30/10/2007

Voltaire

Shorter Tales and Dialogues

“Between two servants of Humanity, who appeared eighteen hundred years apart, there is a mysterious relation. * * * * Let us say it with a sentiment of profound respect: JESUS WEPT: VOLTAIRE SMILED. Of that divine tear and of that human smile is composed the sweetness of the present civilization.” —Victor Hugo.

Table of Contents

Publication Information:

PLATO’S DREAM.

MEMNON THE PHILOSOPHER.

A CONVERSATION WITH A CHINESE.

AN ADVENTURE IN INDIA.

BABABEC.

ANCIENT FAITH AND FABLE.

THE TWO COMFORTERS.

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN MARCUS AURELIUS AND A RECOLLET FRIAR.

ANDRÉ DES TOUCHES IN SIAM.

THE BLIND AS JUDGES OF COLOUR.

THE CLERGYMAN AND HIS SOUL.

DIALOGUE BETWEEN A BRAHMIN AND A JESUIT

DIALOGUES BETWEEN LUCRETIUS AND POSIDONIUS.

DIALOGUE BETWEEN A CLIENT AND HIS LAWYER.

DIALOGUE BETWEEN MADAME DE MAINTENON AND MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.

DIALOGUE BETWEEN A SAVAGE AND A BACHELOR OF ARTS.

Publication Information:

Extracted from Voltaire, The Works of Voltaire: A Contemporary Version. Volume: 4. Translated by William F. Fleming. Publisher: E. R. DuMont. Place of Publication: Paris. Publication Year: 1901.

PLATO’S DREAM.

Plato was a great dreamer, as many others have been since his time. He dreamed that mankind were formerly double, and that, as a punishment for their crimes, they were divided into male and female.

He undertook to prove that there can be no more than five perfect worlds, because there are but five regular mathematical bodies. His republic was one of his principal dreams. He dreamed, moreover, that watching arises from sleep, and sleep from watching, and that a person who should attempt to look at an eclipse otherwise than in a pail of water would surely lose his sight. Dreams were at that time in great repute.

Here follows one of his dreams, which is not one of the least interesting. He thought that the great Demiurgos, the eternal geometer, having peopled the immensity of space with innumerable globes, was willing to make a trial of the knowledge of the genii who had been witnesses of his works. He gave to each of them a small portion of matter to arrange, nearly in the same manner as Phidias and Zeuxis would have given their scholars a statue to carve or a picture to paint, if we may be allowed to compare small things to great.

Demogorgon had for his lot the lump of mould which we call the earth, and, having formed it such as it now appears, he thought he had executed a masterpiece. He imagined he had silenced Envy herself, and expected to receive the highest panegyrics, even from his brethren; but how great was his surprise, when, at his next appearing among them, they received him with a general hiss.

One among them, more satirical than the rest, accosted him thus:

“Truly you have performed mighty feats! you have divided your world into two parts; and, to prevent the one from communication with the other, you have carefully placed a vast collection of waters between the two hemispheres. The inhabitants must perish with cold under both your poles and be scorched to death under the equator. You have, in your great prudence, formed immense deserts of sand, so that all who travel over them may die with hunger and thirst. I have no fault to find with your cows, your sheep, your cocks, and your hens, but can never be reconciled to your serpents and your spiders. Your onions and your artichokes are very good things, but I cannot conceive what induced you to scatter such a heap of poisonous plants over the face of the earth, unless it was to poison its inhabitants. Moreover, if I am not mistaken, you have created about thirty different kinds of monkeys, a still greater number of dogs, and only four or five species of the human race. It is true, indeed, you have bestowed on the latter of these animals a faculty by you called reason, but, in truth, this same reason is a very ridiculous thing, and borders very near upon folly. Besides, you do not seem to have shown any very great regard to this two-legged creature, seeing you have left him with so few means of defence, subjected him to so many disorders and provided him with so few remedies, and formed him with such a multitude of passions and so small a portion of wisdom or prudence to resist them. You certainly were not willing that there should remain any great number of these animals on the earth at once, for, without reckoning the dangers to which you have exposed them, you have so ordered matters that, taking every day throughout the year, smallpox will regularly carry off the tenth part of the species, and sister maladies will taint the springs of life in the nine remaining parts; and then, as if this were not sufficient, you have so disposed things that one-half of those who survive will be occupied in going to law with each other or cutting one another’s throats.

“Now, they must doubtless be under infinite obligations to you, and it must be owned you have executed a masterpiece.”

Demogorgon blushed. He was sensible there was much moral and physical evil in this affair, but still he insisted there was more good than ill in it.

“It is an easy matter to find fault, good folks,” said the genius, “but do you imagine it is so easy to form an animal, who, having the gift of reason and free-will, shall not sometimes abuse his liberty? Do you think that, in rearing between nine and ten thousand different plants, it is so easy to prevent some few from having noxious qualities? Do you suppose that with a certain quantity of water, sand, and mud you could make a globe that should have neither seas nor deserts?

“As for you, my sneering friend, I think you have just finished the planet Jupiter. Let us see now what figure you make with your great belts and your long nights with four moons to enlighten them. Let us examine your worlds and see whether the inhabitants you have made are exempt from follies or diseases.”

Accordingly the genius fell to examining the planet Jupiter, when the laugh went strongly against the laugher. The serious genius who had made the planet Saturn did not escape without his share of the censure, and his brother operators, the makers of Mars, Mercury, and Venus, had each in his turn some reproaches to undergo.

Several large volumes and a great number of pamphlets were written on this occasion; smart sayings and witty repartees flew about on all sides; they railed against and ridiculed each other, and, in short, the disputes were carried on with all the warmth of party heat, when the eternal Demiurgos thus imposed silence on them all:

“In your several performances there is both good and bad, because you have a great share of understanding, but at the same time fall short of perfection. Your works will not endure above a hundred millions of years, after which you will acquire more knowledge and perform much better. It belongs to me alone to create things perfect and immortal.”

This was the doctrine Plato taught his disciples. One of them, when he had finished his harangue, cried out:

“And so you then awoke?”

MEMNON THE PHILOSOPHER.

Memnon one day took it into his head to become a great philosopher. “To be perfectly happy,” said he to himself, “I have nothing to do but to divest myself entirely of passions, and nothing is more easy, as everybody knows. In the first place, I will never be in love, for when I see a beautiful woman I will say to myself, These cheeks will one day grow sallow and wrinkled, these eyes be encircled with vermilion, that bosom become lean and emaciated, that head bald and palsied. Now, I have only to consider her at present in imagination as she will afterwards appear in reality, and certainly a fair face will never turn my head.

“In the second place, I shall always be temperate. It will be in vain to tempt me with good cheer, with delicious wines, or the charms of society. I will have only to figure to myself the consequences of excess— an aching head, a loathing stomach, the loss of reason, of health, and of time; I will then only eat to supply the waste of nature; my health will be always equal, my ideas pure and luminous. All this is so easy that there is no merit in accomplishing it.

“But,” says Memnon, “I must think a little of how I am to regulate my fortune; why, my desires are moderate, my wealth is securely placed with the receiver-general of the finances of Nineveh. I have wherewithal to live independent, and that is the greatest of blessings. I shall never be under the cruel necessity of dancing attendance at court. I will never envy any one, and nobody will envy me. Still all this is easy. I have friends, and I will preserve them, for we shall never have any difference. I will never take amiss anything they may say or do; and they will behave in the same way to me. There is no difficulty in all this.”

Having thus laid this little plan of philosophy m his closet, Memnon put his head out of the window. He saw two women walking under the plane trees near his house. The one was old and appeared quite at her ease. The other was young, handsome, and seemingly much agitated. She sighed, she wept, and seemed on that account still more beautiful. Our philosopher was touched, not, to be sure, with the lady (he was too much determined not to feel any uneasiness of that kind), but with the distress which he saw her in. He came downstairs and accosted the young Ninevite, designing to console her with philosophy. That lovely person related to him, with an air of the greatest simplicity and in the most affecting manner, the injuries she sustained from an imaginary uncle—with what art he had deprived her of some imaginary property, and of the violence which she pretended to dread from him.

“You appear to me,” said she, “a man of such wisdom that if you will come to my house and examine into my affairs, I am persuaded you will be able to relieve me from the cruel embarrassment I am at present involved in.”

Memnon did not hesitate to follow her, to examine her affairs philosophically, and to give her sound counsel.

The afflicted lady led him into a perfumed chamber and politely made him sit down with her on a large sofa, where they both placed themselves opposite to each other, in the attitude of conversation, the one eager in telling her story, the other listening with devout attention. The lady spoke with downcast eyes, whence there sometimes fell a tear, and which, as she now and then ventured to raise them, always met those of the sage Memnon. Their discourse was full of tenderness, which redoubled as often as their eyes met. Memnon took her affairs exceedingly to heart and felt himself every instant more and more inclined to oblige a person so virtuous and so unhappy. By degrees, in the warmth of conversation, they drew nearer. Memnon counselled her with great wisdom, and gave her most tender advice.

At this interesting moment, as may easily be imagined, who should come in but the uncle? He was armed from head to foot, and the first thing he said was that he would immediately sacrifice, as was just, both Memnon and his niece. The latter, who made her escape, knew that he was disposed to pardon, provided a good round sum were offered to him.

Memnon was obliged to purchase his safety with all he had about him. In those days people were happy in getting so easily quit. America was not then discovered, and distressed ladies were not then so dangerous as they are now.

Memnon, covered with shame and confusion, got home to his own house. He there found a card inviting him to attend dinner with some of his intimate friends.

“If I remain at home alone,” said he, “I shall have my mind so occupied with this vexatious adventure that I shall not be able to eat a bit and I shall bring upon myself some disease. It will therefore be prudent in me to go to my intimate friends and partake with them of a frugal repast. I shall forget in the sweets of their society the folly I have this morning been guilty of.”

Accordingly he attends the meeting; he is discovered to be uneasy at something, and he is urged to drink and banish care.

“A little wine, drunk in moderation, comforts the heart of God and man”—so reasoned Memnon the philosopher, and he became intoxicated. After the repast, play is proposed.

“A little play with one’s intimate friends is a harmless pastime.” He plays and loses all in his purse and four times as much on his word. A dispute arises on some circumstance in the game and the disputants grow warm. One of his intimate friends throws a dice-box at his head and strikes out one of his eyes. The philosopher Memnon is carried home drunk and penniless, with the loss of an eye.

He sleeps out his debauch and when his head becomes clear he sends his servant to the receiver-general of the finances of Nineveh to draw a little money to pay his debt of honour to his intimate friends. The servant returns and informs him that the receiver-general had that morning been declared a fraudulent bankrupt, and that by this means a hundred families are reduced to poverty and despair. Memnon, almost beside himself, puts a plaster on his eye and a petition in his pocket, and goes to court to solicit justice from the king against the bankrupt. In the saloon he meets a number of ladies, all in the highest spirits and sailing along with hoops four and-twenty feet in circumference. One of them, slightly acquainted with him, eyed him askance, and cried aloud: “Ah! what a horrid monster!”

Another, who was better acquainted with him, thus accosts him: “Good-morrow, Mr. Memnon; I hope you are well, Mr. Memnon. La! Mr. Memnon, how did you lose your eye?” and, turning upon her heel, she tripped unconcernedly away.

Memnon hid himself in a corner and waited for the moment when he could throw himself at the feet of the monarch. That moment at last arrived. Three times he kissed the earth and presented his petition. His gracious majesty received him very favourably and referred the paper to one of his satraps. The satrap takes Memnon aside and says to him, with a haughty air and satirical grin:

“Hark ye, you fellow with the one eye; you must be a comical dog indeed to address yourself to the king rather than to me, and still more so to dare to demand justice against an honest bankrupt, whom I honour with my protection, and who is also a nephew to the waiting-maid of my mistress. Proceed no further in this business, my good friend, if you wish to preserve the eye you have left.”

Memnon, having thus in his closet resolved to renounce women, the excess of the table, play, and quarrelling, but especially having determined never to go to court, had been, in the short space of four-and-twenty hours, duped and robbed by a gentle dame, had got drunk, had gamed, had been engaged in a quarrel, had got his eye knocked out, and had been at court, where he was sneered at and also insulted.

Petrified with astonishment, and his heart broken with grief, Memnon returns homeward in despair. As he was about to enter his house, he is repulsed by a number of officers who are carrying off his furniture for the benefit of his creditors. He falls down almost lifeless under a plane tree. There he finds the fair dame of the morning, who was walking with her dear uncle, and both set up a loud laugh on seeing Memnon with his plaster. The night approached, and Memnon made his bed on some straw near the walls of his house. Here the ague seized him and he fell asleep in one of the fits, when a celestial spirit appeared to him in a dream.

It was all resplendent with light; it had six beautiful wings, but neither feet, nor head, and could be likened to nothing.

“What art thou?” said Memnon.

“Thy good genius,” replied the spirit.

“Restore me, then, my eye, my health, my fortune, my reason,” said Memnon, and he related how he had lost them all in one day.

“These are adventures which never happen to us in the world we inhabit,” said the spirit.

“And what world do you inhabit?” said the man of affliction.

“My native country,” replied the other, “is five hundred millions of leagues distant from the sun, in a little star near Sirius.”

“Charming country!” said Memnon. “And are there indeed with you no jades to dupe a poor devil, no intimate friends that win his money and knock out an eye for him, no fraudulent bankrupts, no satraps that make a jest of you while they refuse you justice?”

“No,” said the inhabitant of the star, “we have nothing of the kind. We are never duped by women because we have none among us; we never commit excesses at table because we neither eat nor drink; we have no bankrupts because with us there is neither silver nor gold; our eyes cannot be knocked out because we have not bodies in the form of yours, and satraps never do us injustice, because in our world we are all equal.”

“Pray, my lord,” said Memnon, “without women and without eating, how do you spend your time?”

“In watching over the other worlds that are entrusted to us, and I am now come to give you consolation.”

“Alas!” replied Memnon, “why did you not come yesterday to hinder me from committing so many indiscretions?”

“I was with your elder brother Hassan,” said the celestial being. “He is still more to be pitied than you are. His most gracious majesty, the sultan of the Indies, in whose court he has the honour to serve, has caused both his eyes to be put out for some small indiscretion, and he is now in a dungeon, his hands and feet loaded with chains.”

“‘Tis a happy thing, truly,” said Memnon, “to have a good genius in one’s family, when out of two brothers, one is blind of an eye, the other blind of both; one stretched upon straw, the other in a dungeon.”

