, to the number of thirty-seven, continually sit.
The second states-general of Europe are those of Great Britain. They are not always assembled, like the Diet of Ratisbon; but they are become so necessary that the king convokes them every year.
The House of Commons answers precisely to the deputies of cities received in the diet of the empire; but it is much larger in number, and enjoys a superior power. It is properly the nation. Peers and bishops are in parliament only for themselves, and the House of Commons for all the country.
This parliament of England is only a perfected imitation of certain states-general of France. In 1355, under King John, the three states were assembled at Paris, to aid him against the English. They granted him a considerable sum, at five livres five sous the mark, for fear the king should change the numerary value. They regulated the tax necessary to gather in this money, and they established nine commissioners to preside at the receipt. The king promised for himself and his successors, not to make any change in the coin in future.
What is promising for himself and his heirs? Either it is promising nothing, or it is saying: Neither myself nor my heirs have the right of altering the money; we have not the power of doing ill.
With this money, which was soon raised, an army was quickly formed, which prevented not King John from being made prisoner at the battle of Poitiers.
Account should be rendered at the end of the year, of the employment of the granted sum. This is now the custom in England, with the House of Commons. The English nation has preserved all that the French nation has lost.
The states-general of Sweden have a custom still more honorable to humanity, which is not found among any other people. They admit into their assemblies two hundred peasants, who form a body separated from the three others, and who maintain the liberty of those who labor for the subsistence of man.
The states-general of Denmark took quite a contrary resolution in 1660; they deprived themselves of all their rights, in favor of the king. They gave him an absolute and unlimited power; but what is more strange is, that they have not hitherto repented it.
The states-general in France have not been assembled since 1613, and the cortes of Spain lasted a hundred years after. The latter were assembled in 1712, to confirm the renunciation of Philip V., of the crown of France. These states-general have not been convoked since that time.