“Your fate will soon change,” said the spirit of the star. “It is true you will never recover your eye, but, except that, you may be sufficiently happy if you never again take it into your head to be a perfect philosopher.”

“Is it, then, impossible?” said Memnon.

“As impossible as to be perfectly wise, perfectly strong, perfectly powerful, perfectly happy. We ourselves are very far from it. There is a world, indeed, where all this takes place; but, in the hundred thousand millions of worlds dispersed over the regions of space, everything goes on by degrees. There is less philosophy and less enjoyment in the second than in the first, less in the third than in the second, and so forth till the last in the scale, where all are completely fools.”

“I am afraid,” said Memnon, “that our little terraqueous globe here is the madhouse of those hundred thousand millions of worlds of which your lordship does me the honour to speak.”

“Not quite,” said the spirit, “but very nearly; everything must be in its proper place.”

“But are those poets and philosophers wrong, then, who tell us that everything is for the best?”

“No, they are right, when we consider things in relation to the gradation of the whole universe.”

“Oh! I shall never believe it till I recover my eye again,” said the unfortunate Memnon.

A CONVERSATION WITH A CHINESE.

In the year 1723 there was a Chinese in Holland who was both a learned man and a merchant, two things that ought by no means to be incompatible; but which, thanks to the profound respect that is shown to money, and the little regard that the human species pay to merit, have become so among us.

This Chinese, who spoke a little Dutch, happened to be in a bookseller’s shop at the same time that some literati were assembled there. He asked for a book; they offered him Bossuet’s “Universal History,” badly translated. At the title “Universal History”—

“How pleased am I,” cried the Oriental, “to have met with this book. I shall now see what is said of our great empire, of a nation that has subsisted for upwards of fifty thousand years; of that long dynasty of emperors who have governed us for such a number of ages. I shall see what these Europeans think of the religion of our literati, and of that pure and simple worship we pay to the Supreme Being. What a pleasure will it be for me to find how they speak of our arts, many of which are of a more ancient date with us than the eras of all the kingdoms

of Europe! I fancy the author will be greatly mistaken in relation to the war we had about twenty two thousand five hundred and fifty-two years ago with the martial people of Tonquin and Japan, as well as the solemn embassy that the powerful emperor of Mogul sent to request a body of laws from us in the year of the world 5000000000000791234 50000.”

“Lord bless you,” said one of the literati, “there is hardly any mention made of that nation in this world. The only nation considered is that marvellous people, the Jews.”

“The Jews!” said the Chinese; “those people then must certainly be masters of three parts of the globe at least.”

“They hope to be so some day,” answered the other; “but all we have here are those peddlers you see going about with toys and nic-nacs, and who sometimes do us the honour to clip our gold and silver.”

“Surely you are not serious,” exclaimed the Chinese. “Could those people ever have been in possession of a vast empire?”

Here I joined in the conversation, and told him that for a few years they were in possession of a small country to themselves; but that we were not to judge of a people from the extent of their dominions, any more than of a man by his riches.

“But does not this book take notice of some other nations?” demanded the man of letters.

“Undoubtedly,” replied a learned gentleman who stood at my elbow; “it treats largely of a small country about sixty leagues wide, called Egypt, in which it is said that there is a lake of one hundred and fifty leagues in circumference, made by the hands of man.”

“My God!” exclaimed the Chinese, “a lake of one hundred and fifty leagues in circumference within a spot of ground only sixty leagues wide. This is very curious!”

“The inhabitants of that country,” continued the doctor, “were all sages.”

“What happy times were those!” cried the Chinese; “but is that all?”

“No,” replied the other, “there is mention made of those famous people the Greeks.”

“Greeks! Greeks!” said the Asiatic, “who are those Greeks?”

“Why,” replied the philosopher, “they were masters of a little province, about the two-hundredth part as large as China, but whose fame spread over the whole world.”

“Indeed!” said the Chinese, with an air of openness and ingenuousness; “I declare I never heard the least mention of these people, either in the Mogul’s country, in Japan, or in Great Tartary.”

“Oh, the barbarian! the ignorant creature!” cried out our sage very politely. “Why, then, I suppose you know nothing of Epaminondas the Theban, nor of the Pierian heaven, nor the names of Achilles’ two horses, nor of Silenus’ ass? You have never heard speak of Jupiter, nor of Diogenes, nor of Laïs, nor of Cybele, nor of—”

“I am very much afraid,” said the learned Oriental, interrupting him, “that you know nothing of that eternally memorable adventure of the famous Xixofon Concochigramki, nor of the mysteries of the great Fi-psi-hi-hi! But pray tell me what other unknown things does this “Universal History” treat of?”

Upon this my learned neighbour harangued for a quarter of an hour together about the Roman republic, and when he came to Julius Caesar the Chinese stopped him, and very gravely said:

“I think I have heard of him; was he not a Turk?”

“How!” cried our sage in a fury, “don’t you so much as know the difference between pagans, Christians, and Mahometans? Did you never hear of Constantine? Do you know nothing of the history of the popes?”

“We have heard something confusedly of one Mahomet,” replied the Asiatic.

“It is surely impossible,” said the other, “but you must have heard at least of Luther, Zwinglius, Bellarmine, and Oecolampadius.”

“I shall never remember all those names,” said the Chinese, and so saying he quitted the shop, and went to sell a large quantity of Pekoe tea and fine calico, and then, after purchasing what merchandise

he required, set sail for his own country, adoring Tien, and recommending himself to Confucius.

As to myself, the conversation I had been witness to plainly discovered to me the nature of vain glory; and I could not forbear exclaiming:

“Since Caesar and Jupiter are names unknown to the finest, most ancient, most extensive, most populous, and most civilized kingdom in the universe, it becomes ye well, O ye rulers of petty states! ye pulpit orators of a narrow parish, or a little town! ye doctors of Salamanca, or of Bourges! ye trifling authors, and ye heavy commentators!—it becomes you well, indeed, to aspire to fame and immortality.”

AN ADVENTURE IN INDIA.

All the world knows that Pythagoras, while he resided in India, attended the school of the Gymnosophists and learned the language of beasts and plants. One day while he was walking in a meadow near the sea-shore he heard these words:

“How unfortunate that I was born an herb! I scarcely attain two inches in height, when a voracious monster, a horrid animal, tramples me under his large feet; his jaws are armed with rows of sharp scythes, by which he cuts, then grinds, and then swallows me. Men call this monster a sheep. I do not suppose there is in the whole creation a more detestable creature.”

Pythagoras proceeded a little way and found an oyster yawning on a small rock. He had not yet adopted that admirable law by which we are enjoined not to eat those animals which have a resemblance to us. He had scarcely taken up the oyster to swallow it, when it spoke these affecting words:

“O Nature, how happy is the herb, which is, as I am, thy work! Though it be cut down, it is regenerated and immortal, and we, poor oysters, in vain are defended by a double cuirass; villains eat us by dozens at their breakfast, and all is over with us forever. What a horrible fate is that of an oyster, and how barbarous are men!”

Pythagoras shuddered; he felt the enormity of the crime he had nearly committed; he begged pardon of the oyster, with tears in his eyes, and replaced it very carefully on the rock.

As he was returning to the city, profoundly meditating on this adventure, he saw spiders devouring flies; swallows eating spiders, and sparrow-hawks eating swallows. “None of these,” said he, “are philosophers.”

On his entrance, Pythagoras was stunned, bruised, and thrown down by a lot of tatterdemalions, who were running and crying: “Well done, he fully deserved it.” “Who? What?” said Pythagoras, as he was getting up. The people continued running and crying: “Oh, how delightful it will be to see them boiled!”

Pythagoras supposed they meant lentils or some other vegetables, but he was in error; they meant two poor Indians. “Oh!” said Pythagoras, “these Indians, without doubt, are two great philosophers weary of their lives; they are desirous of regenerating under other forms; it affords pleasure to a man to change his place of residence, though he may be but indifferently lodged; there is no disputing on taste.”

He proceeded with the mob to the public square, where he perceived a lighted pile of wood and a bench opposite to it, which was called a tribunal. On this bench judges were seated, each of whom had a cow’s tail in his hand and a cap on his head, with ears resembling those of the animal which bore Silenus when he came into that country with Bacchus, after having crossed the Erytrean sea without wetting a foot, and stopping the sun and moon, as it is recorded with great fidelity by the Orphics.

Among these judges there was an honest man with whom Pythagoras was acquainted. The Indian sage explained to the sage of Samos the nature of that festival to be given to the people of India.

“These two Indians,” said he, “have not the least desire to be committed to the flames. My grave brethren have adjudged them to be burnt; one for saying that the substance of Xaca is not that of Brahma, and the other for supposing that the approbation of the Supreme Being was to be obtained at the point of death without holding a cow by the tail. ‘Because,’ said he, ‘we may be virtuous at all times, and we cannot always have a cow to lay hold of just when we may have occasion.’ The good women of the city were greatly terrified at two such heretical opinions; they would not allow the judges a moment’s peace until they had ordered the execution of those unfortunate men.”

Pythagoras was convinced that from the herb up to man there were many causes of chagrin. However, he obliged the judges and even the devotees to listen to reason, which happened only at that time.

He went afterwards and preached toleration at Crotona; but a bigot set fire to his house, and he was burned—the man who had delivered the two Hindoos from the flames! Let those save themselves who can!

BABABEC.

When I was in the city of Benares, on the borders of the Ganges, the country of the ancient Brahmins, I endeavoured to instruct myself in their religion and manners. I understood the Indian language tolerably well. I heard a great deal and remarked everything. I lodged at the house of my correspondent, Omri, who was the most worthy man I ever knew. He was of the religion of the Brahmins; I have the honour to be a Mussulman. We never exchanged one word higher than another about Mahomet or Brahma. We performed our ablutions each on his own side; we drank of the same sherbet, and we ate of the same rice, as if we had been two brothers.

One day we went together to the pagoda of Gavani. There we saw several bands of fakirs, some of whom were janguis, that is to say, contemplative fakirs, and others were disciples of the ancient Gymnosophists, who led an active life. They all have a learned language peculiar to themselves; it is that of the most ancient Brahmins; and they have a book written in this language, which they call the “Shasta.” It is, beyond all contradiction, the most ancient book in all Asia, not excepting the “Zend.”

I happened by chance to cross in front of a fakir who was reading in this book.

“Ah! wretched infidel!” cried he, “thou hast made me lose a number of vowels that I was counting, which will cause my soul to pass into the body of a hare instead of that of a parrot, with which I had before the greatest reason to flatter myself.”

I gave him a rupee to comfort him for the accident. In going a few paces farther I had the misfortune to sneeze. The noise I made roused a fakir, who was in a trance.

“Heavens!” cried he, “what a dreadful noise. Where am I? I can no longer see the tip of my nose —the heavenly light has disappeared.”

“If I am the cause,” said I, “of your not seeing farther than the length of your nose, here is a rupee to repair the great injury I have done you. Squint again, my friend, and resume the heavenly light.”

Having thus brought myself off discreetly enough, I passed over to the side of the Gymnosophists, several of whom brought me a parcel of mighty pretty nails to drive into my arms and thighs, in honour of Brahma. I bought their nails and made use of them to fasten down my boxes. Others were dancing upon their hands, others cut capers on the slack rope, and others went always upon one foot. There were some who dragged a heavy chain about with them, and others carried a packsaddle; some had their heads always in a bushel—the best people in the world to live with. My friend Omri took me to the cell of one of the most famous of these. His name was Bababec; he was as naked as he was born, and had a great chain about his neck that weighed upwards of sixty pounds. He sat on a wooden chair, very neatly decorated with little points of nails that penetrated into his flesh, and you would have thought he had been sitting on a velvet cushion. Numbers of women flocked to him to consult him. He was the oracle of all the families in the neighbourhood, and was, truly speaking, in great reputation. I was witness to a long conversation that Omri had with him.

“Do you think, father,” said my friend, “that after having gone through seven metempsychoses, I may at length arrive at the habitation of Brahma?”

“That is as it may happen,” said the fakir. “What sort of life do you lead?”

“I endeavour,” answered Omri, “to be a good subject, a good husband, a good father, and a good friend. I lend money without interest to the rich who want it, and I give it to the poor; I always strive to preserve peace among my neighbours.”

“But have you ever run nails into your flesh?” demanded the Brahmin.

“Never, reverend father.”

“I am sorry for it,” replied the father, “very sorry for it, indeed. It is a thousand pities, but you will certainly not reach above the nineteenth heaven.”

“No higher!” said Omri. “In truth, I am very well contented with my lot. What is it to me whether I go into the nineteenth or the twentieth, provided I do my duty in my pilgrimage, and am well received at the end of my journey? Is it not as much as one can desire to live with a fair character in this world and be happy with Brahma in the next? And pray what heaven do you think of going to, good master Bababec, with your chain?”

“Into the thirty-fifth,” said Bababec.

“I admire your modesty,” replied Omri, “to pretend to be better lodged than me. This is surely the result of an excessive ambition. How can you, who condemn others that covet honours in this world, arrogate such distinguished ones to yourself in the next? What right have you to be better treated than me? Know that I bestow more alms to the poor in ten days than the nails you run into your flesh cost for ten years. What is it to Brahma that you pass the whole day stark naked with a chain about your neck? This is doing a notable service to your country, doubtless! I have a thousand times more esteem for the man who sows pulse or plants trees than for all your tribe, who look at the tips of their noses or carry packsaddles to show their magnanimity.”

Having finished this speech, Omri softened his voice, embraced the Brahmin, and, with an endearing sweetness, besought him to throw aside his nails and his chain, to go home with him and live with decency and comfort.

The fakir was persuaded: he was washed clean, rubbed with essences and perfumes and clad in a decent habit; he lived a fortnight in this manner, behaved with prudence and wisdom and acknowledged that he was a thousand times happier than before; but he lost his credit among the people; the women no longer crowded to consult him; he therefore quitted the house of the friendly Omri and returned to his nails and his chain—to regain his reputation.

ANCIENT FAITH AND FABLE.

In order to be successful in their efforts to govern the multitude, rulers have endeavoured to instil all the visionary notions possible into the minds of their subjects.

The good people who read Virgil, or the “Provincial Letters,” do not know that there are twenty times more copies of the “Almanac of Liège” and of the “Courier Boiteux” printed than of all the ancient and modern books together. No one can have a greater admiration than myself for the illustrious authors of these almanacs and their brethren. I know that ever since the time of the ancient Chaldaeans there have been fixed and stated days for taking physic, paring our nails, giving battle, and cleaving wood. I know that the best part of the revenue of an illustrious academy consists in the sale of these almanacs. May I presume to ask, with all possible submission and a becoming diffidence of my own judgment, what harm it would do to the world if some powerful astrologer were to assure the peasants and the good inhabitants of little villages that they might safely pare their nails when they please, provided it be done with a good intention? The people, I shall be told, would not buy the almanacs of this new astrologer. On the contrary, I will venture to affirm that there would be found among your great geniuses many who would make a merit in following this novelty. Should it be alleged, however, that these geniuses, in their new-born zeal, would form factions and kindle a civil war, I would have nothing further to say on the subject, but readily give up for the sake of peace my too radical and dangerous opinion.

Everybody knows the king of Boutan. He is one of the greatest princes in the universe. He tramples under his feet the thrones of the earth, and his shoes (if he has any) are provided with sceptres instead of buckles. He adores the devil, as is well known, and his example is followed by all his courtiers. He one day sent for a famous sculptor of my country and ordered him to make a beautiful statue of Beelzebub. The sculptor succeeded admirably. Never before was there seen such an interesting and handsome devil. But, unhappily, our Praxiteles had only given five clutches to his statue, whereas the devout Boutaniers always gave him six. This serious blunder of the artist was attributed by the grand master of ceremonies to the devil with all the zeal of a man justly jealous of his master’s acknowledged rights, and also of the established and sacred customs of the kingdom of Boutan. He insisted that the sculptor should be punished for his thoughtless innovation, by the loss of his head. The anxious sculptor explained that his five clutches were exactly equal in weight to six ordinary clutches; and the king of Boutan, who was a prince of great clemency, granted him a pardon. From that time the people of Boutan no longer believed the dogma relating to the devil’s six clutches.

The same day it was thought necessary that his majesty should be bled, and a surgeon of Gascony, who had come to his court in a ship belonging to our East India company, was appointed to take from him five ounces of his precious blood. The astrologer of that quarter cried out that the king would be in danger of losing his life if the surgeon opened a vein while the heavens were in their present state. The Gascon might have told him that the only question was about the king’s health; but he prudently waited a few moments, and then, taking an almanac in his hand, thus addressed the astrologer:

“You were in the right, great man! The king would have died had he been bled at the instant you mentioned, but the heavens have since changed their aspect, and now is the favourable moment.”

The astrologer assented to the surgeon’s observation. The king was cured; and by degrees it became an established custom among the Boutaniers to bleed their kings whenever it was considered necessary.

Although the Indian astrologers understood the method of calculating eclipses, yet the common people obstinately held to the old belief that the sun, when obscured, had fallen into the throat of a great dragon, and that the only way to free him from thence was by standing naked in the water and making a hideous noise to frighten away the monster, and oblige him to release his hold. This notion, which is quite prevalent among the Orientals, is an evident proof how much the symbols of religion and natural philosophy have at all times been perverted by the common people. The astronomers of all ages have been wont to distinguish the two points of intersection, upon which every eclipse happens, and which are called the lunar nodes, by marking them with a dragon’s head and tail. Now the vulgar, who are equally ignorant in every part of the world, took the symbol or sign for the thing itself. Thus, when the astronomers said the sun is in the dragon’s head, the common people said the dragon is going to swallow up the sun; and yet these people were remarkable for their fondness for astrology. But while we laugh at the ignorance and credulity of the Indians, we do not reflect that there are no less than 300,000 almanacs sold yearly in Europe, all of them filled with observations and predictions equally as false and absurd as any to be met with among the Indians. It is surely as reasonable to say that the sun is in the mouth or the claws of a dragon as to tell people every year in print that they must not sow, nor plant, nor take physic, nor be bled, but on certain days of the moon. It is high time, in an age like ours, that some men of learning should think it worth their while to compose a calendar that might be of use to the industrious classes by instructing instead of deceiving them.

A blustering Dominican at Rome said to an English philosopher with whom he was disputing:

“You are a dog; you say that it is the earth that turns round, never reflecting that Joshua made the sun to stand still!”

“Well! my reverend father,” replied the philosopher, “ever since that time has not the sun been immovable?”

The dog and the Dominican embraced each other, and even the devout Italians were at length convinced that the earth turns round.

An augur and a senator lamented, in the time of Caesar, the declining state of the republic.

“The times, indeed, are very bad,” said the senator; “we have reason to tremble for the liberty of Rome.”

“Ah!” said the augur, “that is not the greatest evil; the people now begin to lose the respect which they formerly had for our order. We seem barely to be tolerated—we cease to be necessary. Some generals have the assurance to give battle without consulting us. And, to complete our misfortunes, even those who sell us the sacred pullets begin to reason.”

“Well, and why don’t you reason likewise?” replied the senator, “and since the dealers in pullets in the time of Caesar are more knowing than they were in the time of Numa, ought not you modern augurs to be better philosophers than those who lived in former ages?”

THE TWO COMFORTERS.

The great philosopher Citosile once said to a woman who was disconsolate, and who had good reason to be so: “Madame, the queen of England, daughter to Henry IV., was as wretched as you. She was banished from her kingdom, was in great danger of losing her life at sea, and saw her royal spouse expire on a scaffold.”

“I am sorry for her,” said the lady, and began again to lament her own misfortunes.

“But,” said Citosile, “remember the fate of Mary Stuart. She loved (but with a most chaste and virtuous affection) an excellent musician, who played admirably on the bass-viol. Her husband killed her musician before her face; and in the sequel her good friend and relative, Queen Elizabeth, who called herself a virgin, caused her head to be cut off on a scaffold covered with black, after having confined her in prison for the space of eighteen years.”

“That was very cruel,” replied the lady, and presently relapsed into her former melancholy.

“Perhaps,” said the comforter, “you have heard of the beautiful Joan of Naples, who was taken prisoner and strangled.”

“I have a dim remembrance of her,” said the afflicted lady.

“I must relate to you,” continued the other, “the adventure of a sovereign princess who, within my recollection, was dethroned after supper and who died on a desert island.”

“I know her whole history,” replied the lady.

“Well, then,” said Citosile, “I will tell you what happened to another great princess whom I instructed in philosophy. She had a lover, as all great and beautiful princesses have. Her father surprised this lover in her company, and was so displeased with the young man’s confused manner and excited countenance that he gave him one of the most terrible blows that had ever been given in his province. The lover seized a pair of tongs and broke the head of the angry parent, who was cured with great difficulty, and who still bears the marks of the wound. The lady in a fright leaped out of the window and dislocated her foot, in consequence of which she habitually halts, though still possessed in other respects of a very handsome person. The lover was condemned to death for having broken the head of a great prince. You can imagine in what a deplorable condition the princess must have been when her lover was led to the gallows. I have seen her long ago when she was in prison, and she always spoke to me of her own misfortunes.”

“And why will you not allow me to think of mine?” said the lady.

“Because,” said the philosopher, “you ought not to think of them; and since so many great ladies have been so unfortunate, it ill becomes you to despair. Think of Hecuba—think of Niobe.”

“Ah!” said the lady, “had I lived in their time, or in that of so many beautiful princesses, and had you endeavoured to console them by a relation of my misfortunes, would they have listened to you, do you imagine?”

Next day the philosopher lost his only son, and was entirely prostrated with grief. The lady caused a catalogue to be drawn up of all the kings who had lost their children, and carried it to the philosopher. He read it—found it very exact—and wept nevertheless.

Three months afterwards they chanced to renew their acquaintance, and were mutually surprised to find each other in such a gay and sprightly humour. To commemorate this event, they caused to be erected a beautiful statue to Time, with this inscription: “To HIM WHO COMFORTS.”

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN MARCUS AURELIUS AND A RECOLLET FRIAR.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—Now I think I begin to know where I am. That’s certainly the capitol, and that basilica, the temple. The person I behold there is undoubtedly the priest of Jupiter. Hark ye, friend; one word with you, if you please.

FRIAR.—Friend! very familiar, truly: you must certainly be a stranger in Rome, to accost in this manner brother Fulgentius the recollet, an inhabitant of the capitol, confessor to the duchess de Popoli, and who speaks sometimes to the pope, with as much familiarity as if he were a mere mortal.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—Brother Fulgentius in the capitol! Matters are somewhat changed indeed. I don’t understand one word you say. Is there no such place here as the temple of Jupiter?

FRIAR.—Get you gone about your business, honest friend; you seem to be out of your senses. Who are you, prithee, with your antique dress and your Jew’s beard? Whence come you, and what do you want here?

MARCUS AURELIUS.—This is my ordinary apparel: I am come back to see Rome once more. My name is Marcus Aurelius.

FRIAR.—Marcus Aurelius! I think I remember to have heard of such a name. If I don’t mistake, there was a Pagan emperor so called.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—I am he. I longed to have another view of that Rome which I loved, and which was so fond of me; that capitol in which I triumphed by my contempt of triumph; that land I formerly rendered so happy: but now I can hardly think it to be the same place. I have been to see the column that was erected to my honour, and have not been able to find the statue of the sage Antonine, my father. The face is quite altered from what it was.

FRIAR.—So it ought, Mr. Damned Soul. Sixtus V. erected that column; but then he put on it a better man than you and your father to boot.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—I was always of opinion it was no difficult matter to excel me; but I thought it no such easy affair to surpass my father. Perhaps my piety towards him has imposed on my judgment. All men are liable to error. But why give me the epithet of Damned Soul?

FRIAR.—Because so you are. Was it not you— let me see, I don’t mistake—that so often persecuted a set of folks, to whom you lay under very great obligations, and who procured you a shower of rain which enabled you to thrash your enemies?

MARCUS AURELIUS.—Alas! I was very far from persecuting any one. I thank Heaven, by a very happy conjuncture, a storm happened, just in the nick of time, to save my troops, who were dying of thirst; but I never heard before that I owed the favour of this tempest to the folks you mention, though, to tell you the truth, they were very good soldiers. I assure you, in the most solemn manner, I am not damned: I have done too much good to mankind, that the Divine Being should do me any evil. But, prithee tell me, where is the palace of the emperor, my successor? Is it still on the Palatine hill? For really I hardly know my own country again.

FRIAR.—I believe it, truly, we have so improved everything. If you please, I will carry you to Monte Cavallo: you shall have the honour to kiss the great toe of St. Peter; and you will, besides, receive a handsome present of indulgences, which, in my humble opinion, will be very seasonable; for I don’t doubt you stand in great need of them.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—First of all, I desire you would grant me your own; and tell me ingenuously, is there an end of the emperors and empire of Rome?

FRIAR.—No, no, by no means; there is still an empire and an emperor; but then he keeps his court at the distance of about four hundred leagues hence, at a small city called Vienna, on the Danube. My advice is, that you go there to pay a visit to your successors; because here you stand a great chance to visit the inquisition. I warn you that the reverend Dominican fathers are not at all disposed to jest in such matters, and that your Marcus Aureliuses, your Antonines, your Trajans, and your Tituses, and such gentry as cannot say their catechism, are treated by them after a very scurvy manner.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—The catechism! the inquisition! Dominicans! Recollets! a pope and cardinals! and the Roman Empire in a little city on the Danube! I could never have dreamt of such things; though I will allow, that in sixteen hundred years things will change strangely in this world of ours. I could like, methinks, to see one of these Roman emperors, Marcoman, Quadus, Cimber, and Teuto.

FRIAR.—You shall not want that pleasure when you please, and a greater than that still. You would, in all likelihood, be surprised, were I to tell you that the Scythians hold one half of your empire, and we the other: that the sovereign of Rome is a priest like me: that brother Fulgentius may be that sovereign in his turn: that I shall disperse indulgences on the very spot where you were wont to be drawn in your car by vanquished sovereigns: and, lastly, that your successor on the Danube has not a city he can call his own; but that there is a certain priest that lets him have the use of his capital, when he has occasion for it.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—You tell me strange news, indeed. All these great changes could never have happened without great misfortunes. I own I still love the human race, and am heartily sorry for them.

FRIAR.—You are too good. These revolutions have really cost a deluge of blood, and a hundred provinces have been ravaged; but had it not been so, your servant, brother Fulgentius, had never slept at his ease in the capitol.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—Rome, that metropolis of the universe, is then most miserably fallen.

FRIAR.—Fallen, I grant you; but as for miserably, there I must say you nay: on the contrary, peace and the fine arts flourish here eternally. The ancient masters of the world are now become music-masters. Instead of sending colonies into England, we now send them eunuchs and fiddlers. We have, it is true, none of your Scipios now, those destroyers of Carthage; but then we have none of your proscriptions neither. We have bartered glory for tranquillity.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—I tried what I could to become a philosopher in my life-time, but now I am sure I have become one indeed. I find tranquillity is at the least an equivalent for glory: but, by what you tell me, I should be apt to suspect brother Fulgentius is no adept in philosophy.

FRIAR.—What do you mean? Not a philosopher! I am one with a vengeance. I once taught philosophy; nay, better still, I read lectures in theology.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—And, pray, what may this theology of yours be, an’t please you?

FRIAR.—Why, it is—it is that which has made me be here, and the emperor elsewhere. You seem to grudge me the honour I enjoy, and are out of humour at the trifling revolution that has happened to your empire.

MARCUS AURELIUS—I adore the eternal decrees of Providence: I know man ought not to repine at fate: I admire the vicissitude of human affairs; but since everything is so liable to change, and since the Roman Empire has experienced this wonderful mutability, let me hope the recollets may also experience it in their turn.

FRIAR.—I declare you anathematized: but hold, now I think on’t, it is time to go to matins.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—And I will go and be reunited to the Being of Beings.

ANDRÉ DES TOUCHES IN SIAM.

André des Touches was a very agreeable musician in the brilliant reign of Louis XIV., before the science of music was perfected by Rameau, and before it was corrupted by those who prefer the art of surmounting difficulties to nature and the real graces of composition.

Before he had recourse to these talents he had been a musketeer, and before that, in 1688, he went into Siam with the Jesuit Tachard, who gave him many marks of his affection, for the amusement he afforded on board the ship; and Des Touches spoke with admiration of Father Tachard for the rest of his life.

In Siam he became acquainted with the first commissary of Barcalon, whose name was Croutef, and he committed to writing most of those questions which he asked of Croutef, and the answers of that Siamese. They are as follows:

DES TOUCHES.—How many soldiers have you?

CROUTEF.—Fourscore thousand, very indifferently paid.

DES TOUCHES.—And how many talapoins?

CROUTEF.—A hundred and twenty thousand, very idle and very rich. It is true that in the last war we were beaten, but our talapoins have lived sumptuously and built fine houses.

DES TOUCHES.—Nothing could have discovered more judgment. And your finances, in what state are they?

CROUTEF.—In a very bad state. We have, however, about ninety thousand men employed to render them prosperous, and if they have not succeeded, it has not been their fault, for there is not one of them who does not honourably seize all that he can get possession of, and strip and plunder those who cultivate the ground for the good of the state.

DES TOUCHES.—Bravo! And is not your jurisprudence as perfect as the rest of your administration?

CROUTEF.—It is much superior. We have no laws, but we have five or six thousand volumes on the laws. We are governed in general by customs; for it is known that a custom, having been established by chance, is the wisest principle that can be imagined. Besides, all customs being necessarily different in different provinces, the judges may choose at their pleasure a custom which prevailed four hundred years ago or one which prevailed last year. It occasions a variety in our legislation which our neighbours are forever admiring. This yields a certain fortune to practitioners. It is a resource for all pleaders who are destitute of honour, and a pastime of infinite amusement for the judges, who can, with safe consciences, decide causes without understanding them.

DES TOUCHES.—But in criminal cases—you have laws which may be depended upon?

CROUTEF.—God forbid! We can condemn men to exile, to the galleys, to be hanged; or we can discharge them, according to our own fancy. We sometimes complain of the arbitrary power of the Barcalon, but we choose that all our decisions should be arbitrary.

DES TOUCHES.—That is very just. And the torture—do you put people to the torture?

CROUTEF.—It is our greatest pleasure. We have found it an infallible secret to save a guilty person, who has vigorous muscles, strong and supple hamstrings, nervous arms, and firm loins, and we gaily break on the wheel all those innocent persons to whom nature has given feeble organs. It is thus we conduct ourselves with wonderful wisdom and prudence. As there are half proofs, I mean half truths, it is certain there are persons who are half innocent and half guilty. We commence, therefore, by rendering them half dead; we then go to breakfast; afterwards ensues entire death, which gives us great consideration in the world, which is one of the most valuable advantages of our offices.

DES TOUCHES.—It must be allowed that nothing can be more prudent and humane. Pray tell me what becomes of the property of the condemned?

CROUTEF.—The children are deprived of it. For you know that nothing can be more equitable than to punish the single fault of a parent on all his descendants.

DES TOUCHES.—Yes. It is a great while since I have heard of this jurisprudence.

CROUTEF.—The people of Laos, our neighbours, admit neither the torture, nor arbitrary punishments, nor the different customs, nor the horrible deaths which are in use among us; but we regard them as barbarians who have no idea of good government. All Asia is agreed that we dance the best of all its inhabitants, and that, consequently, it is impossible they should come near us in jurisprudence, in commerce, in finance, and, above all, in the military art.

DES TOUCHES.—Tell me, I beseech you, by what steps men arrive at the magistracy in Siam.

CROUTEF.—By ready money. You perceive that it may be impossible to be a good judge if a man has not by him thirty or forty thousand pieces of silver. It is in vain a man may be perfectly acquainted with all our customs; it is to no purpose that he has pleaded five hundred causes with success—that he has a mind which is the seat of judgment, and a heart replete with justice; no man can become a magistrate without money. This, I say, is the circumstance which distinguishes us from all Asia, and particularly from the barbarous inhabitants of Laos, who have the madness to recompense all kinds of talents, and not to sell any employment.

André Des Touches, who was a little off his guard, said to the Siamese that most of the airs which he had just sung sounded discordant to him, and wished to receive information concerning real Siamese music. But Croutef, full of his subject, and enthusiastic for his country, continued in these words:

“What does it signify that our neighbours, who live beyond our mountains, have better music than we have, or better pictures, provided we have always wise and humane laws? It is in that circumstance we excel. For example:

“If a man has adroitly stolen three or four hundred thousand pieces of gold we respect him, and we go and dine with him. But if a poor servant gets awkwardly into his possession three or four pieces of copper out of his mistress’ box we never fail of putting that servant to a public death; first, lest he should not correct himself; secondly, that he may not have it in his power to produce a great number of children for the state, one or two of whom might possibly steal a few little pieces of copper, or become great men; thirdly, because it is just to proportion the punishment to the crime, and that it would be ridiculous to give any useful employment in a prison to a person guilty of so enormous a crime.

“But we are still more just, more merciful, more reasonable in the chastisements which we inflict on those who have the audacity to make use of their legs to go wherever they choose. We treat those warriors so well who sell us their lives, we give them so prodigious a salary, they have so considerable a part in our conquests, that they must be the most criminal of all men to wish to return to their parents on the recovery of their reason, because they had been enlisted in a state of intoxication. To oblige them to remain in one place, we lodge about a dozen leaden balls in their heads, after which they become infinitely useful to their country.

“I will not speak of a great number of excellent institutions which do not go so far as to shed the blood of men, but which render life so pleasant and agreeable that it is impossible the guilty should avoid becoming virtuous. If a farmer has not been able to pay promptly a tax which exceeds his ability, we sell the pot in which he dresses his food; we sell his bed in order that, being relieved of all his superfluities, he may be in a better condition to cultivate the earth.”

DES TOUCHES.—That is extremely harmonious!

CROUTEF.—To comprehend our profound wisdom you must know that our fundamental principle is to acknowledge in many places as our sovereign a shaven-headed foreigner who lives at the distance of nine hundred miles from us. When we assign some of our best territories to any of our talapoins, which it is very prudent in us to do, that Siamese talapoin must pay the revenue of his first year to that shaven-headed Tartar, without which it is clear our lands would be unfruitful.

But the time, the happy time, is no more when that tonsured priest induced one-half of the nation to cut the throats of the other half in order to decide whether Sammonocodom had played at leap-frog or at some other game; whether he had been disguised in an elephant or in a cow; if he had slept three hundred and ninety days on the right side or on the left. Those grand questions, which so essentially affect morality, agitated all minds; they shook the world; blood flowed plentifully for it; women were massacred on the bodies of their husbands; they dashed out the brains of their little infants on the stones with a devotion, with a grace, with a contrition truly angelic. Woe to us! degenerate offspring of pious ancestors, who never offer such holy sacrifices! But, heaven be praised, there are yet among us at least a few good souls who would imitate them if they were permitted.

DES TOUCHES.—Tell me, I beseech you, sir, if in Siam you divide the tone major into two commas, or into two semi-commas, and if the progress of the fundamental sounds are made by one, three, and nine?

CROUTEF.—By Sammonocodom, you are laughing at me. You observe no bounds. You have interrogated me on the form of our government, and you speak to me of music!

DES TOUCHES.—Music is everything. It was at the foundation of all the politics of the Greeks. But I beg your pardon; you have not a good ear, and we will return to our subject. You said that in order to produce a perfect harmony—

CROUTEF.—I was telling you that formerly the tonsured Tartar pretended to dispose of all the kingdoms of Asia, which occasioned something very different from perfect harmony. But a very considerable benefit resulted from it; for people were then more devout toward Sammonocodom and his elephant than they are now, for, at the present time, all the world pretends to common sense, with an indiscretion truly pitiable. However, all things go on; people divert themselves, they dance, they play, they dine, they sup, they make love; this makes every man shudder who entertains good intentions.

DES TOUCHES.—And what would you have more? You only want good music. If you had good music you might call your nation the happiest in the world.

THE BLIND AS JUDGES OF COLOUR.

When the hospital of the Quinze Vingt was first founded the pensioners were all equal, and their little affairs were concluded upon by a majority of votes. They distinguished perfectly by the touch between copper and silver coin; they never mistook the wine of Brie for that of Burgundy. Their sense of smell was finer than that of their neighbours who had the use of two eyes. They reasoned very well on the four senses; that is, they knew everything they were permitted to know, and they lived as peaceably and as happily as blind people could be supposed to do. But, unfortunately, one of their professors pretended to have clear ideas in respect to the sense of seeing; he drew attention; he intrigued; he formed enthusiasts, and at last he was acknowledged chief of the community. He pretended to be a judge of colours, and everything was lost.

This dictator of the Quinze Vingt chose at first a little council by the assistance of which he got possession of all the alms. On this account no person had the resolution to oppose him. He decreed that all the inhabitants of the Quinze Vingt were clothed in white. The blind pensioners believed him, and nothing was to be heard but their talk of white garments, though, in fact, they possessed not one of that colour. All their acquaintances laughed at them. They made their complaints to the dictator, who received them very ill; he rebuked them as innovators, freethinkers, rebels, who had suffered themselves to be seduced by the errors of those who had eyes, and who presumed to doubt that their chief was infallible. This contention gave rise to two parties.

To appease the tumult, the dictator issued a decree declaring that all their vestments were red. There was not one vestment of that colour in the Quinze Vingt. The poor men were laughed at more than ever. Complaints were again made by the community. The dictator rushed furiously in, and the other blind men were as much enraged. They fought a long time, and peace was not restored until the members of the Quinze Vingt were permitted to suspend their judgments in regard to the colour of their dress.

A deaf man, reading this little history, allowed that these people, being blind, were to blame in pretending to judge of colours, but he remained steady to his own opinion that those persons who were deaf were the only proper judges of music.

THE CLERGYMAN AND HIS SOUL.

CHAPTER I.

There can be no doubt that everything in the world is governed by fatality. My own life is a convincing proof of this doctrine. The earl of Chesterfield, with whom I was a great favourite, had promised me that I should have the first living that fell to his gift. An old incumbent of eighty happened to die, and I immediately travelled post to London to remind the earl of his promise. I was honoured with an immediate interview, and was received with the greatest kindness. I informed his lordship of the death of the rector, and of the hope I cherished relative to the disposal of the vacant living. He replied that I really looked very ill. I answered that, thanks to God, my greatest affliction was poverty. “I am sorry for you,” said his lordship, and he politely dismissed me with a letter of introduction to a Mr. Sidrac, who dwelt in the vicinity of Guildhall. I ran as fast as I could to this gentleman’s house, not doubting but that he would immediately install me in the wished-for living. I delivered the earl’s letter, and Mr. Sidrac, who had the honour to be my lord’s surgeon, asked me to sit down, and, producing a case of surgical instruments, began to assure me that he would perform an operation which he trusted would very soon relieve me.

You must know that his lordship had understood that I was suffering from some dreadful complaint, and that he generously intended to have me cured at his own expense. The earl had the misfortune to be as deaf as a post, a fact with which I, alas! had not been previously acquainted.

During the time which I lost in defending myself against the attacks of Mr. Sidrac, who insisted positively upon curing me, whether I would or no, one out of the fifty candidates who were all on the lookout, came to town, flew to my lord, begged the vacant living and obtained it.

I was deeply in love with an interesting girl, a Miss Fidler, who had promised to marry me upon condition of my being made rector. My fortunate rival not only got the living, but also my mistress into the bargain!

My patron, upon being told of his mistake, promised to make me ample amends, but alas! he died two days afterwards.

Mr. Sidrac demonstrated to me that, according to his organic structure, my good patron could not have lived one hour longer. He also clearly proved that the earl’s deafness proceeded entirely from the extreme dryness of the drums of his ears, and kindly offered, by an application of spirits of wine, to harden both of my ears to such a degree that I should, in one month only, become as deaf as any peer of the realm.

I discovered Mr. Sidrac to be a man of profound knowledge. He inspired me with a taste for the study of nature, and I could not but be sensible of the valuable acquisition I had made in acquiring the friendship of a man who was capable of relieving me, should I need his services. Following his advice, I applied myself closely to the study of nature, to console myself for the loss of the rectory and of my enchanting Miss Fidler.

CHAPTER II. THE STUDY OF NATURE.

After making many profound observations upon nature (having employed in the research my five senses, my spectacles, and a very large telescope), I said one day to Mr. Sidrac: “Unless I am much deceived, philosophy laughs at us. I cannot discover any trace of what the world calls nature; on the contrary, everything seems to me to be the result of art. By art the planets are made to revolve around the sun, while the sun revolves on its own axis. I am convinced that some genius has arranged things in such a manner that the square of the revolutions of the planets is always in proportion to the cubic root from their distance to their centre, and one had need be a magician to find out how this is accomplished. The tides of the sea are the result of art no less profound and no less difficult to explain.

“All animals, vegetables, and minerals are arranged with due regard to weight and measure, number and motion. All is performed by springs, levers, pulleys, hydraulic machines, and chemical combinations, from the insignificant flea to the being called man, from the grass of the field to the far-spreading oak, from a grain of sand to a cloud in the firmament of heaven. Assuredly, everything is governed by art, and the word nature is but a chimera.”

“What you say,” answered Mr. Sidrac, “has been said many years ago, and so much the better, for the probability is greater that your remark is true. I am always astonished when I reflect that a grain of wheat cast into the earth will produce in a short time above a handful of the same corn.” “Stop,” said I, foolishly, “you forget that wheat must die before it can spring up again, at least so they say at college.” My friend Sidrac, laughing heartily at this interruption, replied: “That assertion went down very well a few years ago, when it was first published by an apostle called Paul, but in our more enlightened age the meanest labourer knows that the thing is altogether too ridiculous even for argument.”

“My dear friend,” said I, “excuse the absurdity and one cannot divest one’s self in a moment of every silly opinion.”

CHAPTER III. GOOD ADVICE.

Some time after this conversation between the disconsolate person, whom we shall call Goodman, and the clever anatomist, Mr. Sidrac, the latter, one fine morning, observed his friend in St. James’s Park, standing in an attitude of deep thought. “What is the matter?” said the surgeon. “Is there anything amiss?” “No,” replied Goodman, “but I am left without a patron in the world since the death of my friend, who had the misfortune to be so deaf. Now, supposing there be only ten thousand clergymen in England, and granting these ten thousand have each two patrons, the odds against my obtaining a bishopric are twenty thousand to one; a reflection quite sufficient to give any man the blue-devils. I remember, it was once proposed to me to go out as cabin-boy to the East Indies. I was told that I should make my fortune. But as I did not think I should make a good admiral, whenever I should arrive at the distinction, I declined; and so, after turning my attention to every profession under the sun, I am fixed for life as a poor clergyman, good for nothing.”

“Then be a clergyman no longer!” cried Sidrac, “and turn philosopher. What is your income?” “Only thirty guineas a year,” replied Goodman, “although at the death of my mother it will be increased to fifty.” “Well, my dear Goodman,” continued Sidrac, “that sum is quite sufficient to support you in comfort. Thirty guineas are six hundred and thirty shillings, almost two shillings a day. With this fixed income a man need do nothing to increase it, but is at perfect liberty to say all he thinks of the East India Company, the House of Commons, the king, and all the royal family, of man generally and individually, and lastly, of God and His attributes; and the liberty we enjoy of expressing our thoughts upon these most interesting topics is certainly very agreeable and amusing.”

“Come and dine at my table every day. That will save you some little money. We will afterwards amuse ourselves with conversation, and your thinking faculty will have the pleasure of communicating with mine by means of speech, which is certainly a very wonderful thing, though its advantages are not duly appreciated by the greater part of mankind.”

CHAPTER IV. DIALOGUE UPON THE SOUL AND OTHER TOPICS.

GOODMAN.—But my dear Sidrac, why do you always say my thinking faculty and not my soul? If you used the latter term I should understand you much better.

SIDRAC.—And for my part, I freely confess I should not understand myself. I feel, I know, that God has endowed me with the faculties of thinking and speaking, but I can neither feel nor know that God has given me a thing called a soul.

GOODMAN.—Truly, upon reflection, I perceive that I know as little about the matter as you do, though I own that I have all my life been bold enough to believe that I knew. I have often remarked that the eastern nations apply to the soul the same word they use to express life. After their example, the Latins understood the word anima to signify the life of the animal. The Greeks called the breath the soul. The Romans translated the word breath by spiritus, and thence it is that the word spirit or soul is found in every modern nation. As it happens that no one has ever seen this spirit or breath, our imagination has converted it into a being which it is impossible to see or touch. The learned tell us that the soul inhabits the body without having any place in it, that it has the power of setting our different organs in motion without being able to reach and touch them; indeed, what has not been said upon the subject? The great Locke knew into what a chaos these absurdities had plunged the human understanding. In writing the only reasonable book upon metaphysics that has yet appeared in the world, he did not compose a single chapter on the soul, and if by chance he now and then makes use of the word, he only introduces it to stand for intellect or mind.

In fact, every human being, in spite of Bishop Berkeley, is sensible that he has a mind, and that this mind or intellect is capable of receiving ideas; but no one can feel that there is another being—a soul—within him, which gives him motion, feeling, and thought. It is, in fact, ridiculous to use words we do not understand, and to admit the existence of beings of whom we cannot have the slightest knowledge.

SIDRAC.—We are then agreed upon a subject which, for so many centuries, has been a matter of dispute.

GOODMAN.—And I must observe that I am surprised we should have agreed upon it so soon.

SIDRAC.—Oh! that is not so astonishing. We really wish to know what is truth. If we were among the academies we should argue like the characters in Rabelais. If we had lived in those ages of darkness, the clouds of which so long enveloped Great Britain, one of us would very likely have burned the other. We are so fortunate as to be born in an age comparatively reasonable; we easily discover what appears to us to be truth, and we are not afraid to proclaim it.

GOODMAN.—You are right, but I fear that, after all, the truth we have discovered is not worth much. In mathematics, indeed, we have done wonders; from the most simple causes we have produced effects that would have astonished Apollonius or Archimedes; but what have we proved in metaphysics? Absolutely nothing but our own ignorance.

SIDRAC.—And do you call that nothing? You grant the Supreme Being has given you the faculties of feeling and thinking; He has in the same manner given your feet the faculty of walking, your hands their wonderful dexterity, your stomach the capability of digesting food, and your heart the power of throwing arterial blood into all parts of your body. Everything we enjoy is derived from God, and yet we are totally ignorant of the means by which He governs and conducts the universe. For my own part, as Shakespeare says, I thank Him for having taught me that of the principles of things I know absolutely nothing. It has always been a question in what manner the soul acted upon the body. Before attempting to answer this question, I must be convinced that I have a soul. Either God has given us this wonderful spark of intellect, or He has gifted us with some principle that answers equally well. In either case, we are still the creatures of His divine will and goodness, and that is all I know about the matter.

GOODMAN.—But if you do not know, tell me at least what you are inclined to think upon the subject. You have opened skulls, and dissected the human foetus. Have you ever, in these dissections, discovered any appearance of a soul?

SIDRAC.—Not the least, and I have not been able to understand how an immortal and spiritual essence could dwell for months together in a membrane. It appears to me difficult to conceive that this pretended soul existed before the foundation of the body; for in what could it have been employed during the many ages previous to its mysterious union with flesh? Again! how can we imagine a spiritual principle waiting patiently in idleness during a whole eternity, in order to animate a mass of matter for a space of time which, compared with eternity, is less than a moment?

It is worse still when I am told that God forms immortal souls out of nothing, and then cruelly dooms them to an eternity of flames and torments. What? burn a spirit, in which there can be nothing capable of burning; how can He burn the sound of a voice, or the wind that blows? though both the sound and wind were material during the short time of their existence; but a pure spirit—a thought— a doubt— I am lost in the labyrinth; on whichever side I turn, I find nothing but obscurity and absurdity, impossibility and contradiction. But I am quite at ease when I say to myself God is Master of all. He who can cause each star to hold its particular course through the broad expanse of the firmament can easily give to us sentiments and ideas without the aid of this atom called the soul. It is certain that God has endowed all animals, in a greater or lesser degree, with thought, memory, and judgment; He has given them life; it is demonstrated that they have feeling, since they possess all the organs of feeling; if then they have all this without a soul, why is it improbable that we have none? and why do mankind flatter themselves that they alone are gifted with a spiritual and immortal principle?

GOODMAN.—Perhaps this idea arises from their inordinate vanity. I am persuaded that if the peacock could speak he would boast of his soul, and would affirm that it inhabited his magnificent tail. I am very much inclined to believe with you that God has created us thinking creatures, with the faculties of eating, drinking, feeling, etc., without telling us one word about the matter. We are as ignorant as the peacock I just mentioned, and he who said that we live and die without knowing how, why, or wherefore, spoke nothing but the truth.

SIDRAC.—A celebrated author, whose name I forget, calls us nothing more than the puppets of Providence, and this seems to me to be a very good definition. An infinity of movements are necessary to our existence, but we did not ourselves invent and produce motion. There is a Being who has created light, caused it to move from the sun to our eyes in about seven minutes. It is only by means of motion that my five senses are put in action, and it is only by means of my senses that I have ideas, hence it follows that my ideas are derived from the great author of motion, and when He informs me how He communicates these ideas to me, I will most sincerely thank Him.

GOODMAN.—And so will I. As it is I constantly thank Him for having permitted me, as Epictetus says, to contemplate for a period of some years this beautiful and glorious world. It is true that He could have made me happier by putting me in possession of Miss Fidler and a good rectory, but still, such as I am, I consider myself as under a great obligation to God’s parental kindness and care.

SIDRAC.—You say that it is in the power of God to give you a good living, and to make you still happier than you are at present. There are many persons who would not scruple flatly to contradict this proposition of yours. Do you forget that you yourself sometimes complain of fatality? A man, and particularly a priest, ought never to contradict one day an assertion he has perhaps made the day before. All is but a succession of links, and God is wiser than to break the eternal chain of events, even for the sake of my dear friend Goodman.

GOODMAN.—I did not foresee this argument when I was speaking of fatality, but to come at once to the point, if it be so, God is as much a slave as myself.

SIDRAC.—He is the slave of His will, of His wisdom, and of the laws which He has Himself instituted; and it is impossible that He can infringe upon any of them, because it is impossible that He can become either weak or inconsistent.

GOODMAN.—But, my friend, what you say would tend to make us irreligious, for, if God cannot change any of the affairs of the world, what is the use of teasing Him with prayers, or of singing hymns to His praise?

SIDRAC.—Well! who bids you worship or pray to God? We praise a man because we think him vain; we entreat of him when we think him weak and likely to change his purpose on account of our petitions. Let us do our duty to God, by being just and true to each other. In that consists our real prayers, and our most heartfelt praises.

DIALOGUE BETWEEN A BRAHMIN AND A JESUIT

ON NECESSITY AND FREE-WILL, AND THE GENERAL CONCATENATION OF CAUSES AND EFFECTS.

JESUIT.—In all probability, you are indebted to the prayers of St. Francis Xavier for that long and happy life you have enjoyed a hundred and four-score years! Why, ‘tis a life-time for a patriarch.

BRAHMIN.—My master, Fonfouca, lived till three hundred; it is the ordinary course of life among us Brahmins. I have a very great regard for Francis Xavier; but all his prayers would never have put nature out of her destined order: had he really been able to prolong the life of a gnat but for one single instant beyond what the general concatenation of causes and events allows of, this globe of ours had worn a quite different appearance from that in which you now behold it.

JESUIT.—You have a strange opinion of future contingents: why, you must be entirely ignorant that man is free, and that our free-will disposes of everything in this sublunary world at its mere fancy and pleasure. I can assure you the Jesuits alone have contributed not a little to some very considerable revolutions.

BRAHMIN.—I have no manner of question in regard to the learning and power of the reverend fathers, the Jesuits: they are a very valuable part of human society; yet I cannot by any means believe them the sovereign arbiters of human transactions: every single person, every single being, whether Jesuit or Brahmin, is one of the springs which act in the general movement of the universe; in which he is the slave, and not the master of destiny. Pray, to what do you think Genghis Khan owed the conquest of Asia? To the very moment in which his father one day happened to awake as he was in bed with his wife; to a word which a Tartar chanced to let fall some years before. I, for example, the very person you behold, am one of the chief causes of the deplorable death of Henry IV., for which, you may see, I am still much afflicted.

JESUIT.—Your reverence is pleased to be very merry upon the matter? You the cause of the death of Henry IV.!

BRAHMIN.—Alas! it is too true. This happened in the nine hundred and eighty-three thousandth year of the revolution of Saturn, which makes the fifteen hundred and fiftieth of your era. I was then young and giddy headed. I thought proper, upon a time, to take a walk, which I began with moving my left foot first, on the coast of Malabar, whence most evidently followed the death of Henry IV.

JESUIT.—How so, prithee? For, as to our society, that affair, we had not the least knowledge of it.

BRAHMIN.—I’ll tell ye how fate thought proper to order the matter. By moving my left foot, as I told you, I unluckily tumbled my friend Eriban, the Persian merchant, into the water, and he was drowned. My friend, it seems, had a very handsome wife, that ran away with an Armenian merchant: this lady had a daughter, who married a Greek; the daughter of this Greek settled in France, and married the father of Ravaillac. Now, had not every tittle of this happened exactly as it did, you are very sensible the affairs of the houses of France and Austria would have turned out in a very different manner. The system of Europe would have been entirely changed. The wars between Turkey and the German Empire would have had quite another issue; which issue would have had an effect on Persia, as well as Persia on the East Indies; so you see it is plain to a demonstration, that the whole depended on my left foot, which was connected with all the other events of the universe, past, present, and to come.

JESUIT.—I must have this affair laid before some of our fathers, who are theologians.

BRAHMIN.—In the meantime, I will tell you, father, that the maid-servant of the grandfather of the founder of the Feuillants—for you must know I have dipped into your histories—was likewise one principal cause of the death of Henry IV., and of all the accidents which it produced.

JESUIT.—This servant-maid must then have been a domineering quean!

BRAHMIN.—Oh fie! no such thing. She was a mere idiot, by whom her master had a child. Madame de la Barrière, poor soul, died of grief at it. She who succeeded her was, as your chronicles tell, the grandmother of the blessed John de la Barrière, who founded the order of Feuillants. Ravaillac was a monk of this order. With them he sucked in a certain doctrine very fashionable in those days, as you well enough know. This doctrine taught him to believe that the most meritorious thing he could possibly do was to assassinate the best king in the whole world. What followed is known to everybody.

JESUIT.—In spite of your left foot, and the wench of the grandfather of the founder of the Feuillants, I shall ever be of opinion that the horrible action committed by Ravaillac was a future contingent, which might very well not have happened: for, after all, man is certainly a free agent.

BRAHMIN.—I do not know what you mean by a free agent. I can affix no certain idea to these words. To be free, is to do whatever we think proper, and not to will whatever we please. All I know of the matter is, that Ravaillac voluntarily committed the crime, of which he was destined by fate to be the instrument. This crime was no more than a link of the great chain of destiny.

JESUIT.—You may say what you will, but the affairs of this world are far from having any such dependence as you are pleased to think. What signifies, for example, this useless conversation of ours, here on the shores of the East Indies?

BRAHMIN.—What you and I say in conversation is doubtless sufficiently insignificant; but, for all that, were you not here, the machine of the universe would be extremely changed from what it is.

JESUIT.—There your Brahmin reverence is pleased to advance a huge paradox truly.

BRAHMIN.—Your Ignatian fathership may believe me or no, as you like it. But assuredly, we should never have had this conversation together, had you not come into the East Indies. You had never made this voyage, had not your St. Ignatius de Loyola been wounded at the siege of Pampeluna, or had not the king of Portugal persisted in discovering the passage round the Cape of Good Hope. Now, prithee, did not the king of Portugal, with the help of the compass, entirely change the face of this world of ours? But it was first of all necessary that a certain Neapolitan should make this discovery of the compass; now tell me, if you have the face, that everything is not wholly subservient to one constant and uniform tenor of action; which by indissoluble, but invisible, concatenation, unites all that lives, or acts, or dies, or suffers on the surface of our globe?

JESUIT.—What then would become of our future contingents?

BRAHMIN.—What care I what become of them? but yet the order established by the hand of an eternal and almighty God must certainly exist forever.

JESUIT.—Were one to listen to you, we ought not to pray to God at all.

BRAHMIN.—It is our duty to adore Him. But pray what mean ye by praying to God?

JESUIT.—What all the world means by it, to be sure: that He would grant our petitions, and favour us in all our wants.

BRAHMIN.—I understand you. You mean, that a gardener might obtain clear sunshine weather, at a time which God had ordained from all eternity to produce rains; and that a pilot should have an easterly wind, when a westerly wind ought to refresh the earth, as well as the seas? My good father, to pray as we ought is to submit one’s self wholly to Providence. So good evening to you. Destiny requires I should now visit my Brahminess.

JESUIT.—And my free-will urges me to give a lesson to a young scholar.

DIALOGUES BETWEEN LUCRETIUS AND POSIDONIUS.

FIRST COLLOQUY.

POSIDONIUS.—Your poetry is sometimes admirable; but the philosophy of Epicurus is, in my opinion, very bad.

LUCRETIUS.—What! will you not allow that the atoms, of their own accord, disposed themselves in such a manner as to produce the universe?

POSIDONIUS.—We mathematicians can admit nothing but what is proved by incontestable principles.

LUCRETIUS.—My principles are so.

Ex nihilo nihil, in nihilum nil posse reverti.

Tangere enim & tangi nisi corpus nulla potest res.

‘From nothing nought can spring, to nothing nought return.

Nought but a body can a body touch.’

POSIDONIUS.—Should I grant you these principles, and even your atoms and your vacuum, you can no more persuade me that the universe put itself into the admirable order in which we now behold it, than if you were to tell the Romans that the armillary sphere composed by Posidonius made itself.

LUCRETIUS.—But who then could make the world?

POSIDONIUS.—An intelligent Being, much more superior to the world and to me than I am to the brass of which I made my sphere.

LUCRETIUS.—How can you, who admit nothing but what is evident, acknowledge a principle of which you have not the least idea?

POSIDONIUS.—In the same manner as, before I knew you, I judged that your book was the work of a man of genius.

LUCRETIUS.—You allow that nature is eternal, and exists because it does exist. Now if it exists by its own power, why may it not, by the same power, have formed suns, and worlds, and plants, and animals, and men?

POSIDONIUS.—All the ancient philosophers have supposed matter to be eternal, but have never proved it to be really so; and even allowing it to be eternal, it would by no means follow that it could form works in which there are so many striking proofs of wisdom and design. Suppose this stone to be eternal if you will, you can never persuade me that it could have composed the “Iliad” of Homer.

LUCRETIUS.—No: a stone could never have composed the “Iliad,” any more than it could have produced a horse: but matter organized in process of time, and become bones, flesh, and blood, will produce a horse; and organized more finely, will produce the “Iliad.”

POSIDONIUS.—You suppose all this without any proof; and I ought to admit nothing without proof. I will give you bones, flesh, and blood, ready made, and will leave you and all the Epicureans in the world to make your best of them. Will you only consent to this alternative: to be put in possession of the whole Roman Empire, if, with all the ingredients ready prepared, you produce a horse, and to be hanged if you fail in the attempt?

LUCRETIUS.—No; that surpasses my power, but not the power of nature. It requires millions of ages for nature, after having passed through all the possible forms, to arrive at last at the only one which can produce living beings.

POSIDONIUS.—You might, if you pleased, continue all your lifetime to shake in a cask all the materials of the earth mixed together, you would never be able to form any regular figure; you could produce nothing. If the length of your life is not sufficient to produce even a mushroom, will the length of another man’s life be sufficient for that purpose? Why should several ages be able to effect what one age has not effected? One ought to have seen men and animals spring from the bosom of the earth, and corn produced without seed, etc., before he should venture to affirm that matter, by its own energy, could give itself such forms; but no one that I know of has seen such an operation, and therefore no one ought to believe it.

LUCRETIUS.—Well! men, animals, and trees must always have existed. All the philosophers allow that matter is eternal; and they must further allow, that generations are so likewise. It is the very nature of matter that there should be stars that revolve, birds that fly, horses that run, and men that compose “Iliads.”

POSIDONIUS.—In this new supposition you change your opinion; but you always suppose the point in question, and admit a thing for which you have not the least proof.

LUCRETIUS.—I am at liberty to believe that what is to-day was yesterday, was a century ago, was a hundred centuries ago, and so on backwards without end. I make use of your argument: no one has ever seen the sun and stars begin their course, nor the first animals formed and endowed with life. We may, therefore, safely believe that all things were from eternity as they are at present.

POSIDONIUS.—There is a very great difference. I see an admirable design, and I ought to believe that an intelligent being formed that design.

LUCRETIUS.—You ought not to admit a being of whom you have no knowledge.

POSIDONIUS.—You might as well tell me that I should not believe that an architect built the capitol because I never saw that architect.

LUCRETIUS.—Your comparison is not just. You have seen houses built, and you have seen architects; and therefore you ought to conclude that it was a man like our present architects that built the capitol. But here the case is very different: the capitol does not exist of itself, but matter does. It must necessarily have had some form; and why will you not allow it to possess, by its own energy, the form in which it now is? Is it not much easier for you to admit that nature modifies itself, than to acknowledge a being that modifies it? In the former case you have only one difficulty to encounter, namely, to comprehend how nature acts. In the latter you have two difficulties to surmount: to comprehend this same nature, and the visible being that acts on it.

POSIDONIUS.—It is quite the reverse. I see not only a difficulty, but even an impossibility in comprehending how matter can have infinite designs; but I see no difficulty in admitting an intelligent being, who governs this matter by his infinite wisdom, and by his almighty will.

LUCRETIUS.—What? is it because your mind cannot comprehend one thing that you are to suppose another? Is it because you do not understand the secret springs, and admirable contrivances, by which nature disposed itself into planets, suns, and animals, that you have recourse to another being?

POSIDONIUS.—No; I have not recourse to a god, because I cannot comprehend nature; but I plainly perceive that nature needs a supreme intelligence; and this reason alone would to me be a sufficient proof of a deity had I no other.

LUCRETIUS.—And what if this matter possessed intelligence of itself?

POSIDONIUS.—It is plain to me that it does not possess it.

LUCRETIUS.—And to me it is plain that it does possess it, since I see bodies like you and me reason.

POSIDONIUS.—If matter possesses, of itself, the faculty of thinking, you must affirm that it possesses it necessarily and independently: but if this property be essential to matter, it must have it at all times and in all places; for whatever is essential to a thing can never be separated from it. A bit of clay, and even the vilest excrement would think; but sure you will not say that dung thinks. Thought, therefore, is not an essential attribute of matter.

LUCRETIUS.—Your reasoning is a mere sophism. I hold motion to be essential to matter; and yet this dung, or that piece of clay, is not actually in motion; but they will be so when they are impelled by some other body. In like manner thought will not be an attribute of a body, except when that body is organized for thinking.

POSIDONIUS.—Your error proceeds from this, that you always suppose the point in question. You do not reflect that, in order to organize a body, to make it a man, to render it a thinking being, there must previously be thought, there must be a fixed design. But you cannot admit such a thing as design before the only beings in this world capable of design are formed; you cannot admit thought before the only beings capable of thinking exist. You likewise suppose the point in question, when you say that motion is necessary to matter; for what is absolutely necessary always exists, as extension, for instance, exists always and in every part of matter; but motion does not exist always. The pyramids of Egypt are not surely in motion. A subtile matter perhaps, may penetrate between the stones which compose the pyramids; but the body of the pyramid is immovable. Motion, therefore, is not essential to matter, but is communicated to it by a foreign cause, in the same manner as thought is to men. Hence it follows that there must be a powerful and intelligent being, who communicates motion, life, and thought to his creatures.

LUCRETIUS.—I can easily answer your objections by saying that there have always been motion and intelligence in the world. This motion and this intelligence have been distributed at all times according to the laws of nature. Matter being eternal, it must necessarily have been in some order; but it could not be put into any order without thought and motion; and therefore thought and motion must have always been inherent in it.

POSIDONIUS.—Do what you will, you can at best but make suppositions. You suppose an order; there must, therefore, have been some intelligent mind who formed this order. You suppose motion and thought before matter was in motion, and before there were men and thoughts. You must allow, that thought is not essential to matter, since you dare not say that a flint thinks. You can oppose nothing but a perhaps to the truth that presses hard upon you. You are sensible of the weakness of matter, and are forced to admit a supreme intelligent and almighty being, who organized matter and thinking beings. The designs of this superior intelligence shine forth in every part of nature, and you must perceive them as distinctly in a blade of grass, as in the course of the stars. Everything is evidently directed to a certain end.

LUCRETIUS.—But do you not take for a design what is only a necessary existence? Do you not take for an end what is no more than the use which we make of things that exist? The Argonauts built a ship to sail to Colchis. Will you say that the trees were created in order that the Argonauts might build a ship, and that the sea was made to enable them to undertake their voyage? Men wear stockings: will you say that legs were made by the Supreme Being in order to be covered with stockings? No, doubtless; but the Argonauts, having seen wood, built a ship with it, and having learned that the water could carry a ship, they undertook their voyage. In the same manner, after an infinite number of forms and combinations which matter had assumed, it was found that the humours, and the transparent horn which compose the eye, and which were formerly separated in different parts of the body, were united in the head, and animals began to see. The organs of generation, dispersed before, were likewise collected, and took the form they now have; and then all kinds of procreation were conducted with regularity. The matter of the sun, which had been long diffused and scattered through the universe, was conglobated, and formed the luminary that enlightens our world. Is there anything impossible in all this?

POSIDONIUS.—In fact, you cannot surely be serious when you have recourse to such a system: for, in the first place, if you adopt this hypothesis, you must, of course, reject the eternal generations of which you have just now been talking: and, in the second place, you are mistaken with regard to final causes. There are voluntary uses to which we apply the gifts of nature; and there are likewise necessary effects. The Argonauts need not, unless they had pleased, have employed the trees of the forest to build a ship; but these trees were plainly destined to grow on the earth, and to produce fruits and leaves. We need not cover our legs with stockings; but the leg was evidently made to support the body, and to walk, the eyes to see, the ears to hear, and the parts of generation to perpetuate the species. If you consider that a star, placed at the distance of four or five hundred millions of leagues from us, sends forth rays of light, which make precisely the same angle in the eyes of every animal, and that, at that instant, all animals have the sensation of light, you must acknowledge that this is an instance of the most admirable mechanism and design. But is it not unreasonable to admit mechanism without a mechanic, a design without intelligence, and such designs without a Supreme Being?

LUCRETIUS.—If I admit the Supreme Being, what form must I give Him? Is He in one place? Is He out of all place? Is He in time or out of time? Does He fill the whole of space, or does He not fill it? Why did He make the world? What was His end in making it? Why form sensible and unhappy beings? Why moral and natural evil? On whatever side I turn my mind, everything appears dark and incomprehensible.

POSIDONIUS.—’Tis a necessary consequence of the existence of this Supreme Being that His nature should be incomprehensible; for, if He exists, there must be an infinite distance between Him and us. We ought to believe that He is, without endeavouring to know what He is, or how He operates. Are you not obliged to admit asymptotes in geometry, without comprehending how it is possible for the same lines to be always approaching, and yet never to meet? Are there not many things as incomprehensible as demonstrable, in the properties of the circle? Confess, therefore, that you ought to admit what is incomprehensible, when the existence of that incomprehensible is proved.

LUCRETIUS.—What! must I renounce the dogmas of Epicurus?

POSIDONIUS.—It is better to renounce Epicurus than to abandon the dictates of reason.

SECOND COLLOQUY.

LUCRETIUS.—I begin to recognize a Supreme Being, inaccessible to our senses, and proved by our reason, who made the world, and preserves it; but with regard to what I have said of the soul, in my third book, which has been so much admired by all the learned men of Rome, I hardly think you can oblige me to alter my opinion.

POSIDONIUS.—You say:

“Idque situm media regione in pectoris hoeret.”

—‘The mind is in the middle of the breast.’

—But, when you composed your beautiful verses, did you never make any effort of the head? When you speak of the orators Cicero and Mark Antony, do you not say that they had good heads? And were you to say that they had good breasts, would not people imagine that you were talking of their voice and lungs?

LUCRETIUS.—Are you not convinced, from experience, that the feelings of joy, of sorrow, and of fear, are formed about the heart?

Hic exultat enim pavor ac metus; hoec loca circum Loetitioe mulcent.

‘For there our passions live, our joy, our fear, and hope.’

Do you not feel your heart dilate or contract itself on the hearing of good or bad news? Is it not possessed of some secret springs of a yielding and elastic quality? This, therefore, must be the seat of the soul.

POSIDONIUS.—There are two nerves which proceed from the brain, pass through the heart and stomach, reach to the parts of generation, and communicate motion to them; but would you therefore say, that the human mind resides in the parts of generation?

LUCRETIUS.—No; I dare not say so. But though I should place the soul in the head, instead of placing it in the breast, my principles will still subsist: the soul will still be an infinitely subtile matter, resembling the elementary fire that animates the whole machine.

POSIDONIUS.—And why do you imagine that a subtile matter can have thoughts and sentiments of itself?

LUCRETIUS.—Because I experience it; because all the parts of my body, when touched, presently feel the impression; because this feeling is diffused through my whole machine; because it could not be diffused through it but by a matter of a very subtile nature, and of a very rapid motion; because I am a body, and one body cannot be affected but by another; because the interior part of my body could not be penetrated but by very small corpuscles; and, in consequence, my soul must be an assemblage of these corpuscles.

POSIDONIUS.—We have already agreed, in our first colloquy, that it is extremely improbable that a rock could compose the “Iliad.” Will a ray of the sun be more capable of composing it? Suppose this ray a hundred thousand times more subtile and rapid than usual, will this light, or this tenuity of parts, produce thoughts and sentiments?

LUCRETIUS.—Perhaps it may, when placed in organs properly prepared.

POSIDONIUS.—You are perpetually reduced to your perhaps. Fire, of itself, is no more capable of thinking than ice. Should I suppose that it is fire that thinks, perceives, and wills in you, you would then be forced to acknowledge that it is not by its own virtue that it has either will, thought, or perception.

LUCRETIUS.—No; these sensations will be produced not by its own virtue, but by the assemblage of the fire, and of my organs.

POSIDONIUS.—How can you imagine that two bodies, neither of which can think apart, should be able to produce thought, when joined together?

LUCRETIUS.—In the same manner as a tree and earth, when taken separately, do not produce fruit, but do so when the tree is planted in the earth.

POSIDONIUS.—The comparison is only specious. This tree has in it the seeds of fruit: we plainly perceive them in the buds, and the moisture of the earth unfolds the substance of these fruits. Fire, therefore, must possess in itself the seeds of thought, and the organs of the body serve only to develop these seeds.

LUCRETIUS.—And do you find anything impossible in this?

POSIDONIUS.—I find that this fire, this highly refined matter, is as devoid of the faculty of thinking as a stone. The production of a being must have something similar to that which produced it; but thought, will, and perception have nothing similar to fiery matter.

LUCRETIUS.—Two bodies, struck against each other, produce motion, and yet this motion has nothing similar to the two bodies; it has none of their three dimensions, nor has it any figure. A being, therefore, may have nothing similar to that which produced it, and, in consequence, thought may spring from an assemblage of two bodies which have no thought.

POSIDONIUS.—This comparison likewise is more specious than just. I see nothing but matter in two bodies in motion: I only see bodies passing from one place to another. But when we reason together I see no matter in your ideas, or in my own. I shall only observe that I can no more conceive how one body has the power of moving another, than I can comprehend the manner of my having ideas. To me both are equally inexplicable, and both equally prove the existence and the power of a Supreme Being, the author of thought and motion.

LUCRETIUS.—If our soul is not a subtile fire, an ethereal quintessence, what is it?

POSIDONIUS.—Neither you nor I know aught of the matter. I will tell you plainly what it is not; but I cannot tell you what it actually is. I see that it is a power lodged in my body; that I did not give

myself this power; and, in consequence, that it must have come from a Being superior to myself.

LUCRETIUS.—You did not give yourself life; you received it from your father; from whom, likewise, together with life, you received the faculty of thinking, as he had received both from his father, and so on backwards to infinity. You no more know the true principle of life than you do that of thought. This succession of living and thinking beings has always existed.

POSIDONIUS.—I plainly see that you are always obliged to abandon the system of Epicurus, and that you dare no longer maintain that the declination of atoms produced thought. I have already, in our last colloquy, refuted the eternal succession of sensible and thinking beings. I showed you that, if there are material beings capable of thinking by their own power, thought must necessarily be an attribute essential to all matter; that, if matter thought necessarily, and by its own virtue, all matter must of course think: but this is not the case, and therefore it is impossible to maintain a succession of material beings, who, of themselves, possess the faculty of thinking.

LUCRETIUS.—Notwithstanding this reasoning, which you repeat, it is certain that a father communicates a soul to his son at the same time that he forms his body. This soul and this body grow together; they gradually acquire strength; they are subject to calamities, and to the infirmities of

old age. The decay of our strength draws along with it that of our judgment; the effect at last ceases with the cause, and the soul vanishes like smoke into air.

Proeterea, gigni pariter cum corpore, & una

Crescere sentimus, pariterque senescere mentem.

Nam velet infirmo pueri, teneroque vagantur

Corpore, sic animi sequitur sententia tenuis.

Inde ubi robustis adolevit viribus oetas,

Consilium quoque majus, & auctior est animi vis.

Post ubi jam validis quassatum est viribus oevi

Corpus, & obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus:

Claudicat ingenium delirat linguaque, mensgue;

Omnia deficiunt, atque uno tempore desunt,

Ergo dissolvi quoque convenit omnem animai

Naturam, ceu fumus in altas aeris auras:

Quandoquidem gigni pariter, pariterque videmus

Crescere, & (ut docui) simul oevo fessa fatiscit.

‘Besides, ‘tis plain that souls are born, and grow;

And all by age decay, as bodies do;

To prove this truth: in infants, minds appear

Infirm, and tender as their bodies are:

In man, the mind is strong; when age prevails,

And the quick vigour of each member fails,

The mind’s powers, too, decrease, and waste apace;

And grave and reverend folly takes the place.

‘Tis likely then the soul and mind must die;

Like smoke in air, its scattered atoms fly;

Since all these proofs have shown, these reasons told,

‘Tis with the body born, grows strong, and old.’

[—CREECH.]

POSIDONIUS.—These, to be sure, are very fine verses; but do you thereby inform me of the nature of the soul?

LUCRETIUS.—No; I only give you its history, and I reason with probability.

POSIDONIUS.—Where is the probability of a father’s communicating to his son the faculty of thinking?

LUCRETIUS.—Do you not daily see children resembling their fathers in their inclinations, as well as in their features?

POSIDONIUS.—But does not a father, in begetting his son, act as a blind agent? Does he pretend, when he enjoys his wife, to make a soul, or to make thoughts? Do either of them know the manner in which a child is formed in the mother’s womb? Must we not, in this case, have recourse to a superior cause, as well as in all the other operations of nature which we have examined? Must you not see, if you are in earnest, that men give themselves nothing, but are under the hand of an absolute master?

LUCRETIUS.—If you know more of the matter than I do, tell me what the soul is.

POSIDONIUS.—I do not pretend to know what it is more than you. Let us endeavour to enlighten each other. Tell me, first, what is vegetation.

LUCRETIUS.—It is an internal motion, that carries the moisture of the earth into plants, makes them grow, unfolds their fruits, expands their leaves, etc.

POSIDONIUS.—Surely you do not think that there is a being called Vegetation that performs these wonders?

LUCRETIUS.—Who ever thought so?

POSIDONIUS.—From our former colloquy you ought to conclude that the tree did not give vegetation to itself.

LUCRETIUS.—I am forced to allow it.

POSIDONIUS.—Tell me next what life is.

LUCRETIUS.—It is vegetation joined with perception in an organized body.

POSIDONIUS.—And is there not a being called life, that gives perception to an organized body?

LUCRETIUS.—Doubtless vegetation and life are words which signify things that live and vegetate.

POSIDONIUS.—If a tree and an animal cannot give themselves life and vegetation, can you give yourself thoughts?

LUCRETIUS.—I think I can, for I think of whatever I please. My intention was to converse with you about metaphysics, and I have done so.

POSIDONIUS.—You think that you are master of your ideas; do you know, then, what thoughts you will have in an hour, or in a quarter of an hour?

LUCRETIUS.—I must own that I do not.

POSIDONIUS.—You frequently have ideas in your sleep; you make verses in a dream: Caesar takes cities: I resolve problems; and hounds pursue the stag in their dreams. Ideas, therefore, come to us independently of our own will; they are given us by a Superior Being.

LUCRETIUS.—In what manner do you mean? Do you suppose that the Supreme Being is continually employed in communicating ideas; or that he created incorporeal substances, which were afterwards capable of forming ideas of themselves, sometimes with the assistance of the senses, and sometimes without it? Are these substances formed at the moment of the animal’s conception? Or are they formed before its conception? Do they wait for bodies, in order to insinuate themselves into them? or are they not lodged there till the animal is capable of receiving them? Or, in fine, is it in the Supreme Being that every animated being sees the ideas of things? What is your opinion?

POSIDONIUS.—When you tell me how our will produces an instantaneous motion in our bodies, how your arm obeys your will, how we receive life, how food digests in the stomach, and how corn is transformed into blood, I will then tell you how we have ideas. With regard to all these particulars I frankly confess my ignorance. The world, perhaps, may one day obtain new lights; but from the time of Thales to the present age we have not had any. All we can do is to be sensible of our own weakness, to acknowledge an Almighty Being, and to be upon our guard against these systems.

DIALOGUE BETWEEN A CLIENT AND HIS LAWYER.

CLIENT.—Well, sir! with regard to the cause of those poor orphans?

LAWYER.—What do you mean? It is but eighteen years since their estate has been in litigation.

CLIENT.—I don’t complain of that trifling matter; I know the custom well enough; I respect it, but how in the name of heaven comes it to pass that you have been these three months soliciting a hearing and have not yet obtained it?

LAWYER.—The reason is because you have not solicited an audience in person in behalf of your pupils; you ought to have waited on the judge several different times, to entreat him to try your cause.

CLIENT.—It is their duty to do justice of their own accord without waiting till it is asked them. He is a very great man that has it in his power to sit in judgment on men’s lives and fortunes, but he is by no means so to desire that the miserable should wait in his antechamber. I do not go to our parson’s levee to pray and beseech him to have the goodness to sing high mass, why ought I then to petition my judge to discharge the function of his office? In short, after so many and such tedious delays, are we at length going to be so happy as to have our cause tried to-day?

LAWYER.—Why yes, and there is great likelihood of your carrying a very material point in your process; you have a very decisive article in “Charondas” on your side.

CLIENT.—This same Charondas was, in all probability, some lord-chancellor in the time of one of the kings of the first race who has passed a law in favour of orphans?

LAWYER.—By no means, he is no more than a private person who has given his opinion in a great volume which nobody reads, but then your advocate quotes him, the judges take it upon his credit, so there’s your cause gained in a trice.

CLIENT.—What! do you tell me the opinion of this Judge Charondas passes current for a law?

LAWYER.—But there is one devilish bad circumstance attends us. Turnet and Brodeau are both against us.

CLIENT.—These, I suppose, are two other legislators whose laws have much the same authority with those of that other hard-named gentleman.

LAWYER.—Yes, certainly, as it was impossible to explain the Roman law sufficiently in the present case the world took different sides of the question.

CLIENT.—What the devil signifies it to bring in the Roman law in this affair? Do we live in the present age under Theodosius or Justinian?

LAWYER.—By no means, but our forefathers, you must know, had a prodigious passion for tilting and fox hunting; they ran all, as if they were mad, to the Holy Land with their doxies. You will grant me that men in such a hurry of business of consequence could not be supposed to have time on their hands to frame a complete body of universal jurisprudence.

CLIENT.—Aye, aye, I understand you. For want of laws of your own you are forced to beg of Charondas and Justinian to be so good as tell you how you should proceed when an inheritance is to be divided.

LAWYER.—There you are mistaken, we have more laws than all Europe besides; almost every city has a body of laws of its own.

CLIENT.—Your most obedient. Here’s another miracle.

LAWYER.—Ah! had your wards been born at Guignes-la-Putain instead of being natives of Melun near Corbeil!

CLIENT.—Very well; what had happened then, for God’s sake?

LAWYER.—You should have gained your cause as sure as two and two make four, that’s all, for at this same Guignes-la-Putain there is a custom which is wholly in your favour; but were you to go but two leagues beyond this, you would then be in a very different situation.

CLIENT.—But pray are not Guignes and Melun both in France? And can anything be more absurd or horrible than to tell me that what’s right in one village is wrong in another? By what fatal barbarity does it happen that people born in the same country do yet live under different laws?

LAWYER.—The reason is, that formerly the inhabitants of Guignes and those of Melun were not inhabitants of the same country: these two fine cities formed in the golden days of yore two distinct empires, and the august sovereign of Guignes, though a vassal to the king of France, gave laws to his own subjects. Those laws depended on the good will and pleasure of his major domo, who, it seems, could not read, so that they have been handed down by a most venerable tradition from father to son, so that the whole race of the barons de Guignes becoming extinct, to the irrecoverable loss of all mankind, the conceits of their first lackeys still exist and are held for the fundamental law of the land. The case is exactly the same in every six leagues in the whole kingdom, so that you change laws every time you change horses, so you may judge what a taking we poor advocates are in when we are to plead, for instance, for an inhabitant of Poictou against an inhabitant of Auvergne.

CLIENT.—But these same men of Poictou, Auvergne, with your Guignes gentry, are they not all dressed in the same manner? Is it a harder matter to use the same laws than it is to wear the same clothes? And since it is evident the tailors and cobblers understand one another from one end of the

kingdom to the other, why cannot the judges learn of them, and follow so excellent an example?

LAWYER.—You desire a thing altogether as impossible as it would be to bring the nation to make use of one sort of weights and measures. Why would you have the laws everywhere the same when you see the point is different in all places? For my own part, after thinking till my head was like to split, all I have been able to conclude for the soul of me, is this: That as the measure of Paris is different from that at St. Denis, it follows that men’s judgments must also be different in both. The varieties of nature are infinite, and it would be wrong in us to endeavour to render uniform what she intends shall not be so.

CLIENT.—Yet, now I think on it, I have a strong notion the English have but one sort of weight and measures.

LAWYER.—The English! aye. Why the English are mere barbarians; they have, it is true, but one kind of measure, but, to make amends, they have a score of different religions.

CLIENT.—There you mention something strange indeed! Is it possible that a nation who live under the same laws, should not likewise live under the same religion?

LAWYER.—It is; which makes it plain they are abandoned to their own reprobate understandings.

CLIENT.—But may not it also prove that they think laws made for regulating the external actions of men and religion the internal? Possibly the English, and other nations, were of opinion that laws related to the concernments of man with man and that religion regarded man’s relation to God. I am sure I should never quarrel with an Anabaptist who should take it into his head to be christened at thirty years old, but I should be horridly offended with him should he fail paying his bill of exchange. They who sin against God ought to be punished in the other world; they who sin against man ought to be chastised in this.

LAWYER.—I understand nothing of all this. I am just going to plead your cause.

CLIENT.—I wish to God you understood it better first.

DIALOGUE BETWEEN MADAME DE MAINTENON AND MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.

[Madame de Maintenon and Mademoiselle Ninon de l’Enclos had lived long together. The author has often heard the late Abbé de Châteauneuf say, that Madame de Maintenon had used her utmost endeavours to engage Ninon to turn nun, and to come and comfort her at Versailles.]

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—’Tis true, I did request you to come to see me privately, perhaps you may think it was only to make a display of my grandeur; by no means, I really meant it that I might receive in you a real consolation—

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—Consolation, madam! I must acknowledge that, having never been favoured with hearing of you since you were grown great, I concluded you must be perfectly happy.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—I have the good fortune to be thought so. There are people in the world who are satisfied with this, though, to be plain with you, it is not at all my case, I have always exceedingly regretted your company.

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—I understand you. In the midst of your grandeur you were sensible of the want of friendship; and I, on the other hand, who am entirely engrossed by friendship, never had occasion to wish for grandeur; but how then comes it to pass you forgot me so long?

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—You know the necessity I was under to seem at least to forget you. Believe me, amidst all the misfortunes attached to my elevation I always considered this restraint the chief.

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—As for my part, I neither forget my former pleasures nor my old friends; but if you are really unhappy, as you say you are, you impose prodigiously on the whole world who believe you otherwise.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—I was the first person deceived in this manner myself. If, while we were at supper together, in company with Villarfaux and Nantouillet at our little house the Tournelles, when the mediocrity of our fortune was scarce worth thinking of, somebody had said, You will, before ‘tis long, approach very near to the throne; the most powerful monarch in the world will soon make you his sole confidante; all favours will pass through your hands; you will be regarded as a sovereign: if, said I, any one had made me such predictions I should have answered, The accomplishment of this strange prognostication must certainly kill one with mere astonishment. The whole of it was actually accomplished. I felt some surprise in the first moments but, in hoping for joy, I found myself entirely mistaken.

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—A philosopher might possibly believe this, but the public will with great difficulty be brought to believe you were dissatisfied, and should they really think so they would certainly blame you for it.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—The world must then be as much in the wrong as I was. This world of ours is a vast amphitheatre where every one is placed on his bench by mere chance. They imagine the supreme degree of felicity to be on the uppermost benches. What an egregious mistake!

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—I take this mistake to be necessary to human nature: they would never give themselves any trouble about getting higher were they not led by an opinion that happiness is placed above them. Both of us are acquainted with pleasures infinitely less deceiving or fanciful, but, for Heaven’s sake, how did you contrive to be so exceedingly wretched on your exalted seat?

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—Alas! my dear Ninon! from the time I left off calling you anything but Mademoiselle de l’Enclos, I from that moment began to be less happy. It was decreed I must be a prude. This is telling all in one word. My heart is empty, my mind under restraint. I make the first figure in France, but it is really no more than a figure, a shadow! I live only a kind of borrowed life. Ah! did you but know what a burden it must be to a drooping soul to animate another soul or to amuse a mind no longer capable of amusement!

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—I easily guess the uneasiness of your situation. I fear insulting you should I mention the reflection that Ninon is happier at Paris in her little house with the Abbé de Châteauneuf, and some friends, than you at Versailles in the company of the most respectable personage in all Europe, who lays all his power at your feet. I am afraid to show you the superiority of my situation; I know it is wrong to discover too sensible a relish of our felicity in the presence of the unhappy. Endeavour, madam, to bear the load of your grandeur with patience, try to forget that delightful obscurity in which we formerly lived together, in the same manner you have been obliged to forget your ancient friends. The sole remedy in your painful state is to avoid reflection as much as possible, crying out with the poet,

Félicité passée,

Qui ne peut revenir,

Tourment de ma pensée,

Que n’ai-je en te perdant, perdu le souvenir!

‘Tormenting thought of former happiness gone,

never to return! Why, when I was bereft of the joy,

did I not lose the remembrance of it also!’

Drink of the river Lethe, and above all, comfort yourself with having before your eyes so many royal dames whose time lies as heavy on their hands as yours can do.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—Ah, my dear! what felicity can one find in being alone? I would fain make a proposal to you but I am afraid to open myself.

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—Indeed, madam, to be plain with you, you have reason to be a little mistrustful, but take courage.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—I mean that you will barter, at least in appearance, your philosophy for prudery, and then you will become a truly respectable woman. You shall live with me in Versailles, you shall be more my friend than ever, and help me to support my present condition.

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—I still have a great affection for you, madam, but I must freely own to you I love myself still better, and can never consent to turn hypocrite and render myself miserable forever because fortune has treated you cruelly.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—Ah, cruel Ninon! you have a heart more hard than even the very courtiers themselves. Can you then abandon me without the least remorse?

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—By no means; I am still but too sensible. You really melt me, and, to convince you I have the same regard for you as ever I now make you the last offer in my power; quit Versailles and come and live with me at the rue des Tournelles.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—You pierce my very heart. I cannot be happy near the throne, nor can I enjoy pleasure in a retired life. This is one of the fatal effects of living in a court.

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—There is no remedy for an incurable disorder. I shall take the opinion of the philosophers who frequent my house concerning your malady, but I cannot promise you they will effect impossibilities.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—Good heavens! what a cruel situation! to behold myself on the very pinnacle of greatness, to be worshipped as a deity, and yet not to be able to taste of happiness!

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—Hold, my dear friend, I fancy there is some mistake in this; you believe yourself unhappy merely on account of your greatness, but may not the misfortune proceed from another cause, that your eyes have no longer the same lustre, your appetite no longer so good, nor your relish for pleasures so lively as heretofore? You have lost your youth, beauty, and feelings; this, this is your real misfortune. This is the reason why so many women turn devotees at fifty and so fly from one chagrin into the arms of another.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—But, after all, you have more years over your head than I have and you are neither unhappy nor a devotee.

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—Let us understand each other. We ought not to imagine that at your age and mine we can enjoy complete happiness. It requires a soul glowing with the most exquisite sensations and the five senses in their highest perfection to taste this kind of felicity. But with a few friends, a little philosophy, and liberty, one may be as much at one’s ease as this age will admit of. The mind is never unhappy but when out of its sphere. So e’en take my advice and come and live with me and my philosophical friends.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—I see two ministers of state coming this way. They are very different company from philosophers, so fare you well, my dear Ninon.

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—Adieu, illustrious unfortunate.

DIALOGUE BETWEEN A SAVAGE AND A BACHELOR OF ARTS.

A governor of Cayenne, having brought over with him a savage from Guiana, who had a great share of good natural understanding, and spoke French tolerably well; a bachelor of arts at Paris had the honour of entering into the following conversation with him:

BACHELOR.—I suppose, Mr. Savage, you have seen a number of your country people who pass their lives all alone, for it is said that this is the true way of living natural to man, and that society is only an artificial depravity?

SAVAGE.—Indeed I never did see any of those people you speak of. Man appears to me to be born for society, as well as several other species of animals. Each species follows the dictates of its nature; as for us, we live all together in a community.

BACHELOR.—How! in community? Why, then, you have fine towns, and cities with walls, and kings who keep a court. You have shows, convents, universities, libraries, and taverns, have you?

SAVAGE.—No; but have I not frequently heard it said that in your continent you have Arabians and Scythians who never knew anything of these matters, and yet form considerable nations? Now we live like these people; neighbouring families assist each other. We inhabit a warm climate, and so have very few necessities; we can easily procure ourselves food; we marry; we get children; we bring them up, and then we die. You see this is just the same as among you; some few ceremonies excepted.

BACHELOR.—Why, my good sir, then you are not a savage?

SAVAGE.—I do not know what you mean by that word.

BACHELOR.—Nor, to tell you the truth, do I myself—stay—let me consider a little-Oh!-a savage? —Why—a savage is—what we call a savage, is a man of a morose, unsociable disposition, who flies all company.

SAVAGE.—I have told you already that we live together in families.

BACHELOR.—We also give the name of savage to those beasts who are not tamed, but roam wild about the forests; and from hence we have transferred that appellation to men who inhabit the woods.

SAVAGE.—I go into the woods sometimes, as well as you do, to hunt.

BACHELOR.—Pray, now, do you think sometimes?

SAVAGE.—It is impossible to be without some sort of ideas.

BACHELOR.—I have a great curiosity to know what your ideas are. What think you of man?

SAVAGE.—Think of him! Why, that he is a two-footed animal, who has the faculty of reasoning, speaking, and who uses his hands much more dexterously than the monkey. I have seen several kinds of men, some white, like you, others copper-coloured, like me, and others black, like those that wait upon the governor of Cayenne. You have a beard, we have none; the negroes have wool, you and I have hair. They say, that in your more northerly climates the inhabitants have white hair, whereas that of the Americans is black. This is all I know about man.

BACHELOR.—But your soul, my dear sir? your soul? what notion have you of that? whence comes it? what is it? what does it do? how does it act? where does it go?

SAVAGE.—I know nothing about all this, indeed; for I never saw the soul.

BACHELOR.—Apropos; do you think that brutes are machines?

SAVAGE.—They appear to me to be organized machines, that have sentiment and memory.

BACHELOR.—Well; and pray now, Mr. Savage, what do you think that you, you yourself, I say, possess above those brutes?

SAVAGE.—The gifts of an infinitely superior memory, a much greater share of ideas, and, as I have already told you, a tongue capable of forming many more sounds than those of brutes; with hands more ready at executing; and the faculty of laughing, which a long-winded argumentator always makes me exercise.

BACHELOR.—But tell me, if you please, how came you by all this? What is the nature of your mind? How does your soul animate your body? Do you always think? Is your will free?

SAVAGE.—Here are a great number of questions; you ask me how I came to possess what God has given to man? You might as well ask me how I was born? For certainly, since I am born a man, I must possess the things that constitute a man in the same manner as a tree has its bark, roots, and leaves. You would have me to know what is the nature of my mind. I did not give it to myself, and therefore I cannot know what it is; and as to how my soul animates my body, I am as much a stranger to that, too; and, in my opinion, you must first have seen the springs that put your watch in motion before you can tell how it shows the hour. You ask me if I always think? No, for sometimes I have half-formed ideas, in the same manner as I see objects at a distance, confusedly; sometimes my ideas are much stronger, as I can distinguish an object better when it is nearer to me; sometimes I have no ideas at all, as when I shut my eyes I can see nothing. Lastly, you ask me, if my will is free? Here I do not understand you; these are things with which you are perfectly well acquainted, no doubt, therefore I shall be glad you will explain them to me.

BACHELOR.—Yes, yes, I have studied all these matters thoroughly; I could talk to you about them for a month together without ceasing, in such a manner as would surpass your understanding. But tell me, do you know good and evil, right and wrong? Do you know which is the best form of government? which the best worship? what is the law of nations? the common law? the civil law? the canon law? Do you know the names of the first man and woman who peopled America? Do you know the reason why rain falls into the sea; and why you have no beard?

SAVAGE.—Upon my word, sir, you take rather too great advantage of the confession I made just now, that man has a superior memory to the brutes; for I can hardly recollect the many questions you have asked me; you talk of good and evil, right and wrong; now, I think that whatever gives you pleasure, and does injury to no one, is very good and very right; that what injures our fellow-creatures, and gives us no pleasure, is abominable; and what gives us pleasure but, at the same time, hurts others, may be good with respect to us for the time, but it is in itself both dangerous to us, and very wrong in regard to others.

BACHELOR.—And do you live in society with these maxims?

SAVAGE.—Yes, with our relatives and neighbours and, without much pain or vexation, we quietly attain our hundredth year; some indeed reach to a hundred and twenty, after which our bodies serve to fertilize the earth that has nourished us.

BACHELOR.—You seem to me to have a clear understanding, I would very fain puzzle it. Let us dine together, after which we will philosophize methodically.

SAVAGE.—I find that I have swallowed foods that are not made for me, notwithstanding I have a good stomach; you have made me eat after my stomach was satisfied, and drink when I was no longer dry. My legs are not so firm under me as they were before dinner; my head feels heavy, and my ideas are confused. I never felt this diminution of my faculties in my own country. For my part, I think the more a man puts into his body here, the more he takes away from his understanding. Pray, tell me, what is the reason of all this damage and disorder?

BACHELOR.—I will tell you. In the first place, as to what passes in your legs, I know nothing about the matter, you must consult the physicians about that; they will satisfy you in a trice. But I am perfectly well acquainted with how things go in your head. You must know, then, that the soul being confined to no place, has fixed her seat either in the pineal gland, or callous body in the middle of the brain. The animal spirits that rise from the stomach fly up to the soul, which they cannot affect, they being matter and it immaterial. Now, as neither can act upon the other, therefore the soul takes their impression, and, as it is a simple principle, and consequently subject to no change, therefore it suffers a change, and becomes heavy and dull when we eat too much; and this is the reason that so many great men sleep after dinner.

SAVAGE.—What you tell me appears very ingenious and profound, but I should take it as a favour if you would explain it to me in such a manner as I might comprehend.

BACHELOR.—Why, I have told you everything that can be said upon this weighty affair; but, to satisfy you, I will be a little more explicit. Let us go step by step. First, then, do you know that this is the best of all possible worlds?

SAVAGE.—How! is it impossible for the Infinite Being to create anything better than what we now see?

BACHELOR.—Undoubtedly; for nothing can be better than what we see. It is true, indeed, that mankind rob and murder each other, but they all the while extol equity and moderation. Several years ago they massacred about twelve millions of your Americans, but then it was to make the rest more reasonable. A famous calculator has proved that from a certain war of Troy, which you know nothing of, to the last war in North America, which you do know something of, there have been killed in pitched battles no less than five hundred and fifty-five million six hundred and fifty thousand men, without reckoning young children and women buried under the ruins of cities and towns which have been set on fire; but this was all for the good of community; four or five thousand dreadful maladies, to which mankind are subject, teach us the true value of health; and the crimes that cover the face of the earth greatly enhance the merit of religious men, of which I am one; you see that everything goes in the best manner possible, at least as to me.

Now things could never be in this state of perfection, if the soul was not placed in the pineal gland. For—but let me take you along with me in the argument. Let us go step by step. What notion have you of laws, and of the rule of right and wrong; of the to Kalon, as Plato calls it?

SAVAGE.—Well, but my good sir, while you talk of going step by step, you speak to me of a hundred different things at a time.

BACHELOR.—Every one converses in this manner. But tell me who made the laws in your country?

SAVAGE.—The public good.

BACHELOR.—That word public good means a great deal. We have not any so expressive; pray, in what sense do you understand?

SAVAGE.—I understand by it that those who have a plantation of cocoa trees or maize, have forbidden others to meddle with them, and that those who had them not, are obliged to work, in order to have a right to eat part of them. Everything that I have seen, either in your country or my own, teaches me that there can be no other spirit of the laws.

BACHELOR.—But as to women, Mr. Savage, women?

SAVAGE.—As to women, they please me when they are handsome and sweet-tempered; I prize them even before our cocoa trees; they are a fruit which we are not willing to have plucked by any but ourselves. A man has no more right to take my wife from me than to take my child. However, I have heard it said, that there are people who will suffer this; they have it certainly in their will; every one may do what he pleases with his own property.

BACHELOR.—But as to successors, legatees, heirs, and collateral kindred?

SAVAGE.—Every one must have a successor. I can no longer possess my field when I am buried in it, I leave it to my son; if I have two, I divide it equally between them. I hear that among you Europeans, there are several nations where the law gives the whole to the eldest child, and nothing to the younger. It must have been sordid interest that dictated such unequal and ridiculous laws. I suppose either the elder children made it themselves, or their fathers, who were willing they should have the pre-eminence.

BACHELOR.—What body of laws appears to you the best?

SAVAGE.—Those in which the interests of mankind, my fellow creatures, have been most consulted.

BACHELOR.—And where are such laws to be found?

SAVAGE.—In no place that I have ever heard of.

BACHELOR.—You must tell me from whence the inhabitants of your country first came? Who do you think first peopled America?

SAVAGE.—God—whom else should we think?

BACHELOR.—That is no answer. I ask you from what country your people first came?

SAVAGE.—The same country from which our trees came; really the Europeans appear to me a very pleasant kind of people, to pretend that we can have nothing without them; we have just as much reason to suppose ourselves your ancestors as you have to imagine yourselves ours.

BACHELOR.—You are an obstinate little savage.

SAVAGE.—You a very babbling bachelor.

BACHELOR.—But, hark ye, Mr. Savage, one word more with you, if you please. Do you think it right in Guiana to put those to death who are not of the same opinion with yourselves?

SAVAGE.—Undoubtedly, provided you eat them afterwards.

BACHELOR.—Now you are joking. What do think of the constitution?

SAVAGE.—Your servant.

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30/10/2